March 31
GUEST: Stephen Zunes, leading scholar of the Middle East and North Africa and co-author of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution, talks about how the US and France have blocked the UN from calling for an end to occupation and a national referendum.
Stephen Zunes, co-author of Western Sahara
Stephen Zunes expands our awareness of how many people of the world live under brutal oppression. Western Sahara is one of those areas. A decades long occupation has been followed by ethnic cleansing and Moroccan settlements. The goal is the annihilation of the indigenous peoples of Western Sahara so that Morocco can steal their land resources.
To the UN's credit, the occupation of Western Sahara has been consistently condemned by the General Assembly. But France, Israel and the US have different standards than most of the world. The US has gone further than any country in recognizing Morocco's captured lands.
The occupation of Western Sahara is just one of the many war crimes that the US has actively supported. Saudi Arabia's genocidal campaign against Yemen has been backed by US weaponry and planes. The apartheid treatment of five million Palestinians is another example. The US gives close to 4 billon a year so that Israel can destroy houses, ruin orchards, steal water resources, and imprison tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The invasion of Ukraine has given the US Empire a chance to condemn military occupation and human rights violations committed by Russia. But what about the US record? It is up to our mainstream media to obscure coverage of US war crimes so that it can cheerlead righteous indignation towards Russia. All this passes right over the heads of most Americans, who seem oblivious to the obvious hypocrisy.
