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Book review: 'The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760-2010', by John M. Hobson

Oliver Stuenkel
postwesternworld.com
Thu, 19 Mar 2015 18:46 UTC
john hobson eurocentric politics
Rather than producing value-free and universalist accounts of the history of interstate relations, John Hobson writes, international observers usually provide provincial analyses that celebrate and defend Western civilization as the subject of, and ideal normative referent in, world politics. This bias is not only limited to Western thinkers, but also post-colonial or anti-Western writers, who tend to vastly overestimate the importance of the West in global history. Hobson identifies two subdivisions, one imperialist the other anti-imperialist:
The former I call 'paternalist Eurocentrism', which awards Western societies a pioneering agency such that they can auto-generate or auto-develop into modernity while conversely, Eastern societies are granted conditional agency and are unable to auto-generate or self-develop (....) By contrast, the anti-imperialist variant takes the form of anti-paternalist Eurocentrism.
Karl Marx's work is perhaps the most interesting example that shows that Eurocentrism was by no means limited to those who embraced 'scientific racism' or those who supported capitalism or imperialism. Rather, Marx believed foreign intervention in what he called backward societies such as China and India was necessary for them to change. He asserted:
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Info

Ancient stone tools by unknown people discovered in India

Justin Joffe
Outer Places
Wed, 31 Jan 2018 13:38 UTC
Ancient Stone Tools
© Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India
Middle Palaeolithic artefacts emerging during excavation at Attirampakkam.
Science has long thought that we Homo sapiens didn't leave Africa until approximately 175,000 years ago. Now a newly discovered collection of sophisticated stone tools in India that dates back to around 385,000 years has archeologists Archaeologists scratching their heads.

It's a discovery that challenges everything we thought we knew about early humans and changes our understanding of when they spread out to other landmasses.

Using luminescence dating to age the artifacts,at the stratified prehistoric site of Attirampakkam, India, the researchers determined that the end of the Acheulian culture and the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic culture begun almost 450,000 years ago, much earlier than was conventionally presumed for South Asia. Around 7,261 stone artifacts were extracted from the site, which rests on the banks of a tributary of the Kortallaiyar River.

"Chronologies of Middle Palaeolithic technologies in regions distant from Africa and Europe are crucial for testing theories about the origins and early evolution of these cultures, and for understanding their association with modern humans or archaic hominins," says the study, published today in the Nature journal.
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Document

Untold story of the Pentagon Papers co-conspirators

Eric Lichtblau
The New Yorker
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 09:34 UTC
Gar Alperovitz
© Sharon Alperovitz
In 1971, Gar Alperovitz played a vital, clandestine role in making the Pentagon Papers public.
In June of 1971, Gar Alperovitz, a thirty-five-year-old historian, sped through suburban Boston, looking for an out-of-the-way pay phone to use to call a reporter. Alperovitz had never considered himself much of a risk-taker. The father of two ran a small economic think tank focussed on community-building. He had participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War and rung doorbells with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Boston, as part of an antiwar campaign. But what he was doing on this day, propelled by his desire to end the conflict, could lead to federal prison.

He pulled his old Saab up to a phone booth on the outskirts of Harvard Square, and rang a hotel room nearby. When the reporter picked up, Alperovitz identified himself with the alias he had adopted: "It's Mr. Boston." Alperovitz told the journalist to open the door. Waiting in the hallway was a cardboard box, left minutes before by a runner working with Alperovitz. Inside were several hundred pages of the most sought-after documents in the United States-the top-secret Vietnam history known as the Pentagon Papers.
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Che Guevara

Come meet the CIA: Drugs, guns and money

Jeffrey St. Clair, Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch
Sun, 28 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
CIAmoneyskull
© Sott.net
On November 22, 1996, the US Justice Department indicted General Ramón Guillén Davila of Venezuela on charges of importing cocaine into the United States. The federal prosecutors alleged that while heading Venezuela's anti-drug unit, General Guillén smuggled more than 22 tons of cocaine into the US and Europe for the Calí and Bogotá cartels. Guillén responded to the indictment from the sanctuary of Caracas, whence his government refused to extradict him to Miami, while honoring him with a pardon for any possible crimes committed in the line of duty. He maintained that the cocaine shipments to the US had been approved by the CIA, and went on to say that "some drugs were lost and neither the CIA nor the DEA want to accept any responsibility for it."

The CIA had hired Guillén in 1988 to help it find out something about the Colombian drug cartels. The Agency and Guillén set up a drug-smuggling operation using agents of Guillén's in the Venezuelan National Guard to buy cocaine from the Calí cartel and ship it to Venezuela, where it was stored in warehouses maintained by the Narcotics Intelligence Center, Caracas, which was run by Guillén and entirely funded by the CIA.

To avoid the Calí cartel asking inconvenient questions about the growing inventory of cocaine in the Narcotics Intelligence Center's warehouses and, as one CIA agent put it, "to keep our credibility with the traffickers," the CIA decided it was politic to let some of the cocaine proceed on to the cartel's network of dealers in the US. As another CIA agent put it, they wanted "to let the dope walk" - in other words, to allow it to be sold on the streets of Miami, New York and Los Angeles.
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Dig

Syphilis-ridden 18th century mummy found in Swiss church is relative of Boris Johnson

Sarah Knapton
Telegraph
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 15:58 UTC
The mummy and Boris
© Getty
The mummy and Boris
A syphilis-ridden 18th century mummy dug up from a Swiss church is the great-great-great-great-great- great-great grandmother of Boris Johnson, it has emerged.

The body was uncovered in 1975 during renovations on Basel's Barfusser Church, but her identity has remained a mystery for more than 40 years.

Known as 'Switzerland's most famous mummy', the woman was buried in front of the altar, and found wearing expensive clothes, with no signs of malnutrition, suggesting she had been wealthy.

Comment: Science is showing how our lineage can have profound affects on the generations that follow: And on Boris:

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Info

Archaeologists discover 10,000-year-old drawing tool


University of York
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 05:33 UTC
Ancient Crayon
© Paul Shields/University of York
The crayon revealed a sharpened end.
Archaeologists say they may have discovered one of the earliest examples of a 'crayon' - possibly used by our ancestors 10,000 years ago for applying colour to their animal skins or for artwork.

The ochre crayon was discovered near an ancient lake, now blanketed in peat, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire. An ochre pebble was found at another site on the opposite side of the lake.

The pebble had a heavily striated surface that is likely to have been scraped to produce a red pigment powder. The crayon measures 22mm long and 7mm wide.

Ochre is an important mineral pigment used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers across the globe. The latest finds suggest people collected ochre and processed it in different ways during the Mesolithic period.
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Star of David

The not-so-secret life of the late Mathilde Krim

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 18:00 UTC
Johnson with Mathilde Krim, at dinner, undated photograph

Johnson with Mathilde Krim, at dinner, undated photograph.
On January 15, Mathilde Krim, a scientist and socialite, died on Long Island at 91, and the obituaries described her courageous leadership in the fight against AIDS. Krim was incensed by the widespread stigmatization of AIDS victims as somehow deserving the disease, and she worked to lift prejudice that kept our society from taking the illness seriously. (I saw her work for myself, attending a fundraiser at her East Side townhouse back in the 90's).

What the news has not told you about is Krim's other great achievement: helping to swing the White House to Israel's side in the 1960's. The no-daylight policy of U.S. alignment with the Israeli government, so obvious today in Trump's deference to Netanyahu, was born under Mathilde Krim's dear friend Lyndon Johnson. In the feverish weeks surrounding the 1967 war, Krim, who had once emigrated to Israel, and her husband Arthur, a leading fundraiser, were continually at Johnson's side, and advised him on what to say publicly.

"Johnson was the pivotal president for our relationship with Israel and I think Mathilde Krim's sway over Johnson was such that it turned the entire relationship, allowing Israel to continue on, especially after the Six Day War, in a manner that defied not only the U.N. but the whole world with regard to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians," says Martin Brod, a retired systems analyst in New York who has long studied the role of Israel's American friends in cementing the special relationship. Here is that story.
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Star of David

Poisoned toothpaste and exploding phones: Israel linked to 2,700 assassination operations during its 70 year existence, far more than any other western country

Ethan Bronner
The National Post
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 12:14 UTC
A new book also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, an act its officials have consistently denied
Netanyahu
© Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Poisoned toothpaste that takes a month to end its target's life. Armed drones. Exploding cell phones. Spare tires with remote-control bombs. Assassinating enemy scientists and discovering the secret lovers of Islamic holy men.

A new book chronicles these techniques and asserts that Israel has carried out at least 2,700 assassination operations in its 70 years of existence. While many failed, they add up to far more than any other Western country, the book says.

Ronen Bergman, the intelligence correspondent for Yediot Aharonot newspaper, persuaded many agents of Mossad, Shin Bet and the military to tell their stories, some using their real names. The result is the first comprehensive look at Israel's use of state-sponsored killings.

Based on 1,000 interviews and thousands of documents, and running more than 600 pages, "Rise and Kill First" makes the case that Israel has used assassination in the place of war, killing half a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists, for instance, rather than launching a military attack. It also strongly suggests that Israel used radiation poisoning to kill Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, an act its officials have consistently denied.

Comment: Just a few more examples...

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Che Guevara

Cycles of History: 2018 brings echoes of Europe's nationalist rebellions of 1848

James P. Pinkerton
Breitbart
Sun, 28 Jan 2018 12:56 UTC
revolution
© Wikimedia Commons
Populist-Nationalism, Right and Left

Here's a headline that a lot of people -- especially among the entrenched elite -- won't want to see: "2017 Was the Year of False Promise in the Fight Against Populism: The populist wave seems like it may have crested. The data proves otherwise." In other words, the populists are still on the march. Uh oh.

That headline appeared in Foreign Policy magazine, a publication not on the top of many populist reading lists. The two authors, Yascha Mounk and Martin Eiermann, are both associated with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Blair, as we all recall, was the prime minister of the United Kingdom for a decade; he was, and is, a devout apostle of globalism.
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Attention

The origins of the 1959 Mt. Kenya Safari Club and its possible changing tides: 'Safari Club II' what is it?

Wayne Madsen
Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Safari Club II
© Unknown
During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency convinced certain European and Middle Eastern allies to establish an informal intelligence alliance whose links to the United States would be "plausibly denied" in typical CIA parlance. In 1976, a group of pro-Western intelligence agency directors secretly met at the Mt. Kenya Safari Club in Nanyuki, Kenya to hammer out an informal pact designed to limit Soviet influence in Africa and the Middle East. The group met under the auspices of Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Although Khashoggi was present at the first meeting of what soon became known as the "Safari Club," Kenyatta and Kissinger were not present at the inaugural spymasters' meet-up.

Signing the original charter of the Safari Club in Kenya were Count Alexandre de Marenches, director of the French Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) foreign intelligence agency; Kamal Adham, the chief of Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah, the Saudi intelligence service; Egyptian Intelligence Service director, General Kamal Hassan Aly; Ahmed Dlimi, the head of Morocco's intelligence service; and General Nematollah Nassiri, the head of Iran's SAVAK intelligence agency. There are indications, but no actual proof, that the head of Israel's Mossad, Yitzhak Hofi, took part in the first Safari Club meeting in Kenya.
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