Goal Posts

The War on Terror (sic) seems to be creeping its way into new areas. The project itself has had a title change to the ‘Long War’, which is unsurprisingly aimed at Islamic extremist terrorism, but the Long War is about much more than that. The Long War is concerned with the pointless dominance of the world by the most powerful nation - pointless because resource depletion means there will be no ultimate winner. Either humanity will find peace with itself and the earth or it will not. Attitudes of the current US administration indicate that constant war and complete human anihiliation are its perverse goals. Europe is understandably cautious about the plans for a Long War (Guardian 15/02/06). We should all be extremely cautious, if not downright resistant, about supporting such policies not only because of the unacceptable numbers of civilian casualties that have been directly caused by this ‘war’ so far, but also because the Long War is concerned with much more than just terrorist perpetrated violence. Guantanamo Bay is merely the beginning of an attempt to put beyond national and international protection those who challenge powerful states’ power in whatever way. We seem to have failed to learn the lessons gained with encounters with Fascism in the 20th century and seem destined to repeat those mistakes. Human freedom runs above and beyond the power of any state.

Gary McKinnon, the British man who is charged with hacking US military computers is facing up to 70 years in jail, without parole, if he is extradited to the US. His defence team have argued that if he is extradited he may face the same retribution as that handed out to alleged terrorist attackers at Guantanamo Bay: indefinite incarceration and a private military trial. His defence team have asked for assurances from the US government that he will be tried under civil law. The US government declined.The reason the US government refused to give assurances regarding Gary McKinnon is because they believe he is a terrorist. They see Mr McKinnon as being no different from anyone else who challenges US state power, whether that challenge comes from a hacker, from violent protestors who dissent at US state policy, or from real terrorists who threaten or carry out acts of violence. From the perspective of the US state, an individual like Mr McKinnon who seeks to disrupt their activities is an enemy. To the US state the term terrorist is applicable to anyone who gets in the way, whether or not violence is involved.

Let’s take this to some fundamental issues for a moment, and then I’ll return to Mr McKinnon. Western democratic societies are built on the premise that the individual has the power through a representative to affect state policy. This is agreed. Citizens of Western democratic countries have the right to influence each other - provided no violence or blackmail is involved – as they wish. This is agreed. This is the freedom that GW Bush alludes to with his stock phrases. The right to influence each other extends to free market capitalism where a citizen may accrue money and use it to gain power over others. The free market permits us all to influence each other and to influence states by means of free speech and free association, and to influence the free market with these tools. We have the right to work to influence each other and government. However, states seem to have a problem with individuals seeking to use any more power than is allotted to them through the vote. Campaign groups and trade unions have suffered from this in the past. Now that people have the power to communicate peer-to-peer across the world the threat to governmental power from empowered individuals and alliances - whether the threat is legal or illegal – is increasing. A broad response to terrorism reflected in the Long War is an opportunity to control all groups and individuals who seek to influence the US state. Environmental campaign groups, and Mr McKinnon, are finding that state policies and legislation are being marshalled against them as well as against the terrorists who threaten or perpetrate violence in order to alter the political environment.

Let’s look at some hypothetical examples of the way in which the definition of terrorism is being changed. In the context of my comments above about citizens’ freedoms within Western democratic societies, how does government react to individuals or groups of people who seek to affect others by their words and actions? If an extremist preacher incites others to acts of violence, that preacher is engaged in a criminal act and will be charged as such. In the UK if a person incites others to take strike action up to and beyond certain legal constraints, significant legal resources will be deployed to prevent them. The strike process is now highly biased against workers’ ability to influence their employer, because laws have been enacted that restrict the rights of workers in favour of the employer’s corporation. If a person incites others to buy or sell shares however, that ability is freely permitted. The choice to strike or not or to buy or sells shares is one taken by individuals exercising their power over a corporation, but parliament has decided that workers have fewer rights than shareholders. This decision is just under a parliamentary democracy, even if it is unjust from your political perspective.

However, irrespective of the bias in legislation it has always been the trade unions who have drawn the attention from the security services for their attempt to undermine (at a distance) parliamentary democracy, while share dealers are allowed to continue their influential process unimpeded. It seems that there is a bias in the way government views our freedoms, beyond that prescribed by law. An investor is allowed to influence energy supplies but if a campaign group seek to disrupt energy supplies they are likely to face quasi-terrorist charges. In the US, environmental pressure groups are being treated as proto-terrorists because some of their members have damaged logging equipment and SUV dealerships. Such groups do not seek to cause people harm but they do seek political influence. Therefore, it appears to be the attempt to seek political influence outwith traditional political instruments, and by non-establishment actors, that states are seeking to target as their definition of terrorism begins to creep.

Most Western democratic societies are based on the principles of freedom of expression and free markets under which private organisations provide citizens with what they want – although the term free market is clearly a misnomer because markets are influenced by laws and vested interests. If a dissenting campaign group found a way to legally disrupt a part of our increasingly fragile economic and logistical systems, whether financially or through free speech or civil disobedience - which they have every right to do, then government would very likely respond by passing new legislation or ordering security services to counter the activities of the campaign group. The former option of passing new legislation is legitimate, but the latter is unjust because government has no remit for intervention between citizens simply on the grounds that they are trying to alter economic processes. Corporations every day seek to alter economic processes for profit often with little consideration of the social and environmental effects such changes will have. If corporations are free to do this then so are campaign groups.

There is no legislation stating that must we all work together to support the socio-economic system, or indeed organise our lives under the capitalist method. However, it seems that governments see this as a citizen’s duty; that we should all pull together in one socio-economic direction. The example of schooling is salient, in that education is increasingly aimed at the requirements of employers. Many people simply want their children to receive a good education – a good foundation for a lifetime of personal development, and yet the education system is designed to resist these needs in favour of employment requirements. Many people do not see their children’s future lives as workers, and others wish to see the idea of work change completely. Industrialisation and its ‘efficiencies’ only have limited legislation in their favour – one example is planning laws designed to drive populations into centralised urban communities. Those who find ways to subvert this coercion by setting up ‘alternative’ communities and lifestyles often find themselves at the sharp end of the state’s displeasure simply because they are challenging the unwritten assumption that we are an industrialised country. There is nothing in the Magna Carta to say that the state is right and that those who dissent are wrong. In Britain over the past few decades modern nomadic people have received some appalling treatment by a state which fails to recognise their human rights, simply because their lifestyle conflicts with land use due to the urbanised industrial complex. Such people try to get by on the margins by stopping at roadsides but they are constantly moved on. We have contradictory laws permitting property rights and travellers pitching rights, and guess whose rights are upheld nine times out of ten?

The harassment faced by travelling peoples is similar to the kinds of harassment that other dissenters face, from unjustified security service probing, from media who portray some deeply biased assumptions about lifestyle, work, and community, and from corporations who see any attempt at weakening their power as a legitimate reason to engage in everything from spying to manipulations of legal processes in order to silence them, and probably worse. If dissenters engaged in such activities they would find themselves quickly labelled as trouble-makers, terrorists, or smeared, and police time would be used to control their activities. Corporations have been known to target dissenters and protestors using the legal process to silence them in various ways, including legal action for loss of profits due to protest etc. If NGO’s came together and took legal action against key players in the industrialised capitalist machine, alleging damage to the commonly ‘owned’ natural environment and ecology, they would probably fail due to the deeply rooted public institutional but irrational obsession with industrialisation. The law does not work both ways; when the Emperor says the capitalist-industrial-military system is good then it is good.

NGO’s and dissenting individuals are very capable of inventing novel legal ways to interfere with the industrial-capitalist-military complex, and this is what states whose power is based on economic ‘growth’ fear. This is why in future the crime of terrorism is likely to include all efforts against state power. That process has already started in the US where even non-violent (non-sabotage) based environmental groups are facing increasing security service and corporate backed probing and intelligence gathering. The imbalance between the power of non-state and state actors is overt. The Drug Enforcement Agency is openly involved in attempts to neutralise groups campaigning to legalise cannabis. This action on behalf of the US government suggests that they see partisan interference in the political process as acceptable. It appears that the US government does not see the rights of members of civil society as being equal to those of government, corporations, and other organisations who are part of the establishment.

There is nothing in our laws that says a person may not hinder another’s freedom if they do that through economic competition, intellectual competition (DEA attempts to shut down pro-drug campaigners), or by organising a campaign that puts social pressure on supply systems and affects their processes. A person has every right to trick a logistics system into collapse, just as a person has the right to influence another person by choosing whether or not to buy goods and services from her. If a hypothetical campaign group devised a legal way to for example, trip up our increasingly fragile logistics or energy systems, they would meet a state response well out of proportion to the original act. This is justified by states asserting that they have provided a ‘free-market’ under which these processes have grown for the public good due to the decisions of individuals. However, these processes are anything but emergent from the citizens. The processes have been designed in a centralised way in order to place power in the hands of a few, at the expense of many. If a campaign group applied pressure that affected such processes then their crime would not be that they have influenced a free-market process but that they are challenging state power.

Logistics systems do not support our society, laws do. Many of our Western societies are founded on the Magna Carta, not ‘just-in-time’ processes or the supermarket system. Such processes come and they go; they are subject to social and economic forces, just as those processes are naturally subject to the power of individuals and campaign groups. Alternative economic systems are possibly as viable as capitalism. Attempts by campaign groups and individuals peaceful attempts to disrupt and ultimately to change the current socio-economic model are arguably more beneficial to humanity and the ecosystem than industrial-capitalist-military methods. In this there is an implicit parallel between Al Qaeda’s aims (by unacceptable violent means) and the goals of many ‘anti-civilisation’ dissenters. In GW Bush’s mind, and many others in the establishment-corporate world there is little distinction between the two; the US government is not concerned with who is violent - their own ambivalence on the use of violence is breathtaking - but they are concerned with maintaining the socio-economic machine that keeps them in power. Therefore we should look forward to the continued increase in anti-terror/anti-sabotage/anti-dissent legislation by states who are seeking to control individuals and groups that are trying to influence socioeconomic and political processes, whatever their motive. Environmental and social campaigners watch your backs.

What we are witnessing in the US, and in Europe too, are the first spasms of governmental responses to the power of individuals which is increasing exponentially due to communication and networking of individuals who are challenging assumptions about centralised power. The general tension between the state and dissenters underlies the relationship between NGO’s, individual rights, and governments. In the new terminology the definition of ‘terrorist’ is a dissenter who seeks to affect society – by whatever means. We have entered an increasingly dangerous phase in international development while at the same time facing threats from within, fractured communities and new social tensions. One of these tensions is between centralised power and distributed power; individuals and alliances are beginning to assert themselves. The Long War has its sights on dissenters, and terrorists, and any other threat to US hegemony.

The writer is not implying anywhere in this article in favour of terrorism, nor sabotage, but resistance to innappropriate state power that is not in the Real Democratic interest (i.e., control by the people). These examples are given to illustrate the ground on which new battles are being and will be fought, using public money, to kill, maim, and deprive millions, and to kill the planet your children will inhabit - in your name.