Theme for an American TV Show*

So, today I was bored at work, something that happens all too often, and I was reading an article on CNN. It was something about the International Council of the Red Cross demanding that the US either charge Saddam, or let him go by June 30th. They said that under international law, a prisoner of war cannot be held once an occupation is ended, unless the prisoner has been charged with a crime. By the way, that date, June 30th is the day that the US is supposed to hand over control of Iraq to their 'new democracy', but I'll only believe that when I see it (the man who was supposed to take over, Chilabi, has been accused of spying for Iran, so who knows what'll happen now). Anyway, I started thinking about international law, and how I've always wondered about the Geneva Convention and the World Court and all that. The idea of 'war crimes' and 'laws of war' has always sounded odd to me. It's always made me think of how there used to be so much etiquette to war, like the way they would line up across from each other in a field. It just seems weird. So, I looked up international law on Google, and of course, the first link that came up was from the United Nations website. I didn't have to search very far to find some interesting items. There's one in particular that really kept my interest. It's the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Drafted in 1948, this declaration has been in place for well over 50 years. If you click on that link and check it out, you'll start to wonder if the US bothers to acknowledge the United Nations anymore. It's fucking ridiculous. I think the Patriot Act, in it's entirety is a violation of international law. There are so many rights that we're supposed to be afforded by the UN that we may lose if the Patriot Act becomes permanent. Most of the Declaration is very similar to the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence, but it's on a much bigger scale. We're talking about the entire world. The Declaration basically makes fascism illegal. It also makes the holding of prisoners at Guantanamo illegal (because they're being held in limbo with many Geneva Convention violations stacking up). There are 30 articles to the Declaration, and I could go through every fucking one and find an example of a well-known violation in this world, many of them American.

*listen to the Residents