The UN Human Rights Committee regrets

In its review of governmental policies and practices in the US, the U.N. Human Rights Committee issued a devasting report today. In the past, such periodic reports have dwelled mainly on social policies and penal practices, such as the death penalty, that have more to do with state and local government than with federal policy. These issues constitute the second half of today’s report, and there’s little that is new since the last U.N. report in 1995 on conditions in the U.S.

In its first half, though, the UNHRC report focuses on human rights abuses by the federal government, all of them introduced by George Bush since September 11, 2001. The list is depressingly long (four and a half pages) and makes grim reading, even though it omits many outlandish administration practices that are merely illegal, unconstitutional, or just plain obnoxious. All too often, the report notes that the U.S. government has not supplied requested information to the Committee.

The Committee further regrets that the State party, invoking grounds of nonapplicability of the Covenant or intelligence operations, refused to address certain serious allegations of violations of the rights protected under the Covenant.

Excuses

Reaction from the Bush administration was characteristically whiny…

"Our initial reaction is disappointment," said State Department official Matthew Waxman, who led a U.S. delegation to the hearing. He said the panel appeared to ignore much of the American testimony.

…evasive…

In a conference call from Washington, U.S. officials refused to confirm or deny reports that there have been secret detention centers in Europe and elsewhere.

…disingenuous…

Waxman denied allegations that the United States mishandles terror suspects. "Any idea that any United States or other detention operations or other activities in the war on terrorism are beyond the law is simply false."

…and dismissive.

[The UNHRC] loses perspective and credibility when it spends more time criticizing the United States than countries with no civil and political rights.

For example, the recent Committee Conclusions and Recommendations on North Korea was about half the length of that on the United States.

That will play well with the fatheads and superpatriots who form this administration’s base, but it falls afoul of two basic points. First, as even the Associated Press story noted, it’s UNHRC’s duty to investigate periodically the compliance of the 156 signatory countries with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. UNHRC is not singling the U.S. out for criticism, nor is it “spending more time” reviewing the U.S. than it devotes to some of our more monstrous allies, say Kazakhstan. If there are fewer words in the report on a closed country like North Korea, that does not mean UNHRC has given little attention to it.

Secondly, although the UNHRC report on the U.S. is not an indictment on the scale of what you’d find in reports about brutal tyrannies, say in Kazakhstan, it ought to worry any American that there is significantly less difference in today’s report than used to be the case. Even a cursory comparison to the UNHRC report from 1995 reveals immediately how much longer and more severe the new report is.

One thing in particular is very telling about today’s U.N. report. Its list of “positive aspects” includes nothing undertaken by the current administration. Instead, it notes a series of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court against various abuses--rulings (such as Hamdan) that the Bush administration opposed.

Bush & Co. on trial

What are the UNHRC report’s most salient new findings, aside from the obstructionistic attitude of the Bush administration? For starters, it denounces the administration’s refusal to uphold all the provisions of the 1966 treaty, to ensure the rights of all humans under its control (including those detained outside the U.S.), and to “give good faith understanding” to the Committee’s interpretation of the plain meaning of terms in the treaty.

HNHRC calls for the immediate closure of all secret prisons, which it says have existed for a long time now.

The Committee is concerned by credible and uncontested information that the State party has seen fit to engage in the practice of detaining people secretly and in secret places for months and years on end, without even keeping the International Committee of the Red Cross informed. In such cases, the rights of the families of the detained persons have also been violated.…

The State party should immediately abolish all secret detention and secret detention facilities. It should also grant prompt access by the International Committee of the Red Cross to any person detained in connection with an armed conflict. It should only detain persons in places in which they can enjoy the full protection of the law.

Some of the strongest language was reserved for the Bush administration’s torture policies.

The Committee is concerned that for a period of time the State party authorized the possible use of interrogation techniques such as prolonged stress positions and isolation, sensory deprivation, hooding, exposure to cold or heat, sleep and dietary adjustments, 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing and of all comfort items, as well as religious items, forced grooming, and exploitation of detainees’ individual phobias. While welcoming the assurance that, according to the Detainee Treatment Act, these techniques are no longer authorized under the present Army Field Manual for current use by military personnel or on military premises, the Committee remains concerned that (a) the State party refuses to acknowledge that such techniques, several of which were allegedly applied, either individually or used in combination and/or applied over a protracted period of time, violate the prohibition in article 7; (b) no one has been punished for the approved use of the techniques; (c) these techniques may still be authorized or used by other agencies, including intelligence agencies and “private contractors”; and (d) the State party has provided no information demonstrating that oversight systems of such agencies are capable of ensuring respect for the prohibition contained in article 7.

The UNHRC report goes on to complain that investigations into allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners have been neither impartial nor effective. It urges that all federal agencies be bound to follow interrogation techniques that adhere to international law; that prisoners should have effective means to appeal any mistreatment; and that the government “sanction those who used or approved the use of the now withdrawn techniques”.

[The Committee] regrets that it has received insufficient information on prosecutions launched, sentences passed (which appear excessively light for offences of such gravity) and reparation granted to the victims.

UNHRC urges the Bush administration to ensure that those who committed abuse against prisoners be investigated, prosecuted, and punished accordingly; to implement procedures to ensure that these abuses won’t recur; and to stop using evidence at trial obtained by torture.

UNHRC urges that prisoners at Guantanamo be allowed to challenge their detention and treatment.

The State party should ensure, in accordance with article 9 (4) of the Covenant, that persons detained in Guantanamo are entitled to proceedings before a court to decide without delay on the lawfulness of their detention or order their release if the detention is not lawful. Due process, independence of the reviewing courts from the executive branch and the army, access of detainees to counsel of their choice and to all proceedings and evidence, should be guaranteed in this regard.

UNHRC also denounces the Bush administration policies on extraordinary rendition, and it singles out several of the absurd justifications given for these policies, including the “more likely than not” standard by which it becomes permissible, in the eyes of Bush & Co., to ship a prisoner off to a country where there’s at least a 50-50 chance that the prisoner won’t be tortured. UNHRC all but endorses some of the allegations of torture by victims of this policy, and it laments the failure of the U.S. system of justice to permit such victims to bring suit against the government (it mentions the rejection of Maher Arar’s lawsuit). It urges the Bush administration to put a stop to renditions to countries that practice torture, and to investigate all serious allegations by victims of rendition.

UNHRC also denounces the federal government over its false allegations of “terrorism” against all manner of non-terrorist criminals. In particular, it takes note of the number of non-citizens who were detained for long periods without trial after 9/11/01, merely upon suspicion, as ‘Material Witnesses’. It urges that people so detained be paid reparations.

This litany of human rights offenses committed by the Bush administration closes with a flourish. UNHRC decries provisions in the Patriot Act that permit searches and seizure without notification, and which therefore cannot reasonably be challenged in court.

The State party should review sections 213, 215 and 505 of the Patriot Act to ensure full compatibility with article 17 of the Covenant. The State party should ensure that interference in one’s privacy is conducted only where strictly necessary, under protection of the law, and that appropriate remedies are made available to the affected persons.

In sum

This report portrays a long train of human rights abuses--abuses invariably significant and glaringly illegal under both U.S. and international treaty obligations. How does the Bush administration try to deflect these hideously embarrassing accusations?

It complains that the Committee rejected many of the excuses and evasions made by the Bush administration; that some of the Committee’s recommendations address things that are already “under active consideration” by courts or the federal government; that the Committee hasn’t always explained clearly how its recommendations are connected to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and that the Covenant does not apply to American behavior outside the United States.

The first three arguments are simply petty and unworthy. The fourth, whether tenable or not, is essentially an argument that Americans reserve the privilege to abuse human rights when we go abroad. It, too, is petty and unworthy. That is the testament of Bush & Co.

The Deer War

Milo was traveling last week along Route 6, for what purpose is unclear. Anyway he stopped to get some local honey, and sent this along. I thought it was remarkable.

“A few decades ago I moved here to central Pennsylvania. Never meant to stay more than a short time, actually. I planned to move somewhere more cosmopolitan, like Pittsburgh, but I couldn’t get the permits I needed anywhere I really wanted to live. It was the land that kept me here, for better or worse.

“The land was basically uninhabited then. Not the best terrain, but talk about cheap.

“This is apple honey, that’s buckwheat. Yeah, the flavors are quite different. Here’s a spoon. Would your daughter like some pastelli? It’s honey and sesame candy. Don’t bite off too much, dear, or you’ll never manage to chew it!

