A Rant At The World On December 1st 2011

I’ve tried. I really have. I’ve tried to be calm and rational and reasoned over the last few blog entries. But I can’t do it anymore the more news that emerges from, well, everywhere just keeps chipping away at my calm. I mean, seriously, how can the world be in such a mess? Don’t get me wrong, I know the place is run by psychopaths and naked emperors but you’d think they’d at least be competent. Instead they just continue to flush the civic and economic life of the western democracies down the metaphorical toilet. The Emperor has no clothes, but instead of parading around in all his nakedness, he’s actually managed to put on a pair of Y-fronts so he looks even more ridiculous and foolish.

That’s the thing though, these people are Teflon-coated; they can say and do the most stupid things and not only stay out of jail but get rewarded for it. Crash the world economy? Here, have a six digit bonus and don’t think about the human cost of your actions…

What am I saying? They don’t give a damn about the human cost of their actions.

The whole state of affairs gets progressively more ridiculous. Jeremy Clarkson, who is admittedly entertaining on Top Gear said that yesterday’s public sector strikers should have been executed in front of their families. Obviously a joke, but the fact that he writes for the Murdoch-owned, Tory-worshipping Sun leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I mean, I wouldn’t suggest that people who tacitly support hacking the voicemails of murdered schoolgirls should be executed, but you’ll forgive me if I struggle to overcome the enraged contempt in which I hold their actions.

And besides, Clarkson is friends with David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks. That’s the Axis of the Banality of Evil right there.

(Great way of diverting attention from the issues behind the strikes though, Jezza. I’m sure your mates will thank you for it.)

And Nick Clegg and his fraud of a party have chained themselves with words of support for Conservative spending cuts beyond the next election, so that’s another excuse for millionaire ideologues to lecture the rest of us about living in the real world as the money in our wallets gets worth less and less as they destroy our libraries and schools and health services. But no, apparently the biggest threat to the civic life of our nation is a bunch of people camping outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, or a bunch of public sector workers going on strike for a day.

Of course, that’s just tabloid media coverage, and as one of their number seems to think that everyone who wants privacy is a paedophile, I think we should ignore their contemptible hostility and hysterical scapegoating until they go away. Unfortunately they won’t, because football scores, racism, naked breasts and gossip about minor celebrities are this country’s equivalent of crack cocaine and we just keep feeding the dealers, regardless of the amoral chaos they leave behind.

It’s as bad over in America and it’s going to get worse. Next year the world – yes, the world, because US politics tends to have an effect on which civilians we end up bombing – is going to get dragged into a presidential election that will decide who gets to be the most powerful corporate bootlick on the planet. So far, the choices are about 700 potential Republican party candidates engaged in a competition to show which one of them is least capable of being trusted with nuclear launch codes, and Obama.

Ahh yes, Obama. Domestically, I’m sure he’s achieved more than he’s given credit for. Internationally? Just another politician. In some ways worse, because he swept into power on a wave of hope, and now the Egyptian military are using his silence over US treatment of Occupy Wall Street to murder their own citizens. Sure, Obama could say “Our police haven’t killed anyone yet!”, but that last three letter word is laced with grim inevitability.

Oh, and in his quest to raise money for his campaign (note to his staff, tweets about how much money you’ve raised sit uncomfortably next to tweets reporting police brutality in New York and Oakland), Obama yesterday said that the US has “no ally more important than Israel.” Which may be true, but it probably comes as news to France and Australia, to whom he said the same thing.

(Yes, I know “no stronger ally” can mean that the US just has a lot of joint-best-friends, but they’re still just weasel words used for the sake of expediency, just another example of empty flattery churned out by a bunch of speechwriters who are apparently using Word’s find-and-replace function. Realpolitik? Probably, but it’s why no-one trusts each other anymore. Still, he might say it to North Korea by mistake, that’d be fun.)

And while we all know the Special Relationship is an embarrassing Cold War joke, it probably comes as news to all the British troops who’ve died as a result of those damned crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s before we talk about the tens of thousands Afghanis and Iraqis who’ve died. That’s a hell of a lot of collateral damage considering we were only really interested in getting Saddam and Osama. Well, you got them. Well done. When do we invade Iran? Because we’re all expecting it, with bitter, empty laughs.

Still, maybe a good war will distract people from the next inevitable collapse of the global economy. Heck, maybe it can help the economy – after all we sell weapons and tear gas to all those oppressive regimes.

That’s the thing. People are dying because of all this. Their lives are being ruined. And the sad thing is that we all bear some responsibility for this – we voted for them, bought their tabloids, purchased their trinkets. The conspiracy theorists are right, we’re ruled by the Illuminati. The tragic thing is, it happened by mistake. Great. That’s the biggest sick joke of all.

Right, rant over.

For now.

But only because Morrisey’s come on the radio and I have to go.

PS. Now the British Government want chemotherapy patients to undergo “fit-for-work” tests. Here’s a clue – they’re undergoing treatment for cancer, it’s possible they might struggle a bit. There’s a petition against this here.

PPS. And now the Independent has published a story of how lobbyists at Bell Pottinger brag about how easy it is to get access to people like the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. Not that we didn’t all know this, but it’s good to see it in black and white where it might make someone squirm…

Not About the Money? Occupying, rioting, and people who just follow orders

It’s the slogan of 2011 – “We are the 99%”, a reference to how the vast majority of the world’s wealth seems concentrated among 1% of earners. And it’s hard not to sympathise with it, considering corporate corruption and reckless banking has tanked the global economy. Sure, I react against it to a degree – I’m not a part of the 1% by any means, but white middle-class guilt makes me acutely aware that I own an iPhone and a Playstation and therefore I’m way closer to that 1% than someone trying to live on £1.50 a day.

And then I realise I’ve made the mistake of assuming the Occupy movement is about the money – it’s about inequality, it’s about corruption, it’s about greed, but money itself? Probably not, not at its core. Someone wiser than me once said that it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil, and you can see that in the news without too much trouble – when members of the 1% go to a Halloween party dressed as people who’ve just lost their homes, when a member of the 99% pepper-sprays fellow shoppers in order to get a discount on a video game.

You can trace it all back to economics if you want, but Occupy is only one of the events that are shaking the world. While people are occupying the London Stock Exchange, just a mile down the road, the Leveson Enquiry is hearing some terrifying evidence about out-of-control tabloid press. Protestors across the Middle East have been killed and tear-gassed because of their opposition to oppressive regimes. This isn’t all about money (although some very influential people have got very rich on amoral/immoral behaviour), but maybe it’s about power – economic, political, cultural, whatever. The whole rollercoaster is out of control – journalism, banking, politics, law enforcement, the lot.

That helps put some, well, anomalies into perspective – the average police officer may well be part of the 99%, but it takes a certain power-trip to pepper-spray a group of seated, non-resisting students. The rioters in London in August were 99%ers, but rampaging through deprived communities and stealing trainers isn’t exactly an anti-globalisation protest.

It’s looking like a failure of authority, one that doesn’t seem to get any better – instead of improving things, each new revelation, each new response to public anger just seems to make things worse. Our authority figures are losing control, and it seems from many of their public statements that they don’t even understand what’s going on, why people are angry, and how to react to all that’s happening. This isn’t about the 1% that has all the wealth, this is about whatever-percentage holds the economic, civic, political and media power – that includes corrupt police officers, and tabloid hacks, and billionaires and ministerial advisors.

But looked at that way, you may as well say it’s the Illuminati, or David Icke’s Lizard People, or whatever conspiracy theory you want to come up with. It’s at this point I should probably break out the classic – “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” – but let’s not kid ourselves, powerlessness can corrupt as well, hence the rioters and excuses for police brutality that effectively equate to “Just following orders”.

This raises a spectre – if a power vacuum emerges, who gets to fill it? Someone who embodies the worst of human nature? Or someone who can act as a unifier, a spokesperson, a diplomat, a leader? Or, heck, no leader at all but a new grassroots expression of democracy?

I don’t know. These thoughts are running away from me. But the more they do, the more I’m uncomfortable with 1%/99% slogans. Good and bad emerge from both groups, and the way in which both groups exercise their power will be crucial for what happens over the next few years. We seem to be seeing the birth of something big – let’s hope it’s also something good.

PS. And now Occupy LA looks like being evicted. I hope it doesn’t follow the above pattern, but it sounds like a lot of manpower and a partial media blackout are again in effect…

PPS. And now New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has described the NYPD as his “own army”. I’m sure that proves at least something about this post.

Frank Miller on the Occupy Movement

Comics over the last thirty or so years have produced quite a few superstars. Okay, maybe they’re not particularly well known outside the industry, with the exception of Neil Gaiman and possibly a couple of others, but if you’re a fan of comic books then chances are you have something by Grant Morrison on your shelves. Or Alan Moore. Or Frank Miller.

Frank Miller is probably the most influential Batman writer of recent decades, mainly down to two works – Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. If you’re not a comic fan, then you may have seen the movies 300 or Sin City – same guy. Well, Frank kicked up a bit of a stir over the weekend with his blog post on the Occupy movement.

Now, it’s pretty clear that Frank doesn’t altogether have the strongest grasp on current affairs – heck, he gets World of Warcraft’s name wrong, and that’s before conflating Occupy’s protests against corporate corruption with, I guess, the anti-war movement (I’d imagine there’s a reasonable crossover, but they’re hardly the same thing).

It’d be easy to take the blog post apart, especially when he gets on to suggesting that the protestors join the military so they can fight ‘Islamicism’ (which is interesting because Miller has never been in the armed forces while injured Occupy protestor Scott Olsen served with the Marines in Iraq before getting his skull fractured by police in Oakland, California). There’s really no point, because it’s an uninformed screed. However, it comes on the back of recent attention given to the abuse suffered by female bloggers, as well as racist comments relating to the news that the new Spider-Man would be half-black, half-hispanic. The question somehow becomes why, in a medium where most of the characters would probably support Occupy, or at the very least respect their right to protest, and where treating people with respect and compassion is a pretty standard subject for speeches from the likes of Superman and Captain America, does the audience reaction get so ugly sometimes?

(Of course, the flipside of that question is why wouldn’t it – after all, comics are still pretty white, pretty violent and female characters are more sexualised than the men… Just playing devil’s advocate…!)

I guess it’s an issue all of us who engage in online community have to face – the internet can be a harsh, nasty and unforgiving place at times. Miller’s blog post proves that, so do countless comments threatening to rape female writers, and while the majority of us no doubt find this abhorrent, the fact is those attitudes vocally exist. And while maybe the question should be “How can we bring civility back to the internet?”, the darker question is why does such behaviour happen in the first place?

PS. 3.12.2011 – And now Alan Moore has responded to Frank’s comments. Needless to say, he disagrees.

St. Paul’s, The Protests And Occupy Taunton

The Occupy movement has really taken hold in the weeks since a group of protestors decided to draw attention to corporate corruption on Wall Street. One of the sister protests to this, Occupy London Stock Exchange, has made the news because of its complex relationship with St. Paul’s Cathedral, outside which the protestors have their camp. It has prompted questions about the role of the church and the interplay between religion and politics, and it’s clear that a lot of lessons need to be learned.

So maybe some of those lessons can be learned from another Occupy protest that’s set up in the grounds of a church. In contrast to Occupy LSX, this is the smallest protest movement.

Occupy Taunton is Steve Watkins, aged 56. Armed only with a large sign reading “Where’s it all gone, you idiots?” and a chair, Watkins has set up camp in the grounds of his local church. And yet he and St. Mary Magdelene Church seem to be avoiding some of the trickier problems seen by St. Paul’s.

 

For a start, the local vicar has flat out endorsed Mr. Watkins’ right to protest. This is something St. Paul’s has gone back and forth on, appearing woolly in the process (I’m not sure freedom of speech is endorsed if you’re involved in legal proceedings against protest at the same time). Notice that the vicar doesn’t automatically endorse the message itself, just its presence in the churchyard; there’s an argument, one I agree with, that the church should always be on the side of the poor. However, that means genuinely being on the side of the poor, not just saying the right things in interviews. Just say what you mean and get on with it – or, as the Bible says, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no”.

Then there’s how Mr. Watkins and the vicar sorted out any issues over him protesting on church grounds – they went to the pub and talked about it. Much of the St. Paul’s thing seems to have been carried out behind closed doors and, subsequently, in the media. But there’s something biblical about meeting over food and drink – it’s one of the things Jesus kept getting in trouble for, and yet it was key to building relationships. I’d much rather see the church’s response to Occupy be written on the back of a beermat over a drink with some of the protestors than be published in a sixty page strategy document. Sure, the size of things in London might make that impractical, but I think there’s something in it. Hire a room, get protestors, clergy and bankers talking over a curry. Who knows, it might work…

The third potential lesson is Remembrance Day. I’ve said before that this is the most sacred day in the UK’s secular calendar and I stand by that. Mr. Watkins has said he’ll move on before Sunday, so as not to take anything away from the act of remembrance, and while I don’t suggest Occupy LSX do that, the way in which the protestors engage with remembrance services this weekend will be important, not least because of media portrayal. I don’t know if something’s planned, but if so, I hope it’s something powerful and respectful.

When all is said and done, I’d like to thank Occupy Taunton for somehow being very British about it all. Sometimes London seems divorced from the rest of the nation so it’s interesting to see how this plays out against the backdrop of pubs and country churches. And I hope we never forget that the large, powerful and noisy never forget that something powerful can be learned from the small and quiet…