Below is a slightly abridged version of notes used for a talk given to a political conference in Australia, in January, 2005
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Internationalism in the era of so-called “globalisation”.
On 26 December, 2004 one of the worst earthquakes in a century occurred sending a massive tsunami traveling at 800 km per hour out from an epicenter off the island of Sumatra. This tsunami hit a series of countries around the Bay of Bengal and down to the tip of Sumatra, Aceh. The devastation and death caused by this natural phenomenon has been massive with more than 150,000 dead. This scale of death and devastation, however, does not actually reflect the scale of the event of nature but rather the monstrous scale of the manmade situation that allowed so much horror to befall so many human beings.
Yes, the movement of tetonic plates does unleash massive forces and yes an earthquake on the richter scale of 9 is a big earthquake. But the reality is that in the 21st century, with the technology available to humankind, the loss of life should have been minimal, if any. The absence of a warning system is one issue that people have pointed to. This was certainly criminal, especially given that it turns out that there are already seismology centers inmost countries. They exist elsewhere and are obviously not difficult to establish.
But this is the secondary crime perhaps. The devastation and death was so great because the tsunami hit the coasts of impoverished countries who had no defence against the tidal surges. In Aceh, for example, where I have been myself, as in the rest of Indonesia, the vast majority of people live in bamboo or other poorly constructed huts, Most have no phone, no mobile, usually no TV, occasionally only a radio. They have no vehicles – there is no personal car ownership as in the rich countries. The material infrastructure of their existence stood no chance against anything like this. Of course, in addition, the gross underdevelopment of their country’s economy, whether you see it as Aceh or Indonesia as a whole, means that no industrial development of any significance. So many people live at a subsistence level or just above it – such as, for example, as fisherpeople, populating every spare spot on the coastline, right up on shore where accessibility the sea for un-motorised or very primitively motorized boats can have easy access.
But the problems do not stop there. These countries underdevelopment is a direct consequence and a continuation of the centuries of colonial exploitation and oppression that they suffered. In all of them, while they waged great and heroic struggles to win political independence from their colonisers, they did not win economic independence. Their economies and societies are semi-colomnial in nature and their governments are neo-colonial governments, of one sort or another, especially those of Sri Lanka and Indonesia. These neo-colonial governments have been kept in power with the support of one or other, or a combination of different imperial powers, who have armed them funded them and defended them from political criticism and opposition internationally. As political, military and bureaucratic elites that have aquisced to their neo-colonial status their character is corrupt, rent-seeking, and oppressive. They sit at the top of a state apparatus that is distrustful of, alienated from and often hostile to the mass of ordinary people. They serve their own immediaste financial interests, mainly those of their pockets, and those of international big capital. The people are at the leats a hindrance, more often an obstacle and really only useful as a source of labor, which , in any case, is in excess to capital’s immediate needs.
We now have plenty of glimpses of the operations of this state apparatus in Aceh, from the Indonesian journalists in Aceh and from the hundreds of activist volunteers from around Indonesia including activists in the Acehnese Peoples Democratic Struggle Front, the FPDRA. The Indonesian Army declared that only half of its forces in Aceh will be used for humanitarian relief, the rest will continue attacks on villages supporting the Free Aceh Movement. In fact, with between 20 and 40 thousand troops in Aceh, there is little sign of even half of these being allocated to this work. On top of this, there are reports coming in from activists in Aceh, consistent with reports from all the other volunteer activists now in Aceh, that the bureaucratic and elitist nature of the state apparatus hampers the relief movement at every turn, especially in the remote areas.
Supplies are only released to people with correct so-called papers, refuges can’t get aid with their I.D. cards most of which were lost in the tsunami, volunteers are stopped in their work to have the ID cards checked again and again, refugees are charged for aid parcels or to cross rivers and so the stories go on. Both the military and the corrupt elements in the civilian bureaucracy are just doing what they have always been doing and what a neo-colonial state apparatus always does and which the imperialist governments have supported all this while. In fact, they started these methods all when they directly ruled as colonial administrations.
Aid goods pile up in TNI army posts and civilian district head offices – the equivalent of the old colonial resident’s office – or at military controlled airports. Sometimes even civilian state officials cannot get access. I received one report from a FPDRA comrade in Medan, who witnessed a senior regional government official who had driven across to Medan from West Aceh seeking aid break down and cry when the army people at the airport turned him away for not having the right paperwork – meanwhile people die of disease and suffer in pain without medicines.
