Category Archives: United Nations

Speaker at UN stopped mid speech by Canadian chairperson

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Ottawa Citizen March 9 2009

Jewish speaker outraged after debate cut short

By Steven Edwards, Canwest News ServiceMarch 9, 2009

UNITED NATIONS — Canada’s top diplomat at the United Nations in Geneva used his position as debate chair to cut short an accredited speaker as he detailed anti-Semitism in Islamic-sourced books.

The action by Ambassador Marius Grinius took place in the UN’s Human Rights Council, where Muslim and Arab countries regularly deliver harangues against the “Zionist Entity” — a term many of them use to describe Israel.

He said David Littman, delivering a joint statement for the Association for World Education and the World Union for Progressive Judaism, had been “off topic” as the chamber debated a series of human rights reports.

Littman said his bid to call for a “universal condemnation” of defamations of Judaism was appropriate because a report dealing with freedom of expression and hate speech had been at the top of the agenda list.

“There was no valid reason for me to be stopped by the chair,” he wrote in a letter of protest to Grinius Monday.

“We are constantly stopped by points of order by (Muslim) delegates . . . It is very depressing to be censored this time by the Canadian chairman.”

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Once again, the Czech republic shines the light of reason

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Europe Concerned About Freedom of Speech – Czech EU Presidency

Europe concerned about freedom of speech – Czech EU presidency

Ženeva, známý pohled na Ženevské jezero s vodotryskem (v pozadí), centrem OSN (vp?edu), dlouhá budova s muzeem Ariana (vpravo)a kongresovým centrem OSN (vlevo). Uprost?ed snímku jsou budovy Sv?tové meteorologické organizace WWO a uprost?ed vlevo centrum Sv?tové obchodní organizace a uprost?ed vpravo areál Vysokého komisa?e pro uprchlíky (UNHCR). - ilustra?ní foto

published: 04.03.2009, 20:04 | updated: 04.03.2009 20:15:29

?R a Evropa se na konferenci o rasismu obávají o svobodu slova

Geneva – The Czech Republic, as the EU presiding country, and other European countries today expressed fears that the freedom of speech would be at risk if Islamic countries pushed for a ban on “defamation of religion” at the conference on racism in April, Reuters has reported.

Geneva – The Czech Republic, as the EU presiding country, and other European
countries today expressed fears that the freedom of speech would be at risk if
Islamic countries pushed for a ban on “defamation of religion” at the
conference on racism in April, Reuters has reported.

Representatives of the EU countries also warned in their speeches to the U.N.’s
Human Rights Council today that they could not accept any pillorying of Israel
as “racist” and any promotion of anti-Semitism at the April conference in
Geneva.

Reuters reported that the same opinions were expressed in the U.N. Human Rights
Council this week by the delegations of the Czech Republic, holding the EU
presidency in the first half of 2009, Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands,
Poland and Switzerland.

“The freedom of expression must be the cornerstone of our fight against
racism,” Reuters quotes Sweden’s delegate Frank Belfrage as saying in the U.N.

The draft declaration for the Geneva conference has also been criticised by
Israel, which, along with Canada previously decided to boycott the event. The
United States and France are considering this step.

The World Conference Against Racism, also called Durban II, will be held at the
UN headquarters in Geneva on April 20-24, as the continuation of the conference
in Durban, South Africa, in
2001.

India, Islam and freedom of speech.

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It is important for we in the west who see our most fundamental freedoms slipping away exponentially faster than it took to earn them in the first place to remember that India has the same problem and primarily for the same reasons. Islam. John McCain when he ran for president of the United states suggested scrapping the UN in favour of the G8 plus India and Brazil. Like most brilliant ideas, it is too far ahead of the general knowledge curve to seem reasonable but is exactly what is called for. Like relativity, Einstein’s universe shaking concepts of time and gravity, not one of Einstein’s generation accepted it but all of the following one did. The question is whether or not we have the time to wait for the next generation to adopt McCain’s theory of a union of free states. Not to take the physics analogy too far but perhaps we cant afford any uncertainty principle for very long on this one.

A blogger from India has been sending me some links about the erosion of freedom of speech there as well and for the same reasons. Muslims demand that no person or agency should be able to say anything critical of Islam and perhaps worse, no one may even reproduce things Muslim leaders say which may cast Islam in a poor light even if 100% factually correct. Horrifyingly, the odd Christian Jewish and Hindu leader senses a political opportunity and will back the Islamic stance imagining perhaps that stopping religious criticism might be good for the authority of their respective churches as well.

These people need to study history and perhaps more importantly the wording of currently debated binding resolutions now in front of the UN general assembly.

Islam will not be used as anyone’s strong man. Jews Christians and Hindus will enjoy as much protection from blasphemy as the stone Buddha’s did in Afghanistan and as churches and synagogues and temples that have been on lands bordering large Muslim populations.

