contexploration

Rosenberg compares the caricatures of Muhammad with the anti-Semitic caricatures in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, although the Danish Jyllands-Posten never has been a proponent of violence against - or the extermination of - Muslims, and the drawings were not in any sense racist. Rosenberg writes about the “conditions" for the existence of freedom of expression, and claims that if this freedom is used for the systematic production of non-understanding it will eventually render itself useless. The goal of the public arena, according to him, is therefore to "produce understanding". Although I’m a true admirer of the quality of the Swedish public discourse, the fact of the matter is that it too often fails to create the resolve necessary to confront forces which are not as harmonious and consensus-seeking as the sexy Swedes. The Swedish public harmony never presented any problems for Hitler, and even Osama bin Laden can easily give his approval. This explains how Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds and the security police SÄPO could act as the extended arm of the raging mob of religious fanatics by practically distrubuting death threats on their behalf.

MIGRATION: Migrants around the world send home twice the amount of money that the world spends on development, the World Bank finds. The World Bank calls migration “a powerful force for poverty reduction” with the money coming from an estimated 200 million people now living in countries where they were not born. “The World Bank Annual Global Economic Prospects Report of 2006 suggests that remittance inflows into Ghana have helped cut its poverty level by 5 per cent, Bangladesh by 6 per cent and Uganda by 11 per cent."

BLAIR SPEECH: In Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech to the Foreign Policy Centre and Reuters, he says: “’We’ is not the West. ‘We’ are as much Muslim as Christian or Jew or Hindu. ‘We’ are those who believe in religious tolerance, openness to others, to democracy, liberty and human rights administered by secular courts. This is not a clash between civilisations. It is a clash about civilisation.” This clarification from the Prime Minister is useful. Unfortunately he has in the past too often used the terms “we” and “our way of life” referring only to the British. In the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings this was noted by the European press. Under circumstances where civilisation is confronted with an enemy which is truly globalised and imperialistic, “we” ought to be united as well. The major shortcoming of Blair’s rhetoric is the fact that his “interconnected world” is never combined with a call for supranationalism, a question which is essential to European democracy. The real test of your internationalism comes at the moment when you wholeheartedly join a union of liberal democracies where certain decisions are made by majority votes. For the rest of Europe, the actions of Tony Blair too often make his “internationalism” look more like an arrogant British “nationalism”.

IRAQ INTERVENTION ANNIVERSARY: Norman Geras writes: “That we sided with the overthrow of a regime of mass murder is not something I believe needs an apology, except if you pretend that the outcomes were certain, or all but certain, in advance.” Mohammed Fadhil writes about the military intervention with a sense of hope. A young Iraqi journalist in Baghdad has a more pessimistic assessment.

AMERICAN JUSTICE: The criminal gang that abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and shamed the American military are now finally receiving their sentences. Last week, military jurors sentenced Sgt. Michael J. Smith, an Army dog handler, to six months behind bars for abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Charles A. Graner Jr. has been sentenced to 10 years in a military prison. Lynndie England sentenced to a three-year jail term for maltreating detainees. Former staff sergeant Ivan Frederick of Virginia was sentenced to 8 years in prison for maltreatment. Frederick helped place wires on a detainee's hands and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell while standing on a box. Jeremy Sivits was sentenced to one year in prison for taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated, including some of the photographs that triggered the Abu Ghraib scandal. Former specialist Roman Krol admitted pouring water on naked detainees and forcing them to crawl on the floor. He was sentenced in February 2005 to 10 months in prison. Former specialist Armin Cruz was sentenced to eight months in prison. Former specialist Sabrina Harman was found guilty at trial in May 2005 of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and dereliction of duty. She was sentenced to six months in prison. Former sergeant Javal Davis, of New Jersey, was sentenced to six months in prison for stepping on the hands and feet of handcuffed detainees and falling with his full weight on top of them. A former Abu Ghraib guard Megan Ambuhl, was charged with failing to prevent or report maltreatment of prisoners and was discharged from the Army without prison time.

This incompetent and treacherous gang of sadomasochists was nearly able to torpedo all American efforts to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis single-handedly, as well as sabotage the justification for the intervention itself. In the years to come, I fear that other tyrants will be grateful for the soliders' activities at the Abu Ghraib prison.

How many detainees have been killed in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002? Human Rights First, a human rights advocacy organization based in New York City, defines 34 deaths in U.S. custody as "homocides". In a report from February 2006 the organisation found 11 additional cases where the facts suggest death as a result of "physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention".