Victim's rights. . . . WTF?. . . . .

So you have no doubt seen and been nauseated by our Minister of Public Safety going on about what he calls "victim's rights.' This phrase is almost entirely meaningless but the Minster continues to use it ad nauseum n ever interview and public appearance. As I said yesterday it doesn't take a genius to understand that a 'right' is something that the state 'allows' you to do, the word applies to a choice that you can take advantage of like the freedom of speech, or movement etc. Thus a victim of a crime has very few possible 'rights' in relation to a crime committed against him or her. You could claim that victims should have the abstract right to see justice done but really the only technical 'right' a victim could have would related to retribution in  some way; like the right to make a victim statement, to speak as a witness against the person who committed the crime, or even the right to financial restitution whether from the state or the perpetrator of the crime. Outside of this, you it is difficult to imagine what 'rights' the state could bestow upon victims of crimes.

Yet you will constantly hear Vic Toews and other right-wingers talk about 'victim's rights.' Why is that? The answer is, of course, politics. One of the primary political strategies of the Right in general is to foment fear and animosity in society. Thus they love to talk about crime because there is a certain segment of society that wrongly believes that crime is out of control and that people are out there getting away with murder. Thus you will hear Vic Toews say crap like "unlike liberals and socialists, I am in favor of victims rights and not criminals rights." A completely meaningless statement, particularly given that Mr. Toews and his government have actually made no attempt to expand the few rights that victims actually could exercise. Rather, this is part of a strategy to further foster fear and keep people's attention focused on a meaningless political ploy that will not change crime rates and will cost billions of dollars.

As a society we can, if we choose, erode the rights of people who are accused or convicted of a crime. Given the startling number of wrongful convictions that have taken place in the past generation, I for one, think people who are accused or convicted of a crime need to have certain very clear rights which are well protected. And by all means, we can have a rational discussion about bringing the victims of crime into the process in much the same way that traditional justice systems have like those used by our First Peoples. As long as that discussion is not driven by the politically motivated 'tough on crime' nonsense which will only serve to cost billions and do nothing to crime rates.

If you want a justice system to actually reduce crime, every serious professional will tell you that you need a genuine system of rehabilitation and reform. Instead Harper and Toews want to take us down the road of California which has an unbelievably high rate of incarceration, very high rate of recidivism, and is helping to bankrupt the state. But the present government is actually reducing rehabilitation efforts and looking to just throw as many people in jail as possible with minimum sentences. This may satisfy people desire for revenge but is poor social and fiscal policy.

The good old days. . . . when children worked in factories. . .

People who long for some abstract golden age of society are always a frightening amusement to me. In recent years there has been a very clear 'dumbing down' of society; a tendency that Conservatism has long promoted, in part because of their own antiquated and philistine opinions, and in part because they know that an ignorant population is much easier to exploit. Undermining real education, particularly at the secondary and post-secondary level has been a key element in the dumbing down of the population. Ironically they have often hidden that processes behind a so-called 'back to basics' education campaign, but even this is largely about ignorance. They don't actually want people to be educated, they want people to be 'trainable,' particularly for playing the role of obedient employee in a third-world style economy. The so-called 'tough on crime' agenda of Conservatives is another prime example of this dumbing down. Even ignoring the fact that crime has gone down over the past few generations (at the same time as there has been a strategy which the Conservatives say is a coddling approach to criminals), the fact is that the only real way to deal with crime is to undercut its social causes as treat criminals with efforts at reforming their behavior rather than throwing thousands in brutal jails where they train to be even more hard-bitten criminals. Anyone who knows anything about sociology and criminology understands this. But once again the Conservative effort is to push all reason aside and exploit the crime issue to prey on people's ignorance and primitive chest-thumping tendencies to create a more subjugated, uneducated, controlled, and ignorant population in order to design an economy in which people are afraid to assert their rights and can be more effectively exploited. 

The fact that such a strategy is working can be seen in the apparent growth in support of the death penalty in recent years at the very same time when violent crimes are going down. But what I don't understand about this attitude is why people are so prepared to tout their support for the dark-side of our history. I suppose it is just another aspect of the general tendency toward ignorance. If you go back to England of the late 18th century there were over 200 crimes for which you could receive the death penalty. Yet crime was significantly more rampant than it is today. Why? Because of huge inequalities in wealth, total lack of universal education, the absence of the most basic rights in terms of employment standards and democracy, etc. The huge number of crimes and criminals did not go down because of harsher penalties, they went down because of universal education, increases in equality of wealth, and the institution of basic human rights. 

