Tuesday 28 September 2010

Fascism in E5

Friday 24th September

London, E5.
On the way home around 9pm I noticed The Windsor Castle pub on Lower Clapton rd. had police vans (the larger ones with cages over the windows) outside with a lone copper blocking entrants.   It looked rather chronic and after thinking perhaps there must of been a violent incident, thought nothing further and turned off the corner and ran into a Windsor local I was already acquainted with and we began talking about our matching cars, mentioning  nothing about the palpable police presence behind us.  Some of his friends then appeared out the Windsor's rear who said the place was subject to a massive search and sniff raid w/ dogs (he said it was a bit of a laugh when the police tried a pincer movement on entry through the set of double doors and foolishly jammed into each other).  

Perhaps people are dealing and smoking pot.  But so are a quarter of the population,  not to speak of other pubs in the area, that shan't be named here.  Yet, doubt they'll be subject to similar raids.  Suddenly thought I was back in South Africa, during the state of emergency period ('85-'94).  Its very obvious the borough mayor has downwardly directed this intervention, ostensibly as a clean-up, yet its rather apparent what they're cleaning up is anyone who doesn't fit the 'Olympics' brief, anyone not conforming to middleclass mores or anything with a scent of new-gentry.  They don't have a voice,  hence count in the new international yuppie society.  

Its a stitch up, cause we all know people from so-called respectable backgrounds are also using fairly filthy class A's lets face it, pretty often.  Its not about drugs, its about what the consumer will choose to spend money on other than drugs.  Whether or not they'll shun the dive cafes for the pseudo-homegrown smart cafe the morning after.  Supposedly this sensible tactic is to get these bum pubs closed so their locals will go "elsewhere" - further north east ?.. its The Cricketers, act 2 (a council-closed clapton pub which wasn't shimmy clean enough).   If you want culture, go into pubs that are strange to you.  Yes, you may not be able to jive with locals because they're alien visages, but don't shun 'em entirely. They're interesting, you'd certainly gage more about the real world than reading the culture section on Sunday.

 

Saturday 25 September 2010

GLOBAL ABYSS CULTURE

He's nice, he has egalite to a fault, all this inclusivity horseshit  -Stephan Fry- "If you're white and privately educated and you start talking about the virtuosity of western enlightenment, then it sounds as if you're basically grinding a boot into the face of Muslims and the third world."- what if you're not privately educated, but poor, white and self educated ? What if Fry himself hasnt considered perhaps that we're doing them a favour too.?
Look at it from their point of view.  Being from somewhere without welfare and seeing a country with welfare as well worth joining because its a better standard of living; its aspirational and we all have a tendency towards the honeypot, especially if we have no honey. They see the welfare card as some inexplicable pipe-leak worth imbibing (and that's its intention, a kind of bait) while going on with ones usual business - one cannot expect people to softly  change, or choose our customs, and to be better than they themselves already think they are, thankyou v.much.  its sinfully optimistic and vestigially condescendingly presumptuous to do so.
The only outcome of extending ourselves to the full letter of all liberal possibilities, of sharing as much as possible via taxes is that we'll spread too thinly, perhaps to the point of implosion. This is obviously happening in all "1st world" countries. Implosion being the loss of identity to the abyss of global culture, which is to say, any culture but this one, all those countries outside of our amazing liberal European playground empire, who all appear horrifically blase about liberal directives, you know - human rights, not too mention gay, animal, women's rights (and our true born natural liberals, T. Benn, M. Thomas, J. Pilger, H. Pinter never fail to criticises firstly the wretched annuls of imperial America and Europe's sanguine envelopment in it)*.

The paradox is we have so much concentrated here in the first place because we did exactly the inverse to begin with.  Yet no one but the most zany conservative at the excessive fascist end of the right wing is suggesting we
(in full fascist excess) return to the closed-rank racialist colonial capitalist piracy of our preceding centuries.  Yet it can and has been(?) argued that the real cream of the colonial era is only really being reaped now (the lower echelons haven't had it so good). That is the only justification for sharing with the third world victims of our conquistadors - because we are still milking them with our byzantine trade constructs continuing to befuddle and systematically fleece those underducated (unschooled in economic & legal jargon) natives of our planet.  This is the authentic grand crime which no amount of welfare, liberalisation or inclusionist politicking here in the European Union of Nations will remedy.  Its welfare and overpopulation on one hand and a spade on the other,  to the one who is down in a dark deep hole known as elsewhere, being encouraged to dig himself in further.

*The crime of the U.S. and its military is perhaps the desire to replicate, rather than import a totalitarianism, contrary to the academic intellectuals belief that we invented it.  Eastern nations have always had the air of monopolizing despotism not too mention cultural exclusivity - e.g. Japan, until the late 19thC banned all foreign influence vehemently and they were imperialist, not the conquered.

Fry Link:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/sep/12/stephen-fry-interactive-show-profile

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