PLUTOCRACY II

n 1998, humanity will mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On December 10th, 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted this document of extraordinary importance, and in doing so achieved the goal stated in the U.N. Charter of fostering international cooperation "in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all."

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the first treaty in the practice of international relations to enumerate the basic rights and freedoms that all human beings should enjoy. It proclaimed that everyone is entitled to a standard of living adequate to provide for the health and well-being of oneself and one's family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.

The United States along with other countries also signed this international human rights document which covers the right to life, to work, to support when unemployed, to fair and favorable working conditions, to social security, to medical care and to education as well as to political rights.

When the United States of America signed United NationsCharter, the terms of that Charter supposedly became the supreme law of the land in this country. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that international law is "part of ourlaw, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination."

In addition, Article 6, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution states that "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges of every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Therefore, it is the duty of federal, state and local governments in the U.S. to protect any and all rights granted its citizens under the UN Charter, including the right to "adequate standard of living."

Propagandistic juggling of human rights issues has always been one of the integral parts of U.S. foreign policy. American propaganda has always been very outspoken in blaming other nations for violating human rights, but the United States violates the human rights of its own people perhaps more than any other country in the world. The way this nation treats its poor is a clear mockery of fundamental human rights.

While in the Soviet Union, I was myself a vocal advocate for human rights. One of the reasons why I was expelled from the USSR was that in December 1988, on the 40th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I renounced my Soviet citizenship in an act of protest against the occupation of Lithuania by the Red Army.

But it now should be made evident that at least some of my dissident activities at that time were partly incited from abroad, from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. After serious thought I understand now that, quite often, I was simply used as a pawn for the U.S. Government to implement its plans in the dirty Cold War game.

The United States was interested in the downfall of the Soviet Union because the globalization of the world economy has intensified the competitive struggle among the capitalists. This forces them to scour every corner of the world for raw materials, cheap labor, and markets for their products. The former Soviet empire is a huge source of cheap raw materials, and possesses a highly educated work force. It is also a great potential market. To open those possibilities to U.S. exploitation, the Soviet political economy had to be destroyed

The U.S. government, through the CIA and its other intermediaries such as Radio Liberty/Free Europe encouraged us to think that all our fundamental human rights were terribly violated by the Soviet system. It was sort of an inspirational hypnosis for us. As a result, we -- a handful of Soviet dissidents -- fought against often only imaginary injustices and violations of our rights. The American CIA was the conductor and orchestrator of many of such activities. They used us as an assault force in their psychological war against the Soviets.

I don't want to claim that there wasn't any violation of human rights in the Soviet Union at all. And, of course, I'm not talking now about the Stalinist period of the Soviet history. I simply was born later and did not live through that. Of course, there were always some serious violations of people's political and civil rights such as, for example, freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Whenever the United States commented about human rights in the Soviet Union it was always with reference only to political rights.

However, in my opinion, the right to have a guaranteed job and to make a decent living, the right to get free medical help when you are sick, the right to free education, housing, social security -- are all much more important material needs for the vast majority of people than political liberties or freedom of worship. When you get seriously sick, you need to see a doctor first, not a priest.

In the modern world, the realization and exercise of rights and opportunities in the socio-economic sphere form the basis for the quality of life enjoyed by the citizen. Moreover, social-economic rights form the basis for all the other rights and freedoms of the citizen. Political rights are mere gestures if people are denied the right to work and, therefore, to subsistence. The freedom to speak his mind is little consolation to a starving person.

In the Soviet Union most people took their guaranteed right to work, to education, and to health care for granted, as an accustomed element of everyday life. As the respected American historian Stephen F. Cohen wrote in 1989, "The term 'human rights' includes a whole range of economic and other welfare problems, in which the Soviet Union, in the world context, can boast considerable achievement."

On the other hand, as I have witnessed, the rights and freedoms of a significant portion of the U.S. population have a merely formal, and thus hypothetical, character. The truth is that many basic socio-economic elements of decent human existence are not guaranteed in the United States. As Karel Vasak, director of the UNESCO's Division of Human Rights and Peace said in 1978, "The right to work can mean no more than permission to starve to death if the state does not organize the conditions for its exercise." As with all basic human rights in the United Sates, that's the way it goes.