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February 27, 2006

Blair: "this is not an issue of liberty but of modernity"

I'm trying to put together a broadly poststructuralist account of the 'war on terror' at the moment - thinking through what 'modern' war might be. Unfortunately, it seems that Prime Minister Blair is well ahead of me on this - releasing a load of articles this weekend, arguing that new measures introduced to deal with terrorism and 'anti-social behaviour' are "an issue [not] of liberty but of modernity."

Michel Foucault argued that politics is war by other means. Blair seems to agree with him - the 'war' against serious terrorist violence which can cause massive casualties and 'anti-social' behaviour such as swearing in a private conversation are being brought together in 'modern' British politics. For Blair, "there is a serious debate about the nature of liberty in the modern world" and we must move beyond "traditional court processes and attitudes to civil liberties" in order to continue to enforce 'the rules' of our society. After all, as Blair argues, "the 'rules' are becoming harder to enforce" - and maybe they're becoming more ambiguous as well.

'The rules' are becoming harder to enforce, and are no longer as stable as they used to be. While Blair is seeking to find new and bigger truncheons with which to squash attempts at rule breaking/remaking (and, bizarrely, to use the same weapons against global terrorist violence and relatively trivial 'offences' like swearing in public) the other possibility is that new and different rule-sets might emerge - or are emerging now.

Posted by jon_mendel at 03:35 PM

February 23, 2006

Guantanamo Bay - A Savage Anomaly?

The US prison at Guantanamo Bay is not popular here in the UK, or within the Labour Party. However, due to Tony Blair's close relationship to the Bush Administration, he has not been willing to condemn it - instead taking the flack which comes from calling it an "anomaly" that needs to be "dealt with" (this was in response to a member of his Government, Peter Hain, breaking ranks to call for it to be closed). I'm not going to focus on Guantanamo itself here - I find the language Blair uses is so seductive that I'm going to look at this instead.

'Anomaly' is a fascinating word for Blair to use to describe the camp. One might first note that his own government has often been seen as anomalous - for example, John Kampfner argues that it is anomalous for Blair to have played a major role in so many military interventions. Even more interesting, though (at least for political theory students like me) is that the term 'anomaly' resonates with some aspects of recent anti-capitalist politics.

The Italian writer/activist Antonio Negri has referred to Spinoza's work as a 'savage anomaly'. For Negri, the materialism of Spinoza's thought leads becomes a savage anomaly when it comes into conflict with the capitalist mode of production - demonstrating "the radical expression of a historic transgression of every ordering that is not freely constituted by the masses; it is the proposition of a horizon of freedom that is definable only as a horizon of liberation." Blair may then be right to describe Guantanamo as an anomaly - what we see at Guantanemo could be read as the transgression of (neo)liberal norms such as the rule of law by the same bodies that are fighting in the name of such norms.

So, Guantanamo could be viewed as one of the savage anomalies constituted by transgressions of (neo)liberal norms - a transgression which, in Guantanamo's case, has become part of the system which is being transgressed. Blair argues that such anomalies must be dealt with; however, the alternative possibility is that more anomalies will arise to deal with the system. Current problems for both the Bush and Blair governments - abroad and at home - could be early indicators of this. One question to ask now is, therefore, will the anomalies we're seeing in international politics today be dealt with - or will it be the anomalies that do the dealing?

Posted by jon_mendel at 01:04 AM

February 14, 2006

ID cards, Rock and Regime Change

Have just got back from a nice night watching Dawn of the Replicants play, to find out that the UK Government has successfully got a bill on ID cards through our lower house of parliament - meaning that they will establish (or, given their past record, try to establish) a massive computer database holding ID-related information. This also means that ID cards will be compulsarily issued when one applies for a passport (good job I've only just renewed mine...) Kind-of took the shine off the night; only slightly numbed by the cider.

Writing about the Iraq war, the Slovenian social theorist Slavoj Zizek refers back to Freud's account of the strange logic of dreams. Freud illustrates this with the story of a kettle one loaned to one's neighbour. When asked for its return, the neighbour responds by saying that you never gave them the kettle and it was broken and they've already given it back etc... The neighbour's words should be treated with suspicion because they give too many reasons why they cannot return the kettle. Likewise, Zizek argues, the arguments for war in Iraq should be (well, should have been) treated with suspicion - too many reasons were given for war. Here in the UK, we are seeing a similar problem with ID cards now - there are too many reasons being given as to why we need them: apparently they will help fight terrorism, benefit fraud, identity theft, illegal immigration (and legal refugee immigration) and a host of other issues; Liberty's Director Shami Chakrabarti has joked that they are the Government's solution for global warming, too. Identity cards (and perhaps the idea of identity that they rely on) should therefore also be treated with suspicion.

