And what shall we make of this, fairy tale? Which has influenced so much of the world at large, that it can in fact be said to the be a metaphor for the governing role of gender roles on a global scale. It is the handbook of Patriarchy, contained within a single image. A princess, locked in a tower, guarded by a dragon, awaiting rescue from a knight.
And who is this knight? Presumably a good Roman Catholic, since this is English. Who is the princess? She is a princess, so she is of high importance, a prize besought by many. There are many suitors, many knights who come to slay the dragon that imprisons her. There's no mention of the princess' consent. You see it doesn't matter, the whole point is that she is a princess and she is deserved by the best. And who is the best? The best is the knight who overcomes this, dragon, this great obstacle, or whatever it is. And once he's overcome this dragon, he's risen to the occasion and proved himself to be, the best, he deserves the princess. And that's the whole, of gender roles right there, in male dominated society. Once he's rescued her, he obviously deserves her, doesn't matter what she thinks. You don't read; and they dated, they met for coffee, he liked her, but...as a friend. No, no, he's defeated the dragon, he wants to get the prize now.
And now what to think of the tower? What does the tower, where the princess dwells, what does it represent. Solitude? Well, not in the 21st century, now there's FaceBook and she can have all the fake friends she wants; she is a celebrity... But solitude, of some kind, certainly. Or could it represent sexual frigidity? What would that make the dragon. The dragon guards, the tower that holds the princess, why? What is the dragon's interest in the princess? Is it an extension of the princess or a separate entity of itself? Is it to show that being single, for a woman, is a curse to be remedied by marriage? Are we to assume that she would rather be married?
At any rate, some assumptions seem clear. The princess, is, a highly besought prize, deserved only by the one who can defeat the dragon.
So what is it exactly that the princess needs saving from. Something keeps her locked up, lonely, sexually frustrated. Or do we go too far in assuming that the tower represents frigidity? Do we go too far in assuming she minds being alone, single? It is implied, that she must be married, she is a princess, and presumably is expected to bear and heir for the good of her people. Princess...does seem to imply children in the future, as well as a king.
So the princess, who is expected to marry to produce children for, presumably the good of her kingdom, awaits rescue from a dragon, by a knight. A knight who, once the dragon is defeated, deserves her. And who is it that is expect her to produce children? Presumably the same ones who made her princess...perhaps the many suitors?
Hmm... now what if the genders were flipped. Ah now this is easy to break down.
A man, trapped in a tall tower, guarded by a dragon, awaits rescue from a woman.
The tower is his self delusion, his imagined world. It is a filter which protects him from reality. The dragon, is his ego, his filter. It protects the tower, his self delusion, from reality. Of the women there are many suitors they come to defeat the dragon, his ego and rescue the man from his ego and his self delusion in order to bring him back into reality.
It's an interesting fairy tale. Not that I buy any of these gender roles mind you. Ardent feminist, I can assure you of that. ;)
PS
Please forgive this impulsive rant.
7.27.2010
Right-Wing Media Domination
By David Walsh
The right-wing media set the agenda for the Obama Regime. Their programs don't coincide, but they may as well. The initiative remains with these aggressive reactionaries and is caused by the decline of US capitalism and the collapse of liberalism.
The Shirley Sherrod affair, the case of the black US Department of Agriculture official fired July 20 because of an allegedly racist remark, is profoundly discrediting to every wing of the American establishment.
What happened last week is indisputable: the extreme right media organized a provocation and a spineless White House fell for it hook, line and sinker.
The attempt by sections of the liberal media to turn this now into a new chapter of “the national discourse on race” or an additional “teachable moment”—phrases that should be put out of commission forthwith—is simply a hypocritical diversion.
On July 19, Andrew Breitbart, an ultra-right commentator, posted a deliberately misleading excerpt from a speech Sherrod delivered this past March.
She appeared to be explaining how, 24 years earlier, while working at a non-profit organization, she had not exerted herself on behalf of a white farmer because of her own racial preconceptions.
Sherrod’s father was murdered by a white man in 1965 and his killer was never punished, despite the testimony of witnesses, because of endemic racism in rural Georgia.
Breitbart’s posting, and the threat that other right-wing media outlets, especially Fox News, would take up Sherrod’s remarks, threw the Obama administration into a panic.
An official from the USDA harassed Sherrod as she was driving back to her office with several phone calls, finally insisting that she pull over to the side of the road and send in her resignation on the spot, “because you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”
Beck hosts a right-wing program on Fox, where he regales his audience nightly with his unhinged, anti-communist conspiracy theories.
What do these facts demonstrate?
The Obama administration and its hangers-on rushed to judgment on the basis of a two-minute video clip posted by a thoroughly disreputable source.
Breitbart functions in the foul world of ultra-right blogs and web sites. This is a disoriented and deranged petty-bourgeois layer, which identifies any criticism of American free-market capitalism with Bolshevism. They will say and do anything, no matter how unprincipled or violent, to achieve their ends.
