Tony Soprano meets Joe McCarthy

Now I’m not a huge fol­low­er of US polit­ic­al the­at­rics.  Give it a few years and the US of A will prob­ably exit from the world stage pur­sued by a bear (or panda).  So why waste your time on a dying beast?  All you can do is try to avoid the death throes as best you can. 

But this did piqué my interest, purely from the Hol­ly­wood-block­buster schlock value.  The new Chair of the US Home­land Secur­ity Com­mit­tee, Repub­lic­an Con­gress­man for New York Peter King, has opened a hear­ing called  “The Extent of Rad­ic­al­iz­a­tion (with a “z”) in the Amer­ic­an Muslim Com­munity and that Com­munity’s Response.” 

Here is the  Down­load Full_text and here’s the video of King’s open­ing statement:


 

Now isn’t it won­der­ful that esteemed politi­cian Peter King has woken up to the dangers of “the enemy with­in” — or not?  Over the last last few months he has flag­rantly dis­played his pro­found ignor­ance vis a vis the concept of ter­ror­ism.  Last Decem­ber he called for the des­ig­na­tion of Wikileaks, the high-tech con­duit extraordin­aire for pub­lic-spir­ited whis­tleblowers around the world, as a “ter­ror­ist organistion”. 

And this from a politi­cian who is repor­ted to be a life-long sup­port­er of the polit­ic­al wing of the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA — anoth­er reli­gious minor­ity group that fought for its self-pro­claimed ideals — and was for dec­ades the “enemy with­in” the UK

In fact, until 9/11 the US Irish com­munity was by far the biggest fun­der of PIRA ter­ror­ism for dec­ades — so don’t believe everything that is writ­ten about Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya. 

I sup­pose it still holds true that one man’s ter­ror­ist is anoth­er man’s free­dom fight­er, and Rep Peter King is clearly adher­ing to that point of view.….

Look­ing at the above video, I can­’t get out of my head that it’s a bit like put­ting the fic­tion­al organ­ised crime boss, Tony Sop­rano, in charge of a gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee invest­ig­at­ing organ­ised crime.

But it gets worse.  King even men­tions the dread phrase “des­pite what passes for con­ven­tion­al wis­dom in cer­tain circles, there is noth­ing rad­ic­al or un-Amer­ic­an in hold­ing these hear­ings”.  Was­n’t that also what a cer­tain Sen­at­or Joe McCarthy said in the 1950s about the Com­mun­ist witchhunts?

Osama_bin_Laden_portraitSuch mor­on­ic state­ments would poten­tially be amus­ing — if it were not for the fact that Peter Chair is the King of the Home­land Secur­ity Com­mit­tee of the world’s dying and des­per­ate super-power, the USA

Oops, silly me, I muddled the words.….

But sadly he is, and no doubt the whole world will feel the reper­cus­sions of this.  The morph­ing of the fic­tion­al Tony Sop­rano and para­noid Joe Kennedy has spawned a hellish brat — let’s call him Emmanuel Gold­stein, for ease of reference.

 

The murder of Pat Finucane

Mov­ing swiftly past the pruri­ent, thigh-rub­bing glee that most of the old media seems to be exhib­it­ing over the alleged details of Juli­an Assange’s love life, let’s re-focus on the heart of the Wikileaks dis­clos­ures, and most import­antly the aims under­pin­ning them: trans­par­ency, justice, and an informed cit­izenry liv­ing with­in fully-func­tion­ing demo­cra­cies.  Such quaint notions.

In the media mael­strom of the Cableg­ate dis­clos­ures, and the res­ult­ing infant­ile and thug­gish threats of the Amer­ic­an polit­ic­al class, is easy to lose sight of the fact that many of the leaked doc­u­ments refer to scan­dals, cor­rup­tion and cov­er-ups in a range of coun­tries, not just the good old US of A.

Pat_FinucaneOne doc­u­ment that recently caught my atten­tion related to the notori­ous murder twenty-one years ago of civil rights act­iv­ist, Pat Finu­cane, in North­ern Ire­land.  Finu­cane was a well-known law­yer who was shot and killed in front of his wife and three small chil­dren.  There has long been spec­u­la­tion that he was tar­geted by Prot­est­ant ter­ror­ist groups, in col­lu­sion with the NI secret police, the army’s notori­ous and now-dis­ban­ded Forces Research Unit (FRU), and/or MI5.

Well, over a dec­ade ago former top plod, Lord (John) Stevens, began an inquiry that did indeed estab­lish such state col­lu­sion, des­pite hav­ing his inquiry offices burnt out in the pro­cess by person/s allegedly unknown half-way through the invest­ig­a­tion.  Stevens fought on, pro­du­cing a damning report in 2003 con­firm­ing the notion of state col­lu­sion with Irish Loy­al­ist ter­ror­ist activ­it­ies, but nev­er did cla­ri­fy exactly what had happened to poor Pat Finucane.

How­ever, Finu­cane’s trau­mat­ised fam­ily has nev­er stopped demand­ing justice.  The recent dis­clos­ure shines a light on some of the back-room deals around this scan­dal, and for that I’m sure many people thank Wikileaks.

The “Troubles” in North­ern Ire­land — such a quint­es­sen­tially Brit­ish under­state­ment, in any oth­er coun­try it would have been called a civil war — were decept­ive, murky and vicious on both sides.  “Col­lu­sion” is an elast­ic word that stretches bey­ond the strict notion of the state.  It is well-known that the US organ­is­tion, NORAID, sup­por­ted by many Amer­ic­ans claim­ing Irish ances­try, was a major fun­drais­ing chan­nel for, um, Sinn Féin, the polit­ic­al wing of the Pro­vi­sion­al IRA, from the 1970s onwards. 

Peter_kingSuch net­works provided even more sup­port than Col­on­el Gad­dafi of Libya with his arms ship­ments, and the cash well only dried up post‑9/11.  As you can see in this recent art­icle in the The Tele­graph, even the incom­ing Chair­man of the House Home­land Secur­ity Com­mit­tee, New York Con­gress­man Peter King (who iron­ic­ally called for the des­ig­na­tion of Wkileaks as a “for­eign ter­ror­ist organ­isa­tion”) appears to have been a life long sup­port­er of Sinn Féin.

With this in the back of our minds, it appears that Dub­lin and Wash­ing­ton kept push­ing for a full inquiry into Finu­cane’s murder — and in 2005 it looked like MI5 would finally co-oper­ate

How­ever, the dev­il was in the detail. Coin­cid­ent­ally, 2005 was the year that the UK gov­ern­ment rushed through a new law, the Inquir­ies Act, which scan­dal­ously allowed any depart­ment under invest­ig­a­tion (in this case MI5) to dic­tate the terms and scope of the inquiry. 

Col­lu­sion by any state in the unlaw­ful arrest, tor­ture, and extraju­di­cial murder of people — wheth­er its own cit­izens or oth­ers — is state ter­ror­ism.  Let’s not mince our words here.  Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al provides a clear defin­i­tion of this concept.

As the The Guard­i­an  art­icle about Finu­cane so succintly puts it:

When a state sanc­tions the killing of cit­izens, in par­tic­u­lar cit­izens who are law­yers, it puts the rule of law and demo­cracy in jeop­ardy. And when a state enlists aux­il­i­ary assas­sins, it cedes its mono­poly over state secrets: it may feel omni­po­tent, but it is also vul­ner­able to disclosure.”

Mercenaries1Indeed.  North­ern Ire­land was like a Petri dish of human rights abuses: tor­ture, Dip­lock courts (aka mil­it­ary tribunals), kid­nap­pings, curfews, shoot-to-kill, inform­ers, and state col­lu­sion in assassinations.

The infec­tion has now spread.  These are pre­cisely the tac­tics cur­rently used by the US, the UK and their “aux­il­i­ary assas­sins” across great swathes of the Middle East.  Per­haps this explains why our nation states have been out­flanked and have ceded their mono­poly over secrets.

Will justice ever be done?  In the past I would have said, sadly, that would be highly unlikely.  How­ever,  cour­ageous organ­isa­tions like Wikileaks and its ilk are improv­ing the odds.