"The moment Britain changed" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Who do you think said these words three days after the 2016 UK Brexit Referendum, in an attempt to explain the result? “Waves of migration and globalised culture washed among us, eroding our sense of self. Whole communities changed colour and language, leaving older people cut off...but the self-confidently multi-ethnic, liberal, urban class… barely noticed.” It’s more than a bit surprising but the person who spoke these words looking directly down the camera on public television is not a candidate for an ultra right wing political party. His name is Andrew Marr and since 2005 he has been the host of his own hour-long BBC TV news and current affairs interview show. In fact, his program has long been a part of my family’s Sunday morning routine. (We are usually eating my wife’s wonderful, home cooked crepes at some point when his show is on.) Like almost all of the entrenched British Establishment, Marr is a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge universities.He has the general appearance of a quite shy and usually polite man, especially so when speaking to royalty and Hollywood film stars. Recently though he has seemed increasingly excitable at times. I recently saw his post-Brexit piece-to-camera again and realised that his excitement was genuine this time. What viewers originally saw back then on this particular edition of his show was a man taking sides after a profound event. The words he used were deliberate and showed up his true allegiance. Marr was siding with the conservative racists, some of whom are clearly new-style fascists. In other words, he was lining up with those who are -- underneath all the polished British smiles -- in love with power. They are power worshipers: one accurate definition of a fascist. The most important element in their outlook is having someone to hate and this is always a minority group. Even better if the minority is easily recognised in public places. Historically, these lovers of power have come from all social sections of society but have always favoured supporting the strong over the weak, the poor, the disabled, the unemployed. In the UK, they have always trumpeted the ‘Parliament and rule of law’ argument as a fundamental ‘British value’ then ignored it or broken it when it suits them. Of course, in modern Britain and the wider world today (and probably for a long time in the past) there is no law. There is only power. This is what George Orwell said about totalitarian societies like the one he imagined in his novel ‘1984’. In my opinion, it is phrase that perfectly describes our time. The law does not exist, except the ability to enforce it. Andrew Marr knows this. He is a frightened man. So am I. I am frightened of the exact same thing as him: a rule of brute force in Europe. In Britain now, the rule of law has been shown to be a hollow claim. Rule by those with the ability to compel others to their will, by force, has now begun. The courts and prisons are more than full. Police numbers are now so shrunken by conservative government funding cuts and station closures that they are at times unable to defend one person or group against another. The peaceful are being attacked by the violent, some of whom are fascist criminals, others are just criminals. Broadcast all across the nation, watching Andrew Marr’s rant almost three years later, I realised something critically important. This wasn’t the moment Britain changed. It was the moment I realised it had started to completely change. [This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2019.]

What's needed to combat ring-wing lies in the media? Paul Mason tells us...

ALSO HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1jOqbQ5iEg

I generally don't listen to podcasts but I did with this one because it is compelling. 

Broadcaster and journalist Paul Mason, talking to Joana Ramiro tells us exactly (at 35.00) what's needed for the Left to have a fighting chance against bullshit news.

From source at  Politics Theory Other

"The ruling class that drove Brexit"

[Arron Banks and Nigel Farage. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA]

"The media loves to blame far right movements and moments on the working class. Our Brexit research tells a very different story...

After Trump’s election, millions of words were typed about how ‘blue collar’ areas had turned out to vote Republican. Yet Clinton led by 11% among voters who earn less than $50,000. Trump secured his victory by winning among those who earn $50-200,000. 

Much the same can be said for the far right in Italy, whose core support is in the wealthier – though now de-industrialising – north, rather than in the more impoverished south; or about Brazil, where 97% of the richest areas voted for the fascist Bolsonaro, whilst 98% of the poorest neighbourhoods voted for the Workers’ Party candidate, Haddad.

We see a similar distortion in debate about Brexit. 

After the vote, journalists went on endless tours of deprived areas to report on how working-class people voted Leave (which many did). 

However, they somehow forgot to mention that wealthy counties like Wiltshire backed Brexit, while some of the poorest areas of the UK – the western parts of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as Liverpool and Leicester – voted Remain. 

Academics who studied the class breakdown of the Brexit vote found ‘the Leave vote to be associated with middle class identification and the more neutral “no class” identification. But we find no evidence of a link with working class identification.’

This is nothing new. Ruling classes have always sought to blame bigotry on the working classes. Too often in recent times, the liberal media have been willing to champion this myth, rather than confronting the prejudice in its own ranks.

The way we talk about social media is central to narratives that blame the oppressed for their own oppression. 

Online bigotry, abuse and trolling are often framed as problems of the unwashed masses, who need to be regulated by ‘benign’ institutions such as global data corporations or the police. 

In reality, whilst racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, anti-immigrant hysteria and other forms of bigotry feature up and down the social spectrum, their recent mobilization is part of a different story. It has been led and co-ordinated by elite networks, seeking to reshape the world at the dusk of neoliberalism. 

And they are often in direct collaboration with these supposedly respectable institutions, from Facebook to the FBI.

To put it another way: the decade since the financial crisis has accelerated the emergence of a new global oligarch class. With growing wealth has come growing power and a growing ability to shape political debate through the dominant communications technology of the era: TV and the internet. 

As has long happened with right-wing movements, they have done so in close collaboration with military and security networks. Because the era is neoliberalism, those networks are largely privatised, made up of mercenary firms with names like Palantir, Arcanum, SCL, AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica.

Brexit, Arron Banks and the missing millions

Take, for example, the Brexit referendum in the UK. The Leave movement operated a bit like a solar system, whose two largest planets were surrounded by a collection of moons. First, there was Vote Leave, the official Brexit campaign, fronted by Conservative politicians Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and orbited by numerous other campaigns and front groups. 

Second was Leave.EU, associated with the further-right UK Independence Party, fronted by iconic blazered bigot Nigel Farage and primarily funded by an insurance man called Arron Banks. (Banks, by my sums, claims to have funnelled about £15m into the group and its various moons...)

READ MORE in detail from source at openDemocracyUK here.

"The giving game" -- My latest opinion article for Catalonia Today magazine

[Mick Jagger. Photo: EFE]

One day near the start of autumn I was watching that uniquely ex-British empire sport of cricket on TV. England were playing India somewhere in the UK and the equally unique face of Rolling Stones front-man Mick Jagger appeared on my screen.

He was shown drinking a long glass of sparkling wine, and was mixing with expensively dressed men and women. They were part of the crowd at this match and the TV commentators made sure to refer to him as "Sir Mick."

Apart from the polished hypocrisy of a once rebel and anti-establishment figure like Jagger allowing himself to be 'knighted' by a woman who, by simple birthright has inherited the title of The Queen of England, I was soon to learn of another example of his double-standards.

As the (Sky channel) TV commentators were quick to point out, Jagger was offering to donate money to a charity named Chance to Shine. In a sport still hugely dominated at adult level by white men from the wealthiest of private schools, this charity says that it "works to make cricket available to young people in state schools and other communities."

The catch that disturbed me was that Jagger had pledged to hand over between £10,000 and £20,000 but only each time one of the players did his definition of a good performance for their national team.

Quite possibly none of them would be able to achieve the specifics of what he was asking for. Alternatively, there was also the possibility of several of them doing well enough for Jagger to give up to about £100,000 or possibly more.

Of course, I'm not against the existence of charities and I fully acknowledge the great work that many do. I have also written about the huge moral and ethical inconsistencies that some charities operate under, as I did nine years ago in an investigative article on The Polaris Project in the USA.

My complaint is that people like Mick Jagger and other noted celebrities, while obviously giving needed funds to organisations working as NGOs, are using the act of donation as little more than an ego trip or some kind of casino-like, grown-up playtime.

If Jagger can afford to give say £100,000 to help develop young cricketers then why not just just give it? Instead he turns the whole thing into some kind of measly piece of cheap entertainment for himself and his acquaintances while they sip their costly drinks and nibble on each other's vanity.

Sitting in continental Europe watching my TV in that moment, far from the sporting action, I imagined a group of little British boys and girls being told that financial help with their cricketing passion was not possible because the money had run out.

Depending on the vagaries, luck and chance of thirteen men on a field, maybe if one or two of the cricketers had just hit the ball a metre further, their places in the Mick Jagger-sponsored program would have been guaranteed.

In the corporate boxes where Jagger was likely to be, there might have been some back-slapping, congratulating him about what a damn fine fellow he was for being so generous. Instead, I imagined Jagger chatting away to the well-heeled around him, barely watching the game itself, completely indifferent about how many kids his little scheme was going to actually touch. Or not.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, November 2018.]

"Why not Australia?" -- My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today

I spent the first thirty years of my life in Australia and the last twenty trying to stay out of it.

Plenty of local people in this part of the world regularly ask me why we are living so far from Australia. There are a number of reasons but visiting there always reminds me that it is landmass with a population that now badly lacks what I call ‘public intellectuals.’

I grew up in the Canberra suburbs seeing brainy egomaniacs like Richard Neville, Clive James, BA Santamaria (though he was also a genuine bigot) and inspirational Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating on television -- and here I mean free-to-air-TV.

But apart from someone like journalist, author and broadcaster Phillip Adams or a humorist like Andrew Denton there are now precious few deep thinkers in popular media.

The same claim could reasonably be made about the United States today where figures like Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky and perennial US Presidential candidate Ralph Nader have been replaced by a small number of quality satirists such as Jon Stewart.

Even someone like the brilliant (Canadian) writer/activist Naomi Klein has been sidelined from  being heard on a scale that her ideas deserve. The most popular networks and cable TV stations pull in large numbers of viewers who are instead fed a daily diet of polished lies and exaggerated fear-mongering.

Australia is a part of the world where talented, clever people in the creative arts industries have to leave if they genuinely desire to have a wide and mainstream audience.

Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Clive James, Nicole Kidman, Jason Donovan,Toni Collette, Rod Taylor, Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett, Tim Minchin, Geoffrey Rush, Naomi Watts, Sia, Rebel Wilson and Barry Humphries simply could not have achieved the high quality of what they have done by remaining in Australia.

There, sport is number one and everything else cultural is a distant second.

Self-styled Australian ‘feral futurist’ Richard Neville wrote a rare, honest assessment of Australia for Adbusters not long ago. He explained why “the lucky country” still tends to rely on superpowers such as the USA (and most recently, China) and how it’s leaders prefer being an international sycophant.

“Australians are easily distracted,” he argued. “The focus of mass media [in Australia] is shopping promotions and light entertainment: cooking, sport, gossip, stock shifts, celebrity trials, soft porn and big-ticket ‘must see’ events.”

The question then has to be why has this happened? 

I think it’s partly because there is no developed interest in real politics in Australia, as opposed to the personality/leader-rivals "slugging it out in a boxing match" type-journalism that Australians are served.

The internet should have been a factor in leading to discussion on politics being less mediocre but it does not appear to be in Australia, unlike the USA where Obama then Bernie Sanders were able to break new activist ground. Instead, the news cycle “downunder” is dominated by a merry-go-round of opinion polls about leadership -- both state and federal -- and that passes for proper political analysis.

Australians are generally not only politically apathetic.

As one anonymous (European) online poster who had lived in Australia for 12 years wrote: “Australians as a whole are quite conservative. Just look at the government they elected! I find it increasingly frustrating. It's all about family, building a house, having a garden, a big 4WD and a BBQ on the weekend with the other families talking footy, house prices and gardening/fishing... I think maybe more adventurous Aussies leave.”

Australia is a very isolated country, but not only geographically. It is rich with beautiful landscapes (particularly the underrated desert) and its people have a lot in their favour. I just don’t want to live there because it doesn’t suit me and we wanted our son to grow up in culturally-rich Europe .

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, May 2018.]

Spain gang-rape case exposes problems in justice system

["I believe you." Photo:  

Vincent West/Reuters ]

 "On Nov. 14, a young woman entered the Navarre provincial court in northern Spain, a bottle of water in one hand, a piece of paper in the other. She sat on a chair placed at the center of the room before a tribunal and then, probed along by her attorney, recounted the events from two summers past that have dominated Spanish headlines since.

The young woman from Madrid, known only as la víctima, “the victim,” in local media, was 18 then when she alleges she was raped by five men in the early morning hours of July 7, 2016. She’d gone to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls — the city’s celebrated and testosterone-fueled tradition of “bullfights, street dancing ... and much drinking of strong Spanish wine,” as immortalized by one American superfan.

According to her testimony, she’d lost sight of the friend she’d traveled with and ended up making her way toward the car, which they'd planned on spending the night in. When a group of five male friends from Seville, strangers to her until then, struck up a conversation and suggested accompanying her to the vehicle, she accepted. At some point while they twisted their way down the dark streets, they led her to a doorway, pulled her in and took turns raping her, she said. When they’d finished, they seized her phone and left. After some time, she got dressed, sought help and reported the rape. It was only later after she’d pressed charges, and a trial was underway, that she discovered the men had filmed the act on their phones and shared the videos in their WhatsApp group.

The meat and bones of the retelling over, Navarre district attorney Elena Sarasate suddenly veered into new territory. “You seem to be a pretty social and extroverted young person,” she stated before the tribunal. “Do you usually post on social media?”

“Yes,” the young woman replied. “But I’m not going to post pictures of myself crying. I’m trying to lead a normal life. I’m not going to post a picture of myself on social media crying so that everyone can ask, ‘What happened to that girl?’ No. I’m going to continue living normally, and what I normally do is post pictures of myself out partying.”

What would appear to be an unusual turn in the woman’s testimony — her social media habits — has become the crux of the case known as La Manada, or “The Wolf Pack,” after the five accused men’s WhatsApp group name. In a bid to prove the young woman was not raped but consented to having group sex, the men’s defense hinges on proving she did not suffer any trauma following the sex act, which they’ve chiefly done by presenting social media posts showing her out with friends, knocking back a few drinks, or sharing content of an ostensibly sexual nature.

To the prosecution and feminist collectives the country over, the defense’s tactic is an age-old trope with new technological trappings — an updated version of “She was asking for it because she wore a miniskirt.” For the defense, it’s a necessary method designed to reflect the plaintiff’s psychological makeup. The trial ended in late November, and a verdict is still pending. If found guilty, the accused could each face up to 25 years and nine months in prison. The decision will have far-reaching implications. How much can social media reflect a person’s psychology or establish a motive? And should that content be admitted in a court of law?"

---

Read more from source at PRI/Global Post here.

"The Trump Show" - My latest opinion column in Catalonia Today magazine

There is really only one news story over the last months: the start of Donald Trump's regime.

Before the end of last year I said on Matthew Tree’s TV discussion program that one of the main reasons Trump was elected was that he knows that (now more than ever) politics is an entertainment industry. 

Style has become substance. Impression has replaced reality.

I also said that Trump would have been defeated by Bernie Sanders, the other alternative candidate in the Democratic party who offered a genuine agenda of change rather than Hillary Clinton’s message of a continuing the same for another four years.

Trump found the votes he needed in the parts of the country where he needed them because he stood for a major shake-up to a system that clearly needs it and because he repeatedly promised work again to the unemployed. 

When I talk to people here in Catalonia, plenty of people use the word “confident” about Donald Trump. What seems to me as his grotesque arrogance then, is seen by others as a can-do attitude and has given a false hope. And it is also this that helped propel him into the White House.

Large numbers of the public are prepared to ignore his clear personality faults because Trump projects the persona of someone who is an action hero, a cowboy, a maverick but a ‘do-er’ as well as a big talker. And a significant chunk of the popular media has continued to be sucked into reporting his ‘colourful antics’ and ‘controversial statements’ rather than the policy decisions he has already taken in his first weeks in charge.

Even as I write this article, I have to struggle to concentrate on the detail of the executive orders he has just signed rather than talking about his inflammatory Twitter posts. It is easier to look at what he has tweeted than what he has, with a stroke of his pen, made into law. 

On a daily basis the airwaves and worldwide web are awash with his decisions but the hour-by-hour short news cycle can never dwell for too long on a single issue and Trump thrives on this fact as much as he enjoys letting it drag him into the gutter.

Recently, several journalists who covered the protests at his inauguration were charged. With exactly what offence no one's quite sure at this moment but this intimidation tactic is likely to have its desired effect. 

As well as this, the Spanish language version of the Presidential website was shut down: a clear signal to the US’ hispanic citizens that they are disposable too in the wider sweep of life. 

These are actions, not words and they are Donald Trump’s actions. Despite this, his distractions about voter fraud and the size of the crowd at his first speech as commander-in-chief have been publicised a great deal more than his decision-making, as if his social media presence was more significant than the impact of his policies on ordinary people.

It is more than apparent now that those who thought Trump would soften his attitudes and become sobre and responsible once sitting at the Oval Office desk were wrong. 

He is just getting warmed up. 

What we will witness in the next four years (or possibly even eight years) is guaranteed to be an extreme exercise of naked power as a simple extension of his ego. It will be unlike any other term of office in that corrupt superpower ‘democracy.’ 

The crucial question is how much congress is going to stand up to Trump’s will. My prediction is that the majority Republican party will typically bend to his wishes.

I was woken up at five o’clock in the morning by a dream about Trump and immediately decided to write this article. In my dream Trump was on a television talk show and left the set complaining and throwing his earpiece on the ground. 

The truth is that he no longer needs to even appear on TV. We are all doing his PR for him and I would argue that his tweets should be completely ignored by all media, in effort to starve him of easy air time.

But after all though, Donald Trump is the logical result of a society obsessed with money where worship of wealth is as deeply engrained as feeling for the stars and stripes flag.

 
[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, March 2017.]

"Swarms, floods and marauders:" the language of the [European] refugee crisis

"...the ability to influence thought matters a great deal. George Orwell recognised this, inventing Newspeak to illustrate how, in one nightmare scenario, language could be used as an instrument of control.
We’re not there yet, but if we want to maintain the ability to think clearly and independently about migration, there’s good reason to be wary of some of the vocabulary now being bandied about."


Read more from David Shariatmadari's article in the Guardian online.

Video: "Seeking ‘Brave Journalists’ in Spain to investigate the TTIP Trade Agreement"

"The main concerns for groups that oppose the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between Europe and North America are the lack of transparency and the way in which the agreement will affect the communities involved. 
 
In Madrid, Spain, the Asamblea Popular de Tres Cantos (Tres Cantos Popular Assembly), a community activist group that is well known for its participation in protests against the economic crisis, is “seeking brave journalists” as part of an appeal to the media to investigate the treaty.

In the video published on the organization's blog and various social networks, members of the assembly appear with photographs of employees from Spain's large media organizations, which have largely ignored the treaty in their coverage, and offer them a challenge:" [see English subtitled video above.]

More from Global Voices Online source article here.

"Spanish television’s clap trap"

One of the most sad and disturbing stories that I've read about the effects of Spain's economic crisis on ordinary people.

 

Spanish TV offers parents tips about how to dress their kids without being "provocative"

An astonishing program was shown on public TV recently.

Spain's main public television station channel 1 featured a workshop for parents on “how to teach their children to dress appropriately” in its daily afternoon update on May 14, 2013. Although the report was barely a minute and a half long, it featured soundbites such as “it seems we live in an era when everything must be shown” and “the big question: is my daughter dressing provocatively?”

I don't believe there's actually anything wrong with discussing what kids wear in this country.

I just think there are a lot bigger problems such as use of over-technology, bullying, commercialisation of young people or infantalising them.

This TV program raised the question of “provocative” dressing by young girls. There is certainly a de facto summer-time “uniform” of very short jean-pants for teens and some pre-teens and this is generally conformed to by plenty of this age group.

The issue to me is not so much whether this is somehow provocative but whether girls are simply dressing like other girls because they think they should. Following a fashion because others do is sheep-like and dangerous more because it shows a tendency to act without individuality than it is wrong to show bare legs.

It is so much easier to focus on what we can easily see, rather than investigate deeper, more serious problems that are not so apparent to the eye.

(As is so often the case, the commenters on this Global Voices article are also really worth a read.)

Europe three times as “gloomy” as the USA?

Maybe. Maybe not.

According to author Tim Phillip’s Joy Index, in Europe, the English-language press hasn’t been too optimistic recently.

Read more of his explanation here.