Humiliating" the Arabs? And if so... so what?

[molly bloom]

According to Imran, I'm a lefty, and I cheered when Saddam/a wino/dusty Santa Claus was dragged out of his hidey-hole.

After all this was one of the people responsible for Iraq's Red Wave of repression and murder, when Iraq's leftists and Communist Party members were abducted and murdered (with the use of intelligence supplied by Great Britain and the U.S.) following the overthrow of the too-left leaning Qassem regime.

So Oerdin- I say bowlocks to you old chum, you are barking up the wrong date palm. Saddam was one of the great opportunists/cynics of Middle/Near East politics- a lefty when he wanted some money/materiel from the Soviet Bloc, a pan-Arab nationalist when he wanted something from the feudal sheikdoms, pro-Western when he wanted arms deals for oil, technology for bio-weapons and nuclear reactors and help against Iran, secularist when he wanted Egyptian/Libyan/Syrian support against the Kuwaitis.

And of course that doesn't even cover the decades of repression and murder of religious and ethnic minorities within Iraq itself- all of which I've been campaigning about and protesting about for a lot longer than those on the newly anti-Saddam right. Of course back in the late 70s and early 80s, money was to be made in Iraq, so it was bad taste/inopportune/unnecessary to criticise the old gangster despot.

How fortune's wheel turns....

[Tripledoc]

Who is the best defense lawyer today?

[Ned]

I suspect the Arabs are humiliated by the fact that they are virtually powerless against the United States. This adds to their humiliation by the numerous Israeli victories over Arab armies in the past 50 years.

I understand it because it is quite obvious that there is an Arab "nation" even if it is divided into an number of states. When one of their states falls, they all feel the pain.

[Chemical Ollie]

I couldn't care öless about the humiliation of Saddam. Anything he got, he surely deserved.

If you don't like'em, shoot'em.

Then see how they will like you.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by skywalker
Oncle Boris, you forget that, while more power = more ability to do evil, more power = more ability to do good, too.

And to Patroklos too who held a similar point.

My argument is not circular at all. Basically, a State is an organisation which owns the "violence monopoly" over a given territory. Just think of feudal Afghanistan: it is not a true state, because no one holds the power.

To this point in human history, States have not delegated to anyone the monopoly of violence in international relations. Things are headed in this direction, however. A few centuries might pass, but it will eventually become a reality. It remains to see if this worldwide police will defend justice and human rights (personally, I highly doubt it).

No police=perpetual war between countries vying for power. This war is not always armed; it is usually economic and diplomatic. But it's still here, and it obeys to no morale whatsoever.

As far as I know, no democratic state has systematically applied the values behind its Constitution to its foreign policy, unless in isolated cases or when these values were found to be in accordance with commercial or political interests. The reason for this is quite simple: the Welfare state has given its citizens a fair dose of social justice, which can be used to hide atrocities directly or indirectly committed outside of its borders. Machiavelli calls this "Comfort and Indifference". Stanley Milgram used a different, psychological approach, in which he determined that people could operate a machine that tortured someone if the said person was in another room (and out of visual sight of the torturer). When the "victim" was moved closer, the rate of success of the experiment dropped from 67% to approx. 40%.

Now, most right-wingers, supported by media trusts, have made you believe that free-market is at the root of the success of the Western world. Saying that this is a barbaric lie would be an understatement.
Everything that made the succes of Western democracies, is in fact, the opposite of free-market.
In the 19th century, labor unions and strikes were forbidden by law, and child labor was common. Workers in France, USA, Canada, Britain were brutalized by the police or private security guards when they comlained about their condition. Child mortality was higher than in today's third world countries. Gradually, laws protecting basic worker rights were enacted, such as minimal wages, forbidding of child labor, legalization of worker unions. The forbidding of labor unions are a prime example of injustice: if industrials have the right to form conglomerates and oligopolies, why wouldn't the workers have the right to unite themselves? Free-market is a two way things, mind you. Socialist policies made the working class increasingly richer, to the point, as mentionned by Henry Ford, that it could buy the products it was manufacturing. It was only after the lesson of the Great Depression that this fact became widely accepted, however.

The importance of Labor Unions in the economic development of a country was so obvious that American Unions, confronted by their success, formed international unions aimed at syndicalizing poorer countries, to avoid their own jobs being exported over there. This is where globalization (slowly) starts.

(To be more specific, globalization has been going on from the beginning of the 20th century. Its pace has greatly accelerated after the fall of the USSR).

Benefitting from relative social peace in their home countries, enterprises started putting pressure on their governments to open acces to the worldwide markets, where the workforce is much cheaper, social policies virtually non-existent, and, better still, brute force readily available as a coercition tool.

Ergo, WTO, FTAA, GATT, World Bank, etc. All those are puppets of the United States and its allies. They are a tool to enforce economic domination and isolation against countries that are not willing to abdicate their sovereignty to free trade necessities.

Thirld World now=Western world 150 years ago (not in all respects, but many). They don't need free market; they need state-funded education (which is lacking), they need drinking water, they need acces to cheap drugs and basic healthcare. They need the profits of their natural resources to fund economic development in their own country, not to fill the pockets of some baby-boomer shareholder in New York or London.

Without state regulations, enterprises will never grant a single cent to an unspecialized workforce, simply because there are billions in the world, starving, that will work for a ridiculous pay. As long as there is some easy, repetitive work to do, and that the pure law of demand/offer is applied to employment, people will be exploited. This is why free market cannot be succesful in countries with low infrastructure and education levels. There are too much of them. Until every human being in the world is a valuable specialist, there needs to be some regulation preventing free market from instillling a perpetual, unbreakable domination. For this to happen, we need everyone to be educated. We also need to forbid child labor, so that children can go to school (half of the world's cocoa is produced by enslaved children).

And guess what? America's foreign policy is based on forcing other countries to accept free market as it is, without regards to their own benefit. Their main tool is economic sanctions (see: Cuba), but they do not hesitate to use brute force when needed (Vietnam, funding of the Contras against the Sandinists, funding of the coup against Salvador Allende). This will not change as long as huge corporations are the principal donators to Republican and Democrat campaigns (the only two parties that have access to the White House).

There is something you can do about it. First, forbidding enterprises from donating to political parties is a step in the right direction. Many states have adopted a system in which 1 vote=1$ transferred to the party with public funds. This is not perfect, but it's better than Halliburton handing out 5 millions to Bush's campaign.
You can also ask for a dramatic change: demand that foreign countries who wish to export to the US must obey to a "minimal worker condition deal". Economic sanctions would be directed at those countries who do not follow it, instead of the current system where they are used against socialist states.
Vote for someone supporting the Tobin Tax: basically, this one says that by taking a few cents on each stock market transaction, you could amass billions over billions of money that could be directed towards humanitarian aid.

Above all, don't expect CNN or FOX news to tell you what I've been telling you in the last few hundred words.

As long as the US doesn't change its tone, I will consider it an Evil Empire, keen on extending its domination to nurture wealth in their homeland at the detrimen of 66% of the world's population. I defy you to consider my arguments "dumb" or "circular".

NOTE: this will be posted for further discussion on a separate thread.

[Kuciwalker]

What's wrong with this, then? Each country is exercising its own sovereignty (which includes the right to give up sovereignty). If you are complaining abut sanctions, how can you also complain about free trade organisations?

[Dr Strangelove]

Hey! I've thought up an even niftier way to humiliate arabs! Treat their women and kids like human beings! That always ticks 'em off to the max!

[Agathon]

Can anyone think of something productive that comes out of humiliating your enemies?

I mean, it's good practice in war to treat a defeated enemy with respect and compassion. I was reading the other day about the Battle of the Falklands: as soon as a German ship went down the British hurried to try to save as many German sailors as they could. This seems to me the right way to fight a war.

[Kuciwalker]

Can anyone think of something productive that comes out of humiliating your enemies?

Humilty, perhaps?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by skywalker

Can anyone think of something productive that comes out of humiliating your enemies?

Humilty, perhaps?

I don't think so. There's nothing better than humiliation to spark a desire for revenge. It's the same in sports as well as war.

That was the lesson of WW1 and was put into practice in 1945 with excellent results.

[Kuciwalker]

Actually, we humiliated the Germans and especially the Japanese quite thoroughly. I don't think ANYONE could say our efforts to turn them into liberal-minded democracies were unsuccessful

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Azazel
Actually, I've heard it quite often, Sandman.

You may have heard it linked with Israel's behaviour, or with the US general behaviour in Iraq, but I must say I barely heard of this argument when it came to Saddam.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
There's how I really feel, MrFun. Having fun yet?

I was just bullsh*tting with you.

[Whoha]

See, now this is humiliating :P

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by skywalker
What's wrong with this, then? Each country is exercising its own sovereignty (which includes the right to give up sovereignty). If you are complaining abut sanctions, how can you also complain about free trade organisations?

What I mean is that the US is trying to use them as a tool to legitimate sanctions. They are not 100% succesful. But still this at the root of their foreign policy.

Did you know the FTAA included a clause to make education a consumer good such as Colas or cars? We can only dream where this could lead: a country suing another because his school network is an hindrance to free trade!

Each country is exercising its own sovereignty (which includes the right to give up sovereignty)

Remember, international police is virtually non-existent. Surrendering freedom to someone stronger than you when there is no police to protect you anyway is not being free.
Also consider that many poorer countries are ran by non-representative regimes, which means that dictators get US military aid in exchange for resigning their "economic sovereignty".