Special Reports
Ban Ki-moon is Bush’s marionette at the UN
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Jul 18, 2008, 00:26

(WMR) -- UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is increasingly being seen as a virtual marionette for the Bush administration and neocons bent on destroying the UN system in favor of a “League of Democracies” that would be an organization of vassal states to neocon policies and the cause of globalization and corporate global control.

John McCain has adopted the creation of the League of Democracies as a major foreign policy plank and he has made no secret of his disdain for the United Nations. Working behind the scenes to destroy the UN system is Israel, which feels that UN is composed of Muslim countries and other states like Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia that are opposed to Israeli expansionism and suppression of the Palestinians.

Given the long-time interest by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, no relation to Ban Ki-moon, in establishing a major base of operations at the UN and Ban Ki-moon’s own “non-denominational Korean Christian” sectarian bent, more than one journalist covering the UN has inquired as to the secretary general’s own links to Moon and his Unification Church, a cipher for Korean intelligence and various right-wing U.S. political and religious groups.

Known by the South Korean media as the “Slippery Eel” when he was South Korean Foreign Minister, Ban has ruled the UN through the firm fist of the American, British, and French permanent members of the UN Security Council. Former Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday of Ireland has accused Ban of becoming a tool of the Security Council, dominated by Washington, London, and Paris, to pressure Iran on the nuclear issue when Iran has every reason to want to defend itself from the Americans, who have the nation surrounded by occupation armies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel, which is threatening a military strike on Iran. Halliday served as United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq under Kofi Annan until he resigned in 1998 over economic sanctions on Iraq, a move Halliday described as genocide and which killed some one million Iraqi children, an outcome cited by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as “collateral damage.”

The UN, marginalized by Ban; John Bolton, America’s former unconfirmed ambassador the UN; and Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman, a zealous nationalist and anti-Arab who called former President Jimmy Carter a “bigot” for meeting with Hamas’ leader, has become an eyesore for the headquarters for the nations of the world. Bolton and Gillerman were at the forefront of defending Israel’s sneak attack on Lebanon in 2006.

The UN buildings are in a state of disrepair, mainly due to the withholding by the United States of dues payments. This editor visited the UN on July 10 and witnessed an even greater decline in the overall appearance of the once gleaming modernist complex on the East River. The decline of the UN fits in nicely with the neocon plan to drive a stake into the UN system, obliterating the grand plan of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Ralph Bunche, and Dag Hammarskjold, all anathema to the neoconservatives whose underlying principles are based on fascism, racism, colonialism, and corporatism.

The UN Secretariat Building is due for major renovations and UN staff will be scattered across Manhattan during the closure of the building, a process that will further marginalize the UN’s role in global matters.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is attempting to buy votes on the UN Security Council to support sanctions against Zimbabwe. In a repeat of U.S. threats to withhold much-needed economic assistance to countries that opposed UN Security Council resolutions in support of the US invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Burkina Faso, a Security Council member, is being told that its support for Zimbabwe sanctions will help it keep its U.S. economic aid package. In 1991, Yemen’s failure to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq cost it millions of dollars in U.S. economic assistance.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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