Ledeen Self-Pwns

Micheal Ledeen of the “push a country up against the wall” fame was caught looking like a prime Double D-bag today. Ledeen decided to run with a fake college “thesis” from Obama, noting what a horrible commie he is, because he wrote this:

“… the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”

I saw nothing very controversial in that statement; the document categorizes certain humans as 3/5 the value of others. The constitution, indeed, sought to institutionalize certain income redistribution–from slavery and indenture to the masters and others who benefited, both directly and indirectly. But Ledeen, of course, and other conservative fog-nets such as Rush Limbaugh, thought the “thesis” was the holy grail of Obama-ism and practically sprayed themselves with joy at finding written evidence that Obama favors income redistribution [and that he's an unamerican founder-hater, to boot]. Later, Ledeen was forced to admit that the document was a fake, and had indeed been outed as such three months ago.

Its not that Ledeen was punked; he indeed suckered himself, like the dummy chasing the dollar bill on a string all the way down the street or the guy who buys the laptop box that “fell off the delivery truck” from the sketchy dude in the BART station for twenty bucks, only to find the box full of cardboard and newspaper [okay, that last guy was me, five years ago, but I learned my lesson!]. There’s an old saying, often misunderstood, “You can’t fool an honest man.” What that old saw really means is that you can’t fool someone into doing  a dishonest deed unless they are comfortable with dishonesty. Indeed, Ledeen’s public record reads like a primer on bold mendacity, from Iran-Contra, to forging the Yellow-Cake documents, to pushing the Iraq war, despite fears of instability because:

One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists. That’s our mission in the war against terror.

Indeed, in the non-Bizarro version of our universe, where dishonest ineptitude is not a pre-requisite for controlling the media beacons of influence, one would think that Ledeen’s corpse-ridden trail [four thousand US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis in the war he cheerily pushed] would have meant the end of his career. But soft, Ledeen continues to be an oft-quoted luminary in the conservative world where the unmitigated success of the Iraq war that he championed, now qualifies him as a spokesperson for attacking Iran. His column is named “Faster, Please”–a phrase from his 2002 plea to hurry up and invade Iraq quoted abovbe–though he now, quite shockingly claims that he opposed the war, despite a wealth of public statements and an entire archive of  National Review columns that scream otherwise in no uncertain terms . Its no surprise that he was taken in by the “thesis hoax”. The only surprise is that he didn’t invent it himself.

You can read Ledeen’s article here…and Ledeen’s half-hearted apologia here

An Anatomy of Impenetrable Media Obtuseness

Glenn Greenwald, a self-made blogger who has, by the sheer force of his intellect and astute commentary,  insinuated himself into the mainstream media discourse, appeared on MSNBC’s  Morning Meeting, hosted by Dillon Radigan, this morning. Opposite, Greenwald were Arianna Huffington [of the eponymous internet broadsheet] and Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, and the ostensible topic of the day was the putative danger of a nuclear armed Iran. This interaction is a perfect vehicle for examining the great wall of media static and obtuseness which prevents all but a few appearing on cable and broadcast television from being able to discuss issues in any way which reflects reality.

Glenn makes some great points early on in the segment:

…the only obligation that Iran has under the nuclear non-proliferatition treaty is to disclose any facilities at least a hundred and eighty days before nuclear material is introducred and they did that well in advance of a hundred and eighty days. They did it at least a year or a year and a half before that facility is operable…

…and at the same time, America’s key ally in that region, Israel, refuses to belong to the nuclear non proliferation treaty, refuses to have its nuclear stockpile inspected by the IAEA, and so there are nations, beginning with Israel, that refuse to comply with these rules.

Its time for Arianna Huffington, a supporter of sanctions and isolation of Iran, to respond to that statement:

Huffington couldn’t have provided a more pointed and irony-saturated critique of the vast wasteland of unfounded blather that is the discourse on Iran. In the first place, though Radigan asks “how do you balance your coverage so that you’re representing the apparent threat and at the same time not inciting either fear or irrational responses”, Huffington can’t seem to wait to suggest that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons to wipe Israel off the map:

Iran is actually challenging the existential presence of Israel, and so its not just…they don’t believe that Israel has the right to exist…so you have a player here that is actually presenting a major threat to Israel which immensely complicates the international response.

Then, of course, Huffington completely shrugs off Greenwald’s points, she makes no reference to them. Greenwald, though, responds to hers quite directly:

Greenwald makes a crucial point. That its Iran that’s under siege, that its Israel and the US that have been military aggressors and invaders in the past decades.

I think its a very hard case to make that Iran is some sort of a unique threat because of some crazy rhetoric that its president engages in that it could never possibly carry out and I think that’s what needs to be the focal point is, what is the reality of these countries capabilities and what their actions are…

Huffington throws all caution to the wind:

What’s most amazing about this whole exchange is that the theme of the program, as described by Radigan, is the question of how the mainstream media can be more sober, analytical and rational in its assessment in an effort to avoid the bandwagon leap that preceded the war in Iraq. The only person on the program who does that is Greenwald. Huffington, shockingly, given the supposed bonafides of her publication, has literally lifted the script from the Iraq War Progaganda Gin. Rather than address Greenwald’s points that Iran poses no credible threat, and that is guilty of no activities not also undertaken by Israel and the US–and that indeed, Israel and the US have been bigger threats to the region–she simply brings the argument back to the same point every time. Iran wants to destroy Israel. In this colloquy, Radigan plays the traditional role, questioning none of the mainstream points, while acting as little more than a host, making sure that all the guests get a chance to speak, but failing to make sure they address each other’s points. The idea of engaging in analysis of the history of the region–the fact that Israel “illegally” built its nuclear arsenal and that no one anywhere has any idea what’s in it or what Israel does with it– is rejected again and again in favor of exceptionalist platitudes, mythologies and black and white characterizations. US/Israel good, Muslim States/Iran bad.

The exclamation point for the segment came when Capehart finally injected himself into the three way. Capehart complained of confusion at Greenwald’s suggestion that Iran is not a threat. Hadn’t Greenwald noticed that MSNBC’s b-roll during Greenwald’s first comment:

…was showing video of Iran shooting off those missiles just this past weekend, so how does that match up…?

Indeed, how could Iran not be a threat, when the tv showed images of a missile launch over and over again for the entire program?

Clyde Haberman of the New York Times, engaged in a similar dynamic with an analysis of the UN General Assembly, last week in New York. Haberman referred to the “usual gang of despots and rogues who make the collective American skin crawl”. Though its those wearing the American skin that launched two invasions in the past eight years, ending  the lives of tens of thousands, the US remains the indisputable  mediator for the world. No matter what we do, despotism and criminality are characterizations for other countries to bear, and it is always our responsibility to correct their bad behavior. We are always in search of peace. Indeed, opprobrium need only be brought against America and its allies when we try to reach accomodation with the world’s lesser criminals. Habermann implies that Gordon Brown may receive some rebuke at the GA–not because of his continuing support of US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but because he allowed dying Libyan terrorist Abdel Basset Ali al-Magrahi to return to Libya.

Given this allergy to the truth about our actions and the constant finger-pointing to the [much more modest] evil deeds of other countries, the media is destined to make exactly the same mistakes about Iran as it has in every other war for two decades. In fact, they seem to relish the opportunity.

Glenn’s column about the appearance:

Of Sambots and Haltertops

The NYT today carries a little blurb about Family Guy cartoon spin-off Cleveland, today. Several things in this photo jumped out at me. The first is the overt sexualization of the Cleveland daughter, in a mid-drift and cleavage bearing haltertop . The second was that she is lighter skinned than the rest of the family. Not to mention, her long-flowing straight hair, quite unlike every other member of the family.

Its one thing to see this in a live action sitcom, movie, ad or music video, because that’s become a convention. Following Hollywood logic, it must make perfect sense to casting agents when the time comes to portray a black family; sex sells, so the adolescent or young adult daughter will be chosen to be as attractive to young male fantasies as the corresponding teen from a white family would be. But for some reason, in Hollywood, this has taken the form of deracialization–an open statement that only African Americans with light skin can be the product in the “sex sells” formulation.

Indeed, you need only look at casting throughout the eighties and nineties, as African Americans began breaking the color barrier and appearing regularly on television and in movies as serious subjects of narratives:

Here’s the Cosby Show’s Lisa Bonet, a mixed race young adult with African American parents:

Another rather blatant case in Lethal Weapon:

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air:

And, of course, the entire light-skinned cast of A Different World:

The dynamic has become a shamefully accepted trope  for the business, as this casting call for Puff Daddy’s Ciroc specified “Race: White, hispanic or light skinned african american “.

But what’s really of interest in this dynamic is how closely Hollywood mirrors this real life preference even when it is completely freed of the burdens of flesh-and-blood casting. Someone sat down and made the decision to sexualize the “Cleveland” character and to give her straight hair and light skin. Someone made the decision to extend the trope  that attractive and sexually available African American women are “whiter”. And, there’s a more disturbing idea that undergirds this Hollywood convention: the daughters of black men can be co-opted into “whiteness” as the object of safe trans-racial fantasies, while the males remain dark-skinned and un-absorbable.

Such absurd conventions have been notable in animation for some time, especially Disney’s odd fixation of imbuing animal-forms with stereotypical “Black”, “Latino” and “Asian” mannerisms. Most recently, the  “Twins” from Transformer’s 2: Revenge of the Fallen

took such racial designs to new and more enduring extremes. As one reviewer from a generally industry-friendly website put it:

The Twins have a simian appearance, with wide faces and huge ears. One of them… has a gold bucktooth. They have a ‘playful’ back and forth relationship, which includes them talking in some sort of modern day rap-age jive, calling each other ‘bitch-ass’ or ‘punk,’ talking with an exaggerated, crunked-up ’street’ accent. They appear to be stoned all the time. And they can’t read; when asked to translate some ancient Cybertronian language they sheepishly admit they ‘don’t do much readin’.’ …The Twins are completely illiterate, it seems. I was actually surprised that the film didn’t find a way to make them wear a Transformers version of baggy pants.

Here’s the most tragic part of this story–creator Michael Bay purposefully created these characters for younger audiences:

…”I purely did it for kids. … Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”

Once, casting agents and directors were able to plead ignorance as they claimed that the lightest skinned African American also happened to be the best actress for the part. Or they could plead that their black actors were bringing something of their own culture to the roles in their larger than life stereotype-to-life interpretations, as many have claimed. But as animation becomes a more influential genre on television and CGI characters soak up larger chunks of celluloid in mainstream films, directors and producers will be given even more freedom to project their stereotypes on the minds of moviegoers. They may have to start defending their decisions about the bodies, minds and voices they imbue their non-white characters with.

The Absurd Spectacle of Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Movement

Melissa Harris Lacewell, Rachel Maddow’s oft-time guest and fellow creature of Princeton,  is generally a bit too pro-Obama for me. But here I think she does a perfectly succinct job of putting the utterly absurd philosophical underpinning of Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Movement in perspective:

Here’s Beck’s original push for 9-12 in which he weeps with nostalgia for the happy day after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

My dinner with Yoo

I’m trying to get as many people to respond to this as possible in the interest of starting a conversation about the responsibility of every day people in the war-mongering nati0n we live in…please go here:

http://hyphenatedrepublic.wordpress.com/my-dinner-with-john-yoo/

The life of one American

Just had to comment on this. One forgotten mendacity on the pyre of lies that the Bush administration built to con the American public to fall in love with the idea of invading Iraq: the lie that Hussein was holding one of our boys captive, when of course, it was quite obvious that he had died ten years earlier. From today’s Washington Post:

Then-president George W. Bush, in a September 12, 2002, speech to the U.N. General Assembly, had cited Speicher’s possible detention as part of his case for post-September 11 action against Iraq, along with allegations that Saddam was developing banned weapons of mass destruction and was sponsoring terrorism.

The Iraqi government had maintained from the start that Speicher died in the crash, although his remains had gone unrecovered, fueling conspiracy theories.

The Iraqi who told Marines about the remains said he knew of two Iraqi citizens who recalled a U.S. jet crashing in the desert. One said he had been present when Speicher was found dead at the site and buried there by Bedouin tribesmen. The Iraqis led the Marines to the crash site.

Speicher, the “first” American pilot to be shot down and killed over Iraq during our primary democracy-producing and glorious invasion of that country in 1991, was suddenly, after ten years an MIA.

There’s a deeper problem here, though. Because even if Speicher had been alive, the narrative that one of our soldiers is worth the lives of thousands of people from other countries is one of the most damaging to our country. When did we begin to believe that its actually a good idea to risk the lives of thousands of other Americans to get back one soldier, even if there’s a good chance he’s dead?  Why is it that when one soldiers dies, we don’t question the wisdom of having sent him/her to war in the first place, but lodge yet another grievance against a world that fights back when we attack them, and place that in the huge d-base of grievances that we maintain to justify almost anything we do in the developing world? From McCain to Bergdahl, all righteously empowered individuals who met nefarious attacks from people who simply should have laid down and let us do what we wanted to do to their country in the first place.

Hopefully, the disgusting way in which the Bush administration manipulated Speicher’s death, and tortured his family and loved ones by giving them false hope long after any was justified, simply to gin up jingoistic fervor for a war of political expediency, will make people stop and think. Perhaps Americans will decide to innoculate themselves against such tactics, by taking a good hard look at the rest of the world and putting themselves in their place–and remembering that the very Muslims that we demonized, saw fit to give an invader charged with wreaking death and destruction on them, a proper burial.

To be honest, I’ve long since given up hope that the average American is capable of such introspection. But I’m open to being surprised.

Here’s to the white folks…

I don’t envy white people.  First of all, being all lumped together into one crazy, gum-chewing and tobacco-spitting racist and imperialist punch bowl must be a bit hard on the chops. I mean, I can sympathize with Lucia Whalen, the woman who seemed to chafe more at being called white, than she did at being called a racist. The white label hurts. I’m not kidding, Lucia—I’ve been there, too.

In my case, its not like I get any of the so-called benefits of being white. I’m profiled as an Arab on a regular basis and I won’t even fly anymore! And most days I’m afraid to watch the news because some disgusting representation of Arabs or Latinos will make me want to throw my shoe through the television screen. Still, I do know that I get a lot of the privileges white folks get, and so I’ve got to live with that. And if living with that is living with guilt for me, imagine the guilt that the average white person feels on a daily basis. Like the kid who says, “I didn’t ask to be born”, white people didn’t ask to be born white. They didn’t ask for all these quotidian privileges. I mean, seriously, if you were going to specify some really awesome perks, would it really be hailing a cab, shopping at a supermarket without being hovered over, and never being the “randomly” chosen person at the airport?  No, its quite obvious that white privilege is no privilege if all you know is white privilege. All white people get to see are the burdens of their race.

Don’t laugh, but non-white people have actually got it easier in some sense. They don’t have to feel bad for hating anyone. My dad never felt bad about being racist against Black or Asian people. He married a Latina and he was still racist against Latinos. He won’t hire Mexicans to work at the Flea Market stand he runs because he thinks Latinos are all thieves. He hires Vietnamese people because he thinks they’re honest. And he thinks they’re honest, because he thinks they’re stupid.  He doesn’t even trust me, because my mom did most of the raising. And don’t even start in on my mom—she hates Arabs. And hates me even when I’m doing my best to be Latino. And don’t get her started on Mexicans. Or white people. And please, don’t ask me what I think about anyone, especially mixed-race people with their uppity claims to whitehood.

Do you think a person of color ever feels guilty about hating white people? Do you think its hard for a person of color to admit he/she is racially profiling a white cop? Or a white clerk? Or a white anything? No way. Admitting you hate white people is like taking a sip of ice water on a hot day.

But we all know, that for white people there’s nothing like the constant stress of being outed as a racist. Because white people, just like every other people, are racist. But unlike every other group of people on earth today, they’re not allowed to admit it! I grew up amongst them, in the previously 91% white Mecca named San Leandro, and I can assure you that I never met a white man, woman or child who didn’t at least once gleefully say or mouth the N-word. I’m almost positive that they said similar things about me when I wasn’t around.

Really, I pity white people. Imagine having this huge trunk of metaphorical, and almost lyrical verbiage compiled over four hundred years of culture made expressly to describe the imagined odiousness of non-white people. Especially Black people! Seriously, one could put together a pretty heavy thesaurus of English language racism. Or write whole b0oks made up exclusively of bigoted sonnets in iambic pentameter.  And imagine no longer being free to express all that—that which has been the root of European culture for half a millenia. Look at these works, ye whitey, and despair!

I begin with all of this to explain what this teachable moment really has to offer. In fact, let’s call it, instead, a learn-able moment, because the teacher in this case—dumb luck—has little or no faculties with which to impart any lessons. The learning is there, ambient and in whisps. You can breathe some of it in, or hold your breath and let it dissipate.

Gates probably learned something. He learned that its never a good idea to lose your temper, no matter how much you think you’ve earned the privilege. Gates tells the story of having been misdiagnosed as a child by a white doctor who doubted his injuries were real, and walking with a cane for life as a result. My mother claims that rather than go to the trouble of removing a tumor when she was diagnosed cancer right after my birth, the doctor simply gave her a hysterectomy. Whether that’s the way things happened or not—or even whether the truth of the matter is that the doctors didn’t like smart-ass kids or bitchy women, respectively—life becomes a narrative dictated by race, gender, class and a dozen appended etceteras. That narrative, like any other, has its climaxes. In Gates’ story, a dozen, hundred, thousand sub-plots converged at the moment he saw a white cop at his door. Crowley was simply a narrative device, like Chekov’s loaded shotgun, poised to go off in the third act.

But no one will ever know that narrative but Gates, and no one will ever really be able to understand what he saw when a white cop came to his front door asking him to identify himself. So he is doomed to be misunderstood, like so many people of color before him.

But what did Crowley learn? Or, should we say—what was Crowley allowed to learn? Being barraged with the title of “racist cop” didn’t help, that’s for sure. And he certainly can’t admit any wrong doing in public for legal reasons, that much is obvious. If anything the lesson Crowley learned is: when set aflame by accusations of racism, stop, drop and roll. But whatever you do, don’t think when you get called a racist. Don’t explore your genderism, your classicism; or your tendency to get annoyed at handicapped people, at short people, at old people, at gay people, or at people you think are gay. Don’t ask questions. Because who would it benefit? Certainly not Officer Crowley, who can be sued and vilified for being a dumb, racist cop if he admits that there was anything going on in front of that house but by the book policework—his non-white police friends agree. The first lesson of public interest work is cover your ass. The second is cover the ass of anyone you work with who does anything you might do in the future.

There is absolutely no incentive for Crowley to learn anything about this in terms of race, power or any of the other issues that stand at the core of our current societal crisis. And, in this role of risk-averse learner, he represents the acme 0f the double-ott new-millenium white-man. And perhaps, to many, he is a hero in that regard—standing strong under a confusing, heartless barrage of invective in a world and role pre-made for his benefit, but without his consent.

And that’s an important learnable moment for the rest of us.

That Other Thing Going on Thursday

While Obama is laying out the coasters and chilling the beer steins for Thursday’s absurd political theatre, Mohammed Jawad will be waiting to find out if he will see freedom before his childhood is over.

Within hours, the judge scheduled a hearing for Thursday morning in Federal District Court in Washington, setting up what could be a pivotal battle over the reach of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that granted Guantánamo detainees the right to contest their imprisonments in habeas corpus suits.

Jawad may have been as young as 12 when he was captured by Afghan forces, tortured, made to sign a confession that he was a combatant and turned over to Guantanamo, where he’s been held for 7 years. Last week, a federal judge, noting that the Obama administration had admitted that its only evidence for holding Jawad had been extracted through torture, ordered Jawad released.

This is one case that would seem like a cake-walk. The fact that Jawad is in prison to begin with defies the imagination and certainly has everything to do with the fact that the US is the only nation in the world, besides Somalia, that hasn’t ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Indeed, Jawad may still not be an adult!  Moreover, the government of Afghanistan wants Jawad back.  There is no heming and hawing about who’ll take him. Regardless, in a shocking response, the Obama adminstration has said that it may continue to hold Jawad indefinitely while it turns over his case to the DOJ for a civilian prosecution. No one seems to know what Obama prosecutors will pull out of their hat come Thursday, but it will doubtlessly get less attention than the suds and photo-oping of Thursday’s Feel Good Beer Fest.

