Read Novels before casting judgment

“In American legal discourse, empathy is often portrayed as less respectable than Satan. Judges are presented as elements in the vast economic machine. Their job is to keep the conveyor belt flowing and to dispose of human widgets who come out defective. For these functionaries to be aware of those standing before them as fellow human beings would be dangerous.”

Yet, “Reading [novels] makes a judge capable of projecting himself into the lives of others, lives that have nothing in common with his own, even lives in completely different eras or cultures. And this empathy, this ability to envision the practical consequences on one’s contemporaries of a law or a legal decision, seems to me a crucial quality in a judge.”

Therefore three cheers to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who read Marcel Proust, and proclaimed the French author:

“the Shakespeare of the inner world,” “a writer who can give readers a sense of knowing the one thing it is completely impossible to know—what it is like to be another person.”

Source: theatlantic.com

WikiJustice: WikiLeaks meets The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

A friend of mine once asked, "What would Jack London do with his thriller, The Assassination Bureau. Ltd., had he lived in the beginning of the 21st century?"

Jack London wrote a thriller? I was stumped. So I rushed to my local library to read it. "The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.", is an unfinished novel by Jack London, later completed by Robert L. Fish. The idea of an agency devoted to "extirpating" socially detrimental characters was fascinating, alas, the novel left an unsatisfactory feeling in my reading taste.

My friend's question has haunted me for over a year, when at last world events set a spark in my writerly imagination. What, indeed, if a novelist set out to write a thriller in a similar vein, in the age of WikiLeaks, the Occupy Movement, and the general discontent with the World Order, that we witness today?

In the age of crowdsourcing - a collaboration of countless minds from across boundaries - the idea of a single person (Ivan Dragomiloff in London's novel) deciding arbitrarily who ought to be assassinated ("extirpated"), seemed incompatible. A collaborative effort, on the other hand, was much more alluring.

It was, thus, natural that in the time of social networking the people should decide who is detrimental for the wellbeing of society.

WikiJustice was born.

I don't want to be an emperor

"I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness."

Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator

Marquis de Sade's optimism

Reading in "The Crimes of Love" (my translation from French):

"Is there being foolish enough to believe that anyone breaking any law of society will be left in peace by the people?

Is it not in the interest of humanity to destroy anyone who interferes with their rights, or is detrimental to their existence?

Position or wealth can sometimes provide the evanescent glow of success, however, such reign will be short!

Recognized and exposed, he will soon become a subject of public hatred and contempt; will he then find apologists, or supporters ready to cheer him in the fall?

Nobody will want to admit to knowing him, since he will not have anything to offer. Everyone will abandon him as superfluous ballast; misfortune will fall upon him from all sides, he will cry in shame and misery, and will soon die in despair."

Who would have thought that Marquis de Sade could be such an optimist?

Enemies of war

On November 16, 1989, special forces stormed the Universidad Centroamericana and assassinated six professors and two women. At the time civil war was raging in El Salvador. The profs, Jesuits, were vocal critics of the conflict. Their voices, voices of reason, were a shield capable of stopping tanks and bullets. Alas their bodies were frail, as all human life is. So the genocidal oppressors figured that the easiest way to rid the country of the troublesome Jesuits would be to riddle their bodies with bullets. But, with the bullets being supplied by the American taxpayer the murder backfired. A couple years later something of a truce was instituted, and a mock trial found the guilty of the murder. The world forgot about what happened. Until...

Yesterday, Spain's Association for Human Rights started the proceedings against the president of El Salvador and the military officers responsible for the assassinations.

Read the full story here (in Spanish), then watch the PBS documentary Enemies of War, listen to this radio podcast (in Real Audio or Windows Media) and wait for my novel AGENTS OF CHANGE, which echoes the events (I will finish it, soon, I promise!)

Citizen resistance

Most of us are familiar with the term citizen's arrest:

A citizen's arrest is an arrest made by a person who is not a sworn law enforcement official. In common law jurisdictions, the practice dates back to medieval England and the English common law, when sheriffs encouraged ordinary citizens to help apprehend law breakers.

