MANCHESTER AND THE SORRY STATE OF BRITISH JOURNALISM

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged Arena, ariana grande, attack, boycott, clickbait, clicks, daesh, daily mail, Dan Hett, fake news, fake report, hacking, hillsborough, journalism, Katie Hopkins, leaks, Leveson, Liverpool, manchester, Martyn Hett, mass shooting, mental health, Piers Morgan, propaganda, PTSD, revenue, social media, sun, tabloid, terrorism, UK media, US, voyeurism, westminster.

by Zoe Harding

CW: article contains descriptions of the Manchester terrorist attack, racist discourse, links to images of war crimes.

The official threat level after the terror attack in Manchester is back down from Critical to Serious, and the country has started to move on. The news cycle seems to have been slightly shorter, as well; at time of writing the front page of the BBC News website is largely concerned with technical problems at British Airways and I-kid-you-not a cheese rolling competition.

I’d love to say that this particular terrorist incident didn’t incite the usual wave of hate and disgustingly inappropriate coverage that tends to follow such events, including random hate crimes, thundering headlines and political manoeuvring. I’d love to.

But The Daily Mail exists. And The Sun. And the political climate in the UK has become sufficiently toxic that even without those two, the response was nonetheless as unpleasant as any I’ve seen.Continue Reading

FRANK HABINEZA: POLITICS IN AFRICA IS SOMETHING YOU CAN DIE FOR

Posted on April 9, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged African Greens Federation, Amnesty International, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, Frank Habineza, Global Greens, Global Greens Congress, Green Party of England and Wales, Human Rights Watch, international politics, Liverpool, Paul Kagame, politics, Rwanda, Rwandan Genocide, Rwandan Patriotic Front, Rwandan politics, Rwandan Presidential election, Saffron Walden, Scarborough, Victoire Ingabire.

by Olivia Hanks

Content warning: mentions genocide

Frank Habineza is all smiles when I meet him at the Global Greens Congress in Liverpool. It’s hardly surprising: the congress, which he helped organise in his role as president of the African Greens Federation, is running smoothly; and he is one of its star attractions, having just been announced as the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda (DGPR)’s first ever presidential candidate.

Standing for election in Rwanda is not to be done lightly: although opposition is nominally allowed, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly raised concerns about torture and imprisonment of dissenters. Opposition party leader Victoire Ingabire is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence, and many other activists have gone missing in recent years. Habineza himself was forced into exile prior to the last presidential elections in 2010, after the DGPR vice-chairman André Kagwa Rwisereka was murdered.Continue Reading

A EUROPEAN LIFE

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged art, Brexit, British, colony, continent, culture, diversity, Dutch, emotions, EU, EU ref, EU referendum, Europe, european, European cities, food, freedom, freedom of movement, frere jacques, hitchhike, holiday, Italy, Lancashire, languages, Liverpool, memory, military camps, multiculturalism, multiculture, music, paris, reading, Russia, stateless, theatre, thoughts, travel, Vienna, work, World War Two, wwii.

by Kelvin Smith

I was born shortly after the end of the Second World War in a nursing home that overlooked the Mersey, open to the world, “on the stream of trade” as my school song had it.

At primary school we drew Spitfires and Hurricanes in aerial dogfights with Junkers and Messerschmitts. There were bomb-sites in the towns and cities and there were Emergency Water Storage Tanks (marked EWS) everywhere. My first non-English words were Hände hoch and Achtung, closely followed by Frère Jacques. My parents had few foreign friends, although a Dutchman, a fellow chemist, had stayed with them in the early 1940s and he returned home with a broad Lancashire accent. “Reet bloody champion”, he would say.Continue Reading

Liverpool

FRANK HABINEZA: POLITICS IN AFRICA IS SOMETHING YOU CAN DIE FOR

A EUROPEAN LIFE

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