Bombing Myths
Takis Fotopoulos writes a fortnighty column in the mass circulation Athens daily Eleftherotypiá. It’s dense stuff. But if you’re looking for a bit more meat in your sandwhich than usual, it’s a hit. In his latest column “The London bombings and the myths on "terrorism". He makes two points:
1. A frequently repeated myth is that Al-Qaida terrorists do not have any real political demands and are only motivated by an ‘evil ideology’ of hate against the West’s values, liberties and way of life - an Islamic ideology which supposedly aims to achieve global domination. However, in reality, what has been labelled ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ is often a form of nationalism in religious disguise. Al-Qaida, amid their religious rhetoric, have made it crystal-clear through their statements what their main demands are: the withdrawal of US and other western forces from the Arab and Muslim world and an end to support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Osama bin Laden himself raised the obvious question in his US election-timed video: if it was western freedom al-Qaida hated, "Why do we not strike Sweden?"
2. Another relevant myth (frequently repeated by the reformist Left) is that terrorism is a straight blow to democracy. However, if this ‘argument’ could have seemed plausible to some in the past, surely it is silly even to mention it now, in the aftermath of the events leading to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even the caricature of ‘democracy’ which we enjoy in the present representative system was clearly debased a couple of years ago, when the elites not only did not bother to ask their peoples before taking the crucial decisions to launch their ‘wars’ against terrorism and Iraq, but they even provocatively ignored the millions of citizens demonstrating in the streets of London, Rome etc demanding the abortion of the invasion.
As Takis points out, the outcome is that, today, it is the citizens themselves who pay the deadly price for a decision they were not involved in. The actual decision-takers in the political and economic elites, who ‘happen’ to benefit from the invasion and are responsible for the bloody cycle of violence, have taken due care to become almost invulnerable to the blows of the Arab avengers.
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John Bolton
"I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."
Those were the words John Bolton yelled as he burst into a Tallahassee library on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, where local election workers were recounting ballots cast in Florida's disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
A year ago all of the talk of the Project for the New American Century got dismissed as more conspiracy babble. File next to Anti-Gravity Propulsion, Rabbit-Headed Cats and ethical foreign policy. But this guy is straight out of the PNAC nuthouse and now he’s representing the most powerful nation in the world at the UN.
Who’s laughing now?
Yesterday Dubya appointed John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations, without waiting for approval from the Senate. This is scary stuff.
“A veteran of Southern electoral campaigns, Bolton has long appealed to racist voters. Working closely with his former boss James Baker during the Florida recount following the contested 2000 presidential election, Bolton proved his allegiance to the party and polished his reputation as someone “who gets things done.”
After thanking Bolton for his services, Vice President-elect Cheney was asked what job Bolton would get in the new administration. “People ask what [job] John should get,” Cheney said, “My answer is, anything he wants.”
Since the 1970s Bolton has aggressively and stridently attacked multilateral institutions and international treaties. At the same time, however, Bolton has been a firm supporter of multilateral entities and coalitions that the U.S. controls—such as NATO, the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq, and the anti-rogue Security Proliferation Initiative, which was led by Bolton.
“The president and I have asked John to do this work because he knows how to get things done,” said Rice. A hard-line unilateralist and an aggressive opponent of multilateralism and international treaties, Bolton has served as the Bush administration’s designated treaty basher. From the early days of the first Bush administration, Bolton mounted a campaign to halt all international constraints on U.S. power and prerogative, fiercely opposing existing and proposed international treaties restricting landmines, child soldiers, biological weapons, nuclear weapons testing, small arms trade, and missile defense.”
Full biog on Bolton here.
G8 Revisited
There were three major aims for Blair’s big G8 Summit (do you remember it?) Okay let’s refresh. Make Poverty History. Tick. Tackle Global Warming. Tick. Africa. Tick.
It makes you think, how would Blair have looked if those bombs hadn't gone off?
