"AMERICA HAS LESS AND LESS DEMOCRACY"

Quite recently, in late March, French President Nicolas Sarkozy drew everyone's attention to the fact that Washington is trying to rule the world on its own. "Not a single nation, no matter how strong it is, can impose its will on the whole world in the 21st century," the French president said in an address to American students at Columbia University in New York.

The French leader focused special attention on the global financial crisis and the White House's guilt for its origins. "Several hundred irresponsible people did anything they liked with somebody else's money. They have no excuse," Sarkozy said. He warned that "these people are now ready to do the same thing again". The French leader urged the whole international community to prevent a repetition of this economic scenario since, he believes, "a lack of rules kills freedom", reports Interfax.

But it seems that the USA is not going to listen to calls to give up its caprices and adhere to international rules.

In early April, the world was shocked by Internet footage of a US helicopter firing at a group of civilians in Iraq. The incident occurred in July 2007. As it turned out, the victims of the attack were Reuters journalists and at least 10 local residents. The video recording shows that the pilots were following a group of people, after which one of the pilots said that there were armed people among them. The helicopters opened fire at them. After that, the pilots fired at a minibus which had come to pick up the wounded. The pilots were laughing and making cynical comments about their actions. It was revealed later that the minibus also carried two children, who were seriously wounded. The pilots mistook a Reuters reporter's camera for a gun.

An anonymous source in the US armed forces admitted the authenticity of the video, Reuters reports. However, there has been no official confirmation. Meanwhile, the Pentagon still maintains that the pilots acted in compliance with the rules of combat, and there is no evidence that the Reuters journalists did not cooperate with militants, says The Times.

However, the US Defence Department has no evidence to prove the opposite, either. This, apparently, this is why the incident was carefully hidden from the world community for three years. Earlier, Reuters had tried in vain to get the video published under the US Freedom of Information Act. As a result, the video was posted on the independent website WikiLeaks, which specializes in finding and publishing exposures. The video was protected and, in order to open the US attack for viewing, WikiLeaks had to break a code.

Another aspect of this story is no less interesting. It is not enough that this crime by the US military was kept secret, now the founders of the website which published the video are saying that they are being persecuted by the US government. The Times says the Pentagon looked into the possibility of a criminal prosecution of WikiLeaks to avoid the further publication of classified documents.

There was an amazing coincidence. The world came to know about another US military attack on journalists and civilians during the month when US artillery carried out powerful air strikes on Hotel Palestine, which hosted foreign reporters covering the war in Iraq seven years ago. This hotel was regarded as the safest one since it was marked as untouchable on special military maps. Nevertheless, the US military machinery, using flimsy excuses, made an attempt on the lives of journalists. This was hidden terror. That fateful incident became a classic example of interpreting such actions as terrorism. The world saw in a specific example that this dangerous phenomenon becomes doubly terrible when it clothes itself in the mantle of democracy.

Hillary Clinton once made a statement of faith: "In the more than 200 years of our history, we, the Americans, have realized that commitment to democracy is a theory that needs to be proved every day." Meanwhile, facts show that the successors to the fathers of the US Constitution are bad students of history and are at odds with the theory called "democracy".

The modern world already speaks about democracy with a dose of irony when it comes to the United States of America. There is even a joke:

- Under Bush, there was less and less democracy in America!

-That's right, it was being exported.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jody Williams, who was visiting Baku in December 2005, openly said that "the USA is far from being the cradle of democracy". The central theme of her interview with a Zerkalo correspondent was the following: "After the Cold War, many of us hoped for positive changes in the world. But I personally did not believe in it. The US authorities… are only interested in issues related to the USA. This is a tragedy that we should have foreseen. I don't think that the use of hostilities is the best way towards democracy in a country which cannot be understood just like that… without asking the population for permission and without explaining the principles of this democracy. It is no wonder that this principle is not working."

During the Cold War, the difference about the US was characterized mainly by the struggle for freedom. However, the situation changed after Bush came to power - despotism began to be imposed: "It does not matter whether it is right or not, my country is always right." This is the faith in American difference. He failed to pick an appropriate formula to combine America's role as the leader of the international community and as the leader of the free world. Neo-conservatives offered him the concept of "goodwill hegemony", which was meant to settle global problems, lead the fight against human rights violations in various countries and to help democracy succeed in them.

All this would have been possible if the USA had relied on a sound morality, but it was replaced by a triumphalist complex. After the invasion of Iraq, the United States declined in the eyes of the world community, causing a strong wave of anti-Americanism. The groundless killing of innocent civilians showed that this was actual terrorism, not a war on terror, and caused a deep split in American society, as well as differences between the USA and other countries.

