If this is Hope, give me despair

...at least it's more honest.

Today, in Wellington, the representatives of a regime that promised a new era of "Hope" and "Change" are brow beating the rest of the world into submission. So, it's business as usual. The bastardised version of the Munroe Doctrine is yet again being used to further the very narrow goals of self interested, US based, lobbies.

As Michael Geist points out the US Trade Representative is demanding that other nations dance to its own secretive tune and to its own agenda. Haven't we suffered eight years of this sort of idiocy from the Bush administration? Wasn't the Obama regime supposed to herald a new era of multilateralism?

The NZOSS has been campaigning with others against ACTA for a number of years. Perhaps it too optimistic to believe that the words "change" and "hope" would apply to this as well as other US dealings?

Politicians need to be made accountable for their words and actions. The Wellington Declaration is one way of trying to do that. So, let's keep a "glimmer of hope" shining and keep signing.