Outside the Gates

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2007-01-31T18:57:00.000Z

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Paul, War Film and Palestine

2006-07-19T09:00:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 12.07.06 - I heard the news of a death today. Paul a traveller, rough sleeper, peace-making man and occasional rough speaker, died in a public toilet at Market Square on Monday evening. He'd only been back from Mumbai 10 days. I last spoke to him on the previous Thursday and he looked gaunt, worn out and taking prescribed Omeprazole to quiet a troubled stomach. Paul thought he had intestinal worms. He had visited the hospital and was waiting on results from tests for tropical diseases. He certainly had an infection on his feet that he picked up while in India and which didn't look good. From the local press.

The post mortem results showed a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm which was missed at the hospital. Medicinenet.com sees the diagnostic process for this condition as: "Careful feeling of the abdomen by the doctor may reveal the abnormally wide pulsation of the abdominal aorta. This is characteristically felt on both sides of the aorta which is in the midline of the abdomen. Note that even large aneurysms can be very difficult to detect on physical examination in overweight people. Aneurysms on the verge of rupture and that are rapidly enlarging, are often tender."

Paul could, at the best be described as scrawny.

He didn't die alone. Two friends, Richard and Jay were with him and they called the Para-medics who arrived quickly but couldn't save Paul. The Police arrived 4 hours after his death and arrested Richard and Jay on suspicion of murder. They were held for 15hrs. This is the culture of the Police today.

During the summer of last year Paul became the spokesperson for a group of travellers in discussions with the local Council. There had been complaints about them hanging about in Market Square and Paul had been invited to the Council to address them about the problems travellers were facing and what could be done to help alleviate any conflict with the more conservative locals. It seemed to have been a successful meeting and Paul's contribution welcomed. About a week later he was beaten up and arrested by local Police.

Except learning a lot about silk, Paul told me that this latest trip to India was a disaster. He thought he was going to die there. Abandoned by his travelling companion he had to find a way back, via 600 miles in Monsoon rain to Mumbai without money. He made it, and the journey back to Totnes to die in a public toilet.

I'd just read the days headlines when informed of Paul's death, he died the evening before the Mumbai rail network was bombed with 180 people killed, and ten days after leaving that city. Pakistan is being named by India as the place from which the bombings were organised. Three hours later the news is that Israel is making incursions into Lebanon and threatening war following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. Gaza is now the free fire zone predicted at the time of Israel's withdrawl last year. And every hour today, like every other day, another atrocity will be committed in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramada by an illegal occupying force or their puppet proxies. Not a very good day for life.

While in a conversation with Paul last winter, long before his disastrous trip to India, this articulate, intelligent and self-deprecatingly witty man who liked a drink and a smoke, had told me he had served in the Israeli Army. At that time his world was his comrades and it was only later, long after he had left the IDF and gained wider horizons that he realised how massive was the crime being committed against the Palestinians. He always had a Star of David on him.

Since Paul's death his travelling companion has stated that he was not abandoned and that Paul left the hotel where they were staying and didn't return before the companion left the area after searching for him. Paul told me they did meet up at the consulate in Mumbai by chance and the travelling companion had put up posters asking for any news of him. The fact the poster stated his Israel connection in a city of many Muslims frightened him. To say Israel is not liked throughout the Muslim world because of it's actions is an understatement.

I'd been on my way to the DVD shop to pick up a film I'd ordered the last time Paul and I spoke, when he told me of the disaster that the India trip became. The film was the 1985 cinema release of Elem Klimov's award winning 'Come and See'. A war film by which all other war films are judged and found wanting. Especially the likes of Apocalypse Now!, Platoon or Hamburger Hill. 'Finding Private Ryan' says nothing in comparison and you do not see the on-screen evisceration of human bodies in 'Come and See' - just the aftermath.

Lewis Milestone's 1930 'All Quiet On The Western Front' comes close in its lyricism but Europe had not yet experienced the effects of a racist state's mechanised 'Total War' on civilian populations. The war Milestone used to condemned all war in his Oscar winning film was fought, in Europe at least, between Armies facing each other across trenches. Slaughter it was, but slaughter between combatants and not generally directed against civilians.

'Come and See' is about the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union - operation Barbarosa - and the partisan struggle in Belarus to defeat them as seen through the horrific experiences of a young man. More a boy still in his naive adolescence enduring an extreme rites of passage as the hormones rage.

The boy, Florya, played by 13 year-old Alexei Kravchenko in his first acting role, joins the Partisans where he starts to lose the romanticism of war with the mundane chores of the lower rank squaddie at base camp. He is left behind with others by the commander of the partisans to guard the camp while the main force of partisans goes off and campaigns against the marauding Nazis. The camp is shelled and overrun. Florya, along with a young woman are separated from the partisans and travel through a land visited by horror where ever the Nazis have been.

Florya becomes detached from everyone till befriended by a farmer and taken to his village. A 'Punitive Detachment' of Germans arrive at the village. Everybody is herded and gaoled in the communal, wooden barn including Florya. At a high window an SS Officer appears and says to the incarcerated villagers,

"With no children get out. Right here, out the window. Leave the children. Come. Get out."

(all dialogue from the film is from the dubbed version. There are also subtitles if wanted.)

Florya took the opportunity and escaped the barn. A woman with a young child followed him. The child was ripped from her arms and thrown back through the window whilst she is dragged by her hair to the detachment's commander who reprieves her life for the pleasure of his troops to gang rape. After the child is thrown back into the barn it is set alight and all inside are incinerated while the Nazis joke and laugh, their blood-lust up.

During the Nazi invasion and occupation of Byelorussia in 1943, 626 villages were burnt to the ground with all their inhabitants just as depicted in the film.

In 'Come an See', the Punitive Detachment is ambushed and destroyed by the partisans shortly after the razing of the village and the Nazi commanders captured. Florya catches up with them and denounces the SS Officer from the barn window. The SS Officer in all his hubris then proceeds to espouse the racism at the heart of Nazi philosophy,

"Yes I said that - 'come and leave the children. Get out and leave the children'.

I said that because with the children it starts all over again. You've got no right to be! Not every race, not everyone has a privileged right to exist.

Inferior races spread the contagion of communism. We will annihilate. My mission will be accomplished. If not today tomorrow."

This scene ends with the execution of the Nazi commanders - condemned by their own words and actions.

This is a great film and unfortunately I do not have the space or time here to give enough of a critique of 'Come and See'; its humour; the scene by scene symbolism; the flatness of colour and how it adds texture; the scope of suffering or heroics of the cast and crew; the virtuoso Steadycam work by camera operator Radionov: the deep psychological dramas enacted by a stunning Alexei Kravchenko when still only thirteen; the wonderful Olga Mironova as Glasha; the lack of visuals of bullets or explosions ripping flesh in this blood drenched film - unlike Hollywood its not what you see but what you imagine that makes for the horror.

The DVD is a two disc package with interviews and Soviet historical film from the actual campaign. The interview with the director, Elem Klimov is a must and should be watched as a prologue to the film.

A few quotes from the Klimov prologue;

"If people had stronger nerves our audience would be more numerous."

"In America people can hardly watch this film. I think their problem, they say, 'we have thrillers, but here it's something different. It's real life.'"

The films sensibilities, especially in the early scenes reminded me of a work by another great Russian creative. Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's 'A Precocious Autobiography' relayed some of his own youthful experiences during WWII in Russia and the psychological impact on him seemed similar to that of Florya in the film.

The release of 'Come and See' on DVD is apposite. This week, 11th to 15th July 2006 is the 58th Remembrance of the Palestinian Catastrophe - al-Nakba - when in 1948 Palestinian towns and villages were attacked and razed by Jewish terrorist organisations like Irgun or as in Lydda, assaulted by the Israeli Commando Battalion 89 led by Moshe Dayan. By the end of the day at least 250 people had been killed in Lydda, only four of them Israeli Jews. Sandy Tolan at TomDispatch has written a piece of truth on Gaza today and its relation to al-Nakba and The Death March.

What Israel is doing in Gaza, the West Bank and now in Lebanon is justified in the same language of racism as that employed in Byelorussia in 1943.

To make another people 'Other', some quotes from prominent Israelis;

"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001

Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, "the lives and well-being of Sderot's residents are more important than those of Gaza residents".

Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."

Dov Weissglas, the Israeli Government's senior political advisor commenting on the economic siege of Palestine, "is like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but they won't starve to death".

"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

" [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.

"The Palestinians would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.

"There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969

(The first and last six of the above quotes are available at Whatreallyhappened.com)

These are the racist words that make the racist policy being implemented in Gaza and the West Bank. With the building of industrial zones on the Israeli side of the Apartheid wall the inhabitants of the planned Palestinian ghettos of the West Bank will be cheap, impoverished labour, if not slave labour. The only other end to this road - unless Israel is stopped - is the dead-end of genocide.

From Ramzy Baroud at Palestine Chronicle,

'Racism is "the belief that one 'racial group' is inferior to another and the practices of the dominant group to maintain the inferior position of the dominated group. Often defined as a combination of power, prejudice and discrimination."

This is how the British Library defines racism on its Web site. The above definition hardly deviates from the essence of almost all definitions of the ominous concept. And, indeed, the concept is being fully utilized with Israel's onslaught against the Palestinians, and the international community and media's mild, if not accommodating response to the onslaught.'

The results of this policy when put in action can be seen in the casualties from Gaza. The mutilated bodies of children and annihilation of whole families. To rescue one captured Israeli soldier?

From Dr Mona El Farra in Gaza

Thursday, July 13, 2006
ministry of health statestics,injured and dead in Gaza

Yesterday the Palestinian Mininstry of health officially declared that the number
of martyrs is 82 people and 271 injured from 30 - 6 - 2006 to 12 - 7 - 2006. Among
the martyrs 22 children. The number is expected to increase because there are
still casualties in the intensive care units.

It all seems to be coming together, coalescing, happening all at once. The step up in rhetoric from the neocons about any country that has oil; The police actions in Canada, Miami and Forest Gate all deeply suspect; the report of the de Menezes killing released; the arrest of Lord Levy, bagman and special envoy to the Middle East for blair; Mumbai; Iran continuing, as is their right to develop civilian nuclear power and under the threat of nuclear attack; occupying forces and sectarian atrocities continuing in destroyed Iraq; the destruction of Lebanon; Palestine.

Talking with Paul last autumn - he with his Star of David and me wearing a kaffiyeh - he was emphatic that he had married minor aristocracy with a seat in East Anglia. I have no reason not to believe him. People hit the road for many reasons and the claustrophobic alienation he said he felt amongst those inside the gates of affluence is a better reason than many. Whereas our prime minister, blair is comfortable with the affluence, not alienated at all, in fact he is especially snug with the war criminals he has joined and who infest the affluent international milieu.

blair made a statement a couple of weeks ago about Muslims having a "completely false sense of grievance against the West." This after Britain participated in an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq that is degenerating into a charnel house! A hundred years of meddling in the affairs of the Arab and Muslim world because they sit on the most precious commodity in the world and he comes up with that. The first British regiment mobilised and posted at the outbreak of World War One was the Dorset's and they were sent to Basra. That's right, Basra in Iraq. The regiment is now known as the Devonshire & Dorset Light Infantry, who are raised locally and are again in Basra in Iraq today. They lost a soldier on Sunday 17th July, Cpl John Johnston Cosby from Exeter was killed in action. Another young, well liked family man to die for a blair lie.

For blair to say that Muslims have a "completely false sense of grievance against the West‚" is to accuse them and history of lying. Once blair starts accusing a people of lying he places them in a morally inferior position to himself. In fact the lie belongs with blair and for blair to believe his own lie he has to think himself superior to those he accuses of lying. This is how racism gains hold in the thinking of those who try to justify their war crimes.

blair's response to the latest Israeli atrocities has re-enforced the Anglo-American-Israeli alliance by blaming Syria and Iran for the Israeli attack on Lebanon. (It is a very unequal alliance for us. The British role is basically subservient to the US. British nationals can be extradited to the US by employing the words "we accuse" and with no need to offer any evidence in a British court that the accused may have committed a crime in the US. This is not reciprocated - not that it would be a better state of affairs if it were. It means that American law supersedes, supplants British law. Whoever signed this extradition treaty should be charged with treason. Methinks we are now worse than servants, more like the Greeks to Imperial Rome - slaves.)

It is this international triumvirate that needs to be split if peace is to have a hope of being realised. As Sun-Tzu said two and a half thousand years ago in The Art of War,

"Ultimate excellency lies
Not in winning
Every battle
But in defeating the enemy
Without ever fighting.
The highest form of warfare
Is to attack
Strategy itself;

The next,
To attack
Alliances;"

The strategy of this international triumvirate of war criminals is quite simple - destabilisation in the the world's most important region for energy supplies. They want no more than to Balkanise the entire region along the sectarian lines of religion and ethnicity, the better to control the flow of energy for their own benefit. Small and weak religious or ethnic based states, fractious with neighbours they have warred against in their creation, are much easier to corruptly dominate by an outside power. To achieve this the outside power requires the passive support of their own populations and in making the Arab/Muslim 'Other' they believe they can do it.

The racism that saturates the Israeli policy toward the Arab/Muslim is also trying to be used in Britain by 'people in the shadows'. During a period of sustained national fervour in the build up to the World Cup, the secret police instigated a raid on a house in Forest Gate in an anti-terrorism operation, shooting and wounding an innocent British Muslim. They acted on information supplied by an 'interrogated' imprisoned Asian Muslim with a borderline imbeciles low IQ who knew the people who lived at the Forest Gate house. After a week the wounded innocent was released without charge. Around the same time in Canada a group of Canadian Muslims were arrested and in Miami an FBI sting operation - a set up - netted six poor and luckless Black Americans and Haitians.

I do not believe that the timing of these raids was an accident and that the World Cup had no role to play. An opportunity to exploit the national fervour amongst people so as to try and isolate another race/religion from the dominating culture, to add to making them 'Other' as 'Terrorists', would not be missed by reactionary forces within the state. The arms manufacturers; predatory capitalists; the CIA/MI6/Mossad alliance; some in the military Officer Corps and the higher echelons of Civil Servants; blair; the Carlyle Group; the Murdoch media, the affluent milieu, they all benefit. The wider and deeper imperial war becomes the more they will accrue power to themselves in an attempt to try and control dissent from their civil societies against war.

Late last year there were riots in Birmingham. British Asian Muslims and British Afro-Caribbeans had had a go at each other. A rumour spread that some Asian youths had raped an Afro-Caribbean young woman. After the fighting and rioting ended it came to light that no such rape had occurred. Nobody could find who started the rumour. The instigation of rumour has an important role in a states Psy-ops armoury and exploiting the tensions that do exist between Asian and Black cannot be discounted. To divide two minority groups against each other and in effect exacerbate a race/religious division between poor and poor has always been a tactic of the powerful. Rumour helps.

Most commentators critical of the war have concentrated on refuting the lies that are used to justify carnage, responding to events, yet it is the deceptions that are brought into play prior to the carnage justifying lie being uttered that needs to be challenged. From Sun-Tzu, again;

"The Way of War is
A Way of Deception.

When able
Feign inability;

When deploying troops,
Appear not to be.

When near,
Appear far;

Lure with bait;

Strike with chaos."

(Are the British and American nationals still left in Lebanon the bait, who if harmed would justify an Anglo/American military intervention in support of Israel?)

No other world power can militarily challenge this nuclear armed triumvirate without entering into a nuclear war and our extinction as a species. Anyway I don't fancy a war between competing centres of capitalism now that Russia is launching energy giants like Rosfnet on the London Stock exchange and opening a bourse trading its oil in Roubles in Moscow. I want an end to the global capitalist system. (International currency dealer and billionaire, Soros was complaining about the Rosfnet launch on the front page of the Independent the other day claiming it was immoral. Bollocks. When has capitalism had any morals. All the Russian emergence on the international currency markets will do to Soros is make his dealings more complicated and maybe marginally more difficult. He'll still be affluent and able to distort a nations economy and cause mass unemployment with his currency dealings. His major worry is for the dollars pre-eminence as the petro-dollar and the effect of the Russian launch on the bubble that is the American economy. One prick and .........)

It will take the poor not the rich to stop this war, split the alliance. The poor - those in whose interest peace is a priority and who do not profit from atrocity.

Despite the seeming power of the Anglo-American-Israeli alliance and invincibility of their military, there is weakness there and the weakest link I think is Britain. We are not yet so pervaded with racism as is Israel and we still have mass organisation of the people in the Trades Union movement unlike America. The TU's are not as active as one would like but they still exist and can, if won to anti-racist struggle in solidarity with British Asian Muslim workers, be a decisive force in breaking Britain's alliance with America/Israel. It will still require the TU leadership to step outside the economism that has driven their rationale since the defeat of the Miners in 1984/5 and gain a wider political perspective. Not to be afraid to use their power for the collective, moral good. If the leadership won't do this then the membership at branch level will have to. A tall order but not unachievable.

Almost immediately after the release of the Forest Gate casualty a non-violent demonstration was organised in the area against the police action and which attracted thousands. In attendance were some of the relatives and friends campaigning for justice for the assassinated Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes. Another innocent casualty in the 'war on terror' or the 'long war' as it has been renamed by the neocons.

The way to go. All forms of non-violent action are legitimate in trying to stop the war crimes our leadership are committing around the world. Non-violent mass participatory civil disobedience and direct action are the tools that have traditionally been the means of bringing change to the political landscape when used by the poor and disenfranchised.

Paul was 58, the same age as Israel, when he died. That is a long life for rough sleepers and travellers - living without a roof can cut 30 years off life expectancy.

Before he left for India Paul said he would bring something back for me. Here it is.

Thanks Paul.

They Are Worse Than You Can Ever Imagine

2006-05-23T08:05:00.000+01:00

I am starting to think that our political leaderships – specifically in Britain and America – are either ignorant of, or are deliberately ignoring some of the most important teachings from humanities glorious intellectual history.

Ignoring, even rubbishing Marx I can understand, after all Bush/blair are committed Capitalists, but the ideas from others leave me thinking they are in fact not only ignorant but consciously hypocritical. Their self-proclaimed belief in the two thousand year old teachings of Christ, being the most obvious example.

There is another though. Two and a half thousand years ago a Chinese General named Sun-Tzu wrote a short treatise on war – The Art of War – that has been the foundation stone of military theory since. Any career military officer or political leader serious about their profession or calling will have studied this work. I only came across the book 5 weeks ago, which goes to show the lack of serious thought I gave to my ‘career’ as a revolutionary during my membership, and leadership in the CPGB. Now, when it is basically too late to make much of a difference, I find the seriousness in further study to give expression to my political thoughts. My dreams even.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your political perspective, the present day leadership in America and Britain, both political and military, seem to have rejected Sun-Tzu’s teachings as can be seen with the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

(I do not want to tar every member of the British and American armed forces as being hypocritical or unprofessional. Some did raise questions concerning the sagacity, morality and legality of the invasion of Iraq prior to the presidential orders being given to commit the ‘paramount crime’. One or two resigned their commissions, but the majority ended up following the orders from their political leaders. Others have recently questioned the conduct of the war but only from the safety of retirement, unlike Kendall-Smith who refused what he considered illegal orders and was subsequently court-martialled and sentenced to 8 months in the glass-house. Those who have acted like Kendall-Smith are upholding the highest standards and their responsibilities as professional soldiers.)

I am going to quote quite extensively from ‘The Art of War’ to give an idea of the reasons I feel the warmongers in America and Britain – Bush/blair – are going to lose. It’s not that I am an expert on military affairs, far from it. I spent 7 years in the Royal Army Medical Corp and was only promoted to the lowly rank of Lance Corporal, and from which I was ‘bust’ within two months for drinking and fighting. To the Royal Irish Rangers, with whom I spent 6 months in Cyprus, I was the original ‘Mad Medic’, which should speak for itself.

The reason I feel I can write on this topic is the simplicity and clarity with which Sun-Tzu writes. (Translated by John Minford and published by Penguin Books, Great Ideas Series 2005.) Even a dunderhead and late-comer to military reading like me can make sense of it and I would suggest anybody who wants to find out ways of stopping the wars unleashed by Bush/blair non-violently, buy and read it as an initial guide.

From chapter one;

“Command is
Wisdom,
Integrity,
Compassion,
Courage,
Severity.”

Following the obscenity of the assault on 9th Sept 2001 wisdom would have suggested that the reasons for it be examined. Instead we were subjected to a closing down of questions, discussion and debate with Bush leading the way. ‘You’re either for us or for the terrorists’, his opening refrain.

Integrity of both Bush/blair is obviously non-existent if they are prepared to lie to their peoples about the reasons for war. And they did lie.

What compassion does Bush/blair have if they knowingly murder innocents when committing the ‘paramount crime’ by illegally invading Iraq? For compassion you need empathy, but if Islam/Arab is thought of as ‘Other’ through a racist mindset, then compassion is non-existent.

It is not courage when ordering the destruction of a nation from a position of might, especially as the illegally attacked nation had been brought to its knees following a decade of sanctions and almost daily bombing. Kicking somebody when they are down is not courageous.

Severity might be the only aspect of command that is applicable to Bush/blair, but without the previous four it is useless and if only applied to those they believe below them it is divisive amongst those they claim leadership over. The trials in America of low ranking soldiers involved in the torture at Abu Ghraib and not those who authorised the torture like Rumsfeld is a case in point.

From chapter two;

“In War,
Victory should be
Swift.
If victory is slow,
Men tire,
Morale sags.
Sieges
Exhaust strength;
Protracted campaigns
Strain the public treasury.”

On 1st May 2003 Bush declared ‘Mission Accomplished’ six weeks after the illegal invasion of Iraq. It is now obvious that such a statement was slightly premature to say the least and that the resistance to the occupation is gaining strength. The Troops morale is shot. The public treasury – social welfare – is being stolen to pay for the escalating costs of the war in both America and Britain.

“The Skilful Warrior
Never conscripts troops
A second time;
Never transports provisions
A third.”

In America they have instigated ‘Stop/Loss’ whereby troops have had their contracts extended unilaterally. There is no surer way of destroying trust between commander and soldier. Again morale is shot.

“Treat prisoners of war kindly,
And care for them.
Use victory over the enemy
To enhance your own strength.”

Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are torture centres for all the world to see, as I have written previously, and they seem to be a deliberate renunciation of this piece of Sun-Tzu’s teachings. Nearly every country in the world has denounced the practise and even in Britain the Attorney General, the highest legal professional in Britain, Lord Goldsmith, has stated that Guantanamo is ‘unacceptable’.

From chapter three;

“In War,
Better take
A state
Intact
Than destroy it.

Better take
An army,
A regiment,
A detachment,
A company,
Intact
Than destroy them.”

On entering Baghdad the first thing Rumsfeld did was to disband the Iraqi army in direct contradiction to the above teachings of Sun-Tzu. ‘Regime change’ was the name of the game, not the destruction of WMD or the ‘war against terrorism’. It is as if the belligerent parties in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq – Bush/blair – didn’t want the Iraqi people to have a coherent force capable of maintaining the state. Taken with subsequent events, the advent of sectarian death squads for one – the Salvador option - has shown that they were intent on ‘balkanising’ Iraq from the start.

“Ultimate excellence lies
Not in winning
Every battle
But in defeating the enemy
Without ever fighting.
The highest form of warfare
Is to attack
Strategy itself;

The next,
To attack
Alliances;

The next,
To attack
Armies;

The lowest form of war is
To attack
Cities.
Siege warfare
Is the last resort.”

It is now very obvious that the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has degenerated into ‘the lowest form of war’. The siege and subsequent destruction of Fallujah being the most blatant example and where war crimes were committed as though the leadership who countenanced such behaviour think themselves above, outwith the conscience of basic human dignity.

“A ruler can bring misfortune
Upon his troops
In three ways:

Ordering them
To advance
Or to retreat
When they should not
Is called
Hobbling the army;

Ignorant interference
In military decisions
Confuses
Officers and men;

Ignorant meddling
In military appointments
Perplexes
Officers and men.”

The ignorance of Bush is manifold but as ‘Commander in Chief’ his decision to invade Iraq with lies as justification has hobbled his – and Britain’s – army. As the lies of Bush/blair have unravelled they have sown confusion and perplexed the troops. They now know not the moral cause they are fighting for.

“The decision to invade Iraq, was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who never had to execute these missions – or bury the results.” Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold. Even the American Generals are starting to recognise the lack of understanding of Sun-Tzu to the likes of Bush, blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al.

From chapter eleven;

“To the question
‘How should we confront
Numerous and well arrayed,
Poised to attack?’
My reply is
‘Seize something
He cherishes,
And he will do your will.’

This is probably the one lesson from Sun-Tzu that has been learnt by Bush/blair. The taking of hostages by the illegal occupying troops in Iraq, usually the wives and children of those they are seeking to arrest or kill, has been well reported over the last three years. The strength of the resistance is confirmed by such actions. It is in fact a war crime as stated in the Geneva Convention. I will be referring to this quote later on in this article on a more personal issue.

From chapter twelve;

“A ruler
Must never
Mobilise his men
Out of anger;
Must never
Engage battle
Out of spite.

Move
If there is gain;
Halt
If there is no gain.

Anger
Can turn to
Pleasure;
Spite
Can turn to
Joy.
But a nation destroyed
Cannot be
Put back together again;
A dead man
Cannot be
Brought back to life.

So the enlightened ruler
Is prudent;
The effective general
Is cautious.
This is the Way
To keep a nation
At peace
And an army
Intact.”

A rather long quote, but worth it for its obviousness in that the Bush/blair arrogance and spite – their hubris - have brought their respective armies almost to their knees. Armies are to maintain peace and defend the nation, but Bush/blair have decided that the opposite is true and will destroy their respective nations for a lie. Where is the gain for the peoples of America and Britain – who are the nation – in these illegal wars? There is none, just the certainty that more poverty will ensue amongst the ordinary people, whilst the corporations and oligarchs stuff their pockets with record profits from the obscene murder of innocents.

From chapter thirteen;

“There are Five Sorts of Spies:

Local,
Internal,
Double,
Dead, and
Live.”

I think I have met them all, either during my time in the CP, or more recently. In the town where I live there is a CIA Field Officer. I have previously mentioned the tricks he has pulled on me but I have come into further information that, for me, makes it a positive ‘sighting’. He arrived in the area in May 2002, a month after Bush/blair took the decision to invade Iraq, which fits if American ‘assets’ were to be in place around the world preparing for the illegal invasion by disrupting the opposition to the war. There are at least two others, British, who are working with him and are either directly employed by the CIA or are MI6. (During a discussion with David Shayler - ex-MI5 - he mentioned that MI6 did operate in Britain and used MI5 as cover without their knowledge.) While living in Salcombe one tried to get close to me, again I have mentioned this previously, but he is now a ‘dead’ spy in that he has been swapped – another has been given his name and has moved near-by to me following my move from Salcombe.

The following two incidents have happened since the beginning of the year. On Jan 13th I had my fingerprints lifted. While in the café I usually frequent I was very carefully handed a new book by a woman I had fallen into discussion with a few weeks previously. The book had a very glossy cover and the way of being handed it and then taken back made me suspicious. She never directly touched the cover of the book herself. On the afternoon of 13th April, the day before Good Friday and the Easter break, I was visited at home by somebody claiming to be from my landlord and who wanted to do a ‘quality check’ on the kitchen. He then proceeded to take loads of photographs of the kitchen. The kitchen had been renovated a year before and I was suspicious that it had taken this long to check, so on the following Tuesday I went to the landlord’s office to find out who he was. After waiting 15/20 minutes he arrived dressed in black boots, black trousers with no belt and white shirt. I had seen this type of dress on police during my youth when they had to quickly try and appear in ‘plain’ clothes. I live in a small town where it only takes 10 minutes to get anywhere.

Recently I have been thinking about Operation Gladio, having been reminded of it by David Shayler. This was the Italian name of a European wide clandestine reactionary force set up following World War II. Initially established by the British and named in Britain as ‘Stay Behind’, it was conceived as a guerrilla force fighting the Russians if they invaded Western Europe. It was taken over by the American’s – read CIA – and incorporated into NATO almost immediately after its creation. ‘Stay Behind’ membership comprised personnel from the intelligence, police and military services of European nations, including those not affiliated to NATO, and reactionary elements from the various countries involved.

I had read about this in the 1980’s while studying, to a certain extent, the Italian CP’s experience in trying to develop what they called the ‘historic compromise’, an attempt at sharing power in Italy between the Christian Democrats and the PCI. This was brought to an end with the kidnapping and murder of former CD Prime Minister, Aldo Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigades, who in fact were a front for reaction and nothing to do with the Left in Italy. Subsequent investigations in Italy have attributed to Operation Gladio many false flag atrocities from the 1960’s to 1990’s.

I am now wondering if ‘stay behind’ was re-activated throughout Europe as a part of the build up to the illegal invasion of Iraq. And if it is the case, then blair has committed treason against the British people.

In a previous post I stated that I had compromised myself with the British Establishment in my attempts to shed myself of the Americans spooking me. That was not quite true. It’s not so much me who has been compromised, but my family.

During my membership of the now defunct Communist Party of Great Britain I must have met dozens of ‘agents’, but in my naiveté about security matters I never considered it. We genuine revolutionaries were after all only amateurs. Information gathered about individuals in the CP would have been passed to the informant’s ‘handlers’. The knowledge they acquired about me was the little I mentioned of my family, especially my sister, to friends and comrades. There was something there to investigate, search out and they found it big time.

I am now convinced that as preparation for the coming wars, the CIA/MI6 placed an agent to my sister’s daughter to find the secret we had between us. He became the father of her children and was caught by my niece, probably deliberately, searching for porn on the internet. After the incident she agreed to stay with him if he rid himself of the ‘addiction’. His name came over with the 7,000+ names supplied by American intelligence to the British Police in May 2002 as one who accessed child porn sites. (In April 2002 Bush/blair decided to invade Iraq). He was arrested as part of Operation Ore, which was the name given by the police to the action following the handing over of the names. I think this happened in Jan 2003. It obviously freaked my sister and brought back memories from our childhood, which she made very public. He is no longer a member of my family and I was only informed of his arrest and conviction in March 2005. It was following this that an attempt was made to set me up on a ‘stalking charge’ by the ‘police’ in 2003. (See Empathy is not a Colour for the details). The evidence Operation Ore relied on was revealed as "false claims" according to news item in PC PRO by Alun Williams, dated 23rd June 2005 and which referred to an up coming article by Duncan Campbell in the August 2005 issue.

I have stated in other essays that immense sacrifices will have to be made if the war is to be stopped. This also includes the sacrifice I will personally have to make. I am already estranged from the majority of my family and if what I have written will estrange me from the rest – so be it.

Previous posts to this site have included three essays on conspiracy. I am not a believer in conspiracy theories as a means of understanding and explaining historical developments and my writings have tried to say that - not all that coherently. That is not to say that conspiracies do not happen, but they are not the driving force of human history. Recently I came across an essay by Dr Bulent Gokay (Pravda via ICH) that manages to express my ramblings over three attempts, in only half an essay, more succinctly and with greater clarity.

The reason I am mentioning this now is that some of what I have just written can be construed as the fertile imaginings of a conspiracy theorist with a paranoid mind. Paranoia is the psychiatric equivalent of conspiracy theory as they are always mentioned in the same breath. But recent research has shown that approximately 80% of the population is paranoid if one considers it as a condition from being slightly wary to an extreme fearful nervousness. I have not been able to re-find the research item that mentioned this but it is very understandable if one believes the idea that we evolved from a prey species, which recent paleoanthropological research seems to have discovered. That we are like other species, hard-wired, as well as being taught, to be aware of any dangers in our surroundings.

