The Use of Color

In an earlier post, I had noted that I would write some more on a photograph I had posted to provide a graphic illustration of the kinds of regimes that decided on trials when it was in the best interest of the state, rather than, for example, the interests of justice.

When you look at the use of color in that photo, the first thing you should notice is everyone in that photograph is white. It’s shocking to watch so many people internalize and regurgitate the “White = Normal” lie without even thinking, and that attitude is obvious in the responses to the start of rendition and the Military Commissions Act.

Start with the fact that the U.S. government denies even the possibility of habeas corpus, every day, all over the world. Immediately after 9/11, 1,400 people were rounded up and imprisoned by the INS without charge or the ability to see counsel. Thousands more are languishing in jail after being sold to American troops in Afghanistan by the our heroin-producing “allies” (one would be hard pressed to call anyone who helps junkies stay that way an “ally” in any but the most corrupt, Machiavellian sense). No writ for Iraqis or Afghans suspected of supporting whoever the bad guys are this week in those two countries, either.

Nor is this some new phenomena in American life. There was no habeas corpus for slaves prior to 1861. Or outspoken northern Democrats from 1861-1865. Native Americans weren’t allowed to file those writs until 1891. Japanese immigrants and their kids didn’t get it during WWII either.

Even prior to the Military Commissions Act,, whether this basic human right applies to non-citizens residing in the U.S. was a question considered up for debate by the same Congress: recall their earlier attempts to make local police ethnically cleanse Latinos from the U.S.—until the targets of that lily little genocide started marching by the millions and broaching the subject of neighborhood defense committees (rally ’round your family, pocket full of shells).

Naturally, like all laws, this will be primarily used against non-white people, but that does not mean it won’t be enforced against whites who don’t go along. In America, you can’t do that kind of thing to white people without passing laws and such (well, maybe commie-pinko whites, but they hardly count), which is why this law is a huge deal among the progressive groups when it merely institutionalizes what:

1. The Bush administration has been already doing for the last 5 years.
2. White-owned governments in general have been doing to everyone else for the last 400 years now.

It simply sucks that nobody here seems to care about anything unless they are personally threatened or attacked—well enough that the whole right-libertarian free-market/greed-is-good ideology deserves a look in a whole other light.

I’ll post still more on that photograph later.