DAVID SOLWAY: ANOTHER LOOK AT THE UNITED NATIONS @Arts & Opinion

Historian Niall Ferguson in his monumental The Square and the Tower argues that hierarchies ensconced in (metaphorically) high towers have claimed to rule over the globe and arrange for its affairs but that real change and innovation are the product of a network society living down below in the public square. Unfortunately, this distinction is no longer as feasible as it may sound. The tower continues to dominate, to exert its malign control, and one of its major battlemented segments is the United Nations which, as Thomas Sowell would say, is a citadel inhabited by the ‘anointed’ class of global raptors.

A recent example of the UN’s reach for world hegemony is its much-ballyhooed Summit for the Future (alternatively, the Pact for the Future). As the Free Humanity movement argues, the pact represents a consolidation of power, concentrating global influence over critical issues like climate policy, digital governance, and human rights in the hands of an irresponsible few. With limited democratic oversight and no citizen involvement, it works to undermine the ability of nations to determine their own policy and seeks to advance the re-invention of the political world as a globalist autocracy. The emphasis will fall on the censoring of so-called “disinformation” and “misinformation” — completely nebulous categories intended to stifle public dissent — and the imposition of greater restrictions on free speech.

What else has this esteemed organization been up to lately? As Rick Moran reports for PJ Media, “Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, claims that [Israel’s] pager attacks using Hezbollah electronics not only ‘violated international human rights law’ but also appear to violate international humanitarian law’s key principles.” Of course, international law does not apply to Hamas, which slaughtered over 1,400 Israelis, mainly civilians, in its infamous October 7 attack, or to Hezbollah that has been raining rockets on Israel’s northern communities for years. UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) promised to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which barred Hezbollah from re-militarizing south of the Litani River in Lebanon yet refused to honor the Resolution while Hezbollah re-armed, restocking its missile supply via Iran and Syria. And, as we now know, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) has collaborated for many years with Hamas and even participated in the bloody incursion into Israel on October 7.

The UN, like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), with which it is intimately aligned, is clearly a rogue organization that has no business meddling in international affairs and indeed, no longer has any credible reason to exist. It has long outlived its purpose of reconciling global antagonists and working for human wellbeing and fundamental liberties. It has become the very antithesis of its founding charter, siding with the worst actors on the world stage, and promoting egregious canards like supposed Israeli malfeasance, climate change and COVID-19 to deceive the public and enhance its authority. (More on this to come in a subsequent article.)

We recall as well that the UNHRC’s (United Nations Human Rights Council) 2005/8 Resolution 7/36, supported by the Muslim and African member nations and still in force, imposed limits on the freedom of individual expression. The intention was to modify international law in order to bring it increasingly into line with Islamic law, trumping freedom of expression with a moratorium on “defamation of religion,” which is understood as blasphemy against Islam. Christianity and Judaism are of no account. The Council features two agendas at its annual session: one devoted to Israel, the other to the rest of the world. This bias alone is sufficient to disqualify the United Nations as a reliable authority and even as a valid quasi-judicial body on the world scene. It is, or should be, common knowledge by this time that the UN is controlled largely by voting blocs associated with despotic governments and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

As Moran concludes his article, “The UN is becoming more and more irrelevant,” though it is no less toxic than it has been for the better part of a century. The world would be a marginally saner place without the corruption, deceit, hypocrisy and economic parasitism associated with so bloated and useless an organization. Argentinian president Javier Milei has accused the UN of becoming a “multi-tentacled Leviathan that seeks to decide what each nation state should do and how the citizens of the world should live.” He is absolutely right, continuing: “We have seen how [the United Nations], born to defend the rights of man, has been one of the main proponents of the systematic violation of freedom, as — for example — with the global lockdowns in the year 2020, which should be considered a crime against humanity.”

The only reason, plainly delinquent, for the UN’s continued existence is that it furnishes a lucrative sinecure for a pampered and decadent elite, along with a horde of redundant functionaries, who revel in its perquisites. This is a freebie that the compromised leaders of nations and international organizations, as well as the legions of state officials, have no intention of surrendering. For the UN represents a second career to rival the first, or something that resembles a bankable retirement fund for our political, economic, corporate and administrative predators, which is why the UN, which purports to adjudicate global tensions and lobby for “sustainable development,” will continue to bedevil the world with its fraudulent excuse for being.