More Musings on Memory

I know that this blog seems to be getting stuck on one theme, but I guess I’m trying to figure out a few ideas in my head. Mostly, I’m trying to figure out why we (or at least the majority) seem to have such a short attention span, why whilst we may find current events appalling, we seem to be unable to accept the inevitability of this based on what we know about previous activities by our governments. For instance, last week marked the sixth anniversary of Jack Straw releasing General Pinochet, the ex-Chilean CIA backed fascist dictator, who was wanted on an international arrest warrant for his crimes against humanity during his regime. At the time I remember the incredulity amongst large sections of the British public that our home secretary, a Labour Home secretary, would release a man who carried out appalling human rights violations which many Labour ministers must have marched against in their youth. And yet now, these same people seem to have feel difficulty believing that a Labour government would systematically ignore its principles.

This same collective amnesia applies in other areas too. For instance in relation to the ongoing troubles in Palestine. Whilst it no longer makes the news, the situation is unchanged, if not worse. There are still ‘targeted assassinations’, most recently in Balata refugee camp, there are still road blocks, check points, the apartheid wall, the daily humiliations heaped upon the Palestinians, the continuing efforts to undermine democratic structures and civil institutions in the Occupied Territories, and yet people seem to believe that the situation there is ripe for the Palestinians to ‘seize the initiative’ and set up a ‘viable state’. Likewise, in a case which bought to mind the previous indiscretions of the Israeli Defence Force, especially with regards to Tom Hurndall, a young Israeli activist anarchist and refusnik, Marita Cohen, was shot in the head with a rubber baton round during a demonstration against the seperation wall last week. And yet, where this was reported in the news, it was reported in a shocked sense, apparently oblivious to the previous form the IDF has in this area.

Then we have the continuing information leaking about the Stockwell shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes. On Panorama this week I witnessed the distasteful spectacle of a senior Metropolitan Police Officer explaining that the Met does NOT have a "shoot to kill policy" but an "immediate incapacitation" policy for its Special Branch Firearms officers. Asked to explain what an "immediate incapacitation" policy was he calmly explained that this was a policy where the marksmen shot the 'suspect' in the head, but that shooting someone in the head does not constitute a shoot to kill policy. Semantics aside, there’s little chance that anyone shot in the head is going to survive is there? Especially when they’re shot at point blank range seven times with exploding ‘dum dum’ ammunition as Jean Charles de Menezes was. And yet the sophistry seems to work, as I have yet to hear anyone explain that the Stockwell shooting was almost inevitable if you trace its lineage back to its origins in the shoot to kill policy of the British army in Northern Ireland. So I guess I’m just trying to figure out how we can make these connections and make people see that you can’t believe something is inherently good if the evidence points to the contrary, that a leopard never changes its spots.