Consistency has never been a key factor in US foreign policy. It doesn't matter if there's a Democratic president, or a Republican one, the double standard employed by both always been the same.
Take today, as an instance. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced sanctions against eight Iranian officials for human rights violation following a crackdown on protesters after last year's elections. On the surface it sounds good, not just more posturing designed to soften the television watchers up for an attack on Iran.
In the meantime, the UNHRC says Israel used incredible violence against a Gaza Aid flotillaviolated international law by storming the flotilla and killing nine human beings, including an American in execution-style killings, and what does our country do? It criticizes the report as 'unbalanced'. The truth is, the only thing unbalanced is our foreign policy, which seeks to condemn one act of brutality, while defending another.
Now one case is set to go to the International Criminal Court, which the US opposes, mainly because between Iraq, Afghanistan, and the crackdown on the Gaza strip, American-Israeli exceptionalism rules the day. We can torture, kill, and maim whom ever we so please, as we are better than the people living over all those preciou natural resources the Corporate Idiocracy needs to keep it's followers happy and buying more useless things, giving up their time and money to make the incredibly wealthy, more incredibly wealthier.
I don't suspect this will end anytime too soon.
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5 comments:
Why would it end? This lopsided foreign policy is working so well for the oligarchs; they'd have no incentive to change anything.
I'm not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, but because of what I'm about to say, I'm sure some would call me both.
The unhealthy truth is that the financial industry is the biggest and dominant sector of our economy. Jewish people are very prominent in the financial industry. Many Jews also have a lot of political clout, both as bloc voters and campaign contributors, and they're understandably very pro-Israel.
What they have become is the new third rail of American politics. For fear of being tarred as anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, or both, no one in politics is willing to go very far in crossing them.
Special interests are integral to our political system, and I don't claim there's anything deliberately subversive or different about Jewish people building and using clout. What's unhealthy is the widespread fear of open discussion by policy makers of things Jews might not like, and overdoing the kid-gloves treatment of Israel.
Having little to say about what happened to the flotilla is one example of this, and I'm not sure in the long run it's even good for Israelis.
Jews are like the rest of us. They have their economic elite and militaristic authoritarians with disproportionate political leverage just like every other mostly white, non-muslim, non-Native American, non-African Americans do. Both AIPAC and Evangelicals have way more influence than they should have.
America's political/economic system is unjust. "Equality" is the myth required for it to appear as legitimate.
I, for one, won't accuse you of being "anti-Semitic" for the simple reason that most American Jews are not Semites. Most of the Russian settlers in the West Bank who are causing this new round of problems are neither religiously Jewish or ethnically Semitic. I'm not going to continue using this term just because FBI special agent Abraham Foxman, some illiterate Neo-Nazis in the US and semi-literate "socialist-anarchist" Barbie doll Anti-Racist Action clones think American and European Jews are "semitic." Call professor of history at Tel Aviv University Shlomo Sand if you want to argue the details.
Fuck Islam, "Christianity" and Judaism. Ya basta! it's John Lennon's birthday tomorrow!
The double standards are glaring.
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