Cassandra Voices

Category: Current Affairs

  • U.K. Election 2019 – Optimism, Despair and the Fingerprints of Steve Bannon

    1. Long Term Patterns: the U.K. Prefers Oxford University-Educated Conservative Prime Ministers.

    Only Winston Churchill, and John Major among election-winning Prime Ministers since World War II did not pass through ‘the city of the dreaming spires’ during their formative educational years (neither University of Edinburgh-educated Gordon Brown nor Jim Callaghan, who could not afford a university education, won an election to become Prime Minister).

    A former President of the Oxford Union, Boris Johnson (Baliol College, 1987), joins a list that includes Theresa May (St Hugh’s, 1974), David Cameron (Brasenose College, 1988) Anthony Eden (Christchurch College, 1922), Harold MacMillan (Balliol College, 1914) Edward Heath (Balliol College, 1939), and Margaret Thatcher (Somerville College, 1947), as well as Labour PMs Tony Blair (St John’s, 1974), Harold Wilson (Jesus College, 1937) and Clement Atlee (University College, 1904).

    Apart from political points of difference, the well documented hostility exhibited towards Jeremy Corbyn, across the media spectrum, since he was first elected party leader[i] may be attributed to bias (unconscious or otherwise) against an individual perhaps deemed to lack the necessary polish – or debating skills – conferred by the elite institution.

    Moreover, it is clear that Conservatism, an admittedly amorphous and pragmatic body of ideas, fluctuating historically between pro- and anti-European Community positions, represents the mainstream of British politics, with the Party holding power for forty-four of the seventy-four years since the end World War II (or 60% of that time); rising to twenty-seven out of the last forty years (or 68% of the time since 1979).

    Shares of the vote in general elections since 1832 received by Conservatives (blue), Liberals/Liberal Democrats (orange) and others (grey).

    The Conservative formula has been based inter alia on a partisan press, Atlanticist foreign policy involving periodic military commitment, increasing Euroscepticism since Margaret Thatcher, free trade, low taxation, privatisation of government services, and emphasis on financial services in the south-east of the country as opposed to manufacturing industry in the north and west (apart from an arms industry that earned £14 billion in export revenues in 2018[ii]). Moreover, particularly under Tony Blair, New Labour (1997-2010) broadly embraced Conservative policies.

    Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist politics thus represented an usual anomaly in U.K. politics – a genuine threat to the Conservative consensus on how to govern Britain, through a grassroots movement, albeit focused in the south of the country. The scale of the threat is demonstrated by Corbyn’s ability to attract almost as many votes to the Labour Party in the General Election of 2017 (c. 12.9 million) as Tony Blair did in his 1997 landslide victory (c. 13.5m).

    The disturbing character of the campaign to defeat the Labour Party under Corbyn in 2019 has exposed the limits of democracy in the United Kingdom, and bears the fingerprints of Steve Bannon’s tactic of unsettling opponents by ‘deliberately crossing the line, defying normal courtesies, disrupting debate by scorning its conventions.’

    1. The Labour Party Bucks European Social Democratic Decline (to an extent).

    Much has been made of the commonalities between Trump’s election and the Brexit referendum, but as the Polish writer Stefan Bielik observed ‘With its lurch to the right, Britain is no longer special in Europe.’[iii]

    The relative decline in the fortunes in the British Labour Party can be placed in a broader European context, wherein a traditional ‘working class’ no longer support mainstream social democratic parties. In many cases this ‘blue collar’ constituency has shifted to Populist nationalist (or Nativist) parties, including Rassemblement National (formerly Front National) in France, Lega in Italy, and Alternative für Deutschland in Germany – although in many cases these parties adopt causes traditionally associated with the left.

    Similarly, during the Brexit Referendum the Leave side made increased funding for the NHS a central plank of its campaign. The crucial distinction with socialism is that government services are envisioned as being restricted to the native population.

    Brexit Bus Pledge, 2016.

    Johnson’s proposal to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland also fits with the Populist, Bannonite formula. Post-Truth politics permit imaginative policies that barely consider logistical challenges or advantages, such as a wall the length of the U.S.-Mexican border, and as with Trump’s main policy proposal going into the last Presidential election, someone else would pay for it, in that case the Mexican government; whereas the EU is set to foot the bill for the bridge.

    In the U.K. election of 2019, the Labour Party secured a 32% share of the electorate (or 10.2 million votes), which represented a significant decline on the 40% (12.9 million) received in 2017. That proportion, however, compares favourably with the fortunes of other mainstream European left-wing parties, especially when the success of Scottish and other national or regional parties is taken into account.

    Among other large European countries, only in Spain did left-wing parties (Socialist Party and Podemos) secure a greater combined share of the vote than Labour in the U.K.. The steep decline of the German Social Democrats from 40% of the national share in 1998 to just 20% in 2017 might serve as a warning to those complacent enough to assume that Labour cannot sink any further.

    U.K. figures are skewed by a first-past-the-post electoral system that leads to tactical voting, and seriously diminishes opportunities for smaller parties. Nevertheless, at least by comparison with other European socialist parties, the U.K. Labour Party has emerged from Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure in relative good health, crucially, having retained its position as the second major party, it lives to fight another day.

    The U.K. election in 2019 witnessed another poor performance from the Labour Party in Scotland. This decline stems from the 2015 election under Ed Milliband’s leadership, when the Party lost all but one of its seats. This election emphasises that Scotland is a political entity increasingly at odds with the rest of the United Kingdom, in which the Scottish Nationalist Party (S.N.P.) won forty-eight out of fifty-nine seats (with 45% of the vote); as in Northern Ireland, constitutional questions, including membership of the European Union and the United Kingdom are now deciding factors for the electorate.

    In contrast, in Blair’s landslide victory, the Labour Party won fifty-six out of seventy-two seats there. Thus, the bald statement that this was Labour’s worst result since 1935 fails to take the altered politics of Scotland into account.

    Vitally, Labour under Corbyn fought off the Liberal Democrat attempt to assume the mantle of challenger to the Conservative Pary, and potential extinction in an unforgiving first-past-post-system. An early surge in Lib-Dem support saw them surpass Labour (23% v. 21%) in at least one poll prior to the election at the end of September.[iv] The party had become a refuge for both disaffected Labour politicians (including Chuka Umunna and Alastair Campbell), and claimed support from Conservative grandees such as John Major and Michael Heseltine.

    In the election itself, however, Liberal-Democrat support fell away to just under 12% of the total – an improvement on 2017 when the party won just 8% of the total – but a massive disappointment nonetheless considering their high hopes of becoming the main party of opposition, especially through favourable coverage in the pro-Remain The Guardian.

    It might have been expected that in an election in which the Conservative Party put Brexit front and central that the only U.K.-wide party fully committed to remaining in the European Union would emerge as the main challenger. But this re-running of the referendum did not materialise.

    Again bearing in mind the unrepresentative, and arguably anti-democratic, nature of the first-past-the-post system, a socialist message, articulated by Jeremy Corbyn, appears to remain a vote winner – at least among those opposed to the Conservative Party – by comparison to the centrist liberal platform; with many voters also aware that the Liberal-Democrats had entered into a coalition government with the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015 that implemented austerity economic policies.

    Thus, reasserting a centrist, Blairite approach, including a swift return to the European Union, does not seem a likely formula for a Labour Party revival unless its policies cleave closely to the Conservative consensus to a point where the electorate is indifferent to the outcome: as under New Labour when voter turnout dipped below 60% in 2001, compared to 68% in 2017 and 66.5% in 2019.

    1. Unequivocal Brexit Policy Proved Crucial to Conservative Victory.

    It is widely assumed – with the former BBC Newsnight journalist Paul Mason a prominent advocate of this view[v] – that Jeremy Corbyn’s unwillingness to make a firm commitment to remaining within the European Union was the Labour Party’s undoing. The argument runs that had Corbyn campaigned with a defiant promise for a yes vote, perhaps in alliance with the Liberal-Democrats, he would have carried the day. But this flies in the face of the reality.

    After years of bickering inside Parliament, leading to the infamous proroguing, and courtroom battles, it would appear that serious Brexit fatigue had set in among the electorate. The Conservative pledge ‘To Get Brexit Done’, repeated at every possible juncture throughout the campaign with admirable unity of purpose, proved an unbeatable platform – helped of course by an overwhelmingly supportive media, increasingly hysterical in its opposition to Corbyn.

    https://twitter.com/OliverMilne/status/1204415746052198403

    Even Remain-voting Conservatives seem to have been attracted by the simplicity of the message, albeit the claim that a vote for the Liberal-Democrats could bring Corbyn to power may also have proved effective. More importantly, the Conservatives exploited an enduring grievance that the democratic will of the people, as expressed in the Referendum of 2016, was being ignored by a political elite – an argument that resonated strongly in Brexit-voting parts of the country: Labour’s so-called ‘red wall.’

    The vast majority of Labour’s losses to the Conservatives came in those Brexit-voting constituencies of the North, Midlands and Wales,[vi] many of which elected Conservative MPs for the first time in decades.

    Constituencies lost by Labour to Conservatives: Blyth Valley; Workington; Wrexham; Leigh; West Bromwich West; West Bromwich East; Bishop Auckland; Don Valley; Wakefield; Rother Valley; Kensington; Newcastle-under-Lyme; Bolsover; Bolton North East; Bury North; Bury South; Heywood & Middleton; Sedgefield; Warrington South; High Peak; Penistone & Stocksbridge; Scunthorpe; Great Grimsby; Redcar; Burnley; Bassetlaw; Stoke-on-Trent North; Stoke-on-Trent Central; Wolverhampton North East; Wolverhampton South West; Blackpool South; Hyndburn; Vale of Clwyd; Clwyd South; Delyn; Peterborough; Durham North West; Birmingham Northfield; Barrow and Furness; Darlingon; Keighley; Colne Valley; Dewsbury; Ashfield; Lincoln; Gedling; Derby North; Dudley North; Ipswich; Stroud; Crewe & Nantwich; Bridgend; Ynys Mon; Stockton South.

    All of these constituencies, bar Stroud in Gloucestershire, Kensington in London and Ipswich in Norfolk, are in the North of England or Wales – Labour’s traditional industrial heartland.

    This emphasises the extent to which Brexit dictated the electoral outcome, especially given Labour retained seats in those same constituencies in 2017 with a manifesto promising to respect the result of the referendum.

    Thus, while opinion polls register distaste for the Labour leadership among the electorate, after a sustained campaign of vilification in the press, this cannot be separated from the substance of policies (particularly indecisiveness over Brexit), as the opinion questionnaire purports to.

    Thus, both David Broder[viii] and Owen Jones[ix] have persuasively argued that Labour’s failure to replicate its Brexit policy from the 2017 election was its undoing. Labour certainly lost votes and even seats to the Lib-Dems and S.N.P. in 2019, but these parties would probably have supported a minority Labour government which promised to re-run the referendum.

    Jeremy Corbyn can certainly be faulted for adopting what appears to have been a principled neutrality on the question of Brexit, but perhaps it was the decision of his leading lieutenant John McDonnell to advocate for another referendum and a Remain vote – contrary to the Bennite anti-EU tradition within the Labour Party to which he belonged – that was the real problem; indeed, revealingly, McDonnell has ‘owned’ the electoral disaster.[x]

    It may plausibly be argued that the stubborn refusal of many within Britain – and without – to accept the clear verdict of the British people on membership of the European Union, however sinister the tactics of the Leave side, permitted the political gambler and serial liar that is Boris Johnson to win the U.K General Election of 2019, by a handsome margin.

    1. ‘Make Hodge-Podge of Everything’
    Source: Matthew D’Ancona, ‘Bannon’s Britain’ The Tortoise, September 28th, 2019, https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/09/28/bannons-britain/content.html?sig=H8jSG1aWM202Udsw0YK9FImq6JLIDJ0W8yroue9l5hc

    According to Matthew D’Ancona there ‘really is no way to understand how radically’ Boris Johson is ‘trying to remould the Conservative Party, and the very specific way in which he is framing contemporary political debate, without reference to the self-appointed father figure of the worldwide right-wing nationalist movement.’

    2019 marked a new low in British democracy, as fake and misleading information became central to the Conservative Party’s campaign of undermining its opponents, in particular Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Party for the most part, fought a clean fight, essentially winning the campaign on the relatively free medium of Twitter,[xi] where organic sharing is rewarded above political advertisements.

    Conservative Party distortion began in earnest during the first leaders’ debate, when its press office temporarily changed the name on its official Twitter handle to ‘FactCheckUK’, implying it was an independent fact-checking source. That the Party was prepared to do so given the near certainty of discovery is indicative of the cynicism of Post-Truth contemporary political campaigning. Under the guidance of Steve Bannon, who masterminded Donald Trump’s victory, Populists bend reality and impugn the motives of all politicians.

    Thus, Adam Ramsay describes the Conservative strategy as being to: ‘wage war on the political process, on trust, and on truth.’ The Hobbesian project ensures ‘the whole experience is miserable, bewildering and stressful.’ All that remains is to ‘ask voters to make it go away.’[xii]

    https://twitter.com/PeteMcCats/status/1207972111182118912

    Although those with an interest in politics tend to gravitate towards Twitter, Facebook actually has three times as many daily visits in the U.K.,[xiii] and as the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed, users of the platform are susceptible to sophisticated propaganda, and political ads are not verified.

    Independent analysis found an extraordinary 88% of Conservative ads on Facebook contained misleading information; by comparison 0% of Labour’s ads had fake news.[xiv] The influence of such propaganda on individuals who do not ordinarily take an interest in politics cannot be underestimated.

    Moreover, the Conservative Party raised more than three times as much as Labour in large donations (over £7,500) over the course of the campaign (£18 million compared to £5 million), providing them with ample resources for online campaigns targeting key marginal constituencies.

    Added to this, the Conservative Party retained partisan support from most of the widest circulating newspapers in the country, including The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Times and The Sun. Only The Daily Mirror was demonstrably supportive of Labour.

    Left-leaning or liberal broadsheets, The Guardian and The Independent were generally opposed to the Conservatives, but tended to be at least as supportive of the Liberal Democrats as Labour, and ran stories damaging to the latter, including unsubstantiated allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn.[xv]

    Thus, The Guardian carried a letter, signed by the novelist John le Carré and others, in which the authors claimed antisemitism concerns around Corbyn would prevent them from voting Labour.[xvi]

    The Guardian also ran a damaging opinion piece by the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore in which he amplified these claims. He made great play on Corbyn’s unsatisfactory responses to aggressive questioning by Andrew Neil (whose formidable inquisitorial skills Boris Johnson refused to be subjected to) in which the interviewer demanded that Corbyn condemn the proposition that Rothschild Zionists were controlling world governments. Montefiore also referred to the Labour leader’s 2012 support of a grafitti artist’s work apparently featuring antisemitic tropes, in what was an article strikingly thin on substantive evidence for a damaging allegation.[xvii]

    In a Facebook post in 2012, Corbyn offered his backing to Los Angeles-based street artist Mear One, before subsequently conceding he was wrong to support the graffiti artist.

    Alongside criticisms of Corbyn by leading cultural figures in the liberal media, in an unprecedented move, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote an article for The Times[xviii] arguing Corbyn was unfit to be Prime Minister.

    Notably, antisemitism charges were hardly leveled against Corbyn prior to the 2017 election. The extent of the campaign running up to the 2019 elections suggests a coordinated, prolonged strategy, designed to impugn the reputation of a long-term anti-racist campaigner in Jeremy Corbyn, just as Arthur Scargill’s reputation was smeared at the height of the miners’ strike.

    This represented another feature of the Bannonite undermining of the political process, whereby all politicians are depicted as being racist or immoral. Indeed, Boris Johnson could hardly escape such censure given his descriptions of picaninnies with water melon smiles, women in burkhas looking like letterboxes, and homosexuals being tank-topped bum-boys.[xix]

    The episode recalls Fyodor Dostoyevksy’s 1872 Devils, towards the end of which the conspirators Lyamshin is put on trial and asked, ‘Why so many murders, scandals and outrages committed?’ to which he responds that it was to promote:

    the systematic destruction of society and all its principles; to demoralise everyone and make hodge-podge of everything, and then, when society was on the point of collapse – sick, depressed, cynical and sceptical, but still with a perpetual desire for some kind of guiding principle and for self-preservation – suddenly to gain control of it.[xx]

    1. The BBC is no longer a guardian of British democracy (if it ever was).

    Considering the distinct disadvantages that the Labour Party laboured under during this election, with traditional media and fake Facebook ads ranged against it, British democracy was reliant on the BBC to provide a measure of balance. Alas, the public service broadcaster not only failed to vindicate its public service mandate, but actively participated in the fake news campaign in support of the Conservative Party. It was left to Channel 4 to provide meaningful criticism of the Conservatives on the television.

    The BBC’s subtle falsification of news content began early in the campaign with the use of archive footage from 2016 of a dignified Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary laying a wreath outside the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday – in place of actual footage of a dishevelled Boris Johnson making a mess of placing a wreath at the ceremony in 2019.

    There followed the doctoring of a video in which laughter greets Boris Johnson’s claim that he always told the truth, which was used in subsequent news bulletins.

    These were blatant examples of bias. Much of the content was not overtly opposed to Labour, however, but subtly reinforced key Conservative messages, especially through reports from Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg.[xxi] Characteristically, far greater prominence was given to the obscure Labour MP Ian Austin’s endorsement of the Conservatives compared to the ‘Big Beast’ Ken Clarke’s defection.[xxii]

    As Peter Oborne pointed out in a stinging critique, the BBC tends to be biased in favour of any sitting governments, but the level of duplicity of 2019 is unprecedented in recent history. The broadcaster reverted to depicting a general lowering in political standards, encompassing the Labour Party and presumably itself. Thus on the night before the election Radio 4 broadcast a montage of moments seemingly aimed to make the point that all the protagonists were misleading voters.[xxiii]

    The conduct of the national broadcaster reflects the radical challenge posed by Corbyn and his team to the ruling Conservative consensus.

    Jeremy Corbyn took the U.K. establishment by surprise during the 2017 Election campaign, coming within a whisker of victory. This would have had serious ramifications for the domestic economy, but perhaps more importantly also U.K. foreign policy, and the arms’ industry, both in the U.K. and the wider military industrial complex in the U.S., in particular.

    It is unsurprising, therefore, then that a sophisticated and well organised campaign involving elements within both the BBC and other liberal media should have been deployed to undermine Corbyn and his politics.

    Finally, conspiracy theories are just that, but it is perhaps notable that the London Bridge stabbings was the only so-called ‘terrorist’ attack that has occurred on U.K. soil since, again suspiciously, the spate of attacks preceding the 2017 election.

    We have no evidence of provocateurs in action – as during a CND protest that occurs in Chris Mullin’s 1982 novel A Very British Coup – but the febrile atmosphere generated by hysterical media in the wake of any terrorist attack is certainly advantageous to a Conservative Party long associated with law and order – especially when confronted by a Labour leader, who previously welcomed former terrorists into the political fold.

    Notably, within hours of the attack a screenshot of a fake tweet, depicting the Labour leader as unsupportive of the police response, easily shared via WhatsApp, emerged.

    Fake Jeremy Corbyn Tweet that appeared soon after the attack.
    1. ‘Corbynism’ has shifted the mainstream of British Politics to the left, but socialism still needs a makeover.

    Jeremy Corbyn is now a lame duck Labour leader, while the Party considers a replacement. His generation of Bennites, who remained true to socialist and pacifist principles throughout the long period of New Labour centrism under Tony Blair, have, almost miraculously, seized the opportunity to define the philosophy of the Party for the forthcoming decades. This maintains the threat to the ruling Conservative consensus operating since World War II, notwithstanding Boris Johnson’s ‘thumping’ majority.

    The ranks of the Labour Party swelled to over half million under Corbyn, having stood at barely two hundred thousand while Ed Milliband was at the helm.[xxiv] Exceeding Conservative Party membership by three hundred thousand, it is among the most formidable, and youthful, left-wing parties in the developed world, and the largest of its kind in Europe.

    Moreover, running parallel to the Party is the campaigning Momentum movement, with forty thousand members. Any prospective Labour leader must now appeal to this young radical constituency. An immediate reversion to a centrist Blairite leader is an impossibility, and moreover is unlikely to be well received by an electorate in the grip of Bannonite Populism.

    ‘Corbynism,’ such as it is, is often derided as a middle class and metropolitan phenomenon. This is considered a structural weakness of most social democratic parties around the world. It ignores, however, the shifting dynamics of altered economies, as those once considered middle class are squeezed increasingly by high property prices and diminishing opportunities in careers such as education and the arts.

    It should also be born in mind that crippling poverty, afflicting a majority of the population, generated socialism at the end of the nineteenth century. Even for much of the twentieth century, a considerable proportion of the population was actually malnourished, whereas today the poor are more likely to be obese. Notwithstanding the food banks that emerged during the Cameron era of austerity, the extreme poverty that engendered socialism has largely been eliminated.

    Ironically, the tangible gains socialism brought to Britain and other European societies in providing for cheap food, accommodation, education and healthcare now actually work to the benefit of Populists that prey on consumer and entrepreneurial aspirations, while incubating a fear of an imminent immigrant ‘other’ destined to appropriate indigenous welfare, educational and healthcare entitlements.

    Unlike their older peers, young people across the U.K. were, however, disproportionately attracted to a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn,[xxv] including principled opposition to militarism, a Green New Deal and effective redistribution of wealth, including inter-generational transfer. This reveals a growing awareness that high capitalism has brought unprecedented inequality and rampant corporate control, requiring decisive state intervention. This should provide the impetus for a reconceived socialism that merges an aspiration to raise human welfare with the environmental and anti-war movements.

    Source: YouGov: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election

    It should also be conceded that the Labour campaign’s robust defence of the NHS against privatisation, and outside interference, has probably ensured the Conservatives will maintain public health services, at least to British citizens, for the time being. Thus, in defeating Corbynism the Conservative Party has been forced to adopt policies that many among its ranks do not support.

    The Conservatives now have unanimity on Brexit, but it remains to be seen how long a Party prone to factionalism will hold together, especially after absorbing Populist Brexiters. This will provide opportunities for Labour to chip away at the Conservative consensus.

    A priority for the Labour Party will be to develop policies to defeat the Conservative Party in the North of England and Wales. With Brexit ‘done’ the Conservative hold over the ‘red wall’ seems fragile, especially with younger people preferring Labour, and Conservative supporters dying out. Ongoing wrangling with the E.U. could cause serious economic damage, including to manufacturing industries in the North, which the Conservatives will surely be held responsible for.

    Hearteningly, the idealism of the Corbyn years has provided a learning ground for a generation of activists, now attuned to the difficulty of challenging the Conservative consensus. There are genuine grounds for optimism that a new generation of tech savvy activists can ultimately defeat Bannonite Populism, and lay the political and economic foundations for a carbon neutral New Jerusalem. But the dominant Conservative faction will, as ever, be difficult to shift, especially in the current atmosphere of Post-Truth, and attendant disillusionment with the political process.

    To lay the foundations for a New Jerusalem it is incumbent upon the Labour Party to redefine the socialist project, accommodate entrepreneurial innovation – with the mantra that ‘small is beautiful’ –  and avoid the bureaucratisation that was a hallmark of New Labour under Blair and Brown.

    Labour can, and should, offer principled opposition to the enormous corporations, including Facebook, whose interests the Conservative Party has long served, and which New Labour in its giddy appreciation of business leaders also embraced.

    A moral obligation to address the poverty and inequality, still strikingly evident throughout the U.K., should be accompanied by an appeal to small business people. The message that eradicating poverty and reducing inequality serves entrepreneurship should be made loud and clear: an impoverished population cannot sustain new ventures. Thus, the Labour Party may appeal to a nation of shopkeepers, selling new and environmentally friendly innovations, and no longer reliant on dark satanic mills that loom across post-Industrial Britain, fueling a Populist right.

    Follow Frank Armstrong on Twitter: @frankarmstrong2

    [i]  Dr Bart Cammaerts, Brooks DeCillia, João Carlos Magalhães, Dr Cesar Jimenez Martinez, ‘Journalistic Representations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Press’, LSE, 2016, http://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn

    [ii] Dan Sabbagh, ‘UK reclaims place as world’s second largest arms exporter’, The Guardian, July 30th , 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/uk-reclaims-place-as-worlds-second-largest-arms-exporter

    [iii] Stefan Bielik ‘With its lurch to the right, Britain is no longer special in Europe’, The Guardian, December 24th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/24/lurch-right-britain-special-europe-authoritarian

    [iv] Gus Carter, ‘Lib Dems overtake Labour in latest poll’ Metro, September 19th, 2019,

    Lib Dems overtake Labour in latest poll

    [v] Paul Mason, ‘AFTER CORBYNISMWHERE NEXT FOR LABOUR’, paulmason.org, December 16th, 2019, https://www.paulmason.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/After-Corbynism-v1.4.pdf

    [vi] Paula Surridge, ‘Labour lost its leavers while Tory remainers stayed loyal’, The Guardian, December 13th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/conservatives-bridge-brexit-divide-tory-landslide

    [viii] David Broder, ‘Labour’s Brexit Stance Defeated Corbynism Months Ago’, December 16th, 2019, The Jacobin, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/labour-party-uk-brexit-jeremy-corbyn-general-election

    [ix] Owen Jones, ‘Brexit and self-inflicted errors buried Labour in this election’, The Guardian, December 19th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/18/brexit-labour-election-corbyn-left

    [x] Rowen Mason, ‘’I own this disaster’: John McDonnell tries to shield Corbyn’, December 15th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/15/i-own-this-disaster-john-mcdonnell-tries-to-shield-corbyn-rebecca-long-bailey.

