Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Let there be no mistake: this is by no means a criticism of human rights as an ideal to work for. The complete title should be “Open letter to those who invoke human rights selectively in order to justify the Western Powers’ policy of intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.”
Comments
A couple snips.
by A Guy Called LULU on Wed, 01/04/2017 - 2:11pm
Flawed - "non-intervention" isn't gospel or only principle on the table even though it should be resisted due to easy misuse.
Non-intervention is what South Africa asked to protect its apartheid atrocity and what southern states invoked withe "states' rights" to prolong discrimination instead of the Civil Rights act.
Rwanda was an "intervention" case as was Cambodia - there is no universal right to abuse your own people.
Nonetheless, invading Iraq on the pretense of Hussein gassing his own people 15 years before stretching absurdity.
Much of the Cold War was fought on the principle of Human Rights - a good thing, which can cut both ways.
Included in progress is the right to protest, to overthrow one's own government when it gets too vile, and the United Nations was set up partly to arbitrate these issues - with the caveat that there are foxes guarding their own henhouses.
Is North Korea just an internal issue, hands off, let them starve, ignore their missile tests?
Counterpunch knows a lot of history but can't find anything related to Communism in its long critiques.
Ukraine is telling - did the US send in tanks to "intervene"? Or did we have a longstanding policy to promote free elections, used in Poland/solidarnosc, popular protests in Serbia, the Rose revolution in Georgia, the 2004 elections that Timoshenko won in Ukraine.
Counterpunch doesn't talk about the jailing of Timoshenko as a condemned despot ploy similar tio what Putin does often in Russia. Nor the frequent assassination of Russia's dissidents. Counterpunch ignores the people protesting in Kiev - Ukrainians - and never condemns intervention by Russia - a too weird paradox, where Russia pushing its regional interests through intervention is fine, even reannexing a province militarily, but the US is wrong to either push its own interests or back peaceful protesters for their outrage over their government's reversal of rapprochement with the EU.
Our handling of Libya and Syria is muddier, but they relate to Tunisia, Bahrain and Egypt as well. Counterpunch's argument goes limp there because it doesn't want an Arab Spring as a principle - it wants to condemn the US and promote Russia as the new vanguard of behavior. Useless tools.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 01/05/2017 - 2:21am