What They’re Saying: The International Community on the U.S.

[Joanne98]

POSTED: Thursday, March 13, 2008

FROM BLOG: The Seminal :: Independent Media And Politics - Hailing from all over the globe, our writers bring you thoughtful commentary on current events.

The Chinese Government released a scathing report today, pushing back on U.S. criticisms of the country’s human rights record which were revealed in the State Department’s annual survey of human rights. The BBC has the story.

The Chinese report cites rising violent crime in the US as posing a serious threat to the lives, liberty and personal security of its people.

The foreign ministry said the US should stop posing as a rights watchdog and concentrate on its own problems.

“Stop exercising double standards on human rights issues and wrongly meddling in the internal affairs of other countries,” said ministry spokesman Qin Gang.


Sudan also rejected the criticism from the State Department


Sudan accused the United States of hypocrisy over the rights report, citing Guantanamo Bay, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq and the suppression of “racial and religious minorities and the Muslims” in the United States as examples of U.S. abuses.

And so did Russia.


The ministry said the report reflected the “double standards” of a country it claimed uses human rights as a “foreign policy tool” while balking at scrutiny of its own actions.

“How else can one explain that the United States — which has essentially legalized torture, applies capital punishment to minors, denies responsibility for war crimes and massive human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan, refuses to join a series of treaties in the sphere of human rights — distortedly comments on the situation in other countries?” it said.

Mozambique:


A real defender of human rights, Amnesty International, earlier this year described Guantanamo Bay as “a symbol of injustice and abuse. Secret detentions, torture, rendition and indefinite detention without charge flout basic human rights principles and jeopardize rather than promote security”.

But not a whisper of this is allowed into the US State Department reports. In those reports, the United States’ own human rights abuses are always exempt from criticism. They are not acknowledged to exist - the United States is the one country in the world which has no chapter in the report.

Fiji:


“USA should tell Fiji how it intends to deal with gross human rights violations committed by itself in Iraq, while it destroys that country.

“And please, let Fiji people know whether any weapons of mass destruction have been found,” Shameem said.

“As for Guantanamo Bay - when is that house of horrors going to be closed down and every inmate get due process?

“No one wants the USA to be the guardian of human rights for the rest of the world - it’s like asking Dracula to guard the blood bank,” she said.

The foreign minister of France, Bernard Kouchner, offered an equally bleak assessment. His comments were focused on the image of the United States internationally.


Asked whether the United States could repair the damage it has suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency and especially since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Kouchner replied, “It will never be as it was before.”

“I think the magic is over,” he continued, in what amounted to a sober assessment from one of the strongest supporters in France of the United States.

This article in the Guardian, a British newspaper, compares the United States in 2008 to Czechoslovakia in 1975.


Czechoslovakia, 1975: Free healthcare available to all citizens.

US, 2008: 47 million Americans (16% of the population) have no health insurance. Another 16 million are “underinsured”.

Czechoslovakia, 1975: Torture, though not officially sanctioned, has become a covert tool of state policy.

US, 2008: Torture officially sanctioned.

Amazingly, all of these articles came out in the last 24 hours. Fortunately, our long national nightmare is almost over.

http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/topNews?type=topNews&w1=B7ovpm21IaDoL40ZFnNfGe&w2=B9KobpniDQffCOR77fHrDXw&src=blogBurst_topNews&bbPostId=Cz4LaGYSO8cAmCz8ig70FWHdXJCz1pP1crdj8nZBEE6tWXHobsJ&bbParentWidgetId=B7qp5dlHYnIr2YRoUoOjnxK

[CJCRANE]

1. Junior broke the shining beacon nt

[Karenina]

2. "Fortunately, our long national nightmare is almost over."

Sorry to break the news, but it's really just beginning.