How to Defy Weaponised Media Narratives

Posted by Jeremy Dyer

‘The 2000 Yard Stare’

A 1944 illustration by Thomas C. Lea III

depicting World War II.

It’s just bad news, it will pass, right? But why does it make me feel so depressed? Why does it eat away at my peace and happiness? Why do I constantly feel this uneasiness? Why can I not shake off this feeling of impending doom? You are mercilessly and relentlessly pressured to adopt one of the binary positions of ideological narratives.  Ideological violence is in fact a war, with real-world consequences. 

At this time in history, suicides are rising – I won’t post the references, but it is logical. So. For those people, the stress became unbearable. I saw someone have a major Coronaphobia freak out at the grocery store a few days ago. What is unquestionably all around, is:

Personal financial fear

Concern for the future of the world

Rampaging looting, stealing, and killing

Stress around lockdowns and regulations

Lack of normal outlets such as gym, restaurants, and social gatherings

A media onslaught of negativity

‘Doomscrolling’ 

You can look after yourself, stop watching the news – or schedule a time for it – eat healthy, start a plan for a better job, cut your social media time wastage, exercise in some other way, chat with positive friends ... yet in the face of the war, it is a daily effort and discipline, isn’t it? It is exactly like fighting a mental war every day. 

You war with the things you have to do physically. 

You war with the people you come into contact with (I was a teacher, so I know).

And then there is that fuzzy, insidious pyscho-ideological war. On this last point, I am referring to the tsunami of negative, emotionally-driven ‘news’ and more importantly the ‘narratives’ (ideological viewpoints) that inform such news. Memes, articles, sound bites, and so on.

What is going on?

It is this ideological war that drives most of the depressing news – 5G is killing you, you are a racist, the planet is dying, history is all wrong, magical love is the answer to everything, coconut and cannabis oil cure all illness, socialism is better than capitalism, the normals must worship the weirdos and awfuls, another virus is being created to kill us, a murderous Uhuru is coming, vegans are better than carnivores, BDSM is better sex, world food is running out, all GM food is poisonous, the government controls you, the media is all lies ... 

It’s a long list covering a lot of issues.

The thing to note is that each of these messages is absolute and crystalised – very little shades of grey in any of them. Each intrusive narrative is polarised, like the Dems and ’Pubs in the USA. You are mercilessly and relentlessly pressured to adopt one of the binary positions in each of these ideological narratives. They are now ‘weaponised’, and they seek to enforce compliance in you – join the riots, burn the 5G towers, boycott Chinese goods, buy a gun, eat only vegetables, stock up on food, hate men, hate women, wear a face-mask, don’t wear a face mask ...

Doubt, fear, uncertainty ... depression and anxiety. This is logical when confronted with ‘evidence’ from both sides of these aggressive narratives. The whiplash from the changing evidence of experts alone – on life, the universe, and everything – leaves us all in need of physiotherapy.

‘What is revolt?’ asked Albert Camus. ‘Simply defined, it is the Sisyphean spirit of defiance in the face of the Absurd … in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance.’ What kind of defiance remains, then, which will not find you caught up in the war? 

One has to either sift through all these narratives, to find one’s position on any number of issues… (Some people are able to do this, but many are too ADD or incapable. Some choose to believe the fictions of conspiracy theories instead, because it is simpler and easier. Facts and science are irrelevant after all, only opinion matters in what you choose to believe. Wow, talk about dangerous.) 

Or ...

Cultivate an attitude of defiance! 

Look after your own wellbeing. Mind, body and spirit. Reject mental poison.

Do the things that make you happy.

Pursue your meaning.

Say to yourself :

Siss China!

Siss the face masks!

Siss the vegans!

Siss MAGA!

Siss Antifa!

Siss the 5G towers! 

Go fishing. Go swimming. Get seriously sceptical. Take a news fast. Find a lover. Get an awesome sense of humour – loads for free on the internet if you need priming. Be unconventional, meet cool people, do new stuff. Be cheeky, be awesome! Be a thought leader, not a follower. Hey! Find God, if that is what it takes!

Siss the news!

Siss the conspiracies!

Siss depression and negativity!

African Propaganda In a Nutshell

Posted by Sifiso Mkhonto

Change is happening all over the world. It is impossible to stand still. Yet as we change, there are those who would wish to influence that change—some in a positive and some in a negative way. My intention is to focus on invidious change that others seek to bring about through propaganda. Specifically, in Africa.

Propaganda is biased, misleading, and intends to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines propaganda as ‘the active manipulation of opinion by means that include distortion or concealment of the truth.’ It usefully distinguishes between ’agitation propaganda, which seeks to change attitudes, and ‘integration propaganda’ which seeks to reinforce existing attitudes.

Africa has been the victim of both agitation propaganda and integration propaganda—and while propaganda anywhere in the world may share the same characteristics, I here offer examples which are characteristically African, which Africans are primarily aware of—or ought to be. Mark Nichol, a writer, offers these four useful descriptions of propaganda, from which I develop my thoughtful analysis:

• An appeal to prejudice, or the black-and-white fallacy. Africa is a place of unusually stark contrasts, historical, cultural, social, and geographical. Politicians and religious leaders exploit this by presenting only two alternatives, one of which is identified as undesirable. They do so to exploit an audience’s desire to believe that it is morally or otherwise superior. However, the goal is the pleasure of the propagandists, regardless of whether the victim is in poverty or has riches.

• An appeal to fear. Africa still wrestles with fundamental issues, more so than other regions of the world, so that it faces many fears and uncertainties. Propagandists exploit fear and doubt, disseminating false or negative information, to undermine adherence to an undesirable belief or opinion. They do so to exploit audience anxieties or concerns through fear of political identity, gender, race, tribes, and religious or traditional practices.

• Half-truths. Governments and political parties in Africa tend to be secretive about information, which may further be difficult for the public to access. Full knowing the full truth, they still make statements that are partly true or otherwise deceptive to further their own agenda. The government often disguises this as a matter of national security, so that the full truth lies under a veil of secrecy.

• Obfuscation and glittering generalities. In Africa, the spoken word may have priority over the written word, so that it is received personally, not critically. Propagandists resort to vague communication and word prejudices intended to confuse the audience as it seeks to interpret the message. In South Africa, the ruling party has for each election campaign used this method to continue holding power. It tells the story of apartheid history and how its injustices ought to be fixed, however may only be fixed if each person votes in remembrance of their leaders who fought the apartheid system.

Where does the solution lie? It surely lies in our personal choice, as to whether to accept or reject what we see, read, and hear. Our identity and its underlying attitudes are changed over time, through those choices that we make—and our ideology, which is the consequence of what we were and are exposed to, often plays a crucial role in shaping our perception of what is truth and propaganda.

As individuals, we need to examine our judgements of information at the bar of mature reasoning, in order to avoid judging amiss and believing the propaganda. If we continue to fail this test, propaganda will prevail as it allows what is biased popular opinion to turn into the judgement of the minority opinion.  This then infringes on the right we all ought to or do have—freedom of speech.

The theologian Isaac Watts gives us this timely advice:

‘When a man of eloquence speaks or writes upon any subject, we are too ready to run into his sentiments, being sweetly and insensibly drawn by the smoothness of his harangue, and the pathetic power of his language. Rhetoric will varnish every error so that it shall appear in the dress of truth, and put such ornaments upon vice, as to make it look like virtue: it is an art of wondrous and extensive influence: it often conceals, obscures, or overwhelms the truth and places sometimes a gross falsehood in a most alluring light.’ 

Let us use logic as the measure of reasoning and sharing information. Not biased opinion from an eloquent man.

Picture Post #17 The Mask

---

'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

The headquarters of Mussolini's Italian Fascist Party, 1934 via the Rare Historical Photos website

The curious thing about this image is that it looks so much like an over-the-top film set. The dictator looks down on the hurrying-past public, from the facade of the Party HQ. Which in this case is imaginatively, yet also somehow absurdly, covered in graffiti - in the original sense of writing or drawings that have been scribbled, scratched, or painted. The 'Si, si, si' is of course Italian for 'Yes', which is actually not so sinister. The occasion was the the 1934 elections, in which Italians were called to vote either For or Against the Fascist representatives on the electoral list. Indeed, the facade was not always covered up like that.

In 1934, Mussolini had already ruled Italy for 12 years, and the election had certain fascistic features: there was only one party - the fascist one - and the ballot slip for 'Yes' was patriotically printed in the colours of the Italian flag (plus some fascist symbols), while 'No' was in fine philosophical sense a vote for nothing, and the ballot sheet was empty white.

The setting of the picture is the Palazzo Braschi in Rome, and the building was the headquarters of the Fascist Party Federation - which was the local one, not the national, Party headquarters.

According to the Fascist government that supervised the vote, anyway, the eventual vote was a massive endorsement of Il Duce with the Fascist list being approved not merely by 99% of voters but by 99.84% of voters!

But back to the building. Part of Mussolini’s and his philosopher guru, Giovanni Gentile's, grand scheme was to transform the cities into theatrical stages proclaiming Fascist values. Italian fascism is little understood, and was not identical to the later Nazi ideology - but one thing it did share was the belief in totalitarian power. As George Orwell would later portray in his dystopia, 1984, in this new world 2+2 really would equal five if the government said so. Si!

---

People, Photographs, and Reality

A Deconstruction of Picture Post 13 - ‘The Worshippers’

Posted by Keith Tidman

Ludwig Wittgenstein succinctly observed in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “The picture is a model of reality.” But was it ever that; and is it still that?

Photos can be bland, or they can powerfully evoke. Pi’s Picture Post 13: ‘The Worshippers’fell into the latter category—powerful, hauntingly moving. The photograph spotlights supporters of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump—what the posted text referred to as an ‘admiring throng’. The subjects in the photograph took on the persona not just as common supporters wanting to hear the regurgitation of policy positions, but potentially 'fans' celebrating celebrity. Or so it seemed.

At first blush, the supporters’ enthusiasm appeared almost over the top—perhaps why the text accompanying the Picture Post referred, in the opening words, to a ‘cartoonish air’ about the image. Those two words spoke volumes. The supporters really do appear absorbed in the presence of a celebrity-turned-presidential candidate. Yet photography captures reality only by means of analogy; and it always has a point of view—at some point, even at the (unintended) risk of transitioning to theatre. Meanwhile, what, and whose, reality political photographs capture often remains uncertain, even opaque. Made all the more challenging by how inspiration and aspiration—both the photographer’s and viewer’s—might affect the experience. An observation reinforced by the essayist Anais Nin, who poignantly noted, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

Even under the best of circumstances and with the best of intentions, photographs can sometimes prove unreal—and arguably, in the eyes of some, possibly unfair. They’re frozen moments in time and space, captured by one individual who's under intense pressure to quickly decide what’s important, and when. Given the fluidity of what happens in reality at any moment of, say, a public campaign appearance, eyeballs focused on what’s occurring may well be drawn by what's different, by what might set a photograph apart from the many others. In other cases, what gets captured boils down to simple serendipity. These are among the diverse possible circumstances in which photojournalists with serious, honest intent, including the creator of PP 13's image, perform their craft. Yet, as Marshall McLuhan noted, there’s a governing dynamic at play here, a reciprocity between photographer and camera that shapes outcomes: “We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.”

Whether it matters if political photographs are not so subtly edited, as some circulating around the Internet are, depends on circumstances. Hence there’s the question as to what reality do photographs reveal and, largely unintentionally, conceal. In photojournalism, the standard is fairly strict—though perhaps disputable. The public expects that the photograph has not been edited, beyond such acceptable techniques as cropping. And it is expected that there has been a good-faith effort to preserve content integrity. People view such images with a degree of automaticity, whereby trust suspends critical judgment. Expectations are that the image is as ‘true’ as possible to what was going on. But photographers are human. Also, the risk in photojournalism is that some interested third party surreptitiously, but brazenly, ‘hijacks’ and manipulates an image of an unsuspecting photographer, to advance a political or social agenda. Pictures, after all, can stir up emotions as much as words can.

Accordingly, photographic imagery has obviously been used, historically, for political and social purposes—whether to amplify or as a sleight of hand. Even for outright ‘propaganda’—both the malign kind and the benign kind. Photography is a powerful medium, subject to far-ranging purposes and broad interpretation—hence a rich source for shaping the message. And in turn for shaping history. There’s a distinctly nontrivial element of trust—especially given that some viewers might accept image content prima facie. This is true, even though the sense of reality that people take away from looking at photographs can be skewed, notably by any ambiguity as to an image’s intent—not different in that sense than other media. So what was going on with PP 13, as best we can tell? And is there evidence, on the Internet, that people have digitally doctored this original photograph to create permutations for their own (political?) purposes, to make events appear other than they were when the photograph at PP13 was snapped?

Indeed, one must tread warily in the morass of online political imagery. Online searches can locate other versions of the photograph that appear to have been manipulated, and not always deftly. By some person, or some group, over the course of the photo’s Internet lifespan. The result of apparent distortion sometimes therefore taxes people’s ability to connect with the image, as something may not seem quite right. The Pi text characterized the supporters’ reactions in PP 13 as ‘zany’—the manipulated versions of the photograph found online are made, in some cases, to appear all the more so. Did the perpetrators doctor these photos to advance a political agenda? Did they wish to mock, disparage, or even demonize others of a different political persuasion? Was it just a prank? Or were there other motivations? This is just one area in which political photographs need to be decoded.

Online there’s a panoply of other photographs purportedly manipulated, resulting in distracting memes. Whether all the photographs are indeed manipulated, or some are not and have simply been swept up in the hurly-burly of the Internet, is germane, of course. Yet it’s clear from these myriad images, whether edited or not, that there is an intimacy between image and viewer. Or, as Vilém Flusser observed in Towards a Philosophy of Photography, it’s evident “there is a general desire to be endlessly remembered and endlessly repeatable.” At the same time, people bring all sorts of predispositions (ideological, political, personal, experiential) to interpreting photographs. Internet searches serve as a trove of when and how some photographs are morphed into something other than the original. This morphing, mixed with viewers' potentially complex predispositions, can muddy the experience of viewing the photograph all the more.

The idea that a picture is a ‘model of reality’, which Wittgenstein claimed, has to be critically parsed to be even remotely true in the modern era, when a picture’s digits can be handily manipulated, subtly or clumsily, by just about anyone, often to enormously dramatic effect. This ability to manipulate images is not only ubiquitous—rearing its head in every corner, with its results shared virally around the Internet—it challenges the very premise of photo ‘realism’. Both reputable photographers and the public alike become unwitting victims, whose caution about photos’ provenance—and the supposed window on the world of ‘realism’ they offer—becomes rich fodder for dissection.

Picture Post No. 13 The Worshippers

---

'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.

Picture Post No 10: Faceless Fighters of Vietnam, 1972

---

'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.'

Posted by Tessa den Uyl and Martin Cohen

Somewhere in the Nam Can forest, Vietnam, in 1972 ( Image: Vo Anh Khanh)

In the pciture above, faceless activists meet in the Nam Can forest, wearing masks to hide their identities from one another in case of capture and interrogation.

For many Americans, the dominant image of the Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies during the war was as a ghostly enemy sneaking down the Ho Chi Minh trail defying US bombs and apparently inured to suffering.

The visual history of the Vietnam War has been defined by such images. There is Eddie Adams’ photograph of a Viet Cong fighter being executed; Nick Ut’s picture of a naked child fleeing a napalm strike, and Malcolm Browne’s photo of a man setting himself alight in flames at a Saigon intersection.



These scenes were captured by Western photographers working alongside American or South Vietnamese troops. But the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had photographers of their own. Almost all were self-taught, and worked anonymously, or under a nom de guerre, viewing their role as part of a larger struggle.

‘For us, one photo was like a bullet.’ 

As one of the revolutionary photographers, Nguyen Dinh Uu, put it much later:

‘Processing chemicals were mixed in tea saucers with stream water, and instead of darkrooms, film was developed at night.’

Another photographer, Lam Tan Tai recalls how they came up with a new form of flash photography in order to picture fighters and villagers who were living in bomb shelters and tunnels.

‘We emptied gunpowder from rifle cartridges onto a small handheld device and then lit the gunpowder with a match. The burning powder provided all the light we needed.’

For Mai Nam:

‘The vast dark forest was my giant darkroom. In the morning I’d rinse the prints in a stream and then hang them from trees to dry. In the afternoon I’d cut them to size and do the captions. I’d wrap the prints and negatives in paper and put them in a plastic bag, which I kept close to my body. That way the photos would stay dry and could be easily found if I got killed.’

These photographers worked in the shadow of death whether by bombing, gunfire or from the perils of the jungle on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Nine out of ten Vietnamese photographers perished whether by bullets, bombs, or disease. Many, such as Vo Anh Khanh, working clandestinely in the South, could never get their images to Hanoi and the media, but instead exhibited them to fighters and villagers in the mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta - to raise morale.

Each image was precious. Today, with digital images essentially infinite, it is revealing to read that one photographer, Tram Am, had only a single roll of film which he had to use judiciously for the whole duration of the war.

In the early 1990s, two photojournalists, Tim Page and Doug Niven, decided to try to track down surviving Vietnamese photographers. One had a dusty bag of never-printed negatives, and another had his stashed under the bathroom sink. Vo Anh Khanh still kept his pristine negatives in a U.S. ammunition case, with a bed of rice as a desiccant.

One hundred eighty of these unseen photos and the stories of the courageous men who made them are collected in the book: Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side (National Geographic, 2002).

These pictures tell the story of a simple, rural people fighting the most technologically advanced and militarized nation on earth - and finally defeating it. They reveal a reality that nobody outside of the local experience could truly imagine. Looking back today, at Vietnam itself, in many ways their sacrifices seem to have been for nothing. Yet perhaps their struggle, and the images it spawned served a more profound purpose.

Life is not a neatly defined itinerary as these safeguarded masked women neatly standing in line might seem to imply. Rather, there are always several layers of meaning. Indeed, as one Vietnamese proverb puts it: ‘If you travel with Buddha, wear a saffron robe, but if you go with spirits, wear paper clothes.’

Read (and see) more at Mashable.com

---

Picture Post No 10: Faceless Fighters of Vietnam, 1972

---

'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.'

Posted by Tessa den Uyl and Martin Cohen

Somewhere in the Nam Can forest, Vietnam, in 1972 ( Image: Vo Anh Khanh)

In the pciture above, faceless activists meet in the Nam Can forest, wearing masks to hide their identities from one another in case of capture and interrogation.

For many Americans, the dominant image of the Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies during the war was as a ghostly enemy sneaking down the Ho Chi Minh trail defying US bombs and apparently inured to suffering.

The visual history of the Vietnam War has been defined by such images. There is Eddie Adams’ photograph of a Viet Cong fighter being executed; Nick Ut’s picture of a naked child fleeing a napalm strike, and Malcolm Browne’s photo of a man setting himself alight in flames at a Saigon intersection.

These scenes were captured by Western photographers working alongside American or South Vietnamese troops. But the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had photographers of their own. Almost all were self-taught, and worked anonymously, or under a nom de guerre, viewing their role as part of a larger struggle.

‘For us, one photo was like a bullet.’ 

As one of the revolutionary photographers, Nguyen Dinh Uu, put it much later:

‘Processing chemicals were mixed in tea saucers with stream water, and instead of darkrooms, film was developed at night.’

Another photographer, Lam Tan Tai recalls how they came up with a new form of flash photography in order to picture fighters and villagers who were living in bomb shelters and tunnels.

‘We emptied gunpowder from rifle cartridges onto a small handheld device and then lit the gunpowder with a match. The burning powder provided all the light we needed.’

For Mai Nam:

‘The vast dark forest was my giant darkroom. In the morning I’d rinse the prints in a stream and then hang them from trees to dry. In the afternoon I’d cut them to size and do the captions. I’d wrap the prints and negatives in paper and put them in a plastic bag, which I kept close to my body. That way the photos would stay dry and could be easily found if I got killed.’

These photographers worked in the shadow of death whether by bombing, gunfire or from the perils of the jungle on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Nine out of ten Vietnamese photographers perished whether by bullets, bombs, or disease. Many, such as Vo Anh Khanh, working clandestinely in the South, could never get their images to Hanoi and the media, but instead exhibited them to fighters and villagers in the mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta - to raise morale.

Each image was precious. Today, with digital images essentially infinite, it is revealing to read that one photographer, Tram Am, had only a single roll of film which he had to use judiciously for the whole duration of the war.

In the early 1990s, two photojournalists, Tim Page and Doug Niven, decided to try to track down surviving Vietnamese photographers. One had a dusty bag of never-printed negatives, and another had his stashed under the bathroom sink. Vo Anh Khanh still kept his pristine negatives in a U.S. ammunition case, with a bed of rice as a desiccant.

One hundred eighty of these unseen photos and the stories of the courageous men who made them are collected in the book: Another Vietnam: Pictures of the War from the Other Side (National Geographic, 2002).

These pictures tell the story of a simple, rural people fighting the most technologically advanced and militarized nation on earth - and finally defeating it. They reveal a reality that nobody outside of the local experience could truly imagine. Looking back today, at Vietnam itself, in many ways their sacrifices seem to have been for nothing. Yet perhaps their struggle, and the images it spawned served a more profound purpose.

Life is not a neatly defined itinerary as these safeguarded masked women neatly standing in line might seem to imply. Rather, there are always several layers of meaning. Indeed, as one Vietnamese proverb puts it: ‘If you travel with Buddha, wear a saffron robe, but if you go with spirits, wear paper clothes.’

Read (and see) more at Mashable.com

---

Brexit? What's really been going on in Brussels

Posted by Martin Cohen

What’s really been going on in Brussels? On the face of it, the UK Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, has taken Britain to the brink of rupture with the European Union over the issue of child support payments to EU citizens working in the UK, but whose children live at home. The arguments over this raged for two nights and two days, as Mr Cameron pounded the table and wagged his finger and threatened to pull the whole EU house down. Official European plans for a post-discussion English dinner, and then - even more sacrosanct! - English Breakfast were left in tatters.

And that means something serious is going on. Eventually the ‘migrants’ as apparently fellow EU workers are now to be called, lost the right to the full child support benefit, but retained the right to a miserly version phased on the cost of living in their home country.

You’d have to be either pretty stupid, or very ignorant, like the vast majority of English people itching to unshackle themselves from the world's largest free trade area, to think this issue really was what the best minds of the Tory party were concerned about.



No, the real issue going on in the ‘renegotiation’ concerned the City of London. The amounts riding on the child benefit wrangle amounted - at most - to a few tens of millions of euros. EU leaders were baffled at why the UK had dragged them to an Emergency summit. However, the amounts involved in the City’s ability to continue to act as the EU’s financial centre (despite the UK government not being part of the actual Europe currency) are rather more serious. Even the strident ‘vote Leave’ campaign estimate them at 10 billion euros a year.

What Cameron and the Conservative government demanded was that the City be protected by changes to the EU’s core Treaties enshrining the right of the UK government to decide which financial regulations and standards to follow - and which to ignore or water down. In effect, to allow the City to undercut the rest of the European banks by being allowed to offer dodgier financial deals. The City of London represents an obscene 20% of the UK GDP these days. Augmenting this would have been a prize worth having.

And it almost worked! The ‘migrants’ talk and the bluster about not wanting to be part of a ‘political union’ distracted most of the other European leaders. Only, as far anyone can tell, the French really dug in, insisting on the principle of the ‘level playing field’ between financial institutions in Europe. Victory would have been well worth the loss of breakfast.

It seems an initial draft even conceded the right to the UK government to let the City of London run rampant, but this, as Reuters put it very discreetly ‘raised concern’ in France that different banking regulations in London and the euro zone might unfairly benefit the former.

This is no small matter. Had the UK ‘won’, a repeat of the 2008 banking crisis would have been not merely more likely but flat inevitable. As it is, Europe’s banks remain in a fragile state, with their assets largely imaginary and their potential debts dwarfing the entirely ‘real’ economies of their host countries. Iceland learned what happens when the banking bubble bursts, as to a lesser extent the world did in 2008.

This is the key passage:

“The single rulebook is to be applied by all credit institutions and other financial institutions in order to ensure the level-playing field within the internal market. Substantive Union law to be applied by the European Central Bank in the exercise of its functions of single supervisor, or by the Single Resolution Board or Union bodies exercising similar functions, including the single rulebook as regards prudential requirements for credit institutions or other legislative measures to be adopted for the purpose of safeguarding financial stability, may need to be conceived in a more uniform manner than corresponding rules to be applied by national authorities of Member States that do not take part in the banking union.”

(for full test see here )

So, at the end of the day, (apart from that newly defined right to deprive Europeans working in the UK of child benefit) all that the UK has won is a chance to complain about financial regulation. This is The Financial Times’ solemn take on the matter:

“The City of London will also be poring over the small print to see whether the “emergency brake” intended to protect Britain from intrusive, Eurozone-inspired financial regulation will actually work in practice. For all the talk of non-discrimination and “mutual respect” between the Eurozone and non-euro countries such as Britain, will Mr Cameron’s right of appeal to his fellow EU heads of government necessarily produce a different result?”

It won’t, and slightly to my own surprise, it seems that the EU has once again - Houdini like - escaped diabolical perils. Until the next time!

Brexit? What's really been going on in Brussels

Posted by Martin Cohen

What’s really been going on in Brussels? On the face of it, the UK Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, has taken Britain to the brink of rupture with the European Union over the issue of child support payments to EU citizens working in the UK, but whose children live at home. The arguments over this raged for two nights and two days, as Mr Cameron pounded the table and wagged his finger and threatened to pull the whole EU house down. Official European plans for a post-discussion English dinner, and then - even more sacrosanct! - English Breakfast were left in tatters.

And that means something serious is going on. Eventually the ‘migrants’ as apparently fellow EU workers are now to be called, lost the right to the full child support benefit, but retained the right to a miserly version phased on the cost of living in their home country.

You’d have to be either pretty stupid, or very ignorant, like the vast majority of English people itching to unshackle themselves from the world's largest free trade area, to think this issue really was what the best minds of the Tory party were concerned about.

No, the real issue going on in the ‘renegotiation’ concerned the City of London. The amounts riding on the child benefit wrangle amounted - at most - to a few tens of millions of euros. EU leaders were baffled at why the UK had dragged them to an Emergency summit. However, the amounts involved in the City’s ability to continue to act as the EU’s financial centre (despite the UK government not being part of the actual Europe currency) are rather more serious. Even the strident ‘vote Leave’ campaign estimate them at 10 billion euros a year.

What Cameron and the Conservative government demanded was that the City be protected by changes to the EU’s core Treaties enshrining the right of the UK government to decide which financial regulations and standards to follow - and which to ignore or water down. In effect, to allow the City to undercut the rest of the European banks by being allowed to offer dodgier financial deals. The City of London represents an obscene 20% of the UK GDP these days. Augmenting this would have been a prize worth having.

And it almost worked! The ‘migrants’ talk and the bluster about not wanting to be part of a ‘political union’ distracted most of the other European leaders. Only, as far anyone can tell, the French really dug in, insisting on the principle of the ‘level playing field’ between financial institutions in Europe. Victory would have been well worth the loss of breakfast.

It seems an initial draft even conceded the right to the UK government to let the City of London run rampant, but this, as Reuters put it very discreetly ‘raised concern’ in France that different banking regulations in London and the euro zone might unfairly benefit the former.

This is no small matter. Had the UK ‘won’, a repeat of the 2008 banking crisis would have been not merely more likely but flat inevitable. As it is, Europe’s banks remain in a fragile state, with their assets largely imaginary and their potential debts dwarfing the entirely ‘real’ economies of their host countries. Iceland learned what happens when the banking bubble bursts, as to a lesser extent the world did in 2008.

This is the key passage:

“The single rulebook is to be applied by all credit institutions and other financial institutions in order to ensure the level-playing field within the internal market. Substantive Union law to be applied by the European Central Bank in the exercise of its functions of single supervisor, or by the Single Resolution Board or Union bodies exercising similar functions, including the single rulebook as regards prudential requirements for credit institutions or other legislative measures to be adopted for the purpose of safeguarding financial stability, may need to be conceived in a more uniform manner than corresponding rules to be applied by national authorities of Member States that do not take part in the banking union.”

(for full test see here )

So, at the end of the day, (apart from that newly defined right to deprive Europeans working in the UK of child benefit) all that the UK has won is a chance to complain about financial regulation. This is The Financial Times’ solemn take on the matter:

“The City of London will also be poring over the small print to see whether the “emergency brake” intended to protect Britain from intrusive, Eurozone-inspired financial regulation will actually work in practice. For all the talk of non-discrimination and “mutual respect” between the Eurozone and non-euro countries such as Britain, will Mr Cameron’s right of appeal to his fellow EU heads of government necessarily produce a different result?”

It won’t, and slightly to my own surprise, it seems that the EU has once again - Houdini like - escaped diabolical perils. Until the next time!

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.

---

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

A Philosophy of Untruth

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Untruth has to do, not with greed or with need, compulsion or coercion, but with my life-view – and my life-view begins with my conception of the world. From this arises every untruth.

Psychologist Richard Gregory puts it in a word: we, as humans, are motivated by the “unexpected”. That is, whenever and wherever I hold up my personal conception of the world to the world itself, and there discover a disjoint, I am moved to act. Therefore, prior to all of my actions is the way in which I arrange the world in my mind.

Supposing then that, in my imagination, my life is a happy family in suburbia – a friendly dog, fresh muffins on the table, and daisy-chains and laughs. Then I look from my kitchen window, to see my little girl with her face down in the grass. Suddenly there is a disjoint, and I spring into action. Of course, different people will spring into action for different reasons, and this reveals their various conceptions of the world. Some may not want a happy family in suburbia, or a dog, or fresh muffins on the table. Some may want to be loose and wild, and some may want to immerse themselves in figures. The possibilities are as many as the people.

And so, on the one hand, our conception of the world may be balanced and broad – or on the other hand, short-sighted, self-interested, and parochial. Some will live a “large” life, which is well-rounded and meaningful – while others will live a small-time existence, a self-destructive life, as fools or bunglers. In short, some will become wise, and some will become fools. With these simple observations, we may now describe the first of three forms of untruth we shall survey: namely, foolishness. Foolishness is rooted in the “small” view life – and where we find it, we tend to pity it, laugh at it, or denigrate it.  But we don't much take it to heart. It matters little to the rest of us.

Now consider that all of us arrange our worlds differently in our minds. And, again, from these conceptions of our world, our motivations arise. But now, given different conceptions of our world, and different motivations, it stands to reason that my own motivations may come into conflict with the motivations of another.  And if I do not yield to the other, then the other must yield to me. This must mean that if the other cannot, through natural processes, change my own conceptual arrangement of the world, they may yet be able to change the conceptual stuff that I have to work with. With a few targeted ruses, they may change the world I think I live in.

I may feel passionate about the village duckpond, for instance, while another person wants to build a helipad there. But if they cannot overcome my passion for the pond, by fairly changing my own conceptual arrangement of the world, they may tamper with the conceptual stuff I have to work with. They may tell me (falsely) that permission for their helipad has been granted on high authority, or that duckponds are death-traps for children. This now differs from mere foolishness, in that it seeks to manipulate what I know – and it happens all the time, whether on the personal level of lies, or on the political level of propaganda. It is our second form of untruth: namely, lies and deceit.

But further than this.  Not only may one change the way in which I arrange the world in my mind. One may change the world itself – through force and through violence, or comparable actions. Think again on the person who wishes to create the helipad. In the dark of night now, they send a small-time crook with a dump truck, to fill in the duckpond in one dramatic act. Now my conceptual arrangement of the world must change, because the world itself has changed. I have no pond left to defend, and no more purpose in opposing a helipad.

The dynamics of course may be more complex in the real world. It may be easy to see that a pond was filled in on the orders of the person who had a vested interest in it. It may be less easy to see that running me out of town with false rumours had to do with the pond, or that someone now drives a new Bentley on this account. And so the world of untruth may become tangled and dark, and as vast as the ocean. One finds it in lies and in half-truths, bluff and deceit, rationalisation and subterfuge – and now, thirdly, in violence of many kinds: physical, emotional, verbal, financial, sexual.

Now notice what has happened in the course of this short post. By means of some basic principles, all manner of evils in this world have been reconciled. Whether someone is reckoned to be a fool, a liar, or a thug, these are all basically one and the same. It is through a false conceptual arrangement of the world that people fall prey to each one. And notice something else: something about human nature, which seems to speak louder than words. Our moral integrity (or not) lies beyond our immediate control. It lies beyond all moralism and legalism. It changes only if our very life-view changes.

Wikipedia on Climate Change

 

How has the World's largest encyclopaedia been covering the Climate Change debate?

 

 

 

Above. A typical Wikipedia 'smorgasbord' of pseudo-facts. The alarming red hot globe, for example, is based not so much on temperature data but computer 'filling in' of data - notably in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. This technique is so obviously unsatisfactory that no reputable climate statisticians accept it. And the IPCC itself, although used as the source, correctly calls the various scenarios 'projections' not 'predictions'. Wikipedians, like politicians, don't know the difference! (See notes)

---

A Philosophical Investigation by Martin Cohen

February 23 2010

Being a Classic post 'reposted' from Pi-alpha

---

Put 'Global Warming' into Google, let alone Wikipedia, and you will be offered, as 'settled fact', the following: 

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation.... An increase in global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts.[8]… Other likely effects include changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, species extinctions, and changes in agricultural yields. Warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe, though the nature of these regional variations are uncertain.

That is because you will be directed to 'Wikipedia'¹. The Wikipedia page goes on to predict glacial retreat, Arctic shrinkage including long-term shrinkage of Greenland ice sheet. Ocean acidification will lead to the extinction of between 18% to 35% of animal and plant species by 2050. Horrifying predictions of temperature rises are given in graphics, with a note that not all effects of global warming are accurately predicted by the climate models used by the IPCC. Ah ha! a small concession to the sceptics? Not at all, the encyclopaedia merely wants us to worry more because, "For example, observed Arctic shrinkage has been faster than that predicted." 

This is, of course, the 'full throttle' version of the theory of man-made global warming, as advanced by certain scientists and green groups. (Apart from the highly politicised IPCC summaries written by activists including government representatives with the aim of directing political policies, the sources are variously, RealClimate.org, James Hansen at the Goddard Institute, and so on. That is three names for essentially the same outfit.) 

In general, Wikipedia reprints the IPCC notes for policy makers, produced by it political steering committees, as a kind of holy writ. Actually, to say something is the 'view of the IPCC' is a shorthand, because many of the past and present authors of the IPCC reports do NOT agree with particular claims. Naturally, given their origins, the reports consist of endless weasel words and hair-splitting distinctions between degrees of plausibility. 'Very likely' to happen, 'quite likely', 'likely'. None of these complications bog down Wikipedia, where the science is all very straightforward and unremittingly alarmist. To confirm its accuracy, the Global Warming page boasts a gold star meaning it has been approved by the Wikipedia system as one of the best, the most objective and the most encyclopaedic. 

Well down the page, long after most people have stopped reading, below the scary graphs and charts, is the heading "Debate and skepticism". But this debate is confined to 'how to combat Global Warming' and calculating the benefits of limiting industrial emissions of greenhouse gases against costs. "Using economic incentives, alternative and renewable energy have been promoted to reduce emissions while building infrastructure", the encyclopaedia explains. 

But keep on reading, and there we are, at the very bottom of the page XXX words and 122 learned footnotes later, comes a dissenting note! "Some global warming skeptics in the science or political communities dispute all or some of the global warming scientific consensus, questioning whether global warming is actually occurring, whether human activity has contributed significantly to the warming, and the magnitude of the threat posed by global warming." 

That's all it says on the main page, but now - if we are curious, we might follow the link to see what these skeptics are saying. 

The 'Climate Skeptics' page starts neutrally enough: 

"Climate Skeptics include many leading researchers and scientists, such as Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University and Dr David Bellamy and then, under the heading "View of prominent sceptics" offers short quotes to show the sort of things at issue: 

From Climate Skeptics page

"Former UN Scientist Dr. Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris (who resigned from UN IPCC in protest): “As far as the science being ‘settled,’ I think that is an obscenity. The fact is the science is being distorted by people who are not scientists.”

UN IPCC scientist Vincent Gray of New Zealand: “This conference demonstrates that the [scientific] debate is not over. The climate is not being influenced by carbon dioxide.

Climate researcher Dr. Craig Loehle, formerly of the Department of Energy Laboratories and currently with the National Council for Air and Stream Improvements, has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers: “The 2000-year temperature trend is not flat, so a warming period is not unprecedented. … a 1500-year temperature cycle as proposed by [Atmospheric physicist Fred] Singer and Dennis Avery is consistent with Loehle climate reconstruction… a 1500-year cycle implies that recent warming is part of natural trend.”

