Anathema:

On the perverse selectivity of Louise Arbour's humanitarian conscience

Those of you who are following this blog know I hold a very low opinion of the UN. Our very own Canadian - Quebecoise Louise Arbour's conduct and efforts on behalf of terrorists and other miscreants, was the subject of some of my more vehement posts. Well, I wouldn't be thinking of her when I read this piece of astounding information:

Barzan became Iraq's representative to the United Nations in Geneva - including the UN human rights committee - in 1989. He was in Geneva for almost a decade, during which he is believed to have managed clandestine accounts for the Iraqi president's overseas fortune.

if it weren't for this piece of astounding information:

No date has been announced for the execution of Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and former chief judge Awad al-Bandar.

The UN has urged the Iraqi government not to execute them.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said she had appealed directly to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The right honourable Louise Arbour's compassionate heart is touched by the plight of a mass murderer about to meet his maker. Well, it is as it should be and I would have no quarrel with anybody over preventing an execution. What disturbs me greatly is the perversity manifested in her selective pity: why is her heart moved so easily to intervene in the direction of a proven loathesome genocider but remains ice-cold when appealed to intervene on behalf of the three kidnapped Israeli soldiers languishing somewhere in the warm embrace of Hizzballa and Hamas?

What is happening here? What possible moral argument can be manufactured to justify this type of obscenely lopsided humanitarianism?

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Before it's too late...

Irwin Cotler, who is "a member of Canadian Parliament, former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, and ... professor of law (on leave) at McGill University" goes to the heart of the matter in his call for holding Iranian leadership to account for its incitement to and possible preparation for, a genocide:


2. State parties to the Genocide Convention, whose responsibility is to enforce the convention, should refer the horrific genocidal incitement by President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders to the appropriate UN agencies for account. It is astonishing that this genocidal incitement has yet to be addressed by any body or agency of the United Nations.

3. State parties should initiate in the International Court of Justice an inter-state complaint against Iran, also a state party to the Genocide Convention, for its criminal violation of the Genocide Treaty.

4. The situation of the international criminality of President Ahmadinejad, and other Iranian leaders, should be referred by the UN Security Council to the special prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for investigation and prosecution.

5. State parties to the Genocide Convention, which have enabling domestic legislation, should prepare criminal indictments for President Ahmadinejad, former president Rafsanjani, and other Iranian leaders on the basis of the "universal jurisdiction" principle embodied in the Genocide Convention.

6. NGOs should prepare an indictment of President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders for the violation of the prohibition in both the Genocide Convention and the International Criminal Court Treaty, against the "public and direct incitement to genocide."

7. The new secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who seeks to "lead by example," should refer the genocidal incitement of President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders to the UN Security Council, as a matter threatening international peace and security, pursuant to Article 99 of the UN Charter. (Hat tip: Engage)

Cotler should address his own compatriot and colleague, Louise Arbour, and educate her a little about what her humanitarian priorities ought to be. I don't know if and where else his article has been published, but speaking to the potential victims of a genocide hardly seems the right way to go about preventing it.