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Clear Skies
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looking for a saviour in these dirty streets
Jul 2000
time: 05:24
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Personally, having read both the Mail and the Standard (I'll never be clean again), I think while Ken's similes were completely out of line, the spirit of his subsequent comments wasn't - the Mail especially is an horrific example of venomous invective and disgusting xenophobic circle-jerking.
Also, the reporter doorstepped him outside a party celebrating the 20 anniversary of Chris Smith's coming-out as the first openly gay MP, and by Ken's account he was suspicious as to why the Standard had sent a photographer to take pictures of people leaving a gay&lesbian event when usually they were nowhere to be seen (its sister paper the Mail used to take great delight in 'outing' gay politicians prior to Smith's heroic defusing of their favourite weapon). I don't doubt the journalist's intent was at least in part to provoke him into a response (witness the "great, I have you on record") - the Mail and Standard love baiting the mayor, and have been doing so for years on end.
So, although I do think Ken should apologise to the journalist for his comparison, I think the journalist should recognise that the attack was not on him, his ethnicity, or his religion, but upon the paper he works for, and the high 'moral' stance taken by the Standard and the Mail on this issue is laughable, given their histories both in general and with regard to their treatment of Livingstone. However, Ken was wrong to say what he said, and should apologise. I only hope the Mail will respond by apologising for their decades of vitriolic rhetoric and blatant xenophobia.
EDIT:
quote:
Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
It's transparently obvious to anyone reading that it's an attack on the newspaper, not any race or religion. That's why there's no CPS involvement. |
...apologies for duplication. I scrolled through seven pages of semi-irrelevance before finding this. 
Last edited by Clear Skies on 17-02-2005 at 04:06
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Edan
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quote:
Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp quote:
Originally posted by Edan
Despite that the Evening Standard wrote articles supporting facism during the 30's, that doesn't make the Evening Standard of today guilty of the sins of it's fathers.
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Yes it does. Their record on Gypsies makes grim reading. |
Does inheriting the sins of their fathers apply to Germany and Japan, too, or just newspapers? Germany had a fairly bad record with Gypsies, too.
And is a newspaper that supports fascism guilty of war crimes?
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:24
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laz, yeah ok, i was exagerating a little with the CPS thing. however let me put it another way, would red ken, a poster boy for 'anti-racism', still be in his job now if he had made similar comments to a black or muslim reporter (the answer i suspect is no).
as for his disgraces, well how about tea with the IRA in the 80s, and more recently inviting that charming cleric who was frequently quoted giving support to suicide bombers over, shook his hand and had a nice chat and a cup of tea, lovely.
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:24
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well alright, similarly offensive then.
it's hardly a difficult concept :/
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:24
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i think if he'd made a comment like that to a black reporter or any other comment which might be seen as racist he would have been savaged in the media, by both left wing and right wing papers, he would have been condemed by his party and goodness only knows what the CRE (whose silence here has been deafening) would have said about the whole thing...
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:24
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I agree with this guy:
quote:
Johann Hari: Why I admire Ken, a unique politician
Forget rows drummed up by his enemies, says Johann Hari. Livingstone has been brave and his views vindicated by history
17 February 2005
Haven't we heard this tune before? In the blue corner, Ken is accused of evil crimes by the right-wing press. In the red corner, Ken says it's all a gross distortion and won't back down. The crowd takes its position on the Mayor's cheeky chappie persona - and the facts are quickly forgotten.
Well, just for a moment, let's block out the nasal voice and the long-buried moustache, and look instead at the truth about Ken. The current row about Ken's supposed anti-Semitism is a case study of how his arguments have been distorted throughout his career.
If you depended on the reports in the Evening Standard or the rest of the right-wing press, you would think Ken had randomly, viciously singled out a Jew and deliberately accused him of being a Nazi. Here's what happened in the real world. In the middle of the night, Ken was approached by a reporter from a newspaper that has been running a vicious and highly personal hate campaign against him. My guess is that the reporter was there for one purpose and one purpose only: to stitch Ken up. The Mayor snapped at the reporter, asking him why he worked for a company that has a history of supporting fascists and remains stridently right-wing today.
This was a bit of a cheap shot, but it's perfectly true. The first Viscount Rothermere - whose family still owns the company that publishes the Evening Standard and Daily Mail - took a pro-Nazi line throughout the 1930s, writing articles like "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" and writing fawning accounts of their meetings with Adolf Hitler. His newspapers attacked the Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany for bringing "crime and disease" in remarkably similar terms to those used in the same papers today.
I don't know how lucid Ken's critics are when they leave a party at midnight after a few drinks, but Ken is clearly like most of the population: a bit all over the place. He didn't make his argument very well, and ended up comparing the reporter to a concentration camp guard. Crude? Yes. Anti-Semitic? Don't be silly.
But these basic facts - which are not in dispute - have not prevented the right-wing press whipping up a fake row. Never mind that last year, anti-Semitic attacks in Britain rose by 40 per cent, or that the most grotesque defamations about Jews are creeping back into our public debate. Nope; the real problem with anti-Semitism comes from the Mayor of London - a man with a long history of opposing all racism, all the time.
Distortions like this have plagued Ken Livingstone throughout his career - and in the long term, it's usually Ken and not his critics who is vindicated. Look at gay rights. At the height of a hysterical homophobic campaign about the "promotion" of homosexuality to children - led by the Murdoch press and their playthings in the Conservative Party - Ken dared to stand in defence of London's gay community. He funded and tirelessly defended "loony left" policies like helplines for gay teenagers and the distribution of leaflets aimed at children with lesbian mothers - and in return, he was dubbed "the most odious man in Britain" by The Sun. And now? Even Michael Howard and The Sun clamour to support gay marriage. When it comes to gay rights, we are all Livingstoneites now.
And in another, even more controversial area, Ken has turned out to be more right than wrong. As head of the Greater London Council, Livingstone invited Gerry Adams - the head of Sinn Fein-IRA - to this city. Northern Ireland was on fire, and the smoke was getting into the eyes of every British citizen. The British government was arming a sectarian war, and within a few years it would - we now know - back paramilitary death squads. Retaliatory IRA bombs were exploding across Britain, often - appallingly - against civilian targets.
At the time, the Northern Ireland issue was widely presented as a question of "terrorism"; Margaret Thatcher declared that the IRA were "simply criminals, nothing more" and said: "Belfast is as much part of Britain as my constituency." Ken, by contrast, understood that we were not in the middle of a crime spree but a war, and it could only be brought to an end by a negotiated peace. At the time, this argument - never mind negotiating with Gerry Adams - was depicted as an act of raw evil.
And now? Adams has been greeted and embraced by a British prime ministers. These days, only eccentrics deny that Sinn Fein - the elected representatives of a majority of Northern Ireland's Catholics - have to be at the dead-centre of peace in Northern Ireland.
And there's more. Ken saw the importance of well-funded public transport, at a time when Margaret Thatcher was saying that "anybody who still travels by bus at the age of 30 is a failure". Ken understood the importance of environmentalism long before it entered the political mainstream, and he is currently pushing through plans for London to become far more dependent on renewable energy sources. (But who cares about such trivia when there's a juicy, stupid row to be had?)
Is he perfect? Of course not. His influence on national Labour politics has often been appalling. He was far too close to the anti-democratic madmen of Militant tendency, and he made a terrible misjudgement when he opposed Neil Kinnock's party reforms and later - bizarrely - attacked Gordon Brown as a "right-wing influence dragging down Tony Blair". Recently, he brought the far-right Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi to London, played down his extremism and slandered critics of Qaradawi as "Islamophobic".
But Ken's willingness to veer wildly off the political script in strange directions can also be an asset: he is, for example, the only senior British politician today calling for "a United States of Europe" and vehemently defending refugees.
Perhaps that is his greatest strength of all: Ken is resolutely, violently un- boring. In an age of Geoff Hoons and Michael Ancrams - pure electoral Valium - Ken keeps us awake. You can order me a triple espresso of Livingstone any time. |
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_r...3&host=3&dir=62
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:24
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quote:
i think if he'd made a comment like that to a black reporter or any other comment which might be seen as racist he would have been savaged in the media, by both left wing and right wing papers, he would have been condemed by his party and goodness only knows what the CRE (whose silence here has been deafening) would have said about the whole thing... |
I doubt it. Perhaps, but that would have just exposed how silly the papers are. And he's being savaged now, as usual.
What's happening now is what always happens in these cases. Someone makes a comment that can be construed as racist if you ignore the context, and immediately a storm is raised, primarily by that person's political opponents or whomever has an opportunity to gain some political leverage.
Red Ken supports Palestinian rights: that makes him the implacable enemy of many right wing and Jewish organizations, who predictably are howling for his resignation and accusing him of being an anti-semite.
What is Ken to do? If he apologizes for his choice of words, will these people let it drop? No. Of course many people who were disturbed by the remark would do so, because they are decent people, but not the Express. It will be "look he's a Jew -hater, and he admitted it" from now until he dies.
If he backs down before these scum, that's what will happen.
Now, if the Express came out and admitted that it was a racist hate rag, and admitted all its wrongs against Ken, then it would be worth him playing nice.
But given the context of his remarks and the political context of any apology, it would be foolish for him to back down. You cannot play nice when your political opponents are worthless scumbags.
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17-02-2005 03:22
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