Sunday, October 1. 2006
Tankar från inbox och webbrowser, med tack till Jan Viklund, Mikael Wälivaara, Ethan Heitner, Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern med flera.
Daniel Ellsberg (som läckte dokumenten från Pentagon som fällde Nixon under Vietnamkriget) skriver:"Jag hoppas att fler personer är villiga att fatta det nyktra beslutet att sätta sin karriär på spel, till och med riskera fängelse - för de personliga riskerna är ändå betydligt mindre än det mänskligheten riskerar inför de militära aktioner som väntar." (Ellsberg Calls on Insiders to Leak Critiques Of Possible War on Iran, Editor & Publisher, September 16, 2006.) McGovern påminde om medeltida teologen Thomas Aquino, som citerade prästen John Chrysostom:"Den som inte känner vrede, när det finns rättfärdiga skäl till det, syndar."
"Oskäligt och fegt tålamod göder försumlighet och frestar till dåliga handlingar." Tyvärr inget som de flesta tyskar på 30-talet hörde talas om, kommenterade McGovern. (I Put My Money On War, Ethan Heitner, TomPaine.com, Sep 20, 2006.)
Mikael Wälivaara om nya tortyrlagarna i USA:"Men det viktigaste är ändå, att USA nu har blivit en nation som både tillåter dödsstraff och tortyr. Därmed kan vi utan minsta debatterande avfärda landet från listan över civiliserade, demokratiska länder.
Punkt slut." (Inlagt av Mikael Wälivaara | 23 september, 2006 23:29.)
Jag hade själv anledning att citera Milton Mayers "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945" (de trodde de var fria...) redan den 29 december 2004, efter att två borgerliga svenska partiledare inte såg något som helst anmärkningsvärt med att tala klarspråk på radio om att vi i Sverige måste ge vika för de stora grabbarnas säkerhetstjänster och acceptera tortyr, etc. (Se länken.) Mayers beskriver där den gradvisa förlusten av frihet och säger att leva i denna process är att absolut inte kunna lägga märke till den om man inte har en långt större medvetenhet än de flesta någonsin har behövt träna upp. Nu hittade jag ett längre utdrag tack vare en länk från Mikael Wälivaara, citatet kommer strax men eftersom det är på engelska och jag inte hinner översätta så vill jag understryka det som just nu känns mest igen: Att samtalen i politiska forum tystnar, alternativt ihärdigt ignorerar varje alarmistiskt inlägg med största möjliga tystnad. Samtidigt som tjattret om yta, illusion, är ivrigare än någonsin. Även på bloggarna. Här kommer den engelska texten:"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?--Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to--to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked--if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jewish swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in--your nation, your people--is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or 'adjust' your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."
I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.
"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He was just--a judge. In '42 or '43, early '43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an 'Aryan' woman. This was 'race injury,' something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a 'nonracial' offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party 'processing' which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the 'nonracial' charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."
"And the judge?"
"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience--a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (Thats how I heard about it.) After the '44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don't know."
I said nothing.
"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was 'defeatism'. You assumed that there were lists of those who would be 'dealt with' later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a 'victory orgy' to 'take care of' those who thought that their 'treasonable attitude' had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.
"Once the war began, the government could do anything 'necessary' to win it; so it was with the 'final solution of the Jewish problem,' which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its 'necessities' gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."
From here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html Kort sagt: Det är meningslöst att vänta på att alla plötsligt fattar. Det kommer inte att ske. Inte samtidigt. Inte förrän det är försent. Var och en som fattar måste själv ta ansvar för sin insikt. Många gör det redan i dag, som Patriots Question 9/11 - Responsible Criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report "Senior Military, Intelligence, and Government Critics of 9/11 Commission Report..." Eller som Daniel Ellsberg skriver, se citat längre upp. Det finns redan otaliga hjältar. Att vi inte har hört talas om dem beror på att vi lever i sådana tider där hjältedåd krävs - och där verkliga hjältedåd tystas ned.
PS: Det var onsdagen den 22 december 2004 som moderatledaren Fredrik Reinfeldt i radions P1, Studio Ett 17:00-17:45 sa exakt så här:``Jag tror att styckevis fördelt så har nog i slutändan det mesta kommit fram, det landar mer i kvardröjande känslor av att dom inblandade statsråden vetat mer än de kanske vidgår. Men jag är också beredd på att skriva under på att Sveriges del i kampen mot terrorismen kommer att tänja en del gränser .. eh .. för vad vi än så länge uppfattat vara korrekta sätt att agera. Det finns legal grund för detta. Jag tror att Svenska folket [ska] ställa in sig på att det kan hända igen. Både att utländsk säkerhetstjänst opererar på plats i Sverige. Och att det kan ske avvisningar till länder som använder annat än allmän domstol för att pröva skuldfrågan. .. eh .. Och ibland kan det vara bra att vara rak över det, snarare än det vi har upplevt, tycker jag, för att försöka .. eh .. komma undan diskussion i den här frågan.'' Man får verkligen säga att han är en man i tiden - lite före, till och med! (Se andra inlägg om att tortyr nu är laglig i och av USA.) Strax efter denne föregångsman men i samma program sa så Lars Lejonborg:``Jag vill försvara Fredrik Reinfeldt. Jag har suttit ned med honom en lång stund i dag och diskuterat det här, och vi är kritiska på ett antal punkter, och precis som han sa, vi har en känsla av att hela sanningen om statsrådens agerande inte har kommit fram. < ... snip ... > Vi är skrämda av vilka dåd som utförs runt om i världen och vi tror att demokratierna måste samverka för att freda sig mot den här typen av attacker.'' Intervjuare (ej citerad ovan): Ekots Erik Ridderstolpe <erik.ridderstolpe@sr.se>. Ljudfilen fanns en gång i tiden på http://sr.se/cgi-bin/P1/program/index.asp?ProgramID=1637 men den är inte kvar nu. Påannonsen för programmet var: "Vad sa Göran Persson i utrikesnämnden? Statsministern möter partiledarna i utrikesnämnden i eftermiddag - och ämnet är affären med de torterade egyptierna."
TYSTNAD PLUS TORTYR ÄR DELAKTIGHET
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