FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006

Iraq: news
Freedom dead, democracy dying
By Aseem Shrivastava



"Let us not speak falsely now, the hour is getting late." - Bob Dylan

Imagine: among the recent incidents following the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was one that went oddly unreported. In Tehran, Iranian police managed to catch a few European teenagers who were throwing glasses and plates at the crowd from the windows of the Danish Consulate when Danish flags were being burned on the street outside.

Later, police took the boys to the nearest station and gave them a thorough thrashing. One of the boys was kicked in his genitals by a policeman, while others held him down. Another was held against the wall and given a sound hammering with batons on his back. A third was kicked by several of them as he lay prostrate on the ground. "Naughty little boys" and various unmentionable abuses were barked at them by the policemen, who were obviously reveling in the sadistic enterprise.

All this was recorded on video by someone and handed over to the television channel that broadcast it this morning.

Back to reality.

Of course, the above story is made up, but not really, because all I did was make the characters involved switch roles, much as in role plays schoolkids are often asked to do in multicultural neighborhoods around Europe, in order to understand where "others are coming from".

The above is precisely what could be seen on TV screens across the world, after the British tabloid News of the World released the video clip of the beating of Iraqi teenage boys carried out by British soldiers some months back.

Let's have, if only for a change, the same rules for everyone.

Let us not fall into the temptation of the old alibi that it was the work of a few bad men in an otherwise decent establishment. In the video there are plenty of soldiers passing by as the beating is going on. None tries to stop it. How many times they must have seen such things, or done them themselves, or seen their superiors do or order them.

When brutalization is banal, it is too boring to talk about, let alone stop.

How many pictures and videos have been banned from the TV screens of the world at the orders of the Pentagon? If there were nothing to hide, we would indeed be living in a free world at the moment.

It won't do to pass the buck downward. Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, the highest military officer to be punished ("scapegoated", in her own words) in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq (she was demoted to the rank of colonel), in her recent book One Woman's Army says the entire chain of command, starting with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, must be held accountable for the crimes at the prison since the blame "goes all the way to the top". Her interview with Amy Goodman on the news radio Democracy Now! program speaks volumes for the depth of cover-up going on quietly.

The New Standard had reported some months back that a Federal Bureau of Investigation e-mail released by the US government at the demand of the American Civil Liberties Union in December 2004 revealed that President George W Bush had sent out an executive order permitting the use of new interrogation techniques. The White House has neither confirmed nor denied that torture orders were given from the very top.

When the rot is this deep, it is understandable that justice cannot be done: for each finger pointing down at someone who infringed, there will be many times more pointing up toward the bosses who, far from disallowing, actually appear to have encouraged the tortures.

Britain has boasted much about its standards of military justice being some of the highest in the world. Let us see how far up the chain of command investigations are able to reach. Let's see whether the defense secretary is called upon to answer for the crimes.

If we are serious about such matters as peace and security, let us stop denying what is obvious to people living in Muslim countries. Let us not just keep our attention anchored on the silly cartoons and their aftermath on the streets of the Middle East. Let us consider the far graver matters threatening the moral core of civilization itself.

Now the actions last week on the streets of Cairo, Jakarta and Tehran appear in quite a different light. It should have been obvious that the issue - for people living there - did not concern freedom of expression at all. It should have been evident that it wasn't just a matter of a few cartoons. The actions against the cartoons are only at the little-rippling surface of surging anger among people living in Muslim countries at the systematic injustices they continue to suffer at the hands of the West, especially the United States and the United Kingdom. The Muslim clergy is able to make hay only because the blazing sun of foreign injustices refuses to set.

The Abu Ghraib revelations took place almost two years ago - those at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba even earlier. More recently, it was learned that special Central Intelligence Agency flights were being routed through Europe to carry suspects to be tortured in places where it would be safe to do so. Illegal detentions and tortures continue in a global archipelago of prisons run by Washington.

No significant (by which I mean proportionate) justice has been done with regards to the torture revelations. Muslims, much more so than others, cannot forget that. Nor has there been any promise that the practices would be stopped. On the contrary, Washington has sought to legalize torture.

When one has come to live in such a brutalized global village, when men in suits and ties calmly impose barbarities on others in the name of defending something they call civilization and for passing on the torch of liberty to less fortunate souls in strange lands, the time has come to ask for a clear definition of "civilization".

If you reserve your brutality for bar-room brawls and post-soccer angst, or export it abroad in the shape of oil-seeking military missions masquerading as human-rights campaigns, it does not make you any less barbaric than those Muslims who were openly burning European flags and throwing stones at consulates last week. On the contrary, machines kill more effectively than machetes.

Much deeper things than just freedom of speech are at stake these days. The very dignity of human beings is under the sword - everywhere.

Long before the first atom had been split and the first-ever bomb dropped from the air (by the Italians on Libya in 1911), the great 19th-century American writer Herman Melville had written with self-critical honesty that few in this modern world (which, we are assured, is freer today than ever before) would dare, though the truth is far more grim today:

The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth ... it is needless to multiply the examples of civilized barbarity; they far exceed in the amount of misery they cause the crimes which we regard with such abhorrence in our less enlightened fellow-creature.

Times have moved on much since Melville. But the world is such that the integrity of a white man still has greater impact on human destinies than the honesty of others (who are by no means exempt from their duty to find and tell the truth). One shudders to imagine what Melville would have written today. But the rest of the world expects exactly such honesty from Western citizens today. And we know, from the example of numerous noble exceptions, that they are capable of it. It is for them to terminate their indoctrinated ignorance, seek the truth and make it count.

We are truly scratching the bottom of the barrel of civilization now.

Civilization is not just about good manners, about neat and tidy exteriors that conceal behaviour that would put animals to shame. At least with the anti-cartoon protests in Islamic countries the barbarities were on the surface, obvious to onlookers. But how do you detect the insane, well-entrenched barbarism of civilized societies if you are only going to be allowed occasional peeks at the scale of organized evil, if the iceberg of dehumanized depravity pops up but once in a while, staying underground long enough to lull us all into the sleep of drugged babies - until the next set of revelations arrive? When dated defensive ideologies of freedom or human rights are used to defend indefensible state actions?

Freedom is dead. Democracy is dying. There are no human rights for those without power. The example of Iraq should teach us that there are things - loss of human dignity, for one, civil war for another - worse than dictatorship.

It is for the citizens of Europe and America to terminate their shameful silence, resume the struggles for freedom, peace and justice that have been in abeyance since the 1960s, and march in their millions on the streets of Western capitals.

Next month we await a show called Death to Iran. If it is allowed to be aired, Westerners will find little left in their pockets after they have paid their rising oil bills.

Beyond that, all bets are off.

Aseem Shrivastava is an independent writer. He can be reached at aseem62@yahoo.com.

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

'Mind the Bollocks!'
- by Ian Reed -
(on video obtained by British newspaper, News of the World)


Now that the telltale footage is released,
The Ministry of Defence investigates
How British blokes in Basra, South Iraq,
Those bov/ver boys[1] with all their soldier mates,

Beat children senseless with headbuts and batons.
"42 Brainless Blows," the banner reads,
Not to describe what Blair gave Bush,
But Britain's barrage of braindead misdeeds.

One's sense of fair play says it isn't cricket
Kicking Iraqis lying on the ground,
And we're all confident the MoD
Will see to it that scapegoats shall be found,

But not in Downing Street, that viper's nest
Bound in with shame. There lies the rotten root.
And since the hobnails scar at Blair's behest,
It's time the bloody bastard got the boot!

February 2006

________________________________

[1]      "Bov/ver boys" is a British slang term (including slang
pronunciation of "bother"), meaning gang members.

'Polemics,' a collection of political verse assembled since 2000, is
at http://www.ReedandWrite.com
........
Comment from a blog:
Interesting to note that the video showing British Soldiers abusing young Iraqi protesters, was issued by the "News of the World" (Murdoch owned newspaper).

Cannot help thinking that maybe the cartoon provocation although creating much anger in the Muslim world, didn't reach the violent reaction certain people expected. So here once more
another media outlet publishes a two year old video to keep feeding the fire of anti-western hatred. It'd be interesting to know who provided the "video" to the paper. There is going to be an investigation, just like the one after the Mirror published the pictures of abuse. The end result was
the dismissal of the editor of the only anti-war British Newspaper and some years later, no charges of any kind pressed against the "alleged" army culprits. The smell of an intel op is unbearable.
Sandalphon

Siniyah: an Iraqi town that is now a prison

By Brian Conley and Isam Rashid

SINIYAH (Iraq): Twice now, an IPS correspondent has been refused entry to this town that has become a prison for its inhabitants. Contact with residents of the town came only at the checkpoint.

A month back, the United States military built a 10 kilometre wall of sand around the town of Siniyah, 220km north of Baghdad. The town is close to Saddam Hussein’s hometown Tikrit and the oil refining centre at Beiji.

Construction of a sand wall around the town began on January 7 in response to repeated attacks against the 101st Airborne US forces stationed in the area. A night curfew has been imposed in the area.

An IPS correspondent could not visit the town to look at the situation within, despite official claims.

“Journalists have not been limited or prevented from travelling in and around Siniyah,” US military spokesman Major Tim Keefe told IPS. “Coalition and Iraqi Forces go to great lengths to make sure journalists are able to do their job in a safe environment.”

That was after soldiers stopped the IPS correspondent entering the town on two occasions. But in the queue to the main checkpoint many people were more than willing to speak to IPS about the situation within.

“On the 7th of January, the US troops started building this wall around Siniyah,” said Mohammed, a 34-year-old engineer from Siniyah. “They are trying to isolate Iraqi fighters who are attacking them every day. The troops have been exposed to attacks near Siniyah by roadside bombs and by different weapons... Also, the resistance blows up the petrol pipelines leading to Turkey.”

The issue of the pipeline is a salient one for residents of Siniyah. The town has been sealed off not because of attacks within the town, but due to the belief it is being used as a staging ground for attacks outside... The coalition forces are attempting to halt attacks directed mainly at the Beiji refinery and at convoys serving the coalition.

The chosen targets have brought general support for Iraqi resistance within Siniyah. Mohammed says the attacks are taking place because “this petrol will go to Turkey and is stolen by occupation forces, or when Turkey buys this petrol the money is taken by the occupation forces.”

Residents of Siniyah speak also of injustices by the occupation troops. The wall of sand is now dividing residents from the Iraqi government, they say.

“Siniyah has become a real battlefield now, and the occupation forces have destroyed many of our homes,” said Sumiya, a 33-year-old housewife. “There is no security inside Siniyah and it is worse than any place in Iraq now. The occupation forces and Iraqi National Guard are raiding Siniyah houses everyday and arresting many people. There is a curfew from 5pm to 5am; in Baghdad it is only midnight to 5am.”

Sumiya said her children have stopped going to school. Everyone in the town is affected. “My problem is that my college is outside Siniyah, and it is very difficult for me to go back and forth everyday with these checkpoints,” said a 20-year-old student who gave his name as Ammar.

“I left my job because it was outside Siniyah, it is impossible to go and come back every day because of this earth wall and these checkpoints on the way,” said 45-year-old Abdullah Jabar.

The US forces say the wall was built with local approval. “Local police, city council members, sheikhs and religious leaders met with leaders from the 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment 101st Airborne Division, Air Assault, to discuss the operation,” Major Keefe said. He declined to comment on the specifics of the negotiations.

As the isolation of Siniyah continues, its 3,000 residents appear to be unifying behind the opposition. “I don’t think that the occupation force will stop resistance by these steps, because violence causes violence,” Ammar said. “It is normal throughout history there is resistance in any occupied country. But there is no occupation that used this kind of violence.”

“We are in very bad situation and we live in very big jail for three thousand, one called Siniyah,” said Jabar, echoing sentiments of residents interviewed by IPS last month.

The Multi National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) have used such tactics before. Walls and checkpoints were used to isolate residents of Samarra and Fallujah before the eventual devastation of the towns.—Dawn/IPS News Service

www.dawn.com