Sam PF's Journal

On BAE Systems

2008-05-18T10:56:11Z

Reposted from a response to a question from half_of_monty - since I'd already written it, thought I might as well post it!

She asked: How come they're arrestable in the US? Is BAE partly an American company? If so it should change its name!

My reply:

BAE Systems have a US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc., which includes major portions of their business, including the Land Systems and Armaments division. (although some of that is located in the UK and Europe, and likewise some of the other stuff is located in the US.) They have been rapidly growing their US business through acquisitions of companies such as United Defense (2005) and Armor Holdings (2007). They now earn almost twice as much revenue from sales to North America as to the UK (see BAE Systems Annual Report, p104.)

BAE are essentially a global arms company, and regard six countries as their 'home markets': the UK, US, Sweden, South Africa, Australia and Saudi Arabia. In Sweden they own companies such as Bofors and Hagglunds; in Sout Africa they have been making investments as offsets from their big arms deals there; in Australia they have recently added Australia's second largest arms company Tenix Defence to their already substantial portfolio; in Saudi Arabia they have thousands of employees who essentially run the Saudi Air Force.

As for changing their name, they already have! In 1999, when British Aerospace bought the arms business of GEC, they 'acronymized' themselves, becoming BAE Systems, with the BAE no longer standing for anything.

They remain a 'British' company first in the sense that they are headquartered in the UK and registered on the UK Stock exchange. Secondly, in their special relationship with the British government, where they are considered to play a key role in the UK's Defence Industrial Strategy, over which they exercise considerable influence. While they are now a major supplier to the US Department of Defense, they do not enjoy a similar privileged relationship with the US Government.

This is why BAE executives get detained in the US, but not in the UK.

Schadenfreude

2008-05-18T09:30:53Z

Ahahahahahahahaha!!!!

Ahahahahahahaha!

60 Years

2008-05-09T00:25:09Z

Today Israel starts a week of celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of their formation as a state, culminating in their Independence Day of May 14th.

Amidst the chorus of fawning congratulations from world leaders, artists and celebrities, it is fortunately (as the BBC article shows) becoming harder - at least outside the US - to ignore the other side of the events of 60 years ago, the Palestinian Nakba, or Catastrophe.

In the course of the Israeli 'War of Independence', around 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes and land as the result of a campaign of massacres and ethnic cleansing by forces of the nascent Israeli state. Many were forcibly expelled, many others fled the fighting - all were subsequently denied the right to return to their homes, in defiance of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Over 530 Palestinian villages were destroyed. With the Absentee Property Act of 1950, Israel subsequently confiscated the land of the exiled Palestinians without compensation.

Israel's apologists have long tried to deny these facts, but such denials increasingly lack intellectual credibility given the wealth of documentation - including from Israeli sources - that substantiates them. This fact sheet from Jewish Voice for Peace presents one of the most compact but comprehensive accounts I've seen. If you only follow one link from this post, that's probably the one to go for.

The orchestrated nature of the campaign is amde clear by Plan Dalet, adopted by the Zionist leadership early in 1948: (from JVP factsheet)

These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) and especially of those population centers which are difficult to control continuously; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state (Plan Dalet, 10 March,
1948)

The diaries of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin - who signed the Oslo accords with Yasser Arafat - record his role as leader of the Israeli forces attacking Lydda in July 1947:

After attacking Lydda Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out!.' Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring, .... Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook.

Rabin signed the order that "The residents of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age" on July 12th 2008.

This is the reality behind the foundation of the state of Israel, this is what lies behind all the subsequent wars and conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians and the other states in the region. And until this fundamental wrong is acknowledged and given redress, Israel will never know peace.

I don't think there was anything intrinsically wrong with the desire of many (originally mostly European) Jews to live in Palestine, to feel a connection with the land that was the cradle of their religion and community. It is also entirely understandable - even before the Holocaust - that many European Jews wanted a guaranteed option for getting out of Europe. (Like many others, the Perlo's found their escape route to the United States when things got too hot in Poland, but who could know when the US or anyone else would open or close their doors?) There were Zionists - the young Uri Avnery, now a veteran Israeli peace activist, was one of them - who wanted Zionism to be a movement that worked with the indigenous Arab population in seeking freedom from British rule and building an independent state. There were no doubt many others who thought that way, though how many we'll never know.

But that's not how Zionism manifested itself. The thing is, the European Jews who formed the leadership of the Zionist movement were, in particular, Europeans. With a typical arrogant European belief in the superiority of our civilisation, and disregard for lesser peoples, whose rights did not need to be taken into account.

The way I see it though, the actual wrong started in 1922, when the League of Nations carved up the former Ottoman Empire in the Levant and Mesopotamia between Britain and France to be ruled as 'Mandates', with Palestine going to Britain - breaking British promises during WW1 of independence for the Arabs who rose up against their Ottoman overlords. While the principle of self-determination was considered crucial for the superior Europeans, this did not apply to peoples of swarthier complexion. The British used their Mandate in Palestine to implement the 1917 Balfour Declaration, supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine. (Although they later started to have second thoughts). The British ruthlessly suppressed a Palestinian uprising against their rule in the 1930s.

Had the peoples of the Middle East, including Palestine, been granted self-determination after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the state of Israel could never have come to be. Perhaps there could still have been large-scale Jewish immigration to the region - that would have been a matter for negotiation with whatever independent states existed there, instead of the dictat of colonial rulers. But I don't see how one can justify the creation of Israel without believing that the Arabs of Palestine were not entitled to control over their own destiny, that their rights of necessity had to be overridden.

In other words, Zionism - certainly in the dominant form it has taken and was manifested in the creation of Israel - is indeed racism, of simple logical necessity.

That doesn't mean I believe the state of Israel can or should be abolished - it is there, it is recognised as a UN member state, its people have been there for 60 years. Some things cannot simply be reversed, even if it were possible, without as great an injustice as the original event. No-one, not even Hamas, actually thinks that's going to happen anyway. But I do believe the ideology of Zionism that lies at the root of the Israeli state in its present form needs to be challenged and overcome.

There is a demonstration in London on Saturday to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Nakba, calling for an end to the seige of Gaza, an end to the Occupation, and for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Ah, there is one in Stockholm on the 15th, that's good.

Decisions, decisions

2008-04-30T23:24:35Z

So, tomorrow is the 1st of May, international labour day, and here in Sweden they take it quite seriously and there are all sorts of demonstrations and stuff by left parties (and, curiously, the centre party), trade unions and others. I'm rather inclined to go on one in Stockholm, the question is which?

The Anarchists could be fun, but they meet at 9.30am. Since when did Anarchists get out of bed so early?

The VänsterPartiet (Left Party), who seem to be Socialist Feminists (Marxist origins but now fluffier), meet at 12pm at Medborgarsplatsen down in Södermalm, marching up to Kungsträdgården, which is a nice route and a civilised time.

There's a Syndicalist gathering in Sergels Torg at 11am. Another leftist party with them, just called something like "The Socialists". Not sure who exactly they are. Still a little early, particularly if I watch the episode of Bones that's just downloaded.

The Socialdemokraterna (Social Democrats), all I can find on their website is the talk by some of their leader-like people in the afternoon. I can't believe they don't have a march as well, but I can't find it. They're wishy-washy reformists of course, but they'd probably have the unions with them. Hmm. From the Swedish Trade Unions federation (Landsorganisationen) website, they give exactly the same as the Social Dems. Just talking the talk, not walking the walk. Very strange.

Oh, finally. Shoulda been looking at the local website, not the national. Ah, a whole program which actually includes the Anarchists' thing. It's a demonstration for the Spanienfrivilliga. Spanish free will? Aaaaaaaah, the monument to the volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Then there's visits to Anna Lindh's and Olof Palme's graves, then a gathering at 1 and a march at 2 followed by the talks. That's better.

Pretty much comes down to a choice bewteen the main moderaty socialist/trade union demo or the Vänsters, and either way there's an option on getting up hideously early for a holiday to honour the Spanish Civil War martyrs. The Vänsterpartiet are probably closer to me ideologically (apart from wanting to leave the EU which I don't), although there's something to be said for the big demo with all the trade unions and stuff.

Either way, I clearly need to learn the Internationale properly. (Yes I know, shocking that I haven't already.) But will they be singing it in Swedish or the original French?

Well, all this calls for:

View Poll: #1180499

And Happy May Day/Beltaine!

ETAOh yes, and Happy Ascencion Day too! (Yep, going to that too later on.)

Busyness

2008-04-28T23:05:57Z

Long time no post - trying to keep up at least once a week, but somehow let two weeks and a bit zip past. Ah well. Been a fairly busy time at work, though now eased off, having got a number of projects completed more or less at the same time.

Spent the last few days in Britain for a short but action- (and alcohol-) packed multi-tasking visit. Flew over Wednesday evening, arriving with some trepidation at T5, though they seem to have got it sorted now and I got my baggage very quickly. Then off to Bristol, staying at Pauls, to give a seminar at my old Uni, UWE, on Thursday, on the research we've been doing on the military services industry (which should lead to a SIPRI publication fairly soon, so watch this space.)

