Alexander Cockburn for public meeting in TCD

by Caoimhín Fri Nov 07, 2003 10:43

The Afri website is.......

by Anthony Wed Nov 19, 2003 16:48

Here's what I got from last night. I hope my recollection is OK and that I'm doing justice to the content of the speeches. I’m sure that thanks to Open Publishing, the comments will correct me where I get it wrong and add to the bits I left out.

The talk last night (capably chaired by Harry Browne) was an interesting one. The theme for the night was the UN and Iraq. I thought Alex Cockburn was a good speaker with a natural tone and rhythm. He didn't present anything too startling about the political nature of the world we live in. However I did learn quite a bit about the nature of the UN.

He noted how liberals and some of the left often defer to the UN seeing it as an organisation which is both international and has peace as its objective. After all, who can object to internationalism and peace.

However the truth of the matter (as most of us should know by now - my comment) is somewhat different. The UN has been counter-posed as an alternative to the multilateralism of the US but through the Security Council, the US effectively controls what the UN may or may not do.

He described the origins of the UN and how the US could not allow the General Assembly to have any meaningful power. The General Assembly exists to give other nation-states a platform to speak on and a minimal say in how the world is ordered.
The UN rubberstamps US actions and at best can only limit what the US can get away with as demonstrated by the recent UN resolution allowing the US (and coalition allies) to govern Iraq as they see fit.

One example of how this false dichotomy is represented is in the case of Howard Dean who is the Democratic hopeful in the upcoming US presidential elections. He is portrayed as the "anti-war" candidate merely because he was saying that the US should wage war on Iraq under the auspices of the UN. (He also said that if that wasn't working out, the US should go it alone anyway.) The other "alternative" to Bush in the election is Wesley Clarke - a former NATO commander no less. He also pointed out that the poor were no less impoverished at the end of Clinton's term than they were at the start.


Andy Storey from Africa didn't speak for as long. He started off with a number of quotations ranging from Bartolomeo de las Casas (a contemporary of Columbus who criticised the enforcement of European civilisation on the "wild" natives) to Tony Blair (saying the same thing in a more modern context) and another from Brian Cowen. These quotes illustrated his point that the EU/US was equally as bogus a dichotomy as the US/UN. One imperialist power was as bad as another.

by Anthony Fri Nov 21, 2003 03:39

I was just tidying up the gaf this evening and I came across a copy of the Guardian from a few weeks back. It had an article in it entitled "Civilise or Die" which was written by Robert Cooper (works for Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy man). He was another of the people quoted by Andy Storey (from Afri - not Africa, AFAIK).

The quote was quite possibly from the same article as the theme was the same for both Andy's speech and Cooper's article. Cooper basically makes the case for some form of regime change for "failed / rogue states" though he did state a preference for regime change along the lines of the way the former Soviet colonies in Europe changed their regime to one based on the model we have in Western Europe.