Thatcher's funeral - the greatest disrespect

Margaret Thatcher will take her last journey today. And, as Thatcher's earthly form is finally given up, we've seen that even in death her effect has been one of great conflict and animosity across the land and beyond these shores.

One might have thought the mood and response would have been more solemn and respectful, much more compassionate in marking the passing of human life. Alas, the sad and disappointing truth is that Mrs Thatcher's victims have barely even been mentioned, let alone marked, by the BBC and the state network it so dutifully serves.

Along with traducing North Korea's closed media, Britain's own state media have been busy this past week censoring the 'shocking offensiveness' of the Ding-Dong song rather than highlighting Thatcher's dark crimes, like those 323 Argentinian sailors aboard the Belgrano murdered on her direct instruction.

And there has been all the minutiae of the funeral service itself to cover, leaving little space for what should have been headline discussion of the mass murderers Thatcher supported: Reagan with his crazed Star Wars and global aggressions; Pinochet and other Latin America death regimes, genocidal killers like Suharto and Pol Pot and every Saudi-styled tyrant that ever strutted the Middle East.

For all those here who suffered the economic and social devastations of Thatcherism, there's also anodyne words from senior politicians, notably Miliband and Clegg, gushing that she was still a 'great leader' who deserves our special regard, crudely disregarding the feelings of a wide public who thought decidedly otherwise. 
 
Potential protesters at Thatcher's service have been warned not to disrupt or express themselves over-contemptuously. Back-turning on the cortege will, however, be tolerated. It's a token permission from a state which has turned its own back on Thatcher's victims and the mass of public sentiment opposed to this unwarranted ceremony. 

All told, the establishment have, as Seumas Milne notes, "only themselves to blame" for the protests.

So, contra these political obfuscations, state insensitivities and media panderings, what kind of reasonably compassionate view might we take of this funeral day?

What it shouldn't be: a celebration or gloat-fest over her actual death. Why? Because, not only is it hateful and inhuman to wish death and suffering upon another, it's more usually and insidiously done by those politicians and a media indifferent to others' mass suffering; those more prepared to celebrate the death of 'our' enemies than talk about the victims of Thatcher and her dictator friends. The real point of compassionate reaction is to rise above that kind of hate-speak and callous indifference.  And, of course, partying over Thatcher's passing does not end the spectre of Thatcherism, an ongoing set of forces which still hunts as well as haunts us.  Should we speak ill of this dead person? No need when all we have to do is speak honestly about her, in death as in life.

What it should be: a dutiful remembrance, a commemoration, a conscious marking of all those victims of Thatcher, Thatcherism and the system she/it served. Most of those crimes are absent from view, omitted, airbrushed and otherwise ignored. So, it should be a robust denunciation of media protection and all that elite closure. As George Galloway has defiantly argued, it should be a popular rejection of the attempted "canonisation" of someone who did all she could to destroy society. Indeed, it should be a demonstration against the British state itself which, so eager in its military-panoplied, clock-stopping £10 million-plus death celebration at a time of mass austerity, has shown, by far, the greatest distaste and disrespect.

Senior palace figures have apparently been anxious about permitting militarist ceremonial for such a divisive figure, supposedly concerned about popular reaction:

"It is understood that there were fears that the British tradition, in which the monarchy rather than politicians are associated with ceremonial aspects of the military, could be called into question."

One will struggle to recall any such royal 'misgivings' over the Falklands or any other of Thatcher's aggressive campaigns - including Britain's dirty war in Northern Ireland.

That closing of ranks is the real "British tradition", understood and steadfastly observed by every colluding part of the British establishment.

A last small reflection and anti-eulogy from someone who, like other millions, lived through the harsh excesses of Thatcher and Thatcherism: it wasn't just its wicked violence, its gross economic injustice, its political virulence, it was also its ideological and cultural mediocrity; it invoked nothing creative, inspiring or philosophical, only a bland, hostile landscape of Saatchi-sponsored spivdom where petty greed and mammonic narcissism sought to crush anything redolent of hope, love, solidarity or real communal feeling. It was utterly bereft of compassion. And the greatest tragedy of Thatcher's passing is that Thatcher herself will never now be held to account for any of those crimes against humanity.

