Public education is also under sharp attack-- an educated public is primary defense against class war. The neoliberals want the population to be passive and obedient and atomized, as well as resentful, a perfect target for demagogues. As for the underclasses themselves, next to no prioritization is attached to the nuclear threat: In France, the Yellow Vest slogan was "You privileged people are worried about the end of the world, we're worried about the end of the month": "When people are concerned about how to survive in their precarious lives, there's not much use telling them that scientists, whom they distrust anyway, are predicting dire consequences down the road."
That has many consequences: "[I]nequality is a prime factor in the breakdown of social order. Latin America suffered two lost decades under destructive structural adjustment policies. In Yugoslavia and Rwanda such policies in the eighties sharply exacerbated social tensions, contributing to the horrors that followed." It's sometimes argued that the neoliberal policies were a grand success, pointing to the fastest reduction in global poverty in history-- which fails to add that these remarkable achievements were in China and other countries that firmly rejected the prescribed neoliberal principles. Furthermore, it wasn't the "Washington consensus" that induced US investors to relocate production to countries with much cheaper labor and limited labor rights or environmental constraints, "thereby deindustrializing America with well-known consequences for working people. Reagan and Thatcher attacked unions, leading to attacks on labor, often illegal."
The worst crime since World War II was the long US war against Indochina. No country could even contemplate condemning the US or even discussing the issue. The offending country would be "dismantled" by the US. "The West righteously condemns Putin's annexations and calls for punishment of this reincarnation of Hitler, but scarcely dares to utter a chirp of protest when the US authorizes Israel's illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Greater Jerusalem, and Morocco's illegal annexation of Western Sahara."
Continuing on the Mideast: "[T]he region continues to be the global center for heating the world to the brink of survivability and soon beyond. And while Israel and Lebanon may soon be sinking into the sea, they are squabbling about which will have the honor of virtually destroying both of them by producing the fossil fuels at their maritime borders, acts of lunacy duplicated around the world."
On Iran: The US government has warned for a long time that Iranian nuclear programs are one of the gravest threats to world peace. Israeli has asserted time and again that it will not tolerate this danger. "The US and Israel have acted violently to overcome this grave threat: cyberwar and sabotage (which the Pentagon regards as aggression that merits violence in self-defense), numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists, constant threats of use of force ('all options are open') in violation of international law (and if anyone were to care, the US Constitution)."
On Israel: A NWFZ (nuclear weapons-free zone) in the Middle East would be the solution BUT the US will not allow the enormous Israeli nuclear arsenal, the only one in the region, to be subject to international inspection. In fact, the US won't even officially recognize that Israel's possession of nukes. "The reason, presumably, is that to do so would invoke US law, which, arguably, would render the massive US aid flow to Israel illegal."
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