While United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon was in Moscow schmoozing with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Communist Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, autocrats and UN bureaucrats were attacking the United States over its track record on what the global organization refers to as “human rights” — in reality government-granted privileges that can be revoked at will. The tyrant-dominated UN “Human Rights Council,” which has previously lambasted the U.S. government for not further defying the U.S. Constitution and infringing even more on the gun rights of Americans, focused largely on verbally attacking U.S. police during a session in Geneva. However, the outfit’s members also demanded everything from closing Guantanamo Bay and banning capital punishment to providing more taxpayer funding for abortion worldwide and more welfare at home.
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The UN’s “Universal Periodic Review” (UPR) of the United States, which took place in Geneva on May 11, was the second review of America’s “human rights” record. Representatives of some 117 governments and brutal dictatorships seized the opportunity to blast the U.S. government for not submitting quickly enough to their previous list of demands outlined in 2010. Those “recommendations,” often made by some of the UN’s most ruthless mass-murdering member regimes, focused mostly on surrendering more U.S. sovereignty to the UN by ratifying more global treaties, submitting to UN kangaroo courts, and allowing the UN to dictate U.S. policy. The communist and socialist regimes ruling North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and more all added their demands to the list. Iran’s Islamist autocrats called for the U.S. government to combat “gun violence.”
The most recent UN “review” of the United States, which every member government of the global body is purportedly “required” to submit to, mostly aimed at demonizing U.S. police as violent racists supposedly in need of national and global controls. The recent death of Freddie Gray under suspicious circumstances in police custody, already being exploited by Obama and the establishment to push for nationalizing local police forces, received a great deal of attention. Other recent high-profile killings by American police officers were brought up repeatedly as well. Also high on the agenda were attacks on NSA spying, which multiple hostile foreign regimes presumably being monitored by U.S. intelligence services criticized as a “human rights” concern. Spying on U.S. citizens without a warrant is already unconstitutional.
Each UN member regime participating in the spectacle was given just over a minute to lash out at America. Putin’s representative said “the human rights situation in the country has seriously deteriorated recently.” The U.S.-funded Pakistani regime’s delegate, meanwhile, said he had “serious concerns about the human rights situation in the U.S.,” pointing to Obama’s extrajudicial drone assassinations, CIA torture, illegal detentions, and alleged systemic police brutality against blacks. Indian government representative Ajit Kumar even called for the U.S. government to create a “national human rights institution.” Several European governments blasted the ongoing use of the death penalty by some U.S. states. Various “human rights” groups also attacked the United States for real and imagined violations of rights.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, sent high-level bureaucrats to grovel before the UN panel. “We must rededicate ourselves to ensuring that our civil-rights laws live up to their promise,” U.S. Justice Department official James Cadogan declared in Geneva. “The tragic deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Ohio, and Walter Scott in South Carolina have renewed a long-standing and critical national debate about the even-handed administration of justice. These events challenge us to do better and to work harder for progress — through both dialogue and action.”
Cadogan said criminal charges were brought against more than 400 American law-enforcement officers over the last six years, but that more work was needed — and that more prosecutions were likely coming. “When federal, state, local or tribal officials willfully use excessive force that violates the U.S. Constitution or federal law, we have authority to prosecute them,” he said after being peppered with questions by foreign regimes about alleged racism and systematic use of excessive force by American police officers. Last year, exploiting events in Ferguson, UN boss Ban even demanded that local U.S. police departments adhere to what he called “international standards.”
On torture, already a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal law, the Obama administration continued its pattern of shielding torturers from prosecution, offering lip-service instead. “As President Obama has acknowledged, we crossed the line, we did not live up to our values, and we take responsibility for that,” said U.S. “legal advisor” Mary McLeod about the CIA torture report released last year, though she stopped short of saying that those involved in the crimes would face justice. “We have since taken steps to clarify that the legal prohibition on torture applies everywhere and in all circumstances, and to ensure that the United States never resorts to the use of those harsh interrogation techniques again.”
Unsurprisingly, brutal dictatorships of all varieties rushed to celebrate the condemnation of the United States by the UN dictators club. “The Universal Periodic Review that the UN Human Rights Council conducted over the United States’ human rights record on May 11 proved, once again, that no country is perfect in its human rights record,” claimed a spokesperson for the brutal Communist Chinese dictatorship’s “Foreign Ministry,” as if Obama’s lawlessness justified Beijing’s savagery. “The Chinese side hopes that any country undergoing review will be modest enough to listen to the advice of various countries, work hard to resolve its own human rights problems and improve its human rights status.” Propaganda organs for various dictatorships also released articles praising the UN “review.”
The UN launched its UPR scheme after being forced to rebrand its “Human Rights Commission.” The commission was replaced with the “Council” after it became an international laughingstock for, among other absurdities, electing Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi’s regime to lead it. Of course, while some of the points raised by UN member regimes at the latest review in Geneva are indeed egregious violations of the unalienable rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the UN “human rights” apparatus remains as discredited as ever. Among the paragons of “human rights” currently sitting on the UN council, for example, are the brutal regimes ruling Communist China, Cuba, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Communist Vietnam, Venezuela, and more.
In fact, the entire foundation of the UN’s “human rights” apparatus is inherently and fundamentally opposed to the U.S. Constitution and its protections for the God-given rights of all Americans. UN “human rights” are purportedly defined and granted to people by governments, dictators, treaties, and international organizations. The Declaration of Independence, by contrast, makes clear that everyone is endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, and that government exists to protect those rights. Article 29 of the UN “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” though, makes clear that UN “human rights” can be restricted or abolished by government at will under virtually any pretext. It also says UN-defined “rights and freedoms” may “in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”
The UN review will conclude with a series of “recommendations” to be issued later this week. Rather than bow before mass-murderers and brutal dictatorships, though, the U.S. government should defund and withdraw from the UN dictators club. If Americans’ elected representatives would simply obey the U.S. Constitution they all swore an oath to uphold, the real, God-given human rights of everyone in the United States would already be protected from government infringement. On top of that, the UN’s bogus “human rights” schemes are being used as a weapon to attack real rights and the U.S. Constitution. It is time for Congress to put an end to the UN’s charade.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected]
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