More Miserable Families In TV Adverts…

I hate adverts. This is hardly an original opinion – hell, I’m sure you feel the same. But while it’s trite to say that they’re repugnant insults to everything good about humankind it’s also true, so let’s hate adverts together.

As explored here, the real exemplars of the advertising method are promotionals based around family life. The consistent message is that families – just like friends, careers, holidays and, indeed, all of existence – are tedious and frustrating things and that the only way to coexist without overmuch pain is to acquire the thing the ad is offering. This is painfully blatant in pre-Christmas promos. Here’s a great example: a shiny, happy advert which essentially asserts that you’ll have a dull and cheerless Christmas if “Santa” fails to bring a Nintendo Wii…

You see that father? Him with the greasy black hair? He would have been thrashing those children with a belt if they hadn’t received the Wii family pack. Do you want to be thrashing your children with a belt? Well then…

Microsoft’s latest suggests that worthwhile family experiences “all start with a Windows 7 PC”. Because having a laugh at the expense of a relative’s dancing literally never happened before Gates and his cronies put out their latest installment of humdrum gadgetry…

The catchphrase of the ad is that it’s “a great time to be a family”. Would it be anal to cite divorce rates nowadays?

What insults me about these godforsaken things is how – can I phrase this without sounding hugely pretentious? No – blind they are to human resourcesfulness. Your mind and body, they imply, aren’t capable of producing entertainment, stimulation and emotional fulfilment. Nah, you need another thing. This runs counter to all notions of human inventiveness and individuality, and – if y’all don’t mind me dropping the “c” word – that sheds a dim light on the whole “capitalism” thing. Liberty, if it means anything, has to mean more than the freedom to dance like a loon before a small, exorbitantly priced box.

 

And Sour…

Lots of people have been chuckling over a U.S. court’s decision to classify pizza as a vegetable. This feels a tad more sinister when it’s realised that this was part of the creation of guidelines for children’s school lunches. Yeah, along with this “vegetable” the kids will enjoying a big whack of bleached flour, salt and soybean oil. Come back, Jamie Oliver. Most is forgiven.

I love the arguments of the corporate lobbyists who’ve invested their millions in a fatter future…

Food companies including Coca-Cola, Del Monte Foods and the makers of frozen pizza and French fries have a huge stake in the new guidelines and many argue that it would raise the cost of meals and call for food that too many children just will not eat.

But here’s a question: why won’t they eat them? It’s not as if parents for the – ooh, what was it? – tens of thousands of years before pizza had to smother vegetables in refined starch and hydrogenated fat to get the kids to chew ‘em down. No, as Kristin Wartman writes at the Huffington Post, the consumption of lots of industrially processed foods shapes the palate to accept – that’s right – industrially processed foods. Anything that doesn’t have their concentration of thick sugar, fat and salt seems bland and bitter. And, as “food reward” theorists have hypothesised, once you start eating these foods it can be hard to stop…

The human brain evolved to deal with a certain range of rewarding experiences. It didn’t evolve to constructively manage strong drugs of abuse such as heroin and crack cocaine, which overstimulate reward pathways, leading to the pathological drug seeking behaviors that characterize addiction. These drugs are “superstimuli” that exceed our reward system’s normal operating parameters…In a similar manner, industrially processed food, which has been professionally crafted to maximize its rewarding properties, is a superstimulus that exceeds the brain’s normal operating parameters, leading to an increase in body fatness and other negative consequences.

The food industry, in other words, is manufacturing its own customers. And, in doing so, they’re furthering obesity, heart disease and diabetes. These kids are just tucking in.

 

No Surprises…

Savour this, from 2003…

Tony Blair today derided as “conspiracy theories” accusations that a war on Iraq would be in pursuit of oil, as he faced down growing discontent in parliament at a meeting of Labour backbenchers and at PMQs.

Now, wrap your chops round this, from the one-time US ambassador John Bolton…

…critical oil and natural gas producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protect our economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices.

