The Quiet Road

There’s an essay by Robin Fishwick called In Defence of Hypocrisy which everyone should read. It’s very short but wonderfully perceptive, and it makes a point that should probably be made more often. In fact, I’m a walking illustrative example of Fishwick’s point. As mentioned recently, I was a strict vegetarian for most of my life; I did some hunt-sabbing in my late teens and I’ve been on a bunch of anti-vivisection or anti-whaling or anti-bloodsports demonstrations. I’d even put myself in the philosophically difficult position of believing that animals have certain ‘rights’ and that our behaviour towards them is in the sphere of ‘morality’.

However, since my early twenties, my footwear of choice has been the classic 7-eye, ankle-length Doc Martin black leather boot. And you wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve been hassled about this fact. Confirmed carnivores, fresh from stuffing their faces in MacDonalds somehow feel justified in pointing out my ethical failing. “How can you wear leather boots”, they demand, “and yet still call yourself a vegetarian?” Of course by now I’ve developed a full repertoire of responses depending upon the person challenging me. My personal favourite is “The same way you can have shit for brains and still call yourself a human being”.

Thing is, my reasons for wearing leather Docs wouldn’t pass the ethical tests against which I judge the food I eat. I don’t have some great moral justification… it’s just that I really really like the boots, they’re very comfortable, and they work out quite cheap (despite not being cheap to buy) as they only need replacing every five years or so. I guess I’m simply failing to meet the ethical standards I have set for myself. I’m a hypocrite.

But I’m in good company. The vast majority of the people I truly admire have stuggled and continue to struggle to reach the standards they have set for themselves. If you’re reading this and thinking “Bah! I always achieve the standards I set”, then I humbly suggest you’ve not set them high enough. Albert Einstein, a great thinker and a profoundly moral man, was a strong proponent of vegetarianism for most of his life. But Einstein was also a human being with human failings and a real taste for German sausage. In letters to friends he wrote about his “terribly guilty conscience” every time he gave into temptation and ate his favourite food.

Should we deride the man for saying that “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet” and then occasionally succumbing to the temptation of a smoked sausage sarnie? Or should we celebrate him for recognising a truth and doing his best to live his life accordingly, even if he failed from time to time? If it’s flawless heroes you want, then the human race probably isn’t the best place to look for them. We are imperfect creatures, and those of us who strive to overcome those imperfections – despite knowing that battle can never be completely won – shouldn’t be berated for each stumble.

Passive Vs. Aggressive Hypocrisy

But that’s hardly the whole story. There’s a hypocrisy that can’t be defended. One that is not the passive failure of individuals to meet the standards they set for themselves, but the aggressive insistence of others that we all meet standards they themselves fail to achieve. This form of hypocrisy can usually be seen in the three ‘P’s (parents, priests and politicians). So a child is threatened with a grounding if they get caught with a cigarette, despite the father smoking 40 a day. The congregation is threatened with eternal damnation if they steal, by a priest pilfering cash from the poor-box. And the public get threatened with a criminal record and imprisonment if they possess cannabis, by a politician who was an occasional toker for several years of his life.

All three of those are utterly indefensible. If a father wishes to punish his child for smoking a cigarette (not an unreasonable thing to do by any means) then he needs to give them up first. If a priest wishes to be a moral leader; to proscribe a standard of behaviour and threaten punishment for those who fail to achieve it; then that priest needs to live to that standard. And if a politician wants to enforce a law under which cannabis smokers are jailed or receive a criminal record (along with the various restrictions that places on the rest of your life), then that politician better not have been a toker himself.

Here’s an interesting question… does anyone believe it would have been possible for David Cameron to become leader of the British Conservative Party if he had a criminal record? Oh come on Tories! Be honest, there’s just no fricking way he’d even have gotten selected as an election candidate. Yet Mr. Cameron and his party have a policy that states clearly that Mr. Cameron should have been criminalised for his earlier actions. I love the description of the punishment Cameron received when his cannabis-smoking was discovered at Eton…

Eton launched an investigation into reports that some boys were buying drugs in the nearby town. During the course of the inquiry, Cameron and a number of other pupils admitted smoking pot…

Cameron was ‘gated’- meaning that he was deprived of school privileges and barred from leaving the premises or being visited by friends or family. His punishment lasted for about a week.

