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|11.30.04 @ 9:17PM|#
Padon me, Jesse, but I'm not commenting on this subject before Justin Raimondo.
I will say I met a Ukranian here in the US not long ago who shocked me when he said one candidate was backed by the US and one by Putin.
Our tax dollars at work?
|12.1.04 @ 1:18AM|#
this is an interesting article/op-ed on the subject:
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/age15.htm
notable clips:
The Western imagination is now so gripped by its own mythology of popular revolution that we have become dangerously tolerant of blatant double standards in media reporting. Enormous rallies have been held in Kiev in support of the Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovich, but they are rarely shown on our TV screens: if their existence is admitted, Yanukovich supporters are denigrated as having been "bussed in". The demonstrations in favour of Viktor Yushchenko have laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts, tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing; yet we happily dupe ourselves that they are spontaneous.
Or again, we are told that a 96 per cent turnout in Donetsk, the home town of Viktor Yanukovich, is proof of electoral fraud. But apparently turnouts of more than 80 per cent in areas that support Viktor Yushchenko are not. Nor are actual scores for Yushchenko of well over 90 per cent in three regions, which Yanukovich achieved in only two. And whereas Yanukovich's final official score was 54 per cent, the Western-backed President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, officially polled 96.24 per cent of the vote in his country in January. The observers who now denounce the Ukrainian election welcomed that result in Georgia, saying that it "brought the country closer to meeting international standards".
We have become dangerously tolerant of blatant double standards in media reporting.
just noting it as interesting -- what is happening on the ground is hard to tell -- this guy may be a bit too lefty, and the sabot blog dude seems a bit too neo-conned -- perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle...
|12.1.04 @ 2:30AM|#
I'm stunned you made the comment "No state can exist without the threat of coercion, and none can exist unless its subjects are generally willing to acquiesce to its demands.". This is blatantly false. As all the fine libertarians who visit this site know, a "capitalist state" is one in which niether of those conditions exist.
|12.1.04 @ 2:48AM|#
Jesse notes the screwing the Irish got after 1624 and 1688, but a relevant date in Ireland is 1690, when King Billy beat James VII aka Seamus a Chaca* at the Boyne. No velvet revolt there, but actual fighting with people getting killed, and bearing long, long grudges. I hope Ukraine and her neighbors can avoid any of that.
Kevin
*Hmm.. Comments can't handle the fada.
|12.1.04 @ 7:22AM|#
The building blocks of politics are violence and consent: No state can exist without the threat of coercion, and none can exist unless its subjects are generally willing to acquiesce to its demands. As Foucault said in Power/Knowledge, "If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but say no, do you really think anyone would be brought to obey it?" It requires the compliance of the governed. They must be persuaded to stay in their place.
But Gramsci wrote it better. :)
Such militant nonviolence deposed King James II in 1688...
Yeah right; William of Orange's rise was only sealed by the Battle of the Boyne, and even then the rejection of the Catholic Stuart line was only finally complete after the "Rising of '45" was put down (with the consequent slaughter of thousands of Scots). One has to ask, whose "people power" was at work in Scotland and Ireland at the time?
The first was violent; the second was not.
The second was also violent; the violence just played out over fifty-sixty years.
The first established a theocracy...
Nope. Cromwell, nor were most of the members of the Rump Parliament, priests or religious figures; nor did Cromwell claim anything more than Charles I - that his government was ordained by God and that he reigned by divine guidance (remember, English (and French) kings claimed that they could heal people of scrofula). The differences between the monarchy's role to religion and Cromwell's regime are way overplayed. Now, if the Fifth Monarchy Men had defeated Cromwell, that would be different.
...the second advanced religious liberty.
Except for Catholics, dissenters, etc.
The first created a centralized dictatorship...
Its more fair to say that it created a new, short-lived Monarchy; the governing structures of Cromwell's regime were very similar to all things one might think of as the King's Privy Council, etc.
...the second put limits on the executive.
But placed the powers they found to be abusive in the hands of the Parliament, which Parliament well into the 19th century used to slaughter people (the Peterloo massacre comes to mind), imprison the politically active (Pitt the Younger's iron-fisted measures come to), etc.
But both installed regimes that promptly screwed the Irish.
And the Scots.
Man, you are such a Whig.
Highway|12.1.04 @ 9:17AM|#
chilly,
I'm not the biggest minarchy scholar around here, but it seems to me that even in a 'capitalist' state, there must be at least the threat of coercion by the state, if that state is to be the arbiter of contract disputes. If no such threat exists, there is no mechanism for the enforcement of any resolutions to those disputes.
Matthew Goggins|12.1.04 @ 10:05AM|#
Very good article, Mr. Walker.
What do you think the endgame will be, perhaps a new election or run-off?
|12.1.04 @ 10:27AM|#
It's too bad no one thought of all this when planning the great crusade to democratize Iraq. Let's parachute in Ahmed Chalabi; then we'll have a democracy.
Just goes to show how dishonest that ad hoc justification for the war is.
Jesse Walker|12.1.04 @ 10:32AM|#
Spur: The guy who wrote that piece is a Russian apologist affiliated with the "British Helsinki Human Rights Group," which we were discussing in a different thread. Take with extreme caution.
JB and Kevrob: I think you two missed the point. In London, King James was deposed nonviolently in 1688. In Ireland (and elsewhere), his successor consolidated his power with traditional state violence. I was suggesting that a similar scenario could play out here, with Yushchenko taking power nonviolently in Kiev but sending in the gendarmes to suppress a secessionist revolt in the east. (That's not a prediction, just a possibility.)
JB: There are reasons why I said "advanced" rather than "established," and "executive" rather than "all." As for the Scots -- can you just accept the fact that "screwed the Irish" is a more effective phrase than "screwed the Irish, the Scots, and various inconvenient Englishmen"? :>
Matthew: Personally I'm expecting another election, but there's plenty of other scenarios that could unfold.
Justin Raimondo|12.1.04 @ 1:03PM|#
Jack DuVAll, president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict: "The whole U.S. assistance thing is way overplayed."
Is is really? So where is the Center's funding coming from? Look here:
BEREL RODAL is Vice Chair of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict. According to the ICNC's website, he is Managing Director of Hillman Capital Corporation of New York, a management consulting and investment banking firm. Now check out the Washington Post:
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/000168.html
"...And there's Washington superhawk Richard Perle, who heads Hollinger Digital, the company's venture capital arm. Seems that Hollinger Digital put $2.5 million in a company called Trireme Partners, which aims to cash in on the big military and homeland security buildup. As luck would have it, Trireme's managing partner is none other than . . . Richard Perle.
"Perle, of course, has been pushing hard for just such a military buildup from his other perch at the Pentagon's secretive and influential Defense Policy Board, where there are a number of other Friends of Hollinger.
"There's Gerald Hillman, managing partner of Hillman Capital, which also got a $14 million investment from Hollinger, according to the Financial Times. Hillman is also a partner at Trireme."
Hmmmmmmmmmm....
It's funny that Jesse mentions Foucault, but NATO never comes up. Yet this is one of the central issues of the Yushchenko-Yakunovich divide. Yushhie wants Ukraine to join NATO. Yakies says no. If Ukraine does join NATO, it will have to upgrade its military to conform to NATO standards of readiness: which means that military contractors linked to Hillman Capital will cash in.
Jesse smears BHHRG by declaring that it is "pro-Russian" -- but is BHHRG funded by the Russian government? Certainly not, which is more than the "International Center on Nonviolent Conflict" can say. I'd be willing to bet the farm that they get U.S. government subsidies, if not from NED then from some other agency.
Yes, yes, Jesse, Foucault, Etienne de la Boetie, blah blah blah -- wake up, bud, and follow the money. Oh, and do some research.
Another thing unmentioned by Jesse is the language question: Yushchenko wants to BAN the Russian language from all official documents and government functions. Yakunovich wants to accomodate the millions of Russian speakers in Ukraine by adding Russian to the official languages, including Ukrainian. How "libertarian" is that, dude?
Justin Raimondo|12.1.04 @ 1:19PM|#
Gerald P. Hillman, by the way, is a member of the Defense Policy Board, which, up until recently, was chaired by Richard Perle -- who was forced to resign because of the financial shenanigans uncovered by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.
So, if BHHRG is "pro-Russian" -- a conclusion based on nothing but the public statements of its analysts, and not on any evidence of financial or other links to the Russian government or its contractors, then what is DuVall's outfit?
Talk about double standards!
Look, I don't mean to be so harsh: but you really do have to do some RESEARCH before you start to write. Uncovering the Hillman connnection took less than 15 minutes on Google. You owe it to your readers to make more of an effort.
Justin Raimondo|12.1.04 @ 1:53PM|#
From Business Week, April 7, 2003
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_14/b3827621.htm
"So with a $75 billion (and counting) war under way and a multibillion-dollar reconstruction plan on the drawing board, hawks on advisory panels are well-positioned. Perle, with fellow Defense Advisory Board members Henry A. Kissinger and Gerald P. Hillman, has already set up a venture-capital firm, Trireme Partners, to invest in defense and homeland-security companies. "It looks like hell," says Charles Lewis, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. 'We're waging war, and a number of the people serving on these bodies stand to make money from it.'"
Okay, so let's play Follow the Money: the U.S. government pours money into Hillman Capital via contracts with its subsidiaries and investments, and some of the money goes to DuVall's outfit -- who now has the gall to say that U.S. government subsidies to the "pro-democracy" movement in Ukraine are "waaaaaaay overstated."
Puh-leeeeze.
Jesse Walker|12.1.04 @ 2:03PM|#
I started researching this piece -- before those Guardian articles came out, by the way -- with the idea in mind that the U.S. government might be trying to seed nonviolent revolutions as a tool of its foreign policy. I found, as I wrote, only a drop of truth in the idea. (I kind of wish it were true. If nothing else, it's a lot less bloody than wars and blockades.) I'm not sure what your very loose game of connect-the-dots is supposed to prove -- surely you don't think Hillman controls the Center for Nonviolent Conflict, or that the Center created Pora -- but you can find several Kevin Bacon-style connections between the nonviolent-resistance crowd and the neocons, despite the strong ideological differences, because they both have an interest in particular nascent revolts (especially in Iran). You'll also find plenty of connections between the nonviolent-resistance crowd and groups the neocons hate -- Palestinian activists, for example. (Read the chapter on the first intifada in A Force More Powerful and then try to tell me DuVall is in bed with Perle.)
As for NATO and the Russian language -- if I were writing about the issues of the Ukrainian election, I would have mentioned them. As I said explicitly at the beginning of the piece, that wasn't my topic. I also said explicitly that I wasn't writing to defend Yushchenko or his platform, and in fact wrote somewhat sympathetically about the people (among them Russian-speakers) who are threatening to secede if he wins. Yushchenko isn't the issue here.
|12.1.04 @ 2:11PM|#
IF the US government were supporting the Oranges, and
IF the popular media were ignoring those connections while providing favorable coverage for them,
THEN events are occurring exactly as Noam Chomsky depicts in "Manufacturing Consent."
Which, as we all know, makes such an analysis untrue, by virtue of the support it provides for the position of a writer we're supposed to hate.
Justin Raimondo|12.1.04 @ 2:25PM|#
The Center applied for status as a 501(c)3 private foundation in 2004, and received its approval in record time. Its too soon to consult the documentation required of all such organizations showing who is funding it. But it is hardly a stretch to imagine that if a principal of Hillman Capital is the Vice President of the Center, there is some significant financial assistance going on there. So, why would an investment group like Hillman finance a touchy-feely neo-hippie like the Center? If they are paying the bills -- the salaries of the people you quote -- how is that a "loose" connection? Seems pretty damned tight to me....
Also, I wonder if your research carried you into the area of how much government money the Center and other "pro-democracy-in-Ukraine" groups get. Surely that is essential to understanding if the these groups are instruments of U.S. foreign policy.
I also fail to understand your denial that your piece is a whitewash of Yushchenko: you deny that it is even ABOUT Yushie, or NATO, or the language question. But of course that is what the whole crisis in the Ukraine is about. If your piece isn't about these things, then it isn't about anything.
Jesse Walker|12.1.04 @ 2:36PM|#
You might want to research the Center a bit more, Justin. They're not a "touchy-feely neo-hippie" group. The guy who runs it is ex-military, as are other figures in the nonviolent-resistance movement.
It's hard to get a handle on the amount of U.S. money, because a lot of it filters through NGOs. Pora denies getting any direct support from DC, but even if that's true they've certainly enjoyed some indirect assistance.
The piece is about the nature of nonviolent revolt and the relationship between such revolts and their foreign supporters.
|12.1.04 @ 3:28PM|#
In a Capitalist state the authority of the government comes from its monopoly on the RETALIATORY use of force. What the people argree to is to not seek vendetta against those that harm them but to let the government handle the problem. Coercion (threats)is an INITIATORY use of force.
|12.1.04 @ 4:03PM|#
Justin,
Why don't you submit an article to reason? You've been known to write and article or two now and then...just keep it under 8000 words and I'm sure it will be considered...
|12.1.04 @ 4:19PM|#
chilly, you have to stretch the English language pretty far to claim that a person who takes a five-fingered discount had initiated force, and the cop who tackles him is retaliating.
Justin Raimondo|12.1.04 @ 4:24PM|#
I've often thought of doing that: but, on second thought, they'd never accept it, no matter what the content consisted of. Check this out:
http://www.mediatransparency.org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.php?recipientID=286
I'd have to do it under a pseudonym.
|12.1.04 @ 5:16PM|#
Jesse Walker,
I think your example of "people power" sucks, and I'm sticking to that claim. :)
Jack DuVall|12.12.04 @ 8:50PM|#
Justin Raimondo has asserted, on the basis of no factual evidence of any kind, that the funding of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict is derived from Hillman Capital or the U.S government. This is fantasy.
The Center has not received and it will never accept funding from any agency of any government or from any corporation, directly or indirectly. All funding comes from contributions of individuals who believe that nonviolent resistance is an effective way for oppressed people to fight for their rights, regardless of who they are or what their political beliefs are.
We've transferred knowledge about nonviolent resistance to Iraqis and Palestinians as well as to Iranians and Ukrainians (as well as to people with very diverse agendas in many other countries). We believe that open, just and free societies are more likely to be created when the people themselves accomplish change. The people who fund us are people who share that belief.