[Peace-discuss] how I am thinking

[C. G. Estabrook]

Susan's thoughtful comments seems to me much to the point.  I'll post
separately an interview with Noam Chomsky that considers these issues.

She's quite right that "The attempt to stop the war on Iraq is also an
attempt for the people of this country to see if we can control a
corporate-owned government."  I recall with some dismay how slowly the
comparable realization grew during the Vietnam War (for me, at least).  
That war was an education for many Americans (like me) bred up in
post-WWII US pieties.  It took the murder of four million Asians by the
Kennedy-Johnson liberals to bring us to our senses.

But I think the "gap between an owned government and a protesting people"
is always there; the question is how muted or loud the protest.  Early in
the modern era the scribbler in the British Museum made the common-sense
observation, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles," where by a "class" he just meant all those who had
the same role in the process of fulfilling needs for food, shelter, etc.
(So owners, workers, slaves, etc., tend each to make up a class, and the
gaps can obviously be quite great).  

Because of the successful rectification campaign in American culture in
the last generation ("the Reagan years") after the "disorders of the
Sixties," class has been for a generation an impolite topic in American
universities (the source of Susan's gibe, "Being an educated
American...").  But it's always a hot topic in US business circles and
even in the business press (where the evaluation is the reverse of ours).

I didn't hear Blume's comments, but I think it's an exaggeration to say
that the Bush administration has "unified the Arab world"; yet it surely
has "triggered a community of protest."  I'd disagree again, though, that
"unfortunately, the anti-war movement could be seen as absorbing the
anti-globalization movement."  I think these should be seen as
complementary, even identical movements, and that's certainly the way that
they've played out in the streets; people who demonstrated in Seattle in
1999 were opposing the war this year.  (I wrote about this conjunction a
year or so ago, e.g., "Anti-War = Anti-Globalization" in CounterPunch
<http://www.counterpunch.org/estabrookglobal.html>.)

As to the WTO and IMF et al., there is in fact a fair amount of elite
hesitation about this war -- including amongst the oil companies.  Class
struggles are rarely perspicuous -- I mean that the lines are not often
clearly drawn, however deep the actual oppositions.  One of our jobs is
to make the matter clearer, through the dense and effective fog of
American media control.  

The threat of American military imperialism is the outward and visible
form of corporate globalization.  (To take an example almost at random,
the SF Chronicle reports, "A company tied to Vice President Dick Cheney
has won a Pentagon contract for advice on rebuilding Iraq's oil fields
after a possible war.  The contract was disclosed in the last paragraph of
a Defense Department statement on preparations for Saddam Hussein's
possible destruction of Iraq's oil fields in the event of a U.S.-led
invasion.")

Chomsky notes, "Whatever happens in Iraq, the popular movements here
should be invigorated to confront this far larger and continuing threat,
which is sure to take new forms, and is quite literally raising issues of
the fate of the human species.  That aside, the popular movements should
be mobilized to support the best outcomes for the people of Iraq, and not
only there of course.  There's plenty of work to do."

Amen. --Carl


On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, parenti susan rose wrote:

> This is how I think about the anti-war part of our current political
> situation:
> 
> The attempt to stop the war on Iraq is also an attempt for the people
> of this country to see if we can control a corporate-owned government.
> We don't own the government---other groups do. We vote, pay taxes, we
> protest---will these means exert an influence comparable to the
> influence of the owners of our government?
> 
> Being educated American, I'm miserably ignorant of history. Has this
> situation ever happened before, where the gap between an owned
> government and a protesting people was so wide?
> 
> I look at the heart-warming amounts and kinds of creative protests we
> all are making, and I wonder if the merging of 'democracy' with
> capitalism will prove itself still stronger than our efforts.
> 
> I was in Italy last week, and it was glorious from the perspective of
> being with politicized people who unabashedly speak out and
> participate. (80% of the Italians are against the Iraq war; 3 MILLION
> people congregated in Rome on Feb. 15---and this is a conservative
> estimate; last week Italian groups were chaining themselves to the
> railroads in order to stop the transport of weapons for the war). AND,
> at the same time, millionaire Belasconi runs the country and his
> brother owns all the media, and Italy is the one European country in
> favor of the war. The people, on the one hand; the government
> corporation, on the other.
> 
> DAve Blume the permaculture activist from California who visited our
> school this week, said that the Bush Corporation has done two great
> things: it has unified the Arab world,and it has triggered a COMMUNITY
> of protest----people are seeing each other doing things, and try their
> own attempt with the knowledge that they belong to the world-attempt.
> 
> DAve Blume also said that unfortunately, the anti-war movement could
> be seen as absorbing the anti-globalization movement, which, he
> contends, is the movement which gets at the source of the problems.
> 
> How does the WTO, IMF look at this pending war?
> 
> This is how I'm thinking, which is a subtle way of wondering how
> you're thinking.
> 
> Susan Parenti.
>