Saturday, July 22, 2006

The Laugh is at the Bottom of the Gutter

See image link to kitlers below.

Warning: Temporary storm of geopolitical ire ahead.

There are things going on in the world today (I'm tipping my head toward the east) that we may have strongly differing views upon. However, I'd hope we could all now acknowledge that the name U.N. Peacekeepers must've been assigned with the dryest wit that only gets more arid with time. I used to frequently bother posting about the plentiful sex scandals that victimize hungry refugees, the rife internal corruption and obfuscation, Oil-For-Food with the crowning glory of being the most expensive con job in history to deprive the needy of aid. I mean, overseeing the theft of billions in food and medicine and Kofi keeps his gig! You've got to be impressed. Ken Lay, who didn't pilfer nearly that much, had to at least quit and go on trial. But that's here, of course, not the International Criminal Court at The Hague latest known for the four year-long trial of butcher Slobodan Milosevic that ended with him being bored to death long before the verdict.

Sure, I knew that the Peacekeepers (I'm chuckling as I write the word, how amusing) had a tendency to go rapidly small and distant on the horizon once the ugliness heated up, I mean, any ugliness they didn't cause. And I knew that the boys in blue stationed in Lebanon seemed, somehow, to end up within visible range of known, banner-waving Hezbollah outposts. All the better for thugs to hide behind the matching blue skirts and avoid explosive retribution for attacks, despite the pesky U.N. resolution 1559 passed 2 years ago to disarm the sociopaths.

Nonetheless, there just didn't seem any point to saying it anymore, not even about the excrable and soul-dead Human Rights Commission, another droll name for as concentrated a stew of hypocritical, institutional offenders as you could hope to assemble outside a sale on snuff videos and cattle prods. But of course, just when I was successfully ignoring them and hoping they'd fade away, a new outrage. Oh, U.N., you had me at "terrorist ambush". So what about the bluebonnets loitering with hands in pockets, idle spectators to murderous ambushes and kidnappings by terrorist imposters in stolen U.N. uniforms? To be fair, a couple of blues might not have drawn their weapons, but they did shoot souvenir videos, evidence which was later ordered destroyed by the Turtle Bay types in between manicures. Is that a special kind of new low, or haven't I been paying enough attention? It's that old U.N. magic, but it feels fresh and new. I'm hooked again.

For those who care not, courtesy of the essential April: Cats That Look Like Hitler.

4 comments:

April said...

I'm still waiting for anyone who's anti-UN(and I'm not pro or anti-UN)to come up with a better solution.

My take was that UN Peacekeepers have done quite nice jobs on many occasions, and not so nice jobs on others. Kind of like everybody else everywhere.

They are usually sent into overwhelmingly bad situations and are expected to deal with them. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Hope you enjoyed the Kitlers!

April said...

P.S. Ken Lay did not pilfer billions himself, just 10's of millions(what a corporate slacker!) but he caused a company to collapse that cost a freaking lot of people their jobs and/or their life savings. Amounting to billions, i'm sure. What a Machiavellian SOB. Too bad he didn't live long enough to become someone's "honey" in jail, which is where he belonged and what he deserved.

Rusty Hinge said...

Well, NATO does a better job at military interventions and various NGOs and private charities seem to do a much more efficient job of distributing health and food aid. In fact, the NGOs on the ground are often the ones highlighting the U.N.'s abuses.

I'm just saying when it comes to actually getting something accomplished rather than scheduling meetings and fatuous pronouncements, we could parcel out the reponsiblity to a variety of more accountable, transparent entities with way better track records.

When will any sort of justice procedure be launched against Kofi?

TaraMetBlog said...

that's so funny, even before reading the cat link, i thought to myself that cat looks like it has a hitler mustache, lol. too weird, even weirder that there's a site.