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Taken from his essay on Counterpunch called Slouching Toward Global Disaster.
“Toxic Geopolitics
It is impossible to understand and explain such a disastrous failure of military interventionism without considering the effects of two toxic ‘special relationships’ formed by the United States, with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The basic feature of such special relationships is an unconditional partnership in which the Israelis and Saudis can do whatever they wish, including pursuing policies antagonistic to U.S. interests without encountering any meaningful opposition from either Washington or Europe.
This zone of discretion has allowed Israel to keep Palestinians from achieving self-determination while pursuing its own territorial ambitions via constantly expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, fueling grassroots anti-Western sentiment throughout the Arab world because of this persisting reliance on a cruel settler colonialist approach to block for seven decades the Palestinian struggle for fundamental and minimal national rights.
The special relationship with Saudi Arabia is even more astonishing until one considers the primacy of economic strategic priorities, especially the importance of oil supplied at affordable prices. Having by far the worst human rights record in the region, replete with judicially decreed beheadings and executions by stoning, the Riyadh leadership continues to be warmly courted in Western capitals as allies and friends. At the same time, equally theocratic Iran is hypocritically bashed and internationally punished in retaliation for its far less oppressive governing abuses.
Of course, looking the other way, is what is to be expected in the cynical conduct of opportunistic geopolitics, but to indulge the Saudi role in the worldwide promotion of jihadism while spending trillion on counter-terrorism is much more difficult to fathom until one shifts attention from the cover story of counter-terrorism to the more illuminating narrative of petropolitics. Despite fracking and natural gas discoveries lessening Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil, old capitalist habits persist long after their economic justifications have lapsed and this seems true even when such policies have become damaging in lives and financial burdens.”
-Richard Falk. Slouching Toward Global Disaster
Just a little peek into what fairness and equality means on the global scale. Take note of how the playing field is levelled instead of it being ‘level’ and one might start to see the patterns in our society and maybe start to question the conceptions of ‘equality’ when we are told things are ‘fine’.
We’ve legislated equality. We’re done now right?
Wrong Answer Binky; legislating equality is just the first tiny step, because equality has many parts to it, including justice and fairness. Illustrated below:
We’ll be heading in the right direction when women do not have to deal with garbage like this:
In 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then dispatched them into chat rooms. Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7.
–From the article Why Women Are Not Welcome on the Internet by Amanda Hess.
I recommend following the link and reading the article, it is very informative and details the experience of being female and possessing an online presence.
Wouldn’t it be nice if this is what Obama actually said? Quotes taken from the Counterpunch article by Uri Avnery
“No nation, great or small, can prosper for long without peace. War is the curse of mankind. It coarsens our spirit, consumes our resources, spreads death and destruction. In our time, with the development of ever more deadly means of mass destruction, war threatens our very existence.
Yet there seems to be among you a curious aversion to peace. Peacemakers are denounced as traitors or enemies. Even I have been termed a “Destroyer of Israel” because of my efforts at the beginning of my first term, to bring about peace between you and your neighbors.
I am told that in your recent election campaign, all parties studiously avoided the word “peace”. That sounds incredible to me. You need peace, perhaps more than any other people on earth.
I am also told that most Israelis, while longing for peace, strongly believe that “Peace is Impossible”. Peace is never impossible, if good men and women earnestly strive for it.
[…]
I did not come here to try and impose a peace plan on you.
Peace should not be imposed. It must flow from the heart. It must be approved by the mind.
Let me share with you, however, a few things that seem to me self-evident:
Peace must be based on what is commonly called the “two-state solution”. Two states for two peoples, for the Israelis and for the Palestinians.
It is not only the best solution – it is the only solution.
Those who bandy about other “solutions” are deluding themselves. There is no other solution.
There must be a Palestinian state, side by side with Israel. Your fathers and mothers were content with nothing less than a state of their own, and the Palestinians will not settle for anything less either. Freedom and independence under their own flag is the right of all human beings. You should be the first to understand that.
The State of Palestine must include all the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Any changes to the borders must be agreed between the two sides, and be of equal extent.
Jerusalem, this wonderful old city where we are meeting now, and which fills me with excitement, must be shared by the two peoples. What is Arab should be the capital of Palestine, what is Jewish should be the capital of Israel, recognized at long last by all.
The security of Israel must be safeguarded and guaranteed by the world, especially by the United States of America. And so should the security of Palestine.
Obviously, the millions of Palestinian refugees cannot return to Israel. Justice cannot be restored by imposing a new injustice on the present inhabitants. But we must make a great international effort to compensate the refugees generously, and at least a symbolic number should be allowed to exercise their Right of Return.
These peace terms have been lying on the table for a long time. The time has come – indeed, the time is long overdue – to turn them into a permanent peace treaty. The other Arab nations, whose commendable peace plan has also been lying on the table for many years, should be welcomed as partners in this effort.”
[…]
Let us not take lessons from the religiously addled with regards to running our justice system.
“An Iranian court has ruled that a man must lose his eye and part of an ear after he blinded and burnt an ear of another man in an acid attack . Judge Aziz Mohammadi gave the order against the man, who was only identified as Hamid, after convicting him of throwing acid on the victim, named as Davoud, hardline Kayhan newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The judge also ordered Hamid to pay blood-money for the burn injuries suffered by Davoud, who was 22 at the time of the attack, in a ruling issued under the Islamic Republic’s eye-for-an-eye justice code. Hamid told the court he had mistaken Davoud for a classmate who had bullied him in hfigh school, saying that even after moving, he remained tormented by the memory of the bullying.”
The Iranians will not be getting any bonus points for human rights any time soon if they continue with this sort of activity.
“The report, quoting other sources, including Iran’s Fars news agency, did not say whether the authorities would, in fact, carry out the punishment by using acid or via surgery.”
Wow. By surgery or by acid, so many wonderful options. How about imprisonment? How about monetary compensation? Or other options that do not involve maiming the individual in question.
Nothing like lawless mercenaries to brighten your international image and foreground your commitment to transparency, justice and the American Way.
Despite US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign promise to no longer award military contracts to Blackwater – the now renamed notorious security contractor – the US state department has recently awarded the company another lucrative contract.
“Blackwater was renamed Xe after a string of legal cases against the company in the US and in Iraq.
Wired.com reports that while neither Xe nor Blackwater appear on the list of eight firms hired for the Worldwide Protective Services contract (a group of contracts combined into one), one of the company’s fronts, International Development Solutions LLC (IDS) is on the list.
In total, the contract for all eight companies is worth up to $10bn.”
Well, nothing wrong with a share of 10 billion dollars. Wow, I bet a lot of schools could be build for 10 billion dollars. But we cannot go around letting the evildoers win, so sorry little bobby, no schooling for you after all recruits are needed for the Army.
“A press officer from the state department returned Al Jazeera’s call, but was unable to say what specific services IDS could provide and why, given Blackwater’s tarnished reputation, (which lead to the company’s name change in 2009) it was still eligible for such a contract.
She did, however, read out a prepared statement, indicating that while the state department is aware of IDS’s ties to Blackwater, that that fact was not prohibitive in accepting its bid.
“The contract was competed in accordance with the Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR),” read the statement.
“The FAR allows any company that is not been debarred or suspended to submit a proposal in response to an acquisition process based on full and open competition.”
Oh hey, we certainly cannot infringe on the market. That would be unseemly and more to the point, unethical. Everyone needs a fair chance to get paid by Uncle Sam and deal death in foreign lands. Nothing could go wrong with hiring out mercenaries to do your bidding…
“Two former Blackwater employees are currently on trial in the US on charges of murdering Afghan civilians and keeping human remains as trophies. The charges stem from a 2009 incident in Kabul.
In 2008, five Blackwater guards were charged in the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians, who were shot in Baghdad’s al-Nisoor Square in 2007. Those charges were ultimately dismissed.
Another employee of Triple Canopy – another contractor included in the new Worldwide Protective Services contract – was charged with killing at least one Iraqi after he fired into a civilian vehicle for “sport.”
Whoops! I guess things can go wrong, unless I’m getting the wrong “spin” on things but killing people for sport seems to be actions we like to attribute to official enemies as opposed to our own highly ethical and clean foreign slate.
One of the many tenets of Christianity that I strongly object to is the notion of Original Sin. Adam and Eve transgressed against the wishes of God, thus we (their descendants) are in need of saving, hence our reliance on Jesus and his crucifixion. It depends on the premise that responsibility and blame for evil acts are passed down from parent to child. For this post I will not focus on why such an idea is psychologically harmful (especially to children), although that would be a valid avenue of criticism. Instead, I think it would be more effective to just show why it is wrong.
Imagine that a man rapes and impregnates a woman. The rapist then escapes the authorities while the woman is left with child. Over the nine month gestation, the police hunt the rapist to no avail. As the mother gives birth to a son, the police get a lead on the infant’s biological father. Three weeks later the police raid the rapist’s hideout only to find that he had committed suicide via drug overdose mere hours before they arrived. At the scene they find a note where the rapist describes his life of murder, crime, and hedonism. Further, he wrote that after having committed all these atrocities, there were no more thrills left for him. And so he decided he best end his life pleasantly, lest someone else do it for him in a much less favorable manner.
What we have here is someone who has done many evil things, done nothing to make up for his misdeeds, and has escaped all punishment. He leaves behind two victims who are denied all forms of restitution, justice, and closure. This is, of course, one of the worst kinds of situations and I don’t pretend to know a good way to deal with it. But one way I know to be wrong would be to apply the principle of original sin.
If responsibility and blame are indeed passed from parent to child, then we need only go to the infant son to extract justice. If the sins of the father are the sins of the son, then the three week old baby is accountable for his mother’s rape. If original sin held true, the righteous thing to do would be to punish the newborn just as we would punish the rapist had he been caught.
If you agree with me that the previous paragraph’s conclusions are not only absurd, but monstrously unjust and immoral, then the same must be said of the Christian notion of original sin. No fair and just adjudicator would ever hold someone responsible for something that they did not do, let alone for something that happened before they came into existence. But that is what Christianity says that their god does. (a great reason to start indoctrinating your children early – ed. )
Here is another quick thought experiment. Think of the worst thing you have ever done in your life. Then categorize that misdeed with a word or short phrase like ‘neglect’ or ‘assault’, or ‘theft’, or ‘betrayal’. Now, would a just punishment for your category of transgression involve crucifixion? Do you think it would require someone to have their hands and feet nailed to planks of wood and then slowly, agonizingly asphyxiate to make up for any of the offences I just mentioned? Absolutely not. The fact is that no one human has ever done anything that deserved anything close to that kind of torture. Even if you believe that the absolute worst of history’s monsters deserve brutal punishment, those rare instances compose a negligible percentage of the population. The point being that humans, as a whole, are not evil beings and we certainly don’t deserve crucifixion or any other torturous punishment by default. But Christianity says that we are and that we do.
Of course, it has to. If we were not responsible for evil deeds done before our existence and we did not deserve a cruel fate, then we would have no need of a savior, no need for a messiah, and no need of Jesus or Christianity. If we are on the whole morally higher than rapists and child molestors (empirical evidence says we are), and if we are answerable only to our own deeds (reason and justice say we are) then the idea of original sin is aboration of truth, a mockery of rationality, and an assault on morality.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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