Justice, not mercy

The Vasque terrorist group ETA has been expiring for a while now. However, there is no doubt it will try to kill again before finally extinguishing. Killing is the only kind of life its fanatic members are familiar with. Read more

Caribbean mistakes

The Cuban president, Raul Castro, announced this week measures to reinforce the socialist nature of the Cuban revolution. The “experiment”, in the words of the Cuban rulers, will consist in letting some Cubans to offer haircuts or taxi services privately… Of course, we cannot call these measures “reforms”, said the Cuban finance minister, Marino Murillo, since there is nothing to “reform”. They amount to just an “improvement of the Cuban economic model”. We should not worry, because Mr. Murillo guarantees us that “this improvement is being considered carefully”, because, and it strikes me as odd nobody paid much attention to this part of the sentence, “we don’t have the right to make a mistake”. Good. No right to make a mistake.

It seems to me the mistake in Cuba is called “Communist regime”, and the experiment “socialist revolution”, which have crushed the lives and freedom of the Cubans for more than fifty years now.

You may think, “well, just another pronouncement from a despot. No big deal”. However, in this precise moment, while you are reading these lines, there are men and women dying in prison just because they demanded a change, peacefully, or called for freedom, or because they read something forbidden, or talked to the wrong person, or expressed his or her solidarity with the oppressed. And there are many other men and women lining up for hours to get the rationed, insufficient supply of calories from the government stores, the only ones available to the average Cuban. And many more who go to bed with fear and despair every night in this Caribbean prison called Cuba.

Ah, only a little mistake.

Photo: Havana, Cuba, 2009 © Michaelsdonovan

Implicit consent

“Dubai: Alleged victim of gang rape sentenced to one year in prison”, reads the newspaper headline. We’ve read it so many times. In most Arab and muslim countries, women who are sexually assaulted are nearly always victims of two consecutive crimes, and not just one: first, the men who rape them; then, the courts which condemn them to jail and/or to lashes for “enticing men to have sex with them”, “being in the pressence of men who are not family members”, engaging in “consensual sex”, or having an “extramarital relation”. Of course, none of the crimes commited on them ever deserve any justice or reparation worth of that name.

I won’t engage myself now in an easy condemnation of Islam as a whole, or even of certain extreme understandings of Islam. I am just thinking now, why these barbaric and widespread practices are not denounced by the muslim masses in the countries where they take place? I could hear the usual answer: we’re talking about very traditional and conservative societies, they never knew anything different, they don’t know any better. What about the more illustrated groups or the emerging middle class there ? Again, free speech, individual liberty and rule of law don’t exist in any of these countries, and criticizing well entrenched practices may be quite dangerous. Then, what do you say about muslim communities in the Western world? Why are they not denouncing these and other practices we all rightly associate with Islam? Information is not censored here, and is easily accesible; critique is valued and encouraged; freedom and different lifestyles can be compared to a life of oppression and tyrannical social hierarchies. Why we never, ever hear of significant campaigns in the Western democracies, lead by muslim organizations themselves? Why are there no ambitious, comprehensive and combative muslim strategies here to change this state of affairs? I’ve got an answer that, sadly, I don’t think I’ll reconsider in the short term: tacit and widespread approval.

It doesn’t matter most muslim people in a free society would somehow be lukewarm or non-supportive if asked about the well established violence in islamic sacred books, ruling elites and social structures alike against women and children, against dissenters male or female. The truth is they, as a collectivity living in a free society, as theoretically free citizens themselves, are not willing to stand up for freedom, thus voluntarily locking themselves up in the jail of tyranny, violence, indignity and hopelessness.

Photo: State Sanctioned Abuse, 2007 © Dude Crush

Sunrise in Rome

Waking up at dawn, opening the window and staring for a while at the roofs of the very old buildings at the Piazza Bologna. It is a quiet morning here, an otherwise noisy place, as one can only hear birds singing and an the occasional motorino here and there; of course, it is still early… When I think of my first impressions of the city, one word springs up: home. This is my first visit to Rome, but it feels I’ve been here all my life. Buildings that could be in Mallorca, streets similar to those in Valencia, faces seen so many times in Barcelona… And then there is the light. There is something very special about the Mediterranean light one will not find anywhere else. Except in Summer, when it is so hot you wonder why on earth you should have set foot in the street at daytime, sunlight here is like a human embrace, so affectionate, and it warms your soul more than your skin. It seems to me it is the sunlight that makes Mediterranean peoples to be so loud, direct, expressive and passionate. Tentatively, I would say no one can beat Romans when it comes to manifest all these qualities but, who knows… I realize I have been paying more attention to run down but lovable buildings than to the myriad churches popping up everywhere, to regular people more than to the super-beautiful guys and girls populating the Roman streets, to the flood of motorinos, to the many plant-filled verandas overlooking a small piazza here, a beautiful narrow strada there. At sunset, roaming the streets of Campo de Fiori, and not that much interested in the lively crowds of its terraces, I looked for a long time at those open windows and balconies, at the inhabitants of all these houses, cheerfully drinking a glass of wine, or quietly smoking and watching people go by in this Spring Roman night, and a cozy, serene and happy thought comes to my mind, something I always knew, and which adscribes to no country in particular, but certainly to this part of the Mediterranean: this is my people, this is the way I want to live, this is home.

Photo: Che l’Uomo, 2007 © Jody Art

Deprived stasis

In his first visit to the country, the Polish author and renowned journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski describes in a masterly fashion the extreme dire straits of the destitute masses in India in the 1950s.

“It was a gray, overcast day by the time we pulled into Sealdah Station. On every square inch of the enormous terminal, on its long platforms, its dead-end tracks, the swampy fields nearby, sat or lay thousands of emaciated people -under streams of rains, in the water and the mud; it was the rainy season, and the heavy tropical downpour did not abate for a moment. I was struck at once by the poverty of these soaked skeletons, their untold numbers, and, perhaps most of all, their immobility. They seemed a lifeless component of this dismal landscape, whose sole kinetic element was the sheets of water pouring from the sky. There was of course a certain, albeit desperate, logic and rationality in the utter passivity of these unfortunates: they sought no shelter from the downpour because they had nowhere to go -this was the end of their road- and they made no exertion to cover themselves because they had nothing to cover themselves with.

[...] An old woman next to me was digging a bit of rice out of the folds of her sari. She poured it into a little bowl and started to look around, perhaps for water, perhaps for fire, so that she could boil the rice. I noticed several children near her, eyeing the bowl. Staring -motionless, wordless. This last a moment, and the moment drags on. The children do not throw themselves on the rice; the rice is the property of the old woman, and these children have been inculcated with something more powerful than hunger.

A man is pushing his way through the huddled multitudes. He jostles the old woman, the bowl drops from her hands, and the rice scatters onto the platform, into the mud, amidst the garbage. In that split second, the children throw themselves down, dive between the legs of those still standing, dig around in the muck trying to find the grains of rice. The old woman stands there empty-handed, another man shoves her. The old woman, the children, the train station, everything -soaked through by the unending torrents of a tropical downpour. An I too stand dripping wet, afraid to take a step; and anyway, I don´t know where to go.”

Ryszard Kapuscinski, 2007, Travels with Herodotus, New York, Vintage, pp. 28-29. Trans. from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska.

