Paul de Rooij, 17 August 2007

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War by Jean Bricmont, Monthly Review Press, 1-58367-147-1, 176 pp.

Most inhabitants of Western countries are afflicted by nefarious delusions about the nature of their societies and government policy; the public at large is led to believe that their societies are superior, and their governments’ policies are noble and generous. 

The illusions have to do with the dissonance between the fabricated image and the reality of state power, especially when it entails wars waged against third world countries.  Awful wars are waged for crass motives, yet they are sold on the basis that they are driven by benevolent intent.

Promotion of democracy, freedoms, human rights, women’s rights, and even religious tolerance are some of the purported motives for current interventions, subversion or wars.  Since the 1990s, in the lead-up to the wars against former Yugoslavia, the primary justification offered to wage war was that it was necessary to safeguard human rights or to improve the humanitarian conditions of the target population. 

If the blatant hypocrisy wasn’t bad enough, the Left’s delusions regarding the stated humanitarian rationale for wars has had a distinctly deleterious effect on the Left as a movement and the organized opposition to the depredations of their states.  Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism is an extensive analysis of the “humanitarian war” rationale, and how its twisted arguments should be countered and its rationale for war rejected.

One of the defining aspects of the Left of yesteryear was an opposition to imperialism and its consequent wars; Bricmont’s important contribution aims to resurrect the principled opposition to the new imperial wars waged primarily by the United States and Britain.

Marc W. Herold, 16 August 2007 

The “August 2: Airpower Summary” posted on the official website of the United States Air Force (USAF) announced, “An Air Force B-1B Lancer dropped guided bomb unit-31s on enemies hiding in a tree line near Baghran. The bomb drop was reported to have good effects.” [1]

But, on the ground, reality was rather different: Gul Wali, 18, was among the wounded. “Bombs were falling everywhere from the sky into the trees, and I saw pieces of flesh and bone. These were villagers. They were innocent people. They had just come to the mela [outdoor traditional weekly market] to buy food for their families. Instead, they ended up looking for their loved ones among piles of bodies.”

In the absence of normal shops, most communities mount a weekly trade fair, bringing handicrafts, livestock, farm produce and clothing along to barter or sell. The mela was located close to the holy shrine of Ibrahim Shah Baba. Wali’s reference to a line of trees corresponds perfectly with the account given in the US Air Force’s Airpower Summary. The luckier ones ended up in a hospital, as this young 10-year old boy with abdominal shrapnel wounds and whose leg needed to be amputated:

For its part, the U.S. military in Bagram released an official statement proclaiming,

During a sizable meeting of senior Taliban commanders, coalition forces employed precision-guided munitions on their location after ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area. [2]

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, 15 August, 2007 

The temperature on the night bus from Caracas to Mérida is uncomfortably low. Venezuelans relish the opportunity to escape the tropical heat by snuggling under their blankets during these long distance journeys. On this occasion however the atmosphere is warm with the enthusiasm exuded by some of our fellow passengers.

Clad in red t-shirts bearing the symbols of Movimiento Quinta Republica (The Fifth Republic Movement) — Hugo Chavez’s political umbrella — they are still ebullient with the energy of the day’s events.

The young boy on the adjacent seat seems keen to talk; his grandmother sitting next to him more focused on catching a wink of sleep. He tells me he is returning from the launch rally of Chavez’s presidential campaign which he had come along with his grandmother to attend. I had seen the rally earlier in the day.

The scale was impressive and the enthusiasm infectious — the kind that is reserved only for celebrity events in Europe and America, or, more recently, for antiwar rallies (The only Euro-American politician to achieve anything close was Ralph Nader with his super-rallies in 2000 — and he didn’t win). Here, the spirit is one of confidence and possibility. These people have come from all corners of the country, feeling that they are agents of their country’s destiny. They come because it matters. They come because they matter.

The May 2007 elections in Scotland were similarly charged with expectation, even if despair more than hope drove the desire for change. Disillusionment with the status quo was widespread. While the Scottish Left had collapsed under the combined weight of media hostility and its own myopia, the disillusionment only increased the likelihood of a Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) victory.

For its opposition to the war, opposition to the Trident boondoggle, calls for subsidized education, and its pro-independence agenda, the party was well placed to rake in the votes from the remnants of the Scottish Left on top of its traditional, more conservative, nationalist constituency.

For the first time in British history, the possibility of a party outside the Tory-Labour consensus winning power on the British mainland seemed real. In a democracy as old as Britain one would have expected such plurality to be welcomed. Except it wasn’t, and the electorate showed little of the verve of the Venezuelan voter.

'Wittily titled'

Review of Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy Edited by William Dinan and David Miller Pluto Press, 309pp. GBP11.50

Public Relations The editors of this wittily titled book are sociologists from Strathclyde University and they set out their stall with admirable clarity. Not only is the subtitle "Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy", but the first sentence reads: "public relations was created to thwart and subvert democratic decision-making".

Andy Rowell, 14 August 2007 

Earlier this month, a fleet of vehicles drew up outside a house in the picturesque resort of Girdwood in Alaska. Scores of people dressed in black surrounded the house and then, using a lock-smith, entered the premises.

This was a raid by America’s federal police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), at the home of Alaskan Senator, Ted Stevens, who is at the centre of a growing corruption scandal. Stevens, the longest standing Republican in the Senate, is now under investigation for his close ties to the oil industry, including the service company, Veco.

The FBI is investigating whether it was Veco or Stevens who actually paid for an extension to Stevens’ home. At least two other inquiries are looking into whether Stevens earmarked federal funds for land deals benefiting friends and associates. Veco’s chief executive officer, Bill Allen, has already pleaded guilty to bribery, extortion, conspiracy and fraud charges. On one exchange recorded by the FBI, Allen can be heard telling a state lawmaker, “I own your ass.”

There is increasing public pressure for politics on both sides of the Atlantic, in both America and Europe, to clean up its act. Political scandals on both continents have led for greater calls for transparency in the way politicians operate and for calls for a greater separation between politicians and business interests.

1 August 2007

When the Democrats’ eight candidates for US President took part in a televised debate answering questions posted on the video-sharing website YouTube, they contributed to an event which was a first for American political campaigning and which will inevitably be copied and developed further by broadcasters and political parties in the United Kingdom.

New forms of media are opening up new ways of participating in politics and Britain, with its rich history of robust electioneering, is well placed to take advantage of the rapid growth in the use of the web and what has already become a highly-innovative form of communication.

But while welcoming new opportunities to engage with a section of the electorate which has been notorious in the past for its low levels of voting, there is no certainty that future turnout will be higher, nor is there any guarantee that the world-wide web will provide fairer or more accessible forms of political reporting.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, 24 July 2007 

by Richard Falk and Howard Friel
Verso, 352 pp., 2007, 978-1844671090  

If the Enlightenment challenge to monarchy found early fruition in the US constitution, then its express republican tenets aimed at pre-empting autocracy have clearly failed.

A fine ideal the US system of checks and balances might have been, it never materialized into a tangible challenge to the whims of the politically ambitious. Iraq may be the most telling and obvious example, but in the long history of US interventions abroad the legislature or the judiciary have rarely asserted their authority to prevent breaches of the constitution.

With the unrivalled constitutional protections conferred on US media, one could be forgiven for thinking that the so-called Fourth Estate would provide the kind of vigilance that ensures accountability should the rest fail. Sadly, not only has it been remiss in its responsibilities, but has actually enabled breaches of the constitution by avoiding references to it in its reportage on national security (e.g., the NSA wiretapping case), and to International Law in its reportage on foreign policy (e.g., Iraq).

When that arch media manipulator Peter Mandelson pointed an accusing finger at unnamed officers in the Metropolitan Police Authority and blamed them for being responsible for a deluge of embarrassing leaks during the cash-for-honours investigation, he could hardly have paid a finer back-handed compliment to himself.

Here was an infamous former spin doctor, who was prolific in his own exploitation of leaked information, having the gall to castigate anyone else who had dared turn the tables and tried to undermine the credibility of Tony Blair and his closest colleagues.

Mandelson, like his fellow trader in confidential data, Alastair Campbell remains in denial about the damage his manipulative techniques inflicted on both the political process and the conduct of government; together they helped change the culture of Whitehall and Westminster and usher in an era where leaking has become a way of life within the state.

Andy Rowell, 16 July 2007 

Australian politics does not often grace the world stage or make world news, but there was one story earlier this month that did make the rounds and rightly so. Normally if you ask people in the Middle East, Britain or America who Australia’s Defence Minister is, many people would not have had a clue.

However, suddenly the name of Brendan Nelson went around the global news networks, including the BBC, Al Jazeera and ABC. The reason? Nelson made the mistake of muttering the words “oil and Iraq” in one sentence. In a speech Nelson admitted that securing Iraq’s oil supplies was a significant factor behind Australian troops being in the country. According to Nelson, "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority for Australia.

What Nelson was saying is well known to every critic of the US invasion. That gaining access and control of the world’s second largest oil reserves was a significant reason for the 2003 invasion. The oil-Iraq argument has gained legitimate credence with the lack of Saddam’s weapons of mass deception and more recently with the American insistence of the controversial Iraqi oil law as a benchmark for the Iraqi government.

 “It’s interesting that extremists attack democracies around the Middle East, whether it be the Iraq democracy, the Lebanese democracy, or a potential Palestinian democracy.”

Believe it or believe it not, those are the words of President Bush, as he stood beside Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, at the White House on 19 June 2007.

President Bush was speaking a few days after he had finally succeeded in undoing the outcome of the democratic elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in January 2006, when Hamas won 74 out of the 132 seats (compared with Fatah’s 45).  It is worth emphasising that nobody, not even President Bush himself, questioned the fairness of these elections.  Hamas had won, and won fair and square.