'The UN is nothing but a tool of crime'

Mon Jun 6 00:16:47 2005

The UN is the result of interests and power relations shaped during WW II. First and foremost it represents a compromise between the European colonial interests while establishing a multinational order centered around the USA. The UN system of states is characterized by very steep hierarchies with the Security Council on top. Member states represent only a tiny fraction of all nations, and of these states only a tiny group controls all of the major decisions.

The UN is not the nations of the world united but a tool to enforce and defend a system of states and international relations which came out of European history and expansion and serves the interests of state rulers in general and those of the most powerful states in particular. Nations and peoples were both lumped together and divided into states according to the designs of the colonial powers, alien and hostile to the histories and identities of the peoples living under them. Most of these states have no reason of existence besides foreign dictates and legal frameworks, and are the cause of much grievances and conflict among nations and peoples.

The state governments and rulers of these post-colonial states, are generally supporting the UN system as a main source of legitimization of their power. The UN system of states is diametrically opposed to the interests of small nations trying to regain or defend their integrity, autonomy and self-determination. Often one or more dominant nations control the state and oppress and discriminate against the other nations, and many nations have been or are being extinct. In other cases, nations have been divided into several states, made minorities under their respective states.

Population control

During the critical period of the the late 1960s and through the 1970s, the UN and its agencies played an important role in promoting neo-Malthusian ideology and population control programmes (the adoption of policies of population prevention and decimation). The core of the Mathusian ideology is to blame the poor for their poverty. Parents are declared responsible for their children dying from malnutrition and diseases. The rationale implemented goes like this: first, those who don't have enough money to pay for their existential needs will either die or forced into bondage and at the mercy of the international donor community, and second, if families are poor and cannot afford children, they either must prevent them from being born or will face their children suffer much and die early.

Collective Punishment of a Nation

The UN is directly responsible for the mass extermination of Iraqi people. Authorized by the UN, between January 17 until February 28, 1991, a defenseless Iraq was bombed, with an intensity never before seen in the history of warfare, by a multi-national coalition led by the US-CENTCOM. The UN continued its collective punishment of the Iraqi nation with 13 years of sanctions, embargo and blockade. The UN policies systematically impoverished the Iraqi people and left the country without the means to recover from the devastating destruction of the 1991 assault. Altogether, an estimated two million Iraqis died in the name and by the actions of the UN, mostly from malnutrition, diseases and bombing.

Legalize War of Aggression

In the fall of 2001, the UN 'legalized' the US war of aggression against Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries, which tried to recover after decades of war and facing the consequences a long drought. With winter quickly approaching, all aid operations stopped when the USA began its assault. Unknown numbers of people died not only from the bombing or were killed by the invading troops, but also because their food or firewood reserves proved insufficient or while trying to reach one of the camps where many died as well. Still today Afghanistan continues to be occupied by US/NATO troops.

Recolonization

If we look at the history of colonization of Africa, particularly following the Berlin Conference of 1885, humanitarian justifications for intervention were as common as today. And the results were also the same as we witness today. Trade and finances were controlled by foreign companies and countries, selected youth 'educated' to adopt the views of their masters and disrespect their own culture and history, to be used to serve within the colonial and post-colonial administrations and hierarchies. Local peoples were largely dispossessed, impoverished and forced to work, or exterminated.

Based on colonialist and imperialist plunder, subjugation and imposition of economic/political/legal schemes, providing the basis for foreign control of markets, prices and currency exchange rates, resulting in widespread poverty and struggle for control over increasingly scarce resources, fuelled by military and humanitarian assistance by the dominant foreign countries (mostly delivered through proxy states and NGOs) and inter-capitalist competition, unrest and fighting is spreading in Africa.

The conditions created and manipulated by past interventions and continued control of markets and transfer of wealth are used to justify further intervention by those same foreign forces most responsible for the misery. The pattern of foreign intervention is very similar in most cases. The strategy of the DTS to organize strife and escalate conflict is often building upon potential or actual tribal, ethnic and religious differences and historical grievances. This is done

• to distract from the underlying causes of misery and degradation, like the spiritual, social, cultural, economic and ecological disintegration and devastation resulting from colonization/imperialism and foreign controlled development,
• to distract from the ruthless expropriation and exploitation of peoples and resources through world market integration, and the destruction of local economies based on family and community subsistence agriculture and other production, focusing on self-sufficiency and self-reliance for the things needed to sustain their own way of life and control development,
• to distract from mass extermination committed to eliminate potential consumers of resources, which DTS claim and reserve for themselves. The main leverage of mass extermination is the monetarization of relations, resulting in dispossessed and impoverished masses of landless people, made dependent upon and at the mercy of forces completely out of their control,
• to strengthen the preconception of 'them' being backward and primitive, not being able to advance on their own, thereby justifying (re)colonization.

