Musings, perspectives, rants

Following on from the last entry:

• International Court of Justice. Apart from so far failing to take the necessary measures to comply with the ICJ decision on the issue of consular rights and capital defendants, the USA was already one of only two countries to have ignored an ICJ ruling(18) (the other being Iran);
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Aside from ignoring the Commission in relation to the Guantánamo detainees, the USA continues to disregard its call for individual executions to be halted while it examines the prisoners' claims. For example, in 2001, the US government executed federal death row prisoner Juan Raul Garza despite the Commission's finding that the introduction of evidence at Garza's sentencing of his involvement in unsolved crimes for which he had never been tried or convicted had been ''antithetical to the most basic and fundamental judicial guarantees''. The Commission concluded that Garza had been sentenced to death ''in an arbitrary and capricious manner'' and that his execution would be a ''deliberate and egregious violation'' of US obligations under international law. The same thing occurred at the trial of Javier Suárez Medina, but he was killed before the ACHR could examine the facts of his case;
• American Convention on Human Rights, which the USA has failed to ratify 25 years after signing it;
• Geneva Conventions, as outlined above with respect to the Guantánamo detainees;
• Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, in particular as it impacts on foreign nationals in the USA accused of capital crimes;
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The USA is one of only 23 countries not to have ratified this Convention;
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the USA has ratified, but agreed to be bound by only to the extent that its restrictions on the death penalty and its prohibition on torture or other cruel, inhuman degrading treatment or punishment match its own constitutional constraints;
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. While 145 countries have ratified this treaty, the USA has not, 25 years after signing it;
• Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the USA attached a number of ''reservations'' and other conditions upon ratification. The Committee Against Torture, the expert body established by the Convention to oversee its implementation, has asked the US Government to withdraw these reservations. The US Government has failed to do so and has ignored other recommendations by the Committee, such as to prohibit the remote-controlled electro-shock stun belt, widely used in the USA;
• Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture. This Protocol aimed at providing a system of unannounced visits to places of detention such as police stations and prisons was approved by the UN Economic and Social Council on 24 July 2002 despite US opposition;
• Convention on the Rights of the Child. In May 2002, Somalia signed the Convention, and indicated its intention to ratify it. Once it does so, becoming the 192nd state party to the Convention, the USA will be the only country not to have ratified this fundamental treaty.

Source:  http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR511402002

Why pick on the United States?  It claims to be a democratic land of liberty and justice for all, a claim any informed person knows to be utter bullshit.  It attacks other countries for human rights abuses yet does nothing to ensure it doesn't happen and, indeed, uses the same techniques and, more importantly, manufactures instruments of torture which it then sells to the very countries it accuses!

The cover page of a magazine I saw today focussed on torture - used by the United States particularly against so-called terrorists (against whom there is no evidence).  I'll reproduce it here in full.  It's not a pleasant read, but it is an example of what is happening.  Many of these detainees have nothing to do with terrorist organisations - they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time - picked up by Pakistani officials who received money from the US government for every prisoner handed over.

Torture – Where do you draw the line?

 

A few grim numbers.

 

Ninety eight detainees are known to have died since August 2002 in the custody of US officials abroad.  The US military itself classifies 34 of these deaths as suspected or confirmed homicides.  But in half of all deaths, the cause was never announced or was reported as undetermined.

 

At least eight men, and as many as 12, were tortured to death.

 

In only 12 of the 34 admitted homicides have any military personnel or US officials been punished.  In the cases of detainees tortured to death, only half have resulted in punishment.

 

The harshest prison sentence meted out to anyone involved in a  torture-related death?  Five months.

 

Numbers can be grim.  Sometimes, however, they aren’t grim enough.  These numbers only account for the extreme cases, the exceptions – the acts of torture that left behind a sort of gruesome inventory.  What they fail to account for are those acts that don’t leave behind corpses or severed limbs.  The sort of dubious interrogation tactics that we would have known nothing about if it weren’t for those infamous photos, the ones which, years later, we have seen only a tiny subset.

 

As these photos demonstrated, you can do a lot to a person without leaving a mark.  The question is, in the pursuit of your own security, and the security of your family and your neighbors, how much is too much?  When it comes to humiliation, discomfort, fear and pain, where do you draw the line?

 

“You nudge him awake with a barrel of a rifle.  He says nothing, just stands in compliance, shivering in his underwear.  You give him a pair of orange overalls.  He puts them on.  You shackle his wrists, then his ankles.  Heavy boots for his feet, foam plugs in his ears, a hood over his head.  You bag his hands in layers of thick fabric, bound tightly with tape.  He says nothing, but his breath is uneven.

 

As you push him back against a wall, you have a chair brought in for yourself. He stands, you sit.  After an hour, coffee is brought in for you.  When he slumps, you shove him roughly back against the wall.  If he slumps too frequently, you bring your gun up against his exposed throat.  He can feel that.  He stands up nicely.

 

On the fifth hour, while you’re having your meal, he urinates inside of his coveralls.  You can see it as it saturates the fabric.

 

You turn on the bright, artificial lights in his holding cell.  After two hours, you turn them off again.  You continue – off, on, off, on – at random intervals.  He asks you what time of day it is.  You don’t tell him.  Sometimes, you serve him two meals within an hour of one another.  Sometimes, you wait eight hours.  He keeps asking what time it is, what the date is.  You don’t tell him.  He asks for a blanket.  You don’t give him one.  He asks to see his family.  You don’t answer.  He asks to see a judge.  You don’t answer.

 

After a few weeks, he stops asking for things, but you can still hear him talking – quietly – to no-one in particular.

 

When he refuses to eat, you put him in the restraint chair for force-feeding.  When he throws up on himself, you make him remove his clothes and lay down on the concrete floor with his face in the vomit. 

 

When he doesn’t remain perfectly still, or when he makes any noise, you bring out the dogs.  When he tries to cover himself, you get the female guards to point at him, to taunt him, to straddle him and tell him that his mother and grandmother are whores.  When he is uncooperative or insubordinate, you put him on a leash and make him wear women’s undergarments.  When he falls asleep, you blast him with shatteringly loud pop music.  When he asks to go to the toilet, you make him wait until he messes himself, then you force him to roll around in it while you take pictures of him.

 

You and your cohorts do this for twelve, sixteen, twenty hours at a time.

 

On the fiftieth day, you have him strapped to an inclined board, with his feet higher than his head.  You explain to him that he is going to be executed.  He whimpers.  You lower his head into a tank of frigid water as he blubbers incoherently and jerks at the restraints.

 

You watch him carefully, making sure that he doesn’t drown, but getting him as close as possible before raising the board.  He passes out more than once.  Each time, you revive him and then dunk him again.  Then you do it again.  Then you do it again.

 

He begins to confess to impossible, nonsensical plots.  He asks for you to kill him.  He asks to be allowed to kill himself.  You do neither.

 

You wonder how much longer it will be until he gives you some real information.”

 

You can do a lot to a person – you can utterly destroy a person – all without leaving a single visible mark.  Torturers have their techniques, and you have yours.  Hooding, exploitation of phobias, stress positions, sensory deprivation – you can do all of these things, and still you are not a torturer.

 

So do not worry.  You will not be held accountable.  You will not be punished. You are not a torturer.  Not according to your superiors, and not according to your leaders.

 

But be warned: history – as well as your victims – may judge you more harshly.

 

United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave formal, written approval for all of these techniques, along with others normally proscribed by the Army Field Manual, in a December 2002 internal memo.

 

Source:  Adbusters – Journal of the Mental Environment, May/June 2006

For more on American torture click the following links:

http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usai_torture

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR511402002

See next entry for a record of US human rights.

 

I admire Malcolm Kendall-Smith, an RAF doctor of dual British-NZ citizenship for refusing to return to Iraq because he believes the occupation to be illegal.  Good for him.  If only there were more like him who had the courage and wisdom to stand up and refuse to take part in the biggest crime so far this century.  The "war", the invasion and the occupation are illegal according to international law.  But the US puts itself above the law.  There is always one law for the USA and completely different laws for countries that don't like US capitalism, globalisation and imperialism.  It's completely fine, for example, for the US to hoard "weapons of mass destruction" and develop biological weapons, but not countries who are not 'good buddies' with the bully that is the United States.  Double standards.  But I digress.  Here are excerpts about Kendall-Smith:

LONDON: A British Air Force doctor who refused to go to Iraq because he said the war was illegal is due to face a court martial for refusing to obey orders.

Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, 37, faces five charges of disobeying a lawful order after he refused to train and go to Iraq last year.

If convicted at the Court Martial Centre in Aldershot, Kendall-Smith, who was raised in New Zealand and holds dual British-New Zealand citizenship, could be jailed.

The military doctor had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan in the past, but said he realised last year the Iraq war was illegal and that he could not return.

At a hearing last month, his legal team had asked for permission to argue that the order to deploy was illegal, but presiding judge Jack Bayliss ruled that the airman could not use that defence.

"None of the orders given to the defendant in this case was an order to do something which was unlawful," Bayliss said.

Opponents of the conflict were hoping to use the case to test in a British court whether the war itself was legal.

Kendall-Smith's lawyers had argued that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to send British troops to Iraq amounted to aggression, a crime under international law.

But the judge ruled that by the time Kendall-Smith refused to go in 2005, the United Nations Security Council and a new Iraqi government had both granted explicit permission for foreign troops to be in Iraq.

The question of the legality of the invasion two years earlier was therefore irrelevant, he said.

Prosecutors maintained from the outset that Kendall-Smith, as a doctor and non-combatant, was not being asked to do anything that might be a war crime.

"Telling a flight lieutenant to attend in Basra as a doctor could not involve any illegality, either in the giving of the order or in complying with it," prosecutor David Perry said.

Opponents of the war have called it illegal because it began without a UN resolution specifically authorising invasion, although the British government's top lawyer Lord Goldsmith advised Blair that military action was lawful.

After the invasion, the UN Security Council passed resolutions permitting US-led forces to remain in Iraq.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3634912a12,00.html

ALDERSHOT, England — A British air force officer who refused to serve in Iraq told a court martial Wednesday that the actions of the U.S. armed forces were “on a par with Nazi Germany.”

Flight Lieut. Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a Royal Air Force doctor, has pleaded not guilty to five charges of failing to comply with a lawful order for refusing to deploy to Basra last year.

Kendall-Smith, 37, had served twice in southern Iraq with British forces, but refused to return a third time in June.

He said he was not prepared to take part in an illegal “act of aggression.”

“I have evidence that the Americans were on a par with Nazi Germany with its actions in the Persian Gulf,” Kendall-Smith said.

“I have documents in my possession which support my assertions. This is on the basis that ongoing acts of aggression in Iraq and systematically applied war crimes provide a moral equivalent between the U.S. and Nazi Germany.”

Kendall-Smith, a dual British-New Zealand citizen, is on trial at the Aldershot Court Martial Centre southwest of London.

Edmonton Sun http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/World/2006/04/12/1531833.html

Good on him, I say.

And here's Saddam Hussein being tried for the deaths of a few hundred Kurds in the 80s at a time when the US was buddies with him and did nothing - they didn't give a shit and, in fact, enabled the massacre by ignoring it completely.  Meanwhile, US soldiers have killed thousands of Iraqis and for what?  It's all a farce.  There is no justice in this world and never will be while the US of A is in control - the bullies of the world.

It's been so long since I've been here that I'd forgotten my login details.

Quite often I feel that there's so much going on, so much to write about or point out that I can never decide on one or have time to do all, so I don't bother.  I'll endeavour to change that.

Firstly, I found an interesting website today - Tim Longhurst.  His main story at the moment is the cost of Australian involvement in Iraq.  I think people tend to forget the costs involved in a venture which has never been adequately justified.  He has an interesting article too on the spoof John Howard website and how it was shut down.  You can see a PDF version of this site here.  We'll see how long that lasts.  I've put Tim's website on my favourites.  Looks worth visiting.

While on the subject of Iraq (and I'll never get off it, sorry) visit this link (Civil War in Iraq) about intimidation, torture, and deaths thanks to US soldiers.  These stories are no longer 'leftist rumours' but verified accounts from all sides.

Alright, back later.  I promise.