The Big City

Well, it’s not exactly mine, but I did produce and mix it. It’s a documentary by World Service journalist Anu Anand (hey, I took that photo!) about how Afghanistan’s conservative society is coping with western influences like music TV. It focusses in particular on Shakeeb Issar, Afghanistan’s first VJ. He’s an interesting character, utterly egotistical and vain as a peacock, but I ended up sympathising with him. Although he seems utterly apolitical he is a radical just because his society doesn’t like the way he dresses and acts.

The head of the British secret police, Eliza Manningham-Buller, recently made a speech in which she claimed that “Civil liberties may have to be ‘eroded’ to protect Britons from terrorism”. It’s not surprising that she thinks this; as a spook she must have spent much of her career being confounded by unwanted interference from people she probably sees as wishy-washy liberals. In fact, she has more in common with the people who planted the bombs in London on July the 7th than she has with the citizens who she says she wants to protect.

Although people usually characterise the “War on Terror” as being between Muslim militants and democratic governments it is actually a war between liberals and authoritarians. On one side the liberals wants all those things that liberals always want; equality for everyone, protection of civil liberties, tolerance of different opinions, all that sort of thing. On the other side the authoritarians want stricter laws, whether based on the Koran or the Bible or just general strictness, they don’t approve of women’s rights, they don’t like weirdos, they don’t care about civil liberties, they don’t like liberals. Terrorists are almost always authoritarian by instinct, so are policemen.

It’s such a sham when television programmes put together a discussion with a Muslim authoritarian on one side and a secular authoritarian on the other. It’s like two butchers arguing about whether to make pies or sausages, the animal that’s about to be killed doesn’t get a look-in. We liberals need to realise that it’s not just suicide bombers who want to change the world for the worse - the authoritarians from both sides are engaged in a sort of coalition to try and remove our freedoms. They are attacking on two fronts and Eliza Manningham-Buller is the enemy within.