A different reading of this song…a highly sensitised microphone, hooked up to a massive amp & speaker. It can pick up the slightest noise, even from far away and every signal can cause catastrophic feedback that destroys the entire system. So to survive it must be wrapped in protective, dampening insulation, making it not much use for its intended purpose but it means it can function to a limited degree. Or it can be switched off.
In other words, there are conditions under which we can be more altruistic, more generous, and more aware. But those conditions are killed by the act of purchase, of engaging with the world and its problems as if those problems were commodities, rather than political challenges that will be solved not by shopping, but by civic engagement.
Can be seen on YouTube here.
PS. Guardian on it (& Lorna Fitzsimons from a while back).
Via Otto @ IKN, Council on Hemispheric Affairs:- Unsettling Revelations Regarding U.S. Lease of Colombian Military Bases
It emphasizes the “opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America” against threats not only from drug trafficking and guerrilla movements, but also from “anti-U.S. governments” in the region.
…Palanquero is already Colombia’s largest military base and one of the most advanced in Latin America. Leasing this Colombian facility would provide the U.S. Air Force with “access to the entire continent.” According to the budget justification, the planned structural and operational improvements are intended to “leverage existing infrastructure to the maximum extent possible, improve the U.S. ability to respond rapidly to crisis, and assure regional access and presence at minimum cost.” The upgrade is also intended to “increase [the U.S. Air Force’s] capability to conduct Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR).” Within this budget justification, stated interests in counternarcotic and counterinsurgency operations within Colombia are sidelined in favor of promoting strategic military and security throughout the hemisphere.
The Change and Hope of the Empire is to reverse the Bush regimes lacklustre attention deficit on Latin America and a return to…well let’s just say senior Democrats are probably making sure torture equipment is fully represented in their stock portfolios, after all the Attorney General when a highly paid corporate lawyer chose to represent Chiquita to reduce its exposure to punishment from guilt for involvement with terrorism is now overseeing the trial Inquisition of a man water boarded 183 times. And that’s domestically so once out of the glare of domestic media and voters, SOA/WHINSEC graduates will ensure Uribe clings on to power and offers other lucky countries the chance to also enjoy a return to death squads and torture dungeons or as Wall Street will term it- investment opportunities!
Congratulations to The Unapologetic Mexican (scroll down to donate to his scholarship fund) for his selection to the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, just looking at the roster of recipients shows a magnificent challenge to the dominant white-male-corporate-media.
They work or hail from 24 countries across the five major continents. They investigate and write news reports, create documentary films and viral videos, and among them are up-and-coming pioneers of Internet journalism. Many of them do that through multiple forms of media. They hush the imposed silences from above and make the voices from below heard. They are aged 18 to 65, from diverse economic, social, political and demographic backgrounds. And each one’s experiences are compelling and unique.
Maybe the massive opposition to the Afghan occupation is getting through-
Gordon Brown tonight raised the prospect of agreeing a timetable for international withdrawal from Afghanistan, in a speech in which he claimed that almost half of al-Qaida’s leadership had now been killed. Brown said he hoped a UN- sponsored London conference in the new year would set a timetable for a transition to Afghan security forces taking charge of their own country.
Delivering the traditional prime minister’s foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in the City of London, Brown said the damage already inflicted on al-Qaida gave international forces the chance to set a timetable for pulling out.
But we are used to his talk by now, what of actions-
President Barack Obama on Sunday told Myanmar’s junta to free pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during an unusual face-to-face interaction with a top leader of the ruling military. Obama delivered the strong message during his summit with leaders of 10 Southeast Asian nations, which included Myanmar Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that Obama called on Myanmar to free his fellow Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and end oppression of minorities.
“Obama brought that up directly with that government,” Gibbs said, indicating that the president addressed Thein Sein. For decades, Western governments have avoided direct contacts with leaders of Myanmar because of the regime’s poor human rights record and suppression of democracy. A joint statement issued after the summit — the first ever between a U.S. president and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — devoted a paragraph on Myanmar, a major irritant in relations between the two sides. But the statement did not call for the release of political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, who has spent 14 of the last 20 years under detention by the military regime. It only urged Myanmar to ensure that the elections it intends to hold in 2010 are “conducted in a free, fair, inclusive and transparent manner.”
However, a direct appeal from Obama carries more weight as he is the most powerful leader to have conveyed the message directly to a top Myanmar official. Thein Sein did not address leaders’ concerns about Suu Kyi, said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. “We expected a bit more but it was not forthcoming. We hope (democracy) … in Myanmar will become a reality sooner than later,” he told reporters. He said a reference to Suu Kyi was not included in the statement because there was no consensus. White House aides said ASEAN was unlikely to include an explicitly critical statement on one of its members, since it would amount to Myanmar criticizing itself. That’s why Obama raised the issue directly in his remarks to the group, said the aides.
Director and star fired from his own movie by producer who revels in commerce’s superiority over creativity-
“That’s why they call it show business and not show art.”
So what sort of person should regulate commercial media? Would your answer include any of these-
*Enthusiastic & highly active member of the Conservative party who in her debut PCC speech makes clear her allegiances to Cameron’s tribe, so press regulation under a tory government, hmm do you suppose it might favour the ruling party while allowing attacks on opponents?
*A Baroness, oh what a democratic meritocracy we have…
*A former Chief Executive of the Advertising Association of who fought to make the media more useful to advertisers (and more hostile to those without a profit motive, y’know, health & welfare of human beings and the planet kinda thing) working with another tory who also worked for News International-
Vigorous campaigns by highly organised pressure groups such as Sustain have questioned the way young people are targeted by advertisers. Then there are Ofcom’s new TV advertising rules on promoting HFSS (high in fat, salt and sugar) foods to children. These already apply to under-nines. Next year this will extend to under-16s.
The advertising of toys to children is widely believed to be the next target for campaigners and the rise of the environmental lobby means car ads are coming under scrutiny too.
So the £16bn industry is hitting back, and the AA is leading the charge. In addition to Buscombe, the AA has brought in Jonathan Collett, a veteran of both the Tory party and News International, to fill a newly created comms and strategy adviser role.
Buscombe says: ‘Political correctness makes us a diminished people: we shy away from what needs to be said. There’s a “PC creep” that has come in. We’re frightened of being misunderstood. This means private prejudices could be entrenched – the classic one is immigration.’ A pause. ‘But we’re getting off advertising.’
Ooh, she’ll be oh so effective when the tabloids stir up race hatred with migrant bashing, won’t she? Collett is being brought in by Buscombe to the PCC-
Jonathan Collett takes up his position -Director of Communications- on 23 November, having worked as head of comms at the Advertising Association for two years.Collett was formerly public affairs manager at News International. He has also been press spokesman for Michael Howard, when he was leader of the Conservative Party.
So that’s pretty well much a takeover of the PCC by advertising, Conservatives… & Murdoch? (also makes the theory that Cameron has agreed a shopping list of Murdoch wants to implement when in power in return for support from Murdoch’s media seem not so far fetched) But really, conflict of interest much? She was a partisan for -right wing- business interests and now sits in judgement on the media.
*Wealthy, this ones sort of goes without comment most of the time, in a country with a Royal Family going on about class or money is such bad manners, but status subtly informs its own biases, wealthy people by and large do not empathise with poor, sick or unemployed people. So the press coverage that attacks them will similarly continue to go unchallenged in any official capacity, added to that she has an ideological enmity for marginalised groups, it’s a perfect storm of corporate business as usual.
So the largely ineffectual PCC will be even more ineffectual under Baroness Peta Jane Buscombe, giving us less redress against bad reporting and corporate bias while at the same protecting the Conservative party, probably as it gives Murdoch most of what he wants. In fact she’s so unsuitable there are already calls for her to resign-
A lawyer who gave evidence to the parliamentary committee investigating press behaviour, today called on Baroness Buscombe, the chair of the Press Complaints Commission, to resign. He claimed she had published what were termed “extremely serious” false allegations against him.
Solicitor Mark Lewis earlier this year, in testimony to the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee, gave an account of a conversation he had with police, alleging that “thousands” of people were targeted by phone hacking.
Buscombe claimed at the weekend that police had been misquoted in oral evidence to the committee. She said: “Any suggestion that a parliamentary inquiry has been misled is of course an extremely serious matter.”
