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Welcome to Outside the Gates
Why 'Outside the Gates'? There are many gates isolating people from each other. 'Gated communities' being the most obvious, where the affluent try to segregate themselves from the poor.
The most insidious though are the gates within our minds which separate us from, make us
think we are different to, even better than the 'other'.
Yet we all experience the same emotions, feelings, wants and needs irrespective of gender, colour, race or creed.
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Thursday, 28 June 2007 |
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"Writing is a process of learning". The Poet, Michael Hamburger died just recently, on the 7th June this year. To him I owe an immense debt. In the mid 1970s I got hold of a book of literary criticism of his, 'The Truth of Poetry - Tensions in Modern Poetry from Baudelaire to the 1960s'. A phrase from that book has never left me, especially whilst writing - "writing is a process of learning".
For a neophyte writer who had seen his knowledge start to grow from mere juvenile jottings first attempted in, of all places, a German gaol just 2 or 3 years earlier, the phrase had a visceral impact. What I had been experiencing from my own experiments with words was a universal truth. A confirmation I was not alone and strange, that all could grow intellectually, change the trajectory of their life and start to try and live a new morality through the practise of writing.
Other books before and since have also brought with them an emotional recognition that my understandings and exposure to life were not exceptional, but nothing with such gut intensity as the phrase - "writing is a process of learning".
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Totnes and My Parking Traumas |
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Wednesday, 13 June 2007 |
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I received a parking ticket on Saturday 02.06.07 in Totnes. I had parked the car in one of the disabled parking bays at the top of the town - a bank of three outside RoyBern newsagent where I usual buy the daily paper, tobacco etc. before stopping off at the Red Wizard for breakfast. There I was, reading the paper, supping tea, hacking on a fag when told I had a parking ticket. Well, the look on my face must have been a sight.
The car I am the keeper of is a Motability car and is registered as such with the DVLA. I have mobility problems due to multiple sclerosis. The car was legally parked and displaying the required information - a blue card and 'clock' which were attached to the drop down passenger sun-shade and fully visible in the windscreen a foot above the special Motability tax disc. The people who accompanied me to the car noticed them immediately. Perhaps the Police Constable missed them. The offence thought committed? PK59; 'parking in a disabled bay without lawful authority'.
Anyway the displayed blue card and penalty notice stuck to the window were photographed and of course the ticket will be challenged.
There were a few incidents prior to receiving the parking ticket which might be of interest.
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Friday, 08 June 2007 |
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The rhetoric against Iran has been building over the last few weeks. As the latest report from the IAEA on Iran's nuclear enrichment was due to be delivered to the UN Security Council on Wed 23.05.07, the Guardian front page on Tues 22.05.07 was nothing short of a propaganda piece for an attack on Iran. Nearly all of the report was quotes from unnamed USA officials in Baghdad and Washington claiming Iran was responsible for the attacks on US and British forces in Iraq, as if an illegal invasion and occupation couldn't possibly generate an indigenous Iraqi resistance. The response to the article was quick and sharp from Media Workers Against War , Media Lens on the Guardian's comment is free . The journalistic integrity of Simon Tisdall has been severely compromised in requesting the interview and presenting it as an advert for another war. Ironically, if headlined as a world exclusive and an exposé of the USA propaganda campaign to win support for attacking Iran this summer, the body of the report would not have needed a single word changed and could have received high praise and probably won prizes. This dubious story is just part of the recent push by the Anglo/American alliance to ratchet up the level of tension about and in the Middle East.
We had the Marines and Sailors being captured in disputed waters by Iran which resulted in a humiliation for blair and desperate Naval PR spin to divert the story onto the Sailors/Marines being paid by the press to bare all after their return. Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail | Read more... |
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The Anglo/American Alliance and Alternatives Part 2 |
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
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The last essay was incomplete, had been rushed for posting before the Scots Parliamentary, Welsh Assembly and English local authority elections. I think I made it clear that the Labour Party were going to get hammered and could lose control in all. Well they got hammered - not hard to predict really - but didn't quite lose control in all. Nearly, and enough to allow the SNP's Alec Salmond to become Scotland's First Minister and Plaid Cymru seems to be heading for the same in Wales. These were Labour Party heartlands. The liberals lost seats as well in the English local councils, with the Tories gaining. It seems people want a change and in England the Tories are the challengers.
Anyway the essay was ostensibly about the Anglo/American Alliance, but I started to wander and have a go at the mainstream media with its immense influence in reinforcing a culture of low expectation and shallow ambition for our abilities as social beings to improve on what we were or are, on what we can become; that human nature is fixed, is brutish in attitude and action to others, is misanthropic, that we loath and hence fear ourselves. It being better to live believing such nonsense than attempt to disrupt and turn-over this dystopia on the chance of unleashing all the horrors that inhabit the psyches of the demonised-by-media poor. Or that's the impression I get - I don't watch telly, so what do I know. Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail | Read more... |
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"What I Heard about Iraq." |
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Saturday, 12 May 2007 |
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Last night, 11th May 2007, BBC Radio 4 broadcast what is probably the best radio play on the war in Iraq and is available to listen to again for the next 7 days. From the BBC web page for the Friday Play:
'What I Heard about Iraq
Eliot Weinberger's long and continuing prose poem draws on reports, newspapers, official utterances and eye-witness accounts to paint a terrifying picture of the war in Iraq.
Adapted for radio by Simon Levy.
With Tony Pasqualini, Bernadette Speakes, Darcy Halsey, Marc Casabani, Ryun Yu.
Director Tim Dee.' To listen click here. You have until next Friday 18th May.
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The Anglo/American Alliance and Alternatives. Part 1 |
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Wednesday, 02 May 2007 |
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Seeing as an internet friend considers me some sort of thinking blogger I had better write some more, more often as she has requested. No better place to start than revisiting the Anglo/American relationship. An alliance that needs to be broken if humankind is to find a way forward without war. The playing out of the recent events around the 15 Marines and Sailors apprehended in disputed waters by Iran, has helped in clarifying some ideas.
As the event first started to unfold blair came out of the blue corner throwing haymakers at shadows, claiming the moral-high ground and Britain as victim in the hope to build an escalating confrontation with Iran at the behest of Bush, his praying-mate. His cowboy 'n' injuns playing-mate. Ratchetting up the tension by requiring what can only be described as unconditional and abject surrender by Iran to the Anglo/American's unilateral right, as of its might, to impose a maritime border on Iran with nautical maps drawn up by the Anglo/Americans. The safety and well being of the British Navy personnel in Iran were of no consequence in blair's considerations of how not to solve the diplomatic flare-up.
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Wednesday, 25 April 2007 |
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Blimey, this site has been honoured - "tagged" - with a 'Thinking Blogger Award' nomination. Bit of a shock that, especially the generous words explaining why from the site that nominated. But once through the surprise, it is the sort of playing while making revolution that can be serious fun. The Oscars can kiss my arse.
Thank you Mary at peacepalestine . I usually visit peacepalestine once a day and try to read everything that is posted, always hopeful of finding Gilad Atzmon's perceptive, moral analysis. I feel rather honoured being thought worthy by a blog which promotes such good writing, ideas and activity in support of the Palestinians.
Part of the rules of being tagged require that I now nominate the 5 blogs for writing which makes me think, inform them of their tag and hope they carry it on. Most of the sites I visit regularly are commentary and news collators, which keeps me upto date on world events and political interpretations and the only language is English. They don't really fit the criteria despite publishing some brilliant writers. Comments (1) | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail | Read more... |
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Monday, 02 April 2007 |
Getting tense innit. What with the Iranians arresting 15 British Marines and Sailors in disputed waters after the British had boarded a dhow to search for contraband cars. Blair has produced a map of the 'maritime boundaries' which Craig Murray, former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, calls a fake . He should know, having had direct responsibility for the sea boundaries when Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1989 to 1992 . The Iranians are quite understandably a bit touchy at the moment about their international borders. There are wars going on in two neighbouring countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, being conducted by an Anglo/American alliance which has been making threatening military noises against Iran while building up its naval presence in the Gulf, 'surging' troops into Iraq and putting missile 'defence' systems in their client regimes like the Emirates. And then there is the Black-ops being conducted inside Iran by both British and American special forces with finance and support from Saudi Arabia, that Seymour Hersh first reported a year ago and has updated for the New Yorker on March 5 this year. Tom Engelhardt thinks aloud why it is still being ignored by all other media. Its still going on and is highly coordinated with MEK, a terrorist organisation recruited from Iranians and which aligned with Saddam during the Iraq/Iran war of the 1980s. Further destabilisation is being promoted with ethnic and religious groups in Iran being bribed and armed by the USA. Comments (1) | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail | Read more... |
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Remembering Mark Ashton and Some 'Lost' Time. |
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
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I was in London a couple of weeks ago to remember a death 20 years old. It was a commemoration, reunion of sorts, but most a celebration of a friend's short but remarkable life. Mark Ashton was killed by Aids. We were working together for the London Communist Party out of the same office in 1987 when he died. The remembering was held at West London Lighthouse on Monday 12th Feb.
On the way to London I must have seen at least a dozen rainbows. They appeared in the strangest of places. Some seemed occulted from dirty water thrown up by lorry spray, reminding me of an aspect of Mark's character - an openness and generosity of spirit which could find colour and sparkle even in the darkest places. The last time I saw Mark was in the hospital not long before he died. His mother was there. A distant, cold presence who never touched Mark the whole of my visit. Strict Irish Catholicism personified. Just doing her duty, nothing more. He had sinned and brought corruption upon himself, hence undeserving of a mother's affection, tenderness and care. Just stern duty to a church's definition of acceptable sexuality was all she permitted herself. If but my look could have withered her.
Mark had escaped that a few years before, to London and its openly Gay acceptence where he could blossom. And he did.
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Old Writings On Present Day Problems |
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Wednesday, 14 February 2007 |
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Just recently I found an article by Matt Taibbi at Alternet which ripped the American writer, Joe Klein to pieces for his ability to write something one day and then write exactly the opposite the next without blushing. It reminded me that I had written something 5 years ago this month out of anger at reading an article in the Guardian in February 2002 by the same Joe Klein. That was more than three years before starting this blog. The word 'blog' was not part of my vocabulary then nor did I have a clue of the possibilities that a web site could offer. Or the problems it could cause and which manifest themselves very early on.
I've used the occassional chapter from it in other articles/essays but have never posted the whole piece thinking that the time was past for it to see the light of day. I should really have posted the piece as the opening article when setting up this site but I was so enthused at writing anew and finding a means to express my opposition to the illegal war on Iraq that it took a back seat. START
Having read the article by ‘America’s leading political commentator’ in Monday’s (04.02.02) Guardian, I think Joe Klein is well suited to represent the present-day US Administration. His sarcastic tone, arrogance, self-pity, mendacity and childishness bring to the world of letters the worst traits of the bully.
(The rest of the essay follows after the break.) Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail | Read more... |
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