In responding to the tiny number of grievances about the ubiquitous coverage of the 2008 US presidential election, we were assured of its importance with analogies of “If America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold”. On reflection, the analogy is actually quite good, for not only does it suggest the global influence of the United States, but also associates it with disease.
So what then of the United States’ partner in crime, or ‘ally’, as the corporate media prefer to call it? No, not Israel – although you can award yourself marks for that particular answer, but rather, the United Kingdom.
In this case it seems, we are not ‘fortunate’ enough to be treated with saturation coverage of the recent British general election. There are no talking heads analysing the dresses that the wives of Brown, Clegg and Cameron were wearing, nor even what kind of dresses Brown, Clegg and Cameron themselves wore! A thoroughly bland election one feels.
Supposed spice for the election came in the form of “leaders’ debates” – the first time ever to be held in Britain. I couldn’t stomach to watch them, besides, I had managed to hunt out some wet paint in need of watching. After a short period of time however, I abandoned the paint when analysis of the ‘debate’ began to appear on the internet.
Apparently Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, the UK’s ‘third’ party, had done rather well and therefore, with full immaturity as to the actual significance and meaning of the debate, Nick Clegg was suddenly going to be our next Prime Minister while Cameron’s Murdock backed cavalry did what it could to produce thunder stealing polls to the benefit of Mr Cameron – naughtiness uncovered by Britain’s ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan, Mr Craig Murray (http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/).
As the three ‘debates’ unfurled, the focus given to Britain’s current wars, one of them clearly illegal, caused much discontent amongst a number of distinguished analysts and journalists, for example, UK based journalism and political analysis website, ‘Media Lens’, wrote: “By the end of the second debate on April 22, the word ‘Iraq’ had been mentioned a total of five times over the course of the three hours of discussion.”
They continued: “One day later, April 23, a wave of bombings in Baghdad were reported to have killed 58 people and wounded more than 100. Seven people also died that day in a series of bombings in the western town of Khalidya… By the end of the following day, the death toll had risen to 85 with hundreds seriously wounded from a total of 16 bomb attacks.”
It is right to be angry that these wars, and the necessity to stop them, were essentially ignored by Brown, Clegg and Cameron each aided and abetted by the corporate media’s now consistent soft-balling on these matters. However, the apparent near triviality of the 8.5 and 7 year old killing fields in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, as applied to a leader’s debate, was actually fully understandable, because all the politicians have the same war-sustaining policy! So what’s to debate?
Such a situation is truly shocking; that in the UK there is no major political force one can support in order to bring and end to these hellish wars. It is interesting to note that perhaps the most well known (however small) anti-war party, lead by Mr. George Galloway, lost its parliamentary voice.
This is made all the more distasteful given that in the recent election, the old canards of “democracy is in action” or “the voice of the people is being heard” were being articulated without so much as a hint of irony, and now that we have a hung-parliament (a tantalizing prospect), we hear even more allegations of ‘democracy’ in which logic warps and each party claims it’s plan for forming the next government is more democratic than the others.
It is also very sad to see, but has already become established tradition, that faith-based core values got even less prominence than the war, or perhaps, maybe there is a connection?
I personally did NOT vote, was utterly proud in doing so and I appealed for others to do likewise. I refuse to endorse or legitimize a system that will cause mass death. With regard to those who did vote for the main parties, I wonder what they will feel (if anything) once a government finally does form, and news starts to come in of the next massacred family or wedding party, or farmers, teachers, charity workers or peasants What justification will they conjure up to prevent the image of screaming children exploding before their minds eye?
I think here we have a powerful demonstration that the mirror is in fact, well and truly broken. Broken mirrors are never fixed, they totally discarded and news ones brought in to take their place. Will this happen vis-à-vis the British political system? I very much doubt it.
10th May 2010