27 Nov 2009 | Events
The Copenhagen Summit will debate one of the most important public issues of the past thirty years. Many scientists and advocates predict climate change will kill potentially hundreds of millions of people worldwide over the coming decades. This begs the question: is there a special responsibility for the media to exercise restraint in reporting climate change? Or are we witnessing the rise of an unchallengeable orthodoxy?
3 Dec, 6.30 – 8pm, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA
RSVP to: [email protected]
or call Free Word on +44 (0) 20 7324 2570
On our panel debating “Saying the unsayable: is climate scepticism the new Holocaust denial?”:
George Monbiot
George Monbiot is one of the UK’s leading environmental campaigners and the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent, A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man’s Land. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian. His website is: www.monbiot.com
James Delingpole
James Delingpole is a libertarian conservative journalist, broadcaster and author of Welcome To Obamaland, I’ve Seen Your Future And It Doesn’t Work, How To Be Right, and the Coward series of WWII adventure novels. His website is: www.jamesdelingpole.com/
Further reading
James Delingpole, “Climategate reminds us of the liberal-left’s visceral loathing of open debate”, Daily Telegraph, 24 Nov 2009
Read here
George Monbiot, “The threat is from those who accept climate change, not those who deny it”, The Guardian, 21 Sep 2006.
Read here
15 Apr 2009 | Uncategorized
The arrests of 114 climate protesters, coupled with ongoing revelations about police conduct at the G20 protests in London seem to point to a trend in police attitudes to protest and direct action.
The tendency seems to be back to Miners’ Strike tactics, with constables not in place to just police protests — that is, to allow freedom of expression and assembly while assuring protesters do not become a danger to themselves and others — but rather to confront demonstrators. The pre-emptive arrests in Nottinghamshire seem to actively enforce the idea that police are actively anti-protest, at least for now.
This morning, I took part in a radio discussion concerning an anti-police Facebook group, ‘Northumbria Police — what a group ov wankers’ if you must know. 8,478 members and counting!)
The question of the morning was whether people had lost respect for the authority of the police. I’m not really sure that we have less respect for the police than before, but with responsibility comes scrutiny and criticism.
The more worrying question is whether the police are losing respect for us: while it would be naïve to imagine that the police have always held the general public in the highest regard, there has, somewhat ironically, been a more civil atmosphere at heavily-policed protests since the advent of advanced surveillance techniques: perhaps when you can get someone on video and arrest them later, you’ll be less inclined to wade in with the truncheon. Most people on protests these days are quite used to the policeman with the video camera openly filming them.
Are we looking at an age of confrontational policing? One would hope not. Twenty years ago, almost 100 people died in Sheffield because the police assumed that football supporters were hooligans. It’s worrying that today, increasingly, police seem to be assume protesters who may merely be exercising their rights, automatically pose a threat.