I have previously posted to the outsidethegates.blogspot.com site, for 36hrs, a piece about being informed that my neurologist had been put on indefinite leave due to a drug trial investigation, the informant/information was very unreliable hence the lack of a full follow through from me in a further post. I did include in the 36hr piece an extract from a letter that I had written the neurologist in Nov 2005 in which I mentioned that I had entrusted the neurologist with the manuscript of ‘Empathy is not a Colour’ and that, when trying to explain what was happening around me - the spooking, surveillance etc - he stated that I was not paranoid. Whilst not volunteering any information about a ‘police’ investigation, he carried through his Hippocratic Oath of doing no harm.

The other point that needs to be emphasised here is that although I didn’t think I was that important in the overall scheme of things it seems the instigators of illegal wars thought otherwise. My previous role as a leader of a national revolutionary party albeit a small one, the Welsh CP, from 1989 to its demise in 1992 has obviously made this the case. The following link should make this abundantly clear. The Wedge Strategy at antievolution.org.

Moving

2006-04-29T15:12:00.000+01:00

This blog is moving. I registered the domain name outsidethegates.com when first setting up this blog and have transfered all of the postings there. It's still a 'work in progress' so please excuse the uncompleted nature of the site.

The first posting to the site is a poem - Choice - which we all have to make very quickly.

You can access the site via the following link.

Outside the Gates

Meeting Mother

2006-04-25T14:53:00.000+01:00

I met my Mother today. The first time I had seen her for at least 9 months and she was looking better than I expected, but in a wheel chair - the osteoporosis has got to her. She was very much 'up' though which gave me a lift.

We met at the Sainsbury's Cafe in Weston-super-Mare, my home town. Its a good job the arrangement was not done through the mail, we would probably have missed each other by at least five days.

"In A Civilised Country You Never Can Tell"

2006-04-22T08:16:00.000+01:00

"The Battle for America."*

The video only lasts 3:44 minutes yet it is one of the most inspirational collaborations between literature and video that the opposition to war in America has produced to date.

The stunning writing, poetic with its passion for the dignity and history of the everyday American, has been combined with brilliant film making. Talking heads have never had such diversity in accents or character, nor has the English tongue been so dazzlingly edited to maintain rhythm or change tone in an overtly political video.

The genuine commitment, enthusiasm and sheer spirit of the participants engages and trips emotional as well as intellectual triggers in the viewer. This is authentic America speaking and the war machine will lose. Download it. Open anti-war meetings with it. The battle for America - has begun.

I found the video on the net while escaping to a friend's for a few weeks. Events were closing in again and I was being spooked. The video came at a good time. I seem to have been lucky like that throughout my life, feeling down then lifted; road blocks disappearing and opportunities arising; the timing of mistakes made and lessons learnt; knowledge, understanding and information coming when needed. Lucky to have grown to adulthood, gaining experience during a period in human existence when scientific knowledge has led to historically unprecedented life expectancies. Lucky to be born male and white and raised in an affluent, secular society that had great optimism for the future during a time of relative peace. There seemed to be a serendipity to my life's coincidences. The last five years have been slightly different.

A virus had weakened me and caused the immune system to become active, something I cannot afford, so I went to recuperate after the antibiotics. The Pole's place. The visit coincided with the 1st anniversary of his partner, the Aristo's death. (They got their nicknames from some Communist Party members and friends – one's a Polish pole, the other rich – and the names stuck.) Quite a large and friendly community has grown up around him so he didn't really need me around for support.

As I have written previously about a visit there, 'it was not a morbid time'. The Aristo had died as she had lived, trying to make a difference and the living have the same responsibility, whether they succeed or not. Morbidity has no place at this juncture in world political events or my flailing attempts at understanding them at the same time as dealing with the multiple sclerosis. So lets take a serious look at the MS and its person specific manifestation. Everybody's is different and I named mine Maggie in homage to Dennis Potter who named his cancer Rupert.

When I first realised I had relapsing/remitting MS, nearly five years ago, I started to do some research and remembering of my medical history. Maggie didn't just appear out of nowhere.

Was it my genes or the environment that gave rise to the Maggie in me? Like everybody else who has studied, or try to study MS, I do not have a definitive answer. It could be either or both. What I have identified though are two 'triggers' for my relapses, my dances with Maggie. One is physiological the other emotional.

Most of the autumns of my life have been visited by a viral or bacterial infection. Bronchitis, cold sores, flu, boils have accompanied me throughout. During my teens and twenties the following spring or summer would see a heightening of emotion. My behaviour would occasionally spill into violence, but more generally I would swing between high and low – not the extremes of bipolar, that would come later – just a slight raising of the emotions that could lead to snapping at friends or an over generosity in expressions of affection as recompense. Physical signs presented themselves and like the emotional/behavioural disappeared with remission during this period of my life. They would only hold significance when I knew what Maggie was, except a period in my mid thirties. Then people thought I was a nut case and my emotional state was due to a working class lad not having the mental strength for political leadership.

In my puberty it seems a rogue molecule found a compliant receptor. It's arrival could have come unnoticed during a time of quite startling changes, even if it came with a jolt. Whether the molecule was expressed by a faulty vitamin D receptor gene or the ingress of an endocrine disrupting chemical, is anybodies guess at this stage in MS research. The corruption of my immune system began then.

Every time the immune system became active the rogue would enter stage right and it would replicate. The time lag between viral infection and MS symptoms has consistently shortened whilst increasing in intensity, until the symptoms became so noticeable that even I could see there was a problem. Slow initial acceleration, starting over 35 years ago has finally made for a momentum that seems to have initiated the secondary progressive stage of the disease. Relapsing/Remitting can overlap with Secondary Progressive - the continual stripping away of the laminated myelin sheath that protects the nerve fibres. (Think electric cable and its plastic coating). In the early stages of the disease the body has the ability to 'remyelate', but this ability decreases over time.One good thing, yes - good thing, about this stage is the alleviation of the problems being driven by heightened emotions, once again letting my optimistic personality come to the fore.

The emotional has been the most difficult to recognise and write about. Emotions are not supposed to be a male strong point. Heightened emotion more so I suppose. Expectancy, trepidation, anger, hate, love, fear, relief, joy - you name it and I have experienced the exquisite agony or euphoric ecstasy of it at some point in the progression of the disease. Not one to take to the flat, regulation greyness of a 9 – 5 lifestyle, instead opting for the instability of poverty, political activity and the emotional roller-coaster that my life was, heightened emotions gained the ability to trigger a relapse. These emotions can be akin to stress and stress as all who have MS know, brings on relapses.

For me especially so when falling in love. Which I did many times and from which no relationship lasted. In the colloquial of male parlance, 'I got around a bit'. When younger a friend once told me that other men were jealous of me. If they have read anything I have written here I think their view may have changed.

Some relationships failed due to a relapse caused by a cocktail of emotions and stress associated with love and sex of that I am certain. The failures could also have been due to a sexual behaviour characterised as Satyriasis - the male equivalent to Nymphomania and which may or may not be associated with the Maggie, (Maggie as nympho – well she did fuck us over a bit!). I never did enter a sexual relationship without wanting to find love and give the better of me, even when at my most obnoxious. At least I tried. If you have not noticed, people with MS like to talk a lot about sex – probably the closest to sex us singles can get.

I am no Freudian. I do not believe the conclusion that Freud reaches about human nature, that primitive sexual and aggressive forces hidden deep in our minds, if not controlled by those who know better – an elite - would lead individuals and societies to chaos and destruction. Sound familiar? These 'primitive sexual forces' are not primitive at all, but the product of our modern social relations - the alienation from self and other. I believe that acknowledging and openly discussing sex and aggression is what is needed; that the intellect we have, with involvement from the wider society can comprehend, mediate and change any morbid, 'primitive sexual' forces, feelings or desires that we may unconsciously harbour.

Suppression of these 'primitive forces' and the demand to conform has also suppressed the creative and intellectual forces we all possess and that are, collectively, capable of challenging the status quo. It is no accident that Freud's insights into our unconscious emotions, desires and feelings have been used like this. The advertising and public relations industries are his children and they just exploit our unconscious feelings. You can't exploit when people know. See the Adam Curtis documentaries on Freud's legacy available at Information Clearing House for an excellent analysis of what I've probably failed to explain with my writing.

This lack of knowledge about sex, desire, emotion and other of our unconscious feelings with their suppression, has left populations susceptible to sex scares. Hysteria about sexual offences has been ruthlessly used by reaction. 'Pariah' has written an exceptional piece on this at Counterpunch. Sex education has to start in schools.

Two coincidencies:

1.April 2002 Bush and blair take the decision to invade Iraq while blair is in Crawford, Texas. May 2002, with a list of names of alleged child pornography users supplied by American Intelligence, British Police launch 'Operation Ore'.
2.July 20th 2005, Duncan Campbell writes article for PC Pro exposing extremely serious short-comings with the 'evidence' provided by the Americans for 'Operation Ore'. July 21st 2005, dummy bombings on London underground and a bus.

Previously I've written about some activities of the police/intelligence services in my vicinity and with their presence has come deliberately engineered fear - from all angles and at speed. It has been the most common emotion over the last four years and it has been extreme at times. My response to this has been varied, but since starting this blog it has mostly been in writing. Some postings may have been injudicious in exposing weakness, frailty and failings - Bea, will you ever speak to me again? But then, better out than in if it is going to be used against you. Some of my ramblings may even have damaged others and not just myself. Sorry.

Having re-read some of the earlier postings I can come across a bit apocalyptic in what could be awaiting us while Bush has his finger on the button - well it is frightening! Some of the apocalyptic is due to an interpretation of world politics while writing fearful and not waiting to post before the fear had abated and an edit could be done – wanting to get it all out because my time is short. This doesn't mean that I no longer believe that the neocons are not going to nuke Iran, that they are going to leave Iraq any time soon without being forced or that climate change is not upon us. (I will be writing more extensively on this in a future blog and it will not be so self-obsessed!).

Five days after arriving at the Pole's, a major news story broke about six men who had life threatening adverse effects during a drug trial in Britain. It went wrong big time! The story made the international news. The six have seemingly made a recovery which is good news. It reminded me of a drug trial I participated in from Aug 2003 to March 2005.

At the time I wanted to help, and hoped to find a way, to kill Maggie despite there being no cure for the MS. The trial was in two parts. The initial part of the trial went well, the drug seemed to shorten relapses and there was no notable side effects. It was the extention of the trial where I encountered problems. The neurologist cut the trial short for me, for which I am eternally grateful, when I presented some painful and serious adverse side-effects at an unscheduled consultation I requested. The trial ended over a year ago.

The side-effects included; finger and toe nails cracking with brittleness; severe sciatica from compressed disc L5-S1; gross swelling of my lower left leg and foot; a 'crusty' hole in the nose. All bar the nose have gone. But other symptoms that developed during the trial have not eased and could be attributed to the disease not the drug; the ache and heaviness throughout my limbs; the difficulty in walking up a slope; walking on the flat at a snails pace; becoming physically fatigued very easily. Having to use a walking stick is now permanent if I am to maintain balance and not wobble excessively. This is when I moved from Relapsing/Remitting to Secondary Progressive.

At a clinic just before ending the trial the neurologist mentioned to some of us there that a new drug, natalizumab (trade name Tysabri) with exceptional qualities for MS patients according to trial results, had recently been withdrawn - 4 months after licensing - by the American Food and Drug Administration. There is a very small risk associated with progressive multifocal leukoencepthalopathy - a risk most MS patients would willing take if they were to be asked!

I'd read an article about the developments concerning Tysabri posted on 3rd March at the Multiple Sclerosis Society website, just before leaving for the Pole's. The article was quite optimistic about the time scale for the drug becoming available. This year in America, 2007 in Europe and Britain. Like I said, 'serendipity to my life's coincidences'.

On 24th March the FDA issued a press release updating the situation, not as optimistic as the MS Society article but still hopeful. Not for me though now I've moved from Relapsing/Remitting to Secondary Progressive.

I obviously checked the protocol I signed with the neurologist for the Wyeth Research UK CC1-799 trial when I got back. It is as remembered and I was fully cognisant of the possible side effects. All my thoughts about intellectual property rights and access to the information were fully discussed and where principled, respected. I had already come to the conclusion that the neurologist's ethical standards, moral stance, thought and care for patients were of a high standard. Not debased like those medical professionals – physicians and psychiatrists – aiding torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

It is now legal in Britain for the police to gain access to someone's medical records if they are under investigation, and illegal for the medical profession to inform their patients. I want to make it very clear that the neurologist at no time volunteered any information to me that I was being investigated or under surveillance. I am not disassociated from the social environment around me and I could see what was going on - the surveillance and spooking since my public announcement that I have the Maggie. The spooking intensified as the extension of the trial started.

Doctors may not even know that their patients are being investigated or under surveillance. The legal departments of NHS Trust's or pharmaceutical companies might be instructed not to inform them of requests for copies of medical files.

The position that the medical profession has been put in with this law is intolerable. The releasing of information is no longer the patient's prerogative and medical professionals can be placed in a quandary when they need to be decisive on diagnosis and treatment – on what is best for their patients. The Hippocratic Oath must seem very quaint to the framers of this law.

The results from the trial may never be published now that natalizumab is back in the arena. Wyeth Research UK is an arm of an American pharmaceutical with a global reach and levering access to what is my body parts like blood or the MRI scans and X-Rays, would be prohibitively expensive and hence impossible given the state of my pockets. I have found no relationship between the company responsible for natalizumab and Wyeth.

Is this site a spoof? No. I am who I say I am, despite it reading like I've stepped out from a John le Carré novel or two and living my life through fantasy. I moved from Southwark to Salcombe in Aug 2004 three months after the extension of the trial and just at the end of the holiday season because of the spooks. Salcombe I found is a south Devon coastal town that reeks of the opening sentence in 'A Perfect Spy'. The town is pastel pretty by local bye-law, full of affluent second-home owners and has the feel of a retirement centre for pensioned spooks. Quintessential upper-middle class, gentile and established England. I was spooked in Salcombe too.

In January I had a viral infection – a series of cold sores and which were very noticable – and by February I was being spooked again but this time in Totnes, where I moved to just before starting this blog.

But why? A bad coincidence. I started working for a London bus company in April 2002, at the same time that Bush and blair decided to invade Iraq. Bad, bad coincidence.

I've been in the American's 'records' since 1974 after being arrested by their Military Police while working as a civilian kitchen helper on a base in Germany. Possession of some dope. After joining the Communist Party and over ten years later, while Eastern District Secretary of the CPGB, I had to travel to meet a comrade in Mildenhall. On the way I pulled off the main road onto a track to have a piss. As I was walking back to the car two A10's – Warthog tank-busters – flew very low over my head. Didn't think to much of it, I had seen a decayed brick shed that looked a good opportunity for a photo about texture as well as a chance to use up the last few frames on the roll. As I'm trying to take a picture they come back and of course I take a shot. I was a snapper for fuck sake. I put the used roll in the car door compartment and it's missing the next day. What do you think the Americans thought? What do you think? Suspicious?

The plane was not a secret. I only recognised it because it featured a lot in papers/magazines and TV propaganda pieces about American might. Not an easily forgetable looking plane. Warthog is an apt description. I did mention this event to some people at the time but there has been so many people pass through my life since that I cannot remember who. The Americans have obviously got my role of film and I want it back. Its my copyright as author of the work!

They thought I was a spy or a 'terrorist' even. This information was obviously contained in intelligence passed on to the British in April 2002, the month Bush and blair decided to illegally invade Iraq. By allowing American Intelligence to operate in Britain against British citizens, blair has I believe, committed treason.

Am I stupid? Well, in fear from the last spooking and wanting to shed the Americans, I think I may have compromised what little was left of my political integrity with the British, and there ain't no good guys there. How stupid is that, but what the hell I never was a spy nor agent. An adventurer and revolutionary maybe and which has probably made for a more dangerous life anyway.

Knowing that those who dislike the political good – equality, solidarity and humanism - I attempted to achieve throughout my adulthood but failed, who saw my attempts as evil, who have access to my medical records and probably know more about the disease than I could ever learn and have used that knowledge to worsen my condition - what now? I suppose their psychologists will want to keep applying a plan – using the same modus operandi – if I keep opening my mouth about the state of the world, climate change and the neocons strategy to maintain dominance, and how to change with non-violent mass participatory civil disobedience and direct action. I assume there will be more attempts to stop me writing, have me rubbished (not hard) and try to make my life, my history as naught but fantasy.

In the words of John le Carré, as is the title of this piece, 'The most comfortable thing you can do is assume they're with you all the time.' He's probably right seeing his novels contain more truth than the corporate press and the deceitful utterings of Bush and blair. It's now the only way to be while trying to work towards the vision of toy shops without guns in the ever shortening time I have left. The only peace that nuclear war on Iran will bring is the peace of our species extinction.

The disease has gained ground – since starting this piece the same sensations as in my limbs have moved to my jaw and jowls and which, at some point, will affect my ability to swallow. Maggie not only destroys mobility and strength, but she will also try to starve you to death.

In the closing words from 'The Battle for America',

"........So cry a few tears. Bang against the walls. Scream into the wind. Then collect yourself and get back to work. Its time to punch the clock. The battle for America – has begun."

Photo: Caroline Coles

*The Battle for America is directed by Alrick A Brown, written by Max Skolnik and produced by Paola Mendoza.

Psy-ops and the Strategy of Fear

2006-03-01T14:14:00.000Z

Torture for all the world to see.

When the Americans first opened Camp Delta torture centre at their Guantanamo base in Cuba to hold hostages from around the world, they released an official photograph of people dressed to be de-humanised in orange overalls, blindfold goggles, earmuffs, nose and mouth masks, gloves and shackled in chains. In enforced, total sensory deprivation - except for touch when tortured or beaten or as in the photo manhandled. I had originally thought that the photo was taken from Cuban territory and published as another expose of the long history of American barbarity in the Caribbean and beyond. Until I saw the by-line. The Times credited the photos to the US Navy.

Guantanamo is not just a torture centre, that would be bad enough in itself, but it is worse and much, much more sinister. Everybody knows that torture doesn't work in providing reliable information. The tortured tell the torturer what is already decided the tortured should say by the torturer before the torture starts. The torturer knows this but the torturer also knows the psychological power that torture has in instilling fear, hatred and opposition in those the torturer has demonised as 'Other', and for whom the tortured is identified with through race, religion, nationality or just their humanity. Torture is very effective in creating enemies.

Instilling fear in those you wish to fight is an old, old military tactic now being spread via a modern and complicit globalised corporate media. The shock-jocks, the columnists, the journalists, the news anchors nearly all of whom corrupt language and soul when they glorify or attempt to justify, make acceptable, the use of torture as state policy.

The primary rationale for Camp Delta at Guantanamo is Psy-ops - military psychological operations. The Statue of Liberty now declares to the world, as she lights the fuse, "This is what happens to you who would dare attempt to defend your land and wealth from me". Its an example for each one of use on this planet to see, to ponder what happens to anybody America thinks may, at some time in the future of this 'long war', possibly harbour a smidgen of animosity to America's arrogance in thinking the world's resources are theirs to steal. Torture is the last refuge of a class petrified that they may lose control as this multifaceted crisis we are in unfolds. Torture, the only answer a paranoid class and it's state can find and which is not really an answer but an admission of weakness. Of not knowing how and not wanting to change.

A pdf of the USA Department of Defence, Information Operation Roadmap 2003 - the military's psychological operations manual - is available at the BBC (scroll down page).

Over the last few weeks this strategy of fear has been refined. No longer is the whole of the world's poor targeted. It is now directed solely at Arabs/Muslims. A Danish paper, known for its support of the extreme right, commissioned some cartoons characterising the Prophet Mohammed and by extension all Muslims, in much the same way that Nazi Germany did with Jews over 70 years ago. Everything bad in the world is laid at their feet, is their fault. The visual similarity is startling. The cartoons are anti-semitic if one accepts that Jew and Arab are both semitic people, as well as being a calculated insult to Islam. (If the previous link doesn't work then refer to Cambridge Dictionary Online and look up - the following link does link to the C.D.O. definition.)

Jewish anti-semitism is quite rightly outlawed in Europe. Whilst the anti-cartoon riots and demonstrations were going on, the Nazi's apologist historian - David Irving - was gaoled in Austria for denying the Holocaust. The Mayor of London, Ken Livingston has been suspended for a month for what were deemed anti-semitic remarks to a Jewish journalist. (For an analysis of the political implications to Livingston's plight, as well as a look at the editorial practise of the organisation the reporter works for, read Mike Marqusee at Znet.) These two actions against Jewish anti-semitism ostensibly codify the anti-racist credentials of european liberalism but in fact disquise the racism of the Arab anti-semitism that is so graphically displayed in the cartoons.

At least two outcomes were expected from the cartoons publication and to a certain extent were achieved. The first was to provoke and inflame the Muslim street and in the process undermine the authority of their own governments. This was not as successful as was hoped because the majority of Muslims seen the cartoons for what they are – provocations and didn't respond with violence. But the riots and death threats that did erupt aided the more successful outcome of shifting European liberal sentiment against Muslims who they now see as being anti-free speech and therefore against human rights – fundamental tenets of liberal ideology despite free speech not being a reality in any European democracy. When an idea gains hegemonic hold it becomes personal to the individual even if the idea is not supported by fact or is absolutely idiotic like believing in fairies or Bush or Blair. Talk about being 'conflicted'.

Although writing and singing about Americans, Phil Ochs had all liberals and social democrats down to a T.

“In every American community there are various shades of political opinion.
One of the shadiest of these is the liberals.
10 degrees to the left of centre in good times.
10 degrees to the right of centre if it affects them personally.”

Live intro to 'Love Me I'm A Liberal'

Yes, I read the Republic and Nation.
I've learnt to take every view.
You know I've memorised Lerner and Golden.
I feel like I'm almost a Jew.
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue.
So love me, love me, love me. I'm a liberal.

From 'Love Me I'm A Liberal' Phil Ochs

Europeans, unless Muslim, are now more likely to believe that the horrors of Guantanamo will not be visited on them. Easing some of the fear from American practise and redirecting it against the Other. Against the Muslim - the perceived backward and weaker and hence the easier target for expressing our fear. Illegal wars are given justification like this. The problem though is that the greatest warriors are those defending their homes.

If you do not believe that the publishing of the cartoons were a deliberate provocation of Muslims and manipulation of European thinking, then I suggest you read the article by John Sugg at Palestine Chronicle, which exposes the timing of a meeting between the editor responsible and the extreme Christain right in America as well as the history of the paper involved.

Shortly after the publication of the cartoons, further pictures and videos of torture at Abu Ghraib were published in Australia. When the first tranche of pictures appeared two years ago there was an outcry from around the world but the torture has continued unabated throughout the CIA's worldwide Gulag. What has abated however is the level of outrage from the European and American public. It is as if the understanding of what is torture has been raised to the level of acceptability. No longer the hellish outrage and affront to human dignity that it is.

The Bush White House has been fighting the release of these new images in America. So the timing of their appearance, as well as the appearance of the video of British troops viciously beating children, has me, how shall I put this, feeling slightly suspicious about how they came into the public domain.

The British sunday paper (News of the World, owned by Murdoch via ICH) and the Australian TV (via ICH) channel that first aired them, quite rightly so, may have been given a controlled release. But why? Coming so close on the heels of the cartoons, and if it is part of a Psy-ops campaign, then I think it is to intensify the feeling of Muslim isolation from Europe. And test how alienated Muslims are from American, European and Australian feelings following the publishing of the cartoons,. The speed by which the stink dies down compared to the original disclosure two years ago, could be a reliable indicator of public engagement.

Sacrilege has recently been visited on Samarra. The al-Askariya Mosque, shrine to two Shi'a Imams Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari was bombed by men in black. The immediate response in Europe and America was to see civil war. This despite eyewitness reports from the area that American troops and the ING were on patrol around the Mosque all night and left just minutes before the explosion. It took hours to plant the expertly placed explosives.

This has all the hallmarks of Black-ops. The twin of Psy-ops in the dark arts and who never plan without reference to each other. That it was Black-ops was strengthened for me by the speed with which the assassination squads started killing Sunni. Almost as soon as the dust died down the death squads were on the streets. The people to read to get an idea of what is happenning in Iraq are; Truth About Iraqis, Riverbend and Baghdad Dweller. Brave humans all. The Baghdad Dweller link is to an article that carries two eyewitness reports.

What have we become if even the barbarous Mongol Hoards never touched the al-Askariya Mosque, the shimmering jewel of Islamic architecture, out of awe and respect when they invaded and conquered Samarra.

Why the Psy-ops? Well it is obviously a build up to something. Could it be an attack on Shia Iran? I think this is the only possible conclusion that can be drawn. The timing fits with the Iranians plans to establish a Bourse in Tehran and start trading their oil in Euros by the end of March. The shift away from countries having to buy dollars to buy oil would undermine the pre-eminence of the dollar as the world's reserve currency (see Coilin Nunan at Countercurrents). Also at the end of March the Iranians should have on stream their two satellites that the Russians made and launched for them, and which are believed to have 'early warning' abilities. All the claims about Iran having nuclear weapons and that they should be referred to the UN is just hyperbole. The Iranian plans to do as they see fit with their oil and their national security in the face of American/British imperial opposition is the main reason for this build up in tension.

The downsides of a military assault and invasion far outweigh any benefits the American/British could possibly hope to achieve. Iran will prove to be a more formidable enemy than Iraq having not lived through 12 years of sanctions and having built up a well equiped, modern and motivated military. Both American and British forces are overstetched fighting two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against a strengthening Resistance. Moral is shot.

The imperial powers also have a problem with using nuclear weapons despite having integrated them into their regional battleplans as reported by Chossudovsky at Global Research. (Not that depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon of course!). In 1985 when Gorbachev met with Reagan, he told Reagan the Soviets had already developed a counter to his Strategic Defence Initiative – 'Star Wars'. The Russians have sold to the Iranians and Chinese the dual purpose – conventional and nuclear cruise missile they developed. This thing travels at over Mach2, twice the speed of sound, can fly 9ft above the ground out of sight of radar and then as it nears its target, manoeuvre violently with no chance of intercepting. It is unstoppable as the Americans found out when the Chinese used one for practise in the Pacific. Two years ago it only had a range of 100 miles but with the advances in technology this could have been extented. Underestimate Russian science at your peril, they are not encumbered with such nonsense as 'faith based' scientific research. See Mark Gaffney at ICH.

There is of course the possibility of an attack by Israel. They have certainly upped the rhetoric battle with Iran and have previously bombed a nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq. There are also reports that Israel has war planes stationed in Turkey near the Iran/Turkey border and that they have recently received a large consignment of bunker buster bombs from America. Israel is a nuclear power and would object, to put it mildly, Iran having an early warning system that could thwart a surprise convential attack on their nuclear facilities.

European sensitivity to the guilt of our Jewish anti-semitism ending up in the Holocaust, has been ruthlessly exploited by Israel since its inception as a state in its propaganda campaign against Palestinians. The timing and the political/cultural impact of the trial of Irving and suspension of Livingston, couldn't have happened at a better time if we are in the midst of a Psy-ops campaign as a build up to war on Iran. Both decisions are very supportive to Israel, which claims representation of all Jewry, at a time when all Muslims are being made 'Other' with crude, infantile anti-semitic cartoons.

The Chinese and Russians would not stand passively by. They have both invested to heavily in Iran's oil and nuclear industries and will not appreciate America gaining control of 50% of the worlds oil, which they would do if they tried to annex the big oilfields in south west Iran. For China the loss of their contracts for Iranian oil and gas could damage their growth quite substantially. Expect Europe to get a cut in gas supplies from Russia at the very least.

The present negotiations between Iran and Russia over the uranium enrichment process for the Iranian reactors being done in Russia, seems to be advancing positively. The Iranians come across as quite confident of something being decided. Any protocol adopted through an agreement between Iran and Russia on this may be adopted by the International Atomic Energy Authority. Helpful diplomacy in a time of tension from the Russians is being interpreted in Washington as a threat in that it could place Russia as the premier supplier of enriched uranium to countries around the world who desire nuclear power. The crisis of peak oil has brought back into the energy equation the extension of nuclear produced power with a vengeance. And who are we who have it to tell others they can't have this knowledge and the higher education it requires? The negotiatons are continuing.

Although on the balance of benefit it seems sane not to attack and invade Iran, sanity could have nothing to do with it. The America economy is one big bubble and the opening of an Iranian oil Bourse trading in euros could be the pin that pricks. It is going to collapse at some point anyway so why not suppress the demand for oil by locking it in the ground, engineer a population crash while the America of oligarchs, neocons, gangsters and other assorted members of it's capitalist class, still have a slim chance of maintaining world dominance. They certainly will not be in a dominant position if they allow oil trading in euros and can no longer maintain the economic bubble by issuing fiat dollars to a captive clientèle of oil dependent nations.

Being America's poodle, Britain's continued trading of our oil for dollars at the London Petroleum Exchange is the one and only reason Blair has obfuscated about joining the Euro.

What can we do in Britain besides just campaigning to join the euro? As I have said before and will continue saying, non-violent mass participatory civil disobedience and direct action – from petitions to strikes - are the only means by which we can achieve an end that results in peace. The war machine has to be disrupted. Stopped from killing.

The World Tribunal on Iraq and the BRussels Tribunal have given a lead and produced some of the clearest guides to action against the war. All of our peace and anti-war organisations should be taking them on board and organising around them.

In the short term organising for the demo in London on the 18th March has to be a priority, though this should not detract from local events/actions being conducted on the day. A day out in London is always attractive and when its for a vital cause, why not?

It is never to late for peace.

Totnes update.

2006-02-25T12:20:00.000Z

I wasn't planning to post today. Wasn't even planning to write anything - not even a shopping list - till I realised I had made a mistake in my last posting. Only a small mistake and which doesn't detract from the success of the peace activist in making the Army rectruitment stall shut up and close last Tuesday.

Unless I rectify the mistake I am liable to get a very sever ear bashing for getting someone's age wrong. Not for writing that she is older than she really is but for telling everybody she was younger than she is.

Lillian Brown is not 79 but 89 and not only did she do well for a 79 year old, she did bloody marvelous for an 89 year old. I have also found out she is a 'cradle-snatcher'. Donald, her husband is only 84. He was there at the demo as well (right). Two old commies, as tough as nails.

The final picture is that of Poppy. Her of birth at Greenham.

Totnes is no army recruitment zone

2006-02-21T15:02:00.000Z

The Army came to Totnes today. The Devon & Dorset Regiment set up a recruiting stall in the town centre's Civic Square. It's half-term for the local schools and Totnes is a small town of about 15,000 people so all the teenagers, the young people know each other and will congregate in the town centre during the day to meet up. As teenagers are wont when not at school and the sun is out.

I discovered the recruitment stall, to my great dismay as I went for breakfast of tea, bacon sandwich, fag and paper at my local cafe, the Brioche which is on the main street and faces the Civic Square. It wasn't the best start to the day. But the gloom lifted as soon as I entered the cafe. Poppy - cook of the day - exclaimed in wide-eyed righteous anger, "Have you seen what they are doing?!" The next half hour was a whirr of activity as she went up and down the High Street checking with shops and others about what should be done. She came back with a ton of paper to make placards and notices to plaster all around the square and up and down the street.

Poppy was born at Greenham Common, a fact she is rightly proud of. Greenham represented the height of the feminist movement in Britain. The women-only peace camps the feminist movement established around the USAF Cruise Missile base at Greenham Common, during the early 1980s had a major political impact at the time. Unfortunately this went the way of most progressive movements once the miners were finally defeated in 1985. Poppy though is the next generation and seems to have the activism and peace gene.

My bacon sandwich was slow in coming but what the hell, when it arrived it tasted better knowing a cook of one of the best cafe's in Totnes was trying to stop war. The cafe wasn't busy and Laura, running 'front-of-house' not the kitchen, covered while wishing she was making posters. No one in the cafe complained about service, Laura's to good for that. The American wasn't to happy about the anti-war sentiment but Poppy had the measure of him in her uncomplicated and direct way.

Paul, who runs the Harlequin bookshop a few doors down, had already rung around the town's anti-war stalwarts before Poppy stopped by. He had made up some placards to display outside the shop directly opposite the recruitment stall.

"Join the army. Travel to exotic lands. Meet interesting people and kill them."

Paul spent some time in America during the 1960s active in the Vietnam anti-war movement, which explains the speed of his response as well as the placards.

I hung around the cafe for a while having arranged to meet Julie, an artist friend whose day job is in a shop a few doors down past Paul's. She had managed to get a few minutes off work for a coffee and a fag. It was good to see her, as always. Julie has an exhibition coming up in the spring so is very busy.

By the time I left the cafe at 10.45 there were at least 15 people demonstrating around the recruitment stall, keeping a respectful distance but close enough to let the soldiers know their presence was not welcome. Nothing personal.

Lillian, on the left was phoned at 09.00 and turned up at 09.30 as a walking placard. Not bad for a 79 year old. Talking to her I found out that, like me she is an old commie. They get bloody everywhere don't they!

By midday the recruiters had had enough and packed up their stalls and left, having failed in enlisting any new recruits today.

Its nice to see that Totnes peace movement can respond so quickly and enjoy doing it. Makes for optimism in these times of woe.

The photos are taken with a phone camera, its the only picture capturing thing I can seem to hold with out the shakes.

Mid-Winter Feasts, Spooks and Other Imaginings

2006-02-12T14:33:00.000Z

I've been away for a long time due to a winter break and a very severe hack. The hack has taken a few weeks to sort out, being a one man band and not a computer programmer. The spooks are still around, but enough of this self justification already.

Before I leave the topic of the Revolutionary Ccommunist Party as a front for the intelligence services of the USA and the UK, so that I can concentrate on other more important stuff for myself, the MS and open politics, a piece about a Christmas time discovery. Or Christmas present, depending on your interpretation.

I spent this years winter festival on a converted barge. A friend and old comrade, Peter and his partner Kate had acquired the boat 18 months ago. She had cancer and the boat was a refuge of sorts while she battled with it. Kate 'popped her clogs' in March and Peter has had a succession of visitors since - not all have meant for an easy time. Their dog, Douza died a few months after Kate and then, in Sept/Oct his new lover survived an overdose of medicine while on the boat. 2 days after Christmas Day, Peter was emailed about the death of an old lover from cancer. Not a good year for him, but the Loafer is resilient enough to get through with a little help from friends. It was not a morbid time.

Who was there? On the way I picked up an anarchist, grandmother, ex-snapper and declared Celibate who now works for the Home Office. Lesley helped with the driving there and back and is quite bonkers. How the hell she succeeded in being politically vetted by the Home Office, I have no idea! Unless of course one remembers the Home Office's notorious and legendary inefficiency. Two Les' driving. Already at the boat when we arrived were Ann & Ross and Yvonne. Ann and Ross have been together for years, since as long as I can remember knowing them and both women are quite bonkers. Ann is in remission from cancer but is worried that some latest tests may have pointed to a relapse. They're still angry that Kate went up and died on them but it was not a morbid time.

Yvonne is a short story in herself. She's an architect who split with her long-term partner of 15 years, Debbie four months previously, has a degenerative, auto-immune disease similar to my MS though it is not active in the central nervous system but at the nerve system's periphery. A much more exotic disease. We spent some time comparing symptoms like a pair of old hypochondriacs. We both get 'flaring' on sensitised patches of skin and our limbs feel like we have been given a local anaesthetic that is wearing off but never will. A fanatic about cartoons and graphic novels who describes herself as a geek and is quite bonkers.

Many years ago I annoyed Yvonne by going on a date to the flicks with her then girlfriend, Julia to see a Chris Menges film, 'A World Apart'. (A 1988 film about Ruth First and the relationship with her daughters during the struggle in South Africa against Apartheid. It was an Oscar shoo-in after winning at Cannes, but for the American distribution company going bankrupt two weeks before it's American release. No accident I think). Yvonne and I hadn't met for ages until bumping into each other a couple of years ago in, of all places, the MRI scanning unit at Guy's Hospital. She's now my 'blood' sister and it was not a morbid time.

The food was fabulous. Nursing Kate has improved Peter's cooking skills somewhat. I still remember with a shudder the time in Wales when we were frying up some trout with fresh chillies and not enough oil in the pan. The kitchen was smoked out with chilli flavoured fumes that burnt the eyes and lungs and forced a quick evacuation to the garden. Dangerous cooking. Or the time we failed to even roast a chicken. Oops!

Lesley and I were met on arrival with lobster. The first time I've had it and it won't be the last. Tidy. Over the next week we dined very lavishly. A protein binge, as was the original mid-winter festival/feast prior to monotheism's rise and subsequent imposition of an alien religious ceremony upon it. Duck, venison, turkey, lamb, beef, snails, oysters. Smoked salmon & scrambled eggs for Christmas day breakfast, washed down with champagne and orange juice smacks of decadence. But was bloody nice. Polish vodka over lemon sorbet for pudd. Remembering and writing this has me salivating and I make no apology for the extravagance.

Most, if not all northern hemisphere societies have a mid-winter feast that historically pre-dates monotheism by a long stretch. Subsistent farming required that those animals that were not going to be bred from in the spring were slaughtered, processed into sausage or some other means of preserving the meat through winter and that which isn't preserved, is binged on in a mid-winter festival. Slaughtering non-breeding stock also frees land for farming crops for human consumption instead of animal feed. A very sensible response to seasonal changes. We were clever then.

Loads of reading, good music from Dylan to east European war-time marching songs - I kid you not. And a lot of wine.

If I haven't mentioned it, Peter is also quite bonkers. I was not the only sane person there - as in 'every-bodies mad but me' - just the weirdest and wobbliest.

One evening, when the women had gone to their cabins to sleep, read or watch some films I'd brought along or just to get away from the politically incorrect men, Peter and I settled down to smoking some blow, drinking and general chat about the old Communist Party of Great Britain. I mentioned my previous posting to this blog and the RCP's malignant influence on the internet and it's rumoured association with the UK and US intelligence agencies. Peter's response was to find a site purportedly for the CPGB on the internet. Now I know that the CPGB no longer exists. Been there, done that but didn't get a T-shirt. I even spoke at the Nov. 1991 Congress in support of the finalisation of changes of name, constitution, structure etc. etc. A decision that made yours truly redundant as Welsh Secretary of the CPGB.

The new name was Democratic Left, then a couple of years later the New Politics Network. I think there may have been other name changes, but they have also gone, dead as Monty Python's parrot. The financial assets passed on to the post-CP successor organisations have been collared by the Trades Union Congress. There is no CPGB.

I didn't follow the protracted disintegration to closely after redundancy, being more interested in developing my photography while trying to survive on unemployment benefit. Peter was elected to the job of Secretary of Chwith Democrataidd - Welsh Democratic Left - and followed the process of collapse. I remember him being very angry over some of the shenanigans. I was pleased to be out of it.

At some point though, through these final death throes of a once respected revolutionary organisation, the name seems not to have been incorporated in the articles of a successor. The name was discarded as having failed.

The 'CPGB' web site is a front. Despite the links that try and lay claim to the defunct, no longer existent Communist Party's history. Non of their sources are original. I'd seen the site before but had dismissed it as a Maoist attempt to nick the 'brand'. They were the only grouplet I thought nuts enough to think they could benefit from such a discredited name. But Peter thought RCP and I now think he maybe right. Even if it is not, it is a site operated by the secret intelligence services of one country or the other, the US or UK.

But why? One reason is obvious - the harvesting of email and computer addresses of those searching for alternative reasons other than the official version for, and ways out of, the mess our world is in. Another is the throwing into confusion the history of the left in Britain. Yet another is to direct politically naive youth who may be invited to attend their meetings, toward the dangerous and anti-intellectual emotionalism of messianic exhortation that seems to infect some of the so-called atheists masquerading as Marxists.

The Leninist construct that had inspired the formation of revolutionary parties and liberation movements around the world from 1917, collapsed having failed to achieve it's proclaimed objectives. From 1988 to 1990 I was 'conflicted' (although that piece of jargon was not available then!), not sure whether this was the demise of the Communist Parties or not. Confusion reigned. In the end I took all this as not just a crisis in, and of the Communist Parties but as a crisis of political parties per se. I think that still stands. Though the notes for my contributions to the CPGB congresses of 1990 and 1991 have long been lost or stolen, the general gist was;

The political party is a reality which has appeared only recently in the development of human society. They are the most complex and advanced of organisations that people have yet developed. They have evolved, in the course of struggle as a means by which, in a complex society, abstract ideas of democracy, historic interpretation and shared values, amongst many other concepts, are brought into common purpose and given concrete expression. They have a remit which is as vast as the diversity that is the human condition to one that is as narrow as reaction, and all the shades between. The struggle between which, is the terrain where to 'become' or not is thought and fought out.

The Communist Party arrived on the global stage in Russia during, and was shaped by the 'industrialisation' of death as seen in WW1 between 1914/17. This Leninist construct was ostensibly 'democratic centralist' where decisions taken by the membership were binding on both membership and a leadership who had to carry them out. In reality it was hierarchical, very much like a military organisation in that the orders came from the top and went down. Very understandable considering the circumstance in 1917 and the subsequent invasion of Russia by the armies of the US, GB, Finland and others, trying to crush the revolution after WW1 was, unsurprisingly brought to a quick end.

I'm no expert on this period, it's not why I joined the CPGB, but it seems to me that the Russian revolution was a 'revolution of the moment' during a specific and historic time in a specific country and which could not be replicated across the world. It's moment was then - 90 years ago. Again understandably, revolutionaries from around the world adopted the Leninist construct - the democratic centralist political party - as the vehicle for change.

The undemocratic practises that result from this form of organisation are patronage and the creation of self-perpetuating elites. The 'recommended list' (a collection of names recommended as the new leadership by the 'retiring' leadership and put to the CP's congress for election), was long established in the CPGB and demands conformity. It showed a clear lack of respect for peoples ability to make their own decisions and suggests they do not have the intellectual ability to make political choices. Choices they make everyday by just living. Despite the responsibility demanded of them in their work, their families and their communities they were expected to vote as they were told.

A political party that relies on patronage and the self-perpetuation of an elite soon finds that it not only loses it's volunteer membership but that even worse, the intellectual function of the organisation ossifies. The understanding of Marx and his relevance to the modern was nearly reduced to the quoting of text as if literalist believers in a Bible, Qu'ran or Torah. And the Party claimed to be the home of intellectuals!

(As an aside. I was a member of the Political Committee of the CP from 1989 till 1992. It was at a PC meeting during this time that we were informed a journalist had gained access to the KGB files in Moscow and had discovered incontrovertible evidence that the CPGB had been in receipt of millions of Pounds from the Russians. We received this news before it hit the papers. I think sitting next to me was my old friend Bill Innes, the Yorkshire Secretary, who, speaking before me, went and pinched the words I had jotted down; "Lied to again!" Admittedly I had crossed them out, which goes to show just how 'conflicted' I was at the time.

The Bagman for the CP was Rueben Falber who used to collect the money, at times over £100,000. in cash, from the Russians and East Germans and carry it, via public transport across London in a shopping bag. On 5th December last year I had the opportunity to spend an hour or so with David Shayler, ex-MI5, and during our conversation he mentioned that the longest serving and most important agent MI5 had in the CP was code named M142. Shayler claimed the agent was a member of the CP's Executive Committee from the 1960s to the formation of Democratic Left in 1992. No one actually survived that long on the EC. Falber was a member of the EC from the 1960s but was not a member when I started to serve on it. Yet he remained a Director of the CP controlled companies right up to the end of the CPGB and the beginning of Democratic Left. Only thinking on this after the Shayler meeting did I make the linkage. It is probably old news to many, but for me it wasn't.)

It was not just the internal tensions and contradictions that did for the Communist Parties. Their main enemy, international capital under the leadership of the US Establishment, took the opportunity represented by the mistaken intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 to launch a two pronged assault on the Soviet Union that ultimately helped secure the collapse of the Soviet state and the Communist Parties. It is now widely known that the US funded and trained the opium war lords and Al Qa'ida to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as a means to drain the blood from the Red Army the same way the Vietnamese did for the US armed might. But what is not widely understood or reported is the oil price-war that was conducted at the same time.

During the 1980's OPEC was selling oil, for sustained periods, below the cost it took the Soviets to get theirs out of the ground. Oil accounted for 50% of the Soviet Union's foreign currency earnings and they were selling at a massive loss. From 1981 through 1992 George the First was vice-president to Reagan and then president. His contacts with the Saudi's, by far the most important member of OPEC in terms of oil reserves and pumping capacity, made sure this happened.

The unforeseen circumstances of this extremely cheap oil - as low as ten dollars a barrel - was to be the sudden surge in the growth of China and a hurrying to meet Peak Oil. Help bring down one enemy while strengthening another and weakening yourself. Almost as clever as Prescott Bush helping fund Hitler's rise to power during the 1920s/30s. Now we have arrived at Peak Oil, Bush the son, the grandson, threatens the world with nuclear annihilation. Shelley knew their type well;

_______________________

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

______________________

Political parties in America have been in crisis since The Time of the Toad as Dalton Trumbo named the time of the anti-communist witch hunts and suppression of mass politics. A monopoly of power has, from then on been held by a single party with two names - Republican/Democrat - representing the interests of different factions of the singular, capitalist class.

The graft, the contemptuous flaunting of corruption and the obscene amounts of money needed to campaign, the purchasing of representation, has undermined any respect for political parties and the electoral process. Added to the physical intimidation of stopping people voting, the act of voting has itself been hijacked with counting machines that are blatantly rigged, and which are owned by Bush supporters who vocally guaranteed, pre-election that he would win a second term. The continual psychological assault on the poor and poor-paid by being blamed for their predicament, the cutting of benefits and wages in the deliberate worsening of already dire conditions by Democrat and Republican administration alike has alienated millions from participation. The disillusion in politics and political parties this has created is shown by voter turn out for elections. The figures are abysmal. What political opposition there is, is localised, no bad thing in itself, but with no national reach their influence on American foreign policy is somewhat limited to say the least.

The anti-war movement is split and riddled with government agents playing one off against the other the best they can. And probably acting the agents provocateur in some of the self proclaimed Leninist/Trotskyist/Maoist grouplets - that still seek to be the vanguard by sloganising against each other whilst the proletariat they claim leadership of get on with organising themselves in either total ignorance of the grouplets ideas and presence or if known, dismissed as irrelevant in the struggle to put food in their proletarian childrens mouths.

America is now at the point of this crisis in political parties where non-violent extra-parliamentary actions are being deemed terrorist and outlawed. Such things as holding up banners, wearing t-shirts criticising Bush or even heckling 'nonsense', can have you arrested and questioned under anti-terrorism laws here in Britain as well as in the US. The British Establishment is like Greece to Imperial Rome, willingly being led to their own slavery.

There is not much to say about the crisis in political parties in Britain, it being so bloody obvious. If people had not seen it before then the first substantial act of Blair's first government - the cutting of single parent benefit with hardly a whimper from Labour MPs - showed how far the well-being of ordinary people was from Labour Party leadership thinking. In the last election the Labour Party only secured 22% of those eligible to vote, the turnout being so low. Partly apathy, but also anger at the war and a conscious turning away from political parties are part of the explanation.

The Labour Party still got elected, due in part to the 'first past the post' electoral system but also because of the crisis the Tories have been in since the disastrous reign of Thatcher and her ultimate ousting. They have recently chosen a new, younger, thrusting leader - their 5th in 9 years. A toff from Eton cynically and unconvincingly trying to masquerade as a common, people-friendly man like Bush or Blair.

A crisis in Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats has been raging since the beginning of the year. The most senior party to campaign against the war has had its leader ousted for alcoholism. One of the four contenders for the vacant position was forced out of the campaign by a 'rent-boy' sex scandal exposed by a Murdoch paper. Another forced to admit gay relationships in his past that he had previously denied. The election of the new Tory party leader has everything to do with the destabilising of the Liberal Party as a means to position the Tories as the only viable electoral alternative to Labour. Blair doesn't mind. Whoever leads the Labour Party into the next elections will benefit, a two-sided fight is preferable to a three-cornered one because it has the potential to scare the left of the Liberal Democrat voter base into voting Labour. The present balance in the Commons was a result of last years general election when the Liberal Democrats emerged as an alternative to both Tory and Labour. It must make Blair's neocon allies in Washington very happy.

(The crisis in the Liberals has not stopped them winning a stunning victory in the Dunfermline by-election on 09/02/06 overturning what seemed an unassailable margin of 11,000 votes in winning the seat. A 15.7% swing. The only explanation is the anti-war sentiment in Scotland and the position of the Liberals.)

Behind-the-scenes dirty politics and lying to camera are the order of the day for political parties. This and the recognition by the general public that national parties have very little influence over the decisions of the multi-national conglomerates and the oligarchs that are driving Bush and Blair's rapacious acquisition and/or control of the worlds resources, at this point of Peak Oil and climate change, has made them redundant in meeting the needs of the poor.

The anti-war movement in Britain seems to be fairly moribund, reduced to a yearly demo or the occasional 24hr emergency call for a picket. Very little media exposure, no stunts and local peace organisations are only functioning patchily across the country. The recent introduction of new authoritarian government bills on ID cards and terrorism seem to have had a chilling effect on the movement despite the opposition against them.

The Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an old comrade of mine. Kate Hudson - another Hackney CP member - and myself used to work together for the London District of the CPGB through 1985/6. She was the only one in that office who came close to understanding my incorrigibility. Kate has many admirable qualities but one of them is not leadership. The imagination and boldness needed at this juncture, with the threatening of nuclear attack against Iran, is wanting. Kate is more an administrator/organiser. Another old 'comrade' of mine was Andrew Murray, a leading member of 'Stop the War Coalition'. We never did see eye to eye, hence the quotes around comrade. Andrew was one who found himself outside the CP following the 1984 Extraordinary Congress, for which I acted as the logistics hub, and which expelled a Stalinist faction grouped around the CP's daily paper, the Morning Star. They formed a new party called the Communist Party of Britain who also have a website attempting to lay claim to CPGB history. Cheeky.

The main cause for the crisis in national political parties has been the globalisation of capitalism since WWII and which accelerated following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has brought untellable miseries to the mass of humanity but it has also ushered in the glimmer of a New Political Formation. Marx has written somewhere (and I am not going to search out the exact quote) that capitalism would come to dominate the world but that this would also give rise to its nemesis. If this is wrong then Marx should have said it! This process was slowed with the advent of the Soviet Union. Lenin, the supreme opportunist, took the opportunity presented by the revolutionary moment in 1917 in Russia to 'turn the world upside down'. And who is to say it should not have happened? The experiment may have failed, but its failure has exposed the limits of 'democratic centralism' as an organisational tool for the revolutionary left. The Russian revolution has also shown that turning the world upside down can be done. That a new world is achievable.

It is a truism that there are leaders and led, but how do the led decide who their leaders are? Certainly not by the patronage of those already leaders as in democratic centralism's recommended list or with the spending of vast amounts of money that leaves the field open only to the rich capitalist as in the American system.

The complexity and diversity that is the everyday reality of our chaotic human condition, require complex and diverse agencies to represent the aspirations, desires and interests of the poor and exploited peoples of the world. A political formation that is loose, lets individuals or groups come and go as their interests wax or wane but that is influenced by those interests; allows space for initiative, develops new ways of imagining and whose range of possibilities will not be defined or confined by neoliberalism or the failed Leninist construct. It will be a formation that respects the autonomy of individuals, and the differences within its constituent parts and yet that can still respond quickly to events. That marries the intellect to the will to act for the common good. A new history not it's end.

It is not for me, or others who claim to be of the left to provide a blueprint detailing the principles that should guide the growth and development of any new political formation. The constituent parts and the people involved in them will produce their own organisational principles as they concretely relate to the conditions in which people find themselves and which help in forwarding their economic, social, cultural and political requirements.

A new global political leadership will not be found inside the core of the Empire, America and Britain, but at its periphery, from those suffering and struggling against imperial exploitation. This is not to say that in these two countries it is a waste of time organising against the war. It is patently obvious that it is needed and the priority for the American and British people is stopping the war. Our solidarity with those subject to domination and exploitation by the Empire is by stopping the war – everything else has to be subsumed into the struggle against the war. It's the war. Nothing less, nothing more. The war.

Any hope that our species has in coming through Peak Oil and climate change, let alone building a society based on respect, dignity and reciprocity between peoples and with our environment, requires the stopping of the war before its nuclear escalation.

Those who claim that the anti-war movement must be anti-imperialist in ideology in America and Britain and act in ways that cause splits are committing a fatal error. They are actively working in aid of the war-mongers whether they believe it or not. The broadest alliance of forces and individuals are needed in this struggle irrespective of their revolutionary purity. I fancy that the liberal baiting, God devouring, commie word-machine, Joe Bageant would be on bended-knee converting in preparation for the Rapture if one of his "Mutt people" were so much as to have a fleeting thought about signing a petition against the war. Yet these are the people who have to be won. Go on, make Joe God-fearing and not God-devouring. I dare you.

A mendacious position is being put forward that the only way to defeat Bush/Blair and end the war is violently. Falsehoods propagated, in most part by 'left' organisations fronting for the US and UK intelligence services.

That old mate of Marx, Engels wrote something in 1844 about the British working class not being able to militarily defeat their rulers. He was right 160 years ago and he is right today. Engels is coming under attack in the US by the likes of Stan Goff who had me fooled for a while that he was of the left. Goff has applied the same tactics used here, in Britain 20 years ago by the Revolutionary Communist Party. Attacking the a weakness of Marxism - feminism - with a critique that dismisses Engels' The Family, Private Property and the State, is a very sophisticated feint to distract from and ultimately to obscure the non-violent, mass nature of revolutionary change implicit in Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.

There is a way that American and British people can help in stopping the war. In fact their role is crucial. It is still not to late and Gandhi was right. Non-violent, mass participatory civil disobedience and direct action along with the myriad of actions from petitioning to leafleting by individuals and small groups. The war machine needs to be stopped and big sacrifices will need to be made if billions be saved. But the going to war in America or Britain to stop war will not work. There is no such thing as 'the war to end all wars' unless by it we mean the war of our species extinction.

One of the global organisations whose presence should be universal amongst the anti-war movements in America and Britain and in the blogosphere but isn't, is the BRussells Tribunal. Their findings and recommendations for actions, as presented by the World Tribunal on Iraq, are the only game in town for the anti-war movement in America, Britain and Europe. The actions are the means by which the non-violent anti-war movement can coalesce and unite around, so why are they being ignored?!

The leadership of the American and British left need to show some humility and accept that innovations in political tactics, organisational principles, intellectual clarity and ethical/moral mores emerging from the struggles in parts of the poorer world need to be adopted/adapted here at home.

What could become the new political formation is not based upon a nation state, even if some states are helping to give it shape and space to grow by hosting events or acting as inspirational example - even they will be changed by it. The World Social Forum has the potential. Enough of the groans already!

The WSF is an organic initiative that was originally recognised and used as an international forum for grass-roots activists and intellectuals opposing the neo-liberal globalisation agenda in theory and practise. A space where people could share knowledge and experiences; make friends, links and alliances; exchange imaginings and project an alternative perspective to global integration that benefits and celebrates humanity's diversity and chaotic complexity .

A debate is just starting, following the latest round of events in Caracas, Bamako and Karachi, on how far, and if, the WSF should move toward taking on an overtly political character. Big question. The WSF is already a political movement with a presence on the world stage in direct opposition to the neo-cons imperial crusade. But can it become what the new world of our dreams so desperately needs?

I've slagged off Lenin a bit in this piece so to end I ought to give the old man a credit for the best imagining metaphor, ever;

"We see the new world through the windows of the old."

Sex, Lies & Spies

2005-12-21T15:39:00.000Z

If you can bear to read anymore of my ramblings after the posting of 'Empathy is not a Colour', then maybe it has helped you bring an even more critical approach to what I write. No bad thing. As Buddha said, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense". Marx, being more economic with words for once, said, "Doubt everything".

Sunday Dec 11th was a day of serendipity for me when things just seemed to fall into place. I think.

I have been interested in the release of the film 'Syriana', from the Clooney/Soderbergh production company Section Eight, for some time and whilst doing some surfing on the internet on Sunday I came across the web-site for the film. Interesting read and the clip is worth viewing. But what caught my attention was the name of the character that William Hurt plays. I've enjoyed watching Hurt since 1987's 'Broadcast News' (though Holly Hunter's screen presence kept most of my attention in that film) and I really started to rate him as an actor following his lead in Chris Menges' 1994 'Second Best' and part in Wayne Wang's 1995 'Smoke' - small but fabulous films. So I checked out his role in 'Syriana' first.

I've not yet seen the film, just the clips from rottentomatoes.com and the synopsis on the 'Syriana' site so can't give any sort of critical analysis of the film nor of Hurt's character development or dialogue, which for all I know could be humanism personified amongst the corruption and skulduggery that is Oil and geopolitics.

William Hurt's character name and job description? Stan Goff, a retired CIA agent. That came as a bit of a jolt because I know that name from a blog called Feral Scholar which is run by a Stan Goff who claims to be a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant and now to be a revolutionary of the left and member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation. Whether the Hurt character's job description fits the blogger I have no idea. I've been visiting Goff's blog on a regular basis for the past year or so and occasionally dropped in a comment when I agreed with what he had written. I had to have a certain level of sureness that googling can occasionally provide about internet authenticity (now that's a contradiction in terms on a par with 'military intelligence'!), so googled his name. There is only one Stan Goff - besides the fictional one.

Is Goff an advisor on this film as he was for Schwarzenegger's disgracefully racist 'Collateral Damage', in which he also had a speaking role? Could the use of his name be just a coincidence?

I've searched for an advisory role for Goff on 'Syriana' but he is not listed in cast and crew at hollywood.com. No mention of it has appeared on his site so that is probably ruled out.

The film opened to a limited release on 23rd Nov then went nationwide in America on 9th Dec. On the 25th Nov, Goff announced that he had been invited to attend the World Social Forum in Caracas in January 2006. By the 1st Dec he had had to cancel, though his blog still calls for donations to fund the trip.

On the 2nd Dec, Counterpunch - an internet political newsletter - carried an open letter by Goff to Congress titled 'On Power', (it originally appeared at Feral Scholar the day before - the same day he cancelled his trip to Caracas). It is a verbal assault on those in Congress who support or vacillate over the war, with threats about what the masses will do to them, especially the Democrats at the elections in November 2006. No direct physical threats but things like "..we'll see you in the street,...", "You are directly in our path, and we are not going to go around you", as though wishing to replay the Russian revolution of nearly 90 years ago.

"It is because we understand power...", "Gradual, phased, planned, strategized, conditioned, delayed, partial withdrawls...", "To those of you....". He has used these lines as repetitions at the beginnings of paragraphs in an attempt to give the piece some heightened poetic meaning where none exists. It is a rant promising retribution from the masses he fantasises about leading, as they spontaneously coalesce around his rhetoric and storm the Congress. How real is that. Even I've stopped wanting to be Lenin.

Throughout the piece Goff writes of the military/police power of the American state threatening, intimidating it's people as though this is all that power is. Where is the power of the people in this piffle. Where the city and town councils voting against the war (Democrats amongst them), where the petition collecting, the campaign against military recruitment in colleges, occupations, civil disobedience, non-violent direct action, the participation of civil society in stopping this war - the quietly brave stuff that doesn't directly confront the police/military apparatus of the state? It's being built by non-sectarian people and their organisations and its growing, and it is mature enough not to sacrifice itself on the barricades of Goff's adventurist rhetoric. If it were not so dangerous it would be a laughable attempt at gaining some credence as a fire-brand and heroic spokesperson of the left, facing off against the mighty Congress.

This piece of bombast drew a response from John Halle titled 'What Are You Going to Do About It, Punk?' It was carried by Dissident Voice. The cartoonish pugnacity of Goff's rant has been exposed in no uncertain terms by Halle's coruscatingly funny spoof.

I've previously written about Counterpunch carrying, what is to me, an obvious Psy-ops article targeting Iran on its site. An unnamed source had informed Counterpunch that after the first Gulf War the USAF had lost some nuclear missiles off of the Somali coast and they had been retrieved from the sea by a South African arms dealer who sold them to Iran. Sound familiar? It should do, the story is basically a rehash of the Tom Clancy novel and film 'The Sum of All Fears'. Alexander Cockburn, co-editor at Counterpunch, graciously replied to my email about the article and stated, "...of course it's quite possible the whole thing is taken from a Clancy book,.....", though no mention of this was published at Counterpunch.

On 17th July I posted an article to Outside the Gates titled 'On Conspiracy Part 1' argueing against the use of conspiracy theory as a means to understanding political power and how to challenge it. Then on Nov 1st, though no names were mentioned, an attack on this position was posted at Goff's blog. The fact I had not allowed any comments to be posted seems to have wound him up enough to accuse me of being an 'intellectual elitist'. He also had the gall to posit the argument that a feminist conspiracy against patriarchy is a legitimate political strategy. The article appeared a week after I had posted a piece about the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke and the Terrorism Bill he's pushing through the British Parliament.

In what could look like running for cover, 'Counterpunch' carried an interview with Goff on 7th Nov - first published on 6th Nov by 'Left Hook', a youth orientated political magazine. Then the next day on the 8th Nov 'Counterpunch' carried an article by Goff himself which reads as though hastily written.

(The symbolism in the language used by some who claim themselves of the left, leaves a lot to be desired. 'Left Hook' and 'Counterpunch' are two whose titles carry an unambiguous violence which could be indicative of the means to be employed when struggling for socialism as the end. I may be a bit soft, but I have thought for quite a while that the ends do not justify the means and that, in fact the means determine the ends. Violence begets violence. A history of childhood and teenage violence, taken and given, outside and inside the military, has qualified me to say this.)

Obviously I didn't leave the Goff attack there but posted a response on Nov 13th - 'On Conspiracy Part 3'. (Part 2 details some cases where conspiracy law has been used by the state against opposition and Innocents).

Goff espouses a politics that will lead to the bloody defeat of what is remaining of the extra-parliamentary left in America, the entrenchment of the status quo during the epoch making time of Peak Oil and climate change and, if successful, aid a global population crash.

A short debunking of some of his ideas, the most pernicious of which is the view that America is made up of a collection of nations; Native American, Black American, Latino American, European (White) American etc. For a while I was drawn to this idea until I realised that it emphasised the differences between people based on ethnicity, colour, creed or gender. The most extreme form that this thinking takes is being implemented by the Anglo-American occupiers of Iraq in an attempt to control the world's most important hydrocarbon energy region. What is not sought for is common ground that can unite.

There are real differences between peoples (black and white and white and black are not the same) that when exploited can be translated into material differences like life expectancy, housing, educational achievement. The list is endless. The exploitation of these differences have a long and dishonourable history. Capitalism was built on slavery and genocide and their modern equivalents are integral to its functioning today.

But there is also a common unifying factor amongst peoples which becomes more apparent as the contradictions in capitalism become more acute as it enters organic crisis. Namely our relationships to the means of production - the owner or the wage slave. The distance between the reality of a wage slave's everyday life and struggle and that propagandised by the majority of media, schools, colleges, religious institutions (from cradle to grave), as well as the employer or government, becomes so pronounced that the contradictions are easily seen. It is at this point that the role of leadership becomes crucial and at the moment the left is found wanting or compromised. There are obviously deep-seated, historical problems that divide us and which need to be overcome like racism and sexism, but a self-claimed ideologue of the left who highlights difference and not commonality at this juncture is no friend to the exploited and oppressed.

By defining people through their ethnicity, colour, creed etc and not their relationship to the means of production you end up with the exploited and oppressed argueing amongst ourselves about where we stand in the hierarchy of oppression. The poor fighting the poor to the benefit of capital - again. Unity is, as Brecht has written of socialism, "The simple thing. So hard to achieve."

Goff's primary audience is American and to fully understand what he is doing this point needs to be emphasised. In her essay, 'Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy - Buy One get One Free', Arundhati Roy, that doyen of humanist clarity, has made the point that the American people (and I include the British) cannot confront Empire directly, militarily; "The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society". That non-violent direct action and mass participatory civil disobedience aimed at those who profit from the war (which class is that I wonder?) and their enabling government, is the political strategy that can win. How true!

The family tree that leads to the formation of Goff's 'party', Freedom Road Socialist Organisation, is interesting reading. It seems that the RCP - Revolutionary Communist Party - has a very prominent position in their recent history. I had a close encounter with the RCP in Britain around about 1975/76. I was a student delegate to the National Union of Students Bristol Area Committee and had no party political affiliation. I was invited to a meeting of the RCP by an RCP member I met in Bristol. Can't remember her name now. It was an invite to an invite only meeting, but I was never given that information. At the end of the meeting I asked, with youthful gullibility about joining and was brusquely told that, "We don't just take anybody". Never bothered with them again. Not serious about mass politics and seriously 'intellectual elitist'.

Throughout the following 20 years, rumours were rife on the left that the RCP was a front for the intelligence services. Is it true? I don't know, but I do know that the continual splitting and reforming that seems to be endemic amongst the myriad of Trotskyite/Maoist grouplets makes for brilliant cover for intelligence agencies to infiltrate, or to establish front organisations that can wreak havoc amongst the legitimate left. During the '70s and '80s the RCP achieved absolutely nothing for the British working class despite their parasitic presence at nearly every national demo ever held where they would try and sell their obtuse literature.

On the day I posted my response (conspiracy 3) Goff posted a piece on gender that he promoted as 'a tutorial'. The arrogance of this trained killer knows no bounds. According to Goff's analysis gender war has superseded class war as the conflict at the heart of capitalism, and that organising conspiratorially against men is a legitimate tactic in bringing it down. This is nonsense. Capitalism doesn't give a shit about what sex you are. Whether our labour, physical or intellectual can be exploited for the amount it takes to reproduce ourselves is it's bottom line calculation. Surplus labour, female or male can go to the wall.

Superficially attractive this approach echoes his thinking on 'American nations', in that it divides more than it unites those struggling against capitalism. Men are identified as the problem, the enemy, and not the mode of production. In his scenario the advance of capitalist women through the patriarchy can be interpreted as progressive. It is not. No matter what the gender, a capitalist is a capitalist, period. The same conditions of life for working class women and men will still pertain. Matriarchal capitalism or patriarchal capitalism or patriarchal socialism? None of them. What ever we build cannot survive if power is achieved and exercised by exploiting difference other than class.

I will say it again, conspiratorial politics is anathema to open, mass and democratic participation in political change. Identifying men as the enemy and organising against them in such fashion, or threaten them with it, negates any need to engage in the more difficult political struggle of changing men's thinking through argument, example and leadership. Bringing them along, winning them to changing themselves and challenging, then breaking with patriarchy is a bit harder than just dismissing them as the enemy, the problem. Like women, men hold up half the sky.

Goff's approach on gender is in fact an attack on Marxism. One of his latest posts brings this right into the open - Engels is to be uncoupled from Marx. Even a cursory glance through the Marx/Engels correspondence shows how central to the development of Marx's thinking was the bouncing of ideas between the two. Engels not only helped Marx financially but also with insights on the human condition he incorporated in his writings. I remember reading something similar in the '80s and wouldn't be surprised if this was a regurgitation of the same article.

Now this is where the political gets personal.

Early in November my computers were hacked. How do I know this? The browser became very slow, the router was flashing twenty to the dozen and later, when I opened a word processing programme that I have used every day for the last year, a notice appeared on the screen saying that this was the first time it had been opened since being installed. A hack which I am supposed to know about and be frightened of.

I have previously mentioned my struggle with pornography, that I am not clear of it yet but will be - eventually. I will get there and readers of this blog will be the first to know. When hacked at the beginning of Nov the site I was looking through was a 'free' lesbian porno site. I won't give the name or link but a picture from off the site appeared alongside an article about lesbian porn posted by Goff on Nov 29th. Yes I do watch lesbian porn, not all the time - not everyday or even every week. In fact months can go bye, then I will binge for a few days. Why lesbian porn? There are no men involved is the simple and obvious answer.

Goff hadn't written the article but taken it from another site - Den of the Biting Beaver - and added the picture. Biting Beaver's language is intelligent, frank and graphic, a welcome change from the usual fare critiquing pornography. This specific article concentrates it's critique on 'toys' and 'strapon' sex between submissive and dominant women acting out what is thought of as the 'traditional' male/female role. Vaginal and anal penetrative lesbian porn primarily for an audience of men. I've watched a lot of scenes like them and it has been more 'put-off' than arousing for a long time. What gives me the strongest climax and a momentary lifting of my own low self-esteem is the tenderness, intimacy and passion of the kiss. Believe it or not there is some lesbian porn where penetrative sex with dildos and strapons does not feature, nor where dominant/passive roles are played out.

Another article by Biting Beaver - Women and Pornography: My Story - is the best psycho-analytical piece on pornography I have ever read. Probably because it is so personal. I have previously thought about the neurological reasons of porn addiction, not the psychological, and this article spoke to me directly, expressed in language that which I had felt but had not yet fully, intellectually understood.

It is only men without empathy who will fail to comprehend the following quote;

"For me it had to be women I watched. The thought, the very idea of taking control from a man could not, ever, manifest in my mind. The idea of humiliating a man was so foreign to me that my mind discounted the possibility of it immediately, before it even blinked on the radar. I had spent my life with men controlling me it was clear, at least to me, that I would never get power from them. Instead, I turned to women even more vulnerable than me. Women who were EASIER targets to take power from than I was.

"Clearly, these women were pained, and I watched it. I saw it in every movie, in every picture, in every scene. I watched and heard the fake screams and I took power from their misery. I watched their faces twist for just a moment into a face of pain when they were penetrated anally; I saw it and used it to make myself feel better. In some ways I was taking their power. It was ME, it was certainly ME wielding the power over them in my mind, and it was the thought of ME taking their power on the screen that brought me to climax.

"it wasn't the sex, it wasn't the vaginas or the breasts or the tanned skin. It wasn't some sort of biological excitement from seeing two people having sex (although, that's what I told myself for a very long time). It was the power that is inherent in degrading and humiliating another human being that brought me to climax. I was stealing THEIR power, taking it from them in my fantasies and on my TV. With every orgasm I was stealing the little dignity that these women had left and using it to feed my own, seriously lacking, seriously damaged, sense of power and control and self-esteem.

"And I hated them for it. I hated them for reflecting my own weaknesses back at me. I despised them for allowing their dignity to be taken from them, just as I had done myself. These women were, in so many ways, a reflection of me, of my OWN powerlessness, and I hated them for 'letting' themselves be used in such a fashion.

"At the same time I hated MYSELF for using them. I hated myself for being a vampire of sorts, a kind of 'self-esteem vampire'. A creature which was incapable of making her own self-esteem and who therefore took it from other humans. But self-esteem garnered at the expense of another human being does not, and never can, replace your own. It simply drains from your body because it never belonged to you in the first place. Power that is stolen from another person is always empty power, it never fulfils, it never leaves its mark on you for more than a few days, sometimes even a few hours."

(Original emphasis)

(I know. I'm a man taking power here by quoting from a woman's pain to try and understand my own. Its because I'm still too weak to get there by myself).

Any man who has used porn to get off on can understand this quote and if he says other he is either lying or shutting off his inherent empathy, frightened to confront his own low self-esteem and powerlessness. Yes, men as a gender exercise power over women in a patriarchy and individual men benefit from it, but the vast majority of us are powerless, have no control over our lives in the face of capital. It would be rather mechanistic to say that the powerless will try and take power from those even more powerless than themselves and not try and take it back from the powerful because they are weak in comparison. But this is the case for individual men and despite having a male gendered identity, we are isolated, weak and fearful in our sexuality as patriarchy decays along with capitalism. Fertile ground for porn.

It is no accident that porn is a multi-billion dollar industry and the internet infested with free porn sites as teasers for addiction. Capitalism has no morality and capitalists will search for profit where ever they can. Porn to them is a godsend, not only does it turn a substantial profit but perpetuates sexual roles that demean and distort the sexual desires of both men and women and which divides us from each other and ourselves. It my seem old fashioned in this age of brutal capitalism, but as Adrian Mitchell once told me a long time ago, "No revolution without compassion."

The latest excuse to myself for still returning to porn is my disability, being single and in my fifties. MS is a difficult degenerative disease to live with or be part of, and I do not expect women to any longer have a sexual interest in me. Yet I still crave to give and gain the sexual affection, tenderness and intimacy experienced in the best moments of some of my relationships. An invite to sit on my face has always stood me in good stead as well as being good fun. If fantasising along with tender lesbian porn helps in remembering these emotions even for that fleeting moment of orgasm then, still being a sexual being, a 'raving' hetero and borderline onanist, I do not feel like breaking my last sexual relationship, that with my right hand, quite yet.

If it is true that Goff posted the article to intimidate by informing that he knew where I had surfed, to try and exploit any guilt I may feel about my life and sex, and keep me quiet. Well, religion has used guilt of sex for millennia as a means to frighten and control the many for the benefit of the few. I'm way past that. Have I been hacked by a feminist conspiracy or forces from the shadows? Who knows.

People are complex beings and use porn in many different ways and for many different reasons, and I am sure that some of you reading this will not believe what I have written. But like my blog profile it is authentic. Who else in the present political climate would be bonkers enough to admit to a political history that included working for the failed Communist Party of Great Britain, or that they are struggling with porn? Only somebody who has no ambition to lead, with nowhere to hide and hence no reason to lie.

Am I a spy? I have really been asked that. Who for? I went to the London Demo in Sept but was too exhausted by the time I got to the start to join the march, and had to make my way back to where I was staying, knackered. What use am I going to be as a spy? All I'm doing is returning to my favourite means of learning - its getting more difficult for me to take pictures - and if my scribblings are seen as a threat, then the enemy must be as weak as I am. My only allegiance is to the poor.

The easiest thing to do is dismiss my observations as the rantings of paranoia. It is simple, I have a degenerative neurological disease so I must be bonkers. Implying that someone is 'mad' is the oldest political trick in the book, trying to make them that way the second oldest. That is not to say I am not loopy. The psychological campaign of the last four years directed at me may very well have succeeded and 'turned my mind'.

Is the use of Goff's name as a character in the film 'Syriana', a mere coincidence? It's the only plausible answer.

Buddha said, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense". Marx, being more economic with words for once, said, "Doubt everything".

Tavistock Square. A Reposting.

2005-12-11T12:50:00.000Z

This is the re-post of an article I originally posted on 12th July this year. The original has been hacked and the article address changed to an impossibly big number that makes it impossible to find unless you read everything I've posted. It is not linkable in its present state.

The piece is about the London bombing of 07.07.05 and a Psy-ops article carried by the Guardian on 12.07.05. I think it is still relevant.

"I bought The Guardian again this morning, as I have done for the last 30 years. It will probably be the last time. The lead article in G2 is what has made me come to this.

John Lanchester, a name I hope I never see in print again, has a two page spread about the road that runs from Hampstead High Street to The Strand. It's name changes along the route many times. There is a point where it becomes known as Tavistock Square. Of the bombs that exploded across London on 07.07.05, the only one above ground was on the bus in Tavistock Square.

Not once in the article is any mention made of the significance of Tavistock Square as a site dedicated to the ideals of non-violence and peace. There is a statue of Ghandi and tributes to the victims of Hiroshima and prisoners of concience in the Square (see previous post). Since the outrage of the bombing the Guardian has only carried four lines, on it's letters page, of this crucial information. It's not as if this is top secret information.

It is inconceivable that Lanchester is not aware of Tavistock Square's peace credentials. He spent six years working in the BMA building on Tavistock Square. He knows the area well.

But this omission is as nothing compared to the content of the article.

What is emphasised is a story about an Hungarian physicist and friend of Einstein, Leo Szilard, who had a moment of epiphany 300 yards south along the same road that also comprises Tavistock Square. That day, 12th September 1933, the newspapers had reported a talk by Ernest Rutherford on the splitting of the atom. As walking and thinking deeply Szilard came to a sudden realisation. If smashing a neutron into an atom could be made to release two neutrons from one of the atoms and these two neutrons were to do the same, they would release four neutrons. Each time this was repeated it would double the number of neutrons and, in the words of Szilard, "It might be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction, liberate energy on an industrial scale, and construct atomic bombs."

In one paragraph in the article he writes about the occultist and poet WB Yeats losing his virginity close by in Woburn Place. This paragraph of puff has no import other than to link sex with atomic death.

Reading this paragraph reminded me of the back cover blurb on the Journeyman publication, 'Let The Rail Splitter Awake and other poems' by Pablo Neruda. I quote, 'As Neruda has said, before the hawks of Wall Street and Washington can hurl the atom bomb they must annihilate us morally. That is the mission of their poets - the Eliots and Pounds who degrade life and stultify the will to resist.'

The 'Nuke Them' brigade in the White House has made unprecedented advances since 11th September 2001. The continuous propaganda and Orwellian language that has been directed at the American people since then, has to a certain extent innured them to the immorality of using nuclear weapons. It is not as if a majority of Americans are demanding their use. It is just that after any nuclear attack by America it would be thought as having been inevitable anyway. An acceptance after the event and for which the psychological groundwork is being laid. This process is now being accelerated in Britain following the bombings of 07.07.05

The foregrounding of atomic death and sex and the relegation of peace and non-violence from the story of Tavistock Square, in the Guardian of all papers, is one of the most profoundly irresponsible acts in journalism I have had the misfortune of witnessing."

On Conspiracy Part 3

2005-11-13T10:20:00.000Z

Over twenty years ago Martin Jacques - editor of Marxism Today at the time - accused me of 'gross anti-intellectualism' at a London District Committee. He was presenting a paper on the future of MT which had been circulated beforehand. I challenged the basic concept of the magazine being, in his words, 'hegemonic' and got slapped down. Now I'm accused of 'intellectual elitism' from another leftist. Blimey, how confusing.

The reason for it this time, besides me being a nasty person?

I Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, a card carrying member of the neocons has been indicted for perjury - lying - along with other charges. The chief of staff to Cheney had been caught out trying to dissemble under oath to a grand jury and the FBI investigating the outing of a CIA agent, Plame. A lot of play is being made about a possible conspiracy amongst a cabal that includes the neocons usual suspects - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle et al. I am not convinced.

The neocons policy has been public knowledge since at least the late '90s via policy-papers written for the Project for a New American Century and other rabidly right wing 'think tanks' and magazines. PNAC itself was established in 1997, quite late compared to others.

On 25.02.03 - a month before the war - Information Clearing House carried an article by William Rivers Pitt which clearly shows the centrality of imperialism to the thinking of PNAC. In Sept 2000 PNAC published a White Paper titled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century'. This document is the 'essence' of the neocons militarist ideology. Stories about its publication were published in the European press at the time if I remember correctly.

The architects of this policy achieved positions of power in the Bush administration following the stolen 2000 election. One was even on the ticket and elected Vice President. It may seem strange that an elected official should put into practise policies with which he is publicly associated, but not unknown.

"Once policy is decided organisation is all." A quote associated with both Lenin and Stalin. My preference is Lenin as it is the foundation of 'democratic centralism', the organising basis for the Communist Party and the Trotskyite grouplets which followed.

Whats Lenin and Trotsky to do with war on Iraq?

The neocons contain in their ranks many ex-Trots and those claiming to have been influenced by his disciples. Leading neocons like Irving Kristol and Seymour Martin Lipset are ex-Trots. Others follow the politics of Shachtman, an American Trot whose final ideological home was the Social Democrats USA which supported the war in Vietnam. Perle and Wolfowitz were young acolytes of Shachtman, in fact Wolfowitz was a speaker at Social Democrats USA conferences during the '70s.

On 15th January 2004 Mother Jones (via ICH) carried an article about the establishment of The Office of Special Plans at the Department of Defence by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest headlined 'The Lie Factory'. Even before Bush's formal inaugeration Wolfowitz was pulling the team together that evolved into the OSP. It was from here the lies whipping up fear and support for the invasion of Iraq were concocted.

All of this information has been in the public arena for quite some time before, or 10 months into, the paramount crime committed when the Anglo-American coalition invaded and occupied Iraq. It is inconceivable that this part of the process leading upto the war can be described as a 'conspiracy' it having been so open.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the Special Counsel has not pursued the path of conspiracy at this point for a reason. That reason, I think, is to do with the forged 'yellow-cake' documents eminating from Rome via the Niger embassy/consulate there. If that criminal act of forgery can be found to have originated from the OSP then you may have a case of conspiracy by establishing the existance of a secret parallel organisation outwith the state apparatus. A parallel organisation whose reach could include the state apparatus in Italy, Britain, Niger and the USA. But why use conspiracy when treason will do.

Probably the first thing I ever learnt when joining the army aged 15 was that 'ignorance is no excuse'. It is a concept that applies to every adult in every situation. Both the American and British publics could have used their own volition to acquire the above knowledge. Being ignorant of what is being done by your government when the information is in the public domain does not make it's decisions and actions conspiritorial.

Not being a conspiracy phobe, but recognising its use by the state's courts as a means to quash opposition with the admission of hearsay as evidence (see previous post), I have always been wary of labelling anything a conspiracy.

During a period of activity in the Trades Union movement I used to attend CP meetings of members from the same union. A caucus or a conspiracy? Harold Wilson when he was Labour Prime Minister thought this form of organising was 'a conspiracy of tightly knit men'. I don't. I think it's a legitimate caucus. A place where people with a semblance of a common political attitude can discuss and plan how to further the interests of their union members as well as spread the CP's ideas and influence in the union. This was common knowledge amongst non-CP trades union activists. The Trots, the right and the 'broad left' all held, and I assume still hold caucus meetings and which are not outwith the majority of British Trades Union rules.

Two scientists meeting and discussing their latest research could even be considered a conspiracy if some peoples definitions were applied, but that would be ridiculous. Though not to a paranoid state that places bans on people meeting in two's or more.

A couple of years ago I completed what I hoped was going to be a novel. It didn't work as a novel - to autobiographical as some friends who read the completed manuscript thought as well as some parts of the story being 'horribly and vividly evoked'. Being over biographical was confirmed with a pile of rejection letters from publishers. My Mum thought it 'full of resentment' because of the critique of my father. I was considering some of the advice that suggested I try and publish a few short stories or travel journalism pieces that can be found in the manuscript.

The reason for writing it was to try and gain an understanding of what was happening to me following the diagnosis of MS and, at the same time, a campaign by the state to deliberately initiate a massive relapse (see previous post). A campaign that I thought had ended. But obviously not now the blog is up and being read.

It seems that 'Empathy is not a colour' or extracts from it - probably taken out of context - have now appeared on a list server. I did send out some CDs with it on and was told it was copied to a hard drive for safety. It could have come from there or the time I spilt tea over my lap top, frying it. A shop sent it off to get fixed and refused to tell me who they had sent it to after I discovered some emails missing on its return, one a reply from Ron Jacobs. Also old correspondence files to my bank had been opened. The shop did say somewhere in Derbyshire. But who knows. I emailed the relevent chapter to my daughter at least a year ago. She's assured me that it wasn't forwarded anywhere.

The manuscript contains a lot of my history - the good, the bad and the downright disgraceful. If I could apologise to all those I've hurt, damaged or slighted in some way I'd be in an elite of one. There is a period in my childhood that I did apologise for twenty years ago. It is something for which I've carried a deep remorse since it happened. The acceptance of my apology has since been recinded.

This year in Britain it is the 400th anniversary of the Gun Powder Plot, a celebrated 'conspiracy' in British history. A group of affluent catholics were supposed to have conspired to blow up King James 1 and all members of Parliament. All it produced was an anti-Catholic pogrom and because of that it is also believed the 'conspiracy' was a set-up by the King's advisors. Whatever. The usefullness of conspiracies is that they are open to infinite interpretations. The Gun Powder Plot is the classic bourgoise conspiracy and case in point. The Aristocracy/Establishment in Britain are fond of their conspiracies, it's the way they think the world goes round.

Now I'm to believe that in an attempt at feminisation of the left, conspiring is a legitimate organising principle in the movement. Nonsense. The practise of conspiring is fundamentally elitist in that it is conducted in secret, is exclusive - 'we will do it for you'. Whoever 'you' is. Conspiritorial organising has a clear correlation with the urban terrorist groups that plagued Europe through the '70s. They are open to infiltration and manipulation (see previous post). The 'false flag' suicide bombings attributed to Al Qa'ida in Iraq show how 'conspiracy theory' is being exploited to divide and rule in Iraq and couch the illegal occupation for the control of oil as a 'war against terrorism' to the rest of the world.

'False flag' operations are not restricted to Iraq. They are also being conducted in Britain and the USA through 'left' organisations and the blogosphere. 'Full spectrum domination' includes the internet. It would be foolish to think otherwise.

'Heroic' figures can attract the young, politically inexperienced and easily influenced who are starting to see the contradictions of capitalism become more pronounced and who are seeking answers. But they are still affected by the propaganda from Hollywood, TV, schools and press that emphasis the violent individual hero and not mass non-violent participation in civil disobedience as the motor for change. Ex-military hero's claiming to have changed sides will have 'added value' for the starry-eyed idealist.

There is a certain attractiveness to conspiritorial politics for some young people with a romantic view of revolutionary politics. That they are in the know, have new and special knowledge while the rest of us are to ignorant and cannot be included in the discussions and decisions taken on our behalf.

No. It is not secret cabals that change the world but the mass participation of those who grasp and turn an idea into a material force. Progressive movements develop and grow with honesty and openness from those who claim to lead them. Not with hidden agendas or ulterior motives (two of the reasons Communist Parties around the world fell). People change their ideas and practise when involved in struggle together with others and their history and actions criticised in the open, collectively. Everything else benefits the bourgoise state.

Those who know me, who I have worked with on campaigns, in the Trades Union movement, community politics or the CP will know the affect the womens movement had on my thinking and practise during the '70s and '80s. It changed who I was. Not enough I know, but it changed me all the same.

I now am also to understand that the 'no hands operation' that has been conducted against me over the past few years is a feminist conspiracy. That the deliberate relapsing of my MS and 'psychological torture' is accepted practise within the womens movement. Ludicrous. No, this is the State conducting an operation against somebody they don't like posting critical articles against the war in the blogosphere and using a spurious claim to feminism as cover. The blogosphere is after all an arena of struggle which Imperialist forces are trying to control and deny access to.

A couple of days before the article I'm responding to appeared on the internet and the day after I posted a piece partly about my erstwhile friend Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, an American male turned up in the cafe I visit for my breakfast of tea, nicotine and the daily paper. It wouldn't have been unusual but for the glare I received from a flat, stoney face and the intimidatory body language - exactly the same as someone who attempted to 'befriended' me over a six month period last year. I also noticed the same behaviour from various others through June to Aug 2004 when I was still living in London. I can only assume they must have trained together and/or America and Britain have exchanged information on psychological torture techniques, which is more than likely. My political history leaves me open to this I suppose but it must be costing them a fortune.

Everything I have been trying to do with this blog since starting it has been to re-iterate the need for extra-parliamentary, non-violent, mass political activity to remove those responsible for the instigation of the war - the paramount crime - from power. To find the widest unity possible amongst the poor, the oppressed and the disenfranchised to achieve this. It's why I promote the Declaration from the World Tribunal on Iraq as the top link on this blog. The principles and guidlines for action the WTI have put forward for the international anti-war movement is the only game in town for civil society in America and Britain.

So what do I do now? The following 15 posts are the manuscript. Some of it is excruciatingly difficult for me to re-read but somebody might get something from it. It could do with a bloody good edit and if there are any out there get in touch. Unless of course you think it totally destroys your political credibility being associated with it.

You didn't think I'd leave it there did you?

Empathy is not a Colour. Chapter 1

2005-11-13T10:18:00.000Z

“Its cream and scum that rise.”
A Russian Proverb

It started up the Brow.

Blunt had had a fairly easy first spell. Short and fairly easy. Not to many pratts to have to deal with. He had worked out that one percent of London bus passengers were arseholes and ten percent the sort that made the day worthwhile with a please, a thank you and a smile. The rest were decent, quiet people trying to get to work, or shops, hospitals, cinemas and clubs, relatives, school, and all with the least hassle. The eighty-nine percent who helped humanity rub along.

Eight hundred people a day would go through his bus and eight would be foul. As if driving London traffic wasn't hard enough, he was sworn at, threatened with violence, spat at, by men, women, children, black, white, whatever. And to top it all, if robbed of the days fares the driver would have the amount he had taken in fares, taken from his wages by the company. Beaten up and robbed then shat on by the company.

Somewhere in London a bus driver will be assaulted today. He's seen as fair game. Just a bus. Not human but mere driver/bus and who can't respond to insult and disrespect because if reported, he would lose his job, income or worse. Prendergast, a driver out of Blunt's garage with a family to support and five years driving, had been confronted with racist abuse, vile and rabid, and he snapped, lost it, met the red mist. He was sent down for 18 months for GBH on one percent scum.

But that morning Blunt had a laugh at a passengers expense for a change. A young man, vain in his youth, had asked for a fare with a sneer and an Italian accent. Blunt liked Italy, enjoyed the hospitality but responded with a curt witticism, equating the youth with 'Il Cavalero', Italy's neo-fascist Prime Minister Berlusconi, the political buffoon of Europe. The Italian was visibly upset. A few stops later 'Il Cavalero' got off, strolled with a macho shoulder roll to the front of the bus and started giving Blunt the finger. As he was walking ahead, fingering while looking behind over his shoulder, Blunt and the bus watched, waited, gave him no sign, no warning. The Italian hit a lamp-post mid-stride. He didn't bounce but a ripple cascaded from head to toe. The whole bus heard the crack and rocked, mocking his embarrassment. It made for a laugh in the canteen during the break.

He was still enjoying the warmth of natural justice at the start of the second spell.

It was the first stop after taking over. He went through the usual routine, indicate, mirrors, ease up to the stop, handbrake, open back door, open front door, CCTV. Half a dozen passengers milled around - queues had vapourised eons ago - and started to board. A busy afternoon, Pensioners, women shopping and hauling kids, school students and the last, two young women. 16, 5 foot 7, or there abouts and still at school. The leading one, Fame Academy pretty and light skinned, flashed her pass and handed £1.00 to her friend for fare. She had a fierce glint in her eyes, her features sharp and glistening purple-black, handsome, proportioned, athletic and coiled. He thought he recognised her, but before it gelled he was hit with a blast of pre-meditated insult.

“Forty!” came out her mouth with all the bile, all the venom and spite usually reserved for the headlines attacking paedophiles in the News of the World. The Antipodean's vicious, racist press.

Putting on an ugly face she threw the £1 in the tray. Blunt had four hours ahead of him and didn't particularly want a ruck and stress this early on, so kept his response low key. Proportionality would be escalation.

“I would prefer you didn't throw your money in the tray”, he said with well concealed restraint.

Low key had no hope. Escalation was her aim. “I DIDN'T THROW IT".

Blunt still proceeded to get her ticket and change.

“Yes you did and why are you shouting?” He asked, starting to firm his voice. Gave her change and pointed to the ticket. As she went past the cab she spat out, “FUCK YOU.”

That was it for Blunt. He switched off the engine.

“This bus goes nowhere with you on it". The words following her up the stairs.

Blunt sat and waited. Not a murmur from the other passengers. An elderly black couple, pensioners in their grey haired dignity sitting very quite to his left, had taken in the scene. The young women could have been their grand-daughters. He thought they must be enjoying the boot on the other foot, having had this sort of abuse regularly for their last fifty years at least.

She came down a few minutes later demanding the 40p back. It was to late. The ticket machine only allows 60secs to annul a ticket. The 40p would have to come out of Blunt's pocket. No chance. He was not going to be insulted and abused then pay for the privilege. Her friend joined her, tense and aggressive, almost in tears and added to the noise.

A woman, black and in a blue dress, motherly, tried to intervene, sounding sympathetic to Blunt's plight.

“Stop doing this. Do you know what his licence is. It's his employment. His income.” The woman in blue pleaded. It had no impact what so ever on the young women.

What it did do was to bring a twenty-something black man wearing a black string vest into the melee. He came from upstairs and started to shout at the woman in blue.

“He's doing this to get out of a bad second spell. I know why he is doing this.” The black string vest shouted above the confusion. “You weren't even down here so can't know what happened”, Blunt tried to reason. Thinking the young women must have wound him up while upstairs.

The black string vest said, “I'm going to mash your face in. I'll be at your garage waiting for you to come off early and mash your face in. I know were your garage is. I know what you drivers are like.”

Blunt pressed Code Red, gave his location and asked for Police assistance. He then sat back, a bit stunned and waited while the passengers squabbled, the woman in blue still argueing his corner.

No police after five minutes so he pressed Code Red again. The din was getting louder if anything. This time when they responded he was more forceful in his demand for assistance.

“Can you hear what's going on down here. Get me some assistance before it really goes off!". He kept the mike open for thirty seconds so control could hear the cacophony.

“OK. They're on their way.” The TfL controller said finally recognising the seriousness of the situation.

The man in the black string vest got off the bus and came round to Blunt's window threatening again.

“I'm going to mash you up”, He said.

It was at this point that Blunt could finally see his eyes. They weren't wild from drugs or adrenalin, but clear and sharp, calculating. He was acting. Working? The Police arrived and he hurried away. The significance of the eyes wouldn't register for a few months. But it would.

All the while the pensioner couple remained seated absorbed in the mayhem, keeping council with their quite dignity.

Blunt didn't come off early but finished the spell. As he was driving through the gates back into the garage, Valerie Hancock was standing there with the youngest of her two daughters, Judith. 14 and painfully shy. Valerie was on permanent late shift. She worked rest days as often as she could and was always to be found hanging around allocations. The extra money always handy with two girls to raise on her own. He'd only ever seen the Hancock's in three's before.

Rachel, her oldest daughter was not with her. A thought occurred but got stuck. A flash of recognition had lit up a synapse in his brain, but instantly hit a plaque and was dissipated before it could materialise, exist, become concrete. But it would.

“Hello". Blunt called.

“How's your day been”, Valerie responded.

“Bloody awful”, he replied.

She tried to stiffle a giggle but failed.

Blunt put in an incident report the following day and made copies. One for the union branch's equal opportunities officer for her information. He gave another to the chair for it to be added to the union files.

He didn't know it then, but he was in a relapse. The first since the official diagnosis of multiple sclerosis six months before.

Poor Blunt. The next eight weeks would be the weirdest he ever experienced. No marijuana, could equal this. Highs and lows succeeding each other a minute, or an hour, an eon. He soared, euphoric amongst the stars, to the cutting edge of light and parted the curtain of time. Or he wallowed in a black hole of depression and the bone stretching pain at gravity's singularity.

But worst of all his personality regressed. He became needy. Fearful. Child like in his denials and his wants. Easy prey to be played with, be exploited, harmed and have his reputation trashed.

The storms would gradually ease. Not occur so often or be so intense. It allowed for short periods of rationality that got longer as time progressed. It was in these respites that the signals he noticed but ignored and the duplicitious signals he acted on, started to coalesce. The thoughts that had been blocked found ways through, connections were re-routed and bye-passed the plaques. They became concrete. Existed. But not a material force.

He began to make links from his time with the company and the incident. Fragments at first, building molecule by molecule to the certainty that they had organised the incident. The events of the day had been orchestrated. The onset of severe stress would release rogue prions to flood his central nervous system, attack the myelin. Make the attack acute. Viscious. It produced psychological storms and physical damage as his nerve cells scarred, disrupting the
transmission of electrical and chemical messages across the synapse.

They wanted rid of him and as damaged goods.

Blunt kept working for another six weeks, not realising that his auto-immune disease was active, when a hologram appeared in his eye. He knew then that he was in a relapse. The optical neuritis had told him. It occurred three days in a row. He went sick. It was the physical signs, which always came after the psychological disturbance, that had initially indicated he may have multiple sclerosis. Made him seek medical advice. The rogue prion attack showed itself with a vengence. The numbness down his left side deeped. A bit like a local anaesthetic before it finally wears off. This long ache had spread to his right arm. A patch on his back that flared was now larger and hotter. His balance was awry and he stumbled a lot. Only after this relapse would he recognise past episodes of psychological storms and the destruction they caused. The friends lost, the lovers spurned and the damage done. But then nobody knew he had multiple sclerosis till recently. What happened up the Brow and its aftermath was like nothing that had occured before.

They terminated his employement for health reasons sixteen weeks after the incident. There had been some re-myelation by then and he was heading toward remission, but Blunt was angry. Angry with eyes of blue hot steel and an ugly face. He knew he couldn't act rashly, so kept his council, didn't ruck when told they were terminating his employment, despite the provocation and the role of the man who dismissed him.

Empathy is not a Colour. Chapter 2

2005-11-13T10:17:00.000Z

At Vauxhall Cross, in a new HQ building, all post-modern with a

thousand windows twitching, Elizabeth Boro and Jon Peters had

been called to a morning meeting with Protheroe, their Controller.

It was the same day that Blunt started his bus training and the

day after the Blair Government had taken the decision to support

an American invasion of Iraq. March 2002. The propaganda, the

lies, the surveillance and the dirty tricks were being put in place.

"You have a target." Was Protheroe's opening remark, "His names

Blunt and you have to learn to drive a London bus."

"What?" The surprised question came in unison.

"You heard. You have to learn to drive a bus. It has been

arranged that you start in April. If you fuck this assisgnment up then

you can get a real job as a bus driver. The target used to work for the

Communist Party and the files in front of you have everything you

need to know. Be back here in 4 hours after you have read it and

we will go through the operation. Don't leave the building with the

file." Protheroe walked to the door as he was finishing, indicating

that this stage of the meeting was over.

Elizabeth Boro and Jon Peters picked up the 2inch thick files and

headed for the canteen.

"Christ. My old man's a bus driver and its sent him fucking mad."

Peters said to Boro.

"Don't blaspheme." Elizabeth Boro had already decided that she

was going to put on a religious front for this job. It would keep a lot

of people away from her. She was beautiful. Not pretty. Beautiful.

Skin - red hued black burnished flawless. An oval mouth, small

with a curve in her upper lip not quite closing with the lower, the

peltrum hinting at infinite pleasures in a kiss. Fathomless jet-black

eyes deep as coal. To learn the secrets in those eyes would take

a life-time or two. And had done. Her walk and the swish of skirt

swung heads to an ass J-Lo would die for. Most men in the canteen

couldn't take their eyes from her and were jealous of Peters close

proximity. The women just looked in awe or with the green eyes of

envy.

He was pleased that at least this job meant he was working with her

again, though he knew he had no chance. The last time they had

operated as a pair she had kicked him in the balls for making an

advance. Her feminism came with steel capped boots.

"Well. What do you think?" Said Protheroe as the meeting

reconvened.

Peters was the first to respond. "He was done in Germany for

dope. Can't he just be picked up and done for suppling then

stuck in prison? It should be easy to fit him up."

"No. You've obviously not seen the obvious." Was Protheroe's

curt response. "Well Elizabeth?"

"I noticed that he seemed to have a nervous breakdown after the

break up of a relationship and took to stalking her. He is accessing

a lot of internet porn so I suppose I could hook him and get sex

crimes involved." She replied sneering at Peters.

"Exactly. But it's better than that. We now know that he has

multiple sclerosis and the event you referred to was a very severe

relapse. He didn't know he had it at the time and the diagnosis still

hasn't been confirmed but our medical experts are 99% sure. The

porn sites he is visiting on the Internet are free ones, so he has not

used his credit card. No kiddy stuff yet but maybe in time. Elizabeth

you hook him when we say, get him watched by sex crimes and

hopefully lifted, then we have discredit his politics as deviant and he

becomes fodder for the tabloids. A 'nonce' if he ever gets jailed.

Looking at his past we think he is a romantic so you probably won't

have to fuck this one."

Elizabeth Boro was relieved when Protheroe had uttered his last

sentence. Not that she had any qualms about fucking someone for

her controller. The job she was doing now was better than the life

of a sex-slave for the Nigerian gangsters who had originally brought

her to London. She was grateful that she had been saved from that

by the Secret Intelligence Services. The information about his

interest in porn made her skin crawl, reminded her of the old life and

what she was forced to do. The series of photographs of Blunt in the

file hadn't helped. They had shown that he was quite handsome when

younger but the latest depicted a tired, shop-soiled rogue and the

sex for her would just be mechanical, not enjoyable. She wanted to

enjoy her work.

"Peters, you will act as a decoy. The details still have to be sorted.

OK, you have a month between now and training which lasts a month,

so get to know the target as per the training manual, then report back

here in two months for the final briefing before joining Blunt's garage.

Goodbye, and pass the test. That's an order." Protheroe was impatient

to end themeeting. He had other operatives to brief and targets to

destroy.

“How have I got to here?” Elizabeth Boro was deep in introspection,

driving, crawling with the traffic and on auto-pilot heading for bus

driver training.

Born an Ujowbi in Warri 37 years ago and named Rosemary Oritse.

For hundreds of years the Ujowbi had lived in the Niger delta around

Warri.

The town was founded in the 15th Century by the Oba of Benin. When

Portugese and Dutch slave traders arrived later that century they used

Warri as their base. The Ujowbi collaborated with them, broke with

the anamistic religion of their ancestors and converted to Catholicism.

The break wasn't absolute, much to the chagrin of the Portuguese

missionaries but they was a realism attached to their obscurantism, and

they rationalised an acceptance to this Africanisation of Christ. It was

the age of discovery and they weren't in Lisbon or Rome but in Warri

at the edge of their known world. Some of the Ujowbi's traditional

beliefs and practises were squeezed between the cracks, the crevices

of doubt that inhabit the acceptance to a new spiritual culture. It is still

quite common for men to bring a log of wood in tribute to the family of

a new born girl and seek her betrothal. As long as they were not

cousins of the same clan and with a common ancestor - a taboo stronger

than European familial incest - the suitor stood a chance.

Collaboration with Europeans had been a useful political strategy in

maintaining some control by the Oba over Ujowbiland and in the

continual struggles against, and shifting alliances with, the Yoruba in

the west and north and the Ibo in the east. Great politicians and

warriors, the Ujowbi.

200 hundred years of growth and increased wealth from collaboration

helped Warri win independence from Benin in the 17th century, and

with it came the elevation of an Oba of Warri.

When the British supplanted the Portugese and Dutch in the

nineteenth century, they found the Ujowbi easy to deal with. Four

centuries of being told that black people were inferior had left its

pyschological mark on them. They came to believe it and lost any

semblance of self-esteem.

The super-profits extracted from the slave trade and its denigration

of a people to the level of the unter-menschen, the sub-human,

had been invested in the reseach and development that produced

the Industrial Revolution in Britain. By the time Britain had abolished

slaving in its colonial territories it was the pre-eminent industrial and

Imperial Power. It could afford to forego slavery's profits, and this

helped with cementing the collaboration of the Ujowbi to British

interests.

Collaboration had been successful for 400 years - a long time in

politics. But then, towards the end of the 19th century and the

heightening of imperial rivalries between France, Germany and

Britain the agreements of the Berlin West Africa Conference in

1884-85 were formally signed in an attempt to avert war. Africa was

divvied up, spheres of influence agreed and lines drawn on maps

that sundered great tribes, extensive nations, the millenial culture

of ancestors. Official colonialism now existed. No African chief from

any African tribe was ever consulted. Not the Oba of Warri.

Collaboration was now redundant, stood in the way of maximising the

short term profits demanded by laissez faire's fraudulent economics.

Victorian Britain acted. To consolidate her hold on the vast tracts of

West Africa ceeded to her by other European white states, the

Imperial Mother's military came out to play her favourite game -

Slaughter & Rape - and turned on the Ujowbi. Stole the Ujowbi's

cultural artifacts to display as booty in the British Museum. Exiled the

Oba after a rigged trial. Banned the centuries old democracy of the

Ujowbi's politics and forbade negotiations or treaties with Yoruba and

Ibo. They were now mere administrators of their land following the

orders of the Royal Niger Company. Collaborating with the Victorian

British ended this way where ever the British went. A once great

civilisation, The Ujowbi were reduced to a small corner of Nigeria

and subject to a foreign Queen. With a very British sense of gallows

humour they named Warri a 'Protectorate'.

“Why?” The Oba had asked.

“Because I can.” Replied the Imperial Mother.

By the time Rosemary Oritse was born, Warri was a big city. A

decade before her birth, oil had been discovered in the delta and

Warri had grown expotentially. It was already a major transshipment

point between the River Niger and the Atlantic. Shipping rubber,

palm products, cocoa, groundnuts, hides and skins. An energetic

industrial sector was developing, assembling bicycles, processing

rubber and repairing ships. Oil came with a rush and at a cost. Great

slums grew on the promise of work and food, the dream of the poor

and hungry. Sanitation couldn't meet demand. The retching stench of

sewage drapped the streets. It flowed with the mud to the creeks and

rivers, mingling with the seeping oil, the 'black tears'. Polluting.

Fishermen lost their fish. Tilapia and catfish were decimated and

fishermens families added their numbers to the city slums. Refuse

could hardly be called collected, more like dumped on the nearest

empty plot. Dogs scavenged and vultures circled casting shadows.

Gastrointestinal disease flourished, some years it scythed down a

years cohort of children.

She was lucky as a child. Warri is in a wet, low-lying marshy region

and home to the Anopheles mosquito. The drone, the stilleto

harbringer of malaria. It kills one child in three. Not one day would

pass without her seeing some poverty striken human writhing at the

side of the road after an attack. Their malnourished body wracked

with the tremors and deliriums of the disease, lying in pools of sweat.

Ice would course through their veins and arteries as their bones

calved icebergs amongst the body's soft tissue. It didn't matter that

the temperature was 40c - they were wrapped in a glacier. As the

tremors leave them they would be weak, lie were they where for

hours or days, pathetic and benumbed, unable to call for help.

Six months before she was born an Ujowbi in Warri there had been a

coup followed by a counter-coup in Nigeria. Six months after she was

born, civil war broke out. A hundred miles to the east of Warri,

Biafra had seceeded from Nigeria. During the previous twelve months

tens of thousands of Ibo had been returning to the ancestral home in

the eastern delta from all over Nigeria, running scared after the

Hausa in the far north had slaughtered 20, 000 of them. Muslim versus

Animist/Christian, again. This was partly the reason for the

secession and war, but oil was its driving force. Just as it was the

main reason behind the military coups. When ever oil seeps to the

surface it brings it's 'black tears' to cultivate corruption. Not wealth

but poverty it's footprint.

Within a month of the outbreak of war, the city had been raided and

overrun by the Biafran/Ibo Army. Two and half months of terror, her

mother, Isabella remembered. Col Benjamin Adekunle's 'Black

Scorpion' Division drove the Biafran army out of Warri. Then

another slaughter of the Ibo began. 5, 000 were murdered by the

'Black Scorpions' and local mobs in Warri, Sapele, Agbor, Benin.....

It didn't matter if an Ibo family had been in Warri for generations,

lived next door to Ujowbi for years and had broken bread together,

or had intermarried. They were still Ibo and Ibo were Biafrans, the

cause of her family's terror. She didn't know of the pogram at the

time being only six months old and carried on her mother's back. She

still doesn't fully know. No Ujowbi ever mentions it, though she has

a memory trace from two years later, a distant echo of being scared

at her mother's furious voice.

“We didn't kill enough of them, ” Isobella screamed as Warri was

bombed by mercenaries flying for Biafra.

The words are not exact (when is childhood memory ever exact?),

but they carried her mother's sentiment. That and the animosity her

brothers and sister had for Ibo, infected her over the years.

With access to the sea denied by the Nigerian Army and Navy over a

million Ibo would be starved to death by the end of the war. In the all

to human words of Col Adekunle, “I want to see no Red Cross, no

Caritas, no World Council of Churches, no Pope, no missionary and

no UN delegation. I want to prevent even one Ibo from having even

one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything

that moves and when our troops march into Ibo territory, we shoot

at everything even at things that do not move....”

Into this she was born, lucky to survive her infancy. But not so lucky

with her family. She was betrothed two days after she was born.

Her father, Umukoro Oritse was a business man and tribal politician.

A wheeler-dealer in export-import who made more than he lost when

loose with the law and scruple. Like the British, the military regime

banned Ujowbi politics, but his intellectual grasp of the complex

interaction of clans and families, of who was obligated to whom and

why, which clans were fueding, and how to use had been noted prior

to the coups. He had moved quickly through the heirarchy. Making

alliances and deals. Building business on the way. Enemies came with

his looseness for the law and scruple.

He had read the signs following the coups and knew that his enemies

would attempt to undermine him. His alliances were good and strong

in Ujowbiland but he lacked contact in Lagos and thats where the real

danger now lived. To ensure his business' survived he needed a

powerful ally there, and found one. A cousin of his was obligated to

by Akinyemi Ola. It was a small obligation only capable of an

introduction when passed onto him. But that was all he needed.

Empathy is not a Colour. Chapter 3

2005-11-13T10:15:00.000Z

He thought himself all of 22 until he looked in the mirror. There he

saw a kind of reality. His eyes were still sharp blue, the slight

dullness at the edges from the one to many spliffs the night before

fast disappearing. The face had enough creases to give it some

character and deepen the mark of his lineage. Typically English - a

hotch-potch of Anglo-Saxon, Celt, Roma, and Jewish features that

somehow fell agreeably once. He hoped that the closely clipped salt

and pepper beard and greying temples offered a distinguished touch.

He wasn't sure of that. His weight was good at the moment, at his

lightest since twenty-two, but not as lithe. His handsome 22 was not

before him and it was only now that he knew he was handsome then.

“Fuck. I'm fifty”, he admitted. Then, totally unconsciously as he

turned from the honest mirror, withdrew the confession and

reverted to thinking 22.

“Why am I up at 6.30? Oh, of course". Today is important. It's the

start of his training as a London bus driver.

“How had I got here?” He wondered while getting dressed, and his

thoughts turned to the long-stowed cargoe of his story and a

neglected re-appraisal.

Seven years a soldier. From 15 to 22. A boy soldier in the RAMC

untill posted to the regulars at 18. What a con. He'd already done

three years as a boy soldier before the nine year contract kicked in.

His old-man must have known when he told him to sign without

reading. But being to big to hit anymore, his dad had to get him out

of the house somehow and lying by ommission comes easy. Not that

he was an angel. Far from it. The catalyst for the forced enlistment

had been an assault on a class-mate at school and, following his

expulsion, a little spree of shop smash 'n' grab - larceny in the

language of the court. The class-mate was hospitalised and he wasn't

the first or last to feel Blunt's temper. But he was sensitive boy for

all that. The macho stance hid his shyness and lack of confidence.

The last year at school had been awful. He had made the wrong

choice. It should have been art with his line, perspective, a pencil

and a brush. Instead he crumbled under the father's insistance on

science, despite the evidence of the termly reports. Maths was not

bad but chemistry, the periodic table. Yeah well. The only thing he

learnt about physics was that it was heavy and/or light relatively.

Cutting up dogfish in biology was very interesting, but the teacher's

casual violence - a knuckle to the top of the head - was not. A

years failing culminating in expulsion from a Grammar and appearance

in court. He had found Dylan by then. 'The Times They Are A

Changin' spoke directly to him, gave him justification to rebel. But

his rebellion was not constructive, not thought through, more

self-destructive.

Ridicule and pain are the bully's refrain. Ridiculed at five the first time

he opened one of his fathers books. A book without pictures only

words.

“You can't read. You're just a fool.”

“That's for nothing. Wait till you do something”, accompanied by a

clout round the ear and laughter, was the usual greeting when his

father came in from work.

The father probably thought he was being funny, but for Blunt it was

fifteen years of fear interspersed with times of terror. Beaten with

anything to hand - broom or belt - for some minor infraction of a new

rule invented to justify a loss of temper. The father's anger regulated

the family atmosphere.

Blunt's father came from a mining family. Treorchy, the Rhonnda

Valley. When four he lived the General Strike and then the aftermath

of the miners defeat. The grinding pinch of poverty. The dramatic

narrowing of horizons. The depression. His mother handed out the

beatings, the only way she understood of holding a seven member

family together in such circumstance. She learnt it from her father

who had been 'in service' with it's attendant poverty, and done the

same to her. Welsh, and his father sang well in an operatic tenor,

but could not stand on a stage. What dreams he had of conquering

stage fright were lost in the brutalities of WWII North Africa.

When he was thirty, Blunt's parents informed him that he had an

older brother. His mother had had a boy by an American GI just after

WWII. Kicked out of the family home for bearing a bastard, she had

initially found work as a Capstan Lathe Operator. That didn't last

long. Skilled craft needed for the war effort was no longer for

women. Not when the Boys came home victorious from war. She

could then only find night work and all her earnings went on rent and

childcare. She hardly ever saw him. After eighteen months she had to

give the boy away, isolated and shattered. A cousin had agreed to

take him on the condition that she never made contact but that he

would be told who his birth mother was when old enough. She never

made contact and the cousin never told the boy his heritage. In the

event it was obvious he was different. He did a search and renewed

contact thirty-one years later to her great joy.

Stripped of her first child by a cruel father, Blunt's mother could be

social again and three months later she married his father. A year

after losing one boy she gave birth to another. She received

occassional reports from her sisters about the boy, his progress and

health, and the news would always help raise her spirits. Make her

grin. Lift her head from the drudge. She was always loving, but it

was at these times Blunt adored his mother and he didn't understand

why. The boy, David, was academically successful at school. Has

become a Professor and Barrister/Partner in the Inns of Court.

At thirty Blunt understood his mother more. A husband who, with

mental and physical bullying dominated her environment. Left her

marooned. Without the deep tactile affection she craved and lonely

with her grief at loss, made for a psychological cleft. She was

distraught, left home when he was 4 and 5. Walked out on her

husband and son and daughter. Her emotional needs and undoubted

intellect stymied by circumstance and men, and desperate for a way

out. The children were introduced to fostering. Each time she

returned after a few weeks having no where else she could be. Finally

falling into the addiction of 'mothers little helpers' . Her twenties a

haze. It took hospital admissions to get her clean and fostering for

her children again and again. 'Mothers little helpers', a misnomer for

a straight jacket. Prescription drugs issued by lazy GP's in their

billions, that confined millions of emotionally and intellectualy

frustrated young mothers in a chemical cosh. 'Man works and woman

looks after the home and family', was the mantra of the times. If

women found it hard to restrict themselves to the role then there is

something wrong with them.

“You are not real women.

You are ill.

Take the drugs.

Be quiet.

Accept your lot".

The revolution of the contraceptive pill came to late for his mother.

Being clean didn't last long. Her thwarted dreams no less painful, an

alcoholic in her thirties. She finally succeeded in getting dry in her

fifties and became a nationally respected councillor to junkies and

alcoholics. A former 'Valley of the Dolls' wife gaining satisfaction

from using her intellect at last. Her becoming had taken a long time.

He has been proud of his mum these last twenty years.

To his father, David was a parallel child for Blunt to be judged by. A

competition he didn't know he was in. Tests he didn't know he was

taking and with no chance of passing. He may have been his father's

first child, but he was the second of his mother's. Anger instilled by

his own mother and jealousy of an American GI fuelled the father's

violence, made vicious when co-inciding with good news about David.

The frustrated tenor's songs echoingly corrupted to the wailing,

screaching agonies of his son.

Through families and down generations, violence has a habit of

replicating itself. Blunt lived in fear until 10 and his puberty. Anger

and violence reared their heads amongst the hormones. His sister

was the first to get it. He tried to fuck her. The nearest and

weakest to him being passed the baton. Protheroe terrified his sister,

fucked up her life and the abuse only stopped when they were given

their own bedrooms three months after it started. Guilt has been his

constant companion since. His father has only recently found out

about the 'incestuous' son. The final failure. Has banned him from

ever “stepping foot in his house". Barring Blunt from his mother. His

father still does not get it. His own culpability never questioned. As

dogmatic in his self-righteousness as the Stalinism he learnt in The

Valleys.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

This Be The Verse Philip Larkin

Blunt's mother had insisted on the Royal Army Medical Corp not the

infantry and the killing. Up in court the day of his enlistment. In front

of the beak at 10.30am, on the train by 11.30am. The Magistrate was

the wife of the Headmaster who had expelled Protheroe a month

before. Doing her civic duty, she sentenced him to a conditional

discharge for the smash 'n' grab'. Odd the ways of educators and

justice.

The army was an escape of sorts. From one bully to Ranks of them,

but, in a contradiction to the army's rationale, with less violence.

He indulged his passion for rugby. Rugby, the premier contact sport.

Short - 5' 6”, and stocky - 11st 7lb, upper body strength, a low

centre of gravity and short, fast-twitch muscle fibres make for a good

scrum-half. But still three inches to short and two stone to light for

an excellent scrum-half. His talent was in his balance and explosive

speed over the first ten yards. Practise and play brought skill.

Side-steps off either foot, a dummy out of either hand. A flat spin

pass to left or right or reverse. A knock down hit in the tackle.

Good times. And respect amongst the men. His violence hadn't left

him but was being constrained, channelled.

Still a virgin at 18 (the attempted fucking of sister didn't really count

in his reckoning). What humiliation. Still untested by love. Still not a

man really. Then came Christine from Llantrisant, with love and the

minting of a man. From her he learnt to give, engage his finer

emotions and his fumblings started a journey toward refinement.

Six months of blissful pride as he danced around beauty and her smile.

Snatching sex in hidden corners at a rush. She taught him sex was

good. All moist and synchronised, pushing, wrapping, gripping,

sweating, tasting. But rare the chance to sleep the night and find that

point where time slows, extends, stretches. All six months. The

army posted his nurse, tenderer to love, to hot and humid Singapore.

He was left alone amongst dull amd monosyllabic men in the

oppressive drizzle of a Woolwich winter. They wrote for a while.

Eventually word came back that she had found another to love her.

Never to meet again sharing smiles. Never skin to skin again.

Routine and rugby filled the vacumn. After a while he found himself

again looking for love. One-night stands had made for passing fun and

a gradual easing of grief, but not love.

Not long after losing Christine from Llantrisant and at 24hrs notice he

made aquaintance with Kenya. Emergency medical cover for the

Coldstream Guards on a two month jungle and bush exercise. Their

Medical Sergeant had broken his leg skiing, poor sod. Lucky Blunt.

The equatorial sun was fierce. Sharp pulsing daggers of light flaying

any tender white skin exposed in their path. One Guardsman, thicker

than most, didn't listen about the need for gradual exposer to the

Kenyan sun - shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow for only ten

minutes on the first full day, twenty minutes the next day and so on.

Thirty minutes after taking off his shirt on the first full day in

Nanyuki, the Guardsman's back was one big blister. Blunt drained it

with the biggest syringe in the kit, strapped the injury then put the

Guardsman on a charge of 'self-inflicted injury'. What a pratt. The

nick-name, 'Blister', stuck.

One night while he was sleeping in the medical tent, the tent was

stolen from above him. He woke to the so-so-high African skies.

Bliss. Then his brain worked and he cursed, “Bastards". He spent all

morning trying to get a replacement, but to late. A dust-devil, a

miniature tornado, a whirllygig tore through the medical centre and

scattered all the dressings, drugs, equipment and notes across the

arid plains of Samburu. The vast Kenyan bush. Hours to reclaim or

bin. Did he get a bollocking and did the squaddies laugh! He found

out a few weeks later that the Blister had done it. Got his own back

for all the kitchen pans he had had to scrub as punishment for his

self-inflicted injury. Not so thick.

The so-so-high African skies and open, generous people humbled him.

He adored Kenya and the ochre of its earth but was appalled by the

poverty and embarrassed at the stupidity inherent in the soldiers

racism. The soldiers were rich by comparison and young women

would prostitute themselves to it, desperate to fed families. Most

Guardsmen who took some pleasure there didn't see this. They were

just “jungle-bunnies to fuck and cheaper than the whores around

Chelsea Barracks".

Blunt will admit he took some comfort there. The 7 day course of

sulphadimidine he took after cured the soft sore.

Away from Nanyuki in the bush at Smalls Farm, an elderly Kikuyu

woman was brought to the medical tent with a badly gashed leg. A

machette had sliced to the bone and left a six inch long wound on her

left calf that needed a lot of detailed and deep muscle stitching. The

injury was at least three days old. She had walked for two days to

get there. A tough Kikuyu matriarch.

A Sandhurst trained bum-fluffed 2nd Lieutenant ordered him not to

treat her. It took a lot of persuading, but finally he managed to get

the use of a landrover to transport her to the regional hospital near

Nanyuki. It saved her another days walk. She never uttered a word

throughout, but the reproach in her tearless eyes at the callousness

of the Sandhurst trained bum-fluffed 2nd Lieutenant remembered

Mau-Mau and spoke thunder.

Part of his job was to regularly check the refuse dump and ensure it

was not a health hazard. It was just a bloody big hole in the ground

where all the kitchen refuse was dumped. It would be covered with

earth when they left. The MO accompanied him on his tour one day.

Fuck. They found a Kikuyu elder in the pit loading up with food. With

the usual profligacy of the army, whole fresh loafs had been discarded

that morning after breakfast. The poverty of pasturalism make people

take where they can find. The MO though was having none of it and

started yelling at the Kikuyu elder ordering him out of the pit and

away from bread. The look in the eye of that affronted, disrespected

Kikuyu elder remembered Mau-Mau and spoke thunder. The MO was

as one with the Sandhurst trained 2nd Lieutenant and expats. Where

his Hippocratic Oath and his attention to the whole man.

She was petite with wide-set ice-blue eyes. Auburn freckles where

her hair had flecked her face, a constant smile and always in demand.

A Womens Royal Army Corp ambulance driver for the A&E where he

worked when with 12 Coy back in Woolwich. Effervescent Fitz. A

Tyke Dyke who came to him thinking he was the man who could make

her straight and kill the guilt welded to her soul. He married her out

of some twisted macho logic. Three tempetuous months and it was

over.

Blunt had finished a Casualty night shift and returned to the flat to

find another just leaving. A lesbian lover/friend who had stayed the

night by the state of the bed. Thwack. He hit Fitz. That was the end.

Still emotionally immature, caught in the cleft of being a John Wayne

man and sensitivity, he had failed her. Little did he know then that it

would be another four years till confident enough to kiss again and

that a pattern to his relationships had started. Difficult women would

be his attraction, short term the pattern but never to hit a woman

again.

She changed him, his psych and dress. He started wearing Levis. Still

not divorced and Fitz still in the closet. Odd the ways of love and

sexuality.

It seemed every time he lost a love he won a posting.

The UN and medical cover to the Royal Irish Rangers on Aphrodite's

stunning Cyprus. The failed lover on the island of love. Cyprus

where the Irish taught him how many ways there are to drink and that

Orangemen were wrong. Cyprus, an island divided in itself and

policed by soldiers from another. Cyprus slowly-slowly awaiting a

Turkish invasion and a new twist to the antique relationship between

Greeks and Turks.

The 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland permiated the Rangers. Made

them fractious. Understandable when considering the composition of

the regiment. The other ranks were raised from both north and

south, with the catholic south having a slight majority. The

Regimental Police, those that run the 'Glass House' and regimental

discipline, were Protestants from the North. Except the senior Glass

House Sergeant who was from Cork. A Catholic, and very proud that

his father had volunteered as a fascist Blue Shirt serving Franco in his

war against Spanish democracy. The Officers were Anglo/Irish of

course.

The Battalion HQ at Limassol was build by Kitchener. With the

imagination of military intelligence it was called Kitchener Barracks

and the architect had built the POW camp in The Great Escape. All

wood on a concrete plinth. Cold and uncomfortable. The church was

multi-denominational and also built of wood. One sectarian

Regimental Policeman decided that he didn't like Taigs worshipping in

the same place as Prots, so burnt it down. Fucking nuts. Court

Martialled to six months imprisonment in Colchester's Military

Correction Training Centre and soldier on. The worst of all

outcomes for him - he was hoping to get kicked out of the army.

For once military intelligence got it right. It was preferrable to keep

him soldiering than let loose on the streets of Belfast.

The latrines were 8ft deep thunder boxes. Emptied once a week by a

local Cypriot farmer with his sludge gulper. The stench within a

hundred yards of him was acrid. Destroyed the sense of smell for the

day. He was paid to collect it and fed this Irish shit to his Cypriot

fields, turning Guiness into wine. A fucking genius.

Blunt lost a man in Limassol. A heart attack. A twenty-two years

service man on his last posting before retirement and a pension. 42

and his heart goes. Despite the pumping and mouth to mouth for an

hour, he lost him. The autopsy revealed a massive myocardial

infarction and no matter what he did, he would have lost him. It

didn't assuage his guilt much. What did was another soldier saying

with pride,

“No matter where we go around the world, no matter how long we

stay, the Royal Irish Rangers always leave someone.”

He felt drawn into part of a tradition and the guilt slowly dissipated.

His violence surfaced again. Two bottles of cheap Cypriot brandy and

Blunt could kill the world. Not the world but a fellow medic was the

recipient of his fists. A supercillious, arrogant pratt of a

lance-corporal. No excuse though and 28 days in the Guard House cells

under the authority of the Catholic fascist from Cork.

