Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Wooing Old Europe, Condi-style


Kamen at the WaPo quotes State Dept spokesmodel Tom Casey, who objected to Cuba and Zimbabwe being on a UN human rights panel: “The United States believes that countries that routinely and systematically violate the rights of their citizens should not be selected to review the human rights performance of other countries.” But when the US does it, it’s just a few bad apples, and mostly we violate the rights of citizens of other countries and blah blah hypocrisy Abu Ghraib naked human pyramids Alberto Gonzales detention without trial blah blah blah blah....

Sorry, I just had a vision of 4 more years of sanctimonious Bushies pretending to be spreading freedom throughout the world, and I went into blogger automatic pilot.

Kamen points out that Saudi Arabia, another exemplar of human rights, is also on that panel.

Condi Rice was in Paris, “wooing” the French, as all the news sources put it. It somehow comes as no surprise that her style of “wooing” is actually the issuing of marching orders, thinly disguised. An Independent editorial (not available for free online) points out (as does Eli at Left I On the News) that when she said, “America stands ready to work with Europe on our common agenda -- and Europe must stand ready to work with America,” “it sounded very like a command - and if not a command, then a threat.” (The arrogance of power is never far from the Bushies; Chimpy himself today said that Congress “needs to” pass his budget.)

Elsewhere in that speech, she suggests a single historical line from Rosa Parks to the fall of communism to the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq. Must be Black Propaganda History Month.

People accused Bill Clinton of running a permanent campaign, of electioneering rather than governing. Well what do we make of the promotion of Karl Rove, a man who has spent his career running slimy campaigns on behalf of slimy candidates, to the policy position of deputy chief of staff?


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