RADICAL TRANSPARENCY
WHY WE NEED AN AMENDMENT TO THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS.
11 October 2013
The epic human journey: part 4, autumn
Adbusters
They lied to us about Mossadegh in Iran.
They lied to us about the premise for entering Vietnam.
They lied to us about the murder of Allende in Chile,
the
history of intervention in Haiti and Cuba,
the back-room deals to buy and sell
drugs, guns and dictators in Central America and beyond.
And of course they lied to us about Afghanistan, about Iraq,
about Libya, about Syria.
Chances are they’re lying to us about Egypt right now.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS BARELY A TEEN
AND ALREADY IT IS AS
OBSCENE,
VIOLENT AND ARROGANT
AS ITS OLDER BROTHER 100 YEARS BEFORE.
Even in the past ten years, the same mistakes, the same
carnage, the same lies, repeat like a flipping cathode ray television screen.
Lie.
Stall. Lie. Stall. Lie. Stall. And if that doesn’t work, lie
and stall some more.
It was no small happening that on the same day that Chelsea
Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) was handed a 35-year sentence for exposing
American war crimes in Iraq, former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak was freed
from a Cairo prison and the democratically elected, now ousted, Mohamed Morsi
was left in a secret cell.
This type of serendipity is indicative of the deep culture
of secrecy pervading geopolitics today.
WHO BENEFITS FROM THIS OBSESSIVE SECRECY?
CERTAINLY NOT THE HALF MILLION DEAD CIVILIANS IN IRAQ.
NOR THE TWO MILLION CIVILIANS KILLED IN VIETNAM DURING THE
COLD WAR.
Nor the innumerable victims who have died in the blowback
from the long list of covert actions conceived in secret and fought in
darkness.
Even the dead are told that it was for their own good, that
somehow things could have been even worse.
And, of course, we’ll never really know what could have
happened, because we, the people, are always left in the dark.
How many ghostly and fake Al Qaeda threats and foiled terror
attacks have we witnessed since the Snowden revelations alone?
THE RECENT AMERICAN EMBASSY CLOSURE PANIC
WAS NOTHING MORE
THAN A SAD REHASHING OF THE TERROR-TEMPERATURE CHART THAT WAS BROADCAST ON
AMERICAN TELEVISION
IN THE EARLY YEARS AFTER 9/11
(recall the
"chances of a Bin Laden attack" craze).
Looking back, it brings a smile. But don’t be too quick to
laugh. It would be comical if there weren’t so many of us who are still duped
by these very same tactics … who are actually swayed to hate the Mannings and
the Snowdens out there … the very people trying to pull back the curtain of
secrecy.
SO WHY DO WE STILL BELIEVE OUR LEADERS WHEN THEY SAY “TRUST
US”?
Why do we still wait in eager anticipation for them to read
from carefully crafted scripts that they don't even write?
The answer is simple: we don’t know any better.
And why
don’t we know any better?
Why do we continue to live in the dark?
Another simple answer:
OUR GOVERNMENTS ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO LIE TO US.
Totalitarian or democratic, East or West, it’s written into
every state constitution in the world.
And each time a government is given a
mandate, we participate in the farce … we reaffirm that, contrary to what we
tell our children, lying isn’t so bad after all.
IF WE ARE EVER GOING TO ESCAPE
THE 21ST CENTURY
WITH LESS
BLOODSHED THAN THE 20TH CENTURY,
WE’RE GOING TO HAVE
TO STRIP OUR GOVERNMENTS
OF THE RIGHT TO LIE TO US CITIZENS.
In this information
age, where gigatons of information zips around the globe each second, and where
the geopolitical, financial and ecological stakes are so high,
we need a new
human right
… one that is stamped into the first article of every state
constitution, one that needs to become the centrepiece of the United Nations
Charter.
The UN was created in the aftermath of the two most
traumatic and disturbing wars of all time.
Auschwitz. Dresden. Hiroshima.
These atrocities made the battlefields and massacres of
Gettysburg, Sevastopol and Waterloo a century earlier look like a track and
field warm up.
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was penned in
1948, it was based on the belief that without basic human rights, violence, war
and genocide were sure to continue, if not flourish, into the future.
The
resounding and hopeful spirit of “Never Again” led the way.
It was a
groundbreaking moment for the human spirit. A moment that, unfortunately, never
had a chance to fly.
SO LONG AS ELITES AND POWERFUL FORCES
ARE ABLE TO CONCOCT
WARS
AND GEOPOLITICS IN SECRET,
WE, THE PEOPLE,
WILL NEVER SEE A DAY OF PEACE ON EARTH.
Not even a single minute in fact … likely not even a second.
Aggression, hatred, greed, jealousy and fear may be the
ingredients of war,
but SECRECY IS THE HEAT THAT IT NEEDS TO RISE … THE FUEL
that
turns the disapproving into blind followers.
So long as secrecy prevails as a fundamental right of
states,
peace, unity and brotherhood will always remain dreams …
increasingly
jaded ones.
In the spirit of 1945 and 1948, we propose the following
amendment to the UN Charter,
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to
every constitution of every country in the world:
