CPBF Events This Week

Media for all? The challenge of convergence

Saturday 31 October

School of Pharmacy, 29 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AX, from 10.00am – 5.00pm.

(nearest tube Russell Square)

A major international conference on the future of media organised by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.

Keynote speakers:

John Nichols, journalist with The Nation and one of the founders of the US Free Press Media Reform movement.

Alexander Stille, author of The Sack of Rome, an analysis of Silvio Berlusconi’s role in Italian media and politics.

Other speakers include Andrew Currah, Ray Fitzwater, Bob Franklin, Alison Harcourt, Kathrine Sarikakis,

Booking information

Attendance costs: Not for profit organisations and trades unions £25; individuals £20; students, unwaged or retired people £10.

Book online at: http://www.cpbf.org.uk/index_conf.html or email: freepress@cpbf.org.uk by phone 0208 521 5932 or by post:

CPBF, 23 Orford Road, Walthamstow, London E17 9NL. Cheques payable to the CPBF.





Plus our pre-Conference meeting

The miners’ strike and politics today

Friday 30 October, 7.00pm

School of Pharmacy, 29 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AX

Speakers:

Tony Benn, John Nichols, Marc Valle and Paul Lewis.



Showing Ken Loach Which Side Are You On?

Plus premier performance of Embedded with the bankers; the media and the financial crisis by Banner Theatre Group

Admission £5. Booking as detailed above or pay at the door.

The Entirely Predictable Rise -and Fall? - of The British Far Right

Never have so many column inches and so much bandwidth been expended on a soundbite level chat show. I'm talking about, of course, this week's media coverage of the appearance of the leader of Britain's largest Far Right Party on BBC's Question Time. But the key questions seem to have escaped most of the commentators (with the possible exception of the Guardian's Gary Younge who seems to have a glimmer of the dynamic that is behind all this). These are the usual questions - what forces are intentionally or otherwise chiefly responsible for the recent rise of the odious right, and (hopefully assuming the prevention of a New British Reich)"Cui Bono?".

I think there is a case to be made that BNP in their current incarnation are actually the creation of the establishment - in particular the right-wing propaganda arm of the mass media. Griffin and pals were happily marginalised for much of the 80s and 90s. Their spectacular growth has come in the wake of two things - the so called war on terror and the cranking up of a concerted mass media hate campaign targetted at two or three main targets - Islam and Muslims in general, migrants from the New European entrants and the "undeserving poor". These campaigns all serve and are motivated by the interests of the ruling class in Britain. Griffin has been able to gear his "New Right" master plan (cribbed from Le Pen) to the narrative written and mass-propagandised by the British ruling class for their own ends. It is no surprise that he has moved from a friend of Gadaffi and anti-semitic elements of the Islamic world to a "hammerer of Islam", from European new right rhetoric to Little Englanderism and from Chestertonian ruralist elitism to embracing "the honest white working class" of places like Barnsley. These moves parasitize the zeitgeist created by ruling class mass propaganda.

1. The demonisation of Muslims is necessary to create support for the resource wars on behalf of Western Capital, led by the US Military industrial complex. This also works to aid recruitment of cannon fodder for the imperial wars and eases through the raft of security state measures that would have been desired by the ruling class (even if 9-11 had never occurred) in the face of the coming desperate, brutal, even semi-apocalyptic resource conflicts and environmental destruction that is the culmination and possible finale of capitalist accumulation. Even most radical Greens have not grasped the sheer scale and nature of what is likely to be coming.

2. The constant attacks on New European migrants are classic divide and rule designed to make union organisation more difficult, to attack those elements of the EU which the British ruling class find useful to scapegoat to distract attention from the aims they hold in common with other parts of the European ruling class and to obliquely label the British working class as lazy and greedy - see 3 below.

3. As ever, in an economic crisis the ruling class have very basic objectives, reduce the cost of labour, divide opposition to reducing the cost of labour and take back as much as possible of state property into private hands to recoup lost profits and expand the zone of operation of private capital which recession has shrunk (something which requires the attacks on TU organisation that the attacks on scapegoats one and two are being utilised for). To reduce the cost of labour the "reserve army of the unemployed" must be both increased and battered into a servile state through attacks on welfare. If these are to come about the unemployed and sick must be isolated and alienated from the rest of their class - hence constant "scrounger" stories in the tabloids to break up the diet of "millions of migrants" and "all muslims are potential terrorists" type front pages. Claimants are presented as largely criminal and fraudulent (see hype of recent transparently self interested figures released by the firms contracted to "test" those previously on Incapacity). This association with criminality is indispensible for any really serious scapegoating (and an element of it as old as the hills) and so is deployed against all three groups we are talking about.

