Professor Stuart Rees: “good guys, bad guys” view of the world

I met Stuart Rees many years ago as I am in the peace area and it is inevitable our paths will cross. He is a poet who wrote a book ‘A Passion for Peace’, that for me was a special connection as a poet. Poetry will lead us out of darkness.

Here is some information about him and his take on the Osama bin Laden murder.

Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees AM is an Australian academic snd author who is the Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honours, a Diploma of Social Studies, a Certificate of Social Casework and a Doctor of Philosophy. From 1978 to 2000 Rees was Professor of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. Prior to this he taught at University of Aberdeen and University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, at University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Texas at Austin in the United States.

Professor Rees’ awards include a Simon Fellowship at the University of Manchester, a Humanities Fellowship at the City University of Hong Kong, and honorary doctorate and the Award of Highest Honour for ‘Contributions to World Peace’ conferred in 1998 by Soka University, Japan. For four years he was an elected Fellow of the Senate of the University of Sydney.
[edit] Other activities

For six years he was a member of the Aboriginal Reconciliation Council of New South Wales and is currently a council member of the Toda Research Institute into Global Governance and Human Security. He chairs the Energy Council of the State of New South Wales.

Rees has published numerous books and non-academic activities have included community development, probation services and social work in the UK and Canada; work with War on Poverty programs in the U.S.A.; and work with the Save the Children non-governmental organisation in India and Sri Lanka.

Rees is a regular broadcaster on Australia’s ABC Radio about the “means and meaning of peace with justice”.

In 2005 he was awarded a Membership of the Order of Australia for service to international relations, particularly as Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney and through the establishment of the Sydney Peace Prize.

http://newmatilda.com/2011/05/05/vengeance-never-sweet

Vengeance Is Never Sweet
By Stuart Rees

Justice has been done – it’s hard to hear anything else about the killing of Osama bin Laden. But what kind of justice is this, asks Stuart Rees, and for whom has it been done?

Bin Laden has been killed and America’s thirst for revenge has been satisfied. All week the mood has been jubilant but ugly. Outside the White House, at Ground Zero in New York, in towns and cities across the country, young frolickers have been waving the stars and stripes, shouting “U.S.A!” and partying into the night.

On Monday, the New York Times ran pages of admiration — at the expense of almost other news — for the “brave Navy SEALs who killed this Satan of a man”. USA Today announced “a great uplift for America”. Interviewees said things like “this shows that this country always gets its man” and “that’s what happens if you mess with us”. And so it has continued all week.

It has been the same on television. Television news channels have homed in on one story: the elimination of bin Laden. They scrambled to outdo each other with alleged exclusives that sought to reflect the drama of helicopters landing on the high walled compound in distant Abbotabad.

Almost as sickening as the boasting about a brilliantly planned and excecuted operation — which was given the green light by a newly crowned tough guy President — has been the shortage of dissenting voices in the mainstream media. A few bloggers have raised questions but the consensus verdict is that justice has been done. What justice?

The most audible debate is coming from members of Congress who don’t think that the bullying and swaggering has been sufficient. These representatives accuse the Pakistan government of harboring bin Laden. They threaten to punish that country by cutting off aid. Let’s hold Pakistan accountable, not ourselves.

The assertion, delivered in an accusatory tone, that, despite the deficit, unemployment and unending wars, America is the best country in the world, takes us back to the days following 9/11. No debate, no asking why, only jingoism, rampant nationalism. French fries became freedom fries. Congressmen assembled to sing the Star Spangled Banner. The childish but dangerous “good guys, bad guys” view of the world promoted the doomsday solution that might is always right. There is the same noise and the same prescriptions now. It beggars belief — though Obama’s tone was partly reflective and stopped short of returning to the bring-it-on bravado of the Bush years.

Bin Laden was killed by a bullet to the head and one to the heart. He was unarmed but was reported to have fought back initially. This shouldn’t be surprising. Did anybody expect the militant jihadi to say something like, “Welcome to my compound, I’m glad you’ve come. Arrest me if you like but let me show you around first”?

The word justice has been sullied, as though its value can be explained by hundreds of journalists, politicians and TV commentators repeating the mantra “justice has been done”. There is no justice in state murder, no justice in ignoring criminal law’s due process — even if the evidence is irrefutable that bin Laden masterminded the attacks on New York, Washington and helped to plan other terrorist atrocities. There is no justice in implying that the death of one man, however notorious, can deflect attention from the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We could be groping towards a semblance of justice if bin Laden joined Bush and Blair in the dock of the international criminal court, each charged with crimes against humanity and each presumed innocent until shown otherwise.

Judgement by politicians. Trial by media. Conviction by public consensus. Voyeurs arrive at the Abbotobad compound. Journalists explain how high the walls and why garbage was burned instead of being collected. A few crocodile tears are shed as we’re told by White House spokespersons that bin Laden’s body was washed and wrapped accoding to Muslim custom and then slipped gently into the Arabian Sea.

And all the while, Australian politicians and media are singing from the same hymn book of revenge.