US & Somalia Tied for Last Place

To hear some, the USA is the champion of the down-trodden, and the oppressed, the Johnny Appleseed of Democracy. The truth precludes such prideful bumptiousness. In fact, the US is one of the last two states out of 192 to ratify the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. (The other is Somalia.)

The United States has, however, signed two optional protocols on trafficking in children and on children in armed conflict. Very noble of us.

Furthermore, having signed the optional protocols of the Convention, the US has expressed its intention to eventually adopt it completely. Eventually.

What’s stopping the Bushites or the Congress from ratifying this convention? This is a no-brainer. Or should be, even for the half-wits running this farcical fiasco.

According to the Unicef site the Convention is summarized as follows:

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.”

“The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have:

1. the right to survival;

2. to develop to the fullest;

3. to protection from harmful influences,

4. abuse and exploitation;

5. the right to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.

The four core principles of the Convention are:

1. non-discrimination;

2. devotion to the best interests of the child;

3. the right to life, survival and development;

4. and respect for the views of the child.

Every right spelled out in the Convention is inherent to the human dignity and harmonious development of every child. The Convention protects children's rights by setting standards in health care; education; and legal, civil and social services.”

“By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the Convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children's rights and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community.”

This seems straightforward, proper, just and right. It is the expression of an ideal, one would think, of which all people, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, Jew, Animist or Atheist would approve.

Obviously.

190 out 192 nations have ratified it.

What’s stopping the US from ratifying this convention?

Could be that the thousands of youths who have been jailed in US prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo might pose a tough issue to spin-doctor into anything close to resembling sentiments and opinions acceptable to anyone outside the Oval Office or Fox News.

The ‘Real World’, in other words.

Since the March 2003 invasion, the United States has detained 2,400 children under the age of 18 in Iraq, including some as young as 10. Human Rights Watch said as of May 12, U.S. military authorities were holding 513 Iraqi children as "imperative threats to security".

The upside is that youths charged under Iraqi law receive access to legal counsel.

The downside? Read on…

"Those who are not referred to the Iraqi criminal courts do not have legal counsel because they are not charged with a crime," said Major Matthew Morgan, a spokesman for U.S. detention facilities in Iraq.

Not charged with a crime but imprisoned nevertheless.

Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy assistant secretary for Detainee Affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense, told reporters in Geneva "There is nothing in the optional protocol that prevents the detention of individuals under the age of 18, so the United States is in full compliance with its treaty obligations."

So, imprisoning children without charging them with a crime, without the basic legal rights of Habeas Corpus, due process or legal representation is acceptable to the Neo-Con-men in Washington. This is the level to which the United States has sunk under the stewardship of the Bush Administrations.

Tied with Somalia for last place.

http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL21923136

http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/_files/C8CDC017719763AE4393C90EEC4E6602.pdf

http://www.unicef.org/crc/

Grandpa McCain's Psychotic Fairy Tale

Grandpa John McCain, on the stump in Columbus, Ohio, shared a little fairy tale about his vision of “victory” in Iraq.

Papa John calmly intoned the following:

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom.”

Ah, ain’t that sweet?

We can all rest better knowing that America will “be secure in her freedom” at some time in the future if we only have the iron-willed determination to offer the youth of our nation in bloody sacrifice on the altar of corporate greed and rapaciousness by invading, destroying and subjugating each and every nation which has exploitable resources and a government, democratic or totalitarian, that does not explicitly do the bidding of the State Department or the White House.

One may ask, however, what Papa John means by ‘freedom’, so I will.

What restraints on our freedom had Saddam’s regime ever placed on the American people?

None.

What condition of slavery, detention or oppression has been rectified in the US by the destruction of Iraq?

None.

Have the people of the US attained further political independence, possession of additional civil rights or been liberated from unlawful authority as a result of this war?

No.

Are the US people now exempt from such onerous conditions as hunger or disease because Saddam has been over-thrown?

No.

In point of fact, the American people are less ‘Free’ now than we were before the attacks on September 11^th or the wars in Southwest Asia and whatever further restraints to personal freedom the people of the US are currently subject to have been placed on us by the hysterical railroading of legislation in the wake of the 2001 attacks - such as the cynically misnamed ‘Patriot Act’- which have been calamitous to civil liberties and the general good.

So much for the 'freedom' side of this fairy tale but Papa John’s pathetic little fantasy continued:

“The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension.”

Now, one may ask, “The Iraq war was fought and won for whom?”

The Iraqis? Hardly.

Has any serious commentator or observer of the invasion or its aftermath claimed the Iraqis better off now than under Saddam’s brutal dictatorship when, with callous disregard for the well-being of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration dismantled and debilitated all of the institutions of national stability, disbanding the armed forces, designating all Baathists as anathema and resulting in the on-going chaos of violence and depravity which is observed today and which in all likelihood will dominate Iraq for a generation?

By what measure, in 2013 or any year, could any rational person claim a victory, Johnny Mac?

With more than 4,000 American forces killed and an estimated Iraqi death toll well over a million during the first 5 years of the war, what will the body count be after another half decade of this insanity? Will all of the spirits of the dead assemble to bestow blessings on what you and Dubya’s complicitous cohorts proclaim as ‘democracy’ in Iraq?

Thanks but no thanks, Grandpa John. Keep your absurd and contemptible fantasy about Iraq to yourself. It offers nothing but an eerie insight to your very warped and disturbed mind.

End the War Now!

Impeach Bush!

Impeach Cheney!

Impeach Scalia!

Indict and prosecute the war profiteers and war criminals to the fullest extent of the law. Make them all pay the price for their greed, their arrogance, their disdain for the rule of law and their disregard for humanity.

The rest of us already have.

A Vision Thing

The Bush-ster is in Jerusalem to join the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel. On the Palestinian side of the security walls, meanwhile, they’re observing the sixtieth anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba or “catastrophe” that resulted in the expulsion and dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages.

Perhaps with the US annihilation of the indigenous American population and South African apartheid in mind, Dubya praised Israel as a model for Middle East democracies. A model that is, despite its being Jewish and Zionist when all the rest of the Middle-east is Muslim or Christian. And in spite of the fact that more than 50% of Israelis want a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue and favor the recognition of a formal Palestinian state but they ain’t getting it from their government.

Sound familiar?

So, Dubya starts to blather in front of the cameras…

President Bush: "You know, here…, you know, here…, here we are in the heart of a thriving democracy and yet that democracy as are other democracies are being challenged by extremists and terrorists–people who use violence, who try to advance their dark vision of the world."

Like… by invading sovereign countries to over-throw governments in order to control exploitable natural resources, bomb strafe and brutalize innocent men, women and children, destroy the country’s infrastructure, precipitating millions of refugees and millions more homeless and impoverished, torturing prisoners held without habeas corpus in contravention to the Geneva Accords, the United Nations Charter and the US Constitution?

Do you mean that kind of violence in service to a dark vision, Mr Bush?

Doug Feith and Obfuscation

Doug Feith served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Bush administration from July 2001 until he resigned from his position effective August 8, 2005.

Currently, he is hawking his book, ‘War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism’ a polemic refuting the generally accepted opinion that the Bush administration lied to the American people about the necessity of invading Iraq.

On the Daily Show, Feith stated that “I think the Administration had an honest belief in the things that it said. Some of the things that it said about the war that were part of the rationale for the war were wrong, but errors are not lies.”

True enough, Dougie, but the transmission of errors which are known to be errors is, most definitely, lying.

It has been shown and documented repeatedly that much of what Rummy, Cheney and other members of the administration were telling the Congress, the American people and the world to justify the invasion were known by them at the time to be falsehoods, deceptions and unsubstantiated conclusions.

Call it ‘cherry-picking’ or ‘stove-piping’ if you wish but what was offered as justification for war, my friend, was bald-faced obfuscation.

Lies.

One of the lies that Mr Feith continues to espouse is that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the region, to the United States and to Israel. This is malarkey. After the devastating Iraq/Iran war, Desert Storm and 10 years of crippling UN sanctions, Saddam was a threat to no one but his own people.

Lies.

Impeach Bush.

Impeach Cheney.

Indict and prosecute the war criminals and war profiteers.

Defend our Constitution from the onslaught of the neo-con fascists.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=168543

1984, 17 Years On

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/13/fmr_military_intelligence_officer_reveals_us

In this broadcast exclusive on Democracy Now!, Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne (Ret.) reveals that as an Intelligence officer and Arabic language specialist, she was assigned the mission to illegally monitor and intercept cell phone calls of journalists, humanitarian aid organizations and non-governmental organizations including the International Red Cross, Red Crescent and Doctors Without Borders. Ms Kinne also discloses that she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq. She monitored cell phone transmissions from Iraq and Afghanistan between December of 2001 and August of 2003 while stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia.

This is 1984, folks, 17 years on. It just showed up a little behind Orwell’s schedule.

FYI, United States Signals Intelligence Directive [USSID] 18 prohibits eavesdropping on Americans except in very limited cases when the Attorney General is allowed to grant permission. This little detail – upholding the Constitution and the 4^th Amendment right to privacy - was discarded in the wake of the panic and hysteria which followed 9-11.

During an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! (which primarily focused on the shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in 2003) Ms Kinne revealed that her unit’s mission changed after the September, 2001 attacks. She was given a verbal waiver on the Constitution. She and the other members of her unit were told they could listen to Americans and citizens of allied countries from humanitarian aid organizations, journalists and NGOs. Two reasons for this gross violation of the Constitution were given.

First, they were told that US citizens and allies were ‘eyes on the ground’ and if they stumbled upon the location of WMDs, and if they then pass the location of the WMDs over the phone to others, the military would be able to pass that location of the WMDs directly on to military superiors more expeditiously.

Well, there you go, then. We can’t let a little piece of paper like the Constitution stand in the way of efficient military intelligence gathering, can we?

The second rationale to justify spying on Americans is even more preposterous than the first. Sgt Kinne and her fellow eavesdroppers were told that if an American or ally lost their satellite phone, a terrorist could pick it up and start using it. If that happened, Sgt Kinne’s unit would then have to monitor all the phones to make sure that if such a loss (or theft) took place, they would be able to monitor the terrorists.

Huh!? How many hypotheticals can you pile one on top the other?

So, to recap: during Sgt Kinne’s mission, the justification for spying on Americans was that terrorists might steal or find our cell phones and begin using them for evil-doing.

Please, go to Democracy Now! to hear this interview for yourself. Our republic, our Constitution and our rights as citizens are in gravest danger.

Impeach Bush!

Impeach Cheney!

Impeach Scalia!

Prosecute the war criminals and the defilers of our Constitution.

China's Quake, Dubya's Shame

Less than 24 hours after the earthquake in Central China wrought devastation, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was flying to Chengdu Province, the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude quake. Wen stated in mid-flight that it was the duty of Central Committee members to stand on the front lines of the relief and rescue efforts.

The Xinhua news agency reported that, upon arrival at the scene of a collapsed three-storey school building where about 900 teenagers were buried, Wen bowed three times in grief before some of the 50 bodies already pulled out from the wreckage.

"Not one minute can be wasted," Wen said. "One minute, one second could mean a child's life."

China's leadership announced that coping with the devastating quake, and ensuring that it did not threaten social stability, was now the government's top priority.

Compare this response to that of George W. Bush and his administration in the wake of Katrina: in 2005, with Katrina, rated as a category 4 storm, heading for the Gulf coast of the US, Dubya chose to continue his golf vacation. He then went to John McCain’s birthday party and lingered an extra day in Crawford (clearing brush?)before heading to Washington. He didn’t make his photo-op in New Orleans until September 2^nd, a full week after Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency.

Shame on you, Dubya. The totalitarian communist government officials of the PRC are taking you to school to teach you compassion. Or at least, the statesmanlike feigning of same.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/13/2243183.htm?site=science&topic=latest

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007060.php

http://dkosopedia.com/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_Chronology

Bart & Brett

Since when did the word ‘maverick’ come to denote ‘right-wing, reactionary old men’ – as in ‘Judge Scalia and John McCain are mavericks’?