And so, 'Vicar Blair' has delivered another homily from his 'pulpit' at the Guardian/Observer, beseeching us to see the true, dark forces driving war, conflict and terror in the Middle East and wider world:
The fact is that, though of course there are individual grievances or reasons for the violence in each country, there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith.
No intimation here, of course, that, by far, the greatest levels of terror and violence originate in the abuse of power and perversion of office, rather than religion and faith - all helping to evade the actual truth that the worst acts of terrorism, in terms of scale, impact and inhumanity, have been perpetrated by war-seeking states and 'religiously'-driven evangelists like Blair himself.
With standard deceit, Blair also uses his Observer sermon to lament the conflict in Syria as a core problem of internal religious imbalances between Shia and Sunni, faithfully omitting the religious-sectarian agenda of his Saudi Arabian and Qatari friends, and the West's/Israel's own malevolent part in fomenting this catastrophic civil war.
Behind the sham ecumenical lines, the key target of Blair's facile piece is Islam and its 'particular' cultivation of 'terrrorist tendencies'. Predictably, the key link between Western invasions and political radicalisation of Muslims is completely ignored. It's all just attributed to wayward religious fanaticism.
Akin to his posturings as Middle East Peace Envoy, he does include a token nod to other religious violence:
But this issue of extremism is not limited to Islam. There are also many examples the world over where Muslims are the victims of religiously motivated violence from those of other religious faiths.
What 'revelation'. Should we be astounded by this great 'admission' - or just by the kind of money he gets paid for such 'insight'?
If in need of greater elaboration, Blair's Guardian angels, ever-welcome with their platform, provide devotional interpretation of his meaning and message.
Blair's invocation of 'good religion' rallying to combat 'bad religion' isn't just cringing rhetoric. It's a seeming intensification of his own religiously-pitched psychosis in rationalising more violence.
Even after his zealous part in the brutal destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, the sermonising crusader goes relentlessly on:
Such religious tolerance has to be taught and argued for. Those who oppose it have to be taken on and defeated not only by arms but by ideas.
Thus, the still-resolved missionary handing down his lofty injunction: you will be educated for your own good, whether by our righteous bombs or our ennobled words.
Given the alarming mindset of someone who, with Bush, invoked 'Christian guidance' over the 'deliverance' of Saddam, Blair's latest 'appeal' to religious tolerance and compassion suggests either a deepening descent into even starker delusion, more calculating efforts - in lieu of Chilcot's report - to whitewash his actions, or some disturbed mixture of both.
Whatever the underlying psychiatry, the Guardian has acted as a complicit, discipled liberal in hosting Blair's vacuous gospel and the crux of this shabby article, a brazen advert for Blair's 'religious' foundation.
Thus, does unctuous litany slip seamlessly into shameless self-promotion:
The answer is to promote views that are open-minded and tolerant towards those who are different, and to fight the formal, informal and internet propagation of closed-minded intolerance. In the 21st century, education is a security issue. For that reason, when I left office, and in part based on my experience post-9/11 of how countries whose people were freed from dictatorship have then had democratic aspirations thwarted by religious extremism, I established a foundation whose aim is to promote greater knowledge and understanding between people of different faiths....The foundation is now active in more than 20 countries, including some of those most affected by sectarianism, with a multimillion-pound budget, full-time and part-time staff, and expanding rapidly.
A nice 'moral' earner to sanctify his multiple other mammonic urges, corporate dealings and shady payola.
Suffice to say, any associating body - faith-based, academic or otherwise - participating in or accepting funding from this spurious front organisation is, in effect, a 'holy' accomplice to Blair's murderous criminality.
Meanwhile, highest praise to the real humanitarian impulses of one Twiggy Garcia for endeavouring a citizen's arrest of Blair.
Hopefully, one day soon, we may be giving thanks over Blair's criminal conviction rather than cravenly indulging his 'religious' ones.
The Gatekeepers, a film by Israeli director Dror Moreh, provides some fascinating insights into the dark working of Israel's internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet.
It's also a disturbingly deluded exercise in rationalising Israel's military prowess and the brutal occupation of an always subserviently-portrayed Palestinian people.
Six former Shin Bet heads - Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Ami Ayalon, Avi Dichter and Yuval Diskin - speak for the first time about their experiences, expressing cold self-recognition of their considerable powers and where they believe the state of Israel has 'gone wrong'.
The seeming concern is to help expedite an end to the Occupation, but the base motive behind all these reflections and revelations is more specifically to save Israel, rather than liberate Palestine.
Despite the inclusion of some fine archival footage, the film's historical sequences provide little honest, searching explanation of Palestinian displacement and suffering, focusing, rather, on the ex-leaders' comprehensions of the 'Palestinian problem'.
Thus, Diskin describes his formative fears and motivations after reading a Zionist-prescribed book, and his dreaded possibility of Israel being 'taken over' by Arabs.
Peri also relates how he and other dedicated Shin Bet agents made it their early business to understand common Arabic language and text, in order, as they saw it, to be 'inside' the Palestinian mindset.
