Apart from the yes-regimes in the colonies (Eastern Europe, etc.), the cravenness of Germany, France, Canada and Australia knows no bounds. And Scandinavia?
Remember there's no such thing as the Israel lobby.
Meanwhile the Israeli cultural propaganda roadshow, via 'Celebrate Tel Aviv' through Israeli films, has moved to Paris.
http://www.paris.fr/portail/
accu...ortlet_id=21961
More cravenness.
Makes one want to puke, so it does.
What do these lists tell us about who is 'bought off', who is 100% 'owned", who is 'terrified'of the big bad wolf?
So much for national sovereignty.
The countries that bleat on the most about "human rights" are the first to sell out when faced with an actual matter of principle.
I'm saving this list to disk so that whenever one of those idiotic touch/feely schizoid leftist-interventionists opens their big fat mouth, after being led by the nose by the nauseating statements of leaders of the EU and US, to criticise another (3rd world) country for it's "lack of respect for human rights", I can ram this list down their throats and tell em : "Shut the fuck UP!"
Sammi - be careful what you wish for.
- Which one?
Only the western democracies seem willing to stand up to the Hamas Nazis.
Even Switzerland (or maybe its Swaziland, I can't quite make it out) and Sweden are neutral, with the British appeasers looking on while the League of Nations does nothing, er..em...
Actually, wasn't Portugal the destination victims fleeing the nazis all aimed for?
China and Indonesia are not colonial metropoles.
- Thanks for clarifying that evildoer.
I thought the Swiss were up to their old tricks again.
It was indeed Swaziland, and not Switzerland, that joined with the UK in the League of Nations in order to appease the Hamas Nazis.
There are many instances like these, modern Indonesia like modern India was formed as a consequence of European colonial rule, large territories of land and diverse cultures came under colonial monoliths of the Dutch and English empires and thus had a uniting factor for the diverse populations to battle as one for independence.
It is all in all different from what we understand to mean occupation as a consequence of conquest. Some minorities were treated less fairly than others and began demanding independence from the large enterprise that was formed after independence from colonial rule, there is no occupation.
The occupations of Tibet and West Turkestan are altogether different affairs as these problems were formed out of historic conquests of the various Chinese dynasties.
I think that Barghuti was talking of direct military occupation, where the population was conquered and since been living under martial rule till this very day.
Maybe he was a bit off, but his general thrust in the interview was just not there at all, because of the tolerance level of western MSM about what is an Palestinian Arab allowed to say.
Toe, there's a perfectly logical reason to vote in Australia - to avoid the fine they levy if you don't.
It is entirely legitimate to point out the hypocrisy in that double standard, whatever your philosophical position on the concept of international law as such.
Of course there is a reason for Israel still claiming that the West Bank is 'occupied' in that sense, even though defying the conditions attached to that status. The alternative would be to annex the area, which as we know would have undesirable 'demographic' implications. Or of course to withdraw completely and allow a genuine sovereign state to emerge which again [whatever we might think of a 2-state agreement] they also have no intention of doing.
Comparisons with Tibet and Aceh miss this key point completely. China and Indonesia regard these provinces as integral parts of their national territory, and their peoples have the same legal status as other citizens of those countries - exactly what some of them object to, and exactly what Israel will not give to the Palestinians.
I flatter myself, btw, that my position on International Law is political.
There are and have been many conflicts before and besides colonialism, including in the third world, conflicts that resulted from the boundaries imposed of colonized people and other legacies of the colonial administration. Ward Churchill calls them "forth world" conflicts. Many of these conflicts have been horrible beyond belief, including Biafra, East Timor, Bangladesh and many other places. "Colonial" however doesn't mean "really bad." And Indonesia is not a colonial metropolis just because it occupied East Timor. Indonesia is a former colony.
It is, furthermore, you who are blurring the conceptual framework in a way that echoes zionist pillow talk. They would want nothing better than to be considered as one other colonized people fighting another. This is exactly the story Zionists tell themselves, how their fight with the British is no different than the Judean fight with the Roman Empire. that is why they celebrate their independence from the British. And during the fifties and sixties, Israel tried to sell itself for a while as a "third world" former colony.
It's good to be "political" but that doesn't require throwing everything into one big conceptual soup.
You say, ‘It is not just a metaphor’. But no two situations are ever exactly the same. Spanish, French, and British settler colonialsm in the Western Hemisphere took very different forms, as did the colonisation of the Antipodes. Certainly, Zionist settler colonialism is an altogether different kettle of fish. As the hasbaristas like to point out, not just in pillow talk, but overtly, there was no colonial metropole, as there was in the thirteen colonies and Australia. Yet you seem comfortable classifying Israel with the other settler colonies.
Conspicuous by its absence from your list of settler colonies is South Africa. Israeli policies in the West Bank, and indeed within ‘Israel proper’, comfortably meet the definition of the apartheid convention. But in reality, Zionist settler colonialism, with the associated doctrine of avodah ivrit has more in common with the exterminationist settler colonialism of the US and Australia than with the exploitationist settler colonialism of apartheid. One of the conceits of hasbara is exactly this postmodern idea that everything is just what it is. Israel is not South Africa, so it can’t be apartheid. The Armenian genocide wasn’t genocide because it wasn’t The Holocaust.
I don’t know if you agree with Stephen’s point, although your silence on it suggests you do, that ‘Comparisons with Tibet and Aceh miss this key point completely. China and Indonesia regard these provinces as integral parts of their national territory, and their peoples have the same legal status as other citizens of those countries’. If that’s the distinction between colonialism and whatever you want to call these situations, I might point out that Israel considers the Galilee an integral part of its national territory and the Palestinians there have the same legal status as other Israeli citizens, at least to the same extent. Would you argue that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are colonised, but the Palestinian Israelis are not?
Even if you do, it seems like quite a stretch to argue that Indonesia’s military conquest of West Papua and transmigrasi program are qualitatively different from Israel’s military conquest and settlement program of the West Bank just because Indonesia itself had been a Dutch colony. If you agree with Michael that Tibet and East Turkestan are not Chinese colonies because the current Chinese regime inherited them from previous dynasties, then you will probably also agree that Aceh is not colonised by Indonesia because they inherited from the Dutch. And yet you list the Russian Federation among the colonial metropoles, even though the remaining Russian possessions, as well as most of those that are now independent, are largely a relic of the old Tsarist empire.
To be clear, my view is that what makes colonialism colonialism is not the epoch during which it occurs or the wording of the Geneva Conventions or the de iure status of residents. On one level, it’s the colonists’ occupation and appropriation of the indigenous people’s land and resources, and sometimes labour, for the colonists’ or the coloniser’s benefit. And, as Marx pointed out, the colonised people often serve as a captive market for the colonisers’ excess production. On another level, it’s the colonised people’s resistance to the colonisers’ occupation and exploitation.
Now, I don’t know what impels you to adopt such an aggressive and insulting posture. I don’t know why you want to caricature my postions. Where did I say colonialism was ‘synonymous with with local conflict over national boundaries’ or ‘really bad’? Where did I suggest anything remotely like politics ‘require throwing everything into one big conceptual soup’? I’ve always tried to be gentle and polite with you because I thought we were on the same side.
South Africa is not conspicuously absent. it had a regime change, and it is no longer a settler state. It was.
The inclusion of Russia (and Japan), I agree is iffy. Any categorization has borderline cases and this is clearly on the border. Both countries participated in the great game of empires on the turn of 20th century, however, they were on its margins.
I don't think comparisons with Aceh and Tibet miss the point completely. I think these are valid comparisons in some respects but fail in other respects, like any comparison. When they are used as examples of colonialism as you did, I do think they miss a very big point.
You are right that within colonialism there are still differences. Australia is different from Canada and both are different from Israel. At one limit, everything and every moment is unique and unlike anything else, and at the other limit, only the self-same totality of everything is real. These are the philosophical extremes of Heraclytus and Parmenides, and as far as I am concerned human understanding takes place by putting lines somewhere in between. These lines of demarcation are the work of an active intelligence, and therefore do not exist separate from both the world in which they are set and the intelligence that sets them. That is why I referred to colonialism as a "narrative." Epochs are signposts in a narrative that makes sense of the passage of time and human events. They don't exist separate from that activity of making sense. "Colonialism" is an attempt to make sense of where the world is by tracing and grouping events inside a narrative about the interlocking development of Capitalism in the West and of the Western domination of the Rest. Your definition purposefully avoids that narrative, thus transferring colonialism into the register of immutable structures: colonialism is "occupation + appropriation," anywhere, everywhere. Hence the Assyrian occupation of Judea was "colonial" and so is the Parisian occupation of Southern France, the Civil War and the occupation of the US South, the Flemish occupation of Wallonia, the Chilian conquest of a part of Bolivia, the massacres in Biafra, Saddam Hussein's treatment of Southern Iraq, etc. etc. There is no logical reason why we can't use the word "colonialism" in this way. It is perfectly coherent, but I would argue not very useful. My only contention is that historically specific concepts are the best tools for understanding reality, rather than a-historical typological tools like the one you propose. As a Marxist, that should be quite obvious to you.
Within the narrative of colonialism, conflicts such as the one in Aceh (as well as Rwanda and Biafra, but not Tibet) have a special determination, as they are conflicts that result and replicate differences set in motion by colonial administration. This is what is captured by the term "fourth world" conflicts. That is different from Israel, where one of the parties, the dominant one, involves first world settlers. It is a difference in degree, because obviously the West can and often does take sides in "forth world" conflicts. Nevertheless, clearly that difference matters a lot, as comparing Indonesia and Israel would reveal. This is also different from other national conflicts, which might involve identities shaped with some impact of Western notions of nationality but without the direct domination by Western powers over indigenous groups. By that, it doesn't mean that Tibet is less worthy of your attention. Colonialism does not mark the limit of evil, and oppression exists without being colonial.
I suppose you’re right to caricature my hasty definition. I suppose I must have thought it would be obvious that I was talking specifically about colonialism as an artefact of capitalism. But I can hardly blame you for taking it at face value. Most of the examples you give are unfamiliar, but I’d have to give the US Civil War some more thought.
From what you say, I surmise that while you regard Israel as a settler colony, you don’t consider it a colonial metropole. The reason you don’t address the W Papua example, I gather, is that it is irrelevant because Israel’s occupation and settlement in the West Bank doesn’t count as colonialism either? If that’s the case, then I suppose it comes down to a disagreement over how to define colonialism. There is, I might just mention, more than one way to define concepts. For some purposes, like categories in a statistical classification, it’s imperative to demarcate the concept precisely and determine how to treat ‘borderline cases’. Most of the time, however, it’s more useful to identify a value that’s central to the concept and leave the boundaries flexible. For instance, if you give a range of people a colour chart and ask them to draw a line around all the colours that they consider ‘red’, there is very little agreement. If, on the other hand, you ask which is the ‘reddest red’, there is virtual unanimity. If we were to adopt the strict kind of definition you seem to want to apply to colonialism to capitalism, we’d probably say that the economic system in evidence nowadays is not capitalism because it is too different in many crucial respects from early 19th Century British capitalism – the role of state capital and finance capital, the level of concentration, and integration, etc.
Whenever I’ve come across references to the Fourth world, it has been in the context of indigenous people’s struggles against the settler colonists. Do you want to expand on how Churchill’s concept bears on this discussion?
You and James O have done a nice job with Bob over on the other thread, btw.
You're misrepresenting me Ernie. I did not claim that East Turkestan and Tibet aren't colonies, I make a clear distinction between 3 camps:
a)Territories that became a disputed zone after the colonial powers have withdrawn the occupying forces, which are not "occupied territories" in any sense. (Aceh, east & west Pakistan, Tamil Eelam)
b)Territories that were annexed to another national territory, where the population was forced into a new national citizenry to become part of the larger group (wether they desired it or not).
This is a form of occupation nontheless. (Xinjiang,the Caucasus,the Russian far east,Taiwan,the Ryukyu Islands,Hawaii,American Samoa).
c)Territories that were occupied by the occupying power's milirary force and subjugated to ethnic cleansing and land theft, where the native population does not have equal recognition in the national bowndaries of the occupying power and is occasionally subjected to population replacement (not necessary). (West Papua, Palestine, Tibet, Iraq, Afghanistan. in historic times: North& South America,Australia, Indo-China (except Thailand), Africa (except Ethiopia).)
Now the difference between (b) and (c) are not so striking, they're both instances of real occupation, but differ in the interests of the occupiers. Wether the interest is to forcefuly expand a national boundary to include population over the border or the interest is to exploit the land and replace the population with the "right one".
By that very nature of Indonesia occupying W.Papua and East Timor does not make them a "colonial nation" but an occupying power. A colonial nation is a nation that is formed as a result of colonizing, you know.. like Israelis, "Americans", Australians, Argentinians, Les Pieds-Noirs,Afrikaaners etc..
Some colonial nations transform into non-colonial nations like the US, Australia, Argentina etc, and some do not.
If you want to call Indonesia a "colonial nation" you might check see that Britain deserves that description far more since the occupation in Afghanistan.
If we're talking "metropols" that what is that thing we call the United Kingdom?
I think I understand the typology you now propose, but I’m not sure it’s useful. Nor have I a got a worked out typology of my own. But the basic distinction I make is between countries – understood in a loose sense – ruled by another country (or countries, as in the erstwhile New Hebrides) in the interests of the ruling class of the metropolitan country and against the interests of the people of the colony, on the one hand, and countries forcibly settled by a colonial population and ruled by their ruling class in their own interest, i.e. settler colonies on the other.
I would further distinguish among the latter group between those where the colonisers set out to eradicate the indigenous population – roughly corresponding to your category c – which I call ‘exterminationist settler colonies’, those where the colonists set out to exploit the indigenous population – ‘exploitationist settler colonies’. Examples of ‘exterminationist settler colonies’ would be Australia and Israel; examples of ‘exploitationist settler colonies’ would be South Africa until 1994 and Hawai’i.
It doesn’t strike me as useful to distinguish among colonies on the basis of whether the existing colonising regime inherited the colony from a predecessor colonial empire, e.g. Indonesia in Aceh, Russia in Central Asia, or occupied the country itself, e.g. China in East Turkestan, Russia in Estonia, Indonesia in W Papua. Nor do I think it matters whether the colony was conquered from another coloniser, e.g. Guam, Puerto Rico, or colonised ab initio by the current metropole. Furthermore, the status of the metropole as a former colony itself seems to me to be irrelevant to whether to consider it as such or not. I think you are wrong to say that the US and Australia are ‘non-colonial’. From the perspective of the colonised populations, they are still settler colonies, notwithstanding their de iure political status. The US is also itself a colonial metropole, even you don’t consider Hawai’i a colony, Samoans, Puerto Ricans, and Guamanians do not enjoy full US citizenship rights.
I agree that Northern Ireland is a British colony, although I’m not sure it would illuminate anything at this stage to call Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands English colonies. You may also be right about the US and British occupation of Afghanistan. They claim that the occupation is temporary and I guess I think a coloniser, strictly speaking, intends to retain permanent control.
But this is the problem, you could also throw in Nigeria in Biafra into the mix, they don't belong together, and not just because different colonial occupations or metropoles are different. They're intrinsically different in the fact that it was Russian power, the Russian Empire that conquered central asia (but for other purpose and method than the Americas were conquered for instance) and Indonesia had no Imperial monolith. It was broken into many Sultanates before falling to the Dutch. Once they've left there remained this (quasi)independent enterprise called "Indonesia", it was a creation of conquering colonial powers, the state remains intact together for the purpose of survival. Because the moment you see 50 Indonesians on this territory will be the moment each and every part of Indonesia would be in danger of becoming another Biafra for the powers to be (all too often, it's the same power that ruled it before independence).
The same story applies to Biafra. It does not matter how much the Igbo and the Achenese deserve independence (i can say i wholeheartedly support the independence of BOTH) they are not subjected to "colonial powers" or "colonial metropoles" but third world countries with very diverse native population that's miserably failing to provide justice for all.
I fully accept your criticism of my characterization of the US & Australia as 'not-colonial', but i fear that if I'd call 'em in as such that would only muddy the discussion on this topic (that would demand i make distinctions between different American countries etc). Though you'd admit that the colonial era of nation building is well done and over with for the settlers there.
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