A likely story?
Mood:  don't ask
An inherently implausible story in the Observer today contains the following: "As hundreds of extremists from across the world gathered at a training camp in Kent today to learn direct-action tactics, the ultra-hardline wing of the movement warned the UK to brace itself for a sharp escalation in violent activity. "

An extremist training camp? In Kent? To which they invited the Sunday newspapers? Who does Mark Townsend (mark.townsend@observer.co.uk) think he is fooling?
His article then goes on to talk about "breaking windows" and "daubing graffiti on cars". With the wildest imagination in the world this is neither violence nor terrorism. They are hardly things which I would do myself or condone but has everybody lost their sense of proportion in the climate of fear caused by the "war on terrorism"?

In later paragraphs - reading between the lines - this is clearly a legitimate meeting of ordinary animal rights activists which inevitably attract the tiny handful of nutters who want to recruit. Mark Townsend says "sceptics are concerned those attending are being taught how to handle police interviews and life in jail." Thus he does not make the statement himself but attributes it to unnamed "sceptics" and in any case if teaching people about their rights is evidence of TERRORISM then Amnesty International and Liberty must be the biggest TERRORISTS out :)
I am not an animal rights activist of any kind - violent or otherwise...well I do stoke the cat occasionally but that is about it... but there is no excuse for this kind of second-rate sensational journalism.

Of course Blunkett will use the threat of "animal rights terrorism" against legitimate protest. He has already used the Prevention of Terrorism Act against peace protestors and anti-capitalist protestors....

He takes his cue from Bush whose administration used the Patriot Act against groups of peace activists and even one guy who got into a discussion with friends at the gym and was skeptical about the official version of the Twin Towers attack...shown in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

People like Mark Townsend (mark.townsend@observer.co.uk) are creating an atmosphere of fear in which the rights of ordinary citizens can be taken away under the pretext of a crackdown on "extremists." Blunkett is the worst possible guardian of our rights - he thinks it is necessary to destroy liberty in order to save it.

Have a nice day.

Cyberspace - the final frontier
Andrea Chester at RMIT is doing research into the psychology of blogging: http://weblearn.rmit.edu.au/surveys/blog/

There is a very good psychological questionnaire and a number of questions about blogging. As a neophyte blogger I felt a bit over-awed. I think it is something I could encourage pupils to take part in but it is restricted to over 18s.

There is a glitch in the questionnaire which prevented me from citing my educational level as postgraduate and it automatically ticked high school. The standard psych personality test followed...if I say I am 2 for untidy must I say I am 4 for neat?.....and then some questions about why people write blogs. In my case it was mainly a matter of organising things I write and keeping them online where I can find them.

Overall it looks as though it will be a fascinating piece of research. Andrea asked me who I had in mind when writing. This is an interesting question because in writing a diary one is essentially writing to oneself. I always tell my students to have a specific person in mind, for example a stranger they have met for the first time. I suspect that all too often the only audience they have in mind is me and they wonder what sort of mark they think I'll give it and whether they have written enough to get away with it :)

Siege of elementary school in Southern Russia
99% of the media indignation against terrorism is synthetic.
It feeds off the very real sympathy which parents feel when they imagine their own children being the victims.
A similar percentage of the hysteria in the United States (and to a lesser extent in the UK) is intended to create an atmosphere of fear in which civil liberty can be destroyed. "It is necessary to destroy liberty in order to save it."
It consciously creates fear in the population so that torture by the state and imprisonment without trial will be accepted.
You might like to think about how torturing people until they confess to terrorism, imprisoning people as a consequence of such confessions or declaring war on states which are demonstrably not concerned with the terrorist attacks could possibly possibly prevent such outrages from taking place.....they haven't worked so far.

The Media in Question

The Media in Question

Robert Ferguson

ISBN 0-340-74078-7

Media Studies appears on the curriculum in your child's school but a popular front stretching from Polly Toynbee in the Guardian to Chris Woodhead in the Telegraph denigrate it as a "soft option" and suggest that anyone who studies or researches it is wasting their time. They would much prefer it, for example, if their prose were read without any analysis. Not only does Robert Ferguson champion this much-maligned subject but he also adopts a heretical view on teaching it. For him it is not a subject which casts the teacher in the role of a sheepdog directing pupils to pre-determined answers but one in which students and researchers work together both on the skills of media production and on the analysis of media texts.

The TV or movies are often seen as realistic because "the camera cannot lie." However, for example, the people taking the decisions on how to represent a war can decide whether to focus on faithfully showing "the action on the front line" or (like Michael Moore) also pay attention to the grieving mothers, the recruitment of disadvantaged youngsters into the army and to the big business interests which profit from warfare. As Ferguson puts it:

"realism, while dependent partly upon verisimilitude¹, is also dependent on creating, sustaining or challenging the audience's understanding of the world being represented. It is not necessary to agree with what a text offers in terms of dialogue, acting and so on, in order to accept it as realist. The irony is that realism is often most persuasive when any superficial criteria ('that looks like a battlefield') are transcended by thosewhich are more complex ('after the film, you knew more about the nature of warfare and those in whose interets it is pursued.') and are not dependent upon surface appearance."

If "Media Studies" is divorced from ideology it is reduced to issues of technique in a vacuum. Understanding the "how" without tackling the "why" is sterile. Studying the media also involves studying the society which produces media images. Questioning is central to Robert Ferguson's approach and time and again he causes the reader to go beyond simplistic analyses.

For example when dealing with 'race' in the media, he invites the reader to go beyond the basic semiotic² analysis and look at the contradictions and tensions within media messages. Media messages draw on what he terms a "discursive reserve". This is a set of ideas which the media both "feeds" and reinforces. A media text will not have a single meaning for a single audience, it will have *meanings* for *audiences* and an analysis of how these "work" is more fruitful than seeking the one meaning of the text.

He also draws attention to the very real consequences of racism beyond the media.

"On the one hand it is clear that much of the construction of otherness, the exotic and issues of 'race' is accomplished through complex modes of discourse and representation. On the other it is apparent to all but the most solipsistic that people's lived existence, and their deaths, cannot be reduced to the discursive. We have to face the contradictions and dilemmas thrown up at the interface of the discursive and the material. We must also recognise that, as media students and researchers, our relationship to our field of study cannot be that of a 'free floating' intellectual, questioner or researcher."

Postmodernism sheds light and casts shadows in roughly equal measure. The book evaluates the contribution of postmodernism whilst dealing ruthlessly with its shortcomings.

"The main challenge offered by the concept of postmodernism for the media studies student and researcher is that it invites a debate to which there is no easy or final conclusion. Postmodern media texts open the door for the celebration of consumerism and liberation from the constraints of some forms of totalitarianism. At the same time, postmodernity is a period of intense insecurity. In its denial of totalizing theory, it is prone to a new totalitarianism which is insistent upon fragmentation and difference. Political solidarity does not sit happily beside the postmodern."

The book intentionally raises more questions than it answers but anyone who really wants to know what media studies is about and why it is important for socialists could do a lot worse than start with this book.

Moqtada al-Sadr
I imagine the average Iraqi thinks of Moqtada al-Sadr "he may be a son of a bitch but at least he's *our* son of a bitch."

It is a pity that people like Moqtada al-Sadr end up leading the resistance to the foreign invaders in Iraq but if any fool thinks making him a martyr is a good idea he would have to be as stupid as....well lets think of an example of a really really stupid politician shall we :)

Incidentally who was it that kept telling the Shias to rise up in Iraq prior to and during the invasion? The Americans and the British...well the message has gotten through obviously.

Remember me rescue me
Remember me Rescue me
Reviewed by Derek McMillan
written by Matt Roper
published by Authentic Lifestyle
ISBN 1-85078-479-5
Website: http://www.mattroper.com

"I stormed over to the blue police cabin and entered without knocking. Inside, an inspector was lounging, watching football on a portable TV.
"'Have you any idea what is going on out there? A ten-year-old child is being sold to the tourists!'"
"He waved me towards the door, not unkindly. 'There's nothing I can do, you see, senhor. My job here is to protect the tourists.'"
Matt Roper dropped out of a journalism course...in order to become a first class journalist recording the lives of street girls in Brazil.

The book accurately records the grinding poverty which drives these girls into prostitution and the attitude of the authorities. "Protecting the tourists" including those tourists who have come to Brazil for the sole purpose of picking up underage girls. This is a pattern which emerges in one country after another. As the authorities crack down in Thailand the "sex tourism" trade moves to other areas where the police will "protect the tourists."

The result is that "working girls" will go to great lengths to appear younger. The economics are simple: the gringos come to Brazil for underage sex which is illegal in their own countries...and the gringos will pay the highest prices. The prices are still much lower than in their own countries and they do not risk prosecution.

The very real risk of AIDS is the price these children pay. Many also end up addicted to drugs as a matter of deliberate policy on the part of the rich men who control them.

In cases which he documents girls are enticed from Brazil with promises of marriage only to find they are virtually imprisoned in European countries and forced to work as prostitutes there - never seeing the money which changes hands. About 75,000 girls are estimated to be "imprisoned" in this way in Europe.

All too often books and TV programs about child prostitution are either voyeurism or they attempt to patronise the victims. Matt Roper's book does neither of these things. He places the blame clearly enough: "Once Recife was the centre of the Brazilian slave trade. More than one hundred years after the abolition of slavery very little seems to have changed, At Boa Viagem dark-skinned girls are bought and sold on the marketplace, taken from their homes and locked up in foreign countries. And the people who are operating this immensely profitable trade are white Europeans."

As a journalist, Matt Roper is not required to provide a political solution to the evils which he brilliantly exposes in this book. However, he does make clear both in the book and on the website that he believes the answer is Christian charity.

Socialists believe in freedom of religion but recognise the role of the church in the past in defending slavery This is exemplified by Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of America "[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts."

Likewise the Christian church remains an important ideological pillar for capitalism, supporting the very system of exploitation which Matt Roper is exposing. Far from rescuing the victims of exploitation its main role has been to add to their burdens a further burden of guilt for their "sins". The Church has also directly assisted in the spread of AIDS by banning condoms.

Indeed Matt Roper himself recognises the fact that for every child who is saved from prostitution by charity - another one or two are recruited by iron economic necessity. He instances a rural village where people can either work in a factory producing farinha or by selling their bodies at the border post.

The wages at the factory are so low that when there is a drought a day's wages will not buy a litre of water. The dangerous and degrading work of prostitution is better paid.

He concludes "It is always children who bear the brunt of Brazil's unjust society, Girls like Adeidiane, with her scarred and roughened hands and troubling chest pains, are forced to choose between 12 hours of backbreaking work in a sweatshop,and selling her young body in the street. It is a choice no eleven year old should ever have to make."

Remember me, rescue me is compelling reading and the reader is certain to remember these smallest victims of exploitation. It is a tribute to those who, often at considerable personal risk, are trying to stem the tide in Brazil and around the world.

Fight them on the beaches?
I am sure you remember the speech someone wrote for Churchill :
"we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

Whenever the BBC talks about the resistance in Iraq they are painted as "muslim extremists" and no doubt the "muslim extremists" are taking advantage of the situation.

But ask yourself if we were invaded, if our natural resources were stolen, our children killed with high explosives, men and women tortured, shortages of water, shortages of electricity, shortages of food and medical care. What would we do?

How would we respond to the arrogant invader strutting and boasting, the quisling government which grovels to the invaders? Would we grin and bear it? Or would we "fight on the beaches, fight on the landing grounds, fight in the fields and in the streets, fight in the hills; and never surrender?"

And nobody in their right mind is going to call me a "muslim extremist" are they?

Changing times
I visited a website in the states which has silly shoot-em-up games for kids...the main targets these days are Bush and members of his admin and sometimes Kerry. Older versions of the game however featured Osama Bin Laden. So I wonder who is public enemy number 1 now?
There is also a website http://www.democracynow.org which provides a counterweight to fox news...but without the millionaire backing obviously.

Naomi Klein Crosses Picket Line
Naomi Klein is now arguing for a vote for Kerry in the presidential elections. Her arguments appeared in the Guardian in the UK.
The question is at what point do we stop voting for the "lesser evil." The answer of the union leaders and the "Demogreens" in America would seem to be "never." It is never a good time to break away from the two party system. In reality, as Naomi Klein acknowledges, it is a "one party system"...one party for the rich and powerful.

The Republicans will always field some unconscionable travesty and therefore the Democrats will expect to profit from this....so the "other team" batting for capitalism will be elected.

Nader/Comajo are anti-war and anti-corporation. Kerry is not. A movement against the parties of the corporations can be built around the Nader/Comajo campaign. Naomi's only argument for voting for Kerry is to expose him: it is not good enough. This is not a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party. Big business has bought and paid for the soul of the Democratic Party.

Nader detailed some of the dirty tricks which the Democrats have used against him in an interview with Amy Goodman
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/07/1354230

No saviours from on high are going to deliver us and Nader does not believe that any more than I do. People who vote for Nader/Comajo are rejecting the doctrine of the lesser evil for good and all. People in this country ought to understand this - is Blair less evil than Howard? It is a time for "difficult decisions" ....In this country the time is ripe to oppose both parties of war, both parties of the corporations - and the same is true of America.

Knave or fool?
"I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Politicians (ahem) fail to tell the truth all the time. The issue with Blair is the enormity of the consequences of his utterances over Iraq.

I once had to apologise to an OFSTED inspector who had made a blatantly untrue statement because I could not prove that he knew any better. I had to concede that he might not be lying, he might be unbelievably ignorant.

Likewise we cannot prove that Blair didn't actually believe that Iraq had Weapons of Mass destruction which posed an immediate threat. Perhaps he thought that they had these weapons which they would use as a last resort if invaded so the best thing to do was to invade them.

So either a liar or criminally insane