DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT

First published at www.selvesandothers.org

Here is a thought for you… there is a certain species of man, his role being undefined or undefinable, that those in power, unsure of what to do with him, grab, put a hook through his finger and leave dangling on a line for his fellow men to grab onto.

Now the truth is I don’t know where that thought came from. I woke up with it this morning after I was struggling to think of what to say in this article last night.

And there he was in my mind, brave Bob, from the 80s, banging the table, send us the fucking money (even though he didn’t really say that). Where did he come from? What was this hairy thing that had come out of nowhere to remind us all that there was a world outside our homes, offices and schools?

Here was someone actually trying to do something. Making us all feel that we were doing something too.

Ahhhh, I think we have discovered where the problem begins.

Making us feel that we were doing something.

What was Bob starting in the 80s? A caring revolution? It certainly felt that way for those of us who were young at the time and didn’t know enough to see through the bullshit.

And many many more were mollified – let them know its Christmas, we are the world, 20 quid donated and all is right again. Or, at least they won’t upset us with those pictures of the babies with the swollen stomachs and the flies anymore.

Do something, by not doing very much at all. Send your money now he said, and thousands, millions did.

Thank you, he said. You really made a difference.

But we didn’t. It just continued to get worse, but Bob’s saintliness continued to grow.

In the 20 years that followed, so many other things sprang up. Comic relief, Sport Aid and many more. The NGO sector ballooned to a size it has never known before. Charity standing orders, sponsor a child, Oxfam will even send you a free pen so you can fill in the form immediately, and all the guilt is dissipated. Or suppressed.

And all the while, the Western governments policies toward the third world were changing. The Bretton Woods Institutions were making policies designed to loot the third world for its wealth. There was no more Communist threat so the subsidies designed to keep the developing nations on side against the red menace were slashed. Markets were opened, resources were plundered. The NGOs and the charities became a sticking plaster over a bullet wound.

Bob was still flying round the world though, showing us all the good that these sticking plasters were doing, and going to new places to show us where more were needed.

He was meeting the people in power, and telling them straight that if they didn’t do something then he would have to have another concert and make them look bad again.

And on and on it continued, and the G8 came to Scotland.

Bob gets in the mix early, so the leaders, not wanting to look bad, join in. Bob is photographed after an MTV interview with his head on Blair’s shoulder looking like a dog having its belly scratched. He believes Tony is a good man, and really wants to help. But we must keep the pressure on…by having a party.

Sing and dance he said, not while you are facing the water cannons and the dogs, but so you don’t have to. If we party hard enough then they will have to change things won’t they?

Partying is absolution he said, it is the end rather than the means. A party is all it takes. A corporate-sponsored cocaine- fuelled celebrity wankfest will change the world. You can even buy McDonalds on your way there. We can bring Bill Gates on and introduce him as the greatest philanthropist in the world. You don’t even have to give any money this time. Just wear white, hell, you can even buy your new white t-shirt at the gap. It will help to give some people jobs. Madonna will ask us if we are ready for a revolution.[1]

Don’t worry that asking Bush and Blair to deal with poverty problems in the worlds poorest nations is akin to asking a superbug to run a hospital. Party hard enough and it will all come good, or you will be so drunk that you won’t notice anymore.

Don’t worry about the war. We won’t even let people bring you down by talking about the war. Our organizers will make sure that those people are not allowed on the stage. We will even say that the issues of poverty and war are unrelated.[2] It is better, after all, to look at starving Africans who are dying because the rain didn’t come than to look at blown up Middle Eastern children who are dying because of your indifference.

Don’t worry if you think I am taking too big a role in this. Some of the nice NGOs can come along for the ride too. They can join the campaign. They have been working in the field for a long time and know the problems more than most. Their donations might go up a bit. It doesn’t really matter if the need for all those donations becomes more crucial because it will be a good party.

Don’t worry if you think we are too closely involved with the powers that be – even Gandhi and MLK had a dialogue with the power people. True, they didn’t phone them up and ask permission first if they wanted to register people to vote or march through a salt mine but that just shows how much things have progressed now doesn’t it?

Don’t worry that I am now ‘Sir’ Bob and ‘Sir’ is a title given to those who serve the state. If they gave it to me surely that shows they really want to help the people in poor countries doesn’t it?

Don’t worry that we are not letting anyone African near the stage or the microphones.

Don’t worry about the nagging doubts at the back of your mind that even though it is utterly inadequate, the money you spent today could have been better used if you had donated it to someone.

Don’t worry about the fact that if you had all chosen to buy nothing, eat nothing and not go to work for a couple of days this would have worried the G8 far more than the sort of nothing you are doing today (empathizing with someones lack of things to consume by consuming more).

Don’t worry about all those nasty anarchists trying to frighten your children. We will help the police to brutalise them and the media to vilify them. The Daily Mail will call them “gangs of masked extremists.” We will make it appear that they are something between Al-qaeda and football hooligans, even though it is us who are begging for scraps from the table of those who instigated an illegal war.

And at the end of it all they will let me, yes ME, Sir Bob, your representative, into the G8 to have a quick word with them before the real meetings…and they might not even laugh in my face.

Just don’t worry, ok?

They were talking about how they were going to march on […], march on the […], march on the […], march on the […] and tie it up - bring it to a halt and not let the government proceed. They even said they were going out to the airport to lay down on the runway and not let any airplanes land. I’m telling you what they said - that was revolution, that was revolution, that was the revolution. It was the grassroots out there in the street; it scared the white man to death; scared the white power structure in […] to death - I was there. When they found out that this steamroller was going to come down on the capital they called in these national leaders that you respect and told them call it off. [The power structure] said ‘look you all are letting this thing go too far’ and old […] said ‘Boss I can’t stop it I because I didn’t start it.’

I’m telling you what they said. They said ‘I’m not even in it much less at the head of it.’ They said ‘these [people] are doing things on their own; they’re running ahead of us.’ And that old, shrewd fox, he said ‘if you all aren’t in it I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it, I’ll endorse it, I’ll welcome it, I’ll help it, I’ll join it.’