In a letter to Buscombe and to the chairman of the parliamentary committee, Lewis said today: “You have betrayed any semblance of impartiality and regrettably ought to find yourself in a position where the honourable action would be for you to resign.”
He said the discussion he had with Det Sgt Mark Maberley, from the team investigating the tabloid’s behaviour, had been witnessed by two others, including a barrister who was acting for his client at the time, one of the paper’s victims. Maberley told him there were 6,000 instances of phone hacking, although only one case had been prosecuted, involving the royal reporter Clive Goodman, who subsequently went to jail.
“I am deeply concerned that you have thought it proper to criticise my evidence to the select committee without either having the courtesy or the propriety to put the allegations to me first,” said Lewis. “I regret that your failure to act properly has compromised any veneer of impartiality that you sought to create.”
Lewis added: “My evidence was clear. DS Maberly had told me the 6,000 figure.”
Buscombe said she received a letter from Metropolitan police lawyers, which she did not publish or quote directly. She claimed that it said Maberley, who has not testified either to the PCC or to the parliamentary inquiry, was “wrongly quoted”.
She delivered her allegations while seeking to defend the Press Complaints Commission, which she chairs, at a weekend speech to the Society of Editors. The allegations were held back from a previously circulated text of her speech, and then issued as a public statement at short notice last night.
The PCC has been facing accusations of a whitewash, since it refused to accept new evidence supplied to the parliamentary committee by the Guardian and others, which alleged the News of the World was involved in more instances of phone hacking than merely the Goodman case. In a recent statement, the PCC denied that it had been “materially misled” by accepting previous assurances from the News of the World that Goodman had “acted alone”.
Begins to get a bit more sinister when you factor in she covers up for massive spying by corporations that has yet to be properly investigated (of course surveillance creates its own insurance, when you get the dirt on powerful people they are less likely to have you exposed and banged up). Murdoch, Cameron, Buscombe. The lies about Iraq will seem like the golden days of press truth at this rate.
Update: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger resigns from PCC code committee I think like the government’s Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs the PCC is now a very lame duck. It’s a good sign, that some are not quite at the point where we give up all semblance of an informed democracy in order to venerate power and demagoguery.
I so enjoyed this film I have to pass on how good it is. An absolutely brilliant performance by Nina Kervel-Bey as Anna who is the centre of the story as we view through her 9-year-old eyes her parents becoming increasingly politically engaged and the confusion and obstinacy it inspires in her, until she too grows and becomes her own person. But hey don’t let that worthiness put you off, it really is entertaining, with some very funny moments and some touching ones, the mise-en-scène is virtually faultless from the non stereotype 70’s period detail (something British films usually fail at) to the understated yet strong lighting design. Hilariously right-wing critics misconstrue it is a critique of the left rather than a warm and human story of a little girls bewilderment at her parents awakened consciences and activism. It’s directed and co-written by Julie Gavras daughter of Costa Gavras-
I kept the basis of the story, about a wealthy family with a conservative daughter. The father’s from Spain, his sister arrives, and the little girl’s life is shattered. Although I was more at home with Paris than Rome, what struck me was the way the writer talked about that period of the early ’70s from the perspective of a little girl. In the book, the father’s an engineer who becomes a union leader. I changed him into a pro-Allende activist, because my father made a film about Chile called ‘Missing’ , which was the first of his movies that I actually understood. For many French people, Allende represented the hope of a new political system, because he said he wanted to make a revolution within the bourgeois laws. It was something that caught the imagination of the French intelligentsia and a lot of French people went to Chile.
It’s also notable as a female empowered production-
Based on the novel by Domitilla Calamai and written by the film’s director Julie Gavras, it was produced by Sylvie Pialat (widow of Maurice Pialat), shot by Nathalie Durand, edited by Pauline Dairou, costume-designed by Annie Thiellement, cast by Coralie Amedeo, and acted by two splendid leads, Julie Depardieu (daughter of Gérard Depardieu) and first-time actor, little Nina Kervel.
It’s even more enjoyable when you have an awareness of the history as the interpretation through Anna’s experience and family circumstances give it a unique human colour and warmth. Perhaps a perfect accompaniment to this would be Machuca, two boys experiencing the bloody coup against Allende. It’s a while since I saw it but like Fidel it pays some attention to the comfortable middle class lifestyle and the very prosaic reasons why some people might support a fascist dictator just as long as they keep their lifestyle and they can live in denial of the atrocities committed by the government to keep them in fashionable clothes and servants. Machuca does this fairly directly by comparing the two boys, one from a poor slum the other from a bourgeois family who have their friendship tested as the coup unfolds. The Catholic school which brought them together again provides for an examination of the involvement of conservative religious intuitions in the coup and the individual efforts of some clergy to fight the criminal takeover. Unlike Fidel it is not at a remove in Paris so the experience is bleaker, so maybe Machuca first then Blame It On Fidel to leave you a better night’s sleep.
Machuca is also maybe culturally different in terms of national cinema, examining the Pinochet years in mainstream cinema is clearly a loaded issue (although a much earlier film Gonzalo Justiniano’s ‘Amnesia‘ is excellent but almost impossible to see, my knackered VHS copy would be happy to hand over the task to a DVD but none is apparent, please let me know if you have a lead on that), Machuca perhaps uses the children’s story as a way to get to some truths that adults resist admitting. Whereas Fidel does not have that issue and the children’s story illuminates other aspects of resisting dominant paradigms, how doing the right things is not easy on you or those around you. For Anna is Paris it means a smaller apartment and being taken out of divinity class, both of which piss her off mightily which is made very funny through Nina Kervel-Bey’s performance. For Machuca simply his poverty and darker skin gets him in trouble while his richer friend escapes and his family enjoy the fruits of the repression, even the guilt middle class Gonzalo feels is a luxury not afforded to the repressed barrio dwellers.
What both films do is provide rewarding entertainment with real weight to it and …if you can get English speaking children to watch subtitled films they will also give a vitally different view of the world than the Hannah Montana movie, while giving them stories from children’s viewpoints which they can relate to. For adults, the deeper meditations on the costs and rewards of being concerned with social and political justice will gain nods of recognition.
Meanwhile if you fancy Norwegian comedy zombie movies with living dead Nazis erm, there is one- Dead Snow, not great but worth some popcorn, it’s like BNP on Ice!
Ht2 Jay for this, note the, what at best might be called elitist or patrician and at worst fascist, attitude of the pro-war establishment-
David Swanson:- The last time I was on Laura Flanders’s GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest — some Washington, D.C., “progressive” — argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn’t know anything about Afghanistan.
When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don’t know any better.
When I spoke to a philosophy department at a university this month, a number of the professors objected to my advocacy of majority-rule on the grounds that experts often know best.
Let’s set aside for a moment the ludicrous propaganda that maintains that the reason we occupy other people’s countries is to impose democracy on them. Let’s assume we’re imposing the rule of elite experts. Even so, even on those terms, here are some possible responses to this line of thinking.
Admittedly not unexpected, they are using their funding from the European parliament to enrich their party machinery, Searchlight reports-
The British National Party is using money it receives from Europe to support its two MEPs to bankroll the leadership of its organisation. Of the 14 people employed by the two MEPs only five actually live in the two regions they represent and most fulfil national posts for the party. In the latest abuse of the parliamen-tary expenses system, the British and European people are funding the BNP.
As MEPs, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, are entitled to claim a combined £382,000 a year to pay for their colleagues’ salaries. The two share five members of staff, who all happen to be national party officers and only one lives in either the North West or Yorkshire. They are Simon Darby, the party’s deputy leader, Eddy Butler, the national organiser, Emma Colgate, the national administration officer, John Walker, the deputy press officer, and Martin Wingfield, who lives in the North West and until recently was the editor of the party newspaper, Voice of Freedom.
Each MEP also has some staff of his own. One of Nick Griffin’s is Martin Reynolds, a bodybuilder from Leeds who acts as his personal minder. When asked about what “specifically” he does for his EU salary, Reynolds said: “I honestly don’t know”. Andrew Brons employs three people. One happens to be the new BNP Yorkshire organiser while the other two, Adam and Mark Walker, both live in County Durham, which is in a different region. Searchlight has long argued that if elected the BNP would use public money to fund the party rather than helping the people they are supposed to represent. This is proving to be the case.
More.
This is a challenge for those who claim that they voted for the BNP not because they were racist (good luck with that Egyptian river) but that they were not like the debauched mainstream parties. Hmmmm.
I’m sure the truth will out… also notice how occupation meant such crimes would go unreported and continued, wanna take a a guess what we are getting up to in Afghanistan? And what the US does at Bagram? But it’s ok, prisoners can be waterboarded 183 times and everyone will still celebrate the justice™ of having him on trial in New York. Let the Inquisition commence. Meanwhile back to the allegations I am sure we can trust the MOD to investigate-
The Independent:- Claims that British soldiers recreated the torture conditions of Abu Ghraib to commit the sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi civilians are being investigated by the Ministry of Defence.
The fresh allegations raise important questions about collusion between Britain and America over the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners during the insurgency. In one case, British soldiers are accused of piling bodies of Iraqi prisoners on top of each other and subjecting them to electric shocks, an echo of the abuse at the notorious US detention centre at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison.
One claimants says he as raped by two British soldiers, and others say they were stripped naked, abused and photographed. For the first time, British female soldiers are accused of aiding in the sexual and physical abuse of detainees.
The 33 new cases, which form part of a pre-action protocol letter served on the MoD last week, include allegations of other torture techniques widely employed by the Americans, including mock executions, dog attacks and exposure to pornography.
In one of the most disturbing cases, Nassir Ghulaim, a young Iraqi, says his torture was based on the photographs taken from Abu Ghraib. He says he was playing football with friends in April 2007 when he was approached by British soldiers in Jeeps. Their interpreter told two of the Iraqis the soldiers wanted them to go with them to a British base.
When he arrived at the camp his blindfold was removed and he was surrounded by six to eight soldiers, he says. “The soldiers asked us to pick fights with one another, or fight them. The soldiers were laughing and taking photos. The soldiers then made us squeeze together in a pile, while a soldier stood on top of us and shouted and laughed.”
Mr Ghulaim says the soldiers then forced a younger Iraqi male to strip naked and started playing with his penis and taking photographs. When Mr Ghulaim refused to fight, a soldier kicked him hard on his back and he fell on the floor. “A soldier started hitting me with a baton on my knees and used an electric baton on various parts of my body,” he adds. After three days of detention, Mr Ghulaim was freed without charge.
Hussain Hashim Khinyab, 35, who has three children, was arrested in April 2006. He claims that he was badly tortured at the British camp at Shaaibah and later sexually abused by female personnel. He alleges that when he was moved from solitary confinement to the camp’s detention halls he saw male and female soldiers engaging in sexual intercourse in front of the prisoners. He says this was done to deliberately humiliate the inmates.
In May 2003, a 16-year-old Iraqi was among a group of Iraqis taken to the Shatt-al-Arab British camp to help fill sandbags. When the Iraqi youth, who wishes to remain anonymous, and his friends had filled the available sandbags, a British soldier indicated that he should enter a room, from where he assumed that he was to retrieve more sand bags, he says.
On entering the room, he claims he saw two British male soldiers engaged in oral sex. As soon as the two men saw him enter, they started to beat and kick him, he alleges. When he fell to the floor, one of the men held a blade to his neck while the other soldier stripped him naked. Although he screamed in protest, the two British soldiers, one after the other, raped him.
In the legal letter to the MoD, Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing all the Iraqis, said: “Due to the wider access of information and disclosure in the US, we do know that sexual humiliation was authorised as an aid to interrogation at the highest levels of the US administration. Given the history of the UK’s involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation.”
Mazin Younis, a leading Iraqi human rights activist working in the UK, said a lot of the new cases he had seen included allegations of sexual humiliation techniques which were part of what he said was a wider culture of abuse. He added: “This is very similar to what was happening at Abu Ghraib and was clearly employed to try to break the will of the detainees. Hundreds of soldiers must have witnessed this abuse but must either think this was acceptable behaviour or were told by their superiors to turn a blind eye.”
Mr Shiner says that the new cases became known after the British withdrawal from Iraq this year. He added: “Many of these Iraqis were frightened to come forward and only now have been able to gather the courage to do so. That is no mean feat given what they have been through.”
