Humanist Association of Orange County - Newsletter for
May 2005
Issue #90 ( HTML format )
Editor: Benito Franqui
Associate Editor: Dave Silva
Send submissions and membership renewals to:
HAOC
2609 Fernside St.
Orange, CA 92865
benfranq@earthlink.net
Articles submitted for publication in the newsletter
must
be received no later than 10 days before the
next
HAOC meeting.
The Humanist Association of Orange County ( HAOC) is a
chapter of the American Humanist Association.
Please visit our website at http://www.ochumanists.org
HAOC Board
President: Pete Anderson
Vice President: Dave Silva
Treasurer:.Harry Becker
Secretary: Jerry Parks
Member at large: Carl Mariz
Member at large: Benito Franqui
NEXT HAOC MEETING Sunday, May 15, 1:30 P.M.
Open meeting
No specific presentation has been scheduled.
Attendees will have more time than usual to express their beefs, concerns,
opinions about the direction in which the group should be moving or about which
issues should be emphasized, etc.
This will be a special
opportunity to tell us ( the board ) in what ways we can better serve the
memberships interests.
Comments
on last month's presentation
by
Paul Ricci
Emeritus
Instructor in Philosophy,
Cypress
College
I
was impressed by the eloquence and broad knowledge of our last speaker, Prof.
Tibor Machan. Along with some interesting autobiographical data provided by
Benito Franqui, I can understand and appreciate how Prof. Machan came to his
libertarian views. However, insofar as I look at libertarianism as a dangerous
political/ethical stance for any individual or society to adopt, I decided to
offer what seem to me some of its shortcomings and why I think it's dangerous.
This essay is not intended to be a detailed analysis of the libertarian world
view but just a few reasons why I think it is unacceptable as a personal
philosophy and the harm it can lead to.
To
begin with, I rather thoroughly investigated Randian Objectivism many years ago
and thought, at first, it would self-destruct since many of its premises seemed
quite unsupportable. To my chagrin, the philosophy marched on, thanks to popular
novels by Ayn Rand, which neatly and emotively expressed her basic beliefs
regarding ethics, politics and economics. The Fountainhead
was
even made into a movie and along with Atlas
Shrugged a
coterie of following amongst a certain portion of the population ensued. I was
impressed so I dug deeper into her philosophy, especially her ethics, and read
through her The
Virtue of Selfishness (which
I even used
in
a class in ethics at one time),
John
Hospers book, LIBERTARIANISM: A Political Philosophy Whose Time Has Come, a
number of Reason magazines, countless articles and some thirty years of debate
with a friend and colleague who has championed Ayn Rand and libertarian thinking
for as long as I can remember. I concluded from this study many of the
libertarian claims were simply not true, some exaggerated, and others poorly
documented. Further, I found Rand's monstrous text on epistemology to be not
only polemical but misguided and many of her main tenets easily refuted. She
certainly does not have the standing amongst philosophers that her own view of
her work suggested to her devotees. I use the latter word simply because there
is ample evidence her philosophy as a whole, along with her personality, amounts
to a political cult. Though not religious in any sense of the term, she has
those characteristics found in most religious cults; no one can deviate or
diverge one iota from her teachings else they get denounced, she is absolutistic
about her belief system, paranoid about others out to destroy her teachings, and
guilty of megalomania. In all fairness, of course, none of the former is proof
her philosophy is in error just because of the way she held it, for that would
be to commit an ad
hominem
fallacy.
The
Objectivism of Ayn Rand and the libertarianism that eventually followed from it,
is wrong and harmful for a number of reasons. First, it idolizes a certain kind
of capitalism which overlooks any of the harm that has derived from this
economic system. To most neutral observers, the harm became obvious during the
industrial revolution in Europe and in the U.S. The willing exploitation of
children during this time, the miserable conditions of ordinary working people,
the slums, the Robber Barons of our own country, and on and on, provides
abundant evidence of the harm of capitalistic enterprises. The defense of these
atrocities by libertarians are legion: the terrible working conditions were
really the fault of government, we should not judge evil during the industrial
revolution as we would judge it today (really!), the workers were better off in
their misery than not working at all, or that pure laissez
faire capitalism
really hadn't been practiced, if it had, the misery wouldn't have followed, and
on and on. The point is that such ad
hoc
reasons allow for no rebuttal, no experimental disproof of their thesis since
"pure" capitalism is defined never to cause harm. Any harm that came
of capitalism was caused by the greed of certain individuals, not by capitalism
per se. The profit motive, in itself, cannot be evil nor lead to any evil.
Convenient but not convincing and clearly guilty of what I have called the Redefinist
fallacy in
a lecture given at a Humanist meeting a few years back.
Their
second main point is that most harm in society comes from government, not from
the free exercise of the economic rights of capitalists. I find that quite a
remarkable belief since I recall having been "ripped off" innumerable
times by various sorts of capitalistic entrepreneurs,
and it still continues, and only once by my government here in this country. Now
there is no doubt that some countries have done more harm than capitalism,
especially when the government itself restricts freedoms of its citizens as has
happened in fascist and communist countries and with dictators or in
theocracies. But times have changed, the biggest threat to individual citizens
is capitalistic exploitation. Oh, I almost forgot, "capitalistic
exploitation" is a phrase disallowed in libertarian discussion, it doesn't
exist. (!) This is one reason why libertarianism is dangerous, it sweeps all
exploitation under the rug and holds capitalists responsible only for fraud
(which, of course, still occurs and little is done about it) and irresponsible
harm to others which can be remedied through courts in legal battles (which is
extremely difficult in most cases, especially to sue large companies). Oh yes,
they are also opposed to monopolies but these are favorite set-ups for
capitalists nonetheless, and they continue unabated.
Lastly,
and most dangerous of all, is the libertarian absolutist belief in human rights.
Though we are all in favor of rights TO be able to act as we please, so long as
we harm no one else, we must also consider the rights of those to be free FROM
want, from basic necessities. Since the right to do with our property as we
please is foremost amongst libertarian rights, the government has no
right to coerce, through taxation -- which libertarians oppose except for
defense of country and support of a minimum infrastructure-- to support those in
need of food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Of course, it seems to make
little difference to most libertarians that most Americans are willing and able
to pay a little more in taxes to support those in need. The coercion--if any--
is restricted to libertarians and some nasty Republicans as far as I can see.
Let me place this in a question form, one I often like to give to libertarians
to see how it is answered. Is it not better, that is, more moral, to tax
citizens to support those in need for the necessities of life than the evil in
coercing those few who don't want to pay those taxes? When I asked this to Prof.
Machan, he answered that we should help those in need on a voluntary basis, not
through the coercion of taxation. But, of course, as he should know, that is
unworkable and for a number of reasons. First, I don't even know of the vast
majority of individuals, even here in the city of Cypress, who are in desperate
need so they can't be helped. Most are too proud to ask friends or others
unknown to them for help. Second, giving to charities on a voluntary basis is an
excellent way to help those in desperate need but even in a country as wealthy
as we are, charity hasn't worked and never has as far as I know. It may work in
very small collectivist communities but that is not the situation today. Prof,
Machan claimed it has. Well, I need to see the proof. If it has worked, it
certainly is rare and not well-known despite the fact that most religions in the
world entice their parishioners to help the poor and needy. In the long run it
doesn't work; only an aware central government can accomplish such a bold task
and libertarians only argue against it, another reason their philosophy is
dangerous and wrong. We have only to look at the various welfare states in
Europe and some Asian countries to see how the problem of freedom from want is
handled to realize we are doing a poor job in one of the wealthiest countries in
the world.
Even
going along with the libertarian claim that it is wrong to coerce a minority
into doing something they don't wish to do, it is far worse -- morally-- to
allow the desperate needs of the poor to go unattended. That they refuse to see
this, only shows the bankruptcy of their moral code. Their stubborn hatred for
any kind of collectivization is what gets them into their absurd moral position
despite the fact that most democratic nations in the world do concentrate on
both kinds of freedom as mentioned above.
Libertarians
want to claim economic freedom as one of the most important of human freedoms
and even one from which other freedoms stem. I would claim the opposite; it is
the least
important
of freedoms and certainly not the
freedom from which other freedoms derive. But space does not permit a more
detailed defense of this last point.
Much
more could be said about the moral and political beliefs of libertarians and
their implications, but enough has been said here to at least question the kind
of humanism espoused by these thinkers. Does it really fit into the standards we
have accepted as Humanists? I think not.
A
wave of the future?
By
Benito Franqui
I
share the reservations of most humanists about the viability in today's world of
Libertarianism ( or Neo-Objectivism ) as a politico-economic system. But I'm
open to the possibility of its becoming practical some day. And I agree with Dr.
Machan that none of the systems which have been tried so far have proved to be
satisfactory in the long run ( except perhaps in a few isolated areas, and even
there - e.g. Switzerland - the success seems to be dependent on very special
circumstances ).
In
order for Libertarianism to be widely successful, some marked changes in human
nature seem to be necessary. Any kind of civilization I can envision would
require some individuals to be put in positions of authority over other
individuals. And as Dr. Machan reminds us, power corrupts - or at least
that has been our normal experience so far.
Perhaps
Libertarians, by engaging in dialog with transhumanists, can figure out some
ways of enlisting the aid of modern
technology in bringing about that change in human nature. Genetic engineering
springs to mind. Needless to say, the mere notion of applying genetic
engineering principles to the human species will be vigorously - even violently
- opposed in certain quarters - so it is necessary to proceed with extreme
caution.
Perhaps
humanity must first experience some widespread catastrophe before the survivors
are ready to embrace the necessary changes in their thinking. Guess the future
will tell.
No more Crusades
by
Clay Costner
(
Published in the Whittier Daily News on April
4, 2005
)
Re
'The Third Crusade and the Axis of Evll':
George
Santayana wrote: 'Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it."
On
Sept. 11, 2OO1, George Bush said, "We shall go on a crusade against our
enemies."
His
advisers suggested that it would.be better not to use the word crusade again
when talking about the enemy in the Middle East. He didn't use the word again
for many months, but then one day he slipped
and said, "We shall persecute the enemy."
Of
course he meant prosecute this war against our enemies, or did he? Persecute,
torture and kill is what they did in the early
crusades.
In
the First Crusade ( there were five), begun in 1095, on the ,way to Jerusalem,
marauding mobs destroyed Jewish communi ties
from France all the way to the Holy Lands. In Jerusalem, all of the Jews were
locked in the temple, and it was
bumed to the ground.
All
Muslims were slain in similar manner.
In
1187, the Third Crusade included King Richard the Lionheart of
England, King Phillip of
France and Emperor Barbarossa of
Germany, all with huge armies. Barbarossa, with
260,OOO crusaders traveled over land. When they arrived in Turkey,
they ran short on water. The Emperor rode ahead of his troops into a stream and
uncere moniously drowned. His troops broke up and
began looting and never reached the Holy Lands.
King
Richard and King Phillip both sailed huge armadas out of Italy bound for the
Holy Lands. King Phillip arrived first and began a siege of the fort of Acre, a
gateway to the Holy Lands. He waited for King Richard before going farther
because Richard had the better
fighters, and King Richard was a
legendary fighter himself. When King Richard arrived, the two armies quickly
broke down the walls of the fort and established a beachhead in the Holy Lands.
Any Jews or Muslims in Acre might escape torture and death if they paid a huge
ransom and gave up their property.
At
the time of the Third Crusade Saladin, perhaps the greatest leader since
Mohammed, had united all Muslims under his banner from Egypt to Syria. Saladin
was born at Tikrit in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was born. In fact, Saddam saw
himself as a modern-day Saladin who would unite all Muslims under his command.
Despite
the loss of both French and German fighters, King Richard was still able to
defeat Saladin at every battle all of the way to the outskirts of Jerusalem,
then considered the center of the universe and the greatest prize for the
crusaders.
Saladin,
realizing that he could not defeat King Richard in battle, withdrew all of his
forces from Jerusalem. However, while doing so, he poisoned all of the wells and
waters around Jerusalem.
King
Richard, while encamped outside the Holy City, began to receive reports that his
brother John was attempting to take over his kingdom in England and that his
former friend King Phillip was contesting for Richard's lands in northern
France. Richard left his army outside the Holy City and took 20 knights and
headed back to England.
On
the way, King Richard was captured by a new king in Germany and held for a huge
ransom for more than a year before he was finally released.
His
army never entered Jerusalem, which remained under Muslim control from 1187
until 1947 and the Six-Day War.
Now,
George Bush is on a new crusade and pre-emptive war to establish democracy at
the point of firing tank shells, dropping 2,000 pound bombs and missiles fired
from ships.
We
can do better. We must do better.
Meaning
of 'crusade'
by Clay Costner
(
Published in the Whittier Daily News on April
13,
2005
)
Thank
you Florence Richards for your
letter April 10, "More to
Mideast conflict."
I
had made a mistake because of a faulty memory after reading two books on the
Third Crusade. Yes the Six-day War was in 1967 instead of 1947. Otherwise, I
don't think I made any other mistakes.
One
of my sources was the book "Warriors of God" by James Reston Jr. A
couple of pertinent quotes are the following: "The symbolism of the Third
Crusade hovers over the modern history and modem politics of the Middle East. On
Dec. 11, 1917, when Gen. Edmund Allen walked through the Jaffa Gate to accept
the surrender of the Turks after 400 years of rule, the press made much about
the consummation of Europe's last crusade. In July 1920, when the French general
Henri Gouraud took charge of Damascus, he strode to Saladin's tomb next to the
Grand Mosque and exclaimed, to the everlasting disgust of modern Arabs, 'Saladin,
we have returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the
Crescent.'"
On
the recent news of Iraq's newly elected president, al-Qaida released a statement
saying that, "'The new Kurdish president of Iraq was a tail of the
Americaris." And the
"...Holy War against the Crusaders and Jews would continue."
George
Bush may have quit using the word "crusade," but the Jihadists now use
the word and seem to think that it is another attempt through violence to
establish Western domination over the Holy Lands.
Shifting
sands of democracy
From:
Australian Financial Review
By: Peter Manning, adjunct professor of journalism at the University of
Technology, Sydney. He is completing a doctorate on media images of Arabs and
Muslims.
Date: 12/29/2004
In
the Middle East, probably no word is more devalued than "democracy".
Arabs are going into their third century of being told that democracy is being
exported from the West, direct to their backyards. When Napoleon decided to
follow his hero Alexander the Great and head south across the Mediterranean to
invade Egypt in 1798, he did it in the name of the French Republic. His
proclamation, written in the best Arabic, stated that the republic (for which he
used the Arabic word for "public", jumhur) was "based on the
foundations of liberty and equality". 1
Somehow,
fraternity got lost, but in the words that followed, the colonial era began for
"the Orient". France was coming because of "insults" to its
pride and barriers to its merchants. But, of course, it was coming with higher
purpose: to help the common people expel the central Asian Mamluks, whom the
Ottomans used as a bureaucratic elite. Napoleon was appealing to the average
Egyptian, implying a concept of the right of all people to equal opportunity.
Napoleon's
later reflections, written on Saint Helena, show that his true purpose was
broader: to outflank the English in a new region of interest (for England
"the Orient" was India), to roll back Ottoman power, to reduce the
power of Muslims in the Middle East and to capture new resources and territory
for France.
In
the 19th century there was another contest between France and England for power
and prestige, in the Middle East; and in the 20th the great European race for
oil.
But
always there was the dance between rhetoric and power. When Napoleon's ship, The
Orient, hove into Alexandria, the French general brought an unusual cargo.
Several dozen Orientalist "savants" accompanied the expedition
chemists, historians, biologists, surgeons and antiquarians to get to know
Egypt. Their 23-volume Description de l'Egypte, appeared in 1809, and Europe
would soon get to "know" Egypt better than itself or at least a dream
of Egypt, and the Orient.2
And
from the Arabic side, a kind of fascination developed with the energy, education
and curiosity of this expeditionary force. It would be the first of a long
series of love-hate relationships with the West. For much of the next century, a
number of important Arabic philosophical and theological scholars debated the
European inheritance. Rifa'a Badawi Rafi' al-Tahtawi, an Egyptian academic, in
the early 19th century visited Paris, read much of Racine, Voltaire, Rousseau
and Montesquieu and looked into the compatibility of the West with Islam and the
traditions of the Koran. Khayr al-Din, a Tunisian, also tried to fathom the
power of the West especially its education and science while remaining true to
Islam. A Maronite Lebanese of the mid-19th century, Butrus al-Bustani, took on
not only the renewal of his much-loved Arabic language but the task of defining
the new nationalism of "Syria" in Western terms.
These
were the early thinkers reacting to the entrancing French. By the middle of the
19th century, however, the rhetoric of freedom and equality, and now
"democracy", was wearing thin. Various Arab states had become clients
of the Western traders, especially the English. Between 1820 and 1860, Egypt
became a plantation economy for Lancashire cotton. Its exports rose from nil to
##1.5 million. Lebanese silk went to the factories of Lyon, Tunisian olive oil
was used for French soap.
But
woe betide any new state that took "freedom" to mean resistance to its
incorporation in the new "global" economy. In 1861, Tunisians tried
the first constitutional government in an Islamic state: civil liberty,
taxation, a representative council of 60 members. But the economic power
differences between Tunisia and the West, and the influence of local Christian
and Jewish traders with foreign interests, were too great. In the 1860s, street
riots broke out across Tunisia. Tunisia's indebtedness to European banks
triggered an investigation by an international commission. The more the economy
opened, the less room there was to move for local Tunisians. In 1881, the French
army, having already occupied Algeria, invaded the country.
In
Egypt, it was much the same story. Indebtedness and higher taxes, riots,
resentment, poverty and foreign interference became an explosive mix. In 1881,
an army officer, Ahmad 'Urabi, led a movement to establish a democratic Chamber
of Deputies. When the chamber met the following year to declare Egypt's
independence, Britain invaded, promising a short-term stay until order was
restored and debts repaid. It was to last until another army officer, Gamal
Abdel Nasser, threw the British out in 1953, more than 70 years later. Democracy
had been crushed by the army of the world's first democracy.
The
ideas of Arabic political thinkers and intellectuals changed markedly in
response to the discovery of their loss of economic independence, their
powerlessness and the sense of their spiritual world being eroded from within.
From the 1880s onward, the great thinkers in the madrassas and the universities
added the rejection of Western power to their philosophical demands. The sense
of happy equality that Napoleon had inspired was replaced by a determination to
rid themselves, first and foremost, of the economic and military power of Europe
and the West and, perhaps, the cultural influences that went with it.
The
first of these thinkers was Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. But the giant of both
Arabic and Muslim thought after the shocks of 1882, was Muhammad Abduh. His
ideas are still intensely debated in the Arabic religious journals of the Muslim
diaspora.3 He travelled widely, read extensively (Rousseau, Tolstoy, Renan,
Strauss) and thought in grand terms. He was a great believer in nationalism, in
education and at one point became the Mufti of Egypt.
But,
overwhelmingly, he was concerned with philosophically accepting the need for
change and showing that Islam was required to embrace change for renewal. In his
view, Islam had the rational power to include the tenets of the French
Enlightenment. Traditional concepts can encompass the new world. The great
historian Albert Hourani says of Abduh: "In this line of thought, maslaha
gradually turns into utility; shura into parliamentary democracy, ijma' into
public opinion. Islam itself becomes identical with civilisation and activity,
the norms of 19th century thought."4
It
is impossible to underestimate Abduh's influence. His thinking set off a
nationalist strain that provided the intellectual underpinnings for a series of
nationalist movements in the Arabic world in the 1920s and 1930s; he offered a
middle way for Muslims who wanted the freedoms and egalitarian values of the
modern world, but who did not wish to lose their religion to forms of secularism
or become Wahhabist fundamentalists. And he provided hope to traditional
religious leaders who knew there had to be a way to renew and refresh their
faith within the bounds of the Prophet and the Koran.
Abduh
became virulently anti-British as he began to see through the diplomatic games
and niceties to the ruthless operation of self-interest in British policy. He
experienced imperial Britain and France at the height of their arrogance. Lords
Cromer and Balfour gloried in their belief that only Britain could teach
democracy and that "Orientals" must wait their turn. Abduh's virulence
was embraced by thinkers like Rashid Rida and Taha Husayn in the early 20th
century. At the same time, the disgust with the discrepancy between democratic
rhetoric and action on the ground grew ever more powerful.
This
was never more obvious than in the treacheries of Lord Balfour after World War I
when not only were Jews made an integral part of an Arab state (Palestine) but
promises were broken to a string of Arabic leaders.5 Arab lands were divided to
suit the oil interests of the victorious allies, Britain and France.6 Oil had
replaced cotton, olives and fabrics.
The
key local question for independence movements became: can democracy exist
without the West? Can democracy exist in an Islamic state? Can democracy exist
without capitalism?
First
out of the blocks was Kemal Ataturk. His answers to the questions were yes, yes
and yes. In 1924, the new Turkish government abolished sharia law, including in
personal status matters. A note attached to the civil code of the new Turkish
Republic states: "The state whose law is based on religion becomes
incapable, after a short time, of satisfying the needs of the country and the
nation. Otherwise the laws will provide an intolerable tyranny over citizens who
profess a religion other than that adopted by the state."7
Even
the Syrian Ba'ath Party committed itself to socialism and democracy, but with
the overwhelming emphasis on achieving national independence. In Lebanon, where
France had carved off a wider state to protect the Christian minority, a
parliamentary system developed to ensure a rough balance of power between
Christians and Muslims. In 1953, Nasser stormed to power in Egypt on a secular,
nationalist, redistributionist platform but with Western sympathies along with
his Islamic faith. He was soon to be disillusioned both by an invading British
army to protect the Suez Canal and an invading Israeli army to shore up the
eastern front.
Once
again, the message from the allegedly democratic West was: it's our interests or
nothing, stupid!
The
Arab "street" got the message, too. The people got it not just from
the hypocrisy of the Western powers but from the hypocrisy of their own leaders,
who used "independence first" as a synonym for "civil rights must
wait". Egypt, Syria and Iraq became essentially one-party states. Nasser
continued to read widely; Saddam Hussein read about Stalin.
But
the secular, nationalist and socialist movements in the Arab world ran out of
steam with the crushing defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967. It was
one thing to be defeated in Palestine in 1948 after years of military
impoverishment. It was another to be so roundly defeated by a mighty Israel 20
years later, after nationalist revolutions. One by one, Arab states limped back
into the waiting arms of the West. But this time, they belonged to the United
States.
Even
more than Britain and France, the Americans sang the praises of
"democracy". But they meant something else again by
"democracy". They meant free markets as well as free elections; free
trade for foreign investors; free scope for American cultural products such as
Disney, Hollywood and Madison Avenue. They meant adherence to International
Monetary Fund strictures on privatisation of the public sector, job cuts, food
price rises and higher taxes. And they certainly meant putting Islam firmly in
its place, Turkish-style.
For
a decade, we watched the excesses of Iran's Shah Pahlavi and his entourage. We
watched Anwar Sadat dismantle the centralised economy of his mentor, Nasser, and
finally be murdered by an angry citizen for his efforts. We watched Israel
become a nuclear power, though no one admitted it, and defy UN resolutions
against its treatment of Arab citizens. We watched Lebanon tear itself apart.
And we watched the Saudis begin to use their oil power in the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries with the unstated blessing of the US. All the
elements for a storm were brewing.
Then
the Iranian revolution hit in 1979 and, suddenly, the questions about democracy
from earlier in the century were back on the agenda with critical urgency. The
foil to Turkey had arrived. With nationalist movements exhausted (except in
Palestine under Yasser Arafat), Ayatollah Khomeini posed a frightening set of
answers to the West and East alike: yes, yes and yes but only if shari'a law is
the basis for all life in the Islamic state. God, interpreted by the state, will
rule. The Abduh legacy was meant to end in Iran.
Yet
again, the promise of democracy, however defined, would prove to be an Arabian
mirage. First came the slaughter of the leftist opposition parties that helped
bring Khomeini to power. Next a constitution that kept power with the mullahs
over the people's representatives. Then a police state that imprisoned and
tortured its citizens. Finally the crushing of moderate followers of Khomeini
who believed in helping Iran's immensely young population gain new freedoms.
And
now George Bush is bringing "democracy" to Iraq. French President
Jacques Chirac warns the US not to confuse democracy with Western values and
civilisation (some historical hide there). But what does Bush mean by democracy?
Arabs will judge Bush by his actions. They have heard the word too often. So
far, the actions look anything but good.
"The
US has provided more than $US86 million to democracy NGOs and support of the
Iraqi Electoral Commission," the administrator of the US Agency for
International Development, Andrew Natsios, told reporters in Baghdad. The
Reuters report of December 13 failed to mention who the NGOs were or their
connections. But an article in the latest issue of the quarterly Middle East
Report by Herbert Docena, a Bangkok-based policy researcher just back from
Baghdad, spells out the details.8
USAID
is using a North Carolina-based private company called Research Triangle
Institute to set up a host of local councils around Iraq with "those
leaders you can work with". They are selected, not elected. The leaders RTI
has looked for, according to the contract it signed with USAID, are "the
most appropriate 'legitimate' and functional leaders".
Docena
quotes the director of the Democracy Project at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, Thomas Carothers, as saying: "Beneath the new interest
of the United States in bringing democracy to the Middle East is the central
dilemma that the most powerful, popular movements are the ones that we are
deeply uncomfortable with."9
Another
body working alongside RTI is the National Endowment for Democracy. This was the
body that recently created a scandal in oil-rich Venezuela by funding the
opposition parties that tried to stage a coup d'etat against the popularly
elected Hugo Chavez. NED has helped set up the new Iraqi American Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, bent on "promoting an open market economy and a
democratic political system". NED's Larry Diamond told a university
audience that basic tenets of democracy were the right to own private property
and a market economy.
But,
surprise surprise, there are problems. Ordinary Iraqis smell a rat. That word
"democracy" again. "Nobody in this town respects the council,
because we are handpicked by the Americans," Docena quotes Burkan Khalid of
the Samarra City Council as saying. "We are despised, and the next council
chosen by the Americans also will be despised."
When
the sieges of Sadr City and Falluja began earlier this year, the Taji City
Council closed its doors and stuck up a notice expressing the council's support
for the uprising.10
Zaid
Al-Ali edits www.iraqieconomy.org and works with Jubilee Iraq, an organisation
advocating debt relief for Iraq. In the Middle East Report Online of December 7
he writes that the meeting on November 21 of the 19 industrialised nations
composing the Paris Club "took advantage of the opportunity to impose
conditions that could bind the successor government in Baghdad to policies of
free market fundamentalism".
The
Paris Club forgave 80 per cent of the debt incurred by Saddam Hussein,
representing about 30 per cent of Iraq's total debts, but made the relief
contingent on an economic reform program to be monitored and approved by the IMF.
Foreign investors can now own 100 per cent of Iraqi enterprises except natural
resources and lease land for up to 40 years. On October 14, the interim Iraqi
government applied for membership of the World Trade Organisation. Writes
Al-Ali: "Post-Saddam Iraq offers a perfect illustration of how the
industrialised world has used debt as a tool to force developing nations to
surrender sovereignty over their economies."
As
the residents of Falluja began to trickle back to the shattered rubble of their
homes, a Boston Globe journalist, Anne Barnard, wrote a first paragraph back
home that might have been straight from Vietnam 30 years ago: "The US
military is drawing plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this
battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make
Falluja look more like a police state than the democracy they have been
promised."11 Lyndon Johnson and even Richard Nixon baulked when it became
clear you had to destroy a society to save it. It was too medieval a philosophy.
Now we're not so sure.
When
US Secretary of State Colin Powell attended a major conference of foreign
ministers from the European Union, US and Arab states in Morocco recently,
someone left the microphone on in the leaders' anteroom. Journalists overheard
several Arab ministers disabusing Powell of any notion that he could sell
"democracy" while Palestine remained occupied and Iraq was burning12.
So
when Iraq "goes to the polls" amid massive hoopla,
"democracy" will appear to be struggling like a budding flower in an
Arabian desert. Keep listening for those rumbling Halliburton and Bechtel trucks
just out of shot. Your cynicism will mirror that of the Arabs.
NOTES
1: Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Arab Rediscovery of Europe, Princeton, 1963, p13.
2: Edward Said, Orientalism, Penguin, London, 1995, pp81-4.
3: See an interesting discussion in Shahrough Akhavi, "Sunni modernist
theories of social contract in contemporary Egypt", International Journal
of Middle East Studies, 35 (2003), pp23-49.
4: Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939, Cambridge UP
London, 1983, p144.
5: See early chapters of dissident Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's recent A
History of Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples for an excellent outline.
6: See how the Iranians were barely consulted in the dividing up of their lands
for oil in Nikkie Keddie, Modern Iran, Yale UP, New Haven, 2003, Chs 4 and 5,
especially pp69-70.
7: Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Society, Culture and State, University of
California Press, 1993, p139.
8: Middle East Report Fall 2004, No. 232, p15. The journal is the major
publication of the Middle East Research and Information Project in Washington
DC.
9: Ibid, p16
10: Ibid, p21
11: The Sydney Morning Herald, December 7, 2004, p9.
A
NOTE FROM THE PAST
or
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY'RE THE SAME
"Just been reading about this fellow Sandino down in Nicaragua. As to
whether he was a George Washington or a Jesse James, that's for his own people
to judge. But there is one thing that he and I agree on, and that was that
Ameican armed forces had no right down there."
Will
Rogers, 1934
Humanist
Doggerel
by
George Erickson ( former AHA board member )
Freethinkers
are like a rubber ball,
ready to roll, unafraid to fall.
They can stop if they like, and pause for a rest.
But movin' on's what they like the best.
Like
the ball so round, they like to go,
to find out what the other balls know.
Their roamings take them far and wide,
to customs and thoughts that some deride.
The
religious cones have a different bent.
Compared to the balls, they've hardly went.
The cones like to orbit a preconception,
that limits their scope as well as perception.
For roll as they might, as sure as they've parted,
the cones return to where they started.
Pat
Roberstson's noisy, conservative rubes,
I offer as unmoving cubes,
unlike the balls that freely roam,
or even the cones that orbit home.
Firm in their faith but afraid of a fall,
their minds stay put, going nowhere at all.
And
yet there's hope, for cubes can bend,
the mind can mend- and then ascend,
from cube to cone, from cone to ball,
from fearful stance to growing tall.
And
if you need a reason, dear,
for squares going round, becoming sphere,
We'll borrow a thought that religions revere,
Perhaps there's a MIRACLE working here!
On
the other hand, I must confess,
on rare occasions, balls regress.
Under press of events or mental decline,
a few of the balls have been known to resign.
But all in all, I'll have you know,
there's
more that ascend than head below.
St
Georges Fifteen Suggestions for a Better World
1.
Use your head - think critically. Use your hands - be helpful. Use your heart -
be caring.
2. Leave thoughts of gods and miracles, heavens and hells to those who invented
them. Many people think they need religion to make them be good - we do well
without.
3. Remember, everyone needs to be loved.
4. Try to live the Golden Rule one
of the better maxims that Christianity adopted from previous religions.
5. Be at least as good as your parents. If they weren't very good, you have an
easy job. If they were great, you're lucky. If everyone did this, the human race
would rapidly improve.
6.
Get an education. It might be expensive, but ignorance costs even more.
7. Support democracy. Its not perfect, but its the best system running.
8. Support science. All
of your comforts and conveniences derive from science.
9. Make today a little better for someone else, and today will be better for
you.
10. Be tolerant. Why should others consider your viewpoint if you wont
consider theirs?
11.
When you screw up, admit it - and apologize. Its good therapy.
12. Appreciate and protect the planet that feeds, clothes and shelters you.
Don't pollute.
13. Be good to your body. Why screw up something that took millions of years to
evolve?
14. Use safe sex and family planning. The earth is getting crowded. Malls,
factories and parking lots are expanding at the expense of the forests and farms
that sustain us.
15. Remember, a reasonable, smiling person can accomplish more than a brigade of
bitchers and moaners.
NOTICE :
The Irvine Ranch Water District neither supports nor endorses the
causes and activities or organizations which use the District’s meeting rooms, which are made available
as a public service.
HAOC
2609 Fernside St.
Orange, CA 92865
Your membership expiration date is shown in your
address label.