BOOK REVIEWS: Back to the Future with the Food Gathering Diet

Posted by Martin Cohen*

BOOK REVIEW
Back to the Future with the Food Gatherers Diet

How we imagine hunting and gathering - in this case, on the South Texas Plains

Food Sanity: How to Eat in a World of Fads and Fiction
By David Friedman (Turner 2018).

Psst! Maybe someone should have told David Friedman, well-known media personality as well as the author of this new look at food issues – there are hardly any vegans. So if you pitch a book on 'how to eat' to that crowd, you take the risk of ending up preaching to a much reduced congregation. Add to which the serious vegans in town won't like some of what Friedman has to say, because vegans don’t eat eggs and certainly don’t eat fish. All of which only goes to show, that food is a pretty controversial and divisive issue these days, and if you want to be honest, as Friedman evidently does, you're going to have to risk trampling on the dearly held, indeed dearly munched, beliefs of lots of people.

But I hope Food Sanity does find that wider readership, because I’ve read a lot of books and articles recently about food and this one really does clear out a lot of the deadwood and present some pretty mind-boggling facts (and figures) to ‘put the record straight’, as Jack Canfield (of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame) puts it, by way of an endorsement of the book.

Take one opening salvo, that as I say, will surely lose Friedman lots of readers in one fell swoop: the Paleo or ‘Caveman’ Diet. This is probably the most popular diet going and that’s likely because it fits so excellently people’s dearly held prejudices. Plus, it allows them to eat lots of beef-burgers and chips, while cutting out things like muesli which only hippies eat anyway. But oh no, Friedman has done his research and found out that Stone Age folk didn’t really eat lots of red meat washed down with a beaker of blood, as we like to imagine. Instead, using both archaeological and anthropological research as a guide, he says that the earliest human tribes spent most of their time eating fruits and seeds, which they gathered, and probably only really sharpened the spears (or so, at least, I imagine) for internecine human disputes.

Friedman finishes his deconstruction of Paleo by consideration of human biology too: notably the fact that we just aren’t built to catch our fellow animals. We lack the right claws, teeth and general physique too. He points out, a thing curiously overlooked, that Stone Age people would have been rather short and squat - not the fine figures wielding clubs that we imagine. He retells Jared Diamond’s tale of a hunting trip by one of today’s last remaining ‘stone age’ tribes, in New Guinea. At the end of the hunt, the tribe had caught only some baby birds, frogs and mushrooms.

This is all fascinating to me, but compelling too are Friedman’s physiological observations, most particularly on the acidity of the human stomach. The gastric fluids of carnivores are very acidic (pH 1), which is essential if they are to break down the proteins and to kill bacteria. Our stomachs, however, are much less acidic (pH 5), and simply can’t tolerate much uncooked meat. And if, yes, Stone Age man might have done a bit of cooking, it would probably have been rather rudimentary with parts of the meat not really cooked.

Actually, by the time I had finished reading all of the reasons that ‘humans can't eat meat’, I was left puzzled by Friedman’s conclusion which was that a significant proportion of the prehistoric human diet (nonetheless) seems to have been meat. Less surprising was Friedman’s hearty endorsement of eggs, which surely everyone has heard by now are really not dangerous, and don’t cause heart attacks after all, and fish, which he carefully defends form claims that they are today dangerously contaminated with things like mercury.

However dairy gets the thumbs down, with a disdain that I personally felt was unjustified. Dairy, after all, is much more than drinks of cow’s milk - it is goat and sheep milk, cheese and cream too -  and an inseparable part of many dishes. We are advised here instead to swap to things like ‘almond milk’, and ‘hemp milk’ but I know these substitutes very well, and, well, they ain’t one. At least Friedman doesn’t try to suggest we switch to soya milk because, as he rightly observes, that is a food disaster just in itself

There is, to be honest, a bit too much bad news in this book - so much so that I started to skip some  sections, which fortunately the book’s modular structure permits. On the other hand, Friedman makes an effort to leaven the mix by including some good news and positive suggestions, including a two page table of the healthiest foods on earth. What are they? They're all fruits and veggies - the things that Plato and Pythagoras were praising and recommending nearly three thousand years ago. It seems that it’s time, if not indeed long overdue, to go back to following their advice.

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*Martin Cohen is the author of a forthcoming book on food issues too called I Think Therefore I Eat, which is also published by Turner, and due out in November 2018

Poetry: BREXIT and 9/11

The City of London. Although some financiers played  a key role in the
LEAVE campaign, others fear loss of access to lucrative European markets

So Why Does BREXIT* Remind Me of 9/11?

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 A poem by Chengde Chen 

Why does BREXIT remind me of 9/11?
Because the exit is like a suicide attack.
Britain, like a plane hijacked by democracy,
With her island-shaped spirit and body,
Dives into her interdependent neighbour,
Regardless of the fatal consequences of
Isolation, recession, and dismemberment…

If an action of suicide bombing
Is to perish together with the enemy,
Brexit is to do so with friends!
But, world-shaking as it is, this isn’t 9/11 yet.
The “explosion” detonated by the referendum,
is time-consuming, procedural, and reversible.

If Britain regrets the decision, she can re-vote.
Some would cry “respecting democracy”, but
Should we democrats be so “respected”
That we’re not allowed to change our mind –
But must jump off the cliff-edge mistakenly-reached?

A U-turn would, of course, not be glorious, but
Should the UK trade her existence for pride?
Where would the pride stay, anyway?
If we must make the mistake into a full disaster,
Wouldn't democracy look crazier than al-Qaeda?

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* Editorial note. 'BREXIT' is the term used to signify the process of withdrawal from the European Union by the United Kingdom, a long-standing aim of both the extreme left and right in English politics, if rather less so in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems. Readers can find out more about Chengde and his poems here

The Unelected Super-Rich Showing Brits to the Exit

Posted by Martin Cohen

On the 23rd of June 2016, the UK votes on whether or not to 'leave' the European Union and regain full control over its own affairs instead. At least, that's how the argument is put by those in favour of the move. 

For humdrum workers in industries that actually import or export products or materials to the EU, it only means higher tariffs and complicated paperwork. For bosses it means increased costs and uncertainty – and reduced investment. But for one group, it does indeed promise a splendid new dawn of 'freedom'. This group is the super-rich, and they work in financial services in the City of London.

For them the battle lines with the EU were drawn after the crash of 2007/8 which so nearly collapsed the entire Western banking system. The response, apart from pouring billions of taxpayer dollars, euros and yes, British pounds into the pockets of the injured speculators, was increased regulation.

And so the dirty secret, as I see it, of Brexit is the financial services industry jockeying for 'lighter touch' regulation. But this issue has not been given prominence - instead we have talk about conventional business, trade flows, workers rights and currency rates. A constant complaint has been that EU laws are made by people who are unelected – which is simply not true. The real levers of power in the EU remain firmly in the hands of the national governments. But no one is interested in how the EU really works, they just want to stop the 'migrants'.

The UK is obsessed with keeping out migrants. Indeed, waves of Somalis, Afghans, Iraqis and now Syrians are rather alarming – and certainly include a whole host of issues about conflicting social values. But what people mean by this is fellow Europeans. People who are better educated that the average Brit, and far more cultured, all they want to do is work hard and be useful members of the community. But many British resent or even hate them in just the same irrational way as uneducated whites hate people of colour. Because they're 'different'. This is why the British are such poor members of the Union, and if they vote themselves out of it in June, it will be this kind of nationalism that will have won it for 'Leave'.

But giving 'the great unwashed' – the lower classes – this power is not usually done. Indeed the UK is primarily voting in a rare referendum because for decades leading the (ruling) Conservative party has been impossible without assuaging the demands of a noisy Europhile group. Even now, if the UK Parliament had an unencumbered vote, they would not hesitate but to continue working within the EU. In this way, the unelected bosses of the hedge funds and spread-betting firms who have been backing the 'Leave' campaign  are driving the British where they want.

These are people like Richard Tice, co-chair of Leave; Crispin Odey, Peter Cruddas, a former Conservative Party Treasurer; Stuart Wheeler of IG; Michael Hintze, Conservative donor; not to entirely forget Edi Truell, Brexiter and again a major Conservative donor.

For these city speculators – 'value trashers', in City jargon – the possibility of the pound plummeting, of share prices collapsing, of market and political dislocations with dire and unpredictable consequences – all represent big opportunities and easy money.

Market disruption is excellent news for them, and so will any longer-term  post-Br exit dislocation.

And so, to sum up, the 'real story', as I see it, of Brexit is the worst elements of the financial services industry jockeying for 'lighter touch' regulation. It's the poachers tricking the rabbits into letting them be the gamekeepers.

Picture Post No. 13 The Worshippers

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Tessa den Uyl and Martin Cohen

Agency image from the 2016 US Presidential Primaries campaign. These fans can’t quite believe they're standing near THE Donald Trump

There’s a cartoonish air to this image, amusing and entertaining underlying something grotesque, fake and appalling, thus appealing? The (Italian) cartone, a sheet of paper, offers us a blank space to start to represent a scene. America is the land of the comic book, and of Disney.

Take the central woman who seems almost a caricature of an excited fan. Her face expresses the meeting with the unexpected. The facial expression of the boy on the left is equally intense, almost orgiastic. The woman on the right seems to unfold her ladylikeness by touching her hair and the woman behind her seems embraced by unexpected joy. Similarly ingredients for cartoon characters are mixed on paper. Perhaps this is why the picture is funny at first sight; we are recognising our own emotions in caricatures. Laughter disguises pain.

Looking up to people, (admiration) is a very human, very old phenomenom. So it touches belief, right? The belief not so much in people but in a better and in a worse universe. An age-old human trait that seems as strong as ever, and yet a bit strange in the 21st century…And so, yes, first there is this zany, ‘funny cartoon’ impression but behind the facial masks, what is hidden?

Images should make us think, like rain is the memory of plants. The scene of the enthusiastic crowd, the 'admiring throng', is an old visual stand-by. But the belief is not so much in individual people as in the existence of a better universe, populated by imaginary characters.

Terrorists, Secret Services and Private Incomes

Sceptical reflections and conspiracy theories relating to the politics surrounding the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the recent massacre in Saint Denis

 

The shooting at the start of this year of the cartoonists at the Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo has all the hallmarks of a CIA inspired brutal incident. November's massacre at Saint Denis looks much more like an attempt to replay, in the center of European social life, similar deadly outrages to those committed in towns and cities across the Middle East. Colin Kirk* teases out the links.

That most of the perpetrators of these atrocities were known to French secret services is now admitted. There are even several indications of what may have been secret service and police assistance to the Charlie Hebdo incident. Help apparently given to the get-away vehicle and discovery of the driving license dropped by the driver recalls some aspects of the slaughter of over 3000 people on the ninth of November 2001 in New York.

Charlie Hebdo was a satirical magazine before it got its current name after an atrocity in Northern France that resulted in over a couple of dozen deaths was reported in Paris as 28 dead in Northern France. It caused little stir compared with mourning for De Gaulle, who died a few days later. Un homme mort à Paris was the bold, black cover of what was thereafter called Charlie Hebdo.

President Charles De Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in his own image with draconian rights of state surveillance of its citizens that are not dissimilar to those afforded by the American Patriot Act. The State of Emergency currently in force allows police entry without warrant and arrest without charge. There really isn’t any further to go in state legal rights of citizen control, is there?

The CIA is known to have funded media to promote certain political messages in America, Britain and France in particular. On his own account, Stephen Spender, the editor of the British literary magazine Encounter, originally founded by the poet Stephen Spender, resigned  when he discovered the source of much of its 'well-wisher' donations.

Satirical media and those critical of the state were important to western democracies to demonstrate state toleration of dissent in comparison with actions of totalitarian states. Egalité and Fraternité were far less important to politicians than the sacred notion of Liberté.



Heads of State who linked arms with President Hollande to lead the Liberty March in Paris the Sunday following the Charlie Hebdo massacres included central African dictators not to mention Prime Minister Netanyahu. The simultaneous attack on a Jewish supermarket was the reason for his presence and for President Hollande’s ostentatious attendance with him at the central Paris synagogue that evening.

Anti-Semitism is the most serious taboo in France, Semites in this context being Jewish rather than Arabian Semites. Charlie Hebdo itself dismissed a journalist for writing a somewhat anti-Israeli article not long before the murders of some of its staff for drawing cartoons of Mohammad.

The murder of cartoonists horrified people who had adored Charlie Hebdo in its glory days, although it was, until the early January murders, a spent force. Je suis Charlie was displayed in posh shops. The t-shirts didn’t catch on. Here in the Normandy town where I live the Charlie Hebdo March was of elderly and middle aged lefties. And two weeks later it was all forgotten.

'Plantu', the cartoonist of Le Monde, the guy who always has a little mouse observer of the scene, made a film of international cartoonists (Caricaturistes, fantassins de la démocratie) that was released two weeks after the Charlie Hebdo killings. It was a brilliant film with world-wide coverage of cartoonists’ art, except from the sacred monarchies of Britain and Japan for some reason. Brilliant as it was it was not a box office success. Surely after the dreadful incident everyone would want to see it. But that was weeks ago, according to the local film projectionist when asked why such a small attendance in mid-February. Not here the spirited defence of the right to lampoon.

France is not unique in being media led. It certainly is media led. Flavour of the month has become flavour of the week as span of attention has contracted. The same tune is played in all the papers, on all the television channels, in almost all social gatherings; much as elsewhere world-wide.

Only the issues of immigration and Islamic terrorism are here to stay in France, as in the rest of Western Democracies or Civilisations or the International Community or any other feel-good appellation appropriate to smug arms manufacturing countries, which have caused mayhem in the Middle East and are beginning to do so in Africa. The CIA will see these issues retain top billing.

The CIA’s sundry billion dollar budget is not accounted for other than in the most general terms. The last 'almost serious' presentation to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was by Professor George Tenet, who himself had long been a member of it. President Clinton made him Director of Central Intelligence when they turned down his earlier choices. President George W. Bush kept him on as 'A charming diplomat liked by all '. Director Tenet admitted that hidden in the accounts somewhere are colossal expenditures on Hollywood films, computer war games, and subsidisation of all branches of the media on a grand scale. His wording was rather less transparent than here.

The question of the appropriate national reaction to atrocity has to take account of the reaction imposed by the media. Under and overlaying that reaction are ancient religious prejudices in a country where political prejudices have the psychic force of religious ones, not least because they tend to be interlinked. Bourgeois Catholic and Protestant Christian beliefs inform and are informed by the mainstream media feed, which is conformist and conservative. Since President Mitterrand’s second term most all politics in France have become conformist and conservative.

President Hollande, in his inaugural Presidential address, appeared to be about to break the mold: his only enemy was capitalism, which he said he was determined to release France from. He was quickly overcome by the same machinery that engulfed President Obama and will no doubt have the same success with Prime Minister Trudeau.  Shortly after, Trudeau informed Washington that Canadian planes were no longer available to the coalition, President Hollande authorized massive revenge air attacks on Islamic State (ISIS) for its agents’ revenge attacks on Saint Denis. When will we ever learn?

France, in the days of Freedom Fries, condemned the war on Iraq and subsequently fêted President Gadhafi, the key proponent, along with President Mandela, of Pan African government. These were when there were right wing governments in power. French oil interests are given as reason for government action whoever claims to lead the country. Right wing leaders have always tended to an independent line to Washington’s. In the Middle East French and Russian interests are at variance to those of the Anglo-Americans.

By and large the popular mood in France remains that of La Marseillaise - perhaps the most jingoistic and racist national anthem in the world. The French Third Republic, which led the world in consumerism, self-indulgence and free thought began with murder in 1870 of 20,000 communards and ended in 1945 with murder of a similar number of collaborators, all in Paris, and all without any legal process.

This is the country of the Dreyfus Affair, fire at the Charity Bazaar, loss of a million soldiers in the First World War, capitulation at the beginning of the second and loss of empire that was never as glorious as was made out. France has been a wounded beast ever since the Battle of Waterloo. Indeed, since Régis Debray published his Loués soient nos seigneurs; un education politique in 1996 there has been very little serious dissenting intellectual voice in France. He gives as explanation:

We are forced to witness the death throes in France of Marxist Socialists; a proud species that emerged in the nineteenth century from the crossing of the Revolution as myth with the Book as instrument but is now a technical anachronism, doomed to disappear in the global ecology of the videosphere.

These days, it seems to me that the Christianist and Christian Zionist control freaks are truly in control by means of the New York Council on Foreign Relations This private body links the State Department, Wall Street and every other power house in America. It was founded with $1000 donations of the 1000 richest Americans to control President Wilson, as honest broker at Versailles that produced the Peace Treaty signed 28 July 1919. He appeared to have achieved nothing for the United States except honest influence but appearances can be deceptive.

Alan Dulles the first Secretary of the Council went on to found the CIA, with brother John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, the family tinned fruit fortune escalated in value from millions to billions of dollars. In a democracy one looks after one’s own interests…and how!

As someone who loves France for its landscape and folkscape, probably in that order, and as someone able from personal experience to compare it with Britain and the United States, I think there’s little to choose between the three in terms of genuine dissenting analysis of the perilous state humanity is in.

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Colin Kirk writes on health and philosophical issues, poetry and classical history, whilst growing lots of fruit and vegetables in a mediaeval walled garden, to prepare and cook for guests - what has been described as a kind of ' Pythagorean GuestHouse'. A characteristic recent publication is Death of Augustus his Conversion to Christ

The Man who Invented Climate Change (and then disowned it)

Posted by Martin Cohen

The man who started it all off - Herbert Lamb. Source WP:NFCC#4

History, as ever gives an insight into the Climate Change debate. The historian of science, Bernie Lewin, has researched the views of the British scientist who for many years struggled to persuade governments that actually, yes, climate did change. Hubert Lamb, an academic and the founder of the influential Climatic Research Unit (better known by its acronym ‘CRU’) at the University of East Anglia in the UK, is conventionally credited with putting manmade Climate Change on the world agenda. He doesn't get many mentions though - because he came to detest the poltical abuses of his ideas.

Lamb was once described by one of his successors at the CRU, Trevor Davies ( probably self-servingly) as ‘the greatest climatologist of his time’. Davies credits him with ‘convincing the remaining doubters of the reality of climate variation on time-scales of decades and centuries’ and an obituary in Nature offers his great achievement as overturning the ‘old orthodoxy’ of climate stability. Other scientific admirers suggest that it was Lamb who first introduced the idea that climatic change has happened, and is still happening, on human time scales. But Bernie Lewin has no doubt that much of this is political fiction, noting that Lamb was far from the first to introduce the idea of a constantly changing climate. And where Lamb’s successor at his climate research centre found it, ‘ironic’ that even as the world became ‘acutely aware of global climate change’, Lamb maintained a guarded attitude to the importance of greenhouse warming, Lewin sees nothing odd in the position of a scientist advocating the idea of natural climate change being ‘guarded’ about the evidence of a global human influence. Awareness of past variability would rather tend towards scepticism of claims to have identified a single, new and extraordinary cause of climate change.

Hubert Lamb, in fact, was an old-school meteorologist, and there was something of a clash of cultures between those like him brought up on geology and weather records, and the new kinds of ‘climate scientists’ only recently tempted by research money into applying their mathematical skills to the natural world. Lamb expressed open scepticism of the theoretical physics used now to predict future climate trends noting that often the models failed to match reality. He argued for:

* the existence of negative feedbacks dampening warming trends where the climate modellers allowed only positive feedbacks amplifying them;
* that 20th century climate variation was better explained by natural factors (such as solar and volcanic effects);
* wonders how accurate the figures relied on for identifying relatively tiny temperature trends even were.

Such doubts led him to spend time analysing the political impetus for the new climate science, including vested interests, and the reasons why climate modelling in particular received so much support. Lamb completed his memoirs in 1997, just a few months before Kyoto, the international summit in which man-made Climate Change was given it preeminent role. In these memoirs he laments:

‘It is unfortunate that studies produced nowadays treat these and other matters related to changes of climate as if they are always, and only, attributable to the activities of Man and side-effects on the climate.’

This post is lightly adapted from Martin Cohen's book:
Paradigm Shift: How expert opinions keep changing on life, the universe, and everything

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Six smarter ways to stop the terrorists

It is important to fight the real enemy, not an imaginary one

François Hollande declared the attacks on Paris “an act of war that was waged by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, by Daesh [the Islamic State], against France.” The French president (who was at the soccer game outside which bombs were detonated), has promised that France will wage "pitiless war" against those who conceived and executed the attacks.

Now there's two ways to respond to the Paris attacks - an unthinking violent way, and a smart way. Guess which one is in favour? The influential magazine, Foreign Policy, puts it very clearly, it sees  in the streets of Paris an occasion for the ruthless application of hard power.

France has already had one outrage - in the senseless killing of a group of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists seated around their conference table. The response to that - essentially an attack on free speech - was a new law prohibiting language that the State interpreted as supportive of terrorism. In the days that followed, several hapless French motorists were given life terms in prison for breaching the new rules.

A 34-year-old man who hit a car while drunk, injuring the other driver and goaded the police when they detained him by praising the acts of the Hebdo killers was sentenced to four years in prison. In the following days, according to Cédric Cabut, a French prosecutor, a good hundred people were investigated or charged with making or posting comments that 'supported terrorism'. Of course, the charges were ridiculous. But the principle of 'free speech' the cartoonists had died for was buried further.

And rather than arrest and carefully dissect the mindset of the terrorists, the government organised a spectacular 'shoot out' with them, which left the media satisfied but the nation deprived of an opportunity for a meaningful investigation into the underlying issues.

And now less that a year on, another and indeed worse tragedy, underlines the failure to learn anything from the first one.

The immediate response was to 'close the borders' - a grand slamming shut of the characteristic French shutters  -  to stop terrorists getting in or out. This involved several hundred thousand police and army. But it was entirely irrelevant to a terrorist cell made up largely of European (three were from Brussels!), indeed, French, nationals.

So let me tentatively and in a spirit of solidarity, offer the French authorities some more 'analytical' six ideas on behalf of the ordinary people of France  - not the government or the security forces - who were the chosen targets as well as the victims in both attacks.

1. There is no way to stop small groups of people killing ordinary citizens. You can protect your elites, but cannot protect the vast majority. Thus the real battle is for minds and hearts.

"A 242-ship Navy will not stop one motivated murderous fanatic from emptying the clip of an AK-47 into the windows of a crowded restaurant."

2. It follows from this that the security services must work under and for the people, not on top of and against them, as has always been the case in France. The most egregious example of what happens when the security services operate in isolation from the people came in the Second World War when the gendarmerie rounded up Jews for transportation to the Nazi death camps.

3. Instead of these 'muscular' reasons - immediately proffered again by the French politicians - there should be an intelligent response, both in terms of social policy and in terms of security. Suspicious individuals, of whom for example returned jihadis are an obvious and entirely manageable group, should be individually watched and their activities curtailed. Policies directed against the 60 million French people - such as closing the borders, searching all vehicles etc etc - are not only an abuse of power but a waste of resources.

4. The French State needs to respect citizens of all religious persuasions. It simply won't do, for example, to  impose pork on Muslims (or Jews, or indeed vegetarians) in school canteens, nor is there any rational argument for opposing the wearing of headscarves. Face-obscuring garments I think are in a different category. There is a tendency to seek the erasure of religion today rather than the freedom of religion. At the same time, radical Islam itself seems to advance by encroaching on the laws of a nation. It expands its ‘territory’, where other religions focus on heart.

5. Part of the State's obligations to all its constituent groups is to ensure equality of opportunity - and to actively combat inequality. It is in the swamps of the sprawling suburbs of the cities, that the Hebdo killers festered. Jihadis are by no means explained as simply frustrated workers, but on the other hand, their twisted senses of grievance are fuelled by the extremes they see in life around them.

6. The militarisation of the police and the frequent use of the army by the French State creates inevitably a response, and the people who suffer most, as we have seen now, are the weakest and most defenceless. It is thus shameful to hear the drum beating and the clamouring for more 'resources' from the security services that have so clearly let down their citizens.

Europe needs to think outside the box, not only about war but about peace.  I sense that it needs fundamentally new ideas, even mindsets, and an openness to new ideas without its obsession to preserve what it has, or idolises. 

But there's one other practical step that can be taken. Stop propping up the anti-democratic regimes in the Gulf States. The ones behind 9/11, and many other atrocities worldwide - and now the new horror in Paris.

Picture Post No. 4 The Dan Dare Badge

'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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Posted by Martin Cohen and Ken Sequin

 

Team affiliations: Interplanetary Space Fleet

Hey, have you got Dan Dare's cap badge?

Alas, no, sigh...  yet another aspirational challenge failed... this one long ago from the small ads in boys magazines in the 1950s along with other, pointed advice about beach physiques and stamp collecting. Dan's 'authentic' cap badge in brilliant red, black and yellow, that is, with its steel torpedo shaped spaceship at the centre? Surely everyone would want such a badge - but there was a catch. You had to be a member of the Horlicks Spacemen's Club to get one. Not an insurmountable obstacle to be sure, but money was involved.

Dan, or to give him his full title, Colonel Daniel McGregor Dare, was a very British hero, with very British values, such as all parents might hope their boys would aspire to. Throughout the 1950s he rocketed around the Solar System pulling off incredible feats of piloting skills and facing up to the most awful predicaments with a stiff jaw and those famous way eyebrows. Curiously, his spaceship, Anastasia, was named after his Aunt.

There was of course a serious side too to the strip (and the popular radio serialisation) because Dan was in fact involved in fighting evil, personified in the scheming Venusian dictator, the Mekon. Not that they went on about it much, the founder of the Eagle (the comic Dan appeared in), the Rev. Marcus Morris, was vicar of the Southport church of St James at the time, and another clergyman, Rev. Dr. Chad Varah, wrote key scripts in the early years. Of more pressing import to badge wearers, was to be involved in battling the fiendishly cunning oppressor of the the reptilian inhabitants of that watery planet known as 'the Treens'. Unfortunately, for all Dan's policeman-like efforts, the Mekon escaped at the end of each story ready to return with an even more inventive scheme for the conquest of Earth…

More affiliations…

The Eagle  folded long ago (in 1969) but Dan still jets around from time to time. As well as several new comic incarnations, there have been more radio serialisations, and some musical appreciations too. Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett wrote Dan Dare into his song 'Astronomy Domine', from the band's debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, with the line 'Stairway scare, Dan Dare, who's there?' Elton John recorded 'Dan Dare (Pilot Of The Future)' for his 1975 album Rock Of The Westies and the British punk rock group The Mekons included a song 'Dan Dare' on their album The Quality of Mercy is not Strnen (sic).

As to the badges, well, its not too late, you can buy brand new ones plated in 24 carat gold for the surprisingly modest price of about £10. But the 'authentic' badge, was not made of metal, but of plastic.That's the space age!

Things you don’t want anyone to know when wearing the badge

Colonel Dan Dare was originally 'Chaplain' Dan Dare of Space Fleet, with rather dull pastoral duties. Only at the very last minute did he swap hats to become the dashing space pilot that boys and girls might really aspire to follow.

The Power of Man

Posted by Gregory Kyle Klug
      and Thomas Scarborough

What is man?  The answers to this question vary – typically according to the scientific discipline which asks it.  Chemistry, genetics, biology, psychology, history, or religion, all yield different answers as to what man is.  

In fact all of these disciplines are in some way symptomatic of the essence of man, and none should we dare to exclude from our explorations.  And then, too, since the middle of the 20th century, linguistics has joined the inquiry into the nature of 'man' – language being what we call a semiotic code which reveals (in coded form) much about the structure and function of the mind.  With this in mind, the purpose here is to reflect on the importance of a single word in our language in revealing what man is, namely: 'power'.

'Power' has one of the highest word frequencies in English.  According to research of the University of Central Lancashire, 'power' boasts 385 occurrences per million.  This makes it a word which is weightier than love and war and the weather.  It plays a bigger part in our language than dogs and cats, and hours and minutes. Plato, in fact, implied that this is the one word which defines man.  What he (or she) does with power, he wrote, is 'the measure of a man'.

At first sight,  it might seem difficult to discern any coherence in the many variant definitions of power.  In fact sociologists David and Julia Jary present it as a prime example of an 'essentially contested word'.  We speak of the power of an earthquake, one's power of mind, colonial power, a power pitcher, the power of a performance, even the power which one has over one's own self.  How might we derive, from all these many uses of 'power', a unified insight into the nature of 'man'?

Power is a 'transformational capacity', wrote the sociologist Anthony Giddens.  'Despite resistance', wrote the sociologist Max Weber.  In fact, on closer inspection, it is the triumph of power over resistance in all our human activities which would seem most appropriately to define it.  This is a definition, too, which we can universalise: power is 'the ability to overcome significant resistance in a relatively short period of time':

• Physical power: Military power overcomes the resistance of enemy forces. 
• Social power: A popular movement overcomes the resistance of history.
• Intellectual power: A theory resists being known, until the power of mind reveals it. 
• Moral power: We have the power to choose against the resistance of pain, and pleasure.
• Power of imagination: The imagination overcomes the resistance of familiarity.  And
• Sexual power:  All resistance crumbles (need we say more)?

Contrast this with the eighteenth century French philosopher Paul d'Holbach, the first to (scandalously) suggest that the laws of Newton now applied to man: '[Man] is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control.' Yet power, if we are to believe the linguistic evidence, belongs to the very essence of man, in virtually every sphere.  In fact, it is a theme of Biblical proportions.  The opening chapters of Genesis grandly portray not only the power of God, but man's procreative power, physical power, and intellectual power. 

Power is far more than the narrow conception of it which was extolled by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: namely, the 'will to power' which drives us to achieve.  Rather, it is to be found in all the ordinary moments of life.  And this is not who we may yet become, but who we are. 

O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

–William Shakespeare

_______________________________

A single post does not permit a survey of the many aspects and examples of power.  Author Gregory Kyle Klug unfolds further thoughts on the subject at The Philosopher and at What is Power?

The Power of Man

Posted by Gregory Kyle Klug
      and Thomas Scarborough

What is man?  The answers to this question vary – typically according to the scientific discipline which asks it.  Chemistry, genetics, biology, psychology, history, or religion, all yield different answers as to what man is.  

In fact all of these disciplines are in some way symptomatic of the essence of man, and none should we dare to exclude from our explorations.  And then, too, since the middle of the 20th century, linguistics has joined the inquiry into the nature of 'man' – language being what we call a semiotic code which reveals (in coded form) much about the structure and function of the mind.  With this in mind, the purpose here is to reflect on the importance of a single word in our language in revealing what man is, namely: 'power'.




'Power' has one of the highest word frequencies in English.  According to research of the University of Central Lancashire, 'power' boasts 385 occurrences per million.  This makes it a word which is weightier than love and war and the weather.  It plays a bigger part in our language than dogs and cats, and hours and minutes. Plato, in fact, implied that this is the one word which defines man.  What he (or she) does with power, he wrote, is 'the measure of a man'.

At first sight,  it might seem difficult to discern any coherence in the many variant definitions of power.  In fact sociologists David and Julia Jary present it as a prime example of an 'essentially contested word'.  We speak of the power of an earthquake, one's power of mind, colonial power, a power pitcher, the power of a performance, even the power which one has over one's own self.  How might we derive, from all these many uses of 'power', a unified insight into the nature of 'man'?

Power is a 'transformational capacity', wrote the sociologist Anthony Giddens.  'Despite resistance', wrote the sociologist Max Weber.  In fact, on closer inspection, it is the triumph of power over resistance in all our human activities which would seem most appropriately to define it.  This is a definition, too, which we can universalise: power is 'the ability to overcome significant resistance in a relatively short period of time':

• Physical power: Military power overcomes the resistance of enemy forces. 
• Social power: A popular movement overcomes the resistance of history.
• Intellectual power: A theory resists being known, until the power of mind reveals it. 
• Moral power: We have the power to choose against the resistance of pain, and pleasure.
• Power of imagination: The imagination overcomes the resistance of familiarity.  And
• Sexual power:  All resistance crumbles (need we say more)?

Contrast this with the eighteenth century French philosopher Paul d'Holbach, the first to (scandalously) suggest that the laws of Newton now applied to man: '[Man] is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control.' Yet power, if we are to believe the linguistic evidence, belongs to the very essence of man, in virtually every sphere.  In fact, it is a theme of Biblical proportions.  The opening chapters of Genesis grandly portray not only the power of God, but man's procreative power, physical power, and intellectual power. 

Power is far more than the narrow conception of it which was extolled by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: namely, the 'will to power' which drives us to achieve.  Rather, it is to be found in all the ordinary moments of life.  And this is not who we may yet become, but who we are. 

O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

–William Shakespeare

_______________________________

A single post does not permit a survey of the many aspects and examples of power.  Author Gregory Kyle Klug unfolds further thoughts on the subject at The Philosopher and at What is Power?

A New role for wikis? How collaborative spaces could revive the wiki ethos.

Why social media, after contributing to the decline of Wikipedia, could need new forms of Wikis



By Pierre-Alain (Perig) Gouanvic

A little commented upon, but very significant, milestone was passed somewhere in the middle of the noughties (2000-2009), when the number of new accounts being born at Wikipedia became inferior to the number of ones marked as "deceased" — that is, accounts of Wikipedians who had grown angered, bored, or otherwise uninterested by the project. This invisible trend coincides with the rise of social networks and blogs. All other attempts to recreate online collaborative encyclopedias failed. Citizendium is a legendary failure to be remembered in the textbooks.

Blogs, as well as, later and to a greater extent, social networks, made possible the encounter of more-or-less like-minded people, from low-life bullies to high ranking academics (both qualifications not being mutually exclusive). What happens on a social network, and increasingly in all digital versions of newspapers and many websites, is that commenting and arguing have found a new home, after it has become obvious that the number one search engine result for most things, Wikipedia, has become policed and sterilized by rules and oligarchies. Most websites have their comments sections, often in communication with one of the two major social networks.

In the process, the Web has matured into its predicted second phase, Web 2.0, wherein spectators have become actors.
Not to say that they are autonomous, free, and emancipated. Rather, readers are used to create content that they will consume and comment on: everybody is naturally (and without pay) contributing, through web visits metrics, content sharing, "citizen journalism" (proletarian journalism in fact). The most popular of public intellectuals are constantly fed with news and insights by their readers, so that they are better able to feel what will most please their audience.

Now on to Web 3.0. Or, in other words, what's next, to avoid pretentious terminology. The next stage is perhaps closer than we think. Perhaps it's already there and, far from being this "semantic web" so many technicians dream about, perhaps it is, after the transformation of people by the web and the transformation of the Web by people, the webbing of people. Of people who have been exposed to the Web and have lived the pain of becoming a drop in the furious ocean of information. What Theodore Sturgeon called "bleshing".

Jean-Jacques Rousseau warned the Encyclopedists of the precise problems that later rampaged freely through Wikipedia (and Citizendium, and other knowledge oligarchies): specialization and a thrist for power, in a place like an Encyclopedia, will make "Men" even more evil than if they were ignorant. Diderot's answer back then was that what would prevent his Encyclopedia from such catastrophe would be friendship.

(Of course, he was not speaking of the alienated, private and exclusive version of friendship that has become the norm nowadays. Perhaps "solidarity" is a closer modern equivalent. But this word is mainly used to describe friendships or alliances in the context of repression or other hardships. It is a close parent of (another buzzword) "resistance".)

Diderot's view of friendship was dignified: exalting knowledge and passion, art and ethics, universality and practicality. One can witness instances of this friendship in social networks, where there is no requirement to create a well-regulated and policed collaborative encyclopedic page.

But what is lost, in those spontaneous spaces of shared understanding (of each other and of some stuff) and shared ignorance, is permanence. Wikis offer permanence and, at same time, the type of flexibility that is required for a number of different persons to coexist and blesh.

However, such powerful structures have one inconvenience that stems precisely from their strength : these micro-Webs evolve in relative autonomy from the larger Web, and especially from the more labile social networks.

Perhaps collaborative spaces with an ethos like Diderot's are needed by "socially networked" people for them to really achieve what seems to be a constantly disappointed hope. Perhaps PI is one of them.

BBC propaganda

BBC propaganda

An alarming insight into how the BBC operates?
 

 

  Who's Churning the BBC Machine?

 • 'How the BBC became a propaganda machine for climate change zealots 
 - as recounted by its former news frontman, Peter Sissons

Based on  the Daily Wail story which in turn drew on Peter Sissons's memoirs, with additional comments by Pi editors.

Sissons diagnoses it as 'political correctness'. Worrying about manmade climate change was an incontrovertible duty - a view also taken, for example, at the Guardian and the Times newspapers. But Sisson's writes:

'From the beginning I was unhappy at how one-sided the BBC's coverage of 
the issue was, and how much more complicated the climate system was than 
the over-simplified two-minute reports that were the stock-in-trade of 
the BBC's environment correspondents.

These, without exception, accepted the UN's assurance that 'the science 
is settled' and that human emissions of carbon dioxide threatened the 
world with catastrophic climate change. Environmental pressure groups 
could be guaranteed that their press releases, usually beginning with 
the words 'scientists say..'. would get on air unchallenged.

On one occasion, an MP used BBC airtime to link climate change doubters 
with perverts and holocaust deniers, and his famous interviewer didn't 
bat an eyelid.

On another occasion, after the inauguration of Barack Obama as president in 2009, the science correspondent of Newsnight actually informed viewers: 
'scientists calculate that he has just four years to save the world'. What she didn't tell viewers was that only one alarmist scientist, NASA's James Hansen, had said that.

My interest in climate change grew out of my concern for the failings of 
BBC journalism in reporting it. In my early and formative days at ITN, I 
learned that we have an obligation to report both sides of a story. It 
is not journalism if you don't. It is close to propaganda.




The BBC is bound by charter, of course, to be accurate and not conduct campaigns for causes. Exceptions however, can be authorised. The BBC's editorial policy on climate change was spelled out in a report by the BBC Trust in 2007. This announced that the BBC had held 'a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus'.

The Trust promised thqt that climate change dissenters had been, and still would be, heard on its airwaves. 'Impartiality' in keeping with their status as a 'minority view'. The BBC report adds: 'as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space.' (By which it meant the same sort of thing as allowing racist parties might be allowed to comment on immigration policy, for example.)

Indeed, Sissons notes: 'In reality, the 'appropriate space' given to minority views on climate change was practically zero.'

One mystery that has perplexed PI researchers, is who WAS at this important seminar assessing the status of climate science. Numerous Freedom of Information requests have for the guest list have been brushed off - but then a list turned up on the Wayback Machine revealing that they were... a mix of amateurs, business men with profits to make from the AGW scare - and greenies.

For a start, the seminar was partly funded by the UK government and organised in conjunction with a lobby group called the International Broadcasting Trust, both of which had a particular policy aim of increasing coverage about human environmental damage.

Likewise Exeter is a nice town, but it’s an awfully long way from Broadcasting House in London. But it is the base of the UK government’s research unit whose job is to produce evidence of the effects of human-made global warming. 

When an Italian climate sceptic found the names of the people at the expert conference on a long-forgotten web-page the cat was really out of the bag. The list showed that far from a representative sample of scientific opinion, the meeting consisted of scientists whose jobs revolved around proving the theory of human-made climate change; campaigners whose commitment to the cause of fighting global warming was in inverse proportion to their expert knowledge; and groups with financial interests such as British Petroleum.

This all came out after Sissons wrote his memoris. But in these, he says that there is one brief account of the proceedings, written by a conservative commentator who was there.

'He wrote subsequently that he was far from impressed with the 30 key BBC staff who attended. None of them, he said, showed 'even a modicum of professional journalistic curiosity on the subject'. None appeared to read anything on the subject other than the Guardian.'

And, as we know too, Guardian journalists, even so-called environment ones, rely on Wikipedia! for their information.

Sissons adds that this attitude was underlined a year later in another statement: 'BBC News currently takes the view that their reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global 
warming is man-made.'

'Those scientists outside the 'consensus' waited in vain for the phone to ring', notes Sissons.
'It's the lack of simple curiosity about one of the great issues of our 
time that I find so puzzling about the BBC. When the topic first came to 
≠prominence, the first thing I did was trawl the internet to find out as 
much as possible about it. Anyone who does this with a mind not closed by religious fervour will 
find a mass of material by respectable scientists who question the 
orthodoxy. Admittedly, they are in the minority, but scepticism should 
be the natural instinct of scientists -  and the default setting of 
journalists.'

Yet the cream of the BBC's inquisitors during my time there never laid a 
glove on those who repeated the mantra that 'the science is settled'. 
On one occasion, an MP used BBC airtime to link climate change doubters 
with perverts and holocaust deniers, and his famous interviewer didn't 
bat an eyelid.
(PI adds: This is probably a reference to the present Deputy Prime Minister of the UK, Nick Clegg, who used this comparisonn in the pre-election debates. Clegg's wife has a good reason to be concerned about the issue - she is the director of a business that makes wind turbines, and relies on government largesse.)

Sissons makes another interesting point too:

'Meanwhile, Al Gore, the former U.S. Vice-President and climate change 
campaigner, entertained the BBC's editorial elite in his suite at the 
Dorchester and was given a free run to make his case to an admiring 
internal audience at Television Centre.'

At the BBC, Gore's views were above journalistic scrutiny, 'even when a 
British High Court judge ruled that his film, An Inconvenient Truth, 
≠contained at least nine scientific errors, and that ministers must send 
new guidance to teachers before it was screened in schools. From the 
BBC's standpoint, the judgment was the real inconvenience, and its 
environment correspondents downplayed its significance.'

Sissons also records how daily reporting turned into daily applauding:

'At the end of November 2007 I was on duty on News 24 when the UN panel 
on climate change produced a report which later turned out to contain 
significant inaccuracies, many stemming from its reliance on non-peer 
reviewed sources and best-guesses by environmental activists.'

But the way the BBC's reporter treated the story was as if it was beyond 
a vestige of doubt, the last word on the catastrophe awaiting mankind. 
The most challenging questions addressed to a succession of UN employees 
and climate activists were 'How urgent is it and 'How much danger are 
we in?' Back in the studio I suggested that we line up one or two sceptics to 
react to the report, but received a totally negative response, as if I 
was some kind of lunatic.'