At the end of the six month tour the Rangers were relieved by one of

the Parachute Regiments. This was a few months after Bloody Sunday

and the massacre of unarmed demonstrators on the streets of Derry

by the Paras. The advance guard who came to secure stores and sign

the hand over, had a torrid time. Three of them were 'captured' one

night and thrown down the deep trench latrine. The Farmer hadn't

been for six days and they weren't found till morning when the sludge

gulper turned up. One of them was very ill and rushed to hospital but

made a recovery. They were subsequently charged for being late on

parade. The stench hung on them for a while, creating an invisible

bubble that no one dared penetrate. They had only themselves as

company. Blunt had to monitor them for a while, ensuring they

recovered and were disease free. Everybody else had refused to

enter the nasal exclusion zone.

From Nicosia a sojourn to Israel and Jerusalem. He hobbled around

Jerusalem with his leg in plaster. He'd broken his foot playing rugby

for the Rangers against the army hospital in Dhekelia. Typical. He's

playing for the Irish against old team-mates from Woolwich and

breaks his foot in Cyprus. But three weeks later he's in Jerusalem.

It was the first time he had seen the ancient Medina in a Middle

Eastern city, and he was stunned. No word he'd read, no film or

picture he'd watched or seen, no sound he'd heard had prepared him

for this. In the narrow lanes the cacophony, the babel of voices near

overwhelmed him. The animated cadences of barter; the running

giggle of children weaving in and out, in and out the throng; the

ubiquitous laughter and the occassional shrill arguement when all

combined, put in the mix, contained an antique rhythm that gave the

city its vibrant beat. Lock-up shop after lock-up shop lined the lanes

in ranks. Keffiyahed and jalaba'd Palestinians, smiling stall holders,

were looking to deal, to commerce. Shafts of light like shards of

mirrored glass danced across their wares. His excited eyes darted

here and there unable and unwilling to settle. They leapt to a glint of

lapis lazuli caressed by a beam, snapped at a flash of bronze fish,

sprung to a swirl of gold thread blazing through a bolt of turquoise

cloth. Exotic aromas from every known spice and herb had him

salivating in unconditioned reflex. Barrels of thyme and mint, ginger

and cardoman and chilli, cumin and coriander. His tongue has never

been the same since. The soft sensuality of camel leather crafted into

bags, saddles and belts seduced his fingers into constant strokes.

'This city belongs to all humanity and their every sense', he thought

enthralled by its vitality.

But this is a land at war. The negotiation for space is conducted with

the tank, the bullet and the bomb, the Bible, the Torah and the

Qur'an. Animosity and assume-the-worst is the atmosphere between

Jew and Muslim and Christian. Gaza and the West Bank under illegal

occupation is patrolled by fundamentalist settlers with machine guns.

Like Scripture - Dangerous.

Any residual religiosity died here. Here in the Holy Land. A land and

a city where three words collide. Bible, Torah, Qur'an.

Human-made words cynically exploited by theocratic fascists to justify

the imposition of an absolutist world view and the murder of 'other'.

Paper tectonic plates throwing up great volcanoes, that spew out

intolerance as a shroud of toxic words choking progress around the

world. Intellectually vaquous ravings. Mumbo-jumbo.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
where I used to play on the green,

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Garden of Love William Blake

Empathy is not a Colour. Chapter 4

2005-11-13T10:12:00.000Z

Elizabeth Boro and Jon Peters had passed the bus driving test to

the relief of Protheroe. He didn't have to reorganise.

"Well done." He had said on their arrival for the next briefing. "Peters,

it has been arranged that within the next couple of months you will

be relieved for your break from the bus by Blunt. We want you to 'sell

on', recycle a used ticket just before the change over. An Inspector

for the bus company will get on the bus the next stop that Blunt makes

after taking over. It will be obvious that Blunt was not responsible but

it should act as a decoy for Elizabeth. You will be sacked and back in

here for another job.

"Elizabeth, you will bide your time. Blunt will at some point approach

you. He is not slow at coming forward when he sees a beautiful woman.

Be very cool to him and try and involve the other women in garage.

You know, disparage him to them. We will not be acting against him

until next year then we want you to hook him. OK any questions?"

Elizabeth Boro was the first to respond. "It sounds quite easy, but

what is multiple sclerosis?"

"It's an auto-immune disease of the central nervous system. The

bodies defence mechanism against disease has turned on the body

and is attacking it. In this case the brain and spine. He goes nutty

when in a severe relapse." Said Protheroe. "OK thats the end of the

briefing. Go and do it."

Both Elizabeth Boro and Jon Peters got up and left. Peters was

pleased he would only be driving a bus for a few months.

Elizabeth/Rosemary's thoughts turned to her history.

Umukoro Oritse had heard of Akinyemi Ola. Whereas he was loose

with the law and scruple, Akinyemi Ola bought the law and had never

made acquaintance with scruple. Ola, as his name, was wealthy. A

Lagos mobster with a veneer of respectability from a semi-legitimate

bus business. He controlled the city's prostitution and had a

substantial interest in the nascent marijuana export business. Now

55, Akinyemi Ola had stayed atop the heap for the last 15 years,

from colony to independence to military rule, by applying the three

rules of gangsterism. Have enough thugs to keep enemies at bay and

'friends' subdued. Buy police and politicians. And luck.

Pre-independence had been fairly easy for Ola to progress as mobster.

The Yoruba administrators that he corrupted had originally thought

that they were helping undermine the colonial power and speed

independence. It didn't take long to realise otherwise and that what

saying anything could mean. The cash helped dull the conscience of

most.

A rumour about one conscience striken clerk with the Lagos

transport department became legend. Travelled the bye-ways, the

open sewered high-ways. Ran along the quicksilver - the rapid

changing tongues of Lagos' slums.

At the end of a days work, as the story goes, the clerk went to his

immediate superior to confess his part in a licencing scam that helped

put one of Ola's bus competitors out of business. His boss listened

then suggested it would be better to speak to the boss' boss in the

morning as he didn't have the authority to deal with such a serious

accusation or the clerk's error of judgement. That was the white

boss' responsibility. The rumour has it that the conscience stricken

clerk and his whole family; wife and children, mother and father,

sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts, the

ubiquitous cousins - his whole extended clan throughout Yorubaland

- were disappeared that night. Everybody knew the conscience

striken clerk but nobody could recall his name. The Lagos transport

department hadn't reported anybody missing from work, which,

unintentionally helped fuel the rumour. 'They're all corrupted and

scared by Akinyemi Ola', was hurried along in whispers. The clerk

was urban myth, embroidered with each re-tellers phobias. He had

crossed Akinyemi Ola so his family were feed to the pigs, buried in a

refuse dump or after being skinned alive were staked out as carrion

for hyenas and vultures to squark, squabble and laugh over. In Lagos

people spoke Akinyemi Ola's name in awe and fear. Or not at all.

The rumours served Akinyemi Ola so well it could be thought he had

instigated them.

Ola's string of girls traded services for information or just passed on

a stupid policeman's casual remark about being up early for a raid. But

Akinyemi Ola's prize corruptee and informant had been a British

police officer seconded from the Mother country to the Nigeria Police

Force. He had, bold as brass, walked into Ola's office at the bus

company unannounced and in uniform. He had dumped his escort

outside and ordered everybody in the office except Ola to join them.

He then proceeded to offer Akinyemi Ola a deal. He would take 5%

of the profits from the prostitution in return for information of any

planned raids on Ola's brothels. It came as a shock to Ola and he was

suspicious. He mumbled something about being a legitimate business

man, at which point the police officer interrupted and pointed out

that he was not asking for a cut from his marijuana business but he

could be helpful, or not, at it's destination when his secondment

finished. Ola was getting worried that this could be a sting originating

from London. He would have to stall, make enquiries.

Dai Jones, a Valleys lad moved to London, was unusually slim and tall

for someone with Welsh antecedents. The gait of his six foot frame

more a slither than a stride. He had risen to the rank to Detective

Sergeant, two rungs up the ladder in the Met's Flying Squad. But that

would be as far as he could climb. The Nigeria Police Force

secondment was a 'punishment' posting. There were questions

about a failed raid he was involved in that had caused political

embarrasment to the Met. The target, a notorious London firm, had

to have been tipped off to have escaped. Nothing pointed to him

directly, he was to astute for that. It was all conjecture and no hard

evidence, hence secondment not prosecution. His innocent minions

had been transferred to Uniform and Traffic with marked records and

reputations fucked.

A quick learner marked for fast-track promotion, Jones' 5 year

service had taught him well the ways of the force and how to

manipulate it. If his superiors had known the depth of his corruption;

the bungs, the lost evidence, the re-selling of drugs and the fit-ups

that trailed a slime stain his past 3 years in the Flying Squad, they

would have locked him in Pentonville, leave him alone with the

convicts and let their justice for ex-cops take its course.

What prats they were Jones had thought three months on. Two years

secondment in Nigeria and he could do what he liked on his return.

The lead up to independence made for many opportunities and it

hadn't taken long to identify Ola as the one to approach and start the

exploitation and graft.

He could see by the body language - crossed arms, crossed legs and

cold fixed eyes - the suspicion in Ola at his offer. He suggested

that Ola make enquiries about him and he would call, not visit in a

month for an answer.

When Jones had left Ola hit the phone, arranged a tail on Jones and

spoke to his most senior contact in the Nigeria Police Force, a

Sergeant in admin, to get what information he had. Ola had never

previously taken much interest in the colonial police officers before

because they were not as desperate for the money. They didn't have

to shake-down the poor to get a living wage. Ola took pride

in the belief that his corruption was doing a social service for the

poor by keeping the poorly paid black police off their backs. He was

the original Nigerian Robin Hood, or so he liked to deluded himself

occasionally. And anyway, he thought his network kept him up to

date on anything the white officers said and what plans they had that

could affect his operations. His Sergeant told him enough to interest

him, not whet his appetite as such but generate the hint of a

possibility. He gave the Sergeant a dressing down, verbally abused

him because he, Akinyemi Ola had to ask for the information.

The other colonial officers seemed to keep a distance from Jones.

This was the way with new boys, but it only lasted for a week or so

before they were drawn into the force's white camraderie. With

Jones it hadn't happened after three months. He was abrupt,

disrespectful and rude to his Nigerian colleagues just the same as the

others. But the Sergeant had overheard a conversation a while ago

about the force getting a 'right bastard, but nothing provable' from

London. He didn't get a name, but Jones' arrival date seemed to fit.

Dai Jones' reputation had arrived before him.

Akinyemi Ola's last call was to his second son, 25 year old Akin,

ordering him to the office. Akin Ola ran the thugs, the warrior

enforcer of his father's will in Lagos. Five foot nine, thirteen stone

solid, fearless when needed and intelligent enough to know when and

when not to fight. A flashy dresser, he took his style from Harlem.

The zoot suit king of Lagos and a Roue. A charming and ruthless

young man when following his dick. He was partial to a joint.

Akinyemi Ola told his second son that he was being sent to London to

visit his uncle Omotunde and his third son, Amari, to convey

instructions and bring back a report. He had two weeks. Akin was

told in no uncertain terms that he would have to change his attire for

the visit. Conservative business suits. It cut across the flamboyant

grain but this was London and business, not Lagos and enforcement.

No arguement. He would have preferred going to New York to visit

Adan, his older brother and Akinyemi Ola's first son. He could have

packed the zoot suits for forays in Harlem, his cultural capital.

Amari Ola had been sent to London 6 months before to help his uncle

with the British arm of his father's prostitution and dope business.

More cerebral than his brother and as ruthless as his father. 22 and

six-foot-one, he did circuits for an hour each day. Fit and strikingly

handsome with a deep red-black hue. Amari could become a

formidable enemy. Already his friendships were transactional and

political. He favoured the classical lines of Italian suits and silk shirts

to Akin's loud Black-Americana. A broad face and high forehead, his

right eye slightly squint, disconcerted those he first met. It gave him

an advantage he seldom lost. Akin was pleased Amari wasn't in Lagos

as competition for the girls.

With Amari's group in London, led by Omotunde Ola, were a choice

of Lagos' able worst - men and women. A couple, the Eweji's were

set up in a small grocery store in Shadwell, a mile from East India

Dock. It was just a corner shop specialising in African/Caribbean

goods for the small but growing Black population in London. Excellent

cover for importation and distribution of the weed in a drugs naive

London. The Eweji's were the accountants. The windows were put

out a few times by local white school kids wound up by their elders

and 'betters', scared of colour in their drab and drizzly city. But the

Ola cover held.

The rest of the staff were chosen for their other skills, whore,

lawyer, and all were at home as soldier enforcers. A house in Pimlico

was bought to use as a brothel.

The 'Madam', Dada Acacia, had been with the Akinyemi Ola business

for 20 years. One of the first in Ola's stable, it was her labour that

laid the groundwork for the Ola empire. Discovered as a Lagos street

walker and promoted when her looks and figure started to fail, and

her cunning, intellect and loyalty to Ola could better be seen. Rising

to London Madam. Viscious. At least three punters dead when she

street-walked Lagos. Skewered by her knife after being rolled when

drunk. The punters were no threat. She just didn't like them. Of her

half dozen girls in London, four were black from Lagos and two were

local white recruits. They were governed by fear. They had all heard

the stories or knew the victims of her control. A girl, Adetoun, had

tried to hold back some money from a punter and been discovered.

Before she could blink Dada Acacia had opened a 3 inch wound from

mouth to ear, destroying Adetoun's looks and income at a stroke.

But that was not enough, a lesson had to be taught. Dada Acacia

took an eye. Adetoun was last seen begging the slums of Lagos,

offering fucks for food and more often than not, refused.

It had taken two years for Omotunde Ola to find and cultivate a

market for the dimba, ganja, bhang, kiff or any other of the

hundreds of marijuana nick-names. The prostitution and grocery had

kept them afloat after remittance to Lagos. The herb part of the

business was turning a profit by the time Amari Ola arrived.

Local London firms had been slow in recognising the potential profit in

marijuana, relegated it to that 'nigger smoke', and had written off

the 'Beat' scene, its jazz and blues clubs, as places for 'poetry

poofters'. The Ola's marijuana business co-incided with the rise of

British Beatniks who took their musical references from American

Negro culture and actively sought it out. (Negro was how Black

people were known by the middle classes then. How quaint). The

original white counter-culture before the Hippies. The weed was the

drug of the clubs and the Beats adored it. Marijuana use, especially in

London mushroomed. It had even penetrated the Teddy Boys.

It didn't taken long for the London firms to realise their mistake and

try to muscle in on the African and Caribbean gangs trade. One of the

firms, the Robinson's had been eyeing the Ola's prostitution

operation but hadn't moved against him, judging it more trouble than

it was worth. But with dopes growing use by whites they recognised

its potential. The Ola enterprise now looked economically worth the

bother. They tried some strong-arm tactics. A short war, for ever

known as 'Dada's War'. After two dead, both white with throats slit

by Dada Acacia after being caught acid etching her most expensive

black girl - only Dada Acacia was allowed to hurt her girls - an

arrangement was arrived at. The Robinson's got a good deal on bulk

purchase, turf was assigned and outlets defined. A mutual aid pact

was signed. Ola got an excellent deal. A regular bulk outlet,

formalised relations and respect. The Robinson's were quicker than

the rest of the white firms to learn that profit supercedes colour.

Knowledge that came at the cost of three replaceable pawns. Cheap.

Three days after leaving his fathers officer, Akin and his minders

were in London soberly dressed. He was met at Heathrow by

Omotunde Ola and Amari. Omotunde Ola was robed. His shirt a

loose green buba, embroidered in gold around the neck, his sokoto

or trousers were a matching green. Over this he wore his agbada.

Emerald green stretched to the ground, billowing, the printed eagle

motif taking flight. Gold thread was embroidered down the lapels and

along the hem. He wore his fila on his head with nonchalance. The

round cap was gold with emerald green embroidery. He looked

impressive and not one white traveller missed his passing. He was at

his best to met his brothers envoy and enforcer. Amari was sharp in

his charcoal grey Italian suit and mohair coat. Looking the business

adviser to the second chief. He grinned at the awkwardness his

brother Akin obviously felt in conservative pinstripe, but marvelled at

his discipline.

It was Akin's first visit to London and on the drive to Pimlico all he

could do was gawp. His uncle and brother recognised themselves in

Akin's dropped jaw from their first time in London, so left him stare.

Fill his eyes and colour-in those sites he recognised from black &

white 'B' movies. Unfortunately London was its typical slate-grey

autumn and most of the colour was vibrating off Omotunde Ola as if

he was the only element painted, frame by frame, in the film.

At Pimlico, Akin took half an hour to unpack - no zoot suit - and

freshen up. After a meal where presents were given and the

conversation full of stories about family and old friends, Omotunde

Ola, Akin and Amari took a stroll to the Thames. It was 5.30pm and

the tide was high, the river full with Lighters cutting swirls through a

gentle rising mist and the ebbing light. The Lighters busy transporting

goods to and from the wharfs of Chelsea and the docks further east.

They walked east along Millbank, watching the continuos flotillas of

coal barges queuing to unload at Battersea power station, past the

Tate which Amari pointed out and suggested a visit by Akin while he

was here.

In an almost deserted Victoria Tower Gardens they sat at a bench in

front of Rodin's anguished 'Burghers of Calais'. Little wonder the

Burghers look dejected, in 1347 after a years seige by the English,

they surrendered Calais to Edward III and didn't get it back for two

hundred years. This was totally at odds with the confident smiles and

conversation of the Ola's who would get their land back in a couple

years after only 60 years of direct rule from London.

Under the doleful eyes of the Burghers, with the Houses of

Parliament to the front and MI6 over their left shoulder, Akin relaid

his message. Explained the offer by Dai Jones and the need for as

much information on him as possible. He had to be back in Lagos

within ten days, so in reality they had just a week. Omotunde Ola

couldn't place Jones' name but had heard rumours that a Flying Squad

officer was tight with the Robinsons. He would check with them

tomorrow when they came for a collection at Shadwell.

Within 24hrs they had all the information they needed about Dai

Jones. The Robinsons were the firm that Jones had forewarned about

a trap laid by the Flying Squad and that had had him seconded to

Nigeria. The Robinsons had planned a big diamond heist in Hatton

Garden, got warned the day before and didn't turn up. A couple of

youngsters on push bikes were sent to check the target on the day,

and sure enough, hundreds of coppers. It had exposed a nark

amongst them. He was quietly throttled, disposed of in a south

London glue factory, his family exiled from the East End. The only

criticism of Jones was any gangsters usual moan, he was a bit

expensive.

Akin leapt at the news. Pleased. Seven days freedom in London. He

called his minders and told them they were all free for seven days but

he expected them to accompany him around town. Omotunde Ola

released Amari from his duties for the week. He insisted Amari show

Akin the sites, visit the museums, theatres and cinemas, the parks

and clubs, not just get stoned and jiggy-jiggy all day. The girls time

was to valuable for freebies. Akin was up for it and Amari could at

last visit the British Museum, view the Benin Bronzes he had heard

legends of. Akin had read a report in the Lagos Daily Times last week

about the British Museum de-acquisitioning some of the bronzes to

help establish the National Museum in Lagos and was interested.

For Yoruba there maybe histories of wars with Edo and their Oba of

Benin scanning centuries, but they shared a cultural tradition in

creating bronzes of outstanding beauty since at least the 13th century.

Even Akin's minders, more muscle than intellect, were impressed

when they saw them. The stories of the Benin Bronzes had been true.

They are unique. In Europe, no sculpture had been produced between

the Roman Empire and two centuries after the first birth of these

bronzes from their casts that can stand comparison. The style,

virtuosity and sophistication astonished the unprecedented crowds

throughout Europe that visited the exhibitions. Picasso and Braque

could not have conceived Cubism without them. All modern European

art is their legacy.

The emotions of this small group of Yoruba men as they left the

British Museum flew between euphoria and rage. Euphoria at seeing

great African art that expressed a millennia of complex culture. Rage

that they had been stolen and black peoples histories denied.

Time,
For those Black,
Began with their slavery,
So the history teacher said.

By Ommission Les Skeates

Amari's rage was hot, sticky and viscous like the magma in a

volcanoes heart. Since being in London a day had not gone by when

some ignoramus would whisper abuse as they passed, try to shoulder

him if bigger than him or when with others, over charge him in the

shops and bar him from the pubs. “No Dogs, Irish or Niggers”, the

unwelcoming sign on many a lodging or pub. The only place he had a

semblance of comfortability with anybody white was in the Beat clubs

listening to Big Bill Broonzie, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee sing

the Blues. True the whites there were as high as kites on his dope,

but at least they tried. His rage was in danger of dismissing even

these as not worth the candle and stereotyping a race. It wouldn't

take much for him to be suckered into a quagmire of hate. The dull

eyed and dull brained minders were.

The more Akin thought about the bronzes the less he thought of the

power and wealth in their meaning than their monetary value. His

rage subsided quickly. Now some had been returned to Lagos, and

well, he was Yoruba and the bronzes Edo.

Akinyemi Ola's hint of a possiblity with Jones was starting to expand.

Akin had reported to him on his return about Jones and the working

relationship Omotunde and Amari had developed with the Robinsons.

His political weakness was his lack of officers in the military on his

payroll and Jones could be a way in. Identify those to approach or

entrap. He was warming but there still remained a nag. Jones

association with the Robinsons could prove a problem when he gets

back to London, produce divided loyalties. But any serious thinking

about that could wait.

With the lead up to Independence, Ola needed military allies and he

didn't have any. The way the British were maneuvering the 1959

pre-independence election, the way they had set up a federal

structure that in reality made for tribal and religious differences to

dominate the election, was a recipe for chaos. Divide and rule - an

effective imperial concept would be carried over into neo-colonialism

- for the benefit of British economic interests but not unity of the

new Nigerian state. At some point down the line the military would

surely have to intervene. He needed them. A risk would have to be

taken.

Six years later, the military had intervened and Jones had proved

worthwhile. The intelligence he had passed on was a bit expensive but

always proved profitable to Akinyemi Ola. Jones' contacts in the

military gave Ola the in he needed and his return to London at the end

of the secondment was even more lucrative. Jones' association with

the Robinsons no problem. Odd the alliances between black mobsters

and white policemen.

The day after Rosemary Oritse was born her father was ushered into

Akinyemi Ola's office by a petit and pretty secretary. He was not

alone. Two of his 'soldiers' were sitting on a sofa at the far end of

the room, quietly talking together. Ola's desk was at least 7ft by 7ft

of fine grained mahogany. Umukoro Oritse was impressed by its size

and shine. Its massive weight and bearing doing what it was designed

to do. The walls were decorated with what looked like the Benin

Bronzes from Lagos' new National Museum. The had to copies

thought Oritise.

Ola's businesses had all prospered. There was so much cash coming

in from the prostitution and dope smuggling that his accountants had

insisted he start sinking the money into property and shares. He

know held a portfolio through a myriad of legitimate companies that

covered property in New York, London and Lagos. On paper he was

worth legal millions. Some of the money had been used to rebuild the

garage and expand his bus fleet. He still kept his office at the garage.

“My obligation to your Uncle will be spent once this meeting is over.

What can I do for you Umukoro Oritse?” Straight to the point, as

usual with Akinyemi Ola.

“I have come to see you about a political matter and ask for your

support”, Oritse responded, sounding more confident than he felt.

The birth of Rosemary the day before had made him happy and it

carried in his voice.

“Since the coups my political and business rivals have been denouncing

me to the new Military Government so as to take over my business. I

have heard you have influence with our new rulers and would like you

to intervene with them by supporting my character.”

A muffled laugh came from the far end of the room as he ended.

Oritse couldn't work out if it was the 'soldiers' cracking jokes

between themselves or in response to what he had said. It didn't

matter, Ola was talking.

“I don't know your character. We have only just met. But I do know

about your business. The exportation of rubber and the importation

of bicycle parts are your main area of income. A few small fields you

own produce some rubber, but not enough. So you act as Broker for

other rubber producers. You need more clients. The bank has just

written to you I believe and want a meeting about your overdraft.

The business is only just staying afloat and any trouble with our new

rulers will sink it.”

Umukoro Oritse was worried and it showed. How had he known

about the bank and their hard letters?

“Don't worry, ” Ola kept talking, quick to see the nervousness arise

in Oritse. “I always do background checks on people who want to

see me and redeem an obligation. Here is what I'll do. It takes three

parts. One; I will put trade your way for export that will clear your

debt to the bank within a month and make you wealthy. Two; you are

invited to a party at my house this evening where you will be able to

met the military governor for Warri. He can make judgement on your

character. Three; as what I am offering you so far for redemption of

my obligation to your uncle excedes that obligation substantially, you

will welcome my son Amari to your house tomorrow and accept his

offer of a log of wood.” Akinyemi Ola paused for effect.

Now Umukoro Oritse was shocked not just nervous. What Ola

wanted was for him to betroth his baby daughter, Rosemary, to 30

year old Amari. He had not been expecting this.

“You do not have to make a decision now. Come to the party tonight

where you can also meet Amari and let me have your answer then.”

By his tone, body language and call to his secretary, Akinyemi Ola

indicated the meeting was at an end.

Oritse rose from his seat at the desk saying, “Thank you for your

time today and the invitation to the party. I will of course attend and

give you my decision then. Good day.”

He was escorted from the office all the way to the street by Ola's

secretary. She kept up a constant flow of small talk that Umukoro

Oritse didn't hear. At the street she raised her voice loudly enough

to work its way into his head.

“The car will take you to your hotel and pick you up this evening to

take you to Mr Ola's home. Goodbye.” She said, turned and

sasheyed her way back to Ola's office.

A black 1962 Rover P5, a brute of a car and the official vehicle for

British Prime Ministers during the 60's, was waiting with the driver

holding the front passenger door open. Only Ola sat in the back.

Stepping into the car Oritse was welcomed by a deep red and

comfortable leather seat that twenty years later would be recycled as

chic designer seating for Thatchers loft dwelling generation. The dash

was veneered walnut, kept shiny by the diligence of the proud

Chauffer. Heavy as a tank and with the illusion of space inside it

conveying security. He didn't notice any of this when first seated in

the car, but by the time he reached the hotel Oritse's head was no

longer befuddled, he thanked the driver and complimented him on the

car.

At the hotel he started to give serious thought to Ola's offer. Some

Ujowbi still practised the ancient tribal tradition of betrothal, had

absorbed it into their Catholicism. Even new born daughters could be

betrothed so it was an acceptable offer in that sense. No traceable

joint ancestors existed between Ola and Oritse, no clan association

being different tribes. What bothered him was Amari's age. He would

meet Amari tonight find out what he was like and make up his mind

then. That's what he wanted to think, but in reality, and he knew it,

this was an offer he couldn't refuse. Umukoro Oritse had to find a

way to salve his conscience and convince Isabella. He could insist on

no wedding till Rosemary was twenty. 'That's it', he thought in a

eureka moment, 'now I can win Isabella to the necessity of the

arrangement'. Salving his conscience by coincidence.

Akinyemi Ola's home was a big sprawling mansion in Ikoyi, a rich and

luxoriant neighbourhood in Lagos. Home to rich Nigerians,

Europeans, diplomats and gangsters. A gated community heavily

guarded. The house was on a hill where a slight breeze eased the

stifling heat. Ten bedrooms at least and set in five acres. The

grounds were surrounded by a ten foot high wall and patrolled

discretely by armed men.

The party was for Akin's 33rd birthday and had drawn Lagos society.

Faces that Umukoro Oritse had only seen in the papers before today.

Politicians, businessmen, Military Officers and a lot of pretty little

starlets who all seemed to congregate around Akin. No Zoot suit

anymore. He'd grown tired of it as the fashion faded and Harlem's

slow decline in status as the worlds Black Cultural Mecca started.

Oritse met Amari who was at his charismatic best. Both he and

Akinyemi Ola readily agreed with the stipulation of no wedding before

Rosemary was twenty. The military governor of Warri had promised

his help against Oritse's enemies, at a cost and which Akinyemi Ola

had insisted would only be a fraction of his profits from trading with

him. Ola was right. The rages of Oritse's wife would be forgotten

within two years as the foundations were being dug for their new five

bedroom home. She would rage instead against the Biafran Air Force

mercenaries dropping bombs on Warri just as the foundations were

being dug.

He bought an automatic 1962 Rover P5 to park on his new drive way

and impress his business contacts. A purchase in honour to his

mentor.

Empathy is not a Colour. Chapter 5

2005-11-13T10:09:00.000Z

Still the same - the innocents being slaughtered in the Holy Land,

Blunt thought, while wrestling with a tie and checking the clock,

nervous about being late for his first day at training. Not being late

was all that was left of army discipline. Plenty of time. Another mug

of tea and a fag before he left.

He was told the next posting was to be Northern Ireland. No. That

was enough. Seven years a soldier and now 22, it was time to move

on and besides, the Royal Irish Rangers had taught him the wrongness

of the Orange. He would not let himself be party to suppressing the

civil rights of British citizens. Even if those citizens did not wish to be

British. With four years left on his contract he purchased his

discharge. £200.00 it cost, all saved while in Cyprus. Generous

Cyprus giving him time to try and repair a shattered heart and save.

Now what? Adjustment to a new life-style, one that you choose

yourself, proved difficult for him. His references had all been

informed by the army. In and out of jobs, mostly driving lorries.

You could do that then - walk out of one job one day and into

another the next. Never settled, never satisfied and still looking for

love.

Eight months after leaving the army he met up with Jim in Colchester,

an old army friend who had saved the £200.00 by 'working his passage'

- becoming so obnoxious and irresponsible that even the Army tired

of him and threw him out.

These were the acid years.

His first trip had been before Cyprus while still in the army. If they'd

only known. The fellow squaddie who had first turned him onto

marijuana had eventually been arrested by the Special Investigation

Branch for possession while stationed in Germany. He was Court

Martialled to 6 months in Colchester Military Correction Centre.

What chance acid?

It was purple haze. Never to be forgotten. Woolwich Common's

trees leafless branches became prismed peacock fans, foxes - people,

people - birds, cars - poisonous beetles that scared him for a

moment. Eat your heart out Disney, anthropomorphism has never

been so real or so bright or so technicolour. A millisecond of

movement contained an eon of light. Space time had shifted and

Infinity laid bare her secrets. He didn't remember them after he came

down. But the vivid, vibrant emotions, the vibe of belonging, the

communality with Gaia remained and drew him back.

Blunt had been spoilt. The purple haze was sold as mind enhancing,

time expanding and his first trip would be the best he ever had. The

worst would be in Colchester. Bad black acid from the Student

Anarchists. They had a philosophy of sorts. Play mind games. A guy

called Dido Plum, original name something else, common and well

used like Pat Williams or Paul Jones, told him a consignment of acid

would be arriving.

“Good stuff. Just what we need for the festival at the University. A

friend of mine is bringing them. She usually acts as Mother to those

on bad trips.”

Dido had been involved in the organising of the festival. Blunt

remembered it as crap. Held in the underground car-park. Badly lit.

Dingy. No colour. No purple haze. No relaxation. The bands weren't

playing together. Discordant noise and arguements came from an

invaded stage. What few people there were, trippingly mistook the

drums as a call to battle. It was a downer. Blunt left without seeing

the 'Mother'. Wandered the streets of Colchester through the night,

all orange neon and monochrome reflected in the pavement puddles.

Head down asking the pavement “what?” And “why?” Why had such

an abject festival been organised? What was the meaning to its

failure? Why were Anarchists into bad black acid? Why put

Strychnine in acid when it makes you shit? Why had he dropped black

acid?

There was no mind enhancing here. Just unstructured introspection

and trivial cul-de-sac diversions. No optimism that can help unravel

the mysteries he encountered each day, to understand them then

time an intervention for benefit. It was more the pessimism of

meaninglessness. Black acid as an existential metaphor for student

anarchy.

Blunt, Jim and Dido decided to go to Morocco for a smoke, do some

travelling at the fag-end of Hippiedom, most of which Blunt and Jim had

missed for Queen and Country. To follow the sun and head south out

of the dismal grey light, the daily drizzle and decaying post-war

optimism. He dumped his job and started hitching . To Marrakech

accompanied by Crosby, Stills and Nash. And Dylan. Chasing

authenticity.

Dido had applied for a driving licence in the name of Left Black-Boot

and had been duly issued with it, which he proudly showed anyone

who scoffed. Did the same for his passport, but this time in the

name of Dido Plum. Odd the ways of anarchists and bureaucrats.

He split at Calais saying three had less of a chance getting lifts. They

couldn't fault the logic, so they parted promising to meet at a

cafe/rooms in the pink city's medina.

Jim didn't make it. They lost each other in Paris and didn't meet up

again for six months. Jim had decided to 'borrow' a moped and ride it

to Marrakesh syphoning petrol along the way, but typical of Jim,

thought that a detour through Andorra from France to Spain might be

fun. Unfortunately border guards don't like fun. They impounded the

moped as unroad-worthy, fined him and sent him back to France on

foot. Disheartened and skint he headed north toward the dismal light

and drizzle.

Blunt's first lift on his own out of Paris was a disaster. A cruising

queer picked him up then dumped him in the forest at Fontainebleau

for refusing his advances. He wanted to kiss again - but not so

desperate that a man would do. Refinding what looked an empty road,

feeling soiled and scared he started walking, hitching again. At least

he was still heading south.

A 2CV was the first car that passed after two hours. What? It

stopped? Amazing. A couple from his generation offered a lift.

Maybe they felt empathy with his wounds and recent fear from inside

the car as they went past. No. So obviously very much in love and

desperate to share their joy. Even with a complete stranger. One

who would not kiss again for two more years. Still going south they

took him home and cooked savoury pancakes to share, then made a

bed for him to sleep. They talked long in franglais, the hand signs

cutting through air and misunderstanding. Giggling about their loves,

serious about their fears, energetic about their hopes. The following

morning the lovers took the beneficiary of their love for each other

to meet one of their mothers who laughed with affection at his

fractured french. Then onto ice-skating for an hour of which the less

remembered the better. By lunch-time they had taken him 80km down

the road toward Lyon, stopping at a Routier where their love for

each other convinced a truck driver to take the beneficiary of their

love for each other all the way to Lyon. He loved them then and has

cursed himself regularly ever since for losing their names. He still

says “Merci. Je t'aime” when he remembers them. He felt his

journey had finally begun.

Eight days to hitch from Calais to Marseilles looking for a ship to

Algiers or Tangier or Casablanca. The boat? A road dream. He had

no boat skills what-so-ever, so no boats. Britannia rules the waves?

Nope.

He spent the night at Marseilles train station trying to sleep. He was

woken at 4am being kicked by somebody with an idea to roll him,

whoever it was soon ran when they saw his speed to standing and the

knife. The love/hate relationship with France was tipping out of love.

At Perpignan he gave up hitching, knackered, and caught the train to

Algecires at fascist Spain's base. Some set jawed faces with overfeed

jowls and brainless eyes under funny tricorne hats, scrutinised his

passport and ticket on the train. Sneering they handed them back

then set their brainless eyes to intimidating another passenger.

Guardia Civil they certainly were not. If he had laughed at their funny

tricorne hats, he felt they wouldn't have been to pleased.

He had to change and wait for two hours at Bobadilla, a big rail

junction in a small town on the Andalucian plain west of Granada.

Fields of dry white soil rolled for miles, white dirt roads and

white-washed houses dazzled in the cold, bright and huge light. A

scene by Sergio Leone. Wine, sausage and bread from unfascist and

friendly smiling shop-owners, replenished his ideal of Spain.

The train from Bobadilla to Algecires was exhilarating. From the

plains to mountain gorges by slow stopping train. A slow descent

along galleries cut in sides of precipitous mountains with vertigo

inducing views across valleys and the cascading rivers below. Great

viaducts, testament to the building skills of the Spanish and English

engineers, crossed rivers running fast over and around boulders and

rocks. White water - a canoeist's adrenalin dream journey shooting

rapids to the sea.

A group of Muslim men on pilgrimage to Mecca, on the Hajj, had

joined the train at Ronda. Ronda, a name drenched in history and

blood. Another time and another land where three words collided.

Bible, Torah and Qur'an.

In 1492 Isabella's Spanish Inquisition was twelve years old and

headquartered in Ronda. It's reason for being launched was working,

forcing the Jews of Spain to convert to Catholicism, leave or be

branded heretic and roasted on the spit. A millenia of glorious

achievements in medicine, law and finance: Ended. And the Sephardi

were wandering. Catholic anti-semitism has a long history

Also, in 1492, Isabella and husband Ferdinand finally conquered

Granada and brought to a close 800 years of Moorish rule across

Spain. 800 years of glorious achievements in algebra, astronomy and

architecture, and thats just the 'A's: Ended.

The Moors staged their last uprising here, at Ronda, in 1570. Some

say the revolt was engineered by a successor to Isabella, Philip II, as

excuse to make it the turn of the remaining Moors to be forced to

convert, leave or be branded heretic and roasted on the spit. He was

also a bit skint and needed to make money after his cruel campaigns in

the Netherlands to punish heresy and the birth of the Protestant.

Pieter Bruegel saw it all. Catholic anti-anything has a long history.

A bit of a year for Spain 1492. The catholic fundamentalist Isabella,

inaugurator of the Spanish Inquisition and the torch, devourer of the

Moors and the Jews, confiscator of lands and wealth, funded

Columbus' historic journey from some of the proceeds. Pity poor

Pope Innocent VIII, the Blood-Soaked One and Isabella's mentor, he

died in 1492 and missed the riches Columbus secured. The new Pope,

Alexander VI - the most spectacularly corrupt of the corrupt

Borgia's - was as happy as Isabella in his stead. Lands to steal in the

Americas and millions of more souls to convert or be branded heretic

and roasted on the spit.

By sword and gun and crucifix, Christs gospel has been spread,
And two thousand cruel years have shown the way that Jesus led.
The heretics burned and tortured,
The butchering bloody crusaders,
The bombs and rockets sanctified that rained down death from
Heaven.
They followed Jesus, they knew the answer,
All non-believers must be believers,
or else be broken.

Stand up for Judas Leon Rosselson

The pilgrims invited him to join their prays. They certaining weren't

descended from the Moors of 1570, but were they scions of the

Moroccan mercenaries brought to Spain by Franco to kill a fledgling

democracy?

He declined the invitation citing agnosticism but talked with them after

their prayers about Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The morality of

forced conversion, expulsion and the spit. Secularism and inclusive or

exclusive institutions. Their English was excellent. He heard the

words Sunni and Shia for the first time. Discovered that Islam had

bizzare sects like Wahhabi who believe that every reform of Islam for

the past 1200 years is a heresy and should be repealed. Forget 1200

years. Christianity and Judaism have nutty sects like this, mostly in

America and Israel, who want to return to a mythical purity they think

they see in a literal interpretation of The Book. Their Book. Their

Word.

There was no resolution to their discussions when they parted at the

base of Spain with handshakes and respecting 'other'. No, their

parents weren't part of Franco's mercenaries, but Spanish who

supported the Republican Government during the civil war. They

converted from Catholicism to Islam. Odd the ways of religion and

history.

A packed ferry from Algecires to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the

Moroccan coast. Bit like Gibraltar to the British, but don't tell the

Spanish that. They tend to go off on one.

Every little piece of space seemed to have been filled by the time he

boarded. The car and lorry decks were full. Mostly lorries heading

for Tangiers or Casablanca or beyond, loaded with cars and

spare-parts, steel, fridges, TV's, everything. Everything but

oranges. The affluent hippies twee VW camper was there of course.

All the cars seemed to have boots, seats and roof-racks pilled high

with who knows what. They belonged to Moroccans heading home

from their jobs in Spain, France or Germany. Bringing back goodies

for the family. Or just smugglers. Most travellers were foot

passengers.

He finally found somewhere on deck by the bow to park himself. A

group of American back-packers were taking up a lot of space, but

with a little persuasion, reluctantly and suspiciously made some room

for him. He offered round sausage, bread and wine but they were

reluctant and suspicious again. Why are the Americans he had met on

the road so bloody paranoid?

Dido was in Ceuta. He bumped into him on his way to its border with

Morocco.

“Wow, far out, to much man. Where's Jim?” Asked Dido extending

his hand and sounding like a 'head'.

“Lost him in Paris but hope to see him in Marrakech. When did you

get here?” He said taking Dido's hand, pleased to see the first face

he recognised in eight days.

“Three days ago and each time I've tried to cross the border the

Spanish say no. No seems to be the universal language of border

guards.” moaned Dido.

“Probably the only word in their vocabulary.” He responded and they

both laughed.

He crossed the border at the first attempt. It was a wise move not

to be seen together by the border guards. The bus to Tetouan would

be another hour at least so he sat to wait in hope for Dido to cross.

The guards changed and Dido took his chance and made it.

The bus ride to Tetouan was an eye-opener for Blunt. Packed with

Moroccans and twenty minutes down the road it was stopped by the

Customs Police on a shake down. Clump. They came on board to

search for contraband. Are all Moroccans smugglers? On the bus it

seemed so as a hectic shovelling of feet joined the noise of shouting

and abuse. Goods were hooked with the skill of rugby forwards under

seats and along the length of the bus to the back, and back again in an

attempt to escape tax. Contraband with a mind of its own soon had

the Police pissed off. A full bus with 50 people on board was to much

to deal with and they soon gave up. Some goods were taken but

judging by the grins as they proceeded most got through. Scored.

After dodging the aggressive attempts by young men to be their

'Guides to Tetouan' at the bus station, Blunt and Dido found a hotel

in the Medina. Dilapidated but clean and cheap. After a shower, the

first for Blunt since being the beneficiary of a French couples love for

each other, they went to explore this city the inhabitants called 'The

White Pigeon'. The medina was small but exquisite. Its narrow lanes,

lined with stalls was just big enough for two people to pass. Blunt was

to find out that in any Moroccan medina you will never find just two

people passing when six will do. A mad jostle full of noise. The

intimacy a stark and welcome change from the chill distance of the

English in an English city. It seemed impossible that anybody could see

the stalls and their wares on sale, let alone haggle to buy. Tetouan's

architecture had quite rightly been praised, it is stunning but the

effect of the gray-white monotone of the buildings subdued Blunt's

curiosity to explore the steep stepped residential side-lanes.

Sweet mint tea at a street side cafe was a relief after two hours

exploring and bouncing off the knots of people. It gave time to read

and reflect on the history of this pretty city. Founded in the 14th

Century then destroyed by Castilians chasing pirates, but refounded

by the Moors who escaped from Ferdinand's and Isabella's blood

soaked Spain in 1492. Some of the Spanish Jews, the Seraphim fled

their persecution and made it here. Ronda and Granada's loss was to

be Tetouan's gain. The religious tolerence that was the hallmark of

Moorish Spain was transplanted to this old pirates lair and a city of

learning grew. Two-hundred years of Morocco's 'Golden Age'

followed.

From 1912 to 1956 Tetouan was the capital of the Spanish

Protectorate of Morocco. It wasn't a quiet occupation. The Rif Wars

from 1919 - 1926 were barbaric. Savage massacres led by Franco

subdued the Berbers in the end. Franco taking a dozen Berber heads

on pikes back to Spain. His religion and his politics both medieval.

Ten years later he took the knowledge of suppression he had learnt in

Tetouan, along with his Moroccan Mercenaries, and applied them to

killing the Spanish democrats.

They only stayed the one night in Tetouan. The following morning

they started to hitch from the city's outskirts. Immediately got a lift.

A clapped out Ford with four passengers, roof rack piled and tied,

boot open and full, had stopped. The inhabitants insisted that Blunt

and Dido get in. Somehow their back packs and sleeping bags were

forced into the boot and they were crammed in the back seats. The

car and people were going to Marrakech. Sort of.

The detour was via Khatama and the Low Atlas. The driver of the car,

a slim elegant man in his early forties wearing a mud coloured jalaba

kept up a constant stream of French accented English. Repeatedly

turning his head to talk to Dido and Blunt then having to swerve as his

passengers pointed and roared, “Danger ahead". Roads more black

hole than black top and erratic drivers everyone. Scarry but

everybody was smiling as the joint circulated.

The driver was a dope farmer. Took them to his farm for the night

and produced some Khatama treble zero for an after dinner smoke.

Food, chat and smoke for the men while the boys wrapped weights of

dope in sellotape ready for export. The women and girls were

elsewhere but that hadn't registered with Blunt, he was so smashed

so quickly that he flaked out. Oblivious.

They left the farm the next morning heading for Fez and onward to

Marrakech. The farmer had an air of disappointment about him as

Dido and Blunt left, but neither had enough money to buy weights of

dope nor the inclination to be dealers. They started hitching again and

walked for miles without a lift. It didn't matter though, the beautiful

mountain scapes with the fields across valleys covered in swaying

Cannabis Sativa, kept them high. The breakfast joint helped.

One lift and they made Fez late in the evening with only time to find a

bed and crash. Their tiredness still didn't stop them being hassled by

English and American travellers for dope when it was discovered they

had spent a night in Khatama. It seemed that everybody believed they

were dealers not travellers. They had already heard rumours of Fez

being full of narks and that Moroccan gaols were where people rotted

and starved. Blunt and Dido both thought 'fuck this', and caught the

early morning bus to Marrakech. Blunt slept most of the way. He had

over-done the treble zero the last few days. When he woke they

were on the outskirts of Marrakech with Dido enthusing about the

beauty of Morocco that Blunt had missed.

They found their lodgings with the help of a young boy touting for

work as a guide at the bus station. Farouk, no more than 12, cocky

with his excellent English. Blunt was always amazed at other peoples

ability to be multi-lingual. He could never keep a word in his head for

long unless English, never mind the syntax, cadence and

colloquialisms of other languages. 8% was the highest mark he ever

achieved in French tests at school. The school kicked him out of

German lessons. And then there's Farouk. Fluent in English, French

and German, and with his mothers tongue, Arabic to rap with in the

union of 12 year old guides. All of it picked up off the tourist and the

street. No formal education but a family's necessities the discipline.

The lodgings were in the middle of the medina, an address given by an

acquiantance in Colchester, and without Farouk they would have been

lost. But they had to pay him off. Both Blunt and Dido were planning

to explore the medina on their own. Deliberately get lost and find

their way around by mistake. They had no itinerary, except some

unthought through hippie dream, a quest for some cannabis Nirvana

where different, more humane rules applied, or chasing the romance

in the way letters speak “Marrakech” or “Samarkand” or “Zanzibar”

or “Hindu Kush".

The lodgings were 20p a night and it showed. Five windowless brick

sheds on the flat roof of a cafe. Each for four at a pinch. A concrete

roof/floor and no beds. Sleeping bags would have to do for concrete.

The toilet and wash room were basic and functioned.

For Blunt the first full day in Marrakech was spent in an opium haze.

He'd got ill and thought it was from drinking contaminated water. What

a pratt. An ex-medic not thinking of basic health care! But in reality it

was the first serious relapse of his multiple sclerosis making itself

known. Though it would be another thirty years before he realised

what it was. Other travellers staying at the cafe offered him a cure.

Opium Tea. It stopped the shits but he only remembered a little of

the first day. Dido looking after him as they got lost a few times.

They found Jemaa El-Fna, not hard to miss. The city square where he

managed to eat some soup between the waves of opium induced

euphoria and what he thought was salmonella nausea.

The Jemaa El-Fna became the stop for late lunch. 10p for a bowl of

soup and wedge of fresh absorbant bread. A pouch of Kiff - 20p. It

was idyll. The square was always full of people in knots watching

jugglers or listening to musicians and storytellers, dodging fake

healers and Sufi beggars - the Fakirs. A stage, raucous, ribald and

bright, with the medieval Pink City and white Haut Atlas as backdrop.

Jerusalem and Marrakech, Blunt was enthralled by these cities and

their medinas. For him it was the people that made them luster,

shimmer dramatic, and each and every one without a tinge of Sinbad

or Ali Baba. The Western view of the 'Orient' as exotic and

dangerous, as 'other' immersed in bad and sin, was myth

masquerading as ideology which on contact lifts and dissolves as mist.

All the external difference be it skin, dress, culture or language

cannot disguise or suppress the universal human condition. That

mundane need to work, to eat, to grow, to know and the

extraordinary emotions we share and bring to bear in attempting the

mundane. It would be another twenty years before Blunt encountered

Orientalism and the insightful clarity of Edward Said. As he read he

was reminded of things he never knew but had seen.

Blunt's money didn't last long. He didn't have much to start with and

had tried to be frugal, but he still had to leave the magic after two

weeks. The only job available for a European was dealing and that was

no job at all. By far to treacherous for Blunt. He and Dido split at

Casablanca bus station. It was thirty years since Ingrid Bergman

walked into Rick's and Sam played it again for Ilsa. Romance no longer

draped the foggy city. Casablanca was drab and seedy within its

poverty. It was only a film after all.

Dido had a enough money to last another month having done an

insurance scam. Winning reparations from the 'man'. Peanuts really.

But it gave him more time. Blunt though caught the bus to Ceuta,

heading north to the drizzle and the dismal light determined to earn

enough to journey again.

Six months after leaving Marrakech and arriving back in the land of

dismal light and drizzle, Blunt had made enough money, or what he

thought of as enough money from driving a truck for a cowboy firm,

to start a new journey. This time though he bought some transport.

A 1956 Bedford Ambulance that had been converted with bunk beds,

cooker, storage came up as 'Lot 40' at a car auction. £55 and Blunt

had it. The travelling by foot had been fun, but getting caught outside

at night in the wind and the rain had a way of leaving one feeling itchy

and unwashed. Looking dangerous. Liftless.

He met up wth Jim in Colchester again. Jim was up for travelling

again. They had a good laugh over their respectivce experiencies the

last time they left. No itinery again. Just a vague idea that they would

work their way around Europe for a while. Be anywhere but England.

They spent a few days sorting out the ambulance, drinking, sharing

smokes and acid with old friends.

Liz and Pippa, apprentice Earth Mothers to giggley and girlie to sustain

the role, cadged lifts to the south of France. Pretty women always

won Blunt and Jim. They wanted to join some of the student

anarchists who had left Colchester a few months before. Liz had been

chasing a German to love and heard he was with them. Pippa wasn't

sure why she came, but spoke dreamily of metaphysical poetry, myth

and Cyprus.

The journey from Calais to Montpelier across the Massif, top speed

35mph was uneventful except for the scenery and Jimi Hendrix. They

played All Along the Watchtower again and again and again. Driving

the girls wild. Hendrix had made the Dylan song his. The definitive

version adopted by Dylan.

Jim's trick the last time he was in France proved useful. They

syphoned their way south with fuel from French cars at night.

With money from parents, or saved from paying no rent while

squatting and working, the anarchists had bought an old olive grove in

the hills behind Montpelier. The olive trees had been killed years

earlier by a late frost never experienced before or since. It had a

clear, cold brook from a spring which cascaded through rocks into a

pool. An ancient spring that had only ever stopped once, frozen the

night of the Big Frost. The land was cheap, only thought of as dead

olive grove.

Blunt would see Claude Berri's Jean De Florette and Manon Des

Sources fifteen years later and remember the pool made by cold,

clear spring water. Wondered if the anarchists had built their houses,

were still there, not the victims of some malicious, devious thief of

their land who looked like Daniel Auteuil or Yves Montand. And in

Part 2, getting peasant justice in the quise of Emmanuelle Beart.

Revolutionary Marianne - symbol of France.

A week after reaching the olive grove Blunt and Jim decided to go to

Germany and look for some work. Money was running short. There

were no jobs around the hills north of Montpelier except grape

picking and the season was some months away. Liz had found her

man and decided to stay. Pippa still spoke dreamily of Cyprus, not

disabused by Blunt's tales of soldiers and murderous disputes between

Greeks and Turks. She came with Blunt and Jim until a fork in the

road said choose, 'Geneva or Strasbourg?' With a grin and a flirt

she started hitching, heading Geneva and all points to Aphroditi, her

myths and dreams still intact.

At Strasbourg, Blunt and Jim were stopped by the German Border

Guards, held for hours as the ambulance was searched and the both

of them stripped. It must have been the dress, long hair and beards

that made the guards suspicious. Nothing was found but the

demeanour of the guards didn't change. They were still surly and

disrespectful but they let them through, not having found the seven

acid tabs.

Stuttgart was where they were heading, looking for work. They

found something within twenty-four hours. Kuchen helfers on an

American Missile Base just outside the city. Cleaning pots and pans in

a military mess hall and, unlike doing the job as punishment when in the

British Army, getting paid enough to save another stake. Good fun

while it lasted.

The Americans they met were absolutely nuts, some of their antics

frightening.

All ranks ate in the same canteen unlike the British Army's strictly

enforced class divisions of Canteen, Sergeants Mess, Officers Mess.

American Officers queued behind Sergeants behind Pfc's. But in the

politic of things, all Ranks in the US forces still know their place.

Coffee was brewed in a 50 Gallon industrial quality vat that everybody

drank from.

“It's true.” Jim said the first time he saw it, “Every American drinks

coffee.”

“Ye. Where's the tea.” Was Blunt's reply, eager eyes searching.

“They threw it into Boston harbour.” Jim shot back.

They both curled up and roared. Upset the Sergeant Chef until it was

repeated to him, once they had stopped their corpsing. He could see

there was something funny there but couldn't quite grasp it. The first

English he had met, so put it down to an English thing and pointed out

the tea bags. PX ersatz 'English'.

Both Blunt and Jim stayed away from the coffee vat. The story they

heard that night ensured it.

One morning a disgruntled, irresponsible and nihilistic Draftee had

spiked the coffee vat with LSD. The only people not tripping were

those on duty waiting to be relieved. They had to do another 24hr

duty straight off and were lucky not to be tripping themselves with

fingers on buttons. The first of their relief had left the canteen with

coffee for them as he had been doing all week, started hallucinating

before he got there and dropped the coffees, seeing in the cups an

active volcanoe's smoking caldera drawing him into a conflageration.

His mind cracked, dissolved and his duty vaporised. In the canteen

chaos reigned amongst the screech, the laugh, the cry, and the dumb

in their fear and their dread. A few, experienced in the use of acid

thought it a flashback at first, but then understood what was

happening to them, went with it and tried to enjoy or organise order

out of chaos. Most though were lost. Some would never recover.

It was supposed to be a rule, probably the only rule in the acid

community, that everybody had to know that they were, on their

own volition, dropping acid. Not to let people know was to act like

the CIA.

The perpetrator was back in America within 18hrs and in the hands of

the said same CIA. Claiming,

“I was only doing what you had done with LSD. Giving it to

unsuspecting Americans through the fifties and sixties. Experimenting

and testing subjects to destruction.”

They buried him somewhere, in a jail or a sod.

Blunt had thought the Orangeman who burnt down the church in

Cyprus was fucking nuts, but this was a different league again. They

had better be careful with their LSD. It is never the time for a hard

rain. Odd the ways of acid, the CIA and coffee.

The soldiers barrack rooms were segregated. Black people here.

White people there. A microcosm from stateside. A fractious and at

times murderous atmosphere as the ghosts of slavery still worked

their way through the American psych. He and Jim had been invited

back to one of the black GI's barrack rooms by Moses for a smoke of

some real sweet weed.

“Red dirt marijuana, ” He had called it.

“And other tastes.” Blurted Blunt, “That's only in a book by Terry

Southern, the smoke of ones dreams. You mean it exists? The stuff

that knocks cows out, exists?”

“Yep.”

“Wow. Far out. Too much, man.” Jim was grinning, high on

anticipation and sounding hippiefied like Dido. A year out the army

and having the language already.

Moses was short, wiry and fast as a mongoose but relaxed about

race, confident in his skin. He smiled a lot, even when elbow deep in

grease. He could be sharp though, sharp as a blade if felt

disrespected. Some of his barrack room mates were very hostile to

white people being in their sanctuary. The only place they could be

without having to think of their colour first, put on their 'face' to

meet the Man. The one thing that let Blunt and Jim stay and finish

the joint was that they were English. A curiosity not met before.

To be examined and the English be judged on their racism, by the

attitude and the words of just two. They would fail it of course.

Some will always set their standards to high for dialogue, safer in the

castle of their skin. White people have been doing this a long time,

some are practised in it to the point of 'common sense' and deny any

worth just because of skin. Blunt first started to put together an idea

here. Put into words something he had half understood when

embarrassed by the casual racism of Guards Officers in Kenya.

'It was a waste of time criticising someone for the colour of their

skin. Something people can't change. If your going to criticise

anybody then do it on the basis of their ideas, beliefs, attitude and

actions. Somethings people can change.'

He was trying to paraphrase what had already been said.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation

where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but the

content of their character.”

It would be a while before Blunt realised he had been paraphrasing

Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream.” Jim mentioned it a few

months later, but by then what he had thought an original insight had

become a permanent way of seeing.

He had only ever caught snippets of 'I Have a Dream' on the news,

always to busy running out of the house to be with friends not family.

He must have heard it before, must have but lost it, forgot it in the

fuzz of adolescence or later in the haze of smoke and acid. The idea

but not the context buried deep and called up now. 'No matter', he

thought. 'If you think you've come to something important on your

own, not with the help or intervention of others, it will have a

lasting effect irrespective of how long it takes to be disabused of your

own originality.'

The canteen work was wet, greasy and boring but the camps

entertainment wasn't to bad. Not counting the coffee/acid, the camp

had a bar, a sports field and a twice weekly cinema showing new

releases from the States. The screenings were always full.

Blunt and Jim saw Executive Action here, here of all places. This was

not the film of the Warren Commission's report on Kennedy's

assassination but Mark Lane's riposte, Rush to Judgement. The film

pointed out the glaring inconsistancies and contradictions in the

Warren report; no record or note of Oswald's interrogation by the

Dallas police; the impossibility of 3 shots being fired in the time

frame by one man with the weapon found; films that indicate Kennedy

was hit from different directions. An engrossing conspiracy thriller

where Oswald's the patsy and Americas military/industrial complex the

conspiritors.

The scriptwriter was a member of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton

Trumbo, a victim of McCarthy's witch hunt, but who refused to be a

victim despite a year in jail and blacklisting. He kept writing, speaking

to truth but under pseudonymes till fighting his way back. Spartacus,

Exodus and Papillon are on his scriptwriting CV. Blunt saw the power

of Executive Action in the ordinariness, the everyday routine and

banality of the conspiritors. 'Just like anyone, really,' he had thought.

Burt Lancaster led as the practical, ordinary businessman. A planner,

a mover. Like the Watergate conspiritors (working its way out at

the time of the films release), a clean cut, ordinary type.

The arguement used by Lancaster and Robert Ryan (whose last film

this was to be) to win potential conspiritors amongst the political

establishment, was that the Kennedy clan would become a dynasty.

The three brothers would each become President, rule until 1984. A

bit of a stretch to the credulity of conspiracy, Blunt thought, trying

with difficulty to be clinical while watching.

Some of the audience covered their eyes crying, “NOT AGAIN, ”

“NOT AGAIN, ” as Kennedy's assassination was replayed. America's

collective tears from that day in Dallas, still being shed and the pain

still raw ten years on. As the credits rolled the soldiers clapped,

whistled and left nodding, mumbling. “It could be true. It could be

true. Truer than the lone, mad gunman idea.”

That was a different time, things have changed Blunt thought as he

got his fare from his pocket to pay the bus driver to go and learn how

to drive a bus. Then America and the world was a more plural place.

Americas soldiers and her people were able to see or hear or read a

different point of view. Now since the attack on the World Trade

Centre - “Your with us or against us” - plurality and a different

point of view have been made treason.

Watching the street go by through the window of the bus on his way

to training, Blunt's remembering hooked a tangent. Went off

searching a memory about Mark Lane's subsequent investigations into

the assassination of JFK. Only a few years ago he had picked up a

remaindered copy from a big pile of 'Two Men in Dallas'. In the book

Lane places George Bush Sr in Dallas on that conspiracy hatching day.

Papa Bush has always denied it. But what is not in doubt according to

Lane, is that Papa Bush, a rich oilman and Republican hawk, had links

to, and could have been an operative in the CIA at the time.

President Ford, the beneficiary of Nixons disgrace, appointed Papa

Bush Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976. Odd the

ways of dynasties, witchunts and Hollywood.

The fun Blunt and Jim were having on the missile base was about to be

cut very short. They went to a local German bar for a drink and to

see if they could score some dope. Chuck had joined them as guide

and contact. From South Dakota, he was a barrell-chested man with

the biggest biceps and shoulders either had seen on someone so

short. 5ft 7in with the chest of Bonanza's Little Hoss and a

lumberjack down to his shirt. He worked the Blacks Hills National

Forest before his draft.

Chuck had noticed a well known dealer at the bar and assumed he had

left some dope in his car. They went to have a look. Pay dirt. 6

ounces of Khatama treble zero. They got away with it or so they

thought.

The next day Blunt and Jim got a lift by jeep to the main American

base in Stuttgart. A massive facility home to 20, 000 troops and

headquarters of their south German command. They looked a bit out

of place. Hair down their backs and beards down their chests

attracted a bit of attention. The American Military Police stopped

them on the same premise as the German border police at

Strassbourg. They looked different. Other. Put guns to their heads

and searched them. Jim like the occassionally pratt he could be had

1/2 ounce in his pocket. That was it.

Some redneck Sergeant got a bit upset and exposed his post-Vietnam

paranoia,

“Even the Brits are selling us out now.”

He tried to rough them up while they were still cuffed, but an officer

intervened and dismissed him.

Word got back to Chuck sharpish, but not sharpish enough. He was

caught at the missile base trying to find and save the rest of the stash

in the ambulance.

The American Military Police didn't keep Blunt and Jim long. They had

to hand them over to the Germans, their jurisdiction not stretching

to British nationals, though they would have liked to have buried them

for a few years.

A period of interrogation and interpretation followed. What could

they do but tell the truth and they both did separately. It didn't stop

them being held on remand for four months while the Police tried to

establish a case against them of drug smuggling.

The first two weeks were spent in Stammheim prison in Stuttgart.

Blunt was placed in a cell with an Italian armed bank robber, a

German bag snatcher, a Yugoslav without papers, and a Turk who

didn't know why he was in prison. All awaiting trial. The Italian had

some English and helped in the introductions. His military training

kicked-in and barrack room discipline became the order of the day.

The only way to rub along in a confined, highly restricted environment

with people he didn't, and would never really get to know.

Mostly alone in his language he started writing, writing poetry,

searching for meaning. He discovered here, in this prison and wanting

to write, that writing is a process of learning. He revisited those

poems ten years later and binned them, considered them juvenilia,

but they had served a purpose at the time. They maintained his

knowledge of self. Kept his dignity intact against the de-personalised

prison's attempts to make him other.

Stammheim was West Germany's highest security gaol. Blunt was told

on his second day in prison that on the top floor, in hyper-security,

were the Baader/Meinhoff gang, aka The Red Army Faction. One of

Europe's most notorious urban terrorists.