But also got to a talk by a couple of Palestinian academics earlier in the day, who are doing a tour of Britain. They were promoting academic links between western and Palestinian academia, and also an academic boycott of Israel. I've always tended to support this on the grounds that any way of driving home to Israeli society just how unacceptable Israel's actions are - breaking the illusion of normalcy - is to the good. But Paul had some fairly cogent arguments afterwards that this particular tactic isn't likely to be all that effective, and that economic boycotts are the way to go. Not sure now. Perhaps targetted boycotts of institutions with specific involvement in the occupation.

Anyway, my seminar went down well, with a reasonable audience having been advertised a bit beyond the department, and it was good to catch up with all the Economics folks.

Friday I had free, stopped off in Oxford for lunch with shreena, then on to Hayes to meet Iain WINOLJ who I was staying with for the weekend. More beer ensued, as well as curry, which is one of the things Stockholm doesn't do so well.

Saturday was the original purpose of the trip, a meeting of Economists for Peace and Security (UK) (publishers of the online Economics of Peace and Security Journal I'm involved with). Then a quick visit to the Forbidden Planet megastore and on to a demo opposite Downing Street calling for an end to the seige of Gaza that happened to be on that day. Not a fantastic turnout, but not too bad and made a reasonable amount of noise. On which, the stoppage of fuel supplies by Israel has now led to the UN having to stop food distribution. Which is apparently still not bad enough for anyone to care. My prediction? There will be Gazans dying of malnutrition before very long. Israel is just pushing that envelope out little by little, and every time they get no serious response from the rest of the world, they push it just a little further.

So, back to Iain & Rachel's after that and well now it seems kinda out of place to squee about Doctor Who, but there we are. Anyway, good to catch up with them too. Iain is now brewing actually decidedly drinkable lemon beer. Then Sunday met up with Laura WINOLJ who I knew from Bristol and Bil'in. Then Heathrow and home.

Got home rather horribly late last night. I have realised that 5 and a half hours sleep just doesn't seem to work for me any more.

Spring has very definitely sprung here in Stockholm. Thoroughly gorgeous weather, and will hopefully start using my bike rather more. Last Sunday I cycled along the main road across my island, and carried on until I ran out of island, then turned back. About 55km in all.

But, on the getting a sensible night's sleep note, I'd better call it a night for now.

Speculating on starvation

2008-04-12T00:25:53Z

Probably anyone who's been vaguely following the news has seen the reports of rising basic food prices, global hunger increasing for the first time in many years, riots resulting in various countries - the World Bank President said today that it could mean putting back the fight against poverty by 7 years.

Like, I suspect many people, I'd heard of biofuels as being one of the major causes of the problem - supposed to be the way we can stop global warming while keeping driving, but now revealed as basically involving BURNING FOOD. George Monbiot was going on about this ages ago, but he's one of those lefty journalists that liberals like to dismiss as too ranty and polemic, poo poo, Cassandra, poo poo. Other factors I've often seen mentioned include increasing demand from China and India's rapid economic growth, and global warming reducing crop yields. I must admit to not having followed this in detail.

So this article is one of the first I've seen going into detail about another major factor, which is commodity speculation. With the fall of the dollar, speculators looking for a safe reserve have gone into food commodities as an alternative, massively pushing up prices. So poor people are not only competing with western drivers for the world's food supply (which is already monumentally fucked up), but with global investment funds pushing blocks of food around as virtual casino chips. For which... there are no words.

Capitalism is fucked up. Irredeemably so. You can focus on an issue for reforming it, like debt for example, and with enough public pressure you might get some real progress that actually ameliorate some of the system's worst excesses. Which is worth doing, because it will mean less people dying than if you didn't make that effort. But Capitalists will always be looking for new ways of gaining and protecting wealth, regardless of the effect on human beings. So long as this system drives the world, whenever you patch up one tear you'll soon find another opening up somewhere else.

BAE Pwned?

2008-04-10T09:30:36Z

The UK High Court has ruled that the Serious Fraud Office acted unlawfully in calling off its investigation into BAE Systems arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The case was brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Cornerhouse.

(See here and here for some of my previous posts on the subject.)

Not sure yet whether this means they'll have to re-open it (of course it wasn't the SFO's decision, except in the technical sense, it was Blair's), but still very good news, and many congratulations to Ann and Nick and all the others at CAAT who have put a monumental amount of work into this. Having been involved myself on the Steering Committee in CAAT's decision-making around this (and in particular on the BAE spying subplot), very pleased on a personal level too.

Update: Aha, surprisingly enough Yahoo News comes through before the Beeb or the Grauniad. Judges to make further ruling on what happens next. Most likely that SFO will have to reconsider the decision. Nick G. also replied to my querying text with: "Nature of court intervention still argue but fantastic win nevertheless!" Indeed!

Travel plans again

2008-04-05T21:33:23Z

Something of a change of plan - it seems I will be wanted at work for the period just before the Ankara conference (which is 11-13 June) - it's the SIPRI Yearbook launch, so all hands on deck for that. So instead I will take holday after the conference, (not going to the other thing), visiting Istanbul then going to Bulgaria, and thence home to Stockholm. The weekend in London for the Bardcamp reunion will be just a weekend in London.

Judging by the air fares at the moment, that reduces the price differential somewhat, though not by much. Anyway, following the discussion on the last post, I am fairly sure I will take the train. Combining the Sofia-London and London-Stockholm journeys as recommended by The Man in Seat 61, I come up with the following itinerary:

Day 1: car to Svilengrad, then the 05:05 (guuuuuh) Balkan Express to Sofia, arriving 11.40. Then catch the sleeper from Sofia to Vienna at 12:40

Day 2: Arrive Vienna 08:57. Spend the day in Vienna. Then the 20:35 overnight train to Cologne.

Day 3: Arrive Cologne 08:42. Spend the day in Cologne. Then catch the 22:58 overnight from Cologne to Copenhagen.

Day 4: Arrive Copenhagen 09:59, then get the 12:31 to Stockholm, arriving 17:35.

Alternatively, I expect there are quicker ways of doing the Cologne to Stockholm journey. Ah, yes, I can get a train from Cologne 10:49 on day 3, arriving (via various changes) at Copenhagen 20:35, then there are any number of trains hopping across the bridge to Malmö, and then I can get the 23:08 from Malmö, arriving in Stockholm Day 4 at 07:47. (Which seems to be rather a lot cheaper than the fancy tilting train Seat 61 suggests from Copenhagen to Stockholm).

I could even go straight into work on day 4. So long as they're not expecting me to do anything involving the use of my brain.

Travel plans

2008-04-02T22:56:55Z

I am pondering a great journey. No, not Palestine this time, this one is a crazy composite journey in May/June of this year.

The fixed points of this journey are as follows:

On Saturday the 31st May is the Bardcamp reunion in London, so I will be flying Stockholm to London on the 30th.

The 11th-13th June is a conference in Ankara - the annual conference on Economics & Security, where I will be presenting a paper.

Between times, I will be visiting my mother in S. East Bulgaria, and hopefully spend a day or so in Istanbul.

To add to the crazy, almost immediately after the conference I may well be attending a SUPER-SEKRIT event in Paris. Which would mean flying back to Stockholm on the 14th, picking up some stuff and spending one or maybe two nights at home, before flying out to Paris.

Yeah, a lot of flying. Bad, bad stuff. I can pay some carbon offsets, but I know there's an awful lot of question marks about whether they really work. Probably better than not ofsetting, but still.

Anyway, so the only missing piece of this jigsaw is the London-Bulgaria stage. In that, as there's a fair bit of time between the 31st and the 10th, I am actually contemplating getting the train across Europe instead of flying for that leg.

The Man in Seat 61 explains how to do it, and it's not that bad - London-Brussels-Cologne-Vienna-Sofia, leaving at (say) 13:00 on the 1st June, arriving 18:15 on the 3rd. Flying, I'd leave early morning the 1st, arriving mid-afternoon. So, two days longer by train.

From Sofia to my mum's place in S.E. Bulgaria (whether I train or fly from London) I have two choices - stay overnight in Sofia and get a bus to the town a couple of miles away, or get on the Istanbul train the same evening, get off at Svilengrad on the border at half past midnight, then get a car (which someone my mum knows can arrange) to her place, which actually won't cost that much. (Less than 100km, and taxis are stupid cheap there.)

From my mum's to Istanbul, I get a car to Svilengrad and get on the same train arriving in Istanbul 8am next morning. Then (again whether I train or fly to Sofia), train to Ankara.

The cheapest way for me to get the train would be to get an over-26 Interrail pass, 5 days out of 10 (which would cover all the stages to Ankara if I'm canny) for £190, plus I'd need to pay about £20-25 extra for a couple of couchettes/sleepers. At the moment there's flights London-Sofia for £88, but once you factor in all the various costs of getting to and from airports, and also paying for the trains for Sofia-Svilengrad, Svilengrad-Istanbul and Istanbul-Ankara, I reckon the plane works out about £90 cheaper. However, the whole shebang won't cost me that much, as I've checked that I will be able to claim from SIPRI the cost of a return flight to Ankara. What with the Stockholm-London and Ankara-Stockholm legs, I reckon this works out at £60 vs £150 net for plane vs train. Let's add £10 to the plane for offsets.

So, the pros and cons:

For the plane:

- Two extra days, to spend either at my mum's or in Istanbul
- £80 saved

For the train:

- One less flight, even if it is offset, and the accompanying smug glow of virtue even if I am getting four other flights within the space of three weeks.
- Reliving the glory days of my youth, Inter-railing across Europe
- Getting to see all teh awesome places and scenery inbetween, albeit mostly out the window.
- Like, showing that it can be done - it is still possible to travel long distances other than by plane in this world.

Hum. The train idea is rather appealing. But the plane seems more sensible, even accounting for the carbon. (Like, supposing carbon offsets are only 50% effective, I could offset double and still save.) It is annoying that planes are not only faster but cheaper than trains.

Well, one can hardly make an entry like this without putting in a poll:

View Poll: #1164882

Meanwhile in Tibet

2008-03-29T00:50:27Z

I often feel I don't post enough about things like Tibet and Darfur, where it's not "Us" in the West that are so much the bad guys. (OK, I could have finished that sentence after the seventh word). The left gets accused of this quite a lot. Partly I think it's entirely proper that one focuses on the wrongs one is most able to affect via the governments one elects. (Though living in neutral Sweden, I am still a voter in warlike Britain.) Plus there's the whole "take the beam out of your own eye" thing. But still.

So anyway, here is an internet petition on Tibet from Avaaz, who seem to do a fair amount of good stuff. (I note with mild amusement that UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband lists them as one of his favourite organisations on his blog.) Petitions are fairly lame, internet petitions doubly so, especially when the target is a government that doesn't have to worry about votes. But hey, they've got over 1 million signatures, which is rather impressive, and the Chinese really do want to have a happy Olympics, so maybe it can do some good.

Then again it is worth bothering Western governments about such situations, even though it's China that has more direct influence. Bush and Brown etc. say that Darfur is a terrible thing, and that China really ought to put more pressure on their allies in Khartoum; but when it comes to the whole range of issues on the agenda between, say the US or the EU and China, such as trade, terrorism, what to do about Iran, etc. - which will be things where each side will have things they want of the other, matters of quid pro quo rather than one side telling the other what to do - just how high up the list of priorities do you reckon human rights in Darfur and Tibet come? Answers on a postcard. So if public pressure in the West can push such things higher up the agenda, that is all to the good.

Every problem a nail

2008-03-29T00:14:55Z

Yet more craziness and slaughter in Iraq, as forces of Nouri al-Maliki's government continue their assault on the Mehdi army militia in Basra. This attack has been loudly praised by George Bush, and US and UK planes have chimed in with air attacks.

Things have been pretty horrendous in Basra, controlled by rival Shia militias (including the Badr brigade, which is the militia of al-Maliki's Dawa party.), and their rule has not been pretty, especially for women. But so this is the way to solve it? Start an all-out civil war (on top of the various other civil wars still raging in Iraq) in an attempt to destroy the official 'bad guys'?

Juan Cole is probably the best available regular commentary in English on what's going on in Iraq. He reckons (amongst others) that this move is linked to forthcoming provincial elections in Iraq in October, in which al-Maliki and the US are distinctly afraid that Muqtada al-Sadr's party, of which the Mehdi is the militia, will win in the Shia provinces. The Sadrists are strongly against the US presence in Iraq, and have at times been engaged in direct armed resistance against US and UK forces, though currently they are on ceasefire. (Not that the other Shiite parties are that thrilled about the occupation, and Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the spiritual leader of many Shia, including Maliki's party, has been a strong critic of the US presence. But US forces are what keep the government in power, so they go along.) So, destroy the militia, destroy the party may be the thinking. Whether it works is another matter, as the Sadrists are rather popular amongst the Shia, and the US - not so much.

So, Maliki, with the hand up his back moving his mouth barely hidden, vows to fight the Sadrists to the death. Attempts at negotiations are stifled. Basra - and now many other areas of southern Iraq - is turned into a warzone, the US and UK drop righteous bombs which only ever kill "militants" (except that Iraqi sources, including police and medical, have an annoying habit of revealing that actually they were civilians), and the humanitarian situation - never good, with the chronic failure of the 'rebuilding' project in Iraq to provide basic services - deteriorates further.

Thing is, it's not just Iraq. It's the same pattern in every conflict at the moment where the US see their interests as at stake. In Afghanistan, the heavy-handed military approach to dealing with the Taliban insurgency, where Coalition forces appear to be killing more civilians than the Taliban. President Hamid Karzai occasionally makes protests for form's sake, but he's not the one calling the shots. Talk to the Hand.

Then there's Somalia. Without a government since 1991, it was largely controlled by various warlords [1], although there was a theoretical Transitional Government that controlled only the town of Baidoa. In 2006, an Islamist group, the Union of Islamic Courts, captured a large chunk of territory, including the capital Mogadishu, temporarily ending the warlords' rule.

Now these were probably not an entirely nice bunch, but maybe that might have been an opportunity for, say, some sort of negotiations between the UIC and the Transitional Government? Maybe there'd have even been a vague chance of uniting the country? But noooo, the US decides (without any actual evidence) that the UIC are linked to Al-Qaida, and instead back an invasion by Ethiopia. The Ethiopians force the UIC out of Mogadishu in short order, but then comes the inevitable insurgency, plus the warlords return to Mogadishu, as always no-one is particularly keen on foreign occupation (and Somalia and Ethiopia have something of a history) and now aid agencies say that a humanitarian catastrophe is impending. Another triumph of US policy!

Then there's Palestine. Leaving aside the US's ongoing unconditional support for Israel, there's their role in the intra-Palestinian conflict between Fatah and Hamas. which has been, of course, to stoke it up as much as possible. Ever since Hamas unexpectedly won the 2006 elections, they have been doing their darndest to overturn that result, leading an international boycott of the PA, plunging the Palestinians into even deeper poverty, and opposing all attempts at dialogue between the parties, continuing to boycott the unity government that was set up early in 2007.

Then of course there was the Hamas coup in Gaza, since when that territory has been kept under siege. As I said at the time, there was a lot to suggest this was pretty much the inevitable outcome of US policy of playing the two sides against each other. But recently there's been evidence that their role was even more direct than this, with Vanity Fair claiming to have leaked documents showing that the US was arming Fatah forces under Mohammed Dahlan, their strongman in Gaza, and was seeking to orchestrate a coup against Hamas - a policy which of course went horribly wrong with Hamas winning the battle instead.

Every time, every situation, the US policy is the same. Pick an ally, decide who the bad guys are, and pursue a military solution to wipe the bad guys out, and never mind how many innocent people suffer in the process. Pretty much every case where the US's baleful influence is felt, the result is humanitarian catastrophe. You think they might have noticed by now that it doesn't work? Except at one level it does work. Doesn't solve the problem, but it does succeed in dividing and ruling, preventing any unity amongst the subject population that might oppose US interests.

One final case where things may be going a little bit differently - Pakistan. There, the US had President Musharraf as their friendly dictator, pursuing the usual strategy against Taliban insurgents in the North-West Frontier Province. Rather horribly ineffectually, and with the usual dire consequences. But in February, parliamentary elections led to the overwhelming defeat of Musharraf's allies, and a governing coalition that has left the President isolated. And now the new government, unbeholden to the US, wants to try a different approach, with more talk and less killing. No, not suddenly becoming pacifist, and yes the insurgents they're dealing with are an extremely unpleasant bunch, but now that the Pakistanis are free(r) to choose their own approach, they've decided that maybe there's a better way than fighting until every last enemy is dead, no matter the cost. Good luck to them.

I hope, hope to God that things might be a little different with a new Administration - not that evil began with Bush and every past US government was pure as the driven, but there does seem to be a strong current in US opinion that is heartily sick of perpetual war, which might just find a voice in a Democrat Whitehouse. McCain, who gets far too easy a ride in the British press, let alone the American, quite clearly represents more, even more of the same - if anything, "no more Mr. Nice Guy", and I shudder to think what the future holds if he wins.

[1]Except for the self-declared republic of Somaliland in the North, which I gather is fairly peaceful, although it is not recognised by the UN, and the region of Puntland which is likewise de-facto self-governing

Obama

2008-03-18T23:44:15Z

Well, I must say I'm moderately impressed with Obama's speech in response to the furore over Rev. Wright.

I mean, there were some things that made my blood boil - notably:

Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

God forbid that anyone should point out the nasty bodies in the closet of American foreign policy. And no, Mr. Obama, the origin of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not in "hateful ideologies of radical Islam", but in the fact that the nascent state of Israel forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes to make that state possible.

But I hardly expect any different from a serious US presidential candidate who pretty much has to kowtow to the Israeli lobby if they want to stand any chance. One hopes he might be slightly more inclined to listen to advisors with a more balanced view if elected, and somewhat less to the batshit insane Christian Zionist movement that has Bush's ear, but anyway.

But for the rest. I like the fact that he went beyond the platitudes about one happy united American family, and pointed out the rather obvious points about the continuing legacy of racism, continuing Black disadvantage, continuing discrimination - in fact, spelled it out in some detail. That America is in many ways still a segregated society. That he acknowledged the anger this generates, though it's not usually expressed 'in polite company'.

