Moore’s Law is the observation that over the history of computing hardware the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of the Intel Corporation, first described in 1965. His prediction has proven to be accurate. Quality adjusted microprocessor prices, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras are improving at exponential rates. These improvements have dramatically enhanced the impact of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy. Moore’s Law describes a driving force of technological and social change, productivity and economic growth in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Modern technology therefore enables more and more to be achieved with less and less input by the individual.
On the surface this is great news. We have access to more and more information at our fingertips, at a touch of a button, a glance at a screen. Underneath the surface volcanic reactions have been building up. It is hardly surprising that one of the consequences of these rapid technological advances is the rising trend of underlying unemployment and frequent personal disenchantment with the lack of career opportunities which modern education seemed to have promised. Indeed in many quarters there is a disillusionment with life itself.
It is an icy night on Northampton’s Racecourse recreation ground but that has not stopped dozens of teenagers and younger children coming along to play the beautiful game. Few wear gloves, all run hard, chasing down every 50/50 ball, and celebrating every goal as if it were a winner at Wembley. But the Northampton Town coaches at this session are not expecting to unearth the next Wayne Rooney or David Beckham. Instead they are here with a mission to get kids doing something constructive as part of Northampton Borough Council’s Streets Football project.
Speak to any hooded youth on any street corner in Northampton and you hear one response: “There’s nothing to do around here.” Go elsewhere in the UK and, while accents differ, the sentiment is the same. “For many of these teenagers they are usually lacking things to do. We try to positively affect the younger ones. When we have a tournament, depending on the behaviour, we will choose the players who we feel have the right attitude and commitment.”
“The aim is to get those youngsters off the streets and give them something to do. The idea is that football is the vehicle to get these young people to work on their social skills. They don’t realise it but they are working as part of a team. It improves their self-esteem, showing respect for other players.” Rory Dobson, 17, from the Kingsley area of the town is one of those glad of a way of occupying his week nights. “It is something to do. There is nothing else really round here. Before there was this, I’d just be hanging around on the street, messing about, doing nothing.”
In Northampton, the Streets Football project is attempting to get hold of aimless young people before they are ‘lost’. There are no targets to reduce crime, but those behind the programme know that every minute a young person is at Streets Football, they are away from the temptations of anti-social behaviour and petty crime. (From a BBC website.)
What happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s? Disillusionment – despair – resentment, followed by the belief in a new ‘messiah’ in the form of Adolf Hitler. He gave the Germans a new belief in themselves. This belief reached such a pitch of adoration that all levels of degradation became acceptable. The Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War required enormous reparations to be paid by Germany. The moral humiliation and economic collapse arguably attributable to these requirements were fully exploited by Hitler and the Nazi Party whose influence steadily grew through the 1920s until it became an avalanche in the 1930s. Hitler was a clever demagogue. He openly encouraged the Germans to consign the Treaty of Versailles into the waste-paper basket after tearing it into so many bits.
Hitler’s message to the Germans emphasised the importance and value of abiding by Nazi ideology. Thereby the country would recapture its lost glory, power and prosperity. This proposition together with the ever growing disciplines imposed by the Nazi Party appealed to the majority of the population. Hitler’s style of rabble-rousing and agitation commanded great enthusiasm especially welcomed as the economy recovered, not least due to the enormous expenditure on arms and munitions.
Furthermore, the development of Nazism in Germany was greatly facilitated by the establishment of various paramilitary groups which encouraged teenagers and young adults to join. These groups may be regarded as similar to getting kids off the street in Northampton but with much more aggression and discipline. The consequences of these events, combined with the growing anti-Semitism propagated by the Nazi Party which found great value in using the Jews as the scapegoats for all of the country’s previous problems, may even be equated to Charles Darwin’s observation in ‘On the Origin of Species’ “The extinction of species and whole groups of species which has played so conspicuous a part in the history of the organic world almost inevitably follows on the principle of natural selection; for old forms will be supplanted by new and improved forms.” Fortunately Hitler failed to achieve this objective.
This brings me on to George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ which I have just finished listening to in an audio version in my car. Much of what Orwell wrote seems relevant but in particular I want to quote the following extract from the lengthy exchange between the outer party member, Winston Smith, and the inner party member, O’Brien. “The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things but over men. ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’ Winston thought ‘By making him suffer’, he said.
‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see then what kind of a world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.
‘Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilisations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent and between man and man and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends …
‘There will be no loyalty except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’”
Winston Smith and O’Brien were residents of Oceania, one of three sub-divisions of Orwell’s ‘1984’, the other two being Eurasia and East Asia. They were always at war with one another though each time Oceania changed its enemy, the new enemy had always been the enemy and the previous enemy had always been its ally. At least weekly rocket bombs dropped onto Oceania, mainly in the areas occupied by the ‘proles’ (we would know them as proletarians). They referred to these rocket bombs as ‘steamers’. They expected them, they expected houses to be destroyed and lives to be lost. It was part of everyday living or dying.
And now to the real point of this blog. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). More appropriately ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Most recently IS (Islamic State) since it is clear that the ambitions now extend well beyond the previous two limited and somewhat limited regions. In June 2014 ISIL, as it was then known, had at least 4,000 fighters in its ranks in Iraq. In August 2014 the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that the number of fighters in the group had increased to 50,000 in Syria and 30,000 in Iraq. The CIA estimated in September that ISIL numbered between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in all.
It was at the end of June this year when ISIL removed ‘Iraq and the Levant’ from its name and began to refer to itself as ‘The Islamic State’ declaring the territory under its control a new caliphate, describing it as ‘a dream that lives in the depth of every Muslim believer’. The group’s ruling council had decided to establish the caliphate formally and that Muslims around the world should now pledge their allegiance to the new caliph. More recently the new caliphate has gained support from Boko Haram in Nigeria.
ISIL is perceived as a Sunni extremist group though this description is sometimes disputed. It follows an extreme anti-Western interpretation of Islam, promotes religious violence and regards those who do not agree with its interpretations as infidels or apostates. ISIL’s aim is to establish a Salafist-oriented Islamist state in Iraq, Syria and other parts of the Levant. ISIL’s ideology originates in the branch of modern Islam that aims to return to the early days of Islam, rejecting later ‘innovations’ in the religion which it believes corrupt its original spirit. The use of violence to purify the community of unbelievers comes from the Wahhabi tradition.
ISIL’s philosophy is well represented by the symbolism of its black flag which first appeared as the flag of its former parent organisation, al-Qaeda. The flag shows the seal of the Prophet Muhammad within a white circle with the battle phrase above it “There is no God but Allah”. Clearly such symbolism points to ISIL’s belief that it represents no less than the restoration of the caliphate of early Islam with all its political and religious ramifications that this would necessarily imply. Salafists, such as ISIL, believe that only a legitimate authority can undertake the leadership of jihad and that the first priority over other areas of combat, such as fighting non-Muslim countries, is the purification of Islamic society. For example, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since ISIL regards the Palestinian Sunni group, Hamas, as apostates who have no legitimate authority to lead jihad, it regards fighting Hamas as the first step towards confrontation with Israel.
ISIL is known for its effective use of propaganda as typified by the creation of its symbolic flag and coat of arms. ISIL’s use of social media has been described by one expert as “probably more sophisticated than that of most US companies.” It regularly takes advantage of social media, particularly Twitter, to distribute its message by organising hashtag campaigns, encouraging Tweets and utilising software applications which enable ISIL propaganda to be distributed to its supporters’ accounts. More than one video has been produced showing the beheading of prisoners, including at least two US journalists. In one of these videos the executioner – thought to be British by birth and a convert to Islam – is heard saying “I am back, Obama, and I am back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings despite our serious warnings. So just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.”
Such warnings have been given in various forms to any country which is participating in the attempt to destroy ISIL through bombing its fighters on the ground. A demonstration of the impact resulted in the murder of Canadian individuals in the sleepy capital of Ottawa. It is no wonder that the level of terrorist concerns and alerts frequently stand at the highest point – red. And that there is frequently unspoken fear of some unexpected (and yet anticipated) terrorist atrocity.
In 1945 Winston Churchill described Europe as “a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground for pestilence and hate”. Of course this description followed on the ending of the Second World War and would not in general be relevant today. Except! The ghettos in Venice (established in the 16th century) and in various Polish cities (established by the Nazis in the Second World War) were parts of the city into which Jews were segregated for political or religious reasons. Ghettos exist today albeit not imposed by any government order. They exist because of ethnic and economic consequences and almost invariably imply some degree of deprivation and misery.
As referred to above about Northampton, you do not have to live in a ghetto to experience deprivation or misery or disillusionment or despair or resentment. Any one of a multitude of locations may be a breeding ground for some form of confrontational behaviour. Good places for the likes of ISIS/ISIL/IS to recruit converts. And there is no one like a convert to become a fanatic. Add this converted fanatic to the underlying fanaticism of the Islamic caliphate and you really create a problem. This is what the world is facing today.
The response is to drop the equivalent of Orwell’s “rocket bombs”. Practical politics are unlikely to enable Western governments to put troops on the ground to counter the increasing pressures from the caliphate. We have to rely on the fighting spirit of the likes of the Kurds who may well be out-numbered and certainly out-gunned. Nothing is going to turn back this Islamic tide (even though moderate, intelligent, thinking Moslems abhor and reject the caliphate) until the causes which are generating increasing support for this kind of modern revolution are tackled at the grass roots. Meanwhile, fear and uncertainty will grow. IS is turning into a crisis. It would be helpful for all of us to remind ourselves of the famous quote by Franklin Delano Roosevelt “we have nothing to fear except fear itself”. At the moment fear may be the main reaction. Increasing ad hoc terrorist activity will exacerbate fear into something much worse.