Tag: foreign policy

‘Rules-Based International Order’ Means Washington-Based International Order

The US government has shut down multiple news media websites based in the Middle East, including Iran’s state-owned Press TV, and al-Masirah TV which is owned by the Houthi group Ansarullah in Yemen. The Department of Justice said on Tuesday it had seized 36 Iranian-linked websites, claiming without evidence that they were associated with “either disinformation activities or violent organizations” and were shut down for a violation of US sanctions.

This would be the same US government that is imprisoning Julian Assange for journalism which exposed US war crimes, the same US government which paid for the weapons used to destroy more than 20 Palestinian media outlets in Gaza last month, the same US government whose unipolar domination of the planet is made possible by the journalism-destroying propaganda of the media-owning plutocratic class in alliance with sociopathic government agencies.

This would also be the same US government which constantly pays lip service to the need to protect the freedom of the press, as part of the “rules-based international order” it purports to uphold in the world.

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World’s Most Tyrannical Regime Can’t Stop Babbling About “Human Rights”

“America won’t back away from our commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms,” reads a Wednesday tweet from the presidential Twitter account. “No responsible American president can remain silent when basic human rights are violated.”

The tweet, an excerpt from the US president’s prepared congressional address, was retweeted on Saturday by Secretary of State Tony Blinken with the caption, “We will always defend human rights at home and abroad.”

Like all US secretaries of state, Blinken’s public statements overwhelmingly focus on the claim that other nations abuse human rights, and that it is America’s duty to defend those rights. Which is very silly, considering the fact that the US government is the single worst human rights abuser on planet Earth.

And it’s not even close.

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Anti-War Activist Harassed By Plainclothes Cops For Tweet Exposing AOC’s Foreign Policy Incompetence

A leftist anti-war activist was visited by the California Highway Patrol for a tweet he made that lightly criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) pandering and bumbling comments about a “two-state solution” in the Middle East. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s office has denied contacing police about the tweet.

On April 7, activist Ryan Wentz tweeted, “On April 1, @AOC did a livestream with Michael Miller, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. She was asked about ‘peace between Israelis and Palestinians.’ Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least”…

The next day, Wentz was visited in Los Angeles by two plainclothes members of the California Highway Patrol, who reportedly accused him of “threatening” Ocasio-Cortez.

Wentz posted a picture of a business card provided by one of the officers, with the caption, “I’m really shaken up right now. I was just visited by two plainclothes police officers from California Highway Patrol at my home. They said they came here on behalf of the Capitol Police and accused me of threatening @AOC on Twitter yesterday. This is provably false.”

The activist added, “I felt scared, intimidated, and violated. They knew my name and where I live. It was done on behalf of a congresswoman who advocates against police state tactics.”

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Biden’s Protection of Murderous Saudi Despots Shows the Hidden Reality of U.S. Foreign Policy

A staple of mainstream U.S. discourse is that the United States opposes tyranny and despotism and supports freedom and democracy around the world. Embracing murderous despots is something only Donald Trump did, but not normal, upstanding American Presidents. This belief about the U.S. role in the world permeates virtually every mainstream foreign policy discussion.

When the U.S. wants to start a new war — with Iraq, with Libya, with Syria, etc. — it accomplishes this by claiming that it is, at least in part, motivated by horror over the tyranny of the country’s leaders. When it wants to engineer regime change or support anti-democratic coups — in Venezuela, in Iran, in Bolivia, in Honduras — it uses the same justification. When the U.S. Government and its media partners want to increase the hostility and fear that Americans harbor for adversarial countries — for Russia, for China, for Cuba, For North Korea — it hauls out the same script: we are deeply disturbed by the human rights violations of that country’s government.

Yet it is hard to conjure a claim that is more obviously and laughably false than this one. The U.S. does not dislike autocratic and repressive governments. It loves them, and it has for decades. Installing and propping up despotic regimes has been the foundation of U.S. foreign policy since at least the end of World War II, and that approach continues to this day to be its primary instrument for advancing what it regards as its interests around the world. The U.S. for decades has counted among its closest allies and partners the world’s most barbaric autocrats, and that is still true.

Indeed, all other things being equal, when it comes to countries with important resources or geo-strategic value, the U.S. prefers autocracy to democracy because democracy is unpredictable and even dangerous, particularly in the many places around the world where anti-American sentiment among the population is high (often because of sustained U.S. interference in those countries, including propping up their dictators). There is no way for a rational person to acquire even the most minimal knowledge of U.S. history and current foreign policy and still believe the claim that the U.S. acts against other countries because it is angry or offended at human rights abuses perpetrated by those other governments.

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