[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 10625-10628]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            RECOGNIZING THE ``DURBAN II COUNTER CONFERENCE''

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. SHELLEY BERKLEY

                               of nevada

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 23, 2009

  Ms. BERKLEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the American 
Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ), which organized the 
``Durban II Counter Conference'' in New York City April 20-24, 2009, to 
provide an honest and critical examination of issues of racism, racial 
discrimination, genocide, xenophobia, gender discrimination and 
religious discrimination, in marked contrast to the hate-filled 
proceedings that occurred the same week in Geneva.
  The Counter Conference commenced with remarks by my distinguished 
colleague from New York, Representative Carolyn Maloney, and included 
presentations by our parliamentary colleagues from Canada--Senator 
Jerahmiel Grafstein and former minister Irwin Cotler--and Israel's 
Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Daniel Carmon, 
along with prominent experts and human rights advocates from the 
academic and legal communities. The panels included topics that should 
be part of any serious discussion on racism, such as ``A Look at 
Religious Intolerance and Discrimination,'' ``Current Issues in Gender 
Discrimination,'' and ``Genocide in Darfur, Rwanda and the Congo.'' Too 
many of these topics are ignored in the UN and I am pleased that the 
Durban II Counter Conference focused on them.
  I want to particularly recognize the lead organizers of the event--
AAJLJ president Stephen Greenwald, conference chair Robert Weinberg and 
conference vice chair Marc Landis, along with Ambassador Richard 
Schifter, former United States Representative to the United Nations 
Human Rights Commission. Ambassador Schifter delivered the keynote 
address at the conference, entitled ``The Third Totalitarian Threat,'' 
which I would like to insert into the Congressional Record.

The U.N.'s Challenge to Democracy--Address by Richard Schifter, former 
 U.S. Representative in the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and former 
 U.S. Deputy Representative in the U.N. Security Council to the Durban 
  II ``Counter-Conference'' at Fordham Law School in New York City on 
                             April 20, 2009

       If Adolf Hitler had lived to 120, today would be the day he 
     died. While he has, fortunately, not been bodily with us for 
     the past 64 years, his spirit, regrettably, is still alive 
     and very much alive in Geneva this week. As we have focused 
     on Durban II, we have appropriately remembered Durban I, 
     where anti-Israeli propaganda initially intertwined with 
     antisemitism. Whatever product the wordsmiths may come up 
     with, the dominant forces in Geneva will have seen to it that 
     the anti-Israel message of Durban I is reaffirmed.
       There is no doubt that Durban I and Durban II are matters 
     of serious concern. Yet, as we examine the context in which 
     these UN-sponsored conferences are held, we must necessarily 
     come to the conclusion that the anti-Israel and antisemitic 
     phenomenon of these meetings is only the tip of the UN 
     iceberg. Or, to use another metaphor, we deal at this Durban 
     II meeting, as we did at Durban I, with only a symptom of the 
     debilitating disease from which the UN suffers.
       The perfectly legitimate and highly worthy cause of 
     opposition to racism, which is the alleged reason for these 
     gatherings, was from the very start subverted by the 
     totalitarians that dominate the UN General Assembly and who 
     are making full use of the Assembly and its offshoots in 
     their continuing campaign against democracy, civil liberties, 
     and the rule of law. They are engaged in a campaign against 
     the basic principles of the Enlightenment, principles that 
     were enshrined in the UN Charter.
       What we are witnessing now worldwide is the third major 
     totalitarian attack on these principles. In its modern form 
     the ideology of democracy and human rights emanated from the 
     Netherlands in the 17th Century and then spread to the United 
     States, England, France, Germany in the 18th and 19th 
     Centuries, and beyond that region in the 20th Century. It is 
     no longer a way of governing limited to the West. India, it 
     is worth keeping in mind, has for many years been the world's 
     largest democracy. Japan and South Korea are democracies and 
     so are many smaller non-Western countries.
       It is indeed appropriate that we are meeting on the day 
     that marks not only the opening of Durban II, but also the 
     day once known in Germany as the Geburtstag des Fuehrers, the 
     birthday of the leader. For it was Hitler who led the initial 
     totalitarian attack on the Enlightenment, turning first on 
     the democratic process in his own country and then seeking to 
     bring all of Europe under his control.
       In the course of the 20th Century we experienced not only 
     Hitler's attack on the Enlightenment, which led to World War 
     II, but also Stalin's repressive and expansionist policies, 
     which precipitated the Cold War. Both World War II and the 
     Cold War were conflicts resulting from profound differences 
     in ideology. And now, in the 21st Century, we, whose way of 
     life is based on the principles of the Enlightenment, are the 
     objects of the third totalitarian attack, an attack 
     undertaken, strange as it may seem, by an informal de facto 
     alliance of neo-fascists and neo-communists, an alliance that 
     unites Mahmoud Akhmadinejad with Hugo Chavez.
       The proceedings in Geneva at the Durban II meeting are 
     vivid proof to the world of what that new alliance seeks to 
     accomplish. Under the mantle of opposition to racism, it 
     seeks to attack the Western world and our basic concepts of 
     freedom. Its manipulation of significant human rights issues 
     is well illustrated by its approach to the issue of slavery. 
     It is only the wrongful transatlantic slave trade that is 
     attacked. The slave trade in East Africa, undertaken by non-
     Westerners, including Arabs, is deliberately omitted. Nor is 
     there any mention in the Durban

[[Page 10626]]

     II drafts of the racist aspect of the current conflict in 
     Darfur, which Colin Powell has correctly characterized as 
     genocidal.
       While there is a need for us to follow the Durban II 
     proceedings closely for what they reveal regarding the agenda 
     of the new totalitarians, we need also to recognize that 
     Durban II is just one forum of a much larger enterprise, an 
     enterprise that makes full use of the United Nations system 
     to advance its cause, the cause of the new totalitarianism. 
     Israel, I submit, is the canary in the coal mine. The new 
     totalitarians view as their enemies all those who are 
     committed to the way of life that emanated from the 
     Enlightenment.
       I have been around long enough to remember the speech given 
     by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1936 at a session of 
     the League of Nations Assembly to appeal for action against 
     Mussolini's Italy, which had invaded his country. In his 
     speech he warned: ``It is collective security: it is the very 
     existence of the League of Nations. It is the confidence that 
     each State is to place in international treaties. . . . In a 
     word, it is international morality that is at stake.''
       The Emperor's words were heard but no meaningful action was 
     taken. The League quietly faded from the world scene as World 
     War II approached. It had failed in its mission. When the 
     League's successor, the UN, was created in 1945, it was hoped 
     that it would function far better than its predecessor. It is 
     now 64 years later. As we look at the UN Charter's very first 
     statement of purpose for the United Nations, that of 
     maintaining international peace and security, we can hardly 
     say that UN's record in that field has been a resounding 
     success. International morality remains at risk.
       The world's inability to use the UN to advance the cause of 
     international peace and security does not mean that none of 
     the purposes of the Charter have been served by the UN 
     system. If we drop from Article 1 paragraph 1 of the UN 
     Charter, which refers to the maintenance of international 
     peace and security, to paragraph 3, we shall find the 
     statement of another purpose of the UN: ``to achieve 
     international co-operation in solving international problems 
     of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, 
     and in encouraging respect for human rights and for 
     fundamental freedoms.''
       While the Security Council was hamstrung by the Soviet 
     Union's ``nyet'' to efforts to maintain peace, the 
     democracies, constituting a majority of the General Assembly 
     in the early years of the UN, went to work to implement 
     paragraph 3. In 1946, following up on the Charter's promise 
     that the UN would promote respect for human rights, the 
     Assembly established the UN Human Rights Commission. Under 
     the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Commission promptly 
     went to work on drafting the document which became known as 
     the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal 
     Declaration, reflecting fully the thoughts of John Locke, as 
     expressed in 1689 in his ``Two Treatises of Government'' and 
     incorporated a hundred years later into the French 
     Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and into the 
     U.S. Bill of Rights, spelled out with specificity precisely 
     what was meant by the term ``human rights.'' It is 
     appropriate to note that in 1948, when the Universal 
     Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly by the 
     affirmative vote of 48 of its 56 members, no member voted 
     ``no.'' Eight members, 6 Soviet bloc states plus Saudi Arabia 
     and South Africa abstained.
       In these early years of the UN's existence, the General 
     Assembly also created other entities whose task it was to 
     implement the UN's commitment to humanitarian work, such as 
     the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children 
     Fund, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner 
     for Refugees, all three of which have done highly useful work 
     in their respective fields and are functioning well to this 
     day.
       The truly creative period of the UN General Assembly came 
     to an end around 1970. It came to an end as a result of the 
     extraordinarily clever maneuvering of the totalitarians 
     represented at the UN and the failure of the democracies to 
     match their clever manipulations. From the founding of the UN 
     until the 1960s, the Soviet bloc had consistently been 
     outvoted by the democracies at the UN. That was now to come 
     to an end.
       As it was, the diplomats representing the Soviet Union and 
     its East European satellites at the United Nations lacked the 
     finesse needed to succeed in a parliamentary setting in which 
     mere bluster would not suffice to win votes. But they found a 
     close ally who had the skills needed to build a new majority 
     bloc in the United Nations General Assembly. It was Fidel 
     Castro.
       Castro assembled a highly competent cadre of diplomats, who 
     took on the task of building an international network of 
     institutions that would operate in opposition to the United 
     States. Though he was clearly aligned with the Soviet bloc, 
     Castro got Cuba admitted to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) 
     and in due course turned the Non-Aligned and a parallel 
     organization, the Group of 77 (G-77), into mouthpieces for 
     the Moscow line.
       An important step on the way toward taking control of the 
     NAM and the G-77 organizations was for Castro to link up with 
     the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic 
     Conference. At its September 1973, where Castro sought to 
     line up the NAM with Moscow, he was initially challenged by 
     Muammar Qaddafi, who wanted the Non-Aligned to remain truly 
     non-aligned. It was at that point that Castro appears to have 
     realized how he could best attain his goal: he broke 
     diplomatic relations with Israel and added Israel to the 
     United States on his and the entire Soviet bloc's enemies 
     list.
       Castro had no genuine interest in the Palestinian cause. 
     The purpose of his move in 1973 and in Cuba's key role since 
     that time in the anti-Israel effort at the UN was to build a 
     strong bloc at the UN of opponents of the United States. He 
     was aware of the fact that between 1959 and 1972, the 
     membership of the United Nations had increased by more than 
     60%, from 82 to 132. 35 of the additional 50 members belonged 
     to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which had been 
     founded in 1969, or were newly-independent African states, or 
     both. What Castro was well aware of was that by breaking ties 
     with Israel, he would be able to get Qaddafi's help in lining 
     up the votes of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. 
     But there was still the question of how to reach out to those 
     African states that did not belong to the OIC.
       It did not take the Castro and Qaddafi alliance very long 
     to find an answer to that question. Only weeks after the 
     September 1973 NAM summit, the General Assembly considered a 
     resolution that called for more pressure on South Africa to 
     end the apartheid regime. The clique that had begun to 
     manipulate the UN chose Burundi to offer an amendment which 
     referred to ``the unholy alliance between Portuguese 
     colonialism, South African racism, Zionism and Israeli 
     imperialism.'' The amendment was adopted by a two-to-one 
     majority. By linking Zionism with South African racism, many 
     of the non-Muslim states of Africa were brought into the new 
     alliance. This was the first shot in the drumfire that has 
     continued at the UN to this very day.
       The government of Burundi of those days brought truly 
     unique qualifications to the discussion of racism. In the 
     preceding year, the army of Burundi, led by Tutsis, had 
     killed about 100,000 Hutus, for no reason other than their 
     ethnicity. I should add that Burundi is a vastly different 
     country today. In recent years its voting record on Israel-
     related issues at the UN has been one of the better records. 
     Still, the Burundi initiative of 1973, undoubtedly initiated 
     by the antidemocratic clique, was the first effort to use the 
     issue of Israel to bring sub-Saharan African states into the 
     anti-democratic bloc at the UN.
       In the memoir of his year at the UN, entitled A Dangerous 
     Place Pat Moynihan quotes from a letter that he had received 
     from Leon Gordenker, a professor of international relations 
     at Princeton and an expert on the United Nations, who had 
     called Moynihan's attention to the Burundi initiative in the 
     fall of 1973. In 1975 Gordenker wrote Moynihan to complain 
     about the failure of the United States to engage in a 
     concerted effort at the UN to win votes: ``Surely a 
     government that can negotiate with China and the Soviet Union 
     can organize enough persuasiveness to reduce the production 
     of pernicious symbolism and to win the support from sensible 
     regimes for human rights.''
       In his memoir Moynihan explains the reason for this 
     failure: ``American diplomacy put overwhelming emphasis on 
     seeking friendly relations with individual other countries. 
     The institutional arrangement for this was the ambassador and 
     his embassy. To get an embassy was the great goal of the 
     career officer; having achieved it, his final object was to 
     be judged a successful ambassador by maintaining friendly 
     relations. Anything that interfered with this goal was 
     resisted by the system. In recent years, and notably in the 
     new nations, the one aspect of foreign policy that could most 
     interfere with this object was the voting behavior of so many 
     of the small or new nations in multilateral forums, behavior 
     hostile to the United States. In consequence the `bilateral 
     system' resisted, and usually with success, the effort to 
     introduce multilateral considerations into its 
     calculations.''
       These words, let us note, were written in 1975. It is now 
     34 years later. They are as relevant today as they were then. 
     Our mission to the UN lacks the needed back-up in the 
     capitals of UN member states.
       That back-up is needed because of the vastly different 
     manner in which our mission operates when compared to our 
     principal opponents. Once a Cuban diplomat is assigned to the 
     UN he stays there and, over the years, truly learns the 
     business of multilateral diplomacy. As he continues in the UN 
     system, he watches his counterparts from other countries 
     arrive, begin to learn the routine, and then depart as their 
     tour of duty at the UN comes to an end, and they are replaced 
     by a new set of diplomats who have to learn the UN routine 
     from scratch.
       There is another aspect to the Cuban performance. While 
     there are missions to the UN that operate under specific 
     instructions from their respective governments, there are 
     many other missions that receive no specific instructions, 
     allowing their representatives at the UN to make their own 
     decisions on how to vote. It is that aspect of the UN system 
     that has been fully utilized in building

