On Wednesday, following the not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin murder trial, liberal black political activist Jesse Jackson (shown) expressed his opinion that, despite protestations from both the prosecution and the defense to the contrary, the trial was all about race:
If Trayvon Martin were not a young black male, he would be alive today. Despite the verdict, it’s clear that George Zimmerman would never have confronted a young white man wearing a hoodie….
Both the prosecutor and the defense claimed that the trial was not about race. But Trayvon Martin was assumed to be threatening just for walking while being young, black and male.
And then, because in Jackson’s eyes there was a miscarriage of justice in the case, Jackson called for not only a congressional but an international investigation:
We need a national investigation of the racial context that led to Trayvon Martin’s slaying. Congress must act.
And it’s time to call on the United Nations Human Rights Commission for an in-depth investigation of whether the U.S. is upholding its obligations under international human rights laws and treaties.
Jackson is no stranger to civil rights politics and political action, having cut his teeth with Martin Luther King, Jr. as far back as 1965. In 1971, he started a non-profit called People United to Save Humanity (Operation PUSH) and in 1984 organized the Rainbow Coalition, which merged with PUSH in 1996 to become Rainbow/PUSH. Active politically with presidential runs in 1984 and 1988, Jackson has also inserted himself into international incidents, such as securing the release in 1983 of a captured American pilot, Navy Lt. Robert Goodman, who was being held by the Syrian government, as well as persuading Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to release 22 Americans in 1984.
Jackson’s demand for an investigation by the UN follows comments by other cogs in the international machinery decrying the Zimmerman case. Back in April 2012, just days before Zimmerman was indicted for second-degree murder in Florida, Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for “an immediate investigation” into the shooting, adding:
The law should operate equally in respect of all violations. So, like every other situation such as this, we will be urging an investigation, and prosecution and trial — and of course reparations for the victims concerned.
Pillay expanded on her position in May at a meeting of her Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent in Paris where she decried America’s “discrimination that people of African descent face in terms of access to justice,” according to an observer. She “stressed that the process of justice was often different [in America] for people of African descent.”
And last December the UN inserted itself into another highly flammable issue when the UN’s Human Rights Committee criticized Florida’s “stand your ground” law, holding that it wasn’t “compliant with international human rights principles of necessity and proportionality [under which] there is a general duty to avoid the use of force where non-violent means of self-protection are reasonably available.”
If this sounds familiar, it’s merely an echo of the position taken earlier this week when Attorney General Eric Holder said he wanted to launch his own investigation into “stand your ground” laws now enjoyed by 25 states. As noted here, these laws have a long tradition in American jurisprudence, and opening an investigation would serve no purpose other than to undermine 100 years of settled law.
Jackson’s reference to the UN’s Human Rights Commission failed to reflect that that particular odious gaggle of thugs was replaced in 2006 by the UN’s Human Rights Council, an equally repugnant gathering of human rights violators. This opinion is shared not only by the New York Times but by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), both pro-internationalist entities, as well. In 2006, the Times, in an editorial entitled “The Shame of the United Nations,” pointed out:
Some of the world’s most abusive regimes have won seats on the Human Rights Commission and used them to insulate themselves from criticism. Current members include Sudan, which is carrying out genocide; Nepal, whose absolute monarch has suspended basic liberties; and Saudi Arabia, where women have few rights. All are gross violators of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the commission’s founding document.
In 2009, the CFR’s Lauren Vriens wrote:
Despite a high-profile effort to reform the world’s top human rights panel, the new UN Human Rights Council continues to face the same criticisms that plagued its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights.
Experts say bloc voting, loose membership standards, and bias against Israel are keeping the two-year-old council from living up to expectations as a responsible watchdog over global human rights norms. It is earning a failing grade from a broad range of groups, including human rights advocates, international law experts, and democracy activists.
She noted that, to its credit, the United States backed off from supporting the newly revised edition of this scurrilous entity under the Bush administration (but President Obama was very quick, early in his first term, to endorse it). Said Vriens:
The United States also disapproves of the membership standards of the council. Freedom House has determined that [in 2009] three of the Council’s members — China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia — are among the world’s most repressive countries [while] another five — Russia, Pakistan, Egypt, Bahrain and Azerbaijan — are considered “Not Free.”
She noted that Libya, widely criticized for its poor human rights record, actually chaired the new commission at one point, and that it failed to take any sort of action against Sudan “despite reports of rampant abuses in Darfur. Sudan was elected to the commission soon [there]after.”
The hypocrisy surrounding this UN “commission” fades in relative importance when it is understood that the UN is merely part of a plan to impose world-wide totalitarian rule via an international governing body, with criminals and miscreants like these in charge. As Larry Greenley wrote last month, predictions by The John Birch Society about the United Nations are coming true:
At the founding meeting of The John Birch Society in 1958, Robert Welch warned of a plan by our political elites to surrender American sovereignty to international organizations, such as the United Nations:
A part of that plan, of course, is to induce the gradual surrender of American sovereignty, piece by piece and step by step, to various international organizations — of which the United Nations is the outstanding but far from the only example.
Greenley pointed out current reasons to get the United States out of the United Nations and get the UN out of the United States, which included the current push to pass the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which, according to the UN itself, would control
all ocean space, with all its uses, including navigation and overflight; all uses of its resources, living and non-living, on the high seas, on the ocean floor and beneath, on the continental shelf and in the territorial seas.
In other words, according to Greenley, LOST would give the UN “authority over everything, everything, over, on, or under the oceans and seas of the world.”
Then, there’s the Obama-supported UN Arms Trade Treaty, which is designed to disarm American citizens. And there’s the UN’s Agenda 21, which “provides a platform for the eventual total government control over our entire material existence.”
And now there’s the obvious desire of individuals such as Jackson and Holder to allow the UN to undermine long-settled matters of law, using the verdict in the Zimmerman case as an excuse. The fact that they are singing off the same sheet of music just provides one more reason to get United States out.
A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
