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The answer in each case is, of course, the UN. If the UN hadn’t been so fucking lazy, impotent, and incompetent, and had it not sat back and claimed to hold the moral high ground while sitting back and watching millions of people suffer human rights abuses, it could have (and would have) prevented all these messes.

But that’s not what you were looking for, I’m sure.

In my opinion, the perpetrators of illegal acts are the sole parties responsible for those acts. (Outside parties may hold partial responsibility for negligence or other reasons, but let’s keep this simple.) Therefore, my answers are:

1) A. This one’s easy.

2) A. Easy.

3) C. This one’s a little trickier since the entity “new government of Quebec” is a tad difficult to define. The individuals involved, however, are quite easy to finger. Who are the aggrieved going to sue for a couple $million apiece? Damned if I know, or even care. Maybe if they didn’t have such stupid gun control laws up there the people could’ve shot the bastards and prevented this whole fiasco.

4) C. See above.

5) B.

How’d I do?

Regarding your commentary on the UN, I tend to agree with your immediate reaction but arrive at that conclusion with many caveats. The UN does a very good job with many of the things it does, particularly in the provision of health and human services (given the limited resources it has). Considering that this is what the vast majority of what the UN actually does on the ground (beyond meetings), the UN deserves support from all nations for its humanitarian services.

Corruption and lack of oversight does occur in UN operations as it does any other big bureaucracy from time to time (ie oil for food, etc.), which rightfully stains the reputation of the UN. However, because the UN is “the UN,” I think everyone can agree that a higher standard is needed and thus serious reforms are indeed well called for.

Where the UN notoriously falls flat on its face is when it comes to responding to crises involving military conflict and intervention. And these of course are the high profile items that are covered in the news all the time. The thing is - the UN is a political body and it is composed of member nations with their own political agendas. There is no way to get around this. The UN is the sum of its members. It’s a miserable organization when it comes to crisis response because its own members have their own miserable agendas.

Here’s an analogy: Blaming the UN for all the shortcomings in the world is like blaming the waitress for the bad hamburger served to you because one-third of the cooks in the kitchen disagreed on how to make the hamburger for you, another one-third wanted to make you a chicken burger and not a hamburger, and the final one-third didn’t want to feed you anything at all. The point is, trying to get the US, Russia, France, China and the UK to agree on anything, let alone how to respond to a crisis, would be a downright miracle.

Thus, looking at what is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis ongoing – the crisis in Sudan - will the UN go in there to stop what’s going on? No. But even if the US wanted to act unilaterally (which it has proven itself able to do) it won’t go into the Sudan either. Why? Because the US needs its new buddies Russia and Pakistan in its own “war against terror” and both Russia, Pakistan, (and China) are opposed to intervention in Sudan for obvious reasons (Chechnya, Tibet, etc.). Every country has its own political agenda. It’s the sum of all those agendas, and the acts or omissions of nations acting on their own agendas, that leads to all the fucked up situations in the world today.

OK now to the hypos. They are based on an actual case in which the European Court of Human Rights ruled on a case alleging that both Russia and Moldova were responsible for human rights violations committed by pro-Russian Moldovan separatists (with the active help of Russian forces) in an area of Moldova under the firm control of the separatists. The case was a “case of first impression” because it dealt with a government’s responsibility for human rights violations committed on its de jure territory by separatists and foreigners in de facto control of an occupied portion of that state’s territory. There were 4 dissenting opinions in this case, and the court’s 17 judges split 11-6 on
the outcome. The majority opinion struck me as being incorrect, so that is why I was interested in getting input on other people’s reactions.

Ho. Ly. Shit. I typed out a looooong response, only to see it randomly disappear. Sonofacrapper. I’ll try again, but I won’t be able to replicate it, I’m sure.

Your restaurant analogy is badly flawed. The UN isn’t the waitress, it’s the owner/manager. The UN is exactly the individual in the restaurant responsible for keeping the place running. The UN, therefore, is entirely responsible for the restaurant’s incompetence.

The U.S. is your waitress. She’s a my-way-or-the-highway, bossy bitch. She is fat, loud, and gaudy, and she flaunts and revels in her excesses. When the other incompetents in the restaurant don’t do their jobs, she says “Fuck you all!” and does their jobs for them. She could leave the restaurant, but she’s at the only restaurant in town and her life goal is to feed people. She makes sure nobody is hungry, and she’ll do whatever it takes to achieve that end.

The cooks, busboys, dishwashers—they all resent her. The owner/manager fears her. But they all know one thing for certain: without her, the restaurant would collapse. Whether they like it or not, they need her.

Some of her methods are unorthodox. The cooks demand that the burgers be grilled (although they can’t agree on exactly how); the waitress microwaves them. The busboys never break a plate; the waitress sweeps all the dishes off a table into a wash pan, chipping a few here and there. The dishwasher dries all the dishes; the waitress blasts them with a hose and lets them air dry. And sometimes if the waitress sees a hungry, emaciated vegetarian wandering the streets, she will go right out, grab him, and force him to eat hamburgers until he’s full. Those patrons are always a little pissed off at first—it isn’t fun to be force fed a food you don’t care for, after all—but in the end they go home happy, satisfied, and they always thank the waitress.

And folks keep coming back to the restaurant, in spite of the boobery of the other employees, and because the waitress is so effective at what she does.

There are a lot of great things on the menu at the UN Cafe. But the fact is, the only food that ever actually gets served is the waitress’s microwaved hamburgers on slightly chipped, slightly water-spotted plates. Until the owner/manager gets his act together and forces his employees to do their jobs, or until the employees decide on their own to do their jobs, the only way to get fed in this town is through the waitress. Love her or hate her, there are a lot fewer hungry people on the streets today thanks to her.

Au contraire mon frere! Your analysis appears to contradict itself when it comes to analogizing the STRUCTURE of the UN. The UN is not the manager but the waitress. To be a manager implies that the UN has actual authority to enforce its will on the cooks, which it does not have. Do you think Kofi Annan has any power to force the US or China to do what they don’t want to do? Of course not. And this is why – as you recognize – the US just ends up doing what it wants. Whether what it does is good policy or bad policy is definitely arguable, and I think any reasonable observer would conclude that not everything the US does globally is good or bad, contrary to your assumption that the US is out to “make sure nobody is hungry.”

There is no separate “UN army” to keep its member nations in line – UN forces are composed of soldiers from other nations who just temporarily put on blue helmets when their nation’s agenda happens to fall in line with the UN’s. That is why the UN is the sum total of its members – the products it produces are the sum total of what its members come up with. Hence, the UN is a waitress beholden to the agendas and actions of all the cooks in the kitchen – some of which are very powerful and do what ever they want whenever they want (the US), others of which are not. She, the waitress, has to deliver what the cooks give to her, whether good or bad. And sometimes, she can’t deliver at all because the cooks don’t give her anything, and instead deliver things on their own.

You contradict yourself, Mr. T. To wit: “That is why the UN is the sum total of its members – the products it produces are the sum total of what its members come up with.” How is a waitress in any way analogous to the sum total of the employees of a restaurant? In effect you’re saying the UN is made up of many members, one of which is itself. That’s quite the little paradox you’ve constructed!

Furthermore, do you really mean to state that the UN is no more than a “fellow employee” of the nations that form it? How can the UN be equal to the United States when the U.S. is a member of the UN? How is it that you don’t see the UN as an overarching organizing structure encompassing the employees?

If you want to pick nits with my version of your analogy, you’ve gone the wrong direction. Perhaps you would be more apt to agree with the argument that the UN is the restaurant itself. In that case the UN really would be the sum of its parts. That analogy satisfies all your conditions, without your analogy’s many ridiculous notions, such as:
* The UN is only made up of cooks, and they all get a (relatively) equal say about what goes into the pot;
* The UN is but a fellow employee to the cooks, rather than a body encompassing them;
* and ... well, I could go on, but this whole analogy business is rather silly, and I should be working.

Au Contraire Mon Ami! The waitress is expected to deliver the product – which is the sum total of what the cooks do (or do not) put together. The waitress herself does not have the capacity to make the product…she simply delivers whatever the cooks make.

The UN itself is not a cook – it can’t put together, say, a military force to respond to crises on the ground. Instead, it has to rely on the “cooks” – its member nations who provide the military personnel and money. In this sense, the waitress is dependent on the cooks to make the product. If the cooks want to make a hamburger, she delivers a hamburger. If the cooks want to make a tuna salad sandwich, she has to deliver the tuna salad sandwich. If the cooks argue amongst themselves and can’t make anything, then she can’t deliver anything!

“The waitress is expected to deliver the product – which is the sum total of what the cooks do (or do not) put together.”

Correct. Both of our models agree with that statement, to a large extent.

“The waitress herself does not have the capacity to make the product...”

She does in my analogy. The fact that your waitress is an idiot, err, I mean, is limited to a single task, doesn’t mean my waitress is limited to a single task.

“The UN itself is not a cook – it can’t put together, say, a military force to respond to crises on the ground.”

Correct. Neither model claims that to be true, though, so I’m not sure why you brought it up.

“Instead, it has to rely on the ‘cooks’ – its member nations who provide the military personnel and money.”

Correct. To convert that to my analogy, the restaurant relies on all its employees, in various roles, to do their jobs.

“In this sense, the waitress is dependent on the cooks to make the product.”

By and large that’s correct. But since my waitress is capable of performing multiple roles, her “dependence” on the cooks is not absolute.

“If the cooks want to make a hamburger, she delivers a hamburger. If the cooks want to make a tuna salad sandwich, she has to deliver the tuna salad sandwich.”

Largely correct, but again, my waitress has free will and the ability to act on her own if she chooses.

“If the cooks argue amongst themselves and can’t make anything, then she can’t deliver anything!”

In my model she can. She is quite adept at making microwaved (aka “nuked") hamburgers.

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Let’s try something else. Neither analogy is working, obviously. Let’s revise the analogy again. The UN is the restaurant—it oversees everybody and can only offer the goods and services its employees supply. But in this analogy, the UN’s member nations can each have multiple roles in the restaurant. The U.S., for example, is a cook and a waitress and a dishwasher and a health inspector. After all, the U.S. helps set UN policy (in its cook role), it delivers products (waitress), it cleans up after disasters (dishwasher), and it provides oversight (health inspector). Some countries have only one role in the restaurant, while others have many roles.

How ‘bout that one?

Er..I think this *cough* “debate” has run its course. OK so anyway. The answers are: C, C, A, A and E, and A. However, the dissent (that I agree with) in “Ilascu v. Moldova and Russia” would argue that it should be: A, C, A, unknown (this is the real interesting scenario here), and A.