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As Promised, here is a list of sites that document the many successes the United Nations has contributed to the world over the last half century. It really would be a two page document to list them here, so I have just posted some links that begin to document them for me. Note, I didn't even cover the thousands of important scientific publications that have come out of UNESCO. If you really believe the UN is just a shadow agency, then you have been brainwashed by the conservative media in your locale.

enjoy:

http://edie.cprost.sfu.ca/gcnet/ISS4-17d.html (quick summary)
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SAP/accompl.html
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2001/dsgsm131.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/dag/symposium_docs/tabb.pdf
http://www.clw.org/pub/clw/un/whyunmat.html
http://www.clw.org/pub/clw/un/unsucess.html
http://www.unfoundation.org/un/un_facts.asp (find out where the funding comes from)

oh, and for Faile: here is a link to the efforts the UN has sponsred to help alleviate the suffering in Tibet:

http://www.savetibet.org/About/AboutList.cfm?c=12

cheers

I guess that post with those links was ment for me, eh?
-But first, I don't believe the conservative (or other) media in my area. I already said so in a former post.

And now you could post a couple of dozens links about what they didn't acomplish. These days they only publish things when it makes them look good. The world of science is ruled by money too, you know.
Scientific research needs a lot of $$$. So big companies sponsor research in their feild. But... when research shows that those companies are in the wrong the results never get published. And the researchers have to keep it hush hush or they'll get cut off.
Only recently scientists from all over the world complained about that. That it was almost impossible to do objective research. You get to see only what they want you to see.
Example:
With the trials against cigaret companies in the USA those been a bit more in the media again. When researchers first discovered how bad smoking is... theose companies had all results destroyed and even published some advertising movies about how healthy and good smoking is. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />
A couple of those companies been convicted a few times already. Let's take one located in Illinois.
On a last conviction it had to pay 10.1 billion $. Half of that money is supposed to go to smokers that ware "mislead by ads. saying that light sigarets waren't bad for your health". The other half is going to the state.
But what does the state do with that money? It invests it in... the sigaret companies. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> Becouse they're good for the economy of the state.
-If they ever get the money.

As for that list you posted... would you mind having a look at those websites again? They often kinda prove they're just propaganda too and... eh... make your post a bit contradictive.

Let's just take that quick summary to keep it simple:

[*]Maintaining peace and security - eh...where?
[*]Making peace - um... same question as above. Useally the UN only can go in to pick up the peaces.
[*]Promoting democracy, development, human rights, self-determination and independence, investment in developing countries - Aparently only in countries that are already considered to be democratic.
[*]Protecting the environment - Very big <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" /> on this one. All they can try to do now is try to restore environment.
[*]Preventing nuclear proliferation - Wonder how they feel about that in N-Korea and Pakistan (just to name a few). Or the USA... Bush backed out of that one for his star wars program.
[*]Strengthening international law - again, where? A lot of countries, including the USA, won't even recognise that internatial court they established in Holland.
[*]Handing down judicial settlements of major international disputes. - This is a joke. Right? (-again, they only go in to pick up the pieces. One of the biggest scandals (that even forced a goverment to resign): In former Yoegoslavia a whole village got slaughtered while they ware supposed to be under protection of the UN)
[*]Ending apartheid in South Africa - Claiming credit for that is typical. It's appaling. Credit for that should go to the ppl who really fought for their freedom there.
[*]Providing humanitarian aid to victims of conflict, food to victims of emergencies - If the UN would be competent enough to solve those conflicts they wouldn't have to provide aid later on. Most aid doesn't make it to where it should be anyway. And most aid comes from induvial countries.
[*]Aiding Palestinian refugees - Only on tv. That they even dare to put this up. That they never ware able to get anywhere in that conflict just shows how incompetent they are.
[*]Focusing on African development - Should we go ask Africans, who are still getting more poor every day about this?
[*]Promoting women's rights - They should promote a little harder than. Wonder how women in a lot of muslim and other Asian and African countries feel about this...
[*]Providing safe drinking water - ah, That must be why the biggest part of the children in the world have no safe drinking water yet.
[*]Eradicating smallpox - And keeping it alive in labs for biological warfare. - It even showed up again in western countries not so long ago.
[*]Pressing for universal immunization - Making us immune to misery?
[*]Reducing child mortality rates - by 1? Again, a lot more is done by individual countries and organisations.
[*]Fighting parasitic diseases - Same as for smallpox.

