For a Few Rice Bowls More.

 

During the appalling crimes of the Khmer Rouge the US remained vocally critical, but effectively stood back in as part of the push to open up China. The subject of human rights was never an issue of policy, not that it has ever been since. Washington postured over Pol Pot and the media moralised, there was a whitewash for who was funding Suharto's genocide in East Timor. It's impossible to understand these events without keeping in mind the American war on Vietnam. Originally the US waged war on South Vietnam after its proxy terror-state slaughtered 70,000 people and aroused an uncontainable resistance. The liberal administration in Washington arranged a "seat change" for President Diem, a man they had put in power, and just before JFK was assassinated Diem was promptly executed. The pretext for all of this was to contain China and the absurdity of this justification didn't become apparent until Nixon went to China years later. Nixon embraced Mao as US planes were dropping the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on Cambodia.

 

 

The US continued to block all attempts at peaceful settlement until 1975, by which time Cambodia and Vietnam had almost been bombed back into the stone age. Washington had failed to achieve its maximal objectives, a ravaged Indochina would live on, but its main objectives were actually fulfilled by 1965 - when the US installed Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Suharto in Indonesia. By then Vietnam was devastated, estimates of the Vietnamese dead ranged from 3 to 4 million. The war had been continued for the sake of US prestige. The aim had been to kill the "virus" of independence in Vietnam, the fear was that the rot might spread to Indonesia and eventually Japan. That would mean the US would lose everything it had fought for in WW2. The common perception of American defeat in Vietnam is not unfounded. This reading lacks subtlety in terms of analysis and exhibits imperial self-pity in conclusion. In short, the US secured its regional objectives though Vietnam survived the onslaught as a outpost of Soviet power in the Far East.

 

The US establishment was left profoundly bitter and sick over Vietnam and remains so to this day. So when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia the US led the chorus of condemnation, even though the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge. In fact, the US and its allies went as far as to support the Khmer Rouge as a government-in-exile of which Sihanouk became a representative. The Khmer Rouge were allowed to hold onto their seat in the UN as the legitimate representatives of Cambodia. And as a guerrilla force against the Vietnamese occupation the Khmer Rouge received training from the SAS, which the British lied about until 1991. Until then Western governments withheld a great deal of aid to starving Cambodia. The argument was that the Vietnamese would not allow food to reach everyone that it should, namely the Khmer Rouge - who were holding 45,000 people hostage at the Thai border with the protection of the UN. In spite of its battle to rebuild itself Vietnam sent over 25,000 tonnes of food aid across the border to feed civilians.

 

 

Upon the invasion Sihanouk was deployed to make a speech damning Vietnam's aggression at the UN, after which he sought refuge in China. He was later anointed as President of the coalition in waiting. As the respectable face of a government, which included many mass-murderers, Sihanouk thanked the US for passing on lists of Cambodian "traitors". In this grubby partnership Sihanouk was constantly aware that his life was in the hands of hardcore Khmer Rouge in his own entourage. In the meantime the Khmer Rouge decided to wage a guerrilla war and wait for the Vietnamese to be driven out of Cambodia as a force condemned as "outlaws" by the international community. The move would then be a forceful takeover of the country and a return to the barbarism of the 1970s. The Vietnamese occupation was not undeserving of criticism given its brutal repression of dissent and racist policies against minorities. In the end Vietnam left the country in the hands of Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge who had defected to Vietnam, who continues to dominate Cambodia.

 

 

With the end of the Vietnamese occupation the transition to a liberal democratic capitalist state began. Yet it was only a formal shift to a multiparty system of representation as Hun Sen remains in power to this day in a sort of dictatorship lite. The old command economy has been blown apart to make way for markets and the forces of capital. Sihanouk was reinstated as King while the Khmer Rouge stood at a far and tried to appear as a modern force by embracing market liberalism. The power-sharing arrangement was between Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh and thankfully not Pol Pot. Once again the conservatives banded around the royal family began to collaborate with the Khmer Rouge. In response Hun Sen orchestrated a coup and purged around 40 royalists. By now King Sihanouk was fixing pardons to rehabilitate the old men who had led the Khmer Rouge in its heyday. It would be another decade until a handfull of these aging killers would even see an indictment.

Who was Sihanouk?

 

Norodom Sihanouk, the self-styled King-Father of Cambodia, has died at the age of 89 in circumstances far more pleasant than the many Cambodians he outlived. He spent his last years in North Korea and China, the appropriate compatriots of a man who took the side of the Khmer Rouge out of his own opportunism. It's true that Sihanouk was just another man clutching at straws in the chaos of the American war on Indochina. He was both a hostage of and accomplice to the Khmer Rouge. Just as Sihanouk had juggled the various powers in the Vietnam war to maintain Cambodia's "neutrality" and hold onto the thrown, the demagogue went on to stand as a voice of opposition during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. To this end Sihanouk took the side of the Khmer Rouge in those years as the respectable face to the international community. And yet Sihanouk began his reign as a playboy and demagogue, it seems he learned quick how to dance to the tune of foreign powers.

That was the case with the French until the old empire was on its last legs. Sihanouk moved to establish an independent state in 1953 and reinvented himself as the father of the nation. Yet the young King continued the alliance with France even after independence. In 1955 Sihanouk stepped down as King, letting his father take his place, only to lead the country on a populist appeal to cultural conservatism, revolutionary nationalism and Buddhist socialism. Though Sihanouk later took up the powers of King as a Prince when his father died. It was a balancing act, Sihanouk was keen to keep Cambodia out of the Indochinese conflict and played leftists against rightists. In the end, his former deputy, Lon Nol seized power in a putsch in 1970 with the approval of the CIA. It was then that Sihanouk forged a coalition with Pol Pot. Meanwhile the reactionary nationalist Lon Nol supported the US campaign to repeatedly bomb Cambodia thereby laying the road to Phnom Penh for the jungle-dwelling guerrillas.

As the Khmer Republic crumbled in 1975 Lon Nol opted for a last stand - it came straight out of Buddhist mysticism - and when the Khmer Rouge surrounded the capital the Marshall had a ring of consecrated sand spread around the entire city. The sand couldn't save Cambodia from what happened next. At first the mood was one of celebration as the youthful troops draped in black and red garb marched into town. The mood soon changed when the thugs started to evacuate the city, dumping the old and the infirmed at the side of the road to die. The rest of the people were marched into the jungle at gun-point. During all of this Sihanouk spent his time between Beijing and Pyongyang, upon his return to Cambodia he would serve briefly as a mascot monarch of the Angkar. He gave a lie-riddled speech at the UN defending Pol Pot, though Sihanouk was just a pawn in a game this was no trivial game. The Chinese supported Pol Pot in order to colonise Cambodia and counter the shift of power as Vietnam realigned itself with the Soviet Union.

For more on this period of Cambodia's history see my latest article.

Loving the Bomb!

The Cuban revolution of 1959 was met with a three-pronged assault from the colossus less than 100 miles north. A campaign of assassination attempts against the leadership combined with economic strangulation and terrorist attacks. It was in 1961 that Fidel Castro finally declared Cuba to be in the grips of a socialist revolution worth defending with rifles. This was just after the US had bombed two Cuban airports. It wasn't over yet, the Bay of Pigs came soon after and it was over in about 72 hours. The Americans were humiliated and the Cubans quickly exchanged the people they had captured for food and medicine. It wasn't forgotten. After that the Commandante climbed into bed with the Russian politburo and reluctantly agreed to park nuclear weapons on the island as a deterrent to another US invasion. The governing party became the Cuban Communist Party within a few years and the regime began to follow the Soviet model of really existing socialism.

Fidel Castro had reluctantly accepted nuclear weapons from Russia in order to secure Cuba from another invasion and to strengthen the socialist camp. In his typical flamboyance Fidel would have preferred a triumphant display, perhaps a parade of his newfound nuclear might through the streets of Havana. Instead the CIA discovered the weapons from the air and the world was soon on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. This is no exaggeration, as we now know; it was the most dangerous moment in history for our species. The bureaucrats were well aware that this was the case at the time. If it wasn’t for a Russian submarine commander who countered the orders of two other commanders then nuclear-tipped warheads would have been fired at the US. Two of them had made the decision under the assumption that a war had begun, they were under attack from a US destroyer at the time. Thankfully the decision was overruled by Vasili Arkhipov. That could have been the end.

If the Russians had let-off the warheads it would have provoked a full nuclear response from the US. Moscow would have been taken out and then London would have been taken out in retaliation, it would have escalated from there. Near total annihilation in a matter of minutes. This case demonstrates the incredible danger of living in a world of nuclear weapons, we're not as in control of these radioactive toys as we like to think. By and large it is automated systems which have the power to land a mushroom cloud on the horizon. There have been many times where we have come close to the edge, but there has always been someone around to step in. Sooner or later there isn't going to be a human intervention to save the day. It may only be a matter of time as Chomsky reminds us. Disarmament isn't just the moral action at this point, it's vital for the chances of human survival in the long-term. There's no point making sure that we destroy what's left after a nuclear strike takes us out.

A deal was soon cut, the yanks shipped out the nukes they had in Turkey and the ruskies did the same in Cuba in return for a promise that the US would never invade Cuba again. JFK wanted to look hard and refused, but secretly had the missiles in Turkey removed. Of course, he was aware that the missiles were actually obsolete and were about to be replaced by Polaris in the Mediterranean. Cuba was just another square on the chessboard in these manoeuvres and the Commandante wasn’t consulted in any of this. But neither were the people living in Russia or the United States for that matter. With all this in mind Lee Harvey Oswald decided to take-out Kennedy in order to take the heat off of Cuba. Before the year was out Oswald had pulled the trigger and saved the Kennedy legacy in doing so. It saved his criminal Presidency, secured the myth of a vanquished hero and wiped away everything he had done. The internet is stuffed with garbage theories about the man’s death, a lot less is focused on the numerous conspiracies to kill Fidel Castro.

It wasn't over between the US and Cuba, but the attempts to destroy the regime in Havana haven't come close to a nuclear holocaust since 1962. Instead there have been 638 known attempts to murder Fidel Castro, as of 2006 anyway, with the last attempts being made after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The CIA has yet to get their man, clearly they're much better at running drugs. That being said the CIA did manage to put to death Che Guevara in a most cowardly fashion. But that wasn't enough, was it? What would be enough? Only the return of Cuba into the hands of the American ruling-class and underworld. Anything less is an insult. So the Cuban economy had to be strangled with an embargo which is still going strong today. The Cubans turned to Russia and then they had to go it alone after the Soviet Union fell apart like the house of cards it was. Remarkably the Castro regime has survived and the major achievements of the Cuban revolution have been safeguarded.

The command model of the economy has been abandoned to some extent and we may well see a Chinese style of capitalism emerge on the island. There has yet to be a free election on the island, a free press has not been allowed to spring up and the Castro brothers have run the show for over 50 years. This isn't to say that the country should be ripped open to American power once again. The US government keeps more political prisoners in Cuba than the Castro regime actually does. There aren't thousands and thousands of homeless people roaming the streets, nor do millions go hungry every year. That's thanks to the efforts of the Cuban government to localise the production of food. Since the collapse of really existing socialism there has been a return to corruption and prostitution has re-emerged. But it has to be said that there aren't any drug cartels in Cuba and the island is certainly no abattoir unlike Colombia and Mexico.

Back to Lockerbie.

As far as we are concerned the Lockerbie bomber has just snuffed it, the reaction of many was the same as to the death of Gaddafi: good riddance. The man killed 270 people, 189 of them were American and it was the biggest terrorist attack on British soil. The media has acknowledged there is a split of opinion over whether or not Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a mass-murderer. There was overwhelming opposition to releasing him in 2009 with the presupposition of blood on his hands. The obsession was over how this might affect the special relationship, which only exists on the Queen's side of the pond. The other concern readable in the main stream was over the cost to the reputation of British law. Of course, the mistake is to assume that this country has such high repute overseas in the first place. Furthermore it was evident then, as it is now, that the indictment and trial of the accused was not a fair one. There are reasonable doubts to be had at the allegation that al-Megrahi was involved in the atrocity of question.

To accept the label of 'guilty' stamped on al-Megrahi's corpse would be to turn a blind eye to gaping holes in the narrative. The "damning" testimony in the trial came from the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claimed that al-Megrahi bought clothing from him which were later found in the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103. Gauci gave false descriptions of al-Megrahi on 19 different occasions and failed to recognise him in court. The other testimony came from an anonymous witness, a CIA informant, who claimed he saw Lamin Khalifa Fahimah loading the bomb onto the plane in Frankfurt. Fahimah was found not guilty incidentally. For this Tony Gauci and his brother Paul received payments of over $3 million from the US Department of Justice - as part of the "Rewards for Justice" compensation programme - while the CIA informant received $4 million upon the conviction. This is precisely the reason that David Cameron was wrong to rejectcalls for an independent inquiry. It gets murkier and murkier the more you look at it.

What about the backdrop of the bombing? We forget that a few months before the Lockerbie bombing Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes. The Americans insisted this was an accident, the Iranians disagreed. You might be a tad disagreeable if an "accident" left 290 of your fellow citizens dead. When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie there were those who speculated that it was revenge. American officials, most of which were working at the US Embassy in Moscow, had reserved seats aboard Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt, but cancelled their bookings at the last minute. It’s also the case that South African Foreign Minister jumped on another plane instead of Flight 103. You could draw all kind of theories from this, but it’s safer to say that we really don’t know what happened. If an independent inquiry for Pan Am Flight 103 then it follows that there’s no chance of an inquiry into Iran Air Flight 655. Yet we are reminded to remember the victims of one flight, but not another.

The indictment of al-Megrahi and Fahimah came through in November of 1991. By then Thatcher had already shot down an attempt at an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing before it could even get off the ground. Then a report surfaced in 1990 that concluded the attack had been orchestrated by the Iranian government and carried out by a "free-lance" Palestinian group, probably the Popular Front for theLiberation of Palestine. The motivation: revenge for the 290 people killed by the USS Vincennes. Thatcher looked to keep this revelation low-key before she was dethroned by popular demand. This was just before Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait and the US sought to build a coalition to break the backs of the disobedient Iraqi regime. The Gaddafi regime in Libya refused to support the American intervention and instead backed Iraq. It suddenly became a lot more convenient to go back to the old scapegoat, the mad Colonel in the desert.

Hobbes on Democracy.

Thomas Hobbes was a perfect foil for Machiavelli in a way, as Machiavelli claimed to have discovered a new continent of a new order but it was Hobbes who made that continent habitable. The focus of Leviathan, specifically in chapter 19, shifts onto the different kinds of commonwealth as distinguished from one another in terms of institutions and the succession to sovereign power, as well as in differences of convenience, aptitude in the creation of the peace and security of the people. For Hobbes there were only three main models of commonwealth: monarchic, aristocratic and democratic. This is due to the indivisible nature of sovereign power can only be peacefully manifested in representatives of “either one or more or all”.[1] For our purposes we will be focused particularly on what Hobbes has to say about democracy rather than aristocracy and monarchy. But the views he held on aristocratic and monarchic systems remain important only insofar as they can be distinguished from a democracy or a “popular commonwealth” as Hobbes deemed it.

Early on in the chapter democracy is marked out as distinct from monarchy and aristocracy, as a popular commonwealth in which representation comes in the form of “all that will come together”. Thomas Hobbes contrasts this with monarchy, where the representative is one man, and aristocracy, which is only partial assembly. In the case of a democracy every man has the right to enter into it, rather than in an aristocracy where only the men distinct from the rest can enter. Notably, if the power of the monarch has been limited then the state in question is not a monarchy as sovereignty fell into the hands of an assembly (which could be either democratic or aristocratic). For Hobbes the indivisibility of sovereign power is necessary for peace, an end for which sovereignty is instituted. Once power becomes divided it is no longer sovereign, so for conflict to be avoided it is vital for a duality of power to be averted.

For peace the sovereign must have absolute authority, be not a party to the covenants and hold absolute authority only to the extent that the sovereign has the power to enforce the law. Then it is absurd to think that there could be perpetual peace when sovereign power is in the hands of an assembly (as in a democracy) for the absolute representation of the people would fall to subordinate representatives and the power could very easily become divided. Thus subordinate representatives pose a danger to sovereign power insofar as such a system can become a source of division in the commonwealth.[2] So sovereign power can be divided, but it shouldn’t be because power ceases to be sovereign once it has been divided.[3] Think of instances in which states have collapsed into chaos amidst an uprising, a rupture of the order from which the sovereignty of the regime is undermined to the extent that a duality emerges and a rival for sovereignty appears.

There are also cases where the sovereign takes the form of a one-party state and a sudden rupture explodes the status quo. The revolution and subsequent civil war in Libya was one such example where power was stripped of its sovereignty as the people rebelled, but eventually sovereign power was manifested in a new government as the Gaddafi regime was brushed aside in Tripoli. We might even segue into theories of what makes a revolutionary situation. We might understand a revolutionary situation as defined by the emergence of what Charles Tilly called “multiple sovereignty”, which has three main features. First of all, the existing state suffers a loss of power to contenders and rivals. Secondly the rivals fall back on a base of popular support which is a significant portion of the population overall. Lastly, the existing state cannot, for whatever reason, repress the contenders and the base of support behind them. The fears of a divided sovereignty, which Hobbes had, are precisely a fear of this kind of situation arising.

Whether or not it is possible for a sovereign to hold absolute power regardless of its' form (whether monarchic or democratic) is not really explored by Hobbes at this point. For Hobbes, democracy is problematic for a number of reasons let alone the question of indivisible sovereignty. In a democracy the people of the assembly would not just represent the common interest of constituents. The individual has their own private interests which would rival the common interest and could easily come first, as Hobbes notes that the “passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.” Where the public and private interests are unified the public is most advanced, Hobbes maintains that in a monarchy the private interest is the same as the public. The reasoning being that the wealth, power and honour of a monarch are derived from the subjects. The ability of the state to defend itself from enemies would be undermined if the people are poor, contemptible or too weak to maintain such a war. In a democracy, the prosperity of the people contributes not so much to a corrupt leadership as it does many times deceit, treachery and conflict.

Hobbes points out that a monarch can receive counsel wherever and from whomever he so deems fit, in secrecy, at whatever point before the time of action. In a democracy in which a sovereign assembly has been established, there is no time or place in which the assembly could receive counsel with secrecy because of the multitudinous nature of an assembly. So when such an assembly requires counsel, it will not be received except from those who have a right to do so and may not leave the confines of its own body to do so. Typically this will mean that the assembly will receive counsel from people who are more versed in the accumulation of wealth than knowledge. The advice could likely come in the form of long discourses, which would commonly call upon men to act in various ways rather than govern them. For Hobbes the assembly could reach out to counsel from the unskilled in civic matters, orators and so on, who give their opinions in speeches full of pretence and inept learning, this could only lead to the disruption of the commonwealth or do it no good at all.

It is possible that the assembly could strip good citizens of property to enrich friends of the assembly (e.g. friends of the people rather than the friends of elected representatives). Hobbes concedes that this is a possibility in a monarchy, he maintains that “we do not read that this has ever been done.” For the favourites of the assembly are more numerous than a monarch, so there is a greater temptation to serve the interests of their own kindred as well as to seductive orators – who have greater power to hurt than to help, as “condemnation than absolution more resembles justice.” Not only is it impractical for the assembly to be well advised there is a great potential for inconstancy as the potential for such in a monarchy is multiplied as with the mass of the representative. For Hobbes the resolutions of a monarch are subject to no other inconstancy than that of his own nature, whereas democratic resolutions are subject to the nature of the masses.

The assembly would be prone to disagreement as a result of the nature of man, as well as due to envy and interest, to the height of such disagreement a civil war maybe the consequence.[4] So it would seem that the stability of the state in question is at stake with the rise of a democracy. At the same time, the whole of the assembly cannot fail unless the multitude fail as well and there is no place for the question of the right of succession in a democratic government for the reason that anyone can enter into such a government. Though the death of a monarch differs from the death of an entire assembly, it would still dispossess the people of a representative and leave the multitude without a sovereign which unites them. The question of stability inevitably arises once again, without the guarantee of the “peace of men” it is likely that the state could return to the “condition of war in every age” and the only alternative to this is an “artificial eternity of man”.[5]

---

[1] Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.118-120

[2] It makes sense then that Hobbes considered it absurd that the monarchy could hold sovereign power as it invites the people to elect representatives capable of putting forth the advice from the people. In the rare case of a monarchy in which the monarch is never considered a representative, though called sovereign, the status of representative would fall to those who have been sent by the people to carry their petitions and give the monarch their advice. In such cases then it is imperative for the “true and absolute representative of a people” to instruct the people in such offices and watch how they admit any other representation on any occasion.

[3] Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.120-121

[4] For Hobbes, to say it is inconvenient to place sovereign power in the office of one man or an assembly of men (e.g. rather than a democratic assembly) is to hold that “all government is more inconvenient than confusion and civil war.” All danger must originate in the dispute between those who are for an office of such honour and those out to profit for themselves.

Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.122-123

[5] Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1994) pg.124-125

The Master and Medvedev.

So, it looks like Vladimir Putin will be President of Russia by March 2012 due to a convenient arrangement with Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin in 2008 though Putin stayed on as Prime Minister. By 2008 Putin had served two terms as Russian President and had to allow someone else to take office for at least a term because of a constitutional technicality. So Medvedev stood for the Presidency and Putin became Prime Minister for 4 years. In return Medvedev will serve as Prime Minister and lead United Russia. This is not a surprise to anyone familiar with the highly cynical and corrupt nature of Russian politics. It has reached the point that there is not even a whiff of shame to be found at such scenes anymore. It was in front of an audience of dutiful bureaucrats that the decision was announced, then came an embrace which the bureaucrats were keen to welcome with applause. Then it was openly stated that Putin and Medvedev had come up with this arrangement several years ago. The obvious had been admitted.

The possibility of 12 years of Vladimir Putin draws the inevitable comparison with Joseph Stalin in the Western media, e.g. if Putin retains power until 2024 he will be Russia's longest serving ruler since Stalin. When faced with a Russian authoritarianism the Western media can only refer us back to the shibboleths of the old Communist Party. Sadly it doesn't go without saying that the rise of Putin cannot be understood without context. The Economist would have you believe that it is Putin who has undermined Russian democracy before it got a chance to flourish; created a "Mafia state" of crony capitalism via the Kremlin and poisoned the benevolent experiment with liberal capitalism. The conclusion being that the West should adopt a tougher policy towards Russia, e.g. to support Ukraine and Georgia. There is no room for a deeper look at the roots of Putinism, because we might find that the post-Communist world is not just an orgy of consumerism where the sky is the limit when it comes to free-choice and rates of growth.

For the journalists at The Economist it was Putin's failure to shirk from liberalisation of the economy which will lead Russia into future crises. According to The Economist these "weaknesses may make Russia unstable and nationalistic, which will make it harder for foreigners to deal with." Even though nationalism has been a strong tendency in Russia for a long time and the economy was plunged into a deep crisis in the 1990s as a result of reforms. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the advice and support of the US, Boris Yeltsin initiated economic "shock therapy" - a wave of spending cuts, removal of price-controls, deregulation and a spree of privatisation. It was "creative destruction" as millions were plunged into poverty, prices shot through the roof and ruthless businessmen grabbed as much as they could. The country was effectively looted as the state became increasingly ensnared by the oligarchs that had managed to seize large chunks of Russian industry in the chaos. Ultimately the structural adjustments of the Russian economy provide the pretext and create the conditions for a figure such as Putin to emerge on top.

There is no attempt to even reflect on this point in the pages of The Economist. Of course, what really bugs the squealing pigs at The Economist is that the new Russia has yet to join the World Trade Organisation and that the rampant corruption in the country has a disruptive impact on the market. This is not a fundamental critique of Putinism. Primarily The Economist is displeased with Putin's specific choice of Prime Minister and would prefer it if he had chosen Alexei Kudrin over Medvedev. The reason: Kudrin stands for "fiscal responsibility" which means spending cuts for the plebs. The fact that Kudrin can balance a budget means more to this lot than the fact he's just another crony. Kudrin has an affinity for civil liberties, human rights and political pluralism, so he is much more appealing than Medvedev. But he is even more appealing as a "martyr" to liberal values in a barbarous land, it feeds into the self-serving narrative in the Western media. If Alexei Kudrin was Prime Minister under Putin then he would no doubt walk the same line as Medvedev.

The Economist notes that the swap between Medvedev and Putin "opens a new chapter in Russian history - one that may well end in crisis." The fact that it was a crisis in 1998 which allowed Putin to slither into the Kremlin in the first place. The "new chapter" began with the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which Fukuyama heralded the "End of History" and a pisshead named Boris Yeltsin became the President of the new Russia. The collapse of Communism left a void, it was as if all ideologies had failed and the world had entered a post-political age of managerial governance which fed into a climate of cynical anti-politics. Since then an ultra-nationalist populism has emerged, as well as anti-Communist hysteria and even a conservative nostalgia for the Cold War. In a similar way to Berlusconi in Italy Putin stands as a bulwark to the chaos of the marketplace which is conveniently situated at the apex where ultra-politics and anti-politics collide. The only "alternative" permitted by the Kremlin is the Russian Communist Party, everywhere the politics of Russia is riddled with ultra-rightist and proto-fascist groups such as the National Bolsheviks. All the while the Western media is only capable of liberal day-dreams about the new Russia.

125 Years of Coca-Cola.

A Sip of Capitalism.

You must have come across the new ads for Coca-Cola. When you can't buy a bottle of Coke you've passed the borders of civilisation, either that or you've been kidnapped and taken to North Korea where you'll be making films written by Kim Jong-il. The story of Coca-Cola might be understood as a microcosm of the rise of American corporate power and consumerism throughout the world. In global politics the company has carved out a history, which is unique and disturbing whilst also reflective of the level of power corporations have garnered over the past century. Since corporations were given the legal status of human beings, in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in America, the power of the corporation has increased enormously. Except corporations are immortal and amoral in nature, only profit matters and the law requires them to place the financial interests of their owners above all other interests.

The way Coca-Cola has been marketed over the decades have been important in the development of public relations and advertising. As Žižek has pointed out, ideology does not work by saying "no" but by providing the masses with sanction to particular modes of enjoyment. The slogan of Coca-Cola "Enjoy!" is the most perfect demonstration of the way that consumerism buys the passive support of the people. Even in mainstream economics, the stimulation of demand through consumption is a part of the means to securing economic growth. There is no need for calls to maintain inhibitions, save money and resist temptation. The promise of Real enjoyment is the key. The shape of the Coca-Cola bottle was originally designed to remind male consumers of the curves of a woman's body. The constant and obscene injunction to enjoy, obligatory jouissance, comes from the superego. We experience this as a transgression when we indulge, as we worry about the sugar content of the drink, the affect it has on our teeth and son.

The Coca-Cola Company emerged in the early 20th Century just as Edward Bernays pioneered the use of propaganda on a corporate scale, whether it be for advertising or political subversion. By now the stern calls for self-denial by the paternal superego, the Protestant ethic of the Victorian era, has been superseded by a maternal superego which enjoins us to relax and enjoy ourselves. The short-circuit of this obscene injunction (which requires us to feel as though we are not being coerced in anyway) is depressive, self-punitive hatred and the anxiety that we have not enjoyed enough or that others have enjoyed more than us. In consumerism the position of agency is taken up by objective knowledge, which concern our health, appearance, sexual and social needs etc. The advertisers claim to have psychological insights into the target market, what the consumers truly want to become happy, well-adjusted and successful people. Thus, the phrase market Stalinism.

It all began in the American Civil War, way back in the 1860s, when the Yankee North battered the Confederacy of the South in order to abolish slavery. The rural South was torn apart in the process, one of the most prominent cities Atlanta was practically torched to the ground and there was widespread humiliation, along with melancholia, guilt and hysteria. The quack doctor would come around to offer potions of mysterious ingredients and promises of a better life with such potions. One such fellow was John Pemberton, a druggist and a veteran Confederate soldier, with his 'ideal brain tonic'. With the rise of temperance Atlanta went dry and Pemberton sold his 'brain tonic' as a soft-drink Coca-Cola off for $2,300. The tonic, which was part cocaine at the time, would be marketed as the symbol of American wholesomeness. At the time Coca-Cola was part cocaine and had just the right colour to disguise a slug of whiskey. So Coca-Cola became the temperance drink in the 1890s  as the South was in the grips of Christian revivalism and prohibition.

Coca-Cola first transcended the borders of the US after the Spanish-American war when Cuba was claimed by the US and Coca-Cola was soon on the island, with the first bottling plant open by 1906. At the time the formula could not be patented at first as that would have forced the company to hand over the product to the public domain after 50 years at the time. It was vulnerable to competitors, the company only maintained the product through strict secrecy as well as a systematic legal war against all the competition. Pepsi Cola being the only rival to survive, as it emulated the franchise model of Coca-Cola. By 1919 Coca-Cola had been bought for $25 million by Robert Woodruff, who also owned a consortium of Northern banks. The temperance movement turned against Coke after Woodruff snatched the company from the Christian Right. Woodruff led the company to infiltrate Pepsi with 'soda spooks' and took the company to court over the use of the word 'Cola' and lost.

Under Woodruff the company went even further to launch itself into foreign markets and penetrated markets in Britain and France, as well as Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany throughout the 1930s. The Second World War gave the company the chance to distribute bottles of Coke all over the world. As it marketed itself as the drink of patriotism in the US, it was being sold in Nazi Germany throughout the 1930s. Early in the War, Coca-Cola's man in Berlin Max Keith was made the Head of Soft-Drink Production by the Nazis. The company was given priority in distribution throughout all of occupied Europe, the Nazi state allocated the corporation trucks and petrol. Fanta was invented for the Nazi market when the Allies' embargo against Germany obstructed the company from importing Coca-Cola syrup into the country. There were bottling plants on both sides of the War, subsidised by the US War Department and the Third Reich.

There have even been Coke Presidents and Pepsi Presidents, which is indicative of the interests invested in the White House and the importance of business in policy-making. Typically the Democrats have been closer to Coca-Cola, from Franklin D Roosevelt onwards, whilst Republicans were closer to Pepsi. Dwight Eisenhower is a notable exception among Republicans, even Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon were Pepsi men in a sense. Coke was too "red" for McCarthy, who sat on the Senate Sugar Committee, who also received $20,000 from a Pepsi lobbyist and concluded that it was un-American to ration sugar. Richard Nixon worked as a lawyer for Pepsi Cola and as Vice President to Eisenhower he flew out to Moscow on a trade fair to meet with Nikita Khruschev. Before hand he had been taken aside by Donald Kendall, the future President of Pepsi. Kendall wanted to get a bottle of Pepsi into the hand of the Russian premier and Nixon was more than willing to do so. It was an instrumental moment in the introduction of Pepsi to the Soviet Union years later.

