What's Left

Jestina Mukoko

2008-12-25T15:14:00.001-05:00

By Stephen Gowans

Western media have recently raised alarm over the arrest of anti-Mugabe activist Jestina Mukoko, leader of the Zimbabwe Peace Project. Mukoko has been accused of trying to recruit government opponents for military training to overthrow the Mugabe government. [1] Mukoko’s arrest has been condemned as illegitimate by the Western media, and the Zimbabwe government’s accusations against Mukoko have been dismissed as unfounded.

Unlike the Western media, which is certain that any charge by Mugabe against his opponents is false, (and that any charge by Mugabe opponents against Mugabe is true), I have no idea whether Mukoko has been involved in a plot to recruit government adversaries for military training or not. I do believe, however, that the accusation can’t be dismissed out of hand. There is sufficient evidence to tie Mukoko to efforts to overthrow the Mugabe government. The accusation must, therefore, be regarded as credible on the surface. At the same time, however, it must be acknowledged that plausibility does not equal proof, and that Mukoko may indeed be innocent.

Let’s place the accusation in context.

Mugabe’s government is trying to free Zimbabwe from neo-colonialism. Neo-colonialism is the condition in which a former colony, while winning a nominal political independence, has failed to achieve economic independence. Under neo-colonialism, the pattern of ownership of a country’s productive assets remains largely unchanged from colonial times. The newly “independent” government takes over the country’s administrative tasks, while settlers and the former colonial masters continue to reap the benefits of owning the country’s productive assets and natural resources. Since challenging the pattern of ownership threatens to touch off an economic crisis and invite intervention from outside, newly independent governments typically shy away from anti-neo-colonial measures, seeking to accommodate, rather than antagonize, settlers and outside owners. This has not been the Mugabe government’s approach since the late 1990s.

After independence, a tiny minority of people of European descent continued to own the most productive farmland, while ownership of the country’s mineral wealth remained largely in the hands of outsiders. Access to credit and development aid from international lending institutions was made contingent on adopting economic policies that favored the economic elite of donor countries, i.e., the same outsiders who already dominated the economy. The prospect for the indigenous population, then, was one of continued life as either landless peasants or employees of companies controlled from afar. This, in fact, was the same condition most people lived under, under colonial rule.

Mugabe’s government began to challenge Zimbabwe’s neo-colonial status around 2000, with the predictable consequence of economic backlash, as the US, Britain and the European Union imposed sanctions and blocked Zimbabwe’s access to international lines of credit, and built up an internal opposition to destabilize the country. The Mugabe government’s challenge to neo-colonialism came in the form of a fast track land reform program to redistribute land owned by 4,000 famers of European descent to 300,000 landless families [2] and indigenization laws that would see either the government or indigenous Zimbabweans take controlling stakes in all foreign-owned banks and companies.” [3]

To derail the Mugabe government’s efforts, Western powers, whose banks and corporations benefit from neo-colonialism, created a new political party out of Zimbabwe’s civil society. The MDC, the Movement for Democratic Change, would seek to remove Mugabe’s government and reverse its offending anti-neo-colonial policies, through electoral challenges, and by crying foul whenever electoral challenges failed. Mugabe would be accused of rigging elections (long before they had been held), and supporters of the MDC would be called into the streets whenever their party lost, in an effort to recreate the color-coded revolutions that Western governments had promoted to topple governments elsewhere. Like the parties that had benefited from Western-guided color revolutions in other countries, Zimbabwe’s MDC was in favour of keeping the levers of the economy firmly in the hands of outsiders (which is to say, in the hands of the same forces that back the party and shape its policies. [4])

At the same time, the US Congress, through its National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the US State Department, through its United States Agency for International Development (USAID), took a hand in nurturing and strengthening Zimbabwe’s civil society as a pole of opposition to the Mugabe government. This is where Mukoko comes in. While anti-Mugabe activists are depicted as independents who challenge the government through grassroots efforts, they are almost invariably funded, aided, advised and mentored by Western governments working through foundations and agencies. There is very little that is independent or spontaneous about them.

Mukoko is a member of the board of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), an organization which is interlocked with a number of other Western-funded anti-Mugabe groups, and which receives its funding from the NED and USAID. The NED was established after the CIA was implicated in the covert funding of foreign political parties, trade unions, journals, newspapers, church groups and in the publication of anti-Communist literature, including George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Rather than getting out of the illegitimate business of nurturing foreign organizations to advance US financial and corporate interests abroad, Washington decided that the taint of covert CIA backing could be avoided by separating these activities from the CIA and bringing them out into the open. And so the NED was born. [5] Mukoko, then, is a senior member of an organization whose funding comes from the successor to a CIA program which shares the same mandate – to nurture organizations which operate, whether consciously or not, to advance the interests of US banks and corporations overseas. The ZESN’s other funder, USAID, boasts that it is the undisputed leader in nurturing anti-government civil society opposition in Zimbabwe. It operates through a CIA-interlocked organization led by former New York investment banker and Michael Milken right-hand man, Peter Ackerman. [6] Revealing the organization’s true mandate, USAID Assistant Administrator for Africa, Katherine Almquist, says her agency is prepared to re-engage with Zimbabwe (in a friendly way) once Zimbabwe shows “respect for property rights” [7] – that is, once the Mugabe government’s challenges to the patterns of ownership established under colonialism are reversed.

The Mugabe government has gone beyond simply accusing Mukoko of wanting to overthrow the government – it has accused her of wanting to do so violently by recruiting government opponents for military training. Is this credible? The Western media dismiss the accusation out of hand, as if violence is the farthest thing from the minds of Mugabe’s opponents, and could hardly be embraced by the leader of a “peace project.” But is it? A Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and men of the cloth have been among the most bloodthirsty proponents of military intervention in Zimbabwe. And one in particular, South African Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is among the most ardent advocates of the use of violence to topple the Mugabe government. On June 27, Tutu announced that “the world had the right to intervene in Zimbabwe and that African countries should blockade landlocked Zimbabwe.” [8] Earlier this month he “said on Dutch TV that Mugabe must stand down or be removed 'by force'.” [9] A few days later he told BBC radio that the African Union should launch a military assault to oust the Zimbabwean president. [10] But when the MDC warned before the last elections that a Mugabe victory would spark violence, Tutu’s lust for violence was nowhere in evidence. Instead, he urged Mugabe to step down to avert the threat of bloodshed. “Anything that would save the possibilities of bloodshed, of conflict, I am quite willing to support,” he said, adding that “the people of Zimbabwe have suffered enough, and we don’t…want any more possibilities of bloodshed.” [11] And yet today Tutu calls for the bloodshed and violence of a military invasion and wishes a blockade upon the people of Zimbabwe who “have suffered enough.” He’s for peace, when peace means Mugabe stepping down, and for war, when war means Mugabe being toppled. In other words, he’s for Mugabe’s ouster, whether brought about peacefully or not. In July, 2007, the now discredited Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, one of Tutu’s fellow clergymen, urged Zimbabweans to take up arms against their government, claiming he was “ready to lead the people, guns blazing.” [12] When he realized his charge, guns blazing, would be a lonely one, he urged “Britain to raid Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe.” [13] For his part, the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, a black Ugandan, has urged Britain to bury its “colonial guilt” and lead a charge to remove Mugabe by violence. [14] The strategy is clear: Recruit black Africans to demand a military assault to grant the West permission (more than that, to beseech the West) to oust Mugabe by force. And so, we can ask: If black African Churchmen acting on behalf of Western masters can advocate violence to topple the Mugabe government, is the idea of a black African civil society activist bound up with the NED and USAID acting to do the same really so absurd?

Of course, what’s credible is not always what is. Mukoko may indeed be innocent of the charge of participating in the recruitment of a militia. But we shouldn’t be prepared to dismiss the accusation as unfounded, simply because the Western media has. We can be clear on a few points: Mukoko is an adversary of the Zimbabwe government -- she would like to see it toppled; the successor to the Mugabe government, if it is brought down, will be the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC; the MDC will immediately move to reverse the Mugabe government’s anti-neo-colonial policies; land reform will be halted, if not reversed, pro-foreign investment policies will be implemented to secure IMF and World Bank loans, and foreign ownership controls will be abandoned; black Zimbabweans will return to the colonial condition of being landless peasants and employees of companies controlled from outside.

Zimbabweans, then, face a choice: between breaking free from neo-colonialism or giving free reign to civil society activists, like Mukoko, to bring down the only government that, at this point, will realistically pursue anti-neo-colonial policies. If Mukoko is guilty of recruiting a militia, she should be jailed. At this point, the idea that the accusation against her is a preposterous one carries no weight.

1. Associated Press, December 24, 2008.
2. Robert Mugabe. Address to the FAO, June 3, 2008.
3. Ranganai Chidemo, “Mugabe warns industry and the financial sector,” talkzimbabwe.com, December 21, 2008.
4. Stephen Gowans, “US Government Report Undermines Opposition’s Claim of Independence,” What’s Left, October 4, 2008, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/us-government-report-undermines-zimbabwe-opposition%e2%80%99s-claim-of-independence/
5. Michael Barker, “The New York Times "Reports"
On The National Endowment For Democracy,” swans.com, October 20, 2008. http://www.swans.com/library/art14/barker06.html#24
6. Stephen Gowans, “US Government Report Undermines Opposition’s Claim of Independence,” What’s Left, October 4, 2008, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/us-government-report-undermines-zimbabwe-opposition%e2%80%99s-claim-of-independence/
7. Testimony of Katherine Almquist, USAID Assistant Administrator for Africa, “The Crisis in Zimbabwe and Prospects for Resolution.” Subcommittee on African Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, July 15, 2008.
8. Reuters, June 27, 2008.
9. Tracy McVeigh, “Mugabe must be toppled now - Archbishop of York,” The Guardian (UK), December 7, 2008.
10. “Tutu calls for threat of force to deal with Mugabe,” Associated Press, December 14, 2008.
11. “Mugabe must step down with dignity,” The Times (London) April 2, 2008.
12. Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007.
13. Ibid.
14. Observer (UK), September 16, 2007.

Cholera Outbreak Outcome of West’s War on Zimbabwe

2008-12-08T18:52:00.001-05:00

By Stephen Gowans

The crisis in Zimbabwe has intensified. Inflation is incalculably high. The central bank limits – to an inadequate level- the amount of money Zimbabweans can withdraw from their bank accounts daily. Unarmed soldiers riot, their guns kept under lock and key, to prevent an armed uprising. Hospital staff fail to show up for work. The water authority is short of chemicals to purify drinking water. Cholera, easily prevented and cured under normal circumstances, has broken out, leading the government to declare a humanitarian emergency.

In the West, state officials call for the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, to step down and yield power to the leader of the largest faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai. In this, the crisis is directly linked to Mugabe, its solution to Tsvangirai, but it’s never said what Mugabe has done to cause the crisis, or how Tsvangirai’s ascension to the presidency will make it go away.

The causal chain leading to the crisis can be diagrammed roughly as follows:

• In the late 90s, Mugabe’s government provokes the hostility of the West by: (1) intervening militarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the side of the young government of Laurent Kabila, helping to thwart an invasion by Rwandan and Ugandan forces backed by the US and Britain; (2) it rejects a pro-foreign investment economic restructuring program the IMF establishes as a condition for balance of payment support; (3) it accelerates land redistribution by seizing white-owned farms and thereby committing the ultimate affront against owners of productive property – expropriation without compensation. To governments whose foreign policy is based in large measure on protecting their nationals’ ownership rights to foreign productive assets, expropriation, and especially expropriation without compensation, is intolerable, and must be punished to deter others from doing the same.

• In response, the United States, as prime guarantor of the imperialist system, introduces the December 2001 Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. The act instructs US representatives to international financial institutions “to oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.”

• The act effectively deprives Zimbabwe of foreign currency required to import necessities from abroad, including chemicals to treat drinking water. Development aid from the World Bank is also cut off, denying the country access to funds to upgrade its infrastructure. The central bank takes measures to mitigate the effects of the act, creating hyper-inflation as a by-product.

The cause of the crisis, then, can be traced directly to the West. Rather than banning the export of goods to Zimbabwe, the US denied Zimbabwe the means to import goods -- not trade sanctions, but an act that had the same effect. To be sure, had the Mugabe government reversed its land reform program and abided by IMF demands, the crisis would have been averted. But the trigger was pulled in Washington, London and Brussels, and it is the West, therefore, that bears the blame.

Sanctions are effectively acts of war, with often equivalent, and sometimes more devastating, consequences. More than a million Iraqis died as a result of a decade-long sanctions regime championed by the US following the 1991 Gulf War. This prompted two political scientists, John and Karl Mueller, to coin the phrase “sanctions of mass destruction.” They noted that sanctions had “contributed to more deaths in the post Cold War era than all the weapons of mass destruction in history.”

The Western media refer to sanctions on Zimbabwe as targeted – limited only to high state officials and other individuals. This ignores the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act and conceals its devastating impact, thereby shifting responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophe from the US to Mugabe.

The cholera outbreak has a parallel in the outbreak of cholera in Iraq following the Gulf War. Thomas Nagy, a business professor at George Washington University, cited declassified documents in the September 2001 issue of The Progressive magazine showing that the United States had deliberately bombed Iraq’s drinking water and sanitation facilities, recognizing that sanctions would prevent Iraq from rebuilding its water infrastructure and that epidemics of otherwise preventable diseases, cholera among them, would ensue. Washington, in other words, deliberately created a humanitarian catastrophe to achieve its goal of regime change. There is a direct parallel with Zimbabwe – the only difference is that the United States uses the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act – that is, sanctions of mass destruction – in place of bombing.

Harare’s land reform program is one of the principal reasons the United States has gone to war with Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has redistributed land previously owned by 4,000 white farmers to 300,000 previously landless families, descendants of black Africans whose land was stolen by white settlers. By contrast, South Africa’s ANC government has redistributed only four percent of the 87 percent of land forcibly seized from the indigenous population by Europeans.

In March, South Africa’s cabinet seemed ready to move ahead with a plan to accelerate agrarian reform. It would abandon the “willing seller, willing buyer” model insisted on by the West, following in the Mugabe government’s footsteps. Under the plan, thirty percent of farmland would be redistributed to black farmers by 2014. But the government has since backed away, its reluctance to move forward based on the following considerations.

1. Most black South Africans are generations removed from the land, and no longer have the skills and culture necessary to immediately farm at a high level. An accelerated land reform program would almost certainly lower production levels, as new farmers played catch up to acquire critical skills.

2. South Africa is no longer a net exporter of food. An accelerated land reform program would likely force the country, in the short term, to rely more heavily on agricultural imports, at a time food prices are rising globally.

3. There is a danger that fast-track land reform will create a crisis of capital flight.

4. The dangers of radical land reform in provoking a backlash from the West are richly evident in the example of Zimbabwe. South Africa would like to avoid becoming the next Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s economic crisis is accompanied by a political crisis. Talks on forming a government of national unity are stalled. Failure to strike a deal pivots on a single ministry – home affairs. In the West, failure to consolidate a deal between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and the two MDC factions is attributed to Mugabe’s intransigence in insisting that he control all key cabinet posts. It takes two to tango. Tsvangirai has shown little interest in striking an accord, preferring instead to raise objections to every solution to the impasse put forward by outside mediators, as Western ambassadors hover nearby. It’s as if, with the country teetering on the edge of collapse, he doesn’t want to do a deal, preferring instead to help hasten the collapse by throwing up obstacles to an accord, to clear the way for his ascension to the presidency. When the mediation of former South African president Thambo Mbeki failed, Tsvangirai asked the regional grouping, the SADC, to intervene. SADC ordered Zanu-PF and the MDC to share the home affairs ministry. Tsvangirai refused. Now he wants Mbeki replaced.

At the SADC meeting, Mugabe presented a report which alleges that MDC militias are being trained in Botswana by Britain, to be deployed to Zimbabwe early in 2009 to foment a civil war. The turmoil would be used as a pretext for outside military intervention. This would follow the model used to oust the Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Already, British officials and clergymen are calling for intervention. British prime minister Gordon Brown says the cholera outbreak makes Zimbabwe’s crisis international, because disease can cross borders. Since an international crisis is within the purview of the “international community,” the path is clear for the West and its satellites to step in to set matters straight

Botswana is decidedly hostile. The country’s foreign minister, Phando Skelemani, says that Zimbabwe’s neighbors should impose an oil blockade to bring the Mugabe government down.

Meanwhile, representatives of the elders, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Anan and Graca Machel sought to enter Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian situation. Inasmuch as an adequate assessment could not be made on the whistle-stop tour the trio had planned, Harare barred their entry, recognizing that the trip would simply be used as a platform to declaim on the necessity of regime change. The elders’ humanitarian concern, however, didn’t stop the trio from agreeing that stepped up sanctions – more misery for the population -- would be useful.

The Mugabe government’s pursuit of land reform, rejection of neo-liberal restructuring, and movement to eclipse US imperialism in southern Africa, has put Zimbabwe on the receiving end of a Western attack based on punitive financial sanctions. The intention, as is true of all Western destabilization efforts, has been to make the target country ungovernable, forcing the government to step down, clearing the way for the ascension of the West’s local errand boys. Owing to the West’s attack, Zimbabwe’s government is struggling to provide the population with basic necessities. It can no longer provide basic sanitation and access to potable water at a sufficient level to prevent the outbreak of otherwise preventable diseases.

The replacement of the Mugabe government with one led by the Movement for Democratic Change, a party created and directed by Western governments, if it happens, will lead to an improvement in the humanitarian situation. This won’t come about because the MDC is more competent at governing, but because sanctions will be lifted and access to balance of payment support and development aid will be restored. Zimbabwe will once again be able to import adequate amounts of water purification chemicals. The improving humanitarian situation will be cited as proof the West was right all along in insisting on a change of government.

The downside is that measures to indigenize the economy – to place the country’s agricultural and mineral wealth in the hands of the black majority – will be reversed. Mugabe and key members of the state will be shipped off to The Hague – or attempts will be made to ship them off – to send a message to others about what befalls those who threaten the dominant mode of property relations and challenge Western domination. Cowed by the example of Zimbabwe, Africans in other countries will back away from their own land reform and economic indigenization demands, and the continent will settle more firmly into a pattern of neo-colonial subjugation.

Obama and Miracles that Never Happen

2008-12-06T18:42:00.001-05:00

By Stephen Gowans

If 10 times more people claimed to have attended Woodstock than were actually there, I suspect 10 times more people claim to have wept at Obama’s election victory than actually did. Weeping on the night of November 4 – or claiming you did -- has now become a fashion. I, too, wept, though not because Obama won, but because the number of times I heard the words “Obama is the embodiment of hope” was too much to bear.

The day before the election, my son called me from school.

“I was just interviewed on Obama for the national news,” he related excitedly.

“”How’d that happen?”

“Actually, it was a group of us who were interviewed. I’m not sure I’m going to make it on the newscast, though. The reporter was looking for gushing reactions, and I pointed out that I had some concerns about Obama because he had received more in corporate donations than McCain had. I don’t think that’s quite what she was looking for.”

No mistake there. Two days later the segment aired in the last 10 minutes of an hour-long news show devoted to documenting (and manufacturing) excited reactions to the Obama victory. After 50 minutes of Europeans, Asians, Africans and Latin Americans delivering encomia on the Obama victory, my son’s chance at a brief moment of public exposure arrived. A group of high-school students, my son among them, is seen walking into a room. The reporter turns to each in turn and asks, “What do you think of Obama?” The first, a young man born in Canada to Chinese parents, says he identifies with Obama, because they’re both ethnic minorities. Another talks of hope. A third says she gets shivers down her spine whenever she hears Obama talk. (Demonstrating a talent for prophecy, my son predicts two days earlier that “She’ll make it on the newscast for sure.”) And so it goes, each student joining in the celebration, because, wasn’t that the implicit contract? Gush over Obama, and see yourself on TV. My son, whose concerns over Obama’s netting more corporate donations than McCain clashed impolitely with the intoxicated atmosphere of Obama worship, became a voiceless image; the one student who, for reasons never explained, was seen, but not heard, on camera.

To those grasping at straws, the election of a black man as president signals the recession of anti-black racism in the United States. For the gullible, it signals the dawn of a new age of hope.

There have been black people in numerous positions of power in the US before, from CEOs to mayors to governors to secretaries of state to the country’s top soldier. Now we can add president. Will anything of substance change because of this? Obama’s victory hasn’t caused anti-black racism to recede; it is, instead, a consequence of this. Will a black man in the White House make clear to the romantics who haven’t figured it out yet that black people are no different from white people, equally capable of oppressing, exploiting, plundering and killing on a massive scale? Add that liberals are as capable of these things as conservatives, and Obama, the black liberal president, offers no hope of departure from the accustomed trajectory.

Despite its recession, anti-black racism has only receded to the point where a privileged black man with rare forensic talents, the massive backing of the corporate community, and the help of the best marketing talent money can buy, can get elected; it has by no means disappeared, nor receded enough to make a substantial difference in the lives of most black people.

But for black people there’s inspiration to be found in one of their own ascending to the highest office in the land. The joy is misplaced. The only thing Obama shares in common with 99 percent of blacks in the United States is the color of his skin, and skin color, when you get right down to it, is only of consequence to bigots who continue to embrace the echo of a racist ideology once used by slave-owners (who happened to be white) to justify exploitation of slaves (who happened to be black.) If you’re going to screw people over, it’s useful to have a body of legitimizing ideas; after all, who wants to come face to face with the reality that he’s an unconscionable prick living off the toil of others? That’s where racism comes in handy. And if we’re talking about people exploiting others of the same skin color, there’s a whole other body of ideas to justify that, which, in these days of thin class consciousness, most of us mistake for common sense. To be sure, skin color does matter to the victims of racism because they can’t escape the fact that the bigots who continue to embrace the echo of a racist ideology keep making a fuss about it. But that makes Obama as much like them as George Bush is like me.

Come to think of it, George and I are alike in many ways. We’re middle aged; we both trip over words; we’re white; we’re male. But so what? George comes from a ruling class family; my forebears worked in factories, did manual labor, and in recent years, ascended to the ranks of the white-collar proletariat, deluding themselves that by wearing a tie and acting “professional” they had transcended their class. George snorted coke; I worked in a pharmaceutical factory for his friend Donald Rumsfeld. George went to Yale and the Harvard Business School on his family’s money; I went to two undistinguished public universities, one located in the gritty industrial city of Hamilton, Ontario, paying subsidized tuition with money saved up working at a grocery store. Whatever we have in common is picayune next to what sets us apart.

The very best comment I’ve heard on the Obama victory comes from Mickey Z. Obama’s ascendancy, he said in a Dec 1 interview published in the British newspaper, The Morning Star, “is an excellent illustration of how the system handles dissent. A black face, a soothing voice and a vague message of change - all designed to keep the rabble pacified without changing anything at all.”

While a debate whirled around me during the days leading up to the election over the question of whether leftists ought to vote for Obama or opt for someone who wasn’t going to put more boots on Afghan soil and rattle the Pentagon’s sabre at Iran, I kept my counsel. For one thing, I’m not a US citizen. The job of everyone else in the world is to bear the brunt of the stupid decisions Americans make. As much as the rest of us wish the consequences of their choices were limited to the US, sadly, what happens in the United States often has dire consequences for those living everywhere else. For another, all the reasons for not voting for a Democrat or Republican had been made cogently and repeatedly before, apparently, to no avail, and having exceeded my limit in flogging dead horses, I was tapped out. What’s more, it was clear that the Obama-supporters had formed an impermeable seal around their brains that admitted no appeal to reason. This was to be a purely emotional choice; hence, the tears of joy on election night.

While a vote for Nader had its merits, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Nader-supporters shared a delusion with the Obama-backers – that of believing that the right person in the Oval Office would make a difference. Americans might be excused for this delusion; after all, they’ve never elected a leftwing president and therefore have been spared the cold blast of reality that disappoints those who’ve worked to elect a leftwing government. Had they not been deprived of this sobering experience, they would recognize their faith in third party politics for the naïveté it is. A quick survey of what has happened when social democrats, socialists and even communists have won elections and formed governments with a program of reforming the system from within, leaves no doubt as to the possible outcomes. A new socialist age is not one of them. Either the new government:

o Recognizes that it must cater to the imperatives of the system it has chosen to work within to prevent its rule from being destabilized, and therefore behaves as any other pro-capitalist government does.

o Boldly introduces anti-capitalist reforms, only to suffer a backlash as investors and businesses withdraw their capital and refuse to make further investments. This provokes an economic crisis, and the government’s supporters, menaced by rising unemployment or shortages or rampant inflation, withdraw their support.

o Is ousted in a military or fascist coup.

o Is destabilized by outside forces.

Only where the energy of the bulk of people has been mobilized to tear the system down and replace it with one friendly to popular interests, have leftwing forces prevailed for any substantial period.

How is it, then, that substantial reforms, such as the public health care systems of Western Europe and Canada, came into being, if not by the agency of leftwing governments voted into power to reform the system from within? The truth of the matter is that reforms were just as likely to be introduced by conservatives as social democrats (and none of the reforms ushered in by Western governments, often as Cold War expediency, ever matched the programs established under Marxist-Leninist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern European.) It was Bismark and Gladstone – hardly lefties -- who introduced the first modern social welfare programs. The basis for social security in the US came not from the Democrats or organized labor, but from the Rockefeller-founded Industrial Relations Counselors Inc., to head off labor unrest. While a Labour government was introducing the NHS in Britain, conservative governments on the continent were introducing their own NHS equivalents. And in Canada, it was the conservative government of John Diefenbaker that introduced the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act of 1957. Social democrats have claimed social programs as their own, but they can lay no claim to being the sole parents, and have just as often been involved in dismantling the reforms predecessor (and often conservative) governments had introduced.

The programs pursued by governments are shaped by the circumstances they encounter, surrounding events, and for those with reformist aims, by the constraints of the constitutional system and the logic of the capitalist system they’ve chosen to work within. Left-leaning governments bow to the demands of the capitalist economy to survive; conservative governments introduce reforms and concessions to head off labor militancy. Often these constraints are ignored by critics, who assume implicitly that the right person, once elevated to a position of power, is free to make history as he pleases. “Once our man is in power, just wait to see what happens.” The answer is often, more of the same, or policies the government’s backers revile.

Across from me sits a book on whose spine is written “Giving Away a Miracle.” It’s the story of the unlikely election in the 90s of a social democratic government in Ontario (the miracle.) The giving away began the very same night the party was elected, as its leader began beating a hasty retreat from the party’s campaign promises. It ended with the party, the supposed voice of organized labor, tearing up collective agreements it had negotiated with public sector unions.

The transformation from rhetorical champion of the average worker to just another pro-capitalist government was inevitable. The promises made – among them public auto insurance -- would have ended in a messy fight with corporate Canada. Investments would be delayed, capital would be taken out of the province, and jobs would be lost. The news media, which exert a powerful influence in shaping public opinion, were uniformly hostile, warning that the new government would turn Ontario into an economic basket-case. The only way the government could have pursued its agenda was to have had massive popular support, toughened by the people’s readiness to suffer the inevitable blows that the corporations whose interests would be encroached upon, would rain upon the province. This, the government didn’t have, nor could have for long under circumstances in which conservative forces were allowed to continue to control the means of production and means of persuasion. What would have truly been a miracle is if the powerful opponents of the government’s agenda had stepped aside in deference to the people’s will and allowed anti-capitalist reforms to go ahead. But this never happens. The problem, then, wasn’t that a miracle had been given away; the problem was that the miracle of absent opposition never materialized.

The same can be said about Obama. Even if he were pro-labor and anti-war -- which even a superficial look at his voting record, campaign statements, and cabinet choices will reveal he is not –- the course he pursued would have infinitely more to do with the socio-economic forces that press upon him than the color of his skin, his political leanings, or the fact that he belongs to one party of business rather than another. The same goes for Nader. If by some miracle he had won, his good intentions would prove no match for the system he chose to work within.

Obama’s election is no miracle, just what was needed to create the illusion of change. Any chance of meaningful change will require more than the election of another exhibitionist lawyer whose charm, forensic skills and ambition allowed him to catch the eye of people with the connections and resources to get him elected – the people who really rule America. The United States’ first black president is just another instrument of moneyed interests whose decisions will be structured by his obligations to the people who put him power and the logic of the capitalist system in which he must work -- a charming Bush, with darker skin and a liberal pedigree. A better alternative than McCain? If you prefer the used car salesman who sells you a piece of crap while making you feel good about yourself, to the one who’s less talented in hiding his guile, yes. But shit is shit, whether you mask the odor with perfume or not.

Prominent progressive intellectuals

2008-11-26T18:39:00.000-05:00

By Stephen Gowans

James Petras has taken issue with progressive public intellectuals (PPIs) who endorsed the Obama candidacy on pragmatic grounds and who argued the Democratic candidate is a lesser evil, while at the same time condemning lesser evils abroad. In particular, Petras wonders why there’s not a single PPI who supports “the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine or Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the popularly supported nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, the anti-occupation Taliban in Afghanistan or even the right, recognized under international law, of the Iranian people to the peaceful development of nuclear energy.” Whatever their defects, continues Petras, “these are the ‘lesser evil’.” (1)

To Petras’ list can be added Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF, a lesser evil no PPI would publicly support. While the secular nature of Zimbabwe’s party of national liberation makes it marginally more attractive to secular leftists than Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the Sadrists of Iraq, it is still shunned for its failings. Its failings, however, do not erase two realities: (a) with its land reform and economic indigenization policies it is a more progressive alternative than the opposition MDC, which is virtually run from Western capitals and, not surprisingly, promotes a comprador program; (b) there is no other progressive alternative with any realistic chance of coming to power in the foreseeable future. (2) In other words, the situation in Zimbabwe parallels the situation in the US, in which PPIs concluded the progressive alternative, Nader, couldn’t win, that Obama was marginally better than McCain, and, therefore, that an Obama presidency deserved their endorsement on pragmatic grounds. If PPIs are willing to sacrifice their moral hymens at home, why do they keep their legs tightly crossed when surveying the political landscape abroad?

Support for the lesser evil at home but never abroad is a manifestation of an older PPI double-standard: eschewing communist organizations for their ‘crimes’ and hierarchical structure while supporting, working within, endorsing or voting for the Democrats, an organization that can hardly be considered non-hierarchical or free from moral failure. PPIs are forever condemning organizations that effectively oppose imperialist spoliation, while justifying support for a major party of imperialist predation whose commitment to civil and political liberties is no more absolute than that of communist organizations. As Michael Parenti points out:

“Left anticommunists find any association with communist organizations morally unacceptable because of the ‘crimes of communism.’ Yet many of them are themselves associated with the Democratic party in this country, either as voters or as members, apparently unconcerned about the morally unacceptable political crimes committed by leaders of that organization. Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of life; the FBI was given authority to infiltrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a ‘national emergency’; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political associations and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witchhunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic that worked in favor of Franco’s fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated. And for the better part of a century, the Congressional leadership of the Democratic party protected racial segregation and stymied all anti-lynching and fair employment bills. Yet all of these crimes, bringing ruination and death to many, have not moved the liberal, the social democratic, and the ‘democratic socialist’ anticommunists to insist repeatedly that we issue blanket condemnation of either the Democratic party or the political system that produced it, certainly not with the intolerant fervor that has been directed against existing communism.” (3)

Petras amplifies Parenti’s point:

“PPIs justified their support for Obama on the basis of his campaign rhetoric in favor of peace and justice, even as he voted for Bush’s war budgets and foreign aid programs funding the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghanis, Palestinians, Colombians, Somalis and Pakistanis and the dispossessing and displacement of at least 10 million people from their towns, farms and homes.” (4)

PPIs like victims, so it’s fitting that they’ve endorsed or voted for a candidate who as president will continue to produce victims in abundance. They’re always springing to the defense of innocent civilians, but rarely to the defense of those who fight back (who in doing so, in the view of PPIs, are no longer innocent). The problem with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the Sadrists, from the point of view of the PPIs, is three-fold: (i) they’re religious-based, (ii) they use violence, and (iii) they’re not victims. The secular Zanu-PF earns the PPIs’ enmity because it uses the wrong tactics to resist imperialist pressure (presumably it should remove all impediments to the US and Britain using civil society and the MDC as instruments of Western foreign policy.)

To be sure, secular socialist alternatives would be preferable to these lesser evils, but those that exist command insufficient support to mount effective oppositions, and, in many cases, are supporting larger, religious-based, anti-imperialist organizations. And while nonviolent direct action alone is preferable to violence, it has yet to prove effective against armed occupations, except in circumstances in which the violence of war has weakened the oppressor (Britain in India).

There is both a moral and tactical argument for supporting existing organizations which have mounted effective anti-imperialist oppositions. First, they have a right to resist occupation, aggression, and intervention. That their political orientations may be repellent is irrelevant. We don’t deny the right to a fair trial on the basis of the accused’s views, no matter how offensive they are. Second, to the extent these organizations are successful in exercising their right, they weaken the ruling class forces against which progressive at home struggle. The anti-occupation Taliban is reactionary, and is an organization one would bitterly oppose at home, but in its resistance to occupation, and in this alone, it is objectively progressive from the standpoint of Western working class populations; a Taliban that is successful in its efforts to oppose occupation weakens the class forces that both exploit foreign populations by conquest and economically exploit populations at home.

Petras attributes the PPIs’ double standards to what aspiring PPI Stephen Zunes called “the sad reality of capitalism” (5) – “supporters of the millions of victims of Western and Israeli butchery do not live off foundation handouts,” while those who condemn organizations that have mounted effective opposition to imperialist predations receive “invitations to speak at universities with offers of five-figure honorariums.” (6)

There’s a principle governing which political ideas bubble to the surface of public awareness: the prominence of a political idea and of whoever can articulately express it, is proportional to the degree to which it is congenial to the interests of those who have the wealth to bring it to prominence.

Conservative intellectuals (CIs) enjoy the greatest degree of prominence because they articulate ideas that closely match the interests, and justify the privileges, of the wealthy. For example, a CI writing in my daily newspaper said Obama will back away from his pledge to hike taxes on Americans who earn over $250,000 per year and that this is prudent because the wealthy are “the most productive element of society.” It should be no surprise that intellectuals who articulate these kinds of legitimating ideas have no problems securing access to platforms capable of giving their views prominence.

PPIs are far less prominent than PCIs (prominent conservative intellectuals) because they articulate ideas that are often hostile to the interests of the wealthy. But their condemnations of any effective opposition to the interests of the wealthy are congenial to the interests of predatory capital. Whatever the failings of communist governments, they remained effective oppositions to capitalist interests. Whatever the failings of national liberation and anti-occupation movements, they act as effective oppositions to imperialist aims. And whatever the regrettable and grim outcomes of violence, movements and governments that use violence to defend themselves against the aggressions and predatory pursuits of capital, have enjoyed more success than their counterparts who won’t or can’t use violence. Progressive intellectuals who are able to set forth compelling cases against communism, really-existing national liberation and anti-occupation movements, and political violence, earn access to platforms which allow their views to be widely circulated within the progressive community. In this way, they become PPIs.

There is a parallel in the control of insect populations. If you want to reduce the mosquito population, you introduce sterile mosquitoes who mate with fertile counterparts and produce no offspring. This doesn’t eliminate successful fertile pairings, but it does reduce the probability, and checks population growth. Favoring sterile PIs with foundation grants, invitations to lectures, and ready access to progressive media (much of which operates on foundation grants), is equivalent to overwhelming mating populations with sterile mosquitoes.

Articulating a compelling case for effective organization against the wealthy at home is, to those who dole out foundation grants, also undesirable; accordingly, PIs who promote engagement with the Democratic party while condemning effective anti-imperialist movements aboard, are highly valued, and earn access to platforms capable of raising the visibility of their ideas. The question of whether PPIs alter their ideas to cater to foundation and progressive media gatekeepers is beside the point; all that matters is that the right ideas, articulated in compelling ways, earn their bearers prominence.

What we need to do is examine ideas on a case-by-case basis, immune from the halo effect of someone’s admirable political stance on other issues. Aspiring PPI Stephen Zunes makes much of the fact that he’s earned his progressive stripes, but his political stance on the IMF, World Bank, debt peonage or the Bush administration does not mean his stance on ruling class funded nonviolent pro-democracy activism is sound. In particular, we should ask:

• What movements and forms of organization have been historically effective in opposing exploitation and oppression?
• What political positions have PPIs taken on these movements and forms of organization?
• Are there systemic imperatives that push to prominence PIs who can persuasively argue against effective movements and forms of organization?

It might be argued that capitalist forces centered in the Western world are a common enemy of Western working class populations and the Taliban. Failure of the West’s popular forces to forge contingent, ad hoc, alliances with the Taliban weakens their common fight. From a purely self-interested standpoint, Western working classes stand to profit from such an alliance, in the same way the US state profited from an alliance with reactionary Islam in opposing a pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. This does not mean, however, that, from the standpoint of Afghans opposed to the Taliban, or the progress of humanity, that the Taliban is the lesser evil; nor that it is preferable from the perspective of a large number of Afghans to a secular comprador regime which guarantees the equality of the sexes, makes provision for the education of females, and expunges the remnants of feudal institutions. The question of who is the lesser evil, then, is necessarily relative. For women and peasants in Afghanistan, it’s difficult to imagine what the Taliban could be the lesser evil to.

My interest, however, isn’t in the normative question of whether Western working classes ought to pursue their own interests by supporting the Taliban in it fight against occupation, even if an alliance with the Taliban means sacrificing the interests of the peasant and female populations that face Taliban oppression. It is, rather, in the empirical question of whether PPI opposition to the Taliban serves the interests of imperialist forces, and whether PIs become PPIs as a consequence of their hostility to movements and forms of organization that have been historically effective in combating exploitation and oppression. The weakness of Petras’ argument lies, I think, in its reliance on the idea of the lesser evil, which is a contingent idea reflecting class interests in a particular place and time. The elevation to PPI from PI of those who favor support for the Democrats while condemning effective anti-imperialist oppositions abroad, can best be understood, not from the perspective of double standards, but as a necessary outcome of the way wealth operates to bring ideas acceptable to the interests of the wealthy to prominence in progressive communities.

1. James Petras, “Western Progressive Opinion: Bring on the Victims! Condemn the Fighters!” November 22, 2008, http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1763&more=1&c=1
2. While PPIs argue that Zimbabwe civil society is a progressive third force in Zimbabwe, the country’s NGOs are in thrall to the Western governments, capitalist foundations and wealthy individuals who provide their funding. They are no more a progressive alternative than the MDC is, which shares the same backers.
3. Michael Parenti, Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1997; pp.48-49.
4. Petras.
5. Stephen Gowans, “Zunes compromising with capitalism’s sad reality,” What’s Left, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/zunes%e2%80%99-compromising-with-capitalism%e2%80%99s-sad-reality/
6. Petras.

Western Media Bias in Coverage of Contested Elections

2008-11-05T18:31:00.000-05:00

By Stephen Gowans

While elections that bring populists and reformers to power are often contested as fraudulent by Western-backed opposition coalitions which receive favourable and substantial coverage in the Western media, when pro-foreign investment parties come to power in disputed elections, the event barely merits a footnote in the back pages of Western newspapers.

The latest example of the almost complete Western media silence on contested elections that pro-foreign investment parties win, can be found in the October 30 election of Rupiah Banda as president of Zambia.

Banda’s election has been “welcomed by foreign leaders and investors who praise his government’s conservative fiscal policies.”

By contrast, opposition leader Michael Sata, “a populist with strong support among workers and the poor,” has raised concerns among foreign investors by “the strident anti-investment tone of his last campaign for the presidency in 2006.”

Sata, who leads the Patriotic Front, “branded the election a fraud” after a late surge of votes erased his lead. The Patriotic Front noted “discrepancies between vote tallies and the number of voters on registration lists.”

In the former Yugoslavia, Belarus and Zimbabwe, elections which have brought, or have threatened to bring, leaders to power who are not prepared to welcome Western exports and investments on entirely favourable terms and without restriction, have been denounced as unfair before the first ballot is cast.

When this happens, the Western media routinely provide the pro-investment opposition wide and sympathetic coverage.

In what little Western media coverage the Patriotic Front has received, Sata’s charges of electoral fraud have been treated as the whining of a poor loser.

According to the official tally, Banda won 40 percent of the 1.79 million votes cast, versus 38 percent for the leader of the Patriotic Front.

It’s unclear whether Banda’s election victory was fraudulent, but the double standard evident in Western media coverage of contested elections evinces an institutional bias consistent with the view that media coverage reflects the class interests of its owners.

Were Sata the comprador champion of foreign investment and Banda the populist backed by working people and the poor, we would have expected visible and sympathetic coverage of the opposition’s complaint that the election had been stolen.

“Zambia opposition to contest Banda election, Reuters, November 2, 2008.
"Zambia swears in a new president,” Reuters, November 3, 2008.

The Old Chauvinist Con

2008-11-04T18:37:00.000-05:00

By Stephen Gowans

Japanese politicians and military leaders have been revisiting their country’s wartime history, concluding that Japan’s imperialism wasn’t the bundle of unalloyed negatives the Chinese, Koreans and other East Asians – victims of Japanese aggressions -- would have us believe.

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe insisted that Japan’s wartime military had never forced East Asian women into prostitution. They had voluntarily signed up as euphemistically titled “comfort women” to service the sexual desires of Japanese soldiers. At least, there was no documentary proof of official coercion, he said.

Trouble is, scores of official documents put the Japanese military at the scene of the crime, building brothels and recruiting women.

Former prime minister Taro Aso enraged Koreans when he said what amounted to, “Oh sure, maybe colonizing Korea wasn’t the best moment of our history, but that’s only if you look at the negatives. We did a lot of good things, too.”

And last week General Toshio Mamogami put a positive spin on Japan’s wartime history when he attributed advances in racial equality to the colonization of Korea and the Imperial Army’s invasions of China, the Philippines, Indochina, Indonesia, and Malaya. In an essay that won a hotel company’s $30,000 “true modern history” contest, the head of Japan’s air force (until he was fired Friday night) wrote:

“If Japan had not fought the Great East Asia War at the time, it might have taken another 100 or 200 years before we could have experienced the world of racial equality we have today.” [1]

Mamogami’s attributing growing racial equality to Japanese imperialism stirs up memories of Washington painting US imperialism in Iraq as an exercise in dictator-cleansing. Despite the contrived reasons for war, the piles of bodies, and the humanitarian catastrophe that makes Darfur look like a fender-bender, the Iraq predation is supposed to be a net gain for humanity because the dictator and his rape rooms are gone.

What has been most troubling about Mamogami’s views in the US is his thesis that US president Franklin D. Roosevelt tricked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor, to justify breaking a pledge he had made to US citizens to stay out of the war.

You might look at it that way. But the game Mamogami is playing, and the one his American counterparts play when they insist the attack on Pearl Harbor was an event of pure infamy that materialized fully-formed out of nothing, is to angelize one side and demonize the other.

The truth is far more complex.

When Japan invaded Mongolia in 1931, and then started moving south through China, it invoked the necessity of cleansing East Asia of Western domination as its justification.

It’s true that Western powers regarded East Asia as theirs to possess (as they did the rest of Asia, Latin America and Africa.) The British were in Malaya and Burma, the French in Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, and the US in the Philippines and Guam. And China was divided up among European powers into separate spheres of influence.

What the Japanese didn’t say was that while they were driving Western powers out of East Asia, they had no intention of bringing an end to imperialism. Instead, in place of Western imperialism, a new Japanese imperialism would take its place. China would become an exclusive domain of exploitation for Japan.

Washington, then a rising industrial power with few colonial possessions, and a compulsion to find new markets, could hardly regard this development with equanimity, especially since the Nazis were also intent on shutting the US out of their own closed market in occupied Europe.

Washington insisted on an open door in China for its exports and investments and imposed an oil embargo on Japan to give its demand teeth.

The Japanese countered with a demand for reciprocity -- an open door in China for an open door in Washington’s informal Central American empire. Washington demurred.

Desperate for a secure source of oil to power its military machine and industrial economy, Japan looked to neighboring Indonesia and Malaya, both of which boasted rich supplies of oil.

But before Japan could secure these prizes, it would have to neutralize the US Pacific Fleet, based at Hawaii. Hence, the attack on Pearl Harbor.

There were, then, no white hats and black hats. Just two imperialist powers, maneuvering for economic advantage. Sure, outright war between the two countries hadn’t broken out before 1941, but in the age of great power rivalries, peace was simply war by other means.

After Japan’s defeat, the US moved to supplant Japan as East Asia’s hegemonic power. Part of Korea was occupied, its nascent national liberation government crushed by US forces in the south, and the US took the imperialist baton from France in Vietnam.

With the blood of millions on its hands, the US government had much to apologize for.

But rather than apologize, one US president, George H. W. Bush, boasted that:

“When I say I'll never apologize for America, I really believe that. And I believe that we are the most decent, fairest, most honorable country in the world.” [2]

Bush’s words reflected the same sentiment that lies behind Japanese attempts to salvage their sullied reputation from the rogues’ gallery of history.

When Bush Senior said he’d never apologize for America, US citizens applauded. When Shinzo Abe said Japan hadn’t recruited comfort women, the US Congress passed legislation demanding he apologize for Japan.

It seems that in the US, chauvinism is all right, as long as it’s stamped Made in America. Stamped Made in Japan, it’s deplorable.

But chauvinism of any stripe, US or Japanese, is deplorable. And more than that, it is a con.

People say “we invaded Iraq,” or that they “support our troops,” though they’ve had no say over the decision to dispatch troops to far away lands, and, significantly, reap none of the benefits of military intervention. In the US, Bechtel, Lockheed-Martin, General Electric and other corporate titans do. The rest simply furnish their bodies and pay the taxes to make it happen.

My country right or wrong means nothing more than my government right or wrong, but why should anyone feel compelled to stand behind the wrong decisions of a government they have no practical control over?

The idea that capitalist governments speak in one’s name is equally untenable, unless one happens to be part of the intermarrying elite of investment bankers, corporate board members and corporate lawyers, who, through their virtual monopoly over society’s resources, dominate political life. No capitalist government speaks in my name, or in the names of billions more like me.

“Working men have no country,” remarked a pair of 19th century intellectuals, whose status has recently been elevated by the financial crisis. With corporations dominating political life through their extensive lobbying, funding of policy formulation think tanks, appointments of executives to key political positions, financing of major political parties, and ability to extort concessions from governments by threats of capital flight and strike, ordinary people do indeed have no country – and no reason, therefore, for chauvinism.

1. Blaine Harden, “WWII Apologists Persist Despite Japanese Policy,” Washington Post, November 3, 2008.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/02/AR2008110201937.html
2. “The Republicans ‘I've Been Underestimated’”, Time, August 2, 1988. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,968176-1,00.html

West Takes Aim at Belarus’ Pro-Social Policies

2008-10-13T18:21:00.002-04:00

Belarus is one of the few remaining genuine alternatives to the neo-liberal economic order. A US nurtured and bankrolled fifth column is working with Washington to topple it from within.

By Stephen Gowans

The US government has nurtured a fifth column in Belarus to help overthrow the Lukashenko government to replace its socialist-oriented policies with a made-in-the-USA neo-liberal regime that favours US investors and corporations.

The US State Department last year provided funding to five opposition parties and 566 opposition activists, and support and training to over 70 civil society organizations, 71 antigovernment journalists and 21 opposition media outlets in Belarus. On top of that, 900 Belarusian youth were enrolled tuition-free at US government-expense at the European Humanities University. The university is an alternative to Belarusian state schools which the US government condemns for failing to “support the country’s transformation to a free-market democracy.” [1]

The US government has been nurturing Belarus’s anti-Lukashenko coalition since President George W. Bush signed the Belarus Democracy Act in October 2004. The act authorizes the US government to spend millions of dollars to create antigovernment media in Belarus, train election monitors to discredit Belarus’s elections, and back civil society organizations opposed to the Lukashenko government. [2] Washington pledged nearly $12 million to Belarusian antigovernment forces to fight the March 2006 presidential election. [3] The opposition candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, lost badly, an outcome Washington attributed to vote fraud. But even Western newspapers and polls paid for by the Republican Party’s international arm, the IRI, acknowledged that Lukashenko would win the vote handily and that the opposition’s support was in the single digits. Having failed to meet its regime change objective in 2006, Washington authorized further spending of $27 million in each of 2007 and 2008 to support opponents of the Lukashenko government. [4]

The mantra from Washington, echoed by dodgy leftists close to the US ruling class, is that Belarus is governed by an authoritarian president who abuses power to win elections. As we’ll see, this is an invention used to justify US meddling in Belarus’ internal politics. What authoritarian measures the Lukashenko government have taken have been defensive reactions to blatant Western attempts to engineer a free-market coup d’etat.

Contrary to the charge that he is Europe’s last dictator, Lukashenko is an elected president whose electoral victories have been based on wide popular support, earned by promoting the interests of the vast majority of Belarus’ citizens. Washington’s real grievance with the Belarusian government is that its policies are at odds with the interests of US investors and corporations.

Here’s what’s wrong with Belarus, according to the CIA:

• Not enough structural reform.
• Market socialism.
• Private companies have been re-nationalized.
• A wide range of income redistributive policies has produced levels of income equality almost unmatched in the world, but these policies have made Belarus unattractive as a destination for US investment. [5]

Here’s the view of the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal:

• Foreign banks are virtually shut out of the country.
• US investors are barred from buying land.
• Basic goods and services are subsidized by the state.
• Retail prices are regulated.
• The government continues to rely on state-owned enterprises.
• Tariff barriers and subsidies make it difficult for US companies to compete in Belarus. [6]

The Economist’s Intelligence Unit complains that:

• Belarus follows active policies of import suppression and export promotion.
• Lukashenko “pursues a policy of pervasive state involvement in the economy.”
• The government denies ownership rights to the commons, keeping natural resources, waters, forests and land under public control. [7]

The Washington Post says “The economy of Belarus is still state-controlled (and) the nation’s food is grown on collective farms.” [8] And The New York Times points out that “Mr. Lukashenko…has steadily turned Belarus into a miniature version of the Soviet Union itself, with a state-run economy.” [9]

Is Belarus under Lukashenko really as socialist-oriented as US establishment sources say?

Tatyana Golubeva, general secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus, part of a governing coalition with Lukashenko, says “Belarus is still on the socialist path of development. We are one of the few that never gave up.”

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez praises Belarus “as a model of a social state,” likening it to the society Chavez’s Bolivarian revolutionaries are building in South America. [10] Chavez, who calls Lukashenko “a brother in arms” [11] awarded the Belarusian leader Venezuela’s highest award for foreigners, the Order of the Liberator. Lukashenko has also been awarded the highest honor Cuba bestows on foreigners, the Order of Jose Marti.

Belarus retains the symbols and social supports of its Soviet past. An imposing monument to Lenin still guards the approaches to the government headquarters. Education through university is still free, and university students continue to enjoy living stipends as they did in Soviet days. [12] Much of the economy remains under public control.

Clearly, Belarus isn’t the kind of place the CEO’s, corporate board members and investment bankers who dominate decision-making in Washington can warm up to. Sure, Minsk’s policies are good for ordinary Belarusians. Basic goods and services are kept affordable, the public controls the commanding heights of the economy, and income equality is virtually unmatched in the world. But what about the interests of American investors and exporters? Where are the profitable investment opportunities? Where are the lucrative export markets?

Building an opposition

To oust Lukashenko and his socialist-leaning policies, the US government set out to mold a disparate group of opposition parties and activists into a single, coherent unit, guided by a single executive with authority to enforce common goals and strategy. The international arm of the Republican Party, the IRI, has assumed a leadership role in focusing “primarily on the process of consolidating and unifying all of the pro-democratic elements in the country into a single coalition.” [13]

True to the game plan the US government has followed in engineering soft coups in other countries, the opposition has been given a name that underscores its professed struggle for democracy against an alleged dictatorship. While the West created the Democratic Opposition of Serbia to oppose what it called the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic, and the Movement for Democratic Change to oppose the misnamed dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, in Belarus the US-backed and funded opposition goes by the name of the United Democratic Forces (UDF). Its goal is to oppose and topple the alleged dictatorship, and socialist-oriented policies, of Alexander Lukashenko.

The US government uses the word “dictatorship” in a unique way. Belarus is decried by Washington as a dictatorship even though the country’s political system is a multi-party democracy with universal adult suffrage. [14] Dictatorship is to be understood in the world of Washington’s regime changers, not as rule by an individual or committee, where suffrage is absent, but as rule by elected officials the US government opposes because their policies are either immediately or indirectly at odds with the interests of US capital. Branding a socialist or nationalist leader as a dictator provides the US government with a pretext to sanitize its interference in the internal politics of foreign countries by misrepresenting its meddling as democracy-promotion.

The US government has likewise tried to discredit the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, referring to Chavez as a would-be autocrat, to justify nurturing and bankrolling the “democratic” opposition. Chavez, Milosevic, Mugabe and Lukashenko have all pursued policies that have rejected, in various degrees, the free-market, free-enterprise, free-trade orthodoxy Washington insists all countries (but itself) adopt.

The UDF comprises 10 opposition parties and more than 200 NGOs. In 2005, the coalition selected Alexander Milinkevich as its candidate for president. Terry Nelson, national political director of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, practically ran Milinkevich’s 2006 campaign, according to The New York Times. [15] But help from the Republicans was not enough to overcome Milinkevich’s failure to resonate with the public. The UDF’s own polling, paid for by the IRI, “showed the ratings of Milinkevich and other opposition leaders in the single digits.” [16] Lukashenko won the election handily with 83 percent of the vote, a lopsided victory the US government immediately attributed to vote rigging, on grounds that no one could be that popular.

But there are plenty of elections elsewhere won by higher margins which the US government has endorsed as fair reflections of the democratic will. The US-educated and fiercely pro-US ruling class Mikhail Saakashvili polled 97 percent in Georgia’s 2004 presidential elections, without Washington batting an eye. Kurmanbek Bakiyev won 89 percent of the vote in Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution, without incurring Washington’s disapproval. And Eduard Shevardnadze, when he was still Washington’s man in Georgia, polled 92 percent of the vote in Georgia’s 1992 election, without repercussions.

Laying aside US government double standards, there are a number of reasons to believe the 2006 presidential vote in Belarus was free and fair. All the polls, including the opposition’s IRI-paid poll, anticipated a Lukashenko victory as a virtual certainty. This reflected Lukashenko’s enormous popularity, something even members of the opposition acknowledge. [17] “Even his fiercest opponents don’t question the accuracy of independent polls that rate him the most popular politician in the country.” [18]

Lukashenko’s popularity derives from policies which favour the working class over Western investors. He has,

“presided over a continual increase in real wages for several years…He has also cut (the value added tax), brought down inflation, halved the number of people in poverty” and created “the fairest distribution of incomes of any country in the region.” [19]

Belarus’ egalitarianism has been a particular irritant to the US government. While the Lukashenko government’s income-redistribution policies have maintained a narrow gap between the rich and poor, they have also reduced the attractiveness of Belarus to the US corporate rich as a venue for profitable investment. With a choice of serving ordinary Belarusians or catering to corporate America, Lukashenko chose the former and incurred the wrath of the latter.

Beginning in April 2007, the IRI, along with the Democratic Party’s international arm, the NDI, and the Council of Europe, hosted a series of meetings with UDF members, culminating in a national congress attended by 693 delegates. The purpose of the meetings was to formulate coalition strategy and to draft a transitional constitution to be rolled out if and when the UDF topples the government and seizes the reins of power [20] (at which point it will sell off public enterprises, end subsidies for basic goods and services, and reverse Lukashenko’s income redistribution policies.)

Uncle Sam’s NGOs

The US government also provides “extensive support, grant making, leadership and capacity building to over 60 indigenous NGOS.” The US State Department, PACT and the NDI have assisted 60 NGOs in various ways, purchasing goods and services for the organizations, setting up cross-border exchanges with other NGOs, offering advice on strategic planning, and doling out over 40 grants. To strengthen connections among NGOs, the sponsors established a Leadership Fellows Program, to build leadership skills among members of the anti-Lukashenko opposition. [21]

The NDI, “held a youth conference in February 2007 to assist youth groups in their efforts to mobilize, build organizational capacity, (and) improve cooperation.” Not to be outdone, the IRI hosted 10 sessions for more than 300 Belarusian youths, to train “the next generation of political leaders.” These sessions were led by “trainers from across democratic Europe,” [22] non-violent pro-democracy activists trained to foment uprisings in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. Every few months, disciples of Gene Sharp, the US-based guru of non-violent regime change, are “deployed abroad to teach democracy activists how to agitate for change…going everywhere from Eastern Europe to train Belarusians to Turkey to coach Iranians.” The Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, bankrolled in part by the IRI and the CIA-interlocked-Freedom House, plays a leadership role in these training sessions. [23]

Along with Renaissance, Pontis, and the Eurasia Foundations, the US State Department helped found the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank of pro-US ideologues prepared to disgorge policy advice congenial to the US government’s free-market, free-enterprise, free-trade ideology. [24] When the media need quotes from “experts,” they turn to BISS.

As part of efforts to shape public opinion, the US State department funds European Radio for Belarus, an anti-Lukashenko radio station, joining Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, US-government-sponsored propaganda radio stations, in preaching the anti-Lukashenko, anti-socialist, pro-neo-liberal gospel. On top of ERB, Western regime changers doled out $24 million to Media Consulta, a German-led consortium to broadcast anti-government news into Belarus. Individual European countries have also kicked in. [25]

The fifth column goes to Washington

The Republican Party has been heavily involved in nurturing Belarus’s opposition, meeting frequently with its key activists. In April 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held meetings in Lithuania with members of the opposition, discussing the use of “mass pressure for change,” [26] and pledging $5 million in backing, to be provided through the IRI. [27] It is typical of color revolutions, including the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the ouster of Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia, for the US-sponsored opposition to accuse the government of electoral fraud. This provides an occasion to mobilize opposition supporters to take to the streets to force the government to step down. At her meetings in Lithuania, Rice told opposition representatives that the impending presidential election would be an “excellent opportunity” to challenge the government. [28] The opposition followed Rice’s strategy to a tee, not as much “running an election campaign as…trying to organize an uprising.” [29] The New York Times commented that Milinkevich was “campaigning not for the presidency but for an uprising.” [30] For the opposition, an uprising was the only realistic path to power. Polls paid for by the IRI “showed the ratings of Milinkevich and other opposition leaders in the single digits.” [31]

Opposition activists have unique access to high US State officials through the IRI, and have been provided a platform from which to deliver persuasive communications to a wide audience – a platform they would not have without US government influence.

The IRI hosted a delegation of opposition activists over eight days in December, 2007. The delegation had private meetings with Rice and a nearly one-hour meeting with US President Bush, after which each delegate had his photograph taken with the president. The IRI also arranged for the delegation to meet with the Washington Post editorial board, to answer questions on a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty call-in show beamed into Belarus, and set up radio and television interviews with the official US overseas propaganda service, Voice of America. [32]

This came on the heels on another UDF visit to Washington hosted by the IRI from February 26 to March 2. On this trip, delegates met with State Department, White House, and Congressional officials, and shared their points of view with the media, including The Washington Post, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In its meetings with US officials, the delegation expressed its gratitude “for the support of the US government.” [33]

Supporting a working class-friendly alternative

There are a few reasons to oppose US interference in Belarus’ democracy.

Belarus is one of the few remaining places on earth in which the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned, where robust income redistribution narrows the gap between rich and poor, where essential goods and services are subsidized so they remain affordable to all, and where education is free and university students receive a living stipend.

US government interference in Belarus is not aimed at promoting democracy. Belarus already has a democracy, both in the narrow, technical, sense of offering universal adult suffrage and regular elections featuring a multiplicity of parties, and in the broader, more meaningful, sense of being a place in which the interests of the bulk of people predominate.

US government interference in Belarus is aimed at the very opposite of democracy: promoting the interests of a super-privileged minority comprising US and Western investment bankers, CEOs, corporate board members, and hereditary capitalist families, who seek unfettered access to Belarus’ resources, markets, labor and public assets. Corporate America wants to own Belarus’ banks, waters, forests and other natural resources; to buy Belarus’ state-owned enterprises; to sell goods and services unimpeded by tariff barriers and unhindered by subsidies to domestic firms. It wants a low-tax environment, no restrictions on expatriation of profits, and a low-wage and biddable workforce held in check by a reserve army of the unemployed. From the point of view of the US ruling class, Belarus should be investor-friendly, not working class-friendly.

US citizens and citizens of other Western countries that contribute to nurturing Belarus’ fifth column should oppose the use of their tax dollars to bring down one of the few remaining challenges to the neo-liberal economic order. Taxpayer dollars should be used to help fund public health care, provide free education, and subsidize basic goods and services at home, not to undermine working class gains abroad.

1. United States Department of State, “Belarus 2007 Performance Report,” November 16, 2007. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACL044.pdf
2. The Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2005; “Belarus Democracy Act Will Help Cause of Freedom, Bush Says,” October 21, 2004. http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2004/October/20041022100536btrueveceR0.8822595.html
3. The New York Times, December 17, 2005.
4. Russian Information Agency Novosti, July 13, 2007.
5. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, Belarus. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bo.html
6. The Heritage Foundation, 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?ID=Belarus
7. Cited in The Heritage Foundation, 2007 Index of Economic Freedom.
8. The Washington Post, September 23, 2005.
9. The New York Times, January 1, 2006.
10. The New York Times, July 24, 2006.
11. The Financial Times (London), August 2, 2007.
12. The Morning Star (UK), January 7, 2008.
13. Remarks by Stephen B. Nix, Director of Eurasia Program, International Republican Institute, Conference on European Union and Democracy Assistance, Center for European Studies, the University of Florida, March 30, 2007, http://www.iri.org/eurasia/belarus/2007-03-30-Belarus.asp
14. The IRI’s Belarus page describes Belarus’ type of government as a dictatorship. On the same page, under the rubric “suffrage” is written: universal, age 18. http://www.iri.org/eurasia/belarus.asp The CIA’s World Factbook lists 19 political parties in Belarus.
15. “Bringing Down Europe’s Last Ex-Soviet Dictator,” New York Times, February 26, 2006.
16. Ibid.
17. The Washington Post, March 21, 2006.
18. The Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2005.
19. Times Online, March 10, 2006.
20. United States Department of State, “Belarus 2007 Performance Report,” November 16, 2007. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACL044.pdf
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. “A Georgian soldier of the Velvet Revolution,” The Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2008.
24. United States Department of State, “Belarus 2007 Performance Report,” November 16, 2007. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACL044.pdf
25. The New York Times, February 26, 2006.
26. The New York Times, April 22, 2005.
27. Xinhua News Agency, May 13, 2005.
28. The New York Times, April 22, 2005.
29. The New York Times, January 1, 2006.
30. The New York Times, February 26, 2006.
31. Ibid.
32. “IRI Host Belarusian Democratic Leaders,” IRI News Release, December 12, 2007. http://www.iri.org/eurasia/belarus/2007-12-12-Belarus.asp
33. “IRI Host Belarusian Democratic Leaders,” IRI News Release, March 9, 2007. http://www.iri.org/eurasia/belarus/2007-03-09-Belarus.asp

US Government Report Undermines Zimbabwe Opposition’s Claim of Independence

2008-10-04T18:23:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

The US government had a hand in formulating the policy platform of the Tsvangirai faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, and funded community-based newsletters to create a platform to persuade Zimbabweans to accept Washington’s point of view, according to a US government report. The report boasts that Washington is the undisputed leader in nurturing anti-government civil society organizations in Zimbabwe, operating through a CIA-interlocked organization led by former New York investment banker and Michael Milken right-hand man, Peter Ackerman.

In a November 16, 2007 letter accompanying the US State Department’s “Zimbabwe 2007 Performance Report,” US ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee wrote that,

“Working closely with like-minded governments, we continued diplomatic efforts to maintain pressure on the Government of Zimbabwe and to remind the regime that fundamental changes…are a prerequisite to reengagement with the international community.”

McGee called for economic reform, translated as abandonment of Harare’s economic program of favoring Zimbabweans over foreign investors, an end to price controls, and privatization of state-owned enterprises.

The neo-liberal, foreign investor-friendly economic policies Washington favors are central to the policy platform of the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC. The State Department document reveals that the MDC’s policy orientation may be based more on US government direction than its own deliberations. According to the report,

“The (US government)…assisted the MDC to effectively identify, research, and articulate policy positions and ideas within Zimbabwe, in the region, and beyond. In particular, (US government) technical assistance was pivotal in supporting (the) MDC’s formulation and communication of a comprehensive policy platform.”

Critics of the party point to the absence of any difference between its policy proposals and those favored in Washington for African countries, an absence that may be explained in the US government’s helping “the MDC to identify, research, and articulate policy positions and ideas, and develop and communicate a policy platform.”

US government assistance to the MDC’s Tsvangirai faction didn’t stop at formulating and articulating a policy platform, the report says, but extended to helping the MDC formulate strategy to oppose the Mugabe government. According to the State Department, the US government,

"provided technical assistance to the MDC…to enable it to conduct regular strategic planning meetings to establish goals, identify key objectives, prioritize activities, and determine performance benchmarks.”

The tone of the report paints Zimbabweans as being incapable of establishing goals, setting priorities, and measuring performance themselves and therefore requiring US assistance to perform basic organizational tasks. It may be that the assistance US advisors provided is more accurately, and less tactfully, called direction.

The technical aid was furnished by the International Republican Institute, the Republican Party arm of the US Congress’s National Endowment for Democracy, whose chairman is John McCain. According to the State Department document, the,

“IRI held a workshop for Tsvangirai’s shadow government at which each shadow minister presented and defended his/her policy positions. A panel of technical experts grilled presenters on the technical content of their policies.”

This assistance was deemed by the State Department to be “critical to building the capacity of (the MDC) to operate effectively and to enable (it) to contend in the (2008) Presidential and Parliamentary elections, and to be prepared to govern.”

On top of helping the MDC shape its policy platform, the report also reveals that the US government helped shape public opinion in Zimbabwe through support for Voice of America broadcasting and community-based newsletters.

While portraying its role as simply one of delivering assistance, the State Department makes clear in its report that the newsletters provided the US government with a platform “to inform Zimbabweans about issues important to them.” Rather than funding community-based journalism, the report reveals that the State Department underwrote the newsletters to use them as vehicles for disseminating US government propaganda.

The State Department report also offers insight into the financial lengths Washington was prepared to go to create and sustain a civil society apparatus to oppose the Mugabe government. In 2007, Washington gave Freedom House and PACT a total of $1.8 million to back civil society organizations that were hostile to the Mugabe government. Freedom House, headed by former Michael Milken right-hand man, Peter Ackerman, is interlocked with the CIA, according to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent.

In addition, over $400,000 was funnelled to Voice of America to counter Harare’s efforts to jam VOA anti-government broadcasts. Washington had been supporting VOA’s Studio 7, an anti-Mugabe radio program, since 2002. According to the report, “the program consisted of English, Shona and Ndebele broadcasts for an hour and a half per day, five days per week, until July 2007, when broadcasts were expanded to seven days a week.”

To thwart Harare’s jamming efforts, VOA’s broadcast time was expanded, and shortwave radios were distributed to Zimbabweans. In addition, publicity campaigns were undertaken to build Studio 7’s profile “via the distribution of calendars and pens, advertising in the print media and a text messaging campaign.”

The State Department describes Studio 7 as providing a platform for groups opposed to the Mugabe government and its land reform and economic indigenization policies: “the political opposition, exile groups, democracy activists and human rights proponents” – largely the same groups the US government was funding through Freedom House and PACT.

Conspicuously absent from the report’s list of political parties the US government provided “democracy and governance” assistance to in 2007 was Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party. Defenders of US democracy promotion insist that the US government promotes democratic processes aboard, not political parties, but only one party in Zimbabwe received US government assistance: the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC.

That, however, wasn’t Washington’s goal. The report says the US government planned to aid two political parties in Zimbabwe: presumably Tsvangirai’s MDC faction and the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara. But when the US government approached Mutamabara’s party, it was “rebuffed.” Mutambara has complained publicly about US imperialism and hypocrisy in its foreign policy and has manoeuvred to keep himself free from the taint of being an instrument of Western foreign policy.

To square the circle, and prove that it is promoting democracy and not political parties, the US government calls Tsvangirai’s MDC faction the “democratic opposition.” It is not by accident that the MDC’s full name is “the Movement for Democratic Change,” or that another party that once received US government assistance, Serbia’s the DOS, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, also incorporated the word democracy into its name. The Western mass media mimic the US government designation of the foreign political parties Washington supports as being a “democratic opposition”, thus reinforcing the deception that US support for selected foreign political parties is democracy promotion, not illegitimate interference in the internal politics of other countries.

The report boasts that the US has been “the undisputed leader among the donor community in providing assistance to civil society,” providing “technical assistance and small grants to 29” civil society organizations through its “implementing partners”, Freedom House and PACT. Grants and assistance were provided to improve “strategic planning, communication, proposal writing (and) platform development.”

Proposal writing is emphasized, the report explains, to equip civil society organizations with the skills necessary to land additional grants from private foundations. According to the State Department,

“youth organizations like the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union (ZINASU) and Youth Initiatives for Democracy in Zimbabwe (YIDEZ) are two good examples of…(civil society organizations that were) nurtured through US (State Department) funding from an idea to a level where they are able to stand on their own and attract other funders.”

Defenders of the idea that civil society organizations are not created and guided by US government funding, but represent spontaneously arising grassroots organizations that would exist even if they hadn’t received US government largesse, paint a picture far different from the report’s reference to Washington nurturing civil society organizations from an idea to a level where they’re able to attract other funders and stand on their own.

The MDC insists it is an independent political party, and anti-Mugabe civil society organizations and their defenders are adamant that Zimbabwe’s civil society is not under foreign control. Scholar Patrick Bond has declared an underground anti-Mugabe organization that receives US government-funding to be part of an independent left, while scholar Stephen Zunes says Women of Zimbabwe Arise, a group singled out in the State Department report as receiving US government funding, can in no way be considered an agent of the US government. These defenders of anti-Mugabe organizations appear to be unfamiliar with the pivotal role played by the US government in nurturing and sustaining Zimbabwe’s civil opposition.

The MDC has received considerable assistance and guidance from Washington and the John McCain-led IRI, in developing and articulating its policy platform, and in formulating strategy to defeat the Mugabe government.

In its opposition to Zanu-PF, it has been helped by civil society organizations funded by the US government through Freedom House and PACT, and by US government-funded community-based newsletters and the VOA’s Studio 7, which have served as platforms for disseminating the point of view of the US government and the views of Mugabe-opponents.

The report, then, reveals how the US government has taken advantage of Zimbabwe’s relative openness to intervene in the country’s internal political affairs to try to bring to power a party whose platform it had a hand in formulating.

Harare has taken steps to counter Washington’s illegitimate interventions, including jamming VOA broadcasts, barring journalists and election observers from the US, and banning some NGOs. These measures have been denounced by Washington as “undemocratic” and “authoritarian” and therefore as reasons for intervention. But the causal sequence is backwards.

The measures Washington calls anti-democratic and authoritarian didn’t cause the US to help the MDC write and communicate its policy platform, to nurture and fund government-hostile civil society organizations, and to provide Mugabe’s opponents a vehicle through Studio 7 and community-based newsletters to shape public opinion. On the contrary, all these things caused Harare to take the measures that have been denounced as anti-democratic and authoritarian as a means to limit Washington’s illegitimate interference in Zimbabwe’s democratic space.

Anyone who was truly interested in promoting democracy would press Washington to stop its interference in Zimbabwe, rather than lionize US-backed civil society organizations as a spontaneously arising pro-democracy people’s movement, as an independent left that people should look to understand what’s going on in Zimbabwe (Bond), or as groups that can in no way be considered agents of the US government (Zunes).

Stephen Zunes’ False Statements on Zimbabwe and Woza

2008-09-30T18:43:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

Stephen Zunes is making a career of legitimizing fundamental US government assessments of all but a few of its foreign policy targets, uncritically mimicking State Department slanders of target countries and falsely declaring US funded regime change organizations to be “progressive organizations which could by no means be considered American agents.”

Reacting to a Netfa Freeman article in the Black Agenda Report criticizing his position on Zimbabwe, Zunes refers to “Mugabe’s election fraud, mismanagement of the economy, and human rights abuses.” This is State Department boilerplate. While it would be too much to ask Zunes to back up his statements in his brief reply to Freeman’s article, I cannot recall that he has ever produced evidence of any of his charges against US foreign policy targets in his longer articles, or has ever shown the slightest hint of scepticism regarding the charges Washington has levelled against “outposts of tyranny.” Instead, Zunes freely apes State Department rhetoric, defending from the left fundamental State Department views.

Particularly galling is his reference to Mugabe’s “mismanagement of the economy,” standard fare from US Secretaries of State, the CIA and New York Times, but hardly what one would expect from a critical and sceptical progressive who claims to be independent of US establishment positions. Attributing Zimbabwe’s economic difficulties to Mugabe’s policy errors whitewashes the role of the US in sabotaging Zimbabwe’s economy through the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which effectively cuts Harare off from balance of payment loans, development assistance and lines of credit from international lending agencies.

In his reply to Freeman, Zunes falsely states that Women of Zimbabwe Arise can by no means be considered American agents. The group’s leader, Jenni Williams, was presented with the State Department’s 2007 International Woman of Courage Award for Africa by Condoleezza Rice in a March, 2007 ceremony in Washington. The US State Department does not give out awards to people who work against the interests of the US economic elite. It does, however, award those who advance the elite’s positions.

A US government report on the activities in 2007 of its mission to Zimbabwe reveals that the “US Government continued its assistance to Women of Zimbabwe Arise.” US government assistance to Woza and other civil society organizations was channeled through Freedom House and PACT. Freedom House, which is interlocked with the CIA and is a “virtual propaganda arm of the (US) government and international right wing,” according to Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent, is headed by Peter Ackerman, who also heads up the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Stephen Zunes is chair of the board of academic advisors to the ICNC. Ackerman’s wife, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, is a former director of the Albert Einstein Institute, an organization which trained activists in popular insurrection techniques to overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Zunes has vigorously defended the AEI. She is also currently a director of the US foreign policy establishment-dominated Human Rights Watch, which recently launched a dishonest attack on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s human rights record.

Woza supports two US State Department propaganda vehicles: SW Radio Africa, a US State Department funded short-wave radio station that beams anti-Mugabe propaganda into Zimbabwe, and the Voice of America’s Studio 7, also funded by the State Department to broadcast US foreign policy positions into Zimbabwe. All political parties in Zimbabwe have, in their recent Memorandum of Understanding, urged journalists to abandon these pirate radio stations to “start working for the good of the country rather than for its enemies.” Jenni Williams and Woza are not, as Zunes falsely claims, working independently of the US government.

Zunes is close to individuals and organizations that are members of the US foreign policy establishment (Freedom House head and Council on Foreign Relations member Peter Ackerman) and have received funding from the US government and ruling class foundations to train popular insurrection groups to overthrow US foreign policy targets (Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institute). He has been criticized from the left by Michael Barker, Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster, and George Ciccariello-Maher and Eva Golinger. He is intolerant of criticism, asking WordPress to shut down my blog for criticisms of his association with Ackerman.

His modus operandi is to accept State Department denunciations of most US foreign policy targets as true, while attacking Washington’s foreign policy for being based on hypocrisy. He denies that insurrectionary movements trained by organizations that are funded by wealthy individuals, ruling class foundations and Western governments are agents of US imperialism, portraying them instead as independent grassroots groups.

There is much about Zunes to raise doubts about his politics.

Heidi Holland’s Dinner with Mugabe: Failed Demonography

2008-09-28T18:04:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

Journalist Heidi Holland’s biography of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, Dinner with Mugabe, begins with the assumption that Zimbabwe’s long-standing president is a monster. In addition, Mugabe, who recently struck a deal with factions of the opposition MDC to share power, is accused by his biographer of creating “a de facto one party state,” [1] and of “failings and excesses” that have left Zimbabweans “starving” [2] – standard fare from Western journalists.

The fact that Zimbabwe’s opposition now controls the legislature and is due to hold a majority of cabinet posts clashes violently with Holland’s depiction of the country as a de facto one party state. By comparison, no one, much less Holland, complains about South Africa, truly a de facto one party state, which suggests that whatever beefs she has with Zimbabwe have nothing to with it being a de facto one party state, (which it isn’t) otherwise we might expect South Africa, and not just Zimbabwe, to fall within her sights (which it hasn’t.)

As for the hunger of Zimbabweans being due to what Holland describes as Mugabe’s failings and excesses, this too clashes violently with reality. Western sanctions have blocked Zimbabwe’s access to balance of payment support, development aid and other lines of credit. Additionally, drought and electricity shortages have created food insecurity throughout southern Africa, including Zimbabwe. [3] Only if bad weather and standing up to Western bullying count as failings, have Holland’s charges substance.

Proving that Mugabe is a monster, as opposed to uncritically accepting his status as one, isn’t on Holland’s agenda, any more than proving any of her other charges is. All accusations are to be taken as given, starting points for exploring “the untold story of how a freedom fighter became a tyrant.” Holland’s quest, then, isn’t to challenge the received, though unsubstantiated, wisdom, but to affirm it, offering a “psychobiography of a man whose once-brilliant career has ruined Zimbabwe and cast shame on the African continent.”

This reveals much about Holland. Mugabe’s “once brilliant career”, happens to coincide with the period during which he played by the West’s rules, while his subsequent “ruining” of Zimbabwe, coincides with his breaking the rules to redress historical wrongs related to land ownership and to carry out other measures to invest Zimbabwe’s break with colonialism with substantive content. In other words, the view that says Mugabe was once a paragon who has become a tyrant equates his early “brilliance” to keeping former colonists in London and international lenders happy while chalking up as a “failure and excess” his measures to reverse Western domination. This is a curious view from the perspective of democracy, but perfectly understandable from the point of view of imperialism.

Dinner with Mugabe is a “psychobiography,” the standard form favored by authors who want to avoid substantive policy issues, in favor of dwelling in a comic-book world of heroes and villains. There is a shocking absence of policy mentioned in most discussions of politics, including – if not especially – among many on the left, who think the brilliance of any political analysis can be measured by the number of times the author uses the words “thug,” “brutal dictator” and “tyrant.” Holland’s biography is in this mold.

What of policies? It is worthwhile to quote Michael Parenti on this.

“One of the things I try to do is find out what leaders actually do when they’re in power. That’s one of the great hidden questions in history. You can read about six or seven different biographies of Stalin, and they never tell you what he actually did in terms of the programs of the country. You read about his purges of Bukharin and Zinoviev and his fight with Trotsky and this and that. But what were the socio-economic policies he actually pursued? The same with Hitler. I’ve read numerous biographies of Hitler. What did Hitler actually do? What was his political economic program? You find out it was a program in which he cut the taxes for the rich, he cut back wages, he destroyed unions and privatized everything.” [4]

Silence on the political and economic programs of leaders is particularly evident in the case of Zimbabwe, where Western political analyses almost invariably ignore the policies of Zimbabwe’s main political parties and the differences between them. In extreme cases, not only are the policies of the parties ignored, their differences are denied. For example, Shawn Hattingh, a research and education officer at the International Labor Research and Information Group, wrote an August 14, 2008 MRZine article, describing Zanu-PF and the MDC as two sides of the same neo-liberal coin.

There’s no question the MDC is neo-liberal. The party’s 2000 "Social and Economic Policies for a New Millennium," makes a commitment to a program of privatization. Foreign direct investment, under a MDC government, would be courted by the appointment of a "fund manager to dispose of government-owned shares in publicly quoted companies.” [5]

Eddie Cross, then the MDC’s Secretary of Economic Affairs, explained the party’s economic plan.

"First of all, we believe in the free market. We do not support price control. We do not support government interfering in the way people manage their lives. We are in favor of reduced levels of taxation. We are going to fast track privatization. All fifty government (enterprises) will be privatized within a two-year frame, but we are going far beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the Central Statistics Office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years." [6]

Eight years later, the MDC’s fondness for neo-liberalism remains undiminished. The party set out its core beliefs and proposals in its 2008 election platform, declaring an unwavering commitment to the safety and security of individual and corporate property rights and the opening of industry to foreign direct investment. Expatriation of profits is favored, without restriction. The party promised to privatize postal services, telecom and electronic media and to remove the price controls the Mugabe government has introduced to protect Zimbabweans from the ravages of hyperinflation. The Zanu-PF government’s economic indigenization program, which seeks to place control of the country’s resources in the hands of Zimbabweans, would also be cut by an MDC government. Private enterprise would be the engine of economic growth in a new Zimbabwe – particularly private enterprise owned by foreign investors. [7]

Zanu-PF, contrary to Hattingh’s delusions, is not neo-liberal. If it were, there would be no public companies for the MDC to promise to privatize, no subsidies for basic goods the MDC could propose to eliminate, and no differential treatment of foreign investors for the MDC to pledge to abolish. Moreover, were Zanu-PF neo-liberal, it would be the first and only case of a neo-liberal party that has rejected, and has been rejected by, the IMF, and the only neo-liberal party that restricts foreign ownership levels in key sectors, pursues public policy goals through state ownership of key enterprises, provides subsidized food baskets, imposes price controls and rejects national treatment of foreign investors.

The fact of the matter is that it is precisely because the Zanu-PF government is not neo-liberal that the US, Britain and EU have campaigned vigorously to drive Mugabe – and his non-neo-liberal policies – out of Harare. No Third World government can generate the following record without running afoul of Washington, London and Brussels.

o “Total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, are very high. In the most recent year, government spending equaled 50.3 percent of GDP. Privatization has stalled, and the government remains highly interventionist;

o “The government sets price ceilings for essential commodities such as agricultural seeds, bread, maize meal, sugar, beef, stock feeds, and fertilizer; controls the prices of basic goods and food staples; influences prices through subsidies and state-owned enterprises and utilities;

o “The government will consider foreign investment up to 100 percent in high-priority projects but applies pressure for eventual majority ownership by Zimbabweans;

o “Zimbabwe has burdensome tax rates. The top income tax rate is 47.5 percent, and the top corporate tax rate is 30 percent.” [8]

To be sure, the policies that have been pursued by the Zanu-PF government are not socialist, but they are, at the same time, deeply hostile to neo-liberalism, and lean more strongly in the direction of social democracy than the economic policies of many social democratic and socialist governments elsewhere.

At one point, in the 1990s, the Mugabe government did accept the neo-liberal economic structural adjustment program demanded by the IMF, with devastating consequences. From 1991 to 1995, Mugabe’s government implemented the IMF program as a condition of receiving balance of payment support and the restructuring of its debt. The program required the government to cut its spending deeply, fire tens of thousands of civil servants, and slash social programs. Zimbabwe’s efforts to nurture infant industries were to be abandoned. Instead, the country’s doors were to be opened to foreign investment. Harare would radically reduce taxes and forbear from any measure designed to give domestic investors a leg up on foreign competitors, even though the US, Germany, Japan and South Korea, as young developing countries, had become capitalist powerhouses by adopting the very same protectionist and import substitution policies the IMF was forbidding.

The effect of the IMF program was devastating. Manufacturing employment tumbled nine percent between 1991 and 1996, while wages dropped 26 percent. Public sector employment plunged 23 percent and public sector wages plummeted 40 percent. [9] In contrast to the frequent news stories today on Zimbabwe’s fragile economy, attributed erroneously to “Mugabe’s disastrous land policies”, the Western press barely noticed the devastation the IMF’s disastrous economic policies brought to Zimbabwe. By 1996, the Mugabe government was starting to back away from the IMF prescriptions. By 1998, it was in open revolt, imposing new tariffs to protect infant industries and providing incentives to black Zimbabwean investors as part of an affirmative action program to encourage African ownership of the economy. These policies were diametrically opposed, not only to the IMF’s program of structural adjustment, but to the open door goals of US foreign policy. By 1999, the break was complete. The IMF refused to extend loans to Zimbabwe. By February, 2001, Zimbabwe was in arrears to the Bretton Woods institution. Ten months later, the US introduced the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery, a dagger through the heart of Zimbabwe’s economy, which denied the country lines of credit from international lending institutions and pushed the economy into a tailspin. “Zimbabwe,” says Mugabe, “is not a friend of the IMF and is unlikely to be its friend in the future.” [10]

While Holland’s goal in writing Dinner with Mugabe is to reinforce the campaign of vilifying Mugabe begun in London, Washington, and Brussels, her biography only accomplishes its aim if the starting assumption of the book – that Mugabe is a monster – is accepted. If you don’t accept it, the book does quite the opposite of what it sets out to do. Through a series of interviews with people who have played significant roles in Mugabe’s life, texture, context and understanding, deeply at odds with the comic-book caricature of the man, emerge. If you read only the transcripts of the interviews Holland builds her book around, and not her interpretation of the transcripts, you come away with an entirely different impression than the one Holland intends. In this, Holland has utterly failed as a demonographer.

Through the lens of people who have known him, Mugabe is portrayed as a revolutionary forced to make concessions and compromises to deal with the world as it is, not as he would like it to be. Britain often plays the role of spoiling, blocking and undermining the revolutionary aims of Zimbabwe’s national liberation struggle. “Mugabe,” explains Holland, “was not just a political leader, but a revolutionary one, pledged to righting the wrongs of the past.” [11] Britain, however, has made the journey a difficult one.

To balance her sensationalist and demonical caricature of her subject, Holland details the social gains Zimbabwe has achieved under Mugabe’s leadership.

“His administration guaranteed educational opportunities for Zimbabwe’s black population where few had existed before. High school enrollment, which had been about two percent at the time of independence, grew to 70 percent by 1990, and Zimbabwe’s literacy rate rose from 45 percent to nearly 80 percent in the same period.” [12] He “did more to educate his people during his early years in office than any other leader in Africa.’ [13]

She notes, too, that “Mugabe also developed public health facilities to the point where rural dwellers were able to receive medical attention within walking distance of their villages.” [14]

While Mugabe is sometimes portrayed as an anti-white racist, Holland sets the record straight, pointing out that Mugabe “did his best to persuade the country’s 200,000 whites, including its 45,000 commercial farmers, to remain in Zimbabwe.” [15] She cites Mac McGuiness, the former leader of the notorious anti-insurgency unit of the Rhodesian army, the Selous Scouts.

Mugabe “undertook at independence to let bygones be bygones and he never lifted a finger against his former enemies, including Ian Smith, who was allowed to live in Zimbabwe as long as he pleased and to criticize Mugabe whenever he chose for the rest of his life. He was more generous to Smith than Smith was to him, that’s for sure.” [16]

Lady Soames, whose husband Lord Soames was the British governor of Zimbabwe until the first elections in 1980, told Holland that Mugabe was a “Marxist utopian…determined to promote state socialism even if he knew he couldn’t practice it.” [17]

On this score, Lord Carrington, the former British foreign minister who represented Britain at the Lancaster House talks which led to Zimbabwe’s independence, noted in conversation with Mugabe’s psychobiographer that Mugabe was forced to rein in his Marxist aspirations after witnessing the experiences of revolutionary governments in neighboring countries. During his exile in Tanzania and Mozambique, Carrington explained that:

“Mugabe had seen exactly what had happened to the economies of those two countries as a result of kicking out the whites and generally introducing pan-African socialism…So I thought, what with him being a Marxist…he was going to be very different indeed in office (but) once in office he became a capitalist, didn’t he?” [18]

This wasn’t Mugabe’s first encounter with compromise. Lord Carrington explained to Holland that:

“Everyone wanted some sort of solution (at Lancaster House) except Mugabe, who didn’t think it was necessary. And he was probably right. There is no doubt that Mugabe would not have signed the Lancaster House Agreement if presidents Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and Samora Machel of Mozambique hadn’t prompted him to. [19]

They more than prompted him to. The two leaders told Mugabe that the guerilla forces fighting for the principle of one-man-one-vote and return of land confiscated by British settlers could no longer use their countries as bases from which to launch attacks against the Smith regime, forcing Mugabe to the negotiating table just when a military victory was in view. Had the liberation forces been allowed their military victory, much would have been different.

Mugabe was also forced into a compromise over the IMF’s economic structural adjustment program, Esap. Father Fidelis Mukonori, leader of Zimbabwe’s Jesuits, and a friend of Mugabe’s, told Holland that:

“Mugabe accepted Esap, saying he had little choice because it was imposed by northern hemisphere big-wings who never questioned its wisdom or side effects and who would refuse to work with you – if you didn’t…it caused a lot of suffering and Mugabe believed it marked the beginning of Zimbabwe’s dissatisfaction with Zanu-PF.” [20]

On the MDC, whose founding in 2000 was largely directed by Britain, Holland concedes what Mugabe has complained about for years: that the MDC is a vehicle of Britain and the white commercial farmers. She writes:

“It appears that Mugabe was correct in his belief that the former colonist was aiding and abetting the forces that opposed him, namely the MDC, in cahoots with the predominantly white Zimbabweans who had colonized and financed the party.” [21]

And further:

“Some European countries, including Britain, had given financial and other forms of support to the MDC. White farmers gave cheques to Morgan Tsvangirai on television during the 2000 election campaign.” [22]

If Holland’s book is largely unintentionally sympathetic to Mugabe in the reflections of those she interviews, it is most sympathetic in its consideration of land reform. Blame for the crises that have attended the Mugabe government’s efforts to democratize patterns of land ownership is laid squarely at the feet of the British government.

Holland begins by eliciting a favorable assessment of Mugabe by Clare Short, Tony Blair’s secretary of state for international development, who earned notoriety in Zimbabwe for backing away from the commitment made by the Thatcher government to help Harare defray the costs of land redistribution. In a letter to the Zimbabwe government, she wrote: “I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchases in Zimbabwe.” She closed by expressing concern that Mugabe’s land reform policies would impair foreign investor confidence. Interviewed by Holland, Short noted that: “Land was the point of colonialism and all the ugly power issues that went with it. Mugabe was a giant of history who liberated his country from oppression.” [23]

One of the most revealing parts of Holland’s book concerns the experience of Rajan Soni, hired by the British government as a land reform consultant. Once New Labour was in charge, Soni discovered that:

“It was absolutely clear from the attitude of (Clare Short’s) staff towards his recommendations that Labour’s strategy was to accelerate Mugabe’s unpopularity by failing to provide him with funding for land redistribution…They thought that if they didn’t give him money for land reform his people in the rural areas would start to turn against him. That was their position. They wanted him out, and they were going to do whatever they could to hasten his demise.” [24]

Land reform was a pressing issue in Zimbabwe that could not be ignored. Father Mukonori told Holland that:

“Everywhere…from town to town and village to village, the cry was the same as it had been during the war and throughout our history: ‘The soil is ours. The land question was never resolved. We want it resolved. The constitution was declared in London. We did not vote for it.’” [25]

While Holland attributes Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown to Mugabe’s excesses, her interview with the Selous Scout’s Mac McGuiness reveals a different view: “I think,” McGuiness told Holland, “that had the promises made to Mugabe been kept by the…British and others, Zimbabwe would not be in the state it is in today.” (26) Dennis Norman, a white farmer who became Zimbabwe’s first agriculture minister, agrees: “Mugabe couldn’t solve the land issue without money and he didn’t have money. I do blame Britain for that.” [27]

The texture, context and understanding offered by McGuiness, Norman and others are nowhere evident in Holland’s own depiction of Mugabe post-1999. While she portrays the early Mugabe as a hero of national liberation keen on righting historical wrongs, she turns sour on him at the point Mugabe takes the first bold post-independence steps to establish a substantive independence by expropriating the land of white commercial farmers for redistribution to black Zimbabweans. Liberation heroes can be feted so long as their actions leave the basic structure of Western economic domination in place. Encroach on capitalist property rights, impose conditions on foreign investment, wall off parts of the economy to foreign investors, favor domestic investors over Western ones, and reclaim stolen land, and honors and admiration soon turn to execration.

Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has been, to a diminishing degree, dominated by the West. Its economy, natural resources and land have historically been controlled by outsiders and settlers who came from outside and took what they wanted. Over the years, the Mugabe government has gradually asserted Zimbabwe’s independence, resisting US and British imperialist intrigues in southern Africa, ultimately rejecting the economic prescriptions of the Bretton Woods institutions (though accepting them at first), promoting black ownership of Zimbabwe’s resources and economy, and democratizing patterns of land ownership. Western governments, representing corporations and investors with interests in open door access to Zimbabwe, and white commercial farmers seeking to recover privileges established under racist Rhodesian rule, have used their considerable resources to thwart the Zanu-PF government’s efforts to build a truly independent Zimbabwe. An important part of the campaign has been to vilify Mugabe, to portray him as liberation hero turned tyrant. In its goals, Heidi Holland’s, Dinner with Mugabe, is part of this campaign. However, anyone who reads the book critically will discover there is much in it to challenge the comic-book caricature the author sets out to reinforce.

1. Heidi Holland, Dinner with Mugabe, Penguin Books, 2008. p. xx.
2. Holland, p. xv.
3. Stephen Gowans, “The real cause of Zimbabwe’s food crisis,” Race & History, June 4, 2005. http://www.raceandhistory.com/selfnews/viewnews.cgi?newsid1117908112,43270,.shtml
4. Michael Parenti in Joel Wendland, “Interview with Michael Parenti,” Political Affairs, December, 2004. http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/387/
5. Social and Economic Policies for a New Millennium," MDC policy paper, May 26, 2000.
6. Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge - Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice, Merlin Press, 2002.
7. Noah Tucker, “In the Shadow of Empire,” 21st Century Socialism, August 3, 2008, http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/in_the_shadow_of_empire_01694.html
8. http://www.heritage.org/Index/country.cfm?id=Zimbabwe
9. Antonia Juhasz, “The Tragic Tale of the IMF in Zimbabwe,” Daily Mirror of Zimbabwe, March 7, 2004.
10. Herald (Zimbabwe) September 13, 2005.
11. Holland, p. 73.
12. Holland, p. xx.
13. Holland, p. 71.
14. Holland, p. xx.
15. Ibid.
16. Holland, p. 36.
17. Holland, p. 74.
18. Holland, p. 65.
19. Holland, p. 60.
20. Holland, p. 136.
21. Holland, p. 104.
22. Holland, p. 139.
23. Holland, p. 102.
24. Holland, p. 105.
25. Holland, p. 138.
26. Holland, p. 36.
27. Holland, p. 121.

Zunes’ actions: I’m all for free speech, so long as it doesn’t affect me personally

2008-09-07T18:08:00.006-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

Like the autocratic governments he criticizes, Stephen Zunes’ tolerance of free speech stops at criticism of himself. Yesterday, he asked WordPress.Com, which hosts my blog, What’s Left, to shut me down over critical comments I made in my September 4 post, “The War Over South Ossetia.” This is indeed strange behavior for a critic of autocracies who celebrates pro-democracy movements against governments that allegedly limit civil and political liberties, including advocacy rights.

Anyone visiting my blog on Saturday would have been presented with the following message: This blog has been suspended or archived for violation of the terms of service.

When I asked WordPress why I had been shut down, WordPress lifted the suspension and sent this explanation:

Hi,

Your blog is posting information about a certain individual who writes for antiwar.com. The information identifies him and makes wrong statements about who he works for.

If you can fully prove what you write then you are welcome to do so. If not you cannot do this. While some allegations or opinions of people can be published without a problem - we are not restricting free speech - publishing information which could lead to harm is something we do take action on.

Can you help by editing the post(s) concerned?

Mark

I replied to Mark that same day.

Hi Mark,

It's difficult to be sure that by making the edits you request that I will address the complaint, because I can't be sure who says I've made wrong statements about who he works for and therefore I can't be sure which edits are called for. I can only guess.

My guess is that the complainant is Stephen Zunes. He recently wrote an article for antiwar.com (and you say the individual writes for antiwar.com) and he complained elsewhere about a September 4 post of mine, and not that I've made a wrong statement about who he works for, but that I've made a wrong statement about the nature of the organization an associate of his is the head of.

The statement does not reflect my own opinion, but is documented in the academic literature. The statement -- that the organization Freedom House, is interlocked with the CIA -- is documented in Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988, p. 28.

Assuming the Zunes' complaint led to my blog being suspended, and inasmuch as the references to Zunes in the post are incidental, I've removed them. I trust this satisfies your concerns.

Steve

Mark from WordPress replied:

Thanks.

It's always difficult for us when someone does state that actual harm could come to them and we do what we can to check. We are not out to stifle any criticisms, just hopefully remove the parts that were causing the problem.

You are correct in who you said it was.

Mark

Stephen Zunes left a comment on my War over South Ossetia article on the In These New Times web site, where the article had been re-posted. He did not leave a comment on my WordPress blog.

"Gowans falsely claims in his article that I believe that Georgian president Saakashvili is a “great democrat.” I never said such a thing. In fact, I am highly critical of Saakashvili (see my article http://www.antiwar.com/zunes/?articleid=13332) and have written about his authoritarian tendencies, as well as U.S. support for the Georgian government and the U.S. role in the recent war.

More seriously, Stephen Gowans accuses me of being an associate of someone who heads an organization that is interlocked with the CIA. In reality, I am not an associate of anyone who heads any organization which has any connections with the CIA. Anyone familiar with the scholarly work, my political writings, and my activism know that I would never do such a thing.”

The comment appears in the original at http://inthesenewtimes.com/2008/09/05/the-war-over-south-ossetia/#comments

Regarding Zunes’ complaint:

Zunes is academic advisor to the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict. The Center is headed by Peter Ackerman. Peter Ackerman is also the head of Freedom House. According to Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, “Freedom House, which dates back to the early 1940s, has had interlocks with AIM, the World Anticommunist League, Resistance International and U.S. government bodies such as Radio Free Europe and the CIA, and has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the government and international right wing.”

On innumerable occasions, Zunes has celebrated the Rose Revolution, and other US-sponsored and manipulated movements that have cleared the way for the rise to power of US proxies. In the opening paragraphs of his February 17, 2008 Z-Net article, “Nonviolent Action and Pro-Democracy Struggles,” he refers to these movements as “popular nonviolent civil insurrections” to topple “corrupt and autocratic regimes,” and makes specific mention of the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the ouster of Milosevic in Serbia.

Significantly, all three swept Russian-aligned leaders out of power, and installed US clients who have imposed neo-liberal policies and moved to re-orient their economies and militaries toward the US. All three received financial and other backing from government agencies, wealthy individuals and ruling class think tanks in the West, including from Freedom House. At least two of the leaders installed as a result of these “popular nonviolent civil insurrections” have trampled on political and civil liberties and violated their own laws to pursue US ruling class interests.

While celebrating the Rose Revolution as a popular nonviolent civil insurrection to oust an autocratic and corrupt government, Zunes now claims to be critical of Saakashvili. Perhaps he is. But it is as impossible to separate Saakashvili from the Rose Revolution as it is to separate Lenin from the Bolshevik Revolution. Zunes’ celebrating the Rose Revolution, while saying he is critical of Saakashvili, is like celebrating unprotected sex with prostitutes and intravenous drug users and then deploring HIV infection. Indeed, therein is the essential character of Zunes’ disingenuousness. He acts as a cheerleader for a process which brings champions of US ruling class interests to power, and then deplores the outcome. Either he is incapable of following a causal chain, or his game is to bamboozle others into believing that the “popular nonviolent uprisings” he and his friends champion are not part of the apparatus of US imperialism, but are spontaneous uprisings against autocracy. Spontaneous and home-grown they are not.

Significantly, in the same opening paragraphs of the abovementioned Z-Net article, Zunes accuses the governments of Zimbabwe, Iran, Belarus, and Myanmar – all targets of Washington’s regime change program – as “disingenuously” claiming that “popular nonviolent civil insurrections of the kind that toppled” governments “in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine” are somehow part of an effort by the” US government “to instigate ‘soft coups’ against governments deemed hostile to American interests and replace them by more compliant regimes.”

In keeping with Zunes’ own modus operandi, the leaders of these countries might reply that Zunes has made false allegations, since he cannot know whether their fears of a US soft coup are disingenuous or not, without knowing their minds, and without knowing what evidence they have of a soft coup in the making.

The evidence is not lean. The history of US relations with these countries; Washington’s stated intentions to seek to change the governments of all four; the richly documented involvement of “nonviolent prodemocracy” activists in training insurrectionists; and the interconnections among nonviolent prodemocracy advocates, US ruling class think tanks, and US government agencies, all point to fears of soft coups being justified. To offer a single example: In April of 2007, the US State Department acknowledged that it was working with Zimbabwean prodemocracy advocates to overthrow the Mugabe government. Harare’s pointing to this is not disingenuousness and demagogy; it’s reality.

While Zunes wraps himself in the flags of “democracy” and “anti-authoritarianism” his behavior doesn’t seem to be particularly democratic or anti-authoritarian. I know of no one who relies so desperately on appeals to authority to make his case as Zunes does. When he wanted to stifle criticism of color revolution guru, Gene Sharp -- and shutting down offending WordPress blogs wasn’t an option -- he enlisted Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn to sign a letter in defense of Sharp. For Zunes this obviated the drudgery of putting together something like a coherent fact-based defense of Sharp, and obviated Zunes’ readers from having to think for themselves. Instead, they were invited to let Chomksy and Zinn do their thinking for them. This hardly strikes me as being consistent with the anti-authoritarian canon.

As regards Zunes’ commitment to democracy, you can decide for yourself whether the “popular insurrections” in Georgia, Ukraine and Serbia -- which Zunes celebrates -- have led to any advance in the project of democracy in those countries, conceived either in liberal, Marxist or classical terms. On the contrary, the outcome of these US-sponsored and manipulated insurrections has been uniformly negative for the people, and uniformly positive for the US ruling class. But, given who’s funding these insurrections, that should come as no surprise.

The War over South Ossetia

2008-09-04T18:37:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

On August 4, 2008, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin phoned US assistant secretary of state Daniel Fried to complain about the build-up of Georgian troops in the vicinity of South Ossetia. [1] Two days later, South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity, having evidence that Georgia planned a military strike before the month was out, told Denis Keefe, Britain’s ambassador to Georgia, that a Georgian invasion was imminent. [2]

Georgia had increased its military budget from $30 million to $1 billion per year, under its US-aligned president, Mikhail Saakashvili, relying on deep infusions of aid from Washington. [3] A country of only 8 million, Georgia had sent 2,000 troops to help US forces occupy Iraq, the third largest occupation force in the oil-rich country, after the US and Britain. Tbilisi “considered participation in Iraq as a sure way to prepare the Georgian military for ‘national reunification’ – the local euphemism of choice for restoring Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgian control.” [4]

Georgia’s attack was emboldened by three US moves: the sending of “advisers to build up the Georgian military, including an exercise” in July “with more than 1,000 American troops”; Washington’s “pressing hard to bring Georgia into the NATO orbit;” and the US “loudly proclaiming its support for Georgia’s territorial integrity in the battle with Russia over Georgia’s separatist enclaves.” [5]

On the eve of the war, Russia convoked an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, presenting a resolution that called on both sides to renounce the use of force. [6] The US, Britain and France refused to back the resolution, arguing that it was unbalanced. Only South Ossetia and Russia should be called upon to renounce the use of force, they said. Georgia should be allowed to defend herself. [7]

The above shows that far from restraining the Georgian hand, the US was facilitating, even encouraging, an attack; that the South Ossetians and Russians anticipated an attack and that the Russians used their position at the United Nations to try to stop it; and that the West was setting the stage to blame the attack on the victims.

The war was swift, and for the Georgians, ignominious. Georgian forces were rapidly pushed back, their positions easily over-run and much of their equipment captured or destroyed. In the end, Saakashvili would rail against Russian aggression, and wonder histrionically who was next.

The Russians did not strike first, as Georgian officials now claim. The New York Times cited evidence from an extensive set of witnesses that Georgia’s military began to pound South Ossetia’s capital, Tskhinvali, with heavy barrages of rocket and artillery fire, after Saakashvili gave the order and before Russian troops entered Georgia. The result was hundreds of civilian deaths. Among the targets of the Georgian assault was a Russian peacekeeping base. There “has been no independent evidence, beyond Georgia’s insistence that its version is true, that Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages,” reported The New York Times. [8] Moreover, an unnamed senior US official told the newspaper that Russia’s response didn’t look “premeditated, with a massive staging of equipment,” adding that “until the night before the fighting, Russia seemed to be playing a constructive role.” [9]

On August 26, Moscow recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent. Meanwhile, Saakashvili vowed to rebuild his army to try again at a later date. [10]

Origin of Tensions

Ossetians have their own language and, in recognition of this, enjoyed autonomy within Soviet Georgia. Abkhazia, too, was an autonomous region. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Georgia declared the autonomous status of both regions to be void, and attempted to integrate them. This sparked fighting between the Georgians on one side, and the South Ossetians and Abkhaz on the other. The two regions “settled into a tenuous peace monitored by Russian peacekeepers,” in which both enjoyed a de facto independence. But “frictions with Georgia increased sharply in 2004,” when Saakashvili was elected,“ pledging “to restore Tbilisi’s rule over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.” [11]

Pipelines

There are two overland routes for pumping petroleum resources from the oil- and gas-rich Caspian basin to markets in Europe: through Russia, and alternatively, through Western-built pipelines that run through Georgia. Washington would like Caspian oil and gas to be delivered to European markets through the pipelines Western oil companies control in Georgia; Moscow would like Europe to continue to rely on pipelines that transit Russia. [12]

Two Western pipelines run through Georgia: “the 1,000-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line, which can deliver up to one million barrels of crude a day from the Azerbaijani coast on the Caspian Sea, through Georgia and Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea”; and the BP-operated Western Route Export pipeline, capable of carrying up to “160,000 barrels of oil a day from Baku on the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan to the Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa.” [13]

For Washington, the routes through Georgia represent a way of checking “Russia's control over pipelines and energy resources.” Pipeline projects through Georgia are valued owing to their potential “to loosen Russia's grip over European energy supplies”, and to fatten the bottom lines of US oil companies. [14]

From Moscow’s perspective, control of Georgia and its pipelines puts it in a position to establish an “energy chokehold on Europe." [15]

Georgia, then, is of strategic importance to Washington because Western oil companies can transport “oil, and soon also gas, that lies not only in Azerbaijan, but beyond it in the Caspian Sea, and beyond it in Central Asia” to European markets, through Georgia, thereby cutting the Russians out of the action and giving Washington control over Europe’s energy resources. [16] Equally, Georgia is of strategic importance to Moscow for the same reasons.

Encircling Russia

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the United States found itself in a unique position. As the lone remaining superpower, it had the potential to dominate the world for the foreseeable future. To maintain its primacy, it would have to prevent potential rivals from growing strong enough to challenge US pre-eminence. The route to remaining top dog lay in unchallenged military supremacy, and the determination to use military force to eclipse the rise of potential competitors.

The Pentagon set out its strategy in the Defense Planning Guide, a 16-page Pentagon policy statement leaked to The New York Times, on March 18, 1992.

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival…First, the U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. We must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” [17]

In 2000, a group of US ruling class activists established The Project for a New American Century, a think-tank whose aim was to press the Clinton administration to more closely follow the 1992 Defense Planning Guide’s blueprint for US primacy. Members of the group -- investment bankers and CEOs who had circulated between top jobs in Washington and corporate America -- furnished the personnel for key positions in the Bush administration and would soon become the principal architects of the war on Iraq. They urged the Pentagon to eclipse the rise of new greater power competitors, and to adopt this as its main 21st century mission. [18]

Russia was, and remains, of particular concern to the US ruling class. While weak compared to the Soviet Union, it remains the country most able to challenge the US. To preserve US military pre-eminence, Washington seeks to build a ring around Russia, integrating countries on Russia’s periphery into the Nato military alliance. Despite promises that it would not expand toward Russia’s borders, Nato’s policy since the demise of the Soviet Union has been to aggressively expand, dismissing the alarm raised by Russian leaders as paranoia. Expansion serves the purpose of hemming Russia in militarily and expands markets for US arms manufacturers who supply the standardized military equipment Nato countries buy as part of the alliance’s equipment interoperability requirement.

A continuing strategy

While it seems as if Washington’s encirclement strategy is new, dating from the early aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, it is, on the contrary, an extension of a Western policy pursued since the beginning of the Cold War.

The Cold War, remarked R. Palme Dutt in 1962, was “directed against the Soviet Union” since it, and the countries it liberated in WWII “remained…completely independent of American domination and control. The aims of American world domination required the overthrow of this independent power.” [19] The new Cold War is no less directed at Russia, and is no less perpetrated by the US, than the old one (or the continuing one) was.

These “ultimate major aims,” Dutt continued, “required as their presupposition and first step the building up of a coalition of governments and armed forces under American control.” The “long-term strategic plan required the preliminary conquest of (the Soviet Union’s) periphery, and establishment of a chain of bases and hinterland territories from which to launch the offensive.” [20]

Thus, it has been US policy since the beginning of the Cold War to encircle Russia with a chain of bases and armies under US domination. The strategy was not born in 1992 and cannot be said to be the brainchild of neo-conservatives of either the Bush I or Bush II administrations. Its origins stretch back to the 1940s.

In the West, the spat between Georgia and the Ossetians appears to be rooted in longstanding ethnic animosity, but in Russia, it is seen quite differently. Russians understand that the United States is gradually encircling their country, and that Georgia is an important link in the chain. [21] Russian president Dmitri Medvedev complains of “being surrounded by bases on all sides” and of the “growing number of states…being drawn into the North Atlantic bloc.” [22] He and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin protest vehemently against US plans to site antimissile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, on Russia’s doorstep. They fear, justifiably, that the missile shield is aimed at Russia, and provides the US with a new offensive capability.

Saakashvili and the Rose Revolution

Mikhail Saakashvili is typical of local rulers Washington brings to power to act as its proxy on the ground. He is US-educated, fanatically pro-American, and implicitly shares the imperialist values of his backers in Washington. It is not by chance that the Saakashvili government enthusiastically pledged troops to the occupation of Iraq, and named a street in honor of George W. Bush.

With aid from the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and billionaire financier George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Saakashvili was carried to power by the so-called Rose Revolution of 2004, a US ruling class-financed overthrow movement that forced Georgia’s then president Eduard Shevardnadze, to step down. Soros’ intimate connection to Saakashvili’s rise to power is evidenced in his helping finance the Georgian government once Saakashvili was installed in the president’s office, and in Georgia’s designation as Sorositan by critics of the financier’s meddling. [23]

Washington was happy to partner with Soros to rid Georgia of Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister who was too close to Russia and not close enough to Washington. Intent on extending its ring of armies and military bases around its potential great power competitor, the US finagled Shevardnadze’s ouster and replaced him with the biddable puppet, Saakashvili.

The name for our profits is democracy

While the official propaganda holds Saakashvili to be a champion of democracy, the real story is quite different. The Georgian president is in reality a champion of Western investment interests who is prepared to suspend political and civil liberties to crush opposition to his pro-US economic policies.

The World Bank recognizes Saakashvili’s Georgia to be “the number one economic reformer in the world,” having climbed to 18th place from a shameful 112th under Shevardnadze, by creating “a friendly business environment.” Saakashvili earned the bank’s high praise by replacing Georgia’s progressive income tax system with a regressive flat tax; [24] privatizing publicly-owned assets; and gutting the civil service. The latter action sparked huge street protests last autumn, which Saakashvili put down with riot police, rubber bullets and truncheons, charging that the protesters were planning to stage a coup, with Russia’s collusion. [25] Ruling with an iron fist, he had no qualms about dispatching masked police officers to ransack an opposition television station, forcing it off the air. [26] Soon after, he declared a state of emergency, suspending advocacy rights and freedom of assembly – an action which, had it been done by his predecessor Shevardnadze, would have called forth howls of outrage and new infusions of aid for pro-democracy activists from Western governments, imperialist foundations and billionaires. On Saakashvili’s watch, by contrast, abridgments of civil and political liberties are met with fond reminiscences of the Rose Revolution and paeans to Saakashvili’s pro-American leanings and supposed democratic credentials.

Saakashvili won snap elections held two months after he cracked down on protestors, but his victory was secured under a cloud of accusations of blackmail and vote-buying. The government accused two opposition leaders of treason, charging they were conspiring with Russia to overthrow Saakashvili. [27] Having himself come to power with the aid of outside forces, Saakashvili more than anyone else knew the danger of foreign-directed overthrow movements, and perhaps knew better than others, how to defeat them.

Post Rose Revolution

Once Saakashvili had been installed as president, Washington scaled back funding to the civil society organizations that had been instrumental in destabilizing Shevardnadze’s rule, shifting aid instead to building up the central government, now under Saakashvili’s control. [28] Achieving the policy aim of installing a local proxy quite naturally led Washington to channel funding away from the manipulated “pro-democracy” civil society groups on the ground who paved the way for Saakashvili’s rise to power, to the government forces that would secure the friendly economic and military environment Washington desired. In other words, once civil society served its purpose, it was cut free.

Today, Rose Revolution true-believers are embittered. "Georgia is a semi-democracy. We have traded one kind of semi-democratic system for another,” laments Lincoln Mitchell, who worked for the Rose Revolution-funding Democratic Party-arm of the NED in Georgia from 2002 to 2004. “There is a real need to understand that what happened is another one-party government emerged." [29]

Naïve do-gooders who thought money pitch-forked into the coffers of civil society groups by wealthy individuals and the US government would create democracy in Georgia now complain that Georgia under Saakashvili is no better, and probably worse, than it was under Shevardnadze.

Mitchel, for example, points out that under Shevardnadze, there was freedom of assembly and the press, the government was too weak to crack down on dissent, and the parliament could lay a restraining hand on the president. Under Saakashvili, the media have far fewer freedoms, civil society has been weakened, the government is strong enough to crack down on dissent with ease, and the parliament is less able to restrain the president. As regards elections, they’re run no better under Saakashvili. [30]

Exporting color revolutions

The Los Angeles Times of September 2, 2008 ran a story on Nini Gogiberidze, a Georgian who “is deployed abroad to teach democracy activists how to agitate for change against their autocratic governments, going everywhere from Eastern Europe to train Belarusians to Turkey to coach Iranians.” She is not, predictably, deployed within her own semi-democratic country, working to bring down the liberal democracy-disdaining Saakashvili.

Gogiberidze’s salary is paid by the Soros-linked Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, funded by the Republican Party arm of the US Congress’s National Endowment for Democracy, headed by John McCain, a friend of Saakashvili. Freedom House, a US ruling class organization that is interlocked with the CIA and is headed by former Michael Milken right-hand man Peter Ackerman (a Stephen Zunes associate), also chips in.

Gogiberidze is hardly the kind of grassroots, left-leaning, radical democracy activist one is led to believe make up the officer corps of the Soros-funded international army against autocracy. Like one of her Zimbabwean colleagues, who is a white conservative businessman with a penchant for good manners and the British royals (who we’re to believe is working underground to overthrow the Mugabe government because he’s keenly interested in democracy), Gogiberidze sounds more like a conservative interested in promoting Western economic interests on behalf of Uncle Sam. She studied at the London School of Economics and is married to an investment banker. She’s also on the payroll of US ruling class foundations. Moscow “views the so-called color revolutions as US sponsored plots using local dupes to overthrow governments” Washington is unfriendly to “and install American vassals.” [31] Is it any wonder?

The Los Angeles Times reporter who brought the Gogiberidze story to light, mocks Moscow’s assessment of the color revolutions, while at the same time documenting the manifold connections Gogiberidze and her fellow color revolutionaries have to US ruling class organizations. The only way to square this circle – to explain how color revolutionaries can be on the regime changer’s payroll while mocking the idea that color revolutions are US-sponsored plots to overthrow governments Washington has targeted for regime change – is to believe billionaire financiers, CIA pass through organizations, and foundations dominated by US investment bankers and CEO’s, are really concerned with promoting democracy.

Conclusion

US ruling class activists and George Soros, sponsored dupes in Georgia to overthrow the Shevardnadze government to bring the ardently pro-US, pro-foreign investment, pro-imperialist Mikhael Saakashvili to power. Since ascending to the presidency, Saakashvili has gone on a neo-liberal binge, privatizing formerly publically-owned assets, replacing the country’s progressive income tax system with a regressive flat tax, and firing civil servants in heaps. While this has earned him the admiration of the World Bank, it has created unrest at home, which Saakashvili has put down with truncheons, rubber bullets, police attacks on opposition media, and abridgements of political and civil liberties.

At the same time, Saakashvili has acted to further his US-sponsor’s military designs, deploying 2,000 Georgian troops to Iraq, bulking up his military, clamoring to join Nato, and keeping Russia off kilter with incessant threats to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia militarily, now acted upon.

The great democrat, in the eyes of such color revolution hagiographers as Stephen Zunes, is hardly a democrat. Leaders who deploy troops to occupy conquered countries, who attempt to integrate regions that don’t want to be integrated, and who limit political and civil liberties when they threaten to derail the building of a business friendly environment, are not democrats, no matter how many dollars their supporters receive from Freedom House, George Soros and the National Endowment for Democracy.

The US seeks to expand its sphere of influence to hem Russia in militarily in order to preserve US pre-eminence; to draw new countries into the Nato alliance to expand markets for US arms manufacturers; and to secure new markets and investment opportunities for US investors and corporations in countries whose economic ties have historically been oriented toward Russia. Russia seeks to resist the encroachment, to hang on to as much as the former Soviet sphere of influence as possible.

To expand its influence into the former Soviet domain, Washington deploys a number of tactics. In Belarus, it sponsors a civil society-based overthrow movement to destablize the Russia-aligned government of Alexander Lukashenko. In Ukraine, it sponsored the Orange Revolution to force the Russian-aligned leader Viktor Yanukovich to yield power to the US-oriented Viktor Yushchenko. Washington is very likely to have sponsored, encouraged and aided the secessionist movement in Chechnya, with the aim of breaking the territory away from Russia.

To maintain, or in an attempt to restore, its influence in these regions, Moscow backs Lukashenko in Belarus and Yanukovich in Ukraine, facilitates Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s remaining independent of Georgia, and militarily crushed the Chechen secessionists.

The struggle to expand spheres of influence (the US) and to maintain or restore them (Russia) inevitably leads powers to take hypocritical positions: the US insists on Georgia’s territorial integrity (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) but denies that of Serbia (Kosovo); Russia insists on its own territorial integrity (Chechnya) but denies that of Georgia.

There is no doubt that the US is the more aggressive party in this clash, but it can be, because it is by far the stronger of the two. The jingoist depiction in the Western media of Russia as provoking a new Cold War and seeking to expand militarily into neighboring countries is without foundation and is an inversion of reality. The US pursuit of a Cold War against Russia has been carried on without interruption since the 1940s. It is not Russia that is aggressively acting to expand its sphere of influence, it is the US. And yet this reality is so infirmly grasped that it is possible for the leader of a country whose scores of thousands of troops occupy conquered Iraq and Afghanistan to lecture Russia that countries don’t invade other countries in the 21st century.

The Rose Revolution was not a people power-driven rebellion against autocracy but a movement of dupes sponsored and manipulated by Washington whose purpose was to pave the way for the rise to power of a US-educated lawyer with connections to Washington and Wall Street.

Saakashvili is not a hero of democratic reform, but a representative of US ruling class interests who is prepared to suspend civil and political liberties, tinker with elections, and commit war crimes if that’s what it takes to secure his patron’s economic and military objectives.

Russia did not initiate an attack on Georgia. Georgia launched an artillery and rocket barrage on the capital of South Ossetia and on Russian peacekeepers before Russia entered Georgia.

The US did not try to defuse tensions in the region; it has actively moved to inflame them.

Russia has not provoked a new Cold War; the US has allowed the Cold War is had pursued against Russia since the 1940s to heat up, using its puppet, Saakashvili to fan the embers.

1. RIA Novosti, August 4, 2008.
2. RIA Novosti, August 6, 2008.
3. Russia Today, August 8, 2008. US assistance to Georgia is about to increase significantly, with Washington announcing on September 3 that it is hiking economic aid to Georgia to $1 billion per year from $63 million in 2007, placing the country among the top recipients of US aid, along with Israel, Egypt, Turkey and Colombia: The Guardian (UK), September 3, 2008.
4. New York Times, August 10. 2008.
5. New York Times, August 13, 2008.
6. Independent (UK), August 8, 2008.
7. New York Times, August 10, 2008.
8. New York Times, September 3, 2008.
9. New York Times, August 10, 2008.
10. New York Times, August 26, 2008.
11. New York Times, August 10, 2008.
12. Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2008.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Zbginiew Brzinski, quoted in Serge Halimi, “The Return of Russia,” MRZine, August 28, 2008,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/halimi280808.html .
17. Nato in the Balkans, International Action Center, New York, 19998. p. 4.
18. http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
19. R. Palme Dutt, “Problem of Contemporary history,” International Publishers, New York, 1962.
20. Ibid.
21. View of Russia’s representative to NATO, New York Times, August 28, 2008.
22. New York Times, August 28, 2008.
23. Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2008.
24. “The political realities of ‘democratic’ Georgia,” World Socialist Website, August 18, 2008. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/saak-a18.shtml
25. New York Times, August 12, 2008.
26. New York Times, August 14, 2008.
27. “The political realities of “democratic” Georgia,” World Socialist Website, August 18, 2008. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/saak-a18.shtml
28. Glenn Kessler, “Georgian Democracy A Complex Evolution,” The Washington Post, August 24, 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/23/AR2008082301817_pf.html
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2008.

Negative Image: Robert Mugabe through the Lens of Western Propaganda

2008-08-14T16:31:00.003-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

Leaders who have committed offenses against democracy, human rights and international law on a level far graver than the offenses Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has been accused of committing, are rarely, if ever, vilified by Western government officials, the media and left intellectuals. By contrast, Robert Mugabe has been subjected to a sustained barrage of criticism, often bordering on the hysterical, for crimes that, laying aide whether they’ve been committed or not, are minor in comparison. I’ll show that an inconsistency in the treatment of Mugabe does indeed exist, and explore the reasons why. I’ll also show that there are compelling reasons to be skeptical of the case against Mugabe.

That Western state officials, journalists and commentators apply a double standard to Zimbabwe and its leader isn’t difficult to establish. One need look no further than the address made this year by Mugabe-opponent Arthur Mutambara, delivered on Heroes’ Day, when Zimbabweans commemorate their national liberation struggle. Mutambara’s opposition to Mugabe stretches back to the late 80s, when, as a young engineering student, he led anti-government protests at the University of Zimbabwe. Today, he leads one faction of Zimbabwe’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. In March, 2006, Mutambara vowed to remove Robert Mugabe from power with every tool at his disposal. [1]

“For the democratic forces in Zimbabwe, Western double standards and dishonesty have actually damaged our cause and cost us immensely. Western governments have undermined our legitimacy, strengthened our opponents (the dictatorship), removed our moral authority, and ruined our effectiveness and standing among Africans...We are sick and tired of the hypocrisy, double standards, racism and downright dishonesty. The West must not hide its true motive. Where are the Western democratic demands to Egypt, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Israel, Pakistan, and Kuwait? Moreover, what does the record of the US and UK in Iraq, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay teach us? What are the lessons from the ghettos of Chicago, New York and Los Angeles? Who took out Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende and Kwame Nkrumah? Who created and nursed Mobutu Sese Seko, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Jonas Savimbi and Osama Bin Laden?”

Mutambara’s criticisms of the West’s double standards echo those of the new ANC leader, Jacob Zuma, who, himself, has been critical of Mugabe.

“We had millions dying in Angola, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, but no one said the sky must fall. No one! I met Mugabe a couple of times and he asked me questions I could not answer. He was critical of President George Bush and former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He said: ‘These two are hypocrites. While criticizing me, they are embracing the leader of Pakistan, a military man who staged a coup against his government. He even wears a military uniform on TV. He is their friend, yet, he has no constitution. Those are double standards.’”

Zuma continued:

“I didn’t have an answer. There was rigging of elections in Nigeria. Even Olusegan Obasanjo, the outgoing president, admitted that there was rigging. But nobody said the sky must fall. Nobody said there must be regime change.

Thousands died in the Kenyan crisis. Nobody said there must be regime change. Let us not single out Zimbabwe as if it is the only country with such problems.” [2]

Of course, Mutambara’s and Zuma’s complaining that the West applies a double standard to Zimbabwe doesn’t make it so. But both leaders are only acknowledging what most Westerners don’t know: That crimes against democracy and human rights worse than any Mugabe have been accused of, happen in many countries throughout Africa – often where governments facilitate the profit-making of Western corporations and investors. There is a quid-pro-quo between these leaders and the Western governments that sponsor them. Allow me these offenses – which are undertaken on your behalf – and say nothing about them.

Newspapers dutifully document the crimes against democracy carried out in African countries, but infrequently, and in piecemeal fashion. It’s left to the careful reader, who clips articles and catalogues them for future reference, to piece together the connections and tease out the patterns. Rarely do the media draw attention to the patterns, but sometimes glimpses of them begin to emerge. On August 2, Britain’s The Independent noted that:

“On paper, Equatorial Guinea is one of the richest countries in Africa. In reality, the money is controlled by one man, President Obiang Nguema, a dictator who ‘won’ 97 per cent of the vote last time he bothered asking. The situation is similar in Gabon, where oil revenues have kept a dictator in power for more than 40 years. Yar'Adua became president in April 2007. He would say he was elected, but few who witnessed the poll would describe it as democracy.”

Yet both leaders, the newspaper points out, are supported by the British government. What The Independent doesn’t reveal, however, is that while the dictators of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are spared sanctions, threats of military intervention, and campaigns of demonization – and, on the contrary, enjoy London’s diplomatic support and military assistance -- the Mugabe government is the principal target, along with the Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir, of regime change efforts in Africa. Oil dictators who don’t bother with elections receive London’s quiet blessing, while Mugabe, who has just come through elections in which his party lost its legislative majority and placed second in the first round of the presidential poll, is sanctioned, threatened and demonized for alleged democratic lapses.

One could go further. Ethiopia’s prime minister Meles Zenawi was handpicked by former British prime minister Tony Blair to lead Blair’s “African renaissance.” Ethiopia receives humanitarian aid from Britain and annual injections of military aid from Washington. [3] Yet:

“The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has often dealt brutally with people deemed threatening to his fragile ruling coalition. In the capital, people suspected of supporting opposition groups routinely disappear from their neighborhoods, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, a pro-democracy group based in Addis Ababa.

Elsewhere, the government is conducting brutal campaigns against separatist rebels and opposition movements in the Ogaden and Oromia regions, where the council and reporters have documented widespread extrajudicial killings, illegal detention and torture.

The journalists were among thousands of people, including the country’s top opposition leaders, who were arrested in the capital during protests following Ethiopia’s 2005 elections, in which the opposition made significant gains.” [4]

On December 24, 2006, Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia, touching off an immense humanitarian catastrophe. There has been virtually no condemnation of this aggression -- anywhere. While the Marxist Internet discussion group, Marxmail, contains hundreds of exchanges and comments on Robert Mugabe (the majority negative) there are only a couple of dozen references to Meles Zenawi.

US-trained Ethiopian forces moved into Somalia shortly after US General John P. Abizaid, at the time responsible for US military activities in Africa, flew into Ethiopia to confer with Meles. Meles assured the US proconsul that the Ethiopian military would cripple the Islamic Courts Union, the Islamist movement that had won popular support among Somalis. Since then, Ethiopia ground forces, along with US air and naval forces, have battled the Somali resistance. [5] Thousands of Somalis have been killed, one million have been displaced and one-third needs emergency food aid. [6] This is a humanitarian catastrophe as worthy of attention as the catastrophe in Darfur and the too infrequently remarked – and much larger – humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq. But only the Darfurian catastrophe commands the attention of government officials, the media and do-gooders.

Were vilification of African leaders commensurate with the magnitude of their transgressions, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak – a man who has ruled Egypt as long as Robert Mugabe has led Zimbabwe – would surely be one of the most vilified leaders. Instead, last January “President Bush lavished praise on” Mubarak “while publicly avoiding mention of the government’s actions in jailing or exiling opposition leaders and its severe restrictions on opposition political activities.” [7] The severe restrictions include a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition party. Mubarak and his son Gamal, who is expected to succeed his father, are seen in Egypt correctly as “Washington’s lackeys.” [8] This explains why, rather than being taken to task for locking up opposition politicians, beating street demonstrators, imprisoning bloggers who criticize the president, and banning the creation of new opposition parties, Mubarak receives $2 billion in US aid every year – and is lavishly praised whenever the US president visits. [9]

The claim that Mugabe is a dictator, or that Zimbabwe is effectively a one-party state, is partly based on Mugabe’s longevity in power – 28 years. But there are African leaders who have been in power as long as or longer than Mugabe has, who Western government officials, the media and left intellectuals rarely, if ever, denounce as dictators. Apart from the already mentioned Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981, one year less than Mugabe, there is: Omar Bagon of Gabon, who has been in power 41 years, since 1967; Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, in power for 39 years, since 1969; Obiang Ngeuma Mbasongo of Equatorial Guinea, in power for 29 years, since 1979; and Paul Biya of Cameroon, in power for 26 years, since 1982. [10]

There’s an obvious double standard in the fact that there is no Western campaign to oust…

“President Omar Bongo (who) has the distinction of being the longest-reigning president on the African continent. He came to power on 2 December 1967 – 41 long years ago. But because he has not stepped on any Western interests, and still allows French and other Western capital to dominate his economy, Bongo can go to sleep if he wants as his people wallow in abject poverty, and not one Western government or its media will ever point one accusing finger in Bongo’s direction.” [11]

Even the CIA admits Bongo is a dictator. He…

“introduced a nominal multiparty system and a new constitution in the early 1990s. However, allegations of electoral fraud during local elections in 2002-03 and the presidential elections in 2005 have exposed the weaknesses of formal political structures in Gabon. Gabon's political opposition remains weak, divided, and financially dependent on the current regime.”

The reasons for Bongo’s immunity from demonization are revealed further on in the CIA account:

“Despite political conditions, a small population, abundant natural resources, and considerable foreign support have helped make Gabon one of the more prosperous and stable African countries.” [12]

A search for Omar Bongo in the Marxmail archives turns up only five references. Mugabe’s name comes up 976 times.

One could be excused for thinking that the following, from The New York Times of November 3, 2007, is a description of Robert Mugabe, for it fits the familiar outline, typical of portrayals of the Zimbabwean leader in the Western media. He is…

“domineering and abrasive. His opponents accuse him of hoarding and abusing power, and of running the nation through a clique that will neither tolerate dissent nor engage in dialogue with the opposition, which (he) has repeatedly made clear he despises and considers weak.

The government also faces pressure from rising prices and (high) unemployment, and over complaints about a weak judiciary that many government officials concede lacks independence and which the opposition says remains corrupt. Economic conditions remain difficult enough that many … travel abroad for work.”

The New York Times of August 14 notes that:

“Last fall, he deployed riot police with tear gas, rubber bullets and batons against unarmed demonstrators. He also used his police to destroy an opposition television station, which went off the air as masked officers stormed it. His critics say that…his record as a democrat was long ago checkered.”

You would think the references to the hoarding and abuse of power, to a weak judiciary, to the suppression of opposition media, to inflation and high unemployment, and to a checkered commitment to democracy, would call forth the same demands made in connection with Zimbabwe, that the West intervenes to save the long suffering people of this country from their tyrannical leader. Only the descriptions above are of Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili, much beloved in Western ruling class circles for dragging Georgia out of Russia’s orbit and placing it firmly in their lap. Accordingly, all is forgiven. There will be no sanctions imposed on Georgia, no discussion at the UN Security Council about how to punish Saakashvili’s “regime”, no BBC “The World Has its Say” program asking what “we” should do about Georgia, and no sustained media attack on Saakashvili and his government.

The inconsistency and double standards of Western governments undermine their commitment to democracy, but do they undermine Zimbabwe’s opposition, as Mutambara fears? This could only happen if the opposition is seen to be linked with the West in important ways (otherwise how could the West’s hypocrisy discredit Zimbabwe’s opposition?)

It’s not clear, however, that Western governments have undermined the opposition’s legitimacy, so much as the opposition has undermined its own legitimacy by courting and accepting funding and direction from Western governments, and from anyone else willing to play sugar daddy, from billionaire speculator George Soros to South Africa’s Democratic Alliance party. [13]

References to Western funding of the MDC, and that of its civil society front organizations, have cropped up often enough to cast doubt upon MDC assurances that it doesn’t accept foreign funding.

For years, the Mugabe government complained that Britain, and later the US, was bankrolling the MDC. Tony Blair provided partial confirmation when he told the House of Commons in 2003 that “We work closely with the MDC.” [14] While this didn’t amount to direct evidence of London acting as the party’s paymaster, it was at the very least an indication that the MDC isn’t working by itself. And, indeed, there are manifold connections between the MDC and Zimbabwe’s former colonial master.

