Quit the UN

UN Calls for National Water “Affordability Standard” in America by Alex Newman, 10/14/14, thenewamerican.com

As more than one bil­lion peo­ple oppressed under United Nations mem­ber regimes strug­gle to live on less than $1 a day, the UN’s “human rights” brigades vis­ited Detroit this week — where the aver­age wel­fare ben­e­fits amount to almost $30,000 per year — to call for a national “afford­abil­ity stan­dard” for water. Accord­ing to the plan­e­tary human-rights bureau­crats, the tax­pay­ers and the bank­rupt city gov­ern­ment must con­tinue to pro­vide water even for res­i­dents who have not paid their bill in months because appar­ently free water ser­vices are now among the “most basic human rights.”

The UN del­e­ga­tion to Detroit included two oper­a­tives with bom­bas­tic titles: “Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the human right to water and san­i­ta­tion” Cata­rina de Albu­querque, and Leilani Farha, dubbed “the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the right to ade­quate hous­ing.” In a press release posted on the dictator-dominated organization’s web­site, the duo “expressed con­cern” over the water shut-offs that have been tak­ing place in Detroit as city offi­cials seek to col­lect on seri­ously delin­quent accounts. The two had pre­vi­ously called for “inter­na­tional law” to be enforced amid what they said was a vio­la­tion of the UN’s bizarre notions of “human rights.”

“It is con­trary to human rights to dis­con­nect water from peo­ple who sim­ply do not have the means to pay their bills,” said de Albu­querque in the UN press release fol­low­ing the two-day pro­pa­ganda visit to Detroit, appar­ently unaware that a recent study revealed aver­age state and fed­eral wel­fare ben­e­fits in Michi­gan pay $28,872 per year. “I heard tes­ti­monies from poor, African Amer­i­can res­i­dents of Detroit who were forced to make impos­si­ble choices — to pay the water bill or to pay their rent.”

The aver­age rent in Detroit is about $800, which, for some­body bring­ing in more than $80 per day based on aver­age wel­fare ben­e­fits, should leave about $20,000 per year to pay water bills and other expenses — if they live alone. Accord­ing to the Detroit Free Press, the aver­age water bill in the city comes to about $65 per month, or less than $800 every year. In other words, aver­age water bills and rents com­bined should cost around $10,000 per year, leav­ing an aver­age wel­fare recip­i­ent with more than $18,000 left to spend. Gallup data sug­gests that $18,000 is about twice the median house­hold income worldwide.

Appar­ently that is not enough for the UN’s dictator-dominated human rights bureau­cracy, which was dis­banded some years ago after Libyan dic­ta­tor Moam­mar Gad­hafi was elected by UN mem­ber regimes to lead it. Today, the self-styled UN “Human Rights Coun­cil” includes such paragons of human rights as the com­mu­nist regimes rul­ing Cuba and China, among oth­ers. The Saudi monar­chy, which lit­er­ally beheads “apos­tates,” serves on the coun­cil, too. It also recently added the regime rul­ing El Sal­vador, headed by a “for­mer” com­mu­nist mass-murderer who led a bloody Castro-backed cam­paign to over­throw the for­mer government.

Instead of deal­ing with real human-rights abuses, how­ever, the UN body has increas­ingly stepped up its attacks on Amer­ica and other civ­i­lized nations for pro­tect­ing lib­erty, hav­ing low taxes, stay-at-home moms, and more. For instance, in recent years, the UN body has lashed out at the United States for its pro­tec­tions of the right to keep and bear arms, parental rights, the right to a fair trial, state sov­er­eignty, self-defense rights, and much more. The U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and the Amer­i­can sys­tem of gov­ern­ment have also been placed openly in UN crosshairs.

As if to drive home the UN’s igno­rance of — or hos­til­ity toward — the U.S. sys­tem of lim­ited gov­ern­ment and fed­er­al­ism, “Spe­cial Rap­por­teur” de Albu­querque made a series of out­landish demands that would put the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in direct vio­la­tion of the con­tract that cre­ated it. “First, we sug­gest that the city of Detroit restores water con­nec­tions to all res­i­dents unable to pay, and also to stop any fur­ther dis­con­nec­tions of water in those cases,” she was quoted as say­ing. “We also urge the city, the state, but also the national gov­ern­ment … to adopt a manda­tory afford­abil­ity stan­dard.” Of course, the “national gov­ern­ment” has no con­sti­tu­tional author­ity to cre­ate any such standard.

The other UN “spe­cial rap­por­teur,” Farha, played the race card, say­ing that mostly blacks were affected by the shut-offs (because mostly blacks live in Detroit). “Every effort should be made by all lev­els of gov­ern­ment to ensure that the most vul­ner­a­ble are not evicted from or lose their hous­ing as a result of water shut-offs or water bill arrears,” decreed Farha. “Where an indi­vid­ual or fam­ily is ren­dered home­less due to water shut-offs, the City of Detroit must have in place emer­gency ser­vices to ensure alter­nate accom­mo­da­tion with run­ning water is available.”

