UN Reform

yes, more later but for starters vetos need to be removed from the permanent members of the security council.

I really think we do. It has been discredited by recent events (tho obviously not nearly as much as the warmongering leaders who have chosen to ignore it) but recent events have also served to raise its profile and give incentive to those members of the public who have not known (or, sometimes, to our shame, not cared) abt its internal workings. Now the one thing that has struck me abt the Security Council in particular is the way that it is still set up in such a way that it is suited to the world as it was in 1945, rather than how it is in 2003. Why should there be *any* permanent members of the Security Council? Why should some countries have the power of veto? It just underlines the idea that countries are unequal...there are enough inequalities in the world as it is in terms of wealth and power, so we should certainly not have inequalities in terms of representation in an international body. We would rightly balk at ppl in the legislative body of an individual *nation* having some members with greater voting rights than others on the basis of their past history or wealth, so why do we tolerate it on the international stage? I realise that it is a slightly shaky comparison between elected & appointed represntatives, but I hardly think this invlaidates the comparison completely.

Imagine if the Security Council membership was *totally* decided on a rotational basis, with no permanent members at all and no countries with the power of veto. Every single resolution was decided by a straight vote yes or no. How would things turn out differently?

but if the resolutions are to be ignored anyway, does it matter who makes them or what they are:(

if the UN Security Council had been set up with no country able to veto a resolution and with no permanent members, many of those resolutions blocked by the US listed on the Guardian site would have been passed & (possibly) --> earler freedom for those who suffered under the illegal regime in South Africa and an end to the persecution of the Palestinians. The former might have had few effects outside S. African borders, but the latter might have had effects that would benefit us all (fewer terrorist attacks & hijackings, less racial tension ect ect).

I'd like to find a comprehenive list of all vetoed resolutions. France has been fairly prolific in this respect as well.

So your ideal of an equitable transnational body, Mark, would be one in which the views of every government, whether democratic or despotic, carried equal weight? The UN is dead because its original goals have been so thoroughly subverted by anti-semitic &/or anti-american scapegoating on the part of Arab and African regimes, unfailingly supported by cynical &/or cowardly EU appeasers. Whatever replaces it should be less not more 'equal'.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/186drluv.asp

Isreal continues to be a preoccupation of the UN because it has created more refugees, internally and axternal that any other problem in the world and it continues to hold a vast section of its population in aparteid squallor.

Until a decent secular state for jews and palestinians alike is established in the levant Israel will continue to be a preoccupation of the UN or anything that succeeds it.

I'll put forward my views later.

Isreal will always be a problem because of the constant anti-semitisim of may parts of the world, Palistinian state or no.

The core members of the Security Council should logically reflect those folks with the most people, I'd think. The US, Russia, China, Indonesia and India are the most populous nations, f'r instance (or is Japan in there as well, in place of Russia?). This said, there are further problems with that setup -- Pakistan would hardly want India always on the SC, for example.