If there were a rogue state award, the US would win it hands down.
29 November 2014
The United Nations Committee Against Torture issued a lengthy report today assessing the performance of the 156 countries whose governments have ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which took effect two decades ago.
The report subjected a major country to a wide-ranging critique, indicting it for a long list of human rights violations including:
- Refusal to prosecute officials who engage in or sanction torture of prisoners
- Detaining prisoners indefinitely without trial or other judicial proceeding, or any hope of release
- Kidnapping individuals overseas and torturing them in secret prisons
- Approving a manual for interrogation of prisoners that includes methods classified as torture under the Geneva Conventions
- Imprisoning immigrants under degrading conditions and refusing to acknowledge their claims as refugees fleeing persecution
- Imposing the death penalty on hundreds of prisoners, many of them from oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, many…
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The Most Revolutionary Act 
The silver medal would go to Australia.
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Touche.
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‘speaks volumes about the decay and collapse of American democracy’ sums it up well as there is no longer any oversight with teeth.
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Was there ever oversight, Gerald? That’s what I’m trying to get my head around.
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Oversight or not, I think that this list of human rights violations would have been valid in any year throughout US history. Less a “decay and collapse of American democracy” than its exposure.
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Jerry, I’m inclined to agree with you on this (especially after reading your book on the Constitution).
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It is interesting how so many progressive types (and this is not a dig on Gerald) attribute current problems (of a horrific nature) to some wrong turn or betrayal of wonderful American principles during their lifetime. If only we could get back to the time when the US was led by great leaders or when the US was riding high and justice was an obvious feature of American life. And yet I can’t think of a single year in US history (or in the history of any “1st world country” ) when that was true. But I can understand how 80 year old white men, especially those who owned businesses in the 50s and 60s, would believe this. Hence the virtue of your blog – it cuts through all the BS.
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