(Lahore, Pakistan)
Lahore is a beautiful city boasting an exotic mix of impressive monuments, exquisite street food, modern media companies and traditional festivals. It would be a tourist paradise were it not for the problems that still beset this jewel. The city was torn apart during Partition, and soon afterwards riots between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus further damaged both the physical infrastructure and everyday life. It was the objective of an attack by the Indian army in 1965, and its position close to the new border has never let it rest. Today Lahore figures prominently in the conflict against between the West and its enemies.
On March 3rd a group of gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team, killing six people (five policemen and a driver) and injuring nine more. Comparisons were quickly made to the violence at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when members of Palestinian group “Black September” kidnapped and later killed eleven member of the Israeli Olympic team.
However, the Olympics are widely regarded as an event which brings nations together in a sporting festival which still observes the accepted ethics of competition and morals of human co-existence. The irony of the Lahore attack is that it was committed against a team engaged in a “sporting” activity which was used as an unsubtle truncheon in the English class war and more importantly as a weapon in the colonial domination of a post-abolition British Empire.
Many people have likened sport to war – not least when the situation in question involves English football supporters – and there are obvious parallels between armies and teams, flags and team colours, trophies and conquests and primitive tribal belligerence and football crowds. Some would even point to a direct connection between the gentlemanly rules of engagement and the gentlemanly rules of a sport. Whatever the extent of the similarities, it was only a question of time before the already blurred boundaries between these two “sporting” activities were shot to pieces.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Marching out of time
(Helmand Province, Afghanistan)
The Helmand province of southern Afghanistan is mainly a desert, although the Helmand River provides extensive irrigation for agriculture. The main crop is poppies, and this region produces nearly half of all of the world’s supply of opium. It has also been the epicentre of intense fighting between first American, and then British occupying forces and the Taleban.
Last Saturday it was announced that another British soldier had died in Helmand, bringing the total British casualties in the eight-year war in Afghanistan to a round figure of 150. In Iraq the British army has lost closer to 200 soldiers. To those who share the petty-minded, flag-waving mentality prevalent in a tiny nation with a disproportionate ego, these people are heroes, and are always labelled as such by the British press.
This hero-worship reached its hysterical zenith last December when Sky 1 screened an awards ceremony which had apparently been dreamt up by Prince Charles and sponsored by The Sun newspaper. The ceremony was criticised by readers of others newspapers as being a cynical attempt on the part of The Sun to increase its circulation and by veterans’ associations as a glossing over of the real issues for survivors.
A DROP IN THE OCEAN
Despite the criticism, the programme was a success among that alarmingly large sector of the British population that still believes that if you take a gun and invade a foreign country and kill civilians in order to take control of natural resources you are a conquering hero. Prince Charles himself declared:
...as I speak many members of our Armed Forces are far away from their families, working in austere, challenging and often dangerous environments.
It appears to be as lost on him as it is on the rest of the warmongers that they would not have to be working in such conditions if they had not gone to a foreign country with a gun etc. To put it simply, people have a choice. The people who enlist in the army do so voluntarily and in full knowledge of the consequences – at some point they will have to kill somebody. And perhaps at some point they will have to die.
Let us not forget that this is not some humanitarian force which arms itself for self-protection while undertaking aid projects in areas in need of a more permanent infrastructure. Their losses are a drop in the ocean – or indeed a grain of sand in the desert – compared to the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths they have caused in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers vary wildly depending on the source, with some organisations quoting as many as one million civilian deaths, but everybody agrees that the figure is at the very least 100,000.
WHITE FEATHERS
Many countries have seen great empires rise and fall on the back of military conquest and plunder, but most modern people would accept that these are feats that have not only been consigned to the history books but should also never be repeated. The British army may be a collection of heroes to some British people, but – from Cromwell’s crimes in Ireland through the phosphorous fire-bombing of Dresden to the fuel-air bombing of Iraq – to the Argentines, Afghans, Germans, Irish, Indians and Iraqis they are no more than war criminals.
The British government will continue to use its army as an imperialist battering ram for as long as such actions continue to receive support from a large proportion of the British population, and awards ceremonies such as the “Millies” will only fuel that support. It is time for the silent millions who do not support British involvement in wars to stand up not only in the occasional – albeit impressive – street protest, but also on a daily basis.
There needs to be a recognised symbol for those who are brave enough to show their disdain for the army in public. Perhaps an appropriate gesture would be to serve a white feather with pints of beer to those who have enlisted or those who have encouraged others to do so, as a symbol of peace and of the cowardice of those who would seek to bully countries into submission using guns and bombs.
The Helmand province of southern Afghanistan is mainly a desert, although the Helmand River provides extensive irrigation for agriculture. The main crop is poppies, and this region produces nearly half of all of the world’s supply of opium. It has also been the epicentre of intense fighting between first American, and then British occupying forces and the Taleban.
Last Saturday it was announced that another British soldier had died in Helmand, bringing the total British casualties in the eight-year war in Afghanistan to a round figure of 150. In Iraq the British army has lost closer to 200 soldiers. To those who share the petty-minded, flag-waving mentality prevalent in a tiny nation with a disproportionate ego, these people are heroes, and are always labelled as such by the British press.
This hero-worship reached its hysterical zenith last December when Sky 1 screened an awards ceremony which had apparently been dreamt up by Prince Charles and sponsored by The Sun newspaper. The ceremony was criticised by readers of others newspapers as being a cynical attempt on the part of The Sun to increase its circulation and by veterans’ associations as a glossing over of the real issues for survivors.
A DROP IN THE OCEAN
Despite the criticism, the programme was a success among that alarmingly large sector of the British population that still believes that if you take a gun and invade a foreign country and kill civilians in order to take control of natural resources you are a conquering hero. Prince Charles himself declared:
...as I speak many members of our Armed Forces are far away from their families, working in austere, challenging and often dangerous environments.
It appears to be as lost on him as it is on the rest of the warmongers that they would not have to be working in such conditions if they had not gone to a foreign country with a gun etc. To put it simply, people have a choice. The people who enlist in the army do so voluntarily and in full knowledge of the consequences – at some point they will have to kill somebody. And perhaps at some point they will have to die.
Let us not forget that this is not some humanitarian force which arms itself for self-protection while undertaking aid projects in areas in need of a more permanent infrastructure. Their losses are a drop in the ocean – or indeed a grain of sand in the desert – compared to the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths they have caused in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers vary wildly depending on the source, with some organisations quoting as many as one million civilian deaths, but everybody agrees that the figure is at the very least 100,000.
WHITE FEATHERS
Many countries have seen great empires rise and fall on the back of military conquest and plunder, but most modern people would accept that these are feats that have not only been consigned to the history books but should also never be repeated. The British army may be a collection of heroes to some British people, but – from Cromwell’s crimes in Ireland through the phosphorous fire-bombing of Dresden to the fuel-air bombing of Iraq – to the Argentines, Afghans, Germans, Irish, Indians and Iraqis they are no more than war criminals.
The British government will continue to use its army as an imperialist battering ram for as long as such actions continue to receive support from a large proportion of the British population, and awards ceremonies such as the “Millies” will only fuel that support. It is time for the silent millions who do not support British involvement in wars to stand up not only in the occasional – albeit impressive – street protest, but also on a daily basis.
There needs to be a recognised symbol for those who are brave enough to show their disdain for the army in public. Perhaps an appropriate gesture would be to serve a white feather with pints of beer to those who have enlisted or those who have encouraged others to do so, as a symbol of peace and of the cowardice of those who would seek to bully countries into submission using guns and bombs.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Decadence, recession, anonymity
It was a mighty empire, built on the invasion and occupation of other countries and the arrogant belief of superior and separate people that it was their sole responsibility to spread “civilisation” and its mores to the world. It worked for a time, while their military superiority outweighed the increasing decadence of a self-satisfied, bloated society, fat from the spoils of victory.
However, the decadence brought about recession, and the recession led to downfall. Soon, all that was left was the language, an international parlance which continued for another thousand years among the people who wielded the power, even though the empire that had first seen the rise of the language was nothing but a vague memory.