Hurricane expert and Meteorologist Dr. William Gray: “There are lot’s of skeptics out there, all over the U.S. and the rest of the world. Global warming has been over-hyped tremendously; most of the climate change we have seen is largely natural. I think we are brainwashing our children terribly.”

UK Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn: “There is no evidence that CO2 has ever driven or will ever drive world temperatures and climate change. The consequence of that is that worrying about CO2 is irrelevant. Our prediction is world temperatures will continue to decline until 2014 and probably continue to decline after that.”

Meteorologist Art Horn: “There are thousands of scientists around the world who believe that this issue is not settled. The climate is not being influenced by carbon dioxide.”

Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review: “It is my belief that the strident and frequent claims of catastrophes caused by man-made global warming are stated with a degree of confidence not warranted by the data."

This splendidly neutral page then concludes with some longer sceptical accounts including that of Professor John David Lewis of Duke University, USA, reporting that he has challenged many of the claims made by proponents of man-made climate change theory, in an article in the politically neutral journal Social Philosophy and Policy (Volume 26 No. 2 Summer 2009), saying: 'Those predicting environmental disasters today focus on particular issues in order to magnify the gravity of their general claims, and they push those issues until challenges make them untenable. Rhetorical skill and not logical argument has become the standard of success.' 

Then there is that review article, published in the Times Higher on the 03 December 2008, Professor Gwyn Prins, the director of the Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events at the London School of Economics, which says that the 'principle product of recent science is to confirm that we know less, less conclusively - not more, more conclusively - about the greatest open systems on the planet'. 

And finally, Professor Mike Hulme's, a 'climate scientist' at the University of East Anglia's centre for such research, offered a comprehensive defence of scepticism in the December Wall Street Journal noting: "Science never writes closed textbooks. It does not offer us a holy scripture, infallible and complete." 

What a fine summary, if I might say so myself! So 'Wikipedia' gives us (as the old legal refrain goes) the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no? 

No, no, and no! This 'sceptical page', was one I knocked up as little test to see if complaints about climate change bias on the the 'open-to-all encyclopaedia were justified. Once posted, it lasted exactly one minute. No you read that right - one minute! 

  I finished writing the page at 22:34, on the 6 February., At 22:35, 6 February 2010, an editor operating under the usual stupid (but effective in terms of the propaganda function of WIkipedia) pseudonym, MuffledThud, added the template 'Requesting speedy deletion (CSD A10). (TW))'. And that was that! No more nasty Skepticism on Wikipedia! 

Now I am more a little bit more cognoscenti of WP than perhaps most users, so I attempted to defend my page four minutes later - that is before the page could be 'formally' deleted. This required pasting the gnome-like WIkipedia formula : ({{hangon}}). Did that save my page? Well, yes and no. This time the page stayed there for half an hour. But then at 23:09, 6 February 2010 Tony Sidaway 'a system operator', that is to say a Wikipedia editor who has been given extra powers over most of the rest, removed the page and replaced it with an electronic alias pointing at the 'Global Warming page', which as we have seen, covers the sceptical angle very thoroughly with all of that final, er,… one sentence. As a system operator, Tony leaves a short note on the strategy. "Redirect as per Global warming skeptic, stable for over two years", in the so-called 'page history'. Later on, someone thought it safer to make the redirect 'permanent' and to to make challenging it a 'ban able offence'. 

So why is it impossible to place on Wikipedia, just for the record, some of the 'other views', 'dissenting voices' if you wish, including as they certainly do, many distinguished scientists, professors and IPCC authors? 

After all, Wikipedia has room for another 3 million articles including ones on 'Fart Lighting' and 'Nipple clamps' (the encyclopaedia's origins start with a rather sordid 'web-portal' called Bomis) and lengthy accounts of what its editors have done that day. But indeed, it is not possible. Not only Tony Siddaway but a whole group of editors patrol the encyclopaedia immediately removing any views not consonant with their uncompromising thesis. 

Instead of the full range of views, as even those IPCC reports give a nod to, there is only one only page describing other views is headed unprepossessingly: 

 

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

Great title guys! Makes you want to read on! Mind you, there is a rather off-putting opening disclaimer: 

"This article lists living and deceased scientists who have made statements that conflict with the mainstream assessment of global warming as summarised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other scientific bodies."

That's just for starters. Read the first half page of background briefing next! 

Climate scientists agree that the global average surface temperature has risen over the last century. The scientific consensus was summarised in the 2001 Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The main conclusions relating directly to past and ongoing global warming were as follows:

1. The global average surface temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2 °C since the late 19th century, and 0.17 °C per decade in the last 30 years.

2. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities", in particular emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.

3. If greenhouse gas emissions continue the warming will also continue, with temperatures projected to increase by 1.4 °C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100. Accompanying this temperature increase will be increases in some types of extreme weather and a projected sea level rise of 9 cm to 88 cm, excluding "uncertainty relating to ice dynamical changes in the West Antarctic ice sheet". On balance the impacts of global warming will be significantly negative, especially for larger values of warming.

Those listed here have, since the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, made statements that conflict with at least one of these principal conclusions. Inclusion is based on specific, attributable statements in the individual's own words, and not on listings in petitions or surveys. In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of a Fourth Assessment Report, which contains similar conclusions to the Third. For the purpose of this list, a scientist is defined as a person who published at least one peer-reviewed article during their lifetime in the broadly-construed area of natural sciences.

Are you still interested? Well, don't be. None of the views summarised here are presented in a way to make any useful point. Add to which, there are apparently just three people, who as the page puts it, think that "Global warming is not occurring or has ceased". 

All right, let's have 'em!

• Timothy F. Ball, former Professor of Geography, University of Winnipeg: " who sceptically observes: "There's been warming, no question. I've never debated that; never disputed that. The dispute is, what is the cause." but then disputes himself by saying "The temperature hasn't gone up. ... But the mood of the world has changed: It has heated up to this belief in global warming." (August 2006)
• Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia who is allowed, graciously, to say "the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998 ... there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming."

and finally

• Vincent R. Gray, coal chemist, who thinks that:""The two main 'scientific' claims of the IPCC are the claim that 'the globe is warming' and 'Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible'. Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed."[9]"

That's the main business over - very quickly. But space is tight on those Wikipedia servers - send more money please! Next are two slightly longer sections note those who think the "Accuracy of IPCC climate projections is questionable" or that "Global warming is primarily caused by natural processes" or (contrariwise, the duffers!) that "Cause of global warming is unknown", before the page finishes with a section called, hilariously and in full: "Now deceased", thus rounding up the other sceptics. 

And although the page offers at the top:"This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completion. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced additions."- it also has a silver padlock signifying that editing is not open to most users at all.

However, it is in the safe hands of a 'user-group' called the 'Climate Change Task-force', who have special powers to stop articles presenting views that they do not agree with. Or as a notice puts it on their 'home page': 

"A decision by the Wikipedia community has placed articles relating to climate change under article probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be blocked temporarily from editing the encyclopaedia, or subject to other administrative remedies, according to standards that may be higher than elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation for full information and to review the decision."

By 'higher standards' they mean 'lower standards', but then this is WIkipedia and people can barely write. The point though is clear, as Lawrence Solomon has described in his articles over at the Financial Post on Wikipedia, of which more in a moment. Wikipedia is open to everyone to edit, but only if they either write drivel (as most pages there are) or stick to the political line. In the case of 'Climate Change' the line is that there is not only no scientific debate left to be had, but no political debate either. 

The 'lower/ higher standards' mean that people who have been given extra administrative powers on the encyclopaedia, 'system operators', such as the ability to an other users or to 'protect pages' (which means prevent people editing them) - are formally granted dispensation to use these administrative powers on pages they also edit - and thus promote their own views. The 'Chinese Wall' that supposedly exists to stop administrators abusing their powers in content debates has been torn down for articles on 'climate change'. 

Take William Connolley, for example, a little known Greenie (one of the RealClimate.org crowd ²,) whose views make up - literally!- the science for the Wikipedia pages) who has however some special role in the Wikipedia elite. He has banned more contributors than most websites have readers!

Here's what the climate sceptic commentator, Lawrence Solomon, says about him, in an article posted on the Financial Post website on Saturday, May 03, 2008 

"Connolley is a big shot on Wikipedia, which honours him with an extensive biography, an honour Wikipedia did not see fit to bestow on his boss at the British Antarctic Survey. Or on his boss's's boss, or on his boss's boss's boss, or on his boss's boss's boss's boss, none of whose opinions seemingly count for much, despite their impressive accomplishments. William Connolley's opinions, in contrast, count for a great deal at Wikipedia, even though some might not think them particularly worthy of note." 

[From the Financial Post article ³] 

Connolley is … an administrator with unusual editorial clout. Using that clout, this 40-something scientist of minor relevance gets to tear down scientists of great accomplishment. Because Wikipedia has become the single biggest reference source in the world, and global warming is one of the most sought-after subjects, the ability to control information on Wikipedia by taking down authoritative scientists is no trifling matter.

One such scientist is Fred Singer, the First Director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Service, the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a NASA commendation for research on particle clouds — in short, a scientist with dazzling achievements who is everything Connolley is not. Under Connolley's supervision, Singer is relentlessly smeared, and has been for years, as a kook who believes in Martians and a hack in the pay of the oil industry. When a smear is inadequate, or when a fair-minded Wikipedian tries to correct a smear, Connolley and his cohorts are there to widen the smear or remove the correction, often rebuking the Wikipedian in the process.

Lawrence Solomon adds, "Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules and codes don't apply to Connolley, or to those he favours."

Indeed they don't. Here are some of the occasions that William Connolley has used his administrative powers to block other users he disagreed with just on the Climate Change topic. (A page called BLOCK#Disputes records such minutiae for each administrator.) 

It's long, but sums up exactly the travesty of editing on the 'Encyclopaedia anyone can edit'. Remember too that, supposedly, 'blocks' are a tool there only for neutral 'uninvolved' administrators to stop 'vandals'. 

WILLIAM THE GREEN'S BUSY MONTH

1. In an edit war with User:Chris_Chittleborough on Hockey stick controversy William blocks Chris. Another 'administrator', nicknamed Chaser later says:"Will...you can't block users you're in disputes with. The policy is unambiguous and ArbCom [the Wikipedian cabal of the most powerful administrators] has indicated the same thing. This is the kind of thing that people get de-sysopped for." [Hop off, Chaser!]

2. In an edit war with User:Lapsed Pacifist on the page Shell to Sea, William blocks Lapsed for the reason "repeated re-insertion of unsourced material"

3. In an edit war with User:Jaymes2 on Global warming William blocks Jaymes2 for the reason, "repeated insertion of tripe"

4. In an edit war on Global Warming with User:Sterculius William blocks Sterculius for "Tendentious edits at GW"

5. In an edit war with User:Wedjj on Global Warming William blocks Wedjj for 8 hours, reason: "disruptive editing"

6. In an edit war with User:Supergreenred over Global Warming, William blocks User:Supergreenred

7. In an edit war with User:Britcom on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming and Global Warming William temporarily blocks Britcom, reason for 'incivility'. Brit says: "Don't be a hypocrite WC"

8. In the same edit war with User:Britcom on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming and Global Warming William blocks Britcom for 24 hours reason: Incivility

9. In an edit war with User:Wikzilla at Global warming William personally blocks Wikzilla twice for Three-revert rule violations.

10. In an edit war with User:ConfuciusOrnis at Climate change denial William blocks User:ConfuciusOrnis twice. William is chastised by admin User:FeloniousMonk for William abusing his administrative powers.

11. In an edit war with user:207.237.232.228 on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change William blocks 'anon' for three hours.

12. With User:DHeyward on Global Warming William blocks DHeyward, length: 8 hours, reason: "violation of 1RR on GW; in civil edit summaries"

13. In an edit war with User:Lapsed Pacifist on the page Shell to Sea William blocks Lapsed for 3 hours giving the reason as "incivility" for this edit.

14. For comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming which William actively edits, William blocks 65.12.145.148 for incivility for this comment "A great read for all you cool aid drinkers."

15. William blocks User:HalfDome for incivility because of comments on the page Image talk:2000 Year Temperature Comparison.png, a page which he actively edits.

16. William again blocks User:HalfDome for incivility because of comments on the page Image talk:2000 Year Temperature Comparison.png.

17. William blocks User:Jepp for comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, an article William actively edits. Reason: "Inserting false information: incivility"

18. William blocks User:71.211.241.40 for comments on Global warming controversy.

19. William blocks User:Juanfermin for edits on the page List of scientists opposing global warming consensus, an article William edits regularly.

20. William blocks User:UBeR for comments on The Great Global Warming Swindle.

21. William blocks User:Peterlewis for comments on Historical climatology, an article William edits regularly.

22. William blocks User:69.19.14.31 for incivility on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

23. William blocks User:Likwidshoe for incivility on IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, an article William edits regularly.

24. William blocks User:Kismatraval for "spam" on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

25. William blocks User:69.19.14.29 for this comment "One thing is clear: this Wikipedia article and its fanatical guardians are a perfect example of how and why Wikipedia cannot be considered as a reliable source of knowledge."

26. William blocks User:Grimerking for 3rr on Global warming, an article William edits regularly.

27. William blocks User:Dick Wayne for posting youtube link on The Great Global Warming Swindle, an article William edits regularly.

28. William blocks User:DonaldDuck07 for "incivility" for comments on List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, an article William actively edits.

29. William blocks User:Rotten for "incivility" for comments on The Great Global Warming Swindle, an article William actively edits.

30. William blocks User:219.64.26.28 for comments on Scientific opinion on climate change.

There's more, but that's enough to be going on with. The point is this: 

At Wikipedia, according to the bland and hypocritical publicity for the site, "anyone can edit a page" - jump right in, and edit my page, says Jimmy Wales, founder, et cetera et cetera, used to claim . And its central to the methodology of the integrity of the content that all editors are equal. Over time, the good edits are supposed to cancel out the bad edits. Is that true? Will they? No one will ever know, because in fact hardly anyone is even able to edit the 'Climate Change' or other controversial pages, and those who manage to, are immediately banned if they disagree with the 'super-editors' managing the content there.

Executive summary:

Wikipedia is not neutral, it is dangerous propaganda delivered by anonymous non-entities.

 

Does it matter though, what Wikipedia days? After all, we have the BBC and The Guardian newspaper all saying exactly the same thing in a more authoritative way. But indeed it does matter. The Guardian's environment writers use Wikipedia as a source for their stories, as its website editor, James Randerson, confirmed to me by telephone, volunteering (with endearing frankness) its use there as a supply of facts and sources, along with other details. I asked him, as the environment section's web specialist, if he was aware of the controversies surrounding the online encyclopaedia's coverage of Climate Change, specifically, that it was heavily skewed to one side of the debate? No, he said, he was not aware of that. And nor was The Guardian concerned either. As for the BBC, I have had dealings in the past with TV researchers, and rarely is there a group less inclined to look further than a convenient, ten minute source like Wikipedia. Certainly, later on, they will talk properly to experts, but the initial research will come straight off the net, and so will skew that selection of who they speak to. 

Sooo... does it matter? After all facts are facts, aren't they. But facts are not facts. Facts are versions of reality put forward by people with agendas. For example, the frightening temperature increases the page records, uses as its source the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, which is run by James Hansen, the 'big spider' at the centre of the Global Warming web who has such an 'extreme' position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on 'who are the greatest' football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot's vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change. 

Look at the details too- (in the small print) the 'record temperatures' result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and 'parts' of the Antarctic - data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centres do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses theses dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them 'over the entire land mass' - obtaining many more record high temperatures! 

Well, what about using it to check sources, though? A quote is a quote isn't it? Not at WP. Nothing you read there is suitable for reproducing in a 'serious' newspaper - if you might lazily get away with it in a student essay or a top secret dossier for the British government on Iraqi nuclear weapons! Take the view attributed to Benny Peisner, about how he had been wrong to deny that there was a consensus amongst scientists on Global Warming as a settled fact. That's what it says he said on WP! But when Lawrence Solomon checked directly with Peisner, he found that he had said no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. Lawrence Solomon tried to correct the point, but a moment later, it was 'reverted' by 'Tabletop', who offered the explanation: "Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong". 

Despite this, it's not just The Guardian (a paper I used to occasionally write articles on Computers and Education for) uncritically regurgitating Wikipedia. All over the word, journalists are writing stories about global warming using the same strategy. 

A Day in the Life of an Environment Editor

10.00 Arrive at desk, switch computer on and have coffee

11.00 am Editorial meeting. Boss says write something (groans all round) about Global Warming.

12.00 Lunch

2.30 pm Look at Wikipedia

3.00 pm Ring or email someone mentioned there for comments

4.00 Tea and organic chocky biscuits

5.00 File 1000 words using WP and my vegetable patch as sources.

That's why Wikipedia's influence is greater than you might think, if you imagine it is just net-nerds who read Wikipedia you may be deluding yourself. Quite possibly you get a compulsory dose of it every morning in regurgitated form in your newspaper and watch it every evening on TV. 

Only a few media organisations have the 'resources' to do any 'research' into these matters - one's like the New York Times, which is a fervent backer of the cause, could it be in the interests of both the Democratic party and the Carbon Traders of Wall Street? - and the BBC. But the BBC held a meeting at which several climate experts were invited to see if there were any doubts or controversies about the climate change science, and these experts said certainly not! So the BBC has no worries. However, just to be on the safe side, it has officially designated the names of the experts it consulted a 'secret'. Like the temperature readings used by the University of East Anglia to arrive at the conclusion that the world is overheating, these sources can never be revealed. 

Now the 'science of global warming', which is to say, the notion that man-made CO2 has caused, and is set increasingly to do so, the planet to warm slightly, is certainly not all the 'sceptical way' either. But let's not get hung up on that. For any number of reasons, the world 'could be' warming up, just as the theory insists. If it is, we need a rational discussion of both the effects, the implications and possible mitigation strategies. 

None of these can start without a full and open exchange of views and evidence. Wikipedia has systematically distorted both - and it continues to do so. 

Here there are no controversies about inaccurate temperature records, manipulated temperature graphs, melting glaciers, african famines, dehydrating rain-forests, or 'complete lists of greenhouse gases' that miss out the one that causes 90 % of the greenhouse effect - water vapour*. 

Yet even giving the lobby its man-made global warming:

• if temperature records are inaccurate, then remedial activities will be directed to the wrong regions

• if glaciers are not really melting then emergency action to provide replacement fresh water supplies to a billion people in Asia is, to say the least, not necessary

• if the rain-forests are not really dehydrating then it is still worth preserving the rain-forests, rather than converting them to 'biofuels', as is the current policy

• if water vapour accounts for virtually all the greenhouse effect, then the economic value and utility of capturing other gases is functionally nil...

One could go on - but why bother? There is no debate, only propaganda. Whether Wikipedia is as we are asked to believe, just a rudderless ship being tossed here and there on the tides of prevailing opinion, I personally doubt. The bias is careful, subtle and very, very thorough. It involves wholesale abuse of the supposed principles of the site - the right of 'everyone' to edit pages and the expulsion of those who make changes that are 'off message' (like my new page on sceptical views). 

Let's leave the last word to Jimmy Wales, nominally at least, the benign dictator controlling the world's most consulted encyclopaedia. I asked him (by email) if anything about the coverage of Climate Change there had worried him, given that it was not neutral at all, and was generated in ways contrary to his claimed principle that 'all editors are equal'. In a characteristically unreflective reply, he wrote: 

"There exists a long line of people who, when their extremist agenda is not accepted into Wikipedia, accuse the community of bias."

Jimmy Wales, 15 Febuary 2010

Jimmy may or may not be worried about the goings on at Wikipedia. But the rest of us should be. 

---

Notes

About those frightening images... The 'source' is the Goddard Institute, and Gavin Schmidt, editor of realclimate.org (set up by the PR company that Al Gore's environmental advisor was a staffer for), and former home of Wikipedia editing supremo, William Connoley. Does Wikipedia note that Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann - of the now discredited 'hockey stick' graph are both colleagues and chums? Or that the Goddard is run by James Hansen, one of Global Warming Theories' founding fathers, so to speak, who has such an 'extreme' position the matter that he has fallen out with most of the others in the pro-camp. Quoting them is like quoting Liverpool Supporters Club on 'who are the greatest' football team. Or maybe like using George Monbiot's vegetable patch as a marker for global climate change. Look at the small print too- Gavin and co admit that their 'record temperatures' result from spikes in measurements in the Arctic and 'parts' of the Antarctic - data sources that are considered so poor that the Met Office and other climate centrers do not incorporate at all into their models. But the Goddard not only uses these dubious statistics, as they say themselves, they then mathematically extrapolate them 'over the entire land mass' - obtaining many more record high temperatures!)]] 

1. Quotes from Wikipedia pages are from versions downloaded on 16 February 2010. The numbers in square brackets are left in to indicate the WIkipedia footnote gobbledegook. 

2. Lawrence Solomon,evidently confused by WIkipedia's jargon, makes some large over-estimates of the influence of Connolley. I'm grateful to the Wikipedia Review for additional details on William Connolley's activities. 

2. For those who are interested, the temperature records for the Siberia and China have been shown to have been deliberately falsified, while a much-quoted temperature-survey supposedly demonstrating only as small 'urban heat' effect contained key assertions that were impossible -that is, were flat lies. The key temperature graph of the IPCC report the so-called Hockey Stick graph, was inserted 3 times prominently by its inventor in one IPCC report, but then having been extensively discredited - notably for having 'ironed out' all evidence of past changes in temperature, not included at all in the next.The IPCC claim that all the ice in the Himalayas would have melted by 2035 was discredited when it was pointed out that it came from just one scientist, linked to the IPCC's chief, who had no evidence to back it up, and instead a personal interest in the advancing of the claim. The IPCC predictions of massive crop failure in Sub-Saharan Africa and the disappearance of the rainforests due to lack of rain followed the same pattern - one 'partisan' source, not peer-reviewed. Indeed, when spotted, they were flatly rejected by relevant specialists. But that debate has been suppressed - up to now!

• 1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
• 2see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/william-m-connolley/
• 3http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/03/who-is-william-connolley-solomon.aspx