Archive for the ‘The UN’ Category
The obvious appointment
A new chapter in uncovering the true nature of the UN Human Right Mockery Council. This time its new appointee to special rapporteur on the “situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.”:
Falk’s conception of human rights—remember, this is what he is tasked to monitor for the UN—is also colored by his warm feelings toward Tehran. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, an associate professor of legal studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, noted in 2000 that “The international law scholar Richard Falk, who sympathizes with the Islamic Republic and who opines that ‘Islam’ is entitled to have its own ‘civilizational approach’ to human rights, embodies the tendency to imagine that Iranians need more Islamic culture, not the human rights protections valued by people in the West.”
But this is small beer compared to Falk’s latest intellectual pursuit. In 2004, Falk wrote the introduction to The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin, a book arguing that the American government was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Of the vast trove of 9/11 “truth” material available in print and online, it was Griffin, Falk wrote in his foreword, who “has had the patience, the fortitude, the courage, and the intelligence to put the pieces together in a single coherent account.” For Griffin’s latest book, Debunking the 9/11 Debunkers, Falk provided a dust jacket endorsement: “David Ray Griffin has established himself—alongside Seymour Hersh—as America’s number one bearer of unpleasant, yet necessary, public truths.”
This appointment is a good step in the right direction - recognizing the UN for what it is - an haven for dictatorships and a cover up for their actions. While I don’t agree with McCain on many things, the idea that the US - and any other self respecting democracies - should abandon this shameful farce of organization is not a bad idea.
Which Human Rights the council is protecting?
Since I already broke my rule about writing on UN issues I feel obligated to link to this post. It is always interesting to note what the UN Human Rights Mockery Council consider human rights. Freedom of speech isn’t one of them apparently:
So prohibiting dissemination of ideas based upon religious superiority “is compatible with the freedom of opinion and expression”; I suppose that would include claims that Islam, Christianity, or whatever else is the one true religion that is correct while others are false. And states are supposed to “prohibit the dissemination … of … xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers that constitute incitement to racial and religious … hostility”; I suppose that would include, for instance, condemnation of Scientology as fraud, or of Catholicism as oppressive, or for that matter of all religion as folly. And here I thought that freedom of thought, conscience and religion included the freedom to think and comment about all ideologies, including religious ones.
The irony
I breaking my old decision not to right about the UN Human Rights Mockery Council, I simply can’t resist the irony:
Switzerland’s Jean Ziegler has been appointed to a United Nations advisory body for human rights.
He won most votes for the seat designated for western countries at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in the Swiss city of Geneva.
[...]
Ziegler has been criticized for supporting authoritarian leaders in developing countries.
I love the euphemism of calling murderous dictators “authoritarian leaders”, it stand in the grand tradition of the UN.
The best choice?
I still remember the time when the Israeli economy was struggling with inflation rate of few hundred percent a year. I remember my parents struggling to keep up, to buy as soon as we had money and the amount we have still has some value. So when I read about the the currency crisis in Zimbabwe I have some understanding of the hardship it impose:
Black market exchange rates — fueled by the central bank buying at the illegal rates to pay the mounting debts of crumbling state fuel and power utilities — rose to upward of 300,000 Zimbabwe dollars to one U.S. dollar in large offshore deals, said one trader.
The official exchange rate is 15,000-1.
"It’s gone crazy," said the trader, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his dealings are illegal. "People are holding out for the highest bidder and mentioning as much as 400,000-1 which could be tomorrow’s price. It’s changing by the hour."
The going rate doubled since Monday, he said
In local deals, the U.S. currency fetched at least 140,000-1 in cash and around 200,000-1 in electronic bank transfers. Shortages of Zimbabwe bank notes created the premium on bank transfers, said the illegal dealer.
Zimbabwe has the world’s highest rate of inflation, estimated officially at around 4,500 percent but calculated by independent finance houses at closer to 9,000 percent.
But in light of Zimbabwe’s economical situation, maybe it isn’t the best possible country to chair the UN Commission on sustainable Development?
Tags: Inflation Zimbabwe UN Commission on Sustainable Development
If this is a joke, it isn’t funny
While I was writing about the appointment of Zimbabwe to chair the UN commission for sustainable development I missed this:
Meanwhile, at the Disarmament Commission last month, Iran was elected to serve as vice chairman with Syria as rapporteur. Both countries are on the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring countries. Iran is currently defying U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program, and its election occurred on the same day that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted in Tehran that his country had begun industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel.
One can argue what should be the policy regarding Iran’s nuclear aspirations but this is hardly the point here. The simple fact is that Iran adopted a strategy that includes armament of nuclear weapons, chairing the Disarmament Commission is a great place to prevent any UN efficient effort to block it.
If it wasn’t so sad, it could have been a great satire.
What next? North Korea as the chair of the Human Rights Commission?
Tags: Iran The UN The Disarmament Commission Zimbabwe The Sustainable Development Commission
Robert Mugabe to share his phenomenal achievements with the rest of the world
One might think that Zimbabwe should be case study of the evil of social engineering, and the example of how not to build an economy. After all the story of Zimbabwe is the story of:
For years it was a major tobacco producer and a potential bread basket for surrounding countries.
But the forced seizure of almost all white-owned commercial farms, with the stated aim of benefiting landless black Zimbabweans, led to sharp falls in production and precipitated the collapse of the agriculture-based economy. The country has endured rampant inflation and critical food and fuel shortages.
Many Zimbabweans survive on grain handouts. Others have voted with their feet; hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, including much-needed professionals, have emigrated.
But don’t let these minor facts confuse you! Zimbabwe is not only a phenomenal successes story, it will now help the rest of the world follow its success - as it was appointed to chair of the UN commission on sustainable development.
I already called the UN evil organization, but this is undoubtedly a new low. Maybe the UN Free Zone isn’t a bad idea?
Tags: Zimbabwe UN Commission on Sustainable Development UN Watch UN Free Zone
Too busy
Back on Thursday I wrote about the shameful role of the UN in protecting human rights, or actually avoiding from doing so. And than I saw this caricature that expressing basically the same criticism:
While I’m used to here most criticism about the UN focus on Israel from Israelis or Jewish organizations it is encouraging to know that this view shared also by other people from the Middle-East. Sadly I can add that the UN will not find the conscience to stop the killing in Darfur.
Tear the UN decency mask
I have written numerous times about the genocide in Darfur, and I have joined my voice to organizations that called the UN to send peacekeeping forces. This was a mistake!
The UN, as organization, was a mistake from the day it was established. pretending to created a democratic institute that will prevent wars, or at least minimize the wars damages, while actually it only provides the illusion of democratic process. In fact the UN become an haven for many tyrannic leaders to block and effective actions to improve and protect human rights around the world.
While the members of the UN human rights mockery council includes Cuba and Zimbabwe allowed to attack and prevents efforts to protect human rights other speeches, such as the criticising speech of UN Watch, are being kept out of record. In addition the UN Commission on the status of women finds that the only violator of woman rights is Israel.
The UN is an evil organization and I have no hope that any justice will come out of it. And therefore I will not sign petitions requesting UN involvement in Darfur, or anywhere else, nor will I participate in any demonstration calling for UN members to pass a resolution in the UN that effectively help to stop the genocide in Darfur. If any organization will ask for my voice to push the western world to take action, as an ad-hoc coalition or as part of NATO, I will gladly support it - but I refuse to help the UN keep its image of rightful and decent organization.
Here is what will the UN allow, and what not:
Tags: UN Watch The UN Darfur Human Rights Human Rights Council NATO
Shame on them!
If this report is accurate, and I have no reason to doubt it, we reached new level of cynicism and shamelessness:
At its ongoing fourth session, the UN Human Rights Council’s European Union and African Group members have now tabled competing draft resolutions on the human rights situation in Darfur, Sudan. Both drafts purport to be "follow-up" to the report presented to the Council last Friday by an assessment team led by Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams-but regrettably, neither actually implements the recommendations of that report.
[...]
Among its many recommendations, the Williams report asked the Council to condemn the Sudanese government for ongoing violations and for its "manifest failure in its responsibility to protect civilians" and to call on Khartoum to admit the proposed UN/African Union peacekeeping force, to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, to comply with the international sanctions that have been imposed on war crimes suspects, and to remove obstacles to humanitarian aid. The report also urged measures to ensure accountability for perpetrators and compensation for victims and sought the compilation of a list of foreign companies whose business in Sudan has an adverse impact on human rights in Darfur.
If someone had any hope that the UN and its Human Rights Mockery Council will do anything to stop the genocide in Darfur,this hope is vanished. But not only in Darfur - abuses of human rights all over the world will pass, like torture of prisoners in Egypt, without the slight hope of UN involvement.
Unless it is anything do with Israel…
Shame on them!
I wonder
Does someone really believe that the UN is so competent to handle this challenge?
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 17 (Reuters) - An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.
Maybe it should start with less ambitious tasks, like stop the genocide in Darfur or stop the gas chambers in North Korea. Or maybe just before the UN ambitiously going to fight the bad asteroid, it can persuade the Egyptian to release Kareem?
And one last question, if we are going to get his by this asteroid - are we still worried about the global warming? 
Technorati Tags: Asteroid - North Korea - Kareem - Egypt - Darfur - The UN