What is funny is when the americans invaded Iraq the Canwest opinion columnist were furious the U.N. did not endorse the action. They complained bitterly and predicted the end of the U.N..

Now, even the americans are looking to the U.N. to help extricate themselves out of the quagmire.

As Rafe says to get representatives of all countries under one roof to talk is important.

We should be clear that the UN is an assembly for dialogue and not a military alliance.

The UN is a great place for world leaders and NGOs to talk things through and try to avoid conflict.

But it is not a defence alliance, and likely will never be. Unlike alliances, such as NATO, the UN does not identify who likely future enemies are and it does not define the numbers of troops to be mobilized to specific areas from specific member countries in the event of war. It also does not obligate its members to supply troops. The UN is not designed to make rapid deployment decisions in the event of a military incident.

Military alliances must have smaller memberships because there is an "us" and a "them". We shouldn't let "them" prevent "us" from making difficult decisions in an emergency. The UN should be as inclusive as possible to allow for everybody in the world community an opportunity to speak & be heard (despite what China says about Taiwan ...).

So we need the UN to encourage civil society and the spread of democratic institutions around the world. But we need military alliances in case the UN and other diplomatic channels do not prevent a military emergency.

Ideals are always by their nature impossible completely to achieve. The notion of a moral overseer on the international stage is, of course, only effective to the degree that its constituent nations respect its moral authority. As such nations as the US and others have seen fit to undermine this authority, small wonder that there have not been more failures than there have been.

The international anarchy that conceivably could result with the abandonment of such UN initiatives as peacekeeping (of which most Canadians approve and support) is frightening. Let's keep the UN.

Improved is too soft a word. The UN needs to be literally rebuilt from the bottom up. The archaic "veto" system needs to be abolished, and the UN needs to be a lot more picky about who serves in it's human rights tribunals. In fact, I would say that the less enlightened governments of the world need to be restricted to the back benches until they get their act together.

To say nothing of the corruption which appears to have squirmed into the inner workings.

I have not done a cost benefit analysis, but it seems to me that it would be cheaper to clean up the UN's flaws than to establish a brand new organization with an identical mandate.

The strength of the UN is that it is not just a place to talk, it writes legislation that actually commits signatories to change their domestic laws and policies. In this way, it is the most senior form of government.

The weakness of the UN is the same as its strength. Nationalism invests heavily in, well, nations. Paranoia about a "one world government" is not just confined to Christian armageddonists. While many of us would welcome the Star Trek future vision of a united, more or less utopian Earth, many of us would strenuously oppose the diminishment of local control of resources, decisions, practices.

Is reading Rafe Mair's Tyee columns worth it?

Come on Rafe, give us something that's relevant rather than digging into that big bag of standby issues as you've been wont to do in recent weeks.

With your background, surely you can find a topic that you can bring something new to and maybe even have a BC angle.

What next: Is Stanley Park big enough?

To Allan
Are Rafes columns worth it????
Not so much

As soon as we can convince China to embrace democratic traditions, get those ex KGB dicks out of Russia, and push the States to accept gay marriages and call an armitice on their failed war on drugs, we will finally make headway. Obviously, there are a lot of tyrannies and unfree nations out there, but if the big boys get along as free nations, then by way of pressure or incentives, I'm sure we can make headway.

The main problem now is that their is no criteria or mechanism for intervening where a nations head of state is oppressing their own people. Such as genocide in Rwanda, religious oppresion in Afghanistan (which was incidentally solved by questionable action.) Soveriegnty can only be respected, when the leaders are democratically elected by universal sufferage, and ALL individuals are able to vote. We also must assure electoral reform is present to ensure that under democracies, minorities may not hold absolute power over majorities, and majorites may not use their position to deny minority rights.

China's working it's way in that direction dangrice, and will probably make it where the others haven't.

However, when it first first became apparent that the collapse of the USSR had opened the door to a flood of domestic and international crooks and theives, we were told not to worry, since this would soon evolve into "free enterprise". So, what's the problem?

In the US, their personal use of steroids and various other forms of pill-popping, coupled to their willingness to eat foods laced with hormones of all kinds, is reducing them to a population of androgynes, so sex diffences won't soon matter anyway.

And hey, don't you know BC Bud is now our major export? What gives with this legalisation thing?

If there's no dictatorships, etc, to gently nudge down the right political path, what will we do with our armies, their suppliers who employ us and our politicians,and all those neat tanks, smart bombs, etc, etc?

Geez, dangrice, are you some sort of Pollyanna or something ??

I think the above people would be great employees for the UN. They hate the US which is a prerequisit.
They are a useless organization. Disband them now.

I am a little unclear on how having the US Federal government approving gay marriages will help world peace?

I used to be a big believer in the UN, but having my friends come back for various peacekeeping missions and tell me about the corruption, the abandonment of the people they were supposed to protect, the bureaucracy, the lack of concern for the people of the region and the inability to even defend themselves to name a few issues, burned me out on them. Rwanda was the last straw for me.

Peacekeeping which is already part of our mythology is almost obsolete, a byproduct of the cold war. Peacekeeping as most Canadians understand it, can only succeed between two nation states with relatively stable governments that are both looking for a peaceful solution, but do not trust each other. In this case the insertion of a lightly armed force to acting as a buffer, tripwire and communicator will work.
However the same setup has been proven not to work in countries where there internal civil unrest or where the countries are intent in using the UN force as a shield in order to carry out ethnic cleansing and such. Africa is a classical case of this situation, where the UN forces have moved from peacekeeping to peacemaking. One of the more interesting cases is where Pakistani troops supported by Indian helicopter gunships attacked rebel strongholds that had been causing unrest and killed UN troops. This combined attack has reduced the number of incidents in the area and have allowed some of the other UN agencies to work in the area.

The UN General assembly is mainly populated by representatives of countries that find democracy and human rights a foreign concept. They had more in common with Saddam Hussein than with the West and their voting showed this. The security council is flawed but unlikely to be corrected. The Oil for food (read: weapons & palaces) program is representative of the problems that plague the UN. The UN has failed to reach the dreams that people had for it. It still serves a purpose as a place to communicate, and some of the smaller less known programs have significant results.

To fix the UN, you will need a universal accepted definition of a democratic country. Then you allow every country to join the assembly, but only those that meet the definition can vote (if your people can’t vote, why should you be allowed to) As a country cleans up it’s human rights record and such, it moves up the ladder and gains more authority and rights. Right now there is no incentive to change and the worst abusers get to sit as the head of Human right committees.

Ever notice how much play the Palestinian-Israel conflict gets in the UN, meanwhile genocide in Africa or Asia barely gets a mention despite the massive number of dead and displaced people.

OTOH, Colin, the UN provided a platform for Gro Brundland's Our Common Future, putting the issue of sustainability on the world stage for the first time.

That in turn spawned Agenda 21, a series of environmental/social programs that is heavily endorsed in Europe, but totally unnoticed by our NA media. Those efforts are echoed by huge UN ENGO/gov't programmes promoting clean water, sewage, raising of living standards etc in the third world.

The proven fact is that hungry, impoverished people care little, and know little about "democracy". Making them self-sufficient and educated is the most radical thing we can do to counter despotic governments.

Besides getting rid of the WTO and the World Bank, that is :-]

Colin, it basically comes down to having the world's super powers lead by example. The US drug war, and the denial of equal rights for members of their own society present a "do as we say, not as we do" approach.

Democracy means, to at least a greater sense, accountability. An df or Scylla, throwing money at a Tyrant means more palaces (ie oil fo food) instead of better education, and better standards of living.

The UN, which gives similar votes to countries whose representatives have been chosen by the people as to those who representatives are imposters holding their people hostage, fails to act or be accountable.

And Scylla, while BC bud is a big export, its economic value is sku'd. Most of the porfits are concentrated in the hands of crimal elements, which are neither taxed not guaranteed to trickle down on the economy. Indeed, much of our return comes in the form of hard drugs which equally cause great harm to our society. By regulating and taxing drugs, (and then cracking down on smugglers and exporters to the fulll extent of the law) we rid ourselves of these criminal components, and open the way to treament programs, and in doing so reduce the economic bust of property crime.

The taxing of drugs is chimera, Dangrice. Marijuana is a good example of why not, since the taxes can be easily avoided by growing your own. The chemicals can be easily made by a competent chemist in the kitchen sink.

With the chemicals and "hard" drugs, we really
don't want people using them anyway, so taxing is just morally legitimising them, as opposed to the legal legitimisation for "harm refduction" purposes.

There is a further cavil, that Government should never be engaged in the taxation of an addiction. Gambling is a very good example of that, indicative of the sorry pass our society has come to. Tobacco is another such.

Scylla, I can mix up my own Moonshine, but that doesn't prevent me from hitting up the Liquor Store every Friday night.

Basically, if I buy a BigMac, I pay taxes, and so by no means should weed be any different. I won't argue for a second its not a drug, but its as recreational as anything else, and should be treated and regulated (ie, made difficult for Minors to obtain, and sold in small quantities to hinder trafficking).

The social contract says, I get to pay back to society what it allows me liberty to do. And thus ring me up. The other drugs, are a much tighter line. But I'd rather see clean drugs that bathroom stew, and I'd rather see anyone but corner dealers selling them out.

Its the underground elements that **** people over. The dealers waiting outside Money Mart of welfare day, and the abusers selling to abusers to keep the problems perpetuating. I've never been able to take a stolen TV into the liquor store for a beer, (never tried mind you) but alas, creating less criminals allows us better tools to treat our problems.

And you know what, after you regulate them, you crack down hard on the international dealers and smugglers. The courts can be lenient on growers who are doing so as a protest, but, hit em up with tax evasion and smuggling charges and you'll get a much more proper society.

The government does not have the ability moral legitimize anything, but sometimes taking the moral high ground means you must step on those on the low ground, for no point but outdated ideals.

All societies have and have had drugs, dangrise, even many wild animals - including bees :-) - The trick is to regulate their use without the need for force. Usually this takes place through custom.

The US "War on Drugs" which depends upon force, has been a colossal failure, with many side effects far worse than the drugs themselves. The lesson of Prohibition has been deliberatly ignored because of the opportunity presented to those who favour authoritarian control over you and me, not just the druggies.