Tariq Ali's Blog, page 14

BBC reform: cut management and give more freedom to programme-makers

‘BBC reform: cut management and give more freedom to programme-makers’ by Tariq Ali for The Guardian, November 11, 2012

Is the BBC in such a petrified or paralysed state, so badly decayed, that it is beyond repair? Are all hopes of inner movement or structural reform misplaced?

To read the national press this would appear to be the case. I’m not so sure. Hysteria has now reached absurd proportions, as has the level of public discussion on the issues at stake. George Entwistle, his predecessor Mark Thompson and Helen Boaden, director of news, are reminiscent more of middle-level bureaucrats in Honecker’s Germany than creative-minded managers. Entwistle has fallen on his sword. More might opt for hara-kiri, but on its own this will solve very little.

There is an underlying problem that has confronted the BBC since Sir John Birt was made director general in Thatcher’s time. His predecessor (bar one) had been sacked effectively on Thatcher’s orders in 1987 for not “being one of us”.

A reliable toady, Marmaduke Hussey, was catapulted on to the BBC board as chairman. His first task was to sack director general Alasdair Milne for “leftwing bias”. Thatcher was livid that the BBC had permitted her to be grilled on the Falklands war on a live programme by a woman viewer from Bristol who successfully demolished the prime minister’s arguments.

Thatcher disliked the BBC’s coverage of the Falklands war and the miners’ strike and highlighted a number of other documentaries that were considered “too leftwing”. A faceless bureaucrat replaced Milne till the appointment of John Birt, a dalek without instincts or qualities, who transformed the BBC into the top-heavy managerial monster that it has become.

Birt feared that the Tories would privatise the BBC. He pre-empted this by institutionalising private sector methods and dumbing down the BBC so effectively as to destroy any notion of diversity within British television. The number of managers assigned to broadcast units became a sad joke and instead of considered argument management-speak, lampooned fortnightly by Private Eye, became the norm. Not wishing to offend Thatcher, the BBC gave Murdoch much of what he wanted to stabilise Sky. Cricket, for instance, was no longer available to those who paid the licence fee.

When New Labour won, a New BBC was already in place. Blair and his spin doctors Campbell and Mandelson turned out to be even worse control freaks than Thatcher. Together with their subordinates, they regularly harassed producers complaining about what they perceived to be anti-government bias. Radio 4′s Today programme became a favourite Blairite target. Simultaneously they were crawling to Murdoch at regular intervals, hobnobbing regularly with the editors and staff of the Sun and happily inhaling the stench of the Murdoch stables.

After Birt’s departure there was some improvement. Greg Dyke did have some instincts. For one he defended BBC journalists, for another he sometimes resisted the blandishments and abuse that emanated from Downing Street.

But just as the Falklands war had brought down Milne, the Iraq war did for Dyke. Treating an accurate report from Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme as lese majesty, a British judge, Hutton by name, seemed to ignore the bulk of the evidence and declared the BBC guilty. Dyke had to resign while an exultant Alastair Campbell, crowing like a cock on a dung heap, addressed the rest of the media. Hundreds of BBC journalists assembled on the street to bid a fond farewell to Dyke. That had never happened before.

The atmosphere of fear and the self-censorship that followed is hardly a secret. Under Birt, creativity had been suffocated. The new management structures had destroyed departmental autonomy. Heads of departments no longer had the same freedoms as before: current affairs, drama, light entertainment all suffered. The right to fail, so essential to creativity, was no longer part of the deal. Ratings and competition is all that mattered, give or take a few good documentaries. Would a current department boss have taken on a contemporary equivalent of Monty Python with the words: “I don’t like it myself, but make six programmes and then we’ll see.” Ask those who work there.

This is the background to the present crisis. This is the reason why editors of TV programmes are too often scared to take the right decisions. This is why only tried and trusted (ie, safe and sound) people are promoted. Peter Rippon was one of them, but he was not alone in dumping the investigation. That decision was taken by a superior and everybody in the BBC knows their name. Who did they consult? Perhaps we will now find out.

It is the culture of the BBC that needs to be overhauled with the redundant parts (mainly useless management appendages) replaced and some freedom given to programme-makers. There is no sign whatsoever that this is what the government or the opposition wants. Time, perhaps, for licence-fee payers to occupy.read more

Tariq Ali: ‘The Americas and Us’ at the Salone dell’Editoria Sociale

Tariq Ali will be taking part in the fourth edition of the Salone dell’Editoria Sociale in Rome between the 18th-21st of October 2012. The new edition is entitled ‘The Americas and Us’ . Taking place only a few days before the American presidential elections, it serves as an occasion to reflect on what is happening in the country, but especially in the “Americas” of the South and the many cultural and economic contradictions and social policies that animate them.

The event will also focus on the particular relationship between Italy and the USA.

For more information visit the Salone dell’Editoria Sociale website

(Website in Italian)

Tariq Ali: Anti-Imperialist Struggles After 9/11

On October 27-28, the conference on Anti-Imperialist Struggles After 9/11 takes place in Copenhagen.

Tariq Ali will be speaking about anti-imperialist stuggles and counter attacks at 10.30-11.30 on October 27th. Other speakers include Omar Shehada and Cesar Taguba. At 16.15 on Saturday there will be a roundtable debate attended by all the speakers of the day.

For more information, visit the Internationalt Forum.

The full timetable is as follows:

Saturday:

10.00 – 10.30 Welcome

10.30 – 11.30 Tariq Ali: Antiimperialist struggles and imperialisms counterattacks worldwide after 9/11

11.30 – 11.45 Break

11.45 – 12.45 Colombia: Dolly. Antiimperialist struggle in Colombia and the region after 9/11

12.45 – 13.45 Lunch

13.45 – 14.45 Palestine: Omar Shehada: The Palestinian Liberation Struggle in the light of the War on Terror and the Arab Revolt

14.45 – 15.00 Break

15.00 – 16.00 Philippines: Cesar Taguba: The antiimperialist struggle in the Philippines and the region after 9/11

16.00 – 16.15 Break

16.15 – 17.45 Panel Debate among the four speakers: The continued anti-imperialist struggle – Questions from the floor

19.00 Dinner

21.00 – 00.00 Palestine Solidarity Festival

Music Bands (Darg Team and others) and DJ Mescal

An Ugly Stalemate: The Uprising in Syria in CounterPunch

Angered by the non-stop, one-sided propaganda on CNN and BBC World, usually a prelude to NATO bombing campaigns (including the six-month onslaught on Libya, the casualties of which are still hidden from the public) or direct occupations, I was asked to explain my views on RTV. I did so, denouncing the promotion of the Syrian National Council by western media networks and pointing out that some of the armed-struggle opposition were perfectly capable of carrying out their own massacres and blaming them on the regime.

There were doubts about Houla, which at that time there were. No longer. It’s now clear that the regime was responsible. That in no way invalidates my general point, but has led to a lot of confusion regarding my views and worried and sometimes angry e-mails from Syrian friends and outright slander (accusations by frothing sectarians flaunting their ignorance of being an ‘Assad apologist’ just like pro-war idiots called us ‘Saddam apologists’ during the run up to the occupation of Iraq) from others.

How can a 6 minute TV interview be anything else but short and incomplete and given its context, too rhetorical to be of much weight. In fact it was little more than a response to the news of the last few days. So it might be worth make a few points clear so that critics have something to argue against.

From the very beginning, I have openly and publicly supported the popular uprising against the family-run Baathist outfit that rules Damascus. I have been opposed to this regime ever since the Assad military coup that toppled its much more enlightened predecessor whose leaders and activists I met after the Six-Day war and who numbered in their ranks some of the finest intellectuals of the Arab world. To be honest I did not imagine that Syria would erupt like Egypt, but was delighted when it happened. I hoped that the scale of the uprising, its evident popularity would force the regime into negotiations and a jointly agreed plan to elect an Assembly that would decide on a new Constitution. There is some evidence to suggest that few within the regime did favour such a course. Very few. It was not to be. Stupidity and brutality, the two principal characteristics of the regime, could not be swept aside. They were institutionalised and Bashar Assad was convinced that any concessions would be fatal. For many months the popular uprising was peaceful and its strength grew and grew, not unlike the first Palestinian intifada against their Israeli overlords. My views were clear: Total solidarity with the people. Down with the dictatorship. This remains my position. There is nothing even vaguely progressive about this regime. But who will overthrow it and how? Not an unimportant question.

In Egypt the mass movement conquered all because the military leaders had decided that they could no longer back Mubarak and there were fears that soldiers and junior officers might not obey orders. Major cities had seen the masses chasing away the security apparatuses of the falling regime. Once the US withdrew its support for the dictator, it was only a matter of time.

In Syria during the first period, the military high command held firm, built as it is on sectarian lines. Despite this there were some defections to the side of the people. Once state repression was unleashed on a national some within the country decided that the peaceful nature of the struggle was no longer sufficient the military and civilians close to the Western intelligence agencies were pulled out just like in Libya.

The West began to prepare its government-in-exile, using Turkey as its principle relay and Saudi Arabia and Qatar as subsidiaries. The opportunity to weaken the Iranians was too good to be resisted and as a special bonus, Hizballah the only force in the Arab world to have politically defeated Israel twice in the region would be gravely weakened. [Though here one could argue that if a new census--- the last was in 1936--- was demanded it would change the political map of Lebanon overnight. But in the interests of ‘democracy’ the ‘international community’ will not allow a genuine democracy to work on this coastal strip that they tore apart from Syria to maintain an imperial presence.]

Opposing Assad should not lead to backing a Western intervention and an imposed regime on the Libyan model with a quick-fix election as a PR fig-leaf. And yet many important voices within the opposition at home feel that an intervention is now the only answer. “Where is the ‘international community’?” they ask in plaintive tones. Others remain staunchly opposed to a Western intervention. The exact balance of forces inside the country is not easy to judge from the outside and a mass movement with a common goal necessarily requires that difference amongst themselves are not highlighted.

But, as in Egypt, once the euphoria of the uprising and its success in getting rid of a hated despot evaporates, politics emerge. What is the strongest political force in Syrian politics today? Who would be the largest party in parliament when free elections take place? Probably the Muslim Brothers and in that case the experience will be educative since neo-liberalism and the US alliance are the corner-stone of the Turkish model that Morsi and other colleagues in the region seek to emulate. For half of the last century, Arab nationalists, socialists, communists and others were locked in a battle with the Muslim Brothers for hegemony in the Arab world. We may not like it (and I certainly don’t), but that battle has been won by the Brotherhood. Their future will depend on their ability to deliver social change. The Egyptian and Syrian working class have played a huge part in both uprisings. Will they tolerate neo-liberal secularism or Islamism for too long? The Palestinians who demonstrate for social justice against the PLO puppet regime and are beaten by uniformed security thugs of the PLO and the IDF are a sign that the turbulence might not be easily contained.

A NATO intervention would install a semi-puppet government. As I argued in the case of Libya once NATO entered the fray: whoever wins the people will lose. It would be the same in Syria. On this I am in total accord with the statement of the Syrian Local Coordinating Committees published on 29 August 2011.

What will happen if the present situation continues? An ugly stalemate. The model that comes to mind is Algeria after the military, backed strongly by France and its Western allies, intervened to stop the second round of an election in which the FIS were going to win. This resulted in an attritional civil war with mass atrocities carried out by both sides while the masses retreated to an embittered passivity.

This is why I continue to insist that even at this late stage a negotiated solution is the best possible way to get rid of Assad and his henchmen. Pressure from Teheran, Moscow and Beijing might help achieve this sooner than the military posturing of Sultan Erdogan, his Saudi allies and their surrogates in Syria.

This article originally appeared in CounterPunch

Tariq Ali on Masters of Money

Masters of Money, a new three-part documentary series on how the work of Keynes, Hayek and Marx shaped the 20th century. Tariq Ali will be contributing to the episode about Karl Marx.

The series begins on September 17th, 9pm on BBC2.

Tariq Ali and the Future of European Citizenship

Tariq Ali in conversation with Nick Holdstock for Citizenship in Southeast Europe

N.H.: Maybe we should talk about what’s happening right now. Do you think the recent successes of the left in the European elections are just protest votes against the governments or can we see these as grounds for more general hope?

T.A.: Well, I think it varies from country to country. In France I think what we are seeing is the traditional anger of the electorate against incumbents. It doesn’t matter who is in power over the last few years, the story has been a bad one and the electorate decides OK, let’s vote them out. This happened in Britain when New Labour were voted out. It has happened in Greece, where PASOK was aware that New Democracy deliberately called an election because they wanted to be voted out, and it has happened in France where Sarkozy has narrowly been voted out, so these are sort of normal things that happen now in the European Union, where the extreme centre rules, in my opinion, and encompasses both centre left and centre right; so when people are fed up with centre right they vote centre left and vice versa. What is happening in Greece, however, is very different in character – it’s an attempt to break through this stranglehold of the extreme centre on politics and actually to reflect the will of the people. Hence, you see the collapse of the two major parties. Not a total collapse, but in the case of PASOK a very big collapse. And the emergence of SYRIZA, the small political organisation which has now got a huge electoral following. If there is an election in June – which I hope there will be – and they increase their following in formal government, that will be the first modest breakthrough for the left as such in European politics. And then if the Greeks default, that will be a huge business. If they default on the loan and implement parts of their programme. So that is, I think, the most significant thing because that also offers hope to other countries in similar positions, like Spain, like Portugal, like Ireland. They will think if the Greeks can do it, we can do it. We don’t need to be crushed by the EU monolith. And so it’s a very interesting development.

N.H.: Following on from that, I wonder if we can see what is happening in Greece and other places as many people reassessing what it means to be a citizen of a European country. A shift towards active citizenship, if you like.

T.A.: Well, I think the European Union promised a great deal and delivered very little. Voting rights seem to have become totally irrelevant because whoever you elected, it didn’t matter which party, they were carrying out the same elite policies. Greece has made a difference and this will inspire people. But in order for that to happen you do need to have political instruments and political parties. It can’t just happen by occupying public spaces. You know, you need politics for that. And so what we are witnessing in Greece is, in a way, the reassertion of the political and I think that will be extremely important in saying ‘yes, we are citizens; we don’t just have, you know, basic rights. We have political rights and we want to exercise these political rights and link them to social and economic rights.’

Read the full interview here

Ecuador grants political asylum to Julian Assange—Tariq Ali speaks to Russia Today

Today, the Ecuadorian government announced that it is granting political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange has spent the last two months living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, seeking to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Meanwhile, the British Foreign Office is not only continuing to bar Assange from leaving the country (they claim their obligation is to extradite Assange to Sweden), but has also threatened to storm the Ecudorian embassy. “Under British law we can give them a week’s notice before entering the premises and the embassy will no longer have diplomatic protection,” said a Foreign Office spokesman. “But that decision has not yet been taken. We are not going to do this overnight. We want to stress that we want a diplomatically agreeable solution.”

In response to these threats, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said simply, “We are not a British colony.”


Since last night, pro-Assange protesters have been gathering outside the U.K. embassy to show their support for the “freedom fighter” and their disapproval of Britain’s response to Ecuador’s decision, which could have far-reaching consequences: If Britain succeeds in sending Assange to Sweden, where he faces questioning for alleged charges of sexual misconduct, he could then be extradited to the United States.

As the founder of WikiLeaks, Assange has played a key role in the fight for transparency, releasing secret documents such as the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Diary, the Collateral Murder video, U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, files pertaining to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and, most recently, the Syria Files.

While the standoff between Ecuador and Britain continues, Patino remains hopeful that British authorities will honor their decision. As he said in a statement released after the decision was announced, ”We trust that the UK will offer as soon as possible the guarantee for the safe passage of asylum for Mr. Assange and they will respect those international agreements they have signed in the past.”

This tension between Ecuador and Britain is nothing new—Ecuador, led by President Rafael Correa, is part of the left bloc in Latin America, which Tariq Ali analyzes in Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope. Just hours before Ecuador’s announcement, Ali spoke to Russia Today about Assange:

There is no telling when a solution will be reached, but in the meantime, there is no shortage of protesters willing to spend the night on the sidewalk, risking arrest outside of Ecuador’s London embassy, to show Assange that his supporters are still behind him.

Tariq Ali on Russia Today: ‘Syrian rebels create mayhem to blame it on Assad regime’

Moscow says those behind the latest massacre in Syria want to unleash sectarian violence and ignite full civil war. Over two hundred people are believed to have been killed in the central province of Hama. Both government and rebel forces blame each other for the slaughter – while the UN remains paralysed on whether to extend its observer mission, or impose sanctions. Russia Today talks to author and Middle East expert Tariq Ali from London.

Tariq Ali with Noam Chomsky on The Julian Assange Show

Appearing on The Julian Assange Show alongside renowned linguist and political theorist Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali argues that the “infectious” Arab Spring has spread to the US and Russia, and is still underway. Criticising the “extreme centre”, a political consensus of centrist neoliberal orthodoxy that destroys political diversity and opposition, Ali talks about how the speed and flair of the Arab Spring caught everyone, from dictators and their sponsors to the Western media, by surprise.

Assange, Ali and Chomsky continue to discuss the “new hope” that resides in South America Bolivarian movements, and the democratic crisis in the Eurozone.

Tariq Ali in Thessaloniki and Athens

Thessaloniki Law School

28th May, 2012

7:30pm

National Technical University of Athens

29th May, 2012

7:30pm

Tariq Ali will be taking part in two discussions, in Thessaloniki and in Athens, concerning the development of international social movements in today’s world. Under the title “The Age of Extremes is back — Is the Age of Revolution coming?”, Tariq Ali will discuss potential answers to the current crisis of capitalism, and the continued importance of revolution in popular struggle, with journalist Aris Chatzistefanou and Katerina Kitidi of Debtocracy and Catastroika.