Carey Roberts
Soft totalitarians on the loose at the UN
By Carey Roberts
News Flash — UN top brass have begun to realize that the American public is growing tired of the non-stop scandals oozing like putrid swamp-fill from the world body. Appearing on Fox News Sunday this past weekend, UN chief of staff Mark Malloch Brown was forced to admit, "In a very real way, we seem to have lost touch with the great middle in America."
But Mr. Brown is actually quite fortunate.
Because if Middle Americans knew how radical feminists are working tirelessly behind the scenes to spread their socialistic views of gender equality, he would be facing a public relations problem of tsunamic proportions.
The Gender Warriors now operate with impunity from three base camps within the UN bureaucracy:
This is just a partial list of the UN organizations that now specialize in gender issues:
— UNIFEM, the UN Development Fund for Women: Serves as the bully pulpit for director Noeleen Heyzer, whose high-voltage rhetoric makes Gloria Steinem sound like a bow-tie conservative.
— UNICEF: Headed by arch-feminist Carol Bellamy, who succeeded in proving you can make a renowned organization go bad in just a few short years [www.c-fam.org/pdfs/unicef.pdf]
— UN Population Fund: Aims to control population growth through the shameless huckstering of abortion services and forced sterilizations on women and teenage girls.
— UNAIDS: Shows what happens when Leftist ideology is substituted for sound science in the fight to stop AIDS [www.washtimes.com/commentary/20041205-123305-3151r.htm].
— World Health Organization: Thanks to former feminist director Gro Harlem Brundtland, gives top billing to women's health, even though men suffer from shorter lifespans [www.renewamerica.com/analyses/050312roberts.htm].
Still, the Sisterhood seeks to maximize its body count. Watch for these upcoming search-and-destroy missions in the coming months:
First the femmes want to gender mainstream the rest of the UN. In case you hadn't heard, gender mainstreaming is "the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies, or programs, in all areas and at all levels." Note the all-encompassing phrases, "any planned action" and "in all areas and at all levels."
Second, in order to focus its efforts, the UN has established what it calls Millenium Development Goals [www.un.org/millenniumgoals/]. Out of the eight Goals, two are specific to women:
— Promote gender equality and empower women
— Improve maternal health
Now the feminists want to "mainstream" the gender perspective to the six remaining Development Goals. That may happen as early as this coming September at the MDG Summit.
Third, the rad-fems have designs on the International Criminal Court. The ICC now claims jurisdiction over a long list of so-called "crimes against humanity," including forced pregnancy and sexual violence.
"Forced pregnancy" is fem-speak for not providing free abortion services, and no one has yet to define "sexual violence." But once they fortify their power base, the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice no doubt will tell us what they have in mind [www.iccwomen.org].
In the past, totalitarianism was enforced by the GULAG, goon squads, and economic reprisals. That was "hard" totalitarianism.
Now we face a new threat, what Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione likes to call "soft totalitarianism." Buttiglione sees this trend unfolding at the European Union, which regulates the smallest details of life down to the permissible curve of bananas.
Soft totalitarianism has a kinder, gentler face. It pretends to advance the cause of equality. It claims to be working for a gender utopia.
But in practice, soft totalitarianism relies on government-sponsored bribery (known as the welfare state), top-down imposition of laws, rampant distortions of fact, and mass re-education [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0309roberts.html].
The end result of both forms of totalitarianism is exactly the same — concentration of power in the government, economic stagnation, undermining of the family, and curtailment of individual liberties.
At the UN, the color of jackboots is lavender and pink.
© Carey Roberts
News Flash — UN top brass have begun to realize that the American public is growing tired of the non-stop scandals oozing like putrid swamp-fill from the world body. Appearing on Fox News Sunday this past weekend, UN chief of staff Mark Malloch Brown was forced to admit, "In a very real way, we seem to have lost touch with the great middle in America."
But Mr. Brown is actually quite fortunate.
Because if Middle Americans knew how radical feminists are working tirelessly behind the scenes to spread their socialistic views of gender equality, he would be facing a public relations problem of tsunamic proportions.
The Gender Warriors now operate with impunity from three base camps within the UN bureaucracy:
- Commission on the Status of Women — This committee orchestrated the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The CSW organized the 10-year progress review of Beijing that concluded this past Friday in New York City [www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw].
- Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) — Originally adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, this Trojan Horse treaty now has 179 signatory nations [www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/index.html].
- Inter-agency Network on Women and Gender Equality — This is the group that rides herd on the countless UN agencies and initiatives designed to promote women's issues [www.un.org/womenwatch].
This is just a partial list of the UN organizations that now specialize in gender issues:
— UNIFEM, the UN Development Fund for Women: Serves as the bully pulpit for director Noeleen Heyzer, whose high-voltage rhetoric makes Gloria Steinem sound like a bow-tie conservative.
— UNICEF: Headed by arch-feminist Carol Bellamy, who succeeded in proving you can make a renowned organization go bad in just a few short years [www.c-fam.org/pdfs/unicef.pdf]
— UN Population Fund: Aims to control population growth through the shameless huckstering of abortion services and forced sterilizations on women and teenage girls.
— UNAIDS: Shows what happens when Leftist ideology is substituted for sound science in the fight to stop AIDS [www.washtimes.com/commentary/20041205-123305-3151r.htm].
— World Health Organization: Thanks to former feminist director Gro Harlem Brundtland, gives top billing to women's health, even though men suffer from shorter lifespans [www.renewamerica.com/analyses/050312roberts.htm].
Still, the Sisterhood seeks to maximize its body count. Watch for these upcoming search-and-destroy missions in the coming months:
First the femmes want to gender mainstream the rest of the UN. In case you hadn't heard, gender mainstreaming is "the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies, or programs, in all areas and at all levels." Note the all-encompassing phrases, "any planned action" and "in all areas and at all levels."
Second, in order to focus its efforts, the UN has established what it calls Millenium Development Goals [www.un.org/millenniumgoals/]. Out of the eight Goals, two are specific to women:
— Promote gender equality and empower women
— Improve maternal health
Now the feminists want to "mainstream" the gender perspective to the six remaining Development Goals. That may happen as early as this coming September at the MDG Summit.
Third, the rad-fems have designs on the International Criminal Court. The ICC now claims jurisdiction over a long list of so-called "crimes against humanity," including forced pregnancy and sexual violence.
"Forced pregnancy" is fem-speak for not providing free abortion services, and no one has yet to define "sexual violence." But once they fortify their power base, the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice no doubt will tell us what they have in mind [www.iccwomen.org].
In the past, totalitarianism was enforced by the GULAG, goon squads, and economic reprisals. That was "hard" totalitarianism.
Now we face a new threat, what Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione likes to call "soft totalitarianism." Buttiglione sees this trend unfolding at the European Union, which regulates the smallest details of life down to the permissible curve of bananas.
Soft totalitarianism has a kinder, gentler face. It pretends to advance the cause of equality. It claims to be working for a gender utopia.
But in practice, soft totalitarianism relies on government-sponsored bribery (known as the welfare state), top-down imposition of laws, rampant distortions of fact, and mass re-education [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0309roberts.html].
The end result of both forms of totalitarianism is exactly the same — concentration of power in the government, economic stagnation, undermining of the family, and curtailment of individual liberties.
At the UN, the color of jackboots is lavender and pink.
© Carey Roberts
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(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
