The Real Meaning of Christmas

The real meaning of Christmas is family and friends. It’s a time to re-forge the bonds between you and your special group – your family and friends, not others. Forget about the stranger, the lonely, the foreigner, the mentally distressed; keep them separate from your festivities. Don’t invite them into your homes; it’s just embarrassing. This celebration is not for them. You can be sure that they will have their own friends and family, their own ways and celebrations. Christmas is the time for giving your love solely to your own people, your own group.

The real meaning of Christmas is presents – those you give and those you get. If you really love your friends and family, you will buy them the most impressive and costly gifts, even if you have to temporarily go into debt to do it. Conversely, if someone doesn’t get you an expensive gift, you can be sure they do not love you that much. And you should never settle; that’s the wrong life lesson. Demand the gifts you really want and deserve. If you haven’t spent all your money and time on presents for those you love, your love is inadequate. And if you don’t get a massive pile of presents you really want on Christmas Day, it’s clear your family and friends don’t really love you. You should feel diminished as a person; others are getting more then you.

The real meaning of Christmas is conspicuous consumption. It is a time for eating more food in a single day than most people in the world get to eat in a week. And you should drink copiously; that’s the true Christmas spirit. The measure of your Christmas is how bloated and drunk and sick you feel by the end of it: if you don’t feel a bit nauseous with how much you’ve eated and drank, you’ve missed the real point of the festivities. Another important measure of Christmas lies in how much food you throw away at the end. There should be a large pile to throw in the garbage.

I know this is how it’s supposed to be, but the truth is that the best Christmas’s I remember were when my parents would take us kids down to the homeless shelter or sometimes the old folk’s home, and we’d spend Christmas Day helping to decorate, set the tables, cook, serve, talk to people, do dishes and clear up afterwards. My Dad would bring his cornet and lead some carol singing. Late in the afternoon, after the work was done, we would go home and that evening we would have a family meal together and reflect on how lucky we were compared to some of those we had met that day. At the time, as a teenager, I sometimes resented the fact that other people would be having a great time with their family while I had to work at thankless chores. But now I realise that they were the best, the most meaningful Christmas’s I ever had. I hardly remember at all those normal Christmas Days where we didn’t go out and help others; they all merge into one.

That’s all I wanted to say about it. Have a great Christmas 2012, everyone. Love, peace and justice to you all.

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How I was radicalized; or, the effects of opening your eyes

It’s a typical story. There’s nothing unusual or exceptional about it, despite what the so-called ‘experts’ will try and tell you. It’s a well-worn path that so many of life’s travellers have trod leading from a kind of blissful ignorance to an uncomfortable awareness of all the violence cleverly hidden in plain sight; the brutality which daily crushes and bruises the human spirit. It’s really nothing more than a gradual clearing of the eyes, a flowering of sight.

I was radicalized in stages, starting when I was a child growing up in rural Africa. My parents were missionaries in the Republic of Zambia. We lived on a mission station twenty miles down a dirt road that became a river of thick, sticky mud in the rainy season. It was not unusual for the driver of the mission vehicle, on his way to the local town to collect supplies, to have to leave his car mired in the middle of the road to find a local villager willing to lend an ox for an hour to pull the trapped car from the sucking mud. The mission station where we lived had a secondary school and a hospital. It served a large area far from the nearest town, an area without roads, electricity, running water, police, or any vestige of the bureaucratic architecture of the modern state. The people lived in mud huts, kept cows, goats and chickens, and grew maize as their staple food source, selling the surplus to the National Maize Board who, as the sole designated buyer, set the non-negotiable price they would pay for it. It was a system based openly on corruption and exploitation.

One of my early memories of our life in this harsh landscape was noticing how the local African children my own age all had massive swollen bellies which protruded through their tattered clothes on top of spindly legs and dusty bare feet. With a glazed look and mucus lines trailing from their noses and eyes, they would stop and gape at me. Sometimes, one would lean back with an arm crooked on his hip looking just like a heavily pregnant woman. My friends and I, bursting with shiny clean health, and blissfully unaware of the symptoms of malnutrition (we didn’t even know what malnutrition was!), really thought this was hilarious. Did you see that? Look at their huge tummies! They look like your mum who’s having a baby!

A few years later someone, an adult on the mission (I cannot remember now who it was, but I wonder if they ever knew the role they played in my radicalization process) told me why they had swollen bellies; how they must have lived with a gnawing hunger which clung to them every waking minute; how the lack of nutrition that early in life made their bellies swell, their eyes run, their hair change colour; and how it impeded childhood brain development, which probably meant that they would struggle in school, be consigned to a life of manual labour and subsistence in which their own children would no doubt also grow up with swollen bellies, glazed eyes and a brown tinge to their curly black hair. The saddest thing of all is that as adults they would be told by people who should have known better that they were stupid and ignorant because they were Africans. That’s just how Africans are, someone important would say, and everyone would sadly nod their head.

I felt genuinely sick when I heard about the effects of sustained hunger. I wanted to hide myself away, crawl under my bed and close the curtains. I didn’t want to play with my expat friends any more, in case we had to mention it, talk about how we used to joke and giggle at the hungry, staring children. In case we had to remember how we treated food so casually, throwing it away when we didn’t like the taste, dropping unfinished morsels on the very same ground our neighbors’ children would walk in their bare, cracked feet.

I still feel a hot flush of shame even now when I think of it: my younger self, ignorantly laughing at starving children, mocking their misery, completely unaware of my role as a European missionary’s son in the long history of colonialism and neocolonialism, or my place in the violent structures of global capitalism which provides me more wealth than I need to live and life opportunities undreamed of by previous generations, whilst simultaneously consigning other peoples’ children to the poisonous, debilitating pregnancy of lifelong poverty.

This was the first little step on my path to radicalization. I’ve since learned to see and understand the vast, terrifying violence of systematic, human-induced poverty which has most of the world’s people in its crushing grasp, not just in rural Africa, but also in the vast urban slums of the mega-cities of Asia and Central America; the millions of shuffling homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk of every single American city; the unseen and unheard people in the dusty tribal reservations of Australia; the generationally poor masses in the sink estates of Britain, and the decaying worker cities of Russia; and countless others, too many to ever name.

A couple of years ago I returned to Africa, to the places of my childhood. I saw the same children with the same swollen bellies. I quietly swore to myself once again that I would try my best to undermine the global system that made me see these same spindly-legged children over and over again, decade after decade.

Ten years after I had faced up to my cruel laughter I was on a bus, about to be radicalized for a second time.

I was seventeen and had just completed my Cambridge ‘O’ levels, the exams taken at 11:00am in the morning or 3:00pm in the afternoon to coincide exactly with the exams being sat in Cambridge itself. This was, I suppose, to prevent someone in Africa coming out of the exam early and calling long distance to give the questions to someone in Britain. It meant that most of the exams were conducted during the hottest part of the day. My head would be throbbing, my shirt stuck to my back with perspiration by the time I left the exam room.

My parents had decided it was time to return the family ‘home’ to New Zealand (it was a place I had not lived in for more than a few months over my entire seventeen years, but all the adults around me insisted it was my ‘real’ home, despite the fact that I knew no one there and couldn’t even picture it) so I could attend university – if I passed my exams, of course. However, before we left the land where I was born, the place where my only friends were, where all my memories resided, where I’d first kissed a girl and held her hand watching a film, where I’d once caught a snake, seen an elephant in the wild, learned to run for hours at a time, written my first poem; before I left that place, I wanted to hitch-hike down to South Africa, say good-bye to a girl I used to like who lived in Stellenbosch, and see the country the whole world seemed to be talking about. It was 1983 and I wanted to say good-bye to the continent which had made me who I was.

To my surprise, my parents agreed to let me, their seventeen year old acne-ridden, sometimes angst-filled son, hitch-hike alone from Lusaka to Harare, and then down to Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, up the coast to Port Elizabeth and Durban, and then back to Johannesburg, Harare and finally home to Lusaka – before getting on a plane unaccompanied which flew to London via Luanda and Moscow. (I still remember the tanks surrounding the airport in Luanda, a sure indication that the civil war was only a few kilometres away. It was the middle of the night and the place was full of Angolan soldiers and drunken Russian ‘advisors’, and the toilets were completely dark and flooded.) The only stipulation for my journey was that I had to send a weekly telegram to let them know I was alright. It still amazes me that I was able to do such a thing at such an age, in such a place. I can’t imagine any father or mother today so easily lifting off the lead blanket of anxiety which seems to be every parent’s burden to allow their child to wander the developing world with nothing but a backpack, some cash and a list of names of people who might or might not be able to put you up, should you be able to get to that town in a day.

One hot day I climbed onto a public bus on the outskirts of Cape Town, happy not to be huddling on the back of a lorry or crammed into the cab of a pick-up truck with four large men and a dog. The bus driver, a young blond European with dark sunglasses, looked up in his mirror at an old African woman sitting in the front row. ‘Hey, Mama, get in the back so this bwana can sit down’, he said. ‘Yes, boss’, she answered. Her tired body seemed to creak and groan as she pulled herself to her feet and shuffled down the bus with her bags. In the crowded rear, she was forced to stand looking out the window. I could not see her expression.

I sat down, unable to stem the relief I felt at having a comfortable seat for the next twenty minutes.

In that instant, in the wash of guilt and shame and joy that flooded over me, I truly saw the leering, demonic face of the apartheid system. It was as clear as day and it cut right through me. Its casual barbarity, in which an old woman, most likely bone tired from a long day working as a servant, and weary from an entire lifetime of obtaining permits, security checks, discrimination, crushed aspirations, servitude and exhausting poverty, was made to stand on a bumpy bus so a healthy seventeen year old boy with privileged skin could sit comfortably, slapped me hard in the face, shattering my complacent sense of self.

That was a Damascus moment for me, a real fork in my road. I turned myself around and started for home (wherever that was) that day, vowing never to come back to a country where my skin colour made fellow human beings suffer; where I was made complicit against my will in a vast enterprise of crushing millions of human beings so a chosen few could drink gin and tonic by the pool without the fear of having to share with people they considered inferior; where my own lack of moral courage to recognize suffering and injustice and take a stand against it, and a self-imposed ignorance of my fellow human beings was exposed in a thousand different ways every day I was there.

