Cogito ergo Sum

A few years ago I would introduce my students to a lesson on the British media by giving them a list of, "who reads what in Britain?" It went something like this; "The Financial Times is read by the people who run the country", "The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think they run the country", "The Daily Express is read by the wives of the people who think they run the country", anyway, on and on the list went, all inclusive, down through "The Morning Star (the old CPGB daily) is read by the people who would like another country to run the country" to the people's favourite, "The Sun" and, "The Sun is read by people who don't care who runs the country as long as she has got big boobs. However, if we thought the pits had been reached, we were wrong, because even "The Sun" covered political items and real news, albeit very sketchily and with a lot of bias. No the plebs needed something else and so, in 1991, "The Daily Sport" was launched some five years after its sister paper, "The Sunday Sport". It was later to have problems because of its "adult content" and sort of just disappear. However, the good news for the working classes of the United Kingdom is, it was relaunched in April of this year. Still, no need to pass the news on because "The Daily Sport" sold an average of 85,000 copies a day in June 2008.
When I was younger I didn't really believe that people believed the crap they were reading in the Murdoch press. That is when I was younger, now I realise they do and similarly, when I was first introduced to a copy of "The Daily Sport" I thought, "well, it is just a spoof, nobody actually believes this", but do you know, I think they do! Perhaps, we shouldn't be too harsh on the media in China and too ready to accuse the Chinese of being gullible and who can forget the ridiculous figure of Colin Powell, pointing to satellite photographs of empty buildings and telling the world media that these were nuclear installations and there they are doing the same thing with Iran.

The front cover of "The Daily Sport" shows that the paper is doing even better than than the 85,000 daily circulation figures might have suggested. Recent satellite photos of Iran are suggesting that the "mad mullahs" have the nuclear capability to unleash an Islamic armageddon on mankind.

The Return of the Big Four

It was never only about the oil? Thirty six years after losing their oil concessions Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, the four companies that once formed the Iraqi Petroleum Company and exploited the country's oil reserves until the industry's nationalisation in 1972, have returned to Iraq. They are limited contracts and only of two years duration but it would be a silly man who would bet his house against the contracts being extended and expanded in two years time. "The Iraqi Oil Ministry, through a spokesman, said the no-bid contracts were a stop-gap measure to bring modern skills into the fields while the oil law was pending in Parliament."1 "A stop-gap measure and in two years the big four are going to pack their bags and go home; I don't think so, and was it ever very likely that Chinese, Indian and Russian companies, even with "their memorandums of understanding with the Oil Ministry"2, would have been allowed to bid?

With western companies being increasingly excluded from fields in Russia, Khazakhstan,Venezuala and Bolivia the bigger prize awaits for, as Leila Benali, an authority on Middle East oil at Cambridge Energy Research Associates says, "everybody is waiting for is development of the giant new fields,”3. Of course, it was only about fucking oil and if there is a general law in history the evidence would seem to suggest that it is human stupidity. It is a stupidity that has cost the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis and almost 5,000 American and coalition troops this time round.

1 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/africa/19iraq.php

2 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/africa/19iraq.php?page=2

3 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?th&emc=th

The map above shows us what the war was all about.

Neoconservatism

When Irwin Stelzer, writes an article arguing that the, "The Saudis have now extended their influence over oil prices to American monetary policy",1 we can leave the mechanics of how this might be aside and concentrate on two things, namely; who is Irwin Stelzer and what is American monetary policy?
Irwin Stelzer is a long-standing member of the neoconservative political faction and a supporter of a political philosophy that views foreign policy as the government's main responsibility and as a vehicle to ensure America's role as the world's sole superpower, which is deemed necessary, if global order is to be maintained.2 "Global order" and "America's role as the world's sole superpower" are conveniently, synonymus; and American monetary policy?
There has been a growing body of evidence that shows how changes in U.S. monetary policy can influence developing economies in one way or the another. For instance, under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank, capital flows are determined and interest rates and financial markets in the developing economies are profoundly influenced. A global interest in who the President of the United States will be is warranted because whoever it is, could be important to all of us. In the same way, American monetary policy is not a purely American concern. Moreover, the evidence is already suggesting that the dollar system and the United States as a sole world power are both unsustainable. Nevertheless, while we can only speculate on the nature of the compromise that Barack Obama will reach with the neoconservatives, with John McCain no compromise will be necessary, the evidence, unfortunately, also suggests that the neoconservatives are looking to Iran for their final fling.
1 http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article4232162.ece
2 http://wapedia.mobi/en/Neoconservatism
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/14/roberts_luncheon/index.html

Something is Rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark

Taking the line 2 Metro from Zhongshan Park, I decided to get off at Jing'an Temple and walk down Nanjing Xi Lu with the intention of visiting one of the 'city shopping centres' that dot Shanghai. Now, as far as food and drink are concerned, you can get more or less everything in China and what you you cannot get you can more or less get at one of Shanghai's 'city shopping centries'. Anyway, there was me walking down Nanjing Xi Lu and into the Portman Ritz Carlton complex and the 'city shopping centre' there. None of this is, of course, very remarkable and even the scene I am about to describe could, albeit as a variation to the theme, be in London, Paris, New York or Munich.
The wealth in the Portman Ritz Carlton shopping centre is ostentious and reminiscent of Maximillian Strasse in Munich and for Nanjing Xi Lu itself we could read, Theatiner Strasse. Anyway, with my little bag of goodies purchased I walked back onto the main road and a few metres further down, there was this little lady, face burned black by the sun, bent double, posture irreparably damaged, balancing two massive baskets of cherries on a bamboo pole. It is scenes like this that we encounter all over China and while, at times, the exclusion is not always obvious in places like Shanghai it is also all prevading there and in Suzhou it becomes even more blatant; the masses of people in the SIP who clean our offices and flats, who empty the bins, who cook in the restuarants, who stand in front of our compounds, they are less hidden than they are in Shanghai. In China the rich are getting richer and they like to flaunt their wealth but there are over a billion drones out there who don't have access to even those basics that the working class in my Glasgow had in the 60s; education, health, an opportunity for some sort of social mobility. It is, perhaps, appropriate to take a quote fromm chapter ten of George Orwell's 'Animal Farm', "Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer— except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs." Something is rotten and it is rotten not only in the Kingdom of Denmark.

Zoe's

About one hour after leaving Suzhou, I find myself in 'Zoe's', around the corner from the Porsche showroom, just off of Shanghai's Peoples' Square. Probably the main reasons why it is just about my favourite cafe in China are, the value for money breakfast, the location, the wireless connection and the friendly staff who are able to understand that background music is just that; background music. The old crooner, Bing Crosby, is singing a lullaby, the breakfast was yummy and a day in Shanghai looms.
The picture above was taken five minutes ago, inside 'Zoe's'; the breakfast has already been scoffed.

Rhetorical Questions

Of course, I could be wrong because at the end of the day, we all live in our little western world here in China where we are not terribly aware of the big picture. Nevertheless, an article I have just read in "The China Daily" is interesting not because it is particularly interesting in itself but because the Chinese Foreign Minister answers questions, which, I feel, he doesn't really need to answer. In fact, I think the Chinese government is actually asking itself rhetorical questions. The said interview can be found at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2008-06/25/content_6793570.htm . This represents the lowest common denominator in journalism. It is, of course, not unique to China. However, it does represent, along with "newspeak" another method of social control.
It might, of course, be that there is a debate raging in restaurants and bars from Hainan to Harbin and from Shanghai to Uramchi on China's rights over Chunxiao not being negotiable. Maybe, we all live in our little western world where we don't really know what is happening.

Soldier of the Queen

My stint in Her Majesty's Armed Forces was a bit a of a damp squib and not surprisingly so, because by the time 1972 had arrived "Blighty" had the 'DTs' and that was about it. The 'DTs' were, of course, the Dependent Territories. Yes, and then, there was Hong Kong but, all things considered, gone were the days when a wee working class boy could go to sunnier climes and lord it over the natives and only a half witted Data Telegraphist, my trade, would have wanted to go to the Royal Signals installation in Lisburn, Northern Ireland and so it was that off I went, trumpety, trump, to 7th Signal Regiment and the British Army of the Rhine.

When I got to Herford in North Rhine Westphalia, they didn't quite know what to make of me; it was generally accepted that I was quite bright but it was also soon clear to all and sundry that I was a bit of a liability because when it came to my job, I didn't exactly cross my "tees"and dot my "eyes" and my character and behaviour generally suggested that if I wasn't going to join the CPGB or some Trotskyist group, I would at least end up in the Scottish Nationalist Party. The question, therefore, was what do you do with somebody who has top security clearance and is not only incompetent at his job but is also very probably a political liability? They sent me to the Royal Army Ordinance Corps depot in Deepcut, Surrey and trained me to be a clerk.

On returning to Herford, I was given a job as the Commanding Officer's Clerk. It was the sort of crème de la crème of clerk jobs and I even got to discuss the meaning of life and things like that with the CO. It was also a job with a lot of responsibility because it was for me to ensure that the right orders were distributed to the right people. This meant that, for a time anyway, the Officer Commanding 8 Squadron would get the proper orders delivered to his desk first thing in the morning and the 1st Royal Signals Regiment in Hong Kong would get the relevant information from our CO telexed to them. Anyway, for a few weeks I was doing great and everyone, even the RSM, loved me but then I started to get bored and as we moved into 1974 I decided that it was time to stop this army lark.

Now, as they say in German, "irren ist menschlich" and when, all of a sudden, the OC in 8 Squadron was getting a telex meant for Hong Kong and Hong Kong was getting information that should have been on its way to Lisburn .... "Sorry Sir, made a mistake", and I made lots and lots of them. Whatever, soon I was demoted to being the RSM's clerk, a job, which really should have been impossible to fuck up. Indeed, the guy who had done it before me had managed to do it more or less well enough and this was the seriously stupid, Combat Signalman "Woody" Woods, the same guy who on seeing me watching 'Sesame Street' in English was to fly back from Luton with a Sony television set after I had told him that I had bought my set in the UK. In those days German television broadcast 'Sesame Street' in English ' on a daily basis. Shortly after that the twit decided he wanted to see some action in South Armagh. Anyway, back to the story!

My new job was all about making the RSM and his guests cups of tea and coffee and duplicating the RSM's orders on one of these old duplicating machines where you used to squeeze the big tube of black ink onto the printing plates. To cut a long story short, the teas and coffees were invariably too sweet or too weak or too something else, and masses of paper was getting wasted because I was using too much ink on the machine and it wasn't long before they were making one last big effort to tame me by letting me realise a soldier's dream. They decided to unleash me on our NATO allies and sent me to Senelage on exercise. Not as a Data Telegraphist, of course, not even as a clerk ..... off I went, trumpty, trump as a waiter for the Officer's Mess in the field and there they were all these idiots running around in red regimental dinner jackets with tails but instead of the trousers to match, combat trousers, puttees and army boots. What must Her Majesty's allies have thought? Up to our knees in mud, living in tents and, as if the attire wasn't enough to have you splitting your sides, we took the regimental silver with us. It was my job to polish the stuff.

It is at this point that we can finish the story because it was on that exercise that my army career came to a sort of abrupt end. There was the army legal aid thing and me trying to get out under a 'minority and lesion" clause in Scots Law but, in retrospect, they no longer wanted to even contest that. It might partly have been because they didn't want me to set a precedence but I suspect they were really at a point where they just wanted to see the back of me. The exercise was the last straw. Anyway, there was me polishing a silver jug and there was this little creep of a Lance Corporal prodding his finger into my chest and saying, "I've heard about you back at the regiment, I will put you in your place." And there was me saying, "don't prod me, don't prod me, don't fucking prod me" and he prodded and he prodded and he prodded and "WHACK", the silver jug split his nose in two and he stopped prodding and I was sent back to Hereford, put behind the grill, up on Commanding Officer's Orders the following day and told that I was to be given my discharge.

The picture above shows the entrance to the 7th Signal Regiment South Camp Maresfeld Barracks, Herford in 1972.

Newspeak in the Middle East

George Orwell's 2+2=5 is alive and well! One definition for the word "terrorism" that I found was; "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons." It is a reasonable definition. Therefore, what was one IDF corporal, who took part in the summer of 2006 in the battle for Bint Jbei in South Lebanon, rabbiting on about when he wrote, "The (IDF) soldiers also recounted feats of heroism displayed by their friends. “They carried soldiers on stretchers while simultaneously shooting at terrorists”?http://www.blogsofwar.com/2006/07/27/the-battle-for-bint-jbeil/ Bint Jbeil is in the Lebanon and an unlawful war was being perpetrated against the people of the Lebanon with the intention of intimidating or coercing its government and yet the Israelis had the audacity to call resistance to this unlawful war, "terrorism". Of course, it is so much easier for the IDF corporal to fight a war on terror than it is for him to fight an illegal war where civilian casualties are the norm.

'Newspeak' is a global phenomena. However, in the Middle East in particular, it is on the ascendency as resistance becomes "terrorism", illegal settlements become 'neighbourhoods", an unequal contest where the IDF shoots Palestinians who are throwing stones becomes "clashes", a deliberate killing becomes "caught in crossfire" and the occupied territories become "disputed territories". We are descending into the realms of, "Blutvergiftung" (blood poisoning), "Sonderbehandlung" (special treatment), "Schutzhaft" (protective custody) , "Lebensraum" (living space) and "Arbeit macht Frei" (work liberates you), the sign above the Nazi death camps. Israelis in particular could and should remember their own collective history. In doing so they might stop the rot and facilitate a real peace in the Middle East.

The picture above shows a "terrorist" walking down Bint Jbeil High Street after the IDF had failed in their attempt to root out the "terrorists".

Business as Usual

Interesting to note that the ICB are meeting to consider banning Zimbabwe from international cricket and that the ECB have already applied a ban. What with that and the Queen stripping Robert Mugabe of his honorary knighthood, maybe we will see the ZANU-PF asking the MDC to form a coalition government for the sake of the country.
Interesting too is the fact that Anglo American is investing millions in a platinum mine project and that they are, according to, the company “reviewing all options surrounding the development” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4214924.ece . One of those options is very probably business as usual albeit a little sureptitiously. Or, do we really expect them to make way for the Chinese?

An Arrogant Big Shit

When I spent a bit of time in Glasgow between universities during the mid eighties, I got quite lucky when it came to getting temporary jobs and earning money. The first job I had was working for the property surveryors, Richard Ellis, and me and my mate would traipse around the centre of the city, supping cups of coffee, looking at all the pretty girls and a range of daily newspapers and, well, just enjoying life. It really wasn't difficult to sit in the coffee shop, and look across the road and rate the building on our list an a, b, c or d. At the end of the week we were given one hundred pounds cash in our hands and, of course, I was also signing on. Money for nothing and chicks for free and we would drift up to 'Nicos' in Sauchiehall Street and get blootered.
After that my next wee job was a week's work demonstrating for four hours every day for thirty pounds a stint; that's right demonstrating! Some ingenious director had decided that the best place to get German student look alikes for a series on the protests in Berlin at the end of sixties and into the seventies against the Vietnam War was the 'Goethe Institut'. "German student look alikes" and they gave the job to a 1.73m Scotsman with black hair. Anyway,It was in the 'Goethe Institut' that I met and got friendly with Kurt and with his doctoral thesis on Nietzsche and a fondness for quoting Oswald Spengler's, "Der Untergang des Abendlandes"I should have seen it coming. Kurt was an arrogant big shit and while it took me a wee bit of time to realise that, my mates in 'Nicos' soon had him sussed and there we were one afternoon having a quiet libation after a morning of "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" and Donald said when we were both in the toilet, "your mate is an arrogant big shit."
Anyway, Kurt soon became unbearable and when one evening on Byres Rd he made the jump from telling me that Glasgow was decadent to telling me that my mum was decadent, I just cracked and tried to hit him. Unfortunately, the combination of the ten or so beers that I had drunk and the boxing skills that Kurt had acquired in the German 'Bundesliga' meant that while I swung at mid air he cut my face open with three lovely crisp punches. Fortunately, however, there were a few lads who broke up the no contest although they seemed more worried about Glasgow's "miles better campaign' being tarnished than they were about me lying in a pool of blood on the road. Kurt was sent in one direction and I in the other and off I staggered up towards Knightswood.
Now Kurt's ex-girlfriend lived in Hyndland, which as anyone knows who comes from that part of the world, is sort of between Byres Rd and Knightswood and 'ego' had nothing better to do than to drop in on her on his way home. So there was me sleeping my little head off when in she came to tell me that Kurt was coming round and that he was very very upset and angry and sounded like he might want to kill me. "Maybe ye shuid go", she said, but the ten pints had made me either very brave or very foolish and apart, from anything else, I was tired, so I decided that I wasn't going anywhere and soon there was Kurt, all two metres of him, in the room proding and poking his finger in my chest, provoking me and telling me to get up and get dressed and get out and all of a sudden there was me exploding, sticking the heid in him, watching him bounce off of the mantlepiece and bundling him out of the room and locking the door and then there was him smashing his fist through the panels on the wooden door and there was me cracking a antique vase off of the mantlepiece and there was him thinking, "well I might kill the wee bastard but he is at least going to bleed all over me."
The following day, face badly bruised and a couple of stitches in my heid, I walked up to see Donald and my another mate, Davy. Now, you might remember Donald from the beginning of the story and you might remember that he didn't like Kurt. Anyway, there was Donald, working under Davy's car and when he looked up and saw my face he said, "Whit happened to ye?" Of course, I wasn't going to lie and when Davy came to join us he asked me, "Whit's his address?" Now, of course, I never told them but .... well anyway, I never saw Kurt again.

The Great Game Part Two

After the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, I sort of lost interest in that part of the world. The suppression of the opposition in the early eighties went more or less unnoticed by me as did the land confiscations and redistributions later on and now Zimbabwe is constantly in the news and all of a sudden we all have to be interested, why? The parallels with Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere are so blatantly obvious that the semi thinking man cannot help but see behind the drivel.
Western support for Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran has been well documented and, as long as he was perceived to be protecting “our interests”, the nature of the man and the regime were hardly an issue. Afghanistan was completely forgotten for about ten years after the Soviet withdrawal and when, at the beginning of the nineties, Saudi money, the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, facilitated the Taliban’s rise to power the United States believed they had someone they could do business with. They were, of course, wrong and it was time to demonize the man and the regime, and Zimbabwe?
Robert Mugabe is probably as much of a nutcase as Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar. However, this should not stop us thinking about the real reasons why the United Kingdom and the United States in particular want a regime change and when Morgan Tsvangirai’s ‘Movement for Democratic Change’ seek to impress the “international community” that “international community” is in fact a euphemism for the Western powers and it is time for the West to reassert itself on the continent of Africa. In the global village the “great game” is no longer confined to Central Asia and Zimbabwe is a prime example of just how ruthless and hypocritical the West can be when it comes to pursuing its interests. It is also interesting to note that this accentuated interest takes place not only in the wake of flawed elections but, and more importantly, that it also takes place some four months after a high ranking Chinese trade delegation visited Zimbabwe and signed a number of agreements. Of course, we should also be aware of a number of other activities being pursued by the Chinese and, indeed, of China's real motives. Let the game commence!

Wee Brian

One of the good things about writing a blog is that you surf a bit and look for information. Well, there was me surfing this morning and for one reason or another, and I really don't know why and how, I stumbled on Brian Manning's obituary in "The Guardian" http://education.guardian.co.uk/obituary/story/0,12212,1247868,00.html . It would appear that 'wee Brian', as 'big Frank' used to call him, died back in June 2004 at the age of 76.
Brian was my History Professor when I was at, what was then, the New University of Ulster back in the early eighties. If anything, I am slightly surprised that Brian actually made it to 76 because one of the things I liked about him told me at the beginning of the eighties that he might not be in it for the longer haul; Brian, liked his bevy and it was this and his ability to talk to and not down at people that made me empathise with him. Sure his received pronounciation, his tweed jackets, his wee goaty beard and his cigars, all meant that it was going to be easier for me to move socially in the other direction than it would be for him to join the horny handed sons of toil. However, he was just a much more honest, down to earth, person than some of the other bourgoise Marxists I have encountered. However, the one lesson for life he gave me has proved to be wrong.
There were four or five of us having a "wee" drink with Brian in his house on Strand Rd in Portstewart one evening and I made the remark that I wanted to do my best at something. Brian replied that nobody every really does their "best". In retrospect, as far as my own person is concerned this is true and if anything sort of distinuishes me, it is under achievement. Based on my own person Brian's comment, therefore, sort of hits the nail on the head. However, I was at a meeting at work recently and I realised that, despite the mediocrity that is being produced, some of my colleagues are in actual fact doing their best and to be honest this has to be slightly worrying because, while they are all relatively harmless they do have their mirror images out in the big bad world at large where incompetency, stupidity and ignorance actually have much graver consequences.
Still, this is Brian's post and I would like to finish it by quoting the penultimate sentence of the obituary in "The Guardian":
"A frequent visitor to Italy, he took pleasure in pubs, cigars and the company of friends, and, in retirement, continued to address meetings of the London Socialist Historians' Group."
All the best Brian, and I will try to get round to reading your, 'The English People And The English Revolution (1976)', which I still have at home.

Proxemics

In 'Simons' having breakfast this morning and I started off by sitting at a wee table with a socket next to it, so that I could recharge my computer once the battery ran low. Now, the restuarant is quite big and the place was quite empty and I was, therefore, a trifle irritated when two guys came in and sat down right beside me; an irritation, which grew when one of them placed a packet of cigarretes on the table in front of him. The packet of cigarretes was soon opened, I moved to a table a bit further away and it was, all in all, hardly dramatic. Nevertheless, a point has to be made!
The fact that my privacy is being invaded would never dawn on this chap and why would or rather could it? A big chunk of my adult life has been spent in bars and cafes and, although now it is completely unacceptable to smoke in most places in Western Europe, that has not always been the case and for a long, long time I accepted cigarrete smoke as natural consequence of socialising. That has changed in most countries in the European Union and I can actually imagine a day in the not too distant futures when people will say things like, "do you remember when people used to smoke in bars?" However, the smoking is only a part of the problem.

As I said, the cafe is practically empty and it is not even as if there was not a comfy couch available for them elsewhere, so why, why, why, did they have to sit right next to me? Well, I suppose even there, there has to be an excuse of sorts for the whole concept of space and privacy is something quite different in China from what it is in the west. Indeed, the guy who was smoking has, in the time it has taken me to write this post, revealed himself as a chain smoker and it appears that his mate doesn't smoke at all. Neither of them seem particularly aware of the fact that someones privacy is being invaded, which, naturally, means that nobody's privacy is in actual fact being invaded; apart, of course, mine!

The picture above is from inside the cafe after I had moved my laptop. The guy at the front of the picture in the black tshirt is a chain smoker, his mate doesn't smoke, the wee round table is where I was sitting and where my laptop is, is where I am now sitting.

The Buzz

Sometimes, a wee bit "gnothis auton" wouldn't be misplaced. That is Ancient Greek for "knowing yourself' and if we don't really know too much about ourselves, we would do well to think about where we have come from, how that has affected us, how we might have changed etc. etc.

Now, the process of my partial adaptation to bourgeoisie values might have started with me going to college, going to university, going to Germany. One thing for sure though is, the adaptation has only been partial and when I think about where I have come from I should, at least, have a better understanding of where China is today. This, however, isn't going to be a China post. It is going to be a Glasgow post but we might do well to think about the bigger picture. At the beginning of the seventies we were all being moved out of our little rooms and kitchens in the inner city of Glasgow and we were all getting wee hooses in one or another of the big housing schemes on the edge of the city. Drumchapel was one such housing scheme; 60,000 people, three or four pubs, three secondary schools (one of them catholic), a handful of catholic and protestant churches, a couple of public libraries, a wee shopping centre and a few more shops and ... well that was it. The people living there invariably had no money, a lot of them were unemployed and a lot of them were bored out of their minds. It should, though, be pointed out that a lot of them didn't have much of a mind. Anyway, I was there, so what did we do? Well, we kicked a ball about and it is no accident that a host of professional footballers and Scottish caps were to come from the area. However, it wasn't only football that distinguished the youth of the area. There were a lot of heidbangers around and downtown Bagdhad thirty odd years later is, at least a wee bit safer. We actually had no front windows as such but prefered to keep them boarded up. This didn't let much daylight in but it also made it difficult for some idiot to throw a brick from the street into the front living room and then there was this one particular occassion when only my knowing someone in particular stopped some local members of the 'Drummy' from chibbing me. "Oh, he knows 'Goggles'", one of the educationally sub-normal, maladjusted retards said and they all put their chibs away, saying, "on you go pal bit ye shuid be careful." Fucking right I should and phone a taxi in future to take me from my house to my sister's house, which was about 500 metres away. Don't know what happened to 'Goggles' but I am certainly glad he was my pal and it is no accident that my first inclination to get out led to my flirtation with the British Army and me thinking, "West Belfast's not going to be more dangerous than this and they at least give us guns to defend ourselves."

Now, you might think that the opportunity to move to a better area, when it presented itself would be seized upon by all and sundry and the opportunity did come sooner than a lot of people expected; built after World War 2 the buildings were going to be demolished after only some thirty five years. Of course, that was indicative of how derilict they had become in such a short period of time and there was the "cooncil" offering us all nice wee apartments and hooses in Blairdardie and Knightswood. Anyway, as I said, it would be expected that everyone would seize on the chance to move as soon as possible, on the chance to get oot, but not everyone did.

