Leave it to God
The parents of the Siamese twins 'Mary' and 'Jodie' are the latest victims of the national obsession with babies and children, and of the inability of professionals to leave people to suffer their personal tragedies in private. The parents came to Britain in the hope that doctors here would help them. Instead, they have been made the main attraction in an obscene circus run by British doctors, lawyers, priests and journalists.
When the parents were told that separation would lead to the death of one of the twins and only a chance of survival for the other, they asked the surgeons not to operate. The question of whether the twins live or die should be left to the will of God, they said. Naturally, for the parents, it is impossible to decide that what they regard as one of their children should be sacrificed to save the other.
It should be no surprise that the judges have lost sleep over the case. The law is a useless instrument in such a situation since nobody has any true rights here. Jodie is only recognised as a human being by virtue of the arbitrary norm that birth is the point at which life begins. She has no right to life. The parents can have no right of life and death over their children. It may be true that 'Mary', at such a tender age, and with no chance of survival as a being independent of the stronger 'Jodie', is probably not a real or legal person, and that no death would be caused by the separation, but it is irrelevant. Jodie has no right to be free of her.
However, when the welfare of the parties is considered the position is simple and obvious. Jodie is a newborn baby who has only primitive feelings and no opinions. Even if she survived the operation she would be severely disabled. The advantages to her of her survival are at best doubtful. On the other hand the costs to the parents of such an operation are clear and unambiguous. It would offend their deeply held religious beliefs and leave them with an awful emotional burden to live with. Never was there so clear a case for applying the principle that the welfare of the adults should be the paramount consideration.
The twins pose medical science with a problem that it cannot solve. The parents are the only people taking a rational approach to it. They came to Britain seeking scientific help, and now when they say leave it to the will of God they perfectly express the contemporary limits of medicine. Doctors are often accused of playing God. They should take the charge seriously. When God-like powers are assumed by human science then, if they are to be trusted, their exercise must be tempered with wisdom and mercy. Of course, any good surgeon would quite properly want to push the boundaries of their knowledge and skill by operating in such circumstances. What is disturbing is that it is not obvious to the doctors and the judges that they should nonetheless leave the parents alone to their suffering.
Independence for East Timor
On Tuesday 6 September four United Nations staff were killed in a militia attack on a refugee office in West Timor, casting a shadow over the UN's millennium conference. But the familiar story of Western humanitarian efforts frustrated and attacked by brutal local militias has another side; the story of Western recolonisation of East Timor and the US-sponsored humbling of Indonesia.
Western hypocrisy over the Timorese militias opposed to independence is profound. Back in the 1970s, it was the West that pushed Indonesia into crushing East Timor's independence movement in the first place. Even Portuguese PM Mario Soares agreed to Indonesia's annexation moves (28 September 1974), while America, Britain and Australia were determined to see Indonesia crush the Frente Revolucionara do Timor Leste Independente (Fretilin, self-consciously modelled on Mozambique's Frelimo) in the year of the Viet Cong's victory over the USA. 'The people of East Timor are in no position to exercise self-determination', wrote the British Ambassador to Jakarta in July 1975 (Curtis, 219). Between 1975 and 1983 200 000 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops.
The once-colonial powers, the Netherlands and Portugal, were the first to distance themselves from the Indonesian campaign. The Dutch never forgave Indonesia for rejecting the reintroduction of colonial rule in 1945, and Portugal similarly relished the chance to deflect attention from its own colonial record onto Indonesia's post-colonial atrocities in East Timor. (Soares attacked Indonesia for 'halting the decolonisation process in East Timor', 8 June 1988.) But despite rallying support among Third World radicals on the floor of the UN General Assembly, East Timor's latter-day European sponsors could not break the Security Council's effective ban on raising the issue. 'The [US] Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it took', said US representative Daniel Moynihan, 'this task was given to me and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success' (Curtis, 221).
The change in Western policy towards the Indonesian occupation was governed by the strength of the East Timorese independence movement. As long as Fretilin put up a fight, the Security Council insisted that it was an internal Indonesian matter. But once Fretilin had been defeated, the Security Council supported the demands of the General Assembly for intervention.
Under repeated blows and suffering defections, Fretilin's Xanana Gusmao reassured its international supporters that its radicalism belonged to the past, now supporting 'political pluralism' and a 'mixed economy' (23 Jan 1986). Gusmao's capture by the Indonesian military signalled the effective defeat of the national liberation movement. The once- humiliated colonial powers now acted as sponsors of a reinvented movement of moderate Timorese. The Nobel Prize jury even named a new leadership for East Timor in 1996, honouring bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo and diplomat Jose Ramos-Horta. From this point on 'liberation' was to be achieved by foreign intervention, not by the East Timorese people.
The Suharto regime in Indonesia had long been supported by the West as a bulwark against radical nationalism in Indonesia as well as East Timor. The regime was born from the slaughter of at least half a million people in a sustained campaign against the Indonesian Communist Party which followed the overthrow of the radical nationalist Sukarno in 1965. 'The theory that the native eclecticism of Indonesian culture would yield to a generalised modernism...was definitively disproved', crowed US anthropologist Clifford Geertz (246). In fact the slaughter was planned by Prime Minister Macmillan and President Kennedy, who, as noted in a CIA memo 'agreed to liquidate President Sukarno' in 1962 (Curtis, 217). Supporting the 'rights' of an East Timorese movement long-since crushed was a convenient way of de-legitimising Indonesia's last remnants of independence - as well as washing the West's hands of their share of responsibility for the massacres.
While the Foreign Office continues to blame Indonesia for the sporadic attacks of the anti-independence militias, the truth is that Jakarta is bending over backwards to accommodate Western demands, even when these threaten the country's cohesion. The new regime under Abdurrahman Wahid is investigating former military leader General Wiranto for human rights abuses, and negotiating with separatists in Aceh and Irian Jaya. The Indonesian Human Rights Commission has asked for an international peacekeeping force to be sent to the Moluccan Islands.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor, headed by Brazilian UN official Sergio de Mello, exercises absolute power under a Security Council resolution from its office in the former Governor's House. There are 8500 UN troops under Filipino General Jaime de los Santos. Hans Strohmeyer a German legal scholar is writing the country's law and constitution. Andrew Whitley, formerly of the BBC and Financial Times is head of the civil service. 'The new colonialism looks and feels powerfully like the old', writes James Traub of the New York Times.
References: Curtis, Mark, The Ambiguities of Power, London, 1995 Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures, London, 1993 Leifer, Mark, Indonesia's Foreign Policy, London, 1983 Taylor, John, The Indonesian Occupation of East Timor, London, 1990 Traub, James, 'Inventing East Timor', Foreign Affairs, July/August 2000
'There is a dismal record of failure in Africa'
Or so the British Prime Minister told the United Nations millennial summit on 6 September. 'Twenty-one of the 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa are affected by conflict which undermines efforts at development', Blair continued, demanding that 'We must be partners in the search for change and hope'.
But Britain's record of partnership is not promising; in fact Britain has proved to be the major warmonger on the African continent:
Tangier campaigns against the Moors 1661-1684 Kaffir wars at the Cape 1806/1812/1819 Sixth Kaffir War 1835 Seventh Kaffir War 1846-1847 Eighth Kaffir War 1850-1853 Abyssinian War 1868 Ashanti War (West Africa) 1874 Ninth Kaffir War 1877-1878 Zulu War 1879 Transvaal (or First Boer) War 1880-1 Egyptian War 1882 First Sudan War 1884-1885 Ashanti Expedition 1896 Second Sudan War 1898 Boer War 1899-1902 North African campaign, World War Two 1939-1945 Canal Zone/Egypt 1945-1948 Gold Coast 1948 Eritea 1948-1951 Somaliland 1949-1951 Kenya 1952-1960 Suez 1956 Togoland 1957 Cameroons 1960 Zanzibar 1963 Swaziland 1963-1966 Zanzibar 1964 Kenya/Uganda/Tanganyika 1964 Seychelles 1966 Libya 1967 Dhofar 1969-1976 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia 1979-1980 Sierra Leone 2000
The Myth of Creative Britain
Top design magazine Blueprint blasted a hole in Culture Secretary Chris Smith's claims that 'exploiting the full potential of the creative industries sector will be a vital element in ensuring future economic success at home and abroad'. Asking whether 'design creates wealth or thrives on poverty', an article entitled 'Pure speculation' argues that the growth of the creative industries might be seen as 'a beautiful flower growing on a dunghill of deindustrialisation'. It notes that Britain's much-trumpeted cultural industries are lagging, with British television and cinema in the red, and popular music wobbling like Noel Gallagher's marriage. Only design has a high export profile, but even design is 'feeding off economic decay' as 'designers and advertisers...make a killing with new branding of old companies from letterheads to shopfronts'.
The September issue of Blueprint, 'The Myth of Creative Britain', is available from ETP Limited, Rosebery House, 41 Springfield Road, Chelmsford, Essex, CM2 6JJ, England. -- James Heartfield
Great Expectations: the creative industries in the New Economy is available from Design Agenda, 4.27 The Beaux Arts Building, 10-18 Manor Gardens, London, N7 6JT Price 7.50 GBP + 1GBP p&p