Racism in the Big Brother house is of course important. It is admirable that 20,000 people have complained about the alleged bullying, that the Indian Government has expressed concern, and that Labour MP Keith Vaz has raised the issue in the House of Commons. We can only hope that the £300,000 appearance fee Shilpa Shetty has received goes some way to cushioning the hard times she has endured.
Big Brother is an illusion. The contestants could click their fingers, and the nightmare will end. This is not so for the housemates at Guantànamo Bay, who wake each morning to a genuine Orwellian nightmare. They have no plush chairs in the diary room in which to relax. Their only solace is the blissful ignorance of sleep, or a final release through suicide.
“It is not ‘suicide’ anymore,” says Clive Stafford-Smith. “It is called ‘manipulative injurious behaviour’ now. That way, the politicians and military men can claim that there are no suicide attempts at Guantanamo.”
Stafford-Smith is speaking at the offices of Clifford Chance at Canary Wharf, on behalf of the Mary Ward Legal Centre. The title of his talk is Secret Prisons and Ghost Prisoners, about the 14,000 people detained without lawyers or a trial in the name of the ‘War on Terror’. There is apparently a certain chauvinism in the military, and it is assumed that women are not militant. Stafford-Smith only knows of three female detainees, but there may be more. Most of those imprisoned remain unidentified, beyond the reach of the media, legal aid, and the rule of law. Guantànamo is the tip of a sinister iceberg.
Continue reading “Ghost Prisoners at Guantànamo”
Diversity on the Space Shuttle
President Richard Nixon, on 20th July 1969:
Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one, one in their pride of what you have done and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.
Don’t forget that there is another Shuttle Mission in progress at the moment: STS116. I’ve been listening to the cockpit communications this afternoon, which (as I have mentioned before) I find quite medative.
It might be a cliche to draw attention to the diversity of the shuttle crews (much was made of the fact that the ill-fated Columbia crew included an Indian and Israeli astronauts). To point out that this person is a woman, or that person is black, seems an odd thing to do when they are in orbit, hundreds of miles above the earth.
But, when we continue to see so many examples of intolerance and racism in the world, I think it is worth re-emphasising, and celebrating the equality of race, gender and religion we see aboard the space shuttles. These people, the vanguard of human exploration of space, are drawn exclusively from the group of those who have transcended prejudice and tribalism to become representatives of, simply, humanity. Do you suppose someone with Ahmedinejad’s world-view could muster the attitude of co-operation necessary to explore the heavens?
Acting on Doubt
I’ve been reading a lot of Andrew Sullivan’s blog recently. He’s been plugging his new book, The Conservative Soul, and writing a great deal about how doubt is the essence of conservativism, as he sees it. By contrast, he says, much of right-wing politics in the USA has an Evangelical hue, and the certainty of the Christianist zealots is not actually very conservative at all.
This take has attracted many critics, including Jonah Goldberg at the National Review (which I came upon via Reason Magazine):
The fact that evil is rarely defeated by people who are unsure they are right is lost on Sullivan.
I disagree. Just because you are unsure whether you are right, it does not mean you cannot be sure that other people are wrong! You only really need confidence in the latter premise, to make a stand against evil.
That's just what they want you to do!
Michael Leeden at The Corner, one of the National Review Online blogs:
You can be quite sure that the terror masters saw the election as a great victory, and Rumsfeld’s ritual sacrifice as a moment of glory. It will encourage them to redouble their efforts, both in Iraq/Afghanistan, and elsewhere. They believe they have Bush’s number, that they have broken him, and all they must do now is keep the blood flowing to accelerate our retreat.
This rhetoric from the terrorist perspective really annoys me. Why should we care about the terrorists’ opinion of us? Why do we let them get under our skin in this way?
The US mid-term elections were apparently free and fair. Division of power. Checks and balances on the executive. A 219 year-old constitution working exactly as it should. Democracy, working.
The terrorists might think that that they are winning. But by demonstrating a robust democratic system, we know that actually, it is we (or rather, our American friends) who have the upper hand. Doing something that is right, despite what opinion others may have of us, is the true sign of integrity and strength.
The obverse is also true. Doing something that is wrong, merely to save face, is a sign of weakness. This is why George W Bush is essentially a poor leader, lacking integrity, as we saw this week with volte-face regarding Donald Rumsfeld. An infringement of our civil liberties, or human rights, in the name of the War on Terror may well worry a few of those who are planning to do us harm. As we torture and detain, the terrorists may indeed think “Ooh dear, they have struck a blow against us.” But once again, those terrorists would be wrong. Just because these fanatics do not percieve the value of civil liberties, that does not mean such concepts have no place in our own thinking.
Political opposition in America
“Those stupid Americans.” This must be one of the most common and lazy stereotypes peddled by the patrons of pubs and bars the length and breadth of these British Isles. We chuckle at their fat parochial ways, and delight in the statistics saying that, what, only 0.001% of Americans have passports or something? Of course, President Bush is the most visible representative of his fellow citizens, and his brush finds and tars them all. Is it his plain-spoken, folksy charm, that does it… or the utter lack of discernible leadership and logic in his governing?
Its always worth remembering that the ideological fight against Bush has been led by Americans. Neither the 2000 or ’04 elections were hardly landslides, and the electoral maps broken down by county or congressional district paint a very different political picture from the ‘Red State vs Blue State’ analysis we are usually subjected to.
Justin at Chicken Yoghurt has been linking to Keith Olbermann’s special reports. These stinging ‘special comments’ call George Bush to account on a weekly basis, in a manner which seems to elude the Democrats at present. His seething indignity, as yet another liberty trampled upon, is compelling. By repeatedly using the word ‘Sir,’ as he directly challenges the President, he manages to show a respect for the office while displaying utter contempt for the man who holds it:
I don’t know the viewing figures for Olbermann’s Countdown, but MSNBC is a major network, so I imagine it has some degree of influence over public opinion.