The Other side of the road

We get the politics that we deserve and last night Parliament voted not to consider any form of intervention in the civil war in Syria. Was it a good thing? Did it represent the triumph of reason over impulse or was it the long awaited revenge of democracy for the manipulation and dishonesty that took us into Iraq? Judged by its intentions, Parliament's actions may well represent both of these things. Not intervening in a complex civil war is undoubtedly a rational course of action.

Syria is bloody; it is a mess and in the course of this civil war the differences between right or wrong have been extinguished. But the conflict in Syria has not always been like this. For a long time it was sustained by demonstrators whose only weapons were their courage, their convictions and the beauty of the songs they sang. For a very long time the only blood being spilt in Syria was that of the peaceful and the innocent. In the beginning Syria was not a civil war, it was the ruthless pacification of protests that arose out the aspiration for a better world for the Arab people. When Assad began to machine gun his people the conflict in Syria was not complex, it was wrong. But at that point nobody intervened we simply stood on the other side of the road and passed it by and Assad knew that he machine gun his children with impunity.

Since then the conflict has unquestionably become more complex, an interplay of everyday savagery and global politics. The conduct and tactics of the Free Syrian Army more ruthless, their allies more troubling. Yet throughout Assad has known that he was immune from intervention. When shooting people was not winning the conflict, he knew that he could turn to shelling and bombing and that the international community would not act.  In this he was supported by the conduct of the international community. The Russians and Chinese had decided that the emergence of a post revolutionary Syria was not to their liking and that the ideas and values of the Arab Spring had spread far enough. They needn't have worried of course because the challenge of articulating the principles democracy into predominantly Islamic Cultures was not something that the West would allow to come to fruition. The democratic will of the Arab people is not a voice that the West is actually comfortable with. The victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was not what the West wanted or expected, and it will have surprised nobody in Washington when the Egyptian Army ousted its democratically elected government. For all of its hand wringing over the conflict in Syria the West is as reluctant as Russia to see the emergence of an Arab World responsive to the will of its people.

Yet despite this Barack Obama rightly knew that complete inaction in the face of the Syrian carnage was unacceptable, he had to be seen to be doing something. But how to act without acting, he had no intention of intervening directly, which is why he drew his red line in the sand. It was not the misjudgement that most commentators think it was, it was actually a brutal expression of real politik. The meaning of his statement to Assad was clear - as long as all you do is shoot, bomb, burn, rape, torture and massacre we won't intervene. All of these things would slip beneath the media horizon that had settled above the suffering of the people of Syria. As long as the killing took place in a way that had come to be seen as ordinary, mundane and not news worthy - then the killing could go on.

Unfortunately he underestimated the stupidity of the brutal and the lengths to which they will go to sustain themselves. It is likely that the recent offensives by the Assad regime and Hezbollah had not been able to sustain their initial progress and that recourse to weapons of mass destruction symbolises an act of their military desperation. Regardless of the reason, the line was crossed and the British government sought approval from its Parliament to intervene to prevent further use of chemical weapons.

There was remarkably little spin in what David Cameron sought to do - he wanted to support Barack Obama and he wanted the support of Parliament in order to do so. There was something almost naïve in the way in which he hoped that Ed Miliband and the British people would share his belief that an outrage had been committed, an outrage that could no longer be ignored. With the horror with which he had viewed the footage of the attacks evident in his voice, David Cameron sought to lead us across the road of our indifference to the Syrian people's suffering.

But for a mixture of reasons the British Parliament decided that it was not our place to intervene to prevent the use of chemical weapons and as a result David Cameron  is being pilloried from all directions, portrayed as inept and his authority has undoubtedly been undermined. Whilst Cameron's performance in the House of Commons may not have been the performance of a consummate political operator a la Blair and Obama - it was transparent, principled and ultimately it was the performance of a politician who believed he was doing the right thing.

But all of this is largely irrelevant. Whether intended or not, the actions of Ed Miliband and the British Parliament will have strengthened the hand of the Assad regime. Regardless of what small gesture the US undertakes, the struggle in Syria will worsen and we will cloak our general inaction in the language of reason and national interest. We will believe that intervening in someone else's war will always makes things worse and we will argue that the lessons of the Iraq War justify what is in effect our practical indifference to other people's suffering. But in truth that acceptance of suffering has nothing to do with reason but is invariably underpinned by self interest and racism.





    

     

Julian Assange - the road to Stockholm

The debate and discussion around Julian Assange's extradition is becoming increasingly polarised and destructive for progressives. People, who would normally share a perspective on the importance of Wikileaks and the vital role that it has played in exposing the machinations of the state, are now at each others throats. Supporters of Assange are being labelled misogynists and those who believe that Miss A and Miss W have a right to have their allegations heard are now feminist extremists.

