ZGram 0 7/5/2002 - "John Pilger's new book"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

July 5, 2002

Below is an excerpt of a noteworthy book:

[START]

Rise of a new imperialism

July 3 2002

It is nearly 10 months since September 11, and still the great 
charade plays on. Having appropriated our shocked and humane response 
to that momentous day, the rulers of the world have since ground our 
language into a paean of cliches and lies about the "war on 
terrorism" - when the most enduring menace, and source of terror, is 
them.

The fanatics who attacked America came mostly from Saudi Arabia, the 
spiritual home of al-Qaeda and the tutors of the Taliban, but no 
bombs fell on that oil-rich American protectorate. According to an 
American study, 5000 civilians were bombed to death in stricken, 
impoverished Afghanistan, where not a single al-Qaeda leader of 
importance has been caught, or to anyone's knowledge, killed. Osama 
bin Laden got clean away, as did the Taliban ruler Mullah Omah.

After this "victory", hundreds of prisoners, including the Australian 
David Hicks, were shipped to an American concentration camp in Cuba, 
where they have been held against all conventions of war and 
international law. No evidence of their alleged crimes has been 
produced. In the United States, more than 1000 people of Muslim 
background have "disappeared"; none has been charged. Legislation 
undermining the Bill of Rights has been rushed through Congress. For 
example, the FBI now has the power to go into libraries and find out 
who is reading what.

Meanwhile, the British and Australian governments made fools of their 
soldiers by insisting they followed America's orders and pursued 
Afghan tribesmen opposed to this or that favoured warlord. This is 
what British squaddies in puttees and pith helmets did over a century 
ago when Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, described Afghanistan as one 
of the "pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great 
game for the domination of the world".

There is no war on terrorism. It is the great game speeded up, and 
now more dangerous than ever.

Having delivered the Palestinians into the arms of Ariel Sharon, the 
Christian Right fundamentalists running the plutocracy in Washington 
turn their priorities to manufacturing more bombs and missiles to 
hurl at the 22 million suffering people of Iraq. Should anyone need 
reminding, this is a nation held hostage to an American-led embargo 
every bit as barbaric as their dictator. Iraq is the world's second 
greatest source of oil - the reason for the attack is that America 
wants another, less uppity thug to run it.

The Pentagon told former president Bill Clinton that an all-out 
attack on Iraq might kill "at least" 10,000 civilians. In a sustained 
propaganda campaign, journalists on both sides of the Atlantic have 
been used as "conduits" for rumours and lies. These ranged from 
allegations about an Iraqi connection with anthrax attacks in the US 
to a link between the leader of the September 11 hijacks and Iraqi 
intelligence. Both have been discredited.

The great charade is imperialism's return journey to respectability.

As the historian Frank Furedi reminds us in The New Ideology of 
Imperialism, it is not long ago "that the moral claims of imperialism 
were seldom questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global 
expansion of the Western powers were represented in unambiguously 
positive terms as a major contributor to human civilisation". The 
quest went wrong when it was clear that fascism, with all its ideas 
of racial and cultural superiority, was imperialism too, and the word 
vanished from academic discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition, 
imperialism no longer existed.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, a new opportunity arose. The 
economic and political crisis in the developing world, largely the 
result of post-colonialism, such as the blood-letting in the Middle 
East and the destruction of commodity markets in Africa, served as 
retrospective justification for imperialism. Although the word 
remains unspeakable, the Western intelligentsia, conservatives and 
liberals alike, boldly echo the preferred euphemism, "civilisation".

 From Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of 
crypto-fascists, to impeccably liberal commentators, the new 
imperialists share a concept whose true meaning relies on a 
comparison with those who are uncivilised, inferior and might 
challenge the "values" of the West.

The great divisions opening up between the rich and poor are reduced 
to platitudes of how best "we" deal with "them" - an attitude 
expressed in the return of xenophobia and racism towards refugees, 
led aggressively by the Howard Government.

There are many blueprints for the new imperialism, but none as cogent 
as that of Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to several American 
presidents and one of the most influential gurus in Washington, whose 
1997 book is said to have biblical authority among the George W. Bush 
gang and its "endless war" intelligentsia. In The Grand Chessboard: 
American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski writes: 
"Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 
years ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world power."

The key to controlling this vast area of the world is Central Asia. 
Dominance of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan 
ensures not only new sources of energy and mineral wealth but a 
"guard post" over American control of the oil of the Persian Gulf. 
"What is most important to the history of the world?" asked 
Brzezinski. "The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some 
stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe ...?" The 
"stirred-up Muslims" replied on September 11 last year.

Nation states, says Brzezinski, will be incorporated in the "new 
order". "To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more 
brutal age of ancient empires," he says, "the three grand imperatives 
of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain 
security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and 
protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."

Brzezinski is not from the lunar right. He is as mainstream as Bush. 
He was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, who 
persuaded Carter to sign a secret executive order in 1979, funding a 
new Islamic terrorist movement, the Mujihadeen, which the CIA trained 
in Pakistan and Virginia and from which emerged Osama bin Laden, 
al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Brzezinski's followers include John 
Negroponte, the mastermind of American terror in Central America 
under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, now Bush's ambassador to the United 
Nations. It was Negroponte who first warned the world, after 
September 11, that the US planned to attack any country it wished.

For those in thrall to, and neutered by, the supercult of America, 
the most salient truths remain taboos. Perhaps the most important 
taboo is the longevity of the US as both a terrorist state and a 
haven for terrorists. That the US in the only state on record to have 
been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism (in 
Nicaragua) and has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on 
governments to observe international law, is unmentionable.

"In the war against terrorism," said Bush, "we're going to hunt down 
these evil-doers wherever they are, no matter how long it takes." 
Strictly speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are 
given training and sanctuary in the US than anywhere in the world. 
They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants and 
assorted international criminals.

There is no terrorist sanctuary to compare with Florida, currently 
governed by the President's brother, Jeb. In his book Rogue State, 
former senior State Department official Bill Blum describes a typical 
Florida trial of three anti-Castro terrorists who had hijacked a 
plane to Miami at knifepoint. "Even though the kidnapped pilot was 
brought back from Cuba to testify against the men," he wrote, "the 
defence simply told the jurors the man was lying, and the jury 
deliberated for less than an hour before acquitting the defendants."

General Jose Guillermo Garcia has lived in Florida since the 1990s. He
was head of El Salvador's military during the 1980s when death squads 
closely linked to the army murdered thousands of people. General 
Prosper Avril, the Haitian dictator, liked to display the bloodied 
victims of his torture on television. When he was overthrown, he was 
flown to Florida
by the US Government. Thiounn Prasith, Pol Pot's henchman and 
apologist at the UN, lives in Mount Vernon, New York. General Mansour 
Moharari, who ran the Shah of Iran's notorious prisons, is wanted in 
Iran, but is untroubled in the US.

Al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan were kindergartens compared 
with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in 
Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it 
trained 60,000 Latin American soldiers, policemen, paramilitaries and 
intelligence agents in terrorism.

In 1993, the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army 
officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war; 
two-thirds of them had been trained at Fort Benning. In Chile, the 
school's graduates ran Pinochet's secret police and three principal 
concentration camps. In 1966, the US government was forced to release 
copies of the school's training manuals. For aspiring terrorists, 
these recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of 
witnesses' relatives.

The irony is that the US is also the home of some of history's 
greatest human rights movements, such as the 1960s epic campaign for 
civil rights.

Having just returned from the US, it seems the stirring has begun 
again. In an open letter to their compatriots and the world, 
published in the Herald on June 17, almost 100 of the US's most 
distinguished names in art, literature, journalism and education 
wrote: "Let it not be said that people in the US did nothing when 
their government declared war without limit and instituted stark new 
measures of repression. We believe that nations have the right to 
determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great 
powers. We believe that all persons detained and prosecuted by the US 
Government should have the same right of due process. We believe that 
questioning, criticism and dissent must be valued and protected. Such 
rights are always contested and must be fought for. We, too, watched 
with shock the horrific events of September 11. But the mourning had 
barely begun when our leaders launched a spirit of revenge. The 
Government now openly prepares to wage war on Iraq - a country that 
has no connection with September 11. We say this to the world: too 
many times in history people have waited until it was too late to 
resist. We draw on the inspiration of those who fought slavery and 
all those other great causes of freedom that began with dissent. We 
call on all like-minded people around the world to join us."

It is time we joined them.

[END]

This is an edited extract from The New Rulers of the World, by John 
Pilger, published this month by Pan Macmillan Australia.

This story was found at: 
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/02/1023864733062.html

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