With the release of the 2012 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices yesterday, it seems the U.S. State Department has finally realised its hypocrisy in condemning Eritrea for imposing tax on the Eritrean diaspora to fund wars in Africa, while aiding the IRS to impose tax on the American diaspora so that the US can also fund wars in Africa, and the Middle East, and Central Asia, and …
Unfortunately, State’s response has not been to levy similar criticisms against the IRS or to stop cooperating with it, but instead to tone down their criticisms of Eritrea. While the 2010 and 2011 reports are virtually identical in the wording they use to condemn Eritrea’s diaspora tax, the 2012 report shows subtle shifts in language, providing classic examples of “framing techniques” that a writer can use to address roughly the same set of underlying facts while leading the reader to take sharply different attitudes towards those facts.
