Spencer: Obama Declares War on Free Speech

In Human Events today I discuss the latest bad news in the Obama Administration's ongoing quiet war against free speech:

The Obama Administration has now actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council last Friday, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."

What could be wrong with that? Plenty.

First of all, there's that little matter of the First Amendment, which preserves Americans' right to free speech and freedom of the press, which are obviously mutually inclusive. Any law that infringed on speech at all -- far less in such vague and sweeping terms -- would be unconstitutional.

"Incitement" and "hatred" are in the eye of the beholder -- or more precisely, in the eye of those who make such determinations. The powerful can decide to silence the powerless by classifying their views as "hate speech."

The Founding Fathers knew that the freedom of speech was an essential safeguard against tyranny: the ability to dissent, freely and publicly and without fear of imprisonment or other reprisal, is a cornerstone of any genuine republic.

If some ideas cannot be heard and are proscribed from above, the ones in control are tyrants, however benevolent they may be.

Now no less distinguished a personage than the President of the United States has given his imprimatur to this tyranny; the implications are grave. The resolution also condemns "negative stereotyping of religions and racial groups," which is of course an oblique reference to accurate reporting about the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism -- for that, not actual negative stereotyping or hateful language, is always the focus of whining by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and allied groups.

They never say anything when people like Osama bin Laden and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed issue detailed Koranic expositions justifying violence and hatred; but when people like Geert Wilders and others report about such expositions, that's "negative stereotyping."

But we still have the First Amendment, right? Legal expert Eugene Volokh, in an excellent analysis of the resolution, explains why it isn't that easy to dismiss this. "If the U.S. backs a resolution that urges the suppression of some speech," he explains, "presumably we are taking the view that all countries -- including the U.S. -- should adhere to this resolution. If we are constitutionally barred from adhering to it by our domestic constitution, then we're implicitly criticizing that constitution, and committing ourselves to do what we can to change it." He adds that in order to be consistent, "the Administration would presumably have to take what steps it can to ensure that supposed 'hate speech' that incites hostility will indeed be punished. It would presumably be committed to filing amicus briefs supporting changes in First Amendment law to allow such punishment, and in principle perhaps the appointment of Justices who would endorse such changes (or even the proposal of express constitutional amendments that would work such changes)."

Last year the Secretary General of the OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu issued a warning: "We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed" regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. And he reported success: "The official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked."

For the first time, an American President has bowed to the OIC's demands and taken cognizance of that "responsibility" -- after years in which George W. Bush resisted such initiatives at the UN.

In October 2008, I wrote this in Human Events about early signs that Barack Obama had no great love for the freedom of speech: "If candidate Obama is willing to have people arrested when they say things about him that he doesn't like, will President Obama have the vision or courage or understanding to stand up against the OIC when it demands restrictions on freedom of speech at precisely the same time that he wants to build bridges to the Islamic world and demonstrate his power to restore hope and bring change to old stalemated conflicts?"

The answer is in. The answer is no.

Source: JihadWatch

Libya asks for UN council meeting over Gaza report

Libya on Tuesday requested a meeting of the Security Council to discuss a UN report that accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes during Israel's offensive in Gaza, diplomats said.

Dang Hoang Giang, a spokesman for the mission of Vietnam, which currently holds the council's rotating presidency, said the Libyan request was being considered. A Libyan spokesman, however, said he understood a meeting would be held on Wednesday.

An investigation ordered by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council and led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone found that both the Israeli armed forces and Hamas militants committed war crimes in the December-January war. But it was more critical of Israel.

The council had been due to vote on Friday on a resolution that would have condemned Israel's failure to cooperate with the inquiry and forwarded the report to the Security Council.

But action was postponed until March after US pressure aimed at getting the peace process back on track.

A Palestinian official said the Palestinian Authority had agreed to a request from the United States, European Union and Russia for a delay.

The Libyan spokesman, Ahmed Gebreel, said his country, which currently has a Security Council seat, had requested the meeting "because of the seriousness of the report and because we think it's too long to wait until March."

Critics of the Palestinian Authority have accused President Mahmoud Abbas of letting his people down by agreeing to the postponement. A statement by the Palestinian observer mission at the United Nations said it fully supported the Libyan request for a council meeting.

