Support Julian Assange

Not since the height of the Cold War with its synchronous anti-Soviet rhetoric has there been such an overwhelming consensus of the media around a single issue. Julian Assange is the new bête noir, the man to be vilified, smeared and slandered. In all the media hysteria about the rape allegations made in Sweden against Assange by two women he slept with, the real issue is being conveniently buried. Last week with Assange’s short speech from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy and an unrelated off-the-cuff remark by George Galloway in his defence, Assange’s alleged rape again became front page news in all the papers and was at the top of broadcast media news bulletins. Even papers of the liberal left like the Guardian and the New Statesman were fervently part of the bandwagon to demonise Assange as a sexual predator and eccentric misfit. Only the Morning Star, among the dailies, remained rational and focussed. Seumas Milne in a Guardian feature did courageously challenge his paymaster’s editorial line and encouraged readers to look behind the headlines, but he was the only one on the paper of a whole number of other hacks who willing toed the Guardianista party line. George Galloway, normally ignored by the media unless he has just won or lost an election found himself pilloried as a misogynist ‘loud mouth’ (Guardian editorial) and an ignorant clown. Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador which has generously given Assange asylum was likewise portrayed as a ‘banana republic dictator’, only seeking publicity for himself and his ‘tin-pot republic’. Here I don’t want to get enmeshed in the furore around Assange’s alleged sexual misdemeanours or definitions of rape. Anyone who is progressive and aware of what it means to a woman would be loath to offer a fig leaf to anyone who engaged in sexual violence. And Galloway is right in emphasising that rape is too serious an issue to be trivialised in the way the media are now doing around the Assange case. It is, though, not a question of whether Assange is guilty of a sexual crime in Sweden, whether he is a paragon of virtue or a despicable philanderer that is at issue here. He gained fame/notoriety and is now being persecuted because he and his website WikiLeaks made public classified cables sent by US diplomats. The Guardian, New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel willingly and lucratively collaborated with Assange in publishing a selection of his WikiLeaks documents. Bradley Manning, a British-born US army soldier who allegedly provided WikiLeaks with copies of the classified documents has been languishing in a US military jail without being charged and under conditions described by Juan Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, as such ‘harsh treatment that may amount to torture’. His plight is being ignored by the media which prefer sordid stories about Assange’s alleged rape. Manning’s treatment is certainly inhumane and shames a state that calls itself ‘democratic’ and ‘just’. It amounts to persecution of the most vengeful sort. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks with their release of these documents pulled off a journalistic coup and performed an incredible public service by revealing the often criminal behaviour of the US government and its agencies throughout the world and the arrogant and supremacist attitudes of its diplomats. Assange and WikiLeaks appear to have few supporters at present, even though a number, like Daniel Ellsberg (whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers detailing US mendacity on Vietnam), John Pilger, Jemima Kahn, Bianca Jagger and George Galloway are several of some big-name supporters. It is essential that he also receives unqualified support of the left for what he has done in the name of freedom of information, not for anything he might have done or not done in his personal life. If he is extradited to the USA it will be a victory for the very powerful over the least powerful and his case will be used, as it is already being used, to intimidate and discourage any one else who dares to challenge the powers of imperialism. Make no mistake, the rape allegations in Sweden, true or untrue, as well as the threat of extradition are being used solely to undermine his credibility as a journalist and whistleblower and to ensure he faces trial in the USA to be given a draconian sentence; a fair trial there would be impossible. END

Vultures’ Picnic A Tale of High Finance and Investigative Reporting Author: Greg Palast Pubs Constable & Robinson (London) Pbck. £9.99 Greg Palast needs little introduction to Star readers. His uncompromising investigative journalism and his unmasking of corporate sleaze and corruption are second to none. Here we are provided with a selection of his recent writings on the issue of international corporate criminality in the oil industry. What he reveals is a horror story of corporate criminality and political connivance at the highest levels. Unfortunately the collection has been put together with the hurried carelessness of a thief leaving the scene of his crime, with the result that it confusingly hops about from country to country and story to story. However, Palast is witty, fast-paced and sharp. His writing here is often reminiscent of a Dashiel Hammett gumshoe novel, in which he, with his curvaceous assistant Miss Badpenny, is Sam Spade. For my taste, Palast’s writing overdoes the fictional style at the cost of his factual investigations, and this tends to undermine the serious meat of the story beneath. He is clearly a man on a mission, but his adventurous anecdotes about himself as well as his rather cavalier attitude to sources can provoke sceptical questioning of some of his ‘facts’. Certainly he stays on the trail of our corporate and government gangsters with the tenacity of a leech and what he uncovers must make their trigger fingers very itchy. His revelations of BP’s was involvement in paying big bungs to Azerbaijani officials to obtain control of its rich oil resources is an eye-opener. The money, apparently carried in the plane that took Margaret Thatcher to Azerbaijan on an official visit, accompanied by then-BP boss Lord Browne. He also relates how Hilary Clinton became a legal adviser for a big US oil company keen to exploit oil reserves in Arkansas while hubby Bill was governor. Palast goes to great lengths to help untangle the complex web of the political-industrial complex of global oil. Some of his revelations may sound far-fetched, but if they are, why aren’t the accused suing him through the courts? A revelatory read. END

Communism – has its time come? It wasn’t too long ago that Francis Fukuyama was declaiming ‘The End of History’. Communism and Marxism had been conclusively defeated. How history can so easily upset the applecart of complacent thinking is now clearly emerging. Only a few years since that iconic statement was pronounced, global capitalism is in deep crisis, there are mass demonstrations on the streets, corporate bosses are reeling on the back foot As Al Jazeera recently reported, Marxism and the discussion of a communist society are back in fashion and Marxism is again at the centre of intellectual discussion. New editions of Marx's texts have returned to our bookstores accompanied by new introductions, biographies, and interpretations of his thinking. In our universities, too, we are experiencing a sea-change. Not long ago, few academics who valued their status and their funding would be willing to admit to being Marxists, now they seem to be queuing up to do so. A whole number of renowned philosophers (among them Judith Balso, Bruno Bosteels, Susan Buck-Mors, Jodi Dean, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, and Slavoj Zizek), have began to envision how society could be constructed to avoid the pitfalls and injustices of capitalism and are looking at it in communist terms. Here in Britain too, there are a number of Marxist thinkers who are openly challenging the ethical and philosophical basis of capitalism. Not only celebrated academics like Terry Eagleton, but from the mainstream too, like professors Swyngedouw, Ben Fine, Sean Sayers, Terrel Carver and sociologists like Danny Dorling, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett are all challenging capitalist ideology. Recently, Turner short listed artist Phil Collins’s showed his video compilation ‘Marxism Today’ at London’s South bank on the teaching of Marxist economics in the GDR. It received enthusiastic reviews and avid public interest. There are new websites like ‘Marx and Philosophy’ and ‘Historical Materialism’. Recent conferences in London, Berlin, Paris and New York have been attended by thousands of academics, students, and activists around the ideas of Marxism and communism. There is a plethora of best-selling books such as Negri and Hardt's Empire, Badiou's The Communist Hypothesis and Vattimo's Ecce Comu, as well as new biographies of Engels, essays by the Peruvian Marxist Mariategui, and new publications on Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg and so on. What is happening? Although not all these thinkers consider themselves communist, the fact that communist thought is now back at the centre of economic, political, sociological and philosophic research is highly significant and encouraging. Why is all this happening now? It is not simply a reaction to the global financial crisis, but has been brewing for some time. Facing the seemingly incapability of capitalism to address the problems of environmental catastrophe, climate change, over-population and social breakdown, more and more thinkers are looking to alternatives. And Marxism still offers the most useful pointers and potential solutions to these seemingly intractable problems Clearly, at these conferences and in these books, communism is not being proposed as a programme for political parties to repeat previous historical attempts to build communist societies, but more an existential response to the current neo-liberal global condition. Politics, economic planning and government policies should be based ideally on the goal of bettering the human condition, rather than, as at present, simple subservience to the chaotic meanderings of rampant and feral capitalism. To achieve this, we sorely need the input of academic research and innovative ideas. The Al Jazeera report, mentioned above, says: ‘But today, things are not that different if we consider the latest effects of neo-liberalism - apart from our current financial crisis, where differentials in material well-being have never been so explicit - slum populations are growing by an shocking 25 million people a year, and the devastation of our planet's natural resources is causing dire ecological consequences throughout the world, and in many cases it is too late to correct.’ Even the ruling class is recognising the ‘danger’ of a resurgence of Marxism. A recent UK Ministry of Defence report predicts not only a resurgence of, ‘anti-capitalist ideologies, possibly linked to religious, anarchist or nihilist movements, but also to populism and the revival of Marxism’. Of course the word ‘communist’ is loaded with different meanings, but in the minds of most people in the west it is associated with Eastern European attempts to build new societies. It is not only considered a remnant of the past but seen as a political system where everything is controlled by an all-powerful state. In this context, Zizek comments in his inimitable dialectical style: ‘If state communism didn't work, it's primarily because of the failure of anti-statist politics, of the endeavour to break out of the constraints of State, to replace statal forms of organisation with “direct” non-representative forms of self-organisation.’ Communism, as an anti-statist concept has today become the best idea, hypothesis, and guide for non-governmental and international political movements, such as those that arose from the protests in Seattle (1999), Cochabamba (2000), and Barcelona (2011), as well as in the World Social Forum movement, and in experimental new forms of governing as seen in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Kerala, India and in Latin America. Although each of these movements fought for different specific causes (against injurious economic globalisation, the privatisation of water supplies, and harmful financial policies) their enemy was the same: Western democracy's unjust system of property distribution under capitalism. As the increasing poverty and slum populations in the world demonstrate, this model has left behind all those who do not succeed within capitalism’s parameters, and this is generating new communists. What is still missing is a sufficiently strong mass movement of working people to force through the changes that are now becoming increasingly possible; however this situation can change very quickly. END

Jonathan Freedland is right to warn of the probable protracted emasculation of the BBC World Service (Guardian 14 July 2012: This world class institution explains Britain to the world). Its role has been vital in providing those living in countries where news and information was scarce or distorted with a more objective picture. It knew that it had to report broadly and truthfully to maintain credibility, and it used journalists who knew first hand the countries on which they reported. It is a pity, however, that British listeners of the BBC are provided with a much more bland and tendentious news and information service than the better informed World Service listeners. It is also true that, despite its worthy reputation, it also pursued an establishment political agenda. Broadcasts to communist countries were also aimed at undermining. Blacklists were used to filter those employed by the BBC and, certainly in the case of broadcasts to East Germany, the Corporation was not averse to making up their own ‘listeners letters’ as they received so few! I only wish we here in the UK could receive World Service news bulletins instead of the superficial fare we are invariably fed.

A Buddhist take on Marxism I have often thought that while Marxism is a wonderful tool for analysing society and its various processes, but with its overemphasis on classes it largely ignores the question of individual morality and ethical behaviour as determining factors in the historical process. This ‘missing link’ in Marxism may partially explain why the communist project went badly wrong. Professor Richard Winter readily admits that his suggestion of connecting Marxism and Buddhism could appear ‘surprising or even downright bizarre’ to many. When I realised that he is suggesting this as a way of countering the denigration of our humanity under capitalism, I too thought he must be a little ‘off-beam’. However, his lucidly and concisely argued case completely disabused me. Far from being an ‘odd ball’ he is a man with a deep comprehension of the ills of our present system and he has a thorough understanding and appreciation of the value of Marxism as an analytical tool. He has his feet firmly on the ground, based on his wide experience working in our educational system, and he sees education as a potential tool for change. His desire for radical change, together with his strong sense of compassion and justice led him to examine Buddhism as a means of individual self-enlightenment, and as an additional means of bringing about the sort of social change many of us desire: first by changing ourselves. Buddhism is often seen about being about ‘enlightenment’, but it is really more concerned in reshaping character and behaviour than mystical experience; younger Buddhists are more likely to be fired by social action. I remain sceptical of those who suggest answers to our pressing problems can be found in ‘exotic’ cultures, whether Indian Hinduism, North American indigenous traditions or Chinese Confucianism, even if they can offer us new and valuable insights. But Winter is not suggesting this. He is attempting to address Marxism’s underplaying of the role of the individual by suggesting a combination of Marxist theory with a meditational approach derived from Buddhism. However, while I can go a long way with him and even accept that aspects of Buddhist teachings have much to offer us in the West; I doubt such ideas could be easily adopted. Yes, it might be a good idea, but is it feasible or even imaginable that one could persuade a sizable proportion of people not steeped in a Buddhist tradition to adopt such a Buddhist approach to their lives? That is always the dilemma for those who want to change society without being able to obtain a majority electoral mandate: where can you effectively start? Winter argues that one of the keys lies in education. ‘Without changes in our individual awareness and behaviour our attempts to make our institutions more just and more compassionate are doomed in the long run,’ he says. His advocating meditation is basically suggesting a series of straightforward actions that anyone can engage in. Meditation is a method of personal change, he says, and he demonstrates how it can refine our personal and ethical responses to practical situations and how it could support the effectiveness of our attempts to change political and economic structures. Meditation as ‘pure awareness’ can have merely the general and familiar meaning of sustained purposeful thought, he says.’ It involves a heightened state of concentration, derived from being a wholly absorbed awareness of the present. ‘This methodology,’ he argues, ‘helps us resist our spontaneous ego-orientation and thus our assimilation into the stress-filled responses of our exploitive culture, whose ramifications penetrate so deeply into our lives.’ Meditation practice is inseparable from ethical awareness. Winter is not suggesting that we adopt Buddhism as the new religion or see it as a magic solution. But using Buddhist ideas, particularly that of meditation could help us understand ourselves and help us better comprehend and deal with our society in terms of its pressures, stresses and consumer demands. Buddhism places an emphasis on the present and on those things in life that are vital to a meaningful and happy existence, that represent enduring reality. In other words, all the ephemeral trappings of wealth and fame, of vanity and worries about the future or preoccupation with the past, only distract us from the real question of the here and now, and dissipate our creative energies. ‘For Buddhism in its origins and most of its contemporary versions meditation is the primary practice; its teachings are, above all, a rationale for the validity and power of meditation as an individual path of self-transformation,’ he writes. It also helps overcome self-doubt and encourages our creativity. What is certainly true, and something few would deny, is that if we wish to change the world we have first to change ourselves; and in our own behaviour we have to encapsulate the type of society we aim to create. Both Marxist and Buddhist perspectives also emphasise that ‘our spontaneous experiences are frequently based on misperceptions of reality; what Marx called ‘false consciousness’. That is why, Winter argues, that any education curriculum needs to go beyond simply involving students’ personal experience in the learning process: a ‘curriculum for transformation’ is needed to help students engage in a radical critique of their experience.’ He says, perceptively, that behaviour, which constitutes part of the ‘ethics’ of capitalism, is not really endorsed by the general population: rather it is seen as a regrettable compromise. He realises that simply putting forward yet another ‘vacuous plea’ for a ‘change of culture’ is pointless. He knows that such pleas avoid the crunch question: through what agency could the changes we desire be brought about? That’s why he argues forcibly that we are all potentially ‘agents for change’. One might not agree with much of Winter’s argumentation, but his ideas are certainly thought-provoking and deserving of close attention. (Prof Winter’s recent book: Power, Freedom Compassion; Willow Tree Press; £10)

US murdered head of UN but culprits remain unpunished

Buried History CIA and MI5 linked to assassinations in the Congo in sixties With the recent scandal of ‘destroyed’ Foreign Office documents in connection with Britain’s bloody colonial past and more recent revelations of our secret services’ murky complicity with Gadafhi’s security services it is perhaps worth recalling Britain’s role in the nefarious conspiracy in the Congo after it gained independence from Belgium in June 1960. The Belgians had done nothing to prepare the country for independence, and it quickly degenerated into chaos, providing a motive for the Belgians to keep troops there. While the Belgians favoured Joseph Kasavubu to lead the new nation, the Congolese chose Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. Lumumba asked the United Nations, then headed by Dag Hammarskjöld, to order the Belgians to withdraw, and the UN voted to send a peacekeeping mission to the Congo. Impatient and untrusting of the UN, Lumumba threatened to ask the Soviets for help in expelling Belgian forces. He was no communist, but was interested in getting aid from wherever he could, including from the Soviet Union. He’d also sought and, for a time, obtained American aid. Civil war broke out four days after independence, and local leader Moise Tshombe announced copper-rich Katanga's secession in July. In 1959 Lumumba had visited businessmen in New York, and stated unequivocally, ‘The exploitation of the mineral riches of the Congo should be primarily for the profit of our own people and other Africans.’ The country had rich deposits of copper, gold, diamonds, and uranium. Asked whether the Americans would still have access to uranium, as they had during the Belgian occupation, Lumumba responded, ‘Belgium doesn’t produce any uranium; it would be to the advantage of both our countries if the Congo and the US worked out their own agreements in the future.’ The US, though, didn’t trust Lumumba to protect their interests. Investors in copper and uranium in the Congo at that time included the Rockefellers, the Guggenheims and C. Douglas Dillon, who participated in a National Security Council meeting where the removal of Lumumba was discussed. In September, only twelve weeks after his election, his government was indeed overthrown in a western-backed coup by the military, and he was allegedly shot while escaping custody in January 1961. The CIA was not satisfied solely with the death of Lumumba. One of the barriers to completing the takeover of the Congo remained the United Nations, and more specifically, the Swede Dag Hammarskjöld who was UN Secretary-General. Hammarskjöld was killed only nine months after Lumumba in September in a mysterious air crash. Allegations were immediately made of a link between the two and of Western involvement, but firm evidence was difficult to come by. His death was part of an attempt to prevent Katanga's mineral wealth falling under the control of a progressive government. He was flying aboard the Albertina to the Ndola airport at the border of the Congo in Northern Rhodesia, where he was to meet with Tshombe to broker a cease-fire. The pilot of the Albertina filed a fake flight plan in an attempt to keep Hammarskjöld’s ultimate destination hidden. Despite this and other measures taken to preserve secrecy, less than 15 minutes into the flight the press was reporting that Hammarskjöld was en route to Ndola. Hammarskjöld and 15 other people were killed when their aircraft crashed entering what was then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, where the UN head was due to meet rebel leader Moise Tshombe to negotiate a truce in the Congolese civil war. Newspapers at the time alleged British involvement in a plot to kill Hammarskjöld to prevent UN support for Tshombe and his diamond-rich Katanga province. However, in 1998 Reuters reported that South Africa's Truth Commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu Wednesday had released documents which suggested a Western plot was behind the death of the head of the United Nations in 1961. Tutu said his Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was investigating crimes committed during the apartheid era, had decided to release the documents although it could not verify their authenticity. Commission investigators stumbled across the documents by chance while researching an unrelated issue. They link South African agents to the death of Dag Hammarskjöld. The papers also revealed that the project was plotted at the highest levels of the CIA and MI5. The alleged plot was revealed as the brainchild of at least two British security agencies - MI5 and the Special Operations Executive, together with the CIA - as these top-secret documents show. A series of messages between a ‘commodore’ and a ‘captain’ point to a plot hatched on South African soil by a group which had access to large sums of money and the ability to muster mercenary forces to protect Western investments in turbulent post-colonial Africa. The letters, with South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) letter-heads, include references to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI5 security service [SAIMR was a front company for the South African military]. In addition to outlining Operation Celeste - the plan to get rid of the ‘troublesome’ Hammarskjöld - the documents also implicate the SAIMR and international intelligence agencies in the death of Patrice Lumumba and they also implicate then CIA chief Allen Dulles. They claim that the explosives used for the bomb that downed the aircraft were supplied by the Belgian mining conglomerate, Union Minière. The company had extensive interests in copper-rich Katanga, and was known to have backed Tshombe's use of mercenaries, including the group led by South Africa's Colonel ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare. The most damning document, marked ‘Top Secret’, refers to a meeting between MI5, Special Operations Executive, the CIA and the SAIMR at which it was recorded that Dulles ‘agrees ... Dag is becoming troublesome and ... should be removed’ and ‘…I want his removal to be handled more efficiently than was Patrice.’ These documents have predictably been dismissed as fakes by both MI5 and the CIA who still deny any involvement in Hammarskjöld's death. However, they bear a striking resemblance to others emanating from the SAIMR seven years before, when it was headed by ‘commodore’ Keith Maxwell-Annandale and had developed links with both South Africa's military intelligence and the National Intelligence Services. These documents also show that the SAIMR masterminded the abortive 1981 attempt to depose Seychelles president Albert René, and that it was also behind a successful 1990 coup in Somalia. The CIA later opened its files on Cold War assassinations and admitted it had ordered the murder of Patrice Lumumba, but it still denies any involvement with that of Hammarskjöld. The former UN Representative in Africa under Hammarskjöld, Conor Cruise O’Brien, said, ‘I do not think there was anyone there who believed that his death was as accident.’ He and another of Hammarskjöld’s close associates, Stuart Linner, had both been targets of assassination attempts. Interestingly, in 1976 a long-time CIA operative, Bud Culligan, a man with a grudge against his former employer, claimed he personally shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane. He had kept a detailed journal of every assignment he had performed for the CIA. He had dates, names, places - he was a professional assassin. He clearly worked for the CIA in Africa but the extent of his involvement is impossible to prove. We may never be able to uncover the real truth behind Hammarskjöld’s death, but there is certainly no shortage of precedents for CIA involvement in other successful and unsuccessful assassinations of progressive leaders, from Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende, to Omar Torrijos and Bishop Romero. END

Cats are sociopaths!

Psychopaths in the garden It's almost like admitting publicly that you are a paedophile. But I'll admit it anyway: I hate cats! Cats are the world's greatest and most cunning opportunists. They are, in their essence, wild animals that have opted to accept human propinquity because it guarantees ready meals and a dry bed for the night. Cats are unlike any other domestic pet; they cannot be properly tamed or confined, so are free to wander anywhere they want, including into my garden. If my neighbours or even their dogs were continually trespassing on my property I could undertake measures to stop them, even resorting to the courts if necessary. But with cats I have no redress whatsoever - they are a law unto themselves. They can come and go as they please, bury their faeces in my vegetable patch, sunbathe on my patio and hide under the hedge, waiting to pounce on any bird foolhardy enough to hop within range of their vicious claws. In the UK we have 10.3 million cats - that's one for every six people! Just imagine the mountains of food and the tonnage of cans needed to package it. Our supermarkets dedicate metres of shelving to satisfy feline taste buds; cats are offered almost as much choice of food as we humans. Then there are the vet bills, the expensive catteries to park these creatures when their owners go on holiday. This is a multi-million pound industry supporting a vast army of killing machines – a feline-industrial-complex so to speak. Cats are serial killers and they are allowed to murder with impunity. The most recent figures from a British Mammal Society report (2012), estimates that the UK's cats catch up to 275 million prey items per year, of which 55 million are birds. This is the number of prey items that were known to have been caught; we don't know how many more the cats caught, but didn't bring home, or how many escaped injured and subsequently died. On a world scale the figures are even more mind-numbing. Jonathan Franzen in his novel Freedom also lays it on the line about cats through the words of the environmental activist Lalitha: ‘Kitty cats,’ she said. "C-A-T-S. Everybody loves their kitty cat and lets it run around outside. It's just one cat - how many birds can it kill? Well, every year in the U.S. one billion song birds are murdered by domestic and feral cats. It's one of the leading causes of songbird decline in North America. But no one gives a shit because they love their own individual kitty cat.’ I like most animals, but particularly birds. I relish their songs in spring, their animated activity in the nesting season; I like watching them bathe in the water bath and grub for worms on the lawn. But the omnipresence of my neighbours' cats means that their numbers are rapidly reduced and they are driven from my garden. It's even worse in the breeding season when the young hatch, as they have no experience of the wicked wide world outside the nest and no previous contact with those louring beasts of the urban killing fields. Last week a pigeon was pounced on as he strutted calmly around my lawn; only a pile of feathers drifting in the breeze was left behind as evidence. My neighbour’s children told me how their cat brings home dead frogs on a regular basis – culled from around my pond! Cats don't need to catch other animals for food; they do so merely out of instinct. Whereas most town dogs have had their hunter instinct largely bred out of them or can be suitably controlled by their owners, cats are averse to training of any kind. The enormous wastage in terms of the lives of birds and other small animals, due entirely to cats, is mind-boggling. The cat population, I would argue, needs to be seriously reduced if we are to save the remnants of our wildlife. We cull pigeons, foxes and other pests, so why not cats too? Cat-owners should be obliged to make their cats wear bells on their collars or contraptions to prevent their killing. Because they are always well nourished, cats can spend hours simply lounging, grooming themselves, just waiting for any bird, frog or mouse to appear within their vision, before pouncing, just for the sheer hell of it. In conclusion, I can find no better words than those of Franzen’s protagonist in Freedom: ‘Walter never had liked cats They’d seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world, a species domesticated as an evil necessary for the control of rodents and subsequently fetishized the way unhappy countries fetishize their militaries...’ END 735 words John Green