A special U.N. Human Rights investigator has been invited to come to the United States to probe racism and Islamophobia in America. During his three week visit, which started on May 19th, Mr. Doudou Diene, a Senegalese lawyer, will be visiting eight cities and will meet with various federal, state and local government officials, lawmakers and members of the judiciary. According to the United Nations, the purpose of his visit is to gather information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other related intolerance in America.

Mr. Diene is from Senegal, a country with a 95% Muslim majority that is also a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which makes up the largest single voting bloc in the United Nations. The 57 Islamic countries in this (OIC) bloc have a record of consistently voting against Western-style democracies and routinely condemning Israel. Mr. Diene has a personal history of focusing his human rights investigations mostly on Western-style democratic societies, issuing biased reports on alleged institutionalized racism and ‘Islamophobia’ in democratic countries such as Japan, Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland while ignoring real human-rights violations in the non-democratic Muslim countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

It should also be pointed out that the United Nation’s Human Rights Council includes some of the world’s worst human-rights violators, including China, Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. This same UN Human Rights Council has previously urged the United States to halt the post 9-11 racial profiling of Americans of Arab, Muslim and South Asian descent. At the same time, the United Nation’s Human Rights Council has ignored the fact that United Nations’ own peacekeepers in Africa are currently raping women in the Congo and have turned a blind eye to the man-made starvation of millions in southern Africa. In the arena of human rights, the United Nations is not only morally bankrupt, but it is rapidly becoming an irrelevant institution.

Doudou Diene has a clear record against freedom of speech and free expression when it comes to Islam. Mr. Diene had criticized Danish newspapers when they published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, accusing them of placing their country’s right of free speech above fighting religious intolerance and incitement to religions hatred against Muslims. It would appear that Mr. Diene would not be a supporter of the First Amendment of the US Constitution either.

As we all know, copies of the Quran are available in almost any bookstore in America and the book is studied in countless American universities, while Christians and other non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia are not even allowed to possess a copy of their holy books. The Saudi government routinely desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points coming into the country or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately. Just days before Crown Prince Abdullah recently met with President Bush, two Christian gatherings in Saudi Arabia were raided in Riyadh where Bibles and crosses were confiscated to be eventually incinerated. Why hasn’t the United Nations’ Human Rights Council sent Mr. Diene to investigate Saudi Arabia’s overt religious intolerance and persecution of non-Muslims? Why hasn’t the United Nations sent Mr. Diene to investigate the anti-Christian persecution and murders in Albania and Kosovo committed by the Muslim governments? It’s because a very clear double standard now exists at the United Nations.

American taxpayers contribute approximately $5 Billion a year to the operations of the United Nations, which devotes much of its double-standard energy to shielding dictatorial regimes, attempting to usurp individual nations’ sovereignty and promoting a future new world order in which UN bureaucrats will be in charge. Worst of all, the United Nations serves as an on-going forum for rampant anti-American and anti-democratic diatribes.

The United Nations has been granted no authority over the American people or our government because the UN does not derive its powers from the consent of the American people. Americans need to stop thinking that the United Nations has some legitimate, legal authority over our country. It does not! Americans have a choice. We can follow the U.S. Constitution and protect our freedoms, liberties and sovereignty, or we can continue to contribute billions of dollars to a bottomless pit and submit to the unconstitutional interference by the United Nations in our country’s internal affairs.

In this particular investigation into racism and ‘Islamophobia’ in the USA, Mr. Diene is interfering in our country’s internal affairs and he is hardly an objective reporter or an impartial judge of racial conditions, xenophobia and other related intolerance in America. Indeed, Mr. Diene will find a great deal more racial, religious and ethnic intolerance and persecution in his own backyard in Africa and the Middle East.

Perhaps, the time has finally come for Americans to rethink the value of our membership and participation in the United Nations. The evidence is clear. Not only should we get out of the United Nations, but maybe it is also time for the United Nations to get out of the United States as well.

I support the “American Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2007” (HR-1146), introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, to end the membership of the United States in the United Nations.

By: John Wallace
Candidate for Congress
NY’s 20th Congressional District
http://www.FreedomCandidate.com

Reply, Thanks for stopping by Ben.

What do our bridges, schools, health care, and safe city streets have in common?

Yesterday, Cathy and I walked the tenth avenue bridge to get a sense of the scale of the collapsed freeway bridge.

It is the biggest disaster I have been face to face with in my lifetime.

As we walked I felt a sense of reverence for my community and a great sadness for the dead and injured. It was a moving experience to walk the quarter of a mile of twisted steel and concrete laying in the river.

This is OUR city, we deserve safe streets, good schools, and bridges that don’t fall into the river.

Community infrastructure is important. If our bridges are failing, it’s probable that our schools, court systems, child protection, and health care systems are getting the same mistreatment. As a CASA child protection volunteer, I believe this to be true.

As a long time student of public policy, business person, and pragmatic human being, I am convinced that listening to experts and completing their minimal maintenance recommendations is exponentially more cost effective than gambling on the savings of not doing the maintenance.

The following few paragraphs should provide a logical arguement for this thought. First the facts:

Minneapolis City Pages September 5th Economy in Freefall article quoted Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as estimating the additional costs of gas and extra miles due to the bridge collapse at $400,000 per day, or $146,000,000 over the next year.

Any accurate calculation of additional costs to drivers must include at least a fair minimum amount for the 144,000 cars per day that used this bridge each day that now must find other routes.

Forty eight cents per mile is the IRS allowance for automobile deductions and this does not include the headache factor of clogged traffic and longer commutes that I seem to be experiencing.

Assuming an average of ten additional miles for each car each way (some of us take the longer 694/494 route around town (which is depending on east or west between thirteen and eighteen additional miles bypassing the city on freeways, others drive fewer extra miles through downtown city streets or the 280 detour).

Multiplying an average ten miles each way for 144,000 cars per day equals 2.8 million miles per day times the IRS 48 cents equals $1,382,000 per day, or almost four times the governor’s estimate.

Hoping that it only takes one year to finish the bridge, multiply 1.382,000 times 365 and it adds to a little over five hundred million dollars in hard costs to drivers for these detours. Eighteen months bridge construction time would equal over seven hundred and fifty million dollars in hard driver costs.

With no extra consideration for the extra ten to twenty minutes at each end of our commute we can honestly call this the hard cost of the bridge collapse.

Add this to the approximately two hundred million dollar estimated cost of a new bridge, and the sure to be substantial lawsuit settlements for wrongful death and injury from the victims of this disaster, and some minimal value for the businesses that are failing because of their new inaccessibility, and a billion dollars becomes a realistic estimate of the total hard costs of not maintaining our bridge.

New York’s 20 year veteran bridge engineer Samuel Schwartz (NYT OP-ED 8.13.07) estimated that 178,000 dollars annual maintainance per year per bridge would keep all of his states bridges in pristine condition (”all bridges guaranteed never to collapse”, MINE).

Compare 178,000 dollars to the 1,000,000,000 dollars cost of not maintaining this bridge and you can begin to see the actual cost of our anti tax policymaking that has won the hearts and minds of so many Minnesotans.

It appears to be up to five hundred times more expensive to ignore the advice of qualified people (real engineering experts paid high salaries) than it was to gamble on the small savings to be gained by ignoring their advice. Even if we had spent $178,000 each year for twenty years, the total is $3,560,000 (far less than a billion dollars).

Similarly, in the case of human beings it is much more cost effective to attend to the needs of a child than waiting until disaster strikes.

Trying to resurrect a criminalized juvenile or adult with ten to twenty years of serious mental health problems is extremely difficult.

I make a very similar financial calculation for failing to help children in child protection systems to receive the help they need to make it in public schools. Traumatized children cost our community a fortune when we ignore them and wait until they are mentally unstable adults to deal with them.

Experts will tell you that the time to help abused and neglected (traumatized) children is when you first have the opportunity. It is exponentially less expensive than waiting until they hurt someone.

Our bridge failed the majority of its safety inspections over the last twenty years. Early and sustained annual maintenance would have been the way to save money, lives, and trauma.

Bridges are designed to a factor of ten times their estimated strength needs. Ask any engineer about the significance of a bridge falling down. The Minneapolis bridge collapse was a monstrous failure.

It is not the engineers that ruined the bridge. It’s not the teachers that wrecked the schools, or social workers that are not taking care of children in child protection. These are the people doing their jobs with the resources and support at their disposal.

The bridge collapse was the direct result of the people that made the policies, the same people that have been ignoring the engineers and the experts that know what was needed for systems and infrastructure to stay in working order.

The same policy makers that are responsible for the declining conditions of our schools, transportation, courts, bridges, child protection systems and safe city streets.

Policy makers that point fingers and blame others instead of admitting their own failures and especially those that are not working for long term workable solutions to our infrastructure problems should be tarred and feathered (at least run out of office).

Would someone please print a large “YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK” sign and post it on the tenth avenue bridge to be seen by the thousands of us poor dumb saps as we drive by the billion dollar fiasco that to this point hasn’t been any policymaker’s fault?

Who voted for that person anyway? Would you please vote for someone else next time?

And would someone please tell the anti tax people to stay home and count their money at least until the bodies are buried and the wreckage is cleared?

Mike T

I am also a spokesman for Invisible Children
http://www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog

Thanks for stopping by and commenting.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting.

As far as his second trophy wife, whats wrong with that. We should all be so lucky to have a beautiful and intelligent wife. His ex-wife from what I have read, speaks highly of him still.

Hey, everyone should have a good defense. Scooter deserved one to.

I like Fred and I am pulling for him to win.