On Colonialism

An upcoming cricket match has reminded me of a deeply illustrative bit of commentary from the 2009 test match series between the West Indies and England. In a West Indian innings during a limited overs match, the Windies were having one of their sadly all-too-rare periods where they surpass what is expected of the game, and begin scoring and hitting wildly for no loss. These are also the moments where cricket becomes the most entertaining sport on earth.

The English commentary team shifted in their seats for a few overs, audibly strategised, and decided that this was frankly disrespectful - to the bowlers, of course, but most importantly to the game. Grumbling continued, then, in one over, Kevin Pietersen achieved three successive wickets. The commentators could not have been more delighted. Order had been restored, and the underdog lay beaten.

It Gets Better: 'Left To My Own Devices'

Mildly irritating and occasionally amusing US sex columnist Dan Savage has recently initiated a project named 'It Gets Better'. Basically, fully grown gays, lesbians and celebrities (including Paris Hilton) create videos boasting about how comfortable adult life is for the benefit of LGBT teenagers. This has the rare distinction of being smug and wonderful, a sacrament of boasting in the face of oppression.

Which brings me onto the song that has plagued my mind for much of the past few months, 'Left To My Own Devices' by the Pet Shop Boys. It's extraordinary. Firstly, the vocals. Johnny Rotten was famously happy to declare that he didn't care, although the tone of this pronouncement belies his actual level of care. Neil Tennant is unique in all of pop music in being able to sound as though he genuinely doesn't give a thr'penny fuck about all of creation. Languid, bored, lazy, distant - it's all there.

Why doesn't Neil care? Well it's hinted at in the music - a cold fusion of musicals, opera and early house - and suggested in the lyrics - "this friend of mine - he's a party animal", "maybe if you're with me, we'll do some shopping". Neil doesn't care because his Pink Pound and Wildean mind have transcended all limitations placed on him, all fetters on his artistic production and impeccable taste. Finally, he is everything he meant to be and anyone who disagrees can fuck themselves and enjoy it. It's a wonder, and anyone who finds this irritating or distasteful has their bread buttered on the wrong side.

Label of the 'Week': Warp

This week, coming home from a job I hate, with a government being decided that I was sure to hate, I decided to indulge myself with something I love. And indulgence it was. Using Spotify's label search function I searched for 'Warp' and hit random. Given the much vaunted death of the record label, it's a miracle that I could think of a record label, but Warp sprung to mind

Warp is less a record label and more a style of music in itself - easily identifiable. Drum beats skitter, overlap, cut and stretch - none of the melodic instruments sound organic. Vocals, if present, are heavily distorted. In short, it's warped. Unlike the abacus experimentalism of 12-tone music, or the shapeless mass of free jazz, the vast majority of Warp's music offers just enough structure to box you in, then spends most of it's time bending the walls, wrapping space and time, unsettling. It is a music made almost entirely on computers, and in an era when every job seemingly involves staring at an often malfunctioning computer system for 8 hours, then travelling home past detritis (organic and man-made) it's a music made exactly for our time. Thom Yorke was not wrong in describing Autechre's grotesque and detailed masterwork 'LP5' as "the sound that's in my head". It's in all of our heads, whether we accept it on not.

The gateway to Warp is the music of Aphex Twin, who serves as a kind of Weird Al Jankovic comedy record producer and totem for the Warp ethos, having evolved from making slightly odd music for raves to making ludicrous drum'n'bass and pretty piano music. A lot of the music on Warp follows this pattern - this is a label that used to put out records by the cut-up artist Cassette Boy (who used famous people's words to make them say inappropriate things, a comedy trope surpassed only by old people swearing in its satiric power) and the avant-garde composer Mira Calix, who once performed live 'collaborating' with a tank of insects.

In short, childish and modernist, which is where the idea of the holy label comes in. Warp, for me, fits. This was the idea behind the independent music movement - to have a label that catered for a specific group of people - a social and musical sectarianism. Warp is my sect, and its haunting, fucked music speaks to me as Sub Pop and Rough Trade spoke to its secret following.

Well, I say 'speaks', it's more 'spoke'. In recent years, Warp has succumbed to what China Miéville refers to as the "idiot logic of capitalism", the drive to expand, the drive to accumulate. It has broadened its musical palette, taking in flesh and blood bands with actual instruments, Americans and becoming involved in film production. So once again, I'm left in a corner, demanding ideological consistency, barking at the moon.

The Democracy Ration

It's hard not to get depressed around election time. In 2005, the choice was between an overtly racist party led by a vampire, a flapping husk of a party led by a war criminal, and a party led by and supported by over-earnest students. Little has changed since then, although to believe the papers, everything has changed. The nearly unconstitutional TV debates (well, in so far as Britain has a constitution, they seem to be at least against the spirit of the thing) have flipped many people disillusioned with the Husk Party and the Racist Party to support the Earnest Party, or so hype would have us believe. Behind all this looms a giant recession the size of which the majority of people have never experienced - with the concomitant 'necessity' of mindblowing cuts. It's enough to make you emigrate, either to some politically dubious nation where your accent might render you charming (Australia, the US...) or to another astral plain altogether.

Why is this the case? My argument would not be that politics is inherently worse than it was. Many politically engaged people hark back to the days when the parties were really parties - when the Tories were openly racist, rather than tacitly, when Labour supported strikes and provided free silver spoons to every poor unfortunate in the land, and when the Liberals were so bland that you had to take speed to prevent yourself sleeping whenever they opened their mouths. This is bollocks.

I would wager the reason it's depressing is that the act of voting, in Britain particularly, actualises your powerlessness. This is your democracy ration, handed out every 4 to 5 years. It won't really do anything, but it will do more than the other elections you vote in every year or so - Assembly, Council and European - which are, scientifically, less important than votes cast towards X Factor contestants. You can vote for the people you agree with, but it's wasted. Go home, watch Dimbleby for a few hours, sleep, then go back to having less than no power, just as before, but with a different monkey dancing on the organ.

Or you can agitate, educate and organise. It's the only real political choice you ever have to make, and the only one that matters a jot.

