One institution that was not surprised was a body formed in New York in 1941 to fight Nazism, fascism, communism and totalitarianism in all its forms - Freedom House. From its birth, Freedom House illustrated its independence by having as its co-founders Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband's Republican opponent in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie.
It has continued to devote its resources to monitoring and measuring political rights and civil liberties on a global basis. Factors taken into account are free and fair elections, freedom of association, freedom from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, freedom of speech, free trade unions, the rule of law and the basic human rights that democracies throughout the world take for granted.
In 1973, Freedom House began its annual survey that rates every country according to a series of freedom indicators. The survey has a seven-point scale for both political rights and civil liberties with one being the best and seven the worst. The average determines the overall status with the free scoring 1 to 2.5, the partly free 3 to 5.0 and those countries who are not free scoring 5.5 to 7.0.
The organisation's most recent report Freedom In The World, 2011 - The Authoritarian Challenge To Democracy, was scathing in its comments on the backward movement in China (the appalling treatment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo); Egypt (Hosni Mubarak's 95 per cent vote in his last election); Belarus (Alexander Lukashenko's 80 per cent vote in its election); Venezuela (pretty well everything); Russia (corruption, arrest and murder of journalists, activists and those opposing the government and the sentencing of regime critic and former oil magnate Mikhail Khordorovsky).
The regional pattern of freedom makes for interesting reading. In the Americas 24 (69 per cent) are free, 10 (29 per cent) are partly free and one (3 per cent) is not free. In Western Europe 24 (96 per cent) are free, one (4 per cent) is partly free and none is not free.
In the Asia-Pacific 16 (41 per cent) countries are free, 15 (38 per cent) are partly free, and eight (21 per cent) are not free. In Central and East Europe/former Soviet Union 13 (45 per cent) countries are free, nine (31 per cent) partly free and seven (24 per cent) are not free.
In the Middle East and north Africa only one (6 per cent) country is free, three (17 per cent) are partly free and 14 (78 per cent) are not free. In sub-Saharan Africa nine (19 per cent) countries are free, 22 (46 per cent) are partly free and 17 (35 per cent) are not free.
The figures illustrate that freedom is very strong in the Americas and western Europe, where only one country is classified as not free, in contrast with the tyranny that reigns throughout the Middle East where only one country is considered free - Israel. Sub-Saharan Africa with 17 countries out of 48 that are not free is better, but only just.
The terms used to describe the three categories are a little insipid. They don't come close to describing the appalling oppression that rules most Middle Eastern and sub-Saharan countries where elections are rigged, dissidents are persecuted, jailed, tortured and often executed. The executive, without the rule of law, has total control of its citizens resulting in regimes where women are treated as 10th-rate citizens, homosexuals and adulterers are often executed and corruption is rife. Westerners find it impossible to imagine what life is like in such brutal regimes.
What is bizarre is that the United Nations not only ignores the absence of basic human rights in these countries but has devoted more than half of its condemnatory resolutions (more than 400) to one country - Israel.
Forty seven out of 194 rated not free is bad enough but it gets worse. Freedom House now has two "unofficial" sub-categories: the worst of the worst - Belarus, Chad, China, the Ivory Coast, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, South Ossetia, Syria and Western Sahara - and the worst of the worst of the worst - North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Libya, Sudan, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Somalia and Tibet (under Chinese jurisdiction). These are vile, thuggish regimes who brutally oppress their own people with but one goal - to stay in power. They don't tolerate genuine elections for if they did they would be out on their ear. Those who have defended or ignored this thuggery are now doing the greatest volte face in history as one country after the other in the Middle East rebels against dictatorships.
Which begs the question. Why did they remain silent all those years? How did the "geniuses" in our universities, the media, trade unions and politics get conned by the propaganda of the Palestinians and their Arab cohorts? Was it stupidity, ideology and bribery or just the latest fad of the cafe latte set who searched to find something to replace their love affair with the Soviet Union and its satraps when they collapsed in 1989? Many gravitated towards the Greens as another means of attacking capitalism. How could those who claim to be committed to propagating basic human rights close their eyes to the denial of them in 47 countries and concentrate their efforts on the one country where such rights exist? Their hypocrisy is breathtaking. If they were serious about alleviating the plight of the oppressed they would have been equally loud in their condemnation of the 47 countries that are not free.
Those involved in the boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel will tell you that the dispute is different and complex. It is nothing of the sort. The day the Arab/Muslim countries accept Israel's right to exist and end their oft-repeated goal of destroying Israel will be the day when there is genuine peace in the Middle East.
To pretend the proposals being put forward by the Palestinians and their supporters are a peaceful solution is ignorance, stupidity or blatant anti-semitism. Solve that problem and they can then turn their attention to the 47 countries that have no basic human rights.
