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| Reproduced here with A.G.F. authorisation. R.R. 1st draft August 1, 2003 THE MEANING OF VIOLENCE TO MEANING by Andre Gunder Frank There is No Civilization, Much less are there CivilizationS Saving Civilization, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush keep claiming to be doing, is an oxymoron. To begin with, what they really mean is WESTERN civilization. Of that, Gandhi already said a half century ago, that its mere existence would be a good idea. Only a few years before that, Hitler claimed that his invasion of Russia was to save Western Civilization. That cost the Russians 40 million lives and the Jews 6 million. Today, as in Vietnam a generation ago, the government of the United States and its allies' effort to ''save" civilization is DESTROYING it, or at least its most precious legacy: The body of International Law that grew up over the centuries and the International Institutions like the United Nations that were created after the Second World War to prevent repetition of it and other indiscriminate slaughter of man by man [much less by women!]. Yet in the past decades, at any one time there have been at least ten - mostly civil - wars going on at any one time around the world. And the United States has already started the Third World War. Former CIA Director James Woolsey, in a recent speech in Los Angeles, said: "The Iraq campaign is really just the start of the Third World War and one that may well last for decades."[ http://www.americanfreepress.net/06_29_03/Global_War_L ooms_/global_war_looms]. But he is a decade behind the times. In 1991, I pointed out that the FIRST US war Against Iraq was already the beginning of the THIRD WORLD WAR, of which the present and two intermediate ones are only the continuation and escalation. Third World War in two senses, one in that it follows the first and second, and another in that it is directed AGAINST AND FOUGHT IN THE THIRD WORLD [ http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/nato_kosovo/msg00080.h tml] It is the refusal both in theory and in practice - and of both in language - to accept the fact of our common social life that can then find expression in '' we are God's chosen people,'' '' this land is mine and has been so since forever, and ''ethnic cleansing.'' *Hitler declared in MEIN KAMPF "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." *Soldiers of the Wehrmacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). *Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under [Hitler's] administration. Sound familiar? It should, because according to the new Palestinain Prime Minister Abbas, Bush told him : "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/images/0.gif]. In the meantime, the Israelis are working full time, with continued Washington support, on their own ''final solution,'' first the WALL to separate the Palestinians out, and then to STARVE and THIRST [by denying them their water supply] them out, and finally to THROW them out altogether - ETHNIC CLEANSING to the n-th degree, all in the name of being GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE with THE LAND ALLOCATED TO THEM - by the BIBLE! We are indeed living in confusing and dangerous times. Two buzz words go around the world these days. One is GLOBALIZATION - as though that only started a few years ago. That widespread opinion leads to equally widespread confusion and misguided political practice. The second and related widely used term is that of ''civilization'' or worse distinct "''civilizations" and ''cultures'' or ''ethnicities," which allegedly are age-old or even God given. For instance, the UN declared 2001 as the Year of Dialogue of Civilizations and the United Nations University organized a major international conference in Tokyo, which I attended. My thesis was that there are and never have been NO distinct and even less pristine civilizations [plural]. These terms are also confusing and even dangerous, particularly since the events of September 11, 2001.'Civilization'' [singular] came into use to distinguish it from ''barbarism" and the social evolution . The notion of distinct major "civilizations" has become popular especially since the nineteenth century, to distinguish one from another, and especially ''The West" from ''The Rest" - to use Samuel Huntington's terms in his widely successful THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS [1993, 1999]. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain never tires of declaring that he and US President Bush , who has also used the same term, are defending ''civilization" [singular and a barely disguises reference to WESTERN civilization] through the use of advanced technology airplanes and bombs, but also depleted uranium and cluster bombs, dropped on the poor, and the accompanying Big Brother ''WAR IS PEACE" propaganda and obfuscation, indeed downright lies. One, as important as it is hardly noted, is the abrogation of one of the greatest achievements of civilization: international law and its codification and institutionalization a half century ago at the Nuremberg Trials, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations et al - be it noted ALL brought into being by the very big powers who are now destroying them. Those who do not command these military and world media weapons, have recourse instead instead to 'poor man's weapons'' of car bombs, suicide bombers, machetes, and ''ethnic cleansing." Now - but by the major powers already also for decades - the dialogue seems to be the use of the former by the rich against the poor in Vietnam and countless other instances. To claim that different civilizations did and still do exist is not only historically and scientifically confusing but also dangerous. The call, attempt, and claim to compare civilizations is misguided and therefore misleading. Even if it were possible to identify and compare civilizations, which it is not because they do not exist, the very attempt to do so only evades and confuses the issue. For instance former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in his address