Magnificent Whining

Britain in the 00s was a country besieged by grumpy old men. The TV series of that title was unaccountably popular, given that it consisted of pensioned comedians whinging with minimal commitment about topics lobbed by terribly dressed 20-something runners. One of the best selling non-fiction books was entitled 'Is it just me or is everything crap?'. They could all have been replaced by this, for the greater good.

The 1 Best Thing of the 00s

The 00s, or 'the decade with no name' have been awful. There have been more, bigger wars than we saw in the 90s, the economy lies in tatters. The decade started with popular music being an all-American, frat-boy nightmare and ended with popular music being an all-American 'Happy Hour' nightmare, marginally better for being sung by women. Film became overwhelmed by inexplicable, cheap CGI shite.

As befits the end of a decade, a rash of lists has appeared in print media, detailing the decades best films, most important figures, least significant spoons and so on. In the interests of concision, I'm picking my favourite thing of all. We're all busy people after all.

'Malcolm in the Middle' or 'Malcolm', considering the length of its title, was an American family sitcom that ran from 2000-2006. Family sitcoms are generally insufferable, unable to tread the line between love and hate - 'My Family' and 'Married With Children' settled on making their family's relations poisonous to the level where a viewer might have been moved to contact Social Services. The Simpsons tread this line with hitherto unseen skill, but the 00s saw its terminal decline, which manifested itself in globetrotting and Homer's ongoing metamorphosis into a howling sociopath.

'Malcolm' is unique in family sitcoms in seeing the family as a fundamentally flawed but necessary institution, and in seeing the family in terms of power relations. The constant brawling and arguments are status games, pleas for attention, cash or respect. 'Malcolm' also deals with the question of child abuse between siblings. That it does these things while being beautifully written and hilarious is a fucking miracle.

As is usually the case with sitcoms which focus on one character (Malcolm, the title character, is the only player able to converse with the audience), the other characters end up being more fascinating. In particular, Lois, the screaming mother of Malcolm and Hal, his broken father, are masterpieces of characterisation - complete individuals, capable of spite, inconsistences and, most radically, lust. When Homer and Marge 'snuggle', it's as comforting as cocoa, whereas Hal and Lois's sex involves trips to their town's red light district.

The shows' portrayal of childhood is also glorious - showing the 5 stages of childhood, from the infant (Jamie), the pre-adolescent near-alien (Dewey), pre-teen know-it-all (Malcolm), teen thug (Reese) to rebellious early-adult (Francis), discreetly and fully. Childhood isn't romanticised, neither is adulthood, marriage or any other institution, because of my favourite thing about 'Malcolm' - its politics.

'Malcolm' is political in texture and content. The family lead a life helmed to the Permanent Debt Economy that preceded the Credit Crunch - they are sub-prime, 'Malcolm' is a sub-prime sitcom. Lois, despite her clear intelligence, works part-time at a out-of-town megastore, Lucky Aide ("The 'L' stands for Value"). Hal works for an unnamed corporation, but is laid off when it succumbs to Enronitis. This leads to a grimly comic moment - Hal is framed for fraud by his company directors, and is tasered by the arresting officers immediately after declaring "I have complete faith in the U.S. government!". The family's troubles arise from financial stress, overwork and fear - keeping the contrived plots of Family Guy and the modern Simpsons at bay.

But, the 00s made a Marxist out of me, and I'll love and miss 'Malcolm' for its overt politics. Hal, quoting Marx and leading an occupation of Lucky Aide, Lois using all her wit to rescue Reese from his deployment in Afghanistan, and planning for a working-class government. It's cold comfort, but for this shit decade, it'll have to do.

Album of the 'Week': 'Travels With Myself and Another'

I am divorced from current music. Not something to be proud of - music is consistently of value (except for the period between 1985-1988 or so it seems). In this year, I've become interested in one 'new' band, the charmingly named 'Future of the Left', and even they fall into a micro-genre that I'm inordinately interested in, that of 'Welsh Bands - Too Clever For Their Own Good'. It's a genre that includes FOTL (who acronym beautifully), Manic Street Preachers and Scritti Politti.

What is irresistible about these bands is that they're open to politics. While not polemical, their music is inflected by political history, or the idea of politics. An album that begins with a song entitled 'Arming Eritrea' is all too easy to enjoy. FOTL also share with Scritti Politti and the Manics an 'Americanism' - all sing in American accents, play with American forms of music and probably have portraits of George W. Bush on their walls for all I know. FOTL are not however, going to write songs about Jacques Derrida or empowering libraries. They're far too fun for that. Even though they practice a form of punk which is close to the avant-garde and to heavy metal (the irritatingly named 'hardcore'), their music is packed with melodies and jokes.

The perversely serious 'Drink Nike' begins with a description of a crap act of terrorism - "Right in the centre of Hove/Next to an escalator/Somebody's planted a bomb/Underneath a plastic chair" - mocking War on Terror paranoia or farcical homegrown terror plots. 'Stand By Your Manatee', not content with being titled with a crap joke, goes on to tell the story of a suicide motivated by the suicider's parents using plastic forks - ending with the sage observation that "it'll never be a kingdom shared". The harrowing 'Hope That House Built' takes the always enjoyable perspective of an evil ruling bastard, intoning "In the end/Everybody wins".

But what I really love about FOTL is what I love about reggae and calypso - the alliance of miserable or disturbing sentiment with gleeful music. The harmonies on 'Throwing Bricks at Trains', alone, make this my favourite album for a long while.

Thick, White and Unsavoury

The BNP, following their winning of 2 seats in June's European elections, have had unprecedented media coverage, particularly from the BBC. Radio 1's dumbed-right-down-to-the-ground 'wicked' news flagship 'Newsbeat' conducted unchallenging interviews with two young BNP cadres, one of whom, Mark Collett, was caught on a BBC documentary half-a-decade ago claiming that AIDS was a friendly disease because it kills Africans and homosexuals, or 'blacks and gays'. Radio 1 now has the unique selling point of being the only radio station on earth to have placed genocidal racists alongside Beyoncé.

