21st Century Wire says…
A truly shocking a state of affairs all around.
Back in 2010, the world could see the UK government pushing hard towards formalizing an Orwellian-style police state, as outlined at the time in their own “Strategic Defence and Security Review”. New measures allowed the government to grant unlimited powers to Britain’s security services and police forces to spy on every citizen who uses a phone or the internet.
“We will introduce a programme to preserve the ability of the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to obtain communication data and to intercept communications within the appropriate legal framework.”
In its annual ‘State of the World’s Human Rights’ assessment published this week, Amnesty International blasted the Conservative-led ‘Coalition’ government for failing on basic civil and human rights standards, effectively wiping out 70 years of progress, as reported by The Independent newspaper (see report below).
These two quotes in particular, cast a very long shadow over Great Britain in 2015:
Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, said: “The UK is going in the wrong direction on rights, protections and fairness. Public safety is paramount, but not at the cost of basic civil liberties.
The shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, told The Independent: “The belligerent attitude of the Tories towards human rights, access to justice and the rule of law is doing real damage to our international reputation.”
While the human rights assessment speaks clearly on issues regarding the UK domestic setting, its attempt to advocate foreign policy is somewhat confusing, if not misguided. Many of the points made by Amnesty International are welcome in terms of preservation of human rights, especially in a key European nation state like the UK, however, other points made in their assessment are somewhat puzzling, because they clearly advocate for increased military intervention, presumably from NATO forces – in Syria and the Ukraine in particular – which seems to be based on the extremely naive assumption that somehow western bombs and guns will “prevent atrocities” in those countries. Aside from the reference to Gaza and Palestine (illegally occupied, under military control by Israel), employing the other two examples, Syria and Ukraine, fails to acknowledge the fact that both of those conflicts are being externally fueled by the US and NATO. The Independent writes:
“The global report also condemns world leaders for failing to intervene in conflicts such as Syria, Gaza and Ukraine, in what it calls a “catastrophic year” for millions of people caught up in violence.”
“Amnesty called on the UN Security Council to renounce its veto power – wielded solely by the five permanent members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US – to make it easier for peacekeeping forces to be deployed to prevent genocide or mass atrocities.”
Obviously, Amnesty did not consider UN Resolution 1973 for Libya in 2011 and how it led to a US-NATO fraudulent “humanitarian intervention” there, based on the false pretext that Gaddafi was gunning down his own people when in reality the Libyan leader was trying to contain a foreign-backed uprising and power grab there (as is the case with Syria now). In the end, the NATO bombing campaign and NATO-backed insurgency killed some 30,000 Libyans and leaving the country permanently destabilized to this day.
The truly hard hitting conclusions, however, haven’t been delivered by any of the ‘officials’ quoted in the article below, but rather by a member of the public in the comment section. ‘Frankly Speaking’ had these words to offer:
“You are so blind that you fail to see that Churchill and other esteemed Brits were behind the push to have this Human Rights Act in place after the horrors of WW2. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the more recent invention of the EU, it’s completely disconnected from the EU process. Rather, it’s got everything to do with protecting every man, woman and child in England and every other country signed up to it from being shat on by totalitarian leaders and governments, or those that aspire to become that.”
The UK Bill of Rights will become perverted by the corrupt and self-serving politicians, just like so many other important laws in Britain, and the likes of GCHQ and the handlers of the Police State will continue to run amok with British hard-won freedoms and risk moving us ever closer to an Orwellian state. Even Putin has not moved nor proposed to take Russia out of the Human Rights Act; that’s how perverse this proposal is from Cameron and his fascist handlers.”
Strong words, but sadly, all true…
Britain is leading the charge against basic human rights, Amnesty claims
Paul Gallagher
The Independent
