Bradley Manning and Man of Steel
I was struck by the similarity between the two images and put them together for a Facebook post adding the comment ‘superpowers are for wimps’. The coincidence of imagery seems almost intentional.
Syria
This documentary gives good background info on the conflict. It looks like there has been a long history of repression and violence with roots in sectarianism and economic injustice. On the one hand the Assad regime has been brutal in its suppression of opposition and on the other it has provided a framework of stability for a culturally divided people. While Assad has been heavy handed and his violence has been counter productive the US/UK calls for regime changing intervention are also heavy handed and would be counter productive here as they have been in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. What the documentary fails to mention is that the majority of Syrians, not just Alawites, prefer Assad on at least a ‘devil you know’ basis.
This is a BBC documentary but nothing here justifies, on humanitarian grounds, the rabid insistence of Cameron, Hague, Obama, et al, that Assad must go. There is however an explanation in that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and the US/UK share economic interests and political ideologies that put them at odds with the more secular and socialist governments in Syria, Gaddhfi’s Libya and Lebanon and with whatever Iran is. These powers are prepared to work with the Muslim Brotherhood and Sunni extremists who have no love for them but hate what they see as the Sunni and Alawite ‘heretics’ with greater passion.
These days I’m finding that hour long documentaries test my attention span but we really should give time to understanding what motivates our government to violent interventions and the probable consequences of these interventions.
If a 12 Year Old Can Understand This …
This is a very special 12 year old. His understanding of the political situation in Egypt and the Middle East puts most adults to share. I was amused when the interviewer suggests that she doesn’t even know what a ‘fascist theocracy’ and the kid gives a concise and accurate definition.
As I said this kid is special, conscious and articulate he is performing above the expectation for someone his age. But what he is saying is not ‘rocket science’, why don’t more people in the UK realise that their government’s support for the insurgents in Syria is cynical and immoral?
Perception
This video shows a great little experiment that would be a good discussion starter with a group looking at the issue of racism. Some people fool themselves or maybe try to fool themselves and others that racial prejudice does not exist or is not a big problem. But it is a problem. People, black and white, have a negative perception of black people, particularly young black men. This perception leads to black people being judged as less worthy than black people and being treated as morally, socially and intellectually inferior. This perception and treatment affect the self perception of black people and some can conform to the stereotype which reinforces it.
This week George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin. I wrote in a FB post that:
Maybe Zimmerman is not racist in the ‘classic sense’ but racism is inherent in America is a way that is more visceral and institutionalised that in the UK. See http://bit.ly/18kJoGB and http://bit.ly/13uWk7h. Zimmerman was advised to stop following Trayvon, he rejected that advice and there was a confrontation. True we don’t know the facts of that confrontation but it was Z’s responsibility to keep it from escalating and to keep himself and T safe, calling for backup if necessary. I would say that he was negligent/incompetent at best and the system that puts him out on the streets with a gun needs to be reviewed. This hasn’t come out. Also there is a need to look at the context in which this is happening, the context of inherent racism and that of a police state in the US as discussed here: http://youtu.be/01nSGb6waE8.
It was Zimmerman’s perception of Trayvon that led to the shooting. Trayvon Martin was effectively guilty of being black. The video of the ‘bike stealers’ shows how people reacted differently to the three actors. It is not a stretch to suggest that Zimmerman might have acted differently if a white boy were acting in exactly the same way as Trayvon. I think, too, that the jury that tried Zimmerman would have come back with a different verson if he had killed a white boy
Chomsky – Still Challenging Perceptions.
We’ve heard it before and it is staggeringly obvious. The US commits war crimes and act of terror and the perpetrators go unpunished. But it’s Chomsky at 84 still challenging perceptions.
My Political Compass
“I think in a way we’re all Thatcherites now because, I mean, I think one of the things about her legacy is some of those big arguments that she had had, you know, everyone now accepts.” — David Cameron, Radio Four Today Programme, today.
Source: Telegraph Blog
There has been some discussion in the media about David Cameron’s remark that “we’re all Thatcherites now”. Nick Clegg denies being a Thatcherite saying:
“I certainly wouldn’t call myself a Thatcherite. I’m a Liberal, she wasn’t a Liberal. I’ve always called myself a Liberal, I always will.”
He conceded that Lady Thatcher had brought in some “necessary” economic changes to improve Britain but said it was wrong to suggest everyone has wholly accepted her policies.
“I don’t feel comfortable saying she was a role model in everything,” he said on his weekly LBC 97.3 Call Clegg radio phone-in.
Source: The Telegraph
Sounds like he’s just denying being “wholly” a Thatcherite.
A website called The Political Compass has some interesting charts that map political orientation by answers to a series of questions. According to the site Labour was with the Conservatives in the Right-Authoritarian (Thatcherite) quadrant at the time of the 2010 general election while the Lib Dems were in the Right-Libertarian quadrant. Since then the Lib Dems have of course joined the Conservatives.
My answers to the questions on the website make me a Left Libertarian, apparently more Left than any of the named parties and a little more Libertarian that the Greens who are in the same quadrant:
Maybe I should vote Green if that’s where my ‘political compass’ leads. While I’m now very cynical about Parliamentary Democracy, it’s the system that we have and can’t be completely abandoned as a tool for change. This broadcast by the Greens comes across as very genuine:
They are certainly worth looking at. More information on the Greens at the Bright Green website.
Thatcher’s Legacy
I saw this succinct comment on Thatcher’s legacy in a post by Simon Emmerson (I don’t know him) on Facebook. Very well put:
When a political leader dies it becomes compulsory to lie about their record.Â
She won three elections, each with a lower percentage of the vote than all previous post-war Tory victories. She never gained the support of more than a third of eligible voters. She won her second and third elections because a section of the Labour Party split off to form the SDP and the two squabbled over second place. I am happy to say I was part of the two third majority who didn’t vote for her.Â
It’s said that Thatcher restructured the economy and made British capitalism competitive. She didn’t restructure anything. Restructuring would have required a plan, which was anathema to her. Instead, she simply destroyed. Between 1980 and 1983, capacity in British industry fell by 24 percent. Unemployment shot up, eventually topping 3 million. Thatcher effectively shut down British manufacturing, much of it forever. In its place, she turned to the banks and the City, making their wildest dreams come true with the financial ‘Big Bang’. We know how that ended.Â
It’s said that Thatcher restored law and order. She didn’t. Crime increased by a staggering 79 percent under Thatcher.
It’s said Thatcher stood up for freedom and democracy in the world. She didn’t in South Africa, where she opposed sanctions against apartheid and called Nelson Mandela a ‘terrorist’. She didn’t in Chile, where she supported the murderer and torturer Augusto Pinochet. She didn’t in Cambodia, where she gave support to the Khmer Rouge, of all people.Â
It’s said that Thatcher’s greatest free market legacy is privatisation. It isn’t. Thatcher’s privatisations did not create competitive free markets. Instead, the government went for as much money as it could get by selling off public assets in big, monopolistic lumps. The cash came in handy for the chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who used it to claim he had balanced the budget in 1988. But the legacy is one of parasitic cartels, like in the energy sector, where a few big companies are free to bleed customers dry.Â
It’s said that Thatcher created a ‘property-owning democracy’ through the sale of council houses. But this led to a chronic shortage of social housing which has pushed up house prices.Â
It’s said that Thatcher ‘rolled back the state’. But, with the exception of the economy, where the state did retreat, Thatcher’s government intervened in areas of British society like none before it. It imposed draconian laws on one particular type of voluntary organisation – trade unions.
She told the truth later in life when she said that her legacy was New Labour. In so many of her other goals, she failed.Â
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did more to institutionalise Thatcherism than the woman herself. Before New Labour, in the early 1990s, in the midst of a recession, it was a truism that Thatcherism had been an economic failure. The fact that many of the myths discussed here have been revived is in large part due to New Labour.
Stones and Glass Houses
The story is about the tweets of a 17 year old ‘Police Youth Commissioner’, one of those token jobs set up so that the System can boast that they are listening. The picture comes from The Daily Mail which asks:
Is this foul-mouthed, self-obsessed Twitter teen really the future of British policing? Youth crime tsar’s sex and drug rants
Paris Brown, 17, boasted about her sex life, drug taking and drinking
In one Tweet she wrote: ‘I really wanna make a batch of hash brownies’
And she also said: ‘Everyone on Made in Chelsea looks like a f****** fag’
Appointed to change perceptions of young people
Keith Vaz MP says she must be removed from her £15,000 post immediately
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305118/Paris-Brown-Is-foul-mouthed-self-obsessed-Twitter-teen-really-future-British-policing.html#ixzz2Pyg0j7XE
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I posted this comment on Facebook. Reposting here because of some thoughts on social media that are worth following up.
Paying a 17 year old £15000 to ‘represent young people’s views on policing’ seems pretty stupid but the demonizing of this young woman is unfair and an example of media hypocrisy. Her comments are not ‘deeply racist’ or ‘deeply homophobic’ they are ‘superficially racist and homophobic’ and connote impoliteness rather than hatefulness. I know what hateful racism is and this is not what Brown expresses. Her tweets offend aesthetic rather than moral sensibilities and it’s important to distinguish between the two.
Then there is the nature of social media. I use Facebook and blog and post to forums, I don’t really ‘get’ Twitter but I understand that the new social media, in general, facilitates a kind of ‘brain dumping’; you say what’s on your mind without a lot of self censorship. Some of us self censor because we want to appear intelligent but we can all say things that are going to make us look stupid or are going to be misinterpreted by others and this doesn’t just apply to the younger generations. I’m not sure that this is a bad thing; there is a sense in which brainstorming rules apply and a key rule is don’t be afraid to say stupid stuff because if you’re inhibited, you’re likely to miss some really creative ideas. The thing is that when we get into social media we, to greater or lesser extents, agree to ‘glasshouse’ our minds and for any of us to be safe we need to stop throwing stones.
Rebecca Meredith writes in the Huffingdon Post:
Everyone loves social media – and everyone makes mistakes – but we should probably start reminding teenagers that saying horrific things on the internet will be viewed exactly the same way by employers, and by society, as saying them in person.
‘Horrific’ is ridiculously strong for what Brown wrote and possibly employers and society need reminding that saying something on the Internet is not and should not be viewed as the same as saying it in person to a person.
Richard Stallman and the Free Software Movement
http://youtu.be/uFMMXRoSxnA
Stallman is interesting. Admire his patience with the interviewer in this vid. Consumption is political.
Propaganda
http://youtu.be/6NMr2VrhmFI
I found this video on Films for Action. It claims to be a perspective on the West by North Koreas. I think there is some dispute about that but it comes across as a good ‘outside the culture’ perspective.
Another ‘outside perspective’ is given by David Icke in his Oxford Union talk:
http://youtu.be/MCwAcJ78a8A
Both these films are long and say much the same thing but I found them worth watching. Icke is often dismissed because he sometimes talks about quite outre things but he does a good job in opening many people’s eyes to the ‘Matrix’.