EMPIRE - March 23, 2011

As US once again takes the position that our voice is the voice of the whole human race, I must admit that I am again feeling queasy. I am sensitive to the ancient Greek concept of hubris, and of my sense that there are many others on this lost little planet of ours that take a similar feeling from such imperial statements coming out of DC. I have no use for Col. Kaddafi, but that puts him into company with other military dictators, many of whom have been allies and supporters of US governments in the past. Some of these, notably Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen, are showing their colors these days, and their misdeeds extend to deploying battlefield type weapons, especially tanks and fighter- bombers, against unarmed or slightly-armed political protesters. There are no international conventions outlawing such blatant use of the People’s money by the nation’s rulers against political protesters, though I thin there should be. By contrast, we have the issue of piracy, lately appearing in the Straits of Malacca and now issuing from the fishing villages of Somalia. These incursions take place in international waters, and even the imperial US Government shies away from enforcing the centuries-old reading of international law that proclaimed pirates as the enemies of all humanity. An international problem courts an international solution, and the Charter of the United Nations used to include an armed force. I cannot imagine any infraction of world-wide law that has such a uniform condemnation. Who would stand up for piracy on the high seas as a form of Freedom of the Seas? Yet the Emperor of the Planet in DC has never proposed a UN Navy to enforce this unanimous opinion against the violation. Perhaps such a general agreement might be a start toward a day when tanks in the streets against protesters can be generally condemned, and not on a case-by-case basis arising from the opinions of the Boss Nation. I know US love being Boss, but catering to this addiction has proven very dear to US over the past 50 years, in money, lives and moral honor.