Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Im-Putin-g the Russian Bear
The appalling death of Alexander Litvinenko, amid a trail of polonium-210 residues has led many commentators to talk of a new Cold War. Fortified by its gas and oil, Putin’s Russia is chesting it out with all its clients, neighbours and global partners. Its hard-nosed attitudes and complete lack of empathy for other traditions is based, many would argue, on a 20th century calumny in which the communist regime ‘purged’ intellectuals, dissidents, refuseniks, the independently minded, non-Russian nationalists, peasants et al. Estimates vary between 20 and 60 million people dying through this political cleansing and the consequences of war. The overall result has been the embedding of a set of cultural values which continues to uphold the state above the individual, where life is cheap and to kill does not involve much moral uncertainty. Meanwhile, in Britain, the life of the individual is held in the highest ethical regard. Litvinenko’s death was one of the first nuclear radiation assassinations and dozens of other British citizens were, to some degree, contaminated.
Now we have entered tit for tat Cold War diplomacy. Britain will deport four embassy workers (Russian secret service) and wait to see what the response is. Almost inevitably it will be more of the same, the tightening of visa restrictions and so on. We insist that the chief suspect, Andrei Lugovoi, be extradited for trial here. The Russians (given their history, summarised above) have an implacable constitutional barrier to any extradition but have offered trial on their soil. Our Government says it would be skewed and have refused. Bad slur. Bad politics. We are becoming involved in a formulaic set of encounters that reduce communication, understanding and a possible way out of the impasse.
What should we do? My own view is that we should take the Russians up on a trial in their own country. They are hidebound by ideology and haven’t a subtle projection of what might happen when such a trial becomes the subject of international interest. TV cameras from every country in the world. All poring over the trial’s processes. Discussions of fairness, openness, honesty. Mother Russia would be on trial for its legal stature. If she blatantly manipulates the due legal process, then she loses face, dramatically. If the evidence is strong enough in her own and international eyes to lead to prosecution, she gains.
Life is a mixture of order and chaos in all its aspects. The more we try to impose logic, pattern and prediction upon it the more our best laid plans produce consequences that are far removed from our intentions. It is from within the chaos of the unpremeditated that much richness and value can emerge. Instead of trying to control British relations with Russia in stiff, ambassadorial predictability which could lead to months if not years of stand-off, why not acquiesce to their insistence on a Russian trial for a Russian suspect? We may gain far more than we can conjecture.
Labels: Antidote to poison...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Carbon guilt
Is it just me or is this continual barrage of guilt-making publicity about how each of us is killing the planet beginning to pall? The ordinary person appears to have become the major target and repository of cause and effect syndrome. I catch a plane. Have I planted a tree as a consequence? Do all those trees I planted long ago when immersed in a Good Life existence count? Or, since there was no apparent problem then, not - because I was not assuaging my guilt. I put in a new light bulb and stare at its ugly phallic dimensions, trying to make the supposed feel-good emotion outweigh aesthetic revulsion. I get into my little car and wonder whether I should, instead, walk the six miles to the store, despite the vehicle’s fifty to the gallon economy. Then, again, at a very carbon heavy fiftieth birthday party of a friend, a fellow who runs a racing car stable pointed out that a jeep was far more planet friendly than a Prius because it will last twenty years and metamorphose easily into another jeep through the knackering process. While a Prius, with half that lifespan, must be expensively de-aggregated before reincarnation. It's a moral maze. When I get to the store I should make sure the produce is local, thus counting for fewer carbon miles. I should eschew packaging. And so on.
Well, here in France, the supermarkets sell big durable bags for shopping. It is illegal, or at least, socially reprehensible for them to use plastic ones. I have about five capacious holdalls in the car because when I forget to take one, I am forced to buy another. I don’t mind. The decision is taken out of my hands. My head is not full of carbon shopping statistics. I am not struggling with the possibility that the planet will die before me - if you get my drift. I don’t feel as though every interaction with the world results in a visit to some mental confessional. I can get on with my life.
I know that there are concerns about nanny-statism, a lot of which I share, particularly when it comes to eliminating all risk, determining what we eat, how we’ll be policed, surveillance, identity cards etc etc. But, from the moment Thatcher’s Government deregulated the constraints on industry so that it could pollute waters, bury poisons, screw its customers, (or kill them, in the case of railways) all for profit, we have had successive governments of all shades who seem to think that they can’t intervene on any grand scale (except in Iraq to protect oil). Why don’t they outlaw nasty light bulbs and then there’d be competition to produce pleasing energy savers? Why don’t they ban plastic bags? Why don’t they insist on the removal of packaging from goods (and thereby save a big percentage of the price to the shopper. In other words, why don’t they attack the problem at source, instead of berating the symptoms - us and our behaviour?
At the moment, the individual feels the guilt – and also pays the price of this obsequious genuflection to the profit motive.
Is it just me or is this continual barrage of guilt-making publicity about how each of us is killing the planet beginning to pall? The ordinary person appears to have become the major target and repository of cause and effect syndrome. I catch a plane. Have I planted a tree as a consequence? Do all those trees I planted long ago when immersed in a Good Life existence count? Or, since there was no apparent problem then, not - because I was not assuaging my guilt. I put in a new light bulb and stare at its ugly phallic dimensions, trying to make the supposed feel-good emotion outweigh aesthetic revulsion. I get into my little car and wonder whether I should, instead, walk the six miles to the store, despite the vehicle’s fifty to the gallon economy. Then, again, at a very carbon heavy fiftieth birthday party of a friend, a fellow who runs a racing car stable pointed out that a jeep was far more planet friendly than a Prius because it will last twenty years and metamorphose easily into another jeep through the knackering process. While a Prius, with half that lifespan, must be expensively de-aggregated before reincarnation. It's a moral maze. When I get to the store I should make sure the produce is local, thus counting for fewer carbon miles. I should eschew packaging. And so on.
Well, here in France, the supermarkets sell big durable bags for shopping. It is illegal, or at least, socially reprehensible for them to use plastic ones. I have about five capacious holdalls in the car because when I forget to take one, I am forced to buy another. I don’t mind. The decision is taken out of my hands. My head is not full of carbon shopping statistics. I am not struggling with the possibility that the planet will die before me - if you get my drift. I don’t feel as though every interaction with the world results in a visit to some mental confessional. I can get on with my life.
I know that there are concerns about nanny-statism, a lot of which I share, particularly when it comes to eliminating all risk, determining what we eat, how we’ll be policed, surveillance, identity cards etc etc. But, from the moment Thatcher’s Government deregulated the constraints on industry so that it could pollute waters, bury poisons, screw its customers, (or kill them, in the case of railways) all for profit, we have had successive governments of all shades who seem to think that they can’t intervene on any grand scale (except in Iraq to protect oil). Why don’t they outlaw nasty light bulbs and then there’d be competition to produce pleasing energy savers? Why don’t they ban plastic bags? Why don’t they insist on the removal of packaging from goods (and thereby save a big percentage of the price to the shopper. In other words, why don’t they attack the problem at source, instead of berating the symptoms - us and our behaviour?
At the moment, the individual feels the guilt – and also pays the price of this obsequious genuflection to the profit motive.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Banksy and George Melly
There is much debate about Banksy in the Art World. In today’s Guardian, the critic Jonathon Jones gives a somewhat sniffy and disparaging account of Banksy’s work and its place in the territory that the apparatchiks of high art assume for themselves. He mentions the fact that young people rated Banksy third in the list of influential artists behind Walt Disney and Peter Kay and ahead of Leonardo da Vinci, in a recent poll. He talks about how he immersed himself in Banksy’s oeuvre, as if he were a blank photographic plate, in order to see whether Banksy measured up to the hype and would imprint an image of genius upon him. Remember that Banksy has moved from tagged graffiti on Bristol walls, to the dividing wall in Ramallah, from multi-storey car parks to works mysteriously appearing in the most esteemed galleries and museums. He has impacted on American culture, too.
But not like Damian Hirst. Oh no. Damian is an artist because of his passion. Banksy, however, mocks and cuckolds the art establishment.
In the end, of course, Jones fills two pages in the Guardian with his absurdist rambling and throws more publicity-invoking petrol on Banksy’s reputation. Is Banksy the latest in a line through Dada and Surrealism? Of course. Fortunately, people make up their own minds most of the time and there is enough goodwill towards Banksy’s enterprises, to maintain him as an influential, satirical, socio-political commentator, for the moment.
He takes the piss the way we like it. I’d liked to have asked George Melly what he thought. But, alas, that great mischief maker died today. We all do, you know, Jonathon Jones. Some of us make the journey to that final state, fun for the rest.
Labels: Graffiti to art...