The Cold War limited the usefullness of the UN against countries to force them to comply with the dictates of the USA and its Allies. After the end of the Cold War the UN is increasingly used as a tool in a comprehensive strategy of control and enforcement by the DTS, alongside and complementing the IMF/WB/WTO. It is important to note the high level of coordination and integration of social, economic, medical, psychological, political, humanitarian and military aspects into a comprehensive strategy of intervention and domination.

The favorite means of intervention against financially weak are military and humanitarian aid, given directly or through proxies, through governmental or non-governmental channels, more or less open or under-cover, often combined with logistical and intelligence support. Some guerrilla/warlord/militia is selected for support with training and weapons to wage attacks and provoke the state authorities to enter into a cycle of violence which can than be used to wage propaganda aggression and threaten sanctions or armed intervention.

The WB, IMF, WTO and UN provide the main official political framework of control and intervention below the level of higher intensity warfare. Cutting off access to international debt markets and forcing access for foreign capital to local markets, imposition of economic policies and conditions to secure and increase the flow of profit to foreign investors and destroy whatever local control of markets is left. The UN often contribute to further escalate the conflict through political and economic pressure, like sanctions, embargoes and other trade restrictions, freezing of assets, or the use political justice (international or special courts). A next stages on the escalation ladder are coercion of involved groups into some sort of 'peace process' and 'reconciliation' scheme, deployment of foreign troops, and imposition of political and economic structures (power-sharing, democracy, good governance, human rights, sound economic policies).

Size of UN Peacekeeping Forces: 1947-2003
Peacekeeping Operations over the Years and Canada's Contribution

Tens of thousands of UN troops are operating in a number of weak states, mostly in Africa. Areas under occupation of UN troops tend to be a great opportunity for humanitarian and certain religious NGOs to expand their influence because they get secured and largely unrestricted access to communities to spread their gospel and launch their programs upon weak and often desperate people.

UN Peacekeeping Operations 30 April 2005
Contributors to UN peacekeeping operations as of Dec 2004

Out of almost 75,000 military, police and civilian personnel serving in 17 current operations, more than two-thirds are in Africa. ...

... In June 2004, the Group of Eight industrialized nations (G8) adopted the Africa Action Plan to train and equip thousands of African peacekeepers and develop the capacity of African organizations to manage peace support operations. The European Union has also established an African Peace Facility to assist in building indigenous peacekeeping capacities.

...: at the end of 2004, the 10 largest troop and police contributors were all from the developing world, providing almost two thirds of UN peacekeepers. Top contributors Bangladesh and Pakistan deployed one quarter of all uniformed personnel. EU member states, however, while paying 40% of the UN's peacekeeping budget, provided fewer than 10% of the peacekeepers. While the United States gave 26 percent of the peacekeeping budget, it had 318 uniformed personnel in the field at the end of the year. The UN needs, in particular, highly trained units for some specific functions of contemporary peacekeeping missions, which are found more readily in the militaries of developed states.

Meanwhile, at UN Headquarters in New York, DPKO has strengthened its capacity to plan, deploy and sustain complex peacekeeping missions. The department is nearing its goal to be able to set up a mission within 30-90 days of Security Council authorization. ...

In this context of intervention and colonization, disarmament programs are just another act of aggression. The policies of disarming peoples and groups only make them less capable of fighting and more vulnerable to state oppression. The dogma of the state as the only legitimate force to authorize and use violence and impose its laws and regulations leaves less autonomy and authority of peoples for themselves. Pacification achieved by manipulation and coersion is no peace, but one of the worst forms of oppression. There can be no peace without self-determination free from foreign intervention. Therefor a necessary condition for peace is to break free from international community domination and manipulation, and to overcome dependencies from world markets. Only after getting any foreign powers out of their affairs can peace become possible.

The UN proved to be nothing but a tool of crime. The UN Security Council is something like a permanent Berlin Conference dividing the world into areas of influence among the Great Powers. Together with western NGOs, IFIs and development agencies and backed by troops, the subjugation and assimilation of COP peoples under the dominant culture of the DTS is continued unabated.