Gee, that eeeevil, racist, warmongering, conspiratorial, idiot Bush just gets smarter & smarter every day. Go figure?
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Obama Administration Realizes UN Racism Conference Critics Were Right
The Campaign Spot
Jim Geraghty Reporting
Remember when Pres. George W. Bush was turning his back on the world, and being dangerously unilateralist, by pulling out of the U.N. conference on racism?
<<< U.S. and Israeli delegations abandoned the 2001 UN conference on racism, saying they objected to language criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell ordered U.S. participants to leave because the conference planned to use “hateful language” about Israel. >>>
Remember when Barack Obama was going to reverse that policy, and reach out to the world?
<<< Obama sent a delegation to negotiations that began today in Geneva, and the U.S. will consider attending the April 20-24 conference, according to the State Department. The U.S. didn’t attend two preparatory meetings last year, after walking out of the first UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, eight years ago to protest criticism of Israel.
“We are here to explore with you whether it is possible to move beyond our differences and focus the Durban Review Conference on the racism and xenophobia that seriously persist today in our world,” Mark Storella, head of the U.S. delegation, said in a statement to the opening of the Geneva meeting, according to a transcript provided by the UN. >>>
And so many folks around the world were happy . . .
<<< Human Rights First, the leading human rights organization in the U.S., on Tuesday issued a statement welcoming Obama's intention of participating in the summit.
"We urge the administration to work to ensure that the conference advances rather than undermines the protection of fundamental rights, and to engage with others to press for that outcome," the statement reads.
"This session provides an opportunity for the United States to lead efforts to address problems with language proposed for the current draft of the outcome document," said the statement. "The United States should also encourage states to review the implementation of their international commitments to combat racism. Although this is the stated purpose of the conference, states have put in very little effort so far to engage in any meaningful review." >>>
And some charged the critics of the conference were out of their minds . . .
<<< Thus, the anti-racism conference is invariably a "racist confab," and any motion to curb hate speech is certainly an insidious attempt to eat away at our treasured principle of free speech. By ceding the territory of meaning to the conference's nefarious actors — that Iran has an anti-Semitic agenda should come as no surprise to anyone — Bayefsky is essentially stooping to their level. Human rights have meaning and value, and it would be encouraging to see skeptics like Bayefsky express some interest in strengthening the concept worldwide, instead of simply retreating and retrenching in America's own fortress of freedom. >>>
Yeah, well, we learn today that the Obama administration has recognized that indeed, the racism conference is an exercise in Israel-bashing, and not worth attending.
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