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| Hon. Lee Ocran, Former Minister of Education |
Published on March 21, 2013
Letter from A
Teacher
I am a teacher in
the western region and one of those who firmly believed in the agenda of a
better Ghana propagated by His Excellency John Dramani Mahama.
I was deeply impressed by all the promises made to
teachers during the era of Honorable Lee Ocran as Minister of Education. One of
those promises was that every teacher would be given a laptop computer and
assisted to improve his or her computer skills.
The rational was sport on. If laptops were being
supplied to students, then the teachers who teach them need to have computer
skills as well. Besides laptops have become so expensive that many teachers
cannot afford them from their monthly pa packet.
I was particularly thrilled when His Excellency John Mahama
repeated the promised on his campaign trail.
I refused to listen to the cacophony of NPP propaganda
and keenly supporter President Mahama to win 2012 elections.
Unlike other teachers, I am not as yet disappointed in
the President I believe that three months is perhaps too soon to give up on a
President of a country in the midst of crisis.
However, many
teachers want to know what happened to the promise to provide 50,000 laptops to
us. I have checked with many of my colleagues in the region and none of them
has been supplied with a laptop.
My questions are what happened to the promises? Who will
give us the answers we need? Will Honourable Lee Ocran speak to the issue?
It is my hope that The Insight which is fact becoming
the voice of the voiceless we publish this letter for a broader discussion of
the issue.
Seth Mensah
Sekondi- Takoradi
EDITORIAL
Since December
last year, when president John Dramani Mahama was elected as the lead citizen,
all manner of people have pressurized him to give them one job or the other.
Of course as a newly elected President he has thousands
of jobs to distribute and they range from heads of government institutions
through membership of boards to Ministerial positions.
There are Ambassadors and High Commissioners to appoint
and many more.
Given the kinds of problems facing the people of Ghana,
the clamour for jobs is sometimes puzzling. Are all the people jumping over
themselves for appointments fully aware of the enormity of the task? Perhaps if
they were, they would have been a little restrained.
In our view, the time when friends, relatives and associates
of Presidents struggled for positions to enable them pose as big people must
remain in history.
Today those who get these state appointments must
understand that there is work to be done.
The masses need better housing, improved access to water
and education and the people need to be fed on nutritious food.
A Statement From The Ministry of Local Government
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| Hon. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, Former Minister of Local Go'vt. |
The attention of the Ministry of Local
Government and Rural Development has been drawn to some degree of public
confusion regarding the proposed amendments to the procedure for the emergence
of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives.
The Progressive Peoples' Party for example is
reported to have inaccurately concluded that "the recommendation of the
Constitutional Review Commission was for direct and popular election of
MMDCEs." The Ministry considers it a public duty to help the public to
understand the matter.
Ghana currently has three categories of
Assemblies. These are the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
There are six Metropolitan Assemblies, 48 Municipal Assemblies and 162 District
Assemblies. The Constitutional Review Commission recommended a different
approach for each category of Assembly. This meant that there would be three
different approaches for the emergence of Chief Executives for the three
categories of Assemblies. In other words, there would be one approach for the
emergence of Chief Executives for the six Metropolitan Assemblies, a different
methodology for the 48 Municipal Assemblies and yet a different method for the
162 District Assemblies.
For the six Metropolitan Assemblies, the CRC
recommended that "the Metropolitan Chief Executive should be popularly
elected." This meant for example that for the whole of Accra.
covering the entire jurisdiction of the AMA, there would be election open to
every eligible contestant to stand as Metropolitan Chief Executive and all
eligible voters would have the opportunity to vote and elect one candidate. In
short, this recommendation was for a pure political process.
In the case of the 48 Municipal Assemblies,
it was the recommendation of the CRC that "the President should nominate
persons who would be vetted by the Public Services Commission CPSC) for
competence, after which three nominees would contest in a public election ...
" This proposal combines the legitimacy of a political process with an
administrative/bureaucratic system.
The CRC's recommendation for the 162 District Assemblies was that
"the President should nominate a candidate for approval by a simple
majority of the Assembly as District Chief Executive." This recommendation
was very close to the system which pertains today. The key difference between
the CRC proposal and the current situation is that at present, the approval of
a DCE requires two thirds (2/3) majority of the Assembly.
