Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Ora i criminali siamo noi

GRANDE articolo del giornalista inglese Robert Fisk
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1129-05.htm
We Are the War Criminals Now
'Everything we have believed in since the Second World War goes by the
board as we pursue our own exclusive war'
 
by Robert Fisk
 
 We are becoming war criminals in Afghanistan. The US Air Force bombs
Mazar-i-Sharif for the Northern Alliance, and our heroic Afghan allies
- who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul between 1992 and 1996 - move
into the city and execute up to 300 Taliban fighters. The report is a
footnote on the television satellite channels, a "nib" in journalistic
parlance. Perfectly normal, it seems. The Afghans have a "tradition"
of revenge. So, with the strategic assistance of the USAF, a war crime
is committed.
Now we have the Mazar-i-Sharif prison "revolt", in which Taliban
inmates opened fire on their Alliance jailers. US Special Forces -
and, it has emerged, British troops - helped the Alliance to overcome
the uprising and, sure enough, CNN tells us some prisoners were
"executed" trying to escape. It is an atrocity. British troops are now
stained with war crimes. Within days, The Independent's Justin Huggler
has found more executed Taliban members in Kunduz.
The Americans have even less excuse for this massacre. For the US
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, stated quite specifically
during the siege of the city that US air raids on the Taliban
defenders would stop "if the Northern Alliance requested it". Leaving
aside the revelation that the thugs and murderers of the Northern
Alliance were now acting as air controllers to the USAF in its battle
with the thugs and murderers of the Taliban, Mr Rumsfeld's
incriminating remark places Washington in the witness box of any
war-crimes trial over Kunduz. The US were acting in full military
co-operation with the Northern Alliance militia.
Most television journalists, to their shame, have shown little or no
interest in these disgraceful crimes. Cosying up to the Northern
Alliance, chatting to the American troops, most have done little more
than mention the war crimes against prisoners in the midst of their
reports. What on earth has gone wrong with our moral compass since 11
September?
Perhaps I can suggest an answer. After both the First and Second World
Wars, we - the "West" - grew a forest of legislation to prevent
further war crimes. The very first Anglo-French-Russian attempt to
formulate such laws was provoked by the Armenian Holocaust at the
hands of the Turks in 1915; The Entente said it would hold personally
responsible "all members of the (Turkish) Ottoman government and those
of their agents who are implicated in such massacres". After the
Jewish Holocaust and the collapse of Germany in 1945, article 6 (C) of
the Nuremberg Charter and the Preamble of the UN Convention on
genocide referred to "crimes against humanity". Each new post-1945 war
produced a raft of legislation and the creation of evermore human
rights groups to lobby the world on liberal, humanistic Western
values.
Over the past 50 years, we sat on our moral pedestal and lectured the
Chinese and the Soviets, the Arabs and the Africans, about human
rights. We pronounced on the human-rights crimes of Bosnians and
Croatians and Serbs. We put many of them in the dock, just as we did
the Nazis at Nuremberg. Thousands of dossiers were produced,
describing - in nauseous detail - the secret courts and death squads
and torture and extra judicial executions carried out by rogue states
and pathological dictators. Quite right too.
Yet suddenly, after 11 September, we went mad. We bombed Afghan
villages into rubble, along with their inhabitants - blaming the
insane Taliban and Osama bin Laden for our slaughter - and now we have
allowed our gruesome militia allies to execute their prisoners.
President George Bush has signed into law a set of secret military
courts to try and then liquidate anyone believed to be a "terrorist
murderer" in the eyes of America's awesomely inefficient intelligence
services. And make no mistake about it, we are talking here about
legally sanctioned American government death squads. They have been
created, of course, so that Osama bin Laden and his men should they be
caught rather than killed, will have no public defense; just a pseudo
trial and a firing squad.
It's quite clear what has happened. When people with yellow or black
or brownish skin, with Communist or Islamic or Nationalist
credentials, murder their prisoners or carpet bomb villages to kill
their enemies or set up death squad courts, they must be condemned by
the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the
"civilized" world. We are the masters of human rights, the Liberals,
the great and good who can preach to the impoverished masses. But when
our people are murdered - when our glittering buildings are destroyed
- then we tear up every piece of human rights legislation, send off
the B-52s in the direction of the impoverished masses and set out to
murder our enemies.
Winston Churchill took the Bush view of his enemies. In 1945, he
preferred the straightforward execution of the Nazi leadership. Yet
despite the fact that Hitler's monsters were responsible for at least
50 million deaths - 10,000 times greater than the victims of 11
September - the Nazi murderers were given a trial at Nuremberg because
US President Truman made a remarkable decision. "Undiscriminating
executions or punishments," he said, "without definite findings of
guilt fairly arrived at, would not fit easily on the American
conscience or be remembered by our children with pride."
No one should be surprised that Mr Bush - a small-time Texas
Governor-Executioner - should fail to understand the morality of a
statesman in the White House What is so shocking is that the Blairs,
Schröders, Chiracs and all the television boys should have remained so
gutlessly silent in the face of the Afghan executions and East
European-style legislation sanctified since 11 September.
There are ghostly shadows around to remind us of the consequences of
state murder. In France, a general goes on trial after admitting to
torture and murder in the 1954-62 Algerian war, because he referred to
his deeds as "justifiable acts of duty performed without pleasure or
remorse". And in Brussels, a judge will decide if the Israeli Prime
Minister, Arial Sharon, can be prosecuted for his "personal
responsibility" for the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Chatila.
Yes, I know the Taliban were a cruel bunch of bastards. They committed
most of their massacres outside Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s. They
executed women in the Kabul football stadium. And yes, lets remember
that 11 September was a crime against humanity.
But I have a problem with all this. George Bush says that "you are
either for us or against us" in the war for civilization against evil.
Well, I'm sure not for bin Laden. But I'm not for Bush. I'm actively
against the brutal, cynical, lying "war of civilization" that he has
begun so mendaciously in our name and which has now cost as many lives
as the World Trade Center mass murder.
At this moment, I can't help remembering my dad. He was old enough to
have fought in the First World War. In the third Battle of Arras. And
as great age overwhelmed him near the end of the century, he raged
against the waste and murder of the 1914-1918 war. When he died in
1992, I inherited the campaign medal of which he was once so proud,
proof that he had survived a war he had come to hate and loathe and
despise. On the back, it says: "The Great War for Civilization" Maybe
I should send it to George Bush.

 GRANDE articolo del giornalista inglese Robert Fisk
L'ennesimo coglione.

 L'ennesimo coglione.
Eggia'.  Un vero coglione.
------------------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1699000/1699708.stm
A British journalist is recovering after being beaten and pelted with
stones by Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
...
Mr Fisk, who suffered facial, hand and head injuries, said: "It was a
very frightening experience and I am in a lot of pain but I am glad to
be alive.
...
 But Mr Fisk said he could understand the refugees' anger, as many had
relatives who had been killed by the US bombing of Afghan city
Kandahar last week.
 Robert Fisk  "It doesn't excuse them for beating me up so badly but
there was a real reason why they should hate Westerners so much.
"I don't want this to be seen as a Muslim mob attacking a Westerner
for no reason. They had every reason to be angry - I've been an
outspoken critic of the US actions myself. If I had been them, I would
have attacked me."
---------------
Adesso, sbagliero', ma sono sicurissimo che a nessuno degli "eroici"
corrispondenti del CNN capitera' mai un'avventura del genere.
Stesso si puo' dire per quelli della RAI.
I giornalisti di Al Jazeera, invece (per fare un'altro esempio
discusso prima)
questo rischio lo corrono eccome.  (Il corrispondente di Kabul pare
abbia avuto
un'esperienza molto simile qualche settimana fa).
Qua' sta la differenza fra "coglioni" e scribacchini.    
Tanto per intenderci, una delle ragioni per le quali la liberta' di
stampa
mi piace e' appunto il fatto che esistono i "coglioni".  Anche se sono
in minoranza, e non sempre dove ci si aspetta.
GT

 Stesso si puo' dire per quelli della RAI.
Ilaria Alpi infatti era una inviata di "Liberazione" il quotidiano di Rifondazione.