Doublespeak: The White Man's Civilizing Mission Burden Once AgainIn 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 FREEDOMby 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." 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:
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] ------- Comment by Gunder Frank:
------- 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 DEMOCRACYUS organized Venezuelan military and right wing ouster of democratically elected [2 times 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 -------
Ed Vulliamy in THE OBSERVER [London] ------- 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 -------
Comment by Al Giordano -------
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
Gunder Frank comments December 2000:
ON FREEDOM FIGHTERSby 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 PRIZEU.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/12WIRE-NOBE.html? -Kofi Annan 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
letter in THE INDEPENDENT [London] HISTORICAL STATISTICAL APPENDIXTuesday, September 11, 2001 DAMAGE: Human and Pysical, Economic and Political Dead and Missing 5,000 - more than half NON nationals of the 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 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 CIVILIZATIONby 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
Stephen Peter Rose |
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