Hypocrisy

“Russian aggression” – the bad faith mantra of dishonest brokers

It’s always a tricky moment for the corporate media when a foreign leader dies. The content and tone need to be appropriate, moulded to whether that leader fell into line with Western policies or not. Thus, when Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez died in 2013, conventional coverage strongly suggested he had been a dangerous, quasi-dictatorial, loony lefty.

What a spanner in the works of international relations he proved to be. The late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia was always the spoiler in the morality plays of Western powers keen to back him. Oil was always the greatest deterrent against getting on his wrong side, but it also meant the most intolerable of inconsistencies. For most governments, however, these were tolerated.

The “civilized” have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death; these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the conscience of civilized world.
— James Baldwin

It is still not about Islam, even if the media and militants attacking western targets say so. Actually, it never was. But it was important for many to conflate politics with religion; partly because it is convenient and self-validating.
First, let’s be clear on some points. Islam has set in motion a system to abolish slavery over 1,200 years before the slave trade reached its peak in the western world.

A day after President Obama announced initiatives to normalize relations with Cuba, he seemingly reversed course by enacting the latest round of sanctions against Cuba’s staunchest ally, Venezuela, on December 18. His action conclusively ended any threat of a thaw in frosty relations since the US and Venezuela withdrew their respective ambassadors in 2010. The US Senate had approved the legislation on December 8, followed two days later by the House in a bipartisan gush of unity with no debate or dissenting votes.

Carl Gustav Jung, the father of analytical psychology, attributed hypocrisy to individuals who are unconscious of “the shadow-side” of their nature. From this idea arose a simple argument: If people better understood their natures, they might love their neighbors more uprightly. For, as Jung says, “…we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.” Yet, of all its incarnations, the hypocrisy of “pure evil” seems worst.

Only those who chose their natural skin color are allowed to be racists, and only then if they also chose their natural physique and the innate qualities of their own mind. Concerning natural given characteristics where no one ever had any choice, it’s completely irrational to hold those things against anyone else. Life is like the lottery – when your numbers come up, or almost come up, you’re given no choices – you’re simply destined to be born with certain characteristics at a time and place, none of which come at your own choosing.

When Condoleeza Rice argued for a U.S. invasion of Iraq by claiming that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” she touched on a real threat of the nuclear war that could wipe out entire countries and destroy civilization as we know it. Rice and the rest of the Bush administration knew that Iraq didn’t have nuclear weapons and never presented such a threat. They also knew that there was one country in the Middle East who did: a nuclear-armed rogue nation who has proven throughout its history to be possibly the most lawless and bellicose country of modern times.

A recent New York Times article offered another textbook example of the spectacular bias the U.S. employs to undermine those that might pose a challenge to its global hegemony. It also nicely illustrated the willingness of the media to serve as little more than a relay station for state propaganda. Yet it was but the latest in the glossary of deceits that characterize America’s relationship with Iran.