And I think I may have found my people. Please don't alert them. My French isn't good enough to say for certain whether this advert definitely didn't have to be over three minutes long, but I get it. It's a nice little change, I guess. I leave France tomorrow. I hope I've given you a taste. Here's another.
Apparently the inverting of town signs is nationwide: a protest organised by local farmers. Isn't it suave?
"I am sitting here now with a bag of boiling water on my heart"
So the twenty-one-year-old Orson Welles cut Ophelia almost entirely from his hour-long Hamlet it turns out, only introducing her ten minutes from the end to drown her so that he could do the grave-digger scene. That's quite a cut. Let's put a pin in that then, and rejoin the Womens' Revolution in Iran. Among the death sentences and other horrors of state retaliation following the death in custody of Mahsa Ahmini after her arrest for inappropriate headwear, there are also sanitary pads being put up to blind security cameras now. Instagram's translation of Sareh Ghomi's brilliant post above provides both illumination and a poetry of its own, but take any gendered pronouns with a pinch of salt because I think Farsi only has the one. Thanks to my friend Faren for sharing this:
"This is the women's
revolution, I mean this picture, I am sitting right now with a bag of
boiling water on my heart and rolling in pain to myself and thinking why
I shouldn't have seen this one piece all these years, special black
bags that when you said: a pack of purple blinks, please! The local
superintendent wouldn’t hand you in that thick, smelly black bag. I
mean, during her pregnancy, the path of the drawer from the room to the
bathroom had to be put like a bartender in your pocket or pull your
pants and shirt over it so that the male elements of the family and
friends would not see it and get upset! I mean my friend who never threw
his used tape in the trash bin at his workplace and took it with him to
an urban trash bin because he thought the environment was too
masculine! That day when your boyfriend, after a big party, wants to
clean the toilet, but his laziness in putting the bag in the bucket and
sticking one of the same used ones to the bottom of the bucket, makes
him face a scene he had never seen before and sound Don't forget to
throw it up! They don't know what winged means! They don't know what to
buy when you're in trouble and slamming the door and wall! Or even
ashamed to buy and load a super so that the important package is not
visible, sometimes out of kindness buy diapers like because you're in so
much pain. Sanitary tape is a white fragrant piece that prevents the
bleeding from spreading, and right here in this picture, it's glued
itself to the wagon camera to stop the bleeding so it doesn't get lost!
So the female body and all that's connected with it is changing user,
it's taking over, it's breaking all taboos, see this white piece stuck
to the camera and remember to be safe you are safe too. #women_life_freedom"
When I first returned to this blog* after Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory I thought I'd just remain on twitter to post links and provide a little daily – but potentially always topical – keening over our exit from the EU inspired by Megan Anram's daily "Today was the day Donald trump finally became president" posts. Initially, I thought spending less time on everyone's favourite hellsite was simply for my own good, but when I watched Lindsay Ellis' video about her own cancelling last April I realised maybe the problem wasn't just me, but twitter's own business model, which now required the active promotion of upsetting content in order to keep our attention. Capitalism depended on growth, and twitter had grown as big as it was going to get. So I pinned this to my profile:
Yes, stay cool. Because Fascism Thrives On Division.
Then, just over a week ago, Elon Musk finally bought the site or app or whatever it is for forty-four billion dollars.
And immediately sacked its content moderators – one week before the American midterm elections, and exactly one day before a terrorist attack on a migrant processing centre in Dover followed by our reappointed Home Secetary's warning of an "invasion" of the south coast by refugees – and I was initially nonplussed by commentators passing the popcorn and using phrases like "it's going to be a wild ride." I mean, I get it. I write, and sentences must be finished, and lot of this blog is just me sharing stuff I find ineresting and then realising I should probably provide some kind of commentary, and "it's going to be a wild ride" is a handy sign off. But it still seemed a weird way to describe the rise of Fascism.
But maybe that wasn't what was being described. Maybe those commentators anticipating twitter's downfall were looking forward to the fall of the rise of Fascism, certainly something I'd like to live long enough to see... That's maybe not entirely true. What I mean is, given that I have to keep on living, I would very much like the fall of the rise of Fascism to happen at some point during that.
Has the word Fascism gone a bit weird on me now? Maybe.
Anyway, here's some chat.
And I was talking to my uncle Gordie last week, and learning how well his children's generation have been rallying around each other, and how much help is now provided – ar at least seen to be needed – which wasn't when I was their age, and I have to remember that I'm living to see other, far better things also on the rise.
