The other day I indulged a former passion of mine and watched the Rugby League Challenge Cup final, Leeds Rhinos vs Hull FC. It's a great sport and that was a great game, a classic final, though during the prematch build up I found myself torn as to which side to back.

While I live in Leeds now I was still living with my parents when I used to go the rugby and my team was Fartown RLFC, or the Huddersfield Giants as they are now known. Leeds are a very big club and, having already won two major competitions this year, they were looking for a treble, making them the favourites.

Now rugby league is, in my experience, a great family sport with a much more friendly atmosphere in the stands than football. The only exception to this was when we played Hull. For some reason the Hull fans, or a hardcore of them, where the only ones in the sport to cause trouble at matches. When we played Hull there'd be mounted police outside and uniforms in the stands.

So while I would generally always side with the underdog I have bad memories of Hull and so was, as I said, torn. Just before the starting hooter however, I remembered one match against Hull in particular. There had been a certain amount of crowd trouble and there was a lot of chanting going on back and forth, in all the family atmosphere had slipped.

Just as we seemed to have fallen into a tense and unavoidable standoff, however, some of the Hull fans took up a new chant: “We all hate Leeds, we all hate Leeds, we all hate, at least we all hate Leeds.” In seconds the stands were united as we all joined in and smiles returned to faces as the tension seemed to evaporate into the sky.

Remembering this I couldn’t help but smile and as the final got under way I decided to back Hull all the way and, as it happens, they ended up with a hard fought and well deserved victory. Now it’s surely not news to anyone that one sure fire way to unite people is to unite them against someone else. Indeed it’s a human characteristic that has been exploited by leaders of people pretty much forever.

I have often thought, with this in mind, that coming under attack from an alien race could be the best thing that could happen to mankind. United in a common struggle, religious and political differences would suddenly appear petty and too highly priced.

The drawback here of course, besides the abject absence of any warlike little green men, is that war really, really sucks. It ravages all facets of humanity and perpetuates itself like some genocidal virus and so, paradoxically, any war big enough to unite all humanity would surely also be big enough to destroy us.

So should we just give up the ‘uniting against’ method as a bad job? Well I say no, and here’s why: Life expectancy in the ‘third world’ or ‘developing countries’ is far less than here in the big fat west. Our lives are infinitely more comfortable and less risky and, with the advent of groundbreaking medical technology, this gap is set to increase. One documentary I saw a while ago even suggested that, in the future, the haves and have-nots may become practically different species.

The thing is that, for all our glorious achievements in social structures and technology, we still get our arses kicked on a regular basis. Look at the terrible devastation hurricane Katrina has caused in the US, the flooding at one end of Europe and the wild fires at the other or earthquakes in Japan.

Now I’ve already used this quote in an earlier post but it’s so good I’ll use it again. It’s from one of the IRA’s Brighton bombers who met and spoke with the daughter of one of his victims. This is part of what he said to the Guardian:

“The big lesson is that if you see people as human beings, how can you possibly hurt them? Then you think of all the barriers to that simple relationship occurring - political, social, economic.”

What common ground is there to get past those barriers? Well how about that beneath your feet. You can be a wealthy, educated, white guy or a starving Ethiopian child, the natural world is blind to such distinctions and so provides not so much a common enemy but a common struggle.

Despite the illusion of safety we work so hard to maintain, life is fragile and we are weak. In the west our material progress has increasingly insulated us from the natural world to the point of abstraction. Nature is now seen as a resource, a background, a commodity when in reality it is the single thing shared by every human being who has ever lived.

Wherever you are in the world there is a pretty good chance that at least some of the air you have breathed while reading this has been in and out of my lungs at some point. We see the same sun , the same moon and we’ve all drunk the same water, (though let’s not linger too long on that thought.) What this all comes down to I suppose, is not so much finding a way to unite everyone as recognising that we all are united whether we like it or not.

So Iraq has a draft constitution but it's not necessarily to everyone's liking. Apparently a major sticking point has been autonomy. The northern Kurds have long enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy and southern communities had suggested that they may like a similar situation. The argument against this came from the, quite literally, central government who feared the country may eventually split into three.

Now how does a single nation end up as three religiously, culturally and geographically separate social groups? Well the truth is it hasn't. While 'Iraq' is an ancient name, that single nation still grabbing so many headlines was actually only formed in the 1920's.

Before this there were three separate countries, then 'someone' came along and decided that these three peoples were one and must live as such. After that the only practical way for this mysterious decision maker, and those who came after, to keep order in Iraq was brutal and bloody oppression.

Another story featuring heavily in the headline recently has been the change to Israel's long disputed borders and it's interesting to note that it was the very same 'someone' mentioned above who initially set out those borders. Beyond these two incidents the work of this anonymous shit stirrer can be seen in the borders of many African countries, namely the ones that are straight lines.

Now you may be starting to wonder just where this post is going, well if you can bare one last tangent all will be revealed. Now I've written quite a bit recently about the effect of WWII on Japan. It's a subject I find quite interesting but it's also something I've learned about relatively recently because although I studied history at high school and was taught about WWII, the picture painted was not complete.

This is just one example of an aspect of British history that British society, and certainly our schools, seem to have glossed over, as are all the situations described above. That's right, the mysterious decision maker, flouncing about the world lighting long sociopolitical fuses, was Great Britain. So many of the problems around the world have their roots in things we did in the past, things that most of us don't even know about.

A good uni friend of mine has done a lot of travelling and was telling me about some of the various people he met and one encounter in particular has always stuck in my memory. He told me about a group of young US citizens he had met. They had asked him, genuinely concerned and in the dark, just why so many people hated the US.

He suggested that much of it had to do with their foreign policy. When they asked for an example he suggested Chile, 11th September 1973, when the US assisted in a military coup, killing the democratically elected Chilean leader before installing Pinochet and his caravan of death.

Their response to this example was not to dispute or defend what had been said, but outright surprise. They had never heard of that situation, or many others. Now generally the US make it all too easy for those of us on this side of the Atlantic to mock them for such displays of ignorance but, as shown above, they are certainly not alone.

There's much to be said about the identity of a country, the actions of it's government, the values of it's people etc, but the first thing that occurred to me when exploring this long and winding path was something else: How must the world look to you if all you know about it is what you learned at school and what you see on the TV?

Such thoughts as this have inspired numerous fiction writers, from satirical literature to science fiction films, but for me, it's pure horror all the way.

The recent anniversaries of the only two nuclear weapons ever used have brought the debate over necessity back, briefly, to the public consciousness. The main argument of justification is, ultimately, one of self defence: Japan was going to fall by that point, it was when not if, so the question was how many US troops had to die to achieve that end? Dropping two atomic bombs in quick succession certainly limited that number.

The response to this argument is often to consider proportionality and so both sides of this debate find common ground, coming down to weighing the harm of doing something against the harm of not. Unfortunately, especially when talking about harm on these greatest scales, said weighing is entirely subjective and so the common ground of method does not necessarily lead to agreement.

This kind of thing is going on all the time and I'd like to consider two recent examples in particular. Firstly there's the actions of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez who has insisted that 50% of all music broadcast on radio be Venezuelan. Let's break this down:

object of defence: Venezuelan culture which, like most native cultures globally, is under threat of being drowned in the swell of the western capitalist mainstream.

sacrifice for defence: US rock on Venezuelan radio but, critically, not an outright ban. US rock will still be readily available both to buy and hear.

My own subjective weighing up of this one tilts heavily in favour of Chavez. Some rock DJs have warned that their shows will lose their identities but surely if rock is so popular in Venezuela there must be a scene of native rock bands?

The choice seems to be between losing a unique culture or US record companies suffering a minor fall in profit and to me that's no choice at all. Any self governing group of people are surely entitled to control their own social environment in their own interests

Secondly there's the EU's current struggle to somehow limit the amount of Chinese textiles being sold here. Again, let's break it down:

object of defence: European textiles industry which, like many western industries, is under threat of being terminally undercut by countries who can produce the same goods but have a far lower cost of living.

sacrifice for defence: cheap clothes for western consumers and possibly relations with the world's forthcoming dominant super-power.

Just as in the first example, the consequences of not acting will be dire as the collapse of the European textiles industry will cause many people hardship. Also as before the cost of acting in self defence is material wealth, the profits of the Chinese companies and the pockets of the consumer.

Despite these apparent similarities with the previous example however, I find my own subjective scales tipping away from the EU. Certainly something must be done to minimise the harmful impact of Chinese imports but we can't just change the rules because we're losing. This situation is just another reminder that we only enjoy our place at the top of the money tree by cheating.

The fact is that if we actually practiced 'free market economics' on a single, flat, global playing field, then the so called 'developing countries' or 'third world nations' would now kick our arses. So while the object of defence certainly does warrant defending, the method of defence must be right.

The idea of self defence has become somewhat twisted to become a tool of an every-man-for-himself attitude, as if each of us not only has the right to put our interests before those of others but that it's ok to be ignorant of other's needs.

In truth self defence is a strict and narrow field with three strict criteria:

the magnitude of the threat,
the worth of the object of defence,
the method of defence,

If someone's claim of self defence doesn't meet these high standards it's probably more a case of either greed, laziness or both.

First a quick nod to last weeks SotW, violent minorities within protest groups, who have made their presence felt over the last few days. Those dickhead's who think that digging up corpses and making people fear for their personal safety are valid means of protest have managed to close a guinea pig farm that supplied animal researchers.

No doubt they would call this a great and vindicating victory however their poorly thought through strategy has inspired the biggest swell in support for animal testing for a long time. Over 500 leading academics have signed up to a letter of support and opinion polls show that public support is also strong. Were a piece of legislation banning all animal testing to come before the commons in the current climate the actions of the arrogant few have ensured it wouldn't stand a chance. Losers.

Someone else who should have predicted a backlash are the campaigners for the Menezes family. If they really want heads to roll they need public outrage and support. Attacking the Met as a whole will not achieve this. Over the last couple of months the Met has done a lot of good for a lot of people with some officers showing outstanding bravery and commitment.

Had the Menezes protestors adopted a different line for their opening gambit, something like: 'The Met as a whole deserves a great deal of credit for much of its recent work. In light of this it is even more important that the flaws, personal or systematic, that led to what can only be described as a summary public execution, be fully and openly explored and any individuals found responsible punished to the full extent of the law.' they may have found themselves riding a much bigger wave of public opinion.

Sir Ian Blair of course could be considered as a candidate for this weeks dubious honour but that may be jumping the gun. There's still plenty of opportunity for him to act like a swine as the IPCC's enquiry continues.

No, in the end there was only really one choice for this week, as suggested by MichaelStMark, and that's Andy Cook, the HR director of Gate Gourmet. His performance on Newsnight, coupled with his handling of the various stages of this farce put him miles ahead. So congratulations Mr. Cook you are the first individual to hold the title of VFTCS's Swine Of The Week, you twat.

(Check the 'Gate Gourmet' tags -> for more details of why Mr. Cook was chosen or www.gategourmet.com for their side of the story.)

Numbers are meaningless, never trust them. We're told that the Brazilian police have little room to criticise us over the death of Mr Menezes because they kill about 1000 of their own people a year. Ok, fine, but how big's Brazil? Bigger than the UK, obviously, but by how much?

Without such context the conveniently round figure of 1000 deaths lacks any real meaning and when they start talking money, forget about it. Blinded by zeroes as we are, most aid efforts or investments in projects or services sound like stupendous sums of money but wait, everything is relative.

The only way to understand, quickly and clearly, what these damned numbers actually mean is to present them measured against a common factor. Large sums of money, for example, could be expressed as a percentage of defence spending, simply because this is surely the largest expenditure so all percentages would be under 100 thus avoiding any confusion.

OK, sure, I may have my own agenda tied up in that suggestion but that's besides the point. The yardstick itself doesn't matter as long there is one and it's clear. This seems like such a simple idea and you would think that, if the main drive of the media were to communicate effectively, they'd use it.

Perhaps presenting things with a side order of perspective might upset the plans of an influential few so that's why it's avoided, who knows? The most important thing is to remember, when instantly convinced by the dazzle of the number, pure, simple and concrete, to look a little closer. If you don't see a % it's probably nonsense.

As is often the case with these things, the task of untangling the true detail of Charles Clarke's new terror legislation from the description delivered by the media is not an easy one. Until parliament reconvenes to vote on it the confusion will no doubt continue, with no guarantee that the fog will thin too much after that either.

For now I'll focus on one particular description I heard on a TV news broadcast, specifically that certain 'views' would become crimes punishable by deportation, though what happens to you if your a British citizen I'm not sure. What interested me about this was that it's the first example I can think of where a specific thought is to be made illegal, ie. a thoughtcrime.

Of course this may well have been a careless use of the word on the part of the news reader but it set me thinking. There are already offences such as 'conspiracy to commit murder' or 'intent to supply' where individuals are prosecuted for something the authorities claim they were planning to do.

In these situations however, the police are required to present the CPS with evidence that a crime is going to be committed. A witness who will swear that the defendant stated he would kill, an amount of drugs too large to be for personal use, (though the specific amount is questionable the logic is sound,) etc.

Now does saying to your neighbour, "I think those guys were right to bomb London," constitute the same kind of proof of intent to break the law? Clearly not, so this new legislation cannot be passed under the cloak of precedent.

Instead it appears that it is to be justified by the ultimate trump card of national security and defended by the promise that it is only to be applied to particular individuals considered a danger to the nation. The idea of introducing legislation that criminalises large numbers of people in order that the authorities can simply chose the ones they don't like for other reasons is one that I have already criticised in an earlier post and so I'll leave it at a mention here.

Instead let's consider how the Home Secretary will decide, from among the many who will break the law, just which ones should go. Clearly this will come down to the detailed beliefs understood to be held by each individual and so even if the specific offence relates to voicing the thought, having the thought at all is the real crime against society.

Before the veins in the heads in some on the right burst horribly I should make it clear that my criticisms of such anti-terror efforts are not based solely on the woolly liberal, civil liberties abstract but also largely on practicalities.

The problem with punishing thoughtcrime is that it is impossible to enforce fairly and so inevitably leads to corruption and a distortion of justice. On top of this, in order for the population to accept such a system they must either be oppressed or convinced of armageddon, both of which take a great deal of effort to maintain.

Obviously the far more difficult, yet correspondingly productive route, is to bring the disillusioned youth into some positive part of our society, thereby removing the extremists fodder, and to lead by example on the world stage, thereby removing their justification.

It would appear that, stuck between a book and a hard way, our government has chosen to lead us towards the world of Winston Smith. If you haven't read 1984 this might not be making much sense but then, if you haven't read 1984, the world probably doesn't make much sense either.

Thoughtcrime is here, tick it off the list of similarities we notice but don't resist. Hell, maybe it was already here and I was just too dumb to notice, please let me know if you can think of other examples. Meanwhile, just be careful where your thoughts lead you, some of the inside of your head may soon be technically off limits.

The clock is ticking for British Airways. Within the next hour or so Gate Gourmet’s deadline will run out and, should BA not present them with a new contract to their liking, GG will self destruct. For a company struggling both to fend off budget airlines and cope with rising fuel costs, the overnight loss of their single catering supplier could be too terrible to contemplate.

Appearing on Newsnight last night, the Gate Gourmet spokesman stuck firmly to scripted reasonableness and insisted that they and the few permanent staff they have left were the real victims at the heart of this whole ordeal.

His position, it seemed, was firstly that if the little people sacked by megaphone would have just pissed off like they were supposed to there wouldn’t be a problem and secondly BA were refusing to give them a ‘fair’ contract.

Now it’s very easy to make assumptions and jump right into something like this, demonising one side while ignoring the faults of the other. My efforts to be fair and open minded towards Gate Gourmet have been hampered slightly by their choice of spokesman. If you were looking for a poster boy for cold hearted, corporate greed you couldn’t do much better, did you see his eyes when Gav H asked him if he wanted to apologise to the striking workers? Ouch.

Despite this I tried to judge him on his words, instead of his sharp suit and mean eyes, yet still he came up wanting. Now this whole story has already been considered in an earlier post, (‘grounded principles’) but it was two of his statements in particular that I wanted to focus on today to demonstrate something much greater than this increasingly dirty little fight.

When it was put to the GG spokesman that they had agreed to the existing BA contract when they took over the former catering supplier his response was blunt and determinedly ignorant. GG lost £20 million last year and all they want is a fair deal from BA. He would not, or could not, address the strange fact that the contract had apparently become unfair between GG taking it over and this dispute. GG are a business, he said, they have to turn a profit and BA are stopping them from doing that.

When asked about the workers, laid off in such an appalling manner, his response was somewhat familiar. GG lost £20 million last year, if they are to continue as a company they must make savings. If the people had accepted the new contracts, (presented, as I understand, without any discussion,) they could have kept their jobs.

Now these responses, to me anyway, highlighted the two sides of a great social divide in our world today. Simply put there are those who think there are more important things than money and those who don’t. To the guy from GG legal contracts and labour laws are simply abstract obstacles to be overcome and, quite frankly, how dare anyone suggest that they be otherwise.

The leader of the T&G union outlined the other side quite nicely, basically saying that yes, of course GG had to turn a profit but if the owners can’t do that without treating people like dirt then tough. Of course the capitalist’s answer to this would be good old ‘trickle down economics’, you know, if we do well everyone does well. Well take a look around, there’re a lot of people doing very well indeed, better than ever actually, and yet the gap between rich and poor is growing every day.

Having listened carefully to what GG have to say, I can’t find any sympathy for them. Their insistence that their failings are everyone else’s fault and that if only everyone would just do what GG wanted them to serve only to make the company sound like a petulant child. Worst of all, when they whinge they do so with apparently genuine hurt because they truly believe that they are entitled to their demands.

Now I could write several posts a day solely on things that piss me off on TV, but this goes deeper than mere annoyance. The attitude with which GG treated both its staff and employer is the very same that justifies sweat shops, child labour and inescapable poverty in other parts of the world.

Personally I hope BA tell GG to get fucked and announce that they’ve secretly arranged a new contract with another company, preferably not one from Texas this time. Companies do have a right to make profit, but on any prioritised list of rights this one must surely appear fairly low down. There are many things more important than money in the world, and no number of suits squealing, “gimme it cos I wannit!” will ever change that.

A few years ago there was a spate of cheap-to-make TV shows, usually hosted by some half assed comedian, consisting of 'humorous' adverts from the past and around the world. There were a couple of particularly old TV ads that stuck in my mind. There was the weirdly young and black & white Bob Monkhouse selling Mars Bars and then there was an ad for Kellog's Rice Crispies.

The humour value of this latter ad came from the fact that it was produced in a time before advertising standards. The daughter of the narrating housewife was tired in the mornings, doing badly at school and misbehaved regularly.

After just a few days of Rice Crispies for breakfast though, suddenly the girl's face was brighter, her grades shot up and her behaviour improved in leaps and bounds. Ho, ho, ho, did people really believe that at the time? People in the 'olden days' were stupid huh? Luckily we have standards agencies to protect us from such nonsense and even if we didn't we're all far too clued up to fall for such nonsense aren't we?

Yes, every time I see a TV ad for Carlsberg Export I'm reassured by the existence of those powers that be that exist to shield us from the attempted tyranny of advertising executives everywhere. Those ads used to say "The Danes hate to see it leave almost as much as we love to see it arrive." Unfortunately Carlsberg Export is brewed here in Leeds and isn't actually imported at all. The ads now say simply, "The Danes hate to see it leave."

Watching TV last night, however, my faith in advertising standards, such as it is, took a knock when I saw the new Kellog's Cornflakes ad. A vertical split screen shows us two schoolboys, one skipping breakfast the other sitting down to a bowl of Kellog's finest. The first boy is dopey and out of it while the latter is bright eyed and bushy tailed.

The ad also tells us that making sure our children eat a breakfast like Kellog's Cornflakes can make them 9% more alert, not 8% or 10%, but 9%. The question of how Kellog's think they can measure alertness to a 1% accuracy is a minor consideration when you realise that we have now come a full english circle.

Years ago we introduced regulations for advertising to protect the consumer from companies focussed on profit alone. At the time it meant that some companies had to radically change their ad strategies but we have now reached the point where the ad companies have managed to find a way round most of these rules so that we are back to the same company, selling pretty much the same product with an almost identical bogus ad.

There are few spheres of interest that have advanced so dramatically and rapidly as modern consumerism. With this in mind it is perhaps not so radical to suggest that the rules of the game be reviewed and overhauled to keep up. In a recent post the huge influence of the news media was mentioned and as a footnote to that post it's worth mentioning that commercial advertising is perhaps the only system wielding even greater influence. If this is the case then surely rigorous regulation is essential.

Some would say that we drive consumerism, that it's our demand that fuels supply and, on the face of it, this is true. We will always have wants and needs but I would argue that, generally, we are not sold things we need but rather things we are convinced we need.

There is one way in which advertising is more honest than news media in it's perpetual struggle to direct our minds and that is its motivation. It's ok for news media to be biased as long as the audience are aware of the balance so as to be able to counter it. The problem here is that said bias is not always obvious.

In advertising there is only one motivation, easy to remember as long as you don't let yourself be distracted: they want your money. Every ad you see, whatever it says and however it looks, they want your money. You're worth it because they want your money. You owe it to your kids because they want your money.

Having come full circle I suspect that Kellog's will now have to branch out, perhaps with a new breakfast sensation: Kellog's Magic Beans. Admit it, you'd probably buy them if they were on offer.

Recent mentions of the sadly late but eternally great Hunter S Thompson collided with an idle wish to do something a bit more interesting with my BlogLists the other day. As a tribute to the good doctor, and for something regular to write about, I'm going to continue a tradition that he started in his own columns, namely the Swine Of The Week.

I'm sure once parliament comes back we'll be spoilt for choice but I would welcome any suggestions for that person or persons who've just made your blood boil that week. I'm going to start us off with a specific example from this week of something that really gets on my tits.

the violent minority

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza this week has been an intensely complex, emotional and historic piece of history. Personally I have to say that the withdrawal makes sense and is, hopefully, a step towards a real and lasting peace. With this in mind, the obvious anguish of many of the settlers is an unfortunate, but necessary sacrifice.

That said, however, I do sympathise deeply with those settlers who do not wish to leave. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the settlements, those people have been let down by their government. Removing the settlements is a good idea but not building them in the first place would have been a much better one.

I have also been impressed by the way in which the resistant settlers have chosen to protest. Forcing the Israeli government to physically carry them from their homes is a very powerful, yet entirely responsible way for them to make their point. I can even understand those settlers who have burnt their homes before leaving.

The smaller stories within this greater piece of history were what got my blood up. First there was some crazy settler in the West Bank shooting dead three Palestinians then some of the resisters at one of the Gaza settlements started throwing acid at the troops.

These guys were probably visiting activists rather than local settlers but that doesn't really matter to the guy who loses his nose does it? What bugs me about this violence in particular is that it is occurring within a volatile situation that is actually being handled quite well by both sides. Besides the obvious pain inflicted directly, these violent few are risking the entire process taking a turn for the worse.

Now while I’m opposed to all violence just on principle, if a few fools want to dress up and try their luck against heavily armed urban law enforcement why should I care? Them getting their skulls cracked is surely just natural selection in action.

No, the problem comes when their preferred mode of protest not only gives the whole movement a bad name, but also make it more difficult for wittier, more constructive forms of protest to proceed. In a way it’s more the arrogance than the action that pisses me off. The actions of these people affect everyone else around them yet for some reason they think they have the right to decide that our sacrifice is worth it.

This is why this week’s Swine Of The Week are violent minorities everywhere. Mark my words, one day the rest of us are going to work things out and the only way you guys are going to be able to feed your need for action then is to fight each other to the death on prepay TV.

A young Brazilian electrician was shot dead by police in London a few weeks ago, this much we know to be true. The how and the why of the incident on the other hand, is to say the least, 'debateable'. Apparently many of the initial reports of his acting suspiciously have turned out to be unfounded and an immediate independent enquiry was postponed for reasons of national security.

Few would have believed that this terrible incident could become any more shocking and yet ugly speculation about the guy being forcibly restrained and summarily executed in public has done just that. There's much to be said about the issues surrounding this terrible crime but the aspect being considered here is that of the media coverage.

A few days after 07/07/05, (fuck 7/7, am I the only one who finds 'disaster branding' a little distasteful?) it was pretty clear, if you chose to look back, that those first frantic hours of reporting contained almost no basis in fact. The number, location and nature of the attacks changed wildly as the clock ticked by with different news channels reporting conflicting details.

This is more of an observation than a criticism but it occurs to me that what with the wonders of modern technology our news media have broken the speed of truth. They can now broadcast information so much faster than they can find it out, and this would be fine if not for the fact that have to be broadcasting something at all times.

One reason the newspaper will survive, (in some form,) alongside TV news is the very fact that it is less up to date. The inevitable delay between something happening and it being reported in print means that initial panicked speculation tends to be filtered out. Of course a newspaper article also has far more room for relevant background information and in depth analysis than a three minute news item.

So by their very nature, the high tech rolling news services cannot avoid reporting hysterical nonsense in the primary aftermath of such a huge and important incident. Some may say that this is all being a bit picky, after all, what else can they do?

The point is not to criticise the news media but just to recognise its limitations. This is vitally important when you consider how much influence it has on you. How do you know what you know about things happening outside your everyday life? Unless you happen to have a direct line to a front-line friend in any particular story, the news media is your main source of contemporary information.

So it's important to recognise that the news won't always be right because it can't be, but it's the closest we can get, right? Well, there are a couple more elements to consider, the choice of story for example. What about the stories you don't hear because, for whatever reason, they don't make it to the news?

Another limitation to the news media is that it can't possibly report everything, (though our own media could surely cover a few more stories,) so we have to recognise that the news does not give us a complete picture, again because it can't.

The final constraint on the news we see is aptly summed up by a small article from pg14 of the Guardian, 20/02/02 entitled 'Lies, damned lies and Pentagon briefings'. It tells of the Pentagon's 'Office of Strategic Influence' who, at the time, had just finished dropping leaflets on Afghanistan.

"Stung by criticism of the war against terrorism, the Pentagon's office of strategic influence is preparing to feed misinformation to foreign news organisations in friendly countries, military officials told the New York Times."

Yes, yes, it's very easy to squeal conspiracy theory and all too easy to find yourself sleeping in a foil helmet but this still cause for some degree of concern. We are a kind of democracy and public opinion does have some sway over government actions. Bearing this in mind then, any agency that influences public opinion bears a huge responsibility as their own actions may tip a country toward or away from military action for example.

Blair, apparently, had the majority of the country behind him when he decided to declare war on the people of Iraq, and even if they weren't, he was re-elected despite it. The British people as a democratic whole, condoned the war on Iraq but based on what?

Where did the majority of the British public learn what they know of Iraq? Were libraries across the land emptied on books about the middle east? Did the internet hum dangerously under the strain of millions of curious researchers? I'll consider this hammered home and move on.

The news media, the great fourth estate, is indeed vitally important to a free and just society but having such a grand role to fill does not make it infallible. The industry is made up of many hard worker and highly skilled people, many of whom I'm sure are motivated by more than just their wages. This does not mean that we should ignore their limitations or inherent weaknesses.

There's nothing wrong with a biased media, as long as there are plenty different biases and it is clear which way each one leans so that you and I can translate it back into something closer to the truth. At the end of the day your TV tells you more than anyone or anything else and while it may be desperately trying to convince you that your diet is not healthy enough, a pinch of salt probably wouldn't do any harm.

Holy crap, it’s comment central down here today! I did have something else to write about but I think I’ll save it and just respond to the multiple comments yesterday’s post provoked instead. Dialogue is just so much more fun than monologue

mjohnson

The SotF instinct seems to work on various levels from one individual over another to one species over another. Between these, I agree, will lie one social group over another so yes this is certainly a factor in our apparently natural xenophobia. If we have a system that it serving us ok then any potential change or influence for change is likely to be met with suspicion.

I also believe that ambition is another inherent human trait and that this desire to explore, master and develop something, anything, is one thing that has brought us top where we are today. Again, this is neither a good nor a bad thing in of itself, it’s how we choose to use this drive that determines this.

I would argue that we have built a society fixated on material wealth, money in particular and so while it follows that most of us apply this natural drive to the pursuit of financial gain, this is not the only way for us to use this skill.

drk762

I absolutely agree that our current political system is unacceptable and damaging to society though I would suggest that it is really a one party system. The Tories provide a pitiful opposition to Labour now just as Labour did to the Tories before that.

Proportional representation sounds like a good idea though I don’t know much about the details. As it wouldn’t do either the government or the opposition any good however, I don’t expect there to be any public debate or movement on this issue regardless of how good it may be for the rest of us!

I have to say that my own answer to the problem of these huge companies is to fundamentally change our economic system so that, instead of banning or capping companies, it is actually impossible for any to get that big in the first place. Aldous Huxley’s ‘Island’ is an amazing book that describes, (a little vaguely I admit,) just such a system.

My own belief in the potential of hemp leads me to see smaller more independent communities with their own local industries as the way forward. Diversity, communication and a decent quality of life for all, sounds so simple when you say it like that doesn’t it?

marigold

Your mother’s point about the A-bomb is a fair one but I would argue, in that polite, talking-to-your-mate’s-mum way, that the blame for the war and it’s far reaching consequences lies squarely at the feet of the politicians and world leaders of the time.

I stand by my position, outlined in earlier posts, that WWII came out of the way we treated Germany at the end of WWI, we gave Hitler the country on a plate. Maybe the bomb was necessary, maybe it wasn’t (this would be my opinion), but what’s for sure is that the war wasn’t.

I know I whinge about politicians plenty but I feel there’s good reason. When most of us mess up at work we cause ourselves and our colleagues a bit of hassle. When they mess up at theirs a lot of people die and many more suffer.

Yes, the bar is very high, they should either get over it or get hit with it.

Just looking through some comments people have left recently and found that this one in particular, (drk762 on 'grounded principles') inspired a post of its own in reply. Before we get into that though I'd just like to thank everybody who takes the time to read this and in particular those who comment, cheers guys

At first glance there is certainly an apparent conflict between the survival of the fittest drive of our 'animal side' and the community spirit of 'civilised society' but I believe, on closer inspection, that things are not so simple.

Imagine the badger if you will. A badger is born equipped with some degree of instinct which is then supplemented by basic skills it learns from mimicking its elders. This badger will in turn pass on those same skills to its offspring before it dies.

The point here is that animals can never develop beyond a single lifetime's experience. Under these circumstances 'survival of the fittest' means exactly what we usually take it to mean, the strongest individuals in the group win the chance to procreate.

We humans have developed from this into something slightly different. Look at mankind's physical achievements, science, technology etc. no human being can hold the sum of human knowledge in their head. However it happened, we have developed the ability to not only communicate nontrivial information between ourselves verbally, but also to record information and ideas outside our heads so that others can start from where we leave off thereby transcending the limit of a single lifespan.

Father of modern physics Isaac Newton said that he only achieved what he had by, 'standing on the shoulders of giants' and this amazing facet of humanity also delivers a new definition of 'survival of the fittest.' Connecting with one another as we have, the human race has adopted some characteristics of a single creature and suddenly 'survival of the fittest' applies not to an individual person but to the survival of the fittest race.

Under this definition, the co-operation associated with community is suddenly not at odds with the notion of success but is in fact integral to it. Working together is in fact still technically selfish as it is in our own best interests.

Now being an atheist I cannot attribute any moral code I live by to some higher power, it has to come from the world around us. I agree that we are not hardwired to be nice to one another and that destructive tendencies are inherent to our being. That said however, it is my belief that we have evolved as social animals and that because of this tolerance and co-operation are morally right simply because they make practical sense for humanity.

It's important to recognise however, that these two systems of SotF are not mutually exclusive and there will always be people prepared to screw over others for their own benefit as individual SotF works within wider social SotF.

Again, my atheist tendencies lead me to reject the notions of pure good and evil, (see previous post, 'god bothering pt1
')and so while I agree that we cannot remove greed from the human animal I would also argue that we shouldn't try to, it's an inherent trait that must serve some purpose.

While it can't, and probably shouldn't be eliminated, the damage greed does to the world could be greatly reduced. For a start, although greed certainly is in all of us, western society for example seems to actively encourage it in the form of consumerism while choosing to ignore the detriment this causes. This is something we could change.

Another practical change we could make to reduce the impact of greed is our economic system. Our current system allows companies to become so large that they become pretty much free of social constraints. Now we obviously can't simply limit the size companies are allowed to reach, that would be changing the rules of the game unfairly. Instead we need to change the game all together.

The biggest scam ever pulled was to convince us that the system we have now is the only one possible, that material way of life is the unshakeable result of millennia of social evolution. For example, we have the technology and the resources to feed, clothe and house the entire human race in a manner that is infinitely sustainable and good for the environment.

We could do that tomorrow if those in power chose to, as it is they don't and we don't push them. My point is simply that things do not have to be the way they are, especially when the way they are sucks as much as it does.

It's an unfortunate truth of the day that big companies can do more or less as they please and get away with murder on a regular basis. In the US corporations have long since won the rights attributed to individual citizens in their constitution such as free speech etc. At the same time, however, these businesses do not have the responsibilities of the individual, eg. if you cause someone to die you must answer for it.

Another great example was some statistics I saw a while ago that compared the sum total of all state benefits claimed over one year in the UK, (legally and illegally,) with the amount of tax one particular media magnate had managed to avoid paying thanks to his clever accountants.

If that guy had paid all the tax he was supposed to, like you and I have to, his taxes alone would have covered the entire benefit bill. Outrage? No, instead we stand in awe of such a superior human being, defending his right to keep what he 'earns' while demonising those on benefits as thieving scroungers.

How could this have possibly come about we cry? How could our noble and just society have been hijacked behind our backs? Well, unfortunately, our society has always been like this. The rich guys might dress differently now, there are more of them and, if anything, they're richer, but they've always been there fleecing the rest of us they've just gotten really, really good at it.

The simple fact is this however, the only power they have is that which we give them and, if we really want to, we can take it away. A company can be as big as you like but if enough people stop buying its products it's going down. We do have the power to change things, but only together and only if we can get off our own arses long enough.

So it's VJD today and while it's an unfortunate truth that many people probably think that has something to do with mad cow disease, those in the know are celebrating the end of WWII. During their coverage of the Victory in Japan Day celebrations, the BBC mentioned that many surviving veterans have chosen to enter into various reconciliation processes with the Japanese people.

This is apparently partly to better understand the Japan they fought, but also to recognise today's Japan as the very different nation it is and it all sounds like an excellent idea to me. Indeed modern Japan is vastly different to the nation we crippled sixty years ago. It has a strong and stable economy, is seen as a global centre of high tech development and, (until our recent Iraq fiasco,) hadn’t deployed troops anywhere overseas since WWII.

Japan exports much that I personally enjoy such as music, literature, film, computer games, animation etc. all of which whisper of a beautiful and fascinating alien culture. All in all they have done pretty well considering the damage we and the US managed to do to them.

Tokyo for example is seen around the world as a paradigm of the huge, sparkling, high tech city. Of course everything in Tokyo is relatively new in terms of architecture because the US burned the whole place to the ground with incendiary bombs.

VJ Day is often forgotten in the shadow of VE Day, just recently passed, as being of lesser direct importance. From the British perspective victory over Germany has always been the central issue. Germany itself has also undergone a great transformation since WWII, occupied, split in half, reunited, only to emerge apparently stronger. Also having a strong economy, Germany now has a strong pacifist and diplomatic take on its foreign policy.

The impact of winning and losing a war should never be, yet almost always is, underestimated. There are two aspects of losing a war in particular worth considering and they both involve reconstruction. There is physical reconstruction of course, the fact that cities are destroyed requires that they be rebuilt using contemporary technology and planning skills.

There is also the reconstruction of the society however, political structures in particular are often torn down, if they have not crumbled already, and must be rebuilt. In short, the loser of a war is forced to recognise the failures of his society with brutally critical honesty and rebuild having learned those lessons.

The winners on the other hand, usually learn far less, if anything. The victory not only enforces the winner’s vision of who owns what land, (the crux of most conflicts,) but also reassures the winner that his way of life and political systems are absolutely right and justified, after all they have taken him to victory.

Of course war doesn’t always have this effect, suggesting that there are other factors involved and that perhaps there are ways to affect such self realisation without having to kill a whole bunch of people. Whatever it takes, however, that the kind of self improvement forced upon Japan and Germany since WWII is regularly necessary for all countries and peoples.

We and the world change continually and in order for our social structures to serve us effectively they must change too. Clinging to out of date ideas in the name of tradition only serves to insulate a country from the rest of the world and inevitably leads to conflict.

So yes, we won the war, we beat Japan, we rock, they suck etc. The thing is that that was sixty years ago and all the brave guys who risked their lives for us are pensioners now. In the last half a century or so the people we beat down to nothing have built themselves back up to, and even beyond our own level while we’re still patting ourselves on the back. I guess masturbation really does send you blind.

Well it's high summer in the UK but then any Brits reading this don't need me to tell them, after all it's pissing down outside and BA are involved in an industrial dispute. All those poor bastards hoping to escape the changeable weather trapped, as usual, in the slightly unreal limbo of Heathrow.

To be fair to BA it's not all them this time. They are having a ruck with their baggage handlers, or throwers as Chuck Palahniuk would say, but the airport itself is also in dispute with the airline's catering company. The story goes that Gate Gourmet sacked a number of workers without notice, by megaphone because they didn't accept new contracts that were being forced upon them. As you might expect, they were a bit pissed off about that and so they and sympathetic colleagues have undertaken illegal ‘wildcat’ strikes.

Appearing on Newsnight last night was the leader or spokesman of some trade union and John Redwood representing the other side and defending the trade-relations legislation brought in by his government many years ago. For those who don’t know John Redwood, he’s a fairly standard looking little right winger, ie. he always appears to be weirdly greased and just a little bit too creepy.

With Kirsty Wark chairing the discussion Redwood described the system through which workers can go about legal strike action, pointing out that the workers in question had chosen to ignore this route. The union guy looked and sounded like a bouncer. His shiny bald head sat atop a terrifyingly thick neck that disappeared into a suit from which he appeared to be about to burst at any moment. Even his voice, a thick, southern, working class accent, seemed to speak of violent dues paid in the past.

Now the cultural norms of our society cost us a great deal on a daily basis, usually without us noticing, and yesterday was no different. In response to Redwood’s comments about the legality of the strike action the union guy pointed out that if they had followed the rules the action would have taken a fortnight to arrange giving the time for Gate Gourmet to arrange agency staff to ‘scab’.

This minimal but vehement use of slang, particularly in that accent from a guy looking like that, caused by far the most salie