Colonialism // Current

Latin American leaders support Morales at UN

Forrest Hylton: Latin America is leading world in multipolar forms of regional diplomacy. Visiting the UN this week Bolivian... more

Vierotchka
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The UN, cash for trash, and the multipolar world

Pepe Escobar: World leaders speak at the UN about economic crisis, war and the multipolar world. World leaders met at the UN... more

Vierotchka
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Mugabe's new power struggle

The political agreement in Zimbabwe is built on shaky ground. Observers say the South African brokered deal between bitter foes... more

urlspotter
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Colonial borders. Does Africa have a choice?

The lines of Europe’s carve up of Africa were finally taking shape. On March 11, 1913, Britain and Germany agreed who got... more

GrandKnow2
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Colonial heritage metaphors used In US military conflicts

“Indian Country” terminology remains pervasive and appears with great frequency in military discourse. The term is... more

vokred
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Bush is trying to impose a colonial status on Iraq

Whatever the Iraq war was about, we were assured, it definitely wasn't about oil. Tony Blair called the idea a "conspiracy theory". It was about democracy and dictatorship, weapons of mass destruction and human rights, anything but oil. Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, insisted the conflict had "literally nothing to do with oil". When Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, wrote last autumn, "Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil," he was treated as if he were some senile old gent who'd embarrassingly lost the plot.

That argument is going to be a good deal harder to make from next week, when four of the western world's largest oil corporations are due to sign contracts for the renewed exploitation of Iraq's vast reserves. Initially, these are to be two-year deals to boost production in Iraq's largest oilfields. But not only did the four energy giants - BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total - write their own contracts with the Iraqi government, an unheard-of practice: they have also reportedly secured rights of first refusal on the far more lucrative 30-year production contracts expected once a new US-sponsored oil law is passed, allowing a wholesale western takeover. Big Oil is back with a vengeance.

It's a similar story when it comes to the future of the US occupation itself. The last thing on anyone's mind, we were told when the tanks rolled in, was permanent US control, let alone the recolonisation of Iraq. This was about the Iraqis finally getting a chance to run their own affairs in freedom. But five years on, George Bush and Dick Cheney are putting the screws on their Green Zone government to sign a secret deal for indefinite military occupation, which would effectively reduce Iraq to a long-term vassal state.
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A crime beyond words. Now we will make enemies of the Iraqi people thus prologing this war and the terrorism that goes with it. With a Congress that is totally ineffective in stopping them. So once this is done and should the predicted war in Iran take place, how is any candidate going to promise an end to this by next year? They are already being given more than enough time to make that end impossible. This government has now become the very sort of tyrannical monarchy our forefathers fought to free us from! Benjamin Franklin was quoted as stating, "Now you have a Republic if you can keep it." We are failing those words. These people must be held accountable!Whatever the Iraq war was about, we were assured, it definitely wasn't about oil. Tony Blair called the idea a... more

JanforGore
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2 responses

5 months ago

The children of empire, McCain and Obama

This article from the Independent in the UK talks about the similarities between McCain and Obama in relation to their family history. It also goes into pointed detail as to how each father shaped the sons into the candidates and men they are today, taken from speeches and excerpts from both candidates' books written about their fathers.

These paragraphs frame the race as only an independent observer, outside of the U.S. political sphere could frame this historic competition.

"I do not want to exaggerate the difference between Obama and McCain. The US political system is hemmed in by vast blocks of corporate power and geopolitical pressures. Any president can only nudge this system by inches, in either the right or wrong direction – but when a giant moves by a few inches, the effect is vast.

From his father, Obama learned to eschew "the confidence reserved for those born into imperial cultures" that they should rule the world their way, with "a steady unthinking application of force". He can imagine the mentality of the boy in Basra whose father has vanished into an occupiers' prison, because it happened to his father and grandfather too. McCain learned the opposite from his father: that the natives only ever learn "to behave themselves" at the end of a big stick. So now we have to ask: which ghostly father will America choose?"

I chose this image of the tensions between General William Henry Harrison and Tecumseh to highlight the theme of this article: the historic perspectives that both McCain and Obama share and to show how far we have come in American history. America was born on both a spirit of liberty and oppression and that's a complex history we have all inherited. Freed from the tyranny of a King spreading the seeds of democracy in places like France, and French colonies like Haiti alike. The contradictions of our history that lead both Harrison and Tecusmuh to be labelled as American folk heroes. Our history reveres cowboys and Indians, Colonists, and those who seek independence from Colonizers.

A history where McCain's grandfather both stopped the spread of fascism in Asia with Admiral Halsey along with his son McCain's father and then helped to foster fascism and squelch democracy in Latin America later in his military career. Where Obama's grandfather who served in WWII could liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp at a time when America had a 'quota' on the number of Jews who could live in the U.S. and when Obama's other grandfather was being detained by an American ally, Britain for speaking up for democracy. A generation later McCain is tortured by a communist government and Obama's father by a Democratic Kenya that his grandfather hoped for. At a time when everyone in the world is heralding and applauding how far we have come as a nation and as a world we need to take a step back and ask ourselves, what have we learned from the journey? This article from the Independent in the UK talks about the similarities between McCain and Obama in relation to their family... more