October Surprise Preview

Conn Carroll / May 20, 2008

Robert Mugabe’s government is still killing opposition leaders in Zimbabwe. South African shantytown residents are killing migrant workers. A terrorist organization still controls half of Lebanon a full six days after violence began. So how does the United Nations spend its resources? It sends a French-educated lawyer from Senegal, Doudou Diene, on a three week tour of Washington, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago to investigate “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” in America. Heritage Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom Director Dr. Nile Gardiner exposes this game in NRO:

It is hard not to conclude that the U.N. is up to mischief in commissioning a major investigation during a presidential-election year. The United Nations has a habit of interfering in U.S. elections, as it showed in 2004, when the New York Times published an “October surprise” a week ahead of the election revealing that 380 tons of powerful explosives had gone missing from the al-Qaqaa former military complex in Baghdad.
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Doudou Diene has a track record of focusing his attention on freedom-loving democratic societies, with damning reports on alleged institutionalized racism in countries such as Japan, Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland. His reports are highly controversial and are usually rejected out of hand by the Western governments he is targeting. Like most other U.N. “Special Rapporteurs” Diene is unaccountable as well as unqualified for the position he holds. The United Nations doesn’t even bother to post his biography online, though his career details can be found on the website of the Organization of American States. His entire career has been spent as a U.N. bureaucrat, with absolutely no real world experience. Even by the dismally low standards of the United Nations, Diene is a spectacular non-entity.