quote:

---

an Eliasson, president of the General Assembly, called the vote "a historic moment for human rights" as 170 member countries backed the new council. Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau joined the U.S. in voting against the council, while Iran, Venezuela and Belarus abstained, saying they feared that powerful Western nations would use the panel to target them.

---

quote:

---

"If the U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights is to be used as a yardstick", says one Asian diplomat, "most developing nations would be barred from the new Human Rights Council because they are all human rights abusers in the eyes of the United States."

Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy, points out that the United States, which sits in judgment over the rest of the world, should be barred from the proposed new Council because of its own violations of basic human rights under the guise of fighting terrorism. "Let those without human-rights sin cast the first stone," Solomon said. "Along with pouring massive amounts of monetary aid, military arms and political capital into some of the most heinous human-rights-abusing regimes on the planet, the U.S. government has been killing tens of thousands of Iraqi people since the invasion," he told IPS. "This hardly qualifies Washington to credibly pontificate or pass judgment on the deadly crimes of others," said Solomon, author of the forthcoming book 'War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death'.

---

The illegal wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq alone have threatened the right to life of some 52 million people in those two countries.

Then there is the institutionalized system of torture, the secret renditions of prisoners to other countries, the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo scandals, as well as the ongoing support of client regimes that also routinely violate the human rights of their own citizens.

Human Rights Hypocrisy:

quote:

---

The United States objects to the new proposal's commitment to the protection of economic, social and cultural rights. The refusal to enshrine rights such as employment, education, food, housing, and health care in US law is the reason the United States has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Since the Reagan administration, there has been a policy to define human rights in terms of civil and political rights, but to dismiss economic, social and cultural rights as akin to social welfare, or socialism.

Indeed, the United States' inhumane policy toward Cuba exemplifies this dichotomy. The US government criticizes civil and political rights in Cuba while disregarding Cubans' superior access to universal housing, health care, education and public accommodations and its guarantee of paid maternity leave and equal pay rates.

The US also opposes the new proposal's affirmation that the right to development is on par with the rights to peace and security, and human rights, as the three pillars of the United Nations system. Last year, the United States and Australia were the only nations to vote against a General Assembly resolution on the Right to Development, which was passed by a vote of 48 to 2, with 2 abstentions. It reaffirmed the principle that the right to development is an "inalienable human right."

---

US Bureau of Justice Prison Statistics

quote:

---

At yearend 2004 there were 3,218 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,220 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 463 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.

---

It's mere coincidence that there's almost seven times as many blacks as whites in jail (on a per capita basis).