Cannon fodder and military ethics

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

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CANNON FODDER AND MILITARY ETHICS

“The best men are no more fitted to be soldiers than the best metal to be turned into nails.”

Forget the Terracotta Warriors. This proverb sums up the traditional lack of esteem for the military in Imperial China. And rightly so.

No one has the right to take the life of another. Except (a) in the immediate defence of oneself or some one else and (b) where there is no other option. Moreover, the judgement that there is no other option has to be made by the prospective killers themselves. It cannot be delegated to another person (eg a general) or institution (eg a defence ministry).

As a result, it is morally impossible to be a soldier. The concept of a “good soldier” is a contradiction in terms.

Soldiers are paid killers. They kill to order on instruction from their commanders. They go to countries with which they have no organic link and kill people they do not know simply because they receive orders to do so.

In processions in peacetime soldiers wear colourful uniform, brass bands play, bunting is hung, crowds cheer. All this is intended to distract attention from the brutish nature of war. On various occasions in Britain the authorities have made strenuous efforts to prevent wounded veterans from taking part in military pageants. One instance was a march in London to celebrate Margaret Thatcher’s victory over the Argentines in the Malvinas (known as “The Falklands” to the Imperial Brits).  Another recent example involved the traditional wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. No reference to the horrific reality of war can be allowed to intrude on its glorification in public. For that would be dangerous. Then the public might begin to question the fairy-tale imagery of soldiering and that could spell trouble for recruitment, military budgets and troop morale. Every time a tourist gazes in admiration at the cavalry manoeuvring on Horse Guards’ Parade off Whitehall they abet this hypocrisy.

Let us examine the exceptions to the rule against killing set out above. First, exception (a). For killing to be justified, the life of the prospective killer must be imminently threatened by another or, where his life itself is not at risk, his physical integrity must be seriously jeopardised. Similar justification can be claimed where a person nearby is seriously threatened and that threat can be averted by the intervention of the killer. Thus, a mother whose baby is about to be killed by someone is ethically entitled to kill that person provided that no other solution is possible in the circumstances.

The important thing is that the threat must be immediate and must concern an individual. Killing cannot be justified on the grounds, proclaimed by government, that another country may be intending to invade our land. The likelihood that another country “may” invade is not sufficiently definite to justify the actual slaughter of others.  The threat must be immediate and in the mind of the killer there must be no doubt whatsoever as to whether it will occur. Even if it is our government’s view that an invasion “will definitely” take place, this still does not justify the killing of enemy troops by our soldiers. For the killer cannot delegate responsibility for his killing to another person, whether that be an individual commander, an institution or a government. He is responsible individually for his own actions. He cannot simply kill at the behest of another.

Our argument is all the clearer in the case of colonial wars of aggression undertaken with a view to conquest and plunder, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the western “democracies” have invaded and occupied territory with a view to stealing the natural resources of the countries attacked (oil, in the case of Iraq) or establishing imperial military bases and puppet regimes (in the case of both Iraq and Afghanistan). Unfortunately for the western invaders, the hitherto subservient Iraqi Government, now taking instructions from Iran, recently gave them their marching orders: the United States must withdraw its remaining troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.

To return to the circumstances in which killing is justified. The killer must be personally convinced that the person he kills is about to kill someone else. Take a group of soldiers who come upon an enemy encampment where the soldiers are preparing lunch. It cannot be justifiable to kill those soldiers as they do not pose an immediate threat – even though it is possible that, in a few hours’ time, they may be shooting at you. Similarly, it is not justifiable to bomb an enemy’s factories, even though these may constitute the basis of the enemy’s economy and thus, indirectly, sustain his ability to make war.

Now let us consider(b): no one has the right to take the life of another except where he is himself personally convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no other option. If, for instance, he can avert the threat by shoving the assailant aside, knocking them down or restraining them by other means, then this is clearly preferable to resorting to the ultimate sanction. However, he himself must take this decision. A soldier who is ordered by his commander to shoot cannot ethically do so except where he personally believes that there is no alternative if his own life or those of his comrades are to be saved. Human beings cannot be ethically killed on the say-so of someone else. However, a nuance is necessary here. Let us suppose that the prospective killer has personally given careful consideration to all the circumstances and has concluded that the conditions set out in (a) and (b) have been met. If he then agrees with his commanding officer that there is no option but to kill, then the killing is ethically permissible.

We have immense sympathy for the British and American foot-soldiers killed in Iraq as also for those members of the International Security Assistance Force (aka, the army of occupation) still being killed, as we write, in Afghanistan. They have been stationed in a foreign country which poses no threat, immediate or otherwise, to their own countries. Most of them, we are sure, knew very little about Iraq or Afghanistan or the history of the Middle East. Their knowledge of Islam is certain not to have been of the highest order. The British swaddies involved are youngsters of 18 or 19 from Bradford or Hull, whose lives are being snuffed out prematurely in a foreign country about which they know very little.

We find it particularly stomach-churning to see the po-faced UK Prime Minister David Cameron – exactly like his predecessor Gordon Brown –  weeping crocodile tears over the deaths of British servicemen at Wootton Bassett even as he signs a death warrant for the next batch of rookies that he is dispatching pointlessly into the wastes of Helmand. He would be showing much greater respect for the dead if he had taken action to ensure that they were still alive today in their home towns and villages instead of sending them overseas to fight America’s wars in countries where we have no business being. Instead, they are being sacrificed without mercy on the altar of British subservience to US foreign policy.

All the same, in a country like Britain or the United States, where enlistment is voluntary, the fact remains that these soldiers volunteered to join the armed forces in the full knowledge that they might well be instructed to kill other individuals about whom they knew nothing. In an army, you do not question orders, you obey them. Thus, it seems to us that, by volunteering, they bear a degree of responsibility for their tragic plight.

In mitigation, of course, it is unquestionable that armies recruit from the poorest layers of society, from among those who, without the army, might well not have a job. This was brilliantly illustrated in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2004.

However that may be, it is important to recognise that a person’s conscience cannot ethically be bought or sold. You can buy or sell a shoe or a car. You cannot barter, for material gain, your ethical responsibility. A person’s conscience remains his or hers throughout their lifetime and should determine their action at all times. Its operation is non-negotiable.

This is not to deny, of course, the almost universal flouting of this basic principle in daily life. It is accepted virtually without question that, in exchange for pay (ie the sole means whereby an individual can acquire the food and shelter necessary for his existence), an individual must subordinate to the dictates of his employer his inherent and inalienable obligation to follow the promptings of his conscience. The ethical implications are very easy to see, for instance, in industries such as tobacco or alcohol production. They are not difficult to appreciate either when it comes to the armed forces. The assumption is that when you take the Queen’s Shilling thereafter you do whatever you are told to do. Only a moment’s consideration is required, however, to comprehend the ethical vacuity of this time-honoured blackmail.

It will be asked, naturally, how a country can defend itself if the level of military response to an attack has to be left to the individual conscience of each citizen. Moreover, it is quite true that the world is full of predatory powers (eg Russia or the United States), which might well be tempted to invade a country in the absence of any defences. A major reason why Iran is presumably developing nuclear weapons is to defend itself again US aggression. It is a secret to no one that the reason why the US has not threatened to invade North Korea is because North Korea does have nuclear weapons. Iran wants to jack itself into the same position.

Thus, the possession of aggressive nuclear weaponry does insulate a country against attack.

On the other hand, the actual use of nuclear weapons cannot be justified under any circumstances. If the killing of one individual cannot be justified except for reasons (a) and (b) which we have analysed at length above, how much more is this true as regards the use of weapons which can kill hundreds of thousands, nay millions, of people. In fact, there is only one country in the world that has actually used nuclear weapons against another. That is the United States, which dropped atom bombs on Japan in Word War II.

[The uranium bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy” by the Americans, killed or wounded an estimated 150 000 people when it was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The plutonium bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man” by the Americans, killed or wounded around 75 000 people when it fell on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. From a scientific standpoint, however, the bombs were a huge success. Moreover, the military scientists involved were able to draw useful practical lessons by comparing the relative effectiveness of the two different types of bomb.]

The thing to bear in mind at all times is the principle which is the basis of all ethics: the end does not justify the means. If something is wrong, then it remains wrong, no matter how many people are affected by it, whether positively or negatively. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum.

Yet if one accepts that principle, how to defend one’s country against aggression? The only ethical answer we can give is to make our non-aggressive defences  impregnable so that no enemy can hope to get past them. The Star Wars shield proposed by the United States is an interesting proposition in this regard. If an aggressor is warned that he will destroy himself if he tries to breach our defences and yet still tries to do so, he has only himself to blame if he blows himself up. However, the United States wants to have its cake and eat it too. It is proposing to put a Star Wars shield on the Polish border to defend “Free” Europe against Russia.  At the same time, however, it insists on retaining the largest arsenal of nuclear offensive weapons that the world has ever known – with a destructive power incalculably greater than the bombs it dropped on Japan to devastating effect.

We conclude by proposing a positive defence role model, namely that of Switzerland. Switzerland’s defences, based on its citizen militia, are geared exclusively toward defending Swiss territory against aggression. Switzerland has not been invaded since the defeat of Napoleon. Nor has it invaded any other country during those two centuries. Could Switzerland perhaps be a model worth imitating?

Posted in Afghanistan, China, Europe, France, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Military, Russia, Switzerland, UK, UN, USA | Leave a comment

Reader alert: Big Brother

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Reader alert: Antigone1984.com has reason to believe that its output is being monitored on behalf of a foreign power. 


Posted in China, Europe, France, Germany, Israel, Russia, UK, UN, USA | Leave a comment

Occupy protests fizzling out

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

The Occupy protests around the world have so far achieved nothing except irritate the establishment. These protests, which began on 15 May in Madrid, have been motivated by a vague desire to correct the inequalities – the rich getting richer, the poor poorer – that have resulted from the functioning of the globalised market economy. They have involved parallel demonstrations by mostly young people in Spain, North America, London, Frankfurt, Rome, Melbourne and Chile. In most places, the police have either moved the protesters on (using pepper spray fired at point-blank range in California and Oregon) or have kept them under close surveillance (London). With winter now setting in, most of the protesters will pack up and go home, at least till the spring. No government has fallen as a result of an Occupy protest, none of the vague aspirations of the demonstrators has been met by the authorities.

What has gone wrong?

The defects of the Occupy movements are as follows:

1. A successful protest movement needs close well-coordinated organisation. The organisation of the Occupy protests has been singularly fuzzy and amateurish.

2. The Occupy movements lack a specific list of concrete demands to be presented to the authorities and promoted in the media.

3. It looks very much as if the protesters are not attacking the free market system as such, simply certain abuses (eg corporate tax avoidance) of it. Their demands are not sufficiently radical to attract the mass support needed to rattle the authorities. Except in Spain, the protests have been supported at best by a few thousand people.

3. It has not been decided how long the movements will continue in existence in the absence of a positive response from the authorities. What do they propose to do if the authorities continue to ignore them?

4. The protesters seem to be acting autonomously without international coordination.

5. No attempt has been made to establish an electoral machine to contest the establishment at the urns. As a result, the recent parliamentary election in Spain was a shoo-in for the right-wing People’s Party, which is even less likely to be sympathetic to protest than the ousted  Socialist Party.

To protest in these circumstances is simply to let off steam. The Occupy movement needs to get serious if it is to make any headway.

Posted in Australia, Chile, Economics, Germany, Italy, Politics, Spain, UK, USA | Leave a comment

Redistribute the world’s resources to achieve a just society

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

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Everyone born on this earth has an equal right to the riches of the planet.The division of the world into different countries of different sizes and with different shares of the earth’s resources is inequitable. It gives an unfair advantage at birth to those who enjoy the lion’s share of what the world has to offer.

Therefore, if a just society is to come about, the different countries of the world must be abolished and the resources of the planet shared out equitably among the population of the world.

Clearly, this would require a world government responsible to the 7 billion inhabitants of the planet.

But bringing about world government would not be the most difficult part of this exercise. The most difficult thing would be to get those who at present possess an excessive proportion of the world’s riches to agree to a massive reduction in their resources. It is difficult to imagine that they would ever agree to this.

However, that does not mean that we cannot still continue to examine this question.

First of all, then, let us consider why an equitable redistribution of the world’s resources is theoretically justifiable.

We suggest that every human being has a right to food, warmth, shelter and a satisfying way of life. What they do not have a right to, however, is to decide where that shelter is located. If the resources of the world are to be equitably redistributed, not everyone can live in the same place.  Human habitats will need to be spread around the world in such a way that everyone can live in decent conditions somewhere.

To give an illustration. At present 162 million Bangladeshis live in a country of …..square kilometres which has virtually no natural resources apart from agriculture and even then the land which supports agriculture is subject to regular devastating floods. Clearly, many Bangladeshis need to move to other countries, such as the United States or Australia, where land and resources are more plentiful.  Decisions of this kind would be taken by the world government. No one would any longer have the right to say “This my country. I shall continue to live here and I shall keep out any would-be immigrants from poorer regions”. However, that person, like every other inhabitant of the earth, will still be entitled to say: “I am entitled to decent accommodation, good food and an activity which brings me satisfaction”. What that person would not be entitled to say is “I am entitled to live in this particular place”.

