Swedish women in power visit Iran and wear hijabs.

Hypocrisy beyond imagining? Or cognitive dissonance to the point of lunacy?

Sweden has a “feminist government”, it says.

In the present cabinet there are 12 men and 12 women. But considering what it has wrought – the destruction of Sweden – we’d say that the government consists entirely of girls.

From Clarion Project:

In a trade visit to Iran, 11 members of the self-declared “feminist government” of Sweden greeted Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other officials dressed in hijabs …

In declaring itself a feminist government, Swedish ministers said, “This means that gender equality is central to the Government’s priorities – in decision-making and resource allocation. A feminist government ensures that a gender equality perspective is brought into policy-making on a broad front, both nationally and internationally…This is a human right and a matter of democracy and justice.”

Masih Alinejad, an Iranian human rights activist who created the Facebook page “My Stealthy Freedom”, where Iranian women post pictures of themselves rebelling against Iran’s modesty laws, asked European female politicians as well as those around the world to reject the mullah’s dictates and realize that this is not a “cultural issue” but “the most visible symbol of oppression”. …

From Breitbart, by Liam Deacon:

Sweden’s “feminist” government has defended its delegation wearing Islamic headscarves in Iran, after receiving widespread accusations of hypocrisy.

Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin recently attacked U.S. President Donald J. Trump for having [only? mainly? some?] men in his top team. However, when her colleagues visited Iran they refused to take a stand against legally enforced female subjugation.

There were 11 women on the trip led by Prime Minister Stefan Lofven this weekend …  and they were all photographed in headscarves “almost all of the time”, apart from at events in the Swedish Embassy. …

Ann Linde, the Minister for European Union Affairs and Trade from the Social Democrat party, defended the move, arguing they could not violate Iranian law.

What would the Iranians have done about it if they had?

And this is from UN Watch:

Trade Minister Linde, who signed multiple agreements with Iranian ministers while wearing a veil, “sees no conflict” between her government’s human rights policy and signing trade deals with an oppressive dictatorship that tortures prisoners, persecutes gays, and is a leading executioner of minors.

“If Sweden really cares about human rights, they should not be empowering a regime that brutalizes its own citizens while carrying out genocide in Syria; and if they care about women’s rights, then the female ministers never should have gone to misogynistic Iran in the first place,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

The government has now come under sharp criticism from centrist and left-wing Swedish lawmakers, who said the ministers should not have deferred to “gender apartheid”.

“They go to my country,” said [Masih] Alinejad recently in the European Parliament, “and they ignore millions of those women who send their photos to me and put themselves in danger to be heard. And [the European politicians] keep their smile, and wearing hijab, and saying this is a ‘cultural issue’—which is wrong.”

Trade minister Ann Linde, one of three Swedish ministers who oversees the country’s “feminist foreign policy,” decided voluntarily to go covered in a long black coat, akin to the Chador, in addition to covering her hair with the compulsory Hijab. She is seen below meeting President Rouhani, and then signing one of multiple agreements with representatives of the theocratic regime.

Sweden itself will soon be an Islamic country. Then the whole population can wear hijabs, chadors, and smirks of infinite self-satisfaction for being more politically correct than any other country on earth – against stiff competition from other West European states.

Saudi Arabia? Yes. Religious tolerance? Yes.

But the Saudis don’t really mean it, do they?  Of course not, but a little thing like that won’t stop them.

The Independent reports:

Saudi Arabia has hosted an international conference on human rights, attended by the president of the UN Human Rights Council, and resolved to combat intolerance and violence based on religious belief.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – which has its headquarters in Jeddah – convened the fifth annual meeting of the Istanbul Process as the kingdom’s Supreme Court prepared to rule on the case of blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam through religious channels”. It later upheld the sentence.

The UN HRC recently faced criticism over Saudi plans to head up the council from 2016, in what critics said would be the “final nail in the coffin” for the international body.

And the Geneva-based human rights campaign group UN Watch accused HRC president Joachim Rücker of giving “false international legitimacy” to the two-day conference on religious freedoms held in Jeddah on 3 and 4 June.

According to a report in the Saudi Gazette, the participants in the conference “began with an agreement to put [HRC] resolution 16/18 into effect” – a pledge by all member states to combat “intolerance and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against persons based on religion or belief”.

“In addition, participants agreed on the importance on providing human rights education and encouraging religious and cultural diversity in communities.”

Invited to make the opening statement at the conference, Mr Rücker told the summit: “Religious intolerance and violence committed in the name of religion rank among the most significant human rights challenges of our times.”

But Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said: “It’s bad enough that the oppressive and fundamentalist Saudi monarchy was elected to sit on the UN Human Rights Council.

“But for top UN human rights officials to now visit Jeddah and smile while human rights activist Raif Badawi languishes in prison for the crime of religious dissent, still under threat of further flogging, is to pour salt in the wounds. It’s astonishing.”

Astonishing? Astonishing hypocrisy, yes. But what can be expected of the Saudis’ contemptible regime? It’s very existence is a mockery not only of tolerance, but also of  truth, decency, honesty, humanity.

It should inspire not astonishment but outrage and fury – if anyone in the flabby West is still capable of righteous anger.

*

Saudi Arabia is probably the most monocultural and intolerant country in the world. (Comparable only to Communist regimes.)

From Wikipedia:

Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia and its law requires that all citizens be Muslims. Neither Saudi citizens nor guest workers have the right of freedom of religion.The official and dominant form of Islam in the kingdom – Wahhabism – arose in the central region of Najd in the eighteenth century. Proponents call the movement “Salafism”, and believe that its teachings purify the practice of Islam of innovations or practices that deviate from the seventh-century teachings of Muhammad and his companions.

Saudi Arabia has “religious police” (known as Haia or Mutaween), who patrol the streets enforcing dress codes, strict separation of men and women, attendance at prayer (salat) five times each day, the ban on alcohol, and other aspects of Sharia (Islamic law). (In the privacy of the home behavior can be far looser, and reports indicate that the ruling Saudi Royal family applies a different moral code to itself, indulging in parties, drugs and sex.) [Including, to our certain knowledge, homosexual sex (often with under-15-year-old boys), which is punishable by death under sharia – TAC.]

Daily life is dominated by Islamic observance. Businesses are closed three or four times a day for 30 to 45 minutes during business hours while employees and customers are sent off to pray. The weekend is Friday-Saturday, not Saturday-Sunday, because Friday is the holiest day for Muslims. As of 2004 approximately half of the broadcast airtime of Saudi state television was devoted to religious issues. 90% of books published in the kingdom were on religious subjects, and most of the doctorates awarded by its universities were in Islamic studies. In the state school system, about half of the material taught is religious. In contrast, assigned readings over twelve years of primary and secondary schooling devoted to covering the history, literature, and cultures of the non-Muslim world comes to a total of about 40 pages.

Public support for the traditional political/religious structure of the kingdom is so strong that one researcher interviewing Saudis found virtually no support for reforms to secularize the state.

Because of religious restrictions, Saudi culture lacks any diversity of religious expression, buildings, annual festivals and public events. Celebration of other (non-Wahhabi) Islamic holidays, such as the Muhammad’s birthday and the Day of Ashura, (an important holiday for the 10-25% of the population that is Shīʿa Muslim), are tolerated only when celebrated locally and on a small scale. Shia also face systematic discrimination in employment, education, the justice system. Non-Muslim festivals like Christmas and Easter are not tolerated at all, although there are nearly a million Christians as well as Hindus and Buddhists among the foreign workers. No churches, temples or other non-Muslim houses of worship are permitted in the country. Proselytizing by non-Muslims and conversion by Muslims to another religion is illegal and punishable by death. And as of 2014 the distribution of “publications that have prejudice to any other religious belief other than Islam” (such as Bibles), was reportedly punishable by death. 

Atheists are legally designated as terrorists. 

Saudis or foreign residents who “call into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based” may be subject to as much as 20 years in prison. And at least one religious minority, the Ahmadiyya Muslims, had all its adherents deported, and they are legally banned from entering the country.

Next the UN will consider Saudi Arabia the ideal venue for an international conference on “diversity”. And after that, why not one on women’s rights?

July 23, 2014. The United Nations holds an emergency session on the battle in Gaza as the Israeli Defense Force destroys the invasion-tunnels and rocket bases of the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas.

Delegates from countries that specialize in mass murder, such as Sudan, Syria, Cuba, and Iran, accuse Israel of “war crimes”. Most of the rest of the world’s delegates are on the terrorists’ side too.

A lone voice defends Israel, and accuses its accusers. It is the voice of Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

The United Nations must be destroyed.

Even skeptics might acknowledge that the world would be better without the United Nations.

Is a start being made on demolishing the UN, or at least a wing of it?

News comes from The Hill:

A key House Republican is quickly pressing forward with her goals to scale back U.S. funding for the United Nations.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Hill that oversight would be a key function of the panel, particularly funding to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) that is “a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

“I’d like to make sure that we once and for all kill all U.S. funding for that beast,” she said last month. “Because I don’t think that it advances U.S. interests, I don’t think that that’s a pro-democracy group, it’s a rogue’s gallery, pariah states, they belong there because they don’t want to be sanctioned.”

Lovers of all things UN – leftists, the State Department, Obama and his shills, global warmists, world-government advocates, anti-Semites – have an argument for supporting the HRC which sounds ever so diplomatic, clever and subtle, as if they were cunningly manipulating the loathsome tyrannies that dominate the  organization, when in fact they are trying to deceive its honest and indignant critics.

