Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.7.0.10 $; site ea.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!okstate.UUCP!ea.UUCP!kel From: kel@ea.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Hypocrisy in gov't et al Message-ID: <92700017@ea.UUCP> Date: Fri, 24-Jan-86 12:08:00 EST Article-I.D.: ea.92700017 Posted: Fri Jan 24 12:08:00 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 10:31:34 EST Lines: 97 Nf-ID: #N:ea.UUCP:92700017:000:4370 Nf-From: ea.UUCP!kel Jan 24 11:08:00 1986 Earlier this month, Larry Kolodney writes(excerpted): Haiti is the home of one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Western Hemisphere. Its government has been a virtual family feifdom for most of this century. Yet the United States gives $50 million in aid per year to prop up the government. . . . Are we going to wait until there is a Communist revolution in Haiti before we start worrying about human rights there? (end quotes) You shouldn't talk about these cases in isolation. If you include, for instance, Cuba, Guatemala, VietNam, Afghanistan, Chile, Angola, The Phillipines, East Timor, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa, Lebanon, Libya, Taiwan, Eastern Europe, Israel, Korea, and Iran, you have a fairly comprehensive sampling of aggressive and terroristic behavior in the Third World, par- ticularly as instigated by "developed nations". Presumably, if you can sort all those facts out, together with the ones you've mentioned, they will speak for themselves. If I've missed a great many Communist aggressions that should be included in my list, do please speak up. However, at this point, and in my humble opinion, the U.S. has built up quite a reputation for installing and supporting "friendly" govern- ments in Third World countries, even though such "friends" be corrupt, despotic, and murderous against their own people; further, that the U.S. supports such governments willfully, knowing their nature. For documentation of a single example of this charge, I refer you to a sworn affidavit to the World Court in the Hague by Edgar Chamorro, a former leader of the Nicaraguan Contras and a former Jesuit priest, dated September, 1985. I do not condone the fact that the Communists espouse revo- lution as an integral component of doctrine. Neither do I endorse the notion that socialism is the logical political successor to capitalism in the world. Communism, whatever its ends, however, has made its inroads in the Third World almost entirely (with bordering states numbering notable exceptions among them, e.g. Afghanistan) by means of popu- larly supported revolution against bad government. The U.S., however, callously disregards human rights issues outside its own borders even as it pays lip service to them, and little more, within its borders. Reagan almost vetoed Martin Luther King day; how's that for hypocrisy? Serious, determined sanctions by the U.S. against Praetoria would break the back of apartheid in a single season, in a state which condones indiscriminate mayhem by its police power against Black natives, who are denied full citizenship by the government Reagan refuses to act against. Where are the offers of U.S. observers to the Phillipine government for their impending elections? Why did it take five years for the U.S. government to undertake support for AIDS re- search? What was the real purpose of invading Grenada? The exploits of the United States' government since WWII are enough to make a classic paranoid's dreams come true. Apparently, the greatest beneficiary of U.S. adventurism has been the U.S. business establishment. This makes excellent sense, as the Constitution was written with the land owner and merchant in mind. It is unfortunate, however, that other values reflected in the Constitution seem to have been sacrificed in favor of enterprise. They are intangible values more firmly espoused in the Declaration of Independence; justice for all, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; notions we were taught were those that made our war of revolution worthy. We, for we are responsible for the acts of those we allow to act on our behalf, have abandoned our heritage of honor and of warrior- hood. We permit our names to be written on black deeds in the pages of history. We are unworthy to be the Americans of our homeland, because George III himself would be aghast at what we have wrought. Therefore, let us discuss not the hypocrisy of the man we have chosen to represent us, without discussing our own hypocrisy in permitting his hypocrisy to be represented as our will. I more than welcome replies and further discussion of this article; flames, however, > /dev/null. Ken Lonquest, kel@ea (To assume that the opinions I express here are, or coincide with, the opinions of Energy Analysts' manage- ment, wuold be both false and manifestly stupid.)