South Africa was kicked out of the UN for not abiding by it's founding principles, during the push to get rid of apartheid. If there were appropriate policies in place, and USED to remove countries or actors who were not acting in alignment with its principles and these were able to be enforced it could be salvaged, instead there are situations like Israel using its military to shoot and bomb UN peacekeepers. Israel should be kicked out of the UN, like South Africa was, as it is not acting in good faith. But if there are policies within it in place to NOT allow the very founding principles to be achieved they need to be changed or gotten rid of. This "veto power" has obviously been abused. If it can't adopt policies to protect itself from infiltrators and bad actors and penalize them when needed it will never achieve it's goals. It suffers from the same threat any government, organization or group has that doesn't have a system for detecting and rooting out bad intended, corrupt actors. When whistleblowers, truth tellers and people who are really trying are pilloried and punished, instead of and because of, the bad apples not being able to be ID'd and eliminated the whole system can rot from within.
"The UN, it seems, has been taken hostage by people who appear to be using the organization selfishly. They push ahead with their initiatives without achieving genuine consensus won through engagement with grass-roots social organizers."
South Africa was kicked out of the UN for not abiding by it's founding principles, during the push to get rid of apartheid. If there were appropriate policies in place, and USED to remove countries or actors who were not acting in alignment with its principles and these were able to be enforced it could be salvaged, instead there are situations like Israel using its military to shoot and bomb UN peacekeepers. Israel should be kicked out of the UN, like South Africa was, as it is not acting in good faith. But if there are policies within it in place to NOT allow the very founding principles to be achieved they need to be changed or gotten rid of. This "veto power" has obviously been abused. If it can't adopt policies to protect itself from infiltrators and bad actors and penalize them when needed it will never achieve it's goals. It suffers from the same threat any government, organization or group has that doesn't have a system for detecting and rooting out bad intended, corrupt actors. When whistleblowers, truth tellers and people who are really trying are pilloried and punished, instead of and because of, the bad apples not being able to be ID'd and eliminated the whole system can rot from within.
Another tour de force, Tony. Keep up the good work, and happy new year to you!
Hard truths that need saying & repeating
"The UN, it seems, has been taken hostage by people who appear to be using the organization selfishly. They push ahead with their initiatives without achieving genuine consensus won through engagement with grass-roots social organizers."
;-(