“This is what they did with the march on […], they joined it, became part of it, took it over. And as they took it over it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march - it became a picnic, a circus, nothing but a circus - with clowns and all.

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Postcript

The passage above was Malcolm X was speaking a couple of months after the March on Washington. It is a source of debate how much was actually achieved by that march. At least, at the end of it came a piece of oratory that no one who has heard it is likely to forget. This time there was only Chris Martin from Coldplay, who I have seen painted in some papers as a hardline radical, saying that “this [the concert] is the greatest thing organised in the history of the world.” Possible overstatement? After all funerals, when organised correctly, can be more fun than a Mariah Carey concert.

Geldof, like the marchers may have helped in getting people to believe that something has to be done. However, he has done nothing to help them understand why these problems persist, who is causing them and whether or not something is actually being done about them. On the last of those points in particular he has been counter-productive.

At the end of it all, here are some of the things Bob said…

“10 out of 10 on aid, eight out of 10 on debt.”

“Never before have so many people forced a change of policy onto a global agenda. If anyone had said eight weeks ago will we get a doubling of aid, will we get a deal on debt, people would have said ‘no’,.”

“without equivocation the greatest G8 summit there has ever been for Africa”.

He said this even though many of the NGOs that were part of his Make Poverty History campaign asked him not to.

Here is a quick representative sample of what some of the mainstream NGOs said…

Action Aid – (by no means the most radical of NGOs) “What Africa needed from the G8 was a giant leap forward, all it got was tiny steps. The deal that has been announced falls way short of our demands. We have some aid, but not enough, some debt relief but not enough and virtually nothing on trade. Once again Africa’s people have been short-changed”.

Global Call to Action Against Poverty –were angry that the promise to deliver $50bn extra aid by 2010 was “like waiting 5 years before responding to the tsunami”.

Jubilee Debt Campaign – “G8 debt deal is not 100 per cent debt cancellation” it “immediately benefits only 18 countries” and “reinforces the harmful economic policy conditions enforced through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative”

Here is what some of the more radical ones said…

World Development Movement – “an insult to the hundreds of thousands of campaigners… a disaster for the world’s poor. The agreements on trade, debt, aid and climate change are nowhere near sufficient to tackle the global poverty and environmental crisis we face.”

50 Years is Enough – “By retaining the HIPC structure, the G8 perpetuates the requirement that countries submit to demands for economic disarmament in favor of promoting the interests of foreign capital before they can get the consequential debt considered for cancellation.”

War on Want – “[the G8 has] given less than 10% of our demand on debt cancellation and not even a fifth of what we called for on aid. On trade, the G8 has hardened its stance, forcing more countries to open their markets and threatening millions with the misery of poverty. When the moment came to act, the G8 turned their backs on the world’s poor.”

Jubilee South – “The multilateral debt cancellation being proposed is still clearly tied to compliance with conditionalities which exacerbate poverty, open our countries further for exploitation and plunder, and perpetuate the domination of the South.”

No change of policy came, there was a soundbite or two, a cleverly disguised ‘same again’ financial package that in some cases left people worse off than before. Even the few promises that were made were quickly forgotten, or reneged upon. The Italian government very quickly said it probably couldn’t meet its promises. Gordon Brown admitted that there wasn’t really much new money - it was just money brought forward.

The lack of positive outcomes from it all may be disappointing/disgusting/infuriating/inhuman (delete as applicable) but it is not surprising. Why would the caretakers of an economic system that is responsible for the majority of world poverty suddenly alter their views based on a pop concert and a walk around town? The strategy of co-opting the more moderate elements of a campaign in order to freeze out the radicals is as old as the hills. What on earth convinced the NGOs that jumped into bed with Blair that things would be any different this time?

Just maybe, it was Bob.

Couple the muzzling of the NGOs with a failed rock stars predilection for getting publicity howsoever it can be gotten and we are left with a potent recipe for impotence.

All that was achieved was that the government was forced to up the marketing ante to an enormous and enormously powerful marketing campaign and another successful hoodwink was performed on the populace.

After judging last years summit a success, I wonder what would happen if Bob was left to judge himself…

“You can’t trust politicians. It doesn’t matter who makes a political speech. It’s all lies… and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well.”

“People will always reach over the impenetrable roar of political discourse to help a human on the other side.”

P.S..

I started this out as an academic style article but I changed my mind because there are a few things it would have been just too easy to mention.

It would have been too easy to point out that Geldof’s own production company Ten Alps provided the two big screens in Hyde Park and is closely associated with the government and has made programmes for the Department for Education and Skills and that the exposure it got from Live 8 could not fail to help it.[3]

It would have been too easy to point out that even though he said a somewhat controversial line to her he was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher… “She lashed out at every institution she saw. The Monarchy, The old Tory party, the old Labour Party. She was a Punk.”

It would have been too easy to point out that the Planet 24 TV company he was involved in is responsible for subjecting the nation to CHRIS FUCKING EVANS.

It would have been too easy to point out that although performers were not paid it is alleged that some received gifts up to the value of $1,700 and that the Prince’s trust was paid 1.6 million pounds to cancel its party in the park.

I was going to mention that stuff but it would have been too easy.

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[1] the same Madonna that was furious that the Scottish Parliament would not amend the law so that she could keep the public out of the grounds of her mansion

[2] Yes, one of the organizers really did say that. The stop the war people were not allowed a stage as part of the official event.

[3] http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1238

 

 

WHAT THEY WON’T PUBLISH

Having spent a lot of time in academia, at first a student, then a tutor and then a researcher, the one thing they won’t let you say is something I included in a list of JOKE definitions and it is this…

Multiculturalism = respecting the symbols, values and idiosyncrasies of all colours, creeds and religions - provided that is, that they can be co-opted into a neoliberal economic order and packaged in plastic and sold off. If it is not possible to do this then the adherents of whichever ideology it is must be considered to be “depraved opponents of civilisation itself.”

If you didn’t get what I meant by that then you should probably just go away.

If you insist on persisting then wonder where your humour gene went to. really.

OPERATION SADDAM - AMERICA’S PROPAGANDA WAR

This was first published at www.spinwatch.org

I wonder if when it is all finished there will have been more documentaries made about the Iraq war than there will have been soldiers killed. At any rate, if you add up every distortion, every sleight of hand and every downright lie that has been told – and there have been a lot - you won’t come anywhere near the number of civilians killed.

I feel somehow obliged to sit through them all - even though they mostly contain the same information. There are usually one or two new snippets in each one which join a couple of dots and lead you toward completing the full and depressing picture.

This documentary was made in 2002/3 (its good to be on the ball!) by Helmuth Grosse and features people heavily involved in the policy process in the USA such as Richard Perle and Gary Schmitt and it also features the usual critics such as Seymour Hersh, Ray McGovern and Danny Schechter .

The documentary follows the basic narrative of most Iraq documentaries in that war plans were worked out for what is going on now when the first oil embargo gave the USA a real shock in the 70s. At that time there was a feasibility study done called ‘Oil Fields As Military Objectives’. The plans were then further developed by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) who were frustrated in their ambitions by Clinton. However, the election of Bush and then 9/11 gave them the perfect excuse to get their iniquitous plans (the words ‘new world order’ are used) put into action.

The Office of Special Plans was then set up to help push it all through, the CIA was ignored when they said there wasn’t a threat and then there was the dodgy dossier, media complicity and so on. There is the allegation featured in other books and documentaries (and to my knowledge still undenied) that the famous scene of Saddams statue being toppled was a set piece planned in advance for the Bush reelection campaign. We all know the story by now.

Some of the little things I didn’t know were that the backdrop of Picasso’s Guernica was hidden behind a screen for the duration of Colin Powell’s UN presentation and that, according to Seymour Hersh, the Bush people jokingly call themselves “the cabal”.

Israel is not often mentioned in the Iraq war documentaries I have seen and this one mentions it only once. Ray McGovern, when talking about the dodgy dossier, asks “cui bono?” and answers his own question with “the US for selling its position, the UK for selling its position and Israel for having aims that are identical to the United States in this case.”

This film also explicitly asks if there is a link between terror alert codes and political expediency though it balks at answering its own question decisively. I think they struggled to get a British person to speak to them because at this point they interview Peter Willdridge the former planning officer for Buckinghamshire county council.

There is a scene in an episode of Yes Minister, where the vacillating Jim Hacker MP is lamenting being in a situation with only two options. If he takes the first one he will appear heartless and if he takes the other he will appear mindless. One of his aides tells him that it is better to appear heartless than mindless, the other suggests that perhaps he should try appearing heartless and mindless alternately and that way no one else could make their mind up which of the two he was.

As the Iraq disaster has progressed the story of it has now been told so many times in so many different ways that the phoney debate about if it was justified or not or the secondary phoney debate about whether it would it do more harm than good if the troops left are over. The only debate that seems to be going in the supposedly left-wing press now is whether or not the planners of this war are heartless or mindless? All of the Iraq war documentaries I have seen so far fall into one of the two categories.

It comes back to an idea about two competing theories of history, there is the cock-up theory (the road to hell is paved with good intentions) and the conspiracy theory (all of this was orchestrated to happen exactly this way by a few all-powerful and extremely nefarious people). However, every political generation has groups of people who mean well and people who don’t. Furthermore, the people that elected representatives spend most time with are the lobbyists who permanently barrage them with skewed information - it may be that some of them are acting from what they perceive to be the best interests of their extremely selective community.

That said, I for one will never be able to look at Dick Cheney and truthfully say “that man has good intentions.”

This documentary is thoroughly on the side of the conspiracy view of history and by and large what happened pre-war was planned and orchestrated by a nefarious group of people. However, it is rarely pointed out that conspirators usually need people to carry out their plans for them. This documentary does say that there was/is a disturbing lack of people willing to resign rather than proceed with a war they knew/know to be based on deception.

Most of the documentaries have focused on how a hoodwink was performed on the public or how the policy was flawed. Very few have been about those who have had to suffer the consequences of these policies. For those people, instead of being an academic argument about ends and means and secret motivations it has been nothing short of a brutal and murderous rampage.

Whether the planners of this war are nasty or just stupid (or both) is no longer the point (if it ever was). The point is that they should not be in power if the end result of their mistakes or strategies are the bombing and burning of hundreds of thousands of people.

EIGHT WAYS TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT QUESTIONS

This is from the BBC programme ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ and is the best guide I have seen. Print it off and then sit and watch a politician being interviewed. In almost any interview at least one of these ploys will be used and most often several of them will be used.

Eight Ways to Deal With Difficult Questions

1. Attack the Question. - ‘That’s a very silly question, how can you justify the use of the words “Above the Law”?’

2. Attack the Questioner. - ‘How many years have you spent in government?’

3. Compliment the question. - ‘that’s a very good question. I’d like to thank you for asking me it. Let me reply by asking you one.’

4. Unloading the question. - Most questions are loaded. They are full of assumptions such as ‘A lot of people have said that you consider yourself above the law’. There are two possible replies to such loaded questions:
a) Name Ten
b) Surely in a nation of 60 million people you can find a few people who will say anything no matter how irrelevant, misguided, or ill-informed.’

5. Make it all appear an act. - This approach only works for live TV interviews: ‘you know, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t agree with what you suggested I should answer when you asked me that question downstairs before the programme began. The real answer is…’

6. Use the time factor. - Most interviews are short of time, especially live ‘on air’ interviews. Reply: ‘That’s a very interesting question, and there are nine points I should like to make in answer to it.’ The Interviewer will say: ‘perhaps you could just make two of them, briefly.’ You say: ‘No its far too important a question to answer superficially, and if I can’t answer it properly I’d rather not trivialise it.’

