A little controversy goes a long way

The pastor from a little-known extremist Baptist church in America took to the streets of Washington and burned a copy of the Koran, posting a video of the event on Youtube.

But this isn’t 2010, this is 2008, when the congregation of Westboro Baptist Chuch, Kansas (notorious for their homophobic picketing of the funerals of US soldiers), decided to bring further controversy to their church. However, this event attracted little media attention, no international outrage, no press conferences, no comments from the president. Nothing.
Sometimes it is good to give controversial, extremist figures a platform on which to hang themselves. I’ll point to last years spectacle of the BNP’s Nick Griffin on Question Time as a prime example, a party which was seeing a certain amount of popular growth, but failed to gain traction in the popular vote.
However, in this case the media has taken what should have been a sad and embarrassing display of religious extremism, Pastor Terry Jones burning a Koran alone in his back garden alone, and instead given Mr Jones a voice and a credible platform.
The rest of the story as they say is history, protests in Afghanistan, political outrage and finally insurmountable pressure on Mr Jones to cancel his hateful act against the worlds 1.2 billion Muslims.
But if he had not decided to cancel, it is safe to assume that lives would have been lost. And in my opinion, the media would have been to blame. Actions have consequences, and sensationalist headlines written purely to cause controversy and gain attention often lead to real people suffering.
And here’s the real issue, the media has great power in the modern world, but with this comes a responsibility as well. Sometimes the media stands on the right side of this line, allowing figures such as Nick Griffin and David Irving, a proponent of holocaust denial, to have their share of the limelight as it is often the best way to discredit them. Both figures had a radical reputations and controversial beliefs, both of which failed to stand up to scrutiny. However giving these figures a moment in the spotlight is not always the best way to deal with them, sometimes they just need to be ignored.
Want another example of the media hyping controversy? The recent debate over the so-called ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ has once again ignited an international debate. This is despite the fact that this Islamic Community Centre is being built two blocks away from ground zero, yet the media still refer to it as being a ground zero mosque’. And finally the media might want to remind themselves that there was a Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the World Trade Centre’s second tower, because some of those hard-working American men-in-suits who lost their lives on September 11th were in fact Muslim.
Now we all know that the media love a sensational story, however it is important to keep perspective. The tabloid headlines from these two stories have led to real-world suffering, peoples lives have been affected by the events caused by the media's hunt for sensationalism. When the countries 'free press' is largely comprised of re-written press releases handed out by a few large organisations such as the Press Association, the lack of actual journalistic research is staggering.
The message here is not to assume everything you read has been researched as thoroughly as you might have thought.

Make or Break for Labour

The former government have a new leader: will he be the icon that they need? Olly Smith looks at what the future holds for the Labour Party.

Last year I described Ed Miliband as the brother with “less experience”, however he has now quickly overtaken his older brother in the party hierarchy. David Miliband’s younger, ‘geeky’ brother has beaten him to the lead role in the Labour party following a hard fought leadership campaign, one of the closest ever in a party leadership contest.
But who is “the other Miliband” and what are the views of this political figure who constantly played second place behind his more popular and successful brother?
Ed entered the Labour party as a researcher and speechwriter for Harriet Harmen and subsequently Gordon Brown in 1994, gaining the branding of a ‘Brownite’. Whereas his brother entered the party as Tony Blair’s head of policy, a ‘Blairite’ if you like. This divide placed the two brothers on the opposing sides of what would become one of politics biggest soap-operas over the next decade. However these turf-wars helped develop Ed as a skilled diplomat, earning him praise in the ways in which he defused rows between the Treasury and Downing Street.
Eventually Ed made it to the cabinet under Gordon Brown’s short premiership eventually taking the position of Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change in 2008. In this role Ed developed a green following as he pushed for an almost radical stance on environmental policy, promising an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases and opposing a third runway at Heathrow.
And then came the leadership contest: the main pillars of Ed’s campaign revolved around the idea of a ‘living wage’ of more than £7 an hour, higher than the minimum wage of £5.85 an hour. Scrapping tuition fees to make university more affordable and available, but replacing them with a graduate tax, developing further environmental policies and protecting civil liberties. Because of his seemingly centre-left leadership promises many of the tabloid press has nick-named him ‘Red Ed’ and political commentators warning of a “lurch to the left” which Ed rejected in his first speech as the new Labour Party leader.
With the press favouring David Miliband as the front runner in the leadership struggle Ed’s chances looked slim, however after managing to secure the backing of the three biggest trade unions (GMB, Unison and Unite) and their voting members he just managed to beat his brother in the final round of voting.
So what does this mean for Politics and the Labour Party in general?
Whilst David Miliband’s leadership would probably have meant a continuation of New Labour, the Labour Party’s future under Ed Miliband is far less certain. All indications suggest that he will take it more towards the center-left than it was previously, this is probably the reason why Ed was able to gain such an impressive amount of union backing..
And what about parliamentary politics: will this new Labour leadership be able to stem Labours downward spiral of support in recent years? Gordon Brown’s premiership only a short while ago was largely accepted as a disaster for Labour, and the subsequent formation of the Liberal Conservative coalition gave everyone a party that no one wanted. I would argue that British Politics has shifted so far centre that the parties have collided, and a shift to the left for Labour would be no bad thing in terms of choice for the everyday voter.

Kim Jong-Who?

He came to power with a campaign that attributed him with superhuman powers (including the ability to manipulate the time and weather), he technically rules via the wishes of his dead father (whom he is a physical incarnation of) and he recently opened an account on twitter… Yes its Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s “Dear Leader”. 

Now approaching 70, speculation is rife that Kim Jong-il is poised to name his son Kim Jong-Un as his successor, but who is this mysterious character that is set to take over one of the worlds 9 nuclear-equipped states.

As with all figures in North Korean politics, very little is known about Kim Jong-Un, few photos even exist of the young ruler-to-be and even his birthday (either 1982 or 1983) is a mystery. What is known of his history is that he studied at the International School of Berne in Switzerland under a false name and now works for North Korea’s national defence commission as well as being a member of parliament, again both under false names. And as for his personality, most of the information about him comes from Kim Jong-Il’s former sushi chef Kenji Fujimoto, who described him as “exactly like his father” sharing his “violent temper”.

Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un recently returned from a trip to China, being one of North Korea’s most important allies, it is believed that this trip was to seek support for Jong-Un to become Kim Jong-Il’s successor from the Chinese government. At the same time back in North Korea, Kim Jong-Il has been busy creating the same cult of personality for his son that surrounds him. From declaring his son’s birthday as a national holiday to encouraging his citizens to sing a ‘song of praise’ to his son, the newly declared “brilliant comrade” of North Korea.

With so little known about Kim Jong-Il and even less known about Kim Jong-Un, North Korean politics can sometimes feel like a bit of guesswork. However what experiences with other non-democratic regimes have taught us, Cuba being a prime example, is that with new leadership sometimes comes new direction.

Wikileaks: A sign of things to come?

In early July, The Guardian received a huge excel document with over 92,201 rows of data, it took them almost a month to separate the story from the stats. What was revealed was a story of civilian killings by coalition forces, increasing attacks by Taliban forces and questions over Pakistan and Irans involvement with the insurgency.

Once the Afghan War Logs were published on 25th July, they became the biggest story in Wikileaks history. A site with a reputation for publishing classified documents, wikileaks has most recently been the source of the classified Baghdad airstrike video and publishing all the pager messages sent on 9/11. But is this website acting in our interests, a poster child of Internet journalism? Or rather is it a website simply leaking confidential information for publicity and with little consideration of the human consequences?

The Internet has changed many things for better or worse in recent years. The rise of Internet journalism (bloggers) for instance, has started a new wave of investigative political journalism. However many argue that this new journalism fails to follow the established rules of traditional journalism; no story is to personal, no secret (no matter how damaging) is too classified to reveal.

Wikileaks is believed by some to be the pinnacle of this new paradigm, a website which, it is argued, breaks potentially damaging secrets for the sake of it. Many times it is argued that there is no real story in what is being published, the story IS that secret documents have been published.

This is the argument that the American administration has taken with the recent leak. President Obama has claimed that these leaks shine little light on the events in Afghanistan beyond what was already known, and in fact put soldiers at risk in the process. For many governments and older news agencies, the actions of websites such as Wikileaks are "irresponsible" and damaging to politics.

However for the younger generation of journalists, Wikileaks is simply a continuation of the free press meeting the free internet. Take a look at Facebook for instance, a website where millions of people freely post highly private information on themselves for the world to see. For the older generations, information has always been private, the idea of open information is something that should be strictly controlled.

Had a more traditional news source been the origin of the leak rather than Wikileaks, I believe the resulting fallout would have been far different. The raw data would have been hidden from the public, whilst a series of stories would have been drip-fed into the mainstream press in order to maximise profits. In this new system however, the data was
published for the world to see, and it was left to the news organisations to find the story.

Right or wrong, the Afghan War Logs have shone a light onto the changing world of politics and political journalism. A field undergoing a fundamental shift from private to public, driven by a new generation of young news sources such as Wikileaks.

The Coalition: 3 Months in Review

Only a few years ago the notion of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives working together would have seemed unthinkable. How times have changed.

With no one party winning a majority in the elections, the UK embarked on a journey into the unknown. Would the coalition strengthen or split the country? And most importantly, what did this development mean for our student population? Now more than three months in, the answer is far from clear-cut. Sceptics are shocked by the governments perseverance whilst proponents disappointed at their lack of progress.

In May a surreal event occurred when David Cameron and Nick Clegg gathered the nations media in the garden of Number 10, suddenly bitter months of campaigning appeared to have been a mere illusion to hide their friendship. Issues that had divided their election campaigns became the issues upon which the coalition formed, reducing the deficit, electoral reform and working the country out of recession.

The coalition started well for the Lib Dems holding their own with 5 seats in cabinet. But three months on and the Liberal Democrats face a shocking loss of credibility, with public support down to 16%, and many claiming the Lib Dems have abandoned their principles. Much of this can be placed to the ideological mismatch of the Lib-Con coalition. The emergency budget of June 2nd being a great example of this, an all-blue budget of austerity measures, that left Nick Clegg on the defensive as to his parties role in its decisions.

And as for the Lib Dems electoral reform, one of the key issues throughout the election and upon which the coalition was formed. Recent opinion polls popular support is waning and only with Labours help will the Lib Dems have any hope of passing a reform.

The Conservatives have had a far better time at achieving their goals, the coalition being Liberal in name rather than actions. But whilst David Cameron may be content with his governments actions so far, it is apparent that the honeymoon phase wont last forever. Once the budget cuts start to come into play and the country enters the hardship needed to pay off the deficit, then Cameron will need to employ every tool at his disposal to hold the coalition together.

While the Lib Dems struggle to keep their party in line, and the Conservatives enjoy the calm before the storm, the effect of the coalition on student life has yet to be fully felt. The Lib Dems had planned to scrap tuition fees over three years, but this plan was watered down in coalition negotiations.  Now Vince Cable and the government have begun to float the idea of a Graduate tax (or contribution as they would rather it called), and whether it becomes policy come October or not, its safe to say that students will continue to pay more year-on-year for higher education.

One change, however, which is sure to make a mark in student finances is the VAT hike to 20% come the new year. This increase of 2.5% is set to make the January sales a little more expensive than usual, and will definitely make those shopping sprees come student loan day, a little less common.

Three months in review, I dont believe the country got the party it wanted, but it just might have got the party it needed in a time of financial crisis. The coalition is set for trying times, and with the Lib Dems already feeling the strain its hard to say if it will last a full parliament. For us students in the meantime, tighten your wallets, the next few years look expensive.