UK, BNA tala um mannréttindi þegar þeim hentar ?

Útdrátt úr grein í The Guardian, eftir Kishore Mahbubani, föstudaginn 28. mars 2008 : 

The sermons of cowards

The west is squandering authority on democracy and human rights: it fails to practise as it preaches

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/28/humanrights 

Something remarkable has happened in the struggle for greater freedom and democracy. The world's most powerful nation and the traditional beacon for democracy, the United States, has slid backwards. ( Klippaði burt texta um Indonesíu ) 

The first flaw of western discourse is its inability to practise what it preaches in this respect: to speak truth to power. This is revealed in the reluctance of western governments to discuss the most catastrophic reversal in the field of human rights: the decision by the US government to defend the use of torture. In the evolution of human rights there have been two quantum leaps: the first was the universal abolition of slavery; the second, the move towards abolishing torture

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Breyting : Tók út texta sem talaði um að Indónesía sé að gera stór framfaraskref  í lýðræðisátt. Textahöfundurinn útskýrði það ekki, og í öðrum fréttum sýnist mér koma fram að nýja lýðræðið þar standi mjög höllum fótum  - eins og kemur fram t.d. í þessa grein sem google fann handa mér...