The Pentagon Archipelago- Chris Floyd

[Clara T]

The Pentagon Archipelago

Tuesday, 28 February 2006

When I read the passage below from Moazzam Begg's account of his years in Bush's Terror War prisons, I had a strange feeling of dislocation: it was as if 30 years had suddenly fallen away and I was back in high school, reading Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in stunned disbelief at the hideous cruelty inflicted on the prisoners -- deliberately, as a carefully calculated instrument of state policy. And all of it done in the name of national security, of course, to protect the nation against "terrorists" and "traitors."

Solzhenitsyn's books -- not just the factual Gulag but also the deep-delving fiction of his middle years, the powerful First Circle and Cancer Ward -- were enormous influences on my own understanding of politics, power and morality. Years later, I was in Moscow when he returned to Russia from his long exile, having outlasted the system of state terror that had consumed so many of his compatriots. However much I had come to disagree with some of his political positions on certain issues, it was a still a moment of triumph for the deeper truths and moral courage that he continued -- and continues -- to represent.

How sickening, then, to find myself last Saturday reading of the precisely the same kind of state terror that Solzhenitsyn described (and survived) once again being inflicted on innocent people -- and this time in my name, under the flag of my country, at the express order of the leaders of my government. Bush is trying to turn us all into the kind of quiet collaborationists and cowed enablers of atrocity that we habitually decry when speaking of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany: "Oh, how could they have let such awful things go on? Why did they stand silently by? How could they swallow all those monstrous lies? I would never have stood for that kind of thing!"

Well, tens of millions of Americans are standing for it right now –- every bit as quiescent as the most head-down, eyes-averted Soviet citizen or German burgher: countenancing, condoning, even celebrating brutal acts of state terror, and swallowing the tyrant's eternal lie that his crimes are committed to protect the people. For a few crumbs of prosperity from the elite's banquet table, for a few flattering fairy tales about national greatness, national goodness and historical destiny, for a few comforting murmurs to chase away the craven fear of madman monsters across the sea, they have sold their priceless birthright of liberty. It's no longer a matter of what crimes Americans will swallow; now the great question of the day is: what won't they swallow? They've walked this far down the road of darkness – how much farther will they go? Will we one day need a Solzhenitsyn to catalogue our shame, our cruelty and our cowardice?

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=507&Itemid=1

[OneBlueSky]

1. highly recommended . . . n/t

.

[acmavm]

2. Floyd is the best. Always easy to recommend. n/t

[Kolesar]

3. I read those three books as a teenager

I have a vastly different view of society than most Americans.

Delightful was seeing the Gulag Archipelago on his shelf in an Edward Abbey portrait.

[katty]

4. great piece

[rodeodance]

5. recall that Bush is reading Solzhenitsyn's books -

[teryang]

6. The Origins of Totalitarianism - Hannah Arendt

The relationship is between colonialism, the abuse of human rights abroad, and then importing those practices to create a regime of terror against your own people.

[Clara T]

7. Bringing back home

that which has been hidden from view as the local populace mosied along quite blissfully ignorant of the totalitarian regime that has always extracted from the periphery and then the local populace is "all of the sudden" shocked that "It could happen here"- and is happening. The leviathan.

[Spoonerian]

8. I think I look at it the other way around.

As poster Clara T pointed out on the Village Voice article's "CIA Black Sites" thread (which referred me to this excellent article by Floyd):

"2.1 million in the domestic gulags and who knows how many in the various international gulags."

In my opinion these Black Sites are more of an American EXPORT.

The bible reading narco-agent that Begg talks about in the excerpts cited by Floyd and Abu Ghraib's Charles Grainer who was a Virginia prison guard are two good examples of how the US military industrial complex is marketing its prison and torture product lines for export.

[teryang]

9. the gulag is established abroad to avoid due process of law

It also plays the role of conditioning the American people to summary terror as an executive function allegedly justified by the exigencies of the so called war on terror.

The so called Patriot Act response to an alleged "enemy attack" on 911, is little different from the German response to arson in Reichstag. The rounding up of south Asians associated with this event also established a precedent.

The execution of a "gulag" strategy abroad is to keep the intervention of the judicial branch to a minimum (due to lack of jurisdiction) until the public is sufficiently conditioned by the GITMO example and perhaps further enabling events along the lines of 911 and the anthrax attacks. Further acts of belligerence abroad will be used as the justification for implementation of the complete centralized police state at home which is legally in place but not yet consolidated.

An essential part of Straussian analysis is that foreigners don't have rights. This is the convenient stepping stone to the ultimate principle of totalitarianism, that no one has rights.

GITMO and the gulag abroad scare me (effectively performing a domestic terror function) because I know that traditional law concerning the treatment of prisoners has been abandoned. This is a direct assault on international law much as the attack on Iraq was.

I wish I could read the article that you are referring to, so the perspective on the 2.1 million at home becomes clearer. I assume you are referring to the criminal/ penal system.

[Spoonerian]

11. Link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x194476">The CIA's Black Sites

I think the 2.1 million at home that Clara T refers to must be the current tally of the world leading US prison population--most of which is attributed to drug and other peaceful free market activity.

I realize that much of the police/industrial complex's nastiest torture technology is test marketed abroad before being imported here. But many of the most cruel and demeaning tactics were perfected here first before anyone dared attempt to export them abroad--where furriners haven't been hypnotized by 20 years of COPS TV episodes.

In Virginia, Grainer's subjects were well trained in obedience to government authority. In Iraq, the objects of his cruelty still possessed an instinctive resistance to being treated like animals. Hence, the latest products from corporations such as San Diego's CACI and Titan must be launched abroad for proper field testing.

[teryang]

13. I can't get it to work

I've been having difficulty lately (in the last few days) linking from DU to the "type" of web site that is either highly informative and/or highly critical of certain government activities, typically involving DOD or intell functions.

I'm sure it's just a co inky dink.

[Spoonerian]

14. Nope,

just my inability to follow directions properly when making a simple link tag. Try this:

The CIA's Black Sites

[teryang]

15. Thanks n/t

[SongOfTheRayne]

10. Why, exactly, was Moazzam Begg imprisoned?

[Spoonerian]

12. According to the article

"our troops" knew that Begg was an Al Qaeda James Bond.

After years of practicing in the US torturing drug dealers and their customers, "our boys" were sent half way around the world to save us from evil mastermind's like Begg who want to convert us to Islam and apparantly take over the US drug prohibition racket for themselves.