Two and a half months on from the general election, the Labour Party is in the middle of a leadership election. The shock of the leadership election has been the surge of grassroots support for Jeremy Corbyn, the candidate who had been supported by a handful of MPs as a sop the traditional left. Originally backed by MPs to promote the notion of the leadership election being about a real choice of values and ideas, it looks to have possibly turned around and bit those "useful idiot" MPs on the behind. He may actually, god forbid, win the vote.
Corbyn is an unlikely-looking insurgent leader, even to his own supporters. He's been an MP since 1983, as one of the "suicide note" intake, and his politics look like old-fashioned '70s socialism. Bearded, over sixty, and dressed like a Marxist academic, he is the antithesis to the modern idea of the "professional politician". He also has a record as being a perpetual rebel during the Blair government. "New Labour" he ain't.
These characteristics are somewhat reminiscent of another "old Labour" politician who was (to Blair and his allies) inexplicably popular: Ken Livingstone. Like Ken, Corbyn speaks his mind, and speaks from the heart. He does not equivocate. He does not mind making enemies. He does not mind appearing "controversial". He appears to have the same energy and sense of purpose that Ken was blessed with so that, compared to the other candidates, he is a breath of fresh air (albeit circa 1983). He makes "Red Ed" Miliband seem positively Blairite by comparison.
The "change" candidate
Speaking of Ed Miliband, some people blame Ed for the rise of Corbyn. The argument is that, because Ed was so keen to distance himself from Blair, it meant that those who joined the party post 2010 were drawn to Ed's anti-Blairite message. In the space of a few years, the makeup of Labour's grassroots had gone from being Blairite-supporting, to being anti-austerity Blair-haters. Miliband had thought that the "political centre" had moved left with the onset of austerity, but the 2015 election proved that, if anything, it had moved to the right. The rise of fads such as "Milifandom" have shown that while Labour has much greater appeal to the younger voter, it has likewise much less appeal to people who actually are more likely to vote. This is something that George Osborne, the Tories' master tactician, figured out a while ago.
This tactical error of judgement has led to the fundamental reshaping of the party's grassroots, in a way that makes it more difficult for a "neo-Blairite" candidate to succeed in the leadership election. While Corbyn has the backing of many unions, and a significant chunk of the grassroots, he also has another unlikely supporter from another party: David Cameron. It was reported recently that in parliament, Cameron took Corbyn to one side to give him a kind of "pep talk". He reminded Corbyn that like him, in 2005 Cameron was initially thought of as an outsider with little chance of becoming leader, but he marked himself as the "change candidate", who offered something different. It was unreported what Corbyn's reaction was to Cameron's cheeky little interjection. Its purpose can only been to cause greater mischief.
Corbyn as the "change" candidate seems like a bad joke, given the man's age, but this is also a symptom of the wider context. Further afield, the rise of SYRIZA in Greece, and "Podemos" in Spain, seem to act as beacons for those in the Labour grassroots who would believe that the impossible is possible in the UK. Also, as the grassroots under Ed Miliband have been replenished with a batch of younger members. this means there are also a whole cohort of activists who have no memory of life before Blair. It is scary to realise that there are Labour members now who were only two years old when Blair became Prime Minister in 1997. Because of this, they have no memory of the splits in the party in the eighties (which Corbyn would have played a part of); splits that saw the Labour party in opposition for eighteen years. Indeed, anyone under the age of thirty would have no direct memory of life under Thatcher and Labour's dark years; to them, it would be a part of folk lore that their parents might have talked about.
Political schizophrenia
Of course, the biggest inspiration for Labour's potential lurch to the left lies north of the border. The SNP has thrived not because it is nationalistic, but because its sense of identity is crystal-clear to its supporters (even if they are being mislead). Conversely, the Scottish Labour party has died because of its lack of coherent identity, plus a combination of complacency and poor management over many years. 2015 was simply the culmination and inevitable result of that. Furthermore, the SNP has benefitted from having two successive leaders blessed with intelligence and charisma. By comparison, the Labour party in Scotland has been ran by second-rate (even third-rate) party hacks, who were then dependent on having major decisions approved by the political heavyweights in Westminster. It was as bad as anything seen in the internal politics of Soviet Russia.
Staying on the idea of identity politics, the situation in the Labour party in general - let alone in Scotland - is pretty dire. While Jeremy Corbyn's "identity politics" is clear, the other three candidates offer "more of the same", albeit in different doses.
Of those, Liz Kendall is the most "neo-Blairite", who seems to most grasp the scale of the job facing the party, and the scale of the changes needed (and realities faced) before it can stand a chance of winning an election any time soon. The problem is that the starkness of her message, and its similarity to the politics of Blair, is deeply off-putting to the "Milifandom"-loving grassroots. Right now, many of them seek succour in the righteousness of opposition. This is why Corbyn message is so appealing, like the barman pouring you another of your favourite tipple after the acrimonious break-up. Corbyn's politics does nothing to help the party get back into government; it simply helps the party to better understand the face that it sees in the mirror. If the party sees its self-inflicted wounds as scars of pride, that is where the real problems start. Seen in this way, Corbyn becoming leader wouldn't even be the nadir: that would only be achieved with an even more cataclysmic defeat in 2020. It would only be after reaching that nadir, could the "demons" in the Labour party finally be purged.
Corbyn is not yet favourite to win. That honour goes to Andy Burnham, who is the most middling of the candidates. While a likable man, he and Yvette Cooper, the last of the four candidates, are former ministers who seem to be treading water politically. They are competent politicians, but lack any obvious charisma or drive that gives any real hope of the Labour party being anything other than a second-rate oppostion party for years to come. As long as Labour is led by people with no clear idea where to take the party or who the party stands for, the electorate will look at them with scepticism.
Politics is marked out by the personalities that dominate it. Thatcher dominated the eighties; the dull interregnum of Major's premiership was quickly overshadowed by the drive of Tony Blair, who went on to dominate British politics for ten years. The Tories struggled with Blair's drive until Cameron came along with the intention of matching it, which then saw him into Downing Street in 2010, by which time Labour's personalities were a fading force. While Blair and Brown dominated the last Labour administration, setting the marker for everyone else, Cameron and Osborne have done the same since then.
This is why of the four candidates for the leadership, Liz Kendall, as a newly-elected MP, offers the most legitimate claim as a real "change" candidate. Dan Jarvis, who was a name mentioned early on but quickly dismissed calls to stand, is another person of note; alas, like Alan Johnson before him, he has the personality but (for whatever reason) lacks the willpower to take on the mantle.
What is certain is that Labour face a task even more challenging than after the 1983 election. Faced with a war on several political fronts, the rise of multi-party politics has landed a hammer-blow to the long-term prospects of the Labour Party. Like their sister parties PASOK in Greece and PSOE in Spain, they face a long, hard slog. By 2020, no-one can even be sure what the UK will look like.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Thursday, July 23, 2015
George Osborne: the master tactician
Since the "omnishambles" of the 2012 budget, Osborne has become a master of using them for ruthlessly-efficient political purposes. From the "Wonga budget" of 2013, to the even more cynically-minded budget of last year, Osborne demonstrates repeatedly how he uses his control of the nation's economy to mastermind the control of the allegiance of the key segments of society he needs to retain power. This is both a complement and a damnation. It has nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with power. As the author wrote previously, Gideon Osborne is the "master of the dark arts" - the political Lord Voldemort of Westminster, with his hand behind every key decision made in government, relishing in his notoriety.
Since the (unexpected) Conservative victory in the election, it has given Osborne more freedom than had been planned for. It also made the severe swathe of cuts predicted before the election more difficult to administer, with no LibDems there to take the credit for making the cuts more politically-viable (and saving the Conservatives' frugal insanity from themselves). So what would he do?
The Machiavellian trickster
In many respects. Osborne is a terrible economist. It's now long-forgotten that Osborne's original plan when arriving at the Treasury in 2010 was to cut the deficit in one parliament. In the election campaign of that year, he opposed Alastair Darling's plan of doing the same over the period of two parliaments. Then, after two years of following his own plan and seeing that the economy was going from bad to worse, Osborne then decided to follow Darling's plan after all, and carry on as if nothing had changed. The Conservatives had spent their time in government rubbishing Labour and using snappy (if factually inaccurate) soundbites ("don't hand back the keys to the guys who crashed the car"; "paying down the debt that Labout racked up" etc. etc.). So Labour were left on the defensive and had no time to regroup and attack Osborne's blatant, massive policy U-turn.
This theme has continued through Osborne's tenure: whenever Labour came within a sniff of seriously damaging the government, Osborne was able to deflect attention elsewhere. While austerity has been the theme of the government, Osborne has implemented it in such a disproportionate and inconsistent way that it is hard to know where to see a common theme or economic purpose. While some departments face cuts of 40%, the largest outlays of all - pensions, the NHS. and education - are hardly affected at all in real terms. Likewise. while Osborne originally intended before election to have most of the cuts achieved within the first two years of this parliament, now they will be stretched out longer, to just shy of the next election, lessening the appearance of the impact. It is as clear as day to see that the real purpose of this strategy is to smooth things for "the succession", and the expected period of grace before the 2020 election that Cameron would give his successor (i.e. Osborne) to settle in.
Osborne is really enjoying himself these days, as he twists the knife into the open wound that is the post-election Labour party. With the benefit of hindsight, his electoral strategy looks to have been "destroy the Labour party, then steal their best ideas". Before the election, the Conservatives rubbished many of Labour's ideas as left-wing nonsense. Now, Osborne takes some of them as his own, such as the introduction of the "living wage". Paid for by the abolition of tax credits for many families, this is (according to the IFS) nothing less than an enormous fiddle, and one where the sums do not add up, leaving the working poor massively out of pocket. But again, Osborne the trickster has created another illusion, and one for the Labour party to work themselves into knots over.
Like the Conservative Party he represents, Osborne has few real principles that can't be sacrificed if it will help retain power. This is why he has been at times so hard to pin down in terms of real political consistency While the Conservative Party represents the establishment, it will bend over backwards and back to front to defends its self-interest. Osborne is the perfect example of this. What matters is what works for the Conservatives: if that means calling a Labour policy "Marxist" one month, then adopting it themselves the next, so be it. This is what keeps Labour on the back foot, always wondering where the next "trap" will come from. This is what makes Osborne a master at the political dark arts, even within his own party.
Divide and rule
So now the Machiavellian trickster models himself as the "workers' champion". The claim that the Conservatives are the true "workers' party" is a bold one, which requires some expansion. This goes back to another of Osborne's tactics: divide and rule.
The chancellor coined the expression "strivers versus skivers" a few years ago, as a way of explaining the economy. This is, in reality, a very old right-wing theme, where the "earners" are being used to support the "loafers" in society. It has simply been updated using 21st century terminology: it is the classic politics of Ayn Rand and her perspective of individualism and morality.
But is it a con, of course. Dividing the working poor against the unemployed poor helps neither: both are poor, for different reasons. This is simply a political tactic. And in the election, it worked.
Also, Osborne recognises who is most likely to vote at elections, and gears his economic and electoral strategy (in reality, the same thing) around them. In the UK, the older you are, the more likely you are to vote (and also, vote Conservative). It is for this reason why pensions are protected (triple-locked) and why the "help-to-buy" scheme is expanded, yet while there is no control applied to property prices, resulting in year-on-year the increasing unaffordability of housing.
But also it is the reason why tuition fees are extended (to fatten the budgets of the universities); why support for young people is cut back; and why there is no help to give young people genuine skills (a low-skill economy is also a low-wage economy i.e. better for employers). The "recovery" may not be benefitting those under thirty at all, but when they don't vote, who cares what they think? Fundamentally, this is the cynical calculation at the back of Osborne's mind.
Meanwhile, the Labour party is caught in a "triangulation" trap, where it doesn't know where to look to get its lost voters. Seen objectively, Osborne is a terrible economist, storing up problems that will only get worse with time: the low-skill nature of the economy post-2008; the housing crisis; increasingly unaffordable pensions etc. etc.
But Osborne seems to have little regard for this: his focus is only on "the prize"...
Since the (unexpected) Conservative victory in the election, it has given Osborne more freedom than had been planned for. It also made the severe swathe of cuts predicted before the election more difficult to administer, with no LibDems there to take the credit for making the cuts more politically-viable (and saving the Conservatives' frugal insanity from themselves). So what would he do?
The Machiavellian trickster
In many respects. Osborne is a terrible economist. It's now long-forgotten that Osborne's original plan when arriving at the Treasury in 2010 was to cut the deficit in one parliament. In the election campaign of that year, he opposed Alastair Darling's plan of doing the same over the period of two parliaments. Then, after two years of following his own plan and seeing that the economy was going from bad to worse, Osborne then decided to follow Darling's plan after all, and carry on as if nothing had changed. The Conservatives had spent their time in government rubbishing Labour and using snappy (if factually inaccurate) soundbites ("don't hand back the keys to the guys who crashed the car"; "paying down the debt that Labout racked up" etc. etc.). So Labour were left on the defensive and had no time to regroup and attack Osborne's blatant, massive policy U-turn.
This theme has continued through Osborne's tenure: whenever Labour came within a sniff of seriously damaging the government, Osborne was able to deflect attention elsewhere. While austerity has been the theme of the government, Osborne has implemented it in such a disproportionate and inconsistent way that it is hard to know where to see a common theme or economic purpose. While some departments face cuts of 40%, the largest outlays of all - pensions, the NHS. and education - are hardly affected at all in real terms. Likewise. while Osborne originally intended before election to have most of the cuts achieved within the first two years of this parliament, now they will be stretched out longer, to just shy of the next election, lessening the appearance of the impact. It is as clear as day to see that the real purpose of this strategy is to smooth things for "the succession", and the expected period of grace before the 2020 election that Cameron would give his successor (i.e. Osborne) to settle in.
Osborne is really enjoying himself these days, as he twists the knife into the open wound that is the post-election Labour party. With the benefit of hindsight, his electoral strategy looks to have been "destroy the Labour party, then steal their best ideas". Before the election, the Conservatives rubbished many of Labour's ideas as left-wing nonsense. Now, Osborne takes some of them as his own, such as the introduction of the "living wage". Paid for by the abolition of tax credits for many families, this is (according to the IFS) nothing less than an enormous fiddle, and one where the sums do not add up, leaving the working poor massively out of pocket. But again, Osborne the trickster has created another illusion, and one for the Labour party to work themselves into knots over.
Like the Conservative Party he represents, Osborne has few real principles that can't be sacrificed if it will help retain power. This is why he has been at times so hard to pin down in terms of real political consistency While the Conservative Party represents the establishment, it will bend over backwards and back to front to defends its self-interest. Osborne is the perfect example of this. What matters is what works for the Conservatives: if that means calling a Labour policy "Marxist" one month, then adopting it themselves the next, so be it. This is what keeps Labour on the back foot, always wondering where the next "trap" will come from. This is what makes Osborne a master at the political dark arts, even within his own party.
Divide and rule
So now the Machiavellian trickster models himself as the "workers' champion". The claim that the Conservatives are the true "workers' party" is a bold one, which requires some expansion. This goes back to another of Osborne's tactics: divide and rule.
The chancellor coined the expression "strivers versus skivers" a few years ago, as a way of explaining the economy. This is, in reality, a very old right-wing theme, where the "earners" are being used to support the "loafers" in society. It has simply been updated using 21st century terminology: it is the classic politics of Ayn Rand and her perspective of individualism and morality.
But is it a con, of course. Dividing the working poor against the unemployed poor helps neither: both are poor, for different reasons. This is simply a political tactic. And in the election, it worked.
Also, Osborne recognises who is most likely to vote at elections, and gears his economic and electoral strategy (in reality, the same thing) around them. In the UK, the older you are, the more likely you are to vote (and also, vote Conservative). It is for this reason why pensions are protected (triple-locked) and why the "help-to-buy" scheme is expanded, yet while there is no control applied to property prices, resulting in year-on-year the increasing unaffordability of housing.
But also it is the reason why tuition fees are extended (to fatten the budgets of the universities); why support for young people is cut back; and why there is no help to give young people genuine skills (a low-skill economy is also a low-wage economy i.e. better for employers). The "recovery" may not be benefitting those under thirty at all, but when they don't vote, who cares what they think? Fundamentally, this is the cynical calculation at the back of Osborne's mind.
Meanwhile, the Labour party is caught in a "triangulation" trap, where it doesn't know where to look to get its lost voters. Seen objectively, Osborne is a terrible economist, storing up problems that will only get worse with time: the low-skill nature of the economy post-2008; the housing crisis; increasingly unaffordable pensions etc. etc.
But Osborne seems to have little regard for this: his focus is only on "the prize"...