Let us now consider how the inequitable distribution of the earth’s resources came about.  A good example to illustrate this is the history of the United States.

Columbus discovered the lands of the Western Hemisphere in 1492 and by the early 17th century the colonisation of North America was gathering pace. The Pilgrim Fathers anchored at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620 and immediately set about establishing themselves on the land they found  there. But wait a minute. This land was already occupied – by native “Indians”.  That was of no consequence to the settlers. They simply pushed the Indians out,  gradually driving them westwards. By the time of President Andrew Jackson in the nineteenth century the doctrine of Manifest Destiny was invented.  It was the “ manifest destiny” of the United States to expand across the whole continent of North America. And so it came to pass. By dint of brute force, the Indians were annihilated or decimated and the vast majority of their land was confiscated by and for the White Man. The Indians became impoverished outsiders in what had been their own country.

This development, which took place to varying degrees, throughout the planet needs to be reversed. Those expropriated by force, the “wretched of the earth”, need to be reunited with the resources that were stolen from them.

Once this has been achieved and the peoples of the world have adequate land in which to live the question of work can be considered. It goes without saying that everyone on the planet would receive the same wage. In addition, they would be entitled to a job which gave them satisfaction.  Unpleasant jobs, eg refuse collection, would be carried out by rota by everyone. Of course, we would not need as much work to be done since the amount that needed to be produced would be much less than is the case at present. Prodution would be undertaken to satisfy objective needs, not artificially stimulated desires. Thus, since less production would be required, less work would be needed. The scope for leisure and education would increase exponentially.

Posted in Economics, Politics, UN, USA | 1 Comment

Police who attack car with baseball bat keep their jobs

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


This is a copy of a BBC report published on 2 November 2011 :


Six Scotland Yard officers who attacked a suspect’s car with baseball bats will keep their jobs despite being found guilty of discreditable conduct.

One “overly aggressive” detective sergeant was reduced in rank to detective constable.

However, he and five other officers will keep their jobs at the Metropolitan Police.

The 2008 incident in Edmonton, north London, was captured on film, sparking a probe by the police watchdog.

All six officers, who were armed with baseball bats and a pick axe handle, had stopped the suspected stolen car in Meriden Way on 3 June and arrested the driver, a Met misconduct panel heard.

‘Unacceptable’ behaviour

The panel found the detective sergeant had failed to properly supervise his officers by allowing them to use the weapons.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “The five other officers were found to have used more force than was reasonable or necessary to affect the stop by using a non issue baseball bat, hitting the rear offside window causing it to smash.”

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) managed the investigation.

Commander Peter Spindler, of the force’s directorate of professional standards, said: “The behaviour displayed by the six officers that day was unacceptable and as such the board has rightly sanctioned them for it.

“The officers abused their position of trust and authority and by doing so breached the high professional standards expected by the public and the vast majority of outstanding MPS officers and staff who carry out their service to the public with professionalism and integrity.”

A number of allegations were made during a multimillion-pound investigation into the Enfield Crime Squad.

Sixteen officers and one member of police staff were investigated before prosecutors decided there was insufficient evidence to charge any of them.

The detective sergeant was demoted on Tuesday as the hearing concluded.

IPCC spokeswoman Deborah Glass said: “Officers acting in this way bring the police service into disrepute.

“You do not expect to see police officers smashing a car with a baseball bat.

“Whatever the threat they claimed to experience, their actions should be proportionate and reasonable – which in this case they plainly weren’t.

“They breached their codes of professional conduct and their actions were far below the standards rightly expected of police officers by the public.”

Posted in Police, UK | Leave a comment

Tug your forelocks – or else!

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


Those who choose to be politicians do so because they want power and fame: they want others to do what they tell them to do and they also want to be looked up to by the populace at large.What they tell people to do is usually to accept a cutback in their standard of living. You must make sacrifices, they say. You must suffer, at least for now, and maybe – we can’t promise – eventually things will get better for you – but we can’t say when.

Since we were children, we have heard people making this speech. It is the most common of all political speeches. It is made by politicians of all parties – not surprisingly, since for a long time now the parties have been divided not at all on the basis of beliefs or principles but solely on the basis of whether they are in power or not – and it is the same regardless of the country in which the speech is made. During the current bout of international retrenchment, the Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen has been making, word-for-word, the same speech as the Greek Prime Minister George Papadopoulos.

