From the perspective of historical materialism, the end of politics is communist society: "an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." The ruling ideas today elevate either "national sovereignty" or "human rights" (narrowly defined, devoid of socioeconomic and international dimensions1) to the end in itself. However, for historical materialists, "national sovereignty" and "human rights" are means to the aforementioned end. This distinguishes historical materialists from simple-minded nationalists and from Amnesty Internationalists.
1 Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized" (emphasis added). Needless to say, there is no worse negation of Article 28 than imperialism, which is antithetical to human rights.
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The link to the word "socioeconomic" led me to your post of July 25th in which you are referring to the recent airplane crashes in Iran (two crashes in one month) and claiming that the US sanctions may have indirectly caused the accidents. It is good to remember that both airplanes were Russian-made Tupolev and Ilyushin, and there has been no embargo on Iran by Russia since the Islamic revolution.
But, a question arises: would Iran have purchased Russian-made planes, recognized by everyone as poor products (certainly inferior to US-made planes), if the country had not been subject to the US embargo? Isn't the US government not only endangering Iranian air passengers but also undermining the interests of US manufacturers of airplane parts and airplanes? Isn't a better policy -- not only for political and socioeconomic rights of Iranians but also for the sake of adding a little stimulus to the US economy (that may come from more Iranian imports of US products and less US expenditures on its Middle East wars) -- a speedy normalization of US-Iran relations?
The United States is in process of destroying itself. Therefore a rational response to world politics, as Yoshie suggests would be in it's interest, is not going to happen. The Zionist Foreign Policy is U S policy and through the forced set of agreements with the EU, EU foreign Policy as well.
Most watchers, activists ignore this fact. Soon they will not be able to. Probably right aftet Israel bombs Iran. suzannedk@gmail.com
Iran isn't only barred from buying US planes, it can't buy European airbus planes either, because of US pressure on Iran.
A good point, Masoud!
And it really looks like Airbus and Boeing should want the Iranian market even more than Iran would want them: "Airbus and Boeing Co. are taking a break from competing for new jetliner contracts to focus on a more urgent issue: saving the orders already on their books, which are threatened by the economic crisis" ("Airbus, Boeing Try to Preserve Orders," WSJ, 16 June 2009).
Airbus now bows to the orders of empire, as Boeing has always furthered such, being employed by Homeland. Israel is foreign policy for the US and the EU. Israel wants Iran dismembered as Israel is understnadably paranoid. Human rights and National Sovereignty seem to be renamed AIPAC.
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