The Politics of Free Speech
August 9, 2008
No, I am not talking about China. That is easy, and meaningless. I am not moved when some designer anarchist from California privileged enough to afford the ticket to Beijing makes a statement about — Tibet. As if things were hunky dory back home; as if being a Brit or an American grants one the moral authority to dispense such admonition. And there is ignorance. I have never heard any of these peaceniks speak about the Uighurs. Or about the sweatshop labourers. Tibet is sexy, it comes with a patina of Hollywood legitimacy. Uighurs - who are they again?
Does any citizen of the US or UK have business telling the Chinese how to run their affairs when their own countries are busy inflicting genocide abroad (Iraq, Afghanistan) and curtailing rights and liberties at home? Guantanamo, Bagram, Falluja, Abu Ghraib, rendition, shock-and-awe, 42 days without charge — and we have the chutzpah to lecture China, Zimbabwe etc? How many are aware that both UK and US have a higher incarceration rate than China, Saudi Arabia or even Burma?
And all the talk of ‘freedom of speech’ rings a little hollow when neither US nor UK has done much to ensure it at home. Remember those whistleblowers who were last year put in jail by the British state? Can any country which has laws like the Official Secrets Act claim it upholds freedom of speech?
So here comes the latest revelation. Tom Feeley, who runs the excellent news resource Information Clearinghouse is being threatened by armed goons to shut down his operation. Here is a mail Mike Whitney recently sent (thanks Liz):
My friend Tom Feeley is in Big trouble. He runs the web site informationclearinghouse.info <http://informationclearinghouse.info/> which updates “news you won’t find in the corporate media” every day. The site is strongly anti-war.
Tom has gotten his share of death threats over the years, but what happened this week is a lot more serious.
War Crimes Paradox
July 18, 2008
Ah, the irony! The ICC for the first time moves to indict a sitting head of state for war crimes and it isn’t George Bush, Ehud Olmert or Tony Blair, but the president of Sudan! As is their wont, ‘Little Crimes Get Punished, Big Ones Don’t‘, writes Paul Craig Roberts in this excellent piece. (thanks Ali)
National Public Radio has been spending much news time on Darfur in Western Sudan where a great deal of human suffering and death are occurring. The military conflict has been brought on in part by climate change, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Drought is forcing nomads in search of water into areas occupied by other claimants. No doubt the conflict is tribal and racial as well. The entire catastrophe is overseen by a government with few resources other than bullets.
Now an International Criminal Court prosecutor wants to bring charges against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
I have no sympathy for people who make others suffer. Nevertheless, I wonder at the International Criminal Court’s pick from the assortment of war criminals? Why al-Bashir?
Is it because Sudan is a powerless state, and the International Criminal Court hasn’t the courage to name George W. Bush and Tony Blair as war criminals?
Western Delusions
May 27, 2008
Jean Bricmont on ‘The Violent Folly of Humanitarian Interventionism‘.
One can understand why some people might have sincerely thought that the Iraq war would be a “cakewalk”. First, consider WW2 ; the US mercilessly bombed Germany and Japan, including their civilian populations, then occupied those countries militarily, imposing almost total control. Yet, today, Germany and Japan are among the world’s most faithful allies of the US. How deep this alliance really is and how long it will last remains to be seen, but for the moment it is a reality.
Now, consider the Cold War. Remember that, once upon a time, governments from Poland to Bulgaria were hostile to the US. Now, they want nothing more than integration into Nato, advanced US anti-missile shields and participation in the occupation of Iraq. Or consider, even more surprisingly, Vietnam, where US investors are now welcomed with open arms, while, in a not so distant past, the US was ferociously bombing Vietnam, killing millions of people and poisoning the environment.
Even after the bombing of their little country in 1999, the Serbs behaved as desired, by voting out Milosevic and by accepting, at least for a while, pro-Western governments approving implicitely if not explicitely the bombing of their own country.
Why Darfur Intervention is a Mistake
May 24, 2008
Alex de Waal analyzes the politics and practicality of intervention on BBC’s Viewpoints.
Analysts say that Darfur is Rwanda in slow motion, that we should send troops to protect African civilians from their Arab killers and disarm the infamous Janjaweed.
Khartoum came under attack by rebels just two weeks ago
In the Rwandan genocide, a million people were slaughtered in a hundred days. It was Africa’s holocaust. Few would have opposed a short sharp episode of colonial-style armed intervention to stop it.
The British Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, certainly leans towards such a policy for Darfur.
“Too many times, in the aftermath of mass atrocities, we’ve promised ‘never again’,” he said.
“But in a world where so many states remain wedded to the principle of non-interference and the primacy of sovereignty, how do we make the responsibility to protect a reality, not a slogan?”
His are good intentions but they pave the way to a problem from hell.
No Shangri-La
April 19, 2008
In a letter to the London Review of Books Slavoj Žižek dispels media myths about Tibet.
The media imposes certain stories on us, and the one about Tibet goes like this. The People’s Republic of China, which, back in 1949, illegally occupied Tibet, has for decades engaged in the brutal and systematic destruction not only of the Tibetan religion, but of the Tibetans themselves. Recently, the Tibetans’ protests against Chinese occupation were again crushed by military force. Since China is hosting the 2008 Olympics, it is the duty of all of us who love democracy and freedom to put pressure on China to give back to the Tibetans what it stole from them. A country with such a dismal human rights record cannot be allowed to use the noble Olympic spectacle to whitewash its image. What will our governments do? Will they, as usual, cede to economic pragmatism, or will they summon the strength to put ethical and political values above short-term economic interests?
There are complications in this story of ‘good guys versus bad guys’. It is not the case that Tibet was an independent country until 1949, when it was suddenly occupied by China. The history of relations between Tibet and China is a long and complex one, in which China has often played the role of a protective overlord: the anti-Communist Kuomintang also insisted on Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Before 1949, Tibet was no Shangri-la, but an extremely harsh feudal society, poor (life expectancy was barely over 30), corrupt and fractured by civil wars (the most recent one, between two monastic factions, took place in 1948, when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited industrial development, so that metal, for example, had to be imported from India.
Africa and the West
April 15, 2008
Onion News Network: In The Know panelists discuss whether we should spare Africa’s feelings by not telling them about the global economy.
Save Darfur
April 14, 2008
How Can We Let Darfur Know How Much We’re Doing For Them?
Panelists discuss the tragic lack of media access in Darfur and how we can help Darfurians realize how much we’re helping them.
U.S. Humanitarian Aid
March 30, 2008
Powerful artwork by Andy Singer.
I’m not sure why but this cartoon also reminds me of the Orwellian use of the term “Humanitarian Aid.” Often the US has used it when it’s actually delivering weapons, in other words, the bombs in the top section of the drawing might have been “Humanitarian Aid” too! Here’s a good example from Noam Chomsky.
Ten years ago …. the International Court of Justice was found to be an inappropriate forum for judging Nicaragua’s charges against Washington. The U.S. rejected ICJ jurisdiction, and when the Court condemned the U.S. for the “unlawful use of force,” ordering Washington to cease its international terrorism, violation of treaties, and illegal economic warfare, and to pay substantial reparations, the Democrat-controlled Congress reacted by instantly escalating the crimes while the Court was roundly denounced on all sides as a “hostile forum” that had discredited itself by rendering a decision against the United States. The Court judgment itself was scarcely reported, including the words just quoted and the explicit ruling that U.S. aid to the contras is “military” and not “humanitarian.” Along with U.S. direction of the terrorist forces, the aid continued until the U.S. imposed its will, always called “humanitarian aid.” Public history keeps to the same conventions.
For more see Peoples Geography (Thanks Ann!).
Human Rights and Media Manipulation
March 30, 2008
From Pinochet to ‘Human Rights’ in China. Michael Barker on the Regime-Change Industry, its humanitarian pretenses and its nexus with the Israel lobby.
When the twentieth century becomes history it will be seen as distinctive, I believe, for three developments in liberal Western societies: the growth of democracy; the rise of huge concentrations of economic power, known as corporations; and the professionalizing and institutionalizing of propaganda, especially as a means for safe-guarding the power of free-enterprise corporations against democracy.” (Alex Carey, 1987) [1]
Most regular readers of alternative media will be acutely aware of the US government’s antidemocratic history. Indeed, according to William Blum and Dr Danielle Ganser, since 1945 this much neglected history has seen the US government attempt to “overthrow more than 40 foreign governments”, “crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements” and provide support to right-wing terrorist (stay behind) armies in every European country. Unfortunately as most members of the public rely upon the corporate media – for the most part unaware that a useful and democratic alternative media exists – they are for the most part unaware of the extent of this antidemocratic foreign policy (and perhaps more importantly still they are unaware that they can do something to change it).
Tibet, the ‘Great Game’ and the CIA
March 26, 2008
Richard M Bennett on the new great game. For background also check out Fanonite contributor Michael Barker’s ‘“Democratic Imperialism”: Tibet, China, and the National Endowment for Democracy‘. (thanks Dave, Mike)
Given the historical context of the unrest in Tibet, there is reason to believe Beijing was caught on the hop with the recent demonstrations for the simple reason that their planning took place outside of Tibet and that the direction of the protesters is similarly in the hands of anti-Chinese organizers safely out of reach in Nepal and northern India.
Similarly, the funding and overall control of the unrest has also been linked to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, and by inference to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because of his close cooperation with US intelligence for over 50 years.
Indeed, with the CIA’s deep involvement with the Free Tibet Movement and its funding of the suspiciously well-informed Radio Free Asia, it would seem somewhat unlikely that any revolt could have been planned or occurred without the prior knowledge, and even perhaps the agreement, of the National Clandestine Service (formerly known as the Directorate of Operations) at CIA headquarters in Langley.
