UNKLE: War Stories
I love this album more every time I listen to it. (*****)
Tom Middleton: Lifetracks
(*****)
Fink: Distance and Time
(***)
Coldcut: Sound Mirrors
(***)
« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »
The next TTIS pub crawl is in Ealing, and is being run in conjunction with Grace and the Chaplaincy at Thames Valley University.
Everyone is welcome. Come along and visit pubs in the area, asking the manager to take beer mats and posters raising awareness of sex trafficking.
We'll meet at Costa Coffee in Ealing at 11am on Saturday 17th November, and will finish by 2pm, with the option of going on to a local pub. Contact me for further info, or just come along.
This sculpture by Louise Bourgeois is currently sitting outside Tate Modern, part of their retrospective of her work.
On Friday night I dropped into Tate Modern to have a look at Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, the new installation in the turbine hall. It's a crack in the floor, beginning at one end as a hairline fracture, and opening out into a deep fissure in the middle of the hall.
A Shibboleth is a word or cultural device that acts as a test of membership of a society (from Judges 12:1-6). The following quotes are from the exhibition leaflet;
‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.
In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.
Perhaps Shibboleth will help us think about how racial divisions run through British society, where many people are blinded by the belief that we've grown beyond racism. Or maybe we'll just play around with the crack, and never look to closely at what it signifies.
Salcedo has remained tight-lipped about how the crack was made, but it will leave a permanent scar on the building when it's filled in.
While I was there, the hall became remarkably full for an unusual piece of modern art. Then the crowd pulled out their ipods and headphones, and began dancing wildly. Someone in the middle of the hall coordinated the occasional cheer, but otherwise everyone danced to their own music. Other than the fast-rising smell of sweat, it was all harmless and friendly. It's coordinated from a website, www.mobile-clubbing.com.
I've spent a fair amount of time this week handing out beermats similar in style to the image above. Sometimes I was wearing a dog collar, and people expressed shock that a vicar should be distributing such material. The headline reads 'Natasha's been a naughty girls', and the text below says,
She tried to escape from her traffickers. Instead she was imprisoned, beaten and forced to have sex with up to forty men a day. Her pimp says he will kill her baby if she tries it again.
The truth isn't sexy.
It's a campaign against sex trafficking led by a small group of inspired volunteers from the UK emerging church network. On Saturday they oprganised a 'pub crawl' in Croydon, and I went along. Instead of drinking lots of beer, we offered campaign beer mats and posters to the managers of each of the pubs we stopped at. My group visited eleven pubs, and nine took beer mats. In the other two, the manager was out, and the staff didn't have the authority to take them. No-one refused point-blank.
I've just spent the last couple of days at the chaplaincy stand at the Freshers Fair at Thames Valley University in Ealing. As well as telling people about the chaplaincy, I handed out TTIS beer mats, and got into a lot of conversations about sex trafficking. It got the message about sex trafficking out to a lot of students, and it was an effective piece of chaplaincy work as well; everyone knows that I'm the chaplain, and something of what I stand for.
The next pub crawl is in Ealing on Saturday 17th November, beginning at 11:30. It's being organised by The Truth Isn't Sexy in conjunction with Grace and the TVU Chaplaincy. I'll post more details on the blog when I have them. Everyone is welcome, provided you are old enough to enter a pub.
To mark International Bloggers' Day for Burma, I invite you to compare and contrast two news reports.
First, from the BBC website;
Scores of monks are trying to leave Burma's main city, Rangoon, following the military's bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, reports say. Monks were seen at the railway station and bus drivers were reportedly refusing to take them, out of fear they would not be allowed petrol. Curfews and night-time police raids are continuing in Rangoon. Correspondents describe a climate of fear there.
...
Military vehicles patrolled Rangoon's streets before dawn with loudspeakers blaring: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests."
One correspondent in Rangoon told the BBC that people in the country's former capital were angry and frightened.
The correspondent described how a middle-aged man in one of the city's tea shops whispered: "I really want change - but they have guns and we don't, so they'll always win."
Reports from Rangoon said around 25 more monks were arrested by security forces in a raid on a temple overnight.
And now, from the government-operated myanmar.com;
NAY PYI TAW, 26 Sept The government has been striving day and night together with the people for the emergence of a peaceful, modern and developed discipline-flourishing democratic nation.
As the government has been endeavouring to ensure stability of State, community peace, the rule of law and national development that are the main requirements, the national races in all regions are practically enjoying the fruits of national peace and development.
However, saboteurs from inside and outside the nation and some foreign radio stations, who are jealous of national peace and development, have been making instigative acts through lies to cause internal instability and civil commotion. Hence, some members of the Sangha, anti-government groups and saboteurs were staging protest walks.
Some foreign broadcasting stations and destructionists have been issuing announcements, requests and leaflets as if the entire people were taking part in the protests participated by only some monks and people just to intensify the rowdy demonstrations.
The people who wish to earn their living in peace do not accept or take part in the protests. Thus, some saboteurs of the protest walks forcibly urged families of the homes all along their route, whether they know them or not, to provide alms and other requisites for monks.
Sometimes the only way to get people to love democracy and the rule of law is to seize power, and use force to beat it into them.
Governments across the world must continue to pressurise the Burmese regime to institute reforms and recognise human rights.
Last week, Simon Barrow of Ekklesia posted a link to The Dirty List, the Burma Campaign's list of companies with ties to Burma. The Campaign wants us to apply pressure on these companies to sever their ties, thus isolating the Myanmar regime, and closing revenue streams. On the list is Lonely Planet, the travel guide company, which publishes a guide to Myanmar (the regime's name for Burma, which the British government refuses to recognise). On their web site, the company provides a balanced list of reasons for and against going to Burma as a tourist. The article notes that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has asked tourists not to go to Burma, and that the government used forced labour to ready tourist-related sights and services.
Usually, I'm all for giving people informed choices, and allowing them to make their own decisions. In view of the violence of the past week, Aung San Suu Kyi's request is compelling, and the Myanmar guide should be withdrawn. However, the company's owners have been resistant to all such calls in the past.
Things moved on a bit yesterday, as BBC News announced that Lonely Planet has been acquired by BBC Worldwide. Now is an opportune time to apply a little pressure on the guide's new owners.
A little digging revealed that BBC Worldwide's Chief executive Officer is John Smith, and his email address is john.smith.01@bbc.co.uk. I'm going to send him an email. The purchase of Lonely Planet was approved by the BBC Trust, who review all of the BBC's commercial activities against four criteria, one of which is that activities must 'not jeopardise the good reputation of the BBC or the value of the BBC brand'. Putting the BBC brand on a guidebook to Myanmar isn't going to do much for the brand's value, or for the BBC's reputation.
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