Posts Tagged ‘politics’

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Invisible Children: Public Awareness, Private Intelligence

In Rory MacKinnon on March 16, 2012 at 5:00 pm

[A piece fleshing out my previous post — first printed in The Morning Star, 17/03/2012].

When Invisible Children’s Stop Kony 2012 campaign exploded onto the internet last week, it was just a matter of hours before critiques of every colour followed suit. [You can read Invisible Children's counterpoints here.]

The Californian not-for-profit’s slick viral video recounted their efforts to convince the US government to send US forces into central Africa to depose the Lord’s Resistance Army general Joseph Kony — arguably the world’s most infamous wielder of child soldiers.

But African bloggers and journalists decried the video’s depiction of Africans as “victims lacking agency, voice, will or power”, while international relations experts warned of its overly simplistic narrative: the LRA left Northern Uganda six years ago and is reportedly on the wane; meanwhile re-igniting the conflict would necessarily mean fighting and killing the very same children the Stop Kony campaign sought to protect.

Still others cast a wary eye over Invisible Children’s own operations: A self-described “advocacy and awareness organization”, just 37 percent of its budget went to programmes in Africa compared to 43 percent spent on ‘awareness’ — projects like last week’s video. It appeared Invisible Children had never been externally audited, and for some reason had an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.

But the Morning Star can reveal a previously unknown wing of the organisation here in Britain — with ties to an international private intelligence agency. Read the rest of this entry »

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I Just Traced Invisible Children Back To Watergate

In Rory MacKinnon on March 15, 2012 at 5:41 am

It’s a provocative headline, but I’m entirely serious when I say that at least one Invisible Children staffer has ties to a multinational private intelligence agency. Skip to the bottom if you like, but please read it.

I was pretty busy with one thing and another last week so I didn’t get a chance to chime in on Invisible Children’s incredibly sus Kony 2012 campaign. If you miraculously haven’t heard anything about it, you can start with the excellent riposte at Visible Children, then some Actual African People, then the DSG’s heirs apparent at Demand Nothing.

As you’ll see one of the things that’s now coming out is the organisation’s … unorthodox approach to budgeting, with more money going to ‘awareness programs’ than actual operations in Africa. And unusually among non-profits, they seem to have an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.

Well, I finally got around to digging locally (with a tip from a friend) and found there’s an Invisible Children in the UK too — company no. 06679805, first incorporated in 2008. Its directors are Robert Bailey, Margie Dilenberg, Ben Keesey, James McMurtry, Laren Poole, Jason Russell – all staff listed on the US non-profit’s website – and one David Kelly DePauw Young, a UK resident. Read the rest of this entry »

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Occupy’s Object Lessons: Why The Camps Were Critical

In Rory MacKinnon on March 6, 2012 at 1:54 am
Protesters stand on a fort of furniture and shelving, challenging a police operation to remove them.

Photo by freelance journalist Stacey Knott.

[First published in the Morning Star, 02/03/2012.]

And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers. — Acts 18:3

“OCCUPIED 137 DAYS, CLEARED IN 137 MINUTES” blared Wednesday’s Evening Standard as cleaning crews quite literally scrubbed Occupy London Stock Exchange from existence.

The capital’s exiled activists have refused to be cowed, rallying at their sole remaining camp in nearby Finsbury Square. But the loss of St Paul’s Square is only the latest in a string of setbacks: with a grim inevitability, the movement has been ceding ground since December. The repossession of public spaces has been a key image for the movement, with more than 20 outdoor sites across Britain at its height — but four months on, Nottingham, Norwich, Kent and Finsbury Square are all that remain.

The refrain among critics and commentariat alike is that the camps have outlived their relevance — as if the centuries-old predations of capital vanished the moment Miliband and Cameron parroted identical platitudes about ‘responsibility’.

But even the campers themselves have been divided on the issue: even as the eviction was underway, defender Pedro Lima told me they had “spent enough time with the 1 percent”. The week before, regular spokesman Ronan McNern had lamented their legal battles as “a major energy drain — sometimes you just want to get back to the cause itself.”

But a look back at the battle over St Paul’s shows the conflict has, if anything, only served to highlight Occupy’s discontent with the status quo. Read the rest of this entry »

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Some Things I Meant To Say Re: Occupy & The Riots

In Rory MacKinnon on January 3, 2012 at 1:57 pm

Kiwi Summer on Radio New Zealand National

[A ridiculously long postscript to my interview with Radio New Zealand's Kiwi Summer (listen here)]

I love radio, but every time I do a spot I always come away kicking myself because there’s a million more points or stats or clarifications overlooked without which I’m convinced I’ll sound like a blithering idiot. Luckily Charlotte and Sonia of Radio New Zealand’s Kiwi Summer have kindly offered to repost this on their Facebook page so I can completely undermine the point of a radio interview with a massive wall of text. So let’s get cracking.

Occupy & The August Riots Are Rooted In Dispossession
While Occupy and other protest groups have been frequently portrayed in media as a public menace, even the most right-wing media outlets have been wary of associating them with the ‘feral youth’ narrative that immediately sprang up in the wake of the summer’s week-long riots. Many Occupy activists I’ve spoken to have outright rejected any notion of common ground: we are Peaceful Protesters with Placards; they were just Violent Looters. Certainly there’s almost no demographic overlap — and there is an ethnic component to this which is delicate but vital — but it seems blindingly clear to me as an outsider at least that both Occupy and the riots could only have burst upon the country in the way they did because of a backdrop of political disenfranchisement and massive social deprivation. Read the rest of this entry »

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Occupied Press Club: Apply Within!

In Rory MacKinnon on October 31, 2011 at 11:09 pm

No big bloated essays for now – just a notice that I’ve been talking to Ryan of the Occupied Wall Street Journal about putting together an unofficial network of correspondents at occupations worldwide. In the same way that the papers are reflecting the issues in each individual community, a bit of international coverage would offer an unfiltered view of daily life in the camps.

I’m not camping full-time, nor would I expect anyone else to, but you would need to be visiting/camping at least 1-2 days a week and get along to the main events since the point is to source these stories from protesters on the ground. If you are living there full-time, even better.

And best of all would be if you’re covering an occupation in a non-English speaking country (or where English is not the language of choice). This is an international movement and it would be a shame if our readers didn’t hear about all the important things going on in Europe and Asia and the Middle East and Central America. Read the rest of this entry »

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What Would Jesus Donate?: The Big Money Behind St Paul’s

In Rory MacKinnon on October 29, 2011 at 10:44 pm

http://onthefencewithjesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/jesus-money-changers-temple6.jpg

[First published in The Morning Star, 29/10/11. This piece was filed on Thursday, the day before the Cathedral announced it would take legal action to evict the protesters.]

The public furore around London’s occupation movement hit a new peak on Thursday when the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral quit, reportedly over internal pressure to take legal action against the social activists of Occupy London Stock Exchange who have sought sanctuary on the cathedral’s steps for the last fortnight.

The Revd Giles Fraser, who the campers regard as an ally within the church, issued a statement just days before his resignation insisting that rumours the cathedral had closed its doors for commercial reasons were “complete nonsense.”

But in light of his sudden exit and the cathedral’s loss of income – an estimated £20,000 a day – it’s worth taking a look at who does control the cathedral’s purse strings. Read the rest of this entry »

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Fox & Werritty: The Middleman Who Wasn’t There

In Rory MacKinnon on October 22, 2011 at 12:24 pm

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/10/10/1318278448823/Adam-Werritty-and-Liam-Fo-005.jpg

[First published in the Morning Star, 22/10/11.]

“When is a lobbying scandal not a lobbying scandal?,” asked spin doctor Gill Morris in a Huffington Post blog earlier this week.

Ms Morris, whose firm Connect Public Affairs bills everyone from Age UK to health workers’ union Unison, was adamant the Werritty affair of the last fortnight simply didn’t count.

“The fact is, Werritty is not a lobbyist, nor is he like any lobbyist I know,” she wrote. “So why the usual knee jerk reaction?”

It’s certainly true that the way Adam Werritty cultivated his relationship with former defence secretary Liam Fox was fairly unorthodox: a “personal friend” who dropped in on Dr Fox at work 22 times since he took office, accompanied him overseas on 18 known occasions – several of which involved government business, during which Werritty organised private meetings with foreign politicians and senior officials – and even bandied around faux-House of Commons business cards describing himself as “Advisor (sic) to the Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox MP.” Read the rest of this entry »

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White Right Terrorism: Oslo & Media Narratives

In Rory MacKinnon on July 30, 2011 at 4:36 am

[First published in The Morning Star, 29/07/11. Image by nrkbeta under a CC licence.]

[I want to preface this piece by pointing out that Breivik's killings, just like September 11 and 7/7, were politically motivated. If anything, the political aims were even more obvious. Far from cheapening their suffering or fuelling Breivik's narcissism or scoring political points from a national tragedy, an analysis of the political landscape which fuelled him is the only way to ensure his victims - of whom many were Norway's next generation of left-wing leaders - did not die in vain.]

A right-wing extremist publishes a manifesto promising armed resistance against Muslims, ethnic minorities and “cultural marxists”, blows up the offices of a centre-left government, then guns down literally dozens of young party activists, as young as 14, at a nearby summer camp.

Perhaps the only good – if it can be called that – to come out of such a horrific crime is the way Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous campaign drew out the very media narrative which fuelled him, only to stop it dead with an object lesson in media bias. Read the rest of this entry »

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Man United: Public-Sector Pensions & A City On Strike

In Rory MacKinnon on July 2, 2011 at 1:15 pm

Image by SecretLondong123, used under a CC license.

[First published in the Morning Star, 01/07/2011]

It’s 8am on a Thursday morning in Manchester’s university quarter, smack in the middle of the summer break. But the streets are far from empty.

Teachers and lecturers stand clumped together on picket lines outside their classrooms, while across the canal librarians, parking wardens, civil servants and others are doing much the same. Manchester it seems is closed for business.

It’s only a slight exaggeration: with literally a third of Manchester’s workforce in the public sector, it’s hardly surprising that the government’s plans to raid public sector pensions has raised a bit of a ruckus. And with clear blue skies, a beaming June sun and the warm glow of camaraderie, it’s obvious people are glad to be out and about. But they haven’t forgotten why they’re here. Read the rest of this entry »

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Suffrage On Sufferance: Ken Clarke & Prisoner Voting Rights

In Rory MacKinnon on May 28, 2011 at 11:33 am

[First published in the Morning Star, 28/05/2011]

When the BBC’s Question Time arrived at Wormwood Scrubs last week, justice secretary Ken Clarke was braced for battle: in the same day he’d managed to outrage feminists with talk of “the gradations of rape”, while incensing hardline authoritarians with a plan to dangle reduced sentences for prisoners who plead guilty.

But the lord chancellor was back to his breezy, avuncular self by the time inmate James Patterson got a chance to ask why Clarke’s clemency didn’t extend to allowing prisoners the vote — despite a landmark ruling on the issue in the European Court of Human Rights more than half a decade ago.

“Does denying all convicted prisoners the vote reinforce their alienation from society and discourage rehabilitation?” he asked.

Clarke’s response was unequivocal: so unequivocal, in fact, that he didn’t even need to qualify it with an argument. Read the rest of this entry »

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