Andrew Lansley addressing the nation’s concerns.
So, Andrew Lansley is this guy who people just really really love. He’s a legend and stuff. He saved the NHS or something. Now he’s going to save it a bit more properly sort of anyway. He should be given a knighthood etc.
Girl Reading Laptop As If It Were A Newspaper
Pretty much. Obviously it’s custom to now opine on the decline of print media at the merciless hands of online consumption, or perhaps how online content narrows our focus to the detriment of consumer variety, or something like that. Let’s not though.
Visual Guide to Twitter Censorship
The continuing internet furore over Twitter’s new censorship policy may have its heart in the right place, but with so little attention being paid to the facts of the matter, it’s becoming a cacophony of tiresome alarm bell commentary, knees everywhere jerking hard left, blah blah etc. Because the policy concerns the administration of censorship, our moral compass guides us down an understandable logical trajectory; this policy administers censorship; censorship is bad; this policy is bad. Yet in the flurry of denouncements and boycotts and whatnot, we seem to have totally forgotten that Twitter has actually always had some form of censorship policy in place, just like every other social web giant.
If a certain prohibited word or idea is enshrined in a country’s law, then social networks are required to censor that content upon request. It’s been like this for as long as social networks have existed, obviously, because an openly flippant attitude to the rule of law isn’t exactly good for investment. There is still a frequently visited contention that this new direction somehow makes it more likely that Twitter will bend to properly shady censorship requests even though they say they’ll play nice and stuff, or in the least that it’ll lead to countries using their own laws to implement dodgy censorship. Lets face it though, that has always, always been a danger. So, bearing that reality in mind, here’s a handy visual explanation of this terrifying existence, before and after Twitter’s change of policy.
This process of tweets flying back and fourth over national boundaries already occurs. It’s just how the platform works, and it works so bewilderingly fast and in such chaotic directions that the only way to adequately restrict the information these tweets contain would indeed be to block Twitter in its entirety. So here we are. I know it’s hard to say, because doing so involves pronouncing the C-word, but localised censorship is better than global censorship, because it gives us a decent chance of circumventing that very same censorship.
Yes yes yes, it would be so super swell if they took a stand and said no to censorship full stop, but Twitter is a profit making business, not a revolutionary tech collective. Recognise it’s a tool, and use it wisely, because until proper tech-savvy dissidents build a platform that circumvents mainstream social media entirely, Twitter will remain indispensable.
The Post-Racial Problem
There’s a remarkably common belief among occupiers that the cause is post-racial, that economic injustice transcends that particular boundary, and there’s just such a well meaning nature to that contention which makes it seem so benign and cuddlesome instead of the potential danger that it is, because failing to acknowledge race as an issue will alienate those still affected by it. An amazing account (reproduced in the Occupied Wall Street Journal) by Manissa McCleave Maharawal of her effort to change the language in the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City shows what happens when people stand up to this way of thinking - they get a fighting chance, and the movement gets a little more inclusive for it. Manissa and her radical South Asian contingent felt alienated by the language in the declaration’s original draft because it swept away centuries of oppression and ongoing discrimination with its sparkly post-racial idealism, and were willing to block its progress rather than walk away. A block is a serious move, and speaks to how serious an issue such attitudes are; this is something that the majority white General Assembly would have missed and actually tried to breeze over, and had Manissa not attended this GA, had she still been a stranger to occupy, and if her first encounter was the official declaration using the original language, she and others like her may never have become part of the movement.
This idea of a post-racial, post-gender, post-whatever movement is most seductive to those who have never really experienced discrimination. It’s even held up as a liberal virtue, worn as a badge of pride among radicals and laypeople alike, and you can see why; the idea of us all being one race, one people, sounds so inclusive and progressive. While people still live at the blunt end of prejudice though, it also sounds like a lie. So there’s maybe just a small chance that occupy, and western social protest generally, remains so white and so male because of this enlightened attitude, rather than in spite of it.
Artefacts of British Mytholgy fig. 23 “Gideon”
I only today learned that George Osborne’s middle name is indeed Gideon, having previously assumed that was just a cheeky Private Eye jab at the slippery Chancellor.
Gideon, you see, is an ancient Hebrew word. It means ‘destroyer’.
