Where the internet and protests collide

Political activism has been in the news more in the last year than in all the years since the 2003 Iraq war. Revolutions in the Arab world, occupations in America and beyond, and student protests and social unrest in the UK have all been hailed as ‘social networking revolutions’. To understand the importance of information and communication technologies to these examples of political activism, we must examine the extent to which these events were actively driven by new technologies.  By discussing these cases, we can see that increased use of social networking software and other technological advances is not necessarily a root cause of these events, but rather simply an aspect of them.

There can be no denying that, in the West, if your political event is not advertised on the internet, it is probably not going to be considered much of a success in 2011. In terms of promoting activism through the internet, a small number of websites have basically cornered the market, most prominently Facebook and Twitter. Almost every political event, from protests to organising meetings, to even attempted riots, now comes with a promotional Facebook event. Twitter updates followers in real time of what is happening in volatile situations, and provides a new media platform to activists as it becomes journalists’ first stop for ready-made quotes. Twitter has even spawned its own new form of activism, sometimes called the ‘Twittermob‘, where users can come out of seemingly nowhere to force action from previously near untouchable institutions such as the courts or powerful newspaper outlets. This has been seen prominently in the News of the World hacking controversy, the anger at offensive newspaper articles such as Jan Moir’s homophobic Stephen Gately treasure or the Sunday Express’ insensitive Dunblane article, and the Trafigura oil spill/Ryan Giggs being a mad shagger super-injunction cases.

It is important however not to overstate the importance of websites such as Twitter in recent political events. Reading newspapers and watching television news, it would seem like Twitter is incredibly important to modern day political activism, or indeed pretty much any mundane news story about anything ever. However, we shouldn’t mistake media portrayals of social networking software for reality. The traditional media frequently hype social networking in their reports, but in part this is because they are convenient to access, easy to understand, and important for news output in a world where traditional media is fighting to maintain its relevance and readership. Twitter provides user-generated content for traditional media to exploit while simultaneously cutting the number of paid journalists on their staff, and in this sense it can feed a capitalist agenda.

Creepy winking birds will save us all

An example of a somewhat removed-from-the-truth portrayal of Twitter and Facebook’s importance in groundbreaking political events is the way that the media reported their use in the Arab Spring uprisings of early 2011. It was claimed that “connectedness is becoming a relatively mundane part of people’s lives” and that social networking had toppled the Tunisian regime. But the reality is that social networking is still not as common in the Arab world as the Western media would lead us to believe. In Iran, where a ‘Twitter revolution’ was reported in 2010, the number of Twitter users was estimated at between 7,000 and 20,000 – a tiny percentage in a population of 77 million. It seems crass to call the Arab Spring a ‘social networking revolution’ simply because this is one of the ways that information was shared, when in reality it was the result of decades of social unrest and anger at dictatorial regimes.  This Cracked article makes a few good points about the media’s overestimation of social networking in the Arab revolutions.

While social networking’s importance to the Arab revolutions may have been overstated by the media, that is not to say that it cannot be incredibly useful to activists with regular access to its features. The Daily Mail’s online publisher has stated his belief that “Facebook isn’t a threat [to traditional media]… but a gigantic free marketing engine.” This belief is doesn’t need to be confined however to traditional or capitalist modes of information output. If taken on board correctly, the idea of Facebook as a huge resource for marketing your ideas is one that can be utilised to effect by activist groups. The problem for activists seems to come when this is promoted at the expense of other forms of organising. For activist groups, using social networking for organisational purposes can be at best problematic and at worst dangerous. However, what it is undoubtedly useful for is advertising political ideas once they have been organised and put into effect.

Hey Chris Sibbald, I still want my bloody banner back

Local politics in Glasgow provide a stark example of this principle in practise. Two notable recent examples of occupation tactics used by activist groups in the city have yielded quite different results, and much of this can be traced back to the manner in which they were organised. The ‘Free Hetherington’ occupation of a Glasgow University building for 7 months in 2011 was organised largely by a mixture of preliminary broad based student activist meetings, and secret organising meetings to plan the taking of the building without the police or university intervening. Once the occupation was established, the internet was utilised extensively to promote the occupation’s activities. It finished having reached agreements with the university to implement several of its demands, and it played an important role in the establishment of activist links and left wing unity in the Glasgow community.

By contrast, the ‘Occupy Glasgow’ event, which has been ongoing since October 2011, was organised via a small number of activists acting upon the suggestion of a Facebook event, in response to the much larger Occupy Wall Street camp in New York, USA. The Glasgow camp has been plagued with problems of low attendance to the point of the unsustainability of campsites, poor relationships with the rest of the activist community in Glasgow, misogyny amongst the campers in the wake of a gang rape that occurred onsite, and the notable presence of too many off-the-charts batshit conspiracy theorists in the camp.

The difference in support amongst, and usefulness to, the activist community in Glasgow is clear, and it could be said that the way in which these occupations have approached the internet has played a large part in this. If activist groups continue to utilise the most useful aspects of both traditional organising methods and the newer opportunities afforded by modern technology, this can produce better results than treating internet organising through social networking websites as the be all and end all of political organising, or a substitute for coherent, well-supported politics.

The Occupy Movement provides an interesting example of where the political origins of Facebook and less well-thought out applications of online activism meet. Where pre-internet social movements like the women’s movement and the civil rights movement in America brought social change out of decades of political discussion and action reaching a peak, new movements like the Occupy phenomenon are not prepared with a coherent message. The reason for this is the context in which they have been formed. Occupy protests around the world have sprung out of calls on social networking sites to replicate the actions of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab revolutions, regardless of whether these tactics are in reality applicable to smaller towns and cities with no discernible widely-felt revolutionary atmosphere. It is important to note that the political ideology behind Facebook actively supports the promotion of this kind of unfocused approach to political issues.

Mark Zuckerberg: the friendly hipster face of pure fascist evil

It has been stated by one of the three members of Facebook’s own Board of Directors that Facebook is a ‘social experiment‘. In his essay ‘The Education of a Libertarian‘, Peter Thiel says of his investments:

“By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order.”

While Mark Zuckerberg is the public face of Facebook, venture capitalist Thiel is considered to be the brains of the operation. Described in The Guardian as a “neocon activist” and a member of a right wing internet pressure group called TheVanguard.Org, it must hold true that if his plans for Facebook as a social experiment which can make money out of people’s interpersonal relationships are working, then this internet monopoly is certainly proving that it can successfully foster neo-conservative activism. When the brain behind Facebook openly states that he “no longer believe[s] that freedom and democracy are compatible”, it is not a great leap to judge that his strong right-wing ideology will have found itself into the design and purpose of his social experiment. There is bound to be consequences for left-wing activism utilising Facebook in this wide scale manipulation of its users. One way in which these consequences have manifested is known as ‘clicktivism‘, where online activism reflects principles of advertising and engages only in short term goals such as acquiring signatures for single issue petitions. Clicktivism is essentially the reduction of activism to throwaway, commodified ideas that require little political engagement, and as someone who regards democracy as undesirable and dislikes women being allowed the vote, it follows that this deconstruction of traditional activism can only be seen as a positive for Thiel’s ideology. This position on Facebook definitely falls into the realm of ‘cyber-scepticism‘, but it is hard to argue that this is not the ideological root of aspects of Facebook’s design when its own investors and directors are openly stating that this is the case. It is important for left-wing activists who seek to fight traditional power models to bear in mind the philosophical roots behind some of the software that dominates the information sharing market on the internet, and to challenge this where possible. When activism allows itself to be reduced to clicktivism, it plays into the hands of the capitalists who seek to deconstruct human interactions for marketing purposes.

One activist group that seems to have worked out how to utilise social networking without falling prey to its more obvious flaws has been UK Uncut, a loosely organised group which protests tax avoidance by large businesses, and opposes cuts to public services. Where clicktivism utilises the internet to reduce people’s political involvement to a minimum, the ethos of UK Uncut is to enable people who may not have been involved in activism before to organise whole protests themselves. By using a basic organisational template – information disseminated by UK Uncut on websites such as Twitter and Indymedia – anyone can engage with UK Uncut and take its ideas from the internet to their local area, combining protest with the internet’s potential to make ideas ‘viral’. The Guardian states that “new technology has facilitated decentralised, non-hierarchical, horizontal networks” as UK Uncut embodies. This clearly has ramifications for the nature of modern day protest, and in this sense information and communication technologies can encourage short bursts of well organised protest anywhere activists decide to facilitate it, instead of protest being largely confined to tightly controlled large demonstrations in population centres such as was seen during the 2003 Iraq war protests.

Jody McIntyre wheeling menacingly towards Ben Brown

Technologies such as the Blackberry Messenger encrypted messaging service have the potential to be useful to activists in the future. The ability of the BBM service to inform a massive number of people, undetectable to the police and government, of fast-moving events has already been seen in the 2011 English riots. If this technology is developed in future in a way specifically designed for activist use, and is utilised by the likes of UK Uncut, it will be harder for the police to track and arrest activists. The correlation between access to plus understanding of social networking for political agitation purposes and the rise of activism that is harder for police and governments to control and monitor is worth noting. Because protests can be organised quickly, at the drop of a hashtag, the police can find it difficult to estimate how many people will turn out and which target they will pick, which gives UK Uncut protestors a strategic advantage. This has also been a positive development for campaigners who wish to highlight police brutality or miscarriages of justice. They now find that when the police behave inappropriately such as in the case of Jody McIntyre, despite the mainstream media continuing to portray this in a way that is favourable to the police, protestors are quickly able to put across an alternative viewpoint to a much wider audience than ever would have been possible previously. If traditionally organised Non-Govermental Organisations like Greenpeace felt in the past that they were receiving rough treatment from the police, it was unlikely that many people would ever hear about it. For these NGOs, the internet can have the advantage of letting them put across their ideals in their own words in a way that is easily accessible to potential recruits, rather than people hearing about their activities solely through a negative media portrayal.

Activists for whom the value of information and communication technologies cannot be overstated are those who traditionally have been denied access to mainstream political engagement, such as women and disabled people. Websites like Mumsnet have allowed mothers in the UK to not only have a space in which to discuss their own political views in a way that can be adaptable to their schedule as mothers, but also to a limited extent have those views taken in some ways seriously by the media and, at election time, by politicians. Disability campaigners can promote alternatives to the exclusive nature of physical protests, and reclaim some agency over protests surrounding the issues that personally affect them. The internet can provide support networks, that often develop into activist groups, for disenfranchised people – a “virtual civic society”.

While social networking and other communication technologies have certainly made a visible impact on political activism, to claim that they have fundamentally changed them in the way that much media output over the last year has done seems little more than hyperbole, at least at this early stage. It is clear that the way activism is marketed and in some cases approached is changing with the advent of new technologies. But this change has not yet amounted to much of significance, if we consider the vague nature of the Occupy protests and, thus far, the lack of explicitly political mass applications of technologies like encrypted messaging services. What we have seen with the development of these technologies however is the potential that they hold for future political activism all over the world, from local anti-cuts flashmobs to regime-toppling revolutions. If political activists, particularly those on the left who have been embracing the internet and incorporating it into their activities for years, can utilise the best aspects of these technological advances – while managing to avoid the pitfalls of poor applications such as has been seen in the Occupy movement and over-reliance on Facebook – political activism will be strengthened, not hindered, by the internet and other communication technologies.

Eck pure greetin wi laffter at SSY's election liveblog

Batten down the hatches, the Tories and the BBC are officially aware of SSY’s website!

That’s right, it’s not just the police who read our blog! In a BBC documentary following Scotland’s dear leader Alex Salmond, Michael Portillo – the former Thatcherite Tory MP who famously lost his seat in the 1997 NewLabourThingsCanOnlyGetShiter landslide and went on to become a tv politics pundit with a boak inducing penchant for flirting with Dianne Abbott - can clearly be seen not only viewing the SSY blog but even VISIBLY CHUCKLING! You can view the documentary here (we’re at 40 mins 39 seconds, but it’ll only be available for a week!)

Of course it’s not the first time SSY have left their mark on the Tories…
SSY infiltrate Tory Headquarters
SSY ambush Scottish Tory Headquarters
SSY vanquish evil Tories from Scotland
SSY egg David Cameron’s car
SSY pour pint over Boris Johnson

We’re sure Michael enjoyed his wee tour of the website, presumably stopping to read Leftfield, marvel at our street fighting skillz, and purchase a copy of our pamphlet Afghanistan: Three Centuries of Imperialism. Hi Michael!

In case you were wondering, the article he was reading was about the SNP’s backwards, unscientific & unhelpful view on the formerly-legal high Mephedrone and their call for it to be banned. Fancy doing a documentary on that Michael?

SSY BLOG ON TV - FUCK YEAH!

VISIBLE CHUCKLING

OH MA GOD MUM MA NAME'S OAN TV!

The real 9/11 conspiracy was perpetuated by the people who produce sparkly crying eagle gifs

1. The idea that people abused through prostitution are “sex workers” who should be unionised.

Being abused is not a job. People being abused through prostitution should be given all of the help, access to help for addiction, safe affordable housing, and therapy for the multitude of abuses they have suffered before and during prostitution that they need. People who buy consent through paying for sex should be criminalised. The men who buy women and other men through prostitution are disgusting and oppressive and should be blasted off the face of the earth, or at least prosecuted to fuck. “Unionisation” = normalisation of abuse.

2. 9/11 “truthers”.

Do you want to know the truth about 9/11? Okay, the truth is that there’s this terrorist group called Al-Qaeda which used to be funded by the US so that they would do their bidding in the Middle East, but then they thought fuck that let’s put all this training to use and bomb our real ideological enemies, America! So they flew some planes into the World Trade Centre, killed a lot of people, and the US used it to its propaganda advantage by fooling a lot of stupid people into thinking that Afghanistan and Iraq had anything to do it, and started the War on Terror. TA DA! THERE’S YOUR TRUTH! No lizards, holograms, Jews, nanothermites or satanist symbols in banknotes required. So you can stop selling well meaning lefties your anti-semitic, anti-working class shit and go shave your back now.

3. Polyamory.

Really, this is just a heap of manipulative shit wrapped up in ‘alternative thinking’ and ‘free love’ terminology. Like, if we lived in the abstract, in theory there shouldn’t be a problem with several consenting adults freely choosing to take part in multiple relationships concurrently and totes not get jealous or emotional about it, if that’s what they’re into. The problem is that we don’t live in the abstract, we live in patriarchy. The fact that this is an actual concept that is encouraged in left wing political circles is what’s offensive, rather than the individual fact of specific couples agreeing to cheat on each other and not care. You shouldn’t be judged specifically if you really truly feel you have made the free choice to live that way. You should, however, be judged if you promote it to your partners who weren’t into it before you encouraged them to be, or to other lefties as some sort of alternative way to live your life, because it just encourages a culture in which it’s okay for charismatic lefty men to subtly manipulate their girlfriends into accepting bad behaviour as ‘polyamory’. Too many women have been manipulated into an ‘open relationship’ (i.e. her boyfriend wanting an excuse to shag around and mistreat her and get away with it) because they loved their boyfriend so much they didn’t want to lose him, and the truth is that he simply didn’t care as much as he said he did and wanted an easy way to get what he wanted all the time. That’s especially true of the all too prevalent charismatic sexy left wing man who later is revealed to be an arch abuser. Also, it promotes a total false consciousness of empowerment. Also, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting the person you’re in love with, who says they’re in love with you, to not be sticking it in other people. That is an okay way to think and feel, and it’s wrong that polyamory is promoted as a ‘left wing’ way of thinking when it’s not political at all, and as something that young women in left wing circles should get into. There’s nothing left wing about it, it’s left too many abused, manipulated and used women in its wake for that to be the case.

LET THE COMMENT RIOTS COMMENCE!

Frida Kahlo: Mad Trot!

Hey! It’s International Women’s Day! So let’s talk about artist Frida Kahlo, and why feminists like her.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist, notable mostly for her graphic depictions of the painful aspects of her life, and for surrealist and colourful self-portraits. Throughout her life she experienced numerous physical and psychological traumas which she documented in her work. She was considerably ahead of her time in a number of aspects of the way she lived her life. Through her skill, she brought women’s issues to the forefront of a male-dominated art world, paving the way for many future female artists. She was also a mad Trotsky-shagging Trot and had an unashamedly revolutionary spirit. Though her physical traumas set her back and haunted her, she still managed to create some incredible art, cope and learn to give as good as she got with an abusive and badly behaved husband (despite her obvious love for him), and leave a lasting legacy in Mexican, female and art history. And that’s what makes her a feminist icon.

She was born in Mexico in 1907, but later in life she went around telling people that she was born in 1910, the year of the start of the Mexican Revolution. Clearly, Frida saw her life as defined by her revolutionary consciousness, and that’s pretty cool. She was of German, Spanish and Amerindian descent.

She grew up surrounded by women, and was one of only 35 women admitted to her fancy school. She wore long, colourful skirts all the time to cover up a leg that hadn’t formed properly as the result of polio, and always walked with a limp. Despite this she excelled at school and wanted to be a doctor. When she was 18 however, her bus crashed, breaking her spinal column, her collarbone, her ribs, her pelvis, her leg, her foot, and an iron rail pierced her abdomen and uterus. This left her permanently unable to have children, resulting in several traumatic miscarriages which she dealt with through her art in later life. She had to spend months in bed in a full body cast, during which time she had an easel fixed to the bed and began to paint. She experienced a lot of pain and constant operations throughout her life, the pain of which is best expressed through her self-portraits:

'The Little Deer'

'The Broken Column'

It is clear from Frida’s paintings that she believed that she was weak and not entirely beautiful, although she was – she exaggerates her facial hair in nearly all of her self portraits, and in portrays herself as incredibly tiny and dainty next to her admittedly large husband, Diego Rivera. She exaggerated what she perceived as her flaws, and at the same time she took ownership over her appearance, her body disfigurements, and her pain, and reclaimed them as something quite beautiful in her art. She did what I’m sure a lot of us would like to do and say ‘fuck you, I don’t care if I have hair where you think I shouldn’t, this is what I look like, I’m a strong Mexican woman, look at what I can create and do’.

Part of that reclaiming was a healing process for herself, in coming to terms with the miscarriages that her bus accident caused her to have. The paintings depicting this might be upsetting for those who have suffered miscarriages or are sensitive to graphic images, so I’ll just link to them here. Frida wanted more than anything to have a family with her husband, so the pain of her injuries served as a constant reminder of the happiness she was denied.

During her lifetime, Frida Kahlo was mostly famous as the wife of Diego Rivera, who was a very successful artist at the time, and the two were well known for their communist activism and turbulent/abusive relationship. Posthumously however, Frida Kahlo’s success has far eclipsed that of her husband, and she is now perhaps the most well known female artist ever. Frida loved Diego very deeply (as her art and writings show), but their relationship was marked with constant arguments, constant adultery on both parts, and some very bad and abusive behaviour from Diego when it came to his intense jealousy over her relationships with other men, and his affair with one of her sisters, which caused Frida to divorce (then remarry) him. What makes Frida very ahead of her time (remember she lived from 1907-1954) was her open bisexuality and affairs with women, including African-American singer and civil rights campaigner Josephine Baker.

Another of Frida’s famous affairs was with none other than the exiled Leon Trotsky, shortly before Stalin’s henchmen set aboot him wi an icepick. Frida had long been a commie, being a member of the Young Communist League and the Mexican Communist Party. Their affair resulted in Diego Rivera falling out with Trotsky, made Trotsky’s wife very upset, and caused Trotsky & wife to move out of Frida & Diego’s house and into another ‘safehouse’ where he promptly met his bloody end.

Frida herself died at 47, after yet more pain and further operations, including a leg amputation due to gangrene. She left behind a vast legacy of beautiful paintings, revolutionary spirit, and her former childhood home which she later shared with Diego and Trotsky, the Blue House, is now a museum of her life and art.

There’s a pretty decent film about her life starring Salma Hayek as Frida, which you can download here.

A parting message for International Women's Day

Justin Bieber says a big FUCK YOU to women's rights

Today, in what can only be described as an ABORTION EXTRAVAGANZA, we bring to you not one, not two, but THREE news stories that should cause sighs of woe from all sensible (i.e. pro-choice) people.

First and most stupidly of all, is the worrying news that pre-teen hearthrob and Leftfield laughing stock Justin Bieber is ignorantly and vocally anti-choice. Not only is he against a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body & mental health because “it’s like, killing a baby yeah?”, he also has some very worrying views on rape too.

Speaking to Rolling Stone Magazine, J.Biebs said he didn’t agree with abortion, and was asked by the interviewer one of the obvious questions – “but what about in cases of rape?”

Instead of sticking to his bollocks “babykilling” line, The Biebs went further, saying “Um, well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I don’t know how that would be a reason [to have an abortion].”

Bieber, listen up, or I’ll fucking abort you. Rape does not “happen for a reason”, other than the ‘reason’ that there are some disgusting men who make the choice to horrendously abuse women. Being raped is not a woman’s “fate”. The idea that “everything happens for a reason” is nonsense invented to try to force people in disadvantaged and oppressed positions to accept the abuse and discrimination that they face from privileged sections of society. Usually with some sort of religious undertone of “it’ll all work itself out when you get to heaven, so just accept your shit life and get on with it and don’t question authority”.

Women should be the only people allowed to judge whether they want to have a baby or get an abortion, and to make the vital decisions at this time regarding their physical and mental health. In an ideal world, that would be accepted as a matter of principle. However, it seems that Justin Bieber is so far behind in his social attitudes that he hasn’t yet even accepted the basic right of women who’ve been raped to not be forced to have a child that their rapist forced into their body without their consent, under violent and/or emotionally damaging circumstances. Even most right wing fuckwads generally make a wishy-washy type of exception for abortion in cases of rape, so it’s particularly disheartening to hear The Biebs hold that kind of backwards view. Get yourself a clue, Bieber.

I suppose some might say, Justin Bieber is only 17. It may sound excessive to judge the views of a stupit wee boy so harshly. However, two things are important to remember here – Justin Bieber is old enough to get a girl pregnant (and has many young girls flinging themselves at him daily, so it’s not unlikely), and therefore it’s time he grew up a bit and thought about the real issues at stake here before he opens his mouth to the media.

Secondly, Justin Bieber is inexplicably worshipped as a god by very young and impressionable girls the world over. Well, maybe it’s not so inexplicable when you hear his songs, which are designed to sound as if he is personally serenading each and every girl about how she’s his “baby” and he’ll never ever leave her. There’s something (creepy) about him that they just go batshit crazy for. His views MATTER to them, and therefore it matters when he says really really bad things. He has the ability to make a genuinely negative effect with his views, and if he’s starting to spread conservative anti-woman tropes, that’s really quite worrying. Just look at how absolutely loopy he sends girls as young as 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTCm8tdHkfI

They go fucking DEMENTED for him and anything that tumbles out of his mouth. He needs to be educated, fast. On the one hand his carefully cultivated image is selling false ideas of intense and everlasting love and early sexualisation to girls as young as 3, and on the other he’s promoting outdated views of the realities of having sex and babies.

And so on to the second story. While The Biebs’s unfortunate quotes have the potential to cause fucked-up internal conflicts in future generations of women, there’s another story in the Guardian today that highlights a real and direct problem regarding early medical abortions for women in the UK today.

Early medical abortions are standard practice in most countries where abortions are legally available. When a termination is sought in the early stages of a pregnancy (which is the case in the majority of abortions), there is no need for a doctor or nurse to perform any medical procedure. Instead, a woman can visit a clinic and take a pill which terminates the pregnancy. Two days later, the woman must return to the clinic for a second pill, which causes a miscarriage to happen, so that the embryo leaves the body.

BAN THIS SICK FILTH!

In almost every country which offers this medical service, when a woman visits a clinic for the first pill, she is allowed to take the second pill home with her in order to take it at home in a comfortable environment. The main reasoning for this is that most women who take the second pill in a clinic will miscarry on their journey home, which for many women will be inconvenient, humiliating, uncomfortable or traumatic. In the UK, women are not entrusted with taking the second pill home, and must return to the clinic in order to induce miscarriage.

A high court judge on Monday ruled that, unless the Tory Health Secretary Andrew Lansley decides to change the law to state otherwise, women must continue to travel to clinics for the second pill and, in many cases, miscarry in public. The proposal, put forward by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (a charity), has been incorrectly labelled a proposal for “home abortions” – this is not true, as the actual termination of pregnancy occurs with the first pill provided, and changing the circumstances under which the second pill is taken would in reality only be a matter of creating a more comfortable environment for women during an uncomfortable time. Nevertheless, the judge ruled that it was only within the Health Secretary’s power to approve a wider remit of places under which an abortion could *technically* take place, including the home. Even though health is a devolved matter, the ruling would have applied to England, Scotland and Wales.

In Wales, the Guardian points out, there are no abortion clinics outside of Cardiff, so it is a myth that abortions are easy to access in countries which supposedly care about women’s rights like the UK. There should be no problem with a woman wishing to terminate a pregnancy in a comfortable home environment. Obviously in the current climate, where women require the permission of 2 separate doctors to gain access to legal abortion services (and many doctors are very rude and judgemental about the issue which is completely inappropriate), there of course could be the worry that allowing “home” abortions could lead to women who are scared to approach unfriendly doctors or who don’t know where to turn to get adequate advice and help, being offered potentially dodgy “home abortions” which may not comply to health standards. However, this is clearly not the case in this situation, where the practice can be changed without even changing the law or the interpretation of the word “abortion”. It is important that we remove all barriers to safe and easy to access legal and free abortions. It is such a fundamental right, and anything that places pressure or anxiety on women in the situation of requiring an abortion only serves to make abortions less safe and more traumatic.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is actually on record as saying that he is in favour of home abortions and getting rid of the 2-doctor requirement, although at the same time he argued for a reduction in the time limit that abortions are legally available within, causing misery for women in some of the most desperate circumstances. Still, he has said that he thinks abortions should be easier to access for women, and that is a very positive opinion for the Health Minister to be holding while we’re stuck with a generally backward and anti-women Tory government. And yet his response to this ruling has been… silence. Hopefully he will pull his finger out soon, but Zoe Williams makes a good point when she notes that while Lansley is the only person now with the power to change this anomaly in the UK’s abortion rights policy, he’s likely to remain quiet. Sadly, this is the case too often – pro-choice politicians are forced to stay quiet about their views because the anti-choice lobby is so aggressive, dangerous and downright crazy. And so the oppression of women continues de facto.

Abortion saves lives

The third story is one we’ve been meaning to make a point about for a while, but it’s something that’s ongoing and urgently needs to be addressed by the NHS. The Daily Mail recently hailed a ‘Victory for Christianity‘ in its murky, hate-filled pages, as someone who acted inappropriately at work was allowed to return to work, even though they were never fired anyway and were always simply suspended pending review.

It’s been a tough old time for those hard done by Christians of late here in PC GONE MAD GENDER BENDING BABY KILLING Britain. What with the draconian law stating that, shockingly, people who run businesses aren’t allowed to discriminate against people based on their sexuality (Suggestion: SSY Femi-Nazi Woofter roadtrip to Penzance?? We could descend on the town and really put the shits up them with our ceaseless arse-fucking), it’s almost as if the gay feminist mafia elite are trying to OUTLAW THE RIGHT TO HOLD BELIEFS!

Well, there’s some beliefs that should be outlawed, to be honest. The belief that it’s okay for you to use and manipulate your position as a worker in a public health service to put up blocks to or refuse someone access to an abortion that they want and need, for example.

The Mail’s “victory” was in fact the tale of an NHS worker who was suspended for distributing ideologically motivated lies in pamphlets about how abortion ruins womens lives. She never lost her job, and was in fact rewarded for not doing her job correctly by being offered a better job in a different department. She claimed she had been “bullied for expressing religious views”. But in fact it was her that was doing the bullying. She offered the misleading pamphlets to a colleague who worked in family planning, which amounts to attempting to persuade a worker who provides a vital medical service for women to either quit her “immoral” job or start fucking things up for women who came in to use the services. That’s an offensive way to conduct yourself while working for the public health service, and if there was any sense in the world the woman wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near family planning services ever again.

Thankfully, the health worker in question’s employer said:

‘The booklet implies that abortion can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, suicidal thoughts and increased risk of cancer. This could be very worrying and deeply offensive for women who may need an abortion and want balanced, sensible advice. We simply cannot allow NHS staff to distribute material that we know to be seriously unbalanced.’

Here’s a suggestion: if you don’t agree with providing medical services, DON’ T WORK FOR THE FUCKING NHS! It’s not a matter of “personal morality”, it’s a matter of you not doing the job you trained and signed up to do. If you have a fundamental disagreement with abortion, fine, no one’s forcing you to perform one. There are literally millions of other types of jobs which don’t involve administering abortion services. No one has the right to restrict the CHOICE of others to access abortions though, in any way – whether that’s murdering doctors, blocking the doors to clinics, or telling lies about abortion to women who need to have one. No one should be allowed to abuse their position of power (and that is exactly what is occurring when doctors refuse to give their permission for access to abortion services) to cause misery for women, and as a public service those who refuse to do their job or try to interfere with their opinions into the provision of and access to those services should lose their job immediately. They cannot be trusted with their power, and they should not be anywhere near the medical profession.

Giles Coren: just fuck off

Giles Coren – star of food history programme The Supersizers, posh food critic, winner of an award for writing the shittest sex scene of any novel in 2005, “Fuck the Poles” racist and general snobby bastard (see his twitter at any one given time for evidence) – has authored an article for the Daily Mail today. About the sexist comments made by Sky sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray (and his caught-on-camera sexual harassment), two old misogynists unable to accept that women are real people with the ability to work competently, and their subsequent sacking/resignation. Coren starts from the ever-promising position of ‘I’m not sexist, but…’ and from there on blunders into a horrifying public display of loathing for women that would shock even Tommy Sheridan.

The article is actually so offensive it makes the rest of the Mail’s content look like it’s been written by the Teletubbies loved up out their bins on MDMA. I can practically see the eternally offensive Jan Moir, Bel Mooney and Richard Littlejohn hugging each other and intently discussing how they totally now really get why hate and fear is just a media ploy to keep us from joining together in happiness and song. Coren’s article is THAT bad. Yes, I know it’s in the Daily Mail, so I shouldn’t expect better. That doesn’t make it okay for something this sexist to be published, especially as Giles Coren often presents himself as some kind of average liberal middle class guy whose opinions educated people should listen to. It’s like he’s tried to pack every offensive trope out there into the one piece. How bad the article is really can’t be explained adequately second hand, so we’ll just have to show you exactly what he said. And demolish his pish line by line.

“So why is it all right for women to be sexist about MEN?“

That’s his title. The piece isn’t even started and he’s already talking out his hole. Let’s make this clear: sexism involves power relations. For someone to discriminate against someone else, they have to hold the power to discriminate in the first place. Men hold this power, women do not. So while I’m sure there are women out there who have said unpleasant or untrue things about men, there is no sexism by women against men. It’s not a thing that is able to happen because that’s not the world that men and women live in. Just like how racism by blacks against whites isn’t a real thing.

Two thumbs up if you're a cunt!

And besides, MEN (the concept, i.e how men as a whole act and are encouraged to act) ARE deeply unpleasant. There is no low to which the concept of MEN won’t stoop. That’s of course not to say that all men are horrible. There are many lovely men who don’t do nasty things to women, especially outright nasty things. However, the concept of MEN dominates, usurps and controls both the concept of WOMEN and real individual women’s lives on a day to day basis.

“Andy Gray and Richard Keys are a couple of dull, flabby, middle-aged football bores and are just the sort of doddering old clowns you would expect to relax off camera by swapping ancient prejudices and poking fun at women — in this case a female linesman — for not understanding the offside rule.

You shouldn’t pass unflattering remarks about women behind their backs because it is not a well brought-up thing to do, and they needed to be told. I would never do it myself. Not because I am a feminist, but because I am a gentleman.”

And his classist prejudices show through. I don’t give a fuck if you were “well brought up” you posh dick, and I don’t want you to be a “gentleman”, I think we’d all just like it if you could get your head round the concept of being a decent human being. That’s a lot more worthwhile than being a “gentleman”, an outdated and patriarchal view of the world being the property of men and a space in which to dominate women. But, so long as they hold open the door and don’t use sweary words cause that’s what poor people do, apparently gentlemen have the moral highground. On everything.

Bear that paragraph in mind, as Giles seems to do a pretty good job of demolishing all of his protestations that he’s a nice guy who doesn’t talk smack about women in the rest of the article…

“We will hear an endless shrieking to ‘kick sexism out of football’; a PE teacher will be fired for telling his goalkeeper to ‘stop crying like a girl’; and a hapless League One manager will be deported for describing a fight between players as ‘handbags at dawn’”

No you won’t. Stop making shit up. Your slippery slope is a logical fallacy.

“There will be the endless apologies, public soul-searching and self-flagellation. And as usual the rest of us men will be expected to atone as a sex for a couple of remarks by two fat, superannuated fools on the telly, and to grovel for forgiveness with every snivel and cringe of our waking lives”

See above response. God, Giles, you really fucking do hate women don’t you. Get over yourself. Not everything is about you.

“Not that that’s anything new. To be a man in this country is constantly to have to apologise for oneself and to be ever so very careful about every sentence we speak or write which contains any reference at all to members of the opposite sex”

Nothing seems to be stopping you Giles from doing exactly what you say you can never do here. No one is making you apologise for anything. But you do have a duty to recognise your male privilege. And your white privilege. And your straight privilege. You don’t need to apologise for it – it’s not your fault you were born with these constructed social, economic and political advantages over so many others – but you do have to accept it, challenge it, and move on.

“While at the same time, and this is the shame of it, we ourselves are fair game for women. While sexism from men is the outstanding social crime of the modern world, women can say absolutely whatever they like about us”

Sexism from men is not “the outstanding social crime of the modern world”. Do you EVER read newspapers? Watch TV? Listen to conversations about women? I can only assume not,  because if you did you’d know that sexism is everywhere, all the time, and it never went away.

