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March 28
1934 - Bouquet Canyon Reservoir, replacement for ill-fated St. Francis Dam & reservoir, begins to fill with water [story]
Bouquet Reservoir


Commentary by Joe Messina
| Monday, Mar 30, 2015

mug_joemessinaDo you know what the United Nations just did? Why does the president of these Unites States continue to hold the UN in such high esteem? I don’t understand. Talk about a bunch of self-loving, overpowered failures. They get more things wrong than POTUS does.

Last year Iran was chosen to head up the UN Human Rights Council, really. That’s the same council that, just years before, asked for human rights inspectors to be sent to Iran to investigate numerous human right violations. At the time, Iran refused access to the UN inspectors. Does this sound like a cooperative nation? Or one that should now be leading the council? I think not.

A report issued by the UN Secretary-General to the UN General Assembly indicated he said he was “deeply troubled by reports of increased numbers of executions, amputations, arbitrary arrest and detention, unfair trials, torture and ill-treatment” in Iran and noted a “crackdown on human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and opposition activists.”

Following a review of Iran’s implementation of (or lack of) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee concluded “that the status of international human rights treaties in domestic law is not specified in the legal system, which hinders the full implementation of the rights contained in the Covenant.”

What that means in a nutshell: Iran did nothing legally to incorporate human rights as provided in the UN recommendations. So the question remains: Why did the UN choose Iran to lead the UN’s Human Rights Council, when they haven’t even adopted them in their own country?

This is a country where women are executed for surviving a rape – because it’s always the woman’s own fault for getting raped. Come on, ladies, where is the outcry?

Women are discriminated against in personal status matters related to marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody. A woman requires her male guardian’s approval for marriage regardless of her age. An Iranian woman cannot pass on her nationality to her foreign-born spouse or their children. A woman may not obtain a passport or travel outside the country without her husband’s written permission.

Are these the qualifications to head up the Human Rights Council?

Then there are the Chinese. Another country holding the torch for human rights. Oops, I meant torching human rights. Amnesty International reports:

An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances. Harassment, surveillance, house arrest and imprisonment of human rights defenders are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has grown. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues. While the recent reinstatement of Supreme People’s Court review of death penalty cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the leading executioner in the world.

Many women have been jailed for openly questioning how China treats women. Recently, five women were arrested for planning a women’s day event. Can you imagine? How dare they.

And yet, China has been given a seat at the human rights table.

Syria, according to many reports, is at the top of the list for human rights violations, yet last year, they too were a serious contender for a place at the UN Human Rights table.

Given all the above facts, who does the UN Human Rights Council single out as the worst country for human rights? Israel. Out of 193 member nations, Israel seems to have the worst record on how it treats it women, worse than any other country. Why? Because they don’t allow them to own property? Nope. That’s not it, because they can. It must be because they don’t allow them an education. Wait, that’s not it. They have the same rights as men to an education. It has forced circumcision for women? No. That’s not it, either. Stay with me here, I’m trying. Women are beaten for not dressing appropriately, right? Nope. They can dress any way they want. Women can’t drive? No, that’s not it. Women can’t run for higher office, right? Nope. That’s not it, either.

If it’s none of those things, then what is Israel’s hrman Rights violation against women? The United Nuts have decided that because some of them feel Israel is occupying the West Bank and because of the turmoil there, it’s affecting the ability for Palestinian women to get jobs. That’s the single reason behind Israel’s violation. And you wonder why I call them nuts.

The UN Human Rights Council totally ignores rampant female genital mutilation in Somalia. It ignores Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women as second-class citizens who can’t even drive themselves to the hospital and are physically punished if not wearing compulsory clothing. It ignores Syria where government forces routinely employ rape and other sexual violence and torture against women as a tactic of war. It ignores the Sudan, where domestic violence is not prohibited and there is no minimum age for “consensual” sex. And of course Iran, where every woman who registered as a presidential candidate in the last election was disqualified.

But Israel is the country singled out because its actions are affecting the ability of Palestinian women to get jobs. By that logic, the U.S. should be first on the list of human rights violators. Under Obama, women and the black community have been hit the hardest on the employment front during this recession.

And our president wants the UN to ratify an out-of-control, unconstitutional Iranian agreement with the U.S.? I don’t think so.

The UN has got to go.

 

 

Joe Messina is host of The Real Side (TheRealSide.com), a nationally syndicated talk show that runs on AM-1220 KHTS radio and SCVTV [here]. He is also an elected member of the Hart School Board. His commentary publishes Mondays.

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2 Comments

  1. If this is propaganda is typical of this site, SCV already is a place where people have everything but own nothing very high debters in SCV so many foreclosed homes. People who don’t pay their bills are the worse Americans.

  2. msc545 says:

    Actually, just for once, this isn’t a bad commentary and does a decent job of describing various human rights violators. I really think the only country you forgot to include was the US, actually.

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