The United Nations
As we found out we were such big international poilitcs heads, Krista, Kirsten and I met up one afternoon to go on the tour of the UN building in New York. Unfortunately they'd taken all the flags off the poles due to the high wind and snow.
I liked this sculpture outside, it seemed to sum up all that the UN tries to do.
We were told that once we'd stepped foot onto the UN grounds, we were no longer in the United States. The UN territory belongs to each of the member states and thus is not part of the US. In fact, the US is part of it! It even has its own security force, fire brigade and postal service.
I found it highlighted the strange notion of what it is to be 'in' a 'country.' Whenever people stop at borders, they often step from one to the other saying 'now I'm in one country, now I'm in the other' (well I do anyway.) The land is the same, but somewhere in history, someone decided that this part of the Earth belongs to one government or people, and this identical bit, belongs to another.
It is with this in mind that the UN was set up. People have gone to war and empires born and died for the sake of redrawing the lines which only appeared a few hundred years ago. In the history of the world, the lines mean nothing. They're not etched in stone, they mean nothing to the birds and the trees that grow along them, and they'll mean nothing when the human race is gone.
But while we're here, the UN was set up to provide guide-lines for its member states to follow. They're not compulsory policy, but if nation states do not adhere to them then they face pressure from the rest of the states (via embargos and sanctions etc) to do so. The UN doesn't have a military.
If the members of the Security council deem it neccasary to go to war, then those states can contribute their miltary forces to achieve the goals set up by the council.
This is me in the UN Security Council chambers.
As we were shown around the building, there were various facts, figures and stories on the wall saying what the UN has done in the last 50+ years since its conception in 1945. I never knew the UN was made out of so many smaller organisations, each one trying to set out a bill of principles for each country to agree on. Agreements for things like workers rights, safety standards and protecting the environment. It's quite sad to think that the US doesn't actually sign up to many of the weapons policies the UN creates for things like landmines (thankfully Britain does), and Chemical, Nuclear and Biological weapons.
This is the General Assembly hall where every nation has a vote in the say of each topic.
On one info board, it explained how in a survey in the year 2000 (so before the whole War on Terrorism) it found that to cure world hunger, wipe out aids and enable everyone in the world to have access to clean drinking water (generally to bring the whole world up on to a standard we take for granted), the cost to do all of this was one third of what the world spent on arms. Now considering that nearly three quarters of that arms figure is spent by the US and NATO countries, it made me pose the questions;
Why spend all that money on blowing up suspected terrorists? (and lets face it, we're talking Al Qaeda and chums) Why not turn the 'Great Satan' of the West and its allies into a Benevolent-Power, rather than a Super-Power?
For a third of the cost(and probably less now after Iraq and Afghanistan), you could remove a lot of the root causes of terrorism in the world ie. poverty and lack of information, thus taking the wind from the terrorist sails.
Surely an attitude of generosity rather than greed (aka, the 51st State of Iraq - fuck the people, we have the oil) would make the world a better and safer place? Why not pre-empt fear, famine and illness? In the words of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr 'That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind.'
I really liked the UN. I'd love a job there. There should be a time in everybody's life where they learn what it does and understand how amazing it is as an organisation. Forget a United Kingdom and a United Europe, we should all sign up to the United Nations.