Of course even in our bourgeois so-called democracy the civilian bureaucracy is also alienated from the mass of the people. And this has become even more so in the period of neo-liberalism. While big capital has seen more and more deregulation, the rest of us, unemployed, ordinary trade unionists, and small businesspeople have seen bureaucracy and red tape expand at a mind-boggling rate. Imagine unemployed people have to keep a daily diary of the job seeking activities! But there still is a difference between the alienation from society of the state apparatus in a borugeois society and in a underdeveloped semi-colonial society. First, the citeznry has formal democratic rights, a longer history of modern class struggle organization and hugely more developed material base from which to try to hold the apparatus accountable. In other words, class struggle is “easier” from a material point of view. Secondly, the socio-economic status of the vast bulk of civil servants is more-or-less the same as most other workers. In semi-colonial countries while this is also true probably for the majority of civil servants, the layers of privileged civil servants is much greater due to the heritage from feudal and colonial times and the abject poverty of the peasants and workers.
So when a disaster happens, there is still a huge barrier. What a huge difference from the natural disaster mobilisations in Cuba when more than a million people can be evacuated so quickly before a hurricane hits and then moved back again. Cuba is just as poor as Indonesia, but it has priorities public infrastructure, its peoples interests and, most importantly, in many cases the people themselves are the state apparatus. The alienation between apparatus and people is so much less. And so they trust the people. In Indonesia and Aceh, the people are the enemy.
I am not sure about in other semi-colonial countries, but in Indonesia this alienation is entrenched and symbolised by the fact that all civil servants where military style uniforms and have ranks. They lord it over the population right down to the village. They are a man made disaster themselves which only multiply the disaster caused when nature strikes.
And they are apparatus’s sustained and maintained by imperialism to serve imperialism’s interests.
And so several poor, underdeveloped countries see the impact of an natural phenomenon on the lives of their people multiplied horrifically over what it should be. And then it is screened on TV for audiences around the world, and, given that a playground of western tourists was also hit, in particular for Western audiences. There are contradictions in the response. There is a massive outpouring of solidarity and donations from the mass of ordinary people in the rich countries and disgusting miserliness on the part of corporations and government. You will have all read stories in the papers of the tens of millions donated by ordinary people in Australia, and the miserly donations by the banks and the big corporations, such as TELSTRA.
Now, of course, after an obviously stingy set of initial commitments, the Australia and US governments, for example, are trying milk this sentiment for their own purposes. They are now campaigning to sell themselves as generous. In Jakarta, two days Howard announced - quote - the biggest ever aid program in Australia’s history – unquote, 1 billion Australian dollars for relief and reconstruction in Aceh. Of course, it is not the biggest ever aid program in Australia’s history. It pales into insignificance to the cost of the Australian aid program to the U.S. military in Iraq, and to the US military in Vietnam in the 60s and 70s and the British military in Malaysia in the 60s. In any case it is 1 billion Australian dollars over five years, i.e. 200 million a year.
And too, of this $1 billion, $500 million is a loan and most of the rest is made up of the cost of the Australian military deployments already in place in Aceh. But, it does appear bigger than anything carried out under the AUSAID banner before. It is a clever public relations move by Howard. And, chiming in with the US policy, it is a real part of the “war against terror”. It will enable the Australian ruling class to say: look, yes, we must be generally frightened of these failed societies, failed states and failed peoples, these sources of terrorism, but it is not our fault they are hostile to us: look how generous we are. The US government has commissioned the duo of George Bush Snr and Bill Clinton to travel the word collecting more money and proclaiming how generous we are: look, even to Moslems! They shout.
These are big public relations campaigns, which they also hope will overshadow, the bad news from Iraq. Blocking out the bad news of the spreading insurgency in Iraq is no doubt one immediate advantage, they hope to reap from this “look at our generosity” campaign. But its significance goes beyond this. It is the necessary companion response to the increased use of force in imperialism’s enforcement of neo-liberal globalisation throughout the world, especially the underdeveloped semi-colonial world.
We are in a new phase in the global class struggle. The code word signalling this new phase was initially “gloablisation”, but in the last few years “war on terror” was added. The emergence of the propaganda supporting “globalisation” signalled something new, but not in the sense of any qualititive change in the world economy. As we have discussed in many earlier reports, the spread globally of intensified exploitation embodied in intensification of policies of privatisation, deregulation, dismantling of protection of domestic industries and agriculture in the Third World has been connected to the accumulating problems and contradictions of imperialism as an economic system. Put bluntly, declining rates of profit demand reductions in the cost of investment in all fronts. In imperialist countries, the welfare state must be rolled back. In the Third World, the gains of national economic development must be rolled back.
This neo-liberal globalisation – the global spreading of neo-liberal policies - has been proceeding for more than a decade now. Inequalities in wealth are getting worse. Data from the IMF point to this very clearly:
In 1970 the advanced industrial countries accounted for 68% of global income, in 2000 it is 81%, even while the advanced countries population has dropped to 16% from 20%. GDP per capita for the advanced countries in 1970 was $10,473, today it is $26,201. GDP per capita in the rest of the world after rising from $1,248 in 1970 to $1,690 in 1980 dropped again to $1,160 per annum in 2000. The IMF’s inequality ratio summing up this increased from 8.4 in 1970 to 22.6 in 2000.
But these kind of inequalities, while indeed worsening now, have always existed. Why the need for more propaganda barrages now: about the threat of terror to “civilisation” by implication from the uncivilised.. Yes, of course, the neo-liberal drive makes many millions of peoples lives worse and more and more people in the imperialist countries can see this on their TV screens and have a moral unease about it. This is a big factor; the ruling classes started to see it manifest in new popular mobilisations in the US and Europe after Seattle.
But there is another factor. The driving backwards and downwards of so many economies of the underdeveloped world punctures one of the most widespread and important illusions among ordinary people throughout the world, and especially powerful and indeed central, in the underdeveloped world. This was the illusion, manifested in so much ideology and propaganda, that one day the underdeveloped world would develop. TRICKLE DOWN EFFECT, TAKE-OFF POINT, indeed the very word and idea of DEVELOPMENT itself contained the message that one day, maybe not in this generation, but one day, these countries would develop.
NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISATION announces the DEATH OF DEVELOPMENT.
As the destructive effects on economies of neo-liberal policies becomes exposed,at one level of consciousness or another, the understanding is spreading that the poverty of the underdeveloped semi-colonial world is PERMANENT. It is becoming harder and harder, INDEED IMPOSSIBLE, to sell the idea of DEVELOPMENT.
Indonesia is example I know best. From the moment, independence was proclaimed in 1945, everybody on the Left or Right, whether with a socialist or capitalist vision, saw the future, no matter how long term, as much forwards towards development. During the Suharto era, everything was done in the name of development: development plans, development cabinets, even Suharto was made Father of Development by the rubber-stamp parliament. Since the Asian crisis of 1997, the word has disappeared from all political discussion – ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED.
Consciousness or sensing this end of development is developing at different paces at different countries, with just a few countries outside the imperialist world escaping this process for the time being, maybe.
While the world remains capitalist, while imperialism still reigns, then, of course, we know that poverty is permanent. That has always been the case. The difference now is that the neo-liberal role back punctures these massive illusions that floursihed after the end of the second world war and energized by so many countries winning their political independence. There was hope, hope is disappearing – except where mass movements reject neo-liberal globalization, such as in Venezuela, Cuba and Vietnam. These are the only places where the masses can still talk about the development with hope.
This is the period we are entering. We have entered fully into it yet, but we will get their fast. A period where there are no real illusions that development is on its way. Where everybody knows that poverty in the Third World is permanent. And where the ruling classes want to make sure that their populations will feel the littlest solidarity possible with the people of the Third World, especially if they revolt. And NOW they will try to create the feeling that these people should feel gratitude for the imperialist’s generosity.
The world as it is today, the poverty and misery as it is today, PERMANENT. I mentioned the figures from the IMF earlier. But it is the World Bank which is the professed expert on poverty – after all, the eradication of poverty is clearly stated as one of its central goals. So, of course, just last year, on their website, they put up a poverty calculator. You just type in your variables for any country in the world and you get all the figures you want. For most of the underdeveloped worlds, their default setting for a poverty line is US$1 per day income per capita.
Of course, all these economists poverty lines are racist and colonial to their very essence. You get a percentage of who is under the poverty line by calculating what percentage is earning under US$1 Per day. There are all kinds of explanations of the formulas which get this more-or less average figure. But it all boils down to making an assessment of what level the poor are already living at. A typical calculation is determine the cost of buying the minimum level of internationally accepted calories (not taking into account costs of proteins, vitamins and other nutrients in food) and then adding a percentage based on WHAT POOR PEOPLE ALREADY SPEND ABOVE THEIR FOOD.
This is just a formula for permanence. But the website calculator was there, so maybe, I thought, I could check some different figures. A real poverty line would be much higher. Many goods and services that the average person in Australia uses have more or less international prices: quality pharmaceuticals and medical services; schools with good laboratories and library; houses built solidly with good finishes and safe electrics installed by trained electricians, for example. And, today, in Indonesia, for example, a ticket to the cinema is the same as in Australia. Well, according to the IMF, in the year 2000, the GDP per capita for the advanced countries was $26,000. Maybe I could use that: $71 dollars per day. Still, there are some things cheaper in the poor countries. That might still be unfair, what about $35 per day then; still too much, $10 hmmm, - to be absolutely safe I chose $4 per day. And so the figure $4 was entered by a friend who was adept at this website. The results:
Indonesia in 2000 - 88.29% of the population average out on less than $4 per day
Sri Lanka in 2000 – 85.39%
Thailand 63%
Rural China 93%
Asia as a whole excluding Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore 74.89%
Latin and South America 50%
Sub-sahara Africa 90%
Middle East 50%, reaching 88% in Egypt.
African has the worst poverty, virtually having been written off as far as future prospects go, just as the impact of the Tsunami in Somalia, where 50,000 people are reported to have died, has been written out of the media coverage of the Tsunami. Too far from Phuket, perhaps as well.
Such is the proposed permanent division of the world.
War and colonialism
Here we have such a big contradiction, which we should use in all our explanations. The era of globalisation is the era where imperialism must win acceptance of permanent division, and of permanent hostility between rich and poor worlds; of a permanent “clash of civilisations”; of permanent war. Permanent hostility is inevitable once the illusion of possible development declines and vanishes. We know from all the writings of the so called NEO-CONS that many parts of the imperialist countries ruling classes realised that this is the period the world is entering. They were looking for a way to prepare the working classes of the imperialist countries not to solidarise with hostility, i.e. resistance, from the Third World. They tried rogue states and failed states, and then September 11 gave them the “war against terror” which they have frequently proclaimed as war that will last far into the future – it will be more or less permanent.
As soon as September 11 provided the opportunity, they launched an all out propaganda campaign to convince people that ordinary people in the imperialist countries were now under constant threat from “Islamic terrorists”, terrorists from an alien culture. With an eye on Iraq's oil and on strengthening their political and military position in the Middle East, they invaded and occupied Iraq (after first doing the same to Afghanistan). They wanted to put the “war against terror” into practice as soon as possible, and start to win people over to the idea that such wars were now inevitable and part of the long-term future. They accompanied this with constant threats of similar aggression against other countries: Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, just as starters.
So now 100,000 Iraqis are dead, and thousands more maimed. Basic infrastructure that had always operated relatively well – electricity and water – no longer works in many parts of the country. The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. So they are spending about $226 million per day. The US’s pledge to the countries effected by the Tsunami is the equivalent of the cost of 1.5 day’s of US military destruction, oppression and death in Iraq.
Remember all those people on less than $4 per day. 148 billion would be enough to pay 100 million people $4 per day, four times what the World Bank sets as the poverty line. Not to mention what could be done with this to build up the productive forces of several countries.
Associated with this new warlike aggression is the revival of colonial occupation and directly installed puppet regimes, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on a lesser scale, in PNG and Solomon Island. There is a steady build up interventions into so-called failed states – i.e. corrupt and inefficient neo-colonial states formed under imperialist protection in the first place, The increased intervention into the operations of the Indonesian state by the Australian state is also a part of this. The permanent stationing of Australian police at counter-terrorism centers, and now a joint Australian-Indonesian Commission to reconstruct Aceh, where Australian state apparatus personnel will be placed within the Indonesian state apparatus. Still early days, but the first incursions are under way.
If the coup in Venezuela had succeeded, who would be running Venezuela today – the U.S. Embassy, I think. Just like they ran the coup also.
