Death by blog

by | Apr 11, 2009 | Influence and networks

The blogosphere can be fairly brutal. This weekend, it is busy consuming the political careers of two New Labour apparatchiks – Derek Draper, who runs the Labour website LabourList, and Damian McBride, a special advisor in Number 10.

In January, Draper set up LabourList, which calls itself ‘Labour’s biggest independent grassroots e-network’. It was designed to counter the popularity of Tory networks like Conservativehome and bloggers like Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes.

It was part of a Labour drive to harness the power of the net, as Obama’s campaign did last year. As John Prescott put it in comments posted by LabourList on YouTube: “whatever Iain Dale and them are saying, Derek Draper has put up a good network for the Labour Party, ‘LabourListens’ [sic], and we want as many communications as we can get. Iain Dale, Gui Fawkes [sic] – look out baby, coz we’re taking over!’

The Tory blogosphere mocked LabourList for its claim to independence, and suggested it was just a vehicle for the Labour party line.

Meanwhile, Draper was in discussions to set up yet another Labour website, called Red Rag.

The website was registered on November 4 2008, the same day that Draper met with Tim Allan (Alastair Campbell’s former deputy), Benjamin Wegg-Prosser (Peter Mandelson’s former special advisor) and David Prescott in Labour HQ, to discuss “how to take the fight to right-of-centre bloggers”.

Draper says on LabourList:

“I’ve wondered for ages why the right wing have a near monopoly on websites that feature tittle tattle and teasing of their political opponents. But I felt strongly that such gossip wasn´t suitable for LabourList and kicked around the idea of setting up another blog, Red Rag, where such stories might be published.”

The site was registered as being owned by ‘Ollie Cromwell’, which suggests it was intended to be an anonymous site (unlike LabourList) disseminating smears fed by Number 10 and other sources.

As part of this Red Rag project, McBride sent Draper emails in January, from Number 10, with a lot of lurid gossip about the sex lives of front bench Tories, particularly David Cameron and George Osborne, and their wives.

Oops. The emails then found their way to a Tory blogger, Guido Fawkes, and have also been offered to several newspapers. Apparently pages 1 to 3 of the Sunday Times tomorrow will be about the story, including the contents of the emails.

(more…)

The revenge of Levi Johnston

by | Apr 11, 2009 | North America

Come on, admit it.  Sure, it’s nice to have Barack Obama as President.  But you’ve felt something missing in your life ever since we lost the daily spectacle of watching the Sarah Palin political machine attempting to manage the story that her unmarried, school-age daughter Bristol was pregnant – despite what was obviously the inherent unmanageability of the father, Levi Johnston.

So on the one hand, we were treated to photos of the happy couple (with Levi sporting a blazer, a tie and a snappy haircut), and the news that they would be getting married; on the other hand, the exquisite revelation on Levi’s MySpace page that,

I’m a fuckin’ redneck who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some shit and just fuckin’ chillin’ I guess. Ya fuck with me I’ll kick ass.

And then Obama won and – suddenly, we were bereft.

Until now! For Levi has now declared all out war on Sarah Palin family (since you ask, no, he is no longer getting married to Bristol), by appearing on the Tyra Banks Show and then The Early Show on CBS, in each case giving it to Sarah with both barrels. According to People,

One point of disagreement: Whether Johnston, 18, ever lived at the Palin’s home. “They said I didn’t live there,” he said. “[They say] I ‘stayed’ there. I was like, ‘Okay, whatever you want to call it’ – I had all my stuff there. So, if you wanna call it staying there, that’s fine.”  “So, they’re lying,” said anchor Maggie Rodriguez. “Yeah,” Johnston replied.

And Levi’s family mother Sherry and sister Mercede are getting stuck in, too.  As the latter observes,

“They’re lying, trying to save themselves when they’re the ones that asked for it. They brought him to the campaign. They should have known what was coming. They can’t turn around and try and take it back now.”

Hell yeah! How do you like them family values? He warned us he’d kick ass. But for me, the real hold-the-front-page bombshell here is the one set out in the Huffington Post:

Levi Johnston, ex-fiancee of famous teen mom Bristol Palin, admitted to Tyra Banks in an interview set to air Monday that the couple was not always practicing safe sex and says they shared a bedroom on occasion.

Steady on, HuffPo. Did you have your lawyers look this over before you went to press? 

As for Bristol, well, dignfied silence is the order of the day.  As a statement from Camp Palin notes:

“Bristol’s focus will remain on raising Tripp, completing her education, and advocating abstinence.”

‘Oh Dear’-ism

by | Apr 9, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Global system

The highlight of last night’s Newswipe – Charlie Brooker’s rather weak British answer to the Daily Show in the US – was a brief video by Adam Curtis, the maker of such brilliant documentaries as The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares.

Curtis, in a typically bold narrative, argued that the hippy counterculture had changed the way we see global events, leading us to see situations like the famine in Ethiopia or the Kosovo War through the simplistic hippy framework of innocent and heroic individuals versus corrupt political systems.

The global ‘solution’, in this hippy framework, is for direct aid that side-steps corrupt political frameworks – the Blue Peter aid project to Biafra in 1969 launched this, and Live Aid was the culmination of it.

But the simplistic vision broke down, he argued, during the Hutu / Tutsi wars of the 1990s – first the Tutsis were portrayed by the western media as the innocent heroes, but then the Tutsi massaces of Hutus, and the ensuing civil war, showed the story to be much more politically complex, with no obvious ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’.

But the media can’t handle such complexity, so the result is we’re shown repeated images of evil and suffering, without any political framework in which to comprehend it. The end is ‘oh dearism’ – the attitude of a depressed hippy.

It really reminds me of the western world’s response (including my response at the time) to the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine: kids in tents and good-looking rebel politicians standing up to corrupt political leaders, what’s not to like?

Then the Orange leaders spend the next five years arguing and fighting, and the country descends into a major economic crisis. Oh dear.

It’s only about five minutes long, you can watch it below:

Adam Curtis on Newswipe