FuturePresent

non-transparent partisan politics and its influences

Shoes left outside Downing Street during the 'Hands Off Gaza: Stop The Bombing: Free Palestine', UK National Demonstration, London, 3 January 2009
This follows a trend began by the Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi (correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi TV station), who threw a shoe at President Bush during a news conference in Baghdad with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on 07 December 2008 (Meyers and Rubin, New York Times, 14 December 2008)

cc cláudia gabriela marques vieira
part of the i heart peace set on flickr

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Last night Channel 4 broadcast Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby, the results of an investigation by Political commentator Peter Oborne into pro-Israel lobbying to Westminster and the media. The programme proved a disturbing document of the non-transparent ways in which pro-Israel lobby groups, primarily the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), flex their 'financial muscle'  and 'exercise their influence' over UK foreign policy and news coverage in the Middle East, in the interests of the State of Israel (Oborne, 2009).

Oborne suggests that the CFI alone (which claims 80% of Conservative MPs as its members) has donated more than £10 million to The Conservative Party over the last eight years. So, here's another case of political corruption. So, what's new? Lobbying, of course, is an established part of the UK political scene. As David Cesarani argues in The Guardian's Comment is Free, the same accusations of secrecy and undue influence could readily be applied, say, to Michael Ashcroft, Rupert Murdoch, the arms industry - and the list goes on (17 November 2009).  Yet, as Oborne and Jones emphasise in another article for The Guardian's Comment is Free, 'Friends in high places', Oborne's is not a antisemitic conspiracy theory:

It is important to say what we did not find. There is no conspiracy, and nothing resembling a conspiracy (Oborne and Jones, 16 November 2009).

Rather than breaking news necessarily, the documentary highlights exactly how the pro-Israel lobby is able to yield its influence by 'active[ly] defin[ing] the debate in order to limit the options' MPs have over Middle East policy to those that 'would be acceptable' to the interests of the State of Israel (Sir Richard Dalton, Former British Ambassador to Iran 2003-2006, Oborne, 2009).

The documentary focuses in on just how pro-Israel lobbyists manipulate the 'highest level of British politics' (Oborne, 2009). It refers back to William Hague's response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in July 2006, following the firing of rockets by Hezbollah militants at Israeli border towns as a diversion for an anti-tank missile attack on two armoured Humvees patrolling the Israeli side of the border fence. In a speech in the House of Commons on 20 July 2006, William Hague, then Conservative Shadow Foreign Sectretary, is filmed as saying that, 'elements of the Israeli response are disproportionate' and 'damage the Israeli cause in the long-term'. Oborne claims that Lord Cairns, Treasurer of the Conservative Party, and a leading donor for CFI, was 'outraged and threatened to withdraw funding to the party...no further donations were received by William Hague from CFI board members' (Oborne, 2009).

Yet, Israelis are far more heterogenous in their perspectives to Israeli politics than the more 'right-winged' factions of the pro-Israel lobby would admit. Rabbi David Goldberg (Rabbi Emeritus, Liberal Jewish Synagogue) asserts that pro-Israeli groups such as CFI and the LFI do not represent the views of all British Jews. Goldberg claims that there is an apartheid state in Israel that defies international law on human rights. When asked by Oborne how he thinks the pro-Israeli lobby will react to his 'conversation in this film', Goldberg laughs and says,

They'll say there goes Goldberg, the anti-Zion self-hating Jew again, you know (quoted in Oborne, 2009).

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For me, the part of the investigation focusing on media coverage of Middle East politics is more disconcerting still. Oborne documents the consequences of the axiom pro-Israeli discourses have drawn between the BBC and The Guardian in specific and anti-semitic, partisanism, with regards to Middle East politics. Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian, asserts that,

It would be a terribly dangerous thing if the British press were made to feel that they couldn't criticise Israel because they'd be hauled up as anti-semitic...It's a very disreputable argument' (quoted in Oborne, 2009).

