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During his farewell address in the year 1961 outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Eisenhower’s fears have now become America’s reality, as the military-industrial complex has become America’s shadow government, covertly manipulating elections and governmental policies, only revealing itself when its machinations fail to produce the desired results. Although Americans are given the illusion they are “voting” for candidates, rarely does a candidate arise to the position of being on the ballot without paying homage and alms to the military-industrial complex.
I don’t know how Jeanne felt when she was sitting in Yarl’s Wood detention centre for three weeks without her son, or when she was deported to Ivory Coast without him 10 days ago. How would you feel? It seems almost cheap to try to give words to experiences like this. Pain, sorrow, anger, fear; nothing seems quite big enough. The experiences of refugees in detention centres flare briefly into the public consciousness only occasionally, but it is necessary to try to keep a light shining on these experiences - because individuals working in this field say there is an increase in allegations of serious ill-treatment of refugees in detention centres or during deportation attempts.
The combination of rock stars and politicians normally means a good but non-controversial cause is at hand, as the great and the good line-up to pay lip service to global poverty, or the environment, or something equally worthy. But until recently you would not expect the cool and the influential to come together for an issue as divisive as the Israel-Palestine conflict. But so violent is the record of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and so symbolically backward-looking the wall currently bull-dozing its way through the illegally-occupied Palestinian Territories, that it seems Palestine may be emerging as an issue to rival the anti-apartheid movement in its appeal to a base level sense of justice and injustice.
"I will never understand how Mohammed was killed. Maybe one day I will know. Khaled raised his hands, so he was a convenient target for them. Him they killed in cold blood. They let him finish speaking and then they killed him. But how Mohammed was killed I don’t understand. I shouted like a madwoman: `Help, my son is alive, we have to save him.’ They laughed and told me to shut up. The soldier who was laughing was standing below, on the street. I sat on the floor and kept on shouting like a crazy person. I pounded on the door until my hands were injured. I don’t know how those curses came out of me. I called for help, Diana and Ali were crying hysterically, and the soldiers threatened to blow up the building with us inside.”
Another two bite the dust. Following the earlier deaths of detained migrants in Britain, last Friday a 23-year-old Vietnamese asylum-seeker killed himself in the Dungavel immigration detention centre in Lanarkshire. And a week ago in Harmondsworth, west London, a 31-year-old eastern European was found hanging in his cell. New Labour is not moved by such stories. This government will not waver. Stuff the causes of asylum - girlie, bleeding-heart talk. “We are resolute,” says the abrasive Blunkett, and his mates in the Cabinet cheer. They know millions of voters will thank them for the stand they take.
The Democratic National Convention, which opened Monday in Boston, is the culmination of a drive by the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party, the media and the USA ruling elite as a whole to banish from the November presidential election any real debate amongst opponents of the present administration. This effort to exclude from the political process all voices of serious dissent, and suppress the most vital concerns of the vast majority of the people - not only the war, but also the assault on jobs, living standards and democratic rights - testifies to the organic incapacity of the two major parties in America to address, let alone resolve, a mounting social and political crisis of historical proportions.
Former Baltimore Sun journalist Frank Kent considered, “The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.” The government formed is the result of citizens having cast votes in an election. If recent polling results are accurate, then to the extent that the American citizenry are aware of the murderous events in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, and elsewhere, sociopathology might be considered to be societal and reflected by the government. A vote for either Bush or Kerry in the upcoming presidential elections could be construed as a sociopathological attitude to non-Americans, since a Kerry presidency would only mean a change of face and little significant change in foreign policy except to invite allies to share in imperialistic plunder.
While the occupation forces are tightening the siege and carrying out “targeted killings”, battles between the Palestinians themselves have broken out, with militants shooting at each other, targeting leaders and burning headquarters. Occupation generals, politicians and commentators in Israel follow the events with glee or click their tongues sanctimoniously: “Didn?t we tell you? The Palestinians can?t rule themselves, there is no one to talk with, we have no partner for peace. When they are left to themselves, anarchy reigns.” Since the Sharon government is responsible for the present situation in Gaza in the first place, it resembles the son who kills both his parents and pleads in court: “Have mercy! I am an orphan!”
Media images of Islam are omnipresent, and are part of Western culture of racism and imperial design. Islam has always been seen in the West as violent, barbaric, anti-democratic, anti-human, anti-rational, etc. The aim is to turn Muslims into an enemy people, to be regarded collectively with contempt and scorn. In Australia, Muslim refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war torn countries are completely removed from humanity. They are detained in remote centres and stripped of their human rights and dignity. They are portrayed as “illegal” immigrants and “potential terrorists”. The fact that thousands of illegal immigrants are white Anglo-Saxons living and working illegally in Sydney and Melbourne shows how tolerant Australia is. Illegal immigrant it seems, if you’re not white.
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