Monday, July 20, 2015
The Queen's Nazi salute: what it tells us about the establishment
The leaking of private royal footage from the early 1930s has shown the then seven-year-old Elizabeth Windsor prompted to give a Nazi salute with her mother and the future King Edward, her uncle.
Criticism of the actions of a seven-year-old girl seems silly and nonsensical. What the footage does show however, is the private behaviour of the elders of the royal family. It was well-known at the time that a wide number of people in the royal family and the establishment in general, were sympathetic to the Nazi regime and its ideas. The future King Edward was the most high-profile member of the royal family to be openly supportive of the Nazi regime, even during the war and afterwards. For this reason, if he had remained as the monarch at the outbreak of war, the UK would surely have faced a constitutional crisis unlike anything it had ever seen; the actual "abdication crisis" would have felt like a walk in the park by comparison.
Further revelations have revealed (or more exactly, been re-told) that not only were many of the future Queens' relatives sympathetic to the Nazis, but her future husband's family were, in anything, even more interlinked with Hitler's party. Due to his family's German roots, Prince Philip's sisters were married to Nazi officers at the time. So while there may be the view that the UK had "dodged a bullet" by the abdication of King Edward, Philip's Nazi links through his family simply looked to have swapped one imbroglio for another.
In reality, the onset of war changed everything, and the vast majority of those in the royal family (on both Elizabeth's and Philip's sides) distanced themselves very quickly from anything to do with the Nazis. Philip's sisters, of course, could do nothing about being married to Nazis. This was something they had to live with for the rest of their lives. But the pre-war links to the Nazis and the British establishment are something that now look like very uncomfortable reminders of a different time.
Britain and Germany: "best frenemies"?
Large parts of the British establishment became fascinated by the Nazis during their rise to power. Like the higher echelons of the then British Empire, the Nazis were fiercely anti-Communist, saw strikers as a Third Column for Stalin, and were instinctively anti-Semitic. What's often forgotten is that many of the Bolshevik elite were themselves Jews, and the "internationalist" nature of communism was partially what drew some Jewish intellectuals to the Bolshevik cause. For some Jews who did not have a real nation to call their own, Communism fitted the bill. For the same reason, this was why this was seen by some as a mortal threat to the "established order" around the world at the time: "Godless" Communism was therefore a "Jewish conspiracy" at world domination. At the time of Hitler's rise to power, plenty of the great and the good in the UK and the USA saw the Nazis as, at least, a "necessary evil"; others, as we have seen with the future King Edward, actively supported their ideas.
This "moral support" with the British establishment may not only have come about through the "shared goal" of aggressively fighting Communism, but also through a sense of injustice inflicted on the "sister country". Britain's royal family is of German origin, with many of its members married to members of the (former) German royal family in the years after the First World War.
The schism that occurred between Britain and German relations in the year immediately prior to the First World war was down to a variety of reasons. Up to the early 1890s, relations were very friendly, not least because of the extremely close family ties (Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria's nephew - more on his personality here). It was the poor choices that the Kaiser and his advisers made in foreign policy after this point that led to the collapse in good relations with the British government; in that sense, Germany and Britain became "best frenemies" in those last, fateful years before the war.
In the aftermath of the war and the punishing terms of the Treaty of Versailles, there were probably many in the British establishment that must have felt pity for what went wrong with Germany. So by the time of the Nazi's rise to power, those same people would have felt relief that the country was back on the road to recovery that it should never have been forced to take. Whatever misgivings they might have had about the Nazi's methods of this "recovery" would probably have either been put at the back of their minds or dismissed as Communist propaganda.
Seen in this way, the royal family's distancing from the Nazis as the march to war got ever louder by the end of the 1930s would probably have re-ignited the same sense of disillusionment that the British royal family must have felt at the outbreak of the First World War. Germany and Britain had become "best frenemies" once again. The "love-in" that Germany and Britain's establishment once shared had turned into a "mutual loathing" - for a second time.
Controlling "assets"
Apart from the historical context, the establishment's reaction to the publishing of these "revelations" is perhaps more telling than the revelations themselves. The palace has become highly-defensive about the nature of the footage revealed, and is highly-protective of the royal's privacy, for their past private behavior and actions as much as currently.
As the adage goes "information is power". The author recently discussed how technological advances have allowed government the "control of information" in ways never before possible. These days, the "establishment", in the guise of the security services, has the capability to know almost everything that is happening. At the very least, this allows them to have a very good idea about where "threats" may come from.
The phrase "national security" is used a lot by the government to justify its mass surveillance: they cite the now "unpredictability" of the world and the "new techniques" that dangerous groups and individuals pose.
But "security" has a double meaning in reality: officially, it means the security of the nation-state (and by extension, its citizens); unofficially, it also means the security of the government (and its assets).
The reaction that Buckingham Palace has had to the release of the "damaging" footage is the same the reaction that the British government had when Edward Snowden revealed the way that GCHQ work with the NSA to make mass collection of people's communications. The palace sought to punish the leaker of the "damaging" footage, discredit the implications of the footage, and to strongly defend the head of state's right to "privacy" (this last point is an odd stance to take, which we'll look at more in a moment).
When the government discovered "The Guardaan" newspaper had information disclosing how it used mass surveillance, its reaction was to have the newspaper destroy it - which it did under government supervision, even after being told there were other copies outside the UK the government could do nothing about. Later, it used anti-terror laws to arrest the Brazilian partner of a "Guardian" freelancer who was in transit at Heathrow airport, and confiscated his laptop to try and find out what information the "Guardian" had on them. Meanwhile, it strongly discouraged other newspapers from writing any negative coverage about the whole issue.
There's the old saying that you only really know someone when they're really tested. The same can be said of governments and institutions. When tested (using the examples above of Buckingham Palace and the UK government), the establishment's instinct has been shown to be authoritarian and secretive. It behaves so even when it is probably against its longer-term interests. While on the surface the establishment makes a show of respecting "democracy", "oversight" and "freedom of speech", when the chips are down, these ideas are swiftly disregarded.
As seen earlier, the British government gave itself some awful press for the sake of pointlessly destroying a newspaper's computers, and pointlessly (and almost certainly illegally) arresting and detaining a foreigner because they wanted to see what was in his computer and flash drives. Buckingham Palace protects the royal families "privacy" and longer-term legacy with fearsome possessiveness. Some royal experts even argue that it would be better for the royals if more private correspondence was made public, to show that the royal family is, indeed, just a fairly average family in many ways. There have been some good people and bad people in it; people make mistakes and do foolish and horrible things from time to time. This is normal. But by their instinct of wanting to keep many things private, it simply feeds the conspiracy theorists that the royals have a host of "skeletons in the cupboard"
Information is an "asset" for governments; outside information is precious to obtain; inside information is even more precious to keep hold of. Unfortunately, this is also the same thinking used by authoritarian regimes around the world. The establishment, by following this nature, has done itself no favours over the years. It is due to this climate of secrecy that the child abuse scandal has been so damaging. Bad people swarm to a "climate of secrecy" like moths to a flame, for they know they will be protected at all costs, no matter what they do. This is innate, corrupting power of "the establishment": it is corrupt because there is no accountability. If one card falls, they all fall: this is the self-justifying logic of the establishment.
It explains by the infamous MP Cyril Smith was never prosecuted (because of who he knew), and also why Jimmy Savile got away with his behaviour for decades (because of who he was).
Criticism of the actions of a seven-year-old girl seems silly and nonsensical. What the footage does show however, is the private behaviour of the elders of the royal family. It was well-known at the time that a wide number of people in the royal family and the establishment in general, were sympathetic to the Nazi regime and its ideas. The future King Edward was the most high-profile member of the royal family to be openly supportive of the Nazi regime, even during the war and afterwards. For this reason, if he had remained as the monarch at the outbreak of war, the UK would surely have faced a constitutional crisis unlike anything it had ever seen; the actual "abdication crisis" would have felt like a walk in the park by comparison.
Further revelations have revealed (or more exactly, been re-told) that not only were many of the future Queens' relatives sympathetic to the Nazis, but her future husband's family were, in anything, even more interlinked with Hitler's party. Due to his family's German roots, Prince Philip's sisters were married to Nazi officers at the time. So while there may be the view that the UK had "dodged a bullet" by the abdication of King Edward, Philip's Nazi links through his family simply looked to have swapped one imbroglio for another.
In reality, the onset of war changed everything, and the vast majority of those in the royal family (on both Elizabeth's and Philip's sides) distanced themselves very quickly from anything to do with the Nazis. Philip's sisters, of course, could do nothing about being married to Nazis. This was something they had to live with for the rest of their lives. But the pre-war links to the Nazis and the British establishment are something that now look like very uncomfortable reminders of a different time.
Britain and Germany: "best frenemies"?
Large parts of the British establishment became fascinated by the Nazis during their rise to power. Like the higher echelons of the then British Empire, the Nazis were fiercely anti-Communist, saw strikers as a Third Column for Stalin, and were instinctively anti-Semitic. What's often forgotten is that many of the Bolshevik elite were themselves Jews, and the "internationalist" nature of communism was partially what drew some Jewish intellectuals to the Bolshevik cause. For some Jews who did not have a real nation to call their own, Communism fitted the bill. For the same reason, this was why this was seen by some as a mortal threat to the "established order" around the world at the time: "Godless" Communism was therefore a "Jewish conspiracy" at world domination. At the time of Hitler's rise to power, plenty of the great and the good in the UK and the USA saw the Nazis as, at least, a "necessary evil"; others, as we have seen with the future King Edward, actively supported their ideas.
This "moral support" with the British establishment may not only have come about through the "shared goal" of aggressively fighting Communism, but also through a sense of injustice inflicted on the "sister country". Britain's royal family is of German origin, with many of its members married to members of the (former) German royal family in the years after the First World War.
The schism that occurred between Britain and German relations in the year immediately prior to the First World war was down to a variety of reasons. Up to the early 1890s, relations were very friendly, not least because of the extremely close family ties (Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria's nephew - more on his personality here). It was the poor choices that the Kaiser and his advisers made in foreign policy after this point that led to the collapse in good relations with the British government; in that sense, Germany and Britain became "best frenemies" in those last, fateful years before the war.
In the aftermath of the war and the punishing terms of the Treaty of Versailles, there were probably many in the British establishment that must have felt pity for what went wrong with Germany. So by the time of the Nazi's rise to power, those same people would have felt relief that the country was back on the road to recovery that it should never have been forced to take. Whatever misgivings they might have had about the Nazi's methods of this "recovery" would probably have either been put at the back of their minds or dismissed as Communist propaganda.
Seen in this way, the royal family's distancing from the Nazis as the march to war got ever louder by the end of the 1930s would probably have re-ignited the same sense of disillusionment that the British royal family must have felt at the outbreak of the First World War. Germany and Britain had become "best frenemies" once again. The "love-in" that Germany and Britain's establishment once shared had turned into a "mutual loathing" - for a second time.
Controlling "assets"
Apart from the historical context, the establishment's reaction to the publishing of these "revelations" is perhaps more telling than the revelations themselves. The palace has become highly-defensive about the nature of the footage revealed, and is highly-protective of the royal's privacy, for their past private behavior and actions as much as currently.
As the adage goes "information is power". The author recently discussed how technological advances have allowed government the "control of information" in ways never before possible. These days, the "establishment", in the guise of the security services, has the capability to know almost everything that is happening. At the very least, this allows them to have a very good idea about where "threats" may come from.
The phrase "national security" is used a lot by the government to justify its mass surveillance: they cite the now "unpredictability" of the world and the "new techniques" that dangerous groups and individuals pose.
But "security" has a double meaning in reality: officially, it means the security of the nation-state (and by extension, its citizens); unofficially, it also means the security of the government (and its assets).
The reaction that Buckingham Palace has had to the release of the "damaging" footage is the same the reaction that the British government had when Edward Snowden revealed the way that GCHQ work with the NSA to make mass collection of people's communications. The palace sought to punish the leaker of the "damaging" footage, discredit the implications of the footage, and to strongly defend the head of state's right to "privacy" (this last point is an odd stance to take, which we'll look at more in a moment).
When the government discovered "The Guardaan" newspaper had information disclosing how it used mass surveillance, its reaction was to have the newspaper destroy it - which it did under government supervision, even after being told there were other copies outside the UK the government could do nothing about. Later, it used anti-terror laws to arrest the Brazilian partner of a "Guardian" freelancer who was in transit at Heathrow airport, and confiscated his laptop to try and find out what information the "Guardian" had on them. Meanwhile, it strongly discouraged other newspapers from writing any negative coverage about the whole issue.
There's the old saying that you only really know someone when they're really tested. The same can be said of governments and institutions. When tested (using the examples above of Buckingham Palace and the UK government), the establishment's instinct has been shown to be authoritarian and secretive. It behaves so even when it is probably against its longer-term interests. While on the surface the establishment makes a show of respecting "democracy", "oversight" and "freedom of speech", when the chips are down, these ideas are swiftly disregarded.
As seen earlier, the British government gave itself some awful press for the sake of pointlessly destroying a newspaper's computers, and pointlessly (and almost certainly illegally) arresting and detaining a foreigner because they wanted to see what was in his computer and flash drives. Buckingham Palace protects the royal families "privacy" and longer-term legacy with fearsome possessiveness. Some royal experts even argue that it would be better for the royals if more private correspondence was made public, to show that the royal family is, indeed, just a fairly average family in many ways. There have been some good people and bad people in it; people make mistakes and do foolish and horrible things from time to time. This is normal. But by their instinct of wanting to keep many things private, it simply feeds the conspiracy theorists that the royals have a host of "skeletons in the cupboard"
Information is an "asset" for governments; outside information is precious to obtain; inside information is even more precious to keep hold of. Unfortunately, this is also the same thinking used by authoritarian regimes around the world. The establishment, by following this nature, has done itself no favours over the years. It is due to this climate of secrecy that the child abuse scandal has been so damaging. Bad people swarm to a "climate of secrecy" like moths to a flame, for they know they will be protected at all costs, no matter what they do. This is innate, corrupting power of "the establishment": it is corrupt because there is no accountability. If one card falls, they all fall: this is the self-justifying logic of the establishment.
It explains by the infamous MP Cyril Smith was never prosecuted (because of who he knew), and also why Jimmy Savile got away with his behaviour for decades (because of who he was).
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Neo-Imperialism and the nature of power: surveillance, Edward Snowden and democracy
The author recently wrote an article documenting the rise of surveillance in modern society, and how this coincided with the rise of the internet and the widespread use of CCTV. When the Edward Snowden revelations were revealed to the world two years ago, the extent to which the USA (and its Anglophone partners, especially the UK) were gathering masses of information across the globe was astounding. In the article mentioned above I alluded to the "public" rationale for this level of surveillance (The War On Terror etc.), but also to the - more likely - "private" reason: they do it because they can.
This is not to say that these people in government are "evil". It is more down to the simple human nature of those with their hands on the levers of power. The capability exists to know almost everything there is to know about people; therefore, not to use it would seem almost like a abrogation of government's instinct to do what it can to control events.
The modern nation-state is a creation of law. It took centuries for autocratic societies to be transformed into nation-states where those in power were held in check by an objective set of laws. Britain was one of the first nations to achieve this basic principle. The USA took this principle to (for the 18th century) its logical conclusion, by creating a state based "on laws, not men". Since then, other nations have improved this concept further. It is no surprise that the nations with the most stringent application of rule of law are also the most stable and the least corrupt. Therefore, any government that follows these principles consistently (i.e. is not a corrupt dictatorship) is bound by the law of the land in its actions. But where does surveillance fit into this?
"Spycraft" has been a feature of governments for centuries, and more sophisticated - and intrusive - techniques were developed as the technology became available. Fast forward to the end of the Second World War. The USA and the British Empire had won the war, but now faced the threat of Soviet Russia. Thanks to a quirk of geography, many of the world's telecommunications cross the Atlantic between the USA and the UK. This meant they also had the capability to intercept a large volume of the world's telecommunications. Faced with the threat of Soviet Russia, the USA and it's English-speaking partners (The UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) created the "Five Eyes": a secret surveillance network. While those within the "Five Eyes" network worked together, all other countries' communications were effectively declared "fair game" - which included other NATO allies. All this was kept secret from the outside world, until it was cracked open by Edward Snowden.
As the adage goes "information is power". While these governments are bound by their own laws. we also have seen those laws easily modified in times of crisis and war. Freedom (of expression and privacy) and the rule of law is not permanent or set in stone once it has been created. These things can be rolled back. The 9/11 attacks and the War On Terror saw the US government and its Anglophone allies grant sweeping powers of surveillance over their own citizens, as well as others all across the globe. The "rule of law" that was meant to be there to check the excesses of government, was being bent to the breaking point. It would take a great deal of legal trickery to demonstrate that what the US government was doing did not break its own constitution. In the UK, where the "rule of law" was a more flexible construct given the lack of a written constitution, the government were able to do even more.
While terrorism was the official justification to their respective parliaments, in reality the surveillance covered everything from hoovering up the browsing habits of Europeans, to bugging the phones of European leaders. Again, for what possible purpose could this serve to the "War On Terror"?
The meaning of Neo-Imperialism
In reality, these techniques and the widespread use of spycraft on allies and enemies alike showed that the Anglophone spy agencies were really using the technology in whatever way they could, within the (hazy) constraints of the law. Governments are as fallible and as hard-wired to over-reach as the rest of us; the same can be said for companies. Like any ordinary person, given the chance the government will do whatever it thinks it can get away with.
This is the meaning of what we call "Neo-Imperialism". In the 21st century, the world is a place of a number of different centres of power, with alliances here and there, each vying for control. In such a setting, where things seem so uncertain, "information" truly is key. The irony is that the two most significant geo-political events of the last five years - the Arab Spring and its aftermath, (with the subsequent Civil War in Syria and the rise of ISIS) and the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's schism with the West - happened without the west (and the "Anglophone alliance) having a clue about what was about to happen.
An intervention in Libya is called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism", while a non-intervention in Syria and the rise of ISIS is likewise called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism". Neo-Imperialism is about using the modern instruments at the disposal of the world's most powerful governments to try and control events.
We talk about "soft power" and "hard power". The USA uses both. Under George W. Bush, "hard power" was the instrument of preference, supported by "soft power". Under Barack Obama, the emphasis seems to be reversed. The UK was recently shown to be at the top of the world table in its successful use of "soft power". Given its lack of a serious military budget, it is no surprise that the UK uses more indirect methods to get what it wants. It charms and cajoles; it submits and threatens where necessary.
The British Empire may well be a thing of the past, but Britain is still an "empire" in all but name, at least in terms of the way carries out its world affairs, as well as many of its affairs at home. While we are in the 21st century, many nations are still run in a pseudo-feudalistic way. Neo-Imperialism is really just a variation on the world politics of the late 19th and early 20th century, but with modern technology allowing for other techniques to be used for the same ends.
The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of totalitarian states in Russia and Germany. Today, the idea of such a nightmare returning seems thankfully remote. However, while few would see the use of surveillance as "authoritarianism" in the classic sense, the insidious nature of this power is what makes it so easy to ignore. Comparatively few people are truly concerned; they are not aware of it happening, as they would have been in the times of the Nazis or the Soviet Union.
Again, this demonstrates the changed nature of the state: whereas before the state wanted you to know that you were being watched, these days it is done (or was, until Edward Snowden) without public awareness.
As said before, it is easy to understand why governments do it; with the technological capability there, the temptation is too strong to resist, so excuses are created for its use. This technology may seem benign to many but, as with rule of law, these things are prone to change. Governments are masters of "threat management". With the rise of the symbiosis between government and business, accountability and oversight can quickly become lost.
This is the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has ruled the roost in the Anglosphere for the last thirty-five years.
This is not to say that these people in government are "evil". It is more down to the simple human nature of those with their hands on the levers of power. The capability exists to know almost everything there is to know about people; therefore, not to use it would seem almost like a abrogation of government's instinct to do what it can to control events.
The modern nation-state is a creation of law. It took centuries for autocratic societies to be transformed into nation-states where those in power were held in check by an objective set of laws. Britain was one of the first nations to achieve this basic principle. The USA took this principle to (for the 18th century) its logical conclusion, by creating a state based "on laws, not men". Since then, other nations have improved this concept further. It is no surprise that the nations with the most stringent application of rule of law are also the most stable and the least corrupt. Therefore, any government that follows these principles consistently (i.e. is not a corrupt dictatorship) is bound by the law of the land in its actions. But where does surveillance fit into this?
"Spycraft" has been a feature of governments for centuries, and more sophisticated - and intrusive - techniques were developed as the technology became available. Fast forward to the end of the Second World War. The USA and the British Empire had won the war, but now faced the threat of Soviet Russia. Thanks to a quirk of geography, many of the world's telecommunications cross the Atlantic between the USA and the UK. This meant they also had the capability to intercept a large volume of the world's telecommunications. Faced with the threat of Soviet Russia, the USA and it's English-speaking partners (The UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) created the "Five Eyes": a secret surveillance network. While those within the "Five Eyes" network worked together, all other countries' communications were effectively declared "fair game" - which included other NATO allies. All this was kept secret from the outside world, until it was cracked open by Edward Snowden.
As the adage goes "information is power". While these governments are bound by their own laws. we also have seen those laws easily modified in times of crisis and war. Freedom (of expression and privacy) and the rule of law is not permanent or set in stone once it has been created. These things can be rolled back. The 9/11 attacks and the War On Terror saw the US government and its Anglophone allies grant sweeping powers of surveillance over their own citizens, as well as others all across the globe. The "rule of law" that was meant to be there to check the excesses of government, was being bent to the breaking point. It would take a great deal of legal trickery to demonstrate that what the US government was doing did not break its own constitution. In the UK, where the "rule of law" was a more flexible construct given the lack of a written constitution, the government were able to do even more.
While terrorism was the official justification to their respective parliaments, in reality the surveillance covered everything from hoovering up the browsing habits of Europeans, to bugging the phones of European leaders. Again, for what possible purpose could this serve to the "War On Terror"?
The meaning of Neo-Imperialism
In reality, these techniques and the widespread use of spycraft on allies and enemies alike showed that the Anglophone spy agencies were really using the technology in whatever way they could, within the (hazy) constraints of the law. Governments are as fallible and as hard-wired to over-reach as the rest of us; the same can be said for companies. Like any ordinary person, given the chance the government will do whatever it thinks it can get away with.
This is the meaning of what we call "Neo-Imperialism". In the 21st century, the world is a place of a number of different centres of power, with alliances here and there, each vying for control. In such a setting, where things seem so uncertain, "information" truly is key. The irony is that the two most significant geo-political events of the last five years - the Arab Spring and its aftermath, (with the subsequent Civil War in Syria and the rise of ISIS) and the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's schism with the West - happened without the west (and the "Anglophone alliance) having a clue about what was about to happen.
An intervention in Libya is called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism", while a non-intervention in Syria and the rise of ISIS is likewise called a "failure of Neo-Imperialism". Neo-Imperialism is about using the modern instruments at the disposal of the world's most powerful governments to try and control events.
We talk about "soft power" and "hard power". The USA uses both. Under George W. Bush, "hard power" was the instrument of preference, supported by "soft power". Under Barack Obama, the emphasis seems to be reversed. The UK was recently shown to be at the top of the world table in its successful use of "soft power". Given its lack of a serious military budget, it is no surprise that the UK uses more indirect methods to get what it wants. It charms and cajoles; it submits and threatens where necessary.
The British Empire may well be a thing of the past, but Britain is still an "empire" in all but name, at least in terms of the way carries out its world affairs, as well as many of its affairs at home. While we are in the 21st century, many nations are still run in a pseudo-feudalistic way. Neo-Imperialism is really just a variation on the world politics of the late 19th and early 20th century, but with modern technology allowing for other techniques to be used for the same ends.
The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of totalitarian states in Russia and Germany. Today, the idea of such a nightmare returning seems thankfully remote. However, while few would see the use of surveillance as "authoritarianism" in the classic sense, the insidious nature of this power is what makes it so easy to ignore. Comparatively few people are truly concerned; they are not aware of it happening, as they would have been in the times of the Nazis or the Soviet Union.
Again, this demonstrates the changed nature of the state: whereas before the state wanted you to know that you were being watched, these days it is done (or was, until Edward Snowden) without public awareness.
As said before, it is easy to understand why governments do it; with the technological capability there, the temptation is too strong to resist, so excuses are created for its use. This technology may seem benign to many but, as with rule of law, these things are prone to change. Governments are masters of "threat management". With the rise of the symbiosis between government and business, accountability and oversight can quickly become lost.
This is the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has ruled the roost in the Anglosphere for the last thirty-five years.
Monday, July 13, 2015
The Greek Crisis: Europe's Game Of Thrones (aka "A Game Of Debts")
The author wrote about the last "Greek Crisis" three years ago, when it was (last) having to submit to long-term economic decline in order to pay off its debts. Having toppled the governments in Greece and Italy and replaced them with obedient technocrats, in order to enforce the countries' debt obligations, it left few at the time in doubt about who was really in charge: Angela Merkel. It was clear what the ultimate price of losing the "Game Of Debts" would be.
This time around, the list of characters in Europe's ongoing saga is somewhat different. Angela Merkel of Germany, still rules the roost as the effective matriarch of the Eurozone, with her deputy, Wolfgang Schauble, sterner and meaner-looking than ever. The French had replaced Nicolas Sarkozy with the Francois Hollande. Meanwhile, in Greece itself, the unpopular, pro-austerity leader Antonis Samaras, who had been the beneficiary of the events of 2012, was ousted in late January 2015 by the Alexis Tzipras, leader of the radical leftists. The leaders of various other nations of the Eurozone would also have a part to play, one way or the other (and depending on what side they took). Then there were the other fringe - but at times, extremely key - players that represented the other byzantine layers of Europe's bureaucracy: the European Parliament, the Commission, and, last but not least, the ECB. Oh, and there's also the IMF, who aren't European at all, but were somehow roped into getting involved in the Greek debt crisis. Go figure.
"Game Of Thrones" meets Game Theory
Alexis Tzipras, as leader of the radical leftists in Greece, was elected for one key reason: to abolish the onerous terms of its debt obligations, and bring the country out of crippling, humiliating, austerity.
His followers were an odd bunch; an alliance of radical leftists, Greens, and Feminists. However, in order to have a majority, he needed the support of another party. He opted for the Independent Greeks, mostly comprised as an anti-austerity off-shoot of the former governing party of Antonias Samaras. This is a little like trying to imagine a British government that was a coalition between the Greens and UKIP.
Among the characters that comprised the government, the finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, was the most loquacious and outspoken. An academic and economist, he was also a proponent and apparent expert in "Game Theory": very roughly speaking, a confection of economics, mathematics and psychology. Varoufakis was set to be the bane of Wolfgang Schauble's life.
In the first weeks of the new Greek government, Varoufakis, as finance minister, was happy to go on a "charm offensive". However, this quickly came to a grinding halt with the first sets of talks between the other governments later in February, which then dragged on and on over the following weeks and months like a never-ending, interminable soap opera. It got the point where, in June, the Greeks told the IMF (the other major player in this saga) that they would be the first developed country to miss its loan repayments.
By this point, it became abundantly clear to others in the Eurozone that Tzipras and Varoufakis' "Game Theory" was taking the rest of the Eurozone for a bunch of fools. The final insult - in Merkel's eyes - was when Tzipras suddenly walked out of talks at the end of the month and announced a referendum to take place the following weekend, where he would recommend a big Greek "NO" to the bailout terms. This then leads to the "double whammy" at the end of June of Greece missing its IMF payments, and then the ECB decided that enough was enough. For some weeks and months, Greece's banks had been effectively living on ECB life support, as Frankfurt had kept on allowing Greece greater and greater lines of credit. At the end of June, this limit was frozen.
The next two weeks were the "endgame" of the saga, as it currently stands. The Greek government were forced to close the banks and implement capital controls to preserve its fast dwindling supplies of capital. During the week of "campaigning" for the bailout referendum, Tzipras made attempts to restart talks with Merkel, only to be rebuffed: they could talk again only after the referendum made things clearer. It seemed his "gambit" was failing. Then, to general shock all-round, the referendum came out as a decisive "NO"; Tzipras was in the position where his bluff had been called, not only by Merkel, but by his own people. What was the plan now?
The final week of the saga sees two major changes in Greece itself following the referendum: Varoufakis - having offended just about everyone in Europe with his undiplomatic manner - is eased out of his role as finance minister, seemingly as a sop by Tzipras to ease talks with the rest of the Eurozone; meanwhile, Antonias Samaras, leader of the former governing party, steps down after so clearly being on the losing side of the referendum campaign.
So talks resumed again. The situation continued from tragedy to farce as the new Greek finance minster arrived at talks the next day - but with no new plans. Finally, Tzipras gets the message, that time really is running out. Given an ultimatum to have a "real" plan by Friday or prepare for Greece to be out of the Eurozone and effectively insolvent on Monday. By now Tzipras' "Game Theory" was shown to be truly wanting against the raw power play in Merkel's version of "Game Of Thrones". Tzipras' "gambit" - that Greece ultimately wouldn't be allowed to leave the Eurozone, at any price - rested on a fatally-flawed assumption. In the end - as we shall see shortly - Merkel would take Tzipras' false assumptions and throw them back in his face. Tzipras would be hoist by his own petard.
It is at this point that the French, for their own reasons, decide to send some of their senior people to Athens. The French, so it seems, have had enough of Germany's high-handed strategy, and seek their own "moment of glory", by trying to hold the Eurozone together. So the Greeks - with French assistance - at last put forward something approaching a "real" plan, that looks a lot like the one that was rejected in the referendum only a few days earlier.
Except that by now, Germany, Schauble, Merkel and their Northern and East European allies seemed to squeeze the thumbscrews even tighter in their negotiation strategy. By Saturday, citing fundamental issues of "trust", Germany was making demands that were almost off the charts, beyond anything that a reasonable person could possibly agree to. If Greece were to remain in the Eurozone, it would have to pay for it - dearly.
But this was the point: Merkel's "gambit" was that she wanted Greece out of the Eurozone, and would offer conditions that would make it extremely difficult for Tzipras to agree to. Either way, it was a win-win scenario. She would have Tzipras over a barrel regardless.
What followed over the weekend was a marathon session of negotiations: two sets of inconclusive negotiations, followed by a sixteen-hour session between the leaders. Around dawn on Monday, it has been said, Merkel and Tzipras were about to walk their separate ways, only to be brought back together by Donald Tusk. In the end, seemingly a broken man, Tzipras agreed to the conditions. He had got a few cosmetic amendments, and some vague sounds about debt relief in the future, but the deal he signed was far, far worse than anything that had been proposed - and rejected - before.
Tzipras had played Europe's Game Of Thrones and had lost, big time. The question is: what happens now?
This time around, the list of characters in Europe's ongoing saga is somewhat different. Angela Merkel of Germany, still rules the roost as the effective matriarch of the Eurozone, with her deputy, Wolfgang Schauble, sterner and meaner-looking than ever. The French had replaced Nicolas Sarkozy with the Francois Hollande. Meanwhile, in Greece itself, the unpopular, pro-austerity leader Antonis Samaras, who had been the beneficiary of the events of 2012, was ousted in late January 2015 by the Alexis Tzipras, leader of the radical leftists. The leaders of various other nations of the Eurozone would also have a part to play, one way or the other (and depending on what side they took). Then there were the other fringe - but at times, extremely key - players that represented the other byzantine layers of Europe's bureaucracy: the European Parliament, the Commission, and, last but not least, the ECB. Oh, and there's also the IMF, who aren't European at all, but were somehow roped into getting involved in the Greek debt crisis. Go figure.
"Game Of Thrones" meets Game Theory
Alexis Tzipras, as leader of the radical leftists in Greece, was elected for one key reason: to abolish the onerous terms of its debt obligations, and bring the country out of crippling, humiliating, austerity.
His followers were an odd bunch; an alliance of radical leftists, Greens, and Feminists. However, in order to have a majority, he needed the support of another party. He opted for the Independent Greeks, mostly comprised as an anti-austerity off-shoot of the former governing party of Antonias Samaras. This is a little like trying to imagine a British government that was a coalition between the Greens and UKIP.
Among the characters that comprised the government, the finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, was the most loquacious and outspoken. An academic and economist, he was also a proponent and apparent expert in "Game Theory": very roughly speaking, a confection of economics, mathematics and psychology. Varoufakis was set to be the bane of Wolfgang Schauble's life.
In the first weeks of the new Greek government, Varoufakis, as finance minister, was happy to go on a "charm offensive". However, this quickly came to a grinding halt with the first sets of talks between the other governments later in February, which then dragged on and on over the following weeks and months like a never-ending, interminable soap opera. It got the point where, in June, the Greeks told the IMF (the other major player in this saga) that they would be the first developed country to miss its loan repayments.
By this point, it became abundantly clear to others in the Eurozone that Tzipras and Varoufakis' "Game Theory" was taking the rest of the Eurozone for a bunch of fools. The final insult - in Merkel's eyes - was when Tzipras suddenly walked out of talks at the end of the month and announced a referendum to take place the following weekend, where he would recommend a big Greek "NO" to the bailout terms. This then leads to the "double whammy" at the end of June of Greece missing its IMF payments, and then the ECB decided that enough was enough. For some weeks and months, Greece's banks had been effectively living on ECB life support, as Frankfurt had kept on allowing Greece greater and greater lines of credit. At the end of June, this limit was frozen.
The next two weeks were the "endgame" of the saga, as it currently stands. The Greek government were forced to close the banks and implement capital controls to preserve its fast dwindling supplies of capital. During the week of "campaigning" for the bailout referendum, Tzipras made attempts to restart talks with Merkel, only to be rebuffed: they could talk again only after the referendum made things clearer. It seemed his "gambit" was failing. Then, to general shock all-round, the referendum came out as a decisive "NO"; Tzipras was in the position where his bluff had been called, not only by Merkel, but by his own people. What was the plan now?
The final week of the saga sees two major changes in Greece itself following the referendum: Varoufakis - having offended just about everyone in Europe with his undiplomatic manner - is eased out of his role as finance minister, seemingly as a sop by Tzipras to ease talks with the rest of the Eurozone; meanwhile, Antonias Samaras, leader of the former governing party, steps down after so clearly being on the losing side of the referendum campaign.
So talks resumed again. The situation continued from tragedy to farce as the new Greek finance minster arrived at talks the next day - but with no new plans. Finally, Tzipras gets the message, that time really is running out. Given an ultimatum to have a "real" plan by Friday or prepare for Greece to be out of the Eurozone and effectively insolvent on Monday. By now Tzipras' "Game Theory" was shown to be truly wanting against the raw power play in Merkel's version of "Game Of Thrones". Tzipras' "gambit" - that Greece ultimately wouldn't be allowed to leave the Eurozone, at any price - rested on a fatally-flawed assumption. In the end - as we shall see shortly - Merkel would take Tzipras' false assumptions and throw them back in his face. Tzipras would be hoist by his own petard.
It is at this point that the French, for their own reasons, decide to send some of their senior people to Athens. The French, so it seems, have had enough of Germany's high-handed strategy, and seek their own "moment of glory", by trying to hold the Eurozone together. So the Greeks - with French assistance - at last put forward something approaching a "real" plan, that looks a lot like the one that was rejected in the referendum only a few days earlier.
Except that by now, Germany, Schauble, Merkel and their Northern and East European allies seemed to squeeze the thumbscrews even tighter in their negotiation strategy. By Saturday, citing fundamental issues of "trust", Germany was making demands that were almost off the charts, beyond anything that a reasonable person could possibly agree to. If Greece were to remain in the Eurozone, it would have to pay for it - dearly.
But this was the point: Merkel's "gambit" was that she wanted Greece out of the Eurozone, and would offer conditions that would make it extremely difficult for Tzipras to agree to. Either way, it was a win-win scenario. She would have Tzipras over a barrel regardless.
What followed over the weekend was a marathon session of negotiations: two sets of inconclusive negotiations, followed by a sixteen-hour session between the leaders. Around dawn on Monday, it has been said, Merkel and Tzipras were about to walk their separate ways, only to be brought back together by Donald Tusk. In the end, seemingly a broken man, Tzipras agreed to the conditions. He had got a few cosmetic amendments, and some vague sounds about debt relief in the future, but the deal he signed was far, far worse than anything that had been proposed - and rejected - before.
Tzipras had played Europe's Game Of Thrones and had lost, big time. The question is: what happens now?
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Big Brother Is Watching You: Accepting Surveillance In Modern Society
Almost exactly two years ago, the author wrote an article discussing the strange death of privacy in the 21st century. One of the key changes to society in the last twenty years, coinciding with the rise of the "internet age", is the "surveillance society".
The UK is the most highly-watched country on the planet, according to the experts. While the USA may be seen as having a longer history in this field (thanks to the long history of conspiracy theorists), the UK is the real home of "Big Brother", in both the fictitious, and real, sense of the term.
The birth of CCTV around twenty-five years ago quickly exploded across the UK, so that the nineties were the decade that saw the "surveillance society" and cameras become ubiquitous on every street corner, private and public spaces. Improved technology made it possible; political will made it happen.
A Camera In Every Corner
The original reason for the the sudden rise of CCTV was crime prevention. Of this still is the main reason for them, and why they exist in every retail space and public area that is watchable. The ethical issues were never really discussed at a serious level; it was simply assumed by everyone to be "a good thing".
Looking at it from a rational perspective, CCTV, by definition, is a very poor form of conventional "crime prevention". For anyone with an understanding of criminology (the author has a criminology background), CCTV can never be a true resource of crime prevention; only another method of securing criminal prosecution.
The simple explanation is this: cameras record events; they do not prevent events (and crimes) from happening. They are a useful police tool because, of course, it allows the authorities to know which individuals are responsible. Indirectly, yes, they may discourage people from committing crimes if they see an increased likelihood of being caught from CCTV footage, but there is little real evidence of this being actually the case. The would-be perpetrators simply wear "hoodies", thus solving this "problem". This explains why the "hoodie" is the clothing of choice of gangs and low-level criminality over the past twenty years.
So if cameras are not, in reality effective measures of crime prevention, what are they for?
Here we come to the crux of the issue, which will be fully explained once we've looked at the other, more insidious, arm of the "surveillance society" - the internet.
Full-Spectrum Dominance and "mastering" the Internet
The birth and rise of the internet coincided with the proliferation of CCTV across the world. Originally, the internet was seen as a great liberator, allowing masses of information free at the click of a button. Of course, this fact is still true; what has changed is the governments' perception of it.
The internet is essentially an "online mirror" for human nature. You can find the very best and most enlightening aspects of human knowledge; similarly, you can find the very darkest and basest elements so of the human mind also, if you are so inclined. Governments quickly realised this, and saw how criminal networks used the internet for all manner of illegal operations. In other words, it gave criminal organisations a place to carry out their operations beyond the reach of government.
In places like the USA, the internet in the nineties started to be used by right-wing extremist groups; the type of groups that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was involved with. Doubtless, this must have terrified the life out of the FBI, as they saw how exposed they could be if the internet was left more-or-less unchecked. By 1998, with the East Africa bombings by Islamic radicals, the US government must have been even more acutely-aware of how some of these extremist organisations around the world were using the internet to better co-ordinate their activities. The internet's dark underbelly wasn't just about porn and a venue for criminal activity; it was a place full of terror.
Then 9/11 happened.
Up to this point governments in the USA and UK must have felt they were always playing the game "one step behind". Now they knew that the danger was from an unanticipated, and vastly underestimated, source. The PATRIOT act in the USA, and similar legislation in the UK, gave government the authority to more effectively "master" the internet, which it has been doing with greater and greater efficiency ever since. Year on year, as revealed by the Edward Snowden revelations, more and more data was being stored and evaluated by government.
While governments protest that the vast majority of this data - essentially the internet activity of millions of people - is ignored even if it is automatically intercepted, the basic point is that privacy no longer really exists.
"The purpose of power is power"
Here we arrive at the crux of the issue. The purpose of government is "to govern" i.e. to control its citizens. This is the fundamental principle of why people willingly allow themselves to be governed: for the sake of collective security. Because, when it comes down to it, we're all scared.
In the modern age, in the 21st century, the common perception is that we are living in a time of unparalleled freedom. At a superficial level this may well be true: more and more people are being granted "rights" that they have never had before (e.g. the legalisation of gay marriage; the effective decriminalisation of soft drugs). People are free to express themselves in ways that were unthinkable forty years ago. Conversely, racism and base prejudice, while certainly still in existence, are no longer accepted as the norm as they were decades ago.
But a better way of understanding what's happened is this: government is happy to cede control over issues it is indifferent to. The examples raised above are all issues that government generally has little interest in directly controlling over anyway, or are issues that are too much hassle to control (the prevalence of soft drugs being a good example).
While it is willingly cedes control on what might be called "social issues", it conversely has doubled-down on security issues. This is the essence of modern, 21st century government: where government does less, but what it does do, it does with even greater, ruthless efficiency.
The 9/11 attacks and "terrorism" in general since then demonstrate that government most fears what it can't control. Unlike social issues, it cannot remain "indifferent" to terrorism and the loss of government "security", because these issues, to government, are integral to government's functioning. This explains why government can take such a hard line on "mastering" the internet and controlling its own (and others') resources, even beyond the point of rationalism. When the meaning of government is security, people in government can quickly lose a sense of perspective.
The Edward Snowden scandal was a good example of this. When these revelations exploded onto the world scene two years ago, courtesy of "The Guardian" newspaper, the US government realised it had few legal pathways to prevent publication, so instead worked with the newspaper best it could to limit the damage. The Guardian worked carefully to make sure that it complied with US law, while still publishing everything that it could.
By contrast, the UK government was in a much more knee-jerk in its reaction, encouraged by the fact that UK law gave the government far greater power to do what it liked. So after some deliberation, they came down on The Guardian like a ton of bricks, compelling the newspaper to destroy the computers holding the secret information (with government officials watching to make sure!). The irony of this act was that it was entirely futile; The Guardian had copies of the secret information in New York, which the US government had no legal powers (or the willingness) to retrieve. The UK government was seemingly making a point: we can do what we like, even if it's pointless.
So what is the purpose of the "surveillance society"?
As said earlier, governments exist because people are, at heart, scared. This then gives governments a "raison d'etre": to exist for the sake of existing. Information is power, and as the UK government's reaction to the Edward Snowden revelations showed, power is power. In the 21st century, governments have the power to "master" the internet; therefore, there is no reason not to do it. To fail to use this power would be seen (in their eyes) as an abrogation of their duty as government. Government's job is therefore also "threat management"; any act of terrorism becomes seen as an "existential" threat to those in government because they see any threat as potentially lethal to their authority. It is down this pathway that leads logically to authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, society is largely indifferent. The proliferation of the internet and advances in media technology have coincided with a change in individual perception. Some argue that the modern generation are more narcissistic than ever. As a result, they would almost welcome the technological "opportunities" that their own version of "full-spectrum dominance" gives them over the internet: they can be everywhere, all the time - while the government knows what they are doing everywhere, all the time.
This appears to be the future: citizens of the "surveillance state", the "me generation", gleefully enjoying the superficial limelight of Big Brother. After all, if they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear, right?
The UK is the most highly-watched country on the planet, according to the experts. While the USA may be seen as having a longer history in this field (thanks to the long history of conspiracy theorists), the UK is the real home of "Big Brother", in both the fictitious, and real, sense of the term.
The birth of CCTV around twenty-five years ago quickly exploded across the UK, so that the nineties were the decade that saw the "surveillance society" and cameras become ubiquitous on every street corner, private and public spaces. Improved technology made it possible; political will made it happen.
A Camera In Every Corner
The original reason for the the sudden rise of CCTV was crime prevention. Of this still is the main reason for them, and why they exist in every retail space and public area that is watchable. The ethical issues were never really discussed at a serious level; it was simply assumed by everyone to be "a good thing".
Looking at it from a rational perspective, CCTV, by definition, is a very poor form of conventional "crime prevention". For anyone with an understanding of criminology (the author has a criminology background), CCTV can never be a true resource of crime prevention; only another method of securing criminal prosecution.
The simple explanation is this: cameras record events; they do not prevent events (and crimes) from happening. They are a useful police tool because, of course, it allows the authorities to know which individuals are responsible. Indirectly, yes, they may discourage people from committing crimes if they see an increased likelihood of being caught from CCTV footage, but there is little real evidence of this being actually the case. The would-be perpetrators simply wear "hoodies", thus solving this "problem". This explains why the "hoodie" is the clothing of choice of gangs and low-level criminality over the past twenty years.
So if cameras are not, in reality effective measures of crime prevention, what are they for?
Here we come to the crux of the issue, which will be fully explained once we've looked at the other, more insidious, arm of the "surveillance society" - the internet.
Full-Spectrum Dominance and "mastering" the Internet
The birth and rise of the internet coincided with the proliferation of CCTV across the world. Originally, the internet was seen as a great liberator, allowing masses of information free at the click of a button. Of course, this fact is still true; what has changed is the governments' perception of it.
The internet is essentially an "online mirror" for human nature. You can find the very best and most enlightening aspects of human knowledge; similarly, you can find the very darkest and basest elements so of the human mind also, if you are so inclined. Governments quickly realised this, and saw how criminal networks used the internet for all manner of illegal operations. In other words, it gave criminal organisations a place to carry out their operations beyond the reach of government.
In places like the USA, the internet in the nineties started to be used by right-wing extremist groups; the type of groups that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was involved with. Doubtless, this must have terrified the life out of the FBI, as they saw how exposed they could be if the internet was left more-or-less unchecked. By 1998, with the East Africa bombings by Islamic radicals, the US government must have been even more acutely-aware of how some of these extremist organisations around the world were using the internet to better co-ordinate their activities. The internet's dark underbelly wasn't just about porn and a venue for criminal activity; it was a place full of terror.
Then 9/11 happened.
Up to this point governments in the USA and UK must have felt they were always playing the game "one step behind". Now they knew that the danger was from an unanticipated, and vastly underestimated, source. The PATRIOT act in the USA, and similar legislation in the UK, gave government the authority to more effectively "master" the internet, which it has been doing with greater and greater efficiency ever since. Year on year, as revealed by the Edward Snowden revelations, more and more data was being stored and evaluated by government.
While governments protest that the vast majority of this data - essentially the internet activity of millions of people - is ignored even if it is automatically intercepted, the basic point is that privacy no longer really exists.
"The purpose of power is power"
Here we arrive at the crux of the issue. The purpose of government is "to govern" i.e. to control its citizens. This is the fundamental principle of why people willingly allow themselves to be governed: for the sake of collective security. Because, when it comes down to it, we're all scared.
In the modern age, in the 21st century, the common perception is that we are living in a time of unparalleled freedom. At a superficial level this may well be true: more and more people are being granted "rights" that they have never had before (e.g. the legalisation of gay marriage; the effective decriminalisation of soft drugs). People are free to express themselves in ways that were unthinkable forty years ago. Conversely, racism and base prejudice, while certainly still in existence, are no longer accepted as the norm as they were decades ago.
But a better way of understanding what's happened is this: government is happy to cede control over issues it is indifferent to. The examples raised above are all issues that government generally has little interest in directly controlling over anyway, or are issues that are too much hassle to control (the prevalence of soft drugs being a good example).
While it is willingly cedes control on what might be called "social issues", it conversely has doubled-down on security issues. This is the essence of modern, 21st century government: where government does less, but what it does do, it does with even greater, ruthless efficiency.
The 9/11 attacks and "terrorism" in general since then demonstrate that government most fears what it can't control. Unlike social issues, it cannot remain "indifferent" to terrorism and the loss of government "security", because these issues, to government, are integral to government's functioning. This explains why government can take such a hard line on "mastering" the internet and controlling its own (and others') resources, even beyond the point of rationalism. When the meaning of government is security, people in government can quickly lose a sense of perspective.
The Edward Snowden scandal was a good example of this. When these revelations exploded onto the world scene two years ago, courtesy of "The Guardian" newspaper, the US government realised it had few legal pathways to prevent publication, so instead worked with the newspaper best it could to limit the damage. The Guardian worked carefully to make sure that it complied with US law, while still publishing everything that it could.
By contrast, the UK government was in a much more knee-jerk in its reaction, encouraged by the fact that UK law gave the government far greater power to do what it liked. So after some deliberation, they came down on The Guardian like a ton of bricks, compelling the newspaper to destroy the computers holding the secret information (with government officials watching to make sure!). The irony of this act was that it was entirely futile; The Guardian had copies of the secret information in New York, which the US government had no legal powers (or the willingness) to retrieve. The UK government was seemingly making a point: we can do what we like, even if it's pointless.
So what is the purpose of the "surveillance society"?
As said earlier, governments exist because people are, at heart, scared. This then gives governments a "raison d'etre": to exist for the sake of existing. Information is power, and as the UK government's reaction to the Edward Snowden revelations showed, power is power. In the 21st century, governments have the power to "master" the internet; therefore, there is no reason not to do it. To fail to use this power would be seen (in their eyes) as an abrogation of their duty as government. Government's job is therefore also "threat management"; any act of terrorism becomes seen as an "existential" threat to those in government because they see any threat as potentially lethal to their authority. It is down this pathway that leads logically to authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, society is largely indifferent. The proliferation of the internet and advances in media technology have coincided with a change in individual perception. Some argue that the modern generation are more narcissistic than ever. As a result, they would almost welcome the technological "opportunities" that their own version of "full-spectrum dominance" gives them over the internet: they can be everywhere, all the time - while the government knows what they are doing everywhere, all the time.
This appears to be the future: citizens of the "surveillance state", the "me generation", gleefully enjoying the superficial limelight of Big Brother. After all, if they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear, right?
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