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| Raymond Atuguba, Chairman of Constitutional Review Committe |
Critically examined, the three proposals
above meant that the emergence of Chief Executives was going to flow from an
amalgam of processes. From a governance
perspective, that looked confusing.
Government therefore sought to bring clarity to the process. As a
result, the Government decided to adopt a uniform and pragmatic method for the
emergence of Chief Executives for all categories of Assemblies. It was the view
of Government that in "decentralizing in a unitary state, a delicate
balance ought to be struck between central control and local autonomy."
The final decision was that "Article 243(1) of the Constitution
should be amended for the President to nominate a minimum of five (5) persons
who would be vetted by the Public Services Commission (PSC) for competence
after which three (3) nominees would contest in a public election." This
proposal will apply to all categories of Assemblies.
The next step in the process is for Parliament to go through proper
procedures to carry out the amendment. Until then, the status quo remains.
It is the hope of the Ministry that this statement brings some clarity
to the issue of selecting DCEs
HON. A'KWASI OPONG-FOSU, MP
MINISTER OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT
AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT
AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT
WHAT’S THE WAY FORWARD FOR MALI
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| Map of Mali |
The French military offensive in Mali halted militant Islamists’ drive southwards and dislodged them from parts of the northern region, but the fight is far from over, and the country’s future unsure.
IRIN sought the views of four analysts on what the Bamako government’s strategy should be to reconcile its people and restore security: Peter Pham (PP) of the Atlantic Council, a US-based think tank; Andy Morgan (AM), a writer and journalist specializing in West Africa and the Sahel; Abdoulaye Sall (AS) of the Cercle de Réflexion et d’Information pour la Consolidation de la Démocratie au Mali (Centre for Reflection and Information to Consolidate Democracy in Mali); and Magnus Taylor (MT), editor of African Arguments, a political analysis website.
Q: What would the next steps be should Islamist fighters eventually be dislodged from northern Mali?
PP: What is happening and what we’re seeing is the beginning of an insurgency of a sort. This was entirely foreseen. In order to successfully manage the extremism and contain it in northern Mali and roll it back, there is need to invest time to develop a legitimate government in Bamako and an African-led force with Malian army that is capable of a counter-insurgency campaign.
AM: The focus should be on a very broad discussion with traditional elders, the political elite and all the stakeholders in the Malian society on how Mali should function in the future; the relationship between the different regions and cultures of the country. This should go alongside the process of reconciliation and justice.
AS: It’s perhaps a little too early to talk of the next step given that the first one is not even over yet. The territorial integrity remains to be totally achieved. [However], the return of people forced to flee to neighbouring countries should be done professionally and should involve local leaders, traditional and religious leaders as well as civil society groups. The same should be done for the internally displaced people.
MT: There’s a need to work out who is on which side now; what is the status of the Islamists who have been chased; calculate whether there is going to be an insurgency now that there is a military intervention. The Malian government needs to make an assessment of a policy towards the Tuareg - what sort of settlement to have in the north.
Q: Specifically, what should Mali, its neighbours and international supporters focus on to achieve long-term stability?
PP: It is not the optimal option, but [the solution is] targeting and neutralizing these [Al Qaeda-linked] individuals, leaving their minions in disarray, which gives time to work on the political solution. This was advocated by US policymakers for some time. This was the difference between them and the French who wanted to go in quickly. If anything is to be learned from Iraq and Afghanistan it is this; this is how you invite in a long-term counter-insurgency operation.
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| Interim President of Mali, Diaconda Traore |
At the moment we have untrained African forces that are ill-equipped and not integrated to each other to respond to a very complex situation. We need to buy time to train them up and equip them. Having created a situation where garrisons and patrols will be needed in the north, France needs to increase, not decrease, her troops.
For every couple of hundreds militants for hire you only have one strategic leader. Targeting individuals would require drones and electronic surveillance equipment. The USA may have the technological capability, but whether it can deploy in every circumstance - the administration needs to make this decision.
AM: Security and bringing back the people in refugee camps are major priorities. Reconciliation is important, as is the need for a political model. The elections [planned for July] are happening too soon. Elections [only] work in a country with basic stability. Holding elections in the spring of 2015 is more realistic.
AS: Malians don’t have a clear understanding of the role of the UN, African Union and ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] in conflict resolution and peacekeeping. A vigorous information campaign is needed. At the same time there is need to prevent and manage conflict through decentralization. There are 761 local administrations, but they need to be included in conflict resolution. The local authority is the most appropriate level for conflict resolution.
MT: An effective deployment of ECOWAS troops. The idea is also to buy time for negotiations and come to some political settlement with the Tuaregs. You have to get the politics right. You are not going to get security by declaring war. The drug trade routes [in West Africa] are not just a Malian problem. It should be approached in a different way - dealing with the causes of drug trade. This is a problem of corruption that can be solved by developing institutions that can be immune of the corruption of drug money.
Q: How do you deal with the separatist demands of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the recently formed Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA)?
PP: The Tuaregs had turned on the Islamists. What’s not yet clear is that they [the Tuaregs] have a partner they can do business with in Bamako. The only way to fight a counter-insurgency war is if they have a legitimate government they can make a deal with. They and they alone have knowledge of the terrain and people in the north to fight the counter-insurgency battle and to hunt foreign elements out. The Tuareg historically have had three deals with Malian governments that were legitimate, but all of them are now in the dustbin of history. Why would they possibly believe that a deal with the current batch of characters would hold?
AM: There is need for a mediator that both sides trust. The MNLA cannot have constructive negotiations with the Mali government right now. The only country that can play mediator is France. The MNLA also needs to be told some truths. They made some very bad mistakes - they decided to fight alongside Ansar Dine [one of the three militant groups that occupied the north]. Azawad independence cannot exist. Not now. Not in 150 years. The main reason is Algeria does not want an independent Berber [indigenous North African ethnic group] state in its southern border. They have Berber people in their country and they sincerely believe that this will have a domino effect. Everybody in the region is not going to accept that and the MNLA should know that. Because Ansar Dine has split, the moderate part that the international community contemplates having discussions with is the MIA.
AS: The MNLA, an association of a minority among the Tuaregs which does not have an electoral mandate, cannot and should not substitute the regional and national councils and the elected lawmakers in Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu regions and the entire Malian Tuareg people. It should be disarmed, respect the constitution and ask for forgiveness from the Malian people for having become a Trojan horse to jihadists and narco-traffickers.
MT: The MNLA is, in effect fighting on the side of the government after the Islamists hijacked its mission. It is in a weak position because it had to be bailed out not just by the Malian army, but also by the international powers. The other group to negotiate with is Ansar Dine. The MIA are also positioning themselves for negotiations, I think they will be given attention.
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| Map of West Africa |
PP: There has been been a radicalization across the Sahel. That ultimately needs a political solution. How did it blossom in the Maghreb? You have to look at the annulling of elections in Algeria many years ago and the civil war that followed. Algeria is one country that didn’t experience the Arab spring - so that is an indirect cause for radicalization. Radicalization is a threat across the board, but not all radicals are equally threatening. There are more dangerous ones and less dangerous ones.
AM: Violent jihad is like a boil that appears on the body. A bad doctor will cut it open and squeeze it. A good doctor will say: “Why did that boil appear?” Governments need to make sure that people at the bottom of the pile are less hungry and angry and that they are not vulnerable to violent jihad. Al-Qaeda was in northern Mali for 10 years. The reason it was there was because of corruption. Some local politicians, commanders and businessmen benefited from the presence of AQIM [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb]. Violent jihad is born out of desperation. For an average young Malian or Algerian who sees no other way out of his problems, violent jihad is attractive.
AS: By taking part in the military operation in Mali… and supporting the participation of local, traditional and religious leaders in fostering democracy and decentralization.
MT: There aren’t many of these guys [extremist Islamists] in this region. The Islamist threat in this region has been exaggerated. It’s not like there is a huge support for radical Islam in the region. The big Islamist threat came out of Algeria in the 1990s. The problem has not been solved, it’s being suppressed. The Malian government doesn’t have the capacity to fight the Islamists. The Algerian government has a better capacity to do it. There is also need for better intelligence of what this threat is.
Hackers Vow to wipe Israel off
Internet
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| Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Nyetanyahu |
Hacktivist group Anonymous is
planning a massive cyber attack on the Israeli regime, threatening to “erase”
it from the Internet.
“Hacktivists Starting Cyber Attack
against Israel on 7th of April,” Anonymous wrote on Twitter, calling on hackers
around the world to participate in the second of a series of cyber attacks
known as ‘OpIsrael.’
Following the threat, Israeli
officials have been reportedly preparing for the potential attack.
“It’s something being organized
online over the past few days. What distinguishes this plan when compared to
previous attacks is that it really seems to be organized by
Anonymous-affiliated groups from around the world in what looks like a joining
of forces,” said Ofir Ben Avi, director of an online Israeli organization.
The first OpIsrael was launched by
Anonymous during the eight-day Israeli war on Gaza in November 2012.
Some 700 Zionist websites came under
repeated cyber attacks, including the regime’s high-profile systems such as its
foreign ministry, and the Israeli president's official website.
“We are Anonymous. We are legion. We
will not forgive. We will not forget. Israel, it is too late to expect us,”
read the hacktivist group’s message to Israeli authorities.
The Israeli ministry for financial
affairs reported an estimated 44 million unique attacks on the regime’s
websites during the cyber operation.
EXECUTIONS
IN SAUDI ARABIA
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| Public execution in Saudi Arabia |
By Ali Alahmed
As I wrote this article on the night
of March 12 in Washington, seven young men -- all in their early twenties --
were still alive and praying to God for some last-minute grace to save them
from facing a firing squad outside the palatial offices of the governor of
Saudi Arabia's Aseer province, Faisal Ben Khalid, who ordered their execution.
Their prayers fell on deaf ears in
the kingdom. The men, who were convicted of armed robbery, were executed on March 13, in a move denounced by Amnesty International
as an "act of sheer brutality."
Hundreds of people are executed in
Saudi Arabia every year -- because some executions are carried out in secret,
no one knows the real numbers. In 2007, the newspaper Arab News reported that 400 people remained on death row in the province of
Makka alone. There are 12 other regions in the kingdom, so the total number of
people awaiting execution could easily reach several thousand.
The Saudi government runs one of the
most backward and xenophobic judicial systems on the planet. There is no formal
legal code. Judges must all espouse the government-approved Salafi version of
Islam. Blacks, who make up around 10 percent of the population, are banned from
judgeships -- as are women and Muslims who observe a different version of the
faith -- because the monarchy's religious tradition still views blacks as
slaves, other Muslims as heretics, and women as half human. There is only one
word to describe such a system: apartheid.
In addition, the judicial branch is
part of the government -- a blatant conflict with the supposed neutrality of
judges. The Saudi justice minister also serves as president of the Saudi
Supreme Court. That would be like having U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as
chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The condemned men hail from the southern
tribes of Saudi Arabia, which have been a target of the monarchy's systematic
discrimination. Since the foundation of Saudi Arabia in 1932, there has not
been a single minister from the south, which composes 27 percent of the
population and is inhabited largely by Sunni Muslims who follow the
government-sanctioned Salafi doctrine. Before his death, one of the executed
men, Saeed al-Shahrani, even refused to provide his photo for this article
because he followed the government fatwas banning photos of live objects.
That's more than can be said of the members of the ruling family: The royals in
the House of Saud are notorious for plastering pictures of themselves in every
place possible.
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| Saudi Crown Prince |
The body of one of the men, Sarhan
al-Mashayekh, was supposed to be put on public display for three days,
according to the execution warrant. But because everything in Saudi
Arabia is political, that did not happen. The government likely feared that
such an act would attract international embarrassment, and possibly a violent
reaction by the large southern tribes. The executed men came from five large
tribes, and thousands of people gathered to protest when the men were killed --
photos provided by an eyewitness showed hundreds of well-armed
soldiers and dozens of armored vehicles protecting the scene of the execution.
Poverty was the biggest factor behind this crime. All seven were unemployed and came from poor families, reflecting the severe economic conditions faced by many in Saudi Arabia. The unemployment rate in the kingdom is among the highest in the Middle East -- it runs over 40 percent among males and over 80 percent among females.
