What Is The United Nations

What Is The United Nations

The United Nations (UN) is the most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. It is  headquartered on international territory in New York City, with other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague. Its declared objective is to maintain world peace. This was the objective of its predecessor, The League of Nations.When the League of Nations failed to prevent WWII it was scrapped and replaced with The United Nations.  The UN Charter was begun on 25 April 1945, in San Francisco  and was adopted on 25 June 1945 and officially took effect on 24 October 1945. It began with 51 member states and grew to 193 in 2011.

The UN has six main parts: the General Assembly; the Security Council; the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); the Trusteeship Council; the International Court of Justice; and the UN Secretariat. As well as this, The UN System includes a multitude of specialized agencies, such as the the World Health Organization, the World Bank Group, UNESCO, and UNICEF.

What are these parts and what do they do? The General Assembly is responsible for the UN budget, appointing the non-permanent members to the Security Council, and appointing the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It is the only part of the UN where all member states have an equal say. However, it has no power to make international law, only to make recommendations.

The  Security Council is the collection of privileged nations who are allowed to make policy. This is where the power is. The Security council can enacting international sanctions, and authorize military action. It has the authority to impose binding resolutions on member states. It is made up of representatives of 15 privileged countries. The most privileged of the already privileged are the United States of America, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom.  These countries have permanent status on the Security Council. The other ten positions are elected to their spot for two years by the General Assembly.

The other arms of the UN serve in supportive roles. The United Nations Economic and Social Council is responsible for coordinating the economic and social fields of the UN.It is the job of the United Nations Trusteeship Council  to ensure that trust territories are administered in the best interests of their inhabitants, the common people. International Court of Justice, or World Court, is set up to judge international matters. Technically it only gives advisory opinions but its rulings serve as a foundation for international law. It is the role of the Secretariat to set the agenda for the UN's deliberative and decision making bodies. They also are responsible for implementing the decision of those bodies.

The World Bank works in conjunction with the United Nations to lend money  to  countries who are requesting it. It is made up of five international organizations. Throughout the years, the World Bank has been criticized by many non-governmental organizations and academics, including its former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz. Catherine Caufield, in her book,  Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations (1996), argues that the the World Bank actually harms developing nations rather than aids them.

The World Bank and its sister, the IMF, have been two major lending organizations in the world. This is where many politicians go to borrow money for their countries. How many countries in the world are in debt to the World Bank? I could not locate any statistics but the website for the World Bank claims that 124 developing nations have reported to them that they have debt. The IMF is lending close to $200 billion to more than 35 countries.

This debt that countries are racking up comes with strings attached. The most significant of these are agreements to engage in free-trade commerce. Developing countries walk into debt bondage that they can't climb out of. Next they find themselves bound to trade agreements that disadvantage them. Next those countries find themselves having to restructure by cutting government spending on education and health care, devaluing their currency and selling off larger and larger amounts of their natural resources. This is globalism at work.

Even the United Nations, in its own publication “Basic Facts About The United Nations” admits “Globalization and liberalization are posing new challenges to social development. There is growing concern with achieving a more equitable sharing of benefits of globalization. Many governments, which have made great sacrifices in economic reforms and liberalization, feel they have yet to reap the anticipated benefits of globalization.” ( Basic Facts About The United Nations 157)

The anticipated benefits of globalism and liberalism have not materialized for many world citizens. The United Nations is more than a bunch of peace talkers sitting in a room; it is a promoter of globalism. Globalism is the very essence of what the United Nations is. It is its reason for being. It is the United Nations that is promoting globalism, that is promoting itself, in every corner of the globe.

How does the United Nations promote itself? More specifically, how does it convince the masses that we need it standing over us? The short answer is it tells us there is an emergency! It tells us that there is an emergency, so great and so disastrous in its consequences that we need to respond immediately to what it is saying. It tells us that there is an emergency so great, so disastrous, that it is global in its scale and magnitude. Then, one day, at just the right moment it may tells us that only a global government can solve an emergency of this kind.

Friend, that supposed emergency is climate change. All of our media and educational system is saturated with messaging to warn us of the doom that is bearing down on all of us because of climate change. We turn on our t.v.s and hear programing, day and night, where the “Experts” try to convince us that the world is choking out its last gasp.

Many today question the accuracy of these claims. That doesn't mean that we want more air pollution or that we are in favor of dumping raw sewage into the ocean. I recycle like everyone else. However, can't we find a balanced way of living responsibly in the world. The rhetoric that we are bombarded with is not balanced and there are many of us that feel that the emergency could be ramped down to a concern rather than a cataclysmic emergency.

A great cataclysmic emergency suits the purposes of globalism. Globalism gives the United Nations a reason for existing. Globalism enriches the global elite, the multi-national corporations and the banking cartels. The debt bondage that globalism creates ensures the elite that their investments are secure. All of the world citizens are looking up for relief and the anticipated benefits of globalization have not materialized.

 Meanwhile, the little people everywhere are thirsting for a little freedom and assessing, “Do we need a global government to rule over us?” How much representation would the little guy, the individual, the citizen have with his global rulers on the other side of the world? How much accountability would, or can, a global government have towards its individual people? What if the heads of state of the Security Council's privileged nations have different interests than our own? What if there is another reason for the big emergency? What if we can't pay back the billions? What if the anticipated benefits of globalization and liberalization never materialize? Do we need The United Nations?

Shawn Stevens

 

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Economic_and_Social_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Trusteeship_Council
https://www.cfr.org/article/funding-united-nations-what-impact-do-us-contributions-have-un-agencies-and-programs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Secretariat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank_Group
http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/ids/
https://www.imf.org/en/About/effectiveness-of-imf-lending
https://www.tru.ca/library/pdf/cavanagh-mander.pdf
http://denaliassociates.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA