Book Review: The UN Gang

I've just completed reading, "The UN Gang, A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism, and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat," by Pedro A. Sanjuan, as recommended by Shai Ben Tekoa of the Deprogram Program. As someone who thought his eyes were pretty well open to the seemingly pathological opposition of the United Nations to freedom and democracy everywhere, and particularly Jewish political freedom in the holy land, I have to say, my eyes were stretched open a bit wider.

From it's opening sentence, "'So your father was a Jew, yes?' United Nations Undersecretary General Viacheslav Ustinov asked me abruptly," to it's final conclusion, Pedro Sanjuan documents his years in the United Nations and the pandora's box of corruption, hate-mongering, and organized crime activity flowing through the United Nations with sense of humor most would find hard to maintain. In a sense, I found him a kindred spirit, since I too, as an new immigrant, am forced to face outrageous confrontations with Israel's Bolshevik political structure and backward organization lightheartedly.

The book also answered some questions. For example, why would they have selected Kurt Waldheim, the Nazi war criminal who executed British prisoners of war, as its Secretary General in 1972? This is an organization that thinks itself the most important in the world. Don't they vet? As Sanjuan puts it,

"How could a Nazi war criminal have been chosen as UN secretary-general by the U.S. and the Soviets? Let us rephrase the question. How could the U.S. and the Soviets have passed up a chance to have as a UN secretary-general someone who was as subject to intimidation and blackmail as Kurt Waldheim, a man with a hidden Nazi and war criminal past? Put this way, the question seems appropriately rhetorical."
A few of the litany of scandals detailed in his book, or at least what would be scandals were it not for the diplomatic immunity of United Nations officials, include:
-Eye witnessing drug deals conducted in the United Nations parking lot. The buyer Xeroxes off a UN parking pass which allows him into the lot. Because the UN is extraterritorial, the FBI and police can't monitor what happens there, and even if they could, the parties involved could never be arrested because of diplomatic immunity.

-During the Soviet era, massive intelligence gathering operations were conducted from the UN library (run by KGB appointees.) They could ask American companies for information on, say the design or quantities of nuclear missiles produced in a given year, claiming to be on the "UN Nuclear Disarmament Committee," and obtain the data quite easily. Handling of covert agents and operations were also conducted by the Soviet UN appointees. Today, replace "Soviet" with "Islamic" and you have the same picture.

-The sale of nuclear materials from the decaying Soviet Union to parties unknown, conducted inside the UN building.

-The celebration of the 9-11 terrorist atrocities in the halls of the UN.

My own personal favorite is the UN head of the humanitarian, "Oil for Food" program, in which Iraqi oil was sold and the profits supposedly put towards Iraqi humanitarian needs, praising himself, "We did a good job under very difficult circumstances. We were caught up between different groups at different times, shifting political interest, and economic interests." The program's sales totaled $67 billion in oil exports, and supplied$31 billion in food and medicine, and $8.2 billion in humanitarian goods which were never delivered. The remaining $27.8 billion seems to have slipped through the cracks, although it's known that $6.5 billion somehow ended up in Saddam Hussein's hands. Sevan then retired to his $1.5 million Long Island home and even more expensive New York luxury apartment. Of course, they claimed that they paid Saddam, and the records were burned in the American invasion. A bit strange since the UN had pulled out of Iraq previously, and we are to believe that no copy of the financial records for the transfer of billions upon billions of dollars exists anywhere in today's computerized financial world.

Despite the insistence of Israel haters that hatred of Israel isn't the same as hatred of Jews, and it's just pure coincidence that Israel-haters and Jew-haters are the same people, I have to admit that the pervasive anti-Semitism prevalent in the halls of the UN didn't surprise me. After all, one of every three UN General Assembly resolutions is a condemnation of Israel, and one of every three dollars spent by the UN is earmarked for various organizations dedicated to Israel's destruction. The UN culture's hatred of Jews is so intense that the few Jews who work in the UN do so in an administrative capacity only, and hide their identities to avoid being fired. The best line was from Therese Sevigny, former executive of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and later UN undersecretary general for public information, who pronounced Jew as "chew," stating at a press conference, "All Chews are the same to me. I am not anti-Semitic, but, you know, Chews are Chews."

I could go on (and on and on) with examples of corruption, incompetence, lethargy, and hate-mongering detailed in the book, but that would ruin some of the best parts. Sanjuan's own thesis is that the UN was for long tolerated as a soap box for powerless third-world countries while the real issues were decided between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, the UN is no longer merely a benign tumor but is actually regarded with some seriousness in international circles.

Sanjuan concludes with a critique of the UN organizational structure and the needed repairs. But I think this little island of hatred and corruption in the center of the free world is a menace to civilization, and would be best closed down as soon as possible.