FuturePresent

Cruel or Blasé Britannia, or both?

.

A cartoon by Steve Bell published in The Guardian on July 9, 2009 © 2009 Steve Bell 

.

Philip Challinor, wrote the following piece in The Curmudgeon (25 November 2009: 19:34), in response to Cruel Britannia: British Complicity in the Torture and Ill-treatment of Terror Suspects in Pakistan (a report by Human Rights Watch, 24 November 2009):

Flawed Intelligence

A report by Human Rights Watch claims that there is clear evidence of the British government's involvement in the inexpediently enhanced interrogation of its own citizens, and that the British government has thus placed itself in a "legally, morally and politically invidious position". Irrelevances aside, it is not altogether clear what the legal and political consequences might be - the empty suit at the Ministry of Justice may be put on trial, and then again it may not - but doubtless the Glorious Successor will make some effort to smooth things over in the next few days by inquiring after the health of a minor celebrity. The Foreign Office sent out a spokesbeing to give out a prepared denial; representing Her Majesty's Loyal and Complicit Opposition, William Hague huffed and David "Liberty or Death" Davis puffed, while a spokesbeing for the Ascended Incarnation of the Vicar of Downing Street gave out a prepared denial.

The Human Rights Watch report is partly based on the testimony of Pakistani intelligence agents who were doing a crucial job under difficult circumstances and who stated that British agents were grateful that "all means possible" were being used to extract information - accuracy being at best a secondary consideration in the War Against the Abstract Noun. It is not known whether the Pakistani agents were motivated by envy of our freedom and prosperity, or whether they were themselves tortured into accusing the British intelligence services of including the sort of people whose actions Tony Blair would not condone.

.

Ø

.

non-transparent partisan politics and its influences

Shoes left outside Downing Street during the 'Hands Off Gaza: Stop The Bombing: Free Palestine', UK National Demonstration, London, 3 January 2009
This follows a trend began by the Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi (correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi TV station), who threw a shoe at President Bush during a news conference in Baghdad with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on 07 December 2008 (Meyers and Rubin, New York Times, 14 December 2008)

cc cláudia gabriela marques vieira
part of the i heart peace set on flickr

.

.

Last night Channel 4 broadcast Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby, the results of an investigation by Political commentator Peter Oborne into pro-Israel lobbying to Westminster and the media. The programme proved a disturbing document of the non-transparent ways in which pro-Israel lobby groups, primarily the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), flex their 'financial muscle'  and 'exercise their influence' over UK foreign policy and news coverage in the Middle East, in the interests of the State of Israel (Oborne, 2009).

Oborne suggests that the CFI alone (which claims 80% of Conservative MPs as its members) has donated more than £10 million to The Conservative Party over the last eight years. So, here's another case of political corruption. So, what's new? Lobbying, of course, is an established part of the UK political scene. As David Cesarani argues in The Guardian's Comment is Free, the same accusations of secrecy and undue influence could readily be applied, say, to Michael Ashcroft, Rupert Murdoch, the arms industry - and the list goes on (17 November 2009).  Yet, as Oborne and Jones emphasise in another article for The Guardian's Comment is Free, 'Friends in high places', Oborne's is not a antisemitic conspiracy theory:

It is important to say what we did not find. There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy (Oborne and Jones, 16 November 2009).

Rather than breaking news necessarily, the documentary highlights exactly how the pro-Israel lobby is able to yield its influence by 'active[ly] defin[ing] the debate in order to limit the options' MPs have over Middle East policy to those that 'would be acceptable' to the interests of the State of Israel (Sir Richard Dalton, Former British Ambassador to Iran 2003-2006, Oborne, 2009).

The documentary focuses in on just how pro-Israel lobbyists manipulate the 'highest level of British politics' (Oborne, 2009). It refers back to William Hague's response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in July 2006, following the firing of rockets by Hezbollah militants at Israeli border towns as a diversion for an anti-tank missile attack on two armoured Humvees patrolling the Israeli side of the border fence. In a speech in the House of Commons on 20 July 2006, William Hague, then Conservative Shadow Foreign Sectretary, is filmed as saying that, 'elements of the Israeli response are disproportionate' and 'damage the Israeli cause in the long-term'. Oborne claims that Lord Cairns, Treasurer of the Conservative Party, and a leading donor for CFI, was 'outraged and threatened to withdraw funding to the party...no further donations were received by William Hague from CFI board members' (Oborne, 2009).

Yet, Israelis are far more heterogenous in their perspectives to Israeli politics than the more 'right-winged' factions of the pro-Israel lobby would admit. Rabbi David Goldberg (Rabbi Emeritus, Liberal Jewish Synagogue) asserts that pro-Israeli groups such as CFI and the LFI do not represent the views of all British Jews. Goldberg claims that there is an apartheid state in Israel that defies international law on human rights. When asked by Oborne how he thinks the pro-Israeli lobby will react to his 'conversation in this film', Goldberg laughs and says,

They'll say there goes Goldberg, the anti-Zion self-hating Jew again, you know (quoted in Oborne, 2009).

.

For me, the part of the investigation focusing on media coverage of Middle East politics is more disconcerting still. Oborne documents the consequences of the axiom pro-Israeli discourses have drawn between the BBC and The Guardian in specific and anti-semitic, partisanism, with regards to Middle East politics. Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian, asserts that,

It would be a terribly dangerous thing if the British press were made to feel that they couldn't criticise Israel because they'd be hauled up as anti-semitic...It's a very disreputable argument' (quoted in Oborne, 2009).

Yet, Charlie Beckett, former BBC Editor, now Head of POLIS, a journalism and society think tank, a joint initiative from LSE and The London College of Communication, claims the repercussions of suspected bipartisan media coverage are that the CFI exert 'direct pressure, specially on the BBC'. This has resulted in the censorship of BBC journalists, restrictions on journalists' entry into Israel, the banning of the BBC from Sharon's visit to Downing Street in 2003 and Mark Thompson's controversial decision not to broadcast the DEC Gaza Appeal 2009.

.

For an alternative perspective, see Jonathan Hoffman's response to Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby on the CiF Watch website, whose mission is to track anti-semitism on The Guardian's 'Comment is Free': Inside Channel 4’s Conspiracy Factory

.

Today I tweeted the following on @Futurepresent:

@conservatives @DowningStreet @BBC_HaveYourSay How do you plead to Oborne's allegations in 'Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby'?

.

And suddenly, I'm being followed by @HomelandSecNews. In the rare event that there'll be any form of response to my audaciousness, I'll post it here.

.

Ø

.

transience

On the 20th Anniversary of The Fall of The Berlin Wall
The lessons we don't learn from history: leaving a temporary mark on what remains of The Wall, East side, Berlin
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira

'profound whatever'

.

death 1.1
a butterfly in the pool, La Luna, Tuscany
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira

.

I've just began re-reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1985) after sixteen years: thinking about Nietzsche's idea that we exist between 'eternal return' and 'absence of return'. 

If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times...the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht)...Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes [us] to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and [our] earthly being, and become only half real, [our] movements as free as they are insignificant (Kundera, 1985: 2).

A friend of mine, Iain Mackie, introduced me to Josh Raskin's I Met the Walrus (2008), the soundtrack of which is Jerry Levitan's interview with John Lennon (1969). I think Lennon may have had this dichotomy in mind, when he referred to the "profound whatever" (interview with Jerry Levitan, 1969). Could it be that we live in, "a world that rests essentially on the non-existence of return, [where] everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted" (Kundera, 1985: 4)? Or, refuting Parmenides' dialectical thinking, do we exist at once through the 'lightness' and 'heaviness' of being, until the two become ambiguously deceptive. Indeed, from a certain perspective, transience and infinity may be perceived as one, made both of 'heaviness' and 'lightness'.

.

When Nietzsche Wept: Eternal Return (2007)

director and writer: Pinchas Perry
script based on Irvin D. Yalom's When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession (1992)

.

I met the Walrus (2008)

director: Josh Raskin
illustrator: James Braithwaite
soundtrack: Jerry Levitan's interview with John Lennon (1969)

.

Ø

.

transnationalisation v. localisation of culture

The transnational web v. The localisation of news

12 October 2009, 01:27 GMT: Screenshot of a UK-only google search for 'Liberta di Benevento berlusconi bbc'.

.

Interesting search results, whilst trying to find an English-language document of Silvio Berlusconi's speech against freedom of the press at Festa Libertà di Benevento. I needed one for the original post I had in mind, so as to make the story accessible to a big section of my audience:

For the Berlusconi non-immunity cause: tweeting a friend's fb 'What's on your mind?':

"Caro Silvio. Se alcuni commenti ti sputtanao e un problema tuo e, per favore, finiscila con sta farsa e fai carico delle tue responsabilita`. Queste "accuse" non mi toccano e ti parlo da ITALIANO."

This comment is a response to Berlusconi's speech against freedom of the press at Festa Libertà di Benevento webcast on Sky.it. And for english-speakers, here is Reuters' take on what Berlusconi is contesting.

.

So, a search for an UK-only online document turned into an event of contradictory cultural forces: whilst the web is transnational (it evades national boundaries and specificities), 'newsworthiness' continues (politically) localised (why are texts referring to  Silvio Berlusconi's speech against freedom of the press at Festa Libertà di Benevento in any other language than Italian so few and far between?).

.

Ø

wounded

BBC One | Panorama | Wounded
Lance Corporal Tom Neathway lost both legs and his left arm whilst on military service in Afghanistan in July 2008

Image courtesy: BBC

.

Why do we persist in fighting wars no side can 'win'?

.

BBC One | Panorama |  Wounded (Pt 1)

.

Ø

DARK PLACES 001

A screen shot of a Google map of Tyneham, Dorset, UK

.

Recently I've been conducting research for Dark Places, a project by The Office of Experiments. Supported by The Arts Catalyst and SCAN.

On my way to Worbarrow Tout on Purbeck over the weekend, I thought I'd explore Tyneham village, commandeered by the War Office (MoD) in 1943 and uninhabited since. It's perfect for Dark Places. The project focuses particularly on publicly documenting and archiving artefact of restricted spaces (and thinking about the relationships between private/restricted/public spaces).

In this third phase of my research for the project, I'm mapping the 'touristification' of (and signification of 'risk' in) Tyneham village. I've documented the photos I have so far on flickr and google maps, though I'll return this week to extend the document:

go to Tyneham photoset on flickr

.

A screen shot of a Google map of Portland Bill, Portland, UK. QinetiQ, MoD Portland Bill, takes up the top left-hand land section of the map.

Previous research trips have included a public walk to the Fossil Forest, Lulworth, an archaeological and geological site of special interest along the Jurassic Coast, now in MoD restricted territory. I have also documented QinetiQ, MoD Portland Bill, with Neal White, founder of The Office of Experiments.

The most interesting part of the project so far has been the interview The Office of Experiments conducted with Mike Kenner, an Open Government campaigner and Cold War researcher. Mike Kenner was interviewed for Top Secrets Revealed: Porton Down (2004), a HTV documentary investigating the past activities of the UK Government's Biological Warfare facility at Porton Down, Wiltshire. Mike has released documents to The Office of Experiments for public archiving. Details of Mike's latest research can be found on his twitter profile: @wellbright. More to follow.

.

My current photographic archive for Dark Places can be found in the Dark Places Collection on flickr

This is an ongoing project.

Ø

'none of the above'

an international 'NOA [X]' poll card campaign

note: NOA [None of the Above]

.

.

NOA[X] by citizens of the world is licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 Unported License

.

chaotically,

Ø

THE CHANGING DISCOURSES ON 'POLICE BRUTALITY'

"Tomlinson is propelled forward to the ground with a great deal of force"

(G20 police assault revealed in video, Guardian Unlimited*, 7 April 2009: Scene 4: 31 seconds)

courtesy: The Guardian

 

Following on from 'Financial Fools Day' (FuturePresent Blog, 01 April 09), the latest Saturday Guardian (hardcopy) (12 April 2009) made me return to thinking about media representation of police-precipitated violence.

Now, the questioning of police conduct has long been part of everyday discourse, part of long-running urban mythology. In Barthes' sense of the term, mythologies are narratives through which we give meaning to the world around us (Mythologies, 1972); in this case I’m referring to folk mythologies of police violence reflecting the power structures in society over time. Like all mythologies, these are partly attuned to, and partly out of tune with, actuality. Not least because the police are not a mass, but constituted by individuals with different temperaments, albeit individuals adhering to macro, formal laws and codes of conduct, and micro, informal systems of practice.

Certainly, police violence is part and parcel of the discursive territory of, say, The Stop the War Coalition (see Edwards, 'London Demonstration to Protest the Police Attack on Ian Tomlinson', Manchester Stop the War Coalition, 08 April 2009, for a pertinent example of this) and currently prominent within the blogosphere (see Bristle’s Blog from the BunKRS). However, critical perspective on 'Operation Glencoe' (the £7.5m G20 security strategy, supported by six police forces) has bled out notably to the mainstream media over the last two weeks. In context with the YouTube docs tweeted by @guardiantech: G20 protest footage: police v demonstrators ('Financial Fools Day', FuturePresent Blog, 01 April 09: comments) and the G20 police assault revealed in video (Guardian Unlimited, 7 April 2009), the front-page and follow-up double-page spread in this Saturday Guardian (hardcopy) (12 April 2009), precipitated by Ian Tomlinson's contentious and premature death after the G20 London demo, concretise what seems to me to be an unprecedented transformation in the representation of police conduct. The Guardian Unlimited's G20 coverage overall indicates the disproportionate focus on police violence at the G20 protests in London.

The Guardian are not unique here: mainstream news sources as diverse as BBC News and The Times have expressed concerns over G20 police tactics. However, it seems to be the case that The Guardian's is a much more extensive critique of 'Operation Glencoe'; it is certainly the case that the angle of media reportage changed significantly pre-and-post demos. The screenshot below of the first page of an archive search of Times Online for 'G20 + police + violence' indicates the nuanced change in reportage between 28 March and 11 April 2009.

 

The Times Online: 'G20 police violence ' archive search

28 March - 11 April 2009

CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE FOR A FULL-SCALE VERSION

 

To my mind, these kinds of documents are long overdue. From an anecdotal perspective, I was impressed by the serenity and support of the police in the main anti-Iraq-War demo in London in 2003. Yet, to say I was ‘impressed’ already tells of my pre-conditioning by folk mythologies of police violence. Certainly, these mythologies were concretised by my experience of the police when I participated in the march through Brighton attempting to deliver a petition calling for the closure of the EDO MBM Factory (Home Farm Business Park, Brighton, UK) to Brighton Town Hall. EDO MBM was a prominent link between the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and Brighton and Hove City Council, ironically, the first council in the UK to be awarded United Nations Peace Messenger City status. Protestors were blockaded in North Street (some streets away from Brighton Town Hall) by police. Effectively, the police curtailed our right to petition our own council peacefully (for a non-anecdotal perspective, see Eccles, Police hold line against peace marchers, The Argus, 18 September 2006).

Alternatively, in my little town of Wimborne, the police have instilled in me a sense of trust. Though the ‘bobby on the beat’ has long disappeared even from my town, from my experience, there is an air of calmness associated with local police, as they ride around, often on their bicycles, often in a pastoral, rather than disciplinary, role. Then again, I live in the kind of town where some people continue to take the risk of leaving their doors and cars unlocked. Occasionally, this turns out to be a foolish decision but, more often than not, there are no repercussions. Recently, my car wing mirror was broken overnight by two youths, who seemed to have used the roads in my vicinity as their destructive playground. A friendly policewoman informed me of the crime early the next morning, before I’d even noticed the damage to my car. The youths had already given themselves up. This was followed by police phone calls every other day updating me of the process of prosecution. The police solution was one of ‘restorative justice’, by which I mean that we, the victims of the crimes, were involved in defining a non-custodial punishment for the youths. Other local police mythologies range from the bobby who walked a friend of mine home hand-in-hand after my friend had decided erroneously that  ketamine would be his drug of choice for the evening, to another arrested agressively for just walking down the street.

My point is that sometimes the police fall foul of the law themselves, sometimes not. My point is that, from my perspective, media reportage of demos generally has all too often tended to demonise demonstrators and reify police. My point is that representations of the G20 protests in London amongst certain media factions seem to be breaking this mold in the most unabashed of discourses. My friend, Daniel Cox, noted that this may signal a lingering left-of-centre-media post-2003-Anti-War-Demos-got-us-nowhere-resentment (this is epitomised, for example, in Pidd, We marched then...But what now?, Guardian Unlimited, 22 April 2005). Daniel tempered my optimism by reminding me that we're far, far off from the likes of The Daily Mail tapping into this discursive shift. Notwithstanding, the moderated Mail Online News Board on 'How well did the Police handle the G20 protests?' reveals a more complex demographic than the one one may define instinctively as the readership of The Daily Mail. Some of the comments, of course, are right on the mark. Here are two contrasting viewpoints:

 

"Well it was obvious that the man [Tomlinson] was no threat, he was just walking past with his hands in his pockets, maybe leaving the demo? I think that policeman should have spoken to the man first to see if he was going to make toruble!"

saarp a.k.a. Barbara Magill, South Africa

"Absolutely they [the police involved] should be prosecuted and fired immediately.

If it were Muslims demonstrating, they'd be running backwards, and ignoring the verbal abuse from them - oh, they've already done that!"

charlottenc

 

The complexity of discursive currents is highlighted by the sponsored links on the archive search page of The Times Online featured above: from Christian Khan Solicitors advertising for 'advice on legal actions against the police', to The US Department of Sate's America.gov's Alternatives to Violence [sic], to Assured Risk Strategies' G20 March Security consultancy service, to (some twisted humour evident here) Violent Cop on lovefilm, cash-ins on this latest news agenda item are rife. Almost enough for me to boycott lovefilm. But not quite.

In addition, any pro-Guardian discourse I may weave myself into is countered further by my distinctive feeling that The Guardian are sensationalising their content increasingly (for instance, see the disparity between the headline and body of this Saturday Guardian's front-page article - Lewis, Pathologist in Ian Tomlinson G20 death case was reprimanded over conduct, 11 April 2009: 1) and falling fouly to the 'cult of personality' (for example, see Allen, Front row fashionistas, 13 March 2009).

 

Ultimately, and in the name of one of their listeners, Richard_SM, BBC Radio 4's iPM asks the most pertinent question of all: The G20 protests. Does the media only cover violence? (Mair, 1 April 2009). The programme "prides itself in [giving us] '[Our] News'. [We] are at the very centre. The show revolves around [our] knowledge, ideas and experiences" (Vallance, Suggest a story, 14 March 2009). As Tracey details, "iPM has talked about Richard_SM before. He wrote suggesting we look at how the media covers demonstrations. 'Tens of thousands sacrificed their time' to attend protests about events in Gaza, but the demos were 'hardly covered'. He contrasts this with the heckling of a military parade in Luton and the Peter Mandelson green goo incident, which were widely reported." (Reporting demos, and all that Jazz, BBC RADIO 4: iPM, 31 March 2009).

 

The thing is: after the current forore subsides, who'll remember anything of the G20 gathering and its counter-discourses, aside from vague lingering memories of two days when British police lost it on camera big time, and one innocent bystander died?

 

 

*I'm ignoring The Guardian's recent rebranding of Guardian Unlimited into guardian.co.uk for as long as I can get away with it legitimately. As the screenshot from guardian.co.uk below demonstrates, The Guardian itself doesn't seem to have yet decided between the two variations (screenshot dated 14 April 09).

financial fools day

Screenshot of BBC's document of G20 demo (Ben Brown, 1 April 2009) -http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7977489.stm

 

For those who couldn't be at the G20 demos (London) in person, The Guardian's interactive visualisation of the demos is interesting.  Ideally, one would have accessed this visualisation, followed the demos remotely, viewed media uploads 'realtime'. Posthumously, it serves as an archive of a day. The photos of the day's events are documents of media re-presentation. The visualisation, a document of psychogeography. The ultimate in virtual tourism. 

@scpgt tweeted great BBC footage of the demo outside RBS offices. To me, it's one of the best documents of political demonstrations. I'd suggest the movie shows: G20 demonstrators' own savvy self-marketing; that interests in media participation outweigh political participation ([read] these are not mutually exclusive); that the police escalate violence (sometimes/often/generally/invariably [delete as appropriate]).

[archive]

Today's work commitments in Bournemouth: participating in the ultimate in HE marketing - a postgraduate open day. Wouldn't have liked to deal with the consequences of attending a G20 demo in person instead. There's irony there.

To mark Financial Fools Day, and the economic crisis generally, I was visited by a bailiff at my home today. Felt invaded. Economic fascism. Illogical.

So here am I writing about it. Part virtual tourist; part media critic; part media producer; part activist. Part financial fool.

_____________________________________________________

PART ADVERTISER

MA INTERACTIVE MEDIA : THE MEDIA SCHOOL : BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY