War on Terror Log

Brown's article in The Observer - 22 March 2009 - outlined plans to train 60,000 people - "from security guards to store managers" - to watch for al-Qaida suspects as they go about their plans to repeat the 7/7 atrocities.

Since it was not thought necessary to implement such a vast panoply of security measures when the IRA were bombing mainland Britain in the 1970s, and given the propensity of New Labours' public, er, 'servants' to use such measures on people who are not members of al-Qaida and are clearly not planning to bomb their local communities - RIPA - it's advisable to poke around for the other agendas that are riding pillion with the security plans.

Superficially there are two aims here: to combat 'terror' [9], and to integrate Moslems into the indigenous 'community'.   [1]

In the latter case the agenda is not new. Several previous reports signal the government's desire to persuade 'moderate' Moslems that integration into British society will obviate the need to bomb the indigenous population.   [1]   [4]   [6]

A BBC World Service documentary - 22/23 March (?) - suggested that the Moslem community might be split between an older generation of non-fanatics, and a radicalised younger generation eager to extract revenge for events in the Middle East.

Since the British Government has both nailed its colours to the 'war on terror' in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan, and the BBC has shown itself unwilling to offend Israeli hardliners in respect of the Gaza charity appeal, radicalised Moslems have been handed a double propaganda coup, which no amount of flim-flam from the likes of Hazel Blears will counteract.    [HB]

There is, however, a larger background which casts doubt on the overt aims of New Labour's 'cohesion' agenda.

First, it assumes there is some ready-made social order which Moslems might wish to join.

There is not: the other 'society' which Moslems might wish to join is now absorbed into the wider world of market norms which admits of, to quote a famous phrase, 'no such thing as society' - in the sense of a shared community with obligations beyond market norms, norms designed for the very purpose of sacrificing social norms on the altar of profit.   

The "British jobs for British workers" dispute highlighted the reality. Namely that the Lisbon Treaty's 'precarious and commodified citizenship' [SBH] recognises only market norms, to which Brown's "British workers" are expected to conform.

Hazel Blears offers no voice for them.

For them there is 'Police State Britain', and the use of New Labour's vast security agenda by an expanding host of busy-bodies and corporate lackeys - [TMS] - to pursue a wide range of miscreants, such as the parents thought to be misusing the schools' admission procedure.  [GDN].

The 'war on terror' helpfully provides the smoke-screen necessary to camouflage the reality: that both main parties have bought into 'market norms' to the degredation of social norms, which are now of miniscule importance.

Yasmin Alibhai-Browns sums it up better than I can:

In 'The Spirit Level', two sober academics – Richard Wilkinson and his partner Kate Pickett, both medical epidemiologists – have published strong evidence to prove that in unequal societies everyone suffers – even those who think they have it made for generations to come.

They looked at 20 of the richest nations and compared various social and health problems, measuring those against an index of equality.

The US, Portugal (feudal in the near past) and the UK are the most unequal nations, with the top 20 per cent earning nine times more than the bottom 20 per cent.

Japan, Finland, Norway and Sweden are where the money gap is smallest.

Teenage pregnancies, mental illness, life expectancy, obesity, illiteracy, homicide, crime are all worse in the states of greater inequality and not only for the poorest but for all citizens and residents.

Spain is more equal than its neighbour, Portugal and you can see how vastly different are the social ills in the two countries.

There is even evidence that in unequal societies, the people have higher levels of stress hormones. [YAB]

Moslems now act as a lightning rod to deflect the anger and depression - the powerlessness - which touches anyone who recalls, or imagines, a different Britain in which social norms transcend the greed of markets.   [FaG]

This is the ultimate - hidden - racism behind New Labour's multicultural mask.

Labour's 'war on terror' is yet another adoption of Steven Lukes' 'third face of power' - the use of one agenda to pursue a hidden one with a totally differing aim. [TFP]

That a degree of Protectionism might restore the balance between social norms - social cohesion - and market norms is the no-go area in the economic debates of the day, but a raft of recent papers have called into question the economic theories on which the global markets are constructed: