|
|
Fidel Castro: May Day Rally
Speech The Sage of Imperialism: At 90, Harry Magdoff has Made His Marx by Susan Green » » About RECENT ESSAYS ON: BACK ISSUES: April 2003 March 2003 February
2003 January 2003 December
2002 November
2002 October 2002 September
2002 July-August 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February
2002 January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
July-August 2001 June 2001
May 2001
April 2001
March 2001 February
2001 Index to Back Issues
AN
INTERVIEW WITH:
SIMPATICO LINKS:
|
  
|
June 2003, Volume 55 — Number 2 c o n t
e n t s The chief, indeed the only, justification
that Washington offered for its invasion of Iraq during its build-up for war
between September 2002 and March 2003,was the need to “disarm” an
Iraqi regime that Washington contended had broken UN resolutions banning
weapons of mass destruction in that country. The problem, though, was that
there was no hard evidence that Iraq, which had effectively destroyed its
weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s under UN supervision, had any such
weapons—or if it did that they were functional and constituted a
significant threat. Nevertheless, the Bush administration continued to insist
(based on speculation, hearsay, and what turned out to be fabricated evidence)
that Iraq had such banned weapons in significant quantities and was actually
deploying them. In an extraordinary propaganda campaign in which the whole
mainstream media took part, the U.S. population was led to believe that they
were in imminent danger of attack from these phantom weapons and had no choice
but to support a pre-emptive invasion of that country. REVIEW
OF THE MONTH If we learn nothing else from the war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation, it is that the U.S. ruling class has learned to make ideological warfare as important to its operations as military and economic warfare. A crucial component of this ideological war has been the campaign against "left-wing media bias," with the objective of reducing or eliminating the prospect that mainstream U.S. journalism might be at all critical toward elite interests or the system set up to serve those interests. In 2001 and 2002, no less than three books purporting to demonstrate the media's leftward tilt rested high atop the bestseller list. Such charges have already influenced media content, pushing journalists to be less critical of right-wing politics. The result has been to reinforce the corporate and rightist bias already built into the media system. Militarism and the Coming Wars It is not for the first time in history that militarism weighs on the consciousness of the people as a nightmare. To go into detail would take far too long. However, here it should be enough to go back in history only as far as the nineteenth century when militarism, as a major instrument of policy making, came into its own, with the unfolding of modern imperialism on a global scale, in contrast to its earlier—much more limited—varieties. By the last third of the nineteenth century the British and French Empires were not the only prominent rulers of vast territories. The United States, too, made its heavy imprint by directly or indirectly taking over the former colonies of the Spanish Empire in Latin America, adding to them the bloody repression of a great liberation struggle in the Philippines and installing themselves as rulers in that area in a way which still persists in one form or another. Nor should we forget the calamities caused by “Iron Chancellor” Bismarck’s imperialist ambitions and their aggravated pursuit later on by his successors, resulting in the eruption of the First World War and its deeply antagonistic aftermath, bringing with it Hitler’s Nazi revanchism and thereby very clearly foreshadowing the Second World War itself. After
Neoliberalism? What comes after neoliberalism? To answer that question we must ask a more fundamental question: What do neoliberalism and neoconservatism have in common with the antiglobalization and antiwar movements? The answer is that all ostensibly share a focus on redefining democracy in the contemporary world system. “Spreading democracy” is the rallying cry of both the Washington Consensus and the Bush Doctrine. The “Washington Consensus” is the claim that global neoliberalism and core finance capital’s economic control of the periphery and the entire world by means of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only realistic alternative to misery and disaster. The “Bush Doctrine” is the bald neoconservative justification of U.S. global military domination and preemptive war—as part of a renewed attempt to make the world safe for democracy. For the antiglobalization and antiwar movements these establishment doctrines, insofar as they profess to be “spreading democracy,” are nothing but window dressing for the global dictatorship of the U.S. and core corporate governing elites. While focusing their attack on the institutions that enforce this dictatorship, these movements also strive to ‘Let Fury
Have the Hour’: The Passionate Politics of Joe Strummer Joe Strummer, the pioneering punk rock musician, former front man of the Clash, and political activist, died of a rare heart condition at his home in Somerset, Broomfield, England at the age of fifty on December 22, 2002. Barely twenty-five years earlier the Clash burst onto the London music scene to become one of the great rebel rock bands of all time-fusing a mélange of musical styles, with riotous live performances, and left-wing political activism, that inspires many to this day. CORRESPONDENCE No doubt, Monthly Review will not want debate on John Saul's contributions to continue indefinitely. At the same time, his recent response to Jeremy Cronin (Monthly Review, December 2002) contains certain allegations about my conduct, which deserve space for a response. Reply to Suttner The Johannesburg seminar is a pretty unimportant footnote to the broader struggle being waged in South Africa and, in any case, you probably had to be there, but many in attendance other than myself had a reading exactly like my own of the exchange in question. More generally, Suttner’s derisive characterization here of the inadequacy of my scholarship and of the shortfalls in my intellectual and political integrity give a good idea of the level at which he pitched his critique of my argument at that seminar. He’d do better to discuss substance (while providing some evidence of his own) and to note, as well, that I’m very far from being alone in my strong conviction as to the inappropriateness of the ANC’s post-apartheid project (demonstrated even in the thinness of its service delivery accomplishments!) and in my growing suspicion that effective resistance to South Africa’s neoliberal trajectory will have to come primarily from without the ANC and its vaunted Alliance. Moreover, most such critics are activists inside South Africa itself where, in any case, this “debate” will have ultimately to be settled. Nor, to repeat to Suttner what I said to Cronin, am I pessimistic (“tragically” or otherwise) about the prospect that a revival of resistance will occur; indeed, as I strove to establish, such a revival already is underway. BOOK
REVIEWS A review of Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium edited by Robin Morgan. Back to the
Motherland: A review of Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 by Piero Gleijeses. Ecology and Imperialism A review of Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis.
|
||
 |
||||
 About the Editors:
Paul M. Sweezy ·
Harry Magdoff If you have any questions or comments |
||||
|
||||
| | Top | About MR| Subscribe| Order Single Issue| Back Issues| MR Press | |
||||
All material © copyright 2003 by Monthly Review |
||||
Read an 
