Which club would you like to join?

Club 1:Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka.
Club 2:Bolivia, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Japan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, Republic of Korea, Uruguay, Zambia
Club 3:Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

If it helps you decide, Club 1 has an average score from Freedom House, blending civil and political liberties, of 4.55, or ‘not free’. Club 2 has 2.5, or free, and Club 3 has 1.25, also free but very convincingly so.

And what are these clubs about? Well Club 1 ratified the latest human rights farce, Club 2 abstained and Club 3 voted against. Amongst other bits which anyone at all enamoured of liberty ought to reject (as the voting shows they did):
Clause 4 sounds like they don’t like Pat Oliphant’s cartoons (‘recent serious instances of deliberate stereotyping of religions‘), but I have a feeling that isn’t really what they meant;
Clause 6 is s worth reproducing in full:

6. Expresses concern at laws or administrative measures that have been specifically designed to control and monitor Muslim minorities, thereby stigmatizing them and legitimizing the discrimination that they experience;

Clause 9 is about the ‘defamation of religion’. Presumably they don’t mean teaching blood libel in Arab schools, because that is implausibly far-fetched. They must just not like Richard Dawkins.
Clause 10 is about protecting religions from contempt – oh if we were more contemptuous! Happily it seems to leave room for being contemptuous of the UNHCR UNHRC.

‘Islam’ is mentioned 10 times, Muslim a few, ‘Islamaphobia’ twice or thrice. Needless to say no other religion merits a mention.

Something like this makes me think that the US was right at take I, per John Bolton – the world would be better off without a UNHCR UNHRC full stop.

(edited for a silly but important typo)

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jimparker
jimparker
14 years ago

Well this post was looking lonely so I’m tossing a comment in.

What’s your point Pat? The UNHCR is crap?

You could have stated that in four words instead of a ponderous and arch begging the question and demanding the answer 300 plus words. I come to Club Troppo to read people making a good point instead of trying to score a cheap one.

jimparker
jimparker
14 years ago

OK Pat. I think where you really went wrong first with that post was not spelling out the CL acronym in full at first.

I still don’t know exactly what it stands for but have hazarded a guess that it represents various paras of whatever the UNCHR is up to now.

“The bit about clubs was only meant to allude to the question of which club Rudd will be courting in his keenness for Australia to get a security council seat.”

Only start alluding to it once you’re confident your readers have spelt it out i their own heads.

Basically, while I not don’t not disagree with the central point you’re trying to make, (ie: Exactly how much bullshit do you have to swallow these days to score a seat on the UN SecCon), I think you were a bit too eager to make too many points at once.

Also that Freedom House table is quite risible. No coherent definition of “freedom” and their list seems to have been assembled in crayon during a drinking game. “Free!”, “That’s a shot!”. “Partly Free!”, OK, Gulpers”, “Not Free!”, “Pass the bottle.”.

Starting at ‘A’, Afghanistan offers more economic freedom than anywhere else – grab a gun and start growing drugs – while moving to “U” the UK has more CCTV surveillance per capita than anywhere else in the world.

What you should have done is ruthlessly fisked what ever the UNCHR has come up with now, in whatever this “CL” format is while weaving in a running commentary about how ex-diplomant Rudd’s push to score a SecCon seat will basically mean fuck all in the big long run.

Stuff trying to play the morality, ethics and principles cards. Treat it as absurdist realpolitik. That’s what they do.

jimparker
jimparker
14 years ago

Shorter me. I think I agree with the point I think you’re trying to make. I just think you’ve made it very badly.

nysa67
nysa67
14 years ago

you mean UNHRC right? UNHCR do I great job from my point of view

NPOV
NPOV
14 years ago

I don’t quite understand the conclusion – why would the world be better off without the UNHRC, vs having an effective and realistic UNHRC?

John Greenfield
John Greenfield
14 years ago

The net inpact on the “world” would be roughly zip. “International human rights norms” was an experiment, it failed, let’s cut our losses. Australia could do much more with the time, money, and energy, spent on this creepy “human rights” cult, and the indignity of our Governor General gushing and fawning over the world’s wretches. What an insult. The number of people who care about this crap would be about 7 and that’s including the resume-padding legal academics, who appear to be the only people who want to keep us involved.

Tel_
Tel_
14 years ago

http://www.unitedmotorcyclecouncil.com/

These laws allow the police to apply for Control Orders against individuals which will result in people being restricted from socialising with friends, attending events, entering premises – including premises which they may actually own or lease. The law will make it a crime to associate with members of a declared organisation, and associating has been defined to include communication by telephone, letter, facsimile, email and other electronic means.

These laws have supposedly been implemented in order to prevent serious criminal activity from occurring. What is of concern is that in achieving this it is likely to cost dearly in every day civil rights that we take for granted. In effect, the law assumes guilt by association, it assumes that once you have committed an offence you are always a criminal and past offences can be relied upon to convince the Attorney General and/or the Court that you are likely to go on to commit further offences. It restricts freedom of movement, it restricts your right to peaceful enjoyment of your own property. Forget about freedom of association.

These laws ignore the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” and instead, decisions can be made based on the fact that a person was charged with a crime previously, regardless of whether or not that charge resulted in a conviction.

Personally, I feel a lot safer with the bikers than with the current NSW Labor government. The bikers are more honest, less inclined to take out innocent bystanders, and far more predictable and trustworthy. I’ll admit that I have voted Labor in the past, but I doubt I could ever do in future. Somehow I never expected it would come to this. I’ll also admit that I send a regular donation to Amnesty International which will also will stop if they don’t make some effort to put an end to such insanely dangerous extensions of government power.

Tel_
Tel_
14 years ago

http://www.aol.com.au/news/story/Protest-at-secret-search-powers/1830481/index.html

The NSW Attorney-General introduced legislation to Parliament this month that would allow police to search the homes of people not suspected of any crime, but whose homes adjoined those of people who are. The laws build on state terrorism legislation in 2002.

“None of us, or our members, were aware that the NSW Government proposed such laws, that such laws were considered necessary or on what basis they were considered necessary,” said an open letter signed by groups including the International Commission of Jurists, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, and the NSW Council for Civil Liberties.

“The way that it has been introduced without public consultation and debate and is being pushed rapidly through the Parliament demonstrates the very real, if not urgent, need for consolidated human rights protection,” it said.

Looks like I have some idea of where to send the AI money to.

Tel_
Tel_
14 years ago

I always thought that they needed to divide their annual report into a few chapters,

Yes I get your point, there are much worse places than Australia, I expect we will see economic refugees from the USA wanting to get here before longer.

On the other hand, it’s easy to find historic examples where things went from good to rotten in a relatively short time once a mob mentality became acceptable governance and safeguards were removed. It would be heartbreaking to see it happen here. What’s more, if we manage to crap up our own country then we can forget about doing anything useful for anyone overseas, for example, I doubt that you could even get away with writing such reports in places like China or Singapore.

During the last 10 years we have had so many erosions of freedom in Australia and both major parties have been involved, that’s probably the scariest thing for me. Mind you, same is happening in just about every developed nation. Maybe the US will crash so hard that the survivors start reading their Constitution over again.

The theory has it that when the primary military muscle is a mass army of yeomen (be it archers, or riflemen, or just factory production of bulk equipment) then you have Democracy. When the main military muscle is a small, highly trained and well equipped elite force then you end up with a Feudal System.