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