Fox News, owned and operated by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is a source of never-ending political provocation. Lying and distortion is a way of life for its stable of slick reactionaries, engaged primarily in whipping up the basest and most backward sentiments. Racism and anti-Semitism simmer just beneath the surface.
Breitbart, his attempted set-up of Shirley Sherrod exposed as a fraud, was entirely unapologetic. These bullying, neo-fascistic elements are not held back by any of the internal constraints that once operated within the American political system and the mainstream media.
They have been set in motion by the immense social and economic crisis, and nurtured within an official environment in the US over the past several decades pervaded by ideological reaction.
This extreme-right element represents the views of a small portion of the American population, yet it dominates at Fox News, major newspapers and has important representatives at virtually every media outlet.
The Obama administration closely monitors the right-wing web sites and cable television programs and reacts more sensitively to their thrusts than to any other single source of political criticism.
The watchword of this administration is that it will not be outflanked on the right. Meanwhile, it is impervious to mounting popular economic distress and opposition to the Wall Street pay bonanza, government inaction over the Gulf oil disaster, and the war in Afghanistan.
In effect, the right-wing media, bankrolled by Murdoch and others, largely sets the agenda for the Obama White House.
Their programs may not formally coincide, but they may as well. The initiative remains, for reasons bound up with the decline of American capitalism and the collapse of liberalism, with these aggressive reactionary types.
In this incident, as in every other one, the pundits reveal their own bewilderment.
Maureen Dowd in the New York Times makes the point that “Obama lacks advisers who are descended from the central African-American experience,” and proceeds to cite the comments of a series of black Democratic Party politicians as privileged and as distant from American social reality as she is.
The Times’ Frank Rich argues, “This country was rightly elated when it elected its first African-American president more than 20 months ago. That high was destined to abate, but we reached a new low last week.
"What does it say about America now, and where it is heading, that a racial provocateur, wielding a deceptively edited video, could not only smear an innocent woman but make every national institution that touched the story look bad? The White House, the NAACP and the news media were all soiled by this episode.”
Well, what does it say?
Speaking of Vilsack, Rich comments, “an executive so easily bullied by Fox News has no more business running a government department than Ken Salazar, the secretary of interior who let oil companies run wild on deepwater drilling until disaster struck.
That the White House sat back while Vilsack capitulated to a mob is a disgraceful commentary on both its guts and competence.”
Relatively strong words, but Rich draws no conclusions except that “While America’s progress on race has been epic since the days when Sherrod’s father could be murdered with impunity, we have been going backward since Election Day 2008.”
Implicitly at least, Rich identifies the fake populist demagogues on the right with popular opinion. What evidence can he muster to make such an assertion?
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. insists that “The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that ‘fairness’ requires treating extremist rants as ‘one side of the story.’”
But why do they cower?
None of the liberal columnists can answer that question, because it goes to the heart of America’s social reality.
In the end, the human trash on Fox and the right-wing blogs are merely the most naked and brutal face of a crisis-ridden, predatory and essentially criminal American capitalism. The Obama administration and the Democrats serve the same social interests, but in an unconvincingly and half-heartedly liberal guise.
There is a division of labor. Fox News and company proceed to stir up whatever filth they can, while the White House and the pundits assert piously that the country must rise above its alleged preoccupation with race.
But the real story here says something very different. It speaks to the fact that there are two Americas, divided sharply along class lines.
The political and media establishment could so seriously misread the Sherrod case in part because it is insulated by a hundred layers of wealth and privilege from the reality of the working class, the poor, and the sentiments of millions of working people about American life, even if they are not yet fully articulated.
Military Leaks Exposes US Atrocities
By Alex Lantier
The occupation of Afghanistan is a filthy imperialist war. Popular resistance and protests are drowned in blood and US death squads operate at will under a media blackout. NATO collaborates with an elite of corrupt warlords and Afghan officers.
On Sunday, the WikiLeaks web site posted 91,731 American military documents on the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan, covering the period from January 2004 to December 2009.
The release was timed to coincide with articles on these revelations in the New York Times, the British Guardian and the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, all of which had received the documents several weeks ago.
The documents make clear that the occupation of Afghanistan is a filthy imperialist war. Popular resistance and protest demonstrations are drowned in blood, US death squads operate at will under a media blackout, and Washington and NATO collaborate with a narrow elite of corrupt warlords and Afghan officers.
The documents were released as the Afghan government confirmed that NATO rocket fire last week killed more than 50 civilians, largely women and children, in the Sangin district of Helmand Province. The attack was one of the worst since the May 2009 Gerani air strike, in neighboring Farah province, which killed 140 civilians, including 93 children and 28 women.
The WikiLeaks documents confirm the massive scale of US-NATO repression. By the American military’s own classification, which downplays the role of US and NATO troops, the release includes 13,734 reports of “friendly action” by US-NATO forces.