It is no surprise that the concentrations of BNP membership shown by the recently leaked lists are not predominantly in ethnically mixed areas - they are largely in white dominated, even what some might uncharitably term "white ghetto" areas. It is not coincidental that these are the areas most isolated from the reality of life in much of modern Britain and Europe, and where the main source of information for the alienated elements recruited by the fascists is not the TV news, broadsheets or contact with a varied group of people, but tabloid hate stories constantly reinforced by social circulation in a limited parochial group. This is the depressing case for example in Ashfield, or Amber Valley.

What we see at the moment is the capitalist class (in the shape of Tories, the right wing media and other elements of the establishment like military figures and New Labour Ministers) attempting to do a bit of "house cleaning" by belatedly attacking - constantly this week - the BNP, by-product of their own strategies. This could tell us various things - 1. that the limits of growth of the far right are set by the ruling class - to a certain level they are useful, beyond that they become threatening as loose cannons that could provoke resistance to the whole shooting match. 2. That the establishment right would now like to claim back the territory ceded to the far right - in coded language they talk about the mainstream needing to address "the issues" that motivate BNP support - whilst claiming to be centrist they move the whole political spectrum further rightwards as "defence" against the "threat" of fascism that they created. Job done.
If this is the picture, then those of us on the green left, those of us who seek workers' unity and those of us who defend the social gains of the last Century have a hard fight ahead. If the ruling class has miscalculated, as it did in pandering to far right demagogues in several countries in the 1920s and 30s, the situation may be even more serious.....

Weekly Links 08/03/2009

British Politics
Mandelson "slimed"!
Interesting background information to the reasons this action was taken against Britain's least popular unelected Minister from Airportwatch site here.
Guardian report and more video here.

Meanwhile the Bank of England and the government went for "Quantative Easing" in response to the crisis, Larry Elliott's take on it here.

It was announced this week that prescription charges are to rise, prompting a welcome intervention from the BMA -

Our submission seeks to highlight the many problems within the current system, which consequently are inherent in the proposal to extend the exemption list to include those with LTCs. The BMA's position and the conclusion of this evidence is that the Department of Health should abolish prescription charges in England altogether, as has already happened in Wales and will happen shortly in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas this week had an article on the Gaza situation on the Guardian website.

A snapshot of the anger now prevalent in British politics can be gained from the comments underneath a Guardian article by normally cynical/apolitical cultural commentator Charlie Brooker where he expresses his frustration at the uselessness of the British political system.

Blogging
Joseph Healy reported this week on the lobby held against the Government's Welfare Reform Bill.

Derek commented on the "Quantative Easing" strategy.

Dave Osler reflected on the anniversary of the start of the Miners' Strike of 1984-5.

Jim has been to see the film of the "classic graphic novel", Watchmen, and reviewed it on his blog.


Unions and Work
The Iraqi government has this week tried to sieze control of the Iraqi teachers' union. TUC statement here.

Former Miners' leader Arthur Scargill gave an article to the Guardian summarising his current views on the momentous strike of 25 years ago.

Television
This week saw the first airing of the first part of the dramatisation of man of the moment David Peace's Red Riding novels on Channel 4. Not only is the dramatisation on TV, but Peace's book on the short spell of management of Leeds United FC by Derby and Nottingham local hero Brian Clough in the 1970s is coming out as a film, (The Damned United) and his book on the Miners' Strike GB84 is surely topical with the current anniversary in the news.
Red Riding, centred on Police corruption in West Yorkshire, was brutal and stylish, and the TV adaptation did well to capture Peace's disconcerting style.

Weekly Links 27/01/2009

Lots of interesting, exciting, and scary developments around the world this week as the impact of the conjoined economic/ecological/resource/political crises becomes stronger. In the developed world, one of the places that is experiencing most change and that consequently has most possibilities at the moment is Iceland. The government has been under increasing pressure from mass protest and revolt, and this has continued despite the calling of an election for May. It now seems that the existing government has collapsed to be replaced by a caretaker regime until the elections - more on Indymedia here. Derek had a piece earlier this week about the Icelandic Green Left Party, riding a wave of popularity in the current crisis. A comprehensive bit of analysis from the AVPS blog here.

