http://idler.co.uk/idle-idols/idle-idols-jerome-k-jerome/
Friday, 14 November 2008
Thursday, 13 November 2008
John Pilger on Obama
My first visit to Texas was in 1968, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy in Dallas. I drove south, following the line of telegraph poles to the small town of Midlothian, where I met Penn Jones Jr, editor of the Midlothian Mirror. Save for his drawl and fine boots, everything about Penn was the antithesis of the Texas stereotype. Having exposed the racists of the John Birch Society, his printing press had been repeatedly firebombed. Week after week, he painstakingly assembled evidence that all but demolished the official version of Kennedy's murder.
This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose "professionalism" and "objectivity" carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth. Journalists such as Penn Jones, independent of vested power, indefatigable and principled, often reflect ordinary American attitudes, which have seldom conformed to the stereotypes promoted by the corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic.
Read American Dreams: Lost and Found by the masterly Studs Terkel, who died on 31 October, or scan the surveys that unerringly attribute enlightened views to a majority who believe that "government should care for those who cannot care for themselves" and are prepared to pay higher taxes for universal health care, who support nuclear disarmament and want their troops out of other people's countries.
Returning to Texas, I am struck again by those so unlike the redneck stereotype, in spite of the burden of a form of brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the world, and all means are justified, including the spilling of copious blood, in maintaining that superiority.
That is the subtext of Barack Obama's "oratory". He says he wants to build up US military power; and he threatens to ignite a new war in Pakistan, killing yet more brown-skinned people. That will bring tears, too. Unlike those on election night, these other tears will be unseen in Chicago and London. This is not to doubt the sincerity of much of the response to Obama's election, which happened not because of the unction that has passed for news reporting since 4 November (eg, "liberal Americans smiled and the world smiled with them"), but for the same reasons that millions of angry emails were sent to the White House and Congress when the "bailout" of Wall Street was revealed, and because most Americans are fed up with war.
Two years ago, this anti-war vote installed a Democratic majority in Congress, only to watch the Democrats hand over more money to George W Bush to continue his blood-fest. For his part, the "anti-war" Obama voted to give Bush what he wanted. Yes, Obama's election is historic, a symbol of great change to many. But it is equally true that the American elite has grown adept at using the black middle and management class. The courageous Martin Luther King recognised this when he linked the human rights of black Americans with the human rights of the Vietnamese, then being slaughtered by a "liberal" Democratic administration. And he was shot. In striking contrast, a young black major serving in Vietnam, Colin Powell, was used to "investigate" and whitewash the infamous My Lai massacre. As Bush's secretary of state, Powell was often described as a "liberal" and was considered ideal to lie to the United Nations about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Condaleezza Rice, lauded as a successful black woman, has worked assiduously to deny the Palestinians justice.
Obama's first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians - an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the US and the spawning of jihadism.
No serious scrutiny of this is permitted within the histrionics of Obama mania, just as no serious scrutiny of the betrayal of the majority of black South Africans was permitted within the "Mandela moment". This is especially marked in Britain, where America's divine right to "lead" is important to elite British interests. The Observer, which supported Bush's war in Iraq, echoing his fabricated evidence, now announces, without evidence, that "America has restored the world's faith in its ideals". These "ideals", which Obama will swear to uphold, have overseen, since 1945, the destruction of 50 governments, including democracies, and 30 popular liberation movements, causing the deaths of countless men, women and children.
None of this was uttered during the election campaign. Had that been allowed, there might even have been recognition that liberalism as a narrow, supremely arrogant, war-making ideology is destroying liberalism as a reality. Prior to Blair's criminal warmaking, ideology was denied by him and his media mystics. "Blair can be a beacon to the world," declared the Guardian in 1997. "[He is] turning leadership into an art form."
Today, merely insert "Obama". As for historic moments, there is another that has gone unreported but is well under way - liberal democracy's shift towards a corporate dictatorship, managed by people regardless of ethnicity, with the media as its clichéd façade. "True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr, the Texas truth-teller, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you're meant to think, and keeping your eyes wide open at all times."
This was journalism as it had been before corporate journalism was invented, before the first schools of journalism were set up and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around those whose "professionalism" and "objectivity" carried an unspoken obligation to ensure that news and opinion were in tune with an establishment consensus, regardless of the truth. Journalists such as Penn Jones, independent of vested power, indefatigable and principled, often reflect ordinary American attitudes, which have seldom conformed to the stereotypes promoted by the corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic.
Read American Dreams: Lost and Found by the masterly Studs Terkel, who died on 31 October, or scan the surveys that unerringly attribute enlightened views to a majority who believe that "government should care for those who cannot care for themselves" and are prepared to pay higher taxes for universal health care, who support nuclear disarmament and want their troops out of other people's countries.
Returning to Texas, I am struck again by those so unlike the redneck stereotype, in spite of the burden of a form of brainwashing placed on most Americans from a tender age: that theirs is the most superior society in the world, and all means are justified, including the spilling of copious blood, in maintaining that superiority.
That is the subtext of Barack Obama's "oratory". He says he wants to build up US military power; and he threatens to ignite a new war in Pakistan, killing yet more brown-skinned people. That will bring tears, too. Unlike those on election night, these other tears will be unseen in Chicago and London. This is not to doubt the sincerity of much of the response to Obama's election, which happened not because of the unction that has passed for news reporting since 4 November (eg, "liberal Americans smiled and the world smiled with them"), but for the same reasons that millions of angry emails were sent to the White House and Congress when the "bailout" of Wall Street was revealed, and because most Americans are fed up with war.
Two years ago, this anti-war vote installed a Democratic majority in Congress, only to watch the Democrats hand over more money to George W Bush to continue his blood-fest. For his part, the "anti-war" Obama voted to give Bush what he wanted. Yes, Obama's election is historic, a symbol of great change to many. But it is equally true that the American elite has grown adept at using the black middle and management class. The courageous Martin Luther King recognised this when he linked the human rights of black Americans with the human rights of the Vietnamese, then being slaughtered by a "liberal" Democratic administration. And he was shot. In striking contrast, a young black major serving in Vietnam, Colin Powell, was used to "investigate" and whitewash the infamous My Lai massacre. As Bush's secretary of state, Powell was often described as a "liberal" and was considered ideal to lie to the United Nations about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Condaleezza Rice, lauded as a successful black woman, has worked assiduously to deny the Palestinians justice.
Obama's first two crucial appointments represent a denial of the wishes of his supporters on the principal issues on which they voted. The vice-president-elect, Joe Biden, is a proud warmaker and Zionist. Rahm Emanuel, who is to be the all-important White House chief of staff, is a fervent "neoliberal" devoted to the doctrine that led to the present economic collapse and impoverishment of millions. He is also an "Israel-first" Zionist who served in the Israeli army and opposes meaningful justice for the Palestinians - an injustice that is at the root of Muslim people's loathing of the US and the spawning of jihadism.
No serious scrutiny of this is permitted within the histrionics of Obama mania, just as no serious scrutiny of the betrayal of the majority of black South Africans was permitted within the "Mandela moment". This is especially marked in Britain, where America's divine right to "lead" is important to elite British interests. The Observer, which supported Bush's war in Iraq, echoing his fabricated evidence, now announces, without evidence, that "America has restored the world's faith in its ideals". These "ideals", which Obama will swear to uphold, have overseen, since 1945, the destruction of 50 governments, including democracies, and 30 popular liberation movements, causing the deaths of countless men, women and children.
None of this was uttered during the election campaign. Had that been allowed, there might even have been recognition that liberalism as a narrow, supremely arrogant, war-making ideology is destroying liberalism as a reality. Prior to Blair's criminal warmaking, ideology was denied by him and his media mystics. "Blair can be a beacon to the world," declared the Guardian in 1997. "[He is] turning leadership into an art form."
Today, merely insert "Obama". As for historic moments, there is another that has gone unreported but is well under way - liberal democracy's shift towards a corporate dictatorship, managed by people regardless of ethnicity, with the media as its clichéd façade. "True democracy," wrote Penn Jones Jr, the Texas truth-teller, "is constant vigilance: not thinking the way you're meant to think, and keeping your eyes wide open at all times."
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Guantanamo
Shut Guantanamo on Day One, Obama Urged
by Jane Sutton
MIAMI - Five human rights groups urged European governments on Monday to accept Guantanamo prisoners who cannot be sent home for fear of persecution, while a sixth group called on U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to sign an order shutting the prison camp on the day he takes office.
The global efforts are aimed at pressuring Obama to make good on his campaign pledge to close the widely reviled Guantanamo detention camp and halt the special tribunals that try foreign terrorism suspects outside the regular courts.
"President-elect Obama, with a stroke of your presidential pen, on Day One of your administration, you can ensure that our government will be faithful to the Constitution and to the principles upon which America was founded," the American Civil Liberties Union said in a full-page ad in the New York Times.
"Give us back the America we believe in," the ACLU urged Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20.
The detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widely viewed as a stain on America's human rights record. It has held more than 750 captives from around the world since opening in 2002, including many who were caught up in sweeps or sold for bounties during U.S. efforts to route al Qaeda and associated groups after the hijacked plane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
About 255 men are still held at Guantanamo, including 50 the United States has cleared for release but cannot repatriate for fear they will be tortured or persecuted in their home countries.
In Berlin, five international rights groups issued a joint call to European governments to help close Guantanamo by granting humanitarian resettlement and protection to those 50 captives, who are from nations that include China, Libya, Russia, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan.
