INTERNET ABDUCTORS
In response to fears that missing school girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had been lured to their abductors through the internet, the British government announced new measures to outlaw 'grooming' and £25m for monitoring electronic communications. The police spent the early days of the enquiry investigating the internet connection, only to eventually discount it. Since then Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr - caretaker and teaching assistant at the girls' school - have been arrested and two bodies recovered. The original source for the internet story? Maxine Carr.
POLICE AGAINST THE NAZIS?
"Do the police think these people are a respectable party", demanded the Anti Nazi League (ANL) spokeswoman when they declined to ban a British National Party (BNP) rally at Sawley, Lancashire.
You might think that the ANL would have learnt by now that the extensive legal measures to protect 'community relations' from 'incitment' to disorder contained in the 1936 Public Order Act 1976 Race Relations Act and 1986 Public Order Act are not an weapon for the good. Rather these laws have been used again and again against anti-fascists, as they were in East London in the thirties, and again in the 1970s. When the ANL persuaded student unions to adopt 'no platform' policies in the early 1990s they were surprised that these unions also banned ANL societies, as they did islamic societies. In November 2000 the Home Secretary reaffirmed the ban on radical black Muslim Louis Farrakhan from Britain, on the grounds that his presence would jeopardise community relations.
The police know full well what 'respectable' means. They have told us as much by banning the ANL protest and allowing the BNP festival to go ahead.
GULF WARS THEN AND NOW
George Bush Junior's coalition against Saddam is looking like a sorry imitation of his father's Operation Desert Shield of 1991. Bush has lost the use of US bases in Saudi Arabia established by his father, he has had to send Ambassador Daniel Coats to reprimand US Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for breaking ranks, and senior Republican Brent Scowcroft, who was National Security Advisor in 1991, and a principle architect of the coalition, has expressed his doubts about the venture.
George Bush Senior undertook the war against Iraq to put some backbone in the Western Alliance, at a time when Europeans were taking advantage of the end of the Cold War to assert their independence from the US. George Bush Junior's campaign is addressed more domestically to the national psyche.
Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University working on behalf of the Pentagon have been investigating the country's morale. The results are not promising. Americans fear more attacks, which make them anxious and depressed. According to researchers, those who are angry and want action against terrorists are also more likely to be optimistic about the future. But that mood of righteous wrath is in short supply in the US which is proving to be something of a paper tiger. Unfortunately such a state of mind will tempt the president to manufacture a national mood by putting the military machine into action. -- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'