* Here's how this post originally began:
When I first started
Okay
actually, before I continue I'm going to let you a little into how
tediously I go about writing these posts: I've just started writing this,
about four minutes ago, three of which have been spent arriving at the
word "tediously" which I might still change, and it would
normally now be about an hour before I looked back over all this and finally noticed
how... again, I'm going to spend a while now trying to find a synonym
for "bad"... let's just stick with "bad" then... how bad those opening
four words are, only as it happens this time I noticed almost
immediately. "When I first started"? Surely that's a... I'll look this up...
tautology? Doesn't starting mean doing something for the first time
anyway? And yet it sounds okay to my ear when I say it out loud. Maybe I
just like the sound of my voice too much. "When I first started..."
Okay.
When I first started returning to this blog to post daily
Oh bloody hell....
"First
started returning"? That sounds terrible. What can that mean? But no,
back in December of 2019 I returned to the blog after a bit of an
absence and I started posting daily, which I hadn't done before, and
then there was a break in early 2021, and now I'm blogging daily again.
Hence "first", hence "returning"... Yeah that"started" is redundant.
When I first returned to this blog to post daily... I've honestly forgotten now what I was going to say.
My friend Faren is almost finished packing. Moving tomorrow. As I mentioned before she's had a testing fortnight, and I offered to help with her boxes, but she asked me to go to Trafalgar Square instead. So I went and I took these videos and photographs and far more.
A demonstration was being held to honour Mahsa Amini, the woman murdered by Iranian police for her inappropriate headwear. People were calling for revolution, and saying her name, and angry and smiling. It was glorious. It had the quality of glory. The Square was in full bloom.
I saw a new statue on the fourth plinth, which I thought had been reserved for the Queen. But this was of Malawian preacher and freedom fighter John Chilembwe. It had gone up three days ago.
The work of sculptor Samson Kambalu, it recreates a photograph taken in 1914 of Chilembwe refusing to take his hat off in front of the white colonialist over whom he now towers. Now he was looking on. Chilembwe would later stage his own uprising in Malawi.
I remember when Boris Johnson was mayor, he tried to turn this plinth into a war memorial. Without meaning a shred of disrespect to the late Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park, I'm happy that didn't happen. Particularly today. As I say, full bloom.
Seguéing from Stooky Bill to Lembit Öpik is a cheap shot I know, but the Space Nation of Asgardia broadcast its first ever Live Weekly Q&A with the Chairman of Parliament over a month ago now, and I've been meaning to record minutes of it on here ever since. The questions potentially raised about the founding of an international space community may be more pertinent now than ever. Also, today is the founder's birthday! Happy Birthday Dr. Igor! Also I've been bingeing For All Mankind (and I've been trying to binge Foundation, but there are so many space guns!) So let's go...
00:00 – Live stream countdown starts.
10:04 – We begin not with the Q&A but an absolutely must-see promotional film. If you don't already know what Asgardia is this might not be the best introduction, so just to bring newcomers up to speed...
As first explained back in this post, the "dream driven space nation" is currently just a memory stick with its own national anthem, orbiting the Earth, whose "Head of Nation" and "Chairman of Parliament" –
former missile tycoon Doctor Igor Ashurbeyli, and former Liberal Democrat MP and
Cheeky Girl consort Lembit Öpik– are now keen to organize, among other
things, the first ever child born in zero gravity.
Obviously this enterprise raises some interesting questions, such as what might drive this new nation's economy? Well we now have an answer: Franchising! Really, the promo is quite something.
Now let's meet Opik...
12:04 - Q&A with the Chairman of Parliament begins! There's no sound. However it's hard to tell if anyone knows this. There's also no Chairman of Parliament.
None of these people is Lembit Opik.
13:39 – We have sound! But still no Chairman. It's not really clear if it's started. Some people are still trying to find the link.
15:29 – This flashes up for a second some reason:
...Which is fun.
15:30 – "Who's going to start the meeting?" Still no Chairman. Maybe Lembit missed the new time. There are Asgardians all around the world and it must be genuinely hard to arrange a globally convenient window: "This hour is not popular for many others." (By the way, despite it seeming to be the first language of absolutely noone pesent,
everyone is speaking English which is really appreciated.) Is it possible to contact Mr. Lembit? "A warning, maybe?"
16:21 – "Don't worry. We're going to send the security people to go and get him. Give me a minute," jokes an unseen "Aida M." It's all very good humoured. I don't wish to misrepresent this. Asgardian Mayoral candidate Ferda Inan suggests that migh have been an Agents of Shield reference, possibly for the record. More logging on. Everyone starts comparing their climates.
