Stormig Posted January 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2004 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH United States: Guantanamo Two Years On U.S. Detentions Undermine the Rule of Law January 9, 2004 Two years after opening a detention camp at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the United States continues to ignore international law in its treatment of the detainees. Since January 11, 2002, the U.S. government has sent over seven hundred people picked up from around the world to Guantanamo. Currently some 660 are in detention, including an undisclosed number of children. As the detention camp begins its third year, the public still does not know who the detainees are, what they have allegedly done, and whether and when they will be charged with crimes or released. There have been no hearings to determine the legal status of detainees and no judicial review—in short, no legal process at all. The Bush Administration asserts that all of its detainees at Guantanamo are enemy combatants in the war against terrorism and therefore properly detained until terrorism is vanquished. High-level administration officials have repeatedly characterized the detainees as the “worst of the worst.” In response to questions about their fate, President George W. Bush has called the detainees “bad people” and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has labeled them “hard core, well-trained terrorists.” Yet these blanket characterizations stand in sharp contrast to what is known about at least some of the detainees. At Guantanamo there are three children, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, who have been held for about a year. The military is also jailing an undisclosed number of children aged sixteen and seventeen who are held in the adult camp, rather than separately as required by international standards. Guantanamo may also hold a significant number of civilians. Anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan regularly cast a wide net, sweeping up non-combatants, and many of those they captured were delivered to U.S. officials, and in at least some cases in exchange for bounty payments. According to several sources, ranging from interviews with former detainees to press reports citing U.S. officials in Afghanistan, as many as several dozen detainees sent to Guantanamo were simply farmers, taxi drivers, and laborers with no meaningful ties to the Taliban or al-Qaeda—not the enemy combatants the Bush Administration claimed. Whoever the detainees are—including those implicated in international terrorism—the United States is obligated to respect their fundamental rights under law. Guantanamo Bay: Legal Black Hole The Bush Administration has attempted to turn the forty-eight square miles of its naval base at Guantanamo Bay into territory beyond the reach of any law and outside the jurisdiction of any court. In its treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo, it has been unwilling to fully apply international humanitarian law (often called the laws of war), has flouted international human rights standards, and has fought hard to block judicial review by U.S. courts of the legality of its detentions. It has failed to articulate a clear legal framework which it applies to the detainees and which acknowledges their human rights and the government’s obligation to respect them. The administration has instead selectively invoked those rules of war that it finds helpful in detaining and interrogating individuals—such as the authority to hold combatants without charge until the end of hostilities—while ignoring other rules that safeguard combatants—such as those that require individual determinations of their legal status. The administration’s unwillingness to respect basic rights and to provide any legal process has undermined the rule of law and given a green light to other governments to justify rights violations in the name of counter-terrorism. The U.S. refusal to comply with the clear requirements of the 1949 Geneva Conventions cannot be justified. Under the Third Geneva Convention, persons captured in the conflict in Afghanistan should have been treated as prisoners of war unless and until a competent tribunal individually determined that they are not eligible for prisoner of war (POW) status. The United States has never before balked at this straightforward requirement. Indeed, in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. government convened 1,196 such tribunals and granted POW status to 310 detainees. The 886 remaining detainees were determined to be displaced civilians and treated as refugees. Instead of complying with international law, U.S. military regulations, and longstanding U.S. practice, the Bush Administration has made a blanket determination that all persons held at Guantanamo Bay were “unlawful combatants” and were not entitled to the protections due prisoners of war or protected persons under the Geneva Conventions. Had the U.S. military conducted individualized determinations of status in competent tribunals as required by the Third Geneva Convention and its own regulations, it would have properly concluded that the Taliban fighters—as members of the regular armed forces of the then-government of Afghanistan—and perhaps other combatants were entitled to POW status. Moreover, it could have appropriately and accurately determined who was a combatant and who was not, who posed a grave security risk and who was just a farmer in the wrong place at the wrong time. The U.S. government has sought to avoid the prohibition in international human rights law against prolonged, indefinite detention by claiming that terrorist suspects are combatants in the war against terrorism. Because the laws of war permit the detention of captured combatants until the end of hostilities, a vaguely framed war on terror without a clear end means that the detainees could effectively be held forever. In human terms, prolonged and indefinite detention can have a devastating psychological impact on detainees. Indeed, thirty-four suicide attempts have been recorded at Guantanamo to date. One of the former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Pakistan confirmed that he had attempted suicide three times at Guantanamo. The Bush Administration is claiming far-reaching power to detain anyone in any corner of the world and to determine alone whether its actions are lawful. Some of the detainees at Guantanamo were captured far away from the battlefield in Afghanistan. Six Algerians were apprehended in Bosnia and handed over to U.S. officials in January 2002, despite a Bosnian high court order to release them, and sent to Guantanamo. The administration has claimed similar authority in its detention without charge of terrorist suspects arrested in the United States and held by the military as enemy combatants. These detentions threaten the right to liberty and the safeguards that protect against arbitrary detention without due process of law. In a government of laws and not men, the executive is not above the law. Wherever the United States exercises effective control over detainees, it is bound under international human rights standards to respect their rights, and some form of judicial review should be available to ensure that the government acts within the bounds of the law. Legal Critiques: Courts and International Legal Experts In December 2003, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that U.S. courts have jurisdiction to hear claims from detainees at Guantanamo, and affirmed the crucial role that courts play in preventing the executive from running roughshod over individual rights. While the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately resolve this question in June, the appellate court’s decision delivered a strong rebuke to the Bush Administration. The Court noted: Under the government’s theory, it is free to imprison [detainees] indefinitely along with hundreds of other citizens of foreign countries, friendly nations among them, and to do with … these detainees as it will, when it pleases, without any compliance with any rule of law of any kind… Indeed, at oral argument, the government advised us that its position would be the same even if the claims were that it was engaging in acts of torture or that it was summarily executing the detainees… It is the first time that the government has announced such an extraordinary set of principles – a position so extreme that it raises the gravest concerns under both American and international law. A growing chorus of authoritative voices—including the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, various U.N. bodies and other international agencies—have criticized the U.S. government for its failure to respect the rights of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. A British appeals court stated that the detentions contravened fundamental principles of international law and referred to Guantanamo as a “legal black-hole.” The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which visits wartime detainees to ensure compliance with the Geneva Conventions, has voiced concern more publicly than is its usual practice. It has criticized U.S. authorities for placing the detainees “beyond the law” after repeatedly raising concerns about the detainees’ unresolved legal status and the lack of clear legal framework being applied by the United States. In addition, in its visits with the prisoners, the ICRC has witnessed the harmful psychological impact of the uncertainty of their open-ended internment. After two years, it is long past time that the United States fulfill its legal obligations and resolve the cases of the detainees without further delay. In the absence of a lawful reason to detain a person, the U.S. government must either charge that person with a crime or release him or her. If it is holding detainees who are in fact combatants under the laws of war, the U.S. government must comply with requirements of those laws, which do not foreclose the ability of the United States to charge and prosecute them for war crimes or other international offenses. If it is holding civilians who do not pose an imperative risk to U.S. security, under international law they must be immediately released and repatriated unless they are charged with a crime. Special rules apply to children. Under the Optional Protocol on Child Soldiers, which the United States has ratified, the U.S. government has specific legal obligations, including rehabilitation and reintegration of child combatants into their societies. The detainees aged sixteen and seventeen have not received the special protections required by international standards, including separation from adult prisoners, as is the case with the three younger detainees. Rehabilitation cannot happen in a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, half a world away from their homes and families. The U.S. government should resolve the cases of all of the children held at Guantanamo without further delay. Indeed, the ICRC has stated that it does not consider Guantanamo an appropriate place to detain juveniles. Military Commissions: A Failure of Justice The solution to the Guantanamo problem does not lie, however, in bringing detainees before military commissions that are fundamentally flawed. Proceedings have not yet begun—only six of the 660 detainees have been designated eligible for trial by the military commissions, and none has yet been charged. Human Rights Watch has long maintained that persons responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of terrorism should be prosecuted. Accountability for such violations is vitally important, but true accountability requires fair trials. The military commissions established by President Bush fall far short of international due process standards. No one should be tried in the military commissions unless substantial changes are made, both in the way they are structured and in the trial procedure. The planned military commissions will violate defendants’ rights in numerous ways. Under the rules, the President, through his