Mark Thomas introduced a UK Channel 4 'Dispatches' tv program last night on arms brokerage. The Dispatches series promises to be a decent series on a generally Stepford Wives style UK terrestrial tv programing. The significance of the rules of arms brokerage is that it also includes apparatus of torture brokerage.

Thomas introduced both an English and an Irish group of schoolchildren who investigated arms/torture-apparatus brokerage by setting up their own brokerage companies in their own schools, where they tested the limits on legal activities of such in England, Ireland and Italy, with further information about the European Union in general.

The schoolchildren were able to trade in wall-cuffs, modern thumb-screws and a Chinese 'sting-stick'. The latter is a heavy, hand-held piece of pointed metal with about 20 pointed spikes protruding from its length at different angles. The Chinese used it in Tibet, and it clearly can produce fatal trauma, not simply a 'sting'. The UK has signed up to the European Union (EU) rules on arms brokerage, but its list of legally banned items is constantly out of date - it does not list any of the items above. At this moment Ireland and 4 other EU countries have no arms brokerage laws. In addition, Italy seems to be just one big loophole. Further, UK brokers can operate legally in the Republic of Ireland. And it appears that if a country is a broker's direct destination 'no-no', there are always other circuitous routes to get over that embarrassment.

BTW, the Irish girls asked for a demonstration of a stone-firing machine the Israelis produce, and which they have used in anger against Palestinian children. The machine can be successfully exported under the heading of agricultural goods. The machine can be lethal at short range, and permamently injurious at longer ranges, and when Thomas et.al. let the Israelis know the latter had been set-up, they tried to put forward the story that the machine was a sweet distributor. It's one more harrowing lesson for those who are permamently in denial about Israel's atrocities.

Relevant to the US, the schoolchildren were able to broker deals on the leg cuffs used by the US in Guantanamo, and imported from South Africa.

The good news is that some young people are getting a very active education in the torture business and are doing something about it - the English students' case was made in a Commons Select Committee in Westminster by Thomas and themselves; and the Irish government has gone further - following a national press conference by the Irish girls - promising to introduce a bill that joins Ireland up to the EU arms brokerage rules and legally banning Irish citizens from operating beyond the EU rules in any other EU country.

The critical point is that rules on torture and the trade in torture apparatus has to be internationally policed and respected so as to close all loopholes. We obviously cannot rely on our own governments to do this, so we have to make sure that it is done.

The Corporation opened my eyes to a lot of things.  A wonderful book. 

Sometimes in my more nightmarish moments I think ahead in time and try to imagine what the Corporations would want if they had the power to evolve the "Consumer".  What I see is an army of robots inffused with AI technology that enables them the ability and motivation to assess products and make purchases, given an insatiable appetite for products, and to be perpetually connected to the Internet. It would be an ideal situation, as robots do not require social services, nor land, nor education (with the exception of the initial programming), nor medical care, nor retirement funding or any other kind of benefits.  No protests, no unions, no human rights, no demands for more pay and fewer hours and no governments to stand in the way of "free" markets.

They would be paid via a multi-national shared fund, which would grow over time with funds contributed by all corporations via profits.  The game, then, for the Corporations would be to compete on an international level for an increased share of the market.

The rest of us (the 90% of human masses) would be slaves to the production side of things, or left to die miserably.  

I usually wake up about that time.... :-)

The Corporation opened my eyes to a lot of things.  A wonderful book. 

Sometimes in my more nightmarish moments I think ahead in time and try to imagine what the Corporations would want if they had the power to evolve the "Consumer".  What I see is an army of robots inffused with AI technology that enables them the ability and motivation to assess products and make purchases, given an insatiable appetite for products, and to be perpetually connected to the Internet. It would be an ideal situation, as robots do not require social services, nor land, nor education (with the exception of the initial programming), nor medical care, nor retirement funding or any other kind of benefits.  No protests, no unions, no human rights, no demands for more pay and fewer hours and no governments to stand in the way of "free" markets.

They would be paid via a multi-national shared fund, which would grow over time with funds contributed by all corporations via profits.  The game, then, for the Corporations would be to compete on an international level for an increased share of the market.

The rest of us (the 90% of human masses) would be slaves to the production side of things, or left to die miserably.  

I usually wake up about that time.... :-)

But then, here we are talking about education in a broader sense, education as empathy for people who, beyond systemic demonisation, are flesh and blood and suffer as we would under such horrendous conditions of torture.

I have just finished reading Joel Bakan's book 'The Corporation' with its 2000 interview of Chomsky by Mark Achbar as its Appendix. I can't help thinking of how these amoral corporations, tyrannical totalitarian structures, use child psychologists to multi-structure advertising campaigns aimed at the children of poor-, middle- and high-income brackets so as to make them little pressure-consumer voices in the heads of their parents.

Our societies are not trying to produce empathic children who can analytically resist dominant narratives, but rather children as consumers who have the person pulling the purse-strings in their pocket.

There are certain corrosive, tyrannical forces shaping the amoral consumer culture of our societies that we simply have to destroy. Freedom does not mean the freedom to have the power to destroy the environnment, people's lives, enslave them, discard them, demonise them and manufactire a culture of cold-blooded indifference to the effects of that culture's elite activities on the globe.

(This goes as much for the 800 years - beginning with Ireland - murdering, torturing, raping, arms-running England/British Empire/UK rightwing, neoliberal rogue terrorist state as much as it does for the US of course.)

Victor

I remember being impressed by a Danish guy in the 80s who said that the Danish education system then actually helped students to look at the ways language was used (and abused) to condition response. Probably a fairly minimal technique, but more than anything I experienced in the UK education system, i.e. until I studied philosophy at a relatively advanced level at night school.

The reality here in the UK is that I did not begin to study critically before I went to university as a 'mature student'. So, as per your point about childhood capacities for critical thought, mine were pretty-well undeveloped. And university began to give me the tools rather than to produce a well developed critical thinker. I'm still trying to get there...

Kelvin

To produce a politically literate and active populace requires education from a young age.  I think the greatest gift our generation could possibly give to the next one is the ability to think critically.  Without this ability our children for the most part are left to the winds of fate (should should I say to the airwaves of the elite?).

I remember that in Years 4 and 5, my mind was like a sponge.  I think we should capitalise on that early ability to absorb knowledge by introducing at those ages the principles of logic and the methods of Public Relations and Marketing and of scientific research and critical analysis.  With these tools in hand at that age, the children would rapidly develop into critical thinkers sensitive to the means by which their minds are hunted for capture and use by the ruling elite.  Even teaching the very basics of the above could have dramatic effects upon these young minds.

Let then the studies of English, history, maths and science build upon that foundation. 

But, then, all this would not be in the best interests of the powers that be, I suppose. 

Victor, thanks for getting back with the George quote.

Of course, people's material lives, their experience of oppression can and does radicalise them in important ways. The major political projects directing Latin America away from the logic of neoliberalism and dependancy on financing with 'structural adjustments' attached are good examples of this. Literacy and progress do not have a simple, linear relationship. And literacy alone is not naturally a good thing - can you imagine living in a world of exclusively Harry Potter readers!

Having said that, I do believe that if we want to get beyond the admittedly progressive, but fragile, examples of Chavez et al., people generally have to be fully and actively engaged in the political process, therefore political literacy and the tools of independent thinking are important. There has to be a generally high level of familiarity and mental ease with political concepts, information and orientations etc.; there have to be practised analytical and critical skills, so that a relatively benign Chavez does not even have the opportunity to betray people, or be replaced by someone who does.

I was in a strike meeting with the leftist, retired politician, Tony Benn recently, and even he, after all his decades of activism, does not appreciate the importance of political culture underpinning any truly democratic movement. He still believes in partnerships of  progressive and benign political leadership as an end in itself despite his socialist credentials. We need to get rid of these professional politicians, however radical they may seem.

Latin America is a good example of where the US and European people should be looking for materially progressive examples and inspiration; and the people of Latin America are only too aware of the realities of torture and the horrors of war. But, of course, the Latin American experience has to be critically interpreted by a politically literate, and active, Western populace...

Kelvin

Such discouraging news!  I truly believe that the masses of Americans (and other peoples as well, such as in Britain and Western Europe!) have lost the ability to think critically, and have been immobilised into near illiteracy and a permanent state of ignorance.

A famous and immensely talented economist of the 19th century, Henry George had the following to say, "The people must think because the people alone can act.".  The elite of today have indeed succeeded if they have been able to bring the citizens of the world to the point of non-think and leading illiterate lives.  For truly, George was right - only the people have the power to effect change in the world.

Victor, I suspect that there is little reflection amongst the pro-torture population. These are people who would probably be quite heavily traumatised if they were arrested, handcuffed and put into a cell for a day by a fairly friendly local police force. They are simply not thinking about the experience of torture happening to a person with whom they can identify.

It is understandably morally traumatising for any independently minded person, that such percentages of the US general public would be to the right of some fairly conservative establishment forces on such an issue; that they would be so desinsitized, and dismissive of civil liberties and human rights. For the political right to have such a reservoir of manufactured cold-blooded pathology to draw upon - against the interests of those very pro-torture people - does not make comfortable reading. It conjures up intensified, contemporary Day of the Locusts images of violent, unthinking publics.

The imperial hegemony torture circus is definitely out of control and the relatively high 'Often' and 'Sometimes', but low 'Never', figures for the general public, as opposed to the media, I believe does point to something that David has flagged in other blogs - i.e. that administrations invest considerable energy into planting propaganda directly into the corporate media, laundered as 'the facts'. The general public, bombarded by fear-, paranoia- and demonization-inducing 'facts' by a mirrors and smoke engine of pseudo-independent mediation are inevitably reacting in an understandable if horrifying way. Media whores may also be 63% pro-torture, but in a less adamant spread of figures, hopefully because some of them do get to read some literature with independent content from time to time.

If you go to the site below and scroll down to 'If polling changed anything they'd make it illegal', there are some interesting statistics at the foot of the blog about the US general public and their non-reading habits. How do independent voices get to these people? We all know how war-games etc. are filtered into their consciousness.

http://www.chuzzlewit.com/

What if these folks themselves were "mistakenly" taken for terrorists and subsequently tortured?  Would they still be in favor of such treatment?  Can anyone say that all persons suspected of being terrorists and tortured are indeed terrorists?  And who yet has come up with a definition of "terrorist" that makes sense?  In many people's minds within the intelligence, law enforcement and defense communities a person is arrested as a possible terrorist IS a terrorist until proven otherwise (via torture even).  How do these folks feel about that?

And the Patriot Act seems to back the premise that if one is a "suspected terrorist", one can be arrested without cause and held for as long as the government wishes without benefit of counsel or even a phone call.  Would these folks like to be in those shoes?  

And the day is coming when if one even openly complains about the government in power or a multinational corporation, he will be subject to arrest, "interrogation" and indefinite confinement.  Would these same folks object to that as well - under some circumstances? 

What if it were their mother or father or son or daughter or friend or relative?  Would THAT be ok under some circumstances? What if they didn't know their loved one had been arrested?  What if they didn't know where that loved one was being held, or by whom, or for how long, or how they were being treated?  Would that be ok in some circumstances?

Those who are arrested as terrorist suspects are not given a fair trial before they are tortured.  Keep that in mind.