Bollocks.
The world is full of snake-oil salesmen. Every day I am reminded that the lunatics run the ward. Obama, for all his transformative rhetoric is no better than your run-of-the-mill politician. OK, he got some health care legislation through and he can talk in complete sentences. But his Human Rights record is more appalling than Bush. He has not closed Guantanamo as promised. He has not prosecuted the perpetrators of the torture regime. (There is still debate about whether waterboarding is torture or enhanced interrogation technique). He has not even set up an investigation commission let alone hold anyone accountable. At least Blair gets eggs thrown at him and called a war criminal even if he will never see the inside of The Hague. Cheney goes on Face the Nation and builds the case to bomb Iran. The Obama administration continues the Bush-era abuse of civil liberties in the name of war against terrorism (targeted assassination, anyone). The Nobel peace laureate has escalated the drone attacks in Pakistan. For those of you keeping count, that is 2 actual wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), two wars that won't be called wars (Pakistan and Yemen) and another war in Iran in the pipeline. Civilian deaths are transformed to faceless and uninteresting statistics; dots on a mountainous line. And America continues to undermine UN authority by refusing to acknowledge the findings of the UN High commissioner of Human Rights that Israel used inappropriate force against the Gaza flotilla (they were the only dissent vote). The report indicates that an American citizen was executed at point blank range and the US government doesn't blink an eyelid. Apparently, Israel can do no wrong even when they are demonstrably wrong.
The frustration is heightened by the double standards. Example, statements like "America has to stay in Iraq to prevent foreign influence" - said without any irony. Iranian officials are blacklisted and sanctions imposed on them for alleged involvement in arbitrary beatings, arrests and tortures but America must move forward not look backwards. Why, we are freedom loving people. This is what the founding fathers would have wanted.
The frustration is heightened by the double standards. Example, statements like "America has to stay in Iraq to prevent foreign influence" - said without any irony. Iranian officials are blacklisted and sanctions imposed on them for alleged involvement in arbitrary beatings, arrests and tortures but America must move forward not look backwards. Why, we are freedom loving people. This is what the founding fathers would have wanted.
My rant is not that things have turned to the worse (it has) but that there is no change. America has made a habit of not living up to the standards it expects of other countries and there hasn't been the slightest dent in this American exceptionalism since Obama took charge.
This bleak hopelessness is nowhere more prominent than in the lack of proverbial balls of the mainstream media. Rick Sanchez, a sort of bumbling idiot of a CNN anchor, got canned last week. Because of remarks he made about Jon Stewart on a radio interview. Sanchez is one of Jon's favourite Pinata, to pick on and make fun of. Especially as a counter-point to Glenn Beck and other clowns of Fox news. Kinda, the "Fox people are crazy; so are the CNN folks" schtik that Jon does for "objectivity". The piqued Sanchez calls Jon prejudiced and uninformed, with a limited worldview. The host suggests Stewart because he is from an oppressed minority, has at least some sense of what "the sting of prejudice" is like. Sanchez replies
I get political sensitivity. I really do but this is plain stupid. Is there any hope? Nope.
This bleak hopelessness is nowhere more prominent than in the lack of proverbial balls of the mainstream media. Rick Sanchez, a sort of bumbling idiot of a CNN anchor, got canned last week. Because of remarks he made about Jon Stewart on a radio interview. Sanchez is one of Jon's favourite Pinata, to pick on and make fun of. Especially as a counter-point to Glenn Beck and other clowns of Fox news. Kinda, the "Fox people are crazy; so are the CNN folks" schtik that Jon does for "objectivity". The piqued Sanchez calls Jon prejudiced and uninformed, with a limited worldview. The host suggests Stewart because he is from an oppressed minority, has at least some sense of what "the sting of prejudice" is like. Sanchez replies
Very powerless people… [snickers] He’s such a minority, I mean, you know [sarcastically]… Please, what are you kidding? … I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah. [sarcastically]Sanchez is fired for being anti-Semite. And I wonder what is anti-Semitic (or factually incorrect) in that observation. He is not denying the holocaust or wishing the death of jews. He does not support some cuckoo theory that Hamas is a Mossad operation or that 9-11 was orchestrated by Jews. He merely points to the fact that just because someone is Jewish doesn't automatically entail that they are being (or have been) oppressed. He does not say Jews run the media (which is stereotyping but in itself only marginally racist) but that Jews who work in the media cannot claim to be an oppressed minority owing to their religion and what happened to the Jews in the past. Neither did Helen Thomas support anti-semitism by indicating that Israel is occupying Palestine. Asking Jews to return to Germany does not mean returning to the gas chambers. It means that Jews are no longer under siege in Old Europe. Nor did Octavia Nasr, another CNN employee fired for frivolous reasons, support terrorist organisations. The list goes on.
I get political sensitivity. I really do but this is plain stupid. Is there any hope? Nope.
