Spinning the web

The current wave of outrage about Ken Livingstone’s defence of fellow UK Labour MP, Naz Shah, is a media beat up of epic proportions.  The target isn't Shah – who has even been forgiven by some in the rightwing press because she has confessed her sins and issued a ‘heartfelt’ apology –  the target is Jeremy Corbyn and the left of the Labour Party. The media and rightwing politicos are directing yet another artillery barrage at Livingstone in the hope that it will also wipe out Corbyn.

Livingstone is a hostage to fortune on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in part because he refuses to condemn as anti-Semitic (among other things) the often controversial and contradictory Muslim Cleric, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradwi. In light of the high probability that he would be attacked and anything he said taken out of context and used against him in the court of popular opinion, Livingstone would have been wise to have kept out of the debate. Had he done so we might have been spared the awful sight and sound of John Mann charging up to loudly claim the moral high ground. 

Livingstone also stated in his media interviews that Hitler had once been supportive of a Zionist plan to relocate German Jews to Palestine. In the line with current standards of media accuracy and impartiality, he was promptly accused of saying Hitler had been a Zionist. 

The overall tone of the rightwing media response is exemplified by this comment from The Independent: "A Labour MP has stepped down as an aide to John McDonnell after it emerged that she once backed a plan to relocate the state of Israel to North America".  

Since when has an obviously ironic and amateurish meme on Facebook constituted a "plan"? 

Only a rightwing journo, nose down in the dirt, in hot pursuit of an anti-Corbyn story could produce such arrant nonsense.   

As for the foolish man who is Communications Director for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism who claimed that Shah's action was evidence of "gross and brazen anti-semitism" and an "expression of extreme prejudice towards Jewish people" –  may I suggest a regime of cold baths and deep breaths. 

I suspect there are few people who are more alert to, or critical of anti-Semitism than me. I know how deep and widespread its roots are and how easily it can spring back into destructive life even when people think it has been killed off. I've been vociferously anti-anti-Semitism for as long as I've been vociferously pro-Palestinian rights, i.e. for many decades. 

If I’d seen the meme – which was unearthed from Shah's Facebook page by right-wing blogger and Sun columnist Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes) – I may not have shared it because it has spelling mistakes and I am a pedant, but it is clearly meant to be ironic. There is nothing in it to suggest it is anti-Jewish. It is a piece of anti-Israel and anti-American agitprop but however hard the right wing contorts itself, there is simply no basis for arguing that being critical of the actions of the Israeli state automatically constitutes anti-Semitism.  

Another charge against Shah is that she posted a link to an article which draws parallels between al Qaida and Zionism. I'm not sure if it was this one by Catherine Shakdam but if it was, it's worth reading. 

Right wing Zionism and right wing Islamism definitely have one thing in common, and that's a hatred of the political left. Israel and the US and their allies were totally opposed to and actively undermined the moderate leftwing Palestinian leadership.  As stated in Shakdam''s piece and elsewhere, there is evidence pointing towards the US and Israel having fomented extremist Islam as part of a wider move to 'Balkanise' the greater Levant region as part of Israeli expansionism. It's surely worthy of note that the extremists of Al Qaida and ISIL have not directly attacked Israel or Israeli interests – in fact most of their victims are other Muslims and it is Muslim countries which have suffered most from the unrest in the Middle East. 

The Israeli government and its supporters cynically and persistently use the accusation of anti-Semitism to deflect and defuse criticism of Israeli actions.  In so doing, they are busy stripping anti-Semitism of its political and historical meaning and significance.

The actions of the Israeli state with regard to Palestinians are indefensible. The irony and the tragedy is that that they are reminiscent of how Nazi Germany and all its collaborating states and peoples acted towards Jews in the 1930s. 

I've talked to young Israelis travelling in NZ after the end of their military service and been appalled at the unthinking racism some of them display towards Palestinians. It's an almost word for word replication of the bigoted supremacist ideology trotted out by white racists:  Palestinians are stupid and uneducable; they are incapable of running their own affairs; they are aggressive and untrustworthy and innately predisposed towards being thugs and terrorists. 

Those young Israelis didn't arrive at those ideas by themselves, such notions don't pop up out of a social vacuum – they are fed to the young through educational and religious institutions and military service. 

To create the sort of soldier-medic who can shoot a helpless young man in the head with as little thought or compunction as he might step on a bug, or the sort of crazed religious fanatics that can burn a family alive – the 'other' has to be turned into a faceless, soulless, non-human being. The trouble is that the only way people can come to see the 'other' as faceless, soulless and non-human is to become those things themselves.

That is the horror of fascism.  

I abhor Muslim fascists as much as I do Jewish or Christian or Hindu or Buddhist ones. In fact I abhor any ideology that is founded on and perpetuates ignorance, irrationality and bigotry. And I abhor all people of violence – most of all those who dispense their violence from the safe distance and comfort of conference and board rooms. 

There are people – including a few who claim to be of the left – whose support of Palestinian rights owes a great deal to a hatred of Jews.  The political right wing – the traditional home of anti-Semitism – currently fears and hates Muslims more than it hates and fears Jews, except of course for those Muslims who happen to be part of the ruling elites of the likes of Saudi Arabia who are granted a temporary exemption. Such people support Israel because, for the moment, they hate and fear people of another religion more.  Why and how much they hate and fear Muslims varies of course. For most it's ignorance, they have swallowed the toxic ideologies and political spin pumped out by the right wing media, but for others it's a calculated and calculating strategy at the heart of which is the principle of divide in order to continue to rule.

My feminism in a series of tweets

#myfeminism is the product of a deep & unshakeable belief in simple principles of natural justice

#myfeminism understands that humans as a species are inherently social, adaptable, creative & curious

#myfeminism wants a world in which people are able to be social, adaptable, creative & curious

#myfeminism is striving for equality for all by fighting for a social system that’s capable of delivering & maintaining it

#myfeminism seeks to explore and build on what unites people and undermine what divides & separates them

#myfeminism understands the might & the implacable viciousness of the forces that stand in opposition to it

#myfeminism recognises that humanity as a whole is facing a social & environmental crisis of unprecedented magnitude

#myfeminism understands that the overdeveloped world is sucking the life blood from the planet to fuel its toxic way of life

#myfeminism knows that the affluent's right to choose rests on structural realities that deny/constrain the choices of most people

#myfeminism recognises we are not helpless prisoners of our biology but we are the products of it

#myfeminism recognises the harm in being ignorant of and alienated from our biological self

#myfeminism understands there’s a biological binary but much else in reproduction is socially conditioned & flexible

#myfeminism knows that for the vast majority of women in the world, reproduction remains a defining reality

#myfeminism knows that women are capable of being cruel, competitive & self interested

#myfeminism knows that men are capable of being kind, cooperative and altruistic

#myfeminism means I will feel more solidarity with some men than I do with some women

#myfeminism doesn’t demand poor women/women of colour put affluent/white women before their menfolk as proof of sisterhood

#myfeminism recognises that some women are fully & consciously complicit in the maintenance of the phallocracy

#myfeminism deplores media fabrications that perpetuate a shallow & toxic notion of womanhood

#myfeminism recognises the burqa & the bikini are both products of the phallocracy

#myfeminism asks that you ask why governments that hammer the poor are prepared to yield to demands for gender equality

#myfeminism loves to laugh, finds joy in living and doesn't fear death   

#myfeminism knows it can't be adequately represented in a series of tweets but decided to try anyway

Farming Part One : The Pigs

The HUHANZ animal shelter used a Facebook page  to call for action to draw attention to the latest of three fires at a Waikato controlled environment pig farm.  A total of 750 or so pigs have died in these fires; the first fire in 2005 under previous ownership killed 300, a fire 8 months ago under the current owners killed 400, and the latest fire killed 50 sows in farrowing crates.

Farrowing crates were developed by the pig industry because, as a result of selective breeding, sows are very heavy and cumbersome and made more so by a lifestyle that denies them adequate movement, and they have very large litters. The sow’s bulk and lack of fitness, combined with enormous litters, the stresses of confinement and the frustration of the instincts to separate and nest build as farrowing is imminent, can lead to high piglet mortality. 

Hence the crates, in which sows are imprisoned prior to giving birth and for up to 4 weeks afterwards.  The crate does not allow the sow to turn around and it forces her to lie down which allows the piglets to suckle and decreases the risk of them being crushed, smothered or savaged by their over-stressed mother.

In a crate the sow is effectively reduced to a milk machine – a living version of the ‘calfeterias’ that dairy producers use to feed those offspring of dairy cows that are destined to be replacements for dairy herds or to be raised for beef.

Crating is horrible enough when you consider pigs’ intelligence and the frustration of basic instincts, but it enters the realms of the horrific when there is a fire. The thought of any animal trapped in a cage in a fire appals most people and anyone it doesn’t appal is surely missing an essential element of their humanity.

The latest fire at the facility is thought to have been electrical and possibly due to damage to wiring caused by the numerous rats. The owners, who sold a dairy farm to move into intensive pig farming, say they had had problems with equipment failure. Observers have pointed to the absence of an automatic sprinkler system and fire extinguishers.

When the news broke that this facility had had its third fire, HUHA members called for a vigil on the road outside it. It was a small scale affair, quiet and dignified and aimed at raising awareness of the lives and deaths of animals in intensive farming operations.

There was a lot of support for it on the HUHA Facebook page but also some opposition, some of it from people who claimed to be motivated by concern for the feelings of the farmers. One of the most active of the critics, on her own FB page, supported a petition to withdraw the charitable status of the animal rights group, SAFE, which has been a thorn in the side of controlled environment and intensive dairy farming. 

Several of those who were critical of the vigil claimed that the sows would have died or been rendered unconscious by smoke and fumes before the fire reached them which means they would not have suffered.

The fact that people and companion animals often die of smoke/toxic gas inhalation in house fires does not mean that animals in shed or barn fires will die or lose consciousness from smoke inhalation before burning to death.  Whether the smoke and fumes render them insensible or kill them depends on the nature of the combustible material and how the building is constructed and ventilated. 

Most importantly, those who use this rather shabby argument ignore the fact that caged animals who smell and hear a fire will be in a state of utter terror for some time before they are overcome by fumes.  Even if the flames or the radiant heat did not burn the pigs alive, it would not have been a quick or an easy death. 

The critics also avoid the fact that, if the building had had very good smoke alarms and a sprinkler system or other effective means of quickly dousing a fire, and had the owners had plans for responding to a fire – even if the way the fire started was beyond any reasonable person’s ability to anticipate or prevent – the animals may well have been saved.

One of the critics even made the astonishing statement that, if animal rights people were so concerned about the fire risk, THEY should have installed sprinkler systems in the facility themselves after the last fire and, as they hadn’t, they were as culpable as the owners.

Another argument was that the appropriate course of action was to write to the MPI to call for improved fire safety standards and the vigil was highly insensitive to the feelings of the owners who were suffering as a result of the loss of their animals and property.  

The argument is an odd one. The claim is that the vast majority of farmers, including these particular famers, are deeply concerned about the welfare of their animals and do everything they can to ensure their welfare, however, the only way that high health, welfare and safety standards on all farms can be guaranteed is by tighter government regulation.  So, if pigs burn to death it's because the standards are too low which means the government is to blame – not the farmer who chooses to operate at or below the bare industry minimum. 

As to the hurt feelings of the owners of the pig farm, it seems logical to ask, if they had the intention to run it in a safe and professional manner, why did they not do due diligence when buying the facility or, having realised after purchase that the buildings and equipment were sub-standard, why did they not make the necessary improvements immediately, and if necessary, take buildings out of commission until they were safe? 

I believe that if you make your living by locking animals in cage or inside a building and you:

fail to control rodents which might degrade electrical wiring;

do not to install a sprinkler system and/or have other fire fighting equipment appropriate for different types of fire;

do not install and maintain smoke alarms that can be heard from or are linked to the farm house or staff quarters; and,

do not have evacuation plans for the animals – then I am sorry but you cannot claim to care about animal welfare or expect the likes of me to feel sorry for you.  

I don’t care if it's poultry, pigs, cows or horses. If, for your convenience and/or your profit, you lock animals in a cage or a shed, leaving aside the wider welfare issues, you have the moral responsibility to do everything you can to prevent fire and to be able to fight it.  If the current law does not make you criminally liable for harm to animals occasioned by your failure to ensure health and safety, then the law is wrong and needs to be strengthened.

Or we could just ban all factory farming.

Edit: link to FB page hosted by HUHANZ 

'Diss the fatties, date the hotties'

The title of this blog post is a slogan on a tee shirt held up by a little man whose name I genuinely forget and can't be bothered looking up – but he's one of those who persuade other idiotic men to part with a load of dosh to be told how to alienate and offend any woman with any semblance of intelligence and self respect. 

Apart from being a reminder of the depths of some idiots'  misogyny, the slogan is important because it reminded me to finish this post about obesity. 

When I was a kid I read a Phantom comic in which a prince refused to marry the woman chosen to be his bride because she was too fat.  Judged by today's standards, "too fat" was rather plump -– certainly not severely obese. The Phantom's solution was to kidnap the young woman and hold her prisoner for a few weeks and make her gather her own food –  thereby forcing her to lose the weight she had gained, presumably through being lazy and self-indulgent. Once the weight had been lost, he presented her to the prince as a slim, and therefore attractive and acceptable, bride. 

There's more than a hint of this in some attitudes to extreme weight gain – i.e. the belief is that people become overweight because they are lazy and self-indulgent and they need a Phantom equivalent to force them to eat a normal diet and to exercise. If only it was that simple.

I know people who are very overweight who swear blind that they eat sensibly and get loads of exercise. They say diets do not work, that any weight they lose comes back and they get even fatter than they were before dieting. Often they blame their genes or a medical condition but I'd lay odds that most of them are unaware of, forget and/or are inaccurate about how much food and drink they actually ingest, the type of food it is, and how little exercise they actually get.  That's aside from the complicated stuff of how your body processes different types of food and drink at different stages of life and all the other factors associated with weight gain.

It takes a lot of fortitude to be brutally honest about how much our own actions and inactions contribute to the state of our health.  It is not helped by the mass of misinformation that circulates and the intense pressures to consume that run alongside equally strong pressures to look and behave in certain ways. I understand that the pressures stacked against the individual are enormous. 

There is the fact that, once you are very overweight, and the longer you have been overweight, to lose weight and keep it off means you may have to have bariatric surgery and/or find the psychological strength to always control your food intake and – preferably – to restrict it to whole foods. And you have to do this in a society in which high calorie and cheap food and drink is coming at you from every direction. 

The 'fast' food industry – by which I mean manufacturers and marketers of all processed foods – with its cynical marketing ploys, its reliance on addictive, harmful chemical additives, and its vicious PR-orchestrated attacks on its critics, peddles cheap, high calorie / low nutrient, chemically enhanced products that wreak havoc on people's biochemistry.

Medical 'do no harm' science looks for palliative surgical and pharmacological solutions to the problems that food manufacturers have created. I cannot be alone in seeing the irony in the fact that people who've had bariatric surgery are left reliant on nutritional supplements. They gain weight because of a combination of ingesting high calorie, nutritionally depleted, easily accessible foods and drinks and having a genetic predisposition to easy weight gain.  They cannot lose the weight. They have surgery and are then made completely dependent for the rest of their lives on a cocktail of supplements produced by a branch of the very industry that produced the crap which caused them to get unnaturally fat in the first place.

Governments typically sit on their hands or actively collude with the whole sorry business refusing to act to control the industry and instead pouring money into education campaigns which never work.  

The mainstream media, as with most other issues, relies heavily on food and drink industry PR and press releases. Those journalists with the intelligence and integrity to want to pursue the truth are often hamstrung by their corporate bosses'  demands for the sort of froth and nonsense that attracts readers/viewers.

For every person who has a genetic or medical reason for extreme weight gain, there are many more whose initial weight gain is due to them having ingested too much of the wrong sort of food and drink, and exercised too little, but demonising, shaming or attacking them is not only cruel and destructive, it's stupid. 

At the other extreme, arguing that being very fat is unavoidable because it is genetically determined, or even that it is desirable, is not just foolish, it lets a cynical and profit-obsessed food production industry, and complicit, lazy and/or incompetent governments and media off the hook.

I've been reading some activist websites that focus on obesity.  Some try to normalise it. Some question what we define as obese and are critical of the body-mass index as a useful measure. Some cite studies that claim obese people eat less than thin people and that fat kids are more active.  

Some point to the genetic foundation of weight gain - the so-called "thrifty gene" theory that humans who could lay down body fat easily had a selective advantage in times of food shortages. When such people are exposed to easily accessible, easily digested, high calorie foods, their genetic blueprint dictates that they will gain weight and not be able to lose it.

The way genes are expressed is hugely complex and variable and even with a proven genetic predisposition to lay down fat stores, in order to put on extreme amounts of weight, the individual has to ingest a far larger number of calories than they burn up and / or be ingesting substances which alter their bio-chemistry. The most obvious way that happens is eating large amounts of high calorie/low nutrient foods and drinks that are laced with various chemicals – preservatives, artificial flavourings, colours etc.

Because we are subjected to the tyranny of the thin does not mean we should idealise being fat. I increasingly see women who are well beyond plump being held up as having a normal and desirable weight. I know overweight people who have as distorted an idea of their body size as an anorexic does because all their peer group is overweight. We are getting used to seeing plump as normal and fat as barely outside normal.

We're not talking about moderate increases in weight. Leaving aside the difficulties of measuring and defining obesity, it's obvious that there are many more overweight – and importantly, many more severely overweight – people today than there were in the past.  

The extreme obesity that features on an increasing number of tasteless and exploitative shows on television and feeds into a thriving internet fetish market, is still relatively rare but between this sort of super-obesity and the people with 'normal' levels of body fat, there are increasing numbers of very overweight people. I don't need BMI based statistics to tell me the population is getting fatter – I can see it. 

I grew up in 1950s and 60s New Zealand, and although we ate a lot of fresh food and we got a lot of exercise, we also consumed loads of refined sugar, refined flour and saturated animal fats. The artificial fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides used in agriculture and horticulture were different in type and probably amount but it was hardly a pollutant free environment.  I can remember very few adults who were significantly bigger than my slim parents, only one or two adults who I thought of as being quite fat, and only one or two kids at my school were slightly plump. I cannot remember ever seeing or knowing about anyone who would have qualified as being severely or morbidly obese. 

Something has changed dramatically in the past 30-40 years which is driving a large number of people's bio-chemistry so far out of equilibrium it's no wonder simplistic measures such as telling them to eat less / exercise more fail to work.  

Like most things, the increase in obesity in general and in severe obesity is multi-factoral, ie. it is not just what you eat and how much of it you eat relative to how much energy you expend, chronic stress, food-based and environmental toxins and nutrient-deficiencies also play a large role.  

Medical science has not had very long to develop an in-depth understanding of the complexities of the human neuro-endocrine system, let alone the peptidergic pathways in the central nervous system and the ways that these are affected by the presence of large amounts of body fat (especially visceral fat), and by the mass of chemicals we are exposed to in our food and in our environment more widely, and by the enormous increase in the amount and the type of sugar we ingest.

What can be said with certainty is that carrying too much body fat long term is NOT a good thing – it places great stress on your musculo-skeletal structures and your cardio-pulmonary system; it compromises your endocrine system; it stresses your liver and kidneys and your largest and most misunderstood metabolic organ, your skin.  

Yes, you can be overweight and "healthy" by modern health parameters (which are pretty wide ranging) but, the bigger you are, the more strain there is on your essential and irreplaceable bio-systems.  

We need some body fat, too little is also not good but too much is demonstrably harmful. How much is too much will differ from individual to individual and we can carry on arguing about BMIs and thrifty genes or we can agree that there is a vast and increasing  health issue which is exacting a dreadful toll and look to how we might fix it.

An open letter to Richie McCaw

Dear Richie,

You're a great rugby player and I understand the reasons why so many honours have been heaped on your shoulders but I don't accept that they're deserved. I know that those who the conservative world honours almost always share its core values and it was no surprise when an over-excited John Key opened his 2014 election campaign by holding up his mobile phone and crowing – "Richie says, yes you can." 

(We have to assume there was an actual text from you and that it was not unsolicited.)

I’ve no doubt that at times you've found the PM's fawning fanboy attentions a bit embarrassing and tiresome – although not half as embarrassing and tiresome as many in the wider populace have found them –  and that, like many of your fellow citizens, you wish he'd grow some gravitas.  

At times I did wonder if your tacit and overt support of Key was the result of political naivety but any doubts I had on that score were dispelled by your recent decision to use your considerable influence to sway public opinion towards John Key's flag. 

And let's not be disingenuous and try to pretend it's anything other than John Key's flag. 

He wanted a fern; he wanted the flag to be black or at least to have some black on it; he expressed his preference for the black, blue and white Lockwood design; he has been pictured wearing it as a lapel pin whilst on official duties, and he set up the costly two stage referendum to maximise his spin doctors' chances of swaying public opinion, which, let's not forget, initially was overwhelmingly against flag change.

He wants the change and he wants the flag to be remembered as his flag.  And indeed it will.  It is already a symbol of an increasingly divided country so, if adopted, it will be an apt legacy indeed. 

The irony in this is that a lot of those people who are calling for flag change so that we have a flag which distinguishes us from Australia – are the very people who would have screamed foul if a left wing government had staged such an obvious piece of political manipulation.

Can you imagine the outrage from the political right and its media mouthpieces if a left wing government, whilst preaching the need for austerity amongst the affluent, had decided to spend $26 million on a two-stage referendum intended to ensure a particular outcome, i.e. to ask people to choose a design by ranking their preferences from a skewed shortlist of designs – most of which featured the PM's preferred symbol – and then used highly influential people to manipulate public opinion into voting for the 'winning' design?

The spin doctors knew that a straight vote for flag change, especially in advance of any constitutional changes, would result in a resounding NO.  So they set up a process in a which a minority of the electorate would pick one of the fern based designs after which they would put the political machine on maximum spin cycle to try to ensure that design would win over the current flag. 

They knew there'd be a core of people who would follow the PM's lead. They also knew some people who were previously opposed to flag change would start to waver if a lot of celebrities and sports stars like yourself supported the challenger – especially as the Olympics are later this year and perish the thought that someone might mistake a Kiwi medal winner for an Australian.  And they banked on the fact that a lot of people would be disgusted by the whole process or care little either way and they'd not vote at all.

If their calculations prove to be correct, the outcome will be that a small minority of the population will once again have imposed its narrow self interest on the rest of the country.

If this flag change had been part of an overall review of NZ's constitution and a move towards a republic, I could see the logic of it.  If John Key didn't fall over himself to tug his forelock to the Queen and welcome British royal visitors to NZ, and if his government had not reintroduced a British style titular honours system, I might be less inclined to see it as a cynical rebranding exercise and a distraction and diversion from more important issues.

Like it or not, New Zealand history is inextricably tied up with British history. Our legal and our political system are all derived from the British system. On your passport, it is the British Monarch, not the Prime Minster, who asks foreign governments to grant you entry and protection. The relationship between tangata whenua and the British Crown is a defining element of our history, culture and constitutional arrangements. The coat of arms symbolises that relationship, as does the old flag.

The black and blue Lockwood design makes no reference to it.The black is a nod to the All Black brand which has spread its tentacles into all other NZ sports brands and which originally had no symbolic national significance; the giant stylised fern frond is also a nod to sporting as well as other commercial brands; the blue (usefully much closer to the National Party blue than the navy blue of the old flag) is supposed to represent the Pacific Ocean, and only the red stars of the Southern Cross remain unchanged. 

Perhaps if this clunky design does win, when the government then embarks on the next costly exercise – that of changing all the official uses of the current flag (eg. all the insignia which feature the coat of arms) – it could make partial amends by changing the spear in the hands of the Māori warrior to the Tino Rangitiratanga flag. I won't be holding my breath.

In the context of the secret negotiations around the TPP – the signing of which arguably involves the greatest ceding of political and economic sovereignty that independent New Zealand has ever seen – the spiel about the importance of having flag change becomes even more obvious as a piece of political theatre designed to distract and divert people away from way more important issues.  We get to vote on the design of a bit of cloth that is run up a flag pole and which athletes drape themselves in but we don't get to decide on joining the TPP which, if ratified, means our sovereignty has been profoundly compromised.