US veto power in the Security Council effectively rules out any action or statement by the 15-nation body that is hostile to Washington's ally Israel.

Source: YNet

PLO 'pulls backing for Gaza report'

Al Jazeera understands that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) is to defer its endorsement of the UN Goldstone report on the Gaza war.

Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Geneva where the UN Human Rights Council is to meet on Friday, said the decision not to endorse the report condemning Israel's conduct in the three-week war was surprising and a major about turn.

The Palestinian Authority had endorsed the Goldstone report when it was released last month, and on Tuesday the Palestinian representative speaking as an observer at the council had said the report "was a professional, unbiased report and related to facts that could not be denied".

A draft resolution is still expected to be introduced at council on Friday by a number of countries on behalf of the Palestinians – who do not have the power to do so - but it remains to be seen how the sponsors respond to the PLO's move.

In the debate of the draft on Tuesday the wording of the resolution was contested principally by the US, the EU and France, and Israeli media reported that the decision to defer the endorsement follows pressure from Washington.

On Thursday, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said any action to endorse the report would strike a fatal blow to the stalled so-called peace process between Israelis and the Palestinians.

PLO sources told Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh in Ramallah in the West Bank, that there were plans to push for a postponement on the endorsement of the Goldstone report to March, pending a legal review of the findings.

One main reservation the Palestinians have is that the report endorsed the Israeli war on Gaza early this year as a legitimate act of self-defence and not an act of aggression, our correspondent said.

Another concern is the accusations against Hamas and other Palestinian factions of having possibly committed war crimes by launching rockets against the civilian population in Israel.

Endorsing the report would mean endorsing the justification for the Israeli war and the war crimes allegations against Hamas.

The Palestinian side sees these as having legal ramifications which could hamper national efforts to form a unity government with Hamas.

Egypt said on Thursday that it would invite rival Palestinian factions Fatah - which forms the bulk of the PLO - and Hamas to Cairo in late October for a final round of talks that it believes will result in a signed reconciliation agreement.

Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which leads a separate, Western-backed government in the West Bank, have been bitterly divided since internal fighting more than two years ago.

Egypt has been trying for months to broker such a deal, and Hamas's exiled leader, Khaled Mashaal, said this week that his group had agreed to the reconciliation proposal.

Source: Al Jazeera (English)

Iranian People at United Nation Rights Council: "We need your Help"

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Iran Lashes Out After NGO Cites Abuses in U.N. Rights Council

Geneva, September 16, 2009 — The government of Iran slammed a Geneva human rights organization after it testified before a UN panel about Iran's "fraudulent elections in June, brutal arrest of peaceful protesters, murder of Neda and other innocents, and rape of female and male detainees."Following UN Watch’s speech today before the UN Human Rights Council exposing Iran’s abuses, the Ahmadinejad government fired back, accusing the rights group of “unsubstantiated allegations” and lacking “accuracy and decency.” See UN Watch statement, delivered by Iranian human rights defender Nazanin Afshin-Jam, and Iran’s reply below.
_________

UN Watch Statement
UN Human Rights Council, 12th Regular Session
Item 2: Update of High Commissioner for Human Rights

Delivered by Nazanin Afshin-Jam

Thank you, Mr. President.

Madam High Commissioner, thank you for calling attention to victims of torture. My father was tortured, by a vicious regime. I know what it means.

Thank you for spotlighting discrimination in Tibet; the violation of women’s rights in Sudan; and the shooting of human rights defenders in Russia.

Thank you also for putting a spotlight on the Islamic Republic of Iran: its fraudulent elections in June, brutal arrest of peaceful protesters, murder of Neda and other innocents, and rape of female and male detainees. Detailed evidence of these horrific crimes was released this week by opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi.

This is the government that tortured my father. And sitting next to me is Ahmad Batebi. They tortured him for 9 years, for attending a student protest.

This is the government that has at least 160 juveniles on death row, in violation of Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The evidence is documented in this new report by Stop Child Executions, entitled “From Cradle to Coffin: A Report on Child Executions in Iran.”

