Showing posts with label Liar Liar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liar Liar. Show all posts
Monday, 16 May 2011
And in the Red Corner... And in the Blue Corner...
This past Saturday I witnessed a spat on Twitter between President Paul Kagame and British journalist Ian Birrell. Kagame was featured in the Financial Times series Lunch With ... (insert name of African politician) in which he claimed that because the UN and the international community (i.e the West) had failed to act on the 1994 Rwanda genocide they had no 'moral right' to criticize him. Birrell tweeted that Kagame was 'despotic and deluded' with a link to the FT piece. Kagame, riled by Birrell's tweet and he immediately responded and you can read the whole exchange, thanks to View from the Cave. What's probably most interesting about this conversation is that it's probably the first time a President and journalist have had such a lively exchange on Twitter - praise be to Twitter for providing a platform for spontaneous engagement which would previously have been at a press conference, a chance meeting or something of that sort... Unlike other world leaders (or former) who talk to no one and probably have their PR staff tweeting news links and press releases like Barack Obama (@barackobama), Nick Clegg (@nickclegg), Jacob Zuma (@sapresident) and Ban Ki Moon (@secgen), Kagame, like Hugo Chavez (@chavezcandanga) actually does it himself and interacts with people.
What was different about this particular exchange is that its one of the few times Kagame's engaged with a critic and it comes on the back of a painfully boring but rosy You Tube World Leaders interview in which as 'Africa is a Country' rightly put it 'Kagame spins You Tube'. It was a PR exercise -soft questions with no further probing from an interviewer who although smart, funny and likable on other occasions, was not the best choice for this gig. Kagame's had this social media friendly Prez rep for a while now (also see this) but after seeing Saturday's exchange the cracks are beginning to show because Kagame's not entirely the affable, savvy guy he's appears to be online. Sure he has his pluses but not where the Congo or political opposition are concerned.
Kagame didn't actually answer any of the questions posed by Birrell about his government's silencing of political and media opposition. Instead it was a slinging match in which the foreign minister, Louise Mushikwabo also got involved. In a rather strange move, she protected her tweets the very next day as if it was an act of self-protection from a threat, but its an act of hiding. Doesn't she know protecting your tweets only restricts who can see them, but those already following you, can still interact with you and retweet your tweets for others to see? Restricting dialogue won't stop truth-seekers and critics, nor does it advance the democracy and openness which Kagame claims his government does, in the YouTube interview.
Apart from a self-censoring foreign minister and an angry President slain by a journalist and a global supporting cast of tweeters and bloggers (:0), another interesting thing to emerge out of this online spat was the reactions of Kagame's supporters which ranged from blind praise of Kagame to the 'British' lack of understanding of the Rwanda situation to censure of a Western journalist for disrespecting an African leader. It goes without saying that the staunch Kagame supporters would say this, but when seemingly more open-minded Africans also pick on Birrell's Westernness and re-buff his use of the words 'despot and deluded' because they're not fit for an African leader, there is a big problem. Birrell's identity has nothing to do with the facts - that Kagame shuts down debate in Rwanda and has had Congolese and Rwandan blood on his hands since 1996 - and Kagame's Africanness doesn't make him immune to being called a despot. Why do we get so defensive about these terms? When people call Bush and Blair war mongers, genocidaires and war criminals there's no problem, but African leaders are untouchable because they're African? Screw that. I'm a previous sufferer still in recovery mode from Afro-centric syndrome; a state of mind which mainly afflicts Africans raised in Africa: we always defend our leaders against Others (i.e Westerners) in the name of Africanness, even if we're defending the wrong thing, because the defensiveness that comes from the Them/Us relation borne of colonialism and lived neo-colonial experience is so deeply entrenched in our psyche. Not so say this is wrong - but there are times when its completely justified and necessary to take up this position and there are times when it just isn't. This incident and in some defenses of the crimes of people like Mummar Gaddaffi, Omar Bashir and Robert Mugabe it isn't. Sorry.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Liberate Tate Shames BP
From Liberal Conspiracy:
Yesterday at the Tate Britain [gallery in London], Liberate Tate (website) staged another of its headline-grabbing performative protests in the Duveens Hall of Tate Britain. A naked man lay down in the foetal position while several veiled figures covered him in an oil-like substance. The performance lasted for 87 minutes to commemorate the 87 days over which oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, beginning exactly one year ago today.
According to the Telegraph: BP spends over £1m per year sponsoring the Tate Britain, the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery.
***
If the London School of Economics could be shamed into cutting ties with the Gaddaffi regime, then the same should apply to the Tate and BP- not just for environmental reasons but for political reasons too. Unsurprisingly it has big stakes in Libya. Up to $900m (£545m) worth of initial investment deals was facilitated by Tony Blair when he renewed British relations with the Brotherly Leader of the Arab Jamaharihya. BP also promised to invest up to £20 billion over the next 20 years, in 2009, at a time when 200 Nigerians were on death row in Libya for immigration offences (and later released after diplomatic intervention by the Nigerian government) while Libyan citizens faced persecution or repression for various acts of civil disobedience.
Following the Brotherly Leader's threat to nationalize all the oil fields, its in Britain and BP's interests to ensure the Libyan revolutionaries topple Gaddaffi. But can the Tate, as a site that hosts creative expressions of cultural and political resistance in Britain and the world (like Ai WeiWei), really be associated with a corporation that operates on a profits before all else policy?
(As for the British Museum, well its a place that harbors stolen items so more than just cutting ties with BP, it needs to return the stolen goods, like the Rosetta Stone, on which the museum markets itself as a repository of 'world history'.)
copyright Immo Klink
see more pics here.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
ConDemtion Song
This is a siiick remake of Bob Marley's Redemption Song by Adynkrah, an upcoming artist worth looking out for. As social critique, this song song provides a fresh satirical take on the policies and behaviour of UK politicians. From Tony Blair's lies, the MP's expenses scandal (ref. to watching pornography DVDs ), government cuts, Nick Clegg's broken pledge that in part, sparked off the student protests of last November, Adynkrah gets it all in.
I hope that this song will make it onto to the protest soundtrack of #demo2011, so when this song goes viral or this lying government falls :), remember where you heard it first.
In DOPE Music WE Trust
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Yeezey Moment on #Sidibouzid
Jacked from Reuters
During the post-Ben Ali power vacuum things seem so unpredictable. In less that 24 hours there have been 3 leader changes and the militia, looters and police are having their way harassing citizens and foreign reporters while witchunts for the most supportive members of Ben Ali's regime are being carried out in haste. It feels like an Animal Farm/Night of the Long Knives situation where Mr Jones of Manor Farm is replaced by Snowball. It happened before in 1987. President Habib Bourguiba ceded his presidency to Ben Ali after a coup supported by the military. Twenty-five odd years later, same thing different scenario. The expulsion of Ben Ali is led by the people but the army and Presidential guard now have control over Tunis, Tabarak is on the verge of food riots and according to one tweeter, @rafik from Tunis: 'trust me people of kasserine,thala ou sidibouzid (semi-arid areas) are unlikely to see jasmine [revolution], and they paid the price.'
This is why I feel it's inaccurate to call this a 'revolution' as though things have changed and to speak of it in the past tense. Tunisia's story is still unfolding. The army wields power against defenceless citizens. Fouad Mebazza a member of the Old Guard has been interim President for less than a day, but some in the ivory towers of Foreign Policy, NY Times and elsewhere had already declared this a revolution past by Friday evening. It's also impossible for them to think that decades of poverty, unemployment, activism, state corruption and censorship could have driven people into protes because it's too hard to give credit to the ordinary people who rose up in solidarity and to commemorate Bou Azizi's death...Wikileaks and St Julian of Assange in Tunisia make a better gospel. It does, doth it not?
For the record, I'm team Julian Assange & Wikileaks, and I'm not mocking him, but those who are desperately trying to spin this as a Wikileaks story. And yes I do acknowledge the role all forms of social media played in this, but I think it's impact is over-emphasized and dismisses the events that took place on the ground and it also fails to understand the process of events on the ground. And there's also an over-emphasis on Twitter, it wasn't just Twitter that people used to send out messages. I've concentrated on the level of public response to critique the notion that this is a social media revolution because often when people speak of social media revolutions the scale of impact is always key determining factor and the fact that no amount of tweets, Facebook postings and You Tube videos got massive global attention yet in comparison to the Iran Green Movement of summer '09 recieved worldwide attention and Neda Soltani became the face of the cause.
This is why I feel it's inaccurate to call this a 'revolution' as though things have changed and to speak of it in the past tense. Tunisia's story is still unfolding. The army wields power against defenceless citizens. Fouad Mebazza a member of the Old Guard has been interim President for less than a day, but some in the ivory towers of Foreign Policy, NY Times and elsewhere had already declared this a revolution past by Friday evening. It's also impossible for them to think that decades of poverty, unemployment, activism, state corruption and censorship could have driven people into protes because it's too hard to give credit to the ordinary people who rose up in solidarity and to commemorate Bou Azizi's death...Wikileaks and St Julian of Assange in Tunisia make a better gospel. It does, doth it not?
For the record, I'm team Julian Assange & Wikileaks, and I'm not mocking him, but those who are desperately trying to spin this as a Wikileaks story. And yes I do acknowledge the role all forms of social media played in this, but I think it's impact is over-emphasized and dismisses the events that took place on the ground and it also fails to understand the process of events on the ground. And there's also an over-emphasis on Twitter, it wasn't just Twitter that people used to send out messages. I've concentrated on the level of public response to critique the notion that this is a social media revolution because often when people speak of social media revolutions the scale of impact is always key determining factor and the fact that no amount of tweets, Facebook postings and You Tube videos got massive global attention yet in comparison to the Iran Green Movement of summer '09 recieved worldwide attention and Neda Soltani became the face of the cause.
Monday, 13 December 2010
Riot Another Day
Although I'm an international student close to the end of my education in the UK, today [last Thursday] I went to the march in solidarity with the home students and also to protest against the fees rise for international students, that is a less-spoken about but very real consequence of the government's yes vote tonight as this new fees structures follow. If international students are paying between £9000 - £15 000 tuition fees in cash per year, what will those of the future pay? And with university funding cuts looming, there will be serious cutbacks in grants to international researchers and fellows who contribute immensely to global academic development and research.
Anyway, I got to Trafalgar Square at about 3 p.m and there wasn't much happening there so I walked down through St James's Park to try and get to Parliament Square, but the police had formed a human barrier so there was no way I or any of the other students milling about, could get in there. One officer suggested going round the other end to see if it was open. A disparate group of about thirty of us went and happened to meet up with a larger group of protesters (maybe 300), so we marched with them to Westminster Abbey. Upon arrival the police were already shouting 'get back get back' while those on mounted horses looked on. As we got closer there were scuffles between officers and protesters, admittedly some protesters did incite the police by shoving them and shouting abuses, but the police response was disproportionate, heavy handed and aimed at everyone. There were several times I could have been struck, despite the fact that I wasn't standing on the frontlines or mouthing off. It was a tense scene but we continued chanting and dancing to music for about half an hour then decided to find another way into Parliament Square as the police weren't letting us through.
This part of the march was kinda fun, it was like a cat n mouse game - every time the police appeared to be on the approach those at the back would blow a whistle and we ran through the streets shouting 'Whose Streets, Our Streets', Twitter was also quite good because people would post messages of where not to go or where to go. In the end we got kettled though but this came out of the blue because at that time people were chanting and some dancing to music. Like cowards, they snuck up from the back all suited up in riot gear and some on horses - all this to control an at the time, non-violent crowd. As if on cue, people fought back and threw punches that landed on the police's shields and protective headgear. Police on foot would repeatedly charge into the unarmed crowd with baton sticks in hand and force people to move backward. The more they did this is, the more irate protesters got and retaliated with some picking up the kettling fences and throwing them at the police which wasn't a wise move, because it only made the cops respond with even more violence. (Looking back at some of the pictures, I wonder if some people had been hired to stir-up trouble. It's just my feeling, but I think some people were there for the trouble not the protest. I have no proof at all, but I'm writing this here in case it can be proven, somebody post a comment below.)
I didn't want to caught up in anything so I moved to the outskirts of the crowd that was marshalled by mounted officers, but I got scared by one of the horses when I was backed up by a wall and in that moment there's absolutely nothing one can do, but pray that horse doesn't go beserk. The last thing on my mind was moving but a mounted police woman saw me by the wall and instead of telling her colleague to move, she kept shouting at me 'keep moving keep moving!' I didn't respond and I didn't move. She came towards me, still shouting at the top of her voice until I finally said, 'I can't move' and pointed to the horse in front of me. But she was insistent saying 'you can, you can, move!', this went on for about 3 minutes till the male officer on the blocking horse moved on. It was scary being caught up in that. If I were a guy and wasn't such a pain-phobe, I might have swung a punch at one of the footed officers as revenge because I was scared but also very pissed off after that.
Inside the kettle people were lighting flares, chanting and the mood was good some of the youngest protesters I met in the kettle were about fifteen and this was the second time that some of them had been kettled, I felt sorry for these kids especially when overhearing one officer ask another of his colleagues if there were any young kids and if they would be let out, his colleague simply shrugged his shoulders and went about his business. Perhaps students and parents should petition the government to bring in a no under 16 rule for kettling - if kids as young as 15 were held on Westminster Bridge until midnight, what does that say about a supposedly progressive nation's opinion of children and respect for human rights .The younger kids are normally not the violent ones - check the videos on The Guardian and BBC websites of all the protests if you don't believe me, I challenge you to post a link of a video where you see mobs of 12-15 year olds smashing up anything. There's no reason why they should be kettled. I asked one officer why we were being kettled and he said 'I don't know we just got orders' and he suggested I write to the IPCC to make a complaint. I will be writing to them and so should anyone who feels the same way. There was one officer who was pretty decent, he explained why we were being kettled and the law to we'd violated, he said 'I don't wanna be here here just as much as you and I don't wanna do this but I have to. I'd rather be at home with my kids.' He then asked about the vote and I didn't know what the result was and he said he'd hoped we'd won. I guess he knows his own kids' future is at stake too. I managed to get out of the kettle after seven, the police were letting out only two people at a time and me and a journalist from Amnesty International (judging by his press pass) got out because the officer said we looked like 'reasonable people'. I consider myself very fortunate to have been let out, but as I walked down to Victoria station, I felt guilty having left others there, especially after hearing that people were kettled up until after midnight.
As for Camilla and Charles, they got caught up in the moment, and this is the first time in a very, very long time that Brits have attacked the royal family - and for these students it wasn't because they were anti-royalist but because Charles and Camilla represented the establishment and birthright of privilege and they appeared at a moment when news of the lost vote (voted for by millionaires and inheritors of trust funds) and police brutality had upset enough people. While Charles and Camilla have the right not to be attacked and it wasn't wise move to poke Camilla in the ribs, I don't understand why that and Charlie Gilmour's picture swinging from a flag on the Cenotaph has dominated the news so much. There were dozens of injured protesters and officers, but their stories didn't make it to the headlines.
On Twitter Gilmour and Cenotaph have trended for two days, yet not once did Alfie Meadows make it on the trendlist - both tell very different but related stories of the protests. For me, Charlie Gilmour's image is a great picture, not because he's Pink Floyd's son, but it's a money shot, it's better than the Charles and Cam one aesthetically speaking so, kudos to the photographer. Beyond the aesthetic, swinging on the Union Jack against a national monument is the ultimate symbol of defiance and disregard for enforced collective remembrance of soldiers who died at war. Of course I'm sorry that people had to lose their lives on the battle fields, but the constant hero worship of Britain's wars is lost on me sometimes. The Cenotaph swinger and the paintballed Winston Churchill images symbolize a disaffected and frustrated youth who are the alter-face to the millions of young people who've been drafted to fight in wars not of their own making. Did the youth who lived through all of Britain's wars not stand up to their government in protest to the war and 'vandalise public property'? History looks back on these young people as heroes of their time and today when a young person does something albeit mischieveous, but anti-establishment, the Prime Minister and all his co-signers and war romanticists are frothing at the mouth calling for Gilmour's head and the other 'feral anarchists.' For what e.x.a.c.t.l.y? Having the guts to say f- the system? Pissing on a statue and swinging from a flag? How can symbols, slabs of concrete, be more staunchly defended than the future of higher education and research? Should the police have come down so hard on Gilmour, the pisser and the paintballers that they'd end up like Alfie Meadows in need of brain surgery after being bludgeoned, is that what people want to see? Or perhaps it's so they wouldn't have to hear of student 'hooliganism' and they can congratulate The Met on a fine job while the story of Alfie Meadows gets pushed away further and further from the headlines. Camilla got a poke, Alfie got truncheoned, but the Camilla and Charles story dominates the news because they are famous people and Alfie is not. That is all.
Alfie Meadows
Winston Churchill may be Britain's hero, but he is not my hero. As an African, I see Churchill as belonging to the imperialist establishment and he was a supremacist who made sure Africans from Sudan to South Africa would submit to British colonial rule in one way or other, so seeing protesters throwing paint balls or pissing on statues doesn't enrage me, in the slightest. It's a little amusing actually. But one person's amusement is another's vandalism worthy of an arrest - even the death penalty for some of the looney right. But I think the bigger vandals are those known as the Lib Dems who pretended to defend education, but changed their minds as soon as they'd made it into Westminster. The physical mess might be cleaned up within a few days, but who will clean the mess being made of higher education by the coalition government?
Despite being contained and the news the coalition government had won the vote, the education fight isn't over, as someone said to me in the kettle that night, this is just one battle in a war. While Home Secretary, Theresa May, child of Thatcher might think water canons are a justified response to the violence, I say bring it on. One water canon truck costs £750 000 or the full tuition fees 83 students funded through uni at £9000 a pop! (Mehdi Hassan) Or the Educational Maintenance Allowance of 580 of Britain's poorest 16-18 year olds per year, or the annual salary of 32 police constables. In this time of 'austerity' and ideological cuts, if the Brits want to pay almost a million pounds for one water canon truck to spray revolting students, I say game on, let's do this! Buy ten if you like!
UPDATE 1: Theresa May's backtracked and has ruled out the use of water cannons because it wouldn't be a popular choice. I'm a little disappointed the government came to it's senses so quickly, a few more giggles at the implausibility of this plan would have been nice. But still it's a good move, it really isn't the 1960s again.
UPDATE 2:
Ki Price said: Just wanted to say thank you to the person talking about Charlie Gilmour swinging from the Cenotaph, I'm the photographer who took it Ki Price and I thought that was a nice compliment.
Thank you
#demo2010
#solidarity
#saveEMA
Pictures jacked from The Guardian (1,6), Indy Manchester (2) The Telegraph (3, 5) Sky News (4)
FotoCred: see above
Please note this post was written over several days.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
30 000 Students Marching On the Streets of London & the Protests Have Been Reduced to These Images?
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state
- Noam Chomsky
Thursday, 25 November 2010
From Our Kenyan Brother in The White House
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
October 25, 2010
Presidential Memorandum--Child Soldiers Prevention Act
No. 2011-4
MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
SUBJECT: Presidential Determination with Respect to Section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, pursuant to section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA), title IV of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110 457), I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA.
You are authorized and directed to submit this determination to the Congress, along with the accompanying memorandum of justification, and to publish it in the Federal Register.
BARACK OBAMA
The above is waiver issued by President Obama casting a blind eye to four countries that use child soldiers in conflict because it is in America's 'national interest'. Chad, Yemen, Sudan and the Congo will continue to receive military assistance and aid from the U.S because these are allegedly terrorist hotspots where child soldiers might benefit America as snitches and such. LOL. Seriously, my Kenyan brother Barack WTF is this? Because America is fighting some imaginary war against terrorism and has taken it upon itself to 'reform' the armies of these troubled nations, it's now okay to encourage the military conscription of children. Really??? Where is the evidence showing that child soldiers are a neccessary force in fighting 'terrorism' directly linked to the U.S? If people in the UK are unneccessarily shrieking over children being involved in student protests what makes it okay for children in the Congo to be forcefully drafted as soldiers? Would it be okay if kids from Texas or Ohio or California were drafted into an anti-terrorist army to snuff out Osama bin Laden from his cave - that is if bin Laden actually exists? Would that be alright Mr President?
Whilst I stand firmly against U.S sanctions against any nation and am highly critical of U.S 'militarydictatorship assistance' to other nations, the logic for issuing this waiver on child soldiers is downright ridiculous. It is never okay for young boys to be conscripted to fight or for young girls to be drafted in as fighters, bait or sex pleasures for the older soldiers. Barack Hussein Obama (insert all totemic titles, family lineages and praise names here), adults start wars, not children and it is governments like yours and the dysfunctional, power hungry leaders in conflict countries that create situations like this. Sod national interest, this is a selfish, heartless move that reflects yet again the U.S's two-faced attitude on children's rights. While there are U.S-inititated global policies to help combat child poverty, the U.S has not ratified human rights protocols like the Convention on the Rights of the Child - only Somalia and the U.S have not ratified this treaty. While it can legitimately be said that Somalia has no functioning government, the U.S does have a government and as a state, boldly proclaims itself as 'the home of the free and the brave', so what gives?
Whilst I stand firmly against U.S sanctions against any nation and am highly critical of U.S 'military
Somalia is one of the countries not on the US waiver list, but both the U.S and Somalia refuse to ratify the same international law. Under the Child Soldier Prevention law Somalia which currently receives help, will no longer get assistance, while the U.S continues to support and fund Ethiopian invasions into Somalia that have left over 300 000 homeless refugees in the past. Cue Crickets at their loudest. (KMT) OTOH Burma, receives no military aid from the U.S so the law does not make iota of difference, so the Child Soldier Prevention law is ineffective. A very roundabout laughable way of doing things, isn't it? Obama would rather have just scrapped the whole thing instead of indulging in more lily livered bureaucracy and waste of tax payer funds. It might not be obvious to Obama, but its plain as day clear to me that stopping U.S aid will not stop child soldiers, neither is issuing waivers in the name of national interest effective in fighting 'terrorism', it's just more of the same ol' faffing from the U.S and this latest faff has our Nobel Peace Prize winning, Kenyan Brother in the White House's signature all over it. Change WE can believe in, yeh?
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Scenes From Yesterday
Fotos
1. Start of the March - Josh Towers
2. Burnin' Dave - Ahmed Peerbux
3. Bonfire at Millbank - Josh Towers
4. Grandad in Protest - Richard Jones
Background from The Graun: An estimated 52,000 people, according to the National Union of Students [NUS], marched through central London to display their anger over government plans to increase tuition fees while cutting state funding for university teaching.
A wing of the protest turned violent as around 200 people stormed 30 Millbank, the central London building that is home to Tory HQ, where police wielding batons clashed with a crowd hurling placard sticks, eggs and some bottles. Demonstrators shattered windows and waved anarchist flags from the roof of the building, while masked activists traded punches with police to chants of "Tory scum".
Extracts from an opinion piece by Arthur Baker:As much as the Tory press (and for that matter Aaron Porter [NUS President], the BBC, and The Guardian) are keen to give the impression that a tiny minority of nutters who “probably weren’t even students” were ruining the march for everyone else, this is simply not true. There were thousands of students in front of the Millbank Building, cheering as windows were smashed, adding their placards to the bonfire.
Perhaps the press simply do not want to believe that any significant proportion of students are angry enough to engage in more than a bit of banner-waving, but unfortunately this is no longer the case. The only moment when the crowd in the square was unhappy with the actions of protesters was when they loudly booed and jeered as a fire extinguisher was dropped (quite possibly accidentally) from the roof, and the crowd chanted “stop throwing shit”
.....As much as the press go on about ‘violence‘, the violence was very minimal. Like every protest I’ve ever been to, thousands of people pushing one way, police trying to stop them and inevitably a few people in the middle getting hurt. I saw people lobbing bits of placards and one or two throwing punches at police, and I saw police clobbering innocent teenagers with batons.
I talked to some students who told me that after smashing into another building they were trapped in by police and – despite not fighting back – battered with battons.
All of them should face justice, but for the record, putting a placard or an effigy of David Cameron on a bonfire is not violence, writing on walls is not violence, smashing windows is not violence and dancing on roves is not violence. Even throwing bits of cardboard placard at police clad in bullet proof jackets and helmets, armed with sheilds and battons hardly seems “thugish”.
The ‘occupation’ may not be justifiable, that’s a matter of opinion, but it should have been expected, and circumvented: 20 police lining that part of the road would have been enough to dissuade protesters.
Finally the question of whether the incident at Milbank furthered our cause or damaged it. One thing missing from the news coverage was footage of the building being stormed by protesters in the first place, why? Surely protesters forcing the doors and surging in would make incredible footage? The answer is that the press simply weren’t there. In fact, the cameras only arrived half an hour after the protesters. On a march of 50,000, until the vandalism started, the only cameras I saw were from LSTV (Leeds student television).
In October thousands of students and trade unionists marched peacefully on downing street, and they did not make the news. Peaceful protests make boring news, without causing a bit of trouble we wouldn’t have been as big news, never mind having almost uninterrupted coverage on every TV news channel and dominating every front page.
What’s more, what cause did protesters ‘damage?’ protesters don’t want public sympathy, they want to create a feeling of unrest, and show that the Coalition are unpopular with the eventual aim of taking their votes, and this protest can only have furthered this aim.
Of course Aaron Porter and any elected representative has to denounce any vandalism, but yesterday students sent a clear message that they are furious with the government, that you can’t deprive people of an education or saddle them with life-long debts without some reprocussions, and people are listening. Who cares if it made them unpopular?
full article: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/11/11/the-occupation-of-milbank-what-the-press-missed/
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Woolas...You're Fired!
Phil Woolas' Hate Lit
Former Labour immigration minister, Phil Woolas has been expelled from parliament, after a court ruled that he lied about his Lib Dem election opponent having ties to Muslim extremists in his campaign hate literature show above in a deliberate attempt to the angry White vote. Woolas has also been banned from standing for public office for three years and it's expected that there will be a re-run for the Oldham East seat. That a politician has to resort to Islamophobic and xenophobic hype to get votes is bad enough, but for Labour MPs to vote him into Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet says a lot about the Labour party as a whole, considering Woolas has a track record of being anti-immigrants (remember the Gurkhas, the tier system for visas and foreign ID cards). Below is an extract from an on-point opinion piece by Dan Hodges from Labour Uncut on this issue:
When Phil Woolas’ campaign took the decision to “get the white vote angry” it wasn’t an aberration. They were deploying a localised variation of a national strategy. When we, as a party, call for British jobs for British workers, or a ‘debate’ on immigration, we are speaking in code. And when the code is deciphered it says, “we think you’re racist, but we don’t care. We want you to vote for us anyway”.
When did Andy [Burnham], Ed [Miliband] and the other leadership contenders develop their keen interest in the socio-economic implications of mass migration? Where are Andy’s pamphlets? When were Ed’s adjournment debates? Their speeches, fringes, seminars? These are senior representatives of the mother of parliaments. If they really wanted a ‘debate’ they, more than anyone, have had ample opportunity to engage in one. We don’t want a debate. We want votes. And frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn where they come from.
When the battle for the leadership reached its crescendo, who did David Miliband wheel out as one of his final endorsers? Mrs Duffy. “This new government is not on the side of people like Gillian Duffy”, he said, “I am determined the Labour party will be”. When his brother had finished his leadership speech, whose was one of the first adulatory hands he clasped? Gillian Duffy’s. Asked whether she thought he shared her views on immigration, she replied ”Most probably yes, it was very good”. Ed’s office said he was hoping to grab a cup of tea with her later.
Pandering to white working class prejudice isn’t the preserve of one junior immigration minister. It’s Labour’s official line to take. Every time the BNP makes a breakthrough, our response is the same; it’s a reaction, a cry for help. People are just protesting against the system. They’re not racist.
The hell they’re not. At the last election the BNP secured 1.9% of the vote. Two percent of the country racist? We should be so lucky.
Friday, 22 October 2010
Tuesday, 19 October 2010
Who Put the Crack in Angela's Pipe?
Angela Merkel, Potsdam, Germany
- Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel
Response: They who, Angela? The Arabs, Turks, Asians, Africans? Who? The Jews, the Muslims, the Sikhs, the Scientologists? Who?
Multiculturalism is a failed project but not for the reasons Merkel points out, she's playing to the gallery because there's a lot of discontent within the party and conservative Germans over immigration. Multiculturalism's like this trendy thing Europe thought they'd name integration as a way of appearing progressive so the EU pressed full steam ahead with policy, but multiculturalism is impossible without first exorcising history's demons and poverty - Merkel needs a reality check. Multiculturalism failed because Germany didn't make it work. Granted it's not an overnight job as the Germans themselves took long enough to get along, but Merkel's not exactly been pro-multikulti or pro-immigration in her policy and strategically distanced herself on these issues so whose collective failure is she talking about? The Financial Times estimates say there's a skills shortage of about 400000 jobs in Germany and but they suggest that this gap can be filled by employed skilled migrants but visa restrictions prevent non-Germans from having certain jobs - so how do people work? Declaring multikulti has failed when you haven't even tried is a bad political tactic, it's evident that resorting to populist rhetoric is def-o a sign of desperate times, I guess the Baden-Wuttemberg 2011election is not looking too great then, Angie?
IMO multiculturalism's more of a Eurocentric cultural project that legitimises the consumption of 'the exotic other' by celebrating diverse cuisines, music and languages, but it doesn't engage people. Governments purposely build ghettos by ethnicity then in a schizophrenic twist embark on projects to de-radicalise 'the other' and pour money into fostering social cohesion to keep things calm...some work, some fail, but at the heart of it: it's the economy, stupid.
Integration supposed to be the aim of multiculturalism but it's really just mainstreaming everyone into the dominant way of life, a kind of inclusive exclusion - thou shalt not wear a hijab or burkha, but thou shalt speak one standard French and remain in your poor, segregated ghettos. When the ship goes down, blame it on the poor and the migrants, same ol' same ol' and there's much more of this kind of populist talk to come the tougher things get.
Multiculturalism is a failed project but not for the reasons Merkel points out, she's playing to the gallery because there's a lot of discontent within the party and conservative Germans over immigration. Multiculturalism's like this trendy thing Europe thought they'd name integration as a way of appearing progressive so the EU pressed full steam ahead with policy, but multiculturalism is impossible without first exorcising history's demons and poverty - Merkel needs a reality check. Multiculturalism failed because Germany didn't make it work. Granted it's not an overnight job as the Germans themselves took long enough to get along, but Merkel's not exactly been pro-multikulti or pro-immigration in her policy and strategically distanced herself on these issues so whose collective failure is she talking about? The Financial Times estimates say there's a skills shortage of about 400000 jobs in Germany and but they suggest that this gap can be filled by employed skilled migrants but visa restrictions prevent non-Germans from having certain jobs - so how do people work? Declaring multikulti has failed when you haven't even tried is a bad political tactic, it's evident that resorting to populist rhetoric is def-o a sign of desperate times, I guess the Baden-Wuttemberg 2011election is not looking too great then, Angie?
Integration supposed to be the aim of multiculturalism but it's really just mainstreaming everyone into the dominant way of life, a kind of inclusive exclusion - thou shalt not wear a hijab or burkha, but thou shalt speak one standard French and remain in your poor, segregated ghettos. When the ship goes down, blame it on the poor and the migrants, same ol' same ol' and there's much more of this kind of populist talk to come the tougher things get.
Friday, 27 August 2010
A Book Worth Burning
Essentially the book is Naipaul's idiosyncratic search for Africa's spiritual core. He collects experiences and stories of faith and belief on an odyssey across Uganda, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Gabon — eventually travelling to South Africa, a country that he says he finds “mesmerising and profound”. But others he also found repellent, such as Ivory Coast: “I found out what was the best way of killing a cat or kitten. You put them in a sack of some sort and then you dropped the sack in a pot of boiling water. The thought of this everyday kitchen cruelty made everything else in Ivory Coast seem unimportant,” he writes.
The book is a dazzling spectacle of original travel reporting by the greatest living prose writer as he approaches 80, fearless in writing about what he sees and feels. In South Africa he notes human body parts made by witchdoctors into a mixture of so-called “battle medicine” for respectable middle-class Africans. Such images inevitably and understandably jar with those who want Africa to be progressive with economic hope for the 21st century. “I am nervous that people see the book as anti-Africa or use it to make some sort of political point,” Naipaul says. By choosing specifically not to dwell on the economics or the politics of Africa, he aimed to gauge what he perceived as the different inner nervous systems of Africa.
“Truth stares you in the face. You just pick it up and write it. It has not been my intention ever to create trouble, even from my very first book,” Naipaul says. He is more weary than wary of his armchair critics. “People who don't travel to look [for themselves] have their own precious principles, which … go beyond observation or truth and if you go against their principles with your observations, they do not like it. So that is the provocation.”
Naipaul is never deflected from what he perceives as harsh or unfashionable truths, however unpalatable. He has airily dismissed the Caribbean culture of the Seventies as “manufactured societies, labour camps”. Tony Blair was like a pirate who imposed on Britain a “plebian culture”. The fatwah by Ayatollah Khomeini on Salman Rushdie, he once joked, is an “extreme form of literary criticism”.
He is also used to the passage of time eventually making him seem more prophetic than provocative. When, 30 years ago, he wrote harshly about Islam as a potent global difficulty, he was castigated as a racial stirrer. Now his view is considered by many as mainstream. “What happens after a while is that what appears so bold, fire-burning and house-destroying eventually appears OK. I have gone out and done the work; that is my ticket really.”
His first visit to Africa was in the Sixties. This book was the result of his travels nearly 50 years on. “This time an unspoken aspect of my inquiry was the possibility of subversion of old Africa by the ways of the outside world. To witness the old world of magic was to be given some idea of its power and to be taken back to the beginning of things. To reach that beginning was the purpose of my book. To go in search of the beginning of things. It is very exciting, was at the time, to feel one is in touch with the beginnings of thought, the beginnings of metaphysical ideas. So that was what I meant by going back to the beginning — probably a romantic idea.”
The fact that there is no written culture in Africa, he says, was “a great drawback”, adding “I talked about this to people in Africa. They did not see it like that. They thought it just one of those little things that would be put right eventually. They did not see how fundamental it was not having a writing, a literature, a past you could turn to. I wondered why they could not do the writing.”
Not that he underestimates the power of “old Africa” but he sees it as limiting. “What they feel is very profound and it goes down to their very being. But they have no idea of history, though. No idea of a past. This is true of Africa generally. There is not a book in which you can see where you were 100 years ago and that for me is very disturbing.”
His soft hypnotic voice unleashes many stings in the tail. “I have been interested in earth religions that take you back to the remotest past of men.The simplicity took one's breath away. Yet profound belief comes from, as it were, very educated people, people with a gift of thought and everything else, and you can't say that about Africa, it is all emotion.”
For Naipaul, the country he found it hardest to get a handle on was South Africa. “I found it a very hard place to have a point of view, and that is half the battle. I became very frightened in a way that I was never frightened before. I felt stymied in South Africa and saw here race was everything; that race ran as deep as religion everywhere. I thought that I may not be able to do this book there. To be frightened was a new experience. I do not know whether it was age or what but it went away.”
Naipaul made his initial reputation in fiction with A House for Mr Biswas but his Noble Prize for Literature was as much for his travel writing as his novels. “There are few rules for travel, for instance, not too much about oneself — you have to be a seeing eye or a feeling mind.” He was intensely curious about the behaviour of the people, and the stories he encountered, and was at times shocked. “The unhappiness that people get caught up in, the women who try to kill their children — all of that was new to me.”
He was very moved by the sight of the vast forests in Gabon but he also saw and heard things there that chilled him to the bone. “There is a bad side, certainly in Gabon, they kill and the kinds of people they like to kill are children — it has to be a child or an older person, children because they are nearer to the beginning, an old person because they are near the end of life. All very sinister,” he says.
Naipaul may have gone in search of faith in Africa but he has none himself. “I believe in the endless processing of experience. My philosophical attitude does away with the need for faith. I also have no fear of death. None at all,” he says.
His mind is still razor sharp — this new book means a world tour — and his career has ben bolstered by having recently hired Andrew “The Jackal” Wylie as his new literary agent. Naipaul says he would like to please him by writing a novel next. But he simply does not know if he has it in him. He has been reading a book about how Oscar Wilde no longer wanted to write after he came out of jail. “His editor pressing him to write was asking him to become unhappy. Wilde wanted to be happy at that stage after coming out of jail. So I am just wondering if for a man of nearly 80 writing another book is inviting a kind of unhappiness on himself?”
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