Author and activist Walden Bello argued the U.S. military presence in South East Asia to contain China prevented an alliance for peace in the region in 1990 because Washington objected to a proposed multi-structure in South East Asia to resolve conflicts. The U.S. argued unilateral protection by the U.S. through its military bases was a superior solution. The U.S. argument obviously found converts among the region’s leaders.
“Normal relations between neighboring countries are impossible until we get rid of the U.S. military presence,” Bello argued.
By Uli Schmetzer (www.uli-schmetzer.com) in ROSTOCK, June 2007
Future generations of propagandists will be offered the anti-G8 demonstrations this month as a text-book example how globalization crudely manipulated public opinion by demonizing demonstrators and labeling opponents terrorists.
On the other side future protesters will see Rostock as a symbol of civil disobedience, of determined resistance to the few power brokers who have usurped the democratic rights of the many and make decisions for all behind closed doors.
It is true stones were hurled. It is true black-clad masked youths, the Black Blocks, clashed with police. It is true cars burned and a number of windows shattered. But how puny were these incidents compared to the bloody, unprovoked wars and destruction the G8 members have launched or supported?
Did these incidents justify demonizing 80,000 protesters who had trekked to remote Rostock to oppose the way the world is run by members of the exclusive G8 club, a club whose main task has been likened to ‘ironing out inconveniences for the world’s major business corporations,’ a club whose political-economic strategies have made the rich richer, the poor poorer and caused death, destruction and misery across the world.
The lies and exaggerations ‘deployed’ to discredit protest at Rostock resembled the fake information strategy that led to war in Iraq. It also illustrated how desperate our power cliques have become.
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