Posted on 05/11/2005 1:58:34 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
As if the United Nations' reputation had not suffered enough from self-inflicted wounds, its Human Rights Commission has rubbed in more salt. It has re-elected Zimbabwe, one of the world's most notorious human rights violators, as a member.
President Robert Mugabe has evicted white farmers from their land, harassed his political opponents, shut down independent news media and presided over fraudulent elections. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has accurately described his nation as "an outpost of tyranny." But the U.N. has helped to legitimize the treacherous Mugabe regime.
Why expect anything else? Libya is a member of the Human Rights Commission. Cuba and Sudan have had turns as members. ... Secretary-General Kofi Annan correctly observes the commission has sabotaged itself. Its founding in 1948 under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights launched a new era of international respect for fundamental human rights in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Today the 53-nation commission provides cover for some of the world's most egregious human rights abusers.
An overhaul of the current body is badly needed. Merit, not shrewd regional politicking, should decide the members of the Human Rights Commission. Zimbabwe as an arbiter of human rights? That's the worst kind of abuse.
Sophisticated Chinese bugging equipment is being installed clandestinely in homes, offices, restaurants and even lavatories. Chinese technicians handed it over to the Central Intelligence Organisation earlier this year in an effort to block the circulation of what Mugabe calls "hostile propaganda".
First to suffer is a popular UK-based shortwave radio station that sends out anti-Mugabe stories to Zimbabwe seven days a week. The independent radio station, SW Radio Africa, has been experiencing jamming problems all this year from transmitters installed in the Zimbabwean Midlands.
The station’s founder, Gerry Jackson, flies to Nairobi, Kenya, next week to pick up the International Press Institute’s Free Media Pioneer Award for courageous journalism.
"Mugabe will do anything to stop the truth being heard in Zimbabwe," she says. …….***
Ping
Thanks for the ping, and G'morning, Cincy :-)
'Morning JohnHuang2!
I'm stunned! I thought the Houston Chronicle was a far-left newspaper ga-ga over the UN.
The UN, to burnish its image, should get drunk, dress like a court jester and do cartwheels down 5th Ave.
Thank you backhoe!
Bump!
***Washington -- Sen. Chris Dodd uttered a remarkably candid observation during a recent hearing on John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.S. representative to the United Nations.
"The position at the United Nations is not that terribly important,'' Dodd, D-Conn., said.
It would be hard to tell that from the sound and fury over Bolton's confirmation. Democrats have portrayed Bolton as a unilateralist ogre who embellishes intelligence, berates underlings and is incapable of conducting diplomacy. Republicans have countered that Bolton is a strong-willed, if not brilliant, policy-maker with the steely resolve to take on the United Nations.
The fight over Bolton, which reaches a new crescendo Thursday when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to vote on his nomination, has emerged as the most difficult confirmation battle of Bush's second term.
Yet, as Dodd suggested, it is not because the position warrants the attention. It is because Bush's foreign policy remains contentious in Washington. With critics refusing to acquiesce, Bolton has become a proxy for a broader dispute over competing visions for America's role in the world.
"The real issue is that most Democrats, and some Republicans, are very concerned about what they view as the Bush administration's unilateralist foreign policy,'' said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who supports Bolton's nomination. "This is basically a debate over Bush's foreign policy.'' ...........***
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/11/MNGDACNA091.DTL
It isn't, not really, not anymore. It is an institution that doesn't think it needs reform, and sending Bolton will accomplish exactly nothing. His contempt for the UN is well documented, and he could suggest a boatload of changes to improve the UN and none of them are going to listen to him. Why should they?
It's important because Bolton will have a stage from which to scold tyrannical countries and advance the hope of freedom for their oppressed citizens.
That's why Democrats want to block him.
To what end? Those countries aren't going to care one way or the other if Bolton is scolding them. The rest of the UN isn't going to listen to Bolton. Republicans in Congress will lap it up. Democrats will use it to attack the administration. And in the end nothing will happen.
If the administration is trying to send a gigantic "Up your's" message to the UN then I think that a far more effective, and a far cheaper message can be sent by leaving the position vacant.
Followed by refusing to loan them billions of dollars for the renovation of their headquarters, followed by leaving the UN building vacant.
Yea, I just read that to mean that he knew somehow that Bolton was 'in', and was trying to underplay the importance.
I'm so fed up with Republican self imposed impotence. (I'm of the 'justice delayed is justice denied line of thought)
Miguel Estrada has been left hanging out to dry for how many years now?
Enough is enough, and any good will that the Democrats have enjoyed until now with the Republican reluctance to change the vetting process is too much!
It is almost like "battered wife syndrome"
(no, they will never love you, and no, going along with the abuse will not make them be nicer to you ever...)
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