There are 27,078 reports of “enemy action” and 23,082 of “explosive hazards”. This shatters claims that the Afghan resistance is the product of a few Al Qaeda terrorists. There are 237 reports of popular demonstrations against the US occupation or US-controlled Afghan authorities.
These documents themselves are reportedly only a small selection of millions of US files uploaded to WikiLeaks databases.
What has already been released, however, makes clear that the US military sees Afghan casualties as unimportant, to be dealt with primarily by relying on the Western media to conceal the scope of the killing from the populations in NATO countries and internationally.
According to one report, on March 28, 2007, Dutch forces fired on Chanartu, a village in Kandahar province that was reportedly under Taliban attack.
They killed four and wounded seven Afghan villagers in an operation the report called “justified.”
It said the Dutch government had “engaged in a proactive public relations campaign to prevent political fallout here and in the Netherlands,” explaining that otherwise Dutch soldiers might “hesitate” to fire on Afghans in the future. The killings were classified as the result of action by “enemy” forces.
Written from the standpoint of the US military in the heat of events, the documents often understate Afghan casualties.
For example, the September 2009 Kunduz bombing—when German officers called in a US air raid on two fuel trucks, killing 142 Afghans, overwhelmingly civilians—is listed as having caused 56 insurgent deaths.
The documents contain countless reports of civilians shot for approaching NATO vehicles, or for failing to stop at checkpoints.
This includes two instances in 2008 where NATO forces machine-gunned a bus—once by French troops, wounding eight, and once by US forces, with 15 casualties.
There are also repeated accounts of NATO forces repressing demonstrations, often in close coordination with local Afghan authorities.
On May 11, 2005 a unit of Marines reported demonstrations in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. After requests for help from the regional governor, Din Mohammed, the Marines called in “AH-64s [Apache attack helicopters] for a show of force.”
Under cover of air support, Afghan and UN forces moved against the demonstrators. Though the US military reported 37 Afghan civilians were killed and 10 wounded, it classified the Jalalabad demonstration as a “non-combat event” by “neutral” forces.
The documents also reveal the existence of Task Force 373—a covert, heavily-armed Special Forces death squad that mounts operations throughout Afghanistan, seeking to assassinate Taliban leaders.
On the night of June 11, 2007, while trying to capture Taliban commander Qarl Ur-Rahman near Jalalabad, Task Force 373 was surprised by a friendly Afghan police patrol which shone a light on them in the darkness.
The task force called in an air raid by an AC-130 gunship which blasted the policemen with cannon fire. Seven Afghan police were killed and four wounded.
One week later, Task Force 373 launched another mission, against Abu Laith al-Libi in Paktika province. The plan was to fire a salvo of six missiles at the village of Nangar Khel, where al-Libi was suspected of hiding, then send in troops to attack the village.
Though they did not find al-Libi, they discovered that the missile strike had killed six adults, whom they described as Taliban fighters, and eight Afghan children in a madrasa.
On October 4, 2007, the task force attacked Taliban forces in the village of Laswanday, only 6 miles from Nangar Khel. During a pause in the fighting the Taliban slipped away.
However, Task Force 373 called in an air raid, killing four civilian men, one woman, and one girl. Two teenage girls and a boy, as well as 12 US soldiers, were wounded. There are suspicions that some of the Afghan villagers were executed, as one of the men was found with his hands tied behind his back.
Coalition forces initially put out a statement claiming US forces had killed several Taliban militants. A US contingent visited the village and sought to blame the deaths on the villagers.
According to the leaked reports, they “stressed that the fault of the deaths of the innocent lies on the villagers, who did not resist the insurgents and their anti-government activities.”
The documents also reveal growing NATO losses in the air, including numerous drones and even manned aircraft, with at least one F-15 fighter being lost over Afghanistan.
In an April 2007 report, the US military cited reports that the Iranian government had purchased portable anti-aircraft missiles from the Algerian government and given them to Afghan insurgents. This has not been previously reported.
"Secular Superiority" is Reactionary
Though the author doesn't really point it out, Eastern Orthodoxy is also a way of life, not some mere set of religious beliefs. However Christianity is not tribal, nor does it focus on survival, in this world, but rather the journey to the next.
By Gilad Atzom
I have recently accused a genuine Leftist and good activist of being an Islamophobe for blaming Hamas for being ‘reactionary’.
The activist, who is evidently a true supporter of Palestinian resistance was quick to defend himself claiming that it wasn’t only ‘Islamism’ that he didn’t like, he actually equally hated Christianity and Judaism.
For some reason he was sure that hating every religion equally was a proper humanist qualification. Accordingly, the fact that an Islamophobe is also a Judeophobe and Christiano-phobe is not necessarily a sign of a humanist commitment.
For some reason ‘we’ (the Westerners) tend to believe that ‘our’ technological superiority together with our beloved ‘enlightenment’ equips us with a ‘rational secularist anthropocentric, absolutist ethical system’ of the very highest moral stand.
