An Englishman in New York

The Flaming Lips

2010-07-29T22:23:00.000-04:00

Ah yes, the show at Central Park SummerStage on Monday. Musically I quite like the Flaming Lips: did you hear their remake of Dark Side of the Moon? Love it.

My problem was with the needy, out-sized ego of the singer: between every song he'd do a pumping motion with his arms if he felt the applause wasn't sustained enough. He also had some childish political "thoughts" which he felt compelled to share: you know what, if every audience member did a peace sign all together it really, really won't change anything. Hippy-ist thought for the consumer generation. Likewise some of the lyrics feel self-consciously quirky and twee, and probably deliberately not taken to the extremes that might make them really interesting: check out Gong / Here & Now if you feel the need for unadulterated hippy quirkiness.

I'm always looking for that wall of sound at a concert that you can slam into. Flaming Lips delivered the wall, but sometimes also they provided a sparer sound with lots of spaces where interesting things could happen between the notes. Maybe they should record more sessions on the radio so the listener can cut through the visual excess to the musical core.

The (deliberately?) retro staging allowed me to have fun with my camera, but the blow-up ball and the roadies and groupies all dressed in orange just felt cultish. Everyone on stage (and many in the audience) were just ecstatic: you know what, it was a good show, but it wasn't really great sex. And that's despite the band members coming on stage through an on-screen projected vagina and the two phallo-horns ejaculating orange confetti and white smoke over the audience.

The whole event just felt over-indulgent, and made me long for a band like the Antlers who just get on the stage and play. A colleague recently criticized my over-detailed emails by observing "you've got cum on your hands". Yes, the Flaming Lips too had cum on their hands.

Happy Birthday Dad!

2010-01-28T21:37:00.005-05:00

There are many noble and illuminating skill-sets that my Father continues to develop over his long, long, yes long life. There is of course his brilliance in the field of civil engineering, manifested in his ability to sketch a curve and then supply the mathematical formula that describes that curve. Then there are his people management skills, which he parlayed into the creation of the largest civil engineering consultancy in the world. Or perhaps his ability to transform Terminator-style into a walking compendium of botanical Latin names, complemented by his deftness with trowel and dibber. His design of hi-fidelity audio systems involving valves and ferro-concrete are rightly legendary. We should not forget his Fastnet boat racing skills with his professional crew: my mother. On a smaller note, I particularly remember the decorative back-lit panels that he created one Christmas in Pakistan, with wize men on camels overlooking the little town of Bethlehem.

These are amongst the many skill-sets for which Dad is widely admired. Impressive though these undoubtedly are, they pale into insignificance when set against his one vast, overarching accomplishment. I speak, of course, of his ability to fall asleep at a moment’s notice. Perhaps gaining inspiration from a toggle-switch mounted on his self-built amplifier in Pakistan, he flips the switch and is out for the count.

This skill has earned him fame, nay notoriety, at dinner parties. His timing is always perfect. He avoids falling asleep during the process of eating, as pitching head-first into the soufflé would be a trifle indelicate. He instead awaits until coffee is served, perhaps in the living room. He stakes his claim on the comfiest chair, or better yet an overstuffed sofa seated next to one of the insufferable bores he calls his friends (you know who you are!). He waits until the aforesaid insufferable one strikes up a conversation with him, perhaps on a riveting topic such as the beauty of sewage system design in Uzbekistan. Then, with the precision and –yes- grace of a leopard grabbing its prey, he flips the switch and falls asleep.

At first this practice caused some consternation amongst his circle of friends, acquaintances and entourage. They mistakenly applied inappropriate adjectives in their inadequate quest for the right terms to describe what they had just witnessed. Words such as “rude”, “unforgivable” and even “bugger” were deployed, often with a slight shortness in breath which denoted indignation. But Dad knew, as with much else in his life, that he was just ahead of the curve, and that unlike mere mortals he knew the equation for that curve. Playing the long game, he pressed ahead with developing his skills: wine and cheese parties, pot-luck suppers and haute-cuisine sit-downs were all grist to his mill. Over time, indignation gave way to acceptance, acceptance to a grudging admiration, until his coterie began to view a sleeping Roy as a seal of approval for the food just served. A worried host or hostess would whisper to his or her significant other, with a slight shortness of breath now denoting panic: “Roy’s not sleeping yet! Could it be the vol-au-vents?”

Like all skills, such as playing the banjo, continual practice is required to achieve perfection. Dad’s family was privileged to repeatedly view his devotion to his overarching skill. Now skills often require tools to deploy in their pursuance of perfection: in Dad’s case, his tools were “Classic Bike” and “Motorcycle News”. “Classic Bike” was deployed if he had had a so-so day: falling asleep in a chair with “Classic Bike” open at the ads page for spare parts for a BSA Rocket Gold Star, it was easy to maintain the pretence that he was reading: the small page magazine format, the quality stock glossy paper, the stiffening reinforcing of staples at the spine, all made it relatively easy to ensure that the monthly periodical remained open and vertical while he pursued his craft.

If he has had a good day, he felt up to tackling “Motorcycle News”. The large format, the floppy newsprint pages, the absence of stapling all conspired to present formidable challenges, which my father met head-on. There is nothing as awe-inspiring as seeing my Dad asleep, with “Motorcycle News” open and erect in front of his face, with Barry Sheene shaking on the front page with each intake of breath. I know that my Mother felt her bosom swell with pride when she came in from the kitchen, hands red from the washing-up, only to see such artistry in full display. Her words may not have reflected her unbound admiration, but we knew it was there: deep inside. Very deep inside.

As the offspring of a giant, my father is an enormous inspiration to me. Living with him when I was growing up, it became apparent to me that his cornucopia of skills and talents was over-abundant. Most sons wish to emulate their fathers in some way, and after carefully evaluating the many fruits he had in his basket, I settled on the skill I most admired: his ability to fall asleep at the drop of the proverbial hat. Some said I should have adopted his engineering, business or even his gardening skills. But Dad and I both know these to be ephemera, passing shadows in the confusing thicket of life, and that in life you should focus on the important things.

At seventeen, I managed to fall asleep on the ridged metal floor of a 4 ton army truck, as it bumped and grinded its way across the Welsh Black Mountains. This was a defining moment of my adolescence, the transition from childhood to adulthood. I make it a duty to fall asleep at the opera, the theatre or movie house, and strive to ignore Robin’s sharp elbows. The mosh pit at a rock concert is a little more difficult: I find an unfrequented corner, sit down cross-legged and swiftly am rocked into the arms of Morpheus.

I have even adopted Dad’s famous phrase as my own: “I must have dropped off, for five minutes”. For him and for me, it is never, ever five minutes.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Cartoons and Intolerance: a mid-flow discussion

2006-02-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

The following is an email I sent a collegue on the intolerance debate surrounding the Danish cartoons

In our multi-layered argument and going back to an earlier thread, my point was that Muslims feel that they were attacked by the West purely because they are Muslims. If you take the point that we didn’t carpet-bomb the Falls Road to wipe out the IRA, but did so at Falluja in an attempt to wipe out the insurgency, then, quod erat demonstrandum, we attacked them because they were Muslims, and they are right to so think.

I disagree with your last conclusion too. With the possible discounting of self-professed believers who belong to no organization apart from the Church of Dr. Feelgood, I have not found any serious church-goers who do not exhibit intolerance in some fairly fundamental ways. The whole act of belonging to a Church or religion inevitably predicates that one believes that that Church or religion is the “correct” path, and that therefore people who are not part of the club are necessarily following an “incorrect” path. To be sure, I have met devout persons who I have found to be warm and admirable people (I’m thinking right now of a born-again woman from Oklahoma City I sat next to on a plane), but that alone does not discount my premise.

Of course I find it absurd that people, many who do not have a pot to piss in, are demonstrating against some cartoons, but it fits my premise about the distorting emphases of faith. I would much rather they turn their ire against a target that has more real impact on their lives: the corrupt, brutal and inefficient regimes that are in charge of their countries would be a good start. But I would also prefer that our home-grown hero, Rudolph Guiliani, had not vented his ire against the Brooklyn Museum for exhibiting Chris Ofili’s portrait of the Madonna (because it was made in part out of elephant dung and pornographic pictures from magazines). He tried to shut the exhibition down, and threatened to withdraw city funding from the Museum.

Jim Callaghan

2005-03-26T19:36:00.000-05:00

Jim Callaghan

Jum Callaghan's death at 92 has brought out all the usual hyperbolic praises that such milestone events engender, and perhaps in recognition of his limetime of political service, this is no more than his due. After all, it is a social convention (that we fearfully continue with certain knowledge of our own swiftly-approaching demise) that funerals are a time for warm-hearted eulogy, not cool-headed analysis.

Since others have polished the plaudits with greater skill than I can aspire to muster, it remains for me to rewind the videotape of history. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he refused to devalue the pound, to the economy's cost. As Home Secretary, he sent the British army into Northern Ireland, with repercussions that the nations on both sides of the Irish Sea are still trying to detangle. As Prime Minister, he presided over a country in chaos, and by refusing to call an early (winnable) election he ushered in "The Winter of Discontent" and the Tories under Margaret Thatcher. This is the man who publicly and vociferously withheld his support from Barbara Castle's reformist "In Place of Strife", and suffered from the Union militancy that that program was supposed to replace.

Sunny Jim's lasting legacy to the nation was to hasten the demise of "Old" Labour, by blithely ignoring the irreconcible internal conflicts choking Party and Nation, thereby offering the Nation to Margaret and the Party (eventually) to Tony.

Much has been made of Jim being an honourable man. Honour in politics is a rare commodity, and we should applaud him for it; incompetance in politics is alas far more common, and for this our hands should remain apart.

The Gates

2005-03-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

The Gates

On February 18, it was my pleasure to accompany a bunch of eigth-graders from my son's School Poly Prep through the Central Park to view "The Gates" -Christo and Jean-Claude's latest large-scale installation. The majority of the kids appeared to be remarkably unimpressed (unlike myself), but had a good time climbing over the Alice statue.

Return of the Caliphate

2004-11-15T22:27:00.000-05:00

If white is the colour
of mourning in Andalusia,
it is a proper custom.

Look at me, I dress myself in the white
of white hair in mourning for youth.

Abu l-Hasan al-Husri

An abiding dream for many Muslims is the return of the Caliphate, a united Islam as a world center of power and culture. Setting aside the fevered fundamentalist fantasies of the deranged and dispossessed, it certainly appears that a united Middle East is the only way that Moslems can stand up to the powerful West. A fragmented and backwards Middle East, trust fund oil states of money but no influence, do not represent or value their subject peoples and as a result those peoples are held in little worth by the rest of the world.

Models for the twenty-first century Caliphate are not hard to find, such as the neighbouring European Union, with its loose federalist structure and its freedom or thought and association. Or perhaps the tighter political structure of the Great Satan itself. Or a look back to the enlightened poet-princes of Al Andalus, whose benign Islamic rule in Spain served as a lonely beacon of light in the Europe of the Dark Ages.

