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Medialens under the lens, over Syria and Libya: Becoming the new Dave Sparts?

I have long been an active supporter of Medialens ( http://www.medialens.org/ ). Like many others, I have supported them with money, time, tips, and I have been proud to have done so. For they have done very important groundbreaking work over the years challenging the inanities and distortions of the 'mainstream' media. They have for example written important critiques of mainstream media coverage of dangerous climate change, of Iraq Body Count, of the corporate nature of most of our media, and much more besides. They have held the corporate media to account time and again. They ought to be saluted for all of that. It is therefore with a sense of deep regret (as well as of some foreboding) that I have finally to write to address the ways in which, lately, some of the wheels seem to be coming off their wagon. An early warning sign perhaps was their long-running spat with George Monbiot, over the Rwandan genocide and the terrible atr...

The threat -- and the lessons -- of recession

The recession presents a threat to us all. The Green Party would tackle this threat through tougher action to regulate the finance sector and through a massive job-creation programme in renewable energy, public transport, sustainable local farming and other sectors of the 21st-century green economy [see posts on this, below:]. Our Leader, Caroline Lucas, has joined with the UK's leading green economists to propose a 'Green New Deal' that will stabilise the economy and boost employment. We as a society can only make real progress if we grasp the opportunity provided by this historical juncture to move away from a culture of debt-sodden materialism. Jobs and local economies would be far more secure if we replaced the mountains of 'cheap' imports with locally made goods that we genuinely need. A recession shows us all the importance of preserving resources: consuming less fuel, saving on heating bills, minimising damage to our shared environment. Let's ...