It was the day I joined the anti-apartheid movement. And the anti-fascist movement; the anti-racist movement; the anti-imperialist movement; the anti-nuclear movement; the peace movement – any movement that sought to resist and oppose and transform all the visible and invisible chains of violence that crush and grind millions of fellow human beings every day. Because I recognised that all these evils were connected. They were all part of the same unjust, violent system. It was the day I decided to become a student, to learn, and to never let my lack of knowledge or understanding be an excuse for insensitivity or unintended cruelty. I suppose it was the day I first became an international politics scholar. You would probably also say that it was the day I was properly radicalized. I opened my eyes and saw the world; and then I saw myself in it.

Twenty five years after forcing an old lady from her seat on the bus, I am sitting in my university office. A very serious but friendly man from the Home Office is asking me about a former student who is now applying to work for the Ministry of Defence. He is applying to become some kind of spy, I thought to myself. Interviewing the applicant’s former lecturers is a standard part of the background security check. ‘So, during the period when you taught [redacted], did he ever express any radical views?’, the serious man inquires. I put my hands behind my head and think hard for a moment. ‘You know, I am very sorry to say he did not. I really try so hard to radicalize my students, you know, to help them see what’s going on in the world, to motivate them to go out and really struggle against all its injustices, to resist and challenge and question the violence inherent to the status quo – to become activists, not just observers.’ I pause. ‘But to my great disappointment, I can honestly say that I don’t remember [redacted] ever expressing any such views. Really, he always kept pretty quiet and I seem to recall that he wrote very average essays’, I say with genuine sincerity.

The man from the Home Office frowns, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. I don’t think he can see my point at all.

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The Great Con of National Security

It may have once been the case that being attacked by another country was a major threat to the lives of ordinary people. It may also be true that there are still some pretty serious dangers out there associated with the spread of nuclear weapons. For the most part, however, most of what you’ve been told about national security and all the big threats which can supposedly kill you is one big con designed to distract you from the things that can really hurt you, such as the poverty, inequality and structural violence of capitalism, global warming, and the manufacture and proliferation of weapons – among others.

The facts are simple and irrefutable: you’re far more likely to die from lack of health care provision than you are from terrorism; from stress and overwork than Iranian or North Korean nuclear missiles; from lack of road safety than from illegal immigrants; from mental illness and suicide than from computer hackers; from domestic violence than from asylum seekers; from the misuse of legal medicines and alcohol abuse than from international drug lords. And yet, politicians and the servile media spend most of their time talking about the threats posed by terrorism, immigration, asylum seekers, the international drug trade, the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea, computer hackers, animal rights activism, the threat of China, and a host of other issues which are all about as equally unlikely to affect the health and well-being of you and your family. Along with this obsessive and perennial discussion of so-called ‘national security issues’, the state spends truly vast sums on security measures which have virtually no impact on the actual risk of dying from these threats, and then engages in massive displays of ‘security theatre’ designed to show just how seriously the state takes these threats – such as the x-ray machines and security measures in every public building, surveillance cameras everywhere, missile launchers in urban areas, drones in Afghanistan, armed police in airports, and a thousand other things. This display is meant to convince you that these threats are really, really serious.

And while all this is going on, the rulers of society are hoping that you won’t notice that increasing social and economic inequality in society leads to increased ill health for a growing underclass; that suicide and crime always rise when unemployment rises; that workplaces remain highly dangerous and kill and maim hundreds of people per year; that there are preventable diseases which plague the poorer sections of society; that domestic violence kills and injures thousands of women and children annually; and that globally, poverty and preventable disease kills tens of millions of people needlessly every year. In other words, they are hoping that you won’t notice how much structural violence there is in the world.

More than this, they are hoping that you won’t notice that while literally trillions of dollars are spent on military weapons, foreign wars and security theatre (which also arguably do nothing to make any us any safer, and may even make us marginally less safe), that domestic violence programmes struggle to provide even minimal support for women and children at risk of serious harm from their partners; that underfunded mental health programmes mean long waiting lists to receive basic care for at-risk individuals; that drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes lack the funding to match the demand for help; that welfare measures aimed at reducing inequality have been inadequate for decades; that health and safety measures at many workplaces remain insufficiently resourced; and that measures to tackle global warming and developing alternative energy remain hopelessly inadequate.

Of course, none of this is surprising. Politicians are a part of the system; they don’t want to change it. For them, all the insecurity, death and ill-health caused by capitalist inequality are a price worth paying to keep the basic social structures as they are. A more egalitarian society based on equality, solidarity, and other non-materialist values would not suit their interests, or the special interests of the lobby groups they are indebted to. It is also true that dealing with economic and social inequality, improving public health, changing international structures of inequality, restructuring the military-industrial complex, and making the necessary economic and political changes to deal with global warming will be extremely difficult and will require long-term commitment and determination. For politicians looking towards the next election, it is clearly much easier to paint immigrants as a threat to social order or pontificate about the ongoing danger of terrorists. It is also more exciting for the media than stories about how poor people and people of colour are discriminated against and suffer worse health as a consequence.

Viewed from this vantage point, national security is one massive confidence trick – misdirection on an epic scale. Its primary function is to distract you from the structures and inequalities in society which are the real threat to the health and wellbeing of you and your family, and to convince you to be permanently afraid so that you will acquiesce to all the security measures which keep you under state control and keep the military-industrial complex ticking along.

Keep this in mind next time you hear a politician talking about the threat of uncontrolled immigration, the risk posed by asylum seekers or the threat of Iran, or the need to expand counter-terrorism powers. The question is: when politicians are talking about national security, what is that they don’t want you to think and talk about? What exactly is the misdirection they are engaged in? The truth is, if you think that terrorists or immigrants or asylum seekers or Iran are a greater threat to your safety than the capitalist system, you have been well and truly conned, my friend. Don’t believe the hype: you’re much more likely to die from any one of several forms of structural violence in society than you are from immigrants or terrorism.  Somehow, we need to challenge the politicians on this fact.

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Politics, Politicians and Other Reasons to Stop Voting

I have recently returned to New Zealand after 9 years of living in the United Kingdom. One of the most striking similarities between the two countries I have noticed is the almost complete failure of the political class to discern the historical moment and its opportunities. Of course, such failings are not confined to New Zealand and the United Kingdom; there is currently a near universal quality to the myopia and stunted imagination of politicians. However, what’s even more depressing is the profound lack of serious debate in the political realm and the mainstream media about the world-changing issues and tectonic changes currently under way, and the incapacity of the current political system to deal them. While the planet edges closer and closer to unprecedented economic recession and impending environmental disaster, and the manufacture and trade of weapons spreads misery and chaos across the globe, seemingly oblivious politicians merrily continue with business as usual. Their most pressing issues are whether to sell a few more state assets or build a few more casinos.

The problem is not simply that politicians fail to heed established evidence and ignore expert advice, although this is a conspicuous and enduring failure of politicians who seem to care more for appearances, or who are in thrall to special interests. How often have we seen politicians make quite stupid policies on gambling, alcohol, education, health, crime, development assistance, and countless other issues which contradict years of academic research and the advice of leading experts? At present, our politicians ignore a veritable mountain of evidence, including a study by the IMF, which shows that austerity measures most often fail to stimulate economic growth, and instead determinedly press ahead with policies of austerity that are far more likely to exacerbate rather than rectify the crisis. Our politicians also ignore the by now overwhelming evidence which shows that if you want to reduce rates of crime, depression and mental illness, teenage pregnancies, anti-social behavior and a host of other social ills which reduce communities’ happiness and sense of well-being, then you have to make greater equality a serious policy aim. Instead, politicians press on with the same policies that have increased social inequality for the past thirty years, thereby condemning us all – rich and poor – to living in unhappy, blighted societies. I won’t even mention the evidence which shows that nonviolence is morally and practically superior to militarism, and how a single day’s military spending could improve the lives of billions immeasurably.

The problem is also not the fault of the mostly supine and intellectually feeble mainstream media, although their failure to play any kind of fourth estate role has been more than obvious since the Iraq war. A combination of corporate ownership, celebrity culture and the one hour news cycle means that we can no longer expect the media to ask the hard political questions; it seems they no longer have the time or the inclination to do the necessary research for intelligent analysis. Their best option is to take the nicely pre-packaged press releases handed out by ministers and corporations alike and try not to ask any awkward questions which might deny them future access to the news goodies.

No, the real problem is, as the Occupy Movement and countless other protest groups have argued, that the political system itself is broken; irreparably. It is no longer fit for purpose. It’s actually no longer a political system in which genuine political alternatives can be properly debated. It’s become a management system for maintaining neoliberalism. This is why the loyal opposition cannot really oppose; they can only quibble about whether the current government has got their sums right, or whether deficit reduction is moving too fast. It’s also why the politicians cannot suggest anything other than more of the same ideology, and why they cannot launch a real inquiry into financial and corporate crime and malfeasance. It’s also why the media cannot really ask why that is. In the current system, the political elite are there primarily to ensure that neoliberal capitalism functions smoothly, in part because they still believe that this will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. This means that the interests of capitalism have to come before the interests of the majority, or the environment, or the truth.

The point is that we know now that this belief is hopelessly wrong: neoliberal capitalism does not produce the greatest good for the greatest number. It produces the greatest inequality the world has ever known. It produces unimaginable wealth for the few, and declining living standards for the rest. It produces corruption, exploitation, over-consumption, waste, and environmental disaster. The amazing thing is that you know it, and I know it. Scholars know it. Probably 99 percent of the world knows it. But the politicians don’t know it. Instead, they keep insisting that if we keep going with the austerity package, if we sell off some more assets, if we privatize a few more things, if give a few more tax breaks to the rich, things will eventually work out. The economy will come out of its slump. There will be rewarding jobs for everyone. We will all be able to go back to former consumption levels and ever-upwards economic growth will return. Why do politicians keep on insisting on this, despite the fact that everyone knows they’re wrong? Because they have to; they’re part of the system. They believe in it. And it pays their bills.

I think this is why Occupy and other protest movements around the world have decided not to launch national political parties, and refrain from engaging in electoral politics. Because they know the system is unfixable. They figure, hey, what would be the point of becoming part of an entrenched system where there’s no real politics: Where we can’t seriously debate whether to abolish the military and spend the money on schools and hospitals instead? Where we can’t talk about having a maximum wage as well as a minimum one? Where we can’t tell the police to go after tax dodgers and interest rate manipulators with the same zeal as they do rioters? Where we can’t discuss making sustainability the primary value of a state-owned asset rather than profitability? Where we can’t debate replacing GNP per capita with happiness and fulfillment as the measure of the nation’s worth? Where we can’t discuss the option of defining our national goal as a socially just and sustainable society rather than a competitive one? What they are saying is, what would be the point of joining a system where the only real debate is whether we should aim to reduce the deficit in two years or three?

This may land me in hot water, but I have come to largely agree with this point of view. I no longer have faith in the political system. I don’t think it’s fit for purpose anymore. I think we’re deluded if we think that the political class can do anything for us anymore. They work for others, not us; they are part of the system. The implication of my position is that on election day I think we should all conspicuously avoid the polling booth and instead go to the local town hall or park or square and have a debate about the kind of society we’d prefer to live in. Some real political debate, outside of the suffocating prison of the political system, might even lead to some decent ideas. It certainly couldn’t do any worse than the politicians. And if no one voted, the politicians might have to come out and really listen because they could no longer claim a mandate. In the meantime, before the next election, educate yourself. Question. Discuss. Enjoy some real political debate.

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Newspaper Stories from the Other Foot

Imagine if the media did not uphold Western racism and bias. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot in the treatment of minorities and current events. You might get stories such as the following:

The Aotearoa Times, 20 March 2018

A former company director of European-Paheka descent admits he ripped off West Cheviot Finance (WCF) to the tune of $23 million – spending more than $1m on “various female companions”. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has revealed John Peter Carpenter’s spending habits after the former Gemfine Finance director pleaded guilty to six charges of dishonestly using documents, and two charges of false accounting.

The six charges against the well-known figure in the European community involved $23 million in fraud against SCF and related to 894 false transactions. WCF went into receivership in August, 2010 and triggered a $1.6 billion Government payout under the Crown’s retail deposit guarantee scheme.

In the Cheviot District Court today, Judge Mary Latimer said due to the “magnitude” of Carpenter’s offending the 54-year-old would be held in custody until his sentencing on May 3. “The loss to WCF as a consequence of the defendant’s offending is at least $23 million, which is a loss that will ultimately be borne by the New Zealand taxpayer,” said Judge Latimer.

She went on to say that, “His actions raise real questions about whether Europeans are ready to be put into positions of financial trust involving taxpayer’s money. It pains me to say it, but this case poses some serious and difficult questions for the European-Paheka community. The New Zealand public will not tolerate the profligate and dishonest waste of taxpayers’ money.”

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The Kabul Telegraph, 21 March 2018

At least five Afghan military personnel could face a disciplinary review in connection with the recent burnings of American flags at a military base in Austin, Texas. An official familiar with the ongoing probe says a joint Afghan-U.S. team is convinced the burnings were not intentional.

But, two Kabul lawmakers are convinced extremists are intentionally using the incident to whip up anti-Afghan sentiment and increase violence against Afghan soldiers stationed in Texas to support to the fledgling democratic government.

“Just last month, we buried a corporal from Kandahar and it was an American soldier who turned on him, a trusted associate,” said Parliamentarian Shar Maliki. “This is getting outrageous. One thing, we should never apologize. This is just an excuse to inflict harm upon Afghans,” Maliki said. “Americans need to join the twenty-first century and realize that it’s just a piece of cloth. They may revere their flag, but killing in revenge for burning a flag is primitive behavior and cannot be tolerated.”

“This is being done by our enemies, by the so-called Sons of Texas, by the people who are using this flag-burning as an excuse to inflame the local population,” said MP Kaled Gulam Rasul. “It’s not being done by run-of-the-mill people, it’s being done by people who are looking for an excuse to say something bad and stir people up against the Afghans, who are only there to help,” Rasul said.

However, in a video-taped response from the Sons of Texas group posted on Youtube, their spokesman said, “After invading our land, killing our women and children every day in drone attacks, torturing people in their bases and urinating on the corpses of loyal Americans killed doing their patriotic duty, this was the final straw. We call on the American people to rise up and throw out the aggressors.” The spokesman went on to say that because the Afghan army had been in Texas for ten years, they ought to know by now how much the flag meant to Americans. “Nobody who desecrates our sacred flag can expect to escape the most severe retribution”, the spokesman said.

The official probe into the incident is expected to deliver its report by December.

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The Palestine Daily, 22 March 2018

Livid American officials last night pointed the finger at Israel over a plot to kill Palestine’s ambassador on US soil.

As Britain lined up alongside the States to back any reprisals, President Michelle Lopez ordered a probe into Tel Aviv’s part in the plan. It came after an alleged plan to bomb a favourite Washington restaurant of ambassador Mohammad Ahmed was uncovered. Two Israeli nationals have now been charged with offences including conspiracy to murder a foreign official.

A spokesman for the White House said: “President Lopez underscored that the United States believes this plot to be a flagrant violation of US and international law. She reiterated our commitment to meet our responsibilities to ensure the security of diplomats serving in our country, or any other. She pointed out that Israel had a well-documented record of this sort of behavior. It must not be tolerated.”

Tel Aviv has dismissed the allegations but Britain said it would stand beside America in any action. A Downing Street spokesman said: “We congratulate the US authorities on the successful operation to disrupt a conspiracy to attack diplomats in the United States. The United Kingdom is in close touch with the US authorities on this case. We will support measures to hold Iran accountable for its actions.”

In a statement, Prime Minister Dipak Patel’s office said: “Indications that this plot was directed by elements of the Israeli regime are shocking. We will support measures to hold Israel accountable for its actions.”

US officials also said that the Iranian embassy in Washington was to have been attacked. One of the defendants appeared briefly at a New York City court yesterday. He did not enter a plea and was held without bail. He could face a life prison sentence if convicted on all charges, the Department of Justice said.

Israel’s official News Agency called the charges a “propaganda campaign” by the US government against Tel Aviv. The allegations were “a comedy show fabricated by America”, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters.

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The Beast They Call the Revolution

In 1988, I painted a series of pictures for a module on the sociology of peace and justice taught by Kevin Clements at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The pictures were my attempt at a creative interpretation of some key issues facing Africa’s struggle to overcome the violent and distorting legacy of colonialism and achieve a better future. Below I reproduce some often blurry photos of the original paintings and the text which accompanied each one. Please remember I wrote this in 1988 when I was much younger than I am today.

The Chief – oils on board, 1988. The idea for this painting came from a photograph which my father has of a local chief who used to visit our mission-station. He was dressed as a European and carried a modern ‘wireless’, but he also carried a traditional spear. The painting points to the inherent conflict in modern African life between the traditional ways, and the secularisation which invariably comes with Western technology. It is a conflict  involving all areas of life. The consequences of losing a balance between the old ways and the new ways could be very serious. The Chief is given a kind of universal significance by the earth-like dome on which he stands. The confused background suggests the whirlwind nature of the conflict that he is in, although the rich colours could also suggest the passionate history of the African people. The single leg could imply the distorting and crippling effect that Western civilisation is having on the lives of ordinary Africans, as well as the way in which the new ways undermine traditional authority structures.

The Woman – oils on board, 1988. This painting was based on a quote from David Lamb’s book, The Africans, which states: ‘The African woman produces 70 percent of the food grown on the continent… women are responsible for gathering wood, raising children and harvesting crops.’ In other words, women in Africa carry a very oppressive work load. However, the analysis goes deeper than this. Most of the aid send to Africa is aimed at employing and helping men; power is put into the hands of men. It is likely that this is one of the reasons why aid has been so ineffectual in Africa. More could be achieved by empowering women instead. The style and significance of the symbols is similar to that of The Chief. Again, she is given universal significance, and the baby, hoe and wood indicates her role. The empty hand is waiting to be filled. The stormy background could be gathering conflict, as women gain a measure of consciousness and challenge traditional roles and contemporary aid schemes.

Picture of Poverty – oils on board, 1988. This painting is based on a photograph my father took of a starving woman in an area only 50km away from our mission-station. We delivered food supplies to the stricken region. The distorted nature of the woman’s face and arms shows the way that poverty and hunger can destroy the humanity of people. The inappropriate nature of much aid (coca-cola aid) is shown by the half-eaten five dollar bill and the coke can. The ambiguous nature of media attention is hinted at by the TV image and its life-line to the woman’s head. The background and style is pessimistic, heightened by the setting sun. The contribution of civil violence is hinted at by the US Army dress that she is wearing; in many parts of Africa, famines are exacerbated by continuing armed conflict. The picture challenges policy-makers to find better methods of helping people who are starving in absolute poverty.

The Coca Cola Wars – oils on board, 1988. This picture is an investigation into the positive and negative contributions of multi-national companies to Africa’s problems. It also looks at the effect that both repressive and revolutionary violence has on ordinary Africans. While multi-nationals often bring capital and employment, they also tend to rely on oppressive structures to keep them as high profit ventures. This can lead to a situation where the government has to use widespread terror tactics to quell opposition. This in turn, can lead to revolutionary groups employing the same tactics to fight the government. The style is based on several African artists who used to come knocking on our door trying to sell their paintings. It is a very honest style that indicates a specific world view. There is no divide between earth and sky but all the specifics are outlined. This indicates how everything has its place in the scheme of things. The colours are flat, there is no shading, which again indicates a world view where concepts are easily identified. Also, the size of the human figures relative to the huts, cow and cart also indicates a world view where humans are important, although not absolute.

The Beast They Call the Revolution – oils on board, 1988. This painting was inspired by the words of a Bruce Cockburn song: ‘See the loaded eyes of the children too/ trying to make the best of it the way kids do/ One day you’re going to rise from your habitual feast/ to find yourself staring down the throat of the beast/ they call the revolution’. Throughout my painting project, I began to see how bleak the future looks for poor nations. Although I am a strict pacifist, I began to realise that if I was faced by similar life conditions, revolutionary action would become a very real temptation. I do not condone revolution of a violent nature, but I do sympathise with it. The hungry naked boy, with a bloated belly caused by malnutrition, does not think of violent revolution. His eyes are innocent. But as he grows up and his life chances don’t change, the banner of revolution will beckon. He is a universal child representing millions in the same situation who have grown up in an age of revolution. This picture is both defiant and mournful, but the small flowers of peace wait by his feet. Maybe they are also the flowers of hope.

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Guns, Dogs and the Weapons Effect

It is my custom on a clear summer’s day to go cycling along the beautiful Ystwyth Trail near where I live. The track attracts walkers, cyclists and no small number of dog owners, all eager to experience the peace and tranquility of the idyllic Welsh countryside. Over the years, I have been attacked and molested by quite a few ill-disciplined and poorly controlled dogs, a situation which I find very distressing due to more than one childhood trauma where I was savagely attacked by a rabid dog while growing up in rural Africa where rabies is prevalent. Such unprovoked attacks greatly disturb my peace of mind, ruin my experience and make me nervous of going cycling again for several days after.

Recently, I was cycling down the hill onto the track and a sleek grey sheep dog leaped out of a newly arrived car and sprinted towards me with its teeth bared. I couldn’t stop due to my momentum and the dog met me half way down the hill. It immediately started snapping at my ankles, all the while snarling and barking loudly. I nearly fell off the bike and had to shout and kick out at the dog for a couple of minutes before it finally gave up the chase and went back to its ineffectual and unapologetic owners. Needless to say, this spoiled my ride from the very beginning. I was already in a foul mood when I returned back to the start of the track an hour later, and things got worse when the same dog was there. It spotted me again and sprinted towards me for another piece of my leg. This time however, I leaped off my bike stood my ground and shouted obscenities at it at the top of my voice. It stopped in some surprise, and its owner ran up and held it while I got on my bike and continued on my way. Needless to say, I had some choice words for the owners, and I haven’t seen them on the track again!

The incident really upset me and was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I decided I wouldn’t stand for it any longer, and I canvassed the opinion of friends and family as to possible remedies. This produced a number of suggestions ranging from the hilarious to the downright disturbing. In the end, I decided to buy a sonic blaster – a kind of pistol with a cone barrel that emits a high frequency sound that is meant to startle a dog or a cat and make them stop in their tracks – and carry it with me on my rides. I felt it would be more humane than carrying a stick or using pepper spray, but would also provide the maximum level of protection.

The interesting thing is that once I was armed with the sonic gun, I quickly realized that I also carried a new attitude with me on my rides. Whereas in the past I had always slowed down and tried to act in a sensitive manner so as not to alarm or upset the dog unnecessarily, I now found that I actually hoped for a confrontation and made no efforts at all to avoid one. Not only did I want to use my new sonic gun, if for no other reason than to see how it worked, but I now felt that I no longer needed to be concerned about the needs of the dog. If the dog didn’t like what I was doing, I would just zap it and go on my way. I expect I also wanted to get some pay-back for all the times that (other) dogs had attacked me and upset my peace of mind. I would race towards the dog and look aggressively at it, daring it to bark or attack.

Disturbed by my new attitude, I consulted my psychologist friends and soon learned that my experience was probably a reflection of the weapons effect – a condition in which the presence of weapons makes people more aggressive. The fact is, in this case, simply carrying a weapon (albeit a mild, non-lethal weapon) made me approach potential conflict situations with a new, more aggressive attitude. No longer did I need to try and resolve tricky situations with tact and sensitivity, and avoid violent confrontation for my own sake, but now I could escalate and aggress without worrying about the consequences. Simply carrying the sonic gun made me a more aggressive person.

I can’t help thinking that this is probably a good reason not to have armed police and to try harder to limit the number of weapons in society. If people carry weapons, the presence of the weapon and sense of surety it gives them will mean that they may be much more likely to approach potential conflicts and confrontations aggressively. Instead of trying their hardest to resolve the situation nonviolently, and developing their skills in interpersonal negotiation and peaceful conflict resolution, they will rely on coercion and force to create compliance and get their way. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that countries where the police carry weapons have the highest rates of killing members of the public. I would include Tasers here. I think they are used far too often, and with terrible consequences. Tasers have actually killed hundreds of people around the world over the past decade. In fact, they cannot be assumed to be non-lethal weapons because it is not possible to get a full medical history before using them in a confrontation: most deaths from Taser use come when the victim has a pre-existing (sometimes undiagnosed) heart condition.

I also can’t help thinking that this may explain why the most heavily armed countries of the world are also the most aggressive and have the most violent conflicts. If you have a very powerful military there is little incentive to try really hard to resolve a conflict peacefully or struggle to find a diplomatic solution. If things don’t go your way, you can always bomb or invade your opponent.