Yet, Charlie Beckett, former BBC Editor, now Head of POLIS, a journalism and society think tank, a joint initiative from LSE and The London College of Communication, claims the repercussions of suspected bipartisan media coverage are that the CFI exert 'direct pressure, specially on the BBC'. This has resulted in the censorship of BBC journalists, restrictions on journalists' entry into Israel, the banning of the BBC from Sharon's visit to Downing Street in 2003 and Mark Thompson's controversial decision not to broadcast the DEC Gaza Appeal 2009.

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For an alternative perspective, see Jonathan Hoffman's response to Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby on the CiF Watch website, whose mission is to track anti-semitism on The Guardian's 'Comment is Free': Inside Channel 4’s Conspiracy Factory

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Today I tweeted the following on @Futurepresent:

@conservatives @DowningStreet @BBC_HaveYourSay How do you plead to Oborne's allegations in 'Dispatches: Inside Britain's Israel Lobby'?

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And suddenly, I'm being followed by @HomelandSecNews. In the rare event that there'll be any form of response to my audaciousness, I'll post it here.

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positive realization

living green
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira
part of my 'most interesting' set on flickr

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No one ever really taught me that we're able to emanate positive focused energy and emotion, nor that each of us are what we believe we are. These are ways of thinking I've zoned in and out of from time to time, though it's taken me over thirty years to realize.

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'Feed your head'.

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screenshot of I Met the Walrus (2008)
director: Josh Raskin
illustrator: James Braithwaite
soundtrack: Jerry Levitan's interview with John Lennon (1969)

This animation features in 'profound whatever' on FuturePresent

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transience

On the 20th Anniversary of The Fall of The Berlin Wall
The lessons we don't learn from history: leaving a temporary mark on what remains of The Wall, East side, Berlin
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira

'profound whatever'

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death 1.1
a butterfly in the pool, La Luna, Tuscany
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira

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I've just began re-reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1985) after sixteen years: thinking about Nietzsche's idea that we exist between 'eternal return' and 'absence of return'. 

If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times...the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht)...Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes [us] to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and [our] earthly being, and become only half real, [our] movements as free as they are insignificant (Kundera, 1985: 2).

A friend of mine, Iain Mackie, introduced me to Josh Raskin's I Met the Walrus (2008), the soundtrack of which is Jerry Levitan's interview with John Lennon (1969). I think Lennon may have had this dichotomy in mind, when he referred to the "profound whatever" (interview with Jerry Levitan, 1969). Could it be that we live in, "a world that rests essentially on the non-existence of return, [where] everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted" (Kundera, 1985: 4)? Or, refuting Parmenides' dialectical thinking, do we exist at once through the 'lightness' and 'heaviness' of being, until the two become ambiguously deceptive. Indeed, from a certain perspective, transience and infinity may be perceived as one, made both of 'heaviness' and 'lightness'.

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When Nietzsche Wept: Eternal Return (2007)

director and writer: Pinchas Perry
script based on Irvin D. Yalom's When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession (1992)

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I met the Walrus (2008)

director: Josh Raskin
illustrator: James Braithwaite
soundtrack: Jerry Levitan's interview with John Lennon (1969)

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sand storm

sand storm
Worms Head from Rhossili Bay, The Gower, Wales, UK
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira

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"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. 

An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. 

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about." 

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore (2005)

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Click here to access the Murakami site at Random House

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absolute freedom is a misnomer

Pedn Vounder, Treen, Cornwall
CC cláudia gabriela marques vieira

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"i am a brave girl captain"

I don't remember ever being so scared as I have been over the last few weeks. But I remember now that, like Mary, "I am a brave girl captain."

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Image left: Still photograph of the animation The Poster Children, transmediale 09: DEEP NORTH.
CC Claudia Vieira

Image right: Ludo, Ivor Cutler, 1974.
A total enfringement of copyright, but I like to think of it as free promotion: If you haven't heard Ivor Cutler before, give him a try: Ivor Cutler: open.spotify.com/artist/60SKMJ5AgD6DuxTNbVrrSQI wanted to add this to 'dreams' set on flickr, and to this post, you see.

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freak out

CC Cláudia Vieira

 

retrofuturism

 

Going Up: Alberto, the personal blimp
Courtesy: The Boston Globe

 

My friend, Joe Bell, just shared this video of Alberto, the hot-air personal blimp.

...I'll just tree park...here. Now, zoom off up there. Oooooh, hi, Mr. Bird.

 

FuturePresent: Just the kind of retro and eco tech I'm into. And Joe Bell.

 

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plasma

 

...of red balloons and plasma mebranes, Edinburgh Festival 2008 CC Cláudia Vieira

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Blogging at dawn from my office of light. A friend left me two gifts a couple of nights ago. One, the hand-written version of an untitled poem by Denise Levertov below, the other, a copy of the Nan Goldin interview ‘The Labour of Love’. They sparked ideas about love, networks and magnetism.

 

If Denise Levertov is my new muse, Nan Goldin is my choke 

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For those of you who prefer text, here is an electronic version of Denise Levertov untitled poem: 

'Often you seem to be listening to music
that others cannot hear. Rilke would have loved you:
You never intrude, you never ask questions
of those, crying in the dark, who are most near.

<>You always keep something of yourself for yourself,
In electronic bars, even in bedrooms.
Rilke would have praised you: your nearness is far,
And therefore, your distance like the stars.

Yet some things you miss and some things you lose
By keeping your arm outstretched, and some things
You’ll never know unless one, at least, knows you
Like a close up, in detail –

Blow, by human blow.’

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The second text is ‘The Labour of Love’, Anja Cronberg and Christian Barbe’s interview with Nan Goldin , published in Acne Paper, No.7, Autumn 08. I stopped reading after the lead quote: “What we call falling madly in love with someone is not so much evidence of how deeply we care for our lover, but more the relief that we’re not alone anymore.” (2008: 107). I could have read on but there are so many other things I'd enjoy more.

There was purpose in each of these gifts. I think I thought I knew why my friend had offered me these gems from her scrapbook of dreams. Shared experiences; sharing experiences. I recalled one person in particular, and sensed my friend had made that connection long before offering this poem to me.

Yet, re-reading Levertov makes me think we all shun close-ups to a greater or lesser degree, we all distance ourselves from each other sometimes, oftentimes, sometimes. Some people we let nearer, some less. So near, so far. Attraction and repulsion. Our psycho-cultural metanarratives often enact this self-protection, both from harm and from the dilution of self in polyvalents. Sometimes it’s about preserving that space in which each of us just is. Alone. That space, fresh and stale, where only ‘I’ breathes. And some things we do miss and some things we do lose. Many things trail into the tragic pelagic.

There are moments when people connect fundamentally, others when it seems entirely impossible to relate each other's inner worlds. Lately, I’ve recalled the rule of attraction, and close encounters of the first kind drift into the current. Though sometimes against it, still.

If Denise Levertov is my new muse, Nan Goldin is my choke. Nan seems bitter, her feminism, hyperbole. Falling in love to me isn’t something that fills in the loneliness and emptiness (or not just that in some spaces, places, cases). It’s far deeper, mutual, selfless and selfish. It’s understanding one’s body, letting someone else understand one’s body, understanding a body that is different to one’s own, letting one understand it. This body is our own, tuning in and out of singularity, in waves of meiosis and fusion. We interconnect through light and magnetic force, perhaps close to the one the Sanskrit call Prana. At the cellular level, meiosis and fusion recur: constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing; fizzling plasma, realigning ourselves perpetually along the magnetic line of force.

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And so, we have different experiences of love, Goldin and I.

To me our ways of seeing are our 'reality', we evoke it. Positive charge leads to/is led by positive push/pull.

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But then I do sit alone at dawn in my office of light.

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