Forward to the past - are there lessons from 1911?

The thunder which has rolled round Sofia these past 2 days has fitted my mood – a feeling of Goetterdaemuring as the right-wing fanatics crawl out from under the stones in Europe and the United States and threaten the codes of civilised behaviour.

In 1996 Linz and Stepan produced one of the key texts of "transitology”, drawing on the South American and Iberian experience of democratisation of the 1980s, to help us think about the change process underway in Central and Eastern Europe.
Their aim was to try to identify the conditions which created a "consolidated democracy” – one whose citizens accepted the legitimacy of specific governments (regardless of the scale of their policy disagreements) simply because they believed that the governments had been fairly elected.
Paradoxically, there seem a growing number of right-wing American citizens and representives who no longer share that basic premise; who are so opposed to the notion of public services and taxation that they no longer accept "compromise” as a political tactic. Their bile and spleen is so great that they are prepared to risk a default on their national debt to get their way.

Hours after posting this, I am glad to be joined in my feelings by a Real Economics post. Now these bampots are joined in their challenge to democratic legitimacy by mad northern european gunmen – who have equally made the judgement that their politicians have "sold out”; no longer warrant a civilised response; and therefore should try to take out a political generation. Other groups are also alienated by the direction of modern states.
If I were a Palestine fisherman, faced with this Israeli reponse, I would not be trying a civilised reponse. The pacific responses of Gandhi do not come easy to the "instant gratification” generation!

We do seem back a hundred years – at the point which preceded wars and revolutions. The anarchists and leftists are curiously silent (unlike the early part of the 20th century) and yet it is their agenda which is most comprehensively offended by the developments of the past few decades. I was rereading yesterday Tony Judt’s last political tract and also Susan Strange’s Mad Money (1996) which remains for me the clearest analysis of the decisions (and non-decisions) which have brought the western world to the edge of disaster.

This morning I wandered in the old market near the mosque, synagogue and Orthodox church and was strangely comforted. Poor people – whose disparate cultures (Arab; Turk; Bulgarian) – still brought together to trade, drink (coffee) and smoke.

I was strangely drawn to this painting (by contemporary artist Vladimir Dmitrov) when I saw it earlier this year in a Sofia gallery (my second from the artist). I bought it - and now know why. It makes for a lovely illustration of my theme of "twilight of the Gods".

Eight Horsemen of the Apocalypse

In recent years, bankers have become a hated group. However, before the politicians could do any damage to their privileges and excesses, the British right-wing media was able to make an issue of some excessive financial claims made by numerous member of parliament (average 20k) and neuter what remaining power politicians had in that country. The ongoing media scandal in Britain has now (finally) exposed the moral bankruptcy of the “tabloid” newspapers who had politicians fearful of taking actions which would offend newspaper moguls. A joke which beautifully illustrates the perversion of these papers has the Pope in a rowing boat with the leader of the miners’ union of the 1980s then in deep conflict with the government. The oars are lost and Scargill (the miners’ leader) gets out of the boat and walks across the water to retrieve the oars. The next day’s newspapers headlines are “Arthur Scargill can’t swim!”!!
The ongoing scandal has now also brought police corruption into the frame in England.
So, in the course of 3-4 years, 4 core professions of the British Establishment (or Power Elite) have been demonised – bankers, politicians, media and police. Perhaps the most powerful professional group, however, has managed to stay out of the spotlight – but needs now to be “outed” and ousted from its privileged and corrupting position. And which group is that? They began to come into the frame at the recent exchanges between the Murdoch mogul and his son and members of the UK Parliament’s Select Committee on Culture and media. Of course the questions (ranging from dum to clever) were interesting - and also the answers (clearly carefully prepared). But, for me, most interesting were the faces and body language. I was particularly struck by the faces of those who sat in the row immediately behind the 2 Murdochs – not just that of his (beautiful, young Chinese) wife but those of two elegantly dressed and elderly consiglione whose impassive features recalled nothing less than those in mafia films. These were his lawyers – and it was (corporate) lawyers whose advice had been sought by the Murdochs we heard about time and time again during the exchanges. Britain and America have more lawyers than most of the countries of the globe put together – and they basically protect the amorality of corporations. And it is these poeple who then go to become judges - Craig Murray has a short post today on the amorality of our judges. And those with any optimism remaining for the future of the planet will be disappointed to learn that the majority of graduates these days still want to go into either the finance or legal sectors. If our churches had any morality left they would be focussing on this – and discouraging our youngsters from such decisions.
I think it was Harold MacMillan who suggested at a meeting of ex-Prime Ministers that the collective noun for a group of political leaders was a “lack of principles” (He also, interestingly, said that “we did not give up the divine right of kings to succumb to the divine right of experts”! ). So I offer you the 5 groups who are destroying our civilisation - investment bankers, politicians, corporate lawyers, tabloid journalists and corrupt policemen. But what about the accountants/economists, academics and preachers??? Damn! There seem to be 8 horses of the apocalypse! Let me in conclusion, offer this quotation from mediaeval times -

Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other human beings - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends

I have never heard of the painter John Atkinson Grimshaw – but would recommend these videos one of which has the music of Thomas Newman whose soundtrack helped make the film Road to Perdition such a fascinating one for me
I have chosen Durer's version of the Four Horsemen genre.

Man ist was man isst – we are what we eat

Serendipidy again – was browsing amongst reduced-price books in the nearby bookshop and found one with the title We Want Real Food – the local food lover’s bible by Graham Harvey (first published in 2006) which took my fancy. Michael Pollan is the guy I’ve read on the development of the food industry in the post-war period (in America) – and how damaging agro-business is to our health. He is actually a Professor of journalism in California who writes, as you might expect, very elegantly – but has become increasingly concerned about the issue. In Defence of Food – an eater’s manifesto (2008) is perhaps his easiest read. His classic - The Omnivore’s Dilemma (also 2006)- goes into harrowing detail about the composition of what we are eating (basically oil!), is more hard-going and, of course, talks exclusively about the United States.
So I was interested in what Harvey (a Brittish agricultural specialist) had to say about the issue – and the book certainly seemed a lot more practical – with notes on the minerals we need, on individual foods and details of real food shops and farmers’ markets in the UK ( not much use for me!). I was quickly gripped by the story he had to tell – particularly about the passion of a few heroes who stood against the gadarene rush to industrialise and fertilise our food in the post-war period – I was introduced to a family doctor in rural Aberfeldy, Scotland (Walter Yellowlees) who noticed the deterioration of health in the town and tracked it to fertilisers. His presentation of the results in London in the late 1970s to the British Medical Council in a paper entitled Ill fares the Land left his fellow medics indifferent. And I was stunned to read of the results of adding rock dust (with its trace elements) to soil fertility. Harvey’s argument is simple -

The best farm is a mixed farm in which grass and forage crops grown for ruminants are reared in rotation with crops grown for human consumption. This is a very balanced and sustainable system that mimics natural systems. It’s very productive and produces healthy foods.

Of course this is the method in Sirnea – and Romanian and Bulgarian villages which multi-national fertilizer companies want to abolish and who have had the support of the EU’s Agricultural policy for the last few decades. There are a few other books now about this scandal eg Raj Patel's
Food, health (and the safetly of what savings we can manage) are surely the most fundamental issues for the majority of Europeans. If only more of us would focus on what has been going on in these fields in the last few decades; identify the culprits; and come together to map out the sort of practical alternatives which Harvey does in this book!!!

I challenge my readers to produce a more moving combination of paintings and music than these two vidoes from the Skalen art gallery – just north of Copenhagen.

Oh to be in England!

A great European artist is dead – Lucian Freud (above). It’s rare for an artist to make the front page – and its sad that it’s so often only on their death that such detailed information can be found.

Alan Bennett has become a very English institution – in the sense of someone much appreciated for the loving way his essays and diaries recreate th sense of life in the middle of the 20th century. You can experience his wry appreciation of the past from this video which is part of a campaign against the cuts which are engulfing public libraries in England.

I liked this quote from Machiavelli as a commentary on the culture of ignorance with which we were presented in the parliamentary cross-examination of the Murdochs -

ONE ERROR into which Princes, unless very prudent or very fortunate in their choice of friends, are apt to fall, is of so great importance that I must not pass it over. I mean in respect of flatterers. These abound in Courts, because men take such pleasure in their own concerns, and so deceive themselves with regard to them, that they can hardly escape this plague; while even in the effort to escape it there is risk of their incurring contempt. For there is no way to guard against flattery but by letting it be seen that you take no offense in hearing the truth: but when every one is free to tell you the truth respect falls short...."
In my own humble experience every organisation i have ever worked in has resolved this conundrum by the simple expedient of ignoring it - in fact every management I have seen has encouraged the maximum possible sycophancy towards itself and the maximum possible group-think among employees. Genuinely independent thought was absolutely not to be tolerated. It would never occur to me that the Murdoch Empire would be any different

.And for those who can’t get enough of this developing scandal, here’s a podcast discussion between the editor of the Guardian and the key journalist to whom we owe the revelations.

It’s good to know that there is a sense of humour in some bureaucracies – this is the written response Bristol City council gave when asked about their strategy for dealing with a zombie invasion from outer space!

I’ve blogged recently about dead Bulgarian villages. This series of videos reminds us that many British towns are also suffering a slow, ligering death.

Painting treasures; bananas and bampots

Avid readers will remember my recent welcome for the work of Sofia City Gallery in opening up the thousands of paintings in its vaults to (selective) outside selection and display. I am always interested in policies for ensuring that the richness of paintings are, somehow, made more accessible. And last evening I encountered the most ambitious attempt – making the images of no less than 200,000 paintings which are currently in British public spaces (whether galleries, council buildings or universities) - accessible to us globally on the internet. It is a partnership between the BBC and an organisation which has steadily been publishing (at very reasonable prices) regional catalogues - and the first 60,000 images have just come available My only regret is that little information is given about the painters,
A short video has the delighful Scottish painter - Alison Watt – from my hometown – visiting the local art gallery (the board of whose wider library and museum complex my father used to chair for many a long year) and giving a lovely intro to the concept.
I have spoken several times of the impact which the novels (and an autobiographical piece) of Amos Oz have made on me recently. Much as I have admired the Proustian anguishings of Istanbul’s Nobel-prize winner Orhan Pamuk over the past decade, he actually can’t hold a candle to Amos Oz who surely should shortly attract the judge’s support. London Review of Books had a good assessment of Pamuk -

Among the less noted, but most striking aspects of the current government is its rediscovery of an Ottoman past long maligned by Turkish secularists. One could argue, without too much exaggeration, that the neo-Ottoman revival was anticipated by Pamuk’s novels, with their intricate portraits of a cultural past which Atatürk and his successors, in their drive to turn Turkey into a Western republic, were determined to bury. The building blocks of modern Turkey were denial, erasure and forgetting; with the establishment of a secular monoculture, the Armenian genocide was negated, Kurds were defined as ‘mountain Turks’, the fez was banned and the script was changed to the Roman alphabet. Trained as an architect, Pamuk has worked in reverse, dismantling the house Atatürk built, laying bare its cracks.

And I told you all to keep reading the Hungarian Spectrum blog – for the case study it currently offers of those we Scots call the "bampots” who are currently in charge of that country. The world’s attention is on the PIGS – so this little banana republic feels it can do what it wants – and it just could be the future hotspot for some central european violence. The posting about military studies becomning part f the school curriculum certainly suggests that this is being prepared for!
But where are the bloggers spotting and mapping such tendencies in other nations??
The painting is a William McTaggart - one of Scotland's big names (Victorian era). It is of the Island of Jura (which has 70 people and a great whisky) and reminded me a little bit of the Mitko Kostadinov I recently bought her in Sofia.

