Noen argumenter for at også du, kjære leser, skal støtte de svakes rett til å være sterke

På Twitter forleden dag utfordret Nils August Andresen, som er redaktør i høyresidens ideologitidsskrift Minerva, meg til å skrive ned hvorfor jeg var uenig med ham i spørsmålet om FNs barnekonvensjon. Nils August mener at borgerne i de 140 landene som har signert denne konvensjonen ikke bør ha mulighet til å sette makt bak de kravene UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) stiller til landene som underskriver den i forhold til internasjonal lov. Han kaller konvensjonen "umoden" og mener at den er et sammensurium som vi bør la ligge til den har modnet litt.

Selv synes jeg dette er en no-brainer. Barnekonvensjonen er et viktig og et godt verktøy for å beskytte de svakeste blant oss, og stiller tydelige krav til både statlige aktører og familier som krever at vi hever oss opp til et velferdsnivå for barn som er etisk forsvarlig. Som alle de beste rettighetskonvensjoner bærer UNCRC håpet om en mer sivilisert og mindre barbarisk verden i seg, og maner oss til å ta de moralske handlingene som burde være selvinnlysende.

*

Nils August setter en del forskjellige argumenter i spill, og jeg kommer ikke til å angripe dem alle sammen her. Jeg vil heller gå rett til det jeg oppfatter som kjernen i hans argumentasjon, som er en form for motstand mot visse typer menneskerettigheter som jeg hører ofte fra høyreideologer, såvel som stortingspolitikere i Framskrittspartiet og Høyre. Denne typen argumentasjon som har en tradisjon på den politiske høyresiden som går helt tilbake til forarbeidene med FNs menneskerettighetserklæring (UNDHR) og tilbake til kampen om opprettelsen av velferdsstaten, og debattene om dens legitimitet.

For Nils Augusts motstand mot barnekonvensjonen handler såvidt jeg kan se om den gamle debatten om vi skal ha både såkalte positive og negative rettigheter nedfelt i konvensjonene våre. Den ideologiske høyresiden har en tendens til å mislike positive rettigheter, og Nils August argumenterer her for at positive rettigheter er noe herk. Det er mulig han er soft-høyre og vil ha litt velferdsstat, så jeg beklager hvis jeg med dette leser ham litt vel mye inn i en tradisjon, men nå bruker jeg ham litt som unnskyldning for å skrive noe om et spørsmål som har irritert meg lenge.

*

Negative rettigheter er frihet fra noe. Negative rettigheter hindrer andre fra å hindre deg i å leve ditt liv slik du ønsker det. De er samlet retten til ikke å bli hindret fra å utfolde deg: fra å ytre deg, bevege deg, å eie land, eller på annen måte å bli utsatt for vilkårlig maktbruk. Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins, osv.

Positive rettigheter er rettigheter som, med et uoversettelig engelsk begrep, gjør deg empowered. De stiller ofte krav til at andre skal sørge for å bidra til at du skal ha det bra, i den forstand at de stiller krav, særlig til staten. Klassiske positive rettigheter er retten til tilgang på utdannelse, helsevesen, trygghet, vann, mat, advokathjelp og andre goder som sikrer et minimum av velferd. De er ikke passive rettigheter, men aktive rettigheter, idet de krever handling fra andre, og stiller krav til vår samfunnsordning.

Begge disse rettighetstyper er nedfelt i de fleste rettighetskonvensjoner i en eller annen forstand. Jeg vil selv argumentere for at skillet dem i mellom er filosofisk meningsløst, og at de to rettighetsformene i praksis er intimt sammenvevd. Men det kan vi ta i en annen bloggpost.

*

Deler av høyresiden hater positive rettigheter. Det har vært motstand mot positive rettigheter siden Menneskerettighetserklæringen i 1948. Det er mange argumenter mot dem, noen gode, noen dårlige. De gode følger fra Sir Isaiah Berlins kritikk av "positiv frihet" i den klassiske artikkelen "Two Concepts of Liberty", der han argumenterer for at positiv frihet, "frihet til X" innebærer en totalitær fristelse. Han skisserer en rekke av tenkere, helt tilbake til Platons Staten, som har framhevet den priviligerte, opplyste elitens totalitære overformynderi over flertallet. Denne totalitære fristelsen, grunnet i Berlins erfaringer fra totalitære østblokkland grunnet disse tanker, og de samsvarer også med de politiske realiteter i dagens statsdannelser i land som Kina, Nord-Korea eller for den saks skyld det nylig falne regimet i Egypt.

De dårlige motargumentene handler om en libertariansk måte å tenke rettigheter på, der man vektlegger individet framfor det kollektive, og forsøker å nedbygge staten, som, slik jeg ser det, må stå som garantist for de positive rettigheter. Libertarianisme er mer eller mindre rendyrkingen av et sett med utelukkende negative rettigheter. Det er et sterkt og legitimt livssyn, som ville føre til at samfunnet kollapset ("Somalia: libertarian paradise!"). Menneskerettighetsprofessor ved LSE, Conor Gearty, snakker ofte om at den klassiske libertarianske ideen er at "a man's home is his castle". "It tells you a lot about libertarianism: it's a man. And he owns a castle."Libertarianisme er altså en ideologi for de sterke. Menneskerettighetene handler ikke om å gi styrke til de sterkeste, men til å skape et samfunn som er like rettferdig for alle dets medlemmer – en såkalt "rawlsiansk" samfunnsordning.

De virkelig dårlige argumentene handler som regel om å ikle seg de fillete gevantene til ideologiske libertarianere som ledd i en klassekamp der rike eliter ønsker å slippe for å betale sine surt opptjente milliarder i skatt fordi hva har dette samfunnet noen gang gitt dem, bortsett fra infrastruktur, helsevesen, utdannelse, arbeidere, liv, mat, sosiale strukturer og nasjonal sikkerhet?. Dette kan du lese mer om i en kommende bok fra min kollega Mimir Kristjansson.

