The United Nations Organisation was created for purposes which, as the Second World War was coming to an end, seemed necessary to keep some sort of peace between the "Victorious Allies", as they began to look forward to their ultimate aims in the post-war period and each wanted to grab what it considered to be in its respective interest.
The basic idea was to settle the inevitable disputes by diplomatic means rather than by outright warfare, and the Organisation started off with a very high-minded charter, which it breached very speedily. One of its great principles was to allow auto-determination to peoples until then subject to foreign rule, but this was sometimes considered inconvenient by one or more of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council. Perhaps the most striking example of this was the decision not to give any choice to the people of the mandated territory of Palestine and to propose a partition which did not reflect the then land ownership. In 1947, about 93% of the land was owned by Arabs, mostly Muslim or Christian and 7% by persons claiming to be Jews, but the U.N. suggested a partition based on over 50% to Jews and the remainder to the Arabs. Understandably, the Arabs were unhappy with this partition of their homeland, but the five Permanent Members insisted, thus starting the war which still persists. The United Kingdom was weary of fighting the supposedly Jewish terrorists, in the United States Mr Truman wanted to be sure of the Jewish vote in his country, France was more concerned in its own colonial insurrections and did not wish to welcome any more supposedly Jewish refugees, the Soviet Union wanted to get rid of some of its supposedly Jewish trouble-makers and China was engulfed in the early stages of a disastrous civil war. All five therefore supported this iniquitous proposal in complete contradiction with the Charter which they had so blithely agreed so shortly beforehand.
Despite this extremely bad start, the Organisation did try to do something about the trouble arising from its decision, but the new entity calling itself the "state of Israel" decided from an early date not to take any notice of United Nations Resolutions, since it was sure of being able to blackmail the USA on all occasions and far too often the United Kingdom into protecting it from any sanctions.
The almost comic situation has now come about that, while it still refuses to obey any of the Resolutions which would end its status of "rogue state", it is calling on the United Nations to enforce sanctions against those which it dislikes, and, after inciting the Bush régime in the USA into attacking Iraq, it now wishes to cripple Iran. This morning (16th July) I watched and listened in horror as this entity's Ambassador to the U.N., a Mr Dan Gillerman, told the BBC journalist, Stephen Sackur, that Iran and Syria were still part of the "Axis of Evil" and that by supporting resistance groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, they were backing terrorists. The trouble is that many ill-informed people in the English-speaking world will no doubt swallow such stories without first examining the true history of the Zionist gangs who first of all did what they could to sabotage the British forces still fighting a war against the Nazis and then went on to start the ethnic cleansing which they are still continuing to this very day to clear out the indigenous people of the land. Having lived through the Second World War, I find it hard to consider those resistance fighters, who still wish merely to recover their land, their homes and their freedom, as terrorists.
The question is then bound to come to one's mind of why we still have the United Nations, if its Resolutions can so scandalously be rejected by a supposed member state, and this question also leads one to wonder why the whole Organisation is not reformed to answer the needs of our present century. The whole idea of each Permanent Member of the Security Council having a veto on any decision is absurd, as each finds out when any of its pet matters is refused, as recently when the United Kingdom and the USA, with servile support from France, found that they could not obtain a Resolution to deal with the murderous Zimbabwean dictator since Russia (as the successor of the Soviet Union) and China each felt that it had an interest in giving support to the cowardly approach of Thabo Mbeki which seems doomed to failure.
Thus do the great of this world allow the weakest and least protected people on our planet to suffer oppression by supporting the persecutors, not only in Palestine and in Zimbabwe but also elsewhere, almost always for very obvious and crude economic short-term advantage. Freedom is precious as is justice, but, until the United Nations Organisation is reformed to protect the weak and the innocent, it seems unlikely that it will do anything much to help other than to intervene in comparatively minor matters where there is no economic interest for any of the five Permanent Members. However, these comparatively minor matters can be a boon to those who are thereby rescued from distressing conflicts, and we should not write off completely the over-all action of the U.N., or of its useful agencies which certainly save lives around the world.
The answer to the question seems therefore to be that the United Nations should continue its existing good works, but also be reformed to enable the Organisation to do more and better.
© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
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