Tag Archives: Self determination

Slaughter of savages nobody cares about

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Tamil refugees1200 bodies counted, hundreds seriously injured, aerial bombing continues and nobody really cares, do they? More to come. Where are all the Western imperialist liberals who usually wax so eloquent when it comes to giving their precious support to what they always refer to as ‘self determination’? That is when it involves using Western military hardware against ‘the baddies’. Apparently they are asleep in the case of the Tamils of Sri Lanka? It says a lot about where our supposed liberals’ heads are really at?

Current slaughter in Sri Lanka is part of the spread of war into the greater region

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sri-lanka-victimThe struggle for justice for the Tamil community in both India and Sri Lanka has taken place for many long decades and at a great loss of live, and like the struggle for justice in Kashmir, has seen the entire world hardly take the slightest notice. The Tamil people have failed to create a celebrity cause like Darfur and Tibet have become here in the US.

Instead, they have fallen victim to slaughter by State Terrorism much like the peoples of Kashmir, Peru (with the suppression of the Sendero Luminoso by the US-Peruvian governments), and Colombia (with it s decades long death squad massacres promoted by the US-Colombian government) have also suffered tens of thousands of casualties. And how many peoples in Africa have suffered similarly without anybody batting an eye in either Europe or the English speaking countries? The Tamil have probably lost 100,000 in their struggle for self determination of their communities in Sri Lanka alone.

Now, the world government enablers of the Sri Lanka slaughter have stepped in with their typical show of humanitarianism at the last moment in the ongoing slaughter with pleas to help the civilians! Sri Lanka Tigers urged to end war What a sad situation.

However, these same countries that are ‘urging and end to war’ in Sri Lanka are actively part of the US’s spread of war into Afghanistan, Pakistan, and into possibly the entire Indian sub-continent, if the US manages to heat up more the Pakistan-India conflicts with its so-called Global War on Terrorism, a war against shadows that merely serves to feed the US military-industrial complex’s welfare-guzzling operations.

Though the American population is hardly aware of this fact, the US and Indian governments have been increasingly allying their special interests together against what both governments conceive of as common political enemies in Asia. Neither governments are actually concerned at all about this conflict in Sri Lanka, as long as the slaughter is not of such a proportion as to detract from their goals of aggressively pursuing regional conflicts in other arenas of the area.

India, for example, must have good enough press to be able to quietly fight ‘pirates’ for the US in the Indian Ocean region that extends to Somalia. Tens of thousands of deaths in nearby Sri Lanka certainly will not help things here for India. And certainly might make it look nastier for the US’s military public relation’s team as the Pentagon pops civilians in Pakistan on a weekly basis.

One thing for the world to keep in mind, is that the more slaughter that occurs in the Indian sub-continent region, the more unstable becomes the nuclear caches of India and Pakistan, too. It ups the ante about how much bloodshed could possibly be effective or not in achieving sectarian goals.

Meanwhile, let us wish the best for the Tamil people who are suffering so because the dominant Sinhalese of Sri Lanka so little want to share power with the people they share the land with. In that there is similarity to the Middle East itself, where a dominant and controlling group of people care not the least to share power with their victims either.

“That small nations might be free”… and other Imperial Lies…

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This is about, of course, the massive disconnect from reality shown by the “Nationalists” in the Bush Regime.
The title comes from a song called “Foggy foggy dew” about the Easter Rebellion” and is a short representation of the British STATED reason for their rightful (or wrongful) share in starting World War One. “That the right of Small Nations to Self Determination is as valid as that of the Great Powers.”

While at the time they were engaged in one of their more Murderous Cycles of oppression in Ireland.

And continued it even AFTER the Great War.”Great” refers to the SIZE of the war, and the Powers.

After the War the Imperial Powers Who Claimed Not To Be Imperialists (Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the U.S. …) went on a frenzy of operations to quell rebellions in “their” Vassal States.

Ethiopia and Somalia were carved out as separate states with Eritrea split between them, nations with compound words like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were created with a wave of the (Non) Imperial Scepter… Iran and Iraq, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia… The Shah was propped up as a puppet dictator just like King Faisal of Iraq, just like the Emirates…

Mostly because the British Crown was more comfortable dealing with people who had Titles of Royalty.

And Nationalist Sentiment in the Smallest Nations was tossed aside with the same Contempt and Disdain exhibited (to use another British phrase) by the Turk and Hun, meaning the Ottoman and German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.

Kaiser Wilhelm and Archduke Ferdinand and indeed all of the European Kingdoms involved (Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Suddenly Late Tsar Nicolas….) could call themselves Cousin and mean it.

Many of them were still part of the Original Triple Lie “Holy” “Roman” and “Empire”

It doesn’t take an exaggerated sense of history to see which Royal Cousins got to keep their rank and titles and which were deemed “unworthy” by the “Democracies”.

And now, the reactions to claims of National Sovereignty by the Iraqis, the Palestinians, the Somalis… a huge long list actually, are being dismissed and pooh-poohed just as arrogantly as the British dismissal of the Irish claims, the Kenyan claims, the French dismissal of the claims of the Vietnamese, the Sudan, the Algerians,… the British “mandate” in Palestine dismissing the claims of both the Jews and the Arabs.

The U.S. dismissing the claims of the Filipino and Hawaiian and Mexican and Central American claims to sovereignty over their own lands.

And it hasn’t stopped.

When imperialists talk to sheep of ‘Self Determination’

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sheep at election“Nor does it change the right to self- determination fundamental to our relationship with all of our Overseas Territories” -Gillian Merron, British Foreign Minister, on behalf of British Labor Party Prime Minister. Govt agrees new constitution for Falklands

Baah, baah, baah…. You see, there are close to 600,000 sheep on these some 778 islands off the coast of Argentina called Las Malvinas. And less than 3,000 people there, most of them connected to the British military in some way or another (like with the sheepherders’ importation there to help justify British colonial occupation of these foreign islands).

Sweet Gillian blathers on about ‘self determination’ which has become code word these days, for colonialist imperialist control over other peoples affairs. And she does it out of the same breath while talking about ‘Overseas Territory’… CUTE! You have to admire such clever abilities at double talk like this!

Now that Barack Obama is in in the US White House look for the US government to probably be borrowing more of this rather pathetic vocabulary from the degenerative British Labor Poli-class, that Prime Minster Gordon Brown and his team use. ‘Humanitarian’ imperialism is back in style once again! Oh, Whoopee!!! (Do sheep eat carrots like donkeys, I wonder?)

(PS …couldn’t find a sheep picture from the land where sheep outnumber people 20,000 to 1, and not just 3-1 like the words say on the pic…. Sorry. But sheep are sheep in whatever numbers. Baaa…..)

US liberal radicals silent about ‘self determination’ now that South Ossetia and Abkhazia want it

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One of the most aggravating things about American (and British) liberals has been how they consistently line up with the US government shouting ‘Self-Determination! Self Determination!’ every time the Pentagon uses some small nationality against another government.

When Australia wanted to split East Timor off of Indonesia, this was their shout. When the US and the Western Europeans wanted to carve up Greater Yugoslavia into nation-lets under their control this was their call. We hear their call again against China as the US government wants to use Tibet to propagandize for the Pentagon and against the Chinese. We hear it in Africa as they use the issue of the fighting in Darfur to move against Sudan.

Liberal radicals are always using the issue of ‘self determination’ to support US militarism while pretending to be doing the exact complete opposite. That is why their silence is so deafening now about keeping quiet about ‘self determination’ for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Apparently the liberal interventionist American Left is only for ‘self determination’ when the Pentagon calls for it? This is a sad illustration about the liberal Left’s own lack of self examination and their pro US nationalism and pro imperialism that hides behind liberal human rights rhetoric. Some even hide behind Marxism to justify what positions for the Pentagon they take!

What about the Ossetians? Once again the Libertarian Right is more honest than the pseudo Marxists and Left liberal ‘Progressive’ community is. They ask the question about the Ossetians when the phonys remain silent. While the pro Democratic Party liberals/radicals are out cheerleading Barack it is antiwar.com that keeps us informed about the dangerous buildup for war involving Russia and the US. And unfortunately, this constant misuse of the issue of ‘self determination’ in support of State Department propaganda is often used by many even to the Left of the Democratic Party, too. Shameful. But now they are all silent when it comes to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Kosovo

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Many liberals and Leftists support independence for Kosovo just as they have done previously with East Timor. In short, they have supported their own imperialist governments dividing up other countries, and this they call ‘supporting national self determination’!

Let’s face it though. The real reason the Western imperialist powers (NATO) went to war together back then against the government of Milosevic was to destroy the remnants of state socialism in Yugoslavia, and by doing so they split up the old multi-cultural Yugoslavia into many bits and pieces. The last battle was over Kosovo, where the US went to battle alongside allies and proponents of a Greater Albania together against the supporters of a Greater Serbia. Bombs away!

The collateral damage still remains, just as it does in Bosnia and throughout the former Soviet Union. Ethnic manipulation can get rather messy, USA, but of course, this is the preferred method of warfare for the US government, using one ethnic group against the next. We see it again and again and again. We see it in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq.

So Kosovo’s Albanians demand ‘independence’ from Yugoslavia. They demand 2 ethnic Albanias then. Or rather, they demand (indirectly) confederation with Albania instead of with Serb dominated Yugoslavia. Should they get it? If so, will the Serb’s living within Kosovo demand an even smaller ‘state’? Yugoslavia will back that, but then should they, the Kosovar Serbs, get what they want? Is that, too, ‘national self determination’?

Kosovo demonstrates once again that a world where each national group demands an ethnic state of their own all the time will be a messy and continually contentious one. At one time, many American Blacks and groups supporting them against White racism toyed with the idea of demanding that a state like Mississippi or Alabama be made a Black country for ex-slaves to inhabit. In fact, throughout Canada and the US, indigenous groups have something like that already, called the ‘Indian reservations’. Where do we stop in supporting ‘national self determination’ then? Would America and its Black population have been better served by creating an ‘independent’ country back in the ’20s or ’30s in a Southern state? One doesn’t think so today.

Maybe Kosovo is the right place to stop splitting people up further. Instead of wars spent to do this why not support economic plans of peace that would unite Serb and Albanian within Kosovo? Is it really that hard to implement such a program? I thin not but the political will to start such a program is entirely absent, and no more so than in the imperialist countries themselves which continue to prefer to rule by divide and conquer.

NATO out of the Balkans NOW! US out of the Balkans NOW! Monery for economic assistance, not military occupation!

War decides who is left

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Bertrand Russell- War does not decide who is right- war decides who is leftI’m learning of a vulnerable schism among pacifists. There are pacifists like Gandhi and MLK, known as pragmatic pacifists, and principled pacifists emerged from the socialist school.
 
Pacifists up against the usual suspects need to ally, but their ideological differences are easily exploited by agents who would divide their efforts. One side has Jesus and a belief somewhat parallel to the one which dictates that none can be right except through Him. The other carries the baggage that religion has always messed up common man’s self determination, but beggars can’t be choosers.