Please correct the errors. Martin Amis does not suggest any such thing in the “The Age of Horrorism”

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/sep/ 10/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety).

They were remarks from an *interview* following the terrorist attacks:
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What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’
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“What can *WE* do…definite *URGE*…don’t *YOU* have it?” This might well be a way of endorsing this opinion without stating so explicitly but this is pure speculation.

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Alas you have missed the point, AND fall into that endlessly repeated travesty of putting the rights of the perpetrator ahead of those of the victim.

How many South Africans would give their right arm to swap cctv for the ability to sleep with your doors unlocked. I lived in the UK for 35 years, and i have never seen a burglar bar, i don’t know anyone who has ever been hi-jacked, no one i know has ever been murdered, stabbed, or shot at. Before coming to SA i had never seen a hand gun in my whole life.

CCTV has has a massive effect on reducing street crime and football hooliganism, and the effects have been brilliant.

Are you really that out of touch with how people feel about crime in this country? You must be in the ANC!

Tell me, i see you now live in the UK, do you have burgular bars on your house, have a gun, been hi-jacked, lock your doors at traffic lights?

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Pointless putting up too many cameras in SA, someone would pinch them and if not, no one would bother to watch them.

Lecturer: So students why do we study criminology?

Student: So that we can become professional criminals.

Lecturer: Ha, ha, nice joke

Student: No, I was not joking.

UKZN, Criminolgy lecture, February, 2008.

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I stand corrected Lev. Martin Amis first stated those views in an interview with Ginny Dougary of the Times who quotes him as saying: “There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children…”

Amis has subsequently tried to distance himself from the incendiary import of those words by claiming that he had “merely adumbrated” … “a thought experiment”. I would argue that it reveals a lot about the nature of his unconscious though. As the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in his recently published reflections on violence, points out, “the official (Christian, democratic…) discourse is accompanied and sustained by a whole nest of obscene, brutal, racist, sexist fantasises, which can only be admitted in a censored form”.

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Actually Owen your imagined scenario of gross incompetence is exactly what a recent police and government assessment here in the UK reveals: 80 percent of the cameras that in the last decade have cost the Home Office in excess of 500 million pounds are for a variety of reasons defective and of no good use for detection purposes. What this means is that their efficacy is exaggerated by a misplaced public confidence that is more telling of the extent to which the British have internalised Big Brothers politics of fear, than any actual threat. That the public is deferring to an empty mechanical witness has also been argued by some commentators to be making the streets less safe by absolving the passer-by of any responsibility to intervene.

“Amused” should be aware that “Surveillance Society” also has its conservative critics in the UK.

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“Critics” of crime prevention are, more than likely, criminals or naive touchy-feely sympathisers of criminals.

Once a criminal has come along and stolen their stuff, they’ll change their opinion in a flash.

Or, even worse, if the criminal has done more dreadful things than merely steal your stuff.

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All I know is if I know there is a speed camera on the road (thankss to all you motorists who flash me- thank you)I slow down to a touch below speed limit.I am constantly reminded of my speeding ny these guys. Unfortunately in australia most of the speed camereas are mobile so you dont know where the bastards are.I have not collected a speeding ticket in 1 year and they say its good for everybody including me.I also understand for every 1 stationary speeding camera there might be 3 dummy ones. except I dont know which was is the dummy.

Maybe SA may have 1 in 10 (if cost is a problem) live cameras Tsotsis dont know which ones are live. When your throat is getting slit or you are getting raped or robbed or carjacked-you begin to appreciate BIG BROTHER brother.In fact you want BIG BROTHER to watch more carefully

Go one step further- let the cameras transmit to the nearest police car and the base of course.

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Chris the ’surveillance society’ might disagree, but the bl**dy people dont.

You seem to have moved into the land of the academic, and forgotten that it is actually ‘real life’ that counts.

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PS. Exactly what made you leave SA? did you not feel safe?

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I said to my fishmonger yesterday: “You guys have all the cameras while we South Africans have all the crime.”

I think that sums it up for me! Better a live dog than a dead lion.

Frankly, in South Africa there doesn’t exist a respect of human rights anymore - so CCTV cameras are addressing the most important thing to us, life and death!

Let’s get rid of Apartheid first, recognize human rights etc…before tackling surveillance.

Addressing this subtle nuance of human rights, is an attempt at pretending that South Africa has a highly evolved level of respect for human-rights.

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To Chris: With illegal immigrants crowding the UK and flooding the extensive, now virtually border-less, European Union, maybe CCTVs could be justified? As long as they don’t scan the inside of someone’s home, their presence should help deter a large percentage of criminal deeds. Bobbies are certainly not the solution anymore, and who cares if they catch me picking my nose?!.

Statistics show that crime has increased dramatically due to the influx of bad elements from many different foreign origins (this not to be understood as a racist comment but the worst offenders and mafias seem to be coming from the ‘white’ East of Europe). My home is in a southern European country and I am getting out mostly because of the lack of personal safety in that “rainbow continent” of increasingly violent and daring criminality - and guess where I’ll be settling? Right here in S. Africa!
Amongst other things because I do feel safer here.

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In a sense it is a scary thought that these cameras are proliferating, but in the 18 months I have lived in UK, I have never sensed an intrusion on my privacy. At the same time I am nervous aout even small infringements of the law, such as littering. I would rather have EVEN more cameras and have the additional security than the rampant crime in SA, a million times over.

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Chris, sir,
CCTV cameras may seem intimidating if you were to perhaps read too much, let’s say, Aldus Huxley.
However, crime is intimidating no matter what you read.
Try reading “Pavement politics”, “Cameras needed at taxi ranks”, and “They’re trying to teach these girls a lesson”, in this week’s M&G print edition.
Thanks for the great idea: mabey South Africans can debate and vote this into existence; that’s if we can overcome the already predicted CCTV-gate situation (500 million pounds could grease a lot of palms). - How’s that for irony.

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P.S:
Unfortunately, much of what is happening in South Africa is suggesting that we are living in a “cowardly new world”

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Trust is a 2-way street. If sections of society are not behaving you need to have measures in place to bring wrong-doers to justice. The CCTV cameras are normally used to do this in serious cases - not petty ones.

The argument that CCTV cameras rob you of privacy and civil liberties is utter rubbish - these are devices in public places, not people’s homes. What is the difference if a person sees you in public or a camera records your actions?

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The difference is that the person you refer to is presumably not a government spy; and that the now criminalised public used to be called “the commons”. While sharing the widespread concern about SA’s crime, it seems to me equally tragic when the love of liberty is considerd something all together unnatural.

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Me thinks, criminals don’t like camera’s Regular people could not care

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For those of you who a) feel that ordinary people don’t care about the cameras and b) that they are a small price to pay for a lowered crime rate:

I’ve recently moved to Oxford for a gap year (and have EVERY intention of returning to SA as it out-strips this place 10:1) and I am horrified at the constant crawling feeling on my skin from those cameras. I have nothing to hide: I am a law abiding citizen who is constantly under suspicion. It is Orwellian to a disturbing degree. Now the UK government is looking to pass legislation that requires all resident adults to register a DNA sample. This after they have only just recently been lambasted for forgetting CDs of critical sensitive data on desks or losing them in the mail.

As TDR said: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty for Temporal Safety deserve neither.”

On the crime front: within the first 2 days of arrival, my boyfriend had been chased down the street by a pack of skin heads and another friend had had her bag lifted in a pub. Within 3 weeks, my one house-mate had been chased by a knife-wielding maniac on a bike down the road threatening to kill her, and only came to no harm by the grace of a passing motorist. Don’t be fooled: the crime here is high.

Given this, I think we can conclude quite safely (har har) that the cameras efficacy is limited?

What I find the MOST disturbing here is that crime is not committed out of desperation or greed like back in SA, but out of boredom. Back home, my experiences of crime involved guys caught up in gangs because they didn’t really have a chance at an education or a decent job, controlled by ruthless crime bosses who make a packet of money by exploiting the rampant poverty. Many criminals here are just socially dysfunctional bored guys who could have jobs but are just not bothered. Who think harassing and attacking people is funny.

Now which is the more sick society?

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Dear Chris,

Martin Amis said no such thing, you have admitted that you stand corrected, now please make the correction!

There is far too much misinformation and manufactured “the west hates Islam” propoganda flying around, don’t let your words be hijacked in it’s name. Reach for your keyboard and correct the blog.

Please.

Otherwise an interesting topic. I was sorry to read of Sara’s experience. Skinheads? I’ve only seen them on 1980’s TV shows. As for being chased in the street with a knife, well this happened to me once in Berea but if anything like that happens here, it makes the national (country-wide) news.
I don’t want to get into a tit-for-tat “Oh life here in the UK is sooo crime-free” debate, mainly because it isn’t, but I have to say it is a world apart from living in Cape Town, where I was burgled, harassed by aggressive beggars, street-children beg at every street light, stabbings don’t even make the news, burglar bars on houses, just for starters! I grew up there and love the place, I still go back for holidays but every time it is scarier.
As a child I walked alone on Table Mountain, often after school. After the string of muggings (violent, nasty muggings, not just hand-over-your-wallet muggings) I no longer go there, when I am in CT.

I come home from London at ten ‘o clock at night. There are few street lights in my town and I pass rows of houses and people out for a stroll; walking the dog, maybe going to the shop, others coming home from work.

There are NO burglar bars anywhere, I have yet to see one on any house here. Burglars here run away if disturbed, or at the worst they will never shoot you or assault you. My 3-year old car is parked on the street every night like most other people’s and has never been damaged. Hijacking is unheard of. If anyone tried pulling that here, they would be caught and chucked in jail. And the criminals know it.

Essentially there is some crime, even violent crime here in the UK, but a heck of a lot less of it per head. Don’t take my word for it - do some research.

Personally I don’t mind CCTV cameras. There is a lot of debate here about it - many people are opposed to it in terms of invasion of privacy, but myself I’m all for it, when I am walking down the street I don’t care if I am videoed. They don’t make my skin crawl.

The criminals care because they are caught like this.

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Hey pilgrim, you wouldn’t believe how many of us on the white flight passport program are applying to join the english police forces. It has been long rumoured down south that they have the best camera action outside of Loslyf (or for that matter since scope removed the star system). What better job than being a camera operator (just think of all the action available by panning the camera and zooming in on apartment number 5 -the one where she sommer parades kaalgat, siesa!

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Dear O S S V O C,

Martin Amis did say those very words! I erred (as did Terry Eagleton - my initial source) only in attributing them to the essay “The Age Of Horrorism” and not to the interview with the Times.

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Ja ja, this is just the sort of juicy debate we like on these suedo liberal websites. Nice comment Chris, but next time remember to use the star system when quoting naughty words like o****c. After all, we wouldn’t want to upset the children or the tannies as we know how much of a hit this is with the huisgenoot and bebo brigades -besides the animal fidlers out there (we know who you are as we have the cameras now) might get too interested with all this dirty talk. Anyway, enough about Martin and back to the cameras (this intellectual stuff is all a bit hit and Amis anyway). I would have posted earlier, but thought you may interperet it as me having conversations with myself again.

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Dear Chris, you are right, I stand corrected. Apologies. I’m surprised he said that, but he did. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/nov/19/race.bookscomment) Although he has tried to distance himself from it since then.

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