COMMUNITIES AGAINST CAPITALISM
 

IMPERIAL HUMAN RIGHTS
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Col. Writ. 5/5/01
All Rights Reserved

"An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war."
-- Montesquieu (1689-1755) French Philosoppher

It is common for us to hear national elites talk about human rights, but 
what does it really mean, in the real world?  Many nations in the real world, 
members of the UN Human Rights Commission, apparently think such sweet talk 
doesn't really mean much, for the Commission recently removed the US from its 
membership. Done by secret vote, the reasons for the expulsion of the US 
aren't really known. Perhaps it was international anger at the incessant 
preaching of the US on the issue. Perhaps it was a global reaction to how 
the US actually acts internationally. Perhaps it was the recognition of the 
blatant contradiction between what a nation says and what an empire really 
does. For nations must recognize some limit to what they can do beyond their 
national borders while empires, by their very definition, dominate other 
nation-states, through economic or military means, to achieve imperial interests.

The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee likened the United States to the 
ancient Roman empire:
"America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in
the defense of vested interests. She now stands for what Rome stood for. Rome 
consistently supported the rich against the poor in all foreign communities 
that fell under her sway; and, since the poor, so far, have always and 
everywhere been far more numerous than the rich, Rome's policy made for 
inequality, for injustice, and for the least happiness of the greatest number."

Much is made of human rights within the empire, but no such claim is made for 
those in foreign lands. Like ancient Rome, America sees people abroad less as 
people than as subjects. They are expected to work (for U.S.-based corporations) 
for less pay, with no environmental protections, and even less worker rights. 
In times of armed conflict (precipitated by corporate interests) the civilian 
populations are targeted. Who can deny this after Hiroshima or Nagasaki? After 
the carnage of Vietnam? After the ongoing devastation visited upon Iraq now?

Within the empire, with all the dialogue about human rights, where is the human 
right to a house? Where is the human right to a job? Where is the human right to 
an education? In the United States, where there is more wealth than any empire 
that came before, talk of human rights echoes amidst gripping homelessness, 
biting poverty, and schools that are but training grounds for prisons.

How can a nation that prides itself on "human rights" be the world's major arms 
dealer, and sponsor of most of the world's dictatorships and torturers? From 
South Africa to Chile, from Cambodia to Colombia, the U.S. has trained, funded, 
supported and praised some of the world's most repressive governments against 
their own people.

As for international law, the American Empire could care less, as political 
scientist C. Douglas Lummis notes: 
"It is a scandal in contemporary international law, don't forget, that while 
'wanton destruction of towns, cities and villages' is a war crime of long 
standing, the bombing of cities from airplanes goes not only unpunished but 
virtually unaccused. Air bombardment is state terrorism, the terrorism of the 
rich.  It has burned up and blasted apart more innocents in the past six decades 
than have all the anti-state terrorists who ever lived. Something has benumbed 
our consciousness against that reality."

The very notion of empire rebels against any constraints placed upon it by
external forces. It is a law unto itself. It is a manifestation of the powerful
and the wealthy who employ them against the weak and the poor. For the human
rights is an updated version of the old "divine right of kings," for it is but
the right to exploit.  Being an empire means never having to say you're sorry.
(c)MAJ 2001