Bring war criminals to justice

John Pilger says to Bring war criminals to justice.

The use of depleted Uranium (DU) in weapons by US and allied forces have led to an epidemic of cancers within Iraq. Yet, access to vital medical equipment is being denied, and the extent of the problem is being hidden:

The British oncologist Karol Sikora, chief of the cancer program of the World Health organisation (WHO) in the 1990s, wrote in the British Medical Journal: “Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Iraq Sanctions Committee].”

He told me: “We were specifically told [by the WHO] not to talk about the whole Iraq business. The WHO is not an organisation that likes to get involved in politics.”

Recently, Hans von Sponeck, the former assistant secretary general of the United Nations and senior UN humanitarian official in Iraq, wrote to me: “The US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.”

Today, a WHO report, the result on a landmark study conducted jointly with the Iraqi Ministry of Health has been “delayed”. Covering 10,800 households, it contains “damning evidence”, says a ministry official and, according to one of its researchers, remains “top secret”.

The report says that birth defects have risen to a “crisis” right across Iraqi society where DU and other toxic heavy metals were by the US and Britain. Fourteen years after he sounded the alarm, Dr Jawad Al-Ali reports “phenomenal” multiple cancers in entire families.

Dr Jawad Al-Ali had the abstract of his report published as EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDY AT THE SOUTH OF IRAQ (BASRAH CITY) for a conference, and there is a series of slides called The Effects of Wars on Iraq (some of the pictures are quite horrific).

So murder by radioactivity is acceptable if it is done in Iraq, while murder by cleaver is not if it is done in Woolwich.

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I am a racist and so are you

Helen Razer says that I am a racist and so are you.

Her conclusion is that:

Helen Razer is a horrid racist who selfishly fails to understand the pain of indigenous Australia.

…

I am white and I am Australian and I am a racist. The only way out of this shunless truth is to acknowledge it.

I agree. I am a white Australian who has benefited from the genocide of the Australian Aborigines and their continuing exploitation. I was brought up and educated to see them as sub-humans and not deserving of respect.

Yet, as I was an outsider because of my stutter, I had friends who were Aborigines during primary school. We were outcasts together.

Racism is something that is taught. It is an instrument of control. It separates people based on spurious categories.

We forget now, but white people used to discriminate against other white people.

In her book, “The History of White People, Nell Painter traces the evolution of whiteness as a concept passing from the Greeks to the Germans to the Nordic to the rich English to all English to include Irish and Germans to all Europeans and to those of 'mixed race'. She argues that whiteness is constructed to serve a political purpose. The enlargement is to co-opt former outsiders to become part of the system.

Malcolm X once said that:

You cannot have Capitalism without Racism.

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Compliance

Following on from Lack of Character?, I think the movie, “Compliance”, is a deeply disturbing one about how the perception of power can overcome moral scruples.

In this movie, the characters believe that they have no choice but to follow the dictates of the prank caller who calims to be a policeman. The mere assumption that teh caller is genuine is enough to give credibility to whatever lies they tell.

No matter how bizarre the request the caller makes, any moral scruples are quickly overcome by either threats or reasons. At the end of the movie, the manager is asked why didn't she stop the prank. Her reply was that the caller always had an answer to any objections she raised.

The prank only stopped when the gardener would not go along with the requests of the caller. His moral scruples were offended in such a way that he refused to comply with instructions.

What is important for me was that the higher the status of the employee or manager, the more likely they were to comply. Did this mean that advancement in a Capitalist economy requires one to overcome moral scruples? It would seem so.

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Lack of Character?

Dan Little questions the idea of immoral behaviour is due to a Lack of Character?

Little considers &ldqui;Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior by John Doris. Little puts Doris' thesis as:

the basic theory of action associated with virtue ethics and the theory of moral character is most likely incorrect. The character theory maintains that individuals have stable traits that lead them to behave similarly in a range of relevant but differing circumstances. A person with the traits of honesty or compassion will behave truthfully or benevolently in a range of circumstances, when it is easy to do so and when it is more difficult.

Doris' thesis is seen as an endorsement of situationism which …is the competing view that maintains that people's actions are more sensitive to features of the situation of action than to enduring underlying traits.

Little's conclusion is that:

Pure situationism seems to run deeply contrary to our ordinary, commonsense understandings of how and why people behave as they do. Doris doesn't have too much regard for commonsense when it comes to understanding behavior, though he does address the topic. But if we think about the people we've observed most closely in professional contexts, personal life, and politics, it seems hard to avoid the sober conclusion that these individuals do indeed have "character", for better or worse, and that their characters differ. This one can be counted on to deflect responsibility for bad outcomes in his or her division; that one is solidly committed to his spouse; and that one is forever expedient in appealing for votes. People differ in these ways in our ordinary experience; so it is difficult to find the experiments of Milgram or Zimbardo sufficient to erase our reliance on the idea of persistent character traits in ordinary people. (Could we design experiments that seek to evaluate characteristics like "avoids responsibility," "honors familial commitments," "acts out of devotion to principle"?)

My understanding of Marxist morality is that it tends towards situationism. People can only choose between the choices that their material circumstance allows.

For example, the necessity of earning a living may compel a person to accept an immoral job.

The purpose of a socialist revolution is to expand the choices available to workers so that they are not compelled to make immoral choices.

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Leninism for now

Paul Le Blanc writes about Leninism for now.

Le Blanc writes that:

Our purpose – as revolutionary socialists – is not simply to persuade people that socialism could be so much better than capitalism. Our purpose is not simply to protest, and organise protests, against capitalist injustice. Our purpose is not simply to organise struggles to bring about improvements under capitalism. Our purpose is not simply to interpret history and current events (or anything else) from a revolutionary socialist standpoint. Our primary purpose is to overturn existing power relationships, and to put political power into the hands of an organised, class-conscious working class (the class that we are part of, the class of the labouring majority), which is the key to establishing a socialist democracy.

Emphasis Mine

All revolutionary activity should be directed to that end. The daily struggles, protests, strikes, articles, newspapers are all conceived to raise the consciousness of the working class about its historic role and its historic duty. We are charged with saving the human species from Capitalism.

Le Blanc argues that:

The revolutionary vanguard is not those who claim to be building a revolutionary vanguard party under the banner of Lenin. The vanguard is a broad layer of the working class that has a significant degree of class-consciousness, that has some understanding of capitalism and the need to go beyond it, with some accumulated experience and commitment in the struggle against oppression and exploitation. Only when an organisation has a significant membership base in this layer can it be considered a revolutionary vanguard party.

Emphasis Mine

The problem is that no such party now exists. The reasons are many: the triumph of neo-liberalism; the destruction of unions; the fall of the Soviet Union; the re-emergence of Capitalism in China.

Le Blanc outlines a strategy to continue with a United Front approach of joining in the common struggle and learning from each other:

I think it is important for our different groups of the socialist left not to rush into hothouse efforts to forge some premature organisational unity. Instead we should focus on working together in real, practical struggles, with an eye towards possible unity, but with a focus on the actual struggles. Those struggles are the necessary, transformative precondition for possible unity. The only fruitful unity will come on the basis of joint action in such real, practical struggles. If such unity is achieved, the result might be a democratic, durable, well-run organisation of several thousand, with full-time organisers and new technologies being utilised to enable more and more people to become activist cadres working together to build local struggles, as well as advancing left-wing educational and cultural work, throughout the country. Such an organisation could

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