Extra Extra

The inspiration for Oscar the Grouch?

Oscar Levant discusses a weekend in the country with Fred and Ginger

“Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”
The delightful Frank Luntz, in a memo to the US Republican Party, 2003

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”
4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007

“Few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change.”
Jim Hogg, PR professional, DeSmog blog, 2007

“We will delete comments which deny the absolutely overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, just as we would delete comments which questioned the reality of the Holocaust or the equal mental capacities and worth of human beings of different ethnic groups. Such “debates” are merely the morally indefensible trying to cover itself in the cloth of intellectual tolerance.”
Alex Steffen, editor of WorldChanging.com, 2008

“You should be ashamed of yourself”, said a man on the train this morning, berating a fellow commuter who had just barged his way onto the train as the doors were closing. “You knocked that woman over. You even swore at her.”

The accused looked duly bashful. “I didn’t mean to” came his childish response, “and I wasn’t swearing at her, I was swearing at the other people”.

Last week, the UN accused the Congolese government of using excessive force in recent military-style police operations in Bas Congo. According to the UN, ‘at least 100’ people were killed, wounded captives were summarily executed, houses were looted and razed, and bodies were collected and disposed of.

The same thing happened last year. Excuse my lack of objectivity, but it’s disgusting, and the Congolese government should be ashamed of itself.

Instead, the ruling party faithful are lining up to dismiss the report. The government spokesman said it was “mendacious”, with “conclusions that could seriously undermine the credibility the DRC is painfully and very patiently trying to restore”. The Provincial Minister for Justice, Human Rights and Information (no less) went further: “it’s unfounded… quite simply a muddle of confabulations and monstrosities.”

If anything, the UN report, which is based on a painstaking investigation, is too cautious. There is no indication that a single shot was fired at police during their operation ‘to restore State authority’. Yet the evidence from mass graves, together with reports from credible medical and civil society sources, makes it hard to conclude that any fewer than 250 were shot dead by police. And almost as chilling as the massacre itself was the systematic cover-up, with bodies being collected, thrown into police pick-ups (under tarpaulins), and thrown into mass graves and rivers.

In March, a courageous opposition parliamentarian named Gilbert Kiakwama insisted on a debate about these events. Knowing that it would be futile to demand the Interior & Security Minister’s resignation, he asked him to do his job:

Since you have no intention of resigning, I have only one thing to say to you : Work. Do your duty, all your duty, nothing but your duty. Stop ducking the issues. …Give your troops non-lethal weapons, build them real prisons, stop the theft of their salaries and rations, punish corruption and abuse of power… or to the injury of the Kongo people you will have added insult.

Imagine our surprise on finding the austere Wellington Monument surrounded by this.

“Hulk. Smash! …Smash Hulk’s USP. What Hulk smash most? Hulk smash all hope of interesting time in cinema.”

Peter Bradshaw neatly sums up the desperation of the would-be film-goer as blockbuster season settles in for the summer.

Take your pick:

• The Incredible Hulk (see above)
• Iron Man, “a mixture of Robocop and Darth Vader… a franchise that is already beginning to rust”
• Indiana Jones “One tries hard not to be distracted from any available pleasure by the plot—thickly woven gibberish”
• Sex & The City “There are four of them—banded together, like hormonal hobbits, and all obsessed with a ring“, or
• The Happening “Basically an awful clunker of whose essential clunkerishness you become aware slowly but inexorably, like a hypnosis subject coming round from a trance. You begin to notice the abysmal acting, terrible direction, muddled script - an undead trio shuffling worryingly towards you.”

It’s as if the National Theatre was suddenly doing Lloyd Webber musicals. This wouldn’t be so bad if we could count on some sunshine, at least. Time to order another series of The Wire.

(My apologies to readers in Kinshasa, for obvious reasons.)

Has it really been a month?

I designed some t-shirts, and you can have one too. Worldwide exclusive, etc, etc.

Click on the picture for more info. More designs coming soon, including, by popular demand, one for Mundeles.

PREPARE A POSE FOR THE LONDON FREEZE
30 APRIL 2008
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
18.24-18.28
SPREAD THE WORD

Here’s what happened in New York:

Brought to you by Improv Everywhere

Update: It was strangely exhilarating to take part in the Liverpool Street Freeze. It was hard to tell how many of us were there until the station clock read 18.24:00, when more than a third of the people in the station stopped moving. I was on one leg at the time, and halfway down a staircase, so my balance was tested and I got the shakes after three minutes. The effect was slightly spoiled by the huge number of photographers (though I could find only one on Flickr). If you pause to think about it, there’s not a great deal of point in photographing this sort of thing. Videos of this sort of thing, on the other hand, are fun:

ABC News report