Arugmentation (Was: Re: [PLUG-TALK] Fair Use, etc.)

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Craighead, Scot D wrote:
> It's doesn't mean any us against them thing.  The US, like every other
> country in the world, looks out for it's interest.

I think that if you looked, you'd find that there are nations out there
that are more concerned with raising the standards and quality of life for
all people than improving the conditions for their local businesses.

Hence, the US has the third worst record in compliance with international
labor standards and the absolute poorest compliance with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

The Convention On The Rights Of The Child was ratified by every UN nation
except the United States and Somalia.  The International Covenant on Civil
and Political rights was ratified by the United States with a reservation
against Article 7 -- the article states that no person shall be subject to
torture or cruel or degrading treatment as punishment.

> The US gives millions of dollars to virtually every country in the
> world every year in foriegn aide.

Gives?  Virtually every country?  I think you should do a bit more
research.

MOST of the "aid" given by the United States is in the form of loans, due
in U.S. dollars with interest that turn formerly merely poor states into
servile states that must produce goods for the American market, regardless
of the condition of the local markets, in order to recover the cash to pay
the loan.  So we now have many nations in the third world that cannot feed
their own people because their agricultural land has been turned over to
McDonalds.

Most of the direct foreign "support" exists in forms like the money given
to Colombia to "fight the war on drugs".  Colombia receives 70% of its
military funding this way, thus removing any incentive to actually stop
drug trafficking.  (Incidentally, the farmers are only growing drugs
because the U.S. wiped out the local agriculture market by flooding the
nation with cheap U.S. corn and wheat in the 1960s.)  Other aid comes in
the form of CIA advisors that help overthrow democratic governments that
are unfriendly to American business and direct monetary support of
non-democratic rulers to fight democratic uprising in their nations.

> In addition, US private charities give even more.  Any time anyone in
> the world has problems, Americans run in as fast as they can to try to
> help.  You are unfairly characterizing the US.

Really?  What about when the Iraqis had problems with Iran in the 1980s?  
Oh, yeah... the U.S. ran in and installed a military dictator that soon
got out of control.  When Afghanistan had problems, the U.S. trained a
bunch of blood-thirsty religious fanatics to become highly organized
blood-thirsty religious fanatics.

Thomas Caruthers, a member of Reagan's State Department and the "Democracy
Enhancement Programs", wrote that the United States "sought only limited,
top-down forms of democratic change that did not risk upsetting the
traditional structures of power with which the United States has long been
allied.  It sought to maintain the basic order of quite undemocratic
societies because of the deep fear of populist-based change with all its
implications for upsetting established economic and political orders and
heading off in a leftist direction."  (Caruthers believed that his orders
were truly intended to bring about democratic changes, but couldn't was
doomed to fail despite the best efforts because of the limited ability to
support change.  Personally, I don't see how anyone could understand that
democracy brings about populist change that the U.S. fears and also
believe that the U.S. wants to support democracy.  In other words, the
entire operation was designed to stomp democratic revolutions rather than
support them... mostly by introducing sham democratic window dressing to
the existing dictatorship in order to defuse and diffuse the strong
feeling of a need for change in the minds of the people.)

The State Department has no interest in improving conditions for the mass
of men because that is destructive to the system that produces and
maintains the privileged few who are either in or own those who are in
Washington.

Once a fellow, who would certainly be called a "leftist extremist" today,
told us that democracy leads to empowerment and a system of belief "that
holds that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their
backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them" and that
democracy will always "oppose a single and splendid government founded on
banking institutions and monied in corporations."  That leftist extremist
would be Thomas Jefferson.

> >I understand you prefer the former.
> Got that right.

Honestly, I sincerely hope you get it.  Like I said, one of the two things
should happen.  At this point, either is preferable to the current
situation where the U.S. pretends to be a beacon of freedom and democracy
while soundly trouncing any attempts to promote either.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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