Remember this joke proposal-From our "United Nations"

 I forgot to put that it is about the "United Nations proposing to probe racism in America. The UN probing racism in America? They are the last ones with any right to do so.

So you only read the Arizona "Rag" Repulsive? Such a shame. Even conservatives read more than that. Or what distinguished papers do you read that are worthy to you?

Criminy, I read all the writers on all the papers around. I read all papers even though I don't care for some of them.

Maybe you two need to search why you have so little thought or limited thought from few sources

Depending upon your age and country, you may love, despise, or ignore the United Nations. Actually, about two-thirds of Americans in the US say they support the UN despite a negative national policy toward that institution during the last quarter-century [1]. Recent polls also show that a majority of Americans believe that corporations ought to better serve the community and not just the shareholder bottom line [2]. These two public attitudes are not unrelated— since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of civil society activity regarding global environmental and social issues, corporations and their lobbies have sought direct involvement not only in international trade and investment agreements, but in the affairs of the UN as well [3].

Corporate/UN Partnerships

Corporate/UN partnering has already begun, but it is not clear whether corporate motivations are entirely altruistic, or whether corporations stand to gain more than UN agencies. For example, in January of 1999 the UN's Secretary General Kofi Annan blessed the opening of a Business-Humanitarian Forum. Its co-chairs Sadako Ogata and John F. Imie bring together the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the president of Union Oil of California (UNOCAL), a notorious violator of human rights and environmental integrity and creator of refugees, indicted by the Alliance for Democracy [4]. Other charter members include International Red Cross/Red Crescent, Care USA, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and Nestle, Rio Tinto (both notorious violators), United Technologies (weapons), and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a brainchild of the capricious oil entrepreneur Maurice Strong who chaired the compromised Rio environmental summit.

This Business-Humanitarian Forum is just one of several initiatives to bloom after Kofi Annan launched his partnering policy without General Assembly approval. The policy seems to be based on two concerns. The first is the chronic financial malnutrition of the UN, thanks especially to US intransigence in paying its dues, which ripples through the budgets of other UN members who must supply peacekeeping personnel. The second is Annan's express desire to make use of business expertise especially, we might suppose, in computing and telecommunications. The odd thing about this reason is the volunteering and inclusion of some of the worst human rights and environmental corporate offenders who seem to have little expertise to offer the UN.

As I write there is news that a year's civil pressure has succeeded in terminating a new partnership called Global Sustainable Development Facility (GSDF), set up by the UN Development Program (UNDP). Under this project UNDP had sought corporate partners at $50,000 each, a figure familiar to corporate contributors to American political candidates. UNDP was chartered to coordinate other UN agencies in economic development, environmental protection, women's empowerment, job promotion, and the elimination of poverty. Because the US has squeezed UNDP financially, the agency has leaned toward free trade and accommodation to IMF and World Bank structural adjustment policies. Nevertheless UNDP has produced annual reports highlighting its Human Development Index, measurements of outcomes typically ignored by notorious transnational corporations such as Rio Tinto, Dow Chemical, and Novartis, all enrolled in the doomed GSDF.

A "Global Compact," proposed by Kofi Annan at the elite World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland in January, 1999 and launched in July with 29 major transnational corporations and the heads of the International Labor Organization (ILO), UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), UN High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR), and the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) provides the rationale for these corporate/UN partnerships. The Compact itemizes nine principles urging companies to do the right thing with respect to human rights and their abuses; labor's freedom of association and collective bargaining, forced labor, child labor, employment and occupational discrimination; the precautionary principle when introducing new products and processes, environmental responsibility, and environmentally friendly technologies. The Compact requires participating companies to insert these values into their mission statements and corporate practices, but is non-binding, and has no monitoring mechanisms or means of enforcement. A special web site permitting civil society to challenge wayward corporations has been launched at www.UNGlobalCompact.org. Unfortunately the "feedback" section is one-way -- visitors cannot read other visitors’ comments.

The Secretary-General told the US Chamber of Commerce that "a fundamental shift has occurred in recent years in the attitude of the UN toward the private sector. Confrontation has taken a back seat to cooperation. Polemics have given way to partnerships... Both the business community and the UN are engaged in the service of something larger than ourselves: human security in the broadest sense... Values, stability, services: it is no surprise that the UN and the private sector are joining forces. The voice of business is now heard in UN policy debates." Yet the US Council on International Business, affiliated with the International Chamber of Commerce, rejects binding codes of conduct advocated by unions, environmental and human rights groups and vehemently opposes independent auditing and verification as "intrusions." Thus it appears that many transnational companies wish to enjoy "greenwashed" (or "bluewashed" or whitewashed) images and official voices in UN councils, but are not serious about meeting UN needs.

Annan's "shift" was already painfully apparent in 1993 with the dissolution of the UN Center on Transnational Corporations (CTC) jointly by then-Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali and Richard Thornburgh, appointed by President George Bush to advise on "streamlining" the UN. Established by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1974 when the scores of "developing" nations were seeking a degree of industrial and agricultural autonomy, the CTC produced a draft code of conduct for transnational corporations (TNCs). The code became so hamstrung with reservations from TNC base-countries that it has languished since 1989. Thornburgh finished off the CTC by dismantling it and transferring some of its personnel to UNCTAD which in the meantime had been weakened by the global North's limiting its authority to negotiate with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and other agencies. CTC had been the only UN agency charged with monitoring and regulating the powerful and unaccountable TNCs.

Corporate Influence: An Old Story

http://www.globalpolicy.org/reform/business/2002/uncorp.htm