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23 June

Anybody out there going to Glastonbury this year? Well, OK, about ten thousand of you are, but are any of you reading this? (Is anyone?!) Wishful thinking perhaps, but just in case you do see this before you slouch off to pitch your tents in the mud (Oh yes … it's going to be one of those years again) here's a Glastonbury date for your diary.

At 3pm on Friday, on the Tadpole Stage in the Green Field, the West Papuan band Mambesak will be playing. They're great: lots of fun, and you won't see anything like them anywhere else. A few of us from the Free West Papua campaign will be there too; if you're in the Green Fields you should see our stall under a raised Morning Star flag (there's one on my homepage so you'll recognise it). If it hasn't blown away. Come and browse and say hello. We have some extremely funky t-shirts for sale, and it's all for a good - and neglected - cause. No excuses, then. See you there!

Posted by paul at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)

22 June

I keep shivering when I think of what might happen to Kim Sun-il, the South Korean hostage who's been kidnapped by 'militants' and threatened with beheading. I have a horrific image in my head, and it's all my own fault. When the same group beheaded American hostage Nick Berg, filmed it and released it onto the internet, I went and watched it. Why? Because a friend had done so and told me not to, and that meant I had to. It was the most horrific thing I've seen for a very long time, but the really disturbing question, for me, is why I wanted to see it at all? I knew it would be hideous. I knew it was prurient and voyeuristic. I knew I shouldn't have done, but I did anyway.

I still don't quite know why I, and apparently millions of others, watched that video. The only explanation I can come up with is that, however much we try many, or most, of us are fascinated by evil. There's a thrilling risk involved in seeing things we shouldn't see: a strange, prurient, modern-day, risk-free risk. We know we shouldn't watch, but we do anyway. It's like looking at internet porn with the door closed, or slowing down when we drive past a car crash. We feel guilty afterwards, but we do it again next time. It's so far away from our everyday experience that we can't tear our eyes away.

Perhaps there's another explanation too: that we're a generation which has seen so much fake horror, on film and TV, that we see the real thing in much the same light. The number of explosions, deaths, mutilations, beatings etc that we see every year on various screens must number in the hundreds, or thousands. We're a screen culture. In real life, most of us never see death in the raw. In the media, we see it all the time: it's become Spectacle. Would someone who had lived through Kosovo or Rwanda want to watch that video? I doubt it. Perhaps only the over-comfortable can afford to be fascinated.

It makes me think of another grainy video I saw at the weekend, in the house of a journalist friend who had somehow managed to obtain some US military footage from Afghanistan. It was film taken from the inside of a US Apache gunship, on a night mission to 'engage' a 'terrorist base' somewhere in Afghanistan. We watched through the night sights as unbelievably huge explosions tore into mosques and tunnel entrances, and listened to the pilots and gunners calmly liaising with each other as they 'took out' tiny, running white figures - people - with anti-tank rounds. 'Target neutralised', they'd say. Or, in one case, 'affirmative, he's come apart.' It was a video game: pure and simple. War as a Doom upgrade. It's horrific, and it's ours. We can moralise as much as we like, but we're all part of the Spectacle.

Posted by paul at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

14 June

Well, there's good news and bad news. First, on the European election front, some rays of sunshine: both Green MEPs, Jean Lambert and Caroline Lucas, held their seats, despite challenges from both UKIP and Respect. Hurray for that. Lucas in particular is a personal favourite of mine: one of this country's most committed and talented politicians and a rising star. When the Green Party eventually bites the bullet and decides to elect a proper leader, instead of its current mush of having two 'principal speakers', Lucas gets my vote by a mile.

Good, too, too see Labour get another kicking, and even more excellent to see the Tories kicked in the gonads (isn't it always?). Not that either of them look like making any serious changes to their approaches as a result, but at least they can't mistake the message: a plague on both your houses.

As for UKIP: well, scepticism about the EU is perfectly legitimate, and crosses traditional political lines. You don't have to be a xenophobe or a raving right-winger to worry about the loss of democratic control to a supranational body which we have little influence over. It certainly bothers me. That said, UKIP's definition of 'independence' is a sham. They would happily pull us out of the EU only to hand over more economic and political power to less democratic and far more damaging bodies like the WTO and even NAFTA - which has all the disadvantages of the EU without any of its benefits: social chapter, human rights guarantees, working hours directive, good environmental protection laws, etc. The Green Party have produced an interesting attack on UKIP for just this reason. Read it here

As for the other bad news of the weekend: 2-1 to France. What can I say? Except that, for once, I am at one with The Sun: We Wuz Robbed. I'm sick as a parrot, Brian. Get me another lager, and make it quick.

Posted by paul at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

11 June

It's 11.30am on the morning after election day, so it's too early to either gloat or mourn convincingly. Signs so far, though, are that the first reaction looks like being the more appropriate one. Here, at this moment in time anyway, are some reasons to be cheerful this morning:

1. Bad results for Labour. I don't need to say much about this, it'll be all over the news for days. Expected, but no less welcome for it.

2. Good results for the Greens. This is great news. I've been worried about whether the Green vote would hold up, threatened by the rise of UKIP (who may take some potential Green votes in the Euro elections if we're unlucky. Keep your fingers crossed) and the George Galloway ego trip known as the Respect Coalition (more on these dunces below). But so far it's looking good. The Greens set a target of ten new council seats nationwide, and it looks like they might meet, or even exceed it. Meanwhile, in my home town of Oxford the Greens have taken an extra four council seats, giving them a total of seven, and the council has shifted from Labour to No Overall Control. This may mean that the Greens, if they can team up with the Lib Dems here, as they have in the past, could control the council. Hurrah for that. Looks like all my door-to-door leafleting was not entirely in vain…

3. Bad results for the BNP. After all their incoherent boasting about how they would increase their seats, it looks like a damp squib. In Burnley, one of its supposed strongholds, the party contested eight seats and expected to win at least four. They got one, and only by 28 votes. Let's hope this trend continues.

4. No breakthrough for the Galloway Party. The Respect Coalition, an unholy alliance of aging Trots and radical Islamists, began life only a few months ago. It was supposed to be a 'progressive alliance' set up in protest at the war but - oh, that dreadfully familiar story - it was hijacked by the SWP, George Galloway and the more dodgy fringes of the British Islamic movement. One of its co-founders, and a good friend of mine (we'd been arguing about this for months), George Monbiot, resigned when Respect decided to stand candidates against the Greens (who were invited to join the coalition but decided they'd rather remain democratic: not a word that Respect can even spell). There were worries that Respect might take Green or other useful progressive votes, but so far they seem to have made little impact. The real test, though, may come in the Euro elections, where Galloway himself stood as an MEP against Green MEP Jean Lambert, and Respect are also fielding a candidate against the excellent Caroline Lucas. If either of these two lose their seats thanks to the antics of these pointless Trots, I will be getting a petition together to call for the parachuting of Galloway into Kurdistan, armed only with one of his largest cigars and his lifelong love of Saddam Hussein. We could even televise the resulting pursuit: I'm A Vain, Egomaniacal Lover of Genocidal Dictators: Get Me Out of Here! I'd pay for cable to watch that.

More anon….

Posted by paul at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

8 June

I must, at this late stage, drop a plug in here for an event that's happening tomorrow night (Wednesday) in London. Those of you who've read my book will know about the marvellous Reverend Billy, founder and spiritual leader of the US Church of Stop Shopping. For those of you who don't, let's just say he combines the mildly disturbing freakiness of tele-evangelism with the wit and determination of a deeply ambitious anti-consumer activist. This is a man who recently visited a Starbucks in New York with a group of fellow zealots and set about licking everything in sight. Odd, and yet somehow captivating…

Anyway, tomorrow night he will be performing with his Stop Shopping Gospel Choir in Conway Hall, Holborn. There'll be stalls and a bar too, and it promises to be fun.

Perhaps I'll see you there…

Posted by paul at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

7 June

Well, I'm back, and it's high summer. I've had a very creative fortnight, living alone in a wind-powered bothy on the shores of Loch Broom in Scotland, watching seals from my window, drying peat for the stove, writing and walking in the hills. I hardly heard an engine for two weeks. Paradise! As a result of this retreat from humanity I put on a creative spurt and finished the novel that has been under my skin for the last eighteen months. It feels great. Now I'm back home, struggling to re-adjust to so-called reality. Strangely, politics seems a loss less interesting now. I'd rather be planting tomatoes on my allotment. Which is, in fact, how I plan to spend the rest of the afternoon.

More blogging soon, just as soon as my plants are watered, and my mind has reluctantly returned to reality…

Posted by paul at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)