These ID cards are being pushed through by the Blair Government, but his likely successor Gordon Brown is by some accounts now "joint PM" of the UK. We are thus facing a succession of leaders so smooth as to show little resemblance to the type of risk that might be expected in a democracy. Those of us who opposed Government policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and are now faced with a restriction of civil liberties here in Britain, need to remember that -whatever we thought of regime change abroad - regime change now needs to start at home.

Posted by jon_mendel at 12:15 AM

February 07, 2006

Religious Hatred and Censorship? C***s, Cartoons and Clerics

When I wrote about religious hatred and censorship last week, I thought this was a pretty parochial UK issue. However, the argument about the printing of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad -- which many have viewed as offensive and/or blasphemous -- is exploding around the world at the moment. One of the protesters in London - out of jail on licence due to an earlier criminal offence - has been returned to jail, having breached the terms of his licence by dressing as a suicide bomber; he has since apologised for his insensitivity. The extremist Muslim cleric Abu Hamza - who preached at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London - has also just been convicted of inciting murder and possessing documents likely to incite racial hatred.

The UK Government response to the Danish cartoons has only served to give more reasons to be grateful the Government was not able to pass the religious hatred legislation it wanted - Jack Straw has, unfortunately, decided to express his disapproval of the cartoons. It does seem that this Government might have been tempted to use legislation against the incitement of religious hatred to restrict debate and humour in the media. While it was tasteless to publish these cartoons - a right to free speech does not mean you have to say offensive things - the newspapers involved are quite entitled to be tasteless; after all, what could be printed in newspapers if tasteless content were excluded...

So, at the moment it seems that incitement to violence is being punished, 'blasphemy' is not. This is about the right balance to strike, but we should aim for a slightly longer memory - for example, this reminds me of the controversy about the metal band Cradle of Filth's T-shirts with the slogan "Jesus is a C***". There have been at least three convictions in the UK of people for wearing this T-shirt, and the Lord Provost of Glasgow stopped a record shop there from selling the T-shirt. Freedom of speech - if we are, as we should, to allow caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad - should be applied fairly: if Muhammad can be depicted as a suicide bomber, then those who wish to do so should also be free to describe Jesus as a c*** (and, if they really want, to listen to bad metal at the same time).

Even if you wanted to restrict offensive speech, the way that communications today is networked through mediums such as the Internet means that 'censored' speech can easily cross borders and spread around the world - often much more than would have been the case if this speech had been ignored. What this has meant, of course, is that in the 1990s a lousy metal band got masses of publicity and sold a load of T-shirts, just as we're now seeing a few unfunny cartoons of Muhammad being distributed around the world. Perhaps what we really ought to aim for is to make something good (in Friedrich Nietzsche or Oscar Wilde's sense of not being bad, rather than the theistic sense of not being evil) controversial - so that at least something a bit more interesting can colonise these media channels... On that note, I think Gilbert and George deserve more attention for asking, not whether Jesus was a c***, but whether he was heterosexual - at least if that debate spreads we could have something a bit more interesting than those lousy Danish cartoons to look at, while debating if this 'sick stunt' should be banned...

Posted by jon_mendel at 03:23 PM

February 02, 2006

Blair loses vote on incitement to religious hatred bill

The Government lost another vote in the House of Commons yesterday - MPs voted to retain an amendment that the House of Lords (our second chamber in the UK) made to the Government's Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This means that ""abusive and insulting" behaviour [will] not be criminalised, merely "threatening" behaviour; and that people [will] not be prosecuted for "recklessly" stiring up religious hatred - that is, without intent." To add insult to injury, the Government lost by only a single vote - and by the time of the vote, Blair himself had gone home! This has not been viewed as efficient handling of parliamentary business, and the Labour Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong is getting a good share of the blame for this.

There's going to be more to write soon about the Government's controversial Education Bill, and there will also be repercussions from the increased UK deployment of troops to Afghanistan and the symbolic milestone of our hundredth soldier killed in Iraq. I've written enough for tonight, though - Blair's problems are advancing almost too fast for me to blog about.

Posted by jon_mendel at 10:53 PM