LONDON LETTER JULY 2014

I have just spent a week in the country, on the outskirts of Shrewsbury in Shropshire. When away from London I always feel further away from the centre of events. This is slightly ridiculous since how am I closer to the events in Gaza or on the border between Russia and Ukraine? The buzz of the city and the proximity of Parliament and Whitehall providing the illusory sense of being closer to events.

One thing however is true that if you are going to protest about events unfolding in the world London is a good place to do it. London still an important centre, the most cosmopolitan city in Europe and the base for so many media organisations. So perhaps I contradict myself, or more accurately the illusion is more a solipsistic affair.

One curious and paradoxical aspect about my being in Shropshire was the fact that my sister has satellite TV, consequently I had access to a whole panoply of TV news Channels reporting from the perspective of China, France, India, the US, UK and Russia amongst others. Thus, theoretically, I should have felt better informed. In reality outside, of the BBC/CNN mainstream, each parroting a version of events which, whilst reasonably accurate and reliable, within the parameters set, lacked any depth analysis or alternative perspectives. It was impossible to find a narrative that questioned the fundamental assumptions of the ‘western media’ which avoided descending into anti ‘western’ propaganda. The one exception was Al Jazeera, which seemed to be struggling to provide an honest alternative perspective. Indeed given the vitriol the channel has sometimes faced from the US one is surprised how moderate its line is.
FOX news Murdoch's Propaganda
 Channel

The two most grotesque channels are Fox News and the Russian channel RT. Both are little more than propaganda outlets, the former for unrestricted capitalism and the hard right ideology represented by the Tea Party crowd, the latter being Putin’s mouthpiece. Interestingly both channels are united in their derision of Barack Obama.  In many ways the channels represent a mirror image of each other, both presenting themselves as paragons of impartial news reporting, both spewing out a propaganda line that serves the interests of a tiny elite.
RT Putin's propaganda channel 

The destruction of the once free Russian media is just another of Putin’s crimes against the Russian people and the fact that now every Russian newspaper, radio station and television news programme spout variations on the same paranoid Putin narrative is a tragedy for which we will bear the consequences for a great deal of time to come.
Propaganda of course ideally needs a closed society to achieve maximum effect and in this country there are just too many alternate voices for Putin’s propaganda channel and its radio cousin, Voice of Russia, to gain real purchase for its propaganda. Not that there are not some useful idiots around who think the station daringly alternative or crooks such as George Galloway who is willing to take anyone’s money as long as it provides him a propaganda platform from which to propagate his hatred for NATO, the United States and the United Kingdom.[1]

All countries engage in propaganda, and once actual hostilities break out the lying starts in earnest. George Orwell once wrote that he thought all the vicious ‘Hun’ propaganda of the First World War was far more poisonous to civilisation than the actual fighting and killing. To shoot a man he felt was one thing, to portray him as sub human whilst doing so something altogether more wicked.
Language was also a major concern of Orwell, particularly its use in disseminating propaganda and concealing ugly truths. I thought of Orwell this morning when reading about the Israeli governments attempts to control the way in which its invasion of Gaza and treatment of the Palestinian population are portrayed. The invasion, the shelling and bombing of defenceless men, women and children being presented as “humanitarian self-defence actions.” Well Orwell for one would have certainly recognised that attempt to spray murder with the smell of roses.
In The Ruins of Gaza

Again for all the Israeli governments attempts to control the narrative there are just too many other voices. Unlike Chechnya we can see with our own eyes what is going on.
As for Hamas, a truly disgusting bunch of anti-Semitic religious bigots whose war policy has always been indiscriminate- every Jew in Israel is a legitimate target, -it gains strength and legitimacy with every fresh atrocity committed by the Israeli army. Whilst for every hour of the Israeli onslaught men women and children are killed as the consequence of the bottomless cynicism of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s assault on the imprisoned population of Gaza now surely rates as a war crime on a momentous scale. Israel will not be able to control the situation with violence forever and unless it changes course soon the Israeli state will, if it has not already done so, sow the seeds of its own destruction.
MH17 Crash Site

Respecting Putin if you have any doubt that the Russian government bore at least some culpability for the downing of flight MH17 you merely need examine what Putin did not do. Had the Ukrainian government brought down a civilian airliner in this region within hours Putin would have sent in his highly efficient special forces to secure the crash site and have invited the UN to send investigators immediately to the scene. Instead he chose to obfuscate whilst chaos reigned at the wreckage site, rendering any proper investigation much more difficult, if not impossible, and his sock puppet media outlets, like RT, threw out a string of ever more implausible theories to muddy the waters.
Putin’s gamble being that he could continue to divide the EU from the US and that whilst politicians like Cameron would make a lot of noise, in reality, behind the scenes, it would be largely business as usual. Thus far his gamble appears to have paid off.

The profound dishonesty of Cameron, denouncing Russian thugs whilst pocketing the large cash donations of the Russian ex-pat Oligarch community - a more dubious bunch it would be difficult to find- is stomach turning. From Murdoch to every seedy hedge fund manager in the City there is no ass that Cameron is not prepared to kiss to stay in power. Besides these are often the backsides of his old school chums, they share a mutual interest in keeping the old Etonian elite firmly in control. 

I travelled back to London on a Virgin Train. Say what you will about Richard Branson’s company they cannot be accused of lacking a sense of humour. Visual and audio message in the toilets of their Pendolino trains.

"PLEASE DO NOT PLACE SANITARY TOWELS, NAPPIES, JUNK MAIL, YOUR EX'S SWEATER, HOPES, DREAMS OR GOLDFISH DOWN THIS TOILET!”  

Just been recommending Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to a friend. Reading Hunter S Thompson always makes me feel glad to be alive and to have had ‘adventures.’ My favourite quote of his, which both sums him up and for me the meaning of a life well lived:-

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

London now feels more like New York, the humidity sucking the life from one. I once spent four days in Manhattan in a sultry July and it gave me a whole new appreciation of air conditioning.

So now I approach the dead month of August when so many will be going away, leaving the city to the tourists. Incidentally I like visitors to the capital but some sort of invisible barrier prevents any meaningful inter-action. If you’re ever in the neighbourhood let me know and perhaps together we can tear down that wall.

For now however your correspondent will be staying at his post ear tuned to detect the corrupt outpouring of a system long gone rotten.

Enjoy the sunshine, if you are having any.

AT July 2014


[1] Not only does he appear on RT but he also enjoys airtime on the Iranian equivalent of RT, Press TV. On both channels he of course sticks to the prevailing party line. 

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