An Eton contemporary said the punishment had been particularly humiliating for the future Leader of the Opposition because it had come shortly before the annual ‘Fourth of June’ gala day, when the college is thrown open to pupils’ parents, relatives and friends who are invited to enjoy exhibitions, speeches, sports events and the traditional ‘Procession of Boats’.

‘Cameron was gated just beforehand, so his parents, who had been looking forward to spending the day with him, had to apologise to their friends,’ the student said. ‘It was all painfully embarrassing. But after that he pulled himself together and became an exemplary pupil.’

Cameron admits: I used dope at Eton

Awwww… poor lickle David… gated for a full week! And all that embarrassment. Meanwhile the latest Tory policy statement I can find on the subject of cannabis demands that the government reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug (rather than Class C as it’s currently classified). This means the Tory Party believe that anyone caught in possession of cannabis should be jailed for between 3 months and 5 years, receive a minimum fine of GBP2,500 and have a criminal record for the rest of their lives.

The Tories are prepared to forgive Cameron his youthful indiscretions of course. They’ve just spent over a decade in the wilderness with one unelectable leader after another; political expediency demands that they turn a blind eye to Cameron’s pot-smoking (and coke-snorting allegedly) days. But that’s just not good enough. The only reason David Cameron is within touching distance of power is because the policy he proposes regarding cannabis possession doesn’t apply to him.

Careful with that Vote

I was talking about the upcoming Irish elections with a friend recently. He was advocating a vote for Fine Gael for tactical reasons (a classic ‘anyone but the incumbent’ strategy that involves voting for the strongest opposition even if you don’t like them). “But D,” I argued, “you can’t vote for Fine Gael… you’re a pot head!” He dismissed this initially by pointing out that he didn’t vote on single issues. “Yeah, but this is one hell of a single issue D. You’re electing someone who wants to put you in prison. Who wants to take your family, your home and your job away from you. It’s sheer insanity for you to want that person in power.”

He’s reconsidering his position.

And I damn well hope David Cameron is reconsidering his. I’d love to ask him whether he believes his life would be better had his cannabis possession been subjected to the punishment he advocates for others? Would Mr. Cameron be a better, more-productive member of society if he’d been expelled from school, spent three months in a juvenile detention centre, and received a criminal record barring him from numerous positions (as well as travel to several countries)? Would society be better off to have one more half-educated ex-con with a chip on his shoulder?

We are all of us hypocrites from time to time, but David Cameron is guilty of an aggressive hypocrisy that makes him dangerous and untrustworthy and – I sincerely hope – entirely unelectable.

UPDATE: It strikes me that being “a half-educated ex-con with a chip on his shoulder” probably qualifies as “a better, more-productive member of society” than does Leader of the Conservative Party. However I suspect Mr. Cameron doesn’t think that.

While I was away struggling with the short days and the gloom, the rest of the world saw fit to continue doing it’s thing as though my participation were utterly irrelevant. I thought that was rather impolite of it, but figured I wouldn’t kick up a big fuss as everyone seemed to be having such a good time. And why let all that mulled wine go to waste, eh?

All the same, I think a quick recap of the news over the past few months is in order, with perhaps a brief comment from yours truly… the kind of comment that probably would have turned the tide of debate on the issue and brought about a swift and equitable resolution had I made it in a timely fashion. Now though, it’ll just seem like staggeringly obvious hindsight. But if staggeringly obvious hindsight isn’t what blogging is all about, then I for one don’t know what is!

Before I get onto that though, let me pass on a couple of links that have floated my way and which are particularly noteworthy. First up is the silly, wry and very funny short film, Pitch’n’Putt with Beckett and Joyce, which came via email from Gyrus. Favourite line: “No! Not a Milky Way! A Topic You Arse! (all fecund in its nuttiness)”. Go and watch it… you’ll understand.

Also via Gyrus (I think) is this; The World’s 12 Worst Ideas. I actually disagree with a couple of Fred Halliday’s points (for example, when people say “the world is speeding up”, I believe they are describing a very real phenomenon even if they have chosen a clumsy phrase to express it) but it’s nevertheless a very interesting and perceptive little piece.

Oh, and one other thing from Gyrus… this time his review of David W. Kidner’s Nature & Psyche: Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity. I’m just about to start reading this, and it looks absolutely excellent.

Recent Oniony goodness (usually via email from Mahalia) included Meth Addicts Demand Government Address Nation’s Growing Spider Menace, Kansas Outlaws Practice Of Evolution and the short but sweet White House Quietly Retracts Entire State Of The Union Address.

But what of world events and international shenanigans? What of them?

What indeed.

Looking for satellites

One thing that leapt out at me, though didn’t make as big a splash as perhaps it might have done, was the news that China has zapped an orbiting satellite with a ground-launched missile. I wonder if there was a West Wing moment in the the White House, where Dubya faced the Joint Chiefs and asked, “so what contingencies do we have to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion without the use of satellite surveillance, communication or navigation?” and one by one the assembled brass all shook their heads and looked down at the desk in front of them.

You have to admit, it was a masterstroke by the Chinese. In one fell swoop it completely alters the military situation around Taiwan. I’ll bet there’s some very busy folks at the pentagon right now. I noticed some muted complaints coming from Washington. But not only is that all a bit pots and kettles… who really wants to piss off China?

Comin’ over here, stealin’ our jobs…

My eye was also caught by this – far smaller – story: Ecuadorean footballer rebuilds village. It’s about Ulises de la Cruz, a professional footballer playing for premiership side, Reading FC. Mr. de la Cruz is using his great success (premiership football is a goldmine) to help drag his home village out of poverty. He’s sending back the money to build homes, schools and community centres and the village of Piquiucho is benefiting marvellously from their famous son.

And good for them too! I’m just amused by the media… the fact that de la Cruz’s celebrity and wealth means that he’s celebrated for his “philanthropy”, whereas if he were a labourer on a building site sending half his paypacket home to his family in Piquiucho then he’d just be some bloody immigrant syphoning money out of the British economy.

Climate Change

Of course Climate Change has recently hit the headlines like never before. The combination of the extremely emphatic IPCC report and Al Gore’s lightweight but popular An Inconvenient Truth has really stirred things up. And about time too. Of course, Climate Change – like Peak Oil – is what James Kunstler describes as “a long emergency”. It’ll be difficult to keep people engaged with this issue when the climate doesn’t make some sudden, obvious change in a couple of months. That said, this emergency won’t be stretched over a long enough time so as to be unnoticeable. Millions of people are being, and will be, seriously affected by it. I’ve got a long piece in the works regarding the environmental policies of Ireland’s main energy supplier, Bord Gáis, so I’ll not say too much on the subject now. Except to point you at this excellent piece on the BBC website: The semantics of climate change. And – more importantly if you live in the UK – please read Merrick‘s excellent piece, How Green Is Green Electricity? and act accordingly.

Merrick (from his other blog) is also providing the soundtrack to these times. Go listen to the orchestral version of The The‘s wonderful Armageddon Days Are Here (Again). What a track!

It’s weird. The “Hitler was a vegetarian” thing. I was involved in an online discussion of vegetarianism recently and someone posted the cryptic message… “Hitler was a vegetarian. (Enough said!)”

Now, the person posting was almost certainly just making a stale wry comment. But still they got me thinking. See, having been a fairly strict veggie for most of my life (I recently relaxed things a little for health reasons), it’s a line I’ve heard time after time. But I’ve never really understood it. Leaving aside the somewhat salient fact that he wasn’t, in fact, a vegetarian; what’s a person trying to say when they claim “Hitler was a vegetarian”?

Are they saying: “being a vegetarian doesn’t make you a good person”? Is that really it? Because I don’t actually know anyone who claims that it does. Most vegetarians simply feel that their conscience won’t permit them to be involved with the meat industry (for ethical or ecological reasons). The rest eschew meat for more direct “empathy” reasons. Only a total nutter, or a sanctimonious fourteen year old, would make the claim that their diet makes them a good person. Certainly nobody serious.

Vegetarians believe that involvement in something so questionable as the modern meat industry is a choice they simply don’t need to make. So long as an adequate alternative diet is readily available; as it is; then choosing not to eat meat is no different to choosing not to participate in blood sports. It doesn’t make you a good person to obey the dictate of your conscience. Merely a normal one.

That said, the odd hostility with which vegetarianism is often met makes me wonder if there isn’t a lot of defensiveness going on… like maybe there’s lots of people not listening to the dictate of their own conscience. Can you imagine hassling someone at the dinner table because they don’t like badger-baiting?

Apparently Hitler also wore socks. Oh, and I’m told he liked to listen to music. Next time you encounter someone listening to a cd, why not point out that “Hitler was a music listener”. Then add enigmatically, “enough said” as though you’re making some general point about listening to music. If the person listening to the music is also wearing socks (and is eating vegetables), it’s probably best to scream “FASCIST!” and beat them to death. Y’know… just in case they decide to annex the Rhineland and invade Poland.

This is a tough one. As with any attempt to discuss the reasons and motivations behind deplorable acts, one runs the risk – thanks to our psychologically illiterate culture – of appearing to condone them. In 2004 Jenny Tonge (a British Liberal Democrat MP) was sacked from her position for stating that she understood why Palestinians might choose to become suicide bombers. The Israeli ambassador to the UK welcomed her dismissal with the claim that “We must stand up against such remarks, which are an incitement against the state of Israel and against Jews.”

Now, I’m no fan of Jenny Tonge. Her statements about the Kalahari Bushmen were staggeringly offensive and displayed the kind of patronising colonial mindset that clearly blights the upper reaches of the British establishment to this day. Though I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that this attitude should be found in someone willing to bear the title “Baroness”. It’s very difficult to take a liberal democrat seriously when they occupy an unelected position in an archaic ruling aristocracy.

Nonetheless, Tonge’s sacking from the LibDem front bench was one of the more outrageous and cowardly acts to have occurred in mainstream politics of late. And just think of the competition it faces! The idea that “understanding” should be considered anything other than a positive thing is a demonstration of just how screwed up our culture is. Personally I’d introduce a policy whereby every MP was asked whether or not they could understand why Palestinians become suicide bombers. Those without the requisite levels of understanding, imagination and empathy should be fired. Certainly they shouldn’t be permitted to develop and implement policies that would affect anyone beyond their family and circle of friends.

As for the Israeli ambassador and his idiotic remarks; there’s few things that’ll generate anti-Israeli sentiment faster than Israeli officials telling the rest of the world what it may or may not understand.

But it’s not Palestinian suicide bombing that I wish to discuss here. Instead I want to go further into the heart of darkness. To a place we hear a lot less about, but where the horrors and atrocities make most of what we do hear pale into insignificance. I want to journey to the outer reaches of human behaviour where empathy, understanding… perhaps even psychological analysis… run into a brick wall that has most sane people reaching for the word “evil”. I want to talk about what’s been going on in Central Africa of late.

It’s fashionable within the liberal left to ascribe all of Africa’s problems to colonialism. If it wasn’t for the imperialism of white Europe, black Africa would be all sweetness and light. A more nuanced liberal analysis will draw attention to western post-colonial economic policy as a contributing factor. But ultimately it’s a view that boils down to an unconscious assumption of white supremacy.

Of course, I’m not denying the role that both colonialism and continued economic exploitation have played in creating the political chaos we see in much of Africa today. There can be no doubt that European and American policies have had a spectacularly destructive influence on African society (and not just Europe and America either… the tragedy currently occurring in Sudan is being fuelled in part by Chinese economic policy). However, just like the overbearing parent who takes credit for every success their child achieves and blames themself for every failure (as a strategy of establishing control through guilt), the liberal attitude towards Africa denies – or at least grossly minimises – the responsibility that Africans must bear for their own decisions and actions.

It’s important that this is not viewed as a race issue. The atrocities I wish to discuss here are being carried out by black men against black women in Central Africa. But anyone who wishes to draw racial conclusions should probably bear in mind the skin colour of those who ran the gas chambers in Europe in the 1940s. White Germans were responsible for arguably the worst genocide in human history. And it’s only “arguably” the worst because it has competition from black Rwandans and yellow Cambodians. The capacity for extreme cruelty and violence are clearly not the exclusive preserve of any skin colour.

Belgian Congo… The Congo… DRC… Zaire… DRC

And so, finally, to specifics. It was Natalie Bennett’s article in yesterday’s Guardian that prompted me to spend most of the past 24 hours thinking and reading about recent events in the Congo (see this map if you’re unsure of the geography). So thanks a lot Natalie; I’m now extremely depressed. Of course, it’s not really Natalie’s fault. Anyone who spends a little time reading the reports emerging from that war-torn nation can’t help but feel depressed.

For most of my life the Democratic Republic of The Congo (DRC) was called Zaire. In 1997 the name was changed back to Democratic Republic of The Congo – it’s name between 1964 and 1971. For the majority of the 20th century, however (up until 1960), this vast area of land wasn’t a true nation at all. It was called Belgian Congo and was run from Brussels for the benefit of a bunch of north Europeans.

There’s no question that the effects of colonialism have contributed to the political instability in the region. However, the people of The Congo have now had more than forty years of independence and – by almost every measure – conditions have worsened consistently for those forty years.

Similarly, the desire of the industrial west to exploit the vast natural resources of The Congo has generated a massive incentive for disparate groups to control those resources. But liberal opinion does not – and should not – consider the desire for resources an acceptable motive for US political violence in Iraq. So the fact that the west is willing to pay top-dollar for Congolese diamonds, uranium or gold does not absolve the local militia groups of responsibility for their actions. Since 1996 DRC has been wracked by the single most violent conflict on the planet since World War Two. Conservative estimates place the number of dead at four million. That’s four million central Africans (not merely Congolese, for many of the dead are from neighbouring nations dragged into the conflict) massacred by other central Africans.

We must become more aware of the role that the west plays in this violence. For that’s something – in theory at least – we can do something about. But we must be very careful not to assume more responsibility than we bear. If I pay a man to commit murder then I am a murderer. But so is the man I paid. And he bears equal – if not more – responsibility for the act of violence. Certainly nobody should be making excuses for his actions.

The Inhumanity of Men

Did you notice that in the previous paragraph I dropped my usual gender neutrality? I didn’t say “If I pay a person…” It was a man I was paying. This was to better introduce the aspect of the Congolese violence that is perhaps most disturbing; the extreme sexual violence carried out against women. It’s at this point that I advise you to stop reading if descriptions of such violence are likely to upset you badly. My head’s in a pretty bad place right now having examined some of the reports – and it’s not the first time I’ve read such accounts. This is seriously nasty stuff.

I don’t wish to minimise any form of violence. There are very few victims of rape (even extremely violent rape… all rape is violence, but there are levels of violence as we shall soon discover) who would prefer not to have survived the ordeal. So, as far as most people are concerned, it’s better to be raped than murdered. Let me quickly repeat, this is not an attempt to play down the severity of rape. Indeed, as you’ll see, I intend quite the opposite. For while I can honestly say that I understand why a Palestinian might choose to put on an explosive belt, my empathy and imagination fall short when confronted with the tactics of, for example, the Federation for the Liberation of Rwanda (one of the most active militias in The Second Congo War, and generally considered largely responsible for the preceding genocide in Rwanda).

So there’s a disconnect. A Palestinian suicide bomber is arguably committing a “worse” crime than an FLR rapist. Murder Vs. Rape. Yet the worse crime is understandable while the “lesser” one is not. What’s the reason for this disconnect? Well, before I try to answer that let’s get the nasty graphic bit out of the way so you can better understand my failure of understanding. Let me repeat my previous warning… this is disturbing.

“Fistula”. I’d never heard the word before yesterday. It’s an extremely rare medical condition where the wall between the vagina and the bladder and/or rectum is ruptured. Extremely rare, that is, except in Central Africa. In the rest of the world the condition generally occurs due to serious complications during childbirth. Most gynecologists and obstetricians will go their entire career without ever encountering a single case. In DRC, however, there’s an epidemic. And it’s not down to an increase in complicated births.

Many of the militias in DRC have adopted a deliberate policy of terror through mass rape. There’s no question that this is a horribly effective way to cause massive social damage. However rape – even violent rape – does not as a rule cause fistula. No, instead the militiamen, having already gang-raped the woman (often a huge number of times over a period of weeks or months) will deliberately inflict major damage to her genitals before sending her back to her village. More often than not this is achieved by carefully shooting the woman’s vagina at point-blank range. “Carefully” because they want her to survive, to return to her village. Having commit this sickening crime against the woman, they then use her as a psychological weapon against the rest of her people.

Often the fistula is not a result of a bullet. Knives, broken glass or just sharp sticks are used to cause as much damage as possible. Girls as young as 12 months have been subjected to this violence. Sometimes, prior to the mutilation women and young girls are impregnated, held for months, and then given violent late-term abortions. The vast majority of women who suffer this are rendered permanently incontinent, incapable of bearing children or of menstruation, sexually inactive and prone to a lifetime of unpleasant infections. As though that weren’t enough, the extreme incontinence produced by fistula means they face a lifetime smelling of shit and piss… social outcasts.

The Limits of Empathy

If we are entirely unemotional about these horrors, it is possible to understand the reason that militias would adopt this policy of extreme sexual violence. Indeed, this reason has already been mentioned… it’s a very effective method of terrorism and social disruption. But while that may provide an adequate analysis for the history books, it’s a world away from an understanding of the individual man who chooses to commit these acts.

And it’s here that I hit the aforementioned brick wall. You see, to me this appears, bizarrely, like “learned psychopathy”. An isolated case of a psychopath committing vile acts of sexual violence is comprehensible in the context of a severe personality disorder. But when this form of sadistic violence is adopted as policy and willingly implemented by large numbers of men, then we’re faced with something entirely different.

Can we describe these men as suffering from a personality disorder? Are they mentally ill? It seems to me that an essential element in any diagnosis of psychopathy is that the individual is acting in a manner incompatible with the values and sanctioned behaviour patterns of their society. This is why, in our own culture, we do not diagnose as psychopaths those businessmen who are willing to place career advancement and profit above more human concerns… such behaviour is clearly sanctioned within the context of capitalism. It makes little sense to describe as psychopathic any behaviour which is actively encouraged by one’s culture. Psychopathy has both medical and social components.

But in order to work successfully, industrial capitalism has had to insulate the individual businessman from the negative consequences of their actions. This prevents basic human empathy from intervening and forcing a change in behaviour. No such insulation from the consequences of their actions exists for a Congolese militiaman. It perplexes me, and it disturbs me. So while I can envision a set of extreme circumstances that might see me strap a bomb to my body, I simply cannot find any empathy at all with a man willing to repeatedly rape a woman and then shove a broken bottle into her body in order to lash out at his enemies.

I therefore reject outright the implication of Natalie Bennett’s article that this behaviour is essentially a factor of the “maleness” of the perpetrators. Something else is at work in DRC. Something that has even me reaching for the word “evil”.

A fellow blogger has been threatened with legal action for libel. In the following piece, all names and any specifics are entirely fictional (except the bit about Oliver Kamm which is true). I’ve no intention of writing anything that could identify the blogger, the person making the legal threats or the controversial claims that caused the fuss. That said, I’m going to set the scene…

I’m an occasional reader of Bob’s blog. He’s got a nice way with words. Also, we were on the same polo team in Singapore in the mid 1980s. About three months ago an article appeared in a magazine detailing the behaviour of a well-known businessman. Bob quoted this article in a short blog post and thought nothing further of it. Two and a half months later, Hello magazine backed down and published a retraction. They admitted they had no evidence – beyond hearsay – that Sir Digby Jones had “gotten off” with a goat during a recess at the recent CBI conference.

Bob noted this with interest but was still surprised when Sir Digby dropped him an email demanding that he remove his post citing the offending article. If he didn’t, then legal action would swiftly follow.

Now, because of who I am, my initial response was “Screw the bastid!” Don’t remove the offending post, I urged Bob, until someone is literally holding a gun to your head. It’s probably not worth dying over, but it’s certainly worth getting aggressively self-righteous about. No question there.

What you have to understand is that – in my own weird little world – “suing for libel” is only a notch or two above “mugging old ladies for spare change”. It’s essentially setting the rozzers on someone for calling you names. I mean, when it boils down to it, that’s what’s going on. Yes, yes, yes, there’s a million legitimate reasons right? What if the libel ruins your business or makes you unemployable or upsets your mother…? Well look, I’m not saying that having lies told about you can’t be damaging… even ruin a life. Yes that can happen. And that’s wrong and horrible. But I’m a moral absolutist. You know that by now, dear reader, and whatever the circumstances I think you’re pondscum if you set the police on someone for writing something.

Corporations, incidentally, are fair game. You understand that right? Use whatever means necessary to kick Big Media in the balls. Lawsuits, boycotts, petrol-bombs… whatever’s to hand really. But you just don’t threaten another person with the police for something they say. That should be part of the implied social contract we each have with one another. It’s extremely bad form. Which isn’t to say you should take it lying down. When Oliver Kamm called me a Nazi-sympathiser on a public website the idea of suing for libel would have been absurd. Instead I decided to call him a kook and a tosser and point out that I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire and he’s got a stupid head, roughly once every three months for the rest of my life.

None of which is very relevant, but it’s nearly three months since I made fun of Kamm so I wanted to shoe-horn it in somehow.

Anyway, Bob doesn’t want to take down the piece. And quite aside from my “screw you” gut reaction, I don’t think he should either. You see there’s an issue here that needs debating, and maybe even something worth taking a principled stand over. And it’s got nothing to do with whether or not Digby Jones enjoys kissing goats.

The Memory Hole

You didn’t think I’d go the whole month without an Orwell reference now, did you? In Nineteen Eighty Four the memory hole is where all the little bits of un-news get placed when The Party makes a revision. So a war hero who later speaks out against Big Brother not only disappears, but finds himself removed from history. The books and newspapers are all recalled and alterations made. Entire wars get sent to the memory hole.

To the furnace.

I’m not suggesting that this particular instance of alleged libel has a great deal of political or historical import. But while ‘Hello’ magazine have published a retraction in the current issue, they’ve not been required to somehow recall every offending copy and modify it. There’s no army of temps scouring doctors’ waiting rooms as I write this, desperately snipping out the libellous paragraph… removing it from all but imperfect memory.

Similarly, I don’t see why a blog should be forced to alter its past “issues” rather than merely publish a current retraction. Digby Jones isn’t denying that the allegation was made, merely that it’s wrong. Insisting that the thing is erased from history is absurd. Bob should post a retraction and an apology. As a compromise he should also post a prominent link to that apology from the article in question. Insisting upon anything more is using the tactics of The Party.

Initially I tried to argue that expecting Bob to remove his article from the web was oddly akin to asking a big-circulation magazine to do a recall of a three-month-old issue. With google-cache keeping a copy of web content and sites like archive.org doing their thing, it’s clear that Bob no longer has control over the piece once it’s been distributed. It’s unreasonable, therefore, to even ask him to try to “recall” the post.

Once I’d made that argument, however, someone pointed out that google-cache refreshes itself eventually and archive.org tends not to grab blogs. So when I say “sites like archive.org”, which ones do I mean? Off I went to take a look…

And I have to admit there aren’t as many as I expected there to be. Certainly far less than there used to be. I can remember a number of different sites that archived huge chunks of the web and offered specialised indexing and searching. I guess google has killed them all off as only alexa.com seem to be still in the business. Now, the fact that even one such service exists may be enough to prove the point, but I accept that could be reaching a wee bit. So if anyone is aware of any such archive sites or services then I’d be interested to hear about them. Otherwise it’s maybe not a valid argument.

Although I guess I could put my money where my mouth is and set up a mirror of Bob’s site on a webhost in Brazil (actively and explicitly against Bob’s wishes of course so that he has no culpability). Nobody in their right mind – no, not even Digby Jones – would try to sue a resident of Ireland, from the UK, for a minor act of libel occurring on a website in Brazil. Even I don’t have that kind of free time on my hands.

You see, if nothing else, the “libellous” piece is now sitting in the browser-caches of a whole bunch of visitors to Bob’s site. Some people regularly clear their caches, but others don’t. Some people will even save a copy of a controversial page to their hard-drive just to demonstrate the point that once published, Bob no longer has control over what happens to his page.

I admit it… I’m actively searching for a rationale for a gut feeling here. It’s clear that Bob has far more control over his post-distributed content than ‘Hello’ does. Maybe even enough control to make a decent case that removing it from his website will remove it from the web.

But again, I just feel uncomfortable about removing something published months ago in a periodical. It’s insisting upon more than a traditional “public apology and retraction”… it’s an attempt to falsify an historical record. And whatever one may think about Bob’s blog, or blogs in general, there’s something just not right about that.

The trouble with all of this is the fact that bloggers can, and often do, habitually edit past entries for all manner of (usually perfectly innocent) reasons. So maybe it’s all just a load of bollocks really. Nonetheless, suing someone for libel is a low and nasty thing to do. That much is still true.

From Europhobia (now dressed in lovely WordPress trousers and sporting a shiny new URL) comes news that investigations into European complicity in US war crimes have identified 147 occasions when Irish soil was “suspected of being used for ‘extraordinary renditions’ or transfer of prisoners without trial or legal redress to sites such as Guantanamo Bay or Uzbekistan.”

It’s clear that the so-called “neutrality” of Ireland is a sham. At Shannon we provide transfer, refuelling and storage facilities for the US Air Force. I suspect that our government would not have offered the same hospitality to the Iraqi airforce in the geographically unlikely event that Saddam Hussein had made the request.

That said, our constitution is pretty damn clear about the neutrality of Ireland, and it’s always been a strict rule that Shannon could not be used for combat missions. This means that long-range bombers can’t refuel in Ireland on their way to drop explosives on a city, but a plane full of marines on their way to shoot people in that city is acceptable. I wonder whether the revered group of idealists, poets, socialists and agitators who framed our constitution would be proud of a government willing to make such spurious distinctions.

Or of a people willing to quietly acquiesce.

But use of Irish soil during these CIA ‘extraordinary renditions’? That brings the moral transgression and culpability to a whole other level. Here we have the Irish State actively and regularly assisting a policy of kidnap and torture. And 147 flights over a period of a few years is pretty damn regular. We’re not talking about a couple of isolated incidents here.

Protestations of ignorance are hollow and meaningless. An independent neutral republic not only has a right, it has a duty, to regulate any foreign military traffic that crosses its border. And for precisely this reason! So that we are not complicit in acts inconsistent with our international obligations. If a US airforce plane lands in Shannon and it contains people snatched from the street by the CIA en route for torture in an Uzbek detention centre, the Irish authorities have an absolute legal obligation to detain that flight and prevent a crime against humanity.

That these flights were never once detained demonstrates either than the Irish authorities were aware of their nature and chose to provide assistance nonetheless; or that a deliberate policy of ignorance was in place. Imagine an Irish airport had been used as a stop-off point for plane-loads of Afghan heroin for the past few years. Imagine that in order to gain favour with the heroin producers, the Irish government ordered the contents of the planes not to be examined. Imagine that the government later claimed they didn’t realise anything dodgy was going on. Lastly, imagine how naive you’d have to be to believe them.

You may consider that an extreme analogy. And it’s true, it would take a peculiar kind of eejit to think nothing dodgy was going on if Afghan heroin producers asked them to ignore some planes. But the C.I.A.? I mean, come on! You can trust them to be completely legit and above-board, right?

As I say; a peculiar kind of eejit. The kind we seem to elect.

What’s worse is that even despite widespread acknowledgement that these torture buses were fuelled and resupplied by Ireland, we have not denied the US military use of the facilities at Shannon. Instead we have accepted assurances that such flights will never stop in Ireland if indeed they ever happen which they don’t.

So we’re checking the planes now? Well no. They’ve promised to be all legit and above-board from now on, so we don’t need to.

Who has? Ummmm… the C.I.A.

You mean the kidnappers and torturers? Doh!