>The question is how [who] is meting out this
>justice. Is it a progressive step that Noriega was imprisoned by the US?
>Would it be if Saddam were seized or assassinated by NATO forces?
>Certainly most Iraqi oppositionists would applaud such a move, and the
>Panamanian intelligentsia did also. But such actions only reinforce the
>power of Western imperialism, the very force that put Pinochet into
>power.
I take the logic of your political challenge. I would reply openly that we are irreversibly into the global management of capitalism and of civil society. Global governance will emerge in all sorts of impure ways, in which we must be prepared to analyse dialectically and concretely, that on some occasions governments may take progressive positions, and reactionary on others.
Like others, I of course welcome this move, but I repeat this is nothing to do with tailing. Let us for example at the same time condemn the way the USA has attempted to block the setting up of the International Court.
Yes this is about the enforcement of bourgeois right globally. But there are contradictions in that. We should in concrete cases try to show the limitations of bourgeois right, and argue for socially accountable justice. In a way my linked post on the Nigerian fire tries to do this too.
Chris Burford
London