Thu 23 November will be the two thousandth night of Brian Haw’s vigil outside Parliament, that started as a protest against the use of depleted-uranium munitions in Afghanistan. A twisted kind of party, but come to Parliament Square anyway to congratulate him and mourn the reasons that keep him there.
Crib for the cradle
Is war just God’s way of teaching Americans geography? Brush up on your own history of the legendary land of ‘Middle East’ with a fast crib for the cradle of civilisation, courtesy of mapsofwar.com. 5,000 years of history in 90 seconds!
There have always been good people doing good, and evil people doing evil; but to get good people to do evil, that takes religion.» Continue reading “There you go”
Philip Pullman
Bar Humbug
To the Albery Theatre last night to hear Patrick Stewart recite Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. A powerful and affecting performance. The house was full and Stewart received a standing ovation. Miki, who had spent recent evenings curled up with the book, said that rereading it in English, she had realised for the first time how Dickens had written it to be read aloud. (And of course, Dickens gave many public readings.)
Hearing the familiar story again was a shock. What (the Dickens) was he on about? For all the ghosties and the talk of Christmas (but see below), nothing about Christianity. The kernel of it, the pivot of the whole story, comes I think during Scrooge’s vision of the present Christmas of the Cratchet family. Dickens describes their feasting on a dinner barely “sufficient”, the family’s resolve to banish care. They were happy, they were ‘pleased with each other”.
Scrooge’s miserable isolation consists of his refusal to be happy or pleased with other people; and it is that — geniality — upon which Dickens insists.
I’m reminded of Stephen Fry, allegedly morose as so many comedians are, who considers geniality his duty to others.
Speaking of which, our representatives at the WTO talks in Hong Kong have allowed the talks to flounder. How long are we willing to take food from the mouths of the poor? Don’t they know it’s Christmas time at all?
The best and the bulk
Trade matters to the welfare of the Majority World far more than aid. The DFID says our government supports a fair, free and just trading regime between rich and poor. As do we all, until it comes to “exporting jobs”, “protecting our farmers’ way of life”, and so on.
We voters want to see ourselves as the planet’s Good Joes, reaching out to the poor of the Majority World, but will not see how we benefit from their exploitation, as they send us the best and the bulk of the world’s oil, coffee and other commodities at rock-bottom prices.
Through our charities we demand evidence that we are effective Good Joes; through our businesses we press to protect our privileges. Useless to protest about the evil of corporations and governments — it’s us, it’s us. There is no one else here. Our politicians are in an impossible situation. No wonder the WTO’s talks flounder.
Nothing changes until we tell our politicians clearly we are no longer willing to take food from the mouths of the poor.
We have met the enemy and it’s us. George Monbiot’s speech in London last weekend to the climate change protestors, the most succinct summary I have read of the most important issues in the world today. Way to go. A long, long way. If we’re lucky.
Plodding towards Parliament
To London Bridge by bike to ride with the cyclists in the climate campaign march. 
On our flanks, yellow-and-black clad biking bobbies on very serious machines: the Force was with us. At one moment, intimately so, as a blonde policewoman stumbled against me and I was swept by a sudden enthusiasm for women in uniform.
At Lincolns Inn Fields, there we lay down and wept; or I might have, as I find these events vaguely depressing, were it not for the sound system of the Rinky-Dink, belting out cheerful music while volunteers like Bev provided pedal power.
The rear part of the march moved off to the rhythms of pink-clad percussionists, more of a dance than a march. They played their hearts out, a welcome antidote to an otherwise glum plod towards Parliament.
Dear Candace Bennett sounds like a pain in the butt.
Having read more of the campaign web site, I reconsidered too.
Why? Protesting against US policy wastes valuable time and energy. We need to focus on what can be done here. Bush-bashing, however justified, blows off steam that should be doing useful work.
Perhaps I’m too pessimistic, but we are talking about the people who elected Bush last year. If there is any serious prospect of changing American hearts and minds it will be the sight of us tackling this problem while they worsen it. Guilt might, just might, do what abuse won’t. The spirit of Andrew Jackson is too strong.
How about marching but bailing out at Berkeley Square?
That would demonstrate support for action on climate change without joining the shenanigans in front of the US embassy.
§
Just chill Polar meltwater from global warming has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% over the last 12 years, according to a report in the Guardian. While the rest of the planet cooks in our exhaust, we get some natural cooling to offset it. To those that have…
Cooking the planet George Monbiot has tried to estimate how much energy the UK can run on, how much of that might be produced from renewable sources, and comes up with at least 23 Gw we need to generate from other sources. 23 Gw from carbon fuels will still cook the planet, he says; can nuclear energy become an acceptable source? No easy choices, and Lord May warns we have no evolutionary experience of acting on behalf of a distant future
. Our leaders will not address these issues unless we insist they do. The Climate March on Saturday is a chance to insist.
Acid rain Celebrate! The acidity of rain in Britain has dropped substantially in the last 22 years, according to a BBC report.
Passionate and brave To East Finchley and the wonderful old Phoenix Cinema fleapit last night to see The Constant Gardener, adapted from John Le Carré’s novel. The shivers weren’t entirely from Bill Nighy’s suave villain — the heating was off.
» Continue reading “Passionate and brave”Perfect partners George Monbiot’s book The Age Of Consent and the movie Team America: World Police. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Monbiot is right: the international order established by the WWII victors transfers wealth to them from poor countries. Climate change is only one aspect of the global tragedy of the commons which the jostling of nation states for resources makes worse, not better. He advocates a world parliament. It would have many weaknesses, but we need something better than international competition, and have no better ideas.
Sexual politics Bumper sticker behind the bar in the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC:
Make love, not war
LICK BUSH in ’04
Spinning the moral compass Everything we thought was good turns out also to be bad. […] Climate change demands a reversal of our moral compass, for which we are plainly unprepared.
George Monbiot at monbiot.com
Ba-ba-ba Ba-barbecue Hats off once more to Ray Cannon, this time for guiding us into new technology that takes our diet straight back to the palæolithic. We can now grill flesh, fowl and vegetable right outside the kitchen door using the biggest Camping Gaz accessory I’ve ever seen. (It turns out the distinctive barbecue flavour arises from sauce, fat and juices burning on the fuel, not from the charcoal itself — or in the case of our gas appliance, the lava rocks. Did we know? Thanks, Ray.) Vorsprung durch Technik.
» Continue reading “Ba-ba-ba Ba-barbecue”Go global Globalisation is a two-edged sword. Citizens of rich countries hope to wield one edge and be spared the other. People like me, employed in rich countries, are enjoying goods and services produced more cheaply in poor countries. Programmers in Bangalore (to take one example) are enjoying selling their services to the rich. The world price for programmer time is now set in India; it no longer supports family life in Essex. Programmers (and many others) here are feeling the sword's other edge.
» Continue reading “Go global”Walking Eagle Doug Yeager sends this tale from New York in the Land of the Ruptured Duck.
» Continue reading “Walking Eagle”The Meatrix Banning fox-hunting as cruel to animals is a sick joke in a country that farms pigs and chickens as we do. Nor is the result good to eat.
Ultimately supermarkets and farmers are unlikely to improve conditions in meat production, unless we, the chicken-eating public, stop buying cheap meat.
» Original article » The Meatrix
Straight Banana George Monbiot blows the whistle on a narrowly defeated initiative by European commissioner Frits Bolkestein to harmonise the regulation of corporate activities by making their behaviour subject only to the laws of their home country — regardless of where they operate. This would certainly have harmonised regulation, by prompting a flight to the most weakly-regulated countries. Expect your employer to reregister in Lithuania and be regulated and subject to control only in Vilnius.
Or so it would have been, had the scam not got stopped, though without any help from British opponents of Brussels. That’s the trouble with Eurosceptics, says Monbiot, they’re never around when you need them. Too busy fretting about bananas, apparently.
Gettajob gettajob gettajob Unemployed? Best way to find a job is to get elected to Parliament. From George Monbiot’s latest report, corporations will fall over themselves to employ you if you are a Member of Parliament. Or perhaps I’ve got this wrong, and we should pat our collective back for shrewdly sending to Westminster the most employable people in the country.
Where are the antivirals? Simmering behind the passing news headlines is the biggest story of the new century. The next ’flu pandemic is well and truly due by now. WHO estimates of the probable death toll start at 7 million as a best case, with other estimates passing the 50 million mark. We should be stocking antivirals; we’re not.
Yes, the politics of envy. Bring it on, Ken Livingstone, first Mayor of London.
Doonesbury continues its coverage of CIA training course 563P “Interrogation Protocols”
American nationalism, Lieven argues, has taken two antithetical forms: a benign and optimistic civic nationalism, which is normally dominant and whose champions uphold the American Dream, the universally applicable values found in the Declaration of Independence; and a darker nativist tradition, defeatist and suspicious of the world, whose most vociferous proponents are drawn from the ‘embittered heartland’. The former strain of nationalism is common to everyone in the US: Americans from all sorts of racial and religious backgrounds can celebrate freedom and democracy, the constitutional separation of church and state, the guarantee of equal civil rights for all citizens, and the bountiful prosperity of the American Way of Life. This is the ‘American Creed’, as Lieven calls it, and the US as a whole subscribes to it, yet many Americans, particularly in the South, supplement its standard pieties with a self-pitying, defensive white Christian nationalism, oblivious to the contradictions between these two ways of identifying with the US.Colin Kidd, in The London Review of Books 4 Nov 2004, reviewing America Right or Wrong: An anatomy of American nationalism by Anatol Lieven
[…]
The South is now the template for 21st-century America. Stock-car racing, country and western music, an obsession with 'personal weaponry' and an uninhibited style of Protestant religiosity have been exported from it to the rest of the U.S. Blue-collar whites outside the South have adopted the Confederate flag as a badge of working-class alienation from political correctness.
Trouble on the Green Although Cr John Thane’s response on the integrity issue was not wholly satisfactory, I’ve written today about the substance of the issue for tomorrow's meeting of the Environment subcommittee at Camden Town Hall.
» Continue reading “Trouble on the Green (2)”Trouble on the Green Our local 'village green' seems to be degrading by degrees into a bus depôt. Some correspondence on the subject with Cr John Thane.
» Continue reading “Trouble on the Green”No Fear BBC2 is currently airing Adam Curtis’ documentary series The Power of Nightmares challenging the seriousness of the threat of ‘international terrorism’. (Without a television, I’m surely the last person to notice this.) The series suggests that without big political causes to rally us, the US and UK governments are frightening us into supporting them. (Just one of the excellent reasons for not watching television.) David Goodhart has written in Prospect about the lamented ‘end of politics’, suggesting it is no bad thing if political issues have been reduced to questions about how to manage public services. Oooh, nooo — perhaps we should manufacture some political cause to occupy our masters lest they invent mischief like invading, say, Iraq. Yes, Minister?
» Guardian article
» BBC2 home page
In The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker reports studies showing that constant across human cultures is a liking for a savannah-like landscape combined with the figure of a warrior king. A statue of Tony Blair on Hampstead Heath? Fear and laziness are human constants too (I say) and we have to watch how far they incline us to fall in behind leaders.
Did you hear about Magda Lupescu
Who came to Romania’s rescue?
It’s a wonderful thing
To be under a king:
Is democracy better, I esk you?
Thanks to Bruce Schultz who included this in a letter to me in the Cyclades in 1973. Where are you now, Bruce — still a Dominican priest? My memory gave me “Lepescu” instead of “Lupescu”, “rode to” instead of “came to”, and “ruled by” instead of “under”. I’d always supposed Lepescu was a mediæval Romanian king. Having reviewed a Free Encyclopædia article, I’ve made the corrections above. Interestingly, a collection of limerics [sic] has the name misspelt the same way.
Corporal punishment A BBC News article on discipline in education invites comment, but the script breaks down. Here are some thoughts anyway.
Two of the objects of punishment are to stop and to deter misbehaviour. Corporal punishment was abolished for being barbarous and unnecessary: we might substitute other forms of punishment, more suited to civilised society.
Schooling children without corporal punishment was largely unprecedented, given that it wasn't the intention to remodel all schools on experiments like Summerhill. It was not established fact that corporal punishment was unnecessary, it was a theory. A credible theory at the time, when social norms pressed more strongly upon individuals and families, and one with persuasive support, but still a theory.
Abolishing corporal punishment has successfully tested the theory. The test has been a success not because we are pleased with the present indiscipline, but because we have a clear verdict. Corporal punishment is not unnecessary. Substitute punishments have not stopped and deterred misbehaviour sufficiently to preserve the order required in classrooms.
There remains the charge of barbarity. Barbarity is not a fact either; it is a moral judgement. I was beaten once at school as a punishment. I remember it as painful and humiliating, and I have no enthusiasm for hurting or humiliating children. But I weigh this against an education that leaves too many overgrown truculent children insensible of the price they will pay for failing to grow up. We have a responsibility to educate the next generation. Neglecting it is barbarous.
We got our Mayor back He might well be an old-red loony, but he's the only politician who's had the courage to tackle our city's congestion, for which he had to risk seriously pissing off a lot of people. I still don't know if congestion charging is the right answer, but I know ithad to be tried. So we chose him again. "Do you really need to drive into the centre?
" Hooray for "Turn-back" Livingstone, our Mayor of London.
P.J. O'Rourke must be the funniest writer on economics since J.K. Galbraith. But is his economics better?
And a new political party was born. Norman Fyans has started a blog on selective schools.
Of seven guests last night, four of us work or had worked full-time for a living — me and three others. Of the other three, one had retired and stopped working.
» Continue reading “Work work work”We take you now to the Oval Office.
» Continue reading “Hu's on first?”
Long hours of programming over the weekend yielded two hours in Starbucks yesterday with the August issue of Prospect. Lots of interesting pieces: under WTO trading rules rich countries screw the poor. Poor Bangladesh notoriously pays as much duty on its exports to the US as does rich France. Vast US and EU farm subsidies block our markets to poor overseas producers. So scrap WTO and globalised trading rules? Not a bit of it says Kevin Watkins, head of research at Oxfam: the WTO’s multilateral rule-based trading regime has teeth and is infinitely preferable to the network of bilateral trading agreements that the US would otherwise impose.