Jimmy MacLeod, my neighbour, and there were lots like him, said quite simply, "am no leavin". Now, Jimmy was a heidbanger, the type who would get plastered almost every evening, who saw spiders crawling up the wall, who would come home and batter his wife all over the place, and when I asked Jimmy why he wasn't leaving, he said, "ull miss the buzz." "The buzz"; the madness, the police car with sirene screeching , the shouting and screaming, the neighbour's Frank Sinatra LPs blasting through your wee paper walls, the gangs fighting in the street, the stray dogs barking and shitting, the wee fourteen year olds pushing their weans along the road, proud as punch, and over the moon at having someone to love and someone to love them back, the madness that was "the Drum".

This, as I said in the beginning is a Glasgow post and most definitely not a China post. However, doesn't it all help to put the "re4 nao4", the bad driving and the bad habits into perspective?

The picture is of a Drumchapel Street at the Lochgoin Shops, round about the time when I lived in the area.

Intelligence

On reading Amy Goodman's interview with the investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, '1968, Forty Years Later: My Lai Massacre Remembered by Survivors, Victims’ Families and US War Vets Vets', Hersh quotes bad intelligence as one of the reasons for the atrocities commited by Charlie Company in My Lai, Vietnam; on March the 16th 1968 the members of Charlie Company arrived in My Lai and opened fire murdering some 500 women and children. They were not under attack but they had expected that they would be engaging the enemy. Having spent some ten weeks on patrol and losing some 20% of the company through sniper fire and mines, they had been told that the vietcong were in My Lai. The intelligence was faulty, there was no vietcong in the village but Charlie Company had been given their orders; on a 'search and destroy' mission, nerves frayed, they were ready to kill. The intelligence was just not very intelligent. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/17/1968_forty_years_later_my_lai

The jury is out on the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade although having read an article in "the Guardian" http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/oct/17/balkans , I am more inclined to think that when the intelligence community is intelligent, it can be conveniently ignored and then blamed and used as a scapegoat to serve the needs of its political masters. The evidence would seem to suggest that this happens time and time again. For although the Senate Intelligence Committe published a report in 2004 saying that the CIA overstated the threat from WMDs, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3252000 , this does not indicate that Bush and Blair were misled. Firstly, cajoling and coersion were being used to bring the the intelligence community into line and, secondly, there was in fact enough information available to show that WMDs did not exist. Bush chose not only to ignore that information but indeed tampered with it, http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/secret-british-memo-shows-bush.html . The evidence would seem to suggest that there is enough incriminating evidence to convict both George W Bush and Tony Blair of war crimes.

In My Lai bad intelligence was partly responsible for the deaths of some five hundred innocent men, women and children. In the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq the intelligence community was used to support government policy and when any real intelligence was provided it was at times ignored, at times abused and, if necessary, disorted. The murder of over a 100,000 people was facilitated.

The picture above is from inside the CIA Headquarters at Langley, Virginia.

Coming up for Air in Dublin

Now I cannot remember if it was in 1982 or 1983 but I think it was in 1982 and I am no longer sure of the time of year. Whatever, there was me and big Frank driving down Belfast's M1 enroute to Dublin and a weekend of bevvy, bonking and rugby. There was an international on but don't ask me who was playing because I cannot remember and anyway I never made it to the game and there were a couple of more important things for a fairly good looking wee Scotsman to do in Dublin's fair city. Whatever, there we were driving down the road and about thirty miles north of Newry or about half way between the border and Belfast the road was, all of a sudden, closed for some reason or another. The IRA actually had this habit of blowing up the border post at regular intervals and at regular intervals it would move about ten yards closer to Belfast. Now, Frank, a native of East Belfast, knew the back road to Newry but the only thing was the last time he had driven on it things had been a wee bit different. Still, off we went down through South Armagh and in just about the time it takes you to say, "Bob's your uncle", or something similarly ridiculous, there was Crossmaglen in the distance with the Irish tricolour flying proudly from a lamp post and soon we were there and just as we were passing the UDR barracks out came a landrover, out it came, bombing out in front of us, onto the wee narrow road and sitting in the back were six squaddies, supping a bottle of whisky and when we got into the country, out onto the wee narrow roads lined with hedges, there they were pointing their SLRs at us, just in fun of course, but I didn't find it very funny, because those boys, you could see, were at the end of their tethers, nerves frayed, baggy eyes, ready to crack up, and we couldn't overtake because the road was so narrow and all of that and I thought, "what if the fuckers decide to strip search us" or, worse, "what if the Provos decide to blow them to kingdom come?"; a sort of regular occurance in South Armagh! Well, we would have been fucked wouldn't we? Now it was getting a wee bit dark as we approached Newry but believe me I was so over the moon when we got to that wee town and on we went down to Dublin and somewhere between Dundalk and Drogheda, I decided that I had had enough tension for the weekend and .... Well, I have never been a big rugby fan, anyway!

The picture above shows an Irish tricolour and a mural of James Connolly stuck to a lamp post above Crossmaglen, County Armagh.

"Realpolitik"

A memo by George Kennan, Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, which was written on February 28, 1948 was quite clear on how the United States should conduct its foreign policy. He said, "We should dispense with the aspiration to "be liked" or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and--for the Far East--unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memo_PPS23_by_George_Kennan .
Of course, Kennan got it wrong, far from the United States being hampered by idealistic slogans, idealistic slogans are, in fact, used to camoulage America's real foreign policy aims and in doing this they facilitate the achieving of machiavellian goals. What would have been the reaction to the invasion of Iraq if the idealistic slogans had been dropped and the international community had been told, "we are going war to secure our oil supplies and to cement our hegemony in the Middle East and this is going to lead to a lot of people dying?" Idealistic slogans do not obstruct foreign policy goals but rather accompany them, support them and can, inded ensure that those goals are achieved. They are, invariably, part of a "Realpolitik" that provides a pretext when the straight power concepts mentioned by Kennan would be unacceptable to both the American public and the international community. Nevertheless, we should be able to see past the hypocrisy of the slogans and in doing so understand the real reason behind the pretext.

Bad Habits

On Friday I was involved in a discussion with a Canadian and a Chinese colleague about the bad habits that prevail here and there was, more or less, a consensus that bad habits do prevail; the lack of hygiene, spitting, kiddies doing their toilet in public places, people forcing their way to the front of queues, etc. etc. Nevertheless, while agreeing the Chinese colleague, who has a PhD from Leeds University, did make a very pertinent point. She said that she has seen grown men in Leeds piss in the street. She was, of course, right and anyone who has witnessed the binge drinking done at the weekend in British cities might, quite rightly, conclude that the British at least are the last people to condemn others because of their bad habits. Moreover, when I was growing up in Glasgow in the sixties and early seventies, you would see men and kiddies and, yes, even the occasional lady, piss in the street. Indeed, on a Friday and Saturday evening witnessing them vomit, fight, break windows and generally disturb the peace was not unusual.
Nevertheless, while my Chinese colleague did argue that we are always free to choose where we go, what we eat and drink, who we talk to, it remains in China today, more difficult to avoid the spitters, shitters, the noise, the queue jumpers, etc. etc. than it does in Britain ..... and when, when, are they going to learn how to drive?
Finally, you might have noticed that this was a comparison between China and the United Kingdom. Most of the last thirty years of my life have been spent in a little town near Munich in Germany where the penalty for spitting is death by electric chair.

The Logo as Fetish

Bright lights, a western name, noisy music and a location at or close to the corner of other restuarants and facilities, will ensure success for any cafe or restuarant in China. In the west itself, 'Skoob' would have done alright; a little bookshop cum cafe, with decent ice cream and good coffee. However, the Chinese flock to the fairly run down 'Starbucks' that is almost next door without even acknowledging 'Skoob's' existence. The coffee in 'Skoob' is better but they will never get to know that and there isn't really any ice cream in 'Starbucks' but ice cream with no "re4 nao4" isn't really ice cream and anyway there is now a new arrival in town.
'Cold Stone Creamery' has opened on Singa Plaza at the corner of Jin Ji Hu Lu and Xin Han Jie across the road from the Starbucks in Suzhou Industrial Park and they are doing a roaring trade. Is this going to be the final nail in the coffin for 'Skoob'? Would be a shame if it was; I was in the 'Cold Stone Creamery' and it is, to put it mildly, rubbish. Having pointed to a strawberry ice cream on the card, I was a trifle surprised that he gave me vanilla and then went to mix it with banana before I stopped him. Now you might think that this was a simple confusion, however, you would be wrong. In front of me I watched him give two Chinese a dfferent ice cream from the one they pointed to. They, unlike me though, just accepted it. Of course, they were happy anyway, they were getting everything they had come for; the 're4 nao4', the bright lights and the brand name.
If there is a conclusion to this story, it would have to be that this is another example of where the Chinese care even less than we do in the west about what actually inhabits the brand. If Munich's 'Tambosi' or Vienna's 'Demel' or Venice's 'Caffe Florian' were to open a branch in Suzhou Industrial Park they would probably have to make way for a 'Costa Coffee' or 'Starbucks' within a year.
The picture above is of the 'brand' new 'Cold Stone Creamery'.