Bitter taste, huh?

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham offers a portrait of the U.S.’s thinking in terms of the war in Libya…

Let’s get in on the ground. There is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya. Lot of oil to be produced.

Is it a good or bad thing that politicians are revealing their lowest motives rather than being exposed? On the one hand, it’s nice that their existence is unarguable. On the other, if they keep this up they’ll put investigative journalists onto the dole.

Anyway, insisting that an argument is a “conspiracy theory” – as I’ve written, at some length – is often a nifty tactic used by people who’d like to make plausible and relevant ideas seem foolish and esoteric. Now, though, it seems that many powermongers don’t feel obliged to ridicule or even dispute the “war for oil” theses. They’re just like, “Yeah. So?” Perhaps the growing awareness of the shaky state of oil production means they doubt that people will be taken in. On the other hand, perhaps they think that fears regarding oil consumption mean that people will be more likely to tolerate a war if it’s for oil than something they can’t use.

I sympathise with people who people who think refrains like “war for oil” are a tad simplistic, by the way. But an act can have more than one intention. I don’t go to the pub for its spiced rum alone but I doubt I’d go if they took it off the menu.

 

The Money Trail…

The Fox & Werrity saga is more interesting than I’d thought. I’d suspected that Werrity was just a pal that Fox dragged around to take care of the business he couldn’t handle. With the revelation that Werrity was being funded by the plutocrats who’d financed the fantastic one’s ideological activities is seems more likely that he was a “minder” on their behalf. Keeping an eye on their investment.

It emerged on Friday that Mr Werritty’s activities were funded by a not-for-profit company linked to an employee of Michael Hintze, the hedge fund millionaire. Oliver Hylton, who works for Mr Hintze’s CQS hedge fund, is the sole director of Pargav Ltd, although he has insisted he had no role in running the company.

Pargav has paid for flights and luxury hotels for Mr Werritty’s extensive international travels, according to financial records obtained by the Times.

Hintze was, along with Michael Lewis, the former – not, as I’ve said, current – deputy chairman of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), a generous donor to the Atlantic Bridge. Oh, and speaking of Lewis…

The newspaper reported that six groups had each paid up to £35,000 into [Pargav Ltd] since October 2010.

These donors appear to include Jon Moulton, the venture capitalist best known for trying to buy MG Rover, and Michael Lewis of Oceana Investments, a Tory donor who until two years ago was deputy chairman of Bicom, the pro-Israel lobbying group.

Fancy that! The billionaire head of BICOM, Poju Zabludowicz, is also said to have been a donor to Pargav.

Pargav is registered at 60 Goswell Road, in Islington, north London, and has yet to file any accounts. Mr Hylton, its director, is already linked to Mr Werritty through their directorships of Security Futures, a consultancy which was dissolved last year.

Security Futures was also a donor to the Atlantic Bridge. Fancy – once again – that.

It’s also been reported that Fox had a mysterious American adviser named John Falk. Mr Falk…

…described himself on websites as ‘an adviser to Dr Liam Fox MP, the Conservative Party shadow defence minister in the development of the Atlantic Bridge network’, a charity set up by Dr Fox to promote the ‘special relationship’ between the U.S. and the UK.

And what a network! Falk is better known as a lobbyist for the Defence Industry.

These men had a considerable stake in Fox’s pro-Israel and  pro-“Defence” Atlanticism. And, considering his sycophancy to the arms trade and the Americans – guided, perhaps, by a watchful Werrity – it’s not unreasonable to conclude that their paying out was paying off.

 

Notes On The Collapse Of The Atlantic Bridge…

Liam Fox, our ridiculous Defence Secretary, has been in the news after it was revealed that he’s been giving a friend of his access to MoD files. This pal, the Guardian reports, had run a think tank Fox has established. This, coincidentally, was dissolved last week after the Charity Commission said that, well – its activities weren’t very charitable…

A charity set up by Liam Fox, the defence secretary, has been dissolved by its trustees after criticism by the Charity Commission.

