Since when

... does a letter to the editor warrant a full write up in a newspaper?

The answer, of course, is when the paper in question is the Daily Telegraph, and the letter in question is endorsed by a coalition of religious groups like the Medical Ethics Alliance, which embraces human life in its "God given dignity," and the anti-abortion Choose Life campaign, which "exists to highlight an awareness of the sanctity of life from conception to natural death" (2).

Add to that the transatlantic rightwing hysteria around state provision of health care at the moment - particularly following Sarah Palin's delerious 'Death panel' lunacy - and you've got a Barclay Brother's rag wet dream, never mind that the news value is approaching absolute zero.

The Telegraph was always reactionary, rightwing and wrong, but at least it used to be more than the frickin' Daily Mail.

1 - "Sentenced to death on the NHS," by Kate Devlin, published in The Daily Telegraph, 2nd of September, 2009. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6127514/Sentenced-to-death-on-the-NHS.html)
2 - The webiste for the Medical Ethics Alliance is here: http://www.medethics-alliance.org/ and the website for Choose Life campaign is here: . Both viewed on the 8th of September, 2009. Quotations are from the relevant websites.

Brooker on Murdoch (jnr) on the BBC

Amusing commentary on James "Son of Rupert" Murdoch and the News International empire:

... Damien Thorn, offspring of Satan, was educated at Yale before inheriting a global business conglomerate at a shockingly young age and using it to hypnotise millions in a demonic bid to hasten Armageddon. James Murdoch's story is quite different. He went to Harvard. (1)

It doesn't really get beyond the cheap shots, though think referring to Fox New's Bill O'Reilly as a "bellicose human snail" and the network itself as "about as plausible and useful as an episode of Thundercats" is appropriate and apt. He does finish with an important point, however:

Now there's a lengthy, valid, and boring debate to be had about the scope and suitability of some of the BBC's ambitions but, quite frankly, if their news website (a thing of beauty and a national treasure) helps us stave off the arrival of the likes of Beck - even tangentially, even only for another few years until the Tories take over and begin stealthily dismantling the Beeb while a self-interested press loudly eggs them on - then it deserves to be cherished and applauded.

Amen to that. In the war against the Daily Mailification of the world, where choice will be between the middle-class pants-wetting of the Mail and the the chauvanistic laddishness of the Sun, then every inch of territory is vital.

1 - "Charlie Brooker's screen burn," by Charlie Brooker, published in The Guardian, 5th of September, 2009. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/sep/05/charlie-brooker-on-james-murdoch)

Stray thoughts on the political situation in Britain

Almost any criticism levelled at New Labour is merited. The fact that there is still a question about whether or not the Tories would be better shows how deeply, deeply awful the the Tories would be.

The whole way politics are done in Britain is rubbish. It used to be quite cool, swapping two blokes called Harold around every few years. The parties were distinct, even if the leaders weren't, and - IMPORTANT BIT - both reflected very real traditions in British society. The Conservatives reflected a traditionalist bouirgeois world view, with a few aristocratic bits for fun, and Labour more prolish. Weirdly, a lot of criticism, particularly from the left, was that both parties were effectively just different teams of administrators, vying to convince the electorate their team would be best at implementing the same policies. But that's just the left for you.

The reason for this consensus was there generally was a lot held in common, in areas that would seem far to the left of the current political scene. Industrial relations are a good example of this - both Labour and Conservatives had Union troubles and both resolved them the same way. Inflation was held in check through negotiations with the unions about wages and through price controls. The upshot was that for all the perceived differences, you had people working together to achieve goals.

The state was one force in this set up, balanced by others - particularly the unions. This was because the state in Britain was always the instrament of conservative (small 'c') interests. With a monarch, an established church, an unelected second chamber with real power and a voting system that ensured non-radical consensus would win over sectarian extremism, reform was never going to be achieved through elected (as opposed to democratic) means. The British genius for most of the 20th century was that reform was achieved, through the collaboration of state power, capital power and labour power.

Now, of course, things are rather different. The union movement is dimished to the point it no longer represents labour (small 'l') on the national stage. Instead, it just protects or advances (a little) the interests of its members and sector - while the numbers dwindle further. The union movement is politically impotent.

British capital hasn't triumphed, however, because it has been subsumed by the monster of globalisation - there isn't any British industry left - apart from mad highlanders making moonshine - just (an ever decreasing amount of) industry in Britain. Capital is still potent, but no longer British. It has no inherent interest in maintaining the social consensus.

Then, as now, there is a broad similarity between the parties, but the similarity is not the same one as there was up until the end of the seventies. Both parties have an agreed consensus, but it is a neo-liberal, not a social-democratic, consensus. Whatever slight internal tendency there was to reform is extinct. Neither represents a distinct constiuency any longer, both are competing for the same votes and - this is the important bit - the same powerful interests. News International has far more ingfulence on policy of Labour and the Conservatives than the interests of their traditional tribal bases. Like the unions, they are impotent, and like the capitalists, they are effectively de-nationalised.

As a short ginger fellow remarked a propos of another problem, what is to be done?

Blogging

... may be light all through September. I'm unwell in body, with allsorted crappy bugs. I'm also feeling borderline insane, and have strong urges to lurk in doors with the curtains drawn, wearing dark glasses and listening to Tom Waits.

So you may all have to get on without me for a little while.

That said, I said soemthing like this a couple of months ago, and had one of my most productive months.

10%-20% pure NZ

Immediate response

I'm not sure how I feel about Maori TV screening the Chinese Government's film, Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth, immediatately after 10 Conditions of Love. Two reasons why.

First because it gives the impression this is rebuttal of the image of Kadeer presented in 10 Conditions ..., which it is not. Second, because I'm a pampered westerner I find images of people being kicked and clubbed to death disturbing, especially when they are presented without adequate warning. The program was preceded by a generic warning about violent contents - as had preceded 10 Conditions of Love. Ten Conditions ... contained a very few, shocking moments of mass public execution. Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth contained extensive, graphic footage of people being beaten and kicked to death.

I wonder if anyone at Maori TV had even watched the film before broadcasting it. It wasn't scheduled, which suggests it was a last minute decision. The announcement that Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth would follow 10 Conditions ... was made part way through the latter, which would be bizzare if they had planned it as a follow up. Perhaps a copy was made available to them, and they decided to go with it.

So this will be more about Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth than about 10 Conditions of Love. The latter was a fairly routine account of Kadeer's life, contianing little nbew information and only giving her a chance to demonstrate her magnetic personality and her sense of humour - perhaps that is what the intrisically humourless Maoists found so disconcerting. But there was nothing that couldn't have been gleaned from her biography on wikipedia.

Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth fell into several parts.

The first part was a genuinely embarrassing hymn to the glories of unity and harmony, illustrated with kitschy tourist ad style visuals showing Uighurs happily enjoying their cultural practices in slightly too vivd technicolour. Thankfully it was over in seconds.

The next portion was made up of footage of the riot of the 5th of July. It was shocking, but no-one has denied that a riot didn't happen, or that the violence against Han Chinese was anything other than repulsive. Some - myself included - have suggested something like this would occur as a result of the policy of ethnic saturation the Beijing government has waged for the last 50 years - but explaining why something happens is not the same as saying that it is good or okay that it happened. It just puts some responsibility on the authoritites in Beijing, set the whole sorry thing in motion when they decided to swamp the region with Han to stop the Uighurs finding any democratic means to achieve independence.

This section served one very obvious purpose - to sicken and repell the viewer so that the response to whatever came next would be visceral, not rational. It is hard to consider things cooly when your head is full of the images of someone being kicked repeatedly in the head, or smashed to a pulp with iron bars. But that is the point of propaganda, isn't it?

The next section was the most important part, where an attmetp was made to link the riots with Kadeer's World Uighur Congress. It is repeated several times that events were organised and planned, but what is not shown is that a riot was intended. Kadeer and others are quoted talking about a 'demostration' and as far as can be deduced from the information given, it seems like it was an international show of Uighur solidarity, not a bloodbath. Out of context, the quotes seem sinister. Kadeer is quoted, from the 4th of July, saying:

Many things have happened and we all know something will happen tommorrow evening in Urumqi. (1)

Which might seem ominous, if you persist in thinking she's talking about a planned blood bath. On the other hand, if she's talking about a demonstration, it is innocuous enough.

A lot is made about what was said in the days immediately after the riot, by Kadeer and others. But the situation was very confused - Beijing put a stranglehold on the region and very little hard information was available. It isn't susprising that people were confused abotu what was actually happening and that false information was given. All of which points not to some dastardly conspiracy, but to people reacting to a situation that's moving too quickly for them.

An example of this is the use of footage of Kadeer being interviewed on Al Jazeera, on July the 7th, showing a photograph she alleged was of the Urumqi riot. Infact, it was of a riot in Shisou a few days earlier - but the mistake was originally by Reuters, who used the image on the 6th of July, identifying it as Urumqi (2). The judicious narrator says Kadeer was spreading "rumours" and adds that the image had been widely distributed before the July riot, creating the impression it was a WUC orchestrated fraud. That Kadeer was responding in good faith to an image provided by a reputeable news source isn't explained, and the viewer is left with the impression that Kadeer was peddling a falsehood.

Frequently, throught out this section, images of the riot are repeated, ensuring that the immediate reaction is gut revulsion, and diverting the viewer's attention from the tenuous links they attempt to draw between the WUC and the violence.

Finally, we're back to where we started, assured that peace and harmony has return to the region, and the day days of seperatist agitation are in the past. Which is, of course, nonsense. Nothing, fundamentally, has changed, except some people ahve died and some people's lives have been wrecked. And July the 5th will not be the last time this happens.

1 - Rebiya Kadeer, quoted in Xinjiang Urumqi July 5 Riot: Truth.
2 - As per Wikipedia's sumamry of events, "July 2009 Ürümqi riots: media coverage." Viewed on 1st of September, 2009. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots#Media_coverage)

In about 15 minutes

... I'll be watching 10 Conditions of Love, the documentary about Rebiya Kadeer than the PRC objected to so much they unleased their hacker hordes on the Melbourne Film Festival when they refused to pull it on demand. Attempts to muscle Maori TV were similarly ignored. Which shows that Maori TV is the only free-to-air channel that is motivated to show interesting programming that isn't about sex or home reno, and (unlike the NZ and US governments) isn't afraid to stand up to the Bastards of Beijing and tell them where to go.

So good on 'em, in other words.

P.S. I'll be videoing it as well. Eat that, Chairman Mao!