You're a sportsman and a team captain; you know what it takes to get a group of individual players to work as a team. You should also know what gets in the way of that happening.  

IF it is adopted, the blue and black flag will always be disliked by a great many people in a way and to a degree that the old flag – for all its problematic history and reminders of a colonial past – never was. 

A dehumanising caricature

The piece below was first published in The Press on  Nov 25th 2013.

This morning one of those irritating exhortations to support something popped up on my Facebook page. It asked people to "share or like this if you want to bring back Golliwogs".  The sheer stupidity of it as well as its nasty underlying racist agenda offended me – hence publishing this piece again here. 

I keep seeing Golliwogs – on prominent display in a department store toy section, in my local chemist shop and most recently, in a newspaper article about a country fete.

Golliwogs are seen by some people as offensive, a crude caricature of a black man that emerged in an era when such images served a very real political purpose. Others see them as symbolic of the struggle against a "political correctness" that they think curbs their freedom of speech and choice.

The original Golliwogg was a character in an 1895 British children's book and was based on a blackface minstrel doll that the author, Florence Upton, had played with as a child when her family lived in the United States.

The doll and Upton's drawing are a crude caricature of a black man and, although the original character had a good heart, Upton considered him to be extremely ugly.

The name of her character was taken up by other authors in an era in which most white people were either unaware of racial stereotypes and their ill-effects, or were happy to use them for political and commercial gain. It became a generic term and a racial epithet (like "Sambo"), and is very likely the origin of the racial insult "wog".

The toy and books containing the image became very popular throughout Britain, the US and parts of Britain's empire, but fell out of favour with the rise of civil rights and anti-racist movements.

Racist iconography was extremely useful in the processes of imperialist expansion.

Negative images of people of colour flowed through literature, art, commerce and even science - helping form and maintain the ideology of race which underpinned the political and moral "correctness" of slavery, and which also served to justify the historical fact that a global minority of white people appropriated the lands and labour of a global majority of people of colour.

Britain formed a vast empire on the back of the slave trade but also led in its abolition – in part because so many Britons were revolted by it, but mostly because slavery had become a form of property relations that had largely outlived its usefulness.

After the American Civil War, the abolition of slavery in the Confederate states led to the creation of what became known as the "Jim Crow" laws – the US equivalent of apartheid. (The name came from the song Jump Jim Crow by a white comic actor, Thomas Rice, who had popularised blackface in the 1830s.)

Concomitant with the segregationist laws was the rise of white supremacist groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, and the use of terrorist tactics to intimidate black people, force them out of communities, prevent them from voting and from owning land and businesses. No one knows for certain how many African-Americans were lynched in this era but official figures record the lynching of 4743 people (including 150 or so women) between 1888 and 1968.

Seventy-three per cent of the victims were black, and 73 per cent of lynchings occurred in the South. Men were often tortured and women were usually raped before being murdered.

The Jim Crow era also saw mass production of caricatured images of African-Americans. Some of these were seemingly benign, like the dandified "coon", the happy- go-lucky, stupid field hand, the semi-feral "piccaninny"",and the fat "black Mammy"; and some were cruel and grotesque.

A comic stereotype of "mulatto" women as sexually hyperactive had helped legitimise the rape of black women by white men throughout the 1800s. It became more prevalent and extreme during Jim Crow and reduced the likelihood of a black girl or woman accusing a white man of rape, or being believed.

A new stereotype emerged with Jim Crow, that of the black man as an aggressive sexual predator of white women and it was used as a spur for, and legitimation of the shootings, burnings and hangings of black men.

Negative stereotypes and cruel caricatures can dehumanise their subjects and help make it possible for the unspeakably horrible to occur because they desensitise those who create and consume them.

To understand the awful, dehumanising power of negative racial stereotypes, you've only to look at the propaganda caricatures of Jews in Nazi Germany.Those of the Japanese in the United States during World War II were as bad and served a similar purpose.

Google the lynching of Jesse Washington but be warned that, if you are a person of conscience, you will find it disturbing.

The postcards that were made from the photographs of the torture and murder of the 17-year-old, along with other lynchings, are sold on e-Bay, part of a thriving trade in racist memorabilia.

When I've asked people about the sale of golliwogs, the response has been either disbelief that they're on sale or incredulity that anyone would question it.

To some people the golliwog is just a toy and, if they accept that it's a caricature of a black person, they argue it's a harmless one.

But, the "blackface minstrel" doll on which the golliwog is based is part of the same racist iconography as "humorous" postcards like the photograph of four naked black toddlers with the caption "alligator bait".

No-one these days would think it's acceptable to make, sell or buy a toy that caricatured a person with a disability, so how is it acceptable again to make, sell and buy toys that caricature black people?

Bullshit, Inaccuracy, Adulteration and Spin

 When I was still a Twitter neophyte I received a retweet from Tweeter A via Tweeter B:

•        "As Patrick Gower insists on commenting on the stories he is 'reporting' on, he cannot be classed as a journalist, is about facts, not opinion"

I assumed that a person in possession of an opinion about a current issue was in need of a response, so I tweeted back : 

•        "Don't agree actually. Impossible to separate facts from opinion – why a diversity of opinion in MSM is needed"

Tweeter A responded:  

•         "of course it is! if they want to spread their opinions they should start fucking blogs" 

This is the point at which alarm bells should have rung but I'm well known for a dogged pursuit of my point so I replied:

•          "What's defined as fact, how presented & ordered, which included/excluded etc – all guided by opinion." 

By this, I meant that someone's world view, including their politics, must, to some extent, influence how they report a given issue.  Of course a good journalist strives for accuracy, impartiality and balance – that's the essence and life blood of quality journalism – but, if all they do is repeat "facts", they become nothing more than stenographers, "repeaters", "churnalists". In light of who provides most of the FACTS these days (a very small number of corporately owned news agencies and a host of PR companies) that can only serve the interests of the powerful. 

Tweeter A did not agree:

•         "I do not agree with your definition of journalism, I am looking at you very judgmentally ‪#tsk ‪#checkyourself"

Now I didn't know much about Twitter lore at the time so the hashtag thing was uncharted territory for me, and I thought Tweeter B was being ironic. 

Tweeter B fluttered in with:

•         "Strip back The Spin; Expose the facts."

My determined pursuit of logic and rational argument led me further into deep waters:

•         "Have a problem with notion of journos as mere 'repeaters of facts. Has come to fore with neolib economics."

I followed that with the rhetorical question:

•        "Who stocks this storehouse of value-free, politically neutral facts for journos to repeat?"

Tweeter B replied:

•         "Ummm I dunno, things happening?"

I should have pulled the plug at this point but it was one of those "I can't stop, someone on the internet is wrong" moments, so I wrote:

•         "News agencies were primary source for journos – most closed since 1980s. More info now but also more disinfo"

Tweeter B came back:

•         "And their job to distinguish between the two?"

Great, I thought, we've completed the circle :

•        "Yes & that requires them to use judgement, to interpret what are presented as facts."

Tweeter C entered the thread and queried my assertion that it's impossible to separate facts from opinion, and cited science as an example. I asked Tweeter C if s/he was kidding, planning to then elaborate on my belief that science is by no means politically neutral or value free.

Tweeter A chipped in: 

•        "are you kidding?

I responded in the negative and wrote:

•         "Debate was about journalism; science is not inherently value free/politically neutral."

Tweeter A was not amused:

•         "wasn't a debate, you came into my feed giving your view of journalism, you're now done here"

Tweeter C replied to Tweeter A with a well aimed comment: 

•        "If you don't want comment on your feed, talk to yourself in an empty room, don't tweet" 

Tweeter A then spat the dummy :

•        "don't want incessant comment from fuck stains about bollocky bollocks on my feed capeche?" (sic)

Tweeter C replied :

•        "you need to calm down."

I tried to reply to Tweeter A but couldn't as I’d been blocked, so tweeted to the others: 

•        "Someone tell Tweeter A there was a wider debate about journalism I was referring to."

Tweeter A flew back with:

•          "is that a subtweet? can you like just fuck off now? ffs cheers"

I didn't have a clue what a subtweet was or why it was such a bad thing and only realised later that Tweeter A had in fact started the whole thing off with a sub tweet about Patrick Gower. 

Tweeter B then blocked me, presumably in solidarity with Tweeter A. 

Still furious, Tweeter A posted another tweet, seemingly without a hint of irony, sent to me by Tweeter D who was following the exchange: 

•        "subtweeters give me thrush,and make me wish somebody would skull fuck some fucking class and smarts into their rampant stupidity"

Tweeter D continued the debate :

•        "LynnW's point valid - if u don't agree counter it. That's Twitter - capiche."

To which Tweeter A, still under the control of his adrenal glands, replied :

•         "we were not actually talking about that, and lynn makes me vomit blood"

Tweeter B pitched in again, seemingly drawing some sort of parallel between sexual assault and breaches of Twitterquette:

•        "Stop means stop No means no Y do persons consider its OK 2 force themselves on U on Twitter"

Tweeter A then tweeted back to Tweeters B, C and D:

•        "at least preface it with 'sorry to interrupt, but am going to talk about something else" '" 

...which made absolutely no sense because I had been talking about what he'd originally tweeted.

Tweeter B ended the exchange with the somewhat surreal comment:

•         "If it continues I will require lubrication & some kind of Pornography…"

All very daft but also illustrative of some far from silly issues – as well as providing proof that having an overactive amygdala is not the exclusive province of the political right.  

If I write something and someone disagrees with me in a polite and reasoned manner, far from being offended, I'm delighted. I don’t like it if they abuse me or deliberately derail a discussion, but I welcome an intelligent exchange of views.  Only a determined ideologue who brooks no disagreement with their views, or a narcissist who so highly values their own opinion and/or sees "favourites, followers and retweets" as evidence of their personal worth and a flattering mirror they can preen in front of, would be offended by someone politely disagreeing with them. 

I've written about this, not to embarrass the people involved (hence no names) or to purge myself of it (although I found it extremely disturbing to be referred as a "fuck stain" and a thrush-inducing emetic) but because it illustrates the way in which "social" media can be viciously anti-social.  

The back story to that particular exchange was blogger Giovanni Tiso's call for readers to cancel subscriptions to the Sunday Star Times as a protest against that newspaper giving a column to MP Judith Collins. The placement of Collins' debut column made its status as an opinion piece a bit ambiguous and the paper also ran a profile piece alongside it, thus giving Collins the opportunity to start the revision of her old public image as a car crushing, gun toting hard-arse. Her much publicised friendship with a far-right wanna-be hard-arse, plus several other examples of what was widely seen as politically and ethically dubious conduct, had made it expedient to ditch the Crusher persona and create a new one – a softer, more thoughtful, socially sensitive, Judith Collins.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people did not buy into the transmogrification of Ms Collins and questioned the motives and ethics of the SST in giving her a high profile platform from which to relaunch her political career. Tiso wasn't alone in feeling outrage at what was a smack in the mouth for anyone who had any grasp of the anti-democratic nature of the two track dirty politics in which John Key and his government had been immersed. 

Matthew Hooton sparked it off from what I could see, by tweeting that Tiso was acting as a censor, trying to suppress views he didn't like. Several journos flapped in to defend their profession, one even suggested that Tiso's call for people to cancel subscriptions might cost jobs. Others pitched in with references to Labour MPs who had columns in the past. Hooton, very likely emboldened by the growing number of dogs attached to Tiso's ankles, called him "a fascist" – the ultimate insult for a principled left winger – and the whole sorry mess was topped off with an illiberal coating of a certain rightwing blogger's malodorous hate mongering.  

It all got very silly, and as so often happens with this sort of stoush on Twitter, the principle got well and truly buried under a load of nonsense and emotion. It also had the highly desirable effect of making John Key's inability to tell the truth disappear off the radar as a host of news and views dispensers went fluttering off in hot pursuit of the issue of the hour.

Social media are obviously very important; they link people, break down barriers, promote causes. They can also induce and force-feed moral panics, deepen divisions and hostilities, and they can reinforce social isolation and add to people's sense of alienation.  




We humans are a profoundly, inescapably social species. Our drive to connect to others is so strong we try to form meaningful social connections in an increasingly alienated and socially fragmented world via a keyboard and screen. These virtual relationships are not, nor can they ever be, a substitute for interactions between real human beings.  We devote a lot of our big brains to analysing facial expression and body language, and we have developed extraordinarily subtle spoken and written language to convey and develop complex ideas. It's very easy for what one writes on social media to be misinterpreted. Emoticons are a very poor substitute for face to face or carefully written communication, and even that can be misinterpreted.

The pared down sound bite has become the modern norm, both pandering to and reinforcing a reduced span of attention to both the spoken and the written word. The potential for misunderstanding on Twitter is compounded by the restriction on the number of characters plus a host of conventions well known to the Twitterscenti but perhaps not as well understood by others. 

On Facebook, a mob mentality can and frequently does result in an outpouring of emotion – sometimes cloying sentimentality and sometimes vicious bigotry, and it is scary how easily some people slip from the one to the other without missing a beat. 

Given the potential for misinformation, misunderstanding and the absence of normative controls on what is said and written, it's hardly surprising that white-hot emotion on social media is simmering away just below the surface ready to burst out and incinerate anyone in its path.

Social media like Twitter and Facebook seem to give power to the little people but the stream of information is often so polluted by masses of garbage it can be very difficult to see what is true and pure. On Twitter this is made more difficult because the speed with which "items of news slip by" is no longer the slow pace of Ewan MacColl's "flakes of food in a fish tank", it's a fast flowing, ever changing torrent complicated by the appearance of multiple tributaries which makes in-depth analysis and discussion harder, and for a lot of people, nigh on impossible.

In this respect, mainstream media are a vital counterbalance – or should be.  I've read at least one newspaper a day, and mostly 2 or 3, almost since I learned to read. It's distressing to me that most newspapers these days are more white space than print, more colour photos than commentary and more advertising than editorial. TV is mostly a thin, unsatisfying crust of highly paid talking heads mouthing sound bites and platitudes, over an unpalatable filling of freak shows posing as reality TV. Commercial radio heaves with unpleasant schlock jocks whose commentary is so low effort and insulting it's a relief when it's interrupted by the screeching adverts.

We are seeing a merging of paid content and editorial in all the mainstream media. As we move further into the realms of commercial advertising and political spin pretending to be reportage, journalists – as members of a profession whose raison d’être was the pursuit and presentation of the truth through accurate, impartial and balanced reportage – are members of a threatened species.  

Unless the decline is stopped and reversed, what we will be left with are purveyors of BIAS – Bullshit, Inaccuracy, Adulteration and Spin. The relatively few thoughtful and principled authors, journalists and bloggers are all that stands between us and a vast cyberspace littered with toxic trash.

 Not to want to over state it of course. :)