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Don't turn Iraq over to the UN Glad to hear that George Bush is still lukewarm on the United Nations. It appears that the age of bending over for this crowd of quasi-legitimate, whining third-rate bullies is fast drawing to a close. The sooner the better, for the Third World especially, since you and I can dodge the UN quite well thanks. So to George W., I say, let them hand out food and organize medical aid. Anything else? You do it, you're competent. And for heaven's sake, if there are Canadians begging to be included, like I don't know, say, Stephen Lewis, how about a nice firm loud bog off. The UN appears, when judged on its results, to be the ultimate invention of the Canadian intelligentsia of the last 40 years, all hot air, organizational charts, inexorable hyper-inflation of self- righteous bureaucracy, endless re- writing of completely unreadable mission statements, opposition to anything that smacks of capitalism and endless strident demands for more cash. Looks very pretty, sounds very egalitarian, postures that the UN is the hope of mankind and devastates everything in its path. One could list pages of inept, compromised, expensive-for-us decisions based on bad sociology, worse science, and crazed geopolitics. But let's, for the sake of simplicity, take AIDS in Africa, shall we? UNAIDS is headed up by Stephen Lewis, of that axis-of-do- gooders, that includes his son, Avi Lewis and daughter-in-law, Naomi Klein. Perhaps the best undertold story of the past two years (though exhaustively detailed by The Wall Street Journal) has been the juxtaposition of Lewis weeping crocodile tears on every TV station that will host him, while denying infant formula to breastfeeding HIV positive African women because the formula was from a thieving lying multinational, and not just one thieving lying multinational either. From 1997 through 2001, UNICEF, of which Lewis was number two until he moved to the top AIDS position, turned down millions of tins of formula from Nestle, Wyeth and several other companies, on the grounds of what can only be called virulent anti- capitalism. Finally, a pilot project of 25,000 women in three countries was launched. Do I need to remind you that in South Africa, so many people are dying that they are burying people vertically? Meanwhile, in Uganda, transmission of the HIV virus has dropped more dramatically than anywhere else in the developing world. In Stephen Lewis's worthy tromp around the speaking circuit, was this ever mentioned? I'd like to lay odds that it wasn't. No indeed, just the grasping hand, crocodile tears and the call for massive worldwide societal change. And why? Because Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, that gleaming beneficent creature who was present at the last State of the Union, acknowledged by Bush, and wildly applauded by those who know his work, chose not to pull in UN experts. No, he invited Christian and Muslim clergymen to preach forthrightly to Ugandans about the need to abstain from premarital sex and stay faithful to their partners. The Ugandan government backed this up with an exhaustive public relations offensive that told its citizens that sexual fidelity was a matter of life and death. Schoolchildren were told to be abstinent till marriage. Condoms were distributed to those at risk. And the AIDS rate has dropped steadily since 1991. ABC: "Abstain, Be Faithful or Use Condoms." (Emphasis on the first two.) "Zero Grazing Outside of Your Own Field." By last year, according to The New Republic, the number of pregnant Ugandan women testing positive for HIV antibodies had fallen from 21.2% at the height of the epidemic in 1991 to 6.2%. By contrast, in neighbouring Kenya the rate is roughly 15%; in Zimbabwe it stands at 32%; and in Botswana fully 38% of mothers-to-be are HIV- positive -- with rates continuing to rise in each country. "People used their own wisdom to curb the spread of the epidemic," Vinand Nantualya, a Ugandan physician and immunology researcher, said in the National Review last month. "The president just captured the common thinking of the people." Low cost, no products, no bullying of the corporate world, no necessity to harness world opinion to drive down the price of pharmaceuticals, no need for the wildly expensive international AIDS establishment to move in and milk everyone in sight of every available penny. What's not to like? Well God for one thing. UNAIDS is mad for condoms and Lewis travels all over Africa teaching tribespeople how to use them. But many pastors, imams or tribal priests won't promote them, nor do Africans like condoms. Despite the fact that the church or mosque is cornerstone to African culture, UNAIDS ignores them, because acknowledging the growth of the Christian church (especially) is counter to the UN's campaign against conservative Christians and indeed, conservatives of all stripes. The most important thing for this unelectable and virtually unaccountable organization is to promote its vision of mankind. Then, and only then, you get help. If we turn Iraq over to the UN, we will almost certainly spawn another generation of America-hating, capitalism-hating, science- hating young men and women who will seek to kill us. One destructive ideology will be replaced by another. We will end up paying for it, and democracy in the Middle East will be set back another 50 years. No UN Mr. Bush, and particularly no Canadians. It is time the UN and the running dogs of socialist statism were held to account by the free world.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.