This massacre proves, once again, that Western governments never miss an opportunity to tell Saudi people: "We couldn't care less about your problems." Even the U.N. High Commissioner's office -- which called on governments around the world to halt the executions of prisoners, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- refused to make any public pleas on behalf of these young men before the executions.
Since I learned about these executions, I was spending 14 hours a day to contact as many governments as possible to push the Saudi monarchy for a delay and a retrial of these men. Yes, they admitted their guilt -- but they were tortured and had no access to counsel at any stage of the trial.
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| Lord Nicholas Philips |
One of the letters I sent went to Lord Nicholas Philips, a former president of Britain's Supreme Court, asking him to petition the Saudi government for a stay and a retrial. Lord Philips is important because he had met with the Saudi minister of justice and, according to the official Saudi press, praised the Saudi justice system last April while receiving a Saudi delegation. That visit was an apparent attempt to convince the British chief justice to allow the signing of a prisoner-exchange agreement with Saudi Arabia. That agreement will allow the return of Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Nasir Al Saud, a Saudi prince who murdered his lover and manservant in a London hotel.
I believe the Saudi monarchy, which has been pushing for a prisoner exchange agreement with Britain to free the prince, would have accepted pardoning these seven young men if their death was an obstacle to freeing their murderous son. I was banking that Philips would adopt the cause of saving these lives.
I also appealed to State Department officials, noting that it was in their self-interest to intervene on behalf of these men. After a letter and copious phone calls, I was able to get across the point that executing seven men a mere day after Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up his first visit to Riyadh would look bad. Things appeared to change quickly after that -- the king granted a one-week stay of execution, presumably to avoid embarrassing his high-ranking American guest.
By the time I
finished the first draft of this story, I received a grateful call from Saeed,
but his call was cut off -- perhaps because armed guards had entered the
chambers to take him to face his death. My friend Saeed, you remembered to call
to say goodbye before you died. Farewell Saeed. I am sorry I could not do more.
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Epigenetics Reveal Biological Information On
Homosexuality
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700
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| Homosexuals |
A new study from the National Institute for
Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS)
reveals that epigenetics,
rather than genetics,
could be the basis for homosexuality.
To begin, epigenetics looks at how gene
expression is managed by temporary switches, known as epi-marks. In the report,
recently published online in The
Quarterly Review of Biology, the authors discussed
how sex-specific epi-marks generally do not transmit between generations and
are considered “erased.” Homosexuality can result when these marks are not
“erased” and are passed on from father to daughter or mother to son.
“Transmission of sexually
antagonistic epi-marks between generations is the most plausible evolutionary
mechanism of the phenomenon of human homosexuality,” explained the study’s co-author Sergey Gavrilets, who serves as the NIMBioS’ associate director for
scientific activities and professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville,
in a prepared statement.
The researchers explain how
homosexuality is common for men and women in various cultures despite knowledge
of evolutionary methods. Past studies have looked at how homosexuality is
passed through family members, but no gene related to homosexuality has been
found. The current study by the researchers from the Working Group on
Intragenomic Conflict at NIMBioS produced a biological and mathematical model
based on evolutionary theory and new information on gene express and
androgen-dependent sexual development.
In particular, epi-marks give an
extra set of information on the expression of genes. Genes have instruction,
while epi-marks manage how the how gene instructions are carried out during
gene development. For every generation, there is a new set of epi-marks;
however, studies have also shown that epi-marks may be passed between
generations and can cause similarity among relatives.
“There is compelling evidence that
epi-marks contribute to both the similarity and dissimilarity of family
members, and can therefore feasibly contribute to the observed familial
inheritance of homosexuality and its low concordance between [identical]
twins,” the study’s co-author William Rice, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
told
U.S. News.
In addition, sex specific epi-marks
found in early fetal development help protect each sex from having natural
variation in
testosterone that occurs later in fetal development. For example, sex
specific epi-marks will prevent girl fetuses from becoming too masculine while
preventing male fetuses from becoming too feminine. Though, when epi-marks are
transmitted from one generation to the next, from father to daughter or mother
to son they show reversed effects. In this regard, some traits in sons become
feminized while other traits in daughters become more masculine.
