By Paul Facio
In spite of the U.N.s stated purpose to take our guns away so as to unite world governments under Jewish bankers and lizard people, I'm compelled to admit adulation for their declaration of human rights is deserved: broad without seeming generic; long but impacting; it is finely drafted-- if incomplete. And though I lack former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's terrifically authoritative mustache, were the chance presented, here's what I'd add:
Personal rights:
The right to prostitution:
Persons twenty one and over have the right to prostitution within a regulated, safe, and legal framework.
The right to drugs:
Persons twenty one and over have the right to drugs as they would alcohol.
The right to marry and cohabitate:
Persons of legal adulthood have the right to marry other consenting adults.
Societal rights:
The right to prisons as institutions of reform:
Non-life sentence inmates have the right to a free education and a general chance at rehabilitation.
The right to contraception:
Everyone has the right to cheap, legal, and effective contraception.
The right to abortion:
Before and up to twenty four weeks of a pregnancy, every woman has the right to cheap, legal, confidential, and safe abortions. This extends past twenty four weeks in cases of rape, incest, and when the mother's life is jeopardized.
XXXDETH RITESXXX
The right to death:
Persons deemed of sound mind have the right to euthanasia.
The right of conscientious objection:
No persons shall be coerced into any form of organized violence or forcibly drafted. Those opting out of compulsory military service will still be required to serve in another (peaceful) fashion.
The right to life:
As it is both cruel and unusual, no persons shall be subjected to capital punishment.
Financial rights
The right to progressive taxation:
The burden of taxation shall be distributed fairly and according to ones means.
The right to fair pay:
No employee shall earn less than a tenth of his superiors.
The right to protection from usury:
Everyone has the right to protection from unreasonable interest on debt and loans.
Prescripts:
It'd be easy to mine endless non-fiction novels out of what's listed above. I have five (double spaced) pages; I must be terse. Also:
I'm a leftist-- favoring gay marrying stem cells to fund LSD abortions for terrorists-- but it's obvious to my patchouli-addled brain that certain issues-- gay marriage; drug legalization; synchronized incest-- won't be politically viable for sometime. Therefore, it's prudent to begin with rights most universal and centrist; I'll work toward Trotsky afterwards.
The right to conscientious objection.
“To the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights one more might, with relevance, be added: the right to refuse to kill."
– Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, and Nobel Peace Laureate, Sean MacBride, 19743
It'd be reasonable to take this as self-serving moralizing aimed at keeping my already overlarge vocabulary Pashto and Arabic free; I'll allow for that. More compelling is the plight of peasants and children, largely in Africa and Asia, forced to fight in conflicts both murky and increasingly inhuman. It's estimated that 30,000+ children fought in the 1999 through 2003 second Congo war5 (more aptly titled “Africa's World War”) against a backdrop of approximately four million deaths with rampant gang rape and cannibalism67. People are still dying from it's effects. There are similarly, if less wholly awful, documented cases of child solders fighting in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe-- with a sum estimated at around 100,000.
It's been argued the right to refuse to kill can be inferred from the right to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” in article 18 of the UNHR, but it's not explicitly outlined, and there's been heavy lobbying from Amnesty International-- and others like-minded-- for the UN to do so. As this is so ideologically lopsided (unless I've overlooked the pro children-fighting-in-wars side) it will be the easiest to of my proposals to enact.
The right to life.
Retained in only 64 of the worlds 220+ nation states, capital punishment is overwhelmingly opposed globally, with the United States as a glaring anomaly in the western world. As evidenced by 2007's largest execution tallies8: China 470+, Iran 317+, Saudi Arabia 143+, Pakistan 135+, United States of America 42, Iraq 33+
There're myriad reasons for a moratorium: it's pronounced racial bias--( in America blacks amount to 41% of death row inmates while making up only 12% of the general population4)--; it's easy qualification as cruel and unusual10 (strapping someone to to a padded table and plugging them with paralyzing agents while leaving them cconscious as their lungs seize up); it's place on the wrong side of history-- (the death penalty has been dramatically curtailed UN-wide since world war II, with it's abolition a requisite for admission into the European Union)--; it's unproven effectiveness both as a deterrent and a utilitarian cost-saver; and the risk of executing an innocent.
The right to prisons as an institution of reform.
Allowing possible bias due to my multiple convictions as a sex defender, experts in the fields of education and correction have reached an overwhelming consensus1: “postsecondary education is the most successful and cost-effective method of preventing crime.” For every tax dollar spent on spent on educating criminals, two are saved-- both from the massive decrease in recidivism among inmates receiving instruction, and their drastically raised likelihood of contributing to the economy.
The right to progressive taxation:
Taxing those who earn more by higher and higher percents. Favored by an overwhelming majority of economists (81% in America2), and one can assume, the majority of the worlds inhabitants (the lower classes). Already featured in other prominent human rights declarations like France's “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.”
The rest:
Personal rights:
The right to prostitution:
Crime by definition is non-consensual, but sex workers live in fear. The illegality of their profession discourages reporting crimes committed against them, and a lack of regulation and mandated health care leads to exploitative pimps and STDs. It's legal (and regulated) in most countries to pay two people to engage in sexual intercourse on camera (I have videos which prove this), but paying one person for sex private is outlawed-- baffling.
The right to drugs:
Labeled by numerous think tanks, research institutes, economists, politicians, and activists as an 'expensive failure' and largely regarded as a war on the underclass11, the war on drugs is at best, a massive distraction from our societies larger ills, and at worst a concerted effort to move us closer to a police state.
There is so much to speak of here. I could write a dissertation on Marijuana's benign (relative to tobacco) and even positive medical effects12. Or the empowerment to criminal organizations analogous to alcohol prohibition and Al Capone. Or the money we could save from the “war”s cessation-- money we could spend on education, health care, research, infrastructure-- a giant communal bong-- anything that's not oppression.
The right to marry and cohabitate:
The last real civil rights struggle in developed nations. It's my stance that two (or more) consenting adults have the right to whatever ghastly obscenities they so choose in the privacy of their home/poorly lit public rest stop. Whether it involves sour cream, childos, power sanders, clown make up, the elderly, Dakota Fanning head shots, or livestock. The advancement of gay rights in over the past 50 years seems an obvious meat thermometer of where we're headed with all forms of sexual tolerance.
Societal rights:
The right to contraception:
Overpopulation; AIDS; crime; unwanted and neglected children; abortion; teen pregnancy; regional instability; Mormon hegemony-- it's difficult to spot the salient problem, but there's little argument outside the Holy See that contraception serves as a panacea, or at least a topical ointment, to all.
The right to abortion:
An understandably thorny and contentious topic and I won't feign possessing the rhetorical skills to neatly resolve it in two paragraphs. However, I still have points to make:
Safety: when abortions were outlawed in America, so called “back alley” or unlicensed and unsanitary abortions were prevalent; tremendously unsafe to both mother and child.
Crime: it has yet to be conclusively proven, but there's strong evidence that legalized abortion has a drastic bettering effect on crime rates9.
Death Rights
The right to death:
I've yet to hear a clear or reasonable argument as to why the elderly and the terminal of sound mind should not be allowed a painless release. I guess... Maybe if you've got something against cancer patients.
Financial rights
The right to fair pay:
Generally, unskilled labor is the least financially rewarding and most dangerous type of work. It's an obvious disparity, and I propose rectifying it with a law requiring a salary cap on management and above: no one should earn more than ten times the wage of the lowest paid employee. There will still be inequalities-- CEO's will still afford yachts-- but they would not be as galling; as enraging.
The right to protection from usury:
Jesus made decrying usury a cornerstone of his ministry, but it's a foreign sounding word to modern ears. Odd given it's blazing relevance during our economic collapse-- largely due to predatory lending. It's admittedly self-serving to start with Jesus: I'm militantly agnostic and if Jesus
comes back I'll be the first to gather up nails and 2 by 4's, but I still don't find it moral, or reasonable, to have the “money-changing” class we do. Banks and loans are fine; are necessary, but we need them not for profit if we want them trustworthy and in the interest of the public good.
It'll never fucking happen.
1.Education as Crime Prevention: The Case for Reinstating Pell Grant Eligibility for the Incarcerated. Daniel Karpowitz and Max Kenner. Bard Prison Initiative, Bard College. http://www.bard.edu/bpi/pdfs/crime_report.pdf
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax#History_of_intellectual_debate
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights#The_Right_to_Refuse_to_Kill
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_debate#United_States_specificities
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children#Africa
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War#Rape_as_a_weapon
7. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/30/AR2007073001849.html
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty#Global_distribution
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime
12. http://www.medboardwatch.com/wb/pages/therapeutic-effects.php
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