By EZRAH AHARONE 5/2011
There’s a political and planetary solar system at work, where the earth revolves around the sun, while it comprises near-200 nations that revolve around various interests and ideologies that cooperate, compete, and clash.
In short, regardless of norms or ideals, no government or society has escaped the gravitational pull of geopolitics and globalization, which are bookend forces that configure today’s “balance of power” to the advantage of select nations while – either artfully or inadvertently – breeding seeds of terrorism along the way.
Globalization in benign terms refers to the world’s ever-growing interconnectedness via common markets, technology, and development. Within this necessary interdependency however, colonial-like political and corporate arrangements are maintained whereby power and wealth remain largely concentrated within the orbital grips of Western nations and institutions. This is reflected in the 67-year-old Bretton Woods outcome whereby only Americans would head the World Bank and only Europeans would head the IMF. Hence, the EU’s adamancy that former-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who resigned amid rape charges) must unquestionably be replaced by a European.
Geopolitics in benign terms concerns the relationship between geography and politics . . . a government’s legitimate activities in domestic and foreign territories. But from an operational standpoint of certain governments to safeguard or advance their economic, security, and foreign policy interests, geopolitics doubles as a sneaky codeword for the political muscling, coddling, and/or finessing of particular nations that have strategic value or pose threats, based on factors including location, resources, intelligence, terrorism and military implications.
Invariably, classified operations ensue that the world public never knows or imagines because, along with geopolitics comes foreign intrigue, domestic deception of citizens, and manipulation of media, as governments jostle for upsmanship in a globalized pecking-order for world power.
As such, the US has long played a dangerous game of “geopolitical roulette” in places like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which – not unrelated – are places that it now identifies as hotbeds for terrorist networks. President Richard Nixon, who set modern precedents for America’s geopolitical approach to foreign relations, wrote in The Real War (1980) about maintaining geopolitical leverage in the Middle East and Africa, saying early on Page 3: “We have to recover the geopolitical momentum, marshaling and using our resources in the tradition of a great power . . . We must recognize the relationship between strategic resources and patterns of world trade, between economic productivity and military might.”
Accordingly, in roulette fashion, the US has no permanent enemies or permanent friends around Middle East territory, except for Israel. Even Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak became disposable after 30 years of expediency. Geopolitical relations have vacillated based on oil interests and the degree to which Arab governments are amenable to US policies. Iran for example received billions in support after a known CIA-engineered coup installed Shah Pahlavi (1967-1979). But once Ayatollah Khomeini ruled Iran, America propped and supplied Saddam Hussein in Iraqi’s war against Iran (1980-1988).
Saddam later fell from geopolitical grace when his 1990 attempt to annex Kuwait jeopardized US oil stability. He thereafter became the terrorist face of “What’s Wrong With the World,” until 9/11, when Osama Bin Laden unforgivably bit America’s geopolitical hand that fed him during the Afghan Mujahideen war against the Soviets (1979-1989).
Once Bin Laden went turncoat, the US played roulette with Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf, ignoring all warning signals . . . Musharraf already had active sanctions imposed for his 1999 coup; his government was one of few with diplomatic relations with the former Taliban government in Afghanistan; and Pakistan had violated international arms agreements by obtaining missile technology from China and conducting nuclear weapons tests.
On September 11th 2001 Musharraf was therefore ostracized as a “military dictator.” Nevertheless, by September 12th 2001 in haste to avenge Bin Laden, the US began to geopolitically reincarnate the “military dictator” into the honorable stature and media image of “President Musharraf.” He was coddled and gift-wrapped over $1 billion for his allegiance against terrorism, and Pakistan was seduced with over $20 billion since.
After a near-decade of this wobbly courtship, along with thinking Bin Laden was a desolate cave-dweller in Afghanistan; he was paradoxically caught and killed in – of all places – Pakistan, where he’d lived unbothered for years with his family in a million dollar urban compound in – of all places – a military neighborhood.
While the US consequently suspects Pakistan of consorting with al-Qaeda, Pakistan resents that the US conducted the raid unannounced. To teach America a geopolitical lesson in return, Pakistan denied the US further access to the compound and refused to handover wreckage of the abandoned “special forces helicopter” for 2 weeks. Eye-for-eye, it’s well plausible that Pakistan even accommodated China’s suspected overtures to “reverse engineer” the copter’s technology, especially knowing China has since awarded Pakistan 50 fighter jets.
The world is locked into a rotational axis where geopolitics, globalization, and terrorism are fixed realities. And since America’s globalized-edge is predicated upon strategic resources like oil, the US cannot discontinue its risky proneness of trying to rent or convert Arab allies who are just as diametric to Americanization as Americanization is to them. So irrespective of the president’s color, America will duplicitously continue to abet regimes that it may afterwards seek to violently dismantle – under the pretext of “fighting for freedom.”
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Ezrah Aharone is the author of two acclaimed political books: Sovereign Evolution: Manifest Destiny from Civil Rights to Sovereign Rights (2009) and Pawned Sovereignty: Sharpened Black Perspectives on Americanization, Africa, War and Reparations (2003). He is a founding member of the Center for Sovereignty Advancement. He can be reached at Ezrah@EzrahSpeaks.com.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Black History and Vindicationalism
By EZRAH AHARONE 2/2011
As we celebrate another Black History Month during these political times of world turmoil and uprise, it’s important for America to project a world image that it has “turned the page” of racism in its own blood-stained history. And while the relevance of this month has even been called into question since the advent of a Black president, I’m reminded of the African proverb that: “Until the lion has his historian, the hunter will always be the hero.”
As such, when it comes to slavery and what is popularly categorized as “Black History,” America practices the seductive allure of what I call “Historical Vindicationalism,” where the harsh realities of events and narratives are masked and sterilized, while the end-product of Americanization gets epitomized as being lofty-enough to excuse and acquit the otherwise flagrant inhumanities of its means. Thus, we as African Americans are psychologically expected to deem the inflicted pains of our history as well worth the ascribed value of the prize of Americanization.
Vindicationalism incubates historically and thrives unsuspectingly in various imposed forms and expressions. In government for example, partisan members convened the 112th Congress with a showy display of patriotism by ceremoniously taking turns reading the US Constitution. This was great political theater, especially for the viewing world audience, but what went largely unreported is that they propitiously skipped portions related to slavery . . . knowing that such uncut historical truths would naturally corrode the perceived integrity of the document and vainglory of the occasion.
What also should not go unrecognized is that, the political ease of which Congress omitted references of slavery, stems from an overall greater political ease whereby Congress has ignored the unbroken link of causational inequities that 2½ centuries of slavery have systemically and endemically produced.
Upon seemingly inhaling the same vindicationalist fumes, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who gave the Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, remarked in a subsequent speech that “the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” While she is wholly incorrect, this typifies a pervading psyche and a form of vindicationalism wherein Americans hold unconditional reverence for people and events of the 18th century, in ways that give near-Biblical inferences to the founding fathers and founding documents.
As such, even though slavery is invariably and universally “wrong,” vindicationalism requires that we however are not to regard it as “wrong enough” to repudiate the character or diminish the greatness of the founding fathers. Interestingly, to defend their historical imprint and further their just cause for posterity, Jewish cultures for instance avow unapologetically to “never forget,” while we seem resigned to fecklessly prefer “not to consider” the adversarial conduct of those historically responsible for our harm. Since this would equate to political blasphemy on our part, men of Thomas Jefferson’s ilk are historically depicted at-worst as being benignly “complex and ambivalent,” rather than “immoral and inhumane.”
To limit propaganda, nations should recount history with accurate terminologies since omissions, additions, embellishments and/or misplacements of words can distort facts to the point where false perceptions can become misleadingly disguised as irrefutable truths. Euro-Americans understand both the dangers and advantages of word-manipulations, which is exactly why people in US courts are not merely demanded to swear on the Bible to just “tell the truth” . . . They must swear all-inclusively to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Mark Twain emphasized the importance of word-use, saying “Use the right word and not its second cousin” and “The difference between the right word and almost the right word, is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Nevertheless, in another example of vindicationalism, his 19th-century classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was recently cleansed of all 219 mentions of the “N-Word,” which he deliberately used to capture America’s racial “lightning” that still strikes in this 21st century.
Vindicationalism works however to camouflage racism and the horrors of our history into sugar-coated blends with modern media, politics, and education. Students at Grover Cleveland Middle School in New Jersey for example, were assigned to “write catchy slogans and advertisements for why slave labor was the best way to run cotton plantations.” One slogan read: “Got Slaves? Get Cash and Get Some.” Black professor Stacey Patton of Montclair State responded saying: “It is important for students to understand both sides,” while Rutgers University professor Clement Price didn’t have a problem “teaching the past through several lenses.”
Based on the overall vindicationalist nature of America’s system of education, experts and authorities will commonly impart “sides and lenses” that intellectually rationalize and reconcile America’s historical depravity. Conversely, there is no such academic lens to legitimize catchy ads or slogans about the other side to 9/11 or the Holocaust, and neither would the rank and file of Black or White professors intellectually defend it.
In fighting for freedom, Thomas Paine warned about such distorted thinking which satisfies the sociopolitical expediency of others, saying, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” So, if “the truth sets you free,” then we as African Americans need political outlooks and historical interpretations beyond today’s vindicationalist versions and time-warped customs which deify Americanization in ways that are both highly disingenuous and factually untrue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ezrah Aharone is the author of two acclaimed political books: Sovereign Evolution: Manifest Destiny from Civil Rights to Sovereign Rights (2009) and Pawned Sovereignty: Sharpened Black Perspectives on Americanization, Africa, War and Reparations (2003). He is a founding member of the Center for Sovereignty Advancement. He can be reached at Ezrah@EzrahSpeaks.com.
