Posted by Jeff from bgp01107368bgs.wbrmfd01.mi.comcast.net (68.42.59.180) on Wednesday, February 27, 2002 at 3:42AM :
In Reply to: Re: On Being Jealous Of Our Way Of Life posted by Julia from dhcp100030.res-hall.northwestern.edu (199.74.100.30) on Wednesday, February 27, 2002 at 2:43AM :
: Jeff,
: I admit, I should not have used a word like 'model' to describe what you said as people picking and choosing who they decide to help. It IS natural, as you say, and this description of a 'natural' event is not necessarily a 'model' event.
++ I'll respond in parts.
: I understand that people tend to help each other out first; I see that people collect funds and support their own before they serve the interests of others. I do also understand that there are ramifications for such behavior especially if people, communities, cities, states and federal governments adopt this kind of thinking into their policymaking. I think we see it all the time. Israel gets billion dollar gifts from the U.S. and people in Iraq don't. China's human rights abuses and grievances are progressively looked past as eager capitalists want to subsume China into the world trade regime....but countries with similar, if not worse, human rights records are left to the side.
+++ Let's go through these one by one. First, Israel gets support for 2 main reasons: 1) Israeli lobbyists have the most clout of any "mid-east foreign-policy" lobbying group in the country. Of all the lobbys, I would say that for domestic policy, and foreign policy in general, big business wins. Even the oil lobby has some clout with middle eastern affairs in General, but the Israelis get billions in aid because of hard-working Jews in this country that write letters and send faxes and pressure the congressmen and representatives that represent them to support Israel.
The ARmenians get around 90 million a year in aid to Armenia. That's because of their lobby.
You might be mistaking the United States foreign policy decisions as "advancing the interests of the US", but in reality the foreign policy of this country,... MOST policy in this country is in the interests of the whim of the population at that moment in time, and since the population is generally detached from the political process, those small ethnic groups with lobbys win hands down every time.
+++ As far as China goes, that's big business all the way as well. The AMerican populace doesn't agree, I would gather, with most American policy. Well, they might, but only because they are brainwashed by the media.
: I don't think that people helping their own is in itself a bad thing, but I do think it comes with ramifications that people on this forum, including myself, contest all the time. In essence, we are not protesting the starving children of this world, we are prostesting the starving children of Iraq, who share some cultural, ethnic or geographic tie to us. We are asking people who are not from our culture, heritage or geographic origin to make decisions that they deem outside their interests.
+++ Now we are getting somewhere. When I participated in an anti-sanctions march, I do not exaggerate when I say that out of hundreds of people there, more than 95% of them were NOT middle eastern. There were even Jews there, but mostly crackers, aka gringos... ordinary average white folk who could see past the smokescreen. What do they have to gain? Why do they participate? While there are starving children in Africa, that isn't because the US has put an embargo on africa!! Of course, you see the obvious here, and so do they... they are protesting what our government does in the interests of big oil and corporations... and NOT in the interests of its populace.
Lesson: Separate the country's decisions from the decisions of its populace, since in general the population in America either doesn't care, or is too stupid to realize what is really going on until years after the fact.
: In their foreign policy they, like other countries, pick and choose who they reward and punish...
: All i asked you is why should the U.S. in your opinion go beyond what they are doing now and lift the sanctions off Iraq, when the formulated interests of the state dictate otherwise?
++ Just what do you mean by the formulated interests of the state? Sorry, I'm just not up to your level of high vocabulary.
:in essence you are asking them to put aside their interests and advance the interests of people other than themselves.
++ Whose interests... big business?? Or Jon Doe and Jane Doe of America?? John Q. Public, or the Lobbyists?
:
: The sad part is, some people lose, some people win; countries pick and choose who they help all the time...and all I am saying, with my own bias, is that it comes with ramifications....
-- Jeff
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