Weep for Egypt

 

‘The government has censored hundreds of websites and drafted a law regulating internet activities which, among other things, would make the ‘illegitimate trading of ideas’ online a crime punishable by up to 15 years behind bars.’

 

This quote is from the latest issue of The London Review of Books, and refers to the country that had a joyous revolution in 2011. People welcomed a freedom from dictatorship, meaning they would be free to express themselves without fear of torture or death. Mubarak had been in power for 30 years, and despite some early good works, became increasingly corrupt: a stolen election in 2005 and a net worth of 70 billion (gained through bribes and venality) contributing to his downfall.

 

I noticed at the time that the response from the USA was luke warm. Why weren’t Obama and colleagues not delighted at the freedoms gained by the people of Egypt? The people were deliriously happy with what were small gains by our standards. Who could argue with that? Well, the USA, Britain and France, to name a few. I am amazed now at my naivety in 2011, the hope I felt at the time, entirely misplaced. Obama’s secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, effused in 2009:

 

‘I really consider President and Mrs Mubarak to be friends of my family.’

 

Does that give you a clue as to why the USA was not celebrating? ‘…friends of my family’ –  partners in stealing money at the expense of the people, at the expense of torture, death and corruption. You can add Cameron, Trump, May, Macron and many more to that roll of dishonour. But worse than them we have the new rulers of Egypt and their many helpers.

 

‘They are changing the books of schoolchildren, and rewriting history.’

 

says Basma Abdel Aziz, a novelist and dissident, who writes on the difference between official state rhetoric and the stubborn inconvenience of reality, the truth.

 

The families of protesters killed by live ammunition are told they must accept certificates giving ‘cardiac arrest’ as the cause of death before their bodies can be released from Cairo’s Zeinhom morgue.

 

Shaimaa el-Sabbagh, a , young mother and poet, was gunned down by police in 2014, the third anniversary of the revolution; she had been walking unarmed clutching a bouquet of flowers, which she had intended to lay in Tahrir Square. The government initially offered no explanation, then suggested that ‘Islamist infiltrators’ were responsible before finally arguing that her murder was really her own fault. ‘According to science she should not have died’, the forensic authority declared:

 

‘She did not have any percentage of fat. So the small pellets penetrated very easily, and four of five pellets that penetrated her body were able to penetrate her heart and lungs, and these are the ones that caused her death.’

 

In February 2016 a 24 year old taxi driver was shot dead. The official report into the incident declared that:

 

‘The police officer’s bullet mistakenly came out of the gun.’

 

There were almost 1000 forced disappearances in 2016, as well as more than 500 cases of individual torture, more than 300 cases of collective torture, and more then 100 deaths in detention.

 

‘We do not have forced disappearances and we do not have torture,’ the interior minister, Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, has asserted, ‘Exaggerating individual excesses is the aim of our enemies.’

 

Basma Abdel Aziz has written a novel, The Queue, where, in Egypt, reality itself has become subjective and legitimate criticism is blurred with doubt, where foreign powers incite public opinion to distort the image of the regime. Inhabitants queue at the gate, in a line of residents needing permits or other paperwork from the state. The queue stretches for miles. The gate never opens.

 

Egypt was a key partner in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme during the Bush War on Terror. Egypt’s security apparatus is seen as an asset by its allies, not an aberration, hence the USA not being overjoyed by the revolution.

 

‘If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them tortured you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.’

 

In the past two years Egypt has signed new arms deals with the USA and France, while Donald Trump has called his Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, ‘a fantastic guy’. In 2015 David Cameron rolled out the red carpet for Sisi at Downing Street; Theresa May has promised ‘a new chapter in relations between the UK and Egypt.’ The IMF is back to peddling unrealities of its own. The 2011 revolution came as a result of the miseries and corruption created by Egypt’s neoliberal reforms, which the IMF described as ‘prudent and bold’. The latest vicious reforms and austerity are dependent on a new 12 billion loan from the IMF, who describe Egypt as ‘an example of positive transformation’ albeit a transformation that requires ‘sacrifices in the short-term’ for its citizens.

 

In early 2016 the corpse of Giulio Regini, an Italian PHD candidate studying at Cambridge was found abandoned by the roadside. His neck had been broken and his body subjected to ‘animal-like’ violence consistent with torture by the Egyptian security services. The government responded with obfuscation and lies. Under domestic pressure (the public) Italy withdrew its ambassador, but since then a partnership has begun between Italian energy giant Eni and Egypt, and diplomatic relations have been restored.

 

A young man was stopped at a checkpoint for wearing a T-shirt declaring ‘Nation without Torture’. He was incarcerated and tortured for two years. His brother visited him in jail with a few books. The Queue was not allowed through. The officer explained that it was because the book appeared to ‘contain ideas’. Sisi’s regime has done its best to educate its citizens about the impossibility of changing their own reality. Last year armed police walked into a hospital and demanded that doctors falsify the medical reports of detainees that had been subjected to torture.

 

Sisi has spoken about the need to reform Egypt’s education system:

 

 

‘1 + 1 = 2…I don’t want that,’ he declared. ‘I want 1 + 1 = 3, or 5, or 7, or 9.’

 

The comment was intended as a critique of Egypt’s traditional teaching technique of learning by rote, but it could just as easily be describing his regimes worldview, or more accurately the reality it depends on for survival.

 

Aziz’s book, The Queue, reminds me of a quote by Karl Rove, a George Bush aid, that I never tire of repeating:

 

‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

 

At the time I thought that the quote and Karl Rove were signs of minority madness, but now, I’m afraid, I see it as typical of the new breed of politician, and of less clever members of the public. There are many of them. Graham Greene’s comment of many years back now seems typical of most politicians and great swathes of the general public:

 

‘In any government there grows a hideous establishment of stupid men.’

 

I think it’s a little worse than that now.

On Writing 2

 

 “But there are also, odd, offbeat, happy days when something does happen as you write and your characters take surprising turns, sometimes revealing themselves to you on the page in a manner other than you expected them to be. You discover that you know more about life and your characters than you thought you did. Such days are glorious…there is also the sense of a governing hand (not necessarily and altogether your own.”

 Norman Mailer

If you want to write then write. Most of the time you feel that you cannot do it or what you write isn’t any good. All writers have days like this. If you persevere you do get days like Mailer describes, and writing is always worth it.

So do it.

On Writing 1.

 

On page 18 of Andy Martin’s book, Reacher Said Nothing, (Reacher’s most common ‘utterance’) he asks Lee Child, the author of that novel:

 

“Do you have any kind of strategy for writing, or rules or whatever?”

 

Child replies:

 

“I don’t really have one. You should write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast.”

 

 

Now, I’m not sure what Child means here, although I’m sure he does. What I am sure of is that Child has “strategy…rules or whatever.” He may not be conscious of his  rules, but he most certainly has them. He is not naturally talkative and (I think) reluctant to give his secrets away. He does, after all, sell a book every 7 seconds. Why tell everybody how you do it?

 

I am not generally a ‘thriller’ reader. I do like most of Louise Doughty, Gillian Flynn, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, Josephine Tey, Dorothy L. Sayers, John le Carré, Don Winslow, Elmore Leonard, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Elroy and James Lee Burke’s books, among others – though I’m well aware that some of these are not strictly ‘thriller’ writers, just good writers. But I have to admit, when I want something easy to read, that I know I will enjoy, of quality, that will certainly not be rubbish or rushed out for the money – I turn to Lee Child.

 

Make Me was the twentieth novel in the Jack Reacher series; starting in 1998 with Killing Floor. He writes one book per year, spending 6 months on it, taking the other 6 months off, but no doubt thinking about the next book – that’s what writers do. Firstly, to emphasise the work and conscientiousness Child puts into his novels, let me note what he relates on page 28. Child had been employed in some dismal jobs in his youth. He didn’t like any of them. It wasn’t so much the work he didn’t like, it was the workmanship. One of the jobs was in a Jam factory where he says:

 

 

“It was all sugar paste, nothing but sugar paste. If you wanted apricot jam you just threw in some orange colour. Strawberry – throw in some red. It was like you were painting jam. What about raspberry with all those little pips? No problem – we’ll throw in some tiny wood chips.’

 

He was outraged at how bad it was:

 

“Nothing was real. Nobody cared.”

 

Child felt responsible for people eating trash pretending to be jam. He wanted to produce good jam, whatever the flavour. He went on to mention other jobs and his main observation was:

 

“Nobody cared. That’s how it was.”

 

That is an attitude he brings to his writing. An understanding of life and a desire to produce the best possible result, every time, in twenty plus novels; novels which are basically the same – in the same way that Conan Doyle’s and Dorothy L. Sayers’ books are the same. What these books have is an engaging character, a character who meets all kinds of situations and observes life as he/she sees it in each novel, and it is these observations that set the books apart from other ‘thrillers’, because they are they are terminally exciting, interesting, surprising – each one is new – readers really want to know what their character is up to.

 

And Jack Reacher, like Sherlock Holmes, Dave Robicheaux, Peter Wimsey, George Smiley and Art Keller, is one hell of a character. Men want to be him, women love him; he has a bad ass attitude but he is not a criminal, although he will break the law when he believes it’s right – he is tough but fair. He lives as I, and many other men, would love to live. He has no possessions, lives mostly on his army pension, usually has no particular destination in mind, just goes where fancy takes him in the U.S.A. He doesn’t bother washing clothes, just buys new and cheap ones every few days (although he is scrupulously clean). He used to hitch-hike but at six-foot-five in dangerous times has taken to Greyhound buses instead. And, in the U.S.A., there is no shortage of adventures for him to get mixed up in.

 

He is as free as a man can be.

 

Take no notice of the ridiculous decision to cast Tom Cruise in the films. Reacher is 6′ 5″, Cruise is… . This is Reacher.

 

It is this character, conscientiously created every year by Lee Child for nearly twenty years, that justifies the popularity of his books. I have read nearly all of them, possibly there have been a few misfires, but the quality is generally very high. Few writers can do it every time, for so long.

 

Child is highly intelligent. I do not have the space to say all I would like to say, but will quote him a few times to illustrate my opinion.

 

“Shane a great work of art. Realistic fiction tends to be bureaucratic: it fills in all the forms, ticks the boxes about identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, chronology etc. Some writers like to deploy spreadsheets and graphs. They over-explain. I, in contrast, prefer to under-explain. Shane was a mysterious stranger with no past and no future. Reacher is a little like that, at some level, at some level nobody could know anything about him. He was a blank.”

 

 

Lee Child is very good at what he leaves out.

 

I like Lee Child a great deal, as you may have gathered, but not only is he a good writer – I like the person. He drinks too much coffee, as does Reacher, he smokes too much and doesn’t care, and he is basically on the side of the decent hard-working man:

 

“It is the duty of the citizen to stand up to the state. Bureaucrats can’t get anything right. And they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”

 

There are many ‘good’ writers who like Child’s books, Antonia Frazer, Kate Atkinson and Haruki Murakami, for example; and many that don’t, Julian Barnes, Harold Pinter and Edward Docx. The writers who don’t like Child are mainly humourless, take themselves very seriously. He says:

 

“I’m too low-falutin for them.”

 

It was an axis that stretched from the Radio Times to the Sunday Times:

 

“Colin Dexter and Morse had broken through, thanks to Oxford and the opera; then when he stopped writing, it was Ian Rankin and Rebus. They were the anointed ones; the intellectuals had permission to read them. On Radio 4 one of the artsy women panellists said ‘I would never dream of picking up this book’”.

 

To her surprise she enjoyed it, as millions of readers from all walks of life do.

 

If you are prejudiced against Lee Child and his books about Jack Reacher, don’t be, you’ll enjoy them.

   

 

 

 

 

                                                           

Reacher said nothing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading in Bed 2

 

I started a December 2013 post with the following. I was angry at the number of unreadable books being produced, and went on to name a few and why.

That anger remains. Nothing has changed, the situation has worsened. What prompted me to write again on this subject was one book. Read on after the introduction…

Reading in Bed

Posted on December 6, 2013

“Those of you who have seen my book, whatever you may think of its contents, will probably agree that it is a beautiful object. And if the physical book, as we have come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the eBook, it has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping.”

Julian Barnes

From Julian Barnes’s acceptance speech at the 2011 Booker Ceremony, on winning with his novel, The Sense of an Ending.

 

A Guardian article states at length how the book buying public are now being seduced by a book’s appearance as well as its content, how more care is being taken in the production and appearance of books. Generally, I don’t believe this is true.

 

The Sense of an Ending is a physically beautiful object; a compact hardback with dust wrapper containing a nice but simple design, all put together with good quality material.  I think all books are beautiful in their own way, but that is another discussion.  Barnes’s book is a beautiful object, but how practical is it?  By that I mean how well does it do its job, perform its practical purpose of being read, and being read with ease, without unnecessary hindrances?  The answer to that is: not very well.

 

 

Reading in Bed 2

 

I had been struggling for a couple of months to find some decent fiction to read, starting and not finishing several books. While I found the books disappointing at some stage, they were at least readable as physical objects: mainly they had wide inner margins, would lay flat on a table without springing back and could be read comfortably in bed.

 

I was thus relieved to find that Zadie Smith had a new book in paperback (she hasn’t had that many in sixteen years). Here was one of my favourite authors whose book I would surely get through. I ordered it from Amazon and looked forward to it.

 

The book, Swing Time, duly arrived, and due to me writing a novel during the day, I saved it for bedtime. Attractively bound in red, yellow and black, it was a beautiful object, one would be proud to own it, display it on one’s book shelves. The trouble was that the person who designed it had given no thought to the people who would actually attempt to read it.

 

 

The inner margins were narrow, and the book would not flatten out. On every page the inner third of the text was constantly on a curve because of this. The narrow inner margins accentuated the problem. I know many books are like this (wrongly) but this is the worst case I have seen. It made the book hard to read anywhere, but in bed, almost impossible. The book had to be forced open as far as it would go to read the inner text. Not only that, depending on the light source and direction, reading either left or right page threw a shadow over the opposite page, so not only was one having to constantly bend the book back as far as it would go, it was also necessary to keep shifting the page to catch the light upon the shadows.

 

Every page was like this, all 453 of them. I took two months to read the book because I was never comfortable; two or three short chapters a night. Consequently, I never really got in to the flow of the book. The surprising thing is that this title was published by Penguin, who are usually (not always) pretty good. They have a long history of publishing physically readable books. Penguin do not say who designed the book, they give a cover designer and not much else. The last page includes a short history of Penguin, boasting of their dedication to reading; they also say:

 

“We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.”

 

 

 

The above is stated at the end of Swing Time – ironic or what? Penguin certainly forgot any design principles with the design of this book. What is the problem? Do designers have no connection with reading? Do they have no idea that the book is going to be read? Have they never read a book? Should Penguin be aware of this?

 

Should Penguin take care that their book design is for readers first and aesthetic reasons second?

 

YES!

 

I am aware that publishers are considering readers less and less. When I have written before my intention was to keep track of the bad publishers and expose them. That turned out to be a mammoth task, impossible. However, I will write when I find a book like Swing Time, a book that Penguin was aware would be a bestseller yet still published in a near unreadable format.

 

Were Penguin even aware that they had done this? I think not. They have actually sold shoddy goods, sold something which does not do what it is supposed to do – they have sold a book that is not possible to read without difficulty. That is crazy – publishers selling unreadable books.

 

I emphasise that Penguin are not the main culprits, they have just produced something awful here. I hope it is not the beginning of a trend.

 

It is a simple thing to publish books in a readable format. It’s not expensive. So why don’t they do it?

                       

 

Lack of awareness or even care?

Keep an eye on what you read and tell publishers when they produce something unreadable. Tell them in your reviews or email them.  It’s so easy to do.

                                       

                                   “Whatever you like to read – trust Penguin.”

 

 

 

 

Mistakes were made.

In their efforts to attain deniability on the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran, the U.S. administration managed to achieve considerable notoriety for self-righteousness, public befuddlement about facts, forgetfulness under oath, and constant disavowals of political error and criminality, culminating in the quasi-confessional passive-voice-mode sentence, Mistakes were made.

This, of course, was a long time ago (1980s) but it serves to show how much worse things are now. Contrast it with Robert E. Lee’s statement after the battle of Gettysburg and the calamity of Pickett’s Charge:

“All this has been my fault,” Lee said.  “I asked more of my men than should have been asked of them.”

Lee’s sentences have an antique ring.  People just don’t say such things any more.  Honest men are no longer heard. If they are heard they are vilified.

Mistakes were made.  Who made them?  Everybody made them and no one did, and it’s history anyway, so let’s forget about it.  What difference does it make to writers of stories if public figures are denying responsibility for their own actions?  So what if they are, in effect, refusing to tell their own stories accurately?  Well, to make an obvious point, they create a climate in which social narratives are designed to be deliberately incoherent and misleading.  Such narratives humiliate the act of storytelling.  You can argue that only a coherent narrative can manage to explain public events, and you can reconstruct a story if someone says, “I made a mistake,” or “We did that.”  You can’t reconstruct a story – you can’t even know what the story is – if everybody is saying, Mistakes were made.

Every story is a history, however, and when there is no comprehensible story, there is no history.  The past, under these circumstances, becomes an unreadable mess.  When we hear words like “deniability,” we are in the presence of narrative dysfunction, the process by which we lose track of the story of ourselves, the story that tells us who we are supposed to be and how we are supposed to act.

Fast-forward to 2004 and Karl Rove (a Bush aide). Rove criticised a New York Times journalist for working in the ‘reality based community’ with people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’.  He went on:

“That’s not the way the world really works any more.  We’re an empire now, and we act, we create our own reality.  And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you will study too, and that’s how things will sort out.  We’re history’s actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

I’ve studied and thought about this comment of Roves quite a lot over the years since I first heard it. My first reaction was horror. How can any human being think like that? And have absolute confidence that they are right?  I do not think someone in his right mind could have such a thought; Rove is clearly not a sane person and  ‘…what we do’ usually means murdering lots of people – for oil, money, status… and they have also created a new language to match the new reality: ‘collateral damage’ – dead civilians; ‘humanitarian intervention’ – war on civilians and, er, mistakes were made.

 Mistakes indeed.  The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that 500,000 Iraqi children died due to sanctions before the 2003 invasion.  After the invasion, estimates of civilian deaths range from 100,000 in the popular media to 1,200,000 in the Lancet. It is interesting too that if this discrepancy is pointed out to those who would rather not think about it, the reaction is outrage directed not at those who caused the deaths but at the providers of the information.  This is due to a compliant media providing the lies, and idiots believing them.

500,000 children. Perhaps another 200,000 during the war. Does anybody stop to think what that means?  I don’t think they do.  Many of you have children. Imagine your child dying of starvation or of agonising disease. Imagine your child with its arm blown off, crushed to death, blown to pieces – tiny fragile bodies twisted and torn asunder. Because that’s what happened to them, innocent children, as yours are innocent. And why was it done? Who did it?.  Who do you blame?  Who owns up to the dead children?  Are they ever mentioned?’

Er, no.  Nobody takes responsibility. Mistakes were made. Actually, if you want to blame somebody, blame Clinton, Bush and Blair. Do you imagine any of them have lost one second’s sleep over the many child deaths in their name?  Did they ever own up to it? Do they even remember that it happened?  I doubt it.  Clinton was on the election trail with his awful wife; Bush plays golf at his ranch; Blair makes money. Blair at least has the grace to look destroyed.  While admitting nothing, his subconscious has caught up with him. His face has crumbled with guilt. He lives his own hell. He reminds me of Macbeth.  Americans just keep going on their dreadful way.

Does anybody own up to anything?  The police were still challenging the Hillsborough families right up to the last minute, adding immensely to their suffering.  Appeal after appeal on a mountain of lies. It took 27 years to finally arrive at a truth that was obvious from day one.  How many truths are denied and buried completely?

Would you trust a banker to tell you the truth? A policeman?  A judge?  A doctor?  A celebrity?

Anyone?

Ah, mistakes were made.

Hillsborough

It has taken me 28 years to write about Hillsborough. Whenever the subject was raised it made me angry, mainly because I’ve never understood why it had taken 27 years to state the obvious – 96 deaths were caused by, at best, extreme police stupidity. The lies and cover-up that followed were of the most obvious criminality. I doubt very much that anyone will ever pay for it.

The reason I was surprised by the cover-up was that the tragedy was all so public. The whole disaster, aided and abetted by appalling police inadequacy, was on television for all to see – several million people must have seen it. I taped what should have been the game on video. I later wiped it. Why did it take 27 years for me to see those images again? Why did nobody ever show the film of what happened? It has always existed. Why was it hidden?

Too many people were herded into a fenced in pen. This caused many to be crushed and trampled. The whole situation could have been alleviated by opening the gates onto the pitch. Instead the police stood and watched as 96 people were crushed to death and many more injured.

A lie was invented at about 3.45. The lie was to cover up a chief of police’s lack of action and his force’s dreadful incompetency. The lie was that Liverpool fans had rushed a gate, poured into the stadium in their hundreds crushing those already there to death.

The chief of police froze. His only action was to position a row of police on the half-way line to prevent hooliganism. This was while people were dying. People can freeze. It’s a tragedy, but it happens and is forgivable. What is unforgiveable are the invented lies and the heartless and callous disregard for the bereaved families.

Moira Stewart dutifully repeated the lie on the later BBC news. In other words: Liverpool supporters killed themselves. She must have known she was repeating lies but BBC employees will repeat any old rubbish they’re told to repeat. People preferred the lie. After all they were football fans, hooligans; and most of all: working class. Support the police, blame the workers.

The lie was embellished: Liverpool fans urinated on brave police, they were all drunk, they stole wallets from the dead. Incredibly people believed this nonsense. This might have been understandable had not the whole tragedy been shown live on TV – the police were lying. Look at the film: that’s what happened! Why did so many believe those stupid lies?

The idiot celebrity, Terry Wogan, smugly described the deaths as self-inflicted. He once shouted at an audience that vociferously disagreed with him: “Get back to your hovels”. He also charged £5000 for his appearances on Children in Need, until he was rumbled. His popularity is one of life’s mysteries.

The police interviewed all the families of the dead. Completely lacking any sympathy, they told every family that their child, spouse was drunk. To one family who told them their child did not drink they replied: “You’ll be telling us he was a virgin next”. Inhuman behaviour.

The Taylor Report, soon after, exonerated the fans and blamed the police. But the media preferred the lie, incredibly the public did too. One fan was asked hundreds of times if he really urinated on the police. He replied: “Would you do it?” I wrote a letter to The Independent in 2011 voicing my thoughts about the police and Moira Stewart. I received an avalanche of replies, all criticising me. “You must have been there”; “You must have lost someone there” were the polite replies; “How dare you attack our wonderful police?” “How dare you attack the lovely Moira Stewart?” were more common. These are the same people now pretending sympathy for the dead and their families. I’m afraid they are the most hopeless idiots. Nothing can be done for them. They will believe any nonsense the state tells them to believe.

The police present on the day all had their written reports changed. The honest ones had any slight criticism of the police erased. There were some decent police, those few who helped the fans; most of those had the decency to leave the police, some had nervous breakdowns, broken by the sheer horror of what they witnessed. It was mainly the fans who helped, the police did precious little.

The final case against the police took far longer than it should have. The police maintained their lies to the last, prolonging the suffering. After 27 years they still could not admit what had been clear on TV in 1989. Why did that film not surface again for 27 years? The BBC must have known it existed, every TV station must have known, every newspaper must have known. How did film that proved police guilt, showed they were lying, stay hidden for so long?

The BBC, to their credit, finally made a fine documentary showing what really happened. It should have been made 28 years ago and would have avoided years and years of suffering, suffering only made possible by dozens of corrupt police, officials and a compliant, cowardly media.

The policeman or men who invented the lies should be jailed for life, along with Kelvin Mackenzie who repeated the lies in the Sun, a disreputable comic. All those police who interviewed and insulted the grieving families should be jailed for 10 years.

The massively stupid and infantile public who believed this nonsense for 27 years should be sent to an island for dim-witted people: Thick Island perhaps, where their brainlessness can only damage their unintelligent selves.

Equivocation

“These doubtful speeches were used much in the old times by their false prophets, as appeareth by the oracles of Delphos and of the Sybil’s prophecies devised by the religious persons of those days to abuse the superstitious people, and to encumber their busy brains with vain hope or vain fear.”

The Art of English Poesy   

George Puttenham (16^th century).

Equivocation: The art of saying one thing but meaning another.

George Puttenham was writing about equivocation, an art he considered historical. He also considered it dangerous and wicked, a way of telling lies (sinful) while appearing not to. Shakespeare used much equivocation in his plays, although the word hardly existed then. Shakespeare portrayed equivocation as entertainment, as a way of providing information about the world and its people; while no angel Shakespeare was certainly not wicked. At that time equivocation had fiercely anti-Catholic connotations; the authorities were worried about the way Catholics used equivocation to deny their beliefs or that they were hiding priests. You could tell the authorities, for example, that you were taking dinner at a friend’s house while not mentioning that you were attending a Catholic mass. You were not lying but you were concealing the truth.

Equivocation was a rare and scholarly term, appearing in only a few books in the sixteenth century, mostly religious works and never in a play, poem or story. Because Shakespeare was such a gifted writer, wonderful words seemingly just flowing from him without thought, equivocation came naturally to him and his characters. All actors equivocate; it is entertaining, it is human, it can be clever, it can be wicked. We would be bored into slumber if all actors spoke honestly and always spoke the truth. The first time that Shakespeare used the actual word (although he many times used the deed) was in Hamlet, at the turn of the century, during the grave scene with Yoric’s skull. In answer to the Gravedigger’s clever but maddening replies, Hamlet tells Horatio:

How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

Hamlet means that they must speak literally or the Gravedigger will continue with his evasive replies. Shakespeare is being humorous here; later he would use the word in a more sinister fashion. Most people thought that equivocation meant ambiguous; as late as 1605 Francis Bacon defined it as such in his Advancement of Learning. But by 1606, familiarity with the word was almost universal. It was no longer a neutral word, it was now commonly thought to mean concealing the truth by saying one thing while deceptively thinking another. Shakespeare used equivocation as an action and a word to great effect in Macbeth, of the same year.

Although the Earl of Salisbury wrote of “that most strange and gross doctrine of equivocation” which would “tear in sunder all the bonds of human conversation”, and should be rooted out from society, Shakespeare would have understood that efforts to eliminate equivocation were hopeless and naive. Salisbury, the King – everybody – equivocated whether they were conscious of it or not. Equivocation was life’s most common sin – lying.

Shakespeare was subtle with his use of words, and equivocation was not always obvious. Though the word originated in its present use with Catholics using it to deny their beliefs, it soon became much more common with writers. One could say a King equivocated without actually accusing him of lying. Equivocation is a sophisticated word, suitable for a King and his courtiers to use.  Today a politician can say “I may have used slight equivocation on that point” and most people will not even understand that he/she has actually admitted to lying.

The action of equivocating had been in common use for as long as humans have had language. Augustus convinced the Romans that they were living in a free and fair democracy, although they lived under a ruthless dictatorship. Now, in the UK people are told that they live in a democracy, but they are presented with a choice between two almost identical parties who will merely preserve the status quo, likewise the USA. and many other countries. I live in Cuba where daily the TV convinces the people that they live in a wonderful free and fair society, but it’s a dictatorship with some good points. It’s not free and fair. Today politicians and advertisers (the main culprits) use it constantly. I can mostly ignore politicians but advertising is ubiquitous, stupid and wicked; it is impossible to ignore. Equivocation, even if it was once an art, is now the “gross doctrine” that Salisbury feared.

There is no advertising in Cuba, apart from the Cubans advertising themselves: their revolution, their system, their sportsmen and women – everything Cuban; they do not advertise commercial products. The only other place I know of where TV doesn’t advertise is Britain, with the BBC, but a significant section of the population would like to destroy it, as that section worldwide would destroy anything precious.

 

 

Even in Cuba I cannot escape advertising. We have satellite TV, where my woman watches the telenovelas and I watch the football. I thought advertising in England was extremely stupid but the US satellite channels are much more obviously dumb, just a medium for advertising, rather than a medium for entertainment. Programmes are interrupted every ten minutes with the dimmest adverts imaginable, merely a method for repeating names hundreds, thousands of times so that you will be unable to forget them; there is no humour, not very much thought – just the repetition of brand names and phone numbers – and in many, many hours of programming there is not even one minute of intelligence on show. Coke now transposes its logo over the crowd during the football matches – distracting and mind-numbing – as it is supposed to be.

I have found similar programming in East Asia but particularly the United States, the country that has been bombarded more than any other. It has affected even many of their decent writers, whom write of drinking a coke when they really mean something else. Coke has been so ruthlessly advertised for over a century, that taking a drink now means taking a coke to many, many people, such is the effect of constant brainwashing. I don’t even like Coke. I think it’s horrible, but am prepared to believe that some people like it and are not just influenced by the advertising. Hoover became an actual adjective thanks to that company’s successful promotions.

During a long life I have refused to believe that people can be affected by advertising because it is so simple-minded, but of course they are. They believe soap characters are real, and they believe advertising even more if an actor or celebrity equivocates and pretends that he/she uses a particular product (for a large amount of money). One must assume from this that at least seventy per cent of world’s population (particularly the USA’s) is irredeemably stupid; they buy cars, labour saving devices, clothes, tablets and phones that they do not need, and will  soon be persuaded to replace them.

Graham Greene said that “In any government there grows a hideous establishment of stupid men”. That is true, but unfortunately those stupid men represent a very large mass of even stupider people whose “busy brains they encumber with vain hope or vain fear.” These stupid men, big swinging dicks (an apt phrase) rule the world. While once harbouring vague thoughts that human beings will eventually sort themselves out, I tend to agree now with Voltaire, that “men are mad, and anyone who thinks they can be cured is even madder.”

The consumer society does not work; it will destroy itself sooner than you think. Who will stop it? Not the public. One cannot underestimate the stupidity of the public. The public is a big fat idiot. Being naturally non-violent, I would not go quite so far as Bill Hicks, who requested that all those in the public relations/advertising industry kill themselves, but I would like to put them all on an island where they can sell each other junk, and not pollute the world.

Drink Coke. You know it makes sense.

 

 

 

Shopping

“Born in Leicester in 1946, she says her generation was one of the last to truly be free. She would often play in abandoned buildings and pick fruit without the concern for today’s myriad dangers.”

Sue Townsend. Author of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾.

 

Born five years later than Sue Townsend, I did what I liked as a child: played football in the street, played on railway lines, walked through tunnels, played on private land, swam in private lakes, stole fruit and much, much more. Not one person that I knew was hurt seriously. Nobody had any money. We never noticed.

What do today’s children do? They stare into screens on their phone, their tablet, their computer and their TV. What do these screens do? They sell them stuff. Do they play? No, they don’t.

 

Their parents are children too. They grew up with similar, less advanced, stuff, but they too are utterly brainwashed. What do they do? They shop…and shop and shop and shop. Must have the latest car, must have the new reg so everyone can see it and think what a successful person I am. I am skinting myself but that doesn’t matter – I have a new car. And it’s one of those BIG cars, four wheel drive, an SUV, one of those really expensive cars that are not really very safe, much less safe than smaller cars, and a nuisance to everybody else, but who cares? I have one and it’s new, for six whole months, then I shall have to get another new one. You see, a car is no longer a means of getting from A to B. It’s a status symbol for idiots.

 

The kids buy jeans with holes. You can’t make the holes yourself? We did, years ago. So the marketers steal the idea (as they always do) and sell it back to the kids. But they wouldn’t be so stupid as to pay £100 for jeans with holes would they? Oh yes they would. And fades too, we used to do that, it’s easy. No thanks say the morons, we’d rather pay £100 for them. It’s my stupid parents’ money anyway.

 

Just look at all those sofas. They’re the same as last week’s sofas and last month’s sofas. Got to have one. And there’s £200 off (of course there is) and it’s blue; the one we have is grey. And the sale ends tomorrow! (of course it does).

Must have the latest phone. Why? Because all my friends will have it. Hmm. And it will sell me stuff quicker. What? It’s out of date already? Get me the latest. Must have the latest.

 

Must have the latest fashion. Can’t you be original, be different? Create something yourself from a charity shop or an independent shop? What’s independent? Oh dear.

 

What are you doing on Saturday? Sunday? Shopping, it’s cool.

 

I’ve just been on holiday. Where did you go. Africa. Whereabouts in Africa? Don’t know. Stayed by the pool.

 

What’s on TV? Adverts, increasingly moronic adverts. I like adverts. What were you watching? Celebrity Big Brother. Oh.

 

Big Brother is a term created by George Orwell. Did you know that? Who’s Grant Orwell?

 

Did you know the world is slowly being destroyed? That we are polluting it with waste? Much of it from over-shopping? Er…

 

Did you know the most beautiful animals in the world are becoming extinct? That we murder them for clothes, for ivory, for fur?  Er…

 

Did you know your clothes were made by children earning fifty pence a day? Er…

 

Did you know that 85 people in the world have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion? Er…

 

All because of shopping.

 

All because economies run on shopping. And massive overproduction. And persuading idiots to keep buying and buying and buying. New cars when they’re not needed. Sofas that are not needed. Clothes that are not needed. Computers that are not needed. Phones that are not needed.

 

And holes, Jesus, you pay money for holes. You literally spend money on nothing.

 

How can you be taken in by these stupid adverts? They’re utterly brainless. Surely you don’t believe them do you? How can you? Nobody could believe that stuff.

 

Can you think for yourself? Er…

 

Is your brain full of the stupid stuff that your phone vomits out? Er…

 

Do you have a brain?

 

Er…

 

“He tries to tell himself that all this…the warehouses, the shops and banks – is real, but it feels like an elaborate pantomime, a sham.”

 

Ian McGuire: The North Water.

 

 

 

What is an intellectual?

Noam Chomsky dates intellectualism to 1898 and the Dreyfus affair. A Manifesto of the Intellectuals fashioned by the Dreyfusards was inspired by Emile Zola’s open letter to France’s president condemning the framing of Dreyfus for treason and the subsequent military cover-up. This created an image of the intellectual as a defender of justice, confronting power with courage and integrity. But they were not generally seen that way.

The majority of the so-called educated classes, including several prominent figures of the Académie Franςais, considered the Dreyfusards “anarchists of the lecture-platform.” Ferdinand Brunetiére thought the very word intellectual was “one of the most ridiculous eccentricities of our time – I mean the pretension of raising writers, scientists, professors and philologists to the rank of supermen.” In other words, he was frightened of them; Dreyfus was innocent – the intellectuals were merely telling the truth. So were those criticising the Dreyfusards intellectuals? I think not.

 

Prominent intellectuals on all sides enthusiastically supplied justifications for their country’s part in World War I:

In Germany:

“…have faith in us! Believe that we shall carry on this war to the end as a civilised nation, to whom the legacy of a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Kant, is just as sacred as its own hearth and homes.”

In the USA:

“…effective and decisive work on behalf of the war has been accomplished by…a class which must be comprehensively but loosely described as the intellectuals.”

Intellectuals in the USA believed they were entering the war:

“…under the influence of a moral verdict reached, after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community.”

These intellectuals were the victims of a campaign by the British Ministry of Information which sought to:

“…direct the thought of most of the world, but particularly to direct the thought of American progressive intellectuals who might help to whip a pacifist country into war fever.”

 

Would you regard people who joyously recommended entering a war, individuals who generally did not risk their own lives for one second, as intellectuals? I wouldn’t, but let’s continue…

 

Not everyone agreed with the war. Bertrand Russell, Eugene Debs, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht did not agree, and like Zola fourteen years before, were sentenced to prison. Debs was punished with particular spite and malevolence. For doubting the veracity of President Wilson’s “…war for democracy and human rights” he was jailed for ten years. Wilson denied him amnesty after the war, but President Harding did finally relent. This, it seems to me, is what happens to true intellectuals: Speak against power in any country and you will be persecuted. Depending on the country, the best an intellectual can hope for is persecution – elsewhere it will be jail, torture and death, probably all three.

 

So are those who constantly praise the state intellectuals? No, they are not. If any of them were capable of being intellectuals, which is unlikely, they have forfeited any right to the title by being corrupt, by pretending that lies are the truth, by supporting mass-murder and much, much more. In the past these “intellectuals” supported the burning of people at the stake, hanging, drawing and quartering, slavery and child labour. They are Pharisees, supporters of whatever power happens to rule, non-thinkers and massive idiots.

 

There is no doubt that Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron all would have enthusiastically supported all the evils of the past: black people are not really human so we can treat them abominably, children of the poor are fit only for work, the poor are not really people are they, not like us “the elite” – elite? Are they really? Of course, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, the Bush’s, Clinton and Obama are just the same, probably much worse.

Adam Smith described the USA as the “masters of mankind” following a “vile maxim”: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.” Are followers of this most simplistic and stupid philosophy intellectuals? The original intent of the Constitution was, according to historian Gordon Wood, “…intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period, by delivering power to a better sort of person and barring those who were not rich, well born, or prominent from exercising political power.” Were the authors of the Constitution intellectuals? No, they were rich people of low intelligence. The main qualification for “a better sort of person” was hypocrisy and greed.

Nelson Mandela was only removed from the official State Department terrorist list in 2008. Twenty years earlier he was the criminal leader of one of the world’s “more notorious terrorist groups,” according to the Pentagon. I wonder which intellectual or intellectuals made that decision, and then later decided that he was a hero fit to be fawned over by brainless celebrities.

 

A week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, six leading Latin American intellectuals, all Jesuit priests, had their heads blown off on the direct orders of the Salvadoran high command. The act was carried out by an elite battalion armed and trained by Washington. The battalion had already left a dreadful trail of blood and terror. What intellectuals took the decision to murder thousands of people who merely wanted a slightly better standard of living? Not communism, not socialism – just a vaguely better life. Were the perpetrators intellectuals at all, or are they, in fact, the constant murderers of intellectuals who don’t agree with them?

 

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy, a well respected intellectual and admired president, made the decision to shift the mission of the militaries of Latin America from “hemispheric defence” to “internal security” – in other words, war against the domestic population, if they raised their heads. Charles Maechling Jr, who led internal defence planning from 1961 to 1966 described the result of Kennedy’s decision as “…a shift from tolerance of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military to direct complicity in their crimes.” The US supported and acted in “..the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads.”

 

In Colombia, former minister of foreign affairs, Alfredo Vázquez Carrizosa, wrote that Kennedy “…took great pains to transform our regular armies into death squads,” and “...it is their right to fight and exterminate social workers, trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment.”

 

This must be, by necessity, a fairly brief account of the crimes of self-elected intellectuals and the persecution by them of true intellectuals. It is by no means confined to the USA, although as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, they do have a hand in most things. I have hardly touched upon the role of writers in these crimes. Two English writers do spring to mind. The first is David Aaronovitch who wrote an article in 2003 wondering when the “weapons of mass destruction” would turn up. He wrote:

At the United Nations in February, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, presented evidence claiming that there were mobile laboratories and showing clear signs that the Iraqis had moved material to escape inspection from UN teams. Put together, all this was argued as constituting a clear breach of UN resolutions that therefore required urgent action.

These claims cannot be wished away in the light of a successful war. If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere.

He “…will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again.” Well, I’m sure he does go on believing, as a paid Pharisee, but it is quite shocking that he believed anything in the past from either government. And I think he genuinely does, and did, believe them. Some Pharisees are cynics – they don’t really believe the nonsense they write – but I believe Aaronovitch does truly believe. It is rather sad.

He concludes his article with:

At this moment, when the authorities are telling the truth and need the people to trust them, no one does. So I repeat, those weapons had better be there.

Oh dear, and one million civilians dead too.

In Owen Jones excellent book, The Establishment, Aaronovitch describes himself as one of the “elite”. When I had stopped laughing, I realised that these pseudo-intellectuals really do believe they are an elite. Because they are paid well for telling lies, I suppose. I can think of no other reason. They are rich, so in their tiny brains they see that as success. Sad indeed.

The other writer is James Delingpole. He is a climate change denier; there are many of those, of course. I’m sure he knows that the threats of global disaster are real, but business leaders are conducting a propaganda campaign to convince people that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax, and they pay very well. And Delingpole will do anything for money. Business people know full well how grave the threat is but they must maximise short-term profit and market share. If they don’t, someone else will. Delingpole is always willing to help.

Apart from being a denier, I’m not sure what he does. He doesn’t like the BBC, so constantly finds fault. He would prefer it was saturated with mindless adverts and awful programmes. He doesn’t like the NHS. He uses it, then criticises it in his columns, which is rather horrible.  He praises the awful Game of Thrones regularly. He also praised a French science-fiction thing that really was unredeemably awful. And that’s about it.

I suppose it’s a good living for a man with a room temperature IQ, but his constant jealousy of successful acquaintances and yearning for more cash does grate a bit. He is a splendid example of the low-grade Pharisee, of which there are many, but having encountered him fairly regularly, I mention him here.

An intellectual he is not!

The Way We Live

This is, to most people an insignificant story. I first learned of it in on September 23^rd 2015. It made me angry at the time. I then discovered that it kept making me angry, kept coming back to me, partly because everybody else was ignoring it. In the grand scheme of things it is of no consequence, but to me, in its unique, corrupt way, it somehow typifies what is wrong with this country and much of the world.

 

In 2010 two students, the Hilliard brothers, were accused of violent disorder by The Metropolitan Police at a demonstration against student fees in London. They were charged with dragging a policeman off of his horse and beating him. David Cameron, decided to assist the police and gain some publicity by suggesting the boys should “face the full force of the law.” The full force of the law here would have been a seven year prison sentence.

Just pause here to ponder what a seven year sentence would mean to these boys: their lives ruined, four years or so among largely unsympathetic criminals, career prospects nil, disgrace for their family and a memory, a daily reminder, of the English justice system for the rest of their lives.

 

Now, what actually happened? The officer in question had not secured his saddle properly and while he was pulling Christopher Hilliard’s hair so hard he nearly left the floor – he fell off his horse. The Hilliard brothers were then set on by at least four policemen who battered them with truncheons and kicked them. For the crime of being assaulted they were charged with assaulting the officers, facing a long term in prison and a difficult life ahead.

They didn’t do anything, had committed no crime.

As The Guardian stated:

David Cameron himself risked influencing the outcome of the legal process when he publicly drew attention to the case, insisting that police had been “dragged off horses and beaten”. The reality is that young people have not only been denied access to education and jobs through the abolition of the education maintenance allowance and the rise in tuition fees, but they are also being injured, demonised and criminalised when they protest about it.

You see, the two students had spent two years amassing a vast amount of footage of the incident. You can imagine how hard they had to work to get it. The footage showed the officer pulling Hilliard’s hair, it showed his saddle slipping because he hadn’t secured it, it showed the police all around descending on the boys and viciously beating them. Jennifer Hilliard, the boys’ mother, who has tirelessly protested their innocence thought Cameron owed the family an apology, “I think there was an assumption of guilt” she said – incredibly mild in the circumstances.

Christopher Hilliard said:

“I used to have a very positive view, now it’s a very negative view. Through all these things that have happened I certainly don’t trust the police. We were told by our lawyers that the likelihood of us being found not guilty, due to the number of police witnesses, was extraordinarily low (8 police witnesses lied). It’s only due to the fact that we were able with our mum to put together a lot of data, a lot of video footage for the trial, that we were able to be found not guilty through a lot of hard work. But, yes, I frequently worried that I was going to go to prison, that I was going to be incarcerated for something that was not of our doing at all.”

The comments from the family are incredibly tolerant. They seem like a nice, normal, law-abiding family. But imagine if they hadn’t done all that work to clear themselves; imagine if they had just gone with system. The eight lying police officers would have been believed and what was meant to happen would have happened – seven years in prison. This was not an isolated case; there have been at least eleven acquittals by jury since the demos. A lot of police misbehaviour followed by lies.

Ah, but now you’re being filmed.

The brothers were awarded £25,000 each in September 2015. David Cameron, of course, didn’t apologise. It’s a paltry sum, but what do ordinary people want with money? – money goes to people like David Cameron, and they keep it and grow it. Cameron will have forgotten all about it. The Met said:

“The Metropolitan police service has settled civil claims brought by Christopher Hilliard and Andrew Hilliard following their arrest during a protest on 9 December 2010. The claimants have also been given a written apology confirming that they should not have been arrested and expressing regret for the distress and injury suffered.”

 Hmm…

 

Cameron didn’t care if the story was true; he didn’t care that two young men’s lives would be ruined. He foolishly jumped on the bandwagon at the wrong time. It should have caused a scandal. People really should be protesting, demanding answers, but they don’t care – too busy shopping for rubbish and playing with their phones and gadgets.

The story, as far as I can discover, was reported nowhere of significance. I discovered it on Channel 4 news. Credit to them for covering it, but they did only give it two minutes, as though they were reluctant to report but thought they’d better, being a radical news programme and all. The BBC, ITV and Sky didn’t report it. Some minor educational papers reported it. The Guardian reported some of the later stuff. Some newspapers reported the compensation award (always interested in money). It does make one wonder about our media. Why the almost universal lack of reportage? They ALL reported the untrue inciting incident. Do you think they might be telling us what they want us to know, rather than what we ought to know?

 

And what of the Metropolitan Police? If they hadn’t been filmed and watched, several innocent people would be in prison. Now, I have nothing against the police. I have had dealings with them and always found them pretty decent. They have a job to do after all. But the police wheeled out at demonstrations are a different breed. They are the protectors of the system, the protectors of the money. They will do whatever they’re told. They are increasingly better armed; they are the military arm of the government. They are very violent people, itching to go out and hit someone. They have no conscience or finer feelings about lying and locking innocent people up for years. They probably enjoy it.

I know it’s not so bad here as in other places. In Iraq, Iran, Russia, China and many other places it is much worse; they will kill you for standing in the wrong place, but do not believe that our police wouldn’t do the same thing if they were allowed to.

 

There have been no significant demonstrations since 2010. The police did their job. These people are merely defenders of the status quo. It is alarming how many people support them, defend them, even admire them – startlingly stupid people.

 

But for those of you with a functioning brain – wake up. It is getting worse and will be game-over before you know it. This was a comparatively minor incident, but it typifies a million more, a billion more. Even if you only send an email – do something.