| June 2008 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | |||||
Obama's campaign has two powerful things going for it.
On every other measure, the facts are massively against him:
It would be very good for America to have a Black president. But it has to be the right guy. Being Black is a huge plus for Barack, because it would be a great step forward for America to have a Black president - but you can't elect a President based on that alone. Surely even Barack would agree that a job as important as that of President of the United States has to be awarded based on the ability of the candidate to do the job.
Obama has shown that the majority of Americans are comfortable with a Black candidate for President. But he has also shown that he himself, does not have the qualifications to do a good job of being President of this country. He does not have the qualifications to seek out, identify, and to take every action he can for the good of this nation and of its citizens. He is not prepared to be the Commander in Chief of our military forces.
It would be great if America's first Black President does a fantastic job of leading this country, so as to make the way easier for future Black candidates for the office. Obama has neither the experience, nor the qualifications, to do so.
This democracy cannot survive if our supreme court justices arrogate to themselves the right to dictate to the people - to be, in the words of Mark Steyn, our "monarchs".
Just last month, the Supreme Court of California, seeking to make law from the bench, rather than to do its rightful job of merely interpreting the State Constitution, sought to overturn the expressed will of the people and force gay marriage on the people of California. Per Mark Steyn:
...what happened here was not just a sly judicial coup, but an explicit one in the wake of the expressed will of the California electorate, and their elected representatives. And what's interesting to me about this general business of judicial activism, in a period when most sort of sources of authority in society, whether you're talking about politicians or the Church, or I suppose the media, if you mean fellows like Walter Cronkite, when most of those sources have diminished in authority, we have kind of compensated by over-venerating a handful of guys in black robes, just because they happen to be called judges, and sit on a fancy court. And there's no reason for this. It's entirely at odds with the founders' conception of a functioning republic, that in effect, you should turn a handful of judges into super monarchs who can overrule.
This week the Supreme Court of our nation, by a 5-4 vote, declared that enemy soldiers who are trying to kill us have protections under our laws that, in the dissenting opinion of Justice Scalia, "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." Scalia's dissent states:
Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable “functional” test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.
The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.
The Supreme Court of the nation has made a ruling that, in the words of dissenting Justice Scalia, "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
There's one thing the 5 Supreme Court justices who seek to be our super-monarchs have overlooked.
We, the American people, do not like things that put our countrymen in danger of being killed. We, the American people, do not like our officials arrogating to themselves powers that were not intended by the Constitution, and making decisions which put our lives in danger.
There is one power in this country that is greater than the Supreme Court. That is we, the people. If the Supreme Court of California and the Supreme Court of the U.S. are to try to become our monarchs, it may be time for a popular march on both courts, in the tradition of American's great historic marches.
Just last Wednesday Obama stated to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem "must remain undivided." The very next day Obama contradicted his own statement. From the Washington Post:
Obama Backs Away From Comment on Divided Jerusalem
Facing criticism from Palestinians, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged yesterday that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future peace talks, amending a statement earlier in the week that the city "must remain undivided."
Obama's statement, made during a speech Wednesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, drew a swift rebuke from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
"This statement is totally rejected," Abbas told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "The whole world knows that holy Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state."
...Obama quickly backtracked yesterday in an interview with CNN.
"Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations," Obama said when asked whether Palestinians had no future claim to the city.
Under pressure from Palestinians, Obama contradicted himself. Under pressure from Palestinians, Obama changed his position.
Not pressure from U.S. citizens. Not pressure from U.S. voters. Pressure from Palestinians. Think about that. Does Obama wish to represent the people of the country of which he seeks the presidency? Does Obama wish to represent the people of the United States?
Here we see him caving, in less than 48 hours, to a mere statement from Abbas, the leader of another people. How fast would Obama cave in a face-to-face meeting with Ahmadinejad - a meeting that Obama says he wishes to have?
What does it mean that Obama is responding to pressure from Abbas, rather than to pressure from US voters? It appears to mean that the interests of voters of United States are not high on his list of priorities. The explanation for this may be in part, that from the age of 6 years old to 10 years old, he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, rather than in the U.S.
Scanning Google News for "United Nations World Union of Progressive Judaism" shows no new articles, suggesting that there is no vote yet. See this previous article for details.
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights was so dishonest, so packed full of brutal dictators and oppressors, and had made so many biased decisions, that even the U.N. could no longer tolerate it, and it was disbanded in 2006. From Wikipedia:
The New York Times, in its editorial The Shame of the United Nations, praised those intent on "reforming the disgraceful United Nations Human Rights Commission." The Times said that the Commission was composed of "some of the world's most abusive regimes" who used their membership as cover to continue their abusiveness. On 15 March 2006, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to replace UNCHR with the UN Human Rights Council.
...The Commission was repeatedly criticized for the composition of its membership. In particular, several of its member countries themselves had dubious human rights records, including states whose representatives have been elected to chair the commission.
Another criticism was that the Commission did not engage in constructive discussion of human rights issues, but was a forum for politically selective finger-pointing and criticism. The desire of states with problematic human rights records to be elected to the Commission was viewed largely as a way to defend themselves from such attacks.
Activist groups had long expressed concern over the memberships of the People's Republic of China, Zimbabwe, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and the past memberships of Algeria, Syria, Libya, and Vietnam on the Commission. These countries had extensive records of human rights violations, and one concern was that by working against resolutions on the commission condemning human rights violations, they indirectly promoted despotism and domestic repression.
On May 4, 2004, United States ambassador Sichan Siv walked out of the Commission following the uncontested election of Sudan to the commission, calling it an "absurdity" in light of Sudan's ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region. One major consequence of the election of Sudan to the Commission was the lack of willingness for some countries to work through the commission. Indeed, on July 30, 2004, it was the United Nations Security Council, not the Commission, that passed a resolution - by 13-0, with China and Pakistan abstaining - threatening Sudan with unspecified sanctions if the situation in the Darfur region did not improve within the following 30 days. The reasons given for the action were the attacks by the Janjaweed Arab militias of Sudan on the non-Arab African Muslim population of Darfur, a region in western Sudan.
The U.N. replaced the Commission, with the United Nations Human Rights Council. This new Human Rights Council almost immediately proved that it intended to conduct business as usual. From the NY Times in March 2007:
UNITED NATIONS, March 12 - A United Nations Human Rights Council mission to Darfur said Monday that the Sudanese government had organized and taken part in human rights crimes against its own population, and that international action to stop the killings and rapes had been inadequate.
...The rights council has been widely criticized for being no more effective than the discredited Human Rights Commission it replaced this year. Taking action on Darfur is seen by rights groups as a measure of whether the council can start to build credibility during its formal session, the fourth it has held, which began Monday.
So far, all eight of the condemnations of human rights performance it has issued since its creation in June have been against one country, Israel.
The UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations is currently meeting with the intention to eject one particular NGO from the UN - the World Union of Progressive Judaism. The reason? WUPJ representative, Mr. David Littman, a friend of this site, dared to suggest to the Human Rights Council that it was derelict in its duties. From the Daily News, Monday:
...the UN is on a warpath against one particular NGO. It is poised tomorrow to revoke these basic access rights from the World Union of Progressive Judaism. Yes, the WUPJ - which represents more than 1.7 million reform, progressive, liberal and reconstructionist Jews all over the world - is about to have its privileges to attend and speak at UN events erased.
What was its sin? Daring to speak clearly against UN human rights hypocrisy.
Bureaucrats at the UN trace the problem back to a statement made by the WUPJ during a Jan. 24, 2008, session of the Human Rights Council. The meeting marked the fourth time the UN's lead human rights body had convened an entire session to condemn Israel. That brought the total to four special sessions on Israel - compared with six sessions to address human rights in the other 191 UN member states.
As the council conducted its predetermined witch hunt, WUPJ representative David Littman made the mistake of referring to Hamas' genocidal charter. He began three times, quoting the charter's words that "Israel will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it," and calling upon the council to invoke the Genocide Convention.
Each time, the council president interrupted and warned him to "focus on the issue." Littman stood his ground: "The issue is what Hamas and the government in Gaza wishes to do to Israel." Bang, bang, bang went the gavel. Stymied, Littman recalled his Shakespeare and said: "There is a general malaise in the air. A feeling that something is rotten in the state of this council."
That was the last straw. Those words were "disrespectful" to the Human Rights Council, the diplomats from the Muslim world declared.
That brings us to the present day - tomorrow, actually - when the UN committee charged with ensuring NGOs' equal access rights is set to expel the WUPJ from the premises.
Chairing the committee is that bastion of civil liberties, Sudan. Vice-chairs include Pakistan and Cuba. Among the other 16 members are serial free speech abusers Angola, China, Egypt, Qatar and Russia.
At this past Thursday's committee meeting, Sudan - currently committing genocide - expressed concern that the WUPJ's behavior "violates the spirit and the letter of the charter of the UN." China - where you're arrested for logging on to the Internet and typing in "human rights" - was upset because "We respect civil society and NGOs."
Absurdly, the chair of the UN Committee on NGO's is that very same nation - Sudan - whose election to the Human Rights Commission was a key factor in publicizing the illegitimacy of the Human Rights Commission, and causing it to be disbanded. Sudan - which is committing genocide, and which still permits slavery! From the NY Times, February 2008:
The Sudanese government started the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur, and now it seems to be preparing to start the second here among the thatch-roof huts of southern Sudan.
Yet Sudan is chairing the committee which is seeking to eject the WUPJ from the UN! This is the UN writ large - an organization controlled too much by oppressors, dictators, slave-holders and even committers of genocide.
The mere fact that ejection of the WUPJ from the UN is under consideration, has the makings of international scandal - even more so since the head of the committee that is to rule on it is Sudan.
If the WUPJ is ejected, the illegitimacy of the UN will be underlined in gigantic letters for the world to see.
The vote is expected today.
