[Peace] News notes for July 14

Mon Jul 15 16:41:20 CDT 2002

	NOTES ON THE WEEK'S "WAR ON TERRORISM" --
	FOR THE A.W.A.R.E. MEETING 02.07.14

At last night's meeting David Green read from Randolph Bourne's important
1918 essay "War is the Health of the State"  
<www.slip.net/~knabb/CF/bourne.htm>.  He also remarked that he thought my
news summary suggested a greater possibility of a US invasion of Iraq.  
Here's a recent response by Noam Chomsky, to the question of whether such
an invasion is a "madcap idea":

"Is it a madcap idea? No one knows. Violence quite often works, and the US
has an overwhelming preponderance of violence now. When Prince Abdullah of
Saudi Arabia was here a few months ago to warn of the consequences of US
policy, he was told pretty unceremoniously to get lost. He was told to
look at Afghanistan if he wanted to see what the US could do to anyone who
got out of line. Are the planners right in assuming that they can control
the consequences? Anyone's guess. When the 'dogs of war' are unleashed,
it's very hard to judge what will happen. Quite commonly through history,
those who launched wars were destroyed as a consequence, not because they
are stupid, but because there are too many variables, too many
uncertainties. As for the US economy, it's got problems, but by
international standards it's fairly sound. Here too there could be huge
problems -- say, if foreigners decide to stop sustaining the trade
deficit. But it's not at all clear that those problems will be severe in
the range within which planning is undertaken, and the US has so many
advantages that it might very well be able to pull out without serious
damage anyway. Again, highly uncertain; the record of forecasting is
miserable -- also not from stupidity. Will the population accept it? That
depends on whether they can be terrified into obedience. Many ways to
achieve that. Within prevailing value systems, it's not at all clear that
it's a madcap idea, and it wouldn't be a huge surprise to see rumblings,
maybe more, timed for the November elections."

[The following highly selective news notes are followed by two articles,
one a review from a Canadian paper of Kevin Phillips' recent book, and the
other a comment from a censervative British journal, showing once again
that we can't confuse an anti-war position with (some) "Lefts."  Comments
in caps and these are mine.  Regards, Carl]

SUNDAY, JULY 14, 2002 [BASTILLE DAY: SOMEONE TAKES A SHOT AT THE FRENCH
PRESIDENT]

WITH TWO BUSINESS PARTIES, IT'S HARD TO RUN AGAINST BUSINESS.  The New
York Times leads with an analysis of whether the Democrats will benefit as
much as they hope to from the current wave of corporate scandals. The
NYT's Adam Nagourney, reporting from a meeting of the National Governors
Association in Boise, Idaho, says Democrats are bent on using the wave of
corporate abuses and the Republicans' traditional association with big
business to their advantage in this fall's elections. It's not clear
whether they'll be able to do that, though, and they face several risks:
They don't want to appear opportunistic or anti-Wall Street, and when in
comes to taking corporate donations, most Democratic officials are just as
guilty as their Republican colleagues. [SLATE]

WHAT '90S BOOM?  The Washington Post says the stock market's devastating
slide puts the technology and telecommunications bubble in the same
category as the Tulip Mania of 17th century Holland and the South Sea
bubble in 18th century England. And most experts don't think the market
has hit bottom yet. [SLATE]

SATURDAY, JULY 13, 2002

PROPAGANDA BROADCAST SYSTEMATICALLY. Last night, PBS kicked off a new
television series called "Wide Angle" with a documentary on Iraq. Hosted
by former State Department spokesman James Rubin and featuring a
documentary titled "Saddam's Ultimate Solution," it was a brief for an
attack on Iraq.  [COMMONDREAMS.ORG]

AND AS USUAL SOME PEOPLE SPEAK OUT, AT THE RISK OF JOBS.  The cleric
widely tipped to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury has called any
attack on Iraq "immoral". Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales, has
signed a declaration criticising the West's war on terror and said an
assault on Iraq would be "illegal". In it, Dr Williams and other
signatories, including a Church of England and Catholic bishop, say
attacking Iraq would be tantamount to fighting "terror with terror". "It's
deplorable that the world's most powerful nations continue to regard war,
and the threat of war, as an acceptable instrument of foreign policy,"
they write. They add that such thinking is in "violation of both the
United Nations and Christian moral teaching" ... He is believed to be
favored by Prime Minister Tony Blair, with whom the final decision rests.
In January, the outspoken cleric described the Afghanistan conflict as
"morally tainted" and "embarrassing". He is a member of the Christian
pressure group Pax Christi, which was behind the anti-war declaration. The
signatories add: "It is our considered view that an attack on Iraq would
be both immoral and illegal and that eradicating the dangers posed by
malevolent dictators and terrorists can be achieved only by tackling the
root causes of the disputes. [TABLET UK]

PAY THE RICH FIRST. The federal government's $165 billion deficit for this
year, as calculated by the Bush administration. (The Dems say it will be
closer to $200 billion and even Senate Republicans put it at around $190
billion.) The federal deficit brings a four-year streak of surpluses to an
end, according to the NYT lead. (The debt clock in midtown Manhattan will
be lit up again after two years of darkness.) Let the bickering begin:
Republicans say the fall of the stock market caused the deficit, while
Democrats blame George W.'s $1.35 trillion, 10- year tax cut, which was
based on optimistic long-term surplus projections. he worst week on Wall
Street since September. The Dow freefell almost 700 points, or 7.4
percent, while the Nasdaq dropped 5.2 percent. [NYT]

NOTED INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST JOHN NEGROPONTE SAID IN A NEWS CONFERENCE
THAT AMERICANS ARE ABOVE THE LAW. U.N. Security Council granted American
peacekeepers one year of immunity from the U.N.'s new International
Criminal Court.

LIKE CEOS, A FEW 'BAD APPLES,' OR SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE SYSTEM? Last
week's tape of officers beating a handcuffed 16-year-old black boy in LA.
"What we see on the tape is the second beating," says the attorney for the
boy's family. The man who shot the amateur video of Inglewood police
officers beating a black teen-ager was arrested Thursday by officials with
the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Meanwhile, the attorney
for the police officer suspended in the case said the teen-ager took
action "that required that he be punched." Amateur photographer Mitchell
Crooks was arrested outside CNN's Los Angeles bureau where he was
scheduled for an interview. Witnesses said he was screaming as he was
driven away by plainclothes officers. Crooks spent part of Thursday night
in the hospital ward of a Los Angeles jail for as-yet-unexplained injuries
apparently suffered after his arrest, his lawyer said. [REUTERS]

PERSONAL COMMUNICATION: "I was talking to a public defender out of Oakland
last weekend. He told me that local courts, prosecutors, and cops prefer
probation so they can extend their control over people, leaving them on a
string where they can jerk them into prison at any time without any more
proof than a PO or cop's word."

AND ANOTHER: "A more disturbing police state tendency -- the real thing --
is the Rumsfeld determination that US citizens can be held indefinitely on
suspicion of terrorism without being charged, tried, or given access to an
attorney. A federal district (trial) court (without precedential force)
ruling I heard about today -- I haven't read it yet -- apparently said
that some or all of this is OK. This was by the chief judge of the
Southern District of NY (in Manhattan), a very influential court. Another
SDNY court came out the other way."

FRIDAY, JULY 12, 2002

YAWN. A warning from Attorney General John Ashcroft that al-Qaida still
has "sleeper cells" in the U.S.; the Justice Department announced that
most of the 1,200 people picked up in post-9/11 sweeps have been deported
on immigration violations. [LAT]

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE. When President Bush sold more than 200,000
shares in Harken Energy Corp. in June 1990, he said he did not know the
company was in bad financial shape. But memos from the company show in
great detail that he was apprised of how badly the company's fortunes were
failing before he sold his stock -- and that he was warned by company
lawyers against selling stock based on insider information. Less than two
months after Bush sold his stock, Harken announced a $23.2 million loss
for the second quarter of 1990. Bush maintains he did not know Harken was
going to report the loss and thought he was "selling into good news, not
bad," as close Bush advisor Karen Hughes told the American Prospect in
1999, pointing to the announcement of a new drilling contract in the
Middle East island nation of Bahrain. White House spokesman Dan Bartlett
reprised the "good news" argument in an interview with the New York Times
on Wednesday. [SALON]

THERE'S A FURTHER REFUGE, BEYOND PATRIOTISM, FOR SCOUNDRELS. The NYT's
lead says that yesterday President Bush "displayed some impatience" over
all the attention that's being paid to corporate malfeasance. According to
the Times, he said, "I believe people have taken a step back and asked,
'What's important in life?' You know, the bottom line and this corporate
America stuff, is that important? Or is serving your neighbor, loving your
neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself?"

IMPERIAL POWERS DO WHAT THEY WANT. Israel's announcement that it will give
a civilian trial to popular Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who
Israel accuses of masterminding terrorism. Israel said that it's trying
him in a civilian court rather than a military one ("as is usual," says
the LAT), because, as one official said, "we want the public to see the
evidence." The papers suggest, but don't outright say, that trying
Barghouti in Israel is technically a violation of the, essentially
defunct, Oslo accords. [SLATE]

I LOVE THIS GAME/WAR AGAINST TERRORISM! NBA star Allan Iverson plans on
turning himself in today for forcing his way into an apartment while
armed, and threatening two men inside. Police have charged him with
various counts, including criminal trespassing and making "terroristic
threats."

THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2002

ACROSS THE COUNTER PROPAGANDA? According to "senior officials at the State
Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies," the White House has decided
that any full-scale invasion of Iraq would "require" a serious provocation
by Saddam Hussein, such as fielding nukes, or invading another country.
White House has concluded that barring some sort of escalation by Iraq,
there's simply not enough support among allies, or potentially at home,
for a big-time invasion. The paper says that the focus is now on
"smaller-scale options." [USAT]

DO AS I SAY... President Bush proposed on Tuesday to ban companies from
offering loans to corporate officers, in the 1980s he took two such loans.

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT? The Post's article also points out that yesterday
the White House "refused to release" records related to the president's
stint on the board of the company he took loans from, Harken Energy: In
response to questions from reporters earlier this week about the shady
sale of a Harken subsidiary and his role in it, Bush had said, "You need
to look back on the director's minutes." Yesterday, the White House
explained that it doesn't have the minutes and that reporters need to get
them from Harken, which, the WP notes, has long refused to release the
docs.

FAIR HARVARD, EVEN TO YALIES. A New York Times article on the loans
details the mysterious nature of Bush's sale of 212,000 shares of Harken
Energy stock. He was approached by a broker representing an unnamed
institutional investor who offered to buy Bush's shares. According to "The
Buying of the President 2000," evidence suggests that the unnamed
institutional investor was the company that manages Harvard University's
multi-billion dollar endowment, and which had invested at least $20
million in Harken one month after George W. Bush came on board.

TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2002

PAUL KRUGMAN: The current crisis in American capitalism isn't just about
the specific details - about tricky accounting, stock options, loans to
executives, and so on. It's about the way the game has been rigged on
behalf of insiders. And the Bush administration is full of such insiders.
That's why President Bush cannot get away with merely rhetorical
opposition to executive wrongdoers. To give the most extreme example (so
far), how can we take his moralizing seriously when Thomas White - whose
division of Enron generated $500 million in phony profits, and who sold
$12 million in stock just before the company collapsed - is still
secretary of the Army?  Yet everything Mr. Bush has said and done lately
shows that he doesn't get it. Asked about the Aloha Petroleum deal at his
former company Harken Energy - in which big profits were recorded on a
sale that was paid for by the company itself, a transaction that obviously
had no meaning except as a way to inflate reported earnings - he
responded, "There was an honest difference of opinion. . . . sometimes
things aren't exactly black-and-white when it comes to accounting
procedures." [NYT]

LOL, EXCEPT FOR THE TEARS. Bush explained yesterday at his press
conference. "In the corporate world, sometimes things aren't exactly black
and white when it comes to accounting procedures." (The Post says that the
president "glared at reporters when he heard titters after that answer.")

BAD APPLE IN A ROTTEN TREE.  WorldCom's former CEO Bernie Ebbers did
actually have something to say during the hearings yesterday: "I believe
that no one will conclude that I engaged in any criminal or fraudulent
conduct during my tenure at WorldCom." One congressman argued that Ebbers
waived his Fifth Amendment rights by defending himself like that. Legal
scholars quoted in the Journal say the congressman may have a case. The
WSJ says that WorldCom memos recently filed with the SEC show that the
company's CFO "planned to bury" the now-infamous $3.8 billion accounting
"misstatement."

MONDAY, JULY 08, 2002

DID YOU SEE THIS IN THE US NEWS?  UN weapons inspectors colluded with
British secret service agents to spread disinformation about Saddam
Hussein's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs as part of a
campaign to justify military strikes, according to the head of the UN
inspection team in Iraq. In an interview with The Herald, Scott Ritter,
who led the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) team in Iraq for
seven years in the 90s, claims he helped to leak propaganda to
journalists. He resigned from the post in 1998 but said his experience
then suggested that recent claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass
destruction should be treated skeptically. [HERALD SCOTLAND]

PERFIDIOUS ALBION, IN THE US POCKET.  UK foreign secretary Jack Straw will
announce this week a new era of realpolitik, ending any pretence of
Britain having an ethical foreign policy, when he unveils guidelines
allowing for a significant relaxation in the rules governing arms exports.
In a move which has split the Cabinet, the Foreign Secretary will make a
statement to parliament announcing a "modification" to the rules on arms
sales to reflect the "new reality" of the multinational defense projects.
The change in policy has been pushed through by Downing Street to allow
British-made components for F16 fighter planes to leave the country -
despite being destined for aircraft bought by the Israeli government.
Labour back-benchers and Opposition MPs condemned the changes , accusing
the government of breaking its own guidelines, agreed with EU colleagues
in 1999, which forbid the sale of arms when there is a "clear risk" of
them being used for internal repression or aggression abroad. [SCOTSMAN]

AGAIN, AN ACCOUNT THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE US PRESS: THE BBC SHOWED FOOTAGE
FROM THE CURRENT ISRAELI "INCURSION" LAST WEEK. The tank pulls into view,
its barrel pointing straight down Jasmine Street towards the children
cycling back from the shops after buying a chocolate bar. On a nearby
rooftop an amateur cameraman stops panning across the Jenin skyline and
films the group of stick figures moving quickly away from the Israeli war
machine. Suddenly a plume of orange erupts from the barrel and the
cameraman dives for cover as shrapnel slams into the second-story wall
just below him. A hundred yards away teenagers sheltering behind walls
look at the shell bouncing down the street, slamming first into the tarmac
then into a low wall, where it explodes, blowing 11-year-old Tariq Abu
Aziz off his bicycle and ripping apart his two brothers. [TIMES UK]

Published on Saturday, July 13, 2002 in the Toronto Star Too Much in the
Hands of Too Few by Carol Goar

PLUTOCRACY IS one of those words that seems to belong to a bygone era.The
notion of government by the rich, for the rich, conjures up images of
European aristocrats, Russian czars or African potentates. Look closer to
home, says American commentator Kevin Phillips, author of a disturbing new
book entitled Wealth and Democracy. He depicts the United States as "the
most polarized and inequality-ridden of major Western nations" and warns
the current concentration of power in the hands of a moneyed elite is
unsustainable. This is the sort of analysis one might expect from a
left-leaning polemicist in a season of confidence-busting corporate
scandals. But Phillips is a Republican. Moreover, he started work on
Wealth and Democracy in 1999, when the American economy was red-hot, stock
prices were soaring and analysts could see no end to the bull market. Two
things troubled him. He saw eerie parallels between the market mania of
the late 20th century and the speculative booms of the roaring '20s and
the Gilded Age (1870-90). Then, as now, a privileged elite was enriching
itself at the expense of everybody else. "As wealth concentration grows,
especially near the crest of a drawn-out boom, so does upper-bracket
control of politics and its ability to shape its own preferment," Phillips
noted. "The cost to ordinary Americans has been substantial - in reduced
median family income, in stagnant wages, in a diminished sense of
community and commonweal, in fewer private and government services and
sometimes in poorer physical and mental health amid money- culture values,
work hours and competitive consumption." His second concern was that
corporate leviathans were pouring obscene amounts of money into the
electoral system. By the time George W. Bush won the presidency in late
2000, Phillips was convinced that big business had bought control of the
political agenda. "The essence of plutocracy, fulfilled in 2000, has been
the determination and ability of wealth to reach beyond its own realm of
money and control politics and government as well," he wrote. If Phillips
had merely been prescient, his book would be clever, but not compelling.
What gives Wealth and Democracy its moral weight are the lessons he draws
from past plutocracies and the way he applies them to the U.S. and other
countries that allow the wealthy few to benefit at the expense of the
many. He looks at three once-great powers that went through cycles of
giddy accumulation, global pre-eminence, increasing polarization,
dissipation and decline. The first was Spain, whose galleons plundered the
world for gold and silver in the 16th century. Next came Holland, the
greatest commercial power of the 17th century. Finally, he examines
19th-century Britain, with its thriving factories, railroads, docks and
far-flung empire. All three thought they could rewrite the rules of
history and remain at the pinnacle forever. But each followed the same
trajectory: a 50-year climb to global ascendancy, a golden era in which
all prospered, a widening of the gap between rich and poor, a shift from
technological innovation to financial speculation, and a slide into
decadence, corruption and decay. Looking at his homeland, Phillips sees
all the danger signals of a superpower in decline. The richest one per
cent of Americans have reaped more than half of the nation's income gains
in the last decade. Paper wealth has outpaced productivity. The middle
class is working longer and harder to keep up. Federal and state
legislators have cut business taxes, loosened health and safety
regulations, encouraged profligate energy use and shrugged off calls for
campaign finance reform. And now, a wave of scandals is shaking corporate
America. Canada, too, is becoming sharply polarized. The richest 20 per
cent of families now earn 45.2 per cent of the nation's income - a 9 per
cent gain over the past decade. The poorest 20 per cent earn 3.1 per cent
- a drop of 18.5 per cent. Canadian politicians, like their American
counterparts, are paying obeisance to the marketplace at the expense of
equity, the environment and human health. Phillips stops short of
forecasting the inevitable downfall of North America. With the right
political leadership and the right mix of policies - high taxes on capital
gains and inherited wealth, progressive social programs and strict
oversight of corporations - it might be possible to free democracy from
the grip of commerce, he suggests. Lectures like the one Bush delivered to
Wall Street executives this week aren't enough. Neither are jail terms for
prominent white-collar criminals. As long as wealthy politicians depend on
corporate largesse to get elected, America will be governed by the rich,
for the rich. The only way to dismantle a plutocracy is to sever the link
between money and power.

Colonial wars New liberal imperialism is making the world safe for
terrorists Neil Clark

'What is needed is a new kind of imperialism, one compatible with human
rights and cosmopolitan values: an imperialism which aims to bring order
and organisation,' argues New Labour foreign-policy guru Robert Cooper in
his recent pamphlet Re-ordering the World: The Long-term Implications of
September 11th.

Cooper distinguishes between two kinds of 'new colonialism' that can 'save
the world': the 'voluntary' imperialism of institutions such as the IMF
and the World Bank, which 'provide help for states wishing to find their
way back on to the global economy', and the 'imperialism of neighbours',
when states intervene to sort out 'instability' in their neighbourhood.

Cooper uses the 'humanitarian' intervention in Kosovo and the subsequent
establishment there of a 'protectorate' as a shining example of how his
'new colonialism' can bring 'order and organisation'. As Cooper is so keen
to talk of Kosovo, let us examine a little more closely the effect his
'imperialism of neighbours' has had on the province.

Six years ago, Kosovo was at relative peace. Albanian demands for greater
independence from Belgrade were channelled through the peaceful Democratic
League party of Ibrahim Rugova, while the small groups of Albanian
paramilitaries that did exist were disorganised, unco-ordinated and
isolated. As late as November 1997, the KLA, having been formed as the
'hardline' wing of a previous Albanian terror group, could, it has been
estimated, call on the services of only at the very most 200 men.

At this point, Robert Cooper's 'new colonialists' started to get involved.
Having at first declared the KLA to be a terrorist organisation, our new
colonialists, with the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to the
fore, started to see in this motley array of fanatics, cut-throats and
hoodlums a perfect vehicle for their long-desired aim to topple the
politically incorrect regime in Belgrade that they and other
'humanitarian' liberals so detested.

Instead of being treated as pariahs, the KLA were now to be given a
makeover. Gone were the 'terrorist' epithets; the KLA were now gallant
'freedom fighters', bravely defending their people from the brutal
'fascist' regime in Belgrade. The fact that, during 1998, the KLA actually
executed more of their people than they did Serbs was not widely reported
in the media of Cooper's 'post-modern states'. CIA money was diverted, via
Geneva, to fund KLA operations, while BND, the German secret service,
provided uniforms, weaponry and instructors to knock the rag-bag KLA into
shape. Britain, now under the leadership of enthusiastic new colonialists,
was keen to play its part, too, diverting SAS units from their hunt for
the Omagh bombers to send them instead to the mountains of northern
Albania to do their bit in training the young bucks of the KLA to shoot
Yugoslav postmen and, indeed, anyone else wearing the uniform of the
Yugoslav state.

In siding with the KLA, it mattered not a jot to our new colonialists that
they were joining forces with a group largely funded by trafficking in
illegal narcotics. Ironically, on the very day that KLA hardliner Hashim
Thaci (having discarded his Balaclava and combat fatigues for a designer
suit) was being warmly embraced by Mrs Albright for signing the
Rambouillet 'peace' treaty, Europol was submitting a report for all
European interior ministers on the connection between Thaci's organisation
and the Albanian drug gangs that were supplying Western Europe with more
than 75 per cent of its heroin.

Not only were the KLA drug-traffickers, they were also linked
incontrovertibly to Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda organisation. When claims
that al-Qa'eda cells were active in Kosovo in the late 1990s were made by
the then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, they were, predictably,
dismissed out of hand as Serb propaganda. But one doesn't have to take
Slobo's word for it when there is also available the testimony of J.T.
Caruso, the assistant-director of the FBI's counter-terrorism division.

In his statement to a Congressional committee on 18 December last year,
Caruso confirmed that al-Qa'eda had supported 'Islamic fighters' in
Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Chechnya. 'Al-Qa'eda,' continued Caruso,
'has active cells in 20 countries, including Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan,
Kosovo, Chechnya and the Philippines.' Furthermore, according to a
Deutsche Press report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA
was channelled through the former Albanian chief of national security,
Bashkim Gazidede, a man notorious for having 'strong links' to Islamic
terror groups.

So there you have it. Just three years before the Manhattan bombings,
Robert Cooper's new colonialist forces were working alongside Afghan and
Turkish instructors in KLA camps, training mercenaries from Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait to wage holy war on the forces of another European state. One
only hopes that if these erstwhile colleagues do happen to meet up shortly
in an Afghan cave, they remember that they did once work together and at
least exchange greetings before firing at each other.

Not surprisingly, given the massive support that they received from all
quarters, the KLA were, in 1999, able to step up their campaign to remove
Yugoslav forces from Kosovo. When the inevitable security backlash came
from Belgrade, the redoubtable Mrs Albright was ready to hand out the
ultimata, and, after the Rambouillet 'stitch-up', the new colonialists got
the war against Slobo that they had long desired. After a 78-day,
$7-billion bombing campaign, their dream of a 'protectorate' over Kosovo
was finally realised. Three years on, what now of Kosovo?

The province, previously so diverse in its ethnic composition, has seen,
under the aegis of the 'international community', no fewer than 200,000
Serbs and Roma driven from their homes, with hundreds more murdered or
gone missing. So much for Robert Cooper's call for a new imperialism
compatible with human rights and cosmopolitan values. The KLA, now
officially disbanded, is once more being trained by the British, this time
being transformed into the caring, sharing Kosovo Protection Corps. Once
again, the new colonialists have provided the uniforms.

Meanwhile, the drug-running continues. The recent arrest of three ex-KLA
'freedom fighters' in Norway, after the discovery of the country's largest
ever heroin haul, shows that old habits die hard. It is estimated that
Kosovan/Albanian gangs now control 90 per cent of the Western trade in
heroin, 15 per cent up on when the international community took control of
the province.

However, it's not all doom and gloom. New jobs have been created in
Kosovo; not for the local inhabitants, but instead for worthy citizens of
the 'post-modern' world. As Robert Cooper proudly states, 'The
international community provides not just soldiers but police, judges,
prison officers, bankers and others.' For 'others', Cooper is obviously
referring to semi-retired politicians and diplomats, such as Pascal
Fieschi of France, the new head of the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe in Kosovo, and our own Sir Paddy Ashdown, who has
been widely touted as the new high commissioner of the province. Sir
Paddy, though, is reported to be having second thoughts about taking on
the job: perhaps he believes that stemming the multi-billion-dollar drugs
trade and coaxing the Serbs and Roma back to the province so that Albanian
snipers can take pot-shots at them is beyond even his prodigious talents.

In short, Kosovo is in a mess. But it is a mess that is entirely the
making of the new colonialists. If Cooper and his disciples are to have
their way, we must prepare for many more Kosovos in the years ahead. This
might be good news for the numerous politicos and flunkeys keen to end
their careers with a high-commissioner posting in some far-flung corner of
the globe, but decidedly bad news for the rest of us. As the example of
Kosovo shows, Cooper's new colonialism, far from bringing stability and
order, has done exactly the opposite.

The only thing that can truly 'save the world', is if all the states,
whether 'post-modern', 'pre-modern' or however Cooper wishes to label
them, go back to minding their own bloody business.

(c)2001 The Spectator.co.uk http://www.spectator.co.uk

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