DOUBLESPEAK: The White Man's Civilizing Mission Burden Once Again (fwd)

Mike - am sending to you since you used Eduardo G's similar




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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 17:40:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andre Gunder Frank <franka@fiu.edu>
To: franka@fiu.edu
Subject: DOUBLESPEAK: The White Man's Civilizing Mission Burden Once Again

In George Orwell's 1984 the  DOUBLE THINK and NEW SPEAK of BIG BROTHER
proclaimed WAR IS PEACE. Here and Now, they are collapsed into
DOUBLESPEAK

The present war without end is being fought to assure lasting pecae, as
President George W. Bush has repeatedly assured us.


A HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE

"Beware of the leader who bangs of war in order to whip the citizenry into
a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. "It
both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.  And when the drums
of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the
mind is closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the
citizenry. "Rather, the citizenry infused with fear and blinded by
patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and do it
gladly so.  How do I know?  I know for this is what I have done. "And I am
Caesar."

ON MARKETING FREEDOM

by Naomi Klein
TORONTO -- When the White House decided it was time to address the rising
tides of anti-Americanism around the world, it didn't look to a career
diplomat for help. Instead, in keeping with the Bush administration's
philosophy that anything the public sector can do the private sector can
do better, it hired one of Madison Avenue's top brand managers.

As undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs,
Charlotte Beers' assignment was not to improve relations with other
countries but rather to perform an overhaul of the U.S. image abroad.
Beers had no previous State Department experience, but she had held the
top job at both the J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather ad agencies,
and she's built brands for everything from dog food to power drills.

Now she was being asked to work her magic on the greatest branding
challenge of all: to sell the United States and its war on terrorism to an
increasingly hostile world. The appointment of an ad woman to this post
understandably raised some criticism, but Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell shrugged it off. "There is nothing wrong with getting somebody who
knows how to sell something. We are selling a product. We need someone who
can re-brand American foreign policy, re-brand diplomacy." Besides, he
said, "She got me to buy Uncle Ben's rice."
-----------------
-----------------
ON PEACE

- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. "The president
believes that Ariel Sharon is a man of peace."
April 11

Comment by Elson Boles: 
Well of course "The president believes that Ariel Sharon is a man of
peace" because the president is himself similarly a deft "man of peace."
It's all quite consistent:
Occupation is Liberation.
Repression is Freedom.
War is Peace and Security.
Bush and Sharon are men of peace.
-----------------------------
------------------------

ON TERRORISM 
[from among thousands...]

by Eqbal Ahmad 
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish underground in Palestine was described
a "terrorist." Then new things happened. By 1942, the Holocaust was
occurring, and a certain liberal sympathy with the Jewish people had built
up in the Western world. At that point, the terrorists of Palestine, who
were Zionists, suddenly started to be described, by 1944-45, as "freedom
fighters." At least two Israeli Prime Ministers, including Menachem Begin,
have actually, you can find in the books and posters with their pictures,
saying "Terrorists, Reward This Much." The highest reward I have noted so
far was 100,000 British pounds on the head of Menachem Begin, the
terrorist. Then from 1969 to 1990 the PLO, the Palestine Liberation
Organization, occupied the center stage as the terrorist organization.
Yasir Arafat has been described repeatedly by the great sage of American
journalism, William Safire of the New York Times, as the "Chief of
Terrorism."

----------
Prof. Ehud Sprinzak, the so-called "expert on extremist
movements," was interviewed on the lunchtime programme [Yoman
Hatzohorayim] of Channel 7. The interviewer, Ariel Kahana, presented him
as a "person of the left". Sprinzak did not like this description. "I am a
person of the centre", he said, "and in general I dislike labels". Then
the following dialogue took place:

Kahana: "What do you think about the executions in the Palestinian
Authority?"

Sprinzak: "I have a very positive opinion; I mean, it is a vital
instrument, part of the struggle against terrorism and I have no
reservation, except for one thing..."

Kahana: "Ah, one moment, one moment: I was referring to the executions of
collaborators by the Palestinian Authorities, not to the liquidations by
our forces".

