BULLY - July 9, 2009

When I was 12 years old, I went to a summer camp for 2 weeks. I slept in a tent with 6 other campers and a counsellor. 1 of the other boys was bigger and stronger than the rest and was a bully. Finally, in order to call his bluff, all the others united and stood to prevent his bullying anyone. It was a lesson that has lasted me all my life. Today the US government has taken up the role of global bully. The presidents of the US, as though the designated emperors of the world, habitually make fiats out of DC calling themselves the leaders of the free world, although not all their clients are free and not all those who are more or less free are their clients. It has been especially so in the past 40 years including 2 Democrats and the current one. For a period, the French showed some spunk, reminding the world that the war in Iraq over imperial power was illegal and immoral, but the Cheney Gang pulled out all the stops, including even the ludicrous ones, like removing the words “French Fries” from the congressional cafeteria but more significantly carrying out a commercial war against Eurodisney and against French products like wine, cheese, and perfume. French capitalists came to their president’s palace to demand that their nation abandon the principled objection to the illegal war and reminded him that US companies were part of the US ownership of the world and its people. Today the US Tsar inveighs against any show of sovereignty anywhere in the world and delivers himself of the veto he seems to imagine lying in the words “the world will not tolerate”, meaning he says no. Thus he continues the policy of saying who may have an atomic program and who has the sovereign right to run their own elections, on the expectation that almost all the world, including France and even China and Russia, will do as they are commanded at the UN. Resistance against this bullying is hardly to be heard.