In the West we can detect two ideological components that compete for our hearts and minds; Both claim to know what is ‘wrong’ and who is ‘right’.
The Liberal would insist on praising individual liberty and civil equality; the Leftist would tend to believe to possess a ‘social scientific’ tool helping to identify who is ‘progressive’ and who is ‘reactionary’.
As things stand, it is these two modernist secularist precepts that act as our Western political ethical guard. But in fact, they have achieved the opposite.
Each ideology in its own peculiar way has led us to a state of moral blindness. It is these two so-called ‘humanist’ calls, that either consciously prepare the ground for criminal interventionalist colonial wars (the Liberal), or failed to oppose them while employing wrong ideologies and faulty arguments (the Left).
Both Liberal and Left, in their apparent banal Western forms suggest that secularism is the answer for the world's ailments. Without a doubt, Western secularism may be a remedy for some Western social malaise.
However, Western Liberal and Left ideologies, in most cases, fail to understand that secularism is in itself a natural outcome of Christian culture, i.e., a direct product of Christian tradition and openness towards an independent civic existence.
In the West, the spiritual and the civil sphere are largely separated. It is this very division that enabled the rise of secularity and the discourse of rationality.
It is this very division that also led to the birth of a secular ethical value system in the spirit of enlightenment and modernism.
But this very division led also to the rise of some blunt forms of fundamental-secularism that matured into crude anti religious worldviews that are no different from bigotry.
It is actually that very misleading fundamental secularism that brought the West to a total dismissal of a billion human beings out there just because they wear the wrong scarf or happen to believe in something we fail to grasp.
Progressive vs Regressive
Islam and Judaism, unlike Christianity, are tribally orientated belief systems. Rather than ‘enlightened individualism’ it is actually the survival of the extended family that is at the core interest of those two belief systems.
The Taliban that is regarded by most Westerners as the ultimate possible darkest political setting, is simply not concerned at all with issues to do with personal liberties or personal rights.
It is the safety of the tribe together with the maintenance of family values in the light of the Qur’an that stands at its core.
Rabbinical Judaism is not different at all. It is basically there to preserve the Jewish tribe by maintaining Judaism as a ‘way of life’.
In both Islam and Judaism there is hardly a separation between the spiritual and the civil.
Both religions stand as systems that provide thorough answers in terms of spiritual, civil, cultural and day to day matters.
Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah) was largely a process of Jewish assimilation through secularization and emancipation, and spawning various modern forms of Jewish identities, Zionism included.
Yet Enlightenment values of universalism have never been incorporated into the body of Jewish orthodoxy. Like in the case of Rabbinical Judaism, that is totally foreign to the spirit of Enlightenment, Islam is largely estranged to those values of Eurocentric Modernism and rationality.
If anything, due to the interpretation of the Scriptures (hermeneutic), both Islam and Judaism are actually closer to the spirit of post modernity.
Neither the Left ideology nor Liberalism engage intellectually or politically with these two religions. This fact is disastrous, for the biggest current threat to world peace is posed by the Israeli-Arab conflict.
A conflict rapidly becoming a war between a Jewish expansionist state and Islamic resistance. And yet, both the Liberal and the Left ideologies are lacking the necessary theoretical means to understand the complexities of Islam and Judaism.
The Liberal would dismiss Islam as sinister for its take on human rights and women in particular. The Left would fall into the trap of denouncing religion in general as ‘reactionary’.
Maybe without realizing it, both Lib and Left are falling here into a clear supremacist argument. Since both Islam and Judaism are more than just religions, they convey a ‘way of life’.
They stand as a totally thorough answer to questions regarding being in the world, the Western Lib-Left are at danger of a complete dismissal of a large chunk of humanity.
I have recently accused a genuine Leftist and good activist of being an Islamophobe for blaming Hamas for being ‘reactionary’.
The activist, who is evidently a true supporter of Palestinian resistance was quick to defend himself claiming that it wasn’t only ‘Islamism’ that he didn’t like, he actually equally hated Christianity and Judaism.
For some reason he was sure that hating every religion equally was a proper humanist qualification. Accordingly, the fact that an Islamophobe is also a Judeophobe and Christiano-phobe is not necessarily a sign of a humanist commitment.
I kept challenging that good man; he then argued that it was actually Islamism (i.e., political Islam) which he didn’t approve of. I challenged him again and brought to his attention the fact that in Islam there is no real separation between the spiritual and the political.
The notion of political Islam (Islamism) may as well be a Western delusional reading of Islam. I pointed out that Political Islam, and even the rare implementation of ‘armed jihad’, are merely Islam in practice.
Sadly enough, this was more or less the end of the discussion. The Palestinian solidarity campaigner found it too difficult to cope with the Islamic unity of body and soul.
The Left in general is doomed to fail here unless it elaborates by means of listening to the organic Islamic bond between the ‘material’ and the so called ‘opium of the masses’. For the Leftist to do so, it is no less than a major intellectual shift.
Such a shift was suggested recently by Hisham Bustani, an independent Jordanian Marxist, stating:
“The European left must make a serious critical assessment of this ‘we know better’ attitude and the ways it tends to deal with popular forces in the south as ideologically and politically inferior.”
7.26.2010
Noam Chomsky, US is a Failed State
An inability to protect its citizens. The belief that it is above the law. A lack of democracy. Three defining characteristics of the 'failed state'.
And that, says Noam Chomsky, is exactly what the US is becoming. In an exclusive extract from his devastating new book, America's leading thinker explains how his country lost its way.
America Is a Failed State
The selection of issues that should rank high on the agenda of concern for human welfare and rights is, naturally, a subjective matter. But there are a few choices that seem unavoidable, because they bear so directly on the prospects for decent survival.
Among them are at least these three: nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world's leading power is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of these catastrophes.
It is important to stress the government, because the population, not surprisingly, does not agree.
That brings up a fourth issue that should deeply concern Americans, and the world: the sharp divide between public opinion and public policy, one of the reasons for the fear, which cannot casually be put aside, that, as Gar Alperowitz puts it in America Beyond Capitalism,
"The American 'system' as a whole is in real trouble - that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its historic values [of] equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy".
The "system" is coming to have some of the features of failed states, to adopt a currently fashionable notion that is conventionally applied to states regarded as potential threats to our security (like Iraq) or as needing our intervention to rescue the population from severe internal threats (like Haiti).
Though the concept is recognised to be, according to the journal Foreign Affairs, "frustratingly imprecise", some of the primary characteristics of failed states can be identified.
One is their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction. Another is their tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence.
And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from a serious "democratic deficit" that deprives their formal democratic institutions of real substance.
Among the hardest tasks that anyone can undertake, and one of the most important, is to look honestly in the mirror. If we allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of "failed states" right at home.
No one familiar with history should be surprised that the growing democratic deficit in the United States is accompanied by declaration of messianic missions to bring democracy to a suffering world.
Declarations of noble intent by systems of power are rarely complete fabrication, and the same is true in this case.
Under some conditions, forms of democracy are indeed acceptable. Abroad, as the leading scholar-advocate of "democracy promotion" concludes, we find a "strong line of continuity": democracy is acceptable if and only if it is consistent with strategic and economic interests (Thomas Carothers). In modified form, the doctrine holds at home as well.
The basic dilemma facing policymakers is sometimes candidly recognised at the dovish liberal extreme of the spectrum, for example, by Robert Pastor, President Carter's national security adviser for Latin America.
He explained why the administration had to support the murderous and corrupt Somoza regime in Nicaragua, and, when that proved impossible, to try at least to maintain the US-trained National Guard even as it was massacring the population "with a brutality a nation usually reserves for its enemy", killing some 40,000 people.
The reason was the familiar one: "The United States did not want to control Nicaragua or the other nations of the region, but it also did not want developments to get out of control. It wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely."
Similar dilemmas faced Bush administration planners after their invasion of Iraq. They want Iraqis "to act independently, except when doing so would affect US interests adversely". Iraq must therefore be sovereign and democratic, but within limits.
It must somehow be constructed as an obedient client state, much in the manner of the traditional order in Central America. At a general level, the pattern is familiar, reaching to the opposite extreme of institutional structures.
The Kremlin was able to maintain satellites that were run by domestic political and military forces, with the iron fist poised. Germany was able to do much the same in occupied Europe even while it was at war, as did fascist Japan in Man-churia (its Manchukuo).
Fascist Italy achieved similar results in North Africa while carrying out virtual genocide that in no way harmed its favourable image in the West and possibly inspired Hitler. Traditional imperial and neocolonial systems illustrate many variations on similar themes.
To achieve the traditional goals in Iraq has proven to be surprisingly difficult, despite unusually favourable circumstances.
The dilemma of combining a measure of independence with firm control arose in a stark form not long after the invasion, as mass non-violent resistance compelled the invaders to accept far more Iraqi initiative than they had anticipated.
The outcome even evoked the nightmarish prospect of a more or less democratic and sovereign Iraq taking its place in a loose Shiite alliance comprising Iran, Shiite Iraq, and possibly the nearby Shiite-dominated regions of Saudi Arabia, controlling most of the world's oil and independent of Washington.
The situation could get worse. Iran might give up on hopes that Europe could become independent of the United States, and turn eastward.
Highly relevant background is discussed by Selig Harrison, a leading specialist on these topics. "The nuclear negotiations between Iran and the European Union were based on a bargain that the EU, held back by the US, has failed to honour," Harrison observes.
"The bargain was that Iran would suspend uranium enrichment, and the EU would undertake security guarantees. The language of the joint declaration was "unambiguous.
