Suchergebnisse

All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.

In this paper I argue that the self-evident sustainability of the changes wrought
by anti-terrorism law since the 11 September 2001 attacks are rooted in our
colonial past, a past that is littered with such laws. I further argue that in the
post-colonial period those laws were then carried over into the Cold War era,
where they were too useful in the struggle against radical dissent ever to be
completely jettisoned—even by those newly liberated countries whose leaders
had suffered under their coercive power. The paper ends with some brief
reflections on how the 'problem' of 'terrorism' became globalised in the
post-colonial period. My examination of its origins led me to believe that the
'War on Terror' was easy to entrench because liberal democracies had had
decades of practice at it.

ABSTRACT: In this paper I argue that the self-evident sustainability of the changes wrought by anti-terrorism law since the 11 September 2001 attacks are rooted in our colonial past, a past that is littered with such laws. I further argue that in the post-colonial period those laws were then carried over into the Cold War era, where they were too useful in the struggle against radical dissent ever to be completely jettisoned—even by those newly liberated countries whose leaders had suffered under their coercive power. The paper ends with some brief reflections on how the 'problem' of 'terrorism' became globalised in the post-colonial period. My examination of its origins led me to believe that the 'War on Terror' was easy to entrench because liberal democracies had had decades of practice at it.