Increasingly I wonder why anyone supports the UN? It has long been held in low regard by some but was defended by others who actively shielded it from exposure for its gaffes and corruption since it helped them further their domestic agendas. But its blunders in the Balkans and Africa were reconsidered in the media when it proved to be so inept in tsunami relief efforts. And then there's the cluster of Iraq blunders and corruption.

Now they have punked themselves again. [via Norm]

THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.

The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

The mistaken release of the unedited report added further support to the published conclusion that Syria was behind Mr Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast on Valentine’s Day in Beirut. The murder of Mr Hariri touched off an international outcry and hastened Syria’s departure from Lebanon in April after a 29-year pervasive military presence.

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, described the report’s findings as “deeply troubling”. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said: “It is an unpleasant story which the international community will take very seriously indeed.”

But the furore over the doctoring of the report threatened to overshadow its damaging findings. It raised questions about political interference by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary- General, who had promised not to make any changes in the report.

But the predations of the UN are pervasive. There is a current controversy about UNESCO's bid to allow trade protectionism in cultural products, a move supported of course by every autocratic and culturally repressive regime since it allows them to censor more effectively, but also supported by every democracy in decline since its main intent is to restrict US exports. France of course is a strong supporter and UNESCO is a French bailiwick headquartered in Paris.

It's odd how there was a hue and cry about Chinese censorship of internet content, but relative silence about French attempts to censor music, video and other cultural products. Tim Burke has an interesting take on this in Department of Bad Ideas.

Maybe in any event the United States would have ended up isolated at UNESCO’s latest attempt to put global popular culture under the thumb of state sovereignties, but the Bush Administration’s earlier contempt for all multilateral processes hasn’t made it any easier to come out of a disastrous process like this one confident in our occupation of the moral high ground. Whatever leverage we might have had once is gone.

Which in this case is too bad, because the new convention on cultural diversity is more or less straight from the same playbook that brought us the truly execrable “New World Information Order” in the 1970s. The concern driving the new convention is “cultural imperialism”, the proposition that a globalized popular culture results in the homogenization of cultural life everywhere and the loss of local and national difference.

The claims embedded within that idea of “cultural imperialism” are far less obviously true than most of those (including UNESCO delegates) who reference the concept think. It’s not at all clear that increasing globalization of the circulation or dissemination of popular culture produces homogeneity or for that matter, Americanization. The same mechanisms that allow American television to travel to local markets around the world facilitate the movement of popular music throughout the African diaspora, from Africa to the Americas and back again, and from the diaspora out to other national cultures. You can find something rather like hip-hop everywhere you care to look these days, but when it gets to a new place, it’s never the same. It doesn’t homogenize: it re-localizes.

Apart from the gratuitous Bush bashing - a tic Timothy has, one that is particularly inapt in this case since the US didn't rejoin UNESCO until 2003 after a couple of decades of withdrawal in protest (along with the UK which rejoined in 1997) - there's some good insights here. "It doesn’t homogenize: it re-localizes." There is no good cultural argument for the proposed restrictions, leaving only censorship.

Which is of course the source of the appeal of the new convention to many developing nations: it legitimizes their autocratic impulses in the domain of global culture, it authorizes regimes of control designed to keep threatening or subversive ideas out and stifle such ideas that might emerge from local contexts.

I was reading about the reactions of some people in Indonesia IIRC (lost the link) to American movies. Everything they see in those movies is assumed to be propaganda since they can't imagine any government not both supporting the production of cultural products and controlling their content. They sometimes get confused trying to grok why Bush would support Michael Moore, and develop convoluted theories to explain such things. The truly revolutionary answer is that - gasp - Bush didn't and can't control cultural products. The US doesn't do that. If that knowledge becomes widespread autocrats all over the world face difficult times.

What can we do about the UN? Is it hopeless, another example from the Department of Bad Ideas, or is there some way to reform an organization in which the overwhelming majority of members are thoroughly corrupt and view corruption as normal. I think reform is impossible unless the UN is first dramatically reduced in size and scope, focused on just a few main tasks. UNESCO, for example, should simply be terminated. It has already been "reformed" and the current proposal is the result. Its staff and budget were cut - eliminating for example 35 Cabinet-level special advisor positions, halving of the number of Directors from 200 to under 100 and elimination of 2,000 staff - in a round of reforms about the time that the UK rejoined.

Update:

To empasize the corruption of the UN, especially France where UNESCO is headquartered, see this:

More than 2,000 companies taking part in the United Nations oil-for-food programme paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, an inquiry has found. . .

The 500-page report said companies in 66 countries paid kickbacks on selling Iraq humanitarian goods and companies from 40 countries paid surcharges on oil contracts but the UN Security Council took little action. . .

Preferential treatment was given to companies from France, Russia and China, the report says, all permanent members of the Security Council, who were more favorable to lifting the 1990 sanctions than the America and Britain.

The independent inquiry committee, which began its work in 2004, said in an earlier report that the program became deeply corrupted as Saddam arranged for surcharges and kickbacks while an overwhelmed UN headquarters failed to exert administrative control over the program.

I think we need to be realistic about what is possible with international institutions. They are necessarily a reflection of the values and principles of the member nations, and looking around the world it becomes clear that many, perhaps most nations, are highly unprincipled and have values that are in opposition to the fond dreams of those who speak in favor of multinational institutions. A forum for them all to meet and attempt to resolve heated disputes is useful, but it seems silly to pretend that such an institution can be useful for other purposes.