This Thursday, the party's leader, Nick Griffin, is slated to appear on Question Time. When questioned on this, the BBC has claimed that his status as elected representative of a vast swathe of Northern England makes him a suitable candidate for debate. Fair enough, but Nick Griffin represents not just the most bigoted voters in the North West, but a party which adheres to the tradition of classical anti-semitism, historical fascism, and, most importantly, engages in street-fighting, racist attacks and intimidation.

The BNP are now at pains to deny these last two facets of their tradition, and no longer march and rally in ethnic minority areas, in the way which Nick Griffin MEP and Andrew Brons MEP used to as members of the National Front. The tactic they now use is as old as the political party - to do unsavoury things under a different name. And fuck me, quite how unsavoury was a genuine shock.

The above photo is of an event which I witnessed, the EDL (English Defence League) demonstration in Swansea. What are they angry about? What have you got? According to a farcical press conference held for the benefit of Newsnight, the swastika (which they burned). According to the above photo, and the evidence of my own eyes, 'No Swastika' flags being hung in their vicinity.

Less flippantly, they're angry about Muslims. This is the most acceptable form of racism in our time, as it is supposedly against an ideology rather than a specific racial group. The EDL powerfully demonstrated the idiocy of well-meaning liberals and leftists of a particular stripe (you know, those left-wingers who are terrified of Islamofascism and its swarthy practicioners?) who follow this line of argument by screaming abuse at a young Asian woman who dared look at their demonstration from a rooftop. They did not ask whether she was an adherent of Islam before kicking off.

The EDL claims from the BNP - hilariously, on one of their first demonstrations, they carried placards reading 'We Are Not The BNP'. This is only hilarious because of its demonstrable falsehood. Not only are many of the EDL's members (although this is hard to check, because it's more of a flashmob racist rabble than an organisation) BNP members, it is utterly connected by talking-point to the BNP. So, for example, the BNP has recently flipped to a position of support for Zionism, because of its focus on the Muslim threat - the EDL, on their Manchester jaunt, carried placards reading 'Defend Israel's Right To Exist'. Consider this in the light of their burning of the No Swastika flag, it's baffling. Then remember that the EDL models after the BNP, and it becomes obvious. The EDL is the BNP Boot Boy Corps - they protest too much for it to be otherwise.

I was there as part of the much larger counter-demonstration, and, despite the moments of terror, I'm glad I was. Although not of the school of thought that you should trek to the North Pole before claiming with confidence that it's cold, it was instructive to see fascism first hand. Seig Heil-ing, spitting, threatening fascism. Boggle-eyed, unthinking, hateful racism. The idea that the BBC would bring it into people's fucking homes, and treat a Holocaust denier as though he's a normal politician, is nearly beyond comprehension.

Album of the 'Week': Fear of a Black Planet

Public Enemy are ludicrous. I possess the first issue of the Public Enemy comic, from 2007, in which Chuck D fires up a young, disillusioned black man to fight authority, and, I seem to remember, ninjas. The character voices awestruck approval at the revelatory and liberatory power of Public Enemy's music and Chuck D's public speaking before, during, and after fighting the power. All this would be fine if this was charmingly ill-thought out fan-fiction, but the author of the comic is Chuck D himself. Public Enemy have developed into a middling band of overly earnest, politically confused old men, which would be fine, if they didn't have the most musically radical back catalogue of any popular band of the last 30 years.

'Fear of a Black Planet' is often referred to as the first hip-hop concept album, but it is nothing of the sort. Politically confused, over-long and patchy, there is no concept that can be said to guide the piece. The driving force of the album is utter rage. Rage at the band's detractors, rage at homosexuals, rage at race mixers, at Hollywood, and, finally, 'the power'. Rage breeds incoherence, and, coming to 'Fear of a Black Planet' decades after its release, with its reputation as the apex of politically engaged hip-hop, the unpalatable depths of homophobia and (perfectly understandable) race-hatred were shocking, but not as shocking as the sheer fragmentation of Chuck D's lyrics. It's difficult to discern a thread in any of the lyrics. This is in no way a criticism, it renders his writing a collection of placard slogans and a mass of phrases, delivered in his college-trained radio announcer voice. It does however, get a bit much - Ice-T's verse in 'Burn, Hollywood, Burn' (which can be said, with fair confidence, to have predicted the L.A Riots of 1992) actually arrives as light relief, even when he shouts "don't fight the power/(gunshot) the motherfucker!".

The lyrics are the transcription of a riot of ideas, influences and emotions. They form new beats, get sidetracked, alternate between self-pity and bombast. One of the masterpieces of the album, 'Welcome to the Terrordome' begins "I've got so much trouble on my mind/Refuse to lose". The lyrics as a whole betray a seige mentality, following the controversy created by the band's conduct (particularly Professor Griff's claim that "Jews are responsible for 90% of the evil in the world today" a wonderfully precise bit of utter nonsense), and reflect the broader seige mentality of a black community seeing the gains of the civil rights era rolled back by Reaganomics. The shifting rhythm and shock phrase-turning ("brain game, intellectual Vietnam", "subordinate terror kicking off in error", "most of my heroes don't appear on no stamp") and the authoritative delivery make avoiding engaging with the lyrics impossible. They force debate. That MLK and various faceless nameless orators appear in sample makes this even more delicious.

This, however can be said of any number of earnest rappers. What gives 'Fear of a Black Planet' its continued shock power and enduring status isn't the healthy dose of Louis Farrakhan-era Nation of Islam politics or Chuck D's self-pity, but the mindblowing production of The Bomb Squad. As opposed to the fast majority of hitherto existing hip-hop, each track is through-composed, and the album contains thousands of micro-samples. At one point (the first 20 seconds of the gloriously titled 'Anti-Nigger Machine'), the level of abstraction resembles John Cage's 'Williams Mix'. This alone makes the buffoon I saw perform his rap version of Elton John's Tiny Dancer look even more like an arse. But there's more - the vast majority of the tracks have no tonal centre - no student will ever be able to perform 'Fight The Power' in an ironic fashion at an open-mic night.

But most importantly, the production embraces what devotées of anologue call 'the digital squelch' and computer sequencing (Chuck D even namechecks the Mac on which the album was presumably made). 'Fear of a Black Planet', despite its 'classic' status, belongs to an old school of hip-hop that purists and modern practitioners like to imagine doesn't exist - one that isn't identifiably old, and is directly politically confrontational. The wonder of 'Fear of a Black Planet is that not only has it not dated, but it sounds as though it could have been released in the distant future.

Kyleology

A judge once famously described the Jeremy Kyle Show as 'a human form of bear-baiting'. While critics of the show often cite this as a definitive and apposite description of its horror, it falls into a trap of the show's making. In order for Kyle's piece of shit to be broadcastable, its participants have to be made to seem subhuman, animalistic - at best childlike, requiring Kyle's care. In fact, if we're going 19th century in our comparisons, the Jeremy Kyle Show is a reincarnation of Bedlam, where damaged people are exposed for the entertainment of others. It is a form of pornography - a pornography of aggression and misery (not exactly the most fun kind).

What is interesting about the show is not the horror displayed, but the strategies used to legitimate the display of horror. Prime among these is a thin tissue of theraputic credibility. The entire show is framed as an attempt to reconcile warring parties. This is of course utterly unbelievable - even accounting for editing, the participants have at most 45 minutes of Kyle's shock therapy. Given that many of the participants have come to the show in an attempt to rid their lives of conflict, his abrasive style can be assumed to be of very little use.

The show implicitly accepts this, and so Kyle often speaks of the 'Aftercare' team headed by the gentle Northern 'Good Cop' Graham. Aftercare is an apology for Kyle's aggression, the flowers after the wife-beating. Interestingly, we're near as fuck never told how the participants fared during, or following Aftercare. Instead of any meaningful engagement with the guests and their experiences, Kyle spends around 5 minutes of his alloted hour making Graham's healing powers sound as profound and (we can assume) realistic as those of Jesus Christ.

The second and more politically interesting justifying strategy applied to make Kyle's Marvellous World of Madfolk acceptable is one of class. Kyle is a militant member of the middle-class. Kyle makes his class war obvious - the frequency with which he abstractly calls on the state to intervene against his guests ('This, Mr. Brown, is what's wrong with this country') is truly frightening. The entire texture of the show pits his ill-fitting business suits and recieved pronounciation against the ill-fitting (in a different direction) brightly-coloured sportswear and regional accents of his guests. Kyle's show used to largely consist of him screaming "GET A JOB!!!" at poor and/or drug addicted and/or mental ill guests - although this has wisely desisted since The Crunch hit and unemployment rocketed.

Ultimately, class provides the key to comprehending the Jeremy Kyle Show. The late Aneurin Bevan once wrote that 'around the meagre tables, in the small rooms of the poor, bitter hells of wounded vanity and personal acrimony arise'. Stuck in an ex-industrial town (so many of the guests are from Yorkshire, urban Scotland or South Wales that it's frightening) with no job and little prospect of gaining one, short of escape, turning to drink, drugs or a drastically destructive relationship is all too attractive. In fact, aside from these broadcastable vices, the poorer or more (whisper it) working class you are, the younger you will die, after having led a less healthy more miserable life. The Jeremy Kyle Show's 'Bad Cop, Good Cop' routine mirrors that of New Labour, faced with the ongoing misery of the areas destroyed by Thatcherism - an ASBO, then a chromed city centre. The cause of this approach is a fundamental, and wilful ignorance of the roots and horrors of poverty. If Kyle and Brown don't understand, it's our job to make them understand that getting beaten up and getting flowers is demeaning, disgusting and should fucking stop.

On Burma

The international community (which as Chomsky has pointed out, simply means the US and UK, and subordinated NATO allies) has erupted over the extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's decades-old house arrest. By odd coincidence I've been reading an old John Pilger book named 'Hidden Agendas'. It's nice to bask in the World's Poshest Australian's glow, and magnificently portentous writing. It has also been nice to read about the islands of grotesque despotism that persist, despite the 'international community'. His account of Burma follows the pattern of his account of Cambodia, with well-meaning clichés about the beauty of the landscape, the humility and goodness of the people and so on. At one point, he refers to the deference of someone presumably terrified at the prospect of offending a foreigner during Burma's 'turn to tourism' as proof of an innate generosity. This isn't necessary - noone should have to live under a regime of slave and/or convict labour, in conditions of extreme deprivation, even if they're rude and live in a sequence of slimy caves.

The portrait given of Aung Syn Suu Kyi is more nuanced - having acquired a rare interview, he does the unimaginable and asks difficult questions. Solidarity with Third World oppositional movements often takes on a crude element of hero-worship - Mandela, the Dalai Lama - and it often feels like humbug to criticise this well-meaning projection. Pilger, having laid praise on thick, adds enough nuance to counter the cliché. In particular, he questions her on her proposal for a unity government with her jailers. John Pilger remains one of the world's great journalists, simply for the fact that he's conducted robust, critical interviews with two of the subjects (and my, what subjection!) in Gordon Brown's piss-poor, unsold book 'Courage'. In his greatest film, 'Apartheid Did Not Die', he has an actual argument with Nelson Mandela. It is impossible to imagine Andrew Marr doing the same.

However, what's been interesting about Burma is the issue's proof of how our politicians fall over themselves to criticise regimes in which they have very little interest. There's the simple propaganda argument, often heard around the time of the Iraq War, that Saddam's crimes were equivalent to the crimes of a myriad of other dictators, and thus he didn't deserve toppling. As solid as this argument is, it did lead to people who were opposed to the war saying things like "Well, why don't they sort out Mugabe?!". A narrow focus on human rights violations can lead to strange and contradictory statements - the 'comedian and activist' Mark Thomas wrote an article on Burma which praises, with massive qualification, America and the Conservative Party's stances on Burma. If you find yourself singing the praises of the armers of Indonesia and the bombers of Baghdad, you're missing the point.

