Of Paul Street

Source: SakerItalia
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [in English]. Signed by the United States and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, the document was a great and luminous step forward in articulating how human beings could organize their social and political systems in accordance with the ideals of democracy and civilization.
The United States has long mishandled the Universal Declaration (OF) as a weapon to be wielded selectively against officially designated enemies. But seven decades after signing the document (and trumpeted it), American society finds itself in situations, rarely noticed, of clear violation of the key principles of the declaration.
Let's take the first article of the DU: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and must act in a spirit of brotherhood with others.”
The United States is very far from it. A person born in 57% [in English] of US families, with less than 1.000$ into savings, will not enjoy anywhere near the same amount of "dignity and rights" that someone born in1% [in English] above, which overall possesses as much wealth as the 90% of American citizens. Access to essential means for your comfort, dignity and freedom—like quality construction, a qualified education, strong legal representation, free time, trips, healthcare, quality food and entertainment—is governed by the intentionally unequal distribution of wealth and income in the United States, the most viciously unequal nation of all Western “capitalist democracies.”. Like the disgusting polarized political culture with which it is associated, the extreme imbalance socioeconomic of the nation is not consistent with calls for conscience and brotherhood.
The article 2 of the DU proclaims, among other things, that everyone is entitled to human rights and freedoms without distinction of "race", “color” and “national or social origin”. And here too, again, the United States is in stark contrast.
The median wealth of whites is 12 times higher [in English] than the median of blacks in the United States—a reflection of persistent discrimination and segregation against blacks, built into the social structures and institutions of the nation. This reflects large racial disparities in arrests, in judicial proceedings, in legal representation. Blacks and Latinos constitute il 56% [in English] of the 2,2 millions of people incarcerated, although they count approximately the 32% of the population of the United States. One in three adults, among black males he is marked by a Ruinous and life-disabling criminal record [in English]—a critical barrier to opportunity and full citizenship (even for the right to vote in many US states) at numerous levels. Thanks to the war on drugs, moved differently based on race, one his 10 among black males in their thirties it is in a state of arrest or detention [in English] everyday. Rates of drug use among African Americans and whites are similar, but the incarceration rate of African Americans for drug-related crimes is nearly six times that of whites.
Millions of undocumented immigrant workers and residents are unwilling to fight for their “universal human rights” in the United States because they reasonably fear arrest and deportation.
The fourth article of the DU states. “No one shall be enslaved or reduced to servile status.” Hundreds of thousands of American prisoners—i capital goods Today's overwhelmingly non-white humans constitute the raw material for the gigantic prison-industrial complex of the self-proclaimed Land of the Free—performing work tasks for little or no compensation.. The global slavery indicator [in English] estimates that in the United States 57.000 people are victims of human traffickers, the contemporary form of slavery, smuggling and illegal trading of people forced into forced labor or sexual exploitation.
Hundreds of millions of Americans, free on paper, they are de facto slaves and servants for their employers (on which an absurd number of citizens depend for health coverage), and for financial institutions, insurance companies, retail company, credit agencies, owners associations, government tax collectors, gaming agencies (including state lotteries), healthcare providers, lawyers and drug dealers.
The fifth article of the DU says, “No one will be subjected to torture, nor to cruel treatment or punishment, inhuman or degrading.” Torture and similar treatment are endemic throughout the large U.S. prison system, the largest in all of world history. A particularly widespread and shocking form of treatment in this system is solitary confinement—a punishment well known for causing serious harm to the physical and mental health of its victims.. The American Civil Liberties Union [in English] reports that:

Over the last twenty years, The use of solitary confinement in US correctional facilities has seen a rapid increase…44 states and the federal government have maximum security units, where prisoners are held in extreme isolation, often for years, if not decades. It is estimated that every day in this country, beyond 80.000 people are held in solitary confinement. This massive increase in the use of solitary confinement has occurred in the face of criticism from legal and medical professionals, who branded the practice as unconstitutional and inhumane.

