Human Rights Day

The champions of democracy and human rights -- the "West" -- and their lamentable weapons of mass democracy, the media, have managed again to spectacularly bludgeon any sense of decency they may be in possession of. Yes, today, though you'd never know from reading BBC News Online, CNN, Le Monde, Sueddeutsche Zeitung (though they've managed to cover the earth-shattering news of the birthday of the 'Master of Trash Talk, Larry "Tweety" Bird' ), or any number of "reputable" Western media institutions, is International Human Rights Day.

How fitting that Pinochet -- a known war criminal, who like most war criminals in history gets away with murder -- should exit our world on such a memorial to the sanctity of human life, no? How even more fitting that not one of these major "Western" news outlets troubled themselves to remind their readers of the irony of Pinochet's passing on such a day.

What a debasement of the concept of human rights it is that one day must be set aside each year to remind the world that human rights are still predominantly unrecognized and disrespected, and that humanity is still far from appreciating human rights as anything less than second nature. Human rights are the inherent, inviolable rights that each and every human being is born with: the right to health, education, nourishment, due process and equality under the law, and the most misunderstood and overlooked one of all: respect as an individual human being.

Human rights day is everyday, not just today...