Freedom
In Bangladesh, secular bloggers and writers are being hacked to death with alarming regularity. Alarming should be any time a person is murdered with a machete. No less than a dozen writers have died this way in Bangladesh since 2013. Six in the last year. Three last month.
And no, that is not just Bangladesh, or just the backwards so-called Developing or Third World, or even just Radical Islamism. We are witnessing a global crackdown on freedom of expression.
In India, the Hindu Extremists at least have the decency to murder secularists in a more seemly fashion. With guns.
It has been open season on writers and activists in Pakiston for as long as Americans can remember— at least since yesterday — so that’s not news.
China is a black box, or seems to be. For my part, I’m less concerned about restrictions on foreign organizations — How often do you interact with Chinese foreign aid groups here in the United States? The Chinese owners of the Waldorf-Astoria, Smithfield, etc notwithstanding? Maybe such foreign involvement is not appreciated. Maybe it is even resented — than about the lack of basic freedoms for the billion plus people living in China, and what China’s global ascendance can mean for the rest of us.
Though, speaking of foreign organizations doing good work here in the United States, it is of note that the Hindu American Foundation is presently trying to Saffronwash the public school history curriculum in California — so, de facto, nationwide.
Soon-to-be-outgoing President Obama saw fit to joke about the death of investigative journalism during his much-vaunted White House Press Correspondents Dinner standup routine. What is not a fantasy or a joke is the fact that his administration has done more to persecute whistleblowers and undermine press freedom in this country than any previous in history.
Consider the ~1% of American adults who currently reside in prison, the capture of our entire apparatus of government at more or less every level by Corporate Capitalism, and the staggering quality of the current crop of presumptive presidential nominees — coupled with the widespread preoccupation with the circus of our never-ending presidential election, the concomitant widespread paralysis when it comes to taking meaningful action in defense of our liberties — and it is hard not to conclude that we do not live in a terribly free nation ourselves.
American freedom has always been a freedom for the few, if not for the brave. It is only the prospect that those few should continue to get fewer that has so many once secure Americans feelings so alarmed.
During his celebrated standup routine, President Obama also joked that we were witnessing the end of the republic. Republics do sometimes end though, as do democracies. They have in the past, and they doubtless will in the future.
The line between irony and brutal cynicism has blurred to the point of invisibility. Ask our nominal allies in Turkey. The people in Rwanda, who are evidently now living in a totalitarian police state courtesy of our aid dollars. Or the long-oppressed peoples of the other Americas, for example those in Honduras.
Ask the people in Cuba. An American cruise ship just docked in Havana for the first time in 40 years. That has to be good news, right? Historic, even.
Ask the people in Putin’s Russia how the future is looking. Only bear in mind when you do so, Edward Snowden should be celebrated as a national hero here in the United States, not hounded the world over as America’s most-wanted global fugitive, and it is there in Putin’s Russia that our powers that be have conspired to leave Snowden trapped at Putin’s mercy.
Do the math, and we’ve accounted for around half of the world’s population in the named nations above, and well more than that if you connect the dots.
Is this a world you want to live in? One you’ll be proud to see your children inherit? Or claim as our legacy as a set of generations now living on planet Earth?
Heinrich Heine is oft and famously quoted on the subject of speech in the face of tyranny. Today, now, his words seem apropos.
If you’re not speaking, you’re just waiting for the silence to close in.
How is the adivasi supposed to live? From Bombay, on Chhattisgarh, inveterate champion of freedom, Soni Sori, speaks out. The scarring on her face is from a recent chemical attack. Her family is being harrassed by the local police. Yet, somehow, her voice remains raised.
She invites people to come to Chhattisgarh, to visit Bastar, which, frankly, I myself am afraid to do.
No bother, though. Remain patient and passive, and a global Chhattisgarh, Kashmir, Palestine, Bangladesh, Beijing, Moscow, Angola State Pen of the mind and of the flesh will come to us all.
