Boycott America, not Russia

by MARGARET KIMBERLY

US President Barack Obama with the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

The chief law enforcement officer of this country, Attorney General Eric Holder, announced that the right to due process is not the same as the right to judicial process, and therefore the president can kill at will. If those words are confusing it is because they are utter nonsense and the hallmark of countries that Americans generally vilify as dictatorships.

Of the two countries, which spends more of its resources on the military? Of course the answer is the United States, which not only spends more on defense than any other country but more than the rest of the world combined. Russia ranks 6th in defense expenditures, behind the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France and Japan. So, it is America that uses more of its resources for making war than for benefitting humanity.

The sentence was inhumane and so are Russian laws against “hooliganism” which can mean anything that government wants it to mean. But it is the United States that is uniquely inhumane among the world’s nations in its incarceration policies. The country with the dubious distinction of being the world’s largest jailer is, of course, the worst at dispensing justice. In the United States there are 3,278 people serving sentences of life imprisonment after being convicted of non-violent offenses. Of these 3,278 people, 65 percent are black, which is further proof of the systemic racism which is still rampant in this country.

Of course Obama doesn’t care about gay people at all. There are at least ten nations considered American allies that have anti-gay laws far more harsh than Russia’s. Saudi Arabia, America’s partner in international crime, actually executes people because they are gay. Homosexuality is not illegal in Russia, no one has been imprisoned as a result of the propaganda legislation and perpetrators of anti-gay hate crimes have been punished. Meanwhile the sorry record of American states and localities choosing not to punish the white people who kill a black person every 28 hours should be worthy of international boycotts.

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