A few weeks ago on VTB we blogged about an Indian editor who was fired from his job from a major Indian daily newspaper for publishing a fairly innocuous piece on freedom of speech and specifically from irrational religious authority. The author of the article did a reprint saying that no matter what riots and demonstrations take place based on what he said, he stands by every word of it and while that should be allowed to be true in all cases, this was a very good article and all of us need to stand behind it in any case.

Now Indian blogger’s find themselves in danger from the law if they challenge irrational religious authority. I do wonder if the people of the early dark ages saw the creeping draconian and arbitrary rule of the western church as not to be believed in much the way all my day to day acquaintances see the current challenge to secular freedoms. But knowing the likely answer to that question is not nearly as interesting as one might think. Not only did they probably not see it coming as an unimaginable and unlikely event but we will know similar restrictions as handed down by bodies like the U.N. The E.U. and any other social policy body infected with Islamist organizations such as the Organization of Islamic Countries.

From the Times of India:

NEW DELHI: A 19-year-old blogger’s case could forever change the ground rules of blogging. Bloggers may no longer express their uninhibited views

on everything under the sun, for the Supreme Court said they may face libel and even prosecution for the blog content.

[…]

This chilling warning emerged as a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam refused to protect a 19-year-old Kerala boy, who had started a community on Orkut against Shiv Sena, from protection against summons received from a Maharashtra court on a criminal case filed against him.

Petitioner Ajith D had started a community on Orkut against Shiv Sena. In this community, there were several posts and discussions by anonymous persons who alleged that Shiv Sena was trying to divide the country on region and caste basis.

Reacting to these posts, the Shiv Sena youth wing’s state secretary registered a criminal complaint at Thane police station in August 2008 based on which FIR was registered against Ajith under Sections 506 and 295A pertaining to hurting public sentiment.

Hurting public sentiment. This sounds a lot like the threat to public safety the British used to prevent Geert Wilders from speaking in the UK. or the Canadian section thirteen of the ‘hate crimes act’ where something which is said is likely to expose a person or group to hatred or contempt under which countless Canadians have been charged most famously Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. It seems as if nations which once stood proud and defiant in the face of religious intolerance now have created special rules which those very intolerant groups use against us. These laws go from the frightening to the ridiculous which in fact are more frightening. When they pass laws about not speaking out against their religion directly at least at one level of reason we understand it. When they pass a law saying no one may use an elephant as a symbol as it offends worshipers of the Hindu god Ganesh we now are hamstrung in anything we may say or represent for fear of any religious authority finding offense in it, and as there is now great power in being offended, you can bank on an objection from the funny hat crowd.

Thought crimes laws are like a machine gun in the sense that we like them when we are holding them but we like them less when someone else is pointing them at us. They are unlike a machine gun in another way however. Whenever you create a law which abrogates free speech no matter how noble the initial purpose may be for that law, its not a matter of if but of when someone else will take control of it and destroy its original intent and we as a free people along with it.

This has clearly happened at the U.N. in Canada, India and Holland. Do not imagine this will not effect you. It already has. It just may take a while to notice. Cancer is like that.

Video on UN resolution on defamation of Islam

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This is important. Do not kid yourself. This resolution will attempt to make any observation of Islam and behavior of Muslims around the world illegal should those observations be tactically problematic for Islamic global dominance. This is urgent and needs to be followed closely. Its also powerful evidence that the UN not only has little or nothing to do with its purpose at inception, but is now in fact the enemy. The enemy of all free people and anyone who wishes any degree of autonomy as a group. Chris Hitchens is also interviewed in this piece. We at VTB have been following the UN workings to destroy freedom of speech and worse, the attempt to make criticism of irrational religious authority a crime. This criticism was the very thing that allowed the enlightenment which now appears to be near an end.

Also, this is clearly an attempt to install sharia law by proxy.

If in the past few generations there was anything worth fighting for, the preservation of freedom of speech and from religious tyranny is that thing.

Iran, nuclear weapons and the big question.

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According to a Stratfor.com’s assessment of the recent IAEA report, Iran has significantly higher amounts of low enriched uranium, yet a slow down of progress at a processing plant and a dome built at the Arak heavy water facility in order to prevent satellite photos from being taken. Also, only 136 new centrifuges have been built to augment Iran’s existing 3600 centrifuge cascades.

I will do my best to decrypt this information. I am certain I will make many errors. Anyone wishing to correct any factual errors would be most appreciated should they choose to do so in the comments section below this article.

To make a bomb by enriching U238 into U235 you need to have approximately 93%+ pure U235. To make fuel for a reactor you need 5% or less. Low enriched presumably means way more than enough for a reactor but perhaps not quite enriched enough to make nuclear weapons.