Sprinzak: "Pardon, pardon, I thought you were asking me ... In any case,
about the Palestinians: it is disgusting, nauseating, this is how a
dictatorial system operates, without any juridical process. Absolutely
unacceptable, shocking."

[Originally from GNAA]

-----------

by gunder frank

Analogously to the appeal to human rights in order to trample on them in
the NATO WAR against Yugoslavia, the present US/UK WAR against Afghanistan
is ''fighing terrorism'' by using and spreading terrorism. Apart from
using culster bombs, the US military is flying B-52 bombers 8 thousand
miles from the US to Afghanistan in order to drop its biggest block
busters [designed to bust bunkers] on people with the express [that is
expressed by the Pentagon! ] intent '' to frighten and create panic and
chaos'' among both troops and civilians. That is not terror? Moreover, the
US government is also deliberately exposing its own population to
increased and more widespread terror: A US Senator inteviewed on ABC TV
was asked how the bombing of Afghanistan might impact on the United
States. His answer: that his sources informed that a US attack of
Afghanistan would result ''in a 100 % chance of another terrorist attack
on the US" [a direct quotation!]. Then asked further by the interviewer
whether that does not pose a serious problmen, the US Senator replied
[another direct quotation] ''I am not troubled by that''!

--------------

In THE STATE OF TERROR, Oliverio's powerful analysis of terrorism is to
"comprehend that it is the state, including especially the academy and
the media, who serve their own interests by labelling, denouncing, and
persecuting the powerless as the sources of 'terrorism'.  Concomitantly,
Oliverio also appeals to our comprehension of how the same interested
parties use this same power to shape our perceptions in their (largely
successful) attempt to protect themselves from the terrorist label and
other critiques and to exempt their policies from reform."  [from the
Foreword by Andre Gunder Frank]
                 
-------------------------
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ON DEMOCRACY

US organized Venezuelan military and right wing ouster of democratically
elected [2 tims with highest majorities ever]  elected Presidet Hugo
Chavez - and  the installation of a new ''president'' in violation of
the Constitutional provisions for succession - is a ''return to democracy
same time, same station

------- 
The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself,
began, say sources, 'several months ago', and continued until weeks before
the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by
the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin
America, Otto Reich.

Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American who, under Reagan, ran the Office for
Public Diplomacy. It reported in theory to the State Department, but Reich
was shown by congressional investigations to report directly to Reagan's
National Security Aide, Colonel Oliver North, in the White House.

Reich also has close ties to Venezuela, having been made ambassador to
Caracas in 1986. Reich is said by OAS sources to have had 'a number of
meetings with Carmona and other leaders of the coup' over several months.
The coup was discussed in some detail, right down to its timing and
chances of success, which were deemed to be excellent.

On the day Carmona claimed power, Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin
America and the Caribbean to his office. He said the removal of Chavez was
not a rupture of democratic rule, as he had resigned and was 'responsible
for his fate'. He said the US would support the Carmona government.

But the crucial figure around the coup was Abrams, who operates in the
White House as senior director of the National Security Council for
'democracy, human rights and international operations' [SIC!!]. He was a
leading theoretician of the school known as 'Hemispherism', which put a
priority on combating Marxism in the Americas.

It led to the coup in Chile in 1973, and the sponsorship of regimes and
death squads that followed it in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras,
Guatemala and elsewhere. During the Contras' rampage in Nicaragua, he
worked directly to North.

Congressional investigations found Abrams had harvested illegal funding
for the rebellion. Convicted for withholding information from the inquiry,
he was pardoned by George Bush senior.
 
        Ed Vulliamy in THE OBSERVER [London]
-----------

The Times (London)                               April 24, 2002

VENEZUELAN COUP PLOTTER 'IN MIAMI'

     From David Adams in Miami

In the aftermath of Venezuela's failed coup, the United States faces
further potential embarrassment after the discovery that several alleged
coup leaders fled to Miami

----------------------

Before Venezuela's 1998 presidential election, the US State Department
denied Chavez a visa to visit the United States on the grounds - according
to Albright - that he had once been the leader of a coup, and therefore a
criminal unworthy of entry.
 
We wonder if the State Department will now apply its "no coup leaders
allowed" to the band of oligarchs, military thugs (trained by the School
of the Americas, like so many Latin American torturers and dictators), and
media moguls, who were leaders of the failed coup of April 2002. (When he
was arrested and charged with violating the Constitution on Sunday, the
military-installed dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona was reportedly fleeing
from Miraflores Palace en route to the U.S. Embassy to seek asylum.)

        Comment by  Al Giordano

-------------- 

Well...this is really amusing.  I have to confess that,
after Reagan's alleged reasons to invade Grenada (that little island was
supposed to be a security threat for the US...according to Chomsky the
Mexican president refused to report this to his own people and support the
invasion because he was, understandably, afraid that fourty million
mexicans would die in histerical laughter)...well, I never thought that I
would find a more reliable source of comic relief than that story.  But
what about this?  We have a country whose president wins, and with a
considerable margin, four elections in three years (1998 election with 80
per cent of the vote, referendum on the modification of the constitution,
election for the members of the constitutional commission, referendum on
the approval of the constitution...to the point that i do not believe
there is a more 'democratic' government on planet earth), who gets
attacked by an organisation for the promotion of democracy emating from a
country of which the president was appointed by the Supreme Court, after a
very dubious Florida ballot and anyhow obtaining the minority of the
overall US citizens votes...this one really is hard to beat.
  Comment by Damian.Popolo

-------------------
--------------------
ON PARTNETRSHIP FOR PEACE

"Partnership for Peace" programs of which the Strategic Research
Development Report 5-96 of the [U.S] Center for Naval Warfare Studies
reports on 

"activities of these forces that provide dominant battlespace knowledge
necessary to shape regional  security environments. Multinational
excersizes,     port visits, staff-to-staff coordination - all designed to
increase force inter-operability and access to regional military
facilities - along with intelligence and surveillance  operations.... 
[So] forward deployed forces are backed up by those which can surge for
rapid reenforcement and can be in place in seven to thirty days
[256-257]""

Gunder Frank comments December 2000:
 
-- all as a 'partnership for peace" in - we may understand - Orwellian
double-speak. Indeed, U.S. local diplomats and the Clinton administration
now regard the Transcapian as a 'backup' for Middle East oil supplies and
some insist that the U.S. "take the lead in pacifying the entire
area" including by the possible overthrow of  inconveniently not
sufficiently cooperative  governments [258]. The policy and praxis of
common military exercises also includes distant Kazakstan. All this and
more "reflects a major shift in U.S. policy toward Cental Asia
... coordinated by the National Security Council," as the author quotes
from the hawkish U.S. JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION MONITOR.  The Security
Council's former head and then already super anti-Soviet Russian hawk,
Zbigniew Brzezinsky, now promotes a modernized Mackinder heartland vision
of a grand U.S. led anti-Russian coalition of Europe,Turkey, Iran, and
China as well as Central Asia [253].

        Gunder Frank
        
ON FREEDOM FIGHTERS
by Eqbal Ahmad

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men. These
bearded men I was writing about in those days in The New Yorker, actually
did. They were very ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans looking
like they came from another century. President Reagan received them in the
White House. After receiving them he spoke to the press. He pointed
towards them, I'm sure some of you will recall that moment, and said,
"These are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers". These were
the Afghan Mujahiddin. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the
Evil Empire. They were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers! 


ON NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

U.N. Secretary General Wins Nobel Peace Prize

The United Nations and Secretary General Kofi Annan jointly
won the centenary Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for working
for human rights and to defuse global conflicts.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international/12WIRE-NOBE.html?


-Kof Annan  He has done nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he as been a
willing tool and has provided ''legitimation''of agressive US
international military and political policy & practise.

-He did nothing useful and has not even denounced much less done anything
[even if he did make a visit there] the decimation of Palestion
civilians by Israel with US backing, nor for the implementation of the
 over two decade old UN resolution 202 calling for the return of the
Trans-Jordan lands

- He has done nothing to stop, nor even to eliminate the alleged UN cover
for, the decade long embargo of Iraq, which has already killed a million
persens, over half of them children [about wich US Secretary of State
Madelein Albright said ''It was worth it'' ]

- He did nothing at all to impede or stop the killing of millions in
Africa

- He did nothing useful to impede or stop the killing in East Timor

- He did nothing useful to defuse the 3 year killing in Bosnia

- He raised no concrete objection to the transfer from the UN to NATO of
the responsibility of of policy making for and intervention praxis
in Yugolsavia, thereby taking the UN out of the loop of international
war/peace policy making

- He then simply accepted the ''solution'' of the Bosnia crisis at
- He raised no concrete objection to the transfer from the UN to NATO of
the responsibility of of policy making for and intervention praxis
in Yugolsavia, thereby taking the UN out of the loop of international
war/peace policy making

- He then simply accepted the ''solution'' of the Bosnia crisis at
Dayton, USA [significantly on a military base! why is the agreement not
named after that military base instead of after the nearby civilian
city?]

- He raised no objection - indeed consented - to the NATO war against
Yugoslavia, which sidestepped and thereby violated about a dozen clauses
and sections of the UN charter and most dangerously for the future
sanctified the appeal to ''human rights'' to TRAMPLE ON n HUMAN RIGHTS
[the anti-Iraq war already did the same and violated 7 [only!] articles of
the United Nations Charter. His predecessor UN General Secretary Perez de
Cuellar said ''this is a US war not a UN one." But he did nothing to
prevent or modify that, and he did not even resign in protest, which might
at least have dramatized that fact for the world'] and of course Kofi
Annan failed to do so as well when the UN was totally emascualted and 2
decades of international law were simply destroyed in one day [or rather
night].

- After the above end run around the UN, he then willingly let the UN be
used as a fig leaf for the military occupation of Kosovo and then its
adminstration by NATO under a UN flag

- He did no more in or about the even more serious US war against
Afghanstan, in which the US is using weapons and targeting people in total
violation, of course again of the UN Charter [ the reference to its ''self
defense section'' is both hypocritical and outside the remainder of the UN
charter that defines and sets limits to what appeal to it can be used
for-and this action is goes WAY beyond that] and the violation of all
Geneva conventions against the targetting of facilites needed by
civilians, and of the use of cluster boms [useful only against people]
that also violate the Geneva convention and even US law [the last time
they were used against Yugoslavia, former US President Jimmy Carter went
on TV and said they are illegal, because I [he] made them illegal].


--- In a travesty even greater than bestowing it on Henry Kissinger -
the same one for whom Christopher Hitchins recently provided ample
documentation in HARPERS magazine  to demand his indictement for
WAR CRIMES - we must all now ask ourselves and answer how it is possible
that the Nobel Prize is now bestowed on Mr. Annan for ''PEACE'' ??? !!!


ON TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11

Sir:  Wow, it's just like when the Spanish bombed our airbases in
retaliation for our failure to extradite the terrorist Pinochet, in spite
of the fact that we'd been shown the evidence against him.  How history
repeats itself ...
        letter in THE INDEPENDENT [London]

HISTORICAL STATISTICAL APPENDIX

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Bombing of WTC in NYC and Pentagon in Washington DC, USA

DAMAGE:  Human and Pysical, Economic and Political
Dead and Missing  5,000  - more than half NON nationals ofthe USA
WTC destroyed, Pentagon damaged existing economic recession
deepend,existing political power strengthened

RESPONSIBILITY personal : Unknown.
Suspected: possibly Osmana bin Laden, but unproven
Behind the Scenes [not much] : possibly Al Quata
State responsible: None proven, nor even to anybody's knowledge
RESPONSE: Massive bombing of Afghanistan by US & UK
---------------------------

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11, 1973
Bombing of Presidential Palace La Moneda in Santiago Chile

DAMAGE : Human and Pysical, Economic and Political
Dead and Missing - about 30,000, almost all Chileans
Thousands tortured, 100,000 plus driven into exile
Moneda Palace damaged [by destruction and fire]
Economy seriously damaged, unemployment trippled, inflation quadrupled,
income vastly lowered and very much more unequally distributed
political power changed by military coup and decade and a half military
dictatorship


RESPONSIBILITY personal:Chilean General Augusto Pinochet and Military
Junta, [behind the scenes but very visible] U.S. President Richard Nixon &
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger - all self declared and proven,
eg. in their files, US Senate Church Committee Hearings,
recently summarized by Christopher Hitchins in Harpers Magazine
and demanding that Henry Kissinger be indicted as War Criminal
to be brought before International Court of Justice
or new International Criminal Court
Responsible State : Chilean and United States of America

RESPONSE: Car bomb in Washington DC, killing ex Chilean ambassador to US
and a US national, proven responsibility: Chilean DINA secret police with
CIA backup

----------

ON CIVILIZATION

by John Pilger


In his zeal, Tony Blair has come closer to an announcement of real
intentions than any British leader since Anthony Eden. Not simply the
handmaiden of Washington, Blair, in the Victorian verbosity of his
extraordinary speech to the Labour Party conference, puts us on notice
that imperialism's return journey to respectability is well under way.
Hark, the Christian gentleman-bomber's vision of a better world for "the
starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in
want and squalor from the deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza
to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan". Hark, his unctuous concern for the
"human rights of the suffering women of Afghanistan" as he colludes in
bombing them and preventing food reaching their starving children.

Is all this a dark joke? Far from it; as 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.

Since the end of the cold war, a new opportunity has arisen. The economic
and political crises in the developing world, largely the result of
imperialism, such as the blood-letting in the Middle East and the
destruction of commodity markets in Africa, now serve as retrospective
justification for imperialism. Although the word remains unspeakable, the
western intelligentsia, conservatives and liberals alike, today boldly
echo Bush and Blair's preferred euphemism, "civilisation". Italy's prime
minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the former liberal editor Harold Evans
share a word whose true meaning relies on a comparison with those who are
uncivilised, inferior and might challenge the "values"of the west,
specifically its God-given right to control and plunder the uncivilised.

----------

by gunder frank

What kind of ''civilization'' is being defended by abrogating the only
civilized institutions and laws we have in the world designed to and at
least moderately able to protect us and our civilization from ourselves in
a society of laws instead of brutes? The civilized institutions and laws
that we have - granted that they are insufficient, but for that to be
strengthend, NOT abrogated whenever it suits the strong- is all that
stands between us and Hobbes's ''law of the jungle'' war of all against
all in which the weak [poor and starving people in Afghanistan?] are at
the total mercy of the strong [what is the most powerful country in this
sad world?].

If this is not destroying civilization to save it, then destroying
villages in Vietnam to save them was not Orwellian war is peace
double-speak either. What kind of [Western?] civilization is this that
must be ''saved'' by destroying it - indeed denying and/or wantonly
neglecting its existence - and the very institutions that would make us
civilized -- if we were. But of course if we are not civilized enough to
observe, acknowledge and live by the very norms and institutions that
would make us civilized, then what ''civilization'' is there to protect
and save?


AND BY CONTRAST A BIT OF  STRAIGHT TALK FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

AMERICAN EMPIRE

A political unit that has overwhelming superiority in military power, and
uses that power to influence the internal behavior of other states, is
called an empire. The United States [is] an indirect empire, to be sure,
but an empire nonetheless.... If this is correct, our goal is not
combating a rival, but maintaining our imperial position, and maintaining
imperial order. Imperial wars are not so constrained [from escalation as
when still confronted by the Soviet Union]. The maximum amount of force
can and should e used as quickly as possible for psychological impact - to
demonstrate that the empire cannot be challenged with impunity.  Now we
are in the business of bringing down hostile governments and creating
governments favorable to us. Imperial wars end, but imperial garrisons
must be left in place for decades to ensure order and stability. This is,
in fact, what we are beginning to see, first in the Balkans and now in
Central Asia [and] requires a lighly armed ground force for garrison
purposes. Finally, imperial strategy focuses on preventing the emergence
of powerful, hostile challengers to empire: by war if necessary, but by
imperial assimilation if possible. China will be a major economic and
military power in a generationbut is not yet powerful enough to be a
challenger to American empire, and the goal of the United States is to
prevent that challenge from emerging. The United States could do what it
does now: reassure its friends in Asia that we will not allow Chinese
military intimidation to succeed.We may also want unconventional weapons
with which to remind China .

        Stephen Peter Rose
        Harvard University
        Kaneb professor of national security and military affairs,
        Director of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies,
        HARVARD MAGAZINE   May-June 2002, pp 30-31

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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