{"id":4176,"date":"2003-01-23T13:56:37","date_gmt":"2003-01-23T18:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4176"},"modified":"2003-01-23T13:56:37","modified_gmt":"2003-01-23T18:56:37","slug":"moral_high_grou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/23\/moral_high_grou.html","title":{"rendered":"Moral high ground"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since France has taken on the role of Defender of International Morality, perhaps some other actions taken in the past few days will shed light on the sort of actions it considers to be exemplars of How Nations Should Act.<\/p>\n<p>First off, we have the case of Robert Mugabe, the butcher\/dictator of Zimbabwe, who has been formally banned from entering the EU (his assets there have also been frozen).  That ban is up for renewal next week.  <\/p>\n<p>The French, though, are convinced that Mugabe&#8217;s being able to attend a meeting of African Heads of State held in Paris will &#8220;help promote justice, human rights and democracy in his country.&#8221;  To that end, they&#8217;ve <a title=\"BBC NEWS | World | Africa | France defies UK over Mugabe\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/africa\/2688005.stm\">invited Mugabe<\/a> to France, to arrive the day <i>after <\/i>the current sanctions end.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, France is still officially peeved over Libya&#8217;s involvement in the bombing of a French aircraft over Niger in 1989.  That <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dawn.com\/2003\/01\/23\/int10.htm\">wasn&#8217;t enough to keep them from voting no <\/a>when Libya was being elected to the rotating leadership of the UN Commission on Human Rights.  That&#8217;s because Libya had the support of most African states, and, after all, a lot of Africans died in the plane crash, too.  <\/p>\n<p>So, rather than vote yes or now, they simply abstained.<\/p>\n<p>Moral Leadership indeed.<\/p>\n<p><small>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.instapundit.com\/archives\/006962.php\">InstaPundit<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since France has taken on the role of Defender of International Morality, perhaps some other actions taken in the past few days will shed light on the sort of actions&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4053,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/22\/character_refer.html","url_meta":{"origin":4176,"position":0},"title":"Character reference","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 22-Feb-03 3:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, and his wife, Grace, left their five-star Paris hotel last night at the end of the France-Africa summit, praising French hospitality and President Jacques Chirac's role...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geopolitical Brouhaha&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4140,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/30\/smoking_guns_3.html","url_meta":{"origin":4176,"position":1},"title":"Smoking guns","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 30-Jan-03 8:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've got to run later this morning for the airport, so not much time to flesh this out, but here's an interesting interview that basically says the Administration has all...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geopolitical Brouhaha&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3783,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/28\/tired_of_being.html","url_meta":{"origin":4176,"position":2},"title":"Tired of being depressed about Iraq?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 28-Mar-03 8:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"Then read this story about the destruction of a country -- the dismantling and long-term demolition of Zimbabe by its presdient, Robert Mugabe. It'll make you cry....","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Geopolitical Brouhaha&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":52012,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/31\/google-plans-to-challenge-frances-global-right-to-be-forgotten.html","url_meta":{"origin":4176,"position":3},"title":"Google plans to challenge France&#039;s global &quot;right to be forgotten&quot;","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 31-Jul-15 10:28pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's not challenging France's jurisdiction over French domains like Google.fr, but over information anywhere around the globe, such as Google.com. In other words, France's government privacy organization, CNIL, believes that its privacy laws apply not only to French data, but to data everywhere, and that a privacy takedown request should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16974,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/26\/unblogged-bits-for-fri-26-mar-2010-801pm.html","url_meta":{"origin":4176,"position":4},"title":"Unblogged Bits for Fri, 26 Mar 2010,  8:01PM","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 26-Mar-10 5:01pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Ensign feels sorry for himself - Gosh -- great way to take responsibility for your actions, John. A Few Right-Wing Leaders Vow To Be More Civil - They are certainly fine words and good\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Potpourri&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133419,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/07\/congrats-to-emmanuel-macron-and-france-and-europe-and-the-world.html","url_meta":{"origin":4176,"position":5},"title":"Congrats to Emmanuel Macron &#8212; and France, and Europe, and the World","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 7-May-17 10:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's certainly to be celebrated (by me, at least) that a non-party centrist beat the political pants off of a neo-fascist xenophobe, despite fear of a Brexit-Trump-Le Pen trifecta.That said, rumors of the death of the zany right in France are probably just as opportunistic and dead wrong as rumors\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}