Fallujah in Pictures

2004-11-15T22:12:00.000-05:00

For those in the red states that think democracy is obtainable at the end of a gun, check out the powerful Fallujah in Pictures blog at:
http://fallujapictures.blogspot.com/

A different country

2004-11-15T01:07:00.000-05:00

Precious Cargo, Memphis

Due to the vagaries of construction site schedules and the demands of a client, I was in the red (Memphis, Tennessee) on Black Wednesday, the day John Kerry conceded.

Since then I have been reading analysis after analyses, in an attempt to understand how or why America went for the little guy. The analyses contradict each other with aplomb; in fact it's a safe bet that Americans had many reasons for casting their votes, not all of them synchronous, many of them contradictory. It will take a four-year unfolding / unravelling of events for these same Americans to judge whether they made a wize choice.

As I have quieted my voice in shock and awe for two weeks, avoiding the siren charms of the dimensionless space that is this great blogosphere, I feel that it's time to add my own contribution to the cacaphony of commentary. I'm reaching for, but failing to grasp, the great unifying theme that can tie up the straying red, white and blue threads into some neat package of punditry that explains all to everyone, or at the very least to me, myself, I.

But this I can say. You Americans who voted for George Bush as your President sent a message to us non-Americans who cohabit with you in our shared home, the planet earth. The message is simple and clear: we don't need you, we don't want you.

We have heard and understood you.

So back to Memphis and the "Precious Cargo" restaurant at 381 North Main Street, pictured above. Having half an hour to eat before my meeting, I selected a black-owned establishment, to fill my belly with catfish and fries, and more importantly to avoid the need to pass pleasantries back and forth with the victorious good ol' boys. Fortunately, I got a lot more than that. The politically-active proprietress (alas I've forgotten her name) filled me in on the Memphis scene, talked eloquently of ongoing racial polarization, failed attempts at urban regeneration, a sapping of the African-American political will in the city since it hosted the assassination of Dr. King. This woman's will however was magnificently unsapped: the restaurant hosts acid-jazz, hip-hop and reggae concerts, poetry readings, and the night before was the venue for a victory party for a candidate for the Memphis school board: a little victory snatched from the mighty jaws of our collective defeat.

Do ye ken John Peel?

2004-11-13T07:48:00.000-05:00

An elegy for the late, great English DJ, penned by David Stoner, our senior correspondent in Barcelona.

A few days ago, while ambling up the Rambla, I was whisked away back in time to a moment in the late seventies - I presume it was then. I was boarding-school schoolboy as we all were in those days. On one particular cold evening in November - rather like today, I suppose - I was sitting at a large solid wooden table in a Tudor-style house in a quintessential village a stone's throw from the town of Cambridge. It was half-term, you see, and this Laurie Lee-like world is where I would go on leave. It seemed to be colder in those days. That was probably because this was East Anglia and the North Sea freezing fog would wash in over the estuaries and endlessly flat sugerbeet-smelling farmland chilling you to the bones. Neither the cold nor the smell would ever leave you in peace. Unless, however, you were in that cottage home which did indeed provide a cosy retreat form the autumnal elements and boarding school.

More often than not, especially between the hours of ten and twelve, evenings were spent around that wooden table reading and listening to a large radio; the type made of metal and wood displaying an exotic array of large cities among the numbers on the dial: London, Bombay, Moscow, Buenos Aires, New York ... One particular evening while dreaming about such cosmopolitan destinations, a voice came over the airwaves interrupting my train of thought. To this day I have never forgotten what it said and have always had difficulty communicating how much it meant to me, and probably to countless others of my generation. It said ten magical words, and I am sure that when you read them you will know what I am talking about. It went like this: "And for no particular reason, 'Tommy Gun' by The Clash ..."

From our Financial Correspondent

2004-11-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

The Stock Market is predicting a Kerry win.

The market was down 45 points a minute ago - that indicates a Kerry win. We should see a 1% drop in the market if he wins or conversely a 1% rise if Bush wins. Interestingly enough, when a Democrat beats an incumbent, we would see, based on history, a 73% gain in the next 4 years vs. around 17% if a Republican wins re-election. So if you an evil, money grubbing Republican, you should vote Kerry.

Our financial and Mid-West Correspondents are one and the same: none other than Mike McDaneld. Many thanks for the observations.

From our Mid-West correspondent

2004-11-02T13:19:00.000-05:00

Just got back from the polls. It was packed. Never seen it like that. I would say that's bad news for Bush.

If the big MO goes for Kerry it could be all over for Bush.

St Louis, Missouri, 11:03 EST

VOTE KERRY

2004-11-02T06:36:00.000-05:00

Don't vote Bush

Democracy 101

2004-10-30T21:29:00.000-04:00

Today my elder son and I went to visit Democracy Plaza, an outdoor exhibit created at Rockefeller Center. The exhibit included one of only 15 remaining original printed copies of the Declaration of Independence, a cardboardy replica of the Clinton-era Oval Office, a sawn-off section of Nixon's Airforce One, and analysis of several pivotal points in America's history in its long march towards democracy. Perhaps the best exhibit was an outdoor screen with politicians and celebrities reading the Declaration of Independence line by line and interpreting it.

The tenor of the whole exhibit was uplifting, and an infomercial for democracy -an invaluable refresher course in what the political system should be about, before the inevitable Banana-Republic-style blizzard of dirty electoral tricks and disenfranchisements on Tuesday.

Click on the title to go the the NBC Democracy Plaza website.

Unacceptable face (1)

2004-10-26T06:33:00.000-04:00

One of capitalism's many unacceptable faces is that bloated old whore, the advertising industry. The noble and self-serving argument about advertising being the process of bringing the products to the people -an arm of the information industry, in other words- no longer washes, if it ever did. We've seen the relentless rise of "lifestyle" imaging, where the average product is given cachet by associating it with all the cool things that you, Joe Consumer, do.

So here's an occasional series where television advertising that is bothersome is exposed...

SUZUKI
"Real cars for real people"
A slogan which purports to relate to the viewer, but is stripped of meaningful content and echoes in its emptiness.
And all the other cars are... ?

Continual War

2004-10-25T14:24:00.000-04:00

It is said that the world is divided up into two types of people: those who believe in the conspiracy theory of history and those who believe in the "fuck-up" theory. I tend to belong to the latter camp, as it allows one to chortle at others' screw-ups: the former leads to paranoia and night-sweats, and life is just way too short to be one long bad acid trip.

So the story running on all the web sites today about nearly 350 tons of explosives missing from a military complex in Iraq, and the fact that it went missing during the looting for liberation rave in US controlled territory, comes as no surprise: to me, a massive SNAFU, perpetrated ultimately by the Administration in attempting to stage an understaffed occupation: imperialism with tax cuts, if you like.

But if I were in the the camp of the wild-eyed, the situation might start to look very different. It goes like this... Perhaps the foremost duty of a government running an occupation is the protection of its own forces, and an obvious place to start would be to secure potential weapons caches to deny the insurgency access to them. But what if the goal was to extend the insurgency to last past the US elections? Perversely, the Administration can argue that (1) Bush is the more decisive War President and (2) it would be dangerous to change horses in mid-stream in any case. And as the well-founded charges of incompetance seem to be falling on stony ground, then actually running the war badly = running the election campaign well.

Worcester Sauce

2004-10-23T13:10:00.000-04:00

The Bush Campaign on why we must re-elect their candidate:

God hath sent us a noble king in this his visitation; let us not provoke against him. Let us beware; let us not displease him; let us receive with all obedience and prayer the word of God. . . I hear say ye walk inordinately, ye talk unseemly, otherwise it becometh Christian subjects: yea take upon you to judge the judgments of judges. I will not make the king a pope; for the pope will have all things that he doth taken for an article of our faith. I will not say but the king and his council may err; I pray daily that they may not err. It becometh us, whatsoever they decree, to stand unto it, and receive it obediently. . . .

Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester (1551)

Thanks to Skakespeare Online:
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sources/R2sources.html

The Bard in Basra

2004-10-23T13:07:00.000-04:00

On "The Special Relationship":
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Richard II, Act II, Scene 1

On our liege-lord Tony Blair:
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
And yet, incaged in so small a verge,
The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.
Richard II, Act II, Scene 1

Kismet, Hardy

2004-10-23T11:25:00.000-04:00

Market day in Hythe, Hampshire: portrait of Horatio Nelson on a pub sign

The Special Features section of the Navy News (the Royal Navy's website) lists 4 articles, which unintentionally highlight the service's change in mission from the able defender of national glories to a current supporting role in Colonel Blimp style re-enactments of the same.

Two articles deal with the Battle of the Atlantic (World War II) and Horatio Nelson (the Napoleonic Wars); two others deal with the Falklands Conflict (still not a war!) and Operation Telic, which for the 99% of the world's population who may not know, was the code name for the Royal Navy's invasion of Iraq.

The latter is billed on the website as the largest British armada since the Falklands fleet. Let's put aside the interesting use of the word armada: surely the name of the invasion fleet from another country, which -ahem- failed spectacularly in its mission. Let's focus instead on the breath-taking dimunition in role of a historied institution: how are the mighty fallen!

http://www.navynews.co.uk/features.asp

A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall?

2004-10-23T09:13:00.000-04:00

Dropped into Fenelli's last night, an old-fashioned pub in SoHo on the corner of Prince and Mercer Streets, to meet an architectural collegue from Charlotte, SC. He introduced me to his friend and former college room-mate, now based in Sarasota, FL.

Predictably, the conversation turned to the voting fiasco in Florida in the annus horribilis of 2000, with my question as to whether the whole sorry mess might repeat itself in 2004, with (1) the new hackable, error-prone and unaccountable touch-screen computers installed to replace the punch card machines with their infamous hanging chads, and (2) the President's filial regime still in place.

This was an intelligent man who professed deep shame in his state in his country on this and other issues. The conversation turned from voting machines to the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in Florida at the last election, then widened to embrace the transformation of the world's empathy and support for the USA after 9.11 into the world's distrust and scorn after the invasion of Iraq.

At one point, the Sarasotan stopped me dead in my tracks with an unspecified hint of big trouble if a rerun of the vote in 2000 occurs. When pressed as to what he meant, he replied with the two words: "civil war".

Abu Hamza al-Masri

2004-10-21T18:36:00.000-04:00

The pre-emptive charging of Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri in Britain with soliciting to murder and possession of a terrorist document is a transparent attempt by the British Government to forestall his requested extradition to the United States. At first site, this strategy by Her Majesty's Government seems odd -the man is an unapologetically propagator of religious and ethnic hatred; there is no doubt the British Isles would be a more pleasant place with Abu Hamza departed from our green and pleasant land.

But there's a catch: under British law, it is illegal for the government to extradite a person to a country where he might face the death penalty. It is an irony of the transatlantic "special relationship" and the Iraq war's "coalition of the willing" that the senior partner in these asynchronous relationships pursues a practice that most of the countries of civilized Europe find abhorrent -the death penalty.

It's not only the transparently unfair ways in which the death penalty is applied: the poor and the black are more likely to feel the rope; the fact that the ongoing debate concerning the execution of juveniles and the mentally incompetent even exists. More fundamentally, it's the lack of morality the death penalty represents, a lack of morality that is even more astounding in the light of many Americans' oft-professed Christian faith and the Constitution's strictures against cruel an unusual punishment. It's a policy which at once places Uncle Sam in the same bedroom as the late unmourned Hafez al-Assad and Sadam Hussein himself: an unlovely thread woven into the warp and weft of America's societal fabric.

So imagine the briny Atlantic did not separate the United States from old Europe: the United States would not be a qualifying candidate for membership of the EU.

National Celibacy Day

2004-10-21T17:15:00.000-04:00

Don't forget:

National Celibacy Day
November 2nd
NO DICK - NO BUSH

Round-robin email (anon)

Soldiers from the 51st. State

2004-10-21T08:40:00.000-04:00

The "operational" proposal that a contingent of British troops be redeployed north of Basra, to supplement American troop levels and allow U.S. operations to occur in Falluja and elsewhere, has generated a predictable firestorm of criticism within the UK, even from those nominally in favour of military operations in Iraq.

The most revealing arguments floated against this deployment is that those troops would (1) then be placed under American command and (2) operating under tougher rules of engagement.

The first speaks to the nation's continuing ambivalence about participation in the Iraq misadventure, and is understandable but wrong-headed. Even within the relative autonomy of their own command and tucked within the relative safety of the majority-Shia enclave in Basra, the British Army are in reality subordinate to the larger American-lead effort.

The second is a tougher nut to crack, and has repercussions beyond the war in Iraq, and addresses the harsher, retributive elements of American society itself. It is one of the world's worse kept secrets that the British Army and its political masters view US tactics in Iraq with considerable concern. It is held that American air bombardments and "shock and awe" frontal assaults are counterproductive to dealing with an insurgency, and that these unnecessarily violent and indiscriminate tactics serve as effective recruiting agents for that insurgency.

The tests that should be applied for determining the rules of engagement are as follows:

Are the responses proportionate to the events? Current body counts are running at a 10:1 ratio of Iraqi to American deaths, which, even allowing for the deaths of Iraqis at the hands of other Iraqis, suggest that they are not.
Do the responses achieve the desired result? This should be answered by looking beyond the immediate goal (say killing an insurgent in a bombing attack) to the larger picture: is our course of actions achieving the desired goal of a stable Iraq? The continuing insurgency would indicate otherwise.
Would you do what you're doing if it were in Belfast? In other words, would you authorize an air strike on the Falls Road or the Bogside to target an insurgent or group of insurgents? If the answer is no, then the inevitable conclusion is that European lives (even ones threatening your soldiers' lives) are more highly valued than Arab lives, and that therefore the methods used in Iraq are infused with the stench of racism, colonialism's stunted brother.

If the British Government does not want to send the Black Watch to support American troops elsewhere because of the fact that they would be under direct US military control, then it morally cannot continue to hide in the Basra enclave, but should leave Iraq. If it decides that British troops can fight under US military control, then the Government should lobby in the strongest possible terms for fundamental changes in the rules of engagement.

The Curse Reversed?

2004-10-21T06:07:00.000-04:00

The Boston Red Socks' historic comeback from a three game deficit to win the ALCS and vanquish the hated New York Yankees was a fitting result to a thrilling series (and this from a New Yorker). Boston are now headed for the World Series -against either St. Louis or Houston- and stand every chance of winning.

But Boston should be careful what they wish for. In victory, the curse of Babe Ruth (traded from Boston to New York in 1918) will be judged by all to have been lifted. Boston the city will lose the narrative of the plucky underdog that has sustained it for the best part of a century. And Boston the team will have become just another baseball franchise to beat.

Scoundrel

2004-10-12T01:32:00.000-04:00

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel
Dr. Samuel Johnson

People who wrap themselves in the flag have no other clothing to wear.

American Beauty

2004-10-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

America the Beautiful

It appears that the traditional traits quoted by humans to differentiate homo sapiens from the (lesser) animals no longer appear to be unique characteristics: other species (types of birds, chimpanzees) use tools as part of their daily routines; recently the New York Times ran an article on a pet dog who had developed a sophisticated vocabulary -on demand, he has the ability to pick out a yellow, or red or blue, ball from a room full of balls.

I would argue that the one unique trait that separates the human race from the other animals, with whom we're privileged to share this planet, is the appreciation of beauty. While definitions of beauty vary from culture to culture and individual to individual (though I suspect the variation in standards of beauty are less than one might think), the thrill experienced in the presence of beauty is a shared thrill. It could be a beautiful landscape, Shakespeare's Dark Lady, the curve of a lover's neck, the Song of Solomon, Zhang Yimou's Hero, Stephen Holl's Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola in Seattle.

At the cutting edge of knowledge, where mathematics, physics and philosophy collide in Fermat's theorem, string theories and the quest for a Theory of Everything, it is accepted amongst the numerati that beauty = truth, that the degree to which an equation exhibits loveliness is the degree to which it is more valid than its less lovely competing cousins.

When evaluating our fellow human beings, it's useful to determine how or whether they pursue beauty. Robert Kennedy's campaign for the presidency of the United States of America was a process in which we -the denied electorate- watched the unfurling of a beautiful flower: Robert embracing fundamental truths plucked from the fogs and obfuscations of the tribal issues facing America, in those difficult times long ago when the nation was at war. The contrast between that beautiful man and the current inhabitant of the White House is a pain almost too much to bear.

The Unspeakable

2004-10-05T21:40:00.000-04:00

Or that I could forget what I have been,
Or not remember what I must be now!
Swell'st thou, proud heart? I'll give thee scope to beat,
Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me.

Richard II, Act III, Scene III

Far from the excitement of the Presidential Debate here in America last Thursday, across The Pond the voters of Hartlepool stirred up their own piece of ballot box brouhaha, creating election history by voting the party of Her Majesty's Opposition into fourth place, and possibly into electoral oblivion. Reasons for the precipitous fall of the Tory Party from governmental grace are as plain to see as the proverbial probosces on the voters' faces: the party is offering an extremist agenda that does not reflect the country's point of view.

The YouGov poll in this week's Economist, commissioned for party organ The Daily Telegraph, tells the whole sorry story. The nation's voters categorized themselves on average as very marginally left-of-centre (-2%), categorized Tony Blair as very marginally right-of-centre (+4%), and Michael Howard / Tory MPs as extremely right-of-centre (+52%). But all is not gloom and doom: the Tories beat Gordon Brown (-21%) and Labour MPs (-25%) by a factor of 2 where they obviously believe it counts: the extreme bastard's stakes.

This is a party that will obsess about issues far removed from the political pivot: Gilbraltar, fox-hunting and asylum / immigration. They will be heartened by the sturm und drang of the noisy and nasty pro-hunting lobby, and will confuse that noise with popular support. They will lurch triumphantly to the right to capture the 5% of votes the UKIP currently enjoys -and leave the field unclaimed to the Labour and Liberal Democratic Parties.

This is a party who includes amongst its members some of the most intelligent and thoughtful people in British politics: Chris Patten, Kenneth Clarke, Michael Portillo. These are men who should be heard loudly and often by their party and the nation, but instead are pushed to the margins of our national discourse by coarser men of little talent and no imagination.

This is a party who, in its headlong, headstrong chase to grasp the baser, darker, less digestible and more desperate sides of our natures, has indeed become Oscar Wilde's the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

Collateral damage in Samarra

2004-10-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
Joshua 6, 20-21

Kafkat Stevens

2004-10-01T22:52:00.000-04:00

"There can be no doubt—"said K., quite softly, for he was elated by the breathless attention of the meeting; in that stillness a subdued hum was audible which was more exciting than the wildest applause—"there can be no doubt that behind all the actions of this court of justice, that is to say in my case, behind my arrest and today's interrogation, there is a great organization at work. An organization which not only employs corrupt warders, oafish Inspectors, and Examining Magistrates of whom the best that can be said is that they recognize their own limitations, but also has at its disposal a judicial hierarchy of high, indeed of the highest rank, with an indispensable and numerous retinue of servants, clerks, police, and other assistants, perhaps even hangmen, I do not shrink from that word. And the significance of this great organization, gentlemen? It consists in this, that innocent persons are accused of guilt, and senseless proceedings are put in motion against them..."

No, this is not Yusuf Islam's, aka Cat Stevens', account of his detention and subsequent expulsion from the USA, this is the fictional K speaking in Kafka's "The Trial". To see how life parallels art, click on the title of this article to go to Islam's op-ed piece in Guardian Unlimited.

Missed Opportunity

2004-10-01T06:32:00.000-04:00

The presidential debate last night in Coral Cables ended in a draw, which reflects the lack of clear blue water between the two contenders. Kerry will handle Iraq just about the same, but better, and will make nice to all the countries Bush has alienated. Not a platform to set the ticket on fire.

The real story -unnoticed by the post-game commentators- was the evening's massive missed opportunity. Kerry was obviously right to stress that Bush was over-eager to go to war with Iraq before exhausting all other opportunities. But he ignored the major source of anti-American feeling throughout the world, beside the act of invasion itself: that this Administration has been too willing to compromise the intrinsically American principles of freedom and democracy in its wrong-headed pursuit of the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. This has been noted within the United States too, and it makes many people nervous.

If Kerry is serious about winning this election, he needs to add a basket of concrete proposals to his platform, which shows he deeply understands the founding principles of his country and cares about freedom and democracy. These would include the following:

Closing Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by December 2005, either releasing all prisoners to their country of origin or setting trial dates for those perpetrators who merit prosecution. Prisoners selected for prosecution would be transferred to appropriate prisons on the mainland, allowed access to lawyers, and treated according to the Geneva Convention.
Closing Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by December 2005, releasing uncharged prisoners as soon as possible and handing over those facing charges to the civilian administration in Iraq.
An immediate end to the so-called "enemy combatants" status of federal prisoners: all prisoners to have access to lawyers and the courts.
Reviewing the current procedures with respect to the detention and handling of illegal immigrants, to ensure that injustices and unwarranted detentions do not happen to innocent people under the rubric of "fighting the war on terror".
Repealing the Patriot Act as an urgent priority of the incoming Administration.

To maintain the appearance of "toughness" to the American electorate, he should stress items already in his platform:

Increased security at all points of entry into the USA.
Increase the effectiveness of the CIA / FBI. Appoint effective leaders, assign them appropriate powers and budgets.
Pre-emptive war or covert action remain on the table against terrorists anywhere, anytime.
Tougher action against countries with real WMDs: Iran and North Korea.
A renewal of emphasis on the task of hunting down and capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants.

The United States of America is a glorious idea founded on the principles of democracy and freedom. John Kerry needs to stress the fundamental point to the American people that, without these principles, the USA ceases to exist and becomes a mere chunk of real estate west of Ireland.

Belief Systems

2004-09-30T01:23:00.000-04:00

Tony Blair offered the Labour Party a half-hearted apology at the Party Conference in Brighton on Tuesday. Amongst all the verbal wiggling on offer, one phrase in particular stood out:

the decision (to invade Iraq), whether agreed with or not, was taken because I believe, genuinely, that Britain's future security depended on it.

The facts counter this belief, and have been reiterated with each new report on Iraq: no weapons of mass destruction, no ties with Al Qaeda and jihadists, a nation crippled before the war by allied sanctions and fly-overs. I'm not looking for belief systems in my Prime Minister, I'm looking for someone who responds to the facts on the ground. Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

Four More Years?

2004-09-29T23:47:00.000-04:00

An email from Chris, praising the blog, but more importantly looking ahead to November and the next four years.

All right, Stoner! Nicely done. I especially liked the piece on "The Sex of Nations". Hope you're steeling yourself for a second term of Bush as president because from where it stands today, it sure looks likely. But take heart! remember the recent history of second term presidents (could be characterized as "the chickens coming home to roost") - Clinton was impeached in his 2nd term, Reagan was battered by Iran Contra and Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. So we could look forward to the growth of the Michael Moore Hate Bush culture with lots of extra-legal activities and street demonstrations as the whole Iraq Adventure comes unraveled. Hell, it could even start to look like the '60's again!

A Foreign Country

2004-09-28T08:38:00.000-04:00

"The Past is a foreign country: they do things differently there"

The United States is a young country and a strong country, and the benefits of her youthful vigour are clear to see. But one of the characteristics of youth is wilful blindness to the experiences of previous generations. LP Hartley's opening line to The Go-Between (above) seems to be written for America, but upon analysis and reading his novel it becomes clear that he is referring to the differing responses to life's choice within a generation, not the cycles of repetition that occur throughout history.

One of the most glorious days of British History to historians and ruddy-faced schoolboys is the Battle of Waterloo, where combined British and Prussian armies under the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon and the French. No one argues (except maybe the French themselves) that the dismantling of the French empire in Europe was a good thing: one only has to look at the paintings of Goya to see the disastrous effects of the occupation upon Spain.

The main -and intended- consequence of the defeat of Napoleon was the removal of Britain's only rival on the world stage. From the fields of Quatre-Bras until the fields of the Somme a hundred years later, Britain was without a Great Power rival and therefore unchecked in her territorial ambitions, building the largest empire the world had ever seen.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States finds herself in a similar unrivalled situation. The massive armed forces created as a counterpoint to the now-defunct Warsaw Pact create their own imperative for deployment by their very existence. America stands on the threshold of creating her own Empire; like the British, not by grand plan but by incremental powerful responses to differing, often unrelated events. The dangers to the world are obvious; the dangers to America are just as evident -she'll go to bed a democracy, and wake up an Empire.

Learn from your father!

2004-09-27T22:27:00.000-04:00

Tree and wall, Berlin 2004

Violets

2004-09-27T22:02:00.000-04:00

Click on the link to go to the Dialect and Poetry page on the Ranamin Society's DH Lawrence site; then click on the link therein to hear Kenneth Branagh read "Violets" in a soft, buttery Nottinghamshire dialect. It'll change your life, or at least your day.

Blinking Red Hand (2)

2004-09-27T21:43:00.000-04:00

New York (Eigth Avenue and 39th Street) and Brooklyn (King's Highway and Ralph Avenue) wags have found appropriate ways to modify the blinking Red Hands of Ulster: by carefully applying opaque adhesive paper to the index finger, then to the ring and the little fingers, while leaving the middle finger unobscured, a different message is sent to the hapless pedestrian.

Blinking Red Hand

2004-09-27T17:34:00.000-04:00

New Yorkers will have noted the swapping out of the WALK / DON'T WALK signs with the walking white man and disembodied orange hand at every intersection blessed with a traffic light. Graphically, the new illuminated signs make some sense, as they speak to those who speak and read in tongues other than English. Graphically too, the same signs have all sorts of (unintended) resonances: the walking white man struts his superior stuff, selected in preference to walking green men elsewhere in the world (where green = go); the uplifted hand is similar in its posture to the Red Hand of Ulster, an unhappy echo in a city where the majority of Irish immigrants and their descendants are Catholic, and proud of it.

Dimly aware of the significance of the Red Hand to Ulster Protestants, and confused by one I saw on the wall of an Irish bar in Denver, CO, I surfed a few "No Surrender" sites. The most imaginative claims to the red hand's origin to Zarah, son of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, whose unfairly disinherited descendants roamed the earth, founding the Kingdom of Ulster in 1480 BC. The Red Hand? We look to Genesis 38, v 18-20:

"And it came to pass, when she travailed that the one put out " his hand, and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying "This came out first" And it came to pass, as he draw back his hand, that behold, ; his brother came out, and she said, "How hast thou broken forth? This breach be upon thee". Therefore his name was called Pharez. And afterward came out his brother that had the scarlet thread upon ftis hand, and his name was called Zarah."

Since this story ascribes a dubious religious foundation to Ulster, I prefer to ignore it and go the Celtic route. This from the (ahem) Orange Historical Society:

The Red Hand, has its origin in the tale of a race between two giants contesting for the possession of Ulster in a race across the Irish Sea from Scotland, and legend has it that one of the giants, namely O'Neill, to claim victory cut off his hand and tossed it ashore on to Ulster. However, as attested to by English heraldry based on the legend it was the left hand that was cut off symbolized with the left hand on the grant of title of a baronetcy.

The above quoted verbatim, with the interesting grammatical structure laying siege to the claim of Ulsterman as loyal English-speaking subjects of the Crown.

The next time the city changes the pedestrian traffic signals, let her adopt the international symbols of the little red man standing to attention (stop) and the little green man walking (go). There's room for graphic creativity within this convention: Berlin's walking man is a chipper little fellow, and in the pursuit of fame he's made the leap from traffic signals to T-shirts.

Free Radical

2004-09-26T16:52:00.000-04:00

Tony Benn, since his retirement from the House of Commons, has metamorphosised from the tabloid's Marxist bogeyman into the avuncular role of the Grand Old Man of British Politics. To have achieved this remarkable (unsought?) change in the public's perception without changing his politics one whit is to his credit, as the Grand Old Man continues to make excellent sense in his deep and trenchant analysis of current events.

His succinct demolition of the US casus belli in last Wednesday's Guardian contrasts with John Kerry's weak half-criticisms of George Bush and the war in Iraq. Tony takes the high road, Bush has taken the low road, and Kerry insists on the bumpy dirt track between the two.

Kerry should be saying this:

The new president took the decision to invade Iraq when he entered the White House - almost a year before the attack on the twin towers - and that no one in Washington or London really ever believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the atrocity.

And this:

The real reason for the invasion was to topple Saddam, seize the oil and establish permanent US bases to dominate the region.

And this:

We also know, from the recent report of the Iraq Survey Group, that Baghdad did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Neither the president nor the prime minister has been concerned to discover that they misled their own people and the world on this question.

There's lots more, and all of it good. Check out his op-ed piece in The Guardian at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1309706,00.html

Kerry risks loss at the polls by pulling his punches -in effect he's colluding with his supposed opponent. That's not to say you shouldn't vote against George Bush -everyone who can should.

Britain to send more troops to Iraq?

2004-09-26T12:08:00.000-04:00

SCENE I. Iraq. Before Basra.

Alarum. Enter KING TONY, STRAW, BROWN, BLUNKETT, and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders

KING TONY
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
...
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George*!'

*born again

Thanks to
http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/henryv/

Childe Harold

2004-09-26T11:01:00.000-04:00

When Julia from Hampshire visited the great and glorious NYC last year, and again when we met at my sister Christine's wedding in Southampton this August, we spent some time ruminating and reminiscing fondly about former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. With his fondness for his pipe and Gannex raincoats, he cut a grey figure in a grey British landscape, and history's verdict on his time in office has been neutral at best. In his farewell television interview for the BBC, I remember him stating that his greatest achievement was the foundation of the Open University -important and worthy, yes; exciting and world-changing, no.

Fast-forward to Tony Blair and Cool Britannia. Tony brought the nation The Third Way, an ill-defined, but possibly fruitful attempt to steer a course between US unfettered capitalism and Western European welfarismo. With the extremely competent Gordon Brown steady at the helm of the Treasury, Britain has enjoyed a unrivalled and prolonged period of growth -the only First World country not to go into recession the last time around. Record amounts have been spent on education and healthcare, and the baying of the redtop tabloids aside, the fruits of this investment are starting to be apparent.

Childe Harolde achieved nothing remotely comparable to this success, and instead presided over the seemingly relentless decline of Britain from Carnaby Street cool into industrial strife and industrial mediocrity, a decline which reached its peak in the 1979 Winter of Discontent under his successor, Jim Callaghan.

So why the dewy-eyed fondness for Harold Wilson? Not for what he did, but for what he didn't do. He didn't send the British Army into Viet Nam. He resisted the considerable persuasive talents and arm-twisting abilities of Lyndon Baines Johnson, successfully avoiding the entanglements of an unwinnable US imperialist war (the Australians were not so lucky or so prescient). There are middle-aged Englishmen and middle-aged Scotsmen alive today living lives of achievement or perfect mediocrity, whose end may have been very different had Childe Harolde been made of weaker stuff. And who would not swap widows grieving at the wailing wall in Washington for couples worrying about the minutiae of every-day living?

Thanks, Harold.

From God's eye(s) to Florida's ears

2004-09-26T10:55:00.000-04:00

In the last ten years, Florida was hit by four hurricanes. In this election year of 2004, Florida has been hit by four hurricanes. A message to get it right this time?

2004-09-26T10:49:00.000-04:00

The teat of democracy

The Sex of Nations

2004-09-25T20:58:00.000-04:00

Rumsfeld's old jibe about "Old Europe" and "New Europe" had more of a hint of Arnold's "girly-men" about it: that the nations of old Europe were weak and feminine in not supporting Junior's war. That the "New" European nations, newly-liberated from the Warsaw Pact's clutches, were hardened and masculine and thus willing to stand erect with the real men of America. Whereas the plump nations of the Western end -feminized on a surfeit of Prada and Truffaut.

So what about the sex of nations: are us Wessies really "girly-men"? The European Union could be seen as an attempt to create a family, a nurturing unit -surely a feminine structure. La France has Marianne / Laetitia Casta as her symbol, beautiful even when depicted by Delacroix as Liberty storming the barricades. The Germans refer to their nation as The Fatherland, which is somewhat male, but the new national symbol (that graces the covers of Berlin's guidebooks) is the Reichstag's new dome -the national breast to which the Germans return, to suckle at the life-giving teat of democracy. The United States of America is personified by Uncle Sam, undoubtedly male (if appearing to lack manly vigour, due to advanced age); the capital Washington DC is graced by an enormous stone representation of its namesake's phallus.

And where does the transatlantic 51st. State fit into all of this? At the time of Empire, Britain's cartoon personification was John Bull, pugnacious, vigorous, possibly a touch of gout. Our national animal was the bulldog, which shared the John's characteristics. But on the other hand we have Britannia, who poses in repose with shield and helmet, a girl. So, in the tradition of Danny La Rue and the Pythons, a little gender confusion.

Perhaps the real test of a nation's sexual identity is his or her's obscene gesticulations. To indicate to the hard-of-hearing by the linguistically-challenged that they should fuck off, American's extend the middle (and longest) finger priapically upwards -male. The British extend the index and middle finger upwards, but angled and apart -mimicking the dewy cleft that is the essence of female. Legs apart, case closed.

But all is not lost in the Land of the Free. Under the shadow of George's organ is Washington the city's best monument, the Viet Nam War Memorial. Recessed in a fold of the great lawn, enveloped in the womb of the earth, are the names of those who died in the nation's wars -the country's sons cradled in their mother's arms.