Guantanamo Guilt and the Swiss Shame
Amnesty International reports today that the request of three of the numerous – do we even know how many are there at this point? – detainees that have asked for asylum in Switzerland, have been denied (Bern rejects Asylum for Guantanamo Inmates – Swissinfo)
One of the widely awaited actions of US President Elect Obama once he is officially instated into his functions, is the closing of the law-free zone of the Guantanamo prison for terrorist suspects – infamously called Camp X-Ray or Camp Delta or even detention camp.
The name Guantanamo has become synonym with a number of things, fear of terrorism that leads to power abuse, unlawful imprisonment, governmentally ordered torture on prisoners, detention without trial only being a few of them. Throughout the world the name has become as evocative and shiver inspiring as Abu-Graib. The only real difference between the two is the status of soil: Abu Graib was in a far away country on the other side of the globe and on foreign ground, Guantanamo is – granted no around the corner from a European perspective – but factually American soil seeing that the Naval Base is extraterritorial in Cuba.
It takes a while even for the informed US American to understand that a a law-free zone has been created voluntarily and intentionally by their own government as to be at liberty to torture and hold people outside of any legal founding, given the current state of global fear that is maintained at a certain level to justify said injustice.
From a moral standpoint there are a few things that need to be raised as questions and that still have not been properly addressed as of yet either by the philosophical or ethical professional community, nor by the law professionals or even politicians: what is an unlawful combatant in the light of the system of clan wars and interaction as can be found in Afghanistan? Do the ends of saving and protecting the American people and military abroad really justify any means? To a point where the Constitution and Human Rights are flaunted so badly? Is the use of and redefinition of torture in order to make waterboarding not torture, really the way to promote the values of our modern world, as the US have written on their flag in this war on terrorism? (For more on the issue of governemental torture in the US and in Guantanamo, I point to the Documentary ‘Torturing Democracy Documentary’ which makes a shocking and sickening point on this issue. But beware, it is not for the faint of heart or the easily outraged. It’ll leave you shuddering and trembling.)
The problem however that will arise with a closure of the Camps in Guantanamo, is that these detainees cannot be sent home where they are likely to either be prosecuted, hunted, tortured or killed. Any country that knows of such danger is legally prohibited of sending them back. What the US have created here, is a Russian Doll of problems and solving them will entail much more than just a political decision to close Guantanamo. These prisoners need a safe haven and of course the American Government refuses to give them that. (Which is understandable due to their paranoia and reality – sic! – of domestic terrorism. If anything Guantanamo has created more people with terrorist intent than it set out of capture and… dispose of.) So now has started the scramble for other solutions. Other countries will have to step up and of course the EU and Switzerland are obvious candidates.
The three prisoners that have asked for asylum in Switzerland are from Algeria, Lybia and China. Now, I get that the Swiss Immigration Office cannot grant a Lybian citizen asylum in the current bras-de-fer with Gaddafi after the incident that had his son arrested in Geneva (take a look at the second paragraph) and that led to a complete diplomatic meltdown between the two countries.
I understand that France is a much clearer destination for an Algerian, but I do certainly not understand or condone the refusal of a Chinese. It doesn’t make any sense.
From these three, the Chinese prisoner is most likely to suffer prosecution and danger of death than any of the other two. It is safe to assume that the person in question is from the Uyghur tribe, who are Muslim Chinese of Turkic descent. They are a minority that has been persecuted for a long time and have turned to terrorist attacks to state their point. (On the Uighurs Problematic in China)
In my view Switzerland had the possibility to make a stand here and take the first step that would have permitted a lot of other countries to follow and help the US resolve the injustice that persists in the form of Guantanamo. My country has accepted over 40% of the overall number of refugees from the Bosnia war in the 90ies and has the highest percentage of refugees from former Jugoslavia (meaning from all the wars: First and Second Croatian War, Bosnia etc.) in the world, but we cannot find ways to accept a single Chinese prisoner that has been unlawfully kept for years without proof for suspicion of terrorist activity and has now been declared ‘not dangerous’ by the US authorities themselves?
I am ashamed.
Ashamed for a country that holds the chart of the United Nations and the Red Cross. Ashamed for a country that has been and continues to be the synonym for humanitarian action and speaking out against injustice and diplomacy.
Shame on all of us who stay silent.
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Communication: The Sins of our Fathers
We are how we talk and we talk like our parents have or have not taught us. Would teaching dialectics and discussion in school help with the current non-culture of debate and argumentation?
Prompted by the post on the communication style during the past US Presidential Elections, someone pointed out to me on plurk that they thought that communications, dialectics and the ethics of discourse should be taught in school to kids already and I gathered that for him that would mean a considerable improvement of certain things going wrong at this point in history when partisanship seems to be more important than the political, social et al. issue at hand.
I only half agree with that idea for one general reason: we talk like our parents. Or rather we discuss like our parents.
Let me explain this slightly exaggerated assertion. While I am all for teaching young adults the arts of talking properly, right and for effect on one hand and to analyse arguments and react to them on the other hand, I also believe that such a teaching is next to fruitless if it falls on unprepared ground.
Aren’t we much more influenced by the discussion style and culture going on in our parent’s house while growing up than shaped by what the teacher tells us at say… the age 14?
It is a common and widely accepted ground rule today that our way of talking, expressing ourselves in normal circumstance is shaped by our social upbringing, the surroundings we’ve been exposed to at tender age and the all the other socio-historical stimuli we’ve been subjected to. It’s shaped by what we read, when we read it, what we hear and process and finally who we consider our idols and personal heroes. (I had and still have a huge sympathy for the Roman Senators and it has pushed me at an early age to learn the history and nature of rhetoric making me real pain in discussions… 
)
If that is the case for ‘normal style’ communication, then it isn’t too far fetched to assume that the particular case of discursive discussion is just as influenced by our roots. As kids and adolescents we learn from what we see and if our parents have either a passive agressive discussion and confrontation style, or one that makes the roof blow off the house, as children we will either adopt that or refuse it completely depending our level of auto-evaluation and critical analysis of our actions.
The point I am trying to make here is simple really: an ethos is discussion and argumentation cannot be built by schooling and teaching alone, because these levels already assume a certain meta-level because they aim at teaching something. A good discussion style starts much earlier and parents are important in that process. The effect of an all-mighty father that can say ‘Yes, you’re right and making a good point there. I concede that I was wrong/hasty etc.’ are immense on the psyché of a child that will learn that even though a parent is the measure of all things in their life, conceding to being wrong isn’t the end of the world. This in turn will at a later age tell them that riding an argument even though you know that it’s flawed is a bad thing and that it’s better to learn from others rather than stand on your own viewpoint against all odds and the wrath of the gods.
I’ve seen people with a lot of kids being condescending with people who tried to have a decent discussion with them in the course of these Elections, who were deliberately mean and inflammatory and abrasive only to show how right they thought they were and it made me seriously worry about the example they give to their children, because I don’t believe that in their home environment they discuss differently than online. We are what we say and how we say it after all and if you don’t have a discussion ethos with the big topics, why would you have one in the most fundamental social cell, family?
Neither one of us has proof of the ultimate truth, if they did, the world would look differently and there wouldn’t be any need for discursive analysis and discussion or even so much as a teaching exchange. In such a utopian state of Eden, we all would know and thus wouldn’t need to exchange knowledge or different points of views. The second a person, locked in a discussion, assumes that they have the better point of view, the right way of looking at things, the respect clause has been violated and since at this point only condescension can be had from that person, the discussion dies a sudden death.
Now people will continue on, trying to work with such a person, to make them see other contrasting arguments to their view, or even pull the mother of all arguments: personal experience. (A well known ‘trick’ to try and bring emotion into the discussion and tone down the heat.) But with someone as fundamentally convinced as this, even that will be shot down.
There is no value to be had from such discussions. Not a social interactive value, not a personal one and certainly not a political one. All it serves is giving rhetorical bullies a box on which they can stand on their personal speaker’s corner. All that comes from it is insult.
Kids that grow up under such communication circumstances are bound to have a ‘strike first’ attitude in their discussion style and chances are such an attitude will also spill over into their general conflict resolution attitudes (hitting when no arguments are at hand etc.).
So, truly, as adults, we shape the future generation’s communication style as well as their ability to deal with information, process it and use it in discussion. A detail that often gets lost in the mayhem that can be child upbringing.
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Let’s talk about it… or not
Now that the US Presidentials are over, I can finally start thinking about blogging and writing again.
Sounds like an odd thing to say, doesn’t it? Why would the US elections keep me as a European, a writer or a philosopher from blogging my mind? The answer is easily given. There are only two ways to go about a topic that is so invasive in our everyday lives and has such a massive presence in the news: either you avoid talking about it completely, but then the avoidance will always show in your writing since it is what is on everyone’s mind after all OR you do write about it and open a can of worms that you cannot close again.
Of course I had an opinion on the votes and the elections, of course I have a personal stance and a professional one since I can rarely dissociate the one from the other. As someone trained in philosophy going about in the world, you can rarely not be influenced by the things and current topics around you and think about them with your ‘philosophical’ mind. So, even if I wasn’t to talk about the elephant in the room, I would in a way by avoiding it meticulously.
So the main question remains: why not blog about it if it’s such an important issue of our time?
Because in the myriad of comments, opinions, partisanship battles, demeaning thought processes etc. my word doesn’t count for anything. Not amongst the friends that I live around, close contacts over the internet that I’ve come to consider my friends on certain levels, not among the people that share my faith or convictions or the people I respect. Because just as the media coverage enlightens our knowledge of the world (not to be confounded with actual knowledge, I’m just referring to factual knowledge), it also taints and escalates the dialogue. There is practically no informed discussion to be had about anything in this respect. Not about the kind of dog Obama’s kids will get or the colour of Palin’s breakfast cereal.
