Category: Updates

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Meet The Fockers

Just watched Meet The Fockers – both TSP and I really enjoyed the first one, so got the sequel out. I’m always nervous of sequels but had no reason to be with this – the story continued well, the new characters (Greg’s parents, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand) were played to perfection, and the ‘Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em’-style disasters were just right, not so bad that you curl up and want to die. A handful of killer lines, some fun twists, and a load of Hollywood royalty.

Recommended for a fun night in.

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The corruption of Islam

A commenter on the guardian news blog said this in relation to the newspaper coverage of the bomb attacks –

“The media is being foolish and dangerous in terming these terrorists as “Islamists” – will further aggravate feelings between followers of Islam and the rest, the former feeling they are unfairly and stereotypically being classified as murderous maniacs and the latter associating terror with the basic religion.”

And certainly questions are raised about the way such things are portrayed. Have people ever talked about the IRA as ‘Christian Exremists’? Do crazy cult leaders like David Koresh and Jim Jones get labelled as Christian? I wonder if they do in those parts of the world where Christianity isn’t the dominant (though nominal) faith.

Clearly, the behaviour of terrorists is completely out of step with the basic beliefs of Islam, just as running weird death-cults and murdering for the IRA is fundementally anti-christian, and the suggestion that what drives these people to commit attrocities like this a true understanding of their faith is very misguided.

As reported in the Guardian today, The Muslim Association of Great Britain have condemned the attacks,

“Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: ‘Our faith of Islam calls upon us to be upholders of justice. The day after London was bloodied by terrorists finds us determined to help secure this justice for the innocent victims of yesterday’s carnage.’ “

The rubbish part of this for British Muslims is that the sickos who perpetrated the bombings have stolen the arguments about Israeli occupation in Palestine and US occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan away from them. Any Muslim now who sticks their head over the parapet and talks about those issues is going to be labelled by a certain section of the British populus as terrorist sympathisers.

It’s more important than ever that we make Muslims feel particularly welcome in England, that we make it known that there’s no way in which we hold Islam responsible for inspiring these dreadful killings, and that we won’t allow discussions over the geopolitical mess in the middle east to be made taboo by these murderers.

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Looking forward to tomorrow's gig.

And in other news, I’ve got a very intersting gig tomorrow, in Hackney as part of the Spice Festival. The gig in question is the Solo Summit, at The Bullion Theatre.

It’s going to be a lot of fun, and lots of my favourite musicians are on the gig – Orphy Robinson, Cleveland Watkiss, Filomena Campus, Tunde Jegedi, Celloman (Ivan Hussey), Pat Thomas and just added to the bill, BJ Cole! What a lineup that is!

I’ll be playing solo, as well as looping and processing Filomena and Cleveland, so will be kept nice ‘n’ busy. I love the idea of a gig designed to explore the various ways that people perform solo, and am looking forward to stealing some ideas from all the people there!

Soundtrack – Wheeler/Konitz/Holland/Frisell, ‘Angel Song’ (one of my most favouritest albums ever, a hugely inspiring CD, featuring some of Bill Frisell‘s best playing)

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OK, enough of me being a nay-sayer about the G8…

now it’s George Monbiot’s turn – he echoes (far more eloquently and with footnotes ‘n’ everything) a lot of what I’ve been saying about the selling off of ‘aid’ to business. And he goes a lot further, looking at the heinous relationship between what governments term ‘aid’ and what those corporations have done, are doing, and are planning to do.

It doesn’t look good.

Soundtrack – Mike Watt, ‘The Secondman’s Middle Stand’ (times like this, I need me some righteous punk anger courtesy of Watt)

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Bono and Bob on the G8…

here it is.

What on earth are they thinking???

” ‘We’ve pulled this off,’ said U2 frontman Bono.

He and Geldof praised the Group of Eight summit for pledging to double aid to Africa to $50 billion, saying the move will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who would have died of poverty, malaria or
AIDS.

‘The world spoke and the politicians listened,’ Bono said.”

and

“Geldof, creator of the Live 8 concerts, said: ‘The summit in Gleneagles is a qualified triumph.’ Appearing alongside Bono at a news conference held at the close of the summit, he said: ‘A great justice has been done.’ “

Oh shit, why do these people conspire to make me look like a miserable whinging git? Everyone has come out and said the G8 produced very little of note. The 50 billion is fine – it’s 50 billion, not to be sneezed at – but it’s way too little and it won’t be protected by trade reform and debt cancellation.

Before the summit Bono and Bob were both calling for the three points of the MPH campaign – trade reform, debt relief and aid. Only the aid element has been touched with any effectiveness.

Maybe I’ll just go back to writing about my solo gigs, it’s less depressing than all this stuff.

The MPH campaign goes on, more pressure is needed. What isn’t needed is Bono and Bob telling the G8 what superstars they are. ‘A great justice has been done.’ – no it hasn’t!!!

I really really hope I’m misjudging this, that they know something I don’t about making things happen. I’ve no problem with pragmatic compromise to get a result, and if they honestly can get the bastards to move faster and further by chumming up to them, then great, I’ll sit here and whinge to my few hundred readers while they change the world, but right now, it’s looking like they’ve got too close and can’t tell it like it is.

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MPH Response to the G8

here’s the Make Poverty History campaign’s damning response to the G8 – despite them being pretty close to the government in the run-up to the G8, they’ve not pulled too many punches in their cricitism.

Has anyone seen a full statement from Bono and Bob? I saw a soundbite bit on the TV last night with them spouting some crap about it being ‘the beginning of the end for poverty’, to paraphrase Churchill, but I want to see a full statement before blogging about them talking bollocks…

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Campaigners reactions on the G8

the Guardian Newsblog features this collection of comments on the G8 outcomes – naturally, it features a lot of pissed off activists. We’ve been led to expect a lot, and been delivered hardly anything. The Africa declarations are the same as had been agreed before the summit. Nothing new, no trade reforms at all, no further ground on debt cancellation, and no move on the conditions of debt relief. And the aid package is the same as it was – with trade reform and proper debt cancellation, it would help a lot. Without it, it’s far too little far to late.

Make G8 History.

John Hilary, of War on Want, puts it best: “On debt it is a 10th of what we were asking for. On aid it is just a fifth. On trade it has gone totally backwards. The G8 has turned its back on the world’s poor.”

Blood is on your hands, gentlemen.

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More Fudge than a trolley-dash round Cadburys World…

So here it is, The G8’s paper on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development – a few things are noteable from it.

Firstly, they admit there’s a problem. Well done, old rich white men, you’re catching up with the scientists who’ve been saying it for decades. Particularly well done for getting the bell-end in The White House to finally acknowledge that it might be a problem.

Thence follows a list of vague stuff they intend to do. An example –

6. We will, therefore take further action to:

(a) promote innovation, energy efficiency, conservation, improve policy, regulatory and financing frameworks; and accelerate deployment of cleaner technologies, particularly lower-emitting technologies

(b) work with developing countries to enhance private investment and transfer of technologies, taking into account their own energy needs and priorities.

(c) raise awareness of climate change and our other multiple challenges, and the means of dealing with them; and make available the information which business and consumers need to make better use of energy and reduce emissions.

Notice – no figures, no firm commitments, no deadlines, no admission of culpability. Just fudge, fudge glorious fudge.

And let me quote section (b) again –


(b) work with developing countries to enhance private investment and transfer of technologies, taking into account their own energy needs and priorities.

So, hang on, getting third world countries to privatise their currently publically owned energy services is part of the fight against global warming?????? I’ve heard it all now. Not only are they tagging it on as an IMF-sanctioned condition of debt relief, they are commencing bullying impoverished countries into selling off those public services to western energy giants under the guise of it being the greener option. IT’S BOLLOCKS! We have been had – the G8 are once again acting purely in the interests of big business in the west. Bush’s best friends, the guys he called ‘the haves and the have mores’, as though that’s a good thing. Evil, twisted, uncaring, disgusting parasites. How dare they. God, I’m angry.

Make Poverty History my arse.

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Latest news on the bombings…

From the BBC new site – that’s a page that acts as a bit of a hub for the latest news on the bombing. The death toll has risen to ‘more than 50’ – they still don’t know how many are going to be pulled out of the Russell Square crash.

One of the odd things that happens with tragedies and disasters is that place names take on a different resonance – Columbine, Lockerbie, Hungerford, Dunblane, Burnley (forever tainted by getting a BNP councillor in a local election a couple of years ago), Aberfan, Faluja, Dresden, Hiroshima…

Kings Cross already has had a huge fire which took a lot of lives.

Now Russell Square and Tavistock Square – two of my favourite places in central London – have a new resonance. Russell Square is where I get off the tube when I go into town. It means that a) I get to walk through the lovely square itself, and round past the British Museum and b)I get some much-needed exercise, walking a mile further than I would otherwise walk.

Tavistock Square is a particularly tragic place for such an event, as it’s a peace garden. There’s a statue of Ghandi in the middle of the square, and I’ve been there for candle-lit peace vigils before now. You can’t get much further from peace than a bus being blown to bits. I can’t imagine what the people who saw it happen must be feeling. That’s going to stick with you a long time. We’re so used to footage of people in the middle east crying hysterically at the sight of buildings and vehicles that have been blown apart. When it happens in London, it all seems like a bad dream. But it’s the same pain, the same trauma, the same confusion. Maybe we’ll see the pain of bomb-footage from round the world with fresh eyes again after this… who knows.

here’s some eye-witness accounts of what actually happened – the reporting on this has been so mixed, with some news agencies being guilty of the most heinous speculation, like they are hoping it’s going to be a bigger and bigger story. The BBC news web-site remains just about the best place for up-to-date info.

Soundtrack – Kris Delmhorst, ‘Songs For A Hurricane’; Tom Waits, ‘Real Gone’.

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