What factors are increasing the price of oil, recently over $135 a barrel? Is it the speculative ‘unregulated’ oil trading that William Pfaff, writing in the IHT, criticises? Certainly the black magic of contract trading is a factor, a parasite on the ‘real’ market for the commodity. According to the BBC, OPEC has so far blamed price rises on speculators and says there is no shortage of oil. Likewise, Pfaff considers the present situation with rising prices dissimilar to the 1973 oil crisis, when OPEC announced that they would no longer supply oil to nations that supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt.

Paul Krugman, also in the IHT, is somewhat naive if he thinks that we are entering merely an era of scarce, expensive oil. This is more than an era. The buried sunlight that we like to burn is running out. Scarcity is the true reality. It’s more than Half Gone. Not only is the raw material that we are critically addicted to becoming more expensive as it becomes increasingly scarce, feeding our addiction in consuming oil is one of the major causes of global warming.

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I’ve been busy reviewing and replanning my dissertation project - only five weeks to go until hand-in! I’ve cut a lot out since my proposal last year, tightening my focus and shortening my reading lists. My four papers now look something like this…

• Who Governs in a Networked Society (final draft complete) - My first chapter is concerned with the depoliticisation of government and the politicisation of the social world in a global networked society. In this chapter I explore the networked society thesis (Giddens, Castells) contra globalisation. I draw on Virilio’s real/virtual city dichotomy in order to move towards Hardt & Negri Empire. I am interested in the post-material politics of NSM/NGO and the relationship between these organisations and the de/politicisation in networked society. I conclude with a discussion about the imagination and the affective dimension of the political.
• Free, Libre and Radically Open Communities (in draft) - This paper will consider the hacker identity and hacker social and cultural relations. In exploring this subjects ontology and its relationships with others I will also question the understanding of purpose, of telos, by this subjectivity. Freedom and openness are two central concepts in hackerism and the contemporary social movements it has influenced. My research will lead me to examine critically the political philosophy of hackerism in order to reveal the meaning in these emerging redefinitions of freedom and openness and the challenge they present to the corresponding dominant liberal notions of the same terms.
• Communicative Capitalism and F/los - In my third paper I will explore the political economy of contemporary communicative capitalism and f/los. Here I will draw on the networked society ideas from my first chapter and the hacker work ethic from my second. I am conscious of a dynamic between pragmatism and idealism and how this conditions political economy. I am searching for the `positive possibility’ of f/los and how this, in transmission, may effect our contemporary order.
• A New Politics of Openness? - I am not quite sure how this chapter will fit together yet. I am interested in how the hacker idea of freedom, `what kind of rules make possible a good society that is good for the people in it’ (Stallman) is be realised. McKenzie Wark, author of `A Hacker Manifesto’, in his paper `Escape from the Dual Empire’ wrote “020. The search for a counter strategy to ‘globalization’, if it does not look backwards to the reinstatement of the topographic boundaries of a lost age, looks forward instead to a new topography, in which the topical might hold the power of the digital, rather than being held within its thrall.” I think that the hacker ethic and the open political models of f/los are no longer emergent, existing at the frontiers of our networked society. I contend that they already among us and are radically altering established politics.

I’ve just sent the draft of my first paper to my supervisor and I’ve yet to run it past my Chief Editor (thanks B). I’ll post a PDF when its been reviewed and edited.

How many twins can one university have? If Goldsmiths SU passes all of the resolutions before it on conjoining in solidarity with another university it’ll have a hard time buying trousers.

Some would have Goldsmiths twin with a university in Palestine and have campaigned tirelessly for 18 months. Others would see Goldsmiths twin with an Israeli institution and have brought out the votes to defeat motions in the past. Both condemn the other for their solidarity, their morality (or lack of it), their inequity…

Both sides seek absolute right and the destruction of the other… A grotesque caricature of only the most extreme elements of the conflict on which they hope to have some bearing.

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I’ve been reading more F Scott Fitzgerald recently as I’ve just discovered a collection of his short stories published by Hesperus. “The Popular Girl” collects together 5 short stories, each a gem, each of which, with dazzling brilliance and sparkling wit, disects Fitzgerald’s favourite topic: the American society-life. This came to mind this morning while I was digging in my visitor statistics for stats that stood out. The number one incomming search term (the query entered at a search engine that led someone to read this website) is Hayley Matthews. Popular Girl indeed.

Very little information about any of our Councillors on the internet, unless they happened to have been the Mayor or an MP. The Brent Council website lists limited contact information for each elected Council member, and the Brent Brain ‘blogging Councillors’ project had a limited pilot that does not appear to be running at this time. I recently worked with Neil Nerva to support him and the other Labour Councillors in Queen’s Park in the adoption and use on some internet tools: then he wasn’t re-elected so that internet based communications project has ground to a halt.

Hayley is a Brent Lib Dem, so why no information on her, or any of the other Brent Lib Dem councillors on the BELD website? The BELD site emphasises Sarah Teather over other elected members in Brent. With the Lib Dems now with the greatest number of seats in the Council, will we see an overhaul of the BELD website to communicate more from our Local Councillors and less from Sarah Teather? They’ve got www.sarahteather.org.uk for all the news from our MP after all!

I can see people reading this blog. There have been 216 of you this last week and 48 readers so far today! Are you voting, Brent people? Who are you voting for? Why? Why vote at all? Got any comments? After all, it’s Your Council for Your Street and Your Services - Are you having your say?

Me? Of course I’ve voted! I’ve supported Team Yellow in my ward, Mapesbury (Look for the Bird!). When I got to my polling station I spoke to the Team Red vote recorder who was sitting outside - I was the first ‘young person’ through the doors that day… and it’s not like I’m an early riser! Where are the Brent Youth - have the biggest unsigned group in the UK not got their act together? Voting too difficult - i know, i know, making an x in a box…too taxing…..? Anyway - 18-24? Do you care?

Hit the comment button…….