The claim that guns don’t kill people, but rather that people kill people, is dangerously misleading: guns make it far more likely that people will kill people rather than resolve their differences peacefully. This is why I think every society and every person would be better off if there were fewer weapons in the world. At present, there are 600 million handguns circulating in the world, and thousands more produced in over 100 countries every single day. They kill a person every minute of every day, and they have a shelf-life of hundreds of years. This is why I support the principle of disarmament, the strictest possibly gun controls within every country, and the proper regulation of the international arms trade.

In the end, because I didn’t like the way it made me feel and act, I stopped carrying my sonic gun and went back to trying my hardest to avoid giving any dogs a reason to attack me. I heard that a squirt of water in the face will also do the trick, so now I just get out my water bottle when I approach a dangerous looking dog. I figure it’s a small price to pay to make the world a tiny bit less aggressive and confrontational, and to try and to do my bit to make the culture a little less violent.

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Why I Riot

People are saying I am just a violent hooligan, a mindless thug, a criminal, an anarchist. They’re saying I lack proper respect for authority and for people’s property. They say I am engaging in wanton destruction and causing mayhem just because I’m wicked. People are saying I am part of a small, criminally-minded minority who should be locked up. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am just a worthless piece of shit. Maybe I should be locked away forever, punished, excluded. But what do I really care what ‘people’ think?

There are reasons why I riot. You might not like them, but they’re mine.

I riot because I’m angry. Anger envelopes me like a blanket every day of my life. I’m angry because I’m poor, I’ve always been poor, and I know I will never be able to afford all those nice things people are supposed to have. I’m angry because my life is shit and I know it’s always going to be shit. I’m angry because I know that there’s no future for me; no one will ever give me a decent job or a hand-up in life. I will live in the same shitty housing that my family have always lived in, drawing down the same shitty benefits. I’m angry because I live in a shit place full of poverty, crime, vandalism, gangs, garbage, grime and neglect. Most days I take my anger out on myself; I engage in a wide and creative array of self-destructive behavior. But sometimes, like last night, I direct my anger outwards. I let my rage take over, and for a brief moment, I feel a profound sense of release.

I riot because I hate the police, and because I know that the police hate me. They’re racist and brutal, and they treat me like scum every day of my life, always coming around blaming me for everything bad that happens, harassing me when I walk down the street. I hate them because they think they’re God and they don’t have to answer to anyone for what they do. I hate them because they show me no respect. In a riot, you can fight back against the police; you can stand up to them and tell them how you really feel.

I riot because I am nobody, nothing, less than nothing. I am invisible, a ghost in this city, this country, this world. People don’t see me, and don’t give a shit about me or what’s going to happen to me. My parents don’t care, my teachers don’t care, the politicians don’t care, the police don’t care; no one gives a fuck about me and my life. If people do ever see me, they don’t really see me; they just see an anti-social, worthless, feral teenager; they see a danger to society, a threat to the peace. If no one cares about me, why should I care about anyone else?

I riot because no one ever listens to me. No one has ever really listened to me; nobody hears what I have to say. But when I riot, it seems the whole world stops and listens. My riot is my voice. It is the expression of my feelings, the sound of inarticulate rage which I cannot express any other way. I don’t expect anyone will understand what I’m saying, I cannot put it into nice words; but I feel the need to say it anyway. I have to let it out somehow, and right now, music, or drugs, or vandalism is not enough.

I riot because I feel powerless every day of my life. I’m not in control of what happens to me; other people are always deciding about my life, telling me what’s right for me – teachers, cops, social workers, pastors, politicians, media commentators. When I riot, I feel powerful, I feel in control. It may only last a few hours, but for those brief moments when I smash something or burn something, I feel like a free person in control of my own destiny. I feel like somebody. When I riot, I feel like a real man.

I riot because it is the most exciting thing that has happened to me in forever. It’s like being high, but way better: the adrenaline, the sheer thrill and terror of fighting with the police, burning shit down, smashing and stealing, running, hiding. What would I be doing otherwise? Watch the tellie? Studying? Hanging out with my friends on the corner? Smoking dope? Fuck off! This is so much better than the mind-numbing tedium of my regular life where I simply exist from day to day with nothing to look forward to. In my usual life, I am like the walking dead, a real zombie; there’s absolutely nothing exciting to do around here, especially when you have no money. I will live on this excitement for ages.

I riot because when I’m in a group with my friends, we sometimes egg each other on. I’ve done things with them that I would never have done on my own. It’s a group thing; I feel braver and stronger when we’re together. We try to impress each other; we give each other respect. It’s how I get my esteem, the only way I get some respect.

I riot because it might allow me to loot a few shops. I know I could never afford all those beautiful things everyone else seems to have, but in a riot, you can just take them. I need some new trainers, a new phone, a laptop, clothes, money, games. It’s a consumer society, my friend. We have all got to have these things, otherwise we won’t be happy. I just want to be happy.

I riot because I have absolutely nothing to lose. You want to lock me up for it? Go ahead. It means nothing to a nothing like me.

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