Qualms & Wires

2011-04-20T17:11:00.006+02:00

Another day another victory for a xenophobic nationalist party in Europe.

They're dropping like flies. The latest victim to succumb to the smooth-talking bigots is Finland, that mysterious country I've always wanted to move to, for literally no other reason than being inexplicably but desperately in love with the sound of the language.

I'm beginning to think the prophecy might be about to come true. That's the prophecy that Ariyeh King, uber-zionist and founder of the Israel Land Fund (which organizes the building of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land), made during our discussion in the pleasant and leafy courtyard of the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem.

In King's estimation, the levels of discrimination and division that exist in Israel, though they would make the founders of apartheid proud, will soon appear moderate in comparison to the massive scale of racism within Europe. This phenomenon, he predicts, will eventually culminate in a full-scale expulsion of immigrants (islamic, essentially) or even, presumably in the case where they fail to go quietly, “a war”.

To back up this contentious proposal, he cited the bans on minarets in Switzerland, and on the veil in France. But he didn't have to stop there. He could also have mentioned the creeping banalisation of the far-right discourse in the UK (English Defence League "spokesperson" invited onto Newsnight, and then allowed to leave freely afterwards?). Or even the way that European countries like France, Austria and Germany, those great shining beacons of human rights, have pulled up the drawbridges, shut their borders and told trains carrying migrants from North Africa to kindly go back from whence they came (unfortunately for them that was Italy - the country that either allows migrants to drown in the sea, or uses military weapons to prevent them from entering).

The case of the French burka law is particularly staggering. Apart from the fact that virtually every other type of face-covering conceivable appeared to be exempt from the law, I must confess I fail to understand the logic by which making the wearing of an item of clothing into a political offence empowers muslim women and instantly frees them from the complex social and religious structures of oppression that hold them back. Although it did clearly succeed in empowering the two women in burkas who promptly went out and got arrested. Good for them, standing up for themselves, exercising their right to protest, that's what freedom is all about!

Because that was the point, right? It wasn't just about legitimising a pernicious perspective whereby people who do things a bit differently and don't look like the majority are automatically flouting, and engaged in a lifestyle totally incompatible with, the fundamental values upon which the republic was founded, was it? Or was it a pathetic last-ditch attempt by Sarkozy to drag up the opinion poll ratings a notch or two before the election campaigns get underway? No, probably and yes, respectively, would be my guesses.

Suffice to say, there is no shortage of reasons not to be cheerful. The lies, the racism, the political opportunism of it all is, like, wow. But when has it been any other way, in Europe…

Still. No amount of relativising matters historically makes it possible to stomach anti-immigrant politicians bemoaning the relentless influx of scroungers and criminals into their previously edenic nations, who are then treated like privileged citizens to the detriment of the white working-class (especially male, weirdly enough) population. While at the same time barely adult victims of sex-trafiking are being deported. Wonder what demographic of society is generally driving this trade by frequenting these kinds of girls? Hmm, on the other hand, perhaps best not to...

I have to commend the Guardian for helping to raise awareness recently of just some of the projects, organisations and charities that are going to get axed by the cuts. Given the way David Cameron's government has run its operations so far one might be tempted to think they're doing it on purpose, actively seeking to elicit as much outrage as possible at their attempts to destroy the social fabric of absolutely everything in an attempt to shake us out of our complacency and remind us what's important in society, what needs protecting.

So maybe we'll have to wait it out. For a few more nationalists to celebrate their landslide victories, and a few more fascist lunatics to get scarily close, to the point where things have gotten so bad that nobody can get away with ridiculous arguments about politics correctness gone made or immigrants being treated like royalty. To the point where one day Europeans wake up and realise that they are putting the Israelis to shame. That for all their routine violations of the basic rights of Palestinians, bulldozing through houses and cutting off water supplies, they look like care-bears compared to the bigoted, racist pieces of work leading most European countries.

Maybe then we'll remember why it was so important to fear racism.

The Problem with Public Displays of Integrity

2011-04-06T22:00:00.007+02:00

Two peculiar instances of apparent about-turns caught my eye recently. In the case of Richard Goldstone and the report into Cast Lead, it is the timing that is surprising. In the case of George Monbiot's sudden penchant for nuclear energy, it is strength of the statements he's made in its defence that seems uncanny. It's almost enough to make one suspect the "other side" got to them in some way, especially knowing who those sides are.

Monbiot's trajectory began with an article hinting that nuclear power may not be so bad after all, followed by a piece in which he as an individual came out in active support of it, and now by a piece in which he denounced members of a movement to which he once belonged for not being completely coherent.

Monbiot dismisses the arguments made by John Vidal, in response to his previous article, on the basis that he doesn't provide irrefutable evidence of linkages between the phenomena that were and still are observable in the region surrounding the Tchernobyl powerplant, and the meltdown of this plant.

I'm not a scientist, but I have it on a good authority that there are many linkages between phenomena that cannot be fully explained, yet all the evidence suggests the link is there. A number of medical treatments, for instance, are prescribed on the basis that they work - but we don't know yet quite how they work.

I may have found the anti-nuclear campaigners' response to Japan tactless but Monbiot's accusations of deliberately misleading people seems a step too far.

And yet I understand why he did it. The Green movement is one that has many principles. Within its ranks are individuals who admirably hold themselves to very high ethical standards. To an extent which I think it pretty much unique. Monbiot's response to what he regarded as misrepresentation of "the facts" has reinforced this opinion.

But it's also bloody stupid. Stupid, I mean, to admit weaknesses in public, to confess to nagging doubts and open criticisms in the face of such powerful forces who tend to interpret these matters in black and white terms, for their own interests.

As if the nuclear industry or the ruling class in Israel are whiter than white in their own representations. Politicians and the media, not to mention private companies, routinely distort and manipulate information for any number of reasons. Does Monbiot feel that environmental campaigners are so well placed, or their views so dominant, that they can afford to be undermined by giving their opponents such gifts? Knowing, of course, that these opponents would never do the same for them and knowing also how, unfortunately, public debate often fails to take into account the nuances of such arguments, but rather zooms in on the headlines, the soundbites, and runs with them.

Being exposed to some of the Israeli press concerning Goldstone's qualification of the earlier report, at the time, allowed me to gain some insight into the way it was interpreted by the media and politicians there. Namely, that it was immediately seized upon as evidence that the whole report was flawed and invalid, regarding this admission as equating to a revocation of the entire report, and, in the words of Netanyahu, confining it to the "dustbin of history". However educated and refined these individuals no doubt are, the level of appreciation for nuance here is clear.

No doubt the nuclear industry & its lobbies are not far behind, driven as they are by stakeholders and profit, rather than a long-term vision for the perpetuation of the planet, as is the case for environmentalists.

This article commended Goldstone for his statement, describing him as "a man of integrity and independence... It's the easiest thing in the world to stay silent; to come out in this very public fashion is a brave act."

I agree with this. I think it is absolutely the right and correct thing to do. I admire fervently the integrity of those who admit their weaknesses and mistakes in public without being pushed. They are few and far between. But I have to ask - what is the use, when they are not greeted with reflection and willingness to compromise, but rather manipulated and taken out of context as a total victory for those being criticised?

My argument, and it is a practical one for an un-ideal world, is that such admissions should be confined to within the ranks of an organisation or movement, in such circumstances. In this way, the aims of integrity and consistency can be acheieved, and mistakes can be learned from.

But there is also a question of responsability here, not only utility. It is not just about protecting credibility and political reputations. It is also about refraining from handing such criticisms over to those who would use them to the detriment of others.

So in we went.

2011-04-06T20:41:00.004+02:00

At this point I've heard compelling arguments from both sides. Off the top of my head, I'd be fascinated to hear Daniel Cohn-Bendit debate Simon Jenkins on the question.

There's those who want to draw lessons from Iraq, those who'd sooner look to Bosnia, and all the various other precedents that've been mobilised to support a particular course of action, or inaction. When we can't seem to agree which history it is that we do not want to repeat, taking a clear moral position becomes tricky.

In such morally ambiguous situations, one feels small. I certainly do, and so this post isn't meant to be a political "prise de position" based on which stance is more ethical. But on that note - quick parenthesis - although I wouldnt align myself with it completely, perhaps it's worth recalling Chomsky's view of Obama. It may sound cynical but to me it's an alarming reminder of fears voiced by some back in 2008 that under the Obama administration "regime change" and power politics would be rebranded and acquire a renewed legitimacy after the Bush era. Just in passing.

Actually, I'd rather keep my distances and comment instead on a particular aspect of the semantics of the coverage and the debate, such as it comes across to me, at least.

At the same time as European nations are intervening and putting the lives of some of their own citizens at risk for the people of North Africa - this is occuring.

Is it contradictory that navy ships sent to help the rebels are also blocking escaping boats, or that democratic countries that happen to be in the south of Europe allow immigrants to drown at paddling distance from their shores? I think so.

It seems that the situation in Libya is one of at least two pivotal events currently unfolding in the world informed by this syndrome.

In the case of Libya, I think this work of mental abstraction operates in a somewhat incoherent way. If we see people in collective terms then there's two big sets - the heroic figures of the revolution - the protestors risking everything fighting for freedom, who are admired, as opposed to the hordes of asylum-seekers whom we fear and dread.

The process of abstraction which turns individuals into statistics or "illegalises" them, is encouraged and even made inevitable by the political language that characterises the debate about immigration. Like all discourses, it is far from innocuous, but I'd say this one is particularly corrosive.

In her article "Welcome to Britain: the cultural politics of asylum", Imogen Tyler makes a number of very important points about the rhetoric surrounding immigration. The popularisation and banalisation of the term "asylum seeker", as essentially a synonym for a scrounger or a criminal, has been encouraged by mainstream political parties and taken up by most of the media. The worst xenophobic discourses (found in tabloids largely) depict the asylum-seeker as a dehumanised, undifferentiated foreign mass or influx.

The figure of the asylum-seeker invokes the "non-status" of a person who has not been recognised as a refugee - someone who is literally pending recognition. Tyler argues that "inscribing the category of asylum-seeker in British law through the enactment of a series of punitive asylum laws has enabled the British government to manoeuvre around the rights of the refugee as prescribed by international law."

This discourse then identifies and excludes individuals as asylum-seekers on the one hand, and secures the imaginary borders of nations and shores up a normative fantasy of national identity on the other. It also conveniently obscures all the complexity of the phenomenon.

Interestingly, Tyler also speaks of the tension that exists between the urgency of staking a political claim (on behalf of asylum-seekers, for example) and the need to reflect critically on the language in which those claims are made. In other words, although the way politicians and NGOs formulate their arguments and responses may be to some extent complicit with the xenophobic discourses, sometimes the humanitarian urgency is such that there is little time to reconfigure the terms of the debate. I think this is pertinent to the case of Libya where, while the critical thinkers are reflecting sociologically about the terms of the debate, Gadaffi is busy massacring his people. Dilemma.

So I won't denounce the intervention. I will save my condemnations for Marine Le Pen, who went to Lampedusa last week. It's a bit like if Bruno Gollnisch went to visit Auschwitz. It's like when Nicolas Sarkozy went to Turkey. It's an insult. A calculated, cynical insult, designed to impress domestic audiences and win brownie points with voters at home. Incidentally the most conservative, reactionary, racist breed of voters.

The fact that people respond to major catastrophes in the manner described by Chakrabortty means that so often, international crises are met by domestic responses. This seems to me the way that many responded to the nuclear crisis in Japan. In Libya, there is a disconnect between the two responses. It does not add up to declare unflinching support for citizens in a country and yet treat those fleeing danger as potential criminals. We need to connect the dots, and fast.

(UPDATE: This article is very insightful about the way Italy in particular frames the question of immigration in terms of security and criminality, requiring a military rather than humanitarian response)

2011-03-18T16:38:00.006+01:00

There have been a lot of emotional reactions about Japan among the political family to whom I owe my current day-job.

Some of the emotion has been of this order. The French Greens statement mentions immense anger, clenched fists, heavy hearts, before going on to declare that the Greens are on the front line fighting against "this war humanity has unleashed against itself". Poetic, if you like your poetry seething with righteous indignation.

Then there is the emotion in response to these type of reactions, which sees the instrumentalisation of a still unfolding human tragedy on a massive scale as something Greens should aspire to being above. And in response to some of the thinly veiled messages of "we told you so". Then again, Europe Ecologie clearly didn't feel the need to veil anything, they just went ahead and bluntly said that the Japanese were likely to pay "pay a heavy price" for the carelessness of the choice to use nuclear energy, "contrary to all reason". Especially given the timing, this was really the final kick in the teeth in a statement that is so pompous and so offensive to anyone whose been affected by the disaster, as to make one wonder how certain members of the Party with a conscience could possibly have allowed it to be released.

This seems to be the worst of a series of reactions which had the unfortunate side-effect of undermining any criticism by Greens of the nuclear industry lobbyists who rushed to defend nuclear, as quickly as they themselves rushed to condemn it. It meant that the Australians were skating on very thin ice when they denounced the "undignified scramble from nuclear power advocates to trivialise the unfolding disaster at Fukushima in order to promote the technology".

What's more, it seems that it's precisely this kind of hyperbolic, excessive language that many in Japan have criticised and warned against. At least from what I've gleaned so far from those on the ground, qualifications of a "nuclear apocalypse" and other such epithets seem to be regarded as misguiding and infuriating. Descriptions of a "mass exodus" or the immense of another Tchernobyl only serve to disinform and fuel mass hysteria, as well as to detract attention from the genuinely devastating aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami.

Besides all this emotion there were also incredibly dignified and elegant statements, such as that of MEP Philippe Lamberts who warned against fueling a hasty debate and argued that the Greens' views on nuclear energy are well-known, and that now was not the time to restate them. Groenlinks, the Dutch Greens have also shown commendable restraint.

There have since been a number of pieces making more technical arguments for not saying no point blank to nuclear, such as Monbiot's piece. For me this is almost a step too far. What I've been feeling incredibly uneasy about is the way the situation in Japan has been used as a vehicle to further domestic political aims concerning nuclear energy, which detracts attention away from the continuing effects of the natural disaster. But there is also something problematic about a stance on any issue that can consists of only a 2 or 3 letter word. Experience teaches us that there is almost always slightly more to it than that. So the fact that there appears to be a diversity of perspectives within the Greens is no bad thing and in fact it's part of what makes it one of the healthier political movements.

One of the really strong points the Greens have going for them is precisely the fact that they have the kind of integrity and long-term vision which means they don't operate in a way determined by political opportunism, and short-term incentives allowing them to gain popularity. In other words, without playing the political game in such a cynical way, and without exploiting the misfortunes of others elsewhere to further their own agendas at home, on principle, however noble that agenda may be in our estimation.

Perhaps it is naive to think that Greens can operate in the world of politics without playing the game to some extent. They want to implement their ideas and that necessarily means chasing votes, whether we like it or not. But there's a careful balance that needs to be kept. Because making too many compromises for vote-scoring will undermine precisely the strengths and qualities which make them remarkable and unique.

Quotas: scratching the surface to hide what's underneath

2011-03-09T13:51:00.011+01:00

I dislike quotas. But not for the same reasons that many high-flying business-women and politicians dislike them, women who are as bright as they are ruthless, and who constantly like to remind us they can make it their own, thanks all the same.

The problem with quotas is that they allow us to make up the numbers without tackling the root causes of the inequality. It allows us to keep on with "business as usual" while comforting ourselves that, on paper, everyone is perfectly equal. But essentially, it's cheating.

If you want to see how it's done, or being done, we must of course point to the scandies, as sociologists so often have to do. Women did not get to the 3 most powerful political positions in Finland without a bit of childcare provision, it's safe to say. But it's not just about material provision, it goes far deeper than that.

Essentially it's about creating the social conditions which provide real equality of opportunity. For this, there are no shortcuts, and it is misleading to say otherwise. Women go to school, they get degrees. Isn't this enough? Apparently not, at least for the women who get written off before they've even had a chance to open their mouths or prove their merit in any way. Like the lines-person who was the unfortunate subject of the humorously-intended remarks of Gray & Keys, as was so eloquently pointed out by a young woman on Question Time when the matter was discussed. While Katie Hopkins pathetically defended them with the observation that "it's a tough world out there" - an argument which, if taken to its logical conclusion, would require the dismantling of all social provision, all rights for everyone, and indeed the dissolution of the entire fabric of society. Then finally we'd no doubt all be able appreciate just how tough a world it really is, and much good may it do us.

I never thought I'd put the words "good article Mariella Frostrup" in such close proximity, but hers was one of the best pieces I saw around International Women's Day. Her point about the lack of social acceptance of feminism is particularly insightful:

"75% of civilians killed in war are women and children, causing Major-General Patrick Cammaert, the former UN peacekeeping commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to declare in 2008: "It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern conflict."

These are staggering statistics, and yet not powerful enough to make arguing for women's rights a respectable pursuit, rather than the aggressive histrionics of popular perception. International Women's Day, the one day a year when we're encouraged to celebrate what we've achieved and highlight what still needs to be done, conjures less bile than the F word, but also more apathy.

But, Top Gear presenters aside, I wonder if members of either sex actually disagree with what feminism set out to achieve, which is the social, economic and political equality of the sexes (see any definition for confirmation of those goals). Better yet, it's a battle we've all but won."

I for one am so BORED of hearing about the "attack on the middle-class white male" and "political correctness gone mad", rattled off by people without even once having the presence of mind to think that perhaps they aren't best placed to know exactly what it's like for people who aren't in their position. Walk a mile and all that. The whole point about muslims/women/vaguely foreign looking people having to work twice as hard for the same money/recognition is that it is part of a process that is not obvious, that is by its very nature invisible.

Still, maybe there wouldn't be so much feminist-bashing if men didn't feel ever so slightly threatened. And yet all the statistics and numbers point to the fact that there is every reason for complacency among chauvinists and misogynists. The gaps are not closing. Women are still hardest hit by poverty, violence and economic hardship the world over. In Europe they are not payed as much, they are still victim to all manner of double standards about social behavior, and recent statistics showed that even in our "progressive western" societies, women still do the vast majority of the work in the household, including where children are concerned. Apparently all this is not reason enough to be reassured, because at the minutest sign of any preferential treatment being given to redress the balance even a touch - outpourings of indignation inevitably follow. And not just among men.

Oh boy, are women complicit. Women are the first to denounce in vitriolic terms feminism, quotas, positive discrimination or any kind of special treatment. Presumably some of them do it to gain credibility among their male competitors but I'm sure others are genuinely convinced. And there is not a lot that can be done about that, in the short term.

Women, as a whole, especially older women, are the most conservative, reactionary pro-status-quo demographic there is (and its a pretty sizable demographic). The pressures and messages about behavior that older generations of women project onto younger generations has a massive impact, not least in contributing to the internalising of the little voice inside women's heads that holds them back. It's profoundly cultural, and this is what makes it so complex.

And there's no getting away from the fact that we're all products of culture. Germaine Greer said that the problem is that "women like men but men don't really like women". I would have to say that I think it's women who have the problem with other women, essentially bound up with the problems they have with themselves (just look at my spiteful opening paragraph). And that applies to people whose sense of self-worth is undermined for any reason, whether it's to do with skin tone, sex, religion, ethnicity, whatever. We develop mechanisms to defend ourselves, often unconsciously. So in addition to being cultural, its also psychological. The only way these things change is through a deep, societal shift in attitudes, and inevitably it takes time.

But of course, I don't mean by this that it is an organic inevitable process that needs to be left to itself. The people and organisations who "manufacture" culture, in the arts and the media for example, have a crucial role to play. When Miriam O'Reilly successfully took the BBC to court for ageism, Nick Ross dismissed it by saying that TV has to be fashion-conscious (presumably he himself never went out of fashion in the whole 3 decades during which he was a presenter) - as if social trends were something divinely bestowed from the sky as opposed to very superficial and transient moods which images in the media play a key role to shape and perpetuate.

It's really heartening to see the men who do actually have the confidence to take feminism seriously rather than just seeing it as an attack on their entire gender. It's still almost shocking to hear a man declare he is a feminist. But things are not so good that we can afford to be glib and sarky about it all, on women's day of all days.

As for women, I personally am pessimistic about the prospects of a united global alliance of women, a world feminist movement if you will. How does one get that volume and sheer diversity of people under the same banner? And why should we have to. Isn't it enough to see women in the Tahrir squares of North Africa and the world to be inspired? Or Aung San Su Kii's quiet yet utterly fearless ongoing struggle. Rather than trying to speak on behalf of all women everywhere with a single political agenda, international women's day is as good a day as any to be quiet for a minute and reflect on the challenges people face everyday, whether its mothers in the European Parliament, black people in Poland or travellers in the British isles. To recognise their achievements, struggles and to think about how we can make the world a better one for them, and as a result, for everyone. Unfortunately, our staunch guardians against political correctness, the Rosses, Keyses and Grays of the world, despite being the ones who could benefit most from such empathy and momentary reflection, are the ones least likely to engage in it. it's too late for them, they won't change. We can only hope that they are a breed facing inexorable extinction.

2011-03-09T13:43:00.004+01:00

Having watched the recent debut series of Come Fly With Me, the much-hyped BBC production of the cult-duo Walliams & that other guy, I was greatly disturbed to come across the following diatribe, leveling accusations of racism and gratuitous use of crude national stereotypes against the programme. Not least because the charges come from someone with a foreign sounding name and a non-white face, and thus cannot be dismissed out of hand, though the critic may well be as British and middle-class as they come, who knows.

I was disturbed primarily because I like to think of myself as acutely sensitive to, and intolerant of, racism, even in comedy (It was certainly no excuse for the time Michael Gambon told a black joke on the late late show). But also because I would equally like to regard myself as the last person who would laugh at crude national stereotypes. When it comes to caucasions getting offended on behalf of minorities, or sticking up for political correctness, I'm normally first in line. Except of course, it's not on their behalf, it's on mine as well. Because objecting to racial stereotypes shouldn't be the sole preserve of the "ethnically inclined". However, they do of course have special privileges when it comes to determining what is objectionable and what isn't, subjective as that is.

Did the fact that I found Come Fly With Me genuinely funny blind me to its abhorrent underlying racism? I didn't even register the fact that "blacking up" was used as a device. How can this be?

Upon reflection, I think I have found a way out of this conundrum, and made amends with my conscience. For me, by far the funniest character in the programme was Ian Foot, the bigoted immigrations officer, who stops people with foreign sounding names, and whose mantra is "If in doubt, keep'em out". One of the reasons this character was so brilliant was because, as you might be aware if you've had the misfortune of tuning in to one of the deeply distressing border police documentaries, this attitude appears to be the norm among immigration officials. And certainly is the norm among vast daily-mail reading swathes of the population.

The two black characters were less funny, but they weren't offensive. And there was something inherently British about both of them. Is there an argument that British comedians (who are patently not racist themselves - a key point!) do have a certain license to make fun of other brits, even if they themselves happen to be lighter-skinned? Especially when they do it alongside parodies of bigoted white men? I'm not sure I'm being fully consistent with my own policies by claiming so.

I don't know, maybe it is just because I happen to find these crude national stereotypes funny, that I'm being an apologist. But quite frankly, I think ridiculing the prejudiced immigration officer and his absurd racial profiling is progressive comedy with a social conscience which discredits any allegations of racism, if not crudeness. All of the characters are parodies and none of them are particularly dignified. I certainly don't think that just making them white-only would be a victory for opponents of racism.

When dealing with questions of the metaphysical, is it really necessary to sky-rocket so very far from planet earth?

2010-09-17T14:01:00.003+02:00

The scathing indictments of religion that have appeared in some British newspapers recently, such as the pieces of Polly Toynbee and Nick Cohen in the Guardian, are heartening to the extent that they demonstrate there are no longer any barriers to expressing such opinions. But I can't help thinking that, rather than mockery or apathy, a frank and respectful debate about what religion really means to us would be more helpful. Not with the pope of course, because you don't debate with fundamentalists, of any stripe, but rather with critical believers such as the reverend/philosopher Giles Fraser, or even Tariq Ramadan. The people who are trying to make the bridge between supposedly distinct "worlds" - like the so-called muslim world and the secular world.

This binary view has of course nothing to do with the reality, where the majority of believers from all faiths are perfectly adapted to life in "secular" societies, and are no less tolerant and open-minded than anyone else, they just happen to believe in God. To bring in a buzzword that may grate on some - hybridity has always been the "mot d'ordre" when it comes to religion, just like all other aspects of society. The fact that the main religions have become mythologised by a "purifying discourse" which paints them as sacred, coherent wholes that have eternally been that way ever since the day they were dropped from the sky, serves to obscure the fact that actually - all religions are an accumulation of a series of traditions and diverse influences that developped over time. They borrowed, shifted and evolved as much as all cultures do - because that's what they are - elements of culture.

But setting aside this assertion, which those who adhere to a faith would find it tough to swallow, elements of hybridity can be seen everywhere - whether in the surreal juxtaposition of islamisation and americanisation in the form of the "Hallal hamburger" at fast food joints in Europe, or the myriad ways in which religious people bend and alter the practices and requirements of their religions to render them compatible with their daily lives. And its not new. Practices undo discourses, and undo the notions of purity that surround systems of belief. Whether it's the extreme and rather unoriginal example of a priest molesting a child, or the trivial case of a Jew using a phone on the sabbath, the reality is not cut and dried, it's a messy muddle full of complexities and compromises.

We are not dealing with seperate worlds, as becomes abundantly clear whenever a few precious moments of press coverage are devoted to moderates, or in the proofs we encounter in our own lives that actually, co-existence in diversity is not only possible, its incredibly enriching. But as well as that, its incredibly mundane. We all know Muslims who are completely "European" in cultural terms, or Christians who practice their faith without judging anyone else. These people exist, we all know them, it's incredibly banal and yet it's the only thing capable of exposing the nonsense of the debate monopolised by extremists. It's not a lie to show pictures of people draped in stars and stripes holding up anti-islamic placards in NYC, nor is it a lie to show a pastor saying he wants to burn a Koran (well, now you mention it...) Those people exist too, those events are actually happening (or not happening, as the case may be). But it's disinformation to the extent that it ignores the other realities, which are not only far, far more prevalent, but also far more useful in constructing a meaningful, nuanced debate. What we have instead is the battle of imaginary "worlds" and general hysteria on all sides. Which is wholly unneccesary. Many religious people are not fundamentalists and do not seek to impose their beliefs on others. Many secularists respect the important role religion has in the lives of many and are not stubbornly campaigning for its abolition. There is nothing mutually exclusive here. So why whould we be placed in opposition to one another?

The pope's visit, thus far, seems to have been the occasion for mud-slinging in all directions, with secularists being blunt and sometimes mocking in their dismissals of religion, and then Catholics - predictably - defending themselves, often by attacking the atheists in return. Not only is this disconnected from the reality, it is a serious missed opportunity, to have a calm and respectful discussion, either about the metaphysical dimensions of the existence of God, which is always a fun one, or the place of religion in European society in the face of declining religiosity yet increasing fundamentalism and religiously-based identities. Is that too boring or too subtle for people to hear? Or for journalists to write about? Apparently so. If entertainment is the only imperative, then perhaps this justifies limiting the "debate" to caricatures, which are arguably easier to process, and certainly necessitate less thought to grasp.

So now we have Richard Dawkins and the Pope representing two warring worlds. This is the conclusion I would come to if I were a lifeform from another planet, who mistakenly landed on earth and decided to pass the time by perusing the media in recent days. This being said, I do have some sympathy for Toynbee's statement that,

"All atheists now tend to be called "militant", yet we seek to silence none, to burn no books, to stop no masses or Friday prayers, impose no laws, asking only free choice over sex and death."

But of course it can't be true. If all atheists want is unlimited free choice then those who levy charges of relativism and amorality against them would be spot on. Of course atheists want laws. They advocate tolerance but even that must be restricted, because obviously not everything can be tolerated. But the point is, the "we" which Toynbee uses to generalise about all atheists is as absurd as the "we" appropriated by religious spokespeople in the name of all the faithful. Atheists are scattered across a spectrum of values, they are no more a monolithic bloc than any other kind of "imaginary community". But it's an almost irresistible shorthand, and one I am equally prone to making myself. I advocate the view that allowing a few to speak in the name of many is always dangerous, or at the very least problematic. Carving up the world into blocs denies the realities which are evidenced by our own experiences. But its a tricky predicament and I don't have the solution. I would just like to see the debate opened. The kind of debate where each speaks frankly to his/her convictions, and the mud is left at the door.

The shortcuts which lead us round in circles

2010-09-14T14:41:00.005+02:00

By way of context: One of the privileges of an interning stint at the African Museum is the unlimited access it grants to a much mythologised place I have always been fascinated and enchanted by (even as I learned more about its rather sinister past and associations). Hopefully this, and the fact of having moved from a position of looking at culture to “doing” culture, should provide ample food for thought, with which to nourish and sustain this much neglected little blog, over the coming months.

It’s been 50 years since the Congo gained its independence from Belgium. A milestone the museum has decided to mark on a jubilant, celebratory note, with a series of exhibitions of the central one “Independence!”, is a cursory but colourful look back over those 50 years.

Visiting it however, left me with rather mixed feelings. Trying to put my finger on a way of articulating how I felt about it, I decided to search for inspiration by apprehending the reaction of the visitors who’d preceded me, by means of a leaf through the guestbook. Therein I found surprisingly strong words of indignation and outrage from a number of English speaking visitors. While I can’t recall the exact formulations, damning words like “truth”, “genocide”, “8 million dead”, “shameful”, and “atrocities” were some that stuck in my mind. My initial reaction, in defence of the expo, if not the museum, was that such harsh criticism was unfair, that such details did not strictly belong in an exhibition chronicling the independence of the Congo from just a few years prior to 1960 up until the present day. That these belonged elsewhere.

I did enjoy the abstract and artistic quality of the expo, which contained lots of artworks, poems, music, artefacts and references to cultural and social movements. The problem is, when it comes to delicate issues where questions of politics and moral responsibility are being deliberately kept at arm’s length, the line between what is benignly allegorical and what is insidiously euphemistic, becomes a tricky one to place.

And it’s certainly not that there is nothing to read in the expo. In fact the volume of text – contained largely in reproductions of newspaper articles from around 1960, as well as a great deal of detail about historical events leading up to independence – is somewhat overwhelming.

The main problem, as I identified it, is that there is very little in the way of concrete or coherent explanations of two key processes following independence.

Firstly, the process of “hollowing out” of the state after colonialism, the dynamics and logics (such as corruption, nepotism and clientelism) accounting for the extent of economic collapse in the years that followed, due to a systematised policy of extraction under Mobutu on such a scale that it has been described as “kleptocracy” – rule by thieves. It is illustrated with paintings and caricatures, where African politicians are portrayed as predatory animals, but the words explaining it in black and white are missing. The artworks are illustrations to a story that, if you don’t have it in mind already, the museum is not going to tell you, and as a result are essentially of artistic value rather than also being complements to a narrative elucidating history, which would have provided a far fuller explanation.

Secondly, another delicate issue ignored almost totally is the situation of considerable instability, violence and unrest currently affecting areas of the Congo. There is no attempt to give a coherent explanation of the roots of the ethnic tensions, which ties into the woes of a number of other countries such as Rwanda, and making the link would have been helpful, not to say important.

Both of these are serious missed opportunities. But not only that, leaving them out means that one leaves the expo feeling as if a crucial piece of the puzzle, or part of the story has been missed out. At the end of the expo we are faced with a series of testimonies from second generation Congolese immigrants living in Belgium, young adults who express their qualms or inability to “celebrate” the anniversary of independence in light of the ongoing misery in terms of poverty and conflict still plaguing the Congo. But the museum, with its colourful displays and collages of upbeat, celebratory headlines, has not explained to us why this is so. The dissonance, the incongruity is striking and irreconcilable, and as a result the expo just doesn’t quite make sense. The story it is trying to tell doesn’t hold up.

So why leave out a clear and neutral full description of historical events, containing the details needed to make sense of how the story ends? Maybe because someone with a degree of forethought worked out that to explain the mess the Congo is in today requires an explanation of the mess Mobutu made, which in turn requires an explanation of the logics of colonialism of which he was the inheritor. And this is where we get back to all that unfortunate genocide business.

Such is the nature of the postcolonial condition: it is pervasive, and no aspect of Congolese society, culture, or recent history can be meaningfully explained without reference to it. This is the intractable problem which this place just can’t seem to escape.

The Semantics of Jan Moir

2010-06-11T20:33:00.002+02:00

I've recently been doing a lot of reading about Stereotypes, mainly as part of research for a presentation we had to give to a class of german schoolchildren. It's always a bit delicate dealing with Stereotypes, even when approaching it from a "scientific" or academic perspective. And I couldn't help but feel there was something a bit gratuitous about showing images depicting fat american tourists, lederhosen-clad beer-drinkers, or little slanty-eyed yellow people in pointy hats, even if it was all with the intention of pointing out how they appear in the various fora we looked up. The critical distinction between "using" and "mentioning" stereotypes is often tricky to pinpoint exactly, and sometimes either can leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Anyway, for the purposes of the presentation, we looked primarily at national stereotypes. But of course stereotypes don't stop at political geography, and I recently came across a beautiful illustration of another kind at work. According to Michael Pickering, possibly the most intractable and enduring stereotype about women centres around the madonna/whore dichotomy. The two impossibly unrealistic extremes are both given a nice reinforcing boost in this article, by the now notorious daily mail columnist Jan Moir (of course the only excuse for reading the Daily Mail is to read it like a sociologist, under the pretence of "phishing" for such perfect examples of discursive practices in action, and one seldom has to look very far).

So on the one hand we have the immaculately turned out perfect wives, who've never faltered in their lives, either in terms of their irreproachable behaviour or flawless appearance. They are the long-suffering mothers of the children, pure embodiments of goodness. And at the other end of the axis of female persona, we have the the cheap, classless, fame-hungry skanks, the inscrupulous home-wreckers and diabolical seductresses.

Moir then proceeds to drag her common thread through the lives of a series of celebrity couples, who all seem to fit this dichotomy, and makes her point by ramming the opposition down our throats over and over again, attributing to both breeds of women quite astonishing epithetes, free from any nuance or mitigating factors. Nowhere are Cheryl Cole's previous misdemeanous mentioned, such as the incident of violent assault. Here she is "a woman who millions regard as the nation’s sweetheart." Following a jaw-droppingly crude metaphore likening women to pieces of meat, she is the "prime organic" steak to the "battery hens" with whom Ashley Cole committed his numerous indiscretions. Continuing with the animal metaphore, they are "the kind of Premier League lemmings who would throw themselves off a cliff for the chance to be with a footballer."

Then there's "Princess Sandra", whose husband chose to consort with "the kind of girls whom you might expect to find raking the sawdust between acts at the circus" - whatever they look like. Tattooed, apparently.

And then there's the woman who inspired the whole article in the first place, Ronan Keating's recently revealed mistress, Francine who, "has none of Mrs Keating’s glacial beauty, nor her unmistakable air of a sophisticated, sorted woman. Instead, Francine is a faint echo of Yvonne. She is Yvonne-lite. She is the splash of cologne to Yvonne’s drop of eau du parfum."

Just to bring home her point one last time, Moir launches a final tirade of oppositions, directed at the "other women" frequented by the men in question - "almost without fail they appear to be a bargain-basement version of the wife left behind; the counterfeit alternative to the real thing, the Primark to her Prada, the pedalo to her magnificent, ocean-going yacht." Tellingly, now even the animal anaology has been dropped in favour of mere inanimate objects, or shopping and boat metaphores, to characterise these wretched characters.

For Moir it seems there are two kinds of women - the exemplary kind and the fallen kind. It is not clear how exactly one ends of up in either camp, perhaps some kind of genetic pre-disposition from birth. But there is only one kind of man - the kind that makes mistakes, and sometimes gets forgiven. The human kind.

3 Little Reviews

2010-05-30T14:05:00.007+02:00

Marina and the diamonds

First heard her when she did a very simple version of "I am not a robot" on the Culture show. Just her and a keyboardist, I believe it was. A very minimalist sort of showcase for her and her voice, almost pretentiously so, it seemed to me at the time. I haven't found the exact performance online, but I suppose it was quite similar to this one, only with more make-up and minus the maraccas.

Maybe it was the make-up that put me off, or perhaps her stary eyes or bizarre gesticulations... in any case I was deeply unconvinced. Of course because the whole thing was so unusual and stuck in my mind, I went back to it some time later, and after several more listens, became slightly obsessed. It's definitely the voice, more specifically the way she switches from the gritty deep end to absolutely entrancingly beautiful high notes that sound quintessentially classical - like a soprano choirgirl/boy.

In the end I caved in and bought the album, but I still can't claim to be familiar with all of it. "Hollywood" is a song that makes her seem not so original after all, but then there's songs like Mowgli's Road, when she's back to her idiosyncratic, slightly disturbing form, in terms of everything - the video, voice and lyrics. And that character seems to run through most of everything else she's been putting out. She's not quite like Marmite, because I manage to love and sort of hate it at once, rather than veering towards one extreme or the other, and she's not quite like a "disturbing yet can't look away" car crash scenario either. If I could think of a metaphore for something that is at once exquisitely and classically beautiful and yet strangely surprising in an alarming sort of way, then I'd have nailed it.

Bat For Lashes

Bat for Lashes, like Marina and the Diamonds, and Florence and the Machine, is another one of those ambiguous "is it a band or is it just her?" specimens. And in all 3 cases, it's the latter. So Bat for Lashes aka Natasha Khan has much in common with Marina, they both have interesting heritage, make bizarre videos, and have voices that don't come around too often. I first heard Natasha singing "Use somebody" (which incidentally was the first time I heard that song sung by anyone). Although I have a great deal of time for Marina, I think she has a little way to go compared with Natasha. Marina's output is somewhat inconsistent in that you get something mind-altering like "I'm Not a Robot" and then you get blandness.com in the shape of "Hollywood". Much more hit and miss than Natasha, who's records - if the one I have is anything to go by, form coherent, intelligible wholes in which each element plays an essential constitutive part. What I love about the "Two Suns" album is that there is something that runs all the way through it, a thread, a theme - that seems also to have been present in her earlier stuff. Much of it appears to be in the realm of dreams, the surreal, and fairytales. But it is not just airy notions of clouds and castles in the sky, there are also nightmares. And songs like "Siren Song" especially testify to the presence of a threatening alter-ego, a sinister dark side and the constant risk of falling into the abyss.

I'm not gonna lie, a lot of the songs I haven't found to be nearly so accessible and it's still something I'm working on. But I must say, in these

days of autotune it's refreshing to hear voices which do not sound completely generic, and I so often end up adoring things that on a first listen absolutely appall me. It is useful to remember I suppose, that we are as much conditioned to appreciate a certain type of sound as we are to appreciate a certain kind of beauty and it's always worth trying to step out of that, to the extent that it's possible.

The XX

A band who've been on the circuit for a while, but I never claimed to be avant-garde. No such mixed reactions as with the two above, heard it on the radio and fell instantly under the mesmerising spell of the haunting, down-beat "Crystallised". Getting a bit more familiar with the band was initially dissapointing, as again - the rest of the stuff is less easily accessible as the songs which are picked up for radio-play... But the voice of the male singer, Olli, is one I could happily listen to all day even if he were singing the phonebook. Romy I have more difficulty with, she has a manner of speaking that comes across when she sings in a way that bothers me, but I'm learning to get past it, or at least learning to force myself to.

This is a band that, the more I learn about them, the more I appreciate them. Having watched the video for Crystallised, which is absolutely perfect, most of what I read makes perfect sense. The idea of childhood friends Romy and Olli exchanging lyrics over skype because it's "too personal" to bear doing it in person, is at once incredibly poignant and also something so typical of the internet age, in which everything becomes remote, and which of course has completely revolutionised the whole process of making music, and the music itself. The New Yorker reviewer who said that "These are songs to be sung inches from someone’s ear, preferably with the lights off" was spot on. They absolutely are. But they are also lyrics that seem to have been dragged out of their creators, the reluctant poets who cannot even look at each other when they are singing them, because it's just too close to the bone (the video for Crystallised for instance, has them all facing forwards looking rather dazed, in the shadows, while pictures of the sky are projected across their faces.

There's something anonymous and almost robotic about the delivery, yet when you're listening to it, it just drips with sentimentality and feeling. Because the arangements are so stripped-down however, there is nowhere to hide the lyrics, but cleverly they found a way of circumventing that problem by singing over each other, at the same time, something they explain here: There's something about that which has a wonderful stiff-upper lip quality that might just be unique to the Brits, a kind of typical English repressedness, whereby some things are just too emotionally-laden to say, at least with the lights on.

I know, I know.

2010-04-03T01:15:00.003+02:00

I wanted to keep to keep a safe distance from the polemics and the politics, and I've tried. But this is too much. So now it seems this blog has come full circle and I am back where I started - fuming over the Have Your Say pages of the BBC news website. But hopefully this will be just a one off, a very angry interlude, a rant - if you will.

So. Nutshell. Ricky Martin announces he's gay. The BBC tentatively inquires - "Does coming out affect careers?". Discuss.

Some responses:

"Today, being gay is no big deal. It is legal and accepted (except by some churches).

All this "coming out" business is getting sooo boring...."

"Like we hadn't already guessed. Who cares anyway."

"Those of us, from gay rights campaigners to complete bigots,who still care about a persons sexuality still make too big a deal of it.

The rest of us, maybe even the majority, could'nt give a fig what others get up to."

"What a ridiculous HYS. Bad enough you printed such a non-story in the first place.....now you want us to discuss the non-story?"

"Why do people think that a lot of us care what someones sexual orientation is. Its like an announcement that no-one really gives too much of a fig about. His music was boring before the annoucement imho and will probably continue to be middle of the road durge now this oh so major announcement has been made.

Oh just for the record Im hetrosexual, wow, thats interesting, but you really didn't need to know that did you?"

We're still in the first ten posts, by the way, no selective digging around required here.

FIRST OFF - Fig - really? Is this the BBC's automated way of correcting profanity, or is linguistic propriety making a comeback?

Second - Answer the damn question! Unless I'm mistaken, it wasn't phrased in such a way as to sollicit personal opinions about gay people in general - re-read the question and then look me in the eye and tell me the answer isn't obviously YES!

SHOCKING.

These responses from supposedly educated, intelligent and perhaps well-intentioned BBC news readers leave me in absolute consternation.

I am at a complete loss as to why people so apathetic to the issue bother to comment it in such numbers to voice their apathy when someone has clearly just left an identical response before them. Maybe they don't bother reading the rest of the posts. Good for them.

NO. Of course we don't need to know you're a goddamn heterosexual. Because being a heterosexual is not going to get you harassed in Poland, beaten up in Istanbul, or executed in Uganda!

IS that not worth perhaps a moment's discussion without people getting enraged about their time being wasted or being interrogated about such insignificant matters?

Ricky Martin, incidentally, happens to come from the predominantly Roman Catholic country of Puerto Rico, and I presume a large proportion if not the majority of his record sales were from Latin America - also a Roman Catholic stronghold in places, or so I hear. MAYBE just MAYBE an eyebrow or two will be raised. Not by BBC readers of course, because they are far, far above all that trivial nonsense.

And most of the irate respondents seem to have overlooked the fact that the question was not even about Martin! It was about the repercussions of coming out in general, which clearly has an impact in the regions I've just mentioned.

Not in the UK? Tell that to Jan Moir.

The worst kind of homophobia is the kind from patronising bigots, like Alain Soral, telling gay people they are not allowed to complain or even say anything related to their sexuality because "nobody cares" about it anymore. Any discrimination is all in your imagination because we couldn't give a "fig" what you get up to in your private lives. You'd love to think we have a problem with you - but we don't!

WHich, while we're at it, mirrors the worst, most insidious kind of misogyny or sexism. Put on the blinkers and ignore the bigger picture kind of tactic. Don't be an idiot - just because you're above caring doesn't mean people couldn't possibly feel discriminated against in any form, because, crazy as it might sound, you are not the world.

And what I find most nauseating is the ARROGANCE of people who aren't even in the position to make a meaningful comment to fume about how uneccesary the discussion is! It reminds me of the response of the white people in Jane Elliot's "Blue eyes" experiment in the UK. Along the lines of - this is pointless, there is no more racism in the UK, why are we even having this debate, etc. Oh and by the way, I happen to be white. While the Afro-Carribean lady in the corner fidgeted and said nothing, or occasionally dared to venture a cross-word which I couldn't make out because the indignant white folks were speaking over her so loudly.

Walk a mile in my shoes, and then tell me I am not entitled to complain. But in the meantime, and I've said this before, DON'T TELL US WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT.

Painting by numbers

2010-03-10T02:20:00.007+01:00

Last weekend I was in Paris where I received a more than satisfactory dose of haute culture. One of the places I visited was the Institut du Monde Arabe, and its current exhibition of Islamic art. This expo consisted of the stupefyingly extensive personal collection of a Nasser Khalili, composed of objects originating from all over the Islamic world, throughout the ages. Cases and cases of beautifully adorned manuscripts, absolutely jaw-dropping pieces of jewellry, all kinds of objects adorned with myriad styles and patterns... You get my drift. It was almost overkill. Especially in comparison with the sweet little exhibit I visited at Krakow's Ethnographic museum a few months ago. A much more modest assemblage, but beautifully presented and very eloquently and simply explained. I have to say if I had to recommend one of the two, I'd opt for Krakow, despite its humble size and scope in comparison to the reams of scintillating (and closely-guarded - no photos allowed!) treasures housed in the Arab Institute.

The reason for this is that, although displaying an ostensibly less impressive collection, the ethnographic museum was far mor successful in its attempt to explain and make sense of its subject. Admittedly, its scope was more limited, far less variety than I saw in Paris, but in a way that helped to keep it manageable for the mind, to get one's head around it.

The main angle of the Krakow expo was the idea that behind the abstract, geometrical patterns which adorn and characterise many examples of art and ornaments from the Islamic world (as well as more lowly household objects), are all intensely symbolic references to the divine and metaphysical, and testify to a very advanced and subtle understanding of the universe. This is art by mathematicians. And very devout ones at that.

Although the Paris expo took exception to the idea, let's imagine that broadly speaking, it is considered poor form to portray the human figure in art in the Islamic world, and unthinkable to try to create the image of religious symbols such as God or Mohammed. So in light of this prohibition, Muslim artists elaborated a profound and elegantly simple scheme of abstract symbols to convey a certain vision of the universe, and faith, in their images and adornments. A means to infuse their creations with meaning.

The presentation of the exhibit was fantastic, first of all. The space which houses the expo in Krakow was symmetrical in itself. A room divided into five sections, each of which dealt with a number, and examples of art and ornaments where this particular number was in evidence, accompanied with a succint explanation of the symbolic connotations. Something along the lines of, 1 is for God, the beginning and the end, 2 is the dualism, the symmetrical opposition between men & women, holy and human, light & darkness. 3 is the triangle, symbol of man and consciousness, a highly significant number for the Islamic faith, as awell as its multiples (the 99 names of Allah, for instance). 4 refers to the material world, shapes like the cube, square and cross, the four sides of the Kaba, the 4 elements and the cosmos. And 5 of course harks to the five pillars of Islam, commonly seen in the shape of the Hand of Fatima motif, or the five-pointed star which symbolises community of all Muslims in recognition of the fundamental principles of the faith. And so forth. So now you know.

If it sounds like an overly-simplistic, boiled down interpretation of the meanings behind these elaborate creations then I'm sure it is, to some extent. But I really enjoyed the clarity that it provided. A way of shining light on the schematical universe of symbols in the aesthetics of Islam, of stripping away the pretentiousness and obfuscation. It was extremely unpretentious. Unnecessarily so, since the pieces themselves were absolutely breathtaking. I've always been a fan of abstract patterns, but I'd never seen anything like this before. Truly someone who is capable of elaborating creations like the ones which adorn some of the most beautiful mosques in the world, must have a certain grasp of the scale of the universe, of infinity.

And a little cursory research shows that indeed, there are field days to be had by people whose intellect allows them to take a keen & informed interest in issues of abstract religious art and, say, quasi-crystalline geometry. The science of snowflakes. I so I imagine it would be.

The main angle of the Paris expo was perhaps an effort to counter stereotypes and generalisations about the Islamic world, to convey the diversity and richness of its artistic endeavour. The message being - don't take anything for granted. If so it is a noble objective. But one which is perhaps more conducive to frustration, confusion and unease. It was certainly far less accesssible than the ethnographic museum. In any case, I'm very glad I had visited the Krakow as an "introduction to the field" as it were, it definitely provided me with a basis in the matter, a kind of roadmap for deciphering and decoding the vast number of artefacts displayed in the Arab Institute.

“They Called Me Mayer July”

2010-03-02T00:36:00.005+01:00

In Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter in Krakow, there is a very renowned & well put together little museum called the Galicia Jewish Museum which contains lots of interesting documentation including an extensive collection of photographs chronicling the past of the Jewish community in Krakow and throughout the Galicia region (which used to include parts of what is now Ukraine). While I was there, there was also an exhibition showcasing the work of Mayer Kirshenblatt, a Canadian citizen who was born in Opatow, a small Polish town once home to a thriving Jewish community, like many Polish towns were, but moved to Canada with his family for economic reasons, shortly before the Holocaust began. Mayer's work, produced many decades later, portrays his own experiences of growing up in Opatow, as he recalls them.

The collection of paintings constitutes a different type of commemoration than memorials to the dead, the immortalised places of suffering which are captured in the photographs of the museum or the physical remains of places like Auschwitz, or the restored Jewish graveyards. Its subject is life rather than death, and arguably that moment of life that is most vivid and colourful, childhood – perhaps the time when we are most impressionable, most attentive and curious about our surroundings, most “alive”.

This seems to be true for Mayer, as not only has he conserved an astonishingly detailed and clear picture in his mind of his childhood moments, his depictions seem to come directly from the child he used to be, as even his style of painting is reminiscent of the way a child paints. Schematical, simple, and not pre-occupied with resembling too closely the reality. The style is one which is completely untainted by any grief related to the tragedy of events which were to follow, since Mayer and his family left Opatow before the holocaust. As a result, his style is infused with a kind of childish innocence, depicting stories that are also full of the small joys of everyday life, in spite of elements of adversity.

I found this exhibition to be a refreshing and rejuvenating take on the Jewish life that used to inhabit Kazimierz. Rather than mourning what has been lost, it celebrates what once was. It presents an impossibly idyllic view of a place, in such a way that Mayer’s clear love for his old home shines through the portraits, nostalgic but not romanticised yearning for this place and a time that he left behind, and could never return to.

Nowa Huta and Laznia Nowa Theatre

2010-02-26T16:34:00.009+01:00

One of the most striking experiences of the past few months I have spent in Poland, was our little class excursion to Nowa Huta - an industrial district just on the outskirts of the city of Krakow. The area has gained notoriety for its embodiment of the old Soviet notion of a socialist utopia. The whole town was built around the steelworks, which where then a central part of the Communist industrial endeavours, and the associated ideology. Perfectly symmetrical, the area is a show-piece of the Communist style of building - with little grey blocs of identical flats lining the geometrically set out roads.

For me, it was an extremely revealing and eye-opening experience in that it amounted to my first encounter with the concepts of culture, art and architecture being used so overtly as means to an end. Because Nowa Huta is a place where culture was employed as tool (and was even explicitly described as such by Lenin). The objective was to infuse a newly created population with an ideology and a particular way of life deriving from that. The idea of achieving this goal directly through architecture was entirely novel to me, and I was very much struck by how much of an impact it can evidently have, as demonstrated by Nowa Huta’s ongoing search for a clear identity now that the presence and power of communism is no longer, and the void that has been created as a result.

This is not to say that the identity and culture of Nowa Huta was ever entirely clear-cut and consensual. In fact it was witness to ideological battles played out through symbolic means, for example by the desecration of vandalism of monuments celebrating or glorifying communism and its leaders. Presumably, such actions demonstrated a symbolic challenge to the power structures they represented, one imposed from above. Yet it is hard to miss the futility of such forms of resistance, disconnected from reality to some extent, since damaging effigies obviously does not harm the individuals, or the system that they are part of. Surely the most powerless and futile form of rebellion is that which is acted out against symbols made of stone.

The Square where Lenin's monument once stood

And yet, there is something inspiring and romantic about the story of Nowa Huta. About the way there was always tension and resistance bubbling beneath the surface, understandably given that people from across the country came here and were crammed into tiny spaces together and instructed that they were now part of the great Socialist narrative, each and every one of them now living incarnations of the "new Socialist man" - an archetype perfectly envisioned in the minds of all dedicated communists, and which they tried their best to construct through creating the conditions which might bring about this social transformation - in architecture, other forms of culture, and ideology generally. However, this conversion of rural Polish peasants into dedicated members of a socialist workforce staunchy adhering to the tenets of Communist ideology was hardly a seamless one. Because it required them to give up all the out-dated & incomptable remnants of their old existance - the most consequential of these prohibitions being of course against their Catholic religion.

It is scarcely surprising then, that perhaps the greatest challenge to the power system in place was presented by the struggle of the inhabitants to build a church in their district. I have never come across such powerfully symbolic architecture as that of the “Arka” church, the result of a long and arduous struggle between residents and authorities. It is an absolutely overwhelming place that leaves one dumbfounded and humbled by its sheer scale and imposing silhouette.

The motif of the ship or ark which is floating above the barren townscape below creates a very strong impression. Inside the church is equally striking, the most impressive feature being an enormous figure of Christ, exageratedly arched forwards like a sail in the wind, face turned upwards towards the roof, as if trying to detach himself from the invisible crucifix and rise upwards. Much as I tried, there was no vantage point within the church from which I could get a view of his face.

These symbols are extremely powerful and imposing, and through them one can appreciate the importance of the place that symbolism has occupied as a means to creating and having identity in Nowa Huta. These symbols were the arms used in a battle for dominance over public space, which may sound like something too empty and abstract to be worth fighting over, but in the case of Nowa Huta clearly was not.

In this way, throughout its history Nowa Huta was a place of contestation, of ideological battles over its true identity. This can be seen also through the way monuments were removed and replaced, and streets and buildings have been renamed over time. Today Nowa Huta appears to be struggling with its mixed heritage, the difficult legacy of Communism which is very divisive and sensitive – but this is not something that is limited to Nowa Huta, rather it extends throughout the entire region where Communism was present, in varying incarnations depending on where you go. And even beyond the reaches of Communism, perhaps it is a universal phenomenon, the way the outline of a city changes, and its streets and squares are named & renamed - as power games are played out and change the images we wish to remember, and those we now want to forget.

Where Solidarnosc St meets Ronald Reagan Road

Nowa Huta seems, however, to be a rather exceptional case due to the fact that it is a place dominated by its own material form, the architecture which is immediately evocative of a certain period of time, and a certain ideology. Dissociating itself from these connotations and forging a renewed identity is not an easy task, without razing all structures to the ground and starting from scratch, but many inhabitants seem to be hopeful that renewal and regeneration can be achieved without such drastic measures, and that somehow Nowa Huta can escape its founding principles and its past.

One such attempt is being made by the founders and staff of the Laznia Nowa theatre, who regard their position in the area in terms of assets rather than limits. For them, it is a place that is liberated from the stringent cultural pre-conditions and limitations of a place such as the old town area of Krakow. The fact that it lies on the outskirts is a good metaphor for this mentality of being at the “fringes” of cultural expression, and having a more open and adventurous approach to culture. They regard their project as a challenging and exciting alternative to the cultural offerings of Krakow’s centre, which are rather more stale and conservative in nature.

Visiting the Theatre was a fantastic and unique experience, as well as a rather haunting and at times quite unnerving one, as it resembled no theatre I have ever been to. The forms of artistic expression are not limited to performances on the stage, they have flowed out into the corridors and rooms of the building, which house installations which can be listened to, watched, and touched. We were taken around the dark corridors of the theatre's basement, with dim neon lights and paint peeling of the walls, in which was a series of installations which tricked the eye into initially thinking that someone is sitting in a corner, or a homeless person sleeping on the ground. On closer inspection these forms are revealed to be clothes stuffed and propped up to resemble a human figure, sometimes partially obscured by blankets or cardboard. These figures are unconscientiously scattered around the rooms and hallways, which are furnished or unfurnished in such a way that they are reminscent of rather sinister scenes from any city, such as an abandoned, dimly lit underpass or a creaky tram compartment on the verge of falling apart.

It is around these installations that the "play" is acted out. There is nowhere to sit, and no division of the space, so the audience is compelled to stand "inside" the scene. Surprising and sometimes frightening, it is certainly a unique setting for showcasing new and experimental forms of culture, and hopefully will serve as an inspiration for members of the community, and a catalyst for developing new talent of young artists.

What is most impressive about the place is that Lasnia Nowa is so profoundly in contact with, and dependent upon its surrounding, for its very relevance and form. And far from taking anything away from the theatre's image, its significance and symbolism are greatly enhanced by the context. For the director of the theatre, Bartosz Szydlowski, this is the greatest challenge for a cultural institution – not to be “knotted in its own monologue” but rather responding dynamically & reacting, listening to the realities surrounding it. The Theatre was recently relocated from the trendy Jewish district of Kazimierz to Nowa Huta, where it could find more space and lower prices. But it gained something else aswell. Szydlowski speaks of the "power of anonymous grey space" that is "present but not participating". According to him, there are "energies and heroism present in Nowa Huta", even likening it to Greek mythology.

Another Church in Nowa Huta - this one appears to have been inspired by the chemical structure of molecules

Perhaps Laznia Nowa has caught onto and harnessed a key method for Nowa Huta to discover and define itself anew – experimentation. Subversion of classical, typical and expected forms of culture, to replace it with unexpected and challenging new forms, seems like a means through which new inspiration and meanings can be uncovered. In this way perhaps Nowa Huta can create a new cultural frame of reference, leaving behind old associations and turning itself into something that has never been expected of it.

This is where it all starts...

2010-01-14T00:27:00.004+01:00

Sometime after I first arrived in Krakow, I was wandering around the Market Square, just taking in the atmosphere of my new surroundings. I came across an outdoor exhibition called Nowa Europa (New Europe). I stopped to take a closer look, at these images which taught me a greal deal about my new home, and how it feels about itself and its neighbours.

The exhibition subverts the hopeful but trite "New Europe" slogan bandied around by the EU, evoking the "accession states" as bringers of a rejuvenation for Europe or rather to their counterparts - "old Europe", marketing enlargement as an injecton of youthful dynamism into a creaky, stale old structure that was in desperate need of a new lease of life. These are the motifs which come to mind, or at least to my mind, when I hear the words "New Europe". Hope. Novelty. Youth. Dynamism. Growth. Future.

Łukasz Trzciński paints - or rather photographs - a very different kind of picture. His is no shiny, brand "New Europe" brimming with potential and enthusiasm for the future.
It is a most revealing auto-portrait of Poland and its mother-region, Eastern Europe. And while depicting neighbouring countries in unflattering lights could be regarded as petty vindictiveness, this charge cannot be levelled at Trzciński, since he includes his own nation in the statement he is making, including Poland as a member sharing in the intangible melancholy of the whole region.

Out of all the aspects of Poland which could have been showcased, Trzciński chooses Nowa Huta steelworks, the old soviet symbol and flagship town which embodied the socialist Utopia. Now a sad, grey, impoverished and isolated district of the city, striking in its wide empty streets lined with identical square grey blocs. But I won't elaborate further, as my own visit to Nowa Huta and subsequent impressions will be the object of a later post.

And Poland is not the only country that is represented by an uneasy subject matter. Empty shops in Bulgaria, bunkers in Albania, unspeakable architecture in Slovakia, and the alienated, marginalised Russian minority in Estonia, are all put in the spotlight as the selected theme to represent their host nations.

It is as if they've taken something about each country that is dislocated, ugly, broken. As if these objects, places, people speak for their countries, forming a broader narrative of discontent that engulfs half a continent.

My initial reaction was to regard it as a manifestation of the typical "East-european" impulse for self-deprecation and pessimism. A typically bleak and sombre outlook on themselves and their region which smacked uncomfortably of martyrdom. For even if Poland paints itself in such unflattering shades, masochistically putting its most desolate and difficult face forward for all to see, it is not a country without nationalism or patriotism. Only it is not the self-celebrating, narcissistic patriotism as seen in a country like Turkey, for example. The Poles do not go in for that kind of self-glorification, perhaps because they already know the cost. Perhaps because they would be able to see through themselves. Or maybe - it is just not in their nature.

I don't think Poland's vision of itself is entirely without an element of martyrdom. There is a kind of ubiquotous bitterness that permeates culture and conversations, a sense of feeling repeatedly wronged or betrayed, the "God's playground" vision of Poland as one of my lecturers so frequently puts it, and an accompanying futility, that rapidly becomes a little heavy and a little tiresome.

However, this exhibition is illustrative of a more complex phenomenon in the Polish quest to define its own identity. It is that strange combination of nostalgia and pain. A fundamental, deep-rooted dualism that I first became aware of when listening to some young Romanians speaking about their mixed feelings with regard to the legacy of communism. It was an experience which struck me profoundly, and helped me understand something important about the mindset of those who inhabit the other end of my own continent, which I would otherwise have remained completely oblivious to. The ongoing internal and collective wrestling with the intractable paradox of a deep and intense anger about communism for the destruction it wrought and the oppression it led to, and yet a recurring nostalgia for those aspects of life which were better "back then".

These pictures are indicative at once of a country that feels lost and is groping for an identity in the void left by a powerful, dark presence which used to rule every aspect of life and has now abandoned them, as well as something which is profoundly defining of their identity. Disillusion that life has not improved as much as could have been hoped for. A sense of resignation that nothing really changes, that one form of oppression merely succeeds another. And this I believe goes a long way to explain the tricky question of Polish euro-skepticism and non-participation. It is the reason why "New Europe" is such a strange way to speak about this place, these countries, and their peoples who have undergone such trials, and who in many ways are so world-weary as to seem and feel a thousand years older than "old Europe".

A hunger that cannot be reasoned with

2009-12-29T01:10:00.006+01:00

It can't be easy to write a book about childhood. Especially one's own. What a blurry, colourful & complex segment of life it is, how on earth to impose structure and order on such a bubbling pot of heightened, vivid experience and irrational emotion. Without mentioning the added complications of recounting with honesty one's own childhood, in light of or despite the current self, without veering too far towards the extremes of either romanticisation or self-loathing, vis-a-vis one's former self, the two tendancies I find myself adopting alternately when considering my own early years.

All things considered, I think Amelie Nothomb makes a commendable effort in this direction. What is clear - and this much we have in common - is that the neurotic adult is the extention of an extremely neurotic child. Except in childhood, it's not regarded as neurosis, or obsessive compulsive behaviour, or any such mental disorder - all the irrational behaviour, the idiosyncracies - it's all just categorised under the umbrella term "childhood". And as such, protected by the purity and freedom from adult concerns or labels that the term implies. But I have always been convinced that many children are highly neurotic, and perhaps Nothomb finds herself at the upper end of the spectrum. The title of a book is at once a reference to the her later experience of anorexia, but also to an impulse that characterised her childhood from its very beginning - a hunger, applied to everything from love and devotion to knowledge and experience, an all-encompassing, monstrous hunger for life itself, manifested in a general approach to the world as well as in specific displays of compulsive behaviour - like binging on water, for instance. Behaviour that among adults is regarded as pathological but among children is far more innocuous and less taboo. It is the behaviour of an individual with irrational, addictive tendencies, and zero acceptance of the notion of natural limits of any kind. In the child Amelie, it is quite accute, and perhaps indicative of an individual who was and still is exceptional in her impulses towards creation and passion. But I don't believe many children can be entirely devoid of these tendencies and indeed that perhaps this is then the norm, much more so than among adults - who by then have learnt to socialise themselves into "normal" behaviour. Perhaps it is just this freedom that provokes the neurosis, the freedom from feeling one ought to think as other people think, and do as they do. The freedom from being too well-acquainted with the model of the acceptable, average individual, with with we can always compare ourselves if ever suspecting we might be straying too far towards the edges, straying into the margins of eccentricity.

It is the incremental acquiring of this realisation that curtails our childhood spirit. But not only this. Amelie Nothomb speaks of always knowing, since her earliest consciousness, that somehow, growing up would mean a "decroissance" - which I can only translate as the opposite of growing up - that is growing down, or shrinking. It refers to "a perpetual loss" - of everything. Of abilities, of imagination, of confidence, of everything. I have always felt a similar sensation throughout my own childhood. That as I grew older, I didn't get better at anything - quite the opposite. My capacities were dwindling, in every regard. But maybe that's simply an illusion, and represents the confrontation with one's own limitations that inevitably occurs at some stage. But I can't help feeling that anything I might have aspired to acheiving in my life - writing a book, mastering a sport, inventing an entirely novel concept, coming up with a ground-breaking formula, learning a language perfectly - I would have had to do in my childhood, because now it is too late. Those capacities are deserting me, if not vanished entirely. There is some truth in it, of course. Anyone who is utterly brilliant at anything, in a seemingly effortless and natural way - invariably began their activity, whatever it may be, at the earliest stage of childhood. It is a window for brilliance that can never be recaptured. And this is why growing up is in fact a decreasing of every skill, every talent, every ability one might possess. It takes us further and further away from that moment.

When considering my own childhood self as posessing universal mastery (at least the potential of it) in anything I cared to turn my hand to, I am of course adopting that first tendency of the two I mentioned above - the idolisation of the former self-child. And I think Amelie Nothomb is on occasion guilty of this as well. Clearly she hold in very high esteem her childhood self, sometimes described in such a way that makes one wonder whether any child, even one as gifted as she, could ever possess such brilliance and finesse. But maybe I am under-estimating her.

This self-mythologisation is countered I suppose with her own typically graphic and often stomach-churning account of her descent into anorexia, to the point of experiencing an out-of-body brush with death, when the self-inflicted condition was its most aggravated. It is with apparent dismay at the magnitude of her own capacity towards self-destruction that Nothomb recounts her own physical decline, in a narrative that emphasises cruelty and suffering and evokes disgust - also elements that are rarely missing from any of her works.

The condition appears to be the result of the brutal rupture that occurs between childhood and adolescence, that can often be a patch that is agonisingly difficult to traverse. Nothomb alludes to it in terms of the addition of "a new voice" ("l'addition des voix nouvelles qui se melent au recit interieur") - which are mingled with the internal dialogue, the inner narrative. And it is not a kind voice. It is harsh, shrill and above all judgemental. It is the introduction of a horrifying new concept of reality, and the loss of the childhood licence to be eccentic from which one can only draw benefit from until a certain age. Especially for the most neurotic of children, this transition is extremely painful. It is a change which occurs from an internalisation of external circumstances and voices, which is adopted by the child over time, almost inperceptibly, until it has wormed its way in and then proceeds to turn on its host with the full force of its virulence and merciless, unforgiving judgement. But of course by this stage the damage is done, it can no longer be extracted.

Amelie Nothomb has an absolutely stunning mastery of her language. It's a joy to read, or rather to let the words in the phrases wash over you. Even the words whose exact significance escaped me I could appreciate for their sound and shape and rhythm - it is really as if every word has been meticulously chosen and is invariably perfect - never a single one is jarring or out of place. What is sometimes jarring though no less poetic in its own way and certainly original, are Nothomb's sometimes surprising associations - putting together concepts which one usually wouldn't expect to find in the same sentence, inter-weaving the material and metaphysical worlds for example, and these are sometimes the moments which provoke that emotion that seems to be her most favoured, and the one which she does like no other author I've read - disgust. For example, her assertion that "The brain is composed essentially of fat. The most noble of human thoughts are born in fat." It is this uncanny ability to subvert the noble and the lyrical, even of her own sentences, and to twist it into a different, unexpected shape, that is for me the staple of Nothomb's style, and really marks her out from other francophone authors who are also doted with a wonderous way with words.

And lastly, another point in common - Quite late in the book Nothomb asserts that "of all the countries that I have lived in, Belgium is the one I have understood the least. Maybe that's what it means - to be from somewhere: not seeing (not understanding) what it is about."Maybe it is. But if so, Belgium is not the best of examples. I don't know if anyone in Belgium would claim to know or understand what this country is about. I have spent most of my life here and feel exactly the same about it, it is by far the country which I feel I understand the least. Not because I am from here. But because it is not a place which lends itself to being understood - if by that term we mean the process of reduction, simplification, generalisation and abstraction through which we understand the world around us and make sense of it all. And perhaps that is one of the best things about it.

The animation of Adam Elliot

2009-11-29T02:15:00.003+01:00

I first had the pleasure of viewing Adam Elliot's first feature length animation film "Mary and Max" at an animation fim festival in Zagreb (Animafest) that myself & my travel companion wandered into almost by accident, seeking shelter from the rainy weather that afternoon. Last night, when I went to view it a second time at Etiuda i Anima, Krakow's own animation festival, I had the bizarre reaction of finding myself already moved to tears in the opening credits. But of course, I knew what was coming. And also because I adore the main theme, which is Perpetuum Mobile by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Elliot's previous animation films can be seen on Youtube ("Cousin", "Brother" and "Harvey Krumpet" definitely, and "Uncle" I've yet to track down). There's something remarkably consistent about Elliot's films, not only is the style the same but the stories and the way they are told are too, to such an extent that they all rather feel like chapters or fragments from a larger encompassing whole - part of a longer story, even though the characters are not the same.

Elliot's imagination for thinking up cruel and unusual punishments for his characters to endure seems limitless. And he uses autobiographical elements, which are exagerated and twisted to become ironic and often surreal. There's something very Candide-esque about Elliot's characters and endless trials and suffering they must undergo, the way they seem to endure and deal with the ridiculous amounts of bad luck life throws at them with total resignation, accepting their fates and the awfulness of life largely without emotion, just a fatalistic acceptance. This is what is at once depressing and hopeful about the stories Elliot tells, and I think is probably very true to life.

The theme of the outcast, the individual who just doesn't seem suited to the world, is recurrent. These outcasts are not rewarded or redeemed, they suffer and keep on suffering till the bitter end, but implicit in the stories is the message that "fitting in" is really the least of your worries.

There is no sadness and little poignancy in the telling of Elliot's tales (although perhaps the exception is Mary & Max, which does have a slightly different feel). In the 3 shorter films I mentioned above, the twists & turns of the lives the characters, the litany of woes and misfortunes is recounted in a kind of deadpan, sometimes crude style, the narrator appears entirely unmoved by what he is describing and the look and feel of the film corresponds to this because it is all quite understated (a lack of accompanying music in the earlier films contributes to this feel, I think, and if in fact quite conspicuous by its absence).

What all Elliot's wonderfully human characters seem to share is an oustanding capacity for quiet perseverance, of trudging on with life against the odds, in the face of the sheer bloody awfulness of it all. Awfulness that is entirely without meaning & without justice. And that contributes to a kind of sad, melancholic realism, there is no glorification of suffering and little pathos, as typically is overdone in many other non-animated films.

Especially in the earlier stuff there is also a kind of ugliness to the look of the animation itself, accentuated by the lack of colour. The characters initally appeared to me as quite horrifying creatures, that would be better suited to a film of a different nature - i.e. one designed to scare & disgust, not tell a tale of the triumph of hope & humanity over almost absurd levels of adversity. But I suppose this can be compared to a director who deliberately does not use beautiful actors. In the same way, Elliot's animated characters are not smooth nor airbrushed, with an aesthetically appealing finish, but instead appear as imperfect creations, who we are faced with "warts and all."

Notice

2009-11-29T02:09:00.001+01:00

This is an explanation of a slight alteration in the orientation of this blog, that I am hoping to develop and pursue over the coming months. Not so much a change of direction as an additional dimension/track, that I really wanted to find some channel of expression for, even if it will come at the expense of the coherence & consistency of this blog (such as it is), & what it is about. What I want to begin publishing here are personal responses to culture instead of responses to current affairs or politics. No doubt my self-indulgence has gotten out of all proportion, but it has become something that can no longer be contained inside the illegible pages of my notebooks, or within the alarmingly large collection of photographs I have accumulated, not to mention the chaotic and fragmented reflections inside my head, sparks of inspiration that flicker intensely & urgently for a while and then burn out and die away...

Of course, this is not something entirely new to this blog. When I returned from each of the two film festivals I attended last year (African in Milan, & Far-East in Udine) I felt so moved and inspired that I was compelled to pen some sort of reaction to what I'd seen. The result is hardly critical film reviews of any merit or distinction, rather they were entirely personal reactions and reflections based on subjective emotions and thoughts. But this is because my expertise in the area of film, and indeed fine art, is absolutely nil. I barely know my impressionism from my expressionism, I have to force myself to sit through anything old and in black & white, I'm hardly a great appreciator of these things. Until now, I have categorised things rather crudely into what generally resonates with me, what tends to appeal, and what doesn't (e.g. Surrealism = like, and so forth). Film especially, is something I have always kept a distance from, because the domain seems to me like a vaste quagmire of controversy and subjectivity, where really anything goes, there are no set rules, and everything constantly leads back to the debate fo what is really constitutes art, to which a satisfying answer is never acheived.

If there is one thing that can be said for the last year and a half, it's that they have opened up vaste and numerous new areas of interest to me, which have been revealed to me often by accident, and which I'm sure I'd never have discovered had I goen straight from university to a proper job (if such a thing were even possible for someone emerging from college with a degree such as mine). The film festivals, for instance, I did not attend on my own initiative. In the case of the Far-East, it was even with quite some reluctance that I accepted to go. My pre-conceptions about obscure & innaccessible material being priveleged in such cultural forums, attended by an elite of pretentious & very well-versed film students & critiques, were just too strong. But I'm so glad I did. And it's one of those things, where you really do feel as if the future path of your life, and even the shape of your own identity, in terms of tastes and "personal culture" - is defined by these chance encounters with art, of any kind, which move you. Move you to react, and just move you within yourself. Having had these encounters, your frame of reference broadens out, things which you'd never have looked twice at begin to catch your eye, you become exposed to whole new wealth of culture & experience by virtue of the fact that now you know it's out there, and how wonderful it can be. If last year taught me the value of making the effort to attend film festivals, then this year so far has definitely taught me the value of going to museums and art galleries & actually taking the time to fully understand what they are about, what they are trying to say, instead of touristically floating past everything and exiting with a final judgement picked simply from the liked/didn't like dichotomy (as I did when I stormed out of the Modern Art Gallery of Bologna, having found inside only white walls framing only empty space and occasional cinder blocks strewn around... I've since made the effort to look up the exhibit & the artist online, and it was well worth my while to do so). Art, Museums, and architecture have been for me instilled with a new value, a new richness in & of themselves which they never held for me before, as I always implicitly perceived them as areas reserved for people who "Know what they are talking about" - either through study or practice. Instead it turns out that with a minimum of attention, reflection & research, they can be not only accessible, but also tremendously inspiring, and bring new dimensions of knowledge and understanding of places, eras & events that one had never imagined before.

The key, I suppose, to unlocking this realisation was exposure. And I was lucky enough to have that exposure thrust upon me, by friends, colleagues, teachers, etc. Who suggested, coaxed, encouraged, & sometimes dragged me by the hair to places I would never have gone to under my own steam, and I have realised once I get there (or sometimes long after I have left) that they are wonderful. I could say something quite analoguous about the natural environment, actually, but that will be for another post. It seems the more areas of interest you collect & start wanting to explore, the more you realise just how few hours a day really contains.

But of course, I am still a sociologist at heart (or an aspiring one, at least). And sociologists are incapable of looking at anything without asking the rather cynical question: "cui bono?". As a recent colleague of mine reminded me "There is no such thing as an innocent discourse". This phrase sums up perfectly the approach to academics and to knowledge that I am most convinced by, and it applies just as strongly to art, in all its forms, as to other forms of discourse, such as literature, political rhetoric or the media. And this approach of taking nothing for granted, nothing as neutral, natural or self-evident, can be applied far more widely still. It is the reflex I am trying to instill in myself, and writing about culture is an exercise to that end.

No, we don't want Nick Griffin. But there's no harm in reminding ourselves why.

2009-10-23T20:09:00.007+02:00

Nick Griffin described his appearance on Question Time as akin to facing a "lynch mob". In my opinion if that had been the case, it would have been no bad thing. But it wasn't, and it's ironic that a person who fraternises with KKK members and espouses such an intolerant ideology should appropriate such imagery. Telling, perhaps. But in saying so he insults the intelligence of the individuals who so eloquently exposed him, in a manner that was indeed emotional and violent, but quite understandably and rightly so.

I thought the programme, broadcast on thursday night, would amount to basically a regular edition of Question Time, the only difference being Nick Griffin would be able to comment about an issue that frequently comes up on the programme - namely immigration, in much the same way that some of the more disgruntled audience members tend to contribute - rolling out the usual reactionary complaints that the government has lost control of immigration, is allowing everyone and anyone to come in and sponge off the welfare system etc. (These comments always infuriate me because they are invariably full of completely false claims - like that new economic migrants to the UK can immediately receive benefits. FALSE.)

But in fact the debate was something else all together. It did discuss some current events, but essentially just as context points to start off an overarching discussion on the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the politics of the BNP, and what the party really represents. The point being - that the legitimacy of Griffin & his party was not taken for granted - as critics of his appearance on the show suggested it would entail.

And what a wonderful decision it was, on behalf of the BBC, to give viewers the opportunity to jeer along while Griffin got skewered by British citizens who've actually made a positive contribution with their lives... I mean, when was the last time UK politics was this moving? I certainly can't remember.

Peter hain has since said that:
"Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous."

Actually, the BBC's decision was completely neutral. What their decision led to however - was a great deal of debate about the dangers of the BNP and far-Right politics, angry reactions and protests in opposition to Griffin and his views and a general raising of the alarm about the rise of British racism & extremism - because electorally speaking - it is on the up, and we can't ignore that. In fact doing so would be stupid and arrogant, and as I've argued before, why hand the "denial of freedom of speech" card over to such nasty individuals just so they can use it to play martyrs, it's entirely counter-productive. Let them tell us their views, let us be outraged and indignant, and then let's banish them back to the abyss from whence they crawled. Sometimes we need to be reminded about what we stand for, by being confronted with a threat to it - and receiving a severe shock in the process. As a black/Muslin/Jewish citizen, I'd sleep far less soundly knowing that the BNP was winning more & more votes, but no-one seemed to be reacting to it. Instead, the controversy has proved that the vast majority of UK citizens are disgusted by the BNP's politics, and willing to fight back against it.

There was a lot of anger from the audience, and indeed from the panel. Hatred, Racism, Disgusting, Outrageous, Repulsion - all highly emotive words that came up again & again. And were not out of place.

Because let's be completely clear about this, Nick Griffin's politics are not acceptable.

That was the overall message I got from the programme. And not just delivered in an "it's bad because it's bad" moralising way - what was so wonderful about it was that they really exposed him, and his party.

I once visited the BNP website and was genuinely shocked to discover, in a very obvious & visible place, a link to a section that contains specific instructions on how to use a particular kind of language to CONCEAL the real convictions underlying the party's "politics". They explicitly inform their party faithful (and the rest of the world, if they're interested) about how to win people to the side, gain supporters by using innocuous terms such as "identity" as euphemisms for those terms which are harder to swallow, like "racist", but which actually don't portray what the party is really about, at all. (I think now most of that content has been put here.) Painting their politics as legitimate when it isn't. What idiot would fall for that? Well, apparently quite a lot did. It seems that the strategy worked, and the pay-off, at the last elections, was such a significant gain that they have arguably acquired a kind of legitimacy by virtue of the ballot box, whatever their dishonest and misleading tactics of winning those votes may have been. But only arguably. And the opposite point was argued beautifully by some members of the panel, such as Greer and Huhne.

I'm currently doing a masters in a field of sociology. So I'm big on questions of "discourse", of "legitimacy"- this is definitely the stuff that floats my boat, academically speaking - terms which many consider little more than "waffle", even in academic circles, unfortunately. But when such a discussion about forms of expression and their implicit links to systems of power and oppression starts taking place in such a mainstream political forum as QT - I can scarcely contain my excitement. Deconstructing the rhetoric is not an activity that often takes place in such forums, generally it's taken at face value, so I was really impressed and heartened to see it.

Because instead of treating Griffin's perspectives as reasonable views, attention was drawn to what I've just described above, the BNP's explicit tactic of hidding its true colours in order to win sufficient electoral support to start implementing its vile, extremist & racist agenda.

Baroness Warsi labeled Griffin "A thoroughly deceptive man" who was "preaching extremism". Huhne also was pretty clear - reminding us that the politics of the BNP is about "looking for someone to blame" and is "as old as the hills". Greer pointed out that the BNP's version of "English history" is completely selective and absolute looney tunes. And let's not be silly. Let's none of us entertain any naive illusions about ethnic homogeneity or nationalism. That consensus was achieved thanks to policies of multiculturalism (for its sins) and political correctness (I won't have a word said against it).

Pointing out falsehoods and lies when they're presented, especially dangerous ones, and on national television, is crucial, and I'm frequently disappointed with Question Time for not operating that policy when audience members come out with lies about immigration. But on this occasion, they were well prepared, instead of allowing a racist discourse to creep into a conversation in a seemingly innocuous way, they exposed it and hammered it into the ground.

I found it all immensely reassuring. Because the worst thing would be - for us to allow a "banalisation" of the far-Right discourse to occur, as is the case in France, where people are desensitised to the dangers and accept their hateful views as just part of the political landscape because that's how they're treated. (this comparison is insightful.)

Last Thursday the tone of audience & panelists oscillated between anger & mockery. Compare & contrast this to any appearance of a member of the "Front National" on mainstream French Television. The tables are turned, it's Marine Le Pen in this instance, who gets outraged and indignant when someone criticises her father for being a racist.

What was so brilliant about the exposing for Nick Griffin was the strong sense that alarm bells are now ringing, that here is a dangerous individual, posing under the veneer of acceptability, without abhorrent political views, and seeking to obtain credibility. And the answer needs to be a resounding: "You can whistle for it."

If this post seems angry I make no apologies, nor do I think the angry black Britons from hard-working families should apologise for their rage. But everyone has a right to be angry about it. And I don't think even the joker who insulted him by deliberately mispronouncing his name should apologise. Why should we take Griffin seriously? After all, he is not a serious politician, he is a racist extremist trying to actively HIDE his true convictions, distort the facts, using the most deceptive kind of spin.

The audience included a lot of young, mixed race individuals, presumably mostly Londoners, who Griffin subsequently described as not "English". Unfortunately for Nick Griffin, these people are absolutely "English" and they represent the future of the population of "England". Thank God.

Lisbon the Sequel - A Foreign Perspective

2009-09-27T22:28:00.001+02:00

When I was involved in campaigning for the Yes during the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty last time around, there seemed to be a ruthlessly determined No side who passionately used any argument their imaginations could conjure to cite as reasons for a vote against. Whereas the Yes side, as far as my recollection goes, and apart from the likes of JEF (the Young European Federalists) and other such exceptions, was far more measured, acknowledging reasons to be dubious and accepting certain criticisms emanating from the No camp. To the point where many final Yes voters and even campaigners seemed to have spent a long time agonising over their decision, because of the compromises it required. Most of the people I had aligned myself with politically, for instance, had attitudes which were positive overall but attenuated by the apprehensions they nursed about the Treaty's actual content, and some of the more difficult to defend aspects of the EU in general.

This time around, it seems the Yes side has learnt from those responsible for its defeat - that such honest doubts and ambivalence are not to be afforded, if a victory is to be won. As a result, we have a Yes side that seems to have acquired the steely determination of its adversaries, as well as its ability to stop at nothing to ensure it goes their way. The cost is obvious. The pay-off as yet unknown.

If I was in Ireland and voting this time around, I'd probably abstain. I'm not trying to be provocative - or wait, only slightly - but essentially I've found so unpalatable the campaigning, even from outside the country, that I don't think I could bear giving a vote that would favour either side in this charade of a "second referendum".

I think when it comes to bullying tactics, neither side has shown itself to be particularly scrupulous. The Yes side have descended to insinuating, or even declaring outright that if Irish people vote no the EU will expell their nation, putting them back into a relationship of dependency with Britain. The idea of an Irish no vote as translating an assertion of independance is nothing but a silly myth, and the reality is that voters have to choose which camp they prefer (or least dread) or else we'll be set for a long hard winter of isolation. Think North Korea or Albania a couple of decades ago.

Of course, this rather pales in comparison to the threats made by the NO side - basically all of your worst fears will come to pass, and then some. Beyond being dubious tactics, most of it is just nonsense, as if Lisbon and the EU are the antithesis of religion and all that is holy (who are the people effectively running the EU? The same sort of people running France & Germany - conservative christians, last time I looked.) It lays itself open to legitimate ridicule because it actively misinforms, and in doing so harms its own cause - or it would if people bothered to find out the truth which, when it comes to the EU, people just never seem to do.

Perhaps as a response to this phenomenon the new & improved Yes side has acquired a slick new look, brought in people who clearly know a thing or two about marketing a product, as well as the value of charismatic orators, and all their arguments have been boiled down to snappy soundbites. While there's nothing wrong with that per se, it makes me personally instinctively more distrustful of their discourse, because there seems to be a concerted effort being made to purposely put the onus on style over substance. As if an attempt is being made to draw our attention away from something else. To put it bluntly, I know the bitter pills and the complexity are being swept under the carpet, and I just don't buy it.

What also makes me uneasy on the Yes side is the sense I have that underlying the new, aggressive drive is an agenda that was absent last time around, which I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's just paranoia. But a more solid reason for a protest abstention (or the temptation of such a vote - notwithstanding its complete futility) would be about there even being a referendum at all given the total lack of free and clear information, the level of scaremongering and disinformation. So much for a free and independent choice, but then I suppose you could say the same of a vote on anything, and certainly of any election.

In campaigning for the Yes myself I had to overlook a lot of things that didn't sit right with me, and had to defend them (the EU's attitude to immigration is a particularaly jarring one). That's what being in a political party entails (and which incidentally is partly the reason I no longer am).

Other factors that have contributed to the shift in my views would be getting on the wrong side of EU bureaucracy last year year, which taught me just how irrational, not to say infuriating, it can be.On a less pratical and more theoretical level - there was the highly revealing and profoundly depressing information I acquired during a seminar given by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO). Information about the close links between the EU institutions and "commercial interests" - it's not even links - they kind of meld into one another without anyone being able to distinguish where to draw the line (an example - when executives of big companies are called in to act as "experts" on panels when legislation is being drawn up - giving them more power and influence than the members of the European Parliament - this stuff is routine). That showed me a different side of Brussels than the one I've known all my life. The one where NGOs campaigning for transparency, for environmental and social justice, equality, etc, are completely trodden on, dwarfed and drowned out by the immense weight of the towering commercial entities and those representing their interests. Where consultancy firms who've defended everyone from South American dictators to war criminals and fraudsters operate without anyone raising an eyebrow from their luxurious offices just across from the Berlaymont.

I haven't quoted anything in this post because it's more about the issue as an emotive one for me, my reactions to what I've followed of the whole thing, as well as my own recent experiences which have led me to my current perspective. That's exactly what it is, a perspective.

I cannot defend the whole project. I could not say YES to the whole treaty. Maybe I am becoming more of a reactionary in my old age, more like Besancenot in believing that actually, instead of toeing the line, instead of going along with it, and hoping things get better, why not spend my time and energy taking the steps towards fighting for, defending and creating the Europe that I WANT.

But alongside these improbable aspirations, there exists a real world. And while we're constrained to exist inside it I'll still advise anyone who'll listen to vote Yes. For the same reason that it is better to have the Europe we do have, than no Europe at all. Because it has brought about good things, and has the potential to do a great deal more. So support the yes side, because no matter how iffy their campaign has been, they're still better than those jokers on the No side who have trafficked in the most outrageous of untruths, and employed the most shameful of tactics. That's unfortunately what democracy is all about.

The 11th Hour

2009-09-27T22:05:00.002+02:00

Since I watched this film at the start of the summer, I've been wanting to write a comment or review on it. The film surprised me, in a positive way. It doesn't shy away from the complexity of the themes which it opens up, and overall treats the issues without excessive poignancy, drama or simplification.

The way the film is put together, like many other documentaries, involves Various strands of narratives being juxtaposed, ideas from commentators, scientists, sociologists, philosophers, etc. But without there being a clear, single message overall (unlike the Inconvenient Truth, if my memory serves at all). All the contributors are intelligent people, they just don't seem to be able to agree with one another which gives the film somewhat of a schizophrenic feel and perhaps a slight lack of coherence because of the number of different angles presented.It leaves the viewer coming away with more questions than answers and a few uneasy contradictions to ponder. But that's no bad thing.

The really beautiful and inspiring thing about the film is that it reminds us we should be in a permanent state of awe at the planet. Not just at the world as a whole, but also the most seemingly mundane everyday details like our own bodies which are, I dont want to say masterpieces or miracles to avoid straying anywhere near creationist lingo, but you know what I mean.One commentator takes a moment to express his wonderment at the millions of simultaneous processes going on every split second inside our own bodies, something I think it's worth remembering every so often.

But this film is a long, long way from creationism and that's one of the things I liked most about it. It extolls the reassuring continuity of existence, the sheer beauty of evolution. And, for example, presents something like extinction as fundamentally natural, and an integral part of that process, far from being a failure of the system. I think this is where the film's superior strength really lies, as a celebration of evolution.The idea that life goes on whatever happens, and how wonderful that is.

The other thing I like about the film is its breadth of scope, its ambition. Not so much about asking people to turn the red light off as calling for a full-scale paradigm shift, and being upfront about the fact that nothing short of that is going to turn things around.

We need a shift from "Well-having" to "wellbeing" says Nathan Gardels, we need to change the object of desire, putting welfare as the objective, rather than growth. In other words, we need a cultural transformation, a shift in the way our culture interacts with the environment.

It's useful to be reminded of just how superficial and tenuous are the doctrines which regiment our lives and systems of belief. Our expectations are growing with the resources are not. The economy can be regarded as a subsystem, while the parent-system (the biosphere) doesn't grow (again that wonderful constancy). This failure to see the linkages, the arrogance of it, are fundamentally short-sighted, it is as if one floats above the other rather than being embedded within it, completely dependant on it. More evidence of that disconnect that now exists between us and our environment.

Another commentator describes what we have currently as a waste-producing economy, in other words we are in a cycle of transforming resources into waste. In nature there is no waste, and so green design needs to find inspiration from natural processes (I beleive the term one lady has coined is "biomimicry").

Worth mentioning also is Thom Hartmann's "Ancient sunlight" notion to describe the energy we use which enables to sustain 10 billion people on the planet. In other words - we are seriously pushing our luck.

Some of those contradictions I mentioned:

- Will the earth regenerate itself or will it turn into a frozen wasteland like Venus forever? The predictions are contradictory.

- I was also not convinced by the initial footage of natural disasters which unfortunately is used to open the film (we'll indulge them and call it a necessary visual "accroche" device) alongside the claim that these are not just isolated events, even though the media portrays them as such (arguable). Are there more natural disasters or is there just more coverage?

- And a parallel question - are there more diseases or just too many people in the world? Are chemicals leading to cancer or are we just living longer?

Besides which, images of natural disasters used carelessly is seriously at risk of falling into unoriginal over-simplified scare-mongering. And it's certainly not unnatural, in fact chaos and upheaval are profoundly natural, as opposed to the pristine, fragile, perfect view of nature favoured by creationists and the wrong sort of conservationists.

If there is a overarching thread that runs through the entire film it seems to be that life is tenacious and adaptable, as a whole, but paradoxically individual elements within it (such as our own species) are intensely vulnerable. If we remain under the delusion that nature is fragile while we ourselves are invincible, we will fall into a trap that is quite literally as old as the hills.

When I heard Michael Jackson had died, I laughed.

2009-06-30T17:47:00.007+02:00

Exactly the same way I laughed when I heard Lisa "Left-eye" Lopez of TLC had been killed in a car crash, at the heart-wrenching age of 30. Not because it was funny, but because I wanted to react. These were two people - two artists who'd made a real impact on my life. Who I'd sat listening to for hours, whose videos I'd watched in fascination, whose words I'd looked up and tried to decrypt, whose charisma and laughter, such as I'd perceived it, had touched me at some stage or other in such a way that I came to view them as heroic figures.

But of course, all this has actually very little to do with those two individuals, as once they were, and far more to do with me, and my tastes in popular culture, the cds I buy, and my subsequent definition of my tastes as a characteristic of my identity. It's intensely personal, and of course it's a purely one-way street. Moreover, if you're going to be so dogmatic as to make statements like "such & such is my favourite song/record of all time" or "so and so is my absolute hero for life", as I have, then inevitably you've situated yourself firmly inside the realm of hyperbole.

So when such news as this breaks, I feel as if I should - well, feel. And of course I don't, not really, I'm not about to burst into tears because it just isn't that kind of loss. So nervous, guilty, awkward laughter is the only thing that comes out. Which is more emotion, certainly, than I manifested over the death of Diana, or Jade Goody, or Heath Ledger, or Anthony Minghella, or any other public figure I'd simply spent less time investigating, thinking about, and building up in my mind as a symbol of artistic genius and triumph over adversity, and tragedy all at once.

Where are the messages about Iran?? Cry my worldy, politically-preoccupied peers on Facebook. Good question. But why didn't you ask it on the day Neda was killed, or anyone else for that matter, rather than the morning after Michael Jackson has died. Michael Jackson doesn't negate Iran, as far as I'm aware, and there's a time and a place for everything. Just because I contribute to the sharing of old favourite michael Jackson videos doesn't mean I thumb my nose at Iranian students fighting for liberation, and I resent the implication that it does.

The bad news is, it's far too easy to be sarky about the death of Michael Jackson. It's not shocking in the same way that jokes about Madeline Mccann were or are. Micheal Jackson became a media circus in himself, and had become such an eccentric it almost feels as if he died of natural causes, in fact in some ways it's amazing he lasted as long as he did given the odds stacked against him and the apparently limited average life expectancy of child superstars.

I think it's even easier to be sarky about Jackson than Jade Goody's death. In such cases, cracking jokes in an attempt to shock and appall is a waste of time and effort, while cracking jokes out of apathy is just mundane, we've heard them all before - it's far more useful and original to, I don't know, make some intelligent commentary about it, rather than either fuelling the frenzy - or simply criticising it as idiocy. I'm referring of course to Charlie Brooker and what he had to say about Jade's death - a million miles from the irritatingly obvious "why do all these idiots care so much" discourse that 85% of those commenting about it adopted (with the remaining 15% admitting they actually did care, and commenting about it from that perspective).

I suppose the above is targeted at journalists who churn out rubbish like this, with disconcerting rapidity.

What's unbeleivable about Hadley's article, apart from the paradox of the media complaining about the media by criticisng the public reaction it created itself, is that under a seemingly insightful byline such as the second half of hers here, she then proceeds to defend the public reaction to the death of Diana as in some way legitimate, or presumably more legitimate at least than the public reaction to Jackson's death (which funnily enough hasn't really fully occured yet).
Surely the massive, gaping difference between Michael Jackson and Diana is that she never produced anything that could realistically have meant something to people on the scale of Micheal Jackson's contribution to music, or its reach. And yet people took to the streets in angry, devastated tears, to mourn her as a person, presumably, just like grieving relatives - something which is impossible to do if you are not actually a grieving relative who knew the person - so what on earth is that if not "false emotion"?

People cried over Take That splitting up too - and of course it was an over-reaction. But if you think about it, it's just as logical because it kind of represented the end of an era, and that now no new music would be made, no more live shows could be attended, no new records to be bought and enjoyed (mercifully of course, in retrospect, that turned out not to be the case). The people who bought Michael Jackson's newest records and enjoyed them, myself among them, will see this as a loss which can be relieved by no such resurrection, fascination with the man himself aside. And he really was fascinating to me, but then again, I find Pete Burns fascinating. Which just goes to show.

On the brighter side, at least we still have Janet, another long-time object of my tendency towards heroification (and unlike the Take That sarcasm, this I genuinely mean).

I'll leave you with that song, as well some of the brilliant comments made in response to Hadley's article. For once, internet commenters restoring my faith in humanity rather than annihilating it. Those Guardian moderators deserve a raise.

"Why are you telling us? You want to have a word with your colleagues, who are plastering Jacko all over the front page of the website and newspaper in an attempt to force the Diana effect. Nothing more annoying than the meedja telling us not to listen to the meedja."

"Bringin' up Diana again, ugh! More blanket coverage from the lazy media on corpse stories. Get out there and do some journalism."

"What WAS the point of this article? You've basically said, "Look at you all talking about Michael Jackson. I'm not talking about Michael Jackson, I'm talking about you talking about Michael Jackson"
Balls."

"This article is so quick off the mark, I question whether you even had time to actually gauge how people are reacting before you started writing it."

"Hadley, go back to discussing dresses. This is the antithesis of the Diana moment, as in Jacko was everything she wasn't. Poor and talented, tragic and flawed. There is something deeply moving about the Peter Pan of pop who ironically spent millions trying to extend his life span dying young."

"Well I was going to have a collective outpouring of grief, but now that Hadley Freeman (whoever she is) has said we're not allowed to, I won't.
Regards, The Nation.
Seriously Hadley, how overblown is your sense of self regard that you can pontificate on stuff like this? At least wait until the body's cold."

Little fiddly things

2009-04-29T12:30:00.005+02:00

I've some loose ends that want tying up, without anything so focused as a particular argument or observation.

First, about those pesky pirates that everyone is so up in arms about, and yet simultaneously enthralled by because, after all, who didn't enjoy Pirates of the Caribbean? Somehow the romantic, comical cartoon vision of pirates doesn't quite fit with the terrifying lawlessness and grinding poverty afflicting the tragic non-nation of Somalia, the world's number 1 basket case country. And yet no journalist seems to be able to avoid the temptation of juxtaposing the two in some way.
For me, easily the most enlightening and useful piece on the whole matter, is the testimonial of a young pirate as relayed to the BBC: Why I became a pirate

This seems to be the real tragedy. We're astounded at the numbers of those braving the dangerous seas in ridiculous boats en route to Europe, from Africa. The reaction of the Southern European countries seems to be to either watch them drown or just send them back home again. The journey is perilous and often fatal, and those on the other side could scarcely be less welcoming. Given the choice, any choice, what would you do?

Next, a quick plug for the Big Think - a website I've just discovered that is at once fantastic and frightening (because it seems to eliminate the need for newspapers entirely - now you can also get your dose of opinion/editorials as well as straighforward news online). I especially enjoy watching David Rieff being all disgruntled and armchair-intellectualy on a downer about Obama.

Last weekend I was at the Far East Film Festival in Udine, something I initally resisted on the grounds that "I don't like martial arts". But I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Although on the surface the whole thing appeared quite pretentious, in a way that the African Film festival wasn't (I imagine because the far-east has a more extensive and distinctive tradition of film-making, which many of the people there seemed to be intimidatingly familiar with). But the films themselves were really enjoyable (not so much harrowing ordeals as in Milan, mainly because these were "popular" films, with hearthrob actors and mega-budgets). We saw a rather OTT Hong Kong action thriller and 4 japanese films, which were full of wonderful quirky moments and characters, indicating the Japanese appreciate and understand far better the eccentricities of their own people than we do (like the penchant of japanese girls for "cute" things and the almost excessive politeness of the older generation especially) and manage to use that aspect to comic effect excellently. Instant Swamp (left) deserves a special mention, because I seldom laugh out loud at films, especially at visual jokes, I'm generally much more tickled by word-play and delivery, but this film had moments of genuinely hilarious brilliance. I also learnt the valuable fact that there are some incredibly, achingly beautiful Far-eastern men being most considerately cast by the film-makers out there, such as Mizushima Hiro (below). And I didn't come home empty-handed either, but with 3 japanese horror films as a consolation for missing "Horror day". Mmhmm.

Last thing, I read an article in a certain former broadsheet newspaper last week, essentially criticising the latest media campaign by the charity Women's Aid, which shows Kiera Knightley being beaten up by her boyfriend. Yeah ok, maybe a campaign showing Brad Pitt doing the beating would have been an original twist, but picking on them seems a bit rich, all the same. For me, this one does the job, as in - I'd already read about its precise contents before seeing it and it still managed to give me a good shake. Below it you can catch up on the debate about whether or not, as some devil's advocates claim, Violence against women is a social invention, a phenomenon that has been constructed and detracts attention from the real problem of violence in general. Maybe. I'll have to go away and think about that one.

Getting off on the right foot

2009-04-07T12:52:00.009+02:00

It's happening...

I suppose I would've seemed a killjoy back in november if I'd suggested that maybe we should hold off the party until after Obama has succeeded in making the world a better place, rather than pre-emptively. But of course it was never going to be so simple.

You've probably seen this touching little video by now. Ostensibly to mark the occasion of Nawruz, Iranian new year, Obama sends a special message to the peoples of the Middle-east & with a special mention in there for "the leaders of Iran" who should pay particularly close attention, if they know what's good for them.

In the short segment he explains how Iranians (or just their leaders? I'm not too sure) "have a choice" - they have a right to take their rightful place in the international world order, but with that right comes real responsibility (rings a bell... Oh I know, it's a line from Spiderman).

I can only imagine that this video must have left its target audience intensely bemused. I certainly was. I mean, what exactly are they supposed to do now? Is this really how international politics works?

No, of course it's not. What Obama is saying and the way he is saying it might seem to be a break with continuity as far as the face of American foreign policy goes, but other, arguably more substantial aspects of it, don't seem to be changing too rapidly at all.
It doesn't seem as if the US is about to radically rethink its disproportionate support (both political & military) for the State of Israel, making it a clear and persistent security threat in the region which the people of Iran and all its neighbours have an obvious reason to be very concerned about. A lesser known American-sponsored threat to the country are the People's Mujahedin, a militant islamic organisation which aims to overthrow the Iranian government, explains Mohsen Rezai in his editorial (of which I've only a paper copy, forgive lack of reference).
Then there's the economic sanctions, which Obama decided not to lift. This might just have some bearing on the everyday lives of Iranians as well, given how it in no small way contributes to stunting the development of the country & its economy. In fact he's even contemplating tightening them. (So hardly surprising to learn that Ali Khamenei should react by asking "what change?", more on his response over here.)

But Obama didn't mention any of this in his little video greeting card. Instead of confronting the conditions which breed terrorism, he contents himself with asking them nicely to stop it. If this method doesn't work, when America finally loses patience, those Iranians won't be able to say they were not warned!

In Turkey, as all across Europe, over the past few days Obama has been welcomed with open arms, greeted with cheers and euphoria. He may be black, a democrat, and below the age of 60 but he is above all the President of the United States. There seems to be a generalised case of amnesia on this. I've just started reading "Dreams from my Father", the earlier of his autobiographies. I'm willing to believe he's a thoroughly nice person with some really commendable ideas. But Obama is not american politics. He will not and cannot change the nature of how power works in the world, and that's the fundamental problem. No matter how noble his intentions he is subject to the formidable range of pressures & influences of those in the world who have power and capital, but don't need to worry about votes or opinion polls.

So why do people seem to think he can or will? The way Obama is being received across the world makes me so uneasy because it's as if he is infallible, and he seems to have procured American policy a new legitimacy which it has done nothing yet to deserve, as far as I can see.

And it's not just naive, it's dangeous, as I wrote earlier in the month. Obama may have a heart of gold but like all politicians he should be constantly under the hammer and above all not given the benefit of the doubt. If anything, those of us who belong the Tony Benn anti-war school of thought should see him as more dangerous than his predecessor rather than less. Because George Bush could never have gotten away with starting another war after Iraq. But Obama CAN. He certainly has never had the courage to categorically rule out a military intervention, as Roger Cohen points out.

If in five years the world is a safer, fairer and more peaceful place, I will be the first one at the party, eating my words with relish and toasting to change.

Stories you couldn't make up

2009-03-29T18:08:00.015+02:00

I'm just back from the African Film Festival of Milan, which was on all week. We were due to go up for a day to get the films we need for our own African film festival, which starts tomorrow, but I ended staying for 3 days because the catalogue was so intriguing.

The word most frequently used by the Italians to indicate films they'd appreciated is "bello" - which of course generally translates as beautiful, or nice.

After having watched some of the films recommended under this epithet for myself, I couldn't help feeling that such a qualification was terribly inappropriate. These films aren't nice and and with a few exceptions, they aren't beautiful either. They depict some of the ugliest, most miserable, desperate places & situations on earth. Prisons, shantytowns, warzones, slums, ghettos, refugee camps... The kind of environments that could strip any human being of their spirit, but yet in the midst of which glimpses of humanity occasionally appear, which makes it all the more poignant & unbearable.

I learnt pretty rapidly that the films I watched at the festival would not be noted on my next christmas list. You wouldn't want to watch films with scenes of murder, torture, rape & incest over & over, first because its too upetting, but also because seeing it again would make it less shocking, less traumatising, the initial effect is the most important, after which a second view would make you somewhat immune, & desensitised.

The two which stood out for me, in terms of provoking just this kind of trauma, delivering the kind of punch in the stomach that leaves you twitching for days, were these:

To See if I'm Smiling (Israel) - A documentary made up of interviews with young female Israeli soldiers. In Israel, apparently, military draft is obligatory for all youths as of the age of 18. I think this goes a long way to explaining the collective mentality of the country, as I see it. Why Israelis never seem to be capable of measured, rational debate, but never fail to hop on the defensive, to react as if under attack when criticised. To see themselves first & foremost as Israelis whatever the context. When every single member of a population has experienced being in that defensive position, of insecurity and fear, where there is no empathy whatsoever with the people regarded as the "ennemy", it's quite logical that they should become reactionary as a result, and lose all perspective. When an entire population has suffered the trauma of war & combat, this is the result.

Leonera (Argentina) - I won't try to review it but all I can say is I left with a feeling in my chest of actual physical tightness that I can't quite describe properly. A film about how "ordinary" people can be drawn to the depths of desolation, how normality can become hell overnight, and humanity can vanish in a second.

The films I saw at the festival, especially these two, weren't films that make you cry, like Titanic, Cold Mountain, or Love Actually.

Rather, they just leave you feeling limp (in the sense Chinua Achebe describes in "Things Fall Apart"), drained in the face of the unfathomable horror of it all - the unbearable lightness of death, as one of the Israeli girls puts it.

Films like these are not a pleasant experience so much as an ordeal. Within them play out scenes that leave you at a complete loss, about everything, because they are just so difficult, and so ambivalent. Scenes of the awful things people do to one another, and others of the incredible sacrifices they can make. Stories that portray human fragility and human resilience, but don't answer the question of which ultimately wins out most of the time. All this paints a disturbingly complex picture where good & bad are impossible to distinguish, a million miles from the easy Manichaeism of Hollywood & its reassuring conclusions about the state of universe.

Watching the films and hearing the directors speak about them got me to thinking about the relationship between film-making and activism. I suppose shedding light on injustice is a laudable endeavour, but spending millions on film-making somehow seems excessive. I suppose it can depend on the concrete results, Blood Diamond for example, has lead to massive raise in awareness of the ties between the diamond mining industry and civil conflict in Africa. The result has been a much greater interest in obtaining ethically sourced diamonds. There is an argument to be made for art for the sake of art, of course, but that particular can of worms I'll save for another post.

It was fitting really, for the festival to be happening in Milan, which I'd describe as a difficult city itself. There's something incredibly alienating about the place, I don't know if it's the emphasis on the commercial which makes it feel somewhat soulless and superficial, or perhaps the contrasts of the slick city centre a few minutes away from the frighteningly ugly grey tower blocks on the outskirts. I suppose both lack some kind of human quality, in different ways, and it makes the city quite a sad place. Seeing a roma camp on my train ride from the suburbs into the city, with all the squalid little shacks made out of iron and cardboard jostling for space in the darkness of the tunnel under the motorway also came as a bit of a shock. This is northern Italy for goodness sake, not Kosovo. It seems that everywhere has its ugly, shadowy places but in Milan I felt I encountered more than usual.

And everywhere I went I heard foreign languages, which I would try to place... Russian on the metro, amharic in the ethiopian call shop, arabic on the train, polish in the restaurant, something balkan spoken by the musicians on the tram... I couldn't help wondering each time if maybe they had similar stories to those I'd just been watching. In Milan, it seems everyone is an immigrant. Even the italians we encountered seemed to have all migrated from the South. And the result isn't exactly a picture of multicultural harmony. Back in september a black youth was beaten to death by an Italian shopkeeper and his son. But unfortunately, I don't think these are the kinds of people who go to this festival (not to say turnout was lacking - the showings were invariably packed out) which makes me wonder whether such a festival really helps in a city like Milan. With the much loathed Roma stuck hiding in the shadows of the underpass, and poor italian & foreign migrants alike stacked up in isolated high-rise flats, is it any wonder the situation seems on the verge of exploding.

A paradoxical piety

2009-03-26T09:49:00.005+01:00

Far be it from me to come across as a religious sympathiser (as my earlier affirmation that maybe the death of religion would make the world a more boring place might have suggested), but I have to agree with what the defenders of Pope Benedict are saying. I.E. that one shouldn't just focus on two lines taken out of context, and ignore the rest of what someone says which qualify an assertion by putting it within a certain paradigm and system of values. It's true that if you read the full speech the Pope actually gave, it lends at least a shred or two of credibility and meaning to a statement that appears otherwise completely absurd, something only an idiot or a madman could say. The Pope thinks condoms make the problem of AIDS worse not because they spread the HIV virus in themselves but because they are a means to having control over one's own sex life, as opposed to being bound by the laws of reproduction, something it's no secret the Catholic Church disagrees with. It may not be right, but it at least has the virtue of consistency and a certain logic. The Catholic Youth such as those who so maliciously and violently attacked Green & Communist youth in Paris a few days ago, have deplored the short-sightedness of the media in ignoring the rest of their Pope's words and merely zooming in on a small but crucial fragment of what he actually said. As someone who tires of media polemics which constantly make "news stories" out of (frequently misquoted) statements from famous people rather than out of actual news in the form of real events that are taking place, I think they have a point.

Communist & Green Protesters outside Notre-Dame last sunday needed police protection

But what they don't seem to understand is that by making this point they've hit on exactly the reason why the pope's words were so irresponsible and deplorable. As someone with access to the internet and many other sources of information besides, I can look up the pope's speech in full after having read the outraged media headlines provoked by his "condoms aggravate the problem of AIDS" statement, should I be so inclined. But many people in Cameroon, Angola, and the various other African nations hosting him during his visit, do not. Therefore if the message extracted from his pious speech is just that: condoms to be avoided at all costs, basically there is little reason to believe the discussion will go any further, for many. Not because Africans lack any kind of cognitive capacity for critical thinking, but it's no secret that information about HIV/AIDS and sexuality in general is hardly widespread, and frequently subject to distortions and myths about how the disease is contracted and cured. We know this.

The NGOs who have been so upset by the pope's words are not necessarily against sexual abstinence, of course, just horrified that in one breath he has no doubt set them back a good few years in their work trying of trying to stem the spread of the disease and educate people about how to protect themselves.

There is no reason to suspect that Africans are not prone to the same tendencies of simplified assumptions and short-sighted thinking as everyone else has been. There is no reason to expect, especially with less access to information and less resources, that they should analyse the pope's words any more deeply than anyone else has bothered to. If Catholics are hoping that the full meaning and nuances of what the Pope was trying to say in terms of promoting abstinence and sexuality reserved for reproduction, will be not only understood but also adhered to by all Africans at risk of contracting AIDS, they really will need to be praying for miracle.

I'm not too optimistic that the Catholic Youth will be able to get their heads around this, especially since they don't seem to realise how physical and verbal attacks on a small group of peaceful protesters desperately undermines their otherwise perfectly legitimate and laudable calls for a more nuanced and informed debate about the issue. But these are just the kind of frequent inconsistencies and blatant displays of hypocrisy that always make me wonder whether people who still, apparently, manage to be staunch Catholics are really just having us all on, and in fact it's all an elaborate hoax.

A European pathology

2009-03-10T12:25:00.008+01:00

Upon a first reading of this article (thank you l'Internazionale) I was deeply offended.

The arrogance of one yank undertaking the psycho-analysis of an entire continent - classified as "schizophrenic" and afflicted with "stockholm's syndrome" is breath-taking. The characterisation of the collective European personality as completely neurotic, not to mention cowardly and naive, desperate the hide under the skirt of mother America, seems almost too provocative to be taken seriously at all, more like satire. It reminds me of the name-calling and insults that were targetted against the European countries that decided not to go to war in 2003.

On a second reading, this time in my own language (thank you the Times Online), I like it. It rains on the parade of the kind of Obamaphilia and euphoria that I was never really convinced by. I mean yeah, this kind of thing is poignant but you know it's just too good to be true. Obama's speeches always made me somewhat uneasy, because of the religious overtones (a million people chanting back "yes we can" in repetition is just too close to the chorus of "amen" after every line in a sermon) and because of their poetic, vague, and abstract nature.

That said, in our defence, I think Europeans can be glad Obama was elected even though we know he isn't going to be any kind of saviour or great redeemer. Of course he is not going to eliminate all the injustices in the world. He is a politician and as such part of the establishment, and as George Monbiot points out in Bring on the Apocalypse, you simply can't expect to acheive global justice or attain goals such as "making poverty history" without confronting the current global order and distribution of power. It's really inconvenient.

But! If the United States were to start showing signs of engaging with the rest of the world, to seriously commit to tackling climate change and cutting carbon emissions, to close Guantanamo bay, it seems to me these would already be significiant improvements and evidence of progress towards making the world a safer and fairer place. It is not as if the politics and actions of a country like the US have no bearing on the rest of the world, and affect, directly or indirectly, the quality of life of billions.

In this sense, Obamamania is not misguided, nor it "idiocy" or "political blunder". It might be excessive, and over-zealous, but it is at least somewhat justified. Besides, part of the euphoria and air of celebration is also to do with saying goodbye and good riddance to Bush which, after 8 years, I think justifies a party. Or at least a drink.

Rieff certainly doesn't mince his words when it comes to harshly criticising Europeans, in all their naive idiocy, for supporting Obama because he will not act in a way that serves their best interests. But what he doesn't focus enough on are the dangers of such a collective attitude, not just for Europeans but for everyone who lives in the world (including Americans - because who said he can solve all of their problems anyway?).

It reminds me of the "Spice Girls argument", a theory a friend of mine came up with. The theory goes that it's actually very dangerous when apparent improvements and progress seem to be occuring, because it tips people into complacency, into thinking the problem is on its way out. For example, the Spice Girls did more damage to the feminist movement than anything because they made people THINK this was evidence of gender equality and female empowerment, which in fact it wasn't, or at least - might have been only at a very limited, and superficial level.

Applied to this case, it holds that Barack Obama is very bad news because people will "go back to sleep" as Rieff puts it, stop criticising and scrutinising the US as they did when Bush was in power, even though in reality, american politics will probably remain business as usual, in many ways. Now America has got its credibility back. The old-school "Fuck Bush" anti-americanism is muted if not defunct entirely, and the most worrying thing is that maybe now a page has been turned. Perhaps our memory will not stretch back to the awful, fatal mistakes of the Bush administration, because they are seen as belonging to another era. This is the danger, that perhaps next time America, with its brand new face, suggests going to war to its Western allies, we will give them the benefit of the doubt.

The circus is in town

2009-02-23T11:12:00.003+01:00

The placards have gone up all around the city, and outside the station near where we live there's men in strange uniforms giving out those fluorescent-coloured leaflets to the people in cars stopped at red lights.

This must have been what inspired whoever came up with a new campaign from the European Commission, called "Do you know what social Europe can do for you?"

You can decide for yourself, but to my mind, the set of 6 little cartoons, although being extremely cute and amusing and definitely worth showing to all european citizens up to the age of 6, doesn't really answer the question it sets out for itself.

It seems the Commission still hasn't quite managed to nail the delicate balance between rendering its endeavours comprehensible and accessible, while avoiding boiling down a point so many times you end up insulting the intelligence of 99% of your audience.

Another underrated war

2009-02-19T19:32:00.007+01:00

Consciousness-raising seems to be a several-fold process. It doesn't happen overnight or in a flash, rather, it evolves through a series of encounters of various kinds. Little fragments here & there, the combination of which culminates into a kind of intriguing void, a question mark, the beginning of a search for answers, and a better understanding. And in parallel, the developing realisation, the troubling discovery that something isn't been spoken about nearly as much as it should be, given what's actually happening.

But of course, selective attention shouldn't be something that surprises me anymore, and yet it does - for instance the way the media & goverment in west european countries seems to still focus mainly on events in their ex-colonies (as opposed to other developing countries). Media coverage and governments statements of outrage or solidarity in any country seem then to be correlated essentialy with the proportion of the population there with origins back in that country, rather with the level and scale of oppression, violence and/or conflict taking place. Case in point - Mugabe turns out not to be the household villain name he is in the UK, in France for example, where on the other hand they tend to talk far more often about Senegal, Mali... Maybe this sounds normal but in any case it's worth bearing in mind when assessing the relative gravity of the most lamentable plights of people around the world - i.e. that any such assessment is bound to be a million miles from objective.

I'm ashamed to say that before I did a minimum of reading up on the matter, I didn't know that Sri Lanka has been marred by a vicious civil conflict for over two decades. Lately there has been a steady trickle of news stories on the BBC website about the situation, for instance, containing tentative predictions that the Sri Lankan government forces are on the verge of victory against the Tamil Tiger rebels.

But overall, perhaps for the absence of petrol, pirates or a prominent enough position on the axis of evil, the ongoing conflict doesn't seem to warrant all that many news inches, or much discussion at all. Atrocities such as suicide bombings, children & civilians engaged on the frontlines, and assassinations on a massive scale (dare we say - genocide?) quitely play out as if there was nothing urgent nor untoward about the situation at all.

I'll recount the fragments which first triggered my subsequent reading-up on the matter.

First, there was the interview we did, as part of our research/documentary on the lives of immigrants in our quarter of town. It was with the owner of the Sri Lankan restaurant opposite the port, a tiny little place but probably the best place to eat in this town for its quality to price ratio, and run single-handedly by an absolute gem of man known to most as "Lal" (Sri Lankans seem to want to continually outdo each other in terms of the maximum number of syllables that can be crammed into their given names, so please forgive my ignorance for failing to recall the entirety of his.)

In our interview Lal recited a refrain that was strangely familiar in that we heard it several times from various interviewees (Somalian & Kurdish, notably), something along the lines of "I had to leave because, in my country, there is a war going on" and afterwards more or less leaving it at that without following up the statement with any additional details or sentiments.

Then there was the article I came across the other day in L'Internazionale (italian publication which gathers articles from the world press). It was by a certain Lasantha Wickremantunge and absolutely astonishing in that it denounces the Sri Lankan authorities for their hand in his own murder, which would take place only a few days later, as well the general brutality and oppression of the regime. You can read the full article on the IFJ's webpage: And then they came for me.

And finally there is M.I.A., whom I discovered over the summer thanks to my travel companion (whose blog you can read over on the left, incidentally). An appreciation of her music (for the lyrics and the distinctiveness of the sounds rather than for its "listenability") led me to read up on her background which subsequently led me to wish I hadn't. Turns out that M.I.A. (or Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam - what a name), in addition to having an enviably revolutionary background, is an accomplished graphic artist, fashion designer, music producer, singer/songwriter and, as of about a week ago, mother. All by the tender age of 31.

Furthermore, in her music she accomplishes something quite amazing - producing energetic electronic music for the raving masses, while at the same time managing to engage in quiet and subtle political commentary.

"Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked."

M.I.A., perhaps because of her background and personal convictions (which I tend to believe are always strongly linked) seems incurably political, kind of despite herself. It is almost as if she has to hide it, overcome it to be a successful musician, but for those who do search for politics in music, it satisfies this desire for substance and meaning, while hiding it from those who would rather not know.

But of course, there's two sides to every story. An article describing criticism of M.I.A.'s alledged political positions as interpreted from her music, contains some harsh criticism. In it M.I.A. is suggested as being "an apologist for the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels".

"Sri Lankans who have seen her videos say they interpret some parts as showing support for the Tigers, or at the very least glorifying their cause."

The debate about the Media in Sri Lanka, the bias of foreign news sources, musicians or other outlets, illustrates the level of sensitivity of Sri Lankans to what some may perceive as a biased portrayal of the various factions involved in the conflict. Even the BBC has been criticised for allegedly failing to keep to proper norms of neutrality as the following article describes.

But according to the article containing the criticism, M.I.A. isn't all that well known in Sri Lanka, and outside of the country the impact of such resonances is muted since there is so little information and discussion about the ethnic conflict.

Aside from the depths of the entrenched divisions, what is clear is that both sides are guilty of unspeakable crimes of war, and ruthless fighting, at unfathomable cost in terms of human suffering and loss of life. Under such circumstances, where human rights are abused as a matter of course, is absolute and total neutrality really the first priority when dealing with the topic?

Whatever interpretations one lends to the music of M.I.A., linked to her background, personal experiences, and opinions (to which we are all entitled), perhaps the real and first "call of conscience" ought to be to pay attention to, and talk about what is happening, rather than denounce arguable, and often well-motivated, symbolic demonstrations of partisanship.

God doesn't exist. Now start thinking.

2009-01-14T16:42:00.005+01:00

Yesterday on the Italian news there were reports about the Athiest Bus Campaigns, in London and Spain. For the next few weeks buses in London will be displaying the following friendly advice: "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying, and enjoy your life."

Controversial, of course, although many of the big religious leaders claim to be pleased because it stimulates a debate about the metaphysical, an "active conversation about life's big questions" (Theos). Perhaps they see it as an antidote to religious apathy in the UK.

You'll notice the little avatar in the sidebar that links to the homepage of the camppaign. Maybe I'd feel offended if it was the other way around, but this is my camp so here's a cause that I can latch onto. I don't believe, and therefore I agree with spreading this idea, because like little Olivier Besancenot, I am fighting for my ideas to become more widespread in the majority.

Except, that it's not as simple as that. Especially when it comes to the uneasy combination of "evangelising" and anti-religious sentiment.

After reading some of the views of supporters of the campaign, on the boards of the campaign's facebook group, for example, it seems the primary motivating factor is a "desire to stand up & be counted", to be "organised" atheists as a counterweight to organised religion. This strikes me as a dissapointingly banal explanation. Is it really community, safety in numbers we want? But aren't these the same people who go around saying such organised religion is a sign of weakness, that convictions about God or his absence are something fundamentally personal? Isn't organised religion public ennemy number one for atheists, rather than just people who believe in God? If you've read Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", you'll know he sees them as part and parcel of the same loathsome and unpallatable phenomenon. I'm sure Dawkins has other motivations than adapting the principles of organised religion to the Atheist cause. I'm also sure that raising his own profile is one of them, but maybe that's just being cynical.

To tell you the truth, if I see leaflets being handed out in the street telling me to "Repent" now before it's too late, I go out of my way to pick one up, take it home and keep it.

It doesn't take long to realise that it's not just the poor and uneducated who believe. A book that examines this precise fact in more depth that I could really get my head around, is Orhan Pamuk's Snow. If I had my copy here I would quote it at you profusely but unfortunately I don't. In any case, I cannot but be humbled by the presence of so many believers in the world who are far more mentally capable, and far more aware of the mechanics of the world and of human beings than I can ever hope to be. What I find jarring about Dawkins is the way in which he flatly dismisses them all out of hand.

Also, the slogan troubles me a little. There's no god, so stop worrying? The second part doesn't seem to follow. And enjoy your life? The third part follows even less.

Howard Jacobs' criticism of the campaign is slightly harsher than I'm altogether comfortable with, but overall rather insightful:

"Some of the least worried people I know are unworried precisely because they believe in a benign creator who takes individual care of them. Ivan Karamazov on the other hand, is misery incarnate, unable to enjoy a moment of mental peace because he cannot see how, if God does not exist, anything can be deemed unlawful. SINCE THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD it would say on the bendy bus Ivan hires to drive around St Petersburg, START WORRYING BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.

Your liberal atheist would have trouble following the moral logic of that because he thinks everything should be permitted. ENJOY YOUR LIFE he says, as though the mere fact of freedom from ethical or religious restraint is a guarantee of enjoyment and enjoyment the only measure of a life well lived."

I'm not a believer myself. But I don't pretend that leaves me better equipped to lead either a good life or a happy one."

Sometimes I wonder, if I could click my fingers and have everybody stop believing right then & there, would I? The world might be simpler, we might have more consensus on some things, but neither of those are certain. It is very doubtful whether most the violence and conflict across the world is really to do with "God" or faith at all. It seems to come from something a lot more material, a lot more substantial, and intrinsically human.

What is certain is the world would be a lot more boring. It's not that I enjoy being told I'm going to burn in hell for eternity by the fire&brimstone Godsquad. I just think I might miss the wondering, the thoughts provoked by the metphysical gridlock encountered whenever dicussing the existence of God with any of my believing friends, one in particular.

I enjoy those conversations. I even like reading the "Quick, Repent!" leaflets, that's why I go looking for them. I collect tacky catholic memorabilia because I am amazed that such objects can mean such a great deal to people, can influence their behaviour, give them strength. For me the priority, is not for all this to vanish.

So I might question the aims of "Breezy universal atheism" as Jacobs disparagingly but quite aptly labels it.

I think it's a shame that atheists have hopped on the defensive. Not least because of the backlash it is likely to provoke. But also because I believe that belief or non-belief is a profoundly personal matter.

"Is it not enough to see that the garden is beautiful without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it as well?"

These words of Douglas Adams are the kind of rare & subtle wisdom that inspires and underlies some of my most deeply held convictions, they sum up that which gives me confidence and peace of mind in my disbelief. To see them trivialised emblazoned across a double-decker on route 149 is almost too much to bear. I'd sooner have kept them to myself.

But it is not disbelief or lack of faith alone that guides my view of the world and my place in it. That's only a particle of a whole ecosystem of convictions and credences, one with very murky waters, and which is often foggy and nebulous but definitely not inhabited by a supernatural overlord or omnipotent creator.

The campaign will soon come to Italy where buses will bear the slightly less instructional, and less reductive turn of phrase, which manages to be at once braver and less conclusive:

"La cattiva notizia è che Dio non esiste. Quella buona, è che non ne hai bisogno."

That bad news is that God doesn't exist. The good news, is that you don't need him to.

All JEF wants for Christmas is a Superstate

2009-01-08T16:10:00.005+01:00

So it's 2009 now, and that can only mean one thing - the year of intercultural dialogue is finally over (or "just words" to quote my esteemed mentor Dr. Finlay) , giving way to the even more inspiring Year of Creativity and Innovation. Yeah. Think I might sit this one out if it's all the same to you. But of course, if innovation isn't really your thing, there's always the European Parliament Elections to look forward to. All politicos of all walks of life are by now gripped by European election fever. None more so than the Young European Federalists (JEF), a pan-European organisation of young euro-enthusiasts, not politically affiliated but sharing the same dream of the establishment of a European Federation.

Last june I campaigned alongside JEF in the campaign for the YES side in the vote on the Lisbon Treaty, in Ireland. At the time I felt their position of taking European integration all the way towards an inevitable federalist conclusion was perfectly in line with my own views. The fact that they were participants in a campaign run by the governing party in Ireland, Fianna Fail, an unpleasant bunch of conservative right-wing nationalists, didn't even trouble me too much at the time, since I felt we were at least all campaigning for the same result, albeit perhaps with different motivations.

Now JEF have launched their campaign "It's time for change, it's time for Europe", not with a view to getting any particular candidates elected, but rather with the aim of encouraging all elected candidates to support a series of proposals, contained in their Manifesto. Reading through their list of demands, a number of things sound alarm bells in my mind, which I'll go through briefly...

The demands on JEF's Christmas list...

"A European Economic Policy for ensuring growth, employment and sustainable
development, in particular to benefit young people;"

One could question the wisdom of establishing a common economic policy given that a one-size-fits-all model for an area with such political and structural disparities as Europe can hardly be appropriate just yet. In my opinion, development needs to come first. This is acheived by way of concrete initiatives that target areas of weakness, for example improving transport networks, or weeding out corruption. The EU has acheived its best results when focusing on acheiving specific objectives at regional level, keeping local concerns and circimstances in mind. Cf. Ireland over the past 10 years. A broadbrush single economic policy would surely be massively ineffectual in comparison.

"A European Energy and Environmental Agency for ensuring global leadership in the battle against climate change and managing a European Energy Reserve to guarantee a strategic independence of the EU;"

Shame about the second half, I'm all for the first bit. The words "strategic independence" disturb me first for their unattainable pretensions and also because they mirror exactly what the US is attempting to do by drilling to the earth's core. The idea of a European Union that is constructed with "strategic" ends in mind makes me distinctly uneasy. By all means let's work together to try to find solutions, but it's not as if we live in a world where we can cordon ourselves off anymore, though this is, unfortunately, so often what the EU has tried to do.

"A Solidarity Clause to ensure Member States protection against terrorism and natural catastrophes;"

Solidarity... but only within Europe. And enforced solidarity, since if it is written into EU law, not respecting such obligations would surely lead to sanctions of some kind. This one really sums up the idea of a united Europe that exists to preserve itself, its position in the world order, and to secure benefits for European citizens.

"European Blue Helmets enabling the EU to contribute to peace-keeping in the world in the framework of a real European security and defence policy;"

As if the UN Blue Helmets weren't responsible for enough chaos and human rights violations, as it is. Do we really want to expand on a formula that has proven to be so fraught with abuses? And I can only imagine and shudder at what a "real European security and defence policy" would mean, but with Russia and USA playing missile chicken with one another already, I doubt the assertion of a European defence policy would be much of a force for constructive progress in the whole equation.

"A Citizens’ Right of Initiative in order to listen to the voice of European citizens;"

A good idea. Just need to iron out some of the more fundamental details, like ensuring citizens would be aware of such a right and how to instrumentalise it, and to avoid the privelege being abused by other actors, such as lobbyists or companies, as happens all the time with the European Court of Justice.

"A European Civilian Service to promote EU citizenship among young people;"

So we can indoctrinate European youth with a strong sense of pride and belonging to the glorious motherland Europa? This one's just scary...

"European symbols to be officially recognised by all European institutions."

Fatuous, really. Besides, worrying about symbols is the first step towards shooting people who spit on flags. And then we really are going backwards.

Oh JEF! And yet so much of what is written in their mission statement I could not agree more with.
Why then have they produced such a list of demands that so plainly betrays the uglier side of their ambitions - the irony of substituting one kind of nationalism for another.

I suppose my views have undergone a significant amount of transformation over the past few years, especially thanks to the debates around Lisbon, where I was exposed to considerable intelligent and pertinent criticisms of the EU.
It didn't take me long to recognise the unsophisticated crudeness of the US "hard power" = BAD, EU "soft power" = Good dichotomy, as laid out in Mark Leonard's book (Why Europe will run the 21st Century). Whereas in The European Dream, Jeremy Rifkin managed to approach the issue with far more subtlety whilst still retaining a positive slant on the EU.

I still have that positive view overall, even though I now feel a cynical twinge whenever I hear of EU initiatives, especially where youth are concerned. That's down to my experience over the past few months, as a failed EVS volunteer, though not for want of trying. Much more then debates and hearing all sides of the argument, it is hard evidence, in the form of personal experience, that shapes one's held views, it seems to me.

I think the main danger of the supranational organisation which the EU institutions engage in, is the machinistic approach where procedures are followed blindly and to the letter, which brings with it a complete disregard for the nature of specific cases, communities or individuals being dealt with.

The things I dislike most about the EU - the incomprehensible Eurojargon, the ruthless and inhumane immigration policies which have earned the continent the title of "Fortress Europe", the famous democratic deficit... are all symptons of the failure of this approach - based on an obsession with procedures. This in itself may be well-intentioned, but it is accompanied by a more sinister undercurrent of inbuilt xenophobia, a desire to keep out that which may threaten the security and prosperity of European citizens.

The EU is guilty of strangling itself with the unending red tape tentacles of an immense bureacratic machine, where responsability is shifted up and down the line until everyone completely loses sight of everything and general confusion prevails.

Having been on the receiving end of such treatment throughout this past autumn, I am well aware of how frustrating it can be. When I and my co-volunteers wrote a letter condemning this treatment and testifying to our experiences here, of being continuously overlooked and never listened to, the response was fitting - a brief note from a Commission robot thanking us for our time and telling us absolutely nothing.

It may seem a sad way to begin the new year - in such a state of disillusionment and loss of faith. But for the same reason I am no longer member of a political party, I don't want to toe the European line either. Instead of being stuck in the compromising position of being obliged to turn a blind eye to the mistakes and flaws of any one group, or being gagged when it comes to criticising one's "own side" - for now I am happy to remain on the outside, to applaud the successes where they occur, as well as to condemn and denounce, where it is warranted, without reserve or hesitation.

Nothing like a bit of sacrilege at Christmas

2009-01-07T14:39:00.005+01:00

Maybe it's a sign of progress that I haven't felt sufficiently sure of my opinions over the past few months to feel comfortable setting them out in written article format and broadcasting them to anyone who'll read.

Indeed, the last half of 2008 was a period of rethinking some of my established views, such as my staunchly europhile position, but that will be for another entry, but also re-evaluating myself, to a certain extent. New context - new light. These things take up time, energy and mind-space, it turns out.

But the blogging I did before was useful, as a means of processing the immense amount of information around me, the various discourses shovelled around by the media and politicians, trying to keep a critical eye on matters and explore some of the current questions which drew my attention and provoked me to ponder. This is why I'd like to make the effort to re-activate and sustain this blog, in order to keep a record of some of the themes we've been dealing here at the Circolo Culturale Africa, in Ancona, where I'm currently working.

But first - to begin with something more light-hearted, than talk of detention centres and racially-aggravated murders.

This christmas was dominated by a great controversy the likes of which has not been seen this side of the 20th century. No, not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the great Hallelujah debacle of '08.

For those who may not be aware (that is, anyone living outside of the UK or Ireland), for the past 5 or so years now the christmas number 1 in the UK pop charts has been hijacked by the annual winner of a music "talent" programme called the X-factor.

The final show is timed in just such a way that immediately after the winner is chosen, the new record is released and crateloads of copies are shipped into every highstreet music/book/media shop, strategically placed near all the check-outs, with row upon row stacked in the shop windows, so that enough people will buy it in order to get the lucky winner to number one, for christmas. Cynical, I know. This sort of shameless commodification of dreams can be tolerated for one year, but by now the routine is beginning to get tiresome.

Subsequently, the winner is never heard of again, with one exception - Leona Lewis, who appears to be rather good at milking her 15 minutes of fame for all they're worth and thus hasn't quite sunken into obscurity just yet. Unfortunately.

Anyway, this year the song released by the incumbent winner, Alexandra Burke, is the controversial choice of Hallelujah, first written and recorded by Leonard Cohen somewhere back in the 80s, and has been covered and re-covered umpteen times since in a myriad of different styles.

Cue outrage and indignation from music aficionados everwhere, especially Jeff Buckley fans who launched a reactionary campaign to try to get his version to number 1. Unfortunately, it came runner-up to the X-factor version, at number 2. While Cohen's original lagged behind, way down in the 30s somewhere. Probably because the only thing that version has going for it is the fact that it is the original.

Others who've recorded the song include Rufus wainwright, Allison Kraus, K.D. Lang, John Cale, Imogen Heap, etc.

It's almost too banal to call Buckley's my favourite, because that seems to be the general consensus. At least listening to it again brought me to discover Buckley's album, Grace. Which contains some stuff that borders on being too complex and heartfelt to be listened to at all. "Lover you should've come over" is a gem, mainly for its entrancing and raw nerve lyrics. All very understated. I would recommend.

I have to say I'm also a big fan of the Imogen Heap version, because its so melancholic, and not too polished or sing-songy. Although I felt it was used very inappropriately in that final episode of the O.C. as Mischa Barton lay dying in a pool of blood on the tarmac (Clearly THAT was the moment to use "Forever Young"). As is my beloved who insisted on listening to it on loop for a week after selecting it as his favourite from a choice of 3 - hers, Buckley's, or k.d. Lang's, which is nice but, well, just nice.

But you're not meant to listen to it too often because it's a "classic", apparently. In any case, Buckley's can be listened to forever, whereas Alexandra's I couldn't stick even till the end of the first play. I think it had something to do with the fact that she herself alledgedly confessed to not being too keen on the song. I wouldn't like to think of myself as a pretentious music appreciator but there are some things even I cannot accept.

Money-spinning exploitation of young & innocent/stupid talent aside though, nothing was quite so annoying as hearing Fearne Cotton repeatedly pronouncing the word without its first letter - 'Allelujah, while the chart was announced. Now there is a massacre.

Pride comes before a failure

2008-04-17T02:50:00.004+02:00

The "story" of the Green Party annual convention that took place in Dundalk, co. Louth last weekend was undoubtedly John Gormley's clear message to the Chinese government (via the intermediary of the Chinese ambassador, conveniently seated in the audience) re. Tibet, during his leader's address on the saturday evening. Those words once again:

“Respect for human rights must extend to all cultures and countries. One country which has been exploited and suppressed and suffered for far too long is Tibet. We condemn unequivocally the flagrant abuse of human rights by the Chinese government and call on the Chinese government to enter dialogue with the Dalai Lama.”

Following this statement, the ambassador and his little team of diplomats, were no longer sitting in their seats. Cameras flashed, champions of Freedom and Human Rights everywhere cheered, and a buzz filled the room which didn't dissipate until well into sunday afternoon.

I wouldn't describe myself as a contrarian, by occupation, I think it's fair to say I've no objections to towing the party line, when it's a line I can stand by. No doubt it would be cynical and harsh to describe our esteemed leader as merely jumping on the china-bashing bandwagon, I'm sure John's sentiments were genuine and that his intensions were golden. But his words and especially the reaction that followed, left me feeling distinctly uneasy. And perhaps for that reason I began to search for another side to a debate that, so far, I feel has been extremely one-sided.

And as it turns out, one can ask questions about the Tibetan campaign and not be a fascist: http://organizedrage.blogspot.com/2008/04/tibet-china-and-west-so-many-questions.html

I have to say I wasn't particularaly impressed or filled with pride by what was effectively an orchestrated publicity stunt. And a rather crude one at that. It's not news, it's not a message that's being suppressed, in the media or political spheres, by any stretch of the imagination, so I fail to see the element of bravery involved.

But I was even less impressed with the jeers, with the name-calling and the self-congratulatory pats on the back all round that many indulged in, in the aftermath. But this was my first "grown-up" party convention, so perhaps that's what goes on at these kinds of things. The herd-mentality kicks in, it's a bit like supporting your home team at a football match, this is just the way in whcih we identify ourselves, by our political convictions, but it's just as basic in many ways. Unfortunately.

It's an unfortunate coincidence perhaps, that the day after the convention ended it was reported on the BBC news that China had just overtaken the US as the world's number 1 polluter. In fairness to the BBC, they did of course report the fineprint - that carbon consumption per head is a fraction of what it is in the West, and living standards for the vast majority of Chinese still lag far behind. Speaking of inconvenient truths...

The Free Tibet campaign has exploded over the past few months, gaining increasing momentum with the approach of the Olympics. Understandably, if there was ever a time to take to the streets in support of Tibet, now is it, when everybody's watching and the profile of the dispute and the plight of Tibet & the Dalai Lama is sky high.

I'm not saying that Tibetans don't have legitimate and very serious grievances, I'm just wary of the fact that the cause seems to have been latched onto by a whole new group, at a time of particular political and economic significance. And perhaps it serves their cause, but it also undermines it. Sympathy with Tibet shouldn't necessarily mean anti-Chinese feeling or Sinophobia, but they're in danger of becoming two sides of the same coin.

Chinese imperialism and the oppression of minorities are one thing (that I'm by no means defending), but when it comes to countries in the West ganging up to take pot shots at China, it seems to me that there's another kind of power-game going on here at the same time, a kind of bullying on an even larger scale, a reaction to the fact that China seems to have pretensions in terms of acquiring super-power status, and needs to be kept in check. But perhaps these relations of domination are benign, because the West is in the right - it systematically supports human rights and claims to independant sovereignty, after all. No vested interests there then.

No doubt this is hardly how the Chinese see it, but then what would they know, they're just being fed a load of propaganda.

Clearly we think we can afford to trample on our diplomatic relations with China. To throw stones and ostracise them, to be uncompromising. But how is that going to serve our purposes, exactly, when they subsequently refuse to engage with the rest in dialogue about say - the environment, let alone Human Rights or Tibetan independance. How does it help the state of the world to make the Chinese - politicians, youth, and the general population - feel isolated, under attack and discriminated against? From someone who has just returned from China, I'm told of the fierce anti-Western feeling, the anger among many, and it makes my blood run cold.

I don't think one can overestimate just how dangerous it is for Europeans and Westerners to boil the issue down to demonising China. I think in the long-run this can only lead to very serious intractable problems and fractures. So why on earth have we begun digging another rift?

Is there really so much of a consensus in the world that we need to go out of our way to alienate and ostracise vaste sections of the population? I think the Greens especially, who desperately want a breakthrough when it comes to global environmental policy, have administered a real shot in the foot here, and demonstrated a remarkable lack of tact, sensitivity or foresight.

Aren't there other means of negociation and pressure rather than calculated insults? Isn't the only chance for global co-operation necessarily about compromise and finding common ground, about respect, rather than launching attacks and making demands, just for the sake of a round of applause?

The Battle for Europe

2008-03-17T14:05:00.003+01:00

I have now accumulated a huge backlog of various bits and pieces I wanted to write about, and I shall do my best to try to get somewhat up to date and be as chronological as I can about it, although no doubt some synthesis will be necessary, and some things are not so fresh in my mind as they were.

First, here are my updated and slightly more thought out views on the question of the Lisbon Treaty and its little friend the Irish referendum. The ad hoc patched-together little piece below turned out to be only the first foray into a long process of searching, questioning and discovery on the subject of the Treaty and its real meaning and wider political implications. The regrets and the ensuing legitimacy crisis that it sparked in the aftermath of the Convention the Irish Greens held on the Treaty, although with a vengeance, were qualified in the end by my admission that that "speech", although containing elements of sincerity and earnest conviction, was an over-simplified parody and I was right to second-guess it (although perhaps not right enough to warrant full justification for my inaction, such as it was). Its considerations in no way do justice to those who've read the Treaty in its entirety, who've made efforts to uncover its full meaning, intentions and detail, against the odds, or who've agonised over which way to vote, due to conflicts of interest that touch the very core of their ideological convictions.

It's a debate that has rattled on and on, and will no doubt continue to do so up until the referendum, and probably well beyond. It's been inescapable. On television, in the papers, among the Greens, on the radio, in my university lecture halls and its debating chambers... and each time I've issued a "statement" on the matter, I've been determined to draw a line under it but that's just not been possible. So much debate and so many views heard has not left me indifferent. I've been through phases of euro-phoria, euro-scepticism, euro-phobia, and euro-indifference and I've emerged the other side with a far better understanding of why people might feel nthe way they do about Europe, and why people who I feel should be pro-Europe, might not be, for reasons that aren't just down to national pride and/or ignorance, as I always previously believed. And this hasn't just taught me more about people's attitudes to Europe, but also about where my own political loyalties lie, fundamentally. I am above all a Socialist and Green, I have definite extremist tendancies when it comes to the former, but I am also above all a Europhile. Although when I say I've been brainwashed by the Brussels Eurocratic establishment it's only half serious, I do feel very strongly that people's political beliefs are conditioned by their environment. When it comes to my immediate surroundings, I always suppsed we were pro-Europe because we came to Brussels, but perhaps we came to Brussels because we are pro-Europe. In any case, the fact remains. I am a passionate beleiver in the potential of Europe, its as yet under-exploited capacity to be a progressive force, politically, socially and ecologically. And I think that just because it hasn't lived up to the Left's expections on this account (although there is certainly much worth commending it for), doesn't mean it can't.

Many people I fervently admire would disagree with me on this point, and would argue that it's not good enough, that it's too much of a compromise, and a bitter pill. (That said, given how well the Greens have shown they can take pills of that kind when it comes to national government, one wonders at their incapacity to do the same when it comes to Europe, but this isn't the case for everybody.) But who I'm really thinking of here is my newfound ideological leader, the trotskyist postman Olivier Besancenot, leader of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, a fledgling party with the audacity to flaunt its slogan "100% a gauche" and yet still managed to score almost 5% in the first round of the French Presidential elections (and if that sounds meagre, just remember that he regards himself as Communist revolutionnary - these aren't words we hear in politics anymore.)

I had the good fortune of hearing Mr Besancenot's views on the Treaty when I was home in Belgium earlier in the Spring. Of, course, it took a secnd viewing to let it all sink in. Besancenot is hardly like other politicians who speak slowly and in nice short words to hammer their message across (cf. Segolene's bathbook discoure or Le Pen's inflammatory demagogie), he talks about incredibly complex political things at a very high velocity and I find him very difficult to keep up with.

He's a wit too. When asked if he would be attending Sarkozy's wedding, he retorted: "Je ne serais ni a son marriage ni a l'enterrement de l'Europe sociale-democratique pour laquelle on se bat"
When it comes to his reasons for placing himself firmly in the no-camp, his assertions are fiery, forceful and biting. He explains the previous no-vote to the Constitution by the fact that Europe was back then and still is -
"L'Europe de plus en plus discreditée dans le quotidien de millions de personnes, parce qu'elle correspond a des licenciements, a la precarité, a du chomage et a des services publiques qui sont cassés."

By voting no, the extreme left can dissociate itself from the consequences of all the directives to come. So then at least, those who resist, "qui sont en bas", can say Not in Our Name, nor is it legitimate (but a fat lot of good that does them).

And make no mistake, those of us who are apologists for the EU as it currently stands are deluding ourselves. This Europe we see today is -
"L'europe du movement des services, de la monnaie unique, de Schengen, la forteresse, et l'Europe sociale elle vient jamais"

This disillusionment has long since been taken as a reality check for people like Besancenot. We have been waiting too long to see the kind of Europe we wish for to begin to take shape, and Besancenot like many has now been permeated by the sense that it will never arrive. As one of the deluded, I am of course willing to give the EU the benefit of the doubt, another chance, to wait a little longer. Those who are critical, unrelentingly so, who believe that we should make the eurocrats squirm at every opportunity - are led to be so by loyalties that I confess do not override my apologism. When the eurocrats squirm, I squirm along with them. And although it sounds ridiculous, I can't apologise for being an apologist for them and the whole European Project.

Sometimes he makes me angry, along with the other no-voting greens and lefties. Their intransigence, they do not feel the way to win is to compromise, the way to win is to stick to the hard & fast line and not give an inch - but since when is that politics? "Compromise" is essential and always has been, but for the extreme green/left, the prespect seems to be a fate worse than death.

But you don't have to listen to Besancenot for very long to realise that he isn't the kind of lefty who opens arms towards the centre, who panders to the right like the mainstream socialists in attempt to maximise voting score. "Je me bats pour que nos idees soient de plus en plus majoritaires" - OUR ideas. Essentially Besancenot is in politics to get more people to agree with him. Not to obtain power by satisfying as many people as possible, even if it means distorting his ideas out of shape. For this reason, he will no doubt always remain a marginal figure. Because let's face it, a lot of people are never going to vote Left, let alone extreme left.
Besancenot seems confident that a shift is taking place however. Largely because "La politique de sarkozy, elle exaspere." and this is provoking "un changement profond dans la societé", "une radicalisation" no less, and "un engagement nouveau".

He is completely open about this ideological immobility and his ambitions, "Moi mes idees j'ai envie qu'elles gouvernent" and yet he himself admits to not quite knowing what this non-capitalist, non-market economy society would look like exactly, but wants to bring as many people together in support of the prospect, to imagine it.

But returning to Lisbon from that little detour into the more general politics of Besancenot, what I am incresingly coming to understand is the sense from the people in these camps that we need to start completely over - that the Europe we want CANNOT be reached from this path, forged from this mold, that we need to trash the whole thing and start to build again on diferent foundations rather than chipping away it to make it more pallatable, more suited to our interests and values and convictions.

When it comes to deconstructing gut feelings and motivations, it goes without saying that we follow our convictions, and speak/vote/believe in ways that are in accordance with them, complex and multi-facetted as they may be (and sometimes in conflict - cases of cognitive dissonance I believe is the term in social psychology). Thus, Olivier Besancenot will vote no because he is extreeeeme left, many greens will vote no because they are foremost green, my own mixture of socialism/extreme leftism/green fervour is diluted by an overarching sense of faith and beleif in Europe (as an inherently positive phenomenon), in moving the European project forward even if we're not 100% sure it's the right direction because it's preferable to moving it backwards or paralysing it completely, which effectively come to the same thing.

Gunning for the YES

2008-01-19T02:23:00.000+01:00

At the Green Party's Special Convention on the Lisbon Treaty tomorrow, I won't be speaking, in fact I'm not even certain I'll be voting. However, if I were going to take the floor for 3 minutes, I would probably say something along these lines...

First, I want to begin by reminding you how Europe has evolved. A look at its trajectory, over 5 decades, from Paris to Maastricht, from 6 nations to 27 and counting, from its initial narrow economic focus (on coal & steel sectors) to legislation spanning areas from the environment, to human rights & international law - is cause for enormous optimism. It proves that when considering the development of Europe, nothing should be ruled out, but also that we should not look to the past for inspiration of what the European project is about, but rather ahead, we are shaping it now, as we move forward.

The Greens have a place, unlike any other group, in this new order, and a responsibility that goes with it. As a modern & progressive party, it has attained a level of co-operation and united status between the Greens parties across europe, far & beyond any other party. This is why Europe is a forum where the Greens come into their own, where they can be empowered, engage in dialogue, and promote the values of tolerance and collaboration by leading by example.

We cannot retreat into our own national political universes anymore, shut the rest of the world out, talking about "sovereignty" as if this were something inherently good - it is only ever important and meaningful when a nation is under threat. The EU is not a threat but a vehicle for progress, for the diffusion of values, and the echange of information. Furthermore, EU & state are not mutually exclusive, the EU was never intended to replace it, rather to complement it, to exist in parallel, as a forum for debate & cooperation, common regulation of areas that NEED to be regulated centrally (refer to the many progressive environmental that policies began in the EU).

That is not to say that there are no aspects of the EU that are not entirely benign. The move towards social europe hasnt happened yet, but as mentioned above, nothing should be ruled out. We've seen pan-european social mobilisation and strikes - the advent of "europrotestations" and pan-european workers rights movements. We've seen huge progress in development, integration, and the free movement of peoples. National boundaries are not so impermeable as they might one have been, and this is a fundamnetal reason behind the need for supranational regulation & CONSENSUS on these important issues with which we are all confronted, and cannot effectively deal with in isolation, such as migration and environmental degradation.

We need a different kind of europe, but let's not allow that to make us lose sight of the fact that we want & need Europe.To give europe the political weigth to make a real difference, to influence, to be a leader, we need to steer it in the right course, and this can only be done through a democratic process of consulation, of dialogue, in the words of Senator Deirde De Burca, of "critical engagement". One of the formal institutional measures towards this end provided in the treaty, is the attribution of more power to the Parliament, which allows citizens to vote directly in European elections - crucial to resolving the democratic deficit and promoting a sense of European identity & awareness. We need to encourage the taking of measures to enable people to engage, necessary for the process to be democratic.

The original aim of the constitutional treaty was an attempt to simplify Europe, to make it more comprehensible to the citizens of Europe, to frame its policies in a comprehensive & clarified system. Beyond this, it recognises the crucial element of fundamnetal rights - the charter will gain binding legal status, giving much-needed substance to this framework for citizenship. Yes it is too weak (the result of compromise upon compromise) incomplete and imperfect, but nevertheless part of a process that gives us cause for enormous optimism. Let's be clear, it is NOT a solution, but it is a step.

Europe is a political process which is unfolding day by day, progressing by trial & error, and we must to hold those driving the process forwards accountable at every step & make demands, this is essential to the democratic process, and for establishing conditons under which a meaningful european citizenship can emerge.

A European consensus, deveoping alongside a rapprochement of nations & the integration of its peoples, must be rooted in a spirit of tolerance & co-operation, ever broadening in reach & scope. Co-operation is difficult to acheive, but it is not constructive to obstruct it, and we should remember the symbolic aspect of a vote on such an unprecedented european-wide document, in its implications for European unity & integration, both now & in the future. Clearly, it is difficult enough to come to a europe-wide consensus given the diversity of opinion - without protest votes in national referendums, where far-right and far-left both perversely vote the same way for vastly different reasons - which certainly does not send a clear or useful message to the creators of this document, and the leaders of Europe.

Therefore I implore you, do not allow your reservations on individual clauses of this reform treaty that is perhaps merely an attemp on behalf of europoliticians to save face, put the crisis behind them and move forwards, to make you lose sight of the greater picture, and the challenges & difficulties ahead, please don't vote no to europe.

Recall Caroline Lucas's wise spanish proverb: "there is no path, paths are made by walking." We must fashion our own, in our name and in the name of our convictions, but first we must be brave enough to take that step.

Benazir

2007-12-30T15:41:00.000+01:00

It's not the for first time, in this blog, that I will have mentioned Benazir Bhutto. My discussion of the Iraq War's 4th birthday all too briefly refers to her contributions on Question Time, insights which that day marked her out to me as one of these beacons of common sense and tolerance amidst the chaos. Since then I vaguely followed her tumultuous trajectory back into the heart of Pakistani politics. With admiration and not as much understanding as might have been warranted.

But now I'm becoming self-conscious. The media's description of her as a "westernised" politician makes me feel that maybe she appealed to me because she was essentially "one of us" and shared in "our" values. But responding to the argument that human rights and democracy are in some way specific to the West, in origin or application, will have to be saved for another day. For now, suffice to say the there is as much fundamentalism in the West as in the East, it is just as threatening to human rights and civil liberties, and just as condemnable.

What I failed to understand, essentially, is why she would have put herself at such grave risk, didn't she realise that the life of an academic, a commentator - would be far more cushy and lucrative, and far more likely to extend her life? But of course, she is one of these who could have been no other way. Put in context, her own, which is not the docile panel of disgruntled, ageing writers and armchair politicians & salon socialists alongside whom she sat last spring, it all makes much more sense.

That we are conditioned by our surroundings and our families should not undermine her courage nor her acheivements. Whatever can be said about being born into a certain life, part of a certain dynasty that shapes one's destiny, Bhutto clearly went a step further. That she now joins her father and brothers, who also suffered brutal deaths, was by no means a fait accompli. Though the convictions that cement our education, and the struggles of those close to us no doubt condition to some extent our conception of the world and of what constitutes reasonable sacrifice and risk for a worthy cause, no-one is born with the capacity nor the courage to defy the fear and the very prospect of death itself. Such defiance & resistance, in the face of extreme and inescapable danger cannot be simply attribted to an inevitable personal trajectory along pre-traced lines. Rather, it testifies to a kind of abandoned devotion and disregard for personal safety & interest, spurred by belief in a greater purpose so commanding and so intense that it simply cannot be ignored.

Ten today

2007-12-30T15:37:00.000+01:00

I've already remarked on 2007's lack of an inspiring overarching theme, in comparison to say - worker mobility in 2006 which inspired a project on the topic, and inter-cultural dialogue in 2008 which may or may not inspire a young greens campaign.

The most significant thing about 2007, and definitely worthy of note and celebration if not political activism - is that it marks the 10th anniversary of 1997. No particular event that occured in 1997, just the year itself.

Anybody who's read Pete Burns autobiography (which I won't go so far as to recommend but rather will sympathise with anybody whose intrigue and curiosity wouldn't let them avoid it) will no doubt have endured his scattery account of "the formative years" in terms of popular culture, and because it's the holidays, I thought I'd go in for some similiar self-indulgence.

1997 was the year, for me. The one where you suddenly become exposed, to the stuff that comes to symbolise the pop culture of your generation. Also the one where you become turned onto politics, and current affairs. Admittedly, '97 was no '89, nor indeed was it any '01, but because of its particular timing and significance for me, everything seemed historical & momentous. It was a sudden & overwhelming rush of information, and it seems now, at least to me, that there never was nor will be a time quite like it, quite so colourful, so unprecedented, so revolutionary. As if nothing will ever be so incredibly important ever again.

To avoid an agonising Pete Burns-esque stream of consciousness, I'll take ten items from popular culture, in no particular order, in the name of memory-refreshment...

American Beauty (MAJOR. The kind of thing that makes such a huge impact you spend the next 3 days constantly thinking about it, and mentally replaying it, to the point where it interferes with social interaction and keeps you awake at night. Very rarely, if ever, do films affect me so much anymore)
The Spice Girls (my debut in the reception of popular music basically consisted of a head-on collision with the Spice Girls, and is the reason why I can't be cynical about their reunion like those sneering 30-40 somethings)
Teletubbies (generally I either watch children's television with delight or horror, the the combination of the two stirred by the teletubbies was something I've really yet to come to terms with)
LA confidential cleaned up at the oscars, and I of course was not allowed to see it. Nor indeed was I allowed to watch Jurassic Park, which also caused a sensation that year, being as it was, on the cutting edge of computer-animated dinosaur technology.
Hanson (the novelty of androgenous children singing incomprehensible things blew my mind at the time, and all the therapy since hasn't helped to lessen the mental impact)
Blood on the dancefloor & Stranger in Moscow (two of the greatest and most-underrated songs in Michael Jackson's repertoire, & the latter, admittedly perhaps from late '96, featuring on the seminal HIStory album, I still go around proclaiming to be my favourite song of all time)7. Indie genius (Oasis - dyou know what I mean, Verve - Bittersweet symphony)
Gala (my initiation in skanky dance music began with the finest in euro-trash)
Boybands (BSB's first comeback, Gary Barlow - I may have missed the Take That generation, but at least i still caught the barlow bandwagon, brief as it was)
Titanic (when a generation of pre-teen girls fell hopelessly in love with leonardo dicaprio. in my case, it bordered on obsession, and one which it pains me to say im still battling today)

Other items of perhaps more far-reaching significance include, of course, the advent of new labour, Tony Blair leading the labour party to victory with a landslide result, putting an end to the Tory era.

What else?Diana died, Elton John sang about it, Dolly the sheep was cloned, the BSE crisis foreshadowed the many food-scares to come, Louisde Woodward shook a baby to death, and the IRA declared a ceasefire.

You couldn't make it up, in fairness.

Reclaiming Christmas

2007-12-24T23:31:00.000+01:00

Is an atheist christmas a contradiction in terms? It's a view many Christians appear to hold, rolling their eyes as they do, at the annual church-goers, the dilletantes who go through the motions, all the style but none of the substance. They must wonder what it's all about for them, perhaps assuming they venerate and worship in the temple of the God of consumerism. How very vacuous for them. Perhaps, they've got a point.

The idea that atheists do, in fact, have souls too, might be tough to swallow for some believers and indeed non-believers alike, but it's a question that becomes of particular salience at this time of year.

The non-believers who partake in all the cultural ritual and hold no moral objections to the religious symbolism but simultaneously reject it with a certain measure of distate and unease, are not immune to criticism on the basis of paradox and hypocrisy.

In an atheist or agnostic christmas, it is the one day a year we pretend to beleive or do so in solemn remembrance of a time when we ourselves once beleived, or in honour of devout ancestors and relatives. It as if we can beleive through our past selves, or through those others, in admiration and respect for the strength of their convictions. Beleiving in the name of others - as a strange somewhat disembodied demonstration of faith by proxy.

Upon reflection, it seems to me this second-hand belief is not sufficient. I would rather celebrate in the name of my own personal convictions.

In his review of some "bright ideas" that have emerged this year, Will Hutton argues:
"If 2006 was the year of the rampant secularists, Richard Dawkins assailing religion as the source of much evil, 2007 has seen the case for faith begin to make a comeback. A life well lived for many is helped by a sense of higher moral purpose. Human beings still require a sense of the sacred.
Even if there is no God, the act of faith, the sense of purpose and the belief in the sacred have illuminating spillovers on the rest of us."

Although the stark polarisation between the believer and militant atheist seems to me unlikely to correspond to the reality (and the substitution of religion for faith in the opening sentence worthy of note), overall I think Hutton might be onto something.

But rather than keeping their heretic heads down whilst engaging in passive participation in the usual ceremonies, perhaps atheists need to depart from the traditional religious model and ideology of christmas, and fashion a new kind of sacred.

So when it's no longer about believing in Santa Claus, nor in Jesus Christ, what to fill the ostensible void with if not materialism?

Perhaps we can look to the traditional substitutes for religion championed by those with faith in a more tangible realm - socialism, humanism, historical inevitabilty... Or in terms of a focus which shifts from Humans to nature. Admittedly environmentalism doesn't sound very spiritual, and paganism, with its overtones of occultism & witchcraft, might likewise be a tough sell.

Hutton supports those making a case for "non-fundamentalist faith as a source of spiritual good, [which] must be tolerated" while "Dawkins-style militant atheism only widens hostility."

Tolerance is of course as essential for atheists as for any other kind of believers (Because as Hutton rightly points out, belief is not limited to belief in God). For some even, tolerance is not enough. But for those non-Christians among us who will be celebrating Christmas this year along religious lines, singing from the same hymn sheets as our more devout counterparts, where should we look for spiritual nourishment? The litany of secular greeting card concepts: peace, love, goodwill & so on, are surely key components of a secular faith.

But beyond this, perhaps we should endeavour to re-claim and re-brand the so-called "arrogance" of humanism, with its inherent capacity for irrational and boundless optimism - something just as basic and just as vital as belief in a higher being. Hope that is not embodied in the form of such a being, but rather in existence itself. Faith in our environment, in ourselves and in each other.

Going round again

2007-12-15T02:36:00.000+01:00

Upon re-reading some my recent and not so recent posts, it occurs to me that perhaps something of a disclaimer is in order, just to point out that you might have to adjust the levels of your inbuilt sarcasm detectors to "mental", if attempting to gleam any threads of coherence at all out of my fragmented ramblings.

So I turned on the news this morning, as one does the morning after say - a big football match or a national election, in order to find out "the score" as it were, with Bali.

But of course, you don't get the results of a footie match or a national election being announced as "well, actually, we really haven't got a clue about the outcome". Unless it's a Belgian national election of course. Anyway, I found this most dis-heartening. But of course, it's so much worse than dis-heartening.

I like the way the BBC have covered the conference so far, I have to say. Incidentally, I also approve of the way the BBC exposed Gordon Brown's late arrival at the Lisbon treaty signing for the spineless, petty gesture that it was (and even interviewed my best friend Mr. Nigel Farage, who did a very good impersonation of someone for whom the world has more or less just ended). But back to Bali - I think the way they juxtapose the reports on the suits at the conference with the picture of "just down the road" in the rice fields, where people's livelihoods (and lives) are at stake, and they fear for their futures but hey, what can you do, etc, helps to reinforce the real scandal of the whole process. I don't mean to sound like Al Gore - but the immorality of it. Of shirking on such heavy, heavy responsabilities, of treating it like just another diplomatic impasse that has to be negotiated around with words that are just a little bit more ambiguous in order to keep people happy (cf. the Lisbon treaty, on that note).

Studying the rhetoric of colonialism, which may well turn out to be my vocation in life such is the passion I've uncovered for it, or "cultural diplomacy" if you want to be euphemistic about it (and they generally do) has on so many occasions struck me as bearing disturbing similarities to the rhetoric we hear nowadays regarding the environment. Oh the implications.

And no, I have to disagree with my learned African Politics lecturer, much as I revere him and his enthusiasm for political outcomes in a made-up imaginary country called The Gambia, I personally don't think the word "discourse" is an empty term. In fact, such a suggestion smacks of someone who clearly doesn't understand (french) sociology, and probably doesn't respect it either, if they're going around making statements like that. Discourse, is crucial. Not in itself, but because it's symptomatic of underlying attitudes and conceptions. Yes, I definitely think so.
If you want an example of an empty term, try - everyone's favourite - "sustainable development". Nobody in the world thinks sustainable development is a bad thing. It's something we can all agree on, and as a result - means absolutely nothing. This discovery, made at an early stage of my "Environmental sociology 101" class, was the source of considerable disillusionment for me because I actually thought we were making some real progress in this direction.

"Protection" is another favourite, that crops up in both. And problematic, because although it sounds nice & benign, in some contexts protection can mean annexation, can mean isolation, can basically mean theft. Depriving people of their livelihoods on the basis of "environmental protection" might sound like a moral dilemma, but it shouldn't. It's an ingenius way of turning the problem on its head. Yes, of course the (over)developed nations should lead by example, they should step up to the plate and commit to binding targets that slash their emissions so developping countries can go about meeting decent living standards without too much pressure and strain. But then remind yourself, that these are the very same nations, who 200 years ago decided to pump all the resources from their colonies, in order to fund their grand industrial entreprise (not to mention their monuments and palaces...). And instantly, it's the likelihood, rather than the emissions, which are slashed.

Between Gordon Brown's pig-headedness, Bernard Kouchner's casual quasi-threats of war against Iran, and George Bush every living breath, you don't have to look very far to realise that we are not living in an era of solidarity. Fairness and altruism, are not part of the equation, let's be clear about it.

Although there's been such scope for optimism this month, what with the EU-Africa Summit, the Lisbon treaty ratification, and ground-breaking talks at Bali, hopes for a real global breakthrough just haven't materialised. The problem is, the approach to diplomacy in these forums is still the same old dusty one that's always been deployed.

Case in point - Lisbon. Those who supported the original EU constitution aren't happy because it's been twisted out of shape and watered down so much, and those who opposed it initally are hardly any more enthusiastic. As for the Eurocrats, it's almost as if they're embarrased, trying to sneak it under the radar, to scrape back some legitimacy, but almost doing themselves more harm in the process. But this is inevitable if you're trying to resurrect & repackage a defunct and much-maligned document. The prognosis of Bali, at its most optimistic, seems to be about regenerating the Kyoto protocol, in a new & improved format that we can all agree on. But it's the same strategy of attempting to "replace" a treaty that failed, and has lost all credibility.

Perhaps it's no surprise that, for all their professed noble intentions, the same kind of diplomacy just leads to attempts to reproduce the same kinds of agreements. Which are inevitably destined to suffer a similar fate, unless they're modified to be made more pallatable - to the point of rendering them irrelevant.

The lesson is, sometimes - if at first you don't succeed, perhaps it's time for a radically new approach.

2007-12-06T02:03:00.000+01:00

British primary school teacher arrested for naming teddy bear after prophet.

As news stories go, you couldn't ask for a better formula, or a more perfect cast...

The face of the well-intentioned noble european who sets out into darkest Africa seeking to bring education and light into the lives of those in need (stop me if you've heard this one before) and what does she get in return? Arrested, abused, and very nearly executed!

Happily, it's just a matter of Gordon Brown and his diplomats to the rescue and before you know it "common sense" has prevailed over extremism, and Ms Gibbons is, of course, on her way home within a matter of days.

And don't worry, it turns out Ms Gibbons is the gracious & forgiving type, and bears absolutely no hard feelings against the Sudanese or indeed Islam. Which is a damn sight more than they deserve. In fact, this mild, altruistic primary teacher who "wouldn't hurt a fly" sounds like an examplary individual in just about every respect, which of course makes the whole affair even more deplorable.

There's been many an indignant response to the claim from the Sudanese Embassy that the whole thing amounts to no more than "a storm in a teacup based on cultural misunderstandings", because we shouldn't be downplaying the event but instead taking it extremely seriously, despite exceptional and brief character of the whole affair. But the issue I want to address here is not about freedom of speech, religious law or whether or not 15 days in prison and/or 40 lashes for "insulting islam" is justified.

It's not so much the story itself that's objectionable, so much as the sheer amount of coverage it's been getting. And the way they've managed to use the incident to spark a "debate" about Islam.

The Sky News team has certainly been doing its bit, saying things like:

"There are going to be people who say "well this just proves what kind of a religion Islam really is..."
Are there? And are they going to be saying it on national television, or is that just you?

"Prominent religious leaders have all spoken out in unison to say that "British Islam" condemns this..."
Let's be clear about it - our own born & bred British muslims are one thing, the ones way over there in the axis of evil are quite another story. Why they should have bothered to speak out in the first place really doesn't at all seem obvious to me either.

I'm wary enough of the BBC but I absolutely loathe Sky News, it's the kind that had a camera fixed on the McCans front door for a week non-stop and calls it "breaking news". On that note, if you want a good critical & humorous perspective on TV news, I'll refer you to my hero Mr Brooker. Watching sky news doesn't so much supply information, as propose a partisan view of certain current events it has some vague notion of but really knows very little about, and tailors its scant information to adhere to the pre-conceived "plot" of the stories. If anything, it dis-informs.
I mean what is this story REALLY about?

It's just the kind of story we need to remind us all that there's dangerous extremist lunatics out there, that we should still be afraid and outraged by them - just in case we were getting rather too complacent about the state of the world and the global political consensus. And what's more, it also illustrates beautifully that our government has our best interests at heart, and will always fight our corner in the face of such trials. It's exactly the kind of fuel that threats of unilateral military action need in order to gain popular support and hey - Sudan rhymes with Iran, and everyone knows what they're up to.

Game on - nuclear annihilation.

This follows on quite nicely from my earlier discussion on sociology - that nothing above question or without an agenda of some sort.

This is what university in France taught me, and plenty of other things beside, but this is the central, fundamental key moment when something was clarified, something was lit up, and I felt as if I'd broken through a wall in my mind. Learning is normally a gradual, progressive exercice, happening over months and years, creeping too incrementally for you to realise, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it comes in a flash. In France I was brutally & suddenly confronted to the harsh reality that even the most fundamental values and foundations, the ones we build everything else upon, the ones that shape us, are the result of a struggle, an agenda, they are part of a dominant paradigm - just one of an infinity of others. And what's more - it's all imaginary. This rhetoric, this nationalism, this so-called clash of civilisations, these "revendications a l'universel" - are all riddled with implicit conceptions, that need to be dissected and taken out of context and looked at in an altogether new light and it's like performing self-dissection, and in this way it's inevitably limited, because we can only extract to a certain point... a bit like the paradox of exploring the unconscious, yet essential in order to understand the world, not understand as in comprehend the News, but REALLY understand.

We look at the problems in the world today, in society - problems like racism, globalisation, immigration, xenophobia, descrimination, intolerance, religious fundamentalism, conflict, nationalism, genocide, sectarian violence, but these are all symptons. And this is why it's so difficult to make sense of them, without seeing beyond, without looking to the underlying causes - to the roots.

In fact, it's not so much about what's there - as what isn't. As what ISN'T on the news, what the politicans AREN'T talking about, what is ommitted. As Adam Hochschild argues, our world today is "shaped far less by what we celebrate & mythologise than by the painful events we try to forget" - Leopold's Congo being one example, but that's another story...

Politics vs. Sociology

2007-12-05T00:52:00.000+01:00

Week after week, I am amazed at the disparity in terms of brain cell count (or to be more diplomatic - critical faculties) between the two disciplines my degree course uncomfortably straddles.

Political science - or, the 4 hours a week when I feel the overpowering urge to drop out of college, because I clearly haven't a prayer. I have no idea where these kids come from, or more to the point where their knowledge, poise and capacity to string words together to make beautifully incisive, pertinent & eloquent statements comes from.

Sociology - or, the 4 hours a week when I feel the overpowering urge to drop out of college because I'm surrounded by intolerable half-wits. There's a few people in particular, who've incurred my wrath with their inane contributions. I don't name names of course, but I will spout quotes. Especially gems such as:

"But isn't, like, nature, like, too big to manage? I mean - the Nile is, like, huge."

Yes. You're not wrong, the Nile is, effectively, huge. And so is the Amazon, for that matter!
...was the altogether too forgiving response of our docile lecturer. No sharp-tongued lashing to the tune of "Good God, the Nile might well be somewhat on the large side, but have you even stopped to consider, for one second, the sheer scale of the entire human industrial entreprise you STUPID CHILD."

The Irony (with a capital), as I see it, is the remarkable lack of correlation between these (admittedly anecdotal) observations, and the nature and demands of the disciplines themselves. Or at least, the disciplines as taught by our esteemed, now-ranked-top-53-in-the-world-according-to-the-Times, thank you very much mr Provost, educational institution - Trinity college.

Political science, in essence, once you've nailed down a decent research question, really boils down to applying rigorous methodolgy, quantifying "stuff", totting up data - a monkey could do it.
Sociology, on the other hand, as I learned last year in France (as opposed to how I was taught it for the two years prior) is complex beyond imagination. It's a horrifying mess of historical legacies, underlying socio-economic factors and, worst of all - individual motivations. But more than that - it effectively requires the ability to see the invisible, to posess real mastery in terms of critical thought, to be able to extrapolate the underlying values & assumptions which you don't see because you're not MEANT to see them, because you've been conditioned not to, and because everything has been engineered precisely so you won't see them, so you'll be without any shred of doubt that some things just are neutral, natural, eternal & universal - that some things just "are". When really, they just aren't. At all. Or at least, who says they are? Because somebody is or has, that much is certain.

And this is what so irritates me about the failure of some to take sociology seriously (justified in some respects - it's ok to be a joker in a joker's course such as "Gender & popular culture" of course, in fact it's almost impossible not to be, but we all know how I feel about that one). I didn't take it seriously, until I was faced with the revelation, that nothing is beyond question, or goes without saying (something I should have realised well before as it had been heavily hinted at in a remarkably prescient and important course the IB involves - Theory of knowledge).

When I say my degree course straddles two disciplines uncomfortably - this is not limited to the purely academic endeavours and the disparities between them. As this term has gone on, I've come to realise that the two disciplines correspond to two different, contradictory world views of my own.

In sociology, I find myself in staunch support of those who advocate a new form of citizenship, of greater participation, of realising democracy - in order to acheive environmental justice, perhaps as part of a pragmatic or "real" world approach to concretising that ubiqutous & slippery concept of sustainable development.

In political science, on the other hand, I adhere to Platonic view that really, we'd all be better off if we scrapped democracy and put in place a merit-based system where competent people are in charge, and make all the decisions on behalf of "the masses". I won't shy away from the terms "despotism" and "autocracy", because I'm well aware that's what it amounts to. But perhaps this model is limited to the theoretical, notional world of ideas, of the endless philosophical dialectic that ties itself in knots in search of the elusive utopia.

What fundamentally differs here is a judgement on the capacity of human beings to make intelligent decisions for themselves, to run their own lives, and just how much power & influence should be allocated to them accordingly.

And yet somehow, my appraisal of this capacity (ie. in sociology - considerable, in politics - zero) is curiously inversed to my experience, in terms of the scholars of both schools.

Obituary

2007-11-30T00:14:00.000+01:00

Central Societies Committee treasurer Joe O'Gorman writes:

"Many of you will be saddened to learn that Matteo Matubara died on November 18th. He had been becoming increasingly frail over the past few months and it was obvious to all who knew him that he was not long for this world. He was the last of a number of eccentrics who pottered about College over the years whose only real link to the place is the most important: they were known by generations of students for whom, in many ways, they formed a nostalgic link with their time in College."

Matubara, or "Mat the Jap" as he was affectionately known by the student body at large, was indeed one of the more renowned & improbable Trinity personalities. He was the subject for all manner of outlandish rumours, stories and mythology as to where he came from, and why he inhabited the college as he did, wandering the corridors and cobblestones of Trinity, of which I heard only a few. These stories were passed around over the years, probably greatly distorted in the process, stemming from the general intrigue for such an idiosyncratic character, at once ubiqutous and elusive. Among the students he inspired sentiments of fear, mockery, curiosity, bemusement, indignance and affection. For my part, I now realise I'll probably never know the real story of Mat the Jap, but no doubt that will remain part of the mystery and charm that he will be forever associated with in my mind, indeed a nostalgic link with my days in College - a symbol of those years, and of Trinity itself.

2007-11-27T18:50:00.000+01:00

If you think you're feeling stressed at the moment, spare a thought for the king of Belgium. There was scarcely a whisper about Albert II's visit to Trinity earlier this month. In fact, the Belgian flag fluttering discretely alongside the tricolour above front square provided one of the only clues as to the dignitary's fleeting presence, as well as a cordoned off area and a few bored looking guards hanging around. Keeping a low profile might well be desirable whilst he recovers from recent surgery following an injury. Happening to be the head of a State that has been without a government for over 5 months now and appears to be in danger of disintegration might also be affecting his morale.

Of course, there is a temptation to overstate the extent of the "political crisis" facing Belgium at the moment. There is no doubt that the Belgian system is, and always has been, marked by a great degree of complexity. It's ability to function despite the cross-cutting divisions, both linguistic and political, is a testament to the robust efficiency of the administration, but also to the efforts of co-operation which until now, have always carried it through despite the considerable structural obstacles. Flanders and Wallonia have always co-existed as regions with a fairly advanced degree of autonomy, but in recent times seem to have become increasingly isolated from one another.

How they have succeeded in remaining united within the same State thus far is an enigma that Flemish professor Rik Torfs gave some insight into when he appeared on a British radio programme recently, expounding the uniquely Belgian brand of "weak nationalism" - where one succeeds in feeling a sense of belonging to a nation without needing to feel proud of it.
"Why should you be proud of your own identity?" he scoffed, "I am a man, and I'm not proud of it; I am a Belgian, and I'm not proud of it."

Words to be heralded as the voice of reason by those stateless drifters among us for whom the concepts of nationalism and patriotism alike are entirely foreign (pun half intended). Indeed, why can't we be content to be part of a nation, without needing to feel proud of it aswell, and without it necessarily alienating us from others. That isn't to say that a healthy measure of patriotic fervour isn't entirely tolerable and even desirable. Where would we be without the kind of stereotypes that inspire taunts at international football matches, politically incorrect jokes and the scathing commentaries that always accompany the Eurovision song contest.
However, proclaiming the success of the Belgian model could be seen as tempting fate given the precarious state of the Belgian national adminstration at the moment, with its non-existant government.

Lack of nationalism means Belgians appear far more inclined than many of their European counterparts to transfer their sense of attachment either upwards (to the supranational EU, essentially) or downwards (to their regions and local communities), indicating that perhaps this same sense of geographical and cultural identity still exists, but merely operates at different levels than traditional, straighforward nationalism. Certainly we have seen a rise in "regionalism" as an alternative to nationalism. Sub-national patriotic sentiment has flourished as a result of the ongoing process of regionalisation, including a law introduced fifteen years ago abandoning the compulsory teaching of both languages to all Belgian schoolchildren. As a result a new generation has grown up within the context of a state of quasi-apartheid. The current state of deadlock is then perhaps due, not so much to the playful rivalry, to xenophobia or even occasional outright hostility. They have simply had enough of each other. The prospective next prime minister Yves Leterme's insinuations about the Walloons have not gone down well, but he is merely voicing what so many Flemish have been muttering amongst themselves for years, disgruntlement that appears to have gathered sufficient momentum as to throw a spanner in the works the political machinery.

Charting these developments leads to some rather sobering conclusions. The evidence would appear to suggest that a nation without a strong sense of nationalism is doomed to fail, or at least, is in danger of coming perilously close. Perhaps this is why the politicians of countries that appear to be overly "fragmented" immediately call for reflection and a dialogue on the state of its national identity. If the ties that bind seem to be loosening, a national consensus on identity might help a country pull itself together. If in doubt - get the flags out. This seems to be the strategy of UK Secretary for Justice Jack Straw who has been extolling the virtues of "pride" in one's country as a force for cohesion. And if the power of this imaginary concept is such that it really can make or break a country, Belgium seems to be in real trouble.

It seems to me that no amount of artificial government-sponsored national pride pushing is going to resolve the issues of social fragmentation in Britain. Conversely, Belgium's chances of survival aren't so bleak, especially when you consider what the seperatists are up against. The fate of the Euro-bubble of Brussels, for one thing, seems an irresolvable connundrum. Officially bilingual, Brussels is now so overun with expats as to have turned the place into a veritable tower of babel, virtually annihilating any trace of authentic identity it may once have had in the process. In fact the only conceivable option might be for it to become an administrative city-state housing the European institutions and various other international organisations whose headquarters might require a "neutral" seat in the interests of fairness and good diplomacy.

Thus, Belgium's saving grace might lie in the fact that the sheer volume of upheaval threatened by a split might well outweigh that of the dissent. The notorious bureaucracy so loathed by all may well turn out to be a Godsend in so far as preserving the status quo goes. This, along with high standards of living and general overall contentment among the population combine to make Belgium a most inhospitable environment for a revolution.

The Great Green experiment - an update

2007-10-11T23:09:00.000+02:00

Last saturday, october 6th, the Irish Green Party held a special party conference in Dublin. A sort of "where we're at" explanatory session, coupled with a "where to now?" element of inviting feedback from the party ranks and membership.

Before the rest of the day's business (which included workshops, questions and answers, and hustings for the party chair position, Cathaoirleach), the conference was opened by a series of short, sharp & to-the-point speeches by some of the "key people" in the Party. In my not so diligent notes I collected a variety of soundbites from these speeches, some more inspiring than others but all interesting in that each speaker set their own tone, employed their own particular rhetoric to push whatever message it was they felt most appropriate for what was really the first confrontation with the party membership since the election debacle, the controversial but unprecedented and exhilirating move to enter into government. As a result - a lot of tough punters to be won over, some work to be done in terms of rallying the troops, defending a decision which, despite the firm majority of 86.5% in favour, divided the party in no small way.

Mary White, TD, defended the move with no apologies and in no uncertain terms, calling it "progress" whilst lamenting the futility of "ideas without power". "Carpe Diem", she reminded us, "we have seized the day... We have abandoned the certainties of opposition" and a good thing too, for if we hadn't, "we should not call ourselves a political party, but a lobby group..." and finishing with a pointed flourish - "united we stand".

Dónall Geoghegan spoke briefly to emphasise the "educational job" we have, as well as to point out that the link between transport development and climate change cannot be ignored. Well, yes and no.

Next up - Everyone's favourite, Trevor Sargent, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture - the first to qualify the good news with a reality check of sorts, mentioning that, with 6 vs. 78 in the Dail, there were inevitably going to be "an awful lot of bitter pills to swallow" (this essentially in response to the heckling from some disgruntled hardcore true-green members in the front row). What else did Trevor say? Ah yes, that food security is a huge concern and must be a priority, that Bali is going to be the big one in terms of a make-or-break radical campaign of action against climate change globally, and that all of us in the room better be growing our own fruit and veg (in a slightly patronising tone, with a hint of menace) because we wouldn't want to be seen to be telling the general public to do it if our own members aren't leading by example, now would we? Also - forget intercultural dialogue, turns out 2008 is the year of the Potato, which for Ireland is, of course, a seriously big deal.

The ubiquitous John Gormley, party Leader & Minister of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, spoke next. Firstly to denounce what he described as the excessive "negativity" in the room he was sensing, and then, presumably in an attempt to turn things around, embarked on a lyrical exaltation of our acheivements and their significance. "We have stepped up to the plate.... displayed leadership and courage", and in slightly plainer terms, in case anyone was still unconvinced, "we a doing a good job! We have delivered and we will continue to deliver!" followed by a litany of ways in which we have and are delivering, e.g. green paper on local reforms, etc.

So while Mary celebrated the political advances, Trevor put it all into perspective, and JG lavished on the majestic terms, Eamon Ryan, Minister of the Department of Communications; Energy and Natural Resources, brought things back to basics, to fundamentals.

In a bit of a Gordon Brown-style autobiographical anecdote, he mentioned a particular time in his schoolboy days when he suddenly came to understand the complexity of the world, the "web of life", that the earth is "breathing, it has flows, its own regulatory system..." etc. He described this epiphany as a great "moment of clarity" and if anyone sitting in the audience needed to be reminded why they were here, I think his approach provided this most succinctly, most elegantly and in the most fundamental of terms.

For me, it was not an answer to a question I had been asking myself explicitly, but a moment of realisation. Or rather, a further step in a process of realisation that has been ongoing ever since I first joined the Young Greens on my university campus 3 years ago this month.

Bringing things back to our role, our place in government, Ryan alluded to the lefty bandit-style of politics and view of social justice, that consists of "taking power to give power back". An end to be acheived not through "Revolution, but parliamentary democracy" - something that was later contested during the ensuing debates, but obviously we have not joined a government so as we can subsequently overthrow it. We are now officially playing the game.

All in all it was a day marked by criticism and acclaim. Overshadowing the jubilant mood of the coalition honeymoon were the recent attacks from Labour (The Greens are refusing to take responsibility for anything), the jibes from the socialist workers camp (the Greens have sold out and gone back on everything they ever stood for) and indeed the fierce condemnations from the rank & file, Cllr Chris O'Leary, for example, seemed to speak for all the unhappy grassroots members, who see the party morphing into something quite different, and don't like it one bit.

Despite the bitter pills being forced down their throats however, John G & co did manage to turn things around, and the angry mob were soothed and pacified by their reassuring words, their slick discourse and "cute" demeanour. Looks like they really have all turned into excellent politicians, for better or worse.
The accusation of "selling out" is a tricky one, and one which I fear will not go away, and it's so sad that the majority and the most virulent of attacks seem to be coming from other left-wing parties or groups. But I suppose that's rivalry, and indeed that's politics, the way it always will be - no matter who you vote for, somehow the government always gets in.

Nevertheless. This is now a gouvernment of which at least 6 members know the value of a good, deep breath of fresh air.

We are not made of sugar

2007-09-11T00:02:00.000+02:00

Clockwise from top - The Czech, the Armenian, the Romanian, the Macedonian and the Albanian whom, much to my distress, I bid farewell to in the very early hours of yesterday morning as we all went or seperate ways from Krakow. This, after having spent a week setting the world to rights with regards to the question of ethnic minorities and many other matters besides, in accordance with the Young Greens doctrine, along with participants from such places as Turkey, Bosnia, Malta, Ukraine & Georgia.

I was intrigued to meet all the faces behind the lengthy, complicated names I'd been drafting visa letters for, but I have to say, I never suspected to have my expectations exceeded to such an extent.

Thank you to the best bunch of politically incorrect neo-degenerates I've ever had the privelege to encounter. For everything you taught me and the countless times you made me laugh. I feel as if my heart has shifted East, and soon hopefully, so will the rest of me.

2007-07-30T13:58:00.000+02:00

For those who might not be aware, 2006 was the year of worker mobility.
2008 will be the year of intercultural dialogue.
2007 would appear entirely void of symbolic significance - oh, except that it marks 40 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality, in the UK.

In light of this, it seems rather fitting that one of my main tasks at the FYEG office last week was to draft and edit a letter to the Croatian prime minister, in the aftermath of the Zagreb Pride march, some weeks ago. The letter in full has been published here, and the European Green Party have also issued a press release about it on their website.

Zagreb is the most recent in a string of incidents related to Gay Pride events in Eastern and South Eastern Europe over the past few months. Marches have taken place in Moscow, Warsaw, Riga, Zagreb, etc - all with varying degrees of counter-demonstration and reactions of varying hostility. None, however, have been entirely without violence, abuse. This coupled with the implicit nods from the gouvernment who refuse to actually call the attacks hate crimes is a worrying state of affairs, especially in countries that are now full EU members.

My "boss" Judith Verweijen, office coordinator of FYEG has attended a number of marches in areas such as these, and I'd recommend a look at her blog if you're interested in a good description of the kind of climate that accompanies such events, it's quite an eye-opening evaluation, detailling, for instance, how protestors were often escorted out of the city after the march for fear "releasing" them back into the public way would inevitably endanger their lives.

At this stage, very early stage of acceptance, it is not a question of sexual preference, it is first and foremost a fundamentally political issue. Rights are rights, and oppression is oppression, whomsoever is directly concerned and targeted, because where it exists, it touches everything, it is pervasive of all areas of life, and it dictates & sets a very distinct tone and climate. This is why solidarity is so important, whether with minorities, women, the handicapped, under-priveleged, any particular race or religion... it's not fighting someone else's fight, it's fighting your own because making a stand against discrimination is an action in its own right and has far wider implications than any one small segment of society's battle. As the final part of our letter stresses in no uncertain terms...

We sincerely hope that you share our profound conviction that there can be no freedom where people, especially those belonging to vulnerable minorities, exist in conditions of injustice, intolerance and fear... Therefore, we urge you, Mr. Prime Minister, and the Croatian government to firmly and publicly condemn the homophobic attacks at and after Zagreb PRIDE and to urgently take the necessary measures to promote the full respect of the inalienable European values of equality, non discrimination, and freedom of expression throughout Croatian society.

And its such an important point for the Greens especially because it hangs on all those core issues, equality, freedom, civil liberties, dignity, respect - and it's about shifting paradigms and changing mindsets and if anyone is aware of how important and how feasible that is, it's the Greens, because being so progressive is what sets them apart from all the other political "families".

It's true. In glorious Western Europe we do now have widepsread tolerance framed in law, and many other nations are following suit. But complacency is enemy number one, and you can still detect little things that
aren't right. Like Chris Moyles using "Gay" as an insult, to 5 million listeners at 7AM in the morning. And nobody is more aware of these little things, than the people who are most entitled to feel aggrieved by them - the gay demographic.

Philip Hensher of The Independent writes: "It used to be commonplace to read newspaper articles extolling the virtues of the gay best friend for the girl about town who wants to choose some new cushions. Now that
it has dawned on even the most slow-witted of lady columnists how very offensive that is, its been replaced by articles asking what there is for gay people to complain about how they've got everything they ever asked for."
Clearly these columnists (I'll leave aside the misogynistic overtones) have never been to a Gay Pride March in the Balkans. Sometimes it is an honest lack of knowledge about how immense the disparity is between countries when it comes to same-sex policy.

Or sometimes it's just a new, perhaps even more malevolent kind of homophobia. Like the perfectly vile Alain Soral, who is definitely top 5 on my hit list at the moment, asking one gay man what his problem was because "You would love to think that there's opposition, but the truth is - nobody has a problem with you anymore" and calling it a "faux debat" (false debate). Not only is it flagrantly untrue, it's obscenely offensive. WHO IS HE to say it, anyway?!

Some of these MEPs are good at that as well, as in a recent debate on Homophobia at the in Strasbourg, a certain Dutch female MEP rose to give an impassioned tirade against those in the chamber who felt that homophobia shouldn't be discussed about in the European Parliament plenary. "You can be for or against," she said, "But don't tell us we're not allowed to talk about this - do not distort the debate!"

Everybody loves a circus...

2007-07-27T15:04:00.000+02:00

Next week marks the tearful farewell to the European Parliament, as my second internship draws to a close. From Socialists in Strasbourg to Greens in Brussels, the experience has been entirely enriching, if not entirely consistent. (NB. in case anyone feels as if they've missed something, a blog entry giving my reasons for my treachery is currently in the works, as I try to think of enough reasons to justify myself).

Given that I'm now no longer dependant upon the Parliament's presence in Strasbourg for a job, I'm at last free of any vested interets and able to take a more impartial, or critical, view on the matter. But I can only imagine the fallout following Sarkozy shooting down the by now rather formidable attempts to reform the double-seat structure of the EP and the monthly trek backwards & forwards it entails (the "travelling circus" as its been endearingly dubbed). The One Seat campaign, has gathered an impressive million+ signatures, MEPs themselves are generally rather influential people but this something that they just can't seem to budge. And as we know, Sarkozy is not one for beating around the bush, he doesn't say ask me later, he just says No. Never. Not now, not in a million years. cf. Turkish accession, for exemple. So much for the bold reformer, but he certainly has a knack for bold outright rejection. No no no. Veto veto veto.

And yet, there had been high hopes, hopeful whispers that Sarkozy, for all his sins, was a progressive-thinker, a moderniser, in favour of moving forward. In favour, even, of efficiency, time-saving, and good old-fashioned common sense. But of course it wasn't long before those aspirations bit the dust, and Sarkozy went as far as reaffirming the symbolic status of Strasbourg - of franco-german reconciliation, of European unity. I didn't write down the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of: discussing Strasbourg would amount to discussing the very basis of Europe - the precarious equilibria on which it is founded. "L'Europe - ca ne se discute pas." We won't mention of course, the arrogance and inaccuracy of talking about "Europe" as a whole, as opposed to the EU.

I find it difficult to grasp what exactly he's refering to, what this immobile, unchanging, eternal foundation consists of, in his eyes. If he is refering to the nature of the founding agreement, the ideas on which Political Europe was built in its very early stages, what are we basing ourselves on, exactly? A strictly economic mutually beneficial agreement between 6 small nations on matters relating solely to coal and steel production? Oh the unbridled idealism!

Or perhaps he's referring to more recent history, which if anything shows just how malleable & transient the EU structures are, if you take a look at all the changes, structural reforms, upheaval, enlargement, twists & turns over the past 10 to 20 years.

This all would seem to suggest that the foundations, like the borders, are entirely up the discussion, in fact, what is the EU if not one long discussion, negotiation, compromise, to claim it as static at the base is as nonsensical as suggesting the political consensus in general is. When has anything political ever be set in stone, least of all something in constant evolution, progressing by trial & error, like the european project.

Sarkozy can call the shots on his own turf, and we've already seen he isn't shy about doing so. But the EU forum necessitates a little more "give" even among the big players. Now that my internship contract has been safely brought to term, I'm quite happy to deplore the Strasbourg Circus like the rest of them. The arguments generally fall into 3 main categories:

The cost issue - tax payers money argument costing them 200million euro a year alledgedly
The environmental and carbon footprint issue
The plain hassle & bother issue

I suspect the majority of the dissenting voices are spurred on in their crusade by the sheer inconvenience inccured, while the Greens highlight the carbon footprint aspect. It distresses them a lot, firstly because of the C02 munching involved, but also because of the hypocrisy - the EU presents itself as a leader in envrionmental policy but fails to lead by example.

And it's not all a lot of hot air, either. Numerous reports have been published stating exact facts and figures about energy consumption, of which this one by the Greens-EFA group appears to be the most concise, compact and comprehensive

For me the issue is less than clear-cut. Yes the waste of energy is a scandal, but it's a scandal that's been going on for a while now, so a lot of people have gotten used to it. Also, having just finished my erasmus year in Strasbourg, I have to say the town does now occupy a special place in my heart, which prevents me from dismissing the whole idea as entirely stupid. And God knows what we'd do with that awful building... european college, museum, science park, circus anyone?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, or at least - we should

2007-07-15T00:44:00.000+02:00

You'd be forgiven, after last week, for suffering from a touch of "concerts for a cause" fatigue, what with the Princess Diana concert so closely followed by Live Earth, and the echo of Live 8 still ringing in the not so distant past.

With Live Earth, along with such trendy campaigns as MTV Switch, Pop culture meets environmentalism, in much the same way as it met poverty during Live 8 in 2005, just as it had two decades before. Good intentions, I think we can safely assme, I'm just not quite convinced about their methods yet.

The main focus appears to be raising awareness, rather than asking outright for donations. Clearly, the music industry believes it has a special & unique power for good, that it can use at will to alter the public consciousness, to stir up outrage and outcry, to summon support, or in some cases dissent. But ultimately, in the case of live 8 for example, it's poverty-fighting organisations like Oxfam & others who put in the groundwork, who actually get food to people who are starving, who actually ACT rather than wallow in their heightened state of musically-inspired awareness. And to do that, they need the funds, whether from private donations or public gouvernment spending money. That's how it works. In theory.

But climate change isn't a charity. It's a problem of a radically different nature and as such merits a good deal of reflection on how it should be tackled most effectively. Yes awarenesss needs to be raised, yes it needs a higher profile, and yes hearts and minds do need to be won. But the similarities end there.

This is not a problem that money can solve. Poverty, if in theory rather than in practice, is. Even if it's not sustainable to try to solve it in the way the Western world currently is, and even if the systems in place are inherently flawed and unfair. It does not, technically, necessitate a complete overhaul of our industry, of our conception of growth and progress, of our daily household & personal habits. Maybe it should, but no earthly force is going to bring about that transformation. In the case of Global warming, perhaps one just might.

Trevor Nelson, one of the presenters, said it was nice to have someone more informal than Al Gore, in his suit and tie, pushing the message of environmentalism. But are they really? Isn't this another cause? Like Diana gig, only days before, and all of live8, celebrities latch onto a cause brought to the forefront of public consciousness – they don't put it there! and the vast majority of them it seems, are also completely incapable of talking about the subject in any kind of remotely articulate terms. And they're hardly about to convince people of anything if they don't even appear to know why they're there. And even if they did, I wouldn't hold my breath.

I'm not saying their intentions aren't golden, or that their hearts aren't in the right places, I'm just really not convinced that this is the way to save the planet.

And it doesn't really impress me either, to see Russel Brand making sarcastic cracks about feeding baby rhinos. Surely one of the most basic of token efforts made by these "celebrities" ought to be to take the whole thing seriously at least, especially given the lack of consensus (political, not scientific) on the subject.

That's not to say of course, that one can't take a light-hearted approach, or have a sense of humour about it all. Those science twins managed that pretty well:

"Skeptics say global warming is being caused by... The SUN
Answer: Get rid of the sun.
Aviation is responsible for much of the CO2 emissions
but you don't care - because holidays are nice.
Cars are responsible for pollution and also CO2 emissions
but you don't care - because public transport is for poor people.
Etc."

Especially with a question that potentially involves so much science, there's nothing wrong with bringing it back to basics, making sense of it all, and putting it in rational terms. Surely this format is the most effective way of changing attitudes and changing habits, when seeking to adress "the general public".

But beyond eliciting a few laughs with ironic quips, how do you actually entice them into actually doing anything, in concrete terms? To me it seems the most straightforward approach is to translate these large principles into actions and rationalise those actions in terms that make them appear self-evident. Everyone's come across these lists of things you can do to play your part, and so here's my selection, complete with what's in it for you.

Some Golden rules...

- switch the light off – pay less on your electricity bill
- print on both sides – less to be carried around
- with as many pages as you can possibly squint to read on one sheet – less ink and paper gets used up, less frequently needs replacing
- if the windows are open, the heating should be off – should stop you wasting money on heating bill
- unless the heat is completely unbearable, give air conditioning a miss – you won't get an AC cold, and you'll acclimatise much quicker
- sack the tumble dryer - ruins your clothes, surely everybody knows that?
- recycle, obviously – well there's just no excuse not to in this day and age, is there?
- boycott stuff with too much packaging (i.e. if you can buy loose fruit vs. in a package, you know which to go for) – less trash, always agreeable
- always remember to bring your trusty reusable bag out shopping – chance to show off how trendy/well-travelled/politically active you are, depending on your choice of bag
- cut down the carbon miles, buy local – shopping at markets is a soul-restoring exercice
- buy fairtrade – generally lovely, great quality stuff
- support companies that are making an effort, boycott the ones that clearly aren't – gives you a (misplaced) feeling of control and influence
- boycott the evil multinationals - it might not save the whales but it'll help you sleep at night, and probably avoid obseity as well
- turn the red light off (i.e. don't leave appliances on standby) – again, will help you sleep at night, those things are annoying...
- don't rush to flush if it's just a... you know the rest – erm...
- take the bus, tram, bike or walk – people-watching. enough said. often quicker and cheaper, too. and the latter two are much healthier.
- stop moaning about wind farms – they're lovely, end of.
- and finally, the one I almost can't bring myself to say... try not to fly, unless it's completely necessary – sorry, no benefits. or redeeming aspects. at all. whatsoever. apparently you can meet interesting people on long gruelling international bus journeys, but I'm far from convinced.

What is the blatant correlation that emerges? Environmentally-friendly equals enhanced quality of life, equals more ethical work practices, often equals greater social justice, almost always equals simply a more humane way of living. For that, we first need to push away the dodgy alternative we're being fed, and maybe that requires something of a small revolution.

And who should start that revolution? Answer – the people who usually start revolutions. Leaders, to Politicians. The ones to come, rather than the ones we have. Those who acknowledge the problem, who are informed about it, and most importantly who are willing and brave enough to begin the trend that others will follow – Taking personal responsibility for our actions. This is critical – in the context of Globalisation and I mean that in the sense of the emergence of problems on a global scale. Inescapably, it implies a new conception of multilateral negotiating between states, a new conception of cooperation.

When the planet is under threat, it can no longer be each nation for themselves. Rather it has to be about multilateralism, unity and shared responsibility. I know the word makes me sound like an old lefty Trot but solidarity. No longer an aspiration, it may well turn out to be a precondition of the preservation of our species. And shame on those nations who appear still not to have grasped this obvious transformation, who it appears, want to push backwards the precarious progress that has been made thus far – naming no names Sweden with its threatening noises about leaving the EU, or Britain with its blunt refusals to make any concessions or sacrifices to anyone, ever. But why should they, I mean they used to rule over a third of the world. Try reminding the population of that fact, Gordon Brown, when they're submerged under water, and see how much of a useful consolation it is. Oh wait, most of them already are.

We don't need Madonna gyrating on stage yet again, what we do need is the triumph of common sense (I know, how many times in history has that occurred – the outlook is bleak from the get-go) and a general realisation of what we're up against. Realisation of the collective influence of consumers. It's not complex, in fact the message should be as simple as a slap in the face.
Get your priorities sorted - everybody wins.

Except those afflicted with a love of planes...

This might not cure you, but it's a step in the right direction.

Daydream believer

2007-07-09T01:16:00.000+02:00

Given that I'm now working full time at the European Parliament, rather than 3 days a month like I have been for most of the year, you might think I'd have no end of intellectually stimulating and politically cutting-edge tidbits to share with you. Not so.

I did to go a working group meeting (can't remember exactly what the name of the working group was, but it was mostly liberals so it was almost certainly something about rights of some sort) which the president of the EP Hans-gert Poettering had also been invited to, to talk about the place of religion in the EU (apparently a result of Poettering's recent invitation of the Pope to the EP which some members took exception to).

A couple of representatives of the British Humanist association were there aswell, which was very insightful. There's nothing like being presented with the voice of reason every once in a while. Would recommend a look at that, definitely.

Religion for me is a bit like patriotism in its various formes - flags and national anthems. In certain circumstances, and on certain special occasions, their appeal just proves too much to resist, especially where large groups of fellow beleivers/patriots are present, but common sense generally prevails in the end. I would rather describe myself as a fervent beleiver in the virtues of secularity, rather than a God-denier. Although I'm no agnostic. They're almost as bad as centrists (who as we well know, can barely make up their minds which side of bed to get out of in the morning).

One (religious) woman made an interesting point. Separation of church and state does is to be distinguished from the separation of religion and politics which, she claims, is impossible. Presumably because, we cannot remove religion from our politics, because it is one of the fundamental contributing factors that determines these politics, the convictions we hold. Unfortunately, I think she may be right.

But other than that brief foray into the murky world of the metaphysical, I've been mainly concerning myself with what I'll be missing this summer at all those festivals I won't be going to. So far, the investigation has been short of devastating. But here's one thing I came across which might be worth a look.

This is Kate Nash, 19, we'll call her baby Lily Allen. The similarities are rife. That strange gritty sweetness, an ethereal voice with a "butter wouldn't melt" melodious quality - but with words that are frankly rude, crude and unkind. Both representating the East London massive with their refreshingly sharp cockney diction, and both products of the Myspace revolution, not that that's anything to boast about (we'll refrain from recalling the horrors of Sandi Thom, also generated by the same cyber-process).

I can't speak for anything else she's done but as far as this track goes - I just can't stop playing it. I'm a big fan of believable lyrics, as in - sounding like they mean it. It's such a simple formula tune-wise, but it's the words, as if being sung through gritted teeth, and with a breaking voice, which manage to convey a kind of urgent sadness, of humble everyday existential angst. It doesn't have to be anything melodramatic, but songs that convey a particular mood and a feeling, especially an uncommon one are never without some merit. I dont have to identify with them either, just be drawn into it.

The fusion of a light-ish upbeat melody with lyrics that betray the tone entirely, that evoke implicitly or explicitly an acute sense of distress - is something we've encontered recently in James Morrisson's "Wonderful World" - ironic to the extreme. And in addition to the contrast, the words themselves. Tunes are one thing, but in my opinion one cannot over-emphasise the lasting impact of brilliant lyrics. Perhaps this is partly down to the reflection and acting that generally accompanies them, but I also think the language itself is pretty vital. Words that are continually a pleasure to hear and to say, that evoke and that surprise. Songs like "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse, most stuff by the Kaiser chiefs, and anything by Lily Allen - are made by their lyrics, and where the tunes are weak - are saved by them. Clever, witty, unexpected, often funny, & sometimes charming lyrics that roll off the tongue, that remind you that just occasionally music meets character, substance and story-telling.

And it doesn't have to be grandiose or momentous, moralising or philosophising, it can be about the most trivial of occurences as long as it strikes a chord with those who hear it. Songs that endure, for me, endure by their words and by their conviction.

Released

2007-07-07T01:20:00.000+02:00

Perhaps because I myself come from a dynasty of journalists that this issue struck a particular chord with me. There are no words to describe the sense relief and the admiration felt by myself and I'm sure a great many others, on july 4th, when Alan was first released after 114 days in captivity, and then went on to give a series of interviews and appearances on television and radio throughout the day. His release, like the man himself, comes as a glimmer of hope, amidst the turmoil of a situation that seems desperate and hopeless.

Le dernier mot

2007-07-07T00:57:00.000+02:00

Various things appear to have gotten in the way of maintaining this blog. Exams, goodbyes, the usual initial holiday slump of inactivity... But now that my existance has resumed what might considered as some sort of rhythm, there's chances I might get more disciplined about it.

Perhaps it was after May 6th, the day when everything officially became possible, that I was too disheartened to face the prospect of political commenting for a while.

As a result, this should have been posted a good 2 months ago, and although the ship may have sailed (or yacht, whatever it was) I feel as if I should just put it up, if only for posterity.

The French election was eye-opening indeed, in terms of shedding some light on the French attitude vis-a-vis politics in general, or rather the act or "civil duty" of casting ones vote. The notion of people making the trip to the polls expressely to turn in a blank ballot (or "voter blanc") gave me something of an insight as regards the rapport with democracy the French in general seem to have - a very healthy one. This was evem recognised by the Independant, following the 1st round, which listed a number reasons why the french election was reassuring (makes a nice change, the media admitting everything might actually be going ok, rather than milking a perceived "crisis of representation" for all it's worth).

I have to say when I did check the results on May 6th, after putting it off for as long as I could, my heart sank, more than I was expecting, given the honest expectations of the outcome which I think were shared by most. The awful tragedy of such a close-run election (not in relative terms perhaps but 47-53 sounds fairly well proportioned to me) - 16,8 million people are dissappointed, are unhappy, are discontent, are afraid, are insensed at the result, all the way down the political spectrum.

In the aftermath, place de la bastille is burning, and the looks of absolute terror and dread in the eyes of some of he Segolene supporters make my blood run cold. Personally, I've been exile for about 2 weeks now. But what about them?

Millions upon millions of people who weren't convinced by this notion of swapping la "culture du partage" for the "culture de la croissance", the triumph of firmness over compassion, who felt uneasy about the appointment of a minister for "immigration & national identity", who saw through the scare-mongering, who questionned his blunt veto to Turkey, who were worried by an attitude to immigration that regards it as welcoming "toute la misere du monde" into the french territory, who anticipated the dangers of "zero tolerance" policy, and who questioned the threat of deconstruction of the social model (which sarko explicitly referred to when he asserted that people ought to be living off the products of their own work, not aids & benefits, because before we can distribute we need to create "la richesse" - absent in France, according to Sarko, when, as Olivier Besancenot frequently reminded us - there has never been so much wealth in France). What about us?

And what about the absolute scandal of people who don't even live in France being able to vote, while so many people who do and are directly affected are disenfranchised and unable to.

I deplore the people who voted for Sarko because they share in his vision of how to reform French society, but most of all I deplore the people who voted for him, despite twinges of fear, of unease, despite the alarm bells ringing at the back of their minds, because they told themselves "he won't be gouverning alone". Those who, it appears, are willing to let the country go up in flames, for whom the appeal of good firm leadership proved just too much to resist.

And I'm not saying the French haven't got a clue, on the contrary I think they're remarkably
well-informed, remarkably "conscious" politically, mobilised and rational, and I wouldn't insult the intelligence of the vast majority by insinuating that those who voted for Sarkozy aren't completely aware of what he stood for, down to the very fine details.

Sarkozy keeps claiming the French people have voted for change, for "la rupture", despite his party being the one that's been in power for the last 5 years. But this is entirely consistent with the general contradiction that has been running through his campaign right from the start, in his slogan as in some of his frequently offensive and bizarre statements. My personal favourite is his touching assertion that "People who beleive are people who hope".

Well M. Sarkozy, I'm no beleiver but I have, on occasion, been known to hope. I think the best we can hope for now, is that things will essentially stay the same.

I'll leave you with the sombre reactions of Liberation...

"There is great disappointment after so much fervour, so much passion and so much hope in renewal. France has made a clear choice... Nicolas Sarkozy is a legitimate president... The other France will seek compensation in the parliamentary election. In the meantime, sick at heart, it ponders defeat intent on hope in spite of it all... This setback should rouse the forces of
imagination and modernization, that bring together daring and reality. For its
part, Liberation embarks upon this task from today. The values of competition
have won the day but the values of solidarity and justice remain."

Down to the wire

2007-05-05T19:40:00.000+02:00

As I'm sure you're all aware, tomorrow the French go out and vote their new head of State in, it's been extremely well covered in the international press actually, I was pleasantly surprised. After the "premier tour" the Independant devoted its front page to the result, along with a lengthy analysis.

Anyway, in the spirit of useless last-minute appeals... The situation at this stage is hardly straightforward from my perspective, especially in light of my earlier brush with unbridled idealism. I mean obviously we don't want that liberalist demagogue in power and condemn, in the strongest terms, anyone who supports him. The TSS (Tout sauf Sarkozy) message, being fiercely pushed by the Young Greens for example, and indeed the anti-liberal Left, does strike me as unfortunately negative, and really the TPS (Tous Pour Segolene) alternative ultimately seeking the same upshot, seems like a more appealing stance. This is why I'll share with you something I came across during the last Parliament session, circulated by French socialist MEP Catherine Trautmann, which I think lays out the case for Sego quite comprehensibly.

Les Européens pour Ségolène Royal

Nous, parlementaires européens, apportons notre soutien à Ségolène Royal, candidate à la présidence de la République Française pour les motifs suivants:

L'Europe a besoin de plus de démocratie et d'intégration politique. Nous ne voulons pas d'un mini traité européen négocié au sommet. Ségolène Royal s'engage à soumettre par référendum le texte du nouveau traité aux citoyens;
L’Europe a besoin de garantir son modèle social, de lutter contre la pauvreté et favoriser l'accès de tous à l'emploi et à la connaissance. Ségolène Royal s’engage en faveur de la cohésion sociale et territoriale;
L’Europe doit prendre la tête de la résistance au changement climatique. C’est une urgence planétaire. Ségolène Royal est une partenaire européenne crédible pour mettre en œuvre une politique de sobriété énergétique et favoriser les modes de transport les moins polluants;
L'Europe a besoin d'un monde multipolaire, plus sûr et plus solidaire. Ségolène Royal s'engage à soutenir le développement équitable des pays du Sud et à faire respecter le droit international;
L'Etat de droit, la démocratie et les droits de l'Homme sont au cœur des valeurs européennes. Ségolène Royal s'engage à lutter contre toutes les formes de violences et d'atteintes à la dignité humaine. Elle défend l'indépendance de la justice et l'Etat impartial. Avec elle, nous faisons le pari de l'intelligence collective des citoyens et de leur participation, en France et en Europe, pour faire progresser la vie des Européens.

Le moment de verité

2007-04-20T20:42:00.000+02:00

It was over the course of the various legs of my journey from Strasbourg to Dublin yesterday, that I finalised my position, albeit merely a theoretical one, with regards to the imminent premier tour of the french presidentiel election. It's a shame I haven't been able to comment more about it, which is mainly down to a lack of research on my part, something I belatedly attempted to remedy as I set off on my travels armed with a stack of lefty press and a lot of time to kill.

In the spirit of optimism, of not being strategic or playing the game, and approaching the premier tour without the spectre of the second overshadowing it, in a rather strange turn of events I've abandoned my affiliations, shallow as they are, with the Jeunes Socialistes in favour of a strange, distant & seldom-visited place, and where my fundamental beliefs truly lie - la gauche anti-libérale. As Politis laments however, we have not one candidate representing this camp, but three. I certainly don't know all there is to know about Marie-Georges Buffet, Olivier Besancenot, or José Bové, however based on that which I have learned, it's the latter, the alter-mondialiste, who gets my non-vote. A definition of voting which has been put forward in the past, and on which there appears to be consensus, although I compltely disagree with it, is the notion that voting is equivalent to, or signifies - giving an opinion. Personally I don't think voting, generally speaking, has anything to do with giving an opinion, rather with making a choice from a highly constrained range of options with a pre-determined spectrum, a compromise. But I suppose it depends what way you vote. Strategic voting, for Segolene in my case, would certainly have nothing to do with my opinions, or only a very little. Bové on the other hand, gets a little bit closer. A vote based on ideals, on aspirations, on hope.

In Politis, Bernard Langlois rationalises this "vote of conviction" (as opposed to the "useful vote") in the following terms:

"Ce candidat est celui qui exprime au plus prés ce que je crois? Je vote pour lui, même si je sais qu'il n'a aucune chance de figurer au second tour. C'est ainsi que je fais progresser les idées auxquelles je tiens, que j'apporte ma pierre a la construction d'une Cité moins ignoble que celle ou nous sommes contraints de vivre, que je donne une visibilité plus grande a une autre monde possible. N'est-ce pas se conduire de la façon la plus démocratique?"

After April 22nd, no doubt this small parenthesis of misplaced idealism will be brought to an abrupt close, and I'll be brought sharply back to the reality of the situation, back to strategy and playing´the game, in short - back to politics.

Unhappy Birthday

2007-03-24T20:44:00.000+01:00

It may not quite top the list, but when it comes to things I really don't feel like thinking or talking about, Iraq is definitely up there.

I've just had it up to here with it.

I'd had it up to here with Iraq days after it began, when gigs were getting cancelled, shortly before the whole world went mental. A grossly unsatisfactory situation redeemed only by the novelty of being able to throw the word "war" around in a current context. And the obscene flippancy isn't quite so lost on me today.

So I did sit through that special edition of question time, on the occasion of the fourth anniversary, and listened to the whole thing. Only just. It featured, of course, the token pro-war american diplomat, the fiercely anti-war Tony Benn, some idiot from the conservative party, and the former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, a less obvious choice perhaps, but I felt she spoke the most sense out of any of them. Tony Benn is of course my hero for life, I've heard him speak in person at a conference I went to last year, and it was fantastically inspiring, however in this situation his rhetoric was just a bit too caricatured I felt, and instead of being involved in the argument most of the panel (especially the yank) just ignored him.

Even more interesting, however, and more harrowing also, was the input of the audience, which included iraqis, people of other middle-eastern nationalities, and people who's lost friends and relatives in the war such as one woman whose son was killed while serving.

Her comment, "I'm proud of my son but ashamed of my gouvernment for sending him to Iraq," struck me as bizarre. This sounds like something an American would say. I'm not being funny, and I hate to generalise, but I remember after Lewinsky-gate americans saying things like "I feel ashamed of our president" as if he was a close relative or something, and it sounded odd to me then and still does now. English people, on the other hand, generally don't tend to feel ashamed of their politicians - they hammer them into the ground, they jump down their throats and are the first to condemn them, they don't stand beside them and accept partial responsability for their idiocy! Which, if you ask me, is a far healthier approach.

Isn't that the whole point behind the opposition, the anti-war coalitions, the mass demonstrations and the endless outrage - that are all summed up in the seminal dictum - Not in our name.

I don't think the Brits have any call to feel ashamed for the actions of their government, anymore than Iraqis do for the those of Saddam Hussein.

Why the association? Why the apologism? Whence the shared responsibility? To whom is this misguided loyalty felt to be owed and why? I am not "ashamed" of Tony Blair for supporting Bush and sending troops to Iraq, I'm not ashamed of Bertie Ahern and the Irish government for letting american planes land in Shannon, I'm not ashamed of the people who defend them, who advocate imperialistic regime change and who continue to justify the whole wretched process. I'm outraged and incensed by it. I was outraged 4 years ago, and I'm still outraged today.

Watch last Thursday's edition of Question Time

Tony Benn's Stop the War coalition

Because I will never have recommended it enough, Baghdad Burning.

Thanksgiving

2007-03-22T15:58:00.000+01:00

A gold star for the BBC for not being on a complete downer about the Treaty of Rome anniversary, & coming up with a list of ten things the EU has done for you. And one which, furthermore, professes to transcend from the europhile-eurosceptic bickerings, and stick to the cold, hard incontestable facts. So not only is it positive - it's positive and neutral! Surely not. Anyway, I won't list them all here for you, but here are my top 3, in descending order. If you look closely you might notice a theme running through it.

3. Easy travel "In the old days, travellers in Europe had to put up with different currencies, regular border crossings and customs checks, and even trains of different gauges... Now one currency, the euro, suffices for most European countries and border posts have been abandoned between the 15 countries that have implemented the Schengen accords"

2. Cheap Flights "Between 1992 and 2000 prices at the cheaper end of the market fell by 40%. At the same time, consumers benefited from a wider choice of both carriers and destinations, the number of routes linking EU member states increasing by nearly 50%"

1. Foreign Study "Thousands of students take part in foreign exchanges ever year under the EU's Erasmus programme. The programme helps students learn foreign language, gain experience of another culture, and profit from the host country's expertise in their field of study."

No surprises then, that I'm primarily grateful to the EU because it's the reason I've been to 8 countries so far this year (9 if you count Luxembourg, but who counts Luxembourg) and most of them more than once, extremely cheaply and with a minimum of currency, passport & security hassle. Because it's the reason I'm able to to do this Erasmus lark. And of course, because it puts money in in my bank account every month for the pleasure of faffing around the Parliament.

Cheers, the EU. Have a good one.

We'll talk about the protectionism, eurojargon & democratic deficit when the party's over.

I'm from Barcelona

2007-03-22T15:34:00.000+01:00

So mission Spain-averse reverse got off to a good start, Barcelona turns out to be surprisingly enchanting, and enchantingly surprising. Myself and Marg did all the usual required things one would expect, consumed inordinate amounts of tapas & sangria, visited the melting church & various other trippy bits & pieces of Gaudi architecture, & smoked inside excessively because we could, as well as some slightly less conventional things aswell, like drinking Starbucks coffee for breakfast by the port, and downing several rounds of baby guinnesses on St Paddy's night. I blame the taking of such cultural liberties on the her being a yank factor.

It's black & white Italian cinema fortnight at Odyssey, which I'm possibly even more excited about than I was during the Fin film or Gypsy themed sessions. On tuesday went to see "Ladri di Biciclette" with a small crew from my science-po de l'europe class, and tomorrow I'm hoping to get to "La Strada" because it just doesn't do never to have seen a Fellini film, does it?

Press release

2007-03-15T15:09:00.000+01:00

Rather eventful session this week, am now on first-name terms with all the security staff following an epic battle against bureacracy in order to get an expired pass renewed. Myself and Rafaele also interviewed Pierre Moscovici, which was rather traumatic as it involved getting to the apparently non-existant 12th floor of the tower, which is located in a parallel universe we were eventually able to find with the help of none other than Mr Anti-Europe himself & leader of the UK Europe-haters contingent - Nigel Farage, who was entirely amiable and extremely helpful, so my opinion of him has been radically reconsidered. Somewhat.

Anyway, a lot of things came up but the rest of it will have to wait as am in Barcelona ce weekend, attempting to stamp out the last remnants of my Anti-Span policy, which things like Dali, the institution of a Socialist gouvernment led by a valiant pro-European, and not hating the Spanish language nearly so much as I used to - have all contributed to gradually remedying.

As for that military coup I mentioned, the state of affairs appears to be even worse than I first thought, as calls for an early election & demonstrations of collective action, with protests leading impressive numbers out onto the streets to condemn Zapatero's political decisions and even his "illegitimate" regime, prove that it isn't just the officers who are grumbling. I suppose mobilisation is good thing in itself, even if they're mobilising in the wrong direction. Aie aie aie, non me gusta.

How will you spend yours?

2007-03-15T15:07:00.000+01:00

Normally I don't condone making fun of the EU, it's too easy a target, although I will share with you part of an article by Roger Boyes suggesting ways to celebrate the EU's 50th birthday on the 25th of March, just in case you were at a bit of a loss for ideas...

Organise a street party The families at number 25 and 27 will insist that it was all their idea and you have diluted the fun by inviting the whole street. Don’t forget to ask the Turkish family at No 72, then change your mind and ask for the invitation back. You can’t stop the Romanians from the council houses at the end of the road coming, though. Set a date for the party, then argue about the buffet until midnight the day before. Call it a success, whatever happens

Birthday song Gather the neighbours to sing Ode to Joy. In 40 languages. Simultaneously

Family fun Consult everybody about the sort of celebrations they want. If they don’t want your own favourites ask again until they wearily agree with you

Put out more flags Festoon the lampposts with flags of all EU nations. Under Flag Display Parity of Esteem regulation 24, section vi, paragraph 6a, all the flags must be regulation size. Only the Union Jack will adhere to this, however. None of the neighbours will take any notice of the rule. Take down the Union Jack after the Health and Safety regulation 6,124 deems it a hazard to birds. The other flags continue flying

The birthday cake Cut the cake into 27 pieces. Argue about who put what into it and who should get which slice until it goes stale. Eat it anyway. Complain about the extra bit the Jones’s took and ask who ate all the raisins

Celebrate peace Make a speech pointing out that no-one in the street has attacked a neighbour for 50 years. Try not to look at the nice couple who work at the Deutsche Bank as you say it

I think I'll be going for the third option.

Grow up, democracy

2007-03-15T14:21:00.000+01:00

Despite my general opinion of Piers Morgan as something of a Banker with a W, as they say, I have to admit I was very amused by the little anecdote he contributed to Question Time last thursday. Along the lines of, "I once had lunch with a Lord... he fell asleep into his soup" as if this clearly justifies the notion of an all-elected House of Lords, perhaps based on the argument that appointed Lords are inevitably a bunch of narcoleptics? Or just old, conservative and senile? I thought it was cash for honours and Blair cronies factor people found most offensive.

A certain MEP was this week the unfortunate victim of a rather caustic attack from one of the Lords, via the intermediary of a UKIP member, after merely making a few helpful suggestions about acheiving reform and improving democratic performance. He didn't take it too well. I would love to quote it, but it might get me into trouble. I'm terrible with sensitive information, like when my MEP goes "...if the Press gets hold of this all hell will break loose." Which is really the wrong thing to say to someone who's the child of two journalists.

Anyway, the point is the exchange clearly testified to the rather sensitive & volatile nature of the whole debacle, and this poor unsuspecting chap just happened to fall fowl of the obviously nervy & highly irritable current disposition of one amongst many other Lords, I imagine, perhaps to be taken as an indication that they feel they're on shaky ground.

However, I don't think this particular Lord (whose reponse contained some rather offensive not to mention unoriginal accusations about the EU - oh because we've never heard the one about "a country called Europe" before) or indeed any of his colleagues need to be losing any sleep over this. To me it seems more like a palliative measure, going through the motions of adressing the question.
Stranger things have happened, but let's be honest the UK isn't exactly famous for radically renovating its more archaic institutions. All this business about needing a "mature" democracy might be rationally coherent, but against the hefty weight of institutional pomp, precedent & tradition, I don't think it has a prayer.

MPs back all-elected house of Lords - BBC News

How's your relationship with death?

2007-03-13T00:10:00.000+01:00

Only the french could mourn the passing of indoor smoking with quite such melodrama, in quite such romantic terms and to quite such an extent. And mourning it they are. I did however, find myself rather taken in by the contribution of a certain nameless reader in Liberation last week (and I'm not translating because I like the phrasing too much):

"Cette propagande-maladie met a nu le secret du fumeur, son intime souffrance, un aspect visible de son rapport a la mort... cette espece de paradoxe de devoir envers soi-meme, imposé de l'exterieur, moi ca me rend tres sombre, cette infantilisation... franchement, je ressens comme une tragédie qu'on essaie de s'opposer a mes pulsions de mort. La clope compulsive est toujours noire, du coté de l'incinération, des cendres, de la destruction par le feu."

Perhaps in one of my "wholesome" bouts of carrot-munching jogging teetotalism (infrequent as they are) I might be quick to dismiss the elegant prose & to condemn point blank the unsavoury and rationally indefensible practice of polluting others' & one's own lungs. Today however, and with the frame of mind I'm in for most of the time, I'm certainly far more disposed to accept the realities of what I've come to realise is the universal tendancy towards a kind of self-destruction. These "pulsions de mort" as our madame puts it, that are in no way pathological.

And I suppose it is rather offensive, not to mention futile, this paternalistic hounding of the smoker who knows exactly what they're doing, as if they were genuinely expected to be convinced by the incredibly naive suggestion that the practice of actively harming oneself in the name of some form of gratification were somehow novel, somehow deviant, or in any way exceptional.

Oh, wow.

2007-03-12T14:41:00.000+01:00

I don't actually have access to TV currently, but thanks to the glorious invention of Youtube, podcasts and "watch again" features on various channel websites, it's sometimes difficult to notice.

One of the things I've been able to watch, with only a slight delay vis-a-vis its broadcasting schedule, is E4's much hyped "Skins".

Actually what really got me turned onto it was a feature on a recent episode of Screenwipe, where Stewart Lee deplores the modern depiction of teenagers in television - "selfish, avaricious but also confident, sassy and cool, and really at home with sex and drugs". Versus the portrayal of teenagers in the 70s - "terrified of the world, uncomfortable, alienated and alone" and according to him, "much truer to what it's like to be a teenager."

It raises the question of whether so-called "aspirational" television is ultimately quite destructive because it distorts people's image of real life, and what they ought to expect from it. And also because it leads people to feel "left out". While images of teenagers wandering around on their own and feeling highly alienated is presumably a great comfort. I'm not convinced.

I think Lee's assessment was essentially based on the first episode and that trailer (watch), which are quite consistent with his description as quoted above, and admittedly are perhaps a touch over-the-top and excessive, a bit cartoon-ish even, not to say ridiculous or obnoxious. The follow-up episodes seem to attempt to explore the characters and their problems with slightly more subtlety and depth. And they begin with Cassie, who is one of the most delightful & compelling characters I think I've ever come across on television. She's essentially an awfully tragic figure who's entirely disconnected from reality and at the same time somehow appears as a shining beacon of sense and reason among the insanity & frivolity of the world surrounding her. Unfortunately Cassie was made for another planet, and we all know what happens to people like that, who dont fit or play the game - they end up in mental institutions.

Suddenly it doesn't seem quite so aspirational. Then again, I think there's certain kind of "aspirational ambivalence" - one can aspire to a certain kind of suffering, perhaps not so much Cassie's, maybe more like Harry Potter's. There is such a thing as suffering with style, in addition the the implicit premise that after hardship comes triumph, and reward.

So the characters might be a smidge excessive, a bit "type" and lacking in dimensions to make up the full trio. But maybe its ok for them to be exaggerated, and can be justified in the name of producing characters to really get one's teeth into, in short - Characters, as opposed to human beings. Because that's what reality TV is for.

This is Cassie, by the way.

Watch Stewart Lee arguing his case, as featured in a recent episode of Screenwipe, about 2/3rds of the way in, and all the others while you're at it, since you certainly won't be watching any Skins, as at time of going to press all online episodes had been culled.

2007-03-10T17:36:00.000+01:00

Serge July always rounds off his little "La Semaine Politique" radio segment with some good news and some bad news, so today I thought I'd follow that scheme, and our subject matter for today is Ségolene Royal, who I've been meaning to write about for ages, and consequently the following isn't exactly hot off the press.

The good news

It was quite a few weeks ago that I decided it was time to push my passive support of Ségolene Royal past "in theory" & towards concrete and evidence-supported. It was a speech she delivered in Toulon which I chose to deconstruct, or attempt to. It all started off a bit weak I felt, a bit airy-fairy and banal. Enunciating principles - core principles, not even relating to socialism but to democracy at its most basic - giving people "back" a voice and this sort of general nonsense. So far so general consensus. Then it veers disturbingly towards something Sarkozy could have written. Proclaiming herself "la condidate de la morale de l'action" - moral?? could we sound a bit more centre-right please?

Thankfully she quickly steps it up, denouncing such things as the outrage of poverty in a rich country (encore que...) inequality, precarity, social insecurity, violence, fear - all for which the Right are exclusively responsible. (That's better, now we sound like Socialists!) And then recalling everyone's favourite buzzwords of the Republic: Egalité, Liberté, Fraternité - but it's not gratuitous, as she emphasises the need to give these words back meaning they seem to have lost. "Rendre le sens aux valeurs". This sounds more like practical socialism, which - even under a right-wing gouvernment, is easily observable in France, collective action is so routine nobody bats an eyelid, somehow no matter how many people are on strike everything still manages to function almost as normal.

And then she's championing young people. And not just for the sake of it, it isn't just a gimick (although maybe quoting Diam's was), it actually sounds like common sense, it actually sounds like a plan.

"Et je vous le dis ici car cela sera au cœur de mon projet présidentiel : pas un jeune ne restera au chômage pendant plus de 6 mois. Les jeunes auront un droit d'accès au premier emploi ou au premier stage rémunéré. Il seront remis en formation professionnelle si leur chômage est dû à une formation inadaptée au marché du travail. Il n'y aura plus de jeunes étudiants dans des situations de paupérisation parce que nous ferons l'allocation d'économie pour les jeunes. Je veux que les jeunes retrouvent la dignité dans notre pays et qu'ils y trouvent toute leur place parce que c'est pour eux que nous construisons la société de demain." Ségolene Royal

Vas-y Ségo!

The bad news

Ségo is clearly not infallible, as the series of high-profile gaffes on the international scene testify.

And I DO wish she'd take a strong positive stance on the EU, instead of hiding behind the results of potential future referanda, the outcomes of which are faits accomplis unless somebody mobilises some support - you can't just leave people alone to make up their own minds, that's not how political opinions are formed. Or at least, certainly not when it comes to the EU. Heads of state ignoring the EU isn't allowing the population to come to their own conclusions, au contraire - it's sending them a very distinct message.

"Il faudra beaucoup de travail pour que les francais repondent positivement" - obviously work she has no intention of putting in herself. Instead, she is adopting a very laissez-faire approach, preoccupied with being a good socialist on home ground, the rest is up to the good people of France to yay or nay any EU proposals. Europe can do its own work to win them over. Oh wait, no it can't, it doesn't have the means nor the access.

She should take a leaf out of Zapatero's book, toiling away admirably to convince his citizens of the Union's virtues. Then again, a certain MEP recently hinted that there might just be a military coup in the works. Typical.
But even beyond the euro-niverse, Ségo has alledgedly displayed "une incompétence, une légereté et un manque de gravité" vis-a-vis her diplomatic duties - a carelessness, a seeming indifference.

One almost feels she could learn a thing or two from Condoleeza Rice's dealings when it comes to putting on the "serious face" for diplomacy abroad, something Rice is particularly good at. Nobody seems to have less of a sense of humour when it comes to foreign policy. Ségo, on the other hand, seems so concerned not to put a foot wong in France & seems to compensate for it by getting a bit too relaxed overseas.

"Ce qui plombe Segolene, c'est son absence de maitrise a l'international."
Libération

Ok, so maybe they've been a bit harsh. And tricking her into saying opinionated things about the US & various other places hardly seems fair. Nor does criticising her for displaying apparent "Blairism" following a grudging admissal of progress during his term. Of course, her case isn't helped by the attempts of her n.1 rival to turn the situation to his advantage by making it all into the biggest possible deal he can. But it all just becomes entirely comedic when Sarkozy puts on his serious face to gravely announce that, "I don't find Corsica funny".

Sego's speech at Toulon (17/01/07)

They aren't interested, they just don't care for it.

2007-03-09T19:23:00.000+01:00

So I was a bit out of it last Session, which is why you're escaping some ill-informed rebound opinion on the follow-up resolution to the Lisbon strategy.

The deterioration continues, as we depart from the realm of harmless nonsense and descend to the level of offensive cartoons. Surely there's no such thing as a 24 hour intellectual. Although I know my Human Rights lecturer would probably take exception to that ("and don't be watching mindless TV programmes, towards the knowledge - always be going towards the knowledge! Mediocrity is not acceptable, etc.")

Anyone who's familiar with the genial Screenwipe hosted by the relentlessly sardonic and utterly wonderful Charlie Brooker (late night BBC4 might be described as "niche" in televisual terms but apparently it's developped a cult following, as well it should) will by now be familiar with the work of Dave Firth of fat-pie.com, whose off-the-wall creations have been repeatedly featured on the programme.

As a result of the heavy plugging, I eventually caved in and visited this Dave character's website. I have to say some of it is fairly innocuous and some has you shuddering and feeling distinctly queazy. His cartoons intrigue me though, and increasingly so the more I watch them. I especially like the fact that many are inspired from dreams (a good example), I'm big on people who work from their dreams, like Salvador Dali & the surrealists. Sounds like a band. Anyway, this one in particular rings familiar with me, as I'm sure it will with many people, after all who hasn't had the recurring "Russian laughter room" dream? Exactly.

Strange, disconcerting and downright disturbing on occasion, I recommend a visit, just don't hold me responsible for the questionable content. Still, if Charlie likes it, there must be some merit there.

Fat-pie.com

That is the question

2007-02-11T13:17:00.000+01:00

Here's something rather cheerful I came across which I thought would be nice to share ahead of valentine's day, because deep deep down, we all know I am a hopeless romantic. Enjoy.

At least it's parliament session next week, which should hopefully cure this spiralling dumbing-down trend my dear blog seems to be currently on. No promises.

Tunes of Note

2007-02-05T21:56:00.000+01:00

So, freshly baked, I mean back, from il piu bello paese nel mondo, and a few short days of pure blissful indulgence. In terms of indulging my diabolical italian, my inner alcoholic (demonic beer and masterpiece cocktails), my sweet tooth (100% cocoa chocolate, I learnt the hard way that the third piece is "the one that's one too many" - traumatic), and my appetite in general (consuming dangerous amounts of dough in various forms - you'd be amazed at the versatility of the stuff).

In light of that I think today calls for something slightly less cerebral, so here's just a mention of a few worthwhile numbers that have graced my ears lately.

Amy Winehouse - Rehab
I know this has been a firm favourite among daytime DJs at Radio 1 and probably all over the UK for a good while now, and she's already brought out a follow-up single from the album, but I'm still going to recommend it to anyone who mightn't have heard it. Winehouse is a real character, and I don't think I'm the only one who found her annoying to begin with, but Rehab seems like a more sincere portrayal of what she's really about. Blunt, excessive, and the anti-thesis of wholesome. There are also at least two live lounge covers, done by Paolo Nutini (you might now him as the soulster who sings with a scottish accent and it's somehow not excruciating, who made a commendable effort) and Girls Aloud (who absolutely massacred it, so steer well clear).

Joss Stone - Tell me 'bout it
Unlike the above, I'm rather ahead of myself on this one, as I don't think it's even out yet. Joss Stone's new (and I think third) album is titled "Introducing Joss Stone" which seems highly appropriate. For me, she's always had such potential, displayed all the right ingredients, gorgeous silky voice, bit of an edge to her, disarming humility, and most importantly an apparent burning desire to bring soul music back into the charts, where it belongs. With an updated twist, of course. But so far - despite all the good intentions, she has just failed to nail it. The debut single was so good, but it's all been downhill since there, as the songs just deteriorated from mediocre to just dire. So I for one am very glad that she finally seems to be delivering. Unlike Winehouse, Stone isn't being told she needs to go to rehab. Anyone who's seen her appearance in PUnk'd could vouch for the fact that - no, apparently it's not an act, she's for real - she really IS that sweet (& the stunt failed completely, as a result). It only verges on the annoying when she's doing the barefoot hippie thing, otherwise she pulls the whole irreproachable character thing off rather well, probably because she exudes a kind of dark edge and quiet fierceness, despite herself.

Freemasons - Rain down love
Some might say there's not much in it between camp dance music and skanky trance. But I for one beleive the wide, rich spectrum of nuances to be worthy of much exploration, and that inter-weaving various elements together can amount to a dazzling, oh never mind.

And on that note... If I have to hear how Sandi Thom was born too late to a world that doesn't care one more time, my radio will sail through the nearest window.

Four more days...

2007-01-27T17:49:00.000+01:00

The deadline is looming. The final hour of the warm, comfy indoor smoker, as the notion of the woefully ineffective limited "smoking area" in a closed space is finally made extinct. And some disgruntled fumeurs francais are kicking off, one in particular who decided to air her frustration in Liberation this week, arguing that the role of ministers, instead of pushing through such legislation, ought to be (again, dodgy translation): "Weave tightly the tapestry which makes society a place where all people are not the same". I like the image, though the argument makes me irate.

Smoking ban today, she warns, obesity stigma tomorrow, "mandatory euthanasia" of old people next thursday (were such a thing not a contradiction in terms). I hate the "this today, that tomorrow" formula of argument. Smacks of cop-out. If something works today, who cares.

I think the one thing smokers can say that approximates to a legitimate complaint, would be to point out that policy-makers hammer them whilst turn a blind eye to a collective drinking problem (more the case in the UK & Ireland than France, where the practice of drinking to get drunk is less widespread) The element of personal harm & responsibility is no counter-argument, as factors of drunk-driving & violence make it as much if not more of a risk to other people (ok, if you're a happy drunk without a driving licence you're off the hook, but let's stick with the macro vision here, for the sake of argument) Majority rules, cultural factors like smoking falling increasingly out of fashion, and perhaps most ministers also quite like a drink. Then again, they do tax the hell out of alcohol, as with tobacco. Nevertheless, there is not nearly the same social stigma as has built up and exploded in the face of smokers recently.

So yes, Mme De Virieu, we all have our differences, and in principal: all different - all equal, goes the little mantra. However, to paraphrase a man who knew how to make a fierce cup of tea - some differences are more equal than others.

Recognising Genocide is a collective exercise

2007-01-27T16:54:00.000+01:00

There is a written declaration floating around the EP at the moment which, in its opening clause, "Deplores the French National Assembly’s decision to adopt a draft law criminalising denial of the ‘Armenian genocide of 1915’"

Of course, qualifying something as Genocide has important implications. It implies a kind of global recognition, an attempt at reconciliation by acknowledgement, an expression of collective regret, but also about making it an historical event, by way of retrospective recognition. It is a step that cannot be taken if it would only be partial.

So if everybody agrees that a crime against humanity has been committed, and everyone is sorry for it, why shouldnt it be written into law?

As Esther Benbassa writes (rough translation): "Diplomatic pressure on Turkey to officially recognise the Armenian genocide is one thing - criminalising denial in a third party country neither the scene nor the instigator of the events in question, is another." Placing a large no-no on the freedom of speech of an entire population might even be regarded as incitement to deny, and a source of acrimony.

My personal view is that individual holocaust denial is merely a provocation, where freedom of speech is used to justify what is merely an attempt to get attention, a protest statement, a means out lashing out at the establishment, and winding a lot of people up.

It seems to me, the essential point of recognising "genocide" is to do with writing it into the collective memory. This is something a particular state can acheive on various levels, by commemorating it, making official statements, issuing apologies or admissals of responsibility, investigating & locking up the right people, publishing it in the history books, teaching about it in schools, etc. These are the logical & necessary reactions to coming to terms with atrocities and making sure they aren't lost, repressed or forgotten about. But must the additional step of ideological constraint, and consequently ideological persecution, necessarily form a part of that? I'm not sticking up for the nutcases, I'm saying freedom of speech is too important and valuable to be left to them, for them to associate themselves with it, to become martyrs when they really don't matter.

What, already?

2007-01-20T17:08:00.000+01:00

So if the Independent is to be beleived, turns out ITS is "in disarray after one of its MEPs disowned a colleague for attacking the “Jewish establishment” and for accusing Roma parents of selling their daughters into prostitution..."

And so it begins. One wonders how close this bunch really are. And furthermore one might also wonder how Mr Mote manages to reconcile his professed outrage at 23 year old Bulgarian MEP Dimitar Stoyanov, with the fact that Bruno Gollnisch, the group's leader, is still awaiting trial for denying the holocaust, forget blasting the new kid.

Time to update the sociology manuals

2007-01-20T16:59:00.000+01:00

The corporatists are spawning again.

There was a lot of back-slapping going on in Libération this week, as France congratulates itself on a dramatic increase in population growth, now one of the highest in Europe, if it does say so itself.

But did they swallow their pride and make like the Swedes? It appears to be rather a mixed bag of strategies with tax incentives, material enticements, mingled with generous leave time and allowance, "family friendly policies" is rather ambivalent term, as of course, to say that the family has a single interest would set feminism back about a century.

"Yet at the same time, France can still boast one of Europe's highest rates of female employment.
Some 81% of women aged between 25 and 49 are in work, including three-quarters of those with two children. " (source lost and can't be bothered to dig it out, have faith)

Sounds too good to be true. The catch, if one is to be found, clearly doesnt lie here. Trying to figure out exactly how they did it will be a puzzle for another day. For now, we'll just have to just put good old machiavelllian faith in the results, and hope the new baby boom doesnt fizzle out too soon.

Thank you Mr Aylward,

2007-01-19T13:50:00.000+01:00

It's all true then. Wasn't far into the session before I became aware of hearing irish spoken, and then promtly rushing to find out if - yes indeed, interpreted into each and every language, even bulgarian. You can tell theyve been theyve been waiting.... biding their time till january 1st when they can whip it out and launch into a full on rant as gaeilge, much to the bemusement of everyone else, and the amusement of some. Especially the Brits, such as Edward Mcmillan-Scott, whose smirk as he thanked the interpreters and congratulated Prontius de Rossa on an impressive "irish accent", just said it all. Hopefully the novelty will wear off soon, I imagine when they stop trusting these interpreters to speak for them while about 6 or 7 people get the original, (and having it translated & filtered twice over if done by relay) they'll switch back sharpish. At least as far as the socialists are concerned. As for Fianna Fáil, hopefully the national pride gets the better of them, the fewer ears they reach the better.

Andrew M, my source & the authority on all things remotely related to Ireland and/or politics cited the figure as €648,000, which sounds pricey to me, but in the context of EU bureacratic stupidity is apparently smallfry.

But it's not just the price tag that makes me uneasy. 350,000 speak irish everyday, of those the number for whom it is a mother tongue is estimated at around 70,000-83,000. This is clearly not about communication.
One complaint might be that nations are treated differently depending on influence and size. But is that really meant to be news? In the EP, meetings will generally have interpretation only into english, french, german, & spanish, if that. This isn't political, it's practical.

Surely we have enough trouble battling the differences that exist already, without attempting to introduce supplementary ones where they aren't strictly necessary. And it raises questions about whether the primary function of the EP is to create coherent policy or to be a showground for countries to flaunt their diversities, just for the sake of it. For me the answer is clear, it is a parliament, not an international festival. MEPs can best accomplish their duty to citiziens by swallowing their national pride and just getting the job done.

Look out, it's ITS!

2007-01-19T13:44:00.000+01:00

British MEP Ashley Mote's statement on the formation of the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS) group in the European Parliament, January 2007

The formation of a genuine centre-right multinational group in the European Parliament is long overdue. So is the need for the clear expression of the views held by millions of European Union citizens who profoundly disagree with the federalists and their vocal left-wing. Our political opponents should also be aware that their activities in the European Parliament in recent months has been the trigger in setting up the ITS group.[...] Furthermore, the other groups will no longer be able to ignore us.
The ITS group is founded on the following principles:

Recognition of national interests, sovereignties, identities and differences.
Commitment to Christian values, heritage, culture and the traditions of European civilisation.
Commitment to the traditional family as the natural unit within society.
Commitment to the freedoms and rights inherited by all.
Commitment to the rule of law. Opposition to a unitary, bureaucratic, European superstate.

Commitment to direct accountability of governments to the people and the transparent management of public funds.

I think John Lichfield's reponse in the Independent, hits the nail on the head: "Because they are xenophobes, because they hate one another, the various far-right movements in Europe can never truly form a common cause. The creation of a far-right group in the European Parliament is a contradiction in terms – but also a profoundly disquieting sign of the times..."

I suppose it would be a bit double standards-y of me to say giving them attention only encourages them.

A lof of dejected socialist faces in the hemicycle this week. Cheer up Schultz, they'll eat themselves eventually. And wouldnt that be far more satisfying to watch than stamping on them with all the might of the PSE/EPP alliance straight away.

2007-01-19T13:08:00.000+01:00

Nollaig Éireann

So that was the xmas hiatus. It's not that my mind is entirely switched off during the holidays, just thats its always in either one of two places; indulging in mind-rotting sky tv marathons, or feverous purely academic endeavour, in the order of french sociological theory this season. So just in case you've always wondered what an irish christmas looks like, here's a selection:

Rest are on my Bebo page