{"id":17635,"date":"2013-07-31T09:52:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=17635"},"modified":"2013-07-31T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:52:09","slug":"obamas-breathtaking-hyprocrisy-on-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=17635","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s ‘breathtaking’ hyprocrisy on Human Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Breathtaking Hypocrisy – Why the US Has No Right to Lecture Latin America<\/strong>
\nby DANIEL WICKHAM – 30 July, 2013 – Counter Punch <\/p>\n

Venezuela has announced that it is ending efforts to improve ties with the United States after the Obama administration\u2019s nominee for the role of ambassador to the United Nations labelled the country \u201crepressive.\u201d Samantha Power, who is widely known for her strong stance on human rights, vowed to contest \u201cthe crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia and Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

For obvious reasons, Power is selective in who she choses to criticise. The likes of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, all of whom have presided over major crackdowns on dissent in recent years, warrant no mention, which is not surprising given the US government\u2019s staunch support for the regimes in question. Regarding Saudi Arabia, Washington\u2019s attitude towards democracy is best expressed by William M. Daley, Obama\u2019s chief of staff during the Arab uprisings, who said that \u201cthe possibility of anything (like the revolution in Egypt) happening in Saudi Arabia was one that couldn\u2019t become a reality.\u201d Daley explained that \u201cfor the global economy, this couldn\u2019t happen\u201d, referring of course to the importance of Saudi oil, which was described by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2003 as the primary reason for US support for the monarchy. An unsurprising claim, in light of the US State Department\u2019s description in 1945 of the Gulf\u2019s oil reserves as \u201ca stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Returning to Latin America, the hypocrisy is again breathtaking. Condemning Venezuela as \u201crepressive\u201d, Power neglects to mention that the \u201cmost dramatic setback\u201d, according to Americas Watch, for human rights in Venezuela came in 2002 when a coup d\u2019etat, allegedly supported tacitly by the United States, removed Chavez from office and \u201cdissolved the country\u2019s democratic institutions.\u201d It is also worth noting that the US supported enthusiastically the Caldera and Perez administrations which preceded Chavez\u2019s Bolivarian Revolution, both of which were vastly more repressive than the current \u2018revolutionary\u2019 government.<\/p>\n

Also strikingly absent from Power\u2019s remarks was any mention of Colombia, the United States\u2019 closest ally in the region, which according to Americas Watch, \u201cpresents the worst human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere.\u201d This year\u2019s annual report claims that \u201cover the past decade, the Colombian army committed an alarming number of extrajudicial killings of civilians\u201d, carried out in \u201ca systematic fashion\u201d, during which time the army was the highest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. Most of the killings occurred under the presidency of Alvaro Uribe, whom President Bush described in 2006 as \u201ca personal friend\u201d and \u201ca strong believer in democracy and human rights.\u201d Under Obama, Colombia has continued to receive more military aid than any other country in the hemisphere, with Mexico, whose well-documented record of \u201cextrajudicial killings, disappearances\u201d and \u201cwidespread torture\u201d is not much better, coming second. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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A Breathtaking Hypocrisy – Why the US Has No Right to Lecture Latin America by DANIEL WICKHAM – 30 July, 2013 – Counter Punch Venezuela has announced that it is ending efforts to improve ties with the United States after the Obama administration\u2019s nominee for the role of ambassador to the United Nations labelled the more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[582],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17636,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17635\/revisions\/17636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}