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The Vile Maxim Still Runs the World
In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith named the merchants who lived by one creed: everything for themselves, nothing for anyone else. Today's version is multinational corporations and global banks. Since 1945, controlling Middle Eastern oil has meant leverage over the world, so Washington backs cooperative rulers under the Muasher doctrine while ignoring hostile public opinion. At home, the same logic built a "plutonomy," where a tiny elite drives the economy while immigrants and public workers take the blame.
Same Crime, Opposite Verdict
In 2014, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 brought swift global outrage and lasting sanctions. In 1988, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290 people — yet its commander was later decorated, with no sustained condemnation. The same pattern appears with journalists: the murder of Charlie Hebdo's staff sparked worldwide marches, while NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbian television, which killed sixteen media workers, was quietly approved. The only variable that changes the verdict is who pulled the trigger.
Peace Agreements That Preserve Conquest
The 1993 Oslo Accords are remembered as a handshake toward peace, yet the signed text never mentions Palestinian national rights, ignores UN resolutions, and sets no limit on settlement expansion, which accelerated immediately afterward. One of Ariel Sharon's own advisers admitted the process had been placed "in formaldehyde" — preserved but lifeless. The strategy that followed annexed valuable land while confining Palestinians to disconnected cantons, with Gaza locked into a cycle critics call "mowing the lawn": cease-fires announced, sieges unbroken, each response met with a harsher assault.