MEDIA_ACTIVIST JAY BAKER

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Survival of the Fittest?

"Make poverty history." We've heard that a lot. Then the economic crisis hit, and such concepts got conveniently put on the back-burner by powerful people. It hit, and it hit hard, but some of us weren't really surprised; in fact, we'd been warning people about it for quite a while.

As I've said before, you can't remove workers' rights in the workplace, and then ship the rest of the jobs overseas to increase profits and put the poor the furthest behind the rich they've been in forty years...without giving them access to credit (debt). And you can't keep filling the bottom of the barrel with debt without the bottom breaking open and everything falling out from under you.

The media quickly worked to refer to the crisis as the Credit CrunchTM, as though an unavoidable natural phenomenon, and a cereal you have to swallow down and go about your daily business. As is common by intellectual capitalists and Social Darwinists, while they tried to apply laws of nature onto society and politics, referring to the whole thing as a freak of nature, they also kept talking about the "survival of the fittest."

In my homeland, Great Britain, the government moved fast to bail-out the banks who had suddenly found themselves on the brink of destruction. The media drew attention to it, but the focus of their stories were not questioning the bail-outs themselves, but the behaviour of the bankers who were getting bonuses and posting profits in the aftermath - the only scenario where someone was given a raise for doing a bad job! What the media failed to do was question the bailout itself. Hardly anyone did. Funny, huh?

I know what you're thinking, "Well, the banks had to be rescued, because without them our economy might completely collapse, right?" Well, yeah, maybe. But when we talk about "banks," are we talking about the role banks play in our economy, or specific banks - run by corporations? Interestingly, when these corporations - these businesses - failed, suddenly the Social Darwinists weren't using the phrase "survival of the fittest" so much anymore. They weren't cheering for the dying dire banks to be destroyed through a natural selection process of elimination. Even though Metro, Virgin, and even Tesco had suddenly emerged ready to "step up to the plate" as the next line of banks to meet the demand, these older banks - these businesses, remember - were being bailed-out by their buddies in power: Labour, Tory, Same Old Story.

Yeah, the Tories can't comment, for sure - they are, after all, the ones who so loved the Social Darwinist approach to economics by the likes of Milton Friedman that they began massive deregulation of the financial sector years ago, giving the bankers free rein to run amok, with no concern for the disastrous possibilities...because those at the bottom of the barrel will take the brunt of the blow when they're all crushed and "crunched." The bankers - and maybe even the politicians who gave them license - committed financial terrorism on the population, and, as financial pundit Max Keiser suggests, ought to be prosecuted in the Hague.

But the banks have been bailed-out - to the tune of over £1.5 trillion! And why? Well, sure, the likes of RBS have been largely taken under public control, but we still have no say in where their profits are invested (in their case, towards environmental destruction and human rights abuses). And it's still £1.5 trillion we're talking about here!

What else might they have done with that £1.5 trillion? Well, I guess, as my mother always said since I was a kid, we have to "look at the cause, and not the cure." In other words, we ought to be pro-active, not merely reactive. So, will people in poverty without any widespread long-term stable job prospects still seek access to credit? Heck, yeah! Of course they will. That's not going to change unless the whole system changes; until corporations are taxed properly and operate properly, and money is more equally distributed so that people aren't homeless or hungry while rich white men are clinking their champagne glasses together on yachts paid for by overblown bonuses.

Yep, British citizens all across the country are in debt. And while they're in such a bad situation - just as with the poor countries in the developing world indebted to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank - the most decent, humane thing to do, if possible, would be to clear their debts; scrap it all.

But to bail-out the people instead of the banks would cost a lot of money, right? Yeah, there are a lot of citizens in Britain who are bogged-down in debt thanks to loans and mortgages and credit cards. It'd take a lot of money to re-set them all back to zero and liberate the entire population! It'd take a lot of money indeed. In fact, the debt of all citizens in the United Kingdom amounts to...wait for it...£1.5 trillion.

That's right. With the amount of money the politicians - the elite - unilaterally decided to use to bail-out their buddies in the financial sector most of them wanted deregulated, all the debts of all the people in the entire country could have been completely scrapped; gone; ka-put! And you, me, and each and every one of us would be debt-free, overnight. Can you imagine the change felt across the country? Can you imagine the people that would liberate? Citizens going to their jobs free from worry about repaying their debts. No more calls from the bullying collection agencies. No more payments on your mortgage. No more County Court Judgments. Everything you possess, truly owned by you.

It could have happened - with the £1.5 trillion the politicians decided to give to those few banking businesses instead, and now say that those private sector companies have cost the treasury so much money that all the poor people in the country - still, in fact, worrying about their debts - will see their public services slashed as well. A double-whammy! They're taking public money and giving it to private companies. So let's call it what it is: reverse socialism; taking from the poor (the taxpayers) and giving it to the rich (the banking businesses).

Of course, the media and politicians are still telling us that it needed to be done; that the financial sector is so very crucial to our country, and its economy. Is it? Is it really? Let's look at the area in which I work, for example. Media? Pah, pretty trivial stuff, right? Well, aside from the fact that money that could have been invested in cultural industries in communities all across Britain for weeks, months, and even years went instead towards some kind of two-week show in London called "the Olympics," the cultural industry itself is massively undervalued by those in power. But is it comparable to the mighty financial sector? Let's look at the facts.

The financial sector employs about 1million people and accounts for 8% of the GDP. That's fairly significant, right? But the cultural sector employs 1.3million people for 5% of the GDP! Wow...pretty close, huh? Yet the cultural sector is experiencing huge cuts, not just for the Olympics, but for the sake of it, while the financial sector, the failed sector, is gifted £1.5 trillion! (And don't even get me started on social audits that show the benefits culture gives to the people.) Can you imagine a cultural company - such as mine, SilenceBreaker Media - asking the government to be "bailed-out" because I'd badly managed it and run it into the ground (as did the board of directors of my last company after I'd left that)? They'd say "too bad...that's survival of the fittest."

Strangely, everything the Social Darwinists said to excuse their massive dominance and exploitation over the people is no longer applicable to themselves. When their buddies are in trouble, they're bailed out. When it's us in trouble, we get a big "FU." They have had us brought to our knees since the 1980s, when they closed our industries and deregulated those of their buddies. The last thing we should be doing while we're down on our knees is looking up and worshipping them and their business interests. We should be hitting them in their bollocks. We should be hitting them where it hurts. We should be changing the flow of capital.

Make affluence history.

- Jay Baker; South Yorkshire, England

Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here.

Labels: bailout, banks, Conservative Party, intellectual capitalism, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The Big Red One: Santa Clause IV

It's been an interesting year. I've said before that New Labour is a failed brand: nobody asked for New Labour, nobody wanted New Labour, nobody needed New Labour. Re-branding doesn't work when your head honchos love it, but your target market hate it. In 1997, people were so sick to their stomachs of the Conservatives that, heck, they'd have even voted en masse for my beloved Doncaster Rovers team as the next cabinet, if that was the alternative (and back then, they even sucked at soccer - now they're doing well in the Championship and beating teams like Bristol City, which of course I'm not shouting about as I sit here at Bristol International Airport awaiting a flight...to socialist Spain).

Speaking of socialism, I've also said that New Labour are now doomed unless they drop the "New" and return to some of the values they had back when they formed at the turn of the century - a group of trade unionists sitting in the Good Woman pub in St Sepulchre Gate in Doncaster drafting up a proposal to the trade union congress to create a party for the people, a party for the workers: a Labour Party. The Big Red One! Here we are, a century later, and they're almost unrecognizable, and considered virtually unelectable.

Yep, after all the damage Thatcher's Tories did to Britain, 1997 finally saw the working classes mobilize and make sure Labour got into power. What they didn't realize, however, was that New Labour meant Tory LiteTM. Tory Tony Blair scrapped his party's Clause IV (devotion to nationalization of industry), which may not have seemed like a big deal, had it not been for the fact that what it actually symbolized was Blair's devotion to the very opposite: privatization - of areas even Thatcher was hesitant to touch. Blair was able to do this, of course, as a wolf in sheep's clothing; a very dangerous man indeed. And now? Well, today we have his successor, Gordon Brown, trying his best at damage control while leading a party his predecessor put towards privatization, leaving Britain ripe for the pickings of a Tory Party salivating at the thought of finally selling off every last little piece of the country to anyone with the money to buy (their pals). Yeah: thanks - ironically - to New Labour, Tories are more excited than John Major in Edwina Curry's bedroom; their wildest dreams now almost a reality. Almost.

The thing is, New Labour have faced a backlash because of these policies, and today's Independent published results of a poll showing that a massive amount of British citizens still feel the Tory toffs favour the privileged few. And 2009 has seen the demise of New Labour's best-laid right-wing plans.

In 2009, Blair admitted he committed war crimes, compulsory identity cards were essentially abandoned, the plans to privatize the postal service were scrapped, certain banks were taken back into government ownership, and, with an overwhelming 70% of the British public wanting Thatcher's privatized railways back under government control, it actually started to happen. As if the message was not clear enough over the last decade of diminishing votes for the New Labour brand: Britain wanted its working class party back. From the call centre operators to the retail checkout clerks, it wanted a Labour Party again.

So, with the coal of my hometown barely a memory, Santa Claus gets to safely land at the bottom of my chimney with a chance of granting my wish of what I - like most of the working class mass majority - want for Christmas: the return of the Labour Party.

The New Year will bring us a renewed push from the Tory toffs to re-brand themselves, too, as less posh, more relatable, and a far cry from Thatcher's Milton Friedman economics that led to a devastating economic crisis - but it's more of the same. Incredibly, their solution to the crisis has been to repeat what was the problem in the first place: selling off public services, privatization, and deregulation for their banker buddies. What Gordon Brown and Labour have to do, then, is show us what - if anything - is left of the Labour Party that represented the workers; the working class. They have to show us the Big Red One at its biggest and best!

A defining moment in the history of British politics is almost here. Interestingly enough, for Labour to show a shred of integrity means they can still stay in power, while to fail to kick their habit - this new addiction to capitalism - means certain defeat, and a nation wallowing in the mock of avarice.

- Jay Baker; Bristol, England

Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here.

Labels: Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour, Tony Blair

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Remember, Remember...

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot
I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot...

My next book, Pissing in the Mainstream, looks into the history of propaganda powers used to influence the people to endorse politicians who act in opposition to the direct interests of those very people. Whether it be the swastika formerly used by peace-loving Hindus and Buddhists, or the Union Jack flag flown as Nazis were defeated now being waved by Nazis in Britain, symbols have been given power all through history. In the movie masterpiece V For Vendetta the protagonist, V, claims, "A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world." Influenced by Guy Fawkes' historic attempt to avenge his persecuted people by trying to blow up Britain's Parliament building, V sets out to do the same after a member of the Conservative Party uses desperation and fear to rise to power and create a fascist regime. The film was based on the book written by Alan Moore, who created the story during "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister of the U.K.

Symbols have power, and are often co-opted by fascists. But other right-wing politicians have also co-opted holidays: International Workers' Day (May Day) was changed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower into "Law Day" - a holiday to acknowledge the importance of laws, far different to the original meanings of the day that used to be about freedom, liberation, and the powers of the people in the face of often-oppressive authority. As Pissing in the Mainstream looks at, corporations also co-opt things to this day, from skater and punk countercultures to the "green-washing" of their products as supposedly ethical.

In the U.K., there are few holidays more "British" than the May Day we still believe in...and Guy Fawkes Night. While the authorities have failed to co-opt and pervert May Day, they have almost succeeded in doing so with Guy Fawkes Night, once an evening of remembrance for freedom against oppressive authority, now often simply referred to as "Bonfire Night," where children create effigies of Guy Fawkes and ask for "a penny for the Guy," before throwing him on a fire and watching him burn. But, of course, Guy Fawkes Night in its original form actually celebrates the freedom fighter from our history, and we should all do so on this night. Not least because, come next May Day, a member of the Conservative Party might very well be coming to power again.

The first British general election in which I was able to vote - in 1997 - the Labour Party exploited the weak, dying, grey Conservatives led by Thatcher's grey successor, John Major, by taking their place in government thanks to a landslide. Gone, claimed party activists, were the days of Labour leader Neil Kinnock and James Callaghan before him, both of whom failed to truly work with and serve the unions that built their party. What actually replaced that and brought Labour to power, though, was its scrapping of its remaining socialist principles (Clause IV, in particular), becoming New Labour, and successfully wooing businessmen such as media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who had his supposedly "fair" national newspaper, The Sun, back New Labour leader Tony Blair in return for promises not to reverse the Conservatives' anti-union laws or deregulation of the media and financial sectors.

With the promise that "things can only get better," New Labour and Tony Blair had Britain buzzing with excitement, despite the fact things couldn't have gotten much bloody worse under John Major and his Tories. With this typically British modesty, the electorate sat back and tolerated a party whose presence in government was almost entirely based on the principle that "it could be worse." It's like being in a Nazi concentration camp saying, "Hey, they've tortured us, but not gassed us yet - it could be worse!" while singing along to "things can only get better..."

Well, they didn't get better for those poor bastards in the concentration camps, and they didn't particularly improve for us British folk, either. Blair's New Labour meant new laws: one created for about every day he resided in 10 Downing Street, with privatised prisons meaning profit per prisoner for such discredited and disgraceful corporations as Wackenhut. It also meant more surveillance, with millions of CCTV cameras that didn't prevent crime, only record it enough to provide footage for entire episodes of Cops! It meant freezing arts funding after they had already delivered an initial promised funding boost. It meant waging an illegal war against Iraq based on a lie perpetuated by Murdoch's media. And, of course, it meant blaming immigrants for everything that was wrong with the country while betraying the working class, lethal ingredients leaving a void filled by the racist, sexist, homophobic Nazi group in suits, the BNP.