And so on. Some of the things on that list are to appalling to comment on. Some things are more or less twice inthere, just with differend words. And others are the result of another topic in the list.
Making a better world is never achieved by an organisation who's biggest worry is how to keep itself alive.
It's achieved by ppl and organisations who really go out there and don't apear in front of the cameras constantly becouse they're actually doing something.
The UN gets most of their money from "industrial countries". And a golden rule is: never bite the hand that feeds you. Most countries hardly pay anymore anyway. Or a lot less than what they're supposed to.

where exactly are you from again? i'd like to know who *your* leader is...

no one said we were the judge of the world, but pardon us for not sitting idley by like the french and the germans while this evil dictator kills thousands and thousands of his own citizens.

hey, that sounds like another evil dictator from germany named .

people wanna talk about how america isn't getting support from anyone? that's a load of BS. we now have over 40 countries on our side and recent polls indicate that roughly 80% of americans are supporting bush.

so what if countries like france don't support us? we have plenty of them that do. they didn't do jack to help liberate themselves when invaded, so it doesn't surprise me they don't want to help anyone else be liberated.

and all this talk about how the iraqis don't want want us to invade and kick saddam out? explain the following scene to me then:

a marine saw a one of those giant posters of saddam and he went over and started to rip it down. some of the iraqi people saw him and you know what they did to the marine? they helped him tear that junk down.

the war is on, and no amount of complaining is going to change that. i'm tired of people who live in free countries complaining about how we're trying to help free another country.

freedom is not free. freedom was paid for in and will continue to be paid for in . Not everyone in this world lives in freedom. The Iraqis don't, so when I hear a bunch of people who live in free countries who have the basic freedoms a lot of other countries don't, complaining about how we're going after saddam i shake my head sadly.

the world is not a utopia. they are bad guys out there. you can't talk them away, you can't debate them away and you can't rationalise them away.

i loved when bush told saddam he had three options, to get out, to surrender or to die.

This could have been solved in the first Gulf war, but you americans didn't help the iraqis then why should we believe this about libirating them then?

don't believe it. it's bullsh*t. bush will remove saddam, and institute a dictator of his choosing, who will be in debt to america and will probably have an american politician pulling his strings, so that bush can make sure nothing stands in his way.



80% of the people polled. you can make statistics say whatever you want them to say.



hmm. i just finished watching a show on the history channel about the french resistance against the nazis.

what i'm sick of is people yelling at protestors for not being around when saddam was gassing and murdering. well, you protest your own government when you disagree with what they are doing. american protesters against saddam would mean nothing.



thanks for agreeing with me, seth. thats exactly the point i was making about clear channel. that's why you should put more faith in non-profit media.

oh we didn't?

didn't we fight too didn't our soldiers die, didn't we belgians stop the german army from reaching northern france trough Belgium? you are so dumb thinking you americans came and help them stupid Europeans who let them be taken over by the germans. They helped a lot and we are greatfull but we were not sitting there watching them germans occupie us without resisting, My greatgrandfather was in the resisitance when we had been occupied after we battled the off for a long time, but the gestapo got to him. It was not America alone who won that war.

your damn right dragh!

@faile,
I put no faith in no media. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
And protesting against Saddam wouldn't help... just like protesting against this war didn't help.

Bush will try to instal his own dictator. But I doubt if it would work. There are to many "groups" involved. The leaders of the Sjiieten are saying that they wanna let Bush and Saddam fight it out and then take over the country themselves. Also Turkey wants to control at least part of Iraq. And groups like Ansar Al Islam (radical, extreem muslim group) surely won't let Americans or their adepts rule the country. And I kinda expect Iran wanting to try to get control of some parts too. And western countries like France will want to protect their economical intrests there (Why you think France didn't wanna go to war... not becouse they care about Iraqi civillians that might get killed... where do you think the Iraqi air force got mirages?).
It's gonna be one big mess. With lots of different groups trying to take control.

@mickey,
Parts of your post is offensive to almost all Europeans here.
My grandfathers both been in the resistance against the nazi's. One of them was captured, tortured and send to a destruction camp. He survived and got a whole box of medals, for bravery, courage,... But he died before I was 1 year old. Ppl say he was a broken man when he returned from the camp. They also say he waited to die till he had seen his first grandson (me) couse that's what he been fighting for. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />
Also, you forget all those other countries who fought against the nazi's. The British (who had to suffer the "blitz" for years) Australians, Polish (who got famous for attacking nazi pantzers on horses),... the list is very long.

