Cuba Iran Korea Review U.S. Human Rights Violations: Obama's Voluntary Shellacking

Barack Obama joined the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009 and thus put us on the road to "universal periodic review" of this country's human rights.

For several hours, some 56 countries took to the podium and condemned the U.S.  Unbelievably, the hate for our republicanism is so intense, many "stood in line overnight to be near the top of the list of speakers.

Cuba said the U.S. blockade against them is a "crime of genocide." They harangued us about our "violations against migrants," and they didn't forget our rampant brutality against our mentally ill. We were advised to feed our people and keep them healthy.

Iran is deeply concerned by "systematic widespread violations" in the U.S. and warned us about our abuses against women.

North Korea wants us to take care of our "housing inequalities," and prohibit violence of law enforcement.

Libya points to our "racism.

In the Bush years, the U.S. delegation refused to join this farcical Commission, populated by the most heinously cruel human rights violators on the planet.

The Obama administration could not wait to subject us to the scrutiny of tyrants. Now they have until  Tuesday to accept or reject the recommendations also coming from Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia:

The whole list of criticisms and recommendations, as well as our response, will be put together in a document distributed globally by the U.N. for the edification of America-bashers around the world. 

The United Nations is a pit of vipers. We stroke them and coddle them, and fund their atrocities. We make a mockery of our own democracy by acknowledging their right of communist and totalitarian states to address the human rights of any other country. While their people starve, are tortured in prisons for speaking out about their oppressors, live with no electricity, have their children taken from them, and see women so unspeakably abused  - we submit to their scrutiny. Why would we join this hateful coalition?

At some point we must pull out of the United Nations, and form a body of true democratic countries. The sooner the better. Maybe the next President will have a heart for the benevolence of the U.S. and move to dump this obscene United Nations.

Nasrin Soutoudeh Shirin Ebadi: Nasrin Soutoudeh Arrested Charged

Nasrin Soutoudeh, sometimes spelled Nasrine, is an Iranian female attorney representing Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. Soutoudeh received a warning from the Iranian intelligence officials that she would be arrested if she continued to represent Ebadi. Ebadi fled Iran one day before the elections, in June 2009 and is living in London. Soutoudeh was arrested last Saturday and is believed to be in Tehran's Evin prison.

Nasrin Sotoudeh

Charged with "propaganda against the regime" and "acting against national security," Soutoudeh is a member of the Iranian Human Rights movement, the One Million Signature Campaign, which is gathering names of Iranians opposed to the country's laws against women, and the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPRC).

Nasrin's home and office were searched at the end of August. Her hard drives were confiscated and her assets frozen. She has a husband, who she says is a "modern man," and two children about 11 and 3 years old. In Iran, Human Rights attorneys receive no payment for representing human rights victims. She believes the regime is working to "limit the conditions for human rights defense, and says the "ultimate goal is to shut down all defense of human rights."

A few days before her arrest, Sotoudeh told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran how the authorities were creating bogus tax problems for human rights lawyers as a way to provide pretexts for their prosecution.

“I was referred to the taxation bureau and while there I noticed in addition to my name, they are conducting special investigations into thirty human rights lawyers,” she said.

Soutoudeh said Shirin Ebadi paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on her 2003 Nobel Peace Prize money. She was the first Iranian to win the Nobel, and the first Muslim woman to receive the honor. In 2009 the regime confiscated the medal,  and diploma from her bank box and froze her assets.

Ebadi is also an Iranian lawyer, a human rights activist and the founder of Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran.  Nasrin Soutoudeh has represented many victims of Human Rights atrocities, many of them Human Rights attorneys.

There are some conflicting stories about Soutoudeh, but in all, she is at the least missing. Some of the accounts say her attorney was told that "Soutoudeh would be interrogated for an indefinite time." Her husband says he has not seen her or heard from her.

Muslim women in the U.S. and across the West, live in a large measure of freedom, or at least the opportunity of freedom,  and never utter a word about their sisters existing in abject tyranny. Soutoudeh is just one of many. Give me one reason Islam is to be respected...anywhere in the world. Just one.

Linked by Drive By Thinking - Thank you!

Sakharov Widow: World Ignores Shalit Due to Anti-Semitism

By Findalis
many of the readers of this blog will recognize or remember who Andrei Sakharov was, or his widow Yelena Bonner. Or what they did for human rights and freedom in the Soviet Union. Many say that the Soviet Union would never had collapsed but for the tireless work of that remarkable couple. In the field of human rights, Yelena Bonner is not only an expert, she is one of the leading authorities. She speaks with the voice of the oppressed, having lived through the horrors of Stalinism and Soviet repression. There are very few in the world that can truly speak with such moral authority. Recently she gave a speech at the three-day Oslo Freedom Forum, a gathering in response to the Durban II conference. Here is some of that speech:

…At the age of 14, I was left without my parents. My father was executed, my mother spent 18 years in prison and exile. My grandmother raised me and my younger brother. The poet Vladimir Kornilov, who suffered the same fate, wrote: ‘And it felt that in those years we had no mothers. We had grandmothers.’ There were hundreds of thousands of such children… …Read Sakharov’s Memoirs. It’s a pity his Diaries haven’t been translated; they were published in Russia in 2006. Apparently, the West isn’t interested now in Sakharov. The West isn’t very interested in Russia either, a country that no longer has real elections, independent courts, or freedom of the press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists, and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss mainly? Gas and oil -- of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure and blackmail... Russia will remain the way it is now for decades, unless there is some violent upheaval. …They say people are coming together -- but in reality, they are growing apart. And that isn’t because an economic depression suddenly burst forth, and swine flu to boot. [It] began on September 11, 2001. At first, anger and horror was provoked by the terrorists who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and by their accomplices in London, Madrid and other cities, and by the shahids, suicide bombers who blew themselves up at public spaces like discotheques and wedding parties, whose families were rewarded $25,000 each by Saddam Hussein. Later, Bush was blamed for everything, and as always, the Jews -- that is, Israel… So it is about Israel and the Jews that I will speak... At one time, the Nobel Peace Prize was the highest moral award of our civilization. But after December 1994, when Yasser Arafat became one of the three new laureates, its ethical value was undermined. I haven’t always greeted each selection of the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Storting with joy, but that one shocked me. And to this day, I cannot understand and accept the fact that Andrei Sakharov and Yasir Arafat, now posthumously, share membership in the club of Nobel laureates. In many of Sakharov’s publications… [he] wrote and spoke about Israel. I have a collection of citations of his writing on this topic. If it were published in Norway, then many Norwegians would be surprised at how sharply their contemporary view of Israel differs from the view of Sakharov. Here are several citations from Sakharov: … “All wars that Israel has waged have been just, forced upon it by the irresponsibility of Arab leaders.” “With all the money that has been invested in the problem of Palestinians, it would have been possible long ago to resettle them and provide them with good lives in Arab countries.” …Now, a new motif is fashionable (in fact it’s an old one): ‘Two states for two peoples.’ It sounds good. And there is no controversy in the peace-making Quartet, made up of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia (some great peace-maker, with its Chechen war and its Abkhazian-Ossetian provocation). The Quartet, and the Arab countries, and the Palestinian leaders (both Hamas and Fatah) put additional demands to Israel. I will speak only of one demand: that Israel accept back the Palestinian refugees. And here a little history and demography are needed. According to the UN’s official definition, refugees are considered those who fled from violence and wars, but not their descendants who are born in another land. At one time the Palestinian refugees and the Jewish refugees from Arab countries were about equal in number -- about 700-800,000. The newly-created state Israel took in Jews (about 600,000). They were officially recognized as refugees by the UN Resolution 242, but not provided with any UN assistance. Palestinians, however, are considered refugees not only in the first generation, but in the second, third, and now even in the fourth generation. According to the UN Works and Relief Agency’s report, , the number of registered Palestinian refugees has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 4.6 million in 2008, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. All these people have the rights of Palestinian refugees and are eligible to receive humanitarian aid. The entire population of Israel is about 7.5 million, of which there are about 2.5 million ethnic Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. Imagine Israel then, if another five million Arabs flood into it; Arabs would substantially outnumber the Jewish population. Thus, created next to Israel will be a Palestinian state cleansed of Jews, because in addition to the demand that Palestinian refugees return to Israel, there is also the demand that Judea and Samaria are cleansed of Jews and turned over to Palestinians – while in Gaza today there is not a single Jew already. The result is both strange and terrifying, not only because Israel will essentially be destroyed... Because the plan “two states for two peoples” is the creation of one state, ethnically cleansed of Jews, and a second one with the potential to do the same thing. A Judenrein Holy Land - the dream of Adolph Hitler come true at last. So think again, those who are still able, who has a fascist inside him today? And another question that has been a thorn for me for a long time. It’s a question for my human rights colleagues. Why doesn’t the fate of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit trouble you in the same way as the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners? You fought for and won the opportunity for the International Committee of the Red Cross, journalists, and lawyers to visit Guantanamo. You know prison conditions, the prisoners’ everyday routine, their food. You have met with prisoners subjected to torture. The result of your efforts has been a ban on torture and a law to close this prison. President Obama signed it in the first days of his coming to the White House… But during the two years Shalit has been held by terrorists, the world human rights community has done nothing for his release. Why? He is a wounded soldier, and fully falls under the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions say clearly that hostage-taking is prohibited, that representatives of the Red Cross must be allowed to see prisoners of war, especially wounded prisoners, and there is much else written in the Geneva Conventions about Shalit’s rights. The fact that representatives of the Quartet conduct negotiations with the people who are holding Shalit in an unknown location, in unknown conditions, vividly demonstrates their scorn of international rights documents and their total legal nihilism. Do human rights activists also fail to recall the fundamental international rights documents? And yet I still think (and some will find this naïve) that the first tiny, but real step toward peace must become the release of Shalit. Release - and not his exchange for 1,000 or 1,500 prisoners who are in Israeli prisons serving court sentences for real crimes. Returning to my question of why human rights activists are silent, I can find no answer except that Shalit is an Israeli soldier, Shalit is a Jew. So again, it is conscious or unconscious anti-Semitism. Again, it is fascism. Thirty-four years have passed since the day when I came to this city to represent my husband, Andrei Sakharov, at the 1975 Nobel Prize ceremony. I was in love with Norway then. The reception I received filled me with joy. Today, I feel Alarm and Hope (the title Sakharov used for his 1977 essay written at the request of the Nobel Committee). Alarm because of the anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe and even further afield. And yet, I hope that countries, their leaders, and people everywhere will recall and adopt Sakharov’s ethical credo: “In the end, the moral choice turns out to be also the most pragmatic choice."