Those crimes have continued unabated, dutifully executed by an unapologetic line of warmongers, welfare robbers and coalition collaborators, all, in true Thatcherite spirit, party to the ongoing evisceration of society. And, like the media sanitising of Thatcher's death, such crimes will go on being 'respectfully' concealed in her wake.

That's Thatcher's disrespectful legacy and the disrespectful conduct of those who think we should respect it. In paying our proper respects to Thatcher's victims past, we also express concern for those victims present, all, unlike this fraudulent ceremonial, part of a compassionate, truthful and just remembrance.

Thatcher's death - transcending hate and anger

What's sort of messages and impressions might we assume from these two pictures?

 

One shows people celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher, the other, people celebrating the extrajudicial murder of Osama bin Laden. 

 

While a jingo-fuelled Daily Mail applauded the flag-bearing patriots chanting "USA, USA", the same Daily Mail fulminated at the left's 'callous grave-dancing'.

The particular circumstances of each death may be different, but political and media reaction to the revelry is much more telling: the demonising of one set of party-goers, the extolling of another. One is permissible cheering over the state's illegal elimination of a 'leading bad guy', the other an impermissible gloating over a 'leading lady' deeply involved in the elimination of people, economy and society.

Yet, while vital differences of motive and expression distinguish the respective assemblies, both still share an apparently similar emotion: taking pleasure in the death of an enemy.

The problem of such expression isn't just its 'inapropriateness', its lack of 'conventional respect' for the dead. Nor, more particularly, should we heed the kind of coy establishment etiquette that would have us keep quiet about the mass crimes committed and supported by an infamous leader like Thatcher.

This is someone, after all, whose dark activities included support for Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge and other dictators like Suharto, someone who backed Reagan's murderous killings and death-squad coups across Latin America, who condemned Mandela and thought the US shooting-down of an Iranian civilian plane was "understandable". And that's before we even get to the historic crimes and miseries inflicted at home.

As millions are spent on a quasi-state funeral, with its royal presence, bowing politicians, militarist trappings and media deference, we not only have a right but a duty to speak out in marking the actual victims of Margaret Thatcher's cruel policies.

Yet, in doing so, how might we offer something which transcends such brutality, that which supplants the US mob's shallow concept of victimisation, that which offers a real progressive alternative, something more worthy, more compassionate, more humanitarian?

When Elvis Costello sang Tramp the Dirt Down, he was, like many long-sickened others, expressing due contempt for Thatcher and her ideological vandalism. But that sentiment doesn't in itself simply translate as a vengeful urge. Rather, it admirably lyricises the systematic abuse of people and a yearning for it to end.

So, the problem is certainly not the demonstrations against Thatcherism. It's not even the understandable antagonism we might have towards Thatcher herself as a person. It's the more corrosive and debilitating feelings of hatred, anger and retribution that often drive that opposition.

While many at the Thatcher street parties seem genuinely motivated by a legitimate desire to mark the iniquities of Thatcherism, open jubilation over the actual death and/or suffering of another, any other, should cause us to think about the psychology behind those emotions.

Many - notably those not born when Thatcher was in power - see such actions as a continuous statement of opposition to the current Tory ensemble, the new wave of cuts, TINA-type austerity and ongoing neoliberal disorder.

Yet, need this laudable exercise involve "rejoice, rejoice", champagne-popping and other hell-wish sentiment?

Indeed, do such personalised messages and retributive impulses suggest some replication of the  strident language and callous actions already projected by Thatcher and people like her?

As Martin McGuinness has said, in urging an end to celebrating Thatcher's death: "She was not a peacemaker, but it is a mistake to allow her death to poison our minds."

One also thinks here, as in the US example, of Hillary Clinton cackling about the death of Gaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died."

