tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136351642024-03-07T05:04:54.351-05:00The East Coast SoundA floppy-haired Englishman takