Nov 8, 2002 On the United Nations resolution: How to approach this war? Macdonald Stainsby
How often have you been at a demonstration or an event and found yourself being offered all manners of pamphlets? What is often the saddest thing is the people who put out their own, without any following, not even enough to start a little sect. Often, sadly, these people are too sectarian-minded to submit to the discipline of one of the little sects, and too unimpressive as people to create one of their own to dominate. So, they play the game, in utter isolation and on the side of the mass movement, writing stern denunciations of all those who are actually doing anything, like try to organise a mass-movement. I met one of these characters, who shall remain nameless, at a function for the recent (very impressive) Grassroots Women conference opposed to imperialist war. He was American, visiting Vancouver and he had written several different pamphlets, all adorned with his own little catchy name. Each pamphlet was given an entire page of slogans he personally wanted to get people carrying to rallies. When I said "hello", all of the pamphlets, one by one, were put into my hand. I kept them. One was very illustrative. Just because something comes sandwiched in between attacks on Workers World for petty bourgeois opportunism and the p.o. box to correspond with him directly, doesn't mean it doesn't make a lot of sense. And "Infuse the anti-globalisation movement with anti-war content!" makes a lot of sense to me. Simply put, it is the Achilles Heel of the movement now that so many of the new activists see the war as a separate issue. Almost to a human being, the war is opposed. But not as part of the same agenda, but rather something that corporate rule is doing that is also bad. The surrender of the United Nations marks the final eclipsing of this into what is now, more clearly than ever before, the most dangerous dictatorship in human history. The American Empire single handedly, in a none-too-veiled resolution, has managed to garner the full submission of nearly every government, everywhere on the globe --to the absolute authority of the United States government. The American state has shredded all need for either international law or human rights, so long as the enemy can be conjured as beneath human value, evil incarnate. Once that is accomplished, mass murder begins. The hard part to grasp for this movement is that the same basic aims are being led out here, in both instances. That the inherent imperialist logic of removing the state from the economy leads to the increased use of its power in terms of murderous coercion. The ruling class need to get out of the way of the economy is the very same logic that compels states to murder mass numbers of people. To put another way, perhaps it could be said that less is more. The apparent logic of the United Nations member states is most likely, for some: to save the United Nations as a body that has authority, use that authority to do whatever the US wants. In other words, destroy its independence to save it. Meanwhile, it needs to be noted that those people who have been beckoning for sometime to have the anti-globalisation movement move towards being led by the trade union bureaucrats who have opposed making a systemic analysis. This has, in large part, happened here in Vancouver and apparently in lesser degrees, across the country. These forces are more respectable, and yet many of them have been most alarmed not at the prospect of murdering more Iraqis, not at the prospect of doing so from a virtual standstill and for _NO_ legitimate reason, by any law. Now that the United Nations has completely crumbled and the world has, in fact, become far more dangerous (as there isn't even a minor amount of independence in even rhetoric from the UN members), will many of the UN people start to curtail their attempts to stop the war? Let us hope not. However, if one is to judge by things like the content of online polls and badly circulated petitions, let alone sentiments among the halls of academe, this will actually pacify some of the would-be pacifists. We must hope and agitate against any such nonsense. There is going to be a war. It was much better for the world when the UN wasn't party to this imperialist conquering quest. Then, at least, the naked imperial ambitions of the world couldn't be lost to the population. Well, we see that sort of leadership emerging in the face of the threatened war. We have much to hope for, in many ways. The existence of an anti-war movement before a war is indeed as unprecedented as has been noted by many. This should be celebrated. However, in the anti-war movement, has there been a discussion of what is needed to stop the war, to impede their ability to manoeuvre over there through disruption here? Well, if the argument is that people aren't at that stage, then we must damn well get them there. There is simply no other body to appeal to. Today, we witnessed the utter death of the UN. Russia, France and China voted for a resolution that will bring war. Of this, there is no doubt, the new inspectors' version of the Rambouillet agreement that disguises a declaration of war as a bargaining point. Witness from the text: - UNMOVIC and the IAEA shall have unrestricted rights of entry into and out of Iraq, the right to free, unrestricted, and immediate movement to and from inspection sites, and the right to inspect any sites and buildings, including immediate, unimpeded, unconditional, and unrestricted access to Presidential Sites equal to that at other sites, notwithstanding the provisions of resolution 1154 (1998); Even these points alone, (http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm) never mind the rest of the resolution are impossible to respond to. Iraq is sitting around simply waiting for this war, and to accept anything at this point would mean moving the goalposts. The government and the people know it is coming, there is but one hope on the horizon, however small, and that must be us. Two things have been lost to the sectors of the population who considered themselves a part of the anti-globalisation movement in North America. One, initiative and two: creativity. In order that people might be able to not get lost, in order to actually slow down the machines of war like our movement has impeded the machinery of assaults on the population through trade deals. Radical civil disobedience, along the lines described most notably by Arundhati Roy recently. We can and must start amassing our forces to block military recrutiment centres, to find other means of using our bodies to disrupt the everyday running of the military. We must be ready to be called treasonous, or traitors. Because we will be, whatever we think of the flag. Our understanding of the relations between the current phase of the WarT being pursued by Bush needs to deepen. And finally, we do have a role for the essentially social-democratic TUB's and NGO's. We have to co-ordinate a movement that has, as it's guideline, the demand for a referendum on these matters. The reason that the American administration recently suggested it would be a good thing if Gerhard Shroeder "stepped down" was simply _the global ruling class does not allow popular discussion of the war_. Having won his recent election on a plank of no war will be the end of Shroeders career, ultimately. My belief is that the global dictatorship cannot allow these things to ever go to referendum. It is something that many social democrats do believe, so let them make this call and (however inadvertently) expose the anti-democratic and unresponsive nature of imperialist-globalisation society. That, it seems to me, should be the call of the pre-war movement. When the war hits, all bets are off. We must shut them down. We don't want to stop trade meetings anymore, we want to shut down their bloody machinery. The entire world has only one place to turn. It's here, North America. What are we going to do with all that responsibility? Let us, as Ché Guevara so eloquently put it, "be realistic, demand the impossible". Or, in the words of a single isolated member of the Judean People's Front put it: Infuse the anti-globalisation movement with anti-war content. Or, as I might say, let's jam up the works and make the running of this system impossible. Now. ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international -- In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
