Tag: media

The Sun Shining Out Of It’s Own Arse

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Are you ready for me to state the obvious, because I’m going to. I’m going to do it now. The Sun newspaper is full of shit. Yes I know everyone knows it but some forget and it allows them get away with things. The danger with them getting away with things is that they are the number one read newspaper in the UK, owner Rupert Murdoch is a scumbag and also unfortunately people both believe him and vote the way he wants them to. The reason I bring this up is because Facebook‘s algorithm decided I might like to read this article on a man at a school who “could be 40”. To confirm the success of the algorithm I clicked on the link because it sounded ridiculous and because sometimes I have dreams that I’m back at school in sixth form and my mind related becoming curious in the process. It turned out not to be the silly article I originally thought it would be.

The headline – “Worried parents demand answers over new pupil who ‘could be 40’ joining school after moving to UK” – was not on the original link but the nature of the story becomes clear with it. The article goes on to pander to a narrative that child refugees or child migrants are not actually children or more precisely under eighteen. It would be worth mentioning that sometimes this does happen. I don’t deny it but it is important to understand that it’s not rife and it should not discredit the claims to refuge that minors, many of them unaccompanied, make. The article brings up the story of some Iranian who wasn’t under-18 who spent six weeks at a school in Stoke in 2018 before tests confirmed he wasn’t a minor. Without any proof it then uses this example as evidence of guilt in regards the second person with a thinly veiled implication that feeds racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Confirmation bias is a very real thing. We pay more attention to information that confirms our pre-existing understanding of the world. It is very hard to avoid confirmation bias because we’re all susceptible to it’s subtly. This unfortunately is simple and blatant propaganda. It reaches millions of people and the end result is things like Brexit and a majority Conservative government. The people voting for such things will not benefit from them but owners of newspapers like The Sun will. The independent media and the people are at war with powerful vested and influential interests, and themselves. You can’t overcome real power without the people, but first we need to overcome ourselves. I don’t just lay the blame on others, we’re all to blame. Just please don’t buy or believe this crap.

A Football Challenge

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Can I blame my obsession with football on love for the sport? Perhaps it’s the love of procrastinating and the ample opportunities the utterly obscene amount of football news websites allow for. Maybe it’s some primal instinct within me that needs to blindly support a tribe, or two in my case. One Scottish, one English. I’m Scottish so it’s allowed, there’s no other reason anyone would support anything Scottish football related. Whatever it is I do spend an awful lot of time with my head in some kind of football related world. It could be that this is inspired by my team losing the derby today against our fiercest and most loathed knuckledragging right wing unionist rivals. Bastards. I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I despise Rangers with a passion and feel angry hatred towards them. This is part irrational and it’s a remarkable thing to experience and recognise within me when I like to think myself so rational and calm ordinarily. Note the like to think there. Anyway we lost and I’m not happy about it. My other team aren’t doing much better. Now may be the moment to do something extreme.

There have been days in the past where I’ve not allowed myself any technology until noon, or none all day at all. In those days I go without, I find by early evening I’ve done so much and been so productive that genuinely I’ve run out of things to do. How technology takes up so much of our day is quite worrying. But it’s not the phone or the laptop because I can make a call or do some work, it’s the things that we allow ourselves to be distracted on with these things. Facebook doesn’t really take up too much of my time but I can easily sit for two hours immersed in all things football; the latest news, gossip and whatever other click-bait I come across.

The idea may have been inspired by me being annoyed at losing but I thought about giving up football for a year. Absolutely no news, gossip or even games. That would be extreme but what I was curious about was what I would do to fill the time that everything football takes up. That excited me. But it’s also perhaps a bit too extreme, and unnecessarily so. Let’s say I only watched the games and nothing else. That would be less than four hours of the week taken up which really is very little. Imagine not knowing anything that has happened leading up to it, whether a player is injured or even whether the coach has been sacked. So perhaps the hour leading up to kick off and the half hour after as the result is digested. Get the team news and find out what’s going on prior to kick off like people did before twenty-four hour everything. Even then that’s a maximum seven hours a week. I am in no doubt that there will have been times that I spent that much time doing football stuff in one day alone.

The thing is that football itself isn’t bad or a waste of time, it does serve a purpose. Everything around it these days seems to be the thing that causes the problems. It has become a soap opera. Who needs Eastenders when you’ve got public rows between players and managers or whatever nonsense the media create and inflame. I don’t know if I’m ready to do it though but I want to. As much as anything I want to do it to see if both I can and what will happen, as in what will the outcome be in regards all that extra time I find myself with. If I can do this blog everyday for over eleven months I’m sure I can challenge myself to a new game of discipline. Which is what it all comes down to. This writing is about finding the discipline to do something while that would be about finding the discipline to deny something, or more positively, to do something else. It’s actually quite an exciting prospect. I’ll need a new challenge once this finishes in about four weeks after all.

A Harmonious Existence

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Having walked into the living room and seeing the television was on, in particular the news, I was left in no doubt we live in disharmony. This does sound like one of those “well duh” statements but then as we seem so determined not to do anything about it maybe it isn’t quite so obvious as first thought. The headline story was a fire breaking out in Moria refugee camp on the Greek Island of Lesvos. They avoided throwing accusations out there but it’s pretty clear there will be plenty of legitimate ones involving local fascists, and that is what they are that is not hyperbole. What happens next as over ten thousand people, including thousands of children, spend the foreseeable future living rough on the local hillside is anyone’s guess. This story was followed by a quick report on wild fires raging across California and on the fact they have so far destroyed five whole towns as well as the resulted in the largest financial cost from fire damage in the states history. After this I left the room.

Fire may be the main focus of these stories but one represents our inability to coexist as a species and the other to coexist with the planet. The end result of both will be our own destruction. There is a George Carlin joke about the Earth and humans, I have probably mentioned it on here before, but he suggests the earth will be fine it’s us who’s fucked. The earth will just shake us off like a bad case of the fleas. That is paraphrased of course but the gist is a familiar one. If we’re not living harmoniously with ourselves or our environment we will be the ones to lose out. Countless memes describing the human species as nothing more than a pestilence, the earth has caught a human cold. In a contemporary reference the earth may have just contracted a virus.

How can’t we live in harmony then. It is easy to point out what is wrong with the world and ourselves but to suggest ways to fix this are infinitely harder. We are becoming more polarised and disharmonious on a daily basis, despite the facade of action and rhetoric we’re actually doing less to combat the environmental damage we’re responsible for as a species. Somehow we need to come together once more. Unfortunately we only seem capable of this in times of crisis and while these things are a crisis they perhaps don’t quite seem so in real time. Somehow we need to allow people to continue living their comfortable lives while reducing the harmful affects of them or make them realise other people entering their society are not going to take everything they hold dear. Really I have no answers. Living as an example is one and showing examples on larger scales would be another but all it takes is a few weeks of intense media pressure and all the good work would be undone. In fact about one day would probably be enough. We are so individually disharmonious that how can we ever expect anything to change on a macro scale. Look within you say. Well that’s an interesting angle.

Left, Right Or Corkscrew

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In sperm related news it turns out that the seventeenth century microscopes that first determined the movement of our little fellas were not entirely accurate. It was believed they wriggle their tales back and forth twenty times a second giving off the impression of a very fast and very small eel. Interestingly enough sperm are also lopsided and wriggle predominantly on their stronger side. Thankfully they don’t move in a circle as would be expected with lop sided force, think of a canoe if you paddle on only one side. Instead modern microscopes have managed to capture their movement in 3D and it turns out they seem to use a strangely corkscrew like movement instead. From above this looks like a wiggle hence the original confusion. There is a video below to clear up this confusion. Thank god for that.

I got that story from the news channel Russia Today (RT). I had hoped to fine some other stories worth going into but that was about as good as it got. RT is an insight into the world as seen through Russian eyes but more often as you delve deeper through the articles, it is clear that many of these stories are following the same line as those parroted by the right-wing media and the alt-right. They are generally pro-Trump which is clear without even having to read between the lines, they attack ‘left-wing Marxist cancel culture’ as well as Black Lives Matter, LGTBQ and Antifa. While I am not saying these different groups, movements or approaches are always in agreement they do arguably represent one particular side of the fight.

On a geopolitical scale these groupings as such can be seen coming together in the form of Trump, Brexit, Marie Le Pen of France, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Matteo Salvini of Italy. When you take a step back and observe everything from a distance it becomes very clear that what we believe to be a localised issue such as Brexit, is in fact a smaller part of a larger battle being played out on the international stage. Taken by it’s individual parts these are merely a series of unfortunate political incidents, mistakes or leaders but observed together we can really see the threats the world currently faces. The Covid-19 Front is the current battle ground as both sides put forward arguments of varying levels of credibility and persuasion. Although tempting, this may be a moment not to jump into one corner or another and observe this for what it is. It is hard to accept being played as all affects us but perhaps we need to see we are just being used as pawns, play our own game and do as the sperm and corkscrew.

The Lebanon

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This incident seems strange. It seems pretty horrific too. Ammonium nitrate left in a warehouse at the port for six years and it accidentally goes off. That is not an implausible story, let’s be honest. It is possible that fertiliser is imported into a country and it is also possible that it has been left for one reason or another and abandoned. It does happen. But ammonium nitrate is also used as an explosive. It is not implausible that it has intentionally gone off.

Usually in stories like this it’s very quickly pointed out as potentially an act of terror if not jumped on and accused of being so. Unlike other previous events it feels like it is not following the same pattern. The main focus is on the fertiliser and while it is suggested investigations are open into other possibilities, this is not seized on. I have only read the article on the BBC, this could end up being an analysis of the BBC’s reporting or a sign that I’m missing many other angles elsewhere. It just feels notably out of the ordinary in comparison to how these kind of things are usually reported on when covering the Middle East.

It is important to know context with the Lebanon in regards current social and economic issues. While I admit I don’t know in depth, the country is struggling with an arguably failed economy. I’m sure I remember reading that they were on the verge of defaulting as a country for the first time which would be a massive thing. The pandemic and subsequent global economic lockdown has only exacerbated the situation. There are currently protest although I am unsure on what scale. I don’t quite know the political structure of the country but I know Hezbollah, who were elected democratically it is often forgotten and ignored, are in power but I’m sure also the Prime Minister and his ministers are not Hezbollah, so perhaps there are two system within one. The regional political situation is that they are strong allies with Iran and that the Israelis seem to be fighting Hezbollah on and off, who are also deemed a terrorist organisation in the west, yet not fighting with Lebanon, or at least that is the narrative. With all that in mind the Israelis have had to distance themselves already, but have also offered food and humanitarian aid along with offers from Boris Johnson and Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State. It’s fair to say these are ominous gestures you would be cautious of accepting.

All of which make this feel eerily calm, almost like we’re waiting for something to happen. Maybe it also means that it genuinely was an accidental explosion of fertiliser and it has caught everyone, the Lebanese, the Western powers and the media off guard. All scrambling for an as yet unknown and too sudden line to follow. The next twenty-four hours will reveal the immediate direction it’ll take as events unfold, parts of the truth come out and the death toll becomes clear. No matter what does arise, one thing is clear, it is an horrific event either way.

To Understand Or Not To Understand

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Everyday, rules on the coronavirus seem to change. They are now discussing closing pubs in September when schools go back. I assume this is with the intention of balancing the dangers posed from both pubs and schools being open and slowing down any potential infection rate. I understand a certain amount of logic in that but it does seem to fly in the face of previous statements on there being no danger to schools opening up. If my memory is right teachers unions were blasted and shamed when they suggested that re-opening schools might increase the risk of infection and endanger teachers. Boris, his media mouthpieces and his puppet Sir Keir all seemed to be in agreement in dismissing the fears of teachers and now in a round about way they seem to be admitting these fears are in fact well founded. I wonder whether they will retract their previous statements.

There really is no way to follow what is going on properly though. There are some parts of the country going into gentle lockdowns, or ‘putting the brakes on’ as Boris suggested. They’re not really just putting the brakes on though if they’re re-introducing elements of lockdown, that suggests they’re also then going in reverse. Does that mean in other parts of the country that are not applying the metaphorical brakes that everything is fine and they can carry on or should they start to gentle apply them to prevent the necessity of slamming the foot down. The thing is I really don’t know. Ultimately I’m not an expert, very few people in this country and around the world genuinely are. That would presumably be ‘the scientists’ who by now have developed mythological status and who once ran the government according to a government trying to deflect criticism of itself and pass on any blame. It becomes hard to accept that decisions made weren’t political when blatantly they were. I want to believe there is no ulterior motive to all of this but it’s hard sometimes.

And then the rumours are that they’ll be expecting another full on lockdown in November and that it’s now not old people in danger but twenty to forty year olds. Why that age range all of a sudden? Does that suggest the virus has morphed slightly into something else, and if so does that mean the vaccine that if I’m not mistaken we’ve pre-ordered a rather large amount of will need to morph too. And if younger people are now in danger from it evolving should they not be discussing this a bit more. Everyday it feels like we hear something new but all that ever happens is we end up with more questions than answers. Nobody has a clue and those in authority on all sides only seem to focus on their own self-interests which frustrates and angers everyone further. No wonder people question and reject what would ordinarily be acceptable ideas. Will we ever get real answer and clarity. Will pigs fly as they say.

Incidentally, I picked out an old scarf I never imagined I would be wearing in the summer and have started tying it around my face in a way I never dreamt possible when going into shops. I’m still slightly sceptical about a few things and confused about others but am I another fool? I doubt I’ve ever not been.

Politics In A Mad World

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Let’s be honest I’ve ballsed up again. Fresh from a lovely nap I picked up my phone and discovered the world is falling apart. The Tories have refused to take the NHS off the negotiating table in the trade deal with the US, despite categorically insisting it wasn’t for sale during the election. Current Labour leader Keir Starmer’s party have paid out a load of money to his cronies / whistleblowers who were part of the Panorama documentary that tried to further paint the anti-racist, anti-apartheid, and pro-Palestinian campaigning former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a racist anti-semite. Machiavelli would be proud. There are even rumours Starmer is going to withdraw the Labour whip from Corbyn and kick him out of the party. This would be remarkable. It would also be the final nail in the coffin for the Labour party and any pretence of a socially conscious respectability. To think they were once the party of the people. Starmer was supported by the media and put in place with one express purpose, to be nothing like Corbyn and he’s doing a fine job, not just in the ways he thinks or hopes.

The fear is that the world is falling apart. The reality is that I really don’t know whether it has always been this bad and we’re just getting more coverage of things if we take time to read independent media. I’m just bemused at how people don’t recognise how self-serving our politicians are. Or they do but see it as part of the job. Perhaps they think most are but not the few they support. That could describe my support for Corbyn and few else of course but the evidence really does suggest otherwise. I look at Boris and wonder how anyone could think he possibly stands for them but if they stand for leaving the European Union, closer ties to America, privatisation and the eradication of the welfare state then he does stand for them. As my friend, who doesn’t like Corbyn, said at the last election, “If I didn’t give a shit about anyone other than myself and my immediate family I would vote Conservative for the benefits it would bring me economically”. I paraphrase slightly but that was the gist. It is very easy to be self-righteous and left wing but that’s simply because the other side make it so easy and hard not to be. It’s just concerning that so many people seem to follow the King Turkey when Christmas is on the agenda. I’m confused because I don’t see why people think like this, the only thing that makes sense is that people genuinely believe they can rise up a ladder and claim some of these promised benefits for themselves. They just don’t notice the big glass ceiling let alone any of the other glass ceilings in between. At least Boris has left them a big sack of fools gold on the bottom rung for them to squabble and be divided over.

Ten Days Free Falling Tree

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This then is day one of ten without the news. It doesn’t feel a great deal different from yesterday except I missed listening to the two daily Economist podcasts I would usually listen to while driving. Not checking the BBC feels like absolutely zero loss which is quite a pleasant and reassuring feeling and without access to my Facebook wall I am unlikely to come up with any articles from independent or alternate media sources. Life doesn’t feel much different then as I said after one day, but then I wouldn’t expect it to, it’s after five or six days that I’m curious to see the affects.

This is not my first time without any access to the news. There have been plenty of opportunities for me to be ignorant of the worlds ignorance’s when travelling and either being away from the internet or just with better things to do. It is probably important then to get this straight; there are many more important things in life than knowing what is going on in the world, or a version of the world people you don’t know want you to see. When I have been away from the internet for a bit though my first thought is not to check the world or local news but is to find out what the score in the football was. That’s my weakness, everything else is secondary.

These moments of no internet are incredibly rare in modern times. We have access to the internet in ways unthinkable just ten to fifteen years ago. I do remember a time before mobile phones let alone phones with all this infinitely accessible information. I have no idea of the figures and will perhaps expose my ignorance but I imagine the majority of houses in the UK have wifi or at least access to a neighbours. Failing that a trip to McDonalds is the norm for some and even public transport has wifi these days. We’ve come along way from dial-up connections and it taking a minute to download one image.

It is probably a good thing. Long term it is unclear but then what the people of the future think is good will probably be different to what I do now. We apparently have less ability to remember information because we have Google as a surrogate memory bank. Our lack of real face to face connection has been shown to create feelings of loneliness which is surely the opposite of what a world of connectivity is supposed to do. Maybe we need to refine our understanding of the nuances of connection. On the flip side, unless we switch off our devices which can genuinely be really difficult, we are never fully alone and able to relax in our own company. We seem to be in a middle ground that does nobody any favours.

But I started out with discussing taking a break from the constant barrage of news not a one-sided take on the ills of technology. The news then makes us excitable in all the wrong ways and feeds into some primordial survival network going on in our brain. It undoubtedly leads to increases in anxiety and it’s only real benefit seems to be in allowing for a good conversation with someone about, well, the news. Yet being able to share information of massacres, injustices and private and state corruption is invaluable even if it does get drowned out by all the rest of the bullshit. In these ten days though I’ll be fine, as will the world without my observations for I suspect it is true; a falling tree does make a sound in the woods even when nobody is there to hear it.

Let’s Dance

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Today got a little tetchy then. It seems like the far-right turned out to defend memorials, fight and prove something. I thought it might kick off this weekend, admittedly it’s still only Saturday so plenty of time, but I never thought right wing knuckle draggers would be the ones to do it. I’m quite pleased they did actually because it only makes them look bad and strengthens the moral arguments of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as other anti-racist groups. These people have gone out onto the street to defend memorials, got drunk and kicked off. I don’t know if they planned on kicking off in advance, there is talk of it being discussed on message boards, or if the alcohol took over. I have to be careful here though because there have been times I’ve defended violence from anti racists and anti fascists, and while I see a difference it’s possible that difference only exists in my mind because of the prism I like to view the world through. I’m sure there will be elements of the media who will try to portray it as such but is it the same.

I have mentioned that you risk losing the moral high ground when you commit violence in certain situations. This doesn’t necessarily mean I think anarchists throwing petrol bombs at riot police is morally wrong but certainly it can be spun that way by the media and lead the average person to see it as wrong. Yet I don’t condone these thugs behaving as they did today. I guess we need to try and understand why they were really there and what their aim was. I know why anarchists do it but I’m not quite sure why groups like Britain First and The English Defence League do, or why they really do. They suggest they are defending British or English culture but in reality I don’t know what that means beyond white protestants, which is not the entirety of British culture. If the anarchists intention is ultimately to liberate people these people are about subjugating them. How can you argue that with any moral validity. There were apparently a few Nazi salutes done when defending the Churchill statue which suggests they miss the point and have no actual idea who Churchill was and why he is revered. Football firms apparently came together and clashed with police which would suggest the intention was violence. I just don’t get what they were trying to achieve and I’m trying not to be a patronising arsehole who thinks he’s better than others but I suspect I’m also overthinking their thinking.

There has been a lot said about these protests being born in the perfect moment as everyone looks for something to do after being confined for so long. I don’t doubt there is sincerity behind these anti-racist protests but it’s possible there is such interest and energy because of what has happened over these last three months. Why would it not be exactly the same with the far-right. They feel they have an excuse to be outraged and they’re being outraged in the only way they know how. Perhaps that is why they behaved as they did, they don’t know any other way. If violence has solved everything before why would you try a different approach. But maybe I’m overthinking all of this, maybe I’m giving them too much credit.

Perhaps they’re just angry, ignorant and bored, add alcohol to the mix and it’s the perfect storm. But that could be underestimating them and that’s very risky. So no answers then. Not unless I’m willing to suggest they have an argument based on anything credible. If an idea is so flawed it’s impossible to debate constructively with; then it’s not an argument and their actions are not based upon anything defensible. They become the indefensible. Well it was hardly going to turn out any other way here let’s be honest.

A New Normal Sunday

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The Prime Minister still has his most special adviser standing next to him and holding his hand. Apparently he is a man of integrity who did the right thing. I must say the newspapers really played a blinder on this one. Release the first part of the story, let the politicians defend him and lie, before releasing the second even more damning information. It shows how powerful he is that he’s still here and hasn’t walked, he’s hardly going to push himself. It also shows how powerful he is that he’s clearly a marked man, the other side have gone into overdrive to take him down. It’s always much less obvious when it’s your own side getting excited and calling for someones head. When the others do it it feels exaggerated and wrong, like you witnessing another injustice. It’s remarkable how easy it is to get carried away with the baying mob. He’s still a total c**t though and I hope he gets thrown to the wolves.

I hope Sunday was enjoyable for most of us. Is life coming back to normal to the point that it feels like a Sunday again? Certainly there would have been a time when Sunday and Tuesday were indistinguishable but that can now be resigned to the past. Do we want normal to return? All that talk of a new normal sounds great if the new version was meadows and liberty but seeing as it’s the same mob responsible for turning all the meadows into suburban housing estates in the first place I’m a little concerned. We know it as shifting baseline syndrome or something, I may have just made that up, probably did actually, but it’s why people view Scotland’s rolling Glens as open and beautiful when they should be all dense forest, not the wet deserts they now are. Ireland will be the same. It’s partly the sheep and partly the industrial revolution. Now whatever woods there are are just monocrops poisoning the soil. There are some organisations trying to plant native forests again and they’re doing well with what they can but as trees are it’s slow going.

That’s it then on that note. I bid you adieu for another week. They keep on coming and they keep on passing by, each one a microfraction faster than the other. It’s a shame I don’t manage to write each of these a microfraction faster than the previous though.