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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (51936)	8/1/2004 2:43:59 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

I can see some merit in Zonder's idea, but not with the current structure of the UN. I'd like to see a NUN with elected officials so We the Sheeple can turf the rogues out. Well, the pragmatists at the time of the UN's creation recognized that we couldn't isolate the non-democratic nations of the world from participation, let alone the major powers... But I believe the permanent members of the Security Council should have been reserved for the major democratic powers.. Let the Soviet Union "participate", but be expected to democratize their society in order to achieve permanent member status.. After all, what good is create any form of democratic government if all it means is legitimizing a dictatorship.. And I think this is where we're currently at.. We're left with a institutionally dysfunctional international governing forum where unelected dictators can blackmail democratic nations... I personally don't know if the UN can ever be properly fixed, let alone overhauled. It will likely only occur after some major international political crisis (world war?), or possibly some scandal such as the Oil for Food program (I know I'm truly and irrationally getting my hopes up over any reaction from that).. All I can say is that, in its current form, there's no way I would ever support the UN being promoted as some form of world government.. Hawk

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (51936)	8/5/2004 9:35:20 AM
From: zonder	Respond to of 74559

If I may intrude for a minute to clarify the "zonder said" bits: This conversation on loans and government took place quite a while back, which might explain Hawk's spotty recollection of it. The topic of conversation was whether or not Iraq's debt should be cancelled, presumably on the grounds that they were primarily taken on by a dictator. Hawkmoon feels that every form of government that is not democratic is not legitimate and hence the loans it takes on behalf of the country are not necessarily due to be repaid. This, of course, is wrong. Non-democratic governments exists to this day on this planet and they are recognized as governments of those countries. Example: Principality of Monaco is headed by Prince Rainier and the government he put in place, which is the legitimate government of the country as is internationally recognized. Loans taken by this government are rightfully taken in the name of the country. Another example: Northern Cyprus is governed by a democratically elected government, but it cannot even take loans, because it is not recognized as the government of that area. In short, the loans Saddam took as the head of Iraq are the debts of the country and have to be repaid. If it does not, then various other countries like Argentina, whose debts have been taken on by similar regimes will refuse to pay them. This is fine by me, but will immediately change the definition of "sovereign debt" and increase its risk premium. Losers will be not only creditors to countries refusing to repay debts but every developing country who needs loans from this point forward. Argentina is a good case in point, actually: Under its military dictatorship, Argentina's external debt ballooned from $ 7.7 bn in 1975 to $ 46 bn in 1982. Most of this money went to concentration camps, military purchases, numbered Swiss bank accounts, and disappearing a about 30,000 dissidents, their families, and sympathizers. Ever since, Argentina has been caught in a crisis, borrowing billions to pay interest on that original debt, which has reached $ 141 bn as at present. This is only slightly higher than Iraq's debt. The same US that is now saying "Iraqi people should not be saddled with the debt of a brutal regime" has opposed all attempts to cancel Argentina's debt. And this is not an isolated case: US has used its power in IMF and World Bank to block campaigns to cancel debts accumulated by apartheid South Africa, Marcos in the Phillipines, Duvalier's brutal regime in Haiti, and the dictatorship that boomed Brazil's debt from $ 5.7 bn in 1964 to $ 104 bn in 1985. In all of the above, the US position had been that clearing debts would be a "dangerous precedent". Sadly, I have to agree.