What has been happening?

One or two things seem to have happened while I was off-line. Firstly, of course, there is the story of the appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Monti, deciding to go earlier and pave the way to Italian politics as usual. It would appear that Silvio Berlusconi, whose understanding of economics does not extend beyond the lining of his own pockets, has already started ranting about the "Germano-centric" Monti and his austerity measures. Having been found guilty of various malfeasance, obviously, does not prevent a man from standing in elections or, possibly, even winning and becoming Prime Minister again, though I do rather like the idea of Berlusconi losing votes to the professional comedian Beppe Grillo. Let us not forget that whoever wins this election becomes a member of the UK's real government.

Moving on to the UN, the fount of all tranzi thinking and organization we find a press release from UN Watch, an admirable organization that persists in the righteous fight. Yesterday, let me remind people, was International Human Rights Day as it was the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (stop laughing at the back), adopted on December 10, 1948.

The UN has its own way of celebrating such matters. This year they did so by electing Mauritania, "a country that allows 800,000 of its citizens to live as slaves", to be Vice-President of the Human Rights Council. Poland was elected as President with Maldives, Switzerland and Ecuador (a country of shabby human rights record) also becoming Vice Presidents. It could have been worse, I suppose. They could have elected Syria to be President. As it was pointed out to me just a few hours ago, you cannot spell unethical without UN.

To end this rambling posting, I can report another argument I had with a well-meaning journalist who cannot quite get his head round the idea that some people do really think that the world would be a better place without the EU. When he reported that in Slovakia "extremists", undoubtedly rather a nasty bunch, are getting more sophisticated, I made a sarcastic comment about EU membership working so well. Was this not the main argument used against those of us who said it would not be a good idea for the East Europeans to join the EU and we should stop pressurizing them but sign free trade agreements, that within the EU their nasty old habits would die? It would seem that the extremists are utilizing people's frustration with the system and political activities. A success, undoubtedly. My journalist friend professed  himself to be baffled. Did I mean that I did not think that the 10 East European countries should have joined?

Slovakia is not alone to prove those predictions wrong. Right wing extremism (yes, I know that Nazism was not right-wing but that is how Der Spiegel, inevitably, refers to it and its successor ideologies) is becoming more widespread in Germany, especially and unsurprisingly, in the East, where they had not had years of denazification.

All a huge success.

Back to the Human Rights Council

Claudia Rosen has an excellent article about the egregious UN Human Rights Council on National Review Online. After a vigorous campaign led by UN Watch Western officials finally got away from whatever bars they were drinking in and put some pressure on Sudan to drop its candidacy for that body. That, says Ms Rosen is a victory of a kind.

She then goes through all the other countries that would not recognize human rights if they met them on the street that sit on that body or about to be elected to it.

All of which brings us to the question: What, exactly, are the real qualifications for membership on the U.N. Human Rights Council? 

On paper, the terms are neatly spelled out. In a resolution dated April 3, 2006, the General Assembly stipulated that even though seats on the Human Rights Council are open to all U.N. member states, the countries electing representatives should take into account, along with countries’ pledges of good behavior, “the contribution of the candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights.” Further, the General Assembly may, by a two-thirds majority of those present and voting, suspend any member of the council “that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights.” 

That’s great, but it translates into almost nothing in practice. Cuba, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Mauritania have all sat comfortably and entirely unsuspended on the council for years. Venezuela and Pakistan look like shoo-ins in the upcoming election. Evidently, there is no particular bar at the Human Rights Council to such repressive policies, in various combinations, as authoritarian or downright despotic rule, gags on free speech, religious intolerance, torture, jailing of democratic dissidents, or de facto tolerance of slavery.

There actually is no solution to the conundrum for two reasons: the countries are chosen by geographic blocs and when you get to those parts of the world where there are no free countries that respect human rights, you will not be able to find such countries for the Human Rights Council; but an even bigger problem is that among the members of the UN the majority are oppressive, illiberal and have only a nodding acquaintance with the concept of human rights. How can anyone believe that any of its organizations would be capable of promoting that concept?

Meanwhile, UN Watch once again confronts the UN Human Rights Council, this time over one of its new officials, voted in unanimously by the 47 member states, Alfred de Zayas, a man who is much loved by Holocaust deniers for his somewhat controversial opinions.

Coming up again

The subject of prisoners' voting rights is about to come up again. Readers of this blog will recall that this was voted out by the House of Commons some time ago. Now the European Court of Human Rights is about to hear a fresh legal challenge on the subject, mounted by George McGeoch, 40, who is serving a life sentence for murder. (I should have thought the solution is obvious: give the man his voting rights as long as his victim can have them as well.)

Officials in Strasbourg are frustrated by the UK letting the issue fester. Nils Muižnieks, the new human rights commissioner at the Council of Europe, told the Guardian: "A blanket and indiscriminate ban is not in line with the European convention on human rights. The UK government seems to have painted itself into a corner through the last few years.

"The ruling does not require states to give all prisoners voting rights but [depriving prisoners of the vote] has to be linked to the nature of their crime."

Britain has repeatedly argued for what is called a '"margin of appreciation", allowing states some leeway in interpreting ECHR judgments. "Now they have it and the deadline to make the changes ends in November," Muiznieks said. "If they don't it will weaken the whole system and set a very bad example for other states.

"In general the UK has been a good citizen within the human rights system. It would be a huge shame and weaken the UK's influence if they delayed [the decision]."

Goodness me, one wouldn't want that, would one. I mean where would we be if the UK's influence were weakened in the Council of Europe or, for that matter in any tranzi organization?

Why does this surprise anyone?

News comes from UN watch that Syria is about to get a place on the UN Human Rights Council. I can imagine my readers yawning. As news it comes somewhere between dog bites man and supermodel or sports "personality" takes drugs. (Here are some of the postings on this blog on the subject of the UN and human rights.)

The surprising aspect of it all is the number of people who are shocked or surprised or seem to find this unexpected. That is a truly strange attitude as it implies that there is a possibility for the UN and its many, many branches to be a force for the good but just this once or twice they have gone astray and need to be pulled back or else they will become a sick joke. That is no different from people who think that the EU is really what we would like it to be but it has not turned out to be that but can do if we try hard enough.

The truth is that the EU is exactly what it is meant to be and the fact that its internal contradictions (ha, I can spout Marxist jargon with the best of them) will probably tear it apart is part of what it is set out to be. The same applies to the UN though there, I suspect, some force is needed for its abolition. It is far too well entrenched with far too many vested interests of the unaccountable variety. But first, we must understand that  stories of this kind is the norm for the UN not the aberration.

Outrage is as outrage does

Will this assure that China is removed from the United Nations Council for Human Rights? Don't be ridiculous.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world carries on

Hiding from all the election news (good for London, neutral for the rest of the country, expectedly bad in France and confusing in Greece) I came across this article by Hillel Neuer of UN Watch in the Canadian National Post.


It would be hard to deny that there are serious problems with food shortages and, indeed, famine in many parts of the world, though, as ever this is caused by political decisions. When one bears that in mind it will not be so surprising that one of the places with growing difficulties is Syria, a highly productive country.

According to the World Food Program, half a million people don’t have enough to eat in Syria. Fears are growing that the regime is using hunger as a weapon.

Quite so. Shouldn't the UN Human Rights Council' so-called hunger monitor be interested and perturbed?

Apparently not.

This is the kind of emergency which should attract the attention of the UN Human Rights Council’s hunger monitor, who has the ability to spotlight situations and place them on the world agenda. Yet Olivier de Schutter of Belgium, the “Special Rapporteur on the right to food,” is not going to Syria.

Instead, the UN’s food monitor is coming to investigate Canada.

That’s right. Despite dire food emergencies around the globe, De Schutter will be devoting the scarce time and resources of the international community on an 11-day tour of Canada—a country that ranks at the bottom of global hunger concerns.

A key co-ordinator and promoter of De Schutter’s mission is Food Secure Canada, a lobby group whose website accuses the Harper government of “failing Canadians…and [failing to] fulfill the right to food for all.” The group calls instead for a “People’s Food Policy.”

I asked De Schutter if his time wouldn’t better be spent on calling attention to countries that actually have starving people.

“Globally, 1.3 billion people are overweight or obese,” he responded via his spokesperson, “and this causes a range of diseases such as certain types of cancers, cardio-vascular diseases or (especially) type-2 diabetes that are a huge burden.”

Does this mean the Special Rapporteur on the right to food is actually more interested in people having too much food than with them having too little or not at all?

Possibly this curious anomaly has something to do with the history of the specific mandate.

First, consider the origins of the UN’s “right to food” mandate. In voluminous background information provided by De Schutter and his local promoters, there’s no mention that their sponsor was Cuba, a country where some women resort to prostitution for food. De Schutter does not want you to know that Havana’s Communist government created his post, nor that the co-sponsors included China, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe.

These and other repressive regimes are seeking a political weapon to attack the West. That is why the first person they chose to fill the post, when it started in 2000, was Jean Ziegler. The former Swiss Socialist politician was a man they could trust: In 1989, he announced to the world the creation of the Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Prize.

The award spread propaganda for its namesake, and elevated his ideological allies. Recipients include Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. In 2002, the prize went to convicted French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy — and to Jean Ziegler himself.

From 2000 to 2008, Ziegler’s UN reports and probes turned a blind eye to the world’s hungry. Instead he attacked America, the West, capitalism and Israel. The human rights council applauded him, and repeatedly renewed his mandate. Only because of term limits did they replace him in 2008 with De Schutter, who praises and emulates his predecessor.

Normal behaviour on the part of UN organizations and, in particular, on the part of the UN Human Rights Council.

Let us not forget ...

... that Chechnya's President, Ramzan Kadyrov is Russian-President-To-Be-Again Putin's protégé and a man who has been highly approved of by a number of commentators in the West for allegedly having brought peace and stability to the region (give or take the continuing and spreading disturbances). Here is a story about what is really going on under his rule and what his intentions are. Warning: it is not pleasant to read.

Springs come, springs go ...

... but the UN and its institutions do not change. Daily do we read of appalling crimes perpetrated by the Assad regime on Syria's people and what else do we find?

UNESCO’s executive board, which includes the US, France, the UK and other Western democracies, unanimously elected Syria to a pair of committees – one dealing directly with human rights issues – even as the Bashar al-Assad regime maintains its campaign of violence against its own citizens.

The Arab group at UNESCO nominated Syria for the spots, and though the 58-member board approved the pick by consensus on Nov. 11, the agency has not yet posted the results on its website.

Syria’s election came just a day before the League of Arab States moved to suspend Syrian membership of that body.

I wonder when they will post the result on the website. What are they waiting for?

Can't disagree with this

Whatever one may think of the manner in which Colonel Gaddafi was disposed of, one cannot disagree with this call for the UN Human Rights Council member, Jean Ziegler's resignation for founding the Moammar Kaddafi Human Rights Prize. Nor is there anything terribly wrong about calling

on UN chief Ban Ki-moon and human rights commissioner Navi Pillay to acknowledge the UN was wrong to support Gaddafi by granting him key posts on its most influential bodies.

This blog has discussed the subject from time to time, notably here and here also here and here on EUReferendum. I must admit I do not expect those acknowledgements and apologies to materialize.

And while we are on the subject of money ...

... just how much does that European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights cost and what is its purpose. Lord Lester of Herne Hill tried to find out:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what are the objectives of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights that are not delivered elsewhere; and what is its annual budget.

For those who are interested, this is what HMG replied:

The European Agency for Fundamental Rights provides the EU organs, and the EU member states when implementing EU law, with assistance and expertise relating to fundamental rights. Examples of its functions include the production of data comparing the human rights situations in the EU member states, and the preparation of thematic conclusions and opinions at the request of the European Parliament, the Council or the Commission. EU-specific functions such as these are unique to the agency.

The agency received a total contribution from the EU budget of €20 million in 2011. The 2012 EU budget is still being negotiated.

And worth every euro-cent we spend on it. Well, maybe not.

Chaotic ideology

If I say that yet again it has been proved to me that Russia is in chaos, readers of this blog will not be surprised. It is in chaos economically as its infrastructure disintegrates and the money earned from high oil and gas prices disappears; above all, it is in chaos politically with no parties worth their name emerging and the only two important politicians (Putin and his teddy bear) losing popularity.

This evening I went to a talk at the Pushkin House, a sort of a Russian cultural centre, given by Bill Bowring, professor of law, practising barrister and a man much involved with human rights and Russia. The talk was entitled Is 'Sovereign Democracy' Compatible with the Rule of Law in Russia? but was not really about that at all. Why, I ask in parenthesis, is it impossible for lawyers to stick to the subject they are supposed to be discussing or even to finish a sentence without darting off in another direction?

Professor Bowring, though extremely knowledgeable about the Russian legal system, its main players and the more recent important cases, spent the time attempting to define "sovereign democracy", the Putinist ideology. He was not very successful, largely because it is such a chaotic ideology, with bits and pieces from Russian Messianism of the Third Rome kind, old-fashioned autocratic nationalism and Soviet bullying. Nevertheless, he gave a reasonable summary of some of the most important writers who are often connected in various ways to Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev. A good many of the same points are made in this lecture Bowring gave in February.

Much to the good professor's horror some of the Russian theoreticians of "sovereign democracy" show themselves to have been influenced and to admire the legal theoreticians of fascism and Nazism, Carl Schmitt. It makes sense, given their obsession with strong national identity and the importance of the state. There seems to be no interest in the early nineteenth century ideas of rechtsstaat, that is an autocracy but regulated by law.

One relatively interesting writer of this group is Mikhail Vitalyevich Remizov, now President of the Institute of National Strategy founded by Stanislas Belkovskiy. Remizov is a self-described conservative and differentiates between three important ideologies: conservatism, Marxism and liberalism (in the English sense of the word). He acknowledges that there is little in common between fascism and conservatism and may, even, be smart enough to realize that fascism and Nazism are left-wing ideologies. As far as Russia is concerned, Remizov concludes, neither Marxism nor liberalism are viable ideologies; only conservatism can work and it must defeat both the others. In fact the main enemy for him and other Schmittians is parliamentary democracy.

None of this is particularly surprising but there is an extra ironic twist to it. Professor Bowring is committed to the idea of transnational organizations imposing their views on legality and human rights on sovereign states whether they be parliamentary democracies like Britain or autocracies like Russia. Several times he compared Russia's potential defiance of the European Court of Human Rights with Britain's apparently immediate withdrawal from the European Charter of Human Rights, the probability of which does not exist outside the excited imagination of international lawyers. It took a member of the audience, Alexander Goldfarb to be precise, to point out that even if Britain did withdraw from the ECHR law and legality would not collapse in this country. In Russia the situation is somewhat different. Reluctantly Professor Bowring agreed.

Given that British objection to the ECHR is judiciary activism that goes well beyond the intentions of the original charter and given that it is a vote in the House of Commons on the subject of prisoners' rights to vote which may lead to a clash between this country and the ECHR as well as the EU (Professor Bowring also labours under the misapprehension that the Conservative Party wants to pull out of the EU) the question has to be asked: does Professor Bowring not consider parliamentary democracy to be something of an enemy as well.

Some relatively good news

On March 25 the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded its Sixteenth Session with all sorts of agreements, statements, adoption of texts, extension of mandates and, indeed, all the paraphernalia of transnational activity. But there was one item missing: no global blasphemy code.

This has been the perennial demand from Islamic countries, led by Pakistan but, apparently, Western opposition to it has been growing since 2006 when the Bush Administration announced its adherence to world-wide democratic principles (something the UN and its various organizations know nothing about).

Nina Shea goes through the history of this infamous measure and the reasons for its (probably temporary) demise.

More, please

UNWatch, an estimable organization has a blog called Hall of Shame and it is uniformly good reading. Their latest entry is on a new report about to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council that hails Libya's human rights record even though the Council finally voted to suspend the country from its ranks (though whether that was because of Gaddafi's behaviour or because he had been overthrown remains unclear).

The Summary of the proceedings of the review process states:

During the interactive dialogue, statements were made by 46 delegations. A number of delegations commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for the preparation and presentation of its national report, noting the broad consultation process with stakeholders in the preparation phase. Several delegations also noted with appreciation the country’s commitment to upholding human rights on the ground. Additional statements, which could not be delivered during the interactive dialogue owing to time constraints, will be posted on the extranet of the universal periodic review when available.

On page 14 of the report one can find all sorts of recommendations by other countries, most of them rejected by Libya as being unnecessary. Here are Libya's own official comments on the subject.

Far from wanting to abolish this sort of thing - some of the most oppressive regimes of the world belonging to the UNHRC - I want to see more of it. Anything that shows up the UN for the sick joke that it is I welcome. Unfortunately, it takes a long time between general indignation and action with a good deal of shoulder-shrugging in between. The same seems to be true about the EU, the ECHR and foreign aid.

Let's not get too excited

UN Watch has condemned the EU's draft resolution about Libya and events therein for not being strong enough, not mentioning Gaddafi's role and for not insisting that the country should be suspended from the Human Rights Council. Of course, we agree with all of that and we the preposterousness of Libya ever being on anything called the Human Rights Council. There is some doubt, though, as to whether UN Resolutions make the slightest difference to anything at all, given the UN's own record in the area of human rights. It is particularly ironic that the EU draft was prepared by Hungary on behalf of the EU. Possibly the Hungarians in question remember or have been told about the UN's complete inaction on their behalf in 1956. Just a thought.

Makes sense to me

Given the past history of various extremely unpleasant totalitarian governments and just plain autocracies getting all worked up about other countries' malfeasances it makes perfect sense to me that Iranian President Ahmadinejad, in whose countries demonstrators are dealt with in summary fashion, has condemned the killing of protesters in Libya. The people he declared ought not to be killed but listened to. Indeed. As they are in Iran, of course.

As UN Watch reports he has gone even further:

“Iran called for the UN Human Rights Council to form a committee to examine [the] situation in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya,” reported the state-sponsored ISNA news agency today.

“The Head of Iranian Parliament Human Rights Committee Zohreh Elahian in a letter to the UN Human Rights Council President Sihasak Phuangketkeow urged formation of a committee to examine [the] situation in Bahrain, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya to find cases of human rights violations. She then demanded that criminals be introduced to the court to stand trial.”

“Fire is opened on people of the countries who are staging civil and peaceful anti-government protests only to revive their natural and lawful rights,” the letter read. “Iranian Parliament Human Rights Committee condemns violence against these people by their rulers and supports certain rights of protestors,” it read.

It is a joy to know that the Iranian Parliament has a Human Rights Committee. Stalin would have been proud of them.

She has a point

Mary Ellen Synon does not precisely defend Viktor Orban, the ever more unpleasant but democratically elected Prime Minister of Hungary. She merely points out the hypocrisy of those who criticize him and the new media law.

Also, check out what these let's-protect-the-Press eurocrats actually believe. First they believe in trying to influence journalists by way of big chunks of the commission's annual €2.4bn annual propaganda budget (that is the figure for 2008, calculated by Open Europe, and at todays exchange rate equal to just over £2bn). Plenty of perks, free trips, prizes and 'training' courses in nice places are available for compliant journos. In some cases the European insitutions simply hand cash to reporters for unvouched 'expenses.' (And before you ask, no, this blog doesn't take EU dosh.)

More to the point, look at the detail of the so-called Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty. Article 11 is supposed to guarantee 'freedom of expression and information,' including 'the freedom and the pluralism of the media shall be respected. ' (Wouldn't the judges at the European Court have fun defining 'pluralism?' Is Britain soon going to be forced to subsidise a national Islamic newspaper to ensure 'pluralism' in journalism?)

Okay, then keep going, past all the other 'freedoms,' until you get to the final article of the charter, Article 54: 'Nothing in this Charter shall be interpreted as implying any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognised in ths Charter or at their limitaton to a greater extent than is provided for herein.'

