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U.S. Alienates Rest Of World Comment by Larry Ross, July 10, 2005
Because New Zealand is so propagandised by a pro-Bush, pro-U.S. war media, many New Zealanders have little idea of what's really happening in our world. There are many indications that some M.P.s want relations improved with the U.S. at any price. Winston Peters seems quite eager to improve our relationship with the Bush Administration. He carefully avoids mentioning the biggest block to this, which is our nuclear free legislation. What would he really like to give away, due to U.S. pressures? How much is the Labour government going along with Peters? Don Brash goes much further, in promising visiting U.S. Senators that he would get rid of our Nuclear Free legislation by lunchtime. There has been no mention by any N.Z. M.P. of the enormous drop in Bush's popularity ratings around the world, as shown by the following article. Nor have any mentioned the many lies of the Bush Administration to fool the American people and others into supporting his illegal invasion, occupation, laying waste of Iraq and killing up to 250,000 Iraqis. It's no wonder Bush is so unpopular as he has no real reason or justification for his war on Iraq. Most of the rest of the world know this. But Winston Peters and Don Brash and some other M.P.s either don't know this or don't care. To them it seems as if the relationship with Washington is the only relationship that really matters. They are ready to go to just about any lengths to restore that relationship to N.Z.'s traditional colonial pattern. Sometimes it seems as if New Zealand is being groomed by our mainly overseas-owned media for a resumption of it's colonial role as follower of the U.S. wherever it goes. Don Brash's quick promise to throw away N.Z.'s hard-fought for nuclear independence is one indication. His defence spokesman, Simon Power promised to make N.Z. into a pliant follower and supporter of any U.S. wars when National is elected to govern. No silly questions about legality, justification or morality bother Simon Power and other gung-ho M.P. warriors. These promises are possible because of the propaganda climate generated by our media. It literally creates an administration bubble of ignorance around New Zealanders that is only penetrated by a few overseas publications and the Internet. But very few New Zealanders go to the trouble of reading such papers as The Manchester Guardian or any of the rich vein of excellent articles on Internet. New Zealanders have been conditioned for many years to focus their attention on sports, celebrities and other trivia, rather than the crucial importance of the crimes and threats of the Bush Administration, Global Warming and what is happening to our world.
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"Decent Respect" Might Help Image Woes Abroad by Jim Lobe, July 4, 2006 WASHINGTON - It was in 1776 that a group of British colonists living along the Atlantic seaboard of North America felt compelled to offer a public justification for their "Declaration of Independence" from their mother country out of "a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind". That justification, a bill of particulars against King George II for a host of offences, including violations of what would come to be called human rights, was designed to rally British and European public opinion behind the colonists' cause. As the nation marks that occasion exactly 230 years ago Tuesday, a series of surveys from around the world over the past three years makes clear that contemporary "Mankind" believes that the United States no longer accords its opinions the "decent respect" that those who founded the country believe was its due. Those surveys suggest that the image of the U.S. as a benign hegemon that takes account of the interests and opinions of the peoples of other nations -- consciously cultivated by Washington for more than a century -- has been effectively shattered by the unilateralism of the administration of President George W. Bush and particularly its invasion of Iraq. "One of the reasons that people around the world are so upset with the U.S. is the perception that in the post-World War II era, the U.S. was the champion and leader of an international order based on international law and mutual constraints, when it could have created a form of great-power domination," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Marylands Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). "As the leader and promoter of such a system, the U.S. was expected to set the example for all the rest, but Washington is now perceived as violating the same rules it did so much to establish," according to Kull, who cited Bush's decisions to ignore the United Nations in going to war and the Geneva Conventions in treating detainees in its "global war on terror" as key moves that both defied and outraged public opinion abroad. Even after 16 months of vigorous efforts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reassure U.S. allies and potential rivals, such as Russia and China, that Washington cares about their views and is committed to multilateralism, public opinion abroad has remained stubbornly skeptical, according to former Foreign Affairs editor, Fareed Zakaria.
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