Great stuff!
With opinions like those, how did you get a senior University position?

Cheers
RodC

Most of the “international community” consists of uncivilized, undemocratic middens. This so-called community is the very last thing we, in civilized, democratic Australia should be listening to, unless we wish to go back to the Dark Ages.

The UN used to be a joke. Now it is a downright danger to the world.

Australia should not have a bar of the UN, which is run by despots.

Well said, James Allan.

well, i'm inclined to admire any un body that manages to criticize israel. there should be more of it.

everyone criticizes the 'other side', and refuses to accept criticism for 'our (blameless)team'. clearly the new commission has a different composition than the old one. maybe after they feel they have evened up the scoreboard, they will be more evenhanded, but it's unlikely- america never saw a blemish on israeli policy in 60 odd years.

as long as both sides get to publish the warts of the other, bystanders can make up their own minds about where fault lies. for me, the zionists changed a land 85% moslem into a jewish state with bombing and murder. i don't give much credibility to zionist speech anymore.

And this is the same UN that Stephen Hagan relies upon for support in his endless diatribe against the Nigger Brown stand - soon, I hope, to be replaced by the Nigger Brown statue!

"i'm inclined to admire any un body that manages to criticize israel"

DEMOS - Israel surely is not the only, or even the worst, human rights offender. Granted that Israel deserves condemnation, don't you think the author has a point about the utterly one-sided and hypocritical nature of these criticisms?

It is easy to be sceptical, the world body an easy target
Most subscribed to it when we were feeling down after WW2.
It is easy to be sceptical of Bush’s and his sycophantic followers “freedom” a tyrant shall demise etc.
Democracy for all, meaning ?
Take your pick amongst the variants.
An idea of the UN was to have all members sharing and variously chairing committees.
That is it was an attempt at representing all with the idea that discussion might derive a solution which hopefully was not too enfeebled.
Having in order to have enough consensus to form the organisation some nations with extra power.
Which of course they used in pursuit of the welfare of all people.
Impossible? Probably but did anyone really try.?
Many writers would say not really lots of spin and words of great profundity but---?
Okay a crazy idea about as crazy as supposing that if all people abided the precepts of their religion the world would be a better place. Just like the UN the world stage of holy endeavour is full of the kind of oddities your refer to in the UN.
America has been subscribing for some time for a return to government by the strong (and principled) carrying out their exceptional task of providing leadership. As pre WW!?
Vietnam
Yugoslavia
Afghanistan
Iraq
Truthful indeed non partisan truly earnest honest endeavour self less zeal etc Much spin!

So okay we humans appear incapable of devising a scheme though attempts at improving the UN are underway, likely as always to be blocked by special interests and nationalism, but what alternative are you offering?
What do you expect of our leaders our foreign office people? They ignored any and all calls not to go into Kuwait, Iraq etc. They did not go to partake of their wars except later to engage their national corporations.
Thought nothing of strutting the world stage mouthing simplicities , diversions if not down right lies.
So what are you offering? Sceptics to be really useful needs to offer solutions as well as positional plays.

"Call me sceptical."
No you are disingenous and a deceiver.

This lawyer makes no mention of the blatant US bias when it votes on resolutions against Israel, even though he would be intimately familiar with them. When every single other nation votes to condemn an Israeli action, the US steps in and vetoes the resolution (if you don't believe me, check it out, it's all there on the record).

So Allan, why not mention that bias FOR Israel? Btw he also neglected to mention that Israel has developed nuclear missile technology in secret. So why shouldn't Iran?

"Vanun is a former Israeli nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently abducted in Rome by Israeli Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried in secret and convicted of treason.
Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement."

Demos, you speak of Israel taking "a land" which was 85% "Moslem" as though this was a bad thing! (Was it a bad thing when Islamic Armies under Kalid bin Al Waheed blitzkrieged Jerusalem ?)

Lets analyse.

Is it just 'a' land? Nope..its the land given by God to Israel in the past, and while there is debate as to whether Israel currently qualifies for that status (due to their lack of obedience to the Law of Moses and their covenant relationship) the fact remains, that in terms of the foundation/constitution of Israel (read Deuteronomy) if they are obedient to the covenant, they have the right to dwell there.

The land never ceases to be "Israel" the only thing which happens is that the 'children' of Israel are vanquished for a time of reflection until they return to God.

[Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you.]Dt4:1

Now.. lets look at the concept 'Moslem'. "Is this a good thing".

Well.. many Germans and even some British considered that Adolph Hitler was an enlightened far sighted leader of great calibre and charisma. National Socialism produced some economic wonders. Germans went from getting their pay 3 times a day and spending it so it did not lose its value b4 the end of the day to having a 'Volks' wagen.

But none of that changed the reality of the death camps.

"Moslem" means adherance to Sharia law.
-Sharia law gives the death penalty for 'wrong thinking' (apostacy)
-Sharia law regards captive slave girls as a 'possession' which is why they have no say over their Moslem master deciding when or how often to have sex with them.
-Sharia law mutilates bodies of thieves, by cutting off their hands.
-Sharia law provides the death penalty for insulting Mohammad.

Islam, National Socialism ... 6_of_1, half dozen of the other.

Do any of these things happen in Israel ? "no"

Game...Set...Match.

James,

I think you missed that none of the regimes you referred (China, Syria, etc..) claim to be a democracy that respects human rights except Israel. The claim to be a democracy usually attracts criticism in matter of human rights because it seems to contradict the democracy claim.
Its pointless to criticise a dictatorship since they never claimed to be anything but that: dictators.

Great article James,
From what I remember from school, the UN was created just after WWII as a body to prevent future wars. The idea being that an international forum would be there to allow all countries to voice their grievances and hopefully facilitate negotiation and conciliation rather than invasion.
Good in theory but practice has proved that all we have done is give a platform to the most obnoxious tyrants and despots and unfortunately allowed them to claim a level respectability and moral equivalence that they certainly couldn’t achieve if they just remained some non-productive low rent, third world “People’s Democratic Republic of …” that nobody visited and everybody ignored.
You can never improve bad people’s behaviour by being nice to them. By the fact that they are lacking in integrity means that they only interpret benevolence to them as weakness.
When we grant these countries any form of recognition we are only demeaning ourselves and making it harder to uphold moral codes of what is good and what is bad.
The only way to hopefully improve behaviour of the despots and totalitarians is to ignore them and leave them out in the cold until they show that they have improved.

It is time to abandon the UN and set up an alternative elected world parliament of democratic countries. Dictatorships like Cuba, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria and the like would not be eligible. The people of each country would elect their representatives, say, one for every five million people, with a minimum of two per country. There will obviously be some disagreement about where to draw the line of which countries can join and which cannot, as some are democratic in part but not totally.

@Chris C,

Cmon, you can't seriously propose that with a straight face? You are creating an exclusive club of countries that preside over the rest of the world. In effect, a world dictatorship. I don't see that going down well

"Dictatorships like Cuba, Zimbabwe, Libya, Syria"
You forgot to add US to that list. Western countries do business with dictatorships all the time and in the case of the US, install them. Rumsfeld/US was dealing with Saddam Hussein at the time of his atrocities http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/ You'll hear our own politicians saying even now what an evil guy Saddam was (which is true), but he was SO evil they actually helped him and supplied him with the Evil chemical weapons and didn't bat an eyelid while his evil crimes took place.
"The US provided less conventional military equipment than British or German companies but it did allow the export of biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organisation in Chile, the report says."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,866942,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam%27s_Iraq
Lets face it, there are plenty of other evil dictators in the world for which Bush, Blair, and Howard aren't spending a dime or lifting a single military finger for. The difference of course, is the Oil. That explains everything very neatly. No WMD in Iraq. 9/11 attackers were Al Qaeda Saudis, based in Afghanistan. Evil Saddam was left alone by the West while these crimes were being reported by human rights agencies. Listen to those agencies now and you will see the west doesn't give a damn (darfur...etc)

What else? Bush's family did business with Adolph Hitler's Nazis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

The democratically elected leader prior to Pinochet was deposed with the help of the CIA and Pinochet the Dictator was put in his place deliberately.

So you were quite right in pointing out there will be disagreements. Your conception of which are noble democracies and which are dictatorships is inaccurate, more or less fits in with what is seen on television which is simplistic and doesn't tell you any nasty little truths.

"World Government". Now there is a really frightening concept!

‘Apparently the only country that warranted a resolution [from the UN Commission on the Status of Women] for violating women's rights was, wait for it, Israel.’

The resolution in question was in regard to concern for the situation of, and giving assistance to, Palestinian women. Admittedly, this was a political act. However, against the claims of anti-Israel imbalance that were typically overblown in all the usual right-wing mouthpieces of the US press (while the rest of the conference was ignored by the MSM in general) it should be noted that the vote on this resolution was not exactly borderline. The 40 out of 42 nations who voted in favour of the resolution included: Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation and United Kingdom.

Not exactly your average bunch of Israel haters.

It would be a great injustice to single out this one resolution - taken almost as a footnote at the very end of the 2-week timeframe - as representative of the entire CSW 2007 session. The subjects covered among the full list of conclusions and resolutions included FGM, sex trafficking, HIV/AIDS, breaking the cycle of discrimination and violence against women, female child labour, the education of girls and the overall lack of progress on gender equality. The full text of the conclusions and resolutions for the session can be found here:

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw51/pdfs/CSW51_agreed%20_conclusions_ADVANCE%20UNEDITED%20VERSION.pdf

I did not propose that the world parliament of democratic countries dominate the rest at all. I said nothing about the relationship between the democratic world and the undemocratic world, though, as a long-term optimist who has observed the advance of democracy over the last century, I think that eventually every country in the world will be a democratic one.

I did not forget to include the US in my list of dictatorships. For all its imperfections, in the US, its citizens have the vote, there are genuine elections, there are competing parties, and there is freedom of speech.

Nor did I claim the democracies were noble. The ideal of democracy certainly is, but the democracies themselves have their failings, but those failings are nowhere near as great as the failings of dictatorships.

Leigh,

I did not mention world government. Just as the UN is not a world government, a world parliament would not be either. It would be a meeting place. One day, there will be a world government, but not in my lifetime. That is the direction of history. You have only to watch Star Trek to know that. I would prefer that such a world government develop from a democratic organization, not the UN.

Good one James;

But i think your satire has missed the point.

See, its all about the epertisation of global services. I mean, how can we expect to know about any given subject matter without being an expert, or having one present. Why not empannel the board of UN directors with experts skilled in matters as diverse as genocide, clusterbombing, drought making, warmongering, economic breakdown and so on. There is just virtually no way of guaranteeing the expertise of any appointee, except for those who have an expert resume in the relevant field.

By this means, any problem to be addressed by a world super-body can thus assure the world that 'opinion of the experts' is correct and resolute.

We have a pupative form of 'expertise' here in this great land, and I hope I have helped you to affix your sceptisism James.

@Chris C

As I said, the US has installed repressive dictatorships (CIA) in the place of democracy, aided and abetted them, has had business dealings with these evil countries, by selling them chemical weapons and cluster bombs (hi again Saddam Hussein), funding death squads and terrorists in south america. This is meddling in another countries sovereignty, for which I think you would have extreme resentment if another country funded some "freedom fighters" in Australia....oh wait...that sounds an awful lot like funding terror..

"l. I said nothing about the relationship between the democratic world and the undemocratic world, though, as a long-term optimist who has observed the advance of democracy over the last century, I think that eventually every country in the world will be a democratic one."

Uuh, so it will sit there and do nothing? What's the point then? I don't think you realise that a lot of the world's resources are contained in those countries that would be excluded from this organization (oil ect..), as well as a lot of the world's shipping lanes, ocean resources and environment/climate. One world, equal representation. You may not like what these so-called "dictatorships" are, but you certainly don't have a right to presume to create a "world" organisation that excludes them.

Great article. And very, very true!

James is correct. The composition of the UN and its agencies are a complete farce. Arab countries are among the most influencial and the wealthiest in the world - they also have the worst human rights abuses.

Iranian intellectuals and activists are actively calling for Iran to be expelled from the UN in protest against this country's human rights abuses. They cite the Iranian Islamic Consititution and Iranian Islamic Penal Codes. Here are some of the horrors.

The Iranian Islamic Constitution

Article 13 Only followers of three other religions are recognized as minorities (who do not have equal rights with the Muslims believing in twelve imams). The rest are infidels and deprived from all civil rights and killing them is indisputable.

The Iranian Islamic Penal Code

Article 49
A child becomes criminally liable at nine years old for girls and 15 years old for boys, this includes being sentenced to the death. Whenever a boy or a girl who has not reached the age of liability commits a crime, the court is entitled to sentence him/her to corporal punishment ( a public flogging).

Article 83, para 2
Women and girls can be stoned to death; also setting the size of the stones - neither too small not to hurt, nor to large as to kill outright.

Article 110
Homosexuals are to be executed.

Article 207
A Muslim who has killed a non-Muslim has impunity unless only subject to paying fines.

Article 222
A sane person who has killed an insane person has impunity.

Article 220
A father or grand father who kills his child or grand child has impunity. (But, a five-year-old child, who kills some one, is punishable – page 152 ….)

Article 201
A thief, the first time must get his/her four fingers of the right hand cut. The second time, he/she must get his left feet cut from below the tarsus. The third time he must be convicted to imprisonment, and fourth time, even if he steals in the prison, his conviction must be execution.

Article 513
Apostates from Islam are to be executed.

Also see: http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/ir_un2005a.pdf

We are also ignoring the pleas of many Islamic intellectuals and dissidents. Islamic Arabs intellectuals are appealing to the West to help bring change to their countries. Both Tawfik Hamid and Ayman al-Zawahiri among many, many others, state that there is much that is wrong with the Islamic world, that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence and human rights abuses. They call for an approved, theologically rigorous interpetation if Islam challenging the accepted norm.

However, these intellectuals also place blame on the non-Muslim "priests of enlightenment" in the West who come actively and passively to the Islamists' defence.

These "priests of enlightenment", states Ayman al-Zawahiri: " ... who unceasingly claim to support human rights have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism, such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity."

Wait a sec Danielle - Ayman Al Zawahiri?

Everyone points the finger at Osama Bin Laden, however the reality is that he has always been little more than a financier. Zawahiri has long been one of the key figures in coordinating terrorist attacks, dating decades back to his time as a dissident in Egypt.

Where are you quoting him from? I'm curious. Are you referring to the same Zawahiri?

TurnRightThenLeft,

Thank you for pointing out my mistake. Ayman Al Zawahiri is, of course, leader of Jemaah Islamiya ... and now I have libelled him ...!! Perhaps Osama Bin Laden is this very moment trumpetting: “off with his head!”

Tawfik Hamid, author of the article “The Trouble with Islam”, from which extracts I cited, was previously a terrorist with Jemaah Islamiya, but is now a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West. The whole article encapsulating what other Muslims are saying, appears here:

www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=11000989

Courageous Muslim intellectuals and dissidents are becoming more vocal about human rights abuses, the need for democracies, and rigorous examination of Islam.

Iranian dissidents maintain a very active website Free Iran from where they petition various bodies, such as the UN - albeit an exercise in futility - protesting the current Iranian regime. One dissident observed that the West’s obsession with “political correctness” trivialises his people as human beings, in the same way the West, in a bygone era, saw them as “the white man’s burden.”

Change cannot be imposed on these countries from with-out, nor should it be. Dissidents are not asking for their countries to be invaded. However, we should support those who want change. Real change can only come from within.

I am surprised by some writers above demonstrating such illfounded anti-Israel sentiments, even cynicism. They obviously refuse to both learn and understand Israel’s history, nor the Palestinian situation. However, I suppose we others should try and be understanding ...

Such writers are demonstrating typical affective implicit/explicit prejudice. I suspect they come from a background where anti-semitism was the norm. Research indicates that this type of prejudice is extremely difficult to overcome being, as it is, amygdala-mediated and relatively indelible (low neural plasticity). Not only is such prejudice relatively indelible, but any information presented will be interpreted and processed as confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is orbito-frontal PFC mediated. In other words, emotion overcomes fact and rational thought as well.

I suggest they read Michael Shermer’s study on brain-imaging and confirmation bias, drawing on Drew Western’s research conducted at Emory University.

http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000CE155-1061-1493-906183414B7F0162

Whilst such writers will not change their point of view, perhaps they will at least acknowledge that they are prejudiced. As Socrates said “the unexamined life ...”
(Apology 38a).