Tuesday, November 28, 2017

[GMW #3917] UN Budget Compared Military Budgets

[GMW #3917] UN Budget Compared Military Budgets Idea Dream - Robert Muller's Ideas 3001 to 4000
~ Idea 4310 ~
In 1969, when I was briefly Director of the UN Budget, I jotted down this note: 'The United States maintains around the world 429 major military bases, 2900 smaller bases, one million military personnel, 500,000 members of their families, 275,000 foreign workers, and spends for that between five and six billion dollars a year.

In 1969, the UN budget was 168 million dollars and the total number of UN international civil servants and of all its specialized agencies and world programs, including secretaries, was 40,000.' And with that, the UN is supposed to deal with all the major problems of this planet from peace to human rights, from health to education, from development to the environment, from outer space to the atom, etc. In my view, the political opponents of the UN budget should be straightened out by their voters. Sixteen years later, in 1985, the UN budget was 800 million dollars shared by 160 nations. During the same year world military budgets were 800 billion dollars, i.e. a thousand times more. Of the UN budget the US was assessed 200 million dollars or one third of the cost of an atomic Trident submarine. And yet that government complains that the UN is too costly and that the US pays too much! Historians will someday shake their heads in utter disbelief of such facts. (See Annex II of Part IV.) One of the best businesses on Earth: The US gets back in UN and delegations expenditures three times what it pays to the UN and complains that the UN costs too much and that the US contribution is too high! Switzerland has it even better: it collects the second biggest sum from the UN and is not even a member of the UN! * What a world! * It finally became a member in 2002.

Robert's The Miracle, Joy and Art of Living,
Volume I - The Great Scene of Creation
Chapter 5 - The Miracle of Individual Life

Dear philosopher Descartes,
I believe that I am infinitely more than what you thought when you said "I think, therefore I am".  In my opinion.

I breathe, therefore I am
I see, therefore I am
I hear, therefore I am
I think, therefore I am
I love, therefore I am
I feel, therefore I am.

Of course, you might return:
"You thought everything you just said. Therefore I am right after all!"  No, you are not right, because when I breathe, when I see, when I hear, when I love, when I feel I do not necessarily think.
*

UN News: UN Chronicle, United Nations News Service, UN Wire Archive
References: Earth Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Rights of: Children,Women, IndigenousPeople
To Be Written: Rights of Nature, Birds, Animals, Fish, etc.

Daily Ray of Hope
Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually
                                                          National
                                                          Wildlife
                                                          Refuge,
                                                          Washington
Photo by Tony Varela |  Billy Frank Jr. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, Washington
Suddenly there they are, a wavering V headed directly over the hilltop, quite low, beating southward down the central flyway and talking as they pass. We stay quiet suspending our human conversation until their garulity fades and their wavering lines are invisible in the sky.
~ Wallace Stegner

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The first 4000 Ideas & Dreams
For A Better World

The Idea Dreams
- With An Index

Robert's Harmonic & Talk
Ode To Joy
Never Give Up (Audio Talk)

Decide to - poems
DecideTo Index
DecideTo Poems

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