Travesty

[solarbird]

So, where are we this morning?

The US military is holding what appears to be a kangaroo-court trial for Bilal Hussein, the Pulitzer Prize winning news photographer they arrested and detained without trial or charge some time ago, in Iraq.

Harper's Magazine has some rare coverage, rare in part because the US military imposed a gag order - though they have been leaking commentary against him to friendly blogs. (This allegation is not unique to this article, and the use of "supportive" media in this general manner has been confirmed by the White House in the very recent past.) Harper's reports that in this show trial, Mr. Hussein can't cross-examine witnesses, is barred from legal council in court (in direct violation of Iraqi law), his communications with his lawyer are monitored personally by US military, five US military attys are acting as Iraqi prosecutor (in direct violation of Iraqi law), and, oh yeah, the judge said before the trial started that he planned to convict.

I have written many letters to dictatorial governments in protests of identical actions before. Similarly to many of these cases, they're actively using their propaganda wing to propagate a PR campaign against the photographer, and working to suppress other coverage. Please understand that if this material is correct - as after these long six years I no longer find even remotely unlikely - this is a bog-standard show trial, the sort put on against political opponents of any type in any common dictatorship.

And that's where we are today.

Comments

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

Yeah the white house has been gunning for that guy since 2005 when they leaked info to this lapdog blog http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/074442.php and now they got him.

However as this quote shows from Ethics in America- Under Orders, Under Fire [Ethics in the Military, Part I]

Moderator: You are safely traveling with an enemy unit as a foreign war correspondent. As fate would have it the enemy unit you are traveling with is about to ambush an American unit.

Jennings: As a reporter you have to make the decision going in that there is a possibility that you may come upon an American unit. My feeling is that, as a reporter, you have to make that decision before you went. And that if you are in, you are in. I would live in fear of coming across an American unit.

Moderator: So if you made that decision you would then film the enemy unit shooting the American unit?

Jennings: (Long pause thinking) No? I guess I wouldn't. I'll tell you now what I?m feeling rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with the enemy I would do what I could to warn the Americans.

Moderator: Even if it means not getting the live coverage?

Jennings: I don?t have much doubt it would mean my life. I?m glad this is hypothetical. I don?t think I could bring myself to participate in that fashion, by not warning the Americans. Some other reporters may feel otherwise.

Wallace: Some other reporters would feel otherwise. I would regard it simply as another story I was there to tell.

Moderator: Enemy soldiers shooting and killing American soldiers? Could you imagine how you would report that to the American people?

Wallace: Yes, I can. (Talking down to Jennings) Frankly, I?m astonished to hear Peter say that. You are a reporter. Granted you are an American. But you are a reporter covering combat. And I?m at a loss to understand why, because you are an American; you would not cover that story.

Moderator: Don?t you have a higher duty as an American citizen to do all you can to save the lives of American soldiers rather than this journalistic ethic of reporting the fact?

Wallace: No. You don?t have the higher duty. You are a reporter. Your job is to cover what is going on in that war. I would be calling Peter to say, ?What do you mean you?re not going to cover the story.?

Jennings: I think he?s right. I chickened out. I agree with Mike intellectually. I really do. And I wish at the time, I?d made another decision. I would like to have made his decision.

Returning to the dialog from the ethics panel discussion at the opening of this paper - following the exchange between Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace the moderator turns to Colonel George M. Connell, United States Marine Corps, and asks his response to the dialog he had just heard.

Moderator: Colonel Connell, I can see the venomous reaction you are having in hearing all this.

Colonel Connell: (Angrily) I feel utter contempt. Two days later they (the reporters ? Jennings and Wallace) are both walking off my hilltop and they get ambushed and they?re lying there wounded. And they?re going to expect I?m going to send Marines up there to get them. They?re just journalists. They?re not Americans. Is that a fair reaction? You can?t have it both ways. But I?ll do it. And that?s what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get?(grippingly) a couple of journalists.

The real probem is the press wants to actually have the protection of the law while underminding it.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

The real problem with the government and the military is they want to undermine and be outside the laws while using them as a stick to assault anyone who doesn't land on their side of the fence.

But it's good to see that the colonel basically used the exact same logical argument ("I don't like it, but it's my job to do this thing, but I'll do it") to justify why he thought the journalists were contemptible ... for holding themselves to that same standard.

Apparently having honor and deeply believing in what you do is only worthy of acknowledgement and gratitude if you are killing people in the process.

[solarbird]

Y'know what? Let's say this photographer is guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Of what, fuck, I dunno. I don't even care. Whatever the hell you want. Name it.

Lots of people in show trials are actually guilty. A lot of the show trials dictatorships run actually are of people who have violated the laws, such as they are, of those states.

That doesn't make the show trials, the rigging of the judicial system, the creation of sham courts which inherently undermine both the concept of impartial justice and the rule of law in any system in which they take place, any better.

If he's this obviously this guilty of actual crimes, then why the fuck are they doing this? If he's that obviously guilty of actual crimes, and they know it - why do they need this sham? It's a question you cannot avoid asking and which defenders of this travesty have a duty, in my opinion, to answer.

And this is how confidence in the justice system is destroyed. It has been demonstrated - repeatedly - that you cannot just "take their word," whoever "they" happen to be in any particular case. That's the underlying core of open and transparent systems - everybody can see what's going on. That transparency is one of the things this administration has been working to destroy since it took office, and those actions, historically, are never for the good. And I don't think it's any different this time.

[solarbird]

Y'know what's funny? I got this from tinlail and the Ron-Paul-is-a-tool-of-racists meme slung at me from llachglin in my inbox in the exact same download. Awesome!

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

No this is how trust in the media is destoryed. AP has repeatedly lied about this guy. I do not trust anything the media has said. I do not believe that laws are being violated in this case. I think it is clear to any one that has looked at this mans work, whoses side he is on. This man is around when innocent be people are killed.

You are a defending a man who would see you killed in an instance, you are fool for defending him, or his cohorts

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

Without transparency and full disclosure of the facts of the case, who can be trusted as telling the truth? I am strongly disinclined to trust the shrub and company which by extension now includes the entire US Government.

Rather than a show trial, let us have a fully impartial trial, by preference in the International Criminal Court in the Hague but oh dear, your Master the shrub doesn't recognise them, does he? Causes a few problems to have someone looking under rocks he'd rather people don't look under...

[solarbird]

This is really two replies, neither of which actually dealt with the content of my comment.

First: So are you saying that no data sources can be trusted except the administration? Are you asserting that Harper's Magazine is lying about the trial conditions? If so, we really have nothing further to talk about on this topic, since neither of us are actually there in the courtroom.

If that is the case, however, I have a replacement first question: are you also arguing that all media have been lying about the things I've been railing against?

Second: "You are a defending a man who would see you killed in an instance, you are fool for defending him, or his cohorts" - that requires a list response.

A: I've defended the rights of Nazis to stage their little fascist marches, and they're happy to say outright that I should be shot, so this ain't new. If you only defend the rights of people you like, then you aren't defending the rights of anyone at all. You're defending the privileges of your friends.

B: You don't even know that. You're extrapolating that from not liking some of his photographs. I don't know either. More importantly, see A; I don't care. A show trial is a show trial is a perversion of justice.

C: Before you go there, I remind you yet again that I was warning about Islamist fundamentalism in 1998, trying to get the US government to stop supporting Pakistan's little Taliban experiment up in Afghanistan, and how if we weren't careful, we were gonna pay for that, so I'm not some fucking babe in the woods on this topic. Nobody cared because either there were too many arguments about semen-stained dresses, or it was "boring." Maybe if people would pay a little more fucking attention to me on these matters, we could maybe avoid a few more disasters. Wouldn't that be nice?

[solarbird]

And I say again: If his guilt is so obvious, why stage a rigged show trial?

[loopback.livejournal.com]

So people who lie shouldn't be given proper legal counsel or proper court proceedings? Will you be attempting to start a similar kangaroo court for the various members of the current administration who have been documented as lying in multiple instances, and therefore cannot be trusted?

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Ron Paul IS a tool of racists, among other things. He's the only candidate actively campaigning to roll back the legal benefits of the civil rights movement, though of course he doesn't come right out and say that's what he's doing. He's just against federal anti-discrimination law and pretty much all federal law period. If he got his way, we'd be back to de facto Jim Crow in no time. Yet somehow you group me with tinlail when I point this out?

If you want political allies, you'd do best not to give cover to racist-enabling scumbags like Ron Paul.

Honestly, I think Bush is better for the country than Paul would be.

[wrog]

I guess I'm not getting the joke. What does the one have to do with the other? Are you seriously suggesting some kind of equivalence?

[solarbird]

Only in that both barrages repeated party-line memes I've seen many times before, from defenders of the respective parties.

[solarbird]

If you want political allies
Actual allies? In politics? Never had 'em. Temporary joint workings of political interests, yes. Allies - well, I thought I had one set, but that was certainly demonstrated to be wrong this past autumn.

Yet somehow you group me with tinlail when I point this out?
Only in that your commentary and his each separately repeated memes I've seen many times before, from defenders of the respective major parties, and that in both cases, I am being called a fool or worse for either "defending" or "giving cover to" someone.

Under less rancourous circumstances I would explain here how since the primary source of oppressive power-collection is currently the Federal government, it is best to try to move centres of power away from that central government and to the various state governments, and how I am fully aware that will create other nasty fights for me, people like me, and people unlike me, but at least this way the situation would be destabilised, and in these situations - where one is losing badly - destabilisation is opportunity. Perhaps later.

For a change, in semi-agreement w/you. =)

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

You may have more fondness for the major parties than I do, and we disagree on the Paul/Bush issue (at least Paul would be trying to do *some* things right), but we're in total agreement on Paul being a repressive racist immigrant hating environment destroying fundie.

But Bush is, de facto if not in thought, an environment & civil rights destorying fundie, plus he's the pawn of people who are quite successfully creating a police state. I'll grant you, he's probably not actually racist and is all for immigrants as long as they're filling low wage jobs in his companies.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

There's nothing magical about the states. So instead of one big fight you have 50 smaller ones, and only one that's directly relevant to your daily life. On the other hand, you've just written off 49/50th of people in the same circumstances to their own individual fates. You couldn't plan a more divide-and-conquer strategy. There's a reason that slave-holding states were the ones that most enthusiastically supported strong states rights when the Constitution was drafted.

Government is not the problem. Authoritarianism and repression are the problems, and government is just a set of tools that the authoritarians and anti-authoritarians both use to advance their aims. Focusing on the type of government is mistaking the tools for the underlying project. That doesn't mean states can't be used to advance positive goals, but it does mean that deliberately surrendering the federal government to the authoritarians or rejecting it as a tool altogether is a counterproductive strategy. You might as well open your toolbox and throw out your hammer because a screwdriver can nail something in a pinch.

[solarbird]

So instead of one big fight you have 50 smaller ones, and only one that's directly relevant to your daily life. On the other hand, you've just written off 49/50th of people in the same circumstances to their own individual fates.
And if it's 50 battles in active contention instead of one big lost cause encompassing all of the states, that's better.

I never said there was anything magical about the states. I said that right now, the biggest source of problem is the Federal government. That wasn't true in 1964; it was indeed the opposite. But this isn't 1964.

At some point, maybe the problem will reverse centres, and people like me can be pushing things back to the Feds again.

Besides, honestly, what do you think would happen if Ron Paul got magically elected President as an independent? (He's not winning the GOP nod, obviously; he's not an authoritarian.) Congress would strip powers off the presidency so fast - it'd be amazing. And, I might add, fucking awesome. He wouldn't get a whole hell of a lot done, but I'm okay with that. The institution, the office - it'd be sized down quite nicely, whether he really wanted it to be or not. (And, really, he kinda does, so why not?)

[avram]

If he really is guilty, as you say, and if the evidence of his guilt really is as obvious as you claim, and the evidence of his defense really is as blatantly false as you claim -- in other words, if everything you say is true -- then a fair trial would find him guilty.

So why not have a fair trial under a fair judge? What's the harm?

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Which goes to reinforce my alien contention that both parties are really faces of the same underlying power-bloc: the appearance of a two-party system is simply a front to keep the punters enthralled. Gods forbid that any of them should actually get out there and vote -- that in itself would destabilise the present mutually-comfortable (for the two party blocs) stalemate.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

To serve as a chilling example to others who might actually dig something up that was fundamentally destabilising to the current cozy arrangements -- but that should be obvious, anyway, even to most 'insiders'.