The Anti-Empire Project

The plan is to be on the road until Tuesday afternoon, but I might be able to blog from the road.

‘Big-picture’ analysis is always a dicey proposition especially when it seems that there are always emergencies to try and respond to. Responding to the raiding of yet another mosque, shooting and killing 4 people at prayer, with analysis, seems inappropriate. Especially when, by the time you hear about the mosque massacre, there are already bombings and attacks in response, and then more violence in response to the response…

And there’s that feeling that these things are going on and we seem unable to do anything effective to stop them.

That’s not much of an intro to the analyses I’ve been reading. First the little analyst, then the big analysts.

Pranjal Tiwari, a writer for ZNet, Left Turn, and a few other outlets, is based in Hong Kong and provides a smart, uncompromising perspective on East Asian movements and the way things look from East Asia in his blog In the Water. It’s one of the few blogs I’ve linked, so check it if you haven’t already.

Now for the heavy stuff. I got the Monthly Review in the mail, an article by Samir Amin. Amin is an interesting old Marxist figure, who thinks mostly about imperialism. Unlike a lot of North American-based analysts though, he doesn’t hold much hope out for the power of popular movements in North America. In his discussion of the role of Israel/Palestine in the world order, Amin emphasizes that he is not among those “who naively believe that public opinion in the democratic countries, such as it is, imposes its views on these Powers. We know that opinion also is manufactured.”

That analysis leads Amin to pitch his ideas more at regimes – regimes of 3rd world countries in much of his work and, in the article I’m quoting, at European countries. After explaining some of the elements of the global economy – the US as increasingly just a consumer and a military, with Asia and Europe doing most of the manufacturing and the periphery supplying raw materials and energy which the US guarantees with the threat of military force – and the ways in which it might all unravel, he gives some advice to, I assume, European elites:

“The major political conclusion that I draw from this analysis is that Europe cannot pass beyond Atlanticism as long as political alliances defining the blocs in power remain centered on dominant transnational capital. It is only if social and political struggles manage to modify the content of these blocs, and to impose new historical compromises between capital and labor, that Europe would be able to distance itself from Washington, permitting the eventual revival of a European project. Under these conditions Europe also could—even ought to—become engaged at the international level in its relationships with the East and the South, on a path other than that traced by the exclusive requirements of collective imperialism. Such a course would begin its participation in the long march beyond capitalism. In other words, Europe will be of the left (the term left being taken seriously) or will not be at all.”

Samir Amin is certainly not alone in doubting the status of the “second superpower” – public opinion – but his own analysis suggests good reasons why Europe’s elites are unlikely to take his advice. Aside from sheer genocidal violence, all empires always stand on collaboration. The amount of collaboration throughout the world, even in such extreme times as these, when the US is offering almost nothing in return and acting with incredible arrogance, is amazing, as Amin himself argues in his article.

Walden Bello is another one of those analysts who presents the big picture. If Amin offers strategies to European regimes, Bello offers them to the “antiwar movement”.

Bello doesn’t have illusions about the meaning of the US elections:

The terrible truth, however, is that the Republican victory, while not lopsided, was solid. Another phase of the political revolution begun by Ronald Reagan in 1980, the 2004 elections confirmed that the center of gravity of US politics lies not o­n the center-right but o­n the extreme right. Now, it remains true that the country is divided almost evenly, and bitterly so. But it is the Republican Right that has managed to provide a compelling vision for its base and to fashion and implement a strategy to win power at all levels of the electoral arena, in civil society, and in the media. While liberals and progressives have floundered, the Radical Right has united under an utterly simple vision the different components of its base: the South and Southwest, the majority of white males, the upper and middle classes that have benefited from the neoliberal economic revolution, Corporate America, and Christian fundamentalists. This vision is essentially a subliminal o­ne, and it is that of a country weakened from within by an alliance of pro-big government liberals, promiscuous gays and lesbians, and illegal immigrants, and besieged from without by hateful Third World hordes and effete Europeans jealous of America’s prosperity and power.

There are, indeed, two Americas, but o­ne is confused and disorganized while the other exudes a confidence and arrogance that o­nly superior strategy and organization can bestow. The Radical Right has managed, with its vision of a return to an imagined community—a pristine white Christian small-town America circa 1950–to construct what the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci called a “hegemonic bloc.” And this bloc is poised to continue its reign for the next 25 years.

One thing you have to love about these guys is the confidence of their predictions. The US is right-wing, Bello says, but “Latin America’s move to the left will accelerate.” His predictions about Fallujah suggest he doesn’t think of it as a major loss for the resistance:

Fallujah, however, is not an operational center but a symbolic center that has already played its role, and its “fall’ is not going to stop the spread and deepening of a decentralized resistance movement throughout Iraq. Moreover, the Fallujah insurgents are likely to retreat after giving battle, trading, as in Samara, a conventional defense of a city for a guerrilla presence that harasses and pins down the US army and its Iraqi mercenaries.

So what will Washington do? Without 500,000 troops, it can’t control Iraq. So it will “withdraw to and dig in behind superfortified bases and sally forth periodically to show the flag. While this would mean de facto defeat for the US, it will also mean that the Iraqi people’s resistance will not have de jure territorial control from which to declare sovereignty and begin the process of coming up with a truly national government.”

Bello’s advice to the antiwar movement? He wants “a rolling wave of global protests similar to that which marked the anti-Vietnam war mobilizations from 1968 to 1972–one that puts millions of people in a constant state of activism. Coordination, moreover, will mean coordinating not o­nly mass demonstrations but also civil disobedience, work o­n the global media, day-to-day lobbying of officials, and political education.” He wants “Sanctions and boycotts are methods that must be brought into play…not o­nly with respect to US firms but also with Israeli firms and products.” More militancy is needed: “more and more civil disobedience and non-violent disruptions of business as usual encouraged…At no other time than today, when the electoral option is gone, is it more necessary to resist the imperial writ nonviolently by invoking a higher law. ”

I do like this kind of stuff, even though in moments of demoralization I also wonder if activists who write this kind of strategy ever feel like a general staff without an army. Still I’m glad they’re doing it. There’s no way we’re going to learn or grow unless people throw stuff out and see if it goes anywhere or anything comes of it.

One “big analyst” who is annoying though is Juan Cole, who was completely appalled first that al-Hayat compared the US Marines to the murderers of Margaret Hassan, and then appalled that others found his defense of the Marines to be repugnant:

“the Marines at Fallujah are operating in accordance with a UNSC Resolution and have all the legitimacy in international law that flows from that. The Allawi government asked them to undertake this Fallujah mission.
To compare them to the murderous thugs who kidnapped CARE worker Margaret Hassan, held her hostage, terrified her, and then killed her is frankly monstrous. The multinational forces are soldiers fighting a war in which they are targetting combatants and sometimes accidentally killing innocents. The hostage-takers are terrorists deliberately killing innocents. It is simply not the same thing.”

“Soldiers fighting a war in which they are targeting combatants and sometimes accidentally killing innocents”? Backed by an UNSC resolution with legitimacy in international law? Apparently, Cole doesn’t seem to understand the Geneva Conventions or the Nuremberg criteria for war crimes (look up “international aggression”). And Cole is, apparently, a liberal.

Does that mean that if there really are, as Bello says, “two Americas”, that means that Juan Cole is part of the America that opposes Bush?

I wrote an article about the media attacks on Canadian member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish. Her crime? Stomping on a Bush doll on a COMEDY show.

(None of the people denouncing her mentioned any real crimes, of course. Is that Canadian politeness overriding Canadian sense of proportion? Maybe).

(To be fair, Parrish showed a lack of imagination. See the article for my own suggestions on how she could have been more creative).

Continue reading “Parrish the thought”

http://www.zcommunications.org/bush-in-canada-by-justin-podur

Continue reading “Bush in Canada”

Canadians (and those thinking of coming to Canada around November 30, whether that’s to stay or just to help us with our imperial visit) can check this site for regular updates on the emergency anti-Bush demonstration we’re trying to pull together. So far it’s just a call-out, but there will be more there soon. Any Canadians working on this who have info they want on the site, write me please.

The Globe and Mail story sets the date for November 30. It will “mark a thaw in bilateral relations, though his policies remain highly unpopular with Canadians.” He may even speak at Parliament, which “raises the spectre of protests. Polls show that many Canadians were against his re-election, oppose his invasion of Iraq and disapprove of his plan to create a missile defence system. Mr. Bush has not indicated whether he will accept the invitation to speak.”

Continue reading “Bush is coming to Canada – Nov 30. Will we be ready?”

The fabulous magazine Left Turn invited me to update my September essay on Sudan, so I totally revamped it in light of the recent peace accords. Below is an early draft. For the final version, get Left Turn!

The crisis in Sudan provides an extraordinary study in hypocrisy.

On November 16, 2004, for example, a story by Alex Kipotrich of the East African Standard, based in Nairobi, reported a claim by Amnesty International’s Arms and Security Director that France, China, the USSR, the United Kingdom and the United States were all breaking the arms embargo on Sudan and supplying the Sudanese regime with weapons (1). Amnesty International’s press conference exposes the hypocrisy of the very United Nations parties that have so strongly condemned the Sudanese regime’s violations of human rights in Darfur helping to supply weapons to fuel the conflict. Amnesty International itself has a bit of a hypocrisy problem – in 1991, for example, it picked up the phony story about Iraqis murdering Kuwaiti babies in incubators, helping the propaganda machine of the first US devastation of Iraq. Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, released a report arguing that the UN needs to take urgent action to safeguard those who were displaced by government-sponsored violence as they try to return to their homes (2). Human Rights Watch, like Amnesty International, is an organization that does incredibly important work, of which this latest report is a part. And yet, like AI, HRW has helped some very un-human-rights-friendly interests, notably recently in Venezuela, where its reports have featured exaggerated and inflammatory rhetoric has helped the US campaign against the democratic and popular government of that country.

But AI and HRW are organizations of decent people genuinely concerned about human rights, and their mistakes are very mild hypocrisy compared to others. The United Kingdom, for example, is proposing a 10,000 member force for Sudan. Chris Mullin, Foreign Office Minister for Africa, said publicly on November 16 to the Sudanese government: “We are saying that if you (the Sudanese government) get your act together, to get a stable state and live together then this is what we can contribute – a major peacekeeping operation by the UN, humanitarian relief, law and order, help with infrastructure and establishing the rule of law and democratic structures.” (3) This generous offer to help the beleaguered and battered civilians of Darfur comes from the same United Kingdom whose military engaged in international aggression, invading Iraq in March 2003 – defined as the supreme war crime by the Nuremberg tribunal – and more recently relieved US Marines in Iraq so that they could engage in a variety of war crimes in Fallujah, from defining all men over 15 as combatants to destroying hospitals and mosques to using anti-armor munitions against civilians.

And all of this hypocrisy is minor compared to the remarkable depths reached before the Sudanese government and the rebels signed a peace agreement on November 10, 2004, in Abuja, Nigeria. In that agreement, the Sudanese government agreed to stop military flights over Darfur and to disarm the paramilitaries that used massacres to displace 1.45 million within Sudan and force another 200,000 to flee to Chad, and cause the deaths of some 70,000 over the past year. The government also allowed aid workers free access to Darfur. Prior to the agreement, the United Nations was treated to Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin (who was fresh from sending Canadian troops to help oust democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti and install a regime of paramilitary murderers) exhorting the world to stop “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”, though only those by Sudan, not by Canada’s friends like the United States and Israel. The world was treated to the likes of (now former) US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Republican Senator Bill Frist, and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, all enthusiastic Iraq invaders, expressing remarkably selective indignation over the situation in Darfur.

Now that an agreement has been reached, there are still very grave concerns. There are many reports of local violations of the ceasefire, particularly by Sudanese police. The day before the agreement, UN Special Representative Jan Pronk expressed worries that both parties were losing control of the situation: “The government does not control its own forces fully. It co-opted paramilitary forces and now it cannot count on their obedience. . . The border lines between the military, the paramilitary and the police are being blurred.” Meanwhile the rebels are in “a leadership crisis…There are splits. Some commanders provoke their adversaries by stealing, hijacking and killing; some seem to have begun acting for their own private gain.” Pronk worried that “they may turn to preying on the civilians in areas they control by force -and we may soon find Darfur is ruled by warlords.” (4)

Should the accords hold, however, it is important to note that it will not have been because of intervention or bluster by imperial powers, but primarily because of pressure and diplomacy by the African Union. Now it should be noted that the AU consists of regimes that have hypocrisy problems of their own (Nigeria – where the accords were signed – has a regime that knows something about hypocrisy (5)). But in the most difficult, and even horrific of circumstances, Africans have managed to at least begin to resolve conflicts that the imperial powers helped to create and to aggravate.

For activists, the key will be what it has been: to avoid falling into false debates about whether we need to “support” imperial interventions in order to help the oppressed victims of regimes that, for whatever reason, happen to be on the imperial target list rather than the imperial client list. Imperial interventions are destructive, leave the world worse off, and need to be challenged and stopped. Our “support” for such adventures can only result in discrediting ourselves and forcing us to join the long list of hypocrites. The alternative challenge is best posed by Egyptian activists Khalid Fishawy and Ahmed Zaki of alternative media site kefaya.org:

“Could we imagine building a front for the potentials of peoples and democratic movements in Sudan, hurt and disaffected by war, with the solidarity of the global antiwar movement, to impose democratic mechanisms caring for the interests of oppressed Sudanese communities, races, cultures and classes, against the rapacity of the interests of US and Western European Imperialists? Could this aim be possible? Is it promising for the global justice and peace movement to regain its momentum, instead of supporting undemocratic authoritarian and fundamentalist forces, this time in Sudan, under the title of allying with whomever is against the American Empire?” (6)

Notes

(1) Republished at allafrica.com http://allafrica.com/stories/200411160782.html
(2) Reported by the United Nations and republished at allafrica.com http://allafrica.com/stories/200411160250.html The HRW report itself is http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/darfur1104/
(3) From Paul Redfern in the East African, Nairobi, November 15, 2004. Republished in allafrica.com http://allafrica.com/stories/200411160718.html
(4) The source, again, is allafrica.com http://allafrica.com/stories/200411090732.html
(5) See the work of Ike Naijaman on ZNet’s Africa Watch for some colorful examples http://www.zmag.org/racewatch/africawatch.htm
(6) Fishawy and Zaki, “Sudan: Can We Learn?” ZNet August 26, 2004. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=6114

So, the Marines shot an injured prisoner inside a mosque while razing Fallujah.

Some dialogue:

“Did you shoot them?” the lieutenant asked.
“Roger that, sir,” the second Marine replied.
“Were they armed?” the lieutenant asked.
The second Marine shrugged in reply.

And the incident itself:

Continue reading “Did you shoot them?”