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I know little about US activities in Afghanistan. Information such as this increasingly inclines me to believe that Like Korea, Iraq, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, Afghanistan is another victim of US genocide.

95% of suicide bombings linked to military occupations

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Extraordinary video which begins with a myth of “terrorism” but goes on to show the horrors of military occupation. This is not a condemnation of US military personnel, but a moving indictment of criminal policies.

CAVEAT: This video is about what makes people into suicide bombers. What make people into “terrorists” (namely those who use violence to create terror to achieve political ends as per UN definition) is more often an elite education and an elected or unelected position of power in a militarily powerful society such as US, China, UK, France, India, Russia etc., etc. Such terrorists greatly outnumber those in non-state organisations as do their victims.

Also note that governments and academics have known this about suicide bombers for a very long time. Attempts to link suicide attacks to religious extremism are and have always been deception.

Scary quote

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“Out of curiosity, I ran some Google searches.  The results were striking.

  • “Iran’s disputed nuclear weapons program”: 4 hits
  • “Iran’s possible nuclear weapons program”: about 8,990 hits
  • “Iran’s civil nuclear program”: about 42,200 hits
  • “Iran’s civilian nuclear program”: about 199,000 hits
  • “Iran’s nuclear weapons program”: about 5,520,000 hits
  • “Iran’s nuclear program”: about 49,000,000 hits.”

This is from a TomDispatch article.

Also: “A large majority of Americans believe that Iran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program, 71% in 2010 and 84% this March.  Some surveys even indicate that a majority of Americans would support military action to stop Iran from developing nukes.”

I don’t know whether war with Iran is a realistic threat. It clearly benefits the US to make a credible threat. The US stands to lose a lot in such a war, at least the US people do, but what might their elites gain? Equally, as a threat to world peace as a whole it is an implicit or explicit threat to other states and formations such as Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, or the “BRIC” states, or the supposed “friends” of the US like the EU. In a way it means that no matter how much of an outlaw “Rogue State” the US is, between this and the economic and financial hegemony of the US, nothing substantive can be done to constrain the US.

The google data above, however, suggest something about thought control in modern society. The vast disparity in phraseologies is both the result of and the act of determining an agenda, controlling the idiom of a discourse. Mainstream news reporting has been compared to schools of fish, wherein individuals somehow know without information or instruction, the direction to pursue, the line to take. The same evidently applies to the blogosphere, the broader collection of information purveyors. They maintain the Party line by determining the language which may be used to apply thought to areas of interest.Image

First Lecture

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So anyway, some time ago I recorded a first bumper sized audioblog/podcast/lecture thingy. I used Audacity, a free open-source audio editor. This was the first time I’d used the software, my net previous experience being a little bit of mucking around with SoundForge about 15 years ago. I recorded the lecture. It took quite a while, but I only got it into a fairly raw form. I planned to do more, but I kept having technical difficulties. Nearly 90 minutes of multi-track high bit-rate audio turned out to be a bit much for my poor wee laptop to handle. A month later I was just about to trash the whole thing, and maybe start again another time. Then I thought, bugger it, I’ve done this much, I might as well put it out there so here it is.

Yes, it is imperfect. No, I am not a fluent or eloquent lecturer, but I hope to improve. Yes, it may be difficult to understand what I’m getting at, however I’m not sure that that is even a flaw. If it was simple to follow what I was saying it would indicate that my words are already familiar in some sense, and that I was conveying nothing truly unknown to the listener. This is a long lecture, full of all sorts of stuff that may be interesting or moving. My ultimate intent is to convey an analytical idiom which will render transparent the strategies behind the most fateful and monstrous acts of our time, but it is enough at this point to understand the context of suffering, of duplicity, of callousness, of humanity, and that thing which ironically we refer to as ‘inhumanity’.

BEFORE YOU START

As yet, I don’t have a projected structure for a lecture series, however I do want these ‘podcasts’, or whatever, to have a lecturish feel and to be a way of moving towards a structured series with a central thesis. To this end I have decided to have a ‘set text’ for each lecture. I am not, of course, suggesting that you should ‘read’ a text, canonical or otherwise, and then I will explain how you should interpret it. Rather, I think that having a text which is ‘read’ in advance of a lecture immediately activates the engagement of the listener. You can’t ‘read’ a text without some implicit analysis. One makes judgements on meaning and significance. If the text is relevant to the lecture, then you enter into a heightened level of engagement wherein the lecturer’s contentions are not merely passively accepted or rejected but become subjected to the faceted multivalent impressionistic judgements which our brains are so good at, and which partially compensate the limits of language.

The text, a moving speech by S. Brian Willson, is one I chose to set a tone. It is the first 15 minutes that concern this lecture most of all – an eyewitness account of the just how bad US actions in South Vietnam could be; the consequences and the callous cruelty that lay behind them. I feel I must emphasis that there is no violent obsenity that Westerners are somehow unable or even less likely to do than other peoples. Again and again I come across instances where those who witness Western brutality, even first-hand, still must construct in their minds some sense in which the brutality is essentially un-Western. Yes we are civilised, but civilised people are just as capable of dashing a baby’s brains out against a wall as barbarians are – you may not believe that at this point, but it is true. In Vietnam a veteran of the Korean War told Philip Caputo: ‘I saw men sight their rifles in by shooting at Korean farmers. Before you leave here, sir, you’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.’i It is impossible to proceed properly while clinging on to old delusions. Even our treasured ‘liberal values’, on proper examination, incorporate: advocacy of mass murder; authoritarianism [yes I do mean that there is a ‘liberal authoritarianism’]; racial and ethnic hatred; and rabid fanaticism.

THE SET TEXT:  Brian Willson’s speech

THE LECTURE ITSELF: Soundcloud or A-Infos Radio Project

In this lecture I introduce mself and introduce the thesis that major US interventions in Korea, Indochina and Iraq are best considered as genocide. Leaving aside, for this lecture, a precise (or even imprecise) definition of genocide, I use, as an expedience, the deliberate systematic mass killing of civilians as being consonant with the concept of genocide. I discuss the systematic mass-killing of civilians by the US in the Phillippines; Korea; Indochina; and, perhaps most surprisingly to some, in the latter stages of World War II.

Other Links:

Brian Willson’s webpage.

Brian Willson’s autobiography: Blood on the Tracks.

Mountaineater (opening music): Soundcloud;  Facebook; MySpace.  “If you thought HDU were capable of wreaking sonic destruction, this trio will leave you gasping” Real Groove

David Rovics (“Who Would Jesus Bomb”): davidrovics.com; lastFM; MySpace; Soundcloud. “If the great Phil Ochs were to rise from the dead today, he would probably be hailed as the new David Rovics.” Andy Kershaw, BBC; “David Rovics is the musical version of Democracy Now!” Amy Goodman, Pacifica.

FEEDBACK RULES

I welcome feedback. I need feedback. But allow me to clear on thing up right now:

characterising US interventions as genocide is not a political stance and is not something I just made up on a whim.

Yes, I do have political leanings and they do influence my judgement, and I would be grateful to anyone who indicated to me any instance where my political or moral stance had caused partiality in intellectual judgement by, for instance, not giving enough credence or weight to claims made by those whose politics I dislike. Politically, morally and ethically I am opposed to imperialism and military aggression and that interest was what led me first to employ genocide as an analytical characterisation (as is explained in the introductory lecture). If, however, I was writing or speaking purely in the interests of my political beliefs I would address all sorts of things, but probably just avoid the issue of genocide the way most anti-imperialists do.

I apply the term genocide because it is the appropriate term… the appropriate term… for US interventions in Korea, Iraq, and Indochina (no doubt there are other instances, such as Afghanistan, but I cannot comment with authority). If you want to disagree you had better be prepared with a knowledge of the nature of those interventions, a knowledge of the concept of genocide, and a knowledge of other instances of genocide. If you are going to deny US genocides please do not do so in exactly the same terms which others use to deny the Holocaust or other genocides. Likewise, even if you have a PhD, even if you have tenure, do not assume that you have superior knowledge on a subject you have never studied. I realise that in some people’s worldview I must be wrong a priori because my claim is so wildly opposed to the broad accepted consensus view among the intellectual classes. It is a point which makes me somewhat bitter so I will simply confine myself to stating that a trust in orthodoxy is what transforms some of the most potentially useful and incisive intellects into the greatest pack of useless idiots on the face of the planet.

iPhilip Caputo, A Rumour of War, London: Arrow, 1978, p 137.

Intro of Intros – The scope of topics discussed

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Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.
The following illustration will suffice. The confiscation of property of nationals of an occupied area on the ground that they have left the country may be considered simply as a deprivation of their individual property rights. However, if the confiscations are ordered against individuals solely because they are Poles, Jews, or Czechs, then the same confiscations tend in effect to weaken the national entities of which those persons are members.
Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization by the oppressor’s own nationals. – Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, p 79.

That is how the inventor of the term ‘genocide’ introduced the concept.  There is a certain problem in that the ‘destruction of the national pattern’ cannot be taken as an absolute, but I will save that for another post.  Instead I will use Lemkin’s image of genocide as  ‘a composite of different acts of persecution or destruction’ (Axis Rule, p 92) as an entrée into the wide range of topics which pertain to the subject of genocide.

To start with there are the elements of genocide enumerated by Lemkin himself: Economic, social, physical, biological, cultural, political, religious, and moral.  Each of these is a separate topic in its own right, but in genocide a number work in synergistic union in a ‘coordinated plan’.  Popular imagination for understandable reasons gives primacy to the physical aspect of destruction – the acts of mass murder.  For me also, and within this blog, it is the systematic killing of civilians that is of salient importance.*  That said, however, it should be recognised that, taking a dispassionate view, the central aspect of genocide is economic destruction (known in and of itself as econocide).  Economic destruction is the only single aspect listed by Lemkin that can be realistically utilised to effect all others, including physical destruction (notwithstanding that all of these things are inter-related such that any social destruction, for example, may have an economic effect).  A later post will discuss econocide and contentions that it alone may constitute genocide (‘economic genocide’) and the contention that ongoing structural violence against the peoples of poorer states is a form of genocide (‘structural genocide’).

Economics, therefore, will be central to much of the the writing within this blog.  They are a key aspect of the perpetration of genocide, and no exception need be made here for the Holocaust or the Shoah, and there is often an economic strategic consideration which provides a central motive in the perpetration of genocide.  Of particular interest, something which will be recurrent in posts, is the adoption of an antidevelopmental approach which may come in the form of econocide, but which may also be an impelling strategic factor motivating genocide itself.

Imperialism is linked to both an antidevelopmental paradigm of domination (dating back to the early modern period) and to genocide itself.  Lemkin explicitly linked genocide to colonialism (meaning ‘settler colonialism’) but in practice it is almost as intrinsic to imperial hegemony as it is to colonialism.  One may see that this is implicitly hinted at in the third paragraph quoted above, although one must expand and elaborate on ‘the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.’

War and the military provide another set of topics.  Most genocides** involve military personnel as the main direct perpetrators of mass murder.  Moreover, most genocides** are characterised by perpetrators as a form of warfare.  The creation of a perpetrator of genocide begins with whatever chauvinist or other enabling ideologies are abroad in civilian life, continues with military indoctrination and training, and is brought to fruition by the situational*** elements generated in alleged wars.

This brings me to ideology.  Ideology is of crucial importance, but it is not, as it is so often portrayed, the driving force behind genocides.  Every indication is that genocide is not prompted by a particular hatred, but rather that a pre-existing ideology of hatred is an element that is less motive than enabling.  Further, it is clear that those who would undertake genocide deliberately stoke the flames of hatred, while genocide itself fans those very flames among perpetrators.  I aim to demonstrate that the seeming ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem posed by the role of ideology can be resolved in favour of regarding ideology as distinctly subservient to strategic considerations among planners of genocide.

Ideology is also distinctly subservient in a arena of international relations, but nevertheless may be of some import if it, for example, facilitates inadmissable independent development and economic sovereignty.  More relevant concerns are geostrategic in nature.  More to the point are those strategic concerns which are affected by populations – thus, for example, an oil rich state with a small population does not present the same challenges to US imperial hegemony that an oil rich state with a large population does.  The religious, cultural, ideological, political and social nature of these populations also has a bearing.  ‘Geostrategy’ doesn’t really convey the full sense of this aspect, indeed it really refers to distinct matter, so I am forced to coin the phrase ‘demostrategy’.****

I could continue, but I bet this sort of generalised and abstract exposition is pretty boring to read.  The point I wanted to make is that genocide relates directly to a very wide variety of topics.  Economics, imperialism, military matters, ideology, geostrategy and demostrategy are not exhaustive by any means.  And as the reader will find, if they read further, there is also a great deal to be added on the subject of the misuse of the term genocide.

* I will be posting on the issue of systematic mass murder in contrast to extermination or intended extermination at some point, hopefully soon.

** Strictly speaking I should not claim to be writing of ‘most genocides’ without explaining why I exclude those sets of acts which fit the definition of genocide but which do not involve mass murder.  Arguably such ‘genocides’ are greater in number than those involving mass murder, but I am arbitrarily excluding from my considerations all putative genocides which do not bring about mortalities of 100,000 or more.  That is very crude and baseless, I do understand, but there is a method in my madness which will be elucidated upon at a later date.

*** A jargon word meaning ‘circumstantial’, presumably adopted because of the confusing connotations given to the term ‘circumstantial’ by literature, film and television dealing with issues of criminal justice.

**** I don’t like the academic tendency to coin terms at the drop of a hat, so when this one sprung from my head like some scholarly demon-spawn, dripping the ichor of tautology, I recoiled.  Unfortunately the beast insinuated itself into my thoughts because it just such a useful catch-all for the sort of strategic factors which I consider to be paramount in motivating genocide.