    [xi] Annabelle Timsit, ‘The UK election result shows why Twitter does not speak for most voters’, Quartz, December 13th, 2019, https://qz.com/1767195/uk-election-result-shows-twitter-doesnt-speak-for-most-voters/.

    [xii] Adam Ramsay, ‘Boris Johnson made politics awful, then asked people to vote it away’, Open Democracy,  22nd of December, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/boris-johnson-made-politics-awful-then-asked-people-vote-it-away/.

    [xiii] S. O’Dea, ‘Leading social networks by share of website visits* in the United Kingdom (UK) as of June 2019’, Statista, September 3rd, 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/280295/market-share-held-by-the-leading-social-networks-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/.

    [xiv] Rupert Evelyn, ‘88% of Conservative ads on Facebook ‘misleading’’, ITV News, December 6th, 2019, https://www.itv.com/news/2019-12-06/88-of-conservative-ads-on-facebook-misleading/.

    [xv] Letter: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to apologise for antisemitism proves he is unfit to be prime minister’ Independent, November 27th, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-labour-andrew-neil-interview-chief-rabbi-election-a9220576.html.

    [xvi] Letters, ‘Concerns about antisemitism mean we cannot vote Labour’, The Guardian, November 14th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/14/concerns-about-antisemitism-mean-we-cannot-vote-labour.

    [xvii] Simon Sebag Montefiore, ‘This antisemitism poisons any good Labour might do’, The Guardian, November 30th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/30/antisemitism-poisons-any-good-labour-doing-simon-sebag-montefiore.

    [xviii] Ephraim Mirvis, ‘Ephraim Mirvis: What will become of Jews in Britain if Labour forms the next government?’ The Times, November 25th, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/ephraim-mirvis-what-will-become-of-jews-in-britain-if-labour-forms-the-next-government-ghpsdbljk.

    [xix] Adam Bienkov, ‘Boris Johnson called gay men ‘tank-topped bumboys’ and black people ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’’, Business Insider, November 22nd, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-record-sexist-homophobic-and-racist-comments-bumboys-piccaninnies-2019-6?r=US&IR=T.

    [xx] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Devils, (translated by Michael R. Katz), Oxford, 1999, p.748.

    [xxi] Untitled, ‘BBC caught in the crossfire: why the UK’s public broadcaster is becoming a big election story’, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/bbc-caught-in-the-crossfire-why-the-uks-public-broadcaster-is-becoming-a-big-election-story-128639.

    [xxii] Peter Oborne, ‘In its election coverage, the BBC has let down the people who believe in it’, The Guardian, December 3rd, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/election-coverage-bbc-tories.

    [xxiii] Ramsay, 22nd of December, 2019, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/boris-johnson-made-politics-awful-then-asked-people-vote-it-away/.

    [xxiv] Rowena Mason, ‘Labour membership falls slightly but remains above 500,000’, The Guardian, August 8th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/08/labour-membership-falls-slightly-but-remains-about-500000.

    [xxv] Adam McDowell and Chris Curtis, ‘How Britain voted in the 2019 general election’, YouGov, December 17th, 2019, https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election.

  • Silent Night or a New Christmas Carol from Greta Thunberg?

    I especially enjoy visiting the Austrian side of my family around Salzkammergut during Christmas. The highlight is Little Christmas, or the Feast of the Epiphany, on January 6th best witnessed in the home town of my relatives in Ebensee, under the watchful gaze of the Traunsee mountains, which provide a perfect backdrop to the procession of children’s kites.

    Christmas there is suffused with the ubiquitous Salzburgian carol ‘Silent Night,’ first performed in 1819 in the small town of Oberndorf Bei Salzburg. The song is about Christmas and indeed children. It promises stillness and peace, both of which are now in increasingly short supply.

    Ebensee, Austria

    The great British actor Charles Laughton made one foray, during an illustrious career, into direction. Though a commercial flop, in my view it was his greatest achievement. ‘Night of the Hunters’ from 1955 is one of the greatest films ever made about children.

    The film is deeply disturbing with its focus on a mentally deranged, sociopathic killing machine – also a religious maniac – played impeccably by Robert Mitchum. It is the entrancing dream sequence at the beginning that sets much of the tone, and resonates over time.

    The face of the great silent movie actress Lillian Gish – persuaded out of retirement for this film – fronts ends the film with bright stars and children’s faces floating and twinkling all around her; she issues a stern biblical warning about the good and evil of the world for children. It is they who are pursued and victimised. Beware of false prophets she warns.

    Her message is inspired by Christianity, yet contains a warning against religious mania, and the abuses it fosters, fused with dollops of sociopathic behaviour.

    Pity the little children

    It begs the question as to what dangers we should warn our children against in today’s day and age, and what is best left unsaid.

    First off, it has become all too fashionable to listen to children without a critical filter. There is a growth industry of exploitation propagated by often nefarious family lawyers and social workers. This is often motivated by religious mania, or sexual hysteria, where highly toxic and opportunistic prosecutors engage in latter day witch hunts, in both Ireland and America, conniving with deeply corrupt and extremist states, tottering on the brink of fascism.

    This has led to the framing, as they perceive it, of whistle-blowers and Enemies of the People for child sex abuse. Witness Garda McCabe and others in Ireland. Foreign or non-national or mixed nationalities are targeted in particular. And of course ‘little people’ are children too. Garda Maurice McCabe was treated like a child, or rather a lamb to the slaughter.

    In the process the lives of others, and children, are damaged and even destroyed by people who are truly beneath contempt.

    Chomsky, among others, has pointed out the toxic relationship between neo-liberal Republicanism, religious mania, and philosophical relativism: a school of thought permitting Creationism to be put on the same curriculum as the Theory of Evolution.

    Brave New World

    More insidiously states[i] now facilitate and implicitly promote an idea of children ‘getting in touch’ with their transgender sides. The effect is to generate a confusion that renders our young into docile adults, disengaged from political activity – beyond identity politics at least – leading to confused and undirected lives.

    Advertising and consumerism generate a soma-induced soporific state redolent of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian 1929 novel Brave New World. The aspiration is to create a conformist and pliant workforce – Margaret Atwood’s Handmaids Tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019) writ large.

    I believe children benefit from rigour and discipline, not over-indulgence, in their education in order to realise their potentials as human beings. Instead we have the snowflake phenomenon, wherein sensitivities cannot be upset, and sentiments are imparted in a non-structured way, as a substitute for rational argument. The soporific softness of soma leads to over compliance and undue deference.

    Furthermore, attention is increasingly being diverted to solipsistic social media conversations that achieve nothing – the Doomsday Machines that provide for these platforms are a slow train to economic and environmental destruction.

    The harsh realities of the challenge confronting us are obscured from most children. Trickle down is trickling out for most of the planet and much about human existence is unsustainable. The light is dying. It is a much worse scenario than any dystopian novel – a juggernaut gaining speed.

    A lack of statesmanship and sound judgment, clouded by partisanship and compromise, is laying waste to the world. The controlling corporatocracy of the military industrial complex believes in the young solely for exploitation and cheap labour. The rumbling preceding the avalanche recalls Raymond Briggs’s 1982 graphic novel The Snowman in which a boy is carried on the back of a flying snowman, but when the boy wakes in the morning, he finds his snowman has melted.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upH1QZU4Z0Y

    Birds of a Feather

    So what can the Baby Boomers or Gen X, to which I belong, teach the young?

    Like the snowman we all melt away into the abyss of time, but the transfer of real knowledge, the utilisation of talent and intelligence, against the forces of ignorance, endure. We are birds of passage in that respect.

    Let us warn people and children in particular through parables, public intellectualism and real journalism – vindicating George Orwell’s stance that ‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want published; everything else is public relations’ – about the false prophets. We should instill true values upholding innocence; protecting the little people against the gathering storm. This will involve the preservation of the literary canon against the forces of post-modern barbarism, and empowering children with critical lenses.

    Alas, in our over-worked and siloed professions we are afforded little time, let alone incentive, to confront the Gorgon’s head. Thus suffer the little children who need protecting. Now more than ever we need real answers and remedies not more fakery and false promises.

    So let us not bid ‘Au Revoir Les Enfants’, in the words of the 1982 Louis Malle film by that name, and instead inspire them through human rights organisations, which are truth-seeking and truth-telling, with the will to fight back.

    Scrooged

    I recently came across a glittering old edition of Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol from 1847, where Ebenezer Scrooge emerges as the archetypal dishonest businessman, dedicated to the pursuit of profit at the expense of others. He is the type of corporate monster I have had the misfortune to encounter and even serve.

    Scrooge is of course visited by the ghosts of the past, in the shape of his ex-partner Marley who he drove to an early death, and the future of the Cratchett family including poor Tiny Tim. This allows him to recognise the perversity and error of his ways and repent – it is a wonderful fiction!

    Dickens was the great chronicler of the instabilities and social malaise of Victorian society to which I believe our present woe-begotten age is returning, and above all else of unchecked capitalism and the huge inequalities it generates.

    Now, if the people, like Oliver Twist (1837), arrive with a bowl of porridge to ask for ‘more’ the authorities of the modern day workhouses go berserk: ‘Are you not happy with your existing pile of gruel? ‘Are you not Mr. Tsipras?’

    ‘Well no not really. We need you to extend us more credit to maintain a decent standard of living. Or are we to starve?’

    It is also apparent that a death by a thousand cuts to government services, however necessary these may be in certain instances, leads to a precipitate decline in standards of care and professionalism.

    The growing dominance of a neo-liberal cost benefit approach to the provision of government services suggest there is little reason to celebrate, and much to reflect on. Like Scrooge, we can mend the error of our ways, and reflect on how incompetence, ideology, short-termism, greed and delusion are laying waste to the social fabric.

    If we have any sense of individual or collective decency let us all embark on an Ebenezer Scrooge voyage-of-purification and help the Bob Cratchetts of this world to survive Christmas. And let us also note how such greed grips the legal community.

    But perhaps the most crucial text for our time is Dean Jonathan Swift’s 1729 masterpiece ‘A Modest Proposal’, in which he suggests that babies might be sold as a delicacy to the rich, thereby solving the geometric demographic increments of Malthusian Capitalism – an Early Modern precursor to our present neo-liberal status quo.

    Greta                                  

    This brings us to Greta Thunberg, our only child public intellectual. Still only sixteen, yet Time Magazine has seen to fit to make her its person of the year. She became famous for not attending school to demonstrate against her government’s inaction over climate change, leading to a spate of copycat demonstrations.

    Her recent short text, available in any decent book store for £2.99, No One is too Small to Make a Difference (2019), provides a summary of her speeches. She questions, given an imminent mass extinction, whether attending school is a terribly worthwhile idea, and identifies a cathedral solution. This is a great analogy as what is needed is deep structural and integrative thinking, and the leadership of the just and the wise. She might also have noted that serfs and slaves built the cathedrals, just as wage-slaves constructed those great cathedrals of capitalism: the skyscrapers.

    Greta Thunberg sees the world through black and white lenses. Good and evil. This is a refreshing clarity, demanding action is taken now, or her generation will have no future. She is right insofar as the overwhelming majority of scientists are to be believed. But notwithstanding this shining light, a little bit of grey and complexity should be introduced.

    Her appeal is to an older generation who are responsible for the mess. Though of course not all of us, just the neo-liberal corporate ascendancy, such as Donald Trump, who of course derides her, or perhaps presciently regard her as a threat. You are acting like spoiled, irresponsible teenager she is told. Fortunately, she is Swedish and retains a comparative freedom to speak her mind. The writ of neo-liberal justice does not extend to that Nordic country just yet.

    Interestingly from my point of view, Greta has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, as I have been myself. This leads us to speak the unvarnished truth, identifying the inappropriate adults in the room. In my case, this largely occurs in the criminal courts. I see Greta as our modern day female Oscar banging the modern day Tin Drum – the idiot savant with a clear view of the righteous path.

    So let us listen to Greta, rather than the siren poetry of Genesis or the right-wing triumphalism of Bannon and Johnson, or indeed even, the fatalism of Silent Night. We do not need false reassurances and false gods at Christmas. Instead we require decent housing, healthcare, and environmental protection.

    Postscript

    The Nobel Peace Prize is announced on December 20th in Stockholm. It is an honour not untainted, having been founded on the proceeds of the invention of dynamite. Some very rum people have won it. Perhaps most awfully the war criminal Henry Kissinger. Mostly it is a reward for high political office, irrespective of a mixed pedigree, although one suspects that at least Donald Trump will not have the honour bestowed on him, assuming our world does not take a further dystopian twist.

    As it takes place just before Christmas, and with silent night in mind, let us lobby for a Swedish national Greta Thunberg, in particular for her recent non-attendance at school and advocacy of a permanent ban on flying and veganism, unpopular causes which challenger the dominant consumer culture of neoliberalism.

    [i] Robbie Meredith, ‘School transgender support guidelines published,’ October 17th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-50076038

  • Bull Moose – In Praise of Uncivil Discourse

    When truth is the casualty, everyone suffers. 

    For new Americans, spending Thanksgiving in the U.S. comes as a surprise. It’s the busiest travel time of the year, ranking ahead of Christmas and the 4th of July. While some associate Thanksgiving with shopping bonanzas like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, for most it’s simply an opportunity to spend time with family and friends; watching football or just gathering around the dinner table.

    Given that it’s always the last Thursday of November, it also marks the beginning of the holiday season. A time then to take stock, reflect and make plans for the year ahead, finishing any business before the year closes.

    It is little secret that Americans are becoming ever more polarized politically, in no small part due to the comfortable bubbles with which we surround ourselves, in our day-to-day-lives and online.

    All too easily, we can tune out people with whom we disagree. Except when it comes to Thanksgiving. Sitting around the dinner table, it’s hard to steer conversation away from current events. Issues like climate change, inequality, the composition of the Supreme Court, the mess in DC, what to make of Trump, or even football, bubble up.

    Polarization may also be causing people to fall out with one another over politics: according to Pew research more than eight-out-of-ten U.S. adults (roughly 85%) say political debate in the country has become more negative and less respectful.[i]

    Interestingly, a lot of Republican voters feel victimized in this regard. By a wide margin, Republicans believe the mainstream of political discourse is more hospitable to Democrats than to the GOP. Interestingly, Dems also think Republicans are more comfortable sharing their viewpoints, but only by a few percentage points.[ii]

    Given this toxic climate, many choose simply to stay away from any issue that is remotely political, especially given how few people are likely to be dissuaded from their current stance.[iii]

    The problem is that not taking ownership of political views can be harmful. It begs the question as to whether any democracy built on the free sharing of opinions and facts can survive in the face of this extreme polarization within social media bubbles and alternative facts. The jury is still out.

    It seems as if truth and facts are becoming ever harder to determine. People have warmed to the argument that there are always two sides to every issue.

    But there are plain facts which don’t have two sides – the truth.

    In today’s America, it has become commonplace to argue over facts. In some quarters, it might seem improper to suggest that sea levels are rising, despite the mounting evidence; or that a crowd at an inauguration was smaller than a previous one, or that black unemployment is at an all-time low.

    As in other parts of the world, truth is under attack, muddled by a barrage of special interest and nation states seeking to weaken the very democracy the West is built on. If this sounds alarmist, it is. As an aside – I suggest you watch Sacha Baron Cohen give his views on social media moguls, and their blatant lack of responsibility with regards to the truth.

    If you think this is simply a problem on the right of the political spectrum, you’re mistaken. The left is just as adept at bending the truth to suit themselves. The ‘woke’ left is famous for eating its own, so to speak. Writing in The Bulwark, Tim Miller brilliantly documents how Pete Buttigieg, who aspires to be America’s first openly gay President, is a under a multi-prong attack from so-called ‘progressives.’[iv]

    ‘Washington DC’s most interesting ‘power’ couple’

    So, on to the Impeachment Hearings. What we are witnessing is a political tactic that is as old as democracy itself. If you cannot win an argument with facts, you shout louder than the other side.

    Say what you like about the proceeding, but the Republicans are shouting louder. With the political theater gripping the nation – the needle of public opinion has hardly moved in recent months – Republicans are screaming about the unfair process and treatment to Trump.

    Last week, when a legal scholar remarked that even Barron Trump could not become a Baron as Trump is not King, Republicans erupted in indignation. How could Democrats drag a thirteen-year-old boy into the conversation?[v]

    Ah, the moral outrage. On and on the playbook goes – shout, distract, divide – with little change in public opinion on whether Trump should be removed from office.

    Did the Democrats call out the Republicans on this fake moral outrage? No. Actually the legal scholar later apologized for bringing Barron into the conversation. One of the few to call out Republicans on the ‘nothing burger’ was George Conway III – one of Trump’s harshest critics, and none other than spouse to Kellyanne Conway.

    Wait, what? The same Kellyanne Conway, advisor to Trump, who famously coined the term ‘alternative facts’ when asked about the true size of the crowds the latter’s inauguration?

    Yes, together they form Washington DCs most interesting ‘power’ couple. One is a fervent Trump supporter, and survivor of a White House where few, except family and Stephen Miller, survive for long.

    The other thinks Trump suffers from a ‘narcissistic personality disorder’[vi] and is constantly feuding with him online. Interestingly, he was once the head of the conservative Federalist society at Yale and reportedly was introduced to Kellyanne by none other than Ann Coulter. He also dated Laura Ingraham. For anyone unfamiliar with Laura Ingraham, she currently hosts the 10pm weekday evening slot on Fox – and is the reigning queen of conservative broadcasting.

    Home Comforts

    Over Thanksgiving dinner Bull Moose posed a question to some of his more left-leaning friends: ‘why are Republicans more aggressive in their use of social media and defense of their own?’

    We hear the standard answer: ‘it’s because of corporate media control.’ The argument runs that billionaires are not giving voice to Democrat views. It holds some truth, but at best it’s an incomplete picture. Look at George Conway or AOC – if you are willing to shout loudly there are ways around the filters.

    But maybe, also, it’s the very nature of today’s mainstream left to care inherently about another person’s point of view, which makes them less aggressive in the defense of their viewpoint.

    What is certain is that it’s high time for ordinary Americans, right and left, to stop being afraid of hurting one another’s feelings, and being offended by a different point of view. If Kellyanne and George – who Donald has called a husband from hell and a stone cold LOSER – can do it, maybe the rest of us can engage in a bit more civilized discourse over dinner, without fear of reprisal.

    Image: Constantino © Idini

    [i] Untitled, ‘Public Highly Critical of State of Political Discourse in the U.S.’ Pew Research, June 19th, 2019, https://www.people-press.org/2019/06/19/public-highly-critical-of-state-of-political-discourse-in-the-u-s/

    [ii] Bradley Jones, ‘Republicans see a national political climate comfortable for Democrats, but less so for GOP’, Pew Research, June 24th, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/24/republicans-see-a-national-political-climate-comfortable-for-democrats-but-less-so-for-gop/

    [iii] Domenico Montanaro, ‘Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Say Impeachment Hearings Won’t Change Their Minds’, NPR, November 19th, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/11/19/780540637/poll-americans-overwhelmingly-say-impeachment-hearings-wont-change-their-minds

    [iv] Tim Miller, ‘The Problematic Pete Wars’, The Bulwark, December 6th, 2019, https://thebulwark.com/the-problematic-pete-wars/

    [v] Marina Pitofsky, ‘George Conway calls out Melania Trump after she criticizes impeachment witness: ‘You’re amplifying what was a nothingburger reference’, The Hill, December 4th, 2019, https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/473104-george-conway-calls-out-melania-trump-after-she-defends-barron

     

    [vi] Daniel Lippman ‘Kellyanne Conway defends Trump after he attacked her husband’, Politico, March 20th, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/20/kellyanne-george-conway-trump-1229193

  • To Advance We Must Stop: Two Weeks of Protests in Bogotá

    A national strike was called in Colombia for Thursday, the 21st of November. In Bogotá, it would be the beginning of two weeks of protests, parties, and panics.

    Iván Duque, Colombia’s  right-wing president, was elected in 2018. Since then he has tried to implement the typical Latin American neo-liberal programme: pension privatisation; privatisation of government agencies; cuts to education budgets; cuts to corporation tax; cuts to the minimum wage for young people; the violent suppression of the left; the violation of peace treaties; the murder of social leaders. The strikes are a response to that programme.

    Bouncing in the spotlight of the Andean sun

    The marches began on Thursday morning. Thousands walked along the main routes into the centre of the city. Approaching from a few streets over, it sounded like the noise from a football stadium. There was music and whistles and horns. Crowds bounced in the spotlight of the Andean sun. Police helicopters hovered over the tree-topped mountains which enclose the city. Theatre groups twirled white flags like batons. Trapeze artists hung red ribbons from bridges and performed for the crowds passing underneath. The multi-coloured indigenous flag – the Wiphala – sparkled  in the sunshine. The flags of over fifty trade unions waved above the walking crowds. Topless protestors posed for photographs. People in traditional indigenous clothes played music and danced in a circle. Fireworks went off.

    One group of marchers carried a naked, blood-covered doll to represent the eight children who had been killed in August by the Colombian military.[i]

    There were pictures of pigs everywhere. The president, whenever he appears on television, has a bewildered look that is made worse by the porcine upturn of his nose. There were pig masks, pig posters, pig flags, people dressed as pigs, the president’s face on the body of a pig, a puppet of a pig being controlled by Álvaro Uribe.

    President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with the President of the Republic of Colombia Ivan Duque Marquez prior to participating in a bilateral meeting Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

    Mr. Duque is widely considered to be a proxy for Mr. Uribe, the influential former president. The name Uribe alone evokes, for some Colombians, images of death squads, narco money, pro-business corruption, and the genocide of poor and indigenous people. For others, Uribe means safety, progress, prosperity, and victory over left-wing terrorists.

    In a surprise move, students from the National University of Colombia turned west to block the airport. The were stopped along the route by ESMAD, Colombia’s controversial riot police unit.[ii] The riot police fired teargas and stun grenades. The students held their hands up and chanted Sin violencia, both a statement of intent and an accusation directed at the riot police’s reputation for brutality.

    The rest of the marches continued on towards Plaza Bolívar, the historic centre of Bogotá. The protestors stood around in the early afternoon as the sky darkened. They listened to the shouts of the anti-government speeches from a stage at the top of the plaza. The trouble started when the rain started falling.

    Some of the protestors pulled down the black cloth which had been put up to protect the historic buildings around the plaza. They burned the black cloth in the shelter of stone pillars. The riot police cleared the plaza with teargas and stun grenades. The water cannon trucks, black and square and as slow as tanks from the first world war, rolled in and sprayed the remaining protestors out into the narrow streets nearby. They would fight their way back into the plaza and be repelled again many times over the next few hours.

    Fires burned at intersections

    The rain continued to fall. The televisions stations divided their screens in four to show the different riots across the city. The police sirens kept a high pitched background beat as the TV presenters described the rioting.

    Stones were smashed on the ground and broken into smaller pieces and thrown at the riot police. Teargas was fired, the canisters skipped over the wet streets with a trail of white smoke behind them. The smoking canisters were picked up and thrown back towards the riot police. The water cannon trucks were surrounded and attacked and sprayed with graffiti and pounded with stones.

    Bus stations were smashed up with hammers. Fires burned at intersections in working class suburbs, the smoke could be seen from across the city. People with hoods up and their faces covered with scarves ran at the riot police and ran back as the riot police advanced. They chased each other up and down the streets as it got dark.

    They chased each other up and down the television screens in the wealthier northern suburbs where nobody protests. Bogotá is used to such scenes. Rain. Plumes of teargas. Scarfs across faces. Smashed glass. Smashed stones. The streets in the rain soaked north, by comparison, were silent. Christmas trees flickered in the windows of multi-story apartment blocks. In the empty bars and the empty restaurants, bored staff watched the riots on television. There was an empty feeling in the streets like in the days after Christmas.

    For many people in the north of the city, they first heard the distinctive sound of what became known as the ‘Cacerolazo’ from their phones. They saw videos of pots and pans being banged in protest on WhatsApp or Twitter or Facebook.

    It was only when they opened their windows or stepped out onto their balconies that they heard the tinklings of this new protest in the buildings around them. Windows which had previously been lights on the skyline revealed people, more and more as the night went on, banging pots and pans.

    It was happening all over the divided city. Videos of it went viral. The president held a press conference to denounce the riots and the vandalism of the late afternoon. On the news, after he was finished, they showed[iii] the chess pattern lights of tall residential buildings ringing with the sound of the protest.

    In Cali, a large city in southwest Colombia, the protests had led to looting. The night had brought terror. They were calling it the ‘Cali Purge’. A curfew had been set. There were rumours of gangs breaking into houses. Vigilantes stood outside apartment buildings and shot at any shadow that moved.

    The protests in Bogotá continued on Friday. In the south of the city, a bus was hijacked. The videos would be replayed all day on television.[iv] The bus succumbed to a crowd of people after a failed attempt at reversing back down a muddy street. The bus was then driven around with the cheering crowd on board, while others cheered and chased after it. In CCTV footage, the bus was rammed through the shutters of a supermarket while the workers inside scrambled to reinforce a temporary barricade of cardboard boxes. The workers were buried under their fallen barricade as looters ran in through the gap in the crumpled shutter.

    ‘A shallow gene pool of private schools and country clubs’

    The Colombian elite are a paranoid, jittery group at the best of times. They are like pure-bred dogs; overly groomed, prone to neuroticism, easily panicked by outsiders. They mate in a shallow gene pool of private schools and country clubs.

    They survive on inherited money, stolen land, and a reflexive violence towards any sign of redistribution. In response to the looting and riots, the mayor banned the sale of alcohol and called a curfew. It would be the first curfew in forty-two years. By 9pm on Friday night, everyone in Bogotá would have to be inside.

    The dark, empty streets would terrify a city that is already afraid of the night. While Colombia may be associated with magical realism, Bogotá is a noir city. The dark here is heavy. The streetlights can barely push it out of their way. On a normal evening, people hurry home in the dark, rushing in out of the cold, fearful of the empty streets. It is a corrupt, distrustful city, marred by heavy rain and armed muggings and the memory of kidnapping, bombs, and assassinations.

    The rumours started after the curfew. As in Cali, gangs of looters were said to be invading apartment buildings and houses. The word went around by WhatsApp voice notes.

    On Twitter people posted their address and wrote some version of ‘they have entered my building, please help.’ The emergency police line went down. Alarms went off. Gunshots were reported. Families hid under their beds. Old ladies cried on the phone to relatives in the US. The purge had come to the wealthy, northern suburbs.

    The city has millions of desperate poor and they were out there in the dark. Some said they were gangs of Venezuelan refugees. Some said they were Colombians down from the hillside slums. Vigilante groups formed to defend their apartment buildings. They were shown on television, holding their broomstick handles and golf clubs and hammers and knives in poses of self-defence.

    The fear was illogical. Why loot an occupied apartment building when there were unguarded shops all over the city? Unless there was another motive. Unless the chaos and the curfew had unleashed the stored up hate that the poor feel for the rich. Unless it was revenge. Revenge for the way this city and this country had operated for years. It was guilt, as much as rumour, which caused the panic.

    The army was called in to save the northern suburbs. Tanks[v] rolled down the streets and were cheered by the vigilantes outside their apartment buildings. Helicopters hummed over the empty streets. They found nothing. By Saturday morning, it would be revealed to be fake,[vi] though no one knows yet what kind of fake.

    Some say the police had rounded up criminals in trucks and unleashed them on the residential buildings of the upper middle class. Some say it was all orchestrated by Twitter bots. Others believed that the story of the fake terror was itself fake.

    Dilan Cruz

    On Saturday afternoon, a protestor, Dilan Cruz, was shot[vii] in the head as he ran away from the riot police. He was hit by a non-lethal projectile, fired from a riot policeman’s shotgun. The eighteen-year-old lay in an induced coma on Saturday evening. Protestors stood in a circle around the blood stained spot where he had fallen. They laid wreaths. They held moments of silence. The other protests around the city were louder, buzzing with the energy of Saturday night. These days of chaos had been like a heatwave or a World Cup for many people – a break from the mundane.

    On the street outside the compound where the president has his private home, it was like the second night of a music festival.

    Jugglers got up on people’s shoulders and threw flaming torches back and forth. A band in the centre of the two lane street kept a drum beat which was matched and added to by everyone else, banging their pots and pans and dancing along. A police helicopter with its lights on watched from above. Fireworks shot up into the air and exploded. The crowd turned on their phone torches and waved them from side to side in a moment of semi-silence for Dilan Cruz.

    Riot police with their shields up stood in a line on the lawn in front of the compound. The other residents of the other expensive houses stood behind them, watching the party. Friends found friends in the crowd until it grew to block both sides of the street.

    Girls got up on their boyfriend’s shoulders and waved homemade protest signs. People bought beer from a small shop nearby. The smell of weed was sewn into the air like a musical note. The crowd chanted, to the rhythm of a drum beat, ‘A parar para avanzar, viva el paro nacional’ (To advance we must stop, long live the national strike). The party went on until around 2am when the crowd grew small enough to be tear gassed by the riot police.

    Epa Colombia

    Monday brought more protests and more stories. Epa Colombia, a Youtuber who first became famous for saying ‘Epa Colombia’, had filmed herself smashing up a bus station with a hammer during Thursday’s marches. She became a symbol for what some considered to be the mindless vandalism of the protests. She was arrested,[viii] fined, and banned from all social media.

    Fifty-nine Venuezalans were deported[ix] by military plane. While they were charged with looting, their deportation was a symbolic act, a sign of the anti-Venezuelan feeling which had developed around the protests. A soldier recorded a video in support of the strikes, it went viral, he took his own life[x] out of fear over what might happen.

    On Monday night, Dilan Cruz died. It made international news, which is unusual. Colombia normally gets an easy ride from the anglophone media.[xi] It is written about as an up and coming tourist destination,[xii] if it’s written about at all. The systemic murder of social leaders is ignored, while Colombia is referred to as a foodie paradise.[xiii]

    Marches in Hong Kong and Caracas make front pages, while bigger protests in Bogotá are rarely mentioned.

    On Tuesday, union leaders called another national strike for the following day. A video went viral on Tuesday night. It showed a water cannon truck, as usual, spraying protesting students off the motorway in front of the national university. The students walked towards the truck with their hands raised. The truck reversed.[xiv]

    The national strike on Wednesday brought thousands onto the streets again. The students took over the main motorway. They walked north and were cheered as they went. They got to the edge of the city around 9pm. The riot police cornered about two hundred of them in quiet streets near the motorway. They were beaten and tear gassed. Many students were reported to be missing the following morning.[xv] One was seriously injured.

    There was another national strike on the following Wednesday, 4th of December. Thousands marched again, but the government continued to implement its neoliberal agenda.

    Normality, corrupt and violent and internationally accepted, appears to have been restored. The sound of pots and pans banging has grown faint. The streets no longer buzz with the feeling that anything is possible. There are rumours, though, of more strikes to come. The beat of ‘A parar para avanzar, viva el paro nacional’ is stuck in the memory of the city like an earworm. There are many who still listen for it on these quiet nights between protests.

    [i] Untitled, ‘Colombia defense minister resigns amid pressure over bombing casualties,’ Reuters, November 6th, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-politics/colombia-defense-minister-resigns-amid-pressure-over-bombing-casualties-idUSKBN1XG36K

    [ii] Untitled, ‘Colombianos exigen desmontar el Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (Esmad) tras 20 años de represión homicida,’ Globovision, November 30th, 2019, https://globovision.com/article/colombia-protestas-esmad-manifestaciones-violencia

    [iii] El Tiempo, ‘Histórico cacerolazo se toma las calles de Bogotá | EL TIEMPO’, Youtube, November 21st, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuekRtoKJfo

    [iv] Red MAS Noticias, ‘Red+ | Vándalos roban bus del SITP y rompen puerta de almacén para saquearlo,’ Youtube, November 22nd, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbBYCjJP_UU&has_verified=1

    [v] Maria Fernada Pulecio U, @PulecioU, Twitter, November 23rd, 2019, https://mobile.twitter.com/PulecioU/status/1198106200845541377

    [vi] Untitled, ‘¿Cuentas falsas en Twitter inventaron disturbios en Cedritos durante toque de queda?’, November 23rd, 2019, NACION, https://www.bluradio.com/nacion/cuentas-falsas-en-twitter-inventaron-disturbios-en-cedritos-durante-toque-de-queda-233588-ie435.

    [vii] NoticiasUnoColombia, ‘El video que subió Dilan Cruz cuando marchaba pacíficamente antes de ser impactado’, Youtube, November 24th, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxYq1UvUfTQ

    [viii] Noticias Caracol, ‘Epa Colombia tendrá que cerrar sus redes sociales,’ Youtube, November 29th, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oQzQBP2M4o

    [ix] ‘Expulsan de Colombia a 59 venezolanos por actos vandálicos en Bogotá’, El Tiempo, November 25th, 2019, https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/expulsan-a-venezolanos-por-actos-vandalicos-en-bogota-436974

    [x] Adriaan Alsema, ‘Soldier commits suicide citing stigmatization over support for Colombia’s national strike,’ Colombia Reports, November 26th, 2019, https://colombiareports.com/soldier-commits-suicide-citing-stigmatization-over-support-for-colombias-national-strike/

    [xi] Nell McShane Wulfhart, ‘36 Hours in Bogotá’, New York Times, December 27th, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/travel/what-to-do-in-bogota.html

    [xii] Brooke Porter Katz, ‘Five Places to Go in Bogotá,’ New York Times, December 5th, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/travel/five-places-to-go-in-bogota.html

    [xiii] Paul Richardson, ‘’You get five countries for the price of one’ – how Colombia became a foodie superpower,’ The Telegraph, January 8th, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/south-america/colombia/colombia-foodie-gastronomy/

    [xiv] Joshua Potash, ‘Student protesters in Bogota, Colombia forcing police to retreat.’ Twitter, November 27th, 2019, https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1199762726324752386

    [xv] Adriaan Alsema, ‘20 students missing’, 1 injured after US endorsement triggers brutal repression of Colombia’s peaceful protest,’ Colombia Reports, November 27th, 2019, https://colombiareports.com/20-students-missing-1-injured-after-us-endorsement-triggers-brutal-repression-of-colombias-peaceful-protest/

  • Irish Eyes Unsmiling: Have I Got News For You Brexit-Election Special!

    Bob Hope once wisecracked: ‘the choice between Carter and Regan was not so much the choice of the lesser of two evils, as the evil of two lessers.’ In Brexit-land that joke has transmuted into one about the difference between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

    The Irish media, as ever, are looking at this election through a narrow prism of self-interest. A hard or soft border; opposition of the DUP to a United Ireland; the noxious brew of tribalism and nationalism.

    The sideshow of whether the North will be within a Customs Union occludes profound questions. A Tory Government minister has announced, in effect, that within fourteen months all E.U. nationals will have to ‘regularise’ their residency status, with a discretionary right to withhold a leave to remain.[i] That is the really serious repercussion of Brexit for hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens living in the U.K..

    Michael Gove – a man for whom the term Machiavellian might have been invented – whose statecraft is overlaid with a pretence of humanity, alongside juvenile humour, murmurs about repatriation of immigrants après la deluge.

    With the extradition of ‘undesirables’ proceeding apace, historic crimes will be used to determine the right to continue to reside – ‘at her majesty’s pleasure.’ I have never taken a word of Gove’s seriously – intellectually that is – though I do have a soft spot for his comedic turn. The phrase an Englishman’s word is his bond, need not necessarily apply to Scottish Tory – et tu Michael.

    Michael Gove, ‘for whom the term Machiavellian might have been invented’

    It is a noticeable in my criminal defence representations that extradition matters which, hitherto, were settled as a matter of course are now revived, particularly where Eastern Europeans are concerned. Spengler’s proto-fascist text The Decline of the West (1918-22) seems a la mode. Across the world, we witness a rise in irredentist racism stigmatising ‘degenerate’ races and lifestyles, the demonization, exclusion and elimination of the ‘other.’ 

    Decisions as to who can stay and who is showed out the door are based, increasingly, on an economic calculus – a cost-benefit analysis of life – meaning a corrupt Russian oligarch is likely to get the nod ahead of a political dissident.

    The fool in King Lear advises: Have more than you show. Speak less than you know, an approach that Boris Johnson has very much taken to heart. After Brexit, in all likelihood, the National Health Service will be on the table – Trumping smokescreen denials aside – no doubt involving the nefarious orc that is Steve Bannon. Soon free medical treatment will be restricted to U.K. nationals, permitting an insidious soft entry, engineered by Big Pharma Americans, before the ultimate coup de grâce of privatisation.

    Johnson’s commitment to the NHS during the election campaign is purely tactical; indeed he once described it as a ‘top down, monopolistic’ system.[ii]

    The lethal trade agreement – T.T.I.P. all over again –  will facilitate Canadian and American corporations to sue the living daylights out of employers who dare to extend pensions, health care and a quality of life. I have no doubt these restrictions will form part of any trade deal.

    What we are seeing is the imminent dismantling of the welfare state, the end of the Bevanite social compact, and abandonment of Keynesian intervention.

    Brexit is, however, a complex conversation, also based on the failure of the European Union to live up to its principles. It has imposed a savage, doctrinaire austerity that has seriously undermined the social structure of Ireland and Greece. So really Remain is just a lesser of two evils, with Germanic autocratic lunatics at the helm.

    British decency misguidedly seeks a degree of moderation, fair play and reason in the European Union. Good luck with that. Brussels is a hotbed of lobbyists and bureaucrats, playing career snakes and ladders.

    Brexit was born of a perception that multiculturalism and mass immigration had failed. It’s a sad irony that the uncritical endorsement of open borders by the left actually contributed to people trafficking, money laundering and a heightened terror threat. Moreover, visceral dislike of Israel has engendered antisemitism on the fringes of the Labour Party, which Corbyn failed to stamp out adequately.

    Neo-liberalism is a false paradigm, voodoo economics issued by the church of scientology. It is not just a European consensus, but a world delusion. At least the U.K. is now debating the issues.

    The Irish ambassador for neo-liberalism is that bland consumerist bon viveur David McWilliams. In recent articles he has hailed the Berlin Wall as a triumph of capitalism for Ireland.[iii] Now he crows in Dublin wine bars to pseudo-sophisticates about corporatism providing jobs for tech workers who pay most of their salary in rents to what remains of the bourgeoisie – his people.

    ‘bland consumerist bon viveur David McWilliams’

    Well David you and your comprador class of charlatans facilitate the siphoning of funds into Canadian and American vulture funds fronted by Goldman Sachs. In Ireland the ‘powers that be’ will keep workers on short term contracts, without access to affordable housing or sustainable futures;  all for the benefit of a shrinking band of lightweight neophytes, who are Masters of an increasingly desolate Universe.

    Like Miriam O’ Callaghan, McWilliams is the perfect parrot of Ryanair-consumerism, a bland presentational non-entity facilitating disempowered and entrenching futility in people’s lives. With preppie awfulness he has the audacity to quote Jonathan Swift, without ever absorbing the contents of his most famous tract on Malthusian Liquidation: ‘A Modest Proposal’, which bitingly satires the Mercantilism of his time that we are returning to.

    By and large, the British are less prone to seduction by false prophets. Though the right to ridicule, so intrinsic to democracy, as Ronald Dworkin noted,[iv] is being eroded by light entertainment, sound bites and bland criticism.

    Johnson is the poster boy for this decline. A debased British culture is now offering a steady stream of safe comedy such as ‘Have I Got News for You,’ where politicians metamorphize into comedians or vice versa. Johnson has ridden the wave of light entertainment, Brit Pop and laddish buffoonery.

    Dazzling but superficial wit and repartee have crafted a kind of telethon effect spring-boarding him into the highest office in the land.

    The endless womanising and boorish behaviour appeal to a ‘Jack the Lad’ Skinner and Badiel constituency. But reminders of Trumpian excess has been turned into an asset for political advancement. Philandering did no harm to Clinton either, who began the rot. The vulgar jocks have won. Bannon and Trump are merely an extension of Bubba, as is Johnson.

    So the horror expressed by Heseltine, Clarke, Major and other more civilised Tory grandees falls on deaf ears.

    Corbyn is the antithesis of a vulgar jock, but wooly thinking on multi-culturalism, nostalgic cloth-cap socialism, and the endorsement of political correctness has handed the Right all the ammunition they crave.

    What we need is a return to the kingdom of the just and the wise, but forget about it. Corbyn is, nonetheless, the lesser of two evils. A controlled Remain and rejection of Brexit alongside an emasculated Corbyn, under supervision by coalition partners, looks to be the best outcome.

    Who knows, perhaps the outcome will even involve – you first read it here – that most accommodating of human beings Mr Gove. Flexibility was always something Machiavelli recommended in his Prince. But however you vote be careful for what you wish for this Christmas.

    [i] Mathew Weaver and Amelia Gentleman, ‘EU nationals lacking settled status could be deported, minister says’, The Guardian, October 10th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/10/eu-nationals-lacking-settled-status-could-be-deported-minister-says

    [ii] Twitter, ‘Tory Fibs’, December 5th, 2019, https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1202566322078584832

    [iii] David McWIlliams, ‘Ireland was the big winner from the fall of the Berlin Wall’, Irish Times, November 9th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-ireland-was-the-big-winner-from-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-1.4075841?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fdavid-mcwilliams-ireland-was-the-big-winner-from-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-1.4075841

    [iv] Ronald Dworkian, ‘The Right to Ridicule’, March 23rd, 2006, New York Review of Books, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/03/23/the-right-to-ridicule/

  • Special Report: Punitive Policies Inflict Further Exclusion and Trauma on Syrian Refugee Children

    The future of a generation born during over eight years of conflict in Syria is under threat. More than half of all school-aged Syrian children living as refugees in neighbouring countries do not have access to formal education. In this second of a two-part series humanitarian activist and author Bruna Kadletz addresses the educational crisis for school-aged refugees.

    From the balcony on the second floor where an orphanage shelters around forty Syrian children, you can see on the horizon a majestic natural wall of snow-capped mountains. Between the building, the clear blue sky and the highlands, plantation plots, mosques and other edifices adorn the fertile valley, which served as foodstuffs for the Roman provinces of the Levant, during antiquity.

    The Beqaa Valley, in eastern Lebanon, has since become a place of intense pressure, oscillating between hospitality and hostility. In the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War (1975 – 90), the government dedicated itself to rebuilding the capital Beirut, but neglected rural areas. As a result, the Beqaa Valley has one of the highest levels of inequality in the country, concentrating a mix of poverty and political abandonment.

    Since 2011, the influx of Syrian refugees, have exacerbated the inequality and poverty in the valley. Due to its proximity to the Syrian border, with Mount Lebanon to the west and the Anti-Lebanon range to the east, it received approximately three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand[1] refugees, who escaped the brutality of the on-going Syrian Civil War. This influx has had a profound impact on the region´s political, social and economic environment.

    Throughout this period, waves of hospitality have been punctuated by xenophobic attacks, harming refugees in need of protection, and generating further hostility. In June 2019, an apparently accidental fire[2] near the Deir al-Ahmar Refugee Camp displaced around six hundred refugees in the valley, exposing the latest tensions between residents and refugees. According to Nasser Yassin, researcher at the American University of Beirut, the incident, and how it was handled, is an example of ‘collective punishment’ perpetrated by local governments in order to push Syrians away.

    Despite the harsh living conditions for both local populations and newcomers, punitive responses and policies inflict further exclusion and trauma on refugees, with particularly adverse effects on children, who are restricted from enjoying a dignified life and education.

    In April 2019, I travelled to the Beqaa Valley to visit the Molham House, an orphanage housing Syrians kids who have lost their parents or the families taking care of them. The Molham team is responsible for the physical, emotion and social well-being of the children, particularly those who carry the trauma of the war.

    Before moving to the orphanage, many of the Syrian children did not enjoy access to education, food, or a clean and safe place to live. Some could not speak on arrival in the house, reflecting psychological wounds, while others were scarred with physical injuries. The Molham team has been working to improve the children’s lot by offering a home, medical care, psychological support and education.

    We arrived in the late morning, when the children were getting ready for school. Ghaithaa, a Syrian refugee herself, who works and lives in the Molham House, introduces the house to us. As we walk through the building´s chambers, the playful children follow us excitedly.

    After our short tour, I found my way to the balcony. The view was breathtaking not only for its natural beauty, but also because of the tough living conditions of refugees. There were countless informal tented settlements spread next to plantation plots. During the wintertime, when freezing temperatures, snow and torrential rain wreck the settlements, refugees are left in desperate need of emergency aid.

    Access to decent housing is one of the many challenges in the region. Preventing child labour and ensuring an education for school-aged children and youth is another. In early 2015, the Lebanese government suspended the registration of Syrians entering the country and imposed legal restrictions on those already inside the territory, suspending access to formal work, documentation and freedom of movement, and implementing a yearly residency renewal fee of US$200.

    Adults are thus unable to provide for their families and live with scarce resources in precarious conditions. In this extreme context, families end up depending on child labour to survive. Recent research published by UNICEF: Survey on Child Labour in Agriculture in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon: The case of Syrian refugees[3], revealed that ‘4,592 children, between the ages of 4 and 18 years, were reported as actively working, out of a total of 6,972 children living in the surveyed households.’ The research also found that 74.8% of surveyed children work in the agriculture sector and for 85.6% of the working children, family support was the leading motive to work.

    Besides insufficient public schools, lack of financial resources to pay for transportation, school supplies and registration fees, child labour also curtails education opportunities through non-enrolment, school dropout, and/or poor academic performance.

    In the orphanage in the Bekaa Valley, children face familar challenges on arrival. The main reasons for low enrolment levels are lack of documents and financial problems.

    Another issue for the children is the period in which they are permitted to study. Lebanese public schools segregate Lebanese students from Syrian refugees. Ensuring education for all, schools work double shifts. In the morning, it´s learning time for Lebanese students and other foreigners, whereas in the afternoon, it´s the Syrian refugees’ turn to learn.

    Ghaithaa tells us that ‘some kids complain about going to school in the afternoon, they feel tired studying from 1 to 7pm. They return home very tired. Plus, they´re not psychologically fit to study.’

    ‘Refugees in Lebanon have a very hard life,’ she concludes.

    Despite all the difficulties, the sentiment permeating the environment is one of care. In the orphanage, Ghaithaa is responsible for ten girls, ranging in age from six to twelve.

    ‘Each one carries a story. Of course, all of us have fled from Syria, from the war, and we left in harsh conditions. Many of the children have lost someone they love, so this house is a shelter for them, a place where they feel safe, where they are loved, where they are being educated.’ she says.

    ‘Kids are the most important thing for us,’ she says, with tears in her eyes.

    During times of humanitarian crisis and uncertainty, access to a quality education is a daily challenge faced by millions of refugee children and youth around the world. Maintaining access to education in times of crisis is complex, demanding local, regional and international efforts, and political will. Beyond dismantling punitive politics toward refugees, ensuring inclusive policies and developing plans for education, we must cultivate a culture of care and affection.

    In creating a safe, healthy and playful environment for children deeply wounded by the atrocities of wars, armed conflict and social collapse, we may regenerate lost generations.

    [1] Data on registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, UNHCR. Available at: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria/location/71

    [2] ‘Lebanon´s Deir al-Ahmar: how an incident displaced 600 refugees,’ Anchal Vohra for Al Jazeera. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/lebanon-deir-al-ahma-incident-displaced-600-refugees-190609095940222.html

    [3] Rima R. Habib (2019). ‘Survey on Child Labour in Agriculture in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon: The Case of Syrian Refugees.’ Beirut, Lebanon: American University of Beirut Press. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/lebanon/media/1621/file/ChildLabourSurvey_2019.pdf

  • UK Election 2019: Why has common sense become a ‘radical’ proposition?

    Last week two young people were stabbed to death at London Bridge while attending a conference organized by the University of Cambridge on rehabilitation of prisoners through education. Boris Johnson and other Conservatives were quick to politicize the tragedy, implying the attack – by a convicted terrorist on day release – signified a failure of the very approaches its victims promoted. But, as one of the victims, Jack Merritt’s father, movingly wrote, his son would be ‘livid’ at the thought of his death being used to fuel an ‘agenda of hate.’[i]

    Merritt’s death was not symptomatic of a failure of rehabilitation as an approach to crime and punishment, but of a government failure to fund it adequately. In fact, they provide for neither rehabilitative nor restorative forms of justice in such a way as to make either approach effective.

    Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones’ deaths were a major international news story, but sadly stabbings of young people in London are all too common: from January to September 2019, there were over 67 homicides by stabbing (of over 110 homicides)[ii][1], and in 2018/19 there were almost 15,000 knife crimes in London overall.

    In the U.K. as a whole,[iii] in the twelve months preceding March 2019, there were over 43,516 knife crimes recorded, representing an 80% rise over five years.[iv] Cuts to police funding, including the number of police officers, have contributed to this astounding rise in violent crime, and the ensuing deaths of young people – as have cuts to prison and probationary services.

    Poverty, lack of access to healthcare (including mental health services), inadequate education and widespread inequalities relating to class and race, all contribute to proliferating violence in our society, whether terrorism, gang or domestic.

    Traditionally Conservatives have been characterized as ‘strong’ on law and order, but ironically their policies often exacerbate the conditions that lead to crime. It is no exaggeration to say that austerity kills people in myriad ways. Besides knife crime, many deaths can be attributed to inadequate health care, homelessness, and even a sense of despair at the power wielded by an increasingly draconian welfare system.

    Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has been caricatured as crusty Marxists, out-of-touch fantasists, and even crazed Communists, by the neo-liberal radicals who have brought the U.K. to its knees. But all Labour is proposing, in its detailed and costed manifesto, is a level of public spending to bring the U.K. in line with European averages.

    Labour simply proposes to reverse the austerity that has been to the benefit of several rich Tory donors, and the detriment of the rest of us, raising the overall standard of living to a point where business can flourish. It is not fantastical at all: it is common sense.

    The Labour Party is seeking to cancel measures that literally punish people for being poor. For example, under new Universal Credit measures people are sanctioned simply for missing phone calls, with excuses rarely tolerated. They also want to raise the minimum wage, build more affordable accommodation and end homelessness.

    Labour want to restore a standard of decency to the country. Is this really so radical? How have we arrived at a point where improving the lot of the homeless, of vulnerable children and wayward teenagers is characterized as ‘radical’?

    Corbyn’s plans would simply bring the U.K. up to the European average of spending 45% of GDP on public services, in line with France, Italy, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and others.

    And, in proposing to re-nationalise chaotically run and profiteering private railway companies, it aims to bring the highest commuting fares in Europe in line with the average.[v]

    Moreover, by funding Fire Services appropriately, Labour seeks to do a lot more to prevent scandalous tragedies such as Grenfell. Again: why is this radical? When did our society begin to lose all perspective and with it decency?

    The right-wing, mainstream press that stoke fear of a fictional ‘Communism,’ frame common sense solutions to society’s greatest ills as dangerous pipe-dreams. In so doing they pave the way for a further fragmentation of society – accelerating Margaret Thatcher idea of ‘no such thing as society,’ – and leading to Dickensian suffering.

    At this point in the election cycle, with the fear-mongering rampant, we can only hope that what is clear on the ground – the obvious, unending effects of austerity and inequality – will sway people more than the lies and embellishments of those seeking to profit from social breakdown.

    Dr Christiana Spens is the author of The Portrayal and Punishment of Terrorists in Western Media (Palgrave, 2019) and Shooting Hipsters: Rethinking Dissent in the Age of PR (Repeater Books, 2016). She earned her doctorate at the University of St. Andrews and is now based in Glasgow, where she writes for various publications including Studio International, Art Quarterly and Prospect.

    [i] David Merritt, ‘’Jack would be livid his death has been used to further an agenda of hate’’, The Guardian, December 3rd, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/02/jack-merritt-london-bridge-attack-dave-merritt

    [ii] Aidan Milan, ‘How many deadly stabbings have there been in London so far this year?’, Metro, September 25th, 2019, https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/25/many-deadly-stabbings-london-far-year-10804537/

    [iii] Excluding Greater Manchester, due to recording issues.

    [iv] Statista, ‘Number of knife crimes recorded in London from 2010/11 to 2018/19 (in 1,000s)’  https://www.statista.com/statistics/864736/knife-crime-in-london/

    [v] Reality Check Team, ‘Are UK train fares the highest in Europe?’, BBC, August 14th, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49346642

  • Irish Times’s Columnist Finn McRedmond

    For anyone to become an opinion writer for the ‘paper of record’, the Irish Times, requires considerable ability. But does a particular viewpoint give an aspiring columnist a distinct advantage?

    It is said that if you’re not a socialist in your twenties you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative in your forties, you have no brain. Given the increasing centre-right consensus across Irish media, including the Irish Times, anyone aspiring to be a journalist there might do well to accelerate that learning curve. There are, of course, true conservative believers from the outset.

    Once such appears to be the precocious Finn McRedmond, who in recent months has become a fixture op-ed writer for the Irish Times. The daughter of David McRedmond, former chief executive of independent commercial television station, TV3, and currently chief executive of semi-state An Post, Finn McRedmond attended Rathdown Secondary School, and completed a Classics degree in Cambridge University, graduating c.2015.

    In a series of waspish recent articles for the Irish Times, she has attacked the Brexit movement,[i] lauded the statesmanship of Leo Varadkar,[ii] while heaping scorn on both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.[iii] These contributions situate her politics on the centre-right – liberal-conservative and Remainer – an ideological slant very much ascendant in the Irish Times.

    This outlook has been evident in the paper’s coverage of the forthcoming U.K. election. Along with condemnation of Populists, especially Nigel Farage, the U.K. Labour leader is a recurring bête noire,[iv] albeit full-time U.K. correspondent Denis Staunton has generally remained impartial.

    The cartoon drawn by Martin Turner on December 3rd provides a good example. It features Corbyn alongside Boris Johnson with a list of some of the calumnies we have seen during the election. The point seems to be: these are two extremists – one as bad as the other.

    Martin Turner, December 3rd, 2019.

    Even apparently centre-left Fintan O’Toole was moved to describe Corbyn before the 2017 election as: ‘a highly problematic leader, not least in his inability to think about how to create a majority in England for this radical social democratic vision.’[v] Curiously, O’Toole has not expressed views in any articles on the Orwellian campaign of online distortion characterising U.K. election 2019.[vi]

    In her latest opinion piece, McRedmond laments the loss of Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames, Nick Boles and Philip Hammond from Conservative ranks, and reventilates paper-thin allegations of anti-Semitism[vii] orchestrated to discredit Corbyn, concluding: ‘there is no good choice, and no obvious way through this election.’[viii]

    While still a student, McRedmond revealed she gave her vote (presumably enjoying that right as an Irish citizen) to in the 2015 General Election to David Cameron’s Conservatives, who won an overall majority for the first time in nearly two decades. Published in the The Cambridge Tab just after the election – with austerity in full swing as over a million people relied on food banks[ix]  – the headline read: ‘Being a Tory does not make you a bad person.’

    McRedmond supported David Cameron over the then moderate Labour leader Ed Milliband. Perhaps in response to university peers whose “hearts” may have ruled their “heads,” she protested:

    I’m not a bad person because I voted Conservative. I voted to decrease the deficit. I voted to raise the basic state pension by 2.5% a year. I voted to increase the health budget by £8bn by 2020.

    I didn’t vote for closing the NHS, I didn’t vote for free champagne for all FTSE 100 CEO’s, I didn’t vote to “literally kill vulnerable people”. I didn’t actually vote for Satan. I voted for the party that I think this country needs.

    …

    I didn’t vote Conservative for low taxes so I can keep my mansion while everyone else can live in a slum. I don’t even have a mansion. It’s a townhouse.

    No party is perfect. No party will be the indisputable moral saviour of Britain. The bedroom tax is odious. Cutting benefits is sad and maybe not the best way forward. The country isn’t going to be absolved of all moral transgressions with Labour or LibDem or Greens in power. In the same way that Conservatives aren’t going to do that either. But I am sick of people occupying the moral high ground because for some convoluted and laboured reason they see their party ridding Britain of all immorality and filling it with biscuits. God Ed Miliband loves biscuits.[x]

    It is noteworthy that McRedmond attended Peterhouse College while at Cambridge, among the oldest and most traditional institutions in the University. In the 1980s it became association with Conservative, Thatcherite politics, counting Michael Portillo and Michael Howard as alumni.

    Since graduating McRedmond has been writing – alongside Irish Times work – for British commentary and news magazine Reaction. Its editor-in-chief Iain Martin was previously head of comment for the Telegraph group, while Chairman of the board, Lord Salisbury, was once Conservative Leader in the House of Lords, opposing the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, and offering freelance services to the mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[xi]

    Its advisory panel includes luminaries such as Lord Hill, a former European Commissioner and advisor to John Major, as well as Adam Boulton, Editor at Large for Sky News.

    McRedmond’s association with the publication perhaps came about through Deputy Editor Alastair Benn, whose Linkedin profile reveals he too graduated from Cambridge in 2015, also with a Classics degree, and with whom McRedmond has collaborated on a number of podcasts.[xii]

    Finn McRedmond clearly has no taste for the Populism that has overtaken the Conservative Party, and being Irish, no truck with English nationalism or Brexit either. But anti-left bias might be detected in a recent somewhat snide Irish Times article she wrote entitled: ‘Are Sally Rooney’s heroines too skinny?’

    McRedmond opines: ‘Rooney speaks the language of the so-called Woke Left. She is interested in political activism. And she has made her career writing about young people sensitively.’ But, she warns: ‘Her frequent references to thinness feels unconscious. A writer who is so careful and precise in her descriptions of people and their relationships has, like us, a culturally produced blind spot.’

    ‘This recurrent theme,’ McRedmond warns, ‘that women who are thin are more interesting than those who are not, and that women who are thin are the only ones worth writing about – is potentially dangerous.’ She counsels that ‘we should be sceptical of novels that propagate ideas most harmful to those supposed to find them most relatable.’

    McRedmond is certainly a capable writer, and displayed refreshing candour in revealing her political choice. There is no reason to believe she is a bad person, but given the current orientation of media, her rapid progression to become a regular opinion columnist for the Irish Times – the national paper of record – while still in her twenties, is surely connected to the political ‘maturity’ she has displayed.

    [i] Finn McRedmond: ‘Getting Brexit done is last thing Farage wants,’ Irish Times, November 9th, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/finn-mcredmond-getting-brexit-done-is-last-thing-farage-wants-1.4076850?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffinn-mcredmond-getting-brexit-done-is-last-thing-farage-wants-1.4076850

    [ii] Finn McRedmond, ‘Neither rogue nor wily fixer, Varadkar confounds British’, Irish Times, August 17th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/neither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fneither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483

    [iii] Finn McRedmond, ‘ British voters trapped between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’, Irish Times, November 28th, 2019,

    https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/neither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fneither-rogue-nor-wily-fixer-varadkar-confounds-british-1.3988483

    [iv] For example: Chris Johns: Who would I vote for in the UK? Anyone who would defeat the Tory candidate, Irish Times, December 2nd, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/chris-johns-who-would-i-vote-for-in-the-uk-anyone-who-would-defeat-the-tory-candidate-1.4100958?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Feconomy%2Fchris-johns-who-would-i-vote-for-in-the-uk-anyone-who-would-defeat-the-tory-candidate-1.4100958

    [v] Fintan O’Toole, ‘Fintan O’Toole: Corbyn’s nostalgia less of a fantasy than May’s’, Irish Times, June 6th, 2017,  https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-corbyn-s-nostalgia-less-of-a-fantasy-than-may-s-1.3108284?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-corbyn-s-nostalgia-less-of-a-fantasy-than-may-s-1.3108284

    [vi] Frances Perrauden, ‘Twitter accuses Tories of misleading public with ‘factcheck’ foray’, The Guardian,  November 20th, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/20/twitter-accuses-tories-of-misleading-public-in-factcheck-row

    [vii] Jamie Stern-Weiner and Alan Maddison, ‘Smoke Without Fire: The Myth of a ‘Labour Antisemitism Crisis’’, Jewish Voice for Labour, November 26th, 2019, https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/smoke-without-fire-the-myth-of-a-labour-antisemitism-crisis/

    [viii] Finn McRedmond, ‘ British voters trapped between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’, Irish Times, November 28th, 2019,  https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/british-voters-trapped-between-jeremy-corbyn-and-boris-johnson-1.4097084?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fbritish-voters-trapped-between-jeremy-corbyn-and-boris-johnson-1.4097084

    [ix] Patrick Butler, ‘Food bank use tops million mark over the past year’, The Guardian, 22nd April, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/22/food-bank-users-uk-low-paid-workers-poverty

    [x] Finn McRedmond, ‘Being a Tory does not make you a bad person,’ The Cambridge Tab, (more than five years ago), https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2015/05/11/tory-not-make-bad-person-52498

    [xi] Anthony Seldon, ‘The Saturday Profile Viscount Cranborne, Conservative Peer: The last true blue blood,’ The Independent, November 21st, 1998, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-saturday-profile-viscount-cranborne-conservative-peer-the-last-true-blue-blood-1186204.html

    [xii] Alastair Benn and Finn McRedmond, ‘Deconstructing “I’m literally a communist, you idiot”’, Reaction, July 25th, 2018, https://reaction.life/deconstructing-im-literally-a-communist-you-idiot/

  • Ismail’s Story

    What is the experience of a refugee caught in the crisis on the Mediterranean Sea? Approximately 18,910 lives have been lost or are missing since 2014, including three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi in 2015; so far in 2019 there have been an estimated 1089 deaths.[i]

    Yesterday in a Dáil Éireann briefing room we heard testimonies from Search and Rescue NGOs operating in the Mediterranean Sea: Refugee Rescue, Proactiva Open Arms, Sea-Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Irish Refugee and Migrant Coalition. The event was hosted by Sean Crowe T.D. and Senator Alice-Mary Higgins.

    Frontline Witnesses Search and Rescue Briefing, Dáil Éireann, November 7th, 2019.

    The NGOs provided accounts of ongoing tragedies from a hidden frontier.

    Their work is conducted against the backdrop of systematic criminalization of Search and Rescue missions there, as well as misinformation campaigns from Far Right movements in Italy and Spain. Piracy is rife, and the Libyan coast guards are a law onto themselves.

    NGOs fill a void left by the EU’s abnegation of responsibility, fulfilling Article 98 of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, in spite of the consequences.

    First to speak was the impressive Ismail Adam, a young man from Sudan. He has lived in Ireland since 2017 after a two-year journey. He described Libyan detention centres, months of hiding in a household working in exchange for shelter, and the eventual Italian crossing.

    The traffickers told the group the passage would take three to four hours. After perhaps two days the boat was still in the middle of the sea. Ismail was just sixteen-years old at the time.

    Since arriving in Ireland this resilient young man has embarked on the Leaving Certificate, having gained refugee status – assisted by the intervention of the Irish Refugee and Migrant Coalition.

    In his own words:

    I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future, losing a future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market.
    I am here to speak for all generations to come with new ideas … I am only a young man and I don’t have all the solutions but we can work together and make it better.
    I feel that we have such an opportunity, in this really connecting world, to get know each other.
    In my anger I am not blind and in my fear I’m not afraid of telling the world how I feel.
    In Ireland we live a privileged, safe and great life.
    I think that is enough now.

    Ismail Adam

    How we respond to this global humanitarian crisis, involving over seventy million refugees worldwide,[ii] poses major question for receiving countries. All too often we lose sight of precious humanity who become pawns in political games.

    Images courtesy of Fellipe Lopes.

    [i] UNHCR Operational Portal, Mediterranea Situation: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean

    [ii] Untitled, ‘Worldwide displacement tops 70 million, UN Refugee Chief urges greater solidarity in response,’ UNHCR, June 19th, 2019. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/6/5d03b22b4/worldwide-displacement-tops-70-million-un-refugee-chief-urges-greater-solidarity.html

  • Bull Moose: ‘We apologize, we love China’ – When Money, China and Values Collide

    Two stories were in the headlines this October illustrating how money is undermining our values. ‘Ah,’ I hear you say, ‘a story as old as time,’ but before tuning out, let us explain what’s different this time, and why it really matters. 

    Given the pace of technological change, the weight of power of two individuals, LeBron James and Mark Zuckerberg, have raised the stakes. They are among a tiny elite with the power to influence our collective future. In America, this group includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump.

    It matters, therefore, when these individuals make public pronouncements.

    Hong Kong Protests 

    On October 4th, Houston Rockets NBA team’s General Manager, Daryl Morey, retweeted an image (since deleted) that simply read: ‘Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.’[i]  

    The Chinese reaction was swift. Within a matter of days, Chinese teams, streaming services, sponsors, and partners had cut ties with the Rockets and the NBA. As the NBA struggled to contain the fallout, Commissioner Adam Silver initially made a non-committal statement, recognizing and regretting that the tweet had deeply offended certain people. Only later did he explicitly defend Morley’s freedom of expression.[ii]

    Enter LeBron James on October 14th, fresh from touring China, who explained the situation to reporters in the following terms: ‘Yes, we all do have freedom of speech,’ he said, ‘but at times, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you’re not thinking about others, and you’re only thinking about yourself.

    He continued: ‘I don’t want to get in a word sentence feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke. And so many people could have been harmed, not only financially, but physically, emotionally, spiritually.’[iii]

    The essence of what LeBron was saying seemed to be that ‘we should be careful to exercise freedom of speech in case, heaven forbid, we offend someone.’ Yes, this is the same LeBron James who not long ago vowed to keep speaking out on social issues, no matter what the backlash;[iv] the same person who has been called the most powerful voice in his profession, and publicly feuded with Fox News over criticism of President Trump.[v]

    Caring only for the interests and values of ones’ own community, while giving a metaphorical shrug in response to others, is nothing new in the world of sport. Football fans might recall Manchester City’s manager Pep Guardiola’s insistent support for Catalan independence, while he turned a blind eye to the right of self-determination of those in the Middle East living under his bosses’ thumb.[vi]

    Yet this situation was different, and not simply because of the vast sums of money involved: by a conservative estimate the NBA makes $500 million in annual revenue from China; there were reports that the NBA stood to lose up to fifteen percent on its salary cap next year because of the Chinese ban. 

    Not that the players needed reminding. Faced with questions over how he viewed the issue, Houston Rockets star James Harden simply tweeted: ‘We apologize. We love China.’ [vii]

    Questioning Zuckerberg

    On October 23rd, a different but related story was being played out in Washington DC, as Mark Zuckerberg fielded questions before Congress over proposals for Libra, Facebook’s new digital currency.

    In case you aren’t aware, Facebook is seeking approval for it from regulators, but the hearings quickly turned into a debate on the company’s recent decision not to fact check, or ban, political ads.

    This matters for two reasons: first, the scale of the Facebook’s earnings from ads; secondly, because social media is becoming the primary source of Americans’ news.

    Facebook already enjoys a metaphorical license to prints money through its early arrival at the scene of the social media goldrush, and through clever (some would say monopolistic) acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.

    By the third quarter of 2019, its global advertising revenue had risen to over $17 billion dollars, growing 28% year-on-year. If current trends continue, Facebook’s earnings will approach $100 billion in annual revenue by 2020 from advertising alone.

    Moreover, recent research suggests over 55% of Americans now get at least some of their news from social media.[viii]

    Combine these facts with the company’s ability to psychologically profile users, and tailor messages accordingly, and this translates into a significant power to influence, if not outright buy, Presidential elections.

    As Siva Vaidhyanathan pointed out in The New York Times, Facebook actions were logical: even if they had been willing to differentiate between what is political and factual, in practice it is often nigh-on impossible.[ix]

    We can assume that Zuckerberg, ever the calculating pragmatist, would justify his company’s stance on political ads on the basis that it aligns with freedom of speech values.

    This assertion is not simply questionable, but plain wrong, for multiple reasons. Just one example suffices: it was not a question of freedom of speech to allow an ad to run saying the Pope had officially endorsed Trump in the last election,[x] it was simply an implicit endorsement of a lie.

    Silicon Valley has long been identified with the liberal left, but Facebook’s new approach is altering this view. For one, the company seems to have concluded that its digital currency stands little chance in a Democrat-controlled House or Senate.

    In the short term, aligning itself more heavily with Republicans may seem like good business on Facebook’s part, but in the medium term it risks alienating the other side of America’s polarized electorate.

    During that same hearing on the Hill, some Republicans jumped to defend Facebook on Libra, saying any Democratic interference amounted to regulatory overreach and would strangle American innovation. They also applauded Facebook’s non-interference policy on political ads.      

    Facebook followed on by playing the nationalist card, with Zuckerberg claiming: ‘Libra will be backed mostly by dollars, and I believe it will extend America’s financial leadership as well as our democratic values and oversight around the world.’ Otherwise, he added, China would take the lead on digital payments.[xi]

    In China, Zuckerberg may have found a convenient scapegoat, which has also frustrated the global advance of his company. While other multinational brands like the NBA, Apple and Google, have large operations in China, Facebook has never been able to crack the Chinese market. This is not for want of trying. Zuckerberg famously jogged through the smog in Beijing, learned Mandarin, and even asked Xi JinPing to give an honorary Chinese name to his soon-to-be-born child four years ago – a request Xi declined.[xii]

    Money, China and Values

    The United States of America has been, by many measures, one of the world’s most successful democracies, with freedom of expression a core value. In certain respects, such as raising life expectancy and GDP, China can also boast great achievements, but these have been achieved with compliance and obedience as core values, and against a background of well-documented human rights abuses.

    The challenge for the U.S. in the 21st century is to maintain its freedoms, even as we enter into a new digital age with unlimited potential for monitoring, surveillance, censorship and mass manipulation. 

    In the end, calling on Facebook to fix itself, or the NBA to uphold universal values and free speech may be futile. Instead, perhaps we should accept that these companies hold power that is not subject to democratic oversight, and in some cases interference is unwarranted.  

    As Americans we’ve always expressed our preferences for companies and products with our wallets. For the times we are in, therefore, Bull Moose argues we should become more conscious of where we spend our time online, and with whom we are sharing our data, as the data we leave behind, and our attention, is increasingly being monetized. 

    The old saying, ‘if the product is free, you are the product,’ is more relevant than ever.  Whether it is the NBA or Facebook, you have a choice to love, hate or even speak out against them.   

    It is that freedom that still sets us apart from China.

    [i] Untitled, ‘NBA’s Rockets try to calm storm after ‘stand with Hong Kong’ post prompts fury in China’ Hong Kong Free Press, October 7th, 2019, https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/07/nbas-rockets-try-calm-storm-stand-hong-kong-post-prompts-fury-china/

    [ii] Untitled ‘Adam Silver supports free speech rights of Rockets GM Daryl Morey’, ESPN, October 7th, 2019, https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27792662/adam-silver-supports-free-speech-rights-houston-rockets-gm-daryl-morey

    [iii] Dylan Scott, ‘Why everybody is mad at LeBron’, Vox, October 15th, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/15/20915339/lebron-james-hong-kong-quotes-daryl-morey

    [iv] Untitled, ‘LeBron James plans to keep speaking out on social issues’ NBA.com, August 29th, 2018,   https://www.nba.com/article/2018/08/29/lebron-james-los-angeles-lakers-vows-speak-out-social-issues

    [v] Jerry Bembry, ‘LeBron James is the most powerful voice in his profession’, The Undefeated, February 28th, 2018, https://theundefeated.com/features/lebron-james-to-take-floor-for-nba-all-star-game-as-the-most-powerful-voice-in-his-profession/

    [vi] David Mathieson, ‘Guardiola’s hypocrisy over Man City’s owner undermines his pleas about Catalonia’, The New Statesman, March 13th, 2018, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/sport/2018/03/guardiola-s-hypocrisy-over-man-city-s-owner-undermines-his-pleas-about

    [vii] Kurt Baddenhausen, ‘China Feud Over Morey’s Hong Kong Tweet Threatens Rapid Growth Of NBA Team Values’, Forbes, October 9th, 2019,  https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/10/09/the-nbas-soaring-franchise-value-growth-at-stake-with-china-feud/#5c00fb0e4257

    [viii] Peter Suciu, ‘More Americans Are Getting Their News From Social Media’, ForbesOctober 11th, 2019,   https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2019/10/11/more-americans-are-getting-their-news-from-social-media/#15012e063e17

    [ix] Siva Vaidhyanathan, ‘The Real Reason Facebook Won’t Fact-Check Political Ads’, New York Times, November 2nd, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/opinion/facebook-zuckerberg-political-ads.html

    [x] Hannah Ritchie, ‘Read all about it: The biggest fake news stories of 2016’, CNBC, December 30th, 2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/30/read-all-about-it-the-biggest-fake-news-stories-of-2016.html

    [xi] Gregory Barber, ‘Watch Mark Zuckerberg’s Libra Testimony to Congress’, Wired, 23rd of October, 2019,  https://www.wired.com/story/how-watch-mark-zuckerbergs-libra-testimony-congress/

    [xii] April Glaster, ‘Why Mark Zuckerberg Keeps Saying Facebook Needs to Win Against China’, Slate.com, 23rd of October, 2019, https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-libra-cryptocurrency-china-free-speech.html