SOCIALIST UNITY

CND have launched a new on-line radio service, which is designed to cover a broader remit than just peace issues, and given the quality of the people involved could prove a very effective way of stimulating and encourging debate rather a slightly different medium.

The third and latest item is an interview with Bruce Kent

Bruce_Kent_on_Hiroshima_and_Nuclear_Weapons.mp3

Last week’s interview with Jeremy Corbyn MP is still available, about the state of the Coalition government and the future of the Labour Party.

Interview_with_Jeremy_Corbyn_MP.mp3

and Lindsey German on Afghanistan is here

http://traffic.libsyn.com/realityradio/6_8_2010__Afghanistan_and_the_Iraq_Inquiry.mp3

And you can reach the web-site here: http://realityradio.org.uk/ 

by Madam Miaow

The latest in the Guardian’s increasingly demented run of attempts to blame China for every disaster screeches out: “BP oil spill: failed safety device on Deepwater Horizon rig was modified in China”. Tim Webb’s article then goes on to admit:

There is no evidence that the significant modifications to the blowout preventer (BOP), which were carried out in China in 2005, caused the equipment to fail. But industry lawyers said BP could be made liable for any mistakes that a Chinese subcontractor made carrying out the work. It would be almost impossible to secure damages in China, where international law is barely recognised.

No evidence, but I guess the Guardian lives in hope.

In contrast, over at the Observer, their stablemate/rival, Tim Webb dispassionately reports the fact that there are moves afoot to “pass the buck” for responsibility away from BP’s awful health and safety record, th’awl bidness’s general screw-you to local communities, Halliburton’s dodgy cement, and JR-style cronyism with ambitious/influential politicians, to China! When in doubt, blame the Chinese.

The Observer has learnt how Cameron [International, not Dave] will try to pin the blame on BP for the failure of the BOP: lawyers will claim that BP ordered Transocean to modify the BOP in China so significantly that the remodelled component no longer resembled what Cameron had originally manufactured.

A different emphasis entirely.

When the Western nations’ duplicity over the secret Danish Text at the Copenhagen climate change summit was about to hit the headlines last December, The Guardian and Ed Milband led the field in switching attention (hey! Look over THERE!) to supposed machinations from China, in order to protect a deal that would have left the US still producing four times per capita the carbon emissions of the Chinese. My own attempts to join the debate and present an alternative argument at the Guardian’s CiF (Comment Is Free, irony duly noted) resulted in my comments being deleted and my being banned.

In 2000, when the government’s mishandling of the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the UK resulted in pyres of culled livestock across this green and pleasant land, The Guardian was one of the loudest in suddenly accusing the UK Chinese of starting the outbreak (while the Independent was alone in maintaining a healthy scepticism). When this lunacy resulted in an apology and vindication from Nick Brown, minister at the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food, the story melted away, with the late Hugo Young conceding in an email exchange that there were wheels within wheels, and one Guardian reporter telling a UK Chinese defence campaigner that there had been a dressing-down at the very top with the instruction that this should never happen again. If only Young were still with us and on watch …

Isn’t it about time the Guardian acted like a newspaper and offered us unbiased news reporting so we can make up our own minds? What is their agenda? What are they warming us up for? With the US conducting military exercises in the Yellow Sea and Cameron’s statement that nuclear war with China is an option during the General Election campaign, is the West seriously building up to a conflagration with its giant economic rival? Could China’s relationship with Iran be a factor, perchance?

As if we haven’t had enough wars started by the West. Still, no war news is bad news if you happen to have arms industry companies in your share portfolio.

UPDATE: Note that both articles were by Tim Webb but with a different emphasis. The Observer’s homepage featured the more sober headline and standfirst: “What lurks below the surface for BP? Even amid the ‘cowboy culture’ of offshore drilling, BP’s operational record raises concerns BP safety device was sent to China”

The Observer piece acknowledges the buck-passing strategy currently being employed and makes it clear that “BP ordered Transocean to modify the BOP in China so significantly that the remodelled component no longer resembled what Cameron had originally manufactured.” The implication is that the Chinese subcontractor only worked to BP/Transocean’s money-saving specs.

The Guardian’s home page, however, had the headline: “BP oil spill: failed safety device on Deepwater Horizon rig was modified in China.” The piece by the same journalist implies that any fault — which has yet to be determined forensically — was down to Chinese work alone despite there being “no evidence” that any modifications had anything to do with the BOP failure at all.

It would be interesting to to know if either of these versions represents the actual views of the credited journalist.

UPDATE 2: Monday 19th July. As both articles seem to be good examples of objective reportage, containing some interesting material and placing the blame for the oil spill firmly with BP/Transocean, I am left wondering why the Guardian Online chose to foreground the China angle even though the article itself makes it clear that, “… the modifications were carried out at BP’s request and “under its direction” … ‘. It looks as if both headlines and standfirsts were written by eds at the Observer. The Observer home page led with the “What lies beneath the surface” angle, focusing on BP, and which features China as only part of the equation. Take out China and replace it with anywhere else in the world (India and South Korea also get these jobs) and you are still left with a cost-cutting scandal that is the responsibility of the oil industry. But the majority of the subsequent blizzard of Tweets didn’t reflect this, homing in instead on China.

The Observer newspaper published the China angle on page 7, and the “Beneath the surface” article on page 36. So what is going on?

PICTURE LINK

Sometimes in the world of blogging we burn our fingers with the English libel laws, but let us get this in perspective. On Tuesday, the Swindon Advertiser ran a front page story with a banner headline that a local headmaster had been convicted of raping a child, along with a picture of the headteacher. The Adver is the main local paper, with I think a circulation of 27000, and is in every shop, garage and leisure centre in the town. Everyone will have seen it.

But the story wasn’t true! They claimed he had been convicted of 11 charges of rape, but he hadn’t. Oh my God!

It is certainly the only time I have seen a paper run an apology and retraction on the front page, which they did today. I can only think this is going to be a costly mistake for Newsquest.

The truth of the issue is that Anthony Talbot pleaded guilty only to charges of indecent assault over incidents that took place between 1978 and 1981 when he was a young child himself, and involved an older girl. I believe that he was 12 years old when the first incidents took place. He has been sentanced to community service. Serious and disturbing as these issues are, it is a long way from what the Swindon Advertiser claimed.

Not only did the Swindon Advertiser falsely claim that he was a convicted child rapist, but if you only read the headline and saw his photograph as a casual reader, you would have gained the clear impression that the crime was recent, and involved an assault on a child by a teacher.

I think this does set a new standard for journalistic low standards. There must have been some systemic failure in the editorial process, and it perhaps is another example of the de-skilling of local and regional newspapers.

From the NUJ

New pay deal averts threatened strike

Journalists at the Morning Star have secured a two-year pay deal bringing to an end the recent dispute at the paper.

The dispute was settled after NUJ members agreed a new two-year pay deal worth £900 this year, and a rise of RPI plus 1% next year.

Negotiators also secured a new family-friendly agreement with special pay rates for working unsocial hours, giving all journalists at least an extra 4 days off per year in return for bank holiday and Sunday working.

NUJ Deputy General Secretary Michelle Stanistreet who negotiated the agreement said: “We have achieved a significant new deal that meets the aspirations of members for better pay and conditions whilst at the same time recognising the difficult financial situation the paper faces. For the first time our members have secured an agreement on bank holiday and Sunday working and the pay deal is as good as any in the industry”.

The deal has to be endorsed by the management committee of the paper’s owners, the People’s Press Printing Society which meets next week.

Journalists on the Morning Star, the left-wing pro-trades union daily tabloid, are planning to go on strike from next Sunday in an increasingly bitter pay dispute.

Editorial staff represented by the National Union of Journalists want an extra £1,000 a year to supplement their current £19,000 salaries plus some form of recompense for working anti-social hours.

In November 2009, the paper’s management - representing its co-operative owners, the People’s Press Printing Society - offered £1,000.

But it was part of a three-year deal that staff believe will lead to very small rises in the second and third years. There was also no recognition for anti-social working hours. So the offer was rejected

According to one of the staff planning to strike, management initially refused to negotiate with the NUJ chapel any further. Then, with industrial action looming, a new offer was tabled earlier this month.

Staff were offered £900 in a two-year-deal and some form of recognition for anti-social hours. An NUJ member said: “This is a step forward, but it isn’t enough, and we have asked them to continue to negotiate… they have refused to do so, so we will have no option but to strike.”

from the Guardian

Anna Chen looks at how politics and culture mix at unconscious levels, shaping the way we think.

Chinese decorative arts are revered in the West. From Willow pattern dinner plates to the Brighton Pavilion, their designs are regarded as beautiful and sophisticated. But for the past two centuries European composers and musicians have had no qualms about mercilessly parodying what they thought of as ‘Chinese tunes’.

“I always wondered how it was that those cartoon strains of cod Chinese music used to have me running for cover when I was growing up. Siouxsie And The Banshees’ Hong Kong Garden, David Bowie’s China Girl, Carl Douglas’s Kung Fu Fighting, they’re only a few examples of the sort of orientalism in music that was the bane of my young life. Who needed crude verbal epithets when a few bars of plonkery could do the job?”

She asked Dr Jonathan Walker, a musicologist, how certain configurations of a few notes could be so potent in their effect. They take us on a fascinating journey through the development of a musical trope that was loaded with meaning.

Listen to the programme on BBC Radio 4 here, it is available until Saturday:

More from Madam Miaow:

If you look at the mainstream media, you will see that they have now moved on from coverage of the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla.

This means that the Israelis have largely succeeded in creating the circumstances where their version of events has dominated and framed news coverage. As Antony Lerman writes in the Guardian:

The repeated screening of the video, taken from an Israeli assault craft, of the commandos abseiling down ropes onto the Mavi Marmara and then being set upon by the activists waiting for them on the deck, became the defining image of the capture of the boats. Posted by the IDF on YouTube, by Wednesday it had attracted more than 600,000 views.

The activists’ actions were described by Israeli spokespersons as a premeditated terrorist attack by al-Qaida sympathisers, using clubs, knives and guns, carried out with the intention of “lynching” the commandos who were carrying out an entirely legal and peacefully executed operation.

This Israeli version of events was very often given an uncritical airing. The fact that the video was a selected and edited segment, that the activists who witnessed what happened were being held incommunicado, that every bit of recorded evidence they may have had in their possession was being confiscated – this context was rarely highlighted, with BBC online and radio coverage particularly weak in this respect.

Of course, the media were not responsible for the Israeli clampdown – which continued even after the activists began to be seen in public being taken into detention at the Israeli port of Ashdod and when they were being deported – but there could certainly have been more attention drawn to the imbalance in the sources from which the media were obtaining their information.

Even after first-hand accounts started to be broadcast, there seemed to be a belittling of their validity by describing eye-witnesses simply as “activists” or “pro-Palestinians” when some were writers, members of parliament and journalists.

The eye-witnesses who were on the ship have now been released, but will be playing catch-up, given that the initial framing of the story has already been made by the Israelis. This was clear this morning on BBC Radio Four’s flagship Today programme, when Sarah Colborne was interrogated about the Israeli narrative, and not treated with the empathy appropriate when talking to the close witness of a traumatic and brutal crime.

Tomorrow’s demonstration in solidarity with the convoy in London (assemble Downing Street at 1:30 pm), and the coming attempt by MV Rachel Corrie to sail to Gaza are therefore of heightened importance; as it is our opportunity to ensure that the story continues to run, now that our witnesses are available.

The apparent bias of the BBC is worth examining, because I don’t believe that in their overall coverage the BBC are particularly pro-Israeli, nor anti-Palestinian. However, they seem particularly susceptible to influence by Israeli Public Relations when there is a crisis. Outside of these crises, the BBC has become increasingly sceptical of Israel’s behaviour

For example, the BBC has in the past referred to Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas during Israel’s hostile military operations in Gaza as having been “kidnapped”. Only after complaints did they change this to say they had been captured by Hamas; and they admitted they made an editorial error in deviating from impartiality.

I think there are several reasons for this. Firstly, there is a massive imbalance between the PR capabilities of the Israeli state, who view it as an important arm of their military capability, and the ramshackle PR capacity of the Palestinians themselves, and the unavoidably amateur nature of much of the solidarity movement. Israeli spokespeople are English speaking, urbane, and well connected with the Western journalists; these news gatherers anyway live in Israel, and not in Palestine. all sort of subtle and unsubtle effects can shape the ability of Western journalists to visit and report from Palestinian territory. Indeed the huge difference in prosperity and social mores means that a Western journalist will be much more comfortable based in Israel than Palestine.

There is also the factor that Israel has a well funded and technically sophisticated military propaganda capability that can forge, modify and edit photographs and films, and produce misleading mistranslations of Arabic sources that are then dribbled into Western media. Israeli sources will intervene in internet debate, and pump prime pro-Zionist blogs and websites.

The receptiveness of the BBC and other mainstream news outlets to these Israeli sources is conditioned by their default inclination to treat government, particularly democratic governments, as reliable fonts of information; particularly if that government has friendly relationships with Britain and the USA.

The exceptional mendacity of the Israeli lie machine matches the extraordinary brutality of their soldiery. Over the longer course of events, the professionalism of the BBC will correct the bias; but in the first 48 hours of the fog of war, the Israelis get away with framing the narrative again and again.

But of course we are not powerless. The BBC as a state owned and funded broadcaster is susceptible to complaints about bias. Alternative media is able to perpetuate the story, and as long as we continue campaigning then the story can be revived, and the initial propaganda gains of the Israelis can even be counter-productive if the mainstream media contradicts the Israeli version while the lies are still fresh in people’s memories. Internet access to foreign newspaper and satelite TV channels like Al Jazeera allow people to follow events from sources much more sceptical of Israel.

There has been an enormous sea-change in attitude to Israel, where forty years ago almost no-one in mainstream British or European politics was critical of Zionism; today Israel is widely distrusted, even by many politicians who mouth platitudes about being its friends. So we should not be overly worried about pro-Israeli bias, the Israelis are losing the information war.

Cameron was the clear winner of tonight’s debate. That conclusion was reached by the editors of Sky News, the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail etc, even before the party leaders arrived in Birmingham. All he had to do was turn up to be declared the victor by a Tory press desperate to get him into Downing Street.

In reality, David Cameron probably did do enough, he came over as likable, and sincere; whereas Nick Clegg was over-rehearsed and egotistical.

But Gordon Brown did really well, and kept Labour in the game. Recovering adeptly from yesterday’s gaffe with a self-deprecating acknowledgment, he doggedly stuck to explaining how a Labour victory would be in the best interest of ordinary people; and time and again posed questions about Child Tax credit, cuts in corporation tax and inheritance tax which the Tory leader failed to answer.

I certainly don’t agree with everything that Gordon Brown said, but his message was pitched well at Labour voters, and was assured and convincing. Remember where we were a year ago when a wipeout for the Labour Party was expected, the Party has already done well to have recovered to where they are now. If voters who identify with the Labour Party can be persuaded to vote, then disaster can be avoided; and Brown’s performance tonight will have impressed many.

Nick Clegg was poor, and his attempts to play the outsider card were tedious. He probably still hasn’t sealed the deal with the voters attracted to him by the first debate, and in the words of Simon Hoggart of the Guardian, you can almost hear the air hissing out of his balloon.

by John Pilger

Rupert Murdoch’s overweening power goes unchallenged in Australia, where all the main parties pay fealty to the media baron.

Adelaide is Australia’s festival city. Its arts festival is currently in swing. Polite debate, aesthetics and high-octane wine are putting the world to rights. With one exception. Adelaide is where Rupert Murdoch began his empire. The voracious trail starts here. No statue stands; his is a spectral presence, controlling the only daily newspaper, even the printing presses. Across Australia, he owns almost 70 per cent of the capital city press, the only national newspaper, Sky Television, and much else. Welcome to the world’s first murdochracy.

What is a murdochracy? It is where the fealty and augmentation of Murdoch’s editors and managers are undisguised, an inspiration to his choir on seven continents, where even his competitors sing along and wise politicians heed the Murdochism: “What’ll it be? A headline a day or a bucket of shit a day?”

While the veracity of this celebrated remark is sometimes disputed, its spirit is not. Stricken with pneumonia, the former prime minister John Howard dragged himself out of bed to pay obeisance to the man to whom he owed many empty buckets. His successor, Kevin Rudd, scurried to an obligatory audience with Murdoch in New York mere months to his election. This is standard across the planet. Before he took power, Tony Blair was flown to an island off Queensland to stand at the blue News Corp lectern and pledge Thatcherism and media de-regulation to the jowled figure nodding in the front row. The next day, the Sun lauded Blair as one who “has vision [and] speaks our language on morality and family life”.

Whitewash
Murdoch knows that little separates the main political parties in Australia, Britain and America. He plays the man. In 1972, he backed Australia’s Gough Whitlam, who revealed himself to be a radical reformer. A furious Murdoch swung his newspapers against Whitlam with stories so outrageously skewed that rebellious journalists on the Australian burned their paper in the street. That has never been repeated.

Dominant themes in the Australian murdochracy, sport and celebrity gossip aside, are the promotion of war and jingoism, US foreign policy, Israel and a paternalism towards Aborigines, the world’s most impoverished indigenous group, according to the UN. This antiquated cold warring is not entirely due to the Murdoch press, but the agenda is. When the Indonesian tyrant General Suharto was about to be overthrown by his own people, the then editor-in-chief of the Australian, Paul Kelly, led a delegation of editors of most of Australia’s principal newspapers to Jakarta. With Kelly at his side, this mass murderer, whom the Australian promoted as a “moderate”, accepted the tribute of each.

Murdoch’s most unabashed, if entertaining, retainer is Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of the Australian. On one his adoring trips to the US, Sheridan wrote: “The US is the greatest possible argument for media deregulation. Every morning, I flick between Fox, CNN and MSNBC as I eat my cereal . . . why did it take so long for pay TV to get to Australia?”

He was referring, as if instinctively, to his master’s company Foxtel. As for terrorism, Sheridan blames “Pilgerist Chomskyism” for “ideologically fuelling the followers of Osama Bin Lenin, sorry Laden”.

One of the most effective campaigns in the Australian murdochracy has been the whitewashing of a bloody colonial past, including attacks on the distinguished chronicler of the Aboriginal genocide Henry Reynolds and the former director of the National Museum of Australia Dawn Casey, for having dared to present the truth about indigenous suffering. The late Manning Clark, Australia’s great maverick historian, was smeared by Murdoch’s Courier-Mail as a red agent, then as a fraud, in much the style that Murdoch’s Sunday Times smeared Michael Foot as a Soviet agent.

World domination
Something similar awaits those who question the manipulation of the remembrance of Australia’s blood sacrifice for imperialism, old and new. Aimed at the young, a maudlin “new patriotism” reaches an annual climax on 25 April, the anniversary of the disaster at Gallipoli known as Anzac Day. The message is undisguised militarism promoting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, Prime Minister Rudd says, absurdly, that the military is Australia’s highest calling.

Such false flags are flown for Israel, which sees a stream of Australian journalists sponsored and paid for by Zionist groups. The result is apologetic reporting of murderous actions that evokes the great appeasers such as Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the Times, in the 1930s. The debate about state war crimes has all but bypassed Australia. That a former and current British prime minister have been summoned before the Chilcot inquiry is viewed with bemusement, as nothing like it would happen here. Yet Howard, who also invaded Iraq, claimed 30 times in one speech that he knew Saddam Hussein had a “massive programme” of weapons of mass destruction.

The national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has long been intimidated by the Murdoch press in the obsessive manner of the campaign waged against the BBC. Funded directly by governments, the ABC has none of the nominal independence afforded by a licence fee. Last year, HarperCollins, owned by Murdoch, was awarded a lucrative “partnership” with ABC Books.

In 1983, there were 50 major corporations dominating the world’s media. By 2002, this had been reduced to nine. Rupert Murdoch says that eventually there will be three, including his own. If we accept this, media and information control will be the same, and we all shall be citizens of a murdochracy.