17 May 2004
Sunny Afternoon
“the revolutionary flame burns where it lists, and ... it is not up to a small band of men, in the period of transition we are living through, to decree that it can only burn here or there ...” - André Breton
Sitting under the trees in a municipal park on a sunny afternoon, we discussed - for the first time in weeks - the overall direction and purpose of this blog.
We started the blog in December last year, intending to do more or less what other “political blogs” do:
(1) to comment on the news in general, and - given that it’s the overriding issue of the day, though we still think it shouldn’t be - on the liberation of Iraq in particular;
(2) to develop our own ideas about politics and related matters, from our perspective as independent, non-sectarian Marxists who are loyal to the Enlightenment;
(3) to link to, and comment on, other blogs and other websites, focusing mainly on politics, but trying to broaden the scope of our coverage to other interests too (“what do they know of politics who ...”, etc.).
On the first point we haven’t done either as badly as we’d feared or as well as we’d hoped, but the trouble is that when the news itself - and the opinionated speculation that is increasingly intermingled with it - is boring, repetitive and predictable, for days or weeks on end, blogging risks going the same way. We’ve become increasingly bored with making the same points again and again, and, unlike some bloggers, we don’t think there’s any great virtue in repetition for its own sake.
On the second point, we’ve been disappointed, though not really surprised, to find that the general level of Marxist/“Marxist” theory and debate in the “blogosphere” is just as low as it is in every other medium, with a few honourable exceptions (they know who they are). But this is something we’ve long been used to, and no special cause for feeling “demoralised”, or whatever else certain readers of this blog would like us to feel. After all, it’s already 78 years since André Breton described the articles in the French Communist Party’s paper L’Humanité as “... childish, declamatory, unnecessarily cretinising, ... clinging to actuality so closely that there is no perspective to be had, shouting into the particular ...”; and, as so often over the years, it is to Breton’s superb and principled intransigence that we still look for an example of how to keep on going in the face of power, corruption and lies. If he and other Marxists could maintain their patience and optimism in the face of forms of pseudo-leftism that were even more dangerous and reactionary than those we have to put up with now, we should surely try to do no less.
On the third point, we know from e-mails we’ve received that the links we’ve put on this blog, both in the sidebar and in our posts, have led readers to other blogs, and other websites, that they’ve found interesting and valuable. Many of these sites are doing what we have tried to do, and some are doing it significantly better. More power to them!
However ... Sitting under the trees in a municipal park on a sunny afternoon, we found ourselves distracted by the kids playing football nearby, an old couple strolling under the trees, and whole families, weighed down with buckets and spades and whatnot, passing through on their way to the beach: in short, people enjoying themselves. That’s the key point. We’re just not enjoying blogging as much as we used to, and there are plenty of other things we could be getting on with, while leaving the fight that still has to be fought within the blogosphere - as elsewhere - in the very capable hands of others. As the man said, “The real world is somewhere else.”
Be seeing you ...
“the revolutionary flame burns where it lists, and ... it is not up to a small band of men, in the period of transition we are living through, to decree that it can only burn here or there ...” - André Breton
Sitting under the trees in a municipal park on a sunny afternoon, we discussed - for the first time in weeks - the overall direction and purpose of this blog.
We started the blog in December last year, intending to do more or less what other “political blogs” do:
(1) to comment on the news in general, and - given that it’s the overriding issue of the day, though we still think it shouldn’t be - on the liberation of Iraq in particular;
(2) to develop our own ideas about politics and related matters, from our perspective as independent, non-sectarian Marxists who are loyal to the Enlightenment;
(3) to link to, and comment on, other blogs and other websites, focusing mainly on politics, but trying to broaden the scope of our coverage to other interests too (“what do they know of politics who ...”, etc.).
On the first point we haven’t done either as badly as we’d feared or as well as we’d hoped, but the trouble is that when the news itself - and the opinionated speculation that is increasingly intermingled with it - is boring, repetitive and predictable, for days or weeks on end, blogging risks going the same way. We’ve become increasingly bored with making the same points again and again, and, unlike some bloggers, we don’t think there’s any great virtue in repetition for its own sake.
On the second point, we’ve been disappointed, though not really surprised, to find that the general level of Marxist/“Marxist” theory and debate in the “blogosphere” is just as low as it is in every other medium, with a few honourable exceptions (they know who they are). But this is something we’ve long been used to, and no special cause for feeling “demoralised”, or whatever else certain readers of this blog would like us to feel. After all, it’s already 78 years since André Breton described the articles in the French Communist Party’s paper L’Humanité as “... childish, declamatory, unnecessarily cretinising, ... clinging to actuality so closely that there is no perspective to be had, shouting into the particular ...”; and, as so often over the years, it is to Breton’s superb and principled intransigence that we still look for an example of how to keep on going in the face of power, corruption and lies. If he and other Marxists could maintain their patience and optimism in the face of forms of pseudo-leftism that were even more dangerous and reactionary than those we have to put up with now, we should surely try to do no less.
On the third point, we know from e-mails we’ve received that the links we’ve put on this blog, both in the sidebar and in our posts, have led readers to other blogs, and other websites, that they’ve found interesting and valuable. Many of these sites are doing what we have tried to do, and some are doing it significantly better. More power to them!
However ... Sitting under the trees in a municipal park on a sunny afternoon, we found ourselves distracted by the kids playing football nearby, an old couple strolling under the trees, and whole families, weighed down with buckets and spades and whatnot, passing through on their way to the beach: in short, people enjoying themselves. That’s the key point. We’re just not enjoying blogging as much as we used to, and there are plenty of other things we could be getting on with, while leaving the fight that still has to be fought within the blogosphere - as elsewhere - in the very capable hands of others. As the man said, “The real world is somewhere else.”
Be seeing you ...
13 May 2004
Meanwhile, in Other News ...
According to this report, which the Guardian is curiously unwilling to give any prominence to:
“Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shia cleric who has led uprisings across Iraq, said yesterday he was ready to disband his militia, although he still opposed the US occupation ... A month ago Sadr led uprisings across southern Iraq, but his popularity has faded dramatically.”
The fact that this - um - fairly important piece of news has been so resolutely downplayed in the paper and, so far as we can tell, has received no coverage at all on any British television channel’s news bulletins, speaks volumes about the real priorities of the mainstream media. If they cared as much about Iraq as they all piously pretend to, the news that the much-hyped “Shia uprising” is rapidly running out of what little steam it ever had would receive a lot more prominence than the latest twist in the saga about the Mirror’s photos of (alleged) abuse of (alleged) Iraqis by (alleged) British soldiers.
But spare a thought - and a laugh or two - for Ken MacLeod, “Lenin” and the other pseudo-left fantasy bloggers. Now that Sadr has decided that he’d really rather not become a martyr just yet, thankyou very much, who will they turn to next in their ceaseless and risible search for the Vo Nguyen Giap of Iraq?
When Marx made his famous remark about history repeating itself, he cannot have guessed that by 2004 the tragedy and the farce would be playing simultaneously, at least in this country: the tragedy being the near-universal lack of serious attention to Iraq’s future, among politicians and media commentators alike; the farce being the interplay of predictable nonsense from the government, predictable nonsense from the media, predictable nonsense from the “anti-war” clowns. A plague on all their houses: we’d rather be watching The Bill.
According to this report, which the Guardian is curiously unwilling to give any prominence to:
“Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shia cleric who has led uprisings across Iraq, said yesterday he was ready to disband his militia, although he still opposed the US occupation ... A month ago Sadr led uprisings across southern Iraq, but his popularity has faded dramatically.”
The fact that this - um - fairly important piece of news has been so resolutely downplayed in the paper and, so far as we can tell, has received no coverage at all on any British television channel’s news bulletins, speaks volumes about the real priorities of the mainstream media. If they cared as much about Iraq as they all piously pretend to, the news that the much-hyped “Shia uprising” is rapidly running out of what little steam it ever had would receive a lot more prominence than the latest twist in the saga about the Mirror’s photos of (alleged) abuse of (alleged) Iraqis by (alleged) British soldiers.
But spare a thought - and a laugh or two - for Ken MacLeod, “Lenin” and the other pseudo-left fantasy bloggers. Now that Sadr has decided that he’d really rather not become a martyr just yet, thankyou very much, who will they turn to next in their ceaseless and risible search for the Vo Nguyen Giap of Iraq?
When Marx made his famous remark about history repeating itself, he cannot have guessed that by 2004 the tragedy and the farce would be playing simultaneously, at least in this country: the tragedy being the near-universal lack of serious attention to Iraq’s future, among politicians and media commentators alike; the farce being the interplay of predictable nonsense from the government, predictable nonsense from the media, predictable nonsense from the “anti-war” clowns. A plague on all their houses: we’d rather be watching The Bill.
12 May 2004
The Bigger Picture
While the waverers wobble, and the reactionaries and their fellow-travellers rant, David at tiny wings calmly puts the minimum case for continuing to support the liberation of Iraq - grave misgivings and all.
While the waverers wobble, and the reactionaries and their fellow-travellers rant, David at tiny wings calmly puts the minimum case for continuing to support the liberation of Iraq - grave misgivings and all.
11 May 2004
Many Thanks ...
... to Jeremy at Who Knew?, who’s taken time out from celebrating his birthday to write another thoughtful and impressive post on the liberation of Iraq. Many happy returns to him - and best wishes to Cara too.
... to Jeremy at Who Knew?, who’s taken time out from celebrating his birthday to write another thoughtful and impressive post on the liberation of Iraq. Many happy returns to him - and best wishes to Cara too.
If the Cap Doesn’t Fit, Don’t Wear It
Nick at 4 Glengate has chosen to respond to our previous post by focusing on the single least important or interesting element in it, a passing reference to a protest nearly two weeks ago. He’s left us utterly baffled in the process.
One of the purposes of that post - but certainly not the only one - was to attack liberal and pseudo-left anti-war groups. It therefore cannot have had anything whatever to do with the four groups that Nick mentions, which (so far as we know) are genuinely socialist. In other words, he’s defending them from an attack that we simply did not launch. Nick knows perfectly well that the real target was the self-regarding “gesture” politics that tends to dominate many demonstrations these days, and renders them ineffectual and irrelevant - whether or not groups such as those he mentions also happen to be taking part.
As for Nick’s closing challenge to us - “what’s your excuse, comrades?” - we don’t see that we have to make excuses for what we do or don’t do, to Nick, to the leadership of the group he belongs to, or to anyone else. Accordingly, we don’t expect Nick to make any excuses for his post, in which indignation seems to have replaced thought, rather than fuelled it. We just hope that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Hak Mao has responded to an earlier post at 4 Glengate with some characteristically well-chosen words, explicitly directed at what we here call the pseudo-left. We recommend reading the whole thing (and only then deciding whether to take offence or not) - but we’d particularly like to draw Nick’s attention to this sentence:
“I won’t argue against solidarity with democratic socialists, but I will not stand shoulder to shoulder with reactionaries and their fellow travellers.”
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
Nick at 4 Glengate has chosen to respond to our previous post by focusing on the single least important or interesting element in it, a passing reference to a protest nearly two weeks ago. He’s left us utterly baffled in the process.
One of the purposes of that post - but certainly not the only one - was to attack liberal and pseudo-left anti-war groups. It therefore cannot have had anything whatever to do with the four groups that Nick mentions, which (so far as we know) are genuinely socialist. In other words, he’s defending them from an attack that we simply did not launch. Nick knows perfectly well that the real target was the self-regarding “gesture” politics that tends to dominate many demonstrations these days, and renders them ineffectual and irrelevant - whether or not groups such as those he mentions also happen to be taking part.
As for Nick’s closing challenge to us - “what’s your excuse, comrades?” - we don’t see that we have to make excuses for what we do or don’t do, to Nick, to the leadership of the group he belongs to, or to anyone else. Accordingly, we don’t expect Nick to make any excuses for his post, in which indignation seems to have replaced thought, rather than fuelled it. We just hope that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Hak Mao has responded to an earlier post at 4 Glengate with some characteristically well-chosen words, explicitly directed at what we here call the pseudo-left. We recommend reading the whole thing (and only then deciding whether to take offence or not) - but we’d particularly like to draw Nick’s attention to this sentence:
“I won’t argue against solidarity with democratic socialists, but I will not stand shoulder to shoulder with reactionaries and their fellow travellers.”
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
09 May 2004
A Sense of Proportion
We’ve already said all that we intend to say about the torture by US soldiers of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and it would be a waste of time to attempt any kind of detailed response to the subsequent six days’ worth of ranting and raving from the usual suspects.
In any case, others, much better-placed to comment than we are, have made valiant attempts to restore some sense of proportion, notably the Lebanese journalist Rajeh Khuri. In his view, the Middle East as a whole is
“a vast Abu Ghraib prison, where many have died and more are still dying in obscurity ... We are concerned with the detention centres and jails filling the tunnels of regimes in the Arab world, and the shredding of the soul of Arab citizens and their honour, without one official batting an eyelash.”
It’s a pity that in this case “we” cannot be extended to include western liberals and pseudo-leftists. The orgy of rushed judgements and sanctimonious moralising predictably being indulged in as we write confirms what has been sadly obvious for a long time: these hypocrites’ much-vaunted commitment to the notion that human rights are indivisible is no more than hollow rhetoric. It is revived whenever there is western intervention in the Middle East, or another Israeli atrocity (real or alleged), to protest about, but, revealingly, it is abandoned whenever any Arab dictatorship intervenes in the affairs of other Arab countries - as the Syrian Ba’athist regime is now intervening in Iraq - or takes care, unlike Saddam, to terrorise only its own subjects.
Nevertheless, the notion that human rights are indivisible is a powerful one and deserves to be rescued from the liberals and the pseudo-left, for whom Abu Ghraib is merely another issue to be exploited, not in the service of a genuine internationalism, but in the cause of scoring political points at the national level. Even at that level there are bigger human rights issues to protest about.
Earlier today, for example,
“About 50 pro-Tibet and Falun Gong campaigners gathered opposite the Chinese Embassy in London as China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arrived in the UK for a three-day visit. Waving Tibetan flags and banners calling for the release of religious leaders, the pro-Tibet campaigners called for Wen to engage in talks to seek a resolution to China’s 54-year occupation of Tibet ...”
Where were the pseudo-left this time? Still exhausted after their exertions outside the Iraq Procurement 2004 conference in London nearly two weeks ago? Clearly, the occupation of Tibet, which has lasted fifty-four times as long as the occupation of Iraq, has caused vastly greater numbers of deaths, and still - right now, this very minute - involves the use of state-sanctioned, unpunished and barely publicised torture, rape and murder, matters less to British liberals and the pseudo-left than seizing yet another opportunity to indulge in Schadenfreude over events in Iraq.
However, it’s not as if the occupation of Tibet is the only crime committed by the Chinese regime that merits far greater attention, and protest, than it has so far received. If doing business deals over the heads of the Iraqi people is objectionable - and it is - what of the business deals being done right now between the Chinese government and the governments of the EU, who, whatever their differences over Iraq, are all happy to pile in and collaborate in the exploitation of Chinese workers? Business trumps mere principles every time:
“... Britain is now the largest EU investor in China. Total investment pledged is over £10 billion and trade between the two nations has trebled in seven years. Last year exports rose by 28 per cent. ... Last year, China’s economy [allegedly] grew nine per cent and its stock market climbed 90 per cent. It was the largest recipient of foreign investment in 2002, attracting £31 billion, and has one of the fastest-growing middle classes in the world.”
Where Britain leads - without a word of protest, or even polite concern, from the liberals or the pseudo-left - France, Germany, Italy and the rest will doubtless follow. Who cares about human rights when there are massive profits to be made? Who cares exactly how those profits are extracted from the Chinese working class?
Well, to be fair, and to give credit where it’s due, at least one British liberal journalist does. Jonathan Watts points out that:
“China is a labour buyer’s market, with an estimated 94 million migrant labourers. Next year, 24 million people will come of age into a workforce where eight million are already registered jobless. In the countryside, where 800 million people live, it is estimated 80 per cent of men are underemployed.
“On the construction site where Huang works, labourers have no contracts or monthly wages. They are promised money at the end of the year, before which they have to borrow from their bosses for lodging in a disused factory where 20 are crammed into each small, fetid room, sharing wood-slatted beds and lining up with cups and bowls for rice, soup and sometimes meat, for which they pay the bosses 33p a day ...
“Every revision of the Constitution since the start of free-market reforms 25 years ago has shifted the balance to capital. In 1982, the right to strike disappeared on the grounds that everyone was employed by the state, which represented the people. This year the National People’s Congress recognised property rights for the first time and enshrined former President Jiang Zemin’s ‘Three Represents’ theory, which acknowledged entrepreneurs. The [ruling] party still claims to represent workers, so says unions are unnecessary. But the official unions do not want to upset contractors, who often have ties to Communist Party officials.
“The result gives tycoons all the freedoms of a western nation to pursue profits, but none of the democratic restraints from unions, free press or accountable government. Lured by cheap, unregulated labour, foreign investment has flooded into China while domestic entrepreneurs are ramping up production at such a pace that the government fears the economy will overheat.
“The United Nations has commended China for lifting 400 million people out of poverty [sic], but the ‘iron rice bowl’ of secure state employment has been smashed, peasants have no health insurance and the government has warned of a breakdown of public order if the economic growth rate falls below 7 per cent ... With no means of collective bargaining, labourers must resort to petitioning the government, expensive lawsuits or - increasingly - violence. While rarely reported by the domestic media, illegal industrial protests are rising. Last week, 10 factory workers were arrested in Guangdong province for turning over a car and destroying company property after their Taiwanese bosses ordered them to move to an 11-hour day with less overtime. In February, nine arrests were made after 1,000 laid-off workers in Suizhou City, Hubei Province, blocked a train line and occupied their bankrupt textile factory.”
And so on. Yet, true to form, Watts feels compelled to seek signs of hope in the very regime that is responsible for this situation:
“Petitions and violence may not succeed, but the effect has been to alarm the authorities. After two decades of pursuing growth at all costs, the government appears [sic] ready to accept that runaway capitalism must be reined in. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has called for ‘balanced development’ that places a greater priority on social justice, the rule of law, and the need to address the growing gulf between the urban haves of the wealthy western seaboard and the have-nots of the impoverished rural interior. His government has eased permit regulations and police crackdowns, as well as pumping billions of dollars of investment into the poorer inland regions.”
We are a lot less impressed by the cynical machinations of the bureaucrats in Beijing than Watts is, if only because Prime Minister Wen is flying in to be greeted by Prime Minister Blur on the first anniversary of the end of a trial that the western media barely reported and the western pseudo-left took no notice of at all:
“One year ago today, on 9 May 2003, Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang, two workers from Liaoyang, were sentenced to heavy prison terms, after an unfair trial, for their involvement in the massive Ferro-Alloy Factory worker protests beginning in early 2002. They remain in prison and are in increasingly poor health. Some two years after the first protests, 1,600 workers from the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy factory are still without retrenchment compensation, despite years of promises by the local government ... On 9 May 2003 ... Yao was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment and Xiao to four years’ imprisonment ...”
It’s important to recognise how little Yao, Xiao and their comrades were asking for:
“The Liaoyang workers were not asking for freedom of association, for the right to organize, or even for the right to engage in collective bargaining. They were asking merely for minimum guarantees of their families’ right to basic subsistence and livelihood – the very things that the Chinese government proudly tells western governments and the United Nations, when challenged over its poor human rights record, that it has basically solved for the Chinese people since its assumption of power five decades ago.”
The China Labour Bulletin draws a conclusion that we can only hope will be proved correct, and sooner rather than later:
“The lesson of the Liaoyang workers’ protest movement for the country as a whole is that unless the Chinese government begins to allow the workers some modicum of true independence, and the right to organize in defence of their own economic interests, it will inevitably face 10, 20 or 100 Liaoyangs at some point in the probably not too distant future. Should that point be reached, no amount of hastily concocted ‘subversion’ indictments would suffice to protect the government from the consequences of its own short-sightedness and folly.”
As for the broader implications for what anyone outside China should or could be doing, we are much less hopeful. The Bulletin goes on to address the potential for foreign assistance to the Chinese working class:
“In the meantime, the international community – and especially the worldwide labour movement – can play a vital role towards the goal of avoiding widespread social unrest in China, by expressing its solidarity with all peaceful and non-violent Chinese worker activists who have been unjustly persecuted and imprisoned. Every opportunity should be seized by the international community to try to persuade and pressure the Chinese government both into releasing these brave individuals, and at the same time into taking the more far-reaching and historic step of instituting genuine trade union rights for all Chinese workers.”
If only ... Since, for most practical purposes related to China, “the international community” comprises the very governments and corporations that are benefiting from the Chinese regime’s current policies, we see little reason to expect much from them beyond a few cosmetic measures, as urged on them by their own PR consultants. The bitter irony is that little more can be expected from the other organisations that claim, more or less plausibly, to represent this undefined entity known as “the international community”.
How about the worldwide liberal media, for instance? British liberals, at least, clearly need not concern themselves about China, as long as they have “experts” such as Will Hutton ready to reassure them that all is for the best. According to Hutton, China possesses
“a new economic model combining capitalist dynamism but guided by a state constantly aware of the need to raise living standards and the quality of life for literally hundreds of millions of people - or it will suffer a crisis of legitimacy. Wen Jia-bao, the Chinese Prime Minister ... does not talk about economic growth but about coordinated economic development ... The developing world is now looking to China as an exemplar of a new ‘Beijing consensus’, deploying capitalism not as an end in its own right, but as a means to an end. It is because privatisation works that you do it; it is because financial deregulation does not that you have to proceed with caution. Above all invest in education. China, in short, is a world event - a continent on the move with a distinct approach to capitalism. Its achievement is already remarkable, and its impact on a hitherto sluggish world economy entirely welcome.”
So that’s all right then: unlike any other politician in the world, Prime Minister Wen is to be taken entirely at his word, and his fellow authoritarians in other developing countries are to be trusted as if they were equally benevolent and far-sighted.
Consider, then, what is happening in China, and occupied Tibet, and the Chinese satellite states of Burma and North Korea - and all too many other all-but-closed societies ruled by brutal authoritarian regimes - right now, this very minute. Very little of what they do is being photographed, and none of these regimes would even recognise the idea of apologising or compensating for any of its agents’ actions, let alone punishing them.
Of course none of this justifies or excuses what was done in Abu Ghraib. Human rights are indeed indivisible, and those who ride roughshod over them deserve exposure and punishment wherever they are, whoever their victims may be, whatever excuses (political, economic, religious, or other) they may concoct, or have concocted on their behalf. But when liberals and pseudo-leftists make as much noise as they possibly can about abuses of human rights in Iraq, while remaining silent - or, like Will Hutton, gibbering enthusiastically - in the face of much worse abuses, over a much longer period of time, in a vast empire that is increasingly interacting with the rest of the world, we have to wonder how much, if at all, they differ from the governments, corporations and right-wing commentators they claim to oppose - and how much, if at all, they really care about Iraqis, or Tibetans, or any other non-westerners, not as symbolic weapons in the domestic political rivalries of western countries, but as fellow human beings.
We’ve already said all that we intend to say about the torture by US soldiers of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and it would be a waste of time to attempt any kind of detailed response to the subsequent six days’ worth of ranting and raving from the usual suspects.
In any case, others, much better-placed to comment than we are, have made valiant attempts to restore some sense of proportion, notably the Lebanese journalist Rajeh Khuri. In his view, the Middle East as a whole is
“a vast Abu Ghraib prison, where many have died and more are still dying in obscurity ... We are concerned with the detention centres and jails filling the tunnels of regimes in the Arab world, and the shredding of the soul of Arab citizens and their honour, without one official batting an eyelash.”
It’s a pity that in this case “we” cannot be extended to include western liberals and pseudo-leftists. The orgy of rushed judgements and sanctimonious moralising predictably being indulged in as we write confirms what has been sadly obvious for a long time: these hypocrites’ much-vaunted commitment to the notion that human rights are indivisible is no more than hollow rhetoric. It is revived whenever there is western intervention in the Middle East, or another Israeli atrocity (real or alleged), to protest about, but, revealingly, it is abandoned whenever any Arab dictatorship intervenes in the affairs of other Arab countries - as the Syrian Ba’athist regime is now intervening in Iraq - or takes care, unlike Saddam, to terrorise only its own subjects.
Nevertheless, the notion that human rights are indivisible is a powerful one and deserves to be rescued from the liberals and the pseudo-left, for whom Abu Ghraib is merely another issue to be exploited, not in the service of a genuine internationalism, but in the cause of scoring political points at the national level. Even at that level there are bigger human rights issues to protest about.
Earlier today, for example,
“About 50 pro-Tibet and Falun Gong campaigners gathered opposite the Chinese Embassy in London as China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arrived in the UK for a three-day visit. Waving Tibetan flags and banners calling for the release of religious leaders, the pro-Tibet campaigners called for Wen to engage in talks to seek a resolution to China’s 54-year occupation of Tibet ...”
Where were the pseudo-left this time? Still exhausted after their exertions outside the Iraq Procurement 2004 conference in London nearly two weeks ago? Clearly, the occupation of Tibet, which has lasted fifty-four times as long as the occupation of Iraq, has caused vastly greater numbers of deaths, and still - right now, this very minute - involves the use of state-sanctioned, unpunished and barely publicised torture, rape and murder, matters less to British liberals and the pseudo-left than seizing yet another opportunity to indulge in Schadenfreude over events in Iraq.
However, it’s not as if the occupation of Tibet is the only crime committed by the Chinese regime that merits far greater attention, and protest, than it has so far received. If doing business deals over the heads of the Iraqi people is objectionable - and it is - what of the business deals being done right now between the Chinese government and the governments of the EU, who, whatever their differences over Iraq, are all happy to pile in and collaborate in the exploitation of Chinese workers? Business trumps mere principles every time:
“... Britain is now the largest EU investor in China. Total investment pledged is over £10 billion and trade between the two nations has trebled in seven years. Last year exports rose by 28 per cent. ... Last year, China’s economy [allegedly] grew nine per cent and its stock market climbed 90 per cent. It was the largest recipient of foreign investment in 2002, attracting £31 billion, and has one of the fastest-growing middle classes in the world.”
