Civil liberties - new material (80)
01 April 2011
Mugsborough Revisited: author Robert Tressell and the setting of his famous book, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, Steve Peak (SpeaksBooks) 2011, pp. 56. This is a new biography of the author, Robert Tressel, whose seminal novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, was published in 1914. It is authored by Hastings historian, Steve Peak, whose encyclopaedic local knowledge fills many of the gaps in Tressell’s biography and gives a location to many of the site’s mentioned in the original novel. Published to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Tressell’s death, this book is a labour of love but also a crucial document of labour movement history. Available for £7.50 (+ £1 post) from 36, Collier Road, Hastings TN34 3JR.
Revealed: US military’s scheme to infiltrate social media with fake online identities, Nick Fielding and Ian Coburn. The Guardian 16.3.11. This article discusses how the US Central Command (Centcom) “is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media using fake online personas designed to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.” Centcom has awarded a California corporation a contract to develop an “online persona management service” permitting “one serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities, apparently based across the world, at once.” Centcom spokesman, Commander Bill Speaks, said that none of the interventions would be in English “as it would be unlawful to “address US audiences” with such technology”.
Japanese nuclear power plant explosions and their relevance for the UK, Friends of the Earth. Briefing (March) 2011, pp. 5. This briefing paper examines the Japanese earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent damage to a number of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The organisation, which does not think that nuclear power is necessary or cheap “suggests politicians should take a long cool calm look at the Japanese nuclear accident and think again on whether they should be quite so effusive about the role of nuclear power in the UK. They should ask themselves, and taxpayers, whether they should spend quite so much of our money supporting it.” Available at: http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/japanese_nuclear_explosions.pdf