High Hopes Replaced by Low Expectations

It’s the torture, see?

UK

In the UK, when Blair was first elected Prime Minister, the people in the country had such high hopes.  There were promises of an ‘end to sleaze’ and an ‘ethical foreign policy’.

Since those heady few weeks in the UK;

• We’ve had years of subterfuge and an erosion of freedoms on an unprecedented scale except perhaps following the Norman Conquest or during the purges of the Tudor period.
• We’ve had the mysterious deaths of civil servants and the accession to kidnap and torture at the behest of our allies.
• We have had an endless catalogue of tales of personal aggrandisement by our elected representatives gorging at the trough of the public purse.
• We’ve had financial waste and mis-management on a staggering scale.

So much for an end to sleaze.  So much for an ethical foreign policy.  John Smith and Robin Cook will be turning in their graves.

USA

And now in the USA, Obama has been suckered into the establishment line.  It’s only taken 100 days – wow, 3 and a half years left!  We had two stories about torture in rapid succession and various recent commentaries, notably from the biggest winner of the Iraq war, Dick Cheney.  Talk about personal gain…?

• Firstly, torture was supposed to have been small scale, but effective.  It got the results, apparently.
• Secondly, torture on some individuals was used hundreds of times. This also got results, apparently.

Now call me thick, but if someone ‘needs’ to be tortured hundreds of times, it’s not very effective, is it?

This means the victims were tortured for pleasure, because the two statements above are mutually exclusive – they can’t both be right!

Now, I’d like to say ‘bizarrely’,  but given past history from our democratic elected representatives into a society awash with vested interests, it’s got to be ‘not unexpectedly’, Obama isn’t doing anything about the perpetrators or instigators of these crimes against humanity.  It’s all being swept under the nice new carpet.

Obama has been suckered into the corporate establishment….  So;

• Torture?  OK!
• Personal and Corporate governance and financial accountability?  No way!
• Greenhouse gases?  Love ‘em!
• Same old car companies?  Of course!
• Surely the people won’t have to pay for corporate greed and mismanagement will they?   Of course they will!

It’s downhill all the way now.

Lets not forget that the whole Vietnam war fiasco was started and expanded under the Democratic administrations of Kennedy and Johnson?  Carpet bombing?  Napalm?   Democrats!

So welcome to the brave new world of flying drones in their thousands bombing civilians far away (death by computer game, anyone?).  Where government psychopaths are allowed to roam unchecked, stuffing their pockets with cash all the while.

I hope all the US voters who each chipped in their 100 dollar bills for Obama’s campaign think that it was all worthwhile.  For me, it looks like same old story, different cover.

Maybe Now is the Time to Move the UN?

Yes!  It’s a golden opportunity for the freedom loving nations of the world to pull up their roots and move the United Nations to somewhere safe – like Cuba or Norway.  Why?

Take a look at Article 5 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1948 and signed by the USA.  It reads:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

When it says no-one, it means no-one. It doesn’t say ‘except really really bad people, in our opinion’ in tiny letters afterwards.  It’s simply hypocritical that the UN seat should be in such a country that because of it’s might, can pick and choose which bits to uphold for itself and which bits to sling at others.

Please Note, Mr President;

• The Declaration is an all-or-nothing thing.
• It’s not to be picked about and simpered over.
• It’s not about comparative behaviour with the evil people of the world.
• It’s an absolute statement made by people in 1948 who had plenty of time to think about evil and plenty of first hand experience to back it up.

See:

• They Waterboarded Him 183 Times In One Month – The Daily Dish
• Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects – New York Times

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