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Liberation theology was a strategy
adopted by a section of the Church to empower the poor and the
oppressed. It has been successfully aborted with US help and
supplanted by post-liberation theology that wants the rich to be
nicer to the poor. Bishop John Cerardi of Guetemala was killed
as he was about to release a study done by the Church on
atrocities carried out in Guetemala — about 200,000 people
killed, over a million and a half rendered refugees by a
government established, armed, trained and supported by the USA.
Dissidents in
Eastern Europe suffered and became heroic figures in the West.
Their books are widely read and they are quoted. However, the
Latin American intellectuals suffered much more under US
supervision and they have been doubly neglected. Physically
liquidated by the US trained troops, they have been
assassinated. Not a word of theirs has been published in the
mainstream US sources.
Public must be
"spectators" not participants. This well-known
formulation of Walter Lippman, noted American journalist, has
been the guiding principle of the American ruling elites. People
are dangerous. It they involve themselves in public matters;
they may change the power relationship to the detriment of the
rich and the privileged.
A
pharmaceutical factory in Sudan was bombed and destroyed by the
USA in 1998. When UN wanted to investigate the number of
casualties, the move was blocked by the USA. This is no
terrorism. This is counter-terrorism as defined by America. When
Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, was asked to
comment on half a million children having died in Iraq because
of US-led sanctions she said: "We think the price is worth
it." She did not lose her job for making this inhuman
statement.
The UN charter
on waging war clearly states that the use of force is
illegitimate unless it is in self-defence against attack. The
USA has never accepted this principle. The blockade of Cuba is a
case in point. When Libya was attacked by America, the State
Department justified it on the ground that it was a self-defence
measure against future attacks! In the case of US attack on
Nicaragua, the International Court of Justice stated that the
USA was carrying out "unlawful use of force" The USA
never bothered. The bombing of Iraq in mid-1993 was construed as
self-defence.
The USA
champions the cause of human rights all over the world. However,
virtually everyone of the leading recipients of US aid is a
major human rights violator as has been pointed out by
organisations like Human Rights Watch. The leading recepient of
US military aid through the early 1990s has been Colombia which
has the worst human rights record. The record of other
beneficiaries — Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, etc. is not
better in this respect by any means. Saudi Arabia still
practises medieval punishments like amputation of limbs, public
beheading, etc. and women there are not allowed to drive an
automobile. But for the USA everything is fine there.
Cambodia saw
the worst form of genocide for a decade from 1969 to 1979. The
first six years of this period was US-sponsored.
General Suharto
of Indonesia was the darling of the USA. He came to power in
1965 and organised mass murder. East Timor was not a part of
Indonesia. It was seized by Indonesia. It actively supported the
Indonesian barbarity in East Timor.
In case of
Serbia, the USA and Britain demanded an indictment right amidst
bombing and it was granted. The UN mission called for an
international tribunal in East Timor but the move was scotched.
In April last
year, Turkey indulged in ethnic cleansing with the active
support of the USA.
Nearly 3,500
Kurdish villages were destroyed and a couple of millions
rendered refugees.
Israel had been
in occupation of parts of southern Lebanon in violation of the
UN Security Council decision. About 45,000 Lebanese and
Palestanian civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands
have been driven out of their homes.
Joseph Goebbels,
Propaganda Minister of Nazi Germany, observed: "It would
not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition..... that
a square is in fact a circle." The USA exemplifies this
with its vast propaganda machine. The new "art of
democracy", in Lippman’s phrase, is that the human mind
is to be regimented as an army regiments the soldiers. The
control by force has its limitations in a democracy and must be
avoided as far as possible. Propaganda is the device to control
and to marginalise the people. Intellectuals are both the main
victims of this technique and its main architects. The mind of
the oppressed is the most potent weapon available to the
oppressor. Oppression succeeds because it acquires legitimacy.
Propaganda is the instrument that helps the oppressed to
internalise oppression by acquiring the world view and
perspective of the oppressor. To liberate oneself from the
assumptions of the oppressor is a leap towards emancipation.
The current war
between the US-led alliance and Afghanistan can be better
understood in Chomsky’s framework. One eagerly awaits his
detailed analysis but a few things are clear. The terrorist
attack on America on September 11 is too horrible for words.
Terrorism per se is inhuman; first it makes no distinction
between those presumed guilty and those who are plainly
innocent; second, it comes as a surprise and third its real
perpetrators are often invisible and elusive. However, it is a
weapon of the weak and is resorted to when the powerful
adversary cannot be confronted face to face. But often the
terrorist starts suffering from millenarian hallucinations and
in the process turns a monster.
Chomsky has
suggested the need to enter the minds of terrorists. Gunter
Grass, a Nobel Literature laureate from Germany, has opined that
if the cause of hatred were reduced, terrorism would also abate.
The USA with its massive weaponry might succeed in decimating
the Taliban and capturing Osama bin Laden "alive or
dead", as demanded by George W.Bush. However, this would
not eradicate global terrorism. This malady cannot be fought
just by attacking its symptoms.
The moment of
truth has arrived for the American elites and much would depend
on whether they take cognisance of it or not. However, the great
trauma of September 11, one may legitimately hope, may start
fresh thinking among the American public.
The moment for introspection
and soul-searching has arrived for the Muslims the world over.
The question as to why the urge for modernising society and
secularising its polity is non-existent or weak in most of the
Islamic countries has acquired greater importance in the present
context. To lay the blame for everything on the doors of America
will not do.
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