-Caveat Lector- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Euphorian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 12:32 AM Subject: [CTRL] Britlanders' Prisoner Positions
> -Caveat Lector- > > From > 1 - > http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/comment/story/0,11447,634712,00. > html > 2 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,634766,00.html > > 1}}}>Begin > We will not tolerate the abuse of war prisoners > > Guantanamo could be where America and Europe part company > > Hugo Young > Thursday January 17, 2002 > The Guardian > > One value that's meant to bind Anglos and Americans is their attitude > to justice. The common law runs through England and America, and we > believe the principles underlying it are shared. That's partly what > the world war against terrorism is supposed to be about. Yet some of > these values turn out not to be shared at all. It's a salutary, > ominous phenomenon. Just as significant as America's treatment of > Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners held at its Guantanamo base in Cuba is > the gulf this is opening up between two cultures that imagine they > have everything important in common. > > For Washington, Camp X-Ray is plainly an extension of the war. The captives are not allowed to be called prisoners of war, but are held under rules of war defined by the side that's continuing to fight and maybe win it. Yet another convenience of not naming this current conflict a "war," or at least not formally declaring it. As Terry Jones recently put it, how can one wage a war against a concept? I might answer that we have been attamptimg to do so against "drugs," which is no more the real enemy than "terrorism," and the war against concepts undermines the root causes of such. But politicos have seldom been apt in finding, or perhaps acknowledging, the root of the problem. This demonstrates that this is yet another unwinnable war. The last war conceptually was, again, the War on Drugs. The previous unwinnable war was in Vietnam. Although the latter was, indeed, fought in battlefields as an actual war, and while the War on Drugs continues in battlefields unknown to most Americans (look at Colombia for an indication - or perhaps our prisons here in the US), both were (are, in the case of the WoD) quagmires any way you slice it, to mix a metaphor, but the mixing is apt. Now crackhouse laws are being used for purposes for which they were never intended, as is RICO. Both are products of the War on Drugs. COINTELPRO was the nice little intelligence addition to Vietnam, as well as MKULTRA, though MK did start much earlier, though always with the idea of interrogation of prisoners of one sort or another, mainly spies and ops ... and, well, even their own, many unwittingly, and many others, also unwittingly dosed. So, why not bring it into the spotlight of war, except to avoid playing by the rules? And we here in the US do like to bring those rules up every time we do something in our interest ... As for when the world community scorns us? T > hey're kept off US territory, and outside the reach of the Geneva Conventions, so they can be treated the way American generals and politicians rather than American lawyers want to treat them: which is to say, without fun > damental rights or international protection. Is this really a surprise? This is much more than a circus for the media, as they no longer need to be placated - recall Dan Rather's words as of late. This is the next step, making sure we are not only sure who the bogeyman is, but that s/he/it is so totally evil that any and all means are necessary to destruction - carte blanche, as it were. Internment camps in Cuba is, IMHO, not the last we'll see of such camps. > Until the Red Cross get into the camp, it's not possible to be sure what goes on there. And shackling potentially suicidal killers to their plane seats doesn't seem an outrageous form of maltreatment in the circumstances. > But the US authorities haven't denied many details: the shaving of the beards, the open-air cages, the selective hooding, the less than persuasive evidence that the captives are being held as individuals with specific ch > arges against them. When the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said he had "not the slightest interest" in the camp's conditions, he signalled simultaneously contempt for the prisoners and bilious disdain for any cri > tics who might dare to speak. Yep, his shell is cracking, as did Ashcroft's a little while back, and as did Tom Ridge's from nearly day one as Homeland Security Honcho. As Saba would put it, a company of undertakers. > > There have been some of these in the US. A few sharp voices are heard. To accompany yesterday's publication of its annual report on human rights in 66 countries, Human Rights Watch, an essentially American research group, > issued a blistering statement against hypocrisy. "Terrorists believe that anything goes in the name of their cause," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director. "The fight against terror must not buy into that logic. Huma > n rights principles must not be compromised in the name of any cause." Mr Roth likened the military tribunals President Bush has announced to those of a tin-pot tyrant wanting to get rid of his political enemies - which i > n another life Washington would be the first to condemn. > > But HRW is not the mainstream. The mainstream all flows in one acquiescent direction. Searching the New York Times and Washington Post websites, I can find neither an editorial nor a column that criticised the regime Rums > feld approves for Camp X-Ray. The rights and wrongs are barely discussed. Here's a considerable issue of principle, staked out by a president in seeming defiance of international conventions, which the big US papers would > normally be full of. Instead, it succumbs to the fog of loyalty that has choked the oxygen out of controversy in the citadels of the US media ever since September 11. Again, no real surprise. The media at large are so puppet-like as of late that they dare not admit any serious disagreement, except to trot out on the grand stage those awful few, whom they then proceed to crucify. Note Al Shaprton gets a lot more converage on CNN than Chomsky does, no matter that Sharpton is incendiary and is as easy to knock down as any straw man. Wouldn't at all be surprised if Sharpton weren't part of the new COINTELPRO - he's, at the very least, hopefully inadequate in his role, and the press eat it up. > The national crisis sets severe limits to discussion even now. There was a sense of generalised vengeance in what Rumsfeld had to say. Having failed to catch Osama bin Laden, the US is evidently adopting the alternative o > f netting any number of Taliban and al-Qaida and sticking them with collective responsibility for the monstrous mass murder at the Pentagon and World Trade Centre. The issue is not whether this is true, but in what forum, > what context and what conditions the truth will be determined. The establishment mind is content to let such questions pass. The mood of America is to switch off tough calls on justice. This is nothing new. At least pretty much since we stopped declaring wars and started using other euphamisms for it. > The mood of Britain was once the same. Parliamentary Britain, at least. David Blunkett wouldn't otherwise have been able to legislate against habeas corpus. Anti-terrorism laws bring out compliant panic in politicians her > e as well as there. But British responses to the Rumsfeld camp have been different. Not only the Guardian finds the overriding of the Geneva Convention deplorable, but the rightwing press is also weighing in. The Mail ran > a column of regretful outrage by Stephen Glover, a rock-ribbed pro-American. Yesterday's Telegraph laid into Washington for endangering the distinction "between civilised society and the apocalyptic savagery of those who > would destroy it". > > Ministers too are worried. They have no easy answers in defence of the unilateralist interpretation of international law that Washington seems bent on imposing by force majeure. Challenged about it on the BBC, Jack Straw > was reduced to the gibbering squeaks of a man who had no stomach for the task. Whatever lousy laws they're prepared to pass themselves, Labour politicians are horrified by what seems to be happening in Guantanamo. Interro > gated by MPs, Mr Blair gave voice to this feeling yesterday, with repeated assurances that "of course" all prisoners must be treated "properly and humanely". Rightly cautioning us to wait until the Red Cross reported, he > sounded like a man who could not believe the Americans would be doing anything unpleasant. But also one who would have a predisposition to deny it, even if they were. It's all-too apparent and obvious for a thinking person that this is what is happening, no matter personal feelings about being attacked. > The trouble is, he is probably wrong. Rumsfeld's statements, and the indifference of public opinion, announce a nation that's likely to remain impatient with the trifling details of international law for a long time. So h > ere comes another set of issues that put the Anglo-American relationship under special strain. It could be the most taxing of all the challenges to Blair's mantra about not having to make any choice between Europe and Ame > rica: which really means any severance from Washington's side. Thereby shattering the precious "coalition." The US views the UK with less contempt than it does some others only because it likes to play along and get the rewards later. Cui bono? > For some time the hardest break-point looked like being Iraq. It still may be. The justifiable desire to see the back of Saddam Hussein remains very strong in Washington, but has for the moment been overtaken by the even > more justifiable perception that this carries many, perhaps futile, hazards. However, even if it re-emerged as an American priority, it no longer looks certain to tear apart the European wing of the coalition. There's a d > ecent chance that, if the UN set out once again to get weapons inspectors into Baghdad, and was once again rebuffed, few EU members would push heavy opposition to what America wanted. Oh, don't worry ... we'll invent something or other. > The likely outgrowths from Guantanamo are more toxic. Secret hearings > in military tribunals, of EU citizens who might face execution, will > offend every European instinct. If that's what happens, even short of > the execution factor, America can expect its own long drawn-out > vengeance on al-Qaida to be matched by a European public opinion > increasingly roused against it. For, contrary to the myth of Anglo- > America's unique respect for individual liberties, the continental > ethic of human rights is even stronger. In response to September, not > one EU country passed such draconian laws as Britain. If Mr Blair > defends the US as humane and proper, come what may, he finally risks > losing a lot of more important friends. Depends, really. If the EU tries to play their trump card, it might just be some serious discussion of whether or not the UK can contribute to the EU, or whether they should fully be admitted, especially as they have balked so many times on the currency issue - the currency. Follow the money. Of course, this potentially could leave the EU isolated ... but probably not, considering Switzerland, and their potential and very real and established contributors to their ultra lassiez-faire banking system. And none dare call it ... Hmmm ... Follow the money gets pretty tricky ... But if the EU had a srong currency while ours and the UK's collapsed, then there's no telling. FWIW, I don't think the Euro will end up being the world denomination, but things are shaping up to set up one currency, and pretty damn fast. The next small step is no privacy in banking, except by those who run the banks, of course, and a short list of "friends." - jt <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
