Media Activist Jay Baker's blog

You know, I never believed the death of any human being should be celebrated. And I’m not saying the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher should be, either.

But nor should it be mourned.

We can only hope her draconian anti-society ideology now dies with her. As her Conservatives dominate a coalition after receiving a minority of votes in 2010 from an electorate that, in fact, overwhelmingly voted for progressive politics (as they usually do), the media obituaries may or may not include her appalling track record that I’ll address in a moment. Sure, too often Adolf Hitler is used as a comparison to any politician any of us dislike, but we did celebrate the ruthless dictator’s death, and few would have ever objected to such jubilation. So why the offence at applause to the news of Thatcher’s death?

You see, Thatcher the Milk Snatcher didn’t just remove free milk drinks from our schoolchildren. She sided with and befriended General Augusto Pinochet, the Chicago Boys’ own poster boy dictator of Chile after U.S.-backed forces successfully removed democratically-elected socialist leader Salvador Allende and, from September 11th of 1973, slaughtered three thousand people and tortured many more under Pinochet. And Thatcher loved him, and his regime. She wholeheartedly supported it. Maggie may have had dementia, but no Meryl Streep movie will make Chileans forget that.

At home though, Thatcher also launched an all-out and at times illegal attack on workers’ rights, and deregulated not only the media sector for the likes of Rupert Murdoch to come closer to monopolizing, but also the financial sector – embracing the Chicago Boys doctrine that let the bankers run amok, ultimately leading to the current economic crisis.

But perhaps worst of all, Maggie decimated communities through removing their local industries, and declared a Social Darwinist free-for-all where it was survival of the fittest, stating, “There’s no such thing as society” – dividing and compartmentalizing people. By focusing on individuals, differences began to overtake commonalities, and, as a result, increased prejudices. It was a society being divided and conquered. But hey, that’s what Right-wingers thrive on. It’s what they rely on; they’d never get elected otherwise.

Thatcher was merely representative of the Right-wingers she was supposedly leading in the Conservative Party, wielding her handbag and using her “Iron Lady” image to intimidate and at times seduce the populace that read Murdoch’s press that provided her with further propaganda. But racist, sexist, homophobic views have all predominantly been supported or perpetuated by the Right – they opposed suffrage, opposed gay rights, opposed the anti-war movement, and even opposed the fox-hunting ban. They protected the filthy rich time and again while launching assaults on the disadvantaged and chinking their champagne glasses together.

As the decades become centuries, time tells us again and again that they are to be damned by history as not only being “Conservatives” trying to “conserve” things but, beyond that, actually prevent progression. They should change their name to The Anti-Progression Party, perhaps with the slogan “We’re Behind You – And The Times.” These bastards have been wrong about almost everything ever, with the people blasting back against them to forcibly have them change, because they won’t do it without persuasion. Thatcher’s Milton Friedman economics are already now widely regarded as absolutely grotesque, and dangerous, let alone passé.

It’s an obvious equation. The Right = oppression and exploitation; anything to the Left is an improvement. Hell, even Stalin – the crackpot that he was – had a death count half that of Hitler’s. And who did the corporations support?

Thatcher was damaging to our society. She decimated communities and destroyed the lives of generations. She rolled back rights at home and endorsed death and torture abroad. Unfortunately Britain’s current Prime Minister embraces much of what she stood for, and is taking things even further.

The corporate mainstream media ensures we have short memories. So let her demise bring back to the collective consciousness all she did from the perspective of the people’s history – not just a Hollywood portrayal distributed by her old friend Rupert Murdoch. Instead, ask for the opinion of people in Swansea, or Newcastle, or Liverpool, or Sheffield. If Hollywood doesn’t give them a voice, my next film hopefully will.
Without alternative media not fueled by a simple profit motive, though, much of this is likely to be washed away in the sands of time by the waves of radio, television and print that presents us with cleansed obituaries.

When democratically-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was on his death bed – despite being an albeit controversial figure who fought against US oppression and attempted coups, to alleviate pain on millions of working class Venezuelan lives – millions more right-wingers in the UK and US tweeted their celebratory remarks in all their glorious sickness; it was all over Twitter, unashamedly posted for all to see:

Satan need a table for one near Hitler please. Venezuelan Ldr Hugo Chavez in a coma ‘only kept alive by life support’ after cancer surgery.

— flakes (@flakes) January 2, 2013

PLEASE DIE. PLEASE. Hugo Chavez ‘only kept alive by life support’ after cancer surgery bit.ly/WdSE6K via @mailonline

— James Czerwonky (@jamescistheman) January 2, 2013

Hugo Chavez on life support in Cuba. If the grim reaper is making the trip, could he pick up Castro and his brother too?

— ★Jeannie (@jeanniemcbride) January 3, 2013

HUGO CHAVEZ IS GOING TO DIE FUCK YES

— Robertico (@T_rawwbert) December 31, 2012

Soon to be dead Hugo Chavez plans on Nationalizing Satan’s Torture Chamber! Why should Satan get all the benefits & the condemned get none?

— Buck (@IH8Commies) January 2, 2013

Hugo Chavez might die and not a fuck will be given hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie… #tcot #p2

— Bill O’Keefe (@DefendWallSt) December 31, 2012

@lcd_klein well if they really love Chavez they should buy him a nice coffin, flowers and take care if the FUNERAL services without honors

— agsp1980 (@agsprobst) January 3, 2013

Mouthy marxist nutter Chavez – about to check out? #Hope4Venezuela

— Vendetta Associates (@mediumcool1) January 3, 2013

Hugo Chavez overturned the law on how long he could be Pres, now he’s critically ill…all those protesters needn’t have worried.

— Jon Alexander (@ninjamoose101) January 3, 2013

Chavez is dying – if America could only be so lucky….

— Thomas Catterall (@The_Tom_Cat) January 3, 2013

Hey Sean Penn please use ur influence and tell this scum of the earth dictator to just die dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2…

— Chuck Rosseel (@ChuckRosseel) January 3, 2013

SeanPenn & Glover unplugged Chavez life support to recharge iPads to tweet OweBama thanks for FiscalCliff exemption then forgot

— B@bette (@MuffinAndElliot) January 3, 2013

Speak on dictator (sorry, democratically elected – whatever) Hugo Chávez’s health and you’re a ‘rightwing journalist sickened with hatred’.

— Blue Note Factory (@Chuparos) January 3, 2013

Now though, Thatcher’s death is already being covered by the press with sensitivity, even tenderness. Beyond Hugo Chavez, if Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or Muammar Gaddafi had been reported on in the same way Thatcher is following death, there’d have been outrage. No, people were cheering and throwing parties when those guys were shot, or dumped in the sea, or dragged through the streets, or hanged on television.

Yet when more people in our streets choose to instead celebrate the death of a true homegrown tyrant who did nothing but harm to poorer people, the media condemns it. Reject the hypocrisy, think critically, and you find it’s all actually quite understandable, perhaps even patriotic. Yet the media will cleverly demonise demonstrators as “sick” for protesting a funeral. But looking at the actual reasons why, it becomes perfectly acceptable: they’re not picketing a funeral as perhaps Thatcher’s anti-gay followers might have following the demise of an AIDS victim – they’re angry because even now, Thatcher is empowered to steal money from poor people despite being dead…

Thatcher represented the 1980s rise of unabated capitalism and mass private ownership. The only insult to her, then, is to actually give her a state funeral. As has been argued for a while now, the entire ceremony should be privatized. If she’s the darling of the greedy corporate world, let them show their support, and fund it.

Britain’s greatest ever Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, never received a state funeral, despite helping to give us welfare and free universal health care, and save the country from total financial collapse thanks to his Keynesian economic policies.

Not only is Thatcher undeserving of a state funeral, she’s undeserving of any grief from a nation she so badly damaged, and which is still struggling to recover from her decisions to this day. Let her death be instead a time to remember what the Right are really all about, and why she shouldn’t be mourned. The wicked witch is dead. We lost another oppressive piece of wretched refuse; a cancer on our society, preying on the weak and vulnerable. The world just got a little lighter.

Not just here, but perhaps somewhere in Chile, cheers are being heard after the thousands of deaths there that Thatcher herself celebrated. Yes, karma is often like Thatcher herself.

In the words of Mark Twain, “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”

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Wow! Three weeks, two universities, one city: It’s been quite a tour de force for the feminist movement here in Sheffield! And if you know me, you’ll be aware of the fact I’m a feminist. We can get into Pop Psychology 101 and talk about how I was taught at home by my mother, but the fact remains the same: I’m simply for equal rights and responsibilities and will continue to campaign for these things…thus, I’m a feminist. It’s pretty simple, really.

The 1 Billion Rising movement has been phenomenal. Founded by no less than The Vagina Monologues writer Eve Ensler, it’s a campaign to raise awareness on violence and oppression against women worldwide, strategised in an empowering, rather than sympathetic way – its slogan is “Strike, Dance, Rise!” And indeed the dancing is a major part of it. (Even I busted a few moves)

I had the pleasure of attending one event – A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer – at Sheffield Hallam University on February 15th, featuring a collection of monologues spoken by various figures from the Sheffield arts and politics scene. It was both moving and funny, but most of all, it was powerful. It was also interesting to witness the screening of this video of Patrick Stewart in the pre-show:

I was impressed by this inclusion, as it was important to demonstrate how men can be affected and changed by their awareness of violence against women, experienced first-hand or otherwise.

It was also refreshing to take part in a 1 Billion Rising event, as many of them took place on Valentine’s Day – a clever co-opting of what’s usually little more than a Hallmark bonanza of annual token commercial gestures of “love.”

Then came March 8th, International Women’s Day, and a University of Sheffield screening of a Persepolis, an animated movie adapted from a graphic novel about a young woman growing up through the Iranian Revolution. Feminist MP Paul Blomfield gave a a nice introductory speech about the importance of the occasion.

What disturbed me, though, were the words of the otherwise excellent Student Union Women’s Officer Amy Masson, who found fault with the film, she said, because it featured the voice of Sean Penn. That’s right: the actor who’s spent so much time in his recent years supporting same-sex marriage, personally helping to rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina, travelling to countries like Venezuela and Cuba to support progressive causes, condemning the invasion of Iraq, and questioning British colonialism. But, here he was damned by the Women’s Officer because – way, way back in 1987 – he assaulted then-wife Madonna…with a baseball bat, no less, in one of his drunken rages. Admittedly horrific.

“I was an angry young man,” Sean’s since said. “I had a lot of demons and I don’t really know who could’ve lived with me at the time.” Madonna, meanwhile, reportedly still admires Penn, who last year attended one of her concerts. They consider each other good friends, and the violence seems to have been forgiven and put behind them as ancient history, included in context, with the actor maintaining good behaviour ever since, as he ought to.

But that doesn’t seem to be enough for some. While Amy Masson made a really good point about celebrity culture failing to condemn stars at the time – even rewarding them, as is evidenced by Chris Brown’s continued success after his high-profile beating of Rihanna -  I’d put a 1987 incident pretty low on my list, to be honest, and definitely way lower than the more recent actions of scumbag Mel Gibson, who’s pretty much sustained in Hollywood by feminist Jodie Foster (how’s about that then, eh?)

I’m guessing that every crew member of the film ought to have first been screened in case any one of them had ever committed any one indiscretion at any one time in their entire lives, and then been removed from the project because of it (by which rationale you might as well just support the death penalty or other forms of punishment as opposed to rehabilitation since this is based on viewing human life in the most cynical way possibly).

When I tweeted Masson about her remarks, myself comparing Sean Penn to another reformed domestic abuser, feminist singer John Lennon, she claimed he had hit Yoko Ono too, so couldn’t possibly be a feminist. And what was incredible was the additional trolling on Twitter I received from anonymous individuals mockingly sniggering “Oh, artists can’t do any wrong because they made a good song,” as the radical troops were rallied.

Speaking of which, I realise Amy is a radical feminist, as she states on her Twitter bio – which may mean both Patrick Stewart and myself are wasting our time because we have our sexual organs on the outside of our body so are inherently evil – but here’s an interesting blog post by another self-proclaimed radical feminist who says:

“When you think of John Lennon today, please remember the man who learned how to stop being violent to women in his life. Remember the man who chose to spend time with a woman who sparked his imagination more than three guys he’d spent the prior several years with and how this choice of his outraged so many men, who believe there is nothing more sacred than male bonding and that women “get in the way”. Remember the quote that begins this post, about how hurt they each were that so many people said such ignorant and insensitive things about their love for one another, and about Yoko Ono specifically. Remember the man who understood that Yoko Ono was not beneath him or above him–she was with him, as an equal: a partner in love and life. And please don’t forget that he was her love too. The love story isn’t just about what she gave to him.”

To suggest that men can never learn from their mistakes is to give up on them. Maybe that conveniently goes along with the extremist view that men are pure evil and can’t be feminists and so we have to utilise all-women shortlists to get the job done (by which token I assume we require shortlists for token gay people, token black people, token disabled people…none of which would tackle the root causes of socio-economic oppression in the first place). But no, I disagree that men can’t campaign for women’s rights, just as I disagree with the view that middle class intellectuals can’t fight for workers, or that white folks can’t oppose racism, or that straight people can’t support gay marriage.

Anyone can fight for anything if they believe in it enough. And past indiscretions don’t doom those people any more than they did for Vietnam veterans who had gunned down Vietnamese citizens and torched villages full of children, only to go on to oppose the American campaign there, tossing away their medals and marching with peace campaigners.

Over the years, I have been close to women who had been subjected to both assault and rape, but while I’ve never hit a woman, I myself have been subjected to assault from women in the past – yet even though I deserved it no more than any women who’ve been subjected to violence by men, I don’t think they’re sexist because of that. People make mistakes, and people can change. Or do we just hold onto memories of what people once were?

Look at that photograph of Charlton Heston. You remember: the right-wing NRA guy who tastelessly visited towns that had experienced mass shootings, to further promote gun ownership. But here, further back before his years as a gun nut, you can see him marching for civil rights. Conveniently, we don’t remember him for that much, though. Should we? Or should we accept what he later became? Because I happen to think he changed his mind, and made up his mind. And, yes, he died a bit of a racist douchebag.

It’s important to remember what people are, and to hold faith in what people can become. As a young man myself, though admittedly a feminist, I had all sorts of stupid ignorant views and acted in all kinds of idiotic ways that I’m far from proud of. But while raised and educated by a woman, I’ve also seen many men in my life change for the better, and to have never afforded them that chance would have been utterly tragic, I can tell you: society would’ve been the loser.

Funnily enough, while I participated in International Women’s Day – and will continue to do so until women are truly liberated from oppression – I didn’t take part in Mother’s Day. Whether to you it is religious or commercial or simply peer pressure, I can’t bring myself to allow my subjective, personal relationship with my own mother – or father – to become reduced to token gestures once a year; these relationships are ours to remember and celebrate and grieve at times convenient to us as individuals. Every day ought to be Mother’s Day. Sadly, mothers will never enjoy such a true reality as that without such things as International Women’s Day. Free the woman, and you free the mother!

Penis:

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Sheffield’s own Hallam University student Richard O’Dwyer this year faced extradition to the United States where he could have faced up to five years in prison for copyright infringement. His crime? He dared to use his entrepreneurial spirit to create the TVShack.net website, which allowed people to search for and share links to television shows and films available, in full, across the web. Quite a clever idea, I’m sure we all agree, since he was simply providing a resource for people to access the pirate sites, not pirating anything himself, nor hosting torrents for these to be downloaded. But this kind of entrepreneurship is frowned upon because O’Dwyer was a Sheffield lad exploiting a chink in the armour of the entertainment industry, and not the entertainment industry itself.

British Home Secretary Theresa May actually approved the U.S. request for extradition, after rejecting a similar request over Gary McKinnon, a London man with Asperger’s syndrome and depression who hacked into U.S. military systems ten years ago to try and find information on UFO’s.

I guess there isn’t much corporate sponsorship from the U.S. military for British politicians, eh? Because if you run a television show, film and video game company like Dreamworks – as David Geffen does – you might want to spend some time with a high-ranking New Labour bigwig like Lord Peter Mandelson at the Rothschild villa in Corfu, Greece, just before the introduction of the Digital Economy Act, one of the last gasp works of the New Labour project, in 2010, before it was killed off by the general election aftermath. The Digital Britain report had recommended that copyright infringements online should not result in such drastic measures as internet disconnection. But after a chat with Universal Music Group chief Lucian Grainge and his little vacation in Corfu, Lord Mandelson decided to suddenly take a firm stance in rejecting the recommendations of the Digital Britain report and call for harsh technical measures as proposed punishments, though adopting this position two months before public consultation had even been completed. As my partner Jane Watkinson recently pointed out to me, it’s something the Tories have done since: hold a consultation, listen, and then do what you wanted to do, anyway. Lord Mandelson might as well have holidayed in Llamedos. Never heard of it? Read it backwards.

So, as Britain suffers an economic depression partially thanks to cuts following a £1.5 trillion bail-out of the banking companies, and people lose jobs, seek what’s left of welfare benefits, and stay home finding cheap or free entertainment, they meanwhile face severe consequences of downloading programming, movies and music. Well now of course this media activist would never dream of doing it myself, but if I were ever to download music or movies, it might be because the expansive collection I’d accumulated over the years was never returned to me from my time in Canada, so if there’s ever a complaint from authorities, I’ll be sure to forward it over there…’kay?

Beyond people replacing or replenishing their stockpile of entertainment, folk rock legend Neil Young calls torrents “the new radio.” “I look at the radio as gone,” he said. “Piracy is the new radio. That’s how music gets around.” His point that the weakness of audio file-sharing online means lower qualities than what vinyl offered “in 1978” also supports the argument for artists to become true performers, making their money from the ability to sing and play well live while gigging prolifically. Radical concept, eh? This could mean that acts have to hold a more personal relationship with their audience while proving they’re as good as their tracks suggest they are, possibly cutting out middle-men via merchandise sales at shows…a dangerous concept to major entertainment companies like Dreamworks and Universal who want so much control of the contrived crap that fills most of the airtime.

Then there’s News Corporation, the second-largest media organisation and third-largest entertainment group on the planet that in 2010 contributed £1 million to the Republican effort in the States while supporting the Conservatives here in Britain. It is, of course, controlled by Rupert Murdoch – the tycoon who backed Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair and George W. Bush, and largely ensures all of his “news” ventures perpetuate his political perspective, whether they be Fox News, Sky News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Sun, The Times, or The Australian.

A thorn in the side of Rupert Murdoch, Tom Watson MP spoke here in Sheffield this week as News Corporation have been submerged by an avalanche of allegations of hacking attempts – into accessing Gordon Brown’s private legal files, medical records, and bank account, as well as the into phones of NewsCorp media rivals, in addition to celebrities, soldiers’ families, even victims of crime and the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorism attacks, all for the benefit of their “news” outlets. Sickening as this is, the subsequent investigations and even the recommendations from the Leveson Inquiry often lack the same momentum of pursuit as those targeting lowly hackers in basements, file-sharers, or drunken kids on Facebook.

Yes, in the wake of the 2011 summer riots in Britain, 20 year-old Jordan Blackshaw and 22 year-old Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan created Facebook events organising “riots” of their own as, essentially, nothing more than a practical joke. Now, nobody turned up, and the pages were deleted with apologies. Yet the judge, Elgan Edwards QC, called this harmless and hilarious epic social media fail an “evil act,” adding, “Your conduct was quite disgraceful and the message you posted on Facebook chills the blood.” The obnoxious old fart then claimed that the only reason no one showed up to start a riot was entirely due to “the prompt and efficient actions of police,” – not, in fact, that people just aren’t inclined to start smashing shit up because of a Facebook status posted in a drunken stupor. The two lads were jailed for four years. Yes: four years. For creating and deleting a Facebook page that caused no harm to anybody.

I don’t know about you, but the judge’s words chill my blood, and his absolutely irrational, irresponsible claims seem provocative enough to instigate real riots. It’s a wonder hundreds of us aren’t going and creating all kinds of Facebook events to incite riots. Would they arrest us all? I guess the pages Facebook refuse to ban – such as those calling for violence against women – are just fine. This kind of attitude and wanton desire to destroy the lives of two otherwise harmless young people while revering the police is everything that’s wrong with Britain. To subject these lads to such misleading, melodramatic vitriolic scorn is absolutely vile, and the fact they’ve been sent down is an injustice and an affront to the very values and laws Elgan Edwards is supposed to stand up for. He should be ashamed, he should be sacked, and – if there was any actual justice – he’d be the one in the nick, preferably with all the blokes he sentenced over the years. Attacking and punishing innocent people who committed no crime is a crime itself – so by that rationale, this judge should be locked up.

The riots of 2011 saw many people take leave of their senses. Jane Watkinson and I, even amongst the Left, seemed like lone voices amongst the reactionary rants of so many people who bought into the demonisation of youth that Murdoch’s media, and most other media, took part in. The fall-out from Thatcherism’s Big Bang and subsequent rampant materialist individualism as a Tory government abolished the Future Jobs Fund and Education Maintenance Allowance, the riots were merely sparked by the latest in a long line of Met Police injustices, the social conditions ideal kindling for the raging rioting of the summer heat. When the bankers cost our country £1.5 trillion, no one is held to account; when young people damage private property, and steal sneakers and big screen television sets and the latest “must-have” gadgets, they’re punished even more than they already were by the terror of government policy.

This is today’s right-wing Britain – where costing your country money or stealing secrets is just fine, so long as you’re rich and powerful.

I wonder if I’ll get four years for posting this?

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Here in South Yorkshire, the election to choose a Police and Crime Commissioner is very poignant.

Sure, the job title may sound as though they’re commissioning crime as well as police. And sure, such a commish may never have been asked for by the majority of us – Police Commissioners are something the Americans have in Batman and stuff, right? (Maybe that’s why they felt they couldn’t just call it “Police Commissioner”) But the election is here, and it is important.

In my lifetime alone, South Yorkshire has suffered from terrible corruption in its police force.

When Margaret Thatcher declared war on coal miners for daring to be unionised, pickets truly did become a warzone – such as The Battle of Orgreave in 1984. While the media was busy portraying the miners as thugs, rather than working men defending their jobs and each other when the police, in accordance with Thatcher’s plan, attacked them. And it wasn’t just a lethal injection of London’s notorious Met police that administered the brutality; that excuse in these communities has long since faded: the South Yorkshire police officers allegedly manipulated evidence – they too were working for Thatcher it seems, even if it meant breaking the laws they were supposed to uphold.

Then, five years later, we had the Hillsborough disaster here in Sheffield. 96 Liverpool soccer fans died due to a lack of crowd control at the FA Cup semi-final game between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at the Hillsborough stadium. Again as the media did their job demonising the working class, South Yorkshire police were busy altering statements in the aftermath of the incident.

So when the ConDem government decide that our country’s subregions are going to have elected police commissioners Police and Crime Commissioners, a chill might run along your spine. If they’re this bad now, how bad will they be with a right ol’ bastard in charge of them?

This is, of course, not to say that all the police are bad, or that the force itself is rotten. There are many, many South Yorkshire police officers who have been excellent at protecting innocent people, helping our communities, and communicating with citizens. But the goodness needs nurturing, especially in the wake of such corruption charges. They need a leader who is going to set an example; someone on the right side of all this history.

There’s no doubt the Labour Party have done well the last couple of years, taking on Rupert Murdoch, calling for investigations into Hillsborough, and Orgreave. And though they didn’t call for a commissioner of this kind, they’ve stood candidates. Why? Well, would you want the Tories or some other right-wings fruitloops running your police force? No, didn’t think so.

So here’s the deal: in South Yorkshire, people who don’t vote, don’t get to complain about what their police are like any more. You’ve got essentially two choices, whether you were for the elected position or not: vote Labour, or let the ConDems, Ukip, or English Democrats take charge.

If they did take charge, imagine the police at Orgreave or Hillsborough…on steroids.

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Tonight’s the night.

Barack Obama’s again the target of those who either don’t think he’s right-wing enough, or don’t think he’s left-wing enough – all the while the Republicans block and scupper his attempts at progressive policies, and the radicals remain obstinately ignorant to context and claim he has complete power to act in a radical way even with a CIA, military industrial complex, corporate lobbying, and lame Democrats surrounding him constantly.

This last group are, of course, the ones who claim to be “principled”; the self-righteous who tell other Americans not to vote for Obama and instead vote for independents, even if it costs him the election and psycho Mitt Romney and his Republicans seize power and make Obama Capitalism look like a socialist state by comparison. These are the ones prepared to quite comfortably and uncompromisingly see women, ethnic minorities, and the poor suffer even more – for their precious little “principles.” They’re the ones threatening to happily hand the election to money Romney.

Sorry, folks, but I’m rooting for Obama. It’s a choice between him and Romney, straight and simple, and with that choice, who with a clear conscience can wish worse on other people? I’ll be watching the results tonight with my partner, Jane Watkinson, and tweeting away as we do.

For those who haven’t yet bought my collection of blog posts, Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, or read the posts the first time around on my old website, fear not! Not only am I releasing a brand-new collection of entries, and more, in the coming weeks, but I’m offering a few postings here for today’s election in the United States. Enjoy…

“Does it Matter Who’s President?” (from MediaActivist.com; April 22nd, 2008)

So Pennsylvania today has a key deciding factor in the Democratic Party’s choice of a leader in the hopes of breaking the eight-year Republican hold on the White House.

There are two reasons this race is so important.

Firstly, in spite of millions of Democratic votes that will go uncounted in 2008 (just as they had in 2000, and on a larger scale in 2004), the Republicans, as I’ve said before, are doomed; they never had any realistic candidates, and now the fully face-lifted John McCain is not only seeing through his nostrils these days, he’s also already been discredited mere hours after becoming his party’s leader.

Secondly, whether we like to admit it or not, the fact is that the decisions made in the United States will affect the whole world in some way. They refer to themselves as the “world’s policeman,” but it’s much more than that. Britain’s economy has been affected by America’s even more than next-door neighbors, Canada. How messed up is that? But it’s something we have to accept. They’re the big shots.

Once again, the whole world is watching, but this time the Republican elephant is old and tired and ready to be put out of its misery, while the Democratic donkey never had a chance like this before, because when people joke about one-sided elections by saying “a donkey could run, and still win,” this time it’s true!Except neither candidate is a donkey; this is the best crop of candidates in decades. Though I realize that’s not saying much.

Morrissey once sang that in America, “the President is never black, female, or gay,” but two out of three ain’t bad, because with the election now the Democrats’ for the taking, they have guaranteed us that the brand-new President of the United States will, in fact, be either black or female (let’s hope Pee-Wee Herman runs next time!)

Barack Obama hasn’t quite taken my previous suggestions that he cut interviews like wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but he has, nonetheless, been impressive and charismatic. Sure, there are links to Antoin Rezko and the mob in Chicago. Sure, contrary to popular belief, his campaign has had an abundance of support from the corporations he’ll thus become indebted to. And sure, he’s still a capitalist. But just like the man himself says, this is about a different kind of politics, a kind of diplomatic politics, one that has no place for trigger-happy Texans or emphasis on religious faith.

Unfortunately, his opponent seems to have a short memory from her days inspiring the book and film Primary Colors, when the Clintons were agonizingly choosing to take the moral high ground against a mud-slinging Republican Party. She’s been pretty low throughout the campaign, using tactics you’d expect more from John McCain, who’s now lying low himself. It’s all about the Democrats, baby. Even when some of them are acting like Republicans.

Hillary Clinton gave up her fight to provide Americans with good health care, which she’s now hoping to make up for. But she also supported the attack on Iraq, and whilst, yes, it’s an international issue, and it sure is sexy, it’s still a pretty important factor, one that has an enormous effect on the world, and also gives us an idea of what kind of people certain politicians are.

But hoping for a Barack Obama win isn’t just about Iraq. Do you realize that the alternative option will plunge America into a monarchy? The Presidential list of over twenty years would be: Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. That’s right: George HW Bush Sr (1988-1992), Bill Clinton (1992-2000), George W Bush Jr (2000-2008), and Hillary Clinton (2008-2012). Is that what America really wants? Because in that case, let’s just repeal its independence and put it under the rule of the Queen.

Barack Hussein Obama is a symbol that all is not lost in the United States of America. Choosing him would be proving that it doesn’t matter if you have dark skin or even have a name that sounds similar to America’s greatest two manufactured enemies from the last twenty years, and it’d also suggest that they’re not just going to shoot and ask questions later. What America needs now is a statesman, who will act rational – whether you agree with him or disagree with him. “Barack says he’s going to lay the smack down on some roody-poo candy-asses…but only after debating and deliberating first, because war sucks, jabronies.” Wouldn’t that be nice to hear for a change? The cycle can be broken.

The last time I was in the United States, in 2001, I took my feet from the ground of Pennsylvania onto a plane across the Atlantic, and never looked back, as the Twin Towers collapsed behind me and with them any sense of rationality, reason, or restraint. That was the last place I set foot. If they make the right choice today, it may well be the first place in the United States I want to set foot next.

“Four Million Americans Over The Top” (from MediaActivist.com; November 2nd, 2008)

“Here we go again,” you’re probably saying. “Another American election; the more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s no surprise so many people are cynical. But people are also hopeful- it’s just that they’ve had their hopes dashed so many times they don’t like to build them up too much anymore.

Well, this election really does matter, more than any other in American history. Here, I’ll explain why. But first, we have to go back to the beginning, to the demise of the left, and to a place at the other side of the Atlantic…

In 1990s Britain, Bill Clinton was seen as an inspiration by Tony Blair, and there’s a reason for that: the party of the progressive movement couldn’t get elected in the system ruled by money, until the leader used his charm and smarm to trick the left into supporting him while selling-out his party to the same business interests his opponents courted – the Rupert Murdochs of the world that influenced the information people received, as well as the economy. The cynical sell-out strategy worked in the United States, and it worked in the United Kingdom, too.

Bill Clinton said he smoked marijuana but “didn’t inhale,” still getting into power with the backing of the corporations, the media and its moguls, pushing some progressive policies but also rewarding private interests by throwing ten million people off welfare, bombing Sudanese aspirin factories, and supporting sanctions that led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, his Democratic colleague Madeleine Albright explaining that “we think the price is worth it.” The seeds had been sown in the Middle East; forget the CIA-funded Ba’ath Party led by Saddam Hussein – it was the CIA training given to the Taliban’s Osama bin Laden that was really being used now to plot against America through Al Qaeda. We knew who really had the Weapons of Mass Destruction – those we sold them to!

Al Gore was set to take Clinton’s place, which the Democrats welcomed, since, despite economic growth, he experienced growth of another kind during his sex scandal with intern Monica Lewinski – over $6,000,000 of taxpayers’ money being spent on investigating the affair. However, we all know the next part of the story: Florida’s Secretary of State in charge of elections, Katherine Harris, paid $10,000,000 to Database Technologies to remove specific kinds of people from voter rolls, who just happened to be Democrat voters, while she just happened to be co-chairperson for the Republican campaign as well! Technically, the Republicans had fewer votes and lost the election, but the scam worked, and with a media portraying Gore as a sore loser, he stopped protesting to save his party’s public image, and the rest is history. Cocaine-user George W Bush Jr was the first man to be sworn-in amongst riots, not allowed to walk the last block to the white house, in a break from tradition. Heck, the whole thing was a break from tradition – back when I was a lad, it used to be that the candidate that got the most votes became President. Not anymore! I feel so old-fashioned now, believing in that “democracy” stuff.

Then came September 11th, 2001 – the day the Middle East struck back at Western aggression with mostly Saudi Arabians hijacking planes and flying them into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in suicide attacks. $3,000,000 was spent investigating the 9/11 atrocities, half the amount spent on the Lewinski affair, leaving all kinds of discrepancies unexplained, and suggesting that the deaths of three thousand people was less important than a stain on a dress. The important thing was that Bush’s lack of popularity was turned around when he suddenly became a “war president,” saying “I go to work with war on my mind,” meaning, conveniently, that he didn’t have time to pay much mind to social programs – slashing them because his big government needed the funds to build up arms to attack terrorists…wherever they may be.

Bush used the Al Qaeda terrorist attack on 9/11 and the nation’s grief and fear to justify passing the Patriot Act – legislation that eroded civil liberties and meant he could control and keep tabs on his own population to check for dissidents. He then ignored international law and, based on inconsistent intelligence, sent poor kids into harm’s way in, of all places, Iraq – having them shoot anything that moved, blowing everything to smithereens, and seizing the oil fields, before “liberating” anyone. The “War President” gave Vice-President Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton, a big fat uncontested contract to “rebuild” Iraq – in the midst of 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and rising insurgency movements opposed to their country being occupied. But the paranoia, combined with millions more votes lost (not just in Florida, but also Ohio and New Mexico), put Bush Jr back into the White House for a second term, shocking the world, with most peoples citing not terrorists but the United States government itself as the greatest threat to peace on earth. The international community’s hatred towards America only grew.

Bush continued with making loose and outlandish connections between Al Qaeda and oil-rich Iraq, in spite of the fact that “Islamic” extremist Osama bin Laden and secular dictator Saddam Hussein hated each other’s guts. Presumably the fact that both Al Qaeda and Iraq had the letter Q in their names was enough for Bush’s so-called intelligence. The Bush-Blair “Downing Street Minutes” showed that the U.S. and U.K. had almost everything they needed to conquer Iraq: aircraft, tanks, bombs, guns – the only thing missing was an actual legitimate reason. So they did what most war criminals would do, and made up a story about Weapons of Mass Destruction being left lying around there for terrorists to pick up and play with, like kids left with matches.

After entering office with a substantial treasury surplus left by Clinton, War President Bush put the country trillions of dollars into debt, exacerbating extremism and terrorism worldwide – with everyone and their cleric arming themselves to the teeth! Meanwhile, the American people were more over-worked and underpaid than they’d ever been, getting poorer and lacking in welfare and health care, kept afloat by a short-term, unsustainable credit card system. America had caught a cold, and the world was hoping it wouldn’t sneeze.

Eventually, though, the American people were starting to spot the incredible illusion of coincidence – the illegal invasion of Iraq, the lack of WMDs there, the oil money, troops dying in huge numbers, people in poverty…and New Orleans, a city full of African-Americans, left to rot with the government ignoring the threat of Hurricane Katrina and the armed forces too busy in the Middle East to fully attend to the clean-up – another city destroyed, another big contract for corporations to “rebuild” and essentially cleanse the place of “undesirables” (what Naomi Klein called Disaster Capitalism). While the media provided us with some disturbingly racist portrayals of “black looters” in New Orleans, the real looting of the devastated Iraq was carried out not by the Iraqi people themselves, but Western corporations. However, even they were realizing that it wasn’t going to be easy to set-up shop in Iraq. The popularity of the War President waned when what he’d called a “mission accomplished” became, in essence, another Vietnam, a war of attrition with young troops fighting for years, put to battle against angry Iraqis wanting their country back.

While New Orleans drowned, Bush’s approval ratings sank to record levels, eventually hitting 23%, surpassing even those of Richard Nixon at the time of his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal (26%), and making him the second most unpopular president in American history, just ahead of Harry Truman’s 1952 rating (22%). The American people had finally had enough, along with the rest of the world. America’s economic collapse – predicted by Noam Chomsky and echoed in my article ‘A Waterfall into the Mainstream’ – finally began; it sneezed, and the rest of the world caught that darned cold.

On February 12th, 2007, I wrote that the tide was turning, that things were about to change for the better. I claimed that without Chuck Hagel leading the Republicans, they really didn’t have any chance of legitimately winning the next election. I also suggested that Barack Obama might be a good choice to become Democratic leader, citing his ability to resemble wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, joking that he might ask “Do you smell what Barack is cookin’?” Maybe someone saw my blog and told him – because, lo and behold, what does he do? He goes on top professional wrestling show Monday Night Raw itself to parody The Rock and actually asks “Do you smell what Barack is cookin’?” Sometimes the accuracy of my predictions scares even me. I’ll have to be more careful in future!

On April 22nd, 2008, I blogged about the Democrats needing to choose Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton not just because of his different approach, but because he represents a change in Washington – not the rhetoric he speaks, but real change from a potential Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton twenty year monarchy of the elite. The Democrats chose him, the most progressive of all the candidates. For the first time in a long time, there was a chance for real change in American politics.

As it happened, Barack Obama – who had massive grassroots support and garnered a staggering estimate of 88% of his campaign funds from ordinary people giving small donations – gave his Democratic leadership acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of another famous speech; the one by Martin Luther King when he told the world of his “dream.”

So many struggles had taken place over the last century, and this was to be another. The civil rights movement gained rights for African-Americans. The suffragettes died to gain women the right to vote. The allies fought fascism in the Second World War, defeating the Nazis who had risen in poverty-stricken Germany after the country was brought to its knees by the First World War. It was in that war that so much human life was sacrificed in record numbers. The soldiers dreaded the moment they were told to go “over the top” – to leave the trenches and head onto the fields, often doomed to be mowed-down by heavy artillery.

The facts suggest as many as four and a half million Democratic votes will be lost in this election. As Greg Palast told buzzflash.com, “four and a half million votes are going to be shoplifted.” Palast, the investigative journalist who via the BBC exposed the Florida scam in 2000, and the voter fraud in 2004, went on to explain that “that doesn’t mean that they will own the White House, it just means that they start with a big old thumb on the electoral scale.” That gives John McCain a head-start of at least four million votes already. I’ve always said that there can be no Ralph Nader excuses – Jesse Ventura is right; America needs more than just two capitalist choices. Two choices is not a true democracy. But there can be no excuses about lost votes, either. The American people have to give Barack Obama so much of an overwhelming majority that those four million votes don’t even matter, so that four million people go “over the top” first, are sacrificed, and then the other brave troops of democracy stand up and be counted, achieving victory for the Democrats.

Then there are hoax stories of extremists from the Barack Obama camp, and talk of a possible “Bradley-Wilder Effect,” where the polls are showing people are voting for the black man, but will do the opposite when in the privacy of the voting booth. I’m not sure about that – while Britain is full of racist media right now and “there ain’t no black in the Union Jack,” I think Americans are ready to have black represent their flag, and put a black man in the White House.

But ultimately, as Shami Chakrabarti said in the closing scenes of my film Escape from Doncatraz, “people aren’t any less political than they’ve ever been, they’re just less party political.” In some cases giving him a ten-point lead, it’s not just the polls that show Barack Obama with a lead over John McCain, it’s the streets – where, for example, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a friend of mine walked around this traditionally Republican territory and saw nothing but Barack Obama yard signs. There are some stating “Republicans for Obama.” Even Republican Colin Powell recently endorsed Barack Obama. Colin freakin’ Powell! This is incredible. How did this happen?!

For starters, John McCain insulted the people, his own people, when – in the absence of Hillary Clinton from the election race – he cynically “chose a vagina” (to quote suicidegirls.com) as his running mate in hopes he’d garner some female voters. Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a supposed “soccer mom” who had charged the state for her kids’ travel expenses, claimed she had foreign policy experience “because Alaska shares its borders with Russia and Canada,” became a complete liability, and had even less major political experience than Barack Obama – who himself chose as his running mate one Joe Biden, one of the least wealthy men in Washington, a man who commutes to work every day.

The Republican voters – even those in the south – have switched sides, fearing “more of the same” from the GOP (even while Bush is essentially kept off TV to distance the campaign from his legacy), fearing 72 year-old John McCain’s demise during office, and thus fearing Sarah Palin left in charge of the country. Yep, in Fort Wayne and cities like it all over the United States, people are switching sides.

This is the ultimate slap in the face of the corrupt capitalist mob in the GOP who claimed there was a link between Iraq and Osama, who lied to them for so long, who took their hard-earned money and spent it on war, who drove the country into a financial crisis. These ordinary people slapped those bastards in the face by instead supporting a candidate who opposed the invasion and massive military spending from the start, who wants to open diplomatic dialogue with the Middle East, supports a social safety net and universal health care and investment in education, a man who not only smoked pot but inhaled as well, in addition to sucking up cocaine in school too…and, yes, a man whose name rhymes with “Iraq” and “Osama” and has Hussein as his middle name! Ha, ha! This is a message from the American people that they’ve had enough of living in fear and paranoia and propaganda, and of being broke. They’ve had enough of the status quo and the predicament they’ve been put in.

Republicans are crying about the Democrats’ campaign funds being spent on TV commercials when they “could be used to fix the economy.” What? The campaign funds are for, um, campaigning, duh; so when he is President, he can fix the economy. What a stupid, imbecilic and idiotic thing to say (though to be fair it did come from Arnold Schwarzenegger). So, when that argument fails – despite the fact that the Republicans control leading network Fox News – they complain about “media bias.” Well, the fact is that John McCain’s been flying by military jet, while Barack Obama’s invited the press on his planes with him. Besides, the media haven’t been able to control this machine – and everyone knows they like to back a winner. Nope, not even those stupid voting machines could stop the real machine.

There’s still a lot of right-wing media in America, though; almost all of it, and the attacks on Barack Obama have been significant, even at risk of turn-off from American viewers sick of cynicism. They call him a “socialist,” as though the existence of their libraries, schools, fire service and police force is not through socialist policy, when in fact it is; those are socialist principles. Obama’s said he’s a capitalist, a “free marketeer,” and it’s true; he’s about as much of a socialist as John F Kennedy, a man who also faced such accusations when in fact he was a major capitalist himself. However, Barack Obama speaks of Franklin D Roosevelt’s “New Deal” policies with admiration, and like JFK knows that all the clever capitalists in the last century have only prevented total socialist revolution by “tweaking the valve” – giving the people just enough to keep them from revolting. That’s not such a bad thing, considering that in the United States you only have two capitalist choices, anyway.

Barack Obama and the Democrats answer to different groups than the Republicans. If, like JFK, he is assassinated, Barack Obama will be martyred and the LA riots of 1992 would look like a mere playground fight, so he’s untouchable. If, however, he sells-out and betrays the grassroots groups that put him in power, he won’t be in power for long. He has to deliver, and he will – just don’t expect anything socialist, as the right-wingers are screaming. The capitalists in congress and the media would unanimously assault him, then, for sure.

We already know who the majority of people will be voting for: the Democrats – just like in the last two elections! My predictions may have a good track record, dear readers, but I don’t know what the result of this election will be; none of us do. But the change has already begun, regardless of the outcome. If Democratic voters send more than four million of themselves “over the top,” then Barack Obama will certainly be the next leader of the most powerful, most influential nation on the planet. But even if that doesn’t happen, and the GOP steal yet another election, that nation has already embraced change. The system may be broken, but the power is coming back to the people.

Leave the lights on. As Leonard Cohen once sang, “democracy is coming to the USA.”

“Angel of the Public Interest” (from MediaActivist.com; February 26th, 2009)

“The night after I was sworn in, I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come. Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell, an avid deregulation advocate and son of Colin Powell.

Does media matter? That’s what I’m asked a lot.

Well, ask yourself how many of your opinions have been formed by something you heard, something you saw; a television show, a magazine, a song, a movie, a newspaper, or even a conversation – which, in turn, was likely largely based on opinions formed from…media! Sorry, but there’s really no way around it, honey. Media controls the world. That’s just how it is. The more we’re informed, the more our opinions are formed.

But who controls the media? I guess that’s pretty important, then, eh? Well, unfortunately, it’s being left to rich, greedy, white, right-wing men in suits who – funnily enough – have the tendency to tell twisted tales to the people consuming their media, so that they keep hating each other and voting the right-wing political parties into power. That’s pretty much how the whole thing works, right there.

In Britain, after boom-and-bust Conservative strategies left the incoming Labour government in economic turmoil – subjected to the (first) Winter of Discontent – Margaret Thatcher led the Tories back to power in 1979 with help from not just the clever, cynical, fake and now-infamous “Labour Isn’t Working” billboard poster designed by advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, but also Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper The Sun encouraging the population to vote for the Tories, like an evil nanny feeding a starving child arsenic and telling them “It’s good for you,” and it being trustingly gulped back.

No doubt many working class people – feeling that Labour had already significantly compromised their socialist approach moulded three decades earlier by the great Clement Attlee – felt less enthusiastic about voting for Labour again. That’s to be expected. But it was predominantly the less industrial, more middle class, more suburban south of England that provided the push needed to solidify the support necessary to put in – and keep in – a Conservative government, all the way to 1997.

The Tories didn’t simply fall from favour in 1997. No, it’s no coincidence that Rupert Murdoch had become impressed by Tony Blair’s “Third Way” route for New Labour that promised to continue the media deregulation started by Thatcherism – so much so that he had his News Corporation, and indeed The Sun, support them…resulting, of course, in their rise to power. And also resulting in deregulation and near-monopolisation of the media for Mr Murdoch.

Sure enough, Blair’s Britain continued along that path, as did Bush’s United States. In 2003, Murdoch claimed Bush “will either go down in history as a very great president or he’ll crash and burn…I’m optimistic it will be the former.” He put his Fox News Network to work on making his hopes a reality, almost always portraying Bush in a good light, discrediting his critics, and – most crucially – omitting certain facts about him and his party, only increasing the role of the channel as being, in actuality, Faux News, while Murdoch bought MySpace two years later, and continued his quest for his right-wing domination of the media world, and the people of the planet showed the propaganda wasn’t completely succeeding as millions marched in streets across the globe in opposition to the U.K.-U.S. led illegal invasion of Iraq.

The Bush administration, of course, didn’t let these deeds go without reward. In the spring of that same year, Colin Powell’s son, Michael Powell, in his role as chief of the Federal Communications Commission, set about dismissing thirty year-old rules while further loosening restrictions on just how much media could be controlled by a single company like News Corp. These changes threatened to allow a single network to buy stations that, combined, reached as much as a staggering 45% of the American people.

Think about that for a moment: one ideology, one message, one slant – bombarding as many as almost a half of all Americans. Murdoch could control the information of entire cities in the world’s most powerful nation. Yep, deregulation was still being attempted in return for propaganda and campaign funds donated to the bigwigs by the media moguls. It was becoming a tired old sick joke.

Speaking of sick jokes, Powell simply stated, “The night after I was sworn in, I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest…I waited all night, but she did not come.” This pissed off a lot of people, with leading media activist Aliza Dichter responding, “Since he had trouble seeing one angel that dreadful night on March 22nd, we shall descend upon him in droves!” and Indy Media announcing “We encourage all Angels such as yourself to come to the gathering dressed in your best Angel garb – halo, wings, glitter, the whole nine yards. (If no angel gear, come anyway!)”

They’re still waiting for the droves of angels to descend on the FCC, and I’m very tempted to come to Washington, D.C. myself. There are all kinds of media activist opportunities there, because it’s the seat of power, and if I’m allowed there, I’ll be helping to kick the legs from under it along with the rest of the people wanting change through responsible, fair media.

Barack Obama’s great. The media has pleasantly focused on the fact that, for the first time ever, an African-American now resides in the White House. Why trivialise it? Why reduce it to tokenism? He got where he is today because he wasn’t Colin Powell; he represented the wishes and hopes and dreams of America. He made promises he is already struggling to keep while under pressure from the same old system – be it by appeasing the military industrial complex by pulling forces from Iraq and simply putting them into Afghanistan, or by using the economy as an excuse to put progressive policies on the back-burner. Yes, his achievement is historic, yes it’s important – but we must not forget the real reason he was put into power, because a black man means nothing unless he represents the people, and nor does a woman.

Deregulation was pushed to unprecedented places by Margaret Thatcher, one of the most devastating Prime Ministers in British history. That’s something worth remembering. And with that in mind, it’s time to take back control of the airwaves and the printing presses, because once Murdoch and his ilk have had their way, we’ll only get their side of the story.

When the media lie, they get sued. So what do they do instead? Omit. It’s lies through omission. If someone threatens you and your loved ones, and provokes you into threatening them in return, to then accuse you of threatening behaviour would only be part of the story, and, some might say, as bad as lying. That’s what the mainstream media do: they lie through omission. Omitted details about immigration, about Iraq, about Palestine, about Ireland, about everything. There are certain things they’d rather you didn’t know about or focus on. Because if you did? You’d be ripping their papers and brand-new asses for their bosses; you’d be organising and forcing change.

Ever noticed how everyone complains about how hard life is, and how much they work, yet things just largely stay the same? Ever wondered how that’s even possible? They filter the information; they tell you that the arsenic is good for you! Everything’s okay; just blame the immigrants. Everything’s alright; blame the benefit frauds. Everything’s fine; blame the poor who went into debt. Whatever you do, don’t even consider questioning capitalism’s free market or why there are just a few privileged people with eight-bedroom mansions, limousines and lear jets, while the mass majority in the world are struggling, and 1.4 billion live in official poverty.

What the media clues you in on is nowhere near as important as what they’ve left out. It can be quotes, statistics, editorials, and the screaming headlines themselves – overpowering or even replacing a few extra crucial details to the story. Given the fact that more and more of the media is being controlled by fewer and fewer people – with right-wing interests in contrast to the interests of the mass majority – our information is being controlled more and more, as well. It’s being filtered. But heck, information is too important to our lives to be left in the hands of the right who are doing us wrong. We have to do something.

Get involved. Be an angel.

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Tracking the barely-noted progressive arguments put forward by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.

“There will be some people who say this is all too radical, let’s just carry on as we are. I say we can’t carry on as we are. We can’t carry on as we are, two nations not one; the banks and the rest of Britain. We must have a One Nation banking system as part of a One Nation economy.”

In this long-awaited run-down of What Ed Said the last several weeks, we find Miliband talking about people getting rich the right way, taxing the bankers, and, of course, delivering a speech at the Labour Party conference…

After the New Labour brand portrayed a party at ease with the “filthy rich,” Ed was asked if he felt that was okay:  “Yes, if you make it the hard way,” he said. “It’s not for me to pass moral judgment.” (The Guardian)

Continuing to distance Labour from an old regime that did little to stop the bankers running amok following Thatcher’s Big Bang in the 1980s, Miliband vowed to tax their bonuses to raise £2billion while bringing back the 50p tax rate: “Next April, David Cameron will be writing a cheque to each and every millionaire in Britain for £40,000,” he said, referring to the Tory tax cuts for the rich. “If I was in government tomorrow, one change I would make in relation to the better off…we wouldn’t be cutting the top rate of income tax from 50 to 45p. If there was an election tomorrow that is what we would do.” Challenged about the cuts as he’s about to join a union-led anti-cuts rally in London on Saturday, he clarified, “Yes, there would be cuts if we were in government but if you make the pace of those cuts slower, if you take less money out of the economy now, it would be better for the economy, better for growth. Our answer is not, as this Government is doing, borrowing to keep people idle. Let’s get people back to work.” (The Telegraph)

One way to get people working, the Labour leader suggested, was with “green industrial revolution”: “Investing in the infrastructure for a low carbon economy will both kick start the growth that is missing and make our economy resilient to price shocks in an age of scarcity.” The former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change went on: “It is governments which set the low carbon targets and correct market failures; and the degree of support for policies shown by governments is a major part of perceived risk for investors. To attract the investment we need, governments must cover that risk and commit to a clear goal of decarbonising the power sector by 2030, as the independent Committee on Climate Change has recommended.” (Press Association)

Unveiling his plan for “predistribution” based on progressive theories, Ed explained: “The redistribution of the last Labour government relied on revenue, at least in part – which the next Labour government will not enjoy. The option of simply increasing tax credits, for example, in the way we did before, will not be open to us.” He elaborated: “Of course, redistribution will always remain necessary and I continue to believe that, but we have learned we have got to do more. And fiscal circumstances will make it harder, not easier.” Clarifying what he meant by “predistribution,” Miliband said: “(It’s) about saying, ‘We cannot allow ourselves to be stuck with permanently being a low-wage economy and hope that through taxes and benefits we can make up the shortfall.’ It’s not just, nor does it enable us to pay our way in the world. Our aim must be to transform our economy so it is a much higher skill, much higher wage economy. Think about somebody working in a call centre, a supermarket, or in an old peoples’ home. Redistribution offers a top-up to their wages. Predistribution seeks to go further – higher skills with higher wages.” (BBC)

After the events of April 15th, 1989, at the Hillsborough stadium here in Sheffield, which resulted in the deaths of 96 people, there has been a track record of shame that’s staggering even by The Sun’s standards, its then-editor Kelvin MacKenzie racing to demonise soccer fans from the historically progressive city of Liverpool, basing comments on bigoted Tory Irvine Patnick, then representing Hallam where Nick Clegg retains his seat, and who famously branded the rest of Sheffield “The People’s Republic of South Yorkshire.” And so, continuing his war on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, Ed Miliband pulled no punches as more details of the disaster continue to come to light: “The people of Liverpool were systematically smeared and portrayed as its perpetrators,” telling Prime Minister David Cameron “Just as you have apologised on behalf of the Government, and so too have Sheffield Wednesday on behalf of Hillsborough, the same should be forthcoming from all those who wronged the victims, families and supporters, including in the media, particularly The Sun newspaper.” (The Mirror)

And, of course, last but not least, there was Ed’s conference speech, the entire transcript of which is available online, and in which he set out his vision, adding: “There will be some people who say this is all too radical, let’s just carry on as we are. I say we can’t carry on as we are. We can’t carry on as we are, two nations not one; the banks and the rest of Britain. We must have a One Nation banking system as part of a One Nation economy.” Talking about the Tory NHS reforms that opened it up to back-door privatisation, he said: “Remember before the last election, remember those airbrushed posters? ‘I’ll protect the NHS’ with that picture of David Cameron. Remember those speeches? The three most important letters to me, he said, were N-H-S. It was a solemn contract with the British people. And then what did he do? He came along after the election and proposed a top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for, that nobody knew about and nobody wanted. And here’s the worst part. When it became unpopular he paused. Remember the pause? He said he wanted to listen, and what happened? The GPs said no. The nurses said no. The paediatricians said no. The radiologists said no. The patients said no. And the British people said no. And what did he do? He ploughed on regardless. He broke his solemn contract with the British people, a contract that can never be repaired.” After going on to detail what he hated the most about Cameron’s reforms, he stated: “Let me be clear: the next Labour government will end the free market experiment, it will put the right principles back at the heart of the NHS and it will repeal the NHS Bill.”

However, you might have missed much of this sort of thing, because of the likes of the Daily Mail showing a snap of Ed with his hands on his chest as he met with some young females – teehee! That’s headline news!

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Read part one here.

When Warners’ Batman brand was ready for reboot in 2005, things looked relatively promising: director Christopher Nolan was no slouch, and seemed to take the source material seriously enough, while he also brought in a host of skilled actors – Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, and Christian Bale, of American Psycho fame, a wise choice for the dual role of both Bruce Wayne and Batman. Both Nolan and Bale instantly went on record during hype, paying respectful homage to Tim Burton’s vision but then claiming they’d be more true to the source material.

At just over two hours long, Batman Begins did what it said on the packaging: it spent most of its efforts telling the story of how an orphaned rich kid grew up to turn to vigilantism utilising his wealth of resources. It was a well-devised journey that showed him training in the East while on his travels, before returning to Gotham City to defeat his demons and adopt the mantle of the Bat. It even started on intelligent terrain, focusing on his development from vengeful, arrogant killer to recognising his power and responsibility to root out the causes of disadvantage in Gotham’s streets.

Having said that, there were significant departures from the spirit of the Batman stories along the way. Of course, the argument is always that Batman is adapted to various interpretations, but some of Nolan’s changes – unlike Tim Burton’s previous update of the Penguin character, for example – lent nothing, just diluted.

Despite the bragging about staying true to the Batman stories, while audiences were shocked by Burton’s Batman revealing Bruce Wayne’s alter ego to his girlfriend Vicky Vale, already in Batman Begins, Batman’s true identity was essentially known to not one, but three other different people (Rachel Dawes, as well as, arguably, Lucius Fox, and, of course, Ra’s Al Ghul). But the failure to back up their bragging didn’t just lie there…

Bale’s Batman didn’t have a gravelly whisper; it was a growl, at times comical to even the staunchest of Batman Begins fans, and his eyes were small, mouth often gaping as he tried to convey emotion through the mask. And while Bale’s Bruce Wayne was deliberately obnoxious, rather than reclusive, to cover for his secret identity (and that sure is another perfectly acceptable take on the character to an extent), what it sacrifices is a warmth and vulnerability, even in his lone moments, that he really needs to have in order for audiences to sympathise with the privileged protagonist. This is not a major complaint, but is important, because it reflects what the franchise would become.

Alfred, meanwhile, was not a traditional butler from an upper-class background, but, here, a chirpy cockney chappie cracking jokes, which suggests the part was written specifically for Michael Caine, who created his own backstory to the character to suit himself, showing no signs of the proclaimed universal loyalty to the source material. And while Lucius Fox, Carmine Falcone, Jim Gordon and, to a lesser extent, Ra’s Al Ghul, were all done justice, the same can not be said of Dr Jonathan Crane and his alter ego the Scarecrow, barely fleshed-out, barely seen, and reduced to ridicule by the time he’s seen carried around on a horse at the film’s climax – Cillian Murphy, and the character, deserved better. In the comics, the Scarecrow is a manifestation of Jonathan Crane’s desire to use fear as an equaliser after he was bullied by brutes as a child for his lanky, nerdy appearance; here, he was just a mad doctor garnering little sympathy.

Finally, Gotham City – and the entire approach to design, including the grotesque “Tumbler” Batmobile – was based on Nolan’s premise that the film be as urban and gritty as possible, meaning that what was blatantly Chicago in several shots was presented as Gotham, a city so-called because of its dark gothic nature…but not so here. Nolan apparently wanted his crew to think of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner during production, but Batman Begins lacked Scott’s political intelligence in addition to his creativity; you’re hard pushed to find a single breathtakingly beautiful shot anywhere in the film, let alone anything approaching gothic and oppressively twisted. The approach means the film is more likely to date badly, which is presumably just fine with the filmmakers. The movie’s visual ugliness reflects its lack of heart, and that was something apparent when it was over – it felt more like Nolan had an idea for a movie with clever twists, and just transplanted the Batman brand onto it so it would be marketable. Two of Hollywood’s finest composers, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer, combined to score the film yet Batman’s “theme” always felt like a build-up without a crescendo, and the score was never going to be any match for Danny Elfman’s. But all in all, this was, of course, an improvement on the Joel Schumacher versions…though who would anybody be able to brag to about that? Making over $370 million, Nolan couldn’t match Burton’s 1989 debut, but certainly satisfied Warners enough for them to finance further films.

In addition to drawing inspiration from Blade Runner, to his credit Nolan also drew from some DC Comics source material such as Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, a decent starting point from which to have Batman begin, but again also a very dark place in terms of spirit rather than visuals (Burton, as has been mentioned, focused on the reverse: dark style, with well-meaning content).

It was from this dark place that Nolan built his over-long, slightly pretentious sequels, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, both of which brought back Scarecrow – or, rather, Jonathan Crane – for brief scenes in which he was worthless. But other characters were wasted, as well – such as that of Two-Face, a villain who was failed by Schumacher and, here, was failed by Nolan. It would surely take an entire film to do justice to the fascinating, deep, dark, coin-flipping antagonist as he was in Batman: The Animated Series, and yet here he was an add-on, half his face ravaged by acid so much so that, through Nolan’s CGI, it looked absurdly zombiefied, bones and tendons galore, all while Nolan excused the rest of his removal of Batman comics details in the name of – yes – “realism.” And let’s not forget Steve Englehart, Batman comics writer who penned the Dark Detective stories where Batman’s former girlfriend is seeing a handsome, blonde, upright politician scarred and lured into the dark side by Harvey “Two-Face” Dent himself. Here – with no acknowledgement to Englehart’s stories, mind you – Harvey Dent is himself the handsome, blonde, upright politician seeing Batman’s ex, but instead seduced into crime by The Joker.

Stated Steve Englehart himself: “In my version, it’s Two-Face talking to another guy who’s been heavily damaged on the left side, and who is another “golden boy” politician, so it makes sense that Two-Face could convince Evan Gregory. They share a bond. In the film version, it’s the Joker talking to Harvey Dent. Those two have nothing in common, and Dent has hated the Joker the entire movie. It was a storyline in search of a reason to be there.” Englehart went on to point out that he hadn’t continued to flesh out the whole comics story at the time of Nolan’s film, “which is why the last half hour of The Dark Knight feels so tacked on.” But enough about the scarring of Two-Face himself by the filmmakers – there was much more damage done. Many more characters were thrown away or manipulated to suit Nolan’s crime thriller.

Robin was hinted at, without any reference to Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, or circuses, but instead, here found his roots in nothing less than the corridors of the Gotham Police Department as a flatfoot civil servant. When corporate villain Daggett was introduced, Nolan couldn’t bring himself to make it Roland Daggett in homage to the animated series; it was John Daggett. Out was Officer Montoya; in came Detective Ramirez. Grace Lamont was nowhere to be found; Rachel Dawes was Dent’s love interest.

Yes, the Nolanverse had placed itself over and above anything the mere fan-boys had cherished; he was their new God to worship, and gone were the old ways. It’s almost as though Nolan looked down at the Batman source material patronisingly, and again, it was used more as a way for him to engage in clever filmmaking. Whereas Burton was the fascinating geek goth telling stories with heart, Nolan was the fuddy-duddy middle class professor being incredibly intelligent but boring you to death with his clinical tales of twists and turns, showing off his cerebral superiority.

In the first follow-up, the Joker was not just a mysterious vagrant and gifted fighter able to match fisticuffs with Batman (a joke in itself), but also an “agent of chaos” who wanted to “introduce a little anarchy.” This unbleached Joker was a blank canvas for America’s fears, bearing only the smears of face paint – or “war paint” as Nolan rationalised – and while supposedly representing the often-peaceful political philosophy of liberty without authoritarianism that is known as anarchism, was considered a “terrorist.” The Joker even stated: “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just do things.” So, the feeling was that there was no rhyme or reason to the Joker’s actions, reflecting the American Bush era perspective that “terrorists” just do what they do…because. There is, we were told, no point in scratching beneath the surface.

On this basis, throwaway explanations can be something as vacuous as “they hate freedom,” as George W. Bush Jr himself once claimed. His administration’s Patriot Act that attacked civil liberties by spying on their own citizens was introduced on the premise of combating the supposedly constant, elusive, irrational threat of “terrorism” where W. himself said, “When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.” In The Dark Knight, Batman hacked into all the cellular phones in the city to track down “terrorist” Joker, and Lucius Fox told him: “You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong,” to which Batman replied, “I’ve gotta find this man, Lucius.” When Fox asked at what cost, Batman made excuses. Andrew Klavan wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “Like W., Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency.” That this perspective is used in a Batman film, Klavan explains, is because “Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth.” This is quite frightening stuff, if a fair summary of Nolan’s work serving his stories through the Batman mask. The eyes are the windows to the soul, and whereas Michael Keaton’s (below) did much of Burton’s storytelling for him, Christian Bale’s were lacking expression, symbolically serving to conceal the soulless nature of Nolan’s miserable version.

But The Dark Knight made even more money: blowing Burton’s Batman away by doubling that film’s takings (though to judge popularity by this, given the changing price of cinema tickets, remains complicated), it was a billion dollar dream for Warner Brothers, who knew they needed Nolan to return one more time to make a third. By this time, it was easier to brace yourself for the nasty little mean-spirited right-wing themes Nolan was plotting, and in the midst of a post-financial crisis United States, polarised by Occupy Wall Street on one hand and the small-state libertarian Tea Party movement on the other.

The graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke had inspired Burton’s Batman, of course, and the novel’s writer Alan Moore was more than happy to offer his thoughts on the political unrest in the U.S. and his native U.K.: “At the moment, the demonstrators seem to me to be making clearly moral moves, protesting against the ridiculous state that our banks and corporations and political leaders have brought us to.” However, naturally, Nolan seemed more aligned to the perspective of Batman: Year One and RoboCop writer Frank Miller, who said: “The ‘Occupy’ movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. ‘Occupy’ is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.” Alan Moore, in turn, responded: “(The ‘Occupy’ movement) is a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it.”

But Nolan’s franchise kept heading in the direction in which it had begun – which was clearly more “Miller” than “Moore.” In the second sequel, Batman returned from retirement to tackle Bane, who here was not the Latin American muscleman of the comics and cartoons, but a short, chunky, Yoda-voiced “terrorist” from the Middle East merely under the guise of a freedom fighter, kidnapping stock exchange suits, bringing Gotham City to its knees and leaving the people to run amok. Then there’s cat burglar Selina Kyle (but not “Catwoman,” a term too unrealistic for Nolan, we can assume): unlike with Batman Returns, where Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman stopped being in service or submission to men, Selina Kyle here, alongside Miranda Tate, often acted in both. While the film had promise when she told billionaire Bruce Wayne, “You’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us,” she then lured Batman into the grip of Bane, who imprisoned him in a Middle Eastern cell, and left him to watch as he trapped the entire Gotham police force before revealing his true motive: simply destroying the entire city.

Again, the rebel (and his revolutionaries) represented simple “terrorists” with no method to their madness, and the scenes depicting riots and looting of mansions, followed by kangaroo court show trials, played out like a parody, ridiculing the very concept of uprisings and categorising them all as evil, comparable to the Reign of Terror or the Great Purge at their worst. The fact that Bane not only sought to wipe out an entire city, but aimed to do so with a green energy device that was instead co-opted as an A-bomb, only reinforces the cynical, right-wing perspective of Nolan’s films. As Catherine Shoard wrote in The Guardian: “The Dark Knight Rises is a quite audaciously capitalist vision, radically conservative, radically vigilante, that advances a serious, stirring proposal that the wish-fulfilment of the wealthy is to be championed if they say they want to do good. Mitt Romney will be thrilled. What’s strange is that quite so many of the rest of us seem to want to buy into it.”

When Gotham’s police force are trapped underground, we’re told that they’re “not just people down there, they’re cops,” leading to a showdown in the streets between the officers on one hand and the revolting rioters on the other, again reinforcing the binary black-and-white view Nolan supposedly blurred in his first two attempts, all the while tarnishing Batman rather than redeeming his enemies in the process. Once more, the message to moviegoers and their children was to trust power, even if it means sacrificing freedoms, because those who wish to question authority under the banner of making the world a better place are, in fact, themselves not to be trusted; they have a hidden agenda – the “ugly” face of socialism that will, we’re told, lead us to death and destruction. Author David Sirota wrote at Salon.com: “When villainous motives and psychopathy is televisually ascribed to mass popular outrage against the economic status quo, it suggests to the audience that only crazy people would sympathize with such outrage.” He added: “Knowing the teenage audience is right now forming the next generation’s vision of good and bad, it’s a message that the 1 percent must love.”

And, as the movie almost equalled its predecessor, they did love it. Whereas The Dark Knight was provocative enough to leave room for at least a little debate about its themes and questions raised, the American right-wing wholeheartedly embraced The Dark Knight Rises, as is understandable. “The entire film is an ode to traditional capitalism,” claimed Ben Shapiro. “Furthermore, while we learn that Bane spent time in poverty in a prison – and that it toughened him up – Bruce Wayne can get just as tough, though he grew up with tremendous wealth.” He went on to point out the movie’s endorsement of firearms: “At one point, (Selina) Kyle has to save him by using guns – and she tells him that she disagrees with his rule. It’s hard for the audience to disagree, seeing as all the bad guys have guns – and in one scene in which thousands of cops charge the Occupy Army of Bane, the Occupy Army blows the underarmed cops away.” Andrew O’Hehir, also at Salon.com, explained: “It’s no exaggeration to say that the ‘Dark Knight’ universe is fascistic, and I’m not name-calling or claiming that Nolan has Nazi sympathies…It’s simply a fact.” He called the film “an unfriendly masterpiece that shows you only a little circle of daylight, way up there at the top of our collective prison shaft.”

Yes, the Tea Party movement, Paul Ryan, and Mitt Romney must love Nolan’s Batman world. There were few shades of grey here, as we had with Burton or the subsequent animated series. This has been the killing of Batman as a vulnerable, tragic, disturbed figure fighting for the oppressed and exposing the corrupt, his foils all born out of often equal tragedy and, through circumstances, taking different paths in life – the stories, left untold by Nolan, of Mister Freeze, whose wife was left to perish after his cryogenic freezing chamber was discontinued by the greedy corporation funding his research; of Clayface, whose acting career and celebrity depended on superficialities of appearance and whose very stage makeup consumed him; of Killer Croc, whose medical condition left him deformed, cast out by his family, leaving him residing in the sewers; all with questions the Riddler himself would be proud of: what separates these villains from vigilantes, or the police from politicians, or governments from corporations? Understanding psychological trauma and social conditions may provide some answers, but Nolan was more interested in absolute good, and pure evil.

The final film in Nolan’s Batman series has, of course, been often overshadowed by the shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre that left 12 people killed and 58 injured at a time when death threats were being sent to those of us who dared to criticise this latest offering. With such a dark view as Nolan’s, championing the individual and the right to bear arms, while demonising villains as one-dimensional terrorists who hate the freedoms we ourselves must be prepared to sacrifice for our rich and powerful patriarchal masters, this all seemed a tragic yet logical conclusion to the franchise. As Batman costumes were being banned in the subsequent hysteria, were Nolan’s people suggesting it’s a sacrifice we must accept as worth making? After all, we are led to assume that all killers are evil, and all rebels are wrong.

A wise man once said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” As mentioned, Tim Burton’s mistake has been to move on from the Batman films without political awareness. But Christopher Nolan produced his series unashamedly ignorant of the terrible themes and messages he was creating, and the filmmaker, like Clayface, has been consumed by the ugly makeup of his very own aesthetic. “The films genuinely aren’t intended to be political,” he said. When countered with the claim that all art is political, Nolan replied, “But what’s political?” As the Skunk Anansie lead singer Skin sang, “Everything’s political.”

Until these movies are directed by a filmmaker who recognises that – and the power and responsibility that this medium inherently affords – Batman will remain killed off. For now, like our hero, we fight on through the loss; we still have many, many comics and animated episodes in which to take solace before redemption is to be found in Hollywood.

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What comic book character has been so enduringly popular as Batman for the last 70 years? After Superman, you’re hard pushed to think of one that comes even close – in almost every major ranking, Batman is right there, second only to “The Man of Steel” himself.

Superman came about at a time of political extremes and talk of races of supermen, to become a symbol of Rooseveltian American freedom and refuge to others’ poor and persecuted, and while he would go on to, in fact, become a posterboy for blind patriotism, Batman always remained in far more interesting territory.

Inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci flying machine designs, comic strips and pulp fiction books from The Phantom to The Shadow, as well as Zorro and the film Bat Whispers – where a criminal in a cape shines a bat signal before committing murder – Bob Kane developed a crime-fighting vigilante “Caped Crusader” who would, one year after Superman’s debut, follow him into the annals of pop culture history. Batman frequently joined Superman in 1940s comic books to fight against the evils of the Axis powers of the Second World War.

With such anti-fascist sentiment, of course, the 1950s saw a backlash in the United States as Soviet Russia threatened their superpower status, with Hollywood subjected to witch-hunts from Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, and even comic books targeted as a dangerous threat to wholesome apple pie-American family values and consumerism, and the Comics Code Authority was formed to monitor the comic book medium in the midst of outlandish claims that the relationship between Batman and Robin was – shock, horror – perhaps not strictly heterosexual (for those who feel the need to know, it actually was).

But the irony is, that as a result of all this and the subsequent changes made to the aesthetic, you could be forgiven for having thought differently, as the camp 1960s television show starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin had the Bat and his sidekick donning tights, skipping along, and fighting crooks in broad daylight, with crayola colours, bad jokes, and a swinging sixties “Batusi” go-go style dance. It was vacuous; it was awful.

After the 1978 success of Superman as a comic-to-screen adaptation, Hollywood realised that Batman could perhaps translate to the cinema medium, too. However, when Superman’s writer, Tom Mankiewicz, drafted a screenplay for a Batman movie, it was almost as lighthearted as the series.

Producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber enlisted relatively unknown Tim Burton for directorial duties after he’d made cult hit Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and box office success Beetlejuice, and the choice took the project into a darker direction. Despite growing up in hot, sunny, Burbank, California, watching the television show, the pallid, black-robed Burton preferred the evolution of the comics in the 70′s and 80′s that focused further on the trauma that made millionaire Bruce Wayne become vigilante Batman. “It’s a guy dressing up as a bat and no matter what anyone says, that’s weird,” said Burton.

“The rich. You know why they’re so odd? Because they can afford to be.” – Alexander Knox in Batman (1989)

With Hollywood speculating that the likes of Mel Gibson and even Sylvester Stallone might be cast to play the lead in Burton’s Batman, the director instead selected his Beetlejuice friend Michael Keaton, a relatively unthreatening yet versatile actor who was hardly A-list, provoking a huge backlash from fans whose complaints even made the pages of the Wall Street Journal. “It would have been very easy to go for a square-jawed hulk,” reasoned Burton, “but if some guy is well over six-feet-tall with gigantic muscles, what’s the point in him wearing armour with an arsenal of weapons and gadgets?” Developing a story about a rich, reclusive loner obsessed with avenging the murder of his parents, Burton while producing the picture put together rushed trailers of footage to be screened at movie theatres everywhere – and when they witnessed Keaton whispering “I’m Batman” in a gravelly voice, by God, they believed him. While the costumed Keaton modestly joked that he felt like Elvis in the Vegas years, film crew members were in awe by his transformation once in the suit. He was completely different as the shy, retiring Bruce Wayne, compared to his portrayal as Batman, acting through the mask with his eyes, dialogue kept to a minimum to retain mystery, simmering with subdued rage.

Burton had used Alan Moore’s graphic novel The Killing Joke as inspiration for the film’s feel, and after sharing it with Jack Nicholson, successfully convinced the actor to play the Joker, written here as a mobster set up by his boss for having an affair with his moll, dropped into a vat of chemicals that left his skin bleached white and his mind unhinged, a pivotal plot device that brought about everything after it, and even called into question the ramifications of the sometimes-fascistic vigilantism of Batman. Nicholson scored one of the most lucrative film deals ever, making money off the film and its franchise to this day.

With incredible Pinewood Studios sets of an oppressive, gothic, gargoyled Gotham City “as if hell had erupted through the pavements and kept growing” and a sleek Batmobile symbolising sex and violence, all designed by Anton Furst, in addition to a Baroque operatic score by composer Danny Elfman, the film noir homage was a killer, and became a massive box office hit, making over $400 million. It was also for the most part an artistic and critical success, redefining the comic book genre completely following the Superman adaptations, and justifying daring casting decisions in the industry. Its impact on film is too often understated – The Crow, Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers, and even V For Vendetta would never have been treated as serious proposals without 1989′s Batman.

Though some thought the film was “too dark,” Burton himself found such claims disturbing considering the cynical cops-and-guns movies that were released at the same time, bringing into question the definition itself. “They see people walking around in regular clothes shooting guns, and it makes them feel more comfortable than when people are dressed up in weird costumes,” said Burton. “I’m disturbed by the reality of that; I find it darker when there’s a light-hearted attitude to violence and it’s more identifiable than when something is completely removed from reality. I’ve always had trouble understanding that.”

Gaining overnight creative clout and freedom to deal further with interesting, tortured characters, the visionary Burton cast then-unknown Johnny Depp as the lead in Edward Scissorhands, about a boy with scissors instead of hands that are paradoxically both creative and destructive – the film based on sketches by Burton as a child in Burbank, dealing with issues of acceptance, judgement, and depicting the uniformity of suburban life as sinister. With Burton succeeding in Hollywood, Warner Brothers had to give him carte blanche if they wanted him to direct a follow-up to Batman. And they did.

“A man dressed as a bat is a he-man, but a woman dressed as a cat is a she-devil. I’m just living down to my expectations.” – Catwoman, in Batman Returns (1992)

Having lost his friend Furst, who had thrown himself from a rooftop to his death following Batman, for the follow-up Burton made sure to surround himself with others who he could depend on. In addition to the returning Elfman, he brought in production designer Bo Welch, cinematographer Stefan Czapsky, and producer Denise Di Novi amongst others, all of them back-up from Edward Scissorhands, and had Heathers writer Daniel Waters define the Catwoman character as the bullied, dowdy secretary turned kick-ass feminist portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer, while actually adding layers to the previously fat yet flat Penguin persona, developed into a well-rounded three-dimensional former circus freak abandoned by his wealthy parents. Danny DeVito played the Penguin, staying in character throughout production. The film also touched on patriarchal oppression, with Catwoman’s former boss Max Shrek (named after Nosferatu actor Max Schreck) developing a power plant that would, in fact, not generate power for Gotham, but steal and store it – symbolic of Burton’s cynicism towards corporate power at the time. Despite this, the film is careful to make every character sympathetic in some way, presenting redeeming features and even explanations for their atrocities.

While Batman was impressive, Batman Returns was stunningly beautiful, often shot with a wintery blue tint and entirely inside an elaborate, deliberately crowded Warner Brothers studio that Pfeiffer herself at one point got lost in, with its temperature dropped to subzero for the lead villain’s live penguins and for visible breaths in the air; crew members stepped from sets full of real snow and ice out into sunny Californian streets, still wearing their parkas. Abandoning the cartoon animation from the first film and adopting then-groundbreaking computer techniques, the movie may be now more than a quarter of a century old but looks like it could have been made last year, due in part to the timelessness of the overall design that paid homage to the 1940s and 50s emergence of the Batman character, while incorporating styles from numerous eras. Fascist city sculptures and pavements built upon pavements further exacerbated the feeling of claustrophobic urban landscape, incomplete development, and oppressive regimes, while Batman’s own superficialities became more art deco. The film like no other exposes Burton’s influences from German expressionism: in addition to Nosferatu, in Batman Returns it’s easy to see the likes of Metropolis and Cabinet of Dr Caligari in the aesthetic.

Though grossing well over $250 million at the box office in 1992, the huge profits were no match for Batman and not enough for wanting-more Warners, who were uneasy with the more Burtonesque film, with its baby-snatching plot elements and its sadomasochistic subtexts. The Happy Meals™ and toys were becoming more difficult to market to children without backlash from conservatives, and Warners were unnerved. Burton dismissed the concerns: “I think children have their own barometers,” he said. “I was always grateful for heavier subject matter when I was growing up.”

Ultimately, though, the notorious knee-jerk prompted by the studio system’s greed led to a mistake that would, in the long-term, cost them millions: with more material left to enjoy, they decided not to bring Burton back for a third film, and at the time, any attempt to publicly express a firm belief that the franchise was going to head for disaster was dismissed. But having already inspired what is largely considered the best animated series of all time that featured an Elfman theme and Burton motifs all over it, the style was going to be difficult to depart from. While the comics were enjoying some of their juiciest stories ever, and all subsequent comic book movies were influenced by the ground broken by Burton, Batman: The Animated Series finally superseded the live-action serial of the 60′s, and Batman in the popular consciousness was almost entirely based on this “dark deco” interpretation. In turn, the show continued developing characters in that vein – Two-Face, the unstable District Attorney with a tortured soul who has half his face scarred by acid that literally and figuratively exposes his dark side, was presented as the third villain in line to the throne of the rogues gallery, and beautifully Burtonesque in his split suit of black and white and torn, dark complexity. His brooding presence in a third Burton movie was highly anticipated, but it was not to be.

Appeasing Burton by giving him a token producer credit on the third film, Warners brought in Joel Schumacher at the helm. At first, this seemed like a great choice: Schumacher was responsible for the deliciously dark The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and even the controversial yet thought-provoking Falling Down. There was little doubt he could do justice to the material at his disposal. But Warners were clear that he must create something lighter than Batman Returns, lighter than Batman, and even lighter than Flatliners and The Lost Boys. Having read the script, Keaton rejected the offer to don cape and cowl again, and Schumacher cast the younger, more male-model Val Kilmer to replace him. While still exploiting what was widely accepted as the Batman signature theme by Elfman, the first trailer for the third film in 1995 showed Kilmer sporting rubber nipples on the batsuit, alongside the wasted talent of Tommy Lee Jones screaming, shouting and gesticulating wildly as the normally dark and moody Two-Face, in addition to the Riddler – whose mind-reading device in the story seemed like something Mad Hatter would create in the comics. Schumacher utilised a high-tech, high-rise Asian-influenced cityscape and his trademark neon lighting and glow-in-the-dark paint palette for the film, which finally introduced Robin while Batman went through the film over-articulating his over-wrought self-perception rather than simmering in the darkness. Meanwhile, Carrey even based his portrayal of the Riddler on that of Frank Gorshin’s own in the campy 60′s show, and this was representative of the whole regressive nature of the franchise by this time. The wheels of progress towards interesting territory were ground to a halt, and put into reverse by the studio.

Generating over $335 million at the box office, it was more than Batman Returns but less than Batman – though this didn’t seem to matter to Warners because of the large range of merchandising opportunities this lighter, brighter version opened up for them. The film’s title, Batman Forever, suggested Warners were confident they could keep going back to the well an infinite number of times, banking on families with money to spend and enough ignorance or indifference to the source material to care about the sacrilegious bastardisation of the Batman characters. The franchise had to go on – because the bank account, not the material, required it; sequels planned through greed and nothing more. Tolkien, this was not.

But Warners were so sure of themselves, they actually thought they were headed in the right direction, moving up and away from what they saw as the dark depths of the “mere” $250 million from their 1992 Batman returns. So, when Schumacher fell out – as all directors seem to – with Kilmer, and George Clooney was cast as Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, Clooney’s colleague Uma Thurman arrived on set and was forced to do take after take after take to sufficiently ham up her performance as Poison Ivy. Thurman had seen Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, and was sorely mistaken in believing she ought to aim for a similarly sophisticated performance. With Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Mister Freeze as though he were Rainier Wolfcastle as McBain in The Simpsons, and Jeep Swenson as a Bane reduced to a grunting henchman, this fourth film was uncomfortable, even downright embarrassing, to watch. “There was a lot of pressure from Warner Brothers to make (the film) more family-friendly,” explained Schumacher at the time.

The direction was wrong for Warners, whose greed had made them push their luck too far, and 1997′s Batman and Robin failed to reach Batman Returns levels of box office success, while also being universally slated – one critic saying “Schumacher’s tongue-in-cheek attitude hits an unbearable limit,” and even star Clooney – who under a different direction could have perhaps been great as Batman – admitted that on reflection the film was a waste of money. This was a version of Batman killing the franchise. The widespread disgust became so overwhelming that finally Schumacher himself had to offer an apology to audiences: “If I’ve disappointed them in any way, then I really want to apologise. Because it wasn’t my intention. My intention was just to entertain them.” But it wasn’t really Schumacher’s fault. It was Warners avarice taken to it inevitable conclusion.

With Burton proven right, he was courted by Warners the following year to instead turn to Superman, hoping he could adapt the character for contemporary audiences in the same way he had with Batman. He’d even proved he could lighten up, by directing Mars Attacks!, the 1950s style sci-fi comedy that was based on trading cards of the same name and which exorcised all of Burton’s rage at American culture, amusing British audiences but angering American patriots. Interested in focusing on and playing up Superman’s status as an alien adapting to human life while being secretly and inherently different from everyone else on the planet, Burton scrapped the gaudy red, blue and yellow spandex in favour of an electric suit, and understandably rejected Superman’s chances of hiding his identity completely by simply wearing a pair of spectacles, instead casting the sometimes-brilliant Nicolas Cage and agreeing with him that the actor would have to use his physical acting ability to hide Clark Kent’s true identity from other humans.

Comic book fan and Dogma director Kevin Smith wrote a screenplay that read more like the fantasies of a Superman geek-boy, full of insider references, prompting Burton to scrap it, and provoking an immature response from an otherwise smart Smith, who has publicly and pathetically attacked Burton ever since in one of the worst cases of sour grapes in movie history. When Burton suggested he himself never read comic books as a kid, Smith quipped, “that explains Batman” – despite the fact that the entire comic book film genre as we know it today would not exist without Burton’s influence.

But beyond Smith, the wider backlash to Burton’s updating of the costume and casting of Cage proved even greater than that in response to his choice of Keaton a decade earlier. With $30 million already spent in development hell, Warners put the whole franchise on hold and relieved Burton of his Superman duties. At the time of writing, it’s still yet to see a decent movie. Burton went on to direct the wonderfully creepy Sleepy Hollow, the off-target Planet of the Apes, and the quirky tear-jerker Big Fish, all of which began his consistent approach of preferring existing material that he could translate in his own way that coincided with his romantic relationship with Helena Bonham-Carter. And so followed Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows, all starring Bonham-Carter, laden with CGI from the one-time proponent of stop-motion animation, and lacking in political awareness (just look at the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa-Loompas, “African pygmies” all universally played by the same short-statured Kenyan actor). Moving to the more suitably dreary London, England, at a time when the country was about to become run by David Cameron’s most right-wing British government since the Second World War, Burton’s political ignorance would only be reinforced by Bonham-Carter’s claim that Cameron, a close friend of hers, is “not a right-wing person.” All while he was busy scrapping the UK Film Council, clamping down on the internet, selling off the state, and wiping out communities to pay for the debts of his banker buddies.

By then, enough years had passed for Warners to dare revive the Batman brand to plumb for profits. Burton had long since moved on, and the studio began instead looking to other talented directors to reboot the franchise. Wolfgang Petersen and Darren Aronofsky were both under consideration, at various times. But it would be Christopher Nolan to bag the job. And while Schumacher’s involvement might have represented the killing of Batman artistically and commercially, Nolan’s would do something much more sinister: it would kill Batman’s very soul.

Find out why in part two next week, featuring Alan Moore, Frank Miller, the Occupy movement, the Colorado shootings, fascism, and more.

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“The idea the world should arrive…and have these wonderful Olympic Games as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden is unthinkable.”

Sport, of course, can be divisive. Yet it can also be great for unity. Despite all the talk of “Plastic Brits” and the controversy stirred up by sporting personalities like Ron Atkinson as I covered in my film Escape from Doncatraz, many of us are made to feel good about where we come from and the things we share with others – thanks to sport; in this case, the Olympics.

When you live in Sheffield, it’s tough not to be proud of the success of Jessica Ennis this past fortnight. Beyond, Yorkshire has produced so many more top athletes in addition to Jess, that the county would be ranked ahead of South Africa, Brazil and Spain if it was a country – which, given the browbeating it’s been subjected to for years by a disconnected, privileged Conservative central government, is not an entirely unhappy prospect. There is some desire for England’s largest county to have greater autonomy similar to that other Tory-loathing area known as Scotland.

A “big” underdog? Is that possible, you ask? (Look at the working class for examples of an often sleeping giant) While being the biggest county, Yorkshire has still for decades seen its resources plundered in order to line the pockets of the rich who typically dwell in London, host of the Olympics this time. And for all the exposed Tory hatred of Danny Boyle’s games opening ceremony celebrating industrialisation, immigration, multiculturalism and universal health care, the event reinforced the message to other countries that the Tories whose immensely unpopular manifesto only gained them 36% of total votes in our last election still do not reflect the values of Britain.

While the Tories repeatedly send out their dog of war, the disgraced Baroness Warsi, to attack organised workers and their unions, there was more controversy when Unite general secretary Len McCluskey suggested before the Olympics that the games might be a good opportunity to take action and engage workers in high-profile protests to highlight the damage inflicted on the public sector by a private sector-obsessed Tory party and the most right-wing British government since the Second World War. Now that might not be British, some claimed; it’s just not cricket, old chap!

That’s funny. Because when Australia came under criticism in its hosting of the Olympics in 2000, for its appalling human rights violations based on its mistreatment of aboriginal people there that was largely hidden from IOC findings, we were willing to accept that. And when I was one among many to stand up and speak out on the propaganda, press censorship, and human rights abuses by China as they hosted the Olympics in 2008, it went down okay.

So why is it, then, that we are so inclined to wear rose-tinted glasses when Britain hosts the games in 2012 and our government is accused of social cleansing and using the unemployed to steward the Queen’s “diamond jubilee” while having them sleep under London Bridge – all while continuing to decimate communities and making the public pay for private debt after the banking crisis?

When activists raised awareness of issues in previous host nations, it is not wrong for McCluskey to speak for millions when he says, “The attacks that are being launched on public sector workers at the moment are so deep and ideological, that the idea the world should arrive in London and have these wonderful Olympic Games as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden is unthinkable.”

Yes. He was talking about us. He was talking about our country. He was talking about our government. And rightly so. Until we get rid of those currently in power, we can only take comfort in the fact that not the Tories but the opening ceremony’s themes, Jessica Ennis – and everything she represents – are what truly reflect us as a people.

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Tracking the barely-noted progressive arguments put forward by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.

“A few years ago the Tories tried to say ‘we’re all in it together’. But now we know they never meant it. Because we have seen what they do when they get back in power: one rule for those at the top, and another rule for everybody else. They cut taxes for millionaires and they raise taxes on pensioners. It’s business as usual in the banks, and small businesses go under. They try and divide our country between rich and poor. Between North and South. Same old Tories. Not building for the future but ripping up the foundations. Not healing our country, but harming it. Not uniting our country, but dividing it.”

This installment, we find Ed criticising outsourcing, bashing bankers, hanging out with Hollande again, and extending the olive branch to the unions and miners…

Asked about one of the biggest issues that qualifies him for the job of Prime Minister, Miliband said, “A few people do well and everyone else is struggling. We have got to change that and rebuild our economy, a divided society and faith in politics. I know exactly what I think the next Labour Government needs to do. It is about whether you are clear about your purpose. Then you let the other stuff take care of itself.” He added, “We must understand that challenge. It’s about people who say ‘my son and daughter cannot find a job’, who are being ripped off by the banks, see their living standards squeezed.” He made it clear that he was “not going to say the reason we had a big budget deficit is that we invested too much in schools and hospitals because I don’t believe that.” (Reason: it’s not true) He went on to attack the current government: “The Budget was its turning point – standing up for the wrong people, tax cuts for millionaires. It called into question the Government’s motives.” Being clear about the coalition dynamic in the government, Ed targeted the Liberal Democrats as well as the Tories: “Clegg’s biggest problem is that he will say he is a brake on the Tories, but he is an accomplice. He chose not to kill the Health and Social Care Bill, a really bad Bill doing damage to the NHS, and to pursue House of Lords reform.” (The Independent)

Miliband has also called for a Leveson Inquiry-style probe into the disgraced banking business: “There hasn’t been a proper reckoning for what happened in the banking crisis. The bankers told us, It’s all fine, we’ve cleaned everything up. But I’m afraid that doesn’t hold water anymore. We’ve got to have an open, independent inquiry with hearings to find out what is going on in the dark corners of the banks. Some of it clearly was illegal, but it goes well beyond that. There is a problem with how people operate. This isn’t just about regulation, it’s also about culture and ethics.” (Sky News) Ed also suggested “the term banker goes back to being a compliment rather than a term of abuse. (Ouch – Ed.) Stewardship banking relies on the idea that banking is a trusted profession, not a fly-by-night activity. If we’re serious about banking regaining the status of teaching, medicine, law, we have to act. Those professions have clear rules. Codes of conduct which lay down what is expected. We need the same for banking. Anyone who breaks the rules should be struck off.” (BBC)

Miliband was also peeved about the private contracts for security projects such as the Olympics, for which G4S failed to meet its commitments, prompting the state to have to make up the numbers anyway. “The Olympics will be an inspiring moment for London and for Britain. The eyes of the world will be on London,” he said. “We are confident the country can deliver a successful Games because the army and police have stepped in, but we do need to take stock and learn the lessons. We can’t shut our eyes to what is happening with G4S. It raises questions about the outsourcing of policing across the country. It is time for a rethink of the role of the private sector in policing. People want bobbies on the beat, they don’t want G4S. It should be a warning sign, not just about policing of one important event in one city, but a warning sign about police services across the country.” (The Guardian)

Ed also stood up for his business secretary, Chuka Umunna (one of the rising stars of the Labour Party) after he’d admitted to – gasp! – smoking pot when he was younger. “I think everybody is entitled to a past, and a youthful past if you like, before they go into public life,” said Miliband. “I think Chuka was asked a question and I think people are fed up with politicians not providing straight answers and he answered the question straight. I think that is fair enough. He is not taking drugs now, he is doing his job and he is doing a good job.” After Bill Clinton, aren’t we past any hysteria about cannabis now? Chill out. (The Independent)

Another one here, if all that doesn’t silence the naysayers: Miliband became the first Labour leader to address the Durham Miners’ Gala in twenty-three years. Tapping into the principles of mining towns like this and that which he represents (and where I was born), Ed said: “Community. Looking out for each other. Never walking by on the other side. These are the value of the people of Durham. These are the values of the people of the North East. These are also the values of the British people.” He went on: “A few years ago the Tories tried to say ‘we’re all in it together’. But now we know they never meant it. Because we have seen what they do when they get back in power: one rule for those at the top, and another rule for everybody else. They cut taxes for millionaires and they raise taxes on pensioners. It’s business as usual in the banks, and small businesses go under. They try and divide our country between rich and poor. Between North and South. Same old Tories. Not building for the future but ripping up the foundations. Not healing our country, but harming it. Not uniting our country, but dividing it.” Naturally, along came the pathetic figure of Baroness Warsi, the odious, dodgy-dealing Tory who serves no other Conservative Party purpose besides slagging off organised workers, sent out to the press once again, saying “Red Ed is using the Durham Miners’ Gala to cosy up to his militant, left-wing union paymasters.” LOLZ. (BBC)

Although he himself stands no chance of becoming leader of his own country, automatic gaffe-machine and Republican U.S. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney preemptively referred to Miliband as “Mr Leader.” Romney might be forgiven, though, considering Ed had just returned from the Élysée Palace in Paris where he’d been invited to meet with Francois Hollande again, instead of David Cameron. Perhaps the world is starting to prepare itself for Ed Miliband as Prime Minister of a Britain not hellbent on selling off the state to rich vested interests.

But – oh yes – you can be forgiven for missing such details, because the Daily Mail were screaming that Ed’s “praise for the Occupy movement was nauseating and ill-judged, the worst sort of bleeding heart navel gazing, lauding a bunch of layabouts who defecated in St Paul’s cathedral before running home to their parents in the same Primrose Hill suburbs where Mr Miliband is most comfortable.” You tell it like it is, fascist Daily Mail writer of undoubted working class roots! Damn those people for demonstrating against greed! Damn them all to hell!

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