Dear Arjay,

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General
certainly has his critics. He's often
been accused of "frittering away
influence," at a time when "global
leadership is urgently needed."

However, Tim Wirth, President of the
UN Foundation, argues that Ban's critics
miss the point.

The UN Wirth says, is not a vertical institution
but a horizontal one, with 192 nation-states
acting as shareholders. Ban can't tell the UN
members - or even its agencies - what to do.
He has to negotiate and coordinate, find a
consensus.

According to Wirth, Ban manages to do that,
by, "keeping his ego out of the line of fire."

Ban himself expresses pleasure that he's been
able to lead the UN to take climate change
seriously. Discuss the issues involved.
A start has been made. He sees his role in
terms of "bridging the developed and devloping
countries" than in the straighforward language
of leadership.

He is a good consensus builder.

But I agree with you - whether we choose to destroy
our civilization or save it is a collective decision -
and one that hopefully will be made within our
lifetimes. If ways can be found to divert our
energy and resources to the real problems that face
us, including poverty, disease, overpopulation, injustice,
oppression, and the devaastation of our natural
environment - we can not only survive on this planet,
but thrive.

However, we can no longer just simply turn a blind eye.

This is all about securing your current way of life so you can continue to drive your cars, buy your new cheap TV's, build your 30 square homes, pay your protection money (taxes). I's sad I know, but the whole system is stuffed and won't change till we nearly obliterate ourselves. No one is going to complain while they can watch from the safety of their lounge rooms on their big plasma screens, and they certainly won't complain if they even get a wiff it will cost them in anyway.

So I guess you need to ask yourselves, would you be willing to give up your current way of life so that the world can have peace? Because you know deep down there's not enough of everything to go around in this world, there's simply too many of us!

Rawmustard.Nothing is ever that simple.We lost a golden opportunity post WW2 to bring prosperity to all pople on the planet.When living standards rise so the birth rates fall.The money spent on arms could have been spent on education.

The main problem as I see it is the power of the Global Reserve Banks.They create money from nothing and today are all powerful.They determine who the next US president will be.They create environments for war since they profit by loaning Govts money for weapons and money for reconstruction.We have seen this in Iraq.Obama is not the most powerful person in the USA.Ben Bernanke is,since the cartel of banks he represents can create a $ trillion legally in their computers.

If you want to know where the next US war will be,follow the money trail.They are in Afghanistan for two reasons,one is the necessity for oil and gas piplines from Turkmenistan through Pakistan to the ocean,the other was to get the opium crops going which the Taliban had stopped.90% of the world's heroine comes from this area.Now the locals can grow drugs,and buy arms from the likes of Halliburton to kill US and Aust troops.Our Govt has to borrow from the international banksters to fund our war effort.We the tax payer pick up the tab and thus don't have enough money for infrastructure.

It is all about power and profits.The Taliban however don't get paid much for their cash crop.It is the middlemen who make 1000% profits.

the obvious solution to stop men fighting each other is to empower women.
works policing george street sydney saturday nights.
starts with a republic with a women's legislature.

We've discussed this furphy before, Arjay, and it does you no credit to repeat it yet again.

>>Pentagon just before 911 could not account for $2.3 trillion.This is almost two and a half times our GDP.911 conviently distracted attention from this scandle.To this day it has not been addressed.<<

As you know very well, Rumsfeld was complaining about the inability of the different accounting systems to talk to each other.

"Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible."

Here's the actual speech itself, so that you can read it and understand it.

http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=430

The dollars have not gone missing, as you try to suggest. And the problem is being addressed.

"We have committed $100 million for financial modernization, and we're establishing a Defense Business Board to tap outside expertise as we move to improve the department's business practices."

It all stems, of course, from your lack of understanding about what money is, and what it does.

individual shares a little of your fiscal blindness

>>900 billion, crickey we could all retire at age 25 with that sort of dough floating around.<<

That $900 billion didn't disappear either.

All of that money went into normal businesses. It directly paid the wages of many people and bought the raw material from the mines that dig up the metal. The employees then spent that money in the economy that keeps businesses alive, right down to the corner shop where they buy their milk.

Money has value when it moves, none when it stands still.

Pericles what was Jim Minnery the defence account told to back off in the pursuit of a missing $300 million? He was re-assigned because he was too honest.What sort of an accounting system cannot account for $2.3 trillion? You just cannot take the words of bureaucrats that the money is somewhere in their accounts.

The US Federal Res refuses to tell the tax payer to whom they have loaned $ trillions and the tax payer is in debt for this money.This is why Ron Paul is wanting them audited.