Civilization is coming to an end. The globalized economic structure is Hell-bent on turning this planet into a wasteland: global warming has shot a hole into the ozone layer and melting ice caps, our waste is poisoning rivers and water supply to where there is a trash mound the size of Texas floating around the Pacific Ocean, nuclear weapons ready to go off at the slightest hint of human error, and the elite class of the world hoarding the last remnants of civilization, taunting its own survival. It is unlikely that we will make it past the 21st century.
The United State’s call for democracy is a last ditch effort to preserve the modern industrial civilization.
Singh 98 American Quarterly 50.3 (1998) 471-522 Culture/Wars: Recoding Empire in an Age of Democracy Nikhil Pal Singh http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/v050/50.3singh.html)
"The American Century was a conscious rationalization for...and was thus the legitimate inheritor of all the great principles of Western Civilization"
Among the 6 topic countries presented, the United States has used democracy as the principle to install and support authoritarian regimes. This neocolonialism has resulted in the bombing, torturing, and poverty of people either through war, economic sanctions, or a puppet regime, all under the metanarrative that the United States will carry us to the post-historical state of humanity, under a globalized technological civilization in which the privileged elite can consume an infinite variety of pleasure, while the rest of the world burns and rots.
BAHRAIN:
The US provides security support for Bahrain in exchange for King Al Khalifa providing US naval headquarters and military facilities for the civilizing mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. US diplomats described Al Khalifa as "personable and engaging, He rules as something of a ‘corporate king,’ giving direction and letting his top people manage the government. King Al Khalifa rules an apartheid government by appointing all the members of the Shura Council who make up half the government bureaucracy. Protests have erupted where security forces surrounded demonstrators and shot rubber bullets and tear gas, killing and injuring protestors.
CITE:
(Dickinson, Elizabeth Cables illuminate U.S. Relations with Bahrain, Potential for Political Unrest February 17, 2011 - 2:21 PM Published in Foreign Policy magazine http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/17/cables_on_bahrain
Hawley, Caroline 4 March 2011 Last updated at 18:54 ET Gulf states send forces to Bahrain following protests
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12729786)
EGYPT:
The national perception is that the US supports democracy abroad, such as Obama’s support for the democratic uprisings in Egypt, where any skim through history would shown otherwise. The US settled a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel as a way to defect Egypt from the Soviet Union (1973). The US sent $2.3 billion in aid, and in return the US can defend Egypt’s oil, and against the Palestinians who were left out of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.
The US support helped Mubarak suppress democratic participation for the last 30 years before getting ousted and put on trial. However, the military establishment under Mubarak is now in power, accomplishing a sleeper military coup. The US has directed aid towards democracy promotion, though the military has used this fund to discredit civil society organizations.
CITE:
(Elliott, Justin SATURDAY, JAN 29, 2011 10:01 ET How did the U.S. get in bed with Mubarak? A historian explains how the U.S. became closely tied to the Mideast dictatorship http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/29/egypt_america_alliance
Richter, Paul Fleishman, Jeffrey US treading warily in Egypt Published by: Tribune Newspaper August 14, 2011
http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/article_f127b21b-3886-5f14-9ad7-afcc3faa1bd8.html)
SYRIA:
The US supported Israel’s action in stealing the Golan Heights in 1973 . And in the aftermath of Israel’s attack on Syrian forces in 1982, the Reagan administration unconditionally supported Israel’s interests in the region. As a result, the US have restricted trade with Syria, stopping aid and material from entering the country for al Assad’s authoritarian regime.
CITE:
(Friedman, George Re-Examing the Arab Spring August 15, 2011 Stratfor: Global Intelligence
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110815-re-examining-arab-spring
Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, The Country Studies/Area Handbook Series Published by U.S. Department of the Army http://countrystudies.us/syria/67.htm
Porter, Keith The US-Syrian Relationship Accessed on August 18, 2011 http://usforeignpolicy.about.com/od/countryprofi3/p/ussyriaprofile.htm)
YEMEN:
The Obama administration has provided a total of $52.5 million in economic and military assistance to Yemen, in return for a signed cooperation agreement to combat terrorism, smuggling, and piracy, where as of January 2010 there was an estimated 91 Yemen detainees incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.
CITE:
(Sharp, Jeremy M Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs January 13, 2010 Yemen: Background and US Relations Published by Congressional Research Service http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/137261.pdf)
TUNISIA:
In Tunisia, President Bourguiba stood unopposed for re-election and was named "President for Life" in 1974 by a constitutional amendment. Tunisia is a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems, with rising unemployment and regional inequities.
US embassy cable documents argues that,
“Notwithstanding the frustrations of doing business here, we cannot write off Tunisia. We have too much at stake. We have an interest in preventing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other extremist groups from establishing a foothold here. We have an interest in keeping the Tunisian military professional and neutral. We also have an interest in fostering greater political openness and respect for human rights. It is in our interest, too, to build prosperity and Tunisia's middle class, the underpinning for the country's long-term stability. Moreover, we need to increase mutual understanding to help repair the image of the United States and secure greater cooperation on our many regional challenges. The United States needs help in this region to promote our values and policies. Tunisia is one place where, in time, we might find it.
CITE:
(Godec, Robert F. US embassy cables: Tunisia - a US foreign policy conundrum December 7, 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/217138)
LIBYA:
The US lifted sanctions on Libya in 2003-2004 and took Libya off the State Sponsor of Terrorism list for the government policy reversals on WMD, crackdown on terrorists (where Gadaffi jails and tortures journalists and dissenters), followed by economic liberalization international investments. However, Gaddafi’s policies also forced major oil corporations, (Exxon Mobil, Petro-Canada, Repsol, Total, ENI, and Occidental) to sign business contracts that put them in less favorable terms. US ambassadors have warned that ‘putting pressure on US companies ‘crossed a red line’. Washington backed the NATO intervention because Libya produces a lot of oil that oil corporations could free up for neoliberal market practices.
CITES:
(Blanchard, Christopher Congressional Research Service Libya: Unrest and US Policy Acting Section Research Manager
March 29, 2011 http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/159788.pdf
Husain, Syed Rashid Published: Jul 30, 2011 23:43 Cables show NATO’s intervention in Libya is all about oil
Published by Arab News http://www.arabnews.com/economy/article480491.ece
Friend, Chris U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN LIBYA IS ALL ABOUT OIL: Shame on us Posted on 3/22/2011 at 10:11AM
http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/03/22/u-s-involvement-in-libya-is-all-about-oil/)
The drive to produce democratization is founded on contradictory motives; namely, altruism is a ruse to extend American interests. The US uses puppet governments to install ‘democratic’ regimes that maintain the American model of rule and economization.
Ferguson 05
The Unconscious Colossus: Limits of (& Alternatives to) American Empire Niall Ferguson Daedalus
Vol. 134, No. 2, On Imperialism (Spring, 2005), pp. 18-33 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027975 Pg 23
"To Americans there is no contradiction...others rule themselves in the American way."
The notion that the United States should provide democracy assistance is premised on the dichotomy between the civilized and the uncivilized, where the civilized colonize and dominate the uncivilized
Palumbo-Liu 02 (Multiculturalism Now: Civilization, National Identity, and Difference Before and After September 11th
David Palumbo-Liu boundary 2 29.2 (2002) 109-127)
"conditions for a participatory democracy are worsening... the other side of civilization can remain only a cipher of irrational violence"
The dichotomy of the civilized/uncivilized is replicated in humanity’s treatment of the natural world, where human civilization colonizes the natural world for human ends through liberal democracy. The environment itself must become civilized and conform to our consumptive ends.
Garcia Lucas Rose 06
Human Rights: An Earth-based Ethics Rebecca Garcia Lucas Rose 146-147
COLLOQUY text theory critique 12 (2006). © Monash University. www.colloquy.monash.edu.au/issue12/rose.pdf
"Not only may a nation targeting a locality claim...ethical in-clusion and exclusion originates from the perception of human-nonhuman hyperseparation."
Through the force of infinite economic growth, human civilization injects its own processes into nature so that elemental forces become mutated by humanity’s tampering. Nature’s unpredictability gets an exponential increase until humanity’s recklessness will end in extinction. (Boil water analogy)
Morgan 9 (Dennis Ray Morgan Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin Campus- South Korea July 10, 2009
World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race)
"the human -nature relationship...as the Earth and its delicate ecosystems, environment, and atmosphere reach a tipping point, which could turn out to be a point of no return."
If a supposed democracy like the United States exports authoritarianism abroad, then democracy should be questioned here before we can discuss democracy assistance. The values of liberal democracy predicated on US democracy assistance always already involve a right to the free market, and a right for the state to determine who are the civilized/uncivilized, where the uncivilized may be tortured and killed without impunity, and where the uncivilized landscape of the environment may be mutilated and destroyed to meet civilization’s ends. Citizens become passively coerced into a corporate-style colonialism in which they ultimately choose between different flavors of obedience.
The quest for infinite growth has turned all life into cogs in the engine of civilization, where all life is given a specific task, direction, and duty to carry human dominance into the foreseeable future, only to fall like Icarus when we neglect to notice the burning sun and the wax in our wings.
Therefore,
Our Framework—Who presents the better methodology to challenge the logics of domination.
Our advocacy—Affirm the saved night.
The saved night is the methodology by which we affirm to make humanity’s relationship with the natural world inoperative by realizing that the natural world is in no need of being saved by humanity through the ends of civilization. Rather we should exist in the standstill between humanity/nature, and open a space for democratic deliberation that is not dominated by human chauvinism.
Our methodology goes as follows:
Inoperability is a “standstill” that dwells in recognition of the current predicaments that have resulted from democratic ordering.
There is no task because there is nothing to do.
There is no direction because there is nowhere to go.
Instead of doing, we should affirm inoperability as a return of nature that challenges the Western tradition of domination.
Calarco 07
Sovereignty and Life: Jamming the Anthropological Machine Matthew Calarco Stanford University Press copyright 2007 Pg 176
"the "saved night" refers to a natural world that is sufficient in itself... a glimpse of a world not subject to strictly anthropocentric aims or the "hyperbolic naivete" of modern humanity and its human chauvinism."
