Respect is due: Brian Haw

Veteran anti-war campaigner who mounted a decade long protest vigil outside parliament.

1 - "Brian Haw: A decade-long protest dedicated to peace," unattributed BBC article. Published by the BBC, 19th of June, 2011. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13829433)

Bin Laden murder wah wah wah

I had this steaming pile brought to my attention yesterday, and while I'm aware there is absolutely no point in trying to convince the conspiratorially inclined to reconsider, using such weak weapons as reason and evidence, I succumbed to the temptation to give it a more-than-cursory-dismissal (1). I suppose it can stand for all the other crap out there, as it is much of a muchness.

Well, I got as far as "Obama murdered Osama bin Laden," before I started to entertain doubts as to the piece's credibility. Unfortunately, that's the very first line. To advance such a claim, the author must have some remarkable evidence to back it up, showing that Bin laden was killed without provocation and the SEALS had no goal other than his death. Astute legal argument as to the legality or otherwise of his death could be expected. Yet, I note, not a single footnote citing a source for this.

In the second paragraph, we're assured, "there's no attempt to arrest him or bring him to justice," another remarkable claim given no substantiation. Yes, I know. He was shot. He wasn't carrying a gun. But he had after being challenged. He was the head of a terrorist network which glorifies martyrdom. He could easily have been wearing a suicide vest, or grabbing a grenade, or seeking some means to take a few of the infidels with him. The SEALS were justified in killing him. It's an unfortunate reality of military operations that people sometimes die. Just as people perceived as dangerous may be shot if they the resist police.

After that it turns into a standard whine about how everything would have been different under Bush - the left would have "protested Bush's violations of international law and basic human rights. They would have complained about killing the Al Qaeda leader before questioning him about possible terrorist plots. They would have demanded investigations."

Really? Plenty of things were done by Bush that the (sane) left accepted. It was only his egregious offenses that provoked protests. Of course, the insane left protested everything - just like they are doing now over the killing of Bin Laden. To justify the claim of hypocritical silence by the left, Rall would have to demonstrate that killing a legitimate target resisting capture was on a par with, oh, I dunno, illegally invading a country based on blatantly trumped up evidence. But Rall, as pointed out earlier, completely fails to make that case. It must be, because he says so, is what his argument amounts to.

Then we get more wailing about Manning's "torture" - though again, unsubstantiated. Not one authoritative source is identified as describing Manning's treatment as torture. PJ Crowley didn't, for example, didn't describe it in those terms, even though he saw fit to resign over it (2).

Then, towards the end, there's a logical howler. Rall states Bin Laden never claimed responsibility for 9-11, and even denied responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity. Rall dismisses various alleged admissions as CIA framing, or "trying to keep himself relevant for his Islamist audience." Sorry, but that sort of special pleading can be deployed to account for later admissions, it can also be used to account for earlier denials. Perhaps Bin Laden denied (direct) responsibility to avoid being handed over by the Taliban, or to buy time, or who knows?

But Rall isn't playing fair, or even playing unfairly but with-in the rules. He's just writing shit.

1 - "What If Right Made Might: Reimagining the Assassination of Bin Laden," by Ted Rall. Posted on Information Clearing House, 11th of May, 2011. (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28073.htm)
2 - "PJ Crowley: 'No regrets' over Bradley Manning remarks," unattributed BBC article. Published by the BBC, 28th of March, 2011. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12886702)

The war on drugs

An interesting piece by Johann Hari (aren't they all) in the the Indie a couple of days ago:

To many people, the "war on drugs" sounds like a metaphor, like the "war on poverty". It is not. It is being fought with tanks and sub-machine guns and hand grenades, funded in part by your taxes, and it has killed 28,000 people under the current Mexican President alone. The death toll in Tijuana – one of the front lines of this war – is now higher than in Baghdad. Yesterday, another pile of 72 mutilated corpses was found near San Fernando – an event that no longer shocks the country.

Mexico today is a place where the severed heads of police officers are found week after week, pinned to bloody notes that tell their colleagues: "This is how you learn respect". It is a place where hand grenades are tossed into crowds to intimidate the public into shutting up. It is the state the US Joint Chiefs of Staff say is most likely, after Pakistan, to suffer "a rapid and sudden collapse".

Why? When you criminalise a drug for which there is a large market, it doesn't disappear. The trade is simply transferred from off-licences, pharmacists and doctors to armed criminal gangs.

In order to protect their patch and their supply routes, these gangs tool up – and kill anyone who gets in their way. You can see this any day on the streets of a poor part of London or Los Angeles, where teenage gangs stab or shoot each other for control of the 3,000 per cent profit margins on offer. Now imagine this process taking over an entire nation, to turn it into a massive production and supply route for the Western world's drug hunger.

Why Mexico? Why now? In the past decade, the US has spent a fortune spraying carcinogenic chemicals over Colombia's coca-growing areas, so the drug trade has simply shifted to Mexico. It's known as the "balloon effect": press down in one place, and the air rushes to another.

When I was last there in 2006, I saw the drug violence taking off and warned that the murder rate was going to skyrocket. Since then the victims have ranged from a pregnant woman washing her car, to a four-year-old child, to a family in the "wrong" house watching television, to a group of 14 teenagers having a party. Today, 70 per cent of Mexicans say they are frightened to go out because of the cartels.

The gangs offer Mexican police and politicians a choice: "Plata o ploma". Silver, or lead. Take a bribe, or take a bullet. President Felipe Calderon has been leading a military crackdown on them since 2006 – yet every time he surges the military forward, the gang violence in an area massively increases.

This might seem like a paradox, but it isn't. If you knock out the leaders of a drug gang, you don't eradicate demand, or supply. You simply trigger a fresh war for control of the now-vacant patch. The violence creates more violence. (1)

As a result, Hari says, Mexico is contemplating legalising drugs, to remove the economic driver for the escalating violence.

Britain and the USA oppose this, and are pressing the Mexican government to maintain the current, bloody, status quo.

I'm no fan of intoxicants. When I was younger, I drank like a fool, put myself in all sorts of stupid situations and behaved reprehensibly. I find it hard to make an argument that irresponsible idiots like myself should be given a greater range of means to get themselves wasted.

And - as I slide into grumpy and hypocritical middle age - I can't help but wonder if the easy availability of intoxicants is a ploy to keep the youth and the (ex) working class happily smashed and politically docile. After all, why worry about social justice when you've got White Lightening on special at the offie? Marx's opium of the people has been replaced by a far cruder means of muting "the sigh of the oppressed creature. The heart of the heartless world now comes contained a six pack or a bottle of fortified wine, not a bible (2).

Equally, however, I can see no justification for hapless Mexicans being slain in a futile effort to keep these intoxicants from me. I, at least, was a voluntary participant in my own endangerment and degradation. If that's what stupid over-privileged first worlders want to do with themselves, let them, rather than perpetuating a hypocritical war that is accomplishing nothing beyond a lot of misery and suffering.

1 - "Violence breeds violence. The only thing drug gangs fear is legalisation," by Johann Hari. Published in The Independent, 26th of August, 2010. (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-violence-breeds-violence-the-only-thing-drug-gangs-fear-is-legalisation-2062252.html)
2 - "A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right," by Karl Marx. Published in 1843. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm)