Sorted!

New Internationalist, May, 2005 by Tony Hosking

Many thanks for demonstrating so clearly how and why the ideals of the United Nations Organization (UNO) have been degraded to such an extent that the body is now no more than a servile rubber-stamper of The American Way (Upside dowN: The UN at 60, NI 375).

There are four essential actions which must happen if the UNO is to recover its integrity, relevance and independence. These are:

* The Secretariat functions become totally mobile (as per the world of e-administration) on an eight-year cycle and roam the world--that is, the permanent base in New York should close;

* Voting and funding mechanisms for the General Assembly should involve formulas based upon units of one million of national population and one million of national currency (with a minimum of one vote and ten currency units);

* Membership of the Security Council should be on an eight-year cycle which coincides with every second Olympic Games;

* With each change of locale for the mobile Secretariat, membership of the UNO should be open only to nations which are non-possessors of weapons of mass destruction (or more appropriately, weapons of mass indiscriminate destruction and inhumanity).

If the UNO is to be saved from its slide into irrelevance and fawning obsequiousness to the US dollar, then it has to go through a period of moral renaissance.

It's get real, relevant and righteous time for the UNO.

Tony Hosking Nakara, Australia