You have no idea what it’s like to be a woman. You have no idea what it’s like to have a man stand up to his full height and shout in his deepest voice to intimidate you because you said something that he disagreed with. You have no idea what it’s like to have men sneer at and talk over your contributions in classes and at work, male habits which are so ingrained many men don’t even notice they are doing it. You have no idea what it’s like to sprint from the bus stop to your front door because you are terrified that the man who is staring at you, jeering at you or following you (which happens so often you’d shit your pants if you had to experience it for a month) could hurt you.

Jo Brand: stabby stabby stabby manny manny manny

So no, Giles Coren, women can’t say absolutely whatever they like about men. MEN (the concept again) simply don’t allow it. But if a woman does make a point about the way that MEN behave, she’s perfectly fucking entitled to do so as I can guarantee it is based in truth and is brave,  knowing the kind of boorish comments people like you will inevitably throw back in her face when they wish to reassert their authority of her. Whether that be physically, mentally, or through a pathetic and cowardly Daily Mail article.

“Only last week, for example, Jo Brand, the newly crowned Best Female TV Comic at the British Comedy Awards, was on Have I Got News For You and replied to the question ‘What’s your favourite kind of man, Jo?’ by saying: ‘A dead one.’ Oh, how the audience fell about. And the other contestants, all male, chortled away too.

I’m not saying it wasn’t funny. I’m just saying we live in a world where the thorough-going awfulness, uselessness and superfluity of the male sex is such a given, that a frontline television comic can get big laughs by saying she’d prefer it if we were all dead.

And I’m trying to imagine a world in which I am on that show and they say, ‘What kind of women do you like, Giles?’ and I reply: ‘Dead ones.’ I just don’t think it would get the same laughs, do you?

Here’s another of Jo Brand’s (excellent) gags. ‘What’s the way to a man’s heart? Straight through the chest with a kitchen knife!’ Again, not unfunny. But predicated on the idea that killing men is hilarious. Whereas killing women, as we all know, is a very serious affair and not to be joked about.”

Did you ever think that maybe it’s not funny for men to joke about killing women because that’s precisely what men do across the world every week? Women are raped and killed by men who don’t like them, BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN, with everything that entails for the patriarchal psyche of ownership, not-letting-women-step-out-of-line, etc.

More than 2 women each week are killed by their current or ex partners. 1 in 4 women in the UK will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. Police receive a domestic violence call every minute, yet less than half of incidents are reported. Women are killed and harmed because of sexism. Men are not. And you think Jo Brand making a joke about men being useless therefore should enable men to make jokes/threats like that to women, when men are already out there doing it constantly? Fuck. Off.

And anyway, men DO make jokes like that all the time, to women’s faces. We’re back to Giles just making shit up again.

“It’s not just Brand, it’s all women. ‘What do you call the useless flap of skin attached to a penis?’ they joke. ‘A man!’ they all reply, and clink their chardonnay glasses and chortle till dawn. How on earth did this get to be OK?”

What Giles Coren is made of

And now, ‘women are all lushes’.

“I’ll tell you how. It is because pretty much from birth women are schooled by their mothers to deride men. They are sugar and spice, we are slugs and snails.

They are reflective and sensitive, while we run around kicking balls and shouting. And then as girls push towards puberty their mothers take them aside and tell them: ‘Boys are only after one thing!’”

MOTHERS ARE EVIL. EVIL EVIL WOMEN MOTHERS.

“The great lie. All men want is sex. Not so. If anything, it is women who think only of having it off. Girls on average lose their virginity much younger than boys and have more sexual partners in youth.”

OH MY GOD did he just say that the fact that young girls are pressured into early sexualisation and having sex with older boys is the same as women “thinking only of having it off”? There’s something seriously creepy about this statement.

“As a teenager, I was terribly shy about sex and yet girls were trying to do it with me all the time. I used to run, literally run, from their bedrooms when they tried it on. And yet women are allowed endlessly to harangue us with our supposed lechery”

And now we get to the crux of this whole article. Giles thinks he’s a “nice guy”, and therefore women are horrible. He’s got seriously issues with bitterness towards women, there’s a psychological connection of women with hate here. Giles is not a nice guy. See here for an excellent explanation of why the “nice guy” shtick is a misogynist bag of shite.

“And the prejudice festers. Harriet Harman says that men caused the banking crisis, and the harridan legions nod their heads. ‘If women ruled the world,’ they cry, ‘there would be no wars.’”

“Harridan legions”… FNASKJNFEKJNFHJESBFAKLM YOU ARE SUCH A SEXIST SHITEBAG.

“What nonsense. Women are far meaner, more brutal, aggressive, small-minded, jealous, petty and venal than any man.

If women ruled the world countries would be invaded because ‘she’s always been jealous of my feet’ and because ‘she looks down on me for going out to work’.

Millions would die, torture would increase. If women ruled the world there would be carnage.”

It’s getting to the point where I think I can just let Giles Coren’s deep rooted misogyny speak for itself. He’s truly horrible, isn’t he?

“And what sort of an insult is it anyway to suggest that most women don’t understand the offside rule? It’s true, for a start. Most women don’t. And most of them declare it proudly.”

Hang on, didn’t you start this article by saying how you totally didn’t approve of the sexist comments made by Gray and Keys? Did you forget about your ‘I’m not sexist, but…’ lie amidst all your mad rampaging sexism?

Oh and it is an insult, because beyond the casual sexism of the idea that women can’t be interested in or understand football, the person that Gray and Keys were saying didn’t understand the offside rule is a qualified linesman. That’s her job. She knows how to do it. They were suggesting otherwise because she is a woman, regardless of her obvious job competence. It wasn’t casual sexism it was a direct sexist slur on her abilities and character.

“Most of them use football as an example of one of their favourite gags, the one about how men never grow up, about how we’re all just children — most often manifested in the one where a mother-of-two says ‘I’ve got three children’, you raise an eyebrow, and she nods towards her husband. Hilarious.”

Did you forget your line on comedy gags about men, Giles? Jokes about killing men are okay, because they give you the opportunity to argue that jokes about killing women should be okay. But jokes about men being childish? How awful these so called “wives” and “girlfriends” must be if they find THAT funny. They should of course only laugh at what their man decrees is funny.

And nor are men, in this female narrative, merely puerile, aggressive and underdeveloped. They are hypochondriacs, too.

‘He’s got a touch of man flu,’ say the womenfolk and titter. But what nonsense is that? It is women who make a big fuss about mild discomfort, not men.

I have never had so much as a cold in my life, nor claimed to. I even suspect sometimes that the whole palaver about the pain of childbirth is a conspiracy to ride roughshod over men.

My own mother, a consultant anaesthetist herself, has always claimed that giving birth was a breeze but that she pretended it had been painful to build bargaining chips with my father.”

Did I miss the point at which this became a parody of sexist men? You seriously don’t believe childbirth is painful? Is it a ‘mild discomfort’? This is ridiculous because you obviously don’t believe that. You’re just saying that to get a rise. Conspiracy LOL.

So close and yet so far, ladies

And all this business about man flu – honestly, does any man really care if a woman suggests he has ‘manflu’? The vast majority of female partners will still act as caregivers for their poor manflued up partners, how horrible of them to make light of the fact that men are far less likely to feel pain on the level that a woman is throughout their lives.

“You look at shows like Loose Women and you wonder how on earth they get away with the terrible things they say about men. I went on once and it was horrific. I wanted to die.”

Next time, wish a bit harder.

“No male-hosted show could treat women the way those outsized harpies treat men”

“Outsized harpies”.. again with the ffskljnfhsebgjsbngkjsnegaak!!!

“They retire younger and live longer to such an extent that minor inequalities in pay levels are obliterated when you consider whose money pays for those 25 years of retirement. And it just isn’t fair that they are allowed to be so vile about us”

A 20% pay gap is not a minor inequality. Money might be alright for you, posh boy, but you’ve never had to live the life of a single mother.

Women are not vile about men. I like men who aren’t dicks, and I don’t like men who are. You don’t like any women. So get over yourself. Who knows how many men have raped, killed, hurt, humiliated or manipulated women, propped up by the heterosexual male dominated system, in the amount of time it took you to spit your misogyny at your computer and come up with possibly the world’s shittest article?

“I suppose, in a way, British men are like white people were in Nineties South Africa or young Germans after the Second World War.”

Oh here we go. No, British men are not like anything except privileged British men.

