GOP Vixen

Moon Over Darfur

U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon recently wrote an op-ed piece about his trip to Darfur. Moon calls the Darfur crises "complex" and describes it as a "society at war with itself" as well as an "environmental crises". Sudanese President and chief thug Omar al-Bashir is depicted as a real humanitarian for his "unqualified commitment" to peace and Moon even manages to praise the generous Moammar Gaddafi. Moon’s solution to lasting peace in Darfur is a "social contract for peace". How sweet.

Nowhere does Moon ever mention the thousands that have been raped and murdered by the government sactioned Janjaweed. Lost in the "complexity" of Moon’s Darfur is the fact that Bashir gave a free hand to the Arab Janjaweed to eliminate the Christians in Darfur in the worst act of genocide since Rwanda. Moon also seems to attribute the problems in Darfur to a shortage of water as if the Janjaweed raped and killed thousands because they were thirsty.

The U.N has once again proven that it is about as useful as a snow blower in Death Valley and Ban Ki-Moon is not about to get his hands dirty pulling "weeds". Now that the people of Darfur have been effectively wiped out, the U.N. rides in on its white horse to save the day. In a couple of years, someone will undoubtedly nominate Moon, Bashir, and Gaddafi for a Nobel Peace prize for saving Darfur.

The U.N. sucks -- I mean, really, really sucks

Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to be on vacation, but once I check my e-mail leisure goes out the window: Just learned that Libya was elected today to head a U.N. panel that will put together a follow-up event to the stunningly racist and anti-Semitic Durban conference of 2001. Also on the 20-member board for the 2009 world conference supposedly intended to combat racism? Iran! Yeah, that regime that wants to annihilate all those Israeli Jews.

From Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, in Geneva:

"Choosing Libya and Iran to fight racism is like choosing Jack the Ripper to fight sexual harassment. Their election is a painful defeat for all who believe in the anti-discrimination agenda, and a setback for the international human rights movement as a whole. It sends the wrong message and should ring alarm bells. Moammar Khadafy's Libya is the same regime that gave its highest award in 2002 to convicted French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, that routinely brutalizes black African migrants, and that tortures Bulgarian and Palestinian medics for the crime of being foreigners. It defies common sense and morality to put countries with dreadful records on racism in charge of a world committee to combat racism. Libya’s long record of racism, intolerance and xenophobia clearly does not merit such a reward."

Once again, proof that the U.N. is about as useful to world peace as kangaroo dung.

U.N. asked to lend a hand in Iraq

Getting the United Nations to do anything but pass flowery resolutions is like getting Boris the hamster to scrub his own cage. According to today's Washington Post, after three years of urging the U.N. to step up and have a greater role in hammering out the sectarian conflict that's made Iraq a mess, the U.S. and UK will push for a vote at the Security Council on a resolution to invite the U.N. to the party. Updating the WaPo article, a source at the State Department tells me this is unlikely to happen Thursday as hoped.

Looking at a copy of the draft resolution, it seeks to extend the mandate for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq for twelve months to "advise, support, and assist" the government of Iraq on solving political strife (like, perhaps, all the Sunnis walking out of the Cabinet), elections, regional dialogue, reintegrating former militia members, conducting a census, and resolving boundary disputes, like Kurdistan (which is best decided within Iraq before Turkey, its elections now in the past, decides it wants to invade). Not to mention, Kurdistan has been the model for economic development in Iraq, but terrorists are now exporting their bombings to Irbil.

The resolution also calls for member states to pony up the material support to back the UNAMI, and asks for quarterly progress reports to the council. The U.N. is offering to boost its staff in Baghdad from 65 to 95 by October.

I really hope the U.N. will step up and lend a hand in this humanitarian crisis -- and not like they "help" in southern Lebanon, where "peacekeeping force" means peacefully watching as Hezbollah rearms right in front of your eyes.

Zimbabwe to chair U.N. economic commission

Isn't this the most brilliant effing idea since putting China on the Human Rights Council!! On Friday Zimbabwe won approval to chair the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development. Obviously, encouraging development in one's own country is NOT a prerequisite. Neither is having an economy that doesn't involve cheating and stealing from your own people. And it certainly doesn't matter if you had a flourishing agrarian economy that's gone to hell under Bobby Mugabe.

Congratulations, U.N., for adding another embarrassment to the ever-expanding dossier!!

A funny thing happened on the way to the press freedom panel...

As I reveal in my Los Angeles Daily News column today:

"...I was asked to moderate a panel on the U.N. trip to bring attention to these very issues. Hosted by the U.S. Mission to the United Nations last Thursday, the panel included Jeffrey Krilla (deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department), Watson Meng (founder of China's Boxun News), Frank Xie (Boxun blogger), Egyptian blogger Nora Younis and Tala Dowlatshahi from Reporters Without Borders. Live blogging captured the presentation of various views on how to protect bloggers' free speech around the globe.

Interestingly, the event itself faced censorship. Fliers advertising the panel featured a woman with duct tape over her mouth sitting at a laptop computer, on which was superimposed a news brief about the imprisonment of blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman - datelined, of course, Egypt.

Carolyn Vadino, deputy spokeswoman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said that the ambassador's office was asked by U.N. officials to remove the Egypt dateline from the image if they wanted the fliers approved for posting. So after the U.S. refused to censor the flier, U.N. officials responded they could only approve fliers for 'cultural events.'

The purported reason for the initial denial was that a member state was supposedly singled out. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and throws young bloggers in prison for dissing Hosni Mubarak, though, one wonders how the usage of the country's name could be deemed unfair. ..."

Edgy! Read the whole thing!

 

Free-speech panel takes the U.N. by storm!

Or at least we marched up to U.N. HQ to severely annoy some member states who feel it's all right to throw bloggers in jail just for exercising their inherent free-speech rights (having worn my once-favorite heels block after block, I called this route from the U.S. ambassador's office to the United Nations the DKNY Death March). Despite efforts by the U.N. to flub U.S. efforts to advertise the event (tune into my upcoming column for more details), the U.N. conference room was packed at one point. The diverse crowd included bloggers Gateway Pundit, Atlas Shrugs and MSNBC.com, and media included Fox News, Al-Jazeera and Al-Ahram. The panel consisted of Jeffrey Krilla (deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor at the State Department), Watson Meng (founder of China's Boxun News Network), Frank Xie (Boxun blogger), Egyptian bloggress Nora Younis, and Tala Dowlatshahi from Reporters Without Borders.

I was honored to be the moderator of this panel, which means I got the chairman's seat with the big wood gavel! I gave a brief statement about blogging becoming more dangerous in oppressive nations, including a Kareem Amer quote. Jeff talked about the power of the Internet to spread democracy and freedom and increasing challenges faced by the press. Tala then opined that bloggers should be granted the same legal protections as journalists, then went into some Pelosi-praising and Josh Wolf stuff with which I disagreed. Watson shared information about Boxun News and stated that China's Web censorship makes the country's access like a company intranet, rather than the worldwide Internet. Frank presented powerful visuals that showed how Chinese Web access is restricted. Nora wrapped up by telling everyone how new the blogging phenomenon is to Egypt, how quickly it caught on and how dangerous it's recently become. (And when she mentioned that someone went to jail for insulting Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, I wondered if I'd get life in prison for naming my buck-toothed hamster after that dweeb.)

After everybody wrapped up their statements, we launched into the audience questions. Some were good queries; some were people wanting a platform to make their statements. I got to squeeze in my statement at this point, in response to a question about the HRC, opining that China and Tunisia should be kicked off the Human Rights Council and Belarus should be denied the seat it seeks. And because I don't want to ruin my column, I'll leave it at that (but you can read more about the day in this State Department article). But a huge thanks to everyone who came out and made the event a success, and to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations for hosting this free-press event (which, unlike the other lunchtime conference there that day, was open to the public).