Madam High Commissioner, you spoke of human rights, courage and political will.
Mr. Batebi and I here today to present this appeal by 50 Iranian human rights defenders.
We urge you to call for an immediate Special Session of this Council, to investigate Iran’s gross violation of all basic human rights, and to take action to protect the victims.

After June, the world knows: President Ahmadinejad does not represent the people of Iran. The people of Iran want freedom, democracy, and human rights. The abuses are getting worse and worse by the day. There’s no time to spare. Please, we need your help.

Thank you, Mr. President.
________________

IRAN — Right of Reply

...

Read further here: http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=7496321

U.N. Probe: Israelis, Palestinians Both Guilty of 'War Crimes'

GENEVA — A U.N. investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza has found evidence that both sides committed "war crimes."

The United Nations says the investigation led by former South African judge Richard Goldstone concluded that "Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity," during its Dec. 27-Jan. 18 military operations in the Palestinian territories.

The global body said the report released Tuesday "concludes there is also evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity," by firing rockets into southern Israel.

Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation, saying the U.N. Human Rights Council that ordered it was biased against the Jewish state.

Source: FoxNews

"AlLah knows better" even about Free Speech (of Others)

Islamic states threaten UN spokesman for defending free speech
By Adams • on June 4, 2009

Free Speech Death Watch Update: “Islamic states clash with UN expert on free speech,” from Deutsche Presse Agentur, June 3 (thanks to Twostellas):

Geneva - Islamic states have fired back at a United Nations- appointed special expert on freedom of expression, who said that speech should not be restricted in order to protect religion. “Restrictions should never be used to protect particular institutions or abstract notions, concepts or beliefs, including religious ones,” wrote Frank La Rue in his report presented to the Human Rights Council, which started its 11th regular session this week.

He was engaged in an open discussion on his report with diplomats on Tuesday and Wednesday.

La Rue, a Guatemalan human rights jurist, said restrictions to prevent intolerance should only be applied to “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

He also called on the council, and the UN General Assembly in New York, not to adopt resolutions that support the idea of defamation of religion.

At its previous session in March the council adopted, in a blow to European nations, a resolution condemning the so-called defamation of religion as a human rights violation.

Addressing La Rue at the current session, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Zamir Akram, speaking on behalf of the 57 member- states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), slammed La Rue for not reporting on the “abuses of this freedom.”

He said La Rue only focused on “the promotional aspect of this right.”

The African Group, led by Egypt, also said it opposed La Rue for not focusing more on the “abuse” of freedom of speech and for not listing incidents of racial and religious incitement against migrants. The Arab Group made similar comments.

Pakistan’s ambassador said the OIC would monitor the expert and “take an appropriate course of action” if he deviated again from the mandate they wanted him to implement….

Threat noted

Source: http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2009/06/islamic-states-threaten-un-spokesman-for-defending-free-speech/

UN is electing the worst offenders

By Vaclav Havel | May 14

IMAGINE an election where the results are largely preordained and many candidates are widely recognised as unqualified.

Any supposedly democratic ballot conducted in this way would be considered a farce.

Yet on Tuesday the UN General Assembly engaged in just such an election when it voted to fill the vacancies on the 47-member Human Rights Council.

Only 20 countries were running for 18 open seats. The seats were divided among the world's five geographic regions and three of the five regions presented the same number of candidates as there were seats, thus ensuring there was no opportunity to choose the best proponents of human rights each region had to offer.

Governments seem to have forgotten the commitment made only three short years ago to create an organisation able to protect victims and confront human rights abuses wherever they occur. An essential precondition was better membership. The council's precursor, the UN Commission on Human Rights, folded in 2006 mainly because, for too long, it had allowed gross violators of human rights such as Sudan and Zimbabwe to block action on their own abuses. The council was supposed to be different.

For the first time, countries agreed to take human rights records into account when voting for the council's members, and those member states that failed, in the words of the founding resolution, to "uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights" would find themselves up for review and their seats endangered.

For victims of human rights abuses and advocates for human rights worldwide, the reforms offered hope of a credible and effective body.

Now, it seems, principle has given way to expediency. Governments have resumed trading votes for membership in various other UN bodies, putting political considerations ahead of human rights. The absence of competition suggests that states that care about human rights simply don't care enough.

Latin America, a region of flourishing democracies, allowed Cuba to bid to renew its membership. Asian countries unconditionally endorsed the five candidates running for their region's five seats, among them China and Saudi Arabia.

In past years, Western countries encouraged rights-respecting states from other regions to compete for election. This year they have ceded the high ground by presenting a non-competitive slate for the council elections. New Zealand withdrew when the US declared its candidacy, leaving just three countries - Belgium, Norway and the US - running for three seats.

Even where competition is guaranteed, it is minimal. In the eastern European region - which under the UN rules includes all countries behind the former Iron Curtain, including my own, the Czech Republic - the countries that ran for re-election were Azerbaijan and Russia, whose human rights records oscillate from questionable to despicable.

Only Hungary stepped forward to compete for the region's two seats. The reluctance of eastern European states to reclaim leadership from human rights abusers does not inspire confidence.

Like the citizens of Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia, I know what it is like to live in a country where the state controls public discourse, suppresses opposition and severely curtails freedom of expression.

It is thus doubly dismaying for me to see the willingness of democracies in Latin America and Asia to sit by and watch the council further lose its credibility and respect.

Activists and journalists in Azerbaijan and Cuba appealed to the international community not to elect their nations to the Human Rights Council. States committed to human rights and the integrity of the council can no longer remain indifferent.

Countries should have expressed their solidarity with the victims of human rights abuses and reclaimed the council by simply refusing to vote for human rights abusers in this shamefully uncontested election.

Vaclav Havel was the president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.

Source: The Australian

UN bans human rights activist who spoke out against Islamic antisemitism

By Steven Edwards

The United Nations human-rights office on Friday banned for a month an accredited human-rights activist who was at the centre of a recent controversy involving Canada's top diplomat in Geneva.

David Littman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism said he is convinced his protest over the incident involving Canada's Ambassador Marius Grinius provided impetus for the UN to move against him.

In a March 6 debate in the UN Human Rights Council, Grinius used his position as chair to prevent Littman from completing a statement describing bias in Islamic books against Israel and Jews. The office of Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Grinius had acted on advice from the UN secretariat, but added the ambassador had been wrong to cut Littman short.

Insiders said a number of UN officials were embarrassed over the matter, which contrasted the relatively limited criticism in the Council of controversial Islamic practices compared to the number of harangues against Israel by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) states.

A letter informing Littman of the suspension lists several rules governing activist participation in council debates, but says the sanction against him is based on an "understanding" reached at a meeting April 30 to which senior UN officials had summoned him. Read more ...

Source: Canwest News Service
H/T: Jihad Watch

David Littman
Latest recipient of The MASH Award

The UN's Durban II Hate-Fest

By Alan Caruba

On Monday, April 20, the United Nations will convene Durban II, a conference which purports to encourage efforts to end the scourge of racism that has driven much of the history of mankind.

Like everything that emanates from that disgusting international organization, it has no intention of living up to its Declaration on Human Rights. If it did, it is unlikely that Iran’s Mamoud Ahmadinejad would receive a warm welcome, nor that Iran would have been the vice-chair of the preparatory committee led by Libya’s representative.

When Ahmadinejad spoke at the UN General Assembly last September, he said: “The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small, but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the U.S. in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.”

For Ahmadinejad, all of the Arab nations of the Middle East, and a large number of European nations, everything wrong with the world is conveniently explained by blaming the Jews. Durban I, held in South Africa, was such a hate-fest of anti-Semitism that the U.S. representatives withdrew and refused to participate.

Under the Obama administration, some of our diplomats tentatively attended planning sessions of Durban II despite knowing that it was going to be a repeat of Durban I. In doing so they signaled a degree of legitimacy for this most vile conclave. The Obama administration has decided to renew its membership in the UN Human Rights Council, something the Bush administration refused to do.

The previous UN Human Rights Commission was so vile that it had to be “reformed” into the present Council, but its membership includes the African and Asian groups, neither of which is famous for anything other than repression, corruption, and racism.

Member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference hold a majority in each of these groups, giving it the balance of power. Neither the U.S. vote, nor that of its “Western European and Others” group play any role in ameliorating the abject racism of the Council.

Durban II intends to criminalize any “defamation of Islam” based on a Pakistani proposal that only mentions Islam by name and ignores the other religions of the world such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and, of course, Judaism.

Islam regards all other faiths as “infidels” or unbelievers and the Koran explicitly says they should be subjugated and that their adherents can be killed, especially if they are Jews. It is a crime in Islamic nations to speak ill of Islam and the punishment is death. Converting to another religion will get you killed as well.

In a statement to the April 17 meeting of the preparatory committee held in Geneva, Switzerland, Anne Bayefsky of Eye on the UN, said, “The eyes of millions of victims of racism, xenophobia and intolerance are upon YOU, the representatives of states and the United Nations. And instead of hope you have given them despair. Instead of truth you have handed them diplomatic double-talk. Instead of combating anti-Semitism, you have handed them a reason for Jews to fear UN-driven hatemongering on a global scale.”

When it convenes on April 20th, the birth date of Adolph Hitler in 1889, his spirit will dominate the proceedings of Durban II. The good news is that no U.S. diplomats will attend. One hopes other nations whose people suffered and died as the result of his genocidal hatred will not attend either.

Durban II is yet another example of the Islamic jihad, its centuries old war on all other faiths. Those that deny its existence will continue to suffer its consequences.

Source: Warning Signs

The game is up - but they're all still playing

Melanie Phillips | 7th April

Thirteen days to go, and the draft declaration for ‘Durban 2’ – the vicious anti-Israel hate-fest being held under the auspices of the satirically named UN Human Rights Council on April 20, which I wrote about here, here, here, here, and here – still ‘reaffirms’ the 2001 Durban Declaration which singles out Israel alone for libellous vilification as a racist state – thus attacking it for the very crime of which it is not only wholly innocent but is actually the victim. This was one of the supposed sticking points which the EU, America and other so-called civilised nations said would be enough to stop them participating in Durban 2. But it’s still there and guess what – the EU, according to Anne Bayefsky, isn’t objecting and the US still hasn’t decided whether or not it will go to Geneva after all.

The very fact that any decent country or organisation has had anything to do with this wholly disreputable meeting is itself disgraceful. Supposedly going along with it in order to sanitise the language ‘otherwise we will withdraw’, all they have achieved is some minor cosmetic adjustments – and yet they haven’t walked out. Here’s the disgusting game that’s being played:

The OIC countries are locked in a struggle with EU states over the ability to stifle free speech (such as ‘defaming’ Islam) in the name of protecting religion. The Russian move helps the OIC nations by letting them use the antisemitism clause as a bargaining chip, to be played in exchange for the EU’s allowing free-speech restrictions. In a related issue, the Danish are unhappy with the mention of something the U.N. invented called ‘anti-Arabism.’ That phrase has been inserted in the paragraph about discrimination in the form of Islamophobia, Christianophobia and anti-semitism. But the rest of the EU has told the Danes to get lost, on the grounds that if the EU proposes deleting anti-Arabism, the OIC will insist on deleting antisemitism. As EU officials explain to observers, ‘We want to show restraint.’

Otherwise known as agreeing to an equivalence between truth and lies, the post-moral EU’s stock -in-trade. But the draft declaration remains what it was always going to be – a means of reactivating the Durban Declaration, and with it the smearing and delegitimisation of Israel: the Jew of the world which is being lined up for slaughter, with the west acting as mute accomplice.

Source: The Spectator

Obama Joins Human-Rights Charade The United States is participating in a risible U.N. sideshow.

By Anne Bayefsky

Pres. Barack Obama has announced that the United States will seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council for the first time. The formal election of new members is in May, but the result is a foregone conclusion. The human-rights abusers who dominate the Council and use it to protect themselves, to eliminate universal standards, and to demonize their democratic foes are already celebrating.

This is a surrender of American values unlike any other. The spectacle of this particular president legitimizing a lethal weapon for the defeat of human rights will haunt him until the end of his term.

The Council was created in March 2006 after the U.N. Human Rights Commission became too much of an embarrassment even for the U.N. The General Assembly rejected a U.S. proposal requiring that states actually protect human rights as a condition of Council membership. As a result, the United States voted against the Assembly resolution that gave it birth.

The Bush administration also refused to use taxpayer dollars to pay for the Council. Obama's move will reverse this policy. It is, therefore, important to appreciate exactly what American tax dollars will now be purchasing. Here is a sample of what the Council has "accomplished" over its short history.

The Council has adopted a formal agenda of ten items that governs all its meetings. One agenda item is reserved for condemning Israel. This item is called the "human-rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories"; the human rights of Israelis are deliberately omitted. And one agenda item is assigned to the human rights of the remaining 99.9 percent of the world's population. By taking a seat on the Council, the United States will be agreeing to this agenda and to the resulting apportionment of the Council's time.

Every morning throughout the Council sessions, all U.N. member states meet to strategize and share information in one of the U.N.'s five regional groups. All that is, except Israel. At the Council, Israel is denied membership in any regional group, including the amalgam of Western states to which the United States belongs. The United States is, therefore, about to attend a continuous stream of meetings through doors effectively marked "no representatives of the Jewish people allowed."

The Council has had ten regular sessions concerning human rights worldwide and five special sessions to condemn Israel.

The Council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all the other 191 U.N. member states combined.

The Council has terminated human-rights investigations of such paragons as Belarus, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia.

The last time the Council took action on Sudan was seven months ago. The resolution on that country "acknowledges ... the steps taken by the Government of the Sudan to strengthen the human-rights legal and institutional framework, principally in law reform." (The Sudanese criminal code prohibits homosexuality, makes adultery a capital offense, and provides for flogging, amputation, stoning, and crucifixion.)

The Council has just terminated every investigation of "consistent patterns of gross and reliably attested violations of all human rights and all fundamental freedoms." Under this heading, it has discontinued investigations of the likes of Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Even the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission had investigations under way every year since this process began in 1974.

The Council president has made a procedural ruling that any commentary connecting the practice of Islam to human-rights violations is out of order.

The Council has sabotaged the key resolution in the U.N. system on freedom of expression. The resolution now requires investigation of "abuses of the right of freedom of expression" . Most Council members do not permit freedom of expression, much less suffer from the abuse of it.

The Council regularly adopts resolutions on the "defamation of religions," an overt attempt by Islamic states to stymie free speech of individuals in the name of protecting "religion."

The Council has made repeated efforts to circumvent universal principles. It has spawned numerous entities charged with searching for "normative gaps" - with the intention of filling them with sharia exemption clauses.

The Council has created an investigator charged with reporting on respect for "cultural diversity" (read: the refusal to hold Islamic states to universal standards of human rights). Not surprisingly, this plan was spearheaded by some of the worst human-rights abusers on the planet: Iran, Syria, Cuba, China, North Korea, Venezuela, and Belarus.

The Council's one new device - the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) - was heralded as introducing a careful examination of all U.N. states without discrimination. What actually happens is that a series of human-rights abusers congratulate one another, avoid any serious scrutiny, and then denigrate the democracies that agreed to the travesty in the first place.

It is true that some human-rights groups are willing to admit there is a problem with the Human Rights Council. But they still insist that Obama's decision to participate in this sham raises the prospect of change from the inside. They are mistaken.

Serious reform of the U.N. Human Rights Council is impossible. The United States failed to win over a majority of U.N. members to the idea of minimal preconditions for Council membership because the majority of U.N. members are not fully free democracies and have no interest in introducing democratic hurdles for anything they do. On the Council itself, the majority of seats are held by the African and Asian regional groups, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has a majority in both of these groups. That means the OIC holds the balance of power. The more time the Council spends demonizing Israel, the less likely it becomes that it will ever get around to condemning genocide in Sudan, female slavery in Saudi Arabia, or torture in Egypt.

President Obama's decision to bring the United States into the Council is a gift for his political adversaries. The Council and its many subsidiary bodies meet almost year round, and many of their proceedings are webcast. Every time the president makes a speech about human dignity, the welfare of minorities, the equality of women, or an end to torture, his critics can circulate another picture of the hapless American representative to the Council glued to his chair during the adoption of yet another decision trashing human rights - with the United States paying the bill.

Human-rights victims will rue the day that the United States legitimized this morally bankrupt institution. President Obama will, too.

- Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and at Touro College. She is also editor of www.EyeontheUN.org.

Source: Naomi Ragen