The descendants are still superior and separate but considered irrelevant in anything other than a localised context. Some people try to glorify that empire; they are rightly dismissed as fascists. When decadence and self-glorification lead to recession, the result is downfall and anonymity.
However, the decadence brought about recession, and the recession led to downfall. Soon, all that was left was the language, an international parlance which continued for another thousand years among the people who wielded the power, even though the empire that had first seen the rise of the language was nothing but a vague memory.
The descendants are still superior and separate but considered irrelevant in anything other than a localised context. Some people try to glorify that empire; they are rightly dismissed as fascists. When decadence and self-glorification lead to recession, the result is downfall and anonymity.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Dances with defiance
(Los Angeles, U.S.A.)
Los Angeles: Rodney King, earthquakes, drugs gangs and the Oscars. For better or for worse, a city’s reputation is based on broad brushstrokes of history, and L.A. is no different. A visit to any city may leave us with fond memories, but for those who watch from afar it is the most unsavoury aspects of the city’s life which often attract more attention, and there is nothing more appealingly seedy than the annual bun-fight that is the Academy Awards Ceremony.
This year, like every year, there are clear favourites for most categories and films which promise to clean up, but there is one film which has only merited one nomination, slipping under the radar as easily as an Israeli plane over American-controlled territory. “Defiance” tells the tale of Jewish resistance and heroism in the Second World War, and was released to mixed reviews on New Year’s Eve of 2008.
WAR (FILM) – WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
In modern cinema, there are few things more pointless than spending two hours watching – not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars making – a film which attempts to glorify violence, especially that perpetrated by successive criminal Western governments in the name of some fallacious cause.
Inevitably, for a generation after the end of WW2, there were a plethora of such films, tales in which the men were men and the enemy was nervous. For the most part they were unashamedly chauvinist, phallocentric and stereotypical and served no greater purpose than to perpetuate the ridiculous myth that war is glorious and dying for your country an honour.
When the interest in WW2 films finally – thankfully – waned, it was replaced by films about the Vietnam War. Fortunately, people had also finally realised that wars started or continued by certain Western governments were no more than war crimes committed in the name of an arrogant belief in Western “civilisation”, and the films which dealt with Vietnam showed the war as futile, arrogant and flawed.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Recently we have been spared too many trashy American films glorifying Western atrocities committed in, for example, Afghanistan or Iraq, and there have obviously been only a handful of films glorifying WW2 during the last decade or so.
How strange then that there should suddenly appear a $32 million American film about the plight of the Jews – the first since “Schindler’s List” in 1993 – at a time when nobody else in the world of cinema seems to be interested in such ancient history. The massacre of Israelis in Munich, maybe, but WW2 is no longer in fashion.
A cynical interpretation of events would focus on the coincidence in the timing of the release of the film with the atrocious Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. How better to confuse the issue of these attacks by setting up the usual Israeli-American smokescreen of reminding the world once more of previous atrocities committed against the Jewish people.
SMOKE SIGNALS OR SMOKESCREEN?
This is not the first time American money has helped to create confusion around contemporary topics. Back in 1990, “Dances with wolves” was greeted as a sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans at a time when various peoples were struggling to retain the rights to their ancestral land and when the American authorities had successfully driven a wedge among them in the shape of gambling licences.
More recently, in 2007, the film “300” met with criticism for its extremely negative portrayal of the Persians – the people indigenous to the territory which is roughly now Iran – at a time when the American administration’s sword-rattling towards Tehran was at its loudest. In 2005 “Jarhead” showed an extremely pro-American view of the Iraq War when the Bush administration was coming under increasing pressure to justify the number of casualties among the armed forces (although not among Iraqi civilians, for some reason).
A POWERFUL TOOL
Cinema is a medium which enjoys instant worldwide acceptance and is in the enviable position of being able to reach a global audience with the simple yet effective communication of a message. There are times when cinema brings us films of protest and indignation about man’s inhumanity to man and shows that it is a force for good.
However, with power comes responsibility, and Hollywood would be wise not to promote any films which could be suspected of abusing that power. The eyes of the world are invariably focused on America, and now more than ever it is time for the more prominent American institutions to show integrity and transparency, two qualities which are notably absent from recent American foreign policy.
Los Angeles: Rodney King, earthquakes, drugs gangs and the Oscars. For better or for worse, a city’s reputation is based on broad brushstrokes of history, and L.A. is no different. A visit to any city may leave us with fond memories, but for those who watch from afar it is the most unsavoury aspects of the city’s life which often attract more attention, and there is nothing more appealingly seedy than the annual bun-fight that is the Academy Awards Ceremony.
This year, like every year, there are clear favourites for most categories and films which promise to clean up, but there is one film which has only merited one nomination, slipping under the radar as easily as an Israeli plane over American-controlled territory. “Defiance” tells the tale of Jewish resistance and heroism in the Second World War, and was released to mixed reviews on New Year’s Eve of 2008.
WAR (FILM) – WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
In modern cinema, there are few things more pointless than spending two hours watching – not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars making – a film which attempts to glorify violence, especially that perpetrated by successive criminal Western governments in the name of some fallacious cause.
Inevitably, for a generation after the end of WW2, there were a plethora of such films, tales in which the men were men and the enemy was nervous. For the most part they were unashamedly chauvinist, phallocentric and stereotypical and served no greater purpose than to perpetuate the ridiculous myth that war is glorious and dying for your country an honour.
When the interest in WW2 films finally – thankfully – waned, it was replaced by films about the Vietnam War. Fortunately, people had also finally realised that wars started or continued by certain Western governments were no more than war crimes committed in the name of an arrogant belief in Western “civilisation”, and the films which dealt with Vietnam showed the war as futile, arrogant and flawed.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Recently we have been spared too many trashy American films glorifying Western atrocities committed in, for example, Afghanistan or Iraq, and there have obviously been only a handful of films glorifying WW2 during the last decade or so.
How strange then that there should suddenly appear a $32 million American film about the plight of the Jews – the first since “Schindler’s List” in 1993 – at a time when nobody else in the world of cinema seems to be interested in such ancient history. The massacre of Israelis in Munich, maybe, but WW2 is no longer in fashion.
A cynical interpretation of events would focus on the coincidence in the timing of the release of the film with the atrocious Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. How better to confuse the issue of these attacks by setting up the usual Israeli-American smokescreen of reminding the world once more of previous atrocities committed against the Jewish people.
SMOKE SIGNALS OR SMOKESCREEN?
This is not the first time American money has helped to create confusion around contemporary topics. Back in 1990, “Dances with wolves” was greeted as a sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans at a time when various peoples were struggling to retain the rights to their ancestral land and when the American authorities had successfully driven a wedge among them in the shape of gambling licences.
More recently, in 2007, the film “300” met with criticism for its extremely negative portrayal of the Persians – the people indigenous to the territory which is roughly now Iran – at a time when the American administration’s sword-rattling towards Tehran was at its loudest. In 2005 “Jarhead” showed an extremely pro-American view of the Iraq War when the Bush administration was coming under increasing pressure to justify the number of casualties among the armed forces (although not among Iraqi civilians, for some reason).
A POWERFUL TOOL
Cinema is a medium which enjoys instant worldwide acceptance and is in the enviable position of being able to reach a global audience with the simple yet effective communication of a message. There are times when cinema brings us films of protest and indignation about man’s inhumanity to man and shows that it is a force for good.
However, with power comes responsibility, and Hollywood would be wise not to promote any films which could be suspected of abusing that power. The eyes of the world are invariably focused on America, and now more than ever it is time for the more prominent American institutions to show integrity and transparency, two qualities which are notably absent from recent American foreign policy.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
A new dawn
(Washington D.C., U.S.A.)
I didn’t bother watching President Obama’s inauguration. I have never seen any of the political leaders of my own country being sworn in, so I was hardly going to watch the ceremony to inaugurate some foreign leader.
With this I do not mean to say that I have not been feeling the emotion surrounding his election; it is simply that I am not one of television’s sheep. I breathed in the excitement on the dawn of his election – it was dawn where I was – and the time of day almost seemed appropriate in a symbolic sort of way. It was not only the first time an African-American had become president, but his style and demeanour suggested a fresh start for his country.
Not only would he erase the bad memories left by the likes of Powell and Rice, and not only would he right the terrible wrongs committed by the Bush administration but he would start to take care of the weaker sections of American society. At last the masses would be protected against the onslaught of modern capitalism.
There was talk of a revolution.
REVOLUTION
The problem with revolutions is that they rarely bring the benefits of which the people had dreamed.
In Paris in May, 1968 the student strikes were the most visible aspect of the attempt to overhaul establishment ideals, but as early as June not only did the Gaullist government win an overwhelming majority but the leftist groups lost sixty-one seats and the communists lost thirty-nine. It could be argued that the upheaval cost de Gaulle his job (in a referendum in April 1969) but France simply swept up the rubble and continued as it had before.
In Russia in 1918 Lenin’s communists managed to take over a huge country, but immediately afterwards a civil war started, territory (and 60 million people, 25% of farming land and 75% of iron ore and coal deposits) were handed over to Germany, then the Cheka secret police were formed to keep the people in check. Years of famine, crime and cannibalism followed for Russia.
In Prague in the spring of 1968 the fight for reforms led to the Soviet invasion and suppression and an even greater limitation of freedom of speech and thought.
As for more modern times, there has been very little chance of revolution in the West in the last couple of decades as Western society has grown richer. People tend to become more conservative as they become more prosperous, and appear to go from looking down on poorer people to resenting them – poorer people or the “people we are subsidising”.
And left-wing students also become more conservative as their priorities change – there is nothing more fascist and intransigent than an ageing hippy. It is almost as if they have their revolution and imagine the world around them the way they want it and immediately become reactionary in order to protect their new status quo. They all become the film version of Strelnikov.
WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN
There is a strange cycle in American politics which warrants further research. The prosperity of the fifties was followed by unrest in the sixties, and the US government responded by invading Vietnam. The growth of the eighties could never last, and the US government went into the Gulf. Now that the prosperity of recent years has given way to a period of worldwide economic recession – “worldwide” because when the West is faring badly it kicks everyone else in the teeth just to make sure it is not suffering alone – it is interesting to observe the reaction of the US.
As people get poorer they complain more, protest more, and tend to lash out more. However, being human we never lash out at those who are really at fault – usually those people are untouchable, unreachable or unidentifiable anyway – so we go for the weaker people, or the people who are far enough removed from our own blueprint to have become legitimate targets in order to stop us from attacking each other.
In this new century Western governments, with a remarkable blindness for irony, strive to convince us of the “terrorist threat”. Muslims are the enemy, Arabs are a menace and there are terrorists lurking around every corner. Establishment television stations allow some Muslims to remind us that they are not all the same, but they make it look no more than an ugly sycophancy towards the West and the decision to show them is simply a sop to political correctness. It is designed not to make some Muslims look more reasonable but to allow the television stations to claim impartiality and therefore cover them for more attacks on the Middle East and its religion.
Are we to believe that with a change of president, the US is to suddenly embrace Muslims as brothers? Does anybody really think that after half a century of interfering in other people’s affairs (and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people) the US army will cease its foreign occupation or that after sixty years of economic and military backing the US administration will withdraw support for Israeli atrocities?
It will be a revolution indeed if Obama forces the pharmaceutical industry to finally do the right thing by victims of AIDS in Africa, reduces military spending and once and for all provides some coherent form of health care for the poor of his country. He could start by shutting down Guantanamo...
“Revolution” is a word which people unsheathe with alarming regularity, and in an economic situation which demands profound change people are more trigger-happy with their clichés than usual. However, there is no doubt that Obama is a good and intelligent man, and he will know – even if the social commentators do not – that change is a dish best served cold.
I didn’t bother watching President Obama’s inauguration. I have never seen any of the political leaders of my own country being sworn in, so I was hardly going to watch the ceremony to inaugurate some foreign leader.
With this I do not mean to say that I have not been feeling the emotion surrounding his election; it is simply that I am not one of television’s sheep. I breathed in the excitement on the dawn of his election – it was dawn where I was – and the time of day almost seemed appropriate in a symbolic sort of way. It was not only the first time an African-American had become president, but his style and demeanour suggested a fresh start for his country.
Not only would he erase the bad memories left by the likes of Powell and Rice, and not only would he right the terrible wrongs committed by the Bush administration but he would start to take care of the weaker sections of American society. At last the masses would be protected against the onslaught of modern capitalism.
There was talk of a revolution.
REVOLUTION
The problem with revolutions is that they rarely bring the benefits of which the people had dreamed.
In Paris in May, 1968 the student strikes were the most visible aspect of the attempt to overhaul establishment ideals, but as early as June not only did the Gaullist government win an overwhelming majority but the leftist groups lost sixty-one seats and the communists lost thirty-nine. It could be argued that the upheaval cost de Gaulle his job (in a referendum in April 1969) but France simply swept up the rubble and continued as it had before.
In Russia in 1918 Lenin’s communists managed to take over a huge country, but immediately afterwards a civil war started, territory (and 60 million people, 25% of farming land and 75% of iron ore and coal deposits) were handed over to Germany, then the Cheka secret police were formed to keep the people in check. Years of famine, crime and cannibalism followed for Russia.
In Prague in the spring of 1968 the fight for reforms led to the Soviet invasion and suppression and an even greater limitation of freedom of speech and thought.
As for more modern times, there has been very little chance of revolution in the West in the last couple of decades as Western society has grown richer. People tend to become more conservative as they become more prosperous, and appear to go from looking down on poorer people to resenting them – poorer people or the “people we are subsidising”.
And left-wing students also become more conservative as their priorities change – there is nothing more fascist and intransigent than an ageing hippy. It is almost as if they have their revolution and imagine the world around them the way they want it and immediately become reactionary in order to protect their new status quo. They all become the film version of Strelnikov.
WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN
There is a strange cycle in American politics which warrants further research. The prosperity of the fifties was followed by unrest in the sixties, and the US government responded by invading Vietnam. The growth of the eighties could never last, and the US government went into the Gulf. Now that the prosperity of recent years has given way to a period of worldwide economic recession – “worldwide” because when the West is faring badly it kicks everyone else in the teeth just to make sure it is not suffering alone – it is interesting to observe the reaction of the US.
As people get poorer they complain more, protest more, and tend to lash out more. However, being human we never lash out at those who are really at fault – usually those people are untouchable, unreachable or unidentifiable anyway – so we go for the weaker people, or the people who are far enough removed from our own blueprint to have become legitimate targets in order to stop us from attacking each other.
In this new century Western governments, with a remarkable blindness for irony, strive to convince us of the “terrorist threat”. Muslims are the enemy, Arabs are a menace and there are terrorists lurking around every corner. Establishment television stations allow some Muslims to remind us that they are not all the same, but they make it look no more than an ugly sycophancy towards the West and the decision to show them is simply a sop to political correctness. It is designed not to make some Muslims look more reasonable but to allow the television stations to claim impartiality and therefore cover them for more attacks on the Middle East and its religion.
Are we to believe that with a change of president, the US is to suddenly embrace Muslims as brothers? Does anybody really think that after half a century of interfering in other people’s affairs (and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people) the US army will cease its foreign occupation or that after sixty years of economic and military backing the US administration will withdraw support for Israeli atrocities?
It will be a revolution indeed if Obama forces the pharmaceutical industry to finally do the right thing by victims of AIDS in Africa, reduces military spending and once and for all provides some coherent form of health care for the poor of his country. He could start by shutting down Guantanamo...
“Revolution” is a word which people unsheathe with alarming regularity, and in an economic situation which demands profound change people are more trigger-happy with their clichés than usual. However, there is no doubt that Obama is a good and intelligent man, and he will know – even if the social commentators do not – that change is a dish best served cold.
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