Louise who? Louise Arbour is High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN, that is who. Now like it or not (and I certainly do not), most people reading this blog pay for the United Nations and so have an interest in what their tax money buys in that cesspool of corruption. One of those things is Louise Arbour’s salary so that she can defend ‘Human Rights’.
Now rather prominently amongst those things commonly felt to be a human right is the right to express yourself, just so long as you are not crying ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre or actively inciting people to violence. Yet when a Danish newspaper prints some cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, sparking protests from Muslims, does she support the right of Danish people to express themselves? Hell no.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour was investigating the matter. “I understand your attitude to the images that appeared in the newspaper,” Arbour wrote the Organization of the Islamic Conference. “I find alarming any behaviors that disregard the beliefs of others. This kind of thing is unacceptable.”
Investigating? If it is ‘unacceptable’, it sounds like she is well past the ‘investigating’ stage as it looks pretty damn clear who she thinks is in the wrong here. Let me tell you what is unacceptable. Pandering to people who want to see force used to ‘punish‘ people for saying things they do not like, that is unacceptable. Claiming to defend human rights on our dime while giving aid and comfort to intolerant bigots, that is unacceptable.
Muslims should feel free to express themselves too. Let them match through the streets and scream until they are blue in the face, calling the entire editorial staff of Jyllands-Posten “kufur bastards” if they like, just so long as they do not call on the state to ‘punish’ them. The state can only punish people for breaking the law and there is nothing illegal about expressing critical views about Islam.
Either Louise Arbour immediately recants her views and accepts the non-negotiability of freedom of the press or she must be sacked. Your tax money pays for her antics, so you can demand her removal.
Tell you Member of Parliament/Congressman/Senator/whoever. Got a blog? Pass it on. Sack Louise Arbour.
You want her sacked for not supporting free speech. It will never happen. She can not keep her job unless she is against free speech.
In truth Jake, I want people to call for her to be sacked in order to embarrass the UN and force its true nature into the front pages. Even if she survives, that is a win-win from my point of view.
Many people see the UN through rose tinted glasses and this sort of things can help to break those glasses.
Several countries seem, quite comfortably, to combine assent to the free speech grandiosities of the UN Declaration of Human Rights with this sort of thing:
http://tinyurl.com/8tmd5
Yes, but my tax money does not go to the Austrian state and so if they want to persecute that fantasist moron Irving, at least I am not paying for it, unlike anything the UN does. But sure, why is Louise Arbour not saying anything about Austria?
No surprises here as another UN bureaucrat follows governments age-old path. They are not elected and the people of the world have utterly no way to influence them individually.
They do, of course, know better than anyone else what all the peoples of the world should be allowed to say or think. It must be sad to be in their position and not have the absolute authority with which they could perfect the world. But they will keep trying.
“I find alarming any behaviors that disregard the beliefs of others. This kind of thing is unacceptable.”
Unless of course the “others” are Jews or Christians, hmm?
Time the cesspit known as the U.N. was drained and concreted over, methinks.
Louise Arbour is a protege of the slimy little creep, Maurice Strong. As far as I know neither has any qualifications to do anything but both have been tugging at public teats and enriching themselves vastly for years. Maurice the mentor is up to his eyeballs in the UN oil for food scams. Both of them are an embarassment to the majority of Canadians.
Louise Arbour is a protege of the slimy little creep, Maurice Strong. As far as I know neither has any qualifications to do anything but both have been tugging at public teats and enriching themselves vastly for years. Maurice the mentor is up to his eyeballs in the UN oil for food scams. Both of them are an embarassment to the majority of Canadians.
The UN must be abolished. Disregarding that belief is unacceptable.
Sack? Are you kidding, Kofi will giver her a nice bonus in her year end check.
This is a legitimate question: Is the UN engaged in anything, anything at all, that helps to improve the lives of mankind (other than those emplyed by the UN or their cronies)?
Much as I loathe the attempt by the UK government and others to outlaw criticism of Islam, it’s ultimately immaterial, because a death sentence will be passed on people like Rushdie, van Gogh, Hirsi Ali, etc regardless of the law. Nothing can change this fact, it is simply something that we’ll have to adjust to, as non-Muslims in the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere have known for a long time. Louise Arbour is right insofar as she appears to be on the right side of history; the events in Denmark are reminiscent of Custer’s Last Stand.
Woe is Canada………………… The Supreme Court of Canuckistan is next coup for Louweezie. The election will seal the fate of Canada
I’d imagine that Louise Arbour’s job description is not “uphold human rights” but “uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights(Link)“. Ever read that? It’s possibly the world’s most shameless example of bait-and-switch; after a long list of rights that the Tranzi Superstate pledges to guarantee, Article 29 Clause 3 says that any right can be revoked if it is “contrary to the purposes and principles of the UN”.
Presumably la petite Louise has decided that the purposes and principles of the UN involve promoting the jihadi agenda… which come to think of it would explain pretty much everything the UN has said or done in the last four years. Particularly this(Link).
Louise Arbour is expressing the normal modern definition of “free speech” – i.e. that it does not apply to “hate speech” (this being speech that does not agree with the doctrines of the social democratic elite).
This is perfectly consistent, as “free speech” (indeed all rights) are not “stand alone” rights of individuals – rights (according to the social democratic elite) are the way that people intergrate into a progessive community and much be judged on this basis.
In short the elite who control such institutions as the U.N. (as well as most of the educational establishments in the world – and influence all the bits of society that the students of those educational establishments go on to work in) are (to use a “reactionary” word) EVIL.
No shock there. “Member of international elite is evil: Next week water is wet”.
However, this does fit nicely with xj’s point.
My habit (when dealing with the vile “international declaration of human rights” is to point at the “welfare rights” in it. However, xj makes the vital point that the whole thing is governed by Article 29.
E. H. Carr, (apologist for first the Nazi’s and then the Soviets) Harold Laski (Marxoid Chairman of the Labour party who wanted to set up a dictatorship in post World War II Britain – Prime Minister Atlee refused to take any notice of him) and the rest of the people who created the declaration knew what they were doing.
No “right” must stand in the way of world government (as a progressive community), because such power was the whole point of “rights”.
The classical liberal sounding bits in the declaration are partly cover (to deceive the ignorant), and partly an in joke (to show how well Carr, Laski and the rest knew the classical liberal tradition that they despised).
J.M. Keynes (although not quite in the same camp as Carr and Laski) uses a similar in joke. He points at Prof Pigou of Cambridge as an example of the orthodox economist that his “General Theory….” of 1936 is a revolt against.
Of course (as Keynes knew well) Pigou was ardent collectivist who (amongst other things) argued that people should be punished if they suggested cutting government spending (like Weiser in Austia he thought he had discovered a scientific basis for “welfare economics” [“progressive” income tax and the rest of the nonsense] and, unlike Weiser, Pigou was not tied to reactionary concepts like of freedom of expression).
I wonder how many generations of undergraduates (and postgraduates) have dutifully written of Pigou as an “orthodox” or even “laisser faire” economist.
I’m curious if this officious official officially is offended by the unbelievably strident, cruel and inhumane depiction of Jews and Israelis in the Saudi Press. Somehow, I think not.