Martin Jay
Is Britain a real friend to Morocco? How many world leaders in the West put their hands in their own pockets to help poor people in times of natural calamities? Double standards, hypocrisy and lies is all we have in the West for Morocco and Libya.
Is Britain a real friend to Morocco? How many world leaders in the West put their hands in their own pockets to help poor people in times of natural calamities? Double standards, hypocrisy and lies is all we have in the West for Morocco and Libya.
It's often said during a crisis, you really get to know who your real friends are. It has surprised me somewhat that during the earthquake in Morocco a great number of complete strangers reached out to me and asked if I had survived, while a number of friends didn't even bother to even enquire whether I was alive or dead. Of course, many will say that they checked on social media. But you would have thought they would find the time to call and just ask "are you OK? Do you need anything?". It is after all rare to experience an earthquake. And perhaps a once-in-a-life experience to survive one. We hope.
But many so-called friends did nothing. Perhaps I overestimated the depth of those relationships and shouldn't expect much, especially from ex-girlfriends and even an ex-wife. This is really my shock. Not the walls falling in while I wake up to noise of the rumbling as I run out of the bedroom jumping across a pile of bricks where an internal wall once stood. It is that friendships are never what they seem to be. Not so much that they are ephemeral but more that they have or had no depth in the first place. The earthquake now in Morocco and the terrible flood in Libya will leave many wondering who their friends were and who they can or could count on in tough times. We are all thinking about this now.
And so, here in Morocco, I find the opprobrium towards the Moroccan king and his cabal of advisers quite odd. A number of international journalists want to make a hullabaloo about him not accepting the offer of help from dozens of countries who were apparently lining up to send aid, both in the form of experts and their equipment. The perfidious suggestion that they leave hanging in their articles is that the King's national pride held him back from accepting aid, which, they might argue, underlines that Morocco is a poor country which doesn't have the means to cope with such a calamity on such a scale. Morocco's defence budget is, after all, only 1.5 billion dollars and so, it could be argued that Britain, for example, could send the 60 Chinooks that we have. The focus now is the desperately poor in the mountains.
But we, in the UK, did send search and rescue teams plus dogs. We along with Spain, have very good relations with Morocco, which are developing all the time. At some point in the next few years many Brits will benefit from cheaper electricity bills in their homes due to solar plants being built in Morocco.
There is a great deal of hypocrisy and misplaced moral tutelage being slopped around though before we wave the finger at the Moroccan king. It's up to him who he wants coming to his country and if he chooses politics as a defining measure of who gets to be the chosen ones, we, in the west are not in a position to judge. It is after all a two-way street. Many countries who want to come in will require payback later on. Such assistance is very rarely given on an unreciprocated basis which is why the king was careful not to quickly take offers of aid from both Arab countries too quickly and in particular America. The King has no doubt learnt that the U.S. never gives anything without strings attached. Would the Biden administration beg him later on to get more involved in the Ukraine war? Probably.
And when we look at ourselves and how we treat international tragedies like Morocco and Libya, we are also hardly whiter than white. Hypocrisy and double standards are prevalent. Why is Britain not helping Libya more, given that it was David Cameron who supported a plan to send British-Libyans to fight with terror groups there against Gaddafi? Are we not responsible for their retching poverty?
And even closer to home. How many British servicemen sleep on the street in the UK, who fought our dirty wars around the world? There can be no dirtier wars in our entire history than Iraq or Afghanistan, both wars fought for cheap or free energy resources and multibillion-dollar defence contracts.
Look at how the Biden administration treats its own US citizens in Hawaii, for example.
Why isn't the Biden administration shelling out billions in Hawaii to the victims of a recent fire there, when he and Congress are being asked to sign off another tranche of 24 bn dollars of aid to the Ukrainians in a war which not one American military expert even believes can be won and that is stinking, given that in the same week we learn that the president and his son accepted bribes from an energy firm there, when Biden was Vice President? The hypocrisy is on a grand scale and stinks even more when we see both Oprah Winfrey and The Rock Dwayne Johnson appealing to black Americans to send cash to their charity. Given that the combined wealth of these two megastars is at least 3bn dollars, one wonders if the US is an irony-free zone or Americans are just stupid. The elitism and entitlement of the Hollywood woke left is breathtaking at best, and revolting at worse.
We don't see Joe Biden sending a small token of his own personal wealth to Hawaii. While the two celebrities contributed jointly a trifling 10 million dollars, cynics might argue that for Johnson to contribute 5m USD of his own money hardly amounts to much given his Hawaiian roots. And for Oprah, who some believe has a wealth closer to 5bn rather than the reported 3bn, it must seem like she is getting a great deal, given the PR payback.
But the real hypocrisy comes from their liberal journalist friends who play a key part in promoting them and Biden. These journalists are the same ones pointing the finger at the Moroccan king, who, naturally, they will not report stumped up 100 million dollars of his own cash to help his own people.
Joe Biden's impeachment, in a nutshell, is about allegations of bribery in Ukraine. Could his dirty deals be the basis of the Ukraine war itself and why is he hellbent on keeping it going regardless of the costs to the American taxpayer, let alone Ukrainian lives? Hypocrisy and duplicity on a grand scale.
We have simply lost the moral compass and are not in a position to judge how the Moroccan king orchestrates the relief effort. The tragedy has left us all shell shocked as to whom we can trust and who we consider friends. But if Britain is a real friend, it should also send cash to the Moroccan king as well as helicopters. And British people should not cancel holidays which will only impact on the country's economy struggling to get back on its feet since Covid. I myself am considering a GoFUndMe account to rebuild my house. Shall I send the link to all those old friends who couldn't even send me a text message?