Drivel Part two

As I haven't really been catching up with the British press this is all a wee bit second hand; my friend informs me that the debate in the United Kingdom on Afghanistan and Iraq is restricted to "fallen heroes". My immediate inclination was to think of Wilfred Owen's poem, "Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria mori" and the coughing and spluttering and choking and dying for what?. No real debate back in 'blighty' and we can be sure that very few people are actually thinking about why young British citizens are dying on Afghanistan's plains or are even thinking that they are dying. Still, at least they get the bodies back and no longer content themselves with an, "if I should die think only this of me, there is a corner of a foreign field that is forever England." Progress has been made!

My thoughts drifted back to a period in my life when I left a good grammar school and as a young British solder drifted out east. Well out to the British Army of the Rhine and the realisation that, while I wasn't the type to pass on the nonsense to others, I also wasn't the type to accept the drivel. On "OC orders" the Squadron Leader Major Jones asked me, "what is wrong with you?' "Sir, I am bored!" "Bored, what do you mean bored? You have the model railway club, the chess club, the photography club and ...." Well it is a long time ago, but he went on to list a lot of other clubs and I went on from "OC orders" to "CO orders" and a "services no longer required". "Dulce est Decorum est Pro Patria mori", what drivel!

The picture above is of a group of young British soldiers (7th Signal Regiment Photography Club, 1972) who went east from Catterick Garrison to the British Army of the Rhine.

Life and Death in Glasgow

The legendary manager of Liverpool F.C., Bill Shankly, once said that, "some people think that football is a matter of life and death, but it is much more important than that." If football is or was more important than life and death in Liverpool it certainly is or was just as important in Glasgow.

On the second of January 1971 I went to Ibrox Park Glasgow to watch the Rangers versus Celtic derby with my friend and his cousin. Those were the days of the big crowds and on that particular day there were 80,000 in Ibrox not counting all the wee boys, like myself, who had been lifted over the turnstile. In injury time Colin Stein the Rangers centre forward equalised, after Jimmy Johnstone had scored for Celtic in the 89th minute, and along with my friend and his cousin I made for the exit, the now notorious stairway 13. It doesn't do here to go into too much detail but suffice to say I was dragged unsuspecting down one of the steel barriers banging my leg off of the support poles at relatively regular intervals. However, in retrospect, I now know that I was lucky to get down a barrier that was to collapse only a few minutes later and out of a stairway that was to leave 66 dead. My leg was badly bruised and I had chipped a bone. Thinking it was broken I made my way to the nearest hospital.

My friend who went to the Southern General hospital with me was to lose his cousin that day and it was on arriving at the hospital that he began to suspect as much as the corpses were being wheeled past the emergency room; an emergency room where the injured looked like they had just been through the wars. The doctors didn't have much time for me and it was a case of a quick cast and get him off home. "How was I to get home?" was my immediate thought and it was then that an older man, who also had to take his friend to Drumchapel the area where I lived, said that he would take me and in offering to take me he attempted to aleviate my depression by saying, "never mind son, we got a draw." Of course, I should have been angry but this was a man who had had six ribs broken and who still hadn't found his brother and anyway I did think, "yes, we got a draw."

The following day I was hobbling down Fettercairn Avenue where I lived and never had the bragging rights been so clear as on that sunday; there was one of the O'Donnels and his silly joke about the new drink at Ibrox being "orange squash" or was it "orange crush" and there was the scoreline "Celtic 66 Rangers 0" spray painted inside the close where I lived. A lot of people like to quote Shankly jokingly but in retrospect there were people who actually believed that football was, indeed, more important than life or death. However, in Glasgow, especially in those days, it was never only about football. There weren't only bigots and there were many Celtic supporters who were genuinely upset. Nevertheless, there were a lot of bigots and when I say, "were", have they gone? Over thirty years ago I left Glasgow and I haven't been back very often since although I did manage to take in the Champions League Qualifier between Rangers and AEK Athens when I spent a few days there in 1994 and there they were chanting, "fenian bastards, fenian bastards" and pointing in unision towards the block of Athens fans in the enclosure. "They are Greek Orthodox", I told the gentlemen standing beside me, screaming his head off. Not to be outdone or undone, he retorted, "they are all fucking Marianist bastards."

The picture above is of stairwary 13 after the disaster.

Not getting it right can be getting it right or it can be not getting it right

My criticisms over the last few weeks of people here not getting it right have been rather harsh and have been, sometimes, no doubt, a result of certain other little frustrations as much as anything else. Therefore, I have decided to write a little piece in favour of not getting it right. Well, at least of sometimes not getting it right.

The satellite dish, which gives me access to a lot of live football with English commentary, a lot of English movie channels, western news channels and a sort of potpourri of western soap, was stuck up with no licence, no permission, no fuss or anything and for the price of 1,500 rmb (including the dish and box). It is one example of not getting it right (at least in the sense of following the rules) but, in fact, getting it right and then, of course, there are the dvds that cost about fifty European cents. Another example of "them" not getting it right but - and does he say this reluctantly? - is the "Weissbier" that I sup from time to time in 'Mr.Pizza's'. Well, maybe it is me not getting it right too for I always ask for "bing4 zhen1" (iced) and as everyone back in Munich knows, you don't drink ice cold "Weissbier". However, having just supped that iced cold "Weissbier" I think that I and, for a change, they, are getting it right. Back in Munich you would be told by the waitress that you cannot drink ice cold "Weissbier", that they don't have it or .......

Alright, let's not get carried away; most of the time they don't get it right, they fuck up, like the guy who has just poured his "Weissbier" into three little beer glasses for himself and his two friends; something akin to pouring a bottle of 'Chianti Classico into a beer mug. However, sometimes, just sometimes ....... Anyway, above is a picture of the ice cold "Weissbier" that I have just finished.

The Great Game Part One

Possibly more than 100,000 Iraqis have died since George Bush declared victory on the 1st of May 2003 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The illegal war, which had been undertaken under the guise of a war on terror that was in fact a war for oil had been allowed to proceed because of tacit support from Russia and China in the U.N. security council where both countires refrained from using their vetos. A similar number have also died in Russia's own dirty war in Chechnya. However, the oil pipeline that runs from Baku, via Grozny, to the Russian city of Tikoretsk is under control and Chechnya's considerable oil sources - although declining for some time - have been secured. Similarly Xinjiang, China's most westerly province, has massive reserves of oil and gas and the area is also important as a potential pipeline conduit for crude oil from Kazakhstan. The rhetoric from Washington, Moscow and Beijing is all too similar as all three pursue their war on terror. The Great Game type competition that was briefly revived in the mid nineties appears to have subsided and, at least for the time being, there appears to be some sort of "gentleman's agreement" between the three. However, with the increasing demand and competition for oil this agreement cannot last and when the time comes the Chechnyans and Uighurs will become a cause celebre for the west, Beijing and Moscow's support for Iran will become more concrete and the US, Russia and China will play out their game in Central Asia. Ultimately, it is, of course, a game that cannot be won.

Above is a map of the playing field.

Compromise

My position on the situation in Palestine has been made quite clear in a number of postings and is best articulated in the statement that "it should not be seen as holy land but rather as stolen land" and I am not talking only about the post 1967 settlements. However, one has to be a realist and in being a realist one has to accept that de facto Israel does exist and this not the place to pick up on the legal case for Israel. Nevertheless, whatever that case may be it could only have a much smaller Israel as its point of reference and here I am talking about the UN partition plan from November 1947. Of course, it is very unlikely that this is going to be a bargaining chip on any negotiation table. Indeed, while I believe that Palestinians should be compensated should they not be allowed to return to the land once owned by their parents or grandparents, the very best that they could hope for is a Jewish state within the borders of the Rhodes armistice line of 1949. Of course, the Israeli establishment and Zionist settlers and, indeed, the United States of America, who all have a very different idea of Israel's borders, would never accept this. However, there is hope, for Israel itself appears to be anything but homogeneous. In "The Guardian" today - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/18/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast -there was an interesting article on the Israeli human rights organisation, 'B' T selem' and how they have been helping Palestinians to film attacks by Jewish settlers. There are people in Israel, people like those who work with the 'B'T selem' who will compromise, there are Palestinians who are realistic enough to retreat from what is their moral and legal right to the land and, perhaps, just perhaps, a real settlement is possible. There is, however, no place for Zionism in the area.

The above are maps of the UN partition plan from 1947 (Resolution 181) and the Rhodes armistice agreement of 1949.

