lubna
19-08-2005, 18:03
John Pilger fears for free speech
If those who seek to understand what drives people to
commit terrorist
acts are vilified as "just one notch less despicable"
themselves, we
can say goodbye to freedom of speech.
By John Pilger
New Statesman (London) | www.newstatesman.co.uk
Monday, August 22, 2005
http://www.newstatesman.com/nssubsfilter.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDispla\
yURN=200508220016
Thomas Friedman is a famous columnist on the New York
Times. He has
been described as "a guard dog of US foreign policy".
Whatever
America's warlords have in mind for the rest of
humanity, Friedman
will bark it. He boasts that "the hidden hand of the
market will never
work without a hidden fist". He promotes bombing
countries and says
World War Three has begun.
Friedman's latest bark is about free speech, which his
country's
constitution is said to safeguard. He wants the State
Department to
draw up a blacklist of those who make "wrong"
political statements. He
is referring not only to those who advocate violence,
but to those who
believe US actions are the root cause of the current
terrorism. The
latter group, which he describes as "just one notch
less despicable
than the terrorists", includes most Americans and
Britons, according
to the latest polls.
Friedman wants a "War of Ideas report" which names
those who try to
understand and explain, for example, why London was
bombed. These are
"excuse-makers" who "deserve to be exposed". He
borrows the term
"excuse-makers" from James Rubin, who was Madeleine
Albright's chief
apologist at the State Department. Albright, who rose
to secretary of
state under President Clinton, said that the death of
half a million
Iraqi infants as a result of a US-driven blockade was
a "price" that
was "worth it". Of all the interviews I have filmed in
official
Washington, Rubin's defence of this mass killing is
unforgettable.
Farce is never far away in these matters. The
"excuse-makers" would
also include the CIA, which has warned that "Iraq
[since the invasion]
has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for
the next
generation of 'professionalised' terrorists". On to
the Friedman/Rubin
blacklist go the spooks!
Like so much else during the Blair era, this
McCarthyite rubbish has
floated across the Atlantic and is now being recycled
by the Prime
Minister as proposed police-state legislation, little
different from
the fascist yearnings of Friedman and other
extremists. For Friedman's
blacklist, read Tony Blair's database of proscribed
opinions,
bookshops, websites. The human rights lawyer Louise
Christian asks:
"Are those who feel a huge sense of injustice about
the same causes as
the terrorists - Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on
terrorism, Guantanamo
Bay, Abu Ghraib - to be stopped from speaking
forthrightly about their
anger? Because terrorism is now defined in our law as
actions abroad,
will those who support liberation movements in, for
example, Kashmir
or Chechnya be denied freedom of expression?" Any
definition of
terrorism, she points out, should "encompass the
actions of terrorist
states engaged in unlawful wars". Of course, Blair is
silent on
western state terrorism in the Middle East and
elsewhere; and for him
to moralise about "our values" insults the fact of his
blood-crime in
Iraq. His budding police state will, he hopes, have
the totalitarian
powers he has longed for since 2001, when he suspended
habeas corpus
and introduced unlimited house arrest without trial.
The law lords
have tried to stop this. Last December, Lord Hoffmann
said that
Blair's attacks on human rights were a greater threat
to freedom than
terrorism. On 26 July, Blair emoted that the entire
British nation was
under threat and abused the judiciary in terms, as
Simon Jenkins
noted, "that would do credit to his friend Vladimir
Putin".
Should you be tempted to dismiss all this as esoteric
or merely mad,
travel to any Muslim community in Britain, especially
in the
north-west, and sense the state of siege and fear. On
15 July, Blair's
Britain of the future was glimpsed when the police
raided the Iqra
Learning Centre and bookshop near Leeds. The Iqra
Trust is a
well-known charity that promotes Islam worldwide as "a
peaceful
religion which covers every walk of life". The police
smashed down the
door, wrecked the shop and took away anti-war
literature which they
described as "anti-western".
Among this was, reportedly, a DVD of George Galloway
addressing the US
Senate and a New Statesman article of mine illustrated
by a
much-published photograph of a Palestinian man in Gaza
attempting to
shield his son from Israeli bullets before the boy was
shot to death.
The photograph was said to be "working people up",
meaning Muslim
people. Clearly, David Gibbons, this journal's
esteemed art director,
who chose this illustration, will be called before the
Blair
Incitement Tribunal. One of my books, The New Rulers
of the World, was
also apparently confiscated. It is not known whether
the police have
yet read the chapter that documents how the Americans,
with help from
MI6 and the SAS, created, armed and bankrolled the
terrorists of the
Islamic mujahedin, not least Osama Bin Laden.
The raid was deliberately theatrical, with the media
tipped off. Two
of the alleged 7 July bombers had been volunteers in
the shop almost
four years ago. "When they became hardliners," said a
community youth
worker, "they left and have never been back, and
they've had nothing
to do with the shop." The raid was watched by
horrified local people,
who are now scared, angry and bitter. I spoke to
Muserat Sujawal, who
has lived in the area for 31 years and is respected
widely for her
management of the nearby Hamara community centre. She
told me, "There
was no justification for the raid. The whole point of
the shop is to
teach how Islam is a community-based religion. My
family has used the
shop for years, buying, for example, the Arabic
equivalent of Sesame
Street. They did it to put fear in our hearts." James
Dean, a Bradford
secondary-school teacher, said: "I am teaching myself
Urdu because I
have multi-ethnic classes, and the shop has been very
helpful with
tapes."
The police have the right to pursue every lead in
their hunt for
bombers, but scaremongering is not their right. Sir
Ian Blair, the
Metropolitan Police commissioner, who understands how
the media can be
used and spends a lot of time in television studios,
has yet to
explain why he announced that the killing of the
Brazilian Jean
Charles de Menezes was "directly linked" to terrorism,
when he must
have known the truth. Muslim people all over Britain
report the
presence of police "video vans" cruising their
streets, filming
everyone. "We have become like ghettoes under siege,"
said one man too
frightened to be named. "Do they know what this is
doing to our young
people?"
On 26 July, Blair said, "We are not having any of this
nonsense about
[the bombings having anything] to do with what the
British are doing
in Iraq or Afghanistan, or support for Israel, or
support for America,
or any of the rest of it. It is nonsense and we have
to confront it as
that." This "raving", as the US writer Mike Whitney
observed, "is part
of a broader strategy to dismiss the obvious facts
about terror and
blame the victims of American-British aggression. It's
a tactic that
was minted in Tel Aviv and perfected over 37 years of
occupation. It
is predicated on the assumption that terrorism emerges
from an
amorphous, religious-based ideology that transforms
its adherents into
ruthless butchers."
Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has
examined every
act of suicide terrorism over the past 25 years. He
refutes the
assumption that suicide bombers are mainly driven by
"an evil ideology
independent of other circumstances". He said: "The
facts are that,
since 1980, half the attacks have been secular. Few of
the terrorists
fit the standard stereotype . . . Half of them are not
religious
fanatics at all. In fact, over 95 per cent of suicide
attacks around
the world [are not about] religion, but a specific
strategic purpose -
to compel the United States and other western
countries to abandon
military commitments on the Arabian peninsula and in
countries they
view as their homeland or prize greatly . . . The link
between anger
over American, British and western military [action]
and al-Qaeda's
ability to recruit suicide terrorists to kill us could
not be
tighter."
So we have been warned, yet again. Terrorism is the
logical
consequence of US and British "foreign policy", whose
infinitely
greater terrorism we need to recognise, and debate, as
a matter of
urgency.
If those who seek to understand what drives people to
commit terrorist
acts are vilified as "just one notch less despicable"
themselves, we
can say goodbye to freedom of speech.
By John Pilger
New Statesman (London) | www.newstatesman.co.uk
Monday, August 22, 2005
http://www.newstatesman.com/nssubsfilter.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDispla\
yURN=200508220016
Thomas Friedman is a famous columnist on the New York
Times. He has
been described as "a guard dog of US foreign policy".
Whatever
America's warlords have in mind for the rest of
humanity, Friedman
will bark it. He boasts that "the hidden hand of the
market will never
work without a hidden fist". He promotes bombing
countries and says
World War Three has begun.
Friedman's latest bark is about free speech, which his
country's
constitution is said to safeguard. He wants the State
Department to
draw up a blacklist of those who make "wrong"
political statements. He
is referring not only to those who advocate violence,
but to those who
believe US actions are the root cause of the current
terrorism. The
latter group, which he describes as "just one notch
less despicable
than the terrorists", includes most Americans and
Britons, according
to the latest polls.
Friedman wants a "War of Ideas report" which names
those who try to
understand and explain, for example, why London was
bombed. These are
"excuse-makers" who "deserve to be exposed". He
borrows the term
"excuse-makers" from James Rubin, who was Madeleine
Albright's chief
apologist at the State Department. Albright, who rose
to secretary of
state under President Clinton, said that the death of
half a million
Iraqi infants as a result of a US-driven blockade was
a "price" that
was "worth it". Of all the interviews I have filmed in
official
Washington, Rubin's defence of this mass killing is
unforgettable.
Farce is never far away in these matters. The
"excuse-makers" would
also include the CIA, which has warned that "Iraq
[since the invasion]
has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for
the next
generation of 'professionalised' terrorists". On to
the Friedman/Rubin
blacklist go the spooks!
Like so much else during the Blair era, this
McCarthyite rubbish has
floated across the Atlantic and is now being recycled
by the Prime
Minister as proposed police-state legislation, little
different from
the fascist yearnings of Friedman and other
extremists. For Friedman's
blacklist, read Tony Blair's database of proscribed
opinions,
bookshops, websites. The human rights lawyer Louise
Christian asks:
"Are those who feel a huge sense of injustice about
the same causes as
the terrorists - Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on
terrorism, Guantanamo
Bay, Abu Ghraib - to be stopped from speaking
forthrightly about their
anger? Because terrorism is now defined in our law as
actions abroad,
will those who support liberation movements in, for
example, Kashmir
or Chechnya be denied freedom of expression?" Any
definition of
terrorism, she points out, should "encompass the
actions of terrorist
states engaged in unlawful wars". Of course, Blair is
silent on
western state terrorism in the Middle East and
elsewhere; and for him
to moralise about "our values" insults the fact of his
blood-crime in
Iraq. His budding police state will, he hopes, have
the totalitarian
powers he has longed for since 2001, when he suspended
habeas corpus
and introduced unlimited house arrest without trial.
The law lords
have tried to stop this. Last December, Lord Hoffmann
said that
Blair's attacks on human rights were a greater threat
to freedom than
terrorism. On 26 July, Blair emoted that the entire
British nation was
under threat and abused the judiciary in terms, as
Simon Jenkins
noted, "that would do credit to his friend Vladimir
Putin".
Should you be tempted to dismiss all this as esoteric
or merely mad,
travel to any Muslim community in Britain, especially
in the
north-west, and sense the state of siege and fear. On
15 July, Blair's
Britain of the future was glimpsed when the police
raided the Iqra
Learning Centre and bookshop near Leeds. The Iqra
Trust is a
well-known charity that promotes Islam worldwide as "a
peaceful
religion which covers every walk of life". The police
smashed down the
door, wrecked the shop and took away anti-war
literature which they
described as "anti-western".
Among this was, reportedly, a DVD of George Galloway
addressing the US
Senate and a New Statesman article of mine illustrated
by a
much-published photograph of a Palestinian man in Gaza
attempting to
shield his son from Israeli bullets before the boy was
shot to death.
The photograph was said to be "working people up",
meaning Muslim
people. Clearly, David Gibbons, this journal's
esteemed art director,
who chose this illustration, will be called before the
Blair
Incitement Tribunal. One of my books, The New Rulers
of the World, was
also apparently confiscated. It is not known whether
the police have
yet read the chapter that documents how the Americans,
with help from
MI6 and the SAS, created, armed and bankrolled the
terrorists of the
Islamic mujahedin, not least Osama Bin Laden.
The raid was deliberately theatrical, with the media
tipped off. Two
of the alleged 7 July bombers had been volunteers in
the shop almost
four years ago. "When they became hardliners," said a
community youth
worker, "they left and have never been back, and
they've had nothing
to do with the shop." The raid was watched by
horrified local people,
who are now scared, angry and bitter. I spoke to
Muserat Sujawal, who
has lived in the area for 31 years and is respected
widely for her
management of the nearby Hamara community centre. She
told me, "There
was no justification for the raid. The whole point of
the shop is to
teach how Islam is a community-based religion. My
family has used the
shop for years, buying, for example, the Arabic
equivalent of Sesame
Street. They did it to put fear in our hearts." James
Dean, a Bradford
secondary-school teacher, said: "I am teaching myself
Urdu because I
have multi-ethnic classes, and the shop has been very
helpful with
tapes."
The police have the right to pursue every lead in
their hunt for
bombers, but scaremongering is not their right. Sir
Ian Blair, the
Metropolitan Police commissioner, who understands how
the media can be
used and spends a lot of time in television studios,
has yet to
explain why he announced that the killing of the
Brazilian Jean
Charles de Menezes was "directly linked" to terrorism,
when he must
have known the truth. Muslim people all over Britain
report the
presence of police "video vans" cruising their
streets, filming
everyone. "We have become like ghettoes under siege,"
said one man too
frightened to be named. "Do they know what this is
doing to our young
people?"
On 26 July, Blair said, "We are not having any of this
nonsense about
[the bombings having anything] to do with what the
British are doing
in Iraq or Afghanistan, or support for Israel, or
support for America,
or any of the rest of it. It is nonsense and we have
to confront it as
that." This "raving", as the US writer Mike Whitney
observed, "is part
of a broader strategy to dismiss the obvious facts
about terror and
blame the victims of American-British aggression. It's
a tactic that
was minted in Tel Aviv and perfected over 37 years of
occupation. It
is predicated on the assumption that terrorism emerges
from an
amorphous, religious-based ideology that transforms
its adherents into
ruthless butchers."
Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has
examined every
act of suicide terrorism over the past 25 years. He
refutes the
assumption that suicide bombers are mainly driven by
"an evil ideology
independent of other circumstances". He said: "The
facts are that,
since 1980, half the attacks have been secular. Few of
the terrorists
fit the standard stereotype . . . Half of them are not
religious
fanatics at all. In fact, over 95 per cent of suicide
attacks around
the world [are not about] religion, but a specific
strategic purpose -
to compel the United States and other western
countries to abandon
military commitments on the Arabian peninsula and in
countries they
view as their homeland or prize greatly . . . The link
between anger
over American, British and western military [action]
and al-Qaeda's
ability to recruit suicide terrorists to kill us could
not be
tighter."
So we have been warned, yet again. Terrorism is the
logical
consequence of US and British "foreign policy", whose
infinitely
greater terrorism we need to recognise, and debate, as
a matter of
urgency.