Rupert's Read

Vodafone admit to me here that they swallowed Mubarak's line on national security justifying their phone blackout!: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/01/31/exclusive-vodafone-justifies-censorship-in-egypt-over-national-security/   -- Rupert Read Green Party Councillor, Norwich. http://rupertread.net [If you have an urgent email for me while I am away from a regular computer, you may wish to try contacting me instead on rupertread+mob AT gmail.com] WHY NOT FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER?: twitter.com/GreenRupertRead

This letter has just been published, in the latest issue of PROSPECT magazine:     To the Editor; Peter Kellner's piece (Jan. '11) on how the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill badly underestimates the effect that AV will have on the composition of the Commons. Because it puts an end to the main form of tactical voting and to the 'wasted vote' argument, AV changes the expressed first preferences of voters. For example, the rise of the Greens in Australia has been predicated on growing numbers of Aussies voting Green even if and where the Greens have little chance of winning; voters can affords to do this, because their second preferences etc will still count. If the AV referendum goes through, expect much more substantial changes to British politics (than Kellner has woken up to) - including an accelerated rise for the Green Party.   Faithfully, C'llr. Rupert Read, one of 21 Norwich Green Councillors Norwich NR2 3TT.

Green Party members from all over the East of England met in London yesterday for a Regional gathering. The following statement was unanimously agreed: "We are concerned about the de facto militarisation of the Egyptian government, when what is really needed is a swift and clear promise of _democratisation_. We praise the bravery of those protesting against the dictatorial Mubarak regime. We call on our MPs and our government to exert the strongest possible economic and diplomatic pressure on the Egyptian regime to refrain from treating protesters with violence and brutality, and to concede forthwith the free and fair elections that are their main demand."

 Avaaz.org - The World in Action I don't often do this, but in the case of the #Jan25 revolution, its worth it. Indeed, it feels compulsory. ...I've signed; I hope you will too:   Forwarded from the good people at  Avaaz :   Brave Egyptian protesters will determine in the coming hours whether tyranny or democracy prevails in Egypt and across the region. They've appealed for international solidarity – let's send them a massive response , and hold our governments accountable to stand with them too: Millions of brave Egyptians are right now facing a fateful choice. Thousands have been jailed, injured or killed in the last few days. But if they press on in peaceful protest, they could end decades of tyranny. The protesters have appealed for international solidarity , but the dictatorship knows the power of unity at a time like this – they've desperately tried to cut Egyptians off from the world and ea...

 Just a quick note to say - I hope you are urging the British govt today to tell the Egyptian govt today that a massacre tonight would be totally unacceptable . You need to threaten the cutting off of all aid, the imposition of sanctions, etc.     It is so crucial that the British govt makes very clear to the Egyptian govt right now that the army attacks on the protesters that have now begun - I am watching live coverage on Al Jazeera, this minute - must stop...    Egypt needs to be told that it will become a pariah state, facing sanctions, etc., if it does not allow these demonstrations to continue, and allow democratic reform in Egypt...   People's lives - and the reputation of your govt - are in the balance, at present....     Do join me: Write to your MP now!

Listen to the remarkable double interview in this morning's The World Today programme on the BBC World Service. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00d4rpr/The_World_Today_27_01_2011/ The interview, beginning at about 26'4" into the programme, is with two young people: Ahmed in Cairo (whose phone is intermittently jammed by the dictatorship) and Sanay in Tunis. They express mutual support and solidarity. Their revolution is one. Near the end of the interview, at about 30'48', the BBC guy asks Sanay: "Do you think history is on your side?" And without a milli-second hesitation, she delivers the right answer: " We are making history; people are making history!"

Today our six East Anglian writer-campaigners - Rupert Read, Mark Crutchley, Charlotte Du Cann, Marguerite Finn, David Seddon, & Trevor Phillips - launched the @OneWorldColumn blog an an online magazine, forum and news network for the region's progressive organisations. The One World Column was for six years a regular weekly feature in the Eastern Daily Press, commenting on issues including international development, poverty, globalisation, peacemaking, human rights, international relations and the environment. It also commented on local news from a global perspective. The column was written by a rotating team of six volunteer writers and also published on its own website. When the EDP terminated the weekly column, the writers decided to produce a blog and develop a partnership with progressive organisations with similar interests. Campaigning groups and charities will provide guest writers and news – and network the blog to their organisations' supporters, cre...

I'm still reeling somewhat from the death of my friend David Fleming late last year. Here are a couple of great tributes I've picked up: http://www.darkoptimism.org/FlemingTimesObit.html http://www.darkoptimism.org/2010/11/29/in-memoriam-david-fleming/ I'm pleased that the last time I saw David, in September of 2010, we had a great time together, and some superb chats (as one virtually always did with him). He will be sorely missed, but his influence lives on.  

To listen to me uncut on carbon rationing, go 1 hr. 24 minutes in to this BBC Radio Norfolk piece: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00d12q3/Matthew_Gudgin_19_01_2011/

Seminar 2: Friday 25th February 2011. Please click to enlarge the event schedule:

The revelations from Lord Goldsmith ( http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/99953  ) are at once completely unsurprising and completely devastating. We now finally know that Goldsmith told Bliar that 1441 didn't authorise war. In any decent society, Goldsmith would (as the MS points out) have told us this at the time . But, far more important, in any decent society, this news would now lead at least and at last to the indictment on war crimes charges of the former PM. Sadly, we are it seems a long way still from being a truly decent society. Blair still 'walks tall', despite having been definitively exposed as a liar and as the author of the ultimate international crime (as defined by the Nuremberg tribunals): aggression leading to mass killing, mass murder. Hopefully, his day in court will still come. We can but hope that the International Criminal Court will catch up with him and Bush, just as Pinochet eventually had to face t...

UEA Law School Research Seminar Series Spring 2011   I'm kicking off this series:     Wednesdays at 4.30pm in Blackdale Building room 0.32. Please direct any questions to Magda Raczynska M.Raczynska AT uea.ac.uk (research seminar convenor, UEA Law School).     26 January Dr Rupert Read (PHI) Guardians for Future Generations; a Radical Proposal  

Current Issue Access Current Issue (Subscription Required) | View Sample Past Issue 41, 3 (2010) Summer 2010 Edited by Rita Felski Bruno Latour, "An Attempt at a 'Compositionist Manifesto'" | Download Article Ian Hunter, "Scenes from the History of Poststructuralism: Davos, Freiburg, Baltimore, Leipzig" Robert Pippin, "Philosophical Film: Trapped by Oneself in Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past " Krishan Kumar, "The Ends of Utopia" Shira Wolosky, "Relational Aesthetics and Feminist Poetics" Rupert Read, "Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations as a War Book" James Phillips, "Wordsworth and the Fraternity of Joy" Nergis Erturk, "Those Outside the Scene: Snow in the World Republic of Letters" ...

From the excellent Aussie Greens:   'Following our devastating floods in Australia, Bob Brown called for our nation to implement the mining profits tax that is being discussed here, and for some of this tax to be put towards a fund to help Australia cope with the likely increased natural disasters from global warming. Two of Bob's media statements follow.   Bob's call follows the observations by climate scientists that global warming is lifting more water vapour into the air, so increasing the intensity of torrential downpours, especially in Australia's north. Professor David Karoly from the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences said that "Australia has been known for more than a hundred years as a land of droughts and flooding rains, but what climate change means is Australia becomes a land of more droughts and worse flooding rains." http://www.theage.com.au/environment/fates-conspire-to-concoct-a-recipe-for-disaster-20110111...

If you can come along, you're welcome!: Green Drinks Tonight: Shifting Cultural Values With Dr. Rupert Read , reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia, co-founder of values-change blog Green Words Workshop and Norwich Green Party Councillor. The Green Dragon, 18th January, 7:30pm Hello Everyone, To date our Green Drinks themes have had quite a practical focus, but this month we're tackling something that at first glance seems a little more esoteric - shifting cultural values. In fact it's pretty much central to all Sustainable Bungay's projects and is at the heart of Transition; but we generally only acknowledge it in so much as we recognise that, if we're to tackle climate change, come to terms with finite resources and cope with a radical economic readjustment we'll have to change the way we think about each other and the world. At Green Drinks this month, and with the help of Dr. Rupert Read, we'll delve a little deeper. ...

Rupert's readers! You might be interested in the article below, by Gillian Tett in the FT, which describes an approach to re-regulating the banking system being taken in South Korea.      www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8bfc81e2-1f30-11e0-8c1c-00144feab49a.html#axzz1B3bTiTpm The accompanying paper by Professor Hyun Song Shin is well worth reading too, at      www.princeton.edu/~hsshin/www/MacroprudentialMemo.pdf Would it be too much to hope we could do something like this in Britain? Under this government (or its predecessor), yes. #VoteGreen...

The Dail voted through Ireland’s Euro-bailout package. The Irish Greens wanted an election in January: they haven’t got it. But Cowen, the Irish PM, did say in November that; “It is my intention at the conclusion of the budgetary process, with the enactment of the necessary legislation in the New Year, to then seek the dissolution of parliament.” So we may now be very close to the onset of elections in Ireland. Given that context, where now, for Irish political economy, and in particular for we on the Left and in the Green movement, to whom surely the chain of events that led to the baiout looks particularly wrong, particularly venal and disastrous? So: I was phoned up recently at random by MORI, for an opinion poll. One of the main questions was: “Do you think that Britain help should bail out Ireland to stop it going bankrupt?” This question helpfully brings out an insane inconsistency in the current British governmental approach to debt and pump-priming. According to Osborne, Camero...

This is truly extreme: the LDs are down to just SEVEN percent in the latest opinion poll: http://today.yougov.co.uk/politics/lib-dems-drop-7  . 'Others' are once again beating the LDs, with the Greens in there amongst them of course. It really does look like the LDs may be heading for oblivion. Step forward, their potential replacers: http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2010/12/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-libdems

As you no doubt know by now, Rupert's reader, a Democratic Congresswoman who was 'targetted' by Sarah Palin - with rifle-hair-cross-sights on a map - is fighting for her life, after a shooting which has already killed several others. @ SarahPalinUSA  tweeted this: "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" This dangerous moron's willingness to bring the lives of her political opponents into peril seemingly knows no limits.   The U.S. is now in a very dangerous place. Check out this thoughtful article: http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/2009/08/10/is-the-us-on-the-brink-of-fascism/   [And these follow-ups to it, about how America might stop its descent into disaster: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009083311/fascist-america-ii-last-turnoff   http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009083526/fascist-america-iii-resistance-long-haul  ]

As MPs who #No2AV claimed were supporters continue publicly to declare for the Yes campaign, the Yes campaign are encouraging supporters to write to their MPs to ask where they stand: http://www.yestofairervotes.org/blog/entry/where-does-your-mp-stand-on-the-alternative-vote/ Given that No2AV certainly cannot be relied to give out any reliable facts on this matter - see http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2011/01/no-to-av-meltdown.html  - this looks like the best way forward.

The #No2AV campaign appear to be having a bit of a crisis... Last week they published a list of 114 Labour MPs.  Within a matter of hours it emerged that at least one MP on the list had not given them his consent. By yesterday, the count was up to 5: http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/01/no2av-campaign-gaffe/ Now it turns out that Barry Sheerman MP, far from being a No supporter, is an outspoken Yes campaigner: http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2011/01/06/huddersfield-mp-barry-sheerman-to-campaign-in-favour-of-alternative-vote-86081-27938126/ This of course comes after they wrongly declared that Michael Gove was a supporter: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11845177 They do seem to be in a mess about this. While yestofairervotes.org are, it seems to me, going from strength to strength!   Maybe the problem is in part that the No campaign are in fact run by a bunch of right-wing nasties from the Tax-Payers Alliance and the Tories...

So, my plans are firming up... I am going to be in Oldham East & Saddleworth for Polling Day (and for the count), next Thursday 13th Jan. ... Am hugely looking forward to it! My last byelection outing was of course Norwich North...  ;-) Hopefully, the quite disgraceful LibDem lies and misrepresentations on that occasion, matched by Woollas of Labour up in Oldham such that this byelection became necessary, will resonate with some voters who will be willing to give the cleaner Greens a try, instead...

Here is an unusually important and concerning MediaLens piece: http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=594:guest-media-alert-killing-journalism&catid=24:alerts-2011&Itemid=68