2011-08-30

Socionomics and political shifts: target U.N.

One aspect of social mood that I try to keep in mind is that one doesn't want to place too much meaning into the terms negative and positive social mood. At the macro level, a society is better off in positive or rising social mood, but negative social mood also plays a positive role. Just as a recession cleans out the bad investments, declining social mood in a healthy society will allow the political and cultural forces to target areas that were ignored or reached excess. For example, the United Nations has been a cesspool of corruption and criminal activity (UN Peacekeepers raping in Africa is just one example), but nothing has been done about it. Certain political groups in the U.S. have long opposed the United Nations and at the extreme, they would like to drop out entirely. While that isn't likely in the near future (how low can social mood go?), more people will likely turn sour on the international body and that will allow some pressure to be applied on the organization, resulting in a more efficient and less corrupt body.

House GOP targets the U.N.
House Republicans are planning to introduce legislation Tuesday that will force major changes at the United Nations, an organization that the bill’s author has called a “stew of corruption, mismanagement and negligence.”

The bill, by Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, would require the UN adopt a voluntary budget model, in which countries selectively choose which UN agencies to fund.
It's not just the House Republicans though, members of the diplomatic corps are also speaking out.
Speaking on behalf of the United States, senior U.S. diplomat Joseph Torsella recently objected to a nearly 3 percent cost of living raise to the approximately 5,000 UN employees in New York City, saying that “a raise is inappropriate this time of global fiscal austerity, when member state governments everywhere are implementing drastic austerity measures.”

Bloomberg has a longer article: Republicans to Unveil Bill to Force Major Changes at the UN

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