Media Activist Jay Baker's blog

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?

Share this:

It’s remarkable that the same Conservative Party that was the first to radically deregulate the City in the 1980′s and agreed to match Labour’s levels of public spending as recently as 2008, can actually come into power in 2010 blaming Labour for an economic crisis caused by a greatly unregulated financial sector, and then – as the media go to sleep – repeatedly claim that this was all the incompetence of Labour. If you repeat it enough, it’ll become accepted as truth, thinks public relations whizkid David Cameron, it seems, as he sells off the state and puts power into private interests.

The cuts? The Tories claim they’re just cutting state spending and privatising not for the elites that they entirely depend on for party funding of course, but because ordinary people have to suffer the consequences of repaying a banking crisis bill that reached £1.5 trillion.

But people aren’t buying it any more. The successful election campaigning strategy of blasting the discredited Blair/Brown New Labour project worked at a time of post-crisis confusion, which is when – as Naomi Klein explains in her book The Shock Doctrine – shock therapy is administered: ramming through radical reforms of neoliberalism while a people are disorientated.

The shock now, though, is starting to wear off, with the dust settling, the smoke clearing, and people emerging from the proverbial smokescreen recalling that Britain only ever pulled itself from a crisis via economic growth stimulus – just look at the greatest crisis ever, the Second World War, after which we literally rebuilt Britain and formed a National Health Service that David Cameron promised he wouldn’t cut. Of course, you don’t have to cut it when you can sell it off – the process of which has begun for the first time in British history, thanks to the Liberal Democrats-backed Health & Social Care Bill, to little media attention.

While U.S. President Barack Obama tries to introduce the principles of universal health care in his country, over here in the U.K. we’re headed in the opposite direction – and ignoring his largely successful economic crisis recovery strategy of stimulus. The Tories can ignore history, but people are starting to recollect it, and regroup to mobilise against the establishment. Today, on May Day, people are preparing to vote later this week in local elections for councils that have suffered their own budget cuts thanks to central government. The wealthier town councils which, of course, tend to be Tory, are getting by on their vast reserves, while the poorest are hit the hardest.

My city council – Sheffield – was the first one to ever go “red,” that is, Labour. It was that spirit of International Workers’ Day that brought the labour movement together in the first place a century ago to form the Labour Party – to protect the working class mass majority from the greedy bosses and bankers. Yes, Gordon Brown could have done more to stop tax avoidance, and could have done more to re-regulate the financial sector, albeit provoking the wrath of the corporate media, but he did help rescue Britain from the threat of complete economic devastation. The failed New Labour project was always going to be unpopular, and unsustainable, but domestically, what they did was some good, some bad – yet nothing compared to a Conservative Party that owes no explanations to any worker; they answer to different interests.

As Britain enters the choppy waters of a double-dip recession, the Tories are running out of excuses anyway. Their entire strategy – hidden by the premise of deficit-reduction – will struggle to connect to people wondering why they are paying for a bill racked up not by the public spending that Tories endorsed just over three years ago, but by the bail-out of the top-heavy banking corporations. It can’t keep being Labour’s fault in local elections after two years, and it certainly won’t be in the general election after four or five.

I don’t want to see the Tories get elected any more than the next rational person, but if it comes as a result of them implementing Plan B via a u-turn from their raiding of community libraries, youth centres, and community projects, I’d stomach it somewhat better. They may soon have no choice, unless they’re content to win the loot for their rich buddies at the expense of a longer stay in power, hence their rushed radical reforms ransacking the country.

The media propaganda can only do so much – the sleeping giant of a working class is starting to wake up, and the Tories are in trouble, with those navigating them through dangerous territories perhaps now calling out, “May Day…we’re going down.”

Share this:

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

“Let’s take the big money out of politics. I hope Nick Clegg and David Cameron will come forward with their own proposals that say: ‘We’re willing to take a bit of pain too; we are willing to make changes which will make things harder for our political party but it’s in the interests of our democracy’.”

In this edition of What Ed Said recently, we find Miliband making bold promises about the Tories, vowing to defend ordinary people, and calling the bluff of those criticising him for the usual “union barons” link…

With Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in the comfortable position of making first moves on the political chess board, Miliband has matched him move-for-move, with the cash-for-access scandal covered in the last installment of What Ed Said here prompting the Tory leader to publish the names of major party donors he has entertained, putting the pressure on Ed to do the same.

As it happened, Miliband outmaneuvered him: Cameron’s list only included those donating more than £50,000 to his party, whereas Ed included on his own lists anyone giving as low as £7,500. The odious Baroness Warsi – the Tories’ terrier on issues related to workers’ rights – was immediately wheeled out to minimise the damage, claiming the prominence of unions on the Labour list showed that the party “is the political wing of ‘Red’ Len McCluskey’s Unite trade union.” We can only assume she didn’t want to make it an economic recession-era pissing contest of who funds which party: bosses, or workers. And it’s no shock that Ed’s party will have links to organised workers, since they’re called the Labour Party. (The Guardian) “It’s not just that working people founded the Labour Party,” said Ed, “but they keep us rooted in those communities now.” (BBC)

It is in this context that Ed has continued his talk of, essentially, representing the 99%. In a speech to activists in Birmingham, Miliband said: “Labour is changing so that we can change the country. This Government has abandoned the pretence that they can govern for the whole country. They have betrayed middle Britain. They are spending their time listening to their donors, the people who give millions of pounds to the Conservative Party, cutting taxes for millionaires, not the millions of people of this country.” He added, “We are determined to govern for the whole country, not just the wealthy few. They are the values that the people of Britain demand.” (The Independent)

With that, and in light of the party donations scandals while Occupy protesters are calling to take money out of politics, Ed boldly suggested that all party donations be capped at £5,000. The Tories dismissed the whole suggestion. (The Guardian) The Telegraph then moved into action, quickly claiming that the “£5,000 cap on political donations…would hurt the Conservatives three times more than Labour” echoing Warsi’s cries against the removal of corporate interests when workers’ unions working under those interests would apparently still retain influence (God forbid). Nice enough move by the elitists there. Ed’s response? “All political leaders are going to have to make difficult decisions on this,” he began. “When I talk about a £5,000 donation cap it has got to apply to donations from the trade unions. (Their) large donations would no longer happen under this system. It does need to be a comprehensive reform. I am not making a unilateral act.”

Ouch. Not what the Tories wanted to hear – he was calling their bluff. “Let’s take the big money out of politics,” continued Ed. “I hope Nick Clegg and David Cameron will come forward with their own proposals that say: ‘We’re willing to take a bit of pain too; we are willing to make changes which will make things harder for our political party but it’s in the interests of our democracy’.” (The Independent)

As we know, Labour’s massive battle to save the NHS as we know it failed: the Health and Social Care bill went through, carried by the Liberal Democrats towards the gates that opened up all kinds of privatisation possibilities like a Conservative wet dream, remaining as it did the stuff of fantasies even under Margaret Thatcher. The next battlefield takes place all across the country in various communities represented by council elections – and this is where Miliband feels the fight can still salvage something. “I think that Labour councils are now the last line of defence against this bill and they have got to use the public health and well-being boards as a way of trying to prevent the worst aspects of this bill,” said Ed. “Of course, comply with legislation because the legislation has passed. But I think there is an opportunity for Labour councils to stand up for the right principles not the wrong principles in our NHS.” (The Guardian)

Speaking of elections, the Bradford by-election result was reported as a disaster for Labour due to the victory from perennial underdog George Galloway, the anti-war outcast booted from Labour under Tony Blair’s New Labour regime for his controversial views, but put into perspective it’s not such a big deal, especially compared to the local elections. Ed called it “a very bad result but there is a big picture about where politics is and I think people will look back on the last few weeks and say, ‘that was when the Cameron project hit the buffers and this was when Labour had their chance’.” He went on: “Opposition is a long and difficult haul. It is going to be a one-term haul, I am confident about that.” (The Guardian)

Of course, as always, you could be forgiven for missing quotes such as these – because the likes of the Telegraph were busy pointing out that Ed Miliband met with rich people from the City, just as he met with Rupert Murdoch as part of his role in the Opposition. We can only assume they frown as much when David Cameron and his cronies do the same to generate all those generous donations for themselves, giving private functions in return.

Share this:

For anyone who thought the New Labour project’s inner circle had machinated enough the last decade to cause bloodshed overseas, it’s worth pointing out that the current Conservative-led coalition in power in Westminster are happily perpetuating what has long since lost any credibility – that being our campaign in the Middle East.

Forget South East Asia; forget Latin America: the obsession with the oil-rich region is something this generation will recall the rest of their lives, ever since Tory leader John Major went along with George HW Bush Sr into Iraq in 1991 before boosting military contracting with their Carlyle Group who, ironically, would be in-meeting as their TV screens showed the Twin Towers collapsing into their own footprint ten years later, taking only two hours further to pin the World Trade Center 9/11 attack on Osama bin Laden via the irresponsible corporate media who were seemingly only responsible when it came to providing propaganda for the right-wing.

Given the New Labour project’s Murdoch-friendly approach attempting to keep the City wolves from the door after years in the post-Winter of Discontent wilderness, it’s little surprise this strategy continued with Tony Blair as Prime Minister, invading Iraq again – this time with Bush Jr – in a mission bankrolled by the treasure chest of Gordon Brown, who later softened his stance on the “special relationship” and their Coalition of the Killing Willing. Of course, there’s now another coalition of this kind in the UK – thanks to the ConDem government that hasn’t particularly given us much change (though taken plenty from our pockets).

After Barack Obama’s moves towards Brown’s Britain – valuing universal healthcare; aiming for economic stimulus and growth – David Cameron had to do something to assure the press that the “special relationship” was still strong.

What better way than to exploit the deaths of three thousand people on 9/11?

9/11 was said to be orchestrated by Al Qaeda, led by the CIA-trained Osama bin Laden who had been strengthened by the United States in their quest to kick out the commie Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1970′s, teaming with the Islamic extremists to rid the region of red atheist Russians. There, the Afghanistan connection slips away like sand through the fingers – since most of the plane hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis.

So, last month, David Cameron and his wife visited “ground zero” in New York City, laid some flowers at the memorial there, not coincidentally near the engraved name of British victim Katherine Wolf. His words? “Here is the place to remember why what we do overseas is so important.”

That’s right: former public relations man Cameron didn’t just pay his respects for those who died there; he used the moment to attempt to justify campaigns such as the one in Afghanistan which has cost the lives of over four hundred soldiers, failed to help puppet leader Hamid Karzai, and only fans the flames of hatred towards us and our mission of what is seen as Western imperialism. This is exploitation at its most sickening. It is using one incident – and the grief and pain attached to it – for the pure purpose of political gain, in this case attempting to justify more bloodshed for overseas meddling, dominance, and control of resources.

After the Second World War, much of Britain had had enough of such violence and suffering. With the conflict over, the electorate removed Winston Churchill’s Conservative Party from power and gave Clement Attlee’s Labour Party the mandate to rebuild Britain through economic stimulus despite massive debt. And, of course, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson turned away American calls for help in Vietnam while Tories supported what was perceived as the fight to cleanse the world of the communist perspective. The New Labour project took a different approach to international conflict.

Since Brown’s resignation, the Labour Party has further distanced itself from that Middle East mentality that saw it take Britain into Afghanistan and, once more, into Iraq. Post-New Labour leader of the party, Ed Miliband, has stated they were wrong about Iraq, but in the aftermath of such sentiment faces more pressure to back Britain’s presence in Afghanistan.

George Galloway was booted from Labour for his own opposition to the party’s decision to invade Iraq, but took Bethnal Green from party loyalist Oona King while riding a wave of Muslim support. Last week, he did it again with a similar strategy, running in a Labour constituency in another successful attempt to take a seat from them.

The irony of this is that – while many of us cheer on the brave, controversial Scotsman – it weakens the only opposition to the current coalition government led by Tories that supported the invasion of Iraq and also now the current presence in Afghanistan. By supporting such chipping away at the Opposition, we strengthen something even more right wing; we strengthen the status quo.

The Conservatives are damning a young generation of jobseekers, removing welfare safety nets, throwing disabled people off benefits, privatising healthcare – and all the while continuing to do what they’ve always done: fight wars.

The War Party is in power, incredibly able to suddenly find funds to kill people abroad, while people are dying here, and getting away with it. If that wasn’t a PR victory in itself – exploiting the deaths of thousands to kill thousands more overseas – then the “victory” for smaller parties to undermine the Opposition certainly is.

Share this:

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

“It is patriotic to have an active government using all the means at its disposal to give competitive British firms every chance to succeed. That patriotism should be rooted in our knowledge that British firms can and do compete with the best in the world, in the belief that they deserve our backing, and in supporting fair competition so that British firms can make it on to the pitch to compete in the first place.”

In this installment of “What Ed Said” the last few days, we find Miliband calling for a patriotic resurgence in British manufacturing in the Thatcher-induced post-industrial era…

It seems strange to call for a renewed sense of pride in British production, since when you travel the world, citizens of other countries remind you that Britain no longer produces much, just consumes. This is, as I’ve written here before, a result of not just post-war capitalism, but also Thatcherism that sought to replace citizens with consumers. Part of this – as Thatcher decimated industries that had strong unions – was exemplified by the transition from coalmines to call centres in South Yorkshire, chosen for its trustworthy accent.

It is in this area, of course, that Ed Miliband is MP – in my birthplace of Doncaster. In a speech to the EEF, he expressed a desire for a comeback of the British manufacturing industry: “We should not be embarrassed about the need for more patriotism in our economic policy,” he said. “It is patriotic to have an active government using all the means at its disposal to give competitive British firms every chance to succeed. That patriotism should be rooted in our knowledge that British firms can and do compete with the best in the world, in the belief that they deserve our backing, and in supporting fair competition so that British firms can make it on to the pitch to compete in the first place. There are three words we don’t hear enough, or see enough. Those three words are ‘Made in Britain’.” But he warned against protectionism as “what governments reach for when they don’t believe firms can compete.” And he wasn’t just talking about factories, either – calling for “pride and patriotism – infusing everything from government to culture – if British business is to succeed.” (BBC)

Unfortunately, almost every major media outlet (including the BBC within their EEF report above) switched attention to a Radio 5 phone-in where callers were brought onto the air by the producers to attack the Labour leader (callers are almost always asked by the station what their angle will be before being forwarded onto the air). You will be forgiven for failing to recall this kind of airing of abuse at Tony Blair while an overwhelming majority of the British public were vehemently opposed to the invasion of Iraq.

So, you may have missed the crux of Ed’s not insignificant “Made in Britain” speech, because everyone from the Telegraph to the Daily Mail (and, yes, The Guardian, in addition to the BBC themselves) amplified these critical calls on a random radio show and framed them in the narrative of supposedly reflecting ordinary neutral voters – something the polls show is not the case.

Share this:

In my first book I included a prediction that New Labour was an unsustainable election-winning machine that would eventually break down, fixed only by the progressive values that the party was founded upon. That’s what happened.

When Ed Miliband became a candidate for leader of the Labour Party, he was seen as the best hope for a realistic opportunity to take the party back on its progressive course. When he became leader via a total of votes cast by MPs, members, and union members, many of us celebrated. His statesmanlike yet Blairite brother was defeated, and it was the demise of New Labour; time to start over.

