The century of Barbarism

From Random Hipatia

“Capitalism is an economic system that must inevitably destroy those same freedoms which enabled it’s creation in order to survive.” – me

Actually this particular thought came not from Marx, who wrote of the idea that capitalism is inevitably unstable and must either collapse as workers are forced to produce ever more for ever less buying power (putting some of his ideas into a more contemporary consumer context) until they choose to rebel, or fall into barbarism to survive, but rather from reading Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”. However, all these questions I think are in part relevant to understanding the emerging 21st century, and perhaps in understanding the most immediate evidence for barbarism today, in the destruction of civil justice and “presumption of innocents”.

More specifically I am concerned with the odd relationship between the prisoners of Guantanamo, held in a lawless manner without charges or even knowledge of why they are held, under secret evidence they have no means to challenge, with the recent and police attack on an innocent family in the U.K., the systematic and random arrest and detention bystanders prior to events such as happened in NYC, the use of “security certificates” in Canada, and the curious and also rather brutal detention, but again without trial or charges being filed, of 7 U.S. service men for an as yet alleged war crime. What I am suggesting is that all these things are symptomatic of the breakdown of the concept of due process, and stem from a government which fails to recognize it’s authority is derived from the people it claims to serve. The 7 servicemen are simply examples of blowback, that is when barbarism becomes the norm, and finally consumes even those who have actively served it’s purposes. Rather than an odd form of justice, I actually did find the situation of those servicemen to be a further example of injustice and it’s continued perversion.

Some of course have actually claimed that those 7 servicemen have somehow been treated worse than those in Guantanamo. Given that they at least know of what crimes they are believed guilty of, a basic human courtesy those held in Guantanamo have been denied, I find the suggestion ludicrous. However, both groups do share the fact that they are being treated as if guilty without charges, trial, or any form of due process. Both detainments I actually do find monstrous barbarism, as they both presume the state has the basic power to decide guilt and innocence on it’s own without any due process whatsoever, whether for political purposes or prosecutorial whim. Both demonstrate the real danger of the Bush administration and unlimited executive authority.

I believe seeing the mis-treatment of people in places like Guantanamo and in the Afghanistan campaign made it that much easier to do the same elsewhere. When barbarism becomes the norm, even in one place, the norm elsewhere can also become barbarism. Hence, Abu Ghrahab and the many other prisons where torture is routine, or practices like rendition, or treating Iraqi civilians like animals and random killings and abuse, become acceptable to those who actively perform these practices, because they were already considered acceptable in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Which brings us back to due process. When due process is lost for some, there are those who see that who are then willing to do the same to others. Hence, the case of the 7 marines kept shackled 24/7, accused of no actual crime as yet. If it is acceptable to have no due process in Guantanamo, then it becomes that much more acceptable elsewhere. This is how states and societies turn to barbarism. If there is no justice for those in Guantanamo, then there will eventually be no justice at all for anyone that this government touches, including for example the 7 servicemen.

Strangely enough, I do not feel any “safer” in a state that engages in arbitrary detention without trial, and that practices guilt until proven innocent, in rejecting the concept of due process while principally acting on behalf of privileged elites and at the same time claiming to do so in the name of my “protection” and safety. Indeed, I find that such a state is in point of fact a far greater danger to the safety of myself, my children, and the people as a whole, than the potential threat of terrorism I am supposedly being protected against, whether it is real or imagined.