A squalid piece of co-operation

Now I seem, inadvertently, to be knocking the United States of late in my political pieces on this blog so I won't do it in this one - well not exactly. However I share the anger of the Council of Europe in its damning report, published today, condemning all the European member states who allowed the CIA to operate rendition flights on their territory. One of the countries thus condemned is, naturally, the United Kingdom.

The report, extremely critical of the whole US policy in dealing with terrorism through circumnavigating its own constitution, has damned Britain, Italy and Germany, and 11 others, for allowing its air space knowingly to be used by these flights which, according to the report, are strictly in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights. They point out, correctly, that the nation which built principles safeguarding human rights into its Constitution, cynically chose to avoid having to exercise those safeguards by building Guantanamo and other 'black holes' where people could be taken for interrogation and torture well outside the remit of the US constitution and of prying international eyes.

The fact that the British could wittingly go along with this policy, providing landing and take off facilities for such a nefarious purpose while pretending not to know anything about them fills me with disgust. Of course all the justifications are trotted out, 'Islamic threat so great that all tactics are justified', 'one has to balance security and liberty' etc etc.



Much of this is bullshit. I do not accept that the threat posed by Islamic terrorists justifies the jettisoning of hundreds of years of laws which safeguard the human being in favour of some archaic principle of 'take him somewhere secret and beat the crap out of him'.

Until every nation respects international human rights for everyone - even Islamic terror suspects - the anger and discontent within the Muslim community at these Stalinist tactics will simply simmer and grow until there is a world wide conflagration. Human rights for everyone - like the sticker about the puppy - are not just there for Christmas. They are there for life.