UNESCO destroys thousands of books

I found this extraordinary and demoralizing but not surprising.    Remember this the next time you order UNESCO cards or send your kids out to collect funds for the same. 

U.N. Organization Destroyed Thousands of Books

For more than two decades, 250 historians and specialists labored to produce the first six volumes of the General History of Latin America, an exhaustive work financed by UNESCO, the United Nations organization created to preserve global culture and heritage.

Then, over the course of two years, UNESCO paid to destroy many of those books and nearly 100,000 others by turning them to pulp, according to an external audit.

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Mexico's ambassador, Homero Aridjis, said at the organization's executive council meeting this past week: "This is not only a blow to the culture and knowledge of entire populations and nations, it contradicts the mandate entrusted to UNESCO."
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The director general of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, said it was "completely incomprehensible and inappropriate" that some of the organization's "most important and successful collections" were ordered destroyed, including histories of humanity and Africa, and surveys of ancient monuments.

When the book warehouses were moved from Paris to Brussels, UNESCO officials ordered the books pulped so they wouldn't have to pay to move them.

Just think how many schools around the world would have been ecstatic to receive these books.