>Not surprisingly these self-same 'human rights' activists are drawn from
>the third-worldists of the left. For them the lesson they learnt was
>that US capitalism is largely conflict-free and that repression is a
>problem located primarily in the third world. Having left the camp of
>working class solidarity they embraced instead the strategy of attacking
>third world despots in the name of universal values that turned out to
>be American prejudices. All over the third world now, such ativists
>lecture people in destitution that they must not leave the countryside
>for the towns, that they should not aspire to Western standards of
>living, but Western values of ecological austerity.
Exactly. And you know what is the result? That the local despots have an easy job in depicting themselves as the true defenders of the local people's interests, against those little arrogant western troublemakers who want to keep the thirld world locked in its present underdevelopment. Which is true, of course (has anybody ever lectured the Kennedys about the benefits of family planning?), except for the bit about they being defenders.
Enzo