'Twas ever thus - statute of limitations on torture, did you know?
And, why is the SCLM leaving out the most important fact of all?
When I heard the newscasters on NPR yesterday talking about the Chicago police torture case, I knew exactly which story that was, because I posted on it after hearing about it last year through the Blogistan grape vine, and Mr. Burge - and his history of torturing people "in country" before coming home to enforce "law and order" stateside.
Now, it's outrageous that there is a statute of limitations on torturing confessions out of people and then putting them in prison for decades based on tortured confessions, so that these cops will not be charged by the state of [blue] Illinois for the crimes they committed while working for the good people of Illinois all those decades. (There is a chance they will be sued by the victims, but given the way that worked out for the My Lai survivors, and given the low social status of the US victims, I don't expect much in the way of justice, any more than they do.) It's even more outrageous that all this was covered up by the man who is now the Mayor of Chicago, and was the state AG back then (and is being defended as innocent and helpless and oblivious to what was being done by his underlings back then, just like Ken Lay.)
But I'm not shocked - because this is always the way it's been all around the world. The poor, and especially the ethnically-marginalized helots, get no justice; get tortured and falsely imprisoned and mocked and the Decent Folks turn a blind eye and go on their merry way, until there's a revolution or a riot Out Of Nowhere™ and the Decent Folks are all aghast at how awful Those People are, and how this proves that democracy, aka "mob rule", isn't any good and a Worthy Elite based on wealth ought to be given full control...never realizing that that's what they've already got, and the democracy thing's just an illusion, and the fact that those "unpatriotic" lefties were right when they made these accusations all along, never registers with them. It's still "the greatest country on earth," and the fact that these things have been going on here all along doesn't ever change the mental narrative for them. Doesn't matter if it's Britons (or Usonians!) going on about how wonderful the Raj was for the colonized, or us ignoring the whole racist nation thing in the USA. Doesn't stop us from sneering at everyone else in the world for being morally depraved when they do exactly the same things we ourselves have been doing all along. Doesn't stop the Moderates from feeling that the whole Civil Rights thing is a little over the top and that "black victim culture" is worse than racism, these days.
And the role of the military in training torturers with the electrodes, and the role of the supposed guardians of the law in torturing suspects, and the role of the majority society in turning a blind eye to it all because the victims were Unworthy - all are equally off limits for discussion, in the mainstream. It's not us We're not like that We didn't do it They were just thugs--
If I hear one more Nice Decent Moderate Type babble about how shocking it is that Bush has turned us into a nation of torturers, I'm going to tie them down and force them to read about John Burge a la Clockwork Orange...
They came for everybody else - the First Nations, the blacks, the suffragettes, the labor unions, the nisei, the dissident artists - and what did you say?
A series of collected articles on the cases from over the years.
When I heard the newscasters on NPR yesterday talking about the Chicago police torture case, I knew exactly which story that was, because I posted on it after hearing about it last year through the Blogistan grape vine, and Mr. Burge - and his history of torturing people "in country" before coming home to enforce "law and order" stateside.
Now, it's outrageous that there is a statute of limitations on torturing confessions out of people and then putting them in prison for decades based on tortured confessions, so that these cops will not be charged by the state of [blue] Illinois for the crimes they committed while working for the good people of Illinois all those decades. (There is a chance they will be sued by the victims, but given the way that worked out for the My Lai survivors, and given the low social status of the US victims, I don't expect much in the way of justice, any more than they do.) It's even more outrageous that all this was covered up by the man who is now the Mayor of Chicago, and was the state AG back then (and is being defended as innocent and helpless and oblivious to what was being done by his underlings back then, just like Ken Lay.)
But I'm not shocked - because this is always the way it's been all around the world. The poor, and especially the ethnically-marginalized helots, get no justice; get tortured and falsely imprisoned and mocked and the Decent Folks turn a blind eye and go on their merry way, until there's a revolution or a riot Out Of Nowhere™ and the Decent Folks are all aghast at how awful Those People are, and how this proves that democracy, aka "mob rule", isn't any good and a Worthy Elite based on wealth ought to be given full control...never realizing that that's what they've already got, and the democracy thing's just an illusion, and the fact that those "unpatriotic" lefties were right when they made these accusations all along, never registers with them. It's still "the greatest country on earth," and the fact that these things have been going on here all along doesn't ever change the mental narrative for them. Doesn't matter if it's Britons (or Usonians!) going on about how wonderful the Raj was for the colonized, or us ignoring the whole racist nation thing in the USA. Doesn't stop us from sneering at everyone else in the world for being morally depraved when they do exactly the same things we ourselves have been doing all along. Doesn't stop the Moderates from feeling that the whole Civil Rights thing is a little over the top and that "black victim culture" is worse than racism, these days.
And the role of the military in training torturers with the electrodes, and the role of the supposed guardians of the law in torturing suspects, and the role of the majority society in turning a blind eye to it all because the victims were Unworthy - all are equally off limits for discussion, in the mainstream. It's not us We're not like that We didn't do it They were just thugs--
If I hear one more Nice Decent Moderate Type babble about how shocking it is that Bush has turned us into a nation of torturers, I'm going to tie them down and force them to read about John Burge a la Clockwork Orange...
They came for everybody else - the First Nations, the blacks, the suffragettes, the labor unions, the nisei, the dissident artists - and what did you say?
A series of collected articles on the cases from over the years.
