UN Scam, and Jacques's speech, updated
Just two days ago Jacques was at the UN, proposing a global tax to "fight hunger and poverty and to increase funds for development".

The France2 news last night didn't dwell much on Pres. Bush's speech at the UN yesterday (where he proposed grants instead of loans to disadvantaged countries, for instance), but instead reported that Chirac says that Bush didn't comment on Chirac's global tax proposal "because it's an election year, and there's time to discuss it after the election". France2, however, reports that (my translation)

UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan caused more enthusiasm that the president of the United States by exhorting the leaders of the world, including those of the first power, to conform to international law. "Again and still, we note that the basic rights are shamefully ignored, namely those which require the respect for innocent lives, for civilians, for vulnerable people and in particular for children's lives"

Such respect has Annan shown for the lives of children that Claudia Rosett brings up the subject just this morning: What's 'Illegal'? Kofi Annan helped Saddam Hussein steal food from babies. So concerned is the UN's Secretary-General with the plight of the poor that

When Oil-for-Food was launched in 1996, it was advertised by the U.N. as a response to such horrors as pictures of starving Iraqi children and alarming statistics about infant mortality in Iraq, released by one of the U.N.'s own agencies, Unicef.

Much to Mr. Annan's advantage, the Secretariat collected more than $1.4 billion in commissions on Saddam's oil sales. Ms Rosett briefly explains what details have come to light so far (since, as Ms Rosett says, "many of the vital details of these contracts remain smothered in the continuing secrecy imposed by the U.N.-authorized investigation into Oil-for-Food"), and comes to this conclusion:

Translation: In late 2002, while Mr. Annan was lobbying against U.S.-led removal of Saddam, he was running a U.N. program in which money meant for baby formula, among other goods, was very likely flowing into the pockets of Saddam and his sons and cronies.

Somehow, that was the kind of problem that Mr. Annan's office managed to miss, although according to a November 2002 statement to the Security Council by Oil-for-Food director Benon Sevan, U.N. staff in Iraq had by then made 1,187,487 total "observation visits" to ensure the integrity of Oil-for-Food. More than one million of those observation visits were devoted to checking on food and nutrition (and all of them were paid for out of the U.N. Secretariat's 2.2% oil sales commissions from Saddam).

Of course, people like Chirac are willing to impose taxes that would benefit a corrupt organization such as the UN. As The Economist said, (link via Kathleen), rather than pursuing a free-trade agenda that would benefit the underdeveloped countries,

Given his own rather cavalier attitude to the cost of food, it is perhaps unsurprising that Mr Chirac is unmoved by pleas to reform the European Union's notorious common agricultural policy (CAP). Why should the fact that the CAP adds EURO 600 a year to the food bills of the average European family weigh heavily with a man who can eat his way through that amount, in fruit and veg alone, in just four days?. . .
A lesser man than Mr Chirac might blush to pursue such a venal policy, while protesting his desire to help the world's most impoverished people. But, as his grocery bills (among other things) delightfully illustrate, France's president is not a man who is easily embarrassed

Neither is Kofi Annan.

Update: Too bad more people aren't paying attention to the Oil-for-Food scandal, because it is the center of it all, the beating heart of global corruption.