Gunder Frank Contributions to Public Discussions
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Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 17:40:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andre Gunder Frank
Subject: DOUBLESPEAK: The White Man's Civilizing Mission Burden Once Again
In George Orwell's 1984 the DOUBLE THINK and NEW SPEAK of BIG BROTHER proclaimed WAR IS
PEACE. Here and Now, they are collapsed into DOUBLESPEAK
The present war without end is being fought to assure lasting pecae, as President George
W. Bush has repeatedly assured us.
A HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE
"Beware of the leader who bangs of war in order to whip the citizenry into a
patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. "It both emboldens
the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever
pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind is closed, the leader will have no need
in seizing the rights of the citizenry. "Rather, the citizenry infused with fear and
blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and do it gladly
so. How do I know? I know for this is what I have done. "And I am Caesar."
ON MARKETING FREEDOM
by Naomi Klein
TORONTO -- When the White House decided it was time to address the rising tides of
anti-Americanism around the world, it didn't look to a career diplomat for help. Instead,
in keeping with the Bush administration's philosophy that anything the public sector can
do the private sector can do better, it hired one of Madison Avenue's top brand managers.
As undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, Charlotte Beers'
assignment was not to improve relations with other countries but rather to perform an
overhaul of the U.S. image abroad. Beers had no previous State Department experience, but
she had held the top job at both the J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather ad
agencies, and she's built brands for everything from dog food to power drills.
Now she was being asked to work her magic on the greatest branding challenge of all: to
sell the United States and its war on terrorism to an increasingly hostile world. The
appointment of an ad woman to this post understandably raised some criticism, but
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shrugged it off. "There is nothing wrong with
getting somebody who knows how to sell something. We are selling a product. We need
someone who can re-brand American foreign policy, re-brand diplomacy." Besides, he
said, "She got me to buy Uncle Ben's rice."
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ON PEACE
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. "The president believes that
Ariel Sharon is a man of peace." April 11
Comment by Elson Boles:
Well of course "The president believes that Ariel Sharon is a man of peace"
because the president is himself similarly a deft "man of peace." It's all quite
consistent: Occupation is Liberation. Repression is Freedom. War is Peace and Security.
Bush and Sharon are men of peace.
----------------------------- ------------------------
ON TERRORISM
[from among thousands...]
by Eqbal Ahmad
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish underground in Palestine was described a
"terrorist." Then new things happened. By 1942, the Holocaust was occurring, and
a certain liberal sympathy with the Jewish people had built up in the Western world. At
that point, the terrorists of Palestine, who were Zionists, suddenly started to be
described, by 1944-45, as "freedom fighters." At least two Israeli Prime
Ministers, including Menachem Begin, have actually, you can find in the books and posters
with their pictures, saying "Terrorists, Reward This Much." The highest reward I
have noted so far was 100,000 British pounds on the head of Menachem Begin, the terrorist.
Then from 1969 to 1990 the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, occupied the center
stage as the terrorist organization. Yasir Arafat has been described repeatedly by the
great sage of American journalism, William Safire of the New York Times, as the
"Chief of Terrorism."
----------
Prof. Ehud Sprinzak, the so-called "expert on extremist movements," was
interviewed on the lunchtime programme [Yoman Hatzohorayim] of Channel 7. The interviewer,
Ariel Kahana, presented him as a "person of the left". Sprinzak did not like
this description. "I am a person of the centre", he said, "and in general I
dislike labels". Then the following dialogue took place:
Kahana: "What do you think about the executions in the Palestinian Authority?"
Sprinzak: "I have a very positive opinion; I mean, it is a vital instrument, part of
the struggle against terrorism and I have no reservation, except for one thing..."
Kahana: "Ah, one moment, one moment: I was referring to the executions of
collaborators by the Palestinian Authorities, not to the liquidations by our forces".
Sprinzak: "Pardon, pardon, I thought you were asking me ... In any case, about the
Palestinians: it is disgusting, nauseating, this is how a dictatorial system operates,
without any juridical process. Absolutely unacceptable, shocking."