He had read the stories, seen the aftermath of their actions on the

TV news and toyed with the idea that they were the way forward.

Could make the times change. The RAF clones; Italy's Red Brigades,

America's Symbionese Liberation Army and Britain's deformed clone,

the Angry Brigade were creating havoc, weakening the fabric of their

societies. Or so it seemed to the journalists sensationalised by the

spectaculars.

The reports didn't correspond to reality as Blunt knew it. People still

went to work, carried on with their daily lives. The only ones

directly affected were those unluckily at the scene of a spectacular or

those whose family were targetted and killed or kidnapped. The rest,

the mass were one step removed and just saw it on the TV news,

disgusted at the carnage. It wouldn't stop them going out to work the

next day.

The RAF and their ilk may sloganise against the state in the

romanticised language of anarcho-syndicalism, but they still committed

murder. Despite this they became a sort of attractive alternative for

some in the middle-classes of the baby-booming generation,

especially those alienated from their country's history and who could

see the drab monochrome, the stultifying nature of “real existing

socialism” in the East and didn't want, had see the daily murder

committed in Vietnam by the West, and didn't want. A bi-polar world

with neither pole humane used as lame excuse for inhumane acts in

the name of humanity.

Secular fundamentalists, useless and fucking nuts he would tell people

later in his life. The only things they succeeded in doing were to scare

away the very people they professed to represent from involvement in

political activity; criminalise legitimate dissent and demonstration in

the eyes of those they professed to represent; the shit from their

fan tarring all progressives and in the secret necessity of their

organisation, took life and death decisions that excluded the people

they professed to represent from any involvement in the decisions.

Anti-democratic. Elitist. Reactionary not revolutionary.

The RAF and their actions strengthened the secret apparatus of the

State, introduced new laws undermining the assumption of innocence,

the rights of lawyers, and Turkish Gastarbeiters are still kicked to

death on German streets.

Blunt would only think like that later. His romanticism nearly got the

better of him at the time. He wanted to enjoy the authenticity of the

'danger' tag that could be gleaned from such close association with

notoriety, despite not actually meeting them. As if being in gaol for

possession wasn't an authentic enough 'danger' tag.

From his cell he could see over the perimeter wall the brand new

court house being constructed for the Baader/Meinhoff trial. The only

way into the dock of the court was via a tunnel from the prison. The

dock itself was totally enclosed in bullet-proof glass. Seperated from

the judge and courtroom. So successful had the exaggeration of the

threat from the RAF been, that the establishment were able to build

a state of the art court house capable of exhibiting prisoners as a

different species in a cage.

For two weeks Blunt remained in his cell, sharing a communual toilet

and washing facilities. The most difficult thing to come to terms with

was the stench when anybody crapped. He didn't think it would be

that hard to crap in public, in full view of his cell mates. But it was.

'Anally retentive' took on a whole different meaning for him.

The first time Blunt met up with Jim again was in a holding cell waiting

for transport to another prison. They had a good laugh, pleased to

see each other. It helped each of them in dealing with the worry of

their situation.

Half a dozen prisoners were waiting. Prisoners know how to wait. A

black American was amongst them and wanting to talk, scrounge a

smoke. Barry, a GI, had been done for raping an 18 year-old German

girl he met in a students bar. A young woman trying to distance

herself from her parents Nazi history and he rapes her. Throws her

back into the comfort of her parents and confirms their stereotype of

non-Aryans. He was being transferred to Heilbron to serve the

remainder of his time. Waiting for another 6 years. He didn't question

the 8 year sentence, stuck his hands up and said “Guilty". He had done

it and couldn't explain why. He said once that he was getting a bit of

his own back for all the slights he had had from white women. He didn't

believe that. Not one moment did he believe that, but he wanted to be

accepted in the macho ethos of the men he was sharing a cell and

waiting with.

The waiting time in the holding cell left a lot of space for talking. It

got around to music after the reasons for incarceration, the curses

against bad luck and corrupt police were exhausted.

Barry was a real conspiracy theorist.

“Jimi Hendrix didn't overdose deliberately, no way man. He was

killed because he was a successful black man, like Malcolm X and

Martin Luther King. Janice Joplin the same.”

“Hang on man.” Jim jumped in to explain the obvious. “Janice Joplin

was white.”

“Yeh man. But she said she would fuck with anybody. Even black men.

They killed her for that. Funny how both her and Hendrix overdosed.

Heh man?”

Jim came in with another conspiracy theory of the establishment

against their generations music,

“Dylan's motorbike crash wasn't an accident. That queer Nazi at the

head of the FBI, what's his name? J. Edgar Hoover. He tried to have

him killed for his lyrics. Dylans music changed after that. The songs

of protest and criticism started getting rarer”

“Yeh man.” Barry's conspiracy theories were being listened to at last

and he started riffing on the theme.

“I heard Hendrix play 'Star Spankled Banner' at Woodstock man.

One of the few who stayed to the end. His sustain and feedback were

the aural equivalent of the bombs dropping on Vietnam. That's why he

was killed man. He used the national anthem to condemn the war in

Vietnam. Yeh man, that's why they killed him.” His voice trailing off

into sadness, the defeatism at the root of conspiracy theory near

overwhelming him.

Blunt said very quietly, “Kennedy's assassination was enough

conspiracy for me.”

Barry might be playing a riff, but it was a well practised riff. He had

done 2 years of the 8 year sentence, the first in solitary with only his

thoughts. He explained his predicament to himself, his solitary time,

by the white mans conspiracy against the black man. History was full

of it, from the slave trade to today. The lynchings in the Amerikan

south and the dime-stores? - they're selling postcards of the hanging.

White peoples shame, their loss of dignity and respect becomes a

cultural artifact to be passed through the mail to friends, extolling

their satanic virtues. It takes conspiracy to lynch and conspiracy to

profit from. And the white man becomes the Devil.

In the depths of his solitary, Barry revisited many memories, chewed

over the old, cold, forgotten events and words of his life. Forgotten

by most, including himself till solitary. Barry came from Watts. In

1965 his father had physically stopped him leaving the home and joining

the 'uprising' as Barry thought it then. His father had insisted it be

named 'riot'. His father probably committed his greatest act of love

for his son, saved his life. Imprisoning him at home for 2 long weeks

keeping him off Bone Street and away from his 'friends'. The

majority who died during the Watts Riots were young black men.

Barry's frustration and anger at not “getting back at the Man”, had

shut his ears against what his father said at the time. He had said a

lot in the two weeks that saved his son's life.

It took two months, a chunk of time out of a solitary year, to

remember it, get past the caracature of the school janitor, always

chasing words in that bookshop-cum-coffeeshop on Bones till it was

burnt down in the riot. The white owned general store next door was

the target of the mob, but the fire spread to the black owned

bookshop. The good get razed along with the perceived bad in riots.

He had ranted at him, screamed, “Coward.” Said, “Your scared of

the Man. Just a scared janitor buried in books, dreaming, thinking

your as smart as the teachers.” Expressing the gross

anti-intellectualism of the street.

His father had shot back, “Better than being buried on Bones.”

He told him about stuff from his time when a boy in the twenties and

thirties and the war.

“The years were hard and rich Americans invented theories to blame

the poor, the black, the disabled and the Jew for the Depression.

Harry Haiselden, Leon Whitney and Madison Grant were the high

priests of American eugenics. Adored by the KKK. So successful had

their propagandising and campaigning been that states were adopting

eugenics legislation and forcibly sterilising those they thought

defective. The forced sterilisation of black men and women was even

being done up to a few years ago. Their rich supporters, the

financiers of their views were labelling the poor, the black, the

disbled and the the Jew as, “bacteria”, “vermin”, “mongrels” and

“subhuman". So reknowned had Grant and Whitney become they even

received fan mail from Hitler. The whole of his Mein Kampf is based

on their inhumane theories and he thanked them for it. And it led to

factories with conveyor belts for killing in the concentration camps.

“I met white men in the war in Europe who could see that the

politicians had set up poor white and jewish people the same way black

people have been.

“The Nazis were defeated but it hasn't stopped some of the rich still

thinking like it. Those involved in the riot confirm their racist ideas

to others. Spread their filth. And if more black men are killed,

buried on Bones, they will think 'so much the better'. The riot

doesn't affect the rich, they're protected by the distance money can

buy from here. All it does is destroy our own neighbourhood and

young black men.”

All the years of reading, the acquiring of words and meaning were

dragged up to fuel the struggle to try and save his sons life. Convince

him of the futility of riot. That you lose more than you gain. That

The Man can live with riots. Explosions of rage won't threaten him

nor will the self-destruction of poor peoples neighbourhoods weaken

him.

Barry spat at his father, “Fuck them. I don't care what they think.

Why should I. They fucking hate me anyway. I'd rather be dead out

there having had a go than stuck in here with a coward.”

“Don't you think I want to be out their. Taking my revenge. This

isn't about macho posturing. Our dignity as a race is at stake here. I

will not allow you to become what the racemongers and hate

merchants think we are. You will not become the black shadow to

their mirror image.”

His father turned and left his room locking the door behind him, the

window had been grilled over a few years before to deal with a spate

of house robberies, leaving Barry trapped with his anger and Oedipal

hate.

He hadn't realised till in solitary that his father was a working class

intellectual stymied by poverty, race and time. He couldn't thank him

now. He had died soon after the riots, killed in a drive-by shooting.

Barry was sad he was pleased his father wasn't around to hear his son

was a rapist, had become what he had tried to stop him becoming.

He had another six years of waiting before he could start redeeming

himself to the world.

The transport to the new prison was a death trap. Two rows of six

cells with a central aisle. Each prisoner was locked in a seperate cell

in the truck. A 2' 6” x 2' 6” x 6' upright tube with a folding seat and a

darkened and barred window 6” x 6". In the solid door a small

peephole. No seat belt. The two hour drive to Heilbron was where

Blunt developed his claustrophobia.

Heilbronn was an old prison built of granite blocks and seemed to be

full of non-germans. Blunt and Jim were seperated again but this time

it only lasted a week. They were put into a four man cell sharing with

a white american called Bob and an East German escapee picked up

for shop lifting.

The cell was paradise compared to Stammheim. It had an enclosed

bog.

After a few weeks, Barry heard a rumour about Bob and passed it on

when they were queuing at the library . The word going around was

that he was a stoolie, was put into the cell to gain information or

make it up to help with his forthcoming trial. He was facing 2 years

for fraud with a pregnant wife on the outside. Blunt and Jim's story

was true so they couldn't change it. A fews weeks later Blunt lost it

with Bob the Stoolie and hooked him. Knocked him flat but before he

could inflict real damage Jim intervened. Bob the Stoolie was moved

from the cell within the hour. The prison authorities didn't want a

damaged asset.

There was a wide selection of books in English in the library,

reflecting the dominant langauge of the gaol. The Librarian was in for

life for murdering his wife. Blunt felt funny asking for books from the

first murderer he had met, but asked all the same.

The first book he took out was 'Nausea' by Jean-Paul Sartre, the

intellectual guru of the year of '68 in France. Blunt was half way

through the book and comparing it's brooding alienation with life in

gaol when the book gave up. Some enterprising lag had cut a half inch

deep box out of the centre of the book to use it as a hide for passing

contraband. In his prison naivette Blunt hadn't thought of checking.

Whether the con who did it knew or not, he had made Sartre's

existential angst concrete. Blunt hasn't finished the book to this day

and probably won't. Nausea's time for reading was then not now.

The time in Heilbronn went slow. Blunt and Jim, though on remand

took some work making chairs in the prison factory. A contractor

had done a deal with the authorities to use the prisoners to finish

cheap metal tubed chairs by weaving plastic tape around the metal for

the seats and backs. Boring repetitive work that ripped the hands.

They were paid a pittance and the contractors made a fortune, but it

allowed them a few luxuries from the prison shop like tea to replace

the gaol's ersatz coffee.

After four months in gaol they finally had their day in court. The

police had spent the entire time trying to make a case against them of

smuggling, even putting a nark in their cell. And who should be at the

court on that day, sitting with the prosecution - none other than

Bob the Stoolie. There to lie probably. The big suprise in the court

though was Blunt's parents. His mother had received a letter in

German with Blunts name in it and every other word said 'Die' -

German for 'the'. She thought he was dead until it was translated.

His lawyer asked him who they were and when Blunt told him, “My

parents”, he was on his feet addressing the Judges. No juries in

Germany but a panel of Judges. The Judges were well impressed that

parents had come from Britain and immediately suspended the trial

and called a meeting with prosecution and defence in their chambers.

They sat talking with Blunts parents for an hour while the prosecution

tried to convince the Judges that their case and their witness were

true. The parents had come over the week before for the trial and

were staying at Blunt's sister's in Hannover - she'd married a

squaddie who was stationed in Germany.

Bob the Stoolie stood on his own, worried and glaring.

When the Judges returned they handed down a 3 year probation and

expulsion from Germany. Their defence had convinced the Judges that

their statements when originally arrested were true, that they stole

the 6 ounces from a dealer. The clinching arguement came when he

forced the prosecution to produce the paper work of the strip search

at the border which they were holding back. Odd the ways of parents

and German bureaucratic efficiency.

Blunt and Jim were returned to the prison for a week while the paper

work was sorted out. German bureaucracy is efficient but like

inefficient bureaucracies, slow. They both made sure that the

rumours about Bob the Stoolie were confirmed. That he was named

for what he was amongst the friends they had made there. Bob the

Stoolie was never returned to Heilbronn prison, but transferred to

another to continue his fraud, his debasement to the Man and his own

lack of self-esteem. The title 'Stoolie' followed him where ever he

went, finally catching up with him in Karlsruhe where he was stabbed

with a shard of glass that was snapped off, leaving 3 inches in his liver

and a pregnant widow.

Empathy is not a Colour. Chapter 6

2005-11-13T10:07:00.000Z

Akinyemi Ola was pleased with the meeting with Oritse and its

success. But then again he knew it was a forgone conclusion. Oritse

had no option. Ola had secured another exit point for the marijuana

that was now coming from Morocco as well as sub-sahara Africa.

There seemed to be an expanding market for Morocco's Khatema

Treble Zero in London and New York. Akin had recommended it to

his father, reckoning that a detour via Lagos to London from

Morocco had less chance of being detected. It would increase the

cost of course, but the margins were so good that the slight extra

cost would be absorbed by the increase in volume. So far Akin had

been proved right and Jones in London had been helpful as promised.

After the deal, Rosemary's life expectancy improved dramatically.

She was shielded from the worst that Warri could offer, growing

strong and fit. Not for her the ravages of hunger or the

gastrointestinal diseases that came in waves and decimated her peers.

The oil had brought misery for most, those at the bottom of the

corrupted Nigerian economy were mired in squalor. The oil

companies enjoyed the situation. Super-profits from the Delta's

misery were nearly comparable to the super-profits the Portuguese,

Dutch and British enjoyed from the times of slavery. Wages could be

kept low because so many people were desperate for the work.

There was never less than five hundred people chasing every job with

the oil companies. Wages just enough for the people to reproduce

themselves. Nothing more. No welfare except from charity. No

environmental controls. It all helped with the bottom line - more

profit and shareholders dividends increased.

By twelve Rosemary had grown to dislike school. She was

academically quite gifted - but lazy. Liked geography most. The

expectations evoked by the pink Commonwealth swathe that reached

around the schoolroom globe fascinated her. It was inclusive of

Warri. She skivved off occassionally, truanted down at the port

day-dreaming of far away places were life was exotic, better and

clean. Without the stink of oil. A home in a skyscraper among the

clouds that know no border or boundary. London, New York, Hong

Kong, Bombay, Naples and Marseille, the destinations of the ships

that edged in and out the harbour. Continually moving. What she

would give to be on one.

When her mother found out about the skivving and the visits to the

port she was furious and scared. Scared that her beautiful daughter

would be raped by the “riff-raff” who gang around the port waiting

on the possibility, no matter how thin, for work. Or worse - wreck

the alliance with the Ola's. Isabella beat Rosemary the worst she had

ever done.

When she was 13 Rosemary fell in love. A deep hormonal yearning

had won her to a gawky, totally uncoordinated boy her age who was

thought an intellectual with great promise. She was passing from her

puberty to adolescense and thought she was ugly. She didn't see what

everybody else knew of her. Rosemary was stunning. Skin - red

hued black. Burnished flawless. An oval mouth, the lips not quite

meeting, her peltrum was exquisite. Wide set jet-black eyes. The

swish of her skirt stirred in old men long stowed cargoes of memory

and desire. The boys her own age were scared of her beauty, kept

their distance. Except the Gawk who the oestregen surges demanded

she be close to.

It was time to tell her of the betrothal to Amari Ola.

Rosemary didn't take it to well. She was distraught, thought of

suicide more than once. Ran away from home without a plan or

destination. She was found wandering the docks looking for a ship to

take her anywhere but Warri. Thirteen, and she thought she had no

future.

From then on Rosemary was chaperoned everywhere by a stern and

eagle eyed aunt. A car and driver were brought and hired to drive her

to school and church. Escorted all the way. She was not to touch the

street with her feet lest she do a runner.

Umukoro Oritze told his daughter, “This is the way it is going to be

for the next seven years. You are not going to tarnish this family's

honour by not carrying through your obligations to it. We are now a

wealthy family because of the business brought our way by Amari

Ola's father. Your future is as his wife.”

“That is the longest you have spoken to me in my life and its to

destroy it. I don't want to marry an old man. Its your obligation not

mine.” Rosemary shouted.

Speaking back and out of turn to her father ellicited a slap from her

mother that sent her reeling.

“Don't answer your father back.” She barked.

Isabella's initial reaction to the news of the betrothal had been

apocyleptic. How dare he do this. Now, every time she looked at

Rosemary, Isabella could see and feel the terror the Igbo inflicted on

Warri when Rosemary was all of six months old. With a conditioned

reflex she recoiled from loving her daughter. Saw her as beautiful but

flawed and wanted to change the age stipulation, get her daughter

away from her, remove the fear and terror. Isobella's greed also got

the better of her. Over the years since Rosemary's birth her

husbands business had grown in alliance with Akinyemi Ola. She

wanted more and her daughter would be the means to cement her

families relationship with the Olas. As political a marriage as any that

the royal families of Europe have entered into down the centuries.

Selling daughters for treaties. The similarity would not have been lost

on Isabella if she had known. A callousness had inhabited the

emotional space between a mother and her daughter

Umukoro had insisted on sticking to the marriage agreement, his

conscience still needing the salve, the acquaintence with scruple still

causing him qualms. This show of defience from their daughter might

help Isabella change his mind.

“My obligations are this families obligations. You will not disobey me.”

Said Umukoro Oritse. Sounding concilliatory he added, “Amari lives

most of his time in London and you will join him there. You've always

wanted to travel and dreamed of London. He travels all over the

world on business. You'll be happy. You'll see.”

School became a relief for Rosemary. A place to dream till her plans

were discovered. A friend at school had accidentally let slip to her

own parents that Rosemary had been gradually sneaking a change of

clothing into school. She had worn a garment at a time beneath her

school clothes over a two week period and hid them in her friends

locker. She was going to get changed at lunch time and walk out of

the school gate, give herself an hours start before they searched.

She wouldn't head toward the docks put to Benin, because everybody

would assume she would look for a ship. She would go north, inland

and find somebody there who would help her. She had no idea who.

The friends parents visited Umukoro Oritse. Clan allegience between

cousins did for Rosemary's plan.

Umukoro Oritse beat his daughter. Banned her from leaving the

house and would have stopped all schooling but for the insistance of

Isabella.

“If she is going to be married to Amari Ola, be of value to him and

live a rich life in London she needs to be able to hold intelligent

conversation with people.” Said Isabella, “My own lack of education

meant I haven't been as useful to you as I could have been.”

“You've been a good wife. Rosemary is the problem. But you are

right about her role with Amari. OK we'll hire a tutor and set a room

aside. It may mean she'll be kept so busy it'll stop her making plans.

If this keeps up I may have to think about he age stipulation. But not

yet.” Said Umukoro.

Isabella wanted to say, 'you said that before', but held her tongue.

She hadn't raised it this time. He had.

Rosemary had become a valuable commodity with her betrothal. An

asset, nothing more. Her wishes, her dreams for herself of no

import. She had to marry into the Ola family. For Umukoro it was

not just because of his family, clan or tribal honour, it was gangster

politics. He had grown wealthy as an outpost of the Ola empire and

wanted to join the inner circle. His ambition could not accommodate

the wishes of his daughter and was dissolving the salve to his

conscience.

Value would be added to her if she had a little education and still a

virgin when married. The house would now be her prison and she

would be constantly watched by a permanent chaperon. If she ever

went out of the house she would be accompanied by the chaperon and

a driver.

The first year of her imprisonment she never left the house. Her

siblings were no help. When Rosemary said she would prefer to

marry an Ibo than Amari Ola, her brothers denounced her as mad.

Told their friends, and made sure that Rosemary's friends heard,

that their sister had gone insane and needed to kept at home. That

she was a danger to herself and others. Rosemary did think of

suicide but would never have hurt anybody else. There were times

she thought herself going mad, that the lies and rumours her

brothers had spread were true. Her sister was to young to fully

understand the implications of Rosemary's betrothal, so kept her

distance as Isobel and Umukoro demanded.

After a years confinement, Rosemary's parents allowed her to leave

the house to go to church as she had demanded. Religion became her

new refuge. A haven from the family she now hated. Confession a

chance to tell of her predicament. She asked how to become a Nun.

The austerity of Orders looked more attractive than marriage to

Amari Ola. Non of it helped. No servant of God came to her

rescue, answered her prayers. The opposite. The priest sold the

confessions and requests to Isabella, kept her informed. Cousins

were to be helped, especially if they helped you. Catholicism is not

innured from corruption.

For three years she lived this charade, this fraud that was Rosemary's

family, replayed itself everyday like a bad dream. She still held to her

dreams of escape and was growing suspicious of the Priests

confidence. Twice her mother had mentioned things she had told the

priest the day before. The first time she put it down to coincidence.

The second time and Rosemary started holding back some of her

thoughts at confession.

She had used some of the time watching a succession of drivers and

what they did. Umukoro had changed cars four times since buying the

Rover P5, and everyone an automatic. The latest a Merc. Each time

they went out she study the drivers movements, how he switched on

the engine; selected the automatic; indicated; applied the brakes or

turned the wheel. Occassionally she asked a question about what he

was doing, couching it in terms that would not raise suspicion. One

driver had offered to teach her how to drive but that was immediately

scotched and the chauffer sacked.

Three days short of her sevententh birthday an opportunity to escape

appeared out of the blue and she took it. The driver, a new

employee not fully aware of the rules governing Rosemary's life, had

left the engine running while he went back in side the house to collect

his coat. The chaperone met him at the door and screamed as she

saw Rosemary drive the car out of the open gate. Leaving a brick

dislodged from the wall and a dent in the front near-side wing.

She had put the car in 'drive', released the hand brake and floored the

accelerator, suprising herself at the surge of power and finding it

hard to steer despite the power-assisted steering. She made the road

and turned left forcing a car on her right to swerve and roll. three

hundred yards down the road and she had some semblence of control

and hadn't hit anything since the gate. A few pedestrians had been

scattered and some cars took evasive action but she was gaining

control.

Her bolt for freedom would last four days.

When Rosemary and the car had not been found by the following

morning Umukoro Oritse phoned Akinyemi Ola. He was put through

to Adan. Akinyemi had grown old and frail over the last few years and

Adan had been called back from New York to take on some of his

father's responsibilities. Prepare to take over the leadership of the

family business.

“What?” Was shouted down the line. Adan was as abrupt as his

father and ruder if that could be achieved. A psychopath whose time

in New York was notorious for its brutality in carving out space for

his dealers and whores.

Umukoro Oritse baulked. He would have preferred to deal with the

father. Akinyemi's anger at the news would have been difficult to deal

with, but Adan?

“Please extend my regards to your father.”

“OK. OK. Wah d'fuck da ya'wan?” Adan's acquired American accent

and tone mimicked the worst of US gangster movie argot. Lifted

straight from B-movie film noir.

“Rosemary r-ran off yesterday and we still haven't found her.” The

single stammer betraying his fear.

A cruel laugh came down the phone. “Again? Be here at 2 the day

after tomorrow.” Said Adan as he slammed down the phone.

Akinyemi and Adan grinned at each other. The patriarch had been

listening in.

“You've got him. Well done. He's yours now.” Said Akinyemi Ola

bequeathing Oritse's obligation to Adan. “Phone Amari. Tell him to

come home. The 'wedding' will be brought forward as soon as we find

her. Get Akin in here. We need to get searching. By all accounts

she's a stunner. Should serve that witch in London, Dada Acacia

well.”

The brothers and the father were a quartet known as the “4A's” by

friends and enemies . Misogynists all. The brothers were sons of

different mothers who were thrown out when they were born and a

series of wet nurses employed. None lasting more than six months.

The brothers emotional centre - for what is was worth - was their

father.

Akinyemi Ola was living off the streets of the slums of Lagos at 4

years old. He had no clan. His parents were cousins and incest

tabooed. His mouth one to many to support and there were no

cousins or aunts or uncles to take him on. He was bright, intelligent,

a natural leader of his age cohort. If his education had not been the

streets and the university instead, he could have done anything, been

anybody. As circumstance was he built a reputation and grudging

respect amongst the criminal.

He led his first gun battle at 15, defeating an older gang of boys and

young men, taking territory, growing. He became noticed and feared,

survived two assassination attempts then wiped out the gangs

responsible. Through the 1940's and 50's his brothals screened black

& white 8mm pornographic films smuggled into Lagos by sailors. His

clients enjoyed watching Europeans fuck, have it undermine white

purity, but some would complain about not seeing black women

humilated and as his empire grew he rectified that by producing local

Lagos porn. The punters would have to pay to watch of course, but

the 'girls' were expected to comply in copying what their punters had

watched then demanded. The Ola brothals became the most popular

in Lagos

Akinyemi wouldn't have recognised it but he was addicted to porn.

Women knew his coldness, his cruelty and love for their degradation.

His mechanical sex. The pain as their asses are ripped. The blowjobs

and forced swallowing. Their ritual cleaning of his dick after fucking.

The Ola brothers learned their misogyny young.

Umukoro Oritse entered the Ola's office. Wary and scared. They

were all there. The 4A's. Amari had caught the first flight after

Adan's call and was angry at being disturbed from his enjoyments in

London. Akinyemi was sitting in a high chair, leaning forward and

putting his upper body weight on the walking stick he held in front of

him. The head of the walking stick was the carved head of a black man

and a carved spiral swirled along its tapered length to the foot.

African blackwood and heavy, it could kill a man with one blow to the

head. Akinyemi was old and frail but still armed.

Akin lay sprawled in an exhibition of relaxation across a three seat

black leather sofa.

Adan sat behind the massive desk that had so impressed Umukoro

Oritse at his first meeting with Akinyemi seventeen years earlier.

“Well. What have you got to say?” Asked Adan.

“We still haven't found her. We know she didn't go to the docks. My

people there were the first to be informed, 10 minutes after

Rosemary stole the car. We now think she is heading north towards

Benin. I have informed Isabella that once Rosemary is found, and if

your in agreement, then the wedding to Amari will be brought

forward.” The humiliation of his position gave a whine to his voice.

“I'm not marrying her but she is coming to London when she is

found.” Said Amari.

“We have an arrangement.” Said Umukoro.

“Fuck your arrangement. Your obligated to us.” Akin responded as

he cleaned his finger nails. “We found the car yesterday, two miles

from your house. If I wasn't such a generous man I would think your

family is trying to hide her, renage on your obligation.”

“No we're not. All in my family recognise the importance to us of the

wedding to Amari.” Umukoro could not have heard Amari or did not

believe him.

“No. Your just useless.” Said Amari, “Didn't you hear me. I am not

marrying her but she is coming to London.”

“Who would she know 2 miles north of your house?” Asked Akin.

“She hasn't been out of the house for three years unless escorted to

church. The priest keeps us informed of everything that happens

there. All I can think of is boy about her own age, who she had a

crush on four years ago. He lived to the north of us. He's called the

Gawk.” A trembling and totally humilated Umukoro Oritse

whimpered. His eyes darting across the four faces that glared with

malice at him. He was out of his depth with the gangsters of Lagos.

The relationship had worked well for the last 17 years but its true

face was exposed by this, the first difficulty. And he met the power

of fear that the Ola's exercised with well practised effect.

Akin got on the phone and spoke to his man in Warri.

“His name is The Gawk and lives close to where you found the car.

Check it out and phone me as soon as you have something.” Turning

to Oritse he said, “You stay here till we find her.”

An hour later the phone rang. Akin answered it, “Hello.” He

pressed a button on the phone and let everybody in the room hear his

henchman.

“We've got her.”

“What about the Gawk.”

“Dead.”

“Good. Pick up her mother and bring them here.” Akin hung up.

The Gawk dead in a casual, off-hand way. A future Nigerian Nobel

physicist will not now be nominated.

Rosemary and Isabella were escorted into the office just before

midnight.

Adan met them. “So. This is the runaway from Amari's wedding.

Very beautiful. What do you think Amari? She good enough for you?”

Amari came forward, “Very nice. No I'm not going to marry her but

she's coming to London with me when I return.”

“You can't do that.” Said a defiant Isabella, “We have an agreement.”

“Fuck that you bitch.” Said Adan, “Get over there with you worthless

husband.”

Isabella looked toward Umukoro who beckoned her toward him. He

was sat with shoulders hunched as though waiting a blow. She went

with questioning eyes wondering what was happening.

Turning to Rosemary Adan asked, “Did you fuck with the Gawk?”

Rosemary stood shivering in fear and shock. The last time she saw

the Gawk he was lying dead on the path to his house with his brains

and blood spreading a grey, red streaked halo from his bullet

shattered skull.

“Well?” Adan shouted.

Isabella and Umukoro sat and watched the humiliation of their

daughter, recognising their powerlessness. Their plans and dreams of

marrying into Lagos' gangster royalty snatched away by the foolishness

of their daughter.

Rosemary nodded a trembling yes.

“You two can go.” Ordered Adan to Umukoro and Isabella. “Say

goodbye to your daughter.”

Isabella walked up to her and said, passing guilt, “You are stupid. We

gave you a chance in life and now a young man has died because of

your selfishness.” With a sneer she looked Rosemary up and down,

turned her back and joined her husband who had simply cut his

daughter dead.

Once they were out of the room Akin asked, “Whose first to start

the breaking in, the training to obey. Father?”

“No. I'll just watch. Maybe give a bit of advice.”

“Amari. The bridegroom. How about you?”

“No. I can see how much your itching to put that dick of yours to

use. I'll ease into it as we go along”

“I will.” Said Adan the lust in the voice broked no arguement as he

bent Rosemary across the desk to begin the 'wedding'.

Isabella and Umukoro were getting in a taxi when they heard

Rosemary scream but just ignored it and ordered the taxi driver to

drive.

For the next two weeks Rosemary was used by every member of

Akin's crew. The enforcers knew how to break in new whores.

Akinyemi kept an eye on things. He got a hard on once watching, but

by the time he got to Rosemary he was flacid again and ordered two

of the men to, “Fuck her in the ass and cunt together".

It was Akinyemi who determined when her spirit was broken and she

was able to be taken to London as an obedient whore for Dada Acacia

to look after and train. Rosemary no longer screamed or complained.

Had learned to laugh competently enough at the Ola's sadistic jokes

or smile while being abused as if she enjoyed it.