Category Archives: The Media

He’s not the Messiah….

Posted on by

And so the Left and progressive movement in the UK and further afield rip themselves apart over Julian Assange.  I’d repeatedly said to myself ‘Don’t blog on this, you’ll annoy people, get your blood pressure up, and waste a good hour of your life’.  But, I can’t help it, after seeing ‘old heroes’ of the left supporting a bloke who has taken residence in a foreign embassy to avoid answering allegations of serious sexual assault, and hearing on the TV news people cheering him as if he’s some sort of hero.

Wikileaks started off with some good ideas, but I started falling out with it big time when it made some serious errors of judgement or process and ended up publishing secret information that made it more likely for folks who’d acted as interpreters or informers to Western forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to be identified.  All of a sudden the business of providing ‘Heat magazine for the chattering political classes’ was also making it possible for folks to be shot, bombed or tortured to death for giving information to Western forces.  Whether some folks on the left actually applauded this accidental release I don’t know – but any blood spilt because of these leaks has to lie at the door of Wikileaks and it’s team.

When Assange got himself in to trouble with allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, it was immediately leapt upon by many of the left as a set up of some sort.  Stories abounded about whether the events had happened, whether the women were CIA agents, all sorts of stuff.  the bottom line, though, was that Assange was wanted for questioning about these allegations in Sweden, ended up in London, then went to the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden as he and his supporters felt that he would be extradited to the US to answer potential espionage charges.  Which is ironic in itself, given that a journalist in Ecuador picked up 3 years in jail for ‘defamation’ of the Government of that country…. http://www.hrw.org/americas/ecuador

Which is where we are today, with long time doyens of the left like Tariq Ali, Ken Loach and John Pilger bending over backwards in support, and the progressive and left movement in the UK tearing itself apart over the whole issue.  I hate being able to say ‘I told you so…’ but I’m afraid that I’ve been warning anyone who will listen about the dangers from Assange for at least 3 years.  Here are a few points for my left wing friends supporting Assange to bear in mind.

If the US wanted Assange, I’m quite sure that between 2010 and now, it defies belief that the evil US Government wouldn’t have snatched him off the streets of wherever he happened to be.  The fact that they haven’t means that either they don’t want him badly enough, they don’t want him at all, or the US Government isn’t quite that evil….

It would be easier for the US to request extradition directly from the UK than go through this malarkey of asking Sweden to extradite first.  In recent years the UK has agreed to extradite bankers, alleged terrorists and computer hackers at the drop of a hat.  Are you genuinely trying to tell me that the UK Government wouldn’t agree, if asked, to extradite someone who the US want to talk to over leaks that may have impacted on UK military and diplomatic issues?

The likelihood of Assange being extradited from Sweden is low; why won’t he answer questions about the alleged allegations?

The whole issue looks like it reinforces a lot of rumours about just how mysoginistic the British left and it’s supporters can be when ‘the cause’ is viewed to be under threat.  By refusing to even consider whether or not the sexual assault allegations have any ground to them at all, supporters are denigrating the stories of women who have been assaulted.

Is the blind support of Assange and Wikileaks worth the massive rift that is being caused in the left and progressive movement?  Or is it a traditional knee jerk reaction as described by Nick Cohen in ‘What’s Left’ in which anything that gives the opportunity to hit at the US or UK must be right?

Come on folks, think this out – the Wikileaks material is what I’d expect to see in secret documents.  There’s little, if anything, in there that hasn’t been brought to the attention of journalists through other means. Just how many of the supporters of Assange have read the Wikileaks stuff?  Did it enlighten you about anything?  Is it worth the risk that by splitting the progressive movement around Assange and Wikileaks we damage the chances of change in the future?

Think carefully – the folks who’re suffering hard under Government policies in the UK right now may be very unforgiving if this demonstration of how ‘right on’ the left can be wrecks the chance of change.

Whoops…no Apocalypse!

Posted on by
Reply

So, all you Olympic / Illuminati / Alien Conspiracy theorists….how’s that ‘The 2012 Olympics will herald the end of the world with nukes, interdimensional portals and alien invaders’ idea hanging this morning?

A few weeks ago I posted this item - http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/2012/07/oops-apocalypse-or-get-a-friggin-grip/ - and as we’ve now crashed back to earth on the Monday after the Olympic closing ceremony, I think I can safely say that given 3 possible ends of the world, 2 opportunities for these events to happen (opening and closing ceremonies) and 2 weeks of primetime TV coverage in case the bad guys were late in arriving – it’s not going to happen.

The use of the Clash in an advert was just marketing gonks not listening to the words, the triangular lighting towers at the stadium were just….surprise….triangular lighting towers, the ‘Shard’ is just a rather big glass and steel penis substitute and not a landing platform for Goa’uld style pyramid shaped mother ships.

The closest that we got to an interdimensional portal releasing hordes of creatures from another dimension was when the Octopus appeared in the closing ceremony, and for a brief moment it did look like ”In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” was about to give way to ‘Cthulhu has been woken up by the din and fancies a light supper’…..

OK.  Enough jokes. like I said previously – what really scares me is that there are quite a lot of sane, otherwise sensible people who publicly (well, behind Internet aliases) stated that all this bollocks was going to happen, and larger numbers of people who believed it.  Given the state of the world I guess that if I was feeling generous I could attribute this sort of rubbish to some sort of late Millennial or pre-Mayan Endtimes panic or a spillover of stress from the economic and environmental problems facing the world, but when I’m feeling less generous I have to regard the people pushing this tripe as rather nasty, evil little trolls.

So…to all you conspiracy nuts. Anyone I know on Twitter or Facebook will be purged the first time that you post ANY sort of apologetics explaining why the end of the world didn’t happen.  Just ‘fess up and admit it was bollocks.  There’s good folks.  And get back to playing Dungeons and Dragons.

And for the worried and the anxious – there are enough real world problems out here to deal with.  Engage with a few and try and make the future for yourselves and your family what you want it to be, rather than being anxious about a future that will never exist outside bad science fiction or a psychiatric ward.

How Danny Boyle accidentally saved the Coalition

Posted on by
Reply

On Friday, 16th November, 2012 the General Election results reflected what had been the mood of much of the country since July of that year; increased support and continued mandate for the Coalition Government of David Cameron.  The early election had been called in early September by the 2/3 majority in the House of Commons required by the Fixed term Parliaments Act, with both the Coalition and Opposition generally feeling that they had it in the bag.

As Ed Miliband prepared to step down as leader of the Labour Party, and hence kick off a further period of in-fighting and introspection, he must have wondered how it had all gone so badly wrong.  As did ex-Chancellor George Osborne, who had been fired from his post in early October – quite a daring step for Prime Minister David Cameron but later regarded as a cost that that party had to pay.  New Chancellor Danny Alexander had spoken with the IMF and agreed that the stringent austerity policies of his predecessor would be slackened off.  The Coalition had some how survived – the next election set for 2017.

How had this come to pass?  The answer lay with a peculiarity of the British Electorate and the astonishing Olympic Opening Ceremony that the world had witnessed on July 27th.  It may also have been slightly helped by the antics of US Presidential Mitt Romney who, on the 26th July when visiting the UK, had managed to insult his hosts in quite a public manner.  And it certainly wasn’t hindered by a reasonable sporting performance during the games and the publication of a set of financial results in August that suggested that things were possibly coming along, even if many people in country were suffering badly.  And a couple of highly public firings of Tory MPs with extremist views, and their replacement with ‘party liners’ was highly regarded in the press.

The Games gave Cameron his Falklands moment; just as his predecessor Margaret Thatcher had been able to return to power on an increased majority on the back of a successful patriotic war, Cameron had been able to marshal the hype around the Olympics to his own advantage, making good use of the Olympic ‘feel good’ factor and taking a massive chance that the slight improvement of published financials and the October reshuffle would bring him votes.  Labour had failed to get traction as an opposition party; their own leaders realized that they would be forced to make some unpalatable decisions themselves and appeared to be almost paralysed by their honesty, as spokesmen repeated that ‘things  were not going to be easy’.

But that Friday morning, as Cameron started to plan for this new Cabinet, he knew that his victory started the instant that the spectacular Opening Ceremony hit the screens and fired up in the watching public that very peculiar form of national pride that has carried more than one Prime Minister to election victory by the ‘feel good’ factor.  Even the pointedly critical  ’NHS’ segment was put to good use when, in late August, Cameron gave a speech in which he stated that he and his Government would take on board the Olympic Spirit and start by listening to the people; the outpouring of public support for the NHS triggered by the ceremony had made him rethink policy and in a massive U-Turn the NHS reforms would be reversed.

In the weeks up to and during the election campaign, Cameron deftly reflected on the Olympic ideal in virtually every speech he made; the fact that Britain had once again managed to produce a wonderful event in a time of austerity; that once again we had shown our abilities to the world.  Some early orders to business based on the Olympic Business Summit in the week before the games were heavily publicised, and various pundits of the left and ‘progessive’ movements in the UK were indirectly bought in to the campaign, as positive comments they had made about the Olympics were re-used widely in the media.

As the time approached for him to visit the Palace, he took time out to write a memo to his Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood.  It was short: “Would it be too wicked to offer Danny Boyle a knighthood for ‘Services to the Conservative Party’?”  Cameron smirked and started thinking that some of those NHS reforms were pretty damn good and would have to be reintroduced….

Running with the hares and hunting with the hounds….

Posted on by
Reply

The title of this piece alludes to an old English saying; to ‘run with the hares and hunt with the hounds’ is a way of saying that someone attempts to benefit from both sides in a dispute.

This saying was bought very much to my mind last week by the actions of two entertainers whose behaviour might be regarded as jarring somewhat with the ‘public persona’ that has made them famous.

The first of these is the satirist Armando Iannucci – described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘the hardman of political satire’ for his work with TV show ‘The Thick of It’ and the film ‘In the loop’. It seems odd that such a person should accept an OBE – which is what has happened.  In other words, satirist honoured by the system that he apparently despises so much, and who then chooses to accept the honour.  Consider yourself neutered, Armando.

The second is Jimmy Carr, comedian and someone who has been shown to be ‘frugal with his tax payments’ by using a legal tax avoidance scheme.  There is an old joke that says ‘What’s the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion? About 7 years in Pentonville prison….’; well, Carr has apparently seen the light and accepted that what he did was wrong.  After all, sheltering 3 million a year from HMRC at a time when most of us are under the cosh might seem a little unfeeling- especially coming from a man who’s humour has included comments about the fact that Barclays Bank only pays 1% tax.  But it’s OK – it’s all a joke, isn’t it?

These two gentlemen, in my eyes, do seem to want the benefits of appearing edgy and slightly risky, whilst apparently accepting all the perks and benefits that the current establishment and economic system have to offer.  To me it leaves a rather nasty taste in my mouth.

I have to say that I’m not a fan of the work of either man – I guess that’s made it easier for me to be grumpy about it – but my estimation of both of them would have gone up had they walked the walk that goes with their talk.

The obligatory Facebook IPO post….or…Hey! Zuckerberg! You’re my bitch!

Posted on by
Reply

Well, despite the state of the world economy, Facebook finally managed it’s IPO today and ended the day at roughly the same level as it launched at, having had a high point of about $42 and a start point of $38.  Now, when I were a lad we did IPOs differently – take the VA Linux IPO in the 1990s – a first day increase of nearly 700% on the starting price…..

But the world is different today, and the markets are older – although given recent behaviours not any wiser.   The Facebook IPO was never going to be a show-stopper of the type we saw in the first dot-com boom, no matter how people hyped it up.  But, even Linked In, that had it’s IPO more recently, opened at $45 and closed at around $90 on the first day. So what happened to facebook, and why should we care?

To start with, the opening price was, in my opinion, incredibly high for a company that simply peddles user generated content, games access, in game currencies, personal data access and adverts.  And that’s why we should care, because ultimately the value of Facebook will depend upon how advertisers and data crunchers value that content and the 900 million users of Facebook, and whether those users will keep playing the Facebook game.

Why did Facebook go public?  Traditionally, companies go public when they need a market in which to sell shares in the company to investors in order to raise money, typically for expansion, moving new products to market, etc.  In recent years – especially in tech industries – the IPO has been seen as a means by which the people involved with the startup can flog their shares and get rich quick, and I’m afraid that’s what I see happening here.

The big question is – how is Facebook worth $100 billion dollars?  That’s more than Ford and more than Macdonalds.  Last year Facebook returned a profit of a billion dollars on revenue of 3.7 billion dollars, which isn’t bad going.  Ford had revenues of over $100 billion, and profits of over $6 billion in 2010, having reduced it’s debt by $12 billion in the same year.  Not bad either. But Ford only has a market capitalisation of $38 billion.  So, that market capitalisation of Ford of 38 billions is related to a profit of $6 billions.  Now, whilst you can’t compare Internet and non-Internet stocks, if I were to apply the same rules I’d start thinking that Facebook should, on those proportions, be floated at no more than $6 or $7 billion.

Let’s be fairer and take Google as our reference point.  It’s Internet stock, after all.  Current Market Capitalisation of $197 billion, revenue of $40 billion and income of $10 billion.  Applying some ratios again, Google seem to have a profit of about 25% of revenues, and a Market Cap. of around 5* revenue.  Now, Facebook has profits which are not that far off of the same ratio as Google – 1/3.7*100 = 27%, so if we apply the 5* rule we get 5*3.7 billion – let’s be generous and say $20 billions.

So, Joe’s rough and ready calculations say that Facebook should have sold at $20 billions.  Now, I’m not a stockbroker – in fact, I’m not brilliant with money at all, but this seems….logical.  The difference between Google and Facebook, of course,  is the magic words ‘Social Media’.  After all, Social is the future, according to the pundits, so it must be logical that the Facebook valuation reflects something of the massive profits that people expect to make from Social Media in future.  Yes?

Right…let’s look at Linked IN.  Recentish float, social media company, not so many users, blah, blah.  Market capitalisation of $10 billion dollars (no missing zero), Revenue about $670 million, profits about $17 million.  Oooer.  So Social isn’t necessarily the magic word.

So what could that magic ingredient be?  What do analysts think makes Facebook worth so much?  Do me a favour.  If, like me, you’re a Facebook user, walk to the bathroom, look in the mirror.  Say Hi.  You’re looking at 1/900 millionth of Facebook’s secret sauce. Those investors are putting a lot of money in to the hope that we will continue spending money that can, in some way, be associated with our use of Facebook.  Now, I’ve not spent a dime through any Facebook related advert, game or doohickey in the 4 or so years I’ve been on there.  I rate every advert that pops up in my Timeline (except for the ones from Charities and non-profits) as offensive.  How we use facebook from here on in will make or break a lot of fortunes.

If you want something to put a smile on your face today, remember that 1/900 millionth of Mark Zuckerberg’s arse is yours.  Collectively, Zuckerberg is our bitch.

 

“I heard the news today, oh boy…”

Posted on by
Reply

…which many will recognise as the opening line of the Beatles song, “A Day in the Life”.  Unfortunately, I had to change the next line to ‘…and was as angry as Hell’ rather than ‘About a lucky man who made the grade’.

Today, on Westminster Bridge in London, people protesting against Government Plans to ‘reform’ the NHS are gathering in an event called, on Twitter, #blockthebridge.  It appears that a few thousand people are gathering, and at the time of writing the protest was peaceful.  Although you might be ignorant of this protest unless you’re following it on social media like Twitter and Facebook, becasue neither the BBC or Sky News have seen fit to report on it.

After all, there is a more important story happening..Sir Paul McCartney is getting married! Yes! We’ve had the interviews with the waiting fans, know that Sir Paul and his bride to be went for a workout this morning, know the colour of the wedding car and it’s just popped up as ‘Breaking News’ on the BBC News channel where we have live footage of a car parked in a driveway waiting to drive off.

Quite honestly, it’s shameful – McCartney and (on Sky) dead pop singer Michael Jackson have managed to provide some suitably anodyne and irrelevant ‘OK’ or ‘Hello’ style celeb puff pieces to cover up that people are fighting for the future of the NHS.  It’s either piss poor editorial decision making or censorship, and given the coverage not given to the Wall Street occupation in the last week I’m going with censorship.

Oddly enough, it would have been John Lennon’s birthday today, and I like to think that as the co-writer of the song I quoted above he would have been tempted to go and join the protesters rather than attend the wedding, had he still been with us – were he not already occupying Wall Street, of course.

And in case you’re interested, the BBC are now showing a bus pulling up at a Register Office….

 

Just one more thing….

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, Peter Falk died.  The 83 year old veteran actor had had dementia for a few years – an ironic end for a man who will always be known as Columbo, the dishevelled homicide detective with the razor sharp mind. Enough will be (rightly) written about Mr Falk over the next few days, and I’m sure that the TV planners are already dusting off parts of their schedule for a few re-runs, but I just wanted to blog about what Peter Falk meant to me as an integral part of growing up.

I blogged about the show a year or so ago – here - and it’s sad to come back to it in this way.

Columbo was part of the ‘Mystery Movie’  TV series developed in the US in the late 1960s / early 1970s that featured feature-length stories from three or four detective, once a week. So you’d get a Columbo one week, McMillan and Wife, then a McCloud, etc. They were standard viewing in Pritchard Towers – although I was usually dodging in and out of the living room, doing homework and hobbies or just ‘mucking about’ in the evening.   Columbo is always associated with my early teens; whereas I was not always allowed to watch some TV police shows, Columbo was OK and passed parental screening.

It was like a jigsaw puzzle – you knew who did it, when, how and to whom.  the trick was working out how Columbo would piece the clues together to get to the murderer. If there was ever such a thing as a ‘Police Opera’, Columbo was it.  There’s a saying ‘The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings’ – in Columbo, it wouldn’t be over until the man in the mac turned to the suspect as he was leaving after an interview and said ‘There’s just one more thing…’.  That was the ‘Black Spot’ for the murderer – they were marked for nicking, and it was just a formality from there on in.  The bumbling detective who, in the words of one character, ‘looked like an unmade bed’ was in many cases almost apologetic when he slapped the cuffs on – indeed, there were a number of episodes where the murderer was much more sympathetic than the victim! Columbo was like a favourite uncle, complete with dreadful car and a dog as laid back as he was, called ‘Dog’.

Like another of my favourite detectives, Morse, first name was never mentioned; I got the impression that his mysterious wife (like Arthur Dailey’s ‘er indoors’, mentioned often, never seen) would call him to dinner with a quick ‘Lieutenant, dinner’s up’.  To me he had a number of character traits that were charming and unusual to see in a lead role in a TV detective show.  He was untidy, (apparently) easily distracted, showed humility and was pretty non-violent. He also had a sharp mind, dogged persistence and a sense of fair play and justice. In other words, he was a nice guy who just happened to be a homicide cop.  He didn’t have ‘issues’ like modern cops, but you could actually believe in him – I think even now I want my police murder squad people to be either Columbo or Morse.

Falk was also brilliant in one of my favourite war films ‘Anzio’, in which he played a member of a squad of GIs stuck in a farmouse with German soldiers around them, but for me his greatest film role would be as, wait for it, unkempt, dishevelled, private detective ‘Sam Diamond’ in the brilliant comedy ‘Murder by Death’, which sends up every ‘locked room’ mystery you will ever have seen.  It was on TV a few days ago.  There is a description (and spoilers) here.  If you’ve not seen it, and don’t mind fun being poked at Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade et al. then do take a look!  Falk has some brilliant lines – I have to say that my favourite, after he finds out that he and his girlfriend are locked in a room with a bomb set to explode in 30 seconds, is :

[a bomb is about to explode]
Sam Diamond: I’ve got an idea! I don’t know if it will work but I’ve got to try. Turn around!
Tess Skeffington: I’ve turned, Sam.
Sam Diamond: Whatever you do, don’t turn around until I say so.
Tess Skeffington: [turns around] But Sam…
Sam Diamond: I SAID DON’T TURN AROUND!
Tess Skeffington: Yes, Sam.
Sam Diamond: Good! Cause… I think… I’m gonna cry.

When the news came through about Peter’s death yesterday, I heard it first from Twitter, and then came the grubbing around for a few minutes on Google and such to get it confirmed.  I have to admit to being a little bit teary – but then I realised that I was sad and smiling – all those super memories I have put there by Peter Falk. 

Let me find my Columbo box set…

Left to Apple, 2014 could be like 1984…revisited…

Posted on by
4

Those of us of a certain age in IT will remember Apple’s famous TV advert for the groundbreaking ‘Macintosh’ computer back in 1984.  The advert, here on You Tube, portrayed how the Mac would free computer users from the grasp of the evil Corporate Computer giants (such as IBM and Microsoft) and did a lot to help Apple’s image as the ‘good (albeit expensive) guys’ in the computer world, providing computers that were fun to use, cool and trendy.

Macs were always hard to write software for, compared to the PC.  But the ease of use and availability of high quality software for media use, combined with a large number of users who might be regarded as ‘opinion formers’ – writers, authors, musicians and other media players – ensured that the Mac would survive.  In recent years the iPod, iPhone and iPad have created new markets for Apple products – indeed, I have an iPad on loan at the moment and I really enjoy it, despite my original qualms about the iPad.  But Apple kit has become increasingly ‘walled garden’.  I first explored this in this Blog post: http://www.joepritchard.me.uk/2010/04/apple-why-2014-could-be-like-1984/, expressing concern about the way in which Apple were controlling what you viewed and accessed with the iPad.

So, what’s new? Why am I back here?

Take a look at this Patent.  The stated purpose is to allow the owners of concert or conference venues to turn off the cameras of any devices in the venue that are using technology that is described in the Patent.  You might wonder why someone in the digital camera / video business would want to put circuitry in their cameras that would allow them to be remotely disabled.  Well,  if you’re a media publisher, then you might be very interested indeed in being able to prevent people filming concerts and such that you might actually have the rights for.  At this level – that of Digital Rights Management – then it’s a useful technology – especially if, like Apple, you make money by selling media, or if you think that governments, encouraged by media companies, may consider beefing up DRM laws to protect more forms of media.

The patent relies on infra-red light to disable (or change the function of) the cameras.  Wireless signals would have range issues or might even be disabled by the simple expedient of the user of the camera simply disabling WiFi. As far as I can see, the patent works by using Infra Red light coming in through the camera lens – there might be a way to filter this, but I’m not entirely sure – probably suitable IR filters would dim and distort the colour of the image beyond usability.

Whilst the DRM issue of recording performances has been the overt driving force behind this patent, I’m more worried about how it might be used to disable the camera at demonstrations, civil unrest, etc.  Capturing footage such as that seen in the UK Student Demonstrations, the UK G20 evidence about the death of a passer by and all the footage from Egypt and Greece might no longer be possible for users of cameras fitted with such technology.  All the authorities would have to do is ‘paint’ areas of the scene they don’t want filming with a suitable IR signal and that’s that – apart from any ‘old tech’ that doesn’t have this patent incorporated.  This would be a simple step – the technology to paint with IR could be as simple as a battery of high intensity infra-red LEDs emitting the required coded signals.  One can imagine the situation – the authorities wish to violently break up a demonstration, they turn the infra-red emitters on, the phone cameras go dark, the kickings start.

Apple seem to have come a long way since their ‘freedom from authoritarian power’ beginnings in the 1970s and 1980s.  The revolution will not be televised; certainly not with Apple kit, anyway.

Wikileaks – ‘Heat’ magazine for the Political classes?

Posted on by
3

Hear me out on this one.

I’ve been a political animal for over half my life; for me it came with the turf of being working class boy, avoids going down the pit by going to university, comes home and sees the five pits that I could see from my bedroom window as a kid closed down within a few years.  I was active in ‘Old Labour’ – Chair of Ward, vice Chair of Constituency, District Labour Party, etc. before quitting in disgust at the direction New Labour was taking the party.  Since 1995 my politics have been with a small ‘p’ – they’ve been about community building – bottom up helping people create their own solutions, a little writing, a little online community building, whatever.

So, you might be surprised to read this item, in which I am going to argue that many of the ‘big leaks’ of US Military and Diplomatic Information from Wikileaks have been ultimately pointless, organisationally egotistical and distracting from the issues at hand.  The lack of US security, the possibility that some of the information is ‘black propaganda’ and the personal life of Mr Assange are matters for another day and probably another writer.

Going back to the first time that Wikileaks hit the headlines, the release of papers showing that there had probably been war crimes in Iraq perpetrated by Allied troops, that torture took place and other stories associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was undeniably valuable and the sort of traditional ‘investigative journalism’ that we might expect from the Fourth Estate.  These were relevant and important leaks in any number of ways - wrongdoing by US and UK citizens, possible war crimes, lies in Government about the prosecution of a war – possible further indications that the wars themselves were illegal.  They removed the last shreds of the idea that these were ‘just’ wars being legally and effectively prosecuted. 

Now, the October/November 2010 release.  More of the same to some degree, with added diplomatic cables – what embassy staff said about world leaders, stuff like that.  And stuff going back 20 or 30 years.  Here’s where I start having misgivings – the Diplomatic leaks.

Diplomacy has been defined as the art of saying ‘What a nice doggy, here doggy, have a biscuit, cute doggy…whilst looking around for a large rock with which to hit said dog.’   A great deal of diplomatic traffic is ‘private’ – a concept that many people in Wikileaks and who believe that ‘all information wants to be free’ have problems with.  Does it benefit anyone in the world to find out that British sailors were released from Iranian detention after possible involvement by the Pope?  Or that a US Diplomat regards the British Government as having slight paranoia about the so-called ‘Special Relationship’?  I’m not sure it does – to me it genuinely appears to be gossip on a par with that published in Heat about the status of the marriages of people in the public eye – but I’m sure that it gave the chattering classes a great deal of vicarious pleasure by apparently letting them in to what CS Lewis called ‘The Inner Circle’ – a group of people who know something that most other people don’t…  But ultimately, I’m reminded of the story from World War II surrounding ‘Enigma’ intelligence.  Messages were decrypted that often gave lots of useless personal details about German officers – like one chap constantly complaining about gout.  Whilst it was amusing it was also pointless to the allies, and potentially dangerous to the Enigma decoding project, as were it to get back to the enemy that the allies were having a good laugh at the General’s throbbing toe, it would soon lead to a review of policy and procedure that might shut down the Enigma source for good.

There are other diplomatic leaks that should be kept secret – simply because they deal with ‘work in progress’.  Diplomacy is not a spectator sport.  Those of us of a certain age can remember that the Camp David agreement was greatly facilitated by ‘back channel’ diplomacy where people could speak to each other in secret without knowledge of these meetings, which would have probably scuppered political careers at the very least, getting out until after the event.  This sort of ‘get lots of data, apply no self-censorship, dump the lot on the Internet’ approach from Wikileaks will undoubtedly make any diplomats think twice about what they say in such situations in future.

Wikileaks themselves have admitted that their approach to releasing documents without review or ‘redacting’ (blacking out text, for you and me) could mean that the site would ‘one day have blood on it’s hands’.  To say that and still persist in the same publication method is arrogant and ego-driven.  Amnesty International have already raised the issue of redaction of the names of Afghan civilian workers from released documents – i.e. people helping the Coalition forces in Afghanistan who’re now at risk of death (as are their families) because of the leaked documents.  There is also information about techniques and equipment used to tackle ‘roadside bombs’ in the leaked documents.  Whilst it’s likely that anyone with reasonable technical knowledge could work a lot of this stuff out, there is no point in making the task easier.  I am forced to wonder how much blood will be spilt on the backs of these two stories alone?  Afghan civilian and bomb disposal officer?  Feeling queasy yet, Wikileakers?  People on the liberal left quite rightly decry the waste of life of these wars; I’m not hearing the same voices decrying the waste of life caused by the release of documents by Wikileaks.

And the whole Wikileaks business has been a massive distraction here in the UK.  Whilst a fair number of mainstream media outlets have been publishing leaked Wikileaks documents, running stories on them, and then most recently getting in on the personal stuff about the Wikileaks founder, Britain has had a number of student protests and ‘bottom up’ political protests that have received either biased or no coverage at all.  To people in Britain, Wikileaks will have :

  • Academic / prurient interest for journalists, the chattering classes and teh wannabe ‘heroes of open data’.
  • Serious interest if you’re serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, or have family or friends there, from teh point of view  of your own life or the lives of others being put in greater jeopardy by the data released.
  • Political impact (probably negative) in terms of diplomatic negotiations
  • Very little impact at all on the vast majority of people in the UK.

That’s not to say people are not interested and concerned about leaks that deal with wrongdoing at a personal, governmental or corporate level. That’s what organisations like Wikileaks SHOULD be doing, but with a degree of care, and not with teh arrogance and narcissism that they currently display.

But things like the Student Protests and the protests against unpaid tax made against High Street shops and businesses such as BHS, Vodafone and Top Shop are relevant to people on  day to day basis – they will be paying for that unpaid tax, their children will be paying more for education.  Their children are getting their heads broken (literally) by Police batons.  And these stories are only getting out to the public slowly and with great effort. 

Wikileaks is a distraction to these stories and activities that are more relevant to the British people.  But, I guess they’re not as sexy as things with ‘CLASSIFIED’ written on them that smell, ever so slightly, of spilt blood.  

Like I said, ‘Heat’ magazine for the Political classes,  political porn for the poseurs.

Liberals and ‘acceptable’ bigotry

Posted on by
4

Vatican FlagThe last visit from a Pope to the UK before the most recent one was back in 1982 – I’m old enough to remember that one.  I was just finishing university at the time, and I remember doing some revision while the visit was on TV in the background.

But it was not a state affair – that is, the Pope was not invited by the Queen and was not given treatment accorded to a head of state. This time around, he is.  The visit has cost the taxpayer £12 million, and has upset a vocal minority in the UK who’re objecting to the papal visit with regard to:

  • The Holy See doesn’t meet the rqeuirements for a state under the Montevideo Protocols
  • The Catholic Church’s  beliefs on homosexual rights
  • The Catholic Church’s failure to deal adequately with paedophilia within the priesthood
  • The Church’s rejection of condoms causing the spread of AIDS
  • The Church’s support for segregated education
  • The refusal of the Vatican to sign various international human rights treaties, and instead form concordats with other countries, that have negative effects on human rights issues for people within those countries.

The full list is here.   And the list is totally accurate – the Catholic Church does need to get it;s house in order on a lot of issues, and at the same time the Vatican needs to review it’s links to other countries in the world.  As an Anglican I don’t have to believe in Papal infallibility; the Catholic Church and the Vatican must get their act together. 

However, it’s likely that very few world leaders could happily jump through all the hoops here.  I assume therefore that we’ll eventually see:

  • Protests against President Obama for continuing human rights problems at home and abroad.
  • Protests against President Sarkozy for his treatment of the Roma population.
  • Protests against the Dalai  Lama (who regards homosexual sex as ‘sexual misconduct’)

Will we see protests against these leaders? It may happen….who knows…but I doubt they would have the same amount of vehemence from corners of the liberal establishment  and press that this Papal visit has seen.  In size, the number of protesters has been quite small compared to the numbers obviously supporting the visit, but the media attention given to the protesters seems to have been disproportionately large compared to the amount of  support the protests have garnered.

What has really upset me, though, is the bigotry and sheer offensiveness that I’ve seen from people that I know personally; indeed, some folks have now been given a permanent leave of absence from my Facebook and Twitter accounts; it’s not that I disagree with their beliefs, it’s just the way those beliefs were expressed.  Indeed, I’ve heard comments that must come pretty close to inciting religious hatred from some so-called liberals and ‘progressives’, and whilst I can understand they’re angry about the attitudes expressed by the Pope and the Vatican, it’s worth them remembering the simple rule of thumb that ‘Two wrongs do not make a right’.

It’s been an eye-opener, to be honest; I have to say that seeing 18th Century expressions of ‘anti-popery’ made by people who surely regard themselves as civilised people living in the 21st Century was quite something.  Maybe teh liberal veneer on soem people is a lot thinner than they’d like to think.