"This would have a double effect: helping to end the ordeal of an individual unlawfully held in violation of his human rights, and helping end the international human rights scandal that is Guantanamo," said Daniel Gorevan, who manages Amnesty International's "Counter Terror with Justice" campaign.
Guantanamo Quagmire
Joining Amnesty in the statement were the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, Reprieve and the International Federation for Human Rights. The groups issued the joint statement after a closed two-day meeting in Berlin.
"This is a key opportunity for both sides of the Atlantic to move beyond the misguided acts of the war on terror: rendition, secret detention, and torture," said Cori Crider, staff attorney at Reprieve, a British group that advocates for prisoners' rights.
The U.S. State Department's legal adviser and other senior officials have been traveling around Europe, North Africa and elsewhere trying to persuade nations to take home their Guantanamo prisoners.
Some governments have denied that the Guantanamo prisoners are in fact their citizens, while others have been reluctant to agree to U.S. requests to imprison or monitor Guantanamo returnees.
The outpouring of international goodwill for Obama's election victory suggests America's first black president may enjoy a diplomatic honeymoon among nations that have been reluctant to help the Bush administration find a way out of the Guantanamo quagmire.
But Obama will also need support at home if he is to shut it down. The United States still wants to try about 80 Guantanamo prisoners on terrorism charges and holds a few dozen others it does not intend to try but considers too dangerous to release.
During his election campaign, Obama said he favored holding those trials in the United States.
Those facing charges include five accused Sept. 11 plotters. But proposals to move any Guantanamo prisoners to the United States -- such as to U.S. military prisons in Kansas and South Carolina -- have been met with resistance among U.S. congressional representatives.
Additional reporting by Sue Pleming and Randall Mikkelsen in Washington
Editing by Eric Beech
© 2008 Reuters
by Jane Sutton
MIAMI - Five human rights groups urged European governments on Monday to accept Guantanamo prisoners who cannot be sent home for fear of persecution, while a sixth group called on U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to sign an order shutting the prison camp on the day he takes office.
The global efforts are aimed at pressuring Obama to make good on his campaign pledge to close the widely reviled Guantanamo detention camp and halt the special tribunals that try foreign terrorism suspects outside the regular courts.
"President-elect Obama, with a stroke of your presidential pen, on Day One of your administration, you can ensure that our government will be faithful to the Constitution and to the principles upon which America was founded," the American Civil Liberties Union said in a full-page ad in the New York Times.
"Give us back the America we believe in," the ACLU urged Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20.
The detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widely viewed as a stain on America's human rights record. It has held more than 750 captives from around the world since opening in 2002, including many who were caught up in sweeps or sold for bounties during U.S. efforts to route al Qaeda and associated groups after the hijacked plane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
About 255 men are still held at Guantanamo, including 50 the United States has cleared for release but cannot repatriate for fear they will be tortured or persecuted in their home countries.
In Berlin, five international rights groups issued a joint call to European governments to help close Guantanamo by granting humanitarian resettlement and protection to those 50 captives, who are from nations that include China, Libya, Russia, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan.
"This would have a double effect: helping to end the ordeal of an individual unlawfully held in violation of his human rights, and helping end the international human rights scandal that is Guantanamo," said Daniel Gorevan, who manages Amnesty International's "Counter Terror with Justice" campaign.
Guantanamo Quagmire
Joining Amnesty in the statement were the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, Reprieve and the International Federation for Human Rights. The groups issued the joint statement after a closed two-day meeting in Berlin.
"This is a key opportunity for both sides of the Atlantic to move beyond the misguided acts of the war on terror: rendition, secret detention, and torture," said Cori Crider, staff attorney at Reprieve, a British group that advocates for prisoners' rights.
The U.S. State Department's legal adviser and other senior officials have been traveling around Europe, North Africa and elsewhere trying to persuade nations to take home their Guantanamo prisoners.
Some governments have denied that the Guantanamo prisoners are in fact their citizens, while others have been reluctant to agree to U.S. requests to imprison or monitor Guantanamo returnees.
The outpouring of international goodwill for Obama's election victory suggests America's first black president may enjoy a diplomatic honeymoon among nations that have been reluctant to help the Bush administration find a way out of the Guantanamo quagmire.
But Obama will also need support at home if he is to shut it down. The United States still wants to try about 80 Guantanamo prisoners on terrorism charges and holds a few dozen others it does not intend to try but considers too dangerous to release.
During his election campaign, Obama said he favored holding those trials in the United States.
Those facing charges include five accused Sept. 11 plotters. But proposals to move any Guantanamo prisoners to the United States -- such as to U.S. military prisons in Kansas and South Carolina -- have been met with resistance among U.S. congressional representatives.
Additional reporting by Sue Pleming and Randall Mikkelsen in Washington
Editing by Eric Beech
© 2008 Reuters
Friday, 7 November 2008
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
