Why not give the World Service back its old and proper name?

Sometime in the late 'seventies I discovered a very loud and clear broadcasting station on the medium wave. The programme was the UK-top-20 presented by Paul Burnett. He used to do that on Luxembourg but I stopped listening, loyal as ever to Caroline that seemed to have grown up together with me.
I learned Mull of Kintyre had been kicked off the top spot by a Jamaican sounding tune the lyrics of which escaped me completely (still do not understand most of it), Up town top ranking, yet it was a pleasant dance floor number.
I developed the habit of listening to the news bulletins and some excellent reporting. BBC World Service made me a witness of the revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua, and was at the shipyards in Gdańsk a year later. Reporting struck me as being rather fair to all sides but not especially impartial: no-one shed a tear about the shah or Somoza or Gierek (had to look for that forgotten name...).

The World Service was not exclusively about news though. There were short sharp programmes on all kinds of music, it taught me a lot about classical music (ah! the days of the Greenfield Collection) and jazz and I heard familiar voices from the offshore radio days, like Paul Burnett and Tommy Vance and John Peel - Ian Anderson turned out to be not the Geronimo/RNI-man so my surprise about the loss of his Scots accent had no good foundation - and more... There were enjoyable other music presenters like Andy Kershaw and Charlie Gillett.
There were programmes on literature, religious broadcasting - especially in the days when there was no offshore alternative it was my main outside source of information.
Now I get the impression the BBC utters a sigh of relief about the death of Peel and Gillett. The last two remnants of better days.

Where and when did it go wrong?

*

Newsnight, Tuesday December 7th.
What actually motivates Julian Assange? Kirsty Wark quotes the Enemy of the World quoting Gustav Landauer:

The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another... We are the state, and we shall continue to be the state until we have created the institutions that form a real community and society of men.

Since Modern High German can perfectly differentiate between Human Beings (Menschen) and Humans of the male gender (Männer) I bet this is a bad translation. Yet it is a lovely quotation from a specific religious anarchist, slaughtered by proto-nazis as more of them were.
With a face expressing the officially prescribed loathing Wark concludes Assange may be an anarchist. She turns to a specialist on political theory, studying anarchism, Carl Levy.
I know this man! They will not call me for an interview, I know that, but why him? Anyway, he did not have anything weighty to add, apart from giving the impression Assange might be an anarchist.
An anarchist wanted for sexual assault and rape. Wark works out the government sponsored Half Hour of Hate with an interview with the man behind a journalists organisation, Frontline, which harboured Assange until he went to the police station where he was locked up. We have been treated with the stories about this assault and rape and the only thing I can think is: cannot they keep that for themselves?
There is an air of police framing about this Two-in-One-Week love affair without any mutual love. Wark hammers on the rape accusation without mentioning what it seems to amount to and the Frontline man is pictured as a friend of a rapist.
Of course we are not supposed to think the Swedish accusation, which has been withdrawn by the prosecutor in Stockholm, to be re-opened by a colleague in Gothenburg for no apparent reason, is a framing operation to hand Assange over to the US regime.
Even though it is known one of his fake lovers was run by the CIA. This typically is not told by Wark either.

*

Apparently Newsnight is considered such a pinnacle of excellent journalism these days that I hear the rotten interviews again on The world today on the World Service in the morning. Another highlight is an item about a televangelist operating from a mosque somewhere in Yemen, preaching against Al-Qaida.
A TELEVANGELIST? You mean a pink skinned closet gay preaching hate of gay practice and forgiveness for the sinning gays? An adulterer whining about family values, drawing millions of listeners in YEMEN? At the World Service there is no-one willing to think of the use of a proper label for this preacher, a religiously sensible one. This obviously coincides with shamelessly using the words America and American whilst referring to the USA, especially to please all the listeners on a continent stretching from Green- to Fireland. Yeah love it or leave it.

My better half told me I should be attentive how US-biased news bulletins are nowadays.
It is not a sample yielding scientifically tenable results but for me it is telling enough: an analysis of two six minutes bulletins at 6am GMT on the World Service.

