#47 Mother Merkel and the Anglo-American Babes

February 15, 2015

She doesn’t do it the Anglo-American way. Not for her the well rehearsed impression ofspeaking off the cuff. No prolonged playacting – being seen on camera repeatedly reaching outwards; inviting, grooming the far-flung viewer to come sit on the sofa.

Instead, reading a prepared statement on the Ukrainian ‘peace deal’, is as it says – reading, eyes on the script, lips synched to the page. Compared to Barack-Blair (rhymes with thin air) and their juniors, her performance – but that’s it, ‘performance’ is what it’s not – is as foreign as the preferred pronunciation of her first name: Angeeela; long ‘e’; short on rhetoric.

Mutti (Mother) Merkel, childless herself, is said to treat the German people like children – cutting up policy into bite sized pieces lest they find it indigestible. Let the German people decide whether to accept her domestic regime. But internationally this criticism is hard to swallow, especially as issued in those areas of the world stage – UK, USA, where the recent staging of politics (sofas and soundbites galore) has also been its babyfication.

Those who live in doll’s houses – grow up!

#46 In Brief

February 8, 2015

Glissando More accurately, glissssaaaaando. The sound of Prince Charles sliding and gliding around his words as he has been obliged to step around the everlasting presence of his mother, our Queen. Bending, benighted, bewildered.

Good Life U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, on the podium at the Munich ‘peace conference’, pink-cheeked and aglow with the good life. Never has losing looked so healthy – losing ground to Russia’s Putin, giving ground to France and Germany, gaining ground in health and wellbeing. (Perhaps not the best-ever trade off.)

Good to talk Not caged before burning like the Jordanian pilot murdered by IS, condemned prisoners of Britain’s forgotten religious wars were staked to the ground and consumed by fire (Thomas Cranmer), or drowned in a rising tide of seawater (Wigtown Martyrs). Between two sets of victims, Tudor and Stuart, Shakespeare found a form of words for opposing interests: his Globe, London’s first public sphere. Even now we can hear his joy in staging conflicts in blank verse instead of grisly executions; also his recurring fear of the world struck dumb again, condemned to death screams instead of humanising dialogue.

#45 Thrilla In Manila

January 24, 2015

To keep the rain off, the Pope is wearing a floor length poncho made of see-thru yellow plastic.

To keep off the torrential, tropical rain as he stands at the open end of his customised PopeMobile.

(This one in the style of an American army jeep, post-WWII: Il Papa transported by Uncle Sam.)

A gust of wind must have blown up from ground level, because the poncho has blown out to Michelin man proportions.

Swaddled in yellow, suitably inflated, Pope Francis might be on the point of ascending to heaven – except that Ascension seems unthinkable for this Sancho Panza; this mundane figure of nothing but a man, far too tubby to take flight.

Easy to tease even without mentioning jug ears or asking where he found Helmut Kohl’s old glasses.

(Those aviator frames didn’t stop the German people calling their chancellor ‘cabbage head’; Francis seems more of a swede.)

Feet of clay, easy to say; harder to explain why millions turned out in a tropical storm, up to nine hours before the three-hour Papal Mass was due to begin in Manila.

Six million, seven million Filipinos – the number is not even a number in the modern sense; more like those Biblical sums which mean: too many to count.

All wearing a scaled down version of the Pope’s yellow poncho.

Whatever their number, there are twice as many arms poking out and pointing upwards; with half the hands holding rosaries, the other half handling iPhones.

The rain, the light, and their beaming faces bouncing off millions of pieces of clear yellow plastic, each of these infused with the light and the rain bouncing off millions ofbeaming faces; a virtuous circle, making the whole scene translucent rather than simply see-thru.

For a moment, seeing through it all seems too cynical. As the pious are thrilled by thepresence of their pope, so piety appears to be thrilling. read more

#44 Hebdo Killers: Sont-Ils Charlie, Aussi?

January 15, 2015

Don’t I know you, Cherif and Said Kouachi? Your cropped hair and dead-eye stare seem familiar. And I think I know where you got that blank expression: not in the East, but west of Budapest.

Far from fundamentalist, the brutal story of the Brothers Kouachi is a parable of les temps modernes; from shooting the satirists (violent disaffection with graphic disillusion), to ‘death by cop’ – the only possible outcome of their shoot-out with les flics.

What could be more Left Bank than coming to life by reference to death? Compare theBrothers K to the chapter in Sartre’s Iron in the Soul where his alter ego Mathieu Delarue finds authenticity by firing on German soldiers: it’s a Paris match.

Agreed, the trappings are different. Yet the brothers’ actions were no more Islamic thanThe Mummy is Egyptian; instead of The Koran, more in keeping with Kenneth Anger’s disdain for America’s discredited dreamland. They wanted in on the new spectacle which contemptuously consumes Koran and Kardashians, Raskolnikov and kalashnikovs alike.

Rather than killing an Arab, this time the Arabs did the killing. Not that Islam made them do it – nor the new spectacle; more that the West failed to make them into anything else.

#43 News of the Year: 2014 in retrospect

December 31, 2014

January:
Stolen: a shred of cloth stained with the blood of Pope John Paul II; meanwhile, on theshores of Lake Geneva, Syria’s ‘peace talks’ foaming with blood on both sides.

When fire sweeps through an old people’s home in small town Canada, water from firemen’s hoses turns to ice at 20 degrees below. More than 30 dead.

In the Ancient Kingdom of Fife, masked raiders hijack Glen the Baker’s delivery van (a few quid and a tray of Scotch pies); and hundreds queue to enter the memorial service for three-year-old Mikaeel Kular, whose body was found in woods close to his former home in Kircaldy.

Dennis McGuire (53) lay still after more than 10 minutes of ‘air hunger’ – heaving, choking, snorting and gasping . Danish manufacturers Lundbeck have stopped supplying the United States with lethal injections, and the country of Big Pharma has failed to produce a reliable replacement.

Mexico is ‘quickly turning into the China of the West’, with car production predicted to rise 60 per cent by 2020. In Mexico’s drug wars, however, modern production co-exists with medieval ritual. Thus the five bodies wrapped in white sheets, roped up and strung out along an underpass in the northern city of Saltillo; iconic as a crucifixion scene.

At the height of the tidal surge, photography student Harry Martin went shooting thestormiest waves off the South Devon coast – and never came back.

February
Upper Middle England is messing about in boats on wide, brown rivers dotted with cars and road signs half-submerged. Wellies and woolly jumpers instead of twinsets and pearls.

A dog called Killer has killed a ‘china doll’ called Ava-Jayne – the ‘doll’ being an 11-month-old baby. The incident took place in a town north of Manchester that just doesn’t matter any more. read more

#42 Glasgow: say nothing for the now

December 24, 2014

Resilience, rallying round, the heroism of Glasgow people (note: nobody said ‘Glaswegians’) as they ran to help others.

These soothing words came too soon; only hours after a driverless (‘driver’ seemingly slumped at the wheel) dustbin lorry – baby blue, built like a tank – skittled into Christmas shoppers, killing six of them as it careered alongside Glasgow’s George Square towards Queen Street station.

Of course such words were said, as of course they are largely true; but saying them too early, too often, too readily, only reduces their restorative power.

Better to be dumbfounded at first. Shocked into silence by arbitrary, unnecessary death, since it contains the possibility that our whole lives were always that way.

Then the first acknowledgement: still barely articulate; halting, half-formed, until finally finding the right words immediately finds us the road back to who we are.

Out of the bleak midwinter, the bare naked bulb, the room still dark even though thelights are on, at that moment we can seek to show that death has no dominion.

But even resurrection – especially resurrection – requires a prior period of utter desolation.

It so happens that both aspects are already written into the dual character ofGlasgow’s civic architecture:

Enlightened orderliness in George Square itself, planned by Georgians and completed by Victorians, in which it is declared that out of power and substance will come sweetness and light.

Matched by the menace of the Gothic (the University, the Stock Exchange, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral), which threatens to embalm the city while it is still alive.

Yes, in the wake of disaster would-be words of comfort will come trippingly off thetongue. What else can be said?

But there is a choice: we can either keep saying them until the right moment comes along, eventually; or perhaps say nothing for the now, so that in good time they will be better said. read more

#41 In The Balance

November 30, 2014

On the one hand your new born baby – head flat against outstretched palm, its body pushing back onto your lower arm like a monkey on a bed of leaves.

In your other hand, the stock of an AK-47, barrel pointing upwards – a vertical axis to complement the horizontal infant.

Do they weigh about the same – these two things, each gravitating to the crook of a different arm? I would have guessed the gun was heavier than the baby….. but you look so well balanced.

As one offsets the other, there is no sign of strain in your arms or shoulders – it seems you could stand like this forever. Meanwhile the tiniest tilt of your head, the less-than-half-a-smile playing across your lips, indicate the internal equilibrium of a Mona Lisa.

News reports of 31-year-old Abu Rumaysah, who skipped bail (awaiting trial for ‘encouraging terrorism’), and boarded a bus from Victoria coach station to join theJihadis of Islamic State (dodging MI5 turned out to be as easy as taking the Victoria Line from his North London home), have pointed to the gross discrepancy between left and right: innocent infant on one hand, shoot to kill on the other; two handfuls co-starring in the selfie he posted to celebrate arriving in Syria and the arrival of his new born son.

There is more to the disparity. Rumaysah’s given name is Siddartha. Given to him by his Hindu mother long before he converted to Islam, it is also the birth name of theBuddha. How ironic that the latterday Siddartha turned from ways of peace into a man o’war (and not even a proper war, at that).

Yet there is no getting away from the poise in the picture.

Although his actions are utterly misguided, absurdly lop-sided, and – yes, let’s have another layer of irony – he may even end up doing the same work for IS (press releases and web design, if reports are to be believed) that he could have picked up in London’s ‘creative industries’, nonetheless for a moment at least this man has found his spirit level. read more

#40 The President Un-Masked

November 18, 2014

On the top floor of the White House, a darkened room and a hidden painting – ThePicture of President Dorian.

How else to explain the Gray hair and his head otherwise unchanged?

Still smooth as caramel, iced coffee cool; and blue black lips plump as berries.

Those lines a little deeper only sculpt his features more. The something in the way he moves, remains unmoved; years in high office have left no tangible impression.

Yet the stock question – what lies behind the mask? – is not the one to ask.

Whichever way we do things now, it’s not true to the old pattern.

Myth versus reality, realpolitik opposed to airbrushed image – how Quark theexpression, how quaint.

Not even a conspiracy, Obama was ever the icon. As a mascot he will always remain unblemished; there never was another man behind the mask.

#39 Remembrance

November 9, 2014

Pace Wilfred Owen, it’s not an outright lie – dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Remembrance ceremonies, such as the ceremony taking place this morning at London’s Cenotaph, enact the ‘sweet and noble’. A ritual of dulce et decorum, but not necessarily hollow. The falsification comes in the change of tense – not ‘to die’, Horace’s old line would be straight and true if it read: ‘to have died’.

On Remembrance Sunday, in the primary composition of former combatants, thesecondary role accorded to politicians and other civic dignitaries, and, above all, in thetwo, silent minutes of concerted contemplation, decorum is restored to all those who have died in bloody chaos.

In the moment, bodies broken open (more ghastly than grave robbing), bereft of sense and sensibility (only sensation, agonising sensation). But now they are people again, re-assembled in orderly progression.

The solemn procession, at its head our idea of the dead.

Take this, we say, for we do it remembrance of you. Which may be only partly true, but what else….?

Whichever side. Besides the Cause. There is nobility in having died, now it has been entered post festum.

#38 Top People’s Family In Free Fall

November 2, 2014

Pity the poor Establishment – now bordering on dysfunctional.

Since the summer the British elite has given away two of its elder daughters: first, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was obliged to step down from the government inquiry into historical child abuse, which she had been asked to chair; and now her replacement, Fiona Woolf, has been forced to go the same way.

Dame Elizabeth – thin lipped, fine boned – seems to symbolise the ascetic tradition among Britain’s ruling class. Loyalty to the law and devotion to the Anglican church have combined to keep her back straight throughout half a century of ‘public service’.

At this level, public service – yes, let’s lose the scare marks – is not without numerous privileges; but one should point out that at least as many demands are made of theprivate individuals who sign up for it.

These are the people who can speak of ‘one’ – one does this, one does not do that – without cracking up. As they see it, there’s no reason to be embarrassed by this antiquated term; instead there is every reason to expect the privileged to adhere to common standards.

Of course our club is exclusive, but anyone elected to it can be trusted to behave properly; hence ‘one’ is the proper noun with which to describe what any one of us would do.

Having previously combined senior judicial responsibilities with corporate tax law at thehighest level, Fiona Woolf has been closer to the money. Her year-long term of office as Lord Mayor of the City of London, which comes to an end in a few days’ time, amounts to a symbolic re-capitulation of the finance-oriented aspect of her stellar career.

If Butler-Sloss dresses in the manner of Thomas Cranmer, the sixteenth century archbishop and Protestant martyr, Mrs Woolf is more what you’d expect of Kim Kardashian’s great aunt – plucked eyebrows and lipstick to tone in with hairsprayed hair (from bronze to blond); and two-piece, fitted suits from material that might have been made into wall-hangings in the Chelsea church where she sings in the choir. read more

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