US Drone Warfare Fuels Arabic and Islamic Hatred

One of the main reasons why there has been too much vile and hatred against Americans in the Muslim world has been because of the imperialist-interventionist-militant foreign policies adapted by the US government influenced by the military industrial complex and the imperial goals of the politically entrenched neoconservatives.

One such evidence is the rampant use by the US military of drones to supposedly weed out terrorists. Such actions in reality defies the 3D policies (Development, Diplomacy and Defense), framed by Secretary of State and former first lady Hilary Clinton

As Professor Bill Easterly of the NYU in a recent blog writes,

Hilary Clinton said a while ago that Defense and Development were complements.

Not so much. A new report from Stanford and NYU (see excellent summary in the Guardian) found that US drone strikes (greatly increased under this administration) in Pakistan were killing and terrorizing civilians, while very few killed their terrorist targets.

It would be hard for Development to benefit from “drones hovering 24 hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning.”

The report alleges that drones strike areas multiple times, killing rescuers of victims of the first strike.

Such gruesome violation of human rights which masquerades as the war on terror will exacerbate geopolitical tensions instead of solving them

Yet the best way to promote peace is through trade.

As Judge Andrew Napolitano recently pointed out,

Is it not more likely that when the West supported toppling Arab strongmen, the rioters in the streets saw that as a signal to express hatred toward the meddling West? Might Obama’s drones, which have fallen all over the Middle East killing innocents in schools and hospitals, at weddings and funerals, and demolishing mosques and homes, be coming back to haunt him?

The Arab Spring has become the Western Winter, brought about by two American presidents who thought they could kill without moral justification or painful consequence. We should come home from these barbaric places and leave them alone. We should trade with them, since they want to buy our iPads and washing machines and blue jeans, but let them run their own governments.

Yet another emerging problem has been the escalating anxiety over the overbearing use of drones against Americans in their homeland—another sign of America’s transition towards a police state. These are symptoms of the growing desperation of the ruling class.

Quote of the Day: Property Rights ARE Human Rights

One of the left's most effective canards has been its alleged distinction between property rights and human rights. The fact is that property rights are human rights. My right to my computer--my property--is not my computer's right to itself. It's my right, and I'm human.

A fantastic quote from Professor David Henderson. This is commonsensical. Unfortunately for the left, commonsense isn't common.

The US as Human Rights Violator

US President Obama recently dissed on China’s human rights record.

However, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts exposes on this charade,

Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination.

One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, a country with destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into cinders is the proper way to show concern for human rights.

Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.

In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones bring human rights to the people.

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prison sites are other places to which Washington brings human rights. Obama, who has the power to murder American citizens without due process of law, is too powerless to close Guantanamo Prison.

He is powerless to prevent himself from supplying Israel with weapons with which to murder Palestinians and Lebanese citizens to whom Obama brings human rights by vetoing every UN resolution passed against Israel for its crimes against humanity.

Instead of following Washington’s human rights lead, the evil Chinese invest in other countries, buy things from them, and sell them goods.

For US politicians, moral standards seem to fall into “might makes right”—where there is one set of morality for political opponents and another set for the self-instituted policeman of the world.

The numerous atrocities committed by the US, as part of their imperial foreign policy, serves as further evidence that in Asia (particularly on the US military's proposed expansion due to the Spratly’s issue) the China threat has mostly been a contrived issue which exemplifies H.L. Mencken’s series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Such is borne out of the continuing promotion of war policies meant to uphold the interests of the political class and their welfare-warfare clients/cronies.

Of course, infractions on human rights issues does not extend only to foreigners but to the Americans themselves, in their homeland.

Again Mr. Roberts,

Washington’s concern with human rights does not extend as far as airport security where little girls and grandmothers are sexually groped. Antiwar activists have their homes invaded, their personal possessions carried off, and a grand jury is summoned to frame them up on some terrorist charge. US soldier Bradley Manning is held for two years in violation of the US Constitution while the human rights government concocts fabricated charges to punish him for revealing a US war crime. WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is harassed endlessly with the goal of bringing him into the human rights clutches of Washington. Critics of Washington’s inhumane policies are monitored and spied upon.

More signs that the US appears to be moving away from the embodiment of the “Land of the Free”.

The False Khodorkovsky Truth On Globalization

The Street’s Eric Rosenbaum pins the blame of the 2^nd guilty verdict on Russian Tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which allegedly had been manipulated, to globalization.

He writes, (bold emphasis mine)

In any event, if we have long ago left behind the Cold War and entered the age of globalization, it's pretty clear that globalization means turning a deaf ear to serious human rights and legal rights issues for trade partners like the US, Russia and China, or at least often being hard of hearing.

When a tycoon rots in prison because he was getting too powerful, and too democratic, or when a Nobel Prize winning political dissident is serving a long sentence and his family barred from going to Sweden to accept the Nobel on his behalf -- and yet the major US move in relation to China is to win a dispute at the World Trade Organization over the unfair support of China for its automobile tire manufacturers -- that's the lips speaking truth to the way the powerful act in the age of globalization, as opposed to the lip service that once again overflows with blabber as Khodorkovsky quietly read his book in the metal cage of the Russian court room.

We'll say thank you very much for that cheap plastic mobile for our baby's crib, China, and, thank you very much for the oil that's not coming from those unstable Arabs, Russia, and forget about Khodorkovsky until his next trial, and let Chinese democracy die a silent death. And of course, when it comes down to it, we'll hem and haw and we'll say it's not our place to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries -- except of course, when it's the internal affair of manufacturing car tires.

It’s certainly misleading to impute the seemingly untoward developments in Russia’s domestic political front to globalization since the current body politic of Russia has evolved around the dynamics of the previous polity (Lenin-Stalinism) compounded by the ongoing changes in the economic and international dimensions.

As Stratfor’s George Friedman notes, (bold highlights mine)

Glasnost, or openness, had as its price reducing the threat to the West. But the greater part of the puzzle was perestroika, or the restructuring of the Soviet economy. This was where the greatest risk came, since the entire social and political structure of the Soviet Union was built around a command economy. But that economy was no longer functioning, and without perestroika, all of the investment and technology transfer would be meaningless.

In other words, Russia’s politics have gravitated around the impulses of ‘command mentality’, which she has yet to slough off.

So with or without globalization, the so-called issues of ‘human rights and legal rights’ would still be in place, because of the embedded political structure that operates in Russia.

And perhaps it could even be under worse conditions if a political regime under isolationism had prevailed, since international pressures towards domestic policies would have been muted.

Myanmar and North Korea should be good examples of such isolationist paradigm. Incidentally according to Human Rights Risks Atlas 2011, among the highest “human rights” risk nations, Myanmar and North Korea ranks 5^th and 9^th respectively whereas Russia is ranked 14th.

The top 4 is DR Congo, Somalia, Pakistan and Sudan—obviously countries that have been least exposed to globalization.

As an aside, China is ranked 10th mostly due to recent geopolitical developments. According to African online,

China fell two places from last year’s ranking into tenth place. It is notable that these rankings were released on the day when China would not allow its’ citizens to see the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony because Chinese political prisoner Liu was being honored. China is ranked worst or joint bottom of the league in several key classes.

These include violation categories such as freedom of speech, the press and religion, minority rights, judicial independence, and arbitrary arrest and detention.

Overall, to link globalization with human rights violations seem not only unfounded, but importantly, a strawman meant to score political talking points.

And here is the morality aspect.

If I decide not to patronize my neighbor’s store, who is reputed to be a wife beater, out of my perception of ethics, what then is my right to impose my sense of morality to the others who don’t share my views? Doing so would be playing into the hands of the same command mentality (human rights abuse) game which the author so abhors. And this would be tantamount to the proverbial ‘pot calling the kettle black.’

Lastly, it would be uncalled for to imply that globalization or growing free trade as politically inhumane. That’s because it would be in almost everyone’s self interest to see the others in good stead in order to promote his own.

Adam Smith wrote in his magnum opus, the Wealth of Nations, the dynamics of unintended social cooperation from the pursuit of one’s own interest.

He calls this the invisible hands, (bold emphasis mine)

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestick industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the publick good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

And as we have earlier pointed out, the string of years of world peace have coincided with the growth in free trade. We seem to see the similar parallels in the growth of economic freedom and free trade along with reduction of human rights violation risks (China would be the exception rather than the rule).

Bottom line: In general, where people trade, social cooperation expands, where politics rule, social cooperation deteriorates.