Untermenschen

David Edwards (Crushing Fallujah, 2) does a masterful job analysing how the western corporate media treats western/white victims of violence and everyone else. This differential treatment, where non-white people are still regarded as subhuman (Nazi ideology "untermenschen"), unworthy of even momentary pity and compassion (except when it suits the powers that be politically), has been deeply rooted in our world civilization for at least 500 years. I am increasingly coming to think it is the frame that most effectively explains the world as it is today.

There never was a post-colonialism. The colourline -- global apartheid -- is here and growing, regardless of how multicultural western societies get.

Question of Resistance

Stan Goff's commentary The Bridge, is a powerful tonic to the delusions of pacifism that demand of victims their abject surrender to violence to maintain their moral high ground. Goff unveils this hypocrisy from the interesting standpoint of a former soldier, and how current outreach efforts of anti-war activists are doomed to fail if they don't consider the immediacy and reality of the soldier's experience.

Black Commentator also outlines the colour line at the root of how the US military treats non-white populations. In fact, it is the colour line that seems to govern almost all US imperialism's dealings with the world, from Haiti to Venezuela to the refusal to count the Iraqi dead in the current conflict.

Iraq: Back to the Future

I've been thinking about the Iraq conflict in its historical context. The last time an imperialist power tried to occupy Iraq/Mesopotamia/Babylon, was only 84 years ago when the entire Arab World was divided up between the French and English after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The parallel between the British occupation of Iraq in 1920 and the United States' occupation of the country now is startling and has been mentioned before in these pages, but here's another article from Frontline that details the story including the eerily resonant quote from Winston Churchill about Shia and Sunni uniting to fight the occupier.

It's interesting however that Bush is getting so biblical. Of course according to the dream prophecies of Daniel a series of empires would rule over Babylon, eventually culminating with the last iteration of the Roman Empire (Pax Americana?!) at the end of days... Quite a sobering thought...