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The correct use of treason
Feb. 27th, 2004 09:51 amIn 411 BC the Greek dramatist Aristophanes scored a big hit with his comedy Lysistrata, in which a long-running war between Athens and Sparta is ended when women get together to stop it by, amongst other things, suspending all sexual favours. It's a great story, but I want to tell you a different one which has quite a similar ending.
Once upon a time there was a man who wasn't qualified to run a business, let alone the world. But he grinned and winked and said 'Just watch. This isn't about being qualified, it's about having friends in high places.' He meant God, and he meant Exxon, and he meant his dad. Soon it was time to take power. On election night things weren't looking too good. The American people, who were supposed give the man legitimacy by giving him votes, seemed to be handing the state of Florida to his rival. The giant TV screens at the man's campaign headquarters in Austin, Texas were switched off and the party continued. Soon, thanks to friends on the Supreme Court, the man was in power. And that gesture, of switching off the news you don't want to hear and relying on your friends, became the man's modus operandi. But now, in power, instead of just switching off a TV screen, he could switch off people and ideas. The opposition party, other religions, foreign regimes, the United Nations, weapons inspectors, the CIA, journalists, environmentalists. Anyone joining his 'coalition of the willing' got plugged into big stuff like God and Exxon. The price seemed small compared with the benefits: just switch off dissent. It didn't seem like a problem, until it became clear just how many small people, poor people, messengers, traitors and enemies there were in the world. Once they'd all been switched off (or fired, or made 'irrelevant', or ignored, or killed) there wasn't much left. After you switched off the Pope, you couldn't even be sure of having God on your side. So there was really only Exxon.
Tony, the man's British friend, also ended up with a lot to switch off. Weapons inspectors who couldn't find weapons. Legal experts who couldn't find justification. Spies who failed to cook the books. Cook and Short, the cabinet ministers who didn't want war. The BBC, which didn't report stuff the way Tony saw it. Even the British people themselves. All switched off. And now it looks as if Tony is going to have to switch off women too.
Clare Short and Katharine Gun have this week revealed that Tony Blair got British spies to bug the UN as it debated whether to give a legal justification for the Iraq war by providing a second resolution. At a press conference yesterday, Blair described Short's revelation that she had, as a cabinet minister, read transcripts of Kofi Annan's private conversations, as 'deeply irresponsible' and 'entirely consistent'. He didn't finish the last sentence. Consistent with what? Herself? Women? The facts? Honour? The government itself was being less consistent. While condemning Short, it quietly dropped its case against Katharine Gun, who leaked to the press an e mail from the American National Security Agency.
'Marked "top secret",' The Guardian reports, the e mail 'requested British help with what amounted to a dirty tricks campaign: a plan for the bugging of offices and homes in New York belonging to UN diplomats from the six "swing states", countries whose support would be vital if Washington and London were to win a Security Council resolution authorising the invasion of Iraq.' Gun, a 29 year-old translator of Japanese and mandarin Chinese at GCHQ, thought the request was 'pretty outrageous' and put it into the public domain. After eight months in which she has been imprisoned and harrassed, the government has now dropped its case against her. Why? Because her defense -- that she had broken the terms of the Official Secrets Act out of necessity, to prevent imminent loss of life in a war she considered illegal -- will drag into the full glare of public scrutiny the embarrassing fact that most legal experts in Whitehall thought, like her, that not just the UN bugging but the entire Iraq war was illegal.
Gun has won. And Short is winning too. They are heroines. They are 'entirely consistent'. With the findings of the Populus poll last year which showed that Tony Blair's war stance had damaged his credibility with women more than anyone else. With Aristophanes in the Lysistrata and the idea that women would run the world more humanely than men. Forget Exxon and testosterone, oestrogen and progesterone are what really matter. Let's put it this way. Women are still around. Athens and Sparta are not at war any more. Nobody who switches off women survives long.
I hope I would have been as brave as Gun if I'd been in her situation. I can't be a woman, but I can claim to share one thing with Gun. In her interview with The Guardian, Gun, who spent much of her childhood in Taiwan, claims to be a third culture kid, a term first coined by the writer Ruth Hill Useem to describe children raised abroad by expat parents. According to Dr Ruth, TCKs are four times more likely to earn bachelor's degrees, they experience prolonged adolescence, typically have problems relating to their own ethnic groups and maintain global dimensions throughout their lives.
"One of the things the research says is that third-culture kids tend to be extremely empathetic, and because they've usually lived in at least one other foreign country, they somehow feel a global alliance, almost ... " Gun tails off, as if embarrassed to make too grand a claim for herself.'
I don't think she should be embarrassed at all. Robert Wyatt, while living in exile in Spain, said of himself 'My political inclination is to be a traitor'. That was a modest way of saying that when his conscience and power are at odds, he follows his conscience. Even if it leads him out of the country he was born in. Perhaps it's his sense of justice that bangs the drum, or perhaps his sense of aesthetics. Perhaps they're the same thing.
The US State Department, amusingly enough, has a whole page on 'third culture kids'. Check it out, it's extremely interesting as an explanation for the psychology of treason. You may find, gentle reader, that you, like me, and like a surprising number of artists, musicians, writers, designers, architects and journalists, are a TCK too. My ex-wife, my flatmate and most of my friends are. And we're all, in Robert Wyatt's sense, 'traitors'. Let's blow trumpets and whistles.
Once upon a time there was a man who wasn't qualified to run a business, let alone the world. But he grinned and winked and said 'Just watch. This isn't about being qualified, it's about having friends in high places.' He meant God, and he meant Exxon, and he meant his dad. Soon it was time to take power. On election night things weren't looking too good. The American people, who were supposed give the man legitimacy by giving him votes, seemed to be handing the state of Florida to his rival. The giant TV screens at the man's campaign headquarters in Austin, Texas were switched off and the party continued. Soon, thanks to friends on the Supreme Court, the man was in power. And that gesture, of switching off the news you don't want to hear and relying on your friends, became the man's modus operandi. But now, in power, instead of just switching off a TV screen, he could switch off people and ideas. The opposition party, other religions, foreign regimes, the United Nations, weapons inspectors, the CIA, journalists, environmentalists. Anyone joining his 'coalition of the willing' got plugged into big stuff like God and Exxon. The price seemed small compared with the benefits: just switch off dissent. It didn't seem like a problem, until it became clear just how many small people, poor people, messengers, traitors and enemies there were in the world. Once they'd all been switched off (or fired, or made 'irrelevant', or ignored, or killed) there wasn't much left. After you switched off the Pope, you couldn't even be sure of having God on your side. So there was really only Exxon.
Tony, the man's British friend, also ended up with a lot to switch off. Weapons inspectors who couldn't find weapons. Legal experts who couldn't find justification. Spies who failed to cook the books. Cook and Short, the cabinet ministers who didn't want war. The BBC, which didn't report stuff the way Tony saw it. Even the British people themselves. All switched off. And now it looks as if Tony is going to have to switch off women too.
Clare Short and Katharine Gun have this week revealed that Tony Blair got British spies to bug the UN as it debated whether to give a legal justification for the Iraq war by providing a second resolution. At a press conference yesterday, Blair described Short's revelation that she had, as a cabinet minister, read transcripts of Kofi Annan's private conversations, as 'deeply irresponsible' and 'entirely consistent'. He didn't finish the last sentence. Consistent with what? Herself? Women? The facts? Honour? The government itself was being less consistent. While condemning Short, it quietly dropped its case against Katharine Gun, who leaked to the press an e mail from the American National Security Agency.
'Marked "top secret",' The Guardian reports, the e mail 'requested British help with what amounted to a dirty tricks campaign: a plan for the bugging of offices and homes in New York belonging to UN diplomats from the six "swing states", countries whose support would be vital if Washington and London were to win a Security Council resolution authorising the invasion of Iraq.' Gun, a 29 year-old translator of Japanese and mandarin Chinese at GCHQ, thought the request was 'pretty outrageous' and put it into the public domain. After eight months in which she has been imprisoned and harrassed, the government has now dropped its case against her. Why? Because her defense -- that she had broken the terms of the Official Secrets Act out of necessity, to prevent imminent loss of life in a war she considered illegal -- will drag into the full glare of public scrutiny the embarrassing fact that most legal experts in Whitehall thought, like her, that not just the UN bugging but the entire Iraq war was illegal.
Gun has won. And Short is winning too. They are heroines. They are 'entirely consistent'. With the findings of the Populus poll last year which showed that Tony Blair's war stance had damaged his credibility with women more than anyone else. With Aristophanes in the Lysistrata and the idea that women would run the world more humanely than men. Forget Exxon and testosterone, oestrogen and progesterone are what really matter. Let's put it this way. Women are still around. Athens and Sparta are not at war any more. Nobody who switches off women survives long.
I hope I would have been as brave as Gun if I'd been in her situation. I can't be a woman, but I can claim to share one thing with Gun. In her interview with The Guardian, Gun, who spent much of her childhood in Taiwan, claims to be a third culture kid, a term first coined by the writer Ruth Hill Useem to describe children raised abroad by expat parents. According to Dr Ruth, TCKs are four times more likely to earn bachelor's degrees, they experience prolonged adolescence, typically have problems relating to their own ethnic groups and maintain global dimensions throughout their lives.
"One of the things the research says is that third-culture kids tend to be extremely empathetic, and because they've usually lived in at least one other foreign country, they somehow feel a global alliance, almost ... " Gun tails off, as if embarrassed to make too grand a claim for herself.'
I don't think she should be embarrassed at all. Robert Wyatt, while living in exile in Spain, said of himself 'My political inclination is to be a traitor'. That was a modest way of saying that when his conscience and power are at odds, he follows his conscience. Even if it leads him out of the country he was born in. Perhaps it's his sense of justice that bangs the drum, or perhaps his sense of aesthetics. Perhaps they're the same thing.
The US State Department, amusingly enough, has a whole page on 'third culture kids'. Check it out, it's extremely interesting as an explanation for the psychology of treason. You may find, gentle reader, that you, like me, and like a surprising number of artists, musicians, writers, designers, architects and journalists, are a TCK too. My ex-wife, my flatmate and most of my friends are. And we're all, in Robert Wyatt's sense, 'traitors'. Let's blow trumpets and whistles.