Tag Archives: politics

Blog

Battlestar Galactica producers and cast address United Nations

2 Comments

Battlestar Galactica cylonNo, seriously. The UN invited some of the cast and crew behind successful TV sf series Battlestar Galactica to the United Nations Economic and Social Council to discuss the similarities between the show’s storylines and real-life politics in a changing world:

Some of the thematic parallels seemed a bit forced, but the show’s scenes about human rights and terrorism fit particularly well. UN officials continually mentioned eerie echoes of the real world in “Battlestar.”

“I’ve heard these words from people before, and they weren’t actors,” said Robert Orr, a UN assistant secretary-general for policy planning. He singled out the “Battlestar” story arc on New Caprica that deals with issues of insurgency and terrorism, and thanked Moore and Eick for creating a show which gave people cause to think about such issues.

Moore said that he continually tried to use “Battlestar” to flip familiar situations and put the audience in uncomfortable spots — such as creating situations where humans resorted to suicide bombings and torture against the Cylons, the supposed “villains” at the start of the show who gradually become more sympathetic.

Quite how much impact this will have on UN policy (if any) remains to be seen, but it’s refreshing to see people taking science fiction seriously for its deep themes rather than snarking about its surface tropes. [image by chanchan222]

Blog

Daewoo in Madagascar – the new corporate colonialism?

farm land in MadagascarWith the headlines all taken up by news of crises closer to home, you might not have heard about the civil unrest and political turmoil currently underway in Madagascar.

Even if you have, you might not be aware of what is emerging as one of the trigger factors: Korean company Daewoo inking a deal with the Malagasy government to buy 1.3 million hectares of land, approximately half of the country’s arable real estate.

The company said it had leased 1.3m hectares of farmland – about half the size of Belgium – from Madagascar’s government for 99 years. It plans to ship the maize and palm oil harvests back to South Korea. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The pursuit of foreign farm investments is a clear sign of how countries are seeking food security following this year’s crisis – which saw record prices for commodities such as wheat and rice and food riots in countries from Egypt to Haiti.

It’s not news that food shortages are affecting many countries at the moment, but this move has a distinct whiff of colonialism, no matter how Daewoo’s project manager paints it as a unique expression of Korean psychology. Possibly more worrying still is the fact that few Korean companies seem willing to invest in the project, while a number of foreign interests apparently are. And then there’s this gorgeous slice of doublethink from a Korean journalist covering the story:

I feel more convinced than before that Korea needs Daewoo’s success in Madagascar, not only to prove that its model is different from the models of Britain, the United States, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Japan during their colonial pasts, but also that it is setting a new precedent for both African states and outside investors to benefit from.

Because, y’know, the best way to prove you’re totally different from the old colonial empire-builders is to pretty much replicate their tactics under cover of supposedly legitimate and benevolent business.AMIIRITE?

As the effects of climate change increase the pressure on global agriculture, we’re going to see a whole lot more of this sort of thing; as the nation-state concept loses strength, it’s the weaker nations that will suffer first as their bigger rivals seek to consolidate their remaining power and resources. Borders are just lines on a map to hungry people… and hungry corporations.

All the links above (and a number of others to help you get up to speed on this story) can be found on MetaFilter. [image by World Resources Institute]

Blog

‘The media’s deliberate stupidity’

4 Comments

beePresident Obama’s budget includes a mere $1.7 million, or 0.00041 percent of spending, for honeybee research. Jamison Foser notes that some politicians find that outrageous or hilarious, but that the debate — if you can call it that — over budget earmarks misses an an important point as far as bees are concerned:

Honeybees are pretty important. See, humans need food. Without it, we die. And bees not only produce honey, they pollinate all kinds of crops — onions, cashews, celery, strawberries, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, apples … you get the picture. Honeybees play an important role in our food supply, and our economy. And honeybees have been disappearing at an alarming rate in recent years, for reasons that are not fully known.

It might be useful to know why. And, while admitting that earmarks might not be the best way to fund research, it might also be useful if politicians would stop criticizing things they don’t understand just because they sound funny. Volcano monitoring, planetarium projectors, fruit-fly research, and studies of the DNA of  threatened species called grizzly bears all come to mind.

But if polticians can’t be bothered to understand, and behave like short-sighted anti-space senators in early Arthur C. Clarke, is it too much to ask that our media could be bothered to investigate claims and counterclaims, instead of chortling like Beavis and Butthead?

[Bee picture by Robert Seber]

Blog

Maybe the media isn’t doing such a great job covering global warming

10 Comments

beckLiverpool media researcher Neil Gavin doesn’t think so.

Our research suggests that the media is not treating these issues with the seriousness that scientists would say they deserve. The research company lpsos-MORI found that 50% of people think the jury is still out on the causes of global warming. The limited amount of media coverage – which tends to be restricted to the broadsheets – means that this statistic is unlikely to alter in the short-term.

Bit of a rant: Isn’t “climate change” just a weasel term for global warming? And, regrettable thouhg it is to see newspapers dying, could it be that one reason is that they’re not doing a very good job?

[Image: Fox News host Glenn Beck in 2007 (his low-rated show was on CNN then) by The Rocketeer]

Blog

Charlie Stross’ 21st Century crystal ball

1 Comment

Charles StrossIf you’ve not caught it already, you should get over to Charlie Stross’s blog and check out his 21st Century FAQ; it’s your source of rant fodder for the coming week.

For example, in answer to the question “[w]hich of (Socialism | Capitalism | Libertarianism | Fascism | Democracy) is going to save us?”:

We’re still waiting for the definitive ideological polarity of the internet era to emerge, although Bruce Schneier has opined that the key political hot potato of the 21st century will be the question, “how do we maintain the concept of privacy in an age of ubiquitous communications and surveillance”, and some believe that privacy is already dead. Given the way Moore’s Law is taking us towards an essentially unlimited ability to record everything, I’m not able to argue with the inevitability of surveillance: what I’d dispute is the morality of it.

Responses and counter-arguments are cropping up already, naturally enough; for example, here’s Brian Wang refuting Stross’s claim that space colonisation and the Singularity are non-starters:

We know we can send people into interplanetary space for several days (Apollo). We could easily make the trip to Mars in days [using the Orion nuclear rocket configuration] and then onto to Jupiter in days. We could bring supplies, radiation protection in cargo that is equivalent to several great pyramids or how many loaded aircraft carriers equivalents.

Plenty of material for discussion for the more geeky water-cooler meet-ups. [image by Patrick Nielsen-Hayden]

So, do we reckon Charlie Stross is a fox or a hedgehog?