The U. N. conference against racism was boycotted by the USA, inventor of the most deadly and long lasting form of racism, and Israel, founded on racist dominance of one people over another. They, along with their surrogates attending under strict orders to protect Israel from any revelation about its nature, offered evidence of the fading status of western supremacy. A disgraceful performance by the west was only successful as reported to a minority of the world’s population.
While western media parroted the party line in claiming that alleged anti-Semitism in the Iranian president’s rhetoric provoked the prearranged rush for the exit by political puppets, President Ahmadinejad’s words actually echoed the sentiments of a global majority. He spoke bluntly, though only briefly, of the last racist regime on earth, but mostly he addressed the hope for global peace and challenged a political economic order that threatens humanity’s future.
The minority slouching out of the auditorium – while the majority applauded and cheered Ahmadinejad – was treated here as a shocked reaction by something called the international community. That refers to a loose global association of dependents and henchmen of the U.S. and Israel, but it represents a shrinking minority that needs military force and consciousness control to maintain its domination. It is slowly losing its power, which is good news for humanity.
Ahmadinejad’s speech addressed reality for an as yet officially unrepresented international community that relies on a few leaders from the subjugated world on which the west built much of its wealth. Only a brief mention of the Jewish apartheid state was enough to censor the rest of his talk for most westerners, while distorting the reality of the atrocious social policies he addressed. It seems nearly impossible, in the West, to speak critically of a racist state at the core of violence and misery in the middle east since its creation sixty years ago. At least to an audience which relies on the failing empire for its survival, and which will face an even more dismal future as long as it maintains that status.
Here in America, the Israel lobby had long been at work pressuring its servants to boycott the meeting, using the most hateful and often certifiably psychotic twisting of words and thoughts to further its cause. What are supposed to be representative members of our government bent to its will, as usual, lest their finances, reputations and political or professional careers be brought to an end. This coercive power exercised by agents of a foreign country over a theoretically democratic government is an outrage that is only just beginning to be confronted by the American people.
Ahmadinejad called for reorganizing the U. N., with power moving from the western minority dominated Security Council to the global majority representing the General Assembly. This important point and the general thrust of his talk was nullified by his brief mention of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, made to seem outrageous to a mind managed western population. Alone among world leaders, he constantly speaks to the injustice of Palestinians made to suffer for European sins, and is depicted as a monstrous “uber” fiend intent on destroying the Jewish people for speaking this obvious truth. The west will soon have to face the reality he speaks of or the criminally immoral nature of its political economics will totally destroy what we call civilization.
A history of racism and present injustice in the Middle East are hardly the only problems we face, given the destructive economics of capitalism. But the treatment of Palestine and its impact on the Arab world has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands in wars and uprisings, and tens of trillions of dollars as well. The Iranian president may one day be acknowledged as a herald of the future by some of the same propaganda parrots joining in his defamation now. His speech should be read by all Americans in order that they understand exactly what he said, and see that his words reflect a reality far from the fiction presented to them by their media and politicians. And it is reality being experienced by more Americans than ever before.
The present economic chaos is only the latest in a series of financial disasters which profit a few at loss to the many, but it is threatening all of humanity and not just growing numbers of Americans. Political leaders from South America to Asia to Africa are addressing the critical need for global change, while the west tries to maintain its domination under a new regime made to seem a triumph of Affirmative Action. But the American brand of A.A. maintains the economic system by benefiting some only at the expense of others; it allows a few in, but still keeps most out, just as the economics of profit and loss must have losers in order for some to win. This is the basic economic contradiction that the world must confront and overcome democratically. The imperial rule of the west has benefitted some of the world by leaving most of the world in ruins and poverty, but voices of the previously unheard are beginning to resound, even as strictly controlled western media tries to exclude and distort them.
Under the intense strains of a disastrously wasteful consumption economy that is rapidly diminishing the environment of the entire globe, new movements and governments are beginning to face the fact that a future for humanity means an end to the system of western capital’s domination. It’s time we in the west joined the majority, but we’ll have to deal with obstructions caused by our own rulers in order to do so. We need exactly what Ahmadinejad called for at Geneva; democracy. And that means, among other things, that we must end to the coercive power of corporate capital over our economy, and the Israel lobby over our foreign policy.