18:36 – Clearly unable to conact Lembit, the Chair of the Executive Committee Salvos Mouzakitis logs back on to get the ball rolling. (I've no idea what all these titles mean.) SESSION BEGINS!
Salvos really seems to know what he's talking about, so this all gets a bit harder to follow, but here are the topics covered:
18:45 – A hundred and forty four amendments to the Asgardian Constitution have been proposed at a recent summit of the "Supreme Space Council". No amendment was rejected on the grounds of not being liked it, only if it were deemed "non-constitutional". Salvos praises the professional focus of the four members of the Supreme Space Council who turned up – ("I didn't expect it, to be honest") – but he doesn't have the results of their vote because he's on holiday.
23:24 – There is to be a meeting of the Asgardian Legislative Forum on the twenty sixth. Salvos will attempt to participate again, at least in part, but he is still meant to be out of office, and is really beginning to piss off his wife. "I am in danger, real danger that my wife will divorce me," and his wife is a lawyer. Among topics up for discussion at the forum will be the decentralisation of Asgardia, as the franchising plan has hit a snag it seems: Apparently China is turning out knock-offs. 25:00 – That's really all Salvos can bring to the table right now, as Lembit still hasn't shown up and he hadn't prepared to chair this meeting, so the floor is given to Ferda Inan.
25:28 – Ferda was hoping for more gossip. Salvos says he wants to wait for Lembit. Ferda has no more questions and returns the floor to Salvos. "Thank you."
26:29 – Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Seref Kaplan has a question: Can we have subtitles? Salvos segues onto the topic of the translations, in particular the – understandably stretched – but
sloppy translations being provided in the lead up to Asgardia's
forthcoming constitutional elections. To further complicate matters, mistakes have been spotted in the English originals, "Head of Government" and "Head of Nation" being used interchangeably, for example, when these are entirely separate pillars of Asgardian Government, and differentiating between them will prove vital if the Asgardian electorate is to determine what either of them eventually
mean.
An announcement is expected from Lembit when the first Asgardian books are to be appear.
A succesful Persian translation of the Asgardian consitution has now been completed by "Navid".
31:08 – Tax law. Salvos is personally not in favour of Asgardian taxes as Asgardians aleady pay taxes in their native countries (and presumably because Asgardia doesn't actually do anything yet – also isn't there a joining fee?) If there are to be taxes however, Salvos prefers taxing gross profit rover net because it's less work.
33:43 – Once Asgardia leaves zoom and physical sittings resume, "Fernando" has proposed rotating the countries in which these take place. Salvos loves travelling, but of course there are visa considerations and also not everyone can afford it. Basic stuff, cooly considered.
35:20 – Fernando has also suggested the Asgardian website could be improved.
36:20 – MP Bridget. She proposes Canada for a physical sitting: "They tend to have much lower standards from what I'm aware of as far as entry into their nation." I'm guessing Bridget's from America, although from my own personal gap year experiences I can tell you she's not wrong.
She also suggests free language classes as a perk for Asgardian residents. Apparently there are plans afoot for an official Asgardian Academy.
39:22 – Seref has the floor again. He has uploaded a Turkish translation of the constitution to the website, but just wants everyone to know it's not a translation of the most recent version. Seref is very on board with Bridget's free langauage class idea. They could might a real draw. Or even just a separate enterprise, open to non-residents. He also proposes Turkey for the physical sittings, especially if it's off season.
44:45 – Salvos expresses doubts about how easy it will be to get a lecturer to give regular language classes for free, but would love to go to Istanbul.
47:33 – Ferda again. Apparently nobody should worry about how the Academy will be funded, and volunteers are welcome to upload educational videos to it. Salvos suggests preparing a promotional intro: "Make it nice." (Was Ferda behind the Asgardian promo?) Ferda: "Done already." Salvos: "Really? Great!" Ferda: "Why not?" I couldn't hear the topic chosen for the Academy's first lecture. Visas?
50:35 – Aida M has the floor: Not all countries have the internet. Could these classes be put onto a video or CD and posted out? Also not all countries speak English. Also either you've got to pay people or not. Also Aida has been asking for a while for sign language translations.
53:26 – Aida still has the floor but this has flashed up for a couple of seconds:
Some absolute crackers there.
53:50 – Salvos supports Aida's proposal and recognises how vital accessibility must be for the Asgardian
project to succeed. However, he points out there are as many different
sign langauges as there are spoken languages. "That's going to be a problem."
56:15 – Ferda says that sign languages aren't actually too varied. It's more like an accent thing.
58:30 – Aida says you have to start somewhere. There seems a general consensus then that "English" sign language will be something to look at. (The inverted commas are my own because I'm not sure British and American Sign languages are the same.) Salvos will bring this up with Lembit.
59:40 – Apparently there's a lot of talk happening in the chat about going to Canada. Salvos does not necessarily support it. I get the impression he's spent quite a lot more time on here than he meant to. Session ends. "Adios, amigos."
Lembit remained a no show, but two days later recorded the video at the top of this post.
It's been a busy week for me, but busier for my friend Faren. She's moving flats, which is always quite emotionally draining, and also working 12 hour shifts as social media correspondent for BBC Persian – a job which condemns her to immediate arrest as a western spy if she tries to revisit her home country of Iran. Last night, while I was continually reloading iplayer to see if I was on EastEnders, she was covering a possible revolution.
Here's Faren explaining for the Turkish Service some shows of solidarity for Mahsa Amani, the Iranian woman who died last week after being dragged into a van and beaten by "morality police" for incorrectly covering her hair, a death which coincides with the failing health (and rumoured passing) of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenie, as well as a meeting of the United Nations. The UN is now calling for an investigation into Amani's death. Iranians are calling for more. If "calling for" is the right phrase.
Hence the 12 hour shifts. These scenes are extraordinary. Faren's very busy. I asked her to translate the chants. In hindsight that probably wasn't the smartest thing to ask someone with parents in Iran over a messaging app.
I've adored John Oliver on here before, but never been able to squeeze in how much I've grown to love and really value Seth Meyers. When he first took over the orange and teal chat show Late Night, all he really wanted to do it seemed was talk about Saturday Night Live, where he'd hosted "Weekend Update". But somewhere along the line, a second topical segment was introduced on top of the opening run of one-liners, "A Closer Look", and by the time Trump took office, this segment had grown from a four-minute bit, to a nightly monologue running sometimes to a quarter of an hour, more topical material than even Jon Stewart's Daily Show. "Closer Look" became how I get my news from America. It kept up, and backed by extraordinary research, it still rings with the clarity of a closing argument, while the real News seems oddly committed to propitiating contextless insanity. I don't think Britain has anything like it, it is all up on youtube, and it's a frankly invaluable resource.
When the pandemic hit, my admiration for Meyers grew even more.
I'd always thought he'd had the best writers – who, like Fallon in the seat before him, he seemed happy to foreground – but no late-night host adjusted better to performing in isolation: Meyers moved to his attic, and then to his in-laws, populating both new workplaces with a background head canon of talking portraits, mysterious small doors, and self-replicating copies of Colleen McCullough's "The Thorn Birds". More crucially, he didn't wait for laughs that never came. His entire delivery changed to please only himself, and you can still see this change now he's back in the studio performing to a crew of ten. "A Closer Look", whose punchlines Meyers now powers through, is as great as ever, if not greater. Here's last night's on Matt Gaetz, featuring gorgeous footage of Trump repeatedly calling him "Rick", but included below is the chat Meyers had afterwards with John Oliver, about what might happen next, and how empty the rooms were when they started out – two comedians who've kept track having an absolute blast. I was howling.
... in five chapters. While the Government attempts to ban protests that make noise and historians who teach history, here's fifty minutes of stuff I wish I'd been taught:
Episode 1 takes us to the beginning of the eighteenth century, a huge boom in personal property, new laws, no prisons, a subsequent boom in death sentences (proving no deterrent), citizen's arrests, bounty hunters, and teflon-coated gang-lord and "Thief-Taker General" Jonathan Wild.
Episode 2 sees Wild and his growing Gangland Empire brought down by the popularity of renegade street rat and escape artist Jack "He went that-a-way" Sheppard, who plugged his own biography on the scaffold.
Episode 3 sees novelist and banned-playwright-turned-lawyer Henry Fielding rustle up both the country's first state-funded court, open to the public, and the city's first police force, assembled surreptitiously from parish constables bearing batons stuffed with arrest warrants.
Episode 4 sees Fielding's Bow Street model of law enforcement become acknowledged – if not adopted – nationwide, Henry's brother John starts to tackle the causes of crime, Elizabeth Fry attempts prison reform, and, facing an age of revolution, Home Secretary Robert Peele considers instituting a force trained to arrest people without killing them.
Finally, despite a strong popular distaste for the very foreign idea of a salaried police force, Episode 5 sees Peele gets his wish in 1829...
"Parliament was even ready to fund the police force directly through
taxes, which was the single largest thing that had held the
establishment of a force back. They were also starting to get an inkling
that some things could simply not be outsourced or made to pay for
themselves – an ethos that had ceated Jonathan Wild. It was that same ethos, by the way, that had led to the
colonial taxes that lost Britain the American Colonies, allowed the East
India Company to run amok in India, and would later hobble efforts to
combat the 'Irish Potato Famine'. A lot of problems in this era arose
from British Parliament just flat out not wanting to pay for stuff while
still reaping whatever benefits it gave them."
Imagine being taught that.
And how is it that, despite an A Level in History, I only heard about the South Sea Bubble from Not The Nine O'Clock News, "The Great Hunger"
from The Pogues and the East India Company from a joke in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, ?
I
think some hoardings have come down, because I don't remember seeing
this before. Maybe it's a school. When I linked to the post from last
year about the vigil for Breonna Taylor on Thursday, I hadn't realised how close we were to the anniversary of her death.
It was tonight.
Blackfriars
Bridge has become noticeably colourful. I'm glad these new streetlights have
decided to fake a little sodium gold. Skateboarders have improvised
ramps on the passage up to Saint Paul's.
I shared the hope felt on the night of that vigil.
And while, one year later, still noone's been convicted for her
shooting, I felt some of that hope realised in the confirmation of
Merrick Garland as US Attorney General on Wednesday. The following day I asked a friend who lives in Richmond, among other things... I'll go and check the thread...
yes, I asked "Is it too painful to report, or just too hard and
useless"
"Absolutely useless" she replied.
"Nothing will happen"
"all the policemen ive come across are disgusting"
Here's a pawn shop with a scowling statue covered in carvings, and a
full suit of armor for knight and steed. While I was taking this, the vigil for Sarah Everard
was taking on a very different feel to Breonna Taylor's. But I hope
real good can come yet again from what has been made visible.
"July 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Department of Justice... Celebrating DOJ's 150th year reminds us of the origins of the Department, which was founded during Reconstruction, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to secure the civil rights promised by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. The first Attorney General appointed by President Grant to head the new Department led it in a concerted battle to protect black voting rights from the violence of white supremacists, successfully prosecuting hundreds of cases against members of the Ku Klux Klan... That mission remains urgent because we do not yet have equal justice. Communities of colour and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system... If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on January 6th."
A little scrawling had turned up on the south end of Waterloo Bridge yesterday evening. When I was last here, in the hours of darkness, I'd seen some of it go up. As with the south bank further west, the evening I wandered down to Vauxhall, I'd felt that night like the only one out over the age of thirty.
I remembered how much the scene reminded me of eighties' film dystopias, and how much as a child I'd looked forward to actually living in one. So stimulating! I mean, obviously it would be nice to feel society at large wasn't breaking down, but – at the risk of sounding like the People's Poet – I'd favour this over a future that "kept kids off the streets", as we used to say back in the day. I did wonder though, going back to that night, what it was about pre-lockdown London that had kept the kids away. Was it just other people's evenings out?
And then yesterday I passed this:
Oh yeah, of course. There had been an area specifically designated for everything I'd seen in the night, but it was now fenced off. That was certainly one explanation.
I have so many takeaways from this video – I always have takeaways from Natalie Wynn's work, they're more like solo shows than youtube videos, a full evening's watch requiring a wind-down – but trying to express those takeways in neat little titles, like most bigotry is actually backlash, or projection isn't empathy, won't do this fantastic piece justice, because the reason ContraPoints' pieces are so long is Wynn refuses to pretend anything is simple, or anyone an abstract. Also she likes to bathe in milk and take cocktail breaks, but that's all part of the care package. Backlash is always making a push for respectability, in the guise of "debate", but the idea that liberation must be earnt by argument, rather than simply granted, is surely one of the crappiest our culture has clung to. Argument's not how you understand something, understanding requires love and study. Not that love and understanding need go hand in hand; if you don't understand something, just send love on ahead. But Wynn – both a trans woman, and the receiver of sustained abuse from trans twitter herself – tries harder than most to understand, and she does it with love and opulence.
"When you dehumanise the villains, you become unable... to recognise... the villain... within...
How is she though? She needs a hot toddy is what she needs."
My friend Faren is almost finished packing. Moving tomorrow. As I mentioned before she's had a testing fortnight, and I offered to help with her boxes, but she asked me to go to Trafalgar Square instead. So I went and I took these videos and photographs and far more.
I remember when Boris Johnson was mayor, he tried to turn this plinth into a war memorial. Without meaning a shred of disrespect to the late Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park, I'm happy that didn't happen. Particularly today. As I say, full bloom.
Enlarge for gulls.