In other words, far from protecting the right of each man to express his political opinions as he will, this charter limits the protection of the right to free speech and the right to the freedom of the press to the right to support the 'permissible' opinions defined by the charter.

Her example is the outrageous decision to allow "Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, a failed asylum seeker who ran over a 12-year old girl and left her to 'die like a dog,'" to stay because deporting him would violate his rights to family and private life, enshrined in Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the European Union that is part of the Lisbon Treaty, passed without that referendum promised to us by all three main parties.

But to the point about the freedoms allegedly secured in the charter (a charter which, I will repeat, has been secured by Cameron): since this so-called 'right to repsect for private and family life' is guaranteed in Article 7, that means that, according to Article 54, none of us has the right to campaign for the destruction of that article.

In other words, while Ibrahim can kill and the charter will protect his freedom to stay in Britain, any British citizen campaigning against the ludicrous justice-dodging wheezes in the charter can be stripped of his right to free speech, and any journalist doing the same thing can lose the protection of the freedom of the press.

She has a point. And I have no desire to defend Mr Orban either.

The UN is not completely silent on China

Ban Ki-moon and Navi Pillay may not be attending the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony as their presence might offend the Chinese government but the UN is not completely silent on China and human rights.

UN watch reports

that the U.N. European Headquarters in Geneva today hosted a massive photo exhibit extolling China's human rights record and its alleged respect for Uyghurs, Tibetans and other minority groups, displayed next to the U.N. human rights office event marking international Human Rights Day.

Can anybody explain to me why the UN cannot be closed down immediately as an organization whose marginal usefulness stopped a very long time ago. As it happens, I do not believe even in that marginal usefulness, set up as it was according to Soviet ideas of international law and human rights.

Outrageous! This must stop!

By this I mean the people of Switzerland insisting that they must have some say in major policy decisions. Outrageous! How very dare they? This is, as some readers must have worked out, about the latest referendum in Switzerland in which 52.9 per cent voted for automatic expulsion of foreign criminals from the country and 47.1 per cent voted against. Of the 26 cantons only 6 voted against. So, the people of Switzerland have spoken and is there an outrage!

AFP reports

Switzerland was slammed as the "black sheep" of Europe on Monday after voters endorsed a far-right push to automatically expel foreign residents convicted of certain crimes.

Slammed by whom, precisely? Well there is the Austrian news website, which accused the Swiss of voting against foreigners. Well, no, not exactly. The Swiss have no intention of deporting foreigners who live and work in their country. They do not, however, seem to like foreigners who go to their country and commit serious crimes. Shocking of them, I know, and against international law, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Really? International law says you must tolerate anyone and everyone who happens to want to commit murder or large-scale robbery or rape in your country?

The EU, according to the same AFP article, is fulminating. This is going against bilateral agreements that ensure freedom of movement. For criminals? I don't recall that right in the Treaties and is the EU not the organization that is insisting on every tighter Europe-wide controls to fight international crime? Ah yes, but the Swiss are interested in their own country. That is their great sin.

French newspapers are apparently in shock. As well they might be. France, after all, deports people swiftly and quietly without bothering to ask anyone about it or bothering to find out whether they had committed any crimes.

Not only the EU is fulminating but, as EUObserver points out

Human rights groups slammed the result, with Amnesty International saying the approval of this plan represents a ''dark day for human rights in Switzerland.''

The European Network Against Racism (ENAR), a Brussels-based umbrella organisation, said the vote is the "result of a xenophobic and discriminatory campaign launched by the populist Swiss People's Party, making dangerous amalgams between immigration and criminality."

A "second-class" category of Swiss residents will emerge, ENAR warns, which would be a "clear breach of the fundamental human rights principle of equality before the law."

The group also noted it was not clear where the limit would be set - first, second or even third or fourth generation immigrants.

Of course, third or fourth generation immigrants are not exactly immigrants but that, presumably, will be clarified in the legislation that has to follow the referendum. In the meantime, let us for a moment consider what all these tranzis are saying. They are calling on the Swiss government to ignore the people's vote in the name of some nebulous concept of international human rights. They are also saying that it is one's inalienable human right to go to another country and commit serious crimes there. Really?

