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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 539
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WCL 539 October 2006
Hypocrites united
The recent spectacle of a near-unanimous chorus of disapproval of North Korea gave one of the best examples of hypocrisy on a grand scale ever witnessed in the United Nations. That is not surprising, since the governments that constitute that institution are masters of the spin that so often includes hypocrisy as standard. But to anyone retaining a critical sense, it is yet another demonstration of how little the behaviour of the world's rulers is concerned with truth, justice or even reality and how much with the bolstering of their own nationalist and governmental powers.
For months the Iranian regime has been subjected to a barrage of propaganda attacks by the US and European governments. These political attacks have been aided by the use of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, which has the useful job of keeping a watch on the dispersion of nuclear technology and its increase. Unfortunately, in addition to the reasonable and truthful campaign waged against the acquisition of nuclear weapons by yet another state, the American and European governments have been declaring, or implying, that the Iranians have already breached the NPT or Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, for which no evidence has been produced.
Such propaganda may, of course, be simply designed to obscure the fact that the five permanent Security Council members that have nuclear weapons are themselves in breach of that treaty. Instead of working towards complete nuclear disarmament, as they committed themselves to do "in good faith", they have, instead continued to prepare for possible use of the weapons and in several cases, indefinite extension of their possession. They are even planning to develop nuclear weapons in utter contradiction of their pledges in the treaty.
Over in North Korea, where another but far less democratic regime has been working on nuclear weapons, some years of US and other Western power bullying has totally failed to halt the development of the weapons. Instead, there has been announced a test underground explosion. However, the North Koreans took the precaution of withdrawing from the NPT, as they had the legal right to do. Accordingly, they had as much, or as little right to make the weapons as did India, or Pakistan, or Israel, or indeed, as did the US, Britain, France, China and the former Soviet Union.
That is, of course, these governments had no legal prohibition on what they were doing, preparing and making weapons that could only be used in the most ghastly and inhumane way. The morality of such production was at best dubious and at worst totally depraved; and always has been and probably always will be. The human race may survive, but it will be in spite of the efforts of the governments ordering the production of such weapons of mass destruction. The nationalists who find specious reasons to defend construction of such weapons of mass destruction may satisfy themselves: no world citizen can do so.
Of course, none of this makes the North Korean action any more welcome or reasonable, but it does render the behaviour of the worlds' rulers odious. The United States and the other five long-time nuclear bandits which are already in breach of the NPT by failing to disarm or to negotiate disarmament "in good faith" show no intention of changing their policies. The World Court has given a clear ruling that the use of nuclear weapons would be illegal under international law in almost any conceivable circumstances.
So the United States, the only state that has ever used nuclear weapons to destroy human beings - in two Japanese cities - leads a troupe of governments to condemn North Korea and subject that state to sanctions. The US is waging an illegal war in Iraq with Britain, its servile ally in tow. But the US is also the power with the most - nuclear weapons. And the others voting in the pack include all the nuclear powers, which all built those weapons clandestinely, ready to ignore the condemnation of the sort they are now heaping upon North Korea. Such hypocrisy is monument.
John Roberts
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