San Domenico

Paul Talling writes: 'I've driven past this empty building beside the A3 for years. There is something always slightly sinister looking about it - in a Hammer House of Horror sort of way. There is always a light on in one of the windows presumably security.
There have been rumours that it has some sort of secret military use'

www.derelictlondon.com

Textiles

A shop window near Finsbury Park

From www.derelictlondon.com

Thread

‘I’m riding a tram and, as is my habit, slowly absorbing every detail of the people around me. By ‘detail’ I mean things, voices, words. In the dress of the girl directly in front of me, for example, I see the material it’s made of, the work involved in making it – since it’s a dress and not just material – and I see in the delicate embroidery around the neck the silk thread with which it was embroidered and all the work that went into that. And immediately, as if in a primer on political economy, I see before me the factories and all the different jobs: the factory where the material was made; the factory that made the darker coloured
thread that ornaments with curlicues the neck of the dress’ and I see the different workshops in the factories, the machines, the workmen, the seamstresses. My eyes’ inward gaze even penetrates into the offices, where I see the managers trying to keep calm and the figures set out in the account books, but that’s not all: beyond that I see into the domestic lives of all those who spend their working hours in these factories and offices...A whole world unfolds before my eyes all because the regularly irregular dark green edging to a pale green dress worn by the girl in front of me of whom I see only her brown neck.

‘A whole way of life lies before me.


‘I sense the loves, the secrets, the souls of all those who worked just so that this woman in front of me on the tram should wear around her mortal neck the sinuous banality of a thread of dark green silk on a background of light green cloth.’

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

http://www.resurgence.org/clothingdirectory/index.htm
http://www.knowledgeproblem.com/archives/001606.html
http://www.bafts.org.uk/Upload_files/WFTF_Response_to_Economist_Article.pdf
http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/

Watching Planes Closely

‘Watching planes closely and recording their serial or registration numbers and squadron markings goes back to the last days of the Blitz, when the first issue of the Aeroplane Spotter appeared, a 12-page periodical intended to improve the quality of aircraft recognition among British civilian air defence volunteers. It included photos and silhouettes of the major aircraft types, both friend and foe, and was the first publication to pay attention to military serial numbers, changes in the registry of civilian aircraft, camouflage schemes, squadron markings and unusual insignia. Such markings are important because, once a database has been compiled, an analyst can use it to infer how many aircraft of a particular type or its variants are in circulation, to deduce the size and composition of squadrons, and to keep track of sales, modifications and losses. The Aeroplane Spotter’s legacy lives on in the activities of today’s spotters, including their websites, which publish not just photos and data but also details of search engines that can trace virtually any aircraft through its serial or registration number.

For example: http://travel.flightexplorer.com/about.aspx and http://fboweb.com/fb40/default.aspx

‘Spotters began to expose the CIA’s rendition capers to public scrutiny less than six weeks after 9/11. This was almost inevitable, given that the Agency had chosen to conduct its abductions via the world of civil aviation. The CIA’s operatives seem not to have understood or cared that at all hours of the day and night international airports are simply alive with people – aircrews, flight controllers, ticket clerks, baggage handlers, refuellers, cleaners, police and customs officers, and passengers – who are alert to everything going on around them. Nor was this the only instance of incompetence displayed by the CIA in running its rendition programme.’

From Chalmers Johnson's review of ‘Ghost Plane: The Inside Story of the CIA's Secret Rendition Programme’ by Stephen Grey (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n03/john04_.html, 8/2/2007).

http://www.statewatch.org/rendition/rendition.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2936782.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/26/usa.topstories3

Starting Pistol

It looks like Spielberg's truly kicked off the Chinese Olympics, withdrawing his involvement in protest at China's underwriting of the Sudanese government.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7242016.stm
Here's the Sudan Tribune's take: http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article25970

Astonishing success at drawing attention to the issue. Perhaps there could have been no better country to host the games if what you're after is twelve months of concentrated attention on human rights and moral compromise.

It gave an extra bit of spice to Lara Pawson's review of Nicholas Shaxson’s ‘Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil.’ in LRB 7/2/08 (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n03/paws01_.html). I'll concentrate on one character who caught my imagination: Jacques Foccart “a master manipulator” employed by DeGaulle, known as the ‘White Sorcerer.’ When De Gaulle set up Elf Aquitaine to ensure the French got their fingers in the oil pie, it's operations in Gabon proved crucial. The leader there, Omar Bongo, had been keeping things sweet, parcelling out the cash and favours – and using Bwiti secret societies. Foccart took this one step further, ‘Most top Elf officials were Masons and Bongo was encouraged to establish his own lodges in Gabon in order to foster solidarity with Elf.’


Foccart and Chirac

Fascinating reportage from Le Monde on oil and freemasonry:
http://mondediplo.com/1997/09/masons

‘It took another twenty years, and the biggest fraud investigation in Europe since the Second World War, for the scale of Franco-Gabonese corruption to come to light.’
Here's the World Socialist Web Site on TotalFinalElf: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jul2003/tota-j11.shtml

I reckon the Freemasons are probably perfectly decent individuals for the most part, who do a lot of work for charity. But for those who disagree, check the over excitable http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/

I once did some filming in Chinawhite, Air Street, Piccadilly, and I'm sure through a doorway linking some underground basements there was a disused Masonic hall, with chequered floor and appropriate symbolic accoutrements.

Halcion Sleep

A still from 'Halcion Sleep' by Rodney Graham. A self-portrait of the artist knocked out on the eponymous tranquiliser, one of the most addictive, being driven around Vancouver. One of his earliest memories, the artist says, is waking from a deep, secure sleep in the back of a car.

Now showing at the Wellcome Library in Euston:

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/exhibitions/sleepinganddreaming/index.htm

And here's a link to Iran's leading sleep centre: http://www.irsleepcenter.com/

This is not illegal

Once in a while you wake up feeling like you live in a democracy. To celebrate the Court of Appeal's decision to overturn the conviction of five men found in possession of extremist literature - and to win a few fans at GCHQ - here's a link to some jihad . For the curious.

http://www.islamic-world.net/youth/jihad.htm

It should be stressed that this site does not condone jihad. Curious, nonetheless.

This is the BBC on the Appeal Court ruling: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7242724.stm

And here's a classic piece of work, drawing the veil off a Jihad site to reveal...the CIA:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4513.htm

ishikoro

More from http://rcjzeustuqdfmtyb.blogspot.com/ (hold tight for the pop-ups)

'comfort woman's tears of blood'

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Sarah Boxer, in the New York Review of Books, tells us that abandoned blogs are called 'ishikoro' - pebbles. What the hell do you call this?

from Hyde Park to Tibilisi

Speakers corner continues. A surreal scattering of solitary men, perched on stepladders, one wall short of a decorating job. Many have thermos cups, as if this is part of a cosy Sunday ritual. They orate into the cold, clear air of Hyde Park corner. Does freedom of speech depend upon having anyone listen?

http://www.speakerscorner.net/

Close by, the 'animals in war' monument, lobbied for by Jilly Cooper, competes for most bizarre London memorial. The stone animals parade forlornly over their strip of grass in the middle of sixteen lanes of traffic, coldly shaded by the playboy high-rises of Park Lane. I like the way gardenvisit.com tries to make good of this. Maybe they have a point.

http://www.gardenvisit.com/landscape_architecture/london_landscape_architecture/visitors_guide/animals_war_memorial

The richest man in Georgia has died. Of course, he wasn't in Georgia, he was in Surrey. West Ham fans, as ever, were on the case first:

http://www.soccerblog.com/2006/09/the_west_ham_buyout_kommersant.htm

Immune from Public Interest?

Mystery from my old neck of the woods. Wang Yam, 'financial trader', on trial for the murder of Allan Chappelow, 'prize winning novelist', though who knew him when he was a reclusive resident of Downshire Hill? It's unfolding in the Central Criminal Court, and rendered all the more sinister by the slapping of Public Interest Immunity on parts of the proceedings. Public Knowledge Immunity, surely? Why has the government signed off this secrecy, usually reserved for those cases with national security complications?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Chappelow
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3042941.ece

The Evening Standard go as far as saying Yam was a ‘low-level informant’ for MI5, which sounds plausible:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23427506-details/MI5+wants+millionaire

The guardian goes for MI6/SIS:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2227929,00.html

The murder was all part of an identity theft, so the story goes, although Yam's lawyer - the irrepressible Geofrrey Robertson - asks why Chappelow's passport, wallet and personal identification numbers were left in the house. And why would Yam then be so foolish to try and access Chapelow’s accounts in the full glare of CCTV? Not one piece of forensic evidence links Yam to the murder.

Then there’s the question of the fire that broke out nine days after the discovery of the body, destroying 35% of the ground floor. How does that happen? Police are remaining 'tight lipped', according to the Camden New Journal:

http://www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/062906/news062906_04.htm

Doubtless it will all prove far less interesting than it seems. But the need for PII is intriguing. How many slightly higher-level informants find the criminal justice system bent in their favour to save blushes all round?

I remember passing Chappelow's derelict home as a child, going to the Heath, and even, possibly, seeing the 'reclusive writer' himself in Swiss Cottage library, a haunt we apparently shared.

China

Chinese Poems on the Underground – spotted District Line, eastbound 1/2/08

Winter Travels

who’s typing on the void
too many stories
they’re twelve stones
hitting the clockface
twelve swans
flying out of winter

tongues in the night
describe gleams of light
blind bells
cry out for someone absent

entering the room
you see that jester’s
entered winter
leaving behind flame

- Bei Dao (born 1949)

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beidao.htm
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/media/newscentre/3731.aspx