Sometimes Europe seems pretty good regarding our invasions, especially when they have no dog in the fight. The French press was good on our invasion of Vietnam, but not on their own. Europe has its own imperial past and a lot of the attitudes and fallout still exist.

Several European countries are drifting rightward despite the fact that the left is largely responsible for a reasonable life-style for the majority. The left seems to be stymied by influx of immigration from the former colonies. To some extent, they have hit the wall when it comes to accepting cultural differences.

In Europe, the struggle to enforce human rights is still a struggle and racism is not gone. It would probably be different if we were kidnapping and torturing Swedes.

Good post, deepa! If we used Chomsky's 'journalist from Mars' thought experiment, but deprived the Martian of the benefit of language, leaving him only to observe behavior, when exactly would he say slavery ended in the West?

The power of descriptive words for de facto power relationships is mostly of an aspirational nature. Magna Carta was only for the six guys with their daggers to the king's throat, not for everyone. As their descendants multiplied, more folks laid claim to those rights.

Recent elections in the U.K. and Italy ought to show that Europe can't be held up as an example.

Hey Bubbasouth; if the Bill of Rights is gone, when was it here? I always liked complaining about Jimmy Carter's terrible human rights record because he spoke so well while doing the wrong thing, and with that wonderful accent!

How long will they let this internet thing keep going when it is being used for communication that is clearly outside the acceptable range of public discourse? Probably right up until folks start organizing non-violent direct action across national and regional borders.

"Collusion between European Union governments and a secret US torture and kidnapping programme has damaged the EU's efforts to promote human rights throughout the world"

This is a shameful, continuous promotion of the imperial myths that the European countries (and the US) are the champions of human rights and honor the human rights of peoples in "other" countries, forgetting its imperial and colonial past and dehumanising some peoples as reflected in slavery and slave trade.

The principal concept in the ideology of enslavement and exploitation has been the concept of right. Some people gave themselves the right to own and manipulate some others. The slave owners did not actually deny their slaves their rights, but they simply did not consider the concept of right to be applicable to them at all. Slaves were conceived of as merely objects or some kind of creatures: "The definitive characteristics of slaves are as follows; their labor or services are obtained through force, their physical beings are regarded as the property of another person, their owner, and they are entirely subject to their owners will. Since early times the slaves have been largely defined as things, therefore they could among other possibilities be bought, sold, traded, given as gifts or pledged for a debt by their owner, usually without any recourse to personal or legal objection or restraint."

Those subjected to slavery had to be dehumanized ideologically by creating and maintaining an inferior self-image within them and virtually by forcing them to live in inhumane conditions thereby hampering the development of their human potential. Slave owners were concerned about the physical fitness of their slaves as long as it contributed to their labor productivity and their resale value. They did not only pay no heed to the mental development of their slaves, but prohibited any activities that may lead to such development, for example education. Slaves were considered non-human or at best less human.

Thus human beings were classified into two major categories: those who were considered human beings, and another group who were considered outside of the circle of humanity. The history of the human rights movement in the Europe and the US is then the history of the rights of the free and powerful who considered themselves human and denied humanity to others. The concept of right does not apply to the non-human group. Rights during the Greek city-states, the Roman Empire and medieval times were conferred upon free citizens. Medieval theology held that infidels and barbarians are not entitled to humanistic considerations. Declarations of rights such as the Magna Carta in 1215 and the U.S declaration of independence in 1776 were for free citizens, not for all peoples.

The division of people into masters (free and human) and slaves (non-human) came to an end by the abolition of slavery as an institution and as a trade by different European countries and by the United States. However, the ideology behind it survived and flourished in the form of racism, which has been the ideology rationalizing colonialism. According to racist ideology, people are divided into superhuman and subhuman. Concepts such as savages, degenerates, barbarians, primitive, backward and underdeveloped have been used to dehumanize certain categories of people in order to make the concept of human rights inapplicable to them and to grant the right of their exploitation and even their extermination to the super human categories only. The Europeans had considered people in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the colonialist era as inferior races or subhuman, hence the concept of self-rule and self-determination does not apply to them. While the human rights movement was developing in the west, it did not occur to them that the rest of the world's countries had any claim to such rights. These other countries had to struggle to gain their own rights: their right for freedom. They had to struggle for recognition and equality. In the west one can talk about inequality or discrimination, but no one can talk about dehumanization in the west (one-fifth of the world population). The majority of the population in the rest of the world (four-fifths of world population) still lives under non-human conditions and hence is forced to dehumanization in reality and in consciousness. Most of these societies are raw material producers. They are former colonies of western countries who kept them for long as raw material producers and consumers for their industrial products. They have been deprived for long from the right to develop. After attaining their national independence they remained incorporated in the world system as dependent countries. In most of these countries, the state itself is subordinated and oppressed by European countries and the US and international political and economic regulations. The UN has been used by these human rights violators to dehumanize the "dependent" countries, and thus perpetuate the same ideology of slavery and slave trade: some (Americans and Europeans) are humans and the rest are sub-human beings or even outside the circle of humanity.

The entire republican party is nothing but a bunch of "spoiler"s determined to cause as much crap as they need to cause in order to get their own way.

canuckchuck: So true, so true. The EU is an artificial economic entity, based on greed and avarice. When the greedy boys get together at the various economic summits, they pride themselves in being able to make the "hard" choices unfettered by by emotional concerns like the deaths of thousands of innocents. All self-deception to salve the conscience.

Zoya, Orwell used the term vaporized. I quess that's about the same thing as having your atomic make up "liberated."

The truth is, governments run by rich people dont give a warm crap about human rights.

What is human rights any way? It is merely an attitude that we adopt towards the peoples we despise for personal, racial and or nationalistic aims.

I don't know what is more shameful: the US performing the "renditions" or the EU states who should have known better based on their history and told the US to get stuffed.

"You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists." Thus sayeth the emperor. Which means that either you implicate yourself in all our crimes, or you too will be "liberated."

Indeed. Only liberals and lefties care about human rights. Real men, successful men, rich men, powerful men could not care less. It's the triumph of Capital.

Since 1980, "human rights" has been said with a sneer, evoking an image of sqishy-softies. We should drop this tired cliche'. If you are cautious and lucky, you might evade the jackboot. Our bill of rights is gone, probably forever. Other countries? Forget about it.

The is West is the world champion in hypocrisy. Rest of the world already knows this.

"Does one dare hope...that human rights and dignity will be fashionable again?"

We can look forward to that when money goes out of fashion. Don't hold your breath in THESE United States.

Wow - they have been appallingly spineless on a number of issues - they're equally evil, just with more style.

That said, wouldn't it be something if the US and all its minions had a similar epiphany.

Does one dare hope the turnaround is beginning? that human rights and dignity will be fashionable again?

Most of the genocidal killing from the 15th century onwards has been an integral part of Europe's search for what the Germans famously called Lebensraum-living space. Lebensraum was a word coined by the German geographer and zoologist Freidrich Ratzel to describe what he thought of as the dominant human species' natural impulse to expand its territory in its search for not just space, but sustenance. This impulse to expansion would naturally be at the cost of a less dominant species, a weaker species that Nazi ideologues believed should give way, or be made to give way, to the stronger one. The idea of lebensraum was set out in precise terms in 1901, but Europe had already begun her quest for lebensraum 400 years earlier, when Columbus landed in America. The search for lebensraum also took Europeans to Africa: unleashing holocaust after holocaust. The Germans exterminated almost the entire population of the Hereros in Southwest Africa; while in the Congo, the Belgians' "experiment in commercial expansion" cost
10 million lives. By the last quarter of the 19th century, the British had exterminated the aboriginal people of Tasmania, and of most of Australia.

Sven Lindqvist, author of Exterminate the Brutes, argues that it was Hitler's quest for lebensraum-in a world that had already been carved up by other European countries-that led the Nazis to push through Eastern Europe and on toward Russia. The Jews of Eastern Europe and western Russia stood in the way of Hitler's colonial ambitions. Therefore, like the native people of Africa and America and Asia, they had to be enslaved or liquidated. So, Lindqvist says, the Nazis' racist dehumanisation of Jews cannot be dismissed as a paroxysm of insane evil. Once again, it is a product of the familiar mix: economic determinism well marinated in age-old racism, very much in keeping with European tradition of the time.

The myth of the oppressor and exploiter is clearly expressed by the French advocate of colonialism Jules Harmand: "It is necessary, then, to accept as a principle and point of departure the fact that there is a hierarchy of races and civilizations, and that we belong to the superior race and civilization, still recognizing that, while superiority confers rights, it imposes strict obligations in return. The basic legitimation of conquest over native peoples is the conviction of our superiority, not merely our mechanical, economic, and military superiority, but our moral superiority. Our dignity rests on that quality, and it underlies our right to direct the rest of humanity. Material power is nothing but a means to that end."