Sides? (was Re: the terrorist bombings in London

[jbor at bigpond.com]

(Resending)

All your points below are well-taken, and I do think there is some 
merit in Mike's (Weaver's) comments about the G-8 leaders and the 
manipulation of public opinion, but I tend to think also that those who 
own the mainstream media in the West are calling the shots as much as, 
if not moreso than, the politicians themselves.

A report in yesterday's paper here said that despite the London mayor 
coming out and stating that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam, 
there were over 30,000 hate e-mails sent to the British Muslim Council. 
If the aim of the anti-capitalist lobby is to educate the public and 
strengthen popular support for the economic and social reforms they 
advocate then they need to think very carefully about the way their 
cause is portrayed. Whether the public face of the lobby (i.e. the 
violent brick throwers) are infiltrators from outside, whether they are 
only a "violent minority", or whether their violence is actually 
endorsed as "necessary political protest" by the lobby, which seems to 
be the case, then I don't believe they're doing the cause any good at 
all. I think it's a lesson the IRA learnt quite a few years ago now.

According to the news last night, the G-8 leaders have ratified the 
debt relief proposal, increasing it to $60 billion, and have agreed to 
provide free AIDS treatment to Africa. I think these are steps in the 
right direction and need to be acknowledged as such. Bob Geldof and the 
Live-8 campaign are largely responsible: by raising public awareness 
and garnering popular support through non-violent means they managed to 
put the issue of African poverty firmly back on top of the political 
agenda. While the naysayers sit around mouthing empty slogans and 
fantasising about the dictatorship of the proletariat, Geldof and his 
Live-8 movement actually managed to get something done.

I think it's all very well to say that what the G-8 leaders have agreed 
to is "not enough", but it's better than nothing, which is what has 
been offered as an alternative. It's a start, and it provides a way 
forward for many African people and communities, something which they 
do not have now. I don't see your comments around the dismantling of 
the British Welfare State (Thatcher more than Blair, I would have 
thought), or the over-representation of African-American men in prison 
in the US (gross numbers rather than % comparison to South Africa under 
apartheid, I'd suggest) as valid counter-arguments at all; and I 
sincerely hope you're not trying to claim the (very arguable) 
accusations of genocide against Churchill or Clinton/Bush as 
exoneration of those perpetrating genocide and mass murder in the 
Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Zimbabwe, Burundi et al. today.

Welcome to the list, Sean. Good to have some informed, intelligent 
debate here.

best

PS Here's the token Pynchon reference, on Africa, colonialism, and Marx:

A generation earlier, the declining number of live Herero births was a 
topic of medical interest throughout southern Africa. The whites looked 
on as anxiously as they would have at an outbreak of rinderpest among 
the cattle. How provoking, to watch one's subject population dwindling 
like this, year after year. What's a colony without its dusky natives? 
Where's the fun if they're all going to die off? Just a big chunk of 
desert, no more maids, no field-hands, no laborers for the construction 
or the mining -- wait, wait a minute there, yes it's Karl Marx, that 
sly old racist skipping away with his teeth together and his eyebrows 
up trying to make believe it's nothing but Cheap Labor and Overseas 
Markets.... Oh, no. Colonies are much, much more. Colonies are the 
outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down 
and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit. Where he can fall on his 
slender prey roaring as loud as he feels like, and guzzle her blood 
with open joy. Eh? Where he can just wallow and rut and let himself go 
in a softness, a receptive darkness of limbs, of hair as woolly as the 
hair on his own forbidden genitals. Where the poppy, and the cannabis 
and coca grow full and green, and not to the colors and style of death, 
as do ergot and agaric, the blight and fungus native to Europe. 
Christian Europe was always death, Karl, death and repression. Out and 
down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all 
its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis, nothing to soil those 
cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts.... No word ever gets 
back. The silences down here are vast enough to absorb all behavior, no 
matter how dirty, how animal it gets.... (GR 317)


>> One night the main news story shows violent protests against the G-8 
>> summit in Edinburgh, with masked hooligans attacking police and 
>> breaking shop windows; the next night you've got the terrorist 
>> attacks in London, another manifestation of violent opposition to the 
>> G-8 summit, with the police and emergency services swinging into 
>> action to aid the innocent civilian victims of the attacks. The 
>> juxtapositions are there, unfortunate or accidental though they might 
>> be; the politicians don't even need to make the link explicit.
>
> I don't know, maybe the police verdict of a 'violent minority' as the 
> cause of disruption in Edinburgh city centre ...

(snipping Sean's post to try to avoid the 10k block)