And to get the facts right. There's a very big chance the USA would never have been here in WWII. If Japan hadn't attacked the USA and involved the USA in WWII. Before Pearl Harbor, the USA was only watching...

that's right, make sure your cover your ass, then spout opninons that parrot the conservative media view anyway. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />


1. so why didn't you? too lazy to even post links? Or is it like I think, that you really know so little about it that you can't.
2. I didn't post very many links to actual UN publications (of which there are thousands), only to areas that summarize UN accomplishments (of which you seemed to think there weren't any).
3. You do not imply that the list of accomplishments is invalid, and in fact, state that these make the UN "look good"; so how exactly does your statement disagree with mine?
4. I could post links about what you "haven't accomplished" as well. Kinda pointless tho, yes? do we judge based on what someone has accomplished, or what they have not?



<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspicion.gif" alt="" /> Oh, so now you are an expert on scientific research, eh? What's your field of expertise, rapid deployment of utter nonsense? I happen to have a master's degree in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley, as such, I know scientists, and you're no scientist. The "world of science" to use your own simplification, is about a lot more than just money. If it wasn't, you'd probably be choking on industrial fumes, and scraping toxic waste from your front doorstep. Unless you yourself live in a complete dictatorship, I think you might want to reconsider your blanket statement that unpopular scientific studies are never published. It is actually the exception, rather than the rule, that real scientists don't publish their results becuase of fear of a lack of funding. Do you have no public funding of the sciences where you are from? Your argument here does not hold water. Moreover, it actually supplies significant argument for the exact opposite: The purpose of neutral organizations like the UN is to assist in research and publication of data that might be considered VERY unpopular in many circles.



Oh? show me where this occured? I'd like to see the results of debate amongst the scientific community about this, really. Do you have a link to this?

again, this only supports my argument FOR the UN. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />



*sigh* aside from the fact that i don't see what this has to do with research at the UN, again, if you weren't so brainwashed by the media, you could have tracked down any one of the thousands of PUBLISHED studies documenting the dangers of smoking since the 1950's. Believing that tobacco companies had "all results destroyed" is giving them a bit too much credit. The results they quashed were from their OWN INTERNAL RESEARCH STUDIES, not independent studies conducted by universities and other agencies. why do you think the surgeon general started putting warning labels on cig packages in the 70's? just on a whim? My point is, independent research can overcome political and economic bias, which is exactly why I support the UN!!! You are making my arguments for me!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/puppyeyes.gif" alt="" />



put your money where your mouth is: define exactly the problems you have with the sources of the material, and why you believe them to be propoganda. I wouldn't have posted them if I thought them to be without basis in fact.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" /> Look, I agree that money and politics CAN have an unbalanced effect on what research can be done. But, isn't that the point to sponsoring independent research to begin with?? How could you create an organization that would be more balanced than the UN to sponsor independent research???

I don't see the point.
You convinient leave things out,
you exaggerate, change my words to your convinience,...

I don't post links simply becouse, yes, I'm to lazy, I don't care enough about it. A topic like the UN isn't worth it.
You'll never change my mind. Simply becouse I don't look at links and papers but at what I see around me. Not at what organisations say about themselves. But at what's going on in reality.
Like what's going on right now. I don't recall the UN supporting the war against Iraq...

I don't even have to get insulting about it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

[color:"yellow"] seth [/color] thats because they arent <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

oh, so you live in iraq? and are a member of the un? wow, i wish i lived there and didn't have to read the newspapers for my information.

or did you mean what you see in your country, where you get to formulate an opinion based on what you see and hear from other people... who must get their information somewhere... maybe from newspapers and tv?

i must admit that faile has a god point there <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

a god point?? jvb, you give me too much credit... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

There is just so much crap in your post here, that I had to get some toilet paper to remove the overflow from my screen. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />
It would just be too boring to me to deal with most of your unsubstantiated drivel, so I will just attack those points that at least have SOME logic too them:

general comments: If you had even bothered to read any of the links past the general summary (which I kinda figured YOU wouldn't <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />), you would have the answers to many of the complaints you made, like where exactly the UN is involved in maintaining peace and security (East Timor, for example). This is my biggest criticism of your post: You didn't even bother to look at details involved in supplying the list of accomplishments, you just rolled over them with your own, unsupported, biased, OPINIONS!!! I am fast losing respect for you, my friend. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />



Uh, I'd say the UN can't do its job without support from all participating countries, and the people that represent them. If the folks in the US would get off their ass and actually write letters to their representatives in support of the goals of the UN, perhaps taming nuclear proliferation would be an easier goal to achieve. However, most of them are just like you, too lazy to actually care to find out what the UN does, and why their goals actually support what most people say they really want in the world. As it is, why don't you do some research yourself and ask yourself the same question: Has the UN been invloved in helping to prevent nuclear proliferation, or not? Show us what you find out (don't just roll out your opinion).



*sigh* Ask yourself this question: was the UN involved in putting together the meeting in Kyoto? Then ask: How many other meetings has the UN sponsored in support of sustainable development? Who else is trying to sponsor global support for sustainable development? As to the second part of your statement: Is the environment completely destroyed? Why isn't it? Are rhino's extinct? Not yet, at least. Why aren't they? You seem to ill educated on these topics to even make a comment, and yet you are ready to condemn the ONLY global organization that works to provide answers to these questions, and provide support to stop illegal trading.



Fool. it less to do with competency, or goals, or missions, than it has simply to do with resources. I guess you didn't bother to read the link i posted on the UN's budget. The UN does not have the resources necessary to prevent a major conflict occurring between two antagonists in and of itself. If you would research the conflict in East Timor, you would see a good example of how the UN was too undermanned to prevent that conflict; and the "supporting" countries were too busy in other areas (or unwilling) to provide for logistical support until it was too late. If there were really full support for the goals of the UN, it would have prevented that massacre from taking place. Most aid HAS to come from supporting countries, as the UN IS NOT A COUNRTY, duhhhh. the UN helps to organize relief efforts, and supply personel to do so. "Most aid does'nt make it where it should be anyway". Sounds like a gross overgeneralization born of ignorance to me <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" />. Care to document that for us?

At this point, I am beginning to wonder what you think the UN actually is? It's not a country with population hundreds of million strong with it's own economy and GNP, you know. It was put together by those who believed in the goals it stands for (or at least SAID they did), and it is a tragedy that folks like yourself have abandoned those goals in favor of what? cynicism? Political directions come and go, when the hawks die down in the U.S., there will again be interest in supporting the goals of the UN in the U.S. However, if we all let the grand idea of the UN die for no good reason, when the pendulum swings back towards support, what will we do then? Start another UN? doubt it. Grand ideas like the UN don't gain support easily. Just like democracies are not born easily.

Why don't you post a message stating the goals of the United Nations, just so I know you at least understand what you are criticizing!

huh? sounds like you are running away <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" />. why don't you explain what things i left out, exaggerated, or changed???



Isn't that the whole point of this debate? I think you are too lazy to research the facts for yourself, and you go and prove my point for me! The UN a topic not worth discussion?? hmmm. I don't think many would agree with you on this one. I suppose global warming, nuclear proliferation, peace, freedom, and survival itself are also not topics worth discussing, eh <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/stupid.gif" alt="" />


Well, you are either extremely nearsighted, or live in a VERY small place, then!


who's reality would that be?
hmmm. That's kinda the reason why I decided to start this little debate, eh? the UN didn't "support" the extermination of thousands of people in E. Timor either. Will not supporting the UN change that?



bah, if you think this is flame, you are more nearsighted than i thought. Don't backpeddle because I insult you, fire back, man! I have provided information to further the debate, along with some mud <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />. Please, do the same!

Hey, it's mickey! oh wooommmmbllle... you still around?



<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspicion.gif" alt="" /> Why, so you can write a request to GW to have him blown up with cruise missiles?

I'm gonna give Womble a chance to respond to the rest.

cheers

Maintaining peace and security --> there still war
Making peace --> peace? i tought it was war?? I'm puzzeled they made peace and still they are fighting???
Strengthening international law --> which is broken, shouldn't there come some sanctions?
Orienting economic policy toward social need --> LOL
protecting the ozon --> still a hol in the ozon
Establishing "children as a zone of peace" --> oh so those children with their ak-47 or Galil are just playing

promoting ******** --> we don't need words but actions.