Repression and resistance continue to develop in Italy where the hard right government and its fascist outriders face a developing independent radical movement that has tired of the timid and backtracking Parliamentary reformism of the established parties. See here and here

In Nepal, the authoritarian militarists of the Maoist movement are facing increasing workers opposition to their attempts to impose Chinese style state capitalism on the country. It seems they are responding in the usual vicious Maoist manner and encountering growing resistance from rival "left" factions.

Britain
This weekend saw the Convention of The Left Recall Conference and the Progressive London Conference.

Jim reported on the London event here and here.

Meanwhile, A Very Public Sociologist reported this week on the dispute at "Britain's Left Wing Daily", the Morning Star.

Unions
There is a major left-right battle in the Unite Union over the election for General Secretary of the Amicus side of the union. More from Derek here.

Gaza
Mobilisations and demos on the Gaza issue continue across the UK, with a current focus on exposing and attcking the blatant bias of the BBC and Sky blocking the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza Appeal broadcast. Some enterprising researcher dug up this revealing piece from 2005 that sheds light on the so-called "non-partisan" approach of the BBC Director General.

Meanwhile the Green Party of England and Wales published this condemnation of the BBC's position.

Greenman's Occasional Awards - 2008

Bloggers Of The Year (In No Particular Order)
Daily (Maybe) - Jim J
Socialist Unity Blog - Andy Newman and Friends
Another Green World - Derek Wall
Anglo-Buddhist Combine - Matt S
La Lutte Continue! - James Caspell

Books Of The Year
1. Joel Kovel, Second Edition of The Enemy of Nature
2. Ken MacLeod, The Night Sessions
3. Dave Douglass - Geordies - Wa Mental

Storm In A Teacup Award
1. The SWP Pre-Conference "Split" (Yawn)
2. The NUM versus Climate Campers clash which fortunately was kept comradely.
3. The "Knives are out for Gordon Brown" media stories

Sporting Moments Awards
1. Rebecca Adlington's Swimming Golds
2. James Hayter ends his goal drought at Wembley giving Doncaster Rovers Promotion
3. Fabio Capello amazingly succeeds in teaching England how to play football
4. Andy Murray's comeback with the best season for a Brit since Fred Perry

"Oops - Let it Slip" Award
1.Gordon Brown "Saved The World...er saved the banks"
2.Nick Clegg letting slip what he really thought about members of his front bench
3.George Monbiot letting slip his real (aristocratic disdain and lack of concern) feelings about ordinary people in his Guardian article arguing for the "destruction of Detroit" - for which he was rightly flamed to a crisp in the comments section.

The Idealistic Liberals Misplaced Hopes Award
1.Barack Obama Presidency (Need we say more than his subsequent appointments for a flavour of what is to come)
2.The EU Constitution (And we await with baited breath what happens to the blessed Euro in the New Year after all the Europhile schadenfreude over the Pound's slump)
3.Most versions of the "Green New Deal"

The Rightist "Con-mentariat" Award For Disservice To Their Own Causes And Contributing To The Impression That Many Of them Have, er, Mental Health Issues
1. Melanie Phillips (For services to frothing hatred and irrationality)
2. Richard Littlejohn - the "stupid person's Jeremy Clarkson" (Ditto)
3. Julie Burchill (Continuing her degeneration into a permanent "toddler tantrum")
4. Brendan O'Neill of the weird Furedi cult (For anti-green monomania)

Golden Molotov Award
1. China's (In the face of a media blackout) multitudes in revolt
2. Greece's street rebels
3. Iceland's Credit Crunch Protestors
4. Italy's Anomolous Wave
5. Germany's School Students

Campaigns Of The Year
1. The Big Ask (Friends Of The Earth) Successful, at least on its own terms.
2. Republic - going from strength to strength and raising profile
3. Convention Of The Left (For services to left unity)

British TV
1. Little Dorrit - BBC
2. The Devil's Whore - C4
3. Survivors - BBC
4. Outnumbered - BBC

Hopes for 2009
1. Continued growth, development and strengthening of the Ecosocialist International
2. Development of the Convention Of The Left in Britain
3. Continued growth and development of the IWW in Britain and internationally

Survivors, Episode One - BBC1

Wow! The BBC had promised us a "re-imagining" of Terry Nation's original story from the 1970s first series of Survivors, and the result was certainly imaginative, and by turns grim, poetic, moving and engaging.

We were introduced to the main characters who included "re-imagined" up to date versions of those in the original story, plus new characters to give a more contemporary feel. The events of the virus period were told very quickly, as in the original - giving the viewer a feeling of the terrible speed at which the illness spreads and brings civilisation crashing to its knees within a couple of weeks.

I thought the performances of Julie Graham as the central character Abby Grant and Philip Rhys as Al Sadiq were particularly good. Max Beesley was on good, menacing form again. The worries about the treatment of the story brought on by awareness of some of the recent lightweight previous projects of some of those involved were quickly dispelled - at least in the first episode we were looking at serious, quality TV.

The horror of Julie Graham's character, waking up after "missing time" in a fever and finding all those around her dead was faithfully depicted from some of the most memorable scenes of the original, whilst the new stories of "Playboy" Al Sadiq and Najid, an 11 year old Muslim Mancunian, were seemlessly sewn into the plot. In the original Tom Price was a wisecracking Welsh homeless man of dubious morality, (played by Talfryn Thomas) in the 2008 version Max Beesley's Tom was a violent prisoner who escapes from his prison full of dead by killing the only other survivor there, a Prison Officer. This adds an extra element of danger and drama to the plot - without totally demonising the Price character (his murder of the prison officer was in response to his plan to lock him up in a food store that would have resulted in Price's almost certain death.) Max Beesley must feel he is getting typecast in plague scenarios - his last major BBC role was in another excellent drama on BBC1 - The Last Enemy - also set in a nightmare future.

The important dialogue that Abby has with the outdoor pursuits worker she meets when searching for her son, (a dialogue that points out the nature of the situation they are in and implies a criticism of the distance most people in advanced economies now have from an understanding of nature or basic practical and technical skills needed to survive without ready long-term sources of oil or electricity, food or tools) was also kept in from Nation's 1970s original and seemed if anything even more relevant today given talk about Peak Oil and the increased dependency of most of us on electrical and electronic gadgetry in our everyday lives. Someone involved in the new series said that in the original there was no dependency on mobile 'phones, cars were much easier to break into and start and fuel was much more easily accessed through siphoning or manual emergency pumps - modern security and pumps would make getting fuel a much more dangerous affair, as demonstrated explosively in the first episode of the new version of Survivors.

Hopefully the series might make some of us think a bit more carefully about our resilience in a potential crisis situation - lack of resilience in the UK being illustrated by the rapid effect of the year 2000 fuel blockades.

New elements in the 2008 Survivors are the inclusion of a junior Government Minister and a scene at the end which adds a novel element in keeping with the paranoia of our times!

I await further episodes with interest.

The Devil's Whore

The first episode of Peter Flannery's The Devil's Whore was aired on Channel 4 last night, and very good it was too. We were introduced to the fictional characters of the Fanshawes and historical characters such as Charles I, Rainsborough, Cromwell and John Lilburne and his wife. The style was lush and expensively costumed with the occasional surreal or supernatural element helping to distance us and lessen the effect of the artistic license and historical shorthand necessary to link all the characters and stories together. Excellent performances came from a brooding John Simm as Edward Sexby and Andrea Riseborough as the central fictional character of Angelica Fanshawe.
I look forward to the rest of the episodes.
Here are previews and reviews from :
The Telegraph

The Independent

and The Guardian

Weekly Links 17/11/2008

Television
The waiting is over! Two long awaited drama serials are set to start on terrestrial TV in Britain this week - the remake of Terry Nation's seminal apocalyptic series Survivors, which I have blogged on before, and the English Civil War story The Devil's Whore by the man who created the brilliant Our Friends In the North.
The BBC is due to air its first episode of Survivors on Sunday 23rd November.
Channel 4 air the first episode of The Devil's Whore on Wednesday 19th November.
Here is a topical (see later) piece by Ronan Bennett on The Devils Whore.

I am very excited by both of these series and will report back in due course, along with posting more links on both.


British Republicanism
Graham Smith, of Republic returns to the fray at the Guardian Comment is Free site this week after a Republican article by him last week got a massive response, pro and anti.

"You may have seen reports that prince Charles wishes to become an activist-King. Not content with meddling in political debates and haranguing ministers as heir to the throne, he craves power and influence at the highest level, but wants to be spared the inconvenience of an election. In the article I argue that a politically active King would be tantamount to winding the clocks back on centuries of gradual democratic reform. The only answer of course is the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a democratic alternative."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/17/prince-charles-monarchy

Graham blogs here.

Workers and Unions
This is from Eric Lee at Labourstart -
I doubt if many of you regularly buy leather goods sold by Prada, Louis Vuitton, Mulberry and Nicole Farhi. These are luxury brands, priced too high for ordinary working people like us.

But the people who make those products are often low-paid, non-union workers. When those workers stand up and fight for their rights, it's our responsibility to stand with them.

Earlier this year, hundreds of workers at the Turkish leather manufacturer DESA -- which produces for all the luxury brands mentioned above -- joined a union. The reaction of the company was fierce: 44 union members were sacked, and 50 more compelled to quit the union.

Nevertheless, the workers have stood firm, holding daily protests outside the factory. Local police have been called in to arrest them, and bribes offered to union leaders to call off the demonstrations.
Families have been threatened.

Workers at DESA need a union urgently. They complain of poverty wages, long hours and terrible health and safety conditions.

Please take a moment to send off a message to DESA's customers -- the luxury fashion brands -- telling them that you support the DESA workers in their struggle:

http://www.labourstart.org/desa

Tell them that a union is right, not a luxury.

Thanks - and spread the word!

Eric Lee

Green Politics
The German Green Party, much reduced after its years of historic compromise has elected a new broom as co-leader.

This from the BBC -

The first ethnic Turkish head of a German political party has dismissed any comparisons between himself and US President-elect Barack Obama.

Cem Ozdemir, who was elected co-leader of the Green Party at the weekend, told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper such comparisons were "inappropriate".

Closer to home, the Green Party Trade Union Group's latest bulletin is now out.

Lefty Politics
For us lefty trainspotter types, there are some interesting, dare I say even slightly original (if still mainly plagiaristic)new boys on the block of lefty politics these days - for example the International Luxemburgist Network and in Britain The Commune, Group of International Communists who put a libertarian socialist motion to the recent Labour Representation Committee conference -

Social Ownership and Workers Self-Management

After years of being told 'There is No Alternative', the crisis of global capital has shown that the entire system can be brought into question. Furthermore the widespread state intervention to preserve finance capital has brought into question previously conceived ideas of nationalisation and "public ownership" traditionally accepted in the labour movement.

As part of developing a vision of a viable alternative to capitalism our movement needs to develop new ideas of social ownership and abandon statist conceptions which have proven to be an historical failure.

1. State ownership, no matter what pseudonym it goes under is not social ownership. They are in fact two counter-posed things: one cannot equate the state with society.

2. The state is not a neutral force concerned only with the welfare of society and possessing the ability and the means to take measures suited to this end. The state
is not a vehicle to achieve 'socialism' and cannot be relied upon to act as a protective shield against capital.

The capitalist system, whether in its private or state forms of appearance, does not and cannot work in the interest of the majority. It is an unjust system, an economic tyranny where the rulers at all levels make the crucial economic decisions that affect our lives, solely on the basis of what will increase their profits and promote their interests. The Labour Representation Committee considers that the people who should have the deciding voice on the economy and its problems are the people most directly connected with it, the workers who produce the goods and services.

As such the Labour Representation Committee sets as it goal a system of genuine social ownership, organised on the basis of workers' self-management, a system of participatory democracy based on the sovereignty of those who produce the goods and services in society.

Conference recognises that if we are to realise the slogan 'another world is possible' workers' self-management is a necessity in the creation of a new cooperative society based on common, social ownership. Workers' self-management is not something which can be proclaimed or enacted from above, nor is there a blueprint. It requires a process of social self-organisation and creativity from below.

The publication of Building a new common sense, Social Ownership in the 21st Century is a welcome initiative in helping rejuvenate discussion of these issues in the movement.

Conference agrees:

1. To hold a series of forums and conferences on the question of social ownership and workers' self-management, with LEAP and fraternal organisations.

2. To publish a series of pamphlets on making the case for social ownership and workers' self-management, drawing on historical, international and contemporary experiences of the working class.

3. To develop with affiliated trades unions the case for workers' self-management in specific industries.

4. From these discussions and debates to take forward a campaign for workers' selfmanagement and social ownership

International
Interesting blogging here on the situation in Iceland.

Some updates from my blog on Saturday re

Italy

and

The Paris Demo

Paxman Says BBC Fawns Over Royals

The following is a press release from Republic, the campaign for an end to an unelected head of state in Britain.

PAXMAN RIGHT, SAYS REPUBLIC. BBC GUILTY OF INSTITUTIONAL BIAS ON ISSUE OF MONARCHY

Republic has welcomed remarks by Jeremy Paxman in which he said the BBC fawned over the royals.

Spokesperson Graham Smith told reports:

"We respect the BBC's usual standards of reporting, however we do have serious reservations about the manner in which the corporation reports on issues to do with the monarchy and the royal family."

"We are pleased a senior and respected journalist such as Mr Paxman has raised this issues. We will once again be writing to Director General Mark Thompson to seek changes to the way the BBC reports on the royals."

"We believe there is a clearly identifiable institutional bias, particularly within the BBC's national news output, toward presenting the Monarchy in a manner that is favourable to the institution and to members of the royal family."

"The BBC also plays a strong role in promoting royal events and occasions, which are in essence little more than PR exercises for the monarchy. In doing so the BBC implies that 'royal' events are synonymous with 'national' events, thus excluding those who oppose the monarchy."

"We welcome Paxman's remarks and hope that, as we approach Prince Charles' 60th birthday, the BBC will take note of the serious concerns held by a significant proportion of their audience about their royal reporting."

The story was reported in the Independent here and here on the BBC's own website.

Bonekickers - Expensively Recycled Garbage

Good grief! BBC1's new Tueday night drama serial Bonekickers seemed like proof that if you get one TV success story under your belt you can pitch just about any old tripe and get funding. Bonekickers was like a cack handed lashing together of the archaelogical team of Time Team with the ludicrous plotline of the Da Vinci Code and the breathless running around and "shorthand TV" of adventure series like Primeval, Torchwood and Spooks. It managed to be less than the sum of its parts - appallingly cheesy dialogue, a plot that was easily predictable to anyone who has read Dan Brown's book or watched any of the above serials and a cringeworthy attempt to appear relevant in the first episode that involved anti-muslim christian fundamentalist bigotry.
We perhaps should have suspected this would have been the case after the disappointment that was Ashes to Ashes, the follow up to Life on Mars - the programme that made a name for Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah.

Where Life on Mars was original and witty, Ashes To Ashes was derivative and predictable. Where Philip Glenister's character DCI Hunt was a funny portrayal of a stock character from the 1970s in Life On Mars - with views that allowed viewers to have a laugh both at Neanderthal 70's males and the "PC" 21st Century views of John Simm's time travelling cop, situating themselves somewhere in between - in Ashes to Ashes the affectionate response people had had to Hunt was taken as carte blanche to present him and his views as a positive role model and the series came out with some appallingly reactionary crap, stereotypes and messages.

But Bonekickers managed to be even worse, you had to keep reminding yourself that this was expensive "quality" BBC TV you were watching and not some cheap lowest common denominator ITV pap. Hugh Bonneville had some lines that were supposed to be funny, but most of them fell flat, and the rest of the dialogue was painful. The far-right Christian character was so caricatured as to be unbelievable, but was given "topical themes" which may have meant that his oft repeated speeches actually got a sympathetic response from some of the audience, whilst allowing themselves to distance themselves from the ludicrous portrayal. If the message was liberal (as suggested by the "peace and love" portrayal of a Muslim community leader that one of the "soldiers of God" beheaded) then it was put forward in such a stupid way as to negate itself - likewise the treatment of the religious subject, all "woo-woo it's a miracle!" one minute showing the atheists in the team in a bad light, and then throwing the miracle into a more explicable light later to keep most of the audience on board regardless of faith. This just came across as tacky compromise - nothing wrong with being enigmatic and not offering solutions, but the way it was done here was just silly and obvious.
Sorry Life on Mars guys, we now know that the Emperor has no clothes!

