media and culture
Life of a Daily Mail hack
A blog detailing the abuse suffered by reporters at the Daily Mail was quickly removed this week when it was picked up on by the Guardian and a number of media-watching blogs. Reproduced here are the missing blog posts detailing life in the newsroom under conservative tyrant Paul Dacre.
The editor is prone to issuing edicts which he contradicts within hours, or sometimes even minutes. For example he said at Afternoon Conference a few weeks ago that weather stories were an absolute priority. ‘Do I need to have it written in letters a foot high on the notice board behind the back bench that we must have weather stories?’ he said.
The return of "class warfare"
Recently we've been seeing a long lost phrase creeping back into the media - class warfare. Sadly, they're only talking about the opportunistic ranting of Gordon Brown.
What they definitely aren't talking about are the ever-nastier attacks of rich against poor, where the most vulnerable find their safety nets cut, their schools shut down and their public transport turned into a giant monopolistic cash cow while front line public services are quietly gutted for saleable meat.
The New York newsboys' strike of 1899
A short account of the successful 1899 strike of newspaper delivery boys in New York City.
Hawking newspapers in the 19th century was hard work. Rather than working for the newspaper itself, a newsboy—usually a kid or young teen from a poor family, often homeless himself—had to buy copies of the paper from the publisher, then sell them independently.
Film Fictions of the Iraq War
Tom Jennings examines television and cinema stories about the US/UK ‘war on terror’ in terms of the notion that ‘war is the health of the state’.
The Ill-Health of the State. Film review / essay – Tom Jennings
Hong Kong: Where anarchists and blackbirds sing about freedom
Brief report on anarchist elements in the Hong Kong activist scene ca. 2009, focusing on Lenny Guo of the band Blackbird, veteran of the 70s Collective.
Also deals with HK independent media, the Social Movement Resource Centre, and the 2005 WTO protests. By Norman Nawrocki of Rhythm Activism. Published in Fifth Estate #381 (2009). Posted here with permission. Photos in [url=http://libcom.org/files/Nawrocki:%20HK%20anarchist%20scene%20(2009).pdf]PDF[/url].
Marut, Ret: The Early B. Traven - James Goldwasser
A 1990s article surveying the then recently-acquired Ret Marut archive, now residing with the University of California. The documents confirm certain known facts of Marut's life and times, prior to his (now generally accepted) transformation into the reclusive anarchist novelist B. Traven. The collection also provides some further fuel for speculation on the life and identity of the enigma that remains B. Traven.
Marut and his partner Irene Mermet published the anti-war anarchist magazine "Der Zeigelbrenner" (The Brickmaker or Brickburner) throughout the 1st World war - and continued post-war, after Marut became a fugitive wanted for his participation in the Bavarian Council Republic.
I blame the parents!
Popular media coverage often lays the blame for youth problems at the feet of parents. New report shows that contrary to received opinion, parents actually take greater interest in what their kids are up to now and monitor their activities more.
You know what it's like, you turn on a radio phone-in show or watch some soapbox commentator on TV talk about the rise of 'anti-social crime' or 'youths misbehaving' and you don't have to listen longer than two minutes before someone embarks on a hysterical rant with 'you gotta ask, where are the parents?' and starts whinging about the 'DeCl1Ne oF f@mILee VaLeWs!1!!!1!'.
Surrealism in the Arab World
Artilce printed in the journal Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion no.3, 1976. Includes The Manifesto of the Arab Surrealist Movement, 1975.
The current resurgence of surrealism in the Arab world is a revolutionary development of the greatest significance, demonstrating once more that the strategy of the unfettered imagination is always and necessarily global.
Muzak to my ears - canned music and class struggle
Public space and muzak as policing.
Muzak to my ears
"If you want more Mozart in your life, start loitering."
Art as Form of Reality - Herbert Marcuse
Marcuse discusses the traditional conservative role of art in society, artistic challenges to traditional art forms in the 1970s - and what role art might still play in a liberated society.
"Art itself appears as part and force of the tradition which perpetuates that which is, and prevents the realization of that which can and ought to be."
