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1) Britain's Police State: The cry now is "treason" or the Star
Chamber revisited (13 August 2005)
2) Welcome to Liberal Terrorism (7 August 2005)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BOW20050813&articleId=835
Britain's Police State: The cry now is "treason" or the Star Chamber revisited
Secret, judge-only courts where the accused has no access to the
'evidence'? Changes to the law will include making it illegal to
advocate violence to further a person's belief, justifying or
validating such violence, or fostering hatred.
by William Bowles; Globalresearch.ca; August 13, 2005
Under the Lords Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Cranmer
(1515-1529), the Court of Star Chamber became a political weapon for
bringing actions against opponents to the policies of Henry VIII, his
Ministers and his Parliament. Then, under James the 1st and Charles
the 1st, the Star Chamber Court sessions were held in secret, with no
indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses. Evidence
was presented in writing. On October 17, 1632, the Court of Star
Chamber banned all "news books".[1] Sound familiar?
"This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The
pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let
us re-order this world around us."
Tony Blair @ the Labour Party Conference, October 1st 2001
Tony Blair tells us that "Let no one be in any doubt. The rules of the
game are changing", but whose changing them and whose 'game' is it?
[2]
The cry of 'Treason', is after all, the logical conclusion to a policy
based upon demonisation of the 'other' and the latest sign of a ruling
class in desperate need to justify not only its onslaught on the
people of Iraq but the attacks on our rights and liberties. Not
surprisingly, the bombings of July 7 and the 'topping up' of July 21
came in very handy in the run-up to the cry of 'treason!'
The terrible irony of our current situation is that although the state
is undergoing an unprecedented crisis of credibility because of its
policy of allying itself with the US imperium, there is no real
domestic opposition. So what is it that the state is allegedly so
afraid of?
What should not be let out of our sight is the fact that unless the
domestic population is presented with a 'clear and present danger',
the state faces the real possibility of a genuine opposition
developing to its policies. This is the real danger. For the reality
is that it is precisely the policies of Blair's government along with
that of the US that is the cause of the current situation.
Hence the need to continually up the ante, and thus, the danger is now
'amongst us' and who better to use as a target than not only the
'alien', the Asian, but also an 'alien' religion, one that still has
its more traditional adherents who insist on treating women as
property - hence the hijab becomes overnight, a symbol of all that is
alien to our alleged British values. Modernity versus tradition become
ideological weapons of the state even as it turns the clock back to an
earlier age of naked imperialism! These guys know no shame.
The key to understanding the tactics of the Blair government are the
phrases, "The British way of life" and "British values", catch-all
phrases that are, by themselves completely hypocritical, especially in
the context of the concerted propaganda campaign of the past three
decades that centred on the creation of an allegedly multi-cultural
Britain.
Thus whilst the 'experts' thrash around looking for a clear-cut
definition of 'Britishness'
"To be British seems to us to mean that we respect the laws, the
democratic political structures, and give our allegiance to the state
in return for its protection," the group declared.
"To be British is to respect those overarching specific institutions,
values and beliefs that bind us all, the different nations and
cultures together in peace and in legal order.
"To be British does not mean assimilation into a common culture so
that original identities are lost."
Declares the government-backed study, the Life in the UK Advisory
Group, the obvious fact of a country where racism is institutionalized
- admitted by the government's own investigations into the Lawrence
murder - at every level - from education to the police, apparently
escapes the notice of these 'experts'. [3]
Moreover, that the self-same government that has waged wars of terror
and mayhem against the populations of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq
over the past decade and a half, now talks of making people whose
religious and cultural beliefs have become the object of a vicious
campaign to marginalize them - 'British' - is laughably pathetic not
to mention the height of a very British brand of hypocrisy that
conveniently airbrushes out centuries of colonial pillage and slavery
that is the real backdrop to being 'British', at least as the
government's definition goes.
And lest anyone think that this propaganda war is an off-the-cuff
affair, a 'knee-jerk reaction' to July 7 as some mainline commentators
have suggested, look back to the kinds of phrases that Blair has been
using in his speeches for the past four years since 9/11 - "We will
build a new Jerusalem", an echo of the post-war Labour Party of
Aneurin Bevin and the use of words like "virus" and "inoculation" to
describe the "war on terror". And of course the latest, the "struggle
against violent extremism".
"
a new and deadly virus has emerged.
The virus is terrorism, whose intent to inflict destruction is
unconstrained by human feeling; and whose capacity to inflict it is
enlarged by technology. This is a battle that can't be fought or won
only by armies. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs."
Tony Blair's speech to the joint session of Congress, 18 July 2003
Blair's PR machine is working overtime, for there can be no doubt that
the use of an entire etymology, set into specific contexts, is the
work of PR companies, motivational 'experts', indeed the entire
panoply of opinion shapers used by modern capitalism.
Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist
is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of
people, the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of
Israel; and to translate this into a battle between East and West;
Muslim, Jew and Christian - Tony Blair
But at the heart of Blair's propaganda blitz are age-old themes,
patriotism, tying together the justification for waging war on the
civilian populations of defenceless countries to an alleged desire for
peace; the continual hyping of the 'human rights' message even as it
strips them away; themes that can be found over and over again when
preparing a domestic population for war on something or other,
normally another country but by no means exclusively so as any reading
of the present and the past so clearly demonstrates.
The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our
last line of defence and our first line of attack. In some cases,
where our security is under direct threat, we will have recourse to
arms. In others, it will be by force of reason. But in all cases to
the same end: that the liberty we seek is not for some but for all.
For that is the only true path to victory. - Tony Blair
The most popular motif is one of race, from the 'dastardly Hun' of WWI
through to the 'yellow peril' of WWII and all the stops in-between.
The parallels between the propaganda of the Nazis and that of
Churchill who thought nothing of gassing Iraqis, are no mere
coincidence, for the populace must be persuaded that killing people in
the name of 'freedom' or justice requires more than an appeal to a
person's sense of what is right but that 'our' killing is somehow
better than 'theirs'.
"[Germans] combine in the most deadly manner the qualities of the
warrior and the slave. They do not value freedom themselves and the
spectacle of it among others is hateful to them."
Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons 1943
"We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people,
not just the Nazis. You either have to castrate [them] or you have got
to treat them
so they can't go reproducing people who want to continue
the way they have in the past"
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, August 19, 1944
"From September 11th on, I could see the threat plainly. Here were
terrorists prepared to bring about Armageddon."
Tony Blair, March 5 2004
"Why the little yellow bastards!"
Time Magazine 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbour
We wage war to bring peace, except the peace never comes, it serves as
a prelude to yet more wars and now, "perpetual war".
Muslim communities have turned out in force at large anti-war demos,
but few have attended local meetings, for fear that they would be
identified to the police, especially in the context of anti- terror
laws. This fear has limited the social integration of migrant
communities through the anti-war movement, and will continue to do so
as the anti-migrant backlash ensues. The UK government will now step
up political surveillance of migrant and Muslim communities through
police informers, thus intensifying the current fear.
Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) [4]
In order to do this it is necessary to first dehumanise them; thus the
use of words that do just this; fiends, animals, beasts and so forth.
Thus the slaughter can proceed with no inconvenient moral qualms about
our actions as these 'beasts' are less than human, thus unworthy of
all those 'rights' our government is busy stripping away, layer by
layer in its quest to eradicate allegedly, the "virus" in our midst.
And with death squads now appearing on our streets, there can be no
doubt that Blair has brought the 'war' home and with the help of a
totally complicit media in tow, only too anxious to prove just how
patriotic and 'British' it is, nary a word to the contrary appears in
the mainstream press, for fear of being branded 'un-patriotic' or
worst of all, giving 'aid and comfort' to a vicious enemy. [5]
Thus was the cold-blooded murder of Mr De Menezes justified, whether
innocent or guilty, his death was 'unfortunate', he was, as the front
page of the Independent informed us, "in the wrong place at the wrong
time" just as the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis were no doubt,
also 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'. Tough luck Mr De Menezes,
Mr and Mrs Ali, it's all for the greater good, 'our terror is better
than the terror of the enemy'.
That it has escaped the notice of the corporate/state press that the
actions of the state are in fact worse than those of the bombers
should be apparent (to anyone who cares look) whether it be from
30,000 feet up or at point blank range on the Northern Line, for ours
has the sanction of the state and in defence of Blair's spurious
claims to be defending 'freedom'.
Treason therefore, is the next logical step in the escalation of the
state's war on its own population; the logic is inescapable, for in
order to justify its attacks on our right to dissent, it is necessary
to widen the meaning of what it is to be a dissenter, a process that
has no effective end, for ultimately, to protest against such widening
of powers itself falls under the heading of dissent. It's Joseph
Heller's 'Catch-22' with a vengeance, the vengeance of an all-powerful
state.
And for those who defend this 'temporary' restriction on our rights,
let them remember that throughout history, unless one defends and even
fights to broaden our civil rights, once abrogated, there's very
little chance of regaining them, it's a vicious circle of repression,
just as it has been since 9/11. Yet there is no evidence that the slew
of repressive laws has done the slightest thing to alter the equation
of terror, indeed it can be argued that it has had the opposite
effect, simply by criminalising an ever wider swathe of those who are
now branded as terrorists or 'terrorist sympathisers'.[6]
Notes
1. See Wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
2. Statement by Prime Minister (5.8.05):
www.statewatch.org/news/2005/aug/02pm-terror-statement.htm
3. Forty-five race murders in Britain since the Macpherson Report -
Figures released today by the Institute of Race Relations show that
there have been forty-five murders with a known or suspected racial
element since the publication of the Macpherson report in February
1999:
www.irr.org.uk/2005/august/ak000005.html
4. See 'We are all 'terror suspects': The 'War on Terror' at home
5. UK: New special forces unit tailed Brazilian (Jean Charles de
Menezes shot dead by police on 22 July 2005):
www.guardian.co.uk/print/0%2C3858%2C5254652-103690%2C00.html
6. The price of a chilling and counterproductive recipe - Tony Blair
cannot be allowed to sell our rights and freedoms, Shami
Chatrabarti (Guardian, 8.8.05):
www.statewatch.org/news/2005/aug/shami-chakrabarti-Guardian.pdf
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http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-08/07adamovsky.cfm
Welcome to Liberal Terrorism
By Ezequiel Adamovsky; ZNet; August 07, 2005
The United Kingdom is the cradle of liberalism and, indeed, one of the
places in which Western civilization was born. Britons often take
pride in the fact that the protection of individual rights and
liberties does not even need a Constitution in the UK - such is the
strength of liberal culture and values in the British Isles. Moreover,
unlike the situation in the US, British society has the reputation of
being fairly tolerant and multicultural.
But then Scotland Yard executes Juan Carlos de Menezes - a Brazilian
immigrant mistakenly assumed to be a terrorist - according to a brand
new principle of the police: first murder, then ask. The logic of this
principle is impeccable: if a Muslim fundamentalist is ready to become
a human bomb and kill himself alongside thousands of people, we might
as well kill him before he can trigger the bomb he carries. But, of
course, as there is no time to arrest that person so as to check if he
is really a terrorist - and not, say, a Brazilian worker on his way to
his job - we must be ready to accept some "collateral damage."
Jack Straw made it very clear when he apologized before the Menezes
family while supporting the behavior of the policemen involved; the
first-murder-then-ask policy, he announced, is still applicable, which
means that we all need to accept the fact that the police now have the
right to murder without any motive or proof (not to mention a fair
trial).
We are in a war against terrorism, you see. Without knowing it, that
morning Juan Carlos de Menezes had lost his right to have his life
protected from the state. It seems that the dozens of laws, the
division of powers, the traditional system of checks and balances, the
accountability of state officials and other liberal devices are not as
useful when it comes to defending the life of the weak, as they are
when it comes to protecting private property. Indeed, Juan Carlos had
no security for his life, but, ironically, the Menezes family seems to
have retained the right to financial compensation for the "tragic
mistake" - as if it was a car accident or some other incident that
damaged their "property".
Is it the end of liberalism, as some analysts argued? Are we in the
brink of loosing the values of Western civilization and sinking again
into barbarism, as some journalists fear? As seen from the periphery
of the world, there is nothing really new in the rapid extinction of
the right to life in Britain. In the unstable and violent peripheries
that capitalist expansion created, individual rights are more often
the exception than the rule. Perhaps the only novelty in these affairs
is the fact that globalization is indeed blurring some (and only some)
of the distinctions between the core and the periphery of the
capitalist world-system. As in Franz Fanon's dreadful prophecy, the
violence of capitalist expansion, initially imposed upon the "wretched
of the earth", is finally reaching the whole of humankind. Yes, we are
talking about state terrorism, but now in the heart of the Empire.
What we are witnessing in the Scotland Yard murder, and in Abu Ghraib
or the Guantánamo prison tortures, is not the end of liberalism, but
rather the revelation of its dark side. In the margins of Western
"civilization", liberal politics and liberal terrorism have always
revealed themselves as twin brothers.
Centuries ago, in the formative period of liberalism, John Locke
argued that human beings only become part of civil/political society
after having been properly "educated". Children, idiots, and those who
do not display "reason" in general cannot give their "rational"
consent to a political authority. Therefore, they need to be excluded
from social/political life, and to live under someone else's authority
(that is, they enjoy less or no rights). The problem arises: Who is to
decide that somebody is not "rational" enough?
In the lack of definition for this question lies the ideological core
of liberalism: where theory does not decide, (liberal) social
conventions govern. The history of the idea of civilization betrays
this ideological "second life" of liberalism. In the liberal ideology
and in the narrative of civilization, the key to each person's place
in the gradient of inclusion-exclusion lies, precisely, in his or her
degree of "civilization". As we have all learned at school, the
civilizing process originally expanded from the city to the
countryside, from the upper to the lower classes, and from Western
Europe to the periphery. Indeed, "civilization" still refers to the
manners and customs of the upper class - as Norbert Elias has argued -
to a "rational" and politically acceptable ("civil") behavior, and to
a high degree of economic and cultural "progress", all at the same
time.
In the unacknowledged logic of ideology, by default, all three
meanings are supposed to come together. If all three elements -
Western/white/bourgeois customs, political rationality, and wealth -
are not evidently present in the appropriate measure, our place in the
gradient of inclusion-exclusion will depend on the degree of
civilization we are able to demonstrate. And the burden of proof is
always on those who do not seem civilized in the eyes of those who
obviously are. Failure to show an "anthropological minimum" in the
eyes of the civilized may result in partial or total social/political
exclusion.
Translated into social practices, the "script" of civilization
implicit in liberal politics gives the civilized the right to claim
control over some or all of the aspects of the life of those who have
"failed", including their autonomy, political sovereignty, economic
way of life, and freedom. The war on Iraq is a good example: as the
Iraqi could not live according to Western-capitalist expectations,
they needed to be "helped" (and/or bombed, if they put up any
obstacle). Before the war started, the honest working people in Europe
or the US did not actually know if the Iraqi were "rational" enough or
not; but as their country was poor and backward", and their customs
were not quite "white", many of them assumed that some degree of
(forcible) "help" was acceptable. And if any of them refused to be
helped, well, that was still another proof of "irrationality". Enter
the bombs.
Something similar happened in the case of Juan Carlos de Menezes:
Scotland Yard agents did not know whether or nor he was an
"irrational" fundamentalist; but the fact that Menezes was not quite
white or rich induced them to think that they could overlook his
rights for the sake of national security. Juan Carlos carried the
burden of the proof, and he had no time to prove that, despite being
dark-skinned, foreigner and poor, he was not an "irrational"
terrorist.
The problem is not just one of reactionary Texans or a traitor New
Labor in power. Capitalism (and its ideology, liberalism) are taking
away our rights, including the right not to be killed by the state for
no reason. In times of a permanent global war, liberal (state)
terrorism is here to stay. As a Latin American, there is one thing I
can tell you: We should fear state terrorism more than anything a
bunch of fundamentalist bombers might do.
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