[[Page 10627]]

     the anti-democratic bloc. For one, arrangements are made for 
     missions to be rewarded for their cooperation by being 
     elected to positions in the UN system that are of special 
     interest to them. For another, an informal job placement 
     service operates at the UN that enables relatives of 
     cooperating diplomats to obtain jobs in the UN Secretariat. 
     As one diplomat once put it to me: ``After you have been at 
     the UN for a little while, you start playing the UN game and 
     you forget about your country.''
       There is more to it than that. I recall an incident from 
     the time in which I represented the United States in the UN 
     Human Rights Commission. Having done the needed parliamentary 
     work, I had gotten a resolution adopted that the Cubans had 
     opposed. Immediately following the vote, the Cuban 
     representative rose to accuse me of having bribed some of the 
     representatives so that they would vote with the United 
     States. After the meeting had adjourned, I asked colleagues 
     from other missions whether that really happens at the UN. 
     They all thought I was terribly naive. ``Of course it 
     happens,'' they said. ``The Cubans do it all the time. So do 
     the Libyans.''
       I am sure you agree that we should not pay bribes to 
     ambassadors. But I have not found it easy to understand why 
     we were under specific instructions at the UN never to 
     suggest any relationship between U.S. foreign assistance and 
     UN voting. I recognize that we should understand why Egypt or 
     Pakistan would vote against the U.S. at the UN, but why, for 
     example, should we not make it clear to the Philippines or 
     Vietnam, which during the current fiscal year receive about 
     $100 million, each in U.S. foreign assistance that our 
     resources are limited and that these limited resources will, 
     in the first instance, be made available to states that are 
     prepared to reciprocate our friendship?
       During my stay at the UN I also learned how the leaders of 
     the anti-democratic forces transmit their voting instructions 
     to their following. The explanation that democratic members 
     of the NAM or the G-77 offer to explain their anti-democratic 
     votes is that they vote the NAM or the G-77 ``consensus.'' 
     That raises the question of how that consensus is reached.
       I was offered an explanation by an ambassador from a NAM 
     state with whom I was having lunch. In the course of our 
     conversation he asked me whether I knew how the NAM consensus 
     was formed. When I told him that I did not know, he said: 
     ``You know, we used to be on the other side.'' By that he 
     meant on the pro-Soviet side. He continued by telling me that 
     on the day preceding any meeting of the NAM caucus, which had 
     101 members at that time, the friends of the Soviet Union, 
     about 17 or 18 states, would have a special meeting. When 
     they were all assembled, a small group would enter the room, 
     always including Cubans. That group would then give out 
     instructions on how the assembled representatives should act 
     when they met the next day at the meeting of the full NAM 
     caucus. Each representative would be assigned a specific 
     task, to make a motion on a position to be taken by the NAM, 
     to be the first speaker in support of a motion, or to be the 
     second speaker in support. Then, the next day, when the full 
     caucus met, the whole scenario would be played out. My 
     colleague concluded his account of NAM procedure by saying: 
     ``And there sits the silent majority and just goes along.''
       To return to the events following the 1973 Burundi 
     amendment to the anti-apartheid resolution: as we so well 
     know, having developed the theme of correlating Zionism with 
     apartheid, the other side did not let go. At the 
     International Women's Year Conference in July 1975 in Mexico 
     City a resolution was adopted which called for the 
     elimination of Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination. 
