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Britain's Bizarre Reaction to War Crimes Allegations: Investigations Needed
Binyam Mohamed is the British resident who, two weeks ago, was released from Guantanamo and returned to Britain after seven years of detention, often in brutal conditions. Since his return, compelling evidence has been steadily emerging that British agents were knowingly complicit in Mohamed's torture while in U.S. custody -- including the discovery of telegrams sent by British intelligence officers to the CIA asking the CIA to extract information from him. How does a country with a minimally healthy political class and a pretense to the rule of law react to such allegations of criminality? From the BBC:
MPs have demanded a judicial inquiry into a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's claims that MI5 was complicit in his torture. . . .
[Mohamed's] allegations are being investigated by the government, but the Foreign Office said it did not condone torture.
Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the "extremely serious" claims should also be referred to the police. . . .
Daniel Sandford, BBC Home Affairs correspondent, said Mr Mohamed's claims would be relatively simple to substantiate.
"As time progresses it will probably become quite apparent whether indeed these are true telegrams and I think it's unlikely they'd be put into the public domain if they couldn't eventually be checked back."
The Conservatives have called for a police inquiry into his allegations of British collusion.
Mr Grieve called for a judicial inquiry into the allegations.
"And if the evidence is sufficient to bring a prosecution then the police ought to investigate it," he added.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said there was a "rock solid" case for an independent judicial inquiry. . . .
Shami Chakrabati, director of campaign group Liberty said: "These are more than allegations - these are pieces of a puzzle that are being put together.
"It makes an immediate criminal investigation absolutely inescapable."
New revelations by Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, claiming that British intelligence played a central role in his torture and interrogation, must be answered by the government, the former shadow home secretary David Davis said last night. . . .
[Mohamed's] allegations appear to contradict assertions by foreign secretary David Miliband and home secretary Jacqui Smith that the British government would never "authorise or condone" torture.
Davis said Mohamed's testimony demanded a response from these ministers. "His revelations show that the government's claims about its involvement in the interrogation of Mohamed are completely untenable," Davis said. "Either Miliband or Smith should come to the House of Commons and reveal exactly what the government knew."
Last night other public figures said there should be wider efforts to look into the allegations that the British government had colluded in Mohamed's torture.
Notice what is missing from these accounts. There is nobody arguing that the dreary past should simply be forgotten in order to focus on the important and challenging future. There's no snide suggestion that demands to investigate serious allegations of criminality are driven by petty vengeance or partisan score-settling. Nobody suggests that it's perfectly permissible for government officials to commit serious crimes -- including war crimes -- as long as they had nice motives or were told that it was OK to do these things by their underlings, or that the financial crisis (which Britain has, too) precludes any investigations, or that whether to torture is a mere "policy dispute." Also missing is any claim that these crimes are State Secrets that must be kept concealed in order to protect British national security.
Instead, the tacit premise of the discussion is that credible allegations of criminality -- even if committed by high government officials, perhaps especially then -- compel serious criminal investigations. Imagine that. How shrill and radical.
If one stays immersed in American domestic political debates, it's easy to lose sight of just how corrupted and rotted our political and media class is, because the most twisted ideas become enshrined as elite orthodoxies. Britain is hardly the paragon of transparency and adherence to international conventions; to the contrary, they've been with the U.S. every step of the way over the last eight years, enabling and partaking in many of the worst abuses. Yet this one single case of documented complicity in torture -- mere complicity with, not actual commission of, the torture -- is generating extreme political controversy and widespread demands across the political spectrum for judicial and criminal investigations. The British political class may not have wanted to see it, but when compelling evidence of criminality is rubbed in their faces, they at least pay lip service to the idea that crimes by government officials must be investigated and subjected to accountability.
By stark and depressing contrast, America's political class and even most of its "journalists" -- in the face of far, far greater, more heinous and more direct war criminality by their highest political leaders -- are explicitly demanding that nothing be done and that it all be kept concealed. They're surveying undeniable evidence of grotesque war crimes committed over many years by our government -- including enabling legal theories that even Fred Hiatt described as "scary," "lawless" and "disgraceful" -- and are literally saying: "just forget about that; it doesn't matter." Our country is plagued by "journalists" like The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, giggling with smug derision over the very few efforts to investigate these massive crimes -- and then even lying on NPR by claiming that support for investigations is confined to "a small but very vocal minority within the Party - these are the same folks who were pushing for the impeachment of the President and the Vice President right up [dismissive chuckling] basically to the time of the Inauguration" (to see how flagrantly false is Milbank's statement about support within the Party for investigations, see here and here and here; the NPR host, needless to say, said nothing to correct him).
The accountability-free, self-loving mentality that demands that nothing be done about America's war crimes over the last eight years is hardly confined to America's detention, surveillance and interrogation policies. This is exactly the same bloated, insular corruption that allows multi-billion-dollar insider frauds like this one not only to go unexamined but also to result in those responsible being further empowered with high government positions. It's what lets someone like Tom Friedman think he can lecture us all with a straight face on the evils of overconsumption, the ravaging effects of our "growth model," and the environment-destroying impact of consumerism as he lives in this house, financed by his heiress-wife's shopping-center-developing company, his books urging unfettered globalization, and his columns urging various wars.
In sum, we have the only country, and the only results, that it's possible to have given who has been wielding influence. And nothing expresses more vividly what they are than their explicit insistence that systematic war crimes committed by their own Government be immunized and forgotten, underscored by their bizarre feelings of "centrism"-smugness and Seriousness-superiority for expressing that definitively lawless and amoral view.
* * * * *
One other point about Mohamed: Last month, the Obama DOD claimed that it conducted an investigation and concluded that Guantanamo now fully comports with all Geneva standards. In a New York Times interview yesterday, President Obama claimed (for the first time, to my knowledge) that most of the problems with Bush's detention policies were confined to what he called "the steps that were taken immediately after 9/11," and that most of those problems were fixed by CIA Director Michael Hayden and DNI Michael McConnell "by the time [Obama] took office" because Hayden and McConnell "were mindful of American values and ideals."
Compare all of that to Binyam Mohamed's post-release statements -- supported by other corroborating evidence -- that "conditions at the US detention camp in Cuba have worsened since President Barack Obama was elected. . . . "'Since the election it's got harsher,' Mohamed told the newspaper." Isn't this something that the U.S. Government should be called upon to address?
UPDATE: Slate's Dahlia Lithwick reviews, and dismantles, each of the justifications being offered by the Obama administration for keeping Bush crimes concealed and shielding them from investigations and prosecutions (h/t Bystander). It's quite concise and well worth reading in its entirety (as is Digby's discussion of that article).
UPDATE II: In comments, Cocktailhag writes:
It is something of an upside down world wherein journalists, as a class, comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted, and see nothing odd about this.
At times I've wondered whether Watergate would have even been discovered by the mindless media we have today, but even worse, whether they all would have just explained it away.
It's difficult to select what one thinks is the single most illustrative symbol of how our country now functions, but if I were forced to do so, I would choose the fact that it is America's journalists -- who claim to be devoted to serving as a check on Government and exposing its secrets -- who are, instead, leading the way in demanding that the Government's actions of the last eight years be concealed; in trying to quash efforts to investigate and expose those actions; and in demanding immunity for government lawbreakers. What kind of country does one expect to have where (with some noble exceptions) it is journalists, of all people, who take the lead in concealing, protecting and justifying government wrongdoing, and whose overriding purpose is to serve, rather than check, political power? "Upside down world," indeed.
51 Comments so far
Show AllAmerica is told on a daily basis what to think and how to feel by the "journalist class-the media." The United States no longer has a moral compass of any kind-of its own. That would require some real soul-searching and some painful admissions.
Our moral compass is provided to us by the Media. It's sad and it's sickening, as well. Everything in the US is "fast-food" including our ethics-our morality. Our morality is provided to us by the press-and we like it supersized with an order of fries-a quick and easy "soundbite." Just like the drive-thru-we like it handed right to us! What have we become, in the land of instant gratification? Unable to form or own conclusions (or no longer capable) we turn on the tv set and viola! Our own conclusions. We don't even have to get out of the car!
Sioux Rose
GREAT BEAR: We both used the food metaphor and posted in synch. In one of the movie scripts I tried to share with Hollywood I parody our drug-taking pill-popping culture and ask (rhetorically), "What does it cost a society to become instant." And of course by that I mean affixed upon the fruit of "instant gratification." I answer, "No where do we see the affects more than in our relationships with one another." Of course the levels of obesity, drug abuse, alcoholism, along with the ingestion of anti-depressants by MILLIONS shows where lies of convenience so directly lead to impossible pain on the inside. There are laws of nature, ways of being designed to act in accord with the Tao; and when persons work against these intrinsic energetic blueprints (universal laws as I see it), a price is always extracted, sooner or later.
Sioux Rose
In my view this is one of the most compelling and important pieces yet published by Greenwald. Thankfully we have him as one of a small number of journalists who refuse to be part of the choir that sings its hosannas to the utterly corrupt warrior caste, so that we are informed about true events rather than what collaborators of the spin-world of illusion are so well-financed by Mammon to otherwise deliver.
It's clear that the old paradigm is in every plausible way coming apart. The only weapon left (on the part of those who wish to maintain it) is deception, and let's face it, ownership of media delivers delusion the way the needle provides the addict with his fix. Most Americans have no idea of the degree to which their information has been and is being distorted. It's Orwell and Twilight Zone and Theater of the Absurd hybridized, put on steroids, and then delivered to the body politic as its steady diet of faux food for thought!
Well you see The United States of America is the greatest freest most loving , most compassionate, most peaceful, most tolerant country in the history of the world and it Anti-American to suggest otherwise.
As one journalist put it. Americans have been infantilized. They live in a cocoon world where mommy and daddy are beyond reproach and Santa claus still comes down the Chimney to give out presents.
A steady diet of Hollywood type movies where "Corrupt Government officials" are thwarted by a single lone hero who defeats the Villians because he "loves America" so much helps the cause.
I am reminded of the movie the Manchurian Candidate, one that was suprressed for years where the protagnist when asked to describe a certain person just says by rote that he the kindest most decent person he has ever met while never really understanding why he says it.
GWN:
I'm curious about your assertion that The Manchurian Candidate (movie) was "suppressed for years." I saw it in about 1965 in England. Given the cast and the fact that it was from a novel whose reference was the McCarthy years and the Korean War, it didn't seem to be a movie that had been "supressed for years."
What's your story?
Rainborowe
The film was banned outright in most East European Countries. Distributers removed it from release shortly after the kennedy assassiniation inside the United States.
Thereafter it was rarely seen and became a sort of cult underground hit. Frank Sinatra then bought the rights to it and it was not seen again until the late 1980's.
pk
Just had to add that given someone else mentioned it and memory jogged.
The book the manchurian Candidate was based in part on reports that the CIA was involved in mind control experiments which the CIA denied being involved in for many years.
The author based his work on the CIAS Artichoke experiments. These experiments had as a goal training agents to commit assassinations among other things.
Thank you, Glenn,Sioux Rose, Great Bear et al, for your insights and metaphors -- how sadly true. I am always glad when a piece of our looming National shadow gets exposed and discussed as I feel this is what must happen for us to evolve & transform as a nation (and personally!). Perhaps all this deception, denial and avoidance can somehow, in the end, catalyze Americans to wake up, massively reject what they are being fed,fundamentally rethink things and claim their own inner Saturns (authority & wisdom). May it be so!
Sioux Rose
DAKINI: I see you speak "my" language, that of the Logos. Some are too far gone to ever claim inner autonomy, their "inner Saturn" as you put it. If a creature is taught a behavior for too long and it's lost all flexibility, it simply cannot make those changes. This is where Darwin's theory is so very true. So the work now is about planting seeds for those with eyes to see, reinforcing the Truth that is everywhere parodied to the point the Initiated are made to question their own sanity, wisdom, and sentience, and to nurture in the young the realizations necessary for repairing this world, getting it back into synch with the laws of balance. And always Love (or what some call Light) guides such efforts.
