Of Rogue Nations and Evil Empires

Update [6-NOV-08]: "The way they (Europeans) see it, George W. Bush is a one-man axis of evil, and Obama the redeemer." Josef Joffe, German journalist and political scientist

Update [11-NOV-06]: "The Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the US granted officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes." [See AFP article]

Previously, and until the disolution of the USSR, President Reagan's administration coined the term "Evil Empire" to refer to the former Soviet Union.

With all this noise about bad countries, with a persisting reference to America as the "greatest" and "best" country, and a complete absence of objective reporting about the state of human rights in the US, as well as complete ignorance among the American people about their government's long standing practice of political unilateralism, I feel that it is high time to present to the American public at least some basic information about US international diplomacy.

This page will grow as I add other material, particularly information about the notorious US judicial system, its persisting mistreatment of immigrants and other minorities, and some historical notes -- one must not ignore America's hideous past, which included policies of extermination, slavery, assassination of democratically elected foreign leaders and the advocacy and support of tyrannical dictatorships around the world.

Here are some facts one must consider before deciding to label a country "rogue" or "evil".

Past occasional criticism of US human rights abuses and increasing unpopularity of the US around the world have had no effect. In fact things in the US got a lot worse lately.

The US alone (plus Somalia which is governed by warlords) has not ratified the Universal Convention on the Rights of the Child; the most widely and fastest ratified human rights treaty in history.

The US also has not signed the protocols that enforce the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. These two reasons have to do with why the Americans were kicked out of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, following my relentless campaign, acting as an individual (I do not belong to any organizations).

They recently pulled out of a conference that for 7 years convened to devise effective enforcement of the treaty that banned chemical and biological weapons, causing the conference to collapse, because, the US said, allowing verification inspectors in US factories might diminish their competitive advantage and cause the loss of $$$. Now, post-anthrax, Colin Powel is making the rounds asking other countries to sign along to a US-developed newfangled nonsense, and the rest of the world is saying FU_bastards. [Update: The US threatens to attack Iraq, without provocation, citing its own fabricated evidence of Iraq's developing biological and chemical weapons, which as it turns out were originally supplied to Iraq by the US.]

The US first violated and then announced its intention to pull our of the ABM treaty. [Update: They pulled out].

The Americans (plus Israel) walked out of the conference against racism recently held in Durban, where the rest of the world signed the declaration.

They do not want to sign on to a ban of land mines.

They signed but promised to never ratify the "Kyoto" global warming treaty. As a matter of fact I saw Vice President Dick on global CNN telling mother Earth to eat cake, and he explained that decision by saying that "the American people are accustomed to a way or life that they should not have to compromise".

They pulled out of a conference, and refuse to sign, verification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, causing that conference to collapse as well.

The United States has not ratified the Law of the Sea international treaty, effective in 1994, which regulates economic activity in the oceans, but, in negotiations with China it cited the treaty's coastal sovereignty language after a collision between a U.S. reconnaissance plane and a Chinese fighter jet.

The United states signed the 1989 Basel convention regulating the overseas shipment of hazardous wastes to developing nations that have few environmental safeguards or facilities, but in 2001, the Bush administration discussed ratifying the original 1989 treaty, but not 1995 amendment that would ban the shipments.

The United states has signed, but not ratified, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which restricted the use of 12 common chemicals that contribute to cancer, birth defects and other heath problems, such as dioxin and PCBs.

They now want to deny due process to their prisoners by misconstruing the Geneva conventions, and insidiously bypassing the US constitution. (See articles on Guantanamo Bay detainees, including juveniles.)

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has condemned the practice and, had the US not avoided signing on to the treaties that established the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Court would have condemned them as well.

In their latest action against the international community, the US is trying to derail a new draft international treaty against torture that has taken a decade to negotiate.

Is it likely that 6 billion people are wrong and the Americans are right? Is it surprising that Americans are the targets of terrorists? Do you think the rest of the world would shed any real tears if the Americans and the terrorists by chance eliminated each other?

In other words Americans consider themselves the ultimate arbiters of good and evil, while all along having developed a fatherless, drug and crime infested society that is hideously devoid of humanity, and where prisoners in the few states that allow post-conviction DNA testing are being let out in droves, while most states forbid such testing.

In my own case, I found out that I could not appeal US judicial decisions to international fora, because the US saw to it that they have no jurisdiction. So, while someone who feels that their human rights were violated in, say, Belgium or Peru or Pakistan can seek relief against the government in Geneva or (in the case of Western Hemisphere countries) the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, I and others whose rights were violated in the US have no recourse.

In a radio interview in July 2001 I predicted that Americans "would be turned into dust soon", and the interviewer asked whether that would take place "in several generations". That was less than 2 months before 11-Sept.

It is quite obvious to me that the American people, thinking of themselves as virtuous and righteous by definition, and being the de-facto superpower, are unlikely to change course, because of their false sense of superiority, reminiscent of the Nazi Germans' "Arian" fixation, inviting cataclysmic doom that will shock them by its magnitude and swiftness.

So, instead of wining about human rights abuses elsewhere, it is time for the United States, a police state with the world's highest incarceration rate, to realize that the US is only one of a handful of countries in the world today that do not grant due process to their prisoners, and where justice and civil society are nothing more that a Disneyesque facade.