"Promoting Freedom of Speech and Press"... in Bahrain?

News today is a new Arab TV network is to be launched early next year. The imaginatively named "Al-Arab" is to be a rival of Al-Jazeera. It is to focus on the 'important shifts taking place across the Arab world, with an emphasis on freedom of speech and freedom of press'. It is the brain child of a Saudi prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal. And it is to be based in Bahrain.

The entire idea is laughable at first sight. That a Saudi prince would want to promote the Arab Awakening, when his family has opened its arms to exiled heads of states. That he would base himself in Bahrain, where his country's military repressed the Bahraini movement and helped temporarily crush the free press - there is a reason a Bahraini journalist was singled out for an International Press Freedom award by the Committee to Protect Journalists, an award given to those who have put their lives on the line to stand up to oppression. Such a network cannot exist in his home country, where free speech is non-existent. A Saudi Arabian base for Al-Arab is an impossibility; a Bahraini one is ironic.

It all sounds too ridiculous to believe. Compound this with the fact that the same man has only in the last week bought a $300m stake in Twitter, one of the most important social networks to the revolutions, and you have to wonder what Bin Talal is up to.

Is he really lining himself up as a patron of political and press freedom? Or is he excercising his power as one of the richest men in the world to protect his family from the very same things? Perhaps we'll find out next month, when Al-Arab launches.

Late Night Musing

Over the holidays I've picked up Robert Fisk's The Great War For Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East again. Part history, part autobiography, it took me a while to invest fully in this 1000 page epic - I bought it over a year ago, in fact - but I'm now finding it to be the most engrossing non-fiction I've read in a while, which is why I'm writing this at three in the morning.

At the point I'm at in the book, Fisk has been covering the the Iran-Iraq war for eight years, and one event's coverage has been self-apologetically skewed by the world's media. In 1988, an American warship shot down a commercial airbus travelling from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Dubai, killing all 290 passengers and crew. Amongst the dead was a wedding party, all in their dresses and suits. One young mother died cradling her year-old son. The west's immediate response was justification - that there were terrorists on board, that it was making a suicidal dive for a US warship, that it was an 'understandable' mistake, and so on. When Fisk's own investigative report showed the blame lay almost entirely on the US, that it was a loss of life that never needed to happen, his report was heavily censored to remove the anti-western slant. This led to his resigning from The Times and going over to The Independent.

I'm writing this because in one paragraph Fisk sums up the importance of a free press and its responsibility and duty in disseminating information (emphasis mine):

It's easy for a journalist to become self-important about his work, to claim that he or she is the bearer of the truth, that editors must stand aside so that the bright light of a reporter's genius may bathe the paper's readers. It's also tempting to allow one's own journalistic arguments to take precedence over the ghastly tragedies which we are supposed to be reporting. We have to have a sense of proportion, some perspective in our work. What am I doing - what is Fisk doing, I can hear a hostile reviewer of this book ask - writing about the violent death of 290 innocent human beings and then taking up five pages to explain his petty rows with The Times? The answer is simple. When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner - because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of a victim or because it might upset the owner of our newspaper - then we contribute to the very prejudices that provoke wars in the first place. If we cannot blow the whistle on a navy that shoots civilians out of the sky, then we make future killings of the same kind as 'understandable' as Mrs Thatcher found this one. Delete the Americans' panic and incompetence- all of which would be revealed in the months to come - and pretend an innocent pilot is a suicidal maniac, and it's only a matter of time before we blow another airliner out of the sky. Journalism can be lethal.

It's easy, especially so in the coverage of a war, to fall into a black-and-white view of things. If we are invested in it ourselves, we naturally want to portray 'our side' as in some way better. This may have been written about an event twenty three years ago, but it resonates with the coverage of stories today. The abuses carried out by Libyan revolutionaries against black 'mercenaries', many of whom were only in Libya to make a legal living, was underplayed compared to the wreckages left in the wake of Gadaffi's army. Our media whole-heartedly supported the burgeoning democratic movements in North Africa until Islamist parties came to the fore, at which point it became a much more sensitive subject.

The examples are not as striking as Fisk's, but the spirit of them is the same. When news is clouded by political agendas and biases, the news also begins to carry those biases, which affect our perception of events. Then again, it's also difficult not to be entangled by political biases. I suppose a journalist can only strive to report events as they, and avoid impressing what they want those events to mean.

Perhaps it's because it's that hour of night when everything seems thought-provoking, but I felt like sharing that.

Let's Kill the "Middle East"

The "Middle East" is the only region in the world primarily defined by its relation to another, that is, Europe and more broadly "The West", including Britain and America. It is a term that has been used for approximately 100 years, and while the term has passed into common usage since its introduction, it's time we let go of it.

The terms "Far East" and "Near East" exist, but they have largely fallen into disuse, except in either a historical sense, or where their relation to Europe is relevant. What we called the Far East is now China, North and South Korea and Japan, just as India and its neighbours make up South Asia, and the countries from Burma to Papua New Guinea is South-East Asia. The term Near East once meant the Ottoman empire, but since its dissolution and Turkey's tendencies away from Asia culturally, it's only a historical term now.

East, South, South-East, Central Asia; Western, Northern, Eastern or Southern Europe; North, Central or South America; West, North, East, Southern Africa. These terms carry no implication besides their place on the world map. We ignore the social, political and economic relations of every one of these regions in the world. They are named only in relation to their place on their individual continents. The labels we give the regions of the world are apolitical and solely geographic, if to an extent arbitrary.

Yet the region that would otherwise be called West Asia is defined by its relation to the West: Europe and the USA, in turns their allies and rivals. Even in Arabic, the region is called Assharq Al-Awsat, literally, "the Middle East".

A Guide to Outside Broadcasting

OBs have been some of the most technically difficult things we've tried to deal with this semester. They regularly cropped up from the beginning of November all the way to the 30th, and we never quite managed to get them to work right. This guide won't give a definitive answer to doing an OB, but it's an accumulation of the knowledge we gained over the last few months. We definitely need to put some more work into it before we'll perfect it, but I have a feeling that if this isn't put down to paper we'll be making all the same mistakes months from now.

Kit

iPhone: I don't know the technical side of it, but we have about ten GVs from Tom the week we went down to London for the student march. He could upload it almost as fast as you recorded the videos, and then it was down to the people in TAB09 to take the videos off youtube and edit the good stuff together. The quality isn't too bad either. So if you have an iPhone, or are thinking of getting an iPhone, keep in mind that it can come to some genuinely good use as OB kit. It's also possible that you can get the same result from many smartphones out there on the market, but I don't know enough about phones to say.

Laptop: With a laptop you can skype and you can film things at a last resort - all laptops have inbuilt webcams these days and they aren't too shabby. Also worth noting, a laptop can be easily balanced to sit on top of a tripod (taking the anchoring slab off the top helps). This was how we filmed Tom's piece to camera on the day of the student march. Mac or PC? Mac is better, simply because their laptops come with a firewire port, so you can hook up a PD170 if you want or need to. This might be possible with a PC but I still haven't figured out how - perhaps a HDMI cable will be enough to hook a HD camera to a PC, but there's experimenting to be done. Stick to a Mac if you can, but if you can't you can manage with a PC, provided you're only using Skype.

PD170: Using a firewire you can plug a PD170 into a Mac, and using iMovie you can stream video straight from your camera to the Macbook's hard drive. Also, if you're streaming to iMovie, you can have a gun (or other) mic plugged into the camera, and that sound will be streamed/captured as well. You can also set Skype to stream from your PD170 instead of the default webcam, so it's useful for a live OB as well. You could bring a person to stand in front of the camera and transmit the footage, rather than feeling like a bit of an awkward plonker trying to do so in front of a laptop.

Cannon 550 (or other camera): The 550 is the camera only media production students are allowed to use as they come out of their budget, but the loan counter claims there'll be more of these eventually that other students can book out, so it's worth putting down. Other cameras, like that £100 canon you might own, can be used. The theory behind them is essentially the same - you can film onto an SD card, transfer it to your computer and upload it to youtube. Most laptops come with an SD card tray these days, so it shouldn't be a problem. They're technically made as still cameras though, so how good the footage will be may vary. The 550's worth mentioning because it's a professional camera - and the more professional the equipment looks, the more respected we are on the field. So a 550 is miles better than that pink little camera you got for your birthday, just because it looks better.

Wireless microphone: We never actually used these, but I think they have potential use so here they are. At the loan counter you have to specifically ask for a wireless microphone-to-minijack cable (a minijack is the norm for headphones/mics on computers, mp3 players, etc). They're not on the system, but they can lend them to you informally. With this cable you can connect the receiving end of the mic to your computer and set it as the mic used.

Firewires: To connect a PD170 to a macbook you need either a 4-to-6 or 4-to-9 firewire cable. Which you need varies from model to model, so check your jack first. If the jack on the macbook is rectangular and resembles a usb jack, you want a 4-to-6 jack. If it is smaller and squarer you want a 4-to-9. Usb cables don't have the capacity to transmit as much information as firewires, which is why they can't be used.

Software 

iMovie: I'm no expert at iMovie and don't really know how to use it very well, but there's three important aspects to it. First, create a new project. Second, once you've plugged in a PD170, you can capture video straight onto iMovie - think of it as skipping the entire necessity of tapes. You're looking for the button with the camera icon on the left side of the screen. From there you want to drag the captured footage onto the timeline, and then edit if you can or want (I can't tell you how on iMovie). Export it and upload it on youtube. This is the closest you can get to our usual method of recording and editing footage.

Skype: You need a skype account to download the program, and then you'll need someone in the newsroom on the line. All you have to do here is wait for the call, and the production team will do their magic on the other end - here I don't know how they record it. If you're doing the OB, you just need to be ready. One thing to note, if you are using a laptop's integrated camera, do not read a script open on a document. We'll all be able to see your eyes flicking from left to right!

Youtube: Youtube has limited editing software. All it really allows you to do is crop the beginnings and ends of videos, but that can has its uses too.

Setups

PD170-Mac

• PD170 (or 150, or Sony HD)
• 4-to-6 or 4-to-9 firewire
• iMovie to capture
• No tape necessary!
• Gun mic can be plugged into PD170, it will be picked up by iMovie

Skype

• Integrated cam can do the job
• A wireless mic can be plugged into any laptop so long as you get out a mic-to-minijack cable
• Skype can be told to use a PD170 to stream

Canon 550 (or other camera)-PC

• SD card with 8+ GB
• The connecting cable
• And youtube

End Bit

First of all, the more put-together a piece is when you put it to youtube, the better. But if not you may have to rely on someone else who doesn't know as much as you do about the package to edit it together. Communication with production and editors is important.

Secondly, there is still one major issue we haven't yet figured out: internet. Where do we find fast, reliable internet, especially for live OBs? How do we split our time between editing/uploading and news gathering? I've done 3 OBs for WINOL and I'm still not sure. This is the major thing holding us back with OBs, if anyone's got an answer, it's more than welcome.

Existentialism

Existentialism is a philosophy dating back to the mid-to-late 19th Century. It is characterised by an inability, or feeling of inability, to understand a world that makes no sense. In this regard it is far removed from the empirical ideas that preceded it, and lends itself to the senselessness of the observable mind psychoanalysis looks at. Influential philosophers and writers include Nietzsche, Kafka and Heidegger. All German, although there are others such as Dostoevsky and Sartre, Russian and French respectively.

Totalitarianism

Qualities of totalitarianism:

• Fear of the regime.

• A total disregard for the law. The regime does not abide or seek to change the law to suit them, they just flaunt it. This feeds back into the first point: fear. When anyone can be apprehended for any reason - or without any reason - a culture of fearful obedience emerges.

• Obedience to the regime, even if the acts are perceptively evil. "I was just carrying out orders" was an excuse used by nazis after the war. This facet is explored in Milgram's famous experiment. The volunteer would be led into a room where a man in a white labcoat instructed them to deliver electric shocks of increasing intensity to a person (actor), and told they could stop at any time. The shocks would eventually reach deadly levels, and the actor would fake a painful death. The volunteer was told they could stop at any time, and the experimenter never told them they had to deliver shocks, but as it was suggested, and as they were reassured that the result of the experiment fell solely on the experimenter and not them, they did so. It was found that the vast majority of people would electrocute the man into at least intense pain if not death, and it was the minority who stopped early on. The experiment was controversial at home in the US, where the public believed they would be incapable of committing the crimes of the Germans. It is evident that the average person can easily become an unthinking follower of the regime, especially when there is no morality.

• An aim to destroy history, culture and beliefs that are not a part of the regime's image. There is no 'before totalitarianism' under such a regime.

• An 'Us vs Them' mentality. There is an enemy and an expected attack always just a moment away. This dichotomy is a powerful force as it unites the entire population of the regime as a single entity, with a sense of belonging. This belonging leads to a fear of this unity's severance by an enemy. Wanting to be a part of the regime and wanting to preserve their part of the regime feeds back into their obedience to it.

• The promise that a great future awaits. Hegelian improvement of the human race, or at least of the regime's people. This provides a justification for what might otherwise be considered immoral or inhumane.

Nazi Germany and Stalinism were the great totalitarian regimes, though there are others - North Korea being one of if not the last remaining, complete with the propaganda, war with America and South Korea ever expected and fear.

Frege's Logic

Before Frege, there was logic in the Aristotelian sense. The textbook example of Aristotelian logic is:

Fact: All men are mortal.

Fact: Socrates is a man.

Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

Al Jazeera's Blackout on Bahrain

Just an interesting thing I noticed about Al-Jazeera a long time ago. I've pointed it out a few times on online forums, but I think it's worth warranting a small blog post - though it might be a few months late.

When Egypt was constantly in the headlines back in January, Al-Jazeera emerged as the first-stop broadcaster for news on the burgeoning region-wide movement. And while it has been brilliant in its coverage of Egypt and Libya, with Bahrain we see that Al-Jazeera is not without its own agenda, beyond seemingly embracing the 'Arab Spring'.

My interest in Bahrain's events at its peak, I was almost constantly on Al-Jazeera, reading up on everything happening. And its coverage was good to begin with. In the first month of the protest,; it seemed they had the interest of spreading the Bahraini peoples' message at heart.

Things went sour in Bahrain when on the 14th of March, exactly a month after the then-called 'Pearl Revolution' began, the Saudi army rolled in, dispersing the protesters from their camp and decimating the iconic pearl roundabout. Suddenly, Al Jazeera, which had so readily reported every morsel of news from Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, stopped reporting on Bahrain. On both Arabic and English channels.

30th November

WINOL's 30th November Strikes Special Edition is now out - check it out!

Unfortunately, I find hosting a youtube video on my blog quite difficult with the new blogger design, or I would have had it in this update, but it's there in that link. Featuring a few seconds of my (at the time live) semi-coherent babbling.

Tom Hepworth's Tips

Tom Hepworth, a video-journalist from BBC South came in to talk to us in the newsroom today. And here are the notes I typed up during his chat with us.

Clouding Reality with Labels - Arab Spring and Winter

The label given to the cultural revolution that has enveloped the Middle East has been deceptive to everyone who has used it. It was being called the 'Arab Spring' at least as early as March. A populist movement, it was widely regarded as a force for the Good of the region. But this simplification made it easy to ignore the complexities. The ground-breaking revolution of Tunisia, the expulsion of Mubarak from Egypt and the romantic war of the Libyans - which was only viewed as brutal with the death of Qaddafi, no longer a pharoahic figure but a victim of war. These overshadowed the struggles of Yemen, Bahrain and even to some extent Syria.

To call it the 'Arab Spring' is to paint the whole movement with a single brush, ignoring all the intricacies unique to each nation. It is a simplification that reeks of pan-Arabism and glosses over the difference in every country.

Keynes

Keynes is one of the most influential economists of the 20^th century, his book being a milestone in economic theory. Keynes's book transformed economic theory so radically that one might call everyone today a Keynesian, whether or not we realise it.

Keynes was born in the year 1883, dying in 1946. His best remembered work is The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, written during and influenced by the Great Depression. It was published in 1936. He was a capitalist and the Great Depression did not, as it did to other thinkers in this time, turn him towards socialism. Where others sought a socialist or communist overthrow of the system during the Great Depression, he saw the economic issue as like a car with a broken part – to fix the car all you have to do is fix or replace the part; there is no reason to get a whole new car.

The conclusions of the General Theory can be stripped down to four points:

• Economies can suffer from overall lacks of demand, which leads to involuntary unemployment.
• The economy's automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand, if it exists at all, operates slowly and painfully.
• Government policies to increase demand, by contrast, can reduce unemployment quickly.
• Sometimes increasing the money supply won't be enough to persuade the private sector to spend more, and government spending must step into the breach.

These ideas were unthinkable in the time of Keynes. The success of Keynes's book is displayed in the seeming straightforwardness of these four points.

One of Keyne's crucial innovation is the taking apart of Say's Law, which was one of the driving economic theories of the 19^th century. Writing in the early 1800s, the French businessman Jean-Baptiste Say, states that “products are paid for by products”. This means that when a product is sold, the value earned is then used to purchase another product. For example, if a carpenter sold a table for £15, that £15 might then be spent on purchasing groceries. In effect, the table was traded for the groceries, with transfer of money acting as a medium between these sales and purchases. Thus, by Say's logic, the creation of one product opens the possibility for new products on the market. However Keynes refutes this, stating that the option of accumulating money, as in savings, renders Say's law meaningless. Returning to the previous example, if the carpenter then saved all or most of the revenue made from his sale instead of spending it on something else, he would have broken Say's law.

I actually don't entirely understand Keyne's refutation of this (at least as it was summarised in the reading). Surely if you accumulate money instead of spending it on another product, you will then at some point in the future spend that money? For example if you save to buy a car, or just as an emergency fund. And even if that money is taxed, or never used by yourself and eventually inherited by your children, it will over the long run be used at some time in the future. But perhaps this goes back to the point mentioned earlier, that the economy's tendency to balance falls in demand is incredibly slow.

The classical model of economics wasn't the only thing Keynes broke away from: he also escaped from the business cycle theory of the time. Many economists wrote on the boom and bust economic cycle and tried to explain the complexities of the cycle. Keynes instead focused his study on an economy fixed in depression, such as that of the Great Depression, and the problems of unemployment. Rather than ask “Why is there a depression?”, Keynes asks, “How can we create more employment?” By asking this question, instead of why the depression occurred, Keynes helped move economic thought away from the idea that busts had a redemptive quality, like an economic purgatory.

One criticism of Keynes's book is that he mistook an episode of history as a trend that would continue. He did not see an end to the Great Depression, and wrote with no end of it in mind. He also didn't see a future of persistent inflation, as is what followed after the Second World War.

Writing his introduction, Krugman states that he thinks the greatest economic theories are those that transform the way we view the world, and in this way Keynes's General Theory ranks as highly as Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. He made the idea that mass unemployment is the result of inadequate demand completely comprehensible.

In his documentary series The Age of Uncertainty, Galbraith, another economist of the same generation, described what it was like the first time he read the General Theory, in 1936. He said:

“I remember the shock. All I had been taught to believe and was teaching others to believe was at risk. There could be a shortage of purchasing power; unemployment was not an aberration – in the absence of corrective action it may be normal; to balance the budget might not be an act of wisdom; it tore the possibility that I might have to change my mind, and for an economist there's nothing worse.”

One interesting point, if I've understood correctly, is that Keynes believed that one of the ways in which to get out of a recession for government to spend. If the public sector spends more, the private sector spends more too, resulting in a revitalisation of the economy. Our own government right now is characterised by cuts, and increasing unemployment. By Keynesian logic as I've understood it, this is entirely the opposite direction the government should be taking, sending the economy into a deeper bust rather than bringing it back into a boom.

And in fact, this point is best demonstrated with today's newspaper headlines.

To finish off, I'll end with some food I think is relevant to the whole of HCJ, a quote from Keynes:

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.”  

Bournemouth Town Hall: Occupied Land

Foreword: This is my written article for Occupy Bournemouth, as covered last week. It's still not up on the WINOL website, and may not be. I wrote it a bit differently than we usually write our news stories... this came about when one subeditor told me the level of writing for the written side was often poor. So I know it's a little bit different, and I know it's possibly quite a mistake - as Chris often says, originality is overrated. I tried to add some life to the story though, and this was the result. As I really put an effort into this one, I feel the need to show it off on my blog, even though it's now a dated piece.

Bournemouth Town Hall: Occupied Land

A slogan hangs over hedges between Bournemouth Town Hall and the surrounding roads. 'HONK 4 CHANGE', it shouts to commuters. Of the hundreds of cars passing through during the day, around one in every ten minutes has a sympathetic driver behind the wheel who beeps their support. On that cue, the protesters salute the passing traffic with a cheer and a wave.

The protests that began in Wall Street in September and spread worldwide hit Bournemouth on Saturday the 29^th of October, when the first protesters set up camp on the lawn outside town hall, proclaiming the beginning of the latest occupation: Occupy Bournemouth.

6th WINOL

This last week has been more hectic than I imagined. I had a more relaxed attitude to it to begin with, as my last post highlights. With my work already mostly done on Question Time, I thought I'd have a relatively easy week. I was wrong to make the naive mistake of assuming nothing would come up a second time.

5th WINOL

It was dull and unmemorable. That's the main criticism to take away from the debrief - most of which was actually on Wednesday than today. We need to write to our pictures, be catchier with our language; clichés aren't bad, they're a technique to make use of. Don't try to be over-clever with news reporting or you'll miss the target. Not that they're saying we can't be creative at all (I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong), but you have to walk before you can run (there's a cliché for you), and at the moment we're barely making two steps before tumbling over.

I was in charge of the NIBs this week, as for reasons out of my control I couldn't organise to have a package. The NIBs, all together:

Purple Flag, Streetlights and Strikes. PF and Strikes were the stronger of the two, so I put them at the start and end and the visually awful Streetlights in the middle. Looking back I should have put Strikes in first, as Julie's piece had the best pictures. My pieces were quite shoddy in comparison. I did try to write to my pictures this day, but I found that I didn't have nearly enough images. This led me to realising that I needed a picture for the words 'Purple Flag' - I ripped the logo off their website quickly, it could definitely have been done better. It also made me realise just how little footage I actually had for Streetlights. The script I ended up writing, which I don't have but will pull from the bulletin later, included words and phrases that lent themselves to pictures I didn't have, such as general shots of town centre. I only had streetlamps.

What I found was that to write to my pictures, I need to have filmed to my words. It's circular, but it comes down to being better prepared, something I hope to be this week: I've already written a rough script for the Occupy Bournemouth package I'll be filming tomorrow. Hopefully it will feed into what I film, which will feed into what I write.

A Healthy Dose of Existentialism and Politics

There's not much I can say in-depth today, but there is a lot I want to say - it will have to come in greater density later. I do feel the need to say something now there.

Freud

Sigmund Freud is one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, though he would have baulked at being called one. He thought himself a scientist, but as he didn't apply the scientific method to his theories, he was a very poor one. While he has had a lot of influence in the field of psychology, his own theories are viewed more as historical artefacts than things of solid bases, and those psychologists to have followed him - including Carl Jung, who we'll apparently learn more of later - have pushed psychology in more progressively useful directions. But Freud had a significant impact on the culture of the 20th century, and in that respect he is more philosopher than scientist.

There are three highly important theories of his that remain current in our culture today: the subconscious, the mental triumvirate of the Id, Ego and Superego, and psychosexual development.

The Subconscious

This is perhaps Freud's most important theory, as it moves us away from the Enlightenment idea that we are fully in-control of ourselves. The subconscious is a part of our brain we have no control over and that is the foundation of perceptible consciousness. This fundamentally contradicts that Enlightenment idea that the universe - and by extension, a person - is one complete and perfect clockwork. One argument for the subconscious is that there are physical aspects of our body we have no control over: we can't stop ourselves from breathing (imagine if we could? some idiot would do it for a dare and die, then the nanny government would impose breathing regulations), our sensations - touch, taste, etc, but perhaps most importantly pain - are involuntary, and we all have some physical ticks, like tugging our earlobe when we're nervous or tapping our leg when bored. Even the act of crossing our arms is often involuntary.

Freud helped to propagate the idea that we aren't in full control of ourselves, which leads us to the science of psychoanalysis and is easily incorporated into the existential philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries. Though we still haven't learnt much on the topic of existentialism, I can certainly make connections from what little I know. For example, that famous Nietzsche quote, "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you," is applicable with Freud, where the subconscious is the abyss. In this quote (I believe) Nietzsche was warning his readers from becoming the monsters they fight, and in the mental battlefield Freud describes, that abyss would by the Id, our primal instincts, which Freud believed were harmful.

The Id, Ego and Superego

The Id, as I've just defined, is our primal instincts. Eat, poop, sex, sleep, survive. The Id pushes us towards instant gratification, and someone whose mind is ruled by the Id has low self-control.

The Superego is the opposite of the Id; it suppresses, usually through the usage of guilt. It aims for perfection within the ideals set by culture - so the Superego's manifestation varies not just from person but from place to place. If you eat too much when the Superego's idea of perfection requires you to eat less, it will punish you by making you feel guilty. Someone who is controlled by their Superego, says Freud, suffers from melancholy - depression - due to not being able to satisfy their perfectionism.

The Ego is the realistic of the three, acting as a balancer of the Id and Superego. Someone led by their Ego is more balanced than one who is ruled by the other two and is better adjusted as such.

The Five Stages of Psychosexual Development

The Oral Stage is the first a child goes through in its earliest stages, when it develops an obsession for putting things in its mouth, beginning from breast feeding. Freud warns that children who are under- or over-stimulated at this stage will turn out dysfunctional - those under-fed by their mums will grow into manipulative adults, constantly seeking to get the oral stimulation denied as a child; those over-fed won't mature and will try to stay in this childish, taken-cared-of phase for all their life.

The Anal Stage is characterised by potty training, and is when a child learns to distinguish between instant and delayed gratification - do I poop my pants, or wait to poop in the proper place? A difficult question some people never learn the right answer to. Those who get caught up in this stage, claims Freud, develop personal traits such as orderliness, a need to control, pedantry - otherwise known as being anal.

The Phallic Stage is where the craziest part of Freud comes in. This is when the child begins to identify as 'boy', 'girl' or otherwise (though Freud wouldn't have recognised more than two gender-identities in his day). The child begins to experience their first subconscious sexual desires. For boys, says Freud, this is manifested towards the mother, and a jealousy grows in them against their father, their rival. But, says Freud, this then turns from jealousy to emulation of the father, as the child is instilled with a subconscious fear that if they challenge their father, he will castrate him. This is the infamous Oedipus Complex: you want to have sex with your mum and kill your dad. Freud never did manage to apply it properly to women, though Carl Jung coined the term 'Electra Complex' for the female version.

The Latency Stage, spanning from mid-childhood to the onset of puberty, is the period of time when the child begins to develop or resolve the psychological issues begun in the previous three stages. A more concrete picture of who this kid will become appears in this time.

The final stage, spanning from puberty to death, is the Genital Stage, which is similar again to the Phallic Stage as it is ruled from downstairs. But where it differs is that at this point, the Ego - in a well-adjusted person - rules, and manifests the genital desires in interpersonal relationships, from friendships to sexual relationships.

And That's That

Freud's ideas are all a bit ridiculous, to be perfectly honest. The great problem with his theories is that they are completely unfalsifiable. If I say "Well hang on, that's wrong, I've never wanted to have sex with my mum," Freud will just say "You only think you've never wanted to, but deep down in an area locked away to everyone but myself, you really, really want to." You just can't apply the scientific method to him. However, his ideas have embedded themselves into our culture, and it would be true to say we live in a Freudian world. We describe people as anal, we talk about our subconscious and we all make Freudian slips. Freud has had a massive effect on artists, film makers and writers. And by bringing sex to the fore, he broke us away from the Victorian culture that inhibited it, leading eventually to the sexually free culture that would spring out of the post-war, cold war era.

4th WINOL

Fourth WINOL this year, third WINOL for me.

It went quite well. I couldn't produce a news package due to personal reasons getting in the way, but I was the fireman for news in case of anything breaking, and news presenter.

I admittedly didn't really expect to have anything to do as fireman - a naive idea. Tuesday came, it was noon and I was having a lie-in when Becky called me: I had to be down in Southampton for 2 PM to film Princess Anne entering a police station. After my initial disorder, Lee and I were down at Southampton Police Station - at 1:50 pm, I'll add, a good 15-30 minutes before the Meridian news team arrived. It wasn't the most exciting thing, but we managed to film Princess Anne getting out of her car, shaking hands with the police chief and walking into the police station.

As we didn't have access inside the police station, we had to use Meridian's footage, and first that meant getting the footage. BBC South was also using Meridian's footage so it was a matter of waiting for Andy Giddings to drop it off - at 8 PM, leaving me with little to do between getting back from Southampton and then. I was amused to find that the Meridian footage - at least that taken outside the station - wasn't much better than mine. In fact I had a bit of a mindscrew at one point watching the rushes, as they were so similar to mine I thought they were. I edited the OOV and thought that was done.

My footage:

Wednesday came and the stress was as high as ever. I wrote a script for the OOV, fiddling around with it a bit as I tried to improve it. When our editor decided the Anne OOV should be a package at noon, it all got a bit insane. The script writers wanted the new script in immediately, while I had to write and record a voice over and extend my 20 second OOV to 60 seconds - a feat I didn't manage, coming in at just under. On top of that, I would be needed from around 1pm on for bulletin rehearsals. I did manage to get the package together in the hour I had and give a script in, but it was incredibly hectic. I was having difficulty doing three things at once.

The final package:

Finally for that day, I was presenting sports. Here we had difficulties again, as my talkback wasn't working, and halfway through the actual bulletin Aimee's talkback broke down - we were effectively cut off. Though I think I presented well, we had to deal with only being able to guess when we were back on camera, never being quite sure. This wasn't anyone's fault, but it did lead to some awkward moments on my part - lengthy silences where I didn't realise I was back on, and one jarring moment where I thought I was on about 5 seconds before I actually was - I look away for a moment, realise my mistake and start over again. It's sloppy, but again it was no one's fault.

Overall it was a good week for me. I did more than I thought I would - which was good, better than not being productive at all - and although there came a moment where I felt myself crumbling under the stress, when my OOV was to become a package, I managed to keep my cool throughout.

WINOL the Second

I'm quite late on reviewing WINOL. This will be focused mostly on myself. I got my first real package done - not just an OOV like in the first practice WINOL. It was on the oncoming bus cuts and quite shabby. It was boring and aimless, but I've learnt from it. First of all, angle is more important than I thought - that is, I should prioritise having an angle. I was unsure as to how I would spin the buses story and left it too late to have one. That is, I kept thinking "I'll wait until I've got everything together before I think of an angle," which is just the wrong way to go about it. I know that now though, so by keeping it in mind I might be able to aim for more excitement in my packages right from the start.

I was unimaginative with my footage - it was all just passing-by buses. I should have gotten some empty bus stops, people walking home. Perhaps I could have walked off a bus and begun talking? Dan Mackerel was helping me with camera work, so it was entirely within our ability to do so.

My piece to camera was atrocious - I had to do about thirty takes to get it 'right', and by then I was wildly exaggerating my voice and physicality. I never brought it back to a more 'sober' level.

Another issue was the framing for my interview, a technical issue that should not have come up. If I had just spent a few more minutes with the camera I could've easily sorted these issues out. The final problem was that the camera was faulty, and I didn't realise until I came to edit all my footage. Had I checked when I'd taken it out, I could have traded it for another. I still got my package together, but the camera problems cost me about 2 hours and I couldn't hand my work over to production until 1pm. Our news editor Becky warned me that on another week that would have just had to have been dropped, the leniency would stop.

Though there were other problems, these were the main ones and what I'll work on. It was hectic, and I got no approval from my lecturers for it - though I'd've been stunned if they did approve, it was an awful package overall. One thing though - Angus said I had a bit of Robert Peston to my piece. Though I can't fix the technical and journalistic issues until I come to do my next package, this at least gives me something I can work on my own.

A Cursory Update

So, short post. First of all, I've changed the email address associated with my blog. I'd originally signed up on Fresher's week using my brand-spanking unimail address, but I'd like to move away from that and towards a more permanent, perhaps more professional, address, ali.mn.aljamri@gmail.com. That brings about a few changes - due to the cumbersome path of changing emails on blogspot, I now need a new mugshot and according to the website, I haven't contributed to any of the articles on the blog. And since I deleted my old unimail-based account as an admin, I suppose that means I now have to go through and re-follow everyone with my new one. Silly stuff, but hopefully there's more changes under way - positive ones. Besides this trivial matter, I've ordered Chris's Tabloid Nation and hope to dig into that. I'd almost entirely forgotten about the HCJ2 reading, such is the workload of WINOL. And I still haven't balanced reading for HCJ and researching for WINOL and myself. I'm still getting used to 2nd year, though I'm beginning to get into the flow of things. I don't want to sound too optimistic though - don't want to sound stupid if my story falls through in the next few days and I make a fool out of myself.

On another note, I've been reading some of the 1st year blogs (went through and subscribed to most of them earlier tonight), and there's some interesting stuff there. Will definitely be reading them more to catch up on law and such. I was going to leave individual comments but would've begun repeating myself if I had - overall, good stuff, but you guys should watch your punctuation, spelling and presentation. There's a couple wear's instead of where's, there's instead of their's, uncapitalised first-person 'I's, and a few badly-spaced blogposts that come out as walls of text, impossible to read on a screen. And update often! I'm more than happy to trawl the blogs and leave comments, but that (hopefully constructive) criticism needed to be said, though how many of you will even see this blog is another matter.

As for me, I'm off to dig into Hampshire: The County Magazine, The Countryman and other such magazines. Excitement abounds!

Into the deep end: our first WINOL

This week has been a big drop. The semester's started again, and we've been thrown into the deep end. I didn't exactly know what to expect of WINOL and came into the news room somewhat unsure, but our first dummy run went far better than I could've expected.

I'm starting off as Transport & Environment Correspondent for WINOL, and this week has been all about figuring out what that entails more than anything else. A chat with Brian helped me figure out some leads, while Chris threw some features ideas at me I'd like to get the ball rolling on in time (though I might not be able to commandeer a TARDIS, unfortunately).

Maybe it's because this week's was a dummy run that no one (except perhaps the freshers) will see, and so there was less pressure, but I was very calm throughout the three days. Even after my plan for a voxpop fell through and my phonecalls and emails turned up nothing, I never came close to panicking. My package had to be an OOV - and our news editor Becky straight up told me that she'd have spiked my story on a normal week with more stories to choose from - but I got it done, and that's something. If I can go the rest of the year as clear headed as I was these last three days, I'll consider it a great thing.

That's the good stuff. The bad is that my package was low quality. Just on the news team, Flick's, Tom's, Lee's and Lou's packages had their fair share of problems - such as all starting with a piece to camera, something I was very aware the BBC journalists didn't do when I watched the news this morning. But they all got their interviews, a mix of shots, statements, and all that jazzy stuff that makes a package worth watching, rough around the edges as they were. Mine was easily the worst of the lot; even the written piece was lacklustre. So though I think I started on the right foot where attitude is involved, I don't think I can say the same about my work and product. I'm going to have to get it together and one-up myself next week.

Saying all that, it's been an exciting week back in uni and WINOL. Now I'm trying to learn how to balance the required WINOL work with the side-projects I've been researching and a social life. I'd also like to get to know some of the freshers in our course soon - maybe to the point that I can put my hand on one's shoulder and say, "You: you will be me next year." He (or she) will turn around and frown, ask me, "Is that a good thing?" I'll shrug my shoulders and walk away, and they'll be left more confused than me.

A Word About Salafis

Islamism is, at its most basic, political Islam. It is the application of Islam in public life as well as private life. Salafism is the literal-minded, fundamentalist subsect of Sunni Islam, of which Wahhabism is a subsect of again. Wahhabism, for those unaware is the ideology of the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Al-Qaeda. A hole in the philosophy recently struck me, and this article is a reaction against Salafist Islamism.

A Six-Point Plan

Inactivity is pretty boring, isn't it? It's time to get myself in gear - something I'm somewhat hesitant to say as that's the topic of my last post. I have an ideal image in my head of posting something noteworthy every single day, but the chances of that happening are slim. So to inspire myself to work, I'm going to make public my list of blogging ideas, and invite any reader to help with the list.

Convergence Case Study: Newspapers

The newspaper is an old medium with a history dating back to the invention of the printing press. As a medium of conveying news it came to maturity in the 19^th century, in the age of empires. Innovations in the printing press and long-distance travel meant that more newspapers could be printed and more could be delivered and read. Leading this innovation was the Times, a London based paper which in this era became the leading daily. The newspaper was the one and only media of the day, and it rose to prominence. Though the newspaper has had many battles to face over the 20^th century, the revolutionary mediums of sound and vision, radio and television, chief amongst them, the newspaper was never so threatened by any medium as it was by new media: the internet.

Rebooting

I haven't blogged in a while. I've been following the happenings of the Middle East - the 'Arab Spring' as the media has taken to call it, though I'm not a fan of the name - since Egypt erupted in mid-January. Most of all I've been obsessing over the events of Bahrain, which have only gone from bad to worse in the last two months. The last five months have been mentally draining, and I've needed a break away from it all.

This post is nothing more than me dipping my toe to test the water. The 'dive' as such will come later. So for now, while I revise for the upcoming exams, I'll leave you with this. It's an interview from two days ago, between PBS and my dad, who's been damaged by the government crackdown as so many others have, and more succinctly describes the issues than I can.

William Cobbett

Some background information on Cobbett:

• He was born in 1763 in Farnham, Surrey, not too far from Winchester. He died in 1835 at the age of 72. The tavern he grew up in is now called the William Cobbett after him.
• He spent many years outside of the UK, in France and later America. In America, he started his career as a journalist publishing a pro-British pamphlet. This was in the last years of the 1700s, approximately twenty years after the American revolution.
• When he finally returned to England in the early 1800s, he established his newspaper, the Weekly Political Register, which at its greatest had a circulation of 40,000 copies. He became a radical, calling for the need for parliamentary reform.
• In the early 1800s, the agriculture industry was frequently depressed and the poverty in rural areas great. Unsatisfied with what Parliament was doing to fix these issues, Cobbett took it upon himself in the early 1820s to travel around the countryside of England and view the lives of rural people himself.

When reading Rural Rides, it doesn't immediately come across as a journalistic work. Cobbett's writing style is to write his thoughts down as they come, with little to no revision. His advice was to “Use the first words that occur to you, and never attempt to alter a thought; for that which has come of itself into your mind is likely to pass into that of another more readily and with more effect than anything which you can, by reflection, invent.” His writing style is similar to the stream of consciousness narrative mode, and he does tend to ramble. For example, in one chapter he writes at length about William Ewing, a famous shooter from Philadelphia he once went out hunting pheasants with during his exile in America. The anecdote, while entertaining, has little to no bearing on anything to do with his journey. By the end of this tale, Cobbett puts more focus on the hunting hound he had taken during that trip than the character of William Ewing, which then trails into a discussion on how there are different sorts of men just as there are different breeds of dogs. It leaves you to ask, sometimes: What is Cobbett's point? Sometimes he doesn't seem to have any, and in the previous example I don't think there was a point to his story until near the end when he began writing nostalgically of his favourite hunting hound.

Having said that, there is also a wealth of social commentary in Cobbett's work. One exchange he has with his son after visiting the Winchester cathedral sums his views up:

After we came out of the cathedral, Richard said, “Why, papa, nobody can build such places now, can they?” “No my dear,” said I. “That building was made when there were no poor wretches in England called paupers; when there were no poor-rates; when every labouring man was clothed in good woollen cloth; and when all had plenty of meat and bread and beer.”

Ignoring the belief that life a millennium ago was superior to contemporary life, which I think seems over-simplified, Cobbett here is expressing his dissatisfaction with the lifestyle of common labourers. Life is meagre for them, and steps must be taken to improve it. One can't help but be reminded of Marx's idea of the proletariat’s liberation from the bourgeoisie, but Cobbett focuses on a different class of people. Marx looked down on labourers and did not even consider them in his Manifesto, but the labourers cause is one of Cobbett's obsessions. He also takes up the cause of the Catholics, though he is not Catholic himself.


As Cobbett goes around the countryside, he judges the living standards of the labourers in many of his stops. Early in the book, in Cirencester, he judges that 'the labourers seem miserably poor. Their dwellings are little better than pig-beds, and their looks indicate their their food is not nearly equal to that of a pig'.

Something that comes across quite clearly is Cobbett's compassion for these people, even despite his better upbringing. In the chapter Winchester to Burghclere, he details how he was resolved not to breakfast in Winchester, and from this decision does not get the chance to eat until the afternoon, when he buys bread and cheese from a labourer. He has a lucid moment of compassion before eating it; he describes how he irritably snaps at his son over a trivial matter. Realising his irritability was from his hunger, and that he was made this way from missing just a single meal, he begins to understand how miserable the lives of these labourers must be, and how they cannot be blamed if they turn to thievery to support themselves.

At one village, he likens the labourers on farms to slaves, which he saw in America. From his view, the slaves lived a better life than the labourers. He points out the flaw of logic in the press and by politicians, who say that education will righten the working class's morals and prevent thievery, but you only have to look to their half-starved selves to see that the working class is corrupted by their lack of food or drink. He exhibits even more disgust at the fact that felons in prison are allows better food, clothing and housing than these labourers.

I don't know if Rural Rides stands up as a great example of journalism. It meanders too much, and too often has no precise 'point' to it. Cobbett's thoughts are completely unfiltered here. While it provides an insight into the rural life in the period it was written in, I'm unsure if it could be called journalism in its purest sense – Cobbett is as much a story teller as he is a reporter, perhaps more so.

Machiavellian Bahraini

This afternoon I came across this article on Reuters: 'Bahrain's foreign minister said Monday Saudi and UAE forces called in to help quell street unrest would leave only when "any external threat" he associated with Iran was seen to be gone'.

What absolute bollocks. The so called 'Iranian threat' has been created by the Bahraini government and its Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) allies as a reason to keep the Bahrain crackdown going. What is this vague Iranian threat that can only be wiped out by putting fear in the heart of the population; by creating mass unemployment for a specific sect; by imprisoning and killing protesters and bystanders alike; by treating the Shia as guilty-until-proven-innocent; by destroying the free press; by instilling terror?

It's a sorry state of affairs that what began as a non-sectarian movement has been transformed into a battle between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis are untouched by this upheaval, and may even be profiting from it - who will fill up the thousands of positions opening but them? The only common ground between the Shia population and Iran is their faith, and the monarchy is milking that cow for everything it's worth to justify its crackdown.

It sickens me to see how they've painted the Shia as Iranian conspirators and made the two inextricable from each other. The Western powers have mumbled words of condemnation and empty warnings, but nothing more to Bahrain. And how could they, when the enemy is 'Iran'? When supporting Iran is a political bomb, how can they support the Bahraini protesters? Though whether they'd want to help the protesters in the Gulf and put the precious oil at risk is a question I would perhaps rather not hear answered.

They've snared their Shi'ite opposition, that's for sure. They've managed to mute both the protesters voices and the international community. Many Shia are leaving the country, travelling as far away as they possibly can - Kuwait and Qatar for some, the US and UK for others. It's beginning to look like an ethnic cleansing, and I'd hardly be surprised if that was a part of their plans - they've always wanted to turn the indigenous Shia into a minority.

Alienation in Bahrain

One of my earliest memories is of playing with the other children just out of our mothers' sights in a London-based community centre. This was a place where many Bahraini exiles and activists would congregate, discussing current affairs and handing out newsletters and pamphlets. It wasn't all about grim politics, but it's the grim politics that comes back to me right now. One type of pamphlet passed around a lot would have pictures of tortured men in them, evidence of the regime's crimes. I saw them over the years, though not very often. These sorts of things weren't for a child's eyes after all, but the few glimpses of bodies black and blue and bloody have remained with me.

I haven't dwelt on those memories in years, but they came back to me today while reading Human Rights Watch, watching CNN's reports and visiting the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (which is blocked by Bahraini ISPs). Some of the images, of people tortured and people injured by security forces, are shocking to say the least. My own first impression was that this looked like something straight from the 90s.

What's going on in Bahrain and why? A follow up

The 14th of April will be the two month anniversary of what was briefly called the 'Pearl Revolution' in Bahrain. I wrote my first post on Bahrain back in February and got quite a response. In that post I mused that the Bahraini government would be likely to succumb to the peoples' demands, so as not to lose the big tourism revenue the F1 race would bring. And I'm sure they intended to keep their reputation as one of the most progressive Arab nations. My musings were wrong, to say the least. I think we've reached a point where we can look back at what's happened and analyse, though, and I want to look at some of the recent developments.

I think it's important to add as a disclaimer that I'm in no way unbiased, and there's no point hiding it. Take what I say with a pinch of salt.

Local Government

Local government is divided in a two-tier system into county councils and district councils. At its most basic, the county council deals with policy and issues that affect an entire county such as Hampshire, while a district council, such as Winchester district council, is a more specifically local body. Some cities are large enough that the county and district councils are a part of the some body, in which case it is a one-tier system called a unitary authority.

County Councils

County councils have an elected cabinet, lead by one person, with elections every four years. This is not the county's elected MP, who, though a representative of the electorate, has nothing to do with local government. Although there is some level of democracy in county councils, most decisions will not be debated as there are far too many, and democratic action would be too slow. The county council has a budget that is then divided up between the district councils; exactly how this money is spent comes down to the district council.

Though civil servants cannot have a political opinion, the elected members of the county cabinet belong to a party. County and district councils may come to clashes because of this, for example when Tory and Lib Dem policy contradict, such as in the issue of what cuts will fall. The county council does not necessarily have a final say in every issue despite being the more dominant in the two-tier system.

District Councils

District councils govern over the smaller segments of a council. In Hampshire alone there are eleven district councils, of which Winchester is one of. Districts are further broken up into wards, with a councillor in charge of each. The council is the first port of call for any local issues, such as road maintenance, housing and planning permission. Winchester is a typical district council, as one councillor, Kelsie Learney, has described: the major issues today is the Barton Farm housing development and road maintenance after the harsh winter.

A council's budget is dependent on its size. Winchester has a £12 million budget, which is only a tiny cut of the county's almost £2 billion budget. This budget has to cover all things under the county's purview: education, transport and housing are perhaps the three major issues. Though the county council tells the districts how much is to be cut in 2011 and in the next few years, it comes down to the district to decide where these cuts will fall exactly. As of the last few years, the district (as well as county) council must also be transparent with the where tax payer money is spent, declaring all expenditure over £500. This increased transparency brings the council closer to the public they represent, who may call and enquire over how much is spent on what.

Radio Bulletin

Uprising is the theme that grips the Middle East today. In the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Bahrain is the only country to face a large local revolt. I ask Simon Wilson , former deputy British ambassador in Bahrain, whether he thinks the spirit of revolution will spread across to other Gulf-Cooperation Council states.

In words: I think it's unlikely...

Out words: ...any time soon.

'Spare Change for Real Change' is a charity that funds homeless shelters such as the Trinity Centre in Winchester. Sue McKenna, Development Manager at the shelter, tells us the benefits of giving to the charity.

In words: But the idea is...

Out words: ...difference to homeless people.

Winchester Cathedral sees its first extension in 500 years with the opening of the Fleury building this Saturday the 5th of March.

Named after the Fleury Abbey in France, where Saint Benedict is said to be buried, one of the important additions brought to the cathedral includes extra storage space.

This new space will be used to free up the north transept, one of the original and unspoilt Norman areas dating back to the construction of the cathedral in 1079.

Interview with Simon Wilson: Complete and Unedited

This is the complete interview (almost 15 minutes long) with Simon Wilson, of which I grabbed a 40-second sound-bite for my news story.

Simon Wilson was the deputy British ambassador in Bahrain between 2001 and 2005, and has remained a frequent visitor of Bahrain after his term was over. Today he lives in Winchester. Over the weekend, we met and had a long chat on the current crackdown in Bahrain, culminating in this somewhat lengthy interview.

Radio Story: Bahrain No Template For Change In Gulf

I am severely late getting this out, but I suppose late is better than never. Below is the audio, and following it the script.





Uprising is the theme that grips the Middle East today. In the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Bahrain is the only country to face a large local revolt.

I ask Simon Wilson, former deputy British ambassador in Bahrain, whether he thinks the spirit of revolution will spread across to other Gulf Cooperation Council states.

Simon Wilson audio cut


In words: "I think it's unlikely that..."


Out words: "...coming into Saudi Arabia any time soon."


--


As a side note, one thing I'm not particularly happy about is reading out 'Gulf Cooperation Council'. It's a long-winded phrase and almost never called that - 'GCC' will do in all cases - but George pointed out that many listeners are somewhat unlikely to know what 'GCC', mentioned in the interview, is likely to stand for. I tried to explain it in the least obtrusive way possible, but I'm not sure I've done a very good job of it.

Bahraini Monarch Afraid of Boogeyman

I was just peering through Al-Jazeera and came across this gem of an article: Bahrain king speaks of 'foiled foreign plot'.

So first, the government pulled down the monument at the Pearl Roundabout. That was a couple days ago and wasn't reported as widely as it should have been. Now, they have forced the protestors to retreat using armed force, and blame Iran for all this trouble. The desperate attempts to pin the blame on anything but their own misdeeds are so shallow and see through that it boggles me to think there are people about who agree with their actions.

Winchester Cathedral opens the Fleury Building

Winchester Cathedral sees its first extension in 500 years with the opening of the Fleury Building this Saturday the 5^th of March.

Named after the Fleury Abbey in France, where Saint Benedict is said to be buried, one of the important additions brought to the cathedral includes extra storage space. This new space will be used to free up the North Transept, one of the original and unspoilt Norman areas dating back to the construction of the Cathedral in 1079.

Restoration and maintenance work has been done on the Cathedral for years. The east end was saved from completely collapsing 100 years ago, and in recent times was maintained diligently by cathedral architect, Peter Bird.

However this is the first entirely new addition to the Cathedral building since the Tudor era. The new extension was one of the last works by Bird, who passed away just a month before its completion.

Dean of Winchester and the Very Revd James Atwell said, “A new building attached to the Cathedral is much more than a very useful and practical extension, it is evidence of the continuing growth and life of the Cathedral and its community.”

Now is the Middle East's Chance for Rediscovery

The Arabs have lost sight of their history. This is something true of myself, and true of other Arabs of my generation. My own understanding of Middle Eastern history only began about a year ago, when I began reading up on it for lack of formal education. The more I learn of my history, the more aggravated I am by my education. I know my own story - though it is the exception in some respects - is true of many Arabs of my generation.

The problem with the education of Arabs - and Muslim Arabs, as most of us are - is its love affair with the origin story of Islam. Any Muslim with even a modicum of Islamic knowledge can rattle off the story to you: how the Prophet was visited by Gabriel, how he kept God's word a secret between himself and his wife at first, then revealed it to his family, and then to the greater Meccan public. They can tell you of the migration to Madina - the hijra from which the Muslim calender begins; the conflicts between the Jewish tribes and the glorious victories against great odds; the return to Mecca, where no blood was shed in a peaceful takeover; the Prophet's death, and the subsequent era of the four 'rightly guided' Caliphs. They will tell you that this era ended with the assassination of Ali Ibn Abi Talib.

That story is drilled into our heads from the first moments of our lives, and retold again and again by parents and teachers. It was the Golden Age of Islam, we are told, before Muslim society was corrupted. The Golden Age, before divergent sects evolved. The Golden Age, when Islam was most triumphant.

But little else is taught. Oh, sure, you get some knowledge - about the greatest heights of the Muslim empire in the 9th and 10th centuries and the Israel/Palestine conflict. But all this is in the shadow of the Golden Age. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the greatest testament to how revered the Golden Age is, where, despite all its potential to be a major Middle Eastern and world player, the monarchy chooses instead to rule as though they still lived in the 7th century.

It says a lot that the greatest testament to the Golden Age is the cultural failure that is Saudi Arabia. The royal family is morally corrupt, not just by Islamic standards but by broader, universal standards, as evidenced by stories such as this, where a prince battered to death his manservant. Women's rights have barely penetrated the country, where men and women are segregated and female independence is denied in almost all aspects of life. Every weekend, hordes of Saudis visit Bahrain to enjoy its more liberal values - from being able to enjoy their day without it being dictated rigorously by prayer times, to going out clubbing and drinking.

Perhaps you see where I'm going with this. The Golden Age, if it even existed, has today eclipsed the history of the Arabs, and the 1400 years between the mythical Golden Age and the present day take a back seat - if they aren't completely wiped out of memory.

What's going on in Bahrain and why?

Just over a week ago when Mubarak resigned, I mused briefly on whether or not the revolution would spread to Bahrain, here. Of all the things that could've happened, I didn't expect Bahrain to be the very next country to grip the world after Egypt, but in the last week it's been almost all anyone's talked about. Now the spotlight has begun moving away from us and onto Libya - and good thing too, they need the world's support more than Bahrain does. The acts of the Bahraini government are incredibly mild compared to Ghaddafi's.

I've been asked by a fair few people in the last week about the protests going on, and now that the outcome of the revolution draws increasingly closer and clearer, I felt it'd be appropriate to shed some light about the entire situation.

This article ended up quite a bit longer than I originally thought it would be. If you read this to the end and are neither my lecturer or my parent, you deserve a biscuit.

Mary Wollstonecraft

About a hundred years before the feminist movement took off, there was Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft's book, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, is one of the very earliest feminist texts. In it she derides both the male treatment of women, and the women's treatment of themselves.

Her argument, at its core, is a) that women are purposely educated in such a way as to be kept 'childlike', narrowminded and beautiful, with that being all they know and b) that were they educated the same way as men, there would be no difference. Today her arguments are proven; women have just as much right to any job as men including army service, and girls today tend to perform better in school.

But going back to the 18th Century, when men still dominated, her ideas were radical. She said that women were ruled by their beauty, peaking at the age of 20 when they were most beautiful, while men who work and philosophise don't reach their peak until 30. Women must marry upwards to advance in status and wealth and be, as such, pretty birds in a cage for their husband. This is the sum of their entire lives, ruled by their youthful beauty and over with their first son and old age.

They are also childlike, she states, being unable to control their tempers or themselves. And thus they are inadequate mothers, as you wouldn't want a child to raise a child.. She also argues that men, despite displaying affection and polite, are actually condescending. They may treat women like royalty but scoff at the thought of a woman leading them.

Her answer to this female weakness is education. Wollstonecraft says that all a woman is taught is how to be beautiful, and as such that is all she knows. But were they educated as men are, then they would be equal to men, both physically and mentally.

Wollstonecraft was ahead of her time (by about a hundred years). Of course, we know today that what she says is by and large a truth. Today, with no discrimination between the genders in education, there is little difference between a man and a woman, and there is evidence to suggest girls perform better than boys in education (I put some of it down to self-fulfilling prophecy; when people keep pushing statistics like that in your face, it doesn't exactly fill a kid with scholarly passion).

Rousseau

The Romantic era came after the Enlightenment, the age of empiricism. There is a simple and large difference between the two lines of thought: where enlightenment philosophy and empiricism relies on logic and the literal, romanticism is a thing of emotions and idealism. Subjectivity over objectivity.

Rousseau is the fundamental Romantic philosopher. He eschewed the enlightenment philosophies and thought little of the greatness of Man. He saw what he regarded a beautiful innocence in nature and simplicity, respecting the 'noble savage' and holding that the theoretical state of nature was a decent state of being. Having said that, he also realised that humans have come too far along the path of civilisation to ever return to that state of nature, when we were most like animals.

His theory was that the state of nature (theoretical as it may be) was interrupted when one man first fooled another man that a patch of land belongs to him. Personally, I disagree with him on this, for the simple fact that there are territorial animals. Dogs, for example, claim their land by marking it with their urine and will continue to defend it from other dogs, but they have nothing close to resembling what we might call civilisation. We are territorial by nature as by having territory we preserve ourselves. In a state of nature, for example, this territory might include a fruit tree or a grassy plain where animals graze. It is in our interest to keep others from acquiring these assets, so that we might survive - and survival is inherently selfish. Then again, there are nomadic tribes which we might not call civilised, such as the indigenous North Americans or Arabian bedouins. These people, while they have a culture and a society between themselves, believe the land to be a communal possession of everyone, with their only property being their animals, clothes, tools and tents. So perhaps I'm not really making much of a point here...

Still, having said that, I would say that civilisation began when large numbers of people came together, and the surplus of food was enough that they could do other things than focus constantly on their survival. As far as I'm aware (and my awareness extends to a documentary I watched on iPlayer a few months ago), this is the commonly held view of the birth of civilisation, as the people naturally congregated together and formed the first cities in ancient Babylon. But perhaps I'm taking Rousseau's words too literally. Perhaps, all he is saying is that the selfishness of ownership is the 'original sin', as such, of civilisation.

Mubarak Resigns!

Al-Jazeera's live coverage here.

I've been following the Egyptian revolution for the last 2-to-3 weeks now, particularly enjoying the coverage by The Independent and Al-Jazeera English. My interest in the revolution has only in small part been due to being a journalism student and a follower of news. It's really as an Arab that I find myself invested in the outcome of the Egyptian people's fight, and wondering how far the fires will spread. More specifically, I wonder whether it will spread to my little backwater of Bahrain, though analysts have little belief revolution will reach the richer oil states. But who knows? The victory of the Egyptian people will only help to fan the flames, and perhaps the recent crackdown and infringements of human rights will cause the people to stir.

Egypt is many things: one of the USA's ally in the Middle East, Israel's friendliest neighbour, and a centre of Middle Eastern culture. Both the Fatimid Caliphate in the 10th-12th centuries AD, and the Mamluke Sultanate in the 13tt-16th centuries held Cairo as their capital. Egypt was one of if not the very first Middle Eastern country to be touched by the Industrial Revolution, and in the 50s gave rise to Arab nationalism during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Cairo is also home to one of the oldest film industries in the world and was the birthplace of the Arabian renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries.

So with Egypt's revolution a success - its civil and largely bloodless revolution a success - it can only be good news for the rest of the Middle East. What is reason to rejoice for the people is reason to be concerned for the regimes. Saudi Arabia is reportedly furious with the outcome of events, and the US's decision to ask Mubarak to leave will no doubt hurt its position with all their Middle Eastern allies, including perhaps Israel, who must be uneasy of the potential for an anti-Israeli political party coming to power.

Another point of interest is today's 'siege' on the state broadcaster's building, which is accused of being pro-Mubarak and not reporting truthfully on the protests. It leaves me wondering as to the potential of a truly free press opening in Egypt in the future.

On a slightly different note, The Arabs: A History by Eugene Rogan is a book I've been reading over the past two months. The book is (or was, as I've bought more since) the latest in a series of history texts I've read on the subject in an effort to educate myself on my own cultural and historical background, and the first I would consider a worthwhile read. The writer is a lecturer of Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford and the book, being published in 2009, is perhaps one of the best and most recent published on the modern history of the region. What struck true to me then and amuses me now is the pessimistic outlook of the book:

...journalist and author Samir Kassir [an anti-Syrian Lebanese assassinated in 2005]... had published a remakable essay exploring what he termed the "Arab malaise" of the twenty-first century. It reflected the disenchantment of Arab citizens with their corrupt and authoritarian governments. "It's not pleasant being Arab these days," he observed. "Feelings of persecution for some, self hatred for others; a deep disquiet pervades the Arab world." 

[...]

Kassir, himself a secular nationalist, held the modernizing reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... as an era "when Arabs could look to the future with optimism." This is clearly no longer the case. The Arab world views the future with growing pessimism, and the secular vision no longer inspires the majority of the population. In any free and fair election in the Arab world today, I believe the Islamists would win hands down.

Roughly a month ago today, this would still have been a truthful statement. How quickly things change. The people of the Middle East have been filled with the optimistic spirit of change, the Egyptian revolution calls for true democracy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Islamist group, are both more moderate and less influential, with little public support should they enter future elections.

To quote one Al-Jazeera reporter: "I've seen people give birth; I've seen people get married; I've seen people graduate. I've never seen people as happy as they are here."

Volunteering for WINOL

It's the first WINOL bulletin of 2011 and I was called on by Charlotte Clarke to come help out. It was pretty interesting to catch a glimpse of what we'll be doing next year. I came in around 2 PM and was put to work straight away running back and forth between TAB9 and the TV studio delivering messages on Charlotte's behalf. Closer to 3 PM when the bulletin was meant to go live I was put to the task of running the VTs when given the cues, which was surprisingly stressful. As the bulletin's live, there's little room for error, and the order they were run in was subject to last second changes.

There was a familiar feeling of tension in the studio. It was only a year ago that I and three others wrote, directed and performed our own play, and though I could do little but sit and watch the problems arise one after the other, I felt oddly at home watching the crew wrestle bad lighting, malfunctioning headsets, glitchy audio and necessary, demotivating delays. Despite all these troubles, however, the bulletin was finally broadcast - 15 minutes late - and with little issues during it, save for one very large one during the sports segment (which has since been edited out, I think).

All in all, it was an exciting afternoon. I'll probably be back to volunteer for more in the coming weeks; it's interesting to see what we'll be doing next year.