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9/11 and the new authoritarianism
Ralf Dahrendorf, author of numerous acclaimed books and a former
European Commissioner from Germany, is a member of the British House of Lords, a
former Rector of the London School of Economics, and a former Warden of
St Antony's College, Oxford. His last piece on Webdiary was Parties and populists.
by Ralf Dahrendorf
Five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, “9/11” is no longer a mere date. It has entered the history books as the beginning of something new, a new era perhaps, but in any case a time of change. The terrorist bombings in Madrid and London and elsewhere will also be remembered; but it is “9/11” that has become the catchphrase, almost like “August 1914.”
But was it really a war that started on September 11, 2001? Not all are happy about this American notion. During the heyday of Irish terrorism in the UK, successive British governments went out of their way not to concede to the IRA the notion that a war was being waged. “War” would have meant acceptance of the terrorists as legitimate enemies, in a sense as equals in a bloody contest for which there are accepted rules of engagement.
This is neither a correct description nor a useful terminology for terrorist acts, which are more correctly described as criminal. By calling them war – and naming an opponent, usually al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden – the United States government has justified domestic changes that, before the 9/11 attacks, would have been unacceptable in any free country.
Most of these changes were embodied in the so-called “USA Patriot Act.” Though some of the changes simply involved administrative regulations, the Patriot Act’s overall effect was to erode the great pillars of liberty, such as habeas corpus, the right to recourse to an independent court whenever the state deprives an individual of his freedom. From an early date, the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba became the symbol of something unheard of: the arrest without trial of “illegal combatants” who are deprived of all human rights.
The world now wonders how many more of these non-human humans are there in how many places. For everyone else, a kind of state of emergency was proclaimed that has allowed state interference in essential civil rights. Controls at borders have become an ordeal for many, and police persecution now burdens quite a few. A climate of fear has made life hard for anyone who looks suspicious or acts suspiciously, notably for Muslims.
Such restrictions on freedom did not meet with much public opposition when they were adopted. On the contrary, by and large it was the critics, not the supporters, of these measures who found themselves in trouble. In Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair supported the US attitude entirely, the government introduced similar measures and even offered a new theory. Blair was the first to argue that security is the first freedom. In other words, liberty is not the right of individuals to define their own lives, but the right of the state to restrict individual freedom in the name of a security that only the state can define. This is the beginning of a new authoritarianism.
The problem exists in all countries affected by the threat of terrorism, though in many it has not become quite as specific. In most countries of continental Europe, “9/11” has remained an American date. There is even a debate – and indeed some evidence – concerning the question of whether involvement in the “war against terrorism” has actually increased the threat of terrorist acts. Germans certainly use this argument to stay out of the action wherever possible.
This stance, however, has not prevented the spread of something for which a German word is used in other languages, too: Angst. A diffuse anxiety is gaining ground. People feel uneasy and worried, especially when traveling. Any train accident or airplane crash is now at first suspected of being an act of terrorism.
Thus, 9/11 has meant, directly or indirectly, a great shock, both psychologically and to our political systems. While terrorism is fought in the name of democracy, the fight has in fact led to a distinct weakening of democracy, owing to official legislation and popular angst. One of the worrying features of the 9/11 attacks is that it is hard to see their purpose beyond the perpetrators’ resentment of the West and its ways. But the West’s key features, democracy and the rule of law, have taken a far more severe battering at the hands of their defenders than by their attackers.
Two steps, above all, are needed to restore confidence in liberty within the democracies affected by the legacy of 9/11. First, we must make certain that the relevant legislation to meet the challenge of terrorism is strictly temporary. Some of today’s restrictions on habeas corpus and civil liberties have sunset clauses restricting their validity; all such rules should be re-examined by parliaments regularly.
Second, and more importantly, our leaders must seek to calm, rather than
exploit, public anxiety. The terrorists with whom we are currently at “war”
cannot win, because their dark vision will never gain broad popular legitimacy.
That is all the more reason for democrats to stand tall in defending our values
– first and foremost by acting in accordance with them.
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What's changed?
I have been monitoring radio broadcasts in Arabic language. [Hint for Kim Beazley, to be published in the national tub-o-lard: all foreign language broadcasts, but especially those in Arabic, should be approved by the authorities prior to going to air, and the transcripts in English should be put up on the web.] Couldn't understand much, except frequent mention of 'September'. So, are they promoting the party line, the prevailing truthiness, that everything has changed? We need to know, don't we?
Scott Burchill, in The Age, suggests not much has changed, in fact The war against terror is a hoax.
The powerful have erected another bogeyman to suit their purpose. Another nest of rats to be exterminated. Just one thing that has not changed.
Another is that people do not want to live under colonial rule. If the last 60 years of Indonesian history is a guide, colonised peoples resent, ferociously, the foreign occupiers of their lands. A subtle warning from Mohammad Khatami:
From the local history of colonialism, in Placing the answer before the question betrays a closed mind:
Why is that tiny sliver of written history so stirring to the native-born? Do other peoples warm to the stories of sacrifice in their own struggles to achieve independence? Are those narratives being built on, today?
One living narrative, Rolf Harris' Star Portrait this week with the late Mo Mowlam was full of beauty. Despite her avowed belief in atheism, Mo was the embodiment of humanity - tenacious in pursuit of a cause, passionate but humble, and dignified in the grip of a fatal illness. It was interesting to re-read her opposition to Blair's adherence to the policies of the USA, in The real goal is the seizure of Saudi oil:
Would our Rolf invite Tony Blair in to have his portrait painted? Sitting still for a few hours wouldn't be a problem for Tony. He's been a dangling corpse since he shopped David Kelly. Same old rule there - shoot the messenger.
According to Mick Keelty, on Four Corners (Five Years):
Is it rational for the West, especially the USA and Australia, to be seeking methods of achieving occupation and domination through remote control? Will missile-armed drones, various robots and flying squads of highly-trained super-troopers keep the natives under the thumb?
Occupied, oppressed or subjugated peoples don't want a new set of rules, just the old one about a fair shake.
Nothing against the Crocodile Hunter
Jay White, Steve seemed like a likable sort of bloke. I believe however Germaine Greer will be remembered long after Irwin has faded from the media (already finding a new target with the unfortunate demise of Peter Broch). My comments were more directed towards the mass, mock grief of Australia largely invented by the media as The Crocodile Hunter TV show was a flop here, as was his film, which doesn't take away from his sucess elswehere. It is surprising though to see the venom directed towards Greer, because she is a woman, elderly and considered a "has-been", whatever that is.
Whoever this Bin Laden character is, for a billionaire he isn't in the digital age yet and is still releasing recordings on scratchy old video tape.
It won't be until after November this year until the shit hits the fan, with the Congress elections in the US and whoever takes control all hell is going to break loose, as it finally dawns upon America that Iraq is a lost cause, as it continues to implode and most likely splinters into sections. The US will have to align itself with whichever faction attempts to control the oilfields, the only reason they are there. The most sensible thing to do, of course, would be to ask Saddam Hussein to try and unite the country again.
Eyes Right!
Gaze averted, Chris? Oh no, we hear the kettle drum.
The querulous may be wondering why Corporal John of Pozieres is rabbitting on about a settlement for the Palestinians. From Muslim world must accept Israel:
What the hell, has he lost his nerve? What was wrong with fulsome support for the destruction of southern Lebanon, and cluster bomblets? Does he really think the next generation of ragged kids want to have clean water, drainage and schools? If they do, let Hamas and Hezbollah provide them.
Well, here's a coincidence. From Blair offers support for a Palestinian coalition:
Lobbyists are three-deep outside PMs' doors already.
Overheard in a bugged mud hut in Kabul: "What a sweet victory for Rodney's Doggies! A thousand blessings on any thrashing handed out to the Pies." "Ah yes, but hubris is not a word that passes the lips of Mystic Mick. Next year, maybe. And please pass a tiny sliver of that goat cheese, Ahmed." "Mahmood, I beg to differ, and up the ante. Peter Beattie is the walking lesson in humility. While we are enjoying this splendid dried inflorescence, he has to suffer the Greens cracking 20% in South Brisbane. Not to mention the liberal policies of the rampant Family First fringe. How is Pete going to achieve balance? He'll be slaughtering the pig for a barbecue one day, and drinking gene-free clover tea the next."
