[Overpaid Slacker]

Supe -- Look at it this way (forget Left and Right for a minute)... did you read the article? If what Rosett said about the UNHCR in China is true, the UN has abdicated its actual and moral authority on these matters... SOMEbody has got to pick up the torch.

Cliff Notes:
NK asylum seekers in China (who will likely be killed if sent back to NK) are not allowed into the UNHCR office in Beijing -- the UNHCR has "allowed China's security agents to better defend the compound against further visits by the people the UNHCR is supposedly in China to protect."

The UN refuses to administer the UN Refugee Convention (of which China is a signatory) which promises these refugees safe transit to a place of asylum.

How does that not infuriate you? How does that not break your heart? More to the point, how can you defend an institution that has ignored, violated, abdicated, profaned and defiled so many of its "responsibilities" around the Globe? And many of those "responsibilities" have names, faces and families.

I can't believe that I'm coming across as being more concerned about the plight of North Korean refugees and others over whom the UN claims stewardship than you are.

France, twisting the Security Council to suit its own geopolitical ends, is one thing. That's France, who's had no empire and been able to do nothing but obstruct others for more than 2 centuries (why do you think they helped us vs. the British during our Revolution?).

This goes way beyond that kind of political gamesmanship (though there is a LOT of that too). This goes to: why have a UN? Not why have international agencies, but why continue to allow the United Nations to exist when it doesn't do anything to justify its existence (except present France with a forum to play spoiler and the dirtbags with one to take shots at their host and source of foreign aid?).

Just name me five things the UN does and has done right, and, if you can, why those 5 things can't be done separately, privately, or under the auspices of a new organization.

JP