The Brighton Salon Arena

The quiet streets of Tehran.

Below is an assessment of recent events in Iran by an exiled Iranian. The article is unedited and represents the opinions of its author.

How is the opposition movement in Iran to succeed in the face of an iron-fisted crackdown by the Khameini-Ahmedinejad regime? An answer to this question has to be based on an understanding of three main issues: first, what the regime will do now that it has suppressed the opposition by coercive means; secondly, whether an opposition movement can be successfully led by anyone from the establishment within Iran, such as Mr Moussavi; and thirdly, how the opposition in exile organises itself. To get clues for an understanding of all these questions one does well to look at a similar example (only “similar” because there are a number of important differences that one must keep in mind too): the example of Chinese after the Tiananmen Square crackdown against the “democracy movement” in 1989.
The Chinese regime recognised that after using force to suppress dissent in the short term, it could not sustain itself practicably by continuing to deploy the army on the streets of major cities and shooting dissenters whenever opposition broke out. Instead it had to do something to defuse the opposition – not by yielding to its demands, but by removing wider popular support for it. This it did by accelerating the pace of economic reforms and ensuring that the standard of living at least of many urban Chinese improved considerably in the course of the decade after the crackdown.
It is not clear whether the Iranian regime has quite the same option open to it, because it has already used a large part of its major revenue source from oil to buy the support of Iran’s lower classes. It might nevertheless try to emulate the Chinese model to some extent by means of economic and other inducements to take the edge off opposition concerns. With less room for manouevre than China has, and with fewer resources, this task is a harder one for Iran to undertake. But it almost certainly will try to do something both to shore up its existing bought support, and to extend that support by the same or allied means. However it would seem that such a strategy might not be effective as people crave intellectual freedom, the one thing the regime will not grant, rather than material welfare.
The second point concerns whether anyone associated with the Iranian regime since 1979 can be a focus for opposition activity now. It is of course possible that Mr Rafsanjani and Mr Moussavi have genuinely become democrats with a truly liberal agenda for transforming Iran in the direction desired by the brave citizens who ventured onto the streets of Tehran and other cities in the face of Basin violence after the election. But it is even more possible that what such figures want is the power that Ahmedinejad and Khameini have, without making too great a difference to the situation in Iran beyond some reforming gestures. For this reason a truly powerful opposition movement, which will deliver real change, needs a fresh, credible leader. One steady voice in support of a liberal Iran based on humanist principles is Dr. Hossein Ladjevardi (the Head of Association of Iranian Researchers in Paris). He is a liberal, Sorbonne educated academic who has been tirelessly fighting against the Islamic tyranny that has ruled Iran for the past thirty years. A glance at the ACI website will prove that. For the aims and objective of their association please see: http://www.facebook.com/l/;http://www.aciiran.com/aimsand.htm. It would be a satisfying irony of history if the real liberation of Iran were to come from an exiled leader in Paris, showing 1979 to be a false start, and 2009 the real beginning of a modern, free, mature Iran at last.
The third point relates to this last matter. It is completely typical of opposition movements in exile to be momentarily united at a moment of crisis in their home country, and then as time, frustration, powerlessness, funds and patience grow thin, to fall out with each, to quarrel, and to become weak and useless as a result. This happened to the democracy movement in China when its leaders fled abroad, and when already exiled Chinese tried to sustain an eternal campaign against the Chinese regime. It sometimes seems that the splits and fragmentation of exiled oppositions is inevitable, like a fact of nature. But when they succeed in remaining united with a common purpose and a common effort, they can be extremely effective, and provide great support in the way of funds, argument, and international recognition. Indeed the 1979 revolution is a case where the overseas opposition was sufficiently organised to make the return of Ayatollah Khomeini a focal point of the mass demonstrations against the Shah. In that case the religious aspect of the Ayatollah’s authority was significant, so the case for a leader committed to the values of secular democracy has to be made with the same kind of emotional power and attraction.
If there is a genuinely plausible leader of a united and organised opposition vanguard, mass demonstrations, rallies and strikes within Iran of the kind that were seen after the stolen election would be vastly more effective, even though it would be met with a period of violence by the regime, fighting to save its own life. But there are not enough soldiers and Basij in Iran to suppress the entire population if it is determined and united behind a solid opposition front. This latter must be the main aim of all brave, freedom-seeking Iranians now.

Dan Travis has had his beer confiscated after coming out of a Brighton off-licence

Thursday June 25th at ‘The Terraces’ , Marine Parade, 7pm for a 7.30 start.

If you are in Brighton and if you are drinking on the street, on the beach or in the park you may be in jeopardy. You may be in an alchohol control zone. You can have your drink confiscated at any time by the police. If you refuse to hand over your can you will be arrested. These zones cover most of Brighton, with only pockets designated ’safe’ where open drinking can continue.

For over two hundred years Brighton has been a mecca for public enjoyment, the Bohemian, the risque, the lover’s playground. Does the creation of control zones in Brighton pose a threat to it’s cultural heart?

Sean Bell of the Brighton Salon and Josie Appleton of the Manifesto Club will be presenting the case for why this act of Brighton Council’s is far more than just a draconian crackdown. We will also examine what it is about the modern ban that by attempting to do good we end up spoiling that which we are trying to save.
So please come to the seafront restaurant and bar ‘The Terraces’ on Marine Parade. You can have a drink, listen to the speaker and then take part in the discussion.

Saturday 27 June - Picnic Against Booze Bans, Brighton beach – Brighton members of the Manifesto Club will hold a picnic to protest against the city council’s regulation of drinking and social life, and to speak out for Brighton as a free and fun city.

The Times has published an article today on alcohol control zones:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6571617.ece

Sean Bell has written a blog on the legal position of drinkers in Brighton:

http://seandavidbell.blogspot.com/2009/06/confiscating-alcohol-turns-people-into.html

The Manifesto Club has launched a report on alcohol confiscation:

www.manifestoclub.com/files/Robbedbythepolice.pdf

Please reply to dantravisbrightonsalon@googlemail.com or call 01273507076

Offending Muslims is harder than I thought

The Brighton Salon welcomed writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik to talk about the themes of his latest book From Fatwa to Jihad that marks the 20th anniversary of the death threat that drove Salmen Rushdie into hiding for writing The Satanic Verses, and preceded a new era in British politics and culture.

Kenan Malik first established that almost no-one in the room had managed to read The Satanic Verses. Then he asked why it was worth talking about the 20-year-old global controversy anyway. It is easy to underestimate the impact that the affair had on Britain and what it means for our understanding of multiculturalism and how the political landscape has been transformed.

The Jewel of Medina, a romantic and saucy book that had been commissioned by Random House, was pulled by the publisher after a single assistant professor in Islamic history had warned it was too offensive to Muslims to be published.

The Rushdie affair marked the beginning of a new kind of battle between a minority and the British state, where instead of taking action against discrimination or poverty, Muslims burned books and attacked publishers on the basis of their hurt feelings. The principle that it is morally unacceptable to offend was established in relations between different people in a way that we still suffer from today.

Kenan described how, in The Satanic Verses, the two main characters are hurtling toward the ground in a plane crashing on Sussex when they transform into the embodiment of good and evil, one into a goat-like demon and the other into an angel with a halo and start to have dreams. The book is a rewarding study of migration, Kenan said. There is not much of the book that talks about Islam specifically but the bit that offended was the suggestion that the prophet wrote the Koran rather than it being handed to him from God by the Angel Gabriel. The Satanic Verses refers to false pieces of the Koran that the devil tries to sneak in to the final book.

“There are myths here being used to create monsters. I returned to the Rushdie affair because there many myths about it and it also created monsters that need slaying,” said Kenan.

It is understood today that Muslims feel as if their identity is annihilated by what Rushdie wrote, but that was not how the affair started. Saudi Arabia had long believed itself to be the leader of Islam in the world and had used oil money to set up many organisations around the world that were sympathetic to it. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had challenged that idea and both challengers for Islamic influence looked to attain moral superiority over the other. After being forced to end its war with Iraq on humiliating terms, Iran needed to regain its leading role in radical Islam. The Fatwa against Rushdie was aimed at Saudi Arabia for political reasons.

“The Satanic Verses was not banned in Iran and had already been reviewed in newspapers there before the Fatwa was passed,” Kenan said. The worldwide population of Muslims was not offended at first and it was in India, where Saudi organisations were campaigning in the run-up to a close election that the action against the book got underway. In Britain it presented an opportunity for the conservative elements of the Muslim community to regain the upper hand against the secular radicals.

Western liberals were unable to fully support Rushdie. In those Thatcherite days they felt powerless to do much about inequality but believed that the representation of minorities was a major problem and that showing respect for other people’s ideas and beliefs could avoid cultural pain.

This resulted in a shift in the meaning of the word radical in relation to Muslims from a secular identity to a fundamentalist one. Kenan related an anecdote about a Muslim who did not object to the publishing of those controversial Danish cartoons was told he wasn’t a proper Muslim by a Danish non-Muslim!

The British Council of Muslims had its origins in a conservative Saudi-backed campaign against The Satanic Verses. Recent polls show only 5% of British Muslims actually feel that the BCM represents their views while it has until very recently been representing Muslims in discussions with the government.

The Muslim community is much like others in that it has a whole range of attitudes and different views. However, once the liberals had identified minorities by their differences, they could only be protected from offence. An idea that is branded as offensive ends the discussion about it, putting any challenge to it beyond question. Free speech had to be curtailed in a plural democracy because censorship could defend minorities from offence.

The people most effectively and comprehensively silenced by this state of affairs were the progressive members of minorities who have had their books, plays and exhibitions banned and cancelled. The book-burners may have lost the battle with Rushdie because his book was published, but they won the war in the sense that they gained authority over their fellows and established that the state should protect them from anything they might be offended by. From the myth that all Muslims felt under attack, the institutionalisation of this view created a monster because it was now easier to be offended and many more things became offensive.

Lifting the veil off Muslim identity
The audience did not voice much in disagreement with Kenan’s presentation. Their questions included: Isn’t the veil a big issue for Muslim women? Isn’t the attitude of being offended a bad thing in that it is simply an emotional stance and not a rational one? Why are Muslims so attached to identity? Are Western perceptions based on the attitudes of hierarchical Christian religions inappropriate to Islam because it doesn’t have a central leadership, like Catholics, and is a more personal religion? What is the role of the crisis of British identity? Is there a case for adopting the French model of education and inclusion to rid ourselves of a grievance culture? Perhaps the radicals didn’t win their war either, if you can still publish a book so critical of them.

Kenan said that young Muslims in Britain had adopted a new identity rather than took one down from a traditional shelf. They had distanced themselves from the previous generation by taking up markers of that identity. There is no long tradition of being veiled in a particular way. Religion is not just a text and involves communities, traditions and cultural practices that the new radicals wanted to get away from. In that way they went back to the text and interpreted it more literally to suit the formation of their new identity.

The veils are an issue now but they were not worn in that way 150 years ago. Western attitudes to Islam were once very different to now. “Today we have an idea of a very puritanical and uptight Islam,” said Kenan. “Back then it was seen as too sexual!”

Identity in Britain is a problem for everyone when you’re asked ‘What does it mean to be British?’ But the adoption of a radical Islamic identity is different in that it is a more parochial category. It divides you from all the people of other backgrounds who may feel the same way as you about broad social issues. As an institutional multiculturalism rewards only special communities (poor does not count), one has to identify oneself as from that community in everything one does. This does involve emotional responses to situations rather than political ones.

“Racism in France has just been ignored in a way that is just as bad as multiculturalism,” Kenan said. He could not recommend the French attitude to assimilation in the light of the treatment of migrant workers from North Africa.

The origins of multiculturalism are in the identity politics of the New Left of the 1960s who had started to forsake politics for narrower concerns, phasing out ideology and bringing in identity.

“The great idea of equality has changed. Western liberals have betrayed it as they have with free speech,” said Kenan. Equality once meant that everyone had the right to be treated the same despite their differences. “Now it means the right to be treated differently because you’re different,” said Kenan.

The Brighton Salon would like to thank Kenan for a fascinating and informative discussion and Rob Clowes, the Salon’s chairman, heartily recommends From Fatwa to Jihad. There wasn’t time in the discussion to touch on many of the issues the book raises.

Next month, The Brighton Salon presents Policing Booze on the Beach with its own Sean Bell (myself) and the Manifesto Club’s Josie Appleton.
Brighton council has created booze control zones where alcohol can be confiscated from adults on the suspicion of police officers. We have managed 200 years of alcoholic public enjoyment on Brighton Beach without such zones and the place draws people from around the country. By trying to control the beach to make it a nicer place, the council will ruin it as an arena for public pleasure.
The salon takes place on June 25 at 7pm at The Terraces on Marine Parade. To reserve a place call 01273 507076 or 0782 5168685 or go to dantravisbrightonsalon@googlemail.com
Sean Bell

“I know I’ll be alright when the climate changes. They’ll build flood defenses and so on in my part of the world, but what about people in Bangladesh? There’s no ‘we’ when we talk about what ‘we’ can do to save ourselves from the effects of climate change.”

That was one of the points made by a member of the audience when Joe Kaplinksi, co-author of Energise! A Future for Energy Innovation (with Professor James Woudhuysen), presented the April Brighton Salon at Bellerbys College.

Adaptation, mitigation and transformation are three strategies for dealing with climate change (regardless of one’s views on humanity’s contribution to global warming) that Joe and James identify in their book. Joe told us that he had wanted to to try and find a different approach to the question of climate change; one that did not subscribe to the moralistic and shrill doom-mongering of the eco-warriors and at the same time did not line up with the flat denial that there are problems at all of the climate sceptics.

“We realised that we had to look much more carefully at energy and its uses and production. The politicisation of climate change is a serious issue because it stands in the way of solving problems and stifles debate,” said Joe.

Joe says that those who adapt to climate change and those who seek to simply mitigate it both tend to try to do less, to use less power and resources. Joe and his co-author make the argument for transforming the way we do things by working toward a new kind of power grid across the world. Every kind of fossil, sustainable, natural and nuclear methods of producing energy people can use will have a part to play until there is enough power available to stop having to worry about how much we use.

As energy production is currently the biggest single contributor to the greenhouse gases that raise the level of CO2 n the atmosphere, so one would assume that deep green activists and commentators would try to find alternative power sources, said Joe. But the approach, which is influential upon many more in the mainstream, is to try to limit all kinds of human activity, as they all require power.

I don’t think the man in the audience I quoted at the beginning will have been won over by Joe’s argument, but I for one admire the approach that Energise! takes to many questions.

“The time for debate is over!” say some deep greens, but I don’t think has even been a proper debate on how growth and development can be used to actually clean up the planet rather than assume it will just mess it up.

I recommend Energise! (available on special offer at Amazon) because it’s an unusual book, full of facts, figures, asides into different technologies and very readable. Also, Energise! doesn’t duck the political and moral questions the way so many books on energy, climate and development do; either taking to the unreachable moral high ground or hiding behind catastrophe. It recommends policies regardless of how unpopular they might be with those engaged in the current debates on climate change.

The Brighton Salon would once again like to thank Bellerbys College for hosting the event. The discussion was chaired by Dr Robert Clowes. This has been a highly personal report by the Salon’s recorder, Sean Bell. contact him at jo.e.bell@btinternet.com

Energise! by James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky is available on special offer on Amazon (priced £5.99 reduced from £12.99)

Rob Killick, CEO of cScape, is so worried about the limp responses to the recession; he started a website that tries to develop good ideas about it through discussion. He presented his thoughts to The Brighton Salon.

“I want to focus on the political side of the recession and I realise that might seem a bit odd. Perhaps it is,” said Rob. An economic crisis at the same time as a political crisis is something outside of most people’s experience.

“The political establishment doesn’t have a clue,” he said. Nearly two years after the toxic debts in banks were first identified and they are still trying to solve the problem.

The political crisis has its roots in the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the left. Without any alternative to capitalism, politics lost its edge and, during the eighties and nineties, Thatcher’s famous line “there is no alternative” or TINA became the cultural norm. Even those most critical of the system will struggle to come up with a n alternative for the future.

“If I shut my eyes myself and try to imagine an alternative in the future, I can’t without going back to the past. I struggle myself to imagine an alternative,” said Rob.

While the scale of the problems facing us is huge, there is little discussion within the political class about what to do beyond more regulation and ruthlessness. The disappearance of any alternative left behind the view that the market was a given. People came to believe that because there was no alternative to the market then there must be no problem with the market.

Gordon Brown claimed that he had abolished the cycle of boom and bust once. Politicians just left the market to do what it did and the parties are now little different from each other. The consequence of that is that political parties were completely unprepared for the recession.

“Last year I became more and more afraid of how they were responding,” said Rob. He saw the difficulties the US faced in simply trying to pass measures that save their banking system. As he watched the TV news channels he realised that no-one had any idea what to do about the crisis. Nobody knew how to get out of the mess we’re in.

During the recessions of the seventies and eighties, there was much debate about the future of Britain and where it needed to go. The economy was in a bad way and the manufacturing and productive industries were running down. “Then the financial sector took off. Britain became the centre for moving money about the world,” said Rob.

On that basis, the economy took off again and many people experienced prosperity. The problem was that the prosperity we enjoyed was not made by us. We allowed our industries and productive sectors to run down while the financial sector became more and more important. That sector accounted for about 10% of the total economy and the services associated with it accounted for another big percentage.

The taxes that the government collected from financial activities are extremely important, equivalent to the entire wage bill of the NHS. This is a worrying aspect for the public sector over the next two years. The NHS is the third biggest employer in the entire world, after the Indian railways and the Chinese army. It was paid for by the taxes that were collected from those bankers that everyone now blames for the crisis.

“There were fundamental imbalances in the economy and the growth we experienced was built upon those imbalances,” Rob said. A huge number of the new jobs created in the last decade in the public sector, were mostly for women and mostly part-time. “I do worry about these jobs in the years to come,” Rob said.

In the past years there has been a huge increase in the use of credit and growth of personal credit. But the money we borrowed depended on countries such as China and India creating value. We have thrown about £740 billion at the crisis so far. That’s still a lot of money even though it looks small when compared to the rest of the world. That figure represents about half of what we would all produce in the whole country over a year, if we consumed nothing.

In Britain and the US we have been living off somebody else’s products. We were able to because China and India had huge amounts of cash to lend us. They lent us the money and we bought their goods. There’s clearly a limit to paying people to come and buy things from your shop. It is not sustainable.

The basic problems with the economy are not being addressed, however. With the bank problems still not fixed it is as if the political establishment is in a state of denial. There is little discussion about public spending when we know we have no money. Political parties are unwilling to address this but the problem will not go away. We must look at ways of rebalancing the economy with its financial sector. We cannot just go back to how it was before.

There has been a huge change in the economic world order but there has been no recognition of this politically. The old organisations of international affairs are still there and no longer reflect any reality. This is a big problem as well. “I have adopted as a slogan something Obama’s Chief of Staff said: ‘A crisis is too good an opportunity to miss’,” said Rob.

“When nobody knows what to do there’s space for other people to get involved and come up with ideas and even be influential”, said Rob. But another problem is that there is a risk-averse culture we are all affected by. It is a state of mind we carry in our heads. One of the most difficult things we must do is challenge this culture of risk-aversion if we are to find different approaches to the problems we face.

As an example Rob cited the way that the public sector cossets young people aged 16-24. Perhaps that group should have its social security safety net removed so that they could make their way in the world. Rob did not want cut funds for the genuinely deserving, but felt that teaching these youngsters to be dependent on the state at that age was counterproductive. He also wanted to see an enterprise zone opened in east London after the Olympics.

John F. Kennedy made his moon shot speech nearly 50 years ago. One of the main points about that project was that it was supposed to galvanise the American people behind a big and difficult project. It was supposed to inspire and it did.

The difference between then and now is obvious if you think about what would happen if Obama announced a mission to Mars by 2020! But the same good reasons for doing such a thing apply now as then. It would inspire people because there would be huge technical problems to solve and new forms of energy to invent.

“The key thing is to make our ideas inspiring and face the real problems we have,” said Rob.

The discussion
While many welcomed Rob’s approach and saw that opportunities were indeed up for grabs, there were caveats.
Isn’t one of the reasons that we’re in this mess is we have been too risky already?
Why did the political establishment become naïve?
Surely, after all its problems, the capitalist system will die out eventually, won’t it?
Bankers must bear responsibility for the banking crisis. Let’s stop messing about and nationalise the banks!
The New Deal got the US out of the Great Depression and what we need now is a Green New Deal that is eco-friendly and takes into account the problems of the rising population.
Why do we still talk about ‘capitalism’? Why even try regress back to the times of politics when ism fought ism and little was achieved? I would halve the budget for the Olympics and I would never put an enterprise zone in London!
We have lost a great deal of trust in ourselves and each other and that affects our ability to solve problems and work together.
We are no longer used to working together collectively and have become very individualistic.
Why did Brown think he had solved boom and bust?
A New New Deal is surely the best way to ensure that jobs are saved and the economy can pick up again.
In the sixties when we had a great economy and we had socialism. Now we have a bad economy and no socialism. Have we all given up on an alternative to capitalism? Is there any such thing as benign capitalism?
Won’t young people with no safety net just resort to crime?
Brighton Council has no way to pay its pensions so we have to face problems like that right now in the near term.
We have lost faith in ourselves to overcome problems, but we have come a long way since the caves and we can go further.

Rob said that capitalism, as a set of property relations, can have awful disasters but it always comes back. His project was to try to work out what to do. One could not wait for things to go wrong and then magic up an alternative. You have to do things and try stuff before you gain new ideas. We are at an early stage of human development and modern society is only 100 years old. Sadly, an alternative to capitalism is not currently on the agenda.

When no one has answers it’s an opportunity to discuss things and work out some new ideas. “Speaking to politicians recently it became clear to me that they really do not have a clue what to do,” said Rob. Ideas do not just come out of a vacuum. What kind of productive society do we want to have?

Rob believed that new energy forms need to be found and new technical advances made, but some who call for a Green New Deal are inclined to think small. They are against growth and are in favour of going backwards with the economy and not developing industries.

Recession affects the poorest and weakest in society the most. Because of the property relations, whatever happens, the same kind of society will return. The worst recession would be long-term with no investment taking place and have terrible consequences for the world. Africa is already suffering as its trade has collapsed.

“I really agree with what was said about faith in ourselves,” said Rob. He called for us to come up with inspiring and positive ideas.

The Brighton Salon would like to thank: Rob Killick for his presentation (and for giving up the chance to appear on Al Jazeera English TV to fulfil his commitment to speak.); and The Friends’ Meeting House, Ship Street, for being our hosts.
This is a personal report by Sean Bell, who was busy chairing the discussion, and any similarity between what people actually said and what I said they said is purely coincidental.

The next Brighton Salon in April sees the launch of Energise!, a new book investigating the nature of energy, its production and markets, and questioning some of the assumptions of sustainability. Co-author Joe Kaplinsky will present the book’s ideas and answer your questions. It will be held at Bellerbys College, just behind Brighton Station next door to Jurys Inn, on Thursday April 23 at 7.30pm. Join us for pre-salon tea, coffee and biscuits from 7pm.
To be invited to this event email Dan Travis at
dantravisbrightonsalon@gmail.com

The days of borrowing on the back of the emerging economies are over. The financial and political alliance that spent other people’s money and made Britain feel rich is in tatters.

The recession will end and capitalism will continue.
Now the credit-fuelled economy is in ruins, what do we want to build in its place? Now the old order is exhausted, what do we want to replace it with?

Rob Killick, CEO of cScape, says: “We got ourselves into this mess and we can get ourselves out of it.”
Rob’s blog, Britain after the Recession, offers excellent commentaries and analyses that look beyond the current gloom, thrift and hedonism.
How can innovation and forward thinking be spread in our risk-averse and cautious country?

Rob Killick will present The Brighton Salon on Wednesday March 25 at the Friends’ Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton, at 7.15 for 7.30pm. there will be further discussion at the Cricketer afterwards.

See http://postrecession.wordpress.com/ it’s the business.

If you would like to be invited to this event contact Dan Travis at dantravisbrightonsalon@gmail.com

Dr Helene Guldberg presented themes from her book at The Brighton Salon at Bellerbys College on February 25 2009.

Swimming in the fjords
What a lovely childhood Dr Guldberg had! Helene’s words painted idyllic scenes of swimming in the fjords in Norway, playing in the woods and developing her social skills beyond the control of interfering adults.

Contrasting her happy days of sledging fast in proper snow with the problem childhoods of today’s British children, she had at first approached her book on childhood as a project of reclaiming the good old days. Where once children were given space and told ‘go and play’, they are now wrapped in cotton wool. Parents made paranoid by government warnings don’t let them out of their sight or the control of other, Criminal Records Bureau-checked professionals. No wonder kids could get really fat and want to play computer games all day.

But she found from her research that it wasn’t really like that. We all, kids and parents, seem to have bought into huge myths about childhood and, even more crucially, adulthood itself. The myriad reports put out by the many charities, government departments and quangos have an extraordinary capacity to turn concerns into policy and everyday practice.

Helene quoted many reports that used emotive language and, she said, questionable research practices to supply the media with an ever longer list of things that can go wrong and damage children for LIFE.

What doesn’t really hurt you makes you stronger
In one example of many Helene quoted, from 2006, a load of kids aged 11-16 were shown a choice of emoticon-type smiley faces. These ranged from ‘completely happy’ through ‘happy’, ‘neither happy nor unhappy’, ‘sad’ and down to ‘completely sad’.

“Who thinks above 60% of these kids said they were ‘happy’ or ‘completely happy’?” asked Helene of us (we were a little slow to react to the unexpected invitation to interact). Not many hands went up.

Surprisingly, a whopping 87% of kids said they were ‘happy’ or ‘completely happy’ (9% ‘neither happy nor sad’, only 4% ‘unhappy’ or ‘completely unhappy’). The anti-good news bias in responses for the media, however, resulted in the headline factoid that ‘One-and-a-half million children are not happy’ – but that’s extrapolating the result of the research to the whole population of children and adding the 9% ‘neither happy nor sad’ to the 4% who actually said they were ‘unhappy’ or ‘completely unhappy’. That gives 13% of that whole child population “not happy”. (I think the headline should have read ‘The kids are alright’!)

Helene gave us many examples of the skew that our concerns about children put on our perceptions and amplifies problems. When Baroness Susan Greenfield (a prominent neuroscientist) pronounces that the ‘screen culture’ may be damaging children’s brains, that idea will be taken up as gospel - despite there being no actual research, scientific or otherwise, that can back it up.

‘Cars, bullying and parents’ fears about strangers are turning them not so much into couch potatoes as couch prisoners’, claimed Ian Sparks, then chief executive of the Children’s Society.

Yet parents are being blamed for the supposed crisis of childhood. Experts keep saying we parents have no time for our kids; we’re greedy for our own pleasures and work too much to feed and morally educate them properly.

OMG! I’m in the Daily Mail!
The aspect of Helene’s research and book that suddenly and unexpectedly catapulted her into the public eye was her stance on bullying. She stressed that she was against bullying and children being hurt and abused by other children. But she asserted that what is now considered bullying, alongside genuine bullying, would once have been viewed as completely normal aspects of growing up.

‘Exclusion from peer groups’ is considered bullying by some. Intervention in these kinds of situations is robbing children of their chance to learn how to negotiate very basic interactions. That is far more damaging than the slights being prevented.

When Helene got home from her book launch, a little the worse for wear (“I should have eaten something”), she crashed out but answered nature’s call in the small hours. Deciding to check her emails while she was up, she found that press, radio and TV were clamouring for her opinion. A Daily Mail headline read ‘Academic says bullying may be good for children’. Despite that crucial ‘may’ in the headline, articles appeared globally before she had even been consulted or interviewed about her work.

Unpleasant experiences are part of growing up and cannot and should not be treated as potentially scarring children for life. They pick up on these adult concerns and start to see normal child behaviour as damaging.
Helene stressed that parents’ role is too care for and educate kids in life. We should be gradually and gently introducing children to adult life as they grow and develop. Adults should be adults with children, but children also need time among themselves to be children and we shouldn’t try to treat them as little adults because adults and children are fundamentally different beings.

The discussion:
There was a lot of sympathy for Helene’s position among the 40-odd people there and many spoke of their experiences and views on how the processes of protection had been taken too far. Several people even thought Helene was conceding too much to those protection processes.

Blame culture, fears of being sued, the destruction of trust between adults, the generally smaller families, the unnatural confines of urban life, the claustrophobia of kids not allowed out, the CRB checks, the amplification of risk, the tensions between parents and teachers, the elevation of self-esteem to all-importance, the pervasive social disengagement, the assumption that all kids are victims – that’s just a small section of topics raised in the lively exchange of views. You had to be there…

In conclusion, Helene said that although we all had our roles to play in our daily lives, it seemed unlikely that these long-standing concerns, growing ever more out of hand, could really be reversed without a change in thinking at the top levels of civil society. That feeling that we have gone too far co-exists with the ever more rabid headlines. We need to change what we do and how we think about childhood at the cultural level. Amen to that.

Buy Helene’s book, it’s available on Amazon.
Dan Travis’ review of Helene’s book can be read below.

The February Brighton Salon 2009 was produced and chaired by the salon’s Director Dan Travis.

We would like to thank:
Peter Travis of Bellerbys College for hosting the event once again; the students and staff of Bellerbys; Dave and his friends from the Philosophy in Pubs (PIPS) discussion group, for joining us and for their trenchant contributions; the several newcomers to the salon, for their attendance and views; the regular Salonistas; and, of course, Dr Helena Guldberg, for a challenging, candid, informative and provoking presentation of her work.

This report is a personal view of the event by The Brighton Salon’s reporter-at-large and does not necessarily represent the views of anyone at all (sorry for misrepresenting you during the meeting, Sam!). If you have anything at all to add, subtract or multiply, contact me at jo.e.bell@btinternet.com

Details of the next Brighton Salon in March will be posted asap.

Now let’s all go away and think about what happened there that night.

Sean Bell

Dan Travis’ review:
Reclaiming Childhood by Dr Helene Guldberg tackles head on ‘the stark consequences on child development of both our low expectations of fellow human beings and our safety obsessed culture’. Alongside a relentless society wide trend to ‘protect’ children from everyone… Dan Travis

Reclaiming Childhood by Dr Helene Guldberg tackles head on ‘the stark consequences on child development of both our low expectations of fellow human beings and our safety obsessed culture’. Alongside a relentless society wide trend to ‘protect’ children from everyone and everything, a new phenomena has quietly made an appearance, a mounting unease with the increasing amount of restrictions on children’s activity. This unease has been expressed in a number of ways in the media in the last eighteen months. There has been a backlash against the demise of school sports day, where there are no running races that take place as the idea of having a ‘winner’ is seen as too competitive and therefore wrong. There has been outcry against the well documented reports of teachers who will not step in to help injured children as they fear breaching government protocol or are simply confused as to what action to take. There has been concern about the fact that children play outside significantly less than in the recent past. Such concerns are typified by Esther Rantzen who recently claimed she had gone too far in aspects of her work trying to protect children from adults.

One of the books central points is that criticism of the process of over-protection stems from the very same set of fears that produce the problem in the first place, that of a mistrust and suspicion between adults. This unconscious approach to child over-protection will never reach the root of the problem . In the case of Rantzen’s recent tour de force, she claimed to have gone ‘too far’ but she did not retract, or even question, the highly corrosive sentiment behind her creation Childline.

It is the insatiable need for adults to intervene in children’s play that is the manifestation of a broader sense of confusion and mistrust in society. Adult insecurities are projected onto children. This is where Reclaiming Childhood really struck a chord with me. I have been a tennis coach for around fifteen years and have witnessed this phenomena firsthand. Parents will often attempt to ‘explain’ their child to me, often prior to the child starting tennis lessons. Parents are also far closer to their child’s responses to their than in the recent past; there seems to be little sense of perspective, detached judgement or simply letting the child get on with it and allowing my coaches to teach. This tendency is highlighted beautifully in the book when Guldberg highlights the work of David Anderegg:

“By ‘overthinking and overworrying’, parents are ‘eventually overeacting on the decision arrived at in a worried state’. Anderegg says he is regularly approached by anxious parents who have tied themselves up in knots over rather mundane questions relating to their children - the kind of things our parents never really worried about. According to Anderegg, the problem with constantly worrying about issues such as whether children should be allowed to play with toy guns is that ‘the choices multiply into an infinitude of decisions that seem like they might determine the course of our children’s lives.

Another tendency I have noticed both in teaching tennis and in running discussions for the Brighton Salon is the tendency to blame parents for the situation that Reclaiming Childhood describribes. Guldberg makes it a central premise to her argument that this is a fundamental error. It’s not parents fault that society is obsessed with risk and with interpersonal behaviour. It is also not parents fault that adults are not trusted and that there is a whole state backed army intervening in the parent child relationship. The pressure to continually intervene in children’s play and ’structure’ their time is immense. The insatiable need of adults to intervene is backed by an insatiable need on the part of the state to intervene in the adult child relationship.

The book gives us some very compelling insights into the way children play and how this is totally ignored, misunderstood and distorted by the child protection industry. Modern concerns over ‘toxic childhood’ are taken apart by Guldberg using good old scientific analysis and data. Basically, most horror stories over childhood are made up.

My favourite chapter was on ‘Bullying’. If there ever has been a ’sacred cow’ in societies attitude to children, it is that childhood bullying is getting worse. I must admit to two things here, firstly that as an ex-bully myself I have little sympathy for those who claim that saying nasty things and giving out nasty looks constitute bullying. Bullying can now mean anything, as the definition of what it constitutes it depends completely on whether the victims thinks they are being bullied. Secondly, I take great sadistic pleasure in seeing the anti-bullying industry being outraged by Guldberg’s point that nearly all bullying does not need intervention by adults and that this intervention itself is more harmful than bullying itself.

The best point Guldberg makes about the anti-bullying tenancy is slightly more subtle and never really alluded to by the anti-bullying industry:

“Children are not emotionally scarred by the experience, they move on. Once the experience is labelled as ‘bullying’, however, and a teacher becomes involved, it becomes an issue of much greater significance, driving a more permanent wedge between the putative victim and that week’s bullies, and making it far harder for the spontaneous dynamics of playground life to resolve themselves.”

This book is well written, insightful and timely. As one who wants to turn the tide and turn our back on this age of fear and suspicion I would recommend this book to everyone. For this reason the Brighton Salon are holding a meeting on Wednesday, February 25th at 7.30pm at Bellerbys College Brighton. Helene Guldberg will be introducing the key concepts in her book and you will be given a chance to question her and debate with other members of the Salon. If you would like to attend please contact me now dantravisbrightonsalon@googlemail.com

Dr Kathleen Richardson is Departmental Research Associate at the
Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University. She has written on how humans relate to robots and was a visiting researcher at the Humanoid Robotics Lab, MIT, Boston.
Dr. Blay Whitby is a lecturer at Sussex University and the author of several books including Artificial Intelligence: A beginner’s Guide, and he works on the ethics of robotics. A recent talk of his was called Do you want a robot lover?
Kathleen Richardson told us that robots being developed at MIT and in Japan were pretty far from the ideas we have of humanoid workers found in science fiction. Scientists are trying to build companions that might one day help care for the elderly and children. Second, she noted the widespread predictions that robots would be developed into sexual partners and third, she introduced what she called the ontological uncertainty that these kinds of experiments seem to encourage. They promote confusion between the categories of human, animal and robot, by breaking down the boundaries between people and objects and replacing humans in different kinds of relationships.

When she arrived at MIT Kathleen said that there were several machines that looked like they might have stepped from science fiction stories: “They had a robot with a friendly human face that made me feel all my childhood fantasies would come true,” she said.

But after about six months Kathleen realised that they were not making robots that would do useful tasks for people. The robots were designed to interact with people on an emotional level to provide companionship rather than physical assistance.

Illustrating her words with images of the robots projected behind her, Kathleen particularly spotlighted a Japanese robot baby seal called Paro that was used as a sort of comforter for people living in an elderly care institution. The white, furry thing, about the size of a lapdog, looked at people and wiggled slowly and seemed to respond to, and enjoy, being petted. Some in the audience found it a bit creepy. Kathleen said this sort of machine is seen by its developers as almost a new species, designed to play a new role in its interactions with people.

The purpose of these emotionally responsive, companion machines was to in some way replace the relationships that people might otherwise have had with humans. Interpersonal relationships are envisaged as being exchanged for those with machines of a new kind.

People have sex with a variety of objects already and some may feel there is something wrong with that while others may not. But in some ways recent developments in the building of sex dolls have moved them away from being objects that provide simply physical stimulation toward providing an emotional relationship with a machine companion.

Citing an excellent Channel 4 documentary on the relationships people have with “Real Dolls”, Kathleen explained that these very expensive, very lifelike dolls (which are built for people to have sex with) are replacing women in the lives of the men who buy them (although there are male dolls, most are female).

“She’s not a living human being,” said one owner about the advantages of his Real Doll over a girlfriend. When one sees relationships with real people as difficult and problematic, an object that can provide some of the characteristics of companionship without the inconvenience of a real person can seem desirable.

Donna Harroway’s Cyborg Manifesto is a good example of the attempt to break down the boundaries between humans and machines and humans and animals. Feminist theory aside, the creatures that are imagined or built by robot developers also attempt to break down those boundaries. The companion species represent an attempt to both realise the existence of creatures that defy ontological definition and to bring humans into relationships with them.

‘They make some wonderful killing machines…’
Blay Whitby responded first to Kathleen’s presentation, emphasising that the issues raised were very important and prompted ethical questions of all kinds. The robot has not developed in a direction that resembles a human in a metal suit. People have sex with all sorts of things and one writer has even predicted that progressive states will recognise human-robot marriage by the year 2050, said Blay.

The breakdown of the categories of human and robot is part of the history of the philosophy of love and many people see that our definition of love will change. Paro the robot seal shows the very different reactions that people from different cultures have to robots. In Japan the attitude to robots is very positive and Japanese people look forward to robots acting as childminders and nurses.

In the US, “where they have made some wonderful killing machines,” said Blay, there is still great resistance to the idea of robots automatically killing people. One of the ideas that Blay considered as having great ethical significance was the ambition to program the Geneva Convention into the software of robot “soldiers”, armed drones that might have to make life-or-death decisions.

In Europe we are generally more cautious and beneficial applications that are envisaged include the automation of residential homes for the elderly, allowing them to live independently for much longer than would otherwise be possible.

Both these applications raise difficult questions. Even a benign helping house for the elderly opens the way for programmers to decide when people should get up in the morning. The ethics of all these applications are complicated further by the input that must reflect the biases of the people who build them.

The discussion took the form of questions from Dr Robert Clowes, in the chair, and then further questions and points from the audience. Kathleen and Blay responded to as many of them as they could but, as the mere sample below shows, there’s a very great deal in this subject…

What actual advances in robot technology have been made in the last 20 years that have led to the development of robot companions?
The robots exhibited by institutions are not very capable and the video clips one sees of them take hours to set up. They are not really capable of the things they pretend to do. Shouldn’t we consider these things for what they are rather than how they are presented by their builders?
Where’s the big vision of robots helping to take our society forward? What about all the robots used in production?
Aren’t we missing something important by concentrating on the personal relationships roboticists try to build?
A human being can easily create a relationship with an object emotionally and it doesn’t have to be a robot. TE Laurence had a name for his motorbike and even an object as limited as a pebble can be imbued with characteristics it doesn’t possess by a human.
The robots doing real work are rather boring and are basically clever tools. A real, independent robot is perhaps 100 years away.
Before we worry about the ethics of robotics should we not try to build some really good ones?

What is ethical and what is not is a big question itself. We raise concerns about a killing drone but a similar machine [unarmed, presumably] searching for people lost in the snow seems to have no ethical problem.
Even in relation to developing more useful robots, aren’t the emotional elements good in that they help develop machines with some human qualities and raise the robotics game generally?
The internet showed that when people became familiar with the technology they begin to get creative with it and take it in directions never foreseen by the early pioneers. Until people can get to grips with the actual technology of robotics, we can’t see how it might change.

The interesting idea of a house helping the elderly is an example of how useful robots could be. Are developers stepping back from the possibilities of a brave new world? Is it possible the emotional robot might be a bit of a dead end?
People who build robots have a great deal of backing and they are, in the end, trying to sell us something. It’s very important to look at who is funding what and where their money is coming from.
A drone that goes to work for you seems a great idea but one that automatically kills things replaces a soldier that might have made a different decision and that seems a bad idea.

Can decision making processes be duplicated by machine? That seems to open up the possibility that robots could run amok and discourage their development in useful areas.
The relationship that a person can build with an object can go beyond simply representing the person another way. It may be that someone who displays their personality on Facebook can come to see the interface itself as their personality, not merely a representation of it.

MIT can spend billions on developing things that seem to be headed for the entertainment industry, such as a Disney animatronics display, that are not really robots at all. The way that these machines have been presented to people as robots is simply bad science.
The discussion promoted about these robots suggests something else is going on. Theses machines have many potential uses but they are also vehicles that promote odd discussions about our society that do not reflect what is really going on.

Whoever creates a thing and programs it must take responsibility for what it is and for what it does, including the people who funded its development, but there are still going to be major deviations from the outcomes that they had imagined.
Phew!
Vanilla emotions
From the chair Rob recalled some of the discussions in previous salons that had examined people’s recent fears of intimacy. Discussions on singletons, social networking and friendship had thrown up data that suggests far more people live alone than ever before. A surprising number of people will say that they have no friends at all while others would claim to have thousands on Facebook. The broad retreat from intimacy and human contact may explain much about developments in robotics.

Rob pointed out that the emotional companion robot seems to be a means of editing out the inconvenient aspects of real relationships with people. This creates “vanilla emotions”!

A washing machine with a face
Kathleen said that there had not been any great advances toward real robots but that the impetus toward robot companionship had come from the changing attitudes of humans. Drawing an analogy with animal rights, where we have regulated our relationships with animals, Kathleen said it was because we have come to view animals differently than we did in the past. “The animals have not become smarter, nor did they campaign for their rights themselves,” she said.

The robots that she had seen developed had no more advanced technology than one might find in a washing machine. They have stuck a face on a washing machine and they might soon offer such machines as sexual partners.

As an anthropologist, Kathleen has seen many different relationships with objects in different cultures. In one society shells and axes would be gathered together for display, for example, but the objects themselves are representative of the relationships and position their owner has with other people in that culture. The gift and act of gift-giving, for example, displays a very different attitude to an object than if it has simply been bought. A robot lover is an object that shows an emphasis on the personal sphere that represents a changing relationship between people and objects.

Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in the story that ends either with him wasting away, unable to tear his gaze from his image while Echo calls him hopelessly, or he commits suicide. This idea of creating a copy of yourself and becoming involved with it can reduce actual relationships to nothing.

Kathleen said the term robot was first used in a 1920s play to refer to people who were built in factories to work. The play dealt with the issues of what it is to be human and how humanity can be defined. By the 1930s the term stuck itself to the idea of a mechanical person and spread into the rest of our culture. The robot has been closely associated with annihilation since this time, in both physical and psychological ways.

Kathleen said we all want to be able to just tell machines what to do. As a robotics expert, she cannot get her video recorder to do what she wants! Robots might help people with commitment problems but this too could also isolate people from the experience of real things. For example, a dating manual will always tell you not to show your real self at first and to improve your image.

Blay agreed that human attitudes drive these developments. In one way the first time we meet artificial intelligences in our culture it is usually in a game where we are trying to kill them. The technologies used in the robots we have been looking at are dressed up to encourage human responses. “We know if you put big eyes and a pair of floppy ears on any machine people will respond to it – even if they know they being fooled by appearances, they cannot help responding!” said Blay.

An automatic killing machine raises many difficulties. For example, it does not take the decision to go to war in the first place but its actions distance those who deployed it from what it does. They can blame the machine if, say, it knocks down a Palestinian school in Gaza. Whatever the uses of the machine and however independent it may be, its programming always reflects the prejudices of those who designed its software. Booking a plane seat by credit card can upset a system that is programmed to behave as if everyone with the title doctor must be male.

Blay couldn’t say to what uses future robots would be put. But the tendency in our society for people to be much more ready talk very personally about their problems and reveal more about themselves in public is strong influence on the thinking behind the robot companions. Blay could see that sex with robots might help some people even if it was unlikely we would all have robot partners one day.

Another problem Kathleen had with machine soldiers was that by removing humans from the experience of war it means that, however bad the experience may be, there would be chance for those fighting to deepen their understanding of war and of their understanding of human emotions and, perhaps, change their attitudes to it.

Blay said that he had found a copy of a book he had written 20 years earlier on the use of artificial intelligence in wars that had been in sold second-hand after resting on the shelves of the library in the US military’s Missile Command. He knew therefore that military strategists were very interested in how machines would be deployed in war.

Asymmetric war describes the usual kind of conflict one sees these days where one side is vastly superior to the other technologically speaking. The technological superiority gives rise to the use of suicidal tactics because conventional military or guerrilla methods would be instantly overwhelmed.

Military drones are not actually that good yet. A battlefield where massive robot forces faced each other would indeed be a very uncomfortable place for a human to be.

Yes, there are decision-making programmes that are very good but, unlike the anthropomorphised robots, they aren’t very glamorous. Blay warned us not to be blinded by the packaging that comes with trendy research areas such as artificially intelligence and androids.

Kathleen said scientists are always trying to do things differently and consciously try to change things. They believe that technology is not stopping them and that it is the tool by which they can come to control anything. If the androids of science fiction are unlikely, the efforts to improve human machine interaction can still be very beneficial in many ways such as better user satisfaction.

The Brighton Salon would like to thank Dr Kathleen Richardson and Dr Blay Whitby for a fascinating discussion. We would also like to thank those who joined in from the Informatics Department at Sussex University and Simon Belt, who runs The Manchester Salon. Finally we would like to thank Bellebys College for hosting the event and for Mr Peter Travis’s help in particular.

This is personal report of the proceedings at the Brighton Salon, January 2009, by Sean Bell. I’m all too human and any mistakes, unforgivable omissions or misattributions may be addressed to jo.e.bell@btinternet.com.

The next Brighton Salon is on Wednesday February 25 at 7.30pm (venue to be confirmed) and features Dr Helene Guldberg presenting ideas from her latest book: Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear.

The field of social robotics has been in serious development for around the last ten years and is at the point where robots are starting to play a role in our everyday lives. Using robots as carers for the elderly has been floated in Japan, research projects are afoot to use robots to teach autistic children about sociality and the possibility of a robot lover is on the horizon. But how far will this relationship go? What will we use the robots of the future for and what does our relationship with them say about us?

Kathleen Richardson will introduce the topic and Blay Whitby will add his thoughts before an audience discussion.

     

“Hands up who ruined the world economy, hedge fund billionaires!”

What caused the banks to fail, the markets to fall and the so-called real economy to lurch into recession? As billions are poured into boosting confidence in financial institutions, where will all this end?

Can the global capitalist system really be dealt such a body-blow by sub-prime mortgages? Did greedy Wall Street traders unload a toxic flood of bad debt upon otherwise healthy financial markets?

Can the world ever be the same again? 

The Brighton Salon presents Stuart Simpson, financial analyst and journalist, convenor of the Emerging Economies Forum at the Institute of Ideas and author of Debt and Development: Ghana - A Case Study.

Stuart will explain the general situation and answer questions about the crisis before we all consider the ramifications; cultural, political and economic, of the extraordinary events of the past months.  The Brighton Salon takes place on Monday 24 November, at Bellebys College, behind Brighton Station next to the Jurys Inn, Brighton, at 7pm.  If you would like to be invited to this event, email Dan Travis at dantravis@thebrightonsalonarena.com  

Media Wars: Military targets are no longer strategic, but newsworthy  

“Contemporary warfare is a media spectacle driven by the search for meaning in the West rather than by strategic aims on the ground.”
In his latest book, Media, War and Postmodernity, Phil Hammond argues that Western military operations are now conducted as high-tech media spectacles, more important for their propaganda value than for any more tangible strategic aims.  Tracing the development of conflict and the way it has been reported since the end of the Cold War, through the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s to the current War on Terror, Hammond draws together debates from a variety of theoretical perspectives to make a convincing case for understanding contemporary military intervention as an attempt to recapture a sense of purpose and meaning for Western societies.

Dr Hammond will present his ideas for discussion on Wednesday October 22 at 7pm at the University of Sussex (room to be confirmed). For an invitation and further information, email dantravis@thebrightonsalonarena.com

Phil Hammond is the author of Framing Post-Cold War Conflicts (2007) and co-editor of Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (2000). He is Reader in Media and Communications at London South Bank University.

Media, War and Postmodernity is available at www.amazon.com

The Brighton Salon made a guest appearance at the University of Sussex with its debating society, DebateUS, as part of the build-up to the Battle of Ideas.
 

Below I’ll outline Phil Hammond’s introduction and give a brief account of the discussion before rounding off with a recap of Phil’s responses during the debate along with his closing remarks.

 Dr Phil Hammond:
 

The media have become more central than ever to the conduct of warfare. There has been a shift in the role of media in wars compared with the past.
 

The way that a war is fought has become part of what convinces people that the war needs to be fought. You need good images of the conflict that support the cause for this and also you might equip the soldiers with helmet cameras. The postmodernist Jean Baudrillard said that the first invasion of Iraq had so little to do with any strategic goal on the ground (without even the purpose of regime change) that it did not even happen, that it was a “non-war”.
 

The political context of wars today are very different from the past, but it seems odd to say that the west is in conflict with itself as it launches attacks on and invades other countries. In the past wars in which Britain took part had some national interest or strategic role and people were invited to support it.
 

The west no longer believes in itself in the same way and recent wars have become an exercise in a search for purpose. Tony Blaire said in 2006 that the second invasion of Iraq was not about a regime change but a “values change”. The first Gulf War was unsuccessful in setting up any kind of meaning or positive support for a new western mission.
 

Michael Ignatief said in 1998 that the conflict had not been about saving anyone else but about saving ourselves, in the sense of “saving an image of ourselves as defenders”. From this viewpoint, Afghanis and Iraqis must struggle for democracy because that gives westerners something to believe in.
 

With many correspondents mystified by the meaning and purpose of that war, subsequent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the War on Terror required an even more media-savvy approach from politicians and the military involved. The intent behind arranged pictures of statues of Saddam being pulled down is to illustrate the liberation from a dictator theme of the justification of the war in the first place. Soldiers were seen handing out pots of paint to Iraqi citizens so that they could join in the defacing of portraits of Saddam.
 

When media required a big gun to be fired, reporters and Iraqi artillery established a going rate for each shell and corresponding lower rates for the discharge of smaller weapons and bullets for the cameras.
 

The US organised a live televised operation, ‘Night Raid on Kandahar’, carried out by Special Forces, wearing helmet cams and being filmed ‘in action’. It transpired another Special Forces team (not filmed) had already carried out a mission to check it was safe for the media team, rendering the second mission meaningless in military terms, valuable only for its grainy pictures.
 

Jessica Lynch, an American wounded and missing in action, became a war celebrity when she was ‘rescued’ from a hospital that had already been abandoned by the opposing military forces. She was ‘rescued’ from the doctors and nurses looking after her and one of her ‘rescuers’ thought to bring an American flag to drape over stretcher as she was carried to ‘safety’. Incidentally, there had been a big search for her by Iraqi forces and they were the ones to locate her in the hospital, but were not permitted to ‘rescue’ her.
 

Stepping back from the Iraq conflict and its strange events, it does appear that the terms in which the war was justified have trapped the anti-war movements within the terms of the discussion set by those proposing the war. If I am right in what I say, the war was posed as a question of conscience, of the risks of not intervening being higher than those of involvement, that could only be opposed on its own terms with the ‘not in my name’ slogan.
 

Risks, such as the risk of Saddam having weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) or the risk of the terrible destruction of civilian life, were compared as moral imperatives in either proposing or opposing the war. I would like to get away from the moral argument against war.
 

War has started to be conducted in a way that is self-conscious but that has not made the media reporters any less critical. They could see that claims had been made that people could not quite believe in. But the lack of belief in a western mission can go further. Even on Newsnight, early in the second invasion, it was commented that “even if they found WMDs now, who would believe them?”
 

A lack of purpose makes any quest to find a purpose incoherent.
George W Bush said; “Mission accomplished!” but the media thought the conflict stage-managed. The military itself was self-conscious about the way it appeared. American flags might appear on some buildings but were quickly taken down as the military did not want to appear as conquerors. The flag, once the symbol and rallying point for people fighting for something they believe in, has become something to apologise for using. The media were asked not to show the soldiers pointing guns or looking too aggressive and warlike.
 

The “mother of all bombs”, or MOAB, was wheeled in. It is a weapon that can cause huge, underground explosions that can devastate bunkers and defensive complexes deep in the rock, where WMDs might be thought to be hidden. But MOAB was not used in a way that required it to be detonated. The bomb was released on film rather than from a plane, shots of its test drop serving the propaganda effort. The weapon was only used in the media against a propaganda target that did not exist.
 

The discussion
Questions and observations from the audience particularly centred around the question of whether further military adventures were likely, regardless of their success or otherwise in establishing some kind of purpose. Obama looks ready to downplay Iraq and focus on the war in Afghanistan. However motivated, it seems the possibility of further wars has not run its course.
 

Another aspect of the discussion was the questioning of Phil’s basic premise that recent wars, from the humanitarian interventions in Bosnia to today’s war on terror, were driven by this postmodern collapse of meaning in the west. Is it only in the west that there has been a crisis of purpose?
 

Perhaps, suggested others, Phil’s assertion that much has changed in warfare had gone too far. Many imperialist powers have used propaganda and the media for their wars and in support of their objectives, particularly the Nazis. Is there anything essentially different about modern wars in this respect, apart from that there are far more media? Isn’t it the case that the enemy is always demonised in conflicts? Why can’t we morally object to war on the simple basis it kills and maims people? What’s wrong with that?
 

Phil’s responses and closing remarks
In military terms, because of the justification for wars now, the ideal conflict described by generals in fast and light. A particular objective is envisaged and it would be achieved quickly and efficiently – but no conflict has actually turned out like that.
 

The attempt to find a purpose or meaning in the west through foreign intervention has not gained mass support. The control of the media in theatres of war did not work either. Where the defining image of the Iraq war was supposed to be the toppling of Saddam’s statue, it has probably became the hooded prisoner whose torture by Americans was filmed on a grunt’s phone.
 

When the media message cannot be controlled it becomes even more incoherent than it already is.
 

Even after 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror, the west is very careful to say it is not engaged in a clash of civilisations. The enemy is much harder to define, especially as an ‘anti-Moslem terrorist’ instead of a terrorist Moslem, but it is difficult to say how far this can still carry on.
 

It was popular in the 1990s to say that the media seemed to control everything but there does seem little evidence to support that view. Foreign policy becomes an arbitrary process in which the rational balance of national interests has little role to play when a war is fought not to conquer but to administer a short sharp cure for a moral problem without getting bogged down – which of course they then do.
 

The media itself is able to expose some aspects of the real situations in which wars are fought. However, a lack of opposition to wars in general is very noticeable now compared with the past. Unfortunately, it is not possible to be against war on the basis of its immoral cause of death because the war is likely to be justified in that way in the first place, as a military action to prevent worse death.

The wars have perhaps helped to cohere elites behind military action, if not many other people, but there is another problem with invading another country to work out the crisis in values at home. The world order consists first of a few powerful nations and second ofweak nations whose opinions and interests no longer matter. Their sovereignty and the rights of their people are bypassed. Take Bosnia or Kosovo, where the humanitarian wars are long over. The west still directly dominates and dictates who is allowed to win meaningless elections. The west is not just a military power and a cultural influence over the rest of the world. �
 

The best hope for the future is that a new political vocabulary can be made in the west that can oppose these wars on a basis that can stop them.
 

Acknowledgements:
The Brighton Salon would like to thank:
All those who came (over 40 of you) and particularly thank all those who stayed until the very end (28 of you)!
The University of Sussex Debating Society, DebateUS, particularly Alexandria and Mara;
The Battle of Ideas for including this event in its run-up to the conference on November 1 and 2 in London (see link on left-hand side);
and lastly, Dr Phil Hammond for a thought-provoking and surprising take on the combination of neo-imperialism and postmodernism. I heartily recommend his book, War, the Media and Postmodernity, available at £17.99 from www.amazon.co.uk.
 

This report is personal one from Brighton Salon Secretary Sean Bell, who moderated the discussion.
 

   

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Eyebrow shape, Obama’s personality and the degradation of democracy
 

The US presidential election has become a reality TV contest. Jean Smith, who lives and works in New York and is a founder of the New York Salon, presented her view of American politics to the September Brighton Salon on Wednesday September 17.
 

Jean said the contradiction in the present contest is that political engagement in America takes a form that appears as if there is more engagement than there really is. Americans are really interested in the contest and the candidates and watch the conventions and debates of both main parties on television. People have been getting in to work bleary-eyed after watching the unfolding process that reminded Jean of the day after the Super bowl. However, this interest coexists with a profound cynicism about politicians. In a social movement, voting would form part of the process of political engagement but in this contest and generally in US politics it is the beginning, middle and end of engagement.
 

Obama, before Palin stole the limelight, had offered a breath of fresh air from the Washington norm. He preached bipartisanship and hope and change in a way that keys into the anti-political mood of the people but renders his political views managerial. His personal values are easily gleaned from his books. On abortion, for example, it is his personal view, more or less, that there should be a woman’s right to choose, but he would compromise to co-operate on the issue by taking measures to prevent unplanned pregnancy. The political principles he holds are generally opposed to his personal values in this way.
 

Jean said that the scrutiny of the candidates had reached ridiculous levels. One radio show discussed the shape of the candidates’ eyebrows with Madonna’s eyebrow person. More seriously, 6ft 3ins and only about 13 stone Obama may be thought too thin to be able to relate to the average mid-westerner. He doesn’t even like ice cream! This is shocking to most Americans. The person of the candidate is very much more important than their policies.
 

‘War hero’ John McCain is presented as the victim of war because of his torture while a POW in Viet Nam. He was captured after deciding not to take the easy way out of the war with a short tour. Sarah Palin appeals because she’s interesting, gutsy, stood against Republicans in Alaska, is proud of her Down’s child, has a pregnant 17-year-old daughter whom she wheels out complete with the shotgun wedding target, hunts moose and married a regular-guy husband who is also a snowmobile racing champion. She has revitalised the Republican campaign by appealing to the traditional voters in ‘middle America’. Democrats feel that they have been patronising to those who do not live on the glamorous coasts of the US. All candidates stand on their personal values and this has made the process a bit like reality TV, where there is little focus on big ideas or strong visions.
 

Most presidents of the past stood for something and were accountable to the voters for what they did. Without principles, it is impossible to predict what a politician will do. In foreign policy, decisions would become arbitrary reactions. Knowing what a politician stands for makes them accountable for their actions.
 

Obama makes people feel good, they like him and the fact he has come so far shows some progress in the US from the bad old days of slavery and segregation. People like Palin because they think she is like them. There is a cultural divide between the Red states and the Blue states – they represent to people different personas or lifestyles. Candidates elected on this basis are not accountable because control over their actions is less. It is a degradation of democracy because the candidates represent themselves rather than ‘we the people’. The people themselves are not really active in the process because they are discussing the question ‘Who am I?’ rather than that of ‘What kind of world do I want to live in?’.
 

The discussion
 

Dan Travis asked Jean if the candidates really were as vacuous as she said. Hasn’t Obama a bit of the JFK about him? Was there no substance at all to Palin? How different are today’s candidate from those of the past?
 

Jean said Kennedy had principles on civil rights and tax reform. He was not just a popular person but the product of struggles that were going on in the streets at the time. He said he would put a man on the moon and he did. Obama could not have been popular in the ’60s or ’70s because he is without ideas. People find it easy to criticise Palin personally. How can she be a VP and a mom? The reactions to her show she does not fit the feminist mould of what a successful woman should be like. While Obama is criticised for a lack of experience Palin’s lack is made out to be a virtue because she is untainted by Washington and the cynicism people feel for it.
John McCain campaigns on his personal qualities of trust and character, a reference, Jean thinks, to Martin Luther King’s dream of being ‘judged not by the colour of skin but on character’. The inference is that you should not vote for Obama just because he is black.
 

Alex said Obama seemed to have taken a lead from Tony Blair. Perhaps, in a climate such as today’s, a centre-left party must try to sneak into office, to present itself as reasonable to achieve government? Tom said that Obama certainly had principles and that compromise was one of them. Obama’s books are beautiful and read like beautiful dreams. He has no chance of election, but perhaps Obama’s principles are hidden by his eloquence?
 

Don pointed out that it might almost be termed the Obama/Palin race now that McCain seems pushed to one side. Were not the sixties more ideological? Is it still the case that principle must come dressed up as a manifesto derived from Marxism or the free market? Perhaps we baby boomers expect ideology, but is there anything wrong with ambiguity? Perhaps it is necessary?
 

I think that the sixties were the end of ideology as it existed in the past. The candidates this time represented the very last influence of the sixties set and the problem was that they all were running from discredited ideas of both Democrats and Republicans without any direction.
 

Jean said that compromise in this case was not a principle or a value. For example, in New York the mayor’s administration was elected on bipartisanship and promising to bring its opponents into office within the local government. Cars will be banned from parts of the city, smoking is banned nearly everywhere and transfats are forbidden in restaurants – all in the cheerless name of doing what is good for us. There’s no ideology as such.
 

McCain and Palin are supposed to anti-abortion and pro-gun and that if they win they’ll ban abortion and relax controls - but so was George W. and he did not do those things. The candidates may bear the weight of people’s expectations and they have views that are not their own associated with them.
 

Jean did not think it was possible to sneak into government as the party would need people behind it to win. No government ever took power and then suddenly produced a bunch of radical policies unless they had support for them.
 

The candidates have a certain distance from the political parties that they represent. Obama was not his party’s first choice. Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war is often overstated. He now supports a phased withdrawal but he has not ruled out military interventions as such.
 

Ruth lay into Sarah Palin for her hypocrisy about the choice to have her Down’s child, Trig, when her political position on abortion would give no women any choice. And Obama could certainly say on thing and do another. Tom felt that corporate America wanted a weak president and had some influence over the media to make sure it got one.
 

Don said that there existed in America a deep ideology of Christian theology. The ideological evangelists took their view of choice very seriously. Their use of the language of choice is a very different thing from that employed by the British liberal left. Politics could be fundamentally Christian and theocratic for certain people and it could not be dismissed.
 

Geoff said he thought there was very little control of the general situation. The financial markets were out of control and corporate America looked as helpless in the face of unpredictable events as any institutions with little purchase. The Republicans have distanced themselves from Bush and his rescue of the banks, which reactions Geoff would not dignify with the term nationalisation. In 1997 Blair was cheered in the streets – that’s hard to imagine now. US candidates at least have something as a type of person. Obama’s problem is that although he is black he is an elite character, there’s nothing of the Dukes of Hazzard about him. Everyone assumed there would be threats to kill Obama but the only plot that emerged could not be taken seriously.
 

Mike said the campaigns contained no policies but were little clips setting out ideas for a delightful world. Pete asked if there was any confidence in the US now. The nice Obama might make a good stopgap president for a few years and he makes a perfect global president, but does America really care about that kind of thing?
 

Ruth said Bush didn’t ban abortion but he had made it more difficult to actually achieve on the ground. Don said he felt that there was a principled aspect to the anti-abortionists. He also pointed out that young people seemed to try politicians out and then help to vote them out, as they had with the ideological Ken Livingstone in London, replacing him with the less political Boris Johnson.
 

Andy sympathised with Obama not claiming to have a black and white answer to everything and that his honest admission to weigh things up and come to informed decisions was refreshing and sensible. Something needed to be done in Iraq, said Andy, and perhaps a compromise would have been a lot better.
 

Dan asked ‘What now for the political?’ with the global chaos and the shrinking political content of electioneering.
 

Jean said that debates appear more extreme in the media coverage than perhaps they really were. No one is control of any of the processes involved and this is no holding operation because corporate America has no idea what it wants. Voting habits tend to show people vote for the candidate of the party that they support and that funds tend to switch from one candidate to another as happened with Clinton and Obama.
 

Young Americans care but they tend to most active in very conservative campaigns such as those around fair trade. The culture wars of the US have changed. Even gay marriage and abortion, as issues, have changed with evangelicals saying that they need to move away from cultural issues. Yes, religion is very strong in America but it is also very general and not just to be associated with the right – even atheists may join churches for the enjoyment of belonging to them! Abortion is less of a defining issue than it once was; most Americans support some form of abortion in some circumstances (Palin even supports it where there is immanent danger to the mother’s life).
 

There is no definitive answer as to where the next form of politics will come from and we are not yet at the stage where that politics exists. The Enlightenment created the rational citizen who could take on board what was happening and engage with it. The correction of politics after the event was very much the current way of thinking and it would be necessary to understand more about what is going on. Some say you now cannot have a world view. Jean thought the situation called for an understanding of what it means to be an active citizen and what democracy is. The degraded experience of democracy has caused the death of politics in its old form.
 

The Brighton Salon would like to thank those who came, The Friends’ Meeting House and, of course, Jean Smith.
 

If you have comments on the event, its report or anything else, email me, Sean Bell the Salon’s secretary, at jo.e.bell@btinternet.com
 

The next Salon will be on Media Wars at the University of Sussex on Wednesday October 22. See above for details.