2006-03-28

Farrakhan Calls for Regime Change in US

The controversial African American leader defended Iran's right to develop a nuclear energy program to reduce dependence on oil and said Washington's opposition was a pretext for a war.

"The Muslim world should unite against America's desire for a preemptive strike against Iran and Syria," he said at a news conference.

Farrakhan said a similar pretext was used by Washington to invade Iraq "to rape the treasuries of the United States of hundreds of billions of dollars to be doled out to the friends of President Bush, Halliburton and Bechtel and associates."

2 comments:

Paul Hue said...

I agree with Farrakan in opposing the Cuban embargo. Why single out that dictator, while working with others? And it hasn't worked at all, and has been tried long enough to declare it a failure. Let's try normal relations.

I haven't read about Cuba's hurricane program. It might be better than the US's. One of the worst aspects of the US plan is all the US taxpayer wealth that gets awarded to hurricane-stricken areas. This leads to people forsaking percautions, not leaving when they should, and then bilking the govt in the aftermath. Though Cuba is a totalitarian state, it lacks the wealth that causes the problems that I've just described.

Meanwhile, that US wealth also results in a much better infrastructure than Cuba's, which is why so few people ever die in US disasters. Some undetrmined portion of Katrina's catastrophe derived from local contractors scamming the govt by scrimping on materials in creating the levees. Had the US wealth spent on those levees actually manifested as the designed levees, what would the outcome have been? Cuba's socialist govt doesn't even have enough wealth to get wasted.

In any case, even in the massive case of Katrina, only a few people died. Overall, of all places to live in the Caribean, the US coast is the safest.

Paul Hue said...

I somewhat agree with Farrakhan that there is something of a logical error in asserting that no countries without nuclear weapons can develop them. I disagree with Farrakhan that an important and relevent distinction that applies to Iran is that its president has repeatedly declared his desire to have a nearby nation eradicated.

And of course I agree with him that the establishment of Isreal is logically and morally unjustifiable. However, neither is the existance of most other modern -- and no ancient! -- nations. For humanity to sensibly advance, I think that practically we have to accept the existance of all current nations, and to address the injustices of their foundations by rendering the nations democracies. This leads to a very sensible basis for criticizing the nations of Arabia, including Isreal: how democratic are they?

Surely Isreal lacks some important democratic principles, all involving special status for people identifying themselves as "Jews". But the vast majority of social problems in Arabia derive from the even greater lack of democracy in the much larger areas outside of Isreal.