Acknowledging what was really going on requires greater moral courage for Americans at the moment than for the British, precisely because there is (probably) more awfulness closer to home for Americans. And for those who lacked the courage to acknowledge what was going on as it was happening, the required courage now is even greater, because that courage has to confront not only the shame of what one's country was doing, but the personal shame of having been in denial all this time. The energy behind the continuing denial will be huge, and the resistance to acknowledging it will be enormous for many people. I wonder if it could take a whole new generation, carrying less of the shame personally, to really look clearly at what has happened.
Sioux
Friend of Merlin: I don't think too many readers of CD were EVER in denial about what this nation, led by false leaders (an unelected band of thugs) set into motion; and I think you're onto something as per it taking a generation to really face what's been done. This is why efforts on the part of Bugliosi, Marjorie Cohn, and the many writers/journalists courageous enough to put truth on the record (as read here on CD) are so important. The right wing will try to bury the truth with tons of fake paperwork and "studies" by bogus "prestigious" think tanks. It will pay authors to alter history to make Bush seem in the right, as if the proof of waging war on fixed cause is only speculative and comes from the most dangerous of left-wing ideologues. And will harm be directed at them to keep the record suspect?
One particularly troubling thing evidenced by Naomi Klein's masterful research as presented in "The Shock Doctrine," was the desire to BREAK the MINDS of persons who saw outside the paradigm being engineered by those who truly serve only a dark master (along with those embodied in its image and likeness on this plane). The cruelty and depravity, the lust for harm goes beyond what mere economics calls for. This is entirely something darker, and it is still on the loose, unaccounted for, neither put back in check.
Golden Mean...
Are you referring to the "work" of Dr. Cameron in Canada and his electroshock "brainwashing" experiments he conducted on behalf of the CIA...? I haven't read Klein's recent book, but many of her articles here on CD...
I see the co-relation between the psychic raping of Cameron's victims and the CIA MKUltra mind control experiments that began in the 60's using drugs, hypnosis, electro-shock, psy-ops, and extreme sexual trauma to associate trigger words into the sub-consciousness of women and children to slip into a robotic sex slave mode when prompted by their programmers and handlers...
Cathy O'Brien, if one believes her story in "trance-formation of America", is a recovered sex slave deprogrammed by her now husband...
The exploitation of conditions created by manufactured trauma on a mass scale psy-ops like the assassination of JFK, RFK, MLK, 9-11, etc. gives the disaster capitalists the window of opportunity to pass legislation or create a business friendly climate here or abroad...
Sioux Rose
G.M: That is what I was relating, yes. I was pretty shocked to find that Naomi Klein BEGAN her book using this topic. What it exposes is a sinister, sadistic link between control of populations down to the roots of their belief systems, along with control of economic delivery systems. We're talking about a lust for power so dark that it brings to mind something that can only be summoned from ancient myth.
There is a line somewhere, from the Bible I believe, that says something like "the light beholdeth the darkness and understood it not." I find myself relating to this as I read about the experiments in depravity, the way scientists and government officials take steps, a form of imperialism, over the sovereign terrain of others' beings... aimed directly at their brain structures. These outrageous breaches of free will stun me. If we were to read (and Nick Turse has certainly opened eyes on this subject) about instituionalized searches for new forms of violence and tearing minds, bodies, and infrastructure asunder (funds so generously extended to our military, Mars-rules death machine) it would blow our minds. This is not garden variety depravity, this is some deeply entrenched force that could not possibly have arisen overnight in any one generation. Torture that becomes state-sanctioned or hidden behind the purview of science is still torture, and it reveals something I can't even name about those who elect to make use of it.
"What kind of country does one expect to have where (with some noble exceptions) it is journalists, of all people, who take the lead in concealing, protecting and justifying government wrongdoing, and whose overriding purpose is to serve, rather than check, political power? "Upside down world," indeed."
Why read MSM journalists when we have online alternatives?
It may be worth noting that Britain is floating such crazy and unheard-of notions of investigating government misconduct with a view to assessing responsibility and accountability as a natural consequence of the Great Disillusionment that occurs when the vision of Empire finally shatters and fades away.
In stark contrast, Amerika is still very much in thrall to the illusion of exceptionalism and Empire-- even if that term has become discredited and fallen out of fashion.
Remember Cindy Sheehan's persistent, if unfulfilled, quest to get former War-Criminal-in-Chief Bush to explain exactly what the "Noble Cause" was the caused her son to be killed in a faraway land? Well, IMO Empire is sold to the unwashed and unreflective masses as an Olive Crown or circlet formed of Noble Causes.
Amerikan empire got fairly underway, as Twain satirically observed, by ostensibly taking up the altruistic torch of Bringing the Blessings of Civilization to Persons Sitting in Darkness. (Ridding the World of Evil is implicitly a corollary to this most Noble of pursuits.) And more than a century later, the lyric changes to "Shock and Awe", but the song remains the same.
The New Emperor notwithstanding, Amerika is still intoxicated by an exceptionalism expressed in militarism and economic coercion. To draw closer to the point, Imperial administration-- the whole of the government, not just the executive-- demands that political, policy, and operational decisions be made with a minimum of delay and restriction. So there's great potential for abuse of power and misfeasance as scruples are dissolved and disintegrated in the rush to meet the insatiable and ineluctable demands of Empire.
Critical, humble self-examination is utterly trampled by the juggernaut of Hubris. Wouldn't be prudent!
Thus, Amerikans are caught up in what amounts to an international crime spree, and are not about to stop and take inventory of its misdeeds and their misdoers. Don't you know there's a (Global) War (on Terror) on?
Whereas the Brits went through their imperial phase over a century ago, and have had time to sober up sufficiently to regain national composure and more rationally face up to government wrongdoing.
That's why they're acting so crazy.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Sioux Rose
O.S: Masterfully stated; however I would add that by in large (and I've lived in U.K.) the Brits are better educated and better informed that the U.S. public. That, too, makes a difference in how much wool you can pull over how many eyes.
I'm beginning to believe that the Bush memeo about taking away 1st amendment rights WAS implemented!!
And the US guvmnt under Obama - such as it is - is continuing a policy of telling the MSM what to say and how to frame it. The MSM has been given a choice of disseminate what we tell you to disseminate or disseminate nothing and be put out of business.
The demise of the MSM could be an intentional act by the Guv - just read the memos.
Just study the the demise of MSM truthtelling Knight-Ridder, the only mainstream media that questioned Bush policies from day one of his first administration. A group of rabid right wing GOPers from Florida bypassed its defenses, gained control and sold off its parts and completely dismantled the organization.
The only remnant worth its weight left is the Washington Bureau purchased by and pretty much left alone by the McClatchy Press. This is the group that was not allowed into any Bushco press briefings because they published reports detrimental to them. They were persona non grata but still break uncomfortable news because of their sources who seem to believe in their integrity.
But I could be wrong !
Indeed, we should thank our lucky stars that Greenwald's analysis is so widely respected. However, his criticism of American "journalism" could be more deeply grounded in a sociological critique of the evolving function of journalism in relation to the American public. It has become clear over the past 20 years that this function is no longer primarily to inform, but serves a social conditioning role. Those who perform this role well become successful in their profession, while those who do not wind up at the bottom of the journalistic food chain.
The quintessential "successful" journalist is represented by William Kristol. He tells a compelling story that comforts and reassures those who control economic and military policy. It blends so harmoniously with their policies that it inevitably rises to the surface. Factual inaccuracy or poor strategic thinking doesn't matter.
Greenwald's criticism is essentially moral. It seems to assume that only if more journalists obeyed the moral imperatives of critical journalistic standards, the profession could be reformed and resume it's vital political role as a check on unrestrained power. But we need to look at the reward structure of the profession before we criticize the Dana Milbanks of the world. Careers advance by providing lightweight, mildly humorous pieces that reassure those in power that their policies are smoothly executing. What matters above all is the preferred story line around which selective facts can be arranged. It is a story line that is dictated by the pressure to support policies that have already been set in motion. Journalists who do this in an entertaining way will have great career potential.
Sioux Rose
BOYD: Absolutely right-on and astute analysis. I wonder if Greenwald actually misses this item as he's so committed to standards of integrity himself? Maybe he can't recognize its absence in his peers? Or Who knows, he may have been one who sat among those legendary Knights of the Round Table and came to understand at a cellular level just how important an allegiance to Truth was and remains, not just in King Arthur's kingdom.
I do believe that Glenn Greenwald is a knight devoted to the standards of journalistic integrity. I also think he feels the absence of this standard in his peers, but his idealism is fueled by an individualistic philosophy that most Americans share at a more or less conscious level. This philosophy inspires us with the notion that if only we raise our own standards, we can set an example that others will feel compelled to follow. In a different social and economic system, this might be true. But in the one that currently exists in most of the world, the news media performs a very specific social function which is largely focused on providing psychological security and reinforcing ruling paradigms. This is obviously a large subject and the works of Robert McChesney and many others should be cited in this regard. But the point is that the current media system must be viewed in its social and economic context. If it is seen as merely the result of the actions of individual journalists, then system that socializes journalists into supporting preferred story lines remains invisible. I actually suspect that Greenwald is quite aware of this context.
Sioux Rose
BOYD: Your analysis on this subject (in my view) is impeccable.
I would guess Greenwald is very aware of this context. BUT, whatever happened to personal integrity? Do these reporters not understand they are selling their souls for a few gold coins? OR, is that no longer an issue in today's atmosphere of "show me the money"?
"I would guess Greenwald is very aware of this context."
I would agree--after all, this context is not exactly a new discovery--the tension between individual and society was popularized by Shakespeare. And the added wrinkle of how societal structure and institutions favor and perpetuate a given society's norms has become more widely discerned in our country following the civil rights era.
The curious thing about Boyd's argument is that he seems to advocate the change of that societal structure--not through this individual/communal tension--but rather, through the lack of it.
Historically, that's recipe for disaster.
When it comes to the needs of the individual and society we need to take both into account. Even better, we need to find--or rediscover those core convictions where the two areas overlap.
I would argue that Greenwald's idealism(not necessarily a bad thing!) appears to be in line with those core convictions and ideals central to our democracy.
"....but serves a social conditioning role" Do you mean propaganda?
No, it's more complex than propaganda as this is normally understood. The role of the media is to do many things - to entertain, to provoke discussion, to serve their advertisers, and to present a view of society that reassures the audience that everything is basically working fine, even though there may be a glitch here and there. That's the part where I refer to as "psychological security." The media's role is to soothe troubled minds by conveying the impression that experts in government and industry are in confident control of the system. Another role is to present story lines that reinforce these themes. Does that mean propaganda? Not really, it's just one mechanism among many that reinforce a society's image of itself. Propaganda implies that those broadcasting the propaganda are knowingly falsifying the facts, whereas in the case of our media, they probably sincerely believe that what they are broadcasting is factual, but they've been subjected to many pressures to shape their stories in a certain way.
Interesting. I suppose when the government supplies the story to the press, and the press reports it as if it were its own creation, it's crossing the line into propaganda. Like the Bush administration was doing. Would you agree?
Actually, I think that even when the stories don't come directly from the government, they still serve the same purpose - to support certain approved story lines that the corporations which own the media want to push. The mainstream media makes sure that its stories blend in with what the major powers in our society - governments and corporations - want to convey. They do this because that's what leads to success in their business, not because they consciously wish to broadcast propaganda.
I don't know. I feel like it amounts to the same thing. Take all the media hype surrounding Venezuela and Chavez. The media constantly bombards us with this story of his being an anti-democratic dictator, when in reality his socialist revolution is far more democratic than American "democracy". He's just not conducive to the profit margin of the big U.S. corporations. The press reports the lie to keep our people enslaved to the neoliberal capitalist/corporate ideal. If we could really see how successful the revolution's been in creating a just society we would start doubting corporate/market domination here, then all hell might break loose.
Actually, I'm agreeing with you. It is propaganda, but I just don't think that the people in the newsrooms are conscious that it is. As to the effect of it, I agree that the corporate media wants us to think that Chavez is a dictator because if we realized what a democracy he has managed to create in Venezuela, then we might want a little taste of that here. The distortions they constantly pump out are a mechanism of social control, as I indicated above, but they are part of a much wider set of controls which keep the working class isolated and docile.
interesting posts all, but i remain sceptical about anything coming out of these british m.p.s. 1st off, is anyone in the labor party joining in their demands? perhaps, i don't know. but they may be just taking some shots at gordon brown. hopefully it's more than electoral politics, but britain (and parliament) are fully implicated in the crimes of the last 8 years.
like our congress, until they set up or empower something w/full judicial authority, i'm not convinced anything will come of this.
Boyd, you sound like the guy who began explaining the sociological groundings of love to his wife after she asked if he loved her.
It's not that the provided response is not technically accurate--it's just something is missing--it seems to be a bit of a retreat from something else.
Likewise, I think your picture of Greenwald's point of view is a bit... lacking.
That is, your opinion that Greenwald's philosophy is solely indivdiualistic might have more to do with what you yourself seem to avoid.
I assure you that I'm as passionate about the evasions and lies of modern journalism as Greenwald, but I'm trying to understand it as part of a system, so it probably seems that I'm a bit abstract. But I'd be very interested in what's lacking if you'd care to be a bit more explicit.
"Left means convictions about the way the relationships of society are aligned."
With regard to that statement--what are your convictions Boyd?
I'm a committed democratic socialist, which is why I think criticisms of American journalism have to be placed in a social context, not simply treated as the failings of individual corporations or journalists. However, I feel that rather than proclaiming an ideology, it's more effective to describe what the actual problem is.
Boyd, I don't want to sound like the frustrated wife in the example I gave you, but it appears you're retreating into generalities again.
It's starting to look like you use the word "convictions" without any fundamental understanding of their significance with respect to the "relationships of society" you mentioned.
Maybe I should have said "core" convictions--but I suppose that wouldn't help either.
That is, maybe, Boyd, you lack these kind of convictions altogether?
..
The US still hasn't faced the enormity of war crimes committed in Vietnam - after all, Reagan swept all that under the rug and never apologized for all the heinous 'crimes against humanity' committed in Southeast Asia. What American is truly repentent (as are Germans) over the millions of innocent people killed there while trying to win their own freedom and independence? Southeast Asia combined the worst war crimes ever committed by any nation - including Nazi Germany - in that these heinous crimes were NEVER renounced, and no reparations were ever offered to the survivors. So how do you expect Americans - still in deep denial about the Vietnam invasion/occupation - to face the truth about American war crimes throughout the century? And since the US inherited the Empire abandoned by the UK in the post-WWII era - with the UK now playing junior partner - where do the Brits get off being so indignant anyway?
Most people probably will admit that Vietnam (the American War) was 'a mistake' - but how many admit that it was a heinous unspeakable crime against humanity, as were all the 'anti-communitst' purges conducted throughout the world - often gleefully with full US support - that took the lives of so many innocents guilty only of 'thought crimes' - ie, thinking that a system other than American fascism might be better for their own people? Murdering millions of people over POLITICS - 'wrong thinking' - is far worse than what the Nazis did (and my own family lived under Nazi occupation, so I know what I'm talking about.) Even today, the very word 'socialism' invokes rage in many Americans - a murderous rage - that allows terrorism against Cuba to go on relentlessly. (While keeping anti-terrorist heroes - the Cuban Five - in prison, for actually daring to FIGHT terrorism and co-operate with the US in stopping terrorism!!!)
I find such behavior - such cowardice - to be digusting, despicable, and immoral - not to mention hypocritical...
Rupert Murdoch with a rope around his neck and his minions clinging to his feet would make a decent counterweight for when George Bush drops through the hole in the gallows floor.
Oh Yeah,
Rupert is the one. Whether it is Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine or Lebanon, Rupert is the real criminal behind the criminals. Most serious war crimes would not have happened without the propaganda from Rupert's Sky, Fox or News Ltd. Rupert is truly Goebles reborn - as a Jew.
I wish the writer would do something to summarize his "here, here and here" and "this one". He should be writing a column not a google search site. I don't have time to go "here, here, and here". That is why I'm reading the column.
You should take the time.
well yeah- but that headline- "Britain's Bizarre Reaction to War Crimes" sure, it's true but damn people look in that mirror again- is that a "normal" reaction to war crimes? and britain's crimes here are just spinoffs from those of our own empire. It was our guys who captured, imprisoned, rendered and tortured Binyam all those years. And what's anyone doing about that? Bizarre begins at home too. only i can think of a lot of other words for our terrors
Glenn is so damn good!
