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The Mainstream Western Worldview Pretends The Global South Does Not Exist

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 04, 2024

Mainstream western politics and culture pretend the rest of the world does not exist. The mainstream western worldview shrinks the earth down to US-aligned countries and acts as though the billions of people who live in the global south do not share a planet with us.

You really see this illustrated in US presidential election season, when debates will feature five or six minutes on “foreign policy” with the remaining two hours dedicated to “domestic policy” and culture war wedge issues despite the the White House’s relationship with foreign countries having orders of magnitude more significant real-world consequences. Americans discuss election results as though the whole thing revolves around them and their feelings and how much more convenient or inconvenient the next president might make their lives, while Europeans discuss what the results might mean for NATO expenses and trade agreements. The fact that the next US president will be committing genocide, starving people with economic sanctions and increasing Washington’s stranglehold on earth’s population by any amount of violence and tyranny necessary barely ever enters into the conversation.

Whenever you hear western officials talking about how “the international community” views a particular issue, they’re almost always talking about the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and maybe a few US-aligned Asian countries like Japan and South Korea — while pretending the rest of the world just isn’t there.

You see it in politics, but you see it throughout our culture too. In our movies, our shows, our conversations, our thoughts. We don’t really think about all the exploitative imperialist extraction of resources and labor that makes our lifestyles possible, even though it directly affects damn near every waking moment of our lives. You wouldn’t be reading this sentence right now had not this exact dynamic led to a highly complex electronic device making its way into your field of vision.

We just conduct ourselves from moment to moment like this relationship isn’t happening. It’s as though we’re all walking around with living people strapped to our feet like slippers, but we’re just laughing and talking about the weather and celebrities and how we’re feeling about this and that without ever acknowledging the existence of the human beings we’re standing on top of.

The global south is omitted from our thinking and our conversations in this way all the time, leaving us in this fractured, redacted mental universe where we pretend we’re the only people living in this rapidly shrinking world. Our lives are no less significant or valuable than those of people in Africa or Asia, but we live as though they don’t exist, even when their labor may affect our moment to moment reality far more than the white-skinned person we’re paying attention to in this instant.

This is going to have to change if we’re to become a conscious species and create a healthy world together. Our perception of the world is going to have to reflect the actual world, not just the small cloistered segment which exists within the confines of western civilization. We’re going to have to start thinking about humanity as a whole and stop living the lie that we are not intimately interconnected with the lives on every populated continent.

Until we open up our worldview and begin taking into account the needs and struggles of our fellow human beings around the world, it will be like we’re at a dinner party that’s being waited on by slaves. We’re all looking at each other and talking about our lives and our families as the slaves clear our plates and refill our drinks, never acknowledging them or discussing the fact that they’re being kept as material property and forced to do what they’re doing to avoid punishment and torture. Until we demand their freedom and invite them to come and dine with us, we’re going to be in a highly dysfunctional and abusive relationship with them, and nothing will ever feel quite right — because it won’t be

November 6, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | culture and arts | Leave a comment

We’re Spending 2 Trillion Dollars on Weapons That Must Never Be Used

By Donald A. Smith, PhD. Using my lyrics and Udio.com for the music, I created this military march about the risk and costs of the nuclear modernization program. 14 Oct24

Audio on original  https://progressivememes.org/war/We-are-Spending-Two-Trillion-Dollars-on-Weapons-That-Must-Never-Be-Used.html

We are spending two trillion dollars 
on weapons that must never be used.
Nuclear missile modernization they call it.
The waste and risks cannot be excused.

Two trillion dollars, and what does it buy?
Weapons of extinction to light up the sky.
Corruption and greed keep the war machine alive.
If the weapons are ever used, no one will survive.

Politicians grin, saying "jobs will be made"
While the truth is that we're all being played.
For every job made building weapons of war,
Money spent elsewhere creates two or three times more.

We’re spending 2 trillion dollars on death's quiet plan,
Building bombs in the shadows, buried deep in the land.
Sentinel missiles standing ready to fly.
If they ever launch, we’ll watch the world die.


We tore up arms treaties, walked away from the deals.
Now the money flows faster, greased by power’s appeal.
What’s the true cost when we flirt with the flame?
It’s humanity’s end, in this high-stakes game.

Cost overruns soar and the profits are high.
Politicians line pockets, with kickbacks that satisfy.
What are the opportunity costs? And who’s made more safe?
The end of the world is the risk that we face.

We are pawns in a system that’s broken and blind,
Building weapons of war that will wipe out mankind.
For some jobs and for profit, for power and gain,
We face a future of deprivation, death and pain.

We are spending 2 trillion dollars, but it’s all for the few.
As we edge toward the brink, what can we do?
A system so broken, with the darkest design,
Where we gamble existence, for the sake of their bottom line.

October 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | culture and arts | Leave a comment

One Horrible Year on from October 7 2023, a Bleak Reflection.

1

 larryjhs  September 27, 2024,  https://webstylus.net/2024/09/27/a-bleak-year/?fbclid=IwY2xjawF1TM9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHesplRcX1423JwSpof6CAkT303FkdzIX_bEcTdRO5SkXXOkPsj9hdRcULg_aem_XDLROjlruTcdEBP9ZqlzlQ—

The past year since Hamas’ attack has been traumatic for the Australian Jewish community locally and internationally.  The fate of hostages appears to in the hands of Netanyahu, his generals, and extremists, who despite public outrage, has continued to prosecute an unwinnable war.  It is now clear that that Hamas has made numerous offers for a prisoner exchange and ceasefire, but these have been deliberately refused with a preference for war at all costs by the Israeli government.  Israeli Jews who protest are now arrested and beaten up.  This includes hostage members’ families and protesting members of the Israeli establishment. The forces of anti-democratic extreme nationalism and militarism have taken over the country, unimpeded. Sadly, this mentality appears to be held by some Jews locally.

This war against the Palestinian people has now been extended to the West Bank and into Lebanon against Hezbollah for firing rockets.  For liberal Zionists, the sum total of such a military strategy is a betrayal of what they thought was possible, to negotiate a peaceful political settlement for two peoples, in two states.  Zionism as an ideal now appears bereft of a moral foundation and liberal Zionists are flailing.  For non-Zionists and anti-Zionist Jews, it is confirmation of their worst fears about the seemingly inevitable drift of Zionism to extremism of the worst sort.

Some now call what is going on genocide, others reject the term as offensive, and in fact, it is up to the Internal Court of Justice to make the final ruling.  But with the ongoing evidence of incitement to genocide in the Israeli media, we should call a spade a spade. This is a situation where some Israeli Jews are calling for, or taking part in war crimes.

The violence in real time – aided by an almost unimpeded flow of American arms is like nothing we have seen before, and we have rapidly entered into the world of science fiction with remote explosions of pagers and other devices.    

There is always the same excuse for such violence and its “collateral” damage – Hamas or Hezbollah are our eternal enemies and the fight is existential. The only solution is military eradication.  Sadly, this is the script that has been in use for decades, but it has worn thin. This violence is an attempt to permanently destroy anything that amounts to independent Palestinian life.  The Israel State rejects the existence of an independent Palestine. But people’s wars – which is what the revolt in Gaza is about – are not won by military force, as learned in Algeria and Vietnam.  

Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, far beyond Hamas’ own act on October 7. Israeli soldiers have been filmed rejoicing in destruction and using Palestinians as human shields. Hospitals and schools and universities have been destroyed and journalists killed.  Aljazeerah is closed down. Thousands are arrested for unspecified crimes. Starvation is taking place.  This is not an ordinary war for legitimate defence.  It is something far, far worse.  For Palestinians and their supporters, this is considered to be a continuation of what went on in 1948 and thereafter, but this time, the world sees the brutality on its screens.    

This brutality helps to explain why the atrocity against Jews and foreign workers on October 7 is now considered by many on the left as of secondary importance, when it has become an obsession among Jews, used to reinforce the sense of eternal victimhood. It also helps to explain the simplistic identification by some with Hamas’ actions and its war machine as a justified form of resistance “by any means possible”, when the result has been the superior and brutal murder conducted by Israel.   It also helps to explain why so many have doubted accounts of sex crimes and atrocities by Hamas, when Israel manipulated unclear information from the very beginning.  In war, truth is the first casualty.

Israel/Palestine brings together issues of war and peace, identity, and great power politics as a social media event. It has become a focus for culture and political wars that particularly affect the thinking of alienated young people in a world that appears to be falling apart under the pressure of climate change, political corruption, and technological abuse.  

The brutality of Israel’s assault also helps to explain how the uncritical acceptance of formerly specialist academic theories about colonialism, imperialism, and racism, have found root in many corners of the left internationally, angered by the lack of action by the US and others to stop the carnage.  Palestine has become the cause celebre even a surrogate for all international injustice even though other brutal regional wars and massacres also call for attention.  The difference is of course, that Israel has claimed to be acting as a democracy and in the interests of the West.  At times of course, this anger over Israel has at times segued into explicitly conspiratorial antisemitism, though this is abhorrent to responsible pro-Palestine advocates.  

In fact, the idea that only the colonized, not the colonialist has any rights is totally ahistorical.  Theories should not be set in stone and exclude other insights. In this case, the current take on Israel as a colony reflects theoretical narrowness and the absence of deep knowledge or particular empathy for the peculiar and awful historical circumstances that brought about migration of so many Jews to historical Palestine, as Zionists of one sort or other, or desperate refugees. Once a colony, damned as a colony for ever, including its children. This is determinism.  It has got to a point that the idea of a “conflict” is rejected, since the situation is seen as a pure invasion.   The Jews of modernity are thus regarded as wholly outside interlopers to an imagined Palestine, when in fact Palestine was always multicultural, subject to migration forces and domination by great powers. I’ve thus got a real concern that Palestinian nationalism, for all its talk of future equality, shares a similar thread of intolerance of difference as the Zionist project.  In fact, as the great Palestinian historian and activity Rashid Khalidi said in his The Hundred Years War on Palestine “[T]here are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being, and the conflict between them cannot be resolved as long as the national existence of each is denied by the other.”

But such subtlety now appears to be rejected by many on the left in Australia with dogmatic calls for particular forms of future arrangements that smack of an antidemocratic form of thought and political control, and are devoid of any understanding of the reality of peacemaking in conflict zones, whatever the cause.  The result, as we all know, has even been a political nightmare even in Australia as accusations are made about the direct complicity of any number of institutions for any connection to Israel and politicians are accused of heinous crimes well out of their direct control. Many Jews feel unsafe whether or not the threat is real.  But as a number of commentators have said, there should be no confusion between the perception of unsafety because of political criticism that upsets a privileged comfort zone and blindness or indifference to the plight of others (as distinct from real antisemitism), and the truly and physically unsafe position of Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank.   

Of course, the intolerance shown by elements of the left to anything identified as “Zionist” deserves condemnation because it leads to stereotypes and oversimplification.  Consequently, I have greatly regretted the lack of support on the left in Australia for the activist Israeli Jewish left which while a minority in the Israel, has taken on the hard task of standing up for Palestine.  This criticism extends to elements of the anti-Zionist Jewish left who appear bereft of any empathy for 50% of the world’s Jews. This lack of support may be due to position that this amounts to “legitimatization” of Jewish -Israeli domination over that of oppressed of Palestinians.  I think this is a wrong position to take. Conflict resolution needs people of goodwill from all sides, whatever the shape of final political arrangements, which I hope are based on principles of full and equal rights for all, the end to the occupation and the apartheid system and restorative justice for Palestinians. Huge political & psychological concessions are required by both sides, something hardliners refuse to admit at both ends.

Of course, actions of major Australian Jewish organisations, aligned to dominant political interests in acting as echoes for hasbarah and attacking Israel’s critics has been destructive.  Their and others’ attack on universities for alleged and widespread antisemitism is also flawed, exaggerated, highly partisan, and a threat to academic freedom.  Crying wolf over antisemitism is destructive to the interests of free political speech.  Likewise, uninformed sloganeering, exaggerations and barbs on both sides, and attacks by Zionist or leftist thugs do nothing to progress social cohesion. They detract from political efforts to alter Australian foreign policy to take a strong stand against the Israeli state. 

Sadly, I may be wrong in all this and we will be stuck with unceasing violence by the military state, a largely compliant population, continuing repression of Palestians and violent blowback while the world stands by. The US will be constrained by internal weakness to do any thing, and there will be an increased fracture between Israel and a fair proportion of world Jewry, while an unrepentant and fanatical faction pours in money and support and exerts political pressure. Bleak Bleak Bleak.
(edited a bit for clarification)
[The image is “Exterminating the cockroach” Yosi Even Kama came up with these posters about the fascist state in 2010 as part of an art project about how things would be in 2023]

October 12, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | culture and arts | Leave a comment

2-3 August, and 6-8 August Hiroshima Seen: Survivors and Witnesses Picture the Nuclear Age –

Learn more by exploring the galleries:

Hiroshima Seen

Canada and the Atom Bomb

On August 6th, 1945, one U.S. B29 bomber dropped one bomb, code-named Little Boy, on the city of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. without warning. The destruction it loosened upon the city’s 300,000 inhabitants was unimaginable. Never had such a fierce weapon existed: its flash released heat up to one million degrees centigrade, the shock wave toppled some 60,000 buildings, a firestorm erupted that burned four square miles. Radioactive oily black rain fell—and many gasping for water opened their mouths to drink it.

Some 70,000 people perished instantly or within days, due to radiation poisoning and other grave injuries; 70,000 more died before the end of the year. Those exposed to radioactivity faced punishing illnesses, cancers, and disorders such as bone crushing fatigue and recurring bleeding. Due to the censorship imposed over the seven-year U.S. Occupation, personal stories were repressed, but not forgotten. More than 25 years after the bombing, survivors were asked to make drawings of what they remembered of that day, reflecting their harrowing memories. These images were donated to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, whose mission is to witness and educate about the devastating effects of nuclear warfare—and to prevent its ever happening again.

This exhibition is co-sponsored by Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition (HNDC) and Artspace Gallery. Images are courtesy of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Curated by Katy McCormick.

Read the complete Curatorial Statement here

August 2, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | culture and arts | Leave a comment