13 Feb NYC to U.N.: Please Don’t Leave Us!
13.02.07
|
5 Comments
Although many New Yorkers wouldn’t blink an eye if it happened, NY City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is worried that the United Nations may move its headquarters away from New York City, according to this report. Bloomberg is trying to meet with Secretary of State Rice to get her help on this matter.
If the U.N. leaves town, where would it go? I suppose Switzerland is a good option (now that it has finally consented to join the U.N.). Or Brussels? Anyone have some suggestions?
How about Port Harcourt?
Someplace that can put its money where its mouth is?
Alexander Casella recommended in an op-ed piece that it move to Montreal. http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/02/opinion/edcasella.php
Move the UN to Gibraltar by John Ryle City of Words, The Guardian (London) 28 July, 1997 Reestablish the UN where it has a better chance of doing good Reform of the United Nations and debate over the future of Gibraltar are not issues to set the pulse racing. In each of these cases the arguments are recurrent and never satisfactorily resolved. Important they may be, but ennui-inducing. Both issues, as it happened, made the news last week: there were proposals by the UN Secretary-General for changes in the internal organization of the United Nations; then came reports of a renewal of the dispute between Britain and Spain over the fate of the Rock. Both soon vanished from the news. But Gibraltar and the UN could be the answer to each other’s problems. Criticisms of the UN are various. It is said to be too big and bureaucratic (though its permanent employees in fact number only 50,000) with too many overlapping agencies (thirty plus), all of them either underfunded or overfunded, depending on your point-of-view (about $1.2 billion a year). And it is variously accused of being subject to manipulation by the permanent members of the Security Council, or compromised… Read more »
Mr. Ryle,
Your proposal is not so much impossible as it is brilliant. Intellectual exercises like yours give me hopes that, despite its predominant self-destructive impulses, human nature has other, valuable traits that make it worth living.
You made my day. Thanks.