Prisoner Exchange

Reading at http://www.haaretz.com today, it was interesting to note that Israel and the Hezbollah are in the process of reaching an agreement over the two soldiers who were captured by the Hezbollah on Lebanese soil on July 12th 2006. The Israeli press called what happened an "abduction" despite the fact that the soldiers were on Lebanese territority, but whatever we want to call it the reality is that this action gave Olmert the pretext to invade the Lebanon, kill over a thousand Lebanese civilians including women and children, bomb civilian installations and only withdraw when over a hundered IDF soldiers had lost their lives in battle with the Hezbollah. Now, we are being told that a deal is about to be reached. The details of this deal are not yet public. However, it does look as if only some six Lebanese prisoners and no Palestinians will be involved in it. This should allow the opposition in the Knesset to accept it. However, the question has to be asked wasn't this deal possible before over a thousand innocent civilians had to die. The answer is, of course, the captured soldiers was not the real reason why Israel went to war in 2006.
The exchange, it is reported will take place in Germany because Israel is worried that a cross border exchange will culminate in the Hezbollah holding victory celebrations in Southern Lebanon. The Hezbollah, however, will be celebrating for, despite the continuing turmoil in the Lebanon and the sectarian violence that still plagues that small country, the evidence would seem to suggest that they did, indeed, win a war that was started by Israel.

Drivel Part One

As a wee boy I was sort of always aware of drivel; there was my mate's mother twaddling on about how she spoke Gaelic when she was growing up in Perth and me knowing that they don't speak Gaelic in Perth and thinking, "she's talking rubbish" and, of course, she was. However, that is only one example of how I realised at a very young age that even grown ups can talk drivel. A couple of years later there was my Auntie Jean telling me about how her son, Ian, was a great electrician and how he had fitted all the electrical fittings in Drumchapel and me thinking, "fucking hell, Drumchapel has about 60,000 people, there is no way he could have screwed in all the sockets, done all the wiring, etc. etc. and I just couldn't keep quiet on this occassion and said, "Auntie Jean, you're talking shite", my mum was flabbergasted, my Auntie Jean was stunned and I got a whack across the face and was told to apologise. Now I felt that I had been hard done by and in my rage I squeezed the pint glass I was drinking milk out of. It was one of those big thick mug type glasses and I was so angry i squeezed it until it broke and whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, there was blood everywhere and a big cut across the palm of my hand and there is still a funny tingling feeling in one of my fingers and around the middle of the palm a sort of numbness and it is amost forty years after it happened. Of course, there will be that tingling feeling until I die. Drivel can be dangerous.

Listening to Bush and Brown on BBC World this evening, the drivel was an insult to anyone of even the crudest half education. There was Bush thanking Brown and Brown thanking Bush and Bush saying things like, "it is in our interests that little girls go to school in Afghanistan" and "we don't have a quarrel with the Iranian people, it is their government" and didn't he say the same thing about Iraq, about it not being about the people but about the government? Now that drivel can be dangerous was obvious to me at a very early age and I have a scar on my right palm to remind me of that fact. Nevertheless, when I was a wee boy, I didn't quite realise that drivel could be quite as dangerous as it actually is.

The picture above of an American fatality in Iraq shows how dangerous drivel is if we don't ignore it.

Life is too Short

After eighteen months in China I genuinely feel that I know the place well enough and that is why it is time to get back to Central Europe and it is not because we want for anything here, really, but!

You can get, more or less, everything in this country but the everything that is worth having appears to come from outside. Of course, the Chinese will tell you about their 5,000 year culture but that "5,000 year culture" has about as much to do with reality as the christmas tree with a crucifix at the top of it that they will try to sell you at Christmas and that is just it; the christmas tree with a cross, 'Jingle Bells' in May, the pizza that is ..... well, that really isn't very good and the wireless connection that cuts off at random and then there are the cultural "attractions", the spitting man, the pissing or even shitting kid, the idiot that almost runs you over on his moped on the pavement, the car that is driving on the wrong side of the road and the noise for noise's sake.

Of course, there is also good Chinese food and there are cultural attractions; the Great Wall is spectacular as is the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City, the terracotta warriors are worth seeing even if Pompei is more impressive, the trip to Lhasa by train is an experience and Guillin is pretty pretty. However, most Europeans here live a sort of western existence and that too is the sort of existence that is favoured by Chinese with money and that has to be the point. The "weissbier" can be drunk in Munich and you are never going to get a slightly off bottle, the coffee can be drunk in Munich's 'Tambosi' and the pizza can be eaten in Fuerstenfeldbruck's 'La Piazzetta', if you board a plane and fly for just over an hour you land in London, if you fly for two, you are up in Glasgow or down in Sofia, Salzburg is an hour by car, Prague about four hours and Vienna and Florence about six. There is the mass of daily newspapers that you scan every day, there is the fast, reliable internet connection, there is the privacy, there are no kiddies shitting on the street and spitters are frowned upon and since I left they have even banned smoking in public places, there is the buzz on the Saturday when the football is on, there are the lakes that surround the little town where I live and, and, and!

Once more, I would just like to say you can get more or less everything here. Moreover, Beijing, Tibet, Xi'an, Shanghai, Guillin and a few other places are certainly all worth seeing and you are not going to get a haircut and a massage for 2 euros in Europe, are you? The place was worth the eighteen months but when I say that, I should at least also be aware of why the internet connection cuts off, why strange pop ups appear when you open a website, why when you are looking at BBC World on digital television the television screen might go black and why, sometimes, 'panem et circenses' is not enough, especially when the 'panem et circenses' elsewhere are better and there is no spitter, or shitter, or maker of noise around to interrupt you. Life is, after all, too short.

Ten Hail Marys

We all know that, like a little puppy following its master, Tony Blair followed George Bush into Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, it might be that George is about to follow Tony for the first time as rumours abound that the still American President might join the fold of the Catholic church. Wonder what George's first confession will be like. Well, what I mean is what might he want to confess; "Forgive me Father for I have sinned." ............................. "I cheated on Laura." Don't think so! "I got drunk." No, sorry! "I stole the 2002 election from Al Gore." Nope not even that! What about this one; "I took America to war under false pretences, I ignored American intelligence reports and I deleted watertight evidence that Saadam Hussain did not have WMDs. I am, Father, responsible for the deaths of some 4,000 Americans soldiers and for over 100,000 Iraqis and I have been smiling all the time since this carnage began." No doubt, good old Father O'Brien will go easy on George, give him ten hail marys and tell him to promise not to do it again. Nietszche once said that, "there are no morals, there is only the law". It is time to get the law onto this man's case. However, I think it is more likely that Georgie is going to go to his bed with a clear conscience after the ten hail marys, the word is out that his mate Tony's sleeping much better since making his conversion.

Next Door

If I didn't already know it, there was the discovery today that Shanghai really is next door. The alarm clock wasn't set so I woke up later than I wanted to; at about six minutes past seven to be precise and splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth, threw on my cleanest dirty shirt and a couple of other things, packed my laptop and rushed downstairs into a taxi and on to Suzhou train station because my train was at 7.56 a.m.

Less than an hour later I was in Shanghai and it was into the underground and down to Henshang Lu. Now, some of you might know Hengshang Lu, which is, for me, one of the nicest parts of Shanghai. It is where the French Concession was. So there was me, about one and a half hours after leaving Suzhou's Jin Jie Hu Lu, strolling down this very European part of Shanghai, looking for a fry up and a cup of good coffee. In the end I made my way down to Shanxi Nan Lu for the good coffee and a nice sandwich, the wireless connection, buying "The Shanghai Daily" and "The China Daily" on the way. Shanghai really is next door and I am getting the train back at 5.35 p.m.

The picture above was taken getting on the D-train, which gets you from Suzhou to Shanghai in less than forty minute. The first class ticket costs 31 rmb, which is about 2.95 Euros.

Just a Thought

Perhaps, I can begin with a couple of quotes from Hobsbawn's, 'Interesting Times':
"The proletarian experience was novel in other respects. I think it fair to say that in 1940 few Kingsmen had the occassion to operate a road drill, and I found the experience of doing so tiring but exhilarating." p158
"By and large in my days as a Sapper I lived among workers - overwhelmingly English workers (The author of this post can only say, suprise, surprise English workers in the Royal Engineers) - and in doing so acquired a permanent, if often exasperated, admiration for their uprightness, their distrust of bullshit, their sense of class, comradeship and mutual help. They were good people. I know that communists are supposed to believe in the virtues of the proletariat, but I was relieved to find myself doing so in practice as well as in theory." p159 How condescending!
Working on the roads with a drill, "exilarating".....brrrrrrrrrrbrrrrrrrrrrrrbrrrrrrrrrbrrrr.... and the band played believe it if you like. Oh, and by the way in China I have discovered the noble peasant, the spitting man with the PRC flag stuck into his forehead, who whacks his wife around the head and who would betray his neighbour at the drop of a hat to the party but of course there are some wonderfully decent and humane peasants. Nevertheless, I can say this in all sincerity, there were good people and there were bad people in my Glasgwegian working class just as there are in all classes. One wonders Mr Hobsbawn did the Sappers' distrust of bullshit extend to your person? The more I think about it that is possibly one of the reasons I have never been a communist; the wooly thinking not thinking things through pseudo intellectuals and working class leaders who want to "help" the working class. They are as difficult to take seriously, as difficult to listen to in the west, and as alienated from the working class as the little colony who lived the good life in the woods near Wandlitz must have been from the workers in the GDR. However, there is probably a more important reason why I have never become a communist.
Marx never actually came up with a model of how the new socialist society would function and while his analysis of the world was essentially correct, it was left to later Marxists and Communists to implement the new society. This was always going to be difficult and as early as 1883 Marx was to criticise his own son-in-law Paul Lafargue, when accusing him of a lack of faith in the working class, by saying, "If that is Marxism then I am not a Marxist." It goes without saying how he would have ajudged the model implemented after 1917; the "Bolshevisation" and later "Stalinisation" of the party and the mediocrities that ushered in 'Democratic Centralism' which made you swallow your argument, your doubts, and consequently your beliefs for the sake of party unity and action. Yes, that is why I never became a Marxist or indeed a member of any party; I am just not prepared to consciously act on something I know to be wrong or at least not when those actions can have very serious consequences.
That conclusion should, however, offer us some hope. When we know something to be wrong, we should try to right that wrong or, if we are not in a position to do that, to at least address it. However, no more sentimental romantic rubbish concerning the labouring classes, please. For the intelligent peasant or worker who really is struggling every day, it is just adding insult to injury.

China Talking

Taiwain's Wu Poh-hsiung's meeting with Hu Jintao recently and the talks which have since taken place have to be welcomed for, however absurd it might sound, the reality remains that the PRC would go to war over Taiwan and although even more absurd, if that were to happen, the United States would probably defend Taiwan.

It is all a wee bit weird anyway as the Republic of China's (Taiwan) official claims to the whole of China have not been revised. Furthermore, one of the conclusions of that claim being successfully pursued can be drawn from the map above; the ROC's "China" includes Outer Mongolia, Northern Burma and Tuva (Russian territory). Anyway, nice to see both sides talking and we at least know that, should the ROC ever bring about unification on its terms, they are hardly going to be doing summersaults in Ulan Bator city centre.

A Sort of Routine

My flat sits on top of a little row of cafes and restuarants in Suzhou Industrial Park's, Jin Jie Hu Lu. Everyone who has worked in Suzhou will know exactly where I am talking about and most of them will probably have eaten at Mr.Pizza. Mr. Pizza is literally 45 seconds or so from my house door and sometimes I go downstairs with my clothes over my pyjamas and buy a nice cold "Weissbier" and take it back upstairs. Occassionally though I will stay and have the beer, open my laptop and use the wireless connecton, catch up with the news online, perhaps write something in my blog and then drift upstairs. It is, I suppose, a sort of routine.

The picture above was taken from inside Mr.Pizza at the time of writing this post.

Being in Society

Good German grammar school, followed by good English grammar school and then up to Cambridge, where he, "had lots of time for other activities". This was Eric Hobsbawn's way to the Communist Party, a star first in History and life as a Marxist Historian in a liberal bourgeoisie democracy. If on joining the party in 1932, it was indeed a simple choice between good and evil as he suggests in his autobiographical work, 'Interesting Times' and if Hobsbawn had no real reason to be as disillusioned as a certain George Orwell ne Eric Blair was to become after his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, experiences, which are well documented in Orwell's book, 'Homage to Catalonia' (1938), he (Hobsbawn) was at least aware of the line laid down at the 6th Congress of the COMINTERN in 1928, which equated social democracy with social fascism. In Berlin in 1932 he must also have been aware that this line facilitated rather than hindered the rise of real fascism. Of course, I am talking with the wisdom that hindsight affords us and maybe the grotesque nature of the "social fascism" line wasn't quite so clear to rank and file members of the KPD at the time. Moreover, to be honest that is not my real gripe with Hobsbawn.
When younger I remember reading Orwell's, "Down and Out in Paris and London" and how at the end of the book he gets a new set of clothes and an envelope with cash in it and goes back to his bohemian bourgeoisie existence and I remember thinking that that is not an option for the working class. Now, with Orwell and, to some extent with Hobsbawn too, there is an intellectual sincerity and one would have to come to the conclusion that their hearts too are in the right place. However, if they are not representatives of a generation lost in space, they represented a intellectual middle and upper middle class that was invariably out of place. Both were a priori alienated from the horny handed sons of toil whose interests they wanted to promote. Still, as I suggested there is an intellectual sincerity and a certain humanity as far as both are concerned and in Orwell's case in particular, his books certainly helped even the horny handed sons of toil to see that the Soviet Union was not beyond criticism and, indeed, might not represent their 'Jerusalem' and remember 'Animal Farm' and '1984' were published in 1945 and 1949 respectively. It should, therefore, also be borne in mind that those books preceded the debates between Camus and Satre that were to rage during the early fifties.
Both Hobsbawn and Orwell belong, however, to that environment that spawned the Cambridge "Apostles" and as far as Burgess and Blunt are concerned I fail to detect not only the humanity and intellectual sincerity that would at least have put them on the "right" side but I also fail to detect any real moral fibre. McLean and Philby are different in that they both shared a particular woman and also certain convictions. Nevertheless, didn't they get it so wrong? The evidence would appear to suggest not only was the model provided seriously flawed but also the "intellectuals" who supported it failed to see this or if they did see it, they, with the exception of Orwell and a few others, failed to act upon it.
It can, of course, hardly be otherwise for if we are to accept that our being in society does, indeed, determine our consciousness, we should look no further than Rousseau's two main works, 'Du Contrat Social' and 'Emil'. In the latter the perfect character is produced through a perfect education system and in the other the perfect society exists through a social contract that reflects the general will. The problem is it is a bit like the chicken and egg scenario; in order to get a society of Emils you need the social contract and in order to get the social contract you need a society of Emils. Revolutionaries who still follow the cricket results from their Moscow exile, who walk around with "Sirs" in front of their names, who live in five star hotels, who take themselves off to splendid isolation in the Hebrides to work on a novel might even be well meaning, however, they cannot really represent the working classes.

The picture above is of Groucho Marx, unrelated to Karl Marx. Groucho believed that women should be obscene and not heard. Karl believed that your being in society determines your consciousness.

Maybe

When I was a wee boy growing up in Glasgow I sort of thought that everyone lived like us and then this church group invited me to visit one of their leading members’ house. The house was in Bearsden and I discovered things like washing machines and gardens and stuff like that and while the experience didn’t manage to convert me to the ‘Jesus man’ it was productive in that I realised that not everyone lives in a pokey wee flat, with damp and a leaky roof and with a toilet shared between three families. That realisation did lead me even at that early stage to the belief that it wasn’t really fair that some people lived in big houses, while others lived in pokey wee flats and by the time I got round to reading Proudohn’s, ‘What is Property’, I was ready for it and the fact that some people inherit and some don’t became, well just unfair as later did the idea that someone could actually acquire value added on my graft.
Perhaps, I should have become a communist but I didn’t and there are very good reasons for my not doing so and now, I am; a cross between “Lumpenproletariat”, “Kleinbuerger” and “Bildungsburger”. However, I do still believe that resources are finite and that the demands of capitalism are unlimited and that the planet is heading for another catastrophe. Nevertheless, there is this “carpe diem” thing about me, let the devil take tomorrow attitude and football and beer are my “panem et circenses” and maybe, just maybe, that is the best way to be even when I still occasionally shed a tear when I think of Brecht’s, “Maybe far away, or maybe real nearby, Rich men are supping on hamhocks; poor men are waiting to die." However, maybe when that tear is being shed, it is the socialist who is shedding it.

They Don't Get it Right Part 2

It is literally a two to three minute walk from my flat in Jin Jie Hu Lu to Starbucks in Jin Jie Hu Lu. Therefore, you might think that it would normally be difficult for me to get angry between leaving home and getting my cup of coffee. However, you would be wrong.
As I was closing my door this evening a terrible noise was spreadng throughout the whole building. The bell for one of the other appartments was being pressed. When I got to the bottom of the stair there were two young male adults standing outside and one of them had nothing better to do than keep his finger pressed continuously on the bell, even continuing to do so when I was in the process of opening the front door. On my opening the door it was never going to occur to either of them that they should wait until I got out but rather both of them just pushed past me and made their way up the stairs. Anyway, there was me already thoroughly irritated and one minute later it was only going to get worse as I crossed over the zebra crossing at Xing Han Jie with the green light in my favour. It wasn't enough to have to avoid a taxi that would have prefered to hit me rather than brake as he turned the corner, no on getting to the other side a car, which was driving in the wrong direction almost whacked me.
The three minute provocation might have turned into two and my pissed off state may have lasted a bit less than the thirty or so minutes it has lasted, if Starbucks had got it right. Well there is the wireless connection this evening and I did get to sit down with my 'latte grande' but, I have been coming here almost every day for the last ten months or so and anyway, why would anyone who is sitting down in the premises want to drink their coffee from a paper cup? So she then just took the paper cup and tipped it into a mug while not even thinking to make sure that I got that creamy milk top that you normally get on your coffee. Nevertheless, I just said, "zhi xie" and sat down. Maybe I should relax a bit more but really, they just don't get it right.

Old Money

Surfing this evening it was interesting to stumble onto a list of Britain’s ten richest people and to notice that, after the Indian steel magnet Lakshmi Mittal with a fortune of some 15 billion pounds and Roman Abramovich, the Russian oil tycoon who has about 7.5 billion pounds, it is the good old Duke of Westminster, who is worth approximately 6 billion pounds, in third place. Now that in itself is not so terribly interesting, you might think. However, the Duke of Westminster has been number three or thereabouts for a long time. while Abramovich and Mittal are relative newcomers to this elite club. Moreover, it interesting to note that it is rising steel prices that see Mr Mittal in the number one spot whereas Mr. Abramovich remains sort of steady; although the dollar price of a barrel of oil has increased to almost $150, the dollar itself is not worth quite as much as it was a couple of years ago. Now, Lakshmi and Roman will never be poor I am sure but the good old Duke of Westminster is always going to be super rich.
In the early eighties when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were getting very chummy. Ronald, I am told, stumbled on a sort of strange phenomena. Due to the fact that property in that part of London where the embassies are is normally leased, the US embassy, like the other embassies there, did not strictly speaking own their embassy. This was for Ronald an intolerable state of affairs and he decided to ask his chum, Maggie, if she could not do something about it. She then went to have a chat with the Duke of Westminster, a member of the Conservative Party, and asked him if it might be possible to at least let the Americans buy the land and the building outright. The Duke is reported to have said no problem and that all they had to do was return the land that had been stolen from his family during the American War of Independence. The Duke’s family owned most of the eastern seaboard from Massachusetts down to North Carolina. Now the present 6th Duke of Westminster is the lessor for most of Mayfair and Belgravia. One gets the feeling that in fifty years time when we look at the richest people in Britain a Duke of Westminster will still be there but will there be a Mittal or an Abramovich on the list?

Friends

BBC World is on television at the moment and George Bush is talking live at the EU-USA summit in Slovenia. He is saying that, if more societies were free in the Middle East, the world would be a more peaceful place. Is he also referring to the disgusting regimes in Saudi, Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf States? When I was younger I used to think that, while a lot of people read “The Sun” they didn’t actually believe what they were reading. Sadly now, older and wiser, I realise that people are indeed often both incredibly gullible and a trifle thick. The conclusion has to be that some people do indeed think that Syria and Iran are horrible nasty dictatorships and that Israel is a paradigm of a free society and Saudi, Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf States are moderate voices in a sea of radical Islam. What a lot of bloody nonsense. Syria and Iran are far from perfect but the great “democrat”, Bush, who stole the 2000 election, a racist Israel that discriminates against its Arab population and that continues to illegally occupy land, while bullying its neighbours and the artificial creations of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan where torture is practiced and where, as in the Gulf States, little tin pot despots were installed to protect the interests first of the British and then later on the United States are all hardly in a position to lecture.
The picture shows George and his very very close friend, the very nice magnificent all powerful, rich and handsome great liberal democrat, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Get the Picture Part Two

Kosovo, like Afghanistan, is land locked and like Afghanistan it is of great strategic importance. Pipelines pass from the Caspian Sea through Kosovo both into the European Union and across to the Albanian coast. From the Albanian coast, oil is then shipped to America. Moreover,the thriving narcotics trade that provides no little income for some American banks goes through Pristina. This all happens under the watchful eye of CIA trained Hashim Thaci, the "country's" president and head of the Democratic Party. Thaci's dependence on the goodwill of NATO and the United States will ensure that his government continues to do as it is asked. Bismarks, "some damn foolish thing in the Balkans" comes to mind and that foolish thing is 'Uncle Sam'. However, in a further reference to Bismark the area is, still "not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier." The Serbs are vexed, the Russians are unhappy and the next crisis is only a matter of time. Not only is the Great Game of the nineteenth century being repeated in Central Asia but the geopolitics of that era are now being played out elsewhere too. History does indeed repeat itself!

Get the Picture?

The 100th British fatality in Afghanistan has just been reported and there are noises coming from the MOD that "Blighty" will probably have to maintain a military presence for at least another thirty years. Of course, the Afghanis could benefit from the presence of the NATO troops and real reconstruction could be taking place but the reality on the ground is that this is not really happening and support for the international community is diminishing. The battle for public opinion is being lost and with that battle the war, whether the United States likes it or not, is also being lost. Therefore, why is Uncle Sam and friends there?
Once again, I am reminded of that role play back in 2000 when I told a visitor from a Texan oil company who visited the engineering company where I was working that we were negotiating a pipeline from Turkmenestan to Pakistan but we have the small problem of Afghanistan in the middle only to be informed, "we'll soon have that problem solved." At that very moment there were visitors from the Californian oil company, Unocal, on the ground negiotiating with the Taliban for a solution to the problem but these negotiations were to break down by August 2001. However, the opportunity to "solve" the problem did, of course, arrive after the 11th of September 2001. Nevertheless, the decision to attack the Taliban had already been made while negotiations were still going on. In the meantime Unocal has been taken over by Chevron, a company with strong links to both Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney. Do you get the picture?
The picture above shows a coffin of one of 'Blighty's' dead being carried by his comrades. Let me give them Rudyard Kipling's advice:

The Young British Soldier

When the 'arf-made recruity goes out to the East
'E acts like a babe an' 'e drinks like a beast,
An' 'e wonders because 'e is frequent deceased
Ere 'e's fit for to serve as a soldier.
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
Serve, serve, serve as a soldier,
So-oldier _of_ the Queen!

Now all you recruities what's drafted to-day,
You shut up your rag-box an' 'ark to my lay,
An' I'll sing you a soldier as far as I may:
A soldier what's fit for a soldier.
Fit, fit, fit for a soldier . . .

First mind you steer clear o' the grog-sellers' huts,
For they sell you Fixed Bay'nets that rots out your guts --
Ay, drink that 'ud eat the live steel from your butts --
An' it's bad for the young British soldier.
Bad, bad, bad for the soldier . . .

When the cholera comes -- as it will past a doubt --
Keep out of the wet and don't go on the shout,
For the sickness gets in as the liquor dies out,
A' it crumples the young British soldier.
Crum-, crum-, crumples the soldier . . .

But the worst o' your foes is the sun over'ead:
You must wear your 'elmet for all that is said:
If 'e finds you uncovered 'e'll knock you down dead,
An' you'll die like a fool of a soldier.
Fool, fool, fool of a soldier . . .

If you're cast for fatigue by a sergeant unkind,
Don't grouse like a woman nor crack on nor blind;
Be handy and civil, and then you will find
That it's beer for the young British soldier.
Beer, beer, beer for the soldier . . .

Now, if you must marry, take care she is old --
A troop-sergeant's widow's the nicest I'm told,
For beauty won't help if your rations is cold,
Nor love ain't enough for a soldier.
'Nough, 'nough, 'nough for a soldier . . .

If the wife should go wrong with a comrade, be loath
To shoot when you catch 'em -- you'll swing, on my oath! --
Make 'im take 'er and keep 'er: that's Hell for them both,
An' you're shut o' the curse of a soldier.
Curse, curse, curse of a soldier . . .

When first under fire an' you're wishful to duck,
Don't look nor take 'eed at the man that is struck,
Be thankful you're livin', and trust to your luck
And march to your front like a soldier.
Front, front, front like a soldier . . .

When 'arf of your bullets fly wide in the ditch,
Don't call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch;
She's human as you are -- you treat her as sich,
An' she'll fight for the young British soldier.
Fight, fight, fight for the soldier . . .

When shakin' their bustles like ladies so fine,
The guns o' the enemy wheel into line,
Shoot low at the limbers an' don't mind the shine,
For noise never startles the soldier.
Start-, start-, startles the soldier . . .

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier _of_ the Queen!

-- Rudyard Kipling