Gove us a clue

Discussing the leak, to the Daily Mail, of the plan to bring back the O Level exam to British schools, Ken Clarke claims he does not believe Michael Gove was responsible for the leak. Clarke cannot resist a smirk however, and stumbles over his words, wrong-footed. Most tellingly, when Andy Burnham (Labour) comments 'Michael Gove is the best leaker in Whitehall', Clarke immediately replies 'Yeah' before swiftly seeking to blame Liberal Democrats instead. Who knows if it was Gove or a Lib Dem, but interesting that Clarke seems to agree that Gove leaks and leaks often.

Anyone got any information on Michael Gove's record on leaking? If so, please let us know by commenting below.

Golden Dawn Rituals

One of the leading politico-economic stories of the year has been Greece's general elections, and the wider 'debt crisis' involving the Euro, austerity, and all that jazz, in which they have been situated. Last year, Russia Today's Keiser Report featured an interesting interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, and I was struck by her analysis that Europe does not have a 'debt crisis', rather it is a plan to restructure government according to the needs of the "financial coup d'état":
Yet this situation creates unusual, unpredictable consequences for electoral party politics, particularly in Greece where the establishment parties have lost ground: notably to the 'coalition of Marxists, ecologists and feminists' Syriza, but also to the openly fascist Golden Dawn. The party achieved international notoriety during the election campaign, I would say chiefly for two things: their pledge to attack hospitalised immigrants in Greece, and for a GD MP's physical attack on two left-wing politician on live TV. Here is that moment, with English subtitles:
In a clear display of either paranoia or deliberate obfuscation, Golden Dawn leader Ilias Kasidiaris claimed he was set up, deliberately provoked. According to the Guardian, reporting on the incident

The party's image has been severely dented by continuous replays of footage of the 31-year-old Kasidiaris, a former army commando, striking the middle-aged Communist party deputy Liana Kannelli three times.

Oh yeah? Well, in fact Golden Dawn's share of the vote was only very slightly dented after the incident, its share down from 6.97% to 6.92%. In other words, support for the party has held firm. Clearly, the manufactured economic 'crisis' can be blamed. For our purposes, we note how little the GD spokesperson's public loss of control on TV affected the party's electoral results. What do you think? Was the incident manufactured, not by the TV show but by Golden Dawn itself, a fake loss of control designed to maximise publicity for the group and appeal to a pro-violence tendency in humanity? Or was it a genuine loss of control, spun by the party to portray Kasidiaris as a victim of political correctness? Here's a sharp analysis of the election results to ponder in the meantime. Also, in a thematically related incident from America, here's a video about an alleged assault on Ron Paul by another Republican politician that seems to have been imagined.
My take? Rather than an physical assault, this in fact seems to be an example of a psychological assault using body language commonly employed in the society of power to express seniority and hierarchy within that society. By the way, in the interests of balance I should point out that T-mobile are one of the many networks implicated in the Carrier IQ spyware story.

Obama on technological represssion

Back in April, on Holocaust Memorial Day, President Obama made an halting speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In the video below, at 1:33, Obama makes a slip regarding technological surveillance and repression. He's  talking about his administration's intent to 'institutionalise the focus' on the issue of potential genocides today. In particular, Obama talks about the current crisis in Syria, and announces new sanctions on those who 'abet' Syria 'for using technologies to monitor and track and target citizens for violence'. A finger wag comes in at 1:20, as Obama says the word 'today'. Then, as he begins to talk about the new sanctions, his hand makes a pincer gesture, as if to dramatise sanctions closing around the Assad regime, but the gesture continues, to emphasise the monitoring, tracking and targeting of citizens for violence. Then comes the Freudian slip: raising his finger once more, to emphasise the point, Obama states 'these technologies should not be used to empower...' and then he stumbles as he realises his mistake. As he moves to correct the statement, his hand once more makes the encircling gesture, as he says 'technologies should be in place to empower citizens not to repress them'.

 What are we to make of this? I want to hear your views. Is this a revealing slip, a politician stating his real, if unconscious view, on the era of technological surveillance Internet-based technologies have brought to bear? In particular, does the body language add a particular layer of interpretation to this parapraxis?