As Alex Singleton says in his blog in the Daily Telegraph:

Amnesty’s reasoning is that deportations could cause convicts to be sent back to countries where they could face persecution. But this is a ridiculous argument: no one is forcing visitors to Switzerland to commit offences. If people don’t want to be sent back home, why don’t they just desist from rape, robbery, murder and fraud?

Obviously because even to make such a suggestion is to infringe their human rights.

Then there is the question of taxation. The Swiss do insist on having a say on that, as well.

Meanwhile, a proposal to impose a minimum tax on Switzerland's wealthiest citizens, which was also put for vote on Sunday, was rejected with 58.5 percent.

"The bad mood hits foreigners but not the rich," ran the headline in Der Bund of Bern. The Yes to the People's Party initiative showed that "questions of Swiss identity and culture, triggered by rapidly growing social change and migration, bother Swiss people like virtually nothing else."

As I suspected and as the Reuters Factbox explains the vote about taxation has to do with the cantons jealously protecting their rights to set taxation and to compete for those foreigners who come to the country with good intentions, i.e. to make money by undercutting each other's tax rates.

Need I say it? I am shocked, shocked.

Well, I am shocked

Not all is well in the West Bank, run by the supposedly West-friendly Palestinian Authority (not even Hamas) that is heavily reliant on American and generally Western money. According to the Financial Times allegations of torture have increased recently. This information comes from apparently independent Palestinian human rights organizations and - shock, horror - do not apply to the dastardly IDF.

Claims of torture and abuse by members of the Palestinian security forces are not new. There has, however, been a sharp rise in reported cases, leading Human Rights Watch to remark last month that “reports of torture by Palestinian security forces keep rolling in”. The New York-based organisation also bemoaned the “rampant impunity” of officers allegedly involved in the abuses.

Many analysts and observers fear that life in the west Bank is taking on an increasingly authoritarian hue. “I feel real concern that we are reaching the level of a police state,” says Shawan Jabarin, the director of al-Haq, a Ramallah-based human rights group.

It is a concern shared by Randa Siniora, the director of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, the ombudsman responsible for processing complaints against Palestinian officials. Her commission received more complaints about torture in the west Bank in October than in any month since mid- 2009. “We are looking at a very gloomy situation,” she said. “I am afraid that this [problem of torture and abuse] will become systematic.”

Groups such as al-Haq, which once only documented human rights abuses by Israeli authorities, say they are spending an increasing amount of time on cases in which Palestinians abuse their fellow countrymen.

The deterioration is linked closely to a crackdown on Islamist activists and sympathisers after a deadly attack on Jewish West Bank settlers by Hamas gunmen in August. In an attempt to counter the renewed threat from Hamas, and keen to prove the PA capable of dealing forcefully with its rival, the authority’s General Intelligence and Preventive Security units rounded up more than 700 suspects.

Hmmm. It seems that Israel and the West are still at the bottom of this problem. By the way, can we have a report about how Hamas deals with its opponents in Gaza?

Gilad Shalit vigil

I received this e-mail yesterday from the Zionist Federation, an organization that has quite a pedigree, having been founded in 1899. They will be holding double vigils for Gilad Shalit every day next week and will be glad of any support. I shall try to get along to some of the afternoon ones.

On Monday 5th July a week long vigil will begin outside Downing Street. Every day between 10am and 6pm members of our community will stand outside this world famous land mark and engage members of the public with this issue. We will hand out informational flyers, hold a giant picture of Gilad Shalit and display a banner explaining why we are there. This is not a political protest about the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is not a criticism of, or comment on, the Israeli government – it is a plea to the world to help Gilad Shalit. The vigil will be based on two time slots every day – 10am to 2pm and 2pm to 6pm. People are welcome to come along for less time but ideally we need people to commit to a block so we have all the slots covered.

It is a very worthwhile cause for anyone who feels strongly about human rights as a reality rather than as a plaything for tranzis.