"Police gunned down innocent man", states the Sydney Morning Herald. One day the Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was a potential terrorist and the next an innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time (Stockwell station in London, to be precise, a few minutes walk from my former home.)
The London police are looking for a number of men allegedly behind last week's attempted attacks. It's an essential job and hopefully successful. This doesn't alter the facts that an innocent man has been murdered. Phil Gomes explains what is at stake:
"Jean Charles de Menezes was undoubtedly a man of colour, so he now automatically comes under suspicion because of circumstance and the tenor of the times, and of course Jean Charles de Menezes will just be considered collateral damage as far as those who wish to tighten a noose around our civil liberties. They’ll say 'but if he had nothing to fear he would still be alive', but Jean Charles de Menezes as a man of the global south probably knew better than any of us that police with unlimited powers are something to be feared."
We are seeing the birth of extra-judicial killings in the heart of Western cities. No longer hidden or kept secret by shadowy government officials, but committed under the mantra of "blame the terrorists." London mayor Ken Livingstone misses the point entirely: "The police acted to do what they believed necessary to protect the lives of the public. "This tragedy has added another victim to the toll of deaths for which the terrorists bear responsibility."
Tom Engelhardt reports on the logical extension of this new ideology, the kidnapping of "terrorism" suspects in various countries around the world by American authorities and then spirited away to dictatorships for torture. There have allegedly been over 100 of such missions since 9/11, but it's a figure impossible to clarify.
Make no mistake. John Howard would have little or no problem with introducing draconian measures to crack down on "terrorism." His suggestion this week that the London bombings had nothing to do with the Iraq war show how out of teach with reality he really is.
Let's not forget that this is a man who recently feted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ("I salute somebody in President Musharraf who has led a transition of his country to a democratic state", said Howard dishonestly.) And now we learn that Pakistan "has continued to let [extremist] groups run military-style camps to train guerilla fighters." Turning a blind eye to such dangers is a familiar Western tactic. One of the main sources of Islamic extremism is Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and yet both governments are working closely with the Americans and British. What part of "blowback" do they not understand?
The London police are looking for a number of men allegedly behind last week's attempted attacks. It's an essential job and hopefully successful. This doesn't alter the facts that an innocent man has been murdered. Phil Gomes explains what is at stake:
"Jean Charles de Menezes was undoubtedly a man of colour, so he now automatically comes under suspicion because of circumstance and the tenor of the times, and of course Jean Charles de Menezes will just be considered collateral damage as far as those who wish to tighten a noose around our civil liberties. They’ll say 'but if he had nothing to fear he would still be alive', but Jean Charles de Menezes as a man of the global south probably knew better than any of us that police with unlimited powers are something to be feared."
We are seeing the birth of extra-judicial killings in the heart of Western cities. No longer hidden or kept secret by shadowy government officials, but committed under the mantra of "blame the terrorists." London mayor Ken Livingstone misses the point entirely: "The police acted to do what they believed necessary to protect the lives of the public. "This tragedy has added another victim to the toll of deaths for which the terrorists bear responsibility."
Tom Engelhardt reports on the logical extension of this new ideology, the kidnapping of "terrorism" suspects in various countries around the world by American authorities and then spirited away to dictatorships for torture. There have allegedly been over 100 of such missions since 9/11, but it's a figure impossible to clarify.
Make no mistake. John Howard would have little or no problem with introducing draconian measures to crack down on "terrorism." His suggestion this week that the London bombings had nothing to do with the Iraq war show how out of teach with reality he really is.
Let's not forget that this is a man who recently feted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ("I salute somebody in President Musharraf who has led a transition of his country to a democratic state", said Howard dishonestly.) And now we learn that Pakistan "has continued to let [extremist] groups run military-style camps to train guerilla fighters." Turning a blind eye to such dangers is a familiar Western tactic. One of the main sources of Islamic extremism is Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and yet both governments are working closely with the Americans and British. What part of "blowback" do they not understand?
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Pakistan's military establishment, which is the real bedrock of Pakistan the nation state, never gave up its investment in mujahedin (religious warriors) or madrassas (religious schools). The reasons for this are complex but no less criminal than America’s investment in Israeli tanks or Islam Karimov’s secret police. I think Musharraf feels he cannot make any serious attempt to remove the structures which create militant extremists because he fears his ouster. There exists in Pakistan a large band of mainly middle ranking army and military intelligence officers who were directly involved in the creation of the mujahedin, and who are quite attached to them. Musharraf and the present army elite are products of the period just around independence. They are the last generation of the British-educated, secular-oriented officer corp and they have a severe personal distaste for the more orthodox types. Of course, that did not stop them from supporting such elements out of opportunism.* The problem is that many of the middle ranking officers are more enamored to orthodox Islam, the ways of the Taliban, etc. They are a minority within Pakistan, but a powerful one. They have the potential to be even more powerful once Musharraf drops off the scene.
So what has the Western response to all this been? Perhaps something is happening behind the scenes, but I doubt it. Based on publicly availably information, it is difficult to see any significant Western dialogue with Pakistan’s mainstream, secular political parties. Pakistan’s economy is only surviving (and therefore, so too Musharraf) because of billions in American (and some British and other EU) aid. You can’t tell me that those billions don’t give the United States a powerful lever to drive Musharraf towards democracy, the removal of the religious schools, and, eventually his abdication. It might not be an easy, instantaneous process, but I struggle to find any evidence of such a process being promoted. At present, Musharraf continues to quite skillfully create a political environment in which, without him, there is a political vacuum in Pakistan, thereby making him indispensable to Western interests. To give but one example, we hear from time to time that some significant Al Qaeda figure has been captured in Pakistan. There’s rarely significant analysis of who exactly the person is. But the news reports give important political capital to Bush, Blair, et al because it ‘proves’ to the public that we are winning the war. It also avoids serious analysis of the social and political situation in Pakistan, which is dire.
* A fact Musharraf conveyed himself when he visited Australia. Of course, not in front of the mainstream press, but at a small dinner engagement hosted by the local Pakistani community. It suffices to say my spies were present. ;-)
AAP today:
But former London police chief John Stevens defended the tactics.
"I sent teams to Israel and other countries hit by suicide bombers where we learned a terrible truth," he wrote in the News of the World.
"There is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfil his mission - destroy his brain instantly, utterly. That means shooting him with devastating power in the head, killing him immediately."
The collateral damage from the Israeli occupation just keeps spreading.
And there's more on the guy here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1535565,00.html
Heard the same report (and as Geoffrey Robertson said on Lateline, how many Aussies are in the UK also overstaying their visa?)
More innocents shot, more fear created, and I fear, little public outcry...
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