“Most mainstream biologists have
shied away from studying it because of the social stigma,” continued Rice in
the article by U.S. News. “It’s been swept under the rug, people are still
stuck on this idea that it’s unnatural. Well there are many examples of
homosexuality in nature, it’s very common.”
Furthermore, the mathematical
modeling of the genes shows that the epi-marks can be passed on the population
as a way to boost the fitness of the parent but decreasing fitness in
offspring.
“These epi-marks protect fathers and
mothers from excess or underexposure to testosterone — when they carry over to
opposite-sex offspring, it can cause the masculinization of females or the
feminization of males,” commented Rice in the U.S. News article.
Overall, the study helps explain the
various underling factors related to homosexuality.
“We’ve found a story that looks
really good,” concluded Rice in the U.S. News article.
“There’s more
verification needed, but we point out how we can easily do epigenetic profiles
genome-wide. We predict where the epi-marks occur, we just need other studies to
look at it empirically. This can be tested and proven within six months. It’s
easy to test. If it’s a bad idea, we can throw it away in short order.
The Paranoia of the
Superrich and Superpowerful
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| Noam Chomsky |
By Noam Chomsky
[This
piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on
Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire,
Noam Chomsky’s new
interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan
Books). The questions are Barsamian’s, the answers Chomsky’s.]
Does the United States still have the same level of control over
the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had?
The
major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the
Western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab
Spring is limited, but it’s not insignificant. The Western-controlled
dictatorial system is eroding. In fact, it’s been eroding for some time. So,
for example, if you go back 50 years, the energy resources -- the main concern
of U.S. planners -- have been mostly nationalized. There are constantly
attempts to reverse that, but they have not succeeded.
Take
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example. To everyone except a dedicated
ideologue, it was pretty obvious that we invaded Iraq not because of our love
of democracy but because it’s maybe the second- or third-largest source of oil
in the world, and is right in the middle of the major energy-producing region.
You’re not supposed to say this. It’s considered a conspiracy theory.
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| Three U.S Soldiers lay dead in the Iraq War |
The
United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism -- mostly by
nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they
couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets. Step by
step, Iraq was able to dismantle the controls put in place by the occupying
forces. By November 2007, it was becoming pretty clear that it was going to be
very hard to reach U.S. goals. And at that point, interestingly, those goals
were explicitly stated. So in November 2007 the Bush II administration came out
with an official declaration about what any future arrangement with Iraq would
have to be. It had two major requirements: one, that the United States must be
free to carry out combat operations from its military bases, which it will
retain; and two, “encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq,
especially American investments.” In January 2008, Bush made this clear in one
of his signing statements. A couple of months later, in the face of Iraqi
resistance, the United States had to give that up. Control of Iraq is now
disappearing before their eyes.
Iraq
was an attempt to reinstitute by force something like the old system of
control, but it was beaten back. In general, I think, U.S. policies remain
constant, going back to the Second World War. But the capacity to implement
them is declining.
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| US President Hussein Obama |
Declining because of economic weakness?
Partly
because the world is just becoming more diverse. It has more diverse power
centers. At the end of the Second World War, the United States was absolutely
at the peak of its power. It had half the world’s wealth and every one of its
competitors was seriously damaged or destroyed. It had a position of
unimaginable security and developed plans to essentially run the world -- not
unrealistically at the time.
This was called “Grand Area” planning?
Yes.
Right after the Second World War, George Kennan, head of the U.S. State
Department policy planning staff, and others sketched out the details, and then
they were implemented. What’s happening now in the Middle East and North
Africa, to an extent, and in South America substantially goes all the way back
to the late 1940s. The first major successful resistance to U.S. hegemony was
in 1949. That’s when an event took place, which, interestingly, is called “the
loss of China.” It’s a very interesting phrase, never challenged. There was a
lot of discussion about who is responsible for the loss of China. It became a
huge domestic issue. But it’s a very interesting phrase. You can only lose
something if you own it. It was just taken for granted: we possess China -- and
if they move toward independence, we’ve lost China. Later came concerns about
“the loss of Latin America,” “the loss of the Middle East,” “the loss of”
certain countries, all based on the premise that we own the world and anything
that weakens our control is a loss to us and we wonder how to recover it.