It is time for the world to stop trying to appease the Arabs and listen to the truth. The true obstacle to peace in the region is not caused by Israel, but by the Arabs, who couldn't destroy Israel in battle and will attempt to destroy Israel through diplomatic means. And the world will let them. For it is acceptable to hate and despise the Jews. It is time for the world to listen to the voice of a woman who lived under some of the worst repression that humanity has imposed upon others. It is time to bring Gilad Shalit home.

United Nations Seals the Condemnation of Israel

Very Clever Photo courtesy NewsCorp

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's insight into the corrupt and loathsome workings of the United Nations has proven spot-on, once more. This from the Heritage Foundation:

The United States was one of only four countries that voted against the U.N. General Assembly reso­lution that created the council.The U.S. cast its vote out of concern that the new council would lack safeguards against the problems that afflicted the CHR. Regrettably, this concern has proved to be well founded....

The blacklist of human rights abusers has just been officially whitewashed. Under first-year leadership of the new U.N. Human Rights Council, Cuba and Belarus are dropped from the the list of countries under scrutiny for human rights offenses, but Israel, according to UN Watch, is blatantly targeted for "permanent indictment under a special agenda item."

Anne Bayefsky, writing for the Wall Street Journal and Eye on the UN:

The political lesson here is that the U.S. and Canada don't have the power to push the council to protect human rights, and the European Union would rather sacrifice Israel and hide its own weakness by joining the consensus.

Under this "special agenda," the Palestinians are the only people to receive recognition as "abused":

Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories, which includes Human rights violations and implications of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and other occupied Arab territories; and "Right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.

Israel holds the distinction of being the only country on the planet that the U.N. deems a human rights abuser:

...not genocide in Sudan, not child slavery in China, nor the persecution of democracy dissidents in Egypt and elsewhere.

The investigations of Israel, under the "special agenda" will continue "until the end of the occupation," and the new Council has deemed the "investigation" not to be worthy of review, at any time.

How does a newly formed Council, charged with protecting the world's human rights, gain the power to point its accusatory finger at democracies and ignore profound human suffering at the behest of Kings and dictators? Bayerfsky sheds some light:

The U.N. General Assembly created the council without specifying membership criteria, such as, say, actually respecting human rights. The council now includes the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Egypt, Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Less than half of its members, using the Freedom House's yardstick, are fully free democracies. And after a successful take-over bid of regional blocs within the council, the Organization of the Islamic Conference now dominates it.

Other "not free" countries elected to the Council are Algeria, Cameroon, and Tunisia, and others are suspect, or as Freedom House labels them: Nations at a Crossroads. It can be noted that the U.N. Human Rights Council consists of 13 seats for African states, 13 seats for Asian States, 6 seats for Eastern European states, 8 seats for Latin American and Caribbean states and 7 seats for Western European and Other states.

Jackson Diehl's Washington Post piece is, perhaps, the deepest I've found, and it is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council's 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council's attention on the world's worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union "has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions." At one point before last week's meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe's representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel "is certainly not ideal . . . we have a basis we can work with."

For a video exposing the U.N.'s clear support of Nations viewing their citizenry as lower than chattel, see U.N. Watch: Up Against Human Rights (or look to the right top of my sidebar for a smaller screening of the video).

Related and Background:
The Angst of Supporting Israel - See the history of Israel's borders here.
Who and What are Palestinians?

Young Jewish Man Carries Israeli Flag in LA Muslim Street Protest - Video

Flotilla War Atmosphere before Israel Boarded: Martyrdom Sought

Israel Protects Right to Search Ships Bound for Gaza: IDF Video

Susan Rice Skips U.N. Debate: Rice Vacations - She's still "Wildly Ineffective

Rupert Murdock: U.S., European Survival Without Israel

Without Support, What Happens to Israel?
Golda Meir: War and Wisdom

The Flight from Fact: Maddening Realities
About that Two-State Solution
How the Gaza Tunnels into Egypt Work
Discovering Kryptonite, Disabling Superman
United Nations Condemns Hamas - Gotcha!
United Nations Seal Condemnation of Israel

In a class of its own:
Gaza Flotilla Terror Choir: We Con the World Video