At 17:15 23/10/99 +0100, you wrote:
>In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Chris
>Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>
>>I cannot see any major financial gain for global imperialism from this
>>intervention except for status as peacemakers. And that is in the hands of
>>the UN.
>>
>>This has got to be a progressive move in the growth of world governance and
>>part of a serious attempt to show some solidarity with the people of Africa.
>
>A non-sequiteur, surely.
>
>The crusades were not undertaken for financial gain, but they were still
>pretty gruesome.
The crusades most certainly were undertaken for financial gain.
But in the sense that they were a federation of smaller christian states,
there was still an element of continental if not global government.
>
>More to the point, I am curious to know why it is you persist in hoping
>against hope that somehow the United Nations will represent something
>good.
There is a subtle difference between you and me. Whereas I acknowledge that
Marx's favourite motto was "doubt everything" I do not interpret that to
mean, "be cynical about everything". I also assume it is a tenet of
historical materialism to be optimistic.
>Doesn't empiricism come into this at all?
You mean empirical evidence? Empiricism is the idealism that comes from
restricting oneself to fragmentary empirical data.
>
>Consider the record of UN interventions since the end of the Cold War:
>
>Iraq 1991 180 000 killed. Subsequently 500 000 deaths through sanctions
>and a slow war killing approx 200 a year.
>Somalia 1992 80 000 killed
>Bosnia 1995 partition and permanent suspension of civilian government
>Kosovo 1999 2600 killed, Yugoslavia loses 46 per cent of industry (so
>far the surreal estimates of Kosovar deaths have failed to be verified,
>with only 400 bodies found)
>
>How many people have to be slaughtered before it occurs to Chris that
>there might be a problem with the United Nations?
>--
>Jim heartfield
You list a series of interventions in the name of the UN but in the
interests of the imperialists. These are inevitable but that does not mean
that some interventions may not increasingly be in the name of the ideals
of the United Nations in a way that stands about individual countries.
Intervening in Sierra Leone will be extremely difficult but it is not
primarily being done for imperialist reasons. Nor was the intervention in
East Timor.
Chris Burford
London
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