Due to the actions of the current administration, I am writing this letter to express my feelings on what has occurred. It is in line with my rights as a United States Citizen and currently breaks no laws. However, that could all change tomorrow, if the current administration decides that free speech is no longer legal in this country.
This is the official declaration of Human Rights, according to the Human Rights Council. It is simplified to be easily understood. There are 30 basic human rights that have been agreed to by 47 countries, now 46 since the United States has withdrawn from it.
Some of those basic human rights are:
1. We Are All Born Free &Equal. We are all born free. We all have our own thoughts and ideas. We should all be treated in the same way.
2. Don’t Discriminate. These rights belong to everybody, whatever our differences.
3. The Right to Life. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.
4. No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave.
5. No Torture. Nobody has any right to hurt us or to torture us.
6. You Have Rights No Matter Where You Go. I am a person just like you!
7. We’re All Equal Before the Law. The law is the same for everyone. It must treat us all fairly.
8. Your Human Rights Are Protected by Law. We can all ask for the law to help us when we are not treated fairly.
9. No Unfair Detainment. Nobody has the right to put us in prison without good reason and keep us there, or to send us away from our country.
10. The Right to Trial. If we are put on trial this should be in public. The people who try us should not let anyone tell them what to do.
On June 19, 2018 Nicki Haley our UN Ambassador announced the United States will be withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council. This comes one day after the council decried the United States actions at the Southern Border, and the forced removal and splitting up of families and children, and nursing babies from their mother’s arms for daring to seek asylum in the United States because of Human Rights Violations in their own countries.
It is not illegal to seek asylum in the United States at this time. Zero-tolerance policies have been changed, to say that fleeing from gang violence or domestic violence in your country of origin is no longer accepted as a reason for seeking asylum. These are some of the main reasons central Americans are seeking asylum in the US.
Children who have not committed any crimes are being held inside detention centers for up to 22 hours a day, or put in tent cities which they claim are air conditioned in 120 degree heat in the desert in the middle of the summer.
The list of human rights violations by the United States is endless. Native Americans, Annexation of Hawaii, Japanese internment, Jim Crow laws.
The list goes on and on. Child workers in the industrial age. Chain gangs in the 1930-1950s. Mass incarceration and neglect of the mentally ill, into the 1970s. Denying women the right to vote. To this day, refusing to allow adoptees, the only class of American citizens not to have the right to their original birth certificates. The incarceration of 25 percent of the African American male population under 30 in the nation.
Ms. Haley claimed that the US was leaving, because the Human Rights Council was being too tough on Israel, who recently killed Palestinian protesters at the border, many who were unarmed.
By leaving the UN Human rights council, Israel now as lost its largest defender on the council.
Ms. Haley claimed that the Human Rights council was hypocritical and of duplicity, and that other countries were being let in that violated human rights.
Mr. Trump recently met and praised the leader of North Korea. North Korea is on the list of countries banned and determined by the United Nations to be guilty of human rights violations. Mr. Trump will visit Russia soon. They are also on the banned list for human rights violations. After the UN criticized the actions at the southern border, on June 15, 2018 The US announced its immediate withdrawal from the council for daring to accuse the US of human rights violations.
The rights listed above have to be violated for a country to be condemned by the United Nations.
Read them carefully, and ask yourself this question:
Are we, the United States duplicitous and hypocritical ourselves? Are we aligning ourselves with human rights violators, and calling human rights protectors violators of human rights now?
Are we feeling gas lighted yet? Are we feeling isolated yet?
Once we leave the United Nations altogether, which is more than likely the next move of this administration since we have now officially left most of the important councils, such as climate change and human rights, what then?
So, let’s recap. We do not support the United Nations. We do not support the Human Rights council. We do not support Climate Change Council. The facts are, the United States created the United Nations. The United Nations mission is to support human rights, protect the planet, and keep the peace. It is a cooperative effort of countries that agree to abide by this premise.
Extreme Right political radicalism claims that it is a conspiracy to dominate the planet and take over humanity in a global grab for power. So, essentially, good is bad, and bad is good. Consider this.
We have called our strongest allies names, and imposed tariffs on them. We have praised dictatorships, and accused others of human rights violations while we are committing acts of human rights violations at our southern border.
Will the US continue to be a free nation, which adheres to the above human rights listed above, or will the current administration come out with an announcement that this administration will decide what our human rights will be from now on?
My sincere hope, is that each of the items listed above will continue to be endorsed and enforced by all levels of government, agencies, and elect officials at all levels, and that no human rights violations will occur in the country that I live in.
I hope and pray for mercy for our people.
•••
Anne Punohu is resident of Lihue.
Poor Anne. Perhaps Anne should look for another country to live in? Perhaps she should take a class on “Reality”? The vast majority of the people ILLEGALLY attempting to get into our country is MONEY, DRUGS, AND EVERYTHING FREE, PAID COURTESY OF THE STUPID AMERICAN SYSTEM OF WELFARE! Just because someone claims their husband beat them in Guatemala, or there are gangs in their neighborhood in Mexico is no reason to flood the United States with a problem that will lead to our Country’s path and pain to collapse. Get a life Anne. Celebrate your freedoms and then PROTECT THEM!
Anne, we will have answers to your questions on November 6. IF enough Americans are sick enough of this evil wannabe’ dictator / pathological liar in the White House, and the cowards in Congress who support him, and they vote to take control of at least one House of Congress so that Herr Trump can be neutered, then we may be able to regain our right to call ourselves decent and worthy of international respect again.
But if both Houses of Congress remain in the hands of the cowards who prop up the Liar in Charge, then we are DONE as the great country that once-was.
Early in the morning of November 7, we will know the answer.
We have a double winner, ladies and gentlemen! Anne and Craig have a lock on this week’s Paranoia Runs Deep award. I ask the Garden Island reader to re-read their rants and find evidence of anything other than mental illness.
hutch, pursuant to my Play Nice policy I announced in this forum in April, I will not respond to you in kind.
Tell you what, though: The next time I’m on-island for more than a couple of days, I’ll let everyone know which day and at what time I’ll be at Tip Top. Then you can come out from behind your cowardly screen name and come barf at me to my face … and see what happens.
Mark Beeksma wants to meet me, but then he’s a man — he uses his real name. Even Gordon Oswald does that. Not you though. I doubt if you’d even have the courage to meet Anne face-to-face.
Craig, you don’t understand. “Hutch” IS my name. It’s sort of like “LeBron” or “Kareem”. That’s how well known and successful I am. Let’s meet at Tip Top! Oh, I see. You don’t live here. You just tell the rest of us how to live. I get it. Laterz and aloha, brah.
How terribly charming and humble of you.
So … I’ve been accused of “mental illness” by someone as famous as LeBron. Wow! That’s quite an honor for me, Hutch.
Can you make yourself invisible? Breathe under water?
What the heck are the powers that be at the Garden Island thinking in allowing Anne Punohu on its pages? “Insightful discussion of ideas and viewpoints is encouraged, but comments must be civil and in good taste, with no personal attacks.” What the heck is her irrational rant if not one long personal attack?
Aloha Kakou,
Over the years hundreds of thousands of American kids are separated from one of their parents by Court ordered divorces or the separation of parents and these children are removed from one of the parents usually the Father by enough distance to require a round trip plane ride or too many hours of driving.
These AMERICAN CHILDREN lose precious developmental BONDING time and life skills education from the Absent Parent. “A woman cannot raise a fully developed Man (son), as a man cannot raise a fully developed Woman (daughter)”, without the missing parent ingredient.
Yet our government and Courts condone this family disaster AND child developmental disaster. How many youth are messed up as a result of a missing parent by the push of lawyers and judges.
But again the “bleeding hearts” of America would bestow more rights on illegal alien youth over the rights of American children. Besides the News Videos show mostly young alien men (called children?) ready to take an American’s job. It’s not Alien Rights, it’s PATHETIC RIGHTS.
PROTECTION OF American children and their Right to have both parents in their developing lives by near daily contact can be protected by NO CHILD SUPPORT PAID to a parent that takes the kids away from the other parent that is more than a 1/2 hour by car or require a plane to get there.
AMERICAN kids 1st, Alien kids 2nd.
NO WELFARE of any kind TO ALIENS PAID FOR BY OUR TAXES.
Donations gladly accepted…!
MAHALO,
CHARLES
Illegals break the laws and should be punished and deported ASAP, they brought the problems of bringing their equally illegal kids and expect us to support them. Hell no, we should support our own FIRST and deport these illegals. If they want the same benefits as Americans, then why won’t they sacrifice their efforts in changing their own country’s laws? Freedom in America was fought and paid for by Americans not illegals!
Mahalo for using your real name.
Let’s try the same logical set up with a different sentence and see if it makes any sense:
Why should we allow a computer whiz from India to seek venture capital for a start up in Silicon Valley? Freedom in America was fought and paid for by Americans not venture capital seekers!
Wow, here’s someone who wants to selectively discriminate regarding the treatment of children. I’d say “The System” seems to have done a pretty good job with his custody issues!
BTW, did you recently get nosed out of a dishwashing job by a fellow human being you think you can call “illegal?”