Iran appears to have a two fold plan for the manufacture of nuclear weapons simultaneously. One, is the refinement of U238 into U235 by means of high speed centrifuges to isolate the U235 from the host ore, U238. The refined product post centrifuge is easily made into materials that will detonate a nuclear explosion of the kind we are so familiar with. I wish to be clear on this as there are many terms often used which are confused for each other and which are themselves confusing. U235 with little technology can be fashioned into a nuclear bomb of a Hiroshima or larger size weapon fairly easily. The difficulty comes from obtaining the material to detonate, the U235. Iran is reported to have as stated above, 3600 + 136 arrays presumably working 24/7 to obtain the necessary materials for a bomb. It is through the use of these centrifuges designed and sold by Pakistani nuclear technician A. Q. Khan that this material, U235 is produced. Please watch this documentary for a good in depth analysis on Khan and his centrifuges and how they are used to make nuclear weapons.

I have no idea how many bombs of what size can be produced per unit time using this method but the IAEA some years ago stated they believed that Iran had enough refined U235 to make 10 bombs and that was years ago.

Here is a BBC report which specifies the 10 bomb number

The second method is reprocessing Uranium after it has been through a nuclear reactor for another isotope, ‘plutonium’. If you have the right kind of reactor and reprocessing plant weapons grade plutonium is relatively easy to get but making the bomb is quite difficult. Instead of needing 2 polished hemispheres of U235 which are forced to slam together with a common explosive like Semtex, a commercial plastic explosive, plutonium needs to be made into a complex array of parts of a sphere with very precisely machined explosives all around in complex geometries. In the US, these are sculpted by experts using remote control robots carefully crafted at distances away of miles and monitored on screens. In essence, a U235 bomb is easy to make but the materials are hard to get. A plutonium bomb is hard to make but the materials are easy to get. Both kinds of bombs are still massive public works projects of course. The US project for the first atomic weapons may have been the largest public works project ever done including the pyramids up to that point.

Many speculate that Iran is playing at developing nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip to gain access and authority in Iraq. North Korea seems to have done the same except they did indeed develop nukes and have been instrumental in assisting Iran and it’s partial proxy Syria in developing the technology to build weapons of the plutonium variety as we see from this recent report on the isotopes found at the Syrian facility bombed over a year ago by Israel.

So lets examine what is known about Iran and nuclear weapons.

Iran seems to be doing everything possible to manufacture them and makes frequent albeit veiled references to their intended use on Israel and the USA.

The UN based IAEA has made statements saying that Iran likely has the materials to make several nuclear weapons. The UN itself, seems to be a pawn in many ways of the OIC so one may choose to accept that the UN would understate the development program to facilitate Iran’s program or one may not. Even if you do not the IAEA seems to indicate that development is advanced.

Several reports show that Syria was indeed using North Korean technology to develop nuclear weapons of the plutonium variety from the CIA to Israeli intel, including today’s reports on various specific isotopes that where found at the site the Israeli’s bombed a little over a year ago.

The USA is so keen on placing anti ballistic missile sites in the Caucasus and central Europe against Iranian missiles they are prepared to have serious conflicts with Russia on the matter. Ultimately Russia may choose to join the project as both parties seem to feel the Iranian threat is real. Russia actually has more to worry about from Iran than the US does in some ways which may explain why Russia delayed building a reactor for Iran for over 12 years past its promised operational date. However, more and more evidence is appearing that Iran intends to use its nukes to create an EMP effect, which would have more devestating consequences to the US and the west than a direct strike on a city.

Here is a link to an excellent Stratfor analysis about the Iranians nuclear weapons program. There is tons of really solid information here. However I suspect that the Iranians have and are capable, of moving a lot faster than they predicted. This article was written before the recent tests of 2 stage solid fuel rocket tests which would indicate an ability to launch a nuclear weapon in position for an EMP. It is well worth reading anyway. Most of that they say does apply and stratfor gets more right than wrong. But I wonder if they would revise this now. Iran seems qutie advanced on the programs and the US and Russia clearly take it very seriously.

Lastly, I would suggest to anyone interested in this subject to sit back and watch this most excellent lecture on the manufacture of nuclear weapons and as en passant remarks, the speaker, a professor of nuclear physics at Cal Tech, explains much of the reasons for the Iraq invasion and the WMD issue there. Cal Tech is where nuclear weapons where invented. It really is a fantastic lecture.

I will be updating and editing this for some time for clarity as I think this is an important subject and one on which information is scarce, obtuse and usually incomprehensible. I very much would like to make this a sort of decoder ring for much popular press reporting on the issue. Most reporters of course have little understanding of the issues and so do not represent the information at all well. Please feel free to email me or add thoughts and corrections in the comments section to help clarify this.

Eeyore for Vlad

UN backs down on claiming Israel hit UNRWA school

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From The Australian:

Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem | February 06, 2009


Article from: The Australian

THE UN has retracted claims over one of the biggest controversies in the Gaza war, admitting that an Israeli mortar attack that killed 43 people did not hit a school run by a UN agency.

The January 6 incident, described at the time as the “school massacre”, figured prominently in accusations that Israel committed war crimes in the deaths of hundreds of civilians during the war.

A statement issued yesterday by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Human Affairs acknowledged that it had wrongly blamed the deaths at the time on the “shelling of the UNRWA (Relief and Works Agency) school”.

“The humanitarian co-ordinator would like to clarify that the shelling, and all of the fatalities, took place outside rather than inside the school,” the statement said.

The clarification came several days after a journalist for Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, Patrick Martin, interviewed Palestinians living near the school and a teacher, who told him that none of the casualties were in the school but on the street outside.

In a television interview the day of the incident at a Gaza hospital where casualties were brought, the UNRWA operations director in Gaza, John Ging, an Irish national, did not explicitly say the shells had hit the school but he left that impression.

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UN Ambulances used as weapons and troop transport

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Very versatile organization the UN and their vehicles as well are extraordinarily useful. Not only can they carry injured people to a hospital but they can be used to safely carry troops and weapons without fear of being targeted by the people the troops inside are trying to kill. This would make their vehicles as useful and versatile as the UN schools and other facilities in Gaza as reported here with video on Vlad.

Canada angers Islamists

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It would appear that Canada has been scratched of the guest list to sit down to dinner with the Islamists. No more invites; we’ve pissed off the Arabs and Muslim world with one fell swoop. How? Canada officially declared her support for Israel in the Gaza conflict and Israel’s right to defend herself against terrorism.

And now the bony finger of extremism and twisted logic wags itself at Canada in…….. anger.

A January 14 editorial in the Arab News condemns Canada’s decision to vote against a motion by the UN human rights council to vilify Israel in the Gaza conflict, the only country out of 47 to do so, and to demand an investigation into Israel’s human right’s violations. Canada did so, realizing the slanted position of the proposal which clearly intended to discredit Israel’s stance while simultaneously rendering Hamas blameless. 

” With a stroke, Canada has lost it’s credibility, honour and friends in the Arab and Muslim world”.   

Funny, I didn’t know we had any ‘friends’ in the Arab and Muslim world. 

Certainly, this ommission to defend Hamas is seen as repugnant only among those who would wish that peace replace violence in Gaza via submission to terrorist ideology. The many well meaning? union organizations whose stance for justice and peace rely on condemning Israel, the anti-semites who protest at weekend rallies shouting Nazi rhetoric and of course, the ‘moderate’ Muslim organizations who belittle Canada and the United States at every turn are seething with rage at both the Conservative’s and Liberal’s official stance; that Canada denounce terrorism. The NDP is too busy handing out spare shoes and hot cocoa at the rallies to comment.  Not surprisingly, I found this article on the nation’s most prominent, Islamic, peace loving site, the CIC.

“Canada’s famed evenhandedness seems to have vanished. It has been replaced by blindness and hardheartedness. It is truly shocking”.

It IS a truly shocking and welcome turn, especially to Canadians who had all but given up on the government’s willingness to re-adjust it’s balls in the trousers of the nation and deligitimize terror states and their supporters through abject rejection. As for heardheartedness? The Arab and Muslim world have the monopoly on hardheartedness and heartlessness: just ask the innocent Palestinian people, the victims of Hamas and the countless other innocents around the world who have perished in the name of Islamic ‘peace and justice’.

There is a concerted push by Islamists to see Canada evolve into a safe haven for the imported hatred of Jews and sharia law that ensure intolerance, bigotry and misogyny. All one has to do is attend a pro-Hamas rally on any given weekend to witness the desire. The anger amongst them at Canada’s recent offical denunciation of Hamas combined with the ongoing willingness of Islamist sites and Muslim community newspapers to re-publish the sentiment should come as little surprise to anyone who understands the mandate. If we have indeed ‘thrown fairness to the wind’ as they claim, it is because our definition of fairness is a radically different one, as are the definitions of peace and social justice.

“Canada has, in the past rarely done anything to anger anyone”, states the Arab media editorial. 

So be it.  Time to eat at home with a big ham and swiss on rye and a cold beer.

Grace

UNRWA now 99% terror free!

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U.N. Agency That Runs School Hit in Gaza Employed Hamas and Islamic Jihad Members

99From Fox News by way of Sheikyermami.com

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

By Joel Mowbray

Reuters

The United Nations agency that administers a school in Gaza where dozens of civilians were killed by Israeli mortar fire last week has admitted to employing terrorists to work at its Palestinian schools in the past, has no system in place to keep members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad off its payroll, and provides textbooks to children that contain hate speech and other incendiary information.

A growing chorus of critics has taken aim at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in recent years, although momentum on Capitol Hill has been slow. But last week’s incident, which Israel maintains was prompted by Hamas operatives firing mortars at Israelis from a location near the school, has prompted some lawmakers to scrutinize the U.N. agency.

Rep. Steve Rothman, D-N.J., introduced a resolution in the fall calling for greater transparency and accountability at UNRWA. The bill called on the agency to make its textbooks available on the Internet for public inspection and to implement “terrorist name recognition software and other screening procedures that would help to ensure that UNRWA staff, volunteers, and beneficiaries are neither terrorists themselves, nor affiliated with known terrorist organizations.”

Rothman said he plans to re-introduce his UNRWA resolution in the coming weeks because, “as timely as this bill was before, it is even more timely now. It is urgent that Congress can be assured that U.S. taxpayer money is not being spent to support Hamas and its murderous activities.”

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Article from Globe and Mail Canada. Superb opinion by Canadian General

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What is the UN waiting for? Deploy a strong force to Gaza

LEWIS MACKENZIE

From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

January 6, 2009 at 12:00 AM EST

I first served in the Gaza Strip in 1963, seven years after Lester Pearson’s diplomatic stick-handling led to the creation of the United Nations Emergency Force, the UN’s first peacekeeping force. I served there for two years, living with more than 1,000 other Canadian soldiers in Camp Rafah, just inside Gaza. I returned to the region eight years later, this time to Cairo and Ismailia as part of Canadian support for UN ceasefire protocols after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I have returned to the region many times during the past decade.

In my opinion, the Israeli-Hamas conflict is the only one in the world where there is no hope whatsoever of the participants resolving the key issues on their own, by any means. Hamas makes no secret that, aided and abetted by Iran, it is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Any idea of a ceasefire in the current fighting leading to a change in Hamas’s dedication to Israel’s elimination is naive to the extreme. Any cessation of hostilities, no matter how temporary, will be used by Hamas to enhance its weapons arsenal in preparation for the next round of terrorist attacks against its neighbour.

On their own, Israel and Hamas are doomed to a perpetual state of war no matter how much international diplomatic horsepower is applied to resolving the conflict. But there is a solution that the world has been adroitly avoiding for 40 years.

Israel deserves security. Its population is prepared to live in peace with its neighbours providing they aren’t dedicated to its extermination. If Israel deals with the threat from Hamas on its own, the situation will not improve over the long term – Hamas will simply resuscitate itself and carry on with its terrorist actions against Israel. The Security Council needs to show some rare backbone and authorize a strong UN force under the UN Charter’s Chapter 7, which authorizes the use of deadly force as necessary, and deploy it within the Gaza Strip, taking on the responsibility to provide the security to which Israel is entitled.

The force would need to be strong enough to interdict weapons smuggling by sea, land (including by tunnel) and air from outside sources, to eliminate rocket attacks on Israel, to stop suicide bombers through use of border controls and, most important, to be strong enough militarily to take on Hamas if need be. The oft-expressed idea of putting international monitors into the Gaza Strip to control smuggling and the firing of rockets is ludicrous: Hamas would run rings around any unarmed outsiders whose only mandate was to “observe and report.” Such monitors wouldn’t even qualify as yet another Band-Aid solution.

Israel would not like this solution. It is extremely suspicious of the UN, which has all too often demonstrated anti-Semitic policies and statements thanks to the fact that most member states sympathize with such attitudes. Israel did not recognize the UNEF from 1956 to its withdrawal in 1967. In fact, when we had to drive through Israel to get some of our supplies in Lebanon, we were not allowed to get out of our vehicles while inside Israel.

The UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, has been accused by Israel – with some justification – of anti-Israel bias. Nevertheless, with a UN force deployed across the border from Israel and capable of providing the security desired by its citizens, the Israelis would soon see the benefits.

The UN has maintained a peacekeeping force in Cyprus since 1964. There has been no fighting between the Greek and Turk Cypriots for the past 34 years. The peacekeepers are now popular tourist attractions. When you arrive on the south coast of Cyprus, you can sign up for a bus tour of Nicosia, where you can observe the peacekeepers executing their boring duty in sentry boxes first manned by Canadian soldiers some 38 years ago. If you are polite, they will let you have your picture taken with them.

The UN Security Council and member states should be ashamed. While UN resources are providing peacekeepers in a country safer than most of our major cities, just across the Mediterranean, scores of innocent Palestinians are being killed because a terrorist organization with the stated aim of ridding the world of Jews is permitted to sacrifice its own people without protest or intervention by the international community.

Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie was the first commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.

Repost. The U.N. condemns Israel for womens rights violations.

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I had to repost this as I refer to it often in discussions about the UN. It is hard ti believe that the U.N. would single out Israel as the worst abuser of women’s rights on a planet filled with nations where women can be stoned to death for being raped. But they did. It’s so surreal that I need to keep a link handy or no one would believe it. Or perhaps they would. Not sure which is worse. Here is the article with links.

Eeyore

Women’s Rights at the UN: Israel as the Only Violator, Anne Bayefsky

Last Friday, March 9, 2007 the UN wrapped up its annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Guess where they found a violation of women’s rights? Among the hundreds of thousands of women who are dead, dying, mutilated, displaced or raped in Sudan? Among the million female migrant workers cowering in the basements of Saudi Arabian villas from the taskmasters who stole their passports the minute they got off the plane? Among the women stoned and hanged for “adultery” in Iran? The millions of women forcibly aborted in China? The thousands murdered or forced to commit suicide for the crime of “dishonoring” their fathers and brothers across the Arab and Muslim world?

If you guessed “none of the above,” then you’ll enjoy coming on down to the UN. The UN’s lead body charged with promoting and protecting women’s rights identifies only one state as violating the rights of women in the world today – Israel.(Violating the rights of Palestinian women.) The vote was 40 for and 2 against (the United States and Canada).

Germany, on behalf of the European Union, gave a one minute “explanation” excusing its affirmative vote. It said: “we express our deep concerns for the impact on all women in the region including the Israeli women” – although Germany did not insist such language be inserted in the resolution itself. For 60 seconds, the representative of the country where millions of Jewish women and girls were murdered en masse not so long ago took notice of the Jewish mothers and daughters who have fallen victim to terrorism in the Jewish state. This is the moral corruption that the UN breeds within democracies like Germany. In the United Nations, an institution owned and directed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the European Union grovels while the real abusers cheer.

U.N. approves anti blasphemy laws.

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“We are deeply disappointed that the U.N. has given cover to oppressive governments to persecute dissenters. Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, Christians in Orissa, India, and Bahais in Iran have one more reason to fear for their lives as the U.N. lends legitimacy to the criminalization of their peaceful speech. States have no place determining what is and is not blasphemy,” she added.

No surprise to anyone but an affirmation to the uncertain how the UN is a mockery of itself. The time to dismantle it is here. Canada needs to distance itself from most aspects of the UN as it has from Durban II. Canada has shown true leadership in overtly defying the UN ‘Human Rights Council’ in its attempts to legitimize Nazi era antisemitism by refusing to attend Durban II and walking out of Durban I. Now it needs to be the first to lead the way out of the rest of the more corrupt aspects of the UN.

Eeyore

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UN Passes Islamic ‘Defamation’ Measure, But Critics Hail ‘Backlash’
Thursday, December 18, 2008
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor


The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is spearheading the “defamation of religion” campaign at the U.N.
(CNSNews.com) – A “defamation” of religion resolution stating that “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism” passed in the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday – but with fewer votes than in previous years.

Over the past year opponents ranging to media watchdogs and free speech advocates to Christian and humanist groups have stepped up lobbying against the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)-driven campaign.

Thursday’s vote passed by a margin of 86-53, with 42 countries abstaining. The result showed a significant erosion of support since a similar resolution passed in the General Assembly last December by a vote of 108-51, with 25 abstentions.

For the first time, the number of countries supporting the resolution fell behind the number of those voting against or abstaining.

“Although it is disappointing that religious freedom takes another step backwards today, we are extremely encouraged that the majority of countries in the world did not vote in favor of banning peaceful religious speech,” said Angela C. Wu, the international law director at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The Washington-based public interest law firm viewed the shift in support for the resolution among U.N. member states as “a significant backlash.”

The Becket Fund earlier made a submission to the world body arguing that any attempt to treat religious discrimination in the same way as racial discrimination could result in “the suppression of peaceful, but controversial, discussions of truth claims about and within religions.”

The Becket Fund, and other critics of the OIC push, note that in some of the Islamic countries leading the campaign – notably Pakistan, Egypt and Iran – blasphemy laws target those who challenge the religious viewpoints approved by the state. Some also outlaw conversions from Islam to other faiths.

To these critics, outlawing “religious defamation” at the U.N. would not only legitimize those regimes’ behavior but could lead eventually to similar restrictions on free expression in non-Islamic countries as well.

“The ‘defamation of religions’ resolution is a direct violation of the United Nation’s mandate to protect religious freedom, as peaceful religious speech – a manifestation of belief – will be silenced as a result of it,” Wu said.

“We are deeply disappointed that the U.N. has given cover to oppressive governments to persecute dissenters. Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, Christians in Orissa, India, and Bahais in Iran have one more reason to fear for their lives as the U.N. lends legitimacy to the criminalization of their peaceful speech. States have no place determining what is and is not blasphemy,” she added.

“Defenders of free speech take some consolation in the increased votes for our cause,” Hillel Neuer, executive director of the human rights watchdog UN Watch, said Thursday. “But the adoption of yet another totalitarian text is a stark reminder that human rights at the U.N. is under assault.”

He also noted that Islamic states were using a major U.N. conference on racism, scheduled for next spring, to advance their campaign. Proponents are arguing that the “defamation” of Islam and “Islamophobia” are contemporary forms of racism, and should thus fall under purview of the racism conference, commonly known as Durban II.

“The most dire threat is coming from Geneva where a Durban II committee headed by Algeria has this week been seeking to amend international human rights treaty law to ban ‘defamation of religion,’ especially Islam,” Neuer said.

“Eleanor Roosevelt, whose universal declaration we celebrate this month, must be turning in her grave.”


The United Nations General Assembly in session in New York. (UN Photo by Marco Castro)
‘You can’t defame a religion’

The shift in voting from last year to this came primarily from 16 developing countries which voted in favor in 2007 but chose to abstain on Thursday. Two of them, Benin and Burkina Faso, are OIC members. (The others are Central African Republic, Congo, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Grenada, Haiti, Mauritius, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Vanuatu and Zambia.)

Three countries which voted in favor in 2007 – Belize, Cape Verde and Liberia – moved to opposing the resolution this year. And one country, OIC member Nigeria, abstained last year but voted in favor this year. Absences accounted for the remaining differences between the 2007 and 2008 votes.

The resolution passed Thursday is the latest in a string of similar ones stretching back almost a decade, both at the General Assembly and at the U.N.’s Geneva-based Human Rights Council (and its predecessor, the erstwhile Commission on Human Rights.)

The U.S.-led fight against Islamist terror launched after 9/11 lent further impetus to the campaign, as Islamic governments and organizations complained that Muslims were facing discrimination and being unfairly targeted.

Early this week opponents of the OIC project received a boost when four international freedom of expression experts jointly came out against attempts to legislate against the “defamation” of religion.

While opposition up to now has come largely from non-governmental organizations and some Western governments, the joint statement came from experts representing the U.N. as well as African, Latin American and European nations.

“The concept of ‘defamation of religions’ does not accord with international standards regarding defamation, which refer to the protection of reputation of individuals,” the experts said in a statement.

“Religions, like all beliefs, cannot be said to have a reputation of their own” and cannot therefore be defamed.

The statement called on international bodies, including the General Assembly and Human Rights Council, to “desist from the further adoption of statements supporting the idea of ‘defamation of religion.’”

In other recommendations, the experts said blasphemy laws and others restricting criticism of ideas and beliefs should be repealed; and hate speech laws should be limited to covering the advocacy of views constituting incitement to discrimination and violence.

The four experts were Frank La Rue, the Human Rights Council’s investigator for freedom of expression; Miklos Haraszti of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; Catalina Botero of the Organization of American States; and Faith Pansy Tlakula of the African Union.

Could someone please clone Vaclav Klaus and make him PM of Canada?

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Some of you may already be familiar with Mr. Klaus. A man I consider to be perhaps the last reasonable leader of a nation state. Vaclav has repeatedly stood against hidden agenda laws by the U.N and E.U. with respect to ‘crypto environmental’ regulations concerning CO2 outputs as well as draconian legislation of the EU much resembling old Soviet era rules governing freedom of thought and so on. Vaclav has a book available here through Vlad’s store called ‘Blue Planet Green shackles’ on how leftists with an agenda of hate towards developed nations wish to cripple our various economies using the language of green and very very bad science or more accurately, religion disguised as science. “And lo the world shall be destroyed by hell fire for the sins of corporate man” sort of nonsense.

Below is a story from the Telegraph in the UK showing how Vaclav was chastised by Sarkosi, French president and current head of the EU for refusing to fly the E.U. flag over significant Czech buildings. It may be worth using the search field here on Vlad or in google for reports on how Mr. Klaus has publicly used reason at the UN to speak against IPCC reports and recommendations. I can say with some authority that most developed nations know the facts behind ‘global warming ‘ and CO2 emissions but are hog tied by political correctness and irrational leftists in their own bureaucracies and have to pretend at least to go along with this nonsense. Often the costs of this pretence is in the billions of taxpayer dollars but this is a paltry sum compared to the utter financial ruin should Canada for example actually attempt to comply with Kyoto etc.

Here is a video of Mr. Klaus speaking to the UN on Global Warming and the bias in favor of the man made global warming position in lieu of the science.
Here Vaclav is being beaten up by a useful idiot at the BBC part one. You can see where the BBC is trying to steer him. Of course the ‘Do you have grandchildren’ argument works equally well from the other point of view. They can be warm from CO2, or they can be enslaved by leftist anti corporate and anti westerners who want to shut down all modern industry.

Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked a diplomatic row by attacking the ‘wounding and outrageous’ refusal of the Czech president to fly a European Union flag from Prague Castle.

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 7:59PM GMT 16 Dec 2008

The French president sided with federalist Euro-MPs who are engaged in a bitter feud with Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president and a Eurosceptic.

Senior MEPs, including the president of the European Parliament, Hans Gert Poettering, caused a diplomatic incident ten days ago after demanding that Mr Klaus hoist the European flag over his residence during bad tempered talks in Prague.

“It was a wound, it was an outrage to see that flags had been taken down from public buildings,” said President Sarkozy, the current holder of the EU’s six-month rotating presidency which he hands over to the Czech Republic in January.

“Mr Poettering can count on the full support of the French president.”

Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech foreign minister, hit back as the diplomatic war of words between Paris and Prague threatened to overshadow the smooth transfer of the EU presidency.

“There is no law binding the Czech Republic to hang the EU flag over Prague Castle. Prague Castle is a symbol of the Czech state and not the EU,” he said.

“It is not up to the head of another state to criticise the Czech president over flags.”

A statement from the office of Mr Klaus said: “The Castle is a symbol of Czech statehood. There is no reason to change this historic tradition.”

The row exploded when a delegation of Euro-MPs sarcastically presented Mr Klaus with the 12-starred flag, during a visit on Dec 5, knowing that he had ruled out flying the flag over Prague Castle.

He was especially angered when Dany Cohn-Bendit, a former 1968 student radical and the Franco-German leader of Green Euro-MPs, told him: “I don’t care about your opinions”.

Mr Klaus replied: “This is incredible. I have never experienced anything like this before.”

Nigel Farage, the leader of UK Independence Party, compared the EU flag demand to the behaviour of Nazi or Soviet officials, both dictatorships that had occupied Prague and its Castle in the past.

“The manner in which Cohn-Bendit demanded that President Klaus fly the EU flag over his castle could easily have been done by a German official of over 70 years ago or a Soviet official of 20 years ago,” he said.

“No doubt they think that Buckingham Palace should fly the EU flag to show its dominium.”

Iran’s Power At The United Nations. Forbes.com

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How can Obama navigate the U.N. without stepping on Iranian land mines? Forbes.com

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With Iran racing down the homestretch toward a nuclear bomb, the United Nations Security Council has spent more than two years expressing “serious concern.” By now, Iran is under U.N. sanctions, and in flagrant violation of five Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop enriching uranium. If anything, as a chronic abuser of the U.N. charter, Iran’s despotic, terrorist-backing, nuclear-wannabe regime ought to qualify for expulsion from the 192-member U.N. At the very least, one might suppose that on U.N. premises, Iran would be something of a pariah.

But at the U.N., that’s not how it works. Although Iran lost its bid this year for a seat on the 15-member Security Council, Iran’s government has the U.N. so well-wired, in so many ways, that it’s hard to find an angle Iran is not busy exploiting. That ought to be of serious concern to President-elect Obama, who has promised to give the U.N. a far bigger role in U.S. policy.

As it is, America provides the main U.N. premises in New York, suffers the related traffic jams and tries to ride herd on the alleged spies (two Iranian guards at Iran’s U.N. Mission in Manhattan were deported in 2004, after they were seen filming landmark buildings and parts of the transportation system). American taxpayers bankroll roughly one-quarter of the U.N.’s total budget, now swollen to well over $20 billion, and on top of that look likely to get stuck with the $2 billion-plus tab for the renovation now underway of U.N. headquarters.

Meanwhile, Iran, which pays a paltry 0.18% of the U.N.’s core budget, or less than 1/100th of the U.S. contribution, has wangled itself an astounding array of influential U.N. slots, which by next year will include seats on the governing bodies of at least eight prominent U.N. agencies. That setup serves both to legitimize the same Iranian regime that is busy violating the U.N. charter, and gives Iran a say in how billions in U.N. funds–much of that money supplied by U.S. taxpayers–get spent around the world.

For a glimpse of this setup, you don’t have to wait for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s annual rant on the U.N. General Assembly stage. All you have to do is stroll through the main visitors’ lobby of the landmark U.N. building in Manhattan. In that lobby, by far the most prominent display is a row of eight portraits, framed in gold, and showing the lineup of secretaries-general from the U.N.’s founding at the end of World War II, through the current Ban Ki-Moon. But these are no ordinary portraits. Each is actually a silk carpet, and under the woven picture of each secretary-general, there appears the woven inscription: “Presented by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

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