The Western political and financial elites, Putin knows, will not touch him. He and they are in the same decadent oligarchic class. They hold the same values. Europe depends on Russia for 40 percent of its natural gas, most of which passes through Ukraine. European bankers and corporations have no intention of jeopardizing that flow, or any current or potential trade deals. Corporate profit is the driving engine of foreign policy. Our elites do not care about human rights or civil liberties, not to mention the illegality of pre-emptive war, any more than Putin. Ask the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia how much moral authority the United States has to denounce the violation of the territorial integrity of a sovereign state. Ask those in our black sites and offshore penal colonies how much moral authority we have to denounce arbitrary detention and torture. Ask the 1.3 million people who lost their extended unemployment benefits in December or those who saw food stamp cutbacks reduce their spending by $90 a month how much moral authority there is left in our corporate state.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:37:08 +0000