The western powers stand exposed before the world as immoral hypocrites. And it serves them right.

For centuries, they have pursued a policy of self-serving inhumanity – in Africa, in Latin America and in the Middle East, wherever their business and military interests are involved.

If you are a student of history, I invite you to review the adventures of the various East India companies, of the United Fruit Company, of Standard Oil (and other petroleum giants), of the Chinese Opium Wars – of all those who have roamed the world in search of profit, from the time of Marco Polo and before.

And I call your attention to the deceptions and abuses of the Cold War, the subversion of sovereign states, the death squads, the oppression, brutality and torture carried out in our name – yes yours and mine. May God forgive us.

Now, this web of cynical imperialism has been partially exposed by the uprisings in the Middle East (click on map above).

Questions are finally being asked.

Why are western leaders intervening in Libya? Why did they intervene in Egypt? And Yemen?

Why are they not intervening in Bahrain?

Why will they not intervene effectively in Syria?

The answer is obvious. Some despots are more valuable to the west than others.

However despicable they may be, they remain untouchable because they are the pillars of a worldwide corporate empire.

But this empire is tottering. The underlying moral corruption has eaten away its foundation.

An analysis of U.S. foreign policy, originally published on TomDispatch.com and picked up by Salon. com today, concludes that:

For more than 50 years, Washington has been served well by a system of global power based on subordinate elites. That system once facilitated the extension of American influence worldwide with a surprising efficiency and (relatively speaking) an economy of force. Now, however, those loyal allies increasingly look like an empire of failed or insubordinate states. Make no mistake: the degradation of, or ending of, half a century of such ties is likely to leave Washington on the rocks.

The authors are Brett Reilly, a graduate student in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is studying U.S. foreign policy in Asia, and Alfred W. McCoy, professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation” and “From the Cold War to the War on Terror.”

(Click here to read the article.)

I know I sound naive. You might dismiss my rant as unworldly and unsophisticated.

I plead guilty to those charges – if being worldly and sophisticated means condoning evil on the rationale that the end justifies the means.

Yes, I am naive enough to believe that doing the right thing is the right thing to do.