Obama’s statement when Hugo Chavez kicked it.
Obama’s statement when King Abdullah kicked it.
That makes me want to vomit.
H/t Ahmed Akeel
Butterflies and Wheels
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Obama’s statement when Hugo Chavez kicked it.
Obama’s statement when King Abdullah kicked it.
That makes me want to vomit.
H/t Ahmed Akeel
And it shouldn’t need to be pointed out that Hugo Chávez – whatever his failings or the complexities of the situation – was not a king or a dictator but the democratically elected president of a country with elections widely recognized to be free and fair and an enormous amount of civic participation. This is also true of Maduro, Morales in Bolivia, etc.
Nothing reveals the US government’s contempt for democracy, social justice, and human rights and its commitment to a vicious corporate-military imperialism like its history in Latin America. It’s still trying to foment destabilization and coups to install reactionary puppets of US capitalist interests across the hemisphere, where they would undo the work of social justice movements and governments and we’d see inequality rise and health, education, and empowerment fall drastically. Pure, cynical evil.
SC,
aka Realpolitik. 😐
(More like self-serving amorality than evil, for mine, but that’s a subjective distinction)
In the commercial world, we describe those kind of statements as marketing spiel. In government, we call it diplomacy.
Either way, it is all putting on an act.
It’s not even the oil – Venezuela has more, in total, than Saudi Arabia (though less that can be produced at the current price point). SC has succinctly covered the salient points.
🙂 I’ve never cared for that term, particularly. To me, it implies that what people believe to be their interests or goals are in fact their interests or goals, when in general that’s not the case (so my argument is sort of akin to “Patriarchy hurts men, too” – choices are based on ideology, delusion, and fear rather than a reasoned assessment of the possibilities for well-being), and that they have a clear vision of reality. But I suppose that’s a more philosophical conversation.
OK, sorry to comment and run. Goodnight, all.
I was just told there were flags at half-mast here for the king. Bad enough that our own unelected queen expressed condolences; shame on us for making it a national gesture too. Yes, yes, massive commercial interests. Pity we don’t give a (national) toss about the human rights abuses.
opposablethumbs (#6):
In England and Wales, yes (although not in Scotland, apparently). And there wasn’t even the excuse of having some official rule that makes it obligatory on the death of a foreign ruler (Commonwealth heads of state, yes, purely discretionary with the heads of other states).
In fairness, there’s been quite a backlash against the spineless official response, and said backlash is being widely reported in the press.