In Iraq, and not only there, Bush's words "freedom will prevail" are interpreted by many as "America will win". This questions America's "good intentions" and deprives the USA of the erstwhile authority which allowed it to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

In today's realities, John Kennedy's public confession sounds sagacious: "I am concerned that nationalism and personal interests overshadow the greatness of American traditions." Speaking thus, Kennedy was probably referring to the 5,000 victims who were lynched, the other 2,000 people who were killed in forced labour conflicts, the mass extermination of the Indians and so on. Nevertheless, he probably could not have imagined that the USA would dare to mock all the peoples of the world under the pretext of "exporting democracy". The "greatness of American traditions" was totally debunked when the world learnt about atrocities by US soldiers in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghureib and sanctioned torture at Guantanamo.

In July 2007, Bush confirmed the CIA's right to secretly imprison, sanctioning a violation of the Geneva Convention. This undermined human rights around the world. Top American officials recognized torture as a tool for strengthening democracy. This is proved by George Bush's threat to veto a bill banning inhumane and humiliating treatment, Dick Cheney's attempts to keep the CIA beyond the bill's jurisdiction, the unprecedented statement by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the USA's right to use such treatment against foreigners detained outside America, as well as the position of CIA Director Porter Goss, who described a method of torture used by the inquisition - dowsing someone's head in water until they stop breathing - as a "professional method of questioning".

Thus, punitive justice came into force under the slogan of "a patriotic bill". In January 2003, the OSCE spokesman on freedom of the media, Freimut Duve, said that "there is no more freedom of speech in the USA. The adoption of the so-called Patriotic Act by Congress stripped American citizens of their legal rights." What is more, he was especially outraged by the fact that the new anti-terror law sanctions control over visitors to libraries, subscribers to newspapers and bookshop accounts.

This led the Chinese government, which the US Senate has always accused of violating human rights, to prepare a copious report on human rights violations in the States. It cited the following facts:

-Every fourth prisoner in the world is an American. The so-called "land of freedom" leads the world by a long way for the numbers of convicts and inmates. Their number trebled over 15 years, reaching two million by 2000.

-The US media has actually become a propaganda machine for the authorities to manipulate public opinion. If we make a content analysis of CNN reports on Kosovo, we see that 50 per cent of them were based on US government sources, 26.5 - sources in NATO and the Kosovo Liberation Army and 14.7 - on reports by Albanian refugees.

-The USA is the only leading industrial power that has refused to adopt a system of obligatory medical insurance for many years, and more than 16 per cent of its population live without medical aid.

-From 1987 to 1996, 500 major American corporations, lobbying for their own interests, paid at least 182 million dollars to congressmen and 73 million to the Democratic and Republican parties. Tobacco producers alone "injected" more than 30 million dollars.

In response to the "declaration of war on terror" by the USA in 1980 and 2000, the well-known linguist and political expert, Noam Chomsky, claims that the main sources of international terrorism are the leading world powers; for example, the USA. This opinion is backed up by numerous facts. It is known that there are more than 20 secret terrorist organizations in the world cooperating with the US National Security Agency.

In this regard, we can also mention US Congress financial assistance to Nagornyy Karabakh separatists. On 17 December 2009, following the allocation of eight million dollars to the separatists, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry sent a note of protest to the US Department of State. An answer was received only in January 2010 - the Department of State explained its belated response by bad weather conditions and the Christmas holidays. Diplomatic officials found no weighty arguments to justify their policy of assisting terrorists. Their answer was brief: "The US Department of State does not recognize an entity called Nagornyy Karabakh."

However, this diplomatic statement does not tally with the following incident. The international non-government agency Freedom House, financed by the US Department of State, recently redrew the map of Azerbaijan on its website and showed Nagornyy Karabakh as a disputed territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia, highlighting it in grey. In the organization's report, the aggressor and occupier Armenia was called a partly free country, while Azerbaijan was included on the list of non-free countries. Yes, we are not free, because 20 per cent of our territory has been seized by a "partly free country" called Armenia. But the aggressor cannot be free, just like the country whose territory has been occupied.

In order to understand the nature of American terrorism, we should remember that the United States is the country that invented and first used concentration camps, but they were called "reservations". 

The Democrats, like the Republicans, accepted the policy of the Bush administration, and not a single prominent national politician protested at the mass arrests of immigrants, or the threats to put slandered citizens in hidden jails or concentration camps.

In so-called "democratic" America, the authorities are using the media to manipulate public opinion. This explains the fact that the press was almost silent during the tragic events in East Timor. This was the largest extermination of a population since the Holocaust. East Timor was seized with the consent and participation of the United States, and its seizure was accompanied by special violence. But almost no-one knows about it, as this terrible tragedy was passed over in total silence. It is worth mentioning Mark Twain's well-known statement here: "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and the prudence to practise neither."

