Monthly Archive for February, 2006
While rummaging through one of my drawers today I came across a small memory card for the digital camera I took to Iraq in 2003, and it held photos that I’d forgotten I had. Here’s a few of the better ones. You can find the original fullsize versions of these and my other photos from Iraq on Flickr.com.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve run into right-wingers who seem to have an unwavering belief that the crimes of their foes are to be loudly proclaimed and harshly punished while their own crimes are to be wholly justified in the pursuit of their ideology. The ends justifies the means apparently.
With such people in mind George Orwell once wrote:
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage—torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians—which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. … The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
Now let me introduce you to David Farrar, a New Zealand National Party member and a popular blogger among right-wingers in New Zealand.
In the comments section of a recent post stirring up Islamophobia, David responded to one of his readers:
Oh dear every apologist is out today. David Blake says there is no difference between accidential civilian casualties in a war and deliberate targetting of civilians.
What David Blake actually said was this:
Whether civilians are being killed by suicide bombers … or by the latest and greatest military tools … makes no difference to me. It’s still killing innocent people … to further an agenda.
As you can see David Farrar took the liberty of adding “accidental.” You see it’s “accidental” because the killers are on his side. It doesn’t matter what the facts might be, it is an unquestioning presumption. And a presumption that doesn’t fit the facts.
While there are many horrific instances throughout recent history that could be used as an example, such as the bombing of Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, here’s a well documented one I came across while reading William Blum’s now infamous book:
The most common argument made in NATO’s defense, and against war-crime charges [with regard to the bombing of Yugoslavia], has been that the death and devastation inflicted upon the civilian sector was “accidental”. This claim, however, must be questioned in light of certain reports. For example, the commander of NATO’s air war, Lt. Gen. Michael Short, declared at one point:
“If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, “Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?”" [1]
General Short, said the New York Times, “hopes that the distress of the Yugoslav public will undermine support for the authorities in Belgrade.” [2]
At another point, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea added: “If President Milosevic really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO’s five conditions and we will stop this campaign.” [3]
After the April NATO bombing of a Belgrade office building—which housed political parties, TV and radio stations, 100 private companies and more—the Washington Post reported:
“Over the past few days, U.S. officials have been quoted as expressing the hope that members of Serbia’s economic elite will begin to turn against Milosevic once they understand how much they are likely to lose by continuing to resist NATO demands.” [4]
Before Missiles were fired into this building, NATO planners spelled out the risks: “Casualty Estimate 50-100 Government employees. Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250—Apts in expected blast radius.” [5] The planners were saying that about 250 civilians living in nearby apartment buildings might be killed in the bombing.
What do we have here? We have grown men telling each other: We’ll do A, and we think that B may well be the result. But even if B does in fact result, we’re saying beforehand—as we’ll insist afterward—that it was unintended.
In short, it’s a great big pile of stinking shit to believe that these people, who are trying to rule the world, are in any way interested in the welfare of those who can’t supply them with more wealth or power.
David Farrar, like so many other right-wingers these days, is blinded by his ideology, which itself thrives on a fearful and confused population. In accusing others of being an apologist, he is proving to be precisely that himself.
Note: 51, 52 and 54 of the Geneva Conventions (Protocol 1) are the relevant articles if you’re interested.
A couple of people now have asked me to post the quotes that currently appear at random in the top right hand corner of my blog, so here they are in random order. I’ll add new ones at the top.
Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, a woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or “disappeared,†at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame.
—Amnesty International, 1996
The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
—Alex Carey
What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.
—Tom Hurndall (a friend of mine who I met in Iraq, he was murdered by an Israeli soldier)
To initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
—Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, 30th September 1946
Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without.
—The Merovingian, The Matrix Reloaded
The Pentagon admits that it has no intelligence at all …
—CNN, 21st March 2003
The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.
—Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Note: if you want to know why the West became superior at applying organised violence have a read of Guns, Germs, and Steel.)
Why of course the people don’t want war … But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
—Hermann Goering
Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.
—Emma Goldman
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
—George Orwell
In 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the US secretary of state, was asked on national television what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of US-led economic sanctions. She replied that it was ‘a very hard choice,’ but that, all things considered, ‘we think the price is worth it.’ —Madeleine Albright
Winston Peters: the only member of Parliament named after a concrete block.
—David Lange
… our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
—Douglas MacArthur American military leader
The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
—John Gilmore
Got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger.
—Muhammad Ali, upon hearing the news that he is to be drafted. (Attributed)
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
—Henry David Thoreau
The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.
—Aldous Huxley
This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. (Short pause) And having said that, all options are on the table. (Laughter).
—George W. Bush
Everyone fights with their abilities - the Israelis have helicopters and rockets and the Palestinians have nothing but themselves and some very primitive home-made explosives.
—Lea Tsemel
I grew up in an Israeli culture where suicide attackers are really heroes. Look at Samson, who in order to fight the Philistines in Gaza made the theatre collapse on himself and all the civilians there. He is a very big hero among Jewish children. I grew up on the myth of better suicide than surrender. So what is so special about suicide bombers?
—Lea Tsemel
I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.
—George W. Bush, demonstrating American delusion and arrogance.
So much for having wads of time to blog, I’m back in London now. Taking a holiday in NZ doesn’t involve a whole lot of time indoors.
Fortunately I managed to do some things I’ve wanted to do since I was a teen: walked around Lake Waikaremoana with my father and brother, sailed through Milford Sound, and hitched up the West Coast of the South Island.
One interesting thing to come out of it for me is the realisation that Aotearoa is not so much unique for its wilderness but for the isolation of its wilderness. I love London because there’re so many bloody people here, of all walks of life. Conversely what I love about NZ is the fact that there’s almost no people, and the culture that grows from that.
While I was back it took me some time to get used to anybody within a five metre radius saying hi or kia ora. And I remember arriving in NZ with a list of things that I’d given myself a week to do. I crossed off the last item by lunch time of the first day. No queues, no items out of stock, no parking problems. No dramas.
Unfortunately, given a chance, the growth imperative of our current infantile economic system will likely put an end to all this eventually, including the purity of the NZ wilderness.
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