As we celebrate another Black History Month during these political times of world turmoil and uprise, it’s important for America to project a world image that it has “turned the page” of racism in its own blood-stained history. And while the relevance of this month has even been called into question since the advent of a Black president, I’m reminded of the African proverb that: “Until the lion has his historian, the hunter will always be the hero.”
As such, when it comes to slavery and what is popularly categorized as “Black History,” America practices the seductive allure of what I call “Historical Vindicationalism,” where the harsh realities of events and narratives are masked and sterilized, while the end-product of Americanization gets epitomized as being lofty-enough to excuse and acquit the otherwise flagrant inhumanities of its means. Thus, we as African Americans are psychologically expected to deem the inflicted pains of our history as well worth the ascribed value of the prize of Americanization.
Vindicationalism incubates historically and thrives unsuspectingly in various imposed forms and expressions. In government for example, partisan members convened the 112th Congress with a showy display of patriotism by ceremoniously taking turns reading the US Constitution. This was great political theater, especially for the viewing world audience, but what went largely unreported is that they propitiously skipped portions related to slavery . . . knowing that such uncut historical truths would naturally corrode the perceived integrity of the document and vainglory of the occasion.
What also should not go unrecognized is that, the political ease of which Congress omitted references of slavery, stems from an overall greater political ease whereby Congress has ignored the unbroken link of causational inequities that 2½ centuries of slavery have systemically and endemically produced.
Upon seemingly inhaling the same vindicationalist fumes, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who gave the Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, remarked in a subsequent speech that “the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” While she is wholly incorrect, this typifies a pervading psyche and a form of vindicationalism wherein Americans hold unconditional reverence for people and events of the 18th century, in ways that give near-Biblical inferences to the founding fathers and founding documents.
As such, even though slavery is invariably and universally “wrong,” vindicationalism requires that we however are not to regard it as “wrong enough” to repudiate the character or diminish the greatness of the founding fathers. Interestingly, to defend their historical imprint and further their just cause for posterity, Jewish cultures for instance avow unapologetically to “never forget,” while we seem resigned to fecklessly prefer “not to consider” the adversarial conduct of those historically responsible for our harm. Since this would equate to political blasphemy on our part, men of Thomas Jefferson’s ilk are historically depicted at-worst as being benignly “complex and ambivalent,” rather than “immoral and inhumane.”
To limit propaganda, nations should recount history with accurate terminologies since omissions, additions, embellishments and/or misplacements of words can distort facts to the point where false perceptions can become misleadingly disguised as irrefutable truths. Euro-Americans understand both the dangers and advantages of word-manipulations, which is exactly why people in US courts are not merely demanded to swear on the Bible to just “tell the truth” . . . They must swear all-inclusively to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Mark Twain emphasized the importance of word-use, saying “Use the right word and not its second cousin” and “The difference between the right word and almost the right word, is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Nevertheless, in another example of vindicationalism, his 19th-century classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was recently cleansed of all 219 mentions of the “N-Word,” which he deliberately used to capture America’s racial “lightning” that still strikes in this 21st century.
Vindicationalism works however to camouflage racism and the horrors of our history into sugar-coated blends with modern media, politics, and education. Students at Grover Cleveland Middle School in New Jersey for example, were assigned to “write catchy slogans and advertisements for why slave labor was the best way to run cotton plantations.” One slogan read: “Got Slaves? Get Cash and Get Some.” Black professor Stacey Patton of Montclair State responded saying: “It is important for students to understand both sides,” while Rutgers University professor Clement Price didn’t have a problem “teaching the past through several lenses.”
Based on the overall vindicationalist nature of America’s system of education, experts and authorities will commonly impart “sides and lenses” that intellectually rationalize and reconcile America’s historical depravity. Conversely, there is no such academic lens to legitimize catchy ads or slogans about the other side to 9/11 or the Holocaust, and neither would the rank and file of Black or White professors intellectually defend it.
In fighting for freedom, Thomas Paine warned about such distorted thinking which satisfies the sociopolitical expediency of others, saying, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” So, if “the truth sets you free,” then we as African Americans need political outlooks and historical interpretations beyond today’s vindicationalist versions and time-warped customs which deify Americanization in ways that are both highly disingenuous and factually untrue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ezrah Aharone is the author of two acclaimed political books: Sovereign Evolution: Manifest Destiny from Civil Rights to Sovereign Rights (2009) and Pawned Sovereignty: Sharpened Black Perspectives on Americanization, Africa, War and Reparations (2003). He is a founding member of the Center for Sovereignty Advancement. He can be reached at Ezrah@EzrahSpeaks.com.
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