This provides a very interesting perspective (perhaps, a logical middle ground) on the all-important gender divide in Afghanistan.
click here
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Uprising in Kyrgyzstan
Lee Sustar looks at the background to the rebellion that swept out a Central
Asian autocrat with close ties to the U.S. government.
April 9, 2010
THE MASS revolt that toppled the autocratic president of Kyrgyzstan had its
roots in the impoverishment of the mass of the population and growing
discontent over repression and human rights violations.
Predictably, many commentators in the U.S. press focused on the implications
for the U.S. airbase in the town of Manas, a critical part of the supply
chain for the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Some pundits have pointed the finger at Russia, which was upset over the
pro-U.S. tilt of the ousted Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. But
Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin couldn't
have been pleased by the sight of demonstrators who defied the police, seized
their weapons, and stormed the parliament and the presidential palace.
Anxieties will be greater still in the presidential palaces of the
neighboring Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Turkmenistan, where despots fear a similar mass rebellion.
Thus, a popular revolt in a country of just 5 million people has sent shock
waves through the region. As Russian author and activist Boris Kagarlitsky
said in an interview from Moscow:
>This was more of a social uprising then a revolution. There is a lot of
>unrest. But while people are rebelling against the current regime, they have
>no trust in the opposition, either. It is a social uprising with very little
>political perspective. Sooner or later, one or another group of elites will
>take over, because there is no other political force capable of doing so.
>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE UPRISING comes almost exactly five years after Kyrgyzstan's 2005 Tulip
Revolution ousted Askar Akayev, who had ruled the country since its
declaration of independence amid the breakup of the former USSR in 1991.
The Tulip Revolution followed a split in the ruling class. Where previous
"color" revolutions in the ex-USSR states of Ukraine and Georgia had been
largely peaceful--and heavily influenced by non-governmental organizations
with ties to the U.S.--the Tulip Revolution involved more violent social
clashes.
Bakiyev, a former stalwart of the Akayev regime turned oppositionist, took
office promising a new era of democracy and social justice.
Once in power, however, Bakiyev soon followed the pattern of other Central
Asian strongmen. He ousted opponents within the elite--including the head of
the new provisional government, Roza Otunbayeva--and used his political
connections to amass personal wealth. Bakiyev's reelection in 2009 was widely
denounced as fraudulent, and anger mounted over his effort to groom his son
to succeed him in office.
The uprising forced Bakiyev to flee the capital city of Bishkek by airplane.
While he hasn't officially conceded power--he's reportedly holed up somewhere
in the country, plotting a comeback--he has been effectively ousted by a
rebellion with much deeper social roots than the Tulip Revolution.
Eyewitness accounts of the uprising make that clear. Kyrgyz journalist Kumar
Bekbolotov described how the rebellion unfolded [1]:
>A crowd began to gather around an old bus stop in an industrial area near
>downtown Bishkek. Several speakers stepped up, rousing the group of 500 with
>impromptu remarks about the events unfolding in Talas, a northern region of
>Kyrgyzstan, where protesters had stormed a local government building and
>declared popular rule.
>
>As the crowd grew excited, the riot police circled the buses--wielding
>batons, shields and, in some cases, angry dogs. Without warning, they moved
>on the crowd in a neat rectangular-shaped formation, rounding them up and
>pushing them toward the buses.
>
>It seemed like a routine police operation. But this was no ordinary day.
>Suddenly, a large group of young protesters, screaming and shouting, tore
>through the police ranks, raced across the street, grabbed rocks and
>attacked. Several policemen lost their batons and helmets in the ensuing
>melee. By day's end, the fracas had drawn crowds of 10,000 to 15,000,
>claimed the lives of scores of protesters, toppled a president--and altered
>a country's destiny.
>
Braving police gunfire that killed at least 75 people and wounded hundreds
more, the crowds stormed the presidential palace and parliament on April 7.
Shops were targeted, too, as poor and hungry people seized the food and goods
they couldn't afford.
Luke Harding, a reporter for Britain's /Guardian/ newspaper, wrote that while
the opposition claimed to be in charge of a provisional government, the real
power was with the people [2]:
>Out on the streets...there were few signs that the new regime was in control
>of anything. The police and security forces appeared to be hiding. Large
>crowds milled around the Soviet-era, fir-tree-lined boulevards, forming and
>reforming revolutionary huddles. Dozens of shops had been looted. Burned out
>cars littered the pavements.
>
>The main government building was on fire, with thick, black smoke pouring
>out of its upper floors. Hundreds of looters gathered near the White House
>presidential building. The shells of trucks and a tractor lay next to
>destroyed railings. Youths perched on an armored personnel carrier, seized
>yesterday from government troops.
>
>By late afternoon, the general prosecutor's office was gutted, with gangs
>roaming around inside, smashing windows with broken-off table legs. Sheets
>of paper--followed by a fig plant--fell from a balcony. At the parliament
>building, opposition workers were tossing posters of Bakiyev into the
>street...
>
>Much of the frustration directed at the ousted government has stemmed from
>Bakiyev's appointment of many of his family members to key government
>positions. In particular, his younger son, Maxim, was widely detested.
>
>Inside Maxim Bakiyev's wrecked and burned mansion, a stream of looters and
>the merely curious trampled over beds of broken glass. On the wall, someone
>had written: "Fuck you." Nearby, they had added: "Death to Maxim!" A couple
>of fir trees were still left in the beds. But the others had all gone,
>transplanted--like the rest of Kyrgyzstan--to a new and uncertain future.
>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ONE SPARK for the revolt was a big increase in electricity and water prices
that would hammer a population already reeling from the economic crisis. The
Kyrgyzstan economy contracted by 1 percent last year, forcing an increasing
number to emigrate to Russia in the hope of finding jobs that pay just $300
per month. Remittances from emigrants account for 20 percent of Kyrgyzstan's
Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The other mainstays of the economy are exports of gold and agricultural
products, principally tobacco. Child labor is widespread, especially on
farms.
But the miserable economy is only part of the story. Political life in
Kyrgyzstan had grown intolerable, not just for the elite opposition, but also
for journalists, pro-democracy activists and anyone who happened to cross the
Bakiyev clan and its hangers-on. The summary of the U.S. State Department's
report on Kyrgyzstan [3] in its annual survey of human rights makes that
clear:
>The following human rights problems were reported: restrictions on citizens'
>right to change their government; arbitrary killing, torture and abuse by
>law enforcement officials; impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary
>arrest and detention; lack of judicial independence; pressure on
>nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and opposition leaders, including
>government harassment; pressure on independent media; government detention
>of assembly organizers; authorities' failure to protect refugees adequately;
>pervasive corruption; discrimination against women, persons with
>disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities, and other persons based on
>sexual orientation or gender identity; child abuse; trafficking in persons;
>and child labor.
>
But the actions of the U.S. government speak louder than its words.
In early 2009, when Bakiyev lined up $2.8 billion in loans and aid from
Russia and announced the closure of the U.S. airbase in Manas, Washington
responded with more money and political support. Bakiyev not only extended
the U.S. lease on the airbase, but recently agreed to allow the U.S. military
to establish an "anti-terrorism" training center in southern Kyrgyzstan.
Less than three weeks before Bakiyev's overthrow, the head of U.S. Central
Command, David Petraeus, was in Kyrgyzstan to show U.S. support for the
government. Having already tripled its annual rent for the Manas airbase to
$60 million per year--a big sum for a small, poor country--Petraeus was now
prepared to pay $5.5 million to the government for the training center, which
would formally belong to the Kyrgyzstan military.
Having played off the U.S. against Russia, Bakiyev was confident that it was
time to tighten his grip on power.
Less than two weeks before he was overthrown, he stated at a national
political gathering [4], "The world is actively discussing the shortcomings
of a model of democracy based on elections and human rights. There is no
certainty that such a model is suitable for all countries and peoples."
Bakiyev's tilt back toward the U.S. didn't save him, of course. And Vladimir
Putin's rush to telephone interim government leader Roza Otunbayeva might
suggest that the opposition running Kyrgyzstan's new government is aligned
with Moscow in the "Great Game" of imperial rivalry in Central Asia.
The reality, however, is more complicated. Certainly Russia--which has an
airbase of its own in Kyrgyzstan, about 20 miles away from Manas--will be
keen to influence the new government. But while Otunbayeva was educated in
Moscow and was a diplomat for the old USSR, she also has longstanding ties to
the U.S., having been Kyrgyzstan's ambassador in Washington.
Thus, one of her first statements as head of the new government was to assure
the U.S. that the Manas base would function as usual. Otunbayeva and her
faction of the elite are likely to continue to try and balance between Russia
and the U.S.
Boris Kagarlitsky said that the U.S. and Russia would both have to take a
wait-and-see approach in Kyrgyzstan, since neither has much leverage. "Both
Moscow and Washington are really interested in Kyrgyzstan, but lack any tools
of control at the moment," he said. "All they can do is just flirt with
specific groups of elites."
The question now is whether the mass of people who participated in the
uprising--and who suffered a terrible loss of life in the process--will be
satisfied with the new government. Otunbayeva has pledged to convene a
constituent assembly to draft a new constitution and hold elections in six
months. But the people are also in desperate need of jobs and economic
security.
And what's more, they've showed their power. As Kagarlitsky pointed out, the
uprising in Kyrgyzstan will reverberate across Central Asia. "This is
definitely the beginning of the destabilization of the region," he said. "It
will have a domino effect in the long term. In the short term, the Central
Asian leaders will tighten the screws, which will lead to more control and
more authoritarianism. The question is how far these regimes will go."
Pakistan's /Daily Times/ made a similar point [5]:
>The masses, fed up with the denial of their rights, across-the-board
>corruption and profiteering, tailored alterations of the constitution to
>suit whosoever usurps power, a lack of basic amenities and skyrocketing
>inflation, hold the power to exhibit an extreme degree of pent-up animosity.
>The Pakistani public, too, has been alerted, not just to its rights but also
>of the blatant denial of them.
>
>As can be seen in these latest developments in Kyrgyzstan, it is the people
>who bring about a change once the limit of their patience has been reached.
>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a
Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [6] license, except for articles that are
republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material
belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are
attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.
[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-08/how-the-uprising-happened/
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/08/kyrgyzstan-revolt-over-kurmanbek-bakiyev
[3] http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/sca/136089.htm
[4] http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2010/03/24/kyrgyz_revolution_leaves_legacy_of_oppression/
[5] http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C04%5C09%5Cstory_9-4-2010_pg3_1
[6] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0
Asian autocrat with close ties to the U.S. government.
April 9, 2010
THE MASS revolt that toppled the autocratic president of Kyrgyzstan had its
roots in the impoverishment of the mass of the population and growing
discontent over repression and human rights violations.
Predictably, many commentators in the U.S. press focused on the implications
for the U.S. airbase in the town of Manas, a critical part of the supply
chain for the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Some pundits have pointed the finger at Russia, which was upset over the
pro-U.S. tilt of the ousted Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. But
Russian President Dimitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin couldn't
have been pleased by the sight of demonstrators who defied the police, seized
their weapons, and stormed the parliament and the presidential palace.
Anxieties will be greater still in the presidential palaces of the
neighboring Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Turkmenistan, where despots fear a similar mass rebellion.
Thus, a popular revolt in a country of just 5 million people has sent shock
waves through the region. As Russian author and activist Boris Kagarlitsky
said in an interview from Moscow:
>This was more of a social uprising then a revolution. There is a lot of
>unrest. But while people are rebelling against the current regime, they have
>no trust in the opposition, either. It is a social uprising with very little
>political perspective. Sooner or later, one or another group of elites will
>take over, because there is no other political force capable of doing so.
>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE UPRISING comes almost exactly five years after Kyrgyzstan's 2005 Tulip
Revolution ousted Askar Akayev, who had ruled the country since its
declaration of independence amid the breakup of the former USSR in 1991.
The Tulip Revolution followed a split in the ruling class. Where previous
"color" revolutions in the ex-USSR states of Ukraine and Georgia had been
largely peaceful--and heavily influenced by non-governmental organizations
with ties to the U.S.--the Tulip Revolution involved more violent social
clashes.
Bakiyev, a former stalwart of the Akayev regime turned oppositionist, took
office promising a new era of democracy and social justice.
Once in power, however, Bakiyev soon followed the pattern of other Central
Asian strongmen. He ousted opponents within the elite--including the head of
the new provisional government, Roza Otunbayeva--and used his political
connections to amass personal wealth. Bakiyev's reelection in 2009 was widely
denounced as fraudulent, and anger mounted over his effort to groom his son
to succeed him in office.
The uprising forced Bakiyev to flee the capital city of Bishkek by airplane.
While he hasn't officially conceded power--he's reportedly holed up somewhere
in the country, plotting a comeback--he has been effectively ousted by a
rebellion with much deeper social roots than the Tulip Revolution.
Eyewitness accounts of the uprising make that clear. Kyrgyz journalist Kumar
Bekbolotov described how the rebellion unfolded [1]:
>A crowd began to gather around an old bus stop in an industrial area near
>downtown Bishkek. Several speakers stepped up, rousing the group of 500 with
>impromptu remarks about the events unfolding in Talas, a northern region of
>Kyrgyzstan, where protesters had stormed a local government building and
>declared popular rule.
>
>As the crowd grew excited, the riot police circled the buses--wielding
>batons, shields and, in some cases, angry dogs. Without warning, they moved
>on the crowd in a neat rectangular-shaped formation, rounding them up and
>pushing them toward the buses.
>
>It seemed like a routine police operation. But this was no ordinary day.
>Suddenly, a large group of young protesters, screaming and shouting, tore
>through the police ranks, raced across the street, grabbed rocks and
>attacked. Several policemen lost their batons and helmets in the ensuing
>melee. By day's end, the fracas had drawn crowds of 10,000 to 15,000,
>claimed the lives of scores of protesters, toppled a president--and altered
>a country's destiny.
>
Braving police gunfire that killed at least 75 people and wounded hundreds
more, the crowds stormed the presidential palace and parliament on April 7.
Shops were targeted, too, as poor and hungry people seized the food and goods
they couldn't afford.
Luke Harding, a reporter for Britain's /Guardian/ newspaper, wrote that while
the opposition claimed to be in charge of a provisional government, the real
power was with the people [2]:
>Out on the streets...there were few signs that the new regime was in control
>of anything. The police and security forces appeared to be hiding. Large
>crowds milled around the Soviet-era, fir-tree-lined boulevards, forming and
>reforming revolutionary huddles. Dozens of shops had been looted. Burned out
>cars littered the pavements.
>
>The main government building was on fire, with thick, black smoke pouring
>out of its upper floors. Hundreds of looters gathered near the White House
>presidential building. The shells of trucks and a tractor lay next to
>destroyed railings. Youths perched on an armored personnel carrier, seized
>yesterday from government troops.
>
>By late afternoon, the general prosecutor's office was gutted, with gangs
>roaming around inside, smashing windows with broken-off table legs. Sheets
>of paper--followed by a fig plant--fell from a balcony. At the parliament
>building, opposition workers were tossing posters of Bakiyev into the
>street...
>
>Much of the frustration directed at the ousted government has stemmed from
>Bakiyev's appointment of many of his family members to key government
>positions. In particular, his younger son, Maxim, was widely detested.
>
>Inside Maxim Bakiyev's wrecked and burned mansion, a stream of looters and
>the merely curious trampled over beds of broken glass. On the wall, someone
>had written: "Fuck you." Nearby, they had added: "Death to Maxim!" A couple
>of fir trees were still left in the beds. But the others had all gone,
>transplanted--like the rest of Kyrgyzstan--to a new and uncertain future.
>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ONE SPARK for the revolt was a big increase in electricity and water prices
that would hammer a population already reeling from the economic crisis. The
Kyrgyzstan economy contracted by 1 percent last year, forcing an increasing
number to emigrate to Russia in the hope of finding jobs that pay just $300
per month. Remittances from emigrants account for 20 percent of Kyrgyzstan's
Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The other mainstays of the economy are exports of gold and agricultural
products, principally tobacco. Child labor is widespread, especially on
farms.
But the miserable economy is only part of the story. Political life in
Kyrgyzstan had grown intolerable, not just for the elite opposition, but also
for journalists, pro-democracy activists and anyone who happened to cross the
Bakiyev clan and its hangers-on. The summary of the U.S. State Department's
report on Kyrgyzstan [3] in its annual survey of human rights makes that
clear:
>The following human rights problems were reported: restrictions on citizens'
>right to change their government; arbitrary killing, torture and abuse by
>law enforcement officials; impunity; poor prison conditions; arbitrary
>arrest and detention; lack of judicial independence; pressure on
>nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and opposition leaders, including
>government harassment; pressure on independent media; government detention
>of assembly organizers; authorities' failure to protect refugees adequately;
>pervasive corruption; discrimination against women, persons with
>disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities, and other persons based on
>sexual orientation or gender identity; child abuse; trafficking in persons;
>and child labor.
>
But the actions of the U.S. government speak louder than its words.
In early 2009, when Bakiyev lined up $2.8 billion in loans and aid from
Russia and announced the closure of the U.S. airbase in Manas, Washington
responded with more money and political support. Bakiyev not only extended
the U.S. lease on the airbase, but recently agreed to allow the U.S. military
to establish an "anti-terrorism" training center in southern Kyrgyzstan.
Less than three weeks before Bakiyev's overthrow, the head of U.S. Central
Command, David Petraeus, was in Kyrgyzstan to show U.S. support for the
government. Having already tripled its annual rent for the Manas airbase to
$60 million per year--a big sum for a small, poor country--Petraeus was now
prepared to pay $5.5 million to the government for the training center, which
would formally belong to the Kyrgyzstan military.
Having played off the U.S. against Russia, Bakiyev was confident that it was
time to tighten his grip on power.
Less than two weeks before he was overthrown, he stated at a national
political gathering [4], "The world is actively discussing the shortcomings
of a model of democracy based on elections and human rights. There is no
certainty that such a model is suitable for all countries and peoples."
Bakiyev's tilt back toward the U.S. didn't save him, of course. And Vladimir
Putin's rush to telephone interim government leader Roza Otunbayeva might
suggest that the opposition running Kyrgyzstan's new government is aligned
with Moscow in the "Great Game" of imperial rivalry in Central Asia.
The reality, however, is more complicated. Certainly Russia--which has an
airbase of its own in Kyrgyzstan, about 20 miles away from Manas--will be
keen to influence the new government. But while Otunbayeva was educated in
Moscow and was a diplomat for the old USSR, she also has longstanding ties to
the U.S., having been Kyrgyzstan's ambassador in Washington.
Thus, one of her first statements as head of the new government was to assure
the U.S. that the Manas base would function as usual. Otunbayeva and her
faction of the elite are likely to continue to try and balance between Russia
and the U.S.
Boris Kagarlitsky said that the U.S. and Russia would both have to take a
wait-and-see approach in Kyrgyzstan, since neither has much leverage. "Both
Moscow and Washington are really interested in Kyrgyzstan, but lack any tools
of control at the moment," he said. "All they can do is just flirt with
specific groups of elites."
The question now is whether the mass of people who participated in the
uprising--and who suffered a terrible loss of life in the process--will be
satisfied with the new government. Otunbayeva has pledged to convene a
constituent assembly to draft a new constitution and hold elections in six
months. But the people are also in desperate need of jobs and economic
security.
And what's more, they've showed their power. As Kagarlitsky pointed out, the
uprising in Kyrgyzstan will reverberate across Central Asia. "This is
definitely the beginning of the destabilization of the region," he said. "It
will have a domino effect in the long term. In the short term, the Central
Asian leaders will tighten the screws, which will lead to more control and
more authoritarianism. The question is how far these regimes will go."
Pakistan's /Daily Times/ made a similar point [5]:
>The masses, fed up with the denial of their rights, across-the-board
>corruption and profiteering, tailored alterations of the constitution to
>suit whosoever usurps power, a lack of basic amenities and skyrocketing
>inflation, hold the power to exhibit an extreme degree of pent-up animosity.
>The Pakistani public, too, has been alerted, not just to its rights but also
>of the blatant denial of them.
>
>As can be seen in these latest developments in Kyrgyzstan, it is the people
>who bring about a change once the limit of their patience has been reached.
>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Material on this Web site is licensed by SocialistWorker.org, under a
Creative Commons (by-nc-nd 3.0) [6] license, except for articles that are
republished with permission. Readers are welcome to share and use material
belonging to this site for non-commercial purposes, as long as they are
attributed to the author and SocialistWorker.org.
[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-08/how-the-uprising-happened/
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/08/kyrgyzstan-revolt-over-kurmanbek-bakiyev
[3] http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/sca/136089.htm
[4] http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2010/03/24/kyrgyz_revolution_leaves_legacy_of_oppression/
[5] http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C04%5C09%5Cstory_9-4-2010_pg3_1
[6] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0
Monday, April 5, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Pilger on British/American Imperialism
Published on Sunday, March 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Have a Nice World War, Folks
by John Pilger
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of "defence" Robert Gates complains that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war they are an "impediment" to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a "war of perception". Thus, the recent "liberation of the city of Marja" from the Taliban's "command and control structure" was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
"War is fun", the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one "who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values" (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today's public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the antiwar instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel's assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the "market" or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq's clean water system and lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease". So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a "pre-fascist era". Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. "Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent."
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a "partner". We should interrupt their fun.
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Have a Nice World War, Folks
by John Pilger
Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In Gaza, the sick and abandoned population, mostly children, is being entombed behind underground American-supplied walls in order to reinforce a criminal siege. In Latin America, the Obama administration has secured seven bases in Colombia, from which to wage a war of attrition against the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay. Meanwhile, the secretary of "defence" Robert Gates complains that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war they are an "impediment" to peace. Remember this is the month of the March Hare.
According to an American general, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is not so much a real war as a "war of perception". Thus, the recent "liberation of the city of Marja" from the Taliban's "command and control structure" was pure Hollywood. Marja is not a city; there was no Taliban command and control. The heroic liberators killed the usual civilians, poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it was fake. A war of perception is meant to provide fake news for the folks back home, to make a failed colonial adventure seem worthwhile and patriotic, as if The Hurt Locker were real and parades of flag-wrapped coffins through the Wiltshire town of Wooten Basset were not a cynical propaganda exercise.
"War is fun", the helmets in Vietnam used to say with bleakest irony, meaning that if a war is revealed as having no purpose other than to justify voracious power in the cause of lucrative fanaticisms such as the weapons industry, the danger of truth beckons. This danger can be illustrated by the liberal perception of Tony Blair in 1997 as one "who wants to create a world [where] ideology has surrendered entirely to values" (Hugo Young, the Guardian) compared with today's public reckoning of a liar and war criminal.
Western war-states such as the US and Britain are not threatened by the Taliban or any other introverted tribesmen in faraway places, but by the antiwar instincts of their own citizens. Consider the draconian sentences handed down in London to scores of young people who protested Israel's assault on Gaza in January last year. Following demonstrations in which paramilitary police "kettled" (corralled) thousands, first-offenders have received two and a half years in prison for minor offences that would not normally carry custodial sentences. On both sides of the Atlantic, serious dissent exposing illegal war has become a serious crime.
Silence in other high places allows this moral travesty. Across the arts, literature, journalism and the law, liberal elites, having hurried away from the debris of Blair and now Obama, continue to fudge their indifference to the barbarism and aims of western state crimes by promoting retrospectively the evils of their convenient demons, like Saddam Hussein. With Harold Pinter gone, try compiling a list of famous writers, artists and advocates whose principles are not consumed by the "market" or neutered by their celebrity. Who among them have spoken out about the holocaust in Iraq during almost 20 years of lethal blockade and assault? And all of it has been deliberate. On 22 January 1991, the US Defence Intelligence Agency predicted in impressive detail how a blockade would systematically destroy Iraq's clean water system and lead to "increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease". So the US set about eliminating clean water for the Iraqi population: one of the causes, noted Unicef, of the deaths of half a million Iraqi infants under the age of five. But this extremism apparently has no name.
Norman Mailer once said he believed the United States, in its endless pursuit of war and domination, had entered a "pre-fascist era". Mailer seemed tentative, as if trying to warn about something even he could not quite define. "Fascism" is not right, for it invokes lazy historical precedents, conjuring yet again the iconography of German and Italian repression. On the other hand, American authoritarianism, as the cultural critic Henry Giroux pointed out recently, is "more nuance, less theatrical, more cunning, less concerned with repressive modes of control than with manipulative modes of consent."
This is Americanism, the only predatory ideology to deny that it is an ideology. The rise of tentacular corporations that are dictatorships in their own right and of a military that is now a state with the state, set behind the façade of the best democracy 35,000 Washington lobbyists can buy, and a popular culture programmed to divert and stultify, is without precedent. More nuanced perhaps, but the results are both unambiguous and familiar. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the senior United Nations officials in Iraq during the American and British-led blockade, are in no doubt they witnessed genocide. They saw no gas chambers. Insidious, undeclared, even presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, the Third World War and its genocide proceeded, human being by human being.
In the coming election campaign in Britain, the candidates will refer to this war only to laud "our boys". The candidates are almost identical political mummies shrouded in the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes. As Blair demonstrated a mite too eagerly, the British elite loves America because America allows it to barrack and bomb the natives and call itself a "partner". We should interrupt their fun.
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
White Professor Condemns Racism
- Andrew M. Manis is associate professor of history at Macon State
College in Georgia and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph.
Andrew M. Manis: When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it?
Now I want to ask: "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk."
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period
did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us?
How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?
How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?
How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?
How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?
How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
How long before we start "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.
But here's my three-point plan:
First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."
College in Georgia and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph.
Andrew M. Manis: When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it?
Now I want to ask: "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk."
Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period
did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us?
How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?
How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?
How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?
How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?
How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
How long before we start "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.
But here's my three-point plan:
First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.
Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.
Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."
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