Supporters of continued U.S. support of and participation on the HRC say that it’s essential that Washington have leverage on the panel, renowned for including countries that have their own records of human-rights violations [to put it very mildly – JB].

But staunchly the admirable Ros-Lehtinen is sticking to her resolution:

On Tuesday, Ros-Lehtinen will host a panel of U.N. critics and advocates … The 10 a.m. briefing before the full committee is titled, “The United Nations: Urgent Problems that Need Congressional Action.”

Fans of the UN and the shills for the HRC will appear before it to put their cunning (but transparent) argument:

One of those scheduled to testify, Peter Yeo, represents the United Nations Foundation/Better World Campaign, which at the start of President Obama’s term urged the commander in chief to “mount a campaign” to secure a place on the HRC, which the Bush administration had boycotted.

“Support of our UN commitments is more than an obligation, it is a smart investment in America’s strategic, economic and political interests,” Yeo told The Hill. “Continued American engagement and diplomacy at the UN will only advance our goals for democracy, human rights and world prosperity.”

Weasel words!

But there will be others who are fully aware of the evil the UN does, and some who have nobly exposed it.

U.N. critics set to appear include Claudia Rosett, who unveiled the oil-for-food scandal in 2004 and 2005 in The Wall Street Journal; Brett Schaefer, who regularly takes on the U.N. at the conservative Heritage Foundation; and Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch, which monitors the controversial HRC. …

Neuer [said] of Obama’s initiative to place a U.S. representative on the council with the intention of reforming from within that it was “naive for anyone to have thought it would change significantly.”

Or at all, since changing it is not Obama’s real intention – unless into a seat of world government.

Neuer probably knows this. He certainly knows how iniquitous the UN and the HRC really are. He has pointed out that 35 of the 45 resolutions produced by the HRC over the last five years have been “one-sided measures against Israel.” And he has lamented (The Hill reports) that “the U.S. and allied nations haven’t pulled together to trigger emergency sessions on crises such as the crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Iran or abuses against Tibetans or Uighurs by China.”

Another Republican who wants to “take on the UN” through control of the purse-strings, is Rep. Cliff Stearns:

The first bill in this Congress taking on the U.N., introduced on the first day the House was in session, came from Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) [who] introduced a measure to ensure that no federal funds may be used for the “design, renovation, construction, or rental of any headquarters for the United Nations in any location in the United States” unless Obama “transmits to Congress a certification that the United Nations has adopted internationally recognized best practices in contracting and procurement.”

“During the Bush administration, it was learned from internal U.N. auditors that 43 percent of $1.4 billion in procurement contracts investigated involved fraud,” Stearns said in a statement to The Hill.

“In addition, U.N. peacekeeping operations are plagued with numerous cases of abuse and sexual exploitation,” he added. “The U.N. is in desperate need of reform from top to bottom, and my bill is designed to have the world body take the simple step of adopting internationally recognized best practices in contracting and procurement, which includes taking the bid representing the best value.”

But the UN is not reformable. The UN (like its predecessor the League of Nations) was a bad idea to start with. After the Second World War the victors sat down together on the UN Security Council where the West and the Soviets, and later Communist China, glared at each other for the the duration of the Cold War – and still do; while in the General Assembly an overwhelming majority of despotisms vented their envy and spite against the West and especially Israel – and still do; and the bureaucrats who ran it, or at least some of them, corruptly enriched themselves at the expense of helplessly subjugated peoples (as in the oil-for-food scandal when they conspired with Saddam Hussein to line their own pockets and rob the oppressed Iraqis) – and still do.

The US sustains it. The US could destroy it at a stroke. Just not giving it the billions it does ($6.347 billion was the amount of American tax-payers’ money handed over to the UN in 2009) would crash the whole institution.

The Republicans are not apparently planning to be so radical as to bring down the edifice. Or not immediately anyway. We might hope that it is in their minds as an eventual aim. At present they’re ready only to chip away at its corners: 

The U.N. is also included in a broad-reaching budget-slashing bill by Ways and Means Committee member Kevin Brady (R-Texas).

The Cut Unsustainable and Top-Heavy Spending Act of 2011, introduced Jan. 7, calls for a 10 percent reduction in voluntary contributions to the United Nations — monies the U.S. is not required to give by law — for fiscal year 2011. …

“America can fulfill its generous financial obligations to the U.N., but will set priorities within the voluntary funding areas,” he said. “A financially and economically sound United States is in the U.N.’s best interest.”

A politically wise United States would see that abolishing the UN would be in the world’s best interest.  A movement to achieve its abolition would be a real “Better World Campaign”.

The Republicans need to throw away the chisel and lay the explosive, because the UN must be destroyed.