I guess what’s bothering me throughout the last two posts, what I'm trying to get at, is the feeling that the current conjecture (i.e. the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, etc) is, at its simplest, the manifestation of our modern consumer-capitalist, neoliberal western world. And as such it reveals to us in concrete terms things which, in normal circumstances, stay hidden below the threshold of our normal vision. So, the presence of Guantanamo Bay, flying in the face of international law and global moral opinion, merely serves to highlight the racist, violent and controlling nature of our new world order.

The war in Iraq, in all its brutality, reveals to us the close ties between our system of politics and our economic beliefs (through the inexorable ties between the military-industrial complex and the neoliberal global economic order). Overall, the many ignorals of law, ethics, and common decency reveal the vicious nature of this globalizing force, emerging from behind its polished sheen of accountability, progress, development, and democracy. Which is why I'm so angry and amazed at the relative lack of protest directed at the leading governments in this movement, the UK and US, from within their own borders.

True, there is a groundswell of opposition to the war in Iraq, to the war on terror and its attendant attacks on our civil liberties, but the people more generally opposed to this new world order seemed so stunned at the brutal displays of power, violence, and disregard for law, that we seem, collectively, to have been stunned into silence. It seems to me that the ongoing events present the perfect opportunity to make the linkages from what manifests itself in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the daily brutalities of neoliberal globalization (both at home and abroad): prisoner abuse is as likely in Britain's asylum holding centres, deportation centres, and prisons as that the government is now forced to admit is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan; police brutality and draconian legislation curbing freedoms to assemble and protest are happening in Britain, not just in some far away land; the impoverishment of the lower classes through the privatization of services and the casualisation of work are prevalent globally; the disregard for law and human rights is not only characteristic of Guantanamo Bay; and the desire to be bound only by those treaties and institutions which remain in our interests does not only characterise our actions abroad in exceptional circumstances.