Pixelated Semantics

American Terror

It is telling that Mamdouh Habib's account of his torture at the hands of the US, Pakistan, Egypt, and Australians recieves far more coverage in the New York Times than domestically - though there is mounting evidence to support his story, and the government's plethora of denials (which have attracted more press than the claims) are increasingly threadbare. Saying that Habib's story "did not tally with intelligence assessments" Downer and Ruddock seem to forget that the lack of WMD in Irak also did not tally with assessments. Intelligence is not a legal instrument, and cannot not be used for evidentiary benchmarks, though the Howard government uses "intelligence" findings with liberal abandon in constructing what are often false, by legal standards, characterisations. Indeed, only yesterday Man of Steel was acknowledging "intelligence implicating Mamdouh Habib as a person of interest to Australian authorities could be wrong". Habib has stated that "The Americans, how they are treating people, they are the terrorists. They have no humanity". Neither, it would seem, does the Australian government, who have deliberately forged a PR campaign to convince us that Habib is a terrorist despite lack of any evidence and the clear use of torture; the abundance of the government line in the press over any reasonable reporting of Habib's claims or situation mocks fair treatment and justice in front of all of us.

There are disturbing signs the American plan to create "fake terror" and death squads is active also: as one commentator observes, "now the United States stands openly -- even proudly -- for terrorism, torture and the Hitlerian principle of aggressive war". A strategy that does not fit with even the most basic tenets of respect for humanity or even their own constitution, but then the treatment of prima facie innocent men (by legal standards - "the AFP found no basis upon which to charge Mr Habib") like Habib has pointed to that abyss for some time. And a government, like Australia's, that fails to ask pertinent questions at the right time is just as complicit.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 11:40 am ::