As if there needed to be another reason...

...for our nation to kick the UN the hell out of this country, try this one on for size:


NEW YORK — Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest."
Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to its website.
Buried 2,000 words deep in a U.N. press release distributed Wednesday on the filling of "vacancies in subsidiary bodies," was the stark announcement: Iran, along with representatives from 10 other nations, was "elected by acclamation," meaning that no open vote was requested or required by any member states — including the United States.
The U.S. currently holds one of the 45 seats on the body, a position set to expire in 2012. The U.S. Mission to the U.N. did not return requests for comment on whether it actively opposed elevating Iran to the women's commission.
Iran's election comes just a week after one of its senior clerics declared that women who wear revealing clothing are to blame for earthquakes, a statement that created an international uproar — but little affected their bid to become an international arbiter of women's rights.
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," said the respected cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi.
As word of Iran's intention to join the women's commission came out, a group of Iranian activists circulated a petition to the U.N. asking that member states oppose its election.
"Iran's discriminatory laws demonstrate that the Islamic Republic does not believe in gender equality," reads the letter, signed by 214 activists and endorsed by over a dozen human rights bodies.
The letter draws a dark picture of the status of women in Iran: "women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women's admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws."
The Commission on the Status of Women is supposed to conduct review of nations that violate women's rights, issue reports detailing their failings, and monitor their success in improving women's equality.
Yet critics of Iran's human rights record say the country has taken "every conceivable step" to deter women's equality.
"In the past year, it has arrested and jailed mothers of peaceful civil rights protesters," wrote three prominent democracy and human rights activists in an op-ed published online Tuesday by Foreign Policy Magazine.
"It has charged women who were seeking equality in the social sphere — as wives, daughters and mothers — with threatening national security, subjecting many to hours of harrowing interrogation. Its prison guards have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and raped female and male civil rights protesters."
Though it touts itself as "the principal global policy-making body" on women's rights, the makeup of the commission is mostly determined by geography and its membership is a hodge-podge of some human rights advocates (including the U.S., Japan, and Germany) and other nations with stark histories of rights violations.
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The activists' letter sent to the U.N. Tuesday argued that it would be better if the Asian countries proffered only one candidate, instead of elevating Iran to the commission.
"We, a group of gender-equality activists, believe that for the sake of women's rights globally, an empty seat for the Asia group on (the commission) is much preferable to Iran's membership. We are writing to alert you to the highly negative ramifications of Iran’s membership in this international body."
A spokeswoman for the U.N.'s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which oversees the commission, did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment. (courtesy FoxNews)

Do I really need to comment on this? The same people who bring you "observers" in the Congo that aparently observe nothing other than local rape customs, the same people that bring you global warming "experts" who are aparently only experts in creating fairy tales, and the same people that want you to think that Israel is only a good citizen of the world so long as they take every murder, every, bomb, and every protest their lazy Palestinian antagonists dish out without responce, now want you to believe that President Iamanutjob of Iran will bring greater equality to the world's women. I have a suggestion: let him start by working on Nancy Pelosi's equality.

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And now, our final Euro-hockey note: TPS Turku, 6th place finishers in the S-M Liiga's regular season, win their 11th Finnish championship with a 6-2 over HPK Hameenlimma. So if my memory serves, this means that out of 13 leagues we followed this season, only France, Switzerland, and Denmark had their season champion become their playoff champion. The curse of being best also hit the NHL with Washington's brilliant (hee hee) performance aginst 8th seeded Montreal. I'm sure we'll hear once again all that stuff about the Caps' "window of opportunity" closing. I don't know about the window closing this year, but the screen door sure did. Perhaps, if they had come into the playoffs without the expectation that the league's lower lights would roll over and die for them, they may have gotten farther. Clue fer you, Ovechkin and co.; you aren't the Yankees. Teams don't wilt at the drop of your name. You still need to play the game that brought you there. Until you learn how to play with the target on your back, you'll be on the golfcourse in May more often than not. Now, we'll have to see if the second place Blackhawks can learn the lesson too.