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Robin Mathews
 Posts: 0  Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 2:50 pm <strong>Written By:</strong> Robin Mathews
<strong>Date:</strong> 2006-05-26 14:50:24 <a href="/article/25024988-the-end-of-the-world-coming-to-your-neighbourhood-soon">Article Link</a> The repeated use by the U.S.A. of so-called “depleted uranium” which poisons the earth for thousands of years is a single, simple example. We think the inhumanities of U.S. torture prisons are intolerable. But – just possibly – a few changes of U.S. government may erase the prisons. Such changes cannot erase the genetics-altering, cruel, destructiveness of depleted uranium sewn wherever the U.S. has chosen to name and fight its “enemies”: Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan…. No power on earth can erase depleted uranium pollution. As I write, Stephen Harper’s government has struck down even the slender Kyoto Accord ecological reform program, and has done so on behalf of the large, private corporations it serves. At a recent conference on ecology, sustainability, and art in Vancouver, I was impressed by how many average, concerned people know that what I have written here is true. I was equally impressed by the number who did not want to challenge government or private corporations in order to bring the matter in Canada to sharp focus and intense public discussion. That situation could be a matter for wonder in this “democratic” country. But it really isn’t, because the Canadian population is propagandized, brain-washed, indoctrinated “24/7”, as the saying goes. And it is brain-washed to stay silent and to accept the ravage of community, nature, and foreign “enemies” on behalf of the greed and power of Private Corporations and the governments that serve them. Canadians, it seems, are locked in a dilemma (as the conference showed). They believe the planet is threatened. They believe there is not much time until destruction will become irreversible. They know key forces at work in the destruction are our own governments and Private Corporations (both Canadian and other corporations in Canada). But Canadians have been propagandized, brain-washed, indoctrinated 24/7 not to challenge openly, publicly, and “in the streets” Canadian governments and Private Corporations in Canada. Two books recently published come at the problem of The End of The World from quite different vantages. One focusses on man in nature, revealing the primary role human beings have in the extinction of animals and plants, cultures, languages, and subcultures. The other painstakingly reveals a century-long build-up of exploitation and dehumanization which may well (literally) explode in planet-destroying violence. Terry Glavin writes an enchanting book, Waiting For The Macaws, in 284 pages, as an adventure in story-telling, a tale of far travel and distant peoples, a subtle affirmation of human decency and determination, a plea for awareness about and action to reform the wholesale, increasing slaughter of life and the ecological damage perpetrated each minute: “24/7”. He does those things pointing few fingers directly at evil-doers. “We”, mostly, are doing it. “We” need to wake up, go into reverse, and change things. “We”. Robert Fisk’s travel is through time, space, and human depravity. In his 1300 page book: The Great War for Civilization. The Conquest of the Middle East, he may not think he is writing about The End of The World. I choose to think he is. He presents a staggering build-up to a coming war that is potentially destructive of the planet. That unstated theme, for me, haunts his book. What Fisk concentrates on is the human depravity of those fully aware of their actions or, at least, fully cooperating to have a place in the depravity chain. If you said to Robert Fisk: “Blessed are the innocent”, he might, like Terry Glavin, say: “There are no innocent”. But Fisk wouldn’t rest there. He would go on to say that though none are innocent, only some are seriously guilty. And it is with them Fisk is concerned. For they are bringing The End of The World closer and closer to your neighbourhood, now. Both books are eminently readable. Both are packed with information. Both are “must” reads . One, I would say – Glavin’s – believes reasonable people can find a way and very well may do so. The other – Fisk’s – reaches past the idea of reasonable people to show how a hundred year history in the Middle East has brought the region to such repression, brutality, racism, and denial of identity that the explosion which will come there may bring the planet to its final days. Both books – surprisingly – have a characteristic of great formal literary epics, what is called “the epic march past” of heroes or heroic things. But in Glavin’s and Fisk’s books (both in a way “dystopias”, the opposite of “utopias”) the march past is of the erased, the extinguished, the perversely crippled, the wilfully destroyed. In Glavin’s book, repeatedly, he lists the recently extinguished lives in nature: birds, animals, plants, flowers, languages, small-group peoples. In Fisk’s book, repeatedly, he walks through hospital wards in the Middle East, over battle fields, and through communities to show the results of the human depravity of those who are fully aware of their actions, intending to kill and maim infants, children, women, men – all human life called “the enemy”, all human life obstructing total, demonic power. Terry Glavin chooses not to have us focus on the pre-eminently guilty who are in the shadows of the world he uncovers for us. Robert Fisk shows no such deference, which explains the large title of his large book. No one should over-simplify Fisk’s gigantic work. To do so would be a great and pretentious insult. For Fisk is one of those human beings who cannot dull his outrage and indignation at the bottomless depravity and brutality he reports almost as a damnation of human character. Nonetheless, it may be fair to say his book tells the unregenerate tale of capitalist, imperialist British (“Western”) greed and brutality followed by the capitalist, imperialist U.S. (“Western”) greed and brutality operating to quell the populations of the Middle East and to suck blood and oil from them without compassion, justice, or humanity. Responses which say Middle Eastern despots don’t need outside help are – in a serious measure – irrelevant. That is because behind every despotic regime, every brutal government, every apparent “independent” move of Middle Eastern powers, the British and now the U.S. have been major forces. Saddam Hussein provides a perfect illustration. No one can erase his record of brutal, rapacious cruelty and repression. But during a time when he was vicious in power and using mustard gas against Iranians, he was a U.S. favourite, receiving huge shipments of arms by its management. He was, as well, receiving armaments from many other countries because no force really disciplines the armaments trade. Tell Iraq citizens that the U.S. is not deeply immersed in the long-term desecration of Iraq’s significant place as a highly educated, sophisticated and healthy society. Iraq citizens will laugh in your face. Whatever they want in Iraq, they want the U.S. out and would be happy to see it brought to its knees with its clone/ally Israel. Robert Fisk uses painstaking care to record the absolute looting and destruction (while U.S. occupiers looked on) not only of key Iraq libraries and museums but also of highly sophisticated institutions and ministries necessary to the functioning of Iraq as a modern and productive society. The hundred year history of lies and brutality has created a condition in which many, many responsible people in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria – just for instance – have decided there must be dramatic change. Many have decided the dramatic change can only come with a basic organizing belief based in the Quran – or in some association of the Quranic peoples – and a parallel rejection of “the West” and “the Great Satan” (the U.S.A.). They have decided the occupation of Palestine by Israel must end, that nuclear equivalence must be achieved, and that genuine independence and self-respect for the Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern peoples must be re-gained. In the face of the “capitalist imperialists” lusting for oil, influence, and domination those things may well mean “The End of The World” in a devastating war which will make life on the planet – as we know it – impossible. If we want to know how that can happen, we have to face all that the “western” governments and media don’t tell their populations – and that Robert Fisk writes down to try to reach us. For Canadians, the briefest illustration of the realities of Afghanistan will stand as an indication of what I mean. In Afghanistan Canadians are fighting and dying, journalists are fudging and lying, and the Stephen Harper government is working for U.S. ("Western") capitalist imperialism. The British tried to conquer Afghanistan more than once in the nineteenth century for imperialist reasons. They didn’t do well. But they did install British “influence” to hold off Russian aspirations. The “Second Afghan War” was fought in 1879. Then Britain agreed to its borders in 1893. For some years Afghanistan had relative peace, unity, economic development, and relative independence under British eyes. But power relations shifted and in 1979, Russia invaded Afghanistan for imperial reasons. The pretext was to support a marxist government under siege. But that was a false pretext since the Russians had intentions in the region. They had built a huge tunnel roadway – for imperial reasons – that led to Pakistan and, presumably, the Indian Ocean. Fisk writes of the Russian/Afghan War that “we few journalists … were witness to the start of a fearful tragedy, one that would last more than a quarter of a century and would cost at least a million and a half innocent lives, a war that would eventually reach out and strike at the heart, not of Russia, but of the U.S.A.” (p. 48) If he were truly prophetic Fisk might just have to add “and also at the heart of Canada”. First, as a sop to the demented George Bush when Canada refused to join the illegitimate invasion of Iraq, Jean Chretien agreed to contribute Canadian troops to “the War on Terror” being fought by the U.S.A. in Afghanistan. That terrible mistake by Chretien shoved the foot of the Canadian Bush supporters into the door of Afghanistan. Now the Stephen Harper government has chosen to be a part of the U.S. army in Afghanistan. Let us not fool ourselves for a second. Going, now, under the banner of NATO is not to work with a neutral ombudsman force. NATO is a badly disguised instrument of U.S. policy (and has always been so). Canadian forces moving from under the banner of the U.S. to a place under the banner of NATO in Afghanistan are moving from working for the U.S. directly to working for the U.S. in ugly disguise. When with enormous U.S. aid to militant (and fundamentalist) Muslim fighters, the U.S.S.R. was forced from Afghanistan, some of the militant Muslims (the Taliban) took power, took independence, and took on themselves a simplistic, stark, and repressive kind of rule. But the rule was not all bad. Afghans, at least, were governing Afghanistan. Internal in-fighting broke out (to make Osama bin Laden leave for a time). The huge opium trade was nearly eradicated – a trade with hateful effects all over the world. With U.S. “liberation”, Afghanistan has again become the world leader in opium production and sales. Few in “the West” want to talk about that result of the U.S. war. The U.S. began to negotiate with the Taliban for a pipeline through the country. They got it when the U.S. – having “defeated” the Taliban – planted Hamid Karzai, a Union Oil Company of California employee, as President of Afghanistan. But surely, you say, that is not why the U.S. brutally and illegally invaded Afghanistan. Of course not. It did so, remember, to catch Osama bin Laden, who organized the strike on the New York Trade Towers. The U.S. didn’t catch bin Laden, but it did, incidentally “conquer” (?) Afghanistan, plant a puppet ruler there, get an okay for its pipeline, and establish a state of permanent war against the Afghan people. As Robert Fisk writes: “It was the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv which shrewdly noted that ’if one looks at the map of the big American bases created [in Afghanistan], one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected pipeline to the Indian Ocean’. By 2005, Afghanistan was exporting more opium than it had ever produced before”. (p. 1281) The opium is being produced by the warlord allies of the U.S., the bringer of democracy to Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan is increasingly a U.S. imperialist war against the Afghan people. It is increasingly both a cause of and a powder-keg-to-be in the massive war to come. The Stephen Harper government has chosen to be a servant of the U.S. in that war. At a basic, even lyrical level, Terry Glavin gives evidence that Canada is doing almost nothing in the battle to save the ecology of the planet. Nor, may it be said, is it a leader in peaceful solutions to global conflicts. Robert Fisk provides clear evidence that the British and U.S. imperial powers have created a war against the people of the Middle East which already uses nuclear weapons against innocent populations there. Canadian governments – especially under Stephen Harper – are endorsing that war. In Afghanistan Canadian hands are dripping with blood and Canadians are killing “warriors” in a conflict in which the Canadian presence will disgrace Canada forever. Stephen Harper rejoices in being a fawning servant of the U.S. murder machine. He is inviting violent retaliation on Canadian soil. And when it comes, he will try to use it as a means to strip Canadians of democratic rights. When a significant assault by Afghan forces kills a large number of Canadians, Harper will, equally, use the occasion to try to spend more on military growth. Afghanistan is being set up to serve as the Canadian 9/11. If he were to hear the Robert Fisk statement that war “represents the total failure of the human spirit”, Harper would be at a loss, unable to understand what Fisk means, because Harper is a determined boot-licker of the mendacious Bush circle. It certainly isn’t Robert Fisk’s job to say Canadians must go into the streets and into all the legislatures of the land to demand Canada leave Afghanistan. But it is, I suppose, my job, and I say it. Not for principle alone should Canadians openly and publicly resist Canadian participation in the war against the Afghan people. But they should do so in a hope Canada might help hold off The End of The World instead of joining the rush forward to hasten its arrival. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on May 28, 2006] | |
 
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