Evasion, amorality and Bulgarian tomatoes

OK Confession time – I did spend 5 hours of my life last evening hooked in front of the screen watching MPs of the british Parliament’s Select Committee on Culture and Media "cross-examine” first Murdoch Senior and Junior (who control so much of global media); and then Rebecca Brooks who was, until last week, the editor of one of their trash newspapers. It was a gripping and wonderful encounter between powerful people and a small cross-section of elected representatives of the british parliament – who revealed, each in their own way, both the weaknesses and (potential) strengths of that institution. I’ve put the verb in inverted commas simply because I could not believe how pusillanimous most of the the questions were (with the honourable exception of one Labour (Tom Watson) and one Conservative MP) – and how little follow-up and comment there was. Basically Rupert Murdoch has such a large empire (News of the World accounted for less than 1% of it) that he was rarely briefed; and his son’s comments could be reduced to two statements – "I only took up my appointment in 2007" and "I don’t want to prejudice the ongoing police inquiry". Rupert Murdoch clearly does not even begin to understand the meaning of responsibility – when reminded of the several occasions when people employed by his empire were publicly revealed as having committed serious misdemeanours and asked what action he had taken, his answer was simply that the law had to take its course. There were clearly no internal disciplinary processes. His further comment that "the people I had trusted had been let down by the people they had trusted" also reveals an interesting viewpoint, in which the more lowly you are, the greater a moral responsibility you bear.
The Guardian has useful video excerpts and commentary. Here's a great update of a song the Queen's drummer (Roger Taylor) gave us in the 1990s about Murdoch. Two Guardian correspondents give rather different perspectives (the strength of that paper) here and here. But Boffy’s Blog probably expresses it best.
And this media fixation effectively distracted me (yet again) from taking any real action on my bank savings. I had visited my three banks here to try to make a judgement of what to do with my cash – with a firm proposal being made to me for the first time to move into gold. Everyhere I look there are huge risks – inflation; banks failing; the euro failing; gold coins purchased neing duds.
So best thing is to bury oneself in (a) novels – eg Amos Oz’s Fimaand here and (b) in the delicious Bulgarian vegetables and wine. I don’t think I have yet paid tribute on this blog to Bulgarian tomatoes.

Let me therefore quote on the latter from an ex-pat -

I spent half of July and all of August on the Bulgarian sea coast, starting the day with thick slices of tomatoes on buttered toast, continuing with tomatoes and feta salad for lunch, and ending it with more tomatoes and roasted long peppers or eggplants in tomato sauce, or stuffed zucchini with tomatoes, or nibbling cherry tomatoes straight from the vine, or… you get the picture.
The sun ripened tomatoes from my aunt’s garden are the second reason I go back to Bulgaria every summer – the first being my family and friends. The fact that my parents live ten minutes from the sandy beaches of Varna – the best city in the country – is also a big plus.
I’ve never found better tasting tomatoes – heavy, meaty, sweet. Bulgarians are crazy about their tomatoes, and most of them will grow their own in every available plot. August will be dominated by tomato topics such as the prices on the market, a disease threatening the crop or the extinct local varieties.
The pungent sweet fruits will even overshadow yet another cabinet crisis or new corruption scandal and everybody’s weekends will be spent not on the golden beaches, but plucking or watering the mighty tomatoes. Growing, eating and canning tomatoes is our national sport. And though I’ve been living abroad for many years now, I’m more than happy to participate in those late summer games. By September I have tomato juice flowing in my veins instead of blood.

. See the photo I've just taken - this is an average tomato (note its relationships to the coaster or "biscuit" beneath - there are much larger ones which weigh in at a kilo apiece)

Cities and States

Our understanding of the past came traditionally through books portraying royal families and then of the development of and conflict between nations (variously studied by historians, economists or sociologists). Biographies then developed wonderful insights (eg Henry Pelling’s study of Churchill). More recently writers such as Jason Steele, have offered anthropological, biological and psychological perspectives into our past. But, for me, it is those approaches which focus on geography and specifically cities which give the most powerful insights into the past and its influence on the present – eg Amsterdam (Geert Maak), Barcelona (Robert Hughes), Berlin (Alexandra Richie), Breslau (Wroclaw) by Norman Davies), Constantinople (Philip Mansell), Paris (Richard Cobb). It is in cities that we live, experience (and occasionally influence) the drama of history through the mix of events and individuals. And I doubt whether there is a more evocative book than Mark Mazower’s Salonica – city of ghosts, Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 which I was unable to put down after opening its pages.
I have the book with me since I hope to visit the city – which is only a few hours’ drive south of here. I first heard of the place from my father who visited it in the 70s because of its connection with St Paul. Mazower’ s book tells a fascinating story of the city’s 500 years under the Byzantine and Ottoman rule – with their tolerant policy making it a beacon for Jews harrassed and victimised elsewhere in Europe. At one stage, they formed the largest (if most poor) part of a city which was dominated by a small group of local elites and suffered from plagues and strife. The growth of Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian and Serbian nationalist feelings in the 19th century heightened the fears of the city’s people – but noone could have predicted the sheer scale of brutality and population movement which the early part of the 20th century brought to this part of the world – with muslims being driven out of their homes and forced to flee to what was becoming Turkey; with Greeks being forced out of their homes in East Thracia and Anatolia. Last September I mentioned the massacres in Izmir in 1922 which transformed a city which, until then, had been peaceful. Mazower’s book tells a story of a city which had been much more riven with conflict and despair; which was conquered (against all expectations) by the Greek army in 1912; became a central node for hundereds of thousands of western soldiers in the Gallipoli campaign; and then had a third of the city ripped out by a great fire in 1917. As if this was not enough, the major part of its inhabitants were then forced to leave because of their religion.

From Salonica to Sofia – about which little is available on the internet. Here’s a short video on the city – with a rather obnoxious Australian-Brit hectoring an embarrassed Danish woman. But the pics are nice – particularly in the second half.

Der Spiegel gives Italy a deserved kicking here. This links back to a recent post about "amoral familiasm".

And, just to show there's no snooty british prejudice at work, an appropriate quotation about Britain -

It used to be said that the Russian tsarist system was autocracy, tempered by assassination. British public life feels similar: we don't do thoughtful, deliberate, progressive change. We do long periods of complacency, followed by explosions of outrage.
We don't properly confront the casino-banking system, until – bang! – all bankers are found to be evil and greedy. Hardly anybody discusses MPs' money until suddenly – crash! – MPs are evil and corrupt. Nobody talks much about how stories end up in newspapers, until suddenly – wallop! Journalists and executives, who made such a good living tearing at other institutions, are at last experiencing the same unforgiving mechanism of public opinion in its outraged mode.

The first photo is one I took as I climbed up the Belogradchik fortress - its the superb painting above the door of the derelict but restored mosque there. The second photo shows the town from the old fortress.

Nudging and lying

Rain last evening has brought cool. My ever-resourceful journal put me this morning onto another House of Lords inquiry which has been going on for some time – into „behavioural change” of all things – and onto about 1,000 pages of evidence related mainly to changing eating, drinking and travelling habits. An amazing freebie! I’ve long considered that policy advisers and makers (who churn out legislation) did not give enough attention to the numerous factors which make people behave the way they do. Some years back, I developed a table on this – which I keep updating. A fairly recent version can be accessed at page 73 here.I’m just flicking through the evidence – but already a couple of things have caught my attention – a fascinating table on ages of public service development in a paper on managing the impossibility of expectation – public services in 2020 from a new website. And an interesting submission from the Central Office of Information (COI) – which immediately raised in my mind the question of its relationship with the Statistical Office (which has been downgraded by the Coalition Government and whose chairman-designate has just resigned after a tough gruelling from MPs). I discover that the COI is also heading for extinction – after a review by a State Secretary (Matt Tee) who bears the title Permament Secretary for Government Communications but who seems to me to embody all that is worst in Orwellian Nuspeak. Instead of analysis, there is scoping and benchmarking. "Partnership” is nuspeak for privatisation. Indeed a new verb is invented "to brigade” as in

Government should agree a direct communication strategy, taking into account its priorities, the audiences it is trying to reach and the channels available to it. The strategy should brigade communication around a small number of themes.

And the axing of the COI is phrased as "its brand should cease to be used” !! These are weasel words – for wankers. Better to say that "government communications” is a synonym for…..lies!
Finally a nice gypsy rythm
And bring back Hieronymus Bosch!!! What would he make of our world in 2011? This is "ship of fools"