     The news from Mexico City focused, of course, on the emphasis 
     that had been placed on the rights of women. But it was in 
     that setting, a setting that emphasized the need for progress 
     for women that another totally unrelated step had been taken 
     in the Zionism is racism campaign. Then, in November of that 
     year that formula was made UN doctrine by the UN General 
     Assembly by its adoption of the ``Zionism is Racism'' 
     resolution, by a vote of 72 to 35 with 32 abstaining. 
     Confirming the bargain that had been struck, the new 
     controlling alliance put together by Castro and Qaddafi 
     furnished 68 of the 72 affirmative votes. Brazil and Mexico, 
     Cyprus and Malta provided the remaining four. A majority of 
     the ``no'' votes was provided by the Western Group, but the 
     Western Group was joined by Latin American, Caribbean and 
     sub-Saharan African states. In addition, many of these non-
     Western states abstained.
       What deserves mention is that if Mexico had voted ``no'' 
     rather than ``yes'' or if Colombia and Guatemala had joined 
     the United States in voting ``no'' rather than abstaining, 
     the resolution would have been adopted only if the General 
     Assembly had voted that the resolution was not ``important.'' 
     That is so because with these minor vote changes, the 
     resolution would not have received the two-thirds vote 
     required by the Charter for important resolution. I am 
     mentioning these details to underline the validity of 
     Moynihan's observation that our side does not do the needed 
     parliamentary spade work at the UN. That is, as noted, in 
     sharp contrast to the extraordinarily effective work done by 
     the Cubans to this day. My guess is that they were well aware 
     of the two-thirds majority requirement and worked hard to 
     attain that result.
       I have described how the Zionism is racism campaign got 
     started. Now let us move fast forward to December 22, 2007, 
     when the UN General Assembly had before it a resolution that 
     authorized the allocation of about $7 million to fund the 
     operation of a committee, chaired by Libya, whose task it was 
     to prepare Durban II. The resolution passed by a vote of 105 
     to 46. The fact that the ``no'' vote fell only slightly short 
     of one-third plus 1 is important because the resolution 
     raised a budgetary question and resolutions that raise 
     budgetary questions require a two-thirds majority for 
     adoption. If we had picked up 7 of the 41 abstentions or 
     absences, Durban II would not have been funded.
       Now let us take a look at how Durban II came about by 
     comparing the December 2007 vote to the Zionism is Racism 
     vote of November 1975. Here is what we find:
       (1) Most of the Western states once again voted ``no,'' 
     although a few, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, and 
     Switzerland switched to ``abstain.''
       (2) The 25 Western states have now been joined by 18 East 
     European states, some of which had voted ``yes'' in 1974. 
     Others had not been in existence then, having been republics 
     of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Three Asian UN members 
     also voted ``no.'' They were South Korea, the Marshall 
     Islands, and Palau.
       (3) Most of the Latin American, Caribbean and African 
     states that had voted ``no'' on ``Zionism and Racism'' in 
     1975 voted for funding Durban II in 2007.
       As we make this comparison between the 1975 vote and the 
     corresponding 2007 vote, we need to note that in the interim, 
     in 1991, the Zionism is Racism resolution was repealed by a 
     vote of 111 to 25. The repeal was the result of a major 
     effort, undertaken by the then Assistant Secretary of State 
     for International Organizations, John Bolton. The substantial 
     margin of victory for our side was also the result of the 
     fact that the Soviet bloc had dissolved, the Soviet Union was 
     disintegrating, and the anti-democratic coalition at the UN 
     was in utter disarray.
       But this disarray did not last long. The anti-democratic 
     forces at the UN quickly regained their footing and were soon 
     again in full operation. While they used to fly the flag of 
     the Non-Aligned Movement in earlier decades, they now sail 
     under the flag of the Group of 77. There is only one 
     significant difference between the NAM and the G-77. China 
     does not belong to the former, but belongs to the latter. In 
     fact the G-77 calls itself now the ``Group of 77 and China.'' 
     China has become an increasingly significant player in the 
     anti-democratic camp at the UN.
       China, incidentally, is one country that has no history of 
     antisemitism. On the contrary, Chinese intellectuals see 
     parallels between their ancient culture and the ancient 
     culture of the Hebrews. China has also excellent trade 
     relations with Israel. But at the UN, China consistently 
     votes against Israel. It does so because it is an integral 
     part of the group of member states that use the UN to 
     embarrass the democracies.
       As we watch the totalitarians at work in Geneva, using the 
     UN umbrella in their attacks on the basic principles on which 
     the UN was founded, it is understandable that there are many 
     observers who are prepared to give up on the UN. The response 
     that I want to offer to these pessimists is that while we can 
     clearly identify the symptoms of the disease from which the 
     UN suffers, it is a disease from which it can be cured. What 
     is needed is for the governments of the democracies, 
     particularly of the United States, to engage in more 
     effective parliamentary work at the UN.
       Let us take a look at the roll calls on the two votes that 
     I have cited the 1975 Zionism is Racism vote and the 2007 
     Durban II funding vote. On the first of these the ``no'' vote 
     was 32.7%. On the second it was 30.5%, an insignificant 
     difference in the percentages. As we look at this almost 
     imperceptible change in percentages, we should note that the 
     Freedom House categorizations for 1975 and 2007 show a wholly 
     different pattern. In 1975, Freedom House classified 27% of 
     the UN membership as free. In 2007 the percentage of free 
     countries was 46%, a major increase.
       Why was that difference not reflected in the votes on the 
     two resolutions? Our side had indeed picked up Eastern 
     Europe's new democracies. But we had lost the support of many 
     Latin American, Caribbean, and African states, most of them 
     fellow-democracies. The additional votes cast for our side 
     were not the result of any diplomatic effort on our part. 
     They reflected the political beliefs of the new East European 
     democracies. The democracies whose votes we lost, on the 
     other hand, were lost as a result of a failure on our part to 
     engage them fully on UN issues, combined with the 
     extraordinarily clever manipulation by the other side.
       So, as we watch Durban II unfold, let us keep in mind that 
     effecting change at the UN is not a hopeless cause. The 
     percentage of UN member states that Freedom House classifies 
     as ``not free'' is down to 22%. Under

[[Page 10628]]

     these circumstances should it not be possible for the 
     democracies to return the UN to the principles spelled out in 
     the Charter? I submit it can be done if the United States 
     Government will commit itself to spend the time and energy 
     needed to attain that goal. And it is our task, as citizens, 
     to urge our Government to do just that.
       Let me conclude my remarks by expressing the thanks of all 
     of us assembled here to those whose idea it was to arrange 
     for this counter-conference and who did the necessary 
     organizational work. All of us who believe in the fundamental 
     principles on which the United Nations were founded need to 
     stand up against those who are fully engaged in efforts to 
     subvert them. That is what this counter-conference is doing. 
     And we shall overcome!

                          ____________________