Barnett Weekly

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States recently ruled that any action which can be defined as “material support” to an organization deemed “terrorist” is a federal crime. Material support, says the court, includes discussion and/or consultation about non-violence or peace, making it illegal for peace-making organizations to attempt to mediate hostilities if one of the parties in conflict has been deemed “terrorist.”

When I asked my friend Richard Reoch, former Global Media Chief of Amnesty International, the human rights organization, (not speaking as a spokesman) about the ruling, he predicted, “The U.S. Government, alongside many other governments, will likely violate this law. There will be times when it is thought in the national interest to do so. Experience has shown that most armed conflicts cannot be brought to an end without engaging with terrorist organizations and their supporters.”

Richard pointed out Northern Ireland and South Africa as situations where clandestine contact by governments and others with the IRA and ANC respectively helped broker an end to armed conflict. “This ruling fails to appreciate what is called “second track” diplomacy,” he noted. “Contact with paramilitary organizations often lays the groundwork for peace talks. This can include training in negotiation skills, human rights education and exploring options for a peace settlement. In South Africa, it was the business community that initiated the secret discussions that led to peace.”

Despite being the most powerful country in the world, America is terribly fearful. Because of our distrust and fear, we use our wealth and power as a tool of manipulation. Manipulation always includes an element of dishonesty, and what we often think of as foolishness or incompetence by our government is actually deceit. Historically, this is what has been behind our support of terrible and highly repressive regimes around the world (including Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran), governments which terrorized their own people.

It’s not difficult to see how deceitful policies lead to greater instability and violence. When we act through fear and manipulation it is the example we then set for others. Thus we see Iran developing nuclear capabilities so that they can also be powerful manipulators.

There are those who say aggression is all too human and point to examples of violence as evidence. It is possible, however, to as easily provide examples of benevolence and goodness, the actual basis from which all human society begins. That we can become fearful is also true, and very human, but what distinguishes people is our ability to understand fear and its effects, and using honesty and benevolence to overcome it. This is where the peace-makers come in.

In restricting the ability of peace-makers to mediate armed conflict, the Supreme Court has taken a political stance. In effect, it has decided that the views and opinions of any given administration in defining an organization as “terrorist” now constitute a basis in law.

“The definition of a ‘terrorist’ organization is always subject to political bias,” Richard observed, “Only those groups that are ‘not on our side’ are designated as terrorist. Those that ‘serve our interests’ are not, regardless of their atrocities. This ruling will be used in a highly selective way, and I predict that the first test case will be the result of active political lobbying by well-financed special interests seeking to punish specific organizations they do not like.”

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Now that we are in the midst of an election year, our political foibles are on great display. Not a week goes by that the lies or deceptions of one candidate or another hit the airwaves, and we voters are subjected to yet another round of “what I meant to say.”

I know what the pressure of a campaign can bring; I ran for office four times, losing the first and winning the subsequent three times. Either standing at a front door or on stage alongside other candidates, using words that resonate with others and create a favorable impression is simply part of the campaign process. On the other hand, a lack of honesty or outright pandering never succeeds terribly well. As Bob Dylan wrote: “To live outside the law you must be honest.” And this goes for politics as well.

Politics is “outside the law” insofar as those in political office actually make the law. Thus the statements one makes as candidate, often in print or in advertising – not to mention being quoted in the paper – can come back to haunt you. If during a campaign a candidate is proven to be demonstrably dishonest it often leads to defeat.

Whether statements about military service, current occupation, voting record, sexual orientation or fidelity in marriage, we’ve witnessed one candidate after another get hoisted on their own petard. Who can forget Presidential candidate Gary Hart’s challenge to the press to prove his infidelity to his wife and then get photographed cavorting with another woman aboard a yacht named “Monkey Business”? Lately we’ve been exposed to the spectacle of a Connecticut Attorney General dishonestly claiming he served in Vietnam, only to find him telling voters “what I meant to say.” The wife of a prominent California politician running for County Supervisor claimed in her campaign literature to be a “deputy district attorney.” We now know she is simply an attorney acting as Executive Director of an organization working for the District Attorney’s office.

Good leadership demands the truth, an authentic and genuine capacity for honesty. Despite the pressures of campaigning, an indication of dishonesty during a campaign is a red flag to voters about later conduct. I’m not talking about being honest about liking spinach or red ties, but when it comes to matters of personal history or policy positions, the truth matters. Lacking being true, failures of justness are not far behind, and if not just, then leaders but seek their own personal fortunes and society suffers.

One’s truth cannot be separated from one’s view, and sometimes this makes for an awkward situation. A libertarian might object to civil rights legislation, for example, and be tempted to shade stated opinions to suit the election. Or a liberal might take a tough stand on sending criminals to jail even though believing rehabilitation might serve society better. A conservative could object to logging after gauging the opinions of voters in the district. Switching parties simply for political gain is sleazy. I believe citizens will respect honesty more than opinions shaded to please.

In an era of “spin doctors” and highly paid campaign consultants, our capacity to discern the honesty of politicians must revert to “the gut,” meaning how we feel about someone. As a people drawn to goodness, our political guidance must not come solely from the mouth, but from the heart.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The current spectacle of angry mobs fulminating against government by using degrading images and violent language to incite others has its echo in the past. Using the poor, disenfranchised and minorities as targets embedded in a protest against government is eerily familiar, harkening back to the 1920s and the National Socialist Party (Nazi) demonstrations in Germany.

I wonder; if you or I used our Facebook pages to place cross-hairs on the faces of prominent political figures, as Sarah Palin has done, would we be arrested for making a threat to commit violence?

The world has seen this particular drama before, and it does not end well. Gun-toting reactionary forces of authoritarianism are once again asserting themselves in typically incendiary fashion, asserting false and inflammatory claims that mobilize the angry, scared and uninformed. In these difficult economic times, fear and anger are already plentiful. Though the seeming target is government, the actual target is America’s growing population of non-white, economically depressed, homosexual and non-citizen residents.

In 1920s Germany – society reeling from post-WWI inflation and the changes wrought by the increased democratic liberalism of the Weimar Republic – reactionary Nazi movements mobilized millions in support of identifying scapegoats to blame and punish. Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and Bolsheviks were eventually targeted, but it is interesting to note that the first widespread implementation of Nazi cultural imperatives occurred within Germany’s health care system, through a eugenics program directed at the powerless.

Eugenics proposed that inferior racial, criminal, anti-social and hereditary medical problems could be selectively “bred” out of the human gene pool, resulting in a population of genetically pure people free from defect and therefore creating a better society. Eugenics elevated the “superior” white race above all others. Coincident with Germany’s fascist upheaval, eugenics also enjoyed widespread support in America. Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller provided eugenics research with generous financial support, and the medical establishment in America and Germany were the beneficiaries of his largesse.

By 1930, the popularity of eugenics in the U.S. resulted in the institution of forced sterilization programs in nearly 30 American states, and tens of thousands of poor, black and variously handicapped Americans were involuntarily sterilized up until 1963. In Germany of 1933, recognized as having the world’s most modern health care, the Nazi government implemented forced sterilization of “the feeble, negroes, criminals, and the insane” after carefully observing the success and public acceptance of the sterilization program in America. Administered by doctors and nurses in both countries, eugenic sterilization was viewed as “cutting edge” health care for the future of an entire nation. In retrospect, of course, we can see that in Germany it provided a foundation for the genocide of those deemed by the Nazi’s as “parasites.”

Such inflammatory language is now popping up in our own current political sphere. The ultra-right-wing, with its ideological roots deeply set in America’s persistent racial intolerance, characterizes illegal immigrants and the ethnic poor as “parasitical,” feeding off the body of a host nation. Those of differing political persuasion are labeled with cross-hairs as “traitors,” “socialists,” and “liars.” With self-righteous moral fervor, an angry and violence-prone segment of the populace blames the powerless for their problems.

When we ask “how did the sophisticated German people allow Nazism to happen?” it might be timely to ask ourselves the same question.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Last year it was the Autonomous Region of Tibet; this year it is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. China, it seems, is undergoing another round of its periodic socio-political upheavals.

Chinese history is not customarily taught in America, so many are unaware of the regular regime changes that have taken place in China during just the past 1,000 years. These changes were not only political, but broadly cultural and religious, and they affected uncountable millions of people in this densely populated part of Asia.

Most of us are familiar with the Communist take-over of China in 1949. This event is often viewed simply as the spread of Communism during the 20th Century, and too infrequently viewed from the perspective of 1,000 years of Chinese political maneuvering. The Communist period is but a brief blip in China’s long history, a dramatic but short interlude in an otherwise multi-millennial exploration of social organization. Accordingly, the relationship, role and responsibility of the individual to the state have undergone myriad revisions.

As is true in the West, China’s political system has been inextricably bound to religious institutions, or in the case of the Communists, anti-religious institutions. These institutions – whether Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian or atheist – garnered the allegiance of many millions of people and thereby exercised social and economic influence. Over the last 1,000 years, successive Chinese Dynasties and regimes overtly and covertly played politics with religion, aligning or disassociating itself from such institutions depending upon economic and military implications. Alternately promoted or suppressed, the leaders within China’s major religious faiths oscillated between being valued advisors to emperors or labeled “parasites” and disenfranchised outcasts. The Falun-Gong movement, embraced in 1992 by Chinese authorities was then accused in 1999 of “promoting theism and jeopardizing social stability;” the Communist party persecuted Falun-Gong members and its practices were banned.

An equally powerful vein within Chinese culture is its devotion to an organized Civil Service. Historically, the bureaucratic legions of state supported workers were part of a highly regulated society which included rigorous education and examinations for civic officials. While lending stability to the apparatus of government, this highly regimented mode of social organization continues to strongly resonate through Chinese culture, and can clearly be observed in the hegemonic control of the Communist Party in China today.

China’s absolute insistence that both Tibet and the Uyghur regions are historically part of China proper is based upon the various political, religious and economic alliances that were formed and dissolved during the past millennia. The Uyghur region in western China, for example, largely populated by Turkish Moslems, was once controlled by the Mongol Empire (1206-1368AD) as was China as a whole. It was under the protection of the Mongols that Tibet established its Lamaist governmental system; the first Dalai Lama was appointed by the Mongols. The point is that for varying lengths of time, vast areas of what we today call China were in fact wholly autonomous countries or under the control of various other Empires.

In Europe, the countries cobbled together by the English, French, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and other empires have fractured. The same is true for the former Soviet Union. As the information age extends, despite its great age and military efforts to the contrary, it is reasonable to expect that China will undergo a similar deconstruction in the years to come.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Slowly but surely the “torture” debate inches closer to full disclosure and accountability. In what is most assuredly one of the darkest chapters in modern American history, our immoral use of torture to wrest “confessions and information” from “enemy combatants” and other suspects held in Guantanamo and foreign countries is finally coming to light.

In documents released by the Obama administration, details of our torture program that were otherwise unclear have become much more discernable. Even the New York Times, which along with the rest of the mainstream media has mistakenly called waterboarding “simulated drowning” has recently changed its terminology and now calls it “near drowning.” Near suffocation is even more accurate, because that is what near drowning is; the deprivation of air due to the inhalation of water to the point of deliriousness and near-death.

I objected to the term “simulated drowning” in an article published in The Sun well over a year ago, calling it inaccurate, misleading and downright deceptive. “Near drowning” comes much closer, as it sharpens one’s understanding of exactly what is happening in this particular suffocation event. Try holding your breath beyond what feels comfortable, and then hold it for ten seconds more – feel your sense of urgency and panic rise. Hold your breath ten seconds more. This experience is mild when compared to suffocation by waterboarding.

Learning that one captive was subjected to this torture 83 times in one month is stunning news. Clearly this was not for the purpose of gaining intelligence or information; rather, this was cruel and unusual punishment, pure and simple.

There are those, like former Vice-President Dick Cheney, who argue that valuable information was revealed using torture, and we should not be so quick to condemn tactics like these. Only a man who has never served in the armed forces could make such a stupid comment. By rejecting the Geneva Accords dealing with the treatment of prisoners, the past administration gave the green light to other nations that torture. Such comments are more than ironic given the explicit statement by former President Bush that “America does not torture.” Sadly, we have placed ourselves in the company of the dark forces we ostensibly oppose. Through Cheney’s upside-down logic we become the very monster we abhor.

The current debate about bringing to justice the people who authorized torture has divided our nation yet again. President Obama seems to believe that such inquiry and prosecution will be too hurtful to America. Many Republican leaders staunchly defend the past administration, while condemning torture. Some Democrats prefer prosecutions in an effort to prove America is a land of justice and law. A “Truth” commission with no prosecutorial power has been proposed and rejected.

At the same time, a new batch of photographs showing the gross mistreatment of American-held prisoners will inevitably come to light. This will undoubtedly be shocking and disturbing, and serve to fuel the torture debate even more. At least everyone is on the same page now; no one denies that America tortured. We must honestly come to terms with that uncomfortable fact; it won’t be easy or fun, and not at all entertaining. Like any society that honestly examines and admits to its failures, it may serve, however, to better our nation in the end.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites