On Recent Events: Freedom, democracy, and human rights–concepts deployed by the officialdom and corporate media of American Empire as if they were to be understood as singular and universal, with the U.S. cast as the zenith of achievement on these fronts, are concepts that heavily mark many of the unfolding events that have transpired since the Wikileaks disclosures. This note, then, is as much about the impoverishment of the dominant discourse in North America, where the idea of “democracy” has been narrowed and reduced to some illusion of “liberal democracy” alone, as it is about the many ways the attempt to colonize understanding and marshal knowledge are frustrated by the complications and complexities of reality. “Freedom, democracy, and human rights” are signals of the ways the U.S. seeks to multiply its access points in other societies where the U.S. situates its “interests.” While spoken of as unproblematic, uncontested, easy-to-define concepts, in reality they connect to a bundle of practices involving the subversion and reorientation of local political systems, the exploitation of other economies, and the redefinition of relations between individuals and states. In order to propagate global American liberalism, a substantial part of this program requires that others believe, that they trust the U.S., that they admire it, and that they see its actions as legitimate. The events of the past several weeks magnified the continued erosion of that program on all of those levels. Now we witness the acute resurgence of a worldwide contempt for American power, a vast reservoir of indignation with empire, and a generalized delight in denouncing, frustrating, and short-circuiting U.S. imperial dominance. Barely a few months into what many of us see as George W. Bush’s fourth term, Barack Obama finds himself besieged: the continued fallout of the various distortions proffered by his regime in light of the assassination of its ambassador to Libya; new scandals of how the Internal Revenue Service has once again been used against domestic political opponents; eavesdropping on and persecuting journalists; new leaks about the role of the National Security Agency in collecting information by spying not just on citizens, but on all communications from the rest of the world that pass through the U.S.; and generalized gloom about Obama’s decision to involve the U.S. even deeper into the Syrian conflict, turning it fully into another American war. At the same time, the trial of Bradley Manning got underway and already the prosecution’s arguments have become frayed. Meanwhile the U.S. continues its grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks, and threatens nations that allow passage to Edward Snowden into asylum. In response to the (limited) revelations coming from Snowden’s leak, Obama said “I welcome the debate.” And how does he welcome debate? By repeating the superficial sales pitch for surveillance against “insider threats” that he never felt needed justification (or mention) before now; by seeking to convict and imprison the whistle blower; by addressing collaborative corporate media; and by placing congressional committees under a generalized gag order, even as his administration leaked details to a mere Hollywood filmmaker so it could produce CIA propaganda for a domestic audience. In light of the ongoing Snowden-NSA episode, the U.S. stands embarrassed in front of the world. No longer is U.S. power something that others hold in awe. Options exist, for leakers, and for those who will protect them. The horizon has suddenly expanded. The U.S., both officials and media allies, stand horrified at the realization that the world does not simply consist of nation-states willing to serve as the law enforcement arms of the U.S.–that they have “interests” of their own to defend. As the private media contractors beholden to the U.S. state levy insults and accusations against China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Ecuador, their timing could not have been less appropriate. Washing their mouths with the supposed “oppression” of press freedom in Ecuador, it is the U.S. that stands out as a violator: which state has criminalized whistle blowing and made communicating with the media something worthy of a death sentence? And what do Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador have in common? None of them are massive global human rights violators like the U.S.–the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, as Martin Luther King put it. With reference to Iran, a writer for Reuters editorialized that with the recent elections we see an end to eight years of Ahmadinejad’s “belligerence.” Belligerence? Which countries did Iran invade and occupy in those years? Which wars did Iran start? The U.S. is even unable to prove to its own citizens that they benefit from “democracy,” as they watch a president, a political class, and financial elites rule with impunity above the law, as if the Constitution was merely a tool for administering the masses. As leaders in North America continue to lecture, instruct, and command others on the correct way to do “democracy,” the deep political rot that is the reality of liberal democracy burst into open view especially in Canada. Montreal saw two mayors in less than a year booted for corruption, with many more mayors around Montreal removed (in some cases for “gangsterism”), while the mayor of Toronto was caught on video smoking crack cocaine and using expletives against ethnic minorities. More information came to light of election rigging in Canada, as well as attempts by government to stifle public dissent and freedom of information. This, in a country whose official head of state is a monarch (talk about a “sense of entitlement”), whose senate is also unelected and consists of persons appointed-for-life (entitlement again), and where votes are cast out as a matter of course in a system that lacks fair, proportional representation. Politics continues to be restricted to organized, self-serving parties that answer to their leaders and donors. Adding to this litany, a prime minister held in contempt of parliament, whose practice has been to keep information out of the hands of parliamentarians, while restricting access that the media have in asking him questions. In Canada, “democracy” is increasingly looking like something written, directed, and produced by David Lynch: politics somewhere between Eraserhead and Twin Peaks. All of this we can say without even getting into discussions of why the practical prospects for direct, participatory democracy continue to be ignored when everything else has been simplified and accelerated by electronic communications technology, in ways acceptable even to dominant classes: everything from banking to commerce to education, to passport applications. Yet, direct democracy by citizens is somehow off limits. As a result, we spend more time in our lives vacuuming our cars or flipping through catalogues of patio furniture than we ever get in making decisions about what kind of system rules us. Finally, the beginning of June saw the meeting of Bilderberg, a conference of NATO Defence Ministers, and G8, all within mere days of each other. The powers that be still have superior means of organizing, coordinating, and wielding resources beyond a scale that is imaginable. What can we do? We have to seriously pursue real transformation, involving both short-term solutions (demilitarization, income redistribution, accountability), and long-term ones (greater local autonomy, direct democracy, environmental sustainability). We cannot, however, have real transformation while pretending that we can just carry on our current daily lives as normal. Something has to give. To be sure, no amount of cyber-activism or posturing about “being the change you want to see” is going to change any of this. Given the odds, it seems already clear that serious transformation will not come first from the global north, which is not an excuse for abdicating our role to realize social justice. "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." Albert Einstein GET YOUR LIFE!!
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 07:35:56 +0000
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