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Finally, the Obama Administration and human rights advocates agree that when government officials condone, order or engage in kidnappings, renditions, blackmail, beatings and torture, those officials should be held personally accountable and sanctioned under international law. . . .
. . . Provided those government officials are all Iranians. from the NYT via AP:
Under an executive order signed this week by President Barack Obama, the State and Treasury departments jointly announced the sanctions that target Iranians who "share responsibility for the sustained and severe violation of human rights in Iran," notably after last year’s disputed presidential elections.
At a State Department news conference, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said it was the first time the United States has imposed sanctions on Iranians for violating human rights. . . .
"On these officials’ watch or under their command, Iranian citizens have been arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured, raped, blackmailed and killed," Clinton said. "Yet the Iranian government has ignored repeated calls from the international community to end these abuses."
The move bars the eight Iranians from entering the United States, blocks any of their U.S. assets and prohibits Americans from doing business with them.
Although none of the eight is believed to have substantial assets in U.S. jurisdictions, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he expects foreign financial institutions to stop doing business with them.
Of course, if the Administration really cared about human rights and the rule of law, this order would apply to dozens of the highest officials in the Bush and Obama regimes. But don’t expect any of them to be lawyering up, nor expect the AP to notice the, uh, irony.
Buck up, everyone!
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Glennzilla, Obama to finally Punish Torturers!
John Chandley
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I haven’t got time to look up the link, but Glenn Greenwald also noted years ago that the Bush administration enforced the U.S. anti-torture statute (for the first time ever in a court of law) against the son of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. After the Bushies decided torture was legal for the CIA!
Hillary Clinton has two giant logs stuck in her eye. One is Israeli and the other is native.
I’m blessed with a natural ‘truth meter’ on myself: when I lie, I blush. I’ve never understood people who can be so grossly hypocritical without any shame.
A little lite background reading on the Bush family way of doing things. I think it will be enlightening to those who are not yet ‘in the know’,
http://www.voxfux.com/features/bush_world_class_criminal.html
If you study body language, like I do, you will see even the worst of liars are often an open book.
Not having seen the video, I have to ask: Did she say it with a straight face?
Jane was just on PBS’s NewsHour. Firedoglake was mentioned by name.
from the State Department:
“In the early 1970s the United States formalized its responsibility to speak out on behalf of international human rights standards. . . .This information gathering can be hazardous, and U.S. Foreign Service personnel regularly go to great lengths, under trying and sometimes dangerous conditions, to investigate reports of human rights abuse, monitor elections, and come to the aid of individuals at risk, such as political dissidents and human rights defenders whose rights are threatened by their governments.”
2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
March 11 2010
See if these human rights violations, taken from the country reports, ring any bells. We’ll go through the first five reports, alphabetically in Africa, with extracts.
Angola: Unlawful arrest and detention continued to be serious problems, Citizens widely believed that the government maintained surveillance of certain groups, including government critics, opposition parties, and journalists.
Benin: Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment–The constitution and law prohibit such practices; however, the government did not always respect these prohibitions. Authorities often used the practice of holding a person indefinitely “at the disposal of” the public prosecutor’s office before presenting the case to a magistrate.
Botswana: members of the media stated they were sometimes subject to government pressure to portray the government and the country in a positive light. The government held newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from Zimbabwe, in the Center for Illegal Immigrants
Burkina Faso: suspects were frequently subjected to beatings, threats, and occasionally torture to extract confessions. Prison conditions were harsh and could be life threatening. Prisons were overcrowded, and medical care and sanitation were poor. Prison diet was inadequate,
Burundi: members of the security forces often manhandled and beat civilians and detainees. Sources in the media and civil society believed that security forces monitored telephone calls.
PS: There is no report on the USA.
Great. I hope you’ll share your views now and then when one of our political leaders is being duplicitous. Thanks.
Paul Craig Roberts on RT:
Is US a police state?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2TEhMyRmZg&feature=related
Mahalo, Scarecrow for exposing the hypocrisy… I’d only add that Israel is as culpable as we are…! 8-(
So grossly, fucking embarrassing, no, demeaning to be an American who can do little or nothing about the hypocritical fucking monsters running our government when they commit acts of such bald and monumental hypocrisy over such things as torture and murder.
Memo to Hilary with copy to Obama:
You should be ashamed! Deeply ashamed! But then, I gather monsters don’t feel shame. They just pursue what they want with a vengeance.
How true, Shek…! Btw, I’ve got a new Diary up if you’re interested…! ;-)
Torture/ Murder/ Treason
They committed all of the above.
Not to mention the penultimate war crime a war of aggression, so I won’t.
Didn’t Bunuel and Dali write the screenplay, such as it is, to this movie?
Canadian patches for sale! Canadian patches for sale! Don’t leave ‘Murkhah without one!
When can we finally go back to a government based on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and not Franz Kafka and George Orwell?
Yes We Can!
should say
Be Like Stalin!
Speaking of Hillary’s breathtaking hypocrisy, anyone read much about the coup in Honduras lately? It’s getting almost no coverage, but I understand that ObamaCo (with Hillary in the lead) is backing an old-fashioned rightwing oligarchy there, including death squads and torture. So Obama really is Reaganesque, and Hillary’s the new Jeanne Kirkpatrick.
That’s a little like saying: “Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle”
Indeed. No report on the USA. Well, justice is the whim of the judge.
These are a start to help a bit to fill the gap:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/us-human-rights/page.do?id=1011100
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/meiklejohn/project.html
http://www.cesr.org/article.php?list=type&type=26 (see especially the CESR fact sheet)
Additionally, the United States now has more people in prison, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the population, than any other country in the world, having recently surpassed Russia and China. Do you remember when prison prison population was one of the yardsticks by which we measured the oppressiveness of other nations?
They’re called Sociopaths.
In the October 14 issue of The New York Review of Books, there is a review of three Guantanamo/torture-related books. One of them is “Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror” by Charles and Gregory Fried. Charles Fried. From the review:
“What is most significant about “Because It Is Wrong” is that a well-respected conservative thinker and former Bush supporter has taken an unequivocal public postiion that “the Bush adinistration broke the law in ordering torture, mocked the Constitution in its interpretation of executive authority and outraged common decency.”
“More significant still is what the Frieds insist must follow from this assessment. If torture can never be justified, then we are morally obligated to account for it. As they maintain, “If we do not condemn, prosecute, punish the torturers and those who ordered them to torture, we become accomplices after the fact.”"
Are you listening, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Patrick Leahy and John Conyers?
Not only will Obama not go after Bush for torture, his admin repeatedly goes to argue the Bush positions before the courts, and that includes DADT.
Obama is as much a war criminal as Bush. Obama is a lawyer, he knows that. Moreover, Obama is making sure that history repeats itself!
The torture convention signed by Reagan *requires* the executive, from the US AG Eric “Be” Holder on downards, to investigate and prosecute suspected incidents of torture. This is not elective, and the letter and spirit of the conventions – and thus valid US law – hold that failure to perform these duties is in itself a violation.
In that sense, Bygones Habeas Obama and his “Torture is in the eye of the Be” Holder are – once again – breaking the law. Not that the corrupt courts of this blighted nation would ever act on it if anybody had “standing” to sue, and let us not waste time on debating the cogressional “oversight” of not fulfilling their oath to “defend and protect” the constitution. Because, you know, the constitution is not a suicide bomb.
“Treasury Secretary Timothy ‘I fucked Up Indonesia’ Geithner said he expects foreign financial institutions to stop doing business with them.”
Or else, we are going to put them on the non-citizen [Edited by Moderator. Let's not go down that path]for providing material support to torturers.