Where Britain leads - without a word of protest, or even polite concern, from the liberals or the pseudo-left - France, Germany, Italy and the rest will doubtless follow. Who cares about human rights when there are massive profits to be made? Who cares exactly how those profits are extracted from the Chinese working class?
Well, to be fair, and to give credit where it’s due, at least one British liberal journalist does. Jonathan Watts points out that:
“China is a labour buyer’s market, with an estimated 94 million migrant labourers. Next year, 24 million people will come of age into a workforce where eight million are already registered jobless. In the countryside, where 800 million people live, it is estimated 80 per cent of men are underemployed.
“On the construction site where Huang works, labourers have no contracts or monthly wages. They are promised money at the end of the year, before which they have to borrow from their bosses for lodging in a disused factory where 20 are crammed into each small, fetid room, sharing wood-slatted beds and lining up with cups and bowls for rice, soup and sometimes meat, for which they pay the bosses 33p a day ...
“Every revision of the Constitution since the start of free-market reforms 25 years ago has shifted the balance to capital. In 1982, the right to strike disappeared on the grounds that everyone was employed by the state, which represented the people. This year the National People’s Congress recognised property rights for the first time and enshrined former President Jiang Zemin’s ‘Three Represents’ theory, which acknowledged entrepreneurs. The [ruling] party still claims to represent workers, so says unions are unnecessary. But the official unions do not want to upset contractors, who often have ties to Communist Party officials.
“The result gives tycoons all the freedoms of a western nation to pursue profits, but none of the democratic restraints from unions, free press or accountable government. Lured by cheap, unregulated labour, foreign investment has flooded into China while domestic entrepreneurs are ramping up production at such a pace that the government fears the economy will overheat.
“The United Nations has commended China for lifting 400 million people out of poverty [sic], but the ‘iron rice bowl’ of secure state employment has been smashed, peasants have no health insurance and the government has warned of a breakdown of public order if the economic growth rate falls below 7 per cent ... With no means of collective bargaining, labourers must resort to petitioning the government, expensive lawsuits or - increasingly - violence. While rarely reported by the domestic media, illegal industrial protests are rising. Last week, 10 factory workers were arrested in Guangdong province for turning over a car and destroying company property after their Taiwanese bosses ordered them to move to an 11-hour day with less overtime. In February, nine arrests were made after 1,000 laid-off workers in Suizhou City, Hubei Province, blocked a train line and occupied their bankrupt textile factory.”
And so on. Yet, true to form, Watts feels compelled to seek signs of hope in the very regime that is responsible for this situation:
“Petitions and violence may not succeed, but the effect has been to alarm the authorities. After two decades of pursuing growth at all costs, the government appears [sic] ready to accept that runaway capitalism must be reined in. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has called for ‘balanced development’ that places a greater priority on social justice, the rule of law, and the need to address the growing gulf between the urban haves of the wealthy western seaboard and the have-nots of the impoverished rural interior. His government has eased permit regulations and police crackdowns, as well as pumping billions of dollars of investment into the poorer inland regions.”
We are a lot less impressed by the cynical machinations of the bureaucrats in Beijing than Watts is, if only because Prime Minister Wen is flying in to be greeted by Prime Minister Blur on the first anniversary of the end of a trial that the western media barely reported and the western pseudo-left took no notice of at all:
“One year ago today, on 9 May 2003, Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang, two workers from Liaoyang, were sentenced to heavy prison terms, after an unfair trial, for their involvement in the massive Ferro-Alloy Factory worker protests beginning in early 2002. They remain in prison and are in increasingly poor health. Some two years after the first protests, 1,600 workers from the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy factory are still without retrenchment compensation, despite years of promises by the local government ... On 9 May 2003 ... Yao was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment and Xiao to four years’ imprisonment ...”
It’s important to recognise how little Yao, Xiao and their comrades were asking for:
“The Liaoyang workers were not asking for freedom of association, for the right to organize, or even for the right to engage in collective bargaining. They were asking merely for minimum guarantees of their families’ right to basic subsistence and livelihood – the very things that the Chinese government proudly tells western governments and the United Nations, when challenged over its poor human rights record, that it has basically solved for the Chinese people since its assumption of power five decades ago.”
The China Labour Bulletin draws a conclusion that we can only hope will be proved correct, and sooner rather than later:
“The lesson of the Liaoyang workers’ protest movement for the country as a whole is that unless the Chinese government begins to allow the workers some modicum of true independence, and the right to organize in defence of their own economic interests, it will inevitably face 10, 20 or 100 Liaoyangs at some point in the probably not too distant future. Should that point be reached, no amount of hastily concocted ‘subversion’ indictments would suffice to protect the government from the consequences of its own short-sightedness and folly.”
As for the broader implications for what anyone outside China should or could be doing, we are much less hopeful. The Bulletin goes on to address the potential for foreign assistance to the Chinese working class:
“In the meantime, the international community – and especially the worldwide labour movement – can play a vital role towards the goal of avoiding widespread social unrest in China, by expressing its solidarity with all peaceful and non-violent Chinese worker activists who have been unjustly persecuted and imprisoned. Every opportunity should be seized by the international community to try to persuade and pressure the Chinese government both into releasing these brave individuals, and at the same time into taking the more far-reaching and historic step of instituting genuine trade union rights for all Chinese workers.”
If only ... Since, for most practical purposes related to China, “the international community” comprises the very governments and corporations that are benefiting from the Chinese regime’s current policies, we see little reason to expect much from them beyond a few cosmetic measures, as urged on them by their own PR consultants. The bitter irony is that little more can be expected from the other organisations that claim, more or less plausibly, to represent this undefined entity known as “the international community”.
How about the worldwide liberal media, for instance? British liberals, at least, clearly need not concern themselves about China, as long as they have “experts” such as Will Hutton ready to reassure them that all is for the best. According to Hutton, China possesses
“a new economic model combining capitalist dynamism but guided by a state constantly aware of the need to raise living standards and the quality of life for literally hundreds of millions of people - or it will suffer a crisis of legitimacy. Wen Jia-bao, the Chinese Prime Minister ... does not talk about economic growth but about coordinated economic development ... The developing world is now looking to China as an exemplar of a new ‘Beijing consensus’, deploying capitalism not as an end in its own right, but as a means to an end. It is because privatisation works that you do it; it is because financial deregulation does not that you have to proceed with caution. Above all invest in education. China, in short, is a world event - a continent on the move with a distinct approach to capitalism. Its achievement is already remarkable, and its impact on a hitherto sluggish world economy entirely welcome.”