7. Invoke Secrecy. - ‘There’s a very full answer to that question, but it involves matters that are being discussed in confidence. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to break a confidence. So I’m afraid I can’t answer for another week or two.’

8. Take refuge in a long pointless narrative. - If you can ramble on long enough no one will remember the question and therefore no one can tell if you have answered it or not.

All of these are good ways to deal with difficult questions. If you have nothing to say then say nothing. However, better yet is to have something to say and say it, no matter what they ask you. Pay no attention to the question, make your own statement. If they ask you the same question again, you just say ‘that’s not the question’ or ‘I think the more important question is this:’ then make another statement of your own. Easy-peasy.

MEETING SCOTT RITTER

So you are trying to interview someone reasonably famous. You are not used to doing it and you know there is going to be a scrum to get near him. How would you like to approach such a day?

It certainly wouldn’t be the way I did it, which was nursing a bad hangover. Not only that but at the campsite I had cracked my rib tripping over a tent rope and hitting a picnic table the previous evening. I then slept outside with no sleeping bag (its cold in Scotland). I had to go the campsite because I stayed in the pub too long and missed the last bus home. In short, I was not on top form.

G8 alternatives were hosting a massive political meeting in Edinburgh around the time of the G8 at Gleneagles in Scotland. Scott Ritter, Bianca Jagger, George Galloway, George Monbiot, Danny Schechter and so many others were coming to speak. I had a press pass and wanted to speak to a lot of them but I hadn’t really done any hack work before. In truth I found the whole thing fairly demeaning, scrambling toward people you don’t know begging to be spoken to. I will do interviews again, but not the press pack scramble.

I had my first experience of this earlier in the day (when the hangover was worse) and lots of journalists were trying to get a piece of George Monbiot (there is a link to his site here). I lost heart in the venture very quickly. The mainstream media journalists were more or less giving him abuse and I ended up taking sides and giving him a question he could attack rather than defend. I can’t remember exactly what I asked him, it was something like “do you think the corporate greenwash so widely disseminated in the mainstream media is damaging to the public debate?” I think it’s called throwing him a bone, and I am not ashamed of it at all. It was a question he could have a go at so I sat back, didn’t take notes and just enjoyed the looks on the hacks faces as they scowled at me and got abuse from him. Still, I never did get the chance to speak to him afterwards, which was a shame.

Later in the day it was Ritter’s turn. He made a speech similar to many I have seen him make before, aggresively criticising US middle east policy. At the end I started to sidle toward the stage as did a few others. People from the audience were coming up and shaking his hand, saying that they really respected what he was doing and so on. I thought the way people were looking at him was odd - almost reverential. They were congratulating him on his bravery. I think some of them thought it was a matter of time till someone shoots him.

His military past was obvious. Someone asked him something and he burst out with “amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics” at which I had to suppress a smile - the way he said it had ex-soldier written all over it.

Then he talked about being a Republican. I asked him that if that was the case how did he feel going round the world criticising Bush et al. He just replied ‘he’s not a Republican.’ I asked him how he felt as an ex-marine about the fact that in order to speak publicly about the issues he is raising he most often finds himself in crowds full of radicals and pacifists. He talked about the US constitution and how it was mostly written by one left wing guy and one right wing guy who hated each other and that it is all about freedom of speech and that reasoned debate was one of the things that the US stands for (or at least it used to). I neglected to mention that it was written by 50 white males, the vast majority of which were wealthy landowners and that it semi-legitimised slavery and therefore did not include as much room for debate as is popularly supposed.

That day he was talking about plans for Iran that were already at an advanced stage. Just like before the Iraq confrontation his information and output appear excellent, even if you disagree with his historical analysis.

I hope I bump into him again, only without a microphone - and without a hangover.

Here is what he said regarding Iran in 2005

Here is what he said in 2006

Here is what he said in 2007

LYING MARXISM

This comes via some fellow spinwatchers and lobbywatch

It is quite long but is a good insight into how these things work (or don’t)

LobbyWatch: SMC complaint

It may be useful to read this in conjunction with the George Monbiot interview we recently published at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7748
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Introduction to the submission

Below’s an edited version of a submission made by the writer and investigative journalist, Andy Rowell, to the board of the Science Media Centre (SMC) at the suggestion of one of its board members.

The submission raises concerns about the role of the SMC’s director, Fiona Fox, in the light not just of her long-term involvement with the climate-sceptical LM group but of the SMC’s lack of proactivity in combatting climate change denial - something that stands in marked contrast with the SMC’s record on a number of other issues, such as GM crops.

Andy Rowell’s submission arose out of a talk he gave at a seminar organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry on The Science of Global Warming. On the panel with Rowell were Professor Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Professor John Mitchell - Chief Scientist at the Met Office, and Professor Colin Prentice of Bristol University.
http://www.rsc.org/images/pp%2001-%2008_280306103_tcm18-53677.pdf

Rowell was asked to shed light in his presentation on the often well-funded lobby groups that either deny that human-induced global warming is occurring or maintain that it’s no problem. He explained how large oil corporations are funding groups to publish work questioning the link between climate change and fossil fuel emissions, and detailed a number of the groups in the UK who seem to be particularly active in encouraging climate change scepticism.

Amongst the sceptics Rowell talked about were Julian Morris and Roger Bate of the International Policy Network (IPN), a free market lobby group that has received nearly $300,000 to date from Exxon. Rowell also noted the IPN’s close collaboration with the LM group, who also actively promote the idea that climate change is nothing to worry about.

The LM group were not only behind the magazine LM (originally known as Living Marxism), but also its successor organisations: Spiked-online and the Institute of Ideas. Rowell also mentioned that this group included people working in a number of other organisations such as Sense About Science and the Science Media Centre.

After the talk Rowell was approached by an SMC board member who asked him to justify his reference to the SMC, and this later lead on to the suggestion that he submit his concerns in writing to the SMC’s Board. This he did on behalf of SpinWatch - www.spinwatch.org, which monitors corporate PR and spin. Not for the first time, the SMC’s Board completely rejected the concerns about its director. 

