ANTI-IMPERIALISM FIGHTERS

ANDRE VLTCHEK—It all feels bizarre. As if the Western regime were preparing its citizens and the world ‘for the most awful scenario.’ As if there were no solution to this dire global crisis. “Chinese Virus”, says the U.S. President Donald Trump. He pronounces it with spite, and naturally, China feels deeply insulted. Some citizens and the government officials had enough of the continuous, racist abuses, and they are openly protesting. Well, first of all, do we even really know where the virus has originated from? In Wuhan? But how did it get to Wuhan, and what triggered the epidemic? We don’t know. Nobody really knows.

Already since the 1940s the US has repeatedly attempted to install a pro-Western government in Syria, such as in 1949, 1956, 1957, after 1980 and after 2003, but without success so far. This makes Syria – since the fall of Libya – the last Mediterranean country independent of NATO.

DIANA JOHNSTONE—Fifty years ago, it was “the left” whose most ardent cause was passionate support for Third World national liberation struggles. The left’s heroes were Ahmed Ben Bella, Sukarno, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba, and above all Ho Chi Minh.  What were these leaders fighting for?  They were fighting to liberate their countries from Western imperialism.  They were fighting for independence, for the right to determine their own way of life, preserve their own customs, decide their own future. They were fighting for national sovereignty, and the left supported that struggle.

ED CURTIN—Times change.  Once in the United States of America, theologians were fêted as important social critics and considered worth heeding.  Two of the most famous in the mid-to-late twentieth century were Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.  Both appeared on the cover of Henry Luce’s Time Magazine, and Barack Obama was later fond of referring to Niebuhr to justify his violent policies to extend the American empire.  Obama knew his audience, for Niebuhr was noted for a neo-orthodox theological perspective that encouraged “political realism,” popular among the elites who had created and extended the American empire. 

CRAIG MURRAY—Baraitser was not making no attempt to conceal a hostility to the defence argument, and seemed irritated they had the temerity to make it. This burst out when discussing c), the Iraq war rules of engagement.  Summers argued that these had not been solicited from Manning, but had rather been provided by Manning in an accompanying file along with the Collateral Murder video that showed the murder of Reuters journalists and children. Manning’s purpose, as she stated at her court martial, was to show that the Collateral Murder actions breached the rules of engagement, even though the Department of Defense claimed otherwise.