On December 7th there were two items in which the US or "America" were not mentioned. One about aspirin which prevents cancer. We heard that garbage before, is there no real news?
The other one was a landslide in Colombia, obviously in the US backyard but the victims are not being helped by the USA - at least, we are not told so. So two items without the US being mentioned.

On December the 8th there was an item on a taxi murder in South Africa. That's all.
All the other parts of both bulletins involved the opinion of a US minister, a US ambassador or the USA in general, or were about the USA.

In 1965 the British Empire Service had its name changed into BBC World Service.
It is high time the name Empire Service were properly revived.

A thought for the day, August 6th

This is an elaboration of an introduction I wrote earlier on, elsewhere. It is in the spirit of Herbert Marcuse's One dimensional man, a book that deals in its entirety about the unbearable situation of living "as if normal" whilst the human-made death of all of humanity is being prepared. The metaphors of generation etcetera fulfill a certain ideological function: it further "normalizes" living alongside mass murder. Also cf. "sitting duck" and "barrel of fish" as references to the bombing drones.

Until I started writing this piece I did not know about a "mother of the bomb".
Killing machines apparently also have cousins and other family members.

When you ask the internet search engine for the “father of the bomb” you get the incredible result of around six million hits. One of the first results you may get reads: “Trinity and the birth of the bomb”, which indeed goes on about the “father of the bomb”. There is a good chance you will accuse the writer of the text you now see of blasphemy when you are kindly reminded of the combination of the words trinity, birth and father. Words used in connection with a device that killed about a hundred thousand people in one instant, and another hundred thousand in the slow aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima.

When such a combination yields about six million hits this must mean “we” have accomodated to these weapons. Generally they are called weapons of mass destruction these days, which refers to damage done to buildings and other lifeless things. You do not hear the phrase weapons of mass killing. And apparently “we” accept the idea of these weapons “having been born”, they have “a father” and they have to be modernized once in a while. Then we hear about the next “generation of nuclear bombs” (about one hundred thousand hits in the search engine). Born, father, generation – all words referring to life, the ending of which is the specific aim of these weapons. If you think it unfair that the “mother of the bomb” is not mentioned you are right: she “only” gets three million hits in the search engine.

Since it refers to an insect it probably will be even harder to see the full obscenity of a killing device, the unmanned aerial vehicle, named drone. The main task of drones, male bees, is indeed: fathering. We are up to see a new generation of drones, which will be more stealthy than the present day unmanned killing device.

Let us be aware that bombs and unmanned bombing devices are directed against fathers and mothers, against those who are born and against generations. And let us remember that the most obscene about these things is still not the words used about them. It is the fact that they exist at all, that they are used or that using them is even being considered.

This Sunday, dear Congregation....

..we get on board with the Lord.

How's that for a wifebeater, eh?
h/t: Steve Hayes

Nuclear missile protest planned

On Friday, January 22, The Missile Defense Agency will conduct a Ground-Based Interceptor Test, FTG-06, for the missile defense system. Missiles launched from Reagan Test Site, Marshall Islands, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. The test will simulate an Iranian missile attack on the United States.

We will assemble in protest on Thursday, January 21, from 4 pm to 7 pm at Vandenberg AFB front gate (6 miles north of Lompoc on Highway One Santa Barbara county).

For further details  e-mail macgregoreddy AT gmail.com

Check the Vandenberg website for cancellation. If test is canceled, protest is canceled.

Sponsors include: WILPF, Code Pink, Nevada Desert Experience, and War Resisters League.

The laureate

"Our country needs women like you, Suzy."
"Well, mr. President, looks like you are taking care of that."

Or;

So you like my miniskirt, mr. President?

[See if you can think of another caption to this unmitigated piece of  propaganda].

Come my Eton fellows, er, Comrades, let us unite for the common man.

The Conservatives have announced there latest policy 'revolution'. Yes, that it, the tories are now using the word revolution to describe their policies. Fair play to them - this is what clever propagandaists to: they take the language of the other and co-opt, subvert, and redeploy it's energy into their own agenda. If you don't believe it just look at the gospel of Mark or the First Pauline letters.

So the Conservatives are having a "Big Bang Revolution" And it doesn't involved their already highly publicised wife-swapping policy. It's about the deregulation of the media in order to help generate monopolies that can compete with the BBC. Because poor old ITV etc are struggling to make ends meet.

So it's a dergulation policy then? Yep! And it's about creating a liberalised market that favours the rich at the expense of the poor? Yes again! It's a revolution, apparently.

Those piss-takers at Tory spin-Q have also come up with: "Genuine Schools Revolution"; a "decentralised energy Revolution"; a "revolution to break the cycle of crime"; a "Green consumer revolution"; a "Tourism Revolution"; "London Cycling Revolution"; "Apprenticeship Revolution"; "Skills Revolution"; "NHS Information Revolution" and even - and you really couldn't make this bollocks up unless you were in big-p politics - a "supply-side revolution".

Any talk of revolution on the left or the right is suspicious because it tends to be violent or in never-never-land, or both. Perhaps that's why it's one of the safest words to borrow: it was just sitting there and nobody was doing anything with it...

The most radical people I've met have been people who aim for a constant revolution of the heart. They challenge themselves to be converted to the point of view of their neighbour, to find ways to love and understand their enemies. To make sure that those who want to get at the poor have to step over their bodies to get there.

Colin Ward wrote about the anarchist society being like "a seed beneath the snow" and Jesus talked about a mustard plant (a creeping weed of a plant) speading slowly but providing shelter. Neither of these are the posturing images of revolution that the Conservatives are about to pummel us with as they drew up to their billowing heights for the next general election.

So us ordinary folk will have to sit out another bloody (sic.) revolution: getting on with our ordinary lives of loving and living: building a new world in the shell of the old. Until this old-etonian revolutions finally realise how thoroughly redundant they really are.

Hasta la vicotoria: Siempre!

The Massacre

If you can get to Bury St Edmunds this week you might want to check out "The Massacre" by radical playwright and friend of William Godwin, Elizabeth Archibald.

This play was never performed in its own time because it was considered too politically sensitive. It's only now, over 200 years later that it has been considered safe enough.

Archibald (nee Simpson) lived in exciting times and expected the revolutionary spirit that hit France to transform Britain too. But Britain continues to enjoy the kind of ironic indifference to politics that keeps us calmly and gently sedated to our lack of freedom to do and be all that is good. Good luck Elizabeth!

The Theatre blurb: "The play retains its power to this day and the tale of the family Tricastin and their tragic demise is as provocative and disturbing as it was when it was first suppressed – by its own author."

Obama: 5 Challenges that he and his friends face together

Friendship, ties, tributes, deep respect. These are the things that bring Turkey and the USA to fight their common enemies.

This is how stately speeches work: there is a cordial introduction and then a rounding on the "Other". If states exist only by perpetuating violence then alliances between states exist to bring violent thoughts and actions together across the world.

So what and who are Obama's enemies? Well, according to his speech in Ankara, Turkey today they are the following:

An economic crisis that recognizes no borders.

1. Extremism that leads to the killing of innocent men, women and children.
2. Strains on our energy supply.
3. A changing climate (Change we can believe in).
4. The proliferation of the world’s deadliest weapons.
5. The persistence of tragic conflict.

It is encouraging to hear a world ruler speak frankly of the "strains on our energy supply". When do politicians ever even hint at Peak Oil let alone to do so as a key theme for his or her future agenda? Yet his solutions, none are given, instead he focuses on bailing out the banks and hunting down the terrorists. So no CHANGE there then. And HOPE has an even bigger carbon footprint than the WAR ON TERROR.

Obama quotes a Turkish proverb, how cute of him: “You cannot put out fire with flames.” I don't know why. It has nothing to do with the content of his speech perhpas he just wants us to look the other way a moment while he gets on with the important work of government.

Obama is marching into Jerusalem on the back of a Beast of his own

Obama is marching into Jerusalem on the back of a Beast of his own

“They say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them” (St Paul 1 Thessalonians 5:3).

In 1894, in his book “Christianity and Patriotism”, Leo Tolstoy noted that among the Russian and French political and military leaders there was much celebrating of renewed relations and present and future peace. Generals from both sides dined together at international meetings, public embraces were exchanged.

Tolstoy has great fun satirising the propaganda of these two great states and their new found affection for one another: quoting the presses eager interest in the menus and bar tabs of the soldiers and statesmen.

“With each menu a description was also given of the drinks swallowed by the festive party, some sort of 'vudka', some sort of Bourgogne vieux, Grand Moet and so on. In an English newspaper all the intoxicating drinks consumed during these fetes were enumerated, the quantity of it being so enormous that all the drunkards in Russia and in France could hardly have swallowed it in such short a time.”1

Little has changed in media obsession. It takes a second or two to discover that the G20 leaders at the London summit in April had Bakewell tart and custard for pudding coutesy of celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver.2 How much booze was involved we may never know.

In his early months as USA President, Barak Obama has made diplomatic and deliberate recourses to better relations with the Russians than Bush. And not just Russia – a video link to Iranian T.V., a change of course in Iraq and Afghanistan. It all looks pretty good. The prince of HOPE is doing the job he was elected to do.

But then again.

“It is true that in all the speeches and toasts uttered during those festivities, and in all the articles about them, it was constantly proclaimed that the object of what was happening was to secure peace. [However,...] this constant repetition of the sentence: 'We don't want war, we want peace!” and the silence about what is in everyone's mind, is a most menacing symptom.”3 Tolstoy was offering an educated and insightful guess but things were more complicated: Germany initial saw itself as having to capitulate diplomatically to Russia as Britain lost influence along the Mediterranean but the threat of Russia's greater alliance with France lead indirectly to the Schleiffen Plan and a greater alliance between German and Austria against Russia as a means of self-defense. So the Franco-Russian talk of peace was really another of the many examples of one nation posturing militarily alongside another to threaten the neighbours.

In 1894 the peace between Russia and France only made a strong alliance for war with Germany. St Paul, wise to the ways of empire, warned the Thessalonian Christians of those political leaders who made much talk of peace and held out his own hope that they would be subject to God's judgment (1 Thess. 5:3).

That is why we should take note of Obama's words in Turkey on Palm Sunday this year. He does not ride into Europe on a donkey but in “The Beast”, his armoured gas-guzzler. And like the Sanhedrin, he is looking for the next scapegoat to save a whole nation.

"All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that's why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course."
(Obama in Prague 5 April 2009)

So what does Obama mean when he calls for unity, peace, hope, and an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons as president of a country developing “usable” nuclear weapons as we sleep and eat? He means what we must listen for in the silence.

Please hinder the children

A story from Last Hours which at first I wanted to copy in full as it is a bad read technically, but Indymedia London did it so you can read it there.

The main idea, especially spread by London's local rag, is that anarchists and foreigners (which means I am repeating myself) are out to get your innocent children to use them as human shields in their unscrupulous striving for a revolution which will bring the banks down and will cause a lot of trouble for bankers who even have to dress down to escape the militias. Which consist of lazy drunkards who will however be shooting their way through Oxford Street for a good bit of plundering.
No
kidding.
Do you see that woman calling for a May Day party? Looks trustworthy and innocent, you think? You really are a fool. A May Day fool.

Why are you watching this camera?

Just having finished a restyled re-publication of this magnificent piece on how to make surplus population into cops [it pays to learn the languages of your neighbours!] and then I stumble upon this. Synchronicity - or signs of the times.

Let's work indeed - against the surveillance state, against the policing simulation of work, against the paranoia propagated by the regime.