New Links and Green Books

I have added a few new links to my links column, the first being Skeptical Science, an interesting and useful site set up by John Cook, an ex-Physicist who majored in Solar Physics at the University of Queensland. I have added it to my resources section. From the site intro -

Scientific skepticism is a healthy thing. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge, improve their understanding and refine their theories. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports anthropogenic global warming and yet eagerly, even blindly embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog or study that refutes global warming.

So this website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?

My other new link is in my left parties and blogs section, where I have added the very brave young anti-fascist Duncan Money's blog - Nation of Duncan.



Sian Berry's book, 50 Ways To Save Water And Energy is getting a boost from her high profile during the London election, which is a very good thing as the book promotes things that individuals can do to help save the planet, whilst also usually saving money - and Sian's profile shows that it is not all just about individual action, collective and political action are essential.

The Green Party Political Broadcast for the local elections aired on TV last night, and very good it was too. The Greens also have this excellent website up and running for the local elections - http://www.votegreenparty.org.uk/



Back on books and Lancaster Green Party City Councillor Anne Chapman has a book out entitled Democratizing Technology, published by Earthscan, which looks at risk, responsibility and the regulation of chemicals.

Survivors to return to TV

I have in the past referred to Terry Nation's memorable 1970s apocalyptic drama series Survivors as raising interesting questions and even playing a role in the growth of the green movement in Britain.

After much talk since the success of the new version of Doctor Who back in 2006, it seems that a new version of the drama is set to arrive on our screens. The new version is to be written by Adrian Hodges, responsible for bringing two of Philip Pullman's gothic dramas to life and the promising, but perhaps ultimately disappointing Primeval on ITV.

This follows the success of the CBS post-apocalyptic drama Jericho, set in small town America in the aftermath of a series of nuclear explosions in the USA. (N.B. - I have just had news that CBS have today again cancelled further episodes of Jericho)

The new Survivors has been discussed on a variety of blogs, forums and sites over the last 6 months or so. It is actually going to be a dramatisation of Terry Nation's novel rather than a remake of the three original series.

Here and here are fan sites of the original Survivors with some nice pics and links. Here is the TV Gold discussion forum for Survivors.

Finally, there is a blog on the progress of the new Survivors, which linked my own humble ruminations of last year.

Whilst we are on the subject of survival and resilience, perhaps it is not too much of a leap to link to the increasingly popular ideas of Transition Towns.

A Transition Initiative is a community that is unleashing its own latent collective genius to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and to discover and implement ways to address this BIG question:

"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain
itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate
the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to
mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

The resulting coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life leads to a collectively designed energy descent pathway.

The community also recognises two crucial points:

* that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
* if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

Food for thought....

"The Great Global Warming Swindle" (sic)

Channel 4 in the UK broadcast this programme last night which was an extended attack on greens, the left and climate scientists. (See the end of my blog last night)

I have no problem with debate on the models, scepticism etc I don't mind people saying that I, or the vast majority of climate scientists have an imperfect understanding, or have got a fact wrong or whatever. This is the stuff of scientific debate. Present the facts and we will debate them. Most of the debatable points put by the programme were old hat and are dealt with here at Grist and here by John Houghton.

However, the programme in question began by saying that man made global warming was a lie , and furthermore that all those arguing for the theory are liars. Now this isn't scientific debate. This is political polemic, this is slander. Round here, calling someone a liar to their face would be asking for a fight!

Calling those arguing that man made global warming exists and something can be done about it liars is classic conspiracy theory. It implies that greens and the IPCC and much of the global scientific/meteorological community know that they are arguing falsehoods and do so for a political reason. Durkin and his LM chums are of course familiar with this territory (remember the Serb prisoner camp affair) and perhaps familiar with the legally actionable nature of making such claims. Far be it from me to suggest that the IPCC and Mr Stern and Greenpeace take Mr Durkin to court......

The problem is, like the Telegraph piece and Crichton's books this polemical crap will get thrown back at us by elements of the public every time we try and argue for sensible measures to tackle the problem and we have to waste time exposing the poor arguments of the well funded contrarians that could be better spent elsewhere.

Lost, The Prisoner and the Zeitgeist

So, the day that Lost fans across the world (and particularly in the USA and Canada where it airs tonight on terrestrial TV) have been waiting for is here - the opening episode of series three of the cult castaway drama. In those parts of the world with TV and IT where the third series of the show is not scheduled to be on terrestrial or easily accessible satellite/cable TV for many months yet, there will be a flurry of interest in bit-torrent and the like.

For those who are not aware of the series, it has been described as "Twin Peaks on the beach". It revolves around passengers of a crashed passsenger plane flying between Australia and the USA that has crashed in the vicinity of a mysterious island. The island has strange out-of place beasts, abandoned bunkers and exotic technology created by a secretive cabal of businessmen and scientists, and weird and confrontational inhabitants known as "the others". In series one and two we have been treated to flashback back-stories of the crash survivors as they struggle to survive on the island and find out more about the bunkers and the elusive others. Along the way we have allusions to various philosophers, philosophical and religious concepts, pop cultural references, numerology, mysticism and the paranormal.

Responses to the show have varied greatly - popular response has been to lap it up, but boards and discussion sites are full of sceptics and critics of the phenomenon.
I find it interesting that many of the responses to Lost are very similar to those reported to Patrick McGoohan's original 1960's cult TV series The Prisoner. (i.e. incomprehension, mockery of bits that were thought too obvious and banal, anger at not getting "answers", criticism of "boring repetition", criticism of lack of character development - The Prisoner constantly changed most characters except for McGoohan himself to give a constant disorientation feeling, along with giving the characters numbers, not names)

Elements of Lost are directly cribbed from The Prisoner - i.e numerological elements, the "inescapable island prison", the lack of explanation, mysticism, paranoia, forays into pop philosophy, psychology (contrast the unmasking of "number one" in McGoohan's series with the mind games of "Henry Gale" and the changing perspective of Locke), politics and religion without "fully committing" or revealing an authorial position, (In The Prisoner that authorial perspective tended to appear to fluctuate between extreme individualism and esoteric "traditionalism", whilst in Lost the perspective hints at religious apologetics, whilst teasing with a more esoteric/conspiracist worldview)
There are hints at a broader global conspiracy (The Hanso Foundation/Dharma Initiative in Lost, suggestion of interchangeability or co-operation of East and West intelligence services, or an over arching purpose for both in The Prisoner) Hanso/Dharma may be inspired by the conspiracist views circulating about organisations like those linked to world federalist and Baileyite/Theosophical organisations (that appear to have a whole range of fronts and networks working towards some shady global "plan".) Both series give the odd nod to the pioneers in the field of meta-fiction and attempt to graft themselves onto the tradition of Surrealism, Dada, Oulipo, Joyce, O'Brien, Pynchon, Rennes-le-Chateau/Sion/Sirius mythologists etc (Irrelevant note - the author of the Wizard of Oz Books - whence Henry Gale and balloons etc in Lost - was a theosophist)

Where Lost is able to differ from The Prisoner is in current technological and cultural possibilities - intertextuality, multi-media through viral marketing, the Lost Experience game played out across various linked websites on the net, plus 40 more years of popular cultural and political/philosophical reference points. It has been noted that the programme owes some debt to comic art, particularly that of Alan Moore, one of the most successful comic art writers of recent years. The "knowingness" of the creators extends to them giving the impression of "making it up as they go along", similar to McGoohan's notorious reluctance to "explain" anything about the planning, ideas or meaning behind The Prisoner. With the internet game making it difficult to know what is a fan site, what is an advert, what is a "secret clue", and what is based on reality, this all creates a different feeling where the players/viewers may even feel they have a part in "creating" the Lost reality.

Ah, the joys of late capitalism......

It seems to me that Lost taps into the Zeitgeist as did earlier shows like Twin Peaks and the X-Files. It grabs onto the feeling of disorientation and "lostness" people feel in a globalised world, where in the words of the Communist Manifesto "All that is solid melts into air", where organised religion has relaxed its' grip to be replaced by the religion of shopping, where we sometimes notice with barely supressed paranoia dimly understood forces acting on our behalfs or against our interests in the shadows, where technology creates a global village and nothing and nobody is quite what they seem, where the multiple apocalyptic threats of war, resource exhaustion, environmental catastrophe and civil strife haunt our nightmares.
From what looked like a fairly standard popular cultural product, Lost has developed into a symbol of the times, with all the flaws, contradictions and exhillaration that that implies.....
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