Is this what leftist responses to the death of even such a proclaimed enemy should look and sound like?

Some of this mirrors a more dubious 'left vanguardism' which, in its 'moral confidence', feels a need to demonstrate its 'full radical credentials'.

For others, it's a fair and necessary occasion, as in places like Glasgow, to recall evils like the poll tax and to counter the much more indecent Thatcher hagiography being propagated by the media.

For others still, Thatcher's passing will likely provoke a more resigned set of feelings, a deep lamenting of the Thatcherite 'project' with the realisation that her departure still takes us nowhere useful: the key ingredients of that ugly assignment - greed, individualism and selfishness still prevail.         

In an exemplary piece of humanitarian reflection, Russell Brand notes the perplexed emotions of a leftist friend who thought he'd be elated rather than have to confess the empty melancholy he actually felt on hearing the news:

"This demonstrates, I suppose, that if you opposed Thatcher's ideas it was likely because of their lack of compassion, which is really just a word for love. If love is something you cherish, it is hard to glean much joy from death, even in one's enemies." 

Special words, indeed, from Brand.

And what, after all, is 'the enemy' here?  Is it a person or a thing: Thatcher or Thatcherism? How easily do we project hatred towards leaders rather than try to comprehend and oppose the systems they serve?

As Media Lens editor David Edwards perfectly captures it:

"For me, hatred of individual leaders is an example of a kind of propaganda weathering and erosion - constant exposure to the corporate fringeswamp encourages us to focus towards leaders and away from systemic trends and underlying causes. If Thatcher was The Evil, then how do we explain Reagan, political 'convergence'  (Bush/Blair/Cleggeron, etc), US-UK foreign policy over centuries, the psychopathic corporate system, etc?

Thatcher was much more of a symptom than a cause. But our egos feel so good hating a symptom, especially as part of a mob brandishing our fiery torches. Working to address the more impersonal causes is much less exciting, especially as the ultimate causes are also very much in ourselves - our minds and particularly our thought-identified egos." (ML message board, 9 April 2013.)

An illuminating answer from Buddhist scholar John Makransky in his article Aren't We Right to be Angry (also posted by Media Lens) offers further clarity:

"Many activists see anger as a necessary and motivating force. Is there anything positive about anger? Most who attend my social justice retreats are social justice activists, including teachers, social workers, and health-care givers who see a need for systemic change. Many say, “My anger at injustice is what motivates me to work for change. So it doesn’t make sense to me to reject my anger.” Actually, given what we’ve discussed so far, I think there is truth in that. They are saying that anger is not just deluded, that they sense some wisdom in it, and I think that is true. For example, in trying to make oneself feel safe, anger knows that a ground of safety must be findable somehow. That’s true—there is a ground of safety here within the depth of our being, the deep nature of our minds, which we should try to find. Anger also knows there is something terribly wrong that must be destroyed to make things safe. It’s just wrong about all the details. Anger thinks that what’s wrong is another person or group that must be defeated or destroyed to establish dependable safety. That’s a big mistake. What’s wrong is how out of touch we all are with our fuller humanity and underlying potential of goodness. To correct that wrong, something does need to be destroyed, but it’s not other people; it’s the self-centered fixation that has everyone in its grip, which generates individual and social reactions that make things unsafe for all. So I think some social justice activists want to defend their anger because it indeed contains some wisdom, but it is a distorted form of wisdom. If the wisdom in anger could be liberated from its distorted projections, its intense energy could clarify into wrathful compassion."

What the powerful fear most is not these expressions of hate or even violence. Indeed, in many situations, like Israel's suppression of the Palestinians, they positively welcome, and will often promote or effect, incendiary feelings and actions that can, in calculating turn, be even more fiercely suppressed.

What power fears most is passive resistance and the much more 'dangerous' idea of compassionate activism.

Thus, the practical application of Makransky's radical meditation:

"When Martin Luther King demonstrated against social institutions of racism and economic inequality, his opponents used attack dogs and whips on him and his followers. Yet King repeatedly taught that unconditional love is the key to foundational social change. He taught that we must confront social structures of racism on behalf of everyone, including those supporting such structures. It was never only for the oppressed people. It was also on behalf of the racists, and he made that clear."

If there's such a possible humanitarian lesson to be noted here in the week we recall Thatcher's brutal policies, it's to think about how we might best focus our constructive attentions on systems of power rather than just hateful denigration of those who serve and manage them.

This most certainly shouldn't, and won't, preclude criticism of leaders like Thatcher - even on her  funeral day - and, as with shameless denouncers like Tony Blair, resilient efforts to bring still-living offenders to proper justice.

Rather, it asks us to reflect on what motivates those more aggressive feelings and how they might be more compassionately and radically directed.

Thatcher's remains

Many million words will now be delivered in reflections and testaments to Margaret Thatcher. Much of it will range from outright establishment admirations to queasy apologetics of the 'you may not have agreed with her, but she was still a great/conviction/decisive/female-inspiring leader' type.

Others will, of course, reflect upon the savagery of her actions, recalling the staggering economic and social dislocations she and her associates caused. Others, still, will cheer and openly celebrate her death. 

I've no notion to partake in any party celebrations of Margaret Thatcher's passing. I've no inclination to welcome anyone's passing or personal suffering.

Other than removing someone from positions of power and influence, hopefully with suitable indictments before a high criminal court, the taking or passing of their actual lives assists the greater cause of progressive humanity, including theirs, in no meaningful way.

A good deal of human suffering, past and ongoing, is directly attributable to Margaret Thatcher's wicked neoliberal and warmongering policies  - the decimation of industries, the crafting of unemployment and despair, the breaking of miner communities, deregulation, privatisation and the cultivation of greed, the protection of Pinochet and other dictators, the promoting of hunger strike deaths, the murdering of innocents aboard the Belgrano, the encouragements to hateful media jingoism and much, much more.

Yet those same policies and worse have continued relentlessly on, uncaringly and unsparingly executed by those, like Blair, Thatcher's natural heir, and Cameron, current enforcer of the same cruel 'philosophies'.  Both are, of course, lining up to commend her as an 'iconic' leader.

As will a dutiful, power-serving media. On this and coming days, observe the reserved and reverential treatment accorded to Thatcher - for all her 'faults', still, like Reagan, one of 'ours' - compared with the ready demonisation of 'mad' foreign others, like the recently-departed Hugo Chavez.

While BBC and other journalists wax hysterical about the dark 'lunacies' of Kim Jong-un, what kind of insane state media could still hold an historic criminal like Thatcher in such thrall?

All of which may cause us to reflect more particularly on the actual system, notably its ideological arm, which still rationalises and excuses the Thatcherite brutalisation of people, society and planet.

The remains of Margaret Thatcher will, like every other mortal, pass to nature. What still remains is the pernicious system she and those like her have helped build and impose on humanity.

One retains quiet hopes of a day when we might better celebrate the serious demise of that great evil.

Kim Jong-un - face of a 'global threat'

