Nonviolent Imperialism
March 8, 2008
Michael Barker continues his exchange with Stephen Zunes. Here he responds to Zunes on Gowans.
The progressive academic Professor Steven Zunes has recently entered into debate with Stephen Gowans – a Canadian-based political activist and writer.
- Zunes, “Nonviolent Action and Pro-Democracy Struggles”, Znet, February 17, 2008.
- Gowans, “Stephen Zunes and the Struggle for Overseas Profits”, What’s Left, February 17, 2008.
- Zunes, “A Reply to Stephen Gowans’ False Allegations against Stephen Zunes”, Znet, February 25, 2008.
- Gowans, “Zunes’ Compromising with Capitalism’s Sad Reality”, What’s Left, February 25, 2008.
This exchange is notable for Zunes’ declaration that Stephen Gowans’ response was “filled with demonstrably inaccurate and misleading statements about both me and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict” (ICNC). This use of language is akin to the language he utilized to criticize recent articles I have written exploring his links to the ICNC. An example of this similarity is seen in Zunes’ unsubstantiated assertion that I have made “serious factual errors and misleading comments”, and a “series of false accusations and major leaps of logic” in the critiques of the ICNC. It is with this history that I approach a consideration of Zunes “13-point refutation” of Gowans’ alleged “lies and misinformation”. Read the rest of this entry »
Democracy or Polyarchy?
February 17, 2008
My friend Michael Barker’s paper, ‘Democracy or polyarchy? US-funded media developments in Afghanistan and Iraq post 9/11′ has just been published in the journal Media Culture Society (30 (1): 109-130). To get the whole paper you can email him on the address below. Following is an abstract:
Most media scholars that analyse post 9/11 events in Afghanistan and Iraq base their research predominantly on how both wars were represented in Western media sources. This study, however, will not discuss media coverage but instead will focus on a much neglected issue: the foreign support system provided to indigenous media outlets in both Afghanistan and Iraq. More specifically, it will critique the influence of US-based democracy promoting organisations on the development of potentially independent media outlets. These organisations, like the National Endowment for Democracy, often play an integral role in shaping the media environments of foreign countries; however, their motives for promoting democracy are at best ambiguous and in some cases even counterproductive. Evidence provided in this paper supports the contention that the main goal of various ‘democratic’ activities is not to encourage deliberative forms of democracy, but to promote low-intensity democracy or polyarchy instead.
Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. If you would like a copy of the full paper please email Michael. J. Barker [at] griffith.edu.au. His other assorted articles can be found here.
People Power or Political Puppetry?
January 16, 2008
In today’s guest editorial Michael Barker spars with Cynthia Boaz of the ICNC.
“To question the Burmese peoples’ authorship of their own struggle serves the interests of a brutal dictatorship, and risks undermining global support for what is, at its heart and its force, an indigenous people’s movement.” Cynthia Anne Marie Boaz, 2007.
On October 18, 2007 the Asia Times published an interesting article titled The Geopolitical Stakes of the ‘Saffron Revolution’. In this article the author, F William Engdahl, outlined what he described as the “tragedy of Myanmar” which he deemed is seeing “its population… being used as a human stage prop in a drama scripted in Washington by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the George Soros Open Society Institute, Freedom House and Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution” (click on links for critical information on these groups and individuals).
To summarise a complex argument, in brief, the groups Engdahl mentions in his article form the backbone of the US’s ‘democracy promoting’ (read: manipulating) apparatus, which in turn industriously works to channel/coopt progressive (and also some not so progressive) agents of social change into directions that serve to bolster imperialist pipedreams. In this regard, the seminal book outlining the mechanisms by which capitalists moderate civil society is Professor Joan Roelofs’ (2003) Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, however, the key author outlining how groups like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) work to hijack popular revolutions is Professor William I. Robinson. His classic book on this subject, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (1996), analysed the dynamics of a number of incidents of regime change – in Chile, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Haiti – and demonstrated how democracy manipulating groups like the NED, acting as “skilful political surgeons”, have worked to promote the establishment of low-intensity neoliberal democracies – that is, polyarchic political systems – all over the world. By this, Robinson is referring to the promotion of an extremely limited form of democracy that “is aimed not only at mitigating the social and political tensions produced by elite-based and undemocratic status quos, but also at suppressing popular and mass aspirations for more thoroughgoing democratisation of social life”.
Peace Activists, Criticism, and Nonviolent Imperialism
January 9, 2008
An excellent new article from Michael Barker that reveals the truth behind the ‘peace’ industry, and in particular the murky connections of a celebrated icon of the US left, Stephen Zunes, who also does damage control for the Israel Lobby in his spare time. (See his latest disingenous and scurrilous attack on Mearsheimer & Walt).
All peace activists want peace, but do activists want peace at any cost? In Aldous Huxley’s classic book, Brave New World, peace came at a high price, but there was ‘peace’ nonetheless. Arguably, ‘peace’ also exists within most Western citizens’ minds, mainly because their daily lives are neatly partitioned off from the multitude of ultra-violent actions that are committed in their names by their electoral representatives. Of course, these examples of ‘peace’ are no more than illusions, as for the most of us, the clothes that we wear and the food that we eat are born of the sweat and blood of distant ‘others’, while our ‘homes’ are only ‘ours’ by virtue of genocidal colonial predecessors. So, if it is agreed that peace by delusion is undesirable, we must ensure that we are constantly working for a meaningful peace, built upon equitable and democratic foundations, not lies and subterfuge. As the majority of the world’s inhabitants’ ‘lives’ are dictated by the whims of the minority world’s war-dependent governments, making the transformation from military subjugation to peaceful coexistence will require nothing less than a social revolution. It is vital that such a revolution arouses the majority of people (in the minority countries particularly) to recognize injustice (which many already do) and incites them to demand its immediate replacement with justice.
