Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize acceptance speech has got to be possibly one of the best speeches of the year, methinks... or rather, of the new millennium. Ranks alongside Robin Cook's one at the House of Parliaments, and Dominique de Villepin’s coruscating attack of the US at the UNSC.
(sur une autre chose - j'ai justement dit à Andrée, à propos de son nouvel appart et plus précisement, sa nouvelle vie:
"... ouaais, une nouvelle vie, une renaissance, une rajeunissement! C’est comme de revoir le monde avec des nouveaux yeux et de commencer sur une ardoise propre, n’est-ce pas ? Je pense que c’est une experience merveilleuse!"
et tout ça m'a fait sourire.
t'as souvenu cette phrase?
"chaque pensée devrait être la ruine d'un sourire...")
ah yes, once again, the whole sideshow vaudeville begins just in time to divert attention from the real issue -- that of the abuse of Afghan detainees and the reluctance of the US authorities to pin responsibility on someone at the helm (mentioned in yesterday's post here).
just when Hamid Karzai expresses his outrage at these abuses, and argues for more control over US forces in Afghanistan, a mysterious cable is intercepted that has US embassy personnel in Kabul claiming that the Afghan president has done little to stop the trafficking of heroin in the country, as reported here by David Cloud and Carlotta Gall in The New York Times. such good timing, eh? probablu just another diversion tactic, to make sure no one pays too much attention on Tim Golden's investigative report, also to be found in The New York Times today, which reveals that although there was evidence of homicidal assaults on the dead Afghan detainees in Bagram, US army investigators tried to sweep it all under the carpet by initially recommending to shut the book on the whole affair without trial. in fact, interestingly enough, not only did this inquiry take almost two fucken years to complete, with a mere 7 soldiers being charged, it's been noted that there've been important witnesses that were not questioned, and documents that went *pouf!*.
so instead of paying attention to this, the world's being told it's more important to concentrate on poor Afghans growing the only crop that will garner them enough dosh to keep alive. instead of focusing on the middle-men (usually fatcat dealers from the West), we're told it's the Afghan people who're the root of all evil, and Hamid Karzai's to be blamed for not reining them in. evidently, someone in the White House is trying to ignore the fundamentals of supply and demand here -- whilst conveniently luring us away from the key issue that will expose the degenerate behaviour of the administration.
remember Scott Ritter? he was the senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, when he decided to quit 'cos he alleged that the then Clinton administration was soft on Saddam Hussein. later on, he became an independent consultant, as well as a vociferous critic of the belligerent Bush administration. he rightly argues that unless Dubya and his acolytes can substantiate up their allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability, there is no reason to believe that Saddam Hussein has been building it up (i.e. the "innocent unless proven guilty" argument...)
anyway, Ritter's contributed a succinct article in The Guardian today about George Galloway being the only politician with verve to challenge US Senators and their shambolic McCarthy-esque attempt to smear his name.
also in today's Guardian: an excerpt from Seymour Hersh's book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, where he points out that the main failure of the Abu Ghraib inquiry lie in the fact that no further investigation was carried out to trace responsibility back to the senior politicians who must've been in the know and who, as many of those in the lower ranks indicted for their disgusting deeds claim, have condoned these horrendous human rights abuses. here's a dead good quote from the article:
Despite Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo - not to mention Iraq and the failure of intelligence - and the various roles they played in what went wrong, Rumsfeld kept his job; Rice was promoted to secretary of state; Alberto Gonzales, who commissioned the memos justifying torture, became attorney general; deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz was nominated to the presidency of the World Bank; and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence and one of those most directly involved in the policies on prisoners, was still one of Rumsfeld's closest confidants. President Bush, asked about accountability, told the Washington Post before his second inauguration that the American people had supplied all the accountability needed - by re-electing him. Only seven enlisted men and women have been charged or pleaded guilty to offences relating to Abu Ghraib. No officer is facing criminal proceedings.
Such action, or inaction, has special significance for me. In my years of reporting, since covering My Lai in 1969, I have come to know the human costs of such events - and to believe that soldiers who participate can become victims as well.
but there's more, and abuse of prisoners have way predated Abu Ghraib, which should come as no surprise. Tim Golden, in The New York Times today, writes about the abuse of innocent Afghan prisoners by American soldiers, as revealed by a confidential army investigative report obtained by the paper. Golden notes that the dossier contained:
"ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. Prisoners considered important or troublesome were also handcuffed and chained to the ceilings and doors of their cells, sometimes for long periods, an action Army prosecutors recently classified as criminal assault."
Human Rights Watch has also issued a press release, stating that at least six detainees in US custody in Afghanistan have been killed since 2002, and that despite the fact that five of the six deaths were evident homicide cases, no personnel has been charged -- and more importantly, as in the case of Abu Ghraib, no senior official has been made answerable these crimes.
seeing the pattern here? in fact, Golden points out an outrageous fact that links both the abuses in Abu Ghraib and Bagram together:
"Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison."
if those bastards in the US State Department was not only paying lip service by saying that those who were responsible will be brought to justice, how could it be that investigations of abuses in Afghanistan, which began in 2002, went on at such a snail's pace that by July 2003, the same foot soldiers could be sent to Abu Ghraib to do exactly the same shite as before? how could it also be that in October 2004, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command claimed that 27 officers and enlisted personnel could be charged for these crimes, but only seven have been charged to date, and none have been convicted. how could it also be that the investigations are yet again stopping at the lowest ranks, rather than pursued upwards to make sure the twats sitting at the helm are made to pay?
simply because there's no desire to make the cunts pay, innit? after all, they'd already rejected the Geneva Conventions back in 2002, by claiming that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war. i don't want to sound pessimistic, but the truth is, given the way things have been panning out, there's little chance that with the Bush administration still in power (still bewildered how this could come to be), any higher-ups will have the finger pointed in their direction.
do also check out Andrew Bunscombe's article on the whole shambolic affair in The Independent. there's an excellent summary of what this hearing all means at the end of the piece.
One of America's main allies in the fight against terrorism was accused yesterday of slaughtering women and children "like rabbits", placing the Bush administration in a quandary over its support for President Islam Karimov, the strong man of Central Asia.
...
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who faces criticism for British support of Uzbekistan's dictatorial regime, condemned its record.
He said the situation was "very serious" and there had been a "clear abuse" of human rights.
Jack Straw!!! who woulda thought, eh?
let the hemming-and-hawing/secret-chastising/backtracking show begin.
go read Naomi Klein's new commentary in The Nation, where she talks about the use of torture by the US through proxy nations/corporations. here's a bit which brings to mind Foucault's fundamental argument in Discipline and Punish:
This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will.
on another related note, the news about Uzbek troops firing on protesters should come as no surprise to anyone. there're enough documents on this country report page on Human Rights Watch to reiterate the point that Islam Karimov is a fucken monster. but do bear in mind that the cunt in the White House has previously declared US-Uzbek relations to be "flourishing", if not warm and cordial, according to John Bolender's article on Zmag. in fact, the two were so chummy that back in October 2003, the then-British ambassador in Tashkent, Craig Murray (known for not mincing his words when it comes to his opinions about human rights violations in Uzbekistan and Washington's "compromises" made to further its shambolic "war on terror") was effectively sacked by US-poodle Downing Street for not toeing the line and hushing on the truth. this "mutual appreciation society" goes much further. as reported here in The Guardian,
Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet police state on the strategically important border with Afghanistan, was another potential political minefield. Uzbek security services use "torture as a routine investigation technique", according to the US State Department. But Washington's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led them to finance much of the regime's security apparatus. In exchange the US gets a military base in Khanabad as a centre for operations in Afghanistan. Last year Washington gave the government $500m (£298m) in aid, $79m of which was specifically for the same "law enforcement and security services" they accused of routine torture.
so it's hardly going to raise any eyebrows that Washington, the self-professed beacon of democracy and liberty (ha bloody ha), had only "urged restraint" from both the Uzbek government and protesters in the recent spate of violence.
"The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government. But that should come through peaceful means, not through violence," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
well, fuck you, you twat. this isn't merely a case of the people rising up to fight for that much-bandied notion of "democracy" -- it's because the Uzbek people are sick to death of watching their government act as your proxy and doing your dirty work for you. bear in mind that the protest didn't start with a straggly bunch of Uzbeks chanting slogans about freedom; it began because attempts were made to free inmates from prisons -- the same ones who are being held without trial for "alleged Islamic extremism".
nice to know that Dubya makes friends with the worst dictators and human rights violators in the world. birds of a feather, etc. etc.
"La verite est scandaleuse. Mais sans elle, il n'y a rien qui vaille.
Une vision honnete et naive du monde est deja un chef-d'oeuvre."
- Michel Houellebecq, Rester vivant
