The Livni fiasco and the hypocrisy of UN edicts

[Skybird]

Though it is written with Britain on the author's mind, it is very true for European and Western policy in general.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...=1261083446859

As a piece of legal grotesquerie, the attempted arrest of the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has its funny side. The biggest joke lies in the role of the UN. It was the UN Human Rights Council that endorsed the report by the retired South African judge Richard Goldstone on the Gaza conflict, in which Israel as well as Hamas was accused of war crimes.

The fun lies in the membership of this august body, and guardian of all our rights. Currently those empowered to sit in judgment on the Israeli democracy include Cuba, China, Russia, Kirghizstan, Djibouti and Qatar. In a non-democracy, of course, Ms Livni would have had no bother; with no elections to dislodge her she would still be a minister, and so exempt from arrest. There must be a lesson there.

The joke gains resonance when we remember that in 2003 the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Commission elected a Libyan to its chair. It is of course due to Israel being surrounded by similarly backward and corrupt regimes, such as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as to Israeli recalcitrance, that the Middle East remains in a permanent state of tension and Palestinians suffer.

So the Livni affair is a joke on democracies everywhere, though especially on us, which makes it a sombre matter. The move to get her arrested is part of the climate of creeping anti-Semitism in this country. We do not go in for the hard stuff yet, but whether it is subtly but relentlessly bent TV reporting of the Middle East conflict, or attempts in British universities to deny Israeli academics the freedom of expression notionally protected at the UN by countries such as Cuba or Libya, institutionalised anti-Semitism, assisted now by the law, is gaining ground.

Yet it would be a mistake to take too narrow a view of the business. Something in our culture and mind-set exposes us to asinine legal anomalies of this kind, and not just where Israel is concerned. While Ms Livni is absent from London, known Islamist terrorists are free to walk the streets, or to sit cosily at home filling in claims for benefits, because the law has made it impossible to convict them without endangering our sources of information.
Even if these people are grievously misjudged, being little more than agitators in the cause of mass murder, the same laws mean that more hands-on types can pursue their designs with a degree of impunity from imprisonment or expulsion not available elsewhere.

The literal-mindedness that all this reflects has long been a British failing. The flipside of our relatively sane and just public culture, it can be seen in the slavish implementation of EU directives widely circumvented on the Continent with government assistance — to the fury of my former farming constituents; or in our blundering naivety in seeking to apportion blame and bring order and clean-living in place of the sempiternal hatreds of the Middle East. Maddening enough at home, when we seek to impose its values and assumptions abroad the literal mind becomes positively dangerous.

The upstanding, honest-to-God British magistrate who showed neither fear nor favour towards a former minister is an example of what might be called the Mrs Tiggywinkle style of adjudication in foreign affairs. “Bright and clean, bright and clean, cleaner than it’s ever been,” sang the endlessly busy clear-starcher, scrubbing and ironing away. The British, pretty much alone in the world, solemnly and doggedly seek to execute laws or resolutions voted through by a United Nations that can never be more than the sum of its parts, and of which only a small minority of member states enjoy anything approaching the rule of law.

Not that it troubles their leaders. How well I remember sitting through finger-wagging lecturettes on how to achieve a truly ethical foreign policy, given to our Foreign Secretary in private meetings in the interstices of UN debates by drug-running South American prime ministers or presidents, bribe-grabbing Arab princelings, or the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the twist in whose lips, an English tabloid was disrespectful enough to suggest, had come about through an incurable addiction to lying.
Under our pristine, ultra-democratic system (any politically motivated Joe can apply for an arrest warrant under the International Criminal Court Act, 2001) and indulgent lawyers, Britain is a soft touch for propagandistic exercises like the one we have seen. And whatever the real reason that Tzipi Livni didn’t in the end come, the ruse most certainly succeeded.
Their minds filled with selective TV imagery of the Gaza conflict, the reaction of many a fair-minded Brit to the idea of seizing a former Israeli minister will be: “Why not? They’re trying the Serbs, aren’t they? And it’s the UN, isn’t it?”

Then there is the disruption to Anglo-Israeli relations, and the loss of the contacts and discussion she would have had, at a time when the Israelis are being obdurate over settlements and the Middle East peace process is in the doldrums.

Glad of the distraction, the Iranians will meanwhile gain a few more days or weeks in which to perfect their nuclear triggers, and to polish the speech we must expect a few months hence, announcing with regretful mien that, though they began with a peaceful atomic programme, Israeli threats to Tehran and genocide in Gaza left them with no option but to develop a deterrent ... At which point the international community, with a sideways glance at Tel Aviv, will bow its head in acquiescence.

George Walden is a former diplomat and Conservative MP. His latest book is China: A Wolf in the World?

A creeping form of anti-semitism as well as a rushing form of western dhimmitude seem to be like two lovers holding hands. There seems to be correlation between events and attitudes of both.

The UN Human Rights Council: What a joke. Check out the members.

[Skybird]

I know what you mean. I agree.

Even as a forum the UN is a failure.

Anything at COP15 should have been an ongoing discussion at the UN, without the need of any other special meeting, and without any time limits.

I strongly distrust the UN.

Creeping Antisemitism ?
Is that like your islamaphobia Skybird?

Though its strange that you chose an article about a report complied by a Jewish judge to be somehow indicative of antisemitism.

In Finland an association, Free thinkers, put adds on the sides of buses saying "God probably doesn't exist". Only ones publicly objecting were the muslims.

Thats wierd as the christians over in Britain have been going crazy about those ads for ages.
Whats even wierder is the amount of grief the Freethinker has gotten in Finland over the years from Christians and Jews, in fact its been getting grief from all religions for over well 100 years now.

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Creeping Antisemitism ?
Is that like your islamaphobia Skybird?

Though its strange that you chose an article about a report complied by a Jewish judge to be somehow indicative of antisemitism.


Thats wierd as the christians over in Britain have been going crazy about those ads for ages.
Whats even wierder is the amount of grief the Freethinker has gotten in Finland over the years from Christians and Jews, in fact its been getting grief from all religions for over well 100 years now.

Lol, majority of Finns are first of all Finns.. Unlike those bus drivers that teared the adds off and refused to drive them.

Its a very homogeneous country, believers and atheists are about 50/50 but its considerd a private matter. I know many couples that believe differently but are happily married.

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by Snestorm

The UN Human Rights Council: What a joke. Check out the members.

Agreed. If only the League of Nations still existed. THEY GOT S*** DONE.

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

Agreed. If only the League of Nations still existed. THEY GOT S*** DONE.

Like what?

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by Happy Times

Like what?

Well asides from their anti-human trafficking work and forced slavery investigations in Africa which abolished the practice entirely in Liberia, Morocco, and Egypt, between 1920 and mid-1925 and their human rights activities which set a basis for organizations the world over today (including the League's descendant, the UN), they solved a border dispute that very well likely would have turned into a war between the Finns and the Swedes, they saved Austria from a total economic collapse in the aftermath of the Great War, they prevented the outbreak of what would have been the Third Balkan War (the previous two had produced some 850,000 casualties alone), they solved the Saar Region Crisis between Germany and France- thus preventing a further confrontation between the two. Furthermore, they solved other territorial disputes in Albania, Mosul, Columbia, Peru, put down a revolt in Memel, resolved the war between the Greeks and Bulgarians in October 1925 and the Polish occupation of the border towns and cities belonging to Lithuania. All this in 10 years. Quite impressive when you consider that the system they had was extremely experimental and ultimately failed as a result of power problems and disputes between the membering nations 26 years after it had been created. If the United States had joined, it's very likely that the organization could have survived in the end. Granted some changes would have been necessary to make things more productive, but given that the United States was the richest country in the world at the time (not to mention one of the most resourceful), it's not hard to ponder what could and would have realistically been done.

Lol, majority of Finns are first of all Finns.. Unlike those bus drivers that teared the adds off and refused to drive them.

An interesting viewpoint. So someone like Timo Junkkaala wouldn't be a real Finn then, neither would Tapani Makinen.
Though it does raise the question.
When you wrote .......

Only ones publicly objecting were the muslims.

.....
were you lying, telling lies, making up things or just writing things that were untrue?
Unless of course you consider the Pentecostals and Orthodox to be somehow Muslim, maybe the Lutherans in Turku and Tampere where the ads were being placed were really Muslims too, as were the Lutherans in Helsinki who joined the objections and of course the famously devout Muslim Finnish Bible Institute.
Good luck trying to explain why you felt the need to lie.

I suppose there is an important lesson there Happy Times.
If you have to make up bull**** to demonstrate your point then you don't have a valid point.

[Happy Times]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

An interesting viewpoint. So someone like Timo Junkkaala wouldn't be a real Finn then, neither would Tapani Makinen.
Though it does raise the question.
When you wrote ............
were you lying, telling lies, making up things or just writing things that were untrue?
Unless of course you consider the Pentecostals and Orthodox to be somehow Muslim, maybe the Lutherans in Turku and Tampere where the ads were being placed were really Muslims too, as were the Lutherans in Helsinki who joined the objections and of course the famously devout Muslim Finnish Bible Institute.
Good luck trying to explain why you felt the need to lie.

I suppose there is an important lesson there Happy Times.
If you have to make up bull**** to demonstrate your point then you don't have a valid point.

You really have become a sad character in my books.

Accusing me of lying is something i would expect from you.
When this forum has a lot of Finns it would be bordering crazy to post anything intentionally false information.

Neither of those names said nothing to me before i googled them..
Fact of the matter is that the protesting muslim bus drivers was the story on the media here.
And the Finnish media is by no means "Islamophopic" as you like to say, on the contrary in many cases.

Here is an interwiew of Jussi K. Niemelä, chairman of the freethinkers, concerning the campagn and the file, to the council of ethics in advertising, made against it.
http://www.mtv3.fi/uutiset/kotimaa.s...2009/06/907225

Excerpts.

"Vapaa-ajattelijoiden ja Humanistiliiton mainoskampanjasta syntynyt kohu ei ole Niemelää yllättänyt. Sen sijaan muslimiyhteisön voimakas reagointi tuli yllätyksenä."

"The row about the campaign byt the freethinkers and humanis league didnt suprise Niemelä. But the strong responce from the muslim community came as an suprise"

"- Missään muussa maassa, missä kampanja on järjestetty, eivät muslimit ole reagoineet näin. Tämä on jotenkin ilmeisesti masinoitu tai sitten vain jostain syystä muslimit reagoivat voimakkaasti täällä Suomessa. Tiedän, että Englannissa yksi bussikuski kieltäytyi ajamasta sikäläisen kampanjan tarralla varustettua bussia. Siitä nousi tuolloin kohu. Tämä kyseinen kuski oli käsittääkseni kristitty, Niemelä sanoo."

"-In no other country where this campaign has been held have the muslims reacted this way. This has either been organized or for some other reason the muslims react this strong here in Finland.
I know that in England one busdriver refused to drive a bus that had the local campaigns sticker. It caused a row. I understant that the particular driver was an cristian, Niemelä says."

"Toinen yllätys kohumainoksen tiimoilta on Niemelälle ollut kirkon yllättävän positiivinen suhtautuminen kampanjaan.

- Tämä saattaa kertoa siitä, että kirkko osaa pelata mediapeliä. Sen sijaan muslimiyhteisöllä on siinä vielä opeteltavaa, puheenjohtaja aprikoi"

"Another suprise concerning the campaing to Nimelä has been the suprisingly positive reaction from the church.

-This might indicate that the church handles the media game. Instead the muslim community has learning to do concerning that, the chairman thinks."

So Tribesman,here is a lesson for you, but as allways, you probably wont take it.

[Happy Times]

In Finland an association, Free thinkers, put adds on the sides of buses saying "God probably doesn't exist". Only ones publicly objecting were the muslims.