[mobglob-discuss] New Bo

[Tom_Childs at Douglas.BC.CA]

If you can lay your hands on this one, it looks like it just might be a
great Summer read...  Cheers,  -tc
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---- Forwarded message: ----From: "Tom Wheeler" <twbounds at pop.mail.rcn.net>
To: "Infoshop" <infoshop-news at infoshop.org>
Subject: [Infoshop News] Rise of a new imperialism

Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2002 22:14:53 -0400

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/02/1023864733062.html
In his latest book, The New Rulers of the World, John Pilger argues that the
"war on terrorism" is a charade, masking an all-powerful oppressor that
dares not speak its name.

Rise of a new imperialism
July 3 2002

It is nearly 10 months since September 11, and still the great charade plays
on. Having appropriated our shocked and humane response to that momentous
day, the rulers of the world have since ground our language into a paean of
cliches and lies about the "war on terrorism" - when the most enduring
menace, and source of terror, is them.

The fanatics who attacked America came mostly from Saudi Arabia, the
spiritual home of al-Qaeda and the tutors of the Taliban, but no bombs fell
on that oil-rich American protectorate. According to an American study, 5000
civilians were bombed to death in stricken, impoverished Afghanistan, where
not a single al-Qaeda leader of importance has been caught, or to anyone's
knowledge, killed. Osama bin Laden got clean away, as did the Taliban ruler
Mullah Omah.

After this "victory", hundreds of prisoners, including the Australian David
Hicks, were shipped to an American concentration camp in Cuba, where they
have been held against all conventions of war and international law. No
evidence of their alleged crimes has been produced. In the United States,
more than 1000 people of Muslim background have "disappeared"; none has been
charged. Legislation undermining the Bill of Rights has been rushed through
Congress. For example, the FBI now has the power to go into libraries and
find out who is reading what.

Meanwhile, the British and Australian governments made fools of their
soldiers by insisting they followed America's orders and pursued Afghan
tribesmen opposed to this or that favoured warlord. This is what British
squaddies in puttees and pith helmets did over a century ago when Lord
Curzon, Viceroy of India, described Afghanistan as one of the "pieces on a
chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of
the world".

There is no war on terrorism. It is the great game speeded up, and now more
dangerous than ever.

Having delivered the Palestinians into the arms of Ariel Sharon, the
Christian Right fundamentalists running the plutocracy in Washington turn
their priorities to manufacturing more bombs and missiles to hurl at the 22
million suffering people of Iraq. Should anyone need reminding, this is a
nation held hostage to an American-led embargo every bit as barbaric as
their dictator. Iraq is the world's second greatest source of oil - the
reason for the attack is that America wants another, less uppity thug to run
it.

The Pentagon told former president Bill Clinton that an all-out attack on
Iraq might kill "at least" 10,000 civilians. In a sustained propaganda
campaign, journalists on both sides of the Atlantic have been used as
"conduits" for rumours and lies. These ranged from allegations about an
Iraqi connection with anthrax attacks in the US to a link between the leader
of the September 11 hijacks and Iraqi intelligence. Both have been
discredited.
The great charade is imperialism's return journey to respectability.

As the historian Frank Furedi reminds us in The New Ideology of Imperialism,
it is not long ago "that the moral claims of imperialism were seldom
questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global expansion of the Western
powers were represented in unambiguously positive terms as a major
contributor to human civilisation". The quest went wrong when it was clear
that fascism, with all its ideas of racial and cultural superiority, was
imperialism too, and the word vanished from academic discourse. In the best
Stalinist tradition, imperialism no longer existed.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, a new opportunity arose. The economic and
political crisis in the developing world, largely the result of
post-colonialism, such as the blood-letting in the Middle East and the
destruction of commodity markets in Africa, served as retrospective
justification for imperialism. Although the word remains unspeakable, the
Western intelligentsia, conservatives and liberals alike, boldly echo the
preferred euphemism, "civilisation".

>From Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of crypto-fascists,
to impeccably liberal commentators, the new imperialists share a concept
whose true meaning relies on a comparison with those who are uncivilised,
inferior and might challenge the "values" of the West.

The great divisions opening up between the rich and poor are reduced to
platitudes of how best "we" deal with "them" - an attitude expressed in the
return of xenophobia and racism towards refugees, led aggressively by the
Howard Government.

There are many blueprints for the new imperialism, but none as cogent as
that of Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to several American presidents and one
of the most influential gurus in Washington, whose 1997 book is said to have
biblical authority among the George W. Bush gang and its "endless war"
intelligentsia. In The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its
Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski writes: "Ever since the continents
started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the
centre of world power."