On May 1st, 2005, I was one of those calling for the British people to "give Labour a bloody nose" in the general election, and we did, leaving them with a reduced majority in parliament. On May 5th, I predicted Gordon Brown would succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister, leaving us (like the United States at the time) with an unelected leader. That wasn't the only thing I got right: I also claimed "the end is the beginning is the end," because "The boring uncharismatic corpses are rising from the grave, this time to take Labour back with them into the underworld like they did with the Tories" - due to the fact Brown lacked the personality of Blair but inherited his baggage. I also stated, on March 13th of this year, that Labour's only chance to save itself was to once again embrace the working class, because the more that mass majority stay home (and some of them desperately vote for the BNP), the more Labour will lose. They haven't done that, and unless they do at some point, they're facing a very very long future in "opposition." Even Murdoch's jumped ship, without yet throwing his support back behind the Tories.

Sure enough, as we approach the prospect of a Gordon Brown - David Cameron debate, it's looking worse than ever for Labour. Remember that infamous debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who was sweating like a hog? Recently, Andrew Marr interviewed Gordon Brown and questioned him about potential painkiller dependency, which made him slowly start to sweat to the extent that the beads of perspiration were clearly visible on his forehead (and Brown - unlike Nixon - had makeup on). Now, of course I'm not comparing David Cameron to JFK. Hell, no! But Brown, like Nixon, comes across as awkward, lumbering, lame, and past his prime, just as every world leader seems to go grey-haired during their term (Reagan, Blair, Bush Sr and Jr...and Clinton no doubt would have too, had he not already been a "silver-haired fox.")

In the end, all politicians show their true colours. And David Cameron isn't just a blue-blooded Eton toff - he's a Tory. Forgotten exactly what a Tory is?

Remember, remember everything the Tories ever did: this is the same elite exclusive club that opposed the abolition of slavery, opposed women's suffrage, attacked workers' rights and smashed unions, slashed funding in the creative industries, sold the railways that 70% of the British population now want back in government control, and aggressively pursued deregulation of media and the financial sector that left us in the economic mess we're in. Oh yes, things can get worse, as I overheard in the newsagents' the other morning: "I can't believe all this talk about the Tories!," said one older woman. "Do people not remember what they did to us?" We must remember. Because just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it very well could.

We have to brace ourselves now. Because whatever is wrong for us in Britain today, can and will get worse under the Tories - and they'll fire the first shots, so we have to be armed and ready with knowledge. I'm calling on everyone to mobilise themselves, their family, their friends - even people they don't like much - to make sure they take votes away from the Tories at the next general election. I don't even give a damn where the votes go to: we have to vote for anybody but Tories.

The hanging of Guy Fawkes for attempting to destroy the government showed that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Now, a hung parliament might be the answer to all our hopes in these desperate times.

- Jay Baker; South Yorkshire

You can read a compilation of Jay Baker's best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in his brand-new book "Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist," available here.

Labels: David Cameron, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair

Friday, March 13, 2009

An End to Brown-Nosing

"(Milton) Friedman created this crisis! He is dead and, really, it's too bad. I'd like to see him arraigned before the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity. With his idea that market operation is perfect, he let all greed, all human voracity, express itself openly." - Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France

Let's go back in time eighty years, before it all began...

The Wall Street crash of 1929 was economically devastating for the United States, and its knock-on effect was felt across the Atlantic, in my homeland of Britain; the reverberations of which would affect my grandfather (and, therefore, my father) to forever fear the "rainy day" and hold onto as much cash as possible at all costs (when my grandfather died - after successfully resisting ever opening a bank account - literally thousands of pounds was found, in cold crisp cash, in hiding places all over his house).

On top of the Great Depression, Britain had even greater financial difficulties following the Second World War of 1939-1945, which drained much of its remaining resources in the fight against fascism. By this time, economist John Maynard Keynes had arrived to identify the solutions to these problems, and put in place a series of proposals for measures that were adopted by the British government.

While U.S. President Franklin D Roosevelt was enjoying the realisation of his "New Deal" economic stimulus programmes, post-war Prime Minister Clement Attlee (now considered to be the best British premier of the 20th century) utilised the Beveridge Report that nationalised many industries, funded education, provided welfare, and created the National Health Service - all of which were accepted as backbones of British society for decades...until the Conservative Party's Margaret Thatcher came along, breaking its back, and brandishing her own Ridley Report that recommended smashing the strongest unions by brute force in order to reduce workers' rights, which she did by defeating the National Union of Mineworkers in 1985. Along with Republican Ronald Reagan, she then embraced economist Milton Friedman's ideas of privatisation and deregulation and essentially everything that led to our current troubles.

On May 6th, 2005, I wrote a blog about the British election titled "The End is the Beginning is the End," in which I predicted Gordon Brown would, indeed, replace Tony Blair as Prime Minister. In that blog, I also called Brown "a darling of the big business Brown-nosing lobbyists." Also predicting that Brown's lack of charisma would lead to Labour's eventual defeat, I suggested this might create an opportunity for the socialist back-benchers and trade unionists to take back control of the party. That's how it unfolded. That's how it began.

Blair, discredited largely by his decision to illegally invade Iraq on top of his continuation (and, arguably, extension) of Thatcherism, resigned as Prime Minister, and Gordon Brown, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer forced to fund such decisions, finally took his place. Brown's since inherited financial shockwaves strong enough to send an economic tsunami across the ocean; the biggest since the original crash, today a "crunch."

Hilariously, it's the Tories who are claiming they're the ones to do something different! And while Brown's not totally to blame for this mess, nor is he the Keynesian problem-solver he'd like to believe, and he has to recognise that his lack of popularity is indeed precisely because there's not enough difference between the major parties. Next you'll be telling me that the Liberal Democrats are for tuition fees and war in the Middle East! Wait, they are? Oh, well, there you go.

There has to be investment in welfare, in education, in health-care, in transport, in training, and in the cultural sector, which will benefit other sectors, too. Capitalism has failed, and socialism is no longer a dirty word. It's the only option left now, logically. But do Labour have the guts to re-embrace it at this hour?

Last night here in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire I attended a meeting called "Re-engaging Citizens in Democratic Politics" with Prof Gerry Stoker (who wrote Why Politics Matters) and Sheffield University's very own Prof Colin Hay (author of Why We Hate Politics). It was an interesting event seeking to look at why people are turned-off by politics, with topics ranging from election reform to the importance of politicians interacting with people more. I think it goes much further, much deeper, and much darker than that. If you're still awake and reading this, I'll tell you what I took from the findings...

According to statistics pointed-out by the professors, the working class are less likely to vote than anyone else, and voter turn-out plummeted as soon as New Labour rose to power. Now, these things seem to state something very obvious: once Labour allowed itself to be guided by the twice-disgraced Peter Mandelson, away from social democracy and towards embracing big business, the mass majority of working class people, feeling betrayed, simply stayed at home, or decided to protest.

Anyone with a memory not affected by two hundred satellite channels of (un)reality shows and eMpTyV editing knows the Tories won't do better if they get into power; they themselves are at the root cause of the whole situation. But even if Gordon Brown is booted and - as I've been predicting - David Miliband becomes Labour leader, it won't make much difference because the party itself isn't much different so long as it's New Labour.

Milliband's ready to receive the Obama treatment, giving the perception of ChangeTM and HopeTM with no tangible substance to go with the style. Sure, his father was a Marxist, but both Blair and Brown were considered to be socialists once, too. He may be referred to as a social democrat, but his voting record is absolutely appalling. No wonder we don't vote, then. Like Obama, Miliband is a slippery fish, only likely to offer very light relief. No, the party needs fundamental across-the-board changes.

Here in Britain today, we have all three major political parties on the right. This means that not a single one of them reflects the interests of the mass majority; the working class population. There is no representation whatsoever of any sense of spectrum in politics, of anything other than their own greed and corporate friends.

That is why fewer and fewer people are engaged in the democratic process - it's like going to a supermarket and having a choice between Coke and Pepsi: sure, they're constantly engaged in fierce competition with each other, but both are bad for you; it's just that one is red and the other is blue. That's pretty much it. When we go into a bar and ask for a "Jack Daniels and Coke" and the bartender replies "Is Pepsi okay?" we tell them of course it is, because most sane people really couldn't give a shit - there's no significant difference! It's the same with the major political parties: there's no difference, so we don't give a shit. Thus, low turnout.

Labour has to turn back now. They have to stop the foreign policy of aggression, they have to stop privatisation, they have to stop ignoring the unions, they have to stop selling off public housing, they have to stop eroding civil liberties; all of it. They must stop now and turn back, because it's the only way they can save themselves long-term, and save us. Like the anti-heroes of The Italian Job, they're finding themselves in a money-filled bus that's on the edge of a cliff, but with Michael Caine nowhere in sight to offer "a great idea."

Sometimes we find ourselves back where we began. But it's inevitable when we go around in circles, in the same place. Now is the time to stick it to New Labour. And the Tories. Heck, the Liberal Democrats, too. Their warmongering corporate interests and their ilk from elsewhere must be held accountable. That's why, on April Fools Day, people are heading to London as the G20 arrive for their little conference. The bailed-out bankers and Brown-nosing lobbyists will be subjected to the wrath of the commoner.

This common man, for one, will be there to play the fool. I hope you will, too.

- Jay Baker; Doncaster, England

Labels: Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour, Tony Blair

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Angel of the Public Interest

"The night after I was sworn in, I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come." - Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell, an avid deregulation advocate and son of Colin Powell.

Does media matter? That's what I'm asked a lot.

Well, ask yourself how many of your opinions have been formed by something you heard, something you saw; a television show, a magazine, a song, a movie, a newspaper, or even a conversation - which, in turn, was likely largely based on opinions formed from...media! Sorry, but there's really no way around it, honey. Media controls the world. That's just how it is. The more we're informed, the more our opinions are formed.

But who controls the media? I guess that's pretty important, then, eh? Well, unfortunately, it's being left to rich, greedy, white, right-wing men in suits who - funnily enough - have the tendency to tell twisted tales to the people consuming their media, so that they keep hating each other and voting the right-wing political parties into power. That's pretty much how the whole thing works, right there.

In Britain, after boom-and-bust Conservative strategies left the incoming Labour government in economic turmoil - subjected to the (first) Winter of Discontent - Margaret Thatcher led the Tories back to power in 1979 with help from not just the clever, cynical, fake and now-infamous billboard poster designed by advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, but also Rupert Murdoch's tabloid newspaper The Sun encouraging the population to vote for the Tories, like an evil nanny feeding a starving child arsenic and telling them "It's good for you," and it being trustingly gulped back.

No doubt many working class people - feeling that Labour had already significantly compromised their socialist approach moulded three decades earlier by the great Clement Attlee - felt less enthusiastic about voting for Labour again. That's to be expected. But it was predominantly the less industrial, more middle class, more suburban south of England that provided the push needed to solidify the support necessary to put in - and keep in - a Conservative government, all the way to 1997.

The Tories didn't simply fall from favour in 1997. No, it's no coincidence that Rupert Murdoch had become impressed by Tony Blair's "Third Way" route for New Labour that promised to continue the media deregulation started by Thatcherism - so much so that he had his News Corporation, and indeed The Sun, support them...resulting, of course, in their rise to power. And also resulting in deregulation and near-monopolisation of the media for Mr Murdoch.

Sure enough, Blair's Britain continued along that path, as did Bush's United States. In 2003, Murdoch claimed Bush "will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn...I'm optimistic it will be the former." He put his Fox News Network to work on making his hopes a reality, almost always portraying Bush in a good light, discrediting his critics, and - most crucially - omitting certain facts about him and his party, only increasing the role of the channel as being, in actuality, Faux News, while Murdoch bought MySpace two years later, and continued his quest for his right-wing domination of the media world, and the people of the planet showed the propaganda wasn't completely succeeding as millions marched in streets across the globe in opposition to the UK-US led illegal invasion of Iraq.

The Bush administration, of course, didn't let these deeds go without reward. In the spring of that same year, Colin Powell's son, Michael Powell, in his role as chief of the Federal Communications Commission, set about dismissing thirty year-old rules while further loosening restrictions on just how much media could be controlled by a single company like News Corp. These changes threatened to allow a single network to buy stations that, combined, reached as much as a staggering 45% of the American people.

Think about that for a moment: one ideology, one message, one slant - bombarding as many as almost a half of all Americans. Murdoch could control the information of entire cities in the world's most powerful nation. Yep, deregulation was still being attempted in return for propaganda and campaign funds donated to the bigwigs by the media moguls. It was becoming a tired old sick joke.

Speaking of sick jokes, Powell simply stated, "The night after I was sworn in, I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest...I waited all night, but she did not come." This pissed off a lot of people, with leading media activist Aliza Dichter responding, "Since he had trouble seeing one angel that dreadful night on March 22nd, we shall descend upon him in droves!" and Indy Media announcing "We encourage all Angels such as yourself to come to the gathering dressed in your best Angel garb - halo, wings, glitter, the whole nine yards. (If no angel gear, come anyway!)"

They're still waiting for the droves of angels to descend on the FCC, and I'm very tempted to come to Washington, D.C. myself. There are all kinds of media activist opportunities there, because it's the seat of power, and if I'm allowed there, I'll be helping to kick the legs from under it along with the rest of the people wanting change through responsible, fair media.

Barack Obama's great. The media has pleasantly focused on the fact that, for the first time ever, an African-American now resides in the White House. Why trivialise it? Why reduce it to tokenism? He got where he is today because he wasn't Colin Powell; he represented the wishes and hopes and dreams of America. He made promises he is already struggling to keep while under pressure from the same old system - be it by appeasing the military industrial complex by pulling forces from Iraq and simply putting them into Afghanistan, or by using the economy as an excuse to put progressive policies on the back-burner. Yes, his achievement is historic, yes it's important - but we must not forget the real reason he was put into power, because a black man means nothing unless he represents the people, and nor does a woman.

Deregulation was pushed to unprecedented places by Margaret Thatcher, one of the most devastating Prime Ministers in British history. That's something worth remembering. And with that in mind, it's time to take back control of the airwaves and the printing presses, because once Murdoch and his ilk have had their way, we'll only get their side of the story.

When the media lie, they get sued. So what do they do instead? Omit. It's lies through omission. If someone threatens you and your loved ones, and provokes you into threatening them in return, to then accuse you of threatening behaviour would only be part of the story, and, some might say, as bad as lying. That's what the mainstream media do: they lie through omission. Omitted details about immigration, about Iraq, about Palestine, about Ireland, about everything. There are certain things they'd rather you didn't know about or focus on. Because if you did? You'd be ripping their papers and brand-new asses for their bosses; you'd be organising and forcing change.

Ever noticed how everyone complains about how hard life is, and how much they work, yet things just largely stay the same? Ever wondered how that's even possible? They filter the information; they tell you that the arsenic is good for you! Everything's okay; just blame the immigrants. Everything's alright; blame the benefit frauds. Everything's fine; blame the poor who went into debt. Whatever you do, don't even consider questioning capitalism's free market or why there are just a few privileged people with eight-bedroom mansions, limousines and lear jets, while the mass majority in the world are struggling, and 1.4 billion live in official poverty.

What the media clues you in on is nowhere near as important as what they've left out. It can be quotes, statistics, editorials, and the screaming headlines themselves - overpowering or even replacing a few extra crucial details to the story. Given the fact that more and more of the media is being controlled by fewer and fewer people - with right-wing interests in contrast to the interests of the mass majority - our information is being controlled more and more, as well. It's being filtered. But heck, information is too important to our lives to be left in the hands of the right who are doing us wrong. We have to do something.

Get involved. Be an angel.

- Jay Baker; Doncaster, England

Labels: Aliza Dichter, Barack Obama, Conservative Party, FCC, Fox News, George W Bush, Iraq, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Shop a Skiver

shop (verb): to behave treacherously toward; inform on; betray.

skive (colloq.): the practice of avoiding responsibilities, i.e. not paying taxes when you ought to be doing so.

quid (British Informal): one pound sterling.

Rupert Murdoch - in case you didn't know - is the Australian-born media mogul who controls pretty much everything you will read or watch today: The Australian newspaper, the Fox News channel, the New York Post, Sky Television, the Wall Street Journal, 20th Century Fox, The Times, MySpace, and The Sun, amongst many more around the world.

Murdoch's power in dominating the source of our information can not be overstated. Being one of the biggest tycoon tax avoidance icons of all time, he ensures the public are not told about how little he gives back to their societies, or rather how much he robs from them. Instead, he prefers to push stories of the poor who steal to feed their families, of welfare recipients and refugees, even though he and his News Corporation move freely in and out of countries, make profit from their people, and refuse to give back what they owe through taxes. He's the real-life Scrooge, and I'd like to introduce him to the Ghost of Christmas Future.

The Sun's influence in Britain, as the number one tabloid newspaper there, is such that it holds massive influence over who will win the general election. Previously loyal to the Conservative Party and their Thatcherite policy of privatisation and, funnily enough, deregulation of the media (making it easier for Murdoch to dominate), come the late 1990s and the emergence of New Labour and its "Third Way," suddenly Tony Blair was rivalling the Tories on corporate-friendly policy, his Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown-nosing the suits in conflict with his socialist roots. And so, Murdoch had The Sun switch sides, and tell its entire readership to this time, in 1997, vote for New Labour. A decade later, Britain's reeling from its involvement in the illegal invasion of Iraq, and suffering its worst economic crisis for decades, with the emergence of a police state - jam-packed privatised prisons, more CCTV cameras per-capita than any other country, and the largest DNA database in the world. Meanwhile, Murdoch's near-monopoly of the media has commercialised televised sports, bled dry working class families wanting to watch them, and poached much entertainment programming from terrestrial television into the pay-TV spectrum.

Given all the damage done to Britain by the politicians supported and even funded by Murdoch and his minions, you'd think the people would be outraged, right? Nope. And that's because when they pick up their favourite newspaper, they don't read about these issues, because the paper is dominated and defined by, as Dr John Richardson explains in my film Escape from Doncatraz, "propaganda, public relations, pornography - and sport on the back pages."

The Sun focuses the rest of its pages on either entertainment or "news" with a focus on fearmongering and divisive reports of petty crimes and personal vendettas - to paint a picture of a dog-eat-dog society, with a strong emphasis on those seeking asylum or applying for welfare as though they are taking funds from the state at the expense of the readers themselves. It's the "kick the dog" syndrome perpetuated by the Fat Cats in control of the media - if people are angry with someone as poor as - or even poorer than - themselves, then they won't form communities and rise up in anger at the millions lost through the tax avoidance plans of Rupert Murdoch and his mates, or the billions spent on oil wars.

The best example of this divide-and-conquer strategy by The Sun has been their government-acknowledged "Shop-a-Skiver" campaign that has encouraged people to call a special hotline and "shop" anyone they think may be a "skiver," such as someone on the poverty line claiming welfare while taking some cash-in-hand work to better get by and make ends meet. The amount of money these people probably cost the taxpayer is so insignificant, even when added together, it's probably not worth the cost of the hotline maintenance itself! But that's not the point, now, is it?

And when we talk about the cost to The Taxpayer, who is The Taxpayer, anyway? It sounds like one person! Well, you can be sure of one thing: it isn't likely to be Rupert Murdoch. Ten years ago The Economist itself reported that in the previous eleven years, Murdoch had made £1.4 billion but paid nothing back in corporation tax - this would have been enough to provide the country with seven hospitals or fifty secondary schools. Wow! But hey, let's blame Abdul who just arrived here from a country we recently bombed and who costs us about forty quid a week. Damn him!

Murdoch and his kind get away with this thanks to their fancy accountants and their avoidance schemes that Prof Prem Sikka explains in my film Escape from Doncatraz and through his regular articles for The Guardian (not - yet - owned by Murdoch). I've been in Prem's office, and seen how hard he works, and I don't think this guy ever sleeps; he's amazing - a media mogul's nightmare. But he's not a superhero - he needs our help!

So, I've decided to start my own Shop a Skiver campaign! Clearly the skivers we ought to be worried about most - but who aren't, funnily enough, receiving much press - are the Fat Cats. And we already shopped one of the bastards...

Conrad Black gave up his Canadian citizenship in order to accept a "peerage" as recommended to the Queen by his buddy, Tony Blair, calling Canada "an oppressive little world." Well, while the thorns in my side tried to discredit this media activist by claiming I'd committed fraud, and my records came up clean and stood up to scrutiny, Conrad Black was meanwhile found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 78 months in a nasty old American prison - suddenly wanting his Canadian privileges back and wishing he was back in that "oppressive little world." Tough luck, Lord Black.

Even now his lordship gets to spout his spiel via his rags, writing in the National Post "If saintly men like Gandhi could choose to clean latrines, and Thomas More could voluntarily wear a hair shirt, this experience won't kill me." Brilliant roving reporter Robert Fisk responded by saying "Now when Uncle Conrad likens himself to the assassinated Mahatma, the apostle of India, that is mere hubris. But when he compares himself to England's greatest Catholic martyr, a man of saintly honour if ruthless conviction, this is truly weird."

One down, many more to go!

- Jay Baker; Palma, Mallorca

Labels: Fox News, New Labour, Rupert Murdoch, The Sun, Tony Blair

Sunday, December 7, 2008

A Winter in Mallorca

"Why travel, unless you must?" - George Sand, 1855

In my film Escape from Doncatraz, I looked at how the British government, under influence from their American counterparts in the Bush Administration, had undertaken bombing campaigns in the Middle East - apparently to "liberate" the innocent civilians there, killing hundreds of thousands of them in the process. As a result, millions more people were displaced, fleeing the destruction and upheaval, and heading all over the world to seek refuge. Britain - having paraded around the planet promoting itself for centuries - seemed an attractive option for these refugees...until they got there and saw the media warning that these people were going to "take jobs," be gifted "free phones," and given "free houses," with votes rising for the Nazi BNP party. Not exactly a warm welcome to someone you just "liberated."

Escape from Doncatraz then showed the British abroad - specifically in Mallorca - where they'd headed to in order to get smashed, throw up, have unprotected sex, and get into fights, before looking for "real British grub," like Kentucky Fried ChickenTM and doner kebabs. "It's quite the contribution, quite the gift," I said in the film. "More British people are arrested and hospitalized here than in any other destination they choose." I interviewed several people who, apparently, had loved these statistics so much that they actually permanently moved to Mallorca, from Britain! And while they certainly couldn't be considered refugees, in their own way they too were seeking asylum - from an oppressive surveillance state back in Britain.

The point my film hinted at, then, was that everyone should have the right to move away and into another country, and no reason is less valid than another. Moving around with freedom is almost as natural an instinct as pushing harder on a remote control button even when we know the batteries are flat. Border controls have been in existence for barely more than a hundred years, created at the time with the racist motivation of stopping "undesirables" entering your country - usually, at the time, Jews. Not a surprise, really, since a Jew was a scapegoat for anything bad back then: Not got a job? It's the Jews! Not got a good home? It's the Jews! Heck, you could probably have killed your own child and still got away with it, so long as you blamed it on the Jews. It's pretty much the same these days - as Escape from Doncatraz showed, you just replace the word "Jews" with the word "Muslims."

Escape from Doncatraz, considered a post-modern, "science-fact" B-movie parodying such hysteria not seen since the 1950s, premiered over in Canada, at the feat of post-modern architecture that is Kitchener City Hall, which looked like a spaceship ready to blast off back to Britain to drop the bombshell that is the film itself. That very same day - May 1st, 2008 - I announced the launch of the brand-new, non-profit, alternative arts and media corporation, SilenceBreaker Media, with my partner Terre Chartrand and the organization's patron, chairman of the board Dr Herbert Pimlott, who delivered a killer speech. However, in the months following - beyond uncovering some disturbing facts about Canada's colonialist, racist treatment of First Nations people that would finally inspire me to work on another film - I too would be subjected to the above-mentioned comparative discomfort of dealing with red-tape and bureaucracy in another country. And to think, it's easier for me - being white, speaking English and learning French, and having a good track record (well, aside from all that, uhm, anti-capitalist stuff...heh...don't lock me up, Mr Harper, please!)

Tony Blair's freeze on arts funding in the UK meant my full-time work there was increasingly difficult to sustain, making it an easier decision to face fresh challenges there in Canada and sporadically return to Britain. But the sabotage and subsequent collapse of my previous company back in Blighty meant my original plans - to return there frequently to work for the organization I myself founded years before - were scuppered, and I had to live with my partner, play househusband, and simply wait patiently, as different branches of Canadian and British government gave us conflicting immigration and visa advice. Life was difficult as a result; I couldn't earn a wage from my own job at either side of the Atlantic, and I had maxed-out my credit cards so much so that I alone could be the sole scapegoat for the Credit CrunchTM.

And so it was that my partner and I made the difficult decision to have me return to the Old World, to the EU, to work there while I waited for my visa to come through, at which point I'd return to Canada to accept payment for my work as Executive Director of SilenceBreaker Media, paying my way, and resuming life as it was supposed to be. The opportunities for me to be independent and to make my own way for a while were simply the rational, reasonable option, and by no means one of the heart. Circumstances aren't always ideal, especially in the world we find ourselves today.

As my partner said at the time of my departure, "SilenceBreaker Media is too important to let go of," and I, for one, will always believe that. This is one company I won't let go of this time. SilenceBreaker Media goes on, and grows, as in the meantime I make new contacts with new possibilities, and review opportunities in Europe - as well as Africa - and my new-found free time has allowed me to spend hours working away on my MacBook, bolstering the business plan, writing funding applications, and devising more projects from afar, with the option of attending meetings of the board of directors via web conferencing; the wonders of modern technology! It'll be like a news broadcast: "And now we go to our Executive Director in Egypt, Jay Baker...Jay, can you tell us the situation there?" "Well Herbert, things are very tense here at the moment, especially since I made the mistake of visiting the city of Memphis and complaining that I couldn't find Graceland anywhere..."

While in the Old World, of course, it also makes it slightly easier for me to move around and visit friends and family, which of course means siblings, aunts, and most importantly my dear old parents. In which place do they happen to be staying these days? None other than the Spanish island of Mallorca! And so here I am, spending a winter in Mallorca, at the time of writing. With my movie doing the rounds, and some ex-pats possibly misinterpreting my portrayal of them in my film, my welcome was anticipated to be about as warm as that for a dark-skinned refugee arriving in Britain! It turned out it wasn't me they were mad at, but instead a different limey.

Lynn Evans, a British ex-pat living in Mallorca, was featured in the Mail's FeMail section where she was at least portrayed as someone who had lost any fondness she had for the island, blasting the mentality that the grass is greener and announcing that she was returning to good old Britain. This, of course, did the rounds in the local bars that buzzed with new-found gossip. In turn, those who remained in Mallorca and needed justification for doing so were livid over Lynn's words. How dare she!

The interesting thing, though, is that so much of the article made a valid point. The credibility of the piece aside, the feeling you get when spending any amount of time in Mallorca is that - aside from the kind of segregation for so long complained about when the South Asians segregate in Britain - this segregation creates circumstantial friendships between people who otherwise have nothing in common, and so conversation remains very safe, and lacking depth - a superficiality that the Mallorcean lifestyle supports: sun, sand, sea, surf, sangria, with a rose-tinted view of this Mediterranean island despite many of its stone cold houses lacking any source of heat, all meals being full of meat, along with dog shit lying all over the place. And the water in Mallorca don't taste the way it oughta - so people buy the plastic bottled stuff either from the naturally pure waters found in Canada via baby-killing Nestle, or France thanks to Evian (which, funnily enough, is "naive" backwards).

There are, of course, plenty of good British people living here in Mallorca. There are, however, some who sit in bars and loudly spout their prejudiced views against gays, against Muslims, and, yes, against immigrants coming into Britain - for some, the very reason they left the UK; the irony of such prejudice completely lost on them. Even when Spain has the highest rate of unemployment in all of the EU (a staggering 11.3%), these British are welcomed with open arms, taking jobs, sticking together, and illegally installing Sky satellite television, stifling the development of the home-grown Spanish media industry as the UK's Labour government turns a blind eye to these violations - presumably as a favour to their major party donor, Sky owner Rupert Murdoch, that infamous and odious poster boy for tax avoidance.

I've been fairly outspoken about my opinions on Mallorca since arriving here. And so, if I wasn't hated before, I might be now! Upon visiting the Valdemossa site that a hundred and seventy years ago was once home to the feminist writer who went by the name of George Sand (along with some music bloke named Frederick Chopin), it seemed amusing that she'd then write the book A Winter in Mallorca and document her ill-fated stay there during, funnily enough, a time of economic strife for that country and others. The area was beautiful, idyllic for sure, but like her I found it funny, because such things can so easily be taken for granted after a while, and you forget what it's like to struggle; you forget the plight of your people; you forget your roots.

For five years I worked in the area in which I grew up, in and around "the Socialist Republic of Sheffield," in brow-beaten towns like Rotherham, and did almost all I could do, building a company and contributing to a cultural community that I'd later leave behind to face fresh challenges over in Kitchener, just outside Toronto. The people there, too, know what it's like to live in a post-industrial era, to struggle to develop a media and arts scene that's so crucial to regeneration. These are the places I belong - fighting the fight and experiencing and contributing to the diverse culture; the circus, the cinema, the concerts, the clubs, cafes and coffee shops full of conversation, diplomatic debate, and dissent; drama, with people dressing in drag and uttering dirty words like "socialism" and "feminism." Scandalous! Friends of mine even successfully completed a burlesque show called "Female Hysteria!" That's one great community; a great lifestyle where you're in the thick of it.

That's the lifestyle George Sand had, as well. She was right there in the so-called developed world, fighting against oppression - and writing about it. If you thought "feminism" was a dirty word today in the wake of Reaganomics and Thatcherism from the regressive 1980s, imagine how it was when George Sand was walking around - often in drag in order to slip almost unnoticed into places usually strictly reserved for men. She was also accustomed to smoking cigarettes and walking around graveyards by moonlight. Suffice to say, this behaviour did not go down well at all in Mallorca when she spent the winter there in 1838/1839.

George Sand - in opposition to oppression, sneaking into gentlemen's places of privilege - wanted a piece of the pie - and I know I sure do, too. I'm not going to be counter-cultural and spite myself; I like the idea of living in the so-called luxury of Toronto. But still, it is not like living in a bubble, spending your working hours at a bar, spending your spare time at a bar, and glancing over at the sea without a care for those who live and struggle beyond it; you're constantly surrounded by massive contradictions, reminders that there are struggles going on, with access to information, activism, and culture, against the backdrop of an incredible and unmistakable skyline.

Yes, Canada's beautiful, too; seasons of both freezing cold winters and red hot summers - with mountains and lakes and bears, oh my! But it's not those things that make Canada such a beautiful country to me - it's the warmth and familiarity, and, yes, the gritty reality, the talk on the street, the movement of movements. There's a struggle going on in Canada, a veneer of political correctness hiding a deep shame - and it's one I'll be looking at in my next movie.

George Sand remains an inspiration, and though Frederick Chopin contributed so much to the world with his compositions, it is - as is often the case - a famous man's lesser-known female partner who truly inspires; whose words and picture warms my heart and makes me want to go back to doing what I do best.

Leave a light on, beautiful. It's almost 2009, and I'm coming home.

- Jay Baker; Valdemossa, Mallorca

Labels: BNP, Nazis, New Labour, Rotherham, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Another Kick in the Arts: Open Minds, Small Minds, and Unchanging Minds

I just came away from another successful screening of my film, Escape from Doncatraz - this time in my beloved Steel City, at the University of Sheffield, where there was standing room only (okay, I guess the lecture theatre was small). Unlike the Canadians who viewed it a few months ago and laughed, cried, and gave it a standing ovation, the British behaved extremely British indeed and politely applauded instead. As my friend Matt said, "watch for a sudden dart of the eyes downward...it means they're emotionally moved." Ah, the British. Gotta love 'em.

In Escape from Doncatraz, British National Party candidate Marlene Guest claimed Britain could actually sink if it allowed any more immigrants onto the island. Wow, sink? I'm glad I left when I did - I can barely tread water!

Ah, the BNP. As Escape from Doncatraz shows, leader Nick Griffin and his gang are nothing but a group of fascists; dregs leftover from the Ku Klux Klan, Combat 18 and the National Front, dressed in suits instead of jackboots, and getting airtime for it under the principle of freedom of speech that they hate. Of course, their argument was ridiculous - the British Isles won't sink! Well, not for a good few years anyway - and that'll be because of climate change and rising sea levels, not immigrants. But I actually do think it was a good thing for me to leave the country and head to Canada. Though it's not for the reasons you may think.

When I left, a year ago, I was fully aware of the "Kick in the Arts" I blogged about previously - the freezing of funds for the arts under High Chancellor Tony Blair. People all around me, in the cultural sector, were scrambling around like headless chickens, wondering what they were going to do without government hand-outs now the man they voted for had removed his socialist mask and revealed himself as a clone of Empress Margaret Thatcher, who to this day is probably being kept alive on technology that also helped to create robotic Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.

Of course, there were other avenues to sustainability, and success. But the small-time, small-town mentality is often more difficult to escape in South Yorkshire than even its infamous prison Doncatraz itself - there are only a few visionaries who can think outside the walls in their own minds. Almost everyone else there was desperate, and bitter - as I was packing my bags to head to a place still struggling to get rid of the SARS virus but also where the cancer of cuts to the arts hadn't quite spread yet.

I'm fully at peace with my decision now, and everything that followed. My best friend of five years and composer for my films had taken my departure very badly and had sabotaged my former company in my absence, a company I'd built from scratch into an organization on the brink of breakthrough success and sustainability with resources, services, and even a contract to run the community cinema where its offices were based - at Montgomery Hall in the town of Wath, right in the heart of South Yorkshire. This meddling, of course, led to the young profit-hungry entrepreneurs who had been paid thousands through my projects to register themselves as "non-profit" and become eligible for taking over my defunct company's loot - computers, cameras, screening equipment, you name it. Wow, she really gave them the fruits of my labour! But hey, they won't be demanding any more pay cheques from me with all that stash, and at least they're doing decent if safe work; it's not like they're selling it for smack or something. Well...not yet, anyway - like the rest of Rotherham, they'll be needing to if things continue as they are.

My bitter best friend - like myself, already in her early thirties - had become frustrated with the inability to break through in the music industry, in spite of playing gigs up and down that island allegedly on the verge of sinking. But as a guy in the film business, the newspapers still refer to me as a "young filmmaker," which I find hilarious, while my friend was considered past her prime in the music industry, which was equally ridiculous. At Montgomery Hall (named after James Montgomery, the poet who was twice imprisoned for his commitment to social justice), its boss offered my friend the opportunity to build on the local fan base she had there by hosting a monthly rock night! This, of course, would have enabled her to utilize that base to attract fans to other gigs in other towns, attracting attention to her talent as well, perhaps forcing the labels to sign her and find a way to market her. But hey, apparently I had it all wrong, by planning to leave and launch SilenceBreaker Media, and she rejected the proposal because she felt the financial aspect of the offer from the struggling venue was insulting - cutting off her nose to spite her face. She's now working in youth centres while calling herself a singer because she gets a gig once every four months, in the same area, in front of the same people. It's sad, especially when you consider what might have been.

Meanwhile, the group she and I had helped form - Rotherham Open Arts Renaissance (or "ROAR" - yeah, I know it sounds cheesy) - was rolling along, slowly but surely, developing an independent arts centre without having the foresight to realize that most local artists wouldn't be able to afford the rent for it; the cultural community there needed to be supported first - not least because the BNP had made massive, significant gains in Rotherham since my film had been released, stating that the BNP had been held at bay. So that part of my movie is, sadly, already out-of-date - but hey, we all have deadlines to keep, and can't keep adding stuff, especially when you have as your editors two kids who would seem more at home somewhere else, asking "Would you like fries with that?" and dreaming of making real movies, while plotting ways to blackmail independent filmmakers for more money.

So, I offered less of an olive branch and more of a lifeline to the group, and to the town: the opportunity to include Escape from Doncatraz as part of a festival of events in the town centre under the hallowed Spiegeltent. Hated by the BNP so much that even infamous candidate Marlene Guest herself wrote into the paper to call it a "waste of money," the Spiegeltent is a famous construction made from canvas and wood and decorated with stained glass and mirrors (imagine a Tim Burton film, but, um, set in Rotherham - which, I realize, would be even scarier than Sweeney Todd, Beetlejuice and Sleepy Hollow combined).

The screening - in Rotherham's town centre square, and completely free of charge - had been discussed for a couple of years, and it was now time for us to make it happen. Escape from Doncatraz being shown to ordinary, working class voters frustrated with New Labour and now voting BNP was ideal - heck, they were my target audience! Well, after the administrator said she'd speak with members of ROAR first and get back to me, I tried to remain enthusiastic but had a bad feeling in my gut (and it wasn't because I'd eaten a Mad Cow BurgerTM from a Rotherham butcher shop - Jamie Oliver would've slapped my wrist).

Sure enough, they never returned my calls, text messages, and emails. The chair of ROAR, and head of Open Minds Theatre Company, Steve Rogers - the kind of upper-middle class bloke who thinks the depressed Rotherham's "marvelous," and returns from a first-class plane trip to Kashmir wearing a kind of kaftan; you know the type - obviously cared more about opening minds than changing minds. The people of Rotherham have still yet to see this film that documents exactly why their town - far from being "marvelous" in the eyes of the working class people who've lived there all their lives - is still struggling. So, again due to small minds, the people are losing out. But hey, at least they had a Love Music, Hate Racism event held in a building that acts as a museum to the steelworks that once stood there (actually located in the Sheffield area) - full of activists and students, and barely a BNP voter from Rotherham in sight. But, to be fair, I'll be the first to admit that there's nothing like preaching to the converted to get yourself a pat on the back.

Of course, in addition to these recent events it's also become evident that Canada is not the promised land it, um, promised to be. Stephen Harper - in addition to telling opponents that resistance is futile and that, as with Tory and former Liberal Party member Wajid Khan, they may be assimilated - has slashed funding into the arts as well, prompting thousands to go "Faceless for the Arts" on Facebook. Now, of course I'm not trying to imply that the Prime Minister of Canada is leading a bunch of Star Trek-style robots in running the government; after all, we're unlikely to feel The Wrath of Khan - Wajid or otherwise. I just doubt Harper's human, that's all. So given that he himself is a robot, there's no surprise he doesn't care about the arts, and it's technology that really gets his eloectrodes pulsating with power. Kitchener's neighbouring city of Waterloo is called an "intelligent community" because it's the home of the BlackberryTM - what does that tell you?

I recently attended an event in Guelph, where Naomi Klein - a friend of one of my more recent collaborators in Toronto - spoke out about her background; her parents coming across the border into Canada in opposition to the Vietnam War, one working for the health sector, the other, for the world-renowned National Film Board. And now, both are under attack by Harper's hard drive that's pre-programmed to DESTROY! But again, the locals don't help matters. Sure, ROAR (again, I'm aware it's a cheesy name - please stop writing in to me!) may have become a clique of drunken egos who think that poor is cool, but at least they stuck together. However, the tourism office in their town could justifiably put up a sign saying "Rotherham: You'll Never Leave!" because, far from being enchanting, the town has a clique that simply won't let you leave! Yep, their biggest idiosyncrasy, aside from cheesy names, was also wanting to stick the knife in your back rather than wish you well if you turned to move on for other creative endeavors. In Kitchener, home of SilenceBreaker Media, it's so difficult to help the arts scene grasp the concept of collaboration over competition, though there are some amazing groups there who do "get it." But it's like the tradition of the Left: keep arguing over petty differences instead of putting the principles first.

The difficulty we've had with moving SilenceBreaker Media along is unbelievable, even though these things are always inevitably challenging, and you brace yourself for it. Patience is a virtue, especially when you're predominantly acting as house husband while waiting for your visa to come through. It's just disheartening for me when people who claimed to be in it for the long haul, for the community and for the principle of alternative media, quit the process due to a single difference of opinion with me, claiming I've "turned off everyone" I've ever known except my parents. Not true! I may not be turning on any of them, if you know what I mean, but I have at least, like...four friends! I mean, I don't even know any of those people on my MySpace "top friends" list - ask them! I just put those beautiful people there to look...well...kind of cool.

As my family said to me a few days ago, "it's like being related to bloody Bob Dylan," because these people I've "edited out of the frame" are still either calling themselves writers because they write about me while working in a furniture shop, or whining songs written about me and put on MySpace to be downloaded - by 43 people at the time of writing (and 40 of them were probably by me...hey, it's about me, can you blame me?) Meanwhile, my true, loyal friends are also devoting poems to me in their books (cheap plug: buy D Shellhammer's book Like a Goat in a Hail Storm here!) But hey, you take the rough with the smooth, and there's no such thing as bad press, I guess. And it's a good thing, too - because by doing my own thing and making my own decisions, I've pissed off a heck of a lot of people along the way. And I'll roll with the punches. Some wanted to be followers, some wanted to be the leader, some wanted to control me, and some are still lamenting my absence. Oh, heck, man, I just want to get art made - as much as I'm flattered by the bitter attention, I can't relate to wasting ability on people from the past when there are such big issues going on in the world.

So, sue me - for slander, libel, damages or divorce. Those of us who still truly give a shit will keep on rolling, putting pettiness aside and thinking outside the box to get the changes made. And you can expect some big changes in the near future. The standing ovation from two hundred people on May Day in a country I'd barely been in a few months was just the beginning. SilenceBreaker Media is going to be huge. Because now I have the time to devote myself to that which I long ago married: media activism.

- Jay Baker; Sheffield, England

Labels: BNP, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour, Rotherham, Stephen Harper, Tony Blair

Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]