As I’ve discussed at length several times here, Ed faced an immediate backlash from:

• The right-wing media: The Guardian backed the Liberal Democrats at the general election, and despite that party forming a coalition with the Conservatives and becoming their apologists, the broadsheet continued to undermine Ed Miliband, as did John Rentoul over at The Independent. But as if that wasn’t enough, naturally the press of Rupert Murdoch and his ilk were pulling out all the stops, too. Christening Miliband “Red Ed,” the right-wing rags focused on the large amount of votes from unions that contributed to his leadership win. All these votes were trivialised as not, say, the will of membership card-carrying workers, but their bosses, cleverly called “union barons.” Unite’s head representative – pardon me, union baron Len McLuskey, had even forged links with a “militant” union boss abroad – Canadian Leo Gerard, who came from the nickel mines of Sudbury, Ontario and has worked to globalise workers’ unions to match up with the globalised nature of the corporations they work for…a scary “militant” if I ever heard of one.
• The BBC: Despite being responsible for one of the greatest media manipulations in British media history when it edited footage of the Battle of Orgreave during the miners’ strike to falsely portray the picketers, and not the police, as instigators of the violence, the BBC’s old school small-C conservatism wasn’t enough to keep at bay constant claims by the right-wing media (as in, all the rest) that they were too “left-leaning” (which, as many media groups and experts will tell you, is a fabrication). So, they’ve only aided and abetted their more unashamed right-wing counterparts in framing the Credit Crunch™ as something related largely to Labour rather than Thatcherite financial deregulation, and presenting the cuts as part of TINA* instead of an ideological quest to sell off everything no matter the cost (as per Tory policy since Thatcher).
• The Blairites: Furious that their boy David Miliband had been pipped at the post in the last moments of the race to be leader, Ed was soon surrounded by those from the inner circle who clung to New Labour’s broken legacy and all the big business opportunities it opened up for them as individuals post-retirement. Lord Sainsbury even pulled his party donations because of Ed’s leadership. Their feeding of the negative news stories about him via their think tanks was only part of the action taken to stop Ed from listening to mass majority of progressives who comprise the grassroots base of the political party. To assuage their fears right away, he made Alan Johnson, not Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, despite the fact everyone knew two Eds was better than one. However, Balls got the post later on anyway, and the Blairites weren’t happy.

So, straight from the start, Ed Miliband had it made clear to him that trying to pry himself and his base away from the clutches of New Labour ideology that sought to support much of Thatcher’s capitalist quests wouldn’t be easy: he was being bullied into backing off from the stuff that would’ve made his dad proud. But hey, he still had his party members and all the grassroots activists to stick by him, right?

Wrong.

They crucified him.

Party members complained about his presentation in public. Bloggers ranted that he wasn’t socialist enough. Citizens in cities across the country blamed him for “allowing” Labour councils to slash services despite their budgets being cut by the national coalition government on high. In spite of the fact he even brazenly spoke at the March 26th “March for the Alternative” organised by major unions and even being cunningly juxtaposed by Murdoch’s Sky speaking over footage of rioting protesters, Ed got nothing much from the lefties besides a bashing. It was incredible. Did they, deep down, long for New Labour? Had they long since fallen in love with their oppressors?

As the months went by, Ed’s language softened. He took baby-steps away from anything that could be spun as reinforcing his “Red Ed” image as all the knives came out from inside his party and other parties, while the press slaughtered him. Few rallied to his side to stand up for him, making it easier for these forces to pile on the pressure to have him change his position further.

The one hope Labour had in a leader considered by undecided voters to be the best bet – by proxy – of abandoning New Labour was, incredibly, actually lacking in support from the reds. With each passing month of his leadership, the armchair experts spent more and more energy criticising Ed Miliband than I’d seen them use even to criticise his New Labour predecessors. In turn, this vulnerability was capitalised on by the media. He was defenceless. He remains defenceless today.

If Ed Miliband actually loses the leadership before 2015, what would that do to Labour? Well, apart from the party resembling the mess that was the Tory Party from 1997 to 2005 and starting a series of upheavals that could last several elections, it would likely leave its leadership position immediately open to a more Blairite politician.

Sure, we all know that no matter what they tell the press, Labour would never wreak upon Britain the kind of devastation done by the Tories at the moment, pay freezes and spending cuts or no – because they answer to a broad base of left-wing unions and community members who forced even the odious Tony Blair to pass some progressive policies. But isn’t it better to stick by a leader who comes from a more progressive position on a personal basis, rather than one doing things for people under duress? Ed Miliband is, on paper, arguably the best Labour leader the party’s had since 1994 at the latest. The Labour party needs a strong leader, but any leader is only as strong as his followers entrust and empower him to be.

