By Photius
Coutsoukis © 2002 All Rights Reserved.
This page may be freely
reproduced/published WITHOUT CHANGES.
For years now, there has
been a lot of talk in the media, especially in the United States, about "rogue nations" or "rogue states".
In his 2002 state of the union address to congress, President George W.
Bush referred to an "axis of evil" that consists of Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Previously, and until the disolution of the USSR, President Reagan's
administration coined the term "Evil Empire" to refer to the 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, and some
historical notes -- one must not ignore America's hideous past.
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).
The US has also not signed/ratified the
treaties that established the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
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, citing suspicions
of its developing biological 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.
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 it
cited the treaty's coastal sovereignty language after a collision between a U.S. reconnaissance plane and a Chinese
fighter jet.
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 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. 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 agains 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 last July I predicted that Americans would be
turned into dust, 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, 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
Americans 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.
