UN – What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again!

(Sorry to hijack your song there, Mr. Springsteen)*

What are they up to these days, outside of failing to condemn Iran, and instead expressing ‘grave concern’ over the capture of the 15 British sailors?

Try covering up for North Korea’s counterfeiting of American money. Via the NY Sun:

As federal investigators examine how the leading U.N. agency in North Korea illegally kept 35 counterfeit American $100 bills in its possession for 12 years, documents indicate that more officials were aware of the existence of the fake currency — and earlier — than the agency has reported.

Spokesmen for the United Nations Development Program have said top officials at the agency’s New York headquarters learned in February that their safe in Pyongyang contained the counterfeit bills and immediately reported it to American authorities. But several documents shown recently to The New York Sun indicate that higher-ups knew much earlier that the safe held counterfeit money.

The documents are part of a worldwide reporting system that allows the agency to keep track of the contents of its office safes.

One “safe contents count record” — shown to the Sun with the stipulation that the paper omit such details as the exact issuing date, which was before February — confirms that fake money was in the safe in Pyongyang. According to a source familiar with the system, this and similar records were filed with UNDP headquarters twice a year.

Internal UNDP communication shown to the Sun also indicates that in at least one incident, a Pyongyang office manager reported the existence of the counterfeit money to his successor. Similar reports were filed with the seven managers that have served in North Korea since 1995. Some of these managers have returned to UNDP headquarters since then and now serve as top officials there.

The Secret Service and federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York are investigating the matter and have sought out at least 13 UNDP officials for interviews. But questions about diplomatic immunity and whether lawyers can represent the officials during those interviews have yet to be resolved.

And that’s not all they’ve been up to.

Last month, Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, gave a speech in front of the UN Human Rights Council, blasting them for their blame-Israel-for-everything approach to ‘confronting’ (not) Islamofascism.

What was the response from UNHRC Pres. Luis Alfonso de Alba? (emphasis added):

For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you’d kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I’m not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council. The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. In the memory of the persons that you referred to, founders of the Human Rights Commission, and for the good of human rights, I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language. Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez calling President Bush “el Diablo” at the UN? Acceptable. Criticizing the United Nations on their own turf? Unacceptable and “inadmissable.”

*Update: Some jerk who tried to comment thought he would attempt to ‘educate’ me on the fact that the “War” song wasn’t Springsteen’s originally and that if I can’t get that right, I ‘must not be able to get anything else right.’ So freaking what? It’s the version I remember, and if you don’t like it, smart aleck, see how you like being able to read but not comment.