Festival of the repressed

Natan Sharansky, veteran of nine years in the Soviet Gulag, writes in the International Herald Triibune that he, Vaclav Havel, and José Maria Aznar had convened a conference in Prague over the weekend ‘whose goal was to determine the best way to help support the spread of democracy and human rights’. Gracing the proceedings was none other than ‘President George W. Bush, who put the democracy agenda back on the world stage after 9/11’ who ‘came to Prague to renew the commitment he made in his second inaugural address to work toward "ending tyranny in our world"’.

Among those attending were ‘voices courageously devoted to the non-violent struggle for human rights - including Saad Eddin Ibrahim of Egypt, Garry Kasparov of Russia, Alexander Milinkevich of Belarus, Junning Liu of China, Mudawi Ibrahim Adam of Sudan and Mamoun Homsy of Syria’.

Curiously, he doesn’t mention whether Azmi Bisharat was there.

Only in the last three months, more than 20 democratic dissidents were sent to prisons in Syria, Cuba, Vietnam and other countries without drawing international rebuke or sanction.

Meanwhile, you don’t even have to be a dissident, or Israeli, or even in Israel to be sent to and Israeli prison without charge and above all ‘without drawing international rebuke or sanction’. Just a few weeks ago,

Israeli forces seized a Palestinian cabinet minister and 32 other Hamas officials in overnight [24 May] West Bank sweeps designed to intensify pressure on the Islamic faction.

Not to mention the ones they abducted nearly a year ago, on 29 June 2006.

Birds of a feather

The American Jewish Committee last week honored Colombian President Alvaro Uribe with its Light unto the Nations Award.

“President Uribe is a staunch ally of the United States, a good friend of Israel and the Jewish people, and is a firm believer in human dignity and human development in Colombia and the Americas,” said AJC President E. Robert Goodkind, who presented the award at AJC’s Annual Dinner, held at the National Building Museum in Washington.

“Despite many odds, President Uribe has remained committed to the pursuit of security, peace and broad-based economic growth for all Colombians,” Goodkind said.

According to the CIA factbook, security and peace are evidenced for example by 1.8-3.8 million internally displaced persons, that is, at least 4% and up to nearly 9% of the total population, not nearly as bad as Iraq. As I read it, the fact that they can’t pin it down to within even the nearest two million suggests something really nasty is going on. The economic growth has delivered 49.2% below the poverty line, and as for ‘all Colombians’, some might consider a Gini coefficient of 0.538 evidence of truly gross disparities in economic power and opportunity. But

“Both Colombia and Israel have been forced for decades to face challenges regarding their survival and their citizens have suffered the threat of terror on a daily basis,” he said. “Nevertheless, Colombians like Israelis continue tirelessly to build democratic and prosperous societies, and remain passionate about achieving peace.”

Little could be more convincing of a commitment to democracy and prosperity than similarity to ‘Israelis’. And it goes without saying that it is perfectly appropriate for the American Jewish Committee to confer awards on those who resemble Israelis, because as everybody knows, Israel represents all the Jewish people and, in the immortal words of the EU Monitoring Commission Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, the Jewish people are ‘collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’.

And nothing supports democracy like human rights. According to Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, Principal Specialist on Colombia, Human Rights Watch in her 24 April briefing of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere,

Today, Colombia presents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere… Extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian military are on the rise.

Colombia is currently the murder capital of the world for trade unionists. Those who are not killed are often threatened, attacked or kidnapped…72 killed in 2006 up from 70 the year before. These killings are not random casualties of Colombia’s conflict, as the Colombian government claims. Trade unionists are especially targeted when exercising their rights to organize and bargain collectively.

Colombia, Israel, the AJC…birds of a feather.

Delta blues

As a lot of people know, the UN has instituted a program of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set standards for achieving certain targets across a range of development indicators that they have identified by the year 2015. One of these indicators is the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), the proportion of ‘infants dying before reaching the age of one year per 1,000 live births in a given year.’

According to Indicators for Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals: Definitions Rationale Concepts and Sources (UN, 2003), the rationale for collecting IMR is that

Infant mortality rates measure child survival. They also reflect the social, economic and environmental conditions in which children (and others in society) live, including their health care. Since data on the incidence and prevalence of diseases (morbidity data) frequently are unavailable, mortality rates are often used to identify vulnerable populations.

According to the MDG website, in 2004 IMR ranged from 165 per 1000 live births per year in Afghanistan, the same as in 2000, doubtless thanks to the US invasion and concomitant full liberation of Afghan women, and Sierra Leone, down to 2 per 1000 per year in Iceland. It may be of interest that the UK, Australia, and New Zealand have pretty good records on this indicator, with 5/1000. Cuba, with 6/1000, scores a little better than the US with 7/1000. (Note that the MDG figures differ rather significantly from the 2007 estimates in the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia.)

But that 7/1000 ratio is just the tip of the iceberg. Erik Eckholm, writes in this morning’s NY Times, ‘The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.’ That 14/1000 figure puts Blacks in the US in the same league as those in Mauritius. Curiously, the Eckholm article claims that the most recent national figure from the US are for 2003, while the MDG table claims 2004 data. In any case, more recent data are available at a state and county level. Specifically, ‘In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004’. An IMR of 17/1000 puts Mississippi Blacks in with Albania and Vietnam. A Venezuelan or Syrian mother has a better chance of seeing her baby survive to see its first birthday. And that was two years ago, with an apparently very steep increase in progress.

And that’s the state average. ‘In the past 10 years, the infant mortality rate for blacks in most of the Delta has averaged about 14 per thousand in some counties and more than 20 per thousand in others.’ Tonga has an IMR of 20/1000, it’s a higher rate than claimed for Colombia or Lybia.

“I don’t think the rise is a fluke, and it’s a disturbing trend, not only in Mississippi but throughout the Southeast,” said Dr. Christina Glick, a neonatologist in Jackson, Miss., and past president of the National Perinatal Association.

That’s how the most powerful, prosperous, democratic, and free country in history treats Southern Black women and children, among the most vulnerable members of American society.