Enforced sensory deprivation, as applied to the ‘unlawful combatants’ at Guantanamo Bay during their transit there, constitutes torture.  It does not matter how long enforced sensory deprivation is applied – even for 30 seconds let alone the hours these men endured or the unimaginable years of Terry Waite – it is still torture.  Following an international outcry, for the most part led by Mary Robinson and Europe, the US had to back track.  Now they are only shackled when taken to interrogation just like any other prisoner in a US jail when appearing in court.  That this spectacle itself portrays a supposedly innocent-until-proven-guilty person as dangerous and ‘other’, and thereby prejudicing the perception of him/her by the jury, speaks volumes about US justice.  

When I saw the pictures from Guantanamo Bay I thought they could only have been taken with a long lens from Cuban territory and assumed they were being released as anti US propaganda. I was surprised to discover later that The Times carried the by-line ‘US Navy’ to the photographs. And it started me thinking.  Why would the US military officially release such incontrovertible evidence of torture?  In my naiveté it took a few days for it to dawn on me that this could be US military Psy-ops in action.  And its raison d’e-tre ?  To intimidate the worlds population into accepting the will of the US as a Global policeman – a roll rightly belonging to the UN ?  This sounds so far-fetched when in fact its probably just another of those oxymoronic Military Intelligence cock-ups.  Irrespective.  The pictures are still unambiguous  evidence of torture and every word uttered in its defence can be seen as support for the debasing of human dignity. It debases those that utter it, the torturer’s and those they torture.  And more.  It debases us all.  (Bush’s statement “for us or against us” carries a chilling ring to it if this is the way he wishes to enforce such a doctrine.  At the same time it would make King George the Third look liberal and sane in wanting to keep “the King's” American colonies).

So Joe you point the finger at China for executing thousands while the US only judicially kills a few.  This is a distraction and betrays a mind-set where there is a hierarchy in base deeds calculated by numbers. This is the argument of the playground. It is not numbers but a principle at stake here. Who has the right to kill?  There is only one answer to this question and its quite simple, anyone can understand it.  It is no one.  With which Joe, I am pleased to read, you seem to agree.  But I do not understand why, by pointing to China you would wish to align US penal policy with such a dictatorship?

We  Europeans of a secular humanist bent, have a long and honourable tradition of speaking out and organising against inhumane treatment of our fellow human beings by any country in the world.  This does include China.  Who can forget Tianamen Square ? (A clear warning to everybody of the authoritarian nature too this powerful world player).  Throughout the European Continent vociferous denunciations and demonstrations opposing the Chinese state’s repression of a demand for democracy rose spontaneously,  and which usually had the left to the fore.   

Unlike the US state with its bi-polar political culture  (”for us or against us” is surely a shop-soiled remnant from the cold war ?),  Europe has moved on from the collapse of the Berlin Wall to rediscover its long tradition of pluralism.  Admittedly this has been hard to find at times,  especially when absolute monarchy or fascism was in the ascendancy, or one party states ruled the east.  But it is now integral to the European project.  

A big and sincere thank you to the American people for the sacrifices, bravery and generosity you exhibited in helping make this possible.   America’s multi-racial contribution to the European Allies in defeating Nazi Germany in WW11 has become part of our history and shapes our future,  and for which we are grateful.  Pluralism though brings with it a recognition that the human world is nothing if not diverse and complex, and that solely considering the bottom line of ones own self-interest in this milieu will not be productive to the development of long-term co-operation and mutual respect between the Continents, nation states and even individuals.  It also brings with it space for competing  ideas.  Some of us agree with what the US state is doing around the world, others like myself, disagree.

Yes. I am now anti the US state with its brutish example of capitalism and its self-serving foreign policy, but I am not anti the American people.  Not anti those decent, hard working and honest Americans who in their daily lives ‘talk the talk and walk the walk’ of the American ideal as espoused by one of the worlds giant Europeans – Thomas Paine.  Not anti, but pro the contributions of Americas best intellectuals and politicians to the world.  Walt Whitman’s and Langston Hughes gifts of poetry to us all still thrill new readers.  Abe Lincoln’s heroic struggle to outlaw the scourge of slavery is still a beacon.  The list is endless.

Nor am I anti the ordinary GI Joe.  And it is to this Joe I now speak as one who long wants to call America friend.

Your system is no longer working.  Those of your leaders and their tame intellectuals who tell you otherwise are spouting the usual propaganda of the shallow thinker.  Enron is just the latest example.  It now seems that this corporation, not satisfied with greasing the passage of fellow oil-man Dubya to the Oval Office, could have had some responsibility for the debacle of energy privatisation in California that caused blackouts in your richest State.  The deregulation in the energy market they sought as quid pro quo for their election campaign donations could cause havoc throughout the USA.  Arthur Andersen,  experts at ‘aggressive accounting’ and Enron’s money men, shredded evidence of illicit practise whilst the Chairman ‘took the fifth’.

Yet these sharp practises pale into insignificance compared to the deviousness that has wrought destitution among Enron’s workers and pension holders.  Locked into share options and pensions whilst the corporation’s directors made hundreds of millions of dollars off-loading their own.  For won't of mixing metaphors;  this is not about one rotten apple in the barrel, but the tip of the iceberg to a corrupt and failing system.  There will be more Enrons.

Don’t let the TV distract you, take a moment and look around your country.  Thirty percent of your people – sharers like you of the American ideal – live in poverty.  In some parts of your country the conditions people endure are as bad as any in the third world.  This will only get worse now that a trillion dollars are being given to the already rich as tax cuts taken from your welfare budget. Your literacy levels are worse than Cuba’s and you imprison more per head of population than any other country.  This is not success.  This is not a system working for the good of all the American people,  but just the most brutal who do not see their fellow human beings as anything other than, at best a financial opportunity and at worst a mere commodity to be disposed of at a whim.  

In Florida during the confinement of the ‘pregnant chad’, it was reported that the Police had placed road blocks around African-American districts to discourage them from casting their vote for a new President.  Some observations.   It seems vestiges of the deep south’s racism still permeates the Florida Police and  polls had shown that African-Americans had a propensity not to vote Republican.  Dubya’s brother, Jeb, is the Governor of Florida.  Up on Capitol Hill meanwhile, the Supreme Court re-birthed a myth.   On a technicality, with the decideing  vote of a judge appointed by Dubya’s dad, they decided that the syntax challenged one was ‘the most powerful man in the world’.    Brutish capitalism has no morality.  It is the culture of the Mob.

Come, American people, you can do so much more better than this.

My heart went out to you  America, like billions around the world who witnessed the depths of despair.  9/11 will  long live  as a day obscene.  No peoples deserve such a vile affront to their dignity. No matter what the grievance.

Long held has been my view that the slaughtering of innocents is reactionary.   Acts of terror scare people away from getting involved in legitimate and peaceful political activity to change their world.  It strengthens the hawks - the angels of death incarnate in Rumsfeld.  Terror is fundamentally anti-democratic in that a secret cabal takes decisions for and acts on behalf of The People without the same people having any idea, or say in what acts are being planned and executed in their name.  But they are tarred with it all the same.

The immediate response to 9/11 drew on the enormous reserves of empathy, bravery and humanity inherent in the collective psyche of you,  the American people.  Those days of despair remembered the character to the American ideal.   Even that rogue Giulliani proved he has soul and now is a man I could enjoy a drink with.

But the US state’s military response is wrong.  Wrong for two major reasons.  An idea, even such an insane idea as absolute truth being found in a partisan interpretation of a religious text, cannot be defeated by a bullet or ‘smart’ bomb. The reasons for an abhorrent idea’s existence and its mass support have to be understood if they are to be combated politically, destroyed with little chance of resurrection. Secondly, organisations of terror like al-Qaeda are amorphous without centres of control dependent on a state infrastructure, and require more thoughtful tactics to deal with than the bombing of fresh innocents in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea or whereever.

There is something else that is wrong.  America, behind your righteous anger your leaders are conducting a coldly cynical and calculating campaign to further the US state’s and its big corporations self-interest at the expense of the 6 billion who inhabit this little globe.  They are even acting against your interests.

International treaties and conventions, from IBM through Kyoto to Geneva, are the bones on which we, the peoples of this world build a responsible, respectful and humane approach to dealing with our differences and map a peaceful and democratic future.  The US state’s unilateral abrogation of these aspirations and the replacing of them with the primacy of brute force, has the potential of reducing humanity to barbarism.

Bush,  despite that oil-addled matter he calls a brain,  has learned well his fathers Machiavellian arts.  The bombing of Afghanistan and the building of military bases in neighbouring countries, had less to do with destroying al-Qaeda or capturing bin Laden, than with securing the massive oil reserves in the Caspian Basin for the US.  Afghanistan is the preferred route for a pipeline to the Arabian Sea and to which the Taliban were opposed.  The fascist Taliban regime was a canker on the face of the world.  Educated by rote in the Koran and misogyny at the madrassahs of Pakistan, the Talibans contempt for knowledge was reflected in the repression of music, song and love.  Unfortunately the Afghani Interim Government's Justice Minister – the good guy – has already made clear that some things will not change.  Thieves will still have limbs amputated.  Adulterers will still be stoned to death,  but only with small stones so they have a chance to escape.  Male adulterers will be buried to the waist,  women to the neck.  One bunch of Barbarians replaced by another.   But this bunch will support a pipeline.  So that’s alright then ?

For this open ended ‘War on Terrorism”,  the disappearance of bin Laden is a godsend.  From now on his name and that of al-Qaeda will  be invoked to intimidate other nations sitting on oil or just in the way of US naked self-interest.  more bogeymen  to join Saddam.

Who mourns the dying children of Iraq ?  Is it only their mothers ?  Or is it also you – the compassionate mothers nurturing the American ideal ?  For ten years sanctions and almost daily bombing by the US state  ( and to her eternal shame – Britain’s) have reduced the innocents of Iraq to abject poverty.  This does not help them overthrown Saddam.  It is happening because it is in the US state’s self-interest to have a weak Saddam, not a strong Iraqi democracy.  It serves the purpose of being a highly visible lesson of US military might and thereby helping keep the region subservient to its self-interest.  Which is securing access to oil.

Now Israel.  Here the US state’s use of the Machiavellian arts are laid bare for all to see. Exacerbate the friction between rivals in a strategically important region to keep them weak and it leaves one free to exploit the fallout at will.    Maintaining control over oil.

Israel’s birth as a nation and the struggle to achieve the right to exist has been a bloody one. This is no worse nor better than others.  The problem is that now Israel, in it's existence,  occupies Palestine and by its actions – the use of overwhelming military might – is denying the Palestinian nation its legitimate right to exist.  This treatment of the Palestinians has been a festering, pestilient sore in the middle east for decades and which has shamed all who have turned away indifferent.  The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the primary cause of the regions instability.  To deny this indisputable fact is to commit the Big Lie. This conflict can be stopped.  Israel is bankrupt without the billions of dollars pumped in by the US state. Billions raised from the taxes on the American people.  

Come America,  you can be so much more better than this.

END

 

 

 

Epilogue.

 

When I had original finished this article I was so pleased with myself that I emailed it to an old comrade. Her partner was the first person I informed that I had multiple sclerosis and they were some of the only people I had kept in contact with from my days working for the Communist Party of Great Britain.

 

She emailed me back saying that she had "sent it to some friends in America".  The full weight of that phrase did not resonate as it should have at the time.

 

She died two years ago from cancer.