The more they stay the same

22 years ago at Christmas we were graced with the song "Do they know it's Christmas" by Band Aid. Organized by Bob Geldof, it was an admirable effort by British music artists to raise money to help the starving Ethopians enduring a drought and government-engineered famine. It was soon followed by the awful "We are the World" by USA for Africa.

Fast forward to 2006 and a crisis of similar proportion is unfolding in Sudan. A government engineered famine, ethnic cleansing and a feckless United Nations, and you have hundreds of thousands suffering in Darfur. Except this time they don't have a cheerleader raising money for them. But the need is just as great.

If you want to help out the suffering people of Darfur, you can go here to see some organizations that are working in that region. Not every relief organization is willing to send its people into this volatile are. And please don't give any money to the United Nations relief efforts. The graft and corruption in that organization is shameful.

The more things change...

Some things are just so predictable. The sun will rise in the east, and set in the west. Winter is cold, summer is warm. And the Secretary General of the United Nations will blame the United States for whatever is wrong in the world.

In a predictable fashion, Kofi Annan scolded the United States about abandoning its democratic ideals in the war on terror. Is this the same guy who ran the corrupt Oil For Food program with Saddam where billions was siphoned off from humanitarian purposes to feed Saddam loyalists and his army? The UN didn't sanction its members who participated in this, but individual countries have.

Is this the same United Nations that did nothing in the Balkan crisis, and the US and NATO intervened without their blessing to stop a genocide?

Is this the same United Nations whose "peacekeepers" were sytematically raping and torturing young girls in the Congo while they were supposed to be protecting them?

Thanks for the input Kofi. Now take your corrupt team and get off of the world stage. Your time has been a disgrace at an organization seriously in need of a purpose. This is just one more evidence of why we need to put our faith in God, not in man, or institutions created by man. They will always disappoint us and are prone to corruption. Even those started with high ideals.