The United Nations Conspiracy to Destroy America. Michael Benson
causes the organization supported were abhorrent to the U.S. assistant secretary of state John R. Bolton—about whom you’ll be reading much more later—who agreed that the United States should stay out of UNESCO. It was the right thing to do, he said, noting that “little or no” reform had taken place since we withdrew and that giving UNESCO money would be foolish simply because of the poor choices they made when spending it.
The United States remained out of UNESCO until 2002 when George W. Bush put us back in. During the time the United States was out of UNESCO, no American dollars went to funding activities, which should have been okay because of the nature of those activities. Instead the United States now footed a quarter of the bill for everything UNESCO did.
Anti-American Award Show
Among the activities subsidized with United States funds was the presentation in Havana by Castro of the Jose Marti International Prize, named after a Cuban war hero who’d been killed fighting for independence from Spain. It was awarded every second year in an attempt to “promote and reward an activity of outstanding merit in accordance with the ideas and spirit of Cuban independence leader, thinker, and poet José Marti.”
The winner usually turned out to be an individual whose anti-American activities were considered beyond the call of duty. The first presentation marked the one hundredth anniversary of Marti’s death.
Castro awarded a bizarre sample of leaders, cronies, and lunatics. One year the prize went to Pablo Gonzalez Casanova, a Mexican socialist who was the former rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
In 2005, the winner was Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who was cited for his “contribution to Latin American and Caribbean unity and the preservation of the region’s culture and traditions.” One way he did this was by fighting American antidrug agents who sought to destroy his coca crop.
It was a big biannual to-do. Each time the award was presented, 200,000 people gathered in Havana’s Revolution Plaza to hear Castro and the recipient speak. Mostly Castro. The ceremony, hospitality, and even the afterparty went on the UN’s tab, with the United States paying a quarter on every buck.
So, if you remember nothing else about UNESCO, recall that they chose to finance an annual anti-American hullabaloo hosted by our archenemy, which was not just a great party but an opportunity for power-hungry anti-Americans to make friends, organize, and plot.
Why Did George W. Bush Reenter?
First Lady Laura Bush, during a visit to Paris, made the announcement that the United States was rejoining UNESCO. Mrs. Bush said that the United States promised to be a “full, active, and enthusiastic participant” in UNESCO.
The question remained, Why did Bush want to dive back into the pinko cesspool that was UNESCO? One educated guess is intelligence purposes. Why else use American tax dollars to finance an event that is intrinsically harmful to American interests?
If the move was to create an inside base for clandestine intelligence-gathering missions, that was one thing—and the result might have been worth the price of admission. The more common suspicion was that the United States rejoined UNESCO during the second Bush administration because it sought to answer back to critics of perceived American unilateralism.
If the United States wanted back inside UNESCO for intelligence purposes, did that mean an intelligence void was created by withdrawing from that organization for twenty years? Not necessarily.
Observer Staff
According to Nicholas Farnham writing for the Comparative Education Review in 1986, even after Reagan withdrew from UNESCO, the United States maintained an “observer staff” at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, which wasn’t much smaller than the staff that preceded it. The U.S. observer staff was one of three on hand from nonmembers during that time. The other two belonged to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Vatican.
UNESCO responded with weak comments to the legitimate criticisms coming out of the West. Concessions were always mealy and off point. Oh okay, perhaps UNESCO’s budget could be trimmed of fat here and there. Perhaps the number of divisions could be decreased to shrink ineffective and redundant efforts. But say something nice about the Free World? Wasn’t going to happen.
UNESCO did trim the fat. The organization reshuffled a tad. But as far as philosophy went, nothing changed. The UNESCO rejoined by Bush was very much in spirit like the one Reagan dumped.
UNESCO’s Inability to Change Its Stripes
In 2009 UNESCO demonstrated that its self-image had not changed much, as it described itself as a “standard setter to forge universal agreements on emerging ethical issues as a clearinghouse for the dissemination and sharing of information and knowledge while helping Member States to build their human and institutional capacities in diverse fields.”
The organization, it said, was to halve the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015, achieve universal primary education in all countries, and implement a global initiative to preserve and protect environmental resources.
As of 2010 UNESCO had 193 Member States and 7 associate members. Headquarters was still in Paris but there were a handful of regional field offices and many regional offices around the world. And it still financed the propaganda efforts of an increasingly cohesive Latin American bloc.
Axis of the South
By 2006 Americans were focused on the War on Terrorism, basically the battle to prevent terrorists representing radical Islam from attacking the United States or its interests.
But the nations of Islam were not alone in their anti-Americanism. There was also an “Axis of the South”—a group of small Latin American countries, some of them with drug-reliant economies. The UN, of course, has given that axis an open forum to speak its collective anti-American, hatemongering mind.
The Islamic bloc and the Latin American bloc believed that any enemy of their enemy was a friend. They’d learned to hang together during UN votes, so as to maximize their anti-American influence.
Just more proof that, as of the twenty-first century, the UN was intrinsically anti-American. How else do you explain the granting of a forum during the annual meeting of the General Assembly to Hugo Chavez, who for years has been doing everything he could to disrupt U.S. attempts to halt the northerly flow of cocaine from Venezuela.
Chavez had Oil and Drugs at his back—and he was a powerful man. They say all the world’s power revolves around G.O.D., that is, gold, oil, and drugs. Chavez had two out of three, one of the reasons he was so secure, even when standing before the world and calling the leader of the Free World “the Devil.” In the twenty-first century, the commodities that the world’s power revolve around should be spelled G.O.D.A. A fourth item, the atom, needs to be added. The atom is only truly powerful when in the hands of someone willing to use it—use it as Truman had used it—to bring the wrath of God down on an enemy and not necessarily in retaliation for a blow in kind, but rather because it brings sudden victory.
The Drug Trade Half Trillion
Next to the illegal-arms industry, the drug trade is the largest illegal industry in the world. More than a half a trillion dollars are spent on drugs each year. The profits end up in the pockets of a few drug barons, and any representative of that country strolling UN halls answers to them. Most of the people depend on the drug trade for the food they eat and the shelter over their heads. The country of Peru, for example, earns a half billion dollars a year in drug profits.
Because of their enormous wealth, the barons are among the world’s most powerful people, controlling the government of the country they live in. They bribe politicians and judges so that they can operate unhindered by law enforcement.
Dangerous Business
Manuel de Dios Unanue from New York City was a journalist who liked tough subjects, and wrote a series of articles about the methods of one baron’s “Cali Cartel” in 1992. Soon thereafter he was shot dead inside a New York City restaurant.
Besides the threat of retaliatory murder, another difficulty U.S. agents