The UN's Commitment to Worldwide Donothingness

You know I cannot pass up an opportunity to ridicule the UN when given an opportunity.

The latest chance to do so is with the UN's election of 22 countries with dubious human right's records to the vaunted UN Human Rights Council.

Some of the non-deserving countries rewarded are China, Cuba, Algeria and Saudi Arabia among others.

Thomas P. Kilgannon writing in Townhall has more.

China, one of those nations that will cast judgment on the liberties of individuals around the world, is led by Hu Jintao, who is ranked number six on Parade magazine's 2006 list of "The World's 10 Worst Dictators." The editors at Parade write that in China, "between 250,000 and 300,000 political dissidents are held in 'reeducation-through-labor' camps without trial." Privacy is a little understood concept in China as communications such as phone calls, e-mail, and Internet are routinely monitored by government agents. An organization known as Human Rights in China said in the last 17 years it "has documented continued and increasing detentions, arrests and other forms of persecutions."

Appearing at number seven on Parade's list of dictators is King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, whose nation was also rewarded with a seat on the Human Rights Council. The House of Saud, where women are treated like third-class citizens, received more votes in the General Assembly for a Council seat than did Switzerland.

Among the other stalwarts of tolerance that were elected to the Human Rights Council are Bangladesh, whose rights record is listed by the State Department as "poor" and which restricts religious freedom and freedom of the press; Cameroon, where activists are, according to Amnesty International, "routinely harassed, detained and assaulted"; and Cuba, whose totalitarian regime imprisons political opponents and suppresses political, religious and economic freedoms.

This is the new and "improved" United Nations Human Rights Council – and Kofi Annan can keep it.

Why is it again that we send dues to the UN?