So the question then becomes, “are we learning anything, yet?”

rockhauler on October 1, 2007 at 8:52 PM

Nope, Its going to get worse.
This is just one of many examples.

John O’Sullivan, NRO

August 26, 2005, 4:42 p.m.
Endangered Sovereignty
U.N. bureaucrats are making a quiet power grab.

In less than a month’s time — the 16th and 17th of September — the world’s great and good will be gathering at the U.N. building in Manhattan for what is officially called the High Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. This meeting, attended by the heads of government of most countries, including the major powers, has become a regular event in recent years, but one of ceremonial importance rather than of substance.

This year, however, the meeting will be very significant indeed. For the plenary session will almost certainly pass an obscure document, now circulating in draft form among U.N. delegations, that calls on the assembled governments to re-affirm their support for the U.N.’s Millennium Declaration Goals and the other declarations of U.N. conferences over the past 30 years. It will ask them to support the achievement of these goals in a coordinated and integrated manner, to renew their commitment to…

Falling asleep already, are you? Well, that is precisely the intention of those who composed these anodyne phrases. When bureaucrats seize power, they do it not with swords but with chloroform. And this document is a power-grab by people of whom you have never heard, the officials of the U.N. Secretariat, working in tandem with the diplomats of those countries and international organizations that would like to expand the power of the U.N. and its various agencies over both the citizens and governments of member nations.

You might suppose that, given the spreading scandal of the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food program, in which a regiment of U.N. officials was corruptly assisting Saddam Hussein to outwit the very sanctions they were supposed to be enforcing, the U.N. Secretariat would be on the defensive. And tucked away towards the end of this document, there are provisions to increase the transparency and accountability of U.N. agencies and their officials. In a rational world they would be whole of the document.

Alas, a reader who has the fortitude and diligence to plough through all of its 158 provisions will discover that its main thrust is to extend the U.N.’s power directly into countries and over the lives of citizens, corporations and private bodies. That ambition is not, of course, advertised. Most of the language used, in addition to being sleep-inducing, is mildly benevolent in tone. For instance:

“We recognize that development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing and cannot be enjoyed without each other.

http://www.nationalreview.com/jos/osullivan200508261642.asp

Speakup on October 1, 2007 at 9:19 PM