Do You Keep Your Eyes Open All the Time?

It is very difficult for most Americans not personally involved in a "rights organization" to access information concerning U.S. violations of human rights. This is one of several reasons for the apparent blind spot in our perception when the actual rights of any human being are violated practically right under our noses.

The American media are for the most part owned by major corporations. It is in the best interest of those corporations to hide the uglier parts of what might be front-page news anywhere else. Why?

If the media were to return to actively searching for the truth of what our armed forces and police forces are doing in out-of-the-way places where there are no invited visitors from rights groups, we would see an immediate uptick in demands for impeachment proceedings. When large, powerful corporations are using their money to finance supposedly "conservative" governmental operations, what happens in actuality is that abuses of powerless people multiply exponentially.

The same thing happens when the major multinational corporations open chemical plants in developing nations. The populace is so poor that they jump at the opportunities to make a decent living for their families. The flip side of this "opportunity" for them is the danger inherent in a situation where safety is not paramount.

Safety controls would have saved many innocent lives in Bhopal, India, but Union Carbide would have lost profits in some measure in order to put those measures into effect. It seems to have been simpler to walk away from the problem. In this fashion, a major corporation can simply remove its staff and officers from a deadly accident situation, then set up shop at another location. It is a numbers game, a gamble, and the local people who are hired for the plant are those put at risk. They may live. Or not.

Corporations say that they need to maintain their technical information to stay competitive, but there is a real difference between confidentiality of marketing information and the release to authorities of life-saving technical details.

Secrecy is not confidentiality, and it is secrecy and a culture of lies that kills villagers and townspeople in under-developed countries. The companies endangering both the people and the eco-systems have the resources to pull up stakes and move on. Local people may not have that luxury, assuming they are still alive.

The violation of ecological norms

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Why is the phrase "human rights" only thought of as a non-US issue??
We want to hear your view. Write now!