Media Lens vs George Monbiot

Although I worship George he is not without his faults, as the Media Lens posse have elucidated.

The Media Lens boys extensively detail sources who have reported that Iraqis are manufacturing their own IED devices, known as Explosively Formed Penetrators, or EFPs. The US claims that these are, in fact, being supplied by the Iranians is cast as the nonsense that it is (they, actually had substantial evidence that the technology was transferred from Hezbollah, NOT Iranian sources). The British Army knows that Shia militias are making their own and other iraqi machine shops have also been doing so for years. George didn't know this, apparently.

The closing paragraphs are particularly powerful:

"And so, while the media continue to capitalise on any excuse to promote a “clash of civilisations” between the West and “militant Islam”, it remains a remarkable fact that the ‘threats’ faced are mostly invented. Much of the actual violence against the West has been, and will continue to be, in retaliation for grave Western crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere consuming literally millions of lives.

The simplest way for the West to bring its “war on terror” to a successful conclusion would be for it to stop waging war and to renounce terrorism."

Monbiot: Combatting climate change requires completely decarbonising the economy

George rules.

many UK MPs are essentially highly paid lobbyists

From George's archives.

how to write a powerful polemic, with Robert Fisk and George Monbiot

Two further articles of note today. Firstly Robert Fisk's review of the film "Rendition" together with assorted background details of the true story the plot was derived from. Secondly, we have George's nice little roasting of Western government's embrace of the biofuel greenwash.

George Monbiot, poker of sleeping dragons

On a topical theme George has slagged laissez-faireism in the UK economy and has shat all over some moron called Matt Ridley. As usual, the businesses and vested interests are all on one side going "free us from the tyranny of regulation and we will create utopia!" whilst all informed, rational, sane people are on the other side going "well, no. Actually, you won't. What you'll do is create an opaque system of an epically corrupt nature where money is diverted away from societally rewarding endpoints and into the pockets of the already mega-rich".

You see kids, that's the point of legislation. You can't trust vested interests to govern themselves. Its like giving children the keys to the sweet shop and telling each of them to make sure that the others don't steal any sweets. Sooner or later their immature minds achieve the transcendant state of cooperating for their net good whilst presenting a united front of innocence whenever the shopkeeper returns to find half his stock missing.

As George alludes to, even where you have legislation vested interests work to subvert attempts to enforce its reasonable rules and limits by creating truly opaque accounting systems that are so complex they are effectively inscrutable to legislators. Behind this screen all sorts of dodgy business can be carried out at a subtle level- but that subtle level is surely better than the outrageous self-interest that would predominate in the absence of any legislation whatsoever!

more choice excerpts from Captive State by George Monbiot

here we go:

Our own department of trade and industry had the following to say:

"Environmental regulations can cause an excessive increase in the cost [of supplying services] and become in themselves barriers to trade'.

-DTI, 1999 - Liberalising trade in Services: A consultative document on the 'GATS 2000' negotiations in the world trade organisation and forthcoming bilateral negotiations

Another DTI paper suggested that companies should face only voluntary codes for protecting the environment, and then only when it suits 'their own business reasons'.
DTI, 1999 - International investment: The next steps



Yes, that's our government actually advocating the elimination of legislation protecting the public from corporate attempts to avoid the costs of pollution. Well done Tony & Gordon ! ! !

You fuckers!

domination of government advisory panels by industry representatives and other vested parties

I'm reading George Monbiot's Captive State. Its excellently researched and its message is clear and well presented. Here's a piece from his chapter on the subject heading:

"Until the day before he became Minister for Science and Technology, another sub-committee, called the Food Chain Group, was, as I mentioned in Chapter 8, chaired by Lord Sainsbury. His report, published like all the others by the government's Department of Trade and Industry, expressed the hope that in the future 'the precautionary principle is abandoned'".

Nice. The chapter is full of examples of supposed bastions of public interest either voicing the corporate line or actually advocating the reduction, removal or reversal of legislation protecting the public in order to ease the burden of responsibility on the corporation or corporations in question. Call me idealistic but I was under the impression that government was there to protect the public against exploitation; not to fund, facilitate and defend such exploitation in the name of some overarching capitalist principle which generates wealth for a minority at the expense of the majority. Corporations already have ample scope to turn empty, sociopathic gestures into good publicity and increased revenue. Some might consider a little too much, even.

Another example:

"The Retail and Consumer Services Foresight Panel, chaired by Sir John Banham, the head of Tarmac, warns of the 'potentially dire' impact of growing concerns about the environment. The consequences of these concerns, such as 'increasing difficulty in carrying out green field developments coupled with attempts to restrict traffic and reduce congestion', would result, inexplicably, in 'fewer women . . . working', 'cuts in state pensions' and a collapse in living standards."

Hmmmmmmmmm, and why is this disaster capitalism model being financed and promoted with our taxes again??

There's so much more in the book- you have to read it!

More:

"While openness has long informed the ethics of science, corporations demand confidentiality. Information that the companies find uncomfortable can be withheld, even when it arises from projects half-funded by the government: The LINK programme, for example, grants discretion over whether or not to publish results to the corporate partners. The free flow of ideas is further impeded by the need to secure corporate intellectual property."

Brown helps restart the cold war

George has done his usual comprehensive job of shitting all over Brown's false rhetoric.

Monbiot interviewed about his book, Heat

This is a great interview with George (its 1 of 4 - the others aren't hard to find). He lands a few crushing body blows on the UK's climate change policy. The line about the government's chief scientist is simultaneously hilarious and appalling.

Alexander Cockburn is a cockweasel

This bloke is so hideously sociopathic that he actually claims that peer-review is a corrupt process that has allowed climate science to become dominated by climactic-apocalysts. Now, no-one who understands peer-review thinks its perfect but you have to be utterly ignorant of the process to call it corrupted. Read Monbiot's rebuttals and see how sad this Cockburnweasel is.