Robert Sharp

Pupil Barrister

Tag: Politics (Page 54 of 57)

Saddam's Death: The Revolutionary's Cut

3 January 2007 / / 4 Comments

Saddam on the GallowsOf course, in the past few days, we have been presented with a more sinister example of how new technology is creating a ‘digital revolution’. The official film of Saddam Hussein’s hanging was undermined by alternative footage, videoed on a mobile phone.
The BBC report on how these cheap and portable cameras are being used as a key weapon in the propaganda war is not news to me – I had to watch several hours of insurgent-filmed shootings and bombings in order to find suitable footage for inclusion in the Black Watch video design. To watch unsuspecting marines wander haplessly into a sniper’s cross-hair is chilling. When they are hit, they fall quickly.
Despite the unpalatable subject matter, I think there is an interesting point to be made about how film and video is used here, which is the importance of the sound-track to moving images. In the case of Saddam’s hanging, notice how a particular audio track totally changes the tone of what we see, and the emotions evoked. Film makers and TV producers constantly manipulate us in this way.
An interesting aspect of the commentary that has surrounded the emergence of this bootleg video, is the ‘winner-takes-all’ conception of truth, and history. When the official video of Saddam’s demise was released, it was considered an accurate historical record. How can the camera lie? When the grainy bootleg emerged later, it replaced the official video as the definitive ‘truth’ of the event.
We would do well to consider the possibility that this video is unreliable too. The footage is grainy and shot from a distance. We do not hear the more muted of Saddam’s mutterings, nor the words of those standing right beside him at the moment before death. I have not watched the video all the way through to its grim finale, but I understand that there are cuts in the timeline. What was missed? It is essential that we remember that the footage has been released by someone who wishes to foist a particular historical narrative upon us, one obviously informed by a different agenda to the Iraqi Government. With this in mind, other questions arise.

  • Might not Saddam’s pious recitations at his moment of death – the invocations of Mohammed that we did not hear on the ‘official’ recording – actually enhance his image, rather than humiliate him?
  • We do not witness what happened immediately before the footage was shot. Perhaps Saddam or others provoked the abuse, and the now-famous taunts were more out of anguish than vindictiveness
  • Are we sure that the audio was not doctored or enhanced before its release? Were the names of other leaders chanted, in addition to Moqtadr Al-Sadr?

These new fangled technologies, generating their subversive, low-resolution footage, have become the thorn in the side of those wishing to control a political situation. There may never be another time where a government can control the media as it did during previous conflicts. But the new technologies are just as suceptible to abuse by the purveyors of propaganda as the old.
Primary sources can be illuminating, but they can also be decieving. This historical constant remains true.
Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, calls the execution a ‘lynching‘. (via The Daily Dish)

Stalinist Santa?

1 December 2006 / / 4 Comments

Tis now the season to be jolly, so I have posted something festive over at The Sharpener: Would you let this man into your home?
It concerns the politics of Father Christmas, who by my analysis is a dangerous Stalinist. If you think he is of a different political hue, then please do visit The Sharpener and set me straight.

Update

Now reproduced in full, below.

There’s a crude and simple way to distinguish, should you care to, your right from your left. Waistlines.

I’ve been reading Paul’s polemic, which states that Left-wingers are fatter than Right-wingers. It occurs to me that Father Christmas is a well-known fat bastard, famous for (among other things) scoffing mince-pies and slurping sherry that is not his own, at fire-places up and down this land. He would definitely be a ‘Lefty’ by Paul’s criteria.
This hypothesis is certainly backed up by other facts too. He wears red tunic, long time favourite colour of the revolutionary left. And of course he is interested in the systemised redistribution of presents, in apparent disregard of market forces.
Don’t let that beard and Norwegian charm fool you. This guy is no hippie. He is a dangerous authoritarian. If you do not conform to his insidious conception of ‘nice’ you risk being classified ‘naughty’ and denied basic presents. Everyone is kept under surveillance, parents are turned into informants on their own children and Santa catalogues the good deeds and the bad. What is more, he can only deliver his presents if he keeps a comprehensive computerised database of names and chimney locations. It is only a matter of time before this information is shared with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, and before you know it a cheeky request on a Christmas list from five years ago could see you lose all profits from your tooth harvest.
Its not as if the system fosters any kind of equality anyway. We all know that although Santa’s ‘presents for all populism might appear to treat each case on its merits, but when the service is applied on the ground we find evidence of blatant institutional racism. It is a well-known fact that Father Christmas is less likely to visit children from Muslim, Hindu and Sikh families. Yes yes, we’ve all heard the excuse about a lack of available chimneys, but I notice that Santa will gladly slip in through the French windows for middle-class atheist families. He is also happy to pocket the filthy shill from Coca-cola Company for corporate sponsorship, but do you see the elves getting a pay-rise? No, the fat bastard Father Christmas is a Lefty in name only.
Time was when young people would have cared about the questionable ethics of their largest benefactor. But not this generation. Oh no. The ‘me’ generation too busy talking about X-boxes and X-factor to even consider whether Santa’s seal-skin boots were bought Fair Trade or not. They see the presents dangled in front of their eyes, and once again they fall for his patter. They will let him into their bedrooms, and there is nothing the parents can do about it. Only when Santa has sledged off into the night sky will the parents be called to sort out the misery in his wake. Once again, the cumbersome, centralised, present giving system will not have supplied batteries for the presents, and decent, hard-working parents will be called in to pick-up the tab.

The Point of Vanishing Interest

30 October 2006 / / 12 Comments

I have said before that the operative word in ‘citizen journalist’ is not the latter, but the former. Fay Young’s short, personal report on the happenings of an Edinburgh City Council meeting seems to be a good example of ‘citizen journalism’ and the importance of new Internet technologies. The happenings at the meeting were probably not newsworthy enough for The Scotsman or even the Edinburgh Evening News, so a reporter might not be paid to file a report on it. Now, Fay is an established journalist, but it was in her role of ‘citizen’ that she was present and able to post her report (“Hot air stifles climate change debate”) on her blog. More information for the rest of us, which we hope leads to a more accountable, participatory democracy.
Fay was not impressed by the councillors’ collective time-management:

The meeting rattles through some fairly important stuff about poverty … Then the meeting spends 25 minutes debating whether to replace or restore the old Davenport desks and chairs. Finally one Labour councillor protests at this waste of time when there is still a motion on climate change to debate, not to mention the capital city’s alcohol problem. Still they drone on, and it is another five minutes before they vote [27 to 29] to replace the old heavy mahogany with something that can be easily shifted and stacked when it is not in use.

I wonder if Fay Young has read C. Northcote Parkinson’s eponymous Parkinson’s Law? This is a fantastic compendium of satirical essays, first published in the Economist, and collected in book form in 1958 (I have a fourth edition from that year, which carries some delightful illustrations by Osbert Lancaster). In his essay, “High Finance; or, The Point of Vanishing Interest”, Parkinson describes a committee that bears a remarkable similarity to that which Fay witnessed last week. Finance committees are, he says, made up of people who know nothing of millions, but well accustomed to thinking in thousands:

The result is a phenomenon that has often been observed but never yet investigated. It might be termed the Law of Triviality. Briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

So, Fay’s experience seems all too familiar! Parkinson also presents an amusing essay on the ‘Coefficient of Inefficiency’, definied as the size at which a committee ceases to be of any effective use whatsoever. This he puts at somewhere between 19 and 23 members. It is interesting to note that the number of councillors voting at Fay’s meeting was more than double that estimate…
Whatever the accuracy of his theories, Parkinson’s Law is a great read, and a highly recommended stocking filler for the economist or policy wonk in your life.

Brevity

26 October 2006 / / 3 Comments

This week, brevity is all the rage. Labour MP Tom Watson finds that plenty of sites are issuing six word story challenges.
Meanwhile, over at The Sharpener, Bondwoman has posted her take on John Reid’s immigration policies in equation form.
One of the more famous short short-stories is by Augusto Monterroso:

Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
(“When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.”)

I always chuckle at that. What sordid goings on occurred the night before?

Government ministers are shit at the interweb

6 September 2006 / / 4 Comments

I’m annoyed. Junior Minister Tom Watson has resigned, and I have been forced to learn this from the BBC News website, like some blogless plebeian. This is despite the fact that Mr Watson has his very own blog. But at 1:50pm today, I find no response from the site at all.

Meanwhile, David Milliband has had his own efforts to embrace the new technologies foiled (via DK). His ‘Envrionmental Contract’ was supposed to be edited as a ‘Wiki’ by members of the public. Unfortunately, the ‘Wiki’ was comprehensively defaced, and DEFRA had to abandon the project.
The ‘cyber-vandalism’ was, as Milliband says, rather juvenile. I have very little sympathy, however. The use of a wiki for this purpose was ill-conceived. New internet technologies provide many different ways for people to engage in dialogues and collaboration. But that does not necessarily mean that a wiki open to millions of people, to create a government policy that will affect millions of people, is necessarily the best use of the technology! Such tools will, I believe, be much more effective when used at the lower echelons of democracy – Between civil servants around the country sharing ‘best practice’; or between the members of rural or island councils, say, who may have long distances to travel. Central government will have very little success when it tries to use the ‘Smallweb’.
This jumping on the Wiki/Blog band-wagon in this manner reminds me of the dot-com boom-and-bust we witnessed a few years ago. The people getting burned (or, in this case, custard-pied) are those who assume the new technologies can somehow overcome all laws of economics and politics. I very much doubt Milliband would make policy by standing at Speakers’ Corner with a flip-pad, writing down all the suggestions from passers-by. Sooner or later someone will begin heckling. So why try it online?

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