Sheffield Doc/Fest (or to give it it’s full title: Sheffield International Documentary Festival) is a 5-day event which takes place in and around Sheffield city centre each year, with the majority of the events and activities taking place in the independently-run Showroom cinema. Doc/Fest, now in it’s 17^th year, is ranked among the top 3 events of its kind in the world, and this year screened over 120 different films. In addition to the film screenings, the festival also includes sessions for buyers, producers and distributors to meet, make deals and secure the go-ahead for future documentary projects. I however attended with the sole purpose of satisfying my documentary obsession, by sampling just some of the massive selection on offer.

Unfortunately due to work and other commitments, I only managed to attend the festival for three days. However, the nine films which I viewed during my time in Sheffield were all incredible, and I would therefore like to present you with a brief review of my three favourite works.

The Battle for Barking

This film documents the 12 month run-up to the local and parliamentary elections in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. The film’s young director Laura Fairrie obtained excellent access to both the Labour campaign, fronted by Margaret Hodge, and (surprisingly) to the British National Party, who’s leader Nick Griffin was himself standing in the constituency. Prior to the 2010 elections, the BNP held 12 seats on the local council, and with their recent better-than-expected performance in the European elections, Griffin made the decision that Barking and Dagenham would be a key battleground for the party, and was where he felt they stood the best chance of success.

The Battle for Barking

The film opens to the sound of Hodge’s expletives, whilst recalling the moment she discovered Griffin would be standing against her. Hodge – recently widowed – decided that in order to defeat Griffin, she would have to appeal to the minorities who would stand to be most affected by a BNP win, and there is no doubt that Hodge was indeed seriously considering losing as a distinct possibility. It’s all too easy to cast the BNP’s supporters as the archetypal ‘thugs’ and ‘brutes’, and although there’s no doubt that many shown within the film do indeed fit this stereotype, the film also exposes a deep disconnection between Westminster politicians and the electorate. This ‘ivory tower’ sentiment is particularly evident at times, as Hodge and some of her supporters place a strong focus on statistics and data, with an initial lack of grass roots action and doorstep campaigning, a tactic which the BNP do indeed exploit to their maximum advantage.

There’s no doubt that Griffin was a strong adversary, with Hodge herself describing a BNP election video as ‘repulsive but very clever’. However, no matter how much Griffin has attempted to clear up the party’s image, the BNP’s facist roots are never too far from the surface, with Griffin responding to Fairrie’s question regarding what benefit immigrants and multiculturalism can bring to the UK, with the all too telling reply: ‘There’s a better range of take-away food available, but that’s it.’

Anyone who followed the 2010 election will likely already know how this contest turned out, but it’s nevertheless very interesting to observe the BNP’s reaction to their massive (and unexpected) losses on the night, with Griffin being defeated in the parliamentary elections by a huge margin, and – to rub salt into the wounds – having all of the BNP council seats wiped out in one go. If there was just one thing missing from this film, I would have liked to see some brief discussion of how the mass media discourse feeds into people’s attitudes towards immigration, and why some of the untruths and idle logic echoed by BNP supporters and sympathisers attracts so much attention, although this topic was touched on briefly in the post screening Q+A with Fairrie herself. The Battle for Barking was a truly excellent film for me given my strong interest in politics, and Fairrie has done an admirable job in retaining a neutral tone throughout, especially given the countless challenges she was confronted with during the filming process. I’d highly recommend catching it at a screening or grabbing a copy on DVD if you’re able.

Marwencol

Marwencol, directed by Jeff Malmberg, is a documentary film following the life of a man named Mark Hogancamp. Following a drunken altercation outside a local bar in Kingston, New York, Hogancamp slipped into a coma for several days and emerged with severe brain damage. Once he returned home (and after his medical cover ran out) Hogancamp began to construct a miniature World War II-era Belgian town which he named Marwencol. The town itself slowly begins to tell a story, a story which features Mark as the hero and his friends and family in the supporting cast. Hogancamp starts to use Marwencol as the main outlet for his mental recovery, and begins to photograph key events in the town, photos which eventually become part of an art exhibit.

Marwencol

Mark’s memory was almost entirely wiped-out during the attack and from an early scene where he is shown opening up his mail and simply stuffing it back into the mailbox, it’s clear that he is unwilling to return to the real world. Hogancamp attributes much of the physical and cognitive function he has regained to his work on the dolls of Marwencol, and his mental recovery is similarly improved, with Mark informing us that simply sitting back and observing the events in his fictional town ‘soothes’ him greatly.

Sadly, Mark is still re-living the attack inside his own head, and his ‘hero’ character within Marwencol soon endures an almost identical physical assault to the one inflicted on him in real life, although of course this is administered instead (as you might expect) by a gang of invading SS soldiers. It’s also clear that Mark is lonely, he is seen at one point hugging a new doll he has acquired, and his character’s romances with the women of Marwencol, along with the stories of heroism, are simply an effective outlet for him to express his frustration at the life he has lost. I cannot recommend this film enough, it was funny and yet deeply moving, and I would perhaps suggest it as being my favourite of the entire festival.

12th and Delaware

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s controversial film looks at the ultimate neighbourly disagreement. On a street in Fort Pierce, Florida, at the junction of 12th and Delaware, an abortion clinic sits just cross the road from a ‘Pregnancy Care’ centre run by a pro-life group, who’s sole intention it is to prevent women from terminating their pregnancies.

12th and Delaware

The film begins at 5am, as pro-lifers gather outside, heckling the clinic’s staff as they arrive for work, and the intimidation continues throughout the day, as the women approaching the clinic are preached at in a highly confrontational and deeply insensitive manner. Other pro-life supporters hold placards depicting gruesome images of aborted foetuses, and hand out misleading and factually-incorrect leaflets linking abortion to breast cancer, infertility, and even to death.

The owners of the ‘Pregnancy Care’ centre (yes, the name is just as misleading as it sounds) actively exploit the similarity between the two premises, in the hope that women who have booked an appointment at the abortion clinic will mistakenly enter their own building.Once inside the pro-life centre, women are shown more leaflets, made to watch gruesome videos, and even bribed with food and money in an attempt to change their minds. In a frankly shocking exchange, one pregnant woman is even advised to keep her baby and stay with her abusive husband because: ‘The baby might change him’. Whatever your own personal view on abortion, I think we can all agree that these kind of bullying tactics are both unnecessary and utterly disgraceful. The film ends with a simple yet frightening statistic: that pregnancy care centres now outnumber abortion clinics in the United States by 4000 to 816.

This was the film I had been looking forward to most prior to the festival – as I had immensely enjoyed Ewing and Grady’s previous film ‘Jesus Camp’ – and it certainly did not disappoint me. A member of staff informed us that the 10pm screening I attended had sold out at 10am, clearly demonstrating the massive audience which exists for documentary films which tackle complex religious and ethical issues such as this. Whilst 12th and Delaware may not have featured the same graphic imagery and intellectual analysis as Tony Kaye’s Lake of Fire (which I consider to be my favourite ever documentary), as with The Battle for Barking, Ewing and Grady provide a master-class in exceptional and politically neutral film-making, and one which is well worth taking the time to watch.

Conclusion

I immensely enjoyed my first trip to Sheffield Doc/Fest, although there are a few tips I would like to impart on anyone considering making the journey themselves. Firstly, book your tickets early. Many of the films I attended were packed out, with people relying on the standby list to obtain entry. Secondly, although plenty of hotels exist in and around Sheffield, the accommodation quickly fills up, and I had ended up paying way above the odds to get a room two weeks prior to the event.

The Showroom Cinema, Sheffield

I also want to briefly mention some of the other films I saw which genuinely surprised me, these included Antony Butts’ After the Apocalypse, which examined the after-effects of Soviet nuclear testing in an area of Kazakhstan called the Polygon, and Waiting for Abu Zayd which follows the liberal Islamic scholar Abu Zayd and discusses the alternative interpretations of the Q’uran which saw him declared apostate and exiled from his home country of Egypt. Another fantastic film which deserves a mention is Waiting for Superman, a powerful documentary which investigated the dire state of public education in the United States. Almost all of the films included a post-screening Q+A, the most interesting of which was with the producer and editor of the Banksy film Exit Through the Gift Shop, in which they provided some detail on the story behind the films conception, and some enlightening exchanges with the audience took place regarding one of the film’s stars: Thierry Guetta, specifically regarding his progression through the art world since the film’s theatrical release.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend, and not one of the films disappointed me. The Showroom (similar to Manchester’s Cornerhouse and Wolverhampton’s Light House) is an excellent cinematic venue, with four large screens and excellent facilities. The big announcement, made just prior to this year’s event, is that the festival will be moving to the month of June in 2011. Given just how much I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself over my 3 day visit, I’m already 99% certain I will be taking some time out to continue my documentary obsession in Sheffield once again next year.

I then came across ‘Free Lunch’ by David Smith. With its subtitle of ‘Easily Digestible Economics’ it seemed exactly what I was looking for. From the very start Smith makes it quite clear that this book is for the layman, there’s no graphs and no maths. The book is set-out in the form of a dinner-party conversation, with starters, a main course, desserts, and lots of little interludes in-between. Its an odd concept, but one which I think works quite well.

In the first chapter, Smith describes the thinking behind the book, why one might want to study economics, and the history behind the saying ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’. He explains how economics impacts on all of us in our day-to-day lives, and how a little knowledge can assist us to think differently about anything money related.

He begins the next section with a discussion on house prices, looking at how supply and demand, along with income levels and the rate of inflation all affect the fluctuations in price. My only criticism is that although Smith explains the concepts very well, he sometimes leaves it a little late, diving headlong into a topic prior to explaining the basics, which might cause problems for someone brand new to the subject material. Smith then looks at the ‘substitution’ and ‘income’ effects, using a fall in interest rates as an example. It goes a little something like this: when rates fall, the cost of housing falls. The substitution effect dictates that some people may use this extra money to purchase a larger house, whilst the income effect treats the fall in interest rates as a rise in income, and borrowers may utilise this extra cash to spend on other products and services.

Next, in the first of several discussions on individual economists, he looks at Adam Smith. Smith was a rather awkward Scottish man born back in 1723, who – along with Friedrich von Hayek – had a huge impact on the pro-market and pro-privatization policies of the British Thatcher government and the American Reagan administration in the 1980′s. One of Adam Smith’s most important contributions to economics was the idea of the ‘division of labour’. This was a concept by which workers should become expertly skilled in a particular aspect of the manufacturing process to improve its speed and efficiency. The division of labour survives to this day – more commonly known as ‘specialisation’ – and the productivity gains Smith envisaged have only improved with the development of industrial machinery.

An interesting theory touched on in Chapter 5 is Milton Friedman’s ‘permanent income’ hypothesis. This was the idea that people will always retain an overall idea of what their permanent (or long-run) income is, and will bear this in mind in the face of pay cuts, where they may draw down savings, or when they receive a large bonus, which they might set-aside for harsher times. Ando and Modigliani’s life-cycle hypothesis also links quite nicely into this theory. This uses pensions as an example, stating that during childhood we are concentrated on spending, we then progress onto accumulating savings through employment, and run these down in old age, with perhaps some left to bequeath to our relatives. This is of course highly simplified, but seems to relate quite neatly to most people’s own personal experience.

After giving us a quick biography of some other perhaps less well known economists, including Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, William Godwin and John Stewart Mill, Smith then looks at the differences between companies and individuals, and discusses why we require companies at all, using Adam Smith’s division of labour as one of the the main arguments. There is also some interesting discussion on monopolies, with lack of competition and higher-prices for consumers being major reasons why the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was granted powers to investigate and break-up potential monopolists.

Smith then touches on the growth of on-line shopping and the importance of advertising in building a reputation where lack of a physical shop might otherwise dissuade shoppers from making a purchase. Here he also touches on the subject of Game Theory, a topic which I have a particular interest in. Whole books have been written on the issue, but game theory boils down to the idea that gaining maximum advantage in any given situation depends not just on what you do, but also what others do. The use of game theory in economics comes to to predicting – or somehow finding out – what your competitors are up to in order to maximise the performance of your own business. John Nash, a brilliant American game-theorist, who endured terrible bouts of depression and schizophrenia in the 1980′s, recovered to win the Nobel prize for economics in 1994 by taking on the cold-war game theorists in developing what he called the nash-equilibrium, the idea that a ‘win-win’ outcome could exist in which everyone gained.

In the second chapter covering important economists, Smith turns his attention to Karl Marx. As with Adam Smith, there are various anecdotes and commentary on Marx’s personal eccentricities, but unlike with Adam Smith, he seems quite dismissive of Marx’s arguments. Marx like Ricardo believed in the fundamental importance of distribution and the value of labour. Marx was also interested in the ‘surplus value’ of labour, which would tend to go straight into the pockets of the business owner, as opposed to the worker who carried it out. Whilst I agree with Smith that Marx’s theories have aged quite badly in modern times, he nevertheless has some important contributions to make, and we could certainly learn some lessons for today by reaching back to some of Marx’s ideas.

Chapter 9 looks at Tax. In it, Smith describes some different taxes, the reasons behind government spending and some examples of tax gone wrong. Smith uses the term ‘public goods’ to explain services funded by tax which benefit society as a whole, but which we might not be willing to pay for voluntarily. As an example, would we be willing to pay for the police force if we believed the tabloid headlines about them spending the majority of their time prosecuting middle-class motorists? Possibly not. The other justification given for government spending is ‘uninsurable risks’, an example being a chronically sick person who its doubtful would be able to take out a private health insurance policy. Essentially, the idea of tax is to finance the services which only the government can feasibly supply, taking in aspects of a progressive redistribution of wealth from rich to poor.

Consequences of the 'Window Tax'

If like me you’d always been puzzled as to why certain older buildings have some of their windows bricked up then the answer lies in the Window Tax. As surprising as it may be, between 1696 and 1851 properties with ten or more windows were subject to extra taxation, with some owners therefore deciding to brick up as many as possible to save money, the perfect example of a tax gone wrong if ever there was one. A more recent example lies in the poll tax of the 1980′s, applied by Margaret Thatcher’s government, it acted as an additional tax on local government, with violent protests occurring at the time of it’s introduction. Many people simply decided to remove themselves from the electoral register to avoid paying it.

In this same chapter, Smith also introduces the Laffer Curve, developed in the 1970′s by Arthur Laffer. Laffer theorised that high tax rates could eventually cut tax revenue. It works something like this. A zero tax rate generates no income for government whatsoever, however a 100% tax rate also generates zero income, as there is no point in someone working if their entire wage is consumed by the state. Somewhere in between these two points lies the optimum tax rate, and Laffer demonstrated that a point could be reached where the revenue would begin to drop. Simple when you think about it, but very interesting stuff.

In the last of the profiles of the major economists, Smith looks into theories of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was a charismatic and highly influential individual, who gained a fair amount of sway over government during his lifetime. He attended the Versailles peace conference in 1919 and warned of the dangerous direction the negotiations were taking, and that the high level of reparations being demanded of Germany could lead to further world war, with many later arguing that he was indeed right.

The General Theory was perhaps Keynes’ most important contribution to economics, and it argued that in time of financial crisis and high unemployment, increasing government spending (which Keynes called ‘priming the pump’), would then – via a ripple effect – trigger growth elsewhere in the economy, ideally in the private sector. Keynes wrote that growth in employment overall would then spur the creation of more jobs, as the newly employed public sector workers spent their wages in the private sector.  Again, like most of the theories in this book, it appears deceptively simple. Contrary to the rather dismissive in way in which he covers Marx, Smith seems to make clear the huge impact which Keynes had in the fields of both economics and international relations. Personally, Keynes’ general theory is my favourite piece of thinking described within the book, and I would certainly describe myself as an opponent of the austerity agenda currently being pushed by the UK’s coalition government as a solution to reducing the deficit.

In the final chapters Smith covers two very interesting topics. Money itself, and American influence on Economics. It isn’t very often you think about why we decide certain bits of metal or paper are perceived as valuable. Smith makes it clear that acceptability is often the most important criteria in this, discussing the interesting fact that those annoying Scottish banknotes which many of us detest are not in fact designated as legal tender, not even in Scotland itself, although Smith states that whether something is ‘legal tender’ or not is fairly irrelevant, and he quotes the Bank of England who state that “acceptability as a means of payment is essentially a matter for agreement between the parties involved”. The book then covers the handover of interest rates from Government to the Bank of England, and how decisions are now made.

Smith then looks to America, which has produced 32 of the 49 Nobel prize winning economists. He discusses how economists such as Milton Friedman emerged to challenge Keynesian orthodoxy, instead promoting free-markets as a solution to financial crisis. Friedman’s take on the 1929 crash was that the Federal Reserve had applied the brakes on the level of money available a little too hard, as opposed to Keynes who had blamed a crisis of capitalism, which could be solved via a public sector stimulus. This argument is mirrored slightly in the present day, with Friedman’s arguments that recession cannot be counteracted by tax rises and public spending appearing to prevail in the UK.

The final chapter is given over to a Q+A session, with discussion on taxation levels, globalisation, the European single currency, along with an interesting critique on the role of richer countries in exploiting the developing world when it comes to the rules of global trade.

To conclude then, David Smith certainly appears to be an advocate of the free market and laissez-faire capitalism, something for which he has received a little criticism of late. However, his views are only natural I suppose, especially given his position as economics editor at the Sunday Times. Nevertheless, he presents the opposing viewpoints in a neutral and non-condescending manner, with all relevant views given the consideration they deserve.

Whilst some of his criticism of Marxist theories is valid, in an additional ‘Appetizer’ added to the new edition of the book he covers the current financial crisis without really tackling the problems inherent with an under-regulated financial services market. Perhaps as this section was authored in October 2008, whilst the crisis was still unfolding, we can give him the benefit of the doubt but as a recent editorial in the Independent makes clear, the problems inherent within capitalism must be tackled if we are to prevent the bubble bursting yet again:

The costs to the public of a laissez-faire attitude to markets from the state manifest themselves in excessive charges and needlessly high prices. But the public costs by no means stop there. The reason Britain has one of the biggest deficits in the G20 is because the Treasury became so heavily reliant on the bubble revenues of an inadequately regulated financial services sector. Britain is facing years of savage public spending cuts largely because of the failure of successive ministers and regulators to curb the recklessness of the banks.
The Independent – Editorial  (23 September 2010)

I decided to write to David Smith at the Sunday Times, to put these minor criticisms to him myself, but also to praise him on a job well done. He very kindly sent me the following response:

Dear Mr Davis,

Thank you for sending me the copy of your review, which is very fair. One small point. Though it is commonly believed that the causes of Britain’s sharp swing into enormous budget deficit was a collapse in City tax revenues, as in The Independent editorial, the causes are rather more complex than that. As this paper demonstrates – the tax take from the City has dropped but not collapsed. The recent better-than-expected revenues from the Labour government’s windfall tax on bank bonuses demonstrate that.

The deficit was caused by a more general drop in tax revenues, particularly income tax, National Insurance and VAT, together with a recession-related rise in public expenditure and the fact that a previous planned slowdown in spending was deferred until after the crisis. The banks were indeed reckless and should have been better regulated though as we have seen this problem was not confined to the UK.

That is just a minor point. As I say, your review is very fair.

Best wishes, David Smith

- Email from David Smith  (2nd October 2010)

I’m now beginning to develop an impression of the economy as a huge balancing act, with economists constantly being confronted with new problems to solve, which I believe is what makes economics so exciting and books such as this so important. Despite some small faults, Free Lunch is a fantastic, jargon-free introduction to economic theory, and I would highly recommend it to anybody who like me, would previously have flicked past the ‘boring’ business pages of their daily newspaper.

Joel Bakan is a Canadian lawyer and author, Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia, he holds a Masters degree from Harvard University and has a solid background in Canadian constitutional law. In The Corporation, his objective is to chart the history of the corporation, it’s unique structure and legal positioning, along with exposing some of the obvious flaws which exist within the idea of a corporate entity.

Bakan begins by giving us a whirlwind history of the development of the corporation as an institution. This history features the ‘jobbers’, stockbrokers who prowled the streets of Exchange Alley in London back in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The jobbers would search out naive investors, and persuade them into purchasing shares in bogus companies. Speculation initially caused the share price for these companies to rocket, followed by a total collapse. Bakan states that many soon became suspicious of corporations, with their separated ownership and management, instead preferring the ‘partnership’ model based on mutual trust and loyalty. This distrust of corporations lead to the English Parliament issuing a ban on corporations in 1776, which lasted for around 50 years.

The rise of corporations was assisted by the development of railways, mining, and industrial machinery, all of which relied on massive investments of capital. The partnership slowly went out of fashion as many realised the corporation was a far more efficient method to raise the massive amounts of money required for projects such as these. Bakan discusses the concept of ‘limited liability’ introduced around 1850, the idea being that an investor should only be liable for the amount they had invested in the company, rather than being personally liable for the companies debts, this allowed many more (and for the first time, the working class) to purchase stock.

One of the major themes in the book is the gradual increase in corporate power. One main event in this history was the development of the corporate ‘person’. By the late nineteenth century, corporations had begun to inherit the same legal status as a flesh-and-blood human being, allowing a company to own materials, employ staff and pay taxes just like a regular person, with the added benefit of possessing the same legal protections which any other citizen may enjoy.

In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the ‘New Deal’, an economic plan which included a set of reforms to restrict the power of business. Whilst I knew a little about the New Deal before reading this book, I was completely unaware of the plot hatched by the business leaders of the time to attempt a Coup on Roosevelt, in an effort to remove some of these restrictions and impose a business-friendly fascist regime, the type of which were currently developing in Germany under Hitler, and in Italy under Mussolini.

The embracing of neoliberalism in the 1980′s by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan allowed both Britain and the United States to begin to unravel some of these restrictions on business, and with the advent of globalization and the formation of the WTO, companies were now free to look around the world for the best possible economic conditions, resulting in poorer wages for developing nations, and higher profits for the corporation’s shareholders. Bakan argues that at around this time government to some extent lost control over businesses, with the (corporately influenced) WTO also enforcing unethical policies which government has very little say over. Add to this a group of politicians more heavily reliant on corporate donations to get elected, and it becomes evident that government loses a fair amount of it’s regulatory power.

Through lobbying, political contributions, and sophisticated public relations campaigns, they and their leaders have turned the political system and much public opinion against regulation. The law’s ability to protect people and the environment from corporate harm has suffered as a result.

One of Bakan’s most interesting observations is concerned with the relatively new trend of corporate ‘social responsibility‘. This can take several forms, from a company sponsoring the local football team, maintaining the local neighbourhood, or donating money to charitable causes. Obviously these displays are frequently for PR purposes, or are used purely to persuade consumers that their products are ethical, and should be purchased above all others. Bakan states that if these tactics did not result in greater profits for the company in question, the actions would technically be illegal, under corporate laws which designate that maximizing profits for shareholders is the primary responsibility of management. This reminded me of an article I read in the Guardian a few years ago, which told the tale of the writers young child, who was busy reading the label on a bottle of water which stated that for each bottle purchased, the company would send 1 litre of fresh water to a developing nation. The child questioned, with a wisdom and clarity far beyond that which any adult could display: ‘Why doesn’t the company just send the water anyway, whether I buy it or not?’.

Corporate social responsibility holds out promises of help, reassures people, and sometimes works. We should not, however, expect very much from it. A corporation can do good only to help itself do well, a profound limit on just how much good it can do.

Bakan then raises the concept of ‘externalities’, costs which corporations attempt to avoid by shifting them elsewhere. To illustrate he tells the story of Patricia Anderson, whose family suffered horrific burns after a car shunted the rear of her own at a set of traffic lights, and her petrol tank ignited. Anderson sued General Motors, and was eventually awarded $107 million, with punitive damages of $4.8 billion. Why so high you might wonder? Well, the car in which Patricia Anderson had been driving was designed with it’s petrol tank just 11 inches from the rear bumper. This was in spite of the fact that GM’s own internal safety guidance suggested the tank should be at least 17 inches away, if not further. To change the positioning of the tank would have added an estimated cost of $8.50 onto each vehicle, so the company instead calculated how many fatalities this design flaw might cause, multiplied by the average payout to the families of each victim, and came out with a figure of just $2.40 per car, a massive saving. Hence the car was not redesigned, and the accidents were allowed to happen. Deeply shocking. Obviously this is an extreme example, but that doesn’t hide the fact that cost-benefit analyses such as these are now performed on almost everything we consume.

The corporation’s unique structure is largely to blame for the fact that illegalities are endemic in the corporate world. By design, the corporate form generally protects the human beings who own and run corporations from legal liability, leaving the corporation, a “person” with a psychopathic contempt for legal constraints, the main target of criminal prosecution.

Something which particularly caught my attention in the light of Education Secretary Michael Gove’s recent announcement of the creation of ‘Free Schools’ was Bakan’s observations on the privatization of education. This appears to be another area where corporate donation to political parties holds great sway in deciding how contracts are awarded, and where funding is secured. The book argues, as many have done again fairly recently, that these schools do not necessarily perform any better then their public counterparts, although Bakan states that this isn’t necessarily the largest threat they represent. In the early 2000′s, Edison schools – a private American education provider – saw it’s stock price drop from over $22, to just $1. Various cost cutting measures began, with Edison’s administration staff moving into the schools to save money on office space, and the company quickly sold off school textbooks, computers, lab supplies, and musical instruments.  An example which demonstrates that applying laizze-faire economic theory to education rarely works, a lesson which Mr Gove should certainly bear in mind over the next few years.

On a closely related topic, the commercial exploitation of children and the ‘Nag Factor’ are also areas placed under the spotlight. Targeted advertising, directly to children, is in my opinion highly unethical, but is yet again another area where government has relaxed the rules, and deregulated at the expense of children’s health and mental well-being. Movie tie-ins, sponsorship of local community organisations, and even freely supplied school curriculum kits (which use the Big Mac to illustrate the four food groups) are removing parents control over their kids in ways never before seen. It also severely diminishes parents ability to safeguard children from harmful corporate influences.

In the final chapter of the book, Bakan accepts that whilst the corporation isn’t going anywhere fast, there are some useful ways we can limit it’s power and influence over us.

No one would seriously suggest that individuals should regulate themselves, that laws against murder, assault, and theft are unnecessary because people are socially responsible. Yet oddly, we are asked to believe that corporate persons – institutional psychopaths who lack any sense of moral conviction and who have the power and motivation to cause harm and devastation in the world – should be left free to govern themselves.

He makes several suggestions as to how this shift could take place. Firstly, improving the regulatory system, by means of stronger government control and effective enforcement, enabled by well staffed regulatory departments, and fines which act as a genuine disincentive against breaking the rules, rather than simply an additional cost for corporations to factor into their business plan. Secondly, the strengthening of political democracy, with a move towards publicly financed elections and a reduction in corporate lobbying. Thirdly, the protection of assets too important to be moved into private hands, such as police, schools and fire-fighters. Finally, he suggests that nations should work together to shift the policies of organisations such as the WTO, IMF and the World Bank, away from market fundamentalism, deregulation and privatization. Where these measures fail within a particular nation, or are ineffective, Bakan raises the story of the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Subject to the selling off of their water system (an agreement which went as far as banning them from collecting rainwater on their own property) the citizens organized and protested. Bloody confrontations ensued, as the people of Cochabamba demanded that the company leave, which under substantial pressure from a concerned and volatile public, they promptly did.

I can highly recommend The Corporation to anybody with an interest in politics, economics or social justice, and I was quickly hooked after reading the first chapter. If you’re short on time, I would recommend the documentary version, which does an excellent job of condensing the majority of the book’s topics into just a 140 minute DVD.

Hopefully I’ve given you all some food for thought there, so if anyone reading this has any comments or questions, feel free to leave a message below!

Edwards begins the book (as he and David Cromwell did in Guardians of Power) with a description of the propaganda model devised by Chomsky and Herman, but the similarities between the two works essentially end here. Edwards then begins to widen out the propaganda model to encompass the myriad of different areas where we face a constant barrage of control and manipulation, and where views are filtered to fit the state and business interests. Whether it be in our personal lives, our religious beliefs, or our ethics. Edwards relies not on simple ‘conspiracy theory’ or other shallow explanations, but to the systemic ‘filtering’ of unwanted ideas and opinions described in the propaganda model itself.

Edwards bases many of his ideas on Buddhist teachings, something which I admit I had my concerns about beforehand, although I can safely say that my initial misconceptions around Buddhism were soon shattered, as I realised that Buddhism is a world away from the conventional theistic religions, the ultimate goal being personal enlightenment, rather than belief or worship of a spiritual God.

Edwards uses many examples throughout the book, the most interesting in my opinion being the desolated day-tripper, a man who sets off on a day trip with his family, and then becomes overwhelmed with fear when he realises that he cannot explain why he is taking the trip. Edwards then takes us through this man’s life, looking at how his mind has been moulded from birth to conform in our society, and how the sudden realisation of his dissatisfaction with life manifests itself.

Edwards reserves special (and very accurate) criticism for our profit-driven capitalist system. A system which, as he points out elsewhere in the book, is concerned not just with satisfying (essentially false) needs and desires, but of creating the very dissatisfaction it aims to cure:

The forbidden truth is that we are living by a set of lies which are necessary for short-term profit, at the expense of human physical and psychological life and global environmental integrity. We are living in a system where power ensures that the requirements of profit take priority over the requirements of living things – including to know that this is the case. Consequently our freedom extends as far as, and no further than, the satisfaction of these requirements, with all else declared neurosis, paranoia, communism, extremism, the work of the devil,or Neptunian nonsense.

In addition to criticism of capitalism as a whole, Edwards has many excellent points to make about the damaging effects of the beauty industry and their exploitation of post-war feminism in the pursuit of profit. He states that the emergence of diet articles and plastic surgery have contributed to an increase in physical and mental disorders, as well as a great distortion in the way women have come to see themselves, and is a perfect example of the mass media’s power to manipulate. (For example, he quotes from Naomi Wolf’s book ‘The Beauty Myth‘, which states that between 1966 and 1969, in direct correlation to the media’s new fixation on thinness and perfection, the number of women who perceived themselves as being overweight rose from 50% to 80%.) I was also fascinated by Edwards’ suggestion that the literature we now perceive as important to society, for example Shakespeare and Orwell, may also be a product of the filtering system, in that unpopular historical works may be suppressed entirely, or not published at all, whereas literature which supports the dominant classes or the current socio-economic system is exalted as ‘classic’.

Edwards also discusses the indifference with which most of us treat conflict, poverty and inequality around the world, and how we now tend to psychologically distance ourselves from these horrors, remaining passive to atrocities such as the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. One of my favourite quotes in the book comes towards the end, where Edwards discusses the sometimes absurd rationalizations we create when something we are told, which in essence makes perfect sense, conflicts so completely with our ingrained beliefs and learned knowledge:

Having chosen one of these rationalizations, moments later we can be settling back in our chairs in the office, or in the pub, or in front of the TV, feeling as ‘comfortably’ as part of the ‘real’ world as before. We will have avoided conflict and disruption in our individual, familial, social and career lives; we may have avoided confronting the waste of years, or decades of effort and striving for a deluded dream in a profoundly immoral and brutal system. (The cliché of the transformation of young socialist into old conservative is not a change from idealism to pragmatism but from rationality to rationalization.) The cost of surrendering our reason to rationalization is that we will tend to reject ideas that allow access to a coherent understanding of the world, including it’s problems, including our problems.

In chapter three, Edwards criticises the belief in a cosmic father-figure (CFF), inherent in the great monotheistic religions, and then concludes that Atheism is just as dangerous because it provides ‘believers’ with the same certainty and security. This certainty then removes our need to look for answers to life, as our belief makes asking these questions unnecessary. Whilst I cannot argue at all with his reasoning on this point, Edwards then goes on to suggest that Atheism forms part of an ‘Unholy Trinity’ along with ‘Progress’ and ‘Consumerism’. Edwards’ reasoning appears to be that since Atheism does away with all spirituality, and emphasises the ‘pointlessness’ of existence, that consumerism and the idea of ‘having fun’ and satisfying our lusts will naturally take over as a result.

This was one area of the book were I did have some slight reservations. Whilst I would not argue that Atheism does have potential to fuel consumerism, I would counter that this is true of most mainstream beliefs. Therefore I can’t quite understand the assumed link between the three members of this ‘Unholy Trinity’ and why this is exclusive to Atheism.

I emailed Mr Edwards to congratulate him on an excellent piece of work, but also to question this link between Atheism and Consumerism. He very kindly responded with the following comments:

Incidentally, by “atheism” I really meant the assumption that life is ‘meaningless’, a happy (or unhappy) accident, that ethical norms are intellectual inventions with no grounding in anything beyond personal opinion, and so on.

To be sure, theistic religions have often been at the heart of systems of exploitation and violence, but they’re more useful for promoting servility and deference, less useful for promoting unrestrained hedonism. After all, they have traditionally (at least nominally) emphasised restraints on behaviour. Modern atheism promotes ‘Do as you please so long as you can get away with it.’ But that of course does not mean that theists are not often hedonists, or that theistic religions cannot also promote consumption.

My point was that atheism is really perfect for our kind of unrestrained consumer society where all values are subordinated to profit (as a matter of legal obligation for corporate managers). It also satisfies our conceit that we are scientific, rational creatures who have moved beyond all superstitious religious dogma. In fact there is no greater superstition than belief in the intrinsically existent self or ‘I’ – the new god at the centre of the materialist universe.

- Email from David Edwards  (22nd April 2010)

Free to be Human must rank as one of my favourite books, I doubt that any other author has sparked so much thought about my own existence and way of living, and I certainly see some aspects of myself in the desolated day-tripper, as I’m sure most people would. I can highly recommend this book as an effective antidote to the largely hidden ‘filtering’ system operating in the world today, and I will certainly be looking into the rest of Edwards’ work.

Update 22/04/10: Article updated with comments received from Mr Edwards.

Guardians Of Power – David Edwards & David Cromwell

Before I review this book, I’d like to give a little background to medialens and what they do. Medialens is a ‘UK-based media watch project’ who publish informed criticism of media bias and censorship, revealing the distorted view of the world which mainstream media often provides. Run by the aforementioned Edwards and Cromwell, they publish weekly media alerts and base their work on Chomsky and Herman’s 1988 book ‘Manufacturing Consent – The Political Economy of the Mass Media’. In addition medialens also encourage their readers to challenge individual journalists on their work, something which has gained them some enemies in the past. However they are also influenced by the Buddhist view that ‘while greed, hatred and ignorance distort reason; compassion empowers it’, which hopefully provides us with the means to create a peaceful society, along with a fair and balanced media.

This, their first book, represents a compilation of their media alerts on a wide range of subjects.They start by giving some background on Chomsky and Herman’s ‘Propaganda Model’ of the media, on which the project is based, along with some examples of how ownership and advertising can play a huge role in what we actually read. Here’s wikipedia’s brief summary:

The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes.

It views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the people. The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are: ownership of the medium, the medium’s funding sources, sourcing, flak and ‘Anti-communist ideology’. The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

The authors make it quite clear that advertisers and owners are able to exert a high-level of control over their publications. In addition the pressure to retain advertisers, which medialens quote as providing 75% of their revenue, can necessitate self-censorship along with helping to decide which stories get coverage in the first place. For example, a newspaper may decide to omit any mention of carbon dioxide emissions from air travel if today’s edition also features a large cut-price flights promotion. A frightening thought indeed, but one which does occur frequently, largely unnoticed.

In coverage of news events, medialens ignore the right-wing and go straight for the UK ‘liberal’ media, beginning by exposing systematic failings in coverage of the Iraq war, along with the sanctions that preceded it. Their exchanges with former UN assistant secretary-general Denis Halliday and his criticism of the way in which sanctions were reported in the media were enlightening.

Their alerts covering the build up to the 2003 Iraq war again demonstrate how little a threat was posed by Saddam Hussein and his ‘weapons of mass destruction’, along with discussion of how certain (highly-qualified) voices were sidelined if their views didn’t quite match up with those of the establishment.

The book also features chapters on Afghanistan, Kosovo, climate change and the fight for independence in East Timor. All of which are truly excellent pieces of work. Towards the end the book makes a slight detour, concluding with suggestions for how the media can become more compassionate. The story of Helena Norberg-Hodge’s visit to the residents of Ladakh in Northern India really interested me, in that their way of life allowed them to be so happy and emotionally healthy whilst living in relative poverty, unaffected by the egotism and consumerism of the west.

I opened this book at 9am one day and quite honestly could not put it down until I’d finished it, it’s a fabulous wake up call to anyone who believes that we possess a honest and unbiased mainstream media. A second book was released this year called ‘Newspeak in the 21st Century’ and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

I’d highly recommend that everyone visit the website and read some of their excellent work, subscribe to the weekly medialens alerts, and donate if you can.

Bernays was born in Austria in 1891, and was nephew of the renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Bernays went on to become the father of modern Public Relations, and pioneered many of the PR techniques still in use today. Although rather than exploiting his uncle’s popularity, things surprisingly worked in the opposite direction, as at this time Freud was almost unknown outside his native Austria, and Bernays was to be instrumental in popularising Freud’s theories in the US, as they were inherently linked to Bernays’ own work within PR.

One of Bernays’ most famous successes was to break the taboo on women smoking. Whilst working for the American Tobacco Company in 1929, he staged a PR event to launch his so-called ‘Torches of Freedom’ campaign, which attempted (and largely succeeded) to convince women that smoking was a symbol of independence and freedom, and a protest for equality in society.

His book ‘Propaganda’, although written in 1928, is just as relevant today as when it was published, and although some of the examples are slightly dated, the basic principles of public relations remain almost unchanged to this day.

Bernays firstly documents the history of propaganda and it’s usage by governments around the world, and explains why the phrase itself fell into disrepute, mostly due to it’s heavy usage by the German’s in the first world war. Bernays believed that manipulation of the masses through PR was essential to create a properly functioning society:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Two of Bernays’ techniques interested me greatly, and can be spotted as a common fixture in today’s advertising-driven culture. The first was the theory that it was necessary to sell the ‘need’  for a particular product, rather than the product itself. He gave the example of a business struggling to sell pianos. Now, rather than advertising the piano itself, Bernays created the idea of a ‘music room’ which people could set aside within the home, he then organised to fill the publications of the day with features on the benefits of the music room, and ideas for furnishing such a room. This would inevitably create the ‘need’ for the piano to fill the space set-aside for it in the newly created room, and so vast swathes of the public had been manipulated into purchasing a product they essentially didn’t need, without even knowing it.

The second of Bernays’ techniques revolved around using a person in authority, who the public would inherently trust, to influence their purchasing decisions:

Suppose the old type of salesmanship, acting for a meat packer, was seeking to increase the sale of bacon. It would reiterate innumerable times in full-page advertisements: “Eat more bacon. Eat bacon because it is cheap, because it is good, because it gives you reserve energy.” The newer salesmanship, understanding the group structure of society and the principles of mass psychology, would first ask: “Who is it that influences the eating habits of the public?” The answer, obviously, is: “The physicians.” The new salesman will then suggest to physicians to say publicly that it is wholesome to eat bacon. He knows as a mathematical certainty, that large numbers of persons will follow the advice of their doctors, because he understands the psychological relation of dependence of men upon their physicians.

This kind of technique I’m certain is familiar to most people and although the public relations business still utilises the services of trusted professionals, nowadays it seems to rely much more heavily on celebrity endorsements, which I suppose signifies the much greater role they play in our lives and the importance we place on their opinions.

Bernays was obviously a highly-intelligent man, who possessed a deep understanding of psychology, psychoanalysis and sociology which he wielded to great effect, it’s certainly a testament to his work that people are still reading it 80 years on. Propaganda is an astounding and highly enjoyable book and as I said earlier it is just as important now (if not more so) than on it’s original release. If you’re interested, the full text can be read online here and here or purchased from here.

Noam Chomsky – Hegemony or Survival

Chomsky’s 2003 book is a summary of US foreign policy from the end of World War II up until the current Iraq War, examining America’s pursuit of global dominance and it’s terrible consequences. Chomsky expresses his view that although the attacks of 9/11 were shocking and deplorable, the biggest shock was that for the first time the guns were pointing in the opposite direction. My only criticism of this book was that due to the high volume of names, dates and figures, I found myself occasionally reading paragraphs twice. Nevertheless it was a fantastic book and I’d highly recommend it alongside the pocket book ‘Media Control’ as a excellent intro to Chomsky’s world view.

The Cold War – A Very Short Introduction

The ‘Very Short Introduction’ series from OUP provides an excellent foundation for exploring a subject, giving the reader a wide-ranging overview of events and opinions whilst attempting to maintain impartiality. This particular book is no exception, it begins by explaining the radical changes taking place after the end of the Second World War and going on to discuss how events all over the world, such as the wars in Vietnam and Korea, fueled tensions between the US and the USSR and how diplomatic measures were in full swing in an attempt to prevent a full-blown nuclear war. I’m almost at the end of this book and while almost all of the events took place before I was born, it has been very enjoyable history lesson for me.

British Politics Unravelled – Giles Edwards

I came across this little gem from 2005 whilst in my local library and whilst it’s now sadly out of print, I managed to find a copy for myself on eBay. It’s essentially a beginners guide to British Politics, covering important questions such as: How does the Constitution work?, What actually happens in No 10? and What is an early day motion? The book also has chapters on British Law, Elections, the EU, the Economy and even the Media. It discusses for instance, how a newspaper chooses it’s political allegiance, what the purpose of a party whip is, how ‘spin’ works, it even details the powers that exist within courts and local governments. In fact, the entire book is a goldmine of useful and interesting information, presented in an easy to understand and concise manner. I ended up tracking down Mr Edwards to congratulate him on a job well done, which isn’t something I have done with any other author. Politics isn’t exactly everybody’s cup of tea, but like it or not, it affects almost every aspect of our lives and if you have any interest in learning about the political process in the UK then this book should be at the top of your shopping list.

I have spent the last few months watching journalist John Pilger’s television documentaries, having first discovered his film-making through the 2007 award-winning “The War on Democracy”, an excellent account of US greed and it’s effects on Southern and Central America, including the events surrounding the US-backed coup d’état against Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in 2002 and many other instances of US involvement in attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments around the world.

I became hooked on his work after purchasing “Documentaries which Changed the World”, the first DVD box set of his films, and have since snapped up the rest of the DVD’s. These include some classics ranging from ‘Burp’, which chronicles the history of the ‘ice cold war’ between Pepsi and Coke, ‘The New Rulers of the World’ examining the effects of globalisation on Asia, and ‘Stealing a Nation’ which tells the tragic story of the Chagos islanders, expelled from their homeland in the 1970′s by the British government, the Chagos having been given to the US in order for them to build a military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia.

I recently finished reading his 1998 book ‘Hidden Agendas’, a collection of essays on many subjects, some now outdated although many just as relevant today as when they were first written. Pilger states that he lives by the Claud Cockburn quote, ‘Never believe anything until it is officially denied’ and it certainly shows in all of his books and documentaries. Despite the dangerous places the ventures to, he remains determined to uncover the facts at all costs.

In his chapter on the Gulf war, Pilger shows how manipulation of the media during the conflict helped to steer the journalists in the right direction, encouraging them to focus on the new ‘high-tech weapons’ and the miraculously low US and UK casualties, therefore largely ignoring the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths which occured during the conflict. Pilger also covers the devastating impact that the sanctions against Iraq had on the civilian population.

In the section on the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975 Pilger exposes not just the complicity of the UK government in the mass slaughter of civilians, but also that British manufacturers were arming the Indonesian army. The story of the Ploughshares and their acts of ‘military conversion’ using only hammers to destroy hawk jets destined for delivery to Indonesia was heartening, and showed that direct action against arms suppliers can be successful, their trial and subsequent aquittal can only reinforce this.

One of the most memorable sections is the two chapters on Burma and it’s brutal military regime, here Pilger’s reporting is undercover and has to be remain low-key to avoid detection by the authorities. Some of the interviews with ordinary citizens, although sometimes cut short, provide a fascinating insight into their lives under the Junta and just how bad things have gotten for them, as the west turns a blind eye to western oil and gas companies reaping the profits of Burma’s natural resources, being extracted via forced and even child labour. His interview with Burma’s elected leader in exile, Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Ki is deeply moving and shows the determination within Burma’s ‘National League for Democracy’ to return to a democratic system of government.

Chapters on the British media (including the rise of PR) and the docker’s strikes in the 80′s certainly filled gaps in my knowledge of issues so close to home, and gave excellent examples of how a monopoly over the mass-media can be abused and used to mould public opinion in any way imaginable.

In his writing and documentaries, Pilger joins Noam Chomsky in successfully exposing the depth of the government and media manipulations of the truth, challenging the ‘official’ and established versions of events. He opens your eyes to what is really going on around you, without a hint of scaremongering, and I highly recommend anyone interested in world affairs to purchase Pilger’s books and DVD’s right away, with “Documentaries which Changed the World” being an excellent starting point for further exploration of his work.