designees, serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and, potentially, executioner. There is no appeal to an independent civilian court, violating a fundamental precept of international law as well as settled practice in the U.S. military justice system. In addition, important legal issues that arise during a trial will not be decided by an independent body, but by the same military entity that initially approved the charges against the detainee. An accused brought before the commissions would be severely limited in his ability to defend himself against charges. The rules permit the military to monitor private conversations between defense counsel and their clients, violating the fundamental notion of attorney-client confidentiality. Moreover, under the rules, the detainee’s civilian lawyer, even with a high-level security clearance, can be denied access to the evidence against the defendant or barred from attending closed court proceedings. If the U.S. government persists in ignoring the requirements of international law in its treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo, much more will be harmed than the lives of those individuals. Hard fought gains in international law and protections for basic human rights will be undermined along with the rights of these detainees. The U.S. government should meet its legal obligations, establish a clear legal process, and resolve their cases without further delay. While those who have committed offenses should be charged, they must be given due process. If the U.S. government fails to provide for fair trials, the military commissions will produce verdicts that will not be seen as legitimate in the eyes of a world already deeply skeptical about the long-term detentions at Guantanamo. Two years on, the rules of law continues to buckle under the weight of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2004 Someone remove Bush and his cronies, please? I can't stand them, such rednecks. Bush decided to remove Saddam 'on day one' Former aide says US president made up his mind to go to war with Iraq long before 9/11, then ordered his staff to find an excuse Julian Borger in Washington Monday January 12, 2004 The Guardian In the Bush White House, Paul O'Neill was the bespectacled swot in a class of ideological bullies who eventually kicked him out for raising too many uncomfortable questions. Now, 13 months later at a critical moment for the president, the nerd is having his revenge. Mr O'Neill's account of his two years as Treasury secretary, told in a book published tomorrow and in a series of interviews over the weekend, is a startling tale of an administration nominally led by a disengaged figurehead president but driven by a "praetorian guard" of hardline rightwingers led by vice president Dick Cheney, ready to bend circumstances and facts to fit their political agenda. According to the former aluminium mogul and longstanding Republican moderate who was fired from the US Treasury in December 2002, the administration came to office determined to oust Saddam and used the September 11 attacks as a convenient justification. As Mr O'Neill, who sat in countless national security council meetings, describes the mood: "It was all about finding a way to do it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this'." "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," Mr O'Neill told the CBS network programme, 60 Minutes. In the book, based largely on his recollections and written by an American journalist, Ron Suskind, Mr O'Neill said that even as far back as January 2001, when President Bush took office, no one in the NSC questioned the assumption that Iraq should be invaded. In the book, The Price of Loyalty: George W Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, the author, Mr Suskind, quotes from memoranda preparing for a war dating to the first days of the administration. "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq,'" he told CBS television. Oil contracts He quoted from a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which, he said, talks about carving the country's fuel reserves up between the world's oil companies. It talks about contractors around the world from ... 30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq," Mr Suskind said. The administration, as described by Mr O'Neill, was equally fixated on granting unprecedented tax cuts to the nation's richest people who had bankrolled its election campaign. It was not prepared to listen to an anxious Treasury secretary warning of dangerously ballooning deficits. The president was "clearly signing on to strong ideological positions that had not been fully thought through", Mr O'Neill says. Moderates like himself, the secretary of state, Colin Powell, and Christine Todd Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, "may have been there, in large part, as cover" for a hardline agenda, he argues. Of that trio, only Mr Powell remains in the administration and he has privately made it clear he will not stay on for a second Bush term. Mr O'Neill's memoir is one of the most damning White House exposés of recent times, and is already being quoted with relish by Democratic presidential contenders. It has sparked a furious damage limitation and denigration response by the president's aides, one of whom told Time magazine in a revealing comment: "We didn't listen to him when he was there. Why should we now?" White House aides have also pointed to Mr O'Neill's reputation as a gaffe-prone Treasury secretary, who at one point triggered a run on the dollar by suggesting that maintaining its strength was not a priority. Mr O'Neill says the president often did not have much to say at key discussions and it was the bullies of the Republican right who took over. After perceptions spread early in the administration that Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republicans' political mastermind, Karl Rove, were really making policy, the White House publicity machine dedicated itself to building Mr Bush up as a decisive leader. Presidential aides have "leaked" anecdotes to the press showing Mr Bush making tough decisions. In Bob Woodward's book Bush at War, based principally on the celebrated Washington journalist's interviews with the president and top officials, there is no doubt who is in charge as the nation faces its greatest challenge since Pearl Harbor. Mr O'Neill paints a very different picture. He describes Mr Bush as mostly silent and inscrutable during policy debates in cabinet, and says there was hardly any real interaction between president and his department heads. He describes those cabinet sessions as being "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people". At the end of them, he said, cabinet members were left to make policy like "blind man's bluff" guessing what the president's wishes were. When the Treasury secretary went to the Oval Office for weekly discussions, he found he did all the talking. "I wondered from the first, if the president didn't know the questions to ask," he tells Mr Suskind, "or if he did know and just did not want to know the answers?" The one time the president does become engaged in economic policy discussion in Mr Suskind's book, it is to question the orthodoxy of his own administration's policy during a White House discussion of a second round of tax cuts in November 2002, following triumphal midterm election results. According to Mr Suskind, who says he has a transcript of the meeting, the president asks: "Haven't we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut's gonna do it again." The president suggests instead: "Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?" But Mr Rove, who has masterminded Mr Bush's election campaigns since his days in Texas, jumps in at this point in the transcript to urge the president: "Stick to principle. Stick to principle." "He says it over and over again," Mr Suskind said. "Don't waver." In his own account, Mr O'Neill discovers the hard line on tax cuts is coming from Mr Cheney. Not knowing he was in his last weeks as Treasury secretary, he went to see the vice president expecting to get a sympathetic hearing for his concerns over the deficit. Instead he is told: "You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due." Mr O'Neill's disillusion personifies a latent split in the Republican party between traditional moderates and followers of the president's father, and the hardliners around the second President Bush. Mr O'Neill served in the Nixon and Ford administrations before moving on to run the Alcoa aluminium corporation, where he dedicated himself to improving worker safety. He insists he continues to support the wider Republican cause but he is not going to be silenced. He declares: "I'm an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me." 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Stormig Posted January 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2004 Don't know about you people, but I am getting a KICK out of this for its own sake. January 10, 2004 U.S. and Brazil Fingerprinting: Is It Getting Out of Hand? By LARRY ROHTER IO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 9 — With Brazil and the United States holding fast to their insistence on photographing and fingerprinting visitors from the other country, what began as a minor dispute last week is now threatening to sour relations between the two countries, the most populous in the Western Hemisphere. The dispute grew out of a security program the United States began this week, which applies to all foreigners entering the country who are required to have visas. Comparing the American action to "the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," a judge in a remote interior state ordered that all Americans arriving in Brazil be subjected to the same treatment. Judging by radio call-in programs and newspaper columns and letters to the editor, the measure has proved popular here, with Brazilians praising their government for standing up to Washington. But that sentiment makes it politically costly for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-leaning former labor leader who took office last year, to cede to Washington's insistence the program be curtailed. "The barriers to American visitors erected at ports and airports have served thus far to inflate the national ego," O Globo, the principal daily here, cautioned in an editorial today. "But with the complaints of Secretary Colin Powell and the tension in contacts between the Foreign Ministry and Washington, this could take on the dimensions of an undesired diplomatic crisis." Initially, the United States appeared indifferent to the Brazilian action. But on Wednesday, Washington's tone hardened, with the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, noting that the American procedure took "just seconds," compared with delays of up to nine hours for some Americans arriving here, and suggesting that the Brazilian policy was purposely discriminatory. "It's not being applied to all people the way our system is," Mr. Boucher said. "We regret the way in which the new procedures have suddenly been put into place that single out U.S. citizens for exceptional treatment." Brazilian diplomats and government officials are exempted from the American inspection program. In contrast, embassy staff members said, United States diplomats here have been photographed and fingerprinted even after presenting their diplomatic passports, and even a visiting senator, Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican, was forced to comply with the procedure. Mr. Boucher's complaints were followed by a telephone call by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to his Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim. Officials of both governments said the focus of the conversation was the meeting of Western Hemisphere heads of state in Mexico next week. But they added that the fingerprinting dispute was also discussed and was likely to be addressed again when President Bush and Mr. da Silva meet next week. In a statement Wednesday, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said it was seeking to "assure proper treatment" for its citizens arriving in the United States and invoked the principle of reciprocity, which it said was a "basic element of international relations." On Thursday, Mr. Amorim told reporters that Brazil had grounds to complain of discrimination because "27 countries are exempt from this measure" and Brazil deserved to be among them. The United States has identified the border region where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay come together as a haven for Islamic terrorists. There is also a flourishing traffic in counterfeit and contraband passports; on Wednesday, for instance, a Brazilian police officer about to board a plane in São Paulo was arrested with 36 blank Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Mexican passports. Brazilian officials, however, have contested American warnings about that situation and maintain that their country does not confront any threat of terrorism. Brazil's critics here said that would seem to eliminate any need to build files on American tourists. But federal police officials say fingerprinting is necessary because American visitors could be involved in the prostitution of children or wildlife smuggling. The new Brazilian policy has already begun to affect tourism from the United States. According to the tourist association here in the city that is the primary destination of the more than 600,000 American tourists who visit Brazil each year, an American corporation canceled an excursion for 240 of its employees, and cruise ship and air charter lines are thinking of doing the same. The mayor of Rio, César Maia, this week appealed the original court ruling, calling the new policy "infantile." But a judge here turned down his request, saying she lacked the legal authority to revoke the decision of a judge in another state. The federal government, which does have the power to challenge the policy for a limited time, has not yet filed suit asking that the judge's ruling be overturned. In remarks to Brazilian reporters on Thursday, Mr. Amorim said that such a step should properly occur "within an assemblage of concepts that will permit better treatment for Brazilians in the United States." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/10/internat...print&position= Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 17, 2004 Human rights groups: US may be guilty of “collective punishment” war crime in Iraq By Joanne Laurier 17 January 2004 Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author US military forces in Iraq appear to be committing war crimes by detaining the relatives of suspected insurgents and demolishing their homes, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the international human rights organization. In a January 12 letter addressed to US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, HRW executive director Kenneth Roth charged that on at least four occasions over the past two months, houses appear to have been destroyed for the purpose of punishing families of suspected insurgents or to coerce them into cooperation. “In two of these incidents,” HRW’s Roth writes, “U.S. forces also reportedly detained close relatives of a person that the U.S. was attempting to apprehend. In these cases the individuals detained were themselves not suspected of responsibility for any wrongdoing.” In the most recent incident, reported by the Associated Press (AP) on January 3, US forces operating in or around Samarra destroyed the home of Talab Saleh, a suspected insurgent. The HRW letter states that there was no indication that the house was being used for insurgency operations. US troops also arrested Saleh’s wife and brother, claiming they would only be released upon Saleh’s surrender. Punishing any person for an offense that he or she has not committed or destroying civilian property as a reprisal or deterrent amounts to collective punishment prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to which the United States is a signatory. The Convention applies during military occupation. “[T]he detention of close relatives for the purpose of prompting the surrender of a wanted person appears to be in violation of the strict international humanitarian law prohibition against hostage-taking. Under the laws of war, a hostage is a person taken into custody for the purpose of compelling some recourse of action by the opposing side. Taking hostages is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions—in other words, a war crime,” states Roth’s letter to Rumsfeld. In another case reported December 3, 2003, troops of the 173rd Airborne Brigade partially destroyed the house of an elderly couple in the town of Hawija, west of Kirkuk, after explosives were found. The HRW executive director comments: “The troops reportedly parked a bulldozer in front of their home and threatened to demolish it unless the couple provided information. After the woman gave the soldiers information, they destroyed the front wall of the compound and took her into custody. ‘OK, I’m not gonna destroy the house,’ Maj. Andrew Rohling, the unit commander, was reported saying. ‘Just the front, as a show of force.’” In a separate incident in Tikrit in mid-November 2003, “US troops reportedly used tank and artillery fire to destroy homes belonging to families of Iraqis who allegedly mounted attacks against US forces. A spokesman for the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division said the demolitions were intended to ‘send a message’ to the insurgents and their supporters.” The fourth case involves the arrest on November 25, 2003, of the wife and daughter of General Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, former vice-chair of Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council. Roth states: “As far as we are aware, they remain in US custody. US officials have provided no information as to the reason for taking these family members of a wanted person into custody. At the time they were detained US forces also destroyed a house belonging to the family.” (Two days after Human Rights Watch sent its protest letter to Rumsfeld, in a continuation of the same illegal policy US forces arrested four of al-Douri’s nephews in pre-dawn raids in Samarra. They remain in custody.) The HRW letter ends by reiterating that “[t]hese actions appear to be in violation of US obligations under international humanitarian law.” It suggests that the military command “should investigate these and other allegations of serious violations of the laws of war, and hold accountable anyone responsible for ordering, condoning, or carrying out such actions.” This is the second time since the US stepped up its campaign of terror against the Iraqi civilian population—in an operation launched in mid-November 2003 code-named “Iron Hammer”—that a human rights organization has written to Rumsfeld alleging that the US might be committing war crimes in the form of collective punishment in Iraq. On November 20, 2003, Amnesty International (AI) issued a press release addressed to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld declaring that “[t]he US government should clarify whether it has officially permitted house demolitions as a form of collective punishment or deterrence.” AI was informed that at least 15 houses had been destroyed in Tikrit by US forces since November 16. The group made mention of the case of a family given five minutes to evacuate their home before it was razed to the ground by tanks and helicopter fire. In another incident, two men and four children were left in freezing temperatures in the back of a truck before their house was destroyed. Major Lou Zeisman, a US military official from the 82nd Airborne Division is reported by AI to have threatened: “If you shoot at an American or Coalition force member, you are going to be killed or you are going to be captured, and if we trace somebody back to a specific safe house, we are going to destroy that facility... [W]e didn’t destroy a house just because we were angry that someone was killed, we did it because the people there were linked to the attack and we are not going to tolerate it anymore.” US military authorities, claims the Amnesty International press release, are thereby in breach of Articles 33 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention; the former establishes that “Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.” AI also refers to Article 147, which concludes that “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, is a grave breach of the Convention.” The human rights group adds that “house demolition, in certain instances, amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and is a breach of Article 16 under the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT), which monitors adherence to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the US is a state party. Frustrated over the growing popular resistance to the colonial-style occupation and no doubt directed to reduce American casualties in Iraq before the November 2004 elections, the US military has begun using methods routinely employed by the Israeli Defense Forces to suppress Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A US operation in Samarra, a city of 200,000 people, is a case in point. On December 17, some 2,500 US soldiers sealed off the city and began Operation Ivy Blizzard. Troops from the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, backed by Apache attack helicopters and F-16 fighters, began using sledgehammers, crowbars, explosives and armored vehicles to smash down the gates of homes and the doors of workshops and junkyards “to attack the Iraqi resistance that has persisted despite the capture of Saddam Hussein,” according to AP. Freelance journalist Rob Eshelman wrote from Samarra for Electronic Iraq that the city was “the site of new and aggressive US Army tactics that are similar to Israeli-style counterinsurgency. The methods involve house-to-house searches, curfew, neighborhood-wide closures, and retaliatory home demolitions. The US military says they are targeting resistance cells, however, the people of Samarra say that it’s indiscriminate punishment and intimidation. “If the track record of Israel’s occupation of Palestine is any barometer for how these tactics work, then the US Army needs to prepare for what happens when the hearts and minds of Iraqis are lost.” Along the same lines, Dr. Wamid Nadmi, a professor of political science at Baghdad University, told reporters: “The increasing American violence may lead to the killing or arrest of some resistance fighters. But the other side is this will increase the people’s rage against the Americans, especially those people whose homes are being destroyed or family members are being killed.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1998-2003 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted January 17, 2004 Report Share Posted January 17, 2004 I apologise for the length. ----------------------------------------------------- How States Fall and Liberty Triumphs by Lew Rockwell The great problem that has occupied political philosophers for several millennia, and economists for centuries, has been finding a rationale for the state and its managers that will assure the state longevity and stability. On the face of it, this might seem to be a strange thing to be concerned about. One might think that curbing despotism would be a greater worry. Mises laid out the ideal in 1929, when he wrote, "The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state." Sadly, however, no government is liberal by nature; they all have a tendency to grow and become menaces to society. Also, by definition, the state enjoys a territorial monopoly on the legal use of aggressive force in society, and thereby does not face a problem of compliance most of the time. Given this, one might think that the last problem that would occupy anyone is how to assure the state's stability and longevity. It is akin to medical researchers trying to figure out how to make diseases as long-lasting, painful, and deadly as possible. By comparison, far less energy has been applied to addressing a greater problem: how and when to throw the bums out and start anew. If we look at the sweep of history, especially modern history, we can see that the state as an institution is responsible for the largest and gravest of all social, economic, cultural, and humanitarian disasters. The problem isn't so much assuring that states survive, but in limiting the power of states, and getting rid of them when they go too far. The Encyclopedia of Revolutions and Revolutionaries chronicles more than a thousand cases of internally driven regime change from the ancient world to the present. Some were peaceful, with regimes dissolving without a trace. Others were not peaceful at all. Many ended in greater liberty, while some ended in terrible tyrannies. The difference, in case after case, is the intellectual climate that surrounded the great event. In the sweep of history, however, this much is clear: far too few states have been overthrown. Liberty is the exception and tyranny the norm. Why are states not stopped before they attack private property, wreck economies, destabilize families, and engage in mass murder? As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." There is an additional factor: it is rather difficult to stop states and probably impossible to limit the state to a certain set of functions. The tendency is always and everywhere for it to grow and become overweening. Stopping any voluntary institution in society is comparatively easy. All enterprises in a market economy can be brought to their knees by the simple act of refraining from buying. Families too are broken up by the simple act of walking away. Churches collapse when people lose interest in faith. Private schools go belly-up when the students stop showing up. But states always and everywhere extract their revenue by force. People have no choice but to comply, or rather, they face the choice of complying or being physically punished. Of course, states prefer to elicit compliance through other means – by inspiring patriotic fervor or devotion to the prince. What are the conditions under which a state falls? What are the moral and practical justifications for giving it a push in that direction? What is the best method for assisting in the overthrow of a regime and bringing about a new social and political system? These are the questions that have been addressed by relatively few thinkers in the history of ideas. In fact, we can single out the groups of intellectuals who have addressed the topic in any depth. -The moral thinkers of the high middle ages addressed these questions because they believed that the state could not justly rule without being subjected to the higher law. The state was not seen as inherently legitimate but only provisionally so. -The classical liberal tradition spoke to the issue because it was the first to see that social order and prosperity were not sustained by the state but rather existed despite the state. In that tradition, the founding generation of the US that overthrew British rule drew on the writings of John Locke and others. -The Marxists too have been variously consumed by this topic. They, like the classical liberals, view the state as something of an artifice masking a deeper structure of political dynamic. To this extent they are correct. The issue is directly relevant for our own times. We just witnessed the amazing spectacle of a recall election in California. The citizenry concluded that the regime in charge had failed to do what it said it would do. With the legitimacy of the regime lost, the California system, premised in some small measure on the idea that government should reflect the people's will, permits citizens to petition for throwing the bum out. They elected a new manager in his place. Now, there are many obvious problems with this system. There is no real justice for the bum. He is not punished for his transgressions. He loses nothing out of his personal assets for his mismanagement. He only loses the right to rule. But the biggest problem is that Californians were only permitted to vote on who should manage the government apparatus, not on the legitimacy of the government apparatus itself. Even so, the very existence of a recall election taps into the inchoate sense we all have that there is nothing sacred about government managers. They can be replaced, deposed, overthrown. The government is not permanent. It can fall if the people will it, provided the system permits such a thing to happen. A system that makes this impossible is in some sense unjust because it makes power alone the measure of all things. If we believe that power must be justified in some way, there ought to be a mechanism to check power by the prospect of overthrowing it. Now, obviously the founders believed in the right to overthrow governments, and believed that all governments should be subject to being overthrown. It is crucial for heads of state to understand that their rule is contingent. This serves a crucial role in keeping power in check. Even when putting together the US Constitution, the right of the Congress, as the people's representatives, to impeach the president was firmly established. The founders expected that the threat of impeachment would be constantly held above the head of the president. Never having imagined a permanent bureaucratic class, they believed that getting rid of the president was tantamount to starting fresh. In the modern world, however, governments have worked to make themselves unimpeachable, so to speak. It was once only dictators who advertised themselves as permanent fixtures, unalterable facts of history. The US started doing the same in the 1990s, when it became the world's only superpower and Madeleine Albright declared that the US is the world's only indispensable government. Well, she said indispensable nation, but we know what she meant. In our own times, President Bush has not only declared the US government to be permanent and eternal; he has set up the US as the sole judge of all other governments in the world, which are somehow deemed dispensable. Other regimes can be changed and decapitated, but only one – the most powerful one of all – is regarded as sacred. Why is the US the world's only permanent government? Is it something written into the fabric of the natural law? We know the reason: it has the most guns, by far, and therefore no one is in a position to object. With the impeachment power all but gone, the right of secession declared null and void, the impossibility of recalling presidents at the federal level, and the rise of the permanent bureaucratic class, does this mean that there are no mechanisms remaining to us to check the power of the state? Is there nothing we can do to dislodge these people from their seats of power and prestige? There is still another force at work: the propensity of governments to overreach in so many areas of life that their exercise of power itself leads to their own undoing. The overreach can take many forms: financial, economic, social, and military. In this way, and with enough passion for liberty burning in the hearts of the citizenry, governments can be responsible for their own undoing. It comes about as a result of overestimating the capacity of power and underestimating its limits. I believe this is happening in our time. It may not be obvious when taking the broad view, but when you look at the status of a huge range of government programs and institutions, what you see is a government that is at once enormously powerful and rich, but also very fragile and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Events of the last year indicate just how far the government has slipped in its ability to manage the economy, society, culture, and world order. Despite the exalted status of the state today, the vast and sprawling empire called the US government may in fact be less healthy than it ever has been. The other day, we had a special speaker come to Auburn, probably the most famous man who has visited us since the country and western star Alan Jackson was in town. He was Mikhail Gorbachev, a very interesting figure in the history of nations. He came to power with the reputation of a reformer and instituted many reforms that were designed not to give more liberty to the people, but to stop the unraveling of an empire before it was too late. But it was too late. All his talk of perestroika and glasnost couldn't fool the people, who had become convinced that the Soviet machine was something of a hoax. The empire unraveled not because of him, but despite his efforts to save it. When it came time to make the critical decision of whether to try to hold the empire together by more and more force, or not, history had already made the choice for him. The empire dissolved in the blink of an eye. Not too many months later, he was out of a job, not because he was recalled in some formal process, but because the forces of history had run him over. Ron Paul has said for some years that the US may be in a similar position to that of the late years of the Soviet Union: an empire that everyone believes will last forever, but which is decayed at its very foundations – financially and militarily overextended to the breaking point. I agree with him on this. Let's gain some insight into how governments travel the trajectory from high prestige to humiliation, by looking at the well-known tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes," by Hans Christian Anderson. It has much to teach us about the nature of the state and its stability in good and bad times. In the story, an emperor had the ambition: to be well dressed. He loved nothing more than showing off his clothes in procession, so that people might be ever more convinced of his glory. Now, we might think of this as a metaphor for the ideological dressings that cover the state, of which there are many. The philosophers tell us that all societies need a coercive head to insure justice and fairness. The political philosophers say that the people demand a head of state to represent their interests. The economists tell us that the state is essential to the provision of public goods. The historians tell us that the state is indispensable for making war, which is said to provide the essential hinge of history. The justifications multiply and change as often, and with as much caprice, as the emperor in the story changes his suit of clothes. Some tailors of pre-established reputation are employed to make him the finest set of clothes he has ever worn, but these are very shrewd tailors. They come up with the idea of positing the existence of fabric that can only be seen by the smart and can't be the seen by the stupid. The emperor is thus unwilling to admit that he can't see the cloth. He is driven by vanity to praise the tailors as brilliant, observe the glorious beauty of the cloth, and eventually wear it in a processional. He is surrounded by sycophants who are similarly unwilling to tell what is true. He first sends a minister, who thinks: "Oh dear, can I be so stupid? I should never have thought so, and nobody must know it! Is it possible that I am not fit for my office? No, no, I cannot say that I was unable to see the cloth." Instead of admitting the truth, then, he says: ""What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colors! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much." Next comes the "honest courtier" who we might think of as the bureaucrat. He is shown the cloth and thinks: ""I am not stupid. It is therefore my good appointment for which I am not fit. It is very strange, but I must not let any one know it." He praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colors and the fine pattern. Finally the emperor himself is shown the cloth. "What is this?" thought the emperor, "I do not see anything at all. That is terrible! Am I stupid? Am I unfit to be emperor? That would indeed be the most dreadful thing that could happen to me." "Really," he said, turning to the weavers, "your cloth has our most gracious approval;" and nodding contentedly he looked at the empty loom, for he did not like to say that he saw nothing. All his attendants, who were with him, looked and looked, and although they could not see anything more than the others, they said, like the emperor, "It is very beautiful." Onward goes the agenda of wearing the unseen clothes at a major procession, and, sure enough, the population participates in the illusion. In the most dramatic and hilarious scene in the story, the emperor walks in the procession, as all the people yell: "The emperor's new suit is incomparable! What a long train he has! How well it fits him!" Everyone knows how the story ends. A young child, too naïve to understand the exalted status of the state and thus to know what can and cannot be thought and said, notes very simply: "But he has nothing on at all." Another man, said, "Good Heavens, listen to the voice of an innocent child!" The spell is broken, and all the people lose their fear and cry out: "He has nothing on at all," exactly echoing the words of the child. It is significant that the voice that shattered the illusion was not that of an intellectual, a bureaucrat, a politician, or even a clergyman. It is also significant that the voice did not come from the masses of people who had gathered to observe the state in all its glory. These people instead were all willing to suppress what they knew was true in order to retain their position and not depart from received opinion. Instead it was the voice of a child that told what was true, someone too unschooled to know the merit of repeating propaganda and too young to be afraid to speak plainly. He did not observe something others did not observe. What was different was his willingness to speak about it. He caused enormous humiliation to the state, but he did not pull a gun or a knife. He did something far more powerful: he said what was true. That a young person said what was true when no one else seemed willing is itself significant. Murray Rothbard was fond of quoting Randolph Bourne on the virtues of youth: "Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established – Why? What is this thing good for? … Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay…. Youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress – one might say, the only lever of progress... " Once exposed by this young person, as the crowds join him in observing the absurd reality, does the emperor run and hide? No, he thinks to himself: "I must bear up to the end." And he continued to walk. We are told that the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train that did not exist. In short, the emperor knows that, in some sense, he has always lived a lie. He is no more glorious and exalted than anyone else, and he may well be less so. But he has done well so far by pretending otherwise, pretending to be above the common folk and especially fit to rule them, so why should he change this posture now? The truth about him has always been there for those who could see it, but somehow the system worked. Now that everyone could see what was true, what could he do but continue the racket in hopes that the system would continue to work for him? The story ends there, just at the most interesting part. One wonders how the affairs of state differed the next day? Was the emperor more or less tyrannical? Was he more or less successful in taxing the people? Was his rule more or less secure? We cannot know the whole outcome, but we can know that his status had been seriously diminished. And if we are to think of this as an allegory for the role that ideological garb plays in covering the affairs of state, we know that a major myth had been shattered and thus the grip of the state over the population weakened, even to the point at which the emperor might have to abdicate. I submit to you that this procession of folly takes place every day in modern times. It is spread all over the newspapers. It is on television. It appears on websites. The masses of people may not be willing to admit what they see, or they may even see whatever it is that they want to see. But once you have in your mind a model for understanding the state, and begin to see the linkages between its failures in area after area of life, you begin to stand out from the rest. You think and talk differently from the courtiers and masses of people who watch the same procession but are unwilling to say what is true. Let us look at the US budget, which only a few years ago seemed to be approaching the point of being balanced. Of course it was an illusion created by a massive infusion of revenue due to an artificial economic boom. As we might expect, governments around the country took the new revenue and ran with it, creating a vast apparatus of new programs, only to find that when the recession hit, the money ran dry. Deficits exploded at all levels of government. Localities and states had to find new revenue sources or cut their budgets. As for the federal government, once you wipe away the phony statistics, the real budget deficit surpasses $600 billion, which is a new record. What is the effect of deficits? Because the federal government enjoys the legal power to counterfeit with impunity, deficits do little to restrain spending. But the financial effects are real indeed. Unless the debt is inflated away, the US puts itself in hock to foreigners and citizens willing to fund the deficit, the effect of which is to crowd out private investment, and, frankly, waste hundreds of billions funding big government rather than productive private enterprise. Now, this system of finance can work so long as private investors regard government debt as a safer bet than private enterprise, which government can mostly guarantee, thanks again to the printing press. But it cannot last forever. If China's economy falls into recession and savings are depleted, they may stop holding US debt and then the US faces a very serious problem. In addition, interest rates could rise and dramatically raise the cost of funding the debt, creating ever more debt and putting pressure on the Fed to monetize it. The scenarios for financial collapse are actually unlimited. The point is that in economics, there are limits to how far the state can go. It will use every trick in the book to keep the game going for as long as possible but it too bumps up against reality at some point. In any case, financial collapse of the state is the oldest and most common scenario in world history by which states are brought to their knees, and of all the governments in the world today, the US is the most prone to this fate. The tragedy of course is that this will happen at the expense of the people, our personal finances demolished by the reckless ways of the state. Such a scenario is not an inevitability. The federal government could get its financial house in order. It could stop the reckless spending. It could cut back on its welfare and warfare. It could shut down the central bank and institute a gold standard to provide fiscal discipline. Instead of performing inflationary tricks, it could attempt to tax the people to pay for every dime that it spends. Of all scenarios, I would bet that this is the least likely to take place. In the meantime, as the government spends more and more on less and less, its services continue to deteriorate relative to that which private enterprise provides. Consider the area of communications technology. It was revealed earlier this year that employees of the CIA are not permitted to have access to the Web or to Google to do their research. That tidbit of information is a window into a great reality: the government is remarkably blind as regards information access. And this is in times when the private sector is more information-connected than ever before. Consider Mises.org alone. As Jeff Tucker pointed out, with our new news feeder we can immediately provide free-market news and views, in addition to scholarly work, as we post them, instantaneously, to millions of news sources around the world, in real time. We used to say that Misesian opinion was available to the world with the click of a mouse, but now that is not even necessary. News sites around the world stream Mises.org content the same as they stream the BBC, Reuters, or the New York Times. And this is true not only of our site but millions of individual blogs around the globe. The result is a world connected like never before. Along with this has developed a vast international economy that is at once anarchistic and orderly. Everyone knows about Ebay and how the power of reputation creates this global marketplace without police. But fewer know about sites such as experts-exchange.com, where millions of technology developers pay $100 per year to have access to the insights and help from millions of other experts. Those who solve problems are rewarded with cash bonuses out of the fund. All the entrepreneurs behind the site did was create the infrastructure. The rest is the product of the remarkable power of commerce combined with the creativity of human ingenuity. It is a wonder to behold. In thousands of years of trying, governments have created nothing of similar productive power. These sites pop up on a daily basis online, a testament to the power of free enterprise. This reality is not lost on the young generation, whose world is shaped not by the products of the state but rather those of private markets. It is this young generation, as with the story, that sees the stark reality that the government is wearing no clothes. The times are creating remarkable idealists, but they need systematic education. The child who spoke up about the emperor's clothes had courage, but he also needed, as he grew up, to read in the Austrian tradition so that he could systematize his views and develop a consistent perspective on politics and economics. That is one role that the Mises Institute plays: we take the young generation in college that is very sophisticated about technology, and holds the government in a kind of tacit disdain, and give them reading material to make sense of the bits of information that come their way. Those students who are involved in politics right now are attentive to issues of military security and war, and can't but be astounded at events that have taken place over the last two years, since that ill-conceived War on a Tactic began. The notion of liberation in Afghanistan lasted only several weeks before those who were still paying attention realized that it had been a myth cooked up by US war planners. Today the country is rife with violence, poverty, criminal gangs, and the Taliban forming to stop the enormous rise of drug production that began only weeks after the Taliban was thrown out of the capital. As for Iraq, with bombings, killings, human suffering all around, and nothing in sight but the bad choices of continued military dictatorship or fundamentalist Islamic rule, everyone but the war planners now regards Iraq as a disaster. The war planners believed that their will alone was enough to make and remake a country (whether Iraq or Afghanistan) and the world, simply because they operated the levers of state power. State power sees people as pliable, all events as controllable, and all outcomes as the inevitable working out of a well-constructed plan. Being the top dogs of the world's only superpower, they never doubted their ability to dictate the terms and so they had no plan for what to do if things went wrong. What went wrong? They forgot several essential components of the structure of reality. People's free will is often backed by the willingness to undertake enormous sacrifice. Most especially it overlooks certain underlying laws that limit what is possible in human affairs. In the scheme of how the world works, even the largest state is only a bit player. It is capable of creating enormous chaos and transferring huge amounts of wealth, but not of controlling events themselves. This is why government action often generates results the opposite of those the policy is constructed to create. Donald Rumsfeld's famous memo gives the whole game away. He admits that he does not know whether the US is winning or losing, but he is suspicious that it is losing. He admits that he lacks any means to discover whether the government is winning or losing. He admits that the private armies are doing better with millions than he and his government armies are doing with billions. He goes so far as to contemplate whether the government is capable of beating its enemies or whether another organization is needed. If these comments don't strip away the façade of the warfare state, I don't know what would. Indeed, the entire apparatus of the warfare state is defeated by this fact: Human beings don't respond well to being treated like prisoners in someone else's central plan. If the desire is to wholly manage the future, the mega-planner is always a mega-failure, if not always in the short term certainly always in the long term. The Bush administration had bigger dreams than Wilson or FDR. But the group that began believing that it could reshape the world is now merely responding to events. No effort at all was put into how the conquering heroes would manage an economy after they took power. It's as if they just completely forgot about the people's needs for electricity, clean running water, food, and communications. The one principle that has guided the occupiers in their economic affairs in Iraq has been that whatever happens, the US should be in charge of it. The error has led them to kick out private entrepreneurs who attempted to start cell phone companies and airlines. Even now, the US is putting street vendors out of business, establishing monopoly providers, and throwing around US tax dollars to well-connected corporations in the name of rebuilding the country it first destroyed. The war party has never really understood what freedom means. They have believed it is something granted by government, or the military as a proxy for government. They believed that freedom is something that exists because of the people running the government or the laws that manage society. In fact, freedom means the absence of despotism of all sorts. It can never be granted by the state. It can only be taken away by the state. If a government manager desires freedom for a society, his only path is to get out of the way. The level of arrogance also had an effect on how the administration believed it could fund this war. It is increasingly clear that the total cost of the Iraq war will run into the hundreds of billions, and they proceed as if there are no worries about paying it. Of course the administration benefits by the presence of that great marble palace down the street that promises to print unlimited quantities of dollars to pay for whatever government wants to do. The war policy of this administration may have failed in every way to achieve its stated aims, but it has succeeded in the one way war does succeed: it has transferred huge amounts of money and power from the private sector to the public sector. In believing that war is good for the ruling regime and its cronies, rarely have so few been right about so much. If the government cannot be trusted to run wars, or provide the national defense that so completely failed on September 11, it surely cannot be trusted with the job of managing such crucially important institutions as education. And yet the Bush administration has succeeded in making unprecedented inroads into local schools with its "No Child Left Behind" policy. Just the name alone is worthy of the age of despots who purported to be the father and educator of every child. Yes, I know it is supposed to represent a humanitarian spirit to be concerned about the education of every child, but we need to ask ourselves whether having the government as the imparter of values, at taxpayer expense, is a good idea. Evidently, many people think it is a bad idea. As public school enrollment falls in both rural and urban schools in most places around the country, home schooling is taking off, and creating a cottage industry of textbooks and materials that parents themselves use to educate their children. The effect of this is fantastic, not only for the children who are the main beneficiaries but also for the parents. A major problem of public schools is that they socialize the parents into believing that they do not need to take responsibility for the education of their children. But homeschooling is bringing back an old value that parents bear primary responsibility for their children's education and for their training generally. Homeschooling is still small by comparison to public education but the trend line is enormously encouraging. Nor do I intend to slight private schools, which are also growing in size and diversifying in shape. They are rising up to meet the needs of parents, whose values are ever more diverse. And this fact raises an interesting point. The growing multiculturalism of the American public is often treated as a problematic issue for national unification, but this presumes that there is political value to homogeneity. Believers in freedom should question this assumption. It could be that the rise of multiculturalism will indeed make the country ever less governable at some level. It will reduce the extent to which the population is attached to the central state as an expression of their values. A multicultural people will be ever less attached to the symbols of national unification. This could end up as one means by which the central state – heavily premised on the idea of a unified population – could unravel. Like all empires in human history, especially ones with a growing population and rising prosperity, this country is far too large and diverse and complex to be managed by a central state. It is essentially an unviable project, one destined to fail just as it has failed. If it is true that the population is becoming ever more diverse in its values, as the political left constantly tells us, it makes no sense that there should be a single state that would presume overarching political jurisdiction over the entire entity. It is heresy to say it, but it is long past time that we bring into question the words of the pledge: "One Nation, Indivisible." Crucially important in the process will be the growing problem of Social Security and the welfare state. For all the attention given to the income tax, it is increasingly less significant as a factor in the looting of average Americans. For three-quarters of US taxpayers, the bite that the payroll tax takes out of the paycheck – if you admit that both the employee and employer tax come directly out of worker wages. And what does the worker get in exchange? A bankrupt system that doles out a pittance should you happen to reach the officially defined age of retirement. For the generations after World War II, this might have seemed generous, but for those who will retire in 20 years, it is nothing short of pathetic. Then there is the absurdity of retirement itself. The very idea that people need to throw in the towel at the age of 65 is a gross anachronism that takes no account of dramatically changed mortality statistics. Even more fundamentally absurd is the idea that Washington, DC, which can't manage even the slightest improvement in our well-being, can care for us in old age – providing a steady income stream to substitute for the care given by savings and family. This very idea alone drives a wedge between the generations and pits young against old. For young people these days, they know that they will be caring for their elders and that they need to provide for themselves in old age. The government apparatus that loots them day after day, and which is under intense financial strain, is nothing short of a fabulous failure. If the welfare state in the US in under strain, it has reached the breaking point in most parts of Europe, where nearly everyone recognizes that something must be done to dismantle the grave errors of the postwar planners who instituted huge redistribution schemes. The choice at this stage is between continuing decline and a revival of prosperity by sweeping away the old structures that are inhibiting free initiative and capital accumulation. Equally anachronistic is the idea of centralized fiscal and monetary management. The Keynesian planners from the 1930s through 1970s imagined themselves as masterminds operating this huge machine called the macro-economy. But they made a terrible mess of things, exactly as we might expect. They believed they were boosting aggregate demand, when all they were doing was looting the private sector and ballooning the national debt. They believed they were stimulating production by creating new money and credit but all they did was generate inflation and the business cycle. In their management of international trade, they believed they were harmonizing regulations across borders to create efficiency, and protecting domestic industry from competition, but all they did was loot American consumers, entrench inefficient industries, and create conflicts between nations. Even in this current recessionary cycle, the Bush administration has reached deep into the old Keynesian grab bag and pulled out 50-year-old gimmicks, none of which have helped the economy but instead only forestalled recovery. It is time the macroeconomic planners stop pretending and give it up. What is desperately needed are intellectuals who understand the utter futility of all kinds of central planning, including fiscal, monetary, regulatory, and trade. These are far rarer than you might think. Even today, people who call themselves economic libertarians also counsel the Federal Reserve to provide more liquidity to the system and otherwise attempt every manner of gimmickry to stimulate the economy. They haven't absorbed the central lesson of the liberal tradition: society doesn't need central management by the state. Why is that such a difficult message to get across? Those of us steeped in libertarian theory and the economics of the Austrian School are sometimes amazed that it takes others so long to come around to our point of view. But we must remember that it takes intellectual work to begin to see the logic of economics and apply it to our world. The ignorance is vast and overwhelming, and we must do everything we can to combat it. Sometimes people ask why it is that if liberty is so central to the Mises Institute's mission, we concentrate so heavily on economics. Mises gave this answer: the study of economics, properly considered, is the study of the rise and fall of civilization itself. Aside from the beauty and elegance of economic theory, economics delivers a bracing message to the state: your power is limited. The structure of reality limits the possibilities for power to have its way in this world. Socialism will fail. Central planning will fail. Protectionism will fail. Regulations, taxation, welfare, warfare – all these programs – will often produce the opposite of their stated aims. Economics says to the state: society does not need you. The cooperative work of billions of people, exchanging and creating, is the very source of the quality of life, the very core of peace and prosperity. Economics sets the limits for the state, helps us understand our world, and leads us to make sense of the passing scene. With economics, we never would have been deceived about the true nature of the Emperor's clothes. This is not a message the state wants to hear, which is why we must be passionate, aggressive, and entrepreneurial in delivering it. We are fortunate that the message is capable of connecting very closely with ordinary people. If we look at the way people conduct their affairs in daily life, we find that people are utterly and completely dependent on free enterprise and the institutions on which it rests, and less and less so on the products of the state. We are enormously fortunate to live in times when the wonders of free markets are constantly before our eyes. We can observe the way the seeming anarchy of the market economy, which is global in scope, operates as an orderly, productive process that improves our standards of living in every way. It not only provides us the goods and services we need to live. It is daily creating alternatives to the statist way of doing things. Whether we look at communication, education, security, managing disputes, or any other area of life, the wonders of liberty and the failures of the state are all around us, in a grand procession in which the emperor marches onward in a humiliating pose and the rest of us wait for someone to break the silence and point out what is true. Murray Rothbard argued that there are two conditions that must be in place in order to bring about a revolution: objective and subjective. The objective conditions are in place. Most everywhere in the world, people have embraced the promise and prosperity of freedom and rejected the poverty of despotism. The institutions we love – commerce, creativity, enterprise, property, trade, voluntary association – are on the march, while the state is languishing with its creaking and aged institutions of coercion, compulsion, war, and welfare. What’s left undone is for people like us to work toward achieving the subjective conditions essential for revolution. We must make the intellectual case and teach the world to see the benefits of consistently embracing liberty in theory and practice. Our odds of victory are no better and no worse than they were in the 18th century, when the founding generation threw off the rule of a foreign king, and they are no better or worse than they were in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when the people dismantled an imperial system of despotism. I'm optimistic about the prospects for liberty because our side has enough energy and enthusiasm to match and exceed anything coming from the partisans of stagnation and state power. The application of this energy in the area of political and intellectual activism has a cumulative effect over time. As you know, in the workplace, the employee who is just slightly more productive than the average can end up as a champion in a year or two. It is the same in the intellectual arena. Long ago, we had become accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a tiny remnant of true believers, glad to write for anyone willing to read, but seriously hindered in our ability to get the message out. After 1996, all that changed with the web, when suddenly we found ourselves in a position to get our message out not only to the thousands we knew were interested but also to the millions we did not know anything about. A key question to ask of any body of ideas is whether it is living or dying. Looking at the body of ideas of the Austro-libertarian tradition, and where they stand today as compared with 10 or 20 years ago, there can be no doubt as to our status. We are living and growing at compounded rates, and this is paying off in so many ways. Twenty-one years ago, there were only a handful of Austrians teaching in economics departments around the world. Today there are hundreds, and they no longer have to hide their views. On the contrary, they are hired precisely for their Austrian connections. It is easy to see where this is headed. Not too many years from now, it will become the rule rather than the exception for every economics department at a vibrant institution to have at least one faculty member who embraces the Misesian tradition. The history of the Mises Institute proves this much: a little work done each day adds up over time. Multiply that work by millions and we have a revolution on our hands. What should that work be? It depends on circumstances of time and place. We must first work to improve our own cultural circumstances, and this is something we can control. We must free ourselves from the party line and help others to do the same. We must be good examples. An outstanding entrepreneur is the living embodiment of the power of private enterprise. A great teacher is a living example of idealism in practice. A great father or mother, of which we have many here, is living proof that the family is not a den of pathology as the left claims. A wonderful statesman like Ron Paul is proof that a politician need not be motivated by power lust. No revolution in history has gone precisely according to plan. Every case is different, and the timing and nature of social change surprises its most brilliant intellectual architects. But know this: every time you learn something new about liberty; share a book, article or idea; contribute to a good cause; write a letter to the editor; or give another hero of liberty moral support, you are taking a sledgehammer to the foundation of despotism in our time. We don't know when it will finally crack but we do know that it is intellectual work, above all, that will bring it down. In its place, we must plant a garden of liberty that must be constantly cultivated, from its inception until the end of time. All states everywhere enjoy power only because people are willing to continue to obey and not challenge the powers that be. This means that power is ultimately based on that illusive notion called legitimacy. Legitimacy can vanish in an instant, exposed as a façade that covers up the massive looting machine that is government. It is the role of all of us to break the silence. It is the role of the Mises Institute to teach, so that young people can state the truth in a way that others find compelling. The emperor may continue his march, but he will never again do it with the confidence that he can fool all the people, all of the time. Let us work toward a time when he fools no one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 21, 2004 U.S. government dusts off 1800s law in targeting environmental group Greenpeace January 21, 2004 By Catherine Wilson, Associated Press MIAMI — When prosecutors brought charges against Greenpeace for protesting a shipment of Amazon mahogany, they dusted off a 19th century federal law enacted to stop pimps from clambering aboard ships entering port. Environmentalists call the charges a heavy-handed attempt to stifle free speech and say the government is retaliating against Greenpeace for previous in-your-face protests against the Bush administration. The federal government has never successfully prosecuted an entire activist organization on criminal charges over its protest methods — not even the Ku Klux Klan. "It's an incredible abuse of power, and this is nothing short of political retribution," said Sierra Club spokesman Eric Antebi. "We think this sets a horrible precedent for political intimidation of public interest groups." Environmentalists want a judge to throw out the indictment and release Justice Department records on why charges were brought under an 1872 law that had not even been used since the 1800s. The judge is expected to rule sometime early this year on the requests by Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other supporters. Defending the prosecution in court last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Elliot insisted, "There is no evidence that the government has discriminated against Greenpeace because of its political views." The group's vocal opposition to the federal government "makes it no different from thousands of other political advocacy groups," he said. The mahogany protest came as the 290-meter (965-foot) APL Jade approached Miami Beach on April 12, 2002. Two Greenpeace protesters jumped aboard the ship more than five kilometers (three miles) from shore, wearing shirts emblazoned "Greenpeace illegal forest crime unit" and carrying a banner reading "President Bush, Stop Illegal Logging." The ship's crew kept them from unfurling the banner. Six activists were arrested on federal misdemeanor charges, and the indictment against the organization based on the old law came 15 months later. The law was enacted to keep brothel operators from infiltrating ships "about to" dock. Pimps and others from brothels would row out to the vessels and persuade the sailors to jump ship with them or come over after docking. The sailors were then wined, dined, and separated from their money. Greenpeace maintains a ship moving at 16 kph (10 mph) five kilometers (three miles) at sea is not covered by the "about to" dock requirement. The prosecutor retorted that an 1890 conviction was based on a boarding at the mouth of Oregon's Columbia River 80 kilometers (50 miles) from its dock in Portland. In the only other conviction on record, a New York judge who examined the law the year it was enacted called its language "inartistic and obscure." One reason Greenpeace is fighting so hard is the potential punishment: a $20,000 fine and five years' probation, which could hinder the organization's use of civil disobedience as a protest tactic and could potentially open Greenpeace finances, operations, support, and membership to government inspection. "For an advocacy organization dedicated to passionate dissent, that could be a crippling inhibition," the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a brief in support of Greenpeace. The nonprofit Greenpeace also fears the government will revoke its tax-exempt status if it is convicted. Greenpeace, perhaps best known for sailing its boats into restricted waters and interfering with whaling ships and other vessels on the open seas, has been bothersome to President George W. Bush since shortly after his inauguration, when members put up a banner near his Texas ranch calling him the "toxic Texan." Greenpeace claims its ship protest called attention to the crime of big leaf mahogany logging in the Brazilian Amazon and the Bush administration's failure to enforce an import ban contained in an international treaty. Greenpeace contends roads built by mahogany loggers are the root cause of Amazon deforestation. Other groups are watching the case closely and say the charges run counter to the rich American tradition of civil disobedience as seen during the abolitionist, suffrage, civil rights, and antiwar movements. "Greenpeace is an advocacy group. It is important that they be as free as possible to engage in their advocacy," said First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams. "The decision to indict Greenpeace seems to me to be constitutionally insensitive." Source: Associated Press Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vava Posted January 22, 2004 Report Share Posted January 22, 2004 I know - a little off topic, but nevertheless, HERE's an interesting little animation... I apologize if you all have seen this already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted January 22, 2004 Report Share Posted January 22, 2004 I know - a little off topic, but nevertheless, HERE's an interesting little animation... I apologize if you all have seen this already. well done and to the point, nothing else needs to be said.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2004 I agree. Sums it up pretty well. Any good site should put that up for the types of people that get bored reading things or have a lot of reading to do already or just aren't as interested in the subject(s) to make the effort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 I don't like environmentalists. They are an annoying bunch that should be wrapped in cellophane and spilled in the ocean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 I don't like environmentalists. They are an annoying bunch that should be wrapped in cellophane and spilled in the ocean. Hmmmmmm, I hate to admit this to myself, but I think I am beginning to like you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 I don't like environmentalists. They are an annoying bunch that should be wrapped in cellophane and spilled in the ocean. Yes much like feminist, and pretty much any individual or group who stands up for themselves eh? Leaving the world to the internationalists, capitalists and industrialists to do with what they want eh? But what do you care about the poor, minorities, oppressed people, sick and diseased, perhaps darkies/wogs in genral eh?, oh and yes trees, animals, oceans, rivers, oxygen etc etc eh? I mean who needs em? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 More moronics: http://www.a1plus.am/eng/?go=issue&id=1291...b98c2dd259ad43a ARMENIAN MP ARRESTED IN USA Armenian MP Tatul Manaseryan, the member of “Justice” Bloc, was arrested in USA. Armenian People’s Party Press Secretary Ruzan Khachatryan informed that Tatul Manaseryan had left for USA to partake in a seminar. The incident is of family affair concerning a child guardianship. {BR} Hamlet Gasparyan, press secretary of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Armenia, said that USA frontier guards at “Dallas” Airport of New York had demanded Tatul Manaseryan who had a diplomatic passport for explanations over some family issues. He is now in the migration cell of Virginia, and the explanations probably continue. But the problem is of personal and family character and is related to the American laws. As to sending the appropriate documents to USA, it is a part of the procedure, press secretary says. Since when is it common practice to detain anyone with diplomatic immunity over their family's illegal (?) residence or child guardianship in a country? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 Hmmmmmm, I hate to admit this to myself, but I think I am beginning to like you. Well he hates women too...and aetheists for that matter...and lots of (most) other people....can't stand Turks I imagine...so yeah I can see why you like him.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 23, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 Chill out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 bleah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted January 23, 2004 Report Share Posted January 23, 2004 (edited) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cf...=36&ItemID=4780 http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Se...=15&ItemID=4736 http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Se...=15&ItemID=4859 I particualrly thought this quote was good (from the artical titled "shell game" in a link there) - If Iraq is now a magnet for terrorists, how did that come to be? Before the U.S. invasion, there not only was no evidence of a link between Hussein and al-Qaeda, but also no evidence of an al-Qaeda presence in the areas of Iraq that Hussein controlled. The administration claims that organization is in more than 60 countries. Finding perhaps the only Arab country with no demonstrable al-Qaeda presence and making it a hotbed for recruitment is a remarkable achievement. Edited January 23, 2004 by THOTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2004 (edited) Some international law - starting with Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, including Diplomatic Agents - Article 1 For the purposes of this Convention: 1. "Internationally protected person" means: Head of State, including any member of a collegial body performing the functions of a Head of State under the constitution of the State concerned, a Head of Government or a Minister for Foreign Affairs, whenever any such person is in a foreign State, as well as members of his family who accompany him; any representative or official of a State or any official or other agent of an international organization of an intergovernmental character who, at the time when and in the place where a crime against him, his official premises, his private accommodation or his means of transport is committed, is entitled pursuant to international law to special protection from any attack on his person, freedom or dignity, as well as members of his family forming part of his household; 2. "Alleged offender" means a person as to whom there is sufficient evidence to determine prima facie that he has committed or participated in one or more of the crimes set forth in article 2. http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror...tectpersons.htm Edited January 24, 2004 by Stormig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2004 Which of the following has the said MP engaged in? ARTICLE 2 The intentional commission of: a murder, kidnapping or other attack upon the person or liberty of an internationally protected person; a violent attack upon the official premises, the private accommodation or the means of transport of an internationally protected person likely to endanger his person or liberty; a threat to commit any such attack; an attempt to commit any such attack; and an act constituting participation as an accomplice in any such attack shall be made by each State Party a crime under its internal law. Each State Party shall make these crimes punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of this article in no way derogate from the obligations of States Parties under international law to take all appropriate measures to prevent other attacks on the person, freedom or dignity of an internationally protected person. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted January 24, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2004 Peripherally, assuming an MP is equal if not superior to a "diplomatic agent," - http://www.un.org/law/ilc/texts/dipfra.htm Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961 a "diplomatic agent" is the head of the mission or a member of the diplomatic staff of the mission; Article 29 The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. The receiving State shall treat him with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on his person, freedom or dignity. Article 30 1. The private residence of a diplomatic agent shall enjoy the same inviolability and protection as the premises of the mission. 2. His papers, correspondence and, except as provided in paragraph 3 of Article 31, his property, shall likewise enjoy inviolability. Article 31 1. A diplomatic agent shall enjoy immunity from the criminal jurisdiction of the receiving State. He shall also enjoy immunity from its civil and administrative jurisdiction, except in the case of: (a) a real action relating to private immovable property situated in the territory of the receiving State, unless he holds it on behalf of the sending State for the purposes of the mission; ( an action relating to succession in which the diplomatic agent is involved as executor, administrator, heir or legatee as a private person and not on behalf of the sending State; © an action relating to any professional or commercial activity exercised by the diplomatic agent in the receiving State outside his official functions. 2. A diplomatic agent is not obliged to give evidence as a witness. 3. No measures of execution may be taken in respect of a diplomatic agent except in the cases coming under sub-paragraphs (a), ( and © of paragraph 1 of this Article, and provided that the measures concerned can be taken without infringing the inviolability of his person or of his residence. 4. The immunity of a diplomatic agent from the jurisdiction of the receiving State does not exempt him from the jurisdiction of the sending State. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 Well he hates women too...and aetheists for that matter...and lots of (most) other people....can't stand Turks I imagine...so yeah I can see why you like him.... I don't hate women you blob of protoplasm. I hate feminism and feminists, the doctrine of collectivity and of mass minded thinking. I hate environmentalists and I hate any other political fringe group that is based and or premised on collective and or mass minded thinking and must use legislation and Leviathan to curb more of my civil liberties. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 Yes much like feminist, and pretty much any individual or group who stands up for themselves eh? Leaving the world to the internationalists, capitalists and industrialists to do with what they want eh? But what do you care about the poor, minorities, oppressed people, sick and diseased, perhaps darkies/wogs in genral eh?, oh and yes trees, animals, oceans, rivers, oxygen etc etc eh? I mean who needs em? I am for the individual and individuals rights. While you sit here and try to paint yourself as some sort of holier than thou crusader for the good of all, you were quick to judge another women in the Feminism thread because she didn't subscribe to your mass minded shirade of what things ought to be. You apparently have a hard time understanding how politics and political systems work. The "Democracy" in this country divides people into groups, based on race, ethnicity, gender, ideology, religion, etc. and they get us to identify with one of the said groups and automatically pits us against another group. Mind you "Democracy" is another word for "Socialism/Communism" which was unknown is American vernacular until the 30s when during the Socialistic Roosevelt it started to make its way into the public consciousness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 Yes mouse you do say...hmm - you deny apealing to the courts or legislatuyre for redress eh? Oh of course...all government is eveil..and might makes right...all of that...one big conspiracy isn't it...all goes back to aliens and folks like Count St Germain I imagine...etc etc...yes we know... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 Yes mouse you do say...hmm - you deny apealing to the courts or legislatuyre for redress eh? Oh of course...all government is eveil..and might makes right...all of that...one big conspiracy isn't it...all goes back to aliens and folks like Count St Germain I imagine...etc etc...yes we know... Um, are you okay? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 Its pretty funny actually, it was only a couple of years ago, that I was basically in Stormys mindset. But I have changed and become a true citizen of the Western world. I no longer care how many Iraqis are going to be blown to pieces, for me to have cheap fuel, and how little the coffee harvesters of Western Africa are paid for me to enjoi my coffee. Ignorance is bliss smile.gif (mind you, its not because I have become ignorant in relation to these issues, I just dont give a sh!t anymore, got more important stuff to worry about) And I laugh at these people my age, that are wasting their valuable youth 'trying to make a difference' This is also part of the reason why have stopped posting on political topics, just not worth the effort and couldnt care less..... [ March 02, 2003, 02:13 AM: Message edited by: Accelerated ] A "true citizen"? Gee I must have missed that phase I guess I'm still an underling. Basically I hate people who laud and applaud the current American imperialistic behavior. Yep, who cares about the rest of the world and their lives, we are "American", or so the Romans thought about 2000 years ago, the other empire when Christianity ushered in and now 2000 years later we have another similar empire whoch morphed from a republic to an empire, a "democracy". If anyone thinks that the invasion of Iraq was about liberation, you are as mistaken as the gold fillings in your buckteeth. The only weapon of mass destruction found in Iraq was George Bush, when he flew in on Thanksgiving Day for a slice of turkey and a photo opportunity. Really, it's a damn shame that George Bush Senior's two sons, Jeb and George, didn't meet the same fate as Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay. Florida, America and rest of the world would have been spared the destructive effects of those two pathological imbeciles. Who said political nepotism was a bad idea? As for terrorism, it is nothing but a low intensity war, a means of resistance where no army is available. America is the biggest sponsor of state terrorism on the planet. One of the states it sponsors, Israel, is one of its most malevolent practitioners. Sharon and George Bush condemning terrorism is akin to Bill Gates condemning the use of computers. When America isn't sponsoring either state, pro state or anti state terrorism, it's busy practicing its own form of it called "Liberation" such as its recent terrorizing and humiliation of 23 million people in Iraq and 25 million in Afghanistan. As many as 3,531 Iraqi non combatant civilians were killed in the US assault on the city of Baghdad alone, trying to flee the fighting. Deploying the advanced technology of the American war machine against those armed, by comparison, with sticks and stones is as honorable as throwing a grenade into a pram. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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