Walls
But again contradictions. Colonial occupations; colonial incursions and interventions. Imperialist state power, as well as capital, strives to extend more deeply into the semi-colonial countries. But at the same time, walls are put up between the two spheres of the world’s population rich and poor.
The most vivid and viscious of these walls is that Israel is building between it and the Palestinian people. This wall is deeply symbolic of the world trend. Two worlds, rich and poor, comfortable and miserable, arrogant and humiliated, powerful and oppressed, set in permanent hostility, separated by a wall. And an army. And preemptive strikes. And severe passport controls. Immigration control is the other wall that is being hardened in all the imperialist countries along with racism.
Along with these walls come a new crime, close to treason, namely, to help anybody climb over the wall and get into the haven countries. There are activists in Australia now being charged with such a crime, helping refugees get passports. But the prospect of traitors helping people on the other side of the walls is what lies behind all the draconian legislation attacking civil liberties.
And soon the treason will be seen as an even worse crime, because those helping people on the other side of the wall, either climb over it or – heaven help them – pull the wall down will be seen as helping, not just the uncivilised but the ungrateful uncivilised.
Let us return again to the question of generosity, because, like idea of the threat of terrorism, it is an idea with which we will now have to do battle. The imperialist leaderships have seen the opportunity here. For just a few hundred million dollars over several years, sold as a new ‘Marshal Plan’, they want to repackage themselves in the eyes of the peoples of the world. In Jakarta, on Thursday, even the US announced that they would increase their aid but even submit to the coordination of the dreaded United Nations! They can see that the massive, incredible donations by ordinary people around the world is indeed a potential threat if it ever developed from sympathy and empathy to political solidarity. They know they have to co-opt this sentiment as soon as possible. Now there are two propaganda fronts: that other world breeds terrorists but still we are generous. Maybe there will be less terrorists – of course, the reality on the ground, the increased misery and humiliation, means that the hostility will continue to grow and they will try to depict this hostility as being ungrateful.
And a billion dollars for Aceh will sound a lot to many Australians. And the bourgeois media won’t point out that is only 200 million a year and they won’t underline the comparisons with the size of the war budget or the 4 billion annual profit of TELSTRA. And we will face the question from people: how much aid is enough? Two billion? Three billion? How much?
The reality is of course that no amount of aid can do away with fundamental INEQUALITY. No amount. That is our point and we have to find all the different ways to explain this. We will always demand more aid and any reforms that will transfer wealth from the imperialist countries to the semi-colonial and poor countries. We will always demand, for example, that the Third World debt be cancelled.
In the end, however, we must always keep explaining that these INEQUALITIES can in the end only be ended through the ending of inequalities in power, within countries and internationally; through fundamental social and political change; through revolution. That is our final framework and the only realistic one.
Many wars, many resistances
Under class society, and capitalist society in particular, permanent war has always been a reality. Today the treat of terrorism form alien, barbarian civilisations is used to try to win popular acceptance of this – no more talk about “peace”.
This permanent war is comprised of many wars.
There are wars in different countreis and regions.
There are wars on different fronts:
• Military wars of occupation and colonisation
• Wars of subversion and sabotage, such as those against venezuela and Cuba
• Economic wars against whole peopels using the weapons of debt and conditionality
• Wars against civil liberties, and democratic and trade union rights
Their world is a world of many wars.
Many wars means many resistances.
The resistance that is most at the center of world politics at this moment is the resistance in Iraq. Even watching the TV news, it is clear that the resistance in Iraq to US occupation is huge. Whether it is the form of the Shia resistance of the Badr movement, which waged so many armed battles against the US earlier in the year and ow is boycotting the colonial elections; the resistance of the people of Fallujah who had finally to be driven out of their city. Their city was flattened to make sure it could never be a base of resistance again – the old hamletting tactic from the Vietnam war, disperse the civilian support base. And just the resistance evident in the never resting bombing attacks.
The puppet government’s own intelligence chief, let the cat out of the bag recently. In an interview he said:
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence service director, General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani , said the number includes at least 40,000 hardcore fighters but rises to more than 200,000 members counting part-time fighters and volunteers who provide rebels everything from intelligence and logistics to shelter.”
There is an enormous amount of discussion on the international Left about the political significance of this resistance. But one thing is clear. They have delivered a huge defeat to the American ruling class INSOFAR AS THEY HAVE DEFEATED THE ORIGINAL PLANS OF THE US. The plan for quickly establishing a stable puppet colonial government to supervise the establishing of a functioning semi-colonial colony under neo-liberal policies producing oil and other long-term profits for U.S corporations has been completely defeated. Instead they face escalating war, as the resistance escalates, requiring at least the current 120,000 US soldiers to control an economy that is producing no long-term super-profits, just the cream-offs from marked-up war tenders for the war profiteers like Halliburtons.
What precise form any further defeats that the US will suffer is not clear; what deals they might make with different sections of the Iraqi bourgeoisie; whether those deals will save them from a more obviously ignominious final defeat, we cannot predict with certainty. But the longer the resistance goes on and the longer the U.S. cannot find a tactic to push it back, the more chance is that new leaderships will develop within that resistance. I don’t think any of on the Left can identify a leadership that we would be confident might lead a genuinely radical democratic movement or revolution at this point. Such a thing may or may not develop. But we should not rule it out or undervalue the spirit of this resistance. Listen to this statement from the Islamic Jihad Army:on December 13, 2004.
"We are simple people who chose principles over fear."
People of the world! These words come to you from those who up to the
day of the invasion were struggling to survive under the sanctions
imposed by the criminal regimes of the U.S. and Britain .
We are simple people who chose principles over fear.
We have suffered crimes and sanctions, which we consider the true
weapons of mass destruction.
Years and years of agony and despair, while the condemned UN traded with
our oil revenues in the name of world stability and peace.
Over two million innocents died waiting for a light at the end of a
tunnel that only ended with the occupation of our country and the theft
of our resources.
After the crimes of the administrations of the U.S. and Britain in Iraq
, we have chosen our future. The future of every resistance struggle
ever in the history of man.
It is our duty, as well as our right, to fight back the occupying
forces, which their nations will be held morally and economically
responsible; for what their elected governments have destroyed and
stolen from our land.
We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S.
nor are we responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of the lies that
these criminals present to cover their true plans for the control of the
energy resources of the world, in face of a growing China and a strong
unified Europe . It is Ironic that the Iraqi's are to bear the full face
of this large and growing conflict on behalf of the rest of this
sleeping world.
We thank all those, including those of Britain and the U.S. , who took
to the streets in protest against this war and against Globalism. We
also thank France , Germany and other states for their position, which
least to say are considered wise and balanced, til now.
Today, we call on you again.
We do not require arms or fighters, for we have plenty.
We ask you to form a world wide front against war and sanctions. A
front that is governed by the wise and knowing. A front that will bring
reform and order. New institutions that would replace the now corrupt.
Stop using the U.S. dollar, use the Euro or a basket of currencies.
Reduce or halt your consumption of British and U.S. products. Put an
end to Zionism before it ends the world. Educate those in doubt of the
true nature of this conflict and do not believe their media for their
casualties are far higher than they admit.
We only wish we had more cameras to show the world their true defeat.
The enemy is on the run. They are in fear of a resistance movement they
can not see nor predict.
We, now choose when, where, and how to strike. And as our ancestors
drew the first sparks of civilization, we will redefine the word
“conquest.“
Today we write a new chapter in the arts of urban warfare.
Know that by helping the Iraqi people you are helping yourselves, for
tomorrow may bring the same destruction to you.
In helping the Iraqi people does not mean dealing for the Americans for
a few contracts here and there. You must continue to isolate their
strategy.
This conflict is no longer considered a localized war. Nor can the
world remain hostage to the never-ending and regenerated fear that the
American people suffer from in general.
We will pin them here in Iraq to drain their resources, manpower, and
their will to fight. We will make them spend as much as they steal, if
not more.
We will disrupt, then halt the flow of our stolen oil, thus, rendering
their plans useless.
And the earlier a movement is born, the earlier their fall will be.
And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight
tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons, and seek refuge in our mosques,
churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq
, as we have done with a few others before you.
Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones. This is not your war.
Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq .
And to George W. Bush, we say, “You have asked us to ‘Bring it on’, and
so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge?”
I don’t know exactly who they are, what there program is, how much of the resistance they lead, but if this is any way an honest statement, it exhibits a worthy spirit.
The defeat that the US has already suffered, including its casualties, has not yet provoked a full scale revival of the US anti-war movement. We will get a better idea of its state when we see the mobilisations that are planned to coincide with the second inaugration of George W. Bush later this month. However, the defeat has provoked an unparalleled level of dissent and rebelliousness amongst the U.S. soldiery. It took much longer for a veterans Against the War movement to develop during the Vietnam War than during the Iraq war of the last 22 months. And in the case of the Vietnam anti-war movement, soldier dissent grew with the growth of the anti-war movement as a whole and was, in addition, assisted by the fact of conscription.
In the U.S. the military families against the war movement and radicalised former soldiers such as Stan Goff are very much at the center of the movement, and providing leadership. Goff has gone from being a master sergeant in Special Operations, having served in Vietnam, Grenada and Somalia.
This should not be surprising given the specific nature of the defeat that the US has suffered in Iraq. Their plan to establish a stable, properly functioning neo-colonial government was premised on there being no significant resistance. The failure of the plan so quickly has undermined the rationale provided to soldiers for being there.
So now we have former soldiers at the center of the US anti-war movement trying to galvanise more soldiers into playing a leading role in building the anti-war movement. It will be fascinating and educational to hear Goff speak about this work and challenge during his participation in the Asia Pacific International Conference in March this year. He has certainly stirred discussion on the Left in the U.S. and on the Marxism email list: how to reach out to soldiers and workers and how to deepen their radicalisation. That is the central question that the debates he has stirred up address. Just one of the many reasons to bring the maximum number of people with you to APISC in March.
Many resistances.
Resistance in Iraq. Resistance among US soldiers and their families.
There are many resistances, at different levels of organization and political consciousness, different stages.
While the resistance in Iraq might be said to be at the center of world politics at this particular conjuncture, it is the resistances that are most advanced politically whose centrality is strategic. Cuba is the outstanding example here. A whole people resists U.S imperialism, neo-liberal globalisation while actually advancing the health, education, social security and culture of its people, despite also being kept on the poor side of the global dividing wall. The US embargo on Cuba is another vivid example of imperialism’s walls. And the Cuban peoples’ resistance has also not hesitated to extend outside its borders to solidarity to other peoples, including in arms as well as with health and technical volunteers. And the Cuban leadership has not hesitated to intervene fully into the international battle of ideas in international arenas.
…
In referring to Cuba and Venezuela here I have talked of their resistance to imperialism while they build their societies at the same time. But, of course, we know that in these cases, as with Vietnam, they are more than resistances, they are revolutions. They have or are turning everything upside down compared to everywhere else: the mass of people’s interests dominate; the organizations of the people wield state power or are in the process of winning that state power. Sustaining our solidarity with these revolutions has a particular priority.
Firstly, of course, as we think only revolution will end the inequalities from which most of the worlds human suffering originates, it follows that we support all revolutions that take place. We see them as precious gains for humanity that must be defended at all costs/
And then, not so much secondly, but perhaps equally as important but in a different way, there is the question of hope. We often talk about the example they show, and the example of Cuba indeed shows what a rationally organised human society can achieve. Just as the example of Venezuela shows that the people mobilised and with good leadership can seize the initiative from a long powerful and still wealthy class enemy and take government and then hold it against imperialist organised coups and sabotage.
These examples give hope. In a world of many wars and where the neo-liberal offensive is exposing imperialism’s acceptance of the permanence of poverty and the death of development, the hope that these examples can inspire is of IMMEASURABLE value. We must sharply conscious of this. These revolutions of a great value spiritually: in keeping peoples spirits alive.
And there are many other resistances. Bolivian and Paraguay are in revolt. Palestine: an incredible fight. Another whole people mobilised.
Indonesia was the sight of a great anti-dictatorship resistance during the 1990s, where revolutionaries played a major leadership role. With the fall of the dictatorship, the mass movement has dispersed. But resistance has not gone into retreat. Social protest is endemic, now an integral part of daily life. Street protest, occupations, strikes occur every single day somewhere in some town or city, and usually in many more than one on any one day. Every sector is touched: workers, peasants, fishermen, professionals, teachers, students housewives. They resist in spontaneous, ad hoc protest of between 10 to 10,000 people, rising and disappearing, sometimes, but not yet frequently giving rise to permanent forms of organization. Another kind of resistance.