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How the West Became A Serf To Dictators
Paradoxically, the authoritarian West has become a serf to the rogues and dictators, it has pledged to rid the world of. By employing kidnapping and torture in her "war against terrorism", USA has made herself the scourge of the world. But not only that: The practice of rendition serves to reinforce dicatorships on more than an abstract level. USA is essentially doing their dirty working, ridding them of counter-revolutionaries they would otherwise have to - or fail to - kidnap and torture themselves.
With 70.000 bodies or more in silent transition, rendition has grown
into an industry. The closing of Guantanamo can hardly be more than a
symbolic gesture, a slide of hand, while every sinister activity that
thrives in the dark, beneath the radar of laws and treates, and outside
the reach of the common ethics.
Many commenters have spoken of the fatal blow to the international human rights work, as well as to the standing of USA and her European allies in the rest of the world. The truth is probably far more devastating.
If you do the math, considering the cost of such an operation, and the scores of secret operations, which must be conducted in order to make just one such rendition work out, you begin to understand what is at stake.
All the wrong alliances
You can - to a certain degree - measure the level of reform readiness in people on the ferocity of the counter-revolutionaries. It is no coincedence, for instance, that the majority of 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi-Arabia, a country that fulfills all three conditions for a revolution.
We need no further proof than the radicalism of Osama bin Laden to convince us why Saudi-Arabian rulers are notorious throughout the Levant for their decadence, their disregard for lives and cruel oppression of dissent. Most Arabs loathe them, and you will hear many a discouraging tale of rich young Saudi hunting for female flesh in the streets of tourist cities in the Mediterranean.
Tragically - and in ways that approximate the surreal - the West under the fatally flawed leadership of President George W. Bush has allied itself with all the wrong parties. The Bush-Saudi romance is just one of many peculiarities of recent US foreign politics highlighting the extremely poor judgement at work in leading circles of Washington.
Talking tough about global evildoers and rogue nations, and posing as a cop to its Western allies, USA has the most of the world convinces she is fundamentally seeking to do the right thing, even if she goes about it in a somewhat misguided manner. What's wrong with that picture?
How USA is getting played
Well, to even the most thickheaded, the fundamentalist movements of the Middle East are conservative or even counter-revolutionary movements, serving partly as buffers for the quasi-religious, semi-secular (more or less) hegemonic rulers against too rapid progression of the Western project of reform and the subsequent social destabilization, partly undermining any kind of balanced leadership with their ferocious activity and infectious visions.
The question is, at this point: Which revolutionary movement is the strongest? The question is a trick question, because as it is with anything in this part of the world and has been for a long time, the strongest party is the one with USA on their side. And USA seems to have chosen side, accepting to work with the fundamentally corrupted regimes against the extremely erratic fundamentalists. USA might as well be on the payrole of ME governments - and probably is - the way she helps them capture and torture every potential enemy to their power.
Shouldn't we be happy USA are not against the peaceful, reform friendly Muslims, or at least appeased?
Again, it is a trick question. The problem is that the governments are fundamentally opposed to both movements, the secular and the fundamentalist. As you can tell from many a headline, they oppress all kinds of people. That is the existing concept of equality. So, a lot of the intel they are feeding USA is bogus, attempting to get rid of every dissenting voice in one fell swoop. Hence the size and scope of the operation.
Schadenfreude and the relativity of stability
Another facter you have to take into account is that Arab leaders don't particularly love USA. Read the op-eds in ME magazines and papers, when Israel is freaking out, offering Roman Retribution on a 1-100 scale in Lebanon or Gaza. Then you will know what is proper thought in these regions. The Arab leaders are just pragmatic. Arabs are good thinkers and often brilliant businessmen, strategists and diplomats. They often master a surprisingly eclectic list of faculties, excelling in math and astronomy at the same time as serving in company boards, establishing private charities and offering technical support for pipeline construction and writing poetry on the side.
Anti-American antitudes and scepticism about Westernization is not a privilege of the proletariat, but also a primary interest among many in the elite. To more than you would think it is a delightfully ironic experience to have USA jumping to shake the flees off her back, while at the same time making her dance to the sound of Arab music, stomping on all kinds of dissenters, from your average student radical over nihilistic atheists to crazed fundie bombers. It's all the same, if you are a dictator: As long as they are fighting USA, getting tortured and killed by USA, or killing each other, there is one more year of stability.
