media and culture
News and articles about work, policy and workers' struggles in the media and culture industries around the world, and analysis and reviews of art, culture and the media.
Chris Moyles - scab radio
Spectacularly tedious radio 'personality' Chris Moyles crossed the picket lines of his colleagues during the 2005 BBC strike against 4,000 job cuts.
Ignoring the wishes of his workmates, Moyles - who just one month earlier had recieved a £630,000 a year pay deal - presented his Radio One breakfast show as usual.
Moyles also struck controversy by racially offending actress Halle Berry.
France: strikes at financial paper Les Echos
Staff at the Daily paper voted to strike for a third time in three weeks after management reneged on promises.
Workers at the paper are concerned about plans by its owner Pearson, to sell it to LMVH. LMVH is currently the owner of La Tribune, Les Echos' less popular rival. Although LMVH is currently trying to sell La Tribune and its head, Bernard Arnault has pledged to sell La Tribune if he does buy Les Echos.
John, Augustus, 1878-1961
A biography of British artist and Bohemian Augustus John, with particular focus on his connection with the anarchist movement.
Augustus John and the Anarchists
Augustus John has often been cited as one of a few from the British artistic and intellectual milieu to have identified themselves with the anarchist movement. But Augustus John’s relationship with that movement was as ambivalent as his own life.
On Lice and Fleas: Observations Starting from the Conflict Between Iran and the USA
A new situationist analysis of the threat of war between Iran and Iraq and the way this functions to sustain the dominant society, plus some critical comments on the wave of proletarian struggles in Iran.
Congo: journalists attacked by police
A meeting of 100 journalists in Mbuji-Mayi was broken up by police on May 31st
The general assembly had been called by the local of the Congolese Press association (UNPC) to discuss the suspension of the co-ordinator of the local due to financial irregularities.
Fiji: minister attacks bloggers
Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, the interim attorney-general appointed after last year's coup, has criticised bloggers.
A local businessman, Ulaiasi Taoi, has been detained twice over the past month in relation to a blog and Mr Sayed-Khaiyum has warned of the dangers of bloggers using their anonymity to attack the government. A wave of blogs sprang up after the coup, with many bloggers publishing uncensored accounts of the coup and of the actions of its instigators once in power.
Traven, B. – An Anti-Biography
A short biography of the writer and anarchist, B Traven, also known as Feige, Ret Marut, Torsvan, Croves...
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B. TRAVEN – AN ANTI-BIOGRAPHY
"An author should have no other biography than his books."
“The biography of a creative man is completely unimportant.”
– B. Traven
– B. Traven
Black particularity reconsidered - Adolph L. Reed Jr.
An in-depth 1970s analysis of how the management of black dissent by the black American middle-class/professional elite helped restructure capitalism to its own advantage.
"[i]Black Power presupposed a mass-organizational model built on the assumption of a homogeneity of black political interests to be dealt with through community leadership. It is this notion of "black community" that has blocked development of a radical critique in the Civil Rights movement by contraposing an undifferentiated mass to a leadership stratum representing it.
1942-1944: US musicians recording ban
The musicians’ union called a ban on all commercial recordings, as part of a struggle to get royalties from record sales for a union fund for out-of-work musicians.
The union, the American Federation of Musicians, led by trumpeter James Petrillo, had previously opposed the recording of music, or “canned music”. Musicians were replaced with records in radio, and in cafes and bars bands were replaced with jukeboxes.
Audrey Hepburn - Dutch Resistance courier
Born of wealthy fascist parents, actress Audrey Helpburn became a courier and raised funds for the Dutch Resistance in World War II.
Her father was Joseph Anthony Hepburn-Ruston, a wealthy British banker and Mosleyite. Her mother was Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch baroness who descended from French and English kings.
Her father abandoned her, and her mother abandoned her fascist views following the Nazi occupation.
