2013-05-20T09:27:58-04:00 Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=tony-mckenna Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Tony Mckenna Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3267952 2013-05-14T18:59:37-04:00 2013-05-14T18:59:50-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
But the Internet opened up a new type of world; a virtual one where you can send emails without needing to step outside and post a letter; where you can find out how your friends are via Twitter feeds or Facebook updates -- avoiding the rigmarole of actually knocking on a door and asking; where relationships and even marriages are realized online without the participants ever even meeting in 'real' life.

In fact -- across cyber space whole communities are formed -- manifested in and through digital cities where avatars enjoy virtual lives, travel to virtual workplaces, create virtual families and even endure virtual deaths. In the limitless void of the e-ther, every real world action receives its ghostly cybernetic echo, generating a strange and wonderful realm through the looking glass of your own computer terminal.

But what if the boundaries between the virtual space and the real one began to dissolve? What if things from the one realm started to cross over into the other?

If your knee jerk reaction is to think that sounds like the fantastical stuff of science fiction then I urge you to think again. It is closer than you think! Ladies and gentleman (roll of the drum)... take a look at Bitcoin!

Bitcoin is a form of virtual currency. Nothing new or particularly remarkable in that, mind you, as for ages computer geeks have been creatively designing their own forms of virtual currency in order to pay for virtual products - players using pixelated doubloons to acquire digital weaponry for on-line medieval role-playing games, for instance. But what is unique about Bitcoin -- is that it is the first peer-to-peer virtual currency which can also be used to buy actual real world products. Since its inception in 2008, Bitcoin has proved more and more viable; it is increasingly accepted by merchants and individuals across the world, and even a few major companies such as WikiLeaks.

As it operates peer-to-peer, Bitcoin effectively cuts out the middle man. Under this model
you could send a transfer of money from Boston to London without a portion of it going to your bank or an organization like Western Union. The transaction provides an unmediated link between sender and receiver. Over time they would save a great deal of money. And all that is required is an Internet IP address.

But this lack of regulation, say its critics, means that Bitcoin is open to all forms of abuse. Already it has been linked to 'deep web' black market sites -- sites like the infamous Silk Road which allows buyers to anonymously order various hard drugs while maintaining user anonymity. A crypto-currency like Bitcoin which need not pass through any bank accounts is conducive to invisibility.

The FBI have speculated, should Bitcoin continue to grow, it 'might logically attract money launderers, human traffickers, terrorists, and other criminals who avoid traditional financial systems.' In addition, should the currency depreciate as a result of sudden crisis, there is no central bank or state-sponsored support its users might rely on to help it to stabilize. Indeed there were ominous signs of this when in 2011, and again this April, the Bitcoin 'bubble' seemed to burst and a panic sell-off ensued which caused Bitcoin to lose its liquidity.

Its advocates are more optimistic, however. Mihai Alisie, editor of Bitcoin Magazine, acknowledges that criminal elements may try to take advantage of Bitcoin, but argues this is no different from any other product -- 'You have a knife, and with that knife you can put butter on your bread or you can kill someone. But you make the tool bad or good.'

And the argument which suggests any major currency must require some form of central banking organization is inevitably damaged by the nature of the current economic crisis -- which was very much bank driven. Most recently the crisis has claimed its latest victim -- Cyprus. The president there made the controversial announcement that the bailout for the country's banks would, in part, be paid for by seizing money from the accounts of depositors -- and when this was rejected by the parliament, a levy was placed on substantial deposits, while withdrawals were limited along with overseas transfers.

The sense of not having power over their own money caused a great number of Cypriots to start buying up bitcoins as a means of better controlling their finances. As a consequence, Cyprus will soon become the first place in the world to feature a Bitcoin ATM machine.

Nevertheless, in light of its sudden economic depreciation this year, many critics suggest that Bitcoin is in terminal decline. And they might well be right. But this also misses the point. What is most significant about Bitcoin is the idea of it. True, this particular incarnation may well cease to exist in the near future. But money has never stopped evolving -- from its early forms where crops like barley were used as currency, or sea shells, to later variations which lead to metal coinage and then paper notes and checks.

The idea of a peer-to-peer virtual currency floated across vast swathes of international populations irrespective of borders could well be the next stage in the evolution of money -- its brave new world.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3202872 2013-05-02T14:40:42-04:00 2013-05-06T10:26:16-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/ Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner draw an important distinction between 'risks that scare' and 'risks that kill'. 'Risks that scare' pertain to those dangers where the 'hazard is low and outrage is high' while 'risks that kill' cover cases where 'the hazard is high' but the awareness of it is significantly less.

To illustrate the difference Freakonomics provides us with the example of guns and swimming pools. When you hear of a case of a 'cherubic four-year-old shot through the chest' it is difficult to imagine anything more horrifying, and the story would naturally garner full and intensive media coverage. But what about a child of a similar age who slips outside and falls into the swimming pool while mum or dad are busy making dinner? As tragic and devastating a loss this surely is, it is unlikely to attract the same attention and media scrutiny.

And yet, as the writers of Freakonomics point out, in the US an estimated 175 children under ten die from gun-shots each year, whereas 550 die from drowning. Not only are the deaths from pools considerably higher, but they are easily preventable. Nevertheless a swimming pool is a far less visible danger than a device such as a gun which carries with it an express promise of violence and death. As a result, the more significant danger is overlooked.

If you want to find a society-wide example of 'a risk that scares', you need look no further than the current political narrative purveyed by much of the mainstream media in regard to benefit claimants and so called 'scroungers'. In the cold, sober light of day the facts speak for themselves; we know that, between 2010 and 2011, 93% of all new housing benefit claims were made by households in which at least one adult was in work. We know too the majority of benefit spending goes to those who are not of a working age (42% to pensioners, 15% to children). And we know also - according to estimates by the Department of Work and Pensions - that during 2011-2012 only 0.7% of overall benefit expenditure was overpaid due to fraud.

But although these statistics are floated around in the background, our gaze is drawn with an almost hypnotic compulsion to the hateful image of the flabby scrounger - arse deep in sofa, sat watching Jeremy Kyle in the middle of the day, shamelessly leeching from the state while a brood of feckless, dirty children run riot in his or her midst. Many of us are half-aware that such figures - these almost pantomime like caricatures of sloth and wretchedness - exist as a tiny minority, but the need to find a visible and sinister repository in which to place our fears is both seductive and satisfying. It allows us to give our demons a palpable form, and this in turn permits us to fantasise their destruction. If we go in hard against the 'shirkers' and the 'scroungers', we somehow feel, the threat of broader economic crisis might be averted; our collective anxiety and fear is in some way allayed.

But such catharsis allows the genuine danger - the 'risk that kills' - to go largely overlooked. The risk that kills is created by a set of factors: the banking bailout, the war on public services, the slashing of taxes for the most privileged and the concomitant level of tax avoidance and tax evasion which has accompanied this. That 0.7 per cent which was lost on benefit fraud translates to roughly £1 billion but in the same period tax evasion counted for £70 billion.

And to put all that into perspective - the banking bailout itself cost £1.3 trillion or 1000 billion of tax payer's money. But though these statistics bring to light quite decisively the economic issues which have really caused the economy to haemorrhage, papers still front articles with gaudy images of 'Vicky Pollard' designed to personify the notion of a Britain bled dry by a feral underclass.

That is not to say that there isn't a benefit fraud problem or even a benefits problem. Karl Marx noted that great economic crises were, in the last analysis, characterised by a crisis of purchasing power; capital is rendered unrealizable because the population is unable to buy the surfeit of commodities which has been produced. Increasing numbers of people out of work - with access to only a basic level of funds - can only exacerbate this. But it is not a feckless, work shy underclass which has generated such a situation; rather long term unemployment has spiked 146 per cent in the very period of time in which the current administration have enacted their ruthless oeuvre of economic hack and slash.

The loud, shell-suit sporting image of the gaudy chav might well provide the means to scare. But we should remember; it is the besuited and demure figure of the Tory MP with the means to kill.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3090269 2013-04-18T19:10:26-04:00 2013-04-18T19:10:39-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/ Oscar Pistorius would be allowed to return to international competition. Some questioned the wisdom of the ruling as Pistorius is due to stand trial for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp later this year. Inevitably, the decision to allow the athlete to travel internationally and compete invites the hypothetical 'what if' -- as in 'what if Pistorius had been someone without fame and money?' Would he have been granted the same leniency and freedom of movement pre-trial? Even the more obliging and least cynical would probably regard that as unlikely.

