mattmurrell

A full list of signatories to the Euston Manifesto is now up.

(At least this is the first time I've noticed it)

Despite one or two reservations about the wording of parts, it wasn't a difficult decision to sign the manifesto. I opposed the war in Iraq, and I believe that the occupation of that country has been at best incompetent, at worst criminal. I long to see Bush removed from the White House. However, for over a year now I've found myself increasingly uncomfortable with an anti-war left that seemed more and more opportunistic and populist in its arguments, more and more willing to side with or support reactionary and viscous groups simply because they too were opposed to the US. The logic of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' has seemingly swept away the principle of opposing oppression in all its forms for much of the left.

Too many people opposed the war not because they believed in the right of self-determination for Iraqis, not because of the untold suffering it could cause, but merely because the US was carrying it out. Simplistic arguments and barely concealed anti-Americanism sadly seem to pass for much of left-wing thought nowadays.

The Euston Manifesto, while far from perfect, is at least an attempt to recapture the spirit of a progressive internationalist politics that is so desperately needed. This is why I signed. Adding my name to a long list of like-minded (and some not so like-minded) individuals won't change the world. It won't even change the current politically discourse.

But it's a positive step in that direction.

(Go read the list of signatures - they explain it far better than I can)

"Oh... chav-tastic!"

This new series of Dr Who was eagerly anticipated by myself, and I wasn't disappointed by it.

I can see David Tennant becoming one of my favourite Doctors, managing to combine a sense of eagerness, authority and intelligence. It was also great to finally have the Doctor and Rose making full use of the TARDIS and visiting a genuinely alien world after the more Earth-centric focus of the first series. The return of Cassandra was also quite welcome, with the body-swapping giving rise to some nice acting by Billie Piper and some nice comedy dialogue.

The resolution felt weak though. The Doctor manages to concoct a cure for every known human disease in five minutes - a cure that passes from person to person purely by touch... I had this issue with the Russell T Davis stories from the first series, he just can't seem to write a truly satisfying ending.

Still, the episode gets a thumbs up, and there's a commentary available on the BBC web-site - I'm in nerd heaven!

'The Trials of Lenny Bruce' - Hardback. 560 pages. Hour-long CD of his stand-up with comments and interviews with others.

£4.99 in HMV.

Back of the net!

Cameron urges rapid party change

Rapid change for the Conservative Party? An oxymoron surely?

UKIP 'parks tank' at Tory meeting

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Cameron
If you think old UKIP’s done?
We are the boys who will stop your little game
We are the boys who will make you think again

So who do you think you are kidding Mr Cameron
If you think old UKIP’s done?

The Bigoted Nutters Party (BNP) has made the decision to become a (slightly) equal opportunity employer and allow the grandson of an asylum seeker to stand for a seat in Bradford. The appointment of Sharif Abdel Gawad (Greek-Armenian) “has provoked a backlash among BNP hardliners” according to the Guardian, who believe he should be “barred from the party on race grounds” as it will leave members feeling betrayed and confused.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for diversity and believe that discriminating against someone on the grounds of their race, gender, sexuality, religion, hair colour or political allegiance is pure stupidity. However, I can’t help feeling a little cheated. I expect my far-right, xenophobic loons to be… well xenophobic loons…

Mr Gawad apparently “fulfilled the BNP criteria of being "a member of the white European race of people".

They’re letting Europeans into the British National Party now? I realise that outsourcing is big nowadays, but surely this is going too far? What happened to national pride? What happened to racial purity? What happened to defending us from Johnny Foreigner?

I’m disappointed in the BNP.

Very dissapointed.

Has the humble barcode had its day?

Supermarkets are apparently introducing new “radio frequency ID Tags” (RFID) to allow them to keep track of their products. These tags broadcast a signal that will allow computers to monitor their position “on rail, road, sea and shelf!”

