There Comes A Point

     ...at which the agenda of those who despise the United States and envy it for its success becomes too obvious to deny any longer:

     UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told VOA his agency has alerted countries along the caravan's route that it is likely to include people in real danger.

     "Our position globally is that the individuals who are fleeing persecution and violence need to be given access to territory and protection including refugee status and determination procedure. And, if the people who are fleeing persecution and violence enter Mexico, they need to be provided access to the Mexican asylum system and those entering the United States need to be provided access to the American asylum system," he said.

     Mahecic said the UNHCR is very concerned about the developing humanitarian situation along the migratory route. He said there are kidnapping and security risks in the areas where the caravan may be venturing.

     So! The UN is “very concerned” about the well-being of this caravan, 80% of which consists of military-age males and all of which has been financed by George Soros and other left-wing agencies determined to destroy the borders, and therefore the sovereignty, of the United States. Then what is the UN doing for them? Is the UN providing food, clothing, shelter, resettlement support? And what about Mexico? Does the country through which the caravan has traveled, illegally but essentially without resistance, have any responsibility for it? Why should the United States lift a finger to assist those who would destroy it?

     The UN has no authority in this matter. The United States makes its own laws, including its entry and residence laws – and those laws forbid anyone from entering without a visa, or other than at an official port of entry. These are the requirements of all modern nations...but apparently the U.S., for no clear reason, is forbidden – by the UN! The UN! — to have and enforce such laws.

     President Trump: Get the UN out of the U.S.
     And for the love of God, get the U.S. out of the UN.

Quickies: It’s True! It’s True!

     Remember this observation by Mark Steyn?

     Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that, for Barack Obama, governing America is “an interesting sociological experiment,” too. He would doubtless agree that the United States is “the place on earth that, if I needed one, I would call home.” But he doesn’t, not really: It is hard to imagine Obama wandering along to watch a Memorial Day or Fourth of July parade until the job required him to. That’s not to say he’s un-American or anti-American, but merely that he’s beyond all that. Way beyond. He’s the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he’s condescending to the job — that it’s really too small for him and he’s just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.

     It appears that the era’s greatest commentator nailed it before anyone else:

     Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly is planning payback for President Obama’s dismissing Mr. Netanyahu’s objections to the Iran nuclear deal last year. Mr. Netanyahu is said to be rallying moderate Arabs to thwart Mr. Obama’s bid to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations after he leaves the White House next year.

     Mr. Obama has already discussed the issue with Republican, Democratic and Jewish officials in the United States, according to Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

     Mr. Netanyahu recently is said to have gotten wind of Obama’s plans which he calls the Obama Project. “Wasn’t eight years of having Obama in office enough?” Mr. Netanyahu is quoted in the Kuwaiti daily as telling associates. “Eight years during which he ignored Israel? And now he wants to be in a position that is liable to cause us hardships in the international arena.”

     We can leave aside Israel’s current troubles. With Obama at the helm of the United Nations, that despicable body is likely to work actively for Israel’s annihilation.

     As Mr. Spock would say, “Fascinating.”

     A QUICK UPDATE: Traditionally, the U.N.'s Secretary-General was supposed to come from a non-aligned nation: i.e., a nation not deemed part of either the American or the Soviet bloc. That exclusion appears to have ended with the elevation of Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, an American ally and client state. Would Obama as the Secretary-General of the United Nations justify stripping The Won of his American citizenship? If not, would we finally have an adequate reason for the U.S. to withdraw from the U.N.? Inquiring minds want to know!

Quickies: Are You Comfortably Seated?

     On the representation of a "pandemic" level of harassment against women and girls, and on the ostensible grounds that "respect for the security of girls and women" trumps freedom of speech, the UN wants access to the Internet to be licensed and policed:

     On Thursday, the [United Nations’s] Broadband Commission for Digital Development released a damning “world-wide wake-up call” on what it calls “cyber VAWG,” or violence against women and girls. The report concludes that online harassment is “a problem of pandemic proportion” — which, nbd, we’ve all heard before.

     But the United Nations then goes on to propose radical, proactive policy changes for both governments and social networks, effectively projecting a whole new vision for how the Internet could work.

     Under U.S. law — the law that, not coincidentally, governs most of the world’s largest online platforms — intermediaries such as Twitter and Facebook generally can’t be held responsible for what people do on them. But the United Nations proposes both that social networks proactively police every profile and post, and that government agencies only “license” those who agree to do so.

     “The respect for and security of girls and women must at all times be front and center,” the report reads, not only for those “producing and providing the content,” but also everyone with any role in shaping the “technical backbone and enabling environment of our digital society.”...

     At one point toward the end of the paper, the U.N. panel concludes that “political and governmental bodies need to use their licensing prerogative” to better protect human and women’s rights, only granting licenses to “those Telecoms and search engines” that “supervise content and its dissemination.” In other words, the United Nations believes that online platforms should be (a) generally responsible for the actions of their users and (b) specifically responsible for making sure those people aren’t harassers.

     The Obama Administration will surely endorse this proposal, willingly and with enthusiasm. They have a Federal Communications Commission that, despite an adverse Supreme Court ruling, is resolved to treat Internet service providers as “telecoms,” subject to thoroughgoing federal regulation. Congress, despite the handwringing it does over Obamunist usurpations of powers never granted, will do nothing. As for the other powers, their governments have been slavering over the possibility of legitimized online censorship for more than a decade. The UN report has provided a clear pretext.

     The Internet, most especially the World Wide Web, is the voice of the common man in our era. Without it, we would be cut off from one another, unable to rally against attempts to abridge our rights. Governments would like that just fine.

     How do you think Cass Sunstein feels about this? For that matter, how do you think Hillary Clinton will view it? She was clamoring for a “gatekeeper function” in 2001.

     Catastrophe has breasted the horizon and is rushing toward us at high speed. What are we willing to do to head it off?

"Fair" And Other Nonsense Syllables

I have a number of "favorite words." They're not my favorites because I use them often; I don't. They're not my favorites because they convey a meaning I find particularly valuable; they don't. They're my favorites because I laugh heartily whenever I see them used in a political or economic context.

"Fair" is one such word. As with most single-syllable words, it's very old. And it does possess a dictionary definition:

Fair adj.: Characterized by frankness, honesty, impartiality, or candor; open; upright; free from suspicion or bias; equitable; just; -- said of persons, character, or conduct; as, a fair man; fair dealing; a fair statement.

I must say, that's not the way my stepdaughters used it when they were smaller. "It's not fair!" translated to "But I want it!" in most cases; in the rest, it meant "Why can she have what she wants but I can't?"

It's also not the way the United Nations' Human Rights chairwoman would use it:

The UN's top human rights official again condemned Israel for its military actions to stop Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, accusing the Jewish state of “deliberately defying International Law... in a way that may constitute war crimes.”

Navi Pillay told reporters following yet another "emergency" meeting of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council that Israel was not doing enough to protect civilians. "There is a strong possibility,” said the known Israel critic, “that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.”

Among the UN’s long bill of particulars against the beleaguered Jewish state comes the almost unbelievable accusation that Israel’s refusal to share its Iron Dome ballistic missile defense shield with the "governing authority" of Gaza – i.e. Hamas, the terror group created to pursue the extermination of the Jewish state and now waging a terrorist war against it – constitutes a war crime against the civilians of Gaza.

The UN chairwoman criticized the U.S. for helping fund Israel's Iron Dome system which has saved countless Israeli and Palestinian lives. "No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling," she said.

Just because Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately aimed at Israeli civilian population centers without provocation and fires them from within its own population centers does not “absolve” Israel from its own legal violations, Pillay told reporters Thursday.

Translation: "Israel has Iron Dome. HAMAS doesn't. That's not fair!" (Applause to Phineas at Sister Toldjah for the link.)

Let's leave aside HAMAS's many aggressions, its unconcealed determination to destroy Israel and slaughter every Jew therein, its use of tunnels to commit atrocities against Israeli civilians, its use of human shields to discourage counterbattery fire by Israel, its repeated violations of previously agreed-upon cease-fire periods, and its general villainy toward those upon whom it has imposed itself. Gentle Reader, have you ever heard a military engagement condemned as "unfair" before? Specifically because the two sides were unequally armed? What would the United Nations have said to such a complaint, had it been raised by Germany or Japan in the closing days of World War II?

Good grief. Among American military officers of command rank, one of the homilies relevant to preparation for conflict is "If it's a fair fight, you haven't done your job." The entire point of military planning is to accumulate advantages over your putative adversary -- i.e., to make the coming fight as unfair as possible. But hark! The UN's top Human Rights official has just declared preparation that conforms to that maxim a war crime!

I have an uncanny suspicion that, were the balance of armaments just as asymmetrical as it is today, but in HAMAS's favor, Miss Pillay would not have emitted a word of protest. But hey, that's just me.

What about the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine? Or between ISIS and Iraq? Or the tensions on the Korean Peninsula, steadily escalating toward a rolling boil? Has Miss Pillay had anything to say about the imbalances of armament in those regions?

Or...say it softly, now...what about the card Israel holds that has kept its neighboring states at bay since the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War: its nuclear deterrent? Would Miss Pillay like to go on record as advocating Israel's sharing of those weapons with HAMAS?

I can imagine a time, not too far in the future, when the citizens of a restored America walk by that megalith on the East River, smile down at their minor children, and say, "Would you like to hear what the people who once worked in that building did there?" And after regaling Junior with fifteen or twenty minutes' worth of UN lunacies, conclude with, "And we used to pay them to do it!"

Before Dad launches into such a recitation, he'd better make certain that Junior has a healthy tolerance for absurdity. A program of nightly Monty Python productions might do the trick. Failing that, there's always the clown extravaganza we call Congress. But perhaps I'm being "unfair" to our esteemed legislators. Not that I care, of course.