Other forms of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment that they are widespread [in English] in the vast archipelago of racially imbalanced mass incarceration, include widespread beatings, rapes, the practice of ignoring requests for help, overcrowding, under-funding, the practice of forcing prisoners to fight, dehydration, malnutrition, denial of medical care, the execution of the death penalty (con, sometimes, failed executions) and the scalding showers.
The article 7 of the DU proclaims, “All are equal before the law and are entitled to equal protection of the law.”
This principle is also violated too brazenly in the supposed homeland and headquarters of global freedom and democracy. Many Americans are familiar with the old working-class aphorism that “money talks and bullshit walks”—which means that the wealthy few hire very expensive lawyers to increase their chances and power in the courts., while average citizens fare much less well with fewer resources to pay for legal representation. It's not a joke. As the candidate for the governorship of Georgia and former opposition leader of the parliament of Georgia Stacey Abrams [in English] he noted last February, people with money “navigate elegantly through the criminal justice system and perhaps avoid it altogether,” but the poorest are overwhelmed.
The Wall Street bosses who have put millions of Americans out of work and destroyed billions of dollars in lost savings with their irresponsible and often criminal practices they escaped prosecution [in English] while the nation's prisons are disproportionately loaded with blacks, Hispanics and poor people serving long sentences for comparatively small drug crimes. Hundreds of thousands of Americans rot in prison before sentencing for the simple reason that they do not have the financial resources to post bail. Abrams riferisce, “The majority of Georgians incarcerated in local jails have never been convicted of a crime. They are simply too poor to pay bail.”
The ninth and tenth articles of the DU say that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile” and “Everyone has the right in fairness to a public hearing by an impartial tribunal, in determining their rights and obligations and any criminal charges against them"
The eleventh article says, “Anyone accused of a criminal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to the law in a public trial in which he or she enjoys all the guarantees necessary for his or her defense.”
The “land of the free” contravenes these cardinal principles of civil liberties without the slightest sign of embarrassment. Lo U.S. National Defense Authorization Act [National Defense Authorization Act] (NDAA) authorizes the indefinite military detention [in English], without charge or trial, of any person labeled a “belligerent”—including American citizens. This legislation overrides theyou have a body, the critical legal process that prevents the government from incarcerating you indefinitely without just cause.
What's more, the federal government used the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (REC) after the11 September to justify direct killing (without trial or verdict) of anyone declared an “enemy combatant” in the global war on terrorism. The AUFM is not subject to geographical or temporal limits. American citizens are not exempt, nor is the territory of the United States.
In the meantime, last January, The Washington Post reported [in English], “For the third consecutive year, the police [local and state in the USA] he killed approx 1.000 people across the nation. …” Police killings, inflicted disproportionately against the poor and people of color, they are nothing more than executions of the death penalty, without trial or verdict.
The presumption of innocence does not prevent hundreds of thousands of Americans from experiencing torture and detention simply because they cannot pay bail while awaiting trial..
Il 12 DU article proclaims, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence.” And then? Americans are subjected to a vast public and private surveillance apparatus that has essentially abolished privacy in the name of “national security.” As reported by the ACLU [in English]:

Numerous government agencies—including the NSA, the FBI, il Department of Homeland Security, and local or state law enforcement—intrusions into the private communications of innocent citizens, they amass huge databases of who we call and when and catalog “suspicious activity” based on the vaguest standards. … Innocuous data fuels bloated checklists, with serious consequences—innocent individuals found themselves barred from boarding planes or barred from certain types of jobs, the bank accounts closed and repeatedly questioned by the authorities. Once the information is in the hands of the government, it can be shared extensively and stored for years, and the rules regarding its accessibility and use can be changed completely in secret without the public ever knowing.

The article 15 of DU says, “Everyone has the right to a nationality” and “No one should be deprived of the right to change their nationality.” Millions of “illegal” immigrants fleeing impoverished countries and repressive US-backed regimes are stateless people, too afraid of deportation to declare their foreign citizenship or fight for decent conditions in the US. They are not free to change their nationality to become citizens of the United States.
The nineteenth article of the DU states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold one's opinions without interference.” This is beautiful. Millions of citizen-subjects of the United States know very well that they cannot write or speak (or sing or post or march in the name of) what they believe without risking their livelihood for having offended or in any way worried their employers and other authorities. And in the United States, where health insurance is absurdly strongly linked to the workplace, putting someone's job at risk also jeopardizes access to the health service for oneself or one's family.
Freedom of expression is strongly conditioned, to say the least in the hidden and despotic home of the capitalist workplace [in English], where most working-age Americans spend most of their daytime hours under the supervision of a manager.
Even tenured academics can be fired for expressing their opinions. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign fired tenured professor Steven Salaita for his personal tweets criticizing Israel's mass killings in Gaza in 2014. Prolific radical Native American author Ward Churchill was fired from his tenured professorship on somewhat dubious grounds because of political comments he made on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The article 20 of DU says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.”
These rights are highly conditioned in the United States, where public assemblies are controlled through onerous permitting and fee processes and peaceful protest gatherings typically face militarized police forces making random arrests, they infiltrate the marches and meetings, they target the organizers, they make false accusations against those who protest (and build deadly records) and beat up the demonstrators. Numerous Republican-controlled states have passed measures increasing penalties for protests in the wake of the demonstrations that accompanied the election and inauguration of Donald Trump.
Workers are fired for trying to organize unions in the United States, where once union-friendly laws have been gutted.
The 21st article states that “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. The will of the people must be the basis of government authority; this will be expressed through free and periodic elections which will be by universal and fair suffrage and will be held by secret ballot or through equivalent free voting procedures."
The reality of US politics stands in blatant violation of this universal human right. Like the eminent liberal political scientists Benjamin Page (Northwestern) and Marin Gilens (Princeton) they demonstrated last year in their expertly informed book, “Democracy in America?” [in English]:

There is clear evidence that the desires of average Americans have little if any impact on determining federal government policies. Wealthy individuals and organized interest groups—especially business corporations—have much greater political influence. Upon careful examination, it is clear that the majority of the electorate has been practically ousted. …The will of the majority is often frustrated by those who are able to exert influence and are well organised, they block popular policy proposals and obtain special favors for themselves. … A majority of Americans would prefer … programs that create jobs, wages increase, help the unemployed, provide universal healthcare, ensure decent pension benefits by financing these programs with progressive taxation. Most Americans would also like to eliminate “corporate welfare.” Yet wealthy business groups and structural blocs have blocked these new policies in most cases [and programs].

“The elections alone,” note Page and Gilens, “they do not guarantee democracy.” The majority in American public opinion has been routinely deceived by a deadly complex of forces in the nation's politics, including:

• • campaign financing power, selection of candidates, lobbying and agenda setting by wealthy individuals, companies and interest groups
  • The special influence of full-time party activists on primary elections
  • The composition disproportionately rich, white and elderly among the active electorate (voter)
  • The manipulation and restriction of voter turnout
  • The widespread dissemination of distracting information, confusionarie, deceptive, if not completely false
  • Absurdly and explicitly unrepresentative political institutions like the Electoral College, the non-elective Supreme Court, the over-representation of the rural population, predominantly white U.S. Senate and single-party control of the House of Representatives
  • The fragmentation of authority in government
  • The ownership of the mainstream media by large corporations, who present contemporary events according to the desires and worldview of the nation's true masters—its “unelected dictatorship of money”
  • Americans can vote but nevertheless Mammon reigns in the United States, where Page and Gilens find that “government policies…reflect the desires of those with money, not the desires of the millions of ordinary citizens who go to the polls every two years to choose between pre-approved, money-controlled candidates for federal office.

You would know nothing about this and other blatant violations of the DU (you can find other texts on violations of the articles at home 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 e 28 on the my website [in English]) reading the last one"Report on state abuses of human rights [in English]” that the State Department releases every year. In addition to two disturbing changes—the deletion of most of the previous documentation on women's rights and reproductive rights and the redaction of the term “Occupied Territories” from the report's description of Israel and its, beh, occupied territories—the Trump-era representation of the State Department's annual document (this year's is the first produced entirely by Trump's State Department) flows on four familiar tracks. Consistent with previous versions, fails to recognize political support, economic and military services that the United States has long provided to governments whose human rights abuses the report mentions—as if Washington had nothing to do with them.
Let's learn, for example that Saudi Arabia kills civilians in Yemen and carries out “illegal death sentences, for crimes that are not necessarily the most serious and without the necessary due process; to torture; arbitrary arrest and detention, even lawyers” in his own territory. The report says nothing about whether Washington views the Saudi regime as one of its most valuable allies. Or that equips the absolute Saudi state (whose crown prince was recently hosted by Donald Trump, who boasted during the royal visit about American arms sales to Saudi Arabia) with lethal military equipment worth tens of billions. Nor does it say anything about the direct and shocking abrogation of human rights in facilities like their horrific Guantanamo Bay torture camp and their arch-criminal “targeted killing” war program. (death penalty without trial) That Noam Chomsky defined [in English] “the largest global terrorism campaign the world has ever seen.”
The world has every reason to respond to the State Department report with another old maxim: “You don't have to piss on my shoes and then tell me it's raining.”
The country report document continues the United States' long-standing practice of selective criticism, highlighting violations in rival and enemy nations compared to those in allied nations. Relying only on what is written in the states document, one would think that human rights are no better off in Iran and Cuba than they are in Saudi Arabia and Honduras. You would never know that the Saudis make Iran look like a bastion of civil liberties, women's rights and democracy compared. Or that ordinary Cubans enjoy guaranteed incomes and access to health services and education that are unmatched in Latin America and especially in states that have right-wing governments like Honduras, in which a ferocious far-right regime was installed with non-negligible US input nine years ago.
The State Department report vastly understates the scale of Saudi crimes, supported and equipped by the USA, in Yemen. It gives no sense of the fact that the US-Saudi war against that small nation has created one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes there (to which was added the explosion of a mass epidemic of deadly cholera) in recent history.
When submitting the report, John Sullivan, Trump's acting Secretary of State at the time, identified Russia and China as the main “threats to global stability,” stating that their history of poor human rights places them in the same cruel and evil club that Iran and North Korea are part of. You might ask, where we should place US allies like Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Egypt and Israel? The latter recently brazenly massacred unarmed Palestinians who were protesting peacefully on its borders with Gaza, which is basically an open-air prison for Palestinians, subjected to a fierce blockade by Israel and Egypt since 2007. And what do we say about other US-allied states, like the Philippines, whose strongman Rodrigo Duterte, who ordered murders of drug dealers and drug users by death squads, was praised by Trump for “doing an incredible job on the drug problem”?
It has not gone unnoticed by critical observers that the Trump administration, curiously he designated the main strategic rivals of the American Empire—China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—as the biggest human rights violators.
As usual, The State Department's latest global human rights report deliberately ignores the human rights achievements of states on the wrong side of Uncle Sam's friend-foe division of the world.. He has nothing to say, for example of Cuba's notable achievements in poverty reduction, in public health, in educating its citizens and developing its own low-carbon footprint economy that reduces its contribution to the biggest problem of our times, whose enlargement is instead led by the United States: anthropogenic climate change.
For last point, but no less important, This year's version of the report has not, as usual, nothing to say about the shocking and endemic human rights abuses perpetrated (at home and abroad) from the United States—the supposed “lighthouse for the way the world should live,” per quote former US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson [in English] (currently Trump's permanent representative for NATO) in a speech in the autumn of 2002 in support of congressional authorization of George W. Bush so that he could carry out the criminal invasion of Iraq if he so desired (as he then did). The “Report on Human Rights Abuses in States” deals with all countries on the planet except one: the most powerful nation on earth, the headquarters of a global empire that has no historical parallel, that the majority of the population who follows politics has, for a long time and rightly so, identified as the main threat to peace and stability on earth [in English]. The report deals with 194 Villages, it's not just about the world's only superpower, home of 4,4 % of the world population but but of 22 % of prisoners [in English]—truly a great achievement for the self-proclaimed homeland and headquarters of global freedom and democracy.
As far as the State Department is concerned, Washington and the elite of the company, of finance and imperial power, the DU violations outlined at the beginning of this article (and in my linked supplemental text) belong to George Orwell memory hole [in English], consisting in the principle according to which history is written by and for the winners and in the maxim of Big Brother: “Who controls the past, control the future. Who controls the present, control the past.”
It's nothing remotely new or distinctive of the Trump era. The United States sees itself as a City on a Hill, inherently splendid and humanitarian, able to judge other nations, particularly those he believes to be his rivals and enemies, while assigning itself an “exceptionalist” free pass because, as Madeleine Albright once explained, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, “The United States is good.” There is no way their human rights report will be taken seriously by citizens of the world who know the well-worn adage “those who live in a glass house should not throw stones.”
*****
Article by Paul Street, published on 2 maggio 2018 are Truthdig.com
Translation into Italian by Mario B. per Sakeritalia.it