Presumably, these little critters will be deactivated once you buy the product. Though, as anyone who’s ever set off the alarms when walking about a shop will also testify, I doubt it will be a fool-proof system, and Tesco could end up with data on exactly the route you decide to take home everyday. Who knows – we could have little Tesco minions popping up from behind walls and bushes as we make our way there: “Perhaps you’d like to consider out new ‘Good for everyone’ range…”

As should be clear, I’m as suspicious of new technology as the next anti-supermarket paranoid conspiracy freak (Tesco selling life insurance! Planning for me to have a little accident are they? A slip in the shower perhaps), but, according to the BBC, for some this isn’t just another example of the daily intrusion into our lives by supermarkets – it’s literally the end of the world:

A Christian author in the US, for example, has just published a book claiming RFID will evolve into the mark of the beast featured in Revelations and presage the end of the world.

Okay.

Y’see! I’ve always said that Tesco was the work of the Devil. Now some wide-eyed loon from the US agrees with me.

Who’s laughing now?

Lacking any real publicity since Kilroy jumped ship, UKIP must enjoy finding themselves back in the spotlight once again thanks to their argument with the Tories. As Cameron has refused to back down from his comment that most UKIP members are "closet racists" they've no pledged to win as many seats from the Tory party as they can at the election.

The phrase "hollow threat" could have been coined for this announcement. UKIP did so badly at the last election that most of its members lost their deposits.

All this hoo-hah has managed to serve as a reminder - if one were needed - of just what a strange little party UKIP actually is, from the Hitler quote on their webpage ("The broad mass of a nation ... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one") to their comment that "The real fruitcakes are the people who elected a socialist to lead the Conservative Party".

They do have one positive trait, however, a certain blunt honesty:

"All parties contain members whose views could be considered racist.

Labour accepted an ex-BNP councillor to regain control of the council in Burnley, while several of the former National Front members the Conservatives have identified as UKIP members were defections from the Conservative Party.

To reduce political argument to the level of libellous name calling is absurd and beneath contempt. UKIP will not stand for such slurs under any circumstances.

The childish tactics of the Conservative leadership demonstrate only too well why they remain a party of opposition and not one of government."

George W. Bush: Master of speech

Seriously.

While to a lot of us Bush’s appeal to US voters can seem just as incomprehensible as his sentences, it apparently rests on an extremely subtle method behind his rhetorical madness. The web site I linked to above argues that most Bush supporters simply pick out the words with positive connotations, rather than taking in the speech as a whole. Therefore, as long it contains the right words and phrases it doesn’t matter what the structure is like.

For example:

What Bush says: And when you engage the terrorists abroad, it causes activity and action.
What sticks in people’s minds: …engage the terrorists…activity…action.

The spirit of the speech ultimately triumphs over the actual wording. This theory goes some way to explain the fact that a majority of Americans believe that Bush beat Kerry during the presidential debates. While Kerry offered articulate and reasoned positions, he failed to make the emotional connection with the public, unlike Bush.

The President’s propensity for gibberish masks a much more calculated way of getting through to his audience:

Pundits love to talk about George W. Bush’s Christian code, but that’s only part of his grooming shtick. He also has his male code, his female code, and his military code. Bush speaks a pure language of identity, favoring the present tense and using terms that resonate among various constituencies. When he speaks the faithful, for example, he prefers “I believe” to “I think.” In the summer of 2001 he used “believe” as a kind of fugue:

“I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right.”

Believe it.

While it would easy to ridicule Bush supporters for this behaviour, ultimately we all do it. When listening to someone we respect, or reading a favoured paper or periodical, we all have certain words or phrases that resonate with us and make us more agreeable towards the arguments being advanced.

Any other 'West Wing' fans out there?

Is it me... or does Senator Vinick, the Republican Presidential candidate bear a striking resemblance to US Senator John McCain? (Position wise rather than appearance).

From the Christian Science Monitor:

"Everybody understands, he hates the Christian right. That's a real problem," says Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation. Mr. Weyrich dismisses the Falwell speech invitation as just a "personal patchup."

"He wants to remake the Republican Party into pre-Reagan times," Weyrich continues. "Republicans traditionally stood for limited government, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. We added a fourth leg to that stool, which was traditional American values. And he wants to get rid of that."

The article also notes that McCain has called Jerry Falwell one of the "agents of intolerance" - a position which matches pretty well with Vinack's own contempt for the religious right in the series.

(Please note - I'm watching 'The West Wing' on the British More4 channel, which means I'm only a handful of episodes into the final series. Anyone who reveals what's coming up will not only be BANNED from this blog - they will be HUNTED DOWN AND KILLED as well!)

Can anyone recommed some good (free) software for converting RealPlayer files into MP3s?

Hmmmm…

Bearing in mind that self-diagnosis is wrong nine times out of ten…

I think I have ‘Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome’.

As the blog title should indicate, my relationship with sleep has never been an easy one. I hate mornings, I spend most of the day feeling tired, and then I struggle to get to sleep any time before 3am.

I’ve always been this way.

If I’m not careful I start going to bed later each night and getting less sleep each night. Eventually I have to go a night without sleep in order to try and “reset” myself – which pretty much wastes a day as not sleeping leaves me in an apathetic and grouchy mood.

I’ve tried relaxation techniques… I’ve tried herbal remedies… nothing works.

When I’m not working and have no real commitments I find myself going to bed and getting up later and later. For a good while between leaving college and going to university I got into the habit of going to bed around dawn and walking up around three or four in the afternoon. Although this wasn’t a perfect arrangement (you try getting a good day’s sleep in a family household) it certainly felt a lot more natural than sleeping at night.

Apparently I’m not alone in this:

Delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), also called phase lag syndrome, is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder. However, unlike jet lag and the effects of shift work, delayed sleep phase syndrome is a persistent condition. In clinical settings, it is one of the most common complications of sleep-wake patterns.

Delayed sleep phase syndrome results from a desynchronization between the patient's internal biological clock and the external environment. Unlike jet lag, this desynchronization is not activated by travel or change in external environment. Rather, the patient's propensity to fall asleep is simply "delayed" in relation to that of the general public. Subsequently, a patient with DSPS is desynchronized with the routine that governs most of his or her life.

Patients typically are unable to fall asleep before 2 a.m. and have extreme difficulty waking early (e.g., by 7 a.m.). People with DSPS are sometimes called "night owls" or are described as "not being morning people." If they are able to sleep a full 7 to 8 hours (e.g., until 10 a.m.), they feel rested and function normally. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case.

So… all I need are a job and friends that don’t need me anytime between dawn and five in the afternoon…

Who says Iraqis aren't able to learn from us more developed nations:

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has rejected growing pressure to resign, saying Iraqis must be allowed to choose their leader democratically.

Sound familiar?

(From he BBC)

Freedom in Afghanistan, say goodbye Taliban
Free elections in Iraq, Saddam Hussein locked up
Osama’s staying underground, Al Qaida now is finding out
America won’t turn and run once the fighting has begun
Libya turns over nukes, Lebanese want freedom, too
Syria is forced to leave, don’t you know that all this means

(Chorus)
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!

Democracy is on the way, hitting like a tidal wave
All over the middle east, dictators walk with shaky knees
Don’t know what they’re gonna do,
their worst nightmare is coming true
They fear the domino effect, they’re all wondering who’s next

(Repeat Chorus)

Ted Kennedy – wrong!
Cindy Sheehan – wrong!
France – wrong!
Zell Miller – right!

Economy is on the rise kicking into overdrive
Angry liberals can't believe it's cause of W's policies
Unemployment's staying down, Democrats are wondering how
Revenue is going up, can you say "Tax Cuts"

(Repeat Chorus)

Cheney was right, Condi was right,
Rummy was right, Blair was right
You were right, we were right, “The Right” was right and
Bush was right
Bush was right

Official press releases not getting the message out? Put it in a song!

He Lied To Us Through Song. I HATE When People Do That!

- Homer J. Simpson

Even Tariq Ali gets it! From ZNET:

Is the Left capable of showing that there is an alternative?

A: The Left is at present very weak. As far as the radical Left is concerned I am not optimistic. In Britain I am not a member of Respect. I disagree with them on some points. The way things are happening in Respect is pure opportunism. Obviously I am in favour of working with Muslim groups, but socialists the goal must be to win followers of religion to our own point of view, not to leave them in their entrenched positions.

So we should work together in a less uncritical way?

Of course. The way Respect is doing it won’t lead to anything. We have to find a neutral terrain which can offer a space for discussion. We must not conceal our own point of view by hiding it under the table. Many of the (Muslim) groups with which Respect has developed collaboration have very conservative and reactionary roots. In the countries from which they come, like for example Egypt or Indonesia, they have always been the enemies of the Left.

This is one of the problems that anti-racists and socialists come up against. On the one hand we want to develop solidarity with minorities who suffer discrimination, while on the other hand we have to maintain a critical position in relation to the conservative ways of thinking that are partly dominant among these minorities.

For socialists the task is clear: the Muslim communities must be defended against being made scapegoats, against repression, against the very widespread representation that terrorism is proper to Islam. All that must be energetically fought. But at the same time we must not close our eyes to the social conservatism which reigns in these communities, nor hide it. We have to try to win this people to our own ideas.

(Hat tip: comments at Harry's Place)

I have renounced my atheistic ways!

In one of her commentisfree pieces, the eminent Madeline Bunting quotes US Darwinist Michael Ruse, who claims that:

"If Darwinism equals atheism [as people like Richard Dawkins argue] then it can't be taught in US schools because of the constitutional separation of church and state. It gives the creationists a legal case. Dawkins and Dennett are handing these people a major tool."

The crux of the matter is that many people consider atheism to be akin to a religion, and therefore if Darwinism leads to atheism, it has no place in US schools – unless stuff like Intelligent Design can be taught as well.

The argument is idiotic (as religion involves a belief in transcendental beings - a belief that atheism clearly lacks) but has a number of supporters.

So, if atheism is now considered a religion, then I’m no longer considering myself an atheist.

Until I find a better term for my approach to the world I’ll go with Empiricist.

Empiricism is the philosophical doctrine which holds that all knowledge ultimately depends on the use of the senses and what is discovered through them. The term empiricism comes from the Greek word εμπειρισμός, a noun meaning "test" or "trial". The -pir- is ultimately related to the -per- of the Latin words experientia and experimentum, both of which mean "experiment".

So it’s not that I believe God doesn’t exist – it’s simply that belief in God is incompatible with my experience of life to date. If anyone wants to provide me with tangible proof of the His existence, then I’ll happily consider it.

Until then…

I was going to write a post on John Reid's comments about needing to "update" things like international law and the Geneva convention, but Tim Worstall sums up my position far more concisely and eloquently than I could have done:

Well, quite, all those outdated laws meant to protect the individual from the power of the state. They’ll all have to go you know. For after all, aren’t we ruled by the bestest people ever, ones who would never do anything out of order, never constrain those individual liberties, never, never ever, do anything that might shift the balance of power, pulling more of it to the centre?

Bastard.

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is still around, and kicking up a fuss as usual according to the BBC.

The UK Independence Party is calling for David Cameron to apologise after he claimed its members were "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly".

Sounds reasonable to me. They happen to disagree. This is the second time in recent months that UKIP have been called upon to defend their reputation. In March one UKIP activist won £10,000 in damages after a woman called him a "sex offender" and "racist blogger" in an Internet chat-room.

So labelling UKIP and its members “racist” is out. Apparently, however, calling them cranks, gadfies, loonies and fruitcakes is perfectly acceptable. In fact they welcome such comments. Something I’ll bear in mind for the future.

In fact, they’d probably be glad of any publicity they can get at the moment – having not only failed to win any seats at the last general election, but also losing their deposits* in a number of cases.

[Their spokesman] said 2.7m people had voted for UKIP during the European elections 18 months ago.

Does your mummy say you’re special as well?

(*as did former UKIP celebrity Robert Kilroy-Silk, something I’m still smiling about)

According to this piece on the Guardian's commentisfree site, the US Federal Communications Commission has decreed that the word "shit" can no longer be uttered on US television. It joins the word "fuck" as "certain of those personally reviling epithets naturally tending to provoke violent resentment or denoting language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance" - essentially, the "public" don't want to hear it.

Suprisingly, the word "cunt" is presumably still acceptable?

I've always been fascinated by what makes swear words so "unacceptable". You can express the meaning of the word in non-offensive ways: poo, sex, female reproductive organ. So it's not that. It can't be the sound either, as puck, hit, runt, etc, cause no offense.

So there's nothing in the words themselves that makes them offensive.

They're taboo purely because we consider them so. If we just stopped taking offense at these words, then in a generation or two the whole concept of a swear word would be eradicated. No-one would bat an eye-lid at them and the entire point of them would be lost.

By banning these words, by making them forbidden, the FCC is merely perpetuating their power...

"It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness."

- Lenny Bruce

A brochure from the German Tourist board arrived in the post this morning. I signed up to any number of these things before heading off to Europe for a few months last year, and still have a pile of booklets, brochures and free guidebooks lying around something gathering dust. This is the first one I’ve received since getting back (last August) and I’d forgotten I’m probably still listed on the database of various tourist boards around Europe, so it came as a pleasant surprise.

Needless to say, glancing through the thing (dominated by the upcoming World Cup) brought back some extremely pleasant memories of wandering around Berlin and Dresden: The Tiergarten. The Reichstag. The Kurfurstendamm. The ruined buildings of 1940s Dresden alongside the more vibrant and modern parts of the city. 

Travel is one thing that I’d recommend to anyone. It doesn’t really matter where you go, just be immersing yourself in different cultures you realise not only the staggering diversity of the world, but also the common humanity that underlies it all. So different, yet underneath so similar.

Another benefit of exploring what’s out there is how it can bring what was previously distant and academic to life. Photos of Paris can never match up to the experience of sitting peacefully in the small park behind Notre Dame, or walking along the Seine in glorious sunlight. No jokes about Italian drivers compares to desperate dashes across roads in Rome. Repeated viewing of ‘The Sound of Music’ is nothing to taking a train-journey through the mountains of Austria…

There is also a darker, but not less important side to this. One postcard I sent back from Berlin included the observation that I was walking the same streets that Hitler could easily have frequented. While the comment was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, it’s true that being face-to-face with the Reichstag, the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie… all these things bring those history lessons to life with a startling vividness and immediacy.

When AC Grayling, discussing the bombing of Germany during WW2, notes that…

“Night after night, for years, the RAF rained upon Germany's cities a mixture of high-explosive and incendiary bombs, the latter outnumbering the former by four to one. The high explosives blew out windows, doors and roofs, allowing fires to spread. The incendiaries variously contained petroleum jelly, phosphorus and oil-soaked rags. When phosphorus splashed on to a human being, burning ferociously, it could not be dislodged. Victims leapt into canals, but the flames would spontaneously reignite when they clambered out. Among the bombs were time-delay devices, set to explode at intervals in the hours and days after a raid to disrupt ambulance, firefighting and rescue services.”

…these words become entwined with my memories of wandering along side-streets in Dresden, with ruins from the firestorm on both sides. Distant horrors become solid and immediate. In the same way that passing by woods in Spain containing mass graves from the Civil War, or driving through some desolate Aborigine town in the Australian outback can move you in ways that even the most impassioned article or book cannot.

While not everyone can afford to simply take off and see the world, travel remains, in my opinion, the best form of education possible. No amount of reading or watching on TV can compare to the experience of physically standing where historical events took place. No amount of research about a people is complete until you have actually walked among them. 

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."

-- St. Augustine