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America’s Democracy Hypocrisy

March 1, 2018

America’s Democracy Hypocrisy

In late February, Venezuela’s government began accepting presidential candidate registrations and announced a snap legislative election for April. The country’s opposition denounces the process as a sham and Maduro as a dictator, both of which may be true.

Oddly,  a third voice — the US government — also weighed in. Per US state media outlet Voice of America, “the United States, which under President Donald Trump has been deeply critical of Maduro’s leadership in crisis-torn and economically suffering Venezuela, on Saturday rejected the call for an early legislative vote.”

Given the perpetual public pearl-clutching over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, that’s some major league chutzpah.

The US State Department wants “‘a free and fair election’ involving full participation of all political leaders, the immediate release of all political prisoners, credible international observation and an independent electoral authority.

Let’s take that one at a time.

Participation of all political leaders? In some US states, it’s harder for a third party to get on a ballot than in, say, Iran.

The immediate release of all political prisoners? Last I heard, US president Donald Trump hadn’t pardoned (among others) Leonard Peltier.

Credible international observation? The US proper committed to admitting international election observers in the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s 1990 Copenhagen Document, but many US states forbid international observers or, for that matter, local observers who aren’t affiliated with one of the two ruling parties.

Electoral authorities? The two ruling parties control them all and routinely use them to suppress threatened competition, as do pseudo-private entities like the Commission on Presidential Debates, which makes giant illegal (but government approved) in-kind contributions to the Republican and Democratic candidates in the form of televised candidate beauty pageants which exclude the opposition parties.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia Blamed for the Eastern Ghouta Crisis: the West’s Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

February 25, 2018

Russia Blamed for the Eastern Ghouta Crisis: the West’s Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

Russia Blamed for the Eastern Ghouta Crisis: the West’s Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

As usual, the West has demonstrated its ability to fire off a quick response when it comes to slamming Russia for something it has not done. This time it’s about Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb under terrorist control. The accusation? Russia and its ally Syria are guilty of killing innocent civilians, thanks to their “devastating” attacks and “siege-and-starve tactics.” It’s the same old story – no actions against terrorists are permissible because of the risk of collateral damage. The Western media have jumped on the anti-Russia bandwagon as readily as if they were orchestra members carefully following the tempo of their conductor’s baton. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley wasted no time chiming in.

One has to do some digging into the problem to see what’s really happening in Eastern Ghouta. It was reportedon Feb. 21 that talks to end the hostilities had broken down because the terrorists had refused to lay down their arms. The anti-government groups, including the notorious Al-Nusra(Hayat Tahrir al–Sham), have prevented civiliansfrom leaving this dangerous zone. They are obstructing the humanitarian operations of international aid agencies, such as the Red Cross and World Food Program. The UN has repeatedly expressed its concern over the situation in the region, urging that humanitarian access to the area be safeguarded.

The presence of armed jihadists in Eastern Ghouta, which is at the root of the problem, is never mentionedin Western press reports. The attacks on Russia’s embassy in Damascus, carried out by the same “guys” who are causing the suffering of civilians in Ghouta, receive little or no media attention.

Russian aircraft did not conduct air strikes on this suburb. The Western accusations are groundlessand offer no details. The Russian military has been involved in humanitarian efforts to help the refugees fleeing this dangerous area.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America’s Hypocrisy on Democracy 

October 5, 2017

America’s Hypocrisy on Democracy 

U.S. politicians often lecture other nations about their flawed governance as if American democracy is the gold standard, but anti-democratic measures like gerrymandering belie that self-image, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

An old fear about Islamist political parties entering government is that once in power, even if they had gained their position through democratic means, they would subvert democracy for the sake of maintaining power.

A 1812 political cartoon drawn in reaction to a new state senate election district in Massachusetts, created to favor the Democratic-Republican Party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry, whose name became attached to the concept of gerrymandering.

The U.S. government explicitly mentioned the specter of “one man, one vote, one time” in condoning in 1992 the Algerian military’s cancellation of the second round of a legislative election that the Islamic Salvation Front, which had won a plurality in the first round, was poised to win. The military’s intervention touched off a vicious civil war in which hundreds of thousands of Algerians died.

History has indeed offered examples of rulers coming to power through democratic means and then clinging to power through undemocratic means. Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany only after his Nazi Party had won pluralities in two successive free elections in 1932. But there is no reason to associate such scenarios with Islamists more so than with parties of other ideological persuasions.

A relevant modern data point is Tunisia, the one Arab country in which democracy took hold as a result of the Arab Spring. The Islamist Ennahdha Party won a free election in 2011 and formed a government but willingly stepped down in 2014 after it lost much of its public support, very much in the mold of how governments in parliamentary democracies in the West vacate office after losing the public’s confidence.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America, Crimea and the Dangers of Hypocrisy

March 2, 2017

America, Crimea and the Dangers of Hypocrisy

01.03.2017

America, Crimea and the Dangers of Hypocrisy

Washington’s record on forcible territorial change is exceedingly weak.

The Trump administration is continuing the policy of its predecessor regarding the Crimea issue. U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley is the latest official to confirm that point. In a speech on February 2, Haley emphasized that the United States intended to maintain economic sanctions against Russia until Moscow returned the peninsula to Ukraine. “Crimea is a part of Ukraine,” she stated bluntly. She reiterated Washington’s firm position in remarks to the UN Security Council on February 21.

That stance is nearly identical to the Obama administration’s policy. Former secretary of state John Kerry blasted Russia’s action from the outset. “You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he fumed. “Russia is in violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine. Russia is in violation of its international obligations.”

I’ve written elsewhere how the Trump administration’s stance on Crimea epitomizes the president’s rapid retreat from foreign-policy realism. But the Crimea case also illustrates a long-standing problem with U.S. foreign policy: a willingness to employ blatant double standards.

Numerous U.S. officials over the decades have insisted that territorial changes achieved through military force are illegitimate, and that Washington will not countenance such behavior. Crimea is merely the latest application of that policy. George H. W. Bush took an uncompromising stance regarding Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, and unlike the Obama and Trump administrations, even waged a war to reverse the result. Addressing a joint session of Congress to justify America’s entry into the Persian Gulf War, he stated: “A puppet regime imposed from the outside is unacceptable. The acquisition of territory by force is unacceptable.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s really very simple

July 27, 2015

It’s really very simple

There are times when a loud cry of “The emperor has no clothes!” can be most copacetic. And so, let me point out something quite simple, yet very important.

The old world order, to which we became accustomed over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, its crises and its problems detailed in numerous authoritative publications on both sides of the Atlantic—it is no more. It is not out sick and it is not on vacation. It is deceased. It has passed on, gone to meet its maker, bought the farm, kicked the bucket and joined the crowd invisible. It is an ex-world order.

If we rewind back to the early 1980s, we can easily remember how the USSR was still running half of Europe and exerting major influence on a sizable chunk of the world. World socialist revolution was still sputtering along, with pro-Soviet regimes coming in to power here and there in different parts of the globe, the chorus of their leaders’ official pronouncements sounding more or less in unison. The leaders made their pilgrimages to Moscow as if it were Mecca, and they sent their promising young people there to learn how to do things the Soviet way. Soviet technology continued to make impressive advances: in the mid-1980s the Soviets launched into orbit a miracle of technology—the space station Mir, while Vega space probes were being dispatched to study Venus.

But alongside all of this business-as-usual the rules and principles according which the “red” half of the globe operated were already in an advanced state of decay, and a completely different system was starting to emerge both at the center and along the periphery.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Obama’s Appalling Hypocrisy On Ukraine—–NATO Started It, Not Putin | David Stockman’s Contra Corner

November 20, 2014

Obama’s Appalling Hypocrisy On Ukraine—–NATO Started It, Not Putin | David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

For a man who had taken a stunning electoral blow two weeks earlier, Barack Obama completed his Asian trip with an air of unperturbed leadership of the world—whatever the Republicans at home thought about who was in charge of what now will happen in the United States.

The nation and its politicians have since the Cold War been so confident of American supremacy over the whole of Western civilization that not only allies have ceased to count but enemies. Americans are the leaders who make the decisions on how the world should work, even when this clearly is not what experience teaches, as one might think had been learned in recent years in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The president signed a carbon emissions agreement with China. He went to Myanmar hoping to bestow a gold star for merit on Aung San Suu Kyi but found it necessary to chide the generals in power in the country that they must do better in matters of human rights—at a moment when a scandalous forced expulsion of a Burmese Muslim minority was taking place. Another time for Madame Aung San Suu Kyi.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Rutherford Institute :: Are ‘We the People’ Useful Idiots in the Digital Age?

November 18, 2014

The Rutherford Institute :: Are ‘We the People’ Useful Idiots in the Digital Age?.

Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was “useful idiots” and it applied to a good many people who should have known better. I now propose a new, analogous term more appropriate for the age in which we live: useful hypocrites. That’s you and me, folks, and it’s how the masters of the digital universe see us. And they have pretty good reasons for seeing us that way. They hear us whingeing about privacy, security, surveillance, etc., but notice that despite our complaints and suspicions, we appear to do nothing about it. In other words, we say one thing and do another, which is as good a working definition of hypocrisy as one could hope for.—John Naughton,The Guardian

“Who needs direct repression,” asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?”

In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, “we the people” have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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