Unplug the UN and Other Corrupt Spending Programs

Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)

September 21, 2005

Two questions caught my eye this week. After the top floors of the United Nations building lost their electric power this week, Claudia Bassett, Journalist-in-Residence for The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in a column published today asked: “What if we simply left the U.N. unplugged?”

What really WOULD happen if, the top ten floors of the UN, housing the offices of Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other “important” UN leaders was LEFT unplugged? It was a thought that caused Democrats in the US Senate to try to keep our current UN Ambassador, John Bolton, out of the UN building altogether.

The other big question of the week was from a reader who asked if the Hurricane destruction of New Orleans and the impending Hurricane Rita hitting Texas: “Will this cause the United States to go bankrupt?”

Well, no. However, it might prompt the American people to look at the billions of dollars now being wasted in the funding of corrupt and/or clueless non-profit organizations, government programs, the United Nations, and international do-good groups.

Today, most Americans realize that the billions spent fighting a “War on Poverty” in the 1960s and 1970s not only did not eradicate poverty in the USA but has made it worse. Now we have some folks so dependent on government welfare programs of one kind or another that they sink into anarchy, as they did in New Orleans, the minute they are left without government baby-sitters.

I suspect that another shift in thinking is ahead. Fraud and corruption at UN headquarters, allowed billions of dollars in the Iraq Oil For Food program to be used in the 1990s by Saddam Hussein to arm himself and build palaces while his people starved and UN personnel prospered. Why do we continue lining the pockets of crooks and tyrants represented in the 39 story UN building? Why have we not demanded the resignation of Kofi Anan?

Fraud and corruption isn’t just at UN Headquarters. It seems endemic among bureaucrats who claim to be helping the “poor” everywhere. Mostly, the programs seem designed to control the poor politically and prevent them from learning how to help themselves.

For the past several days I have been trying to track down information about a situation in Kenya that involves poor African farmers learning how to wade through the red tape of a program called EurepGAP that is supposed to assure European consumers that the food coming in from foreign countries is safe. That certainly appears to be an admirable goal.

To achieve that goal, EurepGAP, has set up a program requiring “independent Certification Bodies (CBs)” to check out the farmers and make sure they are following safety and environmentalist farming techniques. Those who cannot obtain the EurepGAP “certification” will not be able to sell their produce to most markets in Europe. According to the EurepGAP website, while there are 14 such CBs approved in Germany, headquarters for EurepGAP, and 12 in France, there is only one lab in the USA that is approved by EurepGAP and one in Kenya. According to one American market company, the cost of EurepGAP “certification” for a Kenyan Farmer, is about $20,000 which naturally puts it out of reach for poor, small farmers.

While EurepGAP was setting all this up, a group of farmers in Kenya were being taught modern farming methods to improve their yields, sometimes simply by having a well that can be used for irrigation, by an American from Utah named Bob Roylance. Bob retired early from managing farms all over the world for the LDS Church. He has many years of successful experience teaching people around the world modern, safe and effective farming methods. His wife, Susan, had been involved in UN conferences since the Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995.

After attending twenty UN meetings, Susan got tired of the talk that never seemed to lead to anything constructive and decided about 4 years ago to “actually DO something” as she puts it. At their own expense, the Roylances went to Kenya, which has about the same population but a third larger land mass as California. Bob helped farmers learn how to raise and export their products and Susan taught African children, many of them AIDS orphans, how to “Stay Alive” by not becoming sexually active before marriage and by remaining faithful to their spouse after marriage. Children who had seen entire villages die of AIDS listened, and did not get AIDS.

Things were looking good for the farmers and their families.

Then along comes a fellow named Kevin Billing, who claims to be connected with Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) which is comparable to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). He seemed determined to prevent the poor farmers from being certified to sell their products. To track down the problem I contacted the director of EurepGAP, read Billings threatening e-mail to the Roylances, spend hours on the Internet trying to sort through all the agencies, government groups, etc to figure out what was going on. Billing managed to actually have Jimmy Matunga, manager of the group the Roylances were working with in Kenya arrested and threatened to sue the head of Kenya Horticulture Crops Development Authority, (HCDA), a Kenya government agency, if she helped Bob Roylance!

Obviously, whoever ends up as the gatekeeper to the EurepGAP “certification” at $20,000 a certificate stands to make a fortune. Are the threats to the Roylances just simple greed or is this an effort to freeze out competition by agents of the large “immigrant owned” commercial farms? Or, is the problem simply the Roylances are Americans who are teaching Africans a much more effective way to avoid AIDS than depending on the billions of condoms dumped in Africa which obviously are NOT working in stopping the AIDS pandemic. Someone is making money on all those condoms being distributed by the United Nations.

If food safety were really the issue, the matter could quickly and easily be addressed by the Kenya director of HCDA or existing inspectors in the importing countries. Perhaps we could rebuild American communities destroyed by the hurricanes, balance the federal budget, give a little funding to the Roylances and actually HELP Africans if we eliminated or slashed the funding for the UN, USAID, buying and distributing condoms that deteriorate in African heat and financing public housing in the USA that causes more problems than it solves.