There was a fantastic 4 part series on BBC 4 that is online. It is called the Century Of The Self. It's all about the history of public relations.

The episodes are on Google Video and are archived here.

The first episode goes into detail about the influence of Edward Bernays on shaping both consumerism and modern democracy. Well worth watching.

Here is the first episode.

Joseph Stiglitz seems to be getting a lot of press at the moment... A noted Keynsian, he offers another point of view to the Chicago school of thought that Milton Friedman pioneered...

Here is something from the Telegraph in the UK:

"The biggest fear is that long-term bond rates won't come down in line with short-term rates. We'll have the reverse of what we've seen in recent years, and that is what is frightening the markets," he told the Daily Telegraph, while trudging through ice and snow in Davos.

	Stiglitz is worried about the level of long-term interest rates

"The mechanism of monetary policy is ineffective in these circumstances. I'm not saying it won't work at all: it will help the banking system but the credit squeeze is going to go on because nobody trusts anybody else. The Fed is pushing on a string," he said.

Climate change is here. That is now commonly accepted.

Here is something pretty interesting though. According to an article in The Scotsman Shell are making public their scenario planning documentation and the conclusions that they draw.

There are two key scenarios that emerge - codenamed "Scramble" and "Blueprints"

From the article:

Last weekend my old friend Simon Napier-Bell gave the music industry a serve that should ensure that he gets taken out to lunch by those people who still have expense accounts. The article is not, I hasten to add, a flattering picture of the business or the business practices that made it.

If you are at all interested in the music industry you should read it. Simon is one of the few people that I know who has the benefit of knowing quite intimately all of the big players who made the music industry what it is today - Ahmet Ertegun, Clive Davis, Mo Ostin, Tommy Mottola.... these are the serious players in the game.

Simon told me that he will never be able to make a deal again in the music business as a result of the article. That may be true. But a lot of people who want the goods on the big wheels will perhaps want to talk to Simon...

This is a video that I discovered on Home Page Daily. Those guys are doing some of the best aggregation of video available on the web today for people who are awake and who care about the planet and the issues. Definitely worth visiting. Unfortunately they haven't yet figured out how to run personalized RSS feeds or alerts in the way that Real News Network has...

This is Lester Brown at the recent Pop Tech:

How long does it take for a story online to build up a head of steam and move beyond the rumour stage into becoming fact?

Over the last two years (and more) pundits have been talking about the problems with the US fed and the fiat dollar. Friends who are in the financial markets have been saying to me that there is still some steam left in the market and it is all about knowing when to get out.

We are now seeing the major investment banking houses taking massive multi-billion dollar write downs from their exposure to subprime and even the ones who don't have direct exposure are going to get hit.

Here is one view:


Stephen Roach says that it is not about the US dollar. It is about the unrealistic prices on American assets.


The problem for the rest of the world is that our economies are all reliant in no small part on the American consumer.

What we are also seeing that I don't believe any of the pundits or the central bankers or the investment bankers for that matter have considered in their models, is the massive change in how the public now is able to share information.

Because of the accelerated speed of communications we now have not just a rumour mill that takes place online, we have an environment. This is critical.

The communications environment gives people an urgency to act together.

As people start seriously reading about gold being a storehouse of value, I believe that there will be a massive move to invest in gold bullion, securities etc. We already know that demand is greater than supply. What is that going to mean to the price of gold?

The dollar is at risk. The global markets are at risk. Gold is solid and tangible. I believe that we are going to see a new gold rush where gold will go to heights that no one can imagine - and all driven by instant communications, rumour and a distrust for anything that looks like it has the thumbprint of banks on it.

We shall see.

What a wonderful story!

Daniel Barenboim, the conductor, who also is an Israeli, has accepted a Palestinian passport.

His comment in this article in the UK Independent says it all:

I watched Bush last night on the news strutting his stuff in Israel and wondered how it is possible that he could be so delusional as to think that his rhetoric about peace in the Middle East is going to create the sort of legacy that any world leader would want as he prepares to leave office over the coming year.

Then I went out to dinner and someone started talking about John Howard and the shambles that he left in this country, and how the healing has begun. Yes. Its true. The healing has begun. And regardless of the positive that Howard did during his period in office and regardless of the shambles he may have inherited he ultimately was an incredibly divisive Prime Minister. It isn't about the party he belonged to. It is about the quality of the human being.... just like it is everywhere. Bush is no different - an unbelievably divisive person.

And then I read a piece of writing this morning written by Chris Hedges who was at one time the Middle East Bureau Chief at the New York Times. It captures perfectly the way that the thinking world sees things. It is also something that four or five years ago I would never have imagined anyone in the US would have written about the President of the United States. Americans are so respectful of their elected leaders. The writing is remarkable for not just what it says, but the way that it says it.

Please read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:

The Gilbert and Sullivan charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule.  Despots stripped of power are transformed from monsters into buffoons.  And this is the metamorphosis that is eating away at the Bush presidency. 

Bush stood in Jerusalem, uncomfortable and palpably bored.  He mouthed platitudes about a peace settlement that mocked the humanitarian crisis he aided and abetted in Gaza, the rapacious land grab by Israel in the West Bank and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The diminished George Bush, increasingly irrelevant at home and abroad, is fading into insignificance.  A year from now one half expects to see him stand up at the next president’s inauguration and screech “I’m melting!  I’m melting!” as he sinks into a puddle of slime.  He will return, I expect, to his ranch, where he will be able to spend the rest of his life doing the only task for which he has shown any aptitude—cutting down brush with a chain saw. 

Interesting story about John Edwards in The Guardian. I'm  not sure whether it was placed by people who are pro-Edwards or anti-Edwards. Maybe Edwards is trying to position himself as a VP for either Obama or Clinton - as the left winger to balance their right wing tendencies, particularly Clinton...

George MacDonald Fraser died a couple of weeks ago.

I remember reading some of his Flashman books when they first came out, many years ago. Not only was Fraser a very witty and satirical author, he was also a very successful screenplay writer, his most successful works being The Three Musketeers...

Before he died, Fraser wrote a really good piece about political correctness.

Here is some of that article:

Through the Seventies and Eighties I led him on his disgraceful way, toadying, lying, cheating, running away, treating women as chattels, abusing inferiors of all colours, with only one redeeming virtue - the unsparing honesty with which he admitted to his faults, and even gloried in them.

And no one minded, or if they did, they didn't tell me. In all the many thousands of readers' letters I received, not one objected.

In the Nineties, a change began to take place. Reviewers and interviewers started describing Flashman (and me) as politically incorrect, which we are, though by no means in the same way.

This is fine by me. Flashman is my bread and butter, and if he wasn't an elitist, racist, sexist swine, I'd be selling bootlaces at street corners instead of being a successful popular writer.

But what I notice with amusement is that many commentators now draw attention to Flashy's (and my) political incorrectness in order to make a point of distancing themselves from it.

It's not that they dislike the books. But where once the non-PC thing could pass unremarked, they now feel they must warn readers that some may find Flashman offensive, and that his views are certainly not those of the interviewer or reviewer, God forbid.

I find the disclaimers alarming. They are almost a knee-jerk reaction and often rather a nervous one, as if the writer were saying: "Look, I'm not a racist or sexist. I hold the right views and I'm in line with modern enlightened thought, honestly."

They won't risk saying anything to which the PC lobby could take exception. And it is this that alarms me - the fear evident in so many sincere and honest folk of being thought out of step.