benedson

The Veil, The Policeman and Baumen

Baumen's Liquid Modernity is a stunning book that has resonances with everyday life and culture all the time. One of his themes, emancipation, identifies that society has put the right of the individual over the right of citizen - or as he puts it the search for a 'just society' has given way to 'human rights'. In the search for freedom we have made freedom impotent by making it such a debased currency that it means little or nothing at all.

I can help but make connections between this thought and the current controversy about the veil and the policeman. Is society giving people so much freedom that freedom means nothing? Are we to focused on giving individuals their human rights without focusing on the wider issues in society as a whole?

I'm worried that the ideology of a tolerant society has become a straight jacket that prevents human freedom rather than giving it...I'm still formulating this, and i've had most of a bottle of wine, so bear with me if this is not too coherent!!

Technorati Tags: Current affairs, Baumen, jack straw

The redemption of the Superdome?

I've just seen the lunchtime news and the New Orleans super-dome has re-opened after hurricane Katrina. On one level i think great: this symbol of despair has been transformed into a symbol of hope. But as i was watching the news footage of U2 playing and hearing the report mention the prices that people had paid to be there my heart sank. All the people in the news footage were white and presumably had enough disposable income to be able to afford a ticket to this one-off prestigious event.

The party should have been for all the people who spent those long days holed up in the super-dome when nobody else wanted to be there...It seems that opening the super-dome just papers of the cracks of a fragmented city.

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Technorati Tags: Current affairs, Superdome

What if Hezbollah is my neighbour?

The situation is Israel and Lebanon at the moment is truly tragic, so much death and destruction and so many people displaced. Arguably in began in 1982, when the IDF invaded Lebanon and killed 19,000 people – the children of that war have now come of age.

We have situation that seems to be escalating by the day with no end in sight and a Prime minister who refuses to call for a ceasefire. He sees it as a pointless exercise and is in charge of a government that has exported £25m worth of arms to Israel in the past 18 months. We also have a US president who cannot criticise Israeli tactics, as they seem to be very similar to the ‘shock and awe’ tactics he employed in the Iraq war. Israel claims that there response is part of the ‘war on terror’…it seems that war on terror is becoming justification for tyranny and is becoming a terror in its own right.

And yet there are always two sides to the story – Israel has the right to protect it’s citizens, no country should feel under daily threat by terrorists and Hezbollah has consistently over the past decade launched attacks into Israel. When I was living in Haifa I worked at guesthouse on the on top of mount Carmel and I could climb onto the roof of the guesthouse and see the Lebanese border. During the time I was there the Israeli government launched operation ‘Grapes of Wrath’ where they bombed Hezbollah posts in southern Lebanon and from the top of the guest house I could see and hear the bombs exploding.

However, war is not the way the bring about a long-term sustainable peace, it creates more anger and alienation, it may prevent Hezbollah from attacking this year but they’ll be back with a new more radical form of terrorism.

Israel can learn something from both Hezbollah and Hamas who have both created a cultural and social infa-structure in their regions, running schools and hospital clinics, and therefore creating good will and building relationships with the local people. Israel should perhaps follow their example and try to build friendship with their neighbours rather than terrorising them and creating the next generation of suicide bombers and Hezbollah guerrillas.

Technorati Tags: Current affairs, Israel, puppy

Faithful Cities

Faithful Cities is published by the commission on Urban life and faith, it's the follow up to Faith in the City. The commission had my Bishop Stephen Lowe on it and I was involved in the consultation process that produced the report.

Part of the report has been leaked to the Sunday Times, who say:

"The Church of England is to issue a withering attack on some of Labour’s highest- profile social policies, accusing the government of forcing asylum seekers into destitution and setting the minimum wage too low to relieve poverty...It states: “It is unacceptable to use destitution as a tool of coercion when dealing with refused asylum seekers.”

Read more here.

Technorati Tags: Justice, Manchester, mission, politics