The Atlantic Bridge, which had already been suspended for promoting Conservative party policies in defiance of regulations, was founded by Fox and run by his close friend Adam Werritty.

Fox’s relationship with Werrity was drawn into question when the Guardian revealed Werritty had visited Fox at Ministry of Defence offices 14 times in the past 16 months.

Oh, that think tank.

I don’t know why I spent so much time raking through the details of a minor league think tank. (I even made a Wikipedia page for the blasted thing.) Still, while it’s in the news it’s worth revisiting. The Atlantic Bridge was set up to give British and American conservatives a chance to meet and share ideas and, in Fox’s words, create an “intellectual framework that will strengthen the special relationship”. It was, then, the sort of “social club” that sociologist William Domhoff claims provides elites with opportunities to “reach consensus” and “affirm cohesion”.

 

Behold Ye Among The Nations…

I’m not sure I could write on the fetishisation of technology without sounding desperately pompous. ‘Til I find a way I’ll let these fellows make the point…

Amazon are currently thrilled with their new “kindle”. I can’t feeling that some people get more inspired by the medium through they experience art than the actual art itself. If they’d read anything at all enobling, for example, they might have felt more inclined to help their workers, who, as reported in this devastating expose, labour under intense scrutiny, at an exacting pace, in the brutal heat of cramped warehouses.

 

Big Fat Cons…

Here’s a study on how falling blood sugars can make us – especially the fatter of us – crave great big snacks…

The hypothalamus, an area of the brain, senses the change when glucose levels fall. The insula and striatum, other brain areas, become active – these areas are associated with reward, and induce a desire to eat, the scientists found.

…

Sinha believes that the stress linked to a fall in glucose levels plays a key part in the activation of the striatum.

This could be another reason why low-fat “diet” foods are such a con. Research has suggested that people, especially overweight people, eat more of them than if they’d stuck with normal products; enough, indeed, that they’re packing in more calories. To some extent that’s the result of ignorance: they equate “fat” with, er, fat and imagine that a low-fat product can’t be fattening. That’s untrue, of course, as many of them are so thick with sugar that there’s a crouton’s worth of calories between them and the real stuff. It may also be significant that these products, with more sugar and no fat to slow digestion, will give a more violent spike to their consumer’s glucose levels and leave them hungering. Even if they restrict themselves to a couple of scoops of yoghurt, then, that box of pringles may seem irresistible later.

This isn’t an issue of world-shattering significance, of course, but I think it’s pretty sad that miserable people are sold a cure that’s liable to make their problem worse. In fact, it represents the worst of consumerism: making people feel they’re dependent on products that, in many cases, will only make them feel more helpless.

Refined carbohydrates are, more broadly, God’s gift to companies and their marketers: cheap to produce and easy to promote. Pack some sugar round some bits of starch, pour ‘em into some garish packaging, call ‘em chocolate frosted sugar bombs and sell ‘em for five times as much as the food to produce. Their success in working their products into diets was considered by Alternet’s Anneli Rufus…

Breakfast in America is a corporate scam.

Not all of it. But nearly every breakfast staple — cold cereal, donuts, yogurt, bagels and cream cheese, orange juice, frappuccino — is a staple only because somebody somewhere wanted money. Wake up and smell the McCafé.

Far be it from me lecture someone on what they should eat, or claim that diets should be joylessly premised on health alone. (Orthorexia or, God forbid, anorexia are as or more unhealthy than the most hoggish of diets.) But it’s odd, as Rufus says, that these are staple foods because whether or not they’re worth it they’re completely unsuitable. If you have cereal and juice you’re often, in caloric terms, enjoying sugar with a glass of sugar; a recipe for moodswings, lethargy and hunger. That this is a normal feed for kids awaiting school should bother teachers everywhere.

I don’t get why conservatives become so grouchy when diets and ill-health are linked. A lot of the problems with consumption in Britain and America have sprung from wacky modern innovations and an overly dramatic shift from traditional diets. I understand the wish to disassociate yourself from anything that Jamie Oliver’s involved with but, still – it’s odd.

 

Miserable Families In TV Adverts…

Well, if I’m going to cash in on Noam Chomsky’s market it’s about time I produced some media criticism. Have you ever curled up with your loved ones, before the tele, and realised that every other advert is devoted to assaulting you with the overt message that family life is a tiresome and joyless experience, only rendered bearable by the consumption of goods? Here, for example, we learn that your relatives are a tiresome load of a miscreants – a source of frustration and shame, whose grim reality must be obscured with nifty software…

In fact, they’re such a chore that you might as well remain in your separate rooms – disassociated from eachother – with, of course, nifty gadgets…

And the least said about this glimpse into Hell the better…

But, oddly enough, it’s when they try and be heartwarming that they’re most hideous. Because, after all, you can’t have a happy situation that’s inspired by affection for one another – it has to have been provoked by some kind of product. So, this dear old Mother thinks her sons are coming to home see her. In reality she’s being used for her sausages…

The core theme of 99% of adverts is that one can’t be secure or fulfilled without the thing it’s offering. In that sense, each one is a calculated insult to humanity.

 

On Things You Wouldn’t Touch Your Chips With…

So, apparently the minions of Murdoch hacked the phones of police suspects, missing girls and bereaved families; multifarious cases, spread across at least a decade. That, at least, is what has been admitted.

Such widespread malevolence would demand the complicity of journalists, editors and, it’s plausible, policemen. These activities were covered up for at least nine years.

And they tell me conspiracy theories are for idiots?

What often surprises me is how appallingly people behave in the service of — jobs. That pecunious powermongers such as Rupert Murdoch have no qualms about trampling on the lives of others isn’t something I find hard to grasp. Their ideas are as distorted as a Mudhoney riff played with a barb of wire. But the grotesque amorality of men and women who earn little more – I’d guess – than average is harder to comprehend. It speaks of a rotten and degrading system and, thus, it’s no less relevant than naked propaganda but a symptom of the same illness.

 

Do The Drugs Work? (And Can They Make You Worse?)

The field of psychiatry appears to be enduring a renewed and, it seems to me, well-deserved assault. Richard Bentall’s fascinating Doctoring the Mind, published in 2009, essentially argued that there are three defects with in practices: no one’s sure of how to explain mental phenomena; no one’s sure of how to diagnose their conditions and no one’s sure of how to treat them. Actually, there are four, and the fourth could be the most important: far too many people are ignoring these uncertainties. Reductionist social and, increasingly, biological hypotheses are adduced as scientific truths; characteristics are wedged inside questionable diagnoses and, of course, Big Pharma-formulated treatments are doled out by the million. It seems to be a lethal mix of complacent ideology and corporate influence.

In the New York Review of Books Marcia Angell introduces recent tomes that offer similar conclusions…

The books by Irving Kirsch, Robert Whitaker, and Daniel Carlat are powerful indictments of the way psychiatry is now practiced. They document the “frenzy” of diagnosis, the overuse of drugs with sometimes devastating side effects, and widespread conflicts of interest. Critics of these books might argue, as Nancy Andreasen implied in her paper on the loss of brain tissue with long-term antipsychotic treatment, that the side effects are the price that must be paid to relieve the suffering caused by mental illness. If we knew that the benefits of psychoactive drugs outweighed their harms, that would be a strong argument, since there is no doubt that many people suffer grievously from mental illness. But as Kirsch, Whitaker, and Carlat argue convincingly, that expectation may be wrong.

At the very least, we need to stop thinking of psychoactive drugs as the best, and often the only, treatment for mental illness or emotional distress. Both psychotherapy and exercise have been shown to be as effective as drugs for depression, and their effects are longer-lasting, but unfortunately, there is no industry to push these alternatives and Americans have come to believe that pills must be more potent. More research is needed to study alternatives to psychoactive drugs, and the results should be included in medical education.