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Is the Zamboanga Uprising more than a Spark in the Darkness?

Internationalist Observer | 29.10.2013 12:12 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Social Struggles | World

There is no clear definition what it is in its own view, but from the perspective of a distance it appears to be Asia´s fourth subcontinent, or its first one, depending on the direction of counting. The chain of volcanic peninsulas and islands along the tectonic line between East Asia and Australia is increasingly plagued by the same neoliberalist woes as its three subcontinental brethren. In addition to that, or more precisely as the cause of that consequence, it is affected by a sort of oceanic backlash where a weakening of the destructive forces harboured by the Americas on one side is resulting in their increased destructivity on the other, and in a different form also vice versa. In the recent weeks, as rebels on Mindanao began an offensive that could only succeed through crystallising a large amount of external attention in its early stages, this geopolitical focus has appeared as the most remarkable blind spot on the surface of the commercial narrative. In the rule of lies which is reporting about every little incident in West Asia, the MNLF seems to be operating on another planet. Yet at light speed the occurrence of its activity coincided with a major disruption of the imperialist narrative demanding explanation, the so-called "government shutdown."

The vain theatrics of the decaying empire become obvious once it is being considered that there might be a cause for the blind spots invisible in the affected narrative. With the temporary suspension of all activity that could somehow be considered useful to people on the background of totally undiminished repressive efforts, the Washington regime, or more precisely the national security apparatus that is metastasising in it, technically is behaving like a surveillance camera targeted with a laser pointer device. Quite obviously, as it appears once the possibility is recognised, the eyes and ears of the regime are displaying the pattern of a system overload inflicted against them by whatever they seem to be focused on. It is in fact much more likely that the attention of the spies is arranged in a form which allows for easy generation of such system shock once the stimulation is being applied at a point where it will be amplified by the hierarchy itself, than that its burden would be distributed equally among humans. This implies that the main targets of spying terror, who are probably neither states nor corporations, are reflecting the intentions of the surveillance regime back against it in such a compact and concentrated form that it renders the apparatus so clueless it ceases functioning.

It is not being damaged though, as can be seen from the fact that the spying was not yet halted, and everything else was so only to distract from this necessity. But it makes visible efforts in order to cope with the confrontation in a form that allows it to imagine that it never existed. Hence the shutdown of North American diplomacy towards East Asia with no other declaration than the one that this was a byproduct of domestic theatrics, while in fact the latter are the byproduct of the former. From the outside view, no offense intended, this reaction presents itself as yet another confirmation of American stupidity: Not only was the mistake made to build that diplomacy upon spying activities whose credibility would depend on permanent lies, but as this failure is quickly unfolding these lies are also being adjusted again and again to mimic an appearance of truth at the further expense of the latter. The result are all kinds of stupid theatrics failing any other purpose than transporting these lies. The wrong-priorised “shutdown” is such a case, in which the population is being used - or more precisely: abused - as a prop by the regime in order to distract from the necessity of abolition. It must be stated that if the latter was less stupid there would be less spying.

Besides being the land conflict of sovereign people against a corrupt regime that it is, the uprising in Zamboanga has highlighted a weak spot in the American ideology: The idea of manifest destiny, which defined the role of the Philippines in that empire for about a century, and has mutated to a central role in carrying the weight of its ideology, is to be understood in a much more profane way than the ideologues would want to suggest: Instead of some glorious ideal, the manifest destiny of empire is to end up on the wrong side of history and die from its own power grab, which is everything but a desirable goal. Rather it should be taken as a grim warning that there is a reason why no empire in history ever lasted longer than its aggressions, though each one has the opportunity to try to escape its morbid destination by making its aggressions last shorter than itself.

In the American case it means that the possibility to cease the spying and all the terror which derives from it is the only escape from the consequences. If that behaviour continues, it will result in utter and total obliteration and oblivion for them and everyone else who does the same, as certain as any teleological term can assure. So “manifest destiny” is not only the greed to inherit the role of the empire that came before, in the case of the Philippines the Spanish colonialist, or the trancendental justification ideology for such robbery, but it is also the carrier of the lethal blowback resulting from it. Besides that, it should be a warning to any empires-to-be that in the overall balance it is not worth trying to take over the hegemonial role of the current one, such as it was counterproductive for China to emulate the European persecution of the American natives in Tibet. From an anti-imperialist viewpoint the ideological concept boils down to the observation that anyone who goes for hegemony will die from it, no matter how many he is going to take with him over the time it takes.

And that is being illustrated by the role of the Philippines, who were taken from another empire by a mere projection of naval hegemony only to be an ideological prop of its successor. The ignorance is all the more remarkable as the Moro army is a rebel force at a significant wedge of institutional diplomacy – if one of the groups in Syria for example was recognised by the biggest bloc of states in the United Nations General Assembly, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, on the same level as the Palestinians, the perception of the civil war there would be considerably different. Yet when these diplomatic implications apply in a case incompatible with the interests of empire, there is no immediately visible response. The only gesture which could be counted as an indirect reference is the Arab rejection of participation in the United Nations Security Council allegedly in response to the diplomatic quagmire over Syria.

The Washington regime cannot formulate a position towards the fourth (first) subcontinent without further alienation of the second (third) one, and in trying to avoid the challenge entirely it is doing itself no good. Either way the historical necessity of its end emanates from the contradictory intention to control it all at the same time, which in the “shutdown” theatrics finds its absurdly distorted negative. The confused imperialist in Washington has to find itself in a constellation of conflict where all sides are wrong in the sense that their choice would interfere with some of its other interests because such a situation is just the practical expression of the fact that it is steering towards the wrong side of history. This is maybe best visible from the observation that there is no balanced center position for the hegemon to take, because the constellation of mutual exclusivity in vested proxy conflict would not exist without a projection of hegemony.

The farcical side of the drama also is not original. When the American invasion of Iraq a decade ago is being remembered, a similar scenario can be found. While the Washington regime was preparing for war, the Berlin regime was trying to promote itself as the spearhead of opposition against that battle. There was hypocritical rhetoric in international institutions while that regime granted overflight privileges as if they were unrelated to the effort. The diplomatic relationship was somehow shut down while there was ongoing collaboration in spying, with agents embedded in Iraq. At the time this writer argued that the proper way to obtain disarmament and avoid war was if the nation arguing so just began with itself. But apparently it was too much of a pedagogic expectation towards government to want it to try to convince honestly by setting a good example. Neither would the American war effort be able to serve as a prototype of any kind.

That this was merely diplomatic without the byproduct of domestic theatrics indicates that the current crisis is much more serious – there was no such rebel group in that country a decade ago as there is now in this place, causing enough diplomatic impossibilities to produce an impact on its proceedings that would be unlikely to be obtained by mere threat of force alone. But now it is obviously happening what a decade ago a few of the war ideologues even went so far to desire: The internal contradictions of the American project, or more precisely the undeniable implications of the blowback from their share in the conflicts, are actively breaking the Washington-Riyadh axis.

The Arab rejection of the United Nations amounts to an ambition to replace it with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Of course the anarchist stance on administrative issues is an agnostic one, all the more since the two have more in common than they differ, otherwise there would never have been such an axis. It is destined to be broken by the load of the energy industry scam once the fossil bubbles are going to burst, and the cracks appearing now are a harbinger of that. Likewise the Zamboanga offensive against the Manila regime was decided in the expectation that the American imperialist project is approaching a breaking point where it can no longer hide from itself that there is no future in it, and the Manila regime therefore would be on its own with its reaction (in fact the tone of its propaganda suggests that the narrative of its cronyism was not only severely challenged but also completely shaken by the resistance).

This analysis will not go into the details of the fighting which can be researched from separate sources. The focus has been put on the wider effects of the strategic implications of the campaign in the context of an international environment where nearly everyone, even many of the American satellite regimes or parties, desires something to be done against the hegemonial project, even without a clear expectation what it should be. In fact the precise overload administered against the spying apparatus of the Americans has not only shocked this one but also its counterparts and the entire network of collaboration, and only thanks to this effect the said axis, whose lack of moral quality would be a pleonasm to mention, could be brought to the promising condition it now is in. Only when the spies are attacking each other and their mutual hypocrisy is reaching a feedback level capable of amplifying the surveillance signal overload into all nodes of the network of evil such an axis of hegemony can be successfully done with.

It should be reiterated that the complete elimination of all spying agencies in any of the states involved in some incarnation of the imperialist project or another is in the interest of everyone else in the two hemispheres that axis has been rolling over. In such a world where territorial sovereignty is next to impossible to keep up, the defining theme to be taken out of the system shock is that such hegemony as it is now coming to its plausible destination in the American case must never repeat, neither out of itself nor by anyone else. Once that is achieved almost everything is possible. And until it is achieved, the Moro rebels and their inspirational sources have put the current international system into a state of clandestine shock that does last even if their attempts to break their chains for the time being might not, and that significantly contributes to bypass and shorten the hypocrisy race of the so-called “intelligence community” preceding the conscious abolition of capitalism.

Internationalist Observer

Comments

Display the following 2 comments

  1. found this a bit over-wordy — anon
  2. a link — anonymous
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