One can see here some genuine sense these figures may have had in witnessing and 'being part' of that 'integral' landscape, even as occupying soldiers.
But the predominant motivation was always to serve the Israeli state, and, in that endeavour, to fight 'terrorism', a term and task which resonates throughout the entire film.
Never is there any serious acknowledgement that this is, primarily, a process of legitimate resistance, a basic struggle for human liberation and justice.
The gatekeepers' defining context, and that of the film, deals in the symptoms of the 'conflict' - from suicide bombings to Palestinians' incarceration - rather than the principal causes, namely the illegality of the Occupation and an all-consuming state-militarism that's been developed to enforce it.
At no point is there any authentic discussion of Palestinians as, first and foremost, a people, a population, a set of equal human beings.
We hear candid recollections from Gillon and others on the brutal arrests, systematic torture, enforced collaborations and other coercive techniques, all, in itself, considerable testament to understanding the deviant extent of state actions and dark psychology of these directors.
Some also reflect openly on the 'grey area' between seeking high political approval for extra-judicial killing of Arabs and the 'strategic' process of making that decision on their own.
When Shalom is questioned on the morality of such unlawful killing he replies: "With terrorism there is no morals."
Having 'done their dirty work', there's also a sense of discontent within the Shin Bet at being 'abandoned' at certain points by expedient politicians - part of the repeated sentiment about the organisation's 'duty', 'integrity' and 'esprit de corps'.
Charting the 'peace process', we hear of a certain faith and hope in the Rabin leadership, the seeming inevitability of his execution amid the heightened Oslo dealings, and the 'lowest depths' within the Shin Bet over its 'failure' to prevent suicide bombings and Rabin's assassination.
The aftermath of bus bombings in Israel features consistently, with the directors recalling their resolve for harsh 'responses'. Yet, nowhere are Palestinian voices permitted proper contextual comment over the attacks. Repeated, menacing footage of armed and masked Hamas fighters reinforces the central concern of the film: how to confront the 'perennial threat to Israel's security'.
An account of Shin Bet intelligence leading to the apprehension of Zionist bomb plotters is offered as additional 'evidence' of the organisation's 'noble' bona fides in maintaining public security.
We hear revelations that such zealots were preparing a crazed attack on Temple Mount, that the plotters had key access to top figures in the Israeli establishment, and that most were granted paltry sentences and gracious rewards after being caught and convicted.
We're also told how the Shin Bet intervened to temper zealot settlers and rabbis as the political temperature rose in lieu of the attack on Rabin. The incendiary roles of Sharon and Netanyahu in promoting this and other key violence is critically intimated.
Yet, such 'worried vigilance' and the deep loss some of these intelligence heads felt over Rabin's killing merely confirms their view of Israel itself as a 'benign' state, and how that 'legitimate' entity has now been 'infested' by rightist forces.
Rabin's assassin, in this view, is castigated as a "punk" who has wrecked the peace process, while the state, the Zionist project itself, is somehow beyond any such critical examination or fundamental blame.
In essence, it's an inward-looking narrative on 'what we have become', rather than what illicit monster 'we actually created' in stealing another people's land.
More accounts follow of the proud intel crafted to murder revered Palestinian leaders - again, always posed as a virulent threat. Asked about the overall effects of such acts, there's admission that Israeli state violence may only induce greater hatred and violent resistance, but the imperative of maintaining a higher capacity for violent control must still prevail.
Dichter, thus, talks in proud, smirking terms about the 'logistics' of dropping an enormous bomb on the populous middle of Gaza in order to decimate the Hamas leadership, and the 'collateral damage' resulting, as though it were primarily a technical task rather than a murderous annihilation.
One can but imagine any similar film commentary from Hamas figures on planning such attacks on the Israeli leadership.
Some other Shin Bet leaders deliberate, finally, on Hannah Arendt's concept "the banality of evil", and the perceived irrationality of Israel killing so many civilians in pursuit of 'selected terrorists'.
Yet, even this criticism helps cement the false discourse of 'mistaken tactics'. For, as seen during the mass bombing of Gaza in 2008/9, Israel's modus operandi has been to kill as many civilians as possible in deliberate shows of terror and strength.
Ultimately, there's broad consensus amongst the film's participants that Israel must end the Occupation and talk to the Palestinians, even engage its deepest foes.
There's even firm agreement from one director that, as forecast long ago by Professor Liebowitz, an esteemed opponent of the Occupation, Israel has, in fact, become a "Shin Bet state" due to its cruel oppressions.
Showing images of Israeli forces raiding a Palestinian home in the middle of the night, there's further admission of the brutality and fear: "It's not easy. You see the family suffering", Ayalon says, adding, "and when you retire, you become a bit of a leftist".
Gillon admits that "we" are making the lives of millions of Palestinians "unbearable" - "It kills me".
Comparing, in certain ways, the treatment of Palestinians to that suffered by various European states at the hands of the Nazis, Shalom more boldly concludes: "We've become cruel...mainly to the occupied population."
