Making Amends

With the brou-ha over Mrs. Pain Palin since Friday (and anyone who still thinks that being Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard constitutes command experience, check out this post at Armchair Generalist), it was easy to miss this story::

Libya and Italy signed an accord on Saturday under which Italy will pay $5 billion in compensation for colonial misdeeds during its decades-long rule of the North African country.

"This accord opens the door to the future cooperation and partnership between Italy and Libya," Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said at the signing ceremony at a palace which was once the headquarters of the Rome government's senior official during the 1911-1943 colonial rule.

Wow.

Anthony Clark Arend has this take on it all:

"Needless to say, this is all part of Libya's "rehabilitation" and its movement away from "rogue" status, which began several years ago.

But on a related note-- can you imagine what would happen if Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and indeed, the United States were to "compensate" states for the "misdeeds" of colonialism?"

Hmm. There's an idea... in fact, this is not lost on various other former colonies of both Italy and other European powers.

One Day for the Watchman is more cautiously optimistic:

"One has to wonder how the human social, cultural, and personal toll of colonial oppression can be translated into a dollar figure, and one that might be seen as rather small. Otherwise, I personally think that compensation is important symbolically and politically, and in some instances could be very useful economically. Other nations will be right to begin to press their cases for compensation, especially when in so many instances, the majority in fact, formal colonial rule ended only in the last 40 to 50 years, with a significant mass of humanity (even if not the majority) having been born as colonial subjects."

More on Justice in the Middle East

Hmmm, if 50-1000 lashes is a suitable punishment for rape in Saudi Arabia, what's a fair penalty for stealing some lumber in Iraq... Let's see what these US Army tankers have to say... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJC1unnuwds&feature=related ... Oh, wait, the title of this note should probably have been "More Injustice in the Middle East"... Rubbish...

Prince Faisal: International Community "Unfairly" Denigrates Saudis

Prince Faisal has distanced the Saudi government from a court's condemnation of a gang-rape victim to 200 lashes, but said "the judgment was being used to vilify the Saudi government." However ridiculous this statement is, it does tell concerned citizens something about the audience they need to persuade with their letters and phone calls.

Why not lobby the Saudi government on its own terms? One hardly must invoke Western standards of women’s rights or universal human rights to oppose this ruling: the sentence is unjust even according to Saudi standards (for a discussion of her lawyers' arguments click here). The ruling challenges (and justifies) King Abdullah’s efforts at judicial reform. And since the rapists were Sunni and their victim Shi’a, failing to commute the sentence will only make the “Girl from Qatif” a flashpoint for ethnic tensions in the Kingdom - something the authorities might care to defuse.

If advocates were to play on these concerns rather than invoking Western notions of gender justice or calling for invasion, they are likeliest to provoke a constructive response, rather than defensiveness.

In between calling the Saudi embassy, they might also lobby the Western media to stop giving a bully pulpit to the Justice Ministry’s claims that the victim has “confessed to adultery,” which if true can carry a sentence of death, rather than flogging.

Instead, reporters should focus on other under-reported aspects of the story:

The courage demonstrated by the victim’s husband in standing up for his wife in a culture where he is expected to kill her himself.

The fact that she is at as much risk from members of her extended family as from the state.

And how about the politically incorrect fact that both her companion and their rapists face flogging (up to 1000 lashes) as well? These too are human beings, eh?