I liked that he didn't simply disassociate himself from Wright, but pointed out where such views come from (albeit that I would tend to think that what Rev. Wright said has much more validity than Obama gives it credit for.) "I can no more disown him than I can the black community". That he acknowledged that people can be full of contradictions.

I liked that he dared to raise the issue - if not the word - of class. Acknowledging also the anger of disadvantaged whites, but pointing out how that's been taken advantage of by the right, and how that is misdirected.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

(Though, ha! at 'middle class' - no-one is working class these days.)

That the struggle for racial justice has to be linked to the struggle for gender justice and economic justice:

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans - the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.

I like also the way he turned round his criticism of Rev. Wright:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country... is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

Neat. Politically pretty clever.

No, I don't see Obama as some sort of messiah - wherever he comes from personally (and he has a rather more radical background than he expresses now), he is bound by the limitations of the corporate-dominated American political system. With Obama is elected all the big corporate funders on whom he depends.

But I do see something potentially positive in where he comes from and the way of thinking he represents. The view of Christianity he comes from, as is also clear from that speech - the Christ who is on the side of the poor and downtrodden against the powerful and mighty - basically a form of liberation theology, as currently repackaged by organisations like the Sojourners, whose founder Jim Wallis I gather knows Obama pretty well. Maybe his candidacy represents a chance, or is part of a chance, to reclaim American Christianity from the forces of darkness that have held sway these past 30 years. (And even if you're not a Christian, given how pervasive Christianity is in America, something that's not likely to change in the near future, that has to be a good thing.)

I don't really expect a lot of electoral politics. It is not the whole of politics, not even the most important part. Whether you get your guy elected or not, you have to keep on pushing in the streets and in your workplaces and in your church, and hassling your representatives and giving them hell, even the ones you voted for when they're not doing what you want. That's what the Right has done, and that's a large part of why they've been winning. But electoral politics do matter, and if there's one thing I learnt from 2000, it's that the difference between an apparent Tweedledum and Tweedledee can be soooo much bigger than you could possibly imagine.

And as far as electoral politics go, Obama seems to me the best on offer Stateside at the moment. For a start, the fact that he does seem to have enthused such a movement behind him could be very important, if - if it keeps going beyond November.

(Yeah, not a US voter, though I am an American citizen (dual national), aside from the fact that what happens over there has enormous implications for the whole planet. 25% of the CO2 for a start. And gosh, my brother actually (I presume) will get to vote over there in November now he's in Cali. Hmm, interesting times.)

Jeremiah

2008-03-16T22:50:51Z

Some interesting comments from a fellow-United Church of Christ Minister on Revd. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor, whom he has now repudiated over videos of a sermon in which he condemned the USA for its racism and described 9/11 as chickens coming home to roost. Also some good comments here. Hat-tip to kynn in both cases.

Inclined to agree - his language might be somewhat OTT - but basically, OMG saying true stuff about America, and clearly stuff that resonates a lot with much of America's black population. Can't have that. As the first link points out, he is also speaking in the prophetic tradition of "speaking truth to power".

One thing I haven't seen commented on though is his name. Hello, JEREMIAH! Perhaps some of those so shocked and horrified that he could say such horrid things about the Best Country in the World (TM) should go back and read what the original Jeremiah had to say about his country and its rulers, who also believed themselves to be chosen by God and unique. And how it was the FALSE prophets who insisted that everything was fine, God was on their side, God bless ~~America~~ Judah.

A shame that Obama's felt the need to repudiate his mentor and friend, but I don't entirely blame him. Politicians may listen and hopefully learn from prophets, but they can't afford to be quite as honest.

Stoppa kriget!

2008-03-15T20:51:08Z

Went on an anti-Iraq war demonstration today, one of a number around the world to mark the fifth anniversary of the war in a few days time. Hum, trying to find a picture. Ah, here are a few. Not such a trendy activity these days, but the turnout was better than I expected - maybe up to 1,000. Dagens Nyheter said 'hundreds', which is consistent with that.

A lot of Iraqis there, who were carrying a giganimous Iraqi flag near the head of the demo. Sweden has been very good at taking in Iraqi refugees from the war, compared to other EU countries - though now they are apparently being monumentally stupid, with the immigration authorities apparently now deciding that there is not a war in Iraq, so they can refuse asylum claims to new arrivals. (Not sure of the details, whether they're actually sending people back). Also a large number of Iraqis, principally Kurds, from a previous generation of refugees, though I imagine many of their attitudes towards the war might be (understandably) rather different.

A plus point compared to the British demos was that there was a bit of a rally at the start as well as the end. With music, including a blues band from the Left Party, who gained loads of awesome points in my books by playing A las Barricadas. Also some hip-hoppers.

Lots of chanting in Swedish of course, which makes a change from the British ones - also quite good for language in terms of getting one's mouth properly round the sounds - somewhat like. I think my favourite was

Vad tänker vi om Bush?

Illa! Illa!

Hur illa?

Skit illa! Usch! Usch! Usch!

Also nice clear, slowly-spoken speeches, which is good listening practice, as my ear is lagging badly behind my reading and even my speaking. Could actually get a reasonable proportion of what they were saying, which is encouraging.

More seriously, a young Iraqi teenager, Ayat Suleiman and her father Ismail spoke - she had been badly injured by a US cluster bomb, leaving her with 65% burns. Four of her brothers, Ishak, Yakub, Yosef and Yassin (sp?) were killed in the explosion.

Cluster munitions are weapons that spread a large number - sometimes hundreds of small submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. Delivered from land or air, their aim is to act as an area-denial weapon. This makes them fundamentally indiscriminate, and even if there are no civilians in the area at the time, a significant proportion of submunitions (even so-called 'smart' ones) fail to explode, and remain as a deadly leftover - especially as a lot of them are brightly coloured and can look like children's toys. (One of Ayat's brothers did just that and brought one home, the source of the Suleimans' tragedy.) War is always hell, but cluster bombs add one more gruesome circle. There is an international campaign to ban them.

Logistics and life

2008-03-08T22:14:57Z

A while since I've made a general update - not a whole lot to report it must be said - mostly the usual rounds of work and Swedish classes and choir practice and spending too much time on the internet and watching DS9.

I did spend a couple of days in Brussels the week before last, on work, which I'd totally meant to write about but you know how it is. I was at the European Defence Agency (EDA) confernce on "Commercialising Logistics?", which they'd invited SIPRI to send someone too, and which was of considerable interest as we're writing about the privatizing and outsourcing of military activities right now.

The focus of the conference was on the potential for outsourcing logistical supply for EU Crisis Management missions such as those in Chad and DRC.

As well as the general ideological predisposition towards public sector outsourcing in most western countries, the shortage of troop numbers available for expeditionary operations (and generally) makes outsourcing of this sort of thing look an attractive option for governments. Of course the US Army has outsourced most of its logistics for overseas operations - most notably Iraq - to KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary (through the LOGCAP contract), with extremely dubious outcomes - allegations of gross overcharging and corruption. Most disturbingly, there have recently been allegations of a KBR employee being gang-raped by fellow KBR workers in Iraq, and then put under guard by the company in a shipping container, and told she'd lose her job if she left Iraq for medical treatment. (She was let out by a guard who took pity on her.)

The British also have a major global logistics contract (CONLOG) with KBR although it seems to work somewhat differently, and I haven't heard anything in particular by way of scandals on that one. Y'see, the thing with these contracts is that you can't just s a fixed price for an agreed set of tasks to be done by the company, because the military don't know exactly what they'll be doing when, and what supplies and other services they'll need. ('Logistics' can include everything from supplying coke and doing laundry to maintaining military equipment.) So the US Army issues a series of 'Task Orders' to the contractor for each individual thing they want done. KBR get paid on a 'Cost-plus' basis, common in US military contracts. That means they get paid for all their costs, plus a percentage bonus depending on performance.

Now, can you maybe see the tiny flaw in this scheme? Namely, that the contractor has no incentive to keep costs down, in fact quite the opposite. Of course theoretcially it's supposed to be only 'reasonable costs allowed', but (as the US Government Accountability Office has found) the problem is the DOD haven't got nearly enough folks on the ground to do the monitoring. So you've had KBR charging ludicrous sums for packs of Coke and for doing bags of laundry and suchlike. US Government auditors, when they did take a look, found over $1bn of 'questioned and unsupported' costs.

Then there's the gang rape, which is probably a product of the general legal black hole that contractors in Iraq have been operating in, which the Blackwater shooting case drew attention to last year.

Now the KBR(UK) representative who was on one of the panels at the conference said that 'cost plus' is something of a 'dirty word' in UK government circles - the MoD worked out the tiny flaw a couple of decades or so, not that they've managed to achieve such a wonderfully cost-effective relationship with their private sector contractors. Not sure exactly what scheme they've got in place instead, but as I say I've not seen any scandals surrounding it yet.

The conference generally was quite interesting. I was somewhat surprised at the amount of scepticism that was expressed by some of the speakers - especially from the military - about the notion of outsourcing logistics, or at least about how far it should go. General Christian Damay, who was the Force Commander for the EU mission to Congo recently, related that they'd outsourced their logistics and it was rubbish. (Although the decision had been taken late in the day.) One German general expressed the opinion that while outsourcing stuff at the homebase was OK, it was probably not such a good idea in the actual theatre of operations. At any rate, they seemed to be aware of the potential problems with this sort of thing, including, crucially, the need to have a clear legal framework for civilian contractors working in theatres of military operations.

