[CasX]

ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

by Ramsey Clark

- from the book - Acts of Aggression, Seven Stories Press, Open Pamphlet Series, 1999

"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. " So observed Abraham Lincoln at, for him, the darkest moment of the American Civil War. He had just received reports of the massacre of 800 Union soldiers, former slaves whose ancestors were brought from Africa in chains. They were the first such unit to be engaged in combat. Caught and overwhelmed at Ft. Pillow, Tennessee on the Mississippi river by a much larger Confederate cavalry force under Nathan Bedford Forrest, every man was killed. Forrest reported the river ran red for hundreds of yards. After the war Forrest was a founder of the Ku Klux Klan and engaged in racist violence for two decades.

Four score and four years after the Ft. Pillow massacre, in the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, the U.N. General Assembly found "a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance," and proclaimed its declaration in order to provide "a good definition."

The Universal Declaration was dominated by the experience, concerns, interests and values of a narrow segment of the "people of the United Nations," primarily the governments of the rich nations, primarily the United States, England and France. It emphasized political rights developed over centuries from their histories with little concern for economic, social and cultural rights. Still it was and remains an important contribution in the continuing struggle for justice.

In the fifth paragraph of its preamble the Declaration notes the United Nations has affirmed "... the dignity and worth of the human person and the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom." Article 1 provides "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Article 5 states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Article 25 declares, "(l)Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care..."

The United States government pays lip service to the Declaration, but its courts have consistently refused to enforce its provisions reasoning it is not a legally binding treaty, or contract, but only a declaration. This ignores the fact that international law recognizes the provisions of the Declaration as being incorporated into customary international law which is binding on all nations.

The most fundamental, dangerous and harmful violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on its fifteenth birthday is economic sanctions imposed on entire populations. The United States alone blockades eleven million Cubans in the face of the most recent General Assembly resolution approved by 157 nations condemning the blockade, with only the United States and Israel in opposition. The entire population of Cuba and every Cuban has had the "right to a standard of living adequate for health and well being... including food, clothing, housing and medical care" deliberately violated by the United States blockade.
Security Council sanctions against Iraq, which are forced by the United States, have devastated the entire nation, taking the lives of more than 1,500,000 people, mostly infants, children, chronically ill and elderly, and harming millions more by hunger, sickness and sorrow. The sanctions destroy the "dignity and rights" of the people of Iraq and are the most extreme form of " cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, " which are prohibited by the Declaration.

Despite the cruelest destruction of the most basic human rights and liberties of all the people in Iraq, including rights to medicine, safe drinking water and sufficient food, the United States government, with the major mass media in near perfect harmony, proclaims itself the world's champion of liberty and human rights. The problem as Lincoln surely knew is not merely one of definitions. It is a problem of power, will and accountability. The United States intends to have its way and serve its own interests, with Iraq, Cuba, Libya, Iran, the Sudan and many other countries whatever the consequences to the liberties and rights of those who live there.

The United States control over and its concerted action with the mass media enables it to demonize such countries, its victims, for "terrorism, "threats to world peace and human rights violations at the very time it rains Tomahawk cruise missiles on them and motivates and finances armed insurrections and violence against them. At the same time the United States increases its own staggeringly large prison industry, with more than a million persons confined, including 40 percent of all African-American males between 17 and 27 years old in the State of California. Simultaneously the United States spends more on its military than the ten largest military budgets of other nations combined, sells most of the arms and sophisticated weapons still increasing worldwide while rejecting an international convention to prohibit land mines and an international court of criminal justice. And the United States maintains and deploys the great majority of all weapons of mass destruction existent on earth, nuclear, chemical, biological and the most deadly of all- economic sanctions.

It is imperative that clear definitions of all fundamental rights of people, be clearly inscribed in international law, including economic rights which are most basic to human need and on which all other rights are dependent and rights to freedom from military aggression by a superpower or its surrogates.

But without a passionate commitment by the people of the United States and other major powers to stop their own governments from violating those definitions of human rights, hold them accountable for their acts and to prevent their own media from seducing them into acceptance or complacency, there will be no protection for the poor and powerless and no correspondence between the words of rich and powerful nations and their deeds.

We can be thankful for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but together the people of the world must do better to define and protect the humanity of the people.

[Freedom]

Security Council sanctions against Iraq, which are forced by the United States, have devastated the entire nation, taking the lives of more than 1,500,000 people, mostly infants, children, chronically ill and elderly, and harming millions more by hunger, sickness and sorrow. The sanctions destroy the "dignity and rights" of the people of Iraq and are the most extreme form of " cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, " which are prohibited by the Declaration.

Sigh...dont these morons even shut up....

including 40 percent of all African-American males between 17 and 27 years old in the State of California.

I read a funny statistic one day...that White men spend shorter times on death row and more of them are killed annually...guess thats discrimination...isnt it?

Maybe African Americans commit more crimes? Or maybe they commit the same amount of crimes but dont do it as well...

Twenty-five percent of young black men possess criminal records, according to government studies, either in jail, on parole or on probation. For the most part, murder victims are killed by a member of their same race. But, although blacks comprise only 12 percent of the population, economist and columnist Walter Williams writes, "According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, blacks commit 54 percent of murders, 42 percent of forcible rapes, 59 percent of robberies and 38 percent of aggravated assaults. ... In the case of interracial violent crime, blacks are 50 times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than whites against blacks."

Williams also notes, "Since 1972, the U.S. Department of Justice has conducted a National Crime Victimization Survey to determine the frequency of certain crimes. One category is interracial crimes. Its most recent publication (1997), 'Criminal Victimization in the U.S.,' reports on data collected in 1994. In that year, there were about 1,700,000 interracial crimes, of which 1,276,030 involved whites and blacks. In 90 percent of the cases, a white was the victim and a black was the perpetrator, while in 10 percent of the cases it was the reverse." For the year 2000, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, blacks committed over 1.5 million violent crimes in 2000, with half of those involving white victims.

Am i a racist for believing statistics? What about this, doesnt this prove that there is discrimination against whites:

This month the Justice Department released "Capital Punishment 2001," its latest annual survey of death penalty statistics. A prowl through the data prompts a few reflections on the capital punishment debate.


1. It is striking that a controversy so large revolves around numbers so small. The death penalty is available in 38 states and the federal system, yet only 66 convicted killers were executed in the United States last year. That was fewer than the 85 executed in 2000, which in turn was fewer than the 98 executed in 1999.

Just as fewer murderers were put to death, fewer were sentenced to death. Only 155 people entered Death Row in 2001 -- the third consecutive decline and the lowest number in 22 years. All told, the population of prisoners under sentence of death at the end of 2001 was 3,581, a slight decrease from the year before.

What these statistics mean isn't clear. Opponents of capital punishment were quick to claim that jurors, alert to the supposed risk of executing innocents, have grown more reluctant to impose the death penalty. (Actually, the risk of a wrongful execution is vanishingly small.) Others suggest that just as the overall number of murders decreased during the 1990s, when most recent Death Row arrivals would have committed their crimes, so too the number of *capital* murders (those eligible for the death penalty) decreased. Which argument is more plausible? Without knowing how many prosecutors actually sought the death penalty in 2001, there is no way to tell.

2. But whatever else might be said about these numbers, they are eclipsed by a far larger and more heartbreaking number, one not mentioned in the Justice Department's report: the number of murder victims. In 2001, *15,980* Americans lost their lives to murder -- a death toll hundreds of times greater than the small body count of executed murderers.

Year after year, the number of inmates put to death by the state -- usually painlessly and after years of due process -- adds up to a minuscule fraction of the number of Americans purposely shot, beaten, strangled, knifed, poisoned, burned, drowned, hanged, and tortured to death by murderers. And yet which set of deaths elicits more public outrage, more media attention, more demands for reform, more cries to protect the innocent? Which occasions more debates, more candlelight vigils, more international protest?

If those who pour so much passion, effort, and money into wiping out the death penalty would pour themselves instead into wiping out homicide, who knows how many thousands of innocent lives they might save? But for reasons I have never been able to fathom, they would rather save the lives of the guilty.

3. Capital punishment is routinely denounced as racially unjust -- more likely to be meted out to blacks than to whites. "Capital Punishment 2001" proves the charge false.

"During 2001," the authors write, "63 men and 3 women were executed: 48 whites, 17 blacks, and 1 American Indian." Of the 155 convicted murderers sentenced to death that year, "89 were white, 61 were black, 4 were Asian, and 1 was self-identified Hispanic." The Death Row population as of Dec. 31, 2001, was 55 percent white, 43 percent black, and 2 percent Indian, Asian, or something else. Of the 749 people executed in the United States between 1977 and 2001, 56 percent were white, 35 percent black, 7 percent Hispanic, and 1.6 percent of another race. Inasmuch as black murderers commit about half of all homicides in the United States, the numbers make it clear that the death penalty is imposed with disproportionate severity not on blacks, but on whites.

Whites even get executed *faster* than blacks. The average elapsed time from sentence to execution for white inmates put to death in 2001 was 11 years, 2 months. For blacks, it was 13 years, 10 months -- 2-1/2 years longer. The anti-black "racism" of the US death penalty system is like the Abominable Snowman: ugly, alarming, widely believed in, and nonexistent.

4. Executions are unnecessary, death-penalty foes often argue -- all we have to do is lock killers up and throw away the key. Anyone inclined to believe them ought to take a look at Page 10 of the new federal report, where inmates are classified by their legal status at the time they committed capital murder.

At least 98 killers now on Death Row were already in prison when they murdered their victims; at least 37 others were prison escapees. Locking up murderers guarantees nothing. Some will always escape and murder again. Some will kill behind bars. In Pennsylvania last week, two vicious thugs serving long sentences for gruesome murders were convicted of attempting to butcher a fellow inmate. Using a smuggled razor, they slashed his throat from ear to ear, severing his trachea. Miraculously, he survived. Other victims don't.

The only way to permanently incapacitate a murderer is to kill him. Common sense says as much. The numbers say it too.

obviously the above qoute was from a pro-death penalty source

Personally i'm against the Death Penalty, but poll after poll shows that Americans generally do support the death penalty? Isnt the US government just being democratic in allowing the people to decide how they want their murderers treated?

economic sanctions.

America doesnt have to trade with countries it doesnt want to trade with...

Cuba

If America and Israel dont want to trade with Cuba i see no reason why they have to...cant Cuba just trade with all those other countries around the world instead of playing the ever so popular Anti American card to win over support...

international court of criminal justice

This will so obviously be used as a political tool and is just one further step towards global tyranny...if a leader who commited crimes against humanity or war crimes is taken down from power by any means, an Ad Hoc trial can be set up al la Slobodan Milosevic.

Iraq, Cuba, Libya, Iran, the Sudan and many other countries whatever the consequences to the liberties and rights of those who live there

In those countries people dont really have umm "liberties"

Media

Oh yeah i almost forgot the only real media is the media that shows all the news left-wingers want to hear...

Yawn...same shit again...

Bah

[Nox]

Your beloved author ... Ramsey Clark ... enjoys a rather 'checkered' reputation.

My personal opinion of this person is that he is a self-serving moron afflicted with congenital cranial rectalitis.

Nox