The U.S., human rights, the U.N. and foreign policy - a few short perspectives

perspective 1...

[T]he United Nations overwhelmingly approved a new Human Rights Council on Wednesday to replace the widely discredited Human Rights Commission.

John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador, said the council was "not sufficiently improved" over its widely discredited predecessor.

The vote in the General Assembly was 170 to 4 with 3 abstentions. Joining the United States were Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Belarus, Iran and Venezuela abstained.

perspective 2...

Foreign policy, legal and human rights authorities are raising serious questions about the credibility of the U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights, released last week.

Noah S. Leavitt, an attorney who has worked with the International Law Commission of the United Nations in Geneva and the International Court of Justice in The Hague, told IPS: "The sad reality is that because of the [George W.] Bush administration's haughty unilateralism and its mockery of international prohibitions on torture, most of the rest of the world no longer takes the U.S. seriously on human rights matters."

perspective 3...

Releasing the latest edition of its annual human rights "Country Reports", the U.S. State Department Wednesday named Iran and China as among the world's "most systematic human rights violators" in 2005, along with North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus.

perspective 4...

"In Iraq 2005 was a year of major progress for democracy, democratic rights and freedom," according to the introduction, citing the "steady growth of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and other civil society associations that promote human rights", as well as the holding of two elections and one constitutional plebiscite.

perspective 5...

As the United States began making the case in the U.N. Security Council this week for what its Ambassador John Bolton calls "painful consequences" if Iran continues with its controversial nuclear programme, Washington is facing a familiar dilemma: What to do if the rest of the world refuses to go along?

perspective 6...

President Bush plans to issue a new national security strategy today reaffirming his doctrine of preemptive war against terrorists and hostile states with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the troubled experience in Iraq.

perspective 7...

An updated version of the Bush administration's national security strategy, the first in more than three years, gives no ground on the decision to order a pre-emptive attack on Iraq in 2003, and identifies Iran as the country likely to present the single greatest future challenge to the United States.

u.s. success in foreign policy goals vs. credibility in the world of public opinion: disaster...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet