Climate change denial and the political power of oral sex

So Dominic Cummings, De Pfeffel Johnson’s key adviser, sacked Claire O’Neill from leading the UN climate talks later this year in Glasgow as President of COP26. In response O’Neill told the Today programme that De Pfeffel Johnson had admitted to her that he didn’t get climate change. For some this has proved to be a shocking allegation, but for others it is a welcome clarification of what they already knew. It is important to remember.…

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Electoral dysfunction and the climate emergency: a failure to perform with the world watching

2019 will for many be remembered as the year that a sixteen year old grabbed the global mainstream media by the shoulders and screamed ‘climate emergency’ in to its face. Unfortunately, I feel it is important to highlight one of the key obstacles potentially standing in the way of Greta and the millions of other activists fighting the architects of this existential catastrophe that we are all facing. That obstacle is the illusion of democratic…

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Climate crisis and the urgent need for a news media that isn’t beholden to carbon-profiteers

In the last post I was planning on going through all the major stories of 2019 on a month by month basis. However it became apparent quite quickly that to do that would take a while. And I do understand the irony implicit in that last statement, in light of the theme of the last post. Anyway, in order to avoid dragging this out for too long I thought that rather than unpicking each story…

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A society riven with hierarchy facilitates sociopaths and gives psychopaths free rein

I have shared my life with many people of many doctrines, beliefs and faiths, some religious and some political. One of the things that has never ceased to amaze me is the moral dissonance that affects so many people, regardless of whether their purported 'ideological core' is based on faith in scripture, or faith in science. Society, as it is structured today, seems to have a tendency to nudge people together into groups, and then…

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If we want to stop being sheared, we need to stop being sheep.

In the lead up to the 15th anniversary of the 15th February 2003 global anti-war protest it struck me that much of the cross-campaign solidarity, that we had achieved at that time has since seemed to disappear and our movements fragment back to their original single-campaign focuses. There was a moment fifteen years ago, that seemed like we may really be able to start addressing inequality and exploitation at it's source. As all the various…

Continue ReadingIf we want to stop being sheared, we need to stop being sheep.