Yet many people are not only ready to call for a return to the past they brag about their philistine opinions and their desire to create a system of revenge rather than justice. But I will say it again, it has always been, and always will be, radicals who have pushed society forward into a better future. People who have struggled for written constitutions, basic employment rights, the elimination of slavery, the right to universal education and health care, have all been radicals. Meanwhile Conservatives have consistently fought against these things since time immemorial. 

If you believe in the death penalty, at least have the courage to argue for all those things which accompanied it; no right to Habeas Corpus, the return to slavery, the elimination of universal education, the elimination of basic democratic rights, etc.  If you want to return to the good old days when children worked in factories at least be honest about your ignorance. 

Mr. Colvin and political principles. . . ..

I am somewhat surprised to see very little in the so-called ‘blogosphere’ being said about the testimony of senior diplomat Richard Colvin in front of a House Committee yesterday. This morning the NDP rightfully called for a full public inquiry concerning the events which Mr. Colvin talked about. For years now people in the intelligence community as well as many in NGOs have been talking about the torture of detainees that have found their way into the hands of the dubious forces of the Afghan government through Canadian hands. Yet any time anyone has asked important questions Harper’s government representatives have marginalized these concerned citizens by openly suggesting that they are naïve lackeys or even unconscious allies of the Taliban. This is, of course, the Harper way; instead of addressing actual concerns about corruption or incompetence they simply attempt to deflect criticism or potential scandal by accusing their accusers. Up to now this technique has been fairly successful, and it may yet work for a while. Eventually, like all such dishonest and centralizing strategies, it will come undone and the government will fall because of some scandal. Of course, the biggest strategy is the precedent that the Harper government will have set for future governments which will feel justified in ignoring scandals and accusing anyone who criticizes the government of being some kind of terrorist or evil-doer.

In the case of this impending scandal, the most distasteful thing I see is that a significant number of Canadians really don’t care if our armed forces or even our government has been directly complicit in torture. There has been a disturbing growth in the number of people who don’t believe that the principles on which our democracies are supposed to be established are to be applied to our supposed foes. However, principles are by their nature always applicable – that is the meaning of the word ‘principle.’ If we do not apply the principles of human rights to everyone, then we simply don’t believe in human rights. If we abandon the principles of rights and the rule of law in the face of some perceived foreign or internal threat, then we have already lost the very fight in which we are claiming to be engaged. 

Colonialism, Afghanistan and human rights....

I have opposed Western involvement in Afghanistan from the beginning because like almost every Western military escapade, the motivation here is about money and power. In this case it is specifically about the control of oil resources in western Asia. Of course Western powers put an entirely expected spin on this military adventure, suggesting at first that it was because we needed to put an end to terrorist training camps. This appears to have been a simple straight-forward lie – there were only a handful of insurgents in Afghanistan and these were Kashmir separatists. Then the standard line was that we were saving the people (particularly the women) from the Taliban. Anyone who has been paying attention to this situation knows that this has never been true. Western governments said shamefully little about the condition of women in Afghanistan before the invasion. Furthermore, for the past six years or so we have been propping up a hopelessly corrupt government in Afghanistan which has shown time and again that it has no genuine interest in human rights. Homosexuality has been a criminal offence in Afghanistan punishable by death while we have been touting our defense of the poor Afghans. Now the situation has been made clear by the recent institution of sharia law for some citizens of Afghanistan. This legislation would essentially legalize marital rape and control women’s lives in horrible ways. The Harper and Obama governments have made a bunch of noise about this but really they are just hoping that it will fade away and they can continue with their neo-colonial agenda unfettered. The truth is that once again US and Canadian soldiers are dying for Wall St. and oil companies and their families appear on television and radio calling their fallen relatives “Heroes” because if they faced up to the reality it would just be too horrible to contemplate. The West continues on with the same agenda it has been pursuing for years: kill, control, and colonize and wrap it all up in a flag of altruism.  

Obama and the discourse of Empire

What a strange moment to watch the inauguration of the first African-American president. I grew up in the US under the shadow of the War in Indo-China and the gradual end of segregation. It is a day I never thought I would see. Of course, we all know that this is not the end of racism, but it is a great symbolic victory for those who have fought so long and hard against it terrible scourge.

