- Sound familiar? It's almost exactly the same nonsense John Reid came out with a couple of weeks ago, just before the footage of British troops beating up some Iraqis emerged.
Only this time he goes even more mental - we should be "slow to condemn our troops" because they are "increasingly constrained not just by international law and conventions, the standards we want to keep, but by media scrutiny, by videophones, by mobile phones, by satellite dishes". Eh? Mobile phones, videophones and satellite dishes? You what, John?
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This argument makes no sense. We should be slow to condemn abuses committed by our armed forces, because due to video cameras and modern media we're more likely to find out about those abuses.
Should we also go easy on muggers, vandals and alcohol-fueled violence because of the spread of CCTV? Perhaps the fact that a new computer system makes it easier to catch people not paying their road tax means the sanctions should be less severe? And as victims of domestic violence are increasingly likely to come forward, let's give those poor wife-beaters a break, yeah?
This is an especially egregious case of what I call "vulgar globalism" by analogy to "vulgar Marxism" - we can't do this/need to do this "because of globalisation".
The idea is that it sounds briefly plausible if you're not thinking.
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