The UN Loves Women--No, Really.

You can always tell how much the United Nations likes a subject by how many commissions, committees, discussion groups, confabs, and entities are created to embrace the subject. It wasn't sufficient that they have allowed the repressive regime of Iran on the Commission on the Status of Women. So just in case you didn't think they considered women sufficiently important, the UN is now creating "U N Women."

What is that, you ask? Well, officially it's the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Now are you convinced of how much the UN cares? It could be worse, I suppose. Unlike the Commission on the Status of Women which is comprised almost entirely of members chosen by geographical area, the "Entity" will have a slightly higher representation based on the percentage of money contributed to the UN. So the United States and Japan will lead the field of states which get seats based on monetary contributions. But they'll still be outnumbered by the states which get seats based solely on geography.

So why create yet another UN group to study the international condition of women? That should probably be obvious from the divergence in representation on the entity. If there's one thing the United Nations does well, it's to suck money out of the pockets of the western democracies. With Iran and other repressive regimes leading the Status Commission, the only way to sucker the West (America particularly) into funding another meaningless and counterproductive activity is to give them extra seats on a newly-created money burning machine.

Previous American administrations have ranged from mildly complicit to openly hostile to the United Nations bodies which claim to be one thing but do quite another. How much do you think the Status Commission will be doing to improve the lot of women in Muslim and sub-Saharan African nations? But this knowledge slows down the influx of money to the UN. And we are now two years into the "we are the world, we are the people" Obama administration. So let's create another whole new body purporting to stand for women's progress and make sure the big bucks nations are well-represented so they can feel better about throwing more money down another UN rathole.

Presently, aside from the Status Commission, there are several small, less grand-sounding UN entities which cover some of the same ground. But as we know, the UN is all about efficiency. So those entities, which currently cost about $500 million annually to accomplish nothing for women will be replaced by a much grander entity that will spend an estimated $1 billion annually to do nothing for women than was previously done for half the price.

One cannot help but wonder how long after the Western suckers have disgorged their capitalist wealth on the new entity will they discover that somehow the entity has come to be dominated by the champions of women's liberation such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, Sudan and the johnny-come-lately Afghanistan. I'm still waiting for the creation of a multibillion dollar UN "entity" to study the empowerment of gays, lesbians, transgendered and transsexual folks. I'm sure my old home and original site of the United Nations, San Francisco, will be among the first to commit itself to such a chimerical concept.