Pepsi would later be the first American product to be made and sold in the Soviet Union. Pepsi sought to profit by association with a possible future President as Nixon was traveling around the world in the 1960s. Pepsi-Cola partially financed the traveling as the company would later contribute to the Nixon campaign and on the campaign trail Tricky Dick flew in a Pepsi plane. Soon after his inauguration Richard Nixon was grateful and appointed Donald Kendall, by then the President of Pepsi Cola, head of National Alliance of Businessmen. In 1971 there was an American trade mission to Russia at which Donald Kendall met Alexei Kosygin, second only to Leonid Breznev, and secured a deal to flood the Russian market with Pepsi. It was part of a bid to combat alcoholism in Russia, but it only succeeded in turning Pepsi and vodka into one of the most popular drinks in Russia. This is the essence of detente, which was mocked by Ronald Reagan and the neoconservatives for that reason.

It was also under the shameless administration of Richard Nixon that Salvador Allende, the democratically elected President of Chile, was overthrown in a military coup on September 11th 1973. Allende was seen as a threat to American corporate power at a time when the US government was looking to establish detente with the Soviet Union. The socialist Salvador Allende was killed, General Augusto Pinochet seized power and began to reverse the reforms of Allende. All opposition was eliminated, trade unionists were dumped into the Atlantic from helicopters, thousands simply "disappeared", citizens were detained without charge and tortured. The military junta led by General Pinochet kept the Chilean markets open to penetration from American corporations and investors. In the run up to the constitutional crisis, which led to the coup, the bottler for Pepsi Cola in Chile was Augustin Edwards and he was also the publisher of El Mercurio. The newspaper became a front for the CIA and was instrumental in the coup which installed a dictatorship that would run Chile until 1990.

Jimmy Carter was a Coke President, he even appointed a Coca-Cola lawyer to Attorney General and Chairman Paul Austin shuttled secretly between the White House and foreign statesmen like Anwar Sadat. On the campaign trail, Carter brought on Tony Schwartz who had made over 300 adverts for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola was banned in Portugal until Carter gave the state a $300 million loan. The product was introduced to China as the economy was opened up for the first time by Deng Xiaoping. Mao had kicked Coke out of China in 1949 and for years all the Chinese had was Happiness Cola. The alliance signed with Coca-Cola was announced publicly a week after it had actually been signed as to not embarrass Jimmy Carter. The President had just secured a trade alliance with China just after the company was welcomed back into China. It was a symbolic gesture to the Soviet Union, which had just forged a pact with Vietnam.

Today the company is known to take out "dead peasant" insurances on employees, so when an employee dies the company can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. Trade union leaders have been killed at bottling plants in Guatemala and Colombia where the organised workers pushed for better pay and better working conditions. Just like other corporations the Coca-Cola Company is defined by white privilege in its' upper echelons, in which women and black people are almost entirely excluded. In spite of all of this, it is practically impossible to boycott the Coca-Cola Company effectively without mass-organisation. As the strange history of a soft-drink corporation is indicative of corporations and the tendencies which guide them. So the only means through which the problems created by corporate structures are revolutionary in nature and at a fundamental level the battle against corporations is a battle against the capitalist system.

Faces of Liberty.

Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, the President of Honduras.

"I believe freedom is the future of all humanity." - George W Bush

The ideological trajectory in the US could be characterised as leaning towards negative liberty, specifically the freedom from constraint, and individualism. For this reason it makes sense that the US government led the "war" against communism since the end of the war against fascism and up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. As there are aspects of communism are in direct opposition to the ideological ideals of the United States. The methods of which the US government utilised to contain communism abroad included the backing of extreme right-wing dictatorships, that would prevent the spread of communism through repression and violence, like that of Suharto in Indonesia and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. In doing so, the US government infringed upon individual freedom on a massive scale to stamp out the "threat" of communism and spread freedom around the world. What should be noted is that the military budget of the US has increased considerably and consistently since the Truman administration. At first, politicians sought justification for the rampant military expenditure in anti-communism and then counter-terrorism.

Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the spending on the military continued to increase which may indicate that "fighting" communism was just an excuse to increase spending. Today the excuse is the "War on Terrorism". The American government spent over $700 billion in 2008 on the military, making up almost 50% of all military spending in the world. Since the level of military spending seems to be unrelated to any threats of communism or terrorism, it seems rational to assume that realpolitik was not merely about securing freedom and the containment of communism. Interestingly, the kind of economic policies pursued by US-backed dictators, like Suharto and Ferdinand Marcos, consisted of mass-privatisation, deregulation and the repression of unions. These policies may have generated a great deal of economic growth in some countries, but they were largely destructive of the societies in which they were implemented. The World Bank and the IMF were instrumental in economic policy in Indonesia and the Philippines, but it was multinational corporations that benefited most from these policies.

It was in 2009, only months into Obama's first term in office, that the President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by members of the Honduran military, who had been trained at the School of the Americas, and was succeeded briefly by Roberto Micheletti. In January of 2010, Pepe Lobo was elected the President of Honduras and Micheletti has since been made a congressman for life. Lobo is a wealthy land owner and is a member of the National Party, a thoroughly conservative political party, he had lost the 2005 election to Manuel Zelaya. Though, Lobo is now has the Presidency due to a questionable election, it has been said that 60% of the votes were "inaccurate". At the time of the coup in 2009, President Zelaya was unpopular with the Honduran upper class, who feared he may be attempting to impose the kind of left-wing reforms on a populist platform as Chavez had done in Venezuela. Within the Liberal Party, Zelaya also became increasingly unpopular in the run up to the coup d'état. Though, at the same time Manuel Zelaya was popular among the poor and the labour movement.

If we look at the history of Latin America coup d'états are nothing new to the region sometimes referred to as the "back yard" in the US. So it is vital that we place the recent events in Honduras in a historical context. Notably, it was when Manuel Zelaya attempted, as he put it, "modernise" the Honduran Constitution through the use of a referendum that he was overthrown and exiled. The opponents to these constitutional amendments argued that Zelaya was attempting to remove the limits on presidential terms, as Chavez had done in Venezuela. In Chile, it was during a constitutional crisis, that Salvador Allende and his left-wing regime were overthrown by the military. Allende's political rivals in the National Party and the Christian Democrats, as well as on the Supreme Court, accused him of attempting to create a totalitarian state, in which political and economic freedom are not respected. Allende refused to leave the Presidential Palace as it was surrounded by the military, as they began bombing Allende delivered his final speech to the nation in the moments before his death.

 "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling." - George W Bush

The regime that seized power following the fall of Allende was a barbaric military junta led by Augusto Pinochet, the labour movement that had flourished under Allende was viciously repressed. Over 130,000 people were imprisoned without charge, thousands were systematically tortured and killed - a favourite method being throwing people into the Atlantic from helicopters. It is ironic that the Supreme Court, that accused Allende of authoritarianism, called on the military to "restore" order to Chile, which led to the rise of the junta. Pinochet was supported by Nixon, under Pinochet the economy followed plans laid out by neoliberal economists from the University of Chicago. These economic reforms reversed the work of Allende, privatising the national industries and removing the regulations which hindered the market. It was not long until public spending in Chile was cut by 50%. This led to the now famous economic miracle in Chile, while Pinochet kept thousands of people incarcerated in concentration camps and may have slaughtered over 80,000 people. Pinochet was no different than Suharto and Marcos, his regime was also highly beneficial to multinationals.

Since Pepe Lobo was inaugurated on January 27th 2010 the US government has been a vocal supporter of the Honduran government and have been urging other countries of that region to restore relations with Honduras. Hillary Clinton said on March 4th "We think that Honduras has taken important and necessary steps that deserve the recognition and normalisation of relations. Other countries in the region say that they want to wait a while, I don't know what they're waiting for, but that's their right to wait." In the month of February alone, the inter-American Commission on Human Rights documented over 50 illegal detentions, eight cases of torture, two kidnappings and two rapes committed against dissidents involved in resistance to the coup. Since Lobo came to power over 10 people have been killed, including children. Sadly, it would appear that "change" has not come from the Obama administration. For the people of Latin America, the events in Honduras and Haiti, are a sad reminder that they are not yet free from the hegemon of the North. The IMF and the World Bank have also been quick to normalise relations with Honduras, which may be a sign of the kind of economic reforms soon to hit Honduras.


The last 35 years have been marked by neoliberal economic reforms across Latin America. Reforms which have led to a sharp decline in the rate of growth and productivity. The policies themselves were so unpopular in most Latin American countries that they had to be imposed by dictatorial regimes. The US government has a history of backing such regimes across the region, the IMF and the World Bank have been instrumental in spreading neoliberalism throughout the developing world through "structural adjustments" in many of these states. The kind of countries that have been subjected to these kinds of regimes and economic restructuring are typically rich in resources and desperately poor. The mass-privatisation of industry can allow corporations to seize up entire sectors of society, while the deregulation of the markets and repression of unions allows these corporations to drive down wages and increase work hours. This is merely one aspect of the kind of exploitation that has resulted in many countries from the kind of policies advocated by the Washington consensus.


We'd all like to believe that the wars fought in the name of liberty and democracy against communism and terrorism were noble causes. In the 1990s military spending increased long after the fall of Soviet communism in the East. So it seems feasible that defeating communism was not the goal of the US government, that increasing the size of the military budget is of primary importance. The ideological reasons for promoting democracy and spreading freedom abroad amounted to the rise of neoliberalism in countries like Honduras, Chile, Indonesia and the Philippines. But this rise could be seen, as something far more insidious, the continuation of imperialism in the world. As the economic interests of the state converge with the profit-motive of corporations, and the "conditions" prescribed by the IMF, the bloated military budget may be about defending and maintaining an empire. In this sense, the role of ideology plays in America is to enable these forces to act in the never ending "fight" against tyranny and evil in the world.

Significant Links:
US covering up reality in Honduras
Solutions for Latin America
Noam Chomsky CBC Interview
The War on Democracy