Category: Justice

The Gaza Reminder

On November 19, 2012

is about the value of human life.

When I was a child, my father once threw some Christian evangalists off our property.

They had said, “everyone who doesn’t believe in Christ will go to hell.”

Now my father had a temper, but the way his voice dropped to a whisper, and the step he took towards them screamed incipient violence and they virtually ran.

I didn’t ask why, but he told me.

“I lived in Bangladesh, Malaysia and other Muslim countries for years. Anyone who tells me that the good people I knew are going to burn in hell, can go to hell. I’ll have nothing to do with any God who does that or people who believe that.”

I always remembered that. Truth be told my father was slightly racist himself, he was of that generation. But he was ashamed of it, he knew better, and he fought it. What he understood was something simple: every human life has the same value. Any moral system which places one life above the other is not ethical, it is evil.

We in the developed world, and in America and Israel in particular, don’t believe that. We don’t even, any more, give it lip service. And we especially don’t believe that a Muslim life is worth the same as an American life, or an Israeli life, or well, pretty much any non-Muslim life. When Madeline Albright can say that half a million dead Iraqi children is a price worth paying for the sanctions, even before 9/11, we’ve become inhumane.

Osama bin Laden once asked, rhetorically, if Muslim blood was red, and if Muslim children were worthy of life as much as American children.

Israel is doomed. The generation of young American Jews do not have the loyalty to Israel, no matter what it does, that older American Jews, as a group, have. The world is coming to see Israel as an apartheid state, which is what it is. The demographics are against it, and at some point America will cut Israel off, and Israel’s economy is not sustainable without the US.

And more to the point, somewhere, alive today, is the person who believes that losing Jerusalem is an acceptable price for wiping out Tel Aviv. That person has been created by Israeli policy, by Western policy and by Saudi policy. Israel is a small country. It will not exist in 50 years. It may be destroyed in an apocalyptic terror attack, it may be destroyed in military action, it may be destroyed by demographics, it may fall apart economically. Its military advantage is already going away. Hezbollah took away Israel’s armor advantage, straight up defeating them in their last invasion of Lebanon. The Israeli air force was unable to substantially dent Hezbollah’s missile force, despite complete air supremacy. If Hezbollah had had the good missiles, it could have wreaked much more damage.

Right now Hamas has rockets. They look like something out of the 15th century. They are pathetic. It won’t stay that way forever.

All this before we get to the fact that Israel’s military is incompetent. They are no longer the Israeli military of 68, they are an occupation military, and occupation militaries are only good at fighting weaklings, they always become corrupt, brutal and weak themselves.

Israel faces a stark choice: the two-state solution is no longer viable, there is not enough water and arable land, and too much population. It can no longer work. Israel can either become a secular single state, giving a vote and rights to everyone, it can ethnically cleanse out all Palestinians and become a pariah state, or it can cease to exist (option 2 and 3 may both occur). Its end, moral or physical, may occur through terror, demographics, war, economic collapse, military decline or more likely, some combination, but it is as close to any historical process comes to inevitability.

Israel is acting like a monster, killing vastly disproportionate numbers of Palestinians. But the grave it is digging, in the not so long run, isn’t that of the Palestinians, it is its own.

W.H. Auden once wrote the line that applies to Israel, and to the Palestinians, for that matter: Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.

I can find no joy in this, no happiness, but it is what it is. If Israelis, not Israel the religious-ethnic state, want to avoid catastrophic destruction, their only solution is simple: stop doing evil, and start doing good.

People will dismiss that as naive, but it is the hardest of hard headed pragmatism, and as such, is advice unlikely to be taken.

Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.

The US does not have justice or even the rule of law

By Ian Welsh

On April 19, 2012

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and whether the public approves or disapproves is irrelevant. Black letter law, on the books, makes most of what the banks did leading up to the subprime crisis illegal. It was fraud. Black letter law makes the war on Iraq a war crime, and no one went to jail for that. Black letter law does not allow freestanding resisting arrest charges, and those happen all the time. Basic law states that an accused has a right to face their accuser and see the evidence against them, that no longer occurs in many cases. Basic justice says that you can’t punish someone without a trial, and the “no-fly list” indicates that is no longer true (along with being unable to face your accusers and see the evidence against you.) The US Congress retroactively made wiretapping without a warrant “legal” and if I have to explain why retroactive immunity is wrong I give up. Basic justice says that secret laws and secret courts are unjust, yet the US has plenty of both.

This is not just an issue with the US. During the G20 up here in Toronto the Ontario government used a SECRET LAW to strip civil liberties from anyone in the downtown Toronto core. Of course, it must be said that the public couldn’t give a shit, it was not an issue in the next election.

In Britain, after the riots, family members of those convicted of crimes were evicted from public housing. Collective punishment of family members is unjust

And, in most countries today, the rich and powerful are not even charged with crimes that their “lessers” regularly do jail time for.

It is done. It is over. The US is not a nation of laws, it is a nation of men, and the law does not treat everyone equally. You do not even have the right to a trial before punishment, to see the evidence against you or to face your accusers. And virtually every other nation in the so-called developed world is walking down the same road.

Is the individual mandate really the hill progressives want to die on?

By Ian Welsh

On April 2, 2012

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Really?

The individual mandate is lousy policy. It always was. It is especially lousy policy without a large (100 million +) public option. The health care plan is, for all intents and purposes, a 90’s Heritage plan.

This? This is what progressives want to fight for?

BMaz has a good article up on whether the bill is Constitutional. Me, I don’t know if it’s Constitutional. But what I do know is that if I were a conservative Justice, I’d want to just strike down the individual mandate and leave the rest in place, because I would laugh myself sick every night watching Obama have to kill the bill himself, getting rid of guaranteed issue, community ratings, and so on. Because Obama would have to, and would. He made a deal with the health insurance companies. In exchange for some concessions, what they received in exchange was every American being forced to buy their shitty product. And while Obama doesn’t keep promises to left wingers, he does keep promises to people like the CEOs of health insurance companies.

Still, watching “progressives” defending the individual mandate is just another reminder of why I don’t call myself a progressive.

Go and die on a hill, for forcing Americans to buy shitty insurance from evil companies which aren’t properly regulated.

I’ll just sit here on the sidelines laughing myself sick. With progressives like these, who needs right wingers?

London Riots #3: Context

By Ian Welsh

On August 9, 2011

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Wow, just wow:

One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.

Yeah. Ok. Go read the rest. What is surprising is that they hadn’t already rioted.

No war but class war, folks. The rich understand this, and they have been practicing it.

Osama’s Death Changes Almost Nothing

By Ian Welsh

On May 2, 2011

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I’m rather more interested in the Canadian election, which is also rather more important than Bin Laden’s death, but let’s run through this. First, however, insert obligatory “he’s a mass murderer who deserved death” statement here. OBL was an evil man and I’m not sorry he’s dead. I’m even kind of glad they killed him rather than capturing him, if only for the purely selfish reason that I didn’t really want to have to defend OBL when they tortured him, as, of course, they would.

Bin Laden still won: Yeah, sorry, but Bin Laden’s goal was to push the US into imperial overreach, causing economic collapse. He succeeded, with a lot of help from Bush and Obama’s stupidity, and there was nothing in Obama’s little speech that indicated he intended to seize this opportunity to pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan and end the security state. If anything, the security state will go into even further overdrive. Enjoy being groped.

No Drawdown, No End to Destruction of Civil Liberties And yeah, if Bin Laden hated America because of America’s freedoms (he didn’t) well he still won. The 4th amendment is dead, the 1st is on life support, and the TSA freely humiliates you or denies you freedom to travel at their whim.

No, it doesn’t mean Obama has won in 2012 The election isn’t going to be about national security, per se, it’s going to be about the economy. Hating Osama is great’n’all, but it doesn’t put a chicken in a pot, give you a place to live, or a job. It doesn’t reduce the price of gasoline one cent. The election is still well out, this euphoria will fade. That doesn’t mean Obama will lose 2012 either. It just means it isn’t as big a factor as most people seem to think it is.

Terror Networks: Doubt it makes all that much difference here, either, honestly. Most al-Q’aeda groups are essentially franchises, and the main one isn’t that important. I’m sure CIA agents stationed in Afghanistan in charge of drone attacks are breathing a sigh of relief, however. More to the point, it’s not clear to me that Osama is less dangerous as a martyr than as a living old man attached to a dialysis machine.

Bin Laden deserved to die, but when the euphoria dies down, his death doesn’t change much, if anything. He still accomplished his goal, a goal he was willing to die for. The Muslim world, Afghanistan and Iraq (and I’m sure, to his dying day, Bin Laden thought the Iraq invasion was a gift from Allah), are still going to be the graveyard of empire, this time the US empire. Oh, it’s not dead yet, but historians will look back to the invasion of Iraq and the continued occupation of Afghanistan as massive contributing factors.

So, whatever. Celebrate and have a good time, but the wars will go on, the 4th amendment is still a dead letter, the 1st amendment is on life support, the economy is in the toilet, gas is over$4 a gallon, Democrats and Republicans are still negotiating how fast to cut your SS and Medicare, unions are still being gutted, schools are still being turned into profit centers, and TSA agents will still touch your junk.

Why Assange and Wikileaks have won this round

By Ian Welsh

On December 8, 2010

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The odd thing about Wikileaks is that their success has been assured, not by what they leaked, though there is some important information there, but by their enemies.

The massive and indiscriminant overreaction by both government and powerful corporate actors has ensured this, and includes but is not nearly limited to:

Wikileaks and Assange have now been made in to cause celebres. If corporations and governments can destroy someone’s access to the modern economy as they have Wikileaks, without even pretending due process of the law (Paypal, VISA, Mastercard, Amazon, etc… were not ordered by any court to cut Wikileaks) then we simply do not live in a free society of law, let alone a society of justice.

