ordinary decent criminal standard

Another round in the circular argument:

It is also unhelpful that Zimbabwe has been singled out for condemnation while a blind eye is turned to other undemocratic states such as Angola, Nigeria, Gabon, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea and Uganda.

The west's failure to apply human rights standards evenly results in stauncher claims to sovereignty in Africa. The danger lies in the fact that some of these claims are pretexts for internal repression. The west can aid Africa's evolution from regarding sovereignty as sacrosanct by desisting from duplicitous international politics.

The problem with the human rights led approach to international politics is that a) it encourages dictators to hang on because it lessens the chance that they will be able to retire somewhere safe with the loot and b) it encourages the merely grotesque to support the actively horrible because should the same standards be applied impartially, then who knows where that will lead. So you get an effective state of impasse which in turn leads ineluctably to the prospect of military intervention.

Of course, such standards will in practice not be applied impartially, which maybe means that we should have different standards. And given that so many regimes across the world operate, domestically or internationally, approximately to the standards of organized crime, then perhaps we should operate the same standards that organized criminals use to assess and deal with their loose cannon.

Call it the Ordinary Decent Criminal standard: “We the undersigned ordinary decent criminals of Angola, Gabon, Egypt etc hereby declare that Sir Robert Mugabe is a right fucking nonce and a headcase who generally stinks up the neighbourhood and makes the rest of us ODC’s look bad. He's nothing to do with us, guv. Hanging’s too good for the bastard.”

Of course, values of Ordinary Decent Criminal can expand to include those governments which have head counts every few years. One of the advantages of this approach is that it acknowledges that the moral high ground does not really exist, except as an aspiration.

If only Lucky Luciano was alive today and running the UN…