The Compassionate Revolution
Radical Politics and Buddhism
By David Edwards
Green Books Ltd
Copyright © 2010 David Edwards
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-870098-70-0
Contents
Acknowledgements,
Preface,
Introduction: Learning to Look After Number One,
1 Demolishing Democracy: The West and the Third World,
2 Structural Constraints: The Myth of Press Freedom,
3 Rumble in the Media Jungle,
4 Political Anthropomorphism,
5 Demolishing Compassion,
6 Rediscovering the Moral Wheel,
7 Generosity is Dissent,
References,
Bibliography,
Index,
CHAPTER 1
DEMOLISHING DEMOCRACY
The West and the Third World
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the US throughout the world have been systematic, clinical, remorseless and fully documented but nobody talks about them. Nobody ever has. — Harold Pinter in the Guardian, 4th December 1996.
Anyone Seen the Bad Guy?
In our society it is commonly assumed that Britain, the United States and other Western nations are great and passionate defenders of liberty and democracy. The world around us may be in a mess, but not as a result of our lack of trying. Powerful though we may be, there is only so much we can do to save people from themselves and their ethnic and religious strife. Burma? Nigeria? East Timor? Colombia? Chechnya? Terrible — but we can only do so much.
Western benevolence is taken for granted to such an extent that it seems almost ridiculous to affirm it. We might also like to mention that breathing is good for our health, that it is nice to have a sun shining on our planet. What could possibly be gained by making such statements, other than the understanding that the individual making them must be disturbed in some way, or making a crude attempt at humour?
After all, in the remarkable display of euphoria that accompanied President Clinton’s visit to Ireland in the winter of 1995, the media never tired of describing the US president as “the leader of the free world”. The phrase was used reflexively by newspaper, radio and TV commentators; yet the implications are enormous. If the president of the United States is the leader of the “free world”, both he and his country must surely be committed to the spread of freedom throughout the world. By inference, then, all these mainstream media entities in Britain, and the West generally, are implicitly assuring us that the United States is indeed dedicated to the spread of justice, peace and human rights.
As President Clinton himself said of US principles: “The violence done to these innocent [Bosnian] civilians does violence to the principles on which America stands.”
The statement was received with sober reflection and much head-nodding by the media — no one questioned it. This is not surprising, for Clinton’s statement was merely the latest in a long tradition of US claims to the moral high ground. In accepting the presidential nomination in 1988, George Bush observed that:
This has been called the American Century because in it we were the dominant force for good in the world … Now we are on the verge of a new century, and what country’s name will it bear? I say it will be another American Century.
In April 1950, Paul Nitze, head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, wrote a state paper (NSC 68) contrasting the “inescapably militant” evil of the Soviet “slave state” with the United States “foun
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