>From Cynthia McKinney: Dispatch from an International Conference Being Held
in Cuba
On the morning of December 10, 2008, Cindy Sheehan, Nelson Valdes, Saul Landau,
and I signed a declaration as the U.S. delegates to an international conference
assessing sixty years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sponsored by
the Network of Networks in Defense of Humanity. Here is our declaration:
We celebrate sixty years of failure. Human rights have been converted from a
noble goal into an instrument of foreign policy used by rich and powerful
nations against the poorest and weakest people of the world.
In 2008, almost three billion people throughout the world suffer the most basic
privations. After sixty years of empty human rights rhetoric, we demand that
governments focus their attention on fulfilling the promises of 1948. We write
this document on the parchment of environment, which everyone shares, and has
warned us all to drastically change the ways in which mass production and
consumption take place.
1. The United States is a member of the commonwealth of nations;
2. Benefits accrue to those who cooperate with the global community and view
other countries as potential partners for the upliftment of humankind;
3. Unfortunately, the leadership of the United States Government has
consistently been a disappointment to those of us who value the tenets and the
possibilities for humankind embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights;
4. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the rights of
self-determination, the rights of women, the indigenous, and the rights of
association, expression, and resistance to protect and preserve these precious
rights;
5. Poverty, severe income inequality on one hand and greed and over-consumption
by a few, on the other hand, deny for far too many on the planet universal
application of the Universal Declaration;
6. Climate change, unsustainable agriculture, unbridled militarism, terrorism
with impunity, nuclear proliferation represent threats to our planet and threats
to humankind;
7. The current implosion of the engine of U.S. imperialism and global
capitalism contains the seeds of a new global order in which the rights of
humankind and the Universal Declaration can find universal application;
8. The incoming Barack Obama Administration has a unique opportunity to make a
clean break with the policies of the past, including installation of
dictatorships, campaigns of invasion, terror, and slander, torture, and
occupation, and can build bridges of peace and justice with dignity and respect
to Africa, Latin America, and Europe;
9. Therefore, we call on the President-elect to put the United States on a
clear course of global fraternity by
a) invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
b) rejecting torture and terror and demonstrating this by closing and vacating
Guantanamo and ceding to Cuba its rightful patrimony,
c) ending the U.S. embargo,
d) releasing the Cuban Five, and
e) extraditing Luis Posada Cariles;
10. While this list is not exhaustive, it represents a much'needed down
payment on hope and change.
11. We will disseminate this document through our respective networks.
Signed: Saul Landau, Cindy Sheehan, Nelson Valdes, Cynthia McKinney
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