And a fine piece of real estate it is. Nestled along the East River at 42nd Street the land itself was purchased by the Rockefellers in 1946 for a whopping 8.5 million dollars. The property affords panoramic views of the river and the New York skyline. Zoned commercial, this acquisition includes four buildings, in need of modest refurbishing, and could be easily restored as office space or condominiums.

Following the purchase in 1946, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. donated the land for use by an organization dedicated to world peace and prosperity. An organization whose primary mandate was to follow in the footsteps of it’s predecessor, promote international cooperation and achieve peace and security. By 1950 the buildings were completed and the United Nations was open for business.

This wasn’t the first attempt at world peace. As the victors met, at Versailles in 1919, to divvy up the spoils of World War One, Field Marshall Jan Christiaan Smuts put forth the idea of the League of Nations. Smuts was a South African who served Britain meritoriously during the First World War. It was the goal of the League of Nations to promote international peace, cooperation, security and prosperity.

As we know, the League of Nations failed in its’ mission and collapsed as World War Two began. But Smuts was undaunted and at the end of World War Two he again put forth the idea of a world body determined to promote peace, prosperity and international cooperation. This new and improved version was to become the United Nations. The first General Assembly was held in London and from then on it occupied the new digs in New York City.

(for trivia buffs, Smuts was the only person to sign the treaties ending WWI and WWII. He was also the only person to sign the charters of both the League of Nations as well as the United Nations)

There was plenty of international discussion leading up to the inception of the UN and some of the best can be found in the post below which looks at a conversation between Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, some diary entries from Joseph Goebbels and an excerpt from Anthony Edens’ autobiography, “Memoirs: The Reckoning”, which discusses in detail the Yalta meetings between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.

Also to be found within the post below is a brief list of United Nations mandates and projects which, over time, have pretty much stumbled and failed. The writings are far too extensive to include in this post but are well worth reading through.

But it is in this present day that the United Nations has raised the concern of more than a few Americans. The scandals, bribery, nepotism and downright theft have raised the eyebrows of even the staunchest of UN supporters.

Accusations, depositions and subsequent resignations followed exposure of the 'oil for food program' which singlehandedly financed Saddam Hussein for a decade or better. Large sums of that money also financed the son of the seventh Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, of Ghana.

UN peacekeepers in central Africa have been accused of child molestation and the rape of the very people they were sent to protect. UN peacekeepers have completely failed in Darfur and the Sudan and within that failure seemed to care even less. Bosnia? Somalia? Cambodia? UN peacekeepers weren’t up to the task in their occupation of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Financing of the United Nations is generated from the member nations. There are 192 members of the United Nations. Annual assessments are levied based on the ability of the individual nation to pay.

Currently the largest bankrollers of the United Nations are: United States 22%, Japan 19.63%, Germany 9.82%, France 6.5%, the UK 5.57%, Italy 5.09%, Canada 2.57%, Spain 2.53% and Brazil 2.39%. These percentages are of 100% total operating budget. Countries not listed are assessed at less than 2.0%.

The corruption notwithstanding, the United Nations had rendered itself impotent most recently in matters concerning Iraq and Iran and North Korea. How many times did Saddam Hussein laugh in the face of UN mandates? Didn’t the United Nations tell Iran to stop it’s nuclear expansion by August 31st? Has anyone heard anything in the month and a half that has since passed?

Wasn’t that the President of Iraq sitting before the General Assembly last month basically telling them to take their mandate and shove it? To coin a phrase heard before here on blogstream, don’t even get me started on Hugo Chavez. Now the UN is going to huddle up and talk about North Korea and their alleged nuclear bomb tests. Does anyone think anything will come out of that before, say, 2008?

There comes a time when things just outgrow their usefulness. Why just last week my blogger friend, FUZZY, threw out his 8 track for a cassette player. The hundreds of committees comfortably ensconced within the United Nations are stumbling all over themselves. Cristo himself would run out of red tape trying to wrap the place up for arts’ sake.

Over the past 50 years the United Nations has morphed into a parody of itself. It seems no longer interested in world peace but rather in blatant, and often illegal, self promotion.

Would the world be better off if the United Nations were to disband? Would the world be better served if the United Nations relocated to the Middle East or central Africa? Do you think the United States needs to be in the United Nations and, conversely, do you think the United Nations needs to be in the United States?