But while the decision to allow Oscar Pistorius to go about business as usual is shocking and outrageous, it's also fascinating because it provides us with almost naturalistic footage of the way prestige and money eat into the justice system and warp and twist its most fundamental mechanisms.

Consider the slick PR job done on Pistorius as he made his various court appearances and public statements in the aftermath of the alleged killing. What strikes you at once is just how little he, himself, actually says. Every word is delivered second-hand by a team of round the clock experts; the phraseology is so meticulously precise that it somehow leaves you feeling cold. A similar set of terms are reeled out with a lulling repetition; the athlete's 'deepest sympathy' is extended to the family of Reeva Steenkamp over and over in a series of sensitive and thoughtful missives which not only reassure the victim's bereft loved ones, but also the world's media as to the bottomless depths of Pistorius' well of tears.

One word achieves precedence above all others. 'Tragedy'. One of Pistorius' lawyers read a statement, allegedly prepared by the defendant, which recounted 'the events of that tragic night'. And again - 'our thoughts and prayers today should be for Reeva and her family, regardless of the circumstances of this terrible, terrible tragedy'. The creators of Pistorius' official website very much want us to know - 'We are praying for everyone touched by this tragedy'.

The repeated use of the word 'tragedy' is far from incidental. It provides a convenient abstraction, an invisible alteration in the dynamics of the case, for by describing the killing as a 'tragedy' it attains an objectivity over and above the people who were involved in it. Pistorius' role becomes somehow secondary; he was almost pulled along by the sweep of larger events. I mean, if you really think about it, he himself was a victim of terrible, implacable circumstance.

If that kind of thinking has you vomiting into your mouth just a little bit, you might want to have a bucket ready for it gets worse. Many journalists would perform a further abstraction: the concept of 'tragedy' was graduated from the specific event of the alleged killing of Steenkamp to Pistorius' life story more broadly.

In this narrative Pistorius steps forward as a tragic hero of the classical type whom the forces of fate have rendered low. 'Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make great' announced the Montreal Gazette with sagacious solemnity while the Guardian's Justice Malala articulated the case with the same tragic tenor, reflecting mournfully -- "Pistorius would redeem us. He ran his guts out, and did. Now he is fallen, and we are lost."

Such affirmations are at once both remarkable and obscene for they achieve a certain sinister alchemy; the event - Reeva's shooting by Pistorius - ceases to be something which happened to her but is transfigured into something which happened to him; in this spin on the tale, heroic Olympian Pistorius becomes both protagonist and victim - Steenkamp's death merely the means of throwing into relief the tragic trajectory of his life.

From the purview of the Pistorius PR and legal teams this makes perfect sense. Trying to describe his life in a series of tragic acts admits the possibility of redemption; the fallen hero who can once more beat the odds and make a triumphant comeback (and attain all the sports contracts and financial rewards to go with). Indeed recent 'leaks' of Pistorius back on the track seem suspiciously like ways of testing the water -- trying to gauge just what the public reaction would be to a full-scale Pistorius return.

But there is also a broader dynamic at work here. The culture of the celebrity sportsperson has in the last few decades grown unhealthy, even perverse. We are talking about young men who find themselves propelled into the limelight; who are given almost limitless press and adulation and raised to the status of gladiators enacting out life and death tussles in the Roman coliseum. But they are not gladiators. They are often immature, inexperienced and ill-equipped -- overwhelmed by the vortex of prestige and wealth they are so suddenly pulled into. This unqualified, almost hysterical admiration can produce a gross sense of entitlement equalled only, perhaps, by the rage the celebrity evinces when their needs are not met.

Theatre -- a contrived sense of melodrama and the obligatory references to Greek tragedy -- has been used to embellish and disguise what increasingly looks to have been an argument which was graduated to murderous proportions. But from within the PR pantomime which followed there was one moment of genuine authenticity. When Pistorius stepped into the docks he broke down and wept profusely. He seemed like a frightened, helpless little boy. The only question is -- were the tears he shed for the woman he had killed, or for the sense of his own glittering future -- now so suddenly snatched away?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2783658 2013-02-28T15:13:16-05:00 2013-04-30T05:12:01-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/ a recording of George Galloway speaking in the House of Commons in 2007. Galloway is stood in the rows toward the back - a lonely figure. The building is relatively empty - only a smattering of politicians, dotted here and there around the benches. Some of these up and leave while Galloway is in mid-flow. Others snigger and chuckle under their breath, exchanging surreptitious glances like sly, precocious school children.

But despite the atmosphere of insouciance and resentment, Galloway's words are spellbinding. He speaks in a measured, solemn voice, with just an edge of pathos, as he outlines the hypocrisies of the government: its support of the anti-democratic regime in Saudi Arabia, its myopia regarding the plight of the Palestinians, and its abject cynicism in sending young soldiers to Iraq - there to bleed into the sand for a war premised on a paper-thin tissue of lies. Whatever you might think of him, just watch that video, and see if this is not the stuff politics should be made of - the powerful, poignant articulation of truths designed to hold power to account.

And how very different it all is from our everyday parliamentary fare. Cameron and Miliband taking swipes at one another, using the kind of prosthetic quips one feels could only have been fabricated by their respective PR gurus. But the plastic-like quality of their politics is far from incidental. Labour peers have great difficulty in mounting substantial criticisms of the coalition - they can't properly take them to task on issues like Iraq and Afghanistan - after all, it was their party which instigated those wars. Student tuition fees? Again, introduced on Labour's watch. Cuts to the public sector? Labour might intimate the conservatives are moving too hard and too fast on this front, but in qualitative terms the positions of both parties remain identical.

And so it necessarily falls to a lone voice, a figure like Galloway, who retains a degree of independence from the political mainstream, to make the kind of points we might otherwise not hear. For this, he remains a precious asset to the left. But the same rarity brings with it certain unfortunate consequences. When Galloway does make a blunder, as he did last year with his noxious comments smacking of rape apologism, many on the left are all too quick to present him with a get out of jail free card; criticism toward him is simply dismissed as the product of right-wing antagonists looking for any excuse to interject and undermine.

A case in point. Last week Galloway walked out of a debate with a young man later saying "I don't debate with Israelis. I don't recognise Israel". This at once generated a flurry of criticism. And some of it was, to my mind, justified. I don't mean the shrill voices which shrieked about racism in the same papers which regularly carry stories of sinister foreigners milking the system and refusing to integrate. Galloway's comments are problematic for an altogether different reason. Their logic is largely self-defeating. Galloway has been a key figure in highlighting the injustice the Palestinians have faced on the part of an intransigent Israeli state which, for its continued incursions into the West Bank has been described by human rights organisation Amnesty International as in 'flagrant violation of international law.'

But when he graduates his criticism from a condemnation of the Israeli state to an indiscriminate indictment of his opponent's nationality, he is committing a significant error. Twenty per cent of Israeli nationals are Arabs. And, of equal significance - there are a considerable number of Israeli Jews vehemently opposed to the violent and illegal transgressions of their military state machine. In September 2011 up to 300,000 Israelis protested in Tel-Aviv demanding social justice - Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews linked arms in the streets in what were inspiring and moving scenes. When Galloway deploys the category of 'Israeli' in the manner in which he has, he inevitably blurs and abstracts these vital political distinctions and differences within Israeli society - whether he intends it or not.

Indeed the toxic actions of the military wing of Hamas express the same logic, albeit to murderous proportions, when they fire missiles into Tel Aviv, for in so doing, they too refuse to distinguish between broader layers of the citizenry of a country - and a military state and the powerful elite which provide the bulwark for its crimes. And all the graduations in between.

Ultimately there can be no solution to the Israeli-Palestine question 'from above.' The Israeli state is financed and empowered by the US government precisely because it remains in a perpetual condition of military readiness; it is, consequently, an attack dog which never sleeps, which always has one eye open, ready to protect US financial interests in the region, and to be deployed at a moment's notice. It is a specific but inevitable expression of its symbiotic link to US imperialism through the latter's funding of a high-tech domestic economy which specialises in producing arms. As of 2012 Israel was the world's eighth largest exporter of military goods. Its militarism, therefore, is inexorably fused with its structural nature.

For this reason, any genuine resolution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict can only come from below. The possibility of solidarity and cohesion between both Arabs and Jews at the broader level in Israeli society provides the only viable social force by which the militaristic character of the Israeli-state might be fundamentally curtailed, and some degree of justice for the Palestinians finally attained. When Galloway dismisses a person on grounds of Israeli nationality he is, albeit in a small way, militating against the process by which this can happen.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2728302 2013-02-20T17:35:45-05:00 2013-04-22T05:12:01-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
I first heard about it in a school assembly. Our headmaster described, in sombre almost reverent tones, how as Christmas night arrived, the men in the trenches stopped fighting, laid down their weapons and walked out to embrace one another under the stars. They even played a game of football. Perhaps because the concepts of fighting and football and Christmas were ones close to our own hearts, we followed the story with rapt attention.

That in itself was special, I guess - for our school assemblies were usually categorised by a cacophony of shuffling and coughing and hushed whispers. Now a silence fell. An event, which had happened many decades before in the annuls of a history which was of meagre interest to small children, nevertheless - and for a few minutes - seemed to claim us entirely.

To this day, the Christmas truce retains that power - the power to fascinate. And it retains an aura of mystique too. When one delves into the records and accounts surrounding it, one tends to find - paradoxically - that things become murkier and more mysterious rather than less.

There is, for instance, no uniform consensus surrounding the totemic football game which was said to have taken place between the soldiers. Some accounts argue there was no one single match; that, in fact, quite a few kickabouts were had in various spots dotted along the trenches, and these were amalgamated into a single event only in retrospect. Others suggest - more controversially - that it is unlikely that any football matches occurred in the first place. 'Where', they ask with hardheaded pragmatism - 'would anyone find a ball?'

Moreover, it is stipulated, most of the 'witness' reports were not based on genuine first-hand accounts but were probably little more than recycled rumours that were later seized upon by 'post-war pacifists' - perhaps because such anecdotes so successfully crystallise both the absurdity of war and its pathos.

There does, however, seem to be some evidence to suggest that at least one match took place. References to the same 3-2 score line crop up here and there. And in 1983, in a televised interview, Ernie Williams, a former private of 6th Cheshires recounted his detailed memories of a match which possibly involved "a couple of hundred taking part".

In any case, even if the legendary football match did take place, we shouldn't forget that it was merely one element of a broader and quite remarkable dynamic. Again, the way in which the truces broke out is disputed for the process was by no means linear, and in many places along the Western Front there were no cessations in the fighting. However it seems that in the week leading up to Christmas, some groups of soldiers began to exchange greetings and sing carols from across the trenches. Frank Richards, a private in the Royal Welch Fusiliers describes how both sides erected signs wishing one another 'Merry Christmas'. A correspondent for the Daily Telegraph reveals how some of the German troops managed to slip a chocolate cake to the British side. Letters sent home show how soldiers eventually stepped out into no-man's land in order to shake hands and exchange gifts.

Although the truce took place at Christmas, it wasn't the product of some quasi-religious epiphany which allowed the scales to fall from the eyes and the soldiers to be possessed by some transcendental yearning for brotherhood. The stakes were far too high for such easy sentimentality. Rather it was an awkward and tentative process which was interrupted by suspicion and distrust on both sides, underscored by the type of black humour the perennial presence of death is likely to induce. In one priceless exchange a British Tommy refused to sing songs with opposing troops shouting "We'd rather die than sing German". At which point a German soldier offered the immortal riposte - "It would kill us if you did".

But despite tensions, fraternisations did occur - and on a massive scale. It is estimated that some 100 000 troops participated in the spontaneous ceasefire. In some cases the troops would not resume aggressions for several days. What is often omitted from more saccharine and apolitical accounts of the truce - is the outrage it evoked on the part of the command centres - and the clinical, cold blooded measures they took in order to make sure that it could not sustain, and would not be repeated.

Officers who had indulged or supported the fraternisations were disciplined and in the case of Captain Iain Colquhoun of the 1st Scots Guard - court-martialled. The 2nd Welsh Fusiliers - who had not fired a shot from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day - were relieved without notice. But more significantly the British high command perpetuated a series of slow interminable bombardments and trench raids in the period immediately following - designed, quite literally, to blow to smithereens the precious, precarious solidarity the soldiers had started to forge against the darkest of backdrops.

As the year of the centennial of the truce approaches, the current UK government is devising plans to mark it; plans which will include a series of football games as part of the homage. This is simultaneously welcome and worrying; on the one hand any commemoration to such a moving and resonant event should be encouraged - but at the same time the temptation to the government to apoliticise the truce, and the conflict more generally, is clearly a strong one.

Conservative minister Andrew Murrison has already spoken of the need for any narrative to "be personal and parochial'" eschewing broader references to "grand strategy". Quite so. In a period when the nation remains embroiled in futile wars overseas, the current government will surely be inclined to reappropriate the Christmas truce; to absolve the record and to conveniently forget that then - as now - there remained a powerful and humane undercurrent of opposition to war among those who were the casualties of it.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2660728 2013-02-11T06:21:44-05:00 2013-04-13T05:12:01-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
There is, to be sure, an inherent attraction in imagining a person 'out there' whose soul is made from a similar stuff, and who you are pre-destined to click with, long before you ever meet them in real time. It's the stuff of novels, the Heathcliff-Cathy paradigm, with all its screechy-soulful Kate Bush connotations. And it's something we learn pretty early on too. After all, who, as a teenager, hasn't translated the ping-pong play of his or her hormones into a more transcendental and pre-ordained passion?

And yet. The 'pre-ordained' vision of love, which at first seems like the most sublime form of spirituality, when scrutinized, very quickly passes into its opposite, revealing a rather more down-to-earth and mechanical modus-operandi. For once notions of 'destiny', 'fate', 'kismet' or anything else we can conceive of anchor us to that one special person, we are relieved of a great deal of our autonomy, in much the same way certain religious notions of pre-destination render a person's ethical behavior in this world almost irrelevant. Isn't there something profoundly undermining in raising a model in which we behave almost like atoms, bounced toward one another in terms of an unalterable trajectory, governed by some force of fate which remains invisible to ourselves?

You might disagree. Look at the couple next door, or across the street, or your aunt and uncle, parents or grandparents, or any other couple who have been together for thirty or more years, and who still gaze into each other's eyes with the same golden affection. Weren't they always fated to be together? Destined to see in the other a partner who is 'the one' - always was, and always will be. After all, what is the feasible alternative? Something inside us inevitably balks at the notion that such a pair could have just as easily ended up spending their lives with totally different people - that it was no more than a series of arbitrary events which brought them into alignment.

And so we encounter a polarization of possibility: a love which is absolutely pre-destined, and a love which is merely the product of a random, senseless series of interactions. But if we return to our hypothetical couple, the couple who have been together for thirty or so years, we can see something else too. They might well say to one another - "you are the only one in the world for me", without drawing on either some cosmic notion of pre-destination or the vicissitudes of chance. To paraphrase a poet who knew about love - their romantic course lies not in the stars, but in themselves.

For, by spending a lifetime together, that couple have as well inexorably altered one another in the process. Their future selves are created, in part, by the living of their relationship, the shared experiences, routines and habits. And so it can be said - 'you are the only one for me' - because the 'me' that makes this comment has to some extent been created by the 'you' which is the object of it. This particular 'you' and this specific 'me' would not now exist, were it not for the fact of a mutual, shared history. The feeling that there could have been no other in the world except 'you' becomes a truth which is fused with lived experience.

All of which means that the discovery of a 'soul mate' is not something any of us realise in advance, the result of some mystical, unseen quirk of fate. Your 'soul mate' is not someone 'out there', already fully formed, and just waiting to be encountered. In actual fact, your 'soul mate' does not yet exist; he or she can only come into being through your creation of them, and their creation of you - through shared experience, through mutual living. This, then, is love as an art form, for you are each other's most wonderful self-creation.

But, just as there is little art involved in those saccharine depictions of hearts and flowers on the cards, so there is something artless inherent in Valentine's Day itself. Everything is transcribed with an inevitability, a pre-destination, to which we must adhere. If we are in a relationship we must celebrate it without any sense of spontaneity, through a series of rituals which can sometimes seem artificial and mawkish, but which have to be observed for fear of being thought of as po-faced and unromantic. However, the real forces of romantic 'pre-destination' which underpin the day are, of course, the rather more unromantic mechanisms of the market, and the all-pervasive need for ever-increasing sales. That is why this year I am going to boycott Valentine's Day. Instead, I will spend February 14th machinating on my next project - a plan to abolish Christmas!]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2227152 2012-12-02T08:21:59-05:00 2013-02-01T05:12:01-05:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
In the field of journalism, Brendan O'Neill provides just such a voice. The editor of Spiked magazine, and blogger on The Huffington Post and The Daily Telegraph, is infamous for swimming against the current; for taking provocative and unpopular stances on issues from global warming to feminism. His most recent pieces on the Jimmy Savile revelations have positively simmered in controversy; when the scandal first broke, and the number of reported victims began to climb, O'Neill penned a sharp, acerbic piece in which he argued the rising tide of public feeling against the late BBC presenter had certain sinister undertones. It was unfair, said O'Neill, to condemn someone who was already in the ground and lacked the wherewithal to defend himself, but more than this, he suggested, the 'savaging of Savile' had spun out of all control taking on the tenor and complexion of a medieval witch hunt.

As one might expect such observations, designed to pull no punches, generated a barrage of criticism but perhaps more surprisingly still - a considerable degree of sympathy. Have O'Neill's claims actually stood the test of the last few months as the sheer scale of Savile's abuse became apparent? In retrospect, it feels as though they haven't.

The notion that people should stop pushing for exposure simply because Savile could never be tried in a court of law felt like a fundamental cop out in the first place, especially given the testimony which was available at the time, and which indicated Savile himself had used his prestige and his celebrity as a virtual gagging order to stifle the press. The fact that Savile hadn't been involved in a criminal trial prior to his death was not incidental but rather symptomatic of the power and influence he wielded more broadly.

But what about O'Neill's more ominous suggestion that the swell of resentment toward Savile, if left unchecked, would graduate into hysteria and persecution? On the face of it this claim seems somewhat more tenable; in the Savile aftermath we have had at least one politician - Lord McAlpine - who was incorrectly labelled as a child molester by the BBC programme Newsnight. One instinctively feels that the BBC, having over-looked Savile's activities so comprehensively and for so long, had now performed a classic gesture of overcompensation - desperate, as it was, to assure an astonished public that their beloved Aunty was more petticoats than paedophiles.

But though there is a real danger of hasty accusations flying loose and fast in such an emotionally fraught context, the 'witch hunt' metaphor employed by O'Neill doesn't work on a logical level. The actual basis for medieval witch hunts was, in the main, the relation between men with power and women with none. Savile was never in a position of powerlessness, nor were those who facilitated him. The idea that most powerful sections of the political class and high chiefs of broadcasting past and present are now facing some genuine form of persecution is a chimera which only serves distract from the real victims, the hundreds of children who suffered at Savile's hands.

O'Neill's skewed sense of the way power-relations operate underpins the shock jock format of the articles he trots out. One of his recent contributions to the Savile scandal is this piece which argues that the victims of Savile's abuse should really just learn to keep it to themselves. He rails against a system in which 'today's therapeutic industry promotes the idea that the best way to cope with bad experiences is to revisit them, relive them, tell everyone all about them'. What good can talking about it do after the event? According to O'Neill, It only helps those 'desperate for more episodes of perversions to pore over...salacious tabloids...[and]...feministic commentators on the broadsheets who muse at length about "cultures of abuse"'.

The 'feministic commentators' provide a particular target for O'Neill's invective as he feels, for them, 'the existence of an alleged 300 Savile victims is like manna from heaven'. The 'alleged victims' themselves will not benefit from airing such 'unpleasant things', but even if they were to, we could never be completely sure of the veracity of the claims in the first place - 'It is virtually impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the allegations against him are true'.

In O'Neill's account the villains of the piece emerge as the very people who urge victims to speak out because those same people are part of an 'abuse obsessed' culture. What such contrarian and provocative observations fail to register, what O'Neill remains blithely unconcerned with, are the power relations which underpin the Savile crimes, and allowed them to go unchecked for decade upon decade. It was the very fact that the victims felt unable to speak out, or those that did were simply side-lined and marginalized; it was this system wide 'un-voicing' of powerless children which allowed the abuse to go on and on. When O'Neill argues that the 'alleged victims' should simply keep stum, he is, in effect, helping to bolster the type of attitude which proves wholly conducive to the perpetrators but utterly destructive for the victims.

Take a look at Brendan O'Neill. What do you see? A hip, cutting edge-blogger who consistently pushes the boundaries with his ironic and cutting prose? Now look again. The same person morphs into a different figure entirely; the rather fusty figure of the Victorian patriarch who believes that feminists are invariably whinny and hysterical, that society has become far too touchy feely and we should bury any unpleasantness by bucking up and maintaining a stiff upper lip. Above all, his arguments harken back to a time where children were seen but not heard.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1947453 2012-10-08T05:33:56-04:00 2012-12-08T05:12:01-05:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
But in retrospect, perhaps we shouldn't blame them for celebrating. The 2002 coup d'état against Hugo Chavez was not the spontaneous product of mass disaffection - the result of a sharp and violent change in the overall political weather; rather it represented a master-work of meticulous planning and audacious execution. It was, as we now know, the culmination of months of sober calculation conducted at the very highest level of the Venezuelan elite.

To provide the spark which would ignite events, the opposition recorded Chavez supporters positioned from a bridge firing in response to gunshots from opposition militia. The images of Chavistas shooting were then juxtaposed with entirely different and unrelated footage, footage which showed civilians injured and bleeding, thereby bolstering the narrative the anti-Chavista campaign had for years attempted to cultivate - the image of the Venezuelan president as a blood thirsty 'caudillo' ready at any moment to turn his guns on the population.

The illegitimacy of the doctored footage did not worry the mainstream Venezuelan press in the least. The broadcasting company Venevision, headed by Gustavo Cisneros (a media mogul very much in the Rupert Murdoch vein), had no qualms about running the incendiary images on a loop in the hours and days which followed the coup. They also promulgated the rather vulgar falsehood that Chavez had resigned of his own free will. In the period leading up to the coup, the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce shut down businesses everywhere provoking an economic chaos which would further set the stage for insurrection.

All of this is instructive in as much as it describes a precise triangulation of interests between politics, big business and the media; a mutual solidarity from which the coup leaders themselves would draw their mettle. Indeed, in an act of pure chutzpah, Pedro Carmona, the head of the coup, had the traditional decorative sash which he would wear at his presidential inauguration woven several months before at an exclusive tailors in Madrid - so confident was he in the illegal removal of the democratically elected head of state.

There was, however, one form of solidarity that the coup orchestrators had not counted on. While Carmona and his cohorts celebrated in the presidential suite of the Miraflores Palace, something other was happening outside. People were beginning to gather. Notable for their shabbier clothes, and darker skins, more and more arrived. They came from the poorest parts of Caracas, from the barrios and the hills, and they came without any obvious sense of hurry but gradually, inevitably, their number began to swell; thousands became tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands.

From the Miraflores balcony the coup plotters must have beheld that vast human sea. What were they thinking in those moments? Did the hold any hopes that their coup, so meticulously planned, could be sustained? Or did they feel a sinking sense of dread before the mighty power they had awoken? Whatever the case, the military officers swiftly intuited the perilous nature of the situation. They radioed in the order to stand down, the plotters fled, and Chavez was returned to the palace amid jubilant celebrations.

The 2002 coup is important today not least because it provides one of those pivotal historical moments where a mask is seen to slip. A small elite which - up until then tried to present themselves as guardians of a precarious democracy threatened by the shadow of a Chavista driven totalitarianism - had demonstrated conclusively, and in the most sinister manner possible, exactly where the true threat lay.

The haughty patricians who occupied the Miraflores Palace that fateful April afternoon at once used their illicit, newly seized power to dissolve the institutions of democracy, the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. The ground was quite clearly being prepared for the type of dictatorship which General Pinochet had so murderously actualised in Chile almost thirty years before.

The current leader of the opposition, Henrique Capriles Radonski, was complicit in the coup attempt of 2002. In her book - The Chavez Code, - Eva Golinger describes an assault on the Cuban embassy in Baruta during the coup and how "Mayor Capriles Radonski, in charge of the municipal police, made no effort to stop the assault and in fact encouraged it by arriving at the scene and interacting with the aggressors." Of course, this was little referenced as Radonski mounted his ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the Venezuelan presidency.

For, as a 'democratic candidate' Radonski presented an altogether different face; he advertised himself as someone who fights for the rights of the oppressed, and even went as far as to cite the leftist ex-President of Brazil Lula Da Silva as an inspiration. Nevertheless the token nod to radicalism was somewhat belied by Radonski's past struggles against social healthcare programmes and a labour law which reduced working hours; he attacked the latter on the flimsy and dubious grounds that it - "does nothing to deal with unemployment or to benefit those with unprotected casual jobs". A leaked document revealed how the plan to follow the Brazilian model was merely a chimera; in fact the presidential hopeful had every intention of reverting to the neo-liberal format Venezuela's poor had so learned to despise.

Chavez, on the other hand, does have a genuinely solid record of fighting to improve the conditions of the poor majority. The UN Economic Commission on Latin America registers a 21% reduction in poverty rates between 1999-2010, while according to a study by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, in approximately the same period "the percentage of households in poverty has been reduced by 39 per cent, from 42.8 per cent to 26 per cent". Perhaps the most important lesson of the 2002 coup is just how much the legacy of Chavez is bound up with the popular movement which rescued him and returned him to power.

None of this is to say that there aren't serious problems with the current Venezuelan administration. There are plausible reports of large scale corruption within the ranks of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) at the district level. It's well known that street crime is terrifyingly high especially in Caracas. In addition the personal support Chavez has rather promiscuously bestowed on genuine dictators like the late Colonel Gadhafi and Iran's Ahmadinejad tends to leave a certain, bilious aftertaste.

But these factors should not be allowed to obscure the root difference between Chavez and his political opposition which represents, ultimately, the opposition between a popular mass movement and a cold-blooded elite. Radonski may now wear the mask of a centre liberal democrat, but we should never lose sight of the sinister physiognomy which lies beneath.

In the election this Sunday, Chavez polled 54% of the vote while Radonski managed close to 45% with 90% of the votes counted. The electoral win of Hugo Chavez is a victory for democracy more broadly.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1763340 2012-08-10T05:45:34-04:00 2012-10-10T05:12:15-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
Nevertheless Livingstone's words are telling; for they provide us with a clue as to the secret of Johnson's success. It is the very fact that his opponents tend to dismiss him as 'frivolous', 'not serious' or 'a joke'- the very ability to be taken lightly - is what has allowed the current London Mayor to achieve several spectacular political upsets.

Some of us are aware that, behind the floppy and clownish demeanour, the almost Woodhousean façade of bumbling Englishness, there lies something far more purposeful and possibly even ruthless. Since Johnson has drawn the media spot light a number of biographies have emerged chronicling his rise, and showing how, from the outset, his political destiny was shaped in the highest echelons of power.

For, like many members of the current cabinet, Johnson is an 'old Etonian'; a bi-product of the antediluvian public school system which allows the English upper classes of the future to form the contacts and connections they will avail themselves of at a later date - in pursuit of their political or commercial careers. A fact which is transparently true in the case of Johnson who - though he studied classics at Oxford - on leaving university was at once offered a lucrative position as a management consultant at L.E.K Consulting.

Nothing remarkable in any of this, you might think, but it bears remembering, especially as one of the ideological bulwarks of Johnson's brand of conservatism comes in the form of an earnest pledge to support those who struggle to gain' reward' through good honest 'effort'. Boris perennially purports to attack a 'culture of easy gratification and entitlement' - presuming, of course, we are talking about rioters and low income benefit cheats as opposed to bankers and the old boy's network.

Having said this, Johnson's allegiance to those of his own social strata is far from absolute. One of his more pronounced qualities is the ruthless ability to malign or sacrifice the very contacts who have supported him - if and when it proves conducive to his own career trajectory. Having lasted as a management consultant for just a week, Johnson was then given a position at the Times Newspaper as a junior reporter. A desire for quick acclaim led him to manufacture a quotation from his Godfather Colin Lucas - who was, as a result, exposed to professional ridicule.

In the event, the somewhat cynical and careerist manoeuvre on the part of the young Boris Johnson backfired, leading to an unceremonious dismissal, but in the years subsequent this keen sense of ruthless ambition seems to have been meticulously refined to a steely, glinting point. Sonia Purnell, one of his more critical biographers, notes how Boris is not above sliding a carefully aimed dagger into the back of one of his former patrons - in the case of his former editor Conrad Black, for instance, Johnson ran an attack on his 'murky business origins' precisely at a time when his mentor was under fire in the US. Perhaps this is why there is an element of cordiality, dare I say wariness, which has crept into our current PM's voice as of late, whenever the topic of his flamboyant London mayor is broached.

In light of all this, some commentators are inclined to see Boris' stuttering, gaffe prone persona as a carefully contrived deception; a charming, antiquated bemusement which belies and obscures the often reactionary political initiatives London's Mayor affects. Boris slashes funds to rape crisis centres but hey - who remembers that when Boris has just stumbled comically and fallen into a river. Boris pulls the plug on the anti-racism festival - 'Rise' but this is blurred by the headlines and the indulgent, amused "tutting" which his latest politically-incorrect gaffe has provoked. Transportation costs have spiked in London but again this is softened by the rather quaint image of our bumbling mayor attempting a return to tradition by bringing the good old fashioned routemaster bus to our streets once more.

It's not difficult to imagine why people might believe Boris' political persona is nothing more than a useful pantomime. In her biography, Purnell cites an occasion where two separate journalists making independent phone calls were given the same meandering spiel almost word for word. And yet, this type of analysis seems almost a little too easy somehow.

Another one of Boris' biographers - Andrew Gibson - suggests that Boris' idiosyncratic version of upper-class Englishness, which at times verges on parody, was cultivated in order to conceal the 'non-Englishness' of his roots on his father's side (Johnson's paternal Grandfather was Turkish and was later recognised as a British subject). Gibson's theory has a ring of plausibility to it especially when set against the background of Oxford University at the time; a place where Boris was part of a coterie of a rich select; a glittering elite where the whiff of any difference in background could negatively affect social standing. To affirm a true blue brand of Englishness in such a context might indeed have been a question of survival.

But despite all this there is something genuine about Boris' unworldly patrician charm. In a time of sleek besuited politicians whose every speech has been manufactured by a well-oiled PR machine, Boris' addled utterances seem to carry an authenticity appropriate to a bygone age. Indeed his manner and tone brings to mind a character in a Graham Greene novel; a cheerful but out of touch brigadier who has been stationed in some exotic colonial outpost in Africa or India, and remains mildly baffled by the 'strangeness' of the native population he has been sent to rule. It's perhaps no coincidence that Boris so easily slips into the lingua franca of yesteryears' imperialism as when he describes black people in terms of 'pickanninies' with 'water-melon smiles'.

Some people have excitedly speculated on the possibility of Johnson becoming PM one day. If he ever makes it to the highest office in the land, I suspect his old world charm will be rapidly evaporated by his instinctive and ruthless elitism. But by then, of course, it will be too late.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1693518 2012-07-23T19:00:00-04:00 2012-09-22T05:12:05-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/ a new spin on an old argument regarding the sex trade. The argument is a familiar one: prostitutes are exploited but hey that's okay - because so are billions of other people. There is, he claims, no difference between the exploitation of a prostitute and that of a person working in Tesco stacking shelves for 12 hours a day.

Is he correct when he says that the exploitation of a prostitute is no different from the exploitation of a shelve stacker? And how might we test the claim?

A study conducted by The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon in 1991 concludes that 85% of prostitutes reported sexual abuse in childhood, and 70% of them were victims of incest. There are numerous other studies which seem to confirm the same bleak pattern. This is perhaps the most important way in which prostitution is different from working in shop or a factory - the often horrific conditions of a shattered childhood create the homelessness and instability on which the sex industry thrives. They provide its necessary pre-condition.

And the actual consummation of the act itself - the moment at which one human being pays a sum of money in order to reduce another to the status of a human toilet - is explicitly premised on the victim's powerlessness. No longer do they confront the other person as an independent sexual being with their own set of needs and desires, but rather as a 'thing' which is entirely subject to the whims of another. A living receptacle. Prostitution is not simply about sex; it is about power and objectification.

And, in reducing another person to 'thing-hood', we inevitably reduce ourselves. In Latin America the colloquial name for prostitute is 'puta' or 'bitch' - which designates not so much lust as hatred. The phrases 'slut' and 'whore' have historical resonance in words such as 'subhuman' and 'wicked'. Such demonisation has a certain logic to it; by hiring a prostitute the client is brought face to face with his own emptiness; in consummating the act, he is as well manifesting his own lack- the inability to connect with another person on a genuine basis of freedom and equality. The very act of paying for sex itself exacerbates the grubby inadequacy of the 'John' - the prostitute, then, becomes the living reminder of his own deficient premise. How can he not despise her for that?

People might argue I am painting too grim a picture. That such po-faced 'moralism' only serves to smother what is essentially a fun activity between consenting adults. I can almost hear the inevitable wittering - "My best friend's mum's sister's niece's bridesmaid's daughter works as a prostitute, and she makes, like, 2000 quid every evening, and she really loves her work 'cause all the men give her so much attention and it, like, makes her feel really empowered and in control."

No doubts such Belle de Jours do exist. But the point is they exist as an extremely tiny minority. For most prostitutes their work provides a misery almost without limits. We know this because up to 95% of them are problematic drug users. According to the Home Office, more than half of women in the UK who work as prostitutes have been raped or seriously sexually assaulted. The overall mortality rate is 12 times the national average.

But beyond this I don't believe those who argue this is merely another form of exploitation really genuinely believe in what they are saying. Most fathers and mothers would not be, in all likelihood, too adverse to their teenage daughter or son getting a job in a supermarket or McDonalds at the weekend for some extra pocket money but I'm willing to bet that those same parents would be horrified and hurt to discover their daughter (or son) had been working in a brothel.

But then again, perhaps this is the real crux of the issue; the people who argue so ardently for prostitution tend also to be those who will never experience the trauma of having their loved ones in the profession in the first place. I argue absolutely for the rights of daughters (and sons) to be able to live 'this life' - and I do so in the name of freedom and against sexual hypocrisy (providing, of course, they are not my daughters, my sons).

Humour is a powerful thing. It goes beyond just making us laugh. Sometimes it is capable of smuggling in some very nasty notions all in the guise of a cheeky-chappy, slap on the back type affability. Dangerfield's article seems to be provocative and liberal but it is anything but.

It is merely a rehash of the dull conservative demand that those who are most vulnerable in society should be allowed to enjoy the only freedom they have - the freedom to be exploited.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1573375 2012-06-07T08:13:19-04:00 2012-08-07T05:12:03-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
The difference in ideas about how the IMF was supposed to function would have profound ramifications. If the Keynesian model had prevailed the IMF would have retained a level of separation from the world economy; attempting to manage its economic components from the outside, so to say, in order to soften extreme forms of national deficit imbalance. In the event it was the American vision which triumphed. Rather than achieve distance from the various competing economic interests - by making its central focus the repayment of loans, the IMF itself became yet another local interest locked into the global economy and the cycle of profit.

As the German philosopher Hegel might have observed - the universal moment was lost in particularity. Once the IMF was particularised in this way, the economists and strategists whom it employed inevitably began to frame their analyses in terms of what was beneficial for the organisation itself, its employees and shareholders, rather than the world economy as a whole. Its specific structural position increasingly brought it into contradiction with its mission statement 'to reduce poverty around the world'. The IMF would offer financial aid for 'underdeveloped' countries who found themselves desperately in need of emergency loans, for sure. But these loans carried certain stipulations designed to open up the economy in question to foreign investment as part of any repayment programme. The consequences for the populations of these countries would nearly always prove dire.

The journalist John Pilger has described the procedure as follows - "Industry would be deregulated and sold off; public services, such as health care and education, would be diminished. Subsistence agriculture... would be converted to the production of foreign exchange-earning crops". In many cases the conversion from traditional crops to cash crops, and the selling off of state stockpiles, meant that a key safety valve against famine was removed. In the case of Malawi in 2002, for instance, the results of famine were exacerbated because the IMF had allegedly 'recommended' the government sell off its grain reserves. In addition the government's ability to respond to the crisis was hampered by the heavy debt repayments it was embroiled in. For this, hundreds of thousands starved.

The representatives of the IMF, of course, do not articulate their role in this way. They insist that deals of 'financial support' between the organisation and the cliental states are the products of free negotiation on both sides. In a certain sense they are correct. Any given country has the formal right not to resort to the IMF in times of crisis just as someone living in on the breadline need not approach a loan-shark. But desperation, for any of us, will always prove a powerful incentive. Struggling economies do resort to IMF 'support' and, as the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz points out, the respective power differences in the relationship mean the IMF is able to dictate its terms from the very beginning - 'these are one-sided negotiations in which all the power is in the hands of the IMF, largely because many countries seeking IMF help are in desperate need of funds...a public announcement by the IMF that negotiations had broken off would send a highly negative signal to the markets'.

Where does the power behind the IMF lie? Its largest shareholder is the US with a quota of 68 billion. As with any company, capital subscription as opposed to simple membership is what determines influence here. Consequently the US carries what effectively amounts to a veto over the organisation's decision making process, converting it into a proxy of its own power. And so the IMF, in effect, operates as something more than simply another business interest on the global stage. By bringing the right combination of threat and finance to bear on weaker economies, the IMF is able to oversee their reconstruction according to a pro-Washington paradigm.

When the IMF closes an "agreement", Stiglitz finds himself wondering - is this so very different from 'the "opening up of Japan" with Admiral Perry's gunboat diplomacy or the end of the Opium Wars or the surrender of the maharajas in India?' Pilger too perceives the hidden hand of colonialism behind the activities of the IMF, only he regards the process as often more subtly subversive, for it often accomplishes 'the surrender of sovereignty, and without a gunboat in sight'. The allusion here is to the lack of military intervention on the part of the IMF itself. For much of the time the IMF is able to rely on the military strength of the regimes it backs, as in the case of its support for the hated apartheid state in South Africa which was prepared to pulverize its indigenous population into cooperation, and which the IMF kindly furnished with more money than it gave to the rest of the continent combined.

The great Latin American historian Eduardo Galeano reminds us that when we look at capitalism it is as if we perceive it through a looking glass which generates an upside-down effect. The IMF does not exploit and reduce to dependence once sovereign economies, you see - no, it simply seeks to 'restructure' them. In the process, it does not propagate the divisions of wealth and power between 'underdeveloped' nations and those of the first world - no, it merely helps 'foster global monetary cooperation.' And it certainly does not reduce vast numbers of people around the globe to destitution - rather it only hopes to encourage 'sustainable economic growth'.

And so when the head of the IMF appears before us dressed immaculately in a serious business suit, and wearing the grave expression of someone who is dispassionately concerned with the fate of the world economy as a whole, we must remember that she too is appearing through the looking glass. And when that same figure appears to tell us, with consummate and oily professionalism, that the Greek population deserve to suffer, and our compassion should really rest with the impoverished children of Africa, we might take a few moments to reflect on just what kind of an influence her organisation has had on that continent.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1464805 2012-05-01T19:00:00-04:00 2012-07-01T05:12:24-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/
However it is worth considering that the history of IQ testing is pervaded by a darker and more sinister aspect altogether.

In the late 19th century Cambridge educated statistician Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, was to provide the template for IQ measurement. Influenced by his relative's famous theory of natural selection, Galton took strides to create something equally revolutionary but which focussed on the social evolution of human beings; he sought to demonstrate that 'intelligence' was an innate biological category cosseted in the matter of our brains; this, in turn, allowed for the implication that some of us would be born with more of it than others.

Galton's theories provided the thin veneer of pseudo-science necessary to justify an already explicitly racist and imperialist outlook. He has the dubious 'honour' of introducing the term 'eugenics' to the language, and was a pioneer of the notion of heredity intelligence passing down the generations of white Europeans, a passage which, according to him, was interrupted and threatened by the integration of "less intelligent races."

In the American Deep South such a world view was swiftly gobbled up. In 1906 Virginian physician Robert Bennet Bean published an article which claimed to demonstrate the inferiority of black people; this study, and others like it, would provide an impetus to a burgeoning eugenics movement in the US, a movement which would lead to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and the enforced sterilisation of thousands of women, mainly African Americans.

The IQ tests which purported to demonstrate the innate intellectual inferiority of blacks, and other minorities - tests which often yielded results in favour of white Caucasians - were in fact highly deceptive. For as Professor of Social Psychology Richard Nesbit points out, they obscure entirely the role played by social relations. Nesbit draws attention to the fact that a child raised in a well off family can sometimes have, on average, up to a 25 point higher IQ than their counterpart living in poverty. In the US, at a time of apartheid, and indeed in its aftermath, black children had and continue to have far less access to education; they were often unable to refine the skills on which the IQ tests were premised.

Thanks to the work of scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould, who have rigorously exposed IQ testing as 'the mismeasure of man' - those who continue to use IQ tests in order to bolster racist views are almost always the kind of cranks and lunatics you would expect to encounter on the fringes of white supremacy movements. Nevertheless the concept of 'innate intelligence' has itself mutated in order to adapt to a post-apartheid world. It has graduated from an explicitly racial orientation to a subtle and implicit focus on gender and class, acquiring a far more libertarian character in the process.

As an English language tutor I would often have to go to staff meetings to discuss teaching method. I worked for many different institutions but almost all of them placed emphasis on what are called 'multiple-intelligence theories'. These tend to argue that each child is blessed with an innate intelligence - Bob is 'logical', Mandy is 'musical', Paulo is 'spatial' and so on. Now on a certain level this had a progressive character - it wasn't like the original IQ tests which sought to demonstrate that specific ethnic groups were either innately stupid or innately intelligent. Rather 'multiple-intelligence' seeks to show that every child is gifted albeit in different ways. But it does not do away with this aspect of the 'innate' - instead it proliferates it.

And this is the problem. Certainly in the course of a child's development he or she will become better at some things than others. I struggled with history until GCSEs when I had a teacher who really inspired, and suddenly it began to interest me. The crucible of education should imply a living development in which children are experimenting and refining their intellectual makeup - continually developing new abilities and interests while possibly shedding older ones. At six Maria wants to be an artist, by 13 though, she is crazy about being a doctor.

But when one theorises a particular innate disposition, the concrete social circumstances inevitably fade into the background. It is not important that David is in a class chock full of great resources and only three other pupils while Derek learns in a beaten down room alongside 30. What is important it that David's intelligence is 'logical mathematical' while Derek's is 'body-kinesthetic'. The corresponding implication is that if Derek gets a low paid job as a manual labourer and David finds himself in position of power as an MP, they are merely fulfilling some inherent-genetic destiny. The theory of 'multiple-intelligences' is fully imbued with the rationale of the status quo.

When I was a child my mum would help me with my English homework but she was always reluctant when it came to maths. 'I don't have a mathematical mind-set' - she'd say, with a hint of regret. At the time I took this at face value. Some years later the subject of her education came up again. She hadn't chosen to do maths for O-levels, she explained, because a teacher had told her that girls were more suited to home economics. There is a real sadness in that. Intelligence theories don't serve to locate intelligence in our children. They serve to limit it.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1439739 2012-04-23T19:42:58-04:00 2012-06-23T05:12:02-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/ A good few people have claimed that he was. In a way this was inevitable; after all - the event, its sheer depth of horror, provides a stumbling block to our reason - we find it hard to define the massacre in terms of the actions of a rational actor with a coherent agenda. How can we not but detect a flicker of derangement in Breivik's cold implacable eyes?

Other commentators have, however, drawn attention to the fact that although diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, Breivik seems to exhibit few features of the illness - based on what we know, he does not hear voices and neither does he suffer from hallucinations. Also, and again premised on available information, he is not inflicted by the violent paroxysms of paranoia which wrack the schizophrenic mind - the surreal and hallucinatory awareness of some immanent and dire threat.

Of course we now realise, courtesy of his 1500 page diatribe, that Breivik did perceive a threat but unlike the paranoid schizophrenic, it wasn't something directed toward him specifically - there were no UFOs or sinister government assassins lurking in the darkness waiting to target him. Rather what Breivik perceived was a threat to 'civilisation' in general; a threat which, according to his bilious ravings, manifested in the guise of a quasi-medieval 'militant' Islam.

And so, in place of the disjointed fantasy of the paranoid schizophrenic, Breivik was able to articulate his 'enemy' in a coherent and profoundly ideological fashion. Since the trial began this week, he has described himself as a 'political activist' and despite their sheer hideousness, his crimes clearly flow from a specific political affiliation presenting a coherent world view.

Islamophobia is, of course, a morbidly racist ideological spectre raised in order to justify the oppression of Muslim populations both domestic and internationally whether it be in Afghanistan or Oslo. Though it appears in a fantastical and irrational form - usually as the fictitious proposition of Muslims as a single homogenous mass swarming so called 'western' culture - nevertheless such irrationality has at its core a lucid and rational element, for it seeks to legitimate a pre-existing set of repressive social relationships, and that is why its individual agents, the bearers of its ideological poison, can't be dismissed as mentally irregular or even irrational simply on account of their ideology.

Islamophobia is common place precisely because it fulfils a definitive and necessary political function especially in the context of the recent and on-going wars in the Middle East. But what was it about Breivik that transformed him from just another embittered Islamophobe into to a mass murderer? At first glance his background doesn't seem to shed much light on the question. He came from a nice middle class family, enjoyed the benefits of wealth and education, and there is no record of abuse or mistreatment during his childhood. In fact there doesn't seem to be anything extreme or remarkable about his formative years. And yet.

Breivik, like many people of his background, was taught he was destined to succeed - through education, through career, through his very essence as a member of a privileged stratum. At the same time this sense of ambition which was absorbed organically was thwarted over and over by a series of rejections and failures. Having been a mildly rebellious teen, his father rejected him wholesale and severed their relations. Such rejection left him in some wise emasculated - the summary dismissal as a son by his father providing agonizing doubts about his own legitimacy as a man - feelings of masculine inadequacy further graduated by what Breivik felt he was left with - a pathetic circle of women. This, he was later to comment 'completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminising me to a certain degree.'

Spurred by his inadequacy, the youthful Breivik attempted to assert himself more forcefully in order to overcome such 'feminisation'. He attended the Oslo Commerce School but performed poorly. He was rejected from the army which deemed him 'unfit for service'. He lost money speculating and the businesses he instigated failed spectacularly. In every case the attempt to transcend his dreaded 'feminisation' was frustrated. In 2006 he was forced to file for bankruptcy and move back in with his mother, the only respite from 'feminisation' here being his long periods engrossed in the computer game 'World of War Craft'.

Breivik's declaration of bankruptcy coincided with an overall fall in the real GDP (2005-2006) of Norway's economy (in comparison to Sweden whose real GDP rose in the same period from 3.2 - 4.3) and a fall in competitiveness on the world market. The Norwegian government compensated for this by increasing credit and real wages to boost domestic demand and this created an increase in the levels of immigration.

These events were crystallised with Breivik's personal development. He had utterly failed to realise his 'potential' and felt alienated from and rejected by the very social group he belonged to. But the increases in immigration, along with the world wide fascist cultivation of notions of Islamophobia allowed his personal sense of betrayal and failure to be graduated into a universal principle; he wasn't hateful of the middle classes because they had betrayed him, no -he was hateful of them because they had betrayed the country by capitulating before 'multiculturalism'. No longer did he experience himself as poisoned toward them by the unbearable personal sense of inadequacy and failure - now his hatred manifested as a positive political principle which extended far beyond his own life; a fight to protect civilisation in which he appeared as a resplendent fighter poised on the front line. Thus a jaundiced thirst for revenge was transfigured into 'nobility' in and through the nexus of political ideology.

There is a photo of Breivik, after the massacre, sitting in a police car looking out through the glass. In the aftermath he seems eerily calm and there is the ghost of a smile on his face. It is the expression of a man who feels as though he has finally found the success which has eluded his life, and is certain he will never be dismissed again.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1418391 2012-04-11T14:22:06-04:00 2012-06-11T05:12:02-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/ the recent proposal for stricter monitoring of private internet use as 'fascist', I couldn't help but wince. Nowadays it seems as though the term 'fascist' is banded around willy-nilly - a loose and lazy pejorative to describe whatever irritating or invasive state sponsored legislation happens to be current. Liberal lefties are, in my opinion, all too quick to cry 'fascism' - much like the boy and his imaginary wolf - until, well... the wolf ceased to be imaginary, that is.

Even if you fervently disagree with a particular proposal - as I do with the idea that some governmental apparatchik should be entitled to peruse my emails - nevertheless by branding it 'fascist' you provoke a violent disequilibrium - a somewhat invasive and unwarranted piece of legislation is automatically thrown into relief by the ghastly spectre of 11 million burning bodies, and your criticism is voided thereupon.

In addition there is a question of definition. Fascism itself resembles Potter Stewart's take on porn - 'I can't define it but I know it when I see it.' It has a nebulous, shifting quality which is difficult to get a handle on, even if all the goose stepping and military parades make it intuitively recognisable. The horrific anti-Semitism which was so integral to the Nazi regime, for instance, was almost entirely unknown in fascist Italy under Mussolini - until 1938 when 'il duce' introduced racist legislation, presumably to curry favour with his counterpart in Berlin. Spanish fascism under Franco sought to preserve much of the power of the church while Hitler, on the other hand, was quick to replace the cross with the swastika, and the Bible with Mien Kampf.

In fact fascism seems to be more of a process rather than a single, uniform product with a coherent set of articulable qualities. What all forms of fascism have in common is the way in which they come to be. Whether under Mussolini in the 20s or Pinochet in Chile of the early 70s, fascist regimes are invariably presaged by a climate of social-economic crisis in which mass mobilisations of the forces of the left become increasingly commonplace.

In Chile, for example, such mobilisations brought the socialist Salvador Allende to power on the crest of a tidal wave, while in Spain, only a few years before the civil war and eventual ascension of Franco, a new republic had been proclaimed which exiled the monarchy, established freedom of speech, nationalised major public services and extended suffrage to women. The fascist regimes were mobilised and supported by big businesses and traditional elites in order to liquidate such gains, to dismantle the new forms of self-determination the mass of the population had so recently won.

From the Arab Spring onwards, as protests proliferated around the world, one of the key ingredients was the ability to co-ordinate via the internet. The internet became an integral feature of these forms of mass self-determination and I suspect that any governmental endeavour to regulate the internet will be more about thwarting the lines of communication which open up and contribute to the efficacy of social protest, rather than the need to frustrate the sinister goals of terrorist bogeymen. It is worth noting just how prickly the forces of the state are with regards to this; two men were recently jailed for four years for attempting to use social networking sites to organise during the riots of last year, even though nothing criminal resulted from their actions.

But the increasingly muscular posturing on the part of the British state wasn't restricted to the virtual world. In late 2010 Alfie Meadows, a twenty year old philosophy student, was struck by a police truncheon in the midst of the student protests against a hike in tuition fees. Meadows required emergency brain surgery, but the lesson which the state power was keen to extrapolate from this incident was that Meadows himself would be put on trial, charged with violent and disorderly conduct, and this, of course, provided an ominous warning to those who consider taking to the streets in order to assert their right to protest. Some months later, and across the pond, a new bill was introduced by the state of Wisconsin which effectively eliminated collective bargaining rights on the part of employees.

I don't for a moment believe either the conservative coalition government of the UK or the state of Wisconsin could legitimately be described as fascist. To describe either in this way would do a disservice to those people who had lived under, and were persecuted by, genuinely fascist regimes. More than that, it would be logically incongruent.

Nevertheless the measures enacted by both governments contain within themselves a particle of fascism, in as much as fascism is the process by which developing forms of mass self-determination are violently physically annulled. In itself curtailing the right to peaceably protest, communicate freely or bargain collectively is politically undesirable, authoritarian even, but not fascist. However when these things are taken together, when they occur more and more frequently against a backdrop in which populations all over the world are creating radical new ways of shaping political life - we receive an early premonition of how terrible it would be to live in a place where such rights have been fully eradicated. And, perhaps more importantly, we have a glimmering that such a place, far from being consigned to a distant and barbaric past, is closer to us than we ever imagined.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1326075 2012-03-07T07:01:23-05:00 2012-05-07T05:12:02-04:00

Tony Mckenna http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-mckenna/ Nothing to Declare. It's a programme which follows the activities of the UK border control, and in this episode, a woman who has just arrived on a flight from St Lucia, has been detained on suspicion of drug smuggling. She's black, possibly in her late twenties, and wears a weary, defeated expression; as she sluggishly opens up her suitcase for the officials to inspect, it feels as though she is sleep-walking through a scene which will have terrible repercussions for her life.

But if the suspect's manner expresses helplessness and fatigue, the customs officer Phil, who is dealing with her, seems keen and engaged. Like most petty bureaucrats, he is clearly animated by the opportunity to use the limited power conferred upon him, though he tries to mask his enthusiasm behind a veneer of professionalism. He explains to the cameras, in sober and serious tones, the procedure by which the suitcase is to be examined, and how the tests for drugs are to be administered. When the test for narcotics eventually returns positive, however, it proves too much: the guise of professionalism slips, and he giggles delightedly - 'that's what we were hoping for! Only a bit quicker and a bit more!' In fact, customs officer Phil still seems pleased when he delivers the news which is to devastate this young woman's life. She, for her part, merely looks stunned, as though she can't quite believe in the series of events which have led her to this.

It is a scene played out with depressing monotony in airports across the world. In the versions screened on TV, the suspect's face is usually pixelated in order to protect their anonymity, and so what the viewer sees is no more than an oxymoron - a faceless face; a blurred visage which belongs to no-one in particular. And the obliteration of identity is something which undergirds this type of programme more generally, for we are never given any information about the lives of the drug smugglers themselves; we are never told what forces and pressures have conspired or contributed to the desperate and often extremely dangerous bid to pirate these illegal substances across the border.

The concrete circumstances of these 'drug mules' remain pixelated, rendered invisible by the self-righteousness of those who have grasped that Drugs Are Bad Things and furthermore that They Are Against The Law. Nevertheless, the individual 'mules' do have backgrounds and circumstances and stories, and it is important we flesh these out. They all seem to share a common thread; that is, one of extreme poverty, and a high number of drug mules are single mothers. Overwhelmingly the women in question are from poorer countries like Jamaica and Nigeria, and the economic desperation which they experience is often adulterated by the threats and coercions of the powerful drug barons who find it profitable and expedient to prey on them.

In 2010 it was estimated that upwards of 60% of the female foreign national prison population had been incarcerated for drugs offences, in the main, related to trafficking. In recent times, films like Maria Llena de Gracia (Maria Full of Grace) have helped transform the popular image of sinister and mercenary couriers into people who are victimised in a twofold way; first by the barons who pay them very little in order to take such exceptional risks, and then by the efficiency and callousness of the state machine that locks them up.

For some of the people who patrol our borders empathy becomes nothing more than unnecessary emotional surplus, for they already have the stock-in-trade required - the rules and regulations which have been laid out neatly in advance, and which mean you don't have to think a great deal. Such people rarely bother to put themselves in the shoes of those they are so keen to castigate.

But not everybody feels the same. Great strides have been made by organisations such as Hisbiscus which has worked tirelessly against those punitive laws which strike at the most vulnerable, while leaving the more powerful almost entirely unmolested. And, in a period when interventions from celebrities such as Richard Branson have helped place the 'legalisation'question on the agenda once more, such organisations have their work cut out. ]]>