Good to see the Brits calling for action.
The american "opposition party" does NOT call for action because too many of its leaders are complicit in several of the Bush crimes.
Thank you Glenn Greenwald! Yesterday at CD there was a piece from FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting): Media Blackout on Single-Payer Health care - another great piece on US media and how they control the debate on important issues. The recent Fairness Doctrine shut-down from our Congress is not a good sign in my opinion - nothing will change until America understands. I've noticed there are different levels of awareness on this -
#1 the willfully ignorant (aka - I don't care what our government does because I obey the laws & 9-11 was really scary!)
#2 the people that say things like "yeah, whatever, our gov did the same shit in Vietnam..."what-a-ya-gonna-do!" (these people totally suck and should know better!)
#3 Americans that are not too bright or otherwise engaged with life (kids-no $-no health care, multiple jobs, etc) to notice that their news source is full of it
More levels I'm sure but nothing will change until American corporate media is discredited.
How is lying to an entire country regarding national security, war, the economy, health care, the environment and more not treasonous? "We the people" right? The silence/inaction out of Washington on this is telling.
It IS treasonous! And you may believe that the powers that be understand this totally. BUT, they know what they can get away with because WE THE PEOPLE are afraid to act. And by "act", I do not mean writing emails and letters; at the least, passive revolution is necessary. We have the numbers and POWER is the only thing that gets their attention....or their bottom line. One easy first step we can take is to create our own NATIONAL REFERENDUM via the internet to DEMAND A NEW AND PUBLICALLY RUN RE-INVESTIGATION OF 9/11. When the truth of 9/11 is revealed, all else will start to fall in place and WE THE PEOPLE may reclaim (claim) our country.
"...the tacit premise of the discussion is that credible allegations of criminality -- even if committed by high government officials, perhaps especially then -- compel serious criminal investigations........Britain is hardly the paragon of transparency and adherence to international conventions; to the contrary, they've been with the U.S. every step of the way over the last eight years, enabling and partaking in many of the worst abuses."
Given that Britain is "hardly the paragon of transparency", could it be they are persuing these investigations to expose some of the secrets and potential wrongdoing that the U.S. has concealed?
When Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited President Obama and suggested that the U.S. (taxpayers) should bail out Britain because it was the U.S. central banks that created the global financial crisis, President Obama pretty much ignored his proposal.
If William Engdahl is correct that there's a global war among banks, is it possible that Britain's plan is to expose evidence of U.S. criminal banking activity that may have taken place, in addition to the war crimes they're investigating?
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Financial_Tsunami/Warfare_Behind_Panic/warfare_behind_panic.html
Sioux Rose
GAIL: Excellent post. I hope you're onto something! I suppose it's true that for truth to penetrate certain quarters, one criminal mind must turn on another.
Good questions Gail...
I wonder how many of the British banks that are members of the private Federal Reserve actually had any significant losses during this manufactured economic crisis...?
Like their US counterparts in the FED, many of the major players quietly positioned themselves to be able to profit enormously during the meltdown, not just in hundreds of trillion$ swindled through derivatives and bundled securities schemes, and not just recieving trillions more in bailout money, but are also buying up their failed competitors for pennies on the dollar after the taxpayers cover the costs of all the toxic debt...
I wonder how much Gordon Brown is aware of this scenario, or Obama for that matter...
With Summers, Geithner, Ribin, et al whispering in Owebama's ear, either he knows enough to play along with the banksters game, or is being FED a PAC of lies to keep him and his constituency insulated from the truth what is really happening...
I believe that a reasonable solution has been found! First get the ICC to indight and if needs be prosecute in absentia and on conviction post a reward, dead or alive just as certain folks did to others in the not distant past. The USA has many armed and otherwise dangerous bounty hunters and unemployed ex police men etc. and I am certain arrangements could be made for international recognition for all people in such pursuits. Aprehending convicted war criminals now that is a worthy cause. There are thousands that fit the various discriptions as war criminals from around the world, great new industry using all those trained killers as hunters, 'Gads" great fun. Think of the movies!!!