July 13, 2008
Jean-Claude Paye in Dictatorship as the Empire’s Mode of Governance?* in Telos (Summer 2007) says:
The state of emergency becomes a lasting form of government. It comes to be seen as a new political regime that is called upon to stand firm for democracy and human rights. In other words, citizens must be ready to give up immediate rights and a well-defined freedom for the sake of an abstract and self-proclaimed democratic order, not only today and tomorrow, but for an indefinite period. As it suspends aw and inscribes such suspension into a new legal order, war on terrorism gives legitimacy to a change in the political regime.
His conclusion is that emergency procedures are in the process of replacing the constitution as the ruling paradigm of politics.The emergency procedures refer to surveillance, mail interception, telephone taping, and electronic monitoring, whicb can now be implemented even in the absence of an infraction. the new anti-terrorism t laws are very much in conformity with more ancient jurisdictional tendencies. They do however vastly extend their scope. Indeed they aim not so much to restrict the fundamental liberties of certain segments of the population, but rather to encompass it as a whole.
They establish a permanent and generalized surveillance and control of individuals
|