John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“China accuses US of 'severe infringements' on human rights in report
“Beijing claims America poses as 'guardian of human rights' after State Department criticises Chinese rights record”
The American State Department regularly plays the charade of criticizing other countries for the kinds of crimes and abuses of which they are themselves guilty.
It does get a little tiresome. It’s a bit like regularly casting Jimmy Stewart in parts fit for King Kong.
Even dictators can be right sometimes, and China is very much right here.
The US has killed at least 8 million people, injured countless millions more, and created vast floods of terrified refugees since WWII with all of its imperial wars.
And the destruction even came all wrapped up in atrocities and use of terrible, inhuman weapons such as napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and other chemical weapons.
All of it in aggressive imperial wars, having nothing to do with rights or freedom.
And it constantly supports, and never once speaks up about, the world's greatest ongoing human rights horror - Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
Generations of abuse and oppression and deprivation, periodically interspersed with large massacres, plus approaching three thousand assassinations.
And all of that is apart from the ugly details of much of domestic American life, such as 1,100 killings a year by local police. Far more than any terrorist could wish to achieve. And it has the distinction of the world's largest prison population, too, and by a huge margin.
Sadly, America really has grown into a place whose ugliness can compete with the very worst.
But it still feels entitled to pompously announce lists of abuses by others. Others who do not toe the American policy line, of course.