I sitt innlegg kommer Nils August med noen egentlig ganske vanlige motargumenter mot positive rettigheter, og jeg mistenker ut fra det han skriver at det egentlig er dette hans motstand mot UNCRC bunner i: dens sterke vektlegging av barns positive rettigheter. Barn er langt mer åpenbart enn voksne aktører avhengige av det kollektive. De eier ikke slott, og de kan ikke være individer uten mye hjelp og støtte fra både statlige og familiære krefter.

*

Jeg kommer til å gjennomgå noen av de tingene jeg har størst trøbbel med i Nils Augusts argument. Først et langt sitat, så motargumenter.

For alle menneskerettigheter er ikke like: Menneskerettigheter som idé vokste frem over mange hundre år før de fikk sitt globale gjennombruddet i form av FNs Menneskerettighetserklæring.

(...)

De to konvensjonene uttrykker essensen i en tusenårig tradisjon, som inkluderer Magna Carta og habeas corpus (1215); John Locke og den engelske Bill of Rights (1688) og James Madison med den amerikanske (1791); den franske menneskerettighetserklæringen (1789); vår egen norske grunnlov fra 1814. I engelsk tradisjon kalles substansen i disse rettighetene gjerne ”our ancient rights and liberties”.

(...)

På den tiden Menneskerettighetserklæringen kom, begynte en ny type rettigheter å gjøre seg gjeldende: Økonomiske, sosiale og kulturelle rettigheter ble nedfelt i en egen konvensjon (ØSK). Tanken om økonomiske rettigheter var selvsagt ikke helt ny: Men å gi disse ”positive rettighetene” form som abstrakte, universelle menneskeretter, snarere enn som foranderlige politiske krav, var en innovasjon.

Etter mitt skjønn er det filosofiske og historiske fundamentet ØSK hviler på langt svakere enn SP og EMK, og stundom direkte tvilsomt. Som et resultat er den juridiske utformingen ofte vag eller problematisk (som rett til ferie med lønn, som bare betyr at en del av lønnen tvangsspares for å utbetales i ferien). Når Norge – og mange andre land – ikke har sluttet seg til tilleggsprotokollen som gir individuell klageadgang etter ØSK, er det rimelig å anta at årsaken ikke bare at man tror den er vanskelig å dømme etter; mange politikere mener rett og slett at ØSK ikke holder mål, og at ikke alt som står der virkelig bør være menneskerettigheter, selv om Norge oppfyller det meste som står der.

*

Jeg skjønner hva Nils August prøver å gjøre her – å gjøre negative rettigheter mer ekte og tradisjonelle, men jeg forstår ikke helt at han tror han kan lykkes. Man kan ikke gå gjennom idehistorien med skylapper så store som dette uten å falle.

La oss starte med det helt elementære at det at noe er eldre ikke nødvendigvis betyr at det er bra. For eksempel er det universelle vestlige demokratiet på mange måter nyere som ide enn både John Locke og Magna Carta, men jeg synes det er en fin institusjon, likevel. Dette er også en tankefeil så gammel og etablert at den har et navn på latinsk: argumentum ad antiquitatem — argument fra tradisjon. Mange av rettighetene våre går tilbake til diskusjoner mellom Platon og Aristoteles, Locke og Mill. Men mange av dem gjør ikke det. Ideen om at kvinner er fullt politisk likeverdige individer er en relativt ny ide, iallefall som massefenomen. Jeg synes det er ok at rettigheter er moralske innovasjoner, for rettigheter er jo rent faktisk politiske proposisjoner som sikter på å skape et minimum av velferd for verdens borgere. At de også er en skisse for et sosialdemokrati er åpenbart, men noe vi kan snakke om en annen gang.

Men uansett om det var et argument mot barnekonvensjonen eller positive rettigheter dersom de var moralsk eller idehistorisk innovative, så ville Nils August likevel tatt feil. De er ikke det.

*

At økonomiske, sosiale og kulturelle rettigheter ikke bare er nedfelt i ØSK, men i selve menneskerettighetserklæringen hopper Nils August såvidt jeg kan se over. Hele den siste halvdelen av menneskerettighetserklæringen er full av slike rettigheter: Rett til arbeid, til velferd, helsevesen, kulturliv, plikter over samfunnet, etc. etc. Dette er en integrert del av dagens menneskerettighetssystem. At Nils August prøver å late som om at dette er noe nytt og innovativt er merkelig.

Menneskerettighetserklæringen er nemlig nettopp ikke et voldsomt innovativt dokument. Det ble til gjennom en lang deliberativ prosess der rettferdighetsbegrepet til kulturer over hele verden ble gjennomgått, og en slags destillering av et minste felles multiplum kom til. Den prøvde å fastsette rettigheter som mange mente fantes, men som i liten grad var realisert i praksis. Da den ble lansert stemte alle land for den, bortsett fra sovjetstatene som avsto fra stemmegivning.

Så når Nils August prøver å late som om økonomiske, sosiale og kulturelle rettigheter er noe nytt, uprøvd, uklart, dunkelt, så leser han historien med dårlige briller. Økonomiske, sosiale og kulturelle rettigheter ligger som en strøm som går parallelt med hele den vestlige rettstenkningen. Resten av denne bloggposten kommer bare til å være noen få antydninger til hvor den interesserte leseren kan gå for å spore denne tradisjonen.

*

La oss starte, som alltid, med Platon, som i Staten er – såvidt meg bekjent – den første av de store tenkerne som foreslår felles eiendomsrett (muligens inspirert av kollektivistisk praksis i Sparta). Altså at fellesskapet eier i fellesskap, og at fellesskapets universelle krav på individet er det primære. Denne tanken er bunnplanken i mye av den følgende positive rettighetstradisjonen. (Forresten er Platon ikke noen stor forkjemper for universelle rettigheter — når han mener "felles eiendom" så snakker han helt spesifikt om kvinnene.)

Så har vi Aristoteles, som går i dialog med Platon og kommer frem til at man skal ha egen eiendomsrett, fordi "it is a difficult business to live together and to share in any form of human activity [especially when it comes to property]." Men likevel innrømmer han at "there is a sense in which property ought to be common, [but] it should in general be private."

Siden vi er i antikken, synes jeg også det er pussig at Nils August glemmer de viktigste kildene til tidlig rettstenkning og rettferdighetsspørsmål, religionene. De monoteistiske religionene har alle sterke krav om positive økonomiske rettigheter, og dette var en del av deres kjerneidentitet som politiske bevegelser.

Almissen er en av islams fem søyler, de handlinger som binder alle muslimer sammen. De er en religiøs plikt. Bibelen nevner fattigdom og almisser over 2.000 ganger, hevder dem som har talt. Her er en sentral passasje mange framhever, Jesaja 58:

6. Nei, slik er fasten som jeg vil ha:
at du løslater dem som med urett er lenket,
sprenger båndene i åket
og setter de undertrykte fri,
ja, bryter hvert åk i stykker,

7 at du deler ditt brød med dem som sulter,
og lar hjemløse stakkarer komme i hus,
at du sørger for klær når du ser en naken,
og ikke svikter dine egne.

8 Da skal ditt lys bryte fram
som når dagen gryr,
dine sår skal snart leges og gro.
Din rettferd skal gå foran deg
og Herrens herlighet følge etter deg.

9 Da skal Herren svare når du kaller på ham,
når du roper om hjelp, skal han si: «Her er jeg!»
Når du tar bort hvert tyngende åk,
når du holder opp med å peke fingrer
og tale ondskapsfullt om andre.

De monoteistiske religionene har alle sine sterke påbud om velferdsstøtte som religiøs plikt. En aktiv, positiv rettighet for den fattige, en tvingende plikt for den rettro. Dette er i kjernen av de monoteistiske religionenes identitet.

Også innenfor buddhisme og hinduisme er sosialt arbeid og fattigdomsbekjempelse en sentral del av dharma, og tenkere så forskjellige som Kon-Fu-Tse og Lao-Tse har alle argumentert for dette:

Den himmelske Tao, er å ta

fra dem som har for mye

og gi til dem som har for lite.

Og så går det slag i slag blant både sekulære og åndelige tenkere (i den grad dette var en sterk distinksjon den gangen): Augustin, Winstanley, Godwin, Rousseau, Robespierre, den franske revolusjonen, Wollstonecraft, Mill, Proudhon, Marx (& Engels), Sen, Gandhi (som btw var konsulent i forarbeidene til UNDHR), Rawls, Rorty, Dworkin, osv osv osv osv ...

Alle disse tenkerne bidro i en eller annen forstand til argumentet om universaliserte velferdskrav der individet både har plikter til felleskapet, og krav til å bli behandlet respektfullt og gitt verktøyene til å maksimalisere eget potensiale.

Det er altså en gammel tradisjon for det politisk radikale standpunktet at alle har krav på å ha det godt. Den kommer fra filosofer og politikere, statsmenn og populister, prester og legpredikanter, venstreradikale sekulære intellektuelle og jihadistiske islamister. Det er en bred, dyp tradisjon med minst 2.500 år på baken og forgreininger inn i den mest absurde radikalisme og det mest mainstream sosialdemokrati. Å late som om den er ny, uprøvd, innovativ strategi er umulig, med mindre man særlig avviser som ikke-eksisterende de vedvarende kravene fra venstresiden som gir gjenlyd gjennom hele den vestlige verdens idehistorie. Det er et krav som endelig har begynt å bryte ned motstanden fra elitene gjennom demokratiet. At vi nå tar for gitt en minimumsstandard for menneskelig velferd er en stor, moralsk og politisk seier.

Hvorfor er det et så langt skritt fra ideen om at vi har rett til et sikkert liv til å tenke at vi har retten til et godt liv? Til et rikt liv? Til et liv levd med god helse, med god utdanning?Jeg forstår ikke hvorfor det er en vedvarende insistering på at vi skal rulle vekk denne seieren og gå tilbake til det libertarianske free-for-all. Det slår meg, i lys av alt som har blitt oppnådd gjennom rettighetsspråket, som en nesten nihilistisk idé.

"... som var det én enkelt by"

Jeg sitter for tiden og leser Micheline R. Ishays The Human Rights Reader, og ble overrasket over en passasje fra Cicero hun tar med:

Men i alt filosofene diskuterer må det da i sannhet ikke være noe som er mer verdifullt enn innsikten at vi er født for rettferdigheten, og at det rette ikke avhenger av menneskers meninger, men av naturens. Dette bør øyeblikkelig bli klart når du tydelig ser menneskets brorskap og enhet med sine medmennesker. For ingenting er så likt noe annet, så nøyaktig dets motstykke, som vi alle sammen er til hverandre. (...) Dette er et tilstrekkelig bevis for at det ikke er noen vesensforskjell mellom mennesker.

(...)

Hva blir det da av vennskapet, det helligste av bånd, hvis selv ikke vennen elskes for sin egen skyld, "med hele hjertet", som man sier? Ja, ifølge denne teorien skulle en venn forlates og kastes til side så snart det ikke lenger er håp om gavn og profitt fra dette vennskapet! Og hva kunne vel være mer umenneskelig enn det? Dersom vennskapet derimot skal søkes for sin egen skyld, så skal også felleskap, likeverd og Rettferdighet oppsøkes for sin egen skyld. Og om dette ikke er tilfellet, så finnes ikke Rettferdigheten i det hele tatt, for den nedrigste urettferdigheten er å søke betaling for Rettferdighet.

(...)

For idet sinnet har oppnådd kunnskap om, og anskuelse av dydene, har lagt av seg sin underkastelse for kroppen (...) har flyktet fra all frykt for død eller smerte, (...) hvilken større glede kan beskrives eller forestilles? Og når den har undersøkt himlene, jorden, havene, universets natur og forstår hvorfra alle disse tingene kommer og hvor de må gå, og hvordan de alle er dømt til å gå under (...) og når det innser at det ikke sperres inne av smale vegger, ikke bebor et fast sted, men er borger i hele universet som var det én enkelt by — da, midt i denne storheten, (...) hvor godt vil det da ikke kjenne seg selv, som den pytiske Apollo forteller oss? Og hvor mye vil det ikke avvise og regne som intet det folkemengden kaller herlig?

— Cicero, De Legibus, 52. f.kr. (Min overs.).