Today,
if you read, say, foreign policy journals or, in a farcical form, listen to the
Republican debates, they’re asking, “How do we prevent further losses?”
On
the other hand, the capacity to preserve control has sharply declined. By 1970,
the world was already what was called tripolar economically, with a U.S.-based
North American industrial center, a German-based European center, roughly
comparable in size, and a Japan-based East Asian center, which was then the
most dynamic growth region in the world. Since then, the global economic order
has become much more diverse. So it’s harder to carry out our policies, but the
underlying principles have not changed much.
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| Bill Gates |
Take
the Clinton doctrine. The Clinton doctrine was that the United States is
entitled to resort to unilateral force to ensure “uninhibited access to key
markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.” That goes beyond anything
that George W. Bush said. But it was quiet and it wasn’t arrogant and abrasive,
so it didn’t cause much of an uproar. The belief in that entitlement continues
right to the present. It’s also part of the intellectual culture.
Right
after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause,
there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.
Centuries ago, there used to be something called presumption of innocence. If
you apprehend a suspect, he’s a suspect until proven guilty. He should be
brought to trial. It’s a core part of American law. You can trace it back to
Magna Carta. So there were a couple of voices saying maybe we shouldn’t throw
out the whole basis of Anglo-American law. That led to a lot of very angry and
infuriated reactions, but the most interesting ones were, as usual, on the left
liberal end of the spectrum. Matthew Yglesias, a well-known and highly
respected left liberal commentator, wrote an article in which he ridiculed
these views. He said they’re “amazingly naive,” silly. Then he expressed the
reason. He said that “one of the main functions of the international
institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force
by western powers.” Of course, he didn’t mean Norway. He meant the United
States. So the principle on which the international system is based is that the
United States is entitled to use force at will. To talk about the United States
violating international law or something like that is amazingly naive,
completely silly. Incidentally, I was the target of those remarks, and I’m happy
to confess my guilt. I do think that Magna Carta and international law are
worth paying some attention to.
I
merely mention that to illustrate that in the intellectual culture, even at
what’s called the left liberal end of the political spectrum, the core
principles haven’t changed very much. But the capacity to implement them has
been sharply reduced. That’s why you get all this talk about American decline.
Take a look at the year-end issue of Foreign
Affairs, the main establishment journal. Its big front-page cover
asks, in bold face, “Is America Over?” It’s a standard complaint of those who
believe they should have everything. If you believe you should have everything
and anything gets away from you, it’s a tragedy, the world is collapsing. So is
America over? A long time ago we “lost” China, we’ve lost Southeast Asia, we’ve
lost South America. Maybe we’ll lose the Middle East and North African
countries. Is America over? It’s a kind of paranoia, but it’s the paranoia of
the superrich and the superpowerful. If you don’t have everything, it’s a
disaster.
The New York Times describes
the “defining policy quandary of the Arab Spring: how to square contradictory
American impulses that include support for democratic change, a desire for
stability, and wariness of Islamists who have become a potent political force.”
The Times identifies
three U.S. goals. What do you make of them?
 |
| Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
Two
of them are accurate. The United States is in favor of stability. But you have
to remember what stability means. Stability means conformity to U.S. orders.
So, for example, one of the charges against Iran, the big foreign policy
threat, is that it is destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan. How? By trying to
expand its influence into neighboring countries. On the other hand, we
“stabilize” countries when we invade them and destroy them.
I’ve
occasionally quoted one of my favorite illustrations of this, which is from a
well-known, very good liberal foreign policy analyst, James Chace, a former
editor of Foreign Affairs.
Writing about the overthrow of the Salvador Allende regime and the imposition
of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1973, he said that we had to
“destabilize” Chile in the interests of “stability.” That’s not perceived to be
a contradiction -- and it isn’t. We had to destroy the parliamentary system in
order to gain stability, meaning that they do what we say. So yes, we are in
favor of stability in this technical sense.
Concern
about political Islam is just like concern about any independent development.
Anything that’s independent you have to have concern about because it might
undermine you. In fact, it’s a little ironic, because traditionally the United
States and Britain have by and large strongly supported radical Islamic
fundamentalism, not political Islam, as a force to block secular nationalism,
the real concern. So, for example, Saudi Arabia is the most extreme
fundamentalist state in the world, a radical Islamic state. It has a missionary
zeal, is spreading radical Islam to Pakistan, funding terror. But it’s the bastion
of U.S. and British policy. They’ve consistently supported it against the
threat of secular nationalism from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and Abd al-Karim
Qasim’s Iraq, among many others. But they don’t like political Islam because it
might become independent.
The
first of the three points, our yearning for democracy, that’s about on the
level of Joseph Stalin talking about the Russian commitment to freedom,
democracy, and liberty for the world. It’s the kind of statement you laugh
about when you hear it from commissars or Iranian clerics, but you nod politely
and maybe even with awe when you hear it from their Western counterparts.
If
you look at the record, the yearning for democracy is a bad joke. That’s even
recognized by leading scholars, though they don’t put it this way. One of the
major scholars on so-called democracy promotion is Thomas Carothers, who is
pretty conservative and highly regarded -- a neo-Reaganite, not a flaming
liberal. He worked in Reagan’s State Department and has several books reviewing
the course of democracy promotion, which he takes very seriously. He says, yes,
this is a deep-seated American ideal, but it has a funny history. The history
is that every U.S. administration is “schizophrenic.” They support democracy
only if it conforms to certain strategic and economic interests. He describes
this as a strange pathology, as if the United States needed psychiatric
treatment or something. Of course, there’s another interpretation, but one that
can’t come to mind if you’re a well-educated, properly behaved intellectual.
Within several months of the toppling of [President Hosni]
Mubarak in Egypt, he was in the dock facing criminal charges and prosecution.
It’s inconceivable that U.S. leaders will ever be held to account for their crimes
in Iraq or beyond. Is that going to change anytime soon?
That’s
basically the Yglesias principle: the very foundation of the international
order is that the United States has the right to use violence at will. So how
can you charge anybody?
And no one else has that right.
Of
course not. Well, maybe our clients do. If Israel invades Lebanon and kills a
thousand people and destroys half the country, okay, that’s all right. It’s
interesting. Barack Obama was a senator before he was president. He didn’t do
much as a senator, but he did a couple of things, including one he was
particularly proud of. In fact, if you looked at his website before the
primaries, he highlighted the fact that, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
in 2006, he cosponsored a Senate resolution demanding that the United States do
nothing to impede Israel’s military actions until they had achieved their
objectives and censuring Iran and Syria because they were supporting resistance
to Israel’s destruction of southern Lebanon, incidentally, for the fifth time
in 25 years. So they inherit the right. Other clients do, too.
But
the rights really reside in Washington. That’s what it means to own the world.
It’s like the air you breathe. You can’t question it. The main founder of
contemporary IR [international relations] theory, Hans Morgenthau, was really
quite a decent person, one of the very few political scientists and
international affairs specialists to criticize the Vietnam War on moral, not
tactical, grounds. Very rare. He wrote a book called The Purpose of American Politics.
You already know what’s coming. Other countries don’t have purposes. The
purpose of America, on the other hand, is “transcendent”: to bring freedom and
justice to the rest of the world. But he’s a good scholar, like Carothers. So
he went through the record. He said, when you study the record, it looks as if
the United States hasn’t lived up to its transcendent purpose. But then he
says, to criticize our transcendent purpose “is to fall into the error of
atheism, which denies the validity of religion on similar grounds” -- which is
a good comparison. It’s a deeply entrenched religious belief. It’s so deep that
it’s going to be hard to disentangle it. And if anyone questions that, it leads
to near hysteria and often to charges of anti-Americanism or “hating America”
-- interesting concepts that don’t exist in democratic societies, only in
totalitarian societies and here, where they’re just taken for granted.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus in the MIT Department
of Linguistics and Philosophy. A TomDispatch
regular, he is
the author of numerous best-selling political works, including recently Hopes
and Prospectsand Making
the Future. This piece is adapted from the chapter
“Uprisings” in his newest book (with interviewer David Barsamian), Power
Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to
U.S. Empire (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books).
Excerpted
from Power Systems:
Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S.
Empire, published
this month by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian. All rights reserved.
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