 

 We can possibly detect a little suppressed smile as Obama corrects his slip, almost as if the accidental meaning of his statement triggers a brief moment of amusement for him. Here's an animated gif showing the moment he realises his mistake and corrects his statement.

One final point: earlier on in the speech, Obama mentions new technologies, stating 'we will strengthen our tools across the board...and create new ones'. He states that they will work with technology companies to this end. He states 'alert channels will ensure information about unfolding crises, and dissenting opinions, quickly reach decision makers - including me'. In other words, technology will be used to funnel information to the government. I'm interested in theories as to why Obama feels the need to add 'dissenting opinions', which he does rather quickly, to this stipulation. Dissenting from who? Presumably, the President is expressing the need for a diversity of information about 'unfolding crises' to reach his ears, not just the standard view. It's a fine point, but why could it not be implicit in the phrase 'information about unfolding crises'? In other words, maybe the purpose of these new technologies will be to monitor 'dissenting opinions' in general? Here's the video capturing that moment, so you can judge for yourself.

News In Brief

Stories catching my eye recently Many of you will have heard Obama's statement that he has 'evolved' into someone who supports same-sex marriage, and publicly affirming his personal support for gay marriage. It turns out one figure surprisingly not yet mentioned on this blog, American VP Joe Biden (who is famous for gaffes, slips and plagarism in public speaking) appears to have precipitated the affirmation. The story goes that in a typical Biden blunder, he jumped the gun by making a similar statement off the cuff, thus forcing Obama to make his statement - arguably, a case of the off-message mis-speak of a loose-lipped politician making a little bit of history. The Slate analysis is archly titled The Audacity of Evolution.

“I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

This classic quote comes from an interesting post listing "political faux pas that will leave you in splits" from John Mark Ministries.

 Added to Blogroll: Sturdyblog, which has at the moment a post that does seem to conclusively prove David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, to be a liar!

Meanwhile here's a pre-emptive exposure of Cameron, courtesy of Armano Iannuci's Time Trumpet.


 Local councillors are so funny sometimes.The Right Ear has a hugely entertaining report on the twitterstorm created by an apparently pro-EDL councillor who, despite claiming not to have realised the EDL were racist in her subsequent apology, had previously tweeted such gems as 'if you don't like it here go back to where you came from' to someone on the basis of their funny foreign name. The post is valuable as an archive of tweets deleted by the councillor concerned.

And finally: a political parapraxis for French speakers.

Mayday Fire

Happy Mayday! The story of the origins of Mayday can be a contested one, anarchists and pagans claiming the festival as their own, attempting to wrest the festival away from its usage by the state. In the ancient pantheon, the Greek Maia, mother of Hermes, was identified with the Roman Maia, a figure associated with growth and the earthly. According to Wikipedia,

the month of May (Latin Maius) was supposedly named for Maia, though ancient etymologists also connected it to the maiores, "ancestors," again from the adjective maius.

Here's a representation of the Greek Maia, with Hermes:

Mayday as a workers day is dated by anarchists from the late nineteenth century, and is intimately bound up with the fight for an eight-hour working day, the Haymarket riots and subsequent martyrdom of several men executed by the state in the aftermath. 6 years go, Democracy Now talked about these events in some detail:
Watch the whole show.
So that's the origins of Mayday from a modern perspective. Taking a longer view, the festival is as ancient as agriculture probably, maybe older. As the year's mid-point between spring equinox and summer solstice, this time is known as Beltain when the light and heat in the North is halfway between equality with dark and cold, and supremacy. The vulgar right-wing journalism of our old friends the Daily Mail holds that:

May Day as a festival is thought to have originated as a day of Roman dancing on which youths would celebrate the coming of spring and pay homage to Flora, the goddess of fruit and flowers. Read more.

The Mail here seems to want to downplay any grass-roots origins of the festival, and thus any authentic association with a people's history, instead preferring the Roman Empire as the secret origin. It appears far more likely the Roman Floralia was added to the British Beltain. This process has been repeated over and over, the day repressed or co-opted by the state as time moves on.

Aristocrats joke around with gun

Last month I blogged that police are just another gang, children fooling around with guns. Today a similar story has emerged with regard to another privileged, state-supported group in society. Who is Pippa Middleton? I had to ask myself this question today when I saw this tweet:

Pippa Middleton with a friend waving a gun at photographers. Sun and Mail cover it, BBC silent.yfrog.com/od65gpfj cc @RepublicStaff
— Martin Robbins (@mjrobbins) April 16, 2012

I thought the name sounded familiar - perhaps a BBC newsreader? But no, apparently she is the sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, who is married to Prince William. Middleton was in Paris for some mock-18th Century Versailles-style parties with various aristos. While she's driving around the city of lights in a German convertible, the driver decides to point a gun at paparazzi. What larks! Er...yes, but they're paparazzi, mate. That means the whole world can see what an asset you are to society:

Let them eat lead.

In a gift for newspaper copywriters, this incident comes shortly after deadly shootings in Toulouse, exposing these more privileged gun-fans to accusations of 'bad taste'. The Sun report, which has a further three pictures, points out that even waving a fake gun publicly in Paris carries a potential custodial sentence.

From our point of view, we are interested in what this story reveals about the normal workings of power. The non-coverage by the BBC does reveal something about how that channel's pro-aristo, pro-state bias and self-censoring norms persist despite its sometimes radical, investigative history. For other organisations, I guess the potential revenue from covering the story, and any prestige from claiming the public interest high-ground, outweighs any bias they too have towards the powerful. Step outside the British media and the coverage becomes marginally more explicit. But let's not assume that bias and censorship has disappeared. Here's NBC:
The report is keen to tag this as a 'strange incident' straight away, immediately precluding the possibility that this is normal, if usually hidden, behaviour.  And is it really 'unclear' who the men in the car are? Or do the Sun know exactly who they are but prefer not to say?

NBC's sources claim that police don't know anything. Whether that will change is moot, but notice how the report, on no evidence whatever, that the gunman 'may'facing questions from police. How do they know? He could be over the border by now. The effect is to reassure the viewer that the gunman will face the legal consequences, while in fact there is no guarantee of that. Despite covering the story, they don't want us to get too angry about it, or know the names of suspects. The bias is still there.

No one is asking why these people didn't realise that their act would be interpreted as bad taste in the light of the Toulouse shootings. It's a terrible gaffe, but with such bad timing one assumes it did not even occur to these people that the two incidents would be connected in the public mind. Its as if these people believe they live in a rarefied strata of society that has nothing to do with the fall out of recent foreign policy that the rest of us have to deal with. The incident in Toulouse - if they were even aware of it at all - was probably filed away as beneath consideration. The grubby world of plebeian gun-crime has nothing to do with them. These people are proud to be able to brandish guns in public, as you can see. It is their birthright and their pleasure. It's interesting that despite the BBC non-coverage, this is public knowledge now. The Crown's PR people will presumably be doing whatever damage limitation they can right now. Expect a contrite-sounding public apology from Middleton soon. Aristos will keep their guns hidden for a while. But the power behind it carries on regardless.

Cock News

Sally Nugent, a television sports presenter, was recently drafted in to present the BBC Breakfast News and attracted a few headlines for accidentally saying 'cock' when she meant to say 'pocket'. The Daily Record claims

viewers took to Twitter to point out the embarrassing gaffe during a report about fake pound coins. Sally said: “When you’re walking around with a couple of pound coins in your cock – um, pocket...” Eleanor Head tweeted: “Oh, Sally Nugent.. your first time giving BBC breakfast news and you say cock rather than pocket on live television! freudianslip.” And Tim Marben said: “Four pound coins in your cock...” Oh, BBC Breakfast, you please me no end.”

A quick search of Twitter reveals no user by the name 'Tim Marben' exists; there are a number of users called Eleanor Head but none of them tweeted about Sally Nugent. It appears that the Daily Record decided to add an angle to the story by pretending people were talking about it on Twitter. Which they are not. There's only one tweet about Sally Nugent, to do with her legs. She's the new Angela Rippon it seems. Here's an edited version of the moment:

Slips by female newsreaders that get a lot of publicity often relate to sexuality, usually penises. From earlier in the year this was getting a lot of attention:

Meanwhile this newsreader seems to associate policing with masculinity:

Male newsreaders also enjoy explicitly referring to the penis: