Weekly news - Tony Blair's Islam speech / American imperialism

Everyone's evangelical warmonger of choice, Tony Blair reared his head again this week, holding forth on the imminent and pernicious threat of the Islamist ideology on our safety and our way of life, claiming that they 'represent the biggest threat to global security of the early 21st century', and that the time had come for the West 'to take sides' against them.

Reading through his speech/essay there is a lot that is rational and agreeable, and yet its difficult to divorce the sentiments being expressed about fundamentalist Islam 'spreading through the Middle East' from the statesman who, G.W. Bush aside, did the most to enflame the regional discontent. (The same crazed tactic currently under way with Obama's drone campaign - the most recent of which in Yemen killed 55 civilians - which has been proved to actively fan the flames of fundamentalism.)

Neo-liberalism, with which Blair is so intensely associated, cannot be exported wholesale as part of the inevitable spread of globalisation to foreign lands that have vastly disparate cultures and traditions from the West. Fundamentalism only arises as a backlash when there is deemed a considerable threat to a way of life. It is up to those civilians to combat and marginalise these oppressive ideologies as they see fit, and no amount of equally oppressive, slash 'n' burn Western intervention will solve the problem, least of all with Tony Blair as figurehead.

It was just one of many stories highlighting the rank hypocrisy of international relations over the course of the week.

Nikolai Gogol, in 'Dead Souls', wrote - 'there are many faces in the world, over whose formation Nature did not pause long in thought ... but simply hewed them out at full sweep of her arm'.

This came to mind upon seeing John Kerry, with his craggy, Mount Rushmore face, declare that Russia, by continuing to aggravate the situation in Ukraine in contravention to last week's hopelessly flimsy Geneva agreement, was making 'a very expensive mistake'.

It is incredible just how comprehensively Russia, at the behest of the West, has been demonised by the mainstream media, and is almost content to once again assume the well-worn 'villain' costume from the Cold War era.

Russia is entitled to feel a certain sense of antagonism from America's persistent imperialism through NATO's encircling of the former Soviet borderlands. Yet Russia has far from endeared herself, with acts of macho aggression, reports of kidnappings and torture, and persistent posturing on the part of Putin; all of which seems destined to lead to a bloody civil war that the US will condemn with both an insincere altruism and a sly smirk. As, by destabilising the region and isolating Russia further from the world stage and the global financial markets, NATO's influence can only be exerted more tangibly.

------

The long term ramifications of these renewed Cold War hostilities have been illumined this week by Putin's threat to break up the global web, thereby creating a Russian-operated alternative.

If this happens then the guiding principles of the internet will have been deconstructed in favour of national cyber boundaries created as a means of containing and controlling the transnational informational flow; leaving our children to look back on the previous couple of decades as an Eden of naïve transparency, in which greedy American security agencies couldn't help but gorge on the forbidden fruit, consigning us all to paranoid oblivion.

------

When it comes to the Ukrainian issue, America is merely repeating the same imperialist trick it has performed many times before, most recently in Venezuela - a country with relatively high levels of social democracy under Hugo Chavez - in which they are stirring up dissent amongst the populace in an attempt at destabilising the current Maduro regime.

And now the pivot towards asserting increased influence in Asia is at hand. By 2020, almost two-thirds of all US naval forces in the world will have been transferred to the Asia-Pacific area, with all their eyes firmly focused towards those worker bee Chinese in their rapidly expanding hive.

Obama expressed the US's commitment to come to Japan's defence should their supposed sovereignty over the clump of rocks known as the Senkaku Islands be compromised by China, despite urging the two nations to settle the matter through peaceful dialogue.

------

It was peaceful dialogue this week, mediated by America, that fell apart between Israel and Palestine on the thoroughly elusive prospect of achieving a harmonious two-nation state.

America's response to this latest house-of-cards collapse is as yet unclear, but considering their heavy involvement over the previous months and their indications to Israel that long-term financial support may be subject to a successful resolution, it can only be assumed that they will express, not anger, but disappointment, and as in any relationship of power, that is a far less favourable reaction...

Weekly news - Ukrainian tension / Iain Duncan Smith versus food banks

The news coming out of Ukraine this week, beginning with Pro-Russian separatists seizing official buildings in Eastern provinces, as well as the humiliating theft of armoured vehicles from an aerodrome. Things appeared to be moving forward on Thursday as a diplomatic deal was struck in Geneva, yet at present separatists are refusing to budge which may yet muddy the slight diplomatic ground gained.

The rational response to the conflict would be for the international community to stand back and allow events to naturally transpire, whether that must mean Ukraine splitting in two. Putin's tactics might now have shifted from impatience to playing the long game. The focus now is centred on what happens with the East, and by engineering this, the Russian annexation of Crimea has receded into the background.

However, things are always more multifaceted than they appear, and certainly through the wider media prism that has firmly anchored in the minds of the masses the assertion of Russia as 'the enemy'. John Pilger's excellent article this week, elucidated some of the conflicting narratives that are currently at odds with one another.

He writes that 'since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato enlargement process'. This has consisted of Nato's absorption of the Balkan states adjoining Russia, who perceive the US's creeping presence eastwards to be a contravention of commitments made to Mikhail Gorbachev 'not to move beyond the boundaries of Germany after Cold War'.

The American intention is clearly to isolate Russia, by provoking the Ukrainian coup in February, and keep the imperialist military juggernaut fully chugging along. After all, its Afghanistan operations are winding down and it needs to find something else to occupy itself, if only to justify the inexorbitant sums pumped into it year after year.

Russia has sought to chastise Ukraine by escalating the costs of energy supplied, on which Ukraine is largely dependent. But, just as the Americans, with their arm firmly on the Nato tiller, will try and influence Eastern Europe strategically, its energy companies will be standing reassuringly by, ready to oblige with dollar-sign thrombosis bulging their eyes.

------

It takes a particularly odious breed of snake to castigate a charitable organisation for providing help to those in need (at Easter!), but it would appear that Iain Duncan Smith is increasingly content to play the part.

Inconveniently for the Conservatives, the Trussell Trust (Britain's largest food bank provider) this week estimated that half of the nearly million people referred to food banks in 2013 had suffered benefit delays or changes, which would tend to substantiate Labour's persistent crowing about the 'cost of living crisis'.

Iain Duncan Smith, as Secretary of State of the DWP, accused the charity of 'misleading and emotionally manipulative publicity-seeking', as though the fact that in 21st century Britain nearly a million people needing the emergency help of food banks wasn't something worthy of being made public. Iain Duncan Smith is clearly walking the same ideological gang plank that says the rich achieve wealth entirely through their own efforts and conversely the poor entirely through their lack of effort.

He accused the Trussell Trust of 'aggressively marketing their services'. Or maybe there are people out there who just cannot afford to feed their families....

His comments seem to be at odds with his boss David Cameron who would appear to have found god this Easter. He was quoted as giving his full support to food banks, which would be fine if he wasn't one of few people in the country who could do anything about it. Ending the austerity measures might be start.

However, he also said 'I want to see the possibilities [of food banks] to expand', which might be some devious Bullingdon code for yet more swingeing cuts to the welfare state.

At any rate, Tesco will not be rejoicing at the PM's words since they announced yet more losses last year. I don't think there will be many tears shed or sympathy extended from the average consumer, who has had the enforced camcerous spread of Tesco across the urban landscape over the last few decades; enshrining dull homogenisation and the kind of monotonous shopping experience that treats individuals like little more than blank units of consumption to be sucked in and spewed out as quickly as possible.

Masterworks of Cinema #3 - 'Stalker' (1979)

The title of a book of conversations with Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, ‘Sculpting in Time’, is, to my mind, perfectly illustrative of the transcendent power of his work. The atemporality of Tarkovsky’s cinematic vision is nowhere more spellbinding than in 1979’s ‘Stalker’; a film that has become embedded in my psyche since I first watched it some 3 or 4 years ago. Despite, or perhaps because of, repeat viewings it retains its ponderous mysticism and dream-like aura, becoming something of an artistic sanctuary to retreat to at times from the often frenetic momentum of everyday life.

‘Stalker’ must rank as one of the most analysed of films, indeed the web would appear to be strewn with disparate analyses and conjecture, and yet there is so much be said about the film on philosophic, analogous and purely poetic levels, that I feel no sense of opprobrium for skimming my own stone across the lake of interpretation.

Based loosely upon the novel ‘Roadside Picnic’ by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, the film opens with the eponymous ‘Stalker’ agreeing – against the frantic wishes of his wife and mysteriously malformed child – to take two men, ‘Writer’ and ‘Professor’, into the forbidden territory known as the ‘Zone’, a place in which some kind of unexplained phenomenon – maybe a meteorite, maybe government conspiracy, or maybe even extraterrestrial activity – has distorted the orthodox laws of physics, leaving multiform dangers lurking beneath the apparently tranquil surface. Within the Zone is the ‘Room’, in which one’s deepest desires will be made a reality.

On an aesthetic level the cinematography is masterful. The washed-out sepia tones of the industrial wasteland (a fictional template for the Chernobyl disaster that was yet to come), starkly contrast with the often supernatural serenity of the Zone. It serves to both enervate and rejuvenate the trio; they lie upon the ground as if trying to affect some kind of cathartic communion with the life-affirming powers of the terra firma that might happen to percolate through to them.

If you were prone to the association of ideas, and I am, you could view the Zone itself as being the physical incarnation of the strange ‘psychological ocean’ that incites visions and hypnosis in Tarkovsky’s earlier film ‘Solaris’.

Adhering to the conventions of ‘Tarkovskian time’, the film proceeds at a languorous, almost weightless, pace with single shots lasting several minutes at a time. According to Wikipedia, in 163 minutes there are a total of 142 shots, a ridiculously scant number when compared to the often epileptic nature of modern Hollywood fare.

The score, composed by Edward Artemiev, adds much to the overarching ambience of a dream-state that pervades the visuals, utilising traditional instruments such as an Iranian tar and flutes and intermeshing them with a bristling electronic dissonance.

Essentially, the film stands as a cinematic allegory for the nature of all philosophical enquiry. It demonstrates the willingness of humanity to mine the abstract for deeper meaning, the gnostic urge to attain some kind of esoteric spiritual insight that might herald salvation from the mundane order of mere mortals.

Each of the three explorers arrive at the Zone with their own distinct agendas. Writer is disillusioned with his work, laden with vice and holding steadfast to his conviction in the efficacy of the true artistic statement to trump all other concerns. Professor is a refined man of science, interested only in uncovering empirical truth. He is goaded by Writer for simply seeking his Nobel Prize, yet, as it transpires, he harbours his own destructive motives for reaching the Room.

Whilst they are myopic, the Stalker is humble yet confused. He is the antipode to the two intellectuals; a renegade who leads men on to the attainment of their desires, yet seeks a desperate truth, dogged by the fact that his contact with the Zone has resulted in his child's malformities. He is haunted by memories of a fellow Stalker known as Porcupine who, upon entering the Room, had his latent wishes for great wealth granted and, in the tidal wave of prevailing guilt, committed suicide.

This notion of faith in the ambiguous permeates through every layer of the film; the two intellectuals unerringly follow the Stalker through the Zone despite warnings of its dangers and the manifest lack of evidence to substantiate them. One could see the bolts bound with bandages tossed by Stalker to delineate a safe path as symbolic of the way philosophical and intellectual advancement is affected, by many great leaps into uncharted space which may or may not allow transitory passage.

One of the most intriguing sequences occurs as the camera pans across a collection of supposedly random artifacts submerged in water - a syringe, coins, a machine gun, and such like. These serve as emblems of the manifold and elementary dogmas that proliferate through human existence, all the time inspiring and demanding a persistent level of faith - medicine, economics, war, religious iconography, the transition of time...

And yet, there is the compelling theory that the Room, and the film as a whole, is simply an exercise in aphophenia, whereby meaningful patterns and connections are construed from random items of information. We the audience are lead blind through the film, searching for intellectual meaning, sifting through the ambiguous stratigraphy that we are offered - the undulations of sand, the ringing telephone, the crown of thorns - in order that we can feel sated in some way by our immersed investment in the artistic medium.

Ultimately, the travellers to the Room have a crisis of faith and waver on the threshold, deigning to submit themselves to its possible revelations, accepting the superficiality of the ulterior motives that have driven them there, and consigning themselves to the psychological safe haven that supplants the unknown and the unexplored, the Nietzschean abyss that might very possibly stare back at them.

The fascinating behind-the-scenes accounts of 'Stalker' can also be interpreted as a strange encapsulation of the overall aura that the film conveys. The genesis of the film was notoriously protracted, with Tarkovsky coming close to abandoning the project at several instances. Having spent a year shooting the external scenes it was discovered that incompatible camera film had been used, rendering the entire work unusable.

Tarkovsky was cast into a state of despondency, a response to which any creative mind would empathise, knowing or sensing the acute agony of losing forever so much of their work. In the end, his dogged faith in the project convinced the Soviet studio Mosfilm to maintain their financing, and by all accounts the re-shot footage was completely different, provoking the romantic rumination as to what this 'lost version' of 'Stalker' would have resembled.

The romantic mythology of the 'artist dying for his art' can also be applied to Tarkovsky and 'Stalker'. As much of the shooting took place near a hydroelectric station outside Tallinn, Estonia, the proximity to toxic liquids (captured on film as strange foaming water), resulted in Tarkovsky, his wife and one of the principal actors dying of cancer several years later. The awareness of this through hindsight acts as a poignant primer onto which the poetic philosophising as to the nature of immortality and fulfilled desires are layered.

In the end, the simplest and most profound expression of faith is invoked by the Stalker's long-suffering wife who, in an extraordinary 'breach of the fourth wall' monologue, professes her love for him regardless of his wayward shortcomings. The celebrated final scene, in which their malformed child apparently uses her powers of psychokinesis to shift objects along a table still remains wonderfully open to interpretation and has been aped in more recent films such as 'Inception' (although the astute will read the scene as closing the circle begun from the opening sequence of the family in bed).

Many would contend that 'Stalker' is not even Tarkovsky's finest film, opting instead for 'Andrei Rublev', 'Solaris' or 'Mirror'; but in my view it sits comfortably among the masterpieces of the cinematic medium, containing several astonishingly beautiful images that I believe have seldom been surpassed.

It is a film that gets to the heart of man's longing for an inner truth that, in the end, should probably remain out of reach, and the door to the Room remain wisely unopened.

Weekly news - Indian election / American corruption / Rwanda commeration / Maria Miller downfall

By any measure it's been quite a week for the virtues of democracy. Following on from the relatively harmonious elections in Afghanistan, India's 815million eligible citizens began heading to the polls in what has been described as the largest collective democratic act in history.

This is rightly laudable, although the likely victory of Narendra Modi of the BJP has caused considerable consternation given his murky past and his continued association with Hindu nationalism. But he is, by all accounts, a straight-talker, shrewd and, unlike his principle opponent Rahul Gandhi, untainted by corruption.

The Indian economy is slowing, and with the astonishing statistic that around half of the 1.2billion population are under 26, measures clearly need to be made to ensure continued employment and productivity. Politics is often said to be merely a series of reactions to perennial and cyclical events that occur. Parliamentary democracy is often too removed from regional concerns, and far too akin to an oil tanker trying to change course, to actually affect real change to people's lives.

The scale of India, its size, its population and its diversity is unfathomably enormous (this is a nation with a burgeoning space programme whilst millions still have no access to clean water). I can't help but wonder whether the nation as a whole wouldn't be better served by a more decisive fragmenting into separate regions of representation that might be freer to instigate actual progress for its civilians, as opposed to all being held under the leadership of one man and his personal foibles and ideals?

Such a colossal election process though is nothing if not symbolic, as the purported 'most democratic nation on earth', namely America, looks intent on eroding away any remaining vestiges of real democracy existent in the system. Money in American politics is everything. This is not saying anything new.

In 2010, the ratio of lobbyists to legislators was 131 to 1; politicians are little more than the finger puppets worn by the tightly-clenched fist of private capital. Until last week though, the donation limit from individuals to candidates or parties stood at $123,200. The Supreme Court have now opened up the sluice-gates for vastly increased political donations, further enshrining the 2010 Citizens United ruling that corporations were to be legally considered as 'people' therefore entitled to free speech and to spend whatever amount they wish on political campaigns.

As the canyon of inequality in America becomes weathered wider and wider, and election campaign costs skyrocket out of all proportion, this development can only be seen as patently undemocratic. According to The Guardian, '30% of diplomatic posts in Obama's administration have gone to friends and donors', and buying into ambassadorships of foreign countries are now valued in the millions of dollars.

And of course, this level of corruption and undue corporate influence can only serve to disenfranchise and alienate those whom politicians should be aiming to help most - the poor and the stagnating middle class.

-----

Perhaps the crux of the concern levelled at Modi's victory in India is his divisensss between Hindus and Muslims, and the lessons that recent history teaches us of fractural disharmony within the fabric of a society. This week marked the 20th anniversary since the beginning of the Rwanda genocide, the legacy of which now serves as the moral shackles that bind Western nations to their supposed commitment to prevent similar horrific occurences taking place in other beleaguered global quarters.

Attending an exhibition at Somerset House, 'Death then : Life Now', the vibrant affirmation of life, community, family and work was striking. It provided a defiant representation of a nation, beset in the past by European imperialism that did nothing except enflame pre-existing tribal divisions, trying to move away from its past and into a more promising future.

All of which should serve to put the dominating UK news, that of Maria Miller finally being forced to leave her post as Culture Secretary after yet more fiddling of expenses, into some kind of perspective. In truth, it should scarcely register as valuable news at all.

That said, for me it raises two preponderances. Firstly, that the publicity such a fall-from-grace generates has negative implications for politics as a whole - in that it allows the gratefully outraged public to chow down on yet more futile politico-bashing bait, and diverts attention away from things genuinely worthy of scrutiny; for instance, Iain Duncan Smith's woeful PIP benefits scheme that is currently failing disabled claimants.

Secondly, I'm not entirely convinced the government's already quite broad remit need necessarily extend to culture. Why do we actually need a Culture Secretary at all? They should instead make the Arts Council, the museums, and so on, independently managed and at the start of each financial year simply hand them their allotted budget share. Can't be any more problematic than the notion of giving British cultural policy to a former banker with Deutsche Bank who has no issue with the idea of ticket touting...

Tearing the city at the seams # 19 - Gran Canaria and the Timple of Doom

"We've gone on holiday by mistake". One of the more memorable examples plucked from the salvo of quotes that comprise 'Withnail and I', and one that I've not felt captured a situation so acutely as on a recent trip to the island of Gran Canaria.

As the first morning rose, I found myself sitting in an al fresco greasy spoon in Puerto Rico, nursing a coffee and wondering what exactly to do with the day. At the table along sat a fridge of a woman, recently washed hair dangling like seaweed above shoulders burnt gammon-pink by several days of submissiveness before the sun.

A waitress approached and plonked down a full English breakfast, an easel of grease to brush up the veins and arteries. With aplomb the woman began wolfing down the sweaty grub, pausing only to suck on a lit cigarette, building up pace before her momentum ran aground on a bank of rasping throaty coughs. Squinting through my veil of mild revulsion, the sun glistened like a Fata Morgana haze across the streaky surface of the bacon rashers.

What kind of deranged reasoning had brought me to this place?, I couldn't help but wonder.

After some cursory investigating, I had learnt that the traditional instrument of the Canary Islands is a timple, a rather attractive 5-string ukulele. Owing to my penchant for 'collecting' indigenous musical instruments - a collection abounding in its breadth, spanning a small djembe and a sanza from South Africa and a cheap tin flute from Dublin - I made it my quest to track down a Timple.

The resort town of Puerto Rico on Gran Canaria's southern coast is alarming in its stultifying banality. The modest town lies as the tongue within the jaws of the dual rising headlands, wedged with stumpy white apartment blocks that snarl up together along the contours of the topography like rows of teeth. Overlooking the beach, an assortment of hotels build up upon the incline like favelas of repose.

Surveying the landscape, I was instantly brought to mind of J.G. Ballard's late-career novels 'Cocaine Nights' and 'Super Cannes', which dealt with the idea that as technological advances in the labour markets elevate leisure over work, civilians would be rendered physically docile and emotionally necrotic by the sedating potency of endless free time; little more than wilful tenants of the 'billion balconies facing the sun'.

The Europa Shopping Centre I came to recognise as one of Dante's circles of Hell that he must have overlooked. An accumulation of souvenir shops hawking the most asinine of tourist tat; drab restaurants displaying the bog-standard English fare on photographic menu boards as though orders would come served in the form of a sci-fi paste substitute; and bars promoting singers performing the songs of Neil Diamond and Tom Jones; all perfectly targeted for the discerning 'Brit abroad'. UKIP don't do package holidays but if they did, they'd probably look something like this.

By late morning, the poolside teemed with crapulent couples lobstering themselves; by afternoon, they sat drinking beer and watching football in bars plastered with plasma screens. By evenings, most it seemed would converge on the Blarney Stone, the ubiquitous Irish pub, that played host to a troupe of squalid minstrels night after night as though they were being forced to comply with some bizarre visa stipulations.

Everything about Puerto Rico, like the Costas as a whole, has been sanitised and bleached of any cultural identity by the UV rays of British homogenisation; a tourist imperialism in which the natural hegemonic urge to assimilate has claimed the victory over any semblance of native autonomy.

As a means of leaving such hideousness aside (I'd hate to besmirch the whole of Gran Canaria solely on the merits of Puerto Rico), my companions and I hired a car in a desperate attempt to escape this shit citadel and headed up into the foreboding mountains. (I believe it a necessary cleansing agent from odious bouts of mindless lethargy to seek out high-risk pursuits. The best thing to do after coming out of a coma would probably be to find a bungee jump.)

Certainly, the spaghetti strand roads draped across the mountain ranges were sufficiently perilous, maybe not on the white-knuckle scale of the Bolivian 'death roads', but certainly enough to make you feel you were taking your life in your hands on the approach to each blind corner, and certainly enough to incite us to tailgate behind our own, very apt, 'canary' - a car probably driven by tourists as terrified as we were.

Continuing the ascent, we headed towards the peak of Roque Nublo ('Cloud Rock'), protruding from the terra firma like an upturned thumb of approval to all those who'd escaped the horrendous trappings of the Europa Shopping Centre.

The geographic diversity of the region was considerable; the arid South with its wave-crest dunes of Maspalomas contrasting sharply with the verdancy and silviculture of the inland terrain. As the afternoon wore on, the mist began rolling down the mountains like a mystical avalanche poised outside the conventional laws of gravity and time.

Firmly outside the conventional laws of public decency was the drunken misbehaviour of one of my companions later that night in the Blarney Stone. With gusto he applied himself to a spasmodic ballet in the 'no-man's land' between performer and audience before engaging in a disturbing slow dance with a tall grizzled Scotsman as those assembled watched on with awkward bemusement.

In a recent BBC documentary about his relationship with England, Martin Amis described the English predilection to public inebriation as being soused with a tangible sense of desperation constructed, when the 'package holiday' to sunnier climes was in its infancy, out of a psychological complex of cultural confusion and inferiority when faced with our more sophisticated and debonair Continental neighbours.

Becoming incensed by the crassness of our surroundings and my lack of success in finding a timple, I ranted to another more lucid companion about how few of the people in attendance had likely made the effort to adventure into the mountains to witness such stunning rural scenery. He asseverated that I should recognise these people as being "the working class you're always going on about", and that these were the kind of holidays that less affluent people could afford and actually enjoyed going on, therefore I was wrong to unduly direct my scorn at them.

I conceded the point that many have alternate designs on what makes for a fulfilling vacation, however, I argued that my friend was equally guilty of being patronising by judging such people incapable of wanting or deserving more. Travel frees up the possibility of exploring foreign cultures, allowing the unfamiliar and vast world to seem a little more familiar and a little bit smaller, rather than simply seeking to transpose a stale replication of what is already known. Travel is about enlightenment and discovery through the immersion of the self into new surroundings and experiences which wealth need not necessarily prohibit.

This kind of resort, marrying ample sunshine with the dubious 'comforts of home', marinaded in sheer relaxation without the often bitter taste of local culture or history spoiling the palate, two or three decades ago would have been seen as the very height of modernity. Now however, in the digital age and the 'glocal' community, just about any kind of information on any travel experience abounds obliterating ignorance, and with commercial flights waiting to catapult you anywhere at all smoothening logistics, it strikes me as all being rather quaint and outdated.

But who was I to cast my aspersions? Looking around people seemed to be having a good enough time, certainly making the best of the fact that a drunken fool and an increasingly irate Scotsman were getting in the way of another rendition of 'Sweet Home Alabama'.

The next day I left my companions to their hangovers and took the bus to the capital Las Palmas where I explored the pretty Old District, marvelling at the fact that it was from here in 1936 that a shunned General Franco launched an uprising that instigated the Spanish Civil War.

All I had on my mind though was a Timple. It seemed no where stocked one. Until I discovered a charming little shop where the friendly owner ushered me in, eager to show me the range of traditional Spanish costumes. I bypassed such items and saw that indeed here was a Timple; it looked and sounded glorious. "It costs 130 euros", the man said with a smile. Sadly I couldn't bring myself to part with such an amount but, keen not to disappoint him, bought a few bottles of the local mojo sauce instead. Hardly a satisfying alternative, but it would have to do.

Culture - March

Books Read:

The Invisible Committee - 'The Coming Insurrection' (non-fiction)
John Milton - 'Paradise Lost'
Adam Smith - 'Wealth of Nations' (non-fiction)
Neil McCormick - 'I Was Bono's Doppelgänger' (non-fiction)

This month I waded through the classic economic text 'Wealth of Nations' by Adam Smith; a challenging and absorbing tract that stands as a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking and one from which society, often unwittingly, still draws influence.

Whilst some of the sections relating to the merits of agriculture over mercantilist policies suffer from an arcane dryness, there are some wonderfully clear-minded expositions as to the historical nature of feudal systems, trade agreements, the folly of colonialisation, the division of labour, and of money itself.

Whilst often being cited as a pivotal text in the promotion of free market economics, international trade and the movement of people, Smith is equally unambiguous regarding the negative influence of monopolies and the balance of trade falling disproportionately in the favour of affordable foreign imports. In this sense, at times it almost reads as a book seeking to legitimise left wing anarcho-syndicalist ideals as opposed to the modern age in which capital is employed chiefly in the creation of yet more capital for those few of plenty to keep from the many in want.

I was particularly struck by the following quote, that even after the 238 years since 1776, stands as a cynosure of appositeness:

'Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all...'


Films Watched:

'Hannah and her Sisters' (Woody Allen)
'Her' (Spike Jonze) (at the Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton)
'Quartet' (Dustin Hoffman)
'Under the Skin' (Jonathan Glazer) (at the Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton)
'Sleepless in Seattle' (Nora Ephron)


Albums Played:

The Men - 'Tomorrow's Hits'
Eagulls - 'Eagulls'
Temples - 'Sun Structures'
Real Estate - 'Atlas'
Goat - 'World Music'
Elbow - 'The Take Off and Landing of Everything'
The Concretes - 'The Concretes'
Liars - 'Mess'
Foster the People - 'Supermodel'
Nine Inch Nails - 'Things Falling Apart'
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - 'B.R.M.C.'
Band of Skulls - 'Himalayan'
Mica Levi - 'Under the Skin' (soundtrack)


Gigs Attended:

Cassels + Escapists at The Shacklewell Arms, Dalston

Weekly news - Farage vs. Clegg

The UK Independence Party made another significant clamber up the climbing wall of mainstream political legitimacy over the last fortnight as leader Nigel Farage and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg embarked on their prime time TV debates.

Regardless of whether one might feel an affinity with UKIP or not, there can be no denying that a large proportion of the electorate, disenchanted by the often shambolic mishandling of immigration policy under New Labour and the subsequent obfuscation by the Con-Dem coalition, have found themselves courted by the rise of UKIP, pushing their anti-Europe ideology, at times appearing to resemble something of a single-issue party.

For all that UKIP might be lambasted and demonized by certain strands of the media and the political establishment, the fact remains that were it not for the latter's woeful shying away of any substantive or meaningful engagement with the issue, their elevation to the mainstream needn't have been so inevitable.

Watching the debates, the manifest problems could be seen to be two-fold. Firstly, they swiftly became ensconced in a kind of tedious Newton's Cradle swinging between one's promotion of facts and statistics and the other's condemnation of them as lies. The only hope one might have of hacking a truthful path through this overgrowth of contradiction would seemingly rest only in being more au fait with EU facts and figures than the average sane person frankly has any sense in being.

Secondly, the manner in which the debates were depicted as being couched under a veil of victory or defeat merely serves to perpetuate the adversarial charade that is so much to blame for the apathetic and disaffected prism through which so many have come to view political discourse. The only residual outcome of the debates worthy of note appears to have been Farage's victory over Clegg, without any meaningful or enlightened progress made on the issues at hand.

Regardless of the left's denigrating of 'Nasty Nigel', his undoubted appeal lies in his bonhomie bluster, his adoption of a 'common sense' populist approach, and his apparent bypassing of the politician's stock-in-trade hedging and artifice. For David Cameron's Tories, the primary focus before next year's election will now lie in dredging the burgeoning river of UKIP support being fed by tributaries from traditional Conservative heartlands. Their promise of a referendum on Europe being the focal point of this counter-attack.

For Farage, the main goal is to get a UKIP Member of Parliament elected, and has stated his resolve to stand down as leader should this achievement fail to be met. In this epoch where the cult of personality often surpasses any context or content, Farage's stock places him firmly in the upper decile of the political firmament.

Aside from the laughing stock that is Godfrey Bloom, I remain unable to name a single other UKIP politician, and my ignorance is unlikely to place me in the minority. Should Farage stand down, I believe the atrophying of UKIP's influence and prominence in mainstream politics would be a natural consequence.

UKIP's ascension is firmly aligned with post-financial collapse return to right wing politics across Europe, from the Golden Dawn in Greece to Marine Le Pen's Front National gaining traction in France.

It seems to me that what the desiccated left wing movement needs, if not in Europe then certainly in the UK, is a Nigel Farage of their own. Someone who, if not entirely imbued with integrity or candour, but with the force of character and will to at least try and rejuvenate the kind of socialist ideals that have been neglected and left to decay in this country for so long.

Confessions of a Revolutionary Anarchist in the City of London - Part 1

The following series of writings are the recovered documents belonging to the self-styled anarchist revolutionary Mikhail B. Whilst the content is largely coherent, the extent to which the actual documented events can be verified as fact remains unclear to this day. What the documents do provide, however, is a unique insight into the warped mind of the man who conspired to bring guerrilla warfare to the economic heartland of the United Kingdom.

Day 1:

So today I begin this journal, blog, diary, diatribe, whatever you might wish to call it. I do so on the pretext that the direction of my life has taken a recent marked deviation into altogether obdurate perceptive planes.

It is now that I must begin the crusade to which my short and inconsequential life has hitherto lead; here I depart from the cloistered schools and academies that represent the moribund and routine life, and take tentative steps forwards onto the virgin snow of sheer conviction.

I have long believed in the following mantra which reads as such a banal truism that I suspect I must have gleaned it from some arch student poster, and yet secretly I wonder whether I may simply have coined it myself – The greatest strength one can possess is the intimate knowledge of one’s own weaknesses. The greatest weakness is in allowing them to dominate one’s strengths.

I intimately consort with my own weaknesses on a hyper-regular basis, checking off every flaw, fallibility and indiscretion as though I were a teacher doing the morning class register.

There’s the reluctance to adequately compromise even when the potential gains from my obstinacy are at best negligible; there’s the inability to at any point raise the visor of intensity when associating with others which, when attempting to be amiable gives the impression of awkwardness, and when trying to be carefree or humorous comes across as a close shade of arrogance.

I am unable to let anyone in. I am unable to confide in anyone nor inspire confidence in anyone that they might confide in me. I am, since we’re looking through the microscope, an egregious friend, a selfish lover, a scathing critic of those embodying virtue and honour in ethical arena removed from those conforming to my own ideals, a semi-coherent rambler of views and ideals worn like the last garments on the sale rack at the end of January, and a belligerent host to a soiree of dubious moral leanings that a good many people would likely deem perversely minatory.

My primary strength on the other hand is that I happen to be a revolutionary anarchist. As such, I am capable of channelling my righteous anger of all that is corrupt and contemptible in society into a direct call for active resistance.

This anger chiefly being levelled at the following: the financial institutions and cronyism that exists merely to create and horde vast sums of capital, providing privilege to the meritless minority who make it their business to with one hand, ensnare and contain as much wealth as possible whilst keeping the door firmly held tight against the majority with the other.

My anger is also levelled at the ineffectual politicians, mere effigies of power; their role being to maintain a veneer of statesman-like control over the masses, dividing and ruling as par for the course, whilst ceremonially lubricating the channels of operation for the business elite. (Ceremonial only insofar as they would proceed regardless of any obstructive flab from the corpulent political body.)

Today in fact marks a defining turning point, a point from which the ramifications on my life will ripple out centrifugally until they dissipate or bounce back from some unforeseen barrier. Standing in the office of the store manager Mr Gibbs, his face a deflated ballast balloon, dehydrated of the helium of alcohol, I felt more assertive than ever regarding two unique propositions.

Firstly, that Mr Gibbs was, in fact, a cunt. Secondly, that whether or not this first surety was broached, I would not be leaving his office still an employee of the PoundWorld on the Walworth Road. Slovenliness, tardiness, a general decrepitude of application or effort, an adversarial attitude completely out of kilter with the requirements for an efficiently operational team of colleagues; just some examples from the litany of offences assigned to my character.

In the current climate, with high unemployment, employees’ rights being hived off by the unscrupulous employers’ market, and the sandstorm of bilious xenophobia whipped up by the right wing media regarding immigrants stealing any available job, you’d think I might be a little more perturbed at finding myself newly jobless.

Truth be told, I could hardly give a fuck. The manacles of wage slavery have been shaken off, the anxious trepidation from one week to the next of whether enough hours will be gifted to me by my generous Master has been palliated. Walking along, with the priapic Shard thrust at the blackening sky, my burgeoning resolve and determinism begins to take flight, no longer shackled to the drudgery and tedium of routine.

My plans and ambitions can now begin to gestate, from mere fantasy into realised action. The situation in which I now find myself is uniquely primed for me to affect these steps, I can rise above the toiling masses ground down into daily submission by unseen and often benign hands, and make my stand.

Like some latter-day Guevara, I will take the fight to the City of London, which by its feculent greed and unstinting perfidy has incited me to it. I pledge to wage revolutionary war against the corporate hinterland, the business leaders and their many acolytes who conspire to perpetuate their plutocracy.

These steps may be tentative and unsteady, but I feel that, just as they have done in years gone by, for a myriad of lost causes and incentives, the people will rise again. In 2014, of all years, with a century’s worth of hindsight since Princip’s gun went off, it is still conceivable that one single decisive action might change the world irreparably. I may need no weapon – at least not yet – but if the pyre of discontent can be built to the requisite measure then just one spark could set the whole thing ablaze in no time at all, leaving the old order as little more than the smouldering embers of history.

To be continued...