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29 March

When uber-terrorist Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for thoughtfully carpet-bombing much of Southeast Asia back to the stone age, musical satirist Tom Lehrer famously gave up performing. 'It was at that moment that satire died,' he said. 'There was nothing more to say after that.'

He was wrong, of course. That was only the beginning. These days, neoliberalism is the best way to abolish poverty, invading Iraq the best way to reduce the threat of terrorism and giving your money to giant mega-corporations is the best way to inject life back into your ailing local community. I mention this last point because evil-global-mega-coffee monster Starbucks is currently sponsoring a series of debates across Britain - the 'Coffee House Challenge 2004' - dedicated to 'addressing some of society's most fundamental concerns.' Debates will be held in Starbucks outlets all over the country in which thoughtful latte-suppers can sit down and discuss subjects including 'zero waste', 'strong communities' and 'global citizenship.'

Yes, you did read that right. The company which uses prison labour to mass-produce its disposable cardboard cups want to have a chat with you about how to reduce waste. The company which operates a policy of 'clustering' its outlets in towns and cities, each branch competing with the others until all the local competition is driven out of business and the only cafes left on your high street are bland, centrally-planned multinational outlets dedicated to taking your money and sending it straight back to head office in Seattle, wants to talk to you about 'strong communities.' The company which militates against trade unions and squirts Monsanto-brand genetically modified milk into its crappuccinos wants to talk to you about 'global citizenship'…

I would say more but I've just fallen off my chair, and once is enough for one day. My advice? If you want strong communities, zero waste and ethical consumption, do whatever you can to get Starbucks and its fellow homogenised mega-corporate food outlets out of your town. The wonderful Reverend Billy can show you how.

Posted by paul at 06:24 PM

24 March

Thought for the day: Go go Richard Clarke!

Posted by paul at 06:23 PM

23 March

Cheery news of the week: yet more evidence of a catastrophic decline in Britain's wildlife. Stories like this get into the papers once every few months (they're usually about songbirds - this time, for a change, the focus is on butterflies). I suspect people have seen them so often they're now becoming blasé about it all. Best not to: similar declines across the world point to the increasingly clear fact that we are on the verge of - if not already plunging into - the sixth mass extinction in Earth's history. If so, this will be the first one precipitated by the actions of just one species - in this case a highly specialised, aggressive and territorial species of ape, known as homo sapiens. You can read more about that here

I'd also really recommend a brilliant piece by Colin Tudge in this week's New Statesman, which focuses on the follies of industrial farming; a major contributor to this and many other problems. He also has a long-overdue go at mouthy charidy tosser Bob Geldof, who, along with that wrinkly, leather-clad old fraud Bono, appears to have taken it upon himself to solve the problems of Africa, with a little help from major multinational corporations and the US treasury. See it here

Posted by paul at 06:20 PM

18 March

You might have noticed a spate of media stories yesterday about the year 1976, coupled with a question: was it a good year to be alive? Cue references to flares, hot summers, water shortages, inflation, the Brotherhood of Man, etc.

What sparked all this is a new report from the New Economics Foundation, Britain's most interesting think tank (I'm not trying to damn them with faint praise, honestly), showcasing a new measure of social progress they've cooked up, which they call MDP (Measure of Domestic Progress). NEF has a long history of trying to highlight the crucial fact that our current measure of 'progress' - Gross Domestic Product, or GDP - is woefully inadequate. GDP simply measures the amount of 'stuff' made, bought and sold in any given year - not whether any of that stuff is socially or environmentally useful or not. Chopping down a forest and turning it into toilet paper boosts GDP, as does an increase in the sale of rape alarms or spending millions cleaning up after an oil spill. If we don't measure progress, growth, development - whatever you want to call it - properly, then calling for more of it incessantly, as all politicians of all parties (bar the Greens) do, is simply mindless, indeed destructive, rhetoric.

The MDP is an attempt to rectify this by measuring not consumption but quality of life. It takes into account things like the value of unpaid work, crime levels, family breakdown and environmental pollution. When it's compared to GDP it shows that social progress peaked in 1976, then tailed off steeply - as GDP continued to rise.

This is important stuff. Our modern myth of constant progress - despite so much evidence to the contrary - is built on flawed measurements like GDP, which crudely assume that if we're buying more things we're better off. You can read the NEF's full report here

Posted by paul at 12:16 PM

17 March

Dipping into the new collection of some of comedian Bill Hicks’ best stuff (here it is), I am reminded forcefully of two things. One: the man was a god. Two: there is no justice in the world. Bill Hicks: dead. Jim Davidson: still alive. If anyone who believes in God’s infinite wisdom would care to write and explain that to me, I’d be very interested.

In the meantime, as a reminder of the man’s genius, here’s what he had to say about advertising:

"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers, Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously.

No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke”... there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! "Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!

"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." God, I'm just caught in a fucking web! "Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you?"

Posted by paul at 06:11 PM

15 March

The Spanish election. What can I say? Nothing that hasn't been usefully said already, probably. But here are a few observations which strike me:

1. It looks like it's possible for Al-Qaeda, or whoever it was, to effectively change an election result with strategically-timed carnage. This has implications I don't even want to think about.

2. There is going to be an attack like this soon in Britain. If 'they' choose to target us, which I don't doubt they will, there is no way at all that we can stop them doing something like this here. It's a question of where and when, not if. And this is frightening as hell.

3. Spain may - if US/UK pressure doesn't succeed in swaying the new boy at the helm - soon withdraw its troops from Iraq. But is this a good thing? I was against the invasion of Iraq (though it took me some time to make my mind up on this; the judgement call was actually a lot tougher than the more simplistic lefties would have you believe.) Now though, whatever the arguments about whether the invasion was right (I still think it wasn't), it seems to me that we have a duty to leave troops in there as long as needed to clean up our own mess. We could pull out tomorrow, but if we did we would likely get either civil war, an Islamic Despotism or even the return to power of the previous one. We are caught between a rock and a hard place, but if we want any kind of decent democracy to emerge out of the mess that is Iraq - and far more importantly, whether we want to give genuine democrats in Iraq a chance to create one themselves - I think we should leave our troops in there as long as we need to. I have to swallow hard as I write that sentence - the spectacle of US troops protecting Paul Bremer as his looting neo-con crowd privatise the hell out of every Iraqi industry and resource sticks in my craw as much as anyone's. But that could be reversed. Another round of massacres couldn't.

Much as I was irritated by some of Nick Cohen's glib dismissals of the anti-war arguments a year ago, I think he has it right when he argues that our job now is to get behind the genuine radicals and democrats that Iraq has. See his New Statesman article here

Posted by paul at 06:03 PM

14 March

Talking of upcoming actions, if you only do one thing this week, do it at Menwith Hill this coming Friday (19th), when Yorkshire CND will be blockading the spy base there in protest at US plans for a national missile defence system which will lay us open to further terrorist attack. Details here

Posted by paul at 05:59 PM

9 March

Surprise surprise! As everyone predicted, the government has given the green light for the first planting of GM crops in the UK - a variety of maize, which will probably appear in our fields sometime next year.

GM is a recipe for even tighter corporate control of agriculture. It could also be an environmental disaster. Yes, another one. Most GM crops, as the biotech firms will admit if you press them, are designed with corporate profit, rather than human health or environmental welfare in mind.

For a reprise of the main arguments against GM, have a look here

And if you want to do something to, ahem, hamper the proposed plantings, go and sign the Green Gloves Pledge - it only takes a minute. See the 'campaigns' section of this site for details.

Posted by paul at 05:52 PM

5 March

I'm on a HUGE high. This was definitely the best day of the year so far (not difficult actually, given my year so far, but anyway.) I just took a tribal leader from West Papua to the HQ of Zoo Weekly, a crappy little lads mag in London run by and for human pond-life, to demand an apology for a piece they'd recently run, in which they wackily accused the people of West Papua of being orgiastic cannibals. I would have paid good money to see the look on that little weasel of an editor's face when he was confronted by a man in a bird-of-paradise feather headdress showing him pictures of torture victims and demanding an apology. Oh boy.

There'll be a piece in next weeks' New Statesman telling the full story of what happened when we went to visit Zoo. If you don't know about what's happening in West Papua, there's a chapter on it in One No, Many Yeses. And if you live in the UK and would like to do something to help the people there gain their freedom, a group of us are setting a UK campaign group in motion. Email friends@freewestpapua.org for more info.

Posted by paul at 04:50 PM

1 March

Just came back from Twyford Down. I've spent the day visiting the scene of Britain's first road protest for the first time since I got involved in it over ten years ago. I went because Open Country, the BBC Radio Four prog about country matters, was making a programme about the Down and had invited me to appear on it.

It's always exciting to get asked to appear on programmes that you've actually heard of. My ego is always hugely grateful, anyway. And this one sounds like it could be good. Have a listen to it when it's broadcast (hopefully) on Saturday 13th March, or when it's repeated on Thursday 18th. Or you should be able to listen to it online here

Going back to Twyford, which changed my life so much that I haven't been able to stop banging on about it since, was a strange, and slightly uncomfortable, experience. But I'm glad I did. It feels, somehow, like exorcising a ghost.

Posted by paul at 12:00 PM