Photo: Flyover kids, Calcutta, 2009 © Soham Gupta

Atrociticies and collective memory

It is always them. The victors are the ones who write history, and they tend to blame the losers for the horrors of war. However, there is hardly a better example of the hypocritical fashion in which we have built our moral self-image than the historical obliviousness surrounding the Allies behaviour in the final year of the Second World War. Whereas crimes committed by the German, the Japanese, and the rest of the Axis members during the War have been extensively documented, it is striking how scarcely the deliberate murder of civilians (particularly Germans) in huge proportions by the British and American forces in 1944 appears in Western history books -even in German ones-, as if this exercise on collective awareness and memory was not necessary, as if we in the West were naturally immune to brutality, as if it was the remotest possibility it could happen again, with us as perpetrators. After all, it is well known no one else is to blame but them, whoever they are…

Here is an account of the Allied bombardments of Dresden and other German cities during the last years of the War: (1)

“In May 1942, Cologne became the first target of the Tausenbombernacht, as the victims called them. But Berlin was the favoured objective, it was ‘the evil capital’ and the lair of ‘the Huns’ […] on the night of 18 November, 1943, the city was bombarded by an airbone fleet of almost 450 bombers. The operation was repeated a few weeks later, but now with 750 planes. Entire neighbourhoods were in flames. 2,000 people were killed. […] On 26 February, 1944, old Alexanderplatz went up in a sea of flames and exploding ‘blockbusters’. By that point more than 1.5 million citizens of Berlin had been ausgebombt. In the end, seventy per cent of the city would be reduced to rubble. […] In Hamburg, on 28 July, 1943, the first firtestorm was created. People ran down the street like living torches; almost 40,000 suffocated in the burning cyclone or were roasted alive in bomb shelters that quickly became as hot as ovens. […] During the German bombardments of England. 60,000 civilians were killed, 90,000 were badly wounded and another 150,000 were injured. The Allied raids of Germany claimed five times that number, around 300,000 victims, including 75,000 children. Almost 800,000 people were badly wounded. Seven million Germans were left homeless, and a fifth of all the country´s houses were destroyed.  The effect of the bombings on the German war industry, however, was far less severe. […] This disproportion between industrial damage and civilian casualties was no accident. It was a concious policy. […] For every ton of bombs that landed on London, Coventry and a few other places, the British and the Americans dropped more than 300 tons back on Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Nuremberg and other German cities. […] The bombardment of civilians became a special science. […] A pronounced preference arose for residential neighbourhoods, as being more susceptible to ‘demoralisation’. Specialists calculated which bomb could best be used to destroy which building, how a firestorm could be created by first using a blockbuster to blow out all doors and windows, how a house could quickly be set alight by adjusting a bomb to explode only after it had first crashed through three floors. To kill firemen and other helpers, time bombs were dropped that went off only 36, 72 or 144 hours after deployment. […] On the night of 13 February, 1945, Dresden was full of refugees from the East. The city had no war industry to speak of, but that was not the point. Precisely according to plan, a firestorm raced through the streets within half an hour of the first bombs falling. To maximise the number of victims, the British and American strategists had devised a triple-whammy. They knew that, in a burning city, bomb shelters provided protection only for about three hours. After that the ground and the walls became so hot that everyone had to go back outside. It was at precisely that moment that the second attack came. The citizens of Dresden had to choose between the sea of fire outside and the oven-like bomb shelters within. Then, while everyone was busy saving themselves and others, a third attack followed. […] Today, local historians […] estimate the number of people killed in the bombardment of Dresden at 25-30,000. In the old market square in the centre of town, a funeral pyre was built that burned for five whole weeks. The cremation was supervised by SS Sturmbahnführer Karl Streibel, who had gained his experience burning bodies at the Treblinka death camp.”

Can we say we in the West have left behind and for good this kind of brutality? What on earth makes us think we are vaccinated against its resurgence, specially when we have decided to remain intentionally and shamefully ignorant about our recent past?

(1) Geert Mak, 2008, In Europe. Travels Through the Twentieth Century, New York, Vintage, pp. 560-561, 563-567.

Read on:

W. G. Sebald, 2003, On the Natural History of Destruction, New York, Random House [originally published in German in 1999 as Luftkrieg und Literatur, Munich, Hanser Verlarg].

Victor Klemperer, 1997, Das Tagebuch 1933-1945, Berlin, Aufbau-Taschenbuch Verlarg.

Michael Ignatieff, 2000, Virtual War. Kosovo and Beyond, New York, Metropolitan Books.

Photo: Dresden after World War II © Emory U.

Taboo, dignity and purpose

A judge from Augsburg, in Germany, has forbidden Gunther von Hagens from showing a couple of corpses having sex in the exhibition opening this month in the city. Von Hagens, medical doctor and Professor, invented the plastination technique, which allows to preserve corpses and display them in different postures, something he has been doing for pedagogic purposes in a number of exhibitions around the world, which bear the title of Koerperwelten. The judge claims the composition with the bodies shows contempt for human dignity.

As it happens, the exhibition has been open during the whole Summer in Berlin, where it raised no controversy, and one has to wonder why this part “shows contempt for human dignity” and other bodies displayed in the same exhibition playing the saxophone or catching a rugby ball do not. Perhaps the judge was influenced by two widespread taboos which play a role here, those of sex and death. However, in this region of the world freedom of expression is a paramount social value, and prohibiting an exhibition is a serious legal decision, which here would only be justified if it actually showed “contempt for human dignity”. It seems this is not the case.

The judge appears not to have taken into account the pedagogical purpose of the Koerperwelten exhibitions, which apparently has not offended the thousands of visitors that attend them each year in different countries and continents, which surely will have different perspectives regarding the representation of death. I attended one of these exhibitions years ago in Berlin and found it fascinating and very interesting. To judge by their attitude, the hundreds of other visitors that day had similar feelings.

In matters of freedom of expression, the rule should be “everything is allowed except…”, and the list of exceptions should be a minimum one, aimed at preserving human dignity, yes, but considering the matter on a case by case basis, and always assessing from an ethical point of view the purposes of the author and the coherence of means and ends. For instance, should we allow the display of explicit images of forced sex betwen adults and children, or of a human execution, devoid of any context? I would say we should not. Should one be free to show those images in, say, a movie, a book, an exhibition, etc., maybe not explicitly, in a meaningful context and with a purpose most would deem ethically acceptable? I would say one should.

I am well aware of the many caveats raised my choice of terms -”ethically acceptable”, “assesing purposes”, “coherence”-, and that this clearly is a moral minefield. However, a liberal system of values -the one we should cherish in our liberal societies- should hold freedom as its highest moral tenet, devising criteria -as morally sound as possible- aimed at making the list of exceptions to this rule a minimum one. Otherwise, it is all paternalism and censorship.

On a final note, I must admit that even the extreme examples I gave a couple of paragraphs before are not very useful to establish the moral boundaries of what we can legitimately display in the public realm. A few years ago, I attended an art exhibition in the P.S.1 museum in New York, which showed an excerpt of an old black and white movie in one of the rooms. In the film we could see a group of white hunters aboard an helicopter, flying above a tropical forest and shooting people with their rifles - apparently, members of an indigenous tribe, who run scared in all directions. Each time they hit one of them, the hunters would celebrate it blatantly. Brutal fictional images, I thought. However, these images became breathtakingly disgusting when minutes after I read the movie was not fictional: it was part of a recovered footage of real human hunting in the Amazon forest in the 70s, hunting for pleasure, as in a normal sport. Perhaps the judge of Augsburg would have censored this exhibition if it had taken place in his city, and for the very same reasons that lead him to censor part of von Hagens´ exhibition, but in doing so, he would have served very poorly the cause of human dignity, for the message the artist wanted to convey when showing this real movie -the radical, unthinkable and utmost inhumanity we could express towards our fellow individuals- reached this visitor deeply, and more so when this message was devoid of any obvious context (just the screen and some brief lines stating it was a real movie). The film itself rendered any description redundant from a moral point of view. Was this bare displaying obscene? Yes, it was. But it made us reflect on something -respect for human life- we carelessly take for granted, and this reflection started in our guts. Nothing short of sheer revulsion could have had such a moral effect.

Photo: Two corpses at the Koerperwelten exhibit in Berlin, 2009 © Koerperwelten.de

Biased prestige

Venezuela´s President, Hugo Chavez, received last week the American scholar and linguist Noam Chomsky, who declared upon arrival that “Chavez is building a different and viable world in Venezuela”. Hours before, Chomsky criticised Washington´s “imperial mentality” and accused his country of “aggravating tensions in Latin America”. According to the Spanish newspaper El País, “the prestigious intellectual has allowed himself to be seduced by the Venezuelan President”. The paper goes on to stress that Chomsky is “among the best known and respected American intellectuals abroad”.

So, according to this newspaper, our man is undoubtedly prestigious. What is this claim based on? Which is the source of his prestige?

Noam Chomsky is an emeritus professor of linguistics at the MIT in Massachusetts, well known for his contributions to the philosophy of language and mind with concepts and theories such as the generative grammar. He is also known to be a leading critic of US foreign policy.

Whereas the scientific community values his work in the field of linguistics as a paramount contribution to the advance of the discipline, his political views are often controversial. Hence, we must conclude that, for the Spanish newspaper -in fact, for everyone regarding him as an acclaimed thinker-, Chomsky is prestigious and, therefore, his political views are to be taken as authoritative ones, either because he is a renowned linguist, or because he is a foremost leftist critic of American foreign policy. Though there is no logical causality in the former claim -being an expert on language does not imply the same expertise in the field of international affairs-, a combination of the former and the latter seems to be a plausible source of prestige in this case. Many people, and a vast sector of the serious media -employing the usual term, prestigious media, would produce an unnecessary circularity- deem someone prestigious if that particular individual is (a) critical with the US domestic or foreign policies, and (b) possesses a certain stature as an academic or theorist, but not necessarily in the mentioned fields. That is, being extremely but scholarly critical of the US is a good way to attain professional and intellectual prestige.

Given the fact that Chomsky´s assertions about the new world being built in Venezuela may be contradicted by the grim reality most Venezuelans and Latin Americans have to face in their daily lives -a direct consecuence of Chavez decisions or other colectivist policies-, in which way might we claim those views are prestigious at all?

And, worse still, would the public, and these media, see him as equally prestigious if he was a fierce supporter of US interventions abroad to restore democracy or to achieve any other declared goals of liberal foreign policy?

Photo: Noam Chomsky, 2006 © Randombassist

Anti-Semitism? Indeed

A couple of days ago apeared in the news (“Filmmakers protest uncritical view of Tel Aviv at Toronto film festival”, Haaretz) that some Canadian filmmakers threatened to withdraw their movies from The Toronto International Film Festival to protest the screening of Israeli movies at the festival -a celebration of the centennial of Tel Aviv- that, according to them, “will show Israel in a positive light instead of creating a critical forum in which to discuss the occupation”. One of the protesters, the movie director John Greyson, complained about “the business-as-usual atmosphere advanced by the choice of Tel Aviv as a young, dynamic metropolis, in a celebration free of confrontation with less pleasant parts of Israel”, for example, what he refers to as “the brutal occupation”.

Somewhere else, I have labeled this protest an anti-Semitic one, which prompted, in turn, some complaints by a friend. He defines anti-Semitism as “the un-principled hatred directed towards Israel and Jewish people based on nothing other than bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance”, and doesn´t think “one can accurately claim that any of the protesters cited in this article are endorsing or promoting anti-Semitism.”

I share entirely my friend´s definition of anti-Semitism, but also reach the oposite conclusion in this case. I´d like to add I´m particularly careful when using certain loaded terms, and “anti-Semitism” is one of them. Therefore, I was not careless when I chose to use it. I also share the emphasis my friend places in the distinction between the legitimate criticism of human rights violations by a country and the condemnation of a country or people as a whole. My own position is very critical towards many Israeli policies, the occupation of The West Bank and the meddling of the Israeli army in the daily life of Palestinians in particular, but this is not the point.

I call these Canadian filmmakers anti-Semitic because their protest reveals hostility and prejudice towards Israel per se.

As an example, let´s think of a film festival outside Canada which was to screen movies by Canadian filmmakers celebrating, say, the vibrant dynamism and multiculturalism of the city of Toronto. Then let´s think of several other participants in the festival protesting against those Canadian filmmakers showing a positive image of Canada when what they should be doing, say, is showing in their movies how evil the participation of Canadian troops in the international mission currently being carried out in Afghanistan. Wouldn´t we think this would be a paranoic protest? Wouldn´t we say these two facts -a vibrant Toronto and the Afghan mission- are not related? Wouldn´t we take it as an unespecific critique and a total disregard of the many good things going on in Canada and, therefore, a censure of the whole country? Moreover, what idea these Canadian filmmakers have of an artist´s freedom to create? Should all Israeli artists devote their energy and time to criticize endlessly the occupation of the West Bank, otherwise they will not be accepted as artists? So, portraying daily life in Tel Aviv means approval of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians? What should be the recommendation, in turn, regarding the Palestinian artists? That they are not free to display whatever they want in their artworks, that they must always show how “brutal” the occupation is, otherwise their works will no be taken seriously? This is exactly what the Case of the Toronto Film Festival and Israel is about.

Often, a very ill-conceived position regarding justice consists in (a) defining strong and feeble individuals or groups, according to our particular ideologies; then (b) side in all places and cases with the feeble and against the strong, thus defined. This complacent attitude may show others how religiously we adhere to our ideologies, but is not likely to be  of service to those we claim to help, and certainly is misguided as a principle for justice. Sometimes, it can also even bear extreme prejudice, and the Canadian filmmakers protest is a good example of it. As my friend says, it´s important to distinguish between a legitimate critique and unspecific, generalistic condemnations. Anti-Semitism may easily sprout among this kind of prejudiced protests against what should be mere movies bearing no relation to what is being objected against. However, some people are always ready to see what they want to see, and not what actually is out there.

Photo: Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, 2009 © Loudsoul

Freedom and civic courage

I still have many progressive acquaintances that purport to cherish freedom, but would never criticize autocratic regimes… if they happen to be “leftist”, that is. These people would do themselves a favor if they watched attentively the film The lives of others (Das Leben der Anderen, Germany, 2006, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck). What would they say then about states that destroyed so meticulously the lives of so many people on behalf of socialism? Would they agree with the claim that building an egalitarian society required spying most citizens, looking at every aspect of private, individual lives, and locking up or eliminating all those over who fell the slightest shadow of a paranoic doubt of disloyalty to the regime, proof of what could often be the mere possesion of a Western newspaper? Perhaps they would try to convince themselves that this events happened long time ago, sidestepping the fact that the terrorist practices of the Eastern European socialist governments against their own citizens were in place until 1989, or that it was a corruption of the true ideas of socialism. But how to avoid linking the millions of lives destroyed by regimes like the former DDR with those being equally destroyed nowadays in Cuba, China or Venezuela, for instance? Those who experienced first hand the fear of the secret police, censorship, and terror at some point in their lives are much more willing to stand up for individual freedom than some of those who were born in a free society, take their liberties for granted, and for whom being progressive is just an empty aesthetic exercise which requires no critical, honest thinking. After all, Nazism and Communism arrived in Germany after decades of constitutional and semi- or fully democratic governments. Those ones that tend to think democracy can defend itself -or worst: that governments will safeguard our liberties, and that it is a task requiring no individual effort on our side- should take the best lessons from this excellent film. On the other hand, and timely related to the film, two days ago the Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel commemorated the 20th Anniversay of the so called “Pan-European picnic”, an spontaneous meeting of East Germans and Hungarians in the border between Austria and Hungary that helped precipitate the fall of the Berlin wall (“Hungary Remembers Picnic That Cracked Iron Curtain”, thanks for the link, J.), and which is the perfect example of the civic courage needed to fight totalitarianism. How many of us here in the Western world would show nowadays the same resolution if our liberties were in danger?

Photo: Das Leben der Anderen, 2006 © moviezkult

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