[ot] [!nt] \n2+0\

integer at www.god-emil.dk integer at www.god-emil.dk
Tue Dec 21 06:47:54 CET 1999




david zicarelli - cycling74 korporat male fascizt typed
"It would be cool if there were some technological solution to 
the Antiorp  - crisis -  in which people could choose to get a version 
of the list that was Antiorp-free"


the phantom of liberty - cycling away at 47 kmph from the ultra `cool`
jankee model citizenz




U.S. IS NOT EXACTLY
KID-FRIENDLY 

Salim Muwakkil 
December 13, 1999 

Were his native country anywhere but Cuba, most Americans would
support sending Elian Gonzales, the 6-year-old "little rafter," back
home to his biological father.

But our national hate affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, coupled
with a widespread assumption that Elian would be better off here than
there, has scrambled the poles on our ethical compasses.

Many people may want to deny custody to Elian's father and keep his
son in this country. And even those who concede the boy should be
returned to his father harbor the misguided notion that this nation offers
Elian the best possible future.

In fact, the United States is one of the least child-friendly countries.

According to an October report by the Children's Defense Fund, nearly
80,000 children and teens were killed by gunfire in America between
1979 and 1997. That figure, the report noted, "is more than the total
number of American soldiers killed in battle in Vietnam."

A toxic environment saturated with violent images, aggressive role
models and firearms has produced a nation in which homicide is the
third leading cause of death among children 5 to 14 years old and the
second leading cause among those 15 to 24. Suicides rates among
youth also are rising, according to the Children's Defense Fund, and
firearms account for more than 90 percent of the rise.

Because of our peculiar history and a wealthy lobbying group that
shamelessly purchases political influence, guns are more prevalent in
this country than anywhere else on the planet. And despite the domestic
carnage firearms cause in this country, they are championed by the
same "Guns `R' Us" Americans who cite Cuba's unarmed citizenry as
the primary reason Castro's tyranny has triumphed.

If the Castro-haters get their way, Elian will grow up in a land that is
one of only two nations in the world that has failed to ratify the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other nation is Somalia.

Among its many protections, the convention provides: "the child by
reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards
and care, including appropriate legal protection." But that restriction is a
stern rebuke to the hot, new American trend of trying kids as adults.

In recent years, 46 states have changed their laws to allow juveniles to
be tried as adults. One particularly prominent case is that of 13-year-old
Nathaniel Abraham, who recently was convicted of second-degree
murder for shooting a stranger when he was 11.

Abraham's photograph adorned an Amnesty International report that
blasted the U.S. for this primitive practice.

"As America exhorts other nations to uphold basic human-rights
principles, we should begin with the ABCs of human rights and treat
our own young offenders as children--not as adults," said Curt
Goering, an official of Amnesty International USA.

So while self-righteous Americans snipe at Castro's Cuba for its affront
to U.S.-style democracy, international monitors vigorously condemned
this country for violating the human rights of children, its most
vulnerable citizens.

But the U.S. is not content just with judging children by adult
standards; our perverse juvenile phobia has pushed us to the point of
executing children.

And the U.S. is riding solo in that practice.

Victor Streib, a professor of law at Ohio Northern University, has been
tracking the number of juveniles sentenced to death over the past 25
years and told The Boston Globe that every other country has
abandoned killing juvenile offenders.

"We're the only ones left," he said.

Of the six nations cited for charging children with murder in the
1990s--Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the U.S.--the
U.S. is the only one that has yet to ratify the 1997 International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits that practice.

The U.S. has become so mistrustful of its own children, legislators are
passing zero-tolerance laws that deliberately exclude mercy, one of the
most hallowed features of Judeo-Christian ethics.

The U.S. piously touts its reverence for youth at every opportunity,
while enacting policies that place more children in harm's way than
most other nations. It's an odd paradox. But perhaps it's not odd at all.

A nation's youth reflect its soul and our children may be telling us more
than we want to hear.

So we drown them out with the diverting clamor of make-believe
solutions that attack only symptoms. And we tell ourselves tall tales that
this is the best of all worlds for kids--even if we have to kidnap to
prove it.








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