We don't like what they say about Colombia? Let's change them!

robi666 says on Jun 21, 2008, 03:46:

Frankly, this reaction of the Colombian government sounds ridiculous...

"No entiendo eso de vamos a buscar una entidad con credibilidad, entonces que es la onu? unos payasos? unos mentirosos? una entidad poco seria? segun veo la onu hace las mediciones desde 1999, eso son 9 annos de experiencia en el mismo trabajo, entonces, una entidad con credibilidad es como el dane, el cual publica las cifras que le gustan al gobierno?"

"I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present."

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Cerealkiller says on Jun 21, 2008, 04:06:

shame on the goverment. We will see who will come to our rescue when the US has had enough of this wonderful friendship.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives -John Stuart Mill

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tasco66 says on Jun 21, 2008, 04:47:

How do you expect the government of Colombia to react to this inaccurate UN report?

I see Chavez's hand behind the UN report

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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Cerealkiller says on Jun 21, 2008, 05:41:

Why would the UN, an organization whose main donations come from the US, Asia and Europe back chavez? Please enlighten me, because I honestly don't see it.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives -John Stuart Mill

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tasco66 says on Jun 21, 2008, 06:34:

Let me enlighten you.

About the US "donations" to the UN :

From Wikipedia

"The UN has always had problems with members refusing to pay the assessment levied upon them under the United Nations Charter. But the most significant refusal in recent times has been that of the U.S. For a number of years, the U.S. Congress refused to authorize payment of the U.S. dues, in order to force UN compliance with U.S. wishes, as well as a reduction in the U.S. assessment.

After prolonged negotiations, the U.S. and the UN negotiated an agreement whereby the United States would pay a large part of the money it owes, and in exchange the UN would reduce the assessment rate ceiling from 25% to 22%. The reduction in the assessment rate ceiling was among the reforms contained in the 1999 Helms-Biden legislation, which links payment of $926 million in U.S. arrears to the UN and other international organizations to a series of reform benchmarks.

U.S. arrears to the UN currently total over $1.3 billion. Of this, $612 million is payable under Helms-Biden. The remaining $700 million result from various legislative and policy withholdings; at present, there are no plans to pay these amounts.

Under Helms-Biden, the U.S. paid $100 million in arrears to the UN in December 1999; release of the next $582 million awaits a legislative revision to Helms-Biden, necessary because the benchmark requiring a 25 percent peacekeeping assessment rate ceiling was not quite achieved. The U.S. also seeks elimination of the legislated 25 percent cap on U.S. peacekeeping payments in effect since 1995, which continues to generate additional UN arrears. Of the final $244 million under Helms-Biden, $30 million is payable to the UN and $214 million to other international organizations."

The UN is one country = one vote, except in the Security Concil (it is not based on contributions). When Chavez called Bush the devil at the UN he got a standing ovation. Why was that?

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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tasco66 says on Jun 21, 2008, 07:05:

The President of the UN is a Sandinista. I am sure Bush lobbied hard for his appointment Jajaja, or was it Chavez?

Sandinista Takeover

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT

United Nations: It's said that the U.N. is only as good as its members. But putting a Nicaraguan dinosaur communist at the presidency of the General Assembly takes it all a step lower. Already, the America-bashing is back.

Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, Nicaragua's foreign minister until his Marxist Sandinista party was booted in 1990, has now got a new gig leading the U.N. General Assembly.

Oh, lucky us. A Maryknoll priest of the old liberation theology school, the 75-year-old rifle-and-cassock radical is famous for taking the U.S. to the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 1986 over President Reagan's arming of Contra freedom fighters resisting d'Escoto's Cuban-style forced communism. His politics discredited, he ought to be out on his ear with his class-warfare philosophy expiring in the ashcan of history.

Instead, the three-way election in Nicaragua in 2006 brought back ex-Sandinista dictator Daniel Ortega and d'Escoto with him.

Already, d'Escoto's started fulminating against America.

He's blasted "acts of aggression, such as those occurring in Afghanistan and Iraq," in a clear shot at the U.S.

"The behavior of some member states has caused the United Nations to lose credibility as an organization capable of putting an end to war and eradicating extreme poverty from our planet," he intoned at his acceptance speech.

Come September, d'Escoto will dish out more of this as leader of the 192-member General Assembly, whose nonbinding resolutions give big megaphones to anti-American windbags. Despite his protestations to the contrary, his entry into this position through the muscling actions of Venezuela's wannabe U.N. Security Council member Hugo Chavez assures that d'Escoto will turn it into a U.N. that blames America first.

D'Escoto also will control the U.N. budget, much of which is funded by the U.S. We can look forward to seeing that managed as a Marxist manages money, and in the name of "eradicating hunger and poverty" he'll seek "redistribution" of income — ours.

D'Escoto says he's got big plans to "democratize" the Security Council, to end its "subjugation" of states. Otherwise, "the world could not be saved and would continue to sink into the morass of selfishness, individualism and indifference that has led some to spend lavishly on luxury items and wars."

D'Escoto promises he won't attack the U.S. but already has broken his word with his oblique assaults, and is likely to dish out more.

The mess he makes should underscore that the U.N. is a broken, discredited system that needs replacement with a league of democracies, as Sen. John McCain has called for. Nothing stands to accelerate that idea better than a year's worth of Miguel d'Escoto.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=298163055754662

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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tasco66 says on Jun 21, 2008, 07:17:

You just got to love the President of the UN:

From Wikipedia

“Described by Reuters as "a fierce critic of the United States", he referred to Ronald Reagan in 2004 as "the butcher of my people", and added: "Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the world today is far less safe and secure than it has ever been."

Following his election to the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly, he offered a statement interpreted as renewed criticism aimed at the United States: "The behavior of some member states has caused the United Nations to lose credibility as an organization capable of putting an end to war and eradicating extreme poverty from our planet."] He denounced what he called “acts of aggression, such as those occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan.At the same time, he expressed his "love" for "the United States as a country", and added: "I do not want to turn this [General Assembly] presidency into a place to take it out on the United States. Reacting to those comments, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad responded: "We have been assured that a page has been turned and that he understands his new responsibilities... We will wait and see." Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. permanent mission to the United Nations, added: "The president of the General Assembly is supposed to be a uniter. We have made it clear that these crazy comments are not acceptable, and we hope he refrains from this talk and gets to work on General Assembly business."

Did this nut case sign off on the Colombian report??? jajaja

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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tasco66 says on Jun 21, 2008, 07:25:

I wonder if every PBH lefties will be spending the next several days reading the full UN report (like they read the Interpol report) to find any inconsistencies, grammatical errors etc…I think not Jajajaja

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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Cerealkiller says on Jun 21, 2008, 17:16:

I did read the Interpol report, unlike those who refer to it without even reading its content.
Second of all saying the president od the UN is a sandinista is innacurate, as the guy is not the president of the UN, only the general assembly, which is only 1 of 5 major organs. There is not veto power in the security council (I actually meant General Assembly here), as all countries are represented on equal basis (yeah, democracy, some scary stuff) . Moreover, the general assembly has no control over what is being published in its studies, so whatever you're suggesting is simply not true.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives -John Stuart Mill

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billyb says on Jun 21, 2008, 17:21:

"There is not veto power in the security council, as all countries are represented on equal basis "

US, England, France, Russia and China have veto power in the Security Council, CK. Maybe you meant to write General Assembly ( a waste of oxigen if there ever was)?

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Cerealkiller says on Jun 21, 2008, 17:24:

Yes Billyb, I was referring to the General Assembly. Mistake. Thanks for pointing that out.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives -John Stuart Mill

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tasco66 says on Jun 21, 2008, 17:47:

Cerealkiller I think I answered your question quite well:

“Why would the UN, an organization whose main donations come from the US, Asia and Europe back chavez?�

If the General Assembly has elected a Sandinista as President, that means that the UN is controlled (except the security Council) by anti-American third world countries like Venezuela, and not the US or Europe.

Get it now?

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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billyb says on Jun 21, 2008, 18:10:

Tasco is right, the UN GA has always been dominated by the so-called "non-aligned block", whose uncrowned king has always been el barbudo. That is why it has always been useless and the important stuff is left up to the SC.

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tasco66 says on Jun 21, 2008, 18:36:

Thank you billyb

United Anti-American Nations: The Roots © 2003 ABIP

Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton
Thursday, March 20, 2003

The winds of war around us brought the stench of a reality long set aside by the people of this great nation: anti-Americanism.
America must wake up to realize that in today’s world we really do not have friends. The success and prosperity of America are the envy of the world. But envy is a highly destructive force that erodes reason, transforming it into blind hatred. And that’s what we are seeing.

Although we have many individual friends and admirers, we don’t have them in the collective sense. The current situation makes all that hatred extremely obvious. We should stop kidding ourselves and face the reality so we can deal with it.

There is not much that we can do as a nation now to change that hatred and resentment for the happiness, success, wealth and power of this nation. For decades we have been damned if we do and damned if we don’t. No matter what, this nation is always blamed for the ills of the world. It is sad, considering the generosity of this nation and the noble ideals of freedom and prosperity that this country holds dear and actually does wish for all.

When I lived in France I noticed the visceral hatred for America and its people. French rudeness toward Americans has been noticed by every American tourist visiting France for decades. And all that in spite of the American blood and deaths on French soil to liberate them from Hitler.

How do they forget all the American money that poured in under the Marshall Plan for France’s reconstruction? We expect better than the hatred they display for us and the recent obstructionism in the United Nations. Americans should boycott all their products and stop traveling to France.

France and Germany (who also owes its freedom and prosperity to America) currently carry an attitude about the war in Iraq based not on moral grounds but on their reprehensible business interests with the regime of Saddam Hussein, an issue that ‘political correctness’ prohibits the media from making anything other than a slight mention of.

Germany, with its increasing anti-Americanism, also should be boycotted by Americans. We must face the power of the collective, official force of these countries. Giving them our tourist and trade dollars while they stab us in the back makes us look like fools.

For a long time we have observed with dismay that the great idea of creating the U.N. for the betterment of mankind has been reduced into a group of nations blinded by the most disturbing feelings of anti-Americanism while permitting the greatest menace to the world, communism, to flourish. Indeed, the U.N. did little to alleviate this suffering upon mankind.

While the U.N. seems to condemn the U.S. at every opportunity, it has been silent about the gross violations of human rights in each and every communist country that has existed on the face of the earth. In the eyes of the world, it seems, the policy mistakes of the U.S. easily obliterate the extermination of 100 million people in the forced imposition of the criminal communist philosophy.

Unfortunately, many members of that supposedly respected body are coming from authoritarian, dictatorial, tyrannical and totalitarian communist regimes in which individual freedoms and human rights don’t exist. Yet they condemn us. In my opinion, the U.N. has become ineffective and irrelevant and more accurately should be called the United Anti-American Nations (UAAN), since that seems to be its united cause.

That united front of anti-Americanism has developed a history of looking the other way when the enemies of the U.S. enslave, torture and murder their citizens. As a matter of fact, that is what they have done in the case of Cuba.

They would rather abstain, vote against or veto the condemnation of those barbaric acts against humanity for the simple reason of going against the U.S. They have even expelled the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission while other criminal regimes that systematically violate human rights, like Libya – clearly a terrorist state – were admitted.

The hatred that has followed this worldwide envy for America’s progress and standard of living has been the end result and legacy of 70-some nefarious years of the application of Marxism-Leninism in the most perverse and destructive ways. Only people who have lived inside a communist country can fully understand the evilness of that system.

When former president Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the “evil empire,� every Democrat, liberal, lefty, socialist and communist sympathizer and the U.S. media scorched him. But Reagan was well understood by all the victims of that inhumane system of government.

For decades, the communists were not even capable of mass-producing enough toilet paper, but were extremely skillful in the production of paper for propaganda. And this propaganda – as well as millions of refugees – was their main export all over the world.

In the propaganda, the U.S. was depicted as the enemy of mankind. All agreed that the so-called “Yankee imperialism� needed to be crushed in order for communism and dictatorships of all varieties to triumph globally. Hatred for the U.S. was disseminated all over the world.

To prevent “Yankee imperialism� from spreading its democracy (read: “self-rule,� something utterly incompatible with communism and dictatorship), a quiet, subversive, grass-roots operation was seen as the workable force. So, Marxist cells began to infiltrate the news media, editorial houses and learning centers, as well as art and culture. This clever scheme was enacted as the way to influence and change minds.

A prime example of this is the imposition of “political correctness,� which is a communist-born technique to limit freedom of speech and to create a monolithic way of thinking and behavior. This is just what the Marxists needed in order to control the masses and make them obedient to follow their strategy.

Unfortunately for freedom in the U.S., Marxist professors – now in control of most learning centers in this country – have been winning the cultural battle, and our youth are becoming more pliable to becoming “useful fools.�

We have seen this new generation in the recent anti-American (“anti-war�) demonstrations and in offering themselves as “human shields� to protect the socialist totalitarian regime of the tyrant Saddam Hussein.

Also well hidden by the left-leaning U.S. media is the fact that the anti-war effort is organized by such enemies of America as the Communist Workers World Party, which according to David Horowitz operates under “its front organization ANSWER.� While many honest but naïve Americans join these anti-war demonstrations, they are unaware of who is really behind them.

Those supposedly “peaceful� organizations are the same ones that supported Stalin, Mao, Castro and any communist tyrant you can name.

Karl Marx’s theory that developed nations will naturally evolve to “socialism� failed, so a push for violent revolution was necessary in an attempt to force the theory into fruition. Prior to 1959, Castro in the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Cuba was the first one to use the hijacking of a passenger airplane and the taking of hostages as a viable technique for political gain.

And it worked for him. So, crimes terrorizing innocent civilians were instituted as tools in the fight for power by the new “revolutionaries� (actually “terrorists,� but the label needed a positive spin).

After 1959, Castro began subverting and exporting revolutions throughout Latin America and beyond. He also began training international terrorists. All the scum of our planet from diverse nationalities, the most violent criminals and terrorists could be found in Cuba, in Castro’s refuge and learning center, perfecting their skills.

Their teachers were not just Cubans but also Soviet military experts. They received instructions, arms, and the art of how to infiltrate (communists’ specialty) and to falsify documents. Their graduates received the equivalent of a Ph.D. in terrorist activities. And out they went, all over the world, including the Arab countries.

It doesn’t take much to inflame the Middle East, with its history of so many territorial wars among each other and invaders. It was not difficult for the communist-trained cells to infiltrate the Islamic religion and convert it into something else, as they have also done with great success in the U.S. with many Protestant and Catholic organizations.

We have a prime example in the National Council of Churches (NCC), which is a Marxist, anti-American and pro-Castro organization as well the New York-based Pastors for Peace.

But neglecting to see what was coming from these decades of teaching hatred for America is one of the reasons that today’s situation has become so well established and out of control. What we are living now is the legacy of communism and not, as many think, a well-deserved resentment against America.

Although all capitalist countries, center, right or left, are guilty of greed and exploiting people to a major or minor degree and have committed their share of mistakes and crimes, that is not the main reason for the incensed hatred directed just toward America. Excess greed on the part of some does not equate to the extermination of millions of human beings.

Notice that you don’t see generalized French, German, Russian, Chinese and Korean flag burnings around the world. What you see is the flag of the U.S.A. being desecrated everywhere on the planet, even in our own land by the new generation of Americans who have been deformed by the spell of their Marxist professors. Why are we singled out among other nations that really have a horrid record of crimes and violations of human rights?

That takes us back to the root, which is the years of anti-American propaganda. Those Marxist professors infiltrated in our learning centers have made anti-Americanism good and anti-communism bad. If we are allowed to see the facts, it is quite the opposite.

However, every day it is more difficult because of the blockade of information due to such efforts as “political correctness� that prevents people from seeing and even thinking bad thoughts about Marxism, even though it has proven to be a dismal and deadly failure.

If we don’t allow the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis to teach their racist philosophies in our learning centers, if the dictators of “political correctness� don’t even allow Condoleezza Rice as a keynote speaker to the students, why are we compelled to open the doors of our learning centers, news media, editorial houses and cultural and arts centers to the professors of an obsolete and failed Marxist philosophy that has exterminated 100 million people and continues to do so?

In our free society we have to open the doors to all. But unfortunately for our free society, while these Marxist cells infiltrate, they begin to eliminate everybody who doesn’t agree with them and their goals. They do in fact blacklist and shut the doors on people who do not think as they do – while we are not allowed to “discriminate� against them! And that puts the rest in an unequal position. That’s why it is so easy for the Marxists in control to disarm and set aside the rest.

For example, take the case of Juan J. Lopez, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was denied tenure because he wrote a book critical of the Castro regime. Mr. Lopez’s case has been taken on by Judicial Watch.

Communism is not dead, as many Americans came to believe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is regrouping and very much alive and spreading under different names in the U.S. and abroad.

The new war against America is being disguised as a “holy war� by the Islamists with their baggage of hatred, which has been nurtured by decades of patient communist propaganda disguised as religion and terrorist training with the convenient goal to destroy America.

For the most part, the members of the U.N. grew up with the preponderance of all this anti-American propaganda designed to foster hatred for America. That is why this institution has become so unfriendly and one more bastion of anti-Americanism. A more fitting name most certainly would be the UAAN.

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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Cerealkiller says on Jun 22, 2008, 03:35:

Oh please Tasco, can you actually post an article that is not american neocon propaganda against the UN? So what if the global south has equal vote? That doesn't mean anything. I don't even think you believe that BS yourself as none of the General Assembly's resolutions are binding, they are only concerned with budgetary issues. The president is not even appointed for long periods of time but rotated on a regional basis every year, so whatever control you claim the president of the general assembly has is a bit farfetched as there is hardly much one can do during a year (Hell 8 years are not enough for Uribe, so take it from there)...Lets look at all the previous "antiamerican presidents" of the council:
- 2001:South Korea (yeah, suuuuper anti american)
-2002: Czech Republic (another rouge state right?)
-2003: St Lucia: A country which has had some territoril disputes with venezuela (but surely that doesn't matter right? those in that island must antiamerican terrorists too...)
-2004: Gabon, an oil producing country that withdrew from venezuela's beloved OPEC...
-2005: Sweden
-2006: Bahrain
-2007: Macedonia
-2008: Nicaragua
Hardly a history of anti americanism.
Then you have UNDOC, the office in charge of SIMCI, an office in which 72% of contributions are made by the west (EU, Canada, USA, Sweden and Netherlands), 21% from National Donors (UAE, Colombia, Brazil, Libya, Peru, Qatar, Mexico) and venezuela is somewhere there, but the difference in contributions between Colombia (12.2 million dollars) and Venezuela (13.168 USD) is pretty significant, to say the least.
I would appreciate if you came to "elighten me" with facts, rather than some speculative press article published on Newsmax...a worthless, lying, conservative publication.

I

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives -John Stuart Mill

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tasco66 says on Jun 22, 2008, 08:38:

Here is another example of a UN organization controlled by the UN anti-American club:

A Tyrants Club
The U.N. Human Rights Commission is worse than a joke.
by CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, January 22, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

Among those who value liberty and justice, the United Nations' choice of Libya to chair this year's session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has been widely described as a defeat. By some lights it's a defeat for the U.S.--which protested giving this post to an emissary of terror-sponsoring tyrant Moammar Gadhafi. By U.S. standards it's a defeat for the Human Rights Commission and the entire system of international justice the U.N. pretends to promote. All of which sounds bad, but comfortably abstract; just one more round of folly at the U.N.

It's much worse than that. Putting Libya in a spot to set the U.N. agenda on human rights is not simply a defeat of justice and human dignity. It is a betrayal.

It is a betrayal of all those brave souls, world-wide, who don't just talk about human rights but put their lives on the line to fight for them in countries where the price can be prison, exile or death. It is a betrayal of dissident Riad al-Seif, a former "parliamentarian" in Damascus, Syria, who dared to advocate democracy and has now become one of the more prominent opposition figures rotting in the dungeons of a nation that sits on the 53-member Human Rights Commission.

It is a betrayal of human rights defender Nguyen Khac Toan, a former soldier, teacher and businessman now serving a 12-year sentence in the prisons of Vietnam, which also enjoys a seat on the Human Rights Commission.

It is a betrayal of Chinese supporters of pluralism, such as Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin, who helped found the opposition China Democracy Party, and are now serving long sentences in the laogai, the gulag of China--yet another member of Gadhafi's constituency at the U.N.

Lofting Libya to chair the Human Rights Commission is a gesture of contempt toward Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who for the past 15 years has sacrificed her own liberty and dedicated her life to the struggle for freedom in Burma. It is a note of almost casual scorn toward thousands upon thousands of courageous people in the world's darkest places, unknown soldiers in the long, human struggle for justice, who have chosen to stand up for principles evidently too demanding for most of the folks who are supposed to be defending them at the U.N.

It is a betrayal of millions upon millions of people living under governments so brutal--from North Korea to Turkmenistan to Iraq--that most citizens do not dare to demand the freedoms that belong by right to all human beings.

It is absurd, in fact, to describe the exaltation on Monday of Libya's Ambassador Najat al-Hajjaji to head of the Human Rights Commission as the product of a "vote." That implies there was some sort of democratic process at work. In the secret balloting among the 53 nations that currently sit on the Human Rights Commission, only three--the U.S., Canada and, reportedly, Guatemala--voted against Libya. Among the 33 governments that voted in favor of Libya were almost certainly the rulers of such civic sinkholes as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Cuba and Zimbabwe. Like the despots in Syria, Vietnam and China, these are folks who do not have the guts to face a genuine system of democracy back home, They wield their votes at the U.N. not as legitimate representatives of their own fellow citizens, but as two-faced members of the global club of tyrants, who hold sway through force and fear.

Then there are the 17 nations that abstained from the balloting, including such moral beacons of the European Union as France and Germany. Their thinking seems to be that they were simply complying with U.N. etiquette, which, as it happens, operates with lots of ritual but no regard for the actual needs of the oppressed. When the Human Rights Commission was founded, back in 1947, the U.S. chaired its sessions not only for the first year but for the next five. Maybe that bothered such rivals as Stalin's U.S.S.R., but back then the idea was to help ordinary people, not tyrants.

Since then, it has become the custom that the chairmanship of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights rotates yearly among five geographic groups of member nations. This year was Africa's turn. The African members nominated Libya which has been liberally dispensing funds to curry influence among African rulers. Rather than take a stand on this outrage, the European Union took a coffee break. Thus did Libya take its seat on the throne of this erstwhile human-rights outfit, which we should perhaps start describing as the U.N. Commission on Rotating Chairs--a label that would better reflect its priorities.

All this has created a whole series of awkward moments for the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, where a permanent U.N. staff works with the 53-nation commission to carry out the agenda that will now be guided by Libya. Trying to make the best of what I can only assume is a bit of an ordeal for any civilized man, the new U.N. High Commissioner, Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian, told me in a telephone interview Monday that he trusts the professionalism of his new Libyan colleague, Najat al-Hajjaji, and feels he "must give her more than the benefit of the doubt." Mr. de Mello noted that with Ms. Al-Hajjaji's ascension, she ceases to represent Libya, and now stands for the interests of all citizens of all U.N. member countries.

Oh really? Then why were Ms. Al-Hajjaji's origins the decisive factor, when Africa's turn came round, in securing her this new job? And why is Libya's state press right now celebrating Ms. Al-Hajjaji's new credentials as a sign of high international regard for the regime of Gadhafi? Beyond that, there's room to wonder if Ms. Al-Hajjaji really plans to abandon her stock scripts, in which, despite all the world's many problems, a big order of business has been the trashing of Israel. Here's a sample of Ms. Al-Hajjaji's rhetoric, from a 1999 U.N. press release: "With support and conniving by the United States, Israel continued to commit aggressive and massive human-rights violations, to take everything and give nothing."

Not that the Human Rights Commission is any stranger to the rants and demands of assorted dictatorships. But for a sample of the real cost of turning the show over to Libyan leadership, consider the case of a group of opposition politicians from Zimbabwe, who visited New York last fall. They were desperately seeking help for the horrors unfolding in their country under the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, whose government also sits on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and who, despite recent quarrels over oil deals, has been a longtime chum of Gadhafi.

These Zimbabweans described the encroaching famine back home, directed by Mr. Mugabe at his opponents. They talked about the confiscations, beatings and torture Mr. Mugabe let loose on those who stood up for human rights. Only one of this group, by the way, was white. The other three, like most of the millions Mr. Mugabe has sent forth his mobs to threaten, starve, beat and in some cases murder--were black.

These Zimbabweans said they hoped to get help from the U.N., which they saw as their only possible protector. They were hoping that somehow the U.N. would take the lead in ending Mugabe's monstrous rule by securing, somehow, free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. I mentioned to them that at the U.N. the fix was already in; that Libya--as has now happened--would be chairing the Commission on Human Rights.

Their reaction was not remotely to proclaim the vaunted "African solidarity," which the EU seems to believe is personified by deals between tyrants like Mugabe and Gadhafi. No, their concern was with the ordinary people of Africa, those who endure the rule of these despots. Their response to Libya's impending new role at the U.N. was shock and disgust. One of these Zimbabweans, a young black politician, blurted out: "It's outrageous, totally outrageous and revolting."

He then ticked off some of Gadhafi's history, including the Lockerbie bombing, which he described as "criminal" and said that if Libya were to be appointed to the chair, "it's an alarming message which we are receiving in Africa."

That's the truth about Libya's victory at the U.N. It's not just a defeat for the U.S. It's a horrifying message for all those for who, in the fight for human rights, man the front lines. Were Ms. Al-Hajjaji indeed worthy of the high office with which the U.N. has now entrusted her, the first item on her agenda when the Commission opens its meetings this March in Geneva should be to call for free and fair elections in Libya itself. If Gadhafi, ruler since 1969 of the state he calls the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, says no, yet again, to human rights in his own home, Ms. Al-Hajjaji's next order of business should be to resign. That would do more for the global cause of human rights than anything now on the agenda of this gang we call the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Ms. Rosett is a columnist for OpinionJournal.com and The Wall Street Journal Europe. Her column appears alternate Wednesdays.

Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!

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juancegomez says on Jun 25, 2008, 23:29:

Those reports are not perfect, and a lot of people overlook that changing or supposedly improving measuring methodology is not just a tool of the Uribe administration to say the least, but I also believe that the government should not simply get angry and complain in this manner, much less try to simply change the messenger.

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