to the UN already in 1988 called for ''unity in diversity.'' Apparently, the UN did not listen very well, since instead it is still today going on about non-existing separate civilizations. Alas, this problem with comparisons and applies not only to non-existent civilizations, but also to societies, cultures, ethnicities and especially races. Apart from the tendency and danger of attributing and comparing characteristics that they do not in fact have, the very comparative method must lead to misleading results when it is applied to units or entities that are supposed to have always been or be separate. In reality however, all have been and still are so related to each other that some of their supposedly separate characteristics in fact RESULT FROM THEIR RELATION itself and/or from some influence that is common to them both or all. All social life is characterized by such relations, connections, and commonalities throughout world history. Moreover, before we can useful ly distinguish differences, let alone understand which differences really make a difference, we need to identify the connections and commonalities from which to distinguish any differences. Everywhere in the world today, ethnic politics is increasingly replacing or at least masking ideological, class, and even international politics. Those who invoke an alleged ethnic, cultural or civilizational difference and uniqueness - and often superiority - to support their political practice, and even populist politics, mostly do so in defense of their own narrow interests against those of much more widespread popular ones. The evocation of ethnicity, culture and civilization as the proper basis of politics not only flies in the face of all world and even ''national'' historical reality. It is itself, as the plague of post-modernism also is, the result of the global reality and forces whose existence and legitimacy it seeks to deny. That can easily be demonstrated by a materialist analysis of WHY these ideational forces are now so widespread. Others and I have done so elsewhere. The Meaning of Violence If there is any civilization, surely one of its most important and precious fruits and legacies are the norms against wantonly killing each other. Cannibalism has mostly but not entirely disappeared, but man killing man continues both privately and socially, and the means for doing so are even multiplied manifold and technically refined: from atomic to hydrogen bombs - and now the US project to develop battlefield nuclear weapons; implosion bombs that suck out all oxygen; depleted uranium munitions that spread nuclear poison and contaminate the land for generations to come; one ton daisy cutters and cluster bombs that spread shrapnel over wide areas and also remain for children to pick up later; and on and on. Yet all of these have been declared illegal under international law, and we would be a step ahead if it were respected and invoked. But it is not. The US and NATO in particular wantonly violate these laws. World War I was fought ''to end all wars, " and the League of Nations was founded to make that come true. After the League of Nations failed to prevent World War II, the United Nations and its Security Council were established - by the allied victors ! - to prevent recurrence again. Since that time there have been hundreds of wars, mostly in the Third World South and many of them sponsored by the North. Now the North, and most particularly the United States, is systematically violating international law and deliberately destroying the United Nations. In the war against Yugoslavia, NATO led by the United States deliberately by-passed the entire United Nations Organization and set aside the consultative procedures it, and especially its Security Council, offers for the discussion and settlement of international disputes in particular those that may threaten the peace. However, even if the NATO states had 'consulted' the Security Council, as Secretary General Kofi Annan belatedly requested, any Security Council 'sanction' of member state bombing would still have been in abject violation of numerous articles [2, 3, 27, 41, 42, 51] of the UN Charter, as was the bombing of Iraq in 1991 and again in 1999, when the Security Council was not even consulted. In addition to that, this NATO action is in direct violation of the precedent and decisions for international law established by - the still valid Kellog Briand Pact against war of 1928 - the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-8 - Helsinki Agreement establishing- OSCE and its deliberations - UN definition and prohibition of 'aggression' against a sovereign [member] state -Vienna convention of 1979 declaring illegal all treaties and agreements signed under [military] duress -several of the Geneva Conventions of 1948 and 1949 on -- human rights -- genocide -- unnecessary targeting of civilians and their infrastructure - the US Constitution - the German Constitution - other NATO countries' constitutions and laws and on and on --- Without trying to be exhaustive, it may be illuminating to take a brief look at least at some of the relevant Nuremberg principles and Geneva conventions: The U.N. Geneva Convention on Genocide of 1948 states the following in its Article 2: "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. At Nuremberg, of all crimes, that of starting a war was judged to be the worst. "Three categories of offenses were regarded as punishable crimes under international law: (a) CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). (b) WAR CRIMES: Violation of the laws or customs of war, which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity. - (c) CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: -Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime." [from Richard A. Falk, A Global Approach to National Policy. Harvard University Press, 1975, p. 149]. Moreover the Nuremberg Tribunal established clearly that the responsibility for these crimes is PERSONAL: "Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced.Hitler could not make aggressive war by himself. He had to have the cooperation of statesmen, military leaders, diplomats and businessmen.When they, with knowledge of his aims, gave him their cooperation, they made themselves parties to the plan he had initiated. They are not to be deemed innocent because Hitler made use of them, if they knew what they were doing" Accordingly, all of NATO political leaders [heads of government, foreign and 'defense' ministers] and its chief military personnel were accused of war crimes by several groups of jurists from Canada, Greece, UK, Norway, and the US itself. They filed detailed legal briefs with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [ICT-Y] in The Hague accusing more than 60 people by name of long lists of specific war crimes and other crimes against humanity. These Jurists have asked that the ICT-Y indict not only Yugoslavs but also NATO leaders of war crimes, and some have traveled to the Hague and have had personal interviews about the same with the ICT-Y Chief Prosecutor Arbour. She said she would look into the matter. Her successor Xx said there was nothing to look into! However. the aggressive NATO war against Yugoslavia was in total violation even of its own principles as a purely DEFENSIVE alliance with a NATO Charter that reads in part: Article 1 The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. Therefore, this first time ever quite unprovoked NATO aggression sets very important and dangerous precedents in that - it violated the above cited NATO and UN Charters, Nuremberg principles, Geneva Conventions, etc. - it was against a sovereign state - it was 'out of area' of the NATO alliance itself All of these statutes were again violated in the US War against Afghanistan and against Iraq, and of course the United Nations was again circumvented. The Violence to Meaning In other words, the Orwellian WAR IS PEACE policy ''saves'' civilization by destroying its most valuable fruits. And NewSpeak has reached dimensions that Orawell could not even imagine for 1984. Since this book is also about the meaning of violence, it may be appropriate to point out some violence that is now being done to meaning. Orwellian Newspeak Made Easy to keep on top of current events as reported by Washington. Here is a handy list of key terms, translated into plain English. Liberation - Invasion and military Occupation and Rule Coalition - The U.S. and British invaders, plus some troops from rent-a-nations like Romania and Poland, which used to be called mercenaries. Dictator - A ruler you don't like, or who does not cooperate. Statesman - A cooperative dictator. Stability - when things go the way Uncle Sam likes, ie., the status quo. Instability - when things don't go the way Uncle Sam wants, Iraq reconstruction - a process whereby big firms that contribute to the president's re-election campaign obtain contracts to rebuild the damage caused by U.S. bombing. Mideast democracy - regimes that hold rigged elections and obey Washington's orders. Free trade - pouring goods and services into the newly "liberated" country, and buying up its key industrial assets at fire-sale prices. It used to be called carpetbagging Terrorism - violent acts by dangerous fanatics and malcontents who refuse to accept the downtrodden status assigned to them by Washington. Anti-terrorism - State terrorism. Iraq Administrator - A pro-consul or gaulieter, disguised as a minor suburban bureaucrat. Vans of death - Claimed by Washington to be Iraqi mobile germ warfare laboratories, but turn out, on inspection, to be British-supplied trucks for inflating weather balloons. Weapons of Mass Destruction - Nasty weapons, existing or non-existing, that the other side has. When your side has them, they become invisible. Torture - a foul act committed by your enemies. When your side does it, it's called intensive interrogation in Guantanamo. Homeland security - bolting the barn door after the horse has escaped by rounding up Muslims and denying them due process of law. French - Insubordinate ingrates Germans - Untrustworthy. Canadians - A bunch of pot-smoking, pinko, wimp nancy boys who refuse to obey [a very few] orders from the Great White Father in Washington. Islam - An evil faith that promotes violence and hatred, as proven by the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who learned about the agents of the devil while encountering them in motel rooms. Fox News - The Ministry of Truth. Al-Jazeera News - All the bad news we don't want to hear. See Fox News. Die-hards and Saddam loyalists - Any Iraqis opposing the invasion of their country. Traitors and friends of Saddam - Journalists who questioned the Bush Administration's lurid claims over Iraq's purported threat. Moderate - A Mideastern ruler who toes the line and makes nice to Israel. Peacekeepers - Troops from browbeaten or bribed vassal states sent to perform garrison duty in U.S.-occupied nations that the Pentagon wants to avoid, or lacks the troops to perform. New Iraqi government - An august body that leaps to its feet when a U.S. soldier enters the room, and has total authority over garbage collection and sewers. Saddam Hussein - A former close American ally who got too big for his britches. [adapted from By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jul27.html ] ______________________________________________________ The Meaning of the New World Order of Violence All this and much more NewSpeak of course does violence to accustomed meaning, but it seems to be an essential component of the NEW WORLD ORDER. President George Bush father coined the term a in 1991 as a name for what he was trying to do with his War Against Iraq. Was it historical amnesia that failed to recall who used the very self-same term to describe an earlier geo-political ambition? - Adolf Hitler! The Clinton Doctrine continued to work on the same American project, notably with the NATO War Against Yugoslavia. It was mis-called the Kosovo war, especially inasmuch as it was militarily directed against Yugoslavia and politically against Russia and was accompanied by the US sponsored expansion of NATO eastward: New, ex-Warsaw Pact members were ushered into NATO, and for the first time and in contravention with its own Charter NATO undertook both offensive military action and did so out of area. NATO extended its power and military action south-eastward toward the sources of oil and the existing and potential pipe-lines to carry it. [One of the latter happens to be the valley that runs parallel to the Kosovo/Macedonia border, through which a line would be run from the Black to the Adreatic Sea]. An additional related effect, if not purpose, of the NATO War was to help foreclose European independence from the US and to maintain and extend US geo-political power in Europe and world-wide. President George Bush son is now working over time to continue to build up and extend the NEW WORLD ORDER that his father started to construct in 1991. But Bush the younger is extending this order not only geographically but also programatically through a combination of complete unilateralism [never mind the allies and even NATO, literally not to mention the UN] and you're either with us or against us plain English blackmail. The words are the same as the ones John Foster Dulles used in the early Cold War. But then those against us were left under the umbrellas of the Soviet Union and China. Now against us INCLUDES Russia and China among those subjected to US political economic blackmail - and, along with a half a dozen other rouge states, American nuclear threat as per Pentagon planning recently publicized by the press. At home in the meantime, the people are encouraged to show pride to be an American while, as Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) wrote, the Bill of Rights is being abrogated and the Constitution dismantled. A critical analysis of this NEW WORLD ORDER under construction is offered in the opening chapters of EMPIRE by Hardt & Negri, published by Harvard University Press in 2000, which argues that the entire world is now imperial per se in which the US occupies a position of priviledge, which includes that of re-defining the ethical and legal standards of good and evil to be imposed on one and all. More significantly still is the formation of an active group of rigth wing policy makers and opinion leaders [the usual suspects from the most dangerous wing of the Reagan and Bush administrations plus some younger converts] in Washington DC who argue that the United States is de facto THE IMPERIALIST POWER in the world today, so that it should accept that fact, make proud of the label and carry out its imperial/ist responsibilities to the full extent of its abilities, which are and should be far greater still than those of the only "hesitant" Bush doctrine. So far, the most visible international part of this NEW WORLD ORDER has been the US Wars Against Afghanistan and then Iraq. Its real purpose and pursuit should have come as no surprise. The Clinton administration had already taken many important steps to extend American influence and power through the Caspian Sea and Central Asian region under the Orwellian NewSpeak A Partnership for Peace. US planning, both political and military, for a War Against Afghanistan was well under way long before the events of September 11, 2001 offered legitimation for the same. Under cover of this war, the US established new military positions and political alliances not only in Afghanistan itself, but also in a half dozen neighboring states in Central Asia in which the US has brokered an at least temporary agreement to share power with Russia B and to encircle China now also from the West, as still in the East, including newly again in the Philippines and elsewhere. The same goes for the Second War Against Iraq, which the Policy for a New American Century under the spiritual guidance of Paul Wolfowitz of Arabia [now Nr. Two in the Pentagon] Began to plan no sooner was the First War Against Iraq finished. Actually, it never finished; since the self-established ''No Fly Zones" continued to be bombed by UK and US planes; and the embargo killed about 1 million innocent people, mostly children In Iraq since then. When it had so far killed only half a million, the then US Secretary of State said publicly that it ''it was worth it." So, the NEW WORLD ORDER is the name of the game on its world-wide scale if we are to accept its baptism by President Bush father. In Central and Inner Asia, it is to pursue the same BIG GAME twenty-first-century style that then Great Britain and Russia already fought over the Eurasian heartland MacKinder.and Huntington already identified it as the region from which to dominate the world and its Pulse as the measure of global geo-politics a century ago. In his 1997 book on the Global Chessboard, Zigniew Brezinski did so again for the present and future. [http://www.cfr.org/public/resource.cgi?pers!1446]. Suitable pretexts came to hand or were made up easily a century ago as they are again now to legitimize such policy - so long as they are not examined for more than a minute. In 1991 the pretext was violation of sovereignty; in 1999 protection of human rights; and in 2001-2 combating terrorism. No matter that on the record, it has been and continues to be US policy and praxis more than anyone elses to violate sovereignty [what else the Yugoslavia policy?] and human rights and to support terrorism around the world [against Palestinians by Israel, Kurds by Turkey, Arabs by Saudi Arabia, by all the new US supported governments in Central Asia, not to mention by US allied and puppet regimes around the world during the past half century and longer]. World-wide condemnation of present US policy is manifest in countless resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly and increasingly by critiques of even the closest US allies in Europe. In the United States, to name only two former public personalities, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark [and even Henry Kissinger ], and former President Jimmy Carter has oft been publicly critical of US foreign policy and publicly opposed the War Against Yugoslavia.. An important statement in that regard by President Carter is posted on my web page www.rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/... New World Order section. |