It's been a week of political and media froth over the 'looming threat' from North Korea. In its main report, the BBC's Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman said of the country's leader: "Kim Jong-un, a man with a more than passing resemblance to a haggis, after all".  From "spiritual heir to Stalin" to "crackpot regime", this and other standard jibes are what passes for balanced, impartial and informed journalism from the BBC's flagship and other news outlets. Imagine such personalised and pejorative remarks being used about Cameron, Blair, Obama, Netanyahu or any Western state. Newsnight's skewed film report from Robin Denselow, dramatically shaking the small locked gates of North Korea's London embassy, had ex-US ambassador Nicholas Burns and an array of Western-minded policy analysts warning of Pyongyang's 'imminent nuclear threat', numbering its 'international violations' and probing 'China's failure' in bringing this "unpredictable" state to heel. Paxman's package also had a placatory interview with a North Korean defector, a non-contested message from David Cameron on the case for keeping Trident at Faslane, a Tory MP using the North Korean 'threat' to defend Trident and a token, moderate counter-view from a Lib Dem MP. Elsewhere, some of that liberal questioning has been more scathing of Cameron's postures. As Simon Jenkins noted in the Guardian: "What is most frightening about the west's response to Kim Jong-un is the scale of the exaggeration. Cameron awards him the global reach of a superpower. We might almost ask which side is now impoverishing its people to pay for glamour defences, which is concocting blood-curling scenarios to justify them and which conjures up enemies to keep its people in thrall to its defence and security chiefs and their demands. Is it only North Korea that feels it must periodically flex its muscles and peddle a ridiculous view of the balance of world power? North Korea constitutes no conceivable threat to the British state, or to the US and its allies." But what's never adequately stated or explored here, for all its reasonable argument, is the massively differing treatment of demonising states like North Korea as opposed to merely criticising the West. Thus, Jenkins and others are ever ready to denounce the "megalomaniac" tendencies of Kim Jong-un in noting the expedient motives of those who benefit from his pronouncements: "The lunacies of a Korean dictator halfway round the world is music to the ears of defence lobbyists, arms manufacturers, security consultants, generals and admirals." But while these dark exploitations by the warmongering lobbies are implicitly criticised by writers like Jenkins, they are never condemned as "lunacies", a language of demonisation still specially reserved for the 'real crazies' like Kim Jong-un.  And what of the lunacies of a US president and his Nato allies who have actually bombed Libya to bits, murdered thousands of innocents in drone strikes in Pakistan and continued a murderous war on Afghanistan? What of the megalomaniac lunatics before them, Bush and Blair, responsible for a million deaths and mass carnage in Iraq? Where, more specifically, in such liberal critiques do we see any more than passive, nominal comment on such media bias and imbalance, that which, like Paxman on Newsnight, can only speak of the 'concerned' West and their 'crackpot' foes? Rather than crude put-downs, here's an exercise which Paxman and other liberal-establishment presenters might more usefully put their minds to: a comparative table of the world's most dangerous states since 1945 based on an aggregation of the following: 1. Most war-waging 2. Most war-committed deaths 3. Most nuclear-threatening 4. Most regionally-destabilising  5. Most coup-promoting 6. Most propaganda-effective A strongly suggested top 3: United States Britain Israel One can argue over who might complete a top 10. But, for all its issues, 'haggis-looking' leaders and all, North Korea isn't even remotely on the page.

The benefits of rational sanity

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”

 

Joseph Heller, Catch-22



According to the Telegraph, a large number of potential claimants aren't re-applying for disability-based benefits, leading to claims that they're all malignant scroungers who have been fairly caught out. The voice of 'rational sanity', as ever, from the Torygraph.

Yet, maybe there are other reasons for this and other such avoidance of the benefits system.

Perhaps sick and stressed people don't claim benefits for fear of making themselves even more stressed and sick. This may seem irrational, even insane. But the rational and sane decision not to apply for benefits suggests that it's the benefits system itself which is irrational and insane in keeping already stressed and sick people away. Of course, the benefits agency would likely say that the very decision of the stressed and sick not to apply for benefits indicates their rational and sane ability to judge their situation and, thus, their sane and rational ability to function and work. In considering the tortured logic of the benefits agency's irrational and insane assessment, the rational and sane person may feel even more reluctant to apply. This, of course, may leave them even more sick and stressed, if, at least, still more rational and sane than the irrational and insane benefits system that's foisted this irrational and insane choice upon them.

Comprehension of the wider system of power is largely guided by the same kind of fear, apprehension and resignation we feel about authority and how it imposes its irrational, insane rules on the rational and sane. Indeed, rational and sane people can be encouraged into accepting almost any kind of social, political or economic control. Capitalism, particularly neoliberalism, as a system is premised on outright winners and losers, with inequality, worry, degradation and misery for billions all celebrated as the hidden hand of sane market rationalism. In other words, it's irrational and insane.  Yet, try telling most rational and sane people that capitalism is irrational and insane. The rational and sane mind may actually realise that capitalism is irrational and insane, but must react in denial of this, largely because to believe otherwise is to accept one's own possible irrationality, even insanity, in even considering such an idea. In effect, even if you don't rationally and sanely believe so, it's seemingly more rational and sane just to say that it's irrational and insane to say that the system is irrational and insane. However, this still bestows upon the system an undue sane rationalism, leaving the supposedly rational and sane person facing the ongoing irrational and insane-inducing dilemma of whether to keep saying the system is rational and sane or make that really rational and sane leap in actually calling it irrational and insane.

Corporate journalists will likely enunciate the similar view that it's irrational and possibly insane to claim that the corporate media is irrational and insane in protecting and reinforcing all the irrationality and insanity of the wider corporate-driven system. The Telegraph journalist who wrote the above story would likely call this blogger's reading of it, and the rest of this blog, utterly irrational and worryingly insane. One must, of course, leave sane and rational readers to judge whether such an assertion is sane and rational or irrational and insane. But to what extent can rational and sane journalists rationally and sanely comprehend the irrational and insane world of journalism they really inhabit? The self-defence of such journalistic rationality and sanity is nowhere better seen than in the rejection of claims that climate change, the irrational and insane destruction of the earth, is anything to do with the irrational and insane process of rampant corporate consumerism, or, more precisely, that such irrational and insane journalism is in itself feeding that irrational and insane process of eco-destruction through greenwashed reports, fossil fuel advertising, evasive editorials and other such irrational, insane copy. Speculating rationally on the very sane proposition of calling corporations, corporate media and corporate life at large not only irrational and insane but criminal and psychopathic in these regards takes us into a further whole dimension of rational and sanity-seeking thought. But that's another question which, with a rational and sane eye on space, time and rational/sane reader weariness, may be best left for the moment.

Is drawing attention to all of this irrationality and insanity in any way rational or/and sane? Perhaps not, for it can easily make one feel increasingly and uneasily, what's the words..., even if that's a seemingly imagined or even self-indulgent irrationality and insanity. On the other hand, feeling a rational obligation to highlight such insanity, sometimes with a rational and sane humour, can keep one grounded in the sure knowledge that while irrationality and insanity rages all around, the rational and sane mind can see corporate existence and the irrationally insane forces supporting it as the darkest possible form of irrationality and insanity, an insane irrationalism so insanely hidden and irrationally denied that the very irrational insanity of such deception and denial helps keep us questioning everything we understand, or rationally and sanely think we understand, as being rational and sane. A Kafkaesque inversion of irrational insanity, or what?

Farewell welfare - bedroom tax and the IDS mindset

It took a while, admittedly, to sink in.

Sometimes some outrages are so outrageous they don't immediately register; like some half-heard mumble of threatening intent amongst all the other dreary news of cuts, coming cuts and more 'prudent' austerity.

But then the realisation. A bedroom tax. A tax on a bedroom. An actual levy, a tariff, a charge on the poorest and most vulnerable for having a 'spare' room.

And then the wonderment, even a kind of grudging 'admiration' at their dark ingenuity: how did they even come to think of something so brutally grasping, so brazen in its thieving offensiveness?

'Let's see', some faceless policy maker in some ornate government office, in some smart multi-roomed building, must have asked, 'how might we claw back even more money from those already struggling at the lowest level of the economic chain?'

Perhaps the answer came with a rush of wicked realisation: 'Yes, of course, why hadn't we thought of it before. Let's check the size of their already meagre houses for the most basic vacant capacity and force them to pay for it, failing which, compel them to move, who knows or cares where, with all the dislocation, anxiety and upheaval involved, so we can slice their housing benefit.'

Those fearing an accompanying mansion tax needn't fret. The attack on social housing recipients will benefit those who own the mansions.

As the range of ConDem measures show, this is a landmark assault on the poorest in support of the richest. While struggling bedroom-taxed families will have to find on average £14 a week more for rent, the 1.5 per cent with incomes above £150,000 are about to have their tax reduced by 5 per cent, giving the UK's millionaires an average £100,769 a year more.

Iain Duncan Smith is, of course, the callous mind behind this and other such 'caring reforms', the department of workhouse and suspensions minister with the 'I know how to sort poverty' gleam in his eye.

Back in the Tory opposition days of 2002, during his short tenure as party leader, IDS was kindly escorted around Glasgow's multi-deprived Easterhouse by the honourable Bob Holman, a deeply people-devoted social worker who hoped he could show him a more compassionate way of tackling poverty. So much for the great 'conversion'.

In 2004 IDS founded the Centre for Social Justice, a spuriously-named right-wing think-tank which, infused with his own Christian sermonising on 'breakdown Britain' and the 'failed' Beveridge welfare state, provided ideological cover for his emergent Welfare Reform Bill.

Thus, have Duncan Smith and George Osborne now claimed, in a bad April 1 joke, that with the new range of cuts and reforms "we are just restoring the original principles of the welfare state".

Charities, churches, housing support bodies and a raft of other front line witnesses see the very opposite: deepening turmoil and destitution for a mass section of society.

Duncan Smith also tells us that he could live on £53 a week if he "had to". If only such people were compelled to try - not just for a week, but in the prolonged and life disfiguring way that so many have to cope and worry.

Yet, maybe we shouldn't be too harsh on the man now labelled "scumbag" by welfare-cut protesters. That really only applies to those who might have been realistically trusted to improve things and then betray that trust.

What else should one expect from any career politician, ConDem or Labour, particularly those with all that steely conviction about how best to 'get the poor to help themselves'?

One can speculate as to the kind of dark, twisted mindset that can tell poor people to relinquish their 'oversized' homes, live on £53 and go find work that doesn't actually exist. But would even that take us nearer understanding the structural wickedness of the system itself?

In truth, IDS is but another predictable enforcer of that much darker system and all its rationally determined cruelty. It's a system which keeps the minds of politicians not just selfishly motivated, but ruthlessly honed to market priorities and class interests, placing corporate rules before social compassion, money before people, elite security before social security, mansion-dwellers before struggling tenants.

Alas, it's also a market-survivalist mindset which inhibits wider social concern for the poor, part of the same political and media promoted prejudice against welfare claimants.

A general antagonism to the cuts and reforms may be evident.  But it's still a largely mediated opposition, driven more by narrow sectoral interests than any particular empathy for those in deepest welfare land.

The castigation of those on welfare, even in the midst of such ruthless cuts, illustrates the pernicious normalisation of public sentiment to gross inequalities and the propaganda function of social division.

The policies of Duncan Smith and Osborne are widely reviled, but millions still harbour a crude and uninformed animosity towards the 'feckless poor' and 'benefit scroungers'. 

And it's this base mythology of the 'suffering taxpayer', 'those who pay to keep those who take', that Duncan Smith and Osborne seek most to cultivate.

Maybe IDS and his Centre for Social Justice are working on that very idea right now: a 'compassion tax' on anyone with spare regard for the poor.

* A gathering petition asking IDS to try living on £53 a week. Please sign.

Iraq death figures - exchange with Jon Snow

To Channel 4 News and the BBC asking them to explain and amend their use of Iraq Body Count death figures in reports and presentations.
 
To Channel 4 News
presenters Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy:
 
Dear Jon and Krishnan,
 
I wonder if Channel 4 News would care to review what appears to be its selective use of Iraq Body Count (IBC) figures for civilian war deaths in Iraq.
 
The problem is discussed here, with reference to a particular Channel 4 News report on Iraq:
 
As noted, the following suggests a simplified alternative which, rather than IBC's limited and misleading count, offers a more informed and balanced range of figures:
 
Civilian war deaths in Iraq
(range):
 
Iraq Body Count (IBC)
(till Dec 2012)
110,937 - 121,227
 
Lancet/Johns Hopkins survey
(March 2003 - end of June 2006)
654,965
 
Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey
(August 12–19, 2007)
1,033,000
 
Source: Wikipedia
 
I'd be most grateful for your thoughts on replacing sole reference to IBC with this fairer and more viewer-serving graphic.
 
Kind regards
John Hilley
 
Reply from Jon Snow:
 
Thanks John..it is eternally controversial..from my own experience reporting in Iraq the IBC count has always seemed very low..I try not to use it....The Lancet figure may be more truthful...I doubt we can be more accurate in reality than say that credible sources believe more than half a million died and at least four million were displaced.
 
Thanks for your help..best wishes,
 
Jon
 
Hi Jon
 

Many thanks for replying. It's very much appreciated.

 

I also appreciate your open acknowledgement that the IBC count "[seems] very low", your reticence about using it and that the Lancet figure "may be more truthful".

 

Alas, the report referred to specifically didn't offer viewers any information on those more "credible sources" indicating, at least, over half a million dead.

 

Which returns us to the original question of what specific undertaking Ch 4 News might give in replacing the IBC count with a more informative set of figures. Any further thoughts?

 

Kind regards

John

 

Also sent:

 

Hi Jon,

 

Another contributor at the Media Lens message board makes this further vital point:

 

"Perhaps it should also be pointed out that The Lancet and others are cited without reservation on other issues (I think mass-killings in Congo is an example). Hence, for the sake of not just balance but consistency too, news broadcasters should necessarily be citing other estimates (e.g. Lancet) too."

 

Kind regards

John

 

No further response, as yet, received.

---------------------------------------------

 
To BBC (via online complaints form):
 
I'd like to request that the BBC end its selective use of Iraq Body Count (IBC) when denoting civilian war deaths in Iraq.
 
The issue of BBC bias towards IBC and the false impressions it serves is discussed here.
 
As noted, the following suggests a simplified alternative which, rather than IBC's limited and misleading count, offers a more informed and balanced range of figures:
 
Civilian war deaths in Iraq
(range):
 
Iraq Body Count (IBC)
(till Dec 2012)
110,937 - 121,227
 
Lancet/Johns Hopkins survey
(March 2003 - end of June 2006)
654,965
 
Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey
(August 12–19, 2007)
1,033,000
 
Source: Wikipedia
 
Please consider replacing sole reference to IBC with this fairer and more viewer-serving graphic.
 
The use of IBC as an 'authoritative' and singularly-mentioned figure is widespread across the BBC, which suggests that a specific executive/editorial decision has been taken in this regard.
 
I'd like to see any copy or/and details of that decision-making process.
 
As the BBC's own charter/editorial guidelines specify a requirement to be neutral and impartial, I look forward to a fairer presentation of this key information. If such an alteration is not undertaken, I intend to seek a ruling on this matter from the BBC Trust.
 
For the purposes of this complaint, I cite the following online report and its singular, biased use of IBC figures:
 
Iraq 10 years on: In numbers
 
I look forward to your reply.
 
Regards
John Hilley
--------------
 
It's also worth recalling here that in 2007 the BBC's own World Service obtained restricted government information denoting advice from a senior MoD adviser that the Lancet study was "robust":

"Asked by officials to comment on the survey, the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, concluded: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to 'best practice'." He recommended "caution in publicly criticising the study"."

This confirmation of authenticity further undermines the BBC's ongoing omission of the Lancet study and the use of IBC as its sole or principal source.
 
Getting the BBC to concede any of these points is, of course, interminably difficult. As many who have used the BBC's labyrinthine complaints system may attest, the prospects of receiving any official acknowledgement of bias, imbalance or breach of guidelines is unlikely. But, as ever, one useful purpose of the exercise is to further highlight that very process of evasion and denial.