The Comment Factory

Articles published in The Independent, The Times, Red Pepper, New Internationalist, Z Magazine, The Ecologist, Resurgence, The Big Issue; monthly ZNet commentator; author of Free To Be Human - Intellectual Self-Defence in an Age of Illusions (Green Books, 1995) published in the United States as Burning All Illusions (South End Press, 1996: www.southendpress.org), and The Compassionate Revolution - Radical Politics and Buddhism (1998, Green Books)

davidedwards@thecommentfactory.com
Subscribe To My Articles

“The gap between public perception and scientific reality is now enormous. While some of the public is just becoming aware of the existence of global warming, the relevant scientists – those who know what they are talking about – realize that the climate system is on the verge of tipping points. If the world does not make a dramatic shift in energy policies over the next few years, we may well pass the point of no return.”

What level of social insanity is it that persuades people to imagine that a single individual has the power to undo what centuries of entrenched, organised and determined vested interests (that have not gone away) have put in place?

George Monbiot got it right: mainstream journalists, quite simply, are “hired hands defending a corporate or institutional position”.

We do not live in a totalitarian society – the public potentially has enormous power to interfere. The goal, then, is to persuade the public that corporate-sponsored political choice is meaningful, that it makes a difference. The task of politicians at all points of the supposed ’spectrum’ is to appear passionately principled while participating in what is essentially a charade

It is a mistake to imagine that media corporations are impervious to all complaints and criticism. In fact, senior editors and managers are only too happy to accept that their journalists tend to be ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-Israel,’ ‘anti-Western,’ indeed utterly rotten with left-wing bias

David Edwards parses Obama’s words on Iraq, and the slavish media reaction.