[News] The War Against Civilisation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The War Against Civilisation

http://www.haitiaction.net/News/JM/1_1_6.html
Commonsense 508

John Maxwell

We cannot say we weren't warned. On May 6, 2002, 
the United States denounced the International 
Criminal Court, telling the United Nations that 
it would no longer consider itself bound by the 
Treaty establishing the ICC - signed by President 
Clinton in the closing days of his 
administration. Clinton had reservations about 
the court, but he believed that the US could 
negotiate compromises which would still have left 
the Court an effective tribunal for the trial of crimes against humanity.

The Bush Administration began almost as soon as 
it took office, to rail against the idea of the 
court itself, and began to blackmail smaller 
countries into signing bilateral treaties to 
(hopefully) render the Court without jurisdiction 
in those countries. The reason, according to 
various spokesmen for the US, was to protect the 
interest of American soldiers and diplomats from frivolous prosecution.

Mr Pierre Richard Prosper, a senior US diplomat 
said the May 6 letter to the UN neutralized Mr 
Clinton's signature and " ... It frees us from 
some of the obligations that are incurred by 
signature. When you sign you have an obligation 
not to take actions that would defeat the object 
or purpose of the treaty," he said.

By unsigning the treaty, the US would no longer 
have to extradite people wanted by the court, he said:

"What we've learnt from the war on terror is that 
rather than creating an international mechanism 
to deal with these issues it is better to 
organize an international mandate that authorizes 
states to use their unilateral tools to tackle the problems we have ..."

Law Free Zones

Unfortunately for the US, the world has seen what 
these unilateral arrangements can mean, at Abu 
Ghraib and Gunatanamo Bay, for example, and in 
the vast gulag archipelago for suspected 
terrorists now being operated round the world by the United States.

As one of Britians most eminent judges, Lord 
Steyn, has said, the US has created a 'law-free 
zone" where it can commit any crime against anyone without fear of prosecution.

Or so Mr Bush's advisers believe.

[]
Unless Mr Bush and his party seize power in the 
United States and remain in power for ever, 
prosecution and retribution are always in the 
offing, as the Chilean usurper/regicide Pinochet is now discovering.

One of the key loopholes the Americans believed 
they had discovered is that resiling from the ICC 
means that they do not have to extradite their 
own home-boy terrorists such as Luis Posada 
Carriles and his accomplice in murder, Orlando Bosch.

But the ICC renunciation was only the most 
significant act in a concerted US campaign to 
turn their backs not only on history but on civilization itself.

It is now clear that the US Administration and 
its dwindling band of fanatics want to turn the 
world back to medieval systems of governance, Justice and knowledge.

Global Warming: The US has worked overtime, using 
bad science, PR spin doctors and the power of 
money to try to turn back the Kyoto protocol on 
climate change. It was sheer embarrassment which 
forced the US three weeks ago to agree to 
continue being a part of the negotiating process. 
The tactic here will be to talk out the decision 
making process while the US continues to pollute 
the atmosphere and the seas and mankind's lungs 
and genes for as long as it is profitable.

Globalisation: The US is adamant that her 
merchants and usurers should be free to scrape as 
much in profit from the rest of the world as 
possible by arrangements such as the WTO and GATS 
(General Agreement on Trade in Services) which 
will allow the Walmartisation and McDonaldisation 
of the world, destroying local artisans and their 
craft and substituting the obviously superior 
American ersatz productions, spreading asthma, 
diabetes, deformity and unemployment everywhere, 
while discrete 'Free Zones' provide slave labour 
for the Cognitive Elite behind their electrified 
fences and shoot to kill policies.

While Jamaica and India must cough up the 
'uttermost farthing' for pirated DVDs and 
software, Americans will legitimately patent such 
things as the Neem Tree, Basmati Rice and eventually Reggae music.

Genetics: The United States and a cadre of rogue 
scientists will continue to plunder the Earth in 
search of desirable plants, for food and 
medicine, developed over centuries by peasants on 
the slopes of the Andes or the terraces of Assam. 
When they have found the most productive strains 
and patented them, they will then genetically 
alter them so that no further development and 
evolution is possible. These seeds will have no 
progeny, except in the tissue culture labs of 
Monsanto and Dupont. At that point, selective 
starvation (aka Eugenics) will become possible, 
as the companies which have patented life protest 
that they have run out of material and farmers in 
Peru and Jamaica and Assam and Sri lanka will not 
be able to buy planting material.

"We have a shortage" will be the claim.

And, since Mr Bush and his merry men do not 
believe in Evolution, All will be for the best in 
the best possible of all (gated) worlds. GATS: 
That desirable green space in front of the 
University of the West indies chapel at Mona 
would be greatly enhanced by a small, efficient 
Walmart. And American universities will demand 
subsidies ('national treatment') from Jamaica if 
Jamaica were unwise enough to give any assistance 
to the poor and indigent Jamaican students 
attending the UWI. If the children of the elite 
want to go to Harvard, the Jamaican government 
would have to pay their fees as well, as long as 
Harvard set up a drop shop in Jamaica.

Small Arms and Drugs: While the United States 
reserves the right to kill people with alcohol 
and tobacco, it has set its face firmly against 
ganja and cocaine, which unlike alcohol and 
tobacco are virulently dangerous substances, 
notwithstanding the fact that they kill far fewer 
people. And citing the immutable laws of Adam 
Smith and Free Trade, the Americans will refuse 
to control the export of small arms to places 
like Jamaica for the very good reason that when 
Jamaicans kill each other it is a purely domestic problem.

Oil: It is a curious fact that petroleum, which 
belongs by natural right to the United States, 
has been secreted by God under the land area and 
seas of various poor and often 'failing states'. 
And when reckless and dangerous agitators like 
Hugo Chavez claim to be the rightful owners of 
the oil under their feet, they need to understand 
that their vain presumptions are entirely without 
fundamentalist justification and are in 
sacrilegious disrespect of the bottom line.

Assaulting Liberty and Civilisation

The US Justice Department has now instituted an 
official probe with a view to criminal charges 
against the person or persons who leaked the 
state secret that president Bush had contravened 
the laws and Constitution of the United States by 
illegally ordering his National Security Agency 
to spy on Americans. A few Americans are agitated 
that this may mean some infringement of their 
civil liberties and may turn a few of them into 
unlawful combatants inhabiting some 'law-free 
zone" for the rest of their natural lives. Mr 
Bush has a divine right to break the law and exposing his crime is a crime.

I remember vividly what I was doing on the 
morning of September 11. My hair was standing on 
end before the planes struck the World Trade 
Centre. I was trolling the web and copied several 
stories about a new project called Echelon, a 
worldwide network of satellites and computers 
which had the capability to read or record the 
secrets of anyone, any company, any government, 
anywhere. The European Union was about to protest 
about Echelon, the stories said. After 9/11 there 
has been a complete absence of stories about Echelon.

Case Study: The destruction of liberty can be 
choreographed, as Hitler and Stalin both knew. 
'Obedience is good, Control better,' Stalin is 
reported to have said. And when Hitler began to 
enslave his people he started with blacks (Yes! 
Blacks! the 'spawn' of the Senegalese and 
Jamaican troops of the First World War armies 
occupying Germany) He next attacked homosexuals, 
Gypsies and then the Jews; picking them off one 
by one, choosing the most friendless - as Niemoller said - to begin with.

Mr Alex van Trotsenberg of the World bank 
infamously described Somalia as 'almost a 
non-country'. Haiti is obviously a non-country, and Iraq cannot be far behind.

What has happened to these two countries may be 
instructive. It was in Iraq, 8,000 years ago, we 
are told, that civilisation as we understand it, first developed.

After suffering defeat in the arranged Gulf War, 
the Iraqis were starved and bombed continuously 
for ten years, their land contaminated by 
depleted uranium, their children poisoned, the 
wombs of the women so corrupted by radioactivity 
that many produced monsters. One American general 
said in 2002 there was nothing left to bomb in 
Iraq but the odd outhouse and a few unsuspecting 
shepherds, yet the US and British unleashed 
"Shock and Awe" against these people, a barbarous 
attempt to cow them into surrender, to un-man 
them and convince them to greet the 'liberators' with flowers and kisses.

The reality was different. "She was standing in 
the wrong place, so I shot her" said one 18 year 
old American GI. Iraq's historic places and 
museums were looted and vandalized. Mr Rumsfeld 
was unperturbed: "Stuff happens" he said. Unlike 
Reichsmarshal Herman Goering, he did not reach 
for his revolver on hearing the word 'Culture' - 
He probably did not understand it.

The Fight Against Slavery

Two hundred and one years after freeing 
themselves from slavery, the Haitians are once 
again engaged in the same struggle. The Haitians 
have been abandoned by their friends, their 
relatives and the world police, terrorized by the 
Americans, Canadians, Brazilians and French, and by the United Nations.

Their president and his family were kidnapped, 
transported out of his country as 'cargo' and 
finally found refuge in South Africa, one of the 
few places with the cojones to defy the United States in such matters.

The Haitian people are being raped, tortured, 
falsely imprisoned, brutalized and massacred by 
known and convicted criminals, one of whom is now 
running for President under elections sponsored 
by George Bush and Kofi Annan. The lawful 
President is being denigrated, vilified and 
libelled for building more schools in five years 
than had been built in a century, for giving the 
children of Haiti their own radio station, for 
setting up a medical school open to poor 
students, for instituting a disaster preparedness 
network, for liberty and democracy.

And, what happened ten years ago when 
American-sponsored Generals first removed 
Aristide is happening again. Rape and murder are 
again instruments of policy under the supervision 
of the man who oversaw Aristide's kidnapping, former US Ambassador Foley.

Lynn Duff, an American journalist reports on a woman she met in Haiti:

"My daughter who is four years old was sleeping 
on a mat on the floor. They kicked her out of the 
way. My other daughter is nine years old. She was 
so scared she didn't even cry. ...The police took 
my husband away because they said he was a 
chimère. [terrorist]They shackled him and beat 
him on his head. Then they took him out of the house.

" ... One policeman showed his identification 
card and said, "See what this is? It means that I 
can do with you whatever I want." But it was too 
dark for us to see the name on the card, even 
though we recognized it as a policeman's identification card.

"... one police officer said to me, 'Don't worry, 
you'll enjoy it.' I think you can imagine what 
happened next. All of the police officers raped 
me, both in the natural place for having sex and 
also in the unnatural way, in my rear.

"The whole time my children were there watching. 
When the police officers finished with me, they 
went for my oldest girl, the one who is here with 
me today. They wanted to violate her as well but 
she is too small. One police officer put his 
fingers up inside of her and she bled.

Today we are here at the clinic to see the doctor 
because my daughter is in a lot of pain since the 
attack. She has pain in her body and pain in her heart."

Paul Farmer, an American professor of medicine 
and medical Anthropology has spent two decades in 
rural Haiti, teaching people to deal with 
HIV/AIDS. He has devoted his life to curing the 
world, starting in Haiti. At this moment he is in Rwanda, pursuing his mission.

I got an email from him last week. He said that 
he had examined the priest, Father Gerard Jean 
Jujste in a prison in Port au Prince. Jean-Juste 
has committed no crime apart from being a pastor 
and leader of the Haitians,. He had also decided to run for President.

He was arrested and held on no charge. Farmer 
examined him in prison and discovered that Father 
Gerry is suffering from cancer, probably leukemia According to Farmer

"... he is not only a prisoner of conscience, one 
of hundreds in Haiti, but a sick one who needs 
more than prayers and letters of support. He 
needs proper medical care and, probably, 
chemotherapy. It's hard enough, as we know from 
our own long experience in central Haiti, to 
deliver chemotherapy anywhere in the country, but 
it's simply not possible to do so in a Haitian prison."

It was the Haitians who first abolished slavery 
and first proclaimed the universal rights of man, 
the doctrine enshrined in the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights 149 years later. If 
their very right to Liberty is now in question, can yours be far behind?

If civilization itself is under attack in Iraq, where next?

If Liberty itself is smothered in Haiti, where does that leave you?

Copyright © 2005 John Maxwell


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