Whatever Happened To Human Rights?

Remember Tiananmen Square and the out cry over the censure, eventual arrest and summary execution of several hundred perhaps thousands of student protestors? The protests of our President over the treatment of prisoners in North Korea, the allegations of human rights abuses in Vietnam, Iraq and Iran?

Do you remember the first woman to become United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, calling on the United Nations to install sanctions against rouge nations who where guility of human rights abuses?

Times have changed in the land of the free, since 2001 the Untied States has instituted water boarding torture, video surveillance cameras of every street corner, wire taps on US citizens without court orders, national monitoring of telephone calls, drugging deportees, special police units who operate with impunity, executing enemies of the state and indefinite detentions at our own soviet style gulag called Gitmo.

Under the cause of the "War on Terror" our country has tossed human rights, and freedom out the window.

ICE FORCIBLY DRUGS DETAINEES

Rouge Police are forcibly injecting prisoners -Detained foreign nationals who are transferred or removed from our country are often accompanied by medical escorts from the U.S. Public Health Service. In the past, nurses or doctors sedated immigrants during deportation if they had a psychiatric disorder, were severely agitated during a flight or presented a danger to themselves or others.

ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers acknowledged in September during Senate testimony that 56 deportees were administered psychotropic drugs during a six month period between Oct. 1, 2006, and April 30, 2007. Thirty-three did not have any history of psychological problems but were given medication because of "combative behavior, with the imminent risk of danger to others and/or self," she said.

Myers said at the time policy prohibited the use of drugs during deportation without a court order unless there was an emergency. "I am aware of, and deeply concerned about reports that past practices may not have conformed to ICE detention standards," she said.

Indonesian immigrant Raymond Soeoth was appealing his case for political asylum when he was sedated with antipsychotic drugs in December 2004 at the Terminal Island detention facility in San Pedro.

Senegal immigrant Amadou Diouf, also pursuing an appeal for permanent legal residency, was medicated in February 2006 while on a commercial plane at Los Angeles International Airport.

Diouf had over stayed his visa while attending college in the United States and held a letter granting a stay of deportation at the time that he was forcedably druged.

GITMO

Guantanamo Bay detention camp is one of several military prisions created after 9/11, established at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, GITMO holds people accused by the United States government of being terrorist operatives, as well as those no longer considered suspects who are being held pending relocation elsewhere. The detainees held by the United States are classified as enemy combatants allowing the prisoners to be held without due process or habeas corpus.

Since the beginning of the War in Afghanistan, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 420 of which have been released after four or five years. As of August 9, 2007, approximately 355 detainees remain.

More than a fifth are cleared for release but may have to wait months or years because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Of the roughly 700 incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to put 60 to 80 on trial and eventually free the rest.

WATER BOARDING

Our CIA has used many types of torture most noteable is water boarding, which consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning in a controlled environment and is made to believe that death is imminent. In contrast to merely submerging the head face-forward, water boarding almost immediately elicits the gag reflex.

Although water boarding can be performed in ways that leave no lasting physical damage, it carries the risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused byoxygen deprivation, injuries (including broken bones) due to struggling against restraints, and even death. The psychological effects on victims of water boarding can last for years after the procedure.

Today it is considered to be torture by a wide range of authorities, including legal experts, politicians, war veterans, intelligence officials, military judges, and human rights organizations, includung the United Nations.

Water boarding gained recent attention and notoriety in the United States when the press reported that the CIA had used water boarding in the interrogation of certain extrajudicial prisoners at GITMO and that the Justice Department had authorized this procedure.

GOVERNMENT EAVESDROPPING

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The White House has defended its overall eavesdropping program and said no domestic surveillance is conducted without court approval. Stating, ''The intelligence activities undertaken by the United States government are lawful, necessary and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks,'' said Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, who added that appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on intelligence activities.

FEDERAL DEATH PENALTY

The federal death penalty can be enacted in any state or territory of the United States, even in states that do not have the death penalty. In 1994, the federal death penalty was expanded to include some 60 different offenses, including the running of large-scale drug enterprises.

On June 11, 2001, Timothy McVeigh became the first of 3 federal death row prisoners to be executed in the United States. Another 48 federal prisoners await the same fate, in the only industrialized nation to still permit state sanctioned executions. The only federal executions to have occurred since 1963 have done so during the George W. Bush Administration

THE TEN STEPS

Author Naomi Wolfin in her article titled Fascist America in Ten Steps, shows how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the twentieth century's worst dictatorships and urges Americans to take action to restore their consitiutional values before they suffer the same fate. The ten common steps which Wolf states can be witnessed in the transition of any democratic state to one of fascist rule are as follows:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
   
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
   
3. Develop a paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
   
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
   
5. Harass citizens' groups.
   
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
   
7. Target key individuals.
   
8. Control the press.
   
9. Declare all dissent to be treason.
   
10. Suspend the rule of law.

HOLY FUCK AMERICA WAKE UP!