Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

> > rise in Europe...I hear about beatings of guest workers...I hear 
> > you're
> > thinking about not letting Turkey in the EU.
>
> Hold on just a minute... not letting Turkey in the EU because of their
> government's human rights record is racist??

 Those weren't related thoughts. I sort of meant racism against Turkish 
people. Some of the anti-Turkey stuff I've read hasn't exactly shown
Europeans as a fountain of equal treatment to all races.

 Of course, you could do the same thing in the US, but you've gotten 
off the point then, because what I was trying to point out was that 
both the US
and many EU countries have some work to do.

> (Of course this is a very hypocritical policy to exclude Turkey from 
> the EU
> for human rights reasons, because those same EU countries finance 
> projects
> abroad with dubious human rights records, including in Turkey. Recently
> a quantum leap in injustice was proposed in which pretty much all laws,
> constitutional protections and human rights standards would not apply 
> to
> people a certain distance from the aforementioned pipeline. I don't 
> know
> if that has gone through.)

 I think we're in violent agreement.

> >  Can't tell whether you're an idiot or not. I certainly don't assume
> > that
> > you are, but when you go around sending senseless things like:
> >
> >  "The US is a fascist state"
> >
> >   you aren't exactly showing a large capability for reasonable
> > discussion.
>
> Certainly the US is not fascist internally. However, there are 
> proto-fascist
> *tendencies* on the domestic front (Patriot Act, Patriot Act II, 
> etc.), and
> it acts in fascist ways towards other countries. Hence the wildly 
> divergent
> views about it. I think that both "the US is not fascist" and "the US 
> is
> fascist" can each be understood to be true in a certain sense.

 I think that when we repeat rhetoric as fact that we lose the ability 
to measure progress. I see far too many people repeating rhetoric they 
heard other people say, without realizing they're repeating rhetoric. 
Somewhere the real issues get lost, and we lose our ability to have 
reasoned discussion on any topic that won't fit in a sound bite.

 To me, it seems that most of the largest issues in our society are 
issues that are too complex to fit into a sound bite. That's why they 
remain issues, because once you need more then 5 seconds to discuss it, 
its not something the media can cover effectively.

> >   Ok, we've gone from being a fascist state to "fascist towards the
> > world".
>
> Yes, exactly.
>
> Especially with regard to the occupation of Iraq. If Seymour Hersch's
> allegations are true that young Iraqi boys were imprisoned and raped 
> with
> broom-handles, on camera, with their mothers within earshot... that 
> sounds
> like Nazi behaviour to me.

 I wish people would give links...googling...ok,

 I guess you mean this:

 http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040717-082858-3675r.htm

  Don't see any reference to broom-handles or mothers.

  Here's another reference that links to some video that I don't have 
the bandwith to download:

http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0716-06.htm

Here's some more quotes:

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=1906

 Still no "broom handles".

> > The difference is one of intent. In our case, those guards were being
> > prosecuted for doing that. Under Saddam, those guards would have been
> > promoted. We put our sadists in Jail,
>
> Not always. Firstly, some accusations are simply ignored and do not 
> appear
> to be properly investigated, and secondly, Bush and Rumsfeld 
> *authorised*
> abusive tactics - first in Guatamano, and then in Iraq. Thirdly, the
> evidence on the ground suggest that abuse, including torture, was or is
> used on a widespread scale as a means of terrorising the prisoners and
> getting them to cooperate, not just out of mindless sadism (although 
> there
> was a lot of that, too).

 Yeah, all that is a slippery slope. Is leaving the lights on torture? 
That's probably a stretch. Is putting a hood over someone's head 
torture? Probably not.

  Here's the relevant from one of the above links:

"Hersh’s latest information comes on the heels of a newly released 2002 
Pentagon memo detailing that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 
personally authorized the use of controversial prisoner interrogation 
tactics, including the use of dogs for intimidation, stripping 
prisoners of clothes and hooding them."

 Is that torture? Probably not strictly, but its clearly intimidation. 
If I was making a firey rhetorical speech for TV I'd call it torture 
though...which would then get picked up on the networks as "Pierce says 
Rumsfield condoned torture in Iraq" which isn't _quite_ true.

 So my take: Rumsfeld authorized some questionable stuff. There are 
quite
a few issues where its better to draw the line clearly then it is to try
to adapt that line to every situation. I think "how far you can go" when
interrogating prisoners is one of them. Rumsfeld was trying to draw a
distinction where none really exists...


> Terrorising people by the use of violence. That's pretty much the 
> definition
> of terrorism.

 I think that Terrorism is Terrorizing _a_ people by the use of 
violence is terrorism, but I'm just being nitpicky. You're being 
rhetorical. I don't disagree with your point, but we've got so much 
rhetoric floating around about the war it makes it hard to tell what's 
really going on.

 The fact is that everything you do has good and bad aspects. If you 
concentrate on only the bad aspects, you can't do anything, because 
everything you do will be questioned. If you concentrate on only the 
good
aspects, you give people more slack then they probably should have.
I have no idea where to draw the line, but rhetoric rarely helps.

 If we were never going to do anything where the guards might abuse
prisoners, we'd have to shutdown the entire criminal justice system. 
Its not just the guards of course:

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/005846.html#005846

 I have a friend who nearly got raped in jail, she was there because of
a parking ticket...perhaps ALL prisons need reform.

 Pierce