Presenting itself as the creator of a "new world order", the USA constantly violates or delays the signing of major international agreements. For example, the genocide convention signed in 1948 was ratified only 40 years later. The United States has still not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (apart from the United States, the latter was not ratified only by Somalia). Nor has the US ratified the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Mine Ban Treaty or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke about the latter with concern in October 2009 during her famous speech to the US Congress, but she was not supported. When she said that it was no longer possible to wait, it was necessary to give an impetus to the Copenhagen Climate Conference and industrially developed powers needed to initiate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, half of the congressmen did not support her. Meanwhile, it must be noted that from the very beginning of Obama's presidency, progressive liberals have been offering to prepare their own package of proposals on the Copenhagen Climate Conference.

The leading brains of America state with sorrow that the process of the death of democracy is evident. Among them is the well-known publicist Gore Vidal. In his book "How We Came To Be So Hated", he writes: "Although we regularly brand other states, calling them rogue states, we ourselves have turned into the biggest rogue state. We do not observe agreements. We neglect international courts. We carry out air strikes wherever we like. We issue orders to the UN, but do not pay our membership fee. We complain about terrorism, but our empire has now become the most defiant terrorist."

No-one can blame the writer, or say that such harsh thoughts are unfounded. America has dragged many countries into the trap of IMF credit, or has enmeshed the countries of the "Golden Billion" in military force. We can say with confidence that the USA lives off the rest of the world, failing to pay developing countries for raw materials and fuel and enmeshing them in bondage through debt. In the late 1980s, it was absolutely clear that the use of the IMF programme had brought about economic catastrophe in Latin America and Africa. But the countries of Southeast Asia (Taiwan, South Korea and so on), which kept the IMF out, managed to avoid collapse. Moreover, there is a direct link between the use of the IMF programme and the criminality of society in the countries where it was used. The international conference Drugs and the Law-Governed State, which was held in Spain in 1995, cited facts indicating a direct link between the interests of the drugs trade and the IMF programme.

30 per cent of wars in the 20th century were initiated by the United States. This country holds the record for mass killings - 140,000 per American. Of those which have directly wiped out the populations of other countries, leadership belongs to the US plane crews who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Vietnam, 250,000 children were killed.

Secretary of State Clinton recently issued a message about America's commitment to single and universal standards of human rights. "These standards are equal for all, including us." However, this statement reeks of hypocrisy and double-dealing. In fact, the USA shamelessly tramples upon the rights of whole nations, forcing its own ideas and false values on them. Sometimes, pro-government circles resort to libel, hoping that, if they are exposed, they can cite wrong information from a non-government organization. This happened recently, for example, when Washington disseminated a primitive lie, alleging that 30-35 per cent of Azerbaijani students are drug addicts. Of course, the US embassy in Baku immediately offered a public apology.

But for some reason, in this report Washington ignored the fact that Armenia has long since turned the occupied territories of Azerbaijan into a terrorist hangout and comfortable conduit for the international drug mafia. This fact has been acknowledged by all relevant international organizations.

They also ignore the fact that, according to venerable pundits, drug production in Afghanistan has increased by 44 times since the US invasion. In that case, why doesn't Washington publish a transparent report on the activities of private American militarized companies in Afghanistan, instead of disseminating disinformation about other countries?

This also happened in November 2008, when the US State Department groundlessly accused Azerbaijan of involvement in human trafficking, which brought public protests from the leadership of the Azerbaijani Interior Ministry. It seems that representatives of the Washington administration do not see the positive reforms in the life of sovereign Azerbaijan, which has taken a strong lead in the ratings of developing economies. Meanwhile, as a senator from the state of New York, Hillary Clinton, with Republican Senator John McCain nominated the presidents of Ukraine and Georgia, Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili, for the Nobel Peace Prize "for their historic roles in Georgia and Ukraine". Later political events in these republics clearly showed everyone the legality of such an initiative.

Randomly accusing post-Soviet countries of trampling on freedom of speech, the USA does not see the beam in its own eye. It is enough to remember the incident when four CBS employees were fired for criticizing George W. Bush at the height of the presidential campaign. Among them was the prominent CBS host Dan Rather, who was forced to resign after 40 years of flawless service just because he said on TV that Bush had refused to have a medical examination and serve in the army. During the scandal surrounding the corrupt Illinois governor Blagojevich, it turned out that he and his chief of staff John Harris had threatened to deprive the media group Tribune Co. of state support if they did not fire members of the editorial board of a newspaper that had criticized the governor. Such facts shed light on the true state of the "democratic" press in the USA as the government's "Cinderella".

Despite diplomatic ethics, members of the US diplomatic corps openly ignore the internal laws of other countries and international conventions. For example, in January 2010, the US and Norwegian embassies in Baku issued a joint statement on the fact that they were barred from entering the village of Bananyar in Naxcivan. A spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry had to remind them that foreign diplomats should observe the norms of the 1961 Hague Convention on diplomatic relations.

Taking account of national specificity and local mentality, what is good for the American is unacceptable to the Azerbaijani. For example, it is well-known that the Democrats have a tolerant attitude towards homosexual relationships, but the overwhelming majority of Azerbaijanis take a tough position on this issue…

To be continued

Read in our next edition: Corruption threatens the security of citizens in America!