“Actually, an acquaintance of mine had gotten some land down the hill, and he held onto it for several decades before I bought it from him. He tried farming it, but had no luck. Didn’t get on with the locals either. I got it from him cheap. That was the first parcel I picked up. Over the years, I got a lot more parcels, here and there.

“At first I didn’t know what I was going to do with his land, I just wanted to have it. Really cheesed off the farmer down the road, heh, thought he was going to get it to plant. Then this plot came up for sale. It was forest, which gave me the idea it might be good for an orchard.

“The real estate agent was trouble, as those kinds of people are. He’s got that house just off Route 6, with the burned out ‘pergola’ in front.

“Pretty dark, that one. Color of molasses. You won’t see any darker, not in these parts. I like the apple better, just my taste though.

“Some hunters wanted to buy this plot, and the agent was annoyed that I outbid ’em. Kept telling me that it’s a dear highway between this ridge and the state hunting lands. ‘You’ll never get an orchard to take,’ says. ‘Deer will eat the seedlings right down to the ground.’ Some truth to that, but nothing as bad as he claimed. Just trying to sell the land to the locals. That’s the real problem round here, the locals. Practically gotta fence them out.

“Got to thinkin’, deer don’t go for figs. Cleared ten acres and put in a fig orchard. Put in another thirty acres the next year. Figured I could get these people to buy my figs, since nobody else around here has them.

“That went on for about seven – six – years. The trees kept dieing back over the winter. Figured they just needed to settle in for a few years, before they’d take to the climate. Wasn’t gonna let the locals laugh me out of business either. But I donnow, I was almost running the well dry watering them every year.

“A quart? Sure, I’ve got plenty.

“Anyhoo, the trees were just taking too long to settle, and by that time I’d bought some more parcels, so I pulled them out and stuck in a bunch of stuff, mostly apricot and pear n’ cherry, some apple too.

“Hadn’t figured on the deer eating the seedlings down to the ground the first winter. I’m tellin’ ya, I was ready to…

“Anyway I replanted, and the deer kept doing their best to ruin the orchard. Kept replacing what they killed. But I got tired of this cat and mouse game. Always chasing them off the land, then they’d come at night.

“I got smart finally and put up some fencing. Shoulda put up the 8 ft. stuff the guy in Benny’s wanted to sell me, but figured the 4 ft. ought to work. I mean, c’mon, what are the deer going to do, jump over it? Spent the whole summer putting up miles of fencing. I have some plots along the next road over too, so they had to be fenced in completely. Here I didn’t bother fencing along the road at first, but the deer went around so I had to do the road as well. Nothing worked. The damn deer just bounded over it like it wasn’t hardly there.

“I wasn’t gonna make that mistake again, so I got some guns and…yeah I took the direct route, started blasting them whenever they appeared. Takes a lot of vigilance. A lot of vigilance, let me tell you. All hours of the day and night, lying in wait. Don’t seem to smarten up, the deer, they just keep coming.

“The local ‘hunters’ of course complained. The game wardens can’t prove anything though, heh, and they can’t be bothered to keep coming out here. Haven’t even seen one in a few years now.

“Thought I finally had the deer beaten, but then one Christmas when I was away for a week they came and hit the trees real hard. They just pruned them way back. Lost a year or two’s growth right there, in a single week. Boy, I was really ready to…

“The next year I planted corn around the perimeter of the fence, thought it would block them out. It just seemed to attract more deer, though, so I’ve pretty much stopped bothering.

“But that gave me an idea, I finally got smart. Put out a salt lick by the edge of the woods in sight of the house. Those damn deer just flocked to it. Musta killed twenty, thirty in the first week. Just sat in the TV room and picked them off, easy as that.

“Woulda been the end of all my problems, right there, ’cept the neighbor over the ridge, Morgan, put out some salt licks in his woods to draw the deer away. Thought he’d outsmarted me, but I showed him.

“The deer just kind of regrouped I guess, and started making incursions like into whatever orchard I wasn’t in at the time. I tried shooting randomly into the wood line, to keep them off guard, but they figured that game out quickly.

“Finally got smart and decided to root them out. I started making incursions into the woods, looking for where they bed down. Caught a few fawns, but mostly I was just wiping out their favorite spots.

“Then I got smart. The deer really love this Russian olive plant, and they need it to survive in the winter. It’s everywhere in the woods, grows like a weed, so I set about cutting it out. Got rid of it in my woods, but Morgan and his son-in-law Follweiler didn’t want me cutting in their woods, so I had to do my best when they weren’t around, know what I mean?

“Damned if that winter the deer aren’t all over my orchards. It was like an invasion, every time I turned around. They were just wiping me out. Got some dogs, which worked for a while, but by the spring the deer had got smart to them. Knew they couldn’t chase them beyond the fences. Just drove the dogs crazy, and here I’m listening to them barking all the time.

“Finally got a bit of an apple crop that spring. None of the pears or apricots have set any fruit yet, and the cherries turned out to be ornamental so they don’t produce anything. That’s another story. What a joke those cherry trees are.

“Anyway, the apples set fruit for once, and everything is great for about a month. Then guess who shows up?

“No, it wasn’t the bees, darling. Are you done with that pastelli already?

“Deer came in and took every apple within reach. As if that wasn’t enough, they also ripped up a few dozen seedlings I was hoping to graft next year. You shoulduv heard the language around here. I wasn’t going to take no more of this, no sir. Now it was personal, like.

“I gathered up my stuff – I’d been plannin’ this out – and headed up to Morgan’s salt lick to spread out some poison. There weren’t any deer about, but what’d you expect? They always manage to evade ya, like they’ve got sensors or something. So I went on to Morgan’s farm. He lets ’em graze his stubble and bed down in his woods, so he had it coming.

“Tried to set his oat field ablaze, just to teach ’im, but it sputtered out after a bit. Wind was blowing the wrong way, as it always is it seems. Anyway so I set his barn on fire. Hadn’t realized he had most of his sheep inside with the new lambs. Morgan came out his house screamin’ an’ hollerin’, but it didn’t do him any good. He pretty much lost everything ’cept a few rams that were out to pasture. I left his house alone, though, his wife being an invalid an’ all.

“Follweiler was gonna be trouble, I knew that. His barns are steel and most of his equipment was lent out right at that moment. So I headed into town to visit the library. Can you believe Follweiler, heh, is on the Library Board? The guy can barely read a newspaper, I swear.

“Anyway, I set fire to the library and this time the winds helped to whip it up. You shoulda seen the Librarian run for cover! Never saw her move so fast.

“Follweiler sells a lotta produce in the summer to Tipton’s Market, so I headed in there and wiped out the produce tables. The ones out front I tipped over, but inside I just pushed everything on the floor and made sure to stomp it. Tipton was out to lunch and the cashiers just looked on in amazement as I wiped them out, short and sweet like. You shoulda seen the looks I got from the customers. But what’d they think I’d do? This has been goin’ on for years, and it’s gotta stop.

“Then I went out to Hemmerdinger bridge, that’s what the dynamite was for. You probably don’t remember it. It was a steel grate bridge on the road up to the fire house. The state police had to come into town that way too. Took it right out.

“Then I cut around the back of town and took care of Follweiler’s brother’s house – the one that had all those gables? – and then the two other Library Board members. Forget their names.

“We’ll have to see whether they learned their lesson. The real estate agent? Beauprez…nah, that was a different time.”

Fleeing Family Ends Up in Path of Israeli Missile

The title of the NY Times story tells you nearly everything you might wish to know about the nature of that paper’s coverage of the conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

Fleeing Family Ends Up in Path of Israeli Missile

The reporter, Hassan M. Fattah, is not responsible for the headline. Like yesterday's lengthier report, this is a detailed picture of the mayhem visited upon the Lebanese. It is a straight-forward account of the attempts by several Lebanese families to flee the fighting, and how they were hunted down by Israeli aircraft as they fled along rural roads. The families' cars were blown up.

We've already heard about such incidents from many sources, and learned that even ambulances have been targeted.

What we had not heard, until the NY Times headline writer thought to tell us, was that (one of) these cars "ended up in [the] path of [an] Israeli Missile". I'm disappointed that the headline writer neglected to explain how this occured. But, evidently, this car, whichever one it was, drove between the attack helicopter and the intended target...perhaps a guard rail, or a stop sign? Or just a loose bit of the macadam?

Curious, too, that the headline writer does not care to tell us which of the cars carrying civilians, whose destruction Hassan M. Fattah describes, was the one which "end[ed] up in [the] path of [an] Israeli Missile". If the headline writer had spoken of "Missiles", then we might infer it is the fate of Any-Car in Lebanon to wander into the firing line of Israeli gunships.

But that pesky singular, "Missile"...what to make of it? It does seem that the writer is signalling a willingness to concede that the other passenger cars were blown up intentionally by the Israeli attackers.

The important thing I suppose, which the headline writer has thoughtfully underscored for us, is that one of the cars carrying fleeing civilians was blown up inadvertently.

That makes the other war crimes described in the article rather less distressing, don't you think?

No immediate plans for internment of Iranian-Americans

If you thought the NSA's illegal domestic spying was the outer limit of the perversions of law and decency that this badministration could invent, this report today in the LA Times will give you more to think about. The Times reveals that California Office of Homeland Security recently has been collecting daily reports from federal law enforcement agencies that monitor, among other things, political protests around the state. These included "A demonstration in Walnut Creek at which U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) and other officials spoke against the war in Iraq." A spokeman for the California Attorney General condemned the practice.

"When we discovered their existence, we informed OHS officials that we had absolutely no use for that kind of information," [Tom] Dresslar said. "Collecting information on protests has no legitimate anti-terrorism intelligence function. None. No intelligence agency has any need to maintain this kind of information."

That aspect of the LA Times report has gotten a little attention, but buried in the story there is a much more troubling allegation.

Anti-terrorism ideas from the state homeland security office have stirred qualms before.

Past and present members of the attorney general's office said they were troubled by a meeting at the security office last September in which federal and state officials discussed ways to prevent Islamic militants from recruiting prison inmates. In attendance were officials from the FBI, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and various local law enforcement agencies, according to documents obtained by The Times.

One account of the meeting is provided in a whistle-blower complaint filed by a former high-ranking official in the attorney general's office, Edward Manavian.

The complaint says homeland security information analyst William Hipsley proposed monitoring private conversations in state prisons between inmates and Islamic clergymen and, citing a potential national security threat from Iran, getting a list of Iranians living in California.

State law makes it a felony to eavesdrop on conversations between a person in custody and his attorney, doctor or religious advisor.

The proposal was to implement these two programs without warrant, as has become the custom under the badministration. The Times might also have noted, though oddly it didn't, that Iranian ethnicity is not grounds for suspicion per se under any set of laws known to Americans.

Chiz. The idea of drawing up a watch-list of Americans based upon ethnicity would be vile under any circumstances. But in California, which is still trying to live down its role in the internment of Japanese-Americans sixty years ago?

The Homeland Security Office and Hipsley denied that Manavian's description of the meeting is acccurate. Manavian was later demoted, he says because he refused to cooperate in this flagrant violation of civil rights. Laura Rozen remarks that she met Manavian a few years ago, and found him to be a straight arrow...

hardly of the type one would expect to become a whistleblower without having witnessed something pretty outrageous. A former cop and counter-narcotics officer, he directed the CATIC (California Anti Terrorism Information Center) out of the California AG's office; the CATIC itself drew criticism for allegedly compiling intel reports on other domestic protests as I remember. The fact that he's blowing the whistle on these alleged abuses really stands out. (I suppose it also could raise the question of the possibility of a turf war? if the office of homeland security's gain was CATIC's loss?)

Manavian resigned after his demotion, and is bringing his complaint before the California Personnel Board. It does not sound to me like the product of a turf war.

As the previous link demonstrates, when Manavian headed up CATIC he justified compiling adviseries on relatively mundane upcoming protest marches and even mass cycling events organized by Critical Mass, on the grounds there was a reasonable suspicion that participants would break laws. Even if the expected violations were nothing more severe than blocking roads, Manavian claimed that it was his duty to issue an advisery.

Hard to know what to make of him as a whistleblower on behalf of civil liberties, but on the whole I suspect Rozen's hunch is right. If even Manavian thought the California Homeland Security gang was way out of bounds, that's probably a good indication that they've been conspiring secretly to violate the rights of Iranian-Americans.

The good news, though, is that Manavian's complaint says nothing about plans to build internment camps any time soon.