I have in all honesty only seen ONE explame of a discussion that could be called constructive and instructive for both camps in all of over 2 years of following the whole circus called U.S. Presidential Election.
What a sad bottom line that makes.
And something I was not ready to expose myself to. There are only so many fall-outs with friends and family that you can get past and once certain things are being said… the going back is almost impossible. The Philosopher’s Attic isn’t about that. It’s about looking at the world in a different manner. It’s about getting a small spark of something else in your day and in mine. And that is what I’ll try to bring back now that this race is over.
A great weekend to all of you.
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The Word
Our worlds are made of words and meaning. Words that bother and comfort, words that build and veil, words that confuse and break open those windows to our hearts that never get used. We use them everyday to speak, relate and cover up, to dissect and inspect, to see and hear and ultimately listen. Words and the things they represent are what makes a man… or not.
There is a word in all this wordness of the wordlessness. So fine in thought and phonetics, so balanced in reason and it’s labio-dental being, so trustworthy in it’s simplicity. So empty in all it’s glory.
It is moved around the pages of numerous books, moved by unseen hands of unknown placers. Pushed to the side of a line, to the beginning, the line-up of a paragraph, the title, the end, the last, the first, the whatever. Through History, through time, on pages worth a thousand others, thought and written by men and women worthy of the meaning, and so many that never grasped it’s true colour or … future. Slipped and flipped around the edges of an inspiring text, a daring pamphlet, a burning speech, a tearing poem or a heating novel. Thus said word, made its way through the eons and ages that long passed, have made the whole structure of words we live in by the day. An architecture of meaning, of synonimical rigour, building room after room, floor after floor, high into skies that bear no limit to what only lowest spirits call culture.
And our word? Stuck somewhere between the ground floor and apartment block 2A, right beside emptiness and vigour. Moved around the great pieces of human culture, like a forgotten furniture: always there, but not really fitting. Not entirely. So, they strip it down, sand it bland, paint it anew to the current times, make it fit wherever it needs to go, make it wear whatever we need it to convey. (grind it down, construct it completely new)
We move it around between the front room, the salon and the back of the house. Once in the first spot for everyone to see when it might serve a purpose. Only to have it removed and put into storage the next day when all sense has been lost and it doesn’t even have enough substance to bear a vase of flowers on its top.
And while it ages, wastes and dies away, this word’s carapace and empty shell is still being used as a ghost, a placeholder in our minds and thoughts. By people that greater and smaller than you or me who rip it apart, move it around, walk over it, tear it apart, defile it, crush it and rape it, while the word all by itself sits in a long forgotten room in some wonderful speech that tells us of a glorious future, whips us in line behind another empty hull of another mighty word that has lost all meaning.
A long forgotten room, in a house full of lost and deconsidered words that have lost reality or reference, that simply have lost being.
There is a word in all this dusty lostness and we used to call it truth. It used to be the making and the destruction of kings, princes and worlds. It used to be the greatest things of all, one of the greatest words with power.
Truth dies easy in the whispers of a thousand liars.
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Solitude
In a time where every minute of every day is filled with chatter and noise, solitude and silence do seem like an endearing thing. And while silence and solitude are bound to connect us much more deeply to ourselves and the things that haunt us, work on us, make us laugh or cry, they – just as anything else – can be the most oppressive and terrible things.
Being alone, lonely… maybe it’s for that reason that these expressions have become tinged with the sense of something negative. Or maybe it’s just our society that is suggesting that the more people you have around you that keep you from being alone, the more successful, more cherished, loved and popular you are. After all, who actually likes to be alone? Isn’t it rather the mark of a socially inept person to be alone, to seek loneliness, to find silence?
Another tradition runs against this. In it men and women have chosen solitude and silence as a way to holiness. For it is in the silence and solitude that we hear our inner selves proclaimed. It is in these lonely hours between the waking and the morning that we truly have to accept our own limits, our own fear and our own hardships that do not come from the world that surrounds us, but from the world that lives in us. But if holiness is found in solitude, why do we shy away from it?
Getting to know oneself is the challenge of a lifetime and some say that you can never achieve it until you’ve drawn your last breath. Be that as it may, it still is a hard task for sure. There never is a moment where we do not either surprise ourselves or are scared by our own darkness, meanness and gratious hardness towards either ourselves or the people that depend on us. Listening, hearing and accepting those limitations of our own being, of ultimately what makes us be the humans that we are… will break us or make us.
And thus solitude becomes a catalyst, a primer, a moment of hesitations before we launch ourselves back at the world to change it.
This is a tease post in a series of short essays or meditations that will sooner or later be published alongside with my poetry.
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