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Iran just announced it will pay a $2.6 million bounty to the first Iranian who murders Salman Rushdie, whose crime was to write the book, The Satanic Verses. It irritates Islamic fundamentalists, and not just in Iran. Pakistan said squads of hit men have been dispatched for Rushdie. Joining Pakistan in banning the book were India, Bangladesh, Egypt and South Africa.
All these countries belong to the United Nations, which
means they agreed to abide by the UN Charter. Among other
things, the charter provides that members should be
promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and
for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to
race, sex, language or religion.
It might seem that writing or reading a given book is
one of those fundamental freedoms,
but the UN, as
always, will ignore violations of its charter by its
members.
The UN started with noble ideals and 56 countries in
1945. Now it has 159 members; most can hardly be called
nations.
The delegate from the sovereign nation of
St. Christopher & Nevis has a vote. His country has
40,000 residents and an area of 101 square miles.
If Colorado joined the UN, it would rank well. Our population of 3,296,000 makes us 101st among the nations of the world, right after New Zealand, and ahead of 58 countries, among them Jordan, Uruguay and Ireland. We have 104,481 square miles, which puts us ahead of 92 places that have their own armies and embassies, such as Yugoslavia, Great Britain and Greece.
In economic terms, Colorado is a superpower compared to
most of the UN membership. Our gross national
product
of $52 billion ranks 34th -- we contribute more
to the world economy than 75 percent of the nations in the
UN. We do more than the bottom 56 members of the UN,
combined.
So what good is the UN if it's dominated by a collection of rinky-dink countries who never honor the promises they made in signing the UN charter?
One theory of national and local government is that governments exist to perform necessary tasks that individuals can't easily do on their own -- build highways, for instance. If we extend that, then an international organization should do things that individual countries have trouble handling on their own.
For instance, countries depose rulers occasionally. The
exiled leader often heads for the United States, as one of
the wretched refuse
that the Statue of Liberty
invites. The presence of a Ferdinand Marcos or an ex-Shah
Reza Pahlavi enormously complicates U.S. foreign
policy.
The UN could provide a useful service to the nations of the world if it established a remote island reservation where former heads of state could live out their days in luxury, but incommunicado from the rest of the world. Among other benefits, we wouldn't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more.
A bigger reservation operated by the UN would solve a greater problem that many nations face. Islamic fundamentalists are resorting to a world-wide murder plot in order to inflict their views of what is, and isn't, good literature on the rest of the human race. In America, we have similar, although not as extreme, problems with Christian fundamentalists. Many citizens have not accepted our national principles, among them freedom of religion and expression.
An article in the Feb. 13 New Yorker noted that
Israel's government can't satisfy the demands of its
ultra-Orthodox
fundamentalists. Mikhail Gorbachev's
reforms in the Soviet Union may be subverted by that
nation's fundamentalists, the hard-core Stalinists.
Around the world, there are millions of fundamentalists of various stripes, all interfering with the rest of us. No nation can handle them. Put them all on a big reservation somewhere, where they can rant and commit holy murder as much as they want.
The UN could establish and administer that fundamentalist reservation. Thus it would honor its charter as it finally served a useful purpose.
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