The UN.....It is past time to take our 30% total funding of the organization

[dan_bgblue]

kick the bastards and bitches out of New York and tell them to go pound sand.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/27/patent-scandal-us-outmaneuvered-on-un-agency-investigation.html?intcmp=hplnws

[CitizenBBN]

It's ridiculous what we tolerate from the UN. It's no different than some corrupt third world country b/c it's largely comprised of corrupt third world countries. It would be like having your local police department contracted out to mafia families and gangs.

[suncat05]

I have been an advocate of this for YEARS now........ :mad0176:

[dan_bgblue]

More proof (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/16/lawmakers-call-for-defunding-un-after-film-shows-palestinian-kids-praising-isis.html?intcmp=hpbt3)

[dan_bgblue]

The United Nations, which spends tens of billions of its member states’ dollars annually, apparently has a simple approach to dealing with fraud in its sprawling operations – ignore it. (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/07/12/fraud-what-fraud-watchdogs-find-un-in-state-near-denial-about-internal-corruption.html)

[dan_bgblue]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/08/12/arrests-un-linked-agency-officials-for-hamas-ties-calls-us-funding-into-question.html

[dan_bgblue]

Now the feckless body wants something done about North Korea.


They should be able to come up with a plan of action by 2018 (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/09/15/un-chief-demands-urgent-response-to-stop-north-koreas-provocative-actions.html)

[dan_bgblue]

New whistleblower rules at the UN. Cut the funding and move the damn offices somewhere they would be welcomed

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/01/06/new-whistleblower-policy-could-give-move-to-defund-un-boost.html

[DanISSELisdaman]

I've said for years that they should be booted out and spend the money for other needy causes. They want our money, but they want our hands tied so they can have a free rein to support third world countries in their terrorist activities.

[dan_bgblue]

At least it is a start (http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/01/27/trumps-hard-nosed-executive-order-asks-what-u-n-money-is-going-for-and-is-it-worth-it.html)

:sHa_clap2::sHa_clap2::sHa_clap2::sFl_america2:

[DanISSELisdaman]

Like him or not, nobody can say he's not taking the bull by the horn and keeping his campaign promises.

[dan_bgblue]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/15/un-agency-helps-north-korea-with-patent-application-for-banned-nerve-gas-chemical.html

[PedroDaGr8]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/15/un-agency-helps-north-korea-with-patent-application-for-banned-nerve-gas-chemical.html

It seems weird and quite a stretch that they chose Tabun as the compound that sodium cyanide can be used to make. Can it be used for that? Yeah, but that is far from the most common or even most likely use. Sodium cyanide is used in a WIDE swath of materials and synthesis. I have used it in the lab more times than I can count. In fact, you likely use or have used these materials that utilized sodium cyanide on a daily basis. Depending on how they are bound they are either called cyanides or nitriles (bound to a metal, like sodium, it is a cyanide, bound to carbon, it is a nitrile). So nitrile rubber (as used in the gloves) often uses sodium cyanide in the synthesis, a variety of other nitrile containing compounds (including drugs) as well as synthetic steps that involve a nitrile. The latter is EXTREMELY useful as it basically adds one carbon and a nitrogen to a compound; something which is surprisingly common in organic synthesis but really hard to do any other way. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that they aren't making nerve agents (double negative to make a point), but lets just say that if they were doing so, they don't need Sodium Cyanide to do it; nor is the cyanation reaction even the hardest part of the synthesis. Because of what I know, this article seems like a HUGE HUGE stretch to me. They link a bunch of things unrelated to the patent (nuclear testing), link the chemical to a nerve agent which isn't even the common use (nor requires Sodium Cyanide to make), etc. It's like they tried to patent bleach (hypochlorite) and the article says that it can be used to clean up chemcial and biological weapons production. It literally would be equally as relevant.

Also, the article makes a mistake in that they are NOT patenting Sodium Cyanide, that is impossible. They are patenting a method to produce it, which once again, doesn't mean they can't use other methods to produce it. The whole article lacks in substance and from a scientific perspective is pretty stupid and does nothing to advance the idea that we fund way too much of the UN.

[Doc]

Isn't that what Walter White used to kill Tuco?

[PedroDaGr8]

Isn't that what Walter White used to kill Tuco?

Yes, it is a common poison because it is easy to get a hold of. For the same reason, it is used in literature a lot. That being said, it kind of sucks as a poison and very few state level actors would use sodium cyanide. Much like arsenic, there are much better poison materials than cyanide, if you want to kill someone and have access to pretty much anything and everything.

