Unparliamentary language

Green Party (Fianna Fáil) TD Paul Gogarty, tweeting (presumably) from the Dáil today:

http://twitter.com/PaulGogartyTD

via @AllanCavanagh

Wallets Full of Blood

Together with our interview with filmmaker Eamonn Crudden, A curse on the zombie establishment, we would like to present below the trilogy of short films that make up Wallets Full of Blood, his cinematic account of Ireland’s property fuelled crisis. Enjoy…

Wallets Full of Blood: Houses on the Moon

‘A chilling and original take on the golden circle that is quickly turning the country to rust.’ Notes On The Front on Houses on the Moon

‘The most mordantly evocative document of post-’Celtic Tiger’ Ireland there is.’  Most Sincerely Folks on Houses on the Moon

Wallets Full of Blood: Zombie Banker Blues

‘A nice little going away present for ‘Fingers’ Fingleton when he finally ‘steps down’ this Thursday.’ Dublin Opinion on Zombie Banker Blues

‘An outstanding evocation of the emotional devastation of negative equity.’
Eurotrib.com on Zombie Banker Blues

Wallets Full of Blood: Roscommon Death Trip

 

‘Not one for the shockers, I loved this one. The directing, the filming, the cut, the audio is simply genius’. Culch.ie on Roscommon Death Trip

‘I strongly advise you all to watch this.’  The Punishment of Sloth on Roscommon Death Trip

Israel says, Israel says, Israel says

Dear Mark,
 
Having just read your piece in today’s Irish Times, ‘Report says Israel violated international law’, I just wanted to ask why you led the first four paragraphs with statements from the Israeli government?
 
Were there no other reactions to the report? Have the families of those who were killed made any comments? Would it not have been reasonable to lead with the findings of the report and mention the government reactions (Palestine and Turkey too) in the closing paragraphs?
 
I can understand that you’re the correspondent in Jerusalem, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to act as a public relations officer.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
David

Previous MediaShots on the subject:

‘The false reality of news journalism’ – Reporting Palestine and the Mavi Marmara

‘Officials say’, ‘officials say’, ‘according to an official’

Ireland is at a crossroads

The Media – A week in review

[Click on the image to enlarge]

Text reads:

Left (to the pub) – Economic Hardship and a scarcity of jammy dodgers

Right (to bed) – Economic Prosperity and an abundance of jammy dodgers

This is just an example for illustration purposes, almost any mainstream news editor could equally fill the role.

I don’t fully understand the alleged jammy dodgers obsession [via @Madam_Editor], but it is funny.

RSA Animations

The RSA Animation of David Harvey’s lecture ‘Crises of Capitalism‘ did the rounds a few months ago, but there are another few animations which are also worth highlighting. Here is Barbara Ehrenreich with ‘Smile or Die’:

Philip Zimbardo on ‘The Secret Powers of Time’:

Jeremy Rifkin with ‘The Empathic Civilisation’:

and here is Dan Pink on ‘The surprising truth about what motivates us’:

Dave Spart meets Noam Chomsky

I was listening to Noam Chomsky delivering the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism:

…which reminded me of this friendly defamation I ‘suffered’ at the hands of a senior correspondent at the Irish Times back in 2007, in a discussion on RTE’s Tonight with Vincent Browne show following the first in a series of lectures Chomsky gave at UCD. [starts at 37mins 40sec] Thankfully Harry Browne rode to this annoymous persons defense.

Tonight with Vincent Browne 17/01/07

[Interesting use of sound effects at 41mins 21sec]

The actual question that I asked was:

“To what extent is the corporate media; The Irish Times, The Guardian, The Irish Independent etc complicit in Iraq’s illegal war, as a result of their inaccurate portrayal of the case for war and the continuing conflict?”

And Chomsky’s response was:

“The US press, and I don’t think its different elsewhere. In fact the continent is often worse; German press, French press. The war in Iraq is described in the manner that some highschool newspaper would describe the local sports team. The framework of discussion is always ‘how well are we doing?’, ‘did the coach make a mistake?’, ‘should he have substituted another player?’, ‘can we do better next time?’

I have virtually never seen a departure from that framework in the Western press. It’s the way most totalitarian states describe their own atrocities. Within that framework you do get some criticism, but the framework itself is so totally distorted that you just can’t comment on it. And it’s true in case after case…The framework of discussion is so skewed, that even extremely good reporting, and it does exist, is within a framework that is imposing serious mis-impressions.” [MediaBite, A crime within a crime within a crime, 09/01/07]

The complete lecture “Democracy Promotion: Reflections on Intellectuals and the State” can be found here.

Crap Journalism and Islamophobia

This is the last time.

Ian O’Doherty writing in today’s Irish Independent:

“I noticed five Algerians were arrested last Friday in connection with a plot to kill the Pope, further proving just what a religion of peace Islam is” [Irish
Independent, 20/09/10]

If O’Doherty is honestly unaware that:

“Six men arrested in a suspected terrorist plot against Pope Benedict XVI on his state visit to Britain were released without charge late Saturday night.” [MSNBC,
18/09/10]

“Six men who were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 on Friday, 17 September, were all released without charge late on Saturday night and early this morning.” [The
Guardian, 19/09/10]

…then he is simply crap at his job.

If he is actually aware of this development and chose not to mention it, then he is simply engaged in spreading Islamophobia, which wouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

The compulsion to consume

Today’s Guardian Comment is Free section has an interesting piece by Micah White, contributing editor at Adbusters, discussing the environmental movements failure to find agreement on a solution to Global Warming. This shouldn’t really be a controversial topic for Guardian readers, who typically pride themselves on cycling to work and holidaying by train, they also apparently look something like this:

But even with these marketable green credentials, this piece has brought on a storm of angry comments, making up about half of the total 159.

Here’s a taster:

White’s central point was:

“The future of environmentalism is in liberating humanity from the compulsion to consume.”

An idea which is pretty much fundamental to what Adbsuters do. Yet even his mild suggestion that advertising, or commercial propaganda, should somehow be restrained (and no small amount of confusion among the readers as to which arguments were White’s and which he was taking issue with), was enough to prompt outcry from a large portion of those who feel the need to comment. That’s pretty depressing really. Perhaps White should have began with advertising directed at children, that angle at least should arouse less controversy.

Of course this article about reducing consumption was finely balanced with an ad for BMI airlines just to right.

For a history of advertising the best place to start is Adam Curtis’ The Century of Self and his blog here. There is also a ‘rare interview’ with him here.

Response to: ‘Arms deal’ or ‘security shift’?

Response from the Guardian’s Middle East editor Ian Black to this email:

dear david

i would say that the phrase “security issue” can encompass both defence and offence. (security forces. national security etc).

if you have any other questions i suggest you contact reader@guardian.co.uk

yours sincerely,

ian

And my response:

Dear Ian,

I would only say that if I accepted the Bush Doctrine.

As regards the readers editor, I don’t see the need to hide behind a mediator.

Yours sincerely,

David

‘Arms deal’ or ‘security shift’?

After reading a letter by David Traynier to the Guardian’s Ian Black regarding a report he’d penned on the recent US arms deal with Saudi Arabia, posted at Persistence of Vision, I found the article had been reproduced by the Irish Times the next day.

Traynier has since received a fairly uninterested response from Black (captured for posterity below), where he failed to answer any of Traynier’s reasonable questions:

“thanks for your email. i would say that the phrase “any military threat” includes the possibility that there isn’t actually one. a standfirst inevitably compresses material contained in the body of the article.

I thought it was worth following up, even just to allow Black the chance to dismiss another criticism.

Dear Ian Black,

I’ve just read your report for the Guardian on the US arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which has been republished (in part) by the Irish Times, and I had a quick question I hope you can answer.

You explain at the beginning of the report that the purpose of the “biggest arms deal in US history” is to “shore up [US] Gulf Arab allies to face any military threat from Iran.” And again, towards the end of the piece you write: “Questions about democracy, freedoms and human rights in the kingdom clearly have a lower priority than security issues.”

Would it be fair to say that in describing the deal as a ‘security issue’ designed to face a ‘military threat’ you have framed the sale of weapons as a ‘defensive act’? It seems to me as though you have dismissed entirely the possibility that the sale of arms could potentially be viewed as an act of provocation.

Even if the reader accepts that Iran may well, now or at some future point, pose a military threat to the US and its allies, the arms deal could, even then, only be reasonably seen as a tit-for-tat provocation between regional powers, definitely not a simple case of ‘security’ against a ‘threat’.

I’d be interested to hear back from you on this. I’m also copying the Irish Times foreign desk.

Yours sincerely,

David

To:

reader@guardian.co.uk
ian.black@guardian.co.uk
foreign@irishtimes.com

[Update: I should have said: Israel clearly sees it a provocation, and they're an ally!]