That was my comment on Guardian cif.
How long before it is moderated out?
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Much like Vronksy, I also tried joining various ‘leftist’ groups while at university. My family has a proud left tradition and the men of my family wear their draft resistance as a badge of honour. However it soon became apparent that the leftist groups were so extreme that they were both morally and strategically useless. During an introductory meeting for the most prominent of these groups they were talking about the need for an armed revolution. When I objected purely on the basis of practicalities (Only 5% of the population own guns, and they are almost exclusively farmers. Violent politics would also ensure that the general population reject them out of hand) they looked at me like I was the fool and a counter-revolutionary.
Unfortunately the hard right and the hard left share a common trait. They both believe that they can justify any violence/oppression in order to create their ‘perfect’ world. They are seemingly oblivious that their methods inherently make them as bad as those they claim to be against. I would much rather hang out with a right-wing farmer just happy to get along in life as opposed to a militant leftist who treats those that don’t agree with them like shit.
What the fuck is wrong with the UK? Why do you people think of Jews as the first enemy?
I agree will all of the previous. But the sad thing is, neither Jack Straw not Peter Hain were hard left. Hain was a Young Liberal and Straw, a moderate student leader. So in their specific cases, it’s not that they simply crossed from one authoritarianism to another. There were both on the ‘centre’ or ‘right’ of the Labour Party. They seem to have made a pact with Blair and power. It is something about the human condition, perhaps: MacBeth.
Craig Murray is mentioned in this report which has two parts.
Complicity in Torture ?” the truth Britain doesn’t want to face
Part 1
Lesley Docksey
November 23, 2010 – When Prime Minister David Cameron announced in Parliament that there would be an inquiry (chaired by Sir Peter Gibson) into the United Kingdom’s complicity in torture, two former Foreign Secretaries, Jack Straw and David Miliband, turned white. They do well to worry, but so should other former government ministers and officials given the sorry history of the UK’s continued abuse of human rights and human bodies. The promised inquiry was asked for by the Joint Human Rights Committee, when they were studying the previous government’s role in torture, but was refused. That we will have one is largely due to former Guantanamo detainees, having alleged that they had been tortured and that UK intelligence officials had known and been present at interrogations, suing the government for compensation. Their case has now been settled out of court and while the ex-detainees will receive compensation, the Government has not admitted liability and the detainees have not withdrawn their allegations…
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m72119&hd=&size=1&l=e
Complicity in Torture ?” the truth Britain doesn’t want to face
Part 2
Lesley Docksey
November 23, 2010 – During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British Armed Forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary were using the ‘five techniques’ (wall standing, hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation and food and drink deprivation) as a precursor to interrogation of suspected terrorists. Following complaints and an inquiry, Lord Chief Justice Lord Parker’s report stated that such practices were illegal under both the Geneva Conventions and domestic law. This being so, ‘no Army Directive and no Minister could lawfully or validly authorise the use of the procedures. Only Parliament can alter the law. The procedures were and are illegal.’ That same day Prime Minister Edward Heath made a statement to Parliament: ‘The Government, having reviewed the whole matter with great care and with reference to any future operations, have decided that the techniques… will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation… The statement I have made covers all future circumstances’ (my emphasis). Directives expressly prohibiting the use of the techniques, whether singly or in combination, were then issued to the security forces by the Government. And note Lord Parker’s judgment. Putting international law aside, no Minister or Army Directive can legally order the use of procedures that our own laws regard as illegal, and only Parliament has the power to make those procedures legal. It has never done so. But the abuse continued.
…
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m72121&hd=&size=1&l=e
It’s strange, to see what’s happening in my neighbourhood. The number of muslim people you see around seems to have dropped dramatically. None of my friends know why. There are more ex-soldiers, who are plainly sleeping in parks. There are more ‘mad’ people: an old man giggling to himself and performing a dancing shuffle down the high street; a giant in sunglasses pissing on a lampost at 10pm; a neatly dressed shopper clutching dozens of reeking bags full of wrappers and rubbish. It’s always been a poor area, a place on the edge; but there’s a new feeling of dislocation, of disintegration. I don’t think it’s just me.
Meanwhile the council’s budget’s being cut by 70 million. I can understand why people become militant, and I can understand that fighting for someone else is technically a nobler cause than fighting for narrow self-interest. The trouble, I think, is that most militant left-wingers tend to be poor themselves and so what begins as a fight for others can end up also a fight for self interest: hence the accompanying resentment, fear and hate. But not with everyone; not with most people, even.
Suhayl: According to a former aide Straw went wrong when he started surrounding himself with people who agreed with him. Mandelson,from the latest documentary reviews, the same. Blair, I know from another aide, ditto. Hain apparently no longer talked to people who’d known him well in the valleys. Perhaps this is what power, and Westminster, do – create such massive insecurity that only yes-men can sustain you? Disagreement is obviously key. But it’s not built into our hierarchical system. Sad because collective consensus works, in fact, and takes ages, which would also, in my view, be a good thing.
technicolour:
In my experience of left politics, most militants are from the middle class. In my country, unions generally represent the working class left, but the unions are not what I would call militant. Union members are dedicated, willing to take to the streets and commit civil disobedience, but not militant as in violent against other people or calling for armed revolution.
contd.
The torture is referred to as a ‘sorry history’. That is a very liberal description of some extremely cruel events.
Gibson is in the mire too. He has been the Intelligence Services Commissioner since 2006 so must have had knowledge of what went on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gibson_(judge)
Technicolour. Nothing ‘went wrong’ with Straw et al. Psychopaths are born as psychopaths.
Thanks for that post somebody, it clearly manifests that Governments, well, at least the civil servants behind them, should have known what to do and give directives to make it widely known in the forces.
This is the Government that says it is against torture, but wants to open the EU, not from the inside as a fully responsible member, no but by shouting from the sidelines that the biggest torture regime in Europe should join us, regardless.
Turkey has a state within a state which is linked to human trafficking, drug trafficking and smuggling in general, whether its the left PKK or ultra right Dev sol, they are both at it, consequetive PM’s have been soft on police involvement in all of the above and it is to be expected that Turkey, due to its position at the gateway to Asia, will increasee its activities, supported by Romania and Bulgaria, both poor countries having close connections with these organisations.
I hope this is not too boring for Carlisle, we do want to make peoples’ online excursions a fully satifying experience, after all, this is the future and if one cannot gain happiness and relevance from what one decide’s to be pertinent, then that is wholly unsatisfactory, we must do better…
Craig, any chance in throwing light on to the protracted sea borders between North and South Korea, it seems to be a mess of islands, how possibly can one ensure that these borders are not violated, if they are so complicated?
Another very sour point, any plans to lead the demonstration of South eastern railway users who are facing a 6%plus rise in fares?
I mean such swift connection, with modern fast trains, ehhh, bumblin’ along after leaving Ashford on the rikety old track subject to tractors getting stuck on level crossings.
Commuters must be livid, this will drive people back into cars, they had enough of being lambasted as cash cows.
I call this making Greens pay whilst havin’ a laugh.
It depends what you define as, ‘militancy’. The word, ‘militant’ does not necessarily imply ‘military’ tactics, violence or armed struggle and might include civil disobedience, picketing, loud demos, etc. What CheebaCow is referring to, I think, is ideologically extreme, usually well-educated, middle-class individuals/small organisations who often tend to be disconnected from working-class movements and who often tend to ‘split’ and then ‘split’ again over minor intellectual disagreements often to do ultimately with the different streams that flowed from the Russian/ Chinese Revolutions.
Some of these people, though, are connected with actual struggle and one wouldn’t apply the label, ‘loony left’ to everyone in that broad field.
CheebaCow: interesting, and good to define ‘militant’: i was (lazily) using it to describe a general attitude rather than a call for violence. I don’t know anyone, of any class, advocating armed revolution; though I’m sure a tiny percentage of people of all ilks fantasise about it.
Also, it varies in different regions. In parts of India, for example, ‘communists’ are in power and are very different from those who were in power in the USSR, for example. In India many of these people/organisations do a lot of good, esp. in the face of the neoliberal economic onslaught. Kerala is the archetypal example, but there are many others. Of course, corruption knows no boundaries either, but that too is part of the human condition!
technicolour – great minds think alike, eh what?
Suhayl:
Yep, that’s the type I was referring to, although I would use quotations for “well educated”. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing and all….. The scary part being that these groups ARE the left in Australian universities (although the Greens may have gained in prominence since I attended). A more moderate left doesn’t seem to exist. It’s little wonder that left politics are failing to gain traction with younger people. Thank god for unions.
somebody: also met someone Straw used to babysit for when he (Straw) was 16 and the man, now a single father on a sink estate, was a small kid. he said straw was alright then too. maybe straw was just concealing psychopathic tendencies, but it didn’t sound like it.
Cheebacow: reminds me of some twit of a university lecturer who managed to slime the last G20 protests by announcing publicly before they started that ‘bankers would be hanging from lamp posts’. Of course it played straight into the hands of the media and he became a major distraction in the run up. And interestingly, none of the main protest groups he claimed to be speaking for had heard of him.
(wiki) “Nor is it the case that a militant person must always use a violent tactic or tactics in pursuit of an aim, or that s/he unilaterally ‘believes in violence’ (in the pejorative sense) or is ‘a violent person’. A militant in fact usually uses a range of tactics, including peaceful or semi-peaceful ones, when trying to achieve an end. The main difference between a militant and a non-militant is the militant’s willingness to actively use violence when s/he considers it necessary.”
our governments are the militants.
ps tho to be fair it sounds as though the lecturer may have been indulging in a bit of street theatre which went wrong.
Something that has always bothered me is Weber’s uncomfortably convincing definition of the state as an entity with a monopoly on violence over a territory. I worry that our present problems cannot be resolved unless that monopoly is thrown into doubt, i.e. for where we want to go, there may be no peaceful path.
I’m sure that Straw, Hain, etc. would be fine on a personal level. Ian Paisley – so I hear – was a very helpful constituency MP for both Catholics and Protestants.
I have learned that an individual’s polictical orientation tends to have very little to do with their personal qualities.
Also, while a person’s core personality (in the absence of organic brain damage) does not change, what we are at 16 or 25 is not what we become by 50. That can be good, or it can be bad, depending, or it can be both simultaneously.
I agree that the distortion of Westminster itself must engender some degree of psychological isolation, and government ministry even more so.
But these are pickled politicians and campaigners, as well as highly educated and intelligent individuals. Robin Cook resigned over a point of principle. Clare Short did as well (though too late – and this illustrates how even a strong-willed, liberatory and clever person can make bad judgements which everyone else at the time can see are bad). Straw and Hain, and others, did not resign and became central to the policy. That was their Rubicon. That, surely, was their ‘MacBeth Moment’. As the ‘War on Whatsit’ progressed, they were implicated ever more deeply.
Good people do terrible things, is the maxim. Most people who do terrible things are ‘good’ people.
Actually, I sensed that Straw had ‘gone bad’ when he refused to hand Pinochet over to the Spanish judge and let him use the ‘Ernest Saunders’ defence and go free. That was a harbinger of what was to come.
Furthermore, what Greenpeace, etc. does, or those people who smashed-up a multi-million pound fighter jet on its runway, is militant and violent agaisnt property but not against people. That is a crucial difference, of course, though in the context of the late 1960s/ early 1970s, that proved a ‘slippery slope’ for the likes of the RAF (Red Army Faction, not Royal Air Force!) et al. It can also lead to unforseen events. Nonetheless, there is a place for carefully modulated direct action.
Have you heard that Gove (my nasty thought – how I would love to stitch his lips together!) wants to put the psychopaths in charge of classes of schoolchildren and will fund their PGCE certificates..?
‘Anyone who wears a uniform is courageous and will be able to impart the discipline and values that are needed for our children’ etc etc
I see he has been saying this for years. Guthrie here as well.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7245122.stm
yes, suhayl. also interesting that people who attempted to smash up jets etc in the interests of preventing a greater crime have been acquitted.
War is a drug ..
Veteran’s essay on killing.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-11-21/news/bs-md-veteran-letter-20101121_1_addictions-soldiers-train
techni:
Thankfully ALL my lecturers were brilliant. I didn’t necessarily agree with them all, but all of them were genuine in their passion for knowledge and debated honestly.
Vronky:
I think you may be right. However I would preface your thoughts by saying that in today’s political climate it would be necessary to first build a mass non-violent movement that was seen to have tried all peaceful methods first. Otherwise a violent movement would be too easily painted as crazy and illegitimate, which would be the case anyway.
Suhayl:
The term ‘violence against property’ leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I feel it’s used to blur a clear moral difference between violence against people and the destruction of inanimate objects. Although I know that wasn’t your intention. I think it’s also useful to make a clear distinction between methods used to destroy property. Smashing stuff with a hammer or 2×4 is vastly different to using explosives.
You also raise a valid point about a slippery slope. The domestic US group the Symbionese Liberation Army is also a good example.
cheer for the students: see BBC news – they’re out everywhere.
police having quite a hard time in Westminster – BBC keep going on about ‘massive policing’ but they seem to have just stuck a few poor bods on the frontline and left them to it.
Suhayl: “Most people who do terrible things are ‘good’ people”.
Yes. We speculate a lot about who the “bad guys” are, but the structure of a society matters more than the personalities of the individuals. It’s easy to describe, say, Karimov as “evil”, but I guess that at least 20% of the male population would behave much the same in Karimov’s circumstances.
A state or a corporation is like an organism, and its members are like the organism’s cells. Each member (cell) carries the same potentialities (DNA), but the society (organism) elicits or suppresses the members’ behaviours in such fashion as to maintain the structure. This analogy is far from perfect, but I think it has some validity. Macrocosm dominates microcosm.
Power is terribly addictive if the holder uses selfishly the advantages that it offers; the power cannot be relinquished whilst retaining the advantages.
If power has been used very unfairly, it cannot be relinquished without risk to the holder’s life, from retribution. An individual can inherit such a problem, for instance, by being promoted to the position vacated by an unfair ruler.
I’m not trying to be an apologist here. What I’m saying is that if we want to change things, we should work out what is keeping things the same, and then map out a path of least resistance to the way we’d like things to be.
And if you can devise a path of *negative* resistance, you get a Gold Star!