Terror as Usual – in your face.

This was a strangely relevant welcome to the ’Terror as usual’ workshop held at Birkbeck – a huge on topic poster in the foyer. pic.twitter.com/SdVeM1kN (thanks Shaku, Jodi, Saleh, Judy, Chris, Rachel, and others for turning out).  Can anyone name this piece of State Terror kit shown in the poster? – it really dominates the room – bet [...]

More Pantomime Terror

More Pantomime Terror – always on the case, protecting the Security of the Homeland near and far, the CIA seem to have found a pair of hot knickers in Yemen. They found no bomber, no plane, no ticket, they have no idea who built the panty-bomb… and there is no threat to the public. So [...]

That free-thinking even-handed paper of record

Even handed as always, the Guardian media ads pages today carries two ‘provocative’ ads for Torturer and Abuser. Ironic ‘sick joke’ ads that eventually ask us to log on to the website for the rehabilitation NGO Freedom from Torture. So far so transparent, a senior human rights abuser is needed for ‘A militia group in [...]

Terror as Usual

‘Terror as Usual’ – Media cultures in an age of terror Symposium Media@LSE and Birkbeck College with London Screen Studies Group Friday 25 May 2012 Venue: Clore Management Centre, Torrington Sq, Birkbeck, University of London Map: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/maps/interactive 10.00 Arrive 10.15 Introduction to the day Session One 10.30-12.00 John Hutnyk, Goldsmiths – ‘Sexy Sammy and Red [...]

Two moments of trinketization spotted by Simon, with thanks

this first one is especially relevant the day after Lenin’s birthday (is it Danish? :) and this one belongs in the Sept 11 file:

Disarm DSEI

Confront “Counter Terror Expo”: Confront the real terrorists! Posted on Friday 23 March 2012 April 25 2012, 6.30pm at the Royal Garden Hotel, 2-24 High Street Kensington: nearest tubes High Street Kensington and Knightsbridge. As “counter-terrorist experts”—many better known as armament companies—gather at the Royal Garden Hotel to guzzle champagne followed by four course dinner. Pausing [...]

Born Free – MIA’s Poetry After Guantanamo

A piece written before this week’s release of Bad Girls, coming out soon in Social Identities. Abstract: The recent work of the Sri-Lankan-British musician and sonic ‘curator’ known as M.I.A. (real name: Mathangi Arulpragasam) is considered as a commentary on atrocity and read alongside the well known essay ‘The Storyteller’ by Walter Benjamin and comments [...]

US Weather Report

NDTV 24 x 7 The Hanging Channel

A text on NDTV 24×7. NDTC x 24 Hanging Channel - click for pdf scan.  ‘NDTV 24 X 7, the Hanging Channel: News Media or Horror Show?’ in Contemporary Indian Media and the Politics of Change, London: Routledge.  Published 2011. * A study of 24 hour Delhi based news channel NDTV’s reporting of the case of Mohammed Afzal [...]

We are all Troy Davis (well, hardly, but its a fucking outrage that the USA executed over a thousand people since 1975, and then some)

A cartoon made for Troy Davis by the activist known cartoonist Carlos Latuff by: We Are All Troy Davis Since I have been writing about this in relation to MIA, maybe its worth noting for the record, that the cited (is this only ‘citation’?) image cartooned here appeared in its original gross form in several films, including [...]

We should not cave into PREVENT

A very disturbing email this morning – latest in a series of ever longer shrill missives on data protection that come in, and add to our workload. Not that I do not take them seriously, but it is not welcome news in between dealing with crap from UKBA (today, a note from a prospective visiting student [...]

Shopping Žižek – a commentary on a commentary (an addendum to ✪ 11 more notes 12&3 on #LondonRiots etc)

Slavoj Žižek’s commentary on the #LondonRiots indented, with my intemperate interjections interspersed in smaller italics (not indented). i – i – i – i. What I have done is copied the entire text from his LRB article (available free) and entered that here, in original order, nothing excised, so I could then add my own commentary, in italics, between [...]

Crusader – white supremacy in Norway

Breivik is identified as a self-declared ‘anti-Muslim crusader’ with a 1500 word [sorry page!] manifesto and links to the English Defense League.[i] That the terrorist self-styles as crusader is no surprise, but again media attention focuses upon the lone-wolf, rogue element, and individuation so as to engender control, in the same way that the manufacturing [...]

Re-post: review of Where there is Light, 2004

Since today in Bradford there is the 30 years commemoration of the struggles around the case of the Bradford 12, and next saturday (23rd July 2011) a similar event in London (see here), I repost this review of ‘Where there is Light’, a novel by one of the perpetrators – an appreciation of the quietly [...]

Pantomime Paranoia in London, or, ‘Look Out, He’s Behind You’

The book version of a commentary on various things Fun^da^mental (plus stuff on the Kumars at No. 42, Jean Charles de Menezes, Forest Gate, and the general mayhem of war-on-terror culture) is now out in a volume edited by Ian Peddie. Some of this material first appeared in various places across this blog, and was my inaugural lecture. [...]

Jodi

Having the assassination cheer squads on heavy rotation on the Jingo channel (BBC news) is embarrassing us all. No critical voice yet on tv, as far as I’ve seen. Worse than the Saddam execution on the Hanging Channel. Who needs media critique when they cartoon it up so bad by themselves? And to think that [...]

For those that hounded Hasan Elahi

I offer you this documentation of last night’s dinner. I do this in solidarity with Hasan Elahi who, as I read in Amitava Kumar’s excellent new book (mentioned below in the Ruthless post), was detained for questioning after visiting an Artist’s Residency program in Senegal and subsequently became subject of a 6 month FBI investigation [...]

Universities UK and the hidden hand of terror/freedom of speech

In a convulsive act of responsive policy and positioning, a new publication on freedom of speech in Universities has hit the shelves. This, I suspect, is going to be interesting reading – it is from the Vice-Chancellor’s cabal we know and love as ‘Universities UK’ – a name for the infinite escalation of ego and salary combined. http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/Publications/Pages/Freedomofspeechoncampus.aspx I’m [...]

Keep Calm talk at Kent – 4:30.21.10.10

. Keep Calm and Carry On: Low Level Anxiety in World War Three London . – John Hutnyk . Video provocation – we will watch Sri Lankan Tamil rapper Mathangi Arulpragasam’s recent Romain Gavras-made video promo for her track ‘Born Free’ from the new album /\/\/\Y/\ – so as to discuss the way stereotypes that [...]

Afzal farce in Delhi

Gadkari not sorry about ‘son-in-law’ remark on Afzal Guru Press Trust of India, Updated: July 09, 2010 13:04 IST Dehra Dun/New Delhi: Taunting the Congress over the delay in hanging Afzal Guru, BJP President Nitin Gadkari asked the party whether the Parliament attack death row convict was its “son-in-law”. In comments that could stoke a [...]