"'A mutually acceptable agreement,' it said, would not only provide 'objective guarantees' that Iran's nuclear programme is 'exclusively for peaceful purposes' but would 'equally provide firm commitments on security issues.'"
The phrase "security issues" is a thinly veiled reference to the threats by the United States and Israel to bomb Iran, and preparations to do so.
The model regularly adduced is Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which appears to have initiated Saddam's nuclear weapons programs, another demonstration that violence tends to elicit violence. Any attempt to execute similar plans against Iran could lead to immediate violence, as is surely understood in Washington.
During a visit to Tehran, the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned that his militia would defend Iran in the case of any attack, "one of the strongest signs yet", the Washington Post reported, "that Iraq could become a battleground in any Western conflict with Iran, raising the spectre of Iraqi Shiite militias - or perhaps even the US-trained Shiite-dominated military - taking on American troops here in sympathy with Iran."
The Sadrist bloc, which registered substantial gains in the December 2005 elections, may soon become the most powerful single political force in Iraq.
It is consciously pursuing the model of other successful Islamist groups, such as Hamas in Palestine, combining strong resistance to military occupation with grassroots social organising and service to the poor.
Washington's unwillingness to allow regional security issues to be considered is nothing new. It has also arisen repeatedly in the confrontation with Iraq.
In the background is the matter of Israeli nuclear weapons, a topic that Washington bars from international consideration.
Beyond that lurks what Harrison rightly describes as "the central problem facing the global non-proliferation regime": the failure of the nuclear states to live up to their nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligation "to phase out their own nuclear weapons" - and, in Washington's case, formal rejection of the obligation.
Unlike Europe, China refuses to be intimidated by Washington, a primary reason for the growing fear of China on the part of US planners. Much of Iran's oil already goes to China, and China is providing Iran with weapons, presumably considered a deterrent to US threats.
Still more uncomfortable for Washington is the fact that, according to the Financial Times, "the Sino-Saudi relationship has developed dramatically", including Chinese military aid to Saudi Arabia and gas exploration rights for China.
"By 2005, Saudi Arabia provided about 17 per cent of China's oil imports. Chinese and Saudi oil companies have signed deals for drilling and construction of a huge refinery (with Exxon Mobil as a partner).
"A January 2006 visit by Saudi king Abdullah to Beijing was expected to lead to a Sino-Saudi memorandum of understanding calling for "increased cooperation and investment between the two countries in oil, natural gas, and minerals".
Indian analyst Aijaz Ahmad observes that Iran could "emerge as the virtual linchpin in the making, over the next decade or so, of what China and Russia have come to regard as an absolutely indispensable Asian Energy Security Grid, for breaking Western control of the world's energy supplies and securing the great industrial revolution of Asia".
South Korea and southeast Asian countries are likely to join, possibly Japan as well. A crucial question is how India will react. It rejected US pressures to withdraw from an oil pipeline deal with Iran.
On the other hand, India joined the United States and the EU in voting for an anti-Iranian resolution at the IAEA, joining also in their hypocrisy, since India rejects the NPT regime to which Iran, so far, appears to be largely conforming.
Ahmad reports that India may have secretly reversed its stand under Iranian threats to terminate a $20bn gas deal.
Washington later warned India that its "nuclear deal with the US could be ditched" if India did not go along with US demands, eliciting a sharp rejoinder from the Indian foreign ministry and an evasive tempering of the warning by the US embassy.
The prospect that Europe and Asia might move toward greater independence has seriously troubled US planners since World War II, and concerns have significantly increased as the tripolar order has continued to evolve, along with new south-south interactions and rapidly growing EU engagement with China.
US intelligence has projected that the United States, while controlling Middle East oil for the traditional reasons, will itself rely mainly on more stable Atlantic Basin resources (West Africa, western hemisphere).
Control of Middle East oil is now far from a sure thing, and these expectations are also threatened by developments in the western hemisphere, accelerated by Bush administration policies that have left the United States remarkably isolated in the global arena.
The Bush administration has even succeeded in alienating Canada, an impressive feat.
Canada's minister of natural resources said that within a few years one quarter of the oil that Canada now sends to the United States may go to China instead.
In a further blow to Washington's energy policies, the leading oil exporter in the hemisphere, Venezuela, has forged probably the closest relations with China of any Latin American country, and is planning to sell increasing amounts of oil to China as part of its effort to reduce dependence on the openly hostile US government.
Latin America as a whole is increasing trade and other relations with China, with some setbacks, but likely expansion, in particular for raw materials exporters like Brazil and Chile.
Meanwhile, Cuba-Venezuela relations are becoming very close, each relying on its comparative advantage. Venezuela is providing low-cost oil while in return Cuba organises literacy and health programs, sending thousands of highly skilled professionals, teachers, and doctors, who work in the poorest and most neglected areas, as they do elsewhere in the Third World.
Cuba-Venezuela projects are extending to the Caribbean countries, where Cuban doctors are providing healthcare to thousands of people with Venezuelan funding.
Operation Miracle, as it is called, is described by Jamaica's ambassador to Cuba as "an example of integration and south-south cooperation", and is generating great enthusiasm among the poor majority.
Cuban medical assistance is also being welcomed elsewhere. One of the most horrendous tragedies of recent years was the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. In addition to the huge toll, unknown numbers of survivors have to face brutal winter weather with little shelter, food, or medical assistance.
One has to turn to the South Asian press to read that "Cuba has provided the largest contingent of doctors and paramedics to Pakistan", paying all the costs (perhaps with Venezuelan funding), and that President Musharraf expressed his "deep gratitude" for the "spirit and compassion" of the Cuban medical teams.
Some analysts have suggested that Cuba and Venezuela might even unite, a step towards further integration of Latin America in a bloc that is more independent from the United States.
Venezuela has joined Mercosur, the South American customs union, a move described by Argentine president Nestor Kirchner as "a milestone" in the development of this trading bloc, and welcomed as opening "a new chapter in our integration" by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Independent experts say that "adding Venezuela to the bloc furthers its geopolitical vision of eventually spreading Mercosur to the rest of the region".
At a meeting to mark Venezuela's entry into Mercosur, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said, "We cannot allow this to be purely an economic project, one for the elites and for the transnational companies," a not very oblique reference to the US-sponsored "Free Trade Agreement for the Americas", which has aroused strong public opposition.
Venezuela also supplied Argentina with fuel oil to help stave off an energy crisis, and bought almost a third of Argentine debt issued in 2005, one element of a region-wide effort to free the countries from the control of the US-dominated IMF after two decades of disastrous effects of conformity to its rules.
The IMF has "acted towards our country as a promoter and a vehicle of policies that caused poverty and pain among the Argentine people", President Kirchner said in announcing his decision to pay almost $1 trillion to rid itself of the IMF forever.
Radically violating IMF rules, Argentina enjoyed a substantial recovery from the disaster left by IMF policies.
Steps toward independent regional integration advanced further with the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia in December 2005, the first president from the indigenous majority. Morales moved quickly to reach energy accords with Venezuela.
Though Central America was largely disciplined by Reaganite violence and terror, the rest of the hemisphere is falling out of control, particularly from Venezuela to Argentina, which was the poster child of the IMF and the Treasury Department until its economy collapsed under the policies they imposed. Much of the region has left-centre governments.
The indigenous populations have become much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, both major energy producers, where they either want oil and gas to be domestically controlled or, in some cases, oppose production altogether.
Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies, and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in SUVs in traffic gridlock. Some are even calling for an "Indian nation" in South America.
Meanwhile the economic integration that is under way is reversing patterns that trace back to the Spanish conquests, with Latin American elites and economies linked to the imperial powers but not to one another.
Along with growing south-south interaction on a broader scale, these developments are strongly influenced by popular organisations that are coming together in the unprecedented international global justice movements, ludicrously called "anti-globalisation" because they favour globalisation that privileges the interests of people, not investors and financial institutions. For many reasons, the system of US global dominance is fragile, even apart from the damage inflicted by Bush planners.
One consequence is that the Bush administration's pursuit of the traditional policies of deterring democracy faces new obstacles. It is no longer as easy as before to resort to military coups and international terrorism to overthrow democratically elected governments, as Bush planners learnt ruefully in 2002 in Venezuela.
The "strong line of continuity" must be pursued in other ways, for the most part. In Iraq, as we have seen, mass nonviolent resistance compelled Washington and London to permit the elections they had sought to evade.
The subsequent effort to subvert the elections by providing substantial advantages to the administration's favourite candidate, and expelling the independent media, also failed. Washington faces further problems.
The Iraqi labor movement is making considerable progress despite the opposition of the occupation authorities.
The situation is rather like Europe and Japan after World War II, when a primary goal of the United States and United Kingdom was to undermine independent labour movements - as at home, for similar reasons: organised labour contributes in essential ways to functioning democracy with popular engagement.
Many of the measures adopted at that time - withholding food, supporting fascist police - are no longer available. Nor is it possible today to rely on the labour bureaucracy of the American Institute for Free Labor Development to help undermine unions.
Today, some American unions are supporting Iraqi workers, just as they do in Colombia, where more union activists are murdered than anywhere in the world.
At least the unions now receive support from the United Steelworkers of America and others, while Washington continues to provide enormous funding for the government, which bears a large part of the responsibility.
The problem of elections arose in Palestine much in the way it did in Iraq. As already discussed, the Bush administration refused to permit elections until the death of Yasser Arafat, aware that the wrong man would win.
After his death, the administration agreed to permit elections, expecting the victory of its favoured Palestinian Authority candidates.
To promote this outcome, Washington resorted to much the same modes of subversion as in Iraq, and often before. Washington used the US Agency for International Development as an "invisible conduit" in an effort to "increase the popularity of the Palestinian Authority on the eve of crucial elections in which the governing party faces a serious challenge from the radical Islamic group Hamas" (Washington Post).
Spending almost $2m "on dozens of quick projects before elections this week to bolster the governing Fatah faction's image with voters" (New York Times).
In the United States, or any Western country, even a hint of such foreign interference would destroy a candidate, but deeply rooted imperial mentality legitimates such routine measures elsewhere. However, the attempt to subvert the elections again resoundingly failed.
The US and Israeli governments now have to adjust to dealing somehow with a radical Islamic party that approaches their traditional rejectionist stance, though not entirely, at least if Hamas really does mean to agree to an indefinite truce on the international border as its leaders state.
The US and Israel, in contrast, insist that Israel must take over substantial parts of the West Bank (and the forgotten Golan Heights). Hamas's refusal to accept Israel's "right to exist" mirrors the refusal of Washington and Jerusalem to accept Palestine's "right to exist" - a concept unknown in international affairs.
Mexico accepts the existence of the United States but not its abstract "right to exist" on almost half of Mexico, acquired by conquest.
Hamas's formal commitment to "destroy Israel" places it on a par with the United States and Israel, which vowed formally that there could be no "additional Palestinian state" (in addition to Jordan) until they relaxed their extreme rejectionist stand partially in the past few years, in the manner already reviewed.
Although Hamas has not said so, it would come as no great surprise if Hamas were to agree that Jews may remain in scattered areas in the present Israel, while Palestine constructs huge settlement and infrastructure projects to take over the valuable land and resources, effectively breaking Israel up into unviable cantons, virtually separated from one another and from some small part of Jerusalem where Jews would also be allowed to remain.
And they might agree to call the fragments "a state". If such proposals were made, we would - rightly - regard them as virtually a reversion to Nazism, a fact that might elicit some thoughts.
If such proposals were made, Hamas's position would be essentially like that of the United States and Israel for the past five years, after they came to tolerate some impoverished form of "statehood".
It is fair to describe Hamas as radical, extremist, and violent, and as a serious threat to peace and a just political settlement. But the organisation is hardly alone in this stance.
Elsewhere traditional means of undermining democracy have succeeded. In Haiti, the Bush administration's favourite "democracy-building group, the International Republican Institute", worked assiduously to promote the opposition to President Aristide, helped by the withholding of desperately needed aid on grounds that were dubious at best.
When it seemed that Aristide would probably win any genuine election, Washington and the opposition chose to withdraw, a standard device to discredit elections that are going to come out the wrong way: Nicaragua in 1984 and Venezuela in December 2005 are examples that should be familiar.
Then followed a military coup, expulsion of the president, and a reign of terror and violence vastly exceeding anything under the elected government.
The persistence of the strong line of continuity to the present again reveals that the United States is very much like other powerful states.
It pursues the strategic and economic interests of dominant sectors of the domestic population, to the accompaniment of rhetorical flourishes about its dedication to the highest values.
That is practically a historical universal, and the reason why sensible people pay scant attention to declarations of noble intent by leaders, or accolades by their followers.
One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: "They present solutions, but I don't like them."
In addition to the proposals that should be familiar about dealing with the crises that reach to the level of survival, a few simple suggestions for the United States have already been mentioned:
1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court;
2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols;
3) let the UN take the lead in international crises;
4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror;
5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN Charter;
6) give up the Security Council veto and have "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind," as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if power centres disagree;
7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending.
For people who believe in democracy, these are very conservative suggestions: they appear to be the opinions of the majority of the US population, in most cases the overwhelming majority. They are in radical opposition to public policy.
To be sure, we cannot be very confident about the state of public opinion on such matters because of another feature of the democratic deficit: the topics scarcely enter into public discussion and the basic facts are little known.
In a highly atomised society, the public is therefore largely deprived of the opportunity to form considered opinions.
Another conservative suggestion is that facts, logic, and elementary moral principles should matter.
Those who take the trouble to adhere to that suggestion will soon be led to abandon a good part of familiar doctrine, though it is surely much easier to repeat self-serving mantras.
Such simple truths carry us some distance toward developing more specific and detailed answers. More important, they open the way to implement them, opportun- ities that are readily within our grasp if we can free ourselves from the shackles of doctrine and imposed illusion.
Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to seek to induce pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, reality is different.
There has been substantial progress in the unending quest for justice and freedom in recent years, leaving a legacy that can be carried forward from a higher plane than before. Opportunities for education and organising abound.
As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions - attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalised quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as "democratic politics".
As always in the past, the tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement to create - in part recreate - the basis for a functioning democratic culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena, from which it is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle.
There are many ways to promote democracy at home, carrying it to new dimensions.
Opportunities are ample, and failure to grasp them is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.
Noam Chomsky @ Independent This is an edited extract from Failed States by Noam Chomsky (Hamish Hamilton).
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