Here's why:


It is a relatively weak poison. Having a relatively high LD50 (amount needed to kill 50% of ppl) of around 300mg. In comparison, ricin is on the order of around 100ug of material (1000x stronger), strychnine is around 30mg (10x stronger).
It must be eaten to be effective
It has a noticeable taste
When activated it has a noticeable smell (rotten almonds)
It has very noticeable and specific symptoms
It has an easily, and cheaply, obtainable antidote

[CitizenBBN]

Pedro, regardless of its overall usefulness, the fact is the UN banned member nations from providing it to North Korea,and it is on the sanctions list. It's restricted. Doesn't matter if it can be used to make baby formula as well as nerve gas, that's what the UN has passed.

Then you have another UN agency working with North Korea in support of them obtaining this compound and patenting the process.

The quotes about its seriousness are coming from the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, so you have one body of the UN trying to prevent this substance from being obtained by North Korea and another agency helping them to get it or at least help them patent a way around the sanctions.

As the article mentions, the WIPO has fallen into this behavior before, providing direct technology to nations under sanction who weren't supposed to get it. The computers they provided to Iran and NK weren't Cray supercomputers either, but they were banned and that was that, and WIPO ignored it.

Doesn't matter if those things are deadly or harmless or both, they're on the list of banned items, and here's the WIPO going rogue again with one of the most purely evil regimes on Earth and ignoring the obvious intent of UN resolutions.

Sure seems like another good point in the case of why the UN is too big, bloated, and bureaucratic to be very useful to me.

[PedroDaGr8]

Pedro, regardless of its overall usefulness, the fact is the UN banned member nations from providing it to North Korea,and it is on the sanctions list. It's restricted. Doesn't matter if it can be used to make baby formula as well as nerve gas, that's what the UN has passed.

Then you have another UN agency working with North Korea in support of them obtaining this compound and patenting the process.

The quotes about its seriousness are coming from the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, so you have one body of the UN trying to prevent this substance from being obtained by North Korea and another agency helping them to get it or at least help them patent a way around the sanctions.

As the article mentions, the WIPO has fallen into this behavior before, providing direct technology to nations under sanction who weren't supposed to get it. The computers they provided to Iran and NK weren't Cray supercomputers either, but they were banned and that was that, and WIPO ignored it.

Doesn't matter if those things are deadly or harmless or both, they're on the list of banned items, and here's the WIPO going rogue again with one of the most purely evil regimes on Earth and ignoring the obvious intent of UN resolutions.

Sure seems like another good point in the case of why the UN is too big, bloated, and bureaucratic to be very useful to me.

Your point would be valid IF WIPO was transferring info and/or materials to the NK government. Irrespective of what has happened in the past, that isn't what is happening here, it is just a patent application. Based on what I have read about WIPO procedures, it is pretty similar to my dealings with the USPTO. The transfer of info is almost entirely one sided, now you can glean some information from the one-sided interactions (i.e. what questions the examiner asks you and what evidence they ask for) but not a lot; certainly not enough to debug a process. Quite simply NK got banned from importing it so they have tried to go about making it themselves, they came up with their own method and want to patent it to try to make extra money from it (who they will license too I don't know). Now there might be a rule as part of the sanctions that they can't patent anything, but if so, once again the article does a complete sh** job of explaining that. My previous point was on the horrible factual disjointedness of the article, but I side tracked myself a bit at their stupid example (and ignoring of other users). It also shows how stupidly toothless these sanctions are. They can the importation of something that is incredibly facile to make. All you need is sodium, ammonia and coal.

[CitizenBBN]

I have no doubt the sanctions are full of issues and holes. Of course that kinda goes to the point of why we don't need to be writing big checks to the UN when they are so inept.

As to the other, I agree they aren't transferring tech to NK, but they are, in their prescribed role, helping the NK to cash in on a process for making a substance that the UN says they shouldn't even possess.

While not a technical breach I don't suppose, the optics are hysterical, and it does IMO underscore the ineptitude of the UN generally.

I don't know that this alone would make me cut the funding, but the organization is a bloated, useless entity rife with third world graft and politics. I've talked to several people who have worked there and even those as dedicated to globalization as you can get all agree that the organization is just a mess of politics, inefficient bureaucracy and corruption. I'm sure some of that would be inherent with trying to deal with 150+ nations, but most of it is structural with the sole intention of being wasteful and thus ripe for corruption.

The US and a few others are paying all the bills so 100 countries can use the entity to reward cronies and wealthy families and push agendas that are largely detrimental to the nations paying the bills (with some exceptions). They do a lot of good work too, but at a very high cost in terms of efficiency so you can pay for all that graft and paperwork.