[Originally from GNAA]
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by gunder frank
Analogously to the appeal to human rights in order to trample on them in the NATO WAR
against Yugoslavia, the present US/UK WAR against Afghanistan is ''fighing terrorism'' by
using and spreading terrorism. Apart from using culster bombs, the US military is flying
B-52 bombers 8 thousand miles from the US to Afghanistan in order to drop its biggest
block busters [designed to bust bunkers] on people with the express [that is expressed by
the Pentagon! ] intent '' to frighten and create panic and chaos'' among both troops and
civilians. That is not terror? Moreover, the US government is also deliberately exposing
its own population to increased and more widespread terror: A US Senator inteviewed on ABC
TV was asked how the bombing of Afghanistan might impact on the United States. His answer:
that his sources informed that a US attack of Afghanistan would result ''in a 100 % chance
of another terrorist attack on the US" [a direct quotation!]. Then asked further by
the interviewer whether that does not pose a serious problmen, the US Senator replied
[another direct quotation] ''I am not troubled by that''!
--------------
In THE STATE OF TERROR, Oliverio's powerful analysis of terrorism is to "comprehend
that it is the state, including especially the academy and the media, who serve their own
interests by labelling, denouncing, and persecuting the powerless as the sources of
'terrorism'. Concomitantly, Oliverio also appeals to our comprehension of how the same
interested parties use this same power to shape our perceptions in their (largely
successful) attempt to protect themselves from the terrorist label and other critiques and
to exempt their policies from reform." [from the Foreword by Andre Gunder Frank]
------------------------- ---------------------
ON DEMOCRACY
US organized Venezuelan military and right wing ouster of democratically elected [2 tims
with highest majorities ever] elected Presidet Hugo Chavez - and the installation of a new
''president'' in violation of the Constitutional provisions for succession - is a ''return
to democracy same time, same station
-------
The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources,
'several months ago', and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The
visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be
his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.
Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for Public
Diplomacy. It reported in theory to the State Department, but Reich was shown by
congressional investigations to report directly to Reagan's National Security Aide,
Colonel Oliver North, in the White House.
Reich also has close ties to Venezuela, having been made ambassador to Caracas in 1986.
Reich is said by OAS sources to have had 'a number of meetings with Carmona and other
leaders of the coup' over several months. The coup was discussed in some detail, right
down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.
On the day Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the
Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chavez was not a rupture of democratic
rule, as he had resigned and was 'responsible for his fate'. He said the US would support
the Carmona government.
But the crucial figure around the coup was Abrams, who operates in the White House as
senior director of the National Security Council for 'democracy, human rights and
international operations' [SIC!!]. He was a leading theoretician of the school known as
'Hemispherism', which put a priority on combating Marxism in the Americas.
It led to the coup in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and death squads that
followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and elsewhere. During the
Contras' rampage in Nicaragua, he worked directly to North.
Congressional investigations found Abrams had harvested illegal funding for the rebellion.
Convicted for withholding information from the inquiry, he was pardoned by George Bush
senior.
Ed Vulliamy in THE OBSERVER [London]
-----------
The Times (London) April 24, 2002
VENEZUELAN COUP PLOTTER 'IN MIAMI'
From David Adams in Miami
In the aftermath of Venezuela's failed coup, the United States faces further potential
embarrassment after the discovery that several alleged coup leaders fled to Miami
----------------------
Before Venezuela's 1998 presidential election, the US State Department denied Chavez a
visa to visit the United States on the grounds - according to Albright - that he had once
been the leader of a coup, and therefore a criminal unworthy of entry.
We wonder if the State Department will now apply its "no coup leaders allowed"
to the band of oligarchs, military thugs (trained by the School of the Americas, like so
many Latin American torturers and dictators), and media moguls, who were leaders of the
failed coup of April 2002. (When he was arrested and charged with violating the
Constitution on Sunday, the military-installed dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona was
reportedly fleeing from Miraflores Palace en route to the U.S. Embassy to seek asylum.)
Comment by Al Giordano
--------------
Well...this is really amusing. I have to confess that, after Reagan's alleged reasons to
invade Grenada (that little island was supposed to be a security threat for the
US...according to Chomsky the Mexican president refused to report this to his own people
and support the invasion because he was, understandably, afraid that fourty million
mexicans would die in histerical laughter)...well, I never thought that I would find a
more reliable source of comic relief than that story. But what about this? We have a
country whose president wins, and with a considerable margin, four elections in three
years (1998 election with 80 per cent of the vote, referendum on the modification of the
constitution, election for the members of the constitutional commission, referendum on the
approval of the constitution...to the point that i do not believe there is a more
'democratic' government on planet earth), who gets attacked by an organisation for the
promotion of democracy emating from a country of which the president was appointed by the
Supreme Court, after a very dubious Florida ballot and anyhow obtaining the minority of
the overall US citizens votes...this one really is hard to beat.
Comment by Damian.Popolo
------------------- --------------------
ON PARTNETRSHIP FOR PEACE
"Partnership for Peace" programs of which the Strategic Research Development
Report 5-96 of the [U.S] Center for Naval Warfare Studies reports on "activities of
these forces that provide dominant battlespace knowledge necessary to shape regional
security environments. Multinational excersizes, port visits, staff-to-staff coordination
- all designed to increase force inter-operability and access to regional military
facilities - along with intelligence and surveillance operations.... [So] forward deployed
forces are backed up by those which can surge for rapid reenforcement and can be in place
in seven to thirty days [256-257]""
Gunder Frank comments December 2000:
-- all as a 'partnership for peace" in - we may understand - Orwellian double-speak.
Indeed, U.S. local diplomats and the Clinton administration now regard the Transcapian as
a 'backup' for Middle East oil supplies and some insist that the U.S. "take the lead
in pacifying the entire area" including by the possible overthrow of inconveniently
not sufficiently cooperative governments [258]. The policy and praxis of common military
exercises also includes distant Kazakstan. All this and more "reflects a major shift
in U.S. policy toward Cental Asia ... coordinated by the National Security Council,"
as the author quotes from the hawkish U.S. JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION MONITOR. The Security
Council's former head and then already super anti-Soviet Russian hawk, Zbigniew
Brzezinsky, now promotes a modernized Mackinder heartland vision of a grand U.S. led
anti-Russian coalition of Europe,Turkey, Iran, and China as well as Central Asia [253].
Gunder Frank
ON FREEDOM FIGHTERS
by Eqbal Ahmad
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men. These bearded men I was
writing about in those days in The New Yorker, actually did. They were very
ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans looking like they came from another century.
President Reagan received them in the White House. After receiving them he spoke to the
press. He pointed towards them, I'm sure some of you will recall that moment, and said,
"These are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers". These were the
Afghan Mujahiddin. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the Evil Empire. They
were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers!
ON NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
U.N. Secretary General Wins Nobel Peace Prize
The United Nations and Secretary General Kofi Annan jointly won the centenary Nobel Peace
Prize on Friday for working for human rights and to defuse global conflicts.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international/12W IRE-NOBE.html?
-Kof Annan He has done nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he as been a willing tool and
has provided ''legitimation''of agressive US international military and political policy
& practise.
-He did nothing useful and has not even denounced much less done anything [even if he did
make a visit there] the decimation of Palestion civilians by Israel with US backing, nor
for the implementation of the over two decade old UN resolution 202 calling for the return
of the Trans-Jordan lands
- He has done nothing to stop, nor even to eliminate the alleged UN cover for, the decade
long embargo of Iraq, which has already killed a million persens, over half of them
children [about wich US Secretary of State Madelein Albright said ''It was worth it'' ]
- He did nothing at all to impede or stop the killing of millions in Africa
- He did nothing useful to impede or stop the killing in East Timor
- He did nothing useful to defuse the 3 year killing in Bosnia
- He raised no concrete objection to the transfer from the UN to NATO of the
responsibility of of policy making for and intervention praxis in Yugolsavia, thereby
taking the UN out of the loop of international war/peace policy making
- He then simply accepted the ''solution'' of the Bosnia crisis at - He raised no concrete
objection to the transfer from the UN to NATO of the responsibility of of policy making
for and intervention praxis in Yugolsavia, thereby taking the UN out of the loop of
international war/peace policy making
- He then simply accepted the ''solution'' of the Bosnia crisis at Dayton, USA
[significantly on a military base! why is the agreement not named after that military base
instead of after the nearby civilian city?]
- He raised no objection - indeed consented - to the NATO war against Yugoslavia, which
sidestepped and thereby violated about a dozen clauses and sections of the UN charter and
most dangerously for the future sanctified the appeal to ''human rights'' to TRAMPLE ON n
HUMAN RIGHTS [the anti-Iraq war already did the same and violated 7 [only!] articles of
the United Nations Charter. His predecessor UN General Secretary Perez de Cuellar said
''this is a US war not a UN one." But he did nothing to prevent or modify that, and
he did not even resign in protest, which might at least have dramatized that fact for the
world'] and of course Kofi Annan failed to do so as well when the UN was totally
emascualted and 2 decades of international law were simply destroyed in one day [or rather
night].
- After the above end run around the UN, he then willingly let the UN be used as a fig
leaf for the military occupation of Kosovo and then its adminstration by NATO under a UN
flag
- He did no more in or about the even more serious US war against Afghanstan, in which the
US is using weapons and targeting people in total violation, of course again of the UN
Charter [ the reference to its ''self defense section'' is both hypocritical and outside
the remainder of the UN charter that defines and sets limits to what appeal to it can be
used for-and this action is goes WAY beyond that] and the violation of all Geneva
conventions against the targetting of facilites needed by civilians, and of the use of
cluster boms [useful only against people] that also violate the Geneva convention and even
US law [the last time they were used against Yugoslavia, former US President Jimmy Carter
went on TV and said they are illegal, because I [he] made them illegal].
--- In a travesty even greater than bestowing it on Henry Kissinger - the same one for
whom Christopher Hitchins recently provided ample documentation in HARPERS magazine to
demand his indictement for WAR CRIMES - we must all now ask ourselves and answer how it is
possible that the Nobel Prize is now bestowed on Mr. Annan for ''PEACE'' ??? !!!
ON TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11
Sir: Wow, it's just like when the Spanish bombed our airbases in retaliation for our
failure to extradite the terrorist Pinochet, in spite of the fact that we'd been shown the
evidence against him. How history repeats itself ...
letter in THE INDEPENDENT [London]
HISTORICAL STATISTICAL APPENDIX
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Bombing of WTC in NYC and Pentagon in Washington DC, USA
DAMAGE: Human and Pysical, Economic and Political Dead and Missing 5,000 - more than half
NON nationals ofthe USA WTC destroyed, Pentagon damaged existing economic recession
deepend,existing political power strengthened
RESPONSIBILITY personal : Unknown. Suspected: possibly Osmana bin Laden, but unproven
Behind the Scenes [not much] : possibly Al Quata State responsible: None proven, nor even
to anybody's knowledge RESPONSE: Massive bombing of Afghanistan by US & UK
---------------------------
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11, 1973
Bombing of Presidential Palace La Moneda in Santiago Chile
DAMAGE : Human and Pysical, Economic and Political Dead and Missing - about 30,000, almost
all Chileans Thousands tortured, 100,000 plus driven into exile Moneda Palace damaged [by
destruction and fire] Economy seriously damaged, unemployment trippled, inflation
quadrupled, income vastly lowered and very much more unequally distributed political power
changed by military coup and decade and a half military dictatorship
RESPONSIBILITY personal:Chilean General Augusto Pinochet and Military Junta, [behind the
scenes but very visible] U.S. President Richard Nixon & Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger - all self declared and proven, eg. in their files, US Senate Church Committee
Hearings, recently summarized by Christopher Hitchins in Harpers Magazine and demanding
that Henry Kissinger be indicted as War Criminal to be brought before International Court
of Justice or new International Criminal Court Responsible State : Chilean and United
States of America
RESPONSE: Car bomb in Washington DC, killing ex Chilean ambassador to US and a US
national, proven responsibility: Chilean DINA secret police with CIA backup
----------
ON CIVILIZATION
by John Pilger
In his zeal, Tony Blair has come closer to an announcement of real intentions than any
British leader since Anthony Eden. Not simply the handmaiden of Washington, Blair, in the
Victorian verbosity of his extraordinary speech to the Labour Party conference, puts us on
notice that imperialism's return journey to respectability is well under way. Hark, the
Christian gentleman-bomber's vision of a better world for "the starving, the
wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the
deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza to the mountain ranges of
Afghanistan". Hark, his unctuous concern for the "human rights of the suffering
women of Afghanistan" as he colludes in bombing them and preventing food reaching
their starving children.