Despite the title, the arresting person does not usually have to be a citizen of the country where he is acting, as they are usually designated as any person with arrest powers. Source: Wikipedia

Stuart Littlewood argues that citizen-delivered justice can go a lot further:

Genocidal tyrants, corrupt leaders and bloodthirsty heads of state hankering for global domination and wishing to keep the world in turmoil once again infest the planet. They are often born and nurtured in the Western democracies the world is told to admire but which are now so corrupt they disgust many right-thinking people. These menaces can’t be brought to justice in the normal way, so it’s a job for a revived and revamped Assassination Bureau.

Military commanders in the resistance and bomb-making freedom fighters are not the issue. The people of the world need an instrument to eradicate the low life in high places that threatens humanity. They need to dispatch those who deal in mega-deaths, who meddle massively where they have no business, who create injustice and who make life miserable for millions. We all have our wish list. I’ll wager the same target names keep reappearing.

Think of it: a socially-responsible international public riddance service ready to do business with any member of the public who feels himself at war with these evil forces and can put a good case for a slaying before the bureau chief and his panel. I see long queues forming to enlist the bureau’s help in eliminating the world’s tormentors. For them there is no hiding place. Riddance requests have to be accompanied by a suitable “intelligence finding”, of course.

The work of an Assassination Bureau would be perfectly “legal” and “legitimate”, and most certainly “necessary”. It would simply follow the precedent set by America and Israel. SOURCE

No long ago I toyed with the very same idea for a thriller novel. Yet again life proves much more interesting than fiction. The movement to take charge of our own wellbeing is growing. We can no longer leave it up to those who claim to speak and act on our behalf but time and again prove to be the very enemy they vow to defend us from.

UN: US administration of criminals

The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of ’universal jurisdiction’ which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.

"There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of redress," Arbour said. SOURCE

Ultimately it will be up to the people to show up at the airport prior to the arrival of this or that criminal and arrest them because no government on Earth has clean enough hands to preach justice.

Time for change

Tony Blair investigated for war crimes:

Officers from Scotland Yard have commenced a criminal investigation nto the deaths of Iraqi citizens killed during the armed invasion and ccupation of Iraq. The Metropolitan Police are acting in response to crimes reported by peace activists from We Are Change UK and The ampaign to Make War History. In an unprecedented step, the case was anded to the War Crimes division of the Counter Terrorism branch who
are now investigating allegations of 14 criminal offences committed by ony Blair, Lord Goldsmith and others. The offences are under the nternational Criminal Court Act 2001, which came into effect under English common law, just two days before 9/11. MORE

That is the world we live in: we are held hostage to criminals / bureaucrats. Seeking justice is only up to us / the citizens, hence it is the peace activists who filed suit against Blair, and earlier against Rumsfeld. Sadly, Rumsfeld got away scot free, and so will Blair, because, as the Jesuits say:

“The courts have become the instruments of the warmakers.” Daniel Berrigan, S.J.

It may be time to take charge:

In a democratic society each man must act as he thinks the principles of political right require him to. We are to follow our understanding of the principles, and we cannot do otherwise. There can be no morally binding legal interpretation of these principles, not even by supreme court or legislature. […] Although the Court has the final say in settling any particular case, it is not immune from powerful political influences that may change its reading of the law. […] The final court of appeal is not the Court, or Congress, or the President, but the electorate as a whole.
John Rawls (professor of philosophy at Harvard University) in: The Justification of Civil Disobedience

Justification for Civil Disobedience

Times are ripe to think about it:

In a democratic society each man must act as he thinks the principles of political right require him to. We are to follow our understanding of the principles, and we cannot do otherwise. There can be no morally binding legal interpretation of these principles, not even by supreme court or legislature. [...] Although the Court has the final say in settling any particular case, it is not immune from powerful political influences that may change its reading of the law. [...] The final court of appeal is not the Court, or Congress, or the President, but the electorate as a whole.
John Rawls (professor of philosophy at Harvard University) in: The Justification of Civil Disobedience