Robert Parry: Bush to World: Up Is Down

[babylonsister]

Bush to World: Up Is Down

By Robert Parry
September 25, 2007

George W. Bush – who asserts his unlimited personal authority to kill, kidnap, torture and spy on anyone of his choosing anywhere in the world – opened his annual speech to the United Nations by hailing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The U.S. President pushed the envelope of the world’s credulity even further by citing the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of 1948 as justification for his “war on terror” and his draconian policies for eliminating “terrorists” or other threats to world order with little or no due process.

“Achieving the promise of the Declaration requires confronting long-term threats; it also requires answering the immediate needs of today,” including destruction of terrorist networks and “bringing to justice their operatives,” Bush said in his Sept. 25 address to the United Nations.

However, Bush’s vision of his near-divine right to smite whomever he judges to be a dangerous enemy flies in the face of the actual Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, Bush must assume that no one in the American press will bother to even check what those rights entail.

If U.S. journalists did pull up a copy of the Declaration, they would find that among its 30 proclaimed rights are these:

--“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

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

--“Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

--“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”

--“Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.”

-- “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.”

--“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

--“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

--“Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”

more...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/092507.html

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1. kicked and recommended

excellent piece that EVERY US journalist should be reading.