Is all this a dark joke? Far from it; as 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.
Since the end of the cold war, a new opportunity has arisen. The economic and political
crises in the developing world, largely the result of imperialism, such as the
blood-letting in the Middle East and the destruction of commodity markets in Africa, now
serve as retrospective justification for imperialism. Although the word remains
unspeakable, the western intelligentsia, conservatives and liberals alike, today boldly
echo Bush and Blair's preferred euphemism, "civilisation". Italy's prime
minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the former liberal editor Harold Evans share a word whose
true meaning relies on a comparison with those who are uncivilised, inferior and might
challenge the "values"of the west, specifically its God-given right to control
and plunder the uncivilised.
----------
by gunder frank
What kind of ''civilization'' is being defended by abrogating the only civilized
institutions and laws we have in the world designed to and at least moderately able to
protect us and our civilization from ourselves in a society of laws instead of brutes? The
civilized institutions and laws that we have - granted that they are insufficient, but for
that to be strengthend, NOT abrogated whenever it suits the strong- is all that stands
between us and Hobbes's ''law of the jungle'' war of all against all in which the weak
[poor and starving people in Afghanistan?] are at the total mercy of the strong [what is
the most powerful country in this sad world?].
If this is not destroying civilization to save it, then destroying villages in Vietnam to
save them was not Orwellian war is peace double-speak either. What kind of [Western?]
civilization is this that must be ''saved'' by destroying it - indeed denying and/or
wantonly neglecting its existence - and the very institutions that would make us civilized
-- if we were. But of course if we are not civilized enough to observe, acknowledge and
live by the very norms and institutions that would make us civilized, then what
''civilization'' is there to protect and save?
AND BY CONTRAST A BIT OF STRAIGHT TALK FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH
AMERICAN EMPIRE
A political unit that has overwhelming superiority in military power, and uses that power
to influence the internal behavior of other states, is called an empire. The United States
[is] an indirect empire, to be sure, but an empire nonetheless.... If this is correct, our
goal is not combating a rival, but maintaining our imperial position, and maintaining
imperial order. Imperial wars are not so constrained [from escalation as when still
confronted by the Soviet Union]. The maximum amount of force can and should e used as
quickly as possible for psychological impact - to demonstrate that the empire cannot be
challenged with impunity. Now we are in the business of bringing down hostile governments
and creating governments favorable to us. Imperial wars end, but imperial garrisons must
be left in place for decades to ensure order and stability. This is, in fact, what we are
beginning to see, first in the Balkans and now in Central Asia [and] requires a lighly
armed ground force for garrison purposes. Finally, imperial strategy focuses on preventing
the emergence of powerful, hostile challengers to empire: by war if necessary, but by
imperial assimilation if possible. China will be a major economic and military power in a
generationbut is not yet powerful enough to be a challenger to American empire, and the
goal of the United States is to prevent that challenge from emerging. The United States
could do what it does now: reassure its friends in Asia that we will not allow Chinese
military intimidation to succeed.We may also want unconventional weapons with which to
remind China
. Stephen Peter Rose
Harvard University
Kaneb professor of national security and military affairs,
Director of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies,
HARVARD MAGAZINE May-June 2002, pp 30-31
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ANDRE GUNDER FRANK
Senior Fellow Residence World History Center
One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University
Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall Boston, MA 02114 USA Boston, MA 02115 USA
Tel: 617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060
Fax: 617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/
e-mail:franka@fiu.edu |
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