The reality that the MDC has an office in London; that British prime minister Gordon Brown has formulated an economic recovery plan for Zimbabwe to be rolled out the moment Mugabe is gone [15]; that James Rose, an Australian with a background in journalism, is writing Tsvangirai's comment pieces in Western newspapers [16]; that Tsvangirai’s presidential campaign was run by Fleishman-Hillard with help from a former BBC political correspondent, Guto Harri [17]; and that “…between £5,000 and £10,000 a month…was being sent from the UK to back Mr. Tsvangirai's campaign” [18] doesn’t help the MDC’s claim to be an independent party with a made-in-Zimbabwe agenda.

But if there is any doubt about the source of MDC funding, the doubt was laid to rest when Tsvangirai “was caught on camera admitting that his organization was financed by European governments and corporations, the money being channeled through a British firm of political consultants, BSMG.” [19]

The New York Times of December 24, 2004 acknowledged that the MDC’s dependence on Western governments for funding had become an open secret. Civil society groups, the newspaper reported, “and the Movement for Democratic Change…have broad Western support, and, often, financing.” Lest niggling doubts remain, on July 15, Katherine Almquist, USAID Assistant Administrator for Africa, told the US Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs that “USAID has a long and successful history of working with Zimbabwe's civil society, democratic political parties, the Parliament and local government.” [20] USAID is the US State Department’s principal conduit for funneling non-military aid to overseas organizations to advance US foreign policy goals.

The MDC connections with the West have been so conspicuous that the party’s legitimacy as a party of, for and by Zimbabweans, as opposed to what Caesar Zvayi, former political editor with state-owned newspaper The Herald calls “a counter-revolutionary Trojan horse that is working with outsiders to subvert the logical conclusion of the Zimbabwean revolution” [21], has been weakened. In an interview on SW Africa (a Western government funded anti-Mugabe pirate radio station) British journalist Peta Thornycroft lamented that:

‘‘When the MDC started in 2000, what a pity that they were addressing people in Sandton, mostly white people in Sandton north of Johannesburg instead of being in Dar es Salaam or Ghana or Abuja. They failed to make contact with Africa for so long, they were in London, we’ve just seen it again, Morgan Tsvangirai’s just been in America. Why isn’t he in Cairo? Maybe he needs financial support and he can’t get it outside of America or the UK and the same would go for Mutambara. They have not done enough in Africa . . ." [22]

Tsvangirai’s penchant for seeking funding from organizations and individuals of European origin, and then lying about it, began early. In his autobiography, On the Contrary, Tony Leon, former leader of the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition to South Africa’s ANC, said that Tsvangirai had solicited and received funding from the Democratic Alliance’s key patrons. The MDC leader approached Leon about “opposition co-operation across the Limpopo,” but “later publicly changed his tune and started singing in the anti-DA/DP caucus - doubtless encouraged by the ANC," writes Leon. In 2000, Zanu-PF ran full-page newspaper ads, portraying Tsvangirai as a puppet, controlled by various masters, including Tony Leon. [23] While Zanu-PF is often criticized for portraying the MDC as a puppet, the party’s portrayal has been on the mark.

This year’s Heroes’ Day address wasn’t the first time Mutambara has complained about Western hypocrisy. Last year he declared that his faction of the MDC stood “opposed to any form of imperialism.”

“We condemn Western double standards, duplicity, and hypocrisy. For example, while we appreciate Western pronouncements on the democratic deficits in Zimbabwe, we condemn the democratic exception they extend to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.” [24]

What Mutambara doesn’t address is why a double standard exists. But before we follow a path he hasn’t tread to ask why, let’s turn to the question of whether there is, indeed, a Zimbabwean democratic deficit, as Mutambara alleges.

The case for one rests on a few accusations that are either unsubstantiated, at odds with the evidence, or based on innuendo repeated so frequently it seems to be an unassailable truth. Significantly, the accusations are made by parties with a prior interest in discrediting the government for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with its adherence to democratic norms.

The US, Britain and EU became hostile to the government of Robert Mugabe in the late 1990s, for three reasons:

1. It had sent troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo to defend the young government of Laurent Kabilla from an invasion by Rwandan and Ugandan forces, backed by the US and Britain.

2. After initially complying with the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, it rejected the IMF’s demands, implementing economic measures hostile to the interests of Western creditors, investors and corporations.

3. It embarked on a program of democratizing patterns of land ownership, culminating in a high crime against capitalist probity – the expropriation of private property without compensation. [25]

For its opposing US and British imperial designs in southern Africa, placing domestic economic interests ahead of those of Western creditors, and providing a model of land reform that is intolerable to conservative forces committed to safeguarding the sanctity of private property, the US, Britain and their allies, decided that Mugabe’s term as president must end. To justify a program of regime change, Mugabe would be portrayed as a dictator who rigged elections, and a “grassroots democracy” movement would be created to remove Mugabe from power, either at the polls, or in the streets.

It was at this point that Britain provided the seed money, through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, to build the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing together the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (of which Morgan Tsvangirai was leader) and civil society groups as founding organizations. That the real function of the MDC was to reverse Mugabe’s policies, and not to repair a democratic deficit that didn’t exist anyway, became clear when the white elite abandoned the Rhodesian Front and embraced the MDC as their new electoral vehicle.

The MDC’s name was carefully chosen. It was to be a “movement”, to distinguish it from a mainstream political party (which indeed, much as it pretends it’s not, it is), and it was to be called “democratic,” following the pattern of Western-backed opposition parties in other countries, such as Yugoslavia’s Democratic Opposition of Serbia. Calling itself a Movement for Democratic Change, reinforced the fiction that a change in government was necessary to restore democracy. And, of course, in a sense, this was true. To the US, British and European governments that back the MDC, democracy is more or less equivalent to free trade, free enterprise, free markets and above all, the sanctity of private property, within other countries’ borders. Equally, in the Anglo-American sense, democracy is an electoral competition among two or more parties committed to these values, or what Robert Dahl called polyarchy and Karl Marx called a contest to decide which representative of the bourgeoisie will oppress you for the next four years.

The MDC’s commitment to private property and capitalist freedoms – and hence, to democracy, in the Anglo-American sense -- is categorical. One need only read Australian James Rose’s paeans to private property in the Wall Street Journal under Morgan Tsvangirai’s by-line [26] to see that for the MDC, as much as for its sponsors in Washington and London, democracy and the profit-making interests of Western capital are pretty much the same thing. The Movement for Democratic Change, then, is indeed a movement for democracy, though in very special senses of the words movement and democracy. Movement refers, not to self-funded grassroots organizations, but to NGOs funded by capitalist foundations, wealthy individuals and Western governments, while democracy refers to the accommodation of foreign investors.

Inasmuch as Western governments and the MDC leadership share a common interest in removing Mugabe from power (the Western governments wanting to reverse his economic and land reform policies and the MDC leadership wanting to come to power) there are ample grounds to be skeptical of the anti-Mugabe accusations they’ve made. Hitler’s accusations against the targets of Nazi aggression would hardly be taken at face value, yet obvious attempts to discredit Mugabe for political reasons by inveterate liars (George Bush and Tony Blair), a jingoistic media and recipients of regime change funding (Grace Kwinjeh and MDC civil society front organizations) are swallowed uncritically.

Mugabe’s alleged rigging of elections is based on negative assessments by election monitors on the payrolls of governments that have an interest in discrediting Mugabe. [27] For every negative assessment by the US, Britain, EU and organizations they control, there are positive assessments by other countries and their organizations, from Russia, China and Iran, to the African Union and Southern African Development Community.

In the Western world, it has been an article of faith that Mugabe rigs elections. Because the media have repeated the mantra so often, its truth is accepted as a given. This popular misconception is so firmly ensconced in the public mind that even the reality that Mugabe’s party lost its parliamentary majority in the March 29th elections, and that Mugabe ran second to Tsvangirai in the presidential race, has been powerless to dislodge it. The inconvenient truth that elections aren’t rigged to lose is circumvented by declaring the March 29th elections the sole set of legitimate elections. Electoral legitimacy, then, is defined in terms of outcome, not process: an election won by the Western-backed opposition is legitimate; an election won by Mugabe is not.

Mugabe’s long tenure as leader despite his alleged lack of popularity is offered as further proof that there is a democratic deficit in Zimbabwe. The only way Mugabe could have lasted 28 years in power without popular support, it’s suggested, is by rigging elections. But this supposes Mugabe is unpopular. He isn’t. Even at the ebb, in March, with the economy in a shambles, with sanctions creating widespread misery, and with the US, Britain and the Netherlands beaming anti-Mugabe broadcasts into the country, Mugabe’s party managed to win the popular vote in the assembly and senate races (however, owing to Zimbabwe’s first-past-the-post system, failed to secure greater parliamentary representation than Tsvangirai’s party.) In the presidential race, the supposedly wildly unpopular Mugabe took 44 percent of the vote. Tsvangirai got 47 percent, shy of the 50 percent plus one needed to avoid a runoff election. But because the Western media overwhelmingly covered the election through the self-serving pronouncements of the MDC and its civil society front organizations, the Western public was bamboozled into believing that the people of Zimbabwe wanted Mugabe out. To be sure, some Zimbabweans wanted Mugabe out, but it is a select group of people that excludes 44 percent of the population.

With undiminished zeal in their commitment to remove Mugabe from power, Western governments and a mimetic media now declare the March 29th elections in which Tsvangirai received more votes than Mugabe, to be the last (and only) legitimate election, and therefore, the moral justification for insisting Mugabe step aside to allow their man, Tsvangirai, to govern.

Mugabe won the runoff election, but the regime changers condemn the runoff election as illegitimate, first, because they say it was a one-man race (Tsvangirai withdrew) and second, because they say the state used violence to intimidate opposition supporters.

While it’s true Tsvangirai withdrew from the election, his name remained on the ballot and the vote went ahead. It was not, contrary to media distortions, a one-man race, though it certainly may have effectively been one if his supporters stayed at home – which they seem to have done. But this raises a question about whether it’s legitimate for a candidate to withdraw from an election in midstream. If so, then the best course for an unscrupulous candidate is to see an election through to the end if he believes he has a good chance of winning, and to withdraw if he believes his defeat is imminent, declaring the election to be unfair.

In this way, he never yields moral authority to his opponent. MDC strategy, as dictated by the technicians of regime change in Washington -- and this is the same strategy followed by Western-organized oppositions in Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus – is based on the heads I win, tails you lose principal. If I win, the election is fair. If I lose, it isn’t. If my victory is imminent, the election is fair. If my defeat is imminent, the election is unfair. The strategy recognizes no legitimate defeat for the Western-backed opposition. If the election goes the wrong way, or appears to be going the wrong way, the election is declared to be unfair, and on this basis, opposition supporters are called onto the streets to demand the government step down.

The strategy of impugning the legitimacy of elections is one the MDC has sought to follow in the past. Indeed, the split in the party between the Tsvangirai and Mutambara factions arose over the question of whether the party ought to participate in the 2005 senate elections. Tsvangirai favored a boycott, but was outnumbered in the party. The party voted for participation, Tsvangirai balked and, expressing contempt for intra-party democracy, led his supporters into his own faction where he can rule by fiat.

Tsvangirai never wanted to have to contest a runoff election. The party’s strategy was to declare victory before the ballots were counted, relying on so-called independent election monitors, who were in fact MDC front organizations that received funding from Western governments, to announce the opposition had won. Immediately after the election, Tsvangirai’s party declared its leader to have won over 60 percent of the vote. The figure was subsequently revised downward to between 57 percent and 58 percent. Finally, the party announced Tsvangirai had taken 50.3 percent of the vote, just enough to squeeze out a first-round victory. [28]

The announcement was accompanied by the party’s tally of the vote totals: Tsvangirai, 1,169,860; Mugabe, 1,043,451; Makoni, 169,636. Someone decided to do the arithmetic to verify the percentages. Tsvangirai’s share worked out to 49.1 percent, not 50.3 percent. [29] Later, on the eve of announcing the official results, the Zimbabwe Election Commission invited the parties to vet the results. Seeing their candidate had received only 47.9 percent of the vote, Tsvangirai’s representatives objected. Their tally, they explained, showed their candidate with over 50 percent of the vote. The electoral commission agreed to consider contrary evidence, allowing Tsvangirai’s people 24 hours to marshal its facts to show how their 50.3 percent figure had been arrived at. The next day Tsvangirai accepted the official figures. [30]

Shaken by its candidate running second to Tsvangirai in the election, Zanu-PF threw itself into the runoff with renewed vigor, while Tsvangirai left the country, returning to his accustomed jetting to foreign capitals, to confer with foreign patrons and solicit funding. He claimed he couldn’t campaign because his life was in danger. Chided by the US ambassador for shirking his responsibilities to campaign, Tsvangirai returned to the country, but took refuge in the Dutch Embassy, fearing, he said, for his life. That Tsvangirai moved freely from and to the embassy daily revealed this to be another MDC publicity stunt, designed to raise doubts about the legitimacy of an election there was a chance he would lose.

Widespread violence seemed to lend credence to the claim that Mugabe was using Zanu-PF activists to intimidate and murder the opposition, a claim Tsvangirai would eventually use as a pretext for withdrawing from the election and declaring its outcome to be illegitimate. He would also use it to declare his first round victory to be the only legitimate basis for deciding who should be president.

Western media coverage was, as is true whenever the interests of Western economic elites are at stake, overblown. No story that alleged Zanu-PF brutality was too farfetched to be rejected. The more brutal, the better. Christina Lamb’s New York Times story, "Mugabe’s thugs shout: ‘Let’s kill the baby’" stood in a long line of pro-regime change propaganda that turned out to be untrue, from the Gulf War story of Iraqi soldiers tossing Kuwaiti babies from incubators to the floor, to the lies about Serb concentration camps in Bosnia and fantasies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

The report began:

“A baby boy had both legs broken by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to punish his father for being an opposition councilor in Zimbabwe…Blessing Mabhena, aged 11 months, was seized from a bed and flung down with force as his mother Agnes, hid from the thugs, convinced that they were about to murder her.”

A report by freelance journalist, Douglas Merle in Harare:

“There was a tremendous hammering on the door of her home. Realizing that President Mugabe’s thugs were hunting for her, Agnes Mabhena, the wife of an opposition councilor, quickly hid under the bed. It was too late for her to grab Blessing, her 11-month old baby, who was crying on top of it. ‘She’s gone out. Let’s kill the baby,’ she heard a member of the gang say. The next thing she saw from under the bed was Blessing’s tiny body hitting the concrete floor with a force that shattered his tiny legs. ‘It is just a baby — leave it alone,’ another said, and the thugs left. All day Mabhena stayed at home with her screaming son, too terrified to move. Her neighbors, knowing that the family was regarded as opponents of Mugabe, were too frightened to help. Now encased in plaster, his little legs stick out at an odd angle below his blue romper suit. Unless he has orthopedic help soon, he may never walk.’" [31]

The New York Times was forced to run a lengthy correction on July 9 after the newspaper learned that boy's mother lied to get money to pay for an operation to correct the child’s bowed legs.

This wasn’t the only time a story had been fabricated to discredit the Zimbabwe government.

“On 6 February 2002, The Zimbabwean Independent carried an article titled, My Ordeal as Mugabe’s Prisoner, written by Basildon Peta. In the piece, Peta claimed that Zimbabwe’s State security agents had wrongfully jailed him. The article was subsequently reproduced in many other newspapers in the West and elsewhere. It later turned out that the Zimbabwe police or state security agents had never arrested Peta. The fictitious article, in which Peta described vividly his ‘holding cell,’ an imaginary blocked toilet and the coarse behavior of Zimbabwe’s security agents, was in fact the result of his fertile imagination… Peta was dismissed from his job as a “special projects editor. He fled Zimbabwe in disgrace to South Africa only to claim to the sympathetic Western media there that he had been ‘hounded’ out of Zimbabwe by a repressive state for his ‘fearless reporting.’ Thus, a dishonest man, who had been exposed to the world as a shameless liar, was hailed by the Western media as a hero. In no time, he was snapped up by the white South African media.’” [32]

Basildon Peta now reports on Zimbabwe for Britain’s The Independent.

No one denies there was violence during the runoff election, and no one denies that Zanu-PF activists participated in it. But was it planned and initiated by the Zanu-PF leadership, or was it spontaneous? Was it one-sided?

One could address these questions at length, pointing to the MDC’s long history of using violence to achieve political ends, [33] and to Mugabe’s frequent appeals during the election campaign to both sides to renounce violence. One could also point to the Human Rights Watch report that said “MDC supporters had burned homes of known Zanu-PF supporters”[34]; to the UN’s top human rights official Louise Arbour’s acknowledgement that the violence was not exclusively inflicted by supporters of Zanu-PF [35]; and to this, from MDC member and civil rights lawyer Paul Themba Nyathi: “Tsvangirai’s followers seem to be saying to themselves that they can win elections by beating people and by using the crudest methods of intimidation.” This has largely escaped the attention of the media “because the big prize is still to rid the country of Mugabe.” [36]

All of these things can be pointed to, but all that needs to be pointed to, is this: On August 7, the following statement was signed by representatives of Zanu-PF and the two MDC factions.

"The parties, acknowledging that violence that is attributable to us and which has been injurious to national and human security, has, indeed, occurred in the country after the 29 March, 2008 harmonized elections, hereby call upon all our supporters and members and any organs and structures under the direction and control of our respective parties to stop and desist the perpetration of violence in any form." [37]

The statement doesn’t say that Zanu-PF activists were solely culpable of using violence for political ends, but that activists of all parties were culpable, including Tsvangirai’s. If Tsvangirai’s followers were trying to ”win elections by beating people and by using the crudest methods of intimidation,” as MDC member Paul Themba Nyathi alleges, and the statement fails to deny, how can Zanu-PF be held solely responsible for undermining the legitimacy of the election?

This doesn’t mean, however, that because he won the last legitimate election uncorrupted by violence that Tsvangirai should be president. Tsvangirai’s followers, as much as Mugabe’s, invalidated the legitimacy of the mandated election that followed. Were Tsvangirai allowed to claim the presidency on this basis, any candidate who won a plurality in the first round of an election, could circumvent the constitutional requirement to achieve a majority, by provoking violence during the next round in order to declare the first round as the only legitimate round. Why take a risk of losing in the second round, when you can claim victory based on the first?

What’s required is another election, this time free from violence. The trouble is, measures the state takes to prevent the eruption of violence will be branded as authoritarian, dictatorial, and anti-democratic -- precisely the charges hurled at Mugabe’s government when it took steps to prevent political violence. The reality is that an opposition party that is bent on coming to party by any means – and it should be recalled that Mutambara said in 2006 that he wouldn’t rule in or out any method to remove Mugabe from power – can be expected to be rewarded for its use of violence. If unchecked by the state, the opposition’s violence disrupts and intimidates government supporters. It the state acts to check the violence, or government supporters retaliate, the government can be accused of disrupting and intimidating the opposition, undermining the basis for a fair vote. Either way, the opposition wins. If the vote goes ahead, and the opposition wins, it can lay claim to power. If the vote goes ahead, and the opposition loses, it still has a chance to attain power by contesting the legitimacy of the vote, using this as justification for taking power unconstitutionally.

Conclusion

The Mugabe government committed three offenses against the interests of the hereditary capitalist families, investment bankers, CEOs and corporate lawyers who dominate the politics of the major capitalist countries.

1. It opposed US imperial designs in southern African by intervening militarily in the resource-rich Democratic Republic of Congo to protect the Laurent Kabila government from a joint Rwandan-Ugandan invasion, backed by Washington and London;

2. It backed away from the demands of the IMF by implementing Zimbabwe-first economic policies that subordinated the interests of Western creditors, investors and corporations to those of local business people;

3. It pushed ahead with a land reform program that violated a cardinal capitalist rule: you don’t expropriate private property and if you absolutely must, you don’t do it without compensation.

These offenses have nothing to do with a failure to adhere to democratic norms. The idea that there is a democratic deficit in Zimbabwe, and that the West is backing the MDC to redress the deficit, is a fiction, cooked up to justify a program of regime change to reverse the Zanu-PF policies that offend the interests of economic elites in the Western world. Part of the program of regime change involves vilifying Mugabe as a deeply unpopular leader who clings to power through guile and violence. This is nonsense. Mugabe has managed to command the support of nearly half the Zimbabwean population, despite the massed efforts of the US, Britain and EU to sabotage Zimbabwe’s economy and to discredit Mugabe, his government and his policies through propaganda broadcasts beamed into the country by short-wave radio and creating and bankrolling a set of hostile civil society organizations bent on regime change. Few leaders would be able to withstand this concerted barrage and still make a highly respectable showing in free and fair elections. Mugabe has.

Other African leaders have played a neo-colonial role, acting as local collaborators, or compradors, facilitating the profit-making activities of Western corporations and investors, while intervening militarily in neighboring countries on behalf of their sponsor governments. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia, is a model case. A recipient of humanitarian aid from Britain and military aid from the US, Meles’ government serves US interests in the Horn of Africa through its military intervention in Somalia. Meles’ record as a democrat is atrocious but he gets away with it, because he does his sponsors’ bidding.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, known to Egyptians as an American lackey, is also a model comprador. He has served as president of Egypt almost as long as Mugabe has led Zimbabwe, but Mubarak retains power by banning opposition parties, imprisoning their leaders, and jailing bloggers who criticize him. Mugabe, on the other hand, tolerates an opposition that is linked in multiple ways to hostile foreign powers that seek his ouster. That there is truly a democratic deficit in Egypt is hardly of concern to Washington, which showers the Egyptian leader with $2 billion per year in military aid. That there isn’t a democratic deficit in Zimbabwe is equally of no concern to Washington. The appearance of one is readily created, to be swallowed whole by a distracted public and gullible left intellectuals.

1. Times Online, March 5, 2006.
2. Sunday Vision (Uganda), July 19, 2008.
3. The New York Times, December 15, 2007.
4. The Washington Post, August 21, 2007.
5. The New York Times, December 14, 2006.
6. The Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2008.
7. The New York Times, January 17, 2008.
8. The New York Times, September 20, 2006.
9. Ibid.
10. New African, June 2008.
11. Ibid.
12. Gabon entry in The CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gb.html
13. Stephen Gowans, “Zimbabwe at War,” June 24, 2008, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-at-war/
14. House of Commons, Hansard Debates text, 14 June 2003.
15. The Independent (UK), September 20, 2007.
16. TalkZimbabwe.com, July 9, 2008.
17. TalkZimbabwe.com, May 16, 2008.
18. The Independent (UK), June 28, 2008.
19. Rob Gowland, “Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, the struggle for independence,” Communist Party of Australia. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/state-media-and-ngos-collaborate-in-shaping-public-opinion-on-upcoming-zimbabwe-elections/
20. The Crisis in Zimbabwe and Prospects for Resolution. Subcommittee on African Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, July 15, 2008.
21. TalkZimbabwe.com, August 1, 2008.
22. The Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008.
23. Angela Quintal, “Tsvangirai lied about DA donors – Leon”, The Star (South Africa), August 12, 2008.
24. The Herald (Zimbabwe), August 16, 2008.
25. Stephen Gowans, “Zimbabwe at War,” June 24, 2008, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-at-war/
26. “The government of Zimbabwe must be committed to protecting persons and property rights as an essential part of the MDC’s recovery program. This means compensation for those who lost their possessions in an unjust way.” Zimbabwe’s program of expropriating land without compensation “scares away investors, domestic and international.” Wall Street Journal, quoted in Herald (Zimbabwe) March 23, 2008.
27. See for example Stephen Gowans, “State, media, and NGOs collaborate in shaping public opinion on upcoming Zimbabwe elections,” March 27, 2008, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/state-media-and-ngos-collaborate-in-shaping-public-opinion-on-upcoming-zimbabwe-elections/
28. New African, June, 2008.
29. TalkZimbabwe.com, April 4, 2008.
30. New African, June, 2008.
31. Talkzimbabwe.com, July 11, 2008.
32. Cited in Netfa Freeman, African Advocacy and the Zimbabwe Question, http://www.blackcommentator.com/285/285_africa_advocacy_zimbabwe_factor_freeman_guest.html
33. Stephen Gowans, “Zimbabwe’s political opposition deploys its own WMD claim,” May 20, 2008, http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/zimbabwe%e2%80%99s-political-opposition-deploys-its-own-wmd-claim/
34. Human Rights Watch, April 25, 2008.
35. The New York Times, April 28, 2008.
36. TalkZimbabwe.com, April 28, 2008.
37. The Herald (Zimbabwe), August 7, 2008.

MRZine gets Zimbabwe Wrong…Again

2008-08-14T16:28:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

MRZine has published an article on the power sharing talks in Zimbabwe by Shawn Hattingh, a research and education officer at the International Labor Research and Information Group. Hattingh makes the claim that “both the MDC and ZANU are neo-liberal” to wish a pox on both their houses.

There’s plenty of evidence that the MDC is neo-liberal, but the claim that Zanu-PF is neo-liberal is quite astonishing.

If it is neo-liberal, it’s probably the first and only case of a neo-liberal party that has rejected, and has been rejected by, the IMF, and probably the only neo-liberal party that restricts foreign ownership levels in key sectors, pursues public policy goals through state ownership of key enterprises, provides subsidized food baskets, imposes price controls and rejects national treatment of foreign investors.

One might wonder too why the neo-liberal US and British governments are so keen on removing the neo-liberal Robert Mugabe from power.

The fact of the matter is that it is precisely because the Zanu-PF government isn’t neo-liberal that the US, Britain and EU are campaigning to drive Mugabe – and his policies – out of Harare.

Below is The Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal’s take on the economic policies of the government over which Zanu-PF has presided for 28 years:

o Total government expenditures, including consumption and transfer payments, are very high. In the most recent year, government spending equaled 50.3 percent of GDP. Privatization has stalled, and the government remains highly interventionist.

o The government sets price ceilings for essential commodities such as agricultural seeds, bread, maize meal, sugar, beef, stock feeds, and fertilizer; controls the prices of basic goods and food staples; influences prices through subsidies and state-owned enterprises and utilities.

o The government will consider foreign investment up to 100 percent in high-priority projects but applies pressure for eventual majority ownership by Zimbabweans.

o Zimbabwe has burdensome tax rates. The top income tax rate is 47.5 percent, and the top corporate tax rate is 30 percent.

To be sure, the policies are not socialist, but they are, at the same time, deeply hostile to neo-liberalism, and lean more strongly in the direction of social democracy than the economic policies of nominally social democratic and socialist governments elsewhere.

Zanu-PF is a pro-business, African nationalist, party -- not a neo-liberal one.

Hattingh’s argument that “the best hope that Zimbabwe and its people have is for the people themselves to start building a truly anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, and democratic movement,” is not only based on the blunder of equating Zanu-PF with the MDC, but represents a flight from serious analysis into what Lenin called pious benevolence.

July 7, 2008 Taylor Report on Zimbabwe

2008-07-14T20:28:00.001-04:00

Stephen Gowans and Phil Taylor in conversation on Zimbabwe.

June 25, 2008 Unusual Sources Interview on Zimbabwe

2008-06-30T09:44:00.000-04:00

Stephen Gowans provides the latest commentary on the misdirection by the Western media in its coverage of the Zimbabwean elections.

Defending the Indefensible: Sham Democracy Promoter Defends Imperialist Ties

2008-06-29T18:53:00.003-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

Stephen Zunes, an advisor to the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, an organization founded by former Michael Milken right-hand man Peter Ackerman, continues to defend “non-violent pro-democracy” activists involved in promoting overthrow movements abroad.

In a June 27, 2008 article in Foreign Policy in Focus, Zunes springs to the defense of Gene Sharp, the founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, who has been exposed in Eva Golinger’s “Bush vs. Chavez: Washington’s War on Venezuela” as “a self-titled expert of what he calls ‘non-violent defense’, though better termed regime change” who has provided “aid to Venezuela’s opposition in finding new and inventive ways to overthrow Chavez.” Sharp has been variously connected to Western-backed overthrow movements in Myanmar, Tibet, Belarus, Serbia and Zimbabwe – countries the US ruling class is acting to bring under its heel.

Zunes’ defense of Sharp, which amounts mostly to declaring Golinger’s and others’ exposure of the AEI founder to be “fabricated allegations,” rests on his demolishing a straw man. Sharp is not, he argues, part of a Bush administration conspiracy to overthrow foreign governments. This is probably true. But I’m not aware of anyone who has ever directly linked Sharp to either the Bush administration or a conspiracy. Someone may have done so somewhere, but for the most part, Sharp have been criticized for accepting funding from and acting (whether intentionally or not) on behalf of US ruling class forces. These, of course, are much broader than the Bush administration.

Peter Ackerman, the head of the ICNC, which Zunes belongs to in an advisory capacity, is not, as far as I’m aware, connected to the Bush administration, but has taken on a leadership role on behalf of the US ruling class. He has celebrated the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic by forces Gene Sharp had a key role in training, and Western governments had a key role in bankrolling and establishing the conditions for the success of. Ackerman’s ruling class credentials are impeccable – a Wall Street investment banker, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and head of Freedom House, which is interlocked with the CIA and a “virtual propaganda arm of the (US) government and international right wing,” according to Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent. This is the company Sharp, Zunes and their left-wing regime change promoters keep. Ackerman’s wife, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, is a former director of the AEI. She is also currently a director of the US foreign policy establishment-dominated Human Rights Watch, which promotes the view that the US should use its “moral authority” to promote human rights around the world, and the US Congress-funded International Center for journalists.

After two pages of telling us there is no truth to the charges against Sharp (which, inasmuch as they involve Bush administration-connections, is probably true) Zunes reinforces the case Sharp’s critics have been making, when he reveals that the AEI:

• Is funded by corporate foundations.
• Is open to accepting funding from organizations that have received funding from government sources (i.e., accepts government funding through pass through organizations.)
• Has received grants from the US Congress’s National Endowment for Democracy (an organization that does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly.)
• Has advised members of the Venezuelan opposition.

Not disclosed in Zunes’ article, but revealing nonetheless, is that the NED paid for the AEI to provide advice to Zimbabwe’s Western-backed neo-liberal opposition party, the MDC.

I’m never sure whether Zunes is unsophisticated, sophistical, or both. He declares Sharp to be innocent of all charges, and then adduces evidence that backs up the allegations of Sharp’s critics. In doing so, he sets out a defense that amounts to the following:

1. It's all right for left activists to take money from corporate foundations.
2. It's all right to take money from governments, just so long as they’re not Republican ones and was done years ago.
3. It’s all right to take money from Republican governments today, just so long as it comes through pass through organizations. (The CIA, it should be noted, has a long history of using pass throughs to fund organizations like the ICNC, Freedom House and the AEI.)
4. Even if foreign overthrow movements have been bankrolled by the US, Britain and other Western governments, the effect of the funding on the success of these movements is immaterial; governments can't be brought down unless they lose popular support.

Zunes’ last point is true, but the pressure Western governments exert on foreign policy targets through threats of war, bombing campaigns, sanctions, and propaganda, go a long way toward alienating target governments of popular support, and thereby preparing the ground for Sharp- and Zunes-trained overthrow movements to go to work.

Serbia, whose once social- and publicly-owned enterprises have been sold off to Western investors, is a model of what overthrow movements Zunes celebrates and assists produce.

As ever, Zunes would like us to believe that the corporations and wealthy individuals who furnish the foundations that support organizations like Sharp's are either keenly interested in promoting democracy, or aren’t, and have ulterior motives in funding nonviolent pro-democracy groups, but that the latter are not influenced by their funding sources. That may be true, but useful idiots don’t need to be bribed. This is succinctly illustrated in a David Horowitz quotation, cited by Michael Barker in a forthcoming Swans article. “In the control of scholarship by wealth, it is neither necessary nor desirable that professors hold a certain orientation because they receive a grant. The important thing is that they receive a grant because they hold the orientation.”

Frances Stonor Saunders in her “Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, points out that the NCL, the non-communist left, has long been the favored funding recipients of foundations and the CIA. The idea, from their point of view, is to channel leftist sentiment and thinking in pro-imperialist directions by amplifying the voice of the pro-imperialist NCL, thereby drowning out and marginalizing the voice of the communist left. While the NCL is often opposed to Western military intervention, and on this basis professes to be anti-imperialist, it promotes and legitimizes imperialist interventions in other ways. It encourages overthrow movements, celebrating them as pro-democracy people’s forces, offers them assistance, training and legitimacy, and mimics the rhetorical assaults by imperialist governments on target governments, thereby promoting the view that Western governments must act, even if not militarily.

A commitment to peace and low-level democracy is not equivalent to anti-imperialism, and as Sharp demonstrates, is a leftist version of a pro-imperialist program. What Zunes leaves out or does not understand is than non-violent pro-democracy movements are often powerless without imperialist governments first threatening or deploying military interventions, imposing sanctions and blockades and broadcasting anti-government propaganda, thereby turning the population of targeted countries against their governments. In other words, the bad guys Zunes can rail against to establish his leftist credentials do the dirty work while his people’s forces come in at the end to effect the coup de grace. The result is never democracy, in the original sense of the word, but improved trade and investment conditions for Western economic elites – the same elites Sharp and Zunes are taking foundation lucre from.

Zunes would also like to bamboozle us into believing that the assistance and funding overthrow movements receive from Western imperialist governments makes little difference in the grand scheme of things (which means, by implication, that the foundations which dole out funding are managed by morons who are squandering money on ineffectual programs.)

As always, Zunes does his part in promoting US foreign policy goals, aping US government descriptions of regime change targets, vilifying them as “autocratic regimes,” which presumably deserve to brought down by handsomely funded overthrow movements trained by Zunes, Sharp and the left “non-violent democracy promotion” apparatus. It comes as no surprise that while Zunes refers to the target governments of Belarus and Zimbabwe as regimes (as the US State Department does), he refers to the current US executive as the Bush “administration.”

Zunes has put together a public statement in defense of Sharp, which has been signed by NCL luminaries Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Zunes hopes their endorsement will lay to rest legitimate questions about the role played by Sharp and other nonviolent pro-democracy activists, including Zunes himself, in promoting US imperialism under the guise of advancing democracy. But endorsements by Chomsky or Zinn don’t change the facts; they only raise questions about the endorsers and Zunes’ stooping to reliance of appeal to authority. Apparently, he has judged his argument too weak to stand on its own. Calling in NCL luminaries is the political equivalent of calling out the sheep herders to bring the flock back into line. But is the authority of Chomsky and Zinn deserved?

Joan Roelofs reveals in her “Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism” that The Progressive, the magazine for which Zinn writes a regular column, had advisory board members on the Council of Foreign Relations and receives grants from the Ford Foundation. Zunes will reply that I’m engaging in guilt by association, but the point is that the ruling class funds the NCL and the NCL gladly accepts ruling class lucre. Zunes can dismiss the connection as irrelevant and of no consequence, but this is sheer sophistry.

Sharp and Zunes may be genuinely interested in the pursuit of democracy, but it’s a low-intensity democracy subordinate to US imperial interests they’re promoting. Foreign governments on the US ruling class regime change hit list – and anti-imperialists in the West -- have a legitimate reason to be wary of Sharp, Zunes and other leftist members of the US regime change apparatus. They are ruling class operatives who align with ruling class figures to facilitate the pursuit of overseas profits through the elimination of nationalist and socialist governments which stand in the way. Their promotion of democracy, revealed in the neo-liberal, privatized tyrannies which are the invariable outcomes of their work, is as much a sham as the democracy promotion of the imperialist governments they’re tied to through pass through funding and interlocks with ruling class foundations and activists.

Look for Michael Barker’s forthcoming article on Zunes’ defense of Sharp in Swans.

Myths of “humanitarian” imperialism

2008-06-29T18:51:00.000-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

Timothy Garton Ash, a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian, has called on “people outside Zimbabwe” to “help the majority inside Zimbabwe have its democratic will recognized” by doing seven things, the first of which is to press their governments for stronger sanctions on Zimbabwe. Ash’s column is titled, “We don’t need guns to help the people pitch Mugabe from his perch.”

Ash’s argument, a call for “liberal” or “humanitarian” imperialism, is based on a false premise. It is also morally repugnant.

False premise: The idea that a majority in Zimbabwe is awaiting the help of Westerners is at odds with reality. If you check, you'll discover that the governing Zanu-PF party won the popular vote in the March 29 elections, but owing to Zimbabwe's first past the post system, won fewer seats than the MDC did. It would be more accurate to say that somewhat less than 50 percent of Zimbabweans would welcome the MDC coming to power, and fewer than that, I suspect, would welcome further misery from a stepped up Western intervention.

Morally repugnant: Ash’s argument amounts to this: Imperialism is fine, just so long as it isn't pursued by military means. Lay aside his eagerness to outrage the sovereignty of Zimbabwe, but not, say, Ethiopia, whose brutal Meles’ regime steals elections, locks up the opposition, and has invaded and occupied Somalia, on behalf of London and Washington. People ought to ask themselves why they’ve heard so much about Zimbabwe, but not Ethiopia.

Non-military interventions can be just as harmful, if not more so, than military ones. The international sanctions regime imposed on Iraq led to the excess deaths of more than a million people, deaths caused by Western countries whose governments lied their only concern was freeing Iraqis from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, and then freed numberless Iraqis from life (and, if Washington and London get their way, from the benefits of their oil wealth.) Sanctions were denounced as sanctions of mass destruction, as devastating as campaigns of carpet bombing. No one should delude themselves into thinking that non-military interventions are free from grim humanitarian consequences.

Ash’s appeal for intervention, then, is based on three myths: (1) that a majority of Zimbabweans are opposed to the Mugabe government and would welcome Western intervention; (2) imperialism without guns is better than imperialism with guns; (3) Western intervention in Zimbabwe (which has already happened on a massive scale through funding of the opposition by Western governments and corporate foundations, and though financial isolation of the country) is motivated by humanitarian, not, imperialist goals (otherwise, why no indignant calls for intervention in Ethiopia -- or in Egypt, where the president has hung on to power for as long as Mugabe has, but acts to promote British and US foreign policy goals?)

While it’s bad enough that the heirs of British colonialism press for neo-colonial interventions, it’s even worse when they wrap up their arguments in a tissue of myths.

Violence in Zimbabwe and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters

2008-06-25T18:52:00.000-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

It was MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai who said to Mugabe, “If you don’t want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently.” [1]

It was MDC faction leader Arthur Mutambara who said he was “going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal” and that “We’re not going to rule out or in anything – the sky’s the limit.” [2]

It was secretary general of Tsvangirai’s MDC faction, Tendai Biti, who warned of Kenya-style post electoral violence if Mugabe won. [3]

It was opposition principal Pius Ncube, then Archbishop of Bulawayo, who said he was “ready to lead the people, guns blazing,” to oust the Mugabe government. [4]

It was the Zimbabwe Resistance Movement that promised to take up arms against the Zanu-PF government if “the poodles who run the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission,” failed to declare Tsvangirai the victor of the presidential run-off election. [5]

In light of this, is it any surprise that Zanu-PF supporters are “outraged that the Security Council that never saw the need to convene and discuss Kenya when more than 2,000 people were hacked to death over two months, at times in front of Western cameras, saw it fit to meet and discuss Zimbabwe on the back of” claims by the opposition that it was being repressed by a campaign of violence? [6]

The Social Imperialist Project

With Western media coverage on Zimbabwe monopolized by the views of the neo-liberal MDC, the US and British governments, and “independent” election monitors and human rights groups funded by the US Congress and State Department, the British government’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy, George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and the CIA- and Council on Foreign Relations-linked Freedom House, one might think it would be possible to find a measure of relief from the blanket uniformity of ruling class dominated opinion on a socialist web site. Just a tiny break.

Instead, the Socialist Project [7] served up an article on Zimbabwe, “Death Spiral in Zimbabwe: Mediation, Violence and the GNU”, by Grace Kwinjeh, a founding member of Zimbabwe’s neo-liberal MDC party and member of its executive committee. [8] The article, not surprisingly, re-iterates a view that is friendly to the party the author is a principal member of.

Kwinjeh has a habit of disguising her background, one that’s hardly irrelevant to the subject she’s writing on, by presenting herself as simply an independent journalist living in South Africa – kind of like John McCain submitting analyses on Obama’s politics while calling himself an independent journalist living in Arizona. Kwinjeh, a regular on the US propaganda arm Voice of America’ Studio 7, traveled to Washington not too long ago on George Soros’s tab to testify to the regime changers in Washington. She is neither independent, particularly interested in national self-determination, nor an opponent of neo-liberalism. [9]

One might expect the Socialist Project to offer a view from the other side, especially given its professed support for “the national self-determination of the many peoples of the world” and ostensibly implacable opposition to neo-liberalism.

Unlike Kwinjeh, I am sympathetic to Zimbabwe’s project of national self-determination, I am implacably opposed to neo-liberalism, and while many of my articles have been published in Zimbabwe’s state-owned newspaper, The Herald, (none of which I submitted or was paid for) I have no membership in any political party in Zimbabwe, disguised or otherwise, much less a relationship as a founding member.

ISO’s Latest Silliness

Here’s what wrong with the MDC, according to the Zimbabwe section of the International Socialist Organization: “The increasing domination of the party leadership by capitalist and Western elites and the marginalization of workers and radicals…will lead to its likely pursuing a neoliberal capitalist agenda if it assumes power to the detriment of the working people.” [10]

Funny that it has taken this long for the ISO to figure this out. Here’s then MDC spokesman Eddie Cross, formerly vice-chairman of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, in advance of 2000 elections – eight years ago!

“We are going to fast track privatization. All 50 government parastatals will be privatized within a two-year time-frame, but we are going to go beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the central statistical office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years.” [11]

Moreover, the principal role in the formation of the party played by the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons are former British foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd, Geoffrey Howe, Malcolm Rifkind and whose chair is Lord Renwick of Clifton, should have provided more than an inkling of what was ahead.

So now that the ISO has belatedly figured out that the MDC is dominated by “capitalist and Western elites” and will likely pursue “a neoliberal capitalist agenda,” what does it recommend radicals and working people in Zimbabwe do?

Unconditionally support Tsvangirai. Yes, that’s right. “The ISO…has now modified its position to call for unconditional but fraternally critical support to Tsvangirai.” [12]

A Canadian connection: Roger Annis and John Riddel are part of a Canadian organization called Socialist Voice, whose web site links to The International Journal of Socialist Renewal, the journal in which ISO-Zimbabwe’s latest silliness appeared. A few years ago Annis and Riddel made essentially the same analysis, but in connection with Canada’s New Democratic Party. After taking the NDP to task for acting “as a faithful defender of the capitalist order,” whose parliamentary program hews “close to the Liberal model” and whose leader “opposes or at best abstains from … mass struggles” -- closing with “they are committed defenders of capitalist rule” – the two recommended that “socialists…give critical support to the NDP.” [13]

Do these guys go to the same confidence trickster school?

Morgan Tsvangirai and the New Humanitarianism

During the run-up to the predatory NATO war on Yugoslavia, groups of people who came to be known pejoratively as “cruise missile leftists” and the “new humanitarians” sought to provide a new legal basis for Western imperialism by arguing that ideas of state sovereignty were no longer valid, and that the West should be free to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries on humanitarian grounds. The elevation of the Rwandan civil war to the status of a genocide helped, for calls for interventions in numerous places could be justified by the need “to prevent another Rwanda.”

In an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on June 25, Morgan Tsvangirai trotted out the same argument. ”Our proposal,” he wrote, “is one that aims to remove the often debilitating barriers of state-sovereignty” to open the door for “the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force.”

So the military pursuit of imperialist goals has now become the moral rectitude of the West’s military force.

Tsvangirai Speaks the Truth

In the same article, Tsvangirai opines: “The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong.”

He’s right. The battle in Zimbabwe today is between the democracy of popular land ownership and self-rule and the dictatorship of rule by outsiders working through proxies; between the justice of Zimbabweans reclaiming the land that was stolen from them and the injustice of sanctions; between the right of struggle for national independence and the wrong of neocolonial oppression.

1. BBC, September 30, 2000.
2. Times Online, March 5, 2006.
3. Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008.
4. Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007.
5. The Zimbabwe Times, May 31, 2008.
6. Herald (Zimbabwe) June 25, 2008.
7. http://socialistproject.ca/
8. http://socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet116.html
9. You can learn more about Kwinjeh here http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/who-is-grace-kwinjeh-and-why-did-patrick-bond-co-author-an-article-with-her/ and here http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/the-company-patrick-bond-keeps/
10. http://links.org.au/node/489
11. John Wright, “Victims of the West,” Morning Star (UK), December 18, 2007.
12. http://links.org.au/node/489
13. http://gowans.blogspot.com/2005/12/marxists-my-ass-these-people-are.html

Zimbabwe at War

2008-06-24T19:49:00.003-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

This is a war between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries; between nationalists and quislings; between Zimbabwean patriots and the US and Britain.

Should an election be carried out when a country is under sanctions and it is has been made clear to the electorate that the sanctions will be lifted only if the opposition party is elected? Should a political party which is the creation of, and is funded by, hostile foreign forces, and whose program is to unlatch the door from within to provide free entry to foreign powers to establish a neo-colonial rule, be allowed to freely operate? Should the leaders of an opposition movement that takes money from hostile foreign powers and who have made plain their intention to unseat the government by any means available, be charged with treason? These are the questions that now face (have long faced) the embattled government of Zimbabwe, and which it has answered in its own way, and which other governments, at other times, and have answered in theirs.

The American revolutionaries, Thomas Jefferson among them, answered similar questions through harsh repression of the monarchists who threatened to reverse the gains of the American Revolution. There were 600,000 to 700,000 Tories, loyal to the king and hostile to the revolutionaries, who stood as a threat to the revolution. To neutralize the threat, the new government denied the Tories any platform from which to organize a counter-revolution. They were forbidden to own a press, to teach, to mount a pulpit. The professions were closed to them. They were denied the right to vote and hold political office. The property of wealthy Tories was confiscated. Many loyalists were beaten, others jailed without trial. Some were summarily executed. And 100,000 were driven into exile. Hundreds of thousands of people were denied advocacy rights, rights to property, and suffrage rights, in order to enlarge the liberties of a larger number of people who had been oppressed. [1]

Zimbabwe, too, is a revolutionary society. Through armed struggle, Zimbabweans, like Americans before them, had thrown off the yoke of British colonialism. Rhodesian apartheid was smashed. Patterns of land ownership were democratized. Over 300,000 previously landless families were given land once owned by a mere 4,000 farmers, mainly of British stock, mostly descendents of settlers who had taken the land by force. In other African countries, land reform has been promised, but little has been achieved. In Namibia, the government began expropriating a handful of white owned farms in 2004 under pressure from landless peasants, but progress has been glacially slow. In South Africa, blacks own just four percent of the farmland. The ANC government promised that almost one-third of arable land would be redistributed by 2000, but the target has been pushed back to 2015, and no one believes it will be reached. The problem is, African countries, impoverished by colonialism, and held down by neo-colonialism, haven’t the money to buy the land needed for redistribution. And the European countries that once colonized Africa, are unwilling to help out, except on terms that will see democratization of land ownership pushed off into a misty future, and only on terms that will guarantee the continued domination of Africa by the West. Britain promised to fund Zimbabwe’s land redistribution program, if liberation fighters laid down their arms and accepted a political settlement. Britain, under Tony Blair, reneged, finding excuses to wriggle out of commitments made by the Thatcher government. And so Zimbabwe’s government acted to reverse the legacy of colonialism, expropriating land without compensation (but for improvements made by the former owner.) Compensation, Zimbabwe’s government declared with unassailable justification, would have to be paid by Britain.

In recent years, the government has taken steps to democratize the country further. Legislation has been formulated to mandate that majority ownership of the country’s mines and enterprises be placed in the hands of the indigenous black majority. The goal is to have Zimbabweans achieve real independence, not simply the independence of having their own flag, but of owning their land and resources. As a Canadian prime minister once said of his own country, once you lose control of the economic levers, you lose sovereignty. Zimbabwe isn’t trying to hang onto control of its economic levers, but to gain control of them for the first time. Jabulani Sibanda, the leader of the association of former guerrillas who fought for the country’s liberation, explains:

“Our country was taken away in 1890. We fought a protracted struggle to recover it and the process is still on. We gained political independence in 1980, got our land after 2000, but we have not yet reclaimed our minerals and natural resources. The fight for freedom is still on until everything is recovered for the people.” [2]

The revolutionary government’s program has met with fierce opposition – from the tiny elite of land owners who had monopolized the country’s best land; from former colonial oppressor Britain, whose capitalists largely controlled the economy; from the United States, whose demand that it be granted an open door everywhere has been defied by Zimbabwe’s tariff restrictions, investment performance requirements, government ownership of business enterprises and economic indigenization policies; and from countries that don’t want Zimbabwe’s land democratization serving as an inspiration to oppressed indigenous peoples under their control. The tiny former land-owning elite wants its former privileges restored; British capital wants its investments in Zimbabwe protected; US capital wants Zimbabwe’s doors flung open to investment and exports; and Germany seeks to torpedo Zimbabwe’s land reforms to guard against inspiring “other states in Southern Africa, including Namibia, where the heirs of German colonialists would be affected.” [3]

The Mugabe government’s rejecting the IMF’s program of neo-liberal restructuring in the late 1990s, after complying initially and discovering the economy was being ruined; its dispatch of troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help the young government of Laurent Kabila defend itself against a US and British-backed invasion by Uganda and Rwanda; and its refusal to safeguard property rights in its pursuit of land democratization and economic independence, have made it anathema to the former Rhodesian agrarian elite, and in the West, to the corporate lawyers, investment bankers and hereditary capitalist families who dominate the foreign policies of the US, Britain and their allies. Mugabe’s status as persona non grata in the West (and anti-imperialist hero in Africa) can be understood in an anecdote. When Mugabe became prime minister in 1980, former leader of the Rhodesian state, Ian Smith, offered to help the tyro leader. “Mugabe was delighted to accept his help and the two men worked happily together for some time, until one day Mugabe announced plans for sweeping nationalization.” From that point forward, Smith never talked to Mugabe. [4]

Overthrowing the Revolution

The British, the US and the former Rhodesians have used two instruments to try to overthrow Zimbabwe’s revolution: The opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, and civil society. The MDC was founded in September 1999 in response to Harare announcing it would expropriate Rhodesian farms for redistribution to landless black families. The party was initially bankrolled by the British government’s Westminster Foundation for Democracy and other European governments, including Germany, through the Social Democratic Party’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Ebert having been the party leader who conspired with German police officials to have Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht murdered, to smother an emerging socialist revolution in Germany in 1918.) Party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been elevated from his position as secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions to champion the West’s counter-revolutionary agenda within Zimbabwe, acknowledged in February 2002 that the MDC was financed by European governments and corporations, which funneled money through British political consultants, BSMG. [5] Today, the government of Zimbabwe charges NGOs with acting as conduits through which Western governments pass money to the opposition party.

The MDC’s orientation is decidedly toward people and forces of European origin. South African-based journalist Peta Thornycroft, hardly a Mugabe supporter, lamented in an interview on Western government-sponsored short wave radio SW Africa that:

‘When the MDC started in 2000, what a pity that they were addressing people in Sandton, mostly white people in Sandton north of Johannesburg instead of being in Dar es Salaam or Ghana or Abuja. They failed to make contact with Africa for so long. They were in London, we’ve just seen it again, Morgan Tsvangirai’s just been in America. Why isn’t he in Cairo? Maybe he needs financial support and he can’t get it outside of America or the UK and the same would go for (leader of an alternative MDC faction, Arthur) Mutambara. They have not done enough in Africa. [6]

A look at the MDC’s program quickly reveals why the party’s leaders spend most of their time traipsing to Western capitals calling for sanctions and gathering advice on how to overthrow the Mugabe government. First, the MDC is opposed to Zimbabwe’s land democratization program. Defeating the government’s plans to expropriate the land of the former Rhodesian elite was one of the main impetuses for the party’s formation. Right through to the 2002 election campaign the party insisted on returning farms to the expropriated Rhodesian settlers. [7]

The MDC and Land Reform

These days Tsvangirai equivocates on land reform, recognizing that speaking too openly about reversing the land democratization program, or taxing black Zimbabweans to compensate expropriated Rhodesian settlers for land the Rhodesians and other British settlers took by force, is detrimental to his party’s success. But there’s no mistaking that the land redistribution program’s life would be cut short by a MDC victory. “The government of Zimbabwe,” wrote Tsvangirai, in a March 23, 2008 Wall Street Journal editorial, “must be committed to protecting persons and property rights.” This means “compensation for those who lost their possessions in an unjust way,” i.e., compensation for the expropriated Rhodesians. Zimbabwe’s program of expropriating land without compensation, he concluded, is just not on: it “scares away investors, domestic and international.” [8] This is the same reasoning the main backer of Tsvangirai’s party, the British government, used to justify backing out of its commitment to fund land redistribution. The British government was reneging on its earlier promise, said then secretary of state for international development Claire Short in a letter to Zimbabwe’s minister of agriculture and lands, Kumbirai Kangai, because of the damage Zimbabwe’s fast-track land reform proposals would do to investor confidence. Lurking none too deftly behind Tsvangirai’s and London’s solicitude over impaired investor confidence are the interests of foreign investors themselves. The Mugabe government’s program is to wrest control of the country’s land, resources and economy from the hands of foreign investors and Rhodesian settlers; the program of the MDC and its backers is to put it back. That’s no surprise, considering the MDC was founded by Europe, backed by the Rhodesians, and bankrolled by capitalist governments and enterprises that have an interest in protecting their existing investments in the country and opening up opportunities for new ones.

Civil Society

There is a countless number of Western NGOs that either operate in Zimbabwe or operate outside the country with a focus on Zimbabwe. While the Western media invariably refer to them as independent, they are anything but. Almost all are funded by Western governments, wealthy individuals, and corporations. Some NGOs say that while they take money from Western sources, they’re not influenced by them. This is probably true, to a point. Funders don’t dangle funding as a bribe, so much as select organizations that can be counted on to behave in useful ways of their own volition. Of course, it may be true that some organizations recognize that handsome grants are available for organizations with certain orientations, and adapt accordingly. But for the most part, civil society groups that advance the overseas agendas of Western governments and corporations, whether they know it or not, and not necessarily in a direct fashion, find that funding finds them.

Western governments fund dozens of NGOs to discredit the government in Harare, alienate it of popular support, and mobilize mass resistance under the guise of promoting democracy and human rights. Their real purpose is to bring down the government and its nationalist policies. The idea that Britain, which, as colonial oppressor, denied blacks suffrage and dispossessed them of their land, is promoting rights and democracy in Zimbabwe is laughable. The same can be said of Canada. The Canadian government doles out grants to NGOs through an organization called Rights and Democracy. Rights and Democracy is currently funding the anti-Zanu-PF Media Institute of Southern Africa, along with the US government and a CIA-linked right wing US think tank. While sanctimoniously parading about on the world stage as a champion of rights and democracy, Canada denied its own aboriginal people suffrage up to 1960. For a century, it enforced an assimilation policy that tore 150,000 aboriginal children from their homes and placed them in residential schools where their language and culture were banned. Canadian citizens like to think their own country is a model of moral rectitude, but are blind to the country’s deplorable record in the treatment of its own aboriginal people; it’s denial of the liberty and property rights of Canadian citizens of Japanese heritage during WWII; and in recent years, its complicity in overthrowing the Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and participation in the occupation of Afghanistan. As for the United States, its violations of the rights of people throughout the world have become so frequent and far-reaching that only the deaf, dumb or insane would believe the US government has the slightest interest in promoting democracy and human rights anywhere.

Consider, then, the record of the West’s self-proclaimed promoters of democracy and human rights against this: the reason there’s universal suffrage in Zimbabwe and equality rights for blacks, is because the same forces that are being routinely decried by Western governments and their NGO extensions fought for, bled for, and died for the principle of universal suffrage. “We taught them the principle of one man, one vote which did not exist” under the British, Zimbabwe’s president points out. “Democracy,” he adds, “also means self-rule, not rule by outsiders.” [9]

Regime Change Agenda

The charge that the West is supporting civil society groups in Zimbabwe to bring down the government isn’t paranoid speculation or the demagogic raving of a government trying to cling to power by mobilizing anti-imperialist sentiment. It’s a matter of public record. The US government has admitted that “it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean opposition…trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human rights organizations…to bring about a change of administration.” [10] Additionally, in an April 5, 2007 report, the US Department of State revealed that it had:

• “Sponsored public events that presented economic and social analyses discrediting the government’s excuse for its failed policies” (i.e, absolving US and EU sanctions for undermining the country’s economy);

• “Sponsored…and supported…several township newspapers” and worked to expand the listener base of Voice of America’s Studio 7 radio station. (The State Department had been distributing short-wave radios to Zimbabweans to facilitate the project of Zimbabwean public opinion being shaped from abroad by Washington’s propagandists).

Last year, the US State Department set aside US$30 million for these activities. [11] Earlier this year, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the UK had increased its funding for civil society organizations operating in Zimbabwe from US$5 million to US$6.5 million. [12] Dozens of other governments, corporations and capitalist foundations shower civil society groups with money, training and support to set up and run “independent” media to attack the government, “independent” election monitoring groups to discredit the outcome of elections Zanu-PF wins, and underground groups which seek to make the country ungovernable through civil disobedience campaigns. One such group is Zvakwana, “an underground movement that aims to resist – and eventually undermine” the Zanu-PF government. “With a second, closely related group called Sokwanele, Zvakwana’s members specialize in anonymous acts of civil disobedience.” [13] Both groups, along with Zubr in Belarus and Ukraine’s Pora, whose names, in English, mean ‘enough’, “take their inspiration from Otpor, the movement that played a major role in ousting Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia.” [14] One Sokwanele member is “a white conservative businessman expressing a passion for freedom, tradition, polite manners and the British royals,” [15] hardly a black-clad anarchist motivated by a philosophical opposition to “authoritarian rule,” but revealing of what lies beneath the thin veneer of radicalism that characterizes so many civil society opposition groups in Zimbabwe. In the aforementioned April 5, 2007 US State Department report, Washington revealed that it had “supported workshops to develop youth leadership skills necessary to confront social injustice through non-violent strategies,” the kinds of skills members of Zvakwana and Sokwanele are equipped with to destabilize Zimbabwe.

In addition to funding received from the US and Britain, Zimbabwe’s civil society groups also receive money from the German, Australian and Canadian governments, the Ford Foundation, Freedom House, the Albert Einstein Institution, the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Liberal International, the Mott Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers, South African Breweries, and billionaire financier George Soros’ Open Society Institute. All of these funding sources, including the governments, are dominated by Western capitalist ruling classes. It would be truly naïve to believe, for example, that the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict and Freedom House, both headed by Peter Ackerman, member of the US ruling class Council on Foreign Relations, a New York investment banker and former right hand man to Michael Milken of junk bond fame, is lavishing money and training on civil society groups in Zimbabwe out of humanitarian concern. According to Noam Chomksy and Edward Herman, Freedom House has ties to the CIA, “and has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the (US) government and international right wing." [16]

Political lucre doesn’t come from Western sources alone. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation awards a prize yearly for “achievement in African leadership” to a sub-Saharan African leader who has left office in the previous three years. The prize is worth $500,000 per year for the first 10 years and $200,000 per year thereafter – in other words, cash for life. Ibrahim, a Sudanese billionaire who founded Celtel International, a cellphone service that operates in 15 African countries, established the award to “encourage African leaders to govern well,” something, apparently, Ibrahim believes African leaders don’t do now and need to be encouraged to do. What Ibrahim means by govern well is clear in who was selected as the first (and so far only) winner: Mozambique’s former president Joaquim Chissano. He received the prize for overseeing Mozambique’s “transition from Marxism to a free market economy.” [17] While there may seem to be nothing particularly amiss in this, imagine billionaire speculator George Soros establishing a foundation to bribe US and British politicians with cash for life to “govern well.” It wouldn’t elude many of us that Soros’ definition of “govern well” would almost certainly align to a tee with his own interests, and that any politician eager to live a comfortable life after politics would be keen to keep Soros’ interests in mind. Under these conditions there would be no question of democracy prevailing; we would be living in a plutocracy, in which those with great wealth could dangle the carrot of a cash award for life to get their way. As it happens, this kind of thing is happening now in Western democracies (that is, plutocracies.) Handsomely paid positions as corporate lobbyists, corporate executives and members of corporate boards await Western politicians who play their cards right. There are Mo Ibrahims all over, who go by the names Ford, GM, Exxon, General Electric, Lockheed-Martin, Microsoft, IBM and so on.

Threat to US Foreign policy

Why does the government of the US consider Zimbabwe to pose “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States”? The answer says as much about the foreign policy of the United States as it does about Zimbabwe. The goal of US foreign policy is to provide profit-making opportunities to US investors and corporations. This is accomplished by pressuring, cajoling, bribing, blackmailing, threatening, subverting, destabilizing and where possible, using violence, to get foreign countries to lower or remove tariff barriers, lift restrictions on foreign investment, deny preferential treatment to domestic investors, allow repatriation of profits, and provide the US military access to the country. The right of the US military to operate on foreign soil is necessary to provide Washington with local muscle to protect US investments, ensure unimpeded access to strategic raw materials (oil, importantly), and to keep doors open to continued US economic penetration. It is also necessary to have forward operating bases from which to threaten countries whose governments aren’t open to US exports and investments.

The Zanu-PF government’s policies have run afoul of US foreign policy goals in a number of ways. In 1998, “Zimbabwe – along with Angola and Namibia – was mandated by the (Southern African Development Community, a regional grouping of countries) to intervene in Congo to save a fellow SADC member country from an invasion by Uganda and Rwanda,” which were acting as proxies of the United States and Britain. [18] Both countries wanted to bring down the young government of Laurent Kabila, fearing Kabila was turning into another Patrice Lumumba, the nationalist Congolese leader whose assassination the CIA had arranged in the 1960s. Zimbabwe’s intervention, as part of the SADC contingent, foiled the Anglo-American’s plans, and earned Mugabe the enmity of ruling circles in the West.

The Zanu-PF government’s record with the IMF also threatened US foreign policy goals. From 1991 to 1995, Mugabe’s government implemented a program of structural adjustment prescribed by the IMF as a condition of receiving balance of payment support and the restructuring of its international loans. The program required the government to cut its spending deeply, fire tens of thousands of civil servants, and slash social programs. Zimbabwe’s efforts to nurture infant industries were to be abandoned. Instead, the country’s doors were to be opened to foreign investment. Harare would radically reduce taxes and forbear from any measure designed to give domestic investors a leg up on foreign competitors. The US, Germany, Japan and South Korea had become capitalist powerhouses by adopting the protectionist and import substitution policies the IMF was forbidding. The effect of the IMF program was devastating. Manufacturing employment tumbled nine percent between 1991 and 1996, while wages dropped 26 percent. Public sector employment plunged 23 percent and public sector wages plummeted 40 percent. [19] In contrast to the frequent news stories today on Zimbabwe’s fragile economy, attributed disingenuously to “Mugabe’s disastrous land policies”, the Western press barely noticed the devastation the IMF’s disastrous economic policies brought to Zimbabwe in the 1990s. By 1996, the Mugabe government was starting to back away from the IMF prescriptions. By 1998, it was in open revolt, imposing new tariffs to protect infant industries and providing incentives to black Zimbabwean investors as part of an affirmative action program to encourage African ownership of the economy. These policies were diametrically opposed, not only to the IMF’s program of structural adjustment, but to the goals of US foreign policy. By 1999, the break was complete. The IMF refused to extend loans to Zimbabwe. By February, 2001, Zimbabwe was in arrears to the Bretton Woods institution. Ten months later, the US introduced the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery, a dagger through the heart of Zimbabwe’s economy. “Zimbabwe,” says Mugabe, “is not a friend of the IMF and is unlikely to be its friend in the future.” [20]

Zanu-PF’s willingness to ignore the hallowed status of private property by expropriating the land of the former Rhodesians to democratize the country’s pattern of land ownership also ran afoul of US foreign policy goals. Because US foreign policy seeks to protect US ownership abroad, any program that promotes expropriation as a means of advancing democratic goals must be considered hostile. Kenyan author Mukoma Wa Nguyi invites us to think of Zimbabwe “as Africa’s Cuba. Like Cuba, Zimbabwe is not a… military threat to the US and Britain. Like Cuba, in Latin America, Zimbabwe’s crime is leading by example to show that land can be redistributed - an independence with content. If Zimbabwe succeeds, it becomes an example to African people that indeed freedom and independence can have the content of national liberation. Like Cuba, Zimbabwe is to be isolated, and if possible, a new government that is friendly to the agenda of the West is to be installed.” [21]

The Comprador Party

If Zanu-PF is willing to offend Western corporate and Rhodesian settler interests to advance the welfare of the majority of Zimbabweans, the MDC is its perfect foil. Rather than offending Western interests, the MDC seeks to accommodate them, treating the interests of foreign investors and imperialist governments as synonymous with those of the Zimbabwean majority. A MDC government would never tolerate the pursuit in Zimbabwe of the protectionist and nationalist economic programs the US used to build its own industry. The MDC’s goals, in the words of its leader, are to “encourage foreign investment” and “bring (Zimbabwe’s) abundant farmland back into health.” [22] “It is up to each of us,” Tsvangirai told a gathering of newly elected MDC parliamentarians, “to say Zimbabwe is open for business.” [23]

Encouraging foreign investment means going along with Western demands for neo-liberal restructuring. “The key to turning around Zimbabwe’s economy…is the political will needed to implement the market reforms, the IMF and others, including the United States, have been recommending for the past few years,” lectured the former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell. This means “a free-market economy and security of property to investment and economic growth.” [24]

Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has developed an economic program for Zimbabwe to be rolled out if Western regime change efforts succeed. Brown says his recovery package will include measures to:

(1) help Zimbabwe restart and stabilize its economy;
(2) restructure and reduce its debt;
(3) support fair land reform. [25]

What Brown is really saying is that:

(1) Sanctions will be lifted, and the resultant economic recovery will be attributed to the MDC’s neo-liberal policies.
(2) Zimbabwe will resume the structural adjustment program Mugabe’s government rejected in the late 90s.
(3) Either land reform will be reversed or black Zimbabweans will be forced to compensate white farmers whose land was expropriated.

The reality that Brown has developed an economic program for Zimbabwe speaks volumes about who will be in charge if the MDC comes to power -- not Zimbabweans, not the MDC, and not Tsvangirai, but London and Washington.

Not surprisingly, MDC economic policy is perfectly simpatico with the prescriptions of its masters. Eddie Cross, formerly vice-chairman of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, who became a MDC spokesman, explained the party’s economic plans for Zimbabwe, in advance of 2000 elections.

“We are going to fast track privatization. All 50 government parastatals will be privatized within a two-year time-frame, but we are going to go beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the central statistical office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years.” [26]

Of course, the intended beneficiaries of such a program aren’t Zimbabweans, but foreign investors.

The MDC’s role as agent of Western influence in Zimbabwe doesn’t stop at promoting economic policies that cater to foreign investors. The MDC has also been active in turning the screws on Zimbabwe to undermine the economy and create disaffection and misery in order to alienate Zanu-PF of its popular support. Arguing that foreign firms are propping up the government, the MDC has actively discouraged investment. For example, Tsvangirai tried to discourage a deal between Chinese investors and the South African company Implats, that would see a US$100 million platinum refinery set up in Zimbabwe, warning that a MDC government might not honor the deal. [27] The MDC leader, true to form, was following in the footsteps of his political masters in Washington. The United States has pressed China and other countries to refrain from investing in Zimbabwe “at a time when the international community (is) trying to isolate the African state.” [28] Washington complains that “China’s growing political and commercial influence in resource-rich African nations” [29] is sabotaging its efforts to ruin Zimbabwe’s economy. More damning is the MDC’s participation in the drafting of the principal piece of US legislation aimed at torpedoing the Zimbabwean economy: The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. Passed in 2001, the act instructs “the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote against--

(1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or

(2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution.” [30]

The effect of the act is to cut off all development assistance to Zimbabwe, disable lines of credit, and prevent the World Bank and International Monetary Fund from providing development assistance and balance of payment support. [31] Any African country subjected to this punishment would very soon find itself in straitened circumstances. When the legislation was ratified, US president George W. Bush said, “I hope the provisions of this important legislation will support the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle to effect peaceful democratic change, achieve economic growth, and restore the rule of law.” [32] Since effecting peaceful democratic change means, in Washington’s parlance, ousting the Zanu-PF government, and since restoring the rule of law equates, in Washingtonian terms, to forbidding the expropriation of white farm land without compensation, what Bush was really saying was that he hoped the legislation would help overthrow the government and put an end to fast-track land reform. The legislation “was co-drafted by one of the opposition MDC's white parliamentarians in Zimbabwe, which was then introduced as a Bill in the US Congress on 8 March 2001 by the Republican senator, William Frist. The Bill was co-sponsored by the Republican rightwing senator, Jesse Helms, and the Democratic senators Hilary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Russell Feingold.” Helms, a notorious racist, had a penchant for legislation aimed at undermining countries seeking to achieve substantive democracy. “He co-authored the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which tightened the blockade on Cuba.” [33]

The Distorting Lens of the Western Media

Western reporting on Zimbabwe occurs within a framework of implicit assumptions. The assumptions act as a lens through which facts are organized, understood and distorted. Columnist and associate editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, Seamus Milne, points out that British journalists see Zimbabwe through a lens that casts the president as a barbarous despot. “The British media,” he writes, “have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime.” [34] If you began with these assumptions, ordinary events are interpreted within the framework the assumptions define. An egregious example is offered in how a perfectly legitimate exercise was construed and presented by Western reporters as a diabolical exercise. Zanu-PF held campaign workshops to explain what the government had achieved since independence and what it was doing to address the country’s economic crisis. The intention, according to Zimbabwe’s Information and Publicity Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, was to “educate the people on the illegal sanctions as some of them were duped to vote for the MDC in the March elections.” [35] But that’s not how the British newspaper, The Independent, saw it. “The Zimbabwean army and police,” its reporter wrote, “have been accused of setting up torture camps and organizing ‘re-education meetings’ involving unspeakable cruelty where voters are beaten and mutilated in the hope of achieving victory for President Robert Mugabe in the second round of the presidential election.” [36] Begin with the assumption that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime and campaign workshops become re-education meetings and torture camps. Note that The Independent’s reporter relied on an accusation, not on corroborated facts, and that the identity of the accuser was never revealed. The story has absolute no evidentiary value, but considerable propaganda value. The chances of many people reading the story with a skeptical eye and picking out its weaknesses are slim. What’s more likely to happen is that readers will regard the accusation as plausible because it fits with the preconceived model of Mugabe as a murderous dictator and his government as uniquely wicked. How do we know the accuser wasn’t a fellow journalist repeating gossip overheard on the street, or at MDC headquarters? How do we know the accusation wasn’t made by the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, or any one of scores of representatives of Western-funded NGOs, whose role is to discredit the Zimbabwe government? McGee is a veritable treasure trove of half-truths, innuendo, and misinformation. And yet the Western media, particularly those based in the US, have a habit of treating McGee as an impeccable source, seemingly blind to the reality that the US government is hostile to Zimbabwe’s land democratization and economic indigenization programs, that it has an interest in spinning news to discredit Harare, and that its officials have an extensive track record in lying to justify the plunder of other people’s countries. To paraphrase Caesar Zvayi, if George Bush can lie hundreds of times about Iraq, what’s to stop him (or McGee or the NGOs on the US payroll) from lying about Zimbabwe? That the Western media pass on accusations made by interested parties without so much as revealing the interest can either be regarded as shocking naiveté or a sign of the propaganda role Western media play on behalf of the corporate class that owns them. If the US and British governments and Western media are against the democratization and economic indigenization programs of Zanu-PF, it’s because they’re dominated by a capitalist ruling class whose interests are against those of the Zimbabwean majority.

It is typical of Western reporting to attribute the actions of the Zanu-PF government to the personal characteristics of its leader: his alleged hunger for power for power’s-sake; demagogy; incompetence in matters related to economic management; and brutality. The government’s actions, by contrast, are never attributed to the circumstances, the conditions in which the government is forced to maneuver, or to the demands of survival in the face of the West’s predatory pressures. This isn’t unique to Zimbabwe; every leader the West wants to overthrow is vilified as a “strongman,” “dictator,” “thug,” “war criminal,” “murderer,” or “warlord” and sometimes all of these things. All of the leader’s actions are to be understood as originating in the leader’s deeply flawed character. If Iran is building a uranium enrichment capability, it’s not because it seeks an independent source of fuel for a budding civilian nuclear energy program, but because the country’s president is to be understood as a raving anti-Semite who seeks to acquire nuclear weapons to carry out Hitler’s final solution by wiping Israel off the face of the map. The same reduction of international affairs to a moral struggle between the West and what always turns out to be a nationalist, socialist or communist country headed by a leader whose actions are invariably traced by Western reporters to the leader’s evil psychology applies equally to Zimbabwe. If the Mugabe government has banned political rallies, it is not because the rallies have been used by the opposition as an occasion to firebomb police stations, but because the president has an unquenchable thirst for power and will brook no opposition. If opposition activists have been arrested, it’s not because they’ve committed crimes, but because the leader is repressive and dictatorial. If Morgan Tsvangirai is beaten by police, it’s not because he tried to break through police lines, but because the leader is a brutal dictator and ordered Tsvangirai’s beating because that’s what brutal dictators do. If an opposition leader is arrested and charged with treason, it’s not because there is evidence of treason, but because the president is gagging the opposition to cling to power because it is in the nature of dictators to do so. If the economy falls into crisis, it’s not because the West has cut off the country’s access to credit, but because of the leader’s incompetence. If agricultural production drops, it’s not due to the drought, electricity shortages and rising fuel costs that have bedeviled other countries in the region, but because the leader is too stupid to recognize his land reform policies are disastrous.

A New York Times story published three days before the March 29 elections shows how Western governments and mass media cooperate with civil society agents on the ground to shape public opinion. The aim of the March 26, 2008 article, titled “Hope and Fear for Zimbabwe Vote,” was to discredit the elections that Zanu-PF seemed at the time likely to win.

Harare had barred election monitors from the US and EU, but allowed observers from Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, South Africa and the SADC to monitor the vote. The Western media pointed to the decision to bar Western observers as indirect evidence of vote rigging. After all, if Zimbabwe had nothing to hide, why wouldn’t it admit observers from Europe and the US? At the same time, Western reporters suggested that Zimbabwe was only allowing observers from friendly countries because they could be counted on to bless the election results. By the same logic, one would have expected that a negative evaluation from observers representing unfriendly countries would be just as automatic and foreordained, especially considering the official policy of the US and EU is to replace the current government with one friendly to Western business interests. Indeed, it is this fear that had led Harare to ban Western monitors.

With Western observers unable to monitor the elections directly, governments in North America and Europe found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. How could they declare the vote fraudulent, if they hadn’t observed it? To get around this difficulty, the US, Britain and other Western countries provided grants to Zimbabweans on the ground to monitor the vote. These Zimbabweans, part of civil society, declared themselves to be independent “non-governmental” observers, and prepared to render a foreordained verdict that the election was rigged. Cooperating in the deception, the Western media amplified their voices as “independent” experts on the ground. The US Congress’s National Endowment for Democracy — an organization that does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly — provided grants to the Zimbabwe Election Support Network “to train and organize 240 long-term elections observers throughout Zimbabwe.” The NED is also connected to the Media Monitoring Project through the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, which it funds, and the Media Institute of Southern Africa, which is funded by Britain’s NED equivalent, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and Canada’s Rights and Democracy. The Media Monitoring Project calls itself independent, but is connected to the US and British governments, and to billionaire speculator George Soros’ Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa.

When the New York Times needed Zimbabweans to comment on the upcoming election, its reporters turned to representatives of these two NGOs. Noel Kututwa, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, told the newspaper that his group would be using “sampling techniques to assess the accuracy of the results announced nationally.” Yet, Mr. Kututwa also told the newspaper that, “We will not have a free and fair election.” If Kututwa had already decided the election would be unfair and coerced, why was he bothering to assess its accuracy? Andrew Moyse, a regular commentator on Studio 7, an anti-Mugabe radio station sponsored by the US government’s propaganda arm, Voice of America, was quoted in the same article. “Even if Mugabe only gets one vote,” Mr. Moyse opined, “the tabulated results are in the box and he has won.”

Moyse, on top of acting as a US mouthpiece on Voice of America, heads up the Media Monitoring Project. While part of the NGO election observer team the US and EU were relying on to ostensibly assess the fairness of the vote, he had already decided the vote was rigged.

Kutatwa and Moyse were the only experts the New York Times cited in its story on the upcoming elections. Yet both represented NGOs funded by hostile governments whose official policy is to replace Robert Mugabe and his government’s land reform and economic indigenization policies. Both presented themselves as independent, though they could hardly be independent of their sources of foreign government and foundation funding. Both declared in advance of the election that the vote would be coerced and unfair and that the tabulated results were already in the box. Their foreordained conclusions – which turned out to be wildly inaccurate -- happened to be the same conclusions their sponsors in the US and Britain were looking for, to obtain the consent of a confused public to intervene vigorously in Zimbabwe’s affairs. This is emblematic of the symbiotic collaboration of media, Western governments, and NGOs on the ground. Western governments, corporations and wealthy individuals fund NGOs to discredit the Zanu-PF government, and the Western media present the same NGOs as independent actors, and provide them a platform to present their views. Meanwhile, the Western media marginalize the Zanu-PF government and its supporters on the ground, denying them a platform to present their side. To publics in the West, the only story heard is the story told by the MDC and its civil society allies, who reinforce, as a matter of strategy, the view that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime. The MDC, civil society, the Western media, the British and US governments, and imperialist think tanks and foundations, are all interlocked. All of these sources, then, tell the same story.

Safeguarding the Revolution

After the revolutionary war, would the Americans who led and carried out the revolution have allowed loyalists to band together to seek public office in elections with a program of restoring the monarchy? We’ve already seen that the answer is no. When the Nazis were ousted in Germany, was the Nazi party allowed to reconstitute itself to seek the return of the Third Reich through electoral means? No. Countries that have gone through revolutionary change are careful, if the revolution is to survive, to deny those who have been overthrown an opportunity to recover their privileged positions. That often means denying former exploiters and their partisans opportunities to band together to contest elections, or constitutionally prescribing a desired form of government and prohibiting a return to the old. The US revolutionaries did both; they repressed the loyalists and declared a republic, which, as a corollary, forbade a return to monarchy. Even if every American voter decided that George Bush should become king, the US constitution forbids it, no matter what the majority wants. The gun (that is, the violence employed by the American revolutionaries to free themselves from the oppression of the British crown) is more powerful than the pen (Americans can’t vote the monarchy back in.)

In Zimbabwe, the former colonial oppressor, Britain, has been working with its allies to restore its former privileges through civil society and the MDC. Britain doesn’t seek a return to an overt colonialism, complete with a British viceroy and British troops garrisoned throughout the country, but to a neo-colonialism, in which the local government acts in the place of a viceroy, safeguarding and nurturing British investments and looking after Western interests under the rubric of managing the economy soundly. Britain, then, wants the MDC, for the MDC is British rule by proxy. Many Zimbabweans, however, are vehemently opposed to selling out their revolution to a party that was founded and is financed by a country to which they were once enslaved.

Western media propaganda presents Zimbabwe as a pyramidal society, in which an elite at the apex, comprising Mugabe, his ministers and the heads of the security services, brutally rule over the vast majority of Zimbabweans at the base who long for the MDC to deliver them from a dictatorship. A fairer description is that Zimbabwe is a society in which both sides command considerable popular support, but where Zanu-PF has an edge. This may sound incredible to anyone looking at Zimbabwe through the distorting lens of the Western media, but let Munyaradzi Gwisai, leader of the International Socialist Organization in Zimbabwe, a fierce opponent of the Mugabe government, set matters straight.

“There is no doubt about it - the regime is rooted among the population with a solid social base. Despite the catastrophic economic collapse, Zanu-PF still won more popular votes in parliament than the MDC in the March 29 parliamentary elections. Mugabe might have lost on the streets, but if you count the actual votes, his party won more than the MDC in elections to the House of Assembly and Senate. Zanu-PF won an absolute majority of votes in five of the country’s 10 provinces, plus a simple majority in another province. By contrast, the MDC won two provinces with an absolute majority and two with a simple majority. But because we use first past the post, not proportional representation, Zanu-PF’s votes were not translated into a majority in parliament. It was only Mugabe himself, in the presidential election, who did worse in terms of the popular vote.” [37]

Those in the thrall of Western propaganda will dismiss strong support for Zanu-PF in the March 29 elections as a consequence of electoral fraud, not genuine popular backing. But it would be a very inept government that rigged the election and lost control of the assembly and had to face a run-off in the presidential race. No, Mugabe’s support runs deep.

“According to a poll of 1,200 Zimbabweans published in August (2004) by South African and American researchers, the level of public trust in Mr. Mugabe’s leadership” more than doubled from 1999, “to 46 percent – even as the economy” was severely weakened by Western sanctions. [38] Significantly, it was over this period that the government launched its fast track land reform program. Notwithstanding Western news reports that Mugabe’s supporters are limited to his “cronies”, Zimbabweans participated in a million man and woman march last December, where marchers “proclaimed that Washington, Downing Street and Wall Street (had) no right to remove Mugabe.” [39]

Elsewhere in Africa, Zimbabwe’s president is enormously popular. As recently as August 2004, Mugabe was voted at number three in the New Africa magazine’s poll of 100 Greatest Africans, behind Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah. [40] The Los Angeles Times, no fan of the Zimbabwean president, acknowledges that “Mugabe is so popular on the continent…that he is feted and cheered wherever he goes.” [41] That was evident last summer when, much to the chagrin of Western reporters, who had been assuring their readers that Mugabe was being called to a meeting of SADC to be dressed down, that “Mr. Mugabe arrived at the meeting to a fusillade of cheers and applause from attendees that…overwhelmed the polite welcomes of the other heads of states.” [42] A European Union-African Union summit planned for 2003 was aborted after African leaders refused to show up in solidarity with a Mugabe who had been banned by the Europeans for promoting the interests of Zimbabweans, not Europeans. The summit went ahead in 2007, but only after African leaders threatened once again to boycott the meeting if Mugabe was barred. With China doing deals with African countries, the Europeans were reluctant to sacrifice trade and investment opportunities, and laid aside their misgivings about attending a meeting at which Mugabe would be present. That is, all except British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He stayed home in protest. German leader Angela Merkel did attend, but thought it necessary to scold Mugabe to distance herself from him. Senegal’s president Abdoulaye Wade sprang to Mugabe’s defense, dismissing Merkel’s vituperative comments as untrue and accusing the German leader of being misinformed. [43]

Opposition’s Failed Attempts at Insurrection

Mugabe’s popularity, and that of the movement for Zimbabwean empowerment he leads, explains Zanu-PF’s strong showing in elections and why the opposition’s numerous efforts at seizing power by general strike and insurrection have failed. Civil society organizations and MDC leaders have called for insurrectionary activity many times. In 2000, Morgan Tsvangirai called on Mugabe to step down peacefully or face violence. “If you don’t want to go peacefully,” the new opposition leader warned, “we will remove you violently.” [44] Arthur Mutambara, a robotics professor and former consultant with McKinsey & Company and leader of an alternative wing of the MDC, declared in 2006 that he was “going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal.” Asked to clarify what he meant, he replied, “We’re not going to rule out or in anything – the sky’s the limit.” [45] Three days before the March 29 elections, Tendai Biti, secretary general of Tsvangirai’s MDC faction, warned of Kenya-style post electoral violence if Mugabe won. [46] In the US, where United States Code, Section 2385, “prohibits anyone from advocating abetting, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States by force or violence,” opposition leaders like Tsvangirai, Mutambara and Biti would be charged with treason (Biti has been.)

Leaders of civil society organizations which receive Western funding have been no less diffident about threatening to overthrow the government violently. Last summer, the then Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, said he thought it was “justified for Britain to raid Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe. We should do it ourselves but there’s too much fear. I’m ready to lead the people, guns blazing, but the people are not ready.” [47] Ncube complained bitterly that Zimbabweans were cowards, unwilling to take up arms against the government. This was a strange complaint to make against a people who waged a guerilla war for over a decade to achieve independence. Zimbabweans’ unwillingness to follow Ncube, guns blazing, had nothing to do with cowardice, and everything to do with the absence of popular support for Ncube’s position.

Recently, the International Socialist Organization, one of the founding members of the MDC along with the British government, argued in its newspaper that “the crisis was not going to be resolved through elections, but through mass action.” ISO - Zimbabwe leader Munyaradzi Gwisai “said that the way forward for the Movement for Democratic Change and civil society was to create a united front and mobilize against the regime.” [48] The ISO makes the curious argument that Zimbabweans should take to the streets to bring the MDC to power, recognizing the MDC to be a comprador party (one the ISO helped found). A comprador party, in the febrile reasoning of the ISO, is preferable to Zanu-PF. Gwisai’s offices were visited by the police, touching off howls of outrage over Mugabe’s “repressions” from the ISO’s Trotskyite brethren around the world. Followers of Trotsky are forever siding with reactionaries against revolutionaries, the revolutionaries invariably failing to live up to a Trotskyite ideal. If they can’t have their ideal, they’ll settle for imperialism. While Gwisai wasn’t arrested, Wellington Chibebe, general secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, was. He too had urged Zimbabweans to take to the streets to bring down the government.

Some opponents of Mugabe’s government go further. An organization called the Zimbabwe Resistance Movement promises to take up arms against the Zanu-PF government if “the poodles who run the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission,” fail to declare Tsvangirai the victor of the presidential run-off election. [49] The Western media have been silent on this form of oppositional intimidation and threats of violence.

The opposition has also tried other means to clear the way for its rise to power. In April, 2007 it called a general strike, as part of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. The strike fizzled, accomplishing nothing more than showing the opposition’s program of seizing power extra-constitutionally had no popular support. The campaign “was a joint effort of the opposition, church groups and civil society… As a body…it (did) not…have widespread grassroots support,” reported the Toronto newspaper, The Globe and Mail. [50] While depicted in the Western media as a peaceful campaign of prayer meetings, the campaign was predicated on violence. MDC activists carried out a series of fire bombings of buses and police stations, events the Western press was slow to acknowledge. A May 2 2007 Human Rights Watch report finally acknowledged that there had been a series of gasoline bombings, but questioned whether the MDC was really responsible. By this point, as far as Western publics knew, peaceful protests had been brutally suppressed by a uniquely wicked government. To keep matters under control, the government banned political gatherings. The opposition defied the ban, calling their rallies “prayer meetings.” It was a result of this defiance that Arthur Mutambara was arrested, and Morgan Tsvangirai roughed up by police when he tried to force his way through police lines to demand Mutambara’s release. The MDC took full advantage of the event to play up to the Western media, claiming Tsvangirai had been beaten up as part of a program of political repression, rather than as a response to his tussling with the police. As the Cuban ambassador to Zimbabwe explained, “What happened in Zimbabwe of course is similar to what groups based in Florida have done in Cuba. They put many bombs in some hotels in Cuba. They were trying to…generate political instability in Cuba, so I see the same pattern in Zimbabwe.” [51]

Making the Economy Scream

While quislings work from within the country to make it ungovernable, pressure is applied from without. Western governments say they’ve imposed only targeted sanctions aimed at key members of the government, nothing to undermine the economy and hurt ordinary Zimbabweans, but as we’ve already seen, the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act has far-reaching economic implications. On top of this, other, informal, sanctions do their part to make the economy scream. As Robert Mugabe explains:

The British and their allies “influence other countries to cut their economic ties with us…the soft loans, grants and investments that were coming our way, started decreasing and in some cases practically petering out. Then the signals to the rest of the world that Zimbabwe is under sanctions, that rings bells and countries that would want to invest in Zimbabwe are being very cautious. And we are being dragged through the mud every day on CNN, BBC, Sky News, and they are saying to these potential investors ‘your investments will not be safe in Zimbabwe, the British farmers have lost their land, and your investments will go the same way.’” [52]

In March 2002, Canada withdrew all direct funding to the government of Zimbabwe. [53] In 2005, the IT department at Zimbabwe’s Africa University discovered that Microsoft had been instructed by the US Treasury Department to refrain from doing business with the university. [54] Western companies refuse to supply spare parts to Zimbabwe’s national railway company, even though there are no official trade sanctions in place. [55] Britain and its allies are now planning to escalate the pressure. Plans have been made to press South Africa to cut off electricity to Zimbabwe if the MDC doesn’t come to power. Pressure will also be applied on countries surrounding Zimbabwe to mount an economic blockade. [56] The point of sanctions is to starve the people of Zimbabwe into revolting against the government to clear the way for the rise of the MDC and control, by proxy, from London and Washington. Apply enough pressure and eventually the people will cry uncle (or so goes the theory.) You can’t say Zanu-PF wasn’t forewarned. Stanley Mudenge, the former foreign minister of Zimbabwe, said Robin Cook, then British foreign secretary, once pulled him aside at a meeting and said: “Stan, you must get rid of Bob (Mugabe)…If you don’t get rid of Bob, what will hit you will make your people stone you in the streets.” [57]

Harare’s Options

Those who condemn the actions of the Zanu-PF government in defending their revolution have an obligation to say what they would do. Usually, they skirt the issue, saying there is no revolution, or that there was one once, but that it was long ago corrupted by cronyism. Their simple answer is to dump Mugabe, and start over again – a course of action that would inevitably see a return to the neo-liberal restructuring of the 1990s, a dismantling of land reforms, and a neo-colonial tyranny. Not surprisingly, people who make this argument find favor with imperialist governments and ruling class foundations and are often rewarded by them for appearing to be radical while actually serving imperialist goals.

Throughout history, reformers and revolutionaries have been accused of being self-aggrandizing demagogues manipulating their followers with populist rhetoric to cling to power to enjoy its many perks. [58] But as one writer in the British anti-imperialist journal Lalkar pointed out, “The government of Zimbabwe could very easily abandon its militant policies aimed at protecting Zimbabwe’s independence and building its collective wealth – no doubt its ministers would be rewarded amply by the likes of the World Bank and the IMF.” [59] If Mugabe is really using all means at his disposable to hang on to power simply to enjoy its perks, he has chosen the least certain and most difficult way of going about it. Lay this argument aside as the specious drivel of those who want to bury their heads in the sand to avoid confronting tough questions. What would you do in these circumstances?

In retaliation for democratizing patterns of land ownership, distributing land previously owned by 4,000 farmers, mainly of British stock, to 300,000 previously landless families, Britain has “mobilized her friends and allies in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to impose illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe. They have cut off all development assistance, disabled lines of credit, prevented the Bretton Woods institutions from providing financial assistance, and ordered private companies in the United States not to do business with Zimbabwe.” [60] They have done this to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy to alienate the revolutionary government of its popular support. For years, they have done this. Soni Rajan, employed by the British government to investigate land reform in Zimbabwe, told author Heidi Holland:

“It was absolutely clear…that Labour’s strategy was to accelerate Mugabe’s unpopularity by failing to provide him with funding for land redistribution. They thought if they didn’t give him the money for land reform, his people in the rural areas would start to turn against him. That was their position; they want him out and they were going to do whatever they could to hasten his demise.” [61]

The main political opposition party, the MDC, is the creation of the Rhodesian Commercial Farmers' Union, the British government and the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons are former British foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd, Geoffrey Howe, Malcolm Rifkind and whose chair is Lord Renwick of Clifton, who has collected a string of board memberships in southern African corporations. The party’s funding comes from European governments and corporations, and its raison d’etre is to reverse every measure the Zanu-PF government has taken to invest Zimbabwean independence with real meaning. Civil society organizations are funded by governments whose official policy is one of regime change in Zimbabwe. The US, Britain and the Netherlands finance pirate radio stations and newspapers, which the Western media disingenuously call “independent”, to poison public opinion against the Mugabe government and its land democratization and economic indigenization programs. It’s impossible to hold free and fair elections, because the interference by Western powers is massive, a point acknowledge by Mugabe opponent Munyaradzi Gwisai. [62]

Guns Trump “Xs”

Zimbabweans who fought for the country’s independence and democratization of land ownership are not prepared to give up the gains of their revolution simply because a majority of Zimbabweans marked an “X” for a party of quislings. There are two reasons for their steadfastness in defense of their revolution: First, Americans can’t vote the monarchy back in, or return, through the ballot box, to the status quo ante of British colonial domination. The US revolutionaries recognized that some gains are senior to others, freedom from foreign domination being one of them. Americans would never allow a majority vote to place the country once again under British rule. Nor will Zimbabwe’s patriots allow the same to happen to their country. Second, no election in Zimbabwe can be free and fair, so long as the country is under sanctions and the main opposition party and civil society organizations are agents of hostile foreign governments. The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Justice has called on the government “to consider the possibility of declaring a state of emergency,” pointing out correctly that “Zimbabwe is at war with foreign elements using local puppets.” [63] Western governments would do – and have done – no less under similar circumstances. Patriots writing to the state-owned newspaper, The Herald, urge the government to take a stronger line. “The electoral environment is heavily tilted in favour of the (MDC) because of the economic sanctions,” wrote one Herald reader. “If it was up to me there should be no elections until the sanctions are scrapped. If we don’t defend our independence and sovereignty, then we are doomed to become hewers of wood and drawers of water. I stand ready to take up arms to defend my sovereignty if need be.” [64] The heads of the police and army have let it be known that they won’t “salute sell-outs and agents of the West” [65] – and nor should they. And veterans of the war for national liberation have told Mugabe that they can never accept that their country, won through the barrel of the gun, should be taken merely by an ‘X’ made by a ballpoint pen.” [66] Mugabe recounted that the war veterans had told him “if this country goes back into white hands just because we have used a pen, we will return to the bush to fight.” The former guerilla leader added, “I’m even prepared to join the fight. We can’t allow the British to dominate us through their puppets.” [67] Zimbabwe, as patriots have said many times, will never be a colony again. Even if it means returning to arms.

1. Herbert Aptheker, “The Nature of Democracy, Freedom and Revolution,” International Publishers, New York, 2001.
2. Herald (Zimbabwe) April 2, 2008.
3. “No Better Opportunity,” German Foreign Policy.Com, March 26, 2007. http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56059
4. Times (London), November 25, 2007.
5. Rob Gowland, “Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, the struggle for independence,” Communist Party of Australia. http://www.cpa.org.au/booklets/zimbabwe.pdf
6. Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008.
7. Guardian (UK), March 3, 2008.
8. Wall Street Journal, quoted in Herald (Zimbabwe) March 23, 2008.
9. Talkzimbabwe.com, June 19, 2008.
10. Guardian (UK), August 22, 2002.
11. Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008.
12. Herald (Zimbabwe), February 22, 2008.
13. New York Times, March 27, 2005.
14. Ibid.
15. Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2005.
16. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, “Manufacturing Consent,” Pantheon Books, 1988, p. 28.
17. The Independent (UK), October 22, 2007; New York Times, October 23, 3007.
18. New African, June 2008.
19. Antonia Juhasz, “The Tragic Tale of the IMF in Zimbabwe,” Daily Mirror of Zimbabwe, March 7, 2004.
20. Herald (Zimbabwe) September 13, 2005.
21. Herald (Zimbabwe) August 12, 2005.
22. Morgan Tsvangirai, “Zimbabwe’s Razor Edge,” Guardian (UK) April 7, 2008.
23. Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 31, 2008.
24. Response to Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Monetary Policy Statement,” Ambassador Christopher Dell, February 7, 2007.
25. The Independent (UK), September 20, 2007.
26. John Wright, “Victims of the West,” Morning Star (UK), December 18, 2007.
27. Herald (Zimbabwe), July 6, 2005.
28. AFP, July 29, 2005.
29 Ibid.
30. US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001.
31. Herald (Zimbabwe) June 4, 2008.
32. “President Signs Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, December 21, 2001. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/200111221-15.html
33. www.pslweb.org, October 17, 2006.
34. Guardian (UK), April 17, 2008. Milne is also clear on who’s responsible for the conflict in Zimbabwe. In an April 17, 2008 column in The Guardian, he wrote, “Britain refused to act against a white racist coup, triggering a bloody 15-year liberation war, and then imposed racial parliamentary quotas and a 10-year moratorium on land reform at independence. The subsequent failure by Britain and the US to finance land buyouts as expected, along with the impact of IMF programs, laid the ground for the current impasse.”
35. Herald (Zimbabwe), June 11, 2008.
36. The Independent (UK), June 9, 2008.
37. Weekly Worker, 726, June 19, 2008 http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/726/forced.html.
38. New York Times, December 24, 2004.
39. Workers World (US), December 12, 2007.
40. Proletarian (UK) April-May 2007.
41. Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2007.
42. New York Times, August 17, 2007.
43. New York Times, December 9, 2007.
44. BBC, September 30, 2000.
45. Times Online, March 5, 2006.
46. Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008.
47. Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007.
48. Weekly Worker, 726, June 19, 2008 http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/726/forced.html
49. The Zimbabwe Times, May 31, 2008.
50. Globe and Mail (Toronto) March 22, 2007.
51. Herald (Zimbabwe) April 15, 2007.
52. New African, May 2008.
53. Herald (Zimbabwe), October 18, 2007.
54. Herald (Zimbabwe), January 28, 2008.
55. Herald (Zimbabwe), January 11, 2008.
56. Guardian (UK), June 16, 2008.
57. New African, May 2008.
58. See, for example, Michael Parenti, “The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History Ancient Rome,” The New Press, 2003.
59. Lalkar, May-June, 2008. http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2008/zim.php
60. Address of Robert Mugabe to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, June 3, 2008.
61. New African, May 2008.
62. Weekly Worker, 726, June 19, 2008 http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/726/forced.html
63. TalkZimbabwe.com, May 15, 2008.
64. Letter to the Herald (Zimbabwe), May 6, 2008.
65. Guardian (UK), March 15, 2008.
66. Herald (Zimbabwe), June 20, 2008.
67. The Independent (UK), June 14, 2008.

Zimbabwe: Politics and Food Aid

2008-06-04T18:48:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

There is no evidence that the government of Zimbabwe is using food “as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election” or that it is deliberately denying “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans” food aid, as Human Rights Watch and The New York Times allege.

In fact, a careful reading of what both sources claim, points to a deliberate and knowing attempt to palter with the truth, reflecting and reinforcing a narrative that holds Africa, and particularly Zimbabwe, to be marked by suffering people, corrupt and monstrous governments, and endless chaos.

The New York Times began a June 4 article on Zimbabwe by announcing that “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans -- orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out – have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance.”

It’s true that Zimbabweans have lost access to food delivered by Western NGOs, but not food aid altogether, and only for the duration of the presidential run-off election campaign. In the interim, the government has made arrangements to take on the job of distributing food aid to those in need. No government-engineered famine is imminent, notwithstanding what The New York Times says.

Harare has ordered NGOs to temporarily scale back or cease operations, accusing them of illegally channeling funding to the opposition MDC party and in March’s elections of “going around threatening villagers in rural areas that the donations they were handing them would be the last if they voted for Zanu-PF and President Mugabe.” [1] It is out of a desire to eclipse Western interference in the election that the Zimbabwe government has taken this step.

Are the government’s accusations credible?

For the last seven years, the US and its allies have cut off all development assistance to Zimbabwe, disabled all lines of credit, stopped the World Bank and International Monetary Fund from providing financial assistance, and have pressured private companies from doing business with the country. The result has been “a form of collective punishment designed to destabilize the country and shake the population’s faith” in the government. [2] Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans -- orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out – have suffered. And to hide their hand in creating the misery, the US and Britain and their allies have blamed it all on Harare’s land reform policies, an inversion of the causal chain. It was not Harare’s land reform policies that created the disaster, but the West’s meting out collective punishment in response to the land reform policies that undermined Zimbabwe’s economy and created widespread suffering.

It is hardly outside the realm of high probability, then, that Western governments that continue to use sanctions “to weaken the economy of the country, to get the people of Zimbabwe so poor and hungry they can change their voting behavior,” [3] would also use food aid directly as a political weapon to shape the outcome of the upcoming election through their influence over NGOs operating in the country. After all, creating hunger in Zimbabwe is exactly what Western governments have been doing for the last seven years, indirectly, through the use of sanctions.

But Human Rights Watch and The New York Times say nothing about Western sanctions and instead accuse the Mugabe government of making Zimbabweans miserable, and further, of deliberately inducing hunger. Human Rights Watch researcher for Africa, Tiseke Kasambala, accuses Harare of taking a decision “to let people go hungry,” citing it as “yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election.” [4] Kasambala conjures the impression that (a) the government is deliberately inducing hunger and (b) that this will somehow help Mugabe’s chances of winning the presidential election run-off poll. But while the HRW researcher says the government is letting people go hungry, he also complains that it is picking up the slack, delivering food aid in place of the NGOs. The government, he says, should not be distributing food but should “let independent aid agencies feed people." [5]

Harare, then, stands accused of two opposing crimes: of letting people go hungry, and of delivering food aid (in place of NGOs) and thereby saving people from hunger. Kasambala’s “you’re guilty no matter what you do” approach reveals that what’s really at issue isn’t whether people will go hungry (and they won’t, though Harare’s accusers play politics by carefully couching their comments to make it seem a government-engineered famine is imminent); the real issue is who controls the food aid. The problem from Kasambala’s and New York Times reporter Celia Dugger’s point of view, is that it isn’t Western-funded NGOs that will be doling out relief for the duration of the election campaign. Dugger acknowledges that the government has bought 600,000 tons of corn to distribute to the hungry, but warns Harare could (not will, but could) use food “as an inducement to win support.” [6] Of course, she offers not a whit of evidence that it is doing so or will do so. On the other side, there is good reason to believe that if Western governments are consistent, they’ll use their funding arrangements with NGOs to extend their policy of bribing the people to vote for their candidate – this time with threats of food aid deliveries stopping if the wrong candidate is elected.

Kasambala, representing a rights organization that is dominated by the US foreign policy establishment, and can therefore hardly be expected to be politically neutral where Zimbabwe is concerned, goes further by predicting Harare will withhold food aid as “a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of (the) election." [7] In a milieu in which the “media have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime,” [8] Kasambala’s dark prediction has a ring of plausibility to it, but if you examine his accusation critically, it falls apart.

How, one might ask, could a government induce hunger and expect to win support, when a hungry electorate would be far more likely to vote against, not for, whoever caused the hunger? Indeed, the aim of sanctions is to create enough misery to force the voters to cry uncle by voting Mugabe out of office. It would surely be a government of fools that would add to the misery already created by sanctions by deliberately engineering more misery. This would serve the aims of the regime changers in the West, not Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. According to Kasambala’s logic, if John McCain wants to win support, he should announce that, if elected, he will restore the draft and hike taxes sharply across-the-board.

Western media and organizations allied with US and British imperial goals are trying to create the impression that the government of Robert Mugabe is deliberately inducing hunger and using food aid to shape the outcome of the presidential run-off election, that is, when they’re not accusing him of planning to rig the election. One wonders why Mugabe would tamper with the election results if he is using food as a political weapon, and vice-a-versa. Apparently, the aim of the demonization campaign is to hurl as many accusations at Mugabe as possible, in hopes that some or all of them will stick, even if they’re mutually contradictory.

It is Western countries that have created hunger through a program of sanctions that has sabotaged the Zimbabwean economy and led to widespread misery and need for food aid. Mugabe’s government has temporarily suspended the operations of NGOs, not to seize control of the delivery of food aid for political gain, but to block Western governments from operating remotely through NGOs to channel funding to the campaign of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and to use food as a political weapon. If you read the Western press uncritically and absorb Human Rights Watch’s analyses without a healthy dose of skepticism, it doesn’t seem that way, but as Malcolm X once said, “If you’re not careful the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” [9]

1. Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008; June 4, 2008.
2. CPGB-ML Statement, “Hands off Zimbabwe,” May 12, 2008.
3. Peter Mavunga, Herald (Zimbabwe) May 3, 2008.
4. Guardian (UK), June 4, 2008.
5. Ibid.
6. New York Times, June 4, 2008.
7. Guardian (UK), June 4, 2008.
8. Seamus Milne, Guardian (UK), April 17, 2008.
9. New African, June 2008.

Zimbabwe’s political opposition deploys its own WMD claim

2008-05-20T18:35:00.004-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

Zimbabwe’s political opposition and its Western-sponsored civil society allies are concocting stories of an impending genocide to call for Western intervention to oust the economic nationalist Zanu-PF government of Robert Mugabe. Yet they themselves have used threats of violence to destabilize the country to pursue an agenda shaped by and conducive to the interests of Western corporations and investors and the white settler community.

The opposition had planned to use the March 29 elections to follow the color revolution script written in Washington to springboard to power. That script called on the opposition to declare victory in elections before the first vote was cast, and then to denounce any outcome other than a clear opposition victory as evidence of electoral fraud. If the opposition failed to prevail at the polls, its supporters were to be mobilized to take to the streets to bring down the government, in a repeat of previous Western-engineered color revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine.

On the eve of the election, Ian Makoni, director of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s campaign, explained that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would avoid the failures of the past.

“The lesson from (the election of) 2002 is we didn’t plan for after the vote. Everyone stayed at home and said we will go to the courts. What happened in Kenya was they knew there would be fraud and they were ready. We will be out in the streets celebrating when the polls close. It can turn into a protest easily. Zimbabweans are angry; they are desperate; they are ready to protest. It’s the tipping point we are planning for.” [1]

But when the opposition’s charges of vote rigging fell flat as election results showed the governing Zanu-PF party losing its majority in the assembly and the party’s presidential candidate Robert Mugabe trailing Tsvangirai in the presidential contest, the edifice on which the MDC’s color revolution plan was predicated collapsed. If the vote had been rigged, Mugabe’s party would have sailed to victory. Instead, Zanu-PF trailed. The margin separating the two parties, however, was slim, revealing the opposition’s support to be limited. With Tsvangirai unable to command overwhelming support, despite massive Western intervention in the election against Mugabe, the opposition needed a way to grab power without having to rely on the uncertainties of a run-off election. It decided to take a leaf from the book of its US and British patrons, inventing a pretext for military intervention on par with the WMD fiction used as the basis for US-British intervention in Iraq. Outside forces, preferably those of the former colonizer Britain, whose corporations still have a large stake in the country, would be called upon to intervene militarily to avert an impending genocide and in the process, install the MDC as the new government.

Over a month ago, MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti appealed to his “brothers and sisters across” Africa not to “wait for dead bodies in the streets of Harare.” “Intervene now,” he demanded. [2] Twelve days later, with no sign of an impending genocide, Morgan Tsvangirai called on the West to launch a humanitarian intervention. [3] The next day, church clerics weighed in with their own warning: “If nothing is done to help the people of Zimbabwe from their predicament, we shall soon be witnessing genocide similar to that experienced in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and other hot spots in Africa and elsewhere.” [4] Two days later, MDC-T (the faction of the party led by Morgan Tsvangirai) spokesman Nelson Chamisa warned that “If something isn’t done in a few days, this country is going to be converted into a genocide zone.” [5] That was more than three weeks ago. A half a month later and with still no looming genocide in sight, Biti sounded the genocide alarm once again, calling on Zimbabwe’s neighbors to ease Mugabe from power “before rivers of dead people start to flow, as they did in Rwanda.” [6]

It is true that there has been politically-motivated violence in Zimbabwe, but it has occurred on both sides, is political, not ethnic, and has led to nowhere near the number of deaths that would even remotely qualify as genocide.

The stakes in the election aftermath are high. Violence has erupted on the part of some Zanu-PF supporters because they fear the loss of what they gained through their revolutionary struggles, and there’s no doubt that an MDC government would set back the project of investing national liberation with real content. That the elections were neither free nor fair has only made Zanu-PF supporters more embittered by Zanu-PF’s poor showing in the elections. Jabulami Sibanda, chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association, has criticized the vote for being held “when people were being pushed by hunger and illegal sanctions to conduct themselves in a way that could have been different.” [7] And Zanu-PF itself has challenged the fairness of the elections, pointing out that:

o NGOs distributing food threatened to cut off food aid if Zanu-PF won the election.

o The sanctions, which will be removed if Zanu-PF is ousted, amount to Western blackmail.

o The campaigns of the MDC-T and former Zanu-PF member Simba Makoni were financed by foreign governments and corporations.

o Western-financed anti-Zanu-PF radio stations, including Radio SW Africa (financed by the US State Department) and the Voice of America’s Studio 7 stepped up their broadcasts during the election period.

o MDC activists doubled as vote educators working for the US government-financed Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network and used their position to promote the opposition under the guise of explaining electoral procedures. [8]

There’s no question there has been massive Western interference in the elections. During the election campaign British Prime Minister Gordon Brown informed the British Law Society that his government’s funding to civil society organizations in Zimbabwe opposing the Mugabe government had been stepped up. [9] On May 14, 2007 Australia announced it would spend $18 million backing critics of Mugabe, two-thirds of which was slated to be spent in the run-up to the elections. [10] And this doesn’t include the much more extensive funding Mugabe’s opponents have received from the United States, other Western governments, corporate foundations, and wealthy individuals.

Western interference has made the post-election period one aptly described by Sibanda as “a battle between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries: Zimbabwean people represented by President Mugabe and foreign interests (represented by) the MDC.” [11] Under these conditions, and especially considering that MDC youth activists have a history of using violence to provoke the police, and then to use the police response to paint the government as authoritarian and repressive, some degree of political violence is inevitable. But is it out of hand? And is it one-sided?

The documentation of violence against MDC supporters has been gathered by the US Embassy in Harare, which is hardly neutral and has an interest in discrediting Zanu-PF to bring its favored vehicle, the MDC, to power. Human Rights Watch (HRW), which is dominated by former members of the US foreign policy establishment, has also been involved. But even HRW acknowledges the violence isn’t exclusive to supporters of Zanu-PF. “Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that…MDC supporters had burned homes of known Zanu-PF supporters and officials.” [12] Louise Arbour, the UN’s top human rights official, who, in previous jobs has invariably sided with the US and Britain, notes that the information she has “received suggests an emerging pattern of political violence” that is not exclusively inflicted by supporters of Zanu-PF. [13] Kingsley Mamabolo, a senior South African official who led the region’s observer team for the March 29 elections agrees that violence is “taking place on both sides,” as do human rights and doctors groups in Harare, most of which have Western sources of funding. [14] Paul Themba Nyathi, a civil rights lawyer and MDC member, says that “Tsvangirai’s followers seem to be saying to themselves that they can win elections by beating people and by using the crudest methods of intimidation.” This has largely escaped the attention of the media, he adds, “because the big prize is still to rid the country of Mugabe.” [15] Police arrested 58 opposition activists on May 9 on suspicion of setting fire to the homes of Zanu-PF members. On May 14, they arrested 50 Zanu-PF activists.

While Mugabe is often portrayed as a monster egging on thugs to beat opposition supporters (whereas we’ll see below, it is opposition leaders who have egged on their followers to use violence), he has spoken out against violence. On May 17, he told the country that “Such violence is needless and must stop forthwith.” He added that “support comes from persuasion, not from pugilism. Genuine support for the party cannot come through coercion or violence.” [16] At the same time, Zanu-PF has proposed a joint Zanu-PF-MDC committee to investigate political violence. Zanu-PF representative Patrick Chinamasa invited the MDC-T to form a joint team “to investigate violence so that we do not end up with false allegations.” MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa voiced no objection, “as long as there was commitment among the parties.” [17]

Despite these developments, it’s unlikely the opposition’s calls for military intervention will cease. Last summer, then Archbishop Pius Ncube called on Britain to invade. “I think it is justified for Britain to raid Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe,” he said. “We should do it ourselves but there’s too much fear. I’m ready to lead the people, guns blazing, but the people are not ready.” [18]

Former head of the British military General Lord Charles Guthrie revealed that the British government had pressed him to consider invading Zimbabwe on a number of occasions. Guthrie says he advised against an invasion, warning military intervention would backfire. [19] But that hasn’t stopped the politicos from pressing for a military assault. Tony Blair’s chief of staff for 10 years, Jonathan Powell, argued in a Guardian article in November for British military intervention in Zimbabwe on humanitarian grounds. In the article, Powell defends interventions in Yugoslavia and Iraq and argues for a British invasion of Zimbabwe. “Are we really saying we just have to wait while (Mugabe’s) people suffer?” [20] If Powell were genuinely concerned about the suffering of Zimbabwe’s people, he would press for the removal of sanctions, the principal cause of Zimbabweans’ suffering.

Basildon Peta, an opposition journalist, also makes the case for Western intervention. “The philosophy that African states should take the lead in Zimbabwe is bankrupt,” he argues. “Most of these entities would not survive without Western subsidies. We Zimbabweans have reconciled ourselves to the fact that our fellow Africans will do nothing for us in our hour of need. In desperation we have to look to our former colonizers for help.” [21]

The MDC claims to be the party of democratic change, founded on the non-violent principles of Ghandi and King, but its behaviour belies its claims. No sooner had the party been born, with Britain acting as mother, father and midwife, than it was threatening political violence. “What we would like to tell Mugabe is please go peacefully,” said leader Morgan Tsvangirai. “If you don’t want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently.” [22]

When Tsvangirai lost an internal vote on whether to boycott or participate in Senate elections, he claimed that the leader of the party was not bound by the majority’s decision. What ensued showed the party’s non-violent credentials to be as bogus as its democratic principles. An internecine war flared between the two factions, featuring beatings, hijackings, posters stripped from street polls, and the party’s director of security thrown down a stairwell. [23]

Leader of the alternative MDC faction, Arthur Mutambara, is equally prepared to use violence to achieve political goals. “I’m going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal,” he told supporters. “We’re going to use every tool we can get to dislodge this regime. We’re not going to rule out or in anything – the sky’s the limit.” [24] Were Mutambara the leader of an opposition group opposed to a British or US ally, he would find himself on the US and EU official lists of terrorists.

Neither is the Roman Catholic Church averse to violence, as already seen in former Archbishop Pius Ncube’s desire to lead the people, guns blazing. “In an Easter (2007) message pinned to church bulletin boards around the country, Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic Church bishops called on President Robert G. Mugabe to leave office or face ‘open revolt.’” [25]

Ncube contemns Zimbabweans as cowards. “The idea of dying for your country was something valuable in Western countries. We haven’t grasped the idea of laying down your life. The people are cowards. I was hoping the politicians would do it but it seems that don’t have any convictions. We must torment and harass the government. Zimbabweans are a bit lethargic and we find ourselves caught with our pants down.” [26] Zimbabweans are hardly cowards. Many fought in the war to liberate Zimbabwe from British colonial rule and Rhodesian apartheid. They are understandably uninterested in rallying behind Ncube and others who are leading the charge to restore Britain to its former dominant position in Zimbabwe.

Finally, it should be noted that MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa, whose colleague Tendai Biti was crying wolf over an impending genocide a little over one week later, warned three days before the elections that if Zanu-PF won, Kenya would look like a picnic. [27]

Zimbabwe’s government has been far more lax in its tolerance of violent dissent than Western governments would ever be. In the US or Britain, a political leader who threatened to use violence to oust the government, appealed for foreign military intervention and economic warfare, and accepted funding from hostile foreign powers, would be branded a terrorist and traitor and locked up. Not surprisingly, there are some in Zimbabwe urging the government to take a harder line. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Justice has importuned the government to declare a state of emergency. “Zimbabwe is at war with foreign elements using local puppets,” says the organization’s chief advocate Martin Dinha. “Western countries are known to fuel violence, civil war and strife.” The government, Dinha says, should “consider the possibility of declaring a state of emergency to quell the disturbances.” [28]

Clearly, the opposition, with the massive backing of Western governments, corporate foundations and wealthy individuals, intent on coming to power to reverse Zanu-PF’s economically nationalist policies, has no qualms about using violence, nor deception, to carry out its Quisling aims. Tsvangirai, Biti, Chamisa and their civil society allies are prepared to use a lie as great as the WMD deception of their British and US patrons for the same end: to justify military intervention in order to put the West firmly in charge. Where Zanu-PF has used violence, has been in the struggle against oppression. Where the opposition has threatened and carried out violence has been in the pursuit of an agenda shaped by and conducing to the interests of Western economic elites. There is no looming genocide in Zimbabwe, only the threat of Western military intervention whose justification is a lie concocted by fifth columnists doing their masters’ bidding.

1. The Guardian (UK), March 28, 2008.
2. The Independent (UK), April 9, 2008.
3. The Times (London), in The Ottawa Citizen, April 22, 2008.
4. Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishop’s Conference and the Zimbabwe Council of Churches. The Independent (UK), April 23, 2008.
5. The New York Times, April 26, 2008.
6. The Washington Post, May 16, 2008.
7. TalkZimbabwe.com, April 4, 2008.
8. The Herald (Zimbabwe) May 3, 2008.
9. The New African, April 2008.
10. Reuters May 14, 2007.
11. The Herald (Zimbabwe) April, 2, 2008.
12. Human Rights Watch, April 25, 2008.
13. The New York Times, April 28, 2008.
14. The New York Times, May 10, 2008.
15. TalkZimbabwe.com, April 28, 2008.
16. Sunday Mail (Zimbabwe), May 18, 2008.
17. The Herald (Zimbabwe), May 20, 2008.
18. The Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007.
19. AFP, November 21, 2007.
20. The Guardian (UK), November 18, 2007.
21. The Independent (UK), September 20, 2008.
22. BBC, September 30, 2000.
23. The New York Times, May 5, 2007.
24. Times Online, March 5, 2006.
25. The New York Times, April 9, 2007.
26. The Guardian (UK), April 2, 2007.
27. The Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008.
28. TalkZimbabwe.com, May 15, 2008.

Even at MRZine the ruling ideas on Zimbabwe are the ideas of the ruling class

2008-05-05T18:49:00.000-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

On May 4, 2008 MRZine published Chido Makunike’s “The Complexities of Zimbabwe.” Makunike’s analysis had originally appeared at the Ford and Soros foundation-funded Pambazuka News, with help from the European Union and British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, partners with another Pambazuka News sponsor, Fahamu. Pambazuka News’ editor, Firoze Manji, is the director of Fahamu. His views on Africa, very likely reflecting those of the imperialist governments and corporate foundations that pay his salary and sponsor his publication and charity, was published in MRZine on April 28 (“China Still a Small Player in Africa”).

While the ostensible mission of MRZine is to dissect the politics and culture of capitalism, Makunike, a Western-educated public relations executive living in Africa, strayed no further than the accustomed anti-Zanu-PF line of the New York Times, Times of London, and other ruling class-dominated newspapers in the West.

Since these newspapers recycle the views of the US State Department and British Foreign Office, and rely on so-called “independent” experts on the ground, who in reality, represent corporate foundation- and Western-government supported NGOs, the circle is complete. The British Foreign Office puts forward its views on the Mugabe government, the world’s major media amplify the message, Makunike mimics it, and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, through Fahamu, provide him a platform to express recycled British Foreign Office views in the apparently left-leaning Pambazuka News.

MRZine then reproduces the article, under the guise of dissecting the culture and politics of capitalism. Anyone exposed to the blanket of negative coverage of the Zimbabwe government and the Zanu-PF program comes to the conclusion that the British Foreign Office view is indisputable; after all, everyone appears to agree on it: other Western governments, Western-educated PR executives living in Africa, the New York Times and Times of London, and MRZine (or at least its editor, Yoshie Furuhashi.)

What’s happened, however, is that the independent socialist publication has reproduced ruling class ideology, and has put its own stamp on it to make it acceptable to its left-wing constituency. When the British Foreign Office view is passed from one publication to the next, each affixing its own imprimatur, is it any wonder everyone agrees with the British Foreign Office?

To piece together what’s really going on in Zimbabwe, you need to critically examine what’s coming from the opposition, the government and other governments, but what’s usually done is to seek out “independent” sources, who often receive funding from the US or British governments or both, and turn out to be repeating what the mainstream media say, which in turn repeat what the US State Department and British Foreign Office say.

Last March, Z-Net published an analysis on Zimbabwe by Grace Kwinjeh, a founder, along with white commercial farmers and the British government, of the now US- and British-backed Zimbabwean opposition party, the MDC. Z-Net didn’t bother to mention Kwinjeh’s party affiliations, presenting Kwinjeh instead as an “independent” journalist.

The MDC’s program is to establish conditions agreeable to US and British foreign investment in Zimbabwe. Because Kwinjeh’s analysis was co-authored with leftist scholar Patrick Bond and appeared in an apparently leftist publication, the illusion is created that Zwinjeh’s US and British-backed MDC view is really an independent left view. In the same vein, co-author Patrick Bond, celebrates the underground anti-Zanu-PF groups, Sokwanele and Zvakwana, as an independent left, even though their funding and training comes from Western sources, the same sources that stand to profit from the replacement of Zanu-PF by the MDC.

While committed publicly to dissecting the politics and culture of capitalism, MRZine does nothing of the sort where Zimbabwe is concerned. Instead, it repackages the justifications the US and British ruling class are using to torpedo Zimbabwe’s efforts to invest national liberation with real content, in the service of the bottom lines of Western investment banks, corporations and white commercial farmers.

How is it that “independent” journalists, “independent” experts, “independent” underground movements, “independent” left scholars, “independent” election monitors, “independent” media, and “independent” socialist e-zines, are either funded by or represent the US and British ruling class or repackage ruling class ideas? So pervasive is the use of the word “independent” to disguise the influence of corporations, imperialist governments and their foundations, that “independent” should become a warning sign: Caution: Ruling class interests ahead.

William Blum: Neo-Malthusian

2008-05-04T12:39:00.000-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

One billion people in the world – one-sixth of humanity – have too little to eat. One-half of humanity is malnourished. Some 18,000 children die every day from malnutrition. (1)

If that weren’t enough, rising prices are pushing food beyond the reach of numberless more.

Government leaders, corporate board members, the owners of large corporations, are concerned – but not because billions are hungry, but because the hunger of billions threatens to destabilize their rule. Food riots have become too frequent to ignore. The head of the CIA worries that growing desperation and poverty in the world will degrade “the US security environment.”

The causes of rising food prices are manifold and interconnected. The industrialization of China and India has created growing demand for oil, putting upward pressure on the price of agricultural inputs based on petroleum, from fuel to run farm machinery, to fertilizers and pesticides. Downstream, rising oil prices increase the costs of transporting foodstuffs to market. Increased emission of greenhouse gasses has created droughts, desertification, and extreme weather, the latter responsible for considerable crop damage. For example, heavy rains last summer left tens of thousands of acres of farmland flooded in north Korea. The growing demand for oil has led agribusinesses to divert land use to ethanol production, reducing the supply of corn for human and livestock consumption. Finally, rising standards of living in China and India have led to an increased demand for food.

Global growth in demand for comestibles at a time supply is contracting has hurt Third World populations the most. Many were already precariously balanced between subsistence and famine. Now millions more are faced with starvation. Western domination long ago forced Third World countries into a pattern of monoculture farming, where a few cash crops are raised for export and most foodstuffs are imported. These countries are food insecure, relying on exports to earn sufficient foreign exchange to import what food they need. But as food prices rise, countries that export foodstuffs are imposing export tariffs, reducing even further the supply of food heading to straitened Third World countries. That has put even more upward pressure on prices in places where rising prices can be absorbed the least. Food aid from Western countries palliates the problem in the short-term, but reinforces the underlying causes. The food the West sends to the Third World to avert famine is grown in the West, which means the problem of Third World dependence on Western countries for food is never addressed. The Third World needs to become food independent, which means breaking the chains of neo-colonial bondage.

Rising food prices command considerable attention today, partly because their effect is felt in the West and partly because they threaten to touch off militant challenges to the system, but the real reason one-sixth of humanity is hungry and one-half malnourished has nothing to do with the rising standard of living in China and India (indeed, rising standards of living attenuate the problem.) The roots of hunger are found in the reality that food is produced and sold to earn a profit, and half of humanity doesn’t have the income to pay for food at prices that allow the producers to make a profit.

At root, it is a system that sets prices above the ability of half of humanity to pay that is to blame. It is not a paucity of food and water relative to the population that is creating privation, as William Blum, author of Killing Hope and the Anti-Empire Report, would have you believe. Blum recommends that birth rates “be radically curbed” because “all else being equal, a markedly reduced population count would have a markedly beneficial effect upon global warming and food and water availability.” There are simply too many people, he says. (2)

About the time Blum was revealing his neo-Malthusian sympathies, Fred Magdoff was pointing out in The Monthly Review that the fact billions are hungry has nothing whatever to do with population counts, but with capitalism. In the US, more food is produced than the population requires, yet hunger remains a problem. Cut the US population in half and there would still be an over-supply of food -- only a bigger one. Would food banks suddenly disappear? The same is true elsewhere. Magdoff points to two headlines to make his case:

“Poor in India Starve as Surplus Wheat Rots.” (3)

“Want Amid Plenty: Bumper Harvests and Rising Hunger.” (4)

Those who remember the Great Depression will recall that poverty and hunger co-existed with plenty. Indeed, poverty and hunger were the children of plenty, of “too much civilization,” as Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto.

If the crises that threaten capitalism occur predictably so too do the regular bouts of Malthusianism that break out whenever the system threatens to fall into disrepute among those who must bear the brunt of its inhumanity. It is then that intellectuals, both left and right, raise the over-population alarm. Beneath their apparent hard-headed realism lurks the system-conserving message: poverty and hunger are not systemic; they happen because there are too many mouths to feed. In 1936, when Blum’s intellectual predecessors were attributing the Great Depression to over-population, one opponent of this deeply reactionary view replied:

“The plea of ‘over-population,’ of the ‘pressure of rising population on natural resources’… has demonstrably no basis in world facts, that is, in the physical and technical facts of world resources and world production. The alleged ‘over-population’ of particular countries is in the first place relative to the social relations within those countries, and is finally…relative to the existing system of division of the unity of world economy. On a world scale the advance of productive forces and even of actual production far outstrips the advance of population.

“The expansion of world production…including foodstuffs, has far exceed the growth of world population.

“Potentially, then, we have all the conditions present for world abundance and for immeasurable advance for every inhabitant of the globe. For the actual expansion of production bears no relation to the potential expansion which could be achieved, if the existing fetters” (i.e, capitalism) “were removed.” (5)

The solution for hunger is not, as Blum advises, “petitioning American leaders to become decent human beings” and radically curbing birth rates. (6) The moral decadence of American leaders and the size of the world’s population are not the problem. The problem is the organizing principle of the capitalist system. Food isn’t grown to feed people; it’s grown to feed bottom lines. Prices are set to make a profit. If the prices are out of reach of half of humanity, then, from the point of view of the system, that’s regrettable, but unavoidable. Profit is the system’s alpha and omega; people are simply the means of getting there.

Blum, whether he intends to or not, is a system-conserver, acting to deflect attention away from the system itself, to red herrings, like American leaders needing sensitivity training and women needing to be outfitted with the Malthusian belts imagined by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World to keep the world population in check. If you’re bamboozled into believing the cause of world hunger lies in George Bush needing moral remediation and people being too philoprogenitive, the system carries on, and is never challenged and changed. When future crises arise, and want worsens in the face of “all the conditions (being) present for world abundance and for immeasurable advance for every inhabitant of the globe,” another Blum will step forward, as Blum’s have before, to blame capitalism’s failure on an unsustainable population count.

1. Fred Magdoff, “The World Food Crisis: Sources and Solutions,” Monthly Review, May 2008.
2. William Blum, “Anti-Empire Report,” May 1, 2008. Blum argues in the same issue that Colombia’s rebel guerrilla army, the FARC, long ago ceased to be Marxist and has become the Colombian equivalent of the Mafia, engaged in kidnappings for ransom, protection rackets and drug trafficking. Blum seems to regard the words “Marxist” and “criminal” as mutually exclusive. Being outside the state, the FARC is hardly in a position to tax the residents of Colombia to raise money in “legal” ways as Colombia’s regular army does. Blum’s disqualification of the FARC as being Marxist because it engages in criminal activities brings to mind Brecht’s question: What is the crime of robbing a bank against the crime of founding one? It’s unclear how Blum expects the FARC to furnish itself with the means to operate – apply for a Ford Foundation grant?
3. New York Times, December 2, 2002.
4. Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2004.
5. R. Palme Dutt, World Politics, 1918-1936, Random House, New York, 1936, pp. 27-28.
6. Anti-Empire Report.

Ideological Mine Fields

2008-04-30T20:17:00.002-04:00

By Stephen Gowans

It’s easy to rail against The Times of London, The Telegraph, Canada’s The National Post and scores of US equivalents for being the worst kind of purveyors of right-wing propaganda. These advocates of all that is backward, with their philosophy of unremitting indulgence for the rich and limitless harshness for the poor, wear their reactionary, jingoist attitudes on their sleeves. They strive to be “in your face” – and are. But because they make no secret of their right-wing prejudices, their propaganda value in the larger population is approximately zero. These newspapers consciously cater to a right-wing constituency. There’s no need to worry about stumbling into ideological mine fields here; the mine field has been conveniently fenced off and bright warning signs have been deployed along the periphery.

More dangerous, like a mine field cleverly concealed beneath an inviting patch of turf sporting signs reading: “Please walk on the grass” are the respectable, seemingly balanced, quality newspapers. They share the same right-wing prejudices, but skillfully disguise them and package them to be palatable to those who aren’t inclined to spout right-wing shibboleths. Chomsky, Herman and others have been dissecting the reporting of these newspapers – the New York Times in particular – to show that the biases of so-called liberal media tilt just as strongly toward ruling class interests as their unabashedly right-wing counterparts do. The genius of the liberal media lies in reproducing ruling class ideology without seeming to – the deception aided by their being starkly different on the surface from their conspicuously right-wing cousins.

The same can be said of progressive and radical sources of information. In societies dominated by hereditary capitalist families and corporate wealth there are few places hived off from the influence of those who own the society’s productive assets. One way in which the corporate ruling class extends its influence to the progressive and radical communities is through buffer organizations. Buffer organizations include foundations, as well as government agencies that have names that appeal to traditional progressive concerns about peace and democracy. The United States Institute for Peace, for example, sounds like it might engage in the kind of work progressives can applaud, but is a buffer organization of the US State Department and Pentagon. The National Endowment for Democracy, which claims to promote democratization around the world, appears to be engaged in praiseworthy work, but works to destabilize foreign countries whose economic policies are not conducive to the interests of US investment banks and corporations.

It is through these buffer organizations that wealthy individuals like billionaire financier George Soros and former Michael Milken right-hand man Peter Ackerman, hereditary capitalist families like the Fords, Rockefellers and Carnegies, and the governments they dominate, connect with the progressive community. These connections reach into sources of progressive and radical news and analysis.

Consider two recent examples. Last March, Z-Net published an article on Zimbabwe by a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change, a coalition of foreign-funded civil society organizations that came together in 2000 to oppose Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF government as it was about to embark on a program of fast-track land reform. The leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, acknowledged in 2002 that the MDC is funded by the British government and European corporations. Both Washington and London have since openly admitted to bankrolling Zimbabwe’s opposition and its civil society adjuncts. The author of the piece, Grace Kwinjeh, who has traveled to Washington on George Soros’ tab to confer with Washington’s regime changers on how to get rid of the Mugabe government, failed to acknowledge her MDC credentials, passing herself off as an independent journalist (kind of like Donald Rumsfeld writing commentary on US elections for a Zimbabwean audience while pretending to be an independent US journalist.) To give the article a radical feel, Patrick Bond added his name as co-author. Bond had assured progressives in a Counterpunch article last year that the Western funded Zimbabwean underground movements Zvakwana and Sokwanele, which count among their number “a conservative white businessman expressing a passion for freedom, tradition, polite manners and the British Royals” represent an “independent” left. In Bond’s and Kwinjeh’s lexicon, “US/British funded fifth columnist” equals “independent.”

In April, MRZine published an article titled “China still a small player in Africa,” by Firoze Manji, the director of Fahamu and editor of Pambazuka News. Pambazuka News operates on grants from the Ford Foundation and George Soros. Fahamu is backed by the US Congress-funded Media Institute of Southern Africa, the European Union, and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. (You can read Bond on Pambazuka News, too.)

How far does Grace Kwinjeh stray from the views of the MDC when she’s masquerading as an independent journalist, and how far do the views of the MDC stray from its regime change underwriters in Washington and London? Are Manji’s views independent of the corporate foundations, wealthy individuals and imperialist governments who allow Pambazuka News and Fahamu to operate, and provide him a remunerative and interesting job?

You don’t have to log onto Z-Net to find out what the MDC’s views are and you don’t need to read MRZine to discover what the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, George Soros and the Ford Foundation think about Africa. But if you go to these sources directly, you know what you’re getting into. Not so if you go to Z-Net and MRZine; you might think you’re getting an “independent” left view, but you could be getting a ruling class view, repackaged to be leftist-friendly. This mine field doesn’t come with warning signs.