Comments by Macumazan

Since Actium

Now THAT'S realistic! Greeks will agree to Greek territories passing to ... Turkey! And why not Athens too? Imagine the delight of the Greek crowds watching a Turkish army shelling of the Acropolis! Combine it with a Eurovision song contest and it would be THE all-time T.V event! And Greeks could even make some money selling souvlakis to the tourists! Problem solved! Voila!

Garaboncias says that I did not answer his question when I said that the America I was referring to existed before American Presidents ordered the use of torture. Now I surely don't need to adduce ANY "well-regarded historians' publications reinforcing [my] view of America", for I specifically singled out the Bush and Obama presidencies as the source of the rot. Garaboncias is evidently upset that anyone - even an Australian foreigner such as myself - might have believed that America was spiritually the finest nation in the world and the genuine last, best hope of mankind, but for all that, it is indeed the case, still believed by many Australians. That the nation had faults goes without saying; it waa run by humans and not by gods. No doubt Garaboncias' family suffered genuine injustices along the way. But the American Consttution was sound - it is the very statement, the self-expression, of liberty - and the working out of this Constitution was the very special spiritual glory of the United States. The Statue of Liberty and the "huddling masses" in joyous tears at Ellis Island at the prospect of freedom in becoming American citizens, is precisely what I'm talking about. Whatever its faults, the nation's telos was sound. The dead at Arlington believed in it and it seems to me that if Garaboncias is an American, he ought to, too. I can believe it and I do believe it and I am not even an American. I know that once there was an America in which Henry Stimson shut down an office in the State Department because "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemens' mail". I agree that America has moved a long way from that, perhaps because it had to cross bridges to fight the Soviets, and the Soviets weren't gentlemen, but the authorisation of torture is a bridge too far. I am in Australia and I feel its wrongness as certainly as if in 1776 I had taken up arms in liberty's defence myself. It is AT ODDS with what America IS. If none of this resonates with Garaboncias, it bodes very badly. If enough people think like Garaboncias, the Republic, though it might prosper, is for all that doomed, even in the midst of its blind prosperity.

"Which old America did you have in mind?"

Since you are genuinely curious, I'm happy to tell you. The old America I refer to was the one that didn't suffer from Presidential directives that prisoners be tortured in order to extract information. Any reasonably knowledgeable person should agree that once upon a time there really was such an America. THAT is the America I was referring to; hope of the world and inspirer of dreams in free men. Surely you would not dispute that once upon a time, torture-free, it really existed? What is your America?

Forget about the Geneva Convention. The issue is just this: the horror that ought to be aroused by the brute fact of a Presidential directive (I repeat and stress, an AMERICAN Presidential directive) to use use torture. Weasel around it as you will. To my mind, it has betrayed America. Once there was a clear distinction between KGB methods and those of the great democracies. T'ain't so any longer. This is not just a matter to be shrugged off as of no consequence. It is an uprooting of every important thing the nation once stood for. Cruel and unusual punishment? Nah, just forget about it; - this is the NEW America and we can live with it and get to like it. Not me. I infinitely prefer the old America and everything it promised. Prosecute Bush and Obama and the sooner the better.

Military courts are staffed by men who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution and to obey their lawful commander-in-chief, the POTUS. The POTUS's (Bush and Obama) however, have ordered the torture of the prisoners upon whom these men are to sit in judgment. Is it only me or are other readers of the Economist also screaming? In Australia, we have deemed the United States to be a worthy ally, worth shedding blood with, for a hundred years. We were honoured to count as an American ally, in the certainty that the calumnies against America were just that, and that the nation really was a shining city on a hill, "One Nation under God" as the expression went, governed by righteous and free men who did not cut moral corners, nor mete out cruel and unusual punishment. And yet unmarked American planes flew prisoners to secret destinations, away from all scrutiny, in order that they might be more efficiently tortured. DO FEEL THE WRONGNESS OF IT! It's a foreign weed that is corrupting the fabled city on a hill. It is not America, at least as this admiring non-American has always understood it. But we must now deal with the unwelcome dread that the weed will grow and its poisonous thorns choke that old America we admired - the one whose birth was of free men governed by a constitution of sublime genius. The old America was the arsenal of democracy, the citadel of freedom and the hope of mankind. About things that matter as much as this, corners cannot be cut, yet corners HAVE been cut; - the city is trembling and no longer secure.

I wrote that they set a precedent, not that they were fair. American judges condemned German officers to hang and wrote the texts of case law that they were rightly condemned to hang because they obeyed grossly immoral laws. "Befehl ist befehl" did not work for the Germans and likewise, Guantanamo tribunal judges cannot save themselves with an "orders are orders" defence. It is the bounden duty of an American military official to disobey any presidential directive legitimising torture. Any serving military officer who sits in judgment at Guantanamo now can only pray that they themselves will never have to face judgement. Meditation on the fate of Ratko Mladic seems in order.

It does not appear to have sunk in yet that the Nuremberg precedent applies down the length and breadth of the American justice system. That torture has been used of itself means much more than that any testimony it has produced must be rejected (just as one can and must reject, in this respect, the testimony elicited from the unfortunates subjected to Gestapo interrogations); - it means also that any U.S. officials who act in accord with presidential directions in this matter are likewise infected by the very fact that presidents themselves have been the source pf the order that torture be used. The entire nation is afflicted. We face the appalling spectacle that obviously guilty mass-murderers can rebuke American judges to their faces as demonstrable aiders and abettors of torture. Some commentators seem to think it doesn't matter. For myself, as someone who has been a long-term admirer of America, I reel and stagger. Any Guantanamo judge with the slightest respect for Anglo-American legal precedent must stand up and disqualify himself. The terrorists MUST be tried in mainland courts and we have to face the absolutely appalling prospect that an American jury might have to free them. Bush and Obama have done what they had no right to do; they have corrupted the justice system, and the entire nation is tarred.

"... these people are not about to be silenced."

Of course they are about to be silenced. That's why they were arrested!

The Raj raised India to seventh industrial power in the world. It went backwards after independence. Fortunately, it is now improving from the 11th position it holds currently, and, one trusts, will in a few years return to the position it had been rais3ed to by British rule.

"In America we're the one's getting all of the really great shit for paper."

Yes indeed, and you use an excellent term for what you are getting. The particular problem is that in general, the consumer goods depreciate, but the paper - the American IOUs - appreciates in $US at market interest rates. That is to say, at above the rate of inflation. The hoard of dollars is growing. Now a trillion dollars equates to the value of a lot of American industry. The Chinese are thus getting control of an equivalent of American means of production in exchange for the contents of Walmart stores. You take a color TV, Hu Jintao takes in exchange an equivalent of shares in General Motors. Here's a set of golf clubs for you, balanced by shares in Ford. Some plastic toys for your children, balanced by shares in Intel. fair exchange, perhaps, but if the other side are malevolent and hate everything America stands for, is it really not a matter of concern? But then, there are many absorbing sitcoms and you can enjoy them with a six-pack without worrying too much about all this stuff. Watch them on a Chinese-made TV. Salud.

That 8 cents in every dollar of U.S. debt owned by China equates to 60% of the total U.S. debt held by the Federal Reserve. Here in Australia I shake my head and wonder if Americans are subject to some sort of collective insanity. If the debt were held by Kim Jong Un of North Korea, the situation would be no less perilous. If one thinks of China as a friendly nation of democrats, one would not be so concerned, but the reality is that the Chinese government consists of malevolent thugs who get to their positions of authority by serving lengthy apprenticeships supervising torture, as did Hu Jintao during his many years in Tibet. Were the debt owned by Heinrich Himmler, what America faces would be as grave.

What a relief to learn that thugs and murderers own only 8 cents in every dollar of U.S. debt! Americans can now go back to watching sitcoms and ignore American-admiring foreigners such as myself getting upset enough to warn them that their nation is in peril.

Why aren't Americans up in arms over the fact that their government has allowed their nation to fall into debt to these thugs? The country, which prides itself on being the "home of the free" in its very national anthem, is now beholden to torturers. This is no matter for business as usual with the usual wry smile about the idiocies of the Washington bureaucrats . It is a matter for national urgency; - getting into the streets and demonstrating before Americas loses everything it ever stood for that matters. Being in debt to thugs is corrosive to the national consciousness. The hour is very late gentlemen. The issue is not the mistreatment of some unfortunate Chinese; the issue is America. Now is the time for all good men ...

This is the site of an English language magazine and it is a courtesy to use the language.

It's rather more than that. Jonathan Miles' recent book on Otto Katz provides a fairly convincing case that she actively aided and abetted the Russian secret agencies in deliberate and conscious subversion of the United States. She was not a "leftist stooge" at all, but a hard-core agent of influence working to promote the Communist cause.

In the 1950s, I saw the launchpad explosion of the (U.S. Navy developed) Vanguard rocket that blew up on the ground at Cape Canaveral in front of the world's news cameras. The U.S. Army promised a satellite launch within 80 days using a Redstone rocket. Result after all the publicity and moans about national disaster? Successful launch. One should expect a few fizzogs with rocket development. The Nazi V2 took thousands of launches to perfect. Our good friends the North Koreans will no doubt take a year or so before they can incinerate Los Angeles, New York (and Beijing, for that matter) but that they will get the capability very soon is obvious. Place a few flowers on MacArthur's grave. gentlemen! Truman was a bloody disaster, as has been American foreign policy. The nation is in peril as it never before, due to the corrosive liberal lunacies to which it is so sadly subject. A giant unable to use its power, is indeed pitiful and helpless. Richard Nixon said it all as POTUS and he knew a lot more about it than me.

Ah! Cam Ranh Nay and Subic! How the Vietnamese and Phillipinos must yearn for the presence of a few American flat-tops! Missed opportunities gentlemen, because their governments failed to read the way the geostrategic winds were shifting. They are now in very deep manure indeed and ought to be in a panic about it. "Come back, Yankee, all is forgiven". And Burma? "Come ye back ye British sojer". Tain't going to happen, but we can expect an absolute blossoming of American relations with the states of south-east Asia.

One should remember Trotsky's encounter with the icepick and Markov's and Litvinenko's with ricin and radioactive thallium. The Russians are murdering on British soil to this day. Chinese murders on American soil are less well documented, but one can hardly think that moral constraints would impede them. China is light something of the order of a hundred million people due to the Party carrying out mass murder in the Hundred Flowers campaign, the Great Famine, The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Deng Xiaoping counter-revolution. The Chinese government has FORM and the use of ricin, radioactive thallium or even the more proletarian icepick, would not seem to be beyond Chinese ingenuity. In any case, instructions on how to use an icepick are publicly available for slow-learning Chinese if they bother themselves reading the details of how Mercador put one through Trotsky's skull. Technology transfer and all that.

One can reasonably think that the lives of the children might be at risk, even in the United States. It's very irresponsible of the Economist to allow the printing of any personal details about the children at all.