Lisbon, Egalitie, Fraternitie?

The EU and its allies are now losing 50% of the votes in the UN Human Rights Commission to opponents of basic human rights led by an “Axis of Sovereignty”; a group of states who value the rights of the state over the rights of the people.  Ratifying the Lisbon Treaty wouldn’t have automatically stopped this slide in the defence of the human rights agenda, but it would certainly help. The sorry story of the EU’s failures is told in a report today from the European Council on Foreign Relations, which can be downloaded from its website.  It is sobering reading, and it brings home just how serious the threats to democracy and human rights are on a worldwide scale.  Of course, the fact that the American Empire is willing to ride roughshod all over some of the freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn’t help the EU to defend those rights. on the world stage, or assert a foreign policy based on those values. It is clear from the research behind the ECFR report that the struggle for democracy, for ‘libertie, egalitie, fraternitie’, or to  “guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally” is at a tipping point and if we if we don’t work for those values, they will become a minority and endangered position. Right now, at a practical level, it comes down to Europe not being able to provide enough helicopters for peacekeepers in Chad and Sudan; next month it will probably be some other shortfall of effort someplace else. Stop moaning about your house values for a moment, folks, and reflect on how important it is to have the right to moan about them without fear of being arrested by the local secret police for criticising the goverment.