The Veil of Legitimacy: Whose word matters

There is a curious reverence that the mainstream media conglomerates grant the legal and justice frameworks of imperial society.

Citizens of empire display deep indignance when a loved one is unjustly killed. For each sensational death, there is the elicited sympathy for the grieving families, and the listless demonisations of the alleged killer.

Imagine, then, that they did for each and every death that they perpetrated in the founding of this nation. There is no justice for the genocide committed on the Australian continent. What a mockery of the ""justice system"".

They — as a whole, as countries — continuously slaughter. For colonial entities in particular, their entire existence is predated by and dependent on the grossest injustices and slaughter. Their riches — land, mining — are amassed from the slaughter that preceded them. Ongoing wars abroad (imperial wars, trade wars) create poor conditions that needy people escape to form the lower classes of this society to serve the middle and upper classes.

They have no other way of relating to the rest of the world. Dwellers in empire who do seek more awareness are shocked by the crimes of the U.S. — for example, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and bullying Russia and China into submission. But as if the U.S. had any other way of relating to the world. It was built on the genocide of indigenous peoples and genocide of Africans. Built on stolen land and stolen labour.

People talk about how the U.S. should grant China respect. Like Paul Keating providing a blueprint for the US to accomodate China. He emphatically quotes Brzezinski, the Cold War warrior, saying:

[Brzezinski] says [for] the United States, "a central challenge over the next several decades will be to revitalize itself while promoting a larger West and accomodating China's rising global status." Accomodating — not competing. Accomodating.

I'm like hahahaha yeah — give me an example when the U.S. has treated anyone outside itself with even the most measly form of respect.

Give me an example where the U.S. has been able to treat others as equals.

How is a country built on the most unapologetic violence capable of having interactions with others that are not the form of violence?

The citizens of empire behave as though, simultaneously,

• their lives are governed by the elusive "rule of law"
• and that this grants them unimpeachable wisdom which separates them from the supposed savagery of the rest of the world, a la (EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs) Josep Borell's "garden vs. jungle".

Both of these suppositions are demonstrably false.

I was reading an account of the slaughter in Cambodia on The Intercept, detailing grossly unjust deaths among the millions more that former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was responsible for, and it also had a footnote on Kissinger's 100th birthday party. That man is now dead. He faced no trial whatsoever in the courts of empire — no judge, no witnesses. Again, what a mockery of the sense of superiority that empire dwellers hold in relation to their courts and laws.

Of course there have also been People's International Tribunals, like the one finding the U.S. guilty of genocide. But these have no legitimacy in the eyes of the invaders and perpetrators. This tells us a lot about whose word matters.

It is also possible for peoples to have freedom and wisdom, without having their lives governed by countless laws most of which people can't name. As linguist and anthropologist Daniel Everett observed while with the Pirahã in the Amazon:

We're talking about a hunter-gatherer, egalitarian, somewhat anarchic society. There is no leadership — nobody tells anybody else what to do. They stay together in a mutually-cooperative environment where each helps the other. There is very little competition. People take care of each other — they share things with each other. [...]

So in that sense, they are a perfect— I wouldn't call them communist in the sense that there's no private property, 'cause there definitely is private property. But it's not a big deal. You could have something and you could call it yours. I may decide to take it. You'll definitely notice that I've taken it, and you might complain to me about it, but that's the end of it. There's no punishment and no sense of, you know, you violated the law. Maybe I'll take it back from you next time when you're not looking.

No before, no after

I was watching, while in a doctor's clinic, a video exploring the Athabaskan glacier in Canada besides Lake Louise.

They said it was the most photographed place in Canada. They said many tourists visited. They said that Swiss explorers discovered it. They said how great it was to be in a 5-star hotel and just step outside the rugged beauty. They said that they were so stunned by the beauty that they almost couldn't paddle in their canoe.

I watched. I waited. I didn't hear it.

There was not a single breath spared for indigenous peoples — not even the mere fact that there may have something been before Canada or The European Explorer.

It is as if there is no before, and no after.

In the prevailing culture of Australia, Canada, and the United States, there is no "before".

And they can see no "after". Their rule is infinite. There can be no succeeding set of powers.

In layman's terms, aka the reporters on the commercial TV news networks, there is only the "international order" which Russia and China and whatever other peoples supposedly pose a threat to. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Palestine and everyone else must be humiliated into submission. There is no room for them in the white man's world.

Correction: Josep Borell's position in the EU is High Representative for Foreign Affairs. A previous version incorrectly stated his position as EU Commissioner.