Re: World Court Rules Against U.S. in Germans' Execution

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 27/06/01 14:25 -0400, you wrote:


> i have seen this kind of stuff posted to this list before, so
> below is a forwarded message. if such info is not pertinent to
> this list, please advice.
>
>         --ravi
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> World Court Rules Against U.S. in Germans' Execution
> by Caroline Jacobs


IMO it is extremely significant, but the link with political economy has
perhaps to be argued out.

I almost posted last week when the brief news came through that the USA had
executed a schizophrenic prisoner. I recall little commentary but my hunch
is that it will be the stuff of contemptuous exchanges at numerous evening
dinner parties of the upper intelligentsia who run the society for finance
capitalism across Western Europe.

The economic significance is that it provides the moral justification for
increased inter-imperialist friction between Europe and America.

Last week too, Europe hosted a major conference condemning the death
penalty throughout the world. Like the Hague decision, it expects to set
its mark on the whole world and not just line up behind the USA. In many
ways the conference was an attack on the USA. It received an opening
message from President Chirac, not noted in Europe for his left wing views,
but of course in the tradition going back as far as De Gaulle, being
motivated by an anti-Americanism.

The conference heard highlight statistics. Something like 1,800 executions
world wide last year, something like 1,200 of them in China. But even more
horrifying [with a death penalty enthusiast in the White House] something
like 3,700 people in the USA awaiting execution.

Meanwhile in terms of economic blocs, last week it appeared that major
companies like Honeywell and General Electric were going to be unable to
merge because of conditions imposed by Europe. Europe may be weaker
economically than the USA and it may not always play its cards well, but it
is powerful enough to interfere with US mergers. This process of the
centralization of capital is a crucial factor in how capitalisms compete
and means the inter-imperialist battle is opening up between models of
regulated versus unregulated capital.

The death penalty issue gives Europe the moral high ground to cover up all
the hypocritical reasons it may be anti-American. Compared of course to the
death rate from AIDS in Africa because of the lack of a world socialist
government, a few thousand deaths of prisoners is neither here nor there.

But there needs to be an ideological basis for an economic struggle. So
long as the USA is second only to China in the statistics of state approved
murder, Bush has very little chance of persuading Europe to line up against
China in a new hegemonic mission as effective as anti-Communism before the
fall of the Berlin Wall.

I do not domgatically interpret Lenin to say that inter-imperialist rivalry
will inevitably end in war, but inter-imperialist rivalry remains very
important in late capitalism, and is worth watching closely even if the
signals are often in code.

I do not regard US citizens as the same as their ruling class of course,
but because the USA is such a large and powerful country, the possibility
of how certain events outside its borders may be perceived, can be overlooked.

I think Ravi's intuition is right that this Hague judgement is significant
for political economy.


Chris Burford

London