One curious feature is common to all these speeches. The person making the speech is invariably unaffected, to any material extent, by the cutbacks he (it is usually a he) is imposing on the population at large. Only people of substance become Prime Minister: their incomes are so far above the average that no cuts they impose will significantly affect themselves.

What they are saying, in effect, therefore, is this: I have decided to make you suffer but, of course, I shall not myself be affected.

And the strange thing is that the population at large fall for it every time. Yes, you are right, they say. We must suffer. There is no alternative.

There is an alternative, however, if they would only grasp it.

They could, for instance, say No.  In living memory, to my knowledge, they have never done this. But they could. They did it at the French Revolution, for instance, and again at the Russian Revolution. They did it in Paris at the time of the Commune. In the latter case, in particular, they suffered severely for their insolence – 17 000 men, women and children were butchered by the troops that Thiers sent from Versailles – but at least they did it. They said No.

And that is what must happen again if anything is to change for the better.

The key question, therefore, is how is this to come about.

For there are problems, naturally. But then there are always problems. And where there are problems there is also sometimes a solution.

In this case, the problem is simple. It is twofold, it will be hard to overcome, but it is not complicated. The problem is the police and the army.

It is often thought that the police exists to protect the people. This is a common misconception. Sometimes they do this if they have nothing else to do. Sometimes they even help old ladies to cross the road. At least according to the common mythology. However, that is not their main task. Their main task – their raison d’ être – is to protect the Government against the people. Not many people realize this. Since most people most of the time bow down before authority, there is no reason why the main function of the police should normally be exposed to the vulgar light of day. However, sometimes the assumed mask of benevolence slips and the brute force of the state bares its teeth. We got a glimpse of this in Britain during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. We had a glimpse of it at the G20 demonstrations in London last year when an innocent bystander was murdered by the riot police. We are getting a glimpse of it currently in London with the kettling of schoolchildren and the charging of police cavalry into defenceless demonstrators. This is what happened at the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1818. It is happening again today. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

However, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The head honcho of the British police, the knight Sir Paul Stephenson, chief of the Metropolitan Police, warned the nation recently that the name of the game had changed. The  massive financial cuts that the current Government is about to inflict on the population may well spark – indeed, hopefully will spark – significant opposition from those selected to bear the brunt. In which case the full severity of the law will be employed against them by forces of order. The ordinary people of this country will be made to understand, by any and every means, to understand that it is not in any way part of their role, in the established order of things,  to contest the fate which their superiors have designed for them. This is the unequivocal message of Britain’s top flick.

There is trouble in the offing, then.

Moreover, if the police do not succeed in persuading the populace to tug their forelocks to the powers-that-be, there is always the army. In the last resort, the army will be called on to restore the status quo, however many lives are lost in the process.  Think Thiers. Think the Paris Commune. Think the June Days of 1848. Think General Cavaignac.

Posted in Greece, Ireland, Military, Police, Politics, Revolution, UK, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Barefaced porkies and the United States

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 


Wikileaks has exposed double-talk by US diplomats. They say one thing to people’s faces and another behind their backs. Of course, this is probably commonplace in the world of diplomacy.The Americans and their lackeys have defended their duplicity on the grounds that they need to be able to talk frankly in cables to their home government.  The implication is that they have no need to talk frankly to the foreign governments to which they are accredited. On the contrary, they can tell them the most bare-faced porkies.

Sir Henry Wotton, a 17th century English ambassador to Venice, said it all: “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”

Moreover, given the scale of the deceit exposed by Wikileaks, who in future will trust a US diplomat?

Mind you, did anyone ever believe a word of what they said?

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Like many of the upper class, he loves the sound of breaking glass

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

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It comes to something when a broken car window calls for a special investigation by the nation’s chief police offer. And why on earth is Cameron so upset about it (PM condemns “feral” protest, Guardian 11 December)?  I should have thought  the Prime Minister more than conforms to the stereotype of the toff of whom it was rightly said: “Like many of the upper class, he loves the sound of breaking glass”. 

When I was an undergraduate at Oxford the bloods at the House used to have a whale of a time tossing magnums of champers, full as well as empty, down into Peckwater Quad from their upper-crust windows.  The noise as these crashed to smithereens on the gravel beneath was most gratifying to the ear, and, if the fellows were exceptionally lucky,  they might even have the joy of seeing one grounded on the pate of some ill-fated scout as he wended his unsuspecting way to the back lodge.

 

You see it’s one thing if the Bullingdon set trash a set of rooms on the night of a feast. It’s quite something else when the serfs try to ape their betters. That at which the Prime Minister  – OE and lineal descendant of William IV –  correctly takes umbrage is the fact that the lower orders seem to have taken a shine to this glass-smashing jape when they ought to be sitting quietly at home ingesting their bread and dripping and loading their coal into the bath.

 

And quite right too, I say. What is the world coming to?  Why, I haven’t seen a forelock tugged in weeks.

Posted in Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The US Empire: a source of evil

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

The United States is an Empire. Moreover, unlike past empires, it does not simply dominate a particular part of the world. No, it is unique in history in that its writ stretches to cover the whole world.

 

The concentration of so much power in a single country would be excessive, even if the United States were a force for good. In fact, it is a source of immense evil, of evil beyond computation. The origin of all the major political  woes of the world today can be traced back directly to the United States.

 

Just like the government of any other country, the United States Government acts exclusively in its own interests, that is, in the interests of that tiny elite, headed by the President, which run the country.  And that is by no means the same as saying that it is run in the interests of the long-suffering people of the United States. Far from it. However, the exclusive focus of the government of the Empire on its own interests has the following implication for the tributary states represented by the other countries of the world. They must find a way of tailoring their interests in such a way that they dovetail with those of the United States.

 

This has been the case for a long time and the procedure for confirming tributary status has been well honed. On accession, the US President receives a constant stream of tributary state leaders who come to press the flesh of the new hegemon and confirm their fealty. It is just as it was in Imperial Rome when the leaders of subject peoples queued up in the Forum to pledge their undying loyalty to the Imperator. After taking the pledge of allegiance, these chieftains, like the heads of today’s tributary governments, must ensure that nothing their administrations undertake is at variance with the wishes of the US Government.

 

All this is well-known and universally acknowledged. That is the way things are, is the reply to critics. We have to deal with the world as it is.

 

If the United States were a force for good in the world, that would at least mitigate the abject surrender of sovereignty by the tribute states. However, since that is not the case, these states are complicit in all the evil committed by the forces of the Empire. Often referred to by the euphemism “allies”, the tributary states are in fact “accomplices”.

 

The  geography of US international crimes extends to all parts of the globe:  Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.  The methods used by the Empire are the same as those used by the Nazis: murder and torture.

 

When the US wanted to transport kidnapped prisoners to countries where their torture would not be hindered by legal restrictions, the tributary countries (Poland, Romania, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, etc ) trampled over one another to offer secret prisons where this could be done. Cuba is not usually thought of as a US tributary. However, at the start of the “War on Terror”, presumably in order to curry favour and perhaps secure an easing in the US blockade of Cuba,  the leaders of that country made it clear to visiting US statesmen that they would not object to the use of the US base at Guantánamo Bay as a US extraterritorial prison. The Cubans are pretty clued up politically and it must be assumed that they realized why the US wanted to locate its prisoners in legal limbo.

 

 

 

 

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Europe and the European Union are not one and the same

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Antigone1984.com
Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 
Two contrafactual propositions continue, as ever, to be highlighted in the coverage by pro-EU media, including the Guardian, of the current EU referendum debacle in the UK.

The first is that Europe and the European Union are identical and interchangeable terms (Guardian editorial, 25 October, passim). The fact is that many of those opposed to the EU are pro-Europeans who want to preserve the Europe they know and love from being sucked down permanently into the black hole created by an unelected Brussels bureaucracy that is galloping out of control towards the ultimate catastrophe of a United States of Europe.

The second contrafactual proposition is that opposition to the EU is the exclusive domain of swivel-eyed fanatics on the right (“This Tory rebellion tells us nothing we didn’t know”, Polly Toynbee, 25 October). The fact is that principled opposition to the EU from a socialist – as opposed to a New Labour – angle is invariably air-brushed out of the picture: we disagree with these people: therefore, they don’t exist.

Why can the Guardian not accept that there are more than one ways to skin a cat, that the EU is not the only show in town and that there exist already a large number of formulations and visions for the Europe other than the one-size-fits-all straitjacket that is being pinned around us, ever more tightly, by the pen-pushers from across the Channel?

Posted in Europe, Media | Leave a comment