From CNN: "Human rights cannot interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to China's foreign minister during her visit in China.
This is a haunting quote. According to Yahoo News, Amnesty International has condemned the remarks, as they should have.
6 comments:
This obviously concerns me. Does anyone know Obama's stance on the ranking? I mean, it's obviously not going to be so horribly stated, but is it just a smoother version of this? I really don't want to believe that's the case.
Harrogate, too, laments, this rubric.
BUT really, it has been this way all along without one of nthe politicos stating it. Look at our situation and ask how could it be otherwise.
"Don't be a protectionist" and "Get with Globalization," etc., are the Law. While people ranging from George Will to Andrew Sullivan to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to George W. Bush browbeat us into being okay with the country outsourcing its autonomy and economic security, they also significantly attenuate any leverage we may have the nations which are, you know, like, actually producing the shit that we buy.
What are we supposed to do, suddenly start making humanitarian or human rights-based demands on China now?
Know who might be be superior to Obama and Clinton and Bush and indeed most public personae, on the question of human rights?
Pat Buchanan.
And that friends is just fucking sad.
I think back to Clinton's "Women's Rights are Human Rights" speech. Well, all I can say is, blah blah and we are in deep trouble, worse than "hanging chads...."
What this means is our economy is in such deep shit, much, much worse than we think. And, on top of it, China owns us. The problem is that China's economy is much worse as they lay off 20 million people. They will start calling soon and I do not think it is possible for us to ignore the call.
Clinton's comments today reflects our need to give up our "moral superiority," or what ever is left after the Bush years.
But the words "cannot interfere" means we have nothing left. Nothing.
I'm of two minds on this.
One is "fuck!"
The other is the slightly more nuanced "what good is talking human rights to a China that sits on cliff edge overhanging economical and environmental self-destruction?
I (have to) assume that, as with all communication, this has a targeted audience and a context beyond what is being presented to us. I don't understand why she would even say such a thing unless it serves a greater rhetorical point. She isn't Bush and has no record of saying "fuck human lives, we need to be safer."
For every step China takes toward world domination, they sew the seeds for their own private Armageddon. I've had my eyes on the Three Gorges Dam for nearly 10 years now and I pretty much agree that freedom of the press can evolve slower than their COMMITMENT to making the country livable in the meantime.
Never mind that we, as a nation, will have a hard time preaching to the world about human rights violation AT LEAST as long as we still don't know the extent of the ones we just finished committing.
Roof,
I think that the lager rhetorical point, is the "Oh Fuck" moment: China owns us and that is why we caved.
Just a good example of American ingenuity.
Plus, even if ye do not care about the moral question of human rights.
No matter how sophisticated and current we may think our new economic behaviors to be, in the end it will not be sustainable. All these smug little pricks and prickettes, these columnists and politicians and economists talking about adaptability and the new age, they are a mere chattering class barely fit to live under any system of true ethics whatsoever.
The idea that this or any other nation could just go on indefinitely, pushing numbers around like salmon on a crystal plate, and borrowing money while other nations with lower standards of living would make our stuff for us.
It is patent nonsense.
Sardonically, our only hope may be the tax code. If we could ever summon the balls to lavishily reward domestic production, and levy draconian penalities on imports, particularly importsn derived via otusourced production
Or put another way, protectionism.
Combione that with a commitment to giving up our colletive sense of entitlement to convenience, and maybe we could begin the end of being "owned."
Post a Comment