But what strikes me as particularly strange as I watch Barack Obama give his inauguration speech is the notable dichotomy that underlies his words. In recent days, as well as in today’s speech, Obama has talked a lot about returning America to its greatness. And those of us who have been so horrified by the Bush administration’s total disregard for the constitution and the rule of law, hope that Obama will reverse a great deal of what has happened over the past eight years. But as seductive as Obama’s speeches can be, let us not kid ourselves! The prosperity of the United States is not been built upon generosity and the promotion of human rights. On the contrary, anyone who has paid any attention knows that the US has continually undermined democracy when its outcomes has not adhered to its political and economic interests. We all know that US trading policies through institutions such as GATT have been designed to undermine the economic independence and prosperity of the world’s poorest nations. For generations the US economy was built with the sweat of slaves at home, and in more recent years US prosperity has been built on the backs of third world workers who, if they ever had the gall to assert their independent right to built their own economies based upon more cooperative ideals, suffered from US oppression or wars waged by proxy in the interests of Wall Street. In the past eight years the US has openly practiced terrible violations of human rights with the excuse of a ‘war on terror.’ But for the past two hundred years it has consistently violated human rights with other kinds of excuses and spin. From its support of the Shah of Iran, the carpet-bombing of Laos, to the mining of Nicaraguan waters, the US has built its prosperity on raw, ferocious, filthy power. Obama talks about rebuilding American greatness, but the only meaningful discourse would be talk of RE-Making America in the real spirit of truth and democracy.

Obama’s first chance to Re-make America would be to stop its closest military ally, Israel, from keeping the worlds largest prison camp in Gaza and pressure it into giving back the land it has stolen, and in the process ensuring that the people of Palestine can build themselves an independent and prosperous nation in fairness and democracy.

Whenever you feel yourself seduced by Obama’s talk of hope, remind yourself what the United States has really been and hope that it can be the first empire in history that can truly re-make itself into that which it has pretended to be.

Human Rights and Macleans Magazine

Recently Macleans Magazine, I believe the largest circulating Canadian news magazine, has been taken before the Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia for a series of articles that they published regarding Islam. These articles, some of which I have read, are, even for a non-Muslim with no particular sympathies for any part of the religion, deeply offensive. But what is even more offensive is Macleans response to the process of the tribunal itself. One of the loudest voices in Macleans' response to the tribunual can be heard in the blogs by Mr. Andrew Coyne on the Macleans web site. Now, putting aside the generally offensive smug and glib manner expressed in Mr. Coyne’s blog, I find his general defence of Maclean’s startlingly simplistic and deeply naïve. As voiced on Sounds Like Canada (on CBC 1 this morning) Mr. Coyne’s defence (and by association I assume Macleans defence) to this Human Rights issue is this: (And I am paraphrasing) “This is a freedom of speech issue that has no place in front of the Human Rights Tribunal. The Proper thing to do for those offended by these articles is to reply in the public arena, in print and on television etc.”

At first glance this defence sounds great and I am sure that right wing radio talk shows across the country will eat this up. But it fails to take into consideration the central core of the issue at stake; the power to control public discourse and, by association, public impressions and opinions. Imagine, if you will, that the New York Times chose a man at random who lived in an apartment on Flatbush Avenue in the Village, and they began to publish a series of articles berating this man as a bad father, an unfaithful husband, and grossly inefficient in his job. Now imagine when this man complained to the paper its response was, “Well take it to the court of public opinion. Let’s have a public debate in the media.” Obviously given the inequality of power to absorb public attention and control public discourse, this would be an unreasonable response from the Times.

A similar situation obtains here. If Macleans magazine has the largest circulation of any news magazine in Canada and is the organ of a large media conglomerate, it has an excessive degree of power in the field of public discourse. (And of course anyone who is paying attention knows that this uneven distribution of discursive authority is one of the fundamental problems with modern democracy and capitalism.) If Macleans utilizes this power to unfairly characterize a minority group, a community that is already marginalized and has relatively little access to the power of public discourse, and if some of these characterizations are provocative, even inflammatory, then this is clearly an issue that must be addressed. And in the absence of any private or public media that might match Macleans for popularity or profile, it is perfectly reasonable for the state to play a role in the issue. The response of Mr. Coyne and Macleans is typical of a person or organization that is accustom to exercising its power indiscriminately. They are incredulous that they can be forced into a public arena where there exists a necessary, systemic, and protected equality of discourse. They are, after all, used to saying what they want against people and groups that have little ability to respond with commensurate power in the public arena.

People who think such issues are just about freedom of speech simply don’t comprehend, or are not willing to address, the systemic imbalances of power that exist in media controlled public discourse.