What even are human rights?
God damn. The big news of the moment is that Manafort is off to the slammer, but there’s another breaking item that’s horrifying: the US is going to quit the UN Human Rights Council.
Talks with the United States over how to reform the main U.N. rights body have failed to meet Washington’s demands, activists and diplomats say, suggesting that the Trump administration will quit the Geneva forum whose session opens on Monday.
A U.S. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the withdrawal appeared to be “imminent” but had no details.
Diplomatic sources said it was not a question of if but of when the United States retreats from the Human Rights Council, which is holding a three-week session through July 6.
Why? Putative “anti-Israel bias.”
The forum, set up in 2006, has a permanent standing agenda item on suspected violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, which Washington wants removed.
Washington says the Council is stacked with opponents of Israel and boycotted it for three years under President George W. Bush before rejoining under Barack Obama in 2009.
The 47-member forum last month voted to set up a probe into killings in Gaza and accused Israel of excessive use of force. The United States and Australia cast the only “no” votes. Israel’s ambassador in Geneva, Aviva Raz Shechter, castigated the Council for “spreading lies against Israel”.
Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un is a smart talented guy who makes his people sit right up when he talks.
I would very much like to see a day in which the United States can be a consistent, respectable player in the discussion and advocacy of human rights. But that isn’t today, and it’s not a bad thing to have that recognized by ourselves and by others. Individuals, certainly – quite a few of us, and that’s a point of pride. The state as such – no, not now, not when it’s hostage to the evil and the indifferent.
The council is packed with Islamist dictatorships. Its dead silence over human-rights violations ANYWHERE other than Israel has been deafening.
But who ever dreamed that a president could simply decree the U.S. out of a major international body on a whim?
Trump voters.
@2 islamists that the USA helped get appointed to the Council…