Sadly, I got home to find the story of Al-Jazeera of two Azeri Muslim journalists sentenced to prison Friday for publishing an article that said European societies were more successful because Christianity is more peaceful than Islam. Samir Sadagatoglu, chief editor of the Senet weekly newspaper, got four years and journalist Rafik Tagi got three years. The two also have a fatwa on their heads -- read the official fatwa text here. When it comes to battling for press freedom, the work of everyone who values free expression is never done.

And my impression of the city on my first trip to New York? Let's just say I never want to hear anyone say Angelenos are bad drivers again. The cabbies there are friendlier than D.C. taxi drivers (though I have an astounding rate of getting grumpy D.C. cabbies to chitchat) but riding through Manhattan with one is like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride on acid.

Getting ready to head for the U.N.

Next week I'm going to the United Nations to moderate an impressive panel on free Internet speech for World Press Freedom Day. Now, a friend expressed amazement that they'd even let me in the door. But who would pass up an opportunity to call out the press-rights violations of China, Egypt, and other members right on U.N. turf? In honor of the occasion, I even named my new gold inca aquarium snail Boutros Boutros Snail (Kofi the snail, who did a great job of sucking up to scum, sadly passed a couple of weeks ago).

More on the event as it unfolds! But a few things to ponder: I think it's important for people to realize that the United Nations was not magically cured by the departure of Annan. Just look at the membership of the Human Rights Council. "In its first year of existence, the Human Rights Council has proven just as feckless in confronting human rights abuses and as vulnerable to politically motivated attacks on Israel as its predecessor," wrote Heritage fellow Brett D. Schaefer in a memo last month affirming the U.S. decision to not seek membership on the council. I'll have a piece out next week in a biggie publication (barring any more psycho armed college students nabbing headlines) noting one particular recent disturbing faux pas of the council.

Other items to check out include Anne Bayefsky's Eye on the UN site, which most recently notes that a document from the UN's Palestinian rep calls terrorists "martyrs"; the great study "A Diminished World Body: An Overview of the UN and Israel" from the American Jewish Committee; and the stuff of Nile Gardiner, who took the U.N. to task back during the Kofi era.

Gore needed on Mars

Scientists are reporting that Mars is experiencing global warm at a rate up to four times faster than earth. While it may make sense to question the proposition that man is the cause of global warming here on earth when other planets are also experiencing similar warming trends, the U.N. stubbornly persists in insisting man is the only culprit. Of course, the reason for this absurdity becomes clear once you realize that nature cannot be taxed. However, you can tax the hell out of man, especially if you can convince him that it is all in the interest of saving the planet.

Even though earth needs Al Gore to save us all from ourselves, it appears Mars needs him much more. We earthlings should make the ultimate sacrifice and immediately send Al Gore into outer space. No doubt, Al will discover the Mars Rover is really a Ford Explorer, which is the real reason for Mars global warming. NASA bastards!

Two thoughts on the U.N. climate change report

Released with much fanfare today:

• Wouldn't it be great if the United Nations got this pissed off at terrorists?

...and...

• How soon until the U.N. blames Israel for global warming?

Meet Kofi the snail!

For the first time in my life, I've learned how to adequately manage an aquarium (translation: keep my fish alive). My betta Ayman al-Zawafishi and African dwarf frog Chirac have a lovely 2-gallon existence with pearly marbles, fluffy plants and a nice fake rock to play around (and the rock has a cave for Zawafishi to fittingly hide in). But recently, despite frequent water changes, an algae problem arose, which apparently means healthy living conditions but is ugly to look at. So today I went down to Petco and bought a blue snail, which has a very light blue-gray shell.

And one of the best parts of getting pets is naming them. Thinking along the lines of escargot, I first considered something French. But then I thought about the fact that snails move slowly and suck up to scum, thus I've named the snail Kofi.

However, Kofi is apparently furiously trying to rid himself of the name, considering that he's gotten to work quickly on cleaning up the algae. His long-term commitment remains to be seen, though. And he's still sucking up to scum.

UPDATE: I just found out that Kofi the snail is a hemaphrodite that has sex with itself. I reserve all comment.