The Associated Press reports (boldface mine) that “A UN General Assembly committee has voted to discourage U.N. human rights bodies from adopting resolutions condemning the human rights situation in any country, over strong objections from the United States and many European countries.” The sponsors? Belarus and Uzbekistan. You can read the AP story here.

Meanwhile — in what might thus qualify as UN inconsistency, but for the single-minded display of purpose — the UN’s new “reformed” Human Rights Council in Geneva, which Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed, and Ambassador John Bolton warned against, is making use of its expanded meeting time to spend absolutely all of it condemning, as Bolton notes, not Burma, or North Korea, or Sudan … but democratic Israel.

Milton Friedman was a giant of modern times, and following his death yesterday, at the age of 94, I keep thinking how well his wisdom can serve us in the struggles ahead. The news is already full of articles describing his ideas, achievements and influence. What stands out in all of this, and what stood out in almost any conversation with Milton Friedman, was his tremendous respect for the individual, and for the great benefits that come when individuals are — in his trademark phrase — “free to choose.”

For many years, in many places, Milton Friedman was vilified for this. He came of age in a century that had a great romance with the collective — with communism, with big government, with paternalistic systems that he rightly believed worked to strip individuals of their freedom, and waste their talents and ingenuity. He stood by his ideas. His vindication came not in the form of the Nobel Prize, though he won one in 1976, but in the form of people living better lives in places where his ideas were put into practice. In the radical 1960s, the real radicalism — in the best sense — lay not in the standard protests of the day, but in works such as Milton Friedman’s then highly controversial “Capitalism and Freedom.” Over the years, in places from Chile to China to the United States itself, he patiently argued and taught and defended again and again the colossal importance of being free to choose.

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A word on the offers of support for John Bolton, which have been pouring into this blog since I observed a few days ago that he’s the best ambassador we’ve had at the UN since Jeane Kirkpatrick, and America needs him now more than ever.

When I wrote that, I threw in a whimsical note — reflecting on the big money poured into the UN by various left-leaning outfits, such as Ted Turner’s UN Foundation. If the Senate won’t confirm Bolton, the only option is for President Bush to make another recess appointment, in which case Bolton would not be paid. So, I wondered if it might not do more good via the UN if people stopped collecting for UNICEF and instead began collecting for Bolton.

It struck a chord. About 80 readers — a lot of traffic for a relatively new blog — have now replied to Joltin’ Bolton, and it is fascinating to scroll through the comments. As far as I can tell, these are not big well-heeled organizations, but grass-roots Americans. Most are offering to put their money where their convictions are, many are ready to pledge anywhere from $50 to $1,000, saying “Count me in,” asking where to contribute, and who might be willing to organize this.

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The UN is not supposed to meddle in the domestic politics of member states. So what are we to make of the profile posted on the web site of Ted Turner’s UN Foundation, in which a senior policy staffer of the UN Development Program, Neal Walker, last year described his approach to Rhode Island Senators Jack Reed and Lincoln Chafee, when John Bolton was first up for confirmation as U.S. ambassador to the UN:

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Pajamas has the election analysis well in hand, so I’ll offer a few vignettes of other doings around Manhattan today — where I slogged over to the UN in the rain that has been falling Shakespearean-style since the election results began coming in.

Enroute, I stopped off to hear Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, speaking at a lunch hosted by the Hudson Institute. Wiesel takes quite seriously Iran’s threats to wipe Israel off the map — “They mean it.” He would like to see Iran’s President Ahmadinejad “declared persona non grata all over the world,” and he urged that Iran with its declared aim of genocide should be “expelled from the United Nations.” Wiesel would also like to see the UN prohibit the use of children as human shields, and declare it a crime against humanity to engage in suicide terrorism.

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Well, they’re celebrating at the UN, where I am heading now for some further insights into how Turtle Bay proposes to make the most of what’s shaping up as a U.S. Congress far less curious about how they spend our tax dollars — and I heartily agree with the election notes that Cliff May at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (with which I am affiliated) has just put on the FDD blog.

There’s been some discussion about whether Condi Rice in her recent blitz of the talk shows is trying to win votes for Republicans. On the basis of the interview she just did with Fox’s Neil Cavuto, I’m more worried that if she’s trying a little too hard to woo anyone, it’s Kim Jong Il. Asked by Cavuto if there is a limit to how many nuclear tests we will allow North Korea, Rice answered: “One was enough…”

Wrong answer, Condi — especially if Iran is listening in. One is way too many.

It would be a pity if between the election coverage and the Saddam verdict, one of the most concise, on-target prescriptions for UN reform were to slip through the cracks. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security, sent a four-page letter Friday to UN Secretary-General Elect Ban Ki-Moon. In it, Coburn urges and explains in brief such vital steps as eliminating the UN’s secretive trust funds and other unaccountable slush pools; genuinely opening the opaque budgetary books; holding the UN Secretary-General and other officials to the functions actually allotted to them in the UN charter; delegitimizing rather than dignifying tyrants; and releasing to the public the archives of the Oil-for-Food investigation, which Paul Volcker and Kofi Annan between them have kept secret– thus covering up information about a great many questions still unanswered. You can read Coburn’s letter here.

Instant headlines, instant reaction. That’s the way of the news cycle these days, and in that spirit the guilty verdict on Saddam is being carved up at speed on TV and online into a debate over how many are dancing in the streets, who is threatening seas of blood, why the EU and UN might be irked by capital punishment, and whether the headlines out of Iraq might affect the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday.

Saddam’s death sentence is about a lot more than any of that. As Roger Simon notes, there is no way we can grasp instantly the full implications of this once-feared and murderous tyrant being forced to his feet to hear himself condemned to hang for his crimes. But we do know this. The aim in invading Iraq was not solely to stop the re-arming of Saddam (who, it seems, did have dangerous plans for building nuclear bombs, and was spending heaps of stolen relief money to re-stock his conventional arsenal).

The overthrow of Saddam was part of a much broader strategy of breaking the mold of modern tyranny, most immediately in the Middle East, but also worldwide. In the burgeoning global bazaar, nations ever more easily export their systems and values. In the case of the worst tyrannies — whether they constitute an axis, a daisy chain, or a shifting brotherhood of evil — this works to deadly effect for the rest of us. Changing the rules of this game is vital to the survival of the Free World, and to the fate of the many among the unfree who would like to join us.

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The New York Times reports that among the documents captured from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and posted recently by the Bush administration were instructions –”charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives” — for building a nuclear bomb. But the thrust of the Times story is not the obvious conclusion that Saddam was — yes indeed — a threat. Instead, the message is that the Bush administration blundered in posting the documents, which the IAEA and other experts have protested could be dangerous in the hands of a state like Iran.

So we’re now supposed to believe that for Saddam, these documents were just so much wallpaper; but in the hands of Iran they would be a deadly menace. More on this on NRO and Haft of the Spear.