So that’s all right then: unlike any other politician in the world, Prime Minister Wen is to be taken entirely at his word, and his fellow authoritarians in other developing countries are to be trusted as if they were equally benevolent and far-sighted.
Consider, then, what is happening in China, and occupied Tibet, and the Chinese satellite states of Burma and North Korea - and all too many other all-but-closed societies ruled by brutal authoritarian regimes - right now, this very minute. Very little of what they do is being photographed, and none of these regimes would even recognise the idea of apologising or compensating for any of its agents’ actions, let alone punishing them.
Of course none of this justifies or excuses what was done in Abu Ghraib. Human rights are indeed indivisible, and those who ride roughshod over them deserve exposure and punishment wherever they are, whoever their victims may be, whatever excuses (political, economic, religious, or other) they may concoct, or have concocted on their behalf. But when liberals and pseudo-leftists make as much noise as they possibly can about abuses of human rights in Iraq, while remaining silent - or, like Will Hutton, gibbering enthusiastically - in the face of much worse abuses, over a much longer period of time, in a vast empire that is increasingly interacting with the rest of the world, we have to wonder how much, if at all, they differ from the governments, corporations and right-wing commentators they claim to oppose - and how much, if at all, they really care about Iraqis, or Tibetans, or any other non-westerners, not as symbolic weapons in the domestic political rivalries of western countries, but as fellow human beings.
08 May 2004
Meanwhile, on Mars
The mainstream media, in Britain at least, seem to have lost all interest in the stream of pictures coming from Mars. Maybe it’s because we can recall the not entirely manufactured excitement over the Moon landings, maybe it’s because we read and watch a lot of (even too much) science fiction, but this baffles us. How can anyone be blasé about being able to see what another planet looks like, not through drawings or paintings based on astronomers’ speculations - as every previous generation had to - but through high-resolution photographs? How can anyone fail to be fascinated by pictures that (among many others) H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein or Olaf Stapledon would have happily paid well over the odds to see, but that are now available free of charge via a few clicks of the mouse?
Anyway, if you’re still interested, The Eternal Golden Braid has a daily picture from Mars (among some interesting posts on other aspects of space exploration); or you could go to the source: the archive of “Captioned Image Releases” from the Mars Orbiter Camera at the website of Malin Space Science Systems.
(With thanks to A.E. Brain [link in sidebar -->] for maintaining coverage of this and many other matters related to the - er - final frontier.)
The mainstream media, in Britain at least, seem to have lost all interest in the stream of pictures coming from Mars. Maybe it’s because we can recall the not entirely manufactured excitement over the Moon landings, maybe it’s because we read and watch a lot of (even too much) science fiction, but this baffles us. How can anyone be blasé about being able to see what another planet looks like, not through drawings or paintings based on astronomers’ speculations - as every previous generation had to - but through high-resolution photographs? How can anyone fail to be fascinated by pictures that (among many others) H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein or Olaf Stapledon would have happily paid well over the odds to see, but that are now available free of charge via a few clicks of the mouse?
Anyway, if you’re still interested, The Eternal Golden Braid has a daily picture from Mars (among some interesting posts on other aspects of space exploration); or you could go to the source: the archive of “Captioned Image Releases” from the Mars Orbiter Camera at the website of Malin Space Science Systems.
(With thanks to A.E. Brain [link in sidebar -->] for maintaining coverage of this and many other matters related to the - er - final frontier.)
Right On, Comrade (2)
The ubiquitous “Gareth” manages to be concise, for once, but still writes as if he has direct telepathic contact with all the millions of Arabs in Iraq, and as if there are no non-Arabs anywhere in the country:
“Whatever your position on the original invasion, now that Arab Iraqi opinion has clearly coalesced against the occupation, [our emphasis] I fail to see how any democrat can avoid the conclusion that the Coalition should leave. And if they won’t just go, then force would conventionally be considered a legitimate option of an occupied people.
“I don’t know why these apparently conventional opinions are causing such a fuss.”
No, you don't, do you?
The ubiquitous “Gareth” manages to be concise, for once, but still writes as if he has direct telepathic contact with all the millions of Arabs in Iraq, and as if there are no non-Arabs anywhere in the country:
“Whatever your position on the original invasion, now that Arab Iraqi opinion has clearly coalesced against the occupation, [our emphasis] I fail to see how any democrat can avoid the conclusion that the Coalition should leave. And if they won’t just go, then force would conventionally be considered a legitimate option of an occupied people.
“I don’t know why these apparently conventional opinions are causing such a fuss.”
No, you don't, do you?
You Tell ’Em, Harry (and Brownie Too)
In two long and impressive posts, one on Thursday, the other on Friday, Harry at Harry’s Place moves, thoughtfully and impressively, from considering the legitimate doubts and anxieties about the liberation of Iraq to a firm restatement of the case in favour of it. It’s also worth reading Brownie’s reply to John Palmer on last year's war (among the comments on the first of Harry’s two posts), as well as the much gloomier but still thought-provoking response to recent developments from Johann Hari (to which the second of Harry’s posts is a reply). These four items total 6,073 words, but none of them is wasted.
In two long and impressive posts, one on Thursday, the other on Friday, Harry at Harry’s Place moves, thoughtfully and impressively, from considering the legitimate doubts and anxieties about the liberation of Iraq to a firm restatement of the case in favour of it. It’s also worth reading Brownie’s reply to John Palmer on last year's war (among the comments on the first of Harry’s two posts), as well as the much gloomier but still thought-provoking response to recent developments from Johann Hari (to which the second of Harry’s posts is a reply). These four items total 6,073 words, but none of them is wasted.
07 May 2004
Right On, Comrade (1)
We wouldn’t dream of “suppressing dissent”. On the contrary, we’re grateful to the pseudo-left for so selflessly providing us with free entertainment ...
However, since commenting on the nonsense spouted by the Schadenfreude tendency in relation to (but not necessarily about) Iraq only upsets the poor, vulnerable, tender-hearted things - and makes them spout still more nonsense - we’ve decided to start another series, under the above heading, in which we let these representatives of - er, the international working class? themselves and their little cliques? - give it their best shot.
First, then, from one of the comments boxes at Harry’s Place, an exchange about the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and no, it’s not Martin Adamson who’s spouting nonsense here):
“This is terrible. For the American military, it’s the Iraq War’s ‘My Lai’. The potential for this sort of thing was one of many reasons I opposed a ‘preventive’ war 18 months ago. - George Peery
“So, George, you were happy to see a government world-famous for its ingenuity and thoroughness in extreme torture remain in place, merely because its replacement might potentially torture people? - Martin Adamson
“Martin, I don’t know what you’re talking about (I suspect you don’t either). But I know a troll when I see one. - George Peery”
Update: Well, it was an easy mistake to make ...
Harry of Harry’s Place has written to correct the false impression given by the above exchange, and inadvertently reinforced by us:
“Just in case you weren’t aware - George Peery ... is far from being a member of the pseudo-left. He is an American Republican and Vietnam veteran, and his anti-war position was based on the belief that he did not believe the Iraq war was necessary or in the US’s national interest.”
We stand corrected: our apologies to George Peery for misrepresenting him.
However, as Harry goes on to say:
“You might of course observe that it is getting difficult to spot the difference between supposed ‘Marxists’ and people like Peery!”
Indeed.
We wouldn’t dream of “suppressing dissent”. On the contrary, we’re grateful to the pseudo-left for so selflessly providing us with free entertainment ...
However, since commenting on the nonsense spouted by the Schadenfreude tendency in relation to (but not necessarily about) Iraq only upsets the poor, vulnerable, tender-hearted things - and makes them spout still more nonsense - we’ve decided to start another series, under the above heading, in which we let these representatives of - er, the international working class? themselves and their little cliques? - give it their best shot.
First, then, from one of the comments boxes at Harry’s Place, an exchange about the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib (and no, it’s not Martin Adamson who’s spouting nonsense here):
“This is terrible. For the American military, it’s the Iraq War’s ‘My Lai’. The potential for this sort of thing was one of many reasons I opposed a ‘preventive’ war 18 months ago. - George Peery
“So, George, you were happy to see a government world-famous for its ingenuity and thoroughness in extreme torture remain in place, merely because its replacement might potentially torture people? - Martin Adamson
“Martin, I don’t know what you’re talking about (I suspect you don’t either). But I know a troll when I see one. - George Peery”
Update: Well, it was an easy mistake to make ...
Harry of Harry’s Place has written to correct the false impression given by the above exchange, and inadvertently reinforced by us:
“Just in case you weren’t aware - George Peery ... is far from being a member of the pseudo-left. He is an American Republican and Vietnam veteran, and his anti-war position was based on the belief that he did not believe the Iraq war was necessary or in the US’s national interest.”
We stand corrected: our apologies to George Peery for misrepresenting him.
However, as Harry goes on to say:
“You might of course observe that it is getting difficult to spot the difference between supposed ‘Marxists’ and people like Peery!”
Indeed.
Intervention in Iraq - from the East
Via Patrick Belton at OxBlog, here are some highlights of a round-up of recent reports in the Arab media about Iran’s involvement in Iraq’s affairs:
“Operating in a friendly milieu in southern Iraq, which is inhabited predominantly by Shi’a Muslims, Iranian intelligence officers have used a combination of incentives and coercion to widen the base of collaborators. According to the Iraqi daily Al-Nahdha, the Iraqi police have arrested many Iranians who are ostensibly pilgrims but, in reality, are intelligence operatives. The newspaper estimates the number of Iranian agents operating in Iraq at 14,000. They are penetrating the country’s nascent security forces, and taking advantage of the open distribution of books and literature ... Pilgrims are also known to have brought to Iraq hundreds of remote controls devices capable of activating explosives ...
“The young Iraqi Shi’a revolutionary cleric and rabble-rouser Muqtada Al-Sadr has visited Iran in 2004 as a guest of the Revolutionary Guard. During his visit Al-Sadr met with Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council, as well as the head of the revolutionary guard intelligence, Murtadha Radha’i, and the commander of the Al-Quds Army responsible for Iraqi affairs, Brigadier General Qassim Suleimani, and other government and religious leaders.
“A source in the Al-Quds Army of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard revealed to the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat information relating to the construction of three camps and training centers on the Iranian-Iraqi borders to train elements of the ‘Mehdi Army’ founded by Muqtada Al-Sadr. The source estimated that between 800 and 1,200 young supporters of Al-Sadr have received military training including guerilla warfare, the production of bombs and explosives, the use of small arms, reconnoitering, and espionage. The three camps were located in Qasr Shireen, ‘Ilam,and Hamid, bordering southern Iraq, which is inhabited largely by Shi’a Muslims ...
“The source indicated that elements of the Al-Quds Army and the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence lead many of the operations directed against the coalition forces. These elements are also leading a campaign against the senior Shi’a clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Hussein Al-Sadr [Muqtada’s uncle], Ayatollah Ishaq Al-Fayyadh, and others, because of their opposition to the concept of “the Rule of the Jurist” (Wilayat Al-Faqih), which is Khomeini’s style of government ...
“These agents are suspected of assassinating the liberal Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Haqim, the former leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and a former member of the Iraqi Governing Council, and were about to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, another moderate cleric, before their designs were exposed.”
We grant that due allowance should be made for the possibility of bias against Iran in some or possibly all of the reports cited - but even biased reports from the Arab media are likely to be better than no reports at all, which is what the western media tend to provide on this matter.
We look forward to the e-mails assuring us that, since the Iranian leaders govern a Third World country and are anti-imperialist, it is absolutely impossible for them to have anything but the best interests of their Iraqi siblings at heart, and that what they are engaged in is not foreign intervention at all, but Muslim internationalism (or something). Get typing, kids - there’s a new blocking facility on our mailbox that we want to try out ...
Via Patrick Belton at OxBlog, here are some highlights of a round-up of recent reports in the Arab media about Iran’s involvement in Iraq’s affairs:
“Operating in a friendly milieu in southern Iraq, which is inhabited predominantly by Shi’a Muslims, Iranian intelligence officers have used a combination of incentives and coercion to widen the base of collaborators. According to the Iraqi daily Al-Nahdha, the Iraqi police have arrested many Iranians who are ostensibly pilgrims but, in reality, are intelligence operatives. The newspaper estimates the number of Iranian agents operating in Iraq at 14,000. They are penetrating the country’s nascent security forces, and taking advantage of the open distribution of books and literature ... Pilgrims are also known to have brought to Iraq hundreds of remote controls devices capable of activating explosives ...
“The young Iraqi Shi’a revolutionary cleric and rabble-rouser Muqtada Al-Sadr has visited Iran in 2004 as a guest of the Revolutionary Guard. During his visit Al-Sadr met with Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council, as well as the head of the revolutionary guard intelligence, Murtadha Radha’i, and the commander of the Al-Quds Army responsible for Iraqi affairs, Brigadier General Qassim Suleimani, and other government and religious leaders.
“A source in the Al-Quds Army of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard revealed to the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat information relating to the construction of three camps and training centers on the Iranian-Iraqi borders to train elements of the ‘Mehdi Army’ founded by Muqtada Al-Sadr. The source estimated that between 800 and 1,200 young supporters of Al-Sadr have received military training including guerilla warfare, the production of bombs and explosives, the use of small arms, reconnoitering, and espionage. The three camps were located in Qasr Shireen, ‘Ilam,and Hamid, bordering southern Iraq, which is inhabited largely by Shi’a Muslims ...
“The source indicated that elements of the Al-Quds Army and the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence lead many of the operations directed against the coalition forces. These elements are also leading a campaign against the senior Shi’a clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Hussein Al-Sadr [Muqtada’s uncle], Ayatollah Ishaq Al-Fayyadh, and others, because of their opposition to the concept of “the Rule of the Jurist” (Wilayat Al-Faqih), which is Khomeini’s style of government ...
“These agents are suspected of assassinating the liberal Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Al-Haqim, the former leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and a former member of the Iraqi Governing Council, and were about to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, another moderate cleric, before their designs were exposed.”
We grant that due allowance should be made for the possibility of bias against Iran in some or possibly all of the reports cited - but even biased reports from the Arab media are likely to be better than no reports at all, which is what the western media tend to provide on this matter.
We look forward to the e-mails assuring us that, since the Iranian leaders govern a Third World country and are anti-imperialist, it is absolutely impossible for them to have anything but the best interests of their Iraqi siblings at heart, and that what they are engaged in is not foreign intervention at all, but Muslim internationalism (or something). Get typing, kids - there’s a new blocking facility on our mailbox that we want to try out ...
Reciprocity
Gaberlunzie and James Hamilton have been added to our sidebar, not just as a formality because they’ve put SIAW on their blogrolls, but because they’re both well worth reading.
Gaberlunzie and James Hamilton have been added to our sidebar, not just as a formality because they’ve put SIAW on their blogrolls, but because they’re both well worth reading.
A Canticle for Someone or Other
Science fiction fans will know that, while Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz remains one of the most impressive of the subgenre of novels depicting the United States after some future apocalypse or other, its predictive value is considerably undermined by the fact that the Catholic monks who are its main characters use Latin, not only in the Mass but in private conversations. That was just about plausible when the book was first published, but has been rendered wildly implausible by the decisions of Vatican II. Miller’s unlucky guess should serve as a warning to all who indulge in attempts to foresee the future.
Nevertheless, one William Madsen has impressed at least one writer of science fiction with the following venture into the territory already explored by Miller - the difference being that A Canticle for Leibowitz is marketed as fiction, while Madsen is, apparently, as deadly serious as, say, your average Flat-Earther or New-Ager:
“As the neoconservatives lead the United States into deeper involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, possible future military forays into Iran, Gaza, Syria and North Korea [sic], withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations system [sic], and a policy of ruthless assassination of its enemies [sic], how long will it take for future historians to be scanning documents from the CIA, the National Security Council and the Republican Party documenting the in-fighting within the last American presidency - a second term of George W. Bush? The Soviet Union collapsed practically overnight. The Roman Empire took a number of years to fall, but it was inevitable. Nazi Germany’s fate became known in a matter of a few years. The United States will not last forever, but the Bush administration may be speeding up the process for its ultimate fall. How long will it be before US 20- and 50-dollar bills are sold as cheap souvenirs at street bazaars in the former United States, like [he means “as”] Soviet ruble notes are sold today on the streets of Moscow? The [sic] Soviet leaders were unable to stop their country’s march to war in Afghanistan. Recent revelations from Bush administration officials show that several key players were unable to stop Bush and Cheney’s determined march to war in Iraq. One world superpower went down in flames in 1990. Will the other last until 2010?”
Address your answers to whichever President of one of the 15 successor republics of the United States you think is most likely to reply ...
Science fiction fans will know that, while Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz remains one of the most impressive of the subgenre of novels depicting the United States after some future apocalypse or other, its predictive value is considerably undermined by the fact that the Catholic monks who are its main characters use Latin, not only in the Mass but in private conversations. That was just about plausible when the book was first published, but has been rendered wildly implausible by the decisions of Vatican II. Miller’s unlucky guess should serve as a warning to all who indulge in attempts to foresee the future.
Nevertheless, one William Madsen has impressed at least one writer of science fiction with the following venture into the territory already explored by Miller - the difference being that A Canticle for Leibowitz is marketed as fiction, while Madsen is, apparently, as deadly serious as, say, your average Flat-Earther or New-Ager:
“As the neoconservatives lead the United States into deeper involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, possible future military forays into Iran, Gaza, Syria and North Korea [sic], withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations system [sic], and a policy of ruthless assassination of its enemies [sic], how long will it take for future historians to be scanning documents from the CIA, the National Security Council and the Republican Party documenting the in-fighting within the last American presidency - a second term of George W. Bush? The Soviet Union collapsed practically overnight. The Roman Empire took a number of years to fall, but it was inevitable. Nazi Germany’s fate became known in a matter of a few years. The United States will not last forever, but the Bush administration may be speeding up the process for its ultimate fall. How long will it be before US 20- and 50-dollar bills are sold as cheap souvenirs at street bazaars in the former United States, like [he means “as”] Soviet ruble notes are sold today on the streets of Moscow? The [sic] Soviet leaders were unable to stop their country’s march to war in Afghanistan. Recent revelations from Bush administration officials show that several key players were unable to stop Bush and Cheney’s determined march to war in Iraq. One world superpower went down in flames in 1990. Will the other last until 2010?”
Address your answers to whichever President of one of the 15 successor republics of the United States you think is most likely to reply ...
Style Guide Update
Just in case you notice a small change here ...
We’ve got tired of trying to distinguish between a potential, genuine left and the actual, fake “left” by the use of quotation marks alone. It’s a pain having to type them; the word between the quotation marks still tends to carry more weight than the marks themselves; and blogs quoting from this one tend to omit them. In any case, having gone back and re-read some of the documents at Last Superpower, we now see no reason to reject Albert Langer’s preferred term “pseudo-left”, and many reasons to accept it. So pseudo-left it is from now on.
Just in case you notice a small change here ...
We’ve got tired of trying to distinguish between a potential, genuine left and the actual, fake “left” by the use of quotation marks alone. It’s a pain having to type them; the word between the quotation marks still tends to carry more weight than the marks themselves; and blogs quoting from this one tend to omit them. In any case, having gone back and re-read some of the documents at Last Superpower, we now see no reason to reject Albert Langer’s preferred term “pseudo-left”, and many reasons to accept it. So pseudo-left it is from now on.