Words to serve or to swerve
The hyperbole that grips the world currently is pathetically impoverished.
A "war on terror"? So far, it is a badly led and incompentently structured farce, at least in words.
Let's remind ourselves of previous attempts to devise words to convey ideas and emotiions.
"A war to end all wars", a description of the horror of WWI when a complete generation of young men disappeared in the most appalling mindless carnage. The total casualties among the various armies was 22 million (no Virginia there is no Santa Claus).
"December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy" uttered by FDR as a response to the deadly Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
"Man's inhumanity to man", Rabbie Burns moving summation of the horrors we visit upon each other century after century, made all the more poignant to "the bard" because of the vile penury to which the English ruling class subjected the Scottish peasants.
Well here is an interesting question. Who younger than 60 finds any reverberation with the anger and horror of what those words were meant to convey back when they were uttered? Who younger than 40 knows anything at all about the events leading up to and surrounding those times?. Who younger than 30 even knows of these events?
Each generation smugly believes that its share of misfortune is at the top of the misery league table that stretches back into prehistory. Here's a flash, today's troubles don't even rate a mention. We have stared down and lived through events far worse than this current situation.
In 30 or so years, "9/11" will be as distant a memory as December 7, 1941 is today; a date that not longer lives in infamy or has any meaning to any one except a few remaining US survivors.
We have been cajoled and coralled into a mindless word game where we are supposed to be concerned or fearful about the potential of a relatively small group of murderers to harm us all and encouraged to vicariously relive the horror of having your life viciously ended in fear and pain.
It is a chimera and a diversion from the real problems and hand-in-hand, the real solutions, to what we should confront. There would barely be a scintilla of support for terrorists and fanaticists if all the people of the world had a measure of the good life that the privileged enjoy, and that it includes us Oi, Oi Oi.
Herbert Hoover understood exactly what his constituency needed, "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage".
We suppress and ignore the underclass at our peril. Stupid slogans, word games and the abdication of hard-won freedoms will not save us.
I think that the overarching question is if mankind can be saved at all from its terminal stupidity and greed.
The War on Disinformation
Osama Bin Laden (Tim Osman to his CIA handlers) seems to have left a litter of blurry clues. Here's the first one that I read back then (Sept 28, 2001):
“I have already said that I am not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other human beings as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of battle.
The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology can survive.
They may be anyone, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the US itself, there are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups capable of causing large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who have been annoyed with President Bush ever since the Florida elections and who want to avenge him. ... Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from Congress and the government every year. ... They needed an enemy. ... Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked who carried out the attacks.”
[Daily Ummat (Karachi), 9/28/2001]
I dunno about you, but I am inclined to think that the local rag might be a better source of info than say, a missive found under a piece of goat's cheese in a shepherd's hut - your classic OBL "find".
It seems that we make choices based on our pre-conceived bias, with a generous amount of help from the MSM and our government.
Even the more impressionable Muslims seem to have fallen for the romantic notion of their bearded Robin Hood. For them, disbelief in OBL's prowess is a bit treasonous - what a perfect setup. Everyone wants to believe for their own reasons.
Hopalong Cassidy really existed. He could ride, sing and shoot. But did he REALLY help make the wild west a better place for settlers, little old ladies and bald-headed babies?
Likewise Mr Zarqawi, the ubiquitous unidexter of Umm Qasar - the one-legged Tarzan of Tikrit. Too bad he had to go, just as I was becoming fond of him.
So we are at it again. Fiddling around the edges, talking nonsense while the perps laugh all the way to the bank. Vast fortunes are being made while we avert our gaze. Our laws are being changed to make the world a safer place for corporate globalists.
There is only ONE undisputable fact in the 9-11 narrative - the world became a safer place for swindlers. Shining the light of truth on that con will bring the whole jumper unravelled, and our children may yet have a chance of a civilised future.
It's all about revealing the great secret which has plagued us for the last 100 years or so:
The corporate and economic necessity for WAR.
Germaine who?
Michael de Angelos: "Germaine Greer tells it like it is and is usually right no matter how inconvenient it is for the numerous politicians clambering to cash in on the unfortunate death of the Crocodile Hunter - State Funeral? - and how covenient it is for the tabloids able to whip up a hate campaign and breath life into the story. You are right though, Irwin was a self made man and Germaine Greer is a self made woman".
The supporters of this Greer woman seem to be caught up in the fact that Steve Irwin was not a "properly trained scientist", well not a real one anyway. Strange thing is, I do not remember him ever claiming to be such. Talk about building an article strawman. Perhaps Bob Brown should be judged on this basis next time he mouths a platitude about one enviromental pet issue or another?
I respect Steve Irwin because he did in life all that one can seriously be asked to do. He had a go. He, no doubt, had his faults, like us all. He did, though, put to use the assets he did have and made the most out of them. He had a family that obviously loved him, and he in turn loved them, ditto for his friends. He had a successful business that from reports allowed gainful employment for over five hundred people, giving them the chance to do something they inturn loved. He also got to do something with his life that he obviously loved. Not bad going for a person all by the tender age of 44.
Steve Irwin, if and when (depending on ones beliefs) he meets God, can honestly say I did my best. That is all any man can honestly ask of another, and I suspect that is all God would ask of a man. Doing one's best with whatever small or large talent one happens to be to be born with is something that should be respected and not torn to shreds. If the world followed this principle I am sure we would live in a much happier place.
Oh yes Ms Greer? It is obvious both her and Steve Irwin travelled in different circles. So I suspect the two would never attend the same social gatherings and likely have little in common. Though Steve Irwin was a person with the common touch (seen by his friends and associates built and KEPT over a lifetime) he was indeed a true A-lister. Steve Irwin could claim to know on a first name basis many of the world most powerful people along with many of it's most widely known. I am sure if it was his aim in life he no doubt would have been easily able to attend the most trendy and elite of social gatherings and parties. It is indeed no stretch to say his face and brand was known by literally over a billion people worldwide.
Perhaps his greatest sin was not appearing on the English version of celebrity big brother? Finding his place amongst the real power elite of opinion makers and world changers?
The New Paradigm
When I look around these days I find a social chaos that has something to do with the erosion of the milder forms of Christianity and more to do with the erosion of old economic structures. (How many jobs does it take to pay the rent? If you're under 30, the answer could be any number from 2-5, none of them full-time, health insurance either inadequate or non-existent. There are also the continual funding crisis in public education, local governments' inability to maintain and repair infractructure that made headlines for its need of repair 10 years ago, unfunded mandates from the Federal Government, such as No Child Left Behind, corporate flight from the tax-paying classes...)
The erosion of the old order is producing falling life expectancy, increasing poverty, the shredding of the social saftey-net, reduced upward mobility: all the things that have been happening for 20 years but have been spun as "greed is good" or disguised by the dot-com boom.
So we have a kind of creeping serfdom, which appears to be generational in character (but which isn't, potentially). Though the new serfs aren't "tied" to their locations they're not able to move all that readily, either. The managerial class is still mobile; those beneath are not.
With the Federal Government increasingly consumed with military exercise and expenditure (wholly-owned toy wars - only the flies really die), the increasingly staged and pageant-like nature of the government itself (the White House press secretary has replaced the President at press conferences, for example), with poverty rising around us, the view from not very far up the social ladder, the texture of the time, is of the new middle ages already arrived. My skin tells me we have been there, in the United States, for about 5 years. I would date the tipping-point at the Supreme Court decision stopping the re-count of the vote in Florida.
That's not to say that the rest of the world is in the same zeit. During Europe's Middle Ages India and China were doing quite nicely thank you in matters of clothing, food, shelter, roads.
The "new authoritarianism" has been building for nearly 40 years. Rumsfeld and Cheney were functionaries of Richard Nixon, whose own authoritarianism was aimed at protesters against the Vietnam War. (That also gave us The War on Drugs - if you can convict them of drug use, you can disenfranchise whole populations.) What prevented Nixon adn Watergate from being mere aberrations was the gradual alliance of corporate interests with the interests of the evangelical Christians. This gave us the erosion of the separation of Church and State.
(The USA PATRIOT Act was 300 pages long, in its original version. It wasn't cobbled up over one weekend. I suspect its foundations were laid by Ed Meese.)
Many of these trends are reversible. All that's required is political will. (New forms of energy - and why isn't Australia exporting solar-energy gismos and systems to every country on earth?- would produce energy, jobs, and money. Environmental restoration would put an end to unemployment for decades.)
However. The paradox is that without immediate and vigorous prosecution of policies to reverse these trands government will continue its pantomime way across the surface of our screens, and the unattended national debt will become the basis of a true tectonic shift away from democracy. Because at the same time we'll all be faced with global warming, and the dislocations that will produce will overwhelm every structure we know of.
you may be right Mike Iyvers
But the outpouring of "grief" in Australia is the biggest load of baloney perpetuated upon the Australian public by the media at it's best. Far from being an Aussie icon, Irwin's TV show was shown once on televison here to very low ratings and never repeated , a fact that seems to escaped all the reporting in our "Princess Diana" moment. However he was better known in the US and many European countries-far bigger than he was here.
Nor did I have anything against the bloke and though he was rather fun if a tad boring after the third "crikey" but I can see a Yank or a Norwegian would find him amusing but probably more because of our strange animals but it takes a Germaine Greer to prick the bubble of Australian's mass deluded fantasies and she did it quite superbly and was fairly restrained compared to Virginnia McKenna who said similar sentiments about Irwins irritating contact with animals which she considered quite detrimental to the creatures and merely showmanship.
With the following howls of outrage from assorted newspaper hacks who whipped up their readers into a frenzy, TV hosts and shock jocks like Steve Price who claimed Greer's greatest sin was that she was paid to write her article (presumably he presents his radio show and donates his fee to charity) the main conclusion drawn was that Germaine Greer was not only an ex-pat - somehow a crime in itself (and ignoring the fact she lives part-time on her rain forest Queensland property surrounded by snakes as she points out in her article which no-body bothered to read) but she was also a grumpy old hag. This is why she will will be remembered for far longer in history as the writer of The Female Eunuch over 30 years ago which had a profound impact upon the women's movement, than a tellie star who made millions from harrassing crocodiles, no matter how cuddly a bloke he was.
Germaine Greer tells it like it is and is usually right no matter how inconvenient it is for the numerous politicians clambering to cash in on the unfortunate death of the Crocodile Hunter - State Funeral? - and how covenient it is for the tabloids able to whip up a hate campaign and breath life into the story. You are right though, Irwin was a self made man and Germaine Greer is a self made woman.
one unhappy camper
You sound like one unhappy camper Michael de Angelos. Wake up and smell the roses.
Irwin wasn't "manufactured," he was the real deal, by all accounts.
A bit late
There is a sort of pompousnous to (presumably) Lord Ralf's writings which are too little and too late and stating the bleeding obvious. Is he one of the Blairite Lords who has just discovered the writing on the wall and that they have been supporting one of Britiain's great war criminals who are beginning to clamour the guy has to go?
Everything he says is correct but plenty of us were saying all this before the illegal Iraq invasion began and even before the Afghanistan War, both of which have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. Ralf Dahrendorf was strangely silent then.
Now we have whacko Bush somehow alluding to Osama what'isname being the new Adolph Hitler yet a few years ago when questioned about him whilst trumpeting the capture of Saddam Hussein, he declared he wasn't interested in Bin Laden.
None of this will touch Aussies though, they are have collapsed in collective grief over the death of the Crocodile Hunter, a national icon and hero who oddly enough, none of them thought popular enough to watch his show on TV. Naomi Robsons outraged viewers with her tasteless outfit while reporting from some reptile park and Germaine Greer has done the unthinkable and told the truth about an Australian manufactured media hero. There are advantages to living on an island - the real world doesn't intrude.