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Monday, October 5, 2009

This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.

Anne Bayefsky: You Can't Say That, At the UN, the Obama administration backs limits on free speech - 'The Obama administration has marked its first foray into the UN human rights establishment by backing calls for limits on freedom of expression. The newly-minted American policy was rolled out at the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council, which ended in Geneva on Friday. American diplomats were there for the first time as full Council members and intent on making friends...'

4 Comments

Since when do diplomats have the right to free expression? At best they have to be, well, diplomatic. At worst they are recalled and screamed at by their bosses -- you recall the fate of the Boston Consul with his boss, FM Lieberman. Obama issuing guidelines is not news. Neither is the fact that water is wet.

Nitwit Daoud tries to change the subject. The OIC's noxious resolution is not about what diplomats can say. It's about limiting the UN's Declaration of Human Rights to prohibit speaking ill of a religion. Of course, sensitivity to religions doesn't prevent the media and spokesmen of Islamic countries from spewing antisemitic crapaganda. But its intent is to remove legal protection for someone who publishes cartoons or makes a movie like Submission which Islamofascists don't like. (Watch Submission here).

The point of the vile resolution eludes Daoud who is blinkered. It's to suppress films like Fitna if not to actually legitimate and justify murder and mayhem such as the cartoon riots or Theo Van Gogh's murder.

Gee, Nappy, even YOUR favorite police state does it:

Foreign Ministry orders staff to keep mum on Goldstone report
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1119114.html

...
Israel, meanwhile, has changed its diplomatic policy on the report, which it had vocally rejected as biased. The Foreign Ministry has instructed Israeli spokesmen not to comment on the report.

The Human Rights Council on Friday shelved the controversial report on Israel's recent war in the Gaza Strip, which was compiled by a UN team led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone after Palestinian officials dropped their support for a vote.

The draft document proposed the Human Rights Council push to have the conclusions of the report, which accuses Israel of perpetrating war crimes in its winter offensive in Gaza, be discussed by the Security Council. It was dropped following heavy lobbying from the administration of U.S. President Obama.

The intense criticism of Abbas has apparently prompted some Fatah officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, to call on Abbas to resign "in light of the damage he is causing to the Palestinian cause."

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister in the Gaza Strip, yesterday accused Abbas of betraying the Palestinian people and of being an accomplice in the Israeli plot to neutralize the Goldstone report. At a specially convened press conference in Gaza, Haniyeh went on to call Abbas' actions "unprecedented."

Israeli officials said last week that if the Geneva-based Human Rights Council forwarded the report to the UN General Assembly, the action would all but end hopes for restarting peace negotiations - a message reinforced by U.S. officials in talks with Palestinians.

Ahmed Jibril, who heads the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also called on Abbas to resign following the Goldstone draft affair. Syria, for its part, has postponed a visit by Abbas, in what seems to be further fallout concerning the Goldstone report.

Palestinian political analysts say that Abbas' status has been severely weakened by the Goldstone affair, the release of prisoners in the framework of negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity, and because of his consent to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Even the Palestinian government under Salam Fayyad issued an announcement yesterday that can be seen as critical of Abbas, which said: "We must not give up on any opportunity to prosecute war criminals from the Israeli aggression toward Gaza."

None of the above, including David's comment, excuses institutionalized limits on freedom of expression.

Read the (left-leaning) New Republic on the subject. The article is helpfully entitled,

U.S., Egypt Co-Sponsor a Resolution on Freedom of Opinion and Expression. What the Hell is Going on? Only the A.P. Reported This: I Wonder Why.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/us-egypt-co-sponsor-resolution-freedom-opinion-and-expression-what-the-hell-going-her

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