If the U.N. is ineffective, or if it is corrupt, or all the other epithets that people like to throw at it, it's because ever since it was organized, a couple or more of the five countries that have veto power have made a mockery of an organization that could have ended war for all time, had it not been for their stupid, selfish posturing and penchant for bullying.

And as far as "it's unlikely to do anything for you personally" is concerned, as ineffecual as the U.N. has often been, the fact that many disagreements between countries were brought before the U.N. for duscussion instead of usual historical practice of going directly to open hostilities that it's quite likely that what the U.N. has done for you personally is that on a number of occasions it probably kept your sorry ass from being vaporized in a nuclear war.

It's easy for people to attack the U.N. for its many failures, but many of its successes go unheralded because, as a result of those successes, nothing much happened. Which is one of the purposes for which the U.N. was organized in the first place.

Don Firth