So much for certain elements in the ruling classes. Dissent is brewing, as everywhere you have ICT and modernization moving in - no filter can block the progress of democracy, as people begin to... chat. First you will hear young people talk about sex, next they will use dirty words, and soon every picture of the king will wear a moustache. It's simple the way it goes, the direction of history, to paraphrase an American president. Whether we see a new velvet revolution cooked up in smoke filled bar houses around the shisha, or a fundamentalist backlash pulling down a prayer curtain between East and West, the elite knows their time will be over.
How many terrorist can you take, please?
USA is currently pulled in every direction, trying as much to justify their abhorrent criminal activities to the Europeans as they are looking for a way to abolish them, sort of like an addict looking for his soul's rescue in the eyes of an aristocratic lady. The problem here is that Europe doesn't care for immigrants. She used them to build up her industries after WWII, a war in which she basically displayed her unrelenting racial puritanism with the Jews as her unfortunate target audience. They say she has dealt with her guilt, but no country ever does. They just continue in their trail, praying that nobody will discover, just like the reformed addict stepping into a dark alley to indulge.
Europe herself is addicted, mostly to the power of USA. There is a rarely heard strategic term about central Europe, the area partially blocked by the existence of Israel: The soft underbelly of Europe. She is a neat little piece of land to take for any conqueror on the march, and ages of relative peace has made her giddy about her safety. One day she wants to form her own army and loosen her ties to her transatlantic partner, the next day she crawls back into his bed. A lot depends on variables: Acts of terrorism, what story is on the cover of the day, whether or not USA has an African-American president or not, which is something different political parties respond differently to.
So, USA should not expect Europe to welcome a lot of Guantanamo refugees with open arms. What is their status anyway? Aren't they hardened criminals with military training and know suicide bombers? In Europe logic is not taken very seriously, and for every self-contradiction there is a carefully designed stupid remark to turn it into a spin, so no blind angles or dark spots are ever detected. In America they know this, and the aides to Obama has already told him that Europe is a bit backwards that way, and this is the perfect opportunity to wipe off some of the collateral damage on the sore conscience of Europeans: "Hey, you want us to stop this war on terrorism? How about helping us with some of the terrorists, then? Or would you rather shut up and leave us to the torturing?"
So long as they are not Westerners
It is a testimony to the weakness of the West, along with the failure of the Iraq invasion, the Al Qaeda running circles around US intelligence and the financial crisis, that USA has fallen prey to ad hoc foreign policies, basically offering herself up as a kind of gun for hire, plowing through bad guys like Charles Bronson in one of his movies not directed by Sergio Leone. The problem is that there is no end to the bad guys. They are crashing in through the windows and coming down through the ceiling, because one thing ticks off people more than anything: The indiscriminate nature of persecution. Of 70.000 people renditioned, delivered into the hands of torturers, probably with the magnanimous aid from US experts having experimented extensively with high tech amplified shock interrogation during the Cold War, how many do you think are innocent?
With such an industry up and running, the question no longer matters: If you weren't a terrorist before, you are likely to wake up with aching to strap on a dynamite belt, after having been exposed to the heavy-handed treatment of this new truly evil axis of powers. As I always say: If you want to know how your enemy sees you, just consider your lowest thoughts in your worst moods, and reverse the picture. This goes far beyond an image problem - it is the proceedings leading up to the absolute divorce. First of all, it is a divorce from sense and reason. No man or society can execute this type of cruelty without being fundamentally changed from within. And, undergoing such changes, it is impossible to avoid a rub-off effect on the local communities, the homelands.
I am going to say something that will probably annoy the hell out of a lot of people, but... even the blood of criminals cries to heaven for revenge. I'm not being religious here or remotely superstitious. There is no karma, because there is no need for it. Social and political mechanisms will take of it, seeking to balance one extreme with another. The fact that mass abductions of such an enormous scale can take place can only mean one thing, and even if it seems hidden in the deck right now - for those counting cards - it will soon be in play: You simply cannot take 70.000 Westerners, round them up on bogus charges for engaging in a perfectly legitimate war, call them terrorists and send them to have their limbs torn off in underground chambers, without calling for a reciprocal response.
But we haven't, have we? They aren't Westerners, are they? No, and that is the thin, very thin, and extremely dubious line between us and Ragnarok, the fall of the gods.
Enough about that subject. Let's go back to talk about the responsibility of banks, about Michael Phelps horrible drug abuse and other, more relevant issues. The other thing will pop up to bite us in the unspeakable soon enough. Let's go for a stroll alongside the edge the abyss, and let's bring umbrellas, because they say there may be rain later in the afternoon.
Many commenters have spoken of the fatal blow to the international human rights work, as well as to the standing of USA and her European allies in the rest of the world. The truth is probably far more devastating.
If you do the math, considering the cost of such an operation, and the scores of secret operations, which must be conducted in order to make just one such rendition work out, you begin to understand what is at stake.
All the wrong alliances
You can - to a certain degree - measure the level of reform readiness in people on the ferocity of the counter-revolutionaries. It is no coincedence, for instance, that the majority of 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi-Arabia, a country that fulfills all three conditions for a revolution.
We need no further proof than the radicalism of Osama bin Laden to convince us why Saudi-Arabian rulers are notorious throughout the Levant for their decadence, their disregard for lives and cruel oppression of dissent. Most Arabs loathe them, and you will hear many a discouraging tale of rich young Saudi hunting for female flesh in the streets of tourist cities in the Mediterranean.
Tragically - and in ways that approximate the surreal - the West under the fatally flawed leadership of President George W. Bush has allied itself with all the wrong parties. The Bush-Saudi romance is just one of many peculiarities of recent US foreign politics highlighting the extremely poor judgement at work in leading circles of Washington.
Talking tough about global evildoers and rogue nations, and posing as a cop to its Western allies, USA has the most of the world convinces she is fundamentally seeking to do the right thing, even if she goes about it in a somewhat misguided manner. What's wrong with that picture?
How USA is getting played
Well, to even the most thickheaded, the fundamentalist movements of the Middle East are conservative or even counter-revolutionary movements, serving partly as buffers for the quasi-religious, semi-secular (more or less) hegemonic rulers against too rapid progression of the Western project of reform and the subsequent social destabilization, partly undermining any kind of balanced leadership with their ferocious activity and infectious visions.
The question is, at this point: Which revolutionary movement is the strongest? The question is a trick question, because as it is with anything in this part of the world and has been for a long time, the strongest party is the one with USA on their side. And USA seems to have chosen side, accepting to work with the fundamentally corrupted regimes against the extremely erratic fundamentalists. USA might as well be on the payrole of ME governments - and probably is - the way she helps them capture and torture every potential enemy to their power.
Shouldn't we be happy USA are not against the peaceful, reform friendly Muslims, or at least appeased?
Again, it is a trick question. The problem is that the governments are fundamentally opposed to both movements, the secular and the fundamentalist. As you can tell from many a headline, they oppress all kinds of people. That is the existing concept of equality. So, a lot of the intel they are feeding USA is bogus, attempting to get rid of every dissenting voice in one fell swoop. Hence the size and scope of the operation.
Schadenfreude and the relativity of stability
Another facter you have to take into account is that Arab leaders don't particularly love USA. Read the op-eds in ME magazines and papers, when Israel is freaking out, offering Roman Retribution on a 1-100 scale in Lebanon or Gaza. Then you will know what is proper thought in these regions. The Arab leaders are just pragmatic. Arabs are good thinkers and often brilliant businessmen, strategists and diplomats. They often master a surprisingly eclectic list of faculties, excelling in math and astronomy at the same time as serving in company boards, establishing private charities and offering technical support for pipeline construction and writing poetry on the side.
Anti-American antitudes and scepticism about Westernization is not a privilege of the proletariat, but also a primary interest among many in the elite. To more than you would think it is a delightfully ironic experience to have USA jumping to shake the flees off her back, while at the same time making her dance to the sound of Arab music, stomping on all kinds of dissenters, from your average student radical over nihilistic atheists to crazed fundie bombers. It's all the same, if you are a dictator: As long as they are fighting USA, getting tortured and killed by USA, or killing each other, there is one more year of stability.
So much for certain elements in the ruling classes. Dissent is brewing, as everywhere you have ICT and modernization moving in - no filter can block the progress of democracy, as people begin to... chat. First you will hear young people talk about sex, next they will use dirty words, and soon every picture of the king will wear a moustache. It's simple the way it goes, the direction of history, to paraphrase an American president. Whether we see a new velvet revolution cooked up in smoke filled bar houses around the shisha, or a fundamentalist backlash pulling down a prayer curtain between East and West, the elite knows their time will be over.
How many terrorist can you take, please?
USA is currently pulled in every direction, trying as much to justify their abhorrent criminal activities to the Europeans as they are looking for a way to abolish them, sort of like an addict looking for his soul's rescue in the eyes of an aristocratic lady. The problem here is that Europe doesn't care for immigrants. She used them to build up her industries after WWII, a war in which she basically displayed her unrelenting racial puritanism with the Jews as her unfortunate target audience. They say she has dealt with her guilt, but no country ever does. They just continue in their trail, praying that nobody will discover, just like the reformed addict stepping into a dark alley to indulge.
Europe herself is addicted, mostly to the power of USA. There is a rarely heard strategic term about central Europe, the area partially blocked by the existence of Israel: The soft underbelly of Europe. She is a neat little piece of land to take for any conqueror on the march, and ages of relative peace has made her giddy about her safety. One day she wants to form her own army and loosen her ties to her transatlantic partner, the next day she crawls back into his bed. A lot depends on variables: Acts of terrorism, what story is on the cover of the day, whether or not USA has an African-American president or not, which is something different political parties respond differently to.
So, USA should not expect Europe to welcome a lot of Guantanamo refugees with open arms. What is their status anyway? Aren't they hardened criminals with military training and know suicide bombers? In Europe logic is not taken very seriously, and for every self-contradiction there is a carefully designed stupid remark to turn it into a spin, so no blind angles or dark spots are ever detected. In America they know this, and the aides to Obama has already told him that Europe is a bit backwards that way, and this is the perfect opportunity to wipe off some of the collateral damage on the sore conscience of Europeans: "Hey, you want us to stop this war on terrorism? How about helping us with some of the terrorists, then? Or would you rather shut up and leave us to the torturing?"
So long as they are not Westerners
It is a testimony to the weakness of the West, along with the failure of the Iraq invasion, the Al Qaeda running circles around US intelligence and the financial crisis, that USA has fallen prey to ad hoc foreign policies, basically offering herself up as a kind of gun for hire, plowing through bad guys like Charles Bronson in one of his movies not directed by Sergio Leone. The problem is that there is no end to the bad guys. They are crashing in through the windows and coming down through the ceiling, because one thing ticks off people more than anything: The indiscriminate nature of persecution. Of 70.000 people renditioned, delivered into the hands of torturers, probably with the magnanimous aid from US experts having experimented extensively with high tech amplified shock interrogation during the Cold War, how many do you think are innocent?
With such an industry up and running, the question no longer matters: If you weren't a terrorist before, you are likely to wake up with aching to strap on a dynamite belt, after having been exposed to the heavy-handed treatment of this new truly evil axis of powers. As I always say: If you want to know how your enemy sees you, just consider your lowest thoughts in your worst moods, and reverse the picture. This goes far beyond an image problem - it is the proceedings leading up to the absolute divorce. First of all, it is a divorce from sense and reason. No man or society can execute this type of cruelty without being fundamentally changed from within. And, undergoing such changes, it is impossible to avoid a rub-off effect on the local communities, the homelands.
I am going to say something that will probably annoy the hell out of a lot of people, but... even the blood of criminals cries to heaven for revenge. I'm not being religious here or remotely superstitious. There is no karma, because there is no need for it. Social and political mechanisms will take of it, seeking to balance one extreme with another. The fact that mass abductions of such an enormous scale can take place can only mean one thing, and even if it seems hidden in the deck right now - for those counting cards - it will soon be in play: You simply cannot take 70.000 Westerners, round them up on bogus charges for engaging in a perfectly legitimate war, call them terrorists and send them to have their limbs torn off in underground chambers, without calling for a reciprocal response.
But we haven't, have we? They aren't Westerners, are they? No, and that is the thin, very thin, and extremely dubious line between us and Ragnarok, the fall of the gods.
Enough about that subject. Let's go back to talk about the responsibility of banks, about Michael Phelps horrible drug abuse and other, more relevant issues. The other thing will pop up to bite us in the unspeakable soon enough. Let's go for a stroll alongside the edge the abyss, and let's bring umbrellas, because they say there may be rain later in the afternoon.