So far, too many of Labour’s followers have guided their party right into the right-wing media’s hands. If they want to win the next election at all, they’d better rally round their leader, and they’d better do it fast – activists, bloggers; all of them. While they’re wanting him to stay progressive, in this system he needs all the help he can get.

*TINA: There Is No Alternative

Share this:

Written for La Bouche

I’ve frequently argued that entertainment media needs to be less violent, whilst news media ought to be more violent. The reason? Too often, action genres desensitise us to the effects of violence, and this is too often complemented by the absence of graphic reality in the news.

Take Iraq, for example: most viewers merely saw a veritable fireworks display in the Baghdad skies at the start of the illegal invasion by the Coalition of the Killing Willing. The United States, in particular – after the real downer that was the imagery of flag-draped coffins coming back from Vietnam – learnt its lesson in marginalising media coverage of war. Gradually, reporters were kept at bay and into press pools, for their safety, we were told.

Yet when a Reuters media crew were turned into a press pool of blood in an Iraqi hotel on April 8^th of 2003 – apparently accidentally killed by Western forces – the response (from retired Marine Lt Gen Bernard E. Trainor) was, “There’s nothing sacrosanct about a hotel with a bunch of journalists in it.”

It’s important that we see the effects of war, so that we can comprehend its horror, and only allow it to commence when all diplomatic avenues have been exhausted. Tony Benn once suggested that all war represents a failure in diplomacy. It should never be taken lightly.

Yet still, war is covered by much mainstream media as just a regular occurrence that’s to be almost accepted. It isn’t a horrific outrage, or a scandal in itself; it’s depicted as an unavoidable battle between the good guys and bad guys in black-and-white perspectives but in living colour and high definition (so the fireworks look as good as the male newsreader with plastic greying hair alongside his female counterpart with youth on her side).

But for the Libyan unrest, much of the corporate news media decided to depart from their usual editorial approach.

Let us for a moment set aside the history behind the conflict. Let’s forget that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi vowed his own parents wouldn’t receive a home until everyone else did, and created a socialist Islamic state with free universal electricity, newlywed support, 0% interest loans from state-owned banks, free farmland, greatly improved literacy rates, overseas education aid, strong welfare support. Let’s not remember how the West felt greatly threatened by these, and likewise, Gaddafi similar to so many others like him, became increasingly erratic, dictatorial, and aggressive as the world squared up to him. Let’s not recall how both Tony Blair and David Cameron spent periods of time assisting Gaddafi’s ability to terrorise, no matter how terrible he could be, provided he was an ally.

With such facts aside, we can look at what happened when Libya was torn apart and the usual suspects moved in from the global community (in particular the U.S. and UK, with France on board this time). It followed the modus operandi used against Osama Bin Laden: the assumption that while certain people are terrorists flouting international law, we have some sort of God-given right to then reject such regulations ourselves in the pursuit of them.

Gaddafi was murdered. He didn’t face arrest, trial, or conviction for any crimes committed, just as Bin Laden didn’t, either. Perhaps Saddam Hussein’s much-censored diatribe in the kangaroo court he was subjected to was another lesson learnt of Vietnam casket proportions: even if you’re going to wipe them off the face of the earth anyway, for goodness sakes don’t allow them to embarrass us over our aiding and abetting them when it suited us.

You may have seen Gaddafi’s murder. Yes, in this case, it was just fine to show graphic images of “war.” After being located and pursued by US, UK, and French forces, Gaddafi cowered in a tunnel, clearly surrendering, when he was dragged from it, beaten, pulled behind a vehicle, and then shot dead; his carcass dragged through the dirt roads.

Britain’s Sun newspaper, owned by the odious Mr Murdoch, declared, in all its thick, thuggish nationalism, “That’s for Lockerbie!” Yes, our consciences were apparently clear; he was dead; no discussion, debate, or drawn-out sentences or even analyses were to go on. The bad guy was gone, and we could be self-righteous even in aiding and abetting a horror we demonised him for. What’s most disturbing is that our consciences could be clear at all after witnessing – and, apparently, enjoying – the sight of any human being subjected to those final minutes.

It doesn’t matter that our government has funded, supported, and perpetuated “Lockerbies” all around the world for scores of years, and continues to do so. Murdoch’s national newspaper pushed the buttons, dispensed with shades of grey, and instead remained black and white, and read all over. That’s for Lockerbie? No. It’s one more for the status quo.

Share this:

“Viewers may find the following images disturbing.”

It’s strange how we’ve often protected people from the horrors of reality, whilst peddling graphic fictional films to the public.

On TV in 2003, we saw the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation who hadn’t threatened us, but all the majority of news media showed us was a distant fireworks display above Baghdad, Iraq. The United States were so determined to conceal the flag-draped coffins from view after learning from the public relations disaster that was the Vietnam war thirty years earlier that they created press pools to tell the media exactly what was happening, in The Truth According to the Department of Offense Defense.

One million innocent civilians died as a result of that invasion. Protests continued, but whilst they battered the political credibility of Tony Blair and George W. Bush – with the former resigning and the latter suffering the lowest popularity ratings of any President since Harry Truman – they weren’t enough to outright stop the onslaught. The corporate mainstream media succeeded in predominantly covering much of the military assault as a legitimate conflict, refraining from conveying the impact of a million dead and thousands wounded, amputated, or scarred for life, both physically and mentally. That’s horror. Horror we didn’t see.

I’ve often said, news media needs to be more violent; entertainment media needs to be less violent. On this All-Hallows-Eve, I felt it appropriate to explain why, and to look at the concept of media horror in that context, drawing on something I’ve been meaning to refer for some time.

Not long ago, I was interviewed on the subject of horror films by film and video graduate Claire Watkinson as part of her research into the genre. I was asked to discuss the impact of “splatter” movies as a relatively recent phenomenon and how these have taken traditional horror to the next level.

Gone are the days of Max Schreck’s Nosferatu, or even Bela Lugosi’s Dracula; the suspense of their films or even those of genius Alfred Hitchcock are a fading philosophy. It’s now a culture of instant gratification, where filmmakers are offering chills, thrills and spills, spilling of blood, slashing of skin, splattering of guts, and blown-out brains as frequently as possible, each time gorier than the last.

The genre is darkly comedic in its absurd, throwaway, over-the-top approach, sometimes sort of satirical, but most often not. When they are not making a satirical statement, the dark humour is extremely manipulative in its desensitisation of violence, particularly towards women. Bereft of political/sociological awareness and invention, the aim has been to deliver as visually explicit a violent act as possible, which marks a regression in filmmaking. But there are a few welcome exceptions that offer a glimmer of hope in the darkness, some by both Claire Watkinson herself and my friend Brian Lockyer, both of whom have successfully penetrated the notoriously cliquey film festival circuit recently with their often-experimental indie works.

Even a Hollywood-based female director, however (in this case Mary Harron) has been able to take an utterly horrific, verging-on-misogynist novel by Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho – and translate it to the screen with minimal misogyny and graphic, detailed, gut-wrenching violence found in most films – here, the misogyny was used as a statement about misogyny, and the violence was abhorrent without being blatant, so audiences saw the film for the message it was. In addition, the Blair Witch Project (harking back to Alfred Hitchcock’s methods) utterly petrified many audiences without showing almost anything at all; the viewer’s subjective imagination creating the horror for themselves. This proves that there are opportunities to create horror without this pornographic approach.

It can be argued that splatter films are another form of visceral pornography, a question raised by my interviewer. They say the difference between pornography and erotica is that the latter does not have to be blatantly visually explicit; it creates a subjective sense of sexuality and is not necessarily designed for the purposes of titillation. Likewise, the horror genre works best – artistically and ethically – when it creates room for a more subjective experience while making a specific point. The ability to make a statement, yet allow interpretations to be had subjectively, is after all the height of art.

As time has gone by, there has been an increase in awareness and liberal attitudes, buoyed by the French-driven Situationist International, and this has offered many progressions in the lives of people in society as prejudices have retreated. However, this – in addition to resistance of censorship – has often been used as an excuse to push the boundaries of explicitness. So, while there has always been “violence,” and “violence” in films, the representation of this violence has become more and more literal; blunt; blatant. In some cases it has even been OTT, which has an even worse effect by desensitising viewers to violence (see the “funny” scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega inadvertently blows off the head of a young African-American male without rhyme, reason, or artistic merit other than to lead to the director’s on-screen role in discussing “dead nigger storage”).

There has, again, been a mass-produced method of artistic and creative shortcuts where filmmakers have wanted to pay no mind to political points or consequences and more towards the of-the-moment approach of topping whatever has been done before in the visuals. This is representative of mainstream culture as a whole being, essentially, style over substance.

The irony of this movement was when Oliver Stone used violence in such an OTT, bombarding, almost oppressive way in his masterpiece Natural Born Killers in order to make a point about precisely that, and yet was promptly censored for it. Censorship is dangerous territory; interpretations are subjective, and all violent images are likely to be “triggering” in inducing trauma to some viewers, as well. So I am not advocating censorship.

The art and entertainment world – even professional wrestling – has always been the scapegoat for powers who pass policies harming societies, exploiting the poor, leaving people vulnerable, and generally – when forced to actually look at a cause instead of a cure (such as being “tough on crime”) – a useful place to point the finger towards as a form of “brainwashing.” (Interestingly, they do not accept this argument when the debate turns focus to corporate news and tabloid press – suddenly, then media is absolved of blame or responsibility).

There is a danger of powers calling for censorship of any creative form, because there is such a grey area and it is such a dark road to go down. I believe Heinrich Heine stated,

“where they burn books, they ultimately burn people”

Instead, just as with the “Axe Factor” mentality of pseudo-reality television, there needs to be a serious debate had around why these productions are being made, what they are doing to the culture, and what thought they provoke. When the excuse is “art for art’s sake,” then it’s an alarm bell for a piece of work that serves no purpose and makes no statement, and even dumbs-down the culture – why should this be funded? While private interests are in complete control of these sources of entertainment (moreso now that the UK Film Council has been predictably abolished by the Conservative government), they will bear no responsibility to contributing to society; there will only be an attempt to maintain the status quo and bolster the tried-and-tested studio formulas and reinforcements of the genre/star/auteur selling points to the public. To raise questions, is not a question for them.

So, yes, through this entertainment media, society becomes more immune to violence – for example, against women, or against the poor; one only has to sit with others when American Psycho’s main character, Patrick Bateman, stabs a homeless African-American man to murder him, then stomps his dog to death, to see what people are more horrified by (hint: it’s rarely the homeless man).

Meanwhile, perversely, corporate news continues to sanitise true life horror for us.

In Gaza – when, interestingly, the BBC reported “War In Gaza” while Al-Jazeera reported “War on Gaza” – only Al Jazeera itself had broadcast journalists on the ground showing bombs exploding around them. During the attack on Iraq mentioned earlier, when bombs were being dropped and men, women, and children were being murdered, most news programmes avoided broadcasting such images.

The image you saw at the top of this page was, from all accounts, very real: a photograph of an Iraqi man killed by the U.S. military. Images like that were allegedly used by American soldiers to trade, in exchange for sexual pornography. This is the desensitised culture being nurtured, where everything’s unreal, everything’s a video game, everything’s got a price.

It can be said, then, that desensitisation is inevitable when we live in a society where non-fiction violence is seen less, and fictional violence is rampant. Without seeing the realities of violence or its consequences, what messages are we sending to people? What is happening to the culture? It leaves me, for one, with a heavy heart indeed.

Claire Watkinson’s own horror film, Sitting Amongst the Apple Trees, premiered at the 2 Days Later short film competition festival this past weekend. Her company, Cherry Tree Productions, can be followed on Twitter.

Share this: