Tariq Ali on the New Imperialism.

Rafael Hernandez: Empire and Resistance, an Interview with Tariq Ali: "s there a new dominant imperialist ideology? Which ideological elements are really new? Is it a worldwide dominant or hegemonic ideology?


TARIQ ALI: Yes, as I have explained above it is the American consensus that dominates the world (with the single exception of Cuba and, partially, Venezuela). The economic basis of this consensus is hardly a secret: prising open the hitherto hallowed domains of public provision to private capital. The state's control of health, education, housing, broadcasting which was the basis of social-democracy in Western Europe has been effectively dismantled. Speculation has become the hub of all economic activity with the unscrupulous use of employee pension funds to shore up profits. The Enron and WorldCom scandals have made no difference at all. In the absence of any serious political alternative, capital remains confident. The collapse in Argentina was a disaster for the Washington consensus, but in the absence of a politico-economic and social alternative, its back to business as usual. The Brazilian rejection of the consensus, which led to the de-industrialisation of the country and the collapse of the national bourgeoisie, produced Lula's triumph, but the PT administration, frightened of its own shadow, remains mired in the IMF swamp. Of all the continents, Latin America is in open revolt against the economic fundamentalism of the new order. The social movements in Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela have created a new political climate. The people want change. The politicians are scared. And then we have the obscenity reported in the New York Daily News of 27th August 2003: 'The 1300-strong Spanish contingent will formally relieve US forces today in Iraq. They will be joined at their base in the rice- and date-growing town of Al Diwaniya, 160 kilometres south of the capital, this week by 1200 troops from Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and El Salvador - all of whom will be under Spanish command.' The use of old imperial powers to help police the world is part of imperial strategy today."

I guess the capture of Saddam didn't make us safer, huh?

U.S. Threat Level Rises to Orange (washingtonpost.com): "Federal officials said yesterday that because fresh intelligence suggests al Qaeda is planning multiple catastrophic terrorist attacks in the United States, they were raising the national threat alert status to 'high risk,' or code orange, a step administration officials previously had said they were reluctant to take except in the most unusual circumstances.


Some of the worrisome new intelligence indicates al Qaeda operatives are exploring security vulnerabilities on commercial or cargo flights originating overseas and flying into U.S. airports, officials said. It suggests the terrorist network is preoccupied with repeating its Sept. 11, 2001, tactic of hijacking aircraft for use as missiles against U.S. targets, they added.


'The strategic [intelligence] indicators, including al Qaeda's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland, are perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11th,' Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said at an impromptu news conference yesterday. 'Information indicates that extremists abroad are anticipating near-term attacks that they believe will rival, or exceed, the attacks in New York [and] at the Pentagon.' "

Krugman tells it straight.

Op-Ed Columnist: Telling It Right: "Now maybe, just maybe, Saddam's capture will start a virtuous circle in Iraq. Maybe the insurgency will evaporate; maybe the cost to America, in blood, dollars and national security, will start to decline.

But even if all that happens, we should be deeply disturbed by the history of this war. For its message seems to be that as long as you wave the flag convincingly enough, it doesn't matter whether you tell the truth.

By now, we've become accustomed to the fact that the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — the principal public rationale for the war — hasn't become a big political liability for the administration. That's bad enough. Even more startling is the news from one of this week's polls: despite the complete absence of evidence, 53 percent of Americans believe that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, up from 43 percent before his capture. The administration's long campaign of guilt by innuendo, it seems, is still working."

Turns out we didn't really "capture" Saddam.

Bloomberg.com:
U.S.: "Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. troops only after being held prisoner by Kurdish forces, who had had drugged and abandoned him, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a Sunday Express newspaper report.


The Kurdish Patriotic Front, which fought alongside U.S. forces during the Iraq war, held Hussien until it negotiated for more political advantage in the Middle East, AFP said, citing the paper, which quoted an unidentified Iraqi intelligence officer.


Hussein, who had been in hiding since April, was captured a week ago about 9 miles south of his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said at a press conference then."

I don't understand these people at all.

Bush's Religious Language: " When Bush, then Governor of Texas, decided to seek the presidency, he described his decision in terms evangelicals would understand as a divine mandate: He had been 'called,' a phrase that evoked the prophetic commissions of the Hebrew scriptures. He summoned to the governor's mansion all the leading pastors of the region to carry out a ritual of 'laying on of hands,' a practice that corresponds above all to ministerial ordination. He told the pastors that he had been called (obviously, by God) to be the presidential candidate. This language of divine calling has been frequent in his declarations and at a much accelerated rhythm since September 11, 2001."

Rumsfelde went to Baghdad to APPROVE of use of chemical weapons.

Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis, Documents Show (washingtonpost.com): "Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents.


Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, 'was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs,' according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.


The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire 'to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing,' remained 'undiminished.' 'This message bears reinforcing during your discussions.'"

Lest we forget: a quic review of America's support of the Butcher of Baghdad

CounterPunch: America's Best Political Newsletter: "In 1959, Saddam, at age 22, came into contact with the CIA, which was backing an effort to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim. (Assassinations are of course illegal, and the CIA's involvement here despicable.) Qasim had led a coup that overthrew the British-imposed monarchy in 1958, and had withdrawn from the anti-Soviet 'Central Treaty Organization' (CENTO) alliance that had linked Iraq with Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, the U.S and Britain from 1954. He had developed cordial ties with Moscow and tolerated the Arab world's most vigorous Communist Party. The CIA and Saddam agreed that Qasim should go. Saddam was set up in an apartment near Qasim's office, but never pulled off the hit. Qasim was toppled by members of the Baath Party in 1963, and a bloodbath of communists followed. Anti-communist Saddam headed the party's intelligence branch, maintaining ties with the CIA, which in fact supplied the new government with lists of Iraqi communists. At present, the U.S. government vilifies the Baath Party, but it once treated the Baathists as a bulwark against communism, and then later, as a counterweight to Islamic militancy.


In 1979, Saddam seized power, becoming President of the Republic of Iraq. In September 1980, he attacked Iran, which had just experienced the revolution that toppled the Shah (placed in power by the CIA in 1954). The U.S. government, implacably hostile to the new regime in Iran, welcomed this attack. ('Here is a man who has attacked his neighbors!' snarls the current U.S. president, whose father served as Vice President under a predecessor who encouraged him to do so.) Iraq had been on the State Department's 'terror' list, and diplomatic relations between Baghdad and Washington had been cut during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. But in early 1982, Iraq was quietly removed from the bad guys' list, and in December 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, representing the State Department, visited Baghdad to discuss ways to cooperate against Iran. Then-President Ronald Reagan had just issued a secret National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) stating that the United States would regard 'any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West.'


By 1985, the U.S. provided 1.5 billion in military equipment to Saddam Hussein. For example, CIA director William Casey supplied cluster bombs obtained through an arms company called Cardoen, from Chile, then under the fascist dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which the CIA had helped place in power. Such support continued through the end of the war with Iran in 1988. It was not affected by Saddam's use of chemical weapons; this was never an issue. As late as September 1988, a Maryland company sent 11 strains of germs, four of anthrax, in a Commerce Department-authorized sale to Iraq. This was six months after the Halabja incident that generated outrage around the world.


From Eisenhower to Bush I, the leaders of the imperialist power now disposed to indignantly inveigh against the Great Dictator were once very happily in bed with him. How many Americans know this? However short people's historical attention spans, this record is not immaterial, ancient history. It's material evidence for the prosecutors' utter unsuitability to try the jilted bedmate's case."

Is The Lord of The Rings racist. Probably

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Wraiths and race: "Perhaps I'd better come right out and say it. The Lord of the Rings is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour. Orcs are bred to be bad, they have no choice. The evil wizard Saruman even tells us that they are screwed-up elves. Elves made bad by a kind of devilish genetic modification programme. They deserve no mercy.

To cap it all, the races that Tolkien has put on the side of evil are then given a rag-bag of non-white characteristics that could have been copied straight from a BNP leaflet. Dark, slant-eyed, swarthy, broad-faced - it's amazing he doesn't go the whole hog and give them a natural sense of rhythm.

Scratch the surface of Tolkien's world and you'll find a curiously 20th-century myth. Begun in the 1930s, published in the 1950s, it's shot through with the preoccupations and prejudices of its time. This is no clash of noble adversaries like the Iliad, no story of our common humanity like the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's a fake, a forgery, a dodgy copy. Strip away the archaic turns of phrase and you find a set of basic assumptions that are frankly unacceptable in 21st-century Britain."