The Collapse of Western Morality
Paul Craig Roberts
Prisonplanet.com
September 23, 2010
Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse。
是的，我知道，正如許多讀者會很快告訴我，西方從來沒有任何道德，然而事情已變得更糟。
In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel’s genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check.
希望我會被允許提出一個觀點，允許我承認美國在兩個日本城市投下原子彈、轟炸東京；承認英國和美國轟炸特雷斯登和其它許多德國城市，據一些歷史學家，耗盡更多的破壞性力量，針對德國平民人口多於針對德國軍隊；承認格蘭特總統和他的南北戰爭罪犯，謝爾曼和謝裡登將軍，針對平原印第安人犯下種族滅絕；承認今天的美國使以色列對巴勒斯坦人的種族滅絕政策進行，是政策一名以色列官員已相比19世紀的美國對美洲印第安人的種族滅絕政策；承認美國在新的21世紀以人為藉口入侵伊拉克和阿富汗，謀殺無數平民；及承認英國首相托尼布萊爾，借出英國軍隊給他的美國主子，正如其它北約國家做的，它們全都發現自己犯有紐倫堡標準的戰爭罪行，在土地上它們是沒有國家利益的，但為那它們收到一張美國的支付支票。
I don’t mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.
我並不意味這幾個例子是詳盡無遺的，我知道名單是不勝枚舉的。然而，儘管一長串的恐怖列表，道德墮落是達到新低點。現在美國常規地折磨囚犯，儘管在美國及國際法律下它的嚴格違法受，和最近的民調顯示，美國人同意酷刑的百分比正在上升。事實上，它是頗高，但仍略低於大多數。
And we have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting trophies such as fingers and skulls.
而我們有似乎是一項新的刺激：美國士兵使用戰爭的遮蓋去謀殺平民。最近，美軍涉嫌為樂趣和收集戰利品如手指和頭骨等，而殺害阿富汗平民。
This revelation came on the heels of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged leak of a US Army video of US soldiers in helicopters and their controllers thousands of miles away having fun with joy sticks murdering members of the press and Afghan civilians. Manning is cursed with a moral conscience that has been discarded by his government and his military, and Manning has been arrested for obeying the law and reporting a war crime to the American people.
US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.
In other words, to obey the law constitutes “treason to America.”
US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by “a culture of disclosure” and that this “serious and growing problem” could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.
If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state that we don’t need.
The US government, a font of imperial hubris, does not believe that any act it commits, no matter how vile, can possibly be a war crime. One million dead Iraqis, a ruined country, and four million displaced Iraqis are all justified, because the “threatened” US Superpower had to protect itself from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that the US government knew for a fact were not in Iraq and could not have been a threat to the US if they were in Iraq.
When other countries attempt to enforce the international laws that the Americans established in order to execute Germans defeated in World War II, the US government goes to work and blocks the attempt. A year ago on October 8, the Spanish Senate, obeying its American master, limited Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction in order to sink a legitimate war crimes case brought against George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Tony Blair,and Gordon Brown.
The West includes Israel, and there the horror stories are 60 years long. Moreover, if you mention any of them you are declared to be an anti-semite. I only mention them in order to prove that I am not anti-American, anti-British, and anti-NATO, but am simply against war crimes. It was the distinguished Zionist Jewish Judge, Goldstone, who produced the UN report indicating that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked the civilian population and civilian infrastructure of Gaza. For his efforts, Israel declared the Zionist Goldstone to be “a self-hating Jew,” and the US Congress, on instruction from the Israel Lobby, voted to disregard the Goldstone Report to the UN.
As the Israeli official said, we are only doing to the Palestinians what the Americans did to the American Indians.
The Israeli army uses female soldiers to sit before video screens and to fire by remote control machine guns from towers to murder Palestinians who come to tend their fields within 1500 meters of the inclosed perimeter of Ghetto Gaza. There is no indication that these Israeli women are bothered by gunning down young children and old people who come to tend to their fields.
If the crimes were limited to war and the theft of lands, perhaps we could say it is a case of jingoism sidetracking traditional morality, otherwise still in effect.
Alas, the collapse of morality is too widespread. Some sports teams now have a win-at-all-cost attitude that involves plans to injure the star players of the opposing teams. To avoid all these controversies, let’s go to Formula One racing where 200 mph speeds are routine.
Prior to 1988, 22 years ago, track deaths were due to driver error, car failure, and poorly designed tracks compromised with safety hazards. World Champion Jackie Stewart did much to improve the safety of tracks, both for drivers and spectators. But in 1988 everything changed. Top driver Ayrton Senna nudged another top driver Alain Prost toward a pit wall at 190 mph. According to AutoWeek (August 30, 2010), nothing like this had been seen before. “Officials did not punish Senna’s move that day in Portugal, and so a significant shift in racing began.” What the great racing driver Stirling Moss called “dirty driving” became the norm.
Nigel Roebuck in AutoWeek reports that in 1996 World Champion Damon Hill said that Senna’s win-at-all-cost tactic “was responsible for fundamental change in the ethics of the sport.” Drivers began using “terrorist tactics on the track.” Damon Hill said that “the views that I’d gleaned from being around my dad [twice world champion Graham Hill] and people like him, I soon had to abandon,” because you realized that no penalty was forthcoming against the guy who tried to kill you in order that he could win.
When asked about the ethics of modern Formula One racing, American World Champion Phil Hill said: “Doing that sort of stuff in my day was just unthinkable. For one thing, we believed certain tactics were unacceptable.”
In today’s Western moral climate, driving another talented driver into the wall at 200 mph is just part of winning. Michael Schumacher, born in January 1969, is a seven times World Champion, an unequaled record. On August 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, AutoWeek Reports that Schumacher tried to drive his former Ferrari teammate, Rubens Barrichello, into the wall at 200 mph speeds.
Confronted with his attempted act of murder, Schumacher said: “This is Formula One. Everyone knows I don’t give presents.”
Neither does the US government, nor state and local governments, nor the UK government, nor the EU.
The deformation of the police, which many Americans, in their untutored existence as naive believers in “law and order,” still think are “on their side,” has taken on new dimensions with the police militarized to fight “terrorists” and “domestic extremists.”
The police have been off the leash since the civilian police boards were nixed by the conservatives. Kids as young as 6 years old have been handcuffed and carted off to jail for school infractions that may or may not have occurred. So have moms with a car full of children (see, for example.
Police Brutality: Dash Cam: Mom Tasered While Kids Watch
警察暴行：短跑相機：媽媽被泰瑟而孩子們在看
西元2009年08月14日
Anyone who googles videos of US police gratuitous brutality will call up tens of thousands of examples, and this is after laws that make filming police brutality a felony. A year or two ago such a search would call up hundreds of thousands of videos.
In one of the most recent of the numerous daily acts of gratuitous police abuse of citizens, an 84-year-old man had his neck broken because he objected to a night time towing of his car. The goon cop body-slammed the 84-year old and broke his neck. The Orlando, Florida, police department says that the old man was a “threat” to the well-armed much younger police goon, because the old man clenched his fist.
Americans will be the first people sent straight to Hell while thinking that they are the salt of the earth. The Americans have even devised a title for themselves to rival that of the Israelis’ self-designation as “God’s Chosen People.” The Americans call themselves “the indispensable people.”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-collapse-of-western-morality.html
光頭黨向希特拉致敬特雷斯登轟炸週年爆發暴力
第二名士兵指稱前蒂爾曼指揮官下令在伊拉克“360度旋轉開火”
阿富汗美軍被控「殺人留骨作紀念」
五角大樓無視員工兒童色情
美國'殺手隊'目標是阿富汗平民
在阿富汗殺人是有樂趣的：美軍高層指揮官說
駐伊美軍濫殺平民片段曝光 恍如打機
日本吃兩顆原子彈竟因首相文件翻譯出錯
美國缺席長崎核爆和平祈願儀式
英國詳列美國酷刑對待被拘留者
美國醫生被指奉命對恐怖嫌犯進行水刑測試
5,200名五角大樓僱員購買兒童色情物品！ （為什麼這不是一個更大的故事？）
沒有留言:
發佈留言