Anti-Imperialist

I'm still looking for an example of a "humanitarian" intervention, uninvited by any sovereign country, which progressive folks supported.

The 50-year U.S. blockade against Cuba is the epitome of imperialism. The world applying sanctions and embargoes against racist South Africa or Israel is the epitome of anti-imperialism. So it depends. 

Unionist wrote:

Here's an unfortunate example of someone who should know better getting caught up in the rush to war.

I guess it would get right to the heart of the matter if we were to ask if that article would have violated babble's later policy on anti-imperialism. In which case, perhaps the moderators should take it down, or at least add a note saying "This is something that we regret having published". Sort of like those old racist Warner Brothers cartoons I've seen on DVD, where the studio puts an intro at the beginning saying "We realize now that this stuff is highly offensive, but we're not going to pretend the cartoons never existed".

Can't we spare 600 troops for Darfur? By Linda McQuaig

| May 15, 2006

 

Some 200,000 people have already been killed and another 2 million driven from their homes.

An international intervention in Darfur could make an enormous difference, possibly even averting a Rwanda-style genocide.

While the janjaweed, mounted on horseback and camels, easily kill and terrorize the unarmed people of Darfur, they're no match for a modern army.

Peter Langille, a defence analyst at the University of Western Ontario, notes that the Canadian army's fighting vehicles, the Coyote and Lav III, are equipped with top-of-the-line sensors and firepower that could easily stop the janjaweed in their tracks.

Canada is well equipped to play a leading role in a UN mission to Darfur. Such a mission could be carried out by a special UN standby force known as SHIRBRIG, which was created in 2001 to deal with just this sort of crisis.

Canada was one of the moving forces behind SHIRBRIG, and one of 15 nations agreeing to support it. A Canadian general heads it up.

But Ottawa has refused to authorize Canadian troops for a SHIRBRIG mission to Darfur, to assist overwhelmed African Union troops.

I guess it would get right to the heart of the matter if we were to ask if that article would have violated babble's later policy on anti-imperialism.

Shit yes. Just let you imagination flow and put down fellow babblers in this fashion:

"This is far from ideal, obviously, but it's difficult to ask for anything more when our one mainstream progressive party is hailing the actions of our troops for killing Libyan civilians."

Chortle, chortle. Yes, Merry Christmas.

 "I am sorry for the consequences of my silence at that time, for the innocent Libyan Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahisentenced to life imprisonment, and for the country of Libya."

Unionist wrote:

We're trying to have a discussion about what anti-imperialism is, how we should view it, how progressive people are not immune to the massive propaganda of the MSM, etc.

Hmmm... Maybe we should amend that to say that progressive people are not immune to propaganda.

 

David McNally offers us a helpful definition of imperialism, one that allows us to see how its form may change over different historical periods while its basic presuppositions remain constant. He suggests that "Imperialism is a system of global inequalities and domination – embodied in regimes of property, military power and global institutions – through which wealth is drained from the labour and resources of people in the Global South to the systematic advantage of capital in the North."

In 1976, a coalition of intelligence agencies was formed, which was called the Safari Club. This marked the discreet and highly covert coordination among various intelligence agencies, which would last for decades. It formed at a time when the CIA was embroiled in domestic scrutiny over the Watergate scandal and a Congressional investigation into covert CIA activities, forcing the CIA to become more covert in its activities.

In 2002, the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal gave a speech in which he stated that in response to the CIA's need for more discretion, "a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran [under the Shah]."[1] However, "The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George H.W. Bush as the head of the CIA," Saudi intelligence chief, Kamal Adham, "transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a world-wide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world to create the biggest clandestine money network in history."