Jeg ble overrasket over tre ting:

1. At Cicero har en så sterk uttalt humanistisk universalisme. Det ventet jeg ikke. Men så er spørsmålet om han ser på for eksempel slaver og kvinner som likeverdige.
2. Å se formuleringer som ligner på Kants kategoriske imperativ eller utilitarismekritikken i tiden rundt Kristi fødsel. Mennesket som middel mot et mål, vs. et mål i seg selv er noe som går igjen både i kantiansk etikk og Rawls' kritikk av utilitarisme.
3. Å se kosmopolitiske ideer så tydelig uttalt så lenge før renessansen. Jeg var ikke klar over at disse ideer ble snakket om i så tydelige ordelag så tidlig. Jeg trodde mer de lå der som uutalte idealer.

(Med mindre jeg har misforstått, og oversatt feil, den engelske versjonen var ikke fantastisk, så vidt jeg kunne se.)

Sic semper tyrannis

I knew I was going to have some major issues with the Obama presidency. Foreign policy, for instance looked really bad, and turned out worse (illegal bombing forays creating popular anger in The Most Unstable Nuclear Power In The World, killing hundreds of civilians? Seriously? That's your strategy to secure the USA? And don't even get me started on Israel.) I also figured his economic policy was going to be business as usual. But I never really thought that the collapse of civil rights in the US was going to be an issue. How could things get worse?

Barack Obama is a trained constitutional scholar. You would think that he would be quick to restore the US constitutional and civil rights that the Bush administration demolished over the past decade. And surely he would dismantle what Lawrence Lessig has called the "unitary überexecutive", where the President's office holds power over life and death. But no, he has done none of these things. There have been disappointingly few reversals, and even several issues where things have deteriorated. He has retained the excessive and unchecked power of the Bush administration, instead of taking his George Washington moment and relinquishing it. And he has insisted on not prosecuting the former administration for its many, many crimes. The man to read about all this is blogger and lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who has been taking the Obama administration to town over these issues.

But I think I had some vague sense of, hmm, Hope for Change, deep down, still. But now? Not so much, no. Two weeks ago, the Obama administration's Treasury Department slapped a Global Terrorist label on a man named Anwar al-Awlaki. He's a US citizen, living overseas, probably in Yemen. Now, in all likelihood, the man is bad news. He's apparently a fundamentalist radical muslim cleric. But that's not really an issue here. This is: The Obama administration has revealed that he is on an assasination list. Obama has, in effect, ordered a US citizen killed without due process, on some dreamed-up neverending battlefield in a neverending war, in which he is apparently a military player. The global terrorist label of the Treasury Dept. makes it a criminal offence to do any kind of business with him — including representing him as a lawyer. This means that al-Anwaki is specifically barred from challenging his kill on sight-order legally.

So the Obama administration is ordering a citizen killed arbitrarily, without due process, with no checks and balances, with no representation, and preventing any legal challenges to that completely crazy concentration of power. That's not something you can do in a democracy. Unchecked and arbitrary power over the life of your subjects is, in fact, the definition of tyranny. Thus, always, to tyrants.

My concern now, extrapolated from this case, is that Obama will keep the political and civil structures in place that preclude change. He was possibly the last hope for a transformative US presidency, but given how he consistently refuses to rethink the distribution of power and rights of opposition, exemplified here in the US's security policy, I'm afraid that this thinking represents his action plans on the domestic front as well. If that happens, then halfway into president Palin's first term, we'll look back on arbitrary extrajudicial assasinations as the good old days.

*

Update: And while I'm busy recommending Glenn Greenwald's writing, this post is very readable, building on the recent exposure by the Washington Post of the secret intelligence bureaucracy in the USA, and the evaporation of internet privacy.

From the introduction to the Washington Post piece:

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight.

Politiet har blitt et våpen mot demokratiet i Danmark

Dansk politi fortsetter et etter hvert veldokumentert mønster av politisk motiverte aksjoner mot politisk aktivisme i angrepene på klimademonstranter. Sadistiske og voldsforherligende trekk er også begynt å tydelig manifestere seg. Johan Reimann, som er sjef for Københavns politi, burde ta tak i dette som sin første prioritet, men det ser ut til å ha forverret seg i den siste tiden, også under toppmøtet.

Jeg leser dette som en forlengelse av den politiske utviklingen i Danmark, og en manglende politisk styring av institusjonen politiet, har ført til at en ukultur har spredt seg.

Som vanlig er det Politiken som er stedet å gå for oppdatert og grundig dekning av situasjonen:

"Med 968 anholdte og maksimalt 13 sigtelser peger alt på, at alt for mange uskyldige mennesker blev anholdt", skriver Politiken i et sitat fra Amnesty International.

Man har den ordningen som går under navnet "Lømmelpakken" som gjør at man kan holde folk fanget i 12 timer dersom det er mistanke om at de kan komme til å gjøre noe kriminelt. Amnestys jurist Claus Juul uttaler, i den forrige artikkelen, at "massive præventive anholdelser kan være et problem for forsamlings- og ytringsfriheden i Danmark, fordi det kan afholde folk fra at deltage i fredelig demonstration af frygt for at blive anholdt."

Juul underdriver: Det innebærer selvsagt at man de facto ikke har noen forsamlingsrett eller ytringsfrihet i Danmark. Dersom politiet når som helst kan stanse en demonstrasjon har politiske aktivister ingen muligheter for å uttrykke seg fredelig. Det er ikke minst politisk svært farlig, fordi det øker risikoen for militant aktivisme -- slik det gjorde i Tyskland på 70-tallet, noe som førte til Baader-Meinhofgruppen.

Inntrykket av en truet ytringsfrihet og forsamlingsrett -- i det hele tatt av et demokrati under press -- forsterkes av at politiet har begynt å bortvise fotografer og journalister fra demonstrasjonene, blant annet med slag og spark mot fredelige fotografer som roper "PRESSE!". Politiets talsmann går rett i en orwelliansk dobbelttale i sin kommentar til Politiken.dk:

»Foreviser I et gyldigt pressekort er det værsågod, så må i komme inden for politiets afspærringer. Også selv om det er til fare for jer selv«, siger talsmanden.

Men det måtte fotograferne ikke i går - for eksempel da de ville dokumentere de mange anholdte som sad og frøs [i sin egen urin, utendørs i desember. bloggers anm.]?

»Vi kan simpelthen ikke have jer til at rende rundt indenfor sådan et område - det ville være det rene ragnarok. Vi kan ikke have i stikker mikrofoner i hovedet på demonstranter, som sidder og er anholdt«, siger Lars Borg.

Se fotos her av den ekstremt uoversiktlige situasjonen, der man blant annet ser to fotografer som blir eskortert med makt langs en i all hovedsak tom gate. Det er skikkelig Ragnarok.

Politiets talsmann blir videre spurt av Politikens journalist:

Alle jeg har snakket med samstemmende siger, at I er blevet voldsommere og mere restriktive i forbindelse med klimatopmødet. Hvad vil I gøre ved det?

»Jeg kan simpelthen ikke genkende det«.

Det er litt sånn jeg har det med Danmark.

Voices from Guantanamo

Apropos my last post, my father showed me this incredibly powerful video. It is just a series of interviews with British Guantanamo detainees who have been released. The video is called "Voices from Guantanamo", and it does give us some of the voices that have been completely silenced by their captives, voices that have been completely absented from our debates. These people happen to know our cultural mores and way of talking. But most of the prisoners are not so lucky.

The American philosopher Richard Rorty points out that moral progress (so to speak) and activism grow out of stories that force us to include other narratives and ways of speaking in our understanding of ourselves and our communities. According to him, stories are in fact the only way "moral progress" happens.¹ The political activism that follows stems from the moral convictions acquired through stories. These kinds of videos become an important tool in remembering exactly what imprisonment without trial, without limits actually means. Why we have a justice system and why legal checks and balances are important.



1. If you know the work of Richard Rorty, you'll know why I put the phrase in quotes. If not, well: long story.

Recommendation: Glenn Greenwald

The blogroll isn't really the best way to introduce other bloggers. I'll try to do posts like this one occasionally, where I recommend other people.

Today: Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald is a constitutional/civil rights lawyer who works for Salon as a blogger. He is distinguished by being absolutely relentless in his pursuit of justice for the horrors of the Bush years and their ongoing obfuscation by the failure of the Obama presidency to prosecute them. He is in my opinion the most interesting voice in the blogosphere on issues of torture, extraordinary rendition, legal black holes, Guantanamo, etc. as well as other issues, like drug policy, foreign policy, civil rights/human rights issues in general, and so on. He is a skilled dismantler of government or media hypocrisy. He is very much not hoped up by the Obama administration. Which, on these issues, is extremely refreshing.

His recent post, "A court decision that reflects what type of country the U.S. is", is a blistering attack on a court decision right out of Kafka. You've probably heard the story of Maher Arar already:

Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent. A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal's McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he's 17 years old. In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was "rendered" -- despite his pleas that he would be tortured -- to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured. He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured. Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing.

And now the court basically says -- incredibly -- that they can't grant Arar his rights, because the president might need to mess with said rights because of national security. I think I agree with Greenwald that there are substantial holes in their line of reasoning. A must-read.

Israel's chickens coming home to roost

I'm reading the Goldstone Report (warning: relatively big PDF) a 600-page document that details the findings of a panel investigating the attack on Gaza last winter. It's an astounding document. Not only is it an interesting and immensely readable introduction to the contemporary situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the oppression of the Palestine people, it is also simply an exquisitely convincing argument. Meticulous, detailed and balanced. It is the objective document that critics on both sides have argued for. It doesn't hesitate to show the full force of Palestinian in-fighting and unlawful attacks on Israel by mortar and Qassam rockets, but it also does not hesitate to shove Israel's face in what they've done. And they have done so very, very much.

It details and substantiates the allegations of deliberate attacks on civilians. I mean, some people might have gotten the impression that those allegations came from crazy, Kalashnikov-toting jihadists. No, those allegations came from so many credible sources that they can no longer be denied. The Goldstone Report documents a pattern of systematic attack on a defenceless civilian population. The Israeli army committed crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The people responsible need to lose their jobs, then they have to be tried and convicted and spend the rest of their lives in prison.

I've read a few documents like The Goldstone report when I was a member of Amnesty and a couple of times afterwards, as well. There is always some detail that gets you. Some ridiculous little piece of information or a telling story that is the convincing detail in the argument being made. It might be the story of how a political activist was shot in front of his children in Chile or the story of how the police routinely administered beatings to 12-years in the US. In the Goldstone Report, for me, it was the chickens:

The chicken farms of Mr. Sameh Sawafeary in the Zeitoun neighbourhood south of Gaza City reportedly supplied over 10 per cent of the Gaza egg market. Armoured bulldozers of the Israeli forces systematically flattened the chicken coops, killing all 31,000 chickens inside, and destroyed the plant and material necessary for the business. The Mission concludes that this was a deliberate act of wanton destruction not justified by any military necessity and draws the same legal conclusions as in the case of [a similar destruction of a flour mill a few days before].

For some reason the image of Israeli soldiers bringing the roof down on 31.000 chickens, for no good military reason other than just to fuck with the civilian population of Gaza; for spite, out of malice, is the detail that really got me.

The Goldstone Report is, in short, mandatory reading for anyone looking for an understanding of the contemporary situation in Gaza and Israel/Palestine. It is readable, well-documented and convincing. As Klassekampen's reviewer Espen Stueland said of another recently published book on Gaza, I know of no words of greater significance that could be read right now.

(Norwegians will find that Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse's book Øyne i Gaza (Gyldendal, 2009) makes a wonderful supplement to the report.)

SERE

Extremely interesting interview on torture with a conscientious interrogator who got very unpopular in Iraq, at NPR:

What you're describing is taking techniques that U.S. military personnel had been trained to resist ... [and] using those very techniques on the people the U.S. was detaining in Iraq?

Exactly, and I think a key point that your listeners need to understand, so they can grasp the gravity of the situation, is that the primary objective of that approach to interrogation was not truth … but somebody's political truth. In the Korean War, they actually compelled some of our pilots to admit to dropping chemical weapons on cities and so forth, when in fact that didn't happen. Now, that stands in stark contrast to intelligence interrogation, where the overriding objective is provide timely, accurate, reliable, comprehensive intelligence.

And these harsh interrogation methods had been used by the Soviets and the Chinese to get people to say things that weren't true?

That's true. And it's not just harsh physically, but I think the element that was more persuasive was their ability to induce what is known as debility, depression and dread through emotional and psychological techniques that profoundly altered somebody's ability to answer questions truthfully even if they wanted to. It truly undermined their ability to recall, so therefore it would call into question its efficacy in an intelligence-based interrogation.

*I am reminded of a passage in William Gibson's latest novel, Spook Country. Gibson apparently knew all this already. He posted this passage on his blog (sidebar), back in September 2006, so I'll repost it here, even though the published version is slightly different:

Tito watched the old man fold the copy of the New York Times he’d been reading. The light was going. Fading above this other ocean, the Pacific, which Tito had never seen before.

“I remember proofs of a CIA interrogation manual, something we’d been sent unofficially, for comment,” the old man said. “The first chapter laid out the ways in which torture is fundamentally counterproductive to intelligence. The argument had nothing to do with ethics, everything to do with quality and depth of product, with not squandering potential assets.” He removed his gold-rimmed glasses. “If the man who keeps returning to question you avoids behaving as if he were your enemy, you begin to lose your sense of who you are. Gradually, in the crisis of self that your captivity becomes, he guides you in your discovery of who you are becoming.”

“Did you interrogate people, yourself?” asked Garreth. The three of them were seated in the back of an open jeep, the black Pelican case under Garreth’s feet.

“No,” said the old man, “I only reviewed the product. It’s a terribly intimate process. An ordinary cigarette lighter will cause a man to tell you anything, whatever he thinks you want to hear. And will prevent him ever trusting you again, even slightly. And will confirm him, in his sense of self, as few things will.” He tapped the folded paper. “When I first saw what they were doing, I knew that they’d turned the SERE lessons inside out. That meant that we were using techniques the Koreans had specifically developed in order to prepare prisoners for show trials.” He fell silent.

Tito heard the lapping of waves.

torture & other things I'm reading about

Obama won't prosecute the torturers. This "stands Nuremberg on its head" according to Mike Farrell, President of the board of Death Penalty Focus and Co-Chair Emeritus of the Southern California Committee of Human Rights Watch.

The Nuremberg defense, as you know, Bob, is basically when people say that "I was just following orders when I committed this war crime. How was I to know slaughtering jews or simulating drowning was wrong? I mean: it's war, who am i to know that mass murder or torture is a bad thing? It's not like our society has a strict code of morality about these things or anything. Right? Right?"

Well, nuts to you, my good man! says the Nuremberg principles:

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

*
What kind of torture, you ask? Well, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed experienced simulated execution by drowning (waterboarding) more than 6 times a day for a month, a total of 183 times in 30 days.

*

Bernhard Ellefsen was kind enough to make me aware of two articles by Mark Danner on the torture reports etc. I haven't looked at them yet, but from the skimming, they look really good:

"US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites" and "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means".

Ellefsen has a video of Danner on CNN up right now at the link above.

*

Here are the actual torture memos by the Bush administration, recently released by the Obama administration, explaining in deliberate, crimes-against-humanity-conviction-inducing prose how to torture a person in such away that it somehow fails to be torture:

In addition to using the cont1ncment boxes alone, you would like to introduce an insect into one of the boxes with Zubaydah. As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar. If you do so, to ensure that you are outside the predicate act requirement, you must inform him that the insects "will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain. If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you're doing so,then in order to commit a predicate act, you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insects... the approaches we have described, the insect's placement in the box should not constitute a threat of severe physical pain or suffering to a reasonable person in his position. An individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened with severe physical pain or suffering if a caterpillar was placed in the box. Further, you have informed us that you are not aware that Zubaydah has any allergies to insects, and you have not informed us of any other factors that would cause a reasonable person in that same situation to
believe that an ... cause him severe physical pain or death. Thus, we
conclude that the placement of the insect in the confinement box...

blah blah blah. Basically, Bybee is arguing that if you shut someone into a coffin-sized box WITH AN INSECT walking all over him, even if he had a phobia for insects, then that is somehow not torture. He could be in the box for hours at a time. With the insect. I have no such phobia, and I don't think I would remain sane if someone did this to me. These documents are worth reading. Pure, distilled banality of evil. 

*

Last but not least on torture, an editorial in the NY Times in which they finally, finally, fucking finally bring out the big guns against the Bush administration:

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability. [my italics]

*

further torture update:

Digby, as usual making lots of sense. Read the Danner articles. They're good.



*

On the other hand, when Obama is not letting torturers go free, he is starting high-speed rail projects across the US. That is awesome. Now if only the Norwegian Arbeiderpartiet could get its ass in gear on this issue at their meeting this weekend, we could get something done in the next ten years.

*

Speaking of which, here's our prime minister saying that Twitter and Facebook are important (Norwegian). The left parties are finally starting to realise what a tool for change the web can be when they take the lead. I tried telling them this five years ago, but would they listen? No.

*

Ezra Klein on why the US health care system costs so much. Part I, part II.

*

Ian McEwan on John Updike. I never liked Updike. He could bang a sentence together like nobody's business but his books, the few that I have had to read, have always felt morally flawed and self-centered to me. But it's always interesting to see what others saw in him.

Non Habeas Corpus

Sure, we have these people locked up already, so who cares about building a case against them. Or, y'know, keeping records about them:

President Obama's plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials -- barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees -- discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is "scattered throughout the executive branch," a senior administration official said. The executive order Obama signed Thursday orders the prison closed within one year, and a Cabinet-level panel named to review each case separately will have to spend its initial weeks and perhaps months scouring the corners of the federal government in search of relevant material.

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration's focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.

Which, I suppose, leads one to wonder exactly how they knew these people were evil terrorist illegal enemy islamofascist non-human pond scum. If there weren't any records being kept, or for that matter being collected. How did they do reviews and inventories to make sure that all the cases were properly overseen? That their judgment in each case was correct? How did they even know who they were dealing with?

But lest we forget, these were "very bad people". Terrorists and bombers and "responsible for 9-11". Man, they really locked up some perverters of democracy. Good going, guys.

Which reminds me of something William Gibson said, back at the end of the halcyon days of the first Bush administration.

One actually has to be something of a specialist, today, to even begin to grasp quite how fantastically, how baroquely and at once brutally fucked the situation of the United States has since been made to be.

*

Oh, completely unrelated - a really weird Google ad in this article:

Nordics Are Israelites
4,000 English Books Say So! Free Saxon-Israel Books & Magazines
ChristsAssembly.com

Well, well, a representative from the Pentagon admits to Bob Woodward that there has been torture of a Guantanamo suspect.

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

(...)

Military prosecutors said in November that they would seek to refile charges against Qahtani, 30, based on subsequent interrogations that did not employ harsh techniques. But Crawford, who dismissed war crimes charges against him in May 2008, said in the interview that she would not allow the prosecution to go forward.

(...)

"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows.

(...)


The interrogation, portions of which have been previously described by other news organizations, including The Washington Post, was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.

(...)


"There's no doubt in my mind he would've been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001," Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantanamo. "He's a muscle hijacker. . . . He's a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don't charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, 'Let him go.' "

You know, despite the fact that the prisoner is dangerous, if he has been tortured, and especially if he made confessions under torture, he should be released in compensation. In that case, it is the fault of the torturers and those who authorised the torture if he commits further abuses. If they didn't want him going free, then they shouldn't have tortured him or illegally detained him. They should have gathered evidence and put him on trial, like we do all other human beings who commit crimes. This is just one of the many many reasons torture is not just morally wrong, but illegal: you can't use it to get legally recognized confessions. 

SMS from Gaza

Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian doctor and solidarity worker who is one of very few foreigners providing eyewitness accounts to Norwegian media from inside the Gaza strip, where he is volunteering at a hospital.

This one was verified to me earlier today by people in the aid community in touch with Mads Gilbert as being geniune. I've snipped the translation from Shädy Äcres:

"Thanks for your support.. They bombed the central vegetable market in Gaza city two hours ago. 80 injured, 20 killed. All came here to Shifa. Hades! We wade in death. Blood and amputees. Many children. Pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything this terrible. Now hearing tanks. Tell it, pass it on, shout it. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We're living in the history books now, all of us! Mads G, 3.1.09 13:50, Gaza, Palestine.

How dare they say there is not a humanitarian disaster happening? This is a crime against humanity. The leaders of this atrocity should be tried and convicted and thrown in jail for the rest of their lives.

Litt frihet fra eller til

Jonas Gahr Støre intervjues av Studentradioen. Nice going, Studentradioen. Sånne hotshots var det sjeldent vi fikk i studio da jeg drev på.

Til åpningsspørsmålet "er menneskerettighetene bedre ivaretatt idag enn for 60 år siden" svarer Støre ja. Det er en kolossal feilvurdering som jeg nesten ikke kan forstå. Til tross for at demokrati er langt mer utbredt og at millioner løftes ut av fattigdom hvert år så er verdensforskjellene økende og siden det blir stadig flere mennesker blir det også dermed stadig flere som lever uten ressurser. 95 % av verdens befolkning lever på under $10 om dagen og 3 milliarder mennesker lever på under $2.50 om dagen. Dette innebærer en grusom og umenneskelig levestandard og sørger for at de er ute av stand til å sikre seg selv de mest basale rettigheter i FNs menneskerettighetserklæring, som for eksempel det følgende utvalget:

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

For ikke å snakke om disse to:

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Problemet her er nok at Støre går i en klassisk felle som liberalere ofte gjør. Han har sannsynligvis vektlagt en forståelse av frihet som man kan kalle for negativ frihet. Det er en vanlig feil når man tenker på FNs menneskerettighetserklæring.

Negativ frihet er et begrep som kommer fra Isaiah Berlin. Han skiller mellom positiv og negativ frihet. Negativ frihet er frihet fra, altså at ingen kommer og blander seg inn i din frihet ved å begrense dine valg. Positiv frihet er frihet til, altså at du er bemyndiget, i kontroll og handlekraftig fordi du har ressursene til å handle slik du vil.

Klassiske liberale vektlegger gjerne negativ frihet, i tradisjonen fra John Stuart Mills On Liberty. Dermed glemmer de lett at man trenger ressurser og kontroll for å kunne uttrykke sitt eget liv slik man ønsker. Sosialister vektlegger ofte positiv frihet, og risikerer å undervurdere individets krav på frihet til fordel for statens behov.  

Mange som tenker på menneskerettighetserklæringen tenker på de sakene som for eksempel Amnesty International gjorde seg kjent på å kjempe for: Frihet fra undertrykkelse, frihet fra arbitrær straff og fengsling, frihet fra tortur og dødsstraff. Dermed glemmer de at halve erklæringen er positive rettigheter. Rettigheten til arbeid, til helse, til utdanning, til kultur og til selvbestemmelsesrett. 

Alle disse positive rettigheter er i elendig forfatning i størstedelen av verden, som tallene ovenfor rikt illustrerer. Skylden ligger på vår dypt urettferdige og umenneskelige fordelingssystem som avhenger av fundamentalistisk frimarkedskapitalisme og egoistisk utbytting av den tredje verden. Dette burde Støre ha sagt noe om. 

What if we start simulated shootings instead. Would that be okay?

Christopher Hitchens gets waterboarded for science. He says the same as everyone who has undergone it says: yes, it really is torture. To which we all say: duh, dumbass. Of course controlled drowning is torture, just as any simulated execution is torture. Simulated execution, I think, we can all get together on that being torture, right?

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

The answer is fifteen seconds. There's a video.

Føre

I'm back from a long weekend cross-country skiing in the mountains. Going beyond cellular coverage and wireless email really is one of the great luxuries of our age. There's something about sitting in a small cabin miles away from anywhere anyone could get a hold of you which helps you focus. Conversation seems to turn naturally towards what is important, and all the noise of the everyday fades into the background.



*

Just so you don't think I'm going all luddite on you, I note that the Wikipedia article on "blog" has grown a lot since I saw it last time. It has an interesting history of early blogging-section now.

*

I was listening to a part of a lecture series called "Ethics and Public Policy" just now. The lectures, made in 1991 by the funny, insightful, rambling and delightfully Jewish political philosopher Ed Beiser, concern the idea of rights and law in the public sphere. It would probably be immoral of me to suggest that one could download the lecture series from this torrent here. Would it be legal of me to say so? Hard to say.

At one point, Beiser makes an interesting argument about what I suspect are different conceptions of rights between capitalist societies like the US and proto-socialist societies like the USSR*. He says that the conception of rights in the US is a negative conception. You have freedom of the press in the US, but the formulation is "Congress [i.e. the government] shall make no law" abridging freedom of religion, the press &tc. The freedom to assemble is the freedom to not be disassembled by the government.

The formulation of the first Soviet constitution is an entirely different approach.

14. For the purpose of securing freedom of expression to the toiling masses, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic abolishes all dependence of the Press upon capital, and turns over to the working people and the poorest peasantry all technical and material means for the publication of newspapers, pamphlets, books, etc., and guarantees their free circulation throughout the country.

15. For the purpose of enabling the workers to hold free meetings, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic offers to the working class and to the poorest peasantry furnished halls, and takes care of their heating and lighting appliances.

So the negative conception of rights says "we won't stop you from printing whatever you like". The positive conception of rights says "here, have a printing press. The paper is over there by the ink barrels." (And in the Soviet model follows this with "here, have an oppressive military dictatorship complete with total censorship.")

It occurred to me that both these notions of freedom of the press are obsolete in their own way. The negative version is obsolete because the oppression these days comes through entirely different channels (Clear Channel & Fox News, for instance), and takes the form of oligarchic capitalism, neo-imperialism and cultural hegemony instead.

The positive version is obsolete simply because the technological revolutions made in the 17 years which have passed since the early 90s have made mass syndication and distribution available to everyone with a PC. Technology solved the problem of scarcity of mass distribution. The problem now is more the perennial one of getting people's attention. Am I right, guys? Guys?

*

The Norwegian word "Føre" is untranslatable, but is indicative of how good the snow is for skiing. Good føre is good for skiing, bad is not. It is the condition of the snow which dictates whether you are gliding in a zen-like trance across soft, light, fluffy perfection or skating roughly across an icy shell roughly the constistency of a slush puppie, which drags you backwards on uphill treks and makes you go too fast and lose all control downhill - yet somehow seems to solidify into head-crackingly hard ice when you fall. We had almost perfect føre this weekend. Føre, like weather, is also a great metaphor for conditions which dictate your actions and your possibilities, like parental mental health or world capitalism or whatever.

To belabour the metaphor: going into the wild gives your thoughts great føre, until you run out of food, at which point you start thinking more and more about the ethics of cannibalism. Fortunately, Mikkel B's cooking skills don't decrease just because he is working on a propane stove in the middle of nowhere.

*

Arthur C. Clarke died. Between him and Gary Gygax going last week, two of the central pillars of 20th century nerdhood have suddenly disappeared.

*

I made brussel sprouts poached in cider with apples and onions last night. It tastes amazing and you should try it. This recipe is totally copied from the book I used. They just changed a sentence here and there.

Yup. That's us.

Well, well, well. This morning Norway is about to be criticised by the UN Commision on Torture for handing over prisoners to the Afghan government. In Afghan prisons, there are numerous reports of prisoners being beaten with cables or bricks and having their nails pulled out, among other things. A week or two ago, a Foreign Affairs Dept. memo leaked in which a recent Amnesty International report on torture in Afghanistan was criticised as being "too political" and not balanced. Of course, this also happened back during the "Boomerang cases", where police officers in Bergen had been systematically abusing prisoners for years and years. Amnesty International really and truly got the shaft from the Norwegian media and police.

Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian foreign minister, despite being an intelligent man, went on NRK this morning saying that basically "well, I mean, the Afghans tell us that everything is allright, so we trust them. We are, after all, there for their sake." On the one hand, he is saying that the Afghans are in control of their prisons and institutions so torture obviously isn't happening. On the other hand he is saying that we just got a deal in place so that we can check on them. Sigh.

We've known this was coming for a while. I'm ashamed.

Waterboarders & Freeloaders

Here's a couple of resources on the totally humane non-torture or at the very least kinder, gentler torture that our allies are doing: Waterboarding.org and the blogpost "Waterboarding is torture... period."

What's the definition of terrorism again? Wanting to subvert democratic values through killing and inflicting pain and suffering?

* * *

Data on the sales record of In Rainbows is now available online. It turns out there was a far higher percentage of freeloaders than expected. Being a senseless optimist, I feel that I should point out that Radiohead is a huge band with a huge following. If they were a small, local band doing the same thing, I suspect the number of people who would pay would go up dramatically. But then again, I also believe that mankind is not born inherently evil, so what do I know?

blogger jailed

Abdel Kareem Soliman, an Egyptian blogger, has been jailed for speaking his mind. Amnesty immediately condemned the jailing, as well they should. You'll have to search far and wide for a more obvious case of a prisoner of conscience. Here's his blog. His profile is quite incendiary, quasi-terroristic, threat-against-the-state type stuff:

I am down to earth Law student; I look forward to help humanity against all form of discriminations. I am currently studying Law in Al Azhar University. I am looking forward to open up my own human rights activists Law firm, which will include other lawyers who share the same views. Our main goal is to defend the rights of Muslim and Arabic women against all form of discrimination and to stop violent crimes committed on a daily basis in these countries .

Though I could almost support his incarceration for that awful audio clip which autoloads when you look at his blog, this goes against the whole project of democracy, not to mention blogging, and we (the blogosphere, the public) should condemn his incarceration in the strongest possible terms. Haven't found an Amnesty campaign yet, but I'll post a link when one pops up. Meanwhile, here is a dedicated campaign: FreeKareem.org. And here's a petition you can sign.