Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Habu on April 21, 2003, 02:19:17 PM
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Anger at UN role for rights violators
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Monday April 21, 2003
The Guardian
Human rights organisations are protesting at the inclusion of countries with some of the worst records of abuses on a list of candidates for election to the main United Nations watchdog.
North Korea, Iran and Nigeria are likely to win membership of the UN Commission on Human Rights in an election either at the end of this month or early next. Egypt is another candidate and, even though its abuses are not on the same scale as the others, it has been conducting a vigorous campaign against homosexuals.
The chair of the commission, which is holding its annual meeting in Geneva, is held at present by Libya, another member with a list of deplorable violations.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among the organisations which are complaining that the inclusion of these countries makes a mockery of the organisation, and are urging reform of the process.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch described the list of candidate countries as "a Who's Who of the worst human rights abusers."
Seeking re-election are other countries with poor records: Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Russia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The body has a membership of 53, each serving a two-year term. It catalogues human rights abuses, investigates claims and puts pressure on governments to change.
A group of countries with poor records can block or slow the work of the commission.
Other members seeking election this year are Eritrea, Mauritania, Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal, Qatar, Hungary, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal.
Seeking re-election are Britain, Costa Rica, Guatemala, India, Peru, South Africa and Thailand.
Amnesty International said it would like to see a benchmark set for membership: each candidate would have to ratify guarantees of basic human rights and open its borders to investigators.
Melinda Ching, a spokeswoman for Amnesty, said that without such a benchmark, the signal being sent out was that the commission "lures those countries that have been under the body's spotlight - North Korea, Iran - into gaining membership to the UN's supreme human rights body for the very purpose of deflecting criticism of each other's human rights situations".
The problem for the UN is that if it was to apply such a strict benchmark, relatively few countries could stand for election. While deploring their records, the UN believes there is a better chance of changing these countries if they are included rather than excluded.
North Korea has no right of free speech or religion, and carries out public executions. It also known for extensive use of torture. Executions are commonplace in Iran, and Nigeria was in the spotlight last year over the stoning of women under sharia law for alleged infidelity.
Already on the commission are Zimbabwe, whose government has been terrorising its political opponents, and Sudan, another country where human rights are regularly abused.
Michael Cashman, the British MEP, yesterday accused Egypt of seeking to block a new UN declaration against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation that is being put forward at the Geneva meeting.
Mr Cashman said: "Not only does the Egyptian government openly and repeatedly violate human rights through their entrapment and torture of homosexuals, but now they are lobbying countries in the UN to allow these medieval attitudes to sexuality to continue."
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But...but....you wanted this, right? That and a world court??
This would be a tremendously funny skit...if it weren't true and on Saturday Night Live...
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If it's in the UN it's just GOTTA be right..... doesn't it?????? :rolleyes:
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Yes the UN is the supreme arbiter of right and just in all the world, all hail the UN. Lets not forget that Iraq's former govt just recently gained the chair to the UN disarmament commision. Now before you UN lovers say it was only becouse of Iraq's alpaphabetical order, and of course it was, how is that an excuse in and what kind of common senses or judgement does the UN practice in general. That is the same as only using alphabetical order to pick kindergraten teachers among a pool of canditades known to include child molestors...
Once again the UN makes a mockery of itself and shows its utter irrelevance and stupididy. I think the US army should invade the UNHQ in new york and put an end to that sorry mess of degernerate chatting losers once and for all.
Death to the UN!
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The inmates have tookover the asylum or rather entering it ;)
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Yes it is hard to believe the number of supposedly intelligent people in here who expect the US and Britain and the rest of the civilized world to kowtow to this totally discredited organization.
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not bad coming from idiots who enslaved negroes for 200 hundred years.....
nice of you too judge others......
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Originally posted by SLO
not bad coming from idiots who enslaved negroes for 200 hundred years.....
nice of you too judge others......
The only idiot around here is you. How far back do you want to go in history to bash any country? What counts is what they are like now, not what they were like 15 years ago, or 50 or 100 or 1000.
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Wow! SLO is such an America hating degenerate that it bothers him more that America violated modern human rights 200 years ago, when slavery was legal, than he is bothered that some of the worlds worst human rights abusers today are on the UN commision for human rights and in fact some of its leaders.
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Originally posted by SLO
not bad coming from idiots who enslaved negroes for 200 hundred years.....
Wow SLO - this is one hell of a posting day for you!! How did you get through high school you... you... STUPID HEAD!!
:rolleyes:
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Originally posted by SLO
not bad coming from idiots who enslaved negroes for 200 hundred years.....
nice of you too judge others......
Wow, not unlike Canada's 200 years of slavery, eh?
Time to learn some history.
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2001-07-12/news_spread_p.html
You'll probably be shocked to learn that slavery wasn't officially ended in Canada until 1833... just 32 years before the United States officially ended the practice as well. But you already knew that, right?
http://innercity.org/holt/chron_1830_end.html
Even Upper Canada, the first area in Canada to limit slavery, didn't do so until 1793. Even then, it failed to eliminate the practice outright, preferring instead to phase out slavery over 25 years. Why such pragmatism? Because, "Many distinguished persons were slave owners, including Peter Russell, who held positions in the executive and legislative councils and became administrator of Upper Canada; Secretary William Jarvis; and Upper Canada' s first Solicitor General, Colonel James Gray. Indeed, six of the sixteen legislators in the first Parliament of Upper Canada were slave owners."
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/magic/mt40.html
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, SLO. America's continued use of slavery was certainly wrong. To point to that slavery while ignoring your own country's history of slaveholding appears ignorant at best and manipulative and self-serving at worst. Nevermind that many northern states had already abolished slavery prior to Canada's attempts in 1793: Vermont in 1777, Massachusetts in 1780, and Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Originally posted by SLO
not bad coming from idiots who enslaved negroes for 200 hundred years.....
nice of you too judge others......
So Habu, GRUNHERZ, LePaul, Maverick and Defiance enslaved blacks for 200 years? Man they must be old!
Or did you mean Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International ?
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LETS ENSLAVE ALL CANADIANS !!!!!!!!!!!!!
yah fetch me a beer canuk
:D
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Well Levi....now you've done it.
We won't here another sound from him in this thread....I would hope you could be slightly more sensitive to those of us entertained by Slo...often my days have slow periods and now I won't know what to do.
Slow periods....I made a joke:)
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PING on the sensitive nerve :D
I'm not the one judging the UN...you are.
you forget your own history and bad mouth everyone else's.....current or past.
your stupid black and white politics just won't work...get with the program.
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"your stupid black and white politics just won't work...get with the program."
Tell me, oh wise one, what exactly was the nuance of lets say hitlers genocide against the jews? What was the gray area there?
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
"your stupid black and white politics just won't work...get with the program."
Tell me, oh wise one, what exactly was the nuance of lets say hitlers genocide against the jews? What was the gray area there?
hahaha talking about psychopaths.....don't forget Stalin...he killed appr. 80 million of his own people.....
find the gray area there......
as for Hitler....ask the Germans not me....I didn't put em there or participant.
now please tell me WTF this has to do with bashing the UN rights commision....
oh btw.... I don't think jews give a rats bellybutton about the UN anyways.
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SLO, give it up, the oven timer is going off.
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Originally posted by Saurdaukar
SLO, give it up, the oven timer is going off.
German ovens...not UN ovens:p
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Originally posted by SLO
not bad coming from idiots who enslaved negroes for 200 hundred years.....
nice of you too judge others......
You know SLO..your anti american drivel is starting to get rather pathatic. Jesus... we aint saints for sure...or history is riddled w/some horriable things but quess what **** face... we fix them w/time.
Damn why do I waste seconds of my life posting a response to such a 1/2 wit?
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Originally posted by SLO
I'm not the one judging the UN...you are.
No, instead you're judging the United States based on its history with slavery, a history that Canada largely shares with it.
Like I said... you're either ignorant or intentionally misleading. In either case, you're wrong.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Originally posted by SLO
PING on the sensitive nerve :D
I'm not the one judging the UN...you are.
you forget your own history and bad mouth everyone else's.....current or past.
your stupid black and white politics just won't work...get with the program.
Okay SLO one... here's the irony. This is an organisation that spouts being some sort of court capable of making sound decisions concerning people/nations and yet they have allowed nations w/clear cut human rights problems...ON GOING PROBLEMS to hold postions of power concerning these issues.
DO you COMPREHEND? Hello..is there anybody there?
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I am reminded of a Simpsons episode where they showed what Homer was thinking and it was quiet except for a cricket chirping.
SLO did chose a very fitting nick though.