Part 3: A World View, Peacekeeping and the UN -- What if there is a mistake? Or worse?

Note: While this is lengthy, I do have a point, but come to your own conclusions after reading.


Our government has called upon the UN's moral authority to end arguments about Canada's proper role in the world and upon the UN's decision making in discussing and determining the Canadian role with military interventions and peacekeeping, the environment, human rights, et cetera.

Along the way, I found the following articles (Don't miss the last in the group: The Idea of "World Government" Suffered a Setback.) which, given the talk of globalization, a world view, and a few other like terms, shines a light on one aspect. If a world court is but a prelude to a world government, and I believe that is where the UN and its supporters would like to go, then, the following are instructive.



Peacekeeping declared dead -- UN missions curtailed: Lone Canadian keeps Maple Leaf flying in Cyprus Chris Wattie, National Post, May 17, 05

[. . . . ] Dr. Maloney, the author of Cold War By Other Means: Canada and UN Peacekeeping, says the idea of interposing international peacekeepers between two opposing armies only worked when the two sides agreed to a ceasefire and to the presence of UN troops.

He argues that the concept lost international credibility in 1995, when missions in Croatia, Bosnia and Rwanda failed "spectacularly" in the chaotic civil wars that erupted after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

It just took Canadian diplomats and politicians until now to realize that peacekeeping no longer worked in most international hot spots. "What we're doing now is full spectrum operations," Dr. Maloney says. "The troops can and often do use lethal force and they aren't bound by a restrictive UN mandate ... they're doing stabilization operations and they're doing them under NATO or with other Western militaries."

[. . . . ] Increasingly, Canada's overseas deployments are with such NATO-run forces as the nearly 1,000 troops serving in Afghanistan, or with coalitions run by our allies as in the 1999 intervention in East Timor, under the Australians.

UN missions are being filled by small groups of soldiers -- or even lone officers such as Capt. Zegarac. [. . . . ]

If you wish to pay for it, there is an article available from the National Post. It sounds of interest, in light of the information that, according to a tipster,

"Paul Cowan the filmaker says peacekeepers are not motivated by humanitarian concerns.The UN pays the peacekeepers' countries U.S. $1028 / day /soldier.

"The last thing most of them are there to do is to fight" Mr. Cowan said."

Peacekeeping film follows the money

AT THE UNITED NATIONS - Four Nepalese soldiers from the UN's peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo were flown home over the weekend to face sex abuse charges.

The peacekeeper...Byline: Steven Edwards, Source: National Post
Page: A15, Edition: National
$4.75 - National Post - Wed, May 11, 2005

Search Google or Dogpile: "Four Nepalese soldiers, UN peacekeeping force, Democratic Republic of Congo"

Also search: "four Nepalese soldiers, UN, peacekeeping, sex abuse charges"

There is, additionally, from the National Film Board (NFB) "The Peacekeepers"

With unprecedented access to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping, The Peacekeepers provides an intimate and dramatic portrait of the struggle to save "a failed state."

The film follows the determined and often desperate manoeuvres to avert another Rwandan disaster, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC).

Focusing on the UN mission, the film cuts back and forth between the United Nations headquarters in New York and events on the ground in the DRC. . . . the enormous sums of money required from uncertain donor countries. We are with UN troops as the northeast Congo erupts and the future of the DRC, if not all of central Africa, hangs in the balance. [. . . . ]

Peacekeeping

'We have a bunch of mandarins that shove this peacekeeping down the throats of Canadians and say we're not a militaristic society. ... 'We like a good punch-up'

The man who led Canadian soldiers into the mountains of Afghanistan in the war on terror say the country is too 'wrapped up in medicare' and lacks clear vision about how to fix our ever-shrinking Armed Forces. Mike Blanchfield, Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 26, 04

The first time the world lined up against Saddam Hussein, Pat Stogran was ready to stand up and be counted. The young major had just become a company commander in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and with the world poised to drive the Iraqi dictator's occupying forces out of Kuwait, then-Maj. Stogran hoped his unit would be on the ground alongside American, British and other allied forces.

But the call-up never came.

[. . . . ] But between the two Iraq wars, new threats to global security have emerged. In that time, Canada -- with its ever-shrinking Armed Forces -- didn't so much surf the shifting tides as tread water, hoping not to be fatally swamped by the next wave.

Regional conflicts in the Balkans and Africa added terms like "ethnic cleansing" to our lexicon. The roots of the terrorist threat that led to the 9/11 terror attacks entrenched themselves. And Mr. Saddam lingered, with his mythical weapons of mass destruction and his very real reign of terror over his own traumatized population. [. . . . ]

The words "ethnic cleansing" were bandied about but, it seems rather difficult to prove. Did it actually happen? (Scroll for the article entitled: "What ever happened to the World Court and Milosovic?) In fact, Canada's retired General (?) Lew MacKenzie has suggested Canadians were actually aiding the wrong side. Was it he who suggested that the whole operation merely made the area safe for Albanian--or is it Bulgarisn?--drug dealers, perhaps as a transshipment point? (Check)

Should we . . . can we trust the UN? Think of those peacekeepers who have been

* described as not working for peace so much as to garner that $1,000 + per day for their governments? -- Does this give the needed 'peace' mindset?

* accused and removed from their posts for sex crimes against women under their control? -- Whose interests do they serve?

* subject to authoritarian thugocratic rule at home in some cases and, having survived within those systems--with whatever means that might entail--and perhaps not trained for 'peacekeeping', would they see these tours of duty as simply the Third World equivalent of a diplomatic posting to the UN, with the perquisites, albeit of a lower end variety? -- opportunities for bribery, theft, and the usual lessons in the naked exercise of power lerned at home? (Think about our own government sending representatives out to teach governing and where their own exercise of power at home as an example might lead. It boggles the mind . . . buying votes, buying provinces, buying individuals, buying time . . . . well, you know. )

How does one know where truth lies, particularly when mainstream media representatives are so easily led into circulating press releases from the government-in-power as 'news'?




The Idea of "World Government" Suffered a Setback

For those who saw the World Court as a prelude to World Government, this must have seemed a setback.

What ever happened to the World Court and Milosovic? -- WEAK CASE AGAINST MILOSEVIC HAS HAGUE 'IN PANIC' -- Massacres in Kosovo never happened, say Canadians who investigated mass graves.

The Ottawa Citizen 29 August 2004 Bruce Garvey
Posted on 09/03/2004 5:37:50 AM PDT by Doctor13

Mr. Pritchard, who has produced more than a dozen documentaries on the Balkan and Afghan wars, said. . . .

"I was telephoned by an RCMP officer seconded to the Hague tribunal's investigative unit, a corporal named Tom Steenvoorden, who told me the total number of bodies they have recovered amounts to 5,080, which is a far cry from 200,000," he told the Citizen.

"I want someone like Peter Mansbridge or Ms. Arbour [Justice Louse Arbour, late of the Supreme Court of Canada, who presided over the Milosevic trial in the Hague] to tell me where the other 195,000 bodies are. This is a massacre that never happened."

Mr. Pritchard said he refused to co-operate with the Hague prosecutors, just as he had with representatives of Mr. Milosevic.

Other Canadians who have been named as potential defence witnesses include Citizen reporter David Pugliese and retired Maj.-Gen Lewis MacKenzie, who have both said they will refuse, and war correspondent and magazine publisher Scott Taylor, who has agreed to defend articles he wrote for the Citizen from Kosovo.

[. . . . ] Sgt. Honeybourn, a veteran of more than 30 years of police work, was a member of the first Canadian forensic specialist team that joined units from several western countries in the search for the alleged 200,000 buried victims.

Now he maintains that the Hague staff under Ms. Arbour was confused and incompetent.

[. . . . ] In the six weeks Sgt. Honeybourn spent digging up fetid graves in Kosovo during the sweltering summer of 1999, the Canadian team exhumed 86 bodies.

[. . . . He] regarded the mission, which cost Canada more than $1.2 million, as an investigative failure and "a waste of time." [. . . . ]

If a nation follows the current news, or what passes for it, as found in the mainstream media, checks the UN for what 'ethical' position it will take in a given conflict, what if there is a mistake? To whom, to what do you turn? It beats me. There is room for nations working in concert, but I would put my faith in a grouping of the free(er) ones rather than being led by a United Nations peopled with the likes of the ones I read of, representatives of failed and / or authoritarian states, dictators and thugs.

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