Pariah

The United States is called out by another UN committee.

The US should immediately shut all secret detention facilities used in its campaign against terror groups, the UN Human Rights Committee has said.

The committee called on the US to give the International Red Cross prompt access to those held in such jails.

The UN panel said the US should increase its efforts "to ensure the rights of poor people and in particular African-Americans are fully taken into consideration in the (Katrina) reconstruction plans with regard to access to housing, education and health care."

There should also be a moratorium on the death penalty, which appears to be imposed disproportionately on minority groups and poor people, the report concluded.

The committee's findings came after it held a two-day hearing in Geneva last week into US compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The committee said it was concerned by "credible and uncontested" information that the US had detained people "secretly and in secret places for months and years."

The US "should only detain persons in places in which they can enjoy the full protection of the law," the report said.

The committee's call comes two months after a separate UN body, the UN Committee against Torture, urged Washington to close its detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

First the UN Committee against Torture, now the UN Human Rights Committee.

No wonder conservatives hate the UN. To them, it's out of line to criticize torture and holding prisoners without charges or evidence at secret detention facilities, but A-OK to torture and hold prisoners without charges or evidence at secret detention facilities.

Look what we've become under George Bush: History's biggest banana republic. What shame this administration has brought on our great country.