The point is that horrors such as those committed by the Burmese junta are perfectly acceptable to major companies, smaller businesses and the 'international community'. Authoritarian capitalism is the norm for most of the world's population, from China to Honduras, and the horrors that the Burmese people suffer are entirely congruent with past and present horrors. The boycott and disinvestment campaign has been very effective, preventing whole American cities and states, and the EU to theoretical non-involvement with the Burmese government. Despite this, the regime persists. Aung Syn Suu Kyi, despite her Courage, will strive for national unity and the injustice that is 'peace and reconciliation'. The only action that will topple it is the action of the Burmese people themselves, battered and enslaved, and the only justice the Burmese people is that which they take in the heat of struggle, to the probable horror of the 'international community'. They have risen, despite their 'peaceloving' 'deference', and will rise again.

There's a good war!

The War in Afghanistan, being the new focus of the US and UK, is quickly shooting up the agenda. Much of the debate recently has focused on the lack of equipment for our boys, primarily the lack of helicopters. There should be a massive increase in helicopters, and they should be used to lift 'our boys' out of a depraved war. The focus given to Afghanistan by President Obama and the increasing severity of the situation in 'Af-Pak' has led to a rather fine upsurge of oppositional literature on the topic. Firstly, Tariq Ali's general piece from 2007, in the beautifully presented, but ever infuriating New Left Review and his more Pakistan-focused 'diary' in this fortnight's London Review of Books. Hitting a more rabble-rousing and less self-obsessed note is Jonathan Neale's wonderfully simple overview of the issues, actors and factors that make up the situation. The feat of this piece is that an 8-year-old could come out the other end of it, and know more about Afghanistan than George W. Bush.

Finally, and on a more bloggy note, the magnificently named Lenin on the crassness of the inevitability argument - a kind of Vietnam syndrome of the left, where any war in difficult territory, with an opposition, will lead to US defeat. The comments section is, as always, worth reading - proof that, however problematic the anti-Iraq war campaign was, the left remains capable of losing its bearings faced with 'the Good war'.

Album of the Week: 'What's Going On?'

A while back, I ranted, without much control, on the subject of 'New Atheism'. Listening to 'What's Going On?' this week, I realised that those words were wasted (well, more than usual) given that the stupidity of the New Atheists can be summed up by the fact that they refuse to recognise the difference between the Christianity of Pope Benedict XIV and Marvin Gaye.

'What's Going On?' is correctly considered to be one of the greatest albums ever made, and there is a narrative traditionally associated with it, usually featuring the unheard-of political radicalism of it, as a Motown release. The film Dreamgirls, about Diana Ross and the Supremes, features a subplot where a Gaye soundalike's vision rubs up against the boss of the Motown-alike record label - leading 'Gaye' down a path of heroin use, and towards death. The inanity of the music that the soundalike produces is hilarious - 90% of the lyrics being the words "peace and love" - and this is before we take into account that 'Gaye' is played by the foul Eddie Murphy - but I digress...

The real surprise of the album, after imbibing the traditional narrative, and hits used for the illustration of it, is the level of introspection, and religious content that 'What's Going On?' contains. The left-wing politics is wonderful - gloriously earnest, exalting "picket lines/and picket signs" and those whose "hair is long". These gems are sanctified and sillified by the inclusion of a recurring prayer that begins "Don't go and talk about my father/God is my friend (Jesus is my friend)", which puts one in mind of both Gaye spoiling for a pub fight with a trash-talking atheist, and Gaye's own father, who tragically shot his son, depriving the world of black music of one of its greatest stylists, and perhaps its greatest singer since Paul Robeson. The music is profoundly soft, unthreatening, with melotrons and flutes spiralling to the heavens, drums that resemble a babbling brook, and grand, simple strings.

Listening to the album, the picture that emerges (much like that of Thom Yorke's 'The Eraser') is of a troubled soul, projecting his crises onto a disturbing, broken world. But a continuity exists with his earlier work, which unlike that of Thom Yorke, is not entirely depressing. So the lush, swinging 'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)' comes on like a love song, then begins "Oh, mercy mercy me/things ain't what they used to be/Where did all the blue skies go?/Poisoned is the wind that flows/From the North and South". On 'Right On', he bemoans inequality, and his own addiction to easy living and nightlife (and perhaps cocaine - I don't have a good Gaye timeline), despite the horror of the world.

The litany of apocalyptic scenarios contrasted with appeals to God's love present us with something more complex than simple love songs, or political tracts. We're left with love songs which accept a world where love is crushed under the jackboot, songs of beauty and ecstacy in a world of squallor, songs that appeal to our highest impulses, while accepting that the easy way out is very easy indeed. It deserves its status, and deserves better than Eddie Murphy.

Oh, What a Lovely War!

Tomorrow, US troops will 'pullback' from towns and cities in Iraq. Good taste surely dictates that the celebrations will be muted - throwing a giant parade, given the million dead and 2 million displaced, would be quite grotesque (I foolishly searched for an image for this post, using the terms 'Iraq War' - not a clever move). The Iraq War (or 'Iraq 2 - This Time, It's Protracted') is seen, by all other than the most ostrich-like supporters of the invasion, as an unmitigated disaster - the deposition and execution of Saddam being scant consolation for the utter destruction of infrastructure, the creation of a sham 'democracy' and the unleashing of inter-communal violence. All of the main governmental supporters of the war: Bush, Blair and Aznar, are now out of office.

The election of an American President who was opposed to the war, and the 'pullback', are drawing a line under the invasion - continued criticism of the war will henceforth appear to be, if not sour grapes, then an increasingly irrelevant irritant. Of course, US troops remain in Iraq, as will the aircraft that rain fire indiscriminately and the branches of KFC. The message is that it's over - the massage of the message from the pro-war crowd will be "we came with good intentions, but got it wrong. Better luck next time!". They'd prefer not to learn the lessons, as they didn't after Kosovo, as they won't after Afghanistan. It's a shame, as I maintain a sedentary lifestyle, and really hate marching, even against war, but needs must.

One problem for the anti-war movement is film. The director and critic Francois Truffaut argued that it is impossible to make an anti-war film, as film can't fail but make look war look exciting. I've always taken this argument as fact - if we look at Apocalypse Now!, all 'the horror, the horror' is balanced with wide shots of helicopters, Flight of The Valkyries and that. Platoon, despite Oliver Stone's pinko-commie ways, leaves us with a slo-mo death scene that makes the chemical squalor of US conduct in Vietnam seem like the greatest heroism. But the Iraq War, for all the horror it's wrought, has left us with a genuinely anti-war film in the form of Paul Haggis' mesmeric 'In The Valley of Elah'.

'In The Valley of Elah' achieves its stance against the war by not setting its film in Iraq - the battered country is only seen in cameraphone footage, grimly reminiscent of leaked footage of so much atrocity. However, Iraq has come home - the film is set on a sunblasted army base, as disconnected from the US as the troops stationed thousands of miles away. Tommy Lee Jones plays the protagonist, the father of an Iraq veteran, and the narrative takes the form of a police procedural. The heavy lifting of the piece is undertaken by Tommy Lee's face, shown in nearly perpetual close-up, and his face's performance is magnificent. It's been said of the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor that he's capable of playing different tempo, tone and volume on each finger. In 'Elah', Tommy Lee Jones does the same thing with each facial muscle.

The film is remarkable for its portrayal of soldiers as human beings. Despite the millenia old existence of armies, this remains a difficulty (see the film '300' if you don't believe me). Perhaps it's because the things which armies do are beyond human - it's hard to believe that the people who razed Fallujah are of made of flesh like ours. But they are - they drink, they fight, they cry, they grieve and love. In a sane society, we wouldn't need an Armed Forces Day, or a Veterans' Day. We'd simply remove these individuals from the hideous situations in which they are placed, and carry about our business.

In dealing with the aftermath of war, 'In The Valley Of Elah' makes war as unsexy as it should be, and by implication, makes the decision to prosecute wars of choice seem as psychotic as it truly is. The film is problematic in its almost exclusive focus on the suffering of Americans. This is an imbalance that we can presume will exist until Iraq becomes the Las Vegas on the Gulf that we are promised. But in its unflinching portrait of what becomes even of the prosecutors of war, it deserves attention and acclaim.

"You're Fired!"

The Apprentice, the most stylish and expensive of reality shows, is limping towards its yearly final, proud but bruised by what Sir Alan has referred to as 'harsh economic times'. It's already been noted by Private Eye that 'Britain's most beligerent boss' is one of the many victims of the credit crunch (an absurd title, which makes the economic crisis sound like an event, not a process, and a breakfast cereal, in one pithy stroke of the alliterator's pen). The Apprentice has been forced to reflect this, and as such the opening narration refers to Sir Alan as being worth millions, rather than putting a specific figure on his wealth, as this sum has been drastically decreased, due to Sir Alan's hasty investment in property, and property subsequently becoming worth less than a supermarket baguette. How he must cry himself to sleep...

It's a shame, because The Apprentice is the best reality show. To call it a guilty pleasure would be a lie - it's an outright pleasure. Perhaps it's an inverse pleasure, because what's truly thrilling about The Apprentice is that it demonstrates the injusticies, stupidities and vulgarities of capitalism, up close, in high definition, and in a way that no drama, written by even the most brilliant of left-wing writers, could ever manage.

The disgustingness of the process (one year, excluding a female candidate for her unwillingness to abandon her child) and the foul bullshit that Sir Alan spouts are all fun to mock and appalling demonstrations of the prejudices inbuilt in the system. But for the real proof of my theory, we have to look at the Apprentices (or Apprenti) themselves. Almost universally detestable - a quality which the business community mispercieves as honesty - they bluster through a sequence of relatively simple tasks, focused more on self-assertion than on the task in hand, leading them to fail so often that the impression you're left with is that they are simply failures. Maybe it's a symptom of these 'harsh economic times', but this year has been marked by how often the teams have made a loss under the rules of the programme - in fact, once or twice, both teams have ended up in this situation.

The level of personal and professional idiocy on display leads many people doubt the validity of selection process, but, going by the potted biographies of the Apprenti that we're offered, they are all successful in their respective fields. This demonstrates, I would like to think, that the premium placed on assertiveness and risk-taking under capitalism leads to a situation that used to be described, in less enlightened times, as 'lunatics taking over the asylum'. Given the offensiveness of this phrase, it's better just to call it what it is, which is people with borderline personality disorders, having positions that offer absurd power and wealth, despite their inability to succeed at the most simple tasks.

This leads us naturally to the ongoing implosion of the Labour Party. The massive decline in the membership has left the higher orders of the Labour Party resembling nothing more than a gaggle of Apprentices. Although the support Labour recieves from the poisoned dwarf that is Sir Alan should force each remaining Labour Party member to commit ritual suicide, the ultimate proof of this theory is the fact of Hazel Blears. With her robust regional accent and robotic delivery of utter nonsense, she's the perfect Apprentice, and that's not mentioning her propensity for tax-dodging. The elevation of figures like our Hazel, James Purnell, Andy Burnham and so many others was necessary, given the flight of left-wingers, or even soft-left wingers, from the Labour Party, but, as we've seen, the elevation of the Headboy Tendency has sown the seeds of its destruction.

The current Labour meltdown compares unfavourably to previous Labour meltdowns. The flurry of ministers now leaving, compared to the graceful, Titantic-like slow sink of the Callaghan government, resemble sodden rats fleeing a burning pedalo. The resignation of the benefit-cutting, blisteringly right-wing prick James Purnell, compared to the resignation of Aneurin Bevan over the issue of the introduction of perscription charges, looks like the pathetic, career-focused move it is. How ruthless, how assertive, how Sir Alan!


POSTSCRIPT: Ludicrous. Just fucking ludicrous

Budgeting for the past: The Hauntology of Labour

Given the scale and profile of the current recession, the recent budget, traditionally the most trying of times for commentators (a great deal of numbers and infinitesimal changes in the price of fags do not a good 'angle' make) has become a goldmine for the boosters and gravediggers of 'New' Labour. The Guardian's Polly Toynbee alternates, with alarming frequency, between these two positions, but for a swift kick up the arse to the government, hers, with its close detail and wounded tone, is one of the best. In general, the conclusion drawn by commentators of the soft left and right is that the increase in tax for people earning over £150,000 a year is the death of 'New' Labour, given that not increasing tax on the rich was one of its key policy positions.

The tax raise is tiny, and largely symbolic. Labour has lost its funding from the very rich, as the hyper-rich now see Labour as an unsafe investment. As a result, 95% of its current funding comes from the trade unions, and with wage freezes/cuts and job losses clearly on the cards for the public sector, increasing tax a fraction on 1.5% of the population is considerably easier way to curry left favour than, well, raising wages and creating jobs. This symbolic murder of 'New' Labour is also an attempt to re-create the 'Brown bounce', when horror at the style of government of Tony Blair led people to hallucinate that Gordon Brown was authetically 'Old' Labour. The political problems of this are compounded by the fact that any hope in Brown as 'Old' Labour are an hallucination of 'Old' Labour as being a model of social democratic government.

If we take an actual appraisal of the last Labour government of 1974-1979, rather than a thumbnail one (beer and sandwiches, unions running the country, ill-fitting suits and regional accents), Brown is inarguably 'Old' Labour. Wage freezes, spiralling unemployment, global economic crisis - all very retro. The major discontinuity is the fact that, way back when, Labour hadn't dragged us into two absurd and disgustingly bloody wars. Brown has spent considerably less than fuck all on protecting jobs and wages, trillions on bankers and this is a 'left budget'?

Margaret Thatcher said her greatest achievement was 'New' Labour - undoubtably that is the case. But just as true is the fact that the greatest achievement of the pre-Thatcher Labour government was to soften the unions through collective bargaining, legal restriction and the argument that the unions should accept cuts in the 'national interest'. Maybe history the legacy of 'New' Labour will be to have killed, or at least critically wounded, the idea that Labour works for the working class. Sparks of resistance to the notion that the crisis is above and beyond control (we regret to inform you that we have to let you go) are burning. Let's hope Labour have lost the power to snuff them out.

Approaching Gore Vidal: Part 2, 'Selected Writings'

Gore Vidal's politics are probably the most intriguing thing about the man. An odd kind of Democrat, he has vehemently opposed America's intervention in all wars including WWII, correctly regards the US an empire, and believes in the legalisation of all drugs. When his personal life is factored in, it is impossible to believe that he was a friend of the Kennedys and Clintons, and a congressional candidate. But, class counts in the States, despite the lunatic pronouncements of pro-Americans on the subject of the American Dream, which is, and has always been a dream.

'Selected Writings', never less than entertaining, collects Gore's writings on books and politics, largely sidestepping Gore's name-dropping, aristocratic side. Of course, these are more than one side of the man (probably nearer 2/3rds), and they creep in - an eyewitness account of 50s Egypt is by turns a travelogue of the kind popularised (?) by Michael Winner and a breathtakingly detailed exposition of superpower rivalry, coming to the then radical conclusion that money, not politics, was the determining factor. A brilliant, before-its-time (1981!) attack on the homophobia and racism of one of the original neo-cons, Norman Podhoretz, 'Pink Triangle and Yellow Star' (exerpt here), is marred by Vidal's compulsion to mock Podhoretz and his wife, Midge Decter, for being nouveau riche, of 'the new class' - not Mayflower originals like the Grand Old Gores.

Vidal's radicalism is absurdly wide-ranging, ranging from attacks on what he calls The Family to ending an essay on 9/11 with a simple, and gigantic, table of US interventions in the 10 years preceeding the attacks. In the same essay, the pre-9/11 Bush is compared to Hitler. Reading Gore's more recent work, the motivation behind his surreal election night face-off with David Dimbleby becomes blindingly clear.

Vidal has bitten off a large chunk of extreme libertarian thought - during the Clinton years, he famously associated with the survivalist convicted of the Oklahoma Bombings. He therefore expresses his anti-imperialism in the tones of one who accepts the Israel Lobby thesis, with touches of New World Order 'theory'. Added to this a fierce (and inexplicable) support for the Democrats, Bush became, to Gore, a fascist dictator, clamping down on dissent, launching criminal wars. While Bush undoubtably did this, Gore saw Bush and the Republican party as cancers on America, and not a logical outgrowth. When the Republicans were defeated at the polls, all the totalitarianism that had been determined by Gore - the theft of the 2000/2004 elections by Republican 'criminals' vanished into smoke. A fascist party that gets peacefully replaced by its rivals, isn't a fascist party.

Album of the Week: 'Armed Forces'

Elvis Costello is perhaps the most respected songwriter to emerge from the punk era - a status he has achieved by spending the last 15 years or so behaving like an apprentice Paul McCartney. He has recorded albums with string quartets and Allen Toussaint, written orchestral music and, most recently, acted like King Music on his good but grating 'chat show' Spectacle. Much of his more recent work has involved carefully rounding off the razor-sharp edge that his music previously had, and re-presenting himself as an all too conscious 'musician'. He is not, however much he may like to think he is, a middle-of-the-road tunesmith - his music is not made for wedding receptions. Costello famously remarked, around the time of the release of his first 3 albums, that he was capable of two emotions - guilt, and revenge. 'Armed Forces' deals with these, brutally and relentlessly.

One reason 'Armed Forces' stands apart from the other early Elvis albums, is hinted at in its title, and blugeoned home in the thankfully discarded provisional title, 'Emotional Fascism'. As well as referring to snatches of broken, destructive relationships, the ghosts of World War Two and the stasis of the social contract that emerged following are pressed into service. In perhaps the album's weakest track, 'Chemistry Class' - a poor, disjointed song of obsessive love and heartbreak - the chorus runs "Are you ready for the final solution?". Fortunately, this disgrace is a rare blip - the interplay between the political and personal is more stylishly done in the glittering 'Oliver's Army', which draws a parallel between the drunken rambling of an old soldier and the decline of the British Empire. The political extremity of the coming Thatcher revolution and the rise of the NF is dealt with in the itchy, fearful 'Green Shirt' and the fabulous 'Sunday's Best', which imagines a particular British seaside fascism of "Songs of Praise and Reader's Wives", where natives "beat up strangers who talk funny - take their greasy, foreign money".

