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The United Nations is a schizophrenic organization that is about as effective as "The League of Nations" was. Every day in the United Nations building in New York, the UN officials are hard at work appeasing dictators, crippling economies and limiting freedoms.

The Soviet Union, at the height of its totalitarian communist regime, where millions were starving and hundreds were being imprisoned for their thoughts and beliefs, was a member of the United Nations! And did the UN step in to depose the dictatorial Stalin and his cronies? Nope, the people were allowed to starve and leave in crushing fear of the thought-police.

Afghanistan, home to the disgustingly oppressive, religiously-themed Taliban: member of the UN since 1946. Iran: see Afghanistan. Iraq joined one year later. All of these countries have a few things in common: they are in the middle east, but most importantly, they were each home to oppressive governmental rule for decades.

What about the Rwandan genocide? Thousands were killed in tribal warfare in a nation which claims membership within the UN. And in Sudan, where the oft-heard about Darfur crisis is unfolding as I write this, there is still no UN intervention to save these people's lives by toppling the government that has initiated these atrocities. The UN even allows Turkey to maintain a law which allows punishment for the expression of opinions and even FACTS which are "damaging to Turkey," a law which has effectively silenced all discourse relating to the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

Where was the UN in all this? Playing bureaucratic-sugar-daddy to the dictators who ran these countries! The UN treated the country, the government, as an individual, forsaking the people of each nation to fend for themselves against the power of the state. And when they were pressured into some kind of action by popular opinion, they imposed economic sanctions, forcing the PEOPLE, not the government (which can resort to illegal revenue streams and afford to makeup any losses by further oppressing their citizens), to live in poverty. Do you think the government of a country cares if they have no money to feed their people? If they did, they wouldn't be stealing from them and treating them as cattle in the first place.

The UN either needs to be disbanded or have a radical change in attitude, because for almost its entire existence (the appeasement/apathy policy was never more glaring than during Kofi Annan's leadership), it has simply refused to recognize that oppressive governments are not simply "different points of view," but are actually threats to their own citizens.

Learn more about this author, Michael Collins.
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