As somebody who believes that Julian Assange's work in setting up Wikileaks has made him one of the most important political figures of his generation, my instinctive response to the Swedish and UK government's respective positions was cynical. Rather than focusing on the extensive political implications of what Wikileaks has disclosed, Assange had become the story. Following the accusations the discussion was no longer the conduct of our troops in Iraq, it was about condoms and consent. The Swedish and UK governments might claim to be acting in the name of justice - but we all know that their interest in justice was being encouraged by the long reach of the US government and its agencies. Then there are the inconsistencies in the way in which the enquiries are being conducted, that have been so effectively outlined by Naomi Wolf. All of this points to a level of political manipulation that perhaps should no longer surprise us. But this affair is not just about Julian Assange and the threat that he poses to disingenuous governments, it is also about two women who have made statements alleging sexual misconduct and their right to have those allegations heard..

As a supporter of the work of Wikileaks this puts me and others in a difficult position, should we show our loyalty to the cause by rejecting the allegations out of hand as politically motivated? The problem is that in doing so we would be judging the women as liars and worse. This is what many of Julian's supporters have already done, in their eyes he is innocent and Miss A and Miss W are players in an elaborate and carefully planned honey trap. What people need to accept, is that it is possible that Miss A and Miss W are telling the truth. The reality of the situation is that none of us know the facts of the case and non of us are in a position to make an informed judgement about what happened. The truth will only ever be found in court - if the Swedish Authorities believe that he has a case to answer, which at the moment is not certain.

The argument against Julian returning to Sweden is that doing so would put him at risk of extradition to the US and the type of persecution that Bradley Manning is currently enduring. It is undoubtedly this fear that was instrumental in his decision to seek asylum with the Ecuadorians and given the vehemence with which he is viewed in the the US you can understand his motivation. Unfortunately it is a strategy that has all the hallmarks of one that was developed in panic and in the long term it is likely to prove ineffective in protecting Julian from the long arm of the US Agencies on whose doorstep he will be living. What seeking asylum in Ecuador will certainly not do is protect his reputation and his legacy, which is being massively damaged by the lack of clarity and closure.

In the light of the current impasse the rhetoric on the social networks is becoming increasingly vitriolic. More and more people are confusing loyalty to a cause with loyalty to a man and more and more people are conflating loyalty to their gender with justice. Whilst Julian Assange might believe that claiming political asylum is in his best interests, what would really be in his interest would be clarity and closure. Whether innocent or guilty of what Miss A and Miss W have accused him of, the only way forward for Julian lies in Stockholm, where he can either prove his innocence or ask forgiveness.

UniLad, Lads and a Culture of Rape

As men we know what men are. We know what they talk about, when there are no women around. The language and the borderline, or overtly misogynistic culture that seems endemic in 'all male' environments. So in some ways, the tone and references made in Unilad should not have surprised or shocked me, but they did. They shocked me, because the 'Unilad' community think that talking about women in this way is acceptable to the society in which they live. To be precise, the surprise is that this kind of language is not exceptional and hidden, it has become embedded in the context of their everyday lives - it has become normal and in seeing it as normal they feel able to share it with the wider world. It is this presumption of normality on the part of the men concerned that is perhaps most disturbing.

The Unilad website and Facebook page has angered a great number of people and true to form the usual response to any kind of challenge, is to state that the whole thing was some form of joke and that people or feminists who don't get it should get back in the 'kitchen'. But they are of course missing the point and failing to realise that their views and 'humour' play an important part in sustaining what can only be described as a culture of misogyny and rape. The statistics speak for themselves.

In the 12 months between 2008 and 2009 over 43,000 people went to the police and stated that they had been subject to a serious sexual assault, most of these will have been women. Because of the appallingly low conviction rates for rape (which between 2007-2008 was only 6.7%), the government estimates that up to 95% of serious sexual crime goes unreported. On that basis we can estimate that in 2008-2009 there may have been as many 860000 serious sexual assaults - most of which will have been against women.  So if we accept that the real level of sexual crime could be up to 20 times greater than the reported rate - then a woman is far more likely to be sexually assaulted than involved in personal theft, she is more likely to be sexually assaulted than have her car stolen and she is far more likely to be the victim of serious sexual assault than she is to be burgled. In short, serious sexual assault is something that probably affects a far greater number of women in this country than we realise.

So the rape, sexual assault and denigration of women- is not something that I think that the Lads of UniLad or elswhere should be joking about - because lads - the prevalence of serious sexaul assault in our society means that the victims have every chance of being your sister, your mother and your future wife. But you will never know and they will never feel able to tell you, because deep down they will know what you are - part of the problem.