From the WSJ (subscribers):
So the U.N.’s Human Rights Commission publishes a study denouncing U.S. detention practices at Guantanamo, and world opinion is supposed to be outraged. Well, count us in: Once again, the Commission has amply demonstrated why even Secretary General Kofi Annan wants to replace it with something better. This being the U.N., however, the reform effort is now being bungled.
We won’t waste your time on the study itself, which largely rehashes factual and legal allegations we’ve seen and rebutted before, and whose authors never actually visited Guantanamo. One of the authors, Algerian jurist Leila Zerrougui, was last heard denouncing Israel’s security fence, which has helped reduce suicide bombings by 90%.
A more interesting question is why this report was produced in the first place: We are still waiting for the Commission’s reports on the human-rights picture in, say, Syria. But there’s no mystery here, since the only purpose the Commission actually serves is to deflect criticism of actual human-rights abusers by heaping invective on the U.S. and Israel.
It is for this reason that we were initially prepared to support Mr. Annan’s call last year to abolish the Commission in favor of a Human Rights Council. Part of what recommended the proposal was Mr. Annan’s call for the size of the Council to be reduced and for Council members to be elected by two-thirds of the General Assembly. That way, it was reasoned, a country such as Sudan (a current member of the Commission, along with fellow paragons Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe) would be less likely to stand for a seat, and more likely to be defeated if it did.
Fast forward a few months, and here’s what the sages of the U.N. actually propose. Instead of a Commission composed of 53 member states, the Council would consist of 45. Now there’s a bold step. The U.N. also appears ready to drop the two-thirds majority requirement in favor of a simple majority, lowering the bar to membership. And a modest proposal to exclude countries under legally binding “Chapter VII” U.N. sanctions (as Iraq was before its liberation) has been excluded, presumably because it’s too tough on the world’s worst regimes.
Instead, the U.N. proposes distributing seats according to what it calls “equitable geographic distribution”: 12 seats to Africa; 13 to Asia (including the Middle East); eight to Latin America; five to East Europe and seven to the so-called West European and Others Group, which includes the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.
Thus the two groups that contain the greatest proportion of liberal democracies are allotted the smallest number of seats. By contrast, in 2005 only nine countries in the whole of Africa were rated “free,” according to Freedom House. In Asia and the Middle East, only about a dozen of 54 countries are free, and that’s if you’re counting Tuvalu, Palau, Nauru and Kiribati.
Put simply, this structure not only fails to exclude abusive regimes from membership in the Council, it actually guarantees them their seats. And it is rigged against the very countries whose opinions about human rights might be other than blatantly hypocritical. As to the potential merit of those opinions, we’ll leave it to posterity to decide whether what the world really needed in this decade was another platform for Scandinavian highmindedness.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has made it clear to his U.N. colleagues that the current proposal is not something the Bush Administration can endorse. That’s a stand that will surely burnish his reputation in certain liberal circles as an “obstructionist.” But fake reform is worse than no reform at all, and whatever else might be said of the current system, it at least has the virtue of being discredited.
The world can certainly wait a few months more to get the human-rights agency that genuine human-rights victims deserve. The fact that the U.N. is incapable of providing one is yet another reminder of what ails the organization, especially under its current management.
Evidently, some mustaches simply don’t get just how world government is supposed to function: consensus, geographical “quotas,” and the ascension to positions of guarding “human rights” representatives from countries who oppress their own citizens.
Then, cocktails and smoked salmon and capers on toast points.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
Well, the nightmare will be over soon. One day, the Democratic party will win back power, and they can send to the UN another go along / get along diplomat who will allow the UN to paint the US and Israel as the world’s evil regimes—and progressives can go back to citing those pronouncements as if they were leveled by fairminded, legitimate “commissions” fit to declare on the morality of liberal democracies, even as children are raped by UN peacekeepers and genocides rage throughout Africa…
(h/t Terry Hastings)
Foster Brooks (RIP) was a charter member of the UN’s council on liver abuse. You may remember the fine work his beard and mustache did on the evils of alcohol. Just goes to show you that not all UN councils are worthless.
Why are both parties refusing to seal the border? What is in it for them, when at least 70% of the public supports it. Any politician that took REAL action in this matter would become the most popular in the nation.
Here is one possible explanation.
Pull out of the UN now. Defund the Tower of Babble, and take the Japanese with us. Also, evict the snotty pricks from NY.
See? I can be reasonable too.
SB: girl
scout cookies
Sorry. Me again.
I just realized that #3 above would turn NY into a virtual ghost town.
Disregard.
That is all.
SB: freedom
Ambassador Bolton once said, famously, that if the top ten floor of the UN building disappeared, no one would notice. He got that wrong; it’s the bottom ten floors that I’d like to see go away.
I agree 100%.
It’s just about time for Regis to go ‘Chuck Norris’ on Mr. Annan’s ass.
Why are we still in the UN? Similar to abused wife who won’t leave her husband except she may feel economically or psychologically bound to the bastard.
We have no excuses!!! (Except the perceived need to kowtow the “world opinion”). Fuck em.
Twonky:
You’re right. We’re looking at a 26 million worker shortfall when the Boomers retire. The idea is that Mexicans will work manual labor jobs for twice what they can make in Mexico and Americans will be the managers and small business owner/operators. There’s no “collusion” involved it’s just simple economics/demographics. This is why Bush is pushing for the guest worker program. As usual the WH doesn’t communicate this very well.
Also, the reason we’re letting the manufacturing jobs go overseas is that in 10-15 years automation and robotics will eliminate almost all those jobs anyway. We get a gradual 25 year easing into a technological revolution so it doesn’t shock the system. Plus, cheap goods from Chinese workers at your local Walmart in the short term. Plus-plus, Chinese agricultural workers who can’t find work because their country is finally coming out of the 13th century are going to find jobs in factories making your slacks instead of forcing a militarization of China to deal with mass riots which would otherwise ensue. It isn’t garaunteed to work, but it’s the best option we have right now.
So enjoy your cheap pants, start a small landscaping business in Texas and wait for the Iranians to make it all irrelevant when they start the Last World War.
Twonky/Apologist:
Sorry but your reasoning assumes too much about our leaders in Washington. There is really no paradox at all if you just listen to what Democrats and Republicans SAY about the problem. They see doing nothing the safest course for DIFFERENT reasons. They both fear that taking action would fracture their respective bases to some extent. A bipartisan coalition of the like minded is ruled out by the poisonous polarization in Washington.
If the theory that Washington fully recognizes the demographic time bomb we face were correct then reforming SS, Medicare, etc. would gain more traction. Maybe a lot of them do but they would still do nothing for the reasons mentioned above. Recount in your mind the hyperbolic debate about SS last year.
…your reasoning assumes too much about our leaders in Washington.
Politicians don’t generate opinions. They do what their staff recommend. Last year I watched a group of influential Rep. and pro-growth Dem. policy wonks at Heritage or AEI. They outlined the whole thing on C-Span. I can’t recall the title of the conference but it was fascinating stuff. I would try and find the President’s Commission on Economic Growth (or some such title) report and read it. All good stuff. One of the people was a woman with a very thick German or East European accent and a long mouthful of a name that started with an H. Sorry I can’t be more specific. It was a while ago and all those C-Span events eventually run together in my head. I currently have 22 hours of unwatched C-Span and Book TV programming on DVR waiting for a free weekend.
I fear that might qualify me as a full on nerd. Nerds are sexy these days right? Right?
I thought Israel was in the Middle East.
Hmmm, something’s fishy.
Not to mention that the notion of any of them actually making anything that could be referred to with a straight face as a “solemn agreement” is… amusing, to say the least…
Someone ought to tell Eric Raymond that Joe Stalin is dead. So’s Soviet-style Communism. Has been for years.
Doesn’t Mr Raymond read newspapers;–watchCNN?
Progressives are not interested in anything Joe Stalin thought about anything. That would include I think, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Robert Fisk.
Most progressives realize Stalin was a murderous dictator and that Soviet Style Communism was a soul destroying ideology. I know I do.
The idea that progressives “tether their beliefs to communist propaganda and ideological warfare is so much nonsense.”
That’s as absurd as saying conservatives tether thier beliefs to fascist propaganda.
Christ! How does anyone come up with this kind of stuff?
And it’s damned hard to see how tolerance chills freedom of speech. Or that it somehow reduces individual freedom.
Does this Eric Raymond live on planet Earth;– maybe he lives on Altair IV.
Carl,
At least you usually manage to be wrong on the correct thread.
TW: I’m just saying….
Carl’s right—today’s progressives couldn’t care less about Stalin when they’ve got Fidel Castro and Hugo Chevez to moon over.
Someone ought to tell Carl W. Goss that he’s in the wrong thread.
Doesn’t Mr. Goss read the posts he’s commenting on?
Progressives are not interested in anything Joe Stalin thought about anything. There is no such thing as the past. There is no such thing as an ideological origin! And Mr Raymond is a damned liar for suggesting as much!
Most progressives realize Stalin was a murderous dictator. Soviet Style Communism was a soul destroying ideology. But why throw the other more perfected Socialist babies out with the bloody bathwater?!
Declaritive statement! Abscence of rational argument!
Equally irrational false analogy! Successful rhetorical evasion!
Requisite outraged rhetorical question!?
Insistant refusal to engage with the argument! Apoplexy!
Does Mr. Goss know where he is?–Is he sane?!
I think not.
Yep, and most progressives—I’m being charitable here—didn’t know that the anti-war protests of 2003 were organized by Stalinists.
But they marched along in long step.
Just b/c the useful idiots don’t know from whence their philosophical drivel originates doesn’t mean a thing Carl.
TW: “earth”, as in, someone make this Goldstein chap king of all the earth.
Hmmm.
Actually Twonkie and The Apologist are both completely wrong about why the southern border has been deliberately left porous. So are most people since they simply aren’t as devious and E-V-I-L as I and George Bush are.
The southern border has been left open so we can, in 30 years or so, steal Mexico, divide it up in about 8-9 new states and expand the great nation of America.
Thank you. Donations accepted, make checks payable to “ed”.
And if anybody is curious as to the foundations of my thinking, assuming that there are foundations of course, I might be persuaded to post something.
Ed, you’re plausible, and wrong. Take a good, long, hard look at Puerto Rico. Then ask yourself, “How crazy would we have to be to want another one, ten times as big?”
The border is porous by policy, and the reason for the policy is that the oligarchy of Mexico is losing their grip. This is, actually, a good thing in the long run—the place is full of assholes who don’t mind walking through dogshit outside their doors so long as there’s cheap labor available to clean it up when they track it in, like the “high class” bunch in Haiti, and it would be awfully tempting to go with Carl and put them against the wall. An east-facing wall, so’s the sun’s in their eyes.
But in the short term the problem is that there’s a Chavezite/Castrovian revolution waiting in the wings. Very few Mexicans actually like those people, but like Palestinians with Hamas they look real good compared to the ones in charge right now. The corruption, and the bloody-minded determination to concentrate wealth at the expense of, not the paisanos but of the middle and lower-middle classes, is getting intolerable.
The open border takes the pressure off. A Mexican can’t make any money unless he’s already rich—what the patrón doesn’t skim off the top the Governnment takes as either taxes or bribes—but as long as he can head north and make enough to buy a house and car he doesn’t have any real incentive to hoist the red flag and start throwing rocks. (The fact that he also provides us with cheap labor as we transition to a society without much “labor” (classically defined) in it is a bonus, but not the point.)
Close the border, and the pressure will start rising like clamping the valve on a pressure cooker. The fire’s still there… I’d give it five years plus or minus two. The grass roots of the PRI still has Socialist ideals, and there are several avowedly Communist parties around. The mayor of Mexico City is a communist (little c) with strong ties to the Old Party, i.e. the original founders and ideas of the Partidad de la Revolución Institutionál. And won’t it be fun to have Castro II right across the Rio Grande? How hard will it be to seal the border then?
Bush knows all that because he hobnobs with the oligarchs, and he has half the equation: leave the border open to keep the pressure down. I’m disappointed that he isn’t leaning on the elites to reform, though. That has to be the other half of it if anything is done but temporize.
Regards,
Ric
As long as all 13 seats in Asia go to Japan and Korea, I’m down with it. Maybe India can have 1 or 2.
The Western European and Others category is a joke, right?
Hmmm.
1. I don’t think it would turn into a Puerto Rico. Frankly I think PR’s days as a territory are numbered. There’s an internal push to achieve independence that’s bound to win.
But regardless I don’t think that an annexation of Mexico would result in the creation of an even larger version of PR. Instead I think it would result in the division of Mexico into a number of new states that would be incorporated into the Union.
2. There might very well be a push by the elites for a socialist revolution. I think that would be a terrible error, but that’s always a possibility when you’re talking about Central and South American countries. There are few countries that don’t have both a long socialist tradition and a weak unstable government.
3. If there were a socialist takeover in Mexico then it would only hasten the process of annexation. More capitalistic Mexicans would remove themselves to America, and thereby become prosperous, at least in relation to a socialist Mexico which would probably have the economic power of Cuba in short order.
4. Considering a recent poll taken in Mexico City resulted in over 50% of the respondents picking to immigrate into America if given the opportunity to do so legally, I think a reverse-colonization is not only possible, but probable.
I.e. as prosperous Mexicans retire from working in America and return to Mexico, they will take with them the attitudes, desires and viewpoints accumulated from years of participation in American life. Once they confront the differences between life in America vs life in Mexico, we’ll see a gradual but constant change in Mexico to reflect life here in America.
Annexation is only a few steps away at that point. Particularly if the political landscape remains a closed system restricted to an elite few.
*shrug* Frankly I’m opposed to illegal immigration for many reasons. But I must admit that this is a curious scenario.