Canada and the World Backgrounder articles from September 2005

Canada and the World Backgrounder archives from September 2005

Ubermensch and Vulcans.(UNITED NATIONS--INTRODUCTION)(master and slave morality)
September 1, 2005... Friedrich Nietzsche (pronounced NEECHUH) was a German philosopher. Born in 1844, he became one of the most creative and controversial thinkers of the 19th century. One of the ideas for which he became famous was what he called "master and...

A difficult birth: after five years of the most destructive war in history there was a deep hunger in the world for peace.(UNITED NATIONS--BACKGROUND)
September 1, 2005... Even before the tide of World War II (1939-45) turned against Nazi Germany and Japan, the eventual victors started to plan for what would follow the hostilities. The U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, pushed the idea of creating an...

With friends like this ... the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has made no secret of its negative feelings about the United Nations.(UNITED NATIONS--U.S. AND)
September 1, 2005... According to The Economist, "The United Nations was above all an American creation." It was the pet project of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. "The most striking aspect of this tale," the magazine reported in 2005, "is that in 1945...

The blue berets: sometimes the United Nations peacekeeping efforts prevent or resolve grisly conflicts; sometimes they don't.(UNITED NATIONS--PEACEKEEPING)
September 1, 2005... There's no question that the United Nations has been hugely successful in solving some of the world's worst conflicts. Success was achieved in El Salvador, where the United Nations brought about a peaceful agreement between the government...

Disaster in Darfur: the United Nations has been unable to prevent the crisis in Darfur, in western Sudan: the UN itself has described the situation as the world's greatest humanitarian crisis.(UNITED NATIONS--INEFFECTIVE)
September 1, 2005... The crisis in Darfur erupted early in 2003. African rebels took up arms against the government for what they saw as decades of state neglect and discrimination against them. Along with claims of government neglect, there also is an economic...

Tarnishing the reputation: unfortunately, UN employees too often fail to live up to the high ideals of the organization.(UNITED NATIONS--CORRUPTION)
September 1, 2005... The UN General Assembly adopted its Convention against Corruption in October 2003. Some see a delicious irony in this, because the United Nations itself has a reputation for being a bit of a sinkhole of corruption. The Cato Institute, a...

Convicts running the jail: to understand the problems plaguing the United Nations we need look no further than the dreadful record of the Human Rights Commission.(UNITED NATIONS--HUMAN RIGHTS)
September 1, 2005... Eleanor Roosevelt would shudder today if she knew what had happened to her beloved Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In a life filled with accomplishments, Mrs. Roosevelt regarded her work on the Universal Declaration as her...

A welcome sight: it is in dealing with humanitarian issues, both chronic and acute, that the United Nations is perhaps at its best.(UNITED NATIONS--HUMANITARIAN ACTIVITIES)
September 1, 2005... Humanitarian disasters can occur anywhere, any time. Newspapers around the world continually report on floods, drought, earthquakes, and conflicts that kill and displace people, leaving communities paralyzed. In the midst of such disasters,...

Change 101: Secretary-General Kofi Annan is proposing complete reform of the United Nations; the experts he appointed to make suggestions have concentrated on what the UN does rather than on who does it.(UNITED NATIONS--REFORM)
September 1, 2005... The United Nations is broken and it needs to be fixed. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody who disagreed with that statement. Some say it's so badly broken that it's beyond repair; others believe the organization can be rebuilt. Kofi...

Quote ... unquote.
September 1, 2005... "Everything will be all right when people stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso [abstract painting] and see it as a drawing they made themselves." Former Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold "Till the war-drum throbbed no...