There are many interesting points that come out of Rowell’s carefully referenced submission. Rowell points out, for instance, that - at the time of writing - out of about 120 press releases the SMC has issued - and which are on its website - “only about four have been on climate.” This despite climate change being a major contemporary scientific issue and one where there’s massive anti-science lobbying, much of which is ending up in the popular media.

Rowell notes how the small number of SMC press releases on climate compares “to over 40 on issues to do with genetics and roughly another dozen each on animals in research and GM crops.” He also notes how the independence of those whose views the SMC has promoted to journalists is open to serious question. Industry executives, lobbyists and people connected to the LM group are all presented in SMC releases that claim to be giving the views of “the scientific community”, and often without making their affiliations clear.

Perhaps the most startling material in Rowell’s submission, though, are the extracts he includes from an internal Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) document authored by the SMC’s director, and obtained by LobbyWatch and copied to Rowell. Fox has always tried to downplay her RCP/LM involvement as just short-term and marginal, despite clear evidence that she wrote a large number of articles for LM, including hugely controversial pieces involving genocide denial and support for terrorism. The leaked Party discussion document confirms the extremity of Fiona Fox’s involvement in what many regard as a fundamentalist political sect. 

In it Fox tells fellow RCP supporters about a friend who developed ME and mental health problems, and how she (Fox) often thinks “there but for the grace of the RCP go I”. Fox also says this same “secret thought” occurs to her when she meets up with old friends who’ve left the RCP, because it’s only thanks to the RCP that she’s able to be “one of the few people in the world who can really understand”. Fox goes on to describe how she spent every Saturday for a year on the streets unsuccessfully trying to persuade members of the public that Oxfam, and the kind of humanitarianism it represents, is perhaps the biggest threat to world peace.

Rowell asks how on earth it could have come about that a tiny extremist faction with a magazine that only ever had a small number of contributors, now has so many of its supporters and contributors serving as leading lights in a whole series of influential science related groups. This is particularly the case when - like Fiona Fox - they often have no relevant background in science.
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Submission to the Board of the SMC

What I said in my talk was that the people behind Spiked and the Institute of Ideas (IOI) are pro-corporate libertarians who are climate sceptics. I said that this network includes people working in other organisations such as Sense About Science and the Science Media Centre. I also said that the Spiked network had collaborated with [Exxon-funded] TechCentralStation, the Royal Institution [closely associated with the SMC - see below] and the [Exxon-funded] International Policy Network (IPN).

* Firstly that the Institute of Ideas (IOI) and Spiked collaborate with known climate sceptics such as Roger Bate and Julian Morris of the IPN

Their collaboration began in the late nineties when two key Living Marxism activists, Frank Furedi and Bill Durodie, started writing for the European Science and Environment Forum and Roger Bate, ESEF’s founder, began writing for Living Marxism (the forerunner of Spiked and IOI).

Bate has also contributed to Spiked-Online, writing on issues such as DDT, GM[1] and depleted Uranium. The latter article by Bate is co-written with Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski,[2] who writes for 21st Century Science and Technology - the magazine of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, a scientist who believes that ‘The Ice Age is Coming.’[3] 

Julian Morris first spoke at a Spiked conference in May 2002.[4] In January 2003, Morris debated the benefits of recycling on Spiked[5]. Two months later, in March 2003, Spiked held a conference on ‘GM food labelling’ - co-hosted with the global PR company, Hill and Knowlton and the IPN. Pro-GM speakers included Gregory Conko, the director of food safety policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and co-founder of the avidly pro-biotech AgBioView, and Tony Gilland, ex-Living Marxism and now the Science and Society director at the Institute of Ideas. The following month, Morris spoke again at a Spiked event[6].

* Spiked/IOI are Climate Sceptics

If you look at Spiked’s section on global warming[7] it is consistently sceptical and includes articles from known sceptics such as Philip Stott[8] [who appeared in the recent documentary by the LM-linked director, Martin Durkin, The Great Global Warming Swindle] and from people associated with the International Policy Network, such as Dominic Standish.[9]

It has also held conferences with known sceptics and this is the one I mentioned in my talk. In May 2003 Spiked, TechCentralStation and the Royal Institution held a conference on risk, called ‘Panic Attack’. It was co-sponsored by the IPN, the Social Issues Research Centre (see below) and Mobile Operators Association, amongst others.[10] The afternoon session, titled the Heated Debate was about global warming and included Bjorn Lomborg - author, The Skeptical Environmentalist and Sallie Baliunas a science co-host of [the Exxon funded] TechCentralStation[11].

* Ex-LM Network

There is a network of ex-Revolutionary Communist Party/Living Marxism people concentrating on science-related issues, particularly those involving either genetics and/or the environment. It is very difficult to tell what their exact shared aims and objectives are but this degree of concentration and activity in such a specific area seems beyond the possibility of coincidence.

The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) was a small extremist faction. Living Marxism, the RCP’s monthly review which went on to become LM magazine, had only a small number of contributors, but RCP supporters/LM contributors not only turn up at Spiked/IOI, but hold the following positions:

SMC director: Fiona Fox

Sense About Science director: Tracey Brown

SAS’s programme manager and Brown’s deputy: Ellen Raphael

Scientific Alliance advisor: Bill Durodie

Genetic Interest Group policy director: John Gillott

Progress Educational Trust (former) director: Juliet Tizzard

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority policy manager: Juliet Tizzard

HFEA (former) director of communications: Anne Furedi

Wellcome Trust advisory group on Public Engagement with Science: Claire Fox

Fiona Fox has no science background. Tracey Brown’s background is likewise almost entirely unconnected to her current post - her previous specialty was sociology of law. Ellen Raphael also has a social science background. I think it is a legitimate question to ask what drew them all to the same highly specific area of activity.

While a number of people may have contributed on occasion to an IOI event or Spiked debate, all of these three have multiple involvements. For example, Fiona Fox appears on Spiked’s website[12] and is quoted in Spiked articles[13]. She also appears at IOI events[14]. Tracey Brown appears on the Spiked website[15] and appears at IOI events.[16] Ellen Raphael also appears on Spiked and is credited with helping at IOI events.[17]

More importantly, all three contributed to LM, which was the forerunner to Spiked/IOI. LM’s co-publisher, Claire Fox, launched the IOI on the day that LM folded; shortly afterwards, LM’s ex-editor launched Spiked with LM’s other co-publisher, Helene Guldberg, as managing editor.

This has been written about by a number of commentators including myself and George Monbiot in the Guardian. For example, in Monbiot’s Guardian article, Invasion of the Entryists - he wrote about Sense About Science[18]:

“The phone number for Sense About Science is shared by the “publishing house” Global Futures. One of its two trustees is Phil Mullan, a former RCP activist and LM contributor who is listed as the registrant of Spiked magazine’s website. The only publication on the Global Futures site is a paper by Frank Furedi, the godfather of the cult. The assistant director of Sense About Science, Ellen Raphael, is the contact person for Global Futures. The director of SAS, Tracey Brown, has written for both LM and Spiked and has published a book with the Institute of Ideas: all of them RCP spin-offs. Both Brown and Raphael studied under Frank Furedi at the University of Kent, before working for the PR firm Regester Larkin, which defends companies such as the biotech giants Aventis CropScience, Bayer and Pfizer against consumer and environmental campaigners. Brown’s address is shared by Adam Burgess, also a contributor to LM. LM’s health writer, Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, is a trustee of both Global Futures and Sense About Science”.

And Science Media Centre:

“SAS has set up a working party on peer review, which is chaired and hosted by the Royal Society. One of its members is Tony Gilland, who is science and society director at the Institute of Ideas, a contributor to both LM and Spiked and the joint author of the proposal Frank Furedi made to the supermarkets. Another is Fiona Fox, the sister of Claire Fox, who runs the Institute of Ideas. Fiona Fox was a frequent contributor to LM. One of her articles generated outrage among human rights campaigners by denying that there had been a genocide in Rwanda.

“Fiona Fox is also the director of the Science Media Centre, the public relations body set up by Baroness Susan Greenfield of the Royal Institution.”

Other Monbiot articles have appeared on the LM network[19]. I have written about the group in the Guardian[20] and PR Watch.[21]

* More on Fiona Fox [the SMC's director]

In George Monbiot’s article he credits much of the work exposing the LM network to the researcher, Jonathan Matthews. His profile of Fiona Fox is accessible at: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=45

In that profile, you will see she wrote a hugely controversial article playing down the genocide in Rwanda under her “pseudonym” Fiona Foster. The Guardian called this article a “bid to rewrite history in favour of the murderers”[22]. The Guardian also noted that the article was written by Fiona Fox under the Foster alias. A piece in the Guardian Diary later quoted Fox as admitting involvement in the article.[23]

This article is far from an isolated example of Fiona’s writing for the RCP. Indeed, during a time in the 1990s she was one of LM’s most frequent contributors. It is also worth noting that although her public role in the group’s activities was less than her sister’s [Claire Fox], her known contributions to the group’s political activities were far more controversial.

For example, a document from 1997, under the headline “Contribution to OTAM” (which stands for On Tactics and Methods - a discussion process within the RCP on its future), contains some interesting views. “Fiona Foster” writes about a friend, Carol, who was suffering from ME and is on anti-depressants.

She wrote: “There are plenty more like Carol … I often think ‘there but for the grace of the RCP go I’. This secret thought is even present when I meet up with those mates who have dropped out of RCP politics. Slowly but surely they have lost their framework for understanding the world… I do feel that being one of the few people in the world who can really understand imposes a certain burden and a definite isolation. But I also feel it is a great privilidge [sic] and quite frankly, if it is [sic] choice between carrying the burden of RCP politics or ending up like my old friend Carol there’s no choice involved!”

* Irish Freedom Movement - Peace process in Ireland an “act of war”

Fox was also active in the Irish Freedom Movement (IFM - another RCP front) which was totally opposed to the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland. In the OTAM document, Foster wrote about Ireland: “To the IFM remembering exactly what you were doing when the IRA ceasefire was announced has taken on Kennedy-type proportions. Knowing for too long that the republican movement was going to compromise with imperialism didn’t seem to comfort in those first few weeks … Within weeks those of us who had really understood IFM politics were back on our feet, fighting against those who said that the ceasefire was a step forward, arguing that the peace process was an act of war, a victory for the British”.

* She also said that Oxfam are a threat to world peace

She also wrote that: “I stood on the streets of Covent Garden every Saturday for a year…I had some cracking arguments and I really believe that I sent some people away with something to think about, but in the end I just couldn’t get people to accept that Western humanitarianism and Oxfam are a bigger threat to world peace than Iraq and the serbs”.

At the time that she wrote that about Oxfam she was working for [the Roman Catholic aid agency] CAFOD. I can send you a copy of this document if you want, but it will have to be in hard copy.

These views are similar to others expressed by “Foster” in LM. In one, she interviewed Tommy McKearney, an Irish Republican jailed for the killing of a British soldier[24]. A year later LM published a highly sympathetic profile of McKearney by “Foster”[25]. It should also be noted that the RCP and the IFM never condemned any IRA atrocity even where it involved civilians.

I know that everyone has political views, and people’s views change over time. I am not interested in some McCarthyite witch-hunt. The reason for quoting these examples is simply to raise the question as to why individuals known to have been involved in a small extreme political group have clustered in this science and society area. I do not pretend to know the answer.

In response to Monbiot’s piece in the Guardian, Furedi has argued that it is wrong to think there is some kind of “revolutionary cell” out there. Maybe it is. The article in which Furedi is quoted is the Times Higher. It continued:

“So why, asks Laurie Taylor, Times Higher columnist and visiting professor of politics and sociology at Birkbeck College, London, do all these former Trotskyists agree in detail on what appears to be in essence a right-wing platform and how can they call themselves academics if they appear to deny independent thought? You might have expected them to travel in a variety of directions after the collapse of their revolutionary dream in the Nineties, but many peddle similar lines”[26].

Richard D. North, with whom I publicly disagree on many issues, has argued that “London’s scientific and cultural Establishments… were so glad of the energy and intelligence of these new arrivals - and their capacity to field numbers of highly-motivated young people - that they overlooked the possibility that the group had an agenda which was unpalatable.”[27]

* From Bosnia to biotech

This same kind of repositioning has occurred elsewhere in their network. The RCP established a parallel group in Germany which produced a sister publication to LM, called Novo. When the RCP were opposing intervention in Bosnia and denying Serb atrocities, Novo’s editor, Thomas Deichmann, “reinvented himself as a fully-fledged Bosnia expert”, in the words of the Guardian. Deichmann gave evidence for the defence in the trial of a Serbian war criminal at The Hague and also wrote a lead article for LM attacking ITN’s journalists over their Bosnia coverage. It was this article that led to LM’s demise in the ensuing libel action[28].

Post-LM, Novo is still going strong and now works in tandem with Spiked and IOI - see, for instance, the Battle of Ideas event that is happening next week-end[29]. But as issues like Serbia, Rwanda and Ireland have faded into the political background, Deichmann has reinvented himself. He has become an expert on biotechnology. To that end, he has co-authored a book on biotechnology, Das PopulSre Lexikon der Gentechnik, and has contributed articles to Novo and Spiked[30]. He also contributed to the IOI’s Genes and Society Festival[31].

* Bias

You raise the question of bias in your email to me. As you know, I quite deliberately did not label the SMC or SAS as climate sceptic organisations. This said, people have asked me why such a pro-science organisation as the SMC has done so little on climate, given that it is emerging as quite possibly the most important scientific issue of our time. Climate change is also one where there is massive anti-science lobbying, much of which is ending up in publications like the Mail, the Telegraph and the Spectator. Yet, if my memory serves me correctly, of the 120 odd press releases the SMC has issued - and which are on its website - only about four have been on climate. This compares to over 40 on issues to do with genetics and roughly another dozen each on animals in research and GM crops.

I also think there is evidence that the SMC is failing in the mission it has set itself. In its consultation report it says: “the Centre will be free of any particular agenda within science and will always strive to promote a broad spectrum of scientific opinion - especially where there are clear divisions within science”. As well as “the SMC will provide access to the wide spectrum of scientific opinion on any one issue. We can provide an anti-GM scientist and a pro-GM scientist… etc, etc”[32].

But on the exact issue it quotes, GM, it is difficult to see much evidence of the SMC promoting or providing such a spectrum. The views of scientists critical of GM are all but absent, whereas pro-GM scientists are routinely quoted. The SMC also includes quotes from the Chairman of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (ABC)[33] - a corporate lobby group for the biotech industry. Its chairman is clearly neither an eminent nor an independent scientist.

The independence of others whose views the SMC has promoted is also open to question. Some of the pro-GM scientists quoted could be regarded as campaigners or lobbyists on the issue, eg Anthony Trewavas[34] and Vivian Moses[35], who are both on the Scientific Advisory Forum of the Scientific Alliance[36]. Vivian Moses is also the Chairman of Cropgen an organization funded by industry and which has a “mission to make the case for GM crops and foods.”[37] Moses is quoted more than once in SMC media briefings.[38] In once case he is identified as the Chairman of Cropgen, but in another purely as “Visiting Professor of Biology at University College London” without any mention of the fact that he is the head of a pro-GM lobby group[39].

The SMC’s consultation document also states: “The following is a list of the kind of events the Centre has been approached to host - all of which the staff are happy to accommodate … the press launch of ABC - the new public information campaign on GM foods set up by the European biotechnology companies”[40]. I think most people would assume that any organization that hosts the launch of a corporate front organisation for the biotech industry is also pro-GM. 

The SMC has used a media briefing to attack a report by GeneWatch UK, an organization that has raised legitimate concerns over GM and cloning[41] and whose director, Dr Sue Mayer sat on the government appointed Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission.[42] Included in the SMC’s “responses from the scientific community” are quotes from representatives of several pressure groups as well as the CEO of a private company - Ardana Bioscience Ltd.

This is not a one off. For instance, in a press release on therapeutic cloning licences some of the quotes are either from pro-biogenetics campaign groups or industry, including the BioIndustry Association. Two of the people quoted: John Gillot of the Genetic Interest Group and Juliet Tizzard, then of the Progress Educational Trust, are also part of the same RCP/LM network as Fox (see above) but this is not disclosed.

* Susan Greenfield

Finally, there is also public confusion as to the exact relationship between Baroness Susan Greenfield and the role of the Royal Institution (RI) in the running of the SMC. The Baroness has described herself as the midwife of the SMC, and while the SMC is a supposedly independent entity, it is housed within the RI.

Certainly, Baroness Greenfield and the RI have allowed themselves to be associated with climate sceptic organisations and other pro-industry campaigns. For example, the RI and Greenfield have held events with the climate-sceptical Scientific Alliance, chaired by the Baroness[43]. They also co-hosted an event with [the Exxon funded] TechCentralStation, that was co-sponsored by the [Exxon funded] International Policy Network and the Social Issues Research Centre, as I have already mentioned.[44]

Professor Greenfield is also a long-time advisor to the Social Issues Research Centre[45], and they describe her as also “centrally involved with us in the development of a Code of Practice for science and health reporting”[46]. An article in the British Medical Journal has raised serious questions about what exactly SIRC and its sister organisation MCM stand for:

“On closer inspection it transpires that this research organisation shares the same offices, directors, and leading personnel as a commercial market research company called MCM Research. Both organisations are based at 28 St Clements, Oxford, and both have social anthropologist Kate Fox and psychologist Dr Peter Marsh as directors, and Joe McCann as a research and training manager.

The scenario becomes even more interesting when one reads the list of MCM’s clients. These include Bass Taverns, the Brewers and Licensed Retail Association, the Cider Industry Council, the Civil Aviation Authority, Conoco, Coral Racing, Grand Metropolitan Retail, the Portman Group (jointly funded by Bass, Courage, Guinness, etc), Pubmaster, Rank Leisure, and Whitbread Inns, as well as several Australian brewing concerns and several independent television companies.

The Social Issues Research Centre (whose website is at www.sirc.org) fosters the image of an ultraconcerned, public spirited group …MCM Research, in contrast, has a commercial approach. It describes itself as an Oxford based company that specialises in applying social science to real world issues and problems. Its website … asks: ‘Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives? MCM conducts social/psychological research on the positive aspects of your business. The results do not read like PR literature, or like market research data. Our reports are credible, interesting and entertaining in their own right. This is why they capture the imagination of the media and your customers.’”

The BMJ article asked “how seriously should journalists take an attack from an organisation that is so closely linked to the drinks industry?”[47] 

In another BMJ article, SIRC comes in for further criticism in an article on HRT. The article says: “HRT Aware [a pharmaceutical industry funded PR body] also commissioned the Social Issues Research Centre to produce a Jubilee Report (named to coincide with the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations), which last month won a Communique award from the magazine Pharmaceutical Marketing in the public relations and medical education category”[48].

References

1 http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DBCB.htm  

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DB7D.htm

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/000000005591.htm

2 http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000000542D.htm

3 http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf

4 http://www.spiked-online.co.uk/event/2002-01.htm

5 http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Science/Debates/Waste/

6 http://www.spiked-online.com/event/2003-01.htm

7 http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Science/GlobalWarming/Index.htm

8 http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAC72.htm

9 http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006E027.htm

10 http://www.spiked-online.com/panicattack/

http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78

11 http://www.spiked-online.com/panicattack/

12 http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CAA22.htm

13 http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DD11.htm

14 http://www.debatingmatters.com/C2B/document_tree/ViewADocument.asp?ID=20&CatID= 12

http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=1015

15 http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA9EC.htm

16 http://www.instituteofideas.com/events/health2005.html

http://www.instituteofideas.com/events/attention.html

17 http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000000548A.htm

http://instituteofideas.com/events/genes2003.html

18 http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/12/09/invasion-of-the-entryists/

19 http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/03/16/modified-truth/ http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1998/11/01/far-left-or-far-right/

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1997/12/18/the-revolution-has-been-televised/

20 http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,921537,00.html

21 http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2003Q1/gm.html

22 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,181819,00.html

23 http://www.guardian.co.uk/diary/story/0,,739944,00.html

24 http://web.archive.org/web/20010529171747/www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM66/LM66_Irish.html

25 http://web.archive.org/web/20010520134057/www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM75/LM75_Tommy.html

26 C. Bunting (2005) “What’s A Nice Trot Doing In A Place Like This?”, The Times Higher Education Supplement, 28 January,  No.1676; Pg.18

27 http://www.richarddnorth.com/new_stuff/spiked.htm

28 http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9703&L=twatch-l&D=1&O=D&F=P&S=&P=7954

29 http://www.novo-magazin.de/battle_of_ideas.htm

30 http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/00000006DAA7.htm

31 http://www.instituteofideas.com/events/genes2003.html

32 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/downloads/consultationreport.pdf

33 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/11-29-02_gmreview.htm

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/01-20-03_sugarbeet.htm

34 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/04-19-03_mexicanmaize.htm

35 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/03-07-11_GMreview.htm

36 http://www.scientific-alliance.com/about_us_advisory_forum.htm

37 http://www.cropgen.org

38 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/05-31-02_fieldsofgold.htm

39 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/05-31-02_fieldsofgold.htm

40 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/downloads/consultationreport.pdf

41 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/press_releases/05-14-02_genewatch.htm

42 http://www.aebc.gov.uk/aebc/about/member.shtml

43 http://www.scientific-alliance.org/events_items/past_events/sciencemeetspolitics.htm

44 http://www.spiked-online.com/panicattack/

45 http://www.sirc.org/about/susan_greenfield.html

46 http://www.sirc.org/news/guidelines.shtml

47 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/319/7211/716

48 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7411/400

ILL

I have been a little ill for the past few days and so haven’t been posting but I am on the mend now.

For today, here is an excellent little video. Will post a new article tomorrow.

This is not meant as an advert for the SNP. There are many pro-independence parties…none of whom I work for… including…

Scottish Green Party

Scottish National Party

Scottish Socialist Party

Solidarity

Free Scotland Party

Celtic League - Alba

GOOD ONE FROM HUXLEY

There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old.  

Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and 

mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it 

is demonstrably inefficient and, in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin

against the Holy Ghost.  A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the 

all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population

of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make 

them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of 

propaganda, newspaper editors, and school teachers.

…[such propagandists] accomplish their greatest triumphs, not by doing something, but by 

refraining from doing.  Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is 

silence about truth.  By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian 

propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have 

done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals.  

                                                             — Aldous Huxley, in his 1946 revised

                                                                 foreword to Brave new world

KURT VONNEGUT R.I.P.

It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.
Kurt Vonnegut

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is no longer unstuck in time. He died last night as a result of brain injuries he sustained in a fall a couple of weeks ago.

Only yesterday I was just trying to convince someone in my family to read his books. Two days ago I watched the movie of Slaughterhouse 5 (having read the book three times). He was also quote of the day the other day and so he is again today.

We have lost a genius and someone who really knew the meaning of what it was to be anti-war.

Some quotes from Kurt..

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
Kurt Vonnegut

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
Kurt Vonnegut

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.
Kurt Vonnegut

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
Kurt Vonnegut

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“I do believe evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can’t help thinking that.. and this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why and where evolution is headed and thats why we’ve got Giraffe’s and Hippopotami and the clap.”

Please watch his interview on the Daily show