The Enablers
If evil is being done, and bystanders choose to turn their faces in the pretense that nothing untoward is occurring, and choose also to support those whose machinations have the effect of subjugating, humiliating and violating those dependent upon their good offices, they're in good standing as enablers - and beyond. If good people allow bad people to pursue their agendas without protest and indeed with the encouragement of supporting the ends if not the means, it demonstrates the banality of evil.
It is the citizenry, the hard-pressed populations of countries whose dictators, rulers and conscienceless politicians manipulate and oppress them whose condition should move influential people from other countries to support. Yet we see otherwise; we see Western political leaders, left-wing social-rights movements, the popular press, academic circles proffer their support to the leaders of Middle Eastern and African countries, while professing to care about their downtrodden populations, managing in the process to lay blame for their condition elsewhere.
People who live in oppressive, human-rights-abusing regimes where state militias and police agencies engage in intimidation, beatings and murder don't tend to protest openly at their condition too often. When they do, their numbers swiftly decline through attrition. And those who feel similarly and would wish to also raise their voices in protest are effectively silenced in fear for their lives and those of their loved ones.
The regimes in Iran, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Egypt, in Libya, in Saudi Arabia, in Sudan, in Zimbabwe and in the Palestine Territories are as good examples as any. The United Nations knows very well which regimes value human rights and practise a balanced form of governance; these are not among them. And there are others who additionally traffic in human slavery, all members in good standing of the United Nations.
Member states see little practicality, it would seem, in pointing fingers lest they visit embarrassment or humiliation upon the heads of other member states. This goes by the name of civil behaviour, as in to each his own. Even when the human condition in one or another of these countries becomes so degraded, elements of the population become so endangered at the hands of their leaders that it becomes impossible to ignore their plight, the response is a hesitant request to ease up.
The United Nations and its member countries, those within North America, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Russia, whose own aspirations are to continue prospering while lending the obligatory helping hand to others are traditionally loath to 'interfere' in the affairs of other member countries. The result is that dictators are handled with the kid gloves of diplomacy in the fond hope that they will somehow be persuaded to become more conscientious leaders through some strange osmosis of emulation and conscience.
And look at the Arab countries where support in the West for Islamist rule becomes politically correct among social liberals who can find it in their hearts to forgive the kind of abuses that has the state encouraging suicide bombing as a way to reach paradise earlier than normally anticipated, who encourage restless unemployed youth into radical mindsets to participate in bloodily futile battles to the death; theirs and their perceived enemies'.
In Great Britain trade unions, academic unions and journalist unions see fit to boycott a legitimate liberal-democratic state on the basis of its 'occupation' of territory whose inhabitants lay continual siege to that democracy. In the interests of aiding the underdog, regardless that these actions spur on jihadists to greater destabilizing efforts. Not that England has a monopoly on this kind of sanctimonious behaviour; it's been seen in Canada as well as other countries.
And then there are the beleaguered populations of the dictatorships themselves who privately, quietly, chafe under their status of state and religion chattels, fed up with the endemic corruption, ineptitude, lack off opportunities and civil resources and who yet understand they can express their helpless frustration nowhere lest they be apprehended and held to account.
They have no rights, their society is bankrupt, they have no dreams of the future. Their leaders own the state media, they place strictures upon public dissent and public gatherings become illegal; the practise of religions other than that sanctioned by the state is also illegal, often to the point of death. Dissidents in such regimes face the possibility of arrest, incarceration, torture and death, be they men or women.
There are the evil doers and those who are by their unwillingness to protest, entirely complicit.
It is the citizenry, the hard-pressed populations of countries whose dictators, rulers and conscienceless politicians manipulate and oppress them whose condition should move influential people from other countries to support. Yet we see otherwise; we see Western political leaders, left-wing social-rights movements, the popular press, academic circles proffer their support to the leaders of Middle Eastern and African countries, while professing to care about their downtrodden populations, managing in the process to lay blame for their condition elsewhere.
People who live in oppressive, human-rights-abusing regimes where state militias and police agencies engage in intimidation, beatings and murder don't tend to protest openly at their condition too often. When they do, their numbers swiftly decline through attrition. And those who feel similarly and would wish to also raise their voices in protest are effectively silenced in fear for their lives and those of their loved ones.
The regimes in Iran, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Egypt, in Libya, in Saudi Arabia, in Sudan, in Zimbabwe and in the Palestine Territories are as good examples as any. The United Nations knows very well which regimes value human rights and practise a balanced form of governance; these are not among them. And there are others who additionally traffic in human slavery, all members in good standing of the United Nations.
Member states see little practicality, it would seem, in pointing fingers lest they visit embarrassment or humiliation upon the heads of other member states. This goes by the name of civil behaviour, as in to each his own. Even when the human condition in one or another of these countries becomes so degraded, elements of the population become so endangered at the hands of their leaders that it becomes impossible to ignore their plight, the response is a hesitant request to ease up.
The United Nations and its member countries, those within North America, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Russia, whose own aspirations are to continue prospering while lending the obligatory helping hand to others are traditionally loath to 'interfere' in the affairs of other member countries. The result is that dictators are handled with the kid gloves of diplomacy in the fond hope that they will somehow be persuaded to become more conscientious leaders through some strange osmosis of emulation and conscience.
And look at the Arab countries where support in the West for Islamist rule becomes politically correct among social liberals who can find it in their hearts to forgive the kind of abuses that has the state encouraging suicide bombing as a way to reach paradise earlier than normally anticipated, who encourage restless unemployed youth into radical mindsets to participate in bloodily futile battles to the death; theirs and their perceived enemies'.
In Great Britain trade unions, academic unions and journalist unions see fit to boycott a legitimate liberal-democratic state on the basis of its 'occupation' of territory whose inhabitants lay continual siege to that democracy. In the interests of aiding the underdog, regardless that these actions spur on jihadists to greater destabilizing efforts. Not that England has a monopoly on this kind of sanctimonious behaviour; it's been seen in Canada as well as other countries.
And then there are the beleaguered populations of the dictatorships themselves who privately, quietly, chafe under their status of state and religion chattels, fed up with the endemic corruption, ineptitude, lack off opportunities and civil resources and who yet understand they can express their helpless frustration nowhere lest they be apprehended and held to account.
They have no rights, their society is bankrupt, they have no dreams of the future. Their leaders own the state media, they place strictures upon public dissent and public gatherings become illegal; the practise of religions other than that sanctioned by the state is also illegal, often to the point of death. Dissidents in such regimes face the possibility of arrest, incarceration, torture and death, be they men or women.
There are the evil doers and those who are by their unwillingness to protest, entirely complicit.
Labels: Human Fallibility
posted by Pieface | 5:17 PM
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