US Rights Violations

[Reverend Blair]

Rummy is a war criminal. Let's chain the fecker up, put him in a packing crate with no air holes, and ship him to the Hague on a slow boat.

 

[EagleSmack]

YAAAAAWWWWWNNNN

I see the canucks are still at it. I thought with the NHL back in business you all would be back to staring at your TV's again.

 

[Jo Canadian]

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Published on Wednesday, November 2, 2005 by Agence France Presse
Rumsfeld Denies UN Rights Experts Access to Guantanamo Detainees


US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused UN experts access to detainees at a military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, dismissing a hunger strike there as a publicity stunt.


The International Committee of the Red Cross as a matter of policy does not make its findings public in order to preserve its access to prisons that might otherwise be closed to them....The UN special rapporteurs, on the other hand, would be expected to report what they see or hear while visiting Guantanamo.


The Pentagon last week invited three UN human rights experts to "observe" operations at the Guantanamo detention center but the officials have said they will go only if they are allowed to interview prisoners privately. In rejecting that, Rumsfeld said the International Committee of the Red Cross already has "complete and total access."


"And so we're not inclined to add the number of people that would be given that extensive access," he told reporters at a Pentagon press conference.

The ICRC as a matter of policy does not make its findings public in order to preserve its access to prisons that might otherwise be closed to them.

The UN special rapporteurs, on the other hand, would be expected to report what they see or hear while visiting Guantanamo.

The Pentagon's invitation last week came in the midst of a three-month-old hunger strike that defense lawyers say has involved as many as 200 detainees in protest over their indefinite detentions.

"I suppose that what they're trying to do is to capture press attention, obviously, and they've succeeded," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld said giving the UN special rapporteurs access to the detainees would not set to rest concerns about their treatment.

"It's very much in some people's interest to have it not be at rest," he said.

He said the decision to bar access to detainees was not taken by the Defense Department but by the US government as a whole.

Lawyers for the detainees, meanwhile, staged a fast outside the Justice Department to protest conditions in which their clients are being held.

A federal judge last week ordered the Pentagon to notify their lawyers when detainees have been force fed and to give them access to medical records at least once a week until the force feeding stops.

Currently, 27 detainees are refusing food and 24 are being fed through tubes, Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Martin, a military spokesman at Guantanamo, told AFP.

"They are clinically stable, and they are being monitored. They walk around, take showers, they have access to the ICRC," he said. "They are being tube fed but none of the detainees are in restraints to receive the feedings."

He said the strike, which began August 8, peaked on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States when 131 inmates refused food.

Rumsfeld said he neither approved nor disapproved of commanders' decisions to force-feed hunger-striking inmates.

The army, which runs the prison, has "expert medical people who make decisions of that type," he said.

"And they've made a decision that they think it's appropriate for them to provide nourishment to people who, for whatever reason, at various points in their detention, decide they want to not provide normal nourishment to themselves," he said.

The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that a detainee, Jumah al-Dossari of Bahrain, tried to hang himself in a bathroom during a visit by his lawyer on October 15.

The lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, was believed to be the first outsider to witness a suicide attempt at the prison, which houses more than 500 war-on-terror suspects.

Since December 2002, 36 suicide attempts have been reported at the prison, including three in the past year, Martin said. He would not comment on any individual cases.

wonder what he is hiding. And wondering if the US will have t obe invaded militarily , a regime change made and the prisons (this one and the "secret" ones too) opened up for PUBLIC INSPECTION.(Human Rights).....so the rest of the world can really find out what horrors the fecking SOB's have been up to.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Re: RE: US Rights Violations

YAAAAAWWWWWNNNN

I see the canucks are still at it. I thought with the NHL back in business you all would be back to staring at your TV's again.

:roll: :roll: :withstupid: :sad3: rotest:

 

[no1important]

Rebellion Against Abuse

LAST MONTH a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay military base excused himself from a conversation with his lawyer and stepped into a cell, where he slashed his arm and hung himself. This desperate attempted suicide by a detainee held for four years without charge, trial or any clear prospect of release was not isolated. At least 131 Guantanamo inmates began a hunger strike on Aug. 8 to protest their indefinite confinement, and more than two dozen are being kept alive only by force-feeding. No wonder Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied permission to U.N. human rights investigators to meet with detainees at Guantanamo: Their accounts would surely add to the discredit the United States has earned for its lawless treatment of foreign prisoners.


Sad sad sad. Click above link for rest of editorial.

 

[no1important]

EU to look into 'secret US jails'

The European Commission has said it will examine reports that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) set up secret jails in Eastern Europe.

Spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told the BBC News website that its justice experts would be contacting European Union member states over the issue.

But he stressed that a formal investigation had not been launched.

A US paper said the secret jails were run in eight countries, including some in Europe, to hold top terror suspects.

Mr Roscam Abbing said that any such prisons would probably violate EU rights laws.

click link for rest. I bet the US has dozens of secret jails worldwide.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Published on Thursday, November 3, 2005 by Reuters
Red Cross Seeks Access to CIA Prison
by Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on Thursday for access to all foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States after a report of a covert CIA prison system for al Qaeda captives.

The Washington Post said on Wednesday the CIA had been hiding and interrogating inmates at a secret facility in Eastern Europe, among so-called "black sites" in eight countries under a global network set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"We are concerned at the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held at undisclosed places of detention," Antonella Notari, chief ICRC spokeswoman, told Reuters in response to a question.

"Access to detainees is an important humanitarian priority for the ICRC and a logical continuation of our current work in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay," she added.

Also in Geneva, the United Nations' Human Rights Committee said it had received two letters and a report from the United States which it hoped would address the issue of detainees being held outside the country.

"It was in our request to the United States. We are going to see how they answer," committee chairwoman Christine Chanet for France told journalists, saying the committee had yet to study the documents.

The European Commission said on Thursday it would look into media reports naming two east European countries as allowing the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) to hold al Qaeda suspects outside of any national or international legal jurisdiction.

EU CHECKING

Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for European Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini, said the EU executive would check the reports with Poland, a new member state, and Romania, which is due to join the European Union in 2007.

The U.S.-based campaign organization Human Rights Watch said earlier it had indications the two were hosting CIA prisons.

Both denied the allegations on Thursday and the Commission's Abbing said it had no knowledge of any such prisons at present.

"What I think we will do is to at a technical level... check what the truth is in these stories. We will check the accuracy of those reports," he told a daily briefing.

He said the treatment of prisoners was not a matter of EU competence but any secret prisons would not appear compatible with the EU's non-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights or the so-called Copenhagen political criteria for EU membership, which include upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights.

He said the Commission's decision to check the reports did not signal any formal investigation, nor would it be appropriate for Frattini to personally question government leaders in the countries concerned.

Carroll Bogert, associate director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, outlined earlier what had led the group to believe Poland and Romania were hosting the alleged CIA prisons.

She said the group based its assumption on flight logs, such as a Boeing 737 having made trips to eastern Europe from Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East.

One flight log showed that a plane went from Kabul to northeastern Poland on September 22, 2003. That was the same month that "we know several CIA prisoners who were held in Afghanistan were transferred out of Afghanistan and the next day the same plane landed at a military airport in Romania," Bogert said.

The Romanian airfield had been closed to the public and the media for some time, she added.

The Washington Post said it had not published the names of the European countries at the request of senior U.S. officials who said disclosure could disrupt counterterrorism efforts or make the host countries targets for retaliation.

U.S. officials declined direct comment on the report, which was likely to stir up fresh criticism of the Bush administration's treatment of terrorism suspects.

Russia's FSB security service and Bulgaria's foreign ministry both denied such facilities existed on their territory as did Thailand, which was named in the Washington Post report.

The U.N.'s Human Rights Committee monitors a 1976 treaty on basic freedoms. The regular report on compliance filed by the United States last Friday was some seven years overdue.

The committee, which will examine the report next July at a public session, said last year it had specifically asked that the issue of detention centers be included.

The ICRC, a neutral humanitarian organization, monitors whether prison conditions and treatment of detainees comply with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which lay down rules for treating those captured in international armed conflicts.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Police and Thieves
by Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers
by Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers



In a previous article, I ridiculed the modern American Police State and the TV show COPS. Several people got very angry with me. Please, folks, don’t shoot the messenger boy when he points out the absurdity of what America has become. Whether you know it or not, whether you want to admit to it or not, the United States has become a very scary country. I’m an American and I believe that I’m telling you folks in America this for your own good. If you don’t want to face the hard truth, and you wish to continue living in denial, stop reading this article and go watch TV.

Some people complain that I never give advice; they say I only complain (I hear that from my wife a lot too). A few readers insisted that the Japanese police are just as brutal and out of control as the police in any big American city. I’m sorry but that’s completely ignorant and idiotic nonsense. I doubt that any country in the world carries the stigma of more police brutality these days more than the United States. Think Rodney King or that poor 60-year-old black man who was beaten by the police in New Orleans right after the floods.

Please bear with me as this might be a bit difficult to understand, but the police in America go out looking for trouble. The Japanese police don’t. The problem with looking for trouble is, as you all know, if you’re looking for trouble, you’ll find it. The bigger problem I can see with this is that when the police in the USA can’t find real trouble, they’ll make it. For example arresting people for minor offenses when a warning would be fine. Or beating people up for minor or trumped up offenses; or just basically turning a molehill into a mountain.

Recently, a friend of mine told me that he was in Tokyo for over 1 week and never saw one policeman. I can believe that. In the last two weeks I’ve come across the Japanese police twice. That’s quite an unusually large amount of times. Both times some foreigner was passed out on the subway platform. The police tried to awaken the guys, but couldn’t. I overheard the police say, "What are we going to do? We can’t just leave him here." They seemed at a loss. I walked up to them and said to the guy passed out on the floor, "Hey man. The cops are here. If you don’t get up, they might arrest you." Bam! The guy gets up real quick. The police ask me to ask him if he’s okay. He says he is. Do they ask for his ID? Do they give him a breath test? Do they give him a hard time? No. They just tell him, "Please don’t sleep on the subway platform. It’s dangerous." And they walked off. Now, you just know that the police in the States would have arrested these guys for something. In Japan, I gather that the police just don’t want people bothering other people. Or maybe it’s because they just can’t be bothered with the little stuff. That’s it. Is this the way things should be? I think so. But perhaps the American police cannot be blamed completely as it also seems a part of today’s American society to be very confrontational. That’s one thing I really like about Japan: Japanese people (and police) will generally leave you alone. Things here are much more relaxed. Japanese people are not "in your face" like Americans.

Whenever I point out just how messed up some things are in the United States, some folks always get indignant and angry. They often wonder why I don’t point out Japan’s faults for American people who might get their jollies laughing at others. Sorry, Mr. & Mrs. America, you’ve lived in a world of self-delusion for far too long; you’ve allowed yourselves to be tricked into believing that the United States is the best place to live in the world – bar none. This born and raised American boy has lived in and visited many countries. Personally, I think it’s laughable when Americans tell me that the United States is a better place to live and raise a family than Japan – especially Americans who have never been out of their own country except to visit Tijuana. I think I’ll save my criticism of the Japanese for the Japanese and reserve my right, as an American, to criticize my own country for the betterment of that country. I still have some most probably very deluded ideas (judging from the mail I get and the direction that the United States is heading), that there is still a small chance to open people’s eyes in the States so that they can judge fairly and wake up to see that the United States is not living up to it’s potential. How could the quality of life be better in Japan than in the United States? Japan has no natural resources; Japan has no space; what does Japan have that the United States doesn’t – or shouldn’t have? Nothing really. Yet statistics show that today’s Japanese lives at a far better standard of living and outlives today’s American by several years. Why?

Being a glutton for punishment, I write about these problems I see. And when I write, I always get hit by furious people who don’t think and consider what I have written; they just knee-jerk the standard response I’ve come to expect.

I can sum up the basic message behind all my hate mail in a few sentences:

Why do you hate America? Why do you hate Americans? Why do you hate the police and the military? America is still the freest nation on earth. If you don’t like it, you can just leave…

Sometimes the people who write to me can actually read my articles and will change the last sentence to:

Stay in Japan!

Well, with the way things are in the United States these days, I think I will. Thank you.

I’d like to clear the air and let it be known (to anyone who even cares) that I don’t hate America. I don’t hate Americans, generally speaking. I’ve come to realize that I can’t get angry at people who write hate mail to me because they just don’t know. Is that their fault? In a way, I suppose so. But that still doesn’t change the fact that they just don’t know any better. I guess Field Marshall Rumsfeld summed it up pretty well when he said:

"…there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know."

Wow! How prophetic. How totally "American."

Where is this all leading? Well, lots of people who write to me ask me to back up my claims with statistics and other facts. Personally, I don’t really like statistics too much as statistics seem to be kept by our masters for some purpose (I reckon in order to get more of our tax dollars). I’d rather depend on my own eyes. But my detractors want statistics. So here it is America, your handy-dandy guide that you can use to judge just how really screwed up – and un-free The Land of the Free really is. If you have the nerve and the guts to read on, I promise that your jaw will drop. The smarter people in the crowd will not be surprised, the Peanut Gallery in the audience will be all riled up and write hate mail to me. It’s okay, I’m used to it by now. Before you read on, keep in mind that these figures are from 1999-2001 so they are a bit dated. Researching of the actual up-to-date figures will show you that the quality of life in the United States today has seriously deteriorated under the presidency of George W. Bush. I’m sorry average America, but the United States is on the level of a third-world country these days. Read on.

Is the United States the best place to live in the world? Not if you want to live a long time. It’s not even close. Life expectancy in the USA is ranked a pathetic 48th among nations. Japan is 4th. The expected lifespan of the average American is even lower than the life expectancy of those flowing oasis countries known as Jordan and Israel. I read a UN report two weeks ago that said a child born in China has a 300% better chance of reaching her first birthday than a child born in the United States these days. Here’s a sample of the stats:

Life expectancy at birth is also a measure of overall quality of life in a country and summarizes the mortality all ages.

1. Andorra – 83.49 years
2. Macau – 81.87 years
3. San Marino – 81.43 years
4. Japan – 80.93 years
10. Hong Kong – 79.93 years
40. Jordan – 77.88 years
47. Puerto Rico – 77.26 years
48. United States – 77.14 years

Puerto Rico at 47 and the United States at 48?! Makes you proud, doesn’t it? I figure that longevity in the United States is so short for many reasons. Mainly too many Americans are grossly overweight (look whose talking, I could stand to lose a few pounds). Americans eat too much junk. Modern American food, for the most part, is packed full of all sorts of chemicals and preservatives; and medical care in the United States is atrocious (thanks Uncle Sam).

But we all have to look for the silver lining, don’t we? It’s good that Americans don’t live so long, that way they can’t be taxed so much – and they become eligible for Death Taxes sooner. Oh joy! I think I’ll stay in Japan for now as taxes in Japan on average are 20% lower than the United States. (Japan’s retail sales tax is 3% by the way.)

The percentage of gross earnings given up in tax, including any social security contributions. Calculated for a single worker without children, earning 100 % of the average wage. Data for 2001:

21. United States 30%
22. United Kingdom 29.7%
26. Japan 24.2%

It might not be so bad today as George gave ya’ll a $300 dollar tax rebate a while ago. That’s good as you folks can use that money to fill up your car with a tank of gas. Everyone knows that England is a socialist nightmare. But wait a minute! Taxes in even the UK are lower than the United States. Hmmm? Go figure.

Snide joke time:

Q: How do you double the value of your General Motors car?

A: Put in a full tank of gasoline.

Oh, that joke just kills me every time. And speaking of killings, hey there’s the good old US of A ranked number 24 in murders! Japan comes in at number 60. I guess I can sleep much better at night in Japan than the United States when my kids are running around at night:

24. United States – 0.04 per 1,000 people
60. Japan – 0.005 per 1,000 people

I’m not too much of a math whiz (I went to public school in the United States) but this looks to me like a person has nearly 100 times the chance of getting killed in the USA than in Japan. Someone do the math for me and get me the exact number, please.

Well, with that murder rate so high in the good old States, I guess we’ll have to start imprisoning more and more of these desperadoes. And America comes through with shining colors here. Thank God that the Land of the Free imprisons more people than any other nation on the face of the earth.

1. United States – 715.0 per 100,000 people
127. Japan – 54.0 per 100,000 people

(I believe that the true figures for the United States today is somewhere around 957 per 100,000 people incarcerated.) But, according to our chart, the United States imprisons more than thirteen times the amount of people in the well-known crime-ridden country of Japan? Wow! The Land of the Free sure is free when you’re locked up in prison getting three squares a day at the public expense. You know, something’s wrong when the USA imprisons so many people, yet the crime rate is so astronomically high. Kind of makes you wonder if the ways things are being done is not really the best way to do things. You reckon?

There is still one area that the USA dominates the world; and that area is in military expenditures. I read somewhere the other day that, including these expenditures and the Iraq War that most Americans seemed so Gung Ho for just a few years ago (forgive them, they went to public school in the United States) the red ink that the US government has gotten you folks all stuck in is over $26,000 for every man, woman, and child living in the United States today. I figure that the US government can pay you folks back by giving you each an Abrahms tank. Oh, you all already drive SUV’s. Never mind.

Military Expenditures – Dollar figure (As of 1999)

1. United States – $276,700,000,000.00
2. China – $55,910,000,000.00
3. France – $46,500,000,000.00
4. Japan – $39,520,000,000.00

Please keep in mind that these figures were published in 2003 and account for US military spending as of 1999. In a recent article by scholar Robert Higgs, the actual dollar amounts the US spends on its military – including the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars – comes out to a conservative estimate of $754 billion dollars – almost 300% the 1999 amount.

The USA spends over $754 billion dollars annually on the military? The United States war machine spends more on its military than the other top one hundred nations combined? Are you people out of your minds? When are you going to put a stop to this insanity?

But, like I said, these kinds of statistics don’t really interest me all that much. If you want to see more for yourself, go to a site called Nationmaster. There you can look up whatever statistics you’d like. Go ahead America; knock yourselves out. But be forewarned, if you still believe that the United States is the freest, most wonderful country in the world, you’re in for a shock; because you’re dead wrong.

I had lived in the United States for 27 years – have been back to visit almost every year. And I’ve lived in Japan over these last 21 years. Like I said, I’m not too interested in statistics; I’m more interested in things I’ve seen with my own eyes. And I know that any traveled American would agree that the United States is going down the trash-can real quick.

I’ve seen both Japan and the United States. I consider myself a fair judge who has the experience and the facts. I have my preference and it’s an easy call: I’ll stay in Japan. In Japan, the people seem to have much more courtesy towards each other and common sense. This is reflected in the standard of living and the low crime rate. While I’m here in Japan, I’ll keep writing and warning you folks about what I see until either the United States goes down with a crash (which is what I fear is going to happen very soon because of what the anti-American’s – like George W. Bush – are doing to the country) or the American people wake up to reality and seriously work to repair their broken-down palace.

 

[no1important]

:twisted: :? moved post to a diferent thread. I think I will go

 

[Ocean Breeze]

hi No 1.....I just posted two items about this under bush WAR CRIMES....


Criminals ....ALL. :evil: As the information comes out.....they could make people like SH look ethical. & humane.

 

[no1important]

hi No 1.....I just posted two items about this under bush WAR CRIMES....


Criminals ....ALL. :evil: As the information comes out.....they could make people like SH look ethical. & humane.

Yeah I just noticed that. Sorry. Sometimes I do not read all the diferent threads before I post and it can get confusing at times what thread to use. :twisted: But at least we can agree serious war crimes are being committed by the USA.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

hi No 1.....I just posted two items about this under bush WAR CRIMES....


Criminals ....ALL. :evil: As the information comes out.....they could make people like SH look ethical. & humane.

Yeah I just noticed that. Sorry. Sometimes I do not read all the diferent threads before I post and it can get confusing at times what thread to use. :twisted: But at least we can agree serious war crimes are being committed by the USA.

not a problem. and yes, we do agree completely that serious war crimes have been committed. From the first LIE that was uttered for this criminality. (IMHO) It is not only war crimes that have been committed.......but that is another territory.