Home World Politics Lessons from the travails of the Bolivian president

Lessons from the travails of the Bolivian president

Details
Published on Sunday
14 July 2013 13:40
Written by Radical Socialist
Lessons from the travails of the Bolivian president by Yakov Rabkin The episode with the Bolivian president’s plane exposes almost as many truths as Snowden’s revelations. These truths are just as conveniently hidden from public sight. The question remains, of course, if the public really wants to know them. It may well be that developed democracies rely on the consent of people who, as the Psalmist put it, have mouths but cannot speak, and eyes but cannot see. First, Snowden is not a fugitive from justice with an Interpol arrest warrant. The U.S. accuses him of espionage, which is a political offense that does not fall under the usual categories leading to arrest and extradition to other countries. Political refugees have occasionally been rendered to their countries of origin, but these precedents are hardly inspiring. For example, Stalin’s NKVD handed German communists, including Jews, to the Gestapo in 1939. Second, even assuming that Snowden is a known common law criminal fleeing from justice, it is highly unusual to violate the diplomatic immunity of a country’s president on the information, let alone the suspicion, that the fugitive is on board. This contrasts starkly with the same European countries’ connivance with the United States in its practice of extraordinary renditions pursued through their air space. This also brings to mind the prompt acquiescence of transnational financial companies, such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, to the U.S. request to cut funds transfer to Wikileaks, while neither Wikileaks, nor its founder Assange had been convicted of any crime in a court of law (and even if they had been, it would have been for the political offense of espionage). Third, this episode shows the growing irrelevance of national governments. President Hollande’s protestations about U.S. intelligence activities sound hollow and hypocritical while the French government orders that France’s air space be closed to the Bolivian president’s plane, unless, of course, France’s military and intelligence agencies show a stronger allegiance to their American counterparts than to their country’s president. Or these agencies act altogether independently of the national government and routinely receive their orders from NATO. Supranational entities, EU, IMF as well as gigantic transnational business interests have grown accustomed to obviate national governments and the electorates that go through the regular ritual of democratic elections. No wonder that major international trade agreements are nowadays negotiated in secret. Fourth, Snowden’s difficulty of finding an asylum shows how obedient to the one and only superpower today’s world, with very few exceptions, has become. Apparently, this obedience to the United States tramples all pretence of maintaining international law and justice. These breaches of international law took place at the behest of a country that refused to join the International Court of Justice in The Hague and is proverbially averse to subject its citizens, particularly its military and political personnel, to foreign jurisdictions. In fact, Snowden’s and Wikileaks revelations only confirm what informed observers have assumed all along: in the absence of a credible international counterweight, the United States would commit any and all infractions of international law, including the laws of war. Most Western elites more or less tacitly cooperate with Washington. This should not be surprising since their interests are more aligned with those of other countries’ elites than with the citizens of their own countries. Apparently this happens not only in imposition of economic austerity measures, even by those ostensibly elected to uphold social justice (such as socialists in France). The search of Evo Morales’ plane on the tarmac in Vienna has put into focus the right of American political, business and military elites to impose their will on Europe. It makes little sense to distinguish between the overtly obsequious New Europe to the East of the Elbe from the rest of the continent no longer trying to keep up appearances. – Yakov Rabkin, Dept of History, University of Montreal.  
RELATED ARTICLES

WSF Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly

Details Published on Sunday 13 February 2011 17:06 Written by Radical Socialist WSF Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly 12 February 2011 As the Social Movements Assembly of the World...

Whither Tunisia?

Details Published on Thursday 20 January 2011 01:43 Written by Radical Socialist Whither Tunisia? Curfew in Tunisia! What is the political significance? January 13 by Fathi Chamkhi Just hours after his...

Tunisia, Egypt: a revolutionary process of world scope

Details Published on Monday 28 February 2011 18:16 Written by Radical Socialist Tunisia, Egypt: a revolutionary process of world scope Fourth International The International Committee of the Fourth International at...

Most Popular

The Recent British Elections — An Assessment in Socialist Resistance, organ of British Fourth Internationalists

Details Published on Thursday 22 June 2017 10:24 Written by Radical Socialist A stunning result for Corbyn and Labour June 9, 2017 Protesting Theresa May's visit to Ealing, west...

Sudan at the Crossroads

Details Published on Thursday 06 June 2019 16:52 Written by Radical Socialist Sunday 2 June 2019, by Revolutionary Socialists of Eygpt The great Sudanese revolution has arrived at the...

GREECE: An alternative to capitulation

Details Published on Friday 17 July 2015 12:06 Written by Radical Socialist GREECE An alternative to capitulation Toussaint On 5 July 2015, by a referendum initiated by the government of...

Statement on India’s Revocation of Jammu & Kashmir’s Autonomous Status by the Indian Government

Details Published on Friday 23 August 2019 18:46 Written by Radical Socialist Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists As the Indian government resorts to annexation of the state of...

Towards a new permanent global war? NATO’s a new strategic concept’

Details Published on Friday 08 July 2022 15:00 Written by Radical Socialist JAIME PASTOR   Version imprimable After the costly and patriarchal spectacle of this summit held for the greater...

REVOLUTION WILL BE FEMINIST OR IT WON’T BE

Details Published on Monday 20 June 2011 11:26 Written by Radical Socialist

IPCC recognizes inequality as a key for “climate risk”. But we must go much further than that.

Details Published on Saturday 19 April 2014 10:40 Written by Radical Socialist

Railworkers’ Strike in Britain: The Class Struggle Heats Up On Our Side

Details Published on Friday 24 june 2022 18:15 Written by Radical Socialist THE RMT’S DEMANDS ARE THE LEAST OF WHAT WORKERS DESERVE. By AARON BASTANI The biggest wave of strikes...

In Tunisia and Egypt the revolutions are underway

Details Published on Thursday 03 February 2011 12:42Written by Radical Socialist

Stop police brutality in Hong Kong! No extradition to China!

Details Published on Sunday 16 June 2019 12:02 Written by Radical Socialist Saturday 15 June 2019 We, the undersigned organisations, are deeply concerned about the high-handed approach by...