By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Beo! July 2008.
Very few people today are unconcerned about pollution of the environment. And that’s certainly a good thing – up to a point. Without a healthy environment, our lives would certainly be much the poorer. But is there any danger that our fears about the environment are being exploited? Can we completely trust the leaders of the environmental movement? Could there be a hidden agenda?
By Maidhc Ó Cathail. Published in Beo! May 2008.
When the Chinese government alleged that the Dalai Lama was behind the recent unrest in Tibet, the international media were incredulous. Since Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is widely seen in the West as the personification of saintliness, the idea that he was fomenting the violence in his native land seemed preposterous. But might there be any basis to the Chinese claims?
“Whoever invokes humanity is trying to cheat.” Carl Schmitt’s maxim is worth repeating whenever leaders of powerful states claim humanitarian motives for their military interventions in weaker states. “Analogously, one can use the concepts of peace, justice, progress, or civilization, to claim them as one’s own and deny them to one’s enemy,” wrote Schmitt, the German political philosopher who saw straight through the humanitarian pretexts of liberal imperialists.
Japan celebrated 50 years of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2004. The world’s second largest donor, Japan has disbursed over $230 billion in the last five decades. So it would seem that Japan has good reason to feel proud of its generosity to less fortunate nations. But who benefits from Japanese ODA? How effective is it? And to what extent is it motivated by humanitarianism?
Japan’s foreign policy is “totally insane,” according to one of the world’s leading peacemakers. Speaking locally last October, Johan Galtung, the Norwegian pioneer of peace and conflict research, said it is “madness” for Japan to “risk falling between the two stools” of a declining American empire and an emerging East Asian community.
Revision of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution is passionately resisted by those who fear the country’s remilitarization, but the government’s proposed amendment of the Fundamental Law of Education could be equally fatal to Japanese pacifism.
