David Cameron makes speech on human rights at Foreign Press Association

David Cameron makes speech on human rights at Foreign Press Association; - Of course it was never as simple as that. Not every regime supported by the Western democracies was really on the right side of the line. In Latin America and in South Africa, there were regimes tolerated if not positively sponsored by NATO countries which fell very far short of anything that could remotely be described as the path of truth and light. - But we consoled ourselves that we were basically the good guys because we were on the side of liberty, democracy and the rule of law. Some of the people we had to deal with in order to maintain an alliance against tyranny and torture might not have been very wholesome, but at least we were fundamentally on the 'right side'. And of course there were things we just didn’t do. Today, even the appearance of that simplicity has gone. - It was shocking for those who recently heard a BBC broadcast where three torturers reflected on what they now felt about how they had behaved that one of them came from the United States of America. Whilst it was great to see that both Barack Obama and John McCain campaigned against torture in the recent elections we have to ask ourselves: how did it come to this? - I think it is important to understand that it didn’t happen because of malevolent intentions. It happened because people with good intentions and in a position of unparalleled power persuaded themselves that, for the sake of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the ends had to be allowed to justify 'more robust' means. - It wasn’t evil intentions, but an attempt to protect our way of life, that caused the slide into water-boarding and Guantanamo Bay. So we should let this latest reminder of the dangers of the end justifies the means approach serve as a new wake up call to recognise just how much the UN Declaration on Human Rights really matters. - Because what the Declaration is really about is a statement of some absolute values. ...
David Cameron makes speech on human rights at Foreign Press Association; - Of course it was never as simple as that. Not every regime supported by the Western democracies was really on the right side of the line. In Latin America and in South Africa, there were regimes tolerated if not positively sponsored by NATO countries which fell very far short of anything that could remotely be described as the path of truth and light. - But we consoled ourselves that we were basically the good guys because we were on the side of liberty, democracy and the rule of law. Some of the people we had to deal with in order to maintain an alliance against tyranny and torture might not have been very wholesome, but at least we were fundamentally on the 'right side'. And of course there were things we just didn’t do. Today, even the appearance of that simplicity has gone. - It was shocking for those who recently heard a BBC broadcast where three torturers reflected on what they now felt about how they had behaved that one of them came from the United States of America. Whilst it was great to see that both Barack Obama and John McCain campaigned against torture in the recent elections we have to ask ourselves: how did it come to this? - I think it is important to understand that it didn’t happen because of malevolent intentions. It happened because people with good intentions and in a position of unparalleled power persuaded themselves that, for the sake of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the ends had to be allowed to justify 'more robust' means. - It wasn’t evil intentions, but an attempt to protect our way of life, that caused the slide into water-boarding and Guantanamo Bay. So we should let this latest reminder of the dangers of the end justifies the means approach serve as a new wake up call to recognise just how much the UN Declaration on Human Rights really matters. - Because what the Declaration is really about is a statement of some absolute values. ...
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ITN
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December 08, 2008
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