She also demanded what sounded like a par­al­lel legal sys­tem to chal­lenge the munic­i­pal water provider’s billing. “If you have a dis­pute about a bill, you need an admin­is­tra­tive rem­edy to that dis­pute,” Farha said. “If you want to chal­lenge the afford­abil­ity of water in the city of Detroit, you need a legal mech­a­nism to do that.” It was not clear under what sup­posed author­ity the UN bureau­crats were pur­port­ing to issue com­mands to local, state, and fed­eral author­i­ties in the United States.

Local offi­cials, though, hit back at the UN bureau­crats. Mayor Mike Duggan’s top aide, Alexis Wiley, blasted the UN “review” as one-sided, say­ing the office was “very dis­ap­pointed” with the “rap­por­teurs” and their sup­posed probe. “They weren’t inter­ested in the facts,” she explained. “They took a posi­tion and never once [before Mon­day] reached out to the city for data.” Indeed, as The New Amer­i­can reported in June, the same UN oper­a­tives made vir­tu­ally the same claims before their “inves­ti­ga­tion” based on com­plaints about Detroit by rad­i­cal Cana­dian activists sub­mit­ted to the UN.

Accord­ing to local offi­cials, cur­rently pre­sid­ing over the largest munic­i­pal bank­ruptcy in U.S. his­tory, the city shuts off water ser­vices to busi­nesses and res­i­dents who are either two months past due on their bills or who owe more than $150. It also has a vari­ety of pro­grams to help res­i­dents who get behind on their pay­ments, includ­ing offer­ing pay­ment plans to delin­quent account hold­ers. Among those whose ser­vices were dis­con­nected: a city coun­cil mem­ber, the Joe Louis Arena that hosts the NHL Detroit Red Wings team, and the NFL Detroit Lions’ Ford Field, accord­ing to media reports.

While the UN frames the issue as a “human rights vio­la­tion,” it is impor­tant to keep some cru­cial facts in mind. The lat­est UN attack on Amer­i­can poli­cies comes amid a con­certed global cam­paign, led by the UN and the glob­al­ist estab­lish­ment, to rede­fine the very notion of rights. In the United States, as the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion make crys­tal clear, indi­vid­ual rights come from God and can­not be legit­i­mately infringed upon by gov­ern­ment. In fact, the Founders pointed out that the whole pur­pose of gov­ern­ment is to pro­tect unalien­able rights.

Under the UN’s vision, by con­trast, revo­ca­ble priv­i­leges are granted by all-powerful gov­ern­ments, which are per­mit­ted to infringe on those pseudo-rights at will. In its “Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights,” the UN even states its abhor­rent posi­tion that what it inac­cu­rately refers to as “rights” are “granted” by gov­ern­ments, not the Cre­ator. The global entity also claims “rights” can be lim­ited “by law,” and that no rights may be “exer­cised con­trary to the pur­poses and prin­ci­ples of the United Nations.” The dec­la­ra­tion also claims every­one has “duties” to the “community.”

Rather than free­dom from coer­cion — free speech, free­dom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to be secure from unrea­son­able searches, and more — the UN admit­tedly views rights in total­i­tar­ian terms, such as the “right” to the fruits of oth­ers’ labor. Like com­mu­nist and social­ist dic­ta­tors world­wide, the UN jus­ti­fies its exis­tence partly based on the dan­ger­ous notion that taxpayer-funded goods and ser­vices can be con­sid­ered “rights” to be enforced by the coer­cive power of government.

The dif­fer­ence between the visions, of course, is cru­cial: Real rights are free­dom from gov­ern­ment coer­cion; UN “rights” require gov­ern­ment coer­cion. For more evi­dence of the UN’s view of “human rights,” sim­ply con­sider the bru­tal assort­ment of com­mu­nist, social­ist, Islamist, and mass-murdering tyrants on the UN “Human Rights Coun­cil.” Late last year, even the regimes rul­ing China, Cuba, Viet­nam, Alge­ria, Saudi Ara­bia, and Rus­sia — among the worst vio­la­tors of actual rights on Earth — were appointed to the council.

What Detroit needs is not UN bureau­crats, more wel­fare, or a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of rights to con­form to failed and mur­der­ous total­i­tar­ian mod­els of the last cen­tury. Instead, as count­less stud­ies have demon­strated, good gov­ern­ment, eco­nomic lib­erty, and pro­tec­tion for unalien­able rights pro­duces abun­dant pros­per­ity for all — that is why the United States, Canada, and Switzer­land are among the rich­est coun­tries on Earth while Cuba, North Korea, and Zim­babwe are the poorest.

For now, the UN “human rights” out­fit acknowl­edged that it has no author­ity to impose its wild demands. How­ever, if Amer­i­cans are not care­ful, that will not always be the case. Rather than con­tinue to play along with the anti-liberty and anti-sovereignty antics of the UN — widely ridiculed as the “dic­ta­tors’ club,” and for good rea­son — the U.S. gov­ern­ment should defund and with­draw from the out­fit immediately.

Related Posts

• The Unalien­able Right to Use and Enjoy One’s Property
• The UN’s got the money, the UN’s got the water
  http://agenda21news.com/2014/10/un-calls-national-water-affordability-standard-america/