So, if we point out that Mugabe won't release the vote totals in the recent election, some "contextualizer" will talk about how, in Ontario, we have a "democratic deficit" no proportional representation, etc.

This style of debate goes way back. In the thirties, one could literally not talk about Stalin's crimes within the left, because the response would be "What about the Negroes in the South?"

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Do we really need yet another thread on this so-called topic?

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[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

Not as an excuse for repression - I remember an infamous conference on "human rights in Cuba" in which the blocade was seen as the greatest violation of human rights - true, perhaps, but also a means of shutting down debate. I was infamously slandered by a participant as a supporter of imperialism (!!!!!!) for speaking out against the anti-gay measures of the day (since rescinded, by the way).

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However, should not democratically inclined socialists be standing up against both American AND Chinese opression?

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Here is Jeff House's exaggerated reply:

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So, if we point out that Mugabe won't release the vote totals in the recent election, some "contextualizer" will talk about how, in Ontario, we have a "democratic deficit" no proportional representation, etc.

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My answer to the question is not without Asians, Africans, Europeans, South Americans, Latin Americans. indigenous peoples, and all others who are oppressed and dispossessed or share common cause speaking at the same time.

When we speak as members of the global north, we speak without sacrifice, or threat, and from a position of privilege and comfort and, most importantly, we speak for ourselves but in a way that is mediated by popular media.

So, for example, while war still rages in Iraq taking lives by the dozen everyday, we find the media attention, and hence our own, is focussed on China and Tibet as though what is happening in Iraq has just stopped.

We learn for example that war coverage of Iraq, in the US, has dropped, as of January this year, to just 4% of all media coverage ( http://www.prwatch.org/node/7167 ). And it barely increased during the recent uptake in violence. But China and Tibet are way up.

Democratically inclined socialists should not be standing up against anything. Enough of that. Isn't it time we started standing up with the oppressed everywhere? And when we do that, we should be doing it because we have always stood with them and not because their cause just happens to be the latest media cause du jour which just happens to coincide with the political efforts of one empire to embarrass another.

I guess what I'm saying is let's quit being puppets jumping whenever our strings are so expertly pulled.

[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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So, for example, while war still rages in Iraq taking lives by the dozen everyday, we find the media attention, and hence our own, is focussed on China and Tibet as though what is happening in Iraq has just stopped.

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OK, but can't we do both at once? In trying to ignore the terrible things done by the Chinese government, aren't we doing a huge diservice to the socalist activists in China and Tibet, whether it is a cause of the day or not.

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OK, but can't we do both at once?

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In your mind, which should be the bigger issue demanding the attention of global peace and human rights activists? It's just me, of course, but I would argue global conflagration.

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In trying to ignore the terrible things done by the Chinese government, aren't we doing a huge diservice to the socalist activists in China and Tibet, whether it is a cause of the day or not.

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If the collective mind of the Western left can only focus on one thing at a time, maybe it's time to dispense with internationalism and look to our own. Our future is, after all, painted in blood, and we will have to focus on domestic troubles if we are to survive.

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[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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In your mind, which should be the bigger issue demanding the attention of global peace and human rights activists? It's just me, of course, but I would argue global conflagration.

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You argue for internatonalism and then in this section of your post you argue against it:

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Precisely. Why don't we? And when we finally have it right and there is justice, freedom, and equality all around, then, maybe, we can export it and tell other nations how to behave.

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Precisely. Why don't we? And when we finally have it right and there is justice, freedom, and equality all around, then, maybe, we can export it and tell other nations how to behave.

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Because at this point we are connected to every country on earth, we couldn't give it the chuck even if we wanted to.

Besides, isn't internationalism a good thing? I think what your arguing against is imperialism and interventionism.

[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Because at this point we are connected to every country on earth, we couldn't give it the chuck even if we wanted to.

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Besides, isn't internationalism a good thing? I think what your arguing against is imperialism and interventionism.

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[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Connected by what? Personal relationships or lines of corporate communication and mediated press? In the sense of a human connection, with the Chinese merchant in Lhasa or the Tibetan monk, do you feel it? Do you hear the babble of voices and diversity of opinion there? If not, then what is it you're connected to?

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Would you say the same if we were discussing the occupied territories?

You seem perfectly willing to influence the policies of the United States and Canada when it comes to foriegn policy issues sourrounding the middle east. Why should I care about this confligration you speak of, any more then I care about Tibet? I have no real connection to the people of Iran either.

[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 13 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

But, how would the Western world respond if China was to pay for and organize a global resistance to the occupation of Iraq and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza? What if China was to plant the seeds, with lots of cash, a movement to boycott Canada's winter games and worked with First Nations for the cause? Would Canadians appreciate the effort on our behalf? Would Americans appreciate the Chinese bringing about colored revolutions in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and violent demonstrations wherever an American official visited including Ottawa?

Somehow, I think we'd see it all differently.

[ 14 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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My question remains the same. Why should I(or a great many Canadian socalists) care about what's happening in the middle east? Aren't there pressing domestic issues that need to be dealt with? Who cares whether people in a country I will probably never visit and with whom I have absolutely no cultural bond, are turned into twitching screaming piles of laserated minsemeat. There's homelessness in Toronto.

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We seem to know more about what is happening in Iran or Iraq or China and Tibet but where do we discuss what is happening in our cities?

We do discuss it but certainly not to the extent of what is happening across the big pond.

I live near a small village so naturally the discussions are pretty local.

There are no homeless people or people sleeping on the street except for the occasional drunk.

Poverty there is but not to be compared to the cities.

[ 14 April 2008: Message edited by: clersal ]

"My question remains the same. Why should I(or a great many Canadian socalists) care about what's happening in the middle east? Aren't there pressing domestic issues that need to be dealt with? Who cares whether people in a country I will probably never visit and with whom I have absolutely no cultural bond, are turned into twitching screaming piles of laserated minsemeat. There's homelessness in Toronto".

I'm very involved in housing issues in Montréal. And I probably have more "cultural bond" with some people of Middle Eastern origins who live here than I do with people in Alberta, for example. Doesn't prevent me from being interested in the latter.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

Let me try it this way: How much peace could we bring to the world if we put all our energy into withdrawing the military forces of the Western world home? How much prosperity could we bring to the world if we focussed on ending the looting the resources of the global south?

I bet you, if we focussed on what we do in the world, it would have a far greater reach and lasting impact than all the focus we could possibly muster on any other part of the world.

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Your right of course, but this piece of silliness:

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Connected by what? Personal relationships or lines of corporate communication and mediated press? In the sense of a human connection, with the Chinese merchant in Lhasa or the Tibetan monk, do you feel it? Do you hear the babble of voices and diversity of opinion there? If not, then what is it you're connected to?

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gives credence to this arguement:

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My question remains the same. Why should I(or a great many Canadian socalists) care about what's happening in the middle east? Aren't there pressing domestic issues that need to be dealt with? Who cares whether people in a country I will probably never visit and with whom I have absolutely no cultural bond, are killed in extraordinarily horrible ways. There's homelessness in Toronto.

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If we only cared about the people and places we had a connection to, we'd be a pretty xenophobic society. I mean if I embraced that way of thinking, there would be no Israeli Resistance threads. My connection to Israel is somewhat tenuous and is certainly not as strong as that of Unionist or Cueball.

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No. Not any place where our empire has expanded through conquest. Israel is not China. Israel is not India. There may have been an ancient Israel, but modern Israel is us. Modern Israel is an extension of the western empire for the purpose of geo-political aims in a region of the world rich in a strategic resource. Just as we are in Afghanistan on a mission of geo-strategic importance. Nothing more.

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But Western powers have conquered and colonized the entire world, and in some cases more then one imperial power holds sway over a given country. For example the Omani and Palestinian governments have connections to Britain and the U.S. So how can we really decide which group of activists should take an interest in Palistine and the Gulf? Should they be British or American?

P.S. We are connected to the rest of the world through economics. If the straight of hormuz closes,( which may well happen if there's a war with Iran) an insanely massive depression will begin. In a globilized world, we can't seal ouraselves off from every other nation.

[ 14 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 14 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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You don't find comparing murdered humans to (sorry for the horrific spelling) "laserated minsemeat? Huh?

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Don't huh me. Who gives a shit about the spelling. You do as you called it: 'Horrific.'

I would guess that there are a lot of murdered humans who do look like mincemeat just like what happens to a cow when we have hamburgers. Unless of course you are a vegetarian and you forget about the carrots that scream when you chop them up!

[ 14 April 2008: Message edited by: clersal ]

Thanks, CMOT, for clearing that up.

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But Western powers have conquered and colonized the entire world, and in some cases more then one imperial power holds sway over a given country. For example the Omani and Palestinian governments have connections to Britain and the U.S. So how can we really decide which group of activists should take an interest in Palistine and the Gulf? Should they be British or American?

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Yes, but that goes to what I said above that you agree with:

Let me try it this way: How much peace could we bring to the world if we put all our energy into withdrawing the military forces of the Western world home? How much prosperity could we bring to the world if we focussed on ending the looting the resources of the global south?

I bet you, if we focussed on what we do in the world, it would have a far greater reach and lasting impact than all the focus we could possibly muster on any other part of the world.

So the key, is reversing our own imperialism and colonialism.

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P.S. We are connected to the rest of the world through economics. If the straight of hormuz closes,( which may well happen if there's a war with Iran) an insanely massive depression will begin. In a globilized world, we can't seal ouraselves off from every other nation.

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And it is true, what happens in Israel-Palestine gets magnified in our media. What happens elsewhere, not so much.

For example, there was very little if no coverage of the Nepal elections in the papers and even progressive news sites. This is even when the election results made history and guaranteed the end of a monarchy and a lasting peace after a brutal civil war that killed 13,000 people.

Nepal has ten times the population of Tibet. It also has a bigger diaspora. Shouldn't the stunning results be mentioned at least in passing? I find it very odd, even with Nepal being a rather well-visited country. Perhaps the West, and even the Left don't have much of an analysis of the situation.

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Are we trying to ignore it or keep it in perspective?

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The Israeli government tries to keep the occupation in perspective too.
They will say things like:
"yes, the Israeli Defense forces killed 16 innocent schoolchildren in the West Bank yesterday, but look at what is happening in Saudi Arabia! There chopping off heads in Riyadh!"

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Do you hear the babble of voices and diversity of opinion there?

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[ 19 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
It seems to me that Babblers are only capable of discussing the regions of the world that are of interest to the mainstream media.
[ 19 April 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
It seems to me that Babblers are only capable of discussing the regions of the world that are of interest to the mainstream media.
Because of this lack of diversity in content, babble has become the least useful part of rabble.ca.

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Contrast the amount of "discussion" the election in Zimbabwe has attracted on babble (5 full threads and counting) with the discussion of the elections in Nepal (18 posts in 11 days) or Spain (10 posts in 10 days). Then consider that most babblers don't know sweet fanny adams about any of those countries, and ask yourself why Zimbabwe gets all the attention from people who normally couldn't even tell you the name of the capital city.

The answer is clearly that they are taking their cue from the mainstream media, which provides a convenient packaging of virtue and evil and invites everyone to join in the pile-on against the latter.

It's the same phenomenon we see when we contrast the amount of discussion on babble about two contemporary events in Venezuela (a fascinating country that may - or may not - be on the way to re-writing the textbooks on how to create a socialist society). The first is the pulling of The Simpsons by a private Venezuelan TV station from a timeslot reserved for children's programming, and rescheduling it to an "adult" timeslot, as a result of pressure from the Venezuelan broadcast regulator. This got lots of play in the MSM, and babblers who know all about The Simpsons, but bugger-all about Venezuela, dutifully followed suit by taking the opportunity to bad-mouth Hugo Chávez (one of the MSM's favourite bad boys), who in fact had nothing to do with the regulator's decision.

The second is the startling developments around the steelworkers strike, where Chávez intervened personally on the side of the workers, and when the employer refused to be reasonable Chávez announced the steel company would be nationalized. He then fired his labour Minister who had tried to screw the union. This got very little interest from the progressives here on babble, or from the MSM.

Coincidence? I think not.

[ 20 April 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
It seems to me that Babblers are only capable of discussing the regions of the world that are of interest to the mainstream media.

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So the key, is reversing our own imperialism and colonialism.

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Irony alert. It seems to me you assume that what they post here on babble is all there is to know of babblers.

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Contrast the amount of "discussion" the election in Zimbabwe has attracted on babble (5 full threads and counting) with the discussion of the elections in Nepal (18 posts in 11 days) or Spain (10 posts in 10 days). Then consider that most babblers don't know sweet fanny adams about any of those countries, and ask yourself why Zimbabwe gets all the attention from people who normally couldn't even tell you the name of the capital city.

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That sounds like the million dollar question, M.Spector,
Thank you for highlighting the cognitive discrepancies.
I'm also surprised occasionally at topics that DONT get mentioned by the supposedly all-knowing Western MSM.
Lets say, some ominous (and prophetic) news, like massive food riots in countries around the world.

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From rice in Ecuador, quark in Germany to croissants in France: food prices are constantly souring up in the whole world. The poorest strata of population suffer most of all. The prosperity of the golden billion is threatened by revolts of the hungry.

Revolution of the hungry is in store for many countries

Extremities of nature, topmost prices of oil, as well as rapid-growing demand in China and India are the major reasons for record high leaps in food prices. The poverty-stricken suffer not only in developing, but in developed countries as well.

Thirty-year-old Haitian worker Eugene Thermilon can no longer support his wife and four children. Prices of noodles doubled. Two corn jars were their only meal for a day. The fact that people like Thermilon cannot afford food any more oppresses Fabiola Duran Estime. The 31-year-old woman sells food, but now she has lost her clients. For she barely earns any money, her daughter can no longer attend the kindergarten, because she cannot afford the $13 monthly tuition. “This population has nothing to do but to confine themselves in food,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, economist of the UN Food and Agricultural organization (FAO). “It is a cruel, but true scenario,” he underlined.

Prices are expected to stabilize in the long term, but within the next decade prices will tend to increase, according to preliminary FAO projections. Topmost prices of oil will push up prices of everything from fertilizers to transport to food processing. Besides, in fast-growing economies like China and India the demand for meat and dairy is sky-rocketing.

In most countries staples are getting more expensive. For example, in Egypt prices of bread have risen 35 percent and prices of cooking oil have become four times more expensive.

As a result of strong protests, the government should end food subsidies and replace them with cash payouts to the needy. “The revolution of the hungry is in the offing,” said Mohammed el-Askalani of Citizens Against the High Cost of Living protest group.

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