Terror Attacks, G20 Hypocrisy
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- Published on Tuesday, 17 November 2015 00:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1185 .... November 17, 2015
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Terror Attacks, G20 Hypocrisy
Art Young
I join with many others who stand for a world of peace and justice in completely repudiating the terrorist attacks in Paris and the similar atrocity in Beirut. We express our full solidarity with the hundreds of innocent victims, dead and injured, many of whom remain in critical condition at this time.
That said, the terror attacks must be seen in a wider context.
We live in a world of massive inequality and environmental degradation, one dominated by the global 1% and the states that act in their interests. To maintain their power, in recent decades the U.S. and its allies have engaged in a seemingly endless series of imperialist interventions across the globe, unequal wars that... have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, destroyed societies, created profound animosities between communities, and forced millions of people to flee their homes to seek safety in bleak refugee camps or risk death on land and sea. Our condemnation of the crimes committed in Paris and Beirut must not blind us to the crimes of imperialism, many orders of magnitude larger, and which create the conditions that have led some to turn to terrorism.
That is why I refuse to stand with Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau or François Holland when they condemn the attacks in Paris. Obama and Hollande have too much blood on their hands. Their statements are hypocritical, designed to promote more repression, war and violence. Trudeau has just assumed office, but the record of his party in office and his election program indicate that his foreign policy will not differ from that of Stephen Harper in any substantial way. It is apparent that the leaders of the G20 who met in Turkey on November 15-16 have made plans to take maximum political advantage of the opportunity that the killings in Paris afford them.