Friday, July 28, 2006

Once Upon a Time


We were the Good Guys.

Now, we're becoming the bad guys, according to more and more of World perception.

How can this be? Once upon a time, it was US who were in the forefront demanding compliance with Human Rights conventions. It was US who treated our enemies with fairness and compassion, regardless of how others treated theirs. It was US who set the standards for the well-being and fair play we hoped would spread worldwide. It was US who tried to lead by example!

But no more. Now we have arbitrary arrests and torture, and secret prisons, and spy on our own citizens (as well as countless innocent citizens of the World), and secretly ship prisoners to detention centers in other countries (and thereby losing them in the system and somehow "absolving" ourselves of responsibility for what happens to them) - is there more?

You bet.

And we're being called to the mat on it.

The US was on Friday roundly rebuked by a key United Nations human rights watchdog for violations of international law at home and abroad, especially in connection with its so-called “war on terror”.

The UN human rights committee called on Washington to immediately close all secret detention facilities, halt “renditions” to countries that practise torture, and give prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, access to the courts to challenge their detention and treatment.

It also criticised US asylum and immigration rules as well as aspects of its criminal justice system, including the death penalty, life imprisonment without parole for child offenders, police brutality and ill-treatment in prisons.


Our response to such charges? "Well what about those guys!?!? They do it too!!"

US officials reacted angrily to the report, saying it dealt with issues outside its remit. In a statement, the US mission to the UN in Geneva said the committee had lost “perspective and credibility” in spending more time criticising the US than countries such as North Korea which had no civil or political rights.

But Christine Chanet, the French magistrate who chairs the committee, said it had “simply done its job according to its mandate”.


But wait, there's more!

On the domestic front, the committee expressed concern over the lack of judicial oversight of phone tapping and electronic surveillance by the security services, and the use of immigration law to detain terrorist suspects.

It also called for a moratorium on the death penalty and an end to the practice of sentencing juveniles to life in jail without parole, which affects more than 2,200 inmates who were under 18 at the time of the crime.


And, WHO in the Good Ol' USA is leading us into all these corruptions? Take a guess.

bush & co.

Impeachment and imprisonment for the lot of them is too good for them.

posted by DadEO @ 4:28 PM