“We are expected to go through a period of atonement for the sins of our fathers. To be treated worse than we merit because of crimes previously committed in our name: in this case the crime of feeding, protecting, loving and nurturing women in accordance with our biological imperative”

Firstly, I think this article you’ve written proves conclusively that your sins when it comes to being a sexist prick are not your father’s, they are very much YOURS, happening right here and now.

Secondly, what? It’s not your ‘biological imperative’ to do anything, we are human beings capable of logical thought, not mating insects, who are probably more emotionally intelligent than you anyway. “The crime of feeding, protecting, loving and nurturing women”… there’s something about that sentence that is very controlling, very patriarchal, very abuse-enabling, and very full of shite.

“They don’t want that any more. They want to be linesmen. And so we have to let them tell us endlessly how they wish we were all dead.

If that’s not off-side, I don’t know what is.”

Yes, how dare women want to be treated with respect when doing a job that they’re qualified for and that they enjoy.

Weren’t you just saying how you found Jo Brand’s joke funny? Oh forget it, you’re obviously just confused about which unpleasant persona you’re playing at any one given time.

If you don’t want yet another row in the media about how you’re kind of a bit of a prick, maybe you should keep your pathological hatred of women to a more private arena. Your poor, poor wife.

Articles like this are not fun and games. They are dangerous. At a time when for once some sexist men have actually been taken to task for their sexist outbursts, people like Giles Coren come along on their white hetero middle class steeds of male honour and attempt to undermine it. Giles, you’re no good, and you have no place in journalism. And FYI Giles, when I’m harsh about you in this article, it’s NOT because you’re a man. It’s because you’ve said the disgusting things that you have. That’s your fault.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w

A public information announcment from Giles Coren’s brain.

UPDATE:

An SSP member sent this article to Giles Coren on twitter, and he gave this surprisingly uncunty response:

However, some of his twitter followers decided to go out of their way to prove just how sexist they could be:

No thanks, I'll stick with my vagina ta

No, but thanks for your confidence in women's ability to be legitimately angry about genuinely horrible statements regardless of whether they're bleeding or not

What a pleasant fellow

Thanks for entirely proving my point by firstly misquoting me and secondly calling me a 'poisonous bitch' for speaking an opinion that differs to a man's

Some people on the other hand, just don’t get it:

The idea that swearing delegitimises your argument is a heap of balls. Swearwords are some of the most nuanced and expressive language tools we have at our disposal. It's fine if you don't want to swear in your own points, but SSY likes to make use of swear words to express our real feelings better and without reservation. I don't care if you accept that or not.

No it doesn't. Lol. It just proves he said some out of order things, that's all. Men are not automatically right.

It's not challenging dogma, it's spreading lies intended to uphold patriarchy.

Lol, no, I'm really not a hippy

But thankfully there are some folk out there that get it, women who aren’t afraid to speak truth to patriarchy and who we’re very proud to share membership of the SSP with!:

Here come the Gards, so put yer half ounce up yer arse

At long long last, SSY’s favourite comedy hip hop outfit The Rubberbandits are getting the recognition beyond their Limerick empire that they deserve. Their single Horse Outside looks set to beat boring X Factor winner Lazy Decorator to the Irish Christmas number 1 spot.  They’ve earned the support of Fianna Fail politician and erstwhile hash dealer Willie O’Dea, Minister for Gee. They are no doubt knee deep in fanny as we speak.

But you don’t reach great heights without making a few enemies. Not everyone in Ireland has fallen in love with the charm and wit of the Bandits when they croon that they’d quite like to invite a hot bridesmaid back to a hotel for a finger and a shift.

The Bandits have found themselves subject to *crucial investigative journalism* determined to unmask these plastic bag-wearing, yoke-dropping foes. Irish papers have revealed their names, former schools, and the streets that they grew up on. The Daily Mail even printed pictures of Mr Chrome and Blindboy Boat Club’s lovely faces which you can click through to if you must, defeating the point of the comedy disguises and attempting to ruin a bit of the oul Bandits magic.

In an astounding feat of missing the point, the media have insisted on playing out a false dichotomy argument over whether the Bandits are too middle class to be rapping about drugs n horses, or if they are in fact glorifying the madcap drug-taking n horse-riding based lives of Limerick’s working classes.

Joe Duffy’s Liveline hosted a radio debate on the subject, which got off to a cracking start when Duffy asked Blindboy Boat Club if he could “talk properly” – apparently Limerick accents don’t make good radio copy. Willie O’Dea was on hand to defend what is after all a piece of comedy and should be treated as such. What ensued was an argument where Blindboy proved himself to be someone who is clever and thoughtful and clearly takes genuine pride in creating art. ‘Antony’, the naysayer, proved himself to be a bit of an idiot, with exchanges such as:

Antony: What’s coming out of that video is the usage and promotion of drugs. It’s a joke!

Blindboy: It is a joke, yeah! You’ve hit the nail on the head there, kid

BANDIT BLASPHEMERS

Blindboy carefully explains that, just like Father Ted repackaged the false images of ‘thick Irish people’ that Brits had in the 90s and sold it back to Britain in the form of comedy, the Bandits’ songs and live shows where they talk about Limerick youth culture and subculture are not promoting a bad image of Limerick like is being claimed, but rather are lampooning the image of Limerick presented in the Irish media. But the point isn’t even that. They’re not doing what they do with the set goal of specific social commentary. They’re creating their art based on what they experience and what strikes them as funny and what they want to create, and as artists it’s their absolute right to define what they do on their own terms. You can’t take a piece of art or a joke or a song in isolation and apply your own meaning to it and then go ranting about how immoral it is. The rules of acceptableness that are placed on society are fucking arbitrary pish, so we love the Rubberbandits for defending themselves in a good natured way against daft conservative humourless wankers.

Here in the Scottish Socialist Youth we’ve taken some amount of pelters in the past for our pish-taking attitude towards serious issues. Take for example our  treatment of the serious matter of former Glasgow City Council leader Steven Purcell’s “chemical dependency” and corruption. It’s how we choose to get our message across, because a) sometimes if you don’t laugh you’d cry, and b) we are ordinary young people who are able to see the funny side of things and we shouldn’t fucking have to apologise for that. We’ve also been criticised for not following the conventional rules of behaviour, such as being outspoken with our views on drugs (which shamefully seem to chime with scientific advice, but not government policy) – that harmful drugs like heroin should be provided safely to addicts on prescription, while recreational drugs should be decriminalised and perhaps even enjoyed from time to time. Crack open a bag o yokes and pass us a big fat J – we’re OUT OF CONTROL! Our former MSP Rosie Kane got pelters too for wearing jeans to the opening of Parliament in 2003 – it’s this fucking snobby attitude that you have to respect these ridiculous ‘rules’ invented by rich white guys to keep order or you can’t be sincere in your message. Basically, we understand where the Bandits are coming from and we respect their right to make all the satirical music they want.

Not for the first time, Blindboy has been forced to explain the concepts of ‘the unreliable narrator‘, ‘self-mocking’ and ‘having a sense of humour’ to po-faced kneejerk critics. When they put out their hilarious satire on armchair Republicanism, Up Da Ra, they were forced to defend themselves against accusations that they were disrespecting the memory of those who died for Irish freedom. It’s just balls.

At one point in the debate there’s a funny exchange where someone texts in to highlight the line in Horse Outside where Mr Chrome sings “I don’t pay no tax, fuck NCT”, with Willie O’Dea saying that they probably don’t earn enough to pay tax. Blindboy replies “that’s true!” It probably is true yunno, but there’s a spectacular sense of humour failure if you can’t understand that YOU’RE NOT REQUIRED TO PAY CAR TAX ON HORSES.

You can hear the full debate here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4y_24liaq0

This incredibly stupid argument on the virtues or otherwise of the Rubberbandits in the Irish Herald states that the “so-called band, the members of which remain unidentified but seem to get a kick out of dressing up like sinister masked Provos from the 1970s, extolling the virtues of drugs and the former Minister for Defence,” are basically evil. Lololololol, I don’t think I ever saw a picture of a man with an inside-out Spar bag on his head on TV accompanying an actor’s voice representing Gerry Adams, but maybe I’m mistaken and Martin McGuinness actually struck a six figure fashion advertising deal with Spar throughout the Troubles. The author, Sinead Ryan, is a prize chumpo who attempts to argue that artists aren’t allowed to define their own art, and that because the song wasn’t allowed on the radio unless they changed the word “fuck” to “suck” throughout that this means they are sell-outs who can’t call themselves artists. As Blindboy said “I’m an artist, but I looooove money, like Andy Warhol”. Clearly, Sinead Ryan has never had to worry about money, or wanted her work to reach a wider audience, or seen the comedy value in taking the fucking piss right out of the established channels of promoting pish identikit music. Sinead, chill the fuck out. It’s SATIRE. If you don’t like the “sinister” Bandits, fuck off and listen to Daniel O’Donnell.

Anyone who can seriously watch a funny song – about using your ownership of a horse advantageously to get yer hole – shoot up the charts and denounce all its fans as impressionable idiots who are incapable of understanding irony really doesn’t deserve a media platform for their shite views. The Rubberbandits are truly something special. They are intelligent, danceable, singalong-friendly and most importantly, fucking funny. They’re welcome to play to an SSY-filled audience in Glasgow any time, chalk it down.

And here’s the offending video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8

Bonus treats:

Merry Christmas. HASH4LIFE

New Bandits tune “Eamon De Valera Double Dropping Yokes”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4ZHBfo1j-A

It’s good that Willie O’Dea can take a feckin joke, saying to a radio host: “I can laugh at myself. I was? remorsefully lampooned by them and I didn’t ring you. They portray me selling hash and swearing on my tash that it’s decent hash”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY4ure_GSHw

That’s Limerick Citaaaaaaayyy – Fuck you Steven Forward!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYgZFm43ZN4

Russians, shortarse Frenchmen, artistic pictures of horses and people who duet with Blue: Just some of the things that the US government HATES

The publication last week of the first few batches of leaked US embassy cables has brought whistleblower website WikiLeaks – as well as the fate of its founder and editor in chief Julian Assange – dramatically to the front pages and top bills of news media around the world. As this article was being drafted, Assange, the website’s principal spokesperson and main public figure, is reported to be have been taken into custody in London, in connection with alleged sex offences in Stockholm in August this year. Unlike some others, SSY prefers to take rape allegations seriously, at least until substantial evidence suggests we should do otherwise.

To deal with this issue first, first of all let’s say something – Wikileaks is not Julian Assange, and Julian Assange is not Wikileaks. Attempting to repress and punish Wikileaks for being inconvenient and worrying to the establishment is not the same as a man being arrested because he is suspected of the very serious crime of rape. Let’s not confuse Assange with Wikileaks. Wikileaks (with Assange as its public face), as we will go on to discuss, has made a brilliant contribution to anti-imperialist activism and we absolutely applaud it for that. Do not let the fact that Wikileaks has got the right ideas about freedom of information blind us to the fact that rape is one of the most reprehensible crimes someone can commit, and that violence (sexual, physical, psychological, emotional) against women (which the overwhelming majority of the time goes unpunished) should be opposed in all its forms – and perpetrators brought to justice where it has been committed.. We offer no opinion on whether Julian Assange is guilty of the crimes that he has now been charged with. It wouldn’t be appropriate. But neither is it appropriate for socialists to promote the position that the women who have made allegations against him should be disbelieved, simply because Assange’s organisation Wikileaks do good things, or because of what the women have said on the internet in the past, or because they are women – which is what a lot of the ‘Defend Assange’ stuff out there on the interwebs is boiling down to. Just because we consider someone to be a “good man” who promotes some of the same ideals that we do does not mean that, if they HAVE abused women, they should get away with it, sticking it to the man yeah? Many men, men who consider themselves to be left wing, are using this arrest as an excuse to propagate often repeated rape myths, and this is unacceptable. Rape myths should always be challenged, no matter how suspicious you find the timing of Assange’s arrest. It’s sad to see people we respect, like Naomi Wolf join in the reactionary smear campaign against the women who reported Assange to the Swedish authorities. This is a misguided approach to anti-imperialism. You have to be anti-patriarchy too, or sorry, you’re not a socialist. For a brilliant article on the meaning of the word ‘consent’, visit Feministe. No means no, and tricking someone in to consenting to sex is rape. That goes in all cases, not just the ones where there’s no left wing icons who might be involved. Now, on to the substantial issue of the leaked cables..

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, originally adopting a wiki-style of organisation (similar to Wikipedia, where users could freely upload, edit and discuss documents. However it has since taken on a far tighter editorial policy, as it became clear the wiki format wasn’t appropriate for the organisation’s aims.

The ongoing release of US embassy cables – taken from the US military internet system SIPRNet (insert Terminator joke here) and representing a database of some quarter of a million secret communications from US embassies around the world – is just the latest in a long line of high profile stories broken by the organisation.

These include the website’s role in releasing the membership lists of the British National Party (BNP) in November 2008 and October 2009, the release of US military footage of an airstrike in Baghdad that appeared to show the gunning down of civilians and journalists, their involvement in the controversial so-called “climategate” leak of emails from the University of East Anglia and the 2009 Trafigura scandal concerning the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, and this year’s release of many thousands of secret documents concerning the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What's an assange? A smelly orange?

As Assange told an audience of journalists and students in London earlier this year, the idea behind the website was to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the internet to “find a way to not be scared to publish…anything”. Unlike the journalism of mainstream media organisations, WikiLeaks perceives of its duties being primarily to its sources – to publish what they say they will publish, not to step back or take things down; to protect those sources as much as possible – as well as to what Assange refers to as “achieving just reform”.

It is perhaps unsurprising that such a project has inspired a vitriolic reaction in the seat of power. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned the most recent leaks as life-endangering, ‘illegal’ and a threat to US national security. Others have taken this much further, with former Vice-Presidential candidate (and likely future Presidential candidate) Sarah Palin describing Assange as “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands” and calling for him to be “pursued with the urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders”, while other political leaders have openly called for his assassination. As has been repeatedly pointed out by WikiLeaks’ spokespeople and supporters, no evidence of anyone’s life being endangered has been forthcoming, and the timing of the releases and the care taken in their publication makes the endangerment of individuals unlikely. Also of note is that US authorities were approached prior to publication to ensure anything they felt might have been explicitly dangerous to individuals could be redacted – the US however refused to cooperate.

The embassy cables released to date have contained so many revelatory details that stories that would otherwise have ran for days have been almost buried in an avalanche of new disclosures. So far we have discovered that the US has been spying on UN officials, that leaders of various Arab states have been calling for a US attack on Iran (as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, despite opinion polls showing the populations of those countries perceive the US and Israel as by far the greatest threats in the region), that the Labour government “put measures in place” to protect the US during the Iraq inquiry, and much more. It’s a lot to sift through, and according to Assange only 200-odd cables out of a staggering 25,000 have been released so far. You can browse the cables by which country you want to hear US diplomacy staff slag off using this handy Guardian guide.

Wank, wank, daft guy, wank

In this then sense WikiLeaks is very much a political project, both with respect to press freedom and independence, and with challenging US power. In an online Q&A session with Guardian readers, it would even seem that Assange is informed by something of an anti-capitalist perspective. In response to a question about press freedom and the west, he answered:

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be “free” because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.”

However it would be misleading – as some have attempted – to try and claim WikiLeaks and Assange to any particular political current or outlook. As Assange told the audience in London earlier this year:

“[…]we can all have particular brands of politics, but I say it’s all bankrupt. And the reason it’s all bankrupt, and all current political theories are bankrupt…is because actually we don’t know what the hell is going on. And until we know the basic structures of our institutions, how they operate in practice… until you know that, how can you possibly make a diagnosis?”

In contrast to this, some on the left have argued that the leaks have told us nothing we didn’t already know. Leaving aside that reports so far have only covered a fraction of the database, this is clearly a bit of an overstatement. As with the Pentagon Papers undermining the US case for war in Vietnam, the leaking of the embassy cables has opened up aspects of US power to a level of scrutiny previously unimagined. While it mostly confirms what many of us already knew about the role of the US empire in world politics, it would be foolish to dismiss such knowledge as of no use, or to pretend that the details don’t matter. While the contents of the cables might not substantially change our understanding of global power relations and US imperialism, they will be a valuable resource for activists, journalists and historians.

Assange and Wikileaks’ lack of ideology beyond a commitment to sharing information and protecting and supporting whistleblowers is appropriate in the project of trying to create a genuinely free news media – even while it might sometimes be counterproductive for those with progressive aims (witness for example the tremendous – and unjustified – ammunition given to climate change-deniers by the release of the University of East Anglia emails last year). In cases like this, those who fund mainstream news outlets have been able to use their money and power to criticise scientific consensus, and nearly trash the reputation of some of the most valuable climate scientists in the world at present.

Tellingly, as the whistleblower’s website hints at what a genuinely free and critical news media might look like and achieve, mainstream press commentary – as well as some mind boggling leftie websites – has echoed the US government and right-wing politicians attacks as irresponsible and dangerous. The weakness of the mainstream media and its subservient relationship to political and economic power is what makes WikiLeaks so vitally important. What the US government and politicians have failed to grasp in focusing so much on Julian Assange is that WikiLeaks can and will continue without him; and if one site is shut down another can appear to take its place.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell our state secrets to Wikileaks

The man who the US government have identified as the source of the leaks, Bradley Manning, is now languishing in solitary confinement in a US army prison in Kuwait, facing 52 years in jail. A huge injustice, THIS is what you call a political arrest. Manning is a young Welsh guy, who joined the US army and found himself putting his intelligence and technological skills and to use working for US intelligence gathering agencies in Iraq. Evidently he realised the extent of the deception, unfairness and murder being committed by the American government, and the ease with which he could access so much secret information. He was already having a shit time in the army, especially badly treated by the repressive Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy which forces LGBT people to live a depressing lie or be kicked out of the army. For an example of how homophobic the rhetoric around this issue can be, check out this lovely piece by the vile Ann Coulter (choice quote: “Let’s check our “Gay Profile at a Glance” and … let’s see … desperate for acceptance … delusions of grandeur … yep, they’re both on the gay subset list!”). It’s a separate discussion, but if readers are interested in the debate around the campaign to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a short while ago there was an open letter sent to vocal campaigner Lady Gaga from a gay Iraqi fan which is worth a read.

Clearly, Manning was fucked off with working for an oppressive murder machine like the American government. A lot of people are, but Manning, it’s alleged, chose to do something about it, and he’ll go down in history for it.

Manning is suspected mainly based on this discussion with a former hacker, who reported him to the authorities. Whistleblowers put themselves at great risk to expose the awful truth about war and corrupt governments. They do an incredibly important job for democracy. All socialists and progressive people should support the growing campaign to defend Bradley Manning. Don’t fall prey to the reactionary idea that Wikileaks are “putting lives at risk” by revealing the truth about the American and other capitalist, imperialist governments. They’re saving lives. There have been 108, 094 documented civilian deaths in Iraq since the war began in 2003, and who knows how many haven’t been counted. Up to 34, 240 documented deaths in Afghanistan. We deserve the truth, and those innocent people deserved to live.

(Co-authored by Neil B)

But they might come across someone posting a Privilege Denying Dude somewhere, and realise what an arsehole he is. Also, a lot of internet memes are hopelessly misogynist, so it’s nice to see a little fightback. Spread it: http://privilegedenyingdude.tumblr.com/

For some theoretical guidance on how not to be a prick, also see: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

]]> http://ssy.org.uk/2010/11/privilege-denying-dude-is-privileged/feed/ 21 http://ssy.org.uk/2010/11/really-remembering-the-consequences-of-war/ http://ssy.org.uk/2010/11/really-remembering-the-consequences-of-war/#comments Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:50:45 +0000 Sarah http://ssy.org.uk/?p=4374

We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight the Taliban

Today is Remembrance Sunday, a day when we stop for a moment of silence, or watch veterans’ parades, or wear red poppies on our tops “to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts”.

It was originally named the Earl Haig Appeal after the man who caused tens of thousands of needless deaths in World War I. There is nothing to celebrate about the first World War. It was a completely unjustified war for colonies, wealth and markets.

Today, Remembrance Sunday is basically a state-enforced institution, where criticism and dissent of the principle of celebrating this is not on any level tolerated, and this year it has reached fever pitch. Virtually every UK citizen is subjected to a form of hysterical bullying to participate. No one is allowed to be featured on the BBC unless they are wearing a red poppy, all political leaders wear them – even if it deeply offends the people that they are visiting – and children are forced to buy and sell them in schools.

This year, it has arrived in a fanfare of glitz and glamour, with the commercialisation of Poppy Day more noticeable than ever before. The Saturdays opened the ‘celebrations’ in London this year, inexplicably. On The X Factor, that barometer of our society’s values, the judges wore £84.99 diamond encrusted poppies, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘conflict diamonds’. (This is of course unfair, we all know that Cheryl Cole has a deep sympathy and understanding for the sacrifices made at Ypres and the Somme, and is an avid fan of the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen). Obviously you’ve got to spend more to remember more.

At the heart of the “celebrations” this year has been the commodification of wholesale slaughter and the monetization of mass murder. The poppy has become a fashion statement, one that’s supposed to display your commitment to Britain, to ‘our heroes’ and to the continued fetishisation of the ‘glory’ of war. Wearing a poppy for many people is genuinely about remembering those who were forcefully drafted against their will into a horrific world war, but you can now buy t-shirts that proclaim ‘I *poppy* our heroes”. In today’s world, the ‘heroes’ fixation is a direct endorsement of the imperialist and unjust wars Britain is still undertaking in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Earl Haig: how can he be a hero? He doesn't even have any superpowers. Get back to us when you've been bitten by a radioactive spider.

Another reason people buy poppies and the various new related merchandise is because the poppy fund is a charity which provides for veteran soldiers. It’s an indictment of our fucked up priorities that we expend so much energy talking about how much we value the heroism of fighting for Britain in wars, yet it’s left to a charity to provide for those who have survived them. One in eleven prisoners in the UK formerly served in the armed forces. Up to a quarter of homeless people are former servicemen and women. There are countless veterans suffering from mental health issues who aren’t receiving proper support (although at least we no longer execute returned soldiers for suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder like we used to). The politicians that brandish their poppies are directly responsible for this – they don’t actually care about veterans – they prefer the idea of veterans to the reality of what life is like for those who have seen the horrors of war. The poppies they wear allow them to justify their inaction. It shouldn’t be left to charity donations to pay to look after veterans.

Here at SSY, we don’t agree with glorifying war and British imperialism. The actions of British troops today in Afghanistan and Iraq are far from heroic. For decades, the memory of the evils of fascism has been used to justify other imperialist conflicts which are in no way comparable, e.g. Kenya (even today, British forces based in Kenya for training continue to rape local women with impunity, which has been going on for three decades; these women are slandered by the British, and rejected by their own communities as well), Malaya, Yemen and Ireland. Remembrance Day, alongside the far more blatant Armed Forces Day, has been hijacked to promote and endorse the militarisation of British life and to encourage young people to sign up, for the “glory” of being remembered as a “hero” after you’ve been blown to bits fighting for the geopolitical and ideological aims of the elite who will never represent you.

We’re not the only ones who don’t appreciate every part of the message of the ideology of Remembrance Day. Legitimate dissent is not tolerated when it comes to Poppy Day – just look at the recent “ban sick bastards” style headlines when the Green Brigade, a left-wing Celtic fan group had a half time banner display in protest at the club’s decision to impose a poppy on the Celtic shirt, going against the wishes of the majority of fans. In Glasgow, it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of people who don’t appreciate being forced to participate in a celebration of British troops who caused misery in the north of Ireland for so many years. Like SSY, the Green Brigade has no problem with the individual choice to wear a red poppy, but rather to the bullying nature of the political campaign which expects everyone to wear poppies and to support the cause without reservation.

On a state visit to China last week, David Cameron and pals caused offence by wearing the poppy, without thinking of the fact that in the 19th Century British forces went to war with China to force them to accept imports of our opium (which is of course derived from poppies). This is a clear example of why a little bit more historical memory about the role of British forces and the British Empire in the world is necessary. The peoples who were wronged by Britain haven’t forgotten, even if we have.

This is what our generation does to remember the war dead. Not in our name, we don't want it to happen again

An official alternative to the poppy cult is the White Poppy Campaign, advocated by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The idea is to remember the deaths of all who have died in wars, not just soldiers, and to advocate peace, not militarisation. This campaign has not been without controversy. In 1986, Maggie Thatcher (gonny just die already?) expressed her “deep distaste” for the white poppy symbol, and their spread in Canada has proved contentious to the point of being banned from being sold at markets and has drawn public criticism from the Royal Canadian Legion. You’re unlikely to see a white poppy on tv, where red poppies are ubiquitous throughout November.

The above views might seem controversial to some, but this year, veterans (and even the Queen’s composer) have spoken out against the use of the red poppy as a “political tool”. Former SAS soldier Ben Griffin rightly stated that

“Calling our soldiers heroes is an attempt to stifle criticism of the wars we are fighting in.

It leads us to that most subtle piece of propaganda: You might not support the war but you must support our heroes, ergo you support the war.”

Remembrance Day should be about honouring those who died needlessly in needless wars. The best way to honour the dead, and the point of remembering, is to ensure it never happens again. Anti-militarism and dissent against war is the way to honour those people, not diamond encrusted poppies, military parades and the stifling of dissent. As a youth organisation, we are proud of our record of opposing military recruitment and the lies spread to young working class folk to persuade them to become cannon fodder for the imperialist war machine that is the British Army.

Last word goes to the late Harry Patch, the last surviving person to have served in World War I

“Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88VPZ74zk6w