Getting back to its roots: Glasto rekindles its radical twist

Glastonbury in its early days was a hotbed for the radical youth of Britain. Not only was it a place to celebrate music, drugs, poor quality canvas A-frame tents and men in shorts far to short, it was a place to feel connected to those politicised all around.

Over the years, commercialisation has set in, with ticket prices sky-rocketing almost as quickly as its security fences. The days of free love and most importantly, free music are over. All the hippie clothing of this bygone era we so loved, is now sold at stalls with names such as 'Namaste' and 'Ethfunkal trading' selling dubiously traded shirts from Nepal for £20 a piece.

But this year, it looks like we will get a chance to relive those moments from the 1980s when the festival used to be organised in conjunction with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) - when nuclear apocalypse was all the rage. For this year, the festival is to be joined by a new protest movement - UK Uncut. Loved by the Guardian, students and many, many bloggers, UK Uncut have used a quasi-circus sit-in tactic as a valuable tool of protest to highlight those banks, businesses and shops that are really rather good at getting around paying their taxes. Do check them out, they really are cool.

Their targets have really been an eclectic mix. First it was Vodafone, then Barclays, Fortnum and Mason and now, last of all, U2. The Irish band moved their company to Holland in order to avoid paying taxes. The hypocrisy involved in this act, when Bono goes on and on with his chum Bob Geldof about feeding the world, and making sure everyone is aware that it's the winter solstice, now appears to be making as much money as he can out of the summer solstice instead.

So, Glastonbury becomes political once more. It's a nuanced difference, being once a place where everyone on stage would be shouting 'Free Nelson Mandela' and 'No More Vietnam,' Glasto now awaits the politicised heckling itself.

Oh how the Frankenstein analogy never stays long in the cliche cupboard.

Should we be surprised to see this political moment turned on its head? No. We'd be kidding ourselves to say that Glastonbury is any iota of its former self. We should praise UK Uncut, not just for being a fantastic reminder that banks, corporations and indeed rock bands should be accountable to their citizens, but making us really consider what's behind the paint work of the festival movement in the UK.

The Arab Spring can teach us a lot about our own leaders

The Arab Spring is amongst us. Yemen, Syria, Bahrain (complete with it's 'not about the money' Grand Prix), Oman, Egypt, Libya and, oh yeah, Palestine.

Yesterday, hundreds were injured and a dozen or so were killed when Palestinian and Syrian protesters held a demonstration on the Israeli border in the hotly contested region, the Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers indiscriminately shot live ammunition at the protesters in a similar fashion to the gunning down of protesters we have seen all over the Middle East. A brief analysis of the responses by Western leaders offers us interesting insights into the state of Middle East politics currently.

According to the BBC News website:

“The US state department said it was 'troubled' by the 'loss of life'” “We call for all sides to exercise restraint... Provocative actions like this should be avoided.”

There are a number of issues here. The first being the fact that the US state department seems to label protest against oppression as a 'provocative action' (a bit like a lady choosing to wear a mini-skirt eh Canadian Policeman??). Protest is not provocative. Protest is not a threat. Protest is a positive element of democratic life, crucial to the collective well-being of all societies.

William Hague certainly didn't regard the protests of Syrian's citizens as provocative when on the 11th April this year he urged the Syrian government to:

“respect its people's right to free speech and peaceful protest.”

And as for exercising restraint on both sides, I wonder how NATO would react if we drew this comment alongside the military barbarism in Libya – killing children in the name of freedom, using UN sanctions to protect human life in order to attempt to overthrow a dictator the West has supported for decades. The West it seems, while calling for restraint from others, are happy to use excessive force in its own interests.

Western leaders condemn the violence of Middle East states and fail to condemn Israeli violence. Western leaders then use violence themselves to achieve their own goals and objectives.

What is more, is the convenient use of pro-protest rhetoric at the same time as the UK government works hard to clamp down on legitimate protest on its own streets. It is beyond doubt that this humanitarian discourse of the UK government helped a great deal in forming a tsunami that washed away the clear appearance of unrest and discomfort on its own streets, during the student protests of late 2010 and early 2011. The more the UK cared about protesters on Egyptian streets, the less it had to worry about the public's perceptions of the protesters in parliament square suffering at the arms of truncheons and under the feet of stampeding horses.

This clever use of foreign policy discourse unveils a number of conclusions that must not go amiss amongst the tidal wave of 24-hour news coverage:

1. The West backs Israel 100% even when it oppresses, tortures and murders civilians every day.
2. The West will use violence when it wants to, and will condemn the use of violence by others when it profits them.
3. The West supports protest when it is in their interest and brutally clamps down on protest in its own streets. The act of demanding that Syria respect the right to free speech and to peaceful protest infers that these rights are respected here – they are not.
4. Protest continues to be perceived as a threat, something which it, by definition, is not.

In the news this week...

In the news this week we've seen the odd contradiction of the worldwide phenomena Slutwalks mixed in with the opening of a new Playboy club in London. The role of gender in our society has never been more blurred and confused and yet so omnipresent.

Where is feminism today?

Arising out of a deep concern that rape victims are often blamed rather than their attackers, Slutwalkers have claimed the right to wear what they like.

Wear a bunny costume, perhaps?

But Playboy has come under attack for the obvious claim that the whole notion of the Playboy brand objectifies women. Not only that, it commodifies women. Women are paid for men to appreciate them for their looks, at least according to the well known feminist Michael Winner. They sell their dignity to drooling men.

The plain matter is: women can wear what they want. A man that rapes a women because she looks 'inviting' has still raped that woman. A woman can decide to dress to impress, but that does not remove her right to say 'yes' or 'no'.

Playboy represents a nostalgic sexism that does not have 'charm' and is not a 'bit of fun' but is indicative of the wider sexism and discrimination that remains in our society, framed in a way that seeks to legitimise its unjustified existence. These examples are not 'bad apples'. These examples exist everywhere. Gendered expectations, stereotypes, roles, images are everywhere and must be countered. Take the Church of England for instance, where women are years away from becoming Bishops.

The media framing these issues as a 'debate' does not help one bit. These are plain and simple issues that need to be dealt with accordingly. Treat women on an equal footing to men: simples.