The best talk though was from Amer Daoudi from the World Food Programme, who'se the head of their Logistics Service. He was basically "We're the biggest logistical operation on the planet, we have 3,000 people doing this alone, we shift so many gazillion tonnes a year, we do it cheaper and faster than anyone else, over the worst terrain imaginable - you guys are amateurs!" (well, he didn't say the last bit.) Oh, and they use elephants where necessary to deliver stuff when the going gets really bad! He sort of stole the show.

Moving in rather fluffier circles, I found it very noticeable just how male-dominated the whole thing was. (Not that I should be surprised.) There were maybe an 10-15% of the participants women, but all the speakers, panellists, moderators, and all the people making questions and comments from the floor (quite a number) were men.

Also not surprisingly, very white - I think Amer Daoudi may have been the only non-white person there out of about 300. Though I can't really claim that the fluffier circles are often much better on that score.

That was the Wednesday - a week and a half ago now. Day after I had a meeting with someone at the EDA - basic info exchange as we are interested in similar things albeit from different perspectives; I'd hoped to arrange more but as that didn't work out, I very sadly had most of the day to myself in Brussels, which is a very pleasant city. Generally wandered round the central area near the Grand Place/Groot Maarkt, which is a magnificent sight with the huge medieval town hall and various other gloriously decorated buildings around it, and saw round the city museum there, which has a lot of good stuff.

With the continuing mild weather, gradually warming up as the rather feeble excuse for a winter draws to a close, I got out my bike last weekend, cycling as far as Brommaplan (about 12k) on the way to church before hoping on the tube. Of course this made it start snowing not long after, although that passed quickly enough, and was on the bike again today. (So look out for snow tomorrow in Stockholm!) Don't know if I'll start cycling to work regularly - not only is it rather a long way, but, which has never been the case in Britain, the bus is so much quicker as it goes direct almost to where I work. Also with the Swedish classes in a completely different part of the city two evenings a week, I pretty much have to use public transport for that. But I'll hopefully start using the bike a bit more.

I seem to be getting into something of a routine on my Saturday afternoons in town, but it is a rather nice routine. I call it the Route of Joy. First I go to Hötorget, where there's this huge hall with dozens of stalls selling food from Sweden and all round the world. Most of it is rather expensive, but at one Middle Eastern stall, calle La Gazelle, you can get a demi-baguette stuffed to the gills with a free choice of four very delicious hot and cold meze from a choice of dozens, all for around £3. (Bit more the way the exchange rates have been going.) So that's lunch. Then I wander over to the old town, Gamlastan, for the SF-Bokhandeln to browse around, buy books from time to time and see if the latest Buffy or Angel comic is out. Then on to Södermalm, the south island, where there's a very nice world music cafe to drink interesting teas in while listening to whatever CD they've got on and perusing my latest acquisitions. (The recent Buffy comic hadn't reached the SFB this time, but not far from the cafe is a comic shop that often gets them earlier and, squee be to God, they did indeed have it. (OMG Buffy/Satsu!!!!!) Varied my routine slightly today, wandering up the hill at Mossebacke, from which you can see out all over Stockholm - not that it's that high, but Stockholm is very flat. I know I need to get out more, but this is a rather pleasant routine it must be said.

In other news, my brother is now in New York, visiting our grandmother for 10 days before going on to California where he will be living. (As mentioned here which can be unlocked now I've sent him the tunes.)

Also I have finally got round to going to the doctor over my persistent sleeping problems. I basically tend to fail at sleep a lot of the time, which is not good for my productivity or general well-being. Getting a full examination next week. Should have gone ages ago, but I am an avoidant idiot.

CaliforniadreamingicationhereIcome

2008-02-28T23:49:55Z

So, my brother, anguscoull (no content in LJ) is emigrating from Scotland to California on Monday. He decided this a few months ago, but it's not as crazy as it sounds. Our mother is American, and we all have US citizenship (as well as British), we have relatives round SF (where he'll be living), also his dad's wife's family. So he'll have contacts, people to stay with initially while he finds work and a place to live, and he thinks SF should be a good place to develop his musical ambitions (though that has recently started going quite well here - he got a couple of gigs playing keyboard with a band whose lead singer was actually moderately famous in the 1970s.)

Anyhow, it has occured to me to put together a mix of California-themed tracks as a small going-away present. Any genre, songs mentioning California, and specifically emigration to California. For general California-themed songs, California here I come, California Dreaming and Californication (am I right in thinking that's a song as well as a TV show?) come to mind. On the emigration to California, I can think of Goodbye Muirsheen Durkin and (somewhat depressingly) Spancil Hill.

But can any of you guys think of any others? Any that mention California are good, bonus for the migration theme, and extra bonus points for any that relate to someone going there from Scotland. (Though I doubt there's so many of those. Most of the Scots went further north and didn't sing about it quite so much as the Irish.)

Well, we are a wandering family. My mum's in Bulgaria (having originally been from the US herself), I'm in Sweden, my sister's lived in Barcelona and Prague, but Angus is taking the prize for now!

On genre and boundaries

2008-02-25T23:05:07Z

I'm currently reading George R. R. Martin's Dream Songs - a retrospective of his short fiction from his teenage fanzine efforts pretty much up to the present. Before anything else is said, let me say it is brilliant, and go read it, fan of GRRM's other stuff or no. It's an extraordinary eclectic collection, spanning sci-fi, fantasy, horror, the 'superhero' genre (though not as we know it), and many that cross these boundaries - sci-fi horrors, fantasy-sci fi, and some that defy classification.

Which is a question that gets touched upon quite frequently in the interstitial introductions where he sets the forthcoming stories against the backdrop of his life and career: what are these categories, and just when is a story to be considered sci-fi or horror or whatever.

In the last interstitial, he comes to some sort of conclusion on this - he quotes William Faulkner, that "The human heart in conflict with itself" is ultimately the only thing worth writing about. He goes on:

"The rest, my friends, is furniture.

The House of Fantasy is built of stone and wood and furnished in High Medieval, its people travel by horse and galley, fight with sword and spell and battleaxe, communicate by palantir or raven, and break bread with elves and dragons.

The House of Science Fiction is built of duralloy and plastic and furnished in Faux Future. It's people travel by starship and aircar, fight with nukes and tailored germs, communicate by ansible and laser, and break protein bars with aliens.

The House of Horror is built of bones and cobwebs and furnished in Ghastly Gothick. It's people travel only by night, fight with anything that will kill messily, communicate in screams and shrieks and gibbers, and sip blood with vampires and werewolves.

The Furniture Rule I call it.

Forget the definitions. Furniture Rules."

And here I find myself... sort of agreeing, but sort of not. The first part about the 'heart in conflict', for sure, but I wonder if there is more (as general tendencies at any rate, rather than hard and fast rules) to the differences between the genres than mere furniture. The following are only really half-formed thoughts, so don't expect a coherent and nicely rounded-off argument.

First of all, the thing that unites all these 'genre' fictions is the central role of the imagination - I mean all fiction is about imagination of course, but sci-fi, horror, fantasy are all about imagining worlds that are not. In the case of sci-fi, worlds that perhaps could be, but they are all about worlds other than our own, and for us geeks around the world that has always been one of their chief attractions; and for literary snobs around the world the thing that disqualifies it from consideration as 'serious' literature. It uses the 'other' to grab our imagination.

For mediocre 'genre' fiction, that's all it does, and sometimes that's enough: a ripping yarn, a pulsating adventure, a bit of a sense of wonder or terror, a darned good read.

But the better sort of genre fic does more, as Faulkner and Martin say; for all the 'otherness' of the backdrop, it tells basic human stories, stories of the 'human heart in conflict'. This is why Buffy the Vampire Slayer is so well loved and has so many acres of academic text devoted to it. (That, and the fact that it allows academics to display their inner geek without shame and earn money from blathering about their favourite TV show. And do you know who I found out today is a major Buffy fan? SIPRI's former Director Alyson Bailes, who was in the post last time I was here. But I digress.)

But I think the sci-fi/fantasy etc. backdrop to these human stories is often more than just 'furniture'. (Cool and exciting furniture as it often is.) The 'otherness' of the setting provides, as it were, 'a distant mirror' (to adapt Tuchman) to the human condition; it allows stories to be told, aspects of humanity to be highlighted, in a way that couldn't be done in quite the same way were it not for that otherness, for that distance from our own world. (And GRRM is as fine an exponent of this fact as any.) Yes, not chairs and tables, but mirrors.

And here's where it gets a bit vague and ill-defined, and where one is always going to be able to find lots of awkard exceptions: I have a feeling that the distinction between the different genres lies in the type of mirror they hold up - the different ways in which they expose 'the human heart in conflict', the particular character of light they shed on it.

If I may start with a really gross generalisation which will provide ample opportunity for contradiction, I think that by and large sci-fi looks out, while fantasy looks in. Sci-fi, whether the hard 'technological' stuff or the more sociological exploration that Le Guin for example does so well, it's about expanding possibilities, putting people in new settings, telling stories about how they interact with and cope with these different settings - and whether it's robot-based futures or post-nuclear dystopias or alien societies with radically different sexual mores, it shows its human subjects in a light that couldn't be done without that backdrop.

Fantasy, on the other hand, tends to deal in Myth, in archetype, in metaphor, in the spiritual, in inner space if you like. Conflicts within the heart are played out on these grand fantastical scales, whether Good vs Evil or coming to terms with your Jungian Shadow and so on. The imagined histories and mythologies illuminate our own. Sci-Fi builds a new external reality and puts us in it, while Fantasy takes what is on the inside and builds its external world from that.

(Though that's probably not the process of writing. That probably comes from the furniture. C.S. Lewis apparently said that the idea for the Narnia stories came not from a desire to tell an allegory of the Christian Myth, but from an image in his head of a faun and a lamppost in the snow.)

I don't claim this as hard and fast, I'm not sure exactly where the boundary lie between an imagined history of some alien civilisation and that of the elves and the dwarves and so forth, but I think there's a difference between what they're doing. Then there are all manner of mixtures and crossovers and so forth; for example, I would consider Star Wars to have Sci Fi 'furniture' but a Fantasy 'mirror'. The setting is space and lasers and Death Stars and so forth, but the heart of the story lies in Myth, The mystical power of The Force, the ancient order of wise Jedi Knights, the Hero's Journey. A Fantasy in Space. And I'm sure one can come up with plenty of examples that tend to blow my distinction out of the water.

I've not read near so much horror; I suppose its 'mirror' lies in looking at the very darkest, most unspeakable recesses of the human heart, and pulling them out into the world to terrify and unsettle. (Again we have crossovers here - Buffy for example strikes me as a Fantasy with some Horror furniture).

Then I'm not sure where to put GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire, which is the first of his writing I read (quite recently in fact, and now like everyone else wondering when he's going to get the next one out.) The 'furniture' is clearly Fantasy, High Medieval, Eleanor of Aquitainesville. And there are magical elements, dragons and zombies and religious cults whose priests seem to hold power of life and death. But the heart of the story comes from the people caught up in the Machiavelian political manouverings of the various great houses and pretenders to the throne. Shakespeare's Histories in prose and with dragons. Guy Gavriel Kay does similar sorts of things in a lot of his fantasies, although his worlds are more closely based on actual Earth history. It's very different from, say, Tolkien - there there is a Magic Ring and a Dark Lord and that is really quite central to everything that happens, and the politics is relatively simple. In Ice and Fire the politics (and the people caught up in it) is centre-stage, and there are also dragons, which are clearly very important and which add an interesting twist, but don't seem to be the key thing around which everything centres. And I think this may make it a different sort of 'mirror' again, but I'm not sure, and I don't know if this makes the dragons just an interesting piece of furniture. So this is where I run out of conclusion. And who cares anyway when it's such a good story.

Thoughts?

Addendum

2008-02-10T00:38:33Z

Also following Bardcamp, I have serious Stan Rogers love. Alas, the CDs at Amazon UK are out of stock and bloody expensive, and the bastards won't sell MP3 download versions outside the US. But there are YouTube versions for learning tunes and dozens of sites for lyrics, and many good music shops in Stockholm, so no great trouble.

King John

2008-02-08T23:54:50Z

So, King John. As I said in my last post, it's a bit of an odd play, and can seem rather unsatisfactory in that the story seems a bit random in some ways, and in particular doesn't resolve itself in any satisfactory way, with John fading away and being randomly poisoned by a monk, just before the French invasion decides to pack up and go home with some sort of compromise agreement. (Both the French and the English have lost half their forces in random accidents.)

As I played John, I've pondered the play a fair bit, and so am going to suggest that, while it may not be one of the Bard's finest works, there's actually more to it than meets the eye, and it holds together rather better than at first sight.

OK, first of all forget about Robin Hood and Magna Carta, the things most associated with John's reign in the popular imagination. The former apparently wasn't so big in Shakespeare's time, and the second - well, not really a prudent subject to bring up in the time of Tudor absolutism, and Shakespeare was nothing if not an expert brown-noser. It's based very loosely around John's actual reign, though with events telescoped and re-ordered heavily, but also based in plot though not text on a contemporary work, a troublesome reign, which was much more of a Protestant propaganda piece. (So the Intro to my Penguin Shakespeare version tells me.)

The plot. John has just ascended the throne, but is immediately challenged by the French under King Philip, who are promoting the claim of John's nephew Arthur, still a boy, son to John's elder brother Geoffrey. (Apparently at the time Primogeniture was not applied so strictly, though it was seen as much more central by Shakespeare's time.) John sends the French envoy packing. Then the Bastard - the hero of the play - Philip Faulconbridge comes in with his younger brother Robert, who is trying to claim his inheritance by having Philip declared Bastard. John's mother Elinor of Aquitaine recognises Philip as looking awfully like Richard Lionheart, and John, taking a liking to him, agrees, but rules (correctly apparently) that since Philip was born in wedlock, and his 'father' never complained at the time, he is the rightful heir. Elinor then offers Philip the opportunity to follow her to France with her armies instead, and give his brother his land. He thinks this sounds like fun, and John nights him, renaming him for his real father, Richard Plantagenet. More on the Bastard later.

John, with Elinor and the Bastard leads his armies to France to confront King Philip before Angiers, whose citizens refuse entry to either party. They fight indecisively, then at the Bastard's suggestion decide to join forces to attack the town. To avert this, the Angiers citizens suggest that Philip's son Lewis the Dauphin marries John's niece Blanche to seal an alliance. Both agree, with John giving his French provinces as a dowry, much to the chagrin of Arthur's mother Constance. Then the Pope's envoy Cardinal Pandulph comes along and demands that John pay tribute to Rome and appoint their choice of Archbishop of Cantebury. John refuses and makes a stirring and prematurely Protestant speech. Pandulph excommunicates John and likewise threatens Philip with hellfire if he maintains his alliance. Philip breaks from John, they fight a battle which the English win, and Arthur is captured. John sends the Bastard home to plunder the monasteries for loot to pay for the war and sundry other expenses.

John, in his moment of triumph, then commits his big Evil Act. Fearing having Arthur around, with his better claim to the throne, he persuades his minion Hubert, Arthur's keeper, to murder the boy. But when confronted by Arthur's piteous pleading Hubert can't bring himself to commit the act, resolving to tell John he's done it and hide Arthur. John stages a second coronation for himself, at which his nobles, led by Salisbury, start murmuring that this is totally unnecessary and suggests something's wrong, and demand Arthur's freedom. Hubert comes in with news of Arthur's death, which John communicates to the nobles (an 'accident' of course.) The nobles say 'yeah right' and walk out. John says 'oh fuck'. Then a messenger comes in with news of a French invasion force preparing under the Dauphin, and of John's mother's death. John basically has a breakdown at this point, and goes into a tantrum at Hubert, trying to blame him for not dissuading him from killing Arthur (!) Hubert then tells him that Arthur is alive, and John relieved sends him to tell the nobles.

Unfortunately, Arthur has meanwhile tried to escape the castle he's in by jumping from the walls, and dies. The nobles find his body, and go into all out rebellion, joining the invading Dauphin. John, fearing for his crown, submits to the Pope, and is left pretty much broken, leaving the defence against the invasion to the Bastard. Pandulph tells Lewis to break off the invasion as John's a good boy now, and Lewis says 'yeah right', now claiming the throne as Blanche's husband. There's a battle which the French win though not decisively; then they lose all their reinforcements at sea, and the rebellious English nobles return to John after a dying French noble tells them Lewis means to have their heads after he's safely on the throne. Unfortunately for the English, the Bastard's lost half his armies in the Lincolnshire marshes.

Meanwhile John has been poisoned by a monk and expires horribly, just after receiving the Bastard's bad news. The Bastard bows to John's young son Henry as the new King. Then the nobles pass on the news that the French have decided to call it a day and have offered reasonable terms. The play ends with a rousing speech by the Bastard about how England must to herself be true.

Which is all a bit of an anti-climax. And it's hard to know what to make of John himself. Not a great tragic antihero, because his death is unconnected to everything that's gone before. Nor a great villain, because he backs away from his villainy when he realises the consequences (having not actually succeeded in killing Arthur), and actually just becomes rather pathetic. It's not really clear what's holding the whole thing together.

I think, however, that King John is actually a rather subtly-thought out play, intensely political and deeply cynical, and what holds it together is what the Bastard - railing at what he considers a dishonorable peace at the beginning - calls 'commodity', namely naked self-interest. All the main characters at various points invoke all sorts of noble motives and causes, but - with the crucial exception of the Bastard - all these are shown to be hypocricy, with self-interest the only guiding principle.

So. King Philip claims to be upholding the rights of Arthur as the Rightful King, which might seem silly to us, but was then certainly seen as a noble cause. But he casts this aside without hesitation when offered a good deal. Likewise, John claims to be upholding England's right and territorial claims - good old patriotism - but is likewise willing to chuck away a bunch of French provinces to secure a deal.

Then there is Love. "If you can in this book of beauty read 'I love'", John says of Blanche to Lewis. Blanche's response though is pretty much she'll love this guy if John tells her to, while Lewis says narcissistically, "Yeah, I can love her, she reminds me of me". And so the loving couple are joined in marriage, only for Lewis to put his new wife in a horrid position when he declares war on her uncle.

Then, religion. John invokes religious principle, prematurely Protestant as I say, lambasting the sale of indulgences for the "vile dross" that is money; but ironically, "vile dross" is precisely his motivation: he's been taxing the monasteries to pay for the war, and the first thing he says in response to Pandulph is "No Italian priest shall tithe or toll in our dominions". It's All About the Oil. And of course he quickly abandons his noble proto-Protestant principles when he decides he needs to get back with Rome to keep his crown. Lewis likewise declares a holy crusade against the heretic John, but when Pandulph says "Call it off, John's a good Papist again", Lewis is all "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The nobles are no better. When they find Arthur's body, Salisbury melodramatically declares that all previous murders are forgiven in this uniquely unspeakable and evil deed, and all future ones will look good in comparison. Yep, John makes all murderers from Cain to Dicky Crookback into saints. But they quite readily go crawling back to the (as they believe) child-killer when that's where their interests lie.

(John is even too pragmatic and self-interested to be properly Evil. Piling Sin upon Sin, wading through rivers of blood, and becoming a proper Shakespearian super-villain might sound like fun, but it never ends well. Instead, when the nobles start to desert him, he realises that there is "No true safety in others' deaths".)

So, political principle, religion, love, and the simple righting of a terrible wrong are all subordinated in King John to self-interest. (I wonder if this is Shakespeare at his most honest, the events far enough back not to have to brown-nose. Especially the religion thing. Is he, crypto-Catholic as he probably was, saying of John what he dare not say of Henry?)

And this is why John's death is not random, but actually completely in keeping with the rest of the play. Why does the monk poison him? Not because he's a heretic, he's repented. It's not stated, but presumably because he's pissed the monks off by taking their stuff. (John twice before has given orders for taxing the monasteries, so we know this is important.) His death is not a great dramatic story - he dies not from his Tragic Flaw, not from his Wickedness, but for reasons of self-interest as banal and sordid as all the other motives in the play.

And then there is the Bastard, who is not only the only hero of the play, but also the observer who sees things for what they are. There's a double irony here first in that dramatic Bastards are so often, well, bastards, and secondly in that after John & Philip's treaty, he makes this whole big speech about 'commodity', and how this is what everyone is following (which as I say is the point of the play), and so he's bloody well going to do the same and from now on look to his own self-interest. Typical soliloquizing villain, except he then goes on to do the exact opposite. He's the only one who acts out of loyalty - to John his mentor, even though John scarcely deserves it and the Bastard is darned suspicious about him. He's the one concerned to find out the truth about Arthur's death - not convinced it is murder, but ready to act to right it if it is. He's the one who also rallies the realm against the invasion when John is basically broken. And then at the end is his most self-effacing act for the good of the country - he's the son of the Lionheart (albeit Bastard, but so was William the Conqueror), clearly the most effective English general in the field, and John's son is only a boy. He says to himself as he hears of John's illness that now he really needs to resist the temptation to get above himself. But when John dies, he immediately acknowledges the young Henry as king, thus avoiding plunging the nation into bloody civil war.

Thus, as well as being the principle element of humour in the play, the Bastard redeems it from being totally depressing, showing that there is still a place for principled behaviour amongst all the sordid and cynical motivations that guide the actions of all the other major characters.

Bardcamp

2008-02-08T22:18:44Z

So, last weekend was our annual marathon Shakespeare readthrough, bardcamp, organised by the magnificent the_alchemist, an even longer long weekend than usual this time, running from Thursday evening till Sunday. We did King Lear, King John, Edward II (Marlowe guest spot - and happy belated 444th from yesterday to the good ol' Gay Atheist Spy, so the_red_shoes informs us), Edward III (disputed but now apparently believed authentic), Henry VIII, Thomas More (a collaboration in which he apparently wrote a scene), Macbeth and Cymbeline. (The theme was Britain, at least those British-set plays we hadn't done in the Histories.)

Photographs available courtesy of mostly_a_cat. Not many of me, which is probably just as well, but I did make an icon out of one of them, as you can see.

King Lear, on Thursday evening was probably the best readthrough we've done. I only had very minor roles in it, which has its advatntages in that I got to watch it without having to be in a character's head most of the time. All the principles were spot on, and often not what I'd expect from the character, a slightly different point of view which is always good - but purplepiano's performance as Edgar, posing as 'Mad Tom' after his downfall completely blew me away - scarily good, an intensely physical madness, and so that you're often not quite sure whether Edgar's entirely faking it.

I was a doctor and evil Edmund's Captain. It's not my fault. I was only following orders.

Friday morning we did King John, in which I played the title role, the first time I've done that at Bardcamp - a bit of a strange play and a part apparently that gives infinitely better actors difficulties, in that John sort of fades away in the second half of the play and his death appears rather random - poisoned by a monk - not tragic, or just retribution, or anything really. But I certainly enjoyed playing him, especially the incredibly slashy 'wooing' of Hubert (elise to persuade him to murder Prince Arthur, and then John's total emotional collapse in the face of an avalanche of bad news - his mother's death, the defection of his nobles, a French invasion, and his guilty conscience over what he (wrongly) believes to be Arthur's death - and I hope I did the part reasonable justice. roz_mcclure was a wonderfully witty and energetic foil as the Bastard, the hero of the play. I have more to say about King John, but I shall put that in a different post.

After lunch was Edward II, which I'd never seen, and which was I thought another emotional high-point - or given the horrible denoument, low point - of the weekend, with mirabehn wonderful in the title role, and working so well with libellum as Edward's lover Piers Gaveston. (Virtually all the principals were cross-gender cast.) So much playful affection, which you need, because Edward's an incompetent twat and Gaveston's something of a shit, which is conveyed, but there was enough sympathy to bring out the horrible awfulness of the way they're treated by the homophobic rebel nobles. (Excellently led by medieval_bunny as Mortimer.) I was possibly the nastiest of said nobles, Warwick. (I always get to play Warwick it seems. Well I was there 8 years.) I think if I were to play it again I'd play him in bovver boots and with a skinhead.

Edward III is one of Shakespeare's less-performed plays, and now I know why, although romauld as Edward and emperor as John of France did an admirable job of holding it together as the straight men when everyone was getting very silly. The first act's quite fun mind you - if pretty much totally disconnected from the rest of the play - in which Edward attempts to woo the married and very virtuous Countess of Salisbury (lj user="the_alchemist">). I had the honour of being Catriona's father twice over the weekend, this being the first occasion as another Earl of Warwick, and am made by Edward to pimp out my own daughter on his behalf.

The rest of the play is basically "Let's go kick some French AAAAAASSSSSSSS", like a Henry V before Shakespeare learnt to write, and was only redeemed from being tedious by descending into a festival of comedy foreign accents from John's United Nations of an army, with the show stolen by libellum's joint-smoking, hippy-skirted, purple scarf-clad King of Bohemia. Who had one line. Plus gnimmel's marvellous stiff-upper-lip pin-striped civil servant Black Prince, who would again otherwise be a thoroughly tedious character.

Saturday morning was Thomas More, ably played by mirabehn. Lots of Thomas More being very, very clever, and a mixture of adorable and slightly annoying, and then practical joking all the way to the scaffold, to the dismay and discombobulation of his adoring wife atreic. It gets almost Pythonesque. "Oh, all right, I'll submit to the King's wishes." "Oh, thank God, quick, sign the document!" "Naaaaaaaaaah, I meant by submitting to 'aving me 'ead chopped off! Oooonly kidding! 'ad you goin' there, didn' I?" He really should have broken out into "Always look on the bright side of life" at the end. Amusingly, there's not a single mention of what Thomas More was actually getting his head chopped off for. Strictly ixnay on the ivorceday. Liiiitle too politically sensitive.

Then Henry VIII, which works rather nicely as it's covering contemporaneous events to Thomas More from a completely different pov. borusa displayed a level of sheer power I don't think I'd seen before as Henry - I was Suffolk, one of the leading members of the court, who's one of those who gets a taste of Henry's wrath near the end for taking a pop at Cramner, and by God you knew that you were being told and that you were really very, very lucky to be keeping your head on your shoulders and by God you'd better not piss him off again. Scary.

Saturday evening we had "Court in the Act", an Elizabethan free-form role play organised by borusa, which was much fun and involved lots of drink. Also my first cross-dressing role, playing Shakespeare's girlfriend Viola, gatecrashing the courtly party disguised as her father, the Queen's greybeard advisor Lord Canning. I didn't achieve many of my goals, but I did get to kiss Shakespeare which was near the top of the list. :)

Macbeth on Sunday morning was another one that was so well done that I didn't regret being mostly in the position of audience. emperor excellent in the lead, and gnimmel totally stunning as Lady Macbeth. She wore tattered gloves for the handwashing scene, with her hands made up to look raw and bloodied from endless scrubbing, truly ghastly, but just one neat touch amongst the whole.

Then, finally, Cymbeline, in which I was again the title (although he's only a mediumish character until the final scene.)

Cymbeline is basically, we decided, a pantomime. Shakespeare takes elements of about half a dozen of his plots - Lear, Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night, Othello at the very least - and mixes them all together in a way that is just about brought together at the end, but in a way that is really very very silly. And almost all the characters are so remarkably thick, most especially Cymbeline. But the_alchemist was wonderful as my woefully ill-used daughter Imogen, and everyone was wonderful, and it was a great deal of fun despite being very, very long and us being rather hungry.

It set me thinking though about how cross-dressing Shakesperean heroines (for such is Imogen) always seem to end up on top. Viola, Rosalind, Imogen... it seems to be a failsafe strategy for a young woman tossed about by fortune's storms to overcome all her troubles. And therefore, how differently some of the Tragedies might have turned out if only the leading lady had had the presence of mind to cross-dress at the critical moment. If Juliet, instead of going for the clearly doomed faking-death strategy had cross-dressed, she'd have ended happily ever after with Romeo, or better still ditched the whining loser and ended up with someone better. Desdemona, the moment she got wind of nasty rumours being spread about her, should have immediately cross-dressed, and would surely have exposed Iago's fell scheming. If Ophelia had boyed up instead of getting all emo, going mad and commiting suicide, Fortinbras would have been sent back to Norway tae think again, and Hamlet on the throne with Ophelia beside him.

But Shakespeare's greatest tragedy of failure to cross-dress is surely King Lear. There is lots of disguising in King Lear - Kent and Edgar of course; and then there are if not disguises then transfigurations, Lear becoming wise only in his madness, Gloucester seeing aright only in his blindness. And the Fool is layer upon layer in himself. The only one of the 'good' characters who is absolutely straightforwardly themselves throughout?

Cordelia. And therein her and everyone else's downfall. Should have cross-dressed. Become Lear's servant or something. She'd have brought her wicked sisters low, forgiven them, and ended up ruling England. And does this not underscore the full tragedy of the events that took place, in that they were all so easily avoidable by this one simple device? (Would have been a crap play mind.)

If there's an even slightly serious point behind this nonsense, it's that it's telling that the only way a woman can get ahead, can win just a little bit of autonomy in the worlds Shakespeare depicts, it's by becoming either a total bitch or a man.

Apart from all this there was much folk music, always enjoy hearing romauld and taimatsu's voices, an unexpected Ceilidh called by atreic and of course much good food, drink and company. Sad to day I will probably not see most of those present for another year, or at least the best part thereof, but such is the way of things.

Spent a couple of days after at my dad's in Brum, and got home late Wednesday night. I'd somehow convinced myself that Ash Wednesday was the following Wednesday, and so was travelling all day and un-ashed. But just as well it is Lent already, as after Bardcamp my liver could do with 40 alcohol-free days.

Irony

2008-01-25T23:40:18Z

Oh, irony of ironies! The 'yellow bulldozer' that was used today by Palestinians to drive another hole through the Gaza-Egypt border, just as the Egyptians were trying to seal it - was (as I rather suspected) a Caterpillar. You can see the logo if you look closely at the picture on the BBC News story above.

A Caterpillar, like the D9 military bulldozers that are used to destroy Palestinian homes and land, including to build the illegal wall in the West Bank, and which crushed Rachel Corrie to death - in the same town, Rafah, where a Caterpillar is now used to destroy an imprisoning wall.

Well I guess there probably aren't many other sorts of bulldozers around there, the Palestinians probably buy stuff Israel imports, so it's not really that ironic.

I'm still not buying their boots though.

Jailbreak

2008-01-23T22:52:19Z

For once, heartwarming scenes from Gaza.

The world's biggest jailbreak

According to Al Jazeera (above), as many as 350,000 Gazans - out of a population of 1.5m - crossed the border into Egypt today after Hamas fighters blew up two thirds of the wall guarding the border, buying vital supplies blocked by Israel, who tightened their siege still further on Friday.

See kids? Non-violent direct action does work. Even if you have to use explosives once in a while.

And good for Egypt for refusing to continue to act as Israel's co-jailer. Probably because they wouldn't dare face their people's anger if they did. I wonder if the behaviour of the Egyptian police in not trying to stop the Palestinians - as they did the day before, with teargas and gunfire - was the result or the cause of their government's decision.

Of course this is hardly a long-term solution for Gaza's problesms, but for now Israel's siege is broken, and maybe they'll have to think of a smarter way of dealing with Gaza and Hamas. And maybe Hamas'll realise that there's smarter things they can do than lobbing random rockets at Sderot, which achieve less than nothing and - while far less devastating in effect than Israel's actions - are based on exactly the same obnoxious principle of punishing an entire population for the crimes of their leaders.

The mild North

2008-01-14T23:52:57Z

When I got back from Scotland on the 3rd of January, everything was covered with a thick layer of snow, much as I expected, and with more falling. Beautiful, but bloody cold. And I thought, well that's set in for the winter then. Dazzling white landscapes, mounds of snow piled high on the edge of every pavement, days on end without sun, the sky a hazy white, Stockholmers walking or skating across the frozen Mälaren, temperatures double-figures before zero, only leaving one's wonderfully Scandinavianly-insulated flat when absolutely necessary, with two pullovers, overcoat, hat, gloves and a big long scarf wrapped round the face with only eyes showing...

But 'twas not so. After a few days the snows stopped, the temperatures climbed, and we've had a week or so of what is for this part of the world remarkably mild weather. The snows are all but gone, just a few greying swept-up mounds here and there as a reminder. Sometimes mild has gone with grey and rainy, but several days we've had glorious sunshine.

One such day was yesterday. And so I took advantage of the unseasonal weather to take a noontide walk up my nearby hill (a rare commodity around Stockholm), this time, fulfilling an earlier promise, with a camera in hand - something I'd not thought to do till spring arrived.

So here's the fell beast. No, really not all that impressive, but when it's the highest point around it can still give you a good view!

Here's a view to the north from the top:

One east towards the city:

And another zoomed to get rid of all the telegraph poles

West across the forest, and a closeup of same:

And this one I think's my favourite, to the Northwest. The road you see below is the way I came from home.

Old Sol, whose unexpected appearance made this little trip possible, forbad a southern view.

I went back by a different route, into the woods:

I went back past Ekebyhov slott, a 17th century manor house.

Not been in it yet, I think it's supposed to be quite nice. It does conferences and food and functions and cultural stuff. This was the second time actually I passed by on a Sunday afternoon and they had live jazz on, though I didn't have time on either occasion to stop. Have to check that out though.

Behind the slott, taking me homeward bound, is another wood, this one populated with the oaks that give Ekerö its name. (It means 'Oak Island'). But this is seen to best advantage in Autumn.

And so home. A brief jaunt of about an hour and a quarter, but greater expeditions I shall leave till spring, mild as the winter may be so far.

Of course I have probably doomed us all up here by posting this, and tomorrow Winter, stung by my idle mockery, will unleash the full fury of his bitter, icy blast. I'll probably be deported.

Bush visit and health crisis in Gaza

2008-01-11T00:03:27Z

Well, I'd certainly never have expected such language from that source - Bush tells Israel to end occupation. He also said that a Palestinian state would need to be contiguous and sovereign, and that a 'Swiss cheese' state wouldn't work. Mildly encouraging, but for other bits of his statement that the '67 borders would have to be revised to reflect 'current realities', i.e. Israeli settlements. A reasonable deal could be reached based on equitable exchanges of land, but if Israel were to insist on keeping the settlements that effectively cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, or Ariel which is so deep into Palestinian territory, overshadowing the surrounding Palestinian towns, then we would be back to Swiss cheese.

And of course his denial of the rights of Palestinian refugees - yes, it is likely that in any deal there would be compromises on that, Israel isn't going to be persuaded into accepting the full return of all refugees to Israel - but to say right from the start things like "The UN deal didn't work in the past", referring to unimplemented UN resolutions on settlements and refugees, so casually writing off international law and the basic human rights of individuals, is appalling.

Meanwhile in the Gaza Strip, the health crisis caused by the Israeli siege, on which Bush said not a word, worsens. 64 patients have now died as a direct result either of being unable to leave Gaza for treatment, or running out of essential medicines. Amira Joah could easily become no. 69, a 15-year old girl facing an agonising death from a severe liver and spleen condition, unable to receive her regular treatment in Egypt that slows the disease and eases the pain, and who can no longer obtain a key prescription drug, Ursogall.

If you want to do anything about this - well, there's always writing to MP/Senator/Foreign Minister/President (president@whitehouse.gov - worth writing to whichever country you're from.) Also relevant Israeli government ministers, in particular:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni:
zlivni@knesset.gov.il
Health Minister Yaacov Ben Yizri:
ybenyizri@knesset.gov.il
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:
eulmert@knesset.gov.il

I just sent off emails to these guys, and managed to refrain from saying things I actually wanted to say in favour of being polite and reasonable, which I am told tends to work better.

Secondly, Gush Shalom and other Israeli peace groups are organising a relief convoy to Gaza to try to deliver some of the urgently needed supplies - in particular water filters. They welcome donations towards this. I have emailed them asking for details of how to make tax-exempt donations from the UK and US and will duly post these when I have a reply.