#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

#37 Wellbeing Versus Human Being

October 26, 2014

Plumped-up eyelids and pale skin, tippled pink…..

But the Renee Zellweger of Bridget Jones’ Diary has been replaced by a new Renee – let’s call her Wellzeger, who is tanned and taut and athletic enough to be Australian (in an Elle Macpherson kind of way).

When Ms Zellweger premiered her healthy new look at the Elle magazine Women In Hollywood awards last week, there was much talk of the ‘work’ she had (had) done to achieve it; although she said she was looking better simply because she has learned to live better.

Take your pick, but there is no doubt about the demand of the day: by any means necessary, make me an icon of ‘wellness’; let me exude the idea of rude health, or I may never work in this town again.

Meanwhile, in the pages of Interview magazine…..

Wasted. Blasted. Playing at being brain dead. A bevy of expensively attired legs, bums, breasts and pouty lips splayed out on the filthy floor of a concrete bunker. Slack limbed and glassy eyed, models acting as mannequins in a pantomime of silk and squalor.

The flipside of ‘wellness’, but no antidote; rather, Fabien Baron’s ‘Wasted’ fashion shoot only shows that today’s cult of health and wellbeing is capable of moving in mysterious ways – up to and including its opposite.

Cut from the cult to the case Dr Stella Adadevoh, who died of Ebola after she herself prevented the disease from spreading through Nigeria.

When Patrick Sawyer, a recent arrival from Liberia, was admitted to Dr Adadevoh’s clinic suffering from ‘malaria’, she refused to believe him; more importantly, despite his protests and threats she refused to let him leave the clinic until tested for Ebola. Thetests proved positive and the good doctor was duly rewarded with a dose of the deadly virus.

Dr Adadevoh died alone – though her husband and son were nearby, they were obliged to remain behind a closed window – in a disused TB hospital set aside for Nigeria’s Ebola patients. But thousands if not millions more Nigerians have survived because her decisive action succeeded in limiting the spread of the disease. read more

#36 Three Circles of Hell

October 19, 2014

1) The Abyss of Nothing

‘Whiteout’, said one survivor. ‘Blackout conditions’, said another. A third man reported stumbling through ‘an abyss of nothing.’

These are escapees from the shoulder-high snow and flattening winds which hit theAnnapurna mountain trail unexpectedly last week, at the height of Nepal’s tourist trekking season.

Nearly 40 bodies have been recovered so far; but hundreds have survived – either snatched out of the snow by keen-eyed, sharp-clawed helicopter pilots, or straggling down the mountainside as best they could, clutching at straws which turned out to be guide poles trailing the way down to safety.

Down to the non-descript place where patches of snow give way to blotches of warm earth; and queues of bedraggled survivors look like they’re waiting for the Night Bus home.

Messy.

Yet how splendid it must have been to come down in the world; to re-enter a lower realm of relative comfort, largely as you left it.

When the trekkers went up, however, weren’t they saying goodbye to all that? Pristine, surely, is what they were after. Above the snow line: the absence of things; and theend of men.

‘Blizzard conditions where the ground became the same as the sky and it was difficult to see which way was up and which way was down’, as one survivor described them, are also the preconditions for the Inhuman Being which tourist-trekkies are sort of, kind of looking for – aren’t they?

They may not admit it, and perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it – safer to have said they were searching for the Abominable Snowman.

Whoever he is, they only wanted to touch the hem of his garment; but when the Nepalese weather turned unexpectedly absolute, last week’s search party found themselves draped and dying in it.

2) The Abyss of Everything

A hospital waiting room where there’s no need to wait – surely no such thing. But now there is, in Dallas. Patients have fled the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital after one man died there and two of his nurses contracted the Ebola virus. read more

#35 Impersonal Freedom

October 5, 2014

I AM a number, I will be a free man.

Hong Kong protesters have flipped the defining statement repeatedly issued by Number Six in the 1960s cult TV series, The Prisoner: ‘I am not a number, I am a free man’.

They readily identify themselves by the start date of their street protests: 926 (26 September); they show affinity with 8964 (6 April 1989), the day the Chinese authorities broke up the pro-democracy protest camp in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

In the East, pro-democracy activists are accustomed to using numbers to sidestep censorship. In their eyes, numbers can be symbols of freedom.

Largely impersonal, because not attached to a named person; but by no means inhuman.

On the Western side of the world, however, protestors rarely regard numbers in such a positive light. They don’t see themselves in numbers; they don’t look comfortable even when – not often nowadays – they find themselves in great numbers. Being one of a number seems almost as hurtful as being reduced to a number.

No freedom, they seem to be saying, without first protecting my personality.

In Hong Kong there appears to be less concern about loss of personality.

When thousands of protestors cross their forearms at the same moment, with one voice semaphoring ‘wrong’ to chief executive C.Y. Leung and, behind him, Beijing, they don’t feel the need to be embarrassed about acting in unison.

Instead, in many different ways – passers-by spraying sit-down demonstrators with cool water; constant litter patrols and the sharing out of visors and masks for use against police tear gas and pepper spray – the level of cooperation among Hong Kong protesters and their supporters suggests that they are comfortable not only in their own skin; but also in each others’.

Meanwhile in the West the cult of personality threatens to rarefy still further the already intermittent call for freedom. read more

#34 If IS is ‘staggeringly brutal’, why?

September 28, 2014

On Friday 26 September British MPs voted by 524 votes to 43 to back UK government plans to bomb Islamic State (IS) on account of its ‘staggering brutality’.

A week earlier the wife of the British taxi driver held hostage by Islamic State had appealed to his captors to find it in their hearts to release him. Alan Henning remains on IS’s death row, facing the possibility of execution following the televised beheading oftwo Americans and one British citizen.

A few days after her appeal, Islamic State sent Barbara Henning a recording of her husband pleading for his life. Since she had only recently entered a heartfelt plea for mercy on his behalf, the IS response seems peculiarly heartless.

But if there is a staggering absence where you’d expect their hearts to grow, what is it that has led to such heartlessness among IS militants?

The staggering brutality of the West, is their answer; inflicted on (Sunni) Muslims everywhere to such an extent that their own form of staggering brutality is the only course of action left open to them.

But the West has been brutal to non-Western peoples for far more than a hundred years, promoting or suppressing them in its own interests, and not counting the cost (to them) – all this without often prompting such brutality in return.

On this account, the particular character of Islamic State remains unaccounted for.

Neither does the region’s natural environment offer a credible explanation. The desert sun was equally relentless seven thousand years ago as it shone down on ‘the cradleof civilisation’ in the territory now occupied by Islamic State. Likewise, the brutal heat ofthe midday sun may account for crucifixion as an ancient method of execution, but it does not explain why IS has only now set about resurrecting it.

Neither imperial history nor the forces of nature can explain the ‘staggering brutality’ of IS. read more

#33 Dear Doctor

September 18, 2014

Never, never, never in doubt, Dr Paisley? Hard to believe, given what happened next.

Power sharing (never!), the tricolour over Belfast City Hall (never!), First Minister ofNorthern Ireland with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as your Deputy (never!).

In the unsettling calm of the wee small hours, Ulster’s Big Man must have found belief increasingly elusive.

On such a night, he may have heard his faith falling by the wayside; the sound of a silk sash slashed (as worn by his father serving a century ago in Edward Carson’s Ulster Volunteer Force).

How else to explain the Protestant centurion no longer stentorian; the Sabbatarian, Presbyterian Moderator who became remarkably moderate?

For this was the conservative’s conservative, priding himself – no, that would be sinful – who made a point of never (never!) reading any book written after the year of his birth (1926).

But in recent years fighting talk directed at ungodly harlots, unnatural abominations, and the anti-Christ himself (Pope John Paul II), was reduced to a Corleone whisper – minus the menace.

How else to account for the unanimous paean to Ian in the days after his death aged 88 on Friday 12 September? Lost to the world and found to be a national treasure. Perhaps on a par with Joan Rivers: equally outspoken and ultimately harmless.

Paisley’s the name, of a life that became
Unexpectedly, appropriately decorative.

#32 Scottish Projections

September 9, 2014

‘Over four million individually addressed pieces of communication started going out last week.’

Responding to the surprise opinion poll (6 September) showing majority support for Scottish independence, Labour MP Douglas Alexander declared that Better Together had already increased its work rate. But the attempt to sound pro-active only revealedthe limitations of the ‘no’ campaign.

‘Individually addressed pieces of communication’ is an especially telling phrase. It tells tales of typefaces personalised to look like handwriting; it speaks of an address to 18-30s which eschews formal logic because digital natives are obviously too restless to follow it.

Hence ‘pieces of communication’ – format not specified; content equally imprecise.

Thus the full gamut of sub-Facebook friending in all its complex variations.

Variations, that is, on the same banal message – don’t take risks.

Enter First Minister Alex Salmond, jolly and jowly, pug-faced and a reputation for pugilism (political). At least he understands that faux is our deadliest foe. He knows what’s real in Scotland is unreal to the Westminster Village, and vice versa. But his yes to ‘independence’ is no more than a ‘no’ to unbearable lite-ness.

Suddenly former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown lands on stage like Salmond’s heavyweight brother. Marginalised because of previous prevarication (losing a UK general election because he didn’t call it in time), now doubly determined to be decisive, Brown is just enough of an outsider to play both Unionist part and Rejectionist role.

Safety first, notional nation, the idea of ‘home rule’: three projections in search of a people; no substance in any of them.

#31 Humanity Hotel

September 2, 2014

‘So their son can get the care…he needs’.

The TV reporter’s final line echoed the advice of Hampshire’s assistant chief constable – that Ashya King’s parents should return their five year old son to Southampton General Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment for cancer and for the severe after-effects of a successful operation to remove a brain tumour.

The way the reporter signed off – his intonation, the grain of his voice – invited ‘Amen’ at the end; as if godlike status is due to the ineffable combination of Police and theNHS.

Brett and Neghemeh King believe in a different god: they are Jehovah’s Witnesses who removed son Ashya from Southampton hospital and took him to their holiday home in Spain. They hoped to sell this property and use the funds to pay for proton beam treatment in Prague – cancer treatment currently unavailable in the UK, which Southampton doctors declared would be useless in Ashya’s case.

But the abduction of Ashya became a top priority – for police officers as well as journalists. His parents were arrested in Spain on Saturday evening and sent to prison. Ashya is now alone in a Spanish hospital.

Far from sacred, the behaviour of UK ‘healthcare professionals’ invites profanity. In a different case, the mother of a boy who was eventually granted NHS funds for proton beam treatment in Oklahoma, USA, reported ‘a bit of a carrot-dangling situation’ in which she was informed that her son might get the grant but funding would be refused if a younger patient came along. In Ashya’s case, Brett King says he was warned about an emergency protection order – his son being taken into care – if he continued to question his treatment; this despite disagreement among Southampton doctors over ‘the Milan protocol’ of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. read more

#30 The Substance of ‘J.F.’ versus Phenomenal ‘J.J.’

August 23, 2014

Two men in the desert, front of camera: J.F. in a prisoner’s orange overall, head shaved, kneeling, apparently penitent; J.J., knife in (left) hand, face covered, swathed in black from head to….ankle, where Grim Reaper garb gives way to non-apocalyptic desert boots.

How did they get there?

J.F., a 40-year-old, photogenic video-journalist – facial bones like the young Iggy Pop, previously said he was drawn to conflict zones because, unless someone gets up close, ‘we can’t understand the world, essentially’.

In video footage of a Q&A session at his old journalism school (Medill), he does that a lot – that is, he makes a strong statement, then softens the sound of it with an adverb – ‘essentially’; likewise, the ‘prayers and cigarettes, basically’, that got him through a previous period of incarceration (Libya 2011), also in the hands of unreliable captors (teenage Gaddafi loyalists), who shot and killed a South African photographer immediately before taking J.F. into custody.

Describing him as ‘motivated’, J.F.’s father later said of his late son that doing this important job ‘gave him energy’.

During his talk to staff and students at Medill (ignoring the Milky Bar Kid who at the first mention of violence, smirks at the girl in the adjacent seat), J.F. remarks upon the‘reach for humanity’ readily discernible among the people he was reporting on.

He reports being inspired by them, but did they also serve as his surrogates? It is valid to ask whether other people’s war zones (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria) became a theatre of self-validation for J.F. He admits that writing fiction failed to fulfil the romantic idea of himself as a writer (please note, a particular kind of young American invests theword ‘writer’ with a special sort of significance); so he turned to reality rather than questions of realism. read more

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