It all seems like a collective admission of failure and guilt, the 'great Zionist goal' deeply compromised.
Yet, what's never truly addressed by any of these men is the primary crime of Palestinian expulsion and persecution - not just from 1967 or 1973, but from 1948.
The Nakba is never actually mentioned, nor the crucial words 'ethnic cleansing'. The systematic imprisonment of Gaza and colonisation of the West Bank are treated, rather, as a 'problem of containment', a 'game-theory' discussion on the case for or against violent supremacy.
Ultimately, while shedding considerable insight, this movie leaves one feeling a sense of bleak despair over the 'regretful' yet still calculating mindset of such figures. Their apparently open admissions still negate any deeper search for catharsis or redemption.
The Gatekeepers remains a fascinating, clinical and chilling portrayal of what people in positions of military and political power can do to the powerless.
But, as with much other Zionist 'docu-self-examination', it's an inward-gazing exercise in self-denial, serving the convenient establishment image of Israel as an 'open, soul-searching and accountable society'.
Indeed, for some Israeli diplomats, Moreh's production is "proof of the highest order of Israeli democracy", and "a powerful film that brings viewers into confrontation with the political-security dilemmas Israel faces". [My emphasis.]
That's the deeply-loaded context and ersatz discussion this film is most likely to elicit.
As with the sham politics that's continually pitched as a 'peace process', so much of this 'brave engagement' and 'tortured dilemma' permits just another system-serving layer of diversion, evasion and normalization.
PJ Harvey's guest editorship of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on 2 January provided a energising New Year antidote to what relentlessly passes for BBC news and commentary.
Alongside fine input from John Rees, Phil Shiner and Ian Cobain, Harvey included particularly brilliant contributions from John Pilger on the state-corporate media's servicing of Western warmongering, and damning historical detail from Mark Curtis on Britain's imperialist crimes.
Harvey's invitation and selected features brought predictable right-wing reaction, including a savaging from the Telegraph and Daily Mail, with the latter's Stephen Glover asserting over Julian Assange's inclusion:
For the BBC to give airtime to such a grubby man is both cringe making and unpatriotic.
There was also much derisory flak from establishment liberals like David Aaronovitch, who tweeted:
I think that the editors of @BBCr4today must know how dreadful that programme was. What next? Freddie Forsyth?
In contrast, much of the wider liberal media applauded both Today and Harvey's 'fresh approach'. Seemingly incredulous, former-Newsnight editor Paul Mason even tweeted:
Brilliant @PJHarveyUK edition of @BBCr4today demonstrating difference between "truth" and "editorial policy" - amazing how weird it feels
Miranda Sawyer at the Guardian also lauded Harvey's "exhilirating" editorship, yet, in typical Guardian garb, balked at certain voices and tones:
"[It]could have done without WikiLeaks' Julian Assange preaching about openness of information. John Pilger, whose documentaries I admire, was a bit ranty."
What Sawyer called "solo pontification slots" seemed nothing of the kind to this listener. Yet, such is the limitation of what even supportive liberal commentators can stomach when it comes to those more darkly-maligned announcers of vital truths.
Soaring high above all this flak and qualified commendation, it was, thus, a delight to read Joyce McMillan's more acute observations, not only concerning the content of Harvey's edit, but the implications of the rumpus:
The row over Harvey’s edition of Today is likely, of course, to be little more than a brief storm in a media teacup. Yet it comes as a sharp reminder that what was once a normal left-of-centre agenda in Britain has now become so exotic that people react to its presence on Radio 4 with various degrees of shock. Most of the points made by Harvey’s contributors may have been accurate, truthful and based on fact. But, in terms of contemporary British political debate, they nonetheless remain marginal, because they are not part of the dominant grand narrative of our time, which requires constant deference to the priorities of rich so-called “wealth creators”, and a rapid refocusing of any popular anger towards other vulnerable groups, such as this New Year’s imaginary tidal wave of new migrants from Romania and Bulgaria.
McMillan continued:
The great political question of our time, in other words – in the UK and across the West – is whether any political force will emerge, in the 21st century, that seriously challenges this dominant narrative; or whether we are now trapped by an account of reality so far adrift of the truth, and so rarely challenged, that a long age of social, moral and intellectual decline seems almost inevitable.
And, with timely reference to the coming independence poll in Scotland:
It is a damning indictment of the current state of British politics – and particularly of the recent history of the Labour Party – that it takes a rock star to create a Today programme that seriously challenges and shifts the conventional news agenda.
Nor is it surprising that many centre-Left voters in Scotland are looking to [this] year’s independence referendum as a unique and vital opportunity to escape from this stale and ugly politics of reaction, and to start reinventing a more just and creative form of national community for the 21st century.
But what of the BBC's own apparent motives in all of this? While the 'PJ show' had the twittersphere and wider social media buzzing with approval and disapproval, the question never seriously asked was what point may be been served here for the BBC in allowing such output?
The effective absence of this question in itself says much about the passive ways in which the issue of alternative media comment is contextualised and treated by right-wing and liberal observers alike. Thus, the guest editor and her content may all be subject to lively scrutiny, while the legitimising factors underlying the BBC's hosting of it is never coherently addressed.
So, beyond indignant Daily Mailers spluttering into their morning cornflakes, and assorted liberals approving the BBC's 'editorial daring', what's in it for the BBC?
Most immediately, this kind of 'deviation' gives such programmes a certain 'edgy topicality'. As with Newsnight's recent dalliance with Russell Brand, and Question Time's occasional invite to the likes of George Galloway, even the 'ever-reliable' and sober Today slot has to angle for viewer interest and ratings in a now highly competitive and picky media market.
More crucially, such invitation allows the vital fig-leaf function of saying: 'look, we carry a wide plurality of views, even radical ones like this.'
Of course, as the Today guest list indicates, the dominant presence of those like Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, and Antony Jenkins, head of Barclays, means the weight of those views is always safely managed.
But what of the elasticity of such critical comment? Could it ever stretch to allow any specific suggestion, discussion or critique on the Today slot about that very programme's fig-leaf inclusion of people like PJ Harvey?
Pilger's piece on media bias certainly included a direct hit by name on the BBC. Yet, as with so much 'risky' guest appearance, Today and other such outlets would likely avoid any deeper scrutiny of its own in-house motives.
This rare BBC 'concession' over content also helps amplify the notion that, while such output can be aired, it should always be regarded as alternatively marginal.
This was consistently inferred throughout the programme, with reminders from lead presenter Sarah Montague of Harvey's guest status and desire to 'bring something different'.
Thus, even this 'mature editorial permission' helps reinforce the 'higher' ideal of 'BBC continuity', while 'acknowledging' the viewer-friendly need for 'experiment and variety'.
Even though so many have expressed their appreciation of Harvey's vigorous edit and comment pieces, normal BBC service has been safely resumed.
Indeed, in the name of BBC 'balance', it was notable that Today deemed it necessary to carry numerous 'fair responses' to the claims made by Rees, Shiner, Cobain, Pilger and Curtis over Iraq war deaths, arms supplies and British torture. This included replies from BAE, Toby Dodge of the London School of Economics, and former
Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak Al Rubaie, the man who led Saddam to the gallows.
With a public so already bombarded by establishment-sided news, such 'balancing opinion' was akin to calling (as the BBC dutifully does) the relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza 'retaliatory responses'.
As with the wide and subversive discussion of liberal parliamentary democracy that followed Russell Brand's Newsnight appearance, PJ Harvey's editorship of Today has elicited a welcome, deeper questioning of both elite-fed and media-supported 'truth'.
Let's hope that wherever else such invitations occur, the critical focus is not only on the loaded establishment message but the particular, crafted posturing of the BBC as 'impartial' host and 'open' messenger.
As 2013 comes to a close, a gathering question for the year to come.
Independence for Scotland: why bother?
2014 will bring all the same problems of brutal war, corporate rampaging, economic austerity, mass poverty and climate calamity. Amid all these global crises, what possible case can be made for a small entity like Scotland seeking separation? Isn't it so parochial? What's the point?
Well, here's a useful motive to consider.
Independence is not just about being 'free' of an England, a United Kingdom, a Union, a parliament, a flag, a national anthem and all the other ersatz iconography of statehood - those political fixtures and fittings which help maintain the elite artifice of 'togetherness'.
It's about seeking the compassionate society.
In practical terms, it's about finding another direction, using this rare opportunity as a potential opening to real political, economic and social alternatives; a small but bold effort to craft a meaningful 'state' of release from harsh market life and the deepening vicissitudes of neoliberalism that lock human beings into a lifetime of worry, servitude and dependency.
It's also, however seemingly token, a way of advancing viable alternatives to corporate-driven warmongering, deranged nuclear weaponry and climate-killing policies.
But isn't this all so overwhelming, beyond our reach to do anything about? Why even think there's any point or purpose in supporting independence to such effects? Why bother?
This encouragement to apathetic resignation and dutiful acceptance is an essential part of Project Fear. Rather than lamely ask 'why bother?', why not welcome the chance to act, to care, to be compassionately bothered?
We've seen much media-fuelled fearmongering over 'issues' like borders, currencies, the 'loss of identity' and so on. Bother to ask yourself: are these really such insurmountable obstacles, unresolvable situations or terrifying scenarios? Are such changes and modifications likely to create chaos and anarchy?
Not only is this kind of 'debate' intended to frighten and perplex, it's, like so much ruling-class narrative, meant to disempower, to crush the public's expectations and hopes of a better society, any wished-for fuller existence. As Chomsky so often says, it's about authority reinforcing the vital notion of political helplessness.
All of which fuels our insecurities and fears of upsetting the status quo. Even many of those proposing independence are stuck in this narrowly-mired 'better together/apart' exchange, fixated on often petty minutiae.
What's never discussed here is the idea of independence in pursuit of the radically compassionate 'state'.
This is not just about promising things like better childcare and pensions. It's about finding a whole new moral engagement, about trying to construct the happier, healthier, enlightened community, something much more progressively ambitious for our children, old folk and most vulnerable, something which bothers about true compassionate interventions both within and beyond Scotia land.
Beyond the bulk of White Paper policies and transitional arrangements, it's also an opportunity to promote and write our own constitution, rather than leaving it to a political class still potentially beholden to all those 'neoliberal realities'.
It's worth remembering here that all the major establishment institutions - financial, political and media - are very bothered about the prospect of any such alternative model, hence their vociferous opposition and spin.
As more and more are battered by austerity and a rigid financial governance underwritten by the City of London, the question thus becomes: can we really afford not to be bothered?
Greatly bothered by imperialism and capitalist denigration of society, the legendary Scottish internationalist John Maclean was also still bothered enough to support an independent socialist Scotland. I'm with Maclean.
Vote 'no' in 2014, if you please. But don't do it on the spuriously-spun 'worries' and siren claims of Project Fear.
And if you vote 'yes', please do so in the serious hope of building a politics of compassion, a state of mind, a state of kind, which cares primarily for people and planet rather than flags and anthems.
A happy and compassionately bothered new year to you all.
As Nelson Mandela is finally laid to rest, it's worth reflecting not only on an historically significant figure, but the crucial truths an international media has sought to bury.
And, in the wake of that relentless distortion of Mandela's life and cause, it's an urgent reminder of the need for a radical new media, completely released from the constraints of corporate control.
The treatment of Mandela's death and memorial has shown just what a vital service state-corporate journalism performs in disguising systemic crimes, whitewashing elite offenders and mythologising those deemed useful to that selective narrative.
Or, rather, it's shown precisely none of this to a public massively smothered by political and media groupthink.
Notable here has been the focus on Mandela's 'capacity for forgiveness', an honourable character trait, of course. Yet, as pinpointedly shown by Media Lens, 'emotionally potent over-simplifications' have been used here to twisted effect. Thus:
"many journalists have rightly praised Mandela's forgiveness. But the state-corporate system also has a generous capacity for excusing torturers, dictators, terrorists, and even former enemies like Mandela - anyone who serves the deep interests of power and profit in some way."
So, while in life and death Hugo Chavez - whose revolutionary movement sought to resist Western-corporate dictate - was damned and derided as an egotistical tyrant, Nelson Mandela - whose African National Congress embraced that neoliberal agenda - was 'forgiven' and hailed as a saintly liberator.
Another welcome antidote to this choice media adulation can be found in Greg Palast's fine dissection of the rampant hypocrisy and 'dollification' of Mandela, laying bare the real story of how, beyond the standard media narrative, his 'triumph' over political apartheid came at the cost of a continued and deepening economic apartheid.
Like Media Lens, Palast also corrects the much-vaunted line on Mandela's 'ready forgiveness':
"The US and European press have focused on Mandela's saintly ability to abjure bitterness and all desire for revenge, and for his Christ-like forgiving of his captors. This is to reassure us all that "good" revolutionaries are ones who don't hold anyone to account for murder, plunder and blood-drenched horror - or demand compensation. That's Mandela in his Mahatma Gandhi doll outfit - turning the other cheek, kissing his prison wardens."
While duly noting his great humanitarian capacities and promotion of civil resistance, Palast reminds us of the considerable threat of force, including Cuban military backing, that Mandela and the ANC had marshalled against the regime by the crisis point of apartheid. Seeing both the economic and political writing on the wall, the regime was compelled to cultivate an inner ANC cabal, which, as Palast laments, were all-too-ready to accept its 'terms of surrender': in essence, political office in exchange for economic control.
Almost nothing of this forceful side, dirty realpolitik and sellout to neoliberalism has been covered by a media dutifully absorbed by the great celebritisation of Mandela and a who's who of memorial-grasping elites.
Thus, we had Obama's 'wondrous' speech, Cameron's gushing praises, tittle-tattle over their 'selfies', Bush and Bono posing together like saintly partners, and, of course, Blair, the perennial interloper, treated as some grand visiting ex-statesman. A crass assembly of warmongers and 'war-on-wanters' mixing in self-serving 'homage'.
At the graveside we had the media lauding of billionaires Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey, while thousands of impoverished black South Africans watched from afar and beyond security cordons.
At no point did a mainstream, or most liberal, media consider any of this intrusive spectacle odd, distasteful or conveniently distracting from the real story of continuing poverty and oppression.
Other fine expositions on the great hypocrisy and economic apartheid came from dissident writers like Jonathan Cook, as with Media Lens, echoing John Pilger's long-standing articles and films on the Mandela mythology and great ANC sellout.
While any critical appraisal of Mandela and his legacy emerged mainly via an alternative media, the Guardian's Seumas Milne was a lone kind of dissenting voice amid the sentimental liberal chorus. Predictably, no one deemed that 'anomaly' worthy of critical comment. Nor, indeed, did Milne.
All of which confirms the media's own systematic role in perpetuating power through journalistic compromise, and the need for a serious media alternative.
In covering Mandela and the coverage of Mandela, did any of our 'searching' media even consider the kind of 'contract' with power it has also slavishly conceded to?
The relinquishing of powers under the Freedom Charter by the ANC to an international business elite may be said to parallel the way in which so many 'left liberal' writers have reached an all-too-easy accommodation with their corporate media masters.
Yes, the proprietors and executive editors have said, you can have your 'critical' columns, which we can use to 'dollify' our own 'crusading' image, proving our own 'radical' purpose. You can have the role of 'internal dissident', which we will hail - all safely surrounded, of course, by multiple other safe and on-message writers - while we get to run our corporate operations.
Deal done: you have your 'status', we have the profits, you get to say your token, 'controversial' piece, we get to say it's proof of a 'challenging' media.
And so, like the pernicious lie of a 'free South Africa', we have the fiction of a free and liberating media, all overseen by the real sovereignty of establishment interests and corporate forces.
A good example of compromised media can be seen in the current spiking of Whose Sarin? by Seymour Hersh, a landmark article alleging US manipulation of intelligence over chemical weapons in Syria and Obama's efforts to fabricate a case for intervention.
Hersh is a renowned Pulitzer Prize winning reporter with a fine track record of insider sourcing and damning exposes. Yet, none of this, it seems, could persuade our 'best radical' media - New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian or Independent - to run or support this key story.
While it now seems safe to note that Mandela's arrest had, all along, been assisted by the CIA, the idea of exposing dark US intel in present situations like Syria appears much more problematic for editors.
This is not conspiracy. It's, more prosaically, a process of 'inside understanding', of what's deemed 'respectably radical' and 'safely publishable' - an editorial/journalistic subservience which Hersh himself recently damned and, in seeming 'respect to open comment', was published by the 'quality' media he criticises.
Yet, that 'openness' is permissable because, unlike Hersh's more explosive claims of Western subterfuge over Syria, such comment is still deemed 'safely abstract', perhaps even the outpourings of a 'loveable media relic'.
Unlike the sanctification of Mandela's past life, or even token exposure of the dark cave-in to apartheid, any media amplifying of such current and contentious indictments brings much more immediate risks of elite exposure - and the corporate media's own part in marginalising it.
And so the media play of 'good guys' and 'bad guys', 'rogue' states and 'liberated' states, 'demons' and 'icons' continues.
Already, Nelson Mandela and South Africa is a media story past, the job of contextualising and appropriating this 'icon' done.
As the curtain comes down on the great media circus, a select version of events behind Mandela's life, struggle and passing have been dutifully distilled and recorded for public consumption. And a crucial part of that distortion and charade involves the media's own power-serving role as chroniclers of the deception.
This is the enduring reality of how media linked into any state body or commercial web will always be potentially compromised, a timely reminder of the need for a true, unfettered journalism entirely liberated from corporate ownership, funding or other hidden alignments.
Nelson Mandela died last night.
RIP Tata Mandina.
His iconic part in bringing down South Africa's apartheid regime needs little elaboration. Watching Mandela emerge that momentous day in 1990 from years of penury remains one of the most abiding reminders that brutal oppression can be overcome.
But it's also a now more sobering reminder that true liberation involves the release of people from even higher forces of oppression.
Today, Mandela's and South Africa's 'long walk to freedom' has been deeply compromised by the ANC's short stroll to neoliberal sellout.
It may seem somehow inappropriate at this sad moment to 'sully' Mandela's reputation with such truths. Yet, reflecting Mandela's own resistance to the system of apartheid, rather than any given leader of it, it's appropriate, likewise, that no one figure, however heroic, should be used to disguise any other oppressive system that comes to replace it.
As John Pilger recently asserted, 'Mandela's greatness is assured, but not his legacy'.
While a new black elite luxuriate in gated mansions, a still massive black underclass languish in abject poverty, excluded by an economic system deeply subservient to the global corporate order.
Following the recent murder of thirty four miners by South African police, Pilger reiterated his thoughts on the "illusion of post-apartheid democracy" and "the new worldwide apartheid of which South Africa is both an historic and contemporary model"; an abandonment of true economic liberation to the demands of privatisation and forces of international capital:
Enveloped in the hot air of corporate-speak, the Mandela and Mbeki governments took their cues from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While the gap between the majority living beneath tin roofs without running water and the newly wealthy black elite in their gated estates became a chasm, finance minister Trevor Manuel was lauded in Washington for his "macro-economic achievements". South Africa, noted George Soros in 2001, had been delivered into "the hands of international capital".
Amid the official eulogies, little of this inconvenient reality is up for discussion, conveniently lost in the narrow narrative of South Africa's 'great democratic emancipation'.
Thus, an on-message media has seamlessly prioritised and approved those 'free world' voices so eager to mark and laud Mandela.
Between glowing commentaries on his life and struggle, the BBC has carried studious tributes from every other world leader, past and present, all desiring some association with the 'Mandela brand'.
Barack Obama spoke of Mandela as a crucial formative influence, his conviction, incarceration and inspirational words helping to form Obama's own 'conviction' politics. Visiting Robben Island recently and posing inside Mandela's cell, Obama also spoke of Mandela's fortitude in the face of harsh imprisonment. This from the man still refusing to shut down Guantanamo and directing a murderous drone war.
David Cameron and William Hague have also issued unctuous statements on Mandela's passing, their cloying words still trying to deflect the shame of Thatcher's denunciation of Mandela and the ANC as criminal terrorists.
Predictably, Tony Blair has also 'honoured' Mandela, 'generously' recognising their 'disagreements' over Iraq, Afghanistan and other 'interventions'. Little, of course, will be made of Mandela's resolute denunciation of US/UK-led wars, or support for Palestinians, as the media continue their choice presentations.
And so it goes on, every part of the establishment, every warmonger, every political wannabe grasping to the safe Mandela lore, many 'belatedly' finding their 'role' in the 'anti-apartheid cause'.
Where do we see the same championing of the Palestinian cause, the castigation of 'friendly' apartheid states like Israel? The sins of Verwoerd, Vorster, Botha and De Klerk can now be safely exposed, but not, it seems, those of Ben Gurion, Sharon, Barak and Netanyahu.
As the presidents, prime ministers, princes and royals prepare for Mandela's great funeral, consider just how suitable most of them are to be 'mourning' such a man.
How easily, too, the patronage and words of such figures have displaced any true debate on Mandela's politics or associations to those like Ronnie Kasrils, Joe Slovo and other ANC subversives.
This is the context within which Mandela has been adopted and sanctified; a 'safe' story and selective hagiography which can whitewash 'Mandela-moment' elites and harness liberal emotion over the evil of South African apartheid while avoiding much more awkward questions on its now imposed place in the global corporate apartheid.
Nor, as Jonathan Cook writes, is it disrespectful to Mandela and his huge achievements to see the ways in which he became appropriated and neutralised:
First, he was forced to become a bloodless icon, one that other leaders could appropriate to legitimise their own claims, as the figureheads of the “democratic west”, to integrity and moral superiority. After finally being allowed to join the western “club”, he could be regularly paraded as proof of the club’s democratic credentials and its ethical sensibility. Second, and even more tragically, this very status as icon became a trap in which he was forced to act the “responsible” elder statesman, careful in what he said and which causes he was seen to espouse. He was forced to become a kind of Princess Diana, someone we could be allowed to love because he rarely said anything too threatening to the interests of the corporate elite who run the planet.
In reflecting fondly on Nelson Mandela, this huge and defining figure, with his humanitarian gift for just forgiveness and reconciliation, we should remember the considerable 'walk' still facing impoverished South Africans, the dark collusion of their government and the ways in which this hypocritical deification of Mandela obscures the ongoing struggle to break the higher chains of oppression.
The shrill and dangerous castigation of Roma and other East European migrants continues with a nasty polemic from Glasgow South MP, Tom Harris.
I'd say Harris was 'my MP', being a constituent of said electoral area. But, in effect, I am without one, 'disenfranchised', choosing not to recognise or seek the usual 'services' of a parliamentarian who voted for the mass slaughter of Iraq and has been so relentless in his attacks on asylum seekers.
Still supporting war criminal Tony Blair to this day (Twitter bio: 'Proud Blairite'), Harris, as prior correspondence shows, is also a long-standing apologist for Israel's occupation and crimes.
The problem in this case isn't just Harris's amplification of residents' fears, it's his promotion of irrational suspicion and effective hatred of an entire people.
Just in case we don't recognise his 'rational' side, Harris commences his piece with this faux 'acknowledgement' of 'worthy' immigrants:
Do I need to add all the usual caveats and qualifications before I continue? Okay, let's get it over with: the vast majority of immigrants from all over the world make a massively positive financial as well as personal and cultural contribution to the UK. Britain is far better off today than it would have been without immigration. Okay? Can I continue now?
And continue he does, with reactionary gusto, turning constituents' reported concerns into a sharp indictment of Roma 'lifestyle':
...filthy and vastly overcrowded living arrangements, organised aggressive begging, the ghetto-isation of local streets where women no longer feel safe to walk due to the presence of large groups of (workless) men, the rifling through domestic wheelie bins by groups of women pushing oddly child-free prams, and a worrying increase in the reporting of aggressive and violent behavior in local schools.
It's not that we should be blind to difficult conditions and tensions; they are patently obvious to most residents and observers of Glasgow's south-side Govanhill area, an historic locale for multiple races of economic migrants and conflict-fleeing peoples: Irish, Jews, Pakistanis, Poles, Slovakians, and, soon to come, perhaps, more Romanians and Bulgarians.
What's problematic is the pernicious categorisation of those deemed 'wholly responsible' for the hostility and social decay - just as the Irish once were - a targeted rhetoric that recognises neither the wider economic/social context of such migrants' arrival, or the need for constructive action to improve the situation for all concerned.
While many front-line social agencies in Glasgow and other migrant-receiving cities have learned the benefits of patient and careful nurturing of mixed-race communities, Harris offers only inflammatory words, generating even greater fear and alienation:
In the meantime, my constituents become angrier and more resentful, because the lives they have worked so hard to build for themselves and their families are being impinged upon by people whose culture, way of life and attitude to authority and those around them are utterly alien. [My emphasis.]
Again, whatever concerns some people may have over the social effects of new immigration, what's achieved by such spurious denigration of an entire culture?
Again, bear in mind, this coming from someone who endorsed the murderous invasion of Iraq, with mass war crimes like Fallujah, devastating an entire people, culture and way of life.
With no apparent remorse over his part in that vast atrocity, Harris is still only concerned with what 'dangers' present themselves at 'our' door: it "would be absurd to claim that all foreign cultures are beneficial to the UK."
He cites here as an "extreme example: female genital mutilation." Why this particular, lone example? No doubt because it helps reinforce the heavily-implied distinction between 'our essentially good' cultural practices against 'their generalised bad and barbaric' ones.
All of which feeds the standard framing on the Roma's supposed 'cultural propensity to criminality', rather than generations of persecution, poverty and forced movement. The current crackdown against Roma groups over 'baby-stealing' is but another facet of that false cultural determinism.
A useful antidote to Harris's bleak fearmongering can be found in Peter Ross's more people-engaging view of the Roma and life around Govanhill, recognising not only the economic/cultural complexities and problematics of a highly-fluid community, but also that which binds and connects people, however adversarial their situation:
The first Roma in Glasgow were asylum seekers from Slovakia, escaping racial hatred. Most, now, are economic migrants, coming from villages in the region of Michalovce. In Glasgow, they have found casual work in potato and chicken processing factories, though, increasingly, jobs are hard to come by. Romanian nationals have very restricted access to the benefits system, and there is anecdotal evidence that some Roma from that country, now living in Govanhill, cannot afford to feed themselves and thus go through the bins of private residences and shops, looking for food.
In seeking understanding of the Roma's street presence, Ross speaks with Marcela Adamova, "a 32-year-old Roma woman who came to Glasgow five years ago from Pavlovce nad Uhom, a town in eastern Slovakia. She works as a Roma support worker with Oxfam and runs Romano Lav, a community group."
The Roma are the most visible ethnic group, due to their habit of standing around outside chatting on street corners in largeish numbers, some even after darkness has fallen. There is nothing sinister in this; it is a cultural practice from back in the villages, but many locals feel suspicious and sometimes intimidated. “I hear some racist remarks, you know, ‘All these gypsies living in Govanhill are not bringing anything to society’,” says Adamova. “But the racism is not so strong as in Slovakia.”
Nor, again, is there any denial here of the social dereliction and ethnic tension:
Govanhill would not be to everyone’s taste. It is a district of old four-storey tenements, from which satellite dishes sprout like fungus. Fly-tipping is endemic, and it is quite common to see people sifting this mess, looking for anything they can use. There is poverty and overcrowding; you hear about 14 people in two-bedroom flats. The area, too, has a reputation for violence and theft. Serious violent crime incidents are reported to be 59 per cent above the Scottish average, though police insist the crime rate is, in fact, falling and that, given the high population density, there is actually less villainy than they would expect.
Recognition without castigation. Why can't Harris, at least, adopt a similar tone?
Ross concludes with a hopeful message from Donegal man Tony Mai Gallagher, 71, a patron of nearby Kelly's bar for many a year:
“We’ve got to be gentle with them, because when we came in, people weren’t too gentle to us,” he says. “Let’s just hope our new neighbours, our New Irish, settle in just as fast as we did. Harmony is what we need.”
Laudable words, indeed.
We needn't be misty-eyed here in romanticising the problems in Govanhill and other such places. There are all-too-visible issues and anxieties on display, confirming an urgent need for wholesale socio-economic assistance. Yet, beneath all of this fear and distrust there's also the capacity for basic human connection.
In dark contrast, people like Tom Harris spread only more negativity, fear and antagonism.
Such language also keeps people attuned to the perpetual myths and fallacies over immigration numbers and costs, notably the 'expected flood of welfare-seeking' Romanians and Bulgarians from 2014.
Even the neoliberal Economist dismiss the hype behind such changes, "suggest[ing] that immigration is more a problem of perception than of reality."
Yet, even these kind of clarifications lack something more elementary: compassionate concern. What, more fundamentally, should we be saying about the very presentation of an issue that routinely starts from the question 'what will they contribute' rather than 'what can we do to help'?
None of this is of seeming significance to Harris, who appears more intent on feeding animosity than helping people build bridges, more concerned with defending neoliberal politics than denouncing them as the prime reason behind Govanhill's social tensions, just as they are in the places such people come from in often desperate and disappointing search of something better.
The growing persecution and terror of Roma people across Eastern Europe, as alarmingly seen in Hungary, should be a warning to all politicians and media here who peddle such populist poison.
Meanwhile, beyond Tom Harris's malicious columns and fake calls for 'serious debate' on immigration, take heart from the Roma children of Govanhill as they voice their small desire to be wanted, secure and happy.