The key to controlling this vast area of the world is Central Asia.
Dominance of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan ensures not
only new sources of energy and mineral wealth but a "guard post" over
American control of the oil of the Persian Gulf. "What is most important to
the history of the world?" asked Brzezinski. "The Taliban or the collapse of
the Soviet Empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central
Europe ...?" The "stirred-up Muslims" replied on September 11 last year.

Nation states, says Brzezinski, will be incorporated in the "new order". "To
put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient
empires," he says, "the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are
to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to
keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from
coming together."

Brzezinski is not from the lunar right. He is as mainstream as Bush. He was
President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who persuaded Carter to
sign a secret executive order in 1979, funding a new Islamic terrorist
movement, the Mujihadeen, which the CIA trained in Pakistan and Virginia and
from which emerged Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Brzezinski's
followers include John Negroponte, the mastermind of American terror in
Central America under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, now Bush's ambassador to
the United Nations. It was Negroponte who first warned the world, after
September 11, that the US planned to attack any country it wished.

For those in thrall to, and neutered by, the supercult of America, the most
salient truths remain taboos. Perhaps the most important taboo is the
longevity of the US as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists.
That the US in the only state on record to have been condemned by the World
Court for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and has vetoed a UN
Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe international
law, is unmentionable.

"In the war against terrorism," said Bush, "we're going to hunt down these
evil-doers wherever they are, no matter how long it takes." Strictly
speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are given training and
sanctuary in the US than anywhere in the world. They include mass murderers,
torturers, former and future tyrants and assorted international criminals.

There is no terrorist sanctuary to compare with Florida, currently governed
by the President's brother, Jeb. In his book Rogue State, former senior
State Department official Bill Blum describes a typical Florida trial of
three anti-Castro terrorists who had hijacked a plane to Miami at
knifepoint. "Even though the kidnapped pilot was brought back from Cuba to
testify against the men," he wrote, "the defence simply told the jurors the
man was lying, and the jury deliberated for less than an hour before
acquitting the defendants."

General Jose Guillermo Garcia has lived in Florida since the 1990s. He
was head of El Salvador's military during the 1980s when death squads
closely linked to the army murdered thousands of people. General Prosper
Avril, the Haitian dictator, liked to display the bloodied victims of his
torture on television. When he was overthrown, he was flown to Florida by
the US Government. Thiounn Prasith, Pol Pot's henchman and apologist at the
UN, lives in Mount Vernon, New York. General Mansour Moharari, who ran the
Shah of Iran's notorious prisons, is wanted in Iran, but is untroubled in
the US.

Al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan were kindergartens compared with
the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in Georgia.
Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it trained 60,000 Latin
American soldiers, policemen, paramilitaries and intelligence agents in
terrorism.

In 1993, the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army officers who
had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war; two-thirds of them had
been trained at Fort Benning. In Chile, the school's graduates ran
Pinochet's secret police and three principal concentration camps. In 1966,
the US government was forced to release copies of the school's training
manuals. For aspiring terrorists, these recommended blackmail, torture,
execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.

The irony is that the US is also the home of some of history's greatest
human rights movements, such as the 1960s epic campaign for civil rights.

Having just returned from the US, it seems the stirring has begun again. In
an open letter to their compatriots and the world, published in the Herald
on June 17, almost 100 of the US's most distinguished names in art,
literature, journalism and education wrote: "Let it not be said that people
in the US did nothing when their government declared war without limit and
instituted stark new measures of repression. We believe that nations have
the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by
great powers. We believe that all persons detained and prosecuted by the US
Government should have the same right of due process. We believe that
questioning, criticism and dissent must be valued and protected. Such rights
are always contested and must be fought for. We, too, watched with shock the
horrific events of September 11. But the mourning had barely begun when our
leaders launched a spirit of revenge. The Government now openly prepares to
wage war on Iraq - a country that has no connection with September 11. We
say this to the world: too many times in history people have waited until it
was too late to resist. We draw on the inspiration of those who fought
slavery and all those other great causes of freedom that began with dissent.
We call on all like-minded people around the world to join us."

It is time we joined them.

This is an edited extract from The New Rulers of the World, by John Pilger,
published this month by Pan Macmillan Australia.

*******************************
Alternative Press Review - www.altpr.org
Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
PO Box 4710 - Arlington, VA 22204

Infoshop.org - www.infoshop.org
News Kiosk - www.infoshop.org/inews


_______________________________________________
infoshop-news mailing list
infoshop-news at infoshop.org
http://www.infoshop.org/mailman/listinfo/infoshop-news


-- 


--