human_rights Saint sadly, no country, even those who would profess to be guardians or champions of the cause of human rights can claim any true moral high ground in such issues this is why other nations have laughed openly at us when we come rallying to the cries of the opressed in faraway lands the guilt of our leaders, past and present and future does not absolve the actions taken against our land, does not justify or in any way legitimize them our leaders have, in the past, been the puppet masters of the same monsters who we now know and revile, past and present Augusto Pinochet, his coup against the elected Chilean president Allende (who was voted into office by the will of his people in order to let his own nation profit from the wealth of the land's natural resources instead of being exploited by foreign powers like ours) in the early 70's until he was deposed by the nation who lived under his jackboots ....thousands were made to disappear, rounded up and herded into soccer stadiums which made for great makeshift prisons, hundreds of the missing cast in concrete walls that made up some of the civic works projects undertaken by the Pinochet government...a takeover financed with american money Manuel Noriega - drug trafficker and dictator, whose stay in power was originally supported by america as a strategic position against the communist regime of Ortega in Nicaragua. the so called war on drugs in this nation was a front for our leaders illicit collaboration with the drug lords because communists wouldn't be so willing to do allow the narcotraficantes to keep their vast fortunes and imperial estates...but we would. And to the north of Nicaragua was El Salvador where the military rulers who were so solidly anti-communist enlisted the aid of the same type of american military "advisors" that the South Vietnamese relied on in the late 50's. With American training, the Salvadoran government carried out a campaign of terror on its citizens that included a massacre ofa village of over 900, the known violation and executon of four american nuns and the assasination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, among the thousands who fell victim to the civil war in that nation during that regime Saddam Hussein, the great nemesis of America for the last eleven years was not always so, after it became clear by he seizure of our embassy and our citizens that the religious government that overthrew our old oil-puppet the Shah of Iran wasn't going to play nice with us, Our leaders turned to Saddam and his military Ba'ath Party and offered him our support in their war with Iran. With our support, for years, Hussein did just as the Salvadorans did: brutally and ruthlessly kept the religious opposition in check. Saddam was no fool though and while we were pipelining cash to Iraq, they were using it to buy weaons and technology from the Soviets. Of course we weren't totally stupid about this either (or were we) and in order to curry enough favor with the militant communities in the mideast to buy back some of our hostages and secretly divert money and or weapons to the anti-communist rebellion in Nicaragua, we made a few arangements involving money and weapons and the exchange thereof with the Iranian government (the "Iran-Contra" affair) When their feud with Iran went quiet, Saddam, like many presdients of other lands and emperors before him decided that the way to drum up nationalist fervor to shore up any image problems he had at home that might threaten his absolute grip on power now that the American dollars had stopped flowing in, he invaded Kuwait and threatened our oil supply...so just like John McCain's spin doctors trotted out his war hero status when the senate was about to crucify him and his buddies over the keating affair, Saddam manages to consolidate his power by having an epiphany and proclaiming himself a champion of the Islamic people of Iraq even after he had made a point of killing and persecuting so many of them, and just like the pro-lifers here who will shoot a doctor and blow up the occupants of a clinic to prove their point, they fell for it, and so did we. and last but not least, Osama bin Laden, the latest of the monsters our leaders have helped create, a mujahadeen fighter trained and equipped on the sly by America in our effort to curtail Soviet imperialism during their Vietnam-like failure in Afghanistan, like a hellish analogue of the Catholic Saint Francis of Assisi, bin Laden gave up a life of privilege to pursue a cause that in his mad fervor he believes to be holy. He is an adept politician as any devil should be I grieve for the victims of this great crime and their families, i grieve for all the children whose innocence is shattered by chaos and terror every day in this world, i grieve for everyone who comes home one day to find that someone they love has ben ripped away from their lives, but when i hear the politicians chant a mantra of human rights, i grieve for the truth In love we should have no fear of speaking the truth and I love my country enough to say that we have no monopoly on human rights We shouldn't kill bin Laden...it would be too easy, and would make him a martyr to his unholy followers. Imprison him in solitude in a secret location, cut out his tongue as befits one whose retoric is a blasphemy against the faith he claims to champion, cut off his hands as holy retribution for the lives he has stolen and the souls he corrupts with his poison, take his eyes, for he has already chosen to be blind to the ways of god and feed him through a tube for the remainder of his days, and when his time is at its end, cast his remains out to the crows and the vultures and let none bury him then when they have been picked clean launch the bones into space where they shall be irretrievable so that none may mourn him 010914 ... dB I life taken will not balance a life lost. I fear you missed the point. It doesn't matter who started it, it only matters who is suffering. 010915 ... kx21 The Grand challenge of Human rights: Convert terrorists into Peace's keepers, enforcers and preachers? 010915 ... florescent light a believe in god proposes gods will god doesn't like America 010915 ... silentbob if theres a god, he honestly doesn't care either way. 010915 ... Saint no offence, dB, but being the originator of this blathe, i find it hard to miss my own point. I know that killing who is perceived as this country's nemesis du jour won't replace the victims of this horror, nor did i advocate his execution, as such would only reinforce his status in the minds of his followers and those of their ilk, i recommended, in the name of poetic justice, letting him live, but in such a degraded and lonely condition that he would pray for a death that would take its own sweet time in coming if our (read that as "western" not just american) society was truly the bastion of human rights it claims to be in times like these, many of these sorts of events would never come to pass but this is not an ideal world, never has been, never will be and human_nature will almost always hold sway over human rights, sad as that is to say and if there ever was a god, he ran away screaming when he realized that we are just like him 010915 ... Saint (revisited) i am a hypocrite and Janus-faced, as is most of mankind. glean what you can from the things i might say 010915 ... kx21 Its unbelievable link to Terrorist acts:- The_String_Between_Human_Rights_and_Terrorist_acts... 010916 ... kx21 Human_Rights = Ten_Supreme_Hearts + Terrorist_Acts... Name all Terrorist_acts which have an appropriate relationship with Human rights.... And_I_will_tell_you_How_wonder_you_are... 010916 ... kx21 Is it true that any reaction or action, i.e. the protector of Human_Rights is a spice of Terrorist_Acts? Name any protector of Human_rights which is totally immured from Terrorist_Acts... And_I_will_Tell_You_How_Wonder_You_are... 010916 ... ........... * Breaking_News * US postpones report on its rights record 1 hour, 19 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AFP) - The State Department postponed release of a report on the US human rights record, amid controversy over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. The annual report "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The US Record" was to have been released Wednesday. Its release "has been postponed for technical reasons that have held up completion of the report," the State Department said in a statement. 040504 ... ? http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040505/pl_afp/us_rights&cid=1521&ncid=1473 040504 ... kx21 * supporting_human_rights_and_democracy_us_record * *** * QQ Sparks - Human_Rights 123 *** 040504 ... somebody Sudan wins reelection to UN rights panel, US walks out in protest Tue May 4, 2:18 PM ET http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1512&ncid=1512&e=13&u=/afp/20040504/wl_afp/un_us_sudan_rights_040504181858 040506 ... minnesota_chris apparently in the same palace in which Saddam used to torture his enemies, we are torturing the Iraqis... What strikes me is the things that Pres. Bush feels he needs to say. Like "That's not the America I know." 'Cause otherwise, we'd be a country of torturers and rapists. Or "Rumsfield has my full confidence." Because there's no way he does. 040506 ... kx21 *** * Prediction 21 *** Open_Hearings / independent_inquiry for Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The US Record... Why_Not? 040506 ... US-led War Amnesty slams Gulf rights record More than a third of Guantanamo Bay inmates are from the Gulf The US-led "War on Terror" has had a "profound and far-reaching impact" on human rights in the Gulf region, says an Amnesty International report. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3827785.stm 040622 ... ?u24 We are unable to do anything for the families of the detainees - it is all confusion and no-one seems to know where it starts or where it ends. Amat al-Aleem al-Suswa, Yemeni minister 040622 ... 1282005 CIA's "ghost_prisoners" spark rights, legal concerns 11:28 AM ET 050128 ... U.S. It is not publically known exactly how many ghost detainees the CIA is holding, who they are or where they are held, 050128 ... 2 hours 33 minutes ago Rumsfeld sued over alleged torture in Iraq, Afghanistan 312005 050301 ... Be_on_Notice Worst_is_yet_to_come... 050301 ... U.S. Will Not Join United_Nations Rights Council 060406 ... three words human_rights seed vibrate 061014 what's it to you? who go blather from