Ironically the Wikileaks files reveal that the British fixed their inquiry into the war, and that the US pressured the Spanish government to stop a war crimes court case against ex-members of the Bush administration. Assange and Wikileaks are subject to extreme judicial and extrajudicial sanctions, but people who engaged in aggressive war based on lies, tortured people and are responsible for deaths well into the six figures, walk free.

To be just, law must be applied to both the big and the small. Thousands of executives at banks who engaged in systematic fraud were never charged, out and out war criminals are actively protected, and Wikileaks and Assange are hunted like animals?

This has enraged, in particular, the Hacktivist community, with Anonymous forming Operation Payback and shutting down both Mastercard servers and the Swiss Bank PostFinance’s website. As they themselves say, what enraged them was multiple companies attempting to shut Wikileaks down, both on the web, and financially.

While there is no comparison between what Assange has done and what happened on 9/11 (his actions are those of a free press), the rabid and indiscrimant overreaction of the the US in particular and the West in general is similar. And what it has done is make Assange into a martyr, an icon for freedom of speech and a symbol of politically motivated repression. It has done the same for Wikileaks and made Wikileaks a cause celebre.

It has proved that the West is run by authoritarian thugs with completely twisted priorities. Kill hundreds of thousands of people and engage in aggressive war? No big deal. Cause the greatest economic collapse of the post-war period sending millions into poverty? We couldn’t possibly prosecute the people who did that, but we will give them trillions! Reveal our petty secrets and lies, and that we know the war in Afghanistan is lost, have known for years and continue to kill both Afghanis and our own soldiers pointlessly? We WILL destroy you, no matter what we have to do.

Which leads us to the rape charges against Assange. Given what we know right now about the case against him, it appears that is going to come down to he said/she said. Unless the Swedish prosecutors have a smoking gun, even if Assange is convicted, most of his supporters will never believe the case wasn’t at the least heavily tainted by political pressure, and at worst, a set up. And if he is extradited from Sweden to the US to face some sort of charges, the howling will reach the high heavens. He will be a martyr for the cause. The more he is persecuted, the more many will rally around both him, and his child, Wikileaks.

Because of the massive overreaction to Wikileaks, the case against him is completely tainted. He might be guilty as sin, but justice can no longer be seen to be done, because it is far too evident that too many powerful people, corporations and governments want him taken out.

And so he has won. Whether he winds up free, in prison in Sweden or the US, or winds up dead, he has won this round. He will be a martyr and an icon, and his child, Wikileaks, whether it lives or dies, will become a rallying point and a symbol of how corrupt and unjust western society is.

What is legal and what is just are two different things

By Ian Welsh

On December 7, 2010

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Just saying. A lot of people seem to have forgotten that.

While we’re at it, you either believe that human rights should be inalienable, or you don’t. That doesn’t mean they can’t be taken away, it means that any time they are taken away it is automatically unjust.

Next: governments exist to serve the interests of their citizens. Any government which exists for any other reason is illegitimate, and defacto tyrannical, no matter how many or how few kneecaps they are breaking. The relationship is similiar to a fiduciary relationship, where the government has its powers only in order, and so long, as it is acting in the interests of of its citizens.

Next: governments and individuals are different types of entities. The presumption is that an individual has the right to privacy unless there is reasonable cause to believe the individual has committed a crime. The presumption for government is that its proceedings and actions should be transparent to its citizens because it exists to serve its citizens, and they can only know that it is doing so, and doing so in ways they would approve of, if they know what it is doing.

Governments which do act in the interests of their citizens and do so transparently and justly, respecting inalienable rights, are legitimate governments. Because such governments are how humans organize to meet needs which cannot be met by individuals or smaller groups, citizens owe those governments their support, but only to the extent that they are just, transparent, respect inalienable rights and act in the interests of the whole body of the citizenry. When they fail in this it is the duty of citizens to oppose those failures.

Mindless obedience to bad law is what makes tyranny of any kind possible.

Justice and law are not synonyms.

Khadr sentenced to 40 years

By Ian Welsh

On October 31, 2010

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8 years more served at most, under the plea bargain, though at that point he’d have been in custody for 16 years.

Others have covered this more than I have, but to me the initial charges were always absurd. He killed a soldier in a firefight in a country that the US invaded. The idea that doing so qualifies as murder is ridiculous, unless we also want to charge everyone who kills an invading soldier with murder? And, I suppose, charge every American soldier in Iraq (a clear case of aggressive war, illegal under the Geneva conventions and exactly what Americans hung Germans for at Nuremburg) with murder?

Kangaroo court justice, the victors punishing the losers, for “crimes” far more minor than those the victors have committed. Get back to me when George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Colin Powell are in the dock, and we’ll talk.

(Aside: I added a new category, Justice, for this post. I did not put it under Law Enforcement, an already existing category, since the two seem to have less and less to do with each other, especially in the US. I should add, of course, that it’s not clear that Khadr did throw a grenade, though I don’t think that’s particularly relevant.)