I’ve written about Jawad a couple of times before, here and here.

John Ridley on Gates

Out of all of the commentary I’ve seen on this, John Ridley does the best job of putting the Gates issue into the context of the current new wave of racist discourse in our society:

Obama Administration Hypocrisy on Children’s Rights

I don’t think any other case highlights the depth of moral depravity guiding US detention policies more than that of Mohammed Jawad, a child arrested and imprisoned by the US since 2002. Yesterday, even a federal judge was unable to hide her disgust with US military detention policies as she excoriated prosecutors when they admitted they had been holding Jawad for seven years based on evidence obtained by torturing him:

The federal judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle of Federal District Court in Washington, reacted furiously last week after government lawyers conceded that much of their evidence to justify Mr. Jawad’s detention consisted of statements he had made that a military judge had previously ruled were obtained after he was tortured. Government lawyers said they would no longer rely on those statements.

Rather than drop the charges and repatriate Jawad to Afghanistan, the Holder Justice Department will continue to hold Jawad in Guantanamo while DOJ prosecutors consider how to bring charges against him in a US civilian court. What raises this story beyond the level of obscenity that we’ve become used to concering detainees is that it was recently revealed that Jawad was not 16, as was originally believed when he was captured, imprisoned and tortured, but closer to 12! From a New York Times blurb of a story, two months ago:

An Afghan who has spent over six years at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay was only about 12 when he was detained…interviews with the family of Mohammed Jawad, who like many poor Afghans does not know his exact age or birthday, showed he was probably not even a teenager when he was arrested in 2002, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission continues to demand the return of Jawad, but has been consistently rebuffed. This would violate the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which, among many other things, makes torture and indefinite detention of children illegal.

The US detention of Jawad violates whole swaths of the UNCRC, [read portions of it at the end of this article]. Since humans are considered under international law to be children until the age of 18, the same was true when he was ostensibly believed to be 16. But the fact that he may have been as young as 12, really highlights the inhuman depths that our current justice system has sunk to–indeed, Jawad may still be a child by the standards of international law.  Ironically, though the US has never ratified the UNCRC  [though it was signed by Clinton and the Reagan Adminsitration even wrote many of the provisions], Obama made special mention of it in the Walden University Youth Debate in 2008. claiming that it was embarrassing that the US and Somalia were the only countries that hadn’t ratified the treaty. Obama claimed:

I will review this and other treaties and make sure that the United States resumes it leadership in human rights.

Well, this would be a good place to start.

———————————————————————————

From the Convention of the Rights of the Child:

States Parties shall ensure that:

(a) No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age;

(b) No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time;

(c) Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her age. In particular, every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults unless it is considered in the child’s best interest not to do so and shall have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances;

(d) Every child deprived of his or her liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance, as well as the right to challenge the legality of the deprivation of his or her liberty before a court or other competent, independent and impartial authority, and to a prompt decision on any such action.

Article 39

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of: any form of neglect, exploitation, or abuse; torture or any other form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or armed conflicts. Such recovery and reintegration shall take place in an environment which fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child.

Article 40

…

2. To this end, and having regard to the relevant provisions of international instruments, States Parties shall, in particular, ensure that:

…

(b) Every child alleged as or accused of having infringed the penal law has at least the following guarantees:

(i) To be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law;

(ii) To be informed promptly and directly of the charges against him or her, and, if appropriate, through his or her parents or legal guardians, and to have legal or other appropriate assistance in the preparation and presentation of his or her defence;

(iii) To have the matter determined without delay by a competent, independent and impartial authority or judicial body in a fair hearing according to law, in the presence of legal or other appropriate assistance and, unless it is considered not to be in the best interest of the child, in particular, taking into account his or her age or situation, his or her parents or legal guardians;

Also, see this CRS report on the current state of the Convention in the US.