Monday, August 22, 2005
A VIEW FROM IRAQ
The US introduced Patriot Acts and violated all international laws after 9/11 to fight “terrorism.” After 7/7, the British government went one step further to the extreme to fight “extremism.” It proposed many laws, contravening the established legal principles, human rights and all norms of moral decency.
The stress on the need for more and more laws gives us the impression as if it was the lack of laws that lead to “terrorism” in the first place.
These developments in the US and UK led to similar initiatives and debate in other Western capitals on whether to follow the suit. Puppet regimes in the Muslim world don’t even need such discussions about terror and law. Thanks to the unflinching, fully determined support of the Western leaders and the terrorist attacks abroad, which are good enough for the dictators to round up, torture and even kill hundreds of people without any reference to any law.
Because of 9/11 and 7/7, the legislatures now see a problem and attempt to solve it with new laws along with permitting the war lords to invade and occupy sovereign states on the basis of lies. The question is: would these laws and occupations address the root causes of the problem?
Even a cursory analysis reveals that the main target of the proposed terror laws is the basic principles that ensure justice and fairness. Principles such as "due process,” “no crime without intent,” “innocent until proven guilty,” “habeas corpus,” “no self-incrimination,” “no ex post facto laws,” “the right to counsel,” “the right to remain silent,” “the right to see the evidence that incriminates” and “the right to confront one's accusers" are the first victims of these laws. These principles are the target because without doing away with them, acts such as racial profiling would be impossible and without that, singling out Muslims would not be easily legitimized in the public eyes.
The most basic understanding of law is that it provides the people with their most important safeguard against "predatory actions of government." The understanding has been turned upside down. The purpose of law, “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” has now been changed to the greatest happiness of the totalitarians, who want to silence their critics in the name of “greatest safety and security.”
The world needs not be deceived with the concept of terrorism used an excuse to consolidate tyranny at home and abroad after 9/11. Efforts were already underway in the US for controlling public opinion and curtailing freedoms. Roberts and Stratton argue in their book, “The Tyranny of Good Intentions,” that in “recent decades, both conservatives and liberals have cut swaths through the law as they pursued drug dealers, S&L crooks, environmental polluters, Wall Street inside traders, child abusers, and other undesirables." In fact, "with the exception of Benthamite ideology, the greatest damage to justice has been done by the unintended consequences of the conservatives' war on crime." The war on terrorism became the perfect excuse for consolidating what was already on the cards.
UK is now moving one step ahead with Blair's plan to criminalize not just direct incitement to terrorism but anything the totalitarians may categorize as "condoning," "glorifying" or "justifying" terrorism anywhere in the world. Words like that are far too vague, elastic and subject to selective use by the world mastering demi-gods. Worse still is the government's plan to expand its list of deportable offenses to include the expression of "what the government considers to be extreme views." The idea of making naturalized British citizens deportable for "extremism" means one has to believe and fully support every single word and deed of the government; otherwise the person will be considered an extremist, whose difference of opinion might “indirectly” lead to terrorism.
All these measures are based on the pre-determination that what the US and UK and their allies have done over the last many decades is absolutely correct. Only there was a lack of the proposed new laws. They didn’t violate any international law and norm. They didn't assist tyrants and aggressors. They didn't support occupations and tortures of innocent populations. They didn't starve 1.8 millions to death. They did not fully legalized state terrorism. And they didn't disregard any international law and even bypassed the UN after 9/11.
Continue reading...
If you read far enough into the article, you will come to this:
These so-called laws are for the ordinary citizens to make them toe the line, to stop questioning the official stories about the terrorist acts, the logic and reason for going to wars and all associated policies. Andrew M. Greeley, a Roman Catholic priest, equated such measures to a “whiff of fascism American style in the air” (Daily Southtown, Chicago, November 25, 2001). He wrote it long before the real face of the new laws regarding terrorism was exposed. Mr. Greeley concluded: “The closet fascists among us, however well-intentioned they may be, are far more serious threats to us than the followers of bin Laden. They would, given half a chance, destroy the American soul.”
