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| Rightwing climate change deniers are all for free speech - when it suits them | George Monbiot Frank Furedi's witchhunt comparsion exposes double standards when UK snow does not undermine global warming consensusRead the piece on cold weather and global warming by George Monbiot and Leo HickmanConservatives are no longer allowed to be wrong. As soon as you point out that someone on the right has made misleading claims, you are accused of pursuing a witch-hunt or behaving like the Inquisition. The delicate sensibilities of rightwingers somehow forbid debate: contradict them, point out their mistakes and falsehoods, and you are immediately charged with persecution.This is profoundly ironic, as the very people who make such charges — Melanie Phillips is a good example — spend the rest of their time waging war on political correctness. People should be able to do and say whatever they like, they maintain, regardless of whether it might upset or offend others … until, that is, it upsets or offends them. Then they will rant and rage, insisting (in the name of free speech, mind) that you are absolutely forbidden from calling those who deny climate change deniers, or comparing creationists to flat-earthers.The most blatant exponent of these double standards is a professor of sociology at the University of Kent called Frank Furedi. Writing in The Australian today, he compares Leo Hickman and myself - who had the temerity both to suggest that manmade climate change is real and to criticise journalists and a Tory MP for claiming that the current cold weather in the UK disproves it - to 16th century witchfinders.Furedi is the eminence grise of the weird movement that arose from the ashes of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Trotskyist splinter that made a name for itself in the late 1970s for disrupting and attacking other leftwing groups. Through its various incarnations – Living Marxism magazine, Spiked, the Institute of Ideas, the Modern Movement and others – this movement has shifted ever further to the right. Today it occupies the furthest fringes of rightwing libertarianism, asserting a doctrine of extreme individualism which would have made Ayn Rand blanch. You would be hard-put to find a movement more antagonistic to protecting people from oppression or protecting the environment from destruction.Living Marxism (later called LM), which Furedi founded and which was run by the RCP, campaigned against gun control, against banning tobacco advertising and against banning child pornography. It argued in favour of global warming, human cloning and complete freedom for corporations. It defended the corrupt Tory MP Neil Hamilton, denied the Rwandan genocide and supported the Bosnian Serb ethnic cleansers. Its offshoots attack all attempts to protect the environment as "anti-human", though nothing damages the interests of humans as much as destroying the biosphere.The movement's theme, spelled out repeatedly by Furedi and others, was that people should not be seen (in the words of LM's manifesto) as "fragile victims in need of protection"; instead they should be encouraged to believe that there are no limits to what they can do or say. But oddly, this works only one way. As soon as you criticise them, they become fragile victims in need of protection, tearfully insisting that their critics are witchfinders who have stepped over the limits of acceptable speech.When, for example, I exposed some of the movement's entryist (political infiltration) tactics, Furedi compared himself to the victims of fascism, McCarthyism and the Inquisition. I have never come across anyone else who appears capable of such extremes of callous disregard of other people's interests and whining self-pity. He seems to me to be a classic example of what Arthur Koestler called a mimophant – someone who has the sensitivities of an elephant towards other people and the sensitivities of a mimosa towards himself.These people can't have it both ways. Either, unconstrained by political correctness, we should be able to state our views clearly and point out when someone is wrong, or we should treat each other like delicate flowers which should never be criticised. But we can't demand the right to contradict others while insisting that they're witch-hunting if they contradict us.Monbiot.comClimate changeWeatherClimate change scepticismGeorge Monbiotguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Yellow Submarine to be remade for 3D The Beatles' Yellow Submarine film is reportedly to be remade for 3D with hopes that Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will add their voices to the project. telegraph.co.uk |
Counter-terrorism budget for Pakistan may be ringfenced Move to protect spending comes after government is accused of drawing up list of embassies to closeThe government is considering ringfencing funds to fight counter-terrorism in Pakistan after it emerged that the falling value of the pound means the Foreign Office is scaling back schemes aimed at tackling extremism.Moves to protect overseas spending on counter-terrorism from cuts came as the Tories revealed a leaked document showing the Foreign Office had been working on plans to close embassies and slash staff numbers, to be implemented after the election.Foreign Office ministers were on the defensive today as they were forced to confirm that the department's budget would fall this year by £110m. The Liberal Democrat peer Lord Wallace of Saltaire said the Foreign Office had undergone a 20% cut.Their earmarking of counter-terrorism projects for scaling back caused embarrassment, first emerging yesterdayin the House of Lords within hours of the prime minister using an emergency statement to tell the House of Commons more work would be done on counter-terrorism on the Afghan-Pakistan border, described as the "number one security threat to the west".The ministers were able to show the amount of money being directed towards Pakistan had risen from £6.2m in 2008/09 to £8.3m in 2009/10 and would be between £9m and £9.5m in 2010/11.However, the Tories released a leaked memo suggesting the budget shortfall would have severe effects across the department.A memo obtained by David Lidington, entitled Board Key Points, shows the Foreign Office's thinking on forthcoming spending cuts: "Even with cuts to programme to subsidise admin, next year's admin budgets will still be substantially less than this year. We were clear that further cuts could and should not be achieved by salami slicing: it would require us to stop activity, close posts and reduce staff numbers."Directors and heads of mission should not make "irreversible" decisions now but draw up "contingency plans for substantial cuts which could be implemented after the election if the new government decides not to allocate additional funds to the FCO".Foreign office minister Chris Bryant denied there was a list of embassies facing closure.The budget shortfall has arisen after a Foreign Office decision taken in 2007 saw the department secure an increase in its capital spending – increasing security posts for embassies – in return for an end to the practice of the Treasury protecting the Foreign Office against the fluctuations of the exchange rate through the overseas price mechanism (OPM).Chris Bryant explained that as the Foreign Office pays for 50% of its operations abroad in foreign currency, the falling value of sterling affects its spending power in its countries of work.In 2007, when the pound was at a near historic high, the Foreign Office decided it would hedge its risk, but within a few months the pound fell 30% against the dollar and the Foreign Office found it was able to buy relatively less, with some observers saying the FCO has lost a sixth of its spending power.Sir Peter Ricketts, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, has already told a commons foreign affairs committee that the Foreign Office had suffered a "significant hit" to its "capacity to operate abroad".Questioning Lady Kinnock in the Lords, a Labour colleague Baroness Symons – a former defence procurement minister – expressed the dismay felt at the FCO's shortfall by many on her own benches as well as in the opposition by saying it did not "add up to a very coherent point of view".Despite the Labour and Tory party both competing to display plans to bring down the level of public spending, Symons asked why the budget was not ringfenced: "There should be ringfencing over the counter-terrorism budget. We can ringfence other budgets; surely a budget that affects the protection and security of the British people should be the first to be ringfenced." Kinnock said it was something "we are going to be looking at".Projects being hit include: staffing in Argentina, Japan and across America; Afghanistan counter-narcotics; capacity building and conflict prevention in Africa; and prevention of radicalisation in Pakistan.Terrorism policyPakistanForeign policyAllegra Strattonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Chris Ofili: A journey from elephant art to mother nature's son Turner prize-winning artist evolves from dealer in shock to purveyor of colourful perception, as new exhibition showsIn pictures: Chris Ofili retrospectiveThink of Chris Ofili and you would be forgiven for imagining the following: elephant manure; the weeping profile of Doreen Lawrence; a black, dung-breasted Virgin Mary that enraged the mayor of New York.But, when a major, mid-career retrospective opens on Wednesday at Tate Britain in London, visitors will see a new Chris Ofili.His recent work may, frankly, come as a shock. There is no dung and no glitter. There are no richly-collaged, jangling surfaces. Instead, in the last room in the exhibition, unexpected swathes of colour lash down the canvases: imperial purple dissonant against citrus orange, saffron squealing against sea green.With the exception of two paintings previously exhibited in New York, none of these eight works has ever been seen in public. They come fresh out of the artist's studio. The exhibition is the first major survey since 1998 of the often controversial 41-year-old's work. Almost a third of the 45 paintings on display have never been shown in the UK before.All the big hits are here, including the Doreen Lawrence painting, No Woman No Cry, which was exhibited in Ofili's Turner prize exhibition in 1998. There is also a fresh chance to see the famous installation The Upper Room – 13 paintings of chalice-bearing monkeys, a reimagining of the Last Supper.But it is in the final two rooms of the exhibition that audiences will see a different artist from the one whose last solo show in Britain was in 2002 (when the Victoria Miro gallery showed The Upper Room).These works reflect new surroundings. Ofili has left the crowded London art scene and, since 2005, has been working in Trinidad and Tobago, living in a cottage in the hills above Port of Spain."I felt in some way things had closed down," the Manchester-born artist says in the Tate exhibition catalogue. "London was an exciting place to work at one point, because socially it was very progressive – a catalyst... But it got to a point where the social aspect became claustrophobic ... It also got to a point where I felt the work was really known in a public sense, that the division between public and private was like a thin membrane. And I didn't feel that gave me a greater sense of freedom."The penultimate room sees Ofili, like Picasso, going through a "blue period". Giant canvases swirl with a dictionary-defying battery of midnight shades: ultramarine, indigo, smoke, bilberry. The colours are so deep and dark that images are hard to read. The only texture comes from the flat paint surface: sometimes velvety, sometimes reflective.In one, Iscariot Blues, two men play musical instruments under a bridge while a hanged man dangles from a gibbet – all are enveloped in tendrils of lush foliage.In these and the most recent paintings, the one recognisable aspect of the work is the mysterious figures that inhabit the paintings. Ofili has always created his own semi-mythological dramatis personae, whether the cartoonish, faux-superheroic character he called Captain Shit in the early work, or the simian saints of the Upper Room.In a painting that has something of William Blake about it, a shower of egg-yolky, lemony blossoms is surrounded by an almost-black ground. On further inspection, the blackness resolves itself into a curious and possibly terrifying creature that appears to be devouring the flowers.Ofili calls this figure The Healer, and imagines it gorging itself on the blossoms of the yellow poui tree, which flower in Trinidad with intense vividness and fall overnight. "I imagined that The Healer feasts on the poui flowers feverishly, and in the frenzy many of the flowers fall off," he has said.The Ofili who was once painting phalluses and porn stars in a King's Cross studio is now painting en plein air – he began The Healer, he has said, outdoors during a lunar eclipse, inspired by "the forms in the clouds hovering over the hills that night".Where once he was bringing all the clamorous life of London into his exquisite paintings as a self-conscious visual analogy of gangsta rap (aggressive lyrics, sweetly sung), he is now more likely to spend his days kayaking or observing the beauty of a Trinidadian waterfall.In other words, Ofili is still transforming what surrounds him into paint, but these days that's the thick, fertile vegetation of the Caribbean rather than the urban jungle.He has said of his new environment: "It has a mystical quality to it. The landscape is hilly, the vegetation is dense and you have the constant feeling that things are happening on the other side of the hill or deep in the forest."By moving to Trinidad he has also retreated from the public gaze. In 1999, the year after he was the first black artist to win the Turner prize, his work attracted controversy when the then mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, objected to the exhibiting of The Holy Virgin Mary at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The painting was touring as part of the Sensation! exhibition of works owned by Charles Saatchi.In 2005, the Tate bought the installation The Upper Room for £600,000, when Ofili was a trustee of the gallery. The Charity Commission published a report critical of the institution's mismanagement of the conflict of interest involved in the purchase.Chris OfiliArtTate BritainExhibitionsCharlotte Higginsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
World's largest book goes on show Klencke Atlas, which is 350 years old, will be displayed as part of British Library exhibition on mapsIt takes six people to lift it and has been recorded as the largest book in the world, yet the splendid Klencke Atlas, presented to Charles II on his restoration and now 350 years old, has never been publicly displayed with its pages open. That glaring omission is to be rectified, it was announced by the British Library today, when it will be displayed as one of the stars of its big summer exhibition about maps.The summer show will feature about 100 maps, considered some of the greatest in the world, with three-quarters of them going on display for the first time.At the exhibition's core will be wall maps, many of them huge, which tell a story that is much more than geography. Many of them, said the library's head of map collections, Peter Barber: "Hold their own with great works of art."He added: "This is the first map exhibition of its type because, normally, when you think of maps you think of geography, or measurement or accuracy."The exhibition aims to challenge people's assumptions about maps and celebrate their magnificence, as demonstrated by the 37 maps in the Klencke Atlas, which was intended as an encyclopaedic summary of the world.It is almost absurdly huge – 1.75 metres (5ft) tall and 1.9 metres (6ft) wide – and was given to the king by Dutch merchants and placed in his cabinet of curiosities."It is going to be quite a spectacle," said Tom Harper, head of antiquarian maps. "Even standing beside it is quite unnerving."As a contrast, one of the smallest maps in the world, a fingernail-sized German coin from 1773 showing a bird's eye view of Nuremberg, will be exhibited close by.The exhibition will show how great maps could be as important as great art. Before 1800 – "that's when the rot set in," joked Barber – were you to visit palaces or the homes of the wealthy, maps would have been almost as prominent as paintings or sculptures or tapestries.They were an important status symbol. Rich men would have a map of the world to show their worldliness; a map of the Holy Land to show their piety; a map of their estate to show their wealth; and a map of their home county or city to show how loyal a citizen they were.They would also be personalised. For example, a map made in 1582 for Sir Philip Parker of Smallburgh in Norfolk also includes a little Brueghel-esque figure of a man with a monkey on his back: a mocking reference to his recently deceased half-brother Lord Morley, a Catholic and a family embarrassment who "spent his time wandering fairly pointlessly around southern Europe", said Barber. "It is a way of saying 'I'm not like that'."Barber and Harper have chosen to exhibit maps from more than 4.5m held in the library's collection – the second biggest in the world after the Library of Congress.Barber said the maps were all made for adornment but "at a deeper level they were made for propaganda. It's all spin. Every map is an exaggeration because you can never 100% capture reality on a reduced surface."Up until 1800 people expected maps in these contexts and enjoyed them, but in the course of the 18th century you got the growth of the cult of science, the belief that maps were to do with geography and the only thing that was important was its accuracy."Barber believes maps are too neglected, particularly by art historians. "In a way we are trying to redress this. The official credo is the only thing that counts about a map is that they are utilitarian objects not really meant for display and that is not the case."There will also be maps where the propaganda role has been more explicit, such as a Nazi poster produced in Vichy France which shows Churchill as an evil, cigar-chomping sea monster whose attempts to seize Africa and the Middle East were being thwarted by Axis forces, bloodily clipping his tentacles.Then there are political propaganda posters which use maps – one even features a reference to removing troops from Afghanistan. The cartoons on the posters were used in the election campaign of 1880 and one shows Disraeli as a great hero assassinating "the windbag" Gladstone and maintaining the British link with Ireland. A cannon on the map is a mocking reference to Gladstone's call for soldiers to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.A pro-Gladstone poster drawn by the same cartoonist has the Liberal leader killing Disraeli with a pen.Gladstone won the election by a landslide.Magnificent maps: Power, Propaganda and Art is at the British Library from 30 April to 19 September.British LibraryExhibitionsHeritageMark Brownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |