UNCENSORED NEWS FROM HENRY MORTON STANLEY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIAN JOURNALISM To view this Presentation as a video, click here To listen to the Lecture, click here Kofi Annan, the first black African to lead the United Nations, died in Switzerland, on Saturday, 18 August, at age 80. Kofi Annan’s personal role as head of the United Nations peacekeeping operations from 1993 to 1997 was controversial: this period saw the killing of 18 American service personnel in Somalia in October 1993, the massacre of more than 800,000 Rwandans in the genocide of 1994 and the massacre of 8,000 Bosnians at Srebrenica in 1995. Shake Hands with the Devil In Rwanda and Bosnia, United Nations forces were quick to abandon their peacekeeping missions. In both cases, Kofi Annan was accused of failing to safeguard those who had looked to the United Nations forces for protection. Serving two five-year terms as U.N. Secretary-General, Annan presided over the world body during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Corruption and Fraud Kofi Annan was the first from its bureaucracy to lead the U.N. Annan championed expansive U.N. programs, including controversial condom handouts: Under Annan U.N. peacekeepers in Sierra Leone and Congo received a condom a day, with Annan’s spokesman claiming condoms “have the same value as flak jackets.” In 2004 Annan faced down calls for his resignation after presiding over one of the world’s largest financial fraud schemes, the U.N.-led Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, whose billions in contracts benefited his son, Kojo Annan. Betraying the People of Iraq The people of Iraq owe no debt of gratitude to Annan, who consistently ignored their suffering, opposed their liberation and actively undermined Coalition efforts to establish security and rebuild the country. The Iraq war undermined Annan's own position as a world leader and exposed the U.N.'s growing impotence in the post-9/11 era. It also exposed the huge degree of corruption and mismanagement involving the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Program, an epic scandal that continues to unfold. Monumental Mismanagement Annan's 10 years in power were a monumental failure and he left behind an institution whose standing could barely be lower and a legacy that is a testament to mismanagement and corruption. As the Whistleblower book and film documented, the U.N. under Annan’s leadership was running human trafficking in Bosnia. Disgrace The U.N. has been dominated by scandal, division and failure. From the disaster of the U.N. peacekeeping missions in Rwanda and Bosnia in the mid-1990s to the U.N.'s slow response to the Sudan genocide, its recent track record has been spectacularly unimpressive. Annan’s successor inherited a U.N. whose image slipped to an all-time low. Gangsters with Flags The Oil-for-Food and Congo peacekeeping scandals have had a devastating impact on the U.N.'s reputation and have reinforced the view that the world body is riddled with corruption and mismanagement, as well as undisciplined in its peacekeeping operations. The failure of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights - now the U.N. Human Rights Council - which was populated with some of the world's worst human rights violators, has added to the U.N.'s poor image. Under Annan the U.N. shamelessly appeased dictators and tyrants, from Baghdad to Tehran to Khartoum and stood weak-kneed in the face of religious persecution, genocide and ethnic cleansing. “The World Failed You!” As head of United Nations peacekeeping operations in the mid-1990s, before he rose to Secretary General, Annan never apologized to the victims of the Rwanda genocide, whose slaughter was the consequence of the U.N.'s failure to intervene, or to the families of those massacred at Srebrenica while under the protection of U.N. soldiers. Annan's lack of humility in the face of great human tragedy has been one of his greatest shortcomings as a U.N. leader. At the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, Kofi Annan finally said: “The world failed you!” Hardly taking personal responsibility for his outrageous failures as documented in General Romeo Dallaire’s book, “Shake Hands with the Devil.” Farce, Fraud and Failure The U.N.'s new Human Rights Council, touted by Annan as a breakthrough for the U.N., is an unmitigated farce and the United Nations has largely jettisoned the principles of liberty and freedom. The Council's lack of membership criteria renders it open to participation and manipulation by the world's worst human rights abusers. Tyrannical regimes such as Burma, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Zimbabwe all voted in favour of establishing the Council, in the face of strong U.S. opposition. The brutal North Korean dictatorship also endorsed the Council. When Council elections were held, leading human rights abusers: Algeria, China, Cuba, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were all elected! Peacekeeping Abuses A series of peacekeeping scandals, from Bosnia to Burundi to Sierra Leone and Haiti, occurred under Annan's watch. The largest concentration of abuse took place in the Congo, the U.N.'s second largest peacekeeping mission, with 16,000 peacekeepers. Congo Crimes In the Congo, acts of barbarism were perpetrated by United Nations peacekeepers and civilian personnel entrusted with protecting some of the weakest and most vulnerable women and children in the world. Personnel from the U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) stand accused of at least 150 major human rights violations and the scale of the problem is likely to be far greater. The crimes involved rape and forced prostitution of women and young girls across the country, including inside a refugee camp in the town of Bunia in north-eastern Congo. The alleged perpetrators include U.N. military and civilian personnel from Nepal, Morocco, Tunisia, Uruguay, South Africa, Pakistan and France. Shocking Sex Scandals The sexual abuse scandal in the Congo made a mockery of the U.N.'s professed commitment to uphold basic human rights. The exploitation of some of the most vulnerable people in the world - refugees in a war-ravaged country - was a shameful episode and a massive betrayal of trust, as well as an appalling failure of leadership. Corruption and Mismanagement The scandal surrounding the U.N.-administered Oil-for-Food programme had immense damage to the world organization's already shaky credibility. The Oil-for-Food scandal is undoubtedly the biggest financial scandal in the history of the United Nations and probably the largest fraud of modern times. It shattered the liberal illusion that the U.N. is an arbiter of moral authority in the international sphere. Oil-for-Food Scandal Established in the mid-1990s as a means of providing humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people, the Oil-for-Food Program was subverted and manipulated by U.N. officials who siphoned off billions of dollars from the program through oil smuggling and systematic thievery, by demanding illegal payments from companies buying Iraqi oil and through kickbacks from those selling goods to Iraq. Nepotism Despite widespread criticism, Kofi Annan never took responsibility for a scandal that irreparably damaged the U.N.'s reputation. A huge cloud remains over the U.N. Secretary General with regard to the Oil-for-Food contractor Cotecna, which employed his son, Kojo, from 1995 and continued to pay him through 2004. Funds for Favours Questions also remain regarding Annan's appointment of Achim Steiner as Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) just months after Steiner helped award Annan $500,000. Steiner, whose four-year term of office began in June 2006, was part of a nine-member jury chaired by a senior U.N. official, which gave a cash gift to Annan last December. Annan's initial decision to accept such a huge prize (eventually given to charity), as well as his subsequent appointment of a man who had played a key role in the award of that money, gave the appearance of a major abuse of power. Both were extraordinary acts of political recklessness by the Secretary General and gave the impression that jobs at the world body may be traded for financial favours. Shameful Lack of Ethics As an international public servant, the Secretary General should not have accepted money from a U.N. member state or a private foundation, either as an award or gift. He should also have completely disclosed his personal finances, as many Western politicians do. He should also have abided by the same strict ethics and disclosure rules that apply to political figures in major democracies, such as in the United States and Great Britain. Annan has talked about accountability and transparency and the supposed winds of change sweeping through the U.N., but his own leadership has betrayed the emptiness of his words. A secretive culture of impunity still dominates the upper echelons of the U.N. Secretariat. A Broken Institution In an interview with the London Daily Telegraph, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, described the U.N. as “hopelessly out of touch” and “stuck in a Twilight Zone-style time warp" where "there are practices, attitudes and approaches that were abandoned 30 years ago in much of the rest of the world." In a March 2006, poll conducted by Gallup in the United States, the most negative rating for the U.N. in its history. Just 28 percent had a positive image of the U.N.'s job performance. “Today's United Nations is a broken institution in fundamental need of wholesale reform. That is Annan's legacy and the United States and the world looks forward to new leadership at Turtle Bay - leadership that is untarnished by scandal and actually lives up to the ideals of the U.N.'s own Declaration of Human Rights. The U.N. needs a Secretary General who will seek real reform of the U.N. bureaucracy and aggressively stand up for democracy, human rights and freedom.”- Nile Gardiner, Ph.D. (the Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow in and Director of, the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom, a division of the Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.) U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan Supported Homosexual ‘Marriage’ UNITED NATIONS, August 5, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan came out in favour of homosexual ‘marriage’. Annan attended part of a homosexual activist conference held at the United Nations. The conference demanded that international treaties such as the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights include rights for homosexual couples. A United Nations release said the Secretary General was “glad to be able to attend” part of the event. He believed that the United Nations cannot condone any persecution of, or discrimination against, people on any grounds and recalls article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that ‘Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, said the release. On the issue of same sex marriage, his personal view, is “that individuals should be allowed to make their own choices and that we should be careful not to draw conclusions, or adopt prejudicial attitudes, towards people for their choices and preferences”. The United Nations, through its various committees has been in the forefront of advocating international acceptance of homosexuality and the bestowing of rights normally reserved for the family on homosexual unions. Annan and most other de-populationists see legitimization and protection of homosexuality as one more way to keep procreation down and to undermine marriage and other institutions (especially religious) that emphasize that children are a blessing. Annan Supported Abortion as Essential Kofi Annan has emphasized that “sexual and reproductive health is an essential part of human rights.” That is, he supported abortion and other population control measures, including explicit sex education, to the extent that they should be declared “human rights”. Ultimately, though, this emphasis on a new category of “human rights” has as its real purpose to advance the agenda of what Kofi Annan says is the “need to stabilize the population of this planet.” All this makes it extraordinary that some Christians have saluted and hailed Kofi Annan as: “A great African diplomat and leader!”
“While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption…” 2 Peter 2:19 “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the Judgment.” Hebrews 9:27 “For we must all appear before the Judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” 2 Corinthians 5:10 “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” John 5:28-29 “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life and the dead were judged according to their works, by the things that were written in the books. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then death and Hades were cast into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire.” Revelation 20:11-15 Dr. Peter Hammond Reformation Society P.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725 Cape Town South Africa Tel: 021-689-4480 Email: [email protected] www.ReformationSA.org www.hmsschoolofchristianjournalism.org See also: The Rwandan Holocaust – 25 Years Ago Lessons from Rwanda Hijacking Civilisation Resisting Babylon and the Beast
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