Posted on 05/17/2010 10:26:23 PM PDT by T.L.Sink
Six experts affiliated with the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a scathing statement condemning Arizona's new immigration law as a likely violation of international human-rights accords.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“Six experts affiliated with the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights”
If they think it’s wrong, then I’m pretty sure Arizona is actually doing the right thing.
Also, I really hate the use of the term “expert” in these situations.
Arizona already has plenty of burros and Taco Bells!
Yeah, where does one go to get a certificate as an 'expert', or 'Special Rapporteur'? Most likely, from a box of Cracker Jacks.
I take it you realize my comment was a bit of attempted satire. But right you are!
This reminds me of the guy hired to shovel out from behind the cows in the dairy barn. He’s an expert, too, on one subject. Could be the same one!
Then these six official need to step down and leave the country immediately. Problem solved.
They are experts - in financial, political and moral corruption: Oil-for-Food, sexually molesting minors, supporting tyranical regimes and dictatorships over democracies, and trying to communistically redistribute wealth from successful, productive nations to Third World thugocracies.
That’s a good one!
I will file that one under “Jokes you won’t hear on MSNBC”.
I didn’t see it, but one gain is that whoever that person was, there is now considerable tape on the subject, suitable for extraction and commentary. That’s Greta’s strength and that she allows them to pontificate only hands them more rope.
Let’s see Letterman tell THAT joke, eh?
Greta Van Susteren interviewed Prof. James Anaya, a professor at the University of Arizona and one of the UN “human rights experts” blasting the Arizona law, last night, Monday, May 18, 2010, on “On the Record” on Fox News Channel.
Ms. Van Susteren: “Looking at this new statute, which part to you violates any human right? What’s the objectionable part?”
Prof. Anaya: “The problem with the law is that it seems to represent a general pattern of animosity toward ethnic and racial minorities in Arizona.”
Ms. Van Susteren: “All right. Let me stop you right there. ... You and I both know, that when you look at a statute to see what is objectionable, you look to the clear language. You don’t say, what you might think, or what it seems to . . . looking at the statute, which part do you think is racial profiling or is unconstitutional?” . . .
Prof. Anaya: “I haven’t said it’s racial profiling or unconstitutional. I have joined a number of human rights experts, speaking in our capacity as United Nations human rights experts, raising concerns about the possible application of the law and the underlying sentiments that it seems to represent. What we’re trying to do is point out the potential for the law to be discriminatory, to involve racial profiling.”
Later, he said, “[w]e haven’t said it’s (the law) a human rights violation. We have raised concerns about it.” He also said the law “sends a red flag that there’s something underlying this law, and that’s what we are trying to point out and avoid an escalation of this kind of attitude that could result in patterns of discrimination.”
He also alleged a similar “animosity towards minorities” in Arizona lay behind a barring of certain ethnic studies programs. But allegations, not denied, indicate that the program contained racist (against whites) falsehoods, intensified an us-against-them ethnic solidarity, and otherwise harmed the students’ education. Prof. Anaya’s comments reflect his own prejudices, e.g., the “animosity” the law “seems” to display.
Using Microsoft Word, one gets 4,558 words in the amended law. 4,180 without the stricken words kept in to clarify what was amended. So the law is short, and is easily found on the Internet. Lawyers like President Obama and Attorney General Holder could go through it a few minutes and discover their claims about it were totally false.
The key problem in all of this: the inexcusable reporting of the Associated Press. Corrupt? Incompetent? Partisan? Propagandistic? Whatever, AP reports cannot be trusted to be true or fair on government, politics, or cultural issues. Bad reporting on the Arizona law and the intense and wrongheaded reaction to it provide a clear example of the destructive effect of bad AP reporting. People demonstrate on the basis of beliefs against “racism” and “hate” drummed into them in schools and colleges, but “racism” and “hate” are absent from the law or its rationale.
The AP has repeatedly characterized the law, in reports and photo captions, as “sweeping.” It is not.
The AP has repeatedly used a formulation included in a report of Jonathan J. Cooper, on the joint appearance of Gov. Jan Brewer with Sarah Palin last Saturday: the law “requires police enforcing another law to ask a person about his or her immigration status if there’s ‘reasonable suspicion’ that the person is in the country illegally.”
In fact, the law makes such inquiry on immigration status contingent on a “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” Failure to include that major restriction lies at the root of much misunderstanding of the law. For further clarification, from the Fox News transcript of an interview, also on On the Record on Monday, May 18, 2010, with Kris Kobach, who helped to write the immigration law:
Prof. Kobach: “Well, this law is actually quite narrow in scope. The law basically says that police officers, when they are making a stop for some other violation of law, and they in the course of that traffic stop — would be typical — they develop reasonable suspicion — and that’s a well-defined concept in the courts, as you know — they develop reasonable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien, then they have to act on that suspicion and contact ICE, which has a hotline that’s been in place for 15 years, and they have to determine if the person is actually lawfully present in the country.
“It also requires — it makes it an Arizona misdemeanor to fail to carry the documents that a person is required to carry by federal law if the person is an alien. For the last 70 years, it’s been a requirement of federal law that aliens in the United States register and carry certain documents with them. The Arizona law just says, If you’re breaking this federal law, you’re also committing a misdemeanor in Arizona.”
I wish some way existed to bring the failure of the Associated Press to the American public. But even if only one person reads this, that would be one person more who grasps one of the reasons why the United States is in such a mess: unreliable, to be charitable, mass news media. Some have written that the messenger of news in centuries past met a bad fate when he reported bad news to the ruler. In this country, the ruler, fundamentally, is the citizenry. And it is not bad news that the AP and other mainstream news people provide that makes their continued employment in their jobs bad for the nation. It is the apparently willing failure to report the truth or to report on current developments of significance to the nation fairly or intelligently.
I saw that interview. I wanted to reach in the television and strangle him.
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