UK blogger and columnist, George Monbiot, asks "What has happened to Bush’s secret prisoners?"
Monbiot cites the 770 being held without charges at Guantanamo as well as the 22,000 being held without charges in Iraq and asks how many more are being held in the dozens of other facilities in many countries and on board ships.
It's hard to argue with Monbiot when he says he thinks Bush will probabl go down in history as the worst ever US President.
What I wonder is how many of these disappeared, who were never charged with any crime or tried in any credible court, have been buried in unmarked graves after being killed or died in custody? Their families may never know what happened to them. Their guilt or innocence ultimately unknown.
It's sad to see the United States going the way of formerly brutal and unaccountable regimes in Argentina, Chile or Paraguay. Of course, they claimed to be fighting terrorism, too.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
6 comments:
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Its not suprising that the U.S. is involved in exactly the same criminal activities that the autocratic regimes in Latin America and South East Asia, because it was U.S. military and intelligence personal who trained and supervised them in the use of those techniques of torture, psyops, and counterinsurancy tactics that they employed against their domestic populations in the 1960s to the late 1980s.
ReplyDeleteI'd highly recommend you read Naomi Kleins, Shock Doctrine, to get an insight on how those methods were employed in the Cold War and how they relate to the current situation in the War on Terror. Heres a review below.
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Shock.html
Jamesey: I was lucky enough to attend the launch of Naomi Klein's book at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto last year. She spoke about the book for about an hour and half in an interview format. But I haven't read it yet. The 'shock doctrine' has been used throughout history, so it isn't really new, though her documenting recent examples is a valuable resource.
ReplyDeleteHi Steve,
ReplyDeleteReally? And you haven't read it yet? I guess it would have still been rather illuminating listening to her interview,though I believe there are many inconsistencies in her narrative, especially since she completely neglected the role of Roger Douglas, one of the world's "trail blazing" reformers who was reputated to have travelled around the world recommending that governments should create a crisis so that the "reforms" would become more palatable to the citizenry.
After reading "Shock Doctrine" I stumbled across an excerpt from a publication commissioned by the Council on Foreign Relations for their 1980s Project that I was so disturbed by I decided to order a copy of the book of the internet to ascertain its legitamacy. I received it the other day and upon reading I learnt that it is.
In light of what transpired in 1979, two years after it was written, the 1979 Oil Crisis and its reprecussions which necessitated the reforms of the 1980s appear altogether too coincidental. It brings those events into a whole new perspective.
“The obvious danger in such a regime resides in its potential instability. Some limited loosening is by no means unequivocally undesirable. It can be seen as a rational response to the earlier tendency, which was most manifest in the 1960s, for economic integration to run far ahead of both actual and desired political integration, thereby forcing countries into suboptimal policy choices. A degree of controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980s and may be the most realistic one for a moderate international economic order. A central normative problem for the international economic order in the years ahead is how to ensure that the dis-integration indeed occurs in a controlled way and does not rather spiral into damaging restrictionism.”
Alternative to Monetary Disorder (Fred Hirsch and Michael Doyle, CFR)
James: Sounds like the neo-con programme: no international law. Just bi-lateral agreements. Self-interest above what's good for everyone. The usual selfish prick stuff. Don't buy used cars from those folks. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAs for Klein, my brother had the tickets and took me along. I actually did NOT buy her book after hearing her speak because i read "No Logo" and foud that to be a long book around a simple idea that I got early on. It seemed that Shock Doctrine might be a repeat of that: loads of examples of the idea I'm already familiar with. But good to have the supporting data if you need it.
Hi Steve,
ReplyDelete"James: Sounds like the neo-con programme: no international law. Just bi-lateral agreements. Self-interest above what's good for everyone. The usual selfish prick stuff."
I guess you could describe the Baker and Brady Plans as bi-lateral, where the U.S. in exchange for "restructuring" the loans of Third World nations, demanded that they open their markets to Western transnational corporate enterprises in the 1980s and 1990s.
That publication shows that it wasn't merely in response to the economic crisis that occured in the G77 nations, but was carefully planned prior to the events, and indicates that they were in fact planned.
I was actually refering to the Council on Foreign Relations publication when I said I ordered off the internet (Amazon). They actually published it in a book. Its no secret what their aims and agenda was. They correctly believed that most of those who read it identified with their cause and those who didn't would in the main remain oblivious.
The recent events in the global capital and trade markets can be directly traced back to the policies drafted by the authors of that book and whats really frightening to me are the considerable parallels to whats happening today and what occured in the late 1970s.
Record high levels of inflation, booming economies in the Third World, massive investments being made in infrastructure in those countries, stagnation in developed economies, a bloc of nations that are making a stand against U.S. dominance in international relations, confrontation between labour and capital )at least in France), and now discussion of reforming the world's financial system.
Heres an article that describes how the Baker Plan related to the IMF "shock therapy" reforms that it imposed on struggling Third World nations in the 1980s and former Soviet States in the 1990s.
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/5btrlf