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Like every US president to date, Ronald Reagan is responsible for prosecutable war crimes. Of course, we being the “good-guys” do not apply the same standards to ourselves that we expect the rest of the world to follow. It is little wonder you see the ironic smirks in the UN and other international bodies when the US is discussing “law and order” and commitment to human rights, because outside of the memory hole that defines our imperial culture the picture is quite clear cut. The national interest of the US trumps human rights, justice and law almost every time. We just do not get to hear about it here in fortress North America. What we also do not get to easily see is how we sow the seeds of our own discord, as in the case of Afghanistan and the current imperial war taking place there.
Here is what Rasil Basu, UN Developmental Program, senior advisor to the Afghan government for women’s development (1986 – 88) had to say.
“She reported “enormous strides” for women under the Russian occupation:
“Illiteracy declined from 98% to 75%, and they were granted equal rights with men in civil law, and in the Constitution… Unjust patriarchal relations still prevailed in the workplace and in the family with women occupying lower level sex-type jobs. But the strides [women] took in education and employment were very impressive… In Kabul I saw great advances in industry, factories, government offices, professions and the media. With large numbers of men killed or disabled, women shouldered the responsibility of both family and country. I met a woman who specialized in war medicine with dealt with trauma and reconstructive surgery for the war wounded. This represented empowerment to her. Another woman was a road engineer. Roads represented freedom – an escape from the oppressive patriarchal structures.”
By 1988, however, Basu “could see the early warning signals” as Russian troops departed and the fundamentalist Islamist extremists favoured by the Reagan administration took over, brushing aside the more moderate mujahideen groups. Saudi Arabian and American arms and ammunition “have been vital in giving fundamentalist groups an edge over the 
moderates,” providing them with military hardware used,” according to Amnesty International, to target unarmed civilians, most of them women and children.” Then followed much worse horrors as the U.S – Saudi favorites overthrew the Najibullah government. The suffering of the population was so extreme that the Taliban were welcomed when they drove out Reagan’s freedom fighters. Another chapter in the triumph of Reaganite reactionary ultranationalism, worshiped today by those dedicated to defaming the honourable term “conservative”.
– Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects pages 245 – 246.
Hardly surprising considering the gross injustices wrought in Central America by Reagan and the United States. The 1980’s were grim years for Central America plagued by torture, terrorism and death all sponsored by the US.
More people need to educate themselves and do the reading into what exactly their foreign policy entails, because the American populace would certainly not endorse the terror wrought in their name if it was properly publicized and discussed realistically.
Let us not take lessons from the religiously addled with regards to running our justice system.
“An Iranian court has ruled that a man must lose his eye and part of an ear after he blinded and burnt an ear of another man in an acid attack . Judge Aziz Mohammadi gave the order against the man, who was only identified as Hamid, after convicting him of throwing acid on the victim, named as Davoud, hardline Kayhan newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The judge also ordered Hamid to pay blood-money for the burn injuries suffered by Davoud, who was 22 at the time of the attack, in a ruling issued under the Islamic Republic’s eye-for-an-eye justice code. Hamid told the court he had mistaken Davoud for a classmate who had bullied him in hfigh school, saying that even after moving, he remained tormented by the memory of the bullying.”
The Iranians will not be getting any bonus points for human rights any time soon if they continue with this sort of activity.
“The report, quoting other sources, including Iran’s Fars news agency, did not say whether the authorities would, in fact, carry out the punishment by using acid or via surgery.”
Wow. By surgery or by acid, so many wonderful options. How about imprisonment? How about monetary compensation? Or other options that do not involve maiming the individual in question.
Violence knows no state boundaries and respects no one:
“A car explosion and what appeared to be a suicide attack injured two people, killed the apparent bomber and caused panic among Christmas shoppers in Stockholm.
Stockholm police spokeswoman Petra Sjolander said a car exploded Saturday near Drottninggatan, a busy shopping street in the centre of the city. Shortly afterward, a second explosion was heard higher up on the same street, and a man was found injured on the ground He was later pronounced dead.”
People have a hard time understanding empathy and compassion; retribution and revenge though have been internalized quite thoroughly.
“Ten minutes before the blasts, Swedish news agency TT received an email saying “the time has come to take action.”According to the news agency, the email referred to Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan and Sweden’s silence surrounding artist Lars Vilk’s drawing of Muhammad as a dog.
“Now your children, daughters and sisters shall die like our brothers and sisters and children are dying,” the news agency quoted the email as saying.
Define someone as the “other”, marginalize them, strip them of their humanity call them terrorists or fanatics or zealots, it does not really matter. Eventually, because we know revenge and because we know violence it will visit all those involved.
“Two people were taken to hospital with light injuries. It was not immediately clear in which explosion they were hurt.”
Empathy, respect, compassion. Any of the three take more time, courage and dedication than revenge or retribution, and usually produce more amiable results. Retribution makes the infidels/terrorists pay though. It teaches the extremists/unbelievers a lesson that they will not forget.
The problem is that the wrong lesson is learned, and therefore the bloody game continues: an eye for an eye.
The Swiss, being sensible, have denied the US and France’s requests to shut down WikiLeaks.
“The site’s new Swiss registrar, Switch, today said there was “no reason” why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.”
Pretty embarrassing, but hardly surprising, when the “land of the free and home of the brave” do their utmost to destroy the very lifeblood democracies thrive on, namely information. Hey of course, it is ‘sensitive state information’. You can find it on google now, perhaps like other state apparatus google should be censored as well. Back in the ‘home of the brave’ the censorship is not so obvious:
“The reassurances [from the Swiss] come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing “illegal activity”. France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.”
Of course, you target the infrastructure that keeps WikiLeaks afloat. The Americans, let their poor die in natural disasters (Katrina anyone?), but watch the organization and money being spent when an attack on the elite happens. The response to Wikileaks is a case study in who has the power in the US and who is really driving that national agenda.
It makes one wonder, with all the furor, what is still classified and quietly festering in the background on a hard drive somewhere of actions that our governments take in our name.
The George Orwell quotations are being dusted off again and rightfully so – consider…
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
This quote prefaces the video, also released on WikiLeaks, of the American Army gunning down men and children while in Iraq. Does anyone, anymore have the gall anymore to say “why do they hate us?”
Approaching contentious topics in conversation is always a touchy proposition considering my stance on most issues. The War in Afghanistan, Prison Policy, Educational Policy and Patriarchy are all minefields that are necessarily carefully navigated through as disagreeing too much with the dominant point of view only leads to consternation and frustration on both sides of the conversation.
Sadly, we end up talking about ‘other’ topics and any sort of give or take is eliminated because of the calcified nature of conservatism in Alberta. Take for instance the Oilsands, a blight in Northern Alberta that is poisoning the environment and the people who live near them. The counter argument, jobs and the economy of course. We are making money and that takes precedence over all. Once the Athabasca river is thoroughly contaminated and the people living near it have moved away or died, things will be fine I imagine.
Similarly in Afghanistan, I’m sure once we kill enough of the Taliban peace and prosperity will firmly take hold and we can make a gracious exit and commend ourselves on a job well done. The alternate picture, perpetual war against a embittered, radicalized population does not to have much traction, although it is a narrative much closer to the reality of the situation in Afghanistan at present. I imagine though that we’ll eventually end up blaming the Afghan people for being too backward, too corrupt and too sectarian for our benevolent efforts (bombing the crap out of everything) and disengage while calling it mendaciously, a victory for our side. Consider the magic woven in Vietnam where America came out of the war eventually demanding reparations from the Vietnamese for their actions… Imperial hubris is wonderful.
Hubris aside, the mentality of some conservatives can be somewhat trying, especially with regards to crime and prisons. The verdict is in, and the evidence points to one clear concept. Punishing people does not ‘fix’ them. More punishment is not the solution. Here is where I get accused of being “soft” on crime. Quite bluntly, dealing with the precursors to crime and criminality – poverty, discrimination, and inequality- is a much more efficient and effective way to deal with crime in a society. I assert with certainty we will still need prisons because necessarily, there exists in any population a percentage of people who simply do not fit in and need to be segregated from the general population. The focus though needs to be on the precursors and getting people the skills they need to become a member of society that does not need to commit crime.
Educational policy dovetails into the discussion of the justice system as it has been noted that in punishment heavy modes of operation, educational policy can act as a feeder system for the criminal justice system. Again, the idea that we can punish (people) children into becoming what we want is deleteriously wrong notion that needs to be dispelled from the schools. The fear of punishment works for many, but not all children. For those who do not have the skills to behave correctly punishing them more only pushes them further away from our goal of nurturing and educating people to become contributing members of our society.
Like the unreality of the punishment point of view the view that Feminism is over and women have achieved equality in our society is a persistent meme that needs to be corrected. The Patriarchy is not dead, our culture is a rape culture and women are still second class citizens at their very best. Is the work of eradicating the massive inequality built into our culture even close to being done, heck no. Not acknowledging that the work needs to be done retards progress significantly, as again, the case must be made, defended and writ large so the proper context can be established and the idea that feminism is not “over” can be vanquished (again).
The theme of this post has been pretty much “waaaa! it sucks having to constatantly contradict the dominant cultural and historical narrative, look how much work it is!!!!”. I realize that, but I write to educate those who wonder why when they talk about certain topics with their progressive friends they all of a sudden get that tired 1000 kilometer stare.
Busy weekend folks, blogging was low on the list of priorities. Therefore I steal the Media Lens Email alert and repost it for your viewing pleasure. It is a meaty one, many links and a nice take down of the corporate media.
MEDIA ALERT: WIKILEAKS – THE SMEAR AND THE DENIAL
PART 1 – THE SMEAR
“Journalists don’t like WikiLeaks”, Hugo Rifkind notes in The Times, but “the people who comment online under articles do… Maybe you’ve noticed, and been wondering why. I certainly have.” (Hugo Rifkind Notebook, ‘Remind me. It’s the red one I mustn’t press, right?,’ The Times, October 26, 2010)
Rifkind is right. The internet has revealed a chasm separating the corporate media from readers and viewers. Previously, the divide was hidden by the simple fact that Rifkind’s journalists – described accurately by Peter Wilby as the “unskilled middle class” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/10/comment.pressandpublishing) – monopolised the means of mass communication. Dissent was restricted to a few lonely lines on the letter’s page, if that. Readers were free to vote with their notes and coins, of course. But in reality, when it comes to the mainstream media, the public has always been free to choose any colour it likes, so long as it’s corporate ‘black’. The internet is beginning to offer some brighter colours.
If Rifkind is confused, answers can be found between the lines of his own analysis:
“With WikiLeaks, with the internet at large, power is democratised, but responsibility remains the preserve of professionals.”
This echoes Lord Castlereagh’s insistence that “persons exercising the power of the press” should be “men of some respectability and property”. (Quoted, James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility – The Press And Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, 1991, p.13)
And it is with exactly this version of “responsibility” that non-corporate commentators are utterly fed up. We are, for example, tired of the way even the most courageous individuals challenging even the most appalling crimes of state are smeared as “irresponsible”.
Thus, Rifkind describes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as “a frighteningly amoral figure”. In truth, journalists find Assange a frighteningly +moral+ figure. Someone willing to make an enemy of the world’s leading rogue state in order to expose the truth about the horrors it has inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq is frightening to the compromised, semi-autonomous employees of corporate power. Assange’s courage is the antidote to their poison.
A separate Times editorial comments:
“Nowhere in WikiLeaks’s self-serving self publicity is there a judgment of what the organisation is achieving for the Iraqi nation, and what it hopes to achieve… Its personnel are partisans intervening in the security affairs of Western democracies and their allies, with a culpable heedlessness of human life.” (Leader, ‘Exercise in Sanctimony; The release of military files by WikiLeaks is partisan and irresponsible,’ The Times, October 25, 2010)
Again, the truth is reversed – it is The Times, together with virtually the entire mass media, that is notable for its “heedlessness of human life”, for its endorsement of the West’s perennial policy: attack, bomb, invade, torture, kill based on any crass pretext that can be got past the public. As WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson politely told the WSWS website this week:
“The media is getting much too close to the military industry. They are not following the changing moods of the general public who are increasingly opposed to the wars.” (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/wiki-n02.shtml)
In the Daily Mail, Edward Heathcoat-Amory’s article raised the important question:
“Paranoid, anarchic. Is WikiLeaks boss a force for good or chaos?”
After all, “The Wikileaks supremo lives a bizarre peripatetic life, with no house and few belongings…” He also has “disciples” whom “he ruthlessly manipulates”. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297917/Is-Wikileaks-boss-Julian-Assange-force-good-chaos.html)
As for Assange’s motivation: “His critics says he’s motivated by a desire for personal publicity.”
Like Rifkind, Heathcoat-Amory is appalled by Assange’s lack of “ethical judgments”, his “cult of secrecy, with no accountability to anyone”. Lack of accountability can indeed be a problem. Heathcoat-Amory, it should be mentioned, is of the Heathcoat-Amory Baronetcy, whose humble “family seat” was at Knightshayes Court in Tiverton, Devon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightshayes_Court
In The Times, passionately pro-Iraq war commentator David Aaronovitch recalls the main theme of his questions to Assange: “from where did WikiLeaks derive its authority and to whom was it accountable”. And from where exactly does The Times derive its authority? To whom is +it+ responsible? Its advertisers? Rupert Murdoch? Aaronovitch continued:
“And this is where something strange happened. Questioners wanted to know from Assange just how he and his team decided which documents to publish, which to redact, which to leave unpublished… Not only would Assange not answer these questions, it was almost as though he regarded them as illegitimate… I could tell that the overwhelming reaction was surprise at Assange’s refusal to engage in any discussion about himself as anything other than an uncaped crusader.” (Aaronovitch, ‘Enigmatic WikiLeaks chief keeps his guard up,’ The Times, October 2, 2010)
Strange indeed, because in fact Assange has addressed these questions numerous times (See here for a recent example: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/26/wikileaks_founder_julian_assange_on_iraq). Aaronovitch focused on Assange’s jacket, his shirt, his shoes – “incredibly long and pointy black winkle pickers”. The very fact of the focus suggested something was not quite right. The unsubtle implication: Assange was unsavoury, strange, sinister.
A Daily Mail reporter described Assange as “somewhat bizarre-looking”.
An Independent news report referred to the “sometimes erratic behaviour of Wikileaks’ founder”. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/secret-war-at-the-heart-of-wikileaks-2115637.html)
In an interview with ABC News (Australia), the Independent’s Robert Fisk derided Assange as “some strange code-breaker from Australia”. (http://is.gd/gzdKc)
Dan Jones wrote in the Evening Standard: “Assange is slippery. He is a master of the moral non sequitur… Do we really want the definition of what constitutes the public interest resting in the hands of a highly politicised neo-anarchist like Assange?” (Jones, ’There are limits to the freedom of the internet,’ Evening Standard, August 2, 2010)
Again, the level of self-awareness hovered around zero.
The Daily Telegraph observed: “the publication of classified documents risks endangering the lives of both soldiers and those who collaborate with them.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8084891/Wikileaks-A-very-leaky-argument.html)
+Failure+ to publish the documents risks the lives of the inevitable next target of the US-UK killing machine in Iran, or Yemen, or Syria, or Venezuela. At this point, the only people capable of stopping the “coalition” is the public they are supposed to represent.
The New York Times’ Hit Piece Read the rest of this entry »
One needs to just to watch the frenzy in the North American media whenever Israel is negatively portrayed. Our institutional blindspots are sacrosanct and should be above reproach. When other countries do this we are understandably peeved, but do we appreciate the irony of the situation? China certainly does.
“When a US delegate once confronted a Chinese diplomat about Beijing’s uncompromising support for Pakistan, the Chinese reportedly responded with a heavily-loaded sarcastic remark: “Pakistan is our Israel”.
But judging by China’s unrelenting support for some of its allies, including North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe and Sudan, its protective arm around these countries is no different from the US and Western political embrace of Israel – right or wrong.”
Ouch. It really sucks when other people start playing by our rules.
“The New York Times newspaper said on Tuesday that the US administration is facing a “confrontational relationship” with an assertive China and is trying to respond to “a surge of Chinese triumphalism” by strengthening Washington’s relationship with Japan and South Korea.
US President Barack Obama is planning to visit four Asian countries next month – Japan, Indonesia, India and South Korea – while bypassing China.”
China is flexing its international muscle and attempting to use international institutions to do so.
“China sees value in promoting its image as the Security Council member defending the rights of the developing world, and China sees value in relying on the UN to counter US power,” said Linda Jakobson, director of the programme on China and Global Security at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Jakobson, an in-house China expert at SIPRI, points out that Beijing also sees value in participating in UN peacekeeping operations “both because this enhances the image of China as a responsible power but also because it gives Chinese military experience”.
I wonder when the sudden rush back to the ‘rule of law’ will happen? I imagine when the same unlawful implements/policies the West has been using for decades start getting pointed in the opposite direction.
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