The New Face of Imperialism

Beginning of article

In the age of TV, new insidious disguises are being used to give imperialism a new face--namely the sudden upsurge of black, Arab, and Asian military and civilian spokesmen and women to deliver official statements or decorate photo-opportunities by Western political leaders. But the ultimate aim of imperialism is essentially the same: economic domination.

**********

"Those whom the Gods want to destroy, they first drive mad". This poetic sentence might never have been true, but it is certainly an apt description of the confusion and official panic that have griped the US and Britain at the start of 2004. "Terrorism" and "terrorists" used to be the words applied to the African liberation fighters by the colonialists of old. It was also first used by besieged Israel for the Palestinian resistance in the intervals between the 1967 and 1973 wars when the moral issues in the Middle East were overshadowed by the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the campaign against apartheid in South Africa. But now, we are faced with a "war on terrorism" which, although obviously concentrated on American, British and Israeli targets, is declared to be "global" and infinite.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Curiously enough, in so far as the TV "image" of black people is concerned, the change has also been remarkable: there is seldom a photo opportunity of visiting American and British dignitaries to Iraq that is not …