Of course, this all sounds rather worthy, which is where the other half of the album's content comes into play. During the recording of 'Armed Forces', Costello is on record as having been under the influence of Abba. Unlike the dry, clattering, Americanised rock of 'My Aim Is True' and 'This Year's Model', 'Armed Forces' is a lush, harmonied and synthesisered work. This explains the enduring status of 'Oliver's Army' and 'Accidents Will Happen' as his most recognizable songs. It also acts as a glorious counterpoint to the grime and sweat of the subject matter - the peppy sequencing and cut glass chords of 'Green Shirt' makes lyrical punches like "better cut off all identifying labels/before they put you on the torture table" easier to weather. The grand horror of the lyrics next to the horror of the subject matter fits into the famous 'Peep Show' framework of brown toast for dinner, and white toast for dessert. The joke is on him, because I actually love brown toast.

Album of the Week: 'Dark Side of the Moon'

Having attacked the 'Holy Album' school of music appreciation, it seems absurd to focus on perhaps the holiest of holies, Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon'. However, 'Dark Side of the Moon' is as much a victim of the 'Holy Album' way of listening as any number of stellar soul singles and non-Bob Marley reggae tunes. Its particular myth entirely precedes and overshadows it - stoners' plaything, synchronises with Wizard of Oz etc. etc.. If anything backs up the argument that the worship of the album puts commodity over content, it's the pants pictured above. You cannot listen to them.

Were you able to listen to the album through those pants, what would assail you would be music that is rocking and 'spacy' but also harsh and experimental. The alternating vocal parts of David Gilmour and Roger Waters' sum up the two different poles that tracks veer between. The sequencing of the heroic and absurd 'The Great Gig in the Sky' next to the biting, aggressive and not very good 'Money' make it obvious. In their inept, hippish way, 'The Floyd' strive for the transcendent, but the mundane and the downright awful keep exercising a pull.

The Syd Barrett-era, and post-'Dark Side' Pink Floyd albums, are packed with lyrics, which are not their forté - just thinking of the phrase "shine on, you crazy diamond" should make you shudder. But on 'Dark Side of the Moon', the lyrics are, for the most part, sparse - it's over 2 minutes into the first track that singing makes its first appearance. The lyrics that are left to stand in this space are better than most - the peerless 'Us and Them', deals with the horror of war in a way that's distant, tragic, and far from the idealism of 60s pacifism. In gloriously effette tones, the line "With, without/Who can deny it's what the fighting's all about?" sounds as though it comes from a suicidal, non-interventionist god. 'Time', while dealing with wasted lives and shattered dreams, as all good songs do, notches up one gem and one clanger - "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" and "the Sun is the same, in a relative way but you're older".

'Dark Side of The Moon' is not trippy, and not appropriate for the branding of novelty underpants. It is a measured, beautifully recorded, ambitious and stylish rock album. It created a synthesis between classical music (experimental and conventional) and popular music that was the well-spring for the self-conscious ambition of Radiohead (perhaps a mixed blessing), and its lyrical razing of the British post-war consensus laid the foundations for punk. It is not a relic or an icon, it's an album that remains relevant, and deserves consideration.

Approaching Gore Vidal: Part 1, 'Palimpsest'

Approaching Gore Vidal is no easy task, as David Dimbleby recently discovered. He's the last man standing from the era of the mega-celebrity author, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote having died. He's also older than most American houses, if not the Sun. Reading his autobiography, 'Palimpsest', you would not be surprised to read a withering put-down of Jesus, or an anecdote about Julius Caesar cruising for rough trade.

Given Vidal's absurdly interesting life story, 'Palimpsest' is a pallid, sporadically interesting work. In large part this is due to Vidal's aristocratic background, and the tiresome focus on family (or family tree) that follows. One of the best anecdotes in the book is of Princess Margaret watching a film about the fall of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, and exclaiming "They're so ordinary. They're just like us!". When Vidal is in aristocratic mode, the book becomes tiresome - clearly, nobody ever told him that an Upper Class name dropper is not a thing to be. This mindset also leads him to effectively end the book with the assisination of JFK, in 1963. The book was written in 1994, and Vidal, seeing himself as the sum total of the company he keeps, considers very little of the 30 intervening years to be worth recording.

More's the pity, as the first half of the book, dealing with his adolescent love affair with a boy named Jimmie Trimble, his ongoing homosexuality and World War II, is riveting. Vidal's style, alternately acid and profound, suits the subject matter perfectly. Jimmie dies in WWII, and Gore undertakes a pre-AIDS marathon of loveless casual sex, etching over a thousand notches into his proverbial bedpost. Despite the evidence to the contrary, Vidal is reticent to consider himself homosexual - one of his most famous aphorisms being "there are no homosexual or heterosexual people, there are homosexual and heterosexual acts". In Gore Vidal's case, there are an epic amount of homosexual acts, and next to no heterosexual acts.

Animating the section is Vidal's dedication to creating an historical record of an existing homosexuality (or homosexual acts) in the mythic past beloved of American conservatives. In Vidal's alternative history, WWII becomes a festival of enforced homosexuality, which demobbed soldiers re-enact with glee. The emergence of the USA as the world's hyperpower provides Gore and his contemporaries with more places to cruise. Allusions are made to the homosexual leanings of both JFK and RFK.

The aspect of the autobiography that is most striking is the distance with which he views his friendships. He draws a scathing comic sketch of the author Anais Nin, drawing on his dislike for her prose, her rampant lying and narcissism. All very amusing, but obviously posing the question of why he was a very close associate of hers for several years. Tennessee Williams has a slightly less sharp assessment, but then they were friends for decades, and the portrait is still cutting. The last years of his life story as he tells it, spent as a courtier in the JFK White House, follow a similar pattern - Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Onassis bearing the brunt of his spite. Ultimately, the impression that Vidal creates is of the consumate observer-writer - dispassionate, non-interventionist and not averse to shaping a narrative to his greater glory.