Archive for the 'Imperialism' Category

Defence quickies

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 weeks, 5 days ago
in Afghanistan, China, Foreign policy, Imperialism, International, Security and War
. 34 Comments

You might remember an LP thread some time ago about the details of our Afghanistan deployment - in essence, only our special forces have been involved in “offensive maneuvers”. It seems that may change, in part because our special forces have been deployed for a “long, long time now”. Worrying. Special forces are, by definition, our best infantry soldiers. While our regularly infantry are undoubtedly far better trained and better equipped than those they are fighting against - and still with the massive advantage of air support - as a layperson I’m concerned that the regular infantry will take even more casualties than special forces doing the same job.

Meanwhile, in the world of defence procurement, apparently Kevin Rudd seems to think we need more “high-end capabilities”, notably naval and air capabilities, to deal with the military risks posed by the buildup of arms throughout Asia. Paul Dibb agrees, and gets a plug in for the good old defence of Australia doctrine. How much this is going to cost is of course left open…

Finally, Liberal backbencher, former defence scientist, and noted global warming denialist Dennis Jensen has heard on the grapevine that a “highly classified” computer simulation of combat between the F-35 fighter - Australia’s likely new combat jet sometime in the next decade - and Russian-built Sukhois was conducted last month in Hawaii. According to Jensen, the (simulated) F-35’s got “clubbed like seals”. For what it’s worth, while I remain concerned about whether the F-35 is up to the job, without details of how the simulation was conducted this information is all but useless.

Georgia conflict - a couple of informative links.

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 month, 4 weeks ago
in Imperialism, International and War
. 36 Comments

If (like me), you know bugger-all about why Georgia and Russia have suddenly started a war, this piece in the NYT (hat tip Kevin Drum) provides some useful background. In short, it appears there’s a combination of old-style Cold Warriors in the Kremlin trying to re-establish dominance (if not outright political union) over key parts of the old Soviet Union, two provinces with distinct and complex histories who like their de facto autonomy under Russian protection, and a nationalist leadership in Tbilsi that wants to bring what they regard as “renegade provinces” back into the Georgian fold.

Lots more original reporting and commentary at a Fistful of Euros, which indicates that this may have been a massive miscalculation by the Georgians and particiularly their President (as distinct from all those other rational wars…).

If anybody else has seen (or has written) useful reporting or commentary, please add them in comments.

UPDATE: From comments, an interesting diary from Daily Kos, and an ABC RN “Rear Window” podcast. Also, a news update from the BBC.

Update: [by Mark] A very informative post at Obsidian Wings. And another interesting take at The Global Sociology Blog.

Dead white male bloggers

Published
by
Kim
2 months, 1 week ago
in Activism, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Ethics, History, Imperialism, Life, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 23 Comments

Boing Boing reports:

The Orwell Prize will mark the 70th anniversary of the Orwell Diaries by serializing them, one day at a time, on a blog — reminiscent of the way that Phil Gyford syndicated Pepys’s Diary.

That’s so cool. Though actually I suspect Pepys would have been the better blogger. He was LJ circa 1660.

The whole revival of Orwell thing is weird and so overdetermined. On one hand, there’s the Orwell as anti-po/mo theme. On the other, there’s Orwell as the “hero” of the “Decent Left” theme (cf. you know, everything Christopher Hitchens has recently written). What’s ignored and effaced totally is Orwell the polemicist in favour of imagining a postwar social democracy. If you read what he was saying in the 1930s, what he was wishing for - as a “realistic utopia” - was something very like what was envisaged in the whole Beveridge/Keynes libertarian social democracy vision. 1984 was also really meant to be more about the distortion of this “new Jerusalem” by the statist Labour Party than “Stalin”. But anyways… Orwell as a writer - and here I’d gesture to the almost forgotten Burmese Days - is also much neglected. Perhaps his diaries will stimulate a respectful consideration of him in regard to his own concerns not some dumbarsed political point scoring about teh war on terror or whatevs.

Tibet, human rights, history and the 2008 Olympics

Published
by
Kim
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, China, Ethics, Foreign policy, History, Imperialism, International, Media, Sociology and Sport
. 6 Comments

In contrast to the media coverage earlier in the year when the People’s Republic of China suffered such an overwhelming public relations disaster in the context of protests from human rights and Tibetan activists against the Olympic torch, very little has been heard of Tibet in the mainstream media of late. All that we’ve seen lately in the Australian press is the solemn warnings from the Australian Olympics Committee that any athletes wearing an innocuous t-shirt with a generic human rights message offered to those interested by the Australia Tibet Council would be immediately sent home. Lest they annoy the Chinese government, and violate the “spirit of the Olympics” presumably. The corporate sponsored Olympiad brooks no petty “mixing” of politics and sport, of course.

Continue reading ‘Tibet, human rights, history and the 2008 Olympics’

Guest post by Peter Murphy - Zimbabwe: Despotism or Democracy?

Published
by
Guest Poster
3 months, 1 week ago
in Developing world, Elections, Feminism, Health, Imperialism, International, Politics, Poverty and Women
. 48 Comments

Peter Murphy from the Zimbabwe Information Centre writes:

Opening Remarks

This story of Zimbabwe and its political, economic and social turmoil is really a story about how women are trying to have their human right to a say in their society, about how the people want to help those millions who have HIV, about how the trade unions want to develop a prosperous, peaceful and just society, about how the professional classes want to create a way of governing that is straightforward, fair and works.

It is a story for the whole of Africa, and that is why all of Africa and in particular South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Botswana are part of this story.

As I write the people of Zimbabwe are being called out to a one-horse election that they don’t want, because it has already been drowned in blood, violence and cheating.

Between the March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections and today, almost 100 activists from the Movement for Democratic Change have been murdered, often in the most terrible way, over 3,000 have been very badly injured through torture, and now about 100,000 have been internally displaced because their homes and property have been looted or completely destroyed.

Zimbabwe now faces a chaotic regime collapse, with perhaps a minimal role for the international community in the immediate crisis.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Peter Murphy - Zimbabwe: Despotism or Democracy?’

Now that Pamela Bone is dead…

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Activism, Apocalypse, Crime, Culture, Developing world, Donation challenge, Ethics, Feminism, History, Howardia, Imperialism, International, Iraq, Masculinity, Media, Politics, Polls, Race, Religion, Sexuality, Sociology, USA, War and Women
. 46 Comments

Yeah, you might have noticed already. I’m in a Truthiness mood tonight, as Stephen Colbert might say. Remember all the loud denunciations I copped from Harry Clarke, Tim Blair et al et al etc. - all the feminists of total convenience - for not denouncing the female genital mutilation loudly enough? Coz it’s all about teh Islam and threats to Western Civ, etc., and that mob are all on the side of women’s rights, and that manly man of steel John Howard is taking us to war to free Afghani women from burqas. And George W. Bush is going to hunt those Al-Qaeda evildoers down. (And Islam is not a race, and some of my best friends… oops, hang on?) While Laura and Condi look after the oppressed women. Or something… Oh yeah, it isn’t 2003 any more… Remember that word fistula - you might not have read that on teh Blair blog - being a word of three syllables and all. And in Latin.

But I talked about it at the time. Now that Pamela Bone is dead (and God rest her soul, may she be blessed with eternal rest, and may perpetual light shine upon her), where are the voices with the loud condemn? What’s with that Australian crusade for women’s rights in benighted Islamic Middle Eastern countries? After all, we - Dolly Downer and John Howard and Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt and Planet Janet told us so - are all (post?) feminists now. It’s on the citizenship test, dude - and dudette a la 50s pinup style no doubt. (Ps - don’t use that politically correct, activist judge f-word though…)

Well, never mind. Here’s a post from The Global Sociology Blog for the benefit of anyone who wanted to continue highlighting the horrors perpetrated on women in the developing world even if there’s not a convenient culture wars damn the left angle in it. (And that’s not to say that women in the developed world don’t still cop a lot - but there’s something to celebrate about a very large majority of Australians agreeing - at least in theory when asked by pollsters - that women have rights over their own choices and bodies - even if that masks continued gender inequality in oh, so many ways…).

You can donate to Medicins San Frontieres here.

And you might be interested in the fact that rape has finally been recognised by the UN as a war crime, something I wrote about last year, but something the keyboard warriors seem to… well, gloss over is far too kind. Because the fact that women are overwhelmingly the victims of war seems to be recognised neither by the pro-war Right nor the “humanitarian intervention” so-called Left. Continue reading ‘Now that Pamela Bone is dead…’

Eurovision preview

Published
by
Robert Merkel
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Europe, Film, TV, Video etc, Imperialism, Levity and Music
. 87 Comments

Sadly, Dustin the Irish Turkey will not be taking the Eurovision Song Contest final stage tonight, after being eliminated in the semi-finals. But there’s still plenty to look forward to - awful Europop, truck-drivers key changes by the bucketload, hosts who can mangle an autocue in two languages, and some fairly bizarre pieces of surrealist theatre to accompany the inane tunes.

After making the sacrifice of sitting through both semi-finals, I can inform you that the only half-decent song amongst them this year is the French entry, “Divine”:

Continue reading ‘Eurovision preview’

I learned a new word today

Published
by
Kim
5 months, 1 week ago
in China, Imperialism, Politics and Sport
. 12 Comments

“Olympism”.

Andrew Bartlett dissects for us the official goals of the “Olympic movement”:

* “Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”
* “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”
* “The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.”
* “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.”

But sport has nothing to do with politics, does it? Thorpey said so. And a gaggle of superannuated IOC bureaucrats/marketing men. (They all appear to be men. What’s with that?)

Andrew goes on to detail the fact that human rights abuses in China go far beyond Tibet. It’s a great post. Go read!

Continue reading ‘I learned a new word today’

This Anzac Day, Bill Rubinstein agrees with me

Published
by
Paul Norton
5 months, 2 weeks ago
in Anzac Day, Australiana, Disasters, History, Imperialism, Middle East, Politics, Sociology and War
. 15 Comments

Conservative and strongly pro-Israel Professor Bill Rubenstein has had a letter published in the April edition of Quadrant which ends with the following observation:

It might also be worth noting that all of the infamous twentieth-century genocides in the period from 1914 to 1980, from the Armenian massacres in 1915-16 through the Nazi Holocaust to Asian communism, were plainly the result of the breakdown of the European elite and governmental structure in the First World War, and the consequential rise to power of fascism and communism. It is as certain as any counterfactual can be that none of these genocides and massacres would have occurred had the European powers not gone to war in 1914.
William D. Rubinstein
(Professor of History),
University of Wales–Aberystwyth,
Penglais, UK.

I can claim to have anticipated the kernel Professor Rubenstein’s argument in this letter which I had published in the Australian on 24 April 2004:
Continue reading ‘This Anzac Day, Bill Rubinstein agrees with me’

Petraeus report open thread

Published
by
Mark
6 months ago
in Foreign Elections, Foreign policy, Imperialism, Iraq and USA
. 82 Comments

I’m teaching later this arvo, so I don’t have time to do any analysis, but I thought people might like a discussion starter on the Petraeus report to Congress on the progress of teh Surge. I do think recent events have only reinforced the validity of this conclusion:

The fate of the surge (and Omaar makes the point that larger numbers of troops have been in Iraq before) essentially rests not on anything the US does, but on the willingness of al-Sadr and his troops (and his grassroots) to maintain a ceasefire - basically for their own reasons. That’s all of a piece with the fundamental illusion that still grips what passes for discussion of the war in America - the denial that what America does, or doesn’t do (short of getting out altogether) really is one of the least important factors driving the changing nature of the situation in Iraq.

… And you can get a sense of that from this excerpt from TomDispatch:

Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who emerged triumphant from an Iraqi government assault on his Mahdi Army militia in Basra (and Baghdad) has called for a “million-strong” march in Baghdad tomorrow to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. The demonstration just happens to fall on one of the days that General David Petraeus is to report to Congress on post-surge “progress” in Iraq. This is unlikely to be pure happenstance.

Whatever’s happening in Washington today might not have all that much to do with whatever’s happening in Iraq today. It’s likely to have more to do with how Iraqi events are spun through a frame which is heavily coloured by the American presidential election, and Bush’s desire for a “legacy”. And the Iraqi actors understand that only too well.

The 1-lakh car

Published
by
Robert Merkel
8 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Developing world, Energy, Environment, Foreign policy and Imperialism
. 40 Comments

The Tata Nano has received more publicity than any car launch I can recall. Still, it’s not surprising. A fully-functional car for the equivalent of about 3000 Australian dollars is big news. While a number of writers have pointed out the similarity between the Nano and the Mercedes “Smart”, I reckon a closer analogy is another ultra-cheap car of another age, the Volkswagen Beetle.

Unsurprisingly, there’s been a fair bit of commentary from green groups that the explosion in third-world motoring that cars like the Nano will bring is environmentally unsustainable. Christian Kerr from Crikey (behind their paywall) has used this as an opportunity to indulge in some left-bashing:

The left in the west used to support the aspirations of people in developing nations to a better qualify of life, including better transport…if activists in the West try to deny these people their aspirations, they are guilty of a new eco-imperialism

Continue reading ‘The 1-lakh car’

Trickery or treat?

Published
by
suz
11 months, 1 week ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Imperialism, Parenting and Sociology
. 69 Comments

It’s Halloween. A decade ago I wouldn’t have known that, but in the past 10 years, not only have I been exposed to daily American culture through the Internet, but Halloween has become an Australian festival (if festival is the right word).

I first glimpsed some children trick or treating in my neighbourhood about six years ago. At the time, I had a toddler who was totally unimplicated in that sort of behaviour, so I could afford to think of it purely in a critical way, as the importation of an American custom — as cultural imperialism. Continue reading ‘Trickery or treat?’

Where are the Iraqi Mandelas?

Published
by
Mark
1 year ago
in Disasters, Immigration, Imperialism, Iraq, Middle East, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 62 Comments

Well might George W. Bush ask himself that question.

Let’s not forget that Nelson Mandela was a highly educated lawyer. Where have the Iraqi middle class gone? Those who the neo-cons banked on to form the social constituency for “instant democracy” and provide its leaders? Fled.

40% of Iraq’s middle class, it’s estimated, are refugees. Most are in Jordan or Syria. A lucky few are in countries such as Canada and Sweden. Very few have made it to America, where they’re basically not wanted:

An aggressive American intake of refugees would suggest their quick return to Iraq is improbable: that smacks too much of failure for Bush. Moreover, you have to scrutinize refugees from countries “infiltrated by large numbers of terrorists,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff opined recently.

And the secular parties that had a commitment to modernity and national unity? Wiped out through the political system established by the Americans, who empowered the theocratic Shi’ite parties.

Roger Cohen writes:

People who risked their lives for America are dying or being terrorized because of craven U.S. lethargy. Others are in limbo. Bush now says “Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.” That’s too glib; one may be waiting to be saved.

And the words of the prophet are written on the subway Robertson St wall

Published
by
Mark
1 year ago
in Activism, Art, Brisbane, Culture, Imperialism, Life, Music, Photography, Sociology, USA and Urbanism
. 27 Comments

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel (who incidentally I saw live back in the 80s at Lang Park)… But who would have thought that the James Street home of the inner city nouveaux riche and very self consciously fabulous would have contained so much political graffiti? A sign of the times? Who knows?

Continue reading ‘And the words of the prophet are written on the subway Robertson St wall’

John Pilger’s The War on Democracy

Published
by
Darlene
1 year ago
in Imperialism and USA
. 259 Comments

“The film tells a universal story”, says Pilger, “analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called war on terror.” (www.johnpilger.com)

Continue reading ‘John Pilger’s The War on Democracy’