LeftExchange
On Thursday May 3, 2001 a miracle took place. According to Evelyn Leopold, the great power broker has lost its place on the United Nations sponsored Human Rights Commission. This is the first time since 1947 the U.S. has not sat on that commission.
The Hypocrisy has Ended!
The Human Rights Commission probes rights abuses throughout the world. One has to wonder if the fact that a U.S. delegate has sat on this Commission for so long has contributed to the complete lack of investigation into U.S. practices around the world: disseminating fear and terror, promoting dictatorship and depotism. The United States is currently the largest seller of arms and weapons in the world. America has trained tyrants around the globe in how to abuse, exterminate, disappear, torture and violate the people of the lower classes.
Instead France, Austria and Sweden were chosen for the three seats allocated to Western countries that were up for election.
Not that France’s record on human rights is stellar. Remember that they were a major player in the genocide in Rwanda.
The commission was created in 1947 and the United States, Russia and India had served on the body ever since. Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the first U.S. delegate to the commission, which issued the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. However, American support for the Declaration has been anything but enthusiastic. Per usual, the United States has taken an all-too-frequent “pragmatic” approach to its application: translation=profits come before people.
The Bush administration's opposes the Kyoto climate change treaty and plans to build a ”missile defense shield”. It is no wonder the world couldn’t take it any more. The U.S. has repeatedly refused to act on and/or to sign treaties that could make a real difference in the lives of ordinary people. Drill in Alaska? Why not! Arsenic in the water? Sure. Why is there any arsenic in our water?
Washington has also opposed a treaty to ban landmines. Landmines remain on the field long after combatants have left. Maps of where these deadly, indiscriminate weapons are located are usually kept secret—the point is that they are covert.
Children, women, farmers, ordinary citizens step on the mines years later, and either die outright or suffer horrible pain and injury. Today, the same companies that manufacture mines will offer to locate them and dispose of them. . .for a price.
And the United States has consistently blocked measures that would make generic AIDS drugs available to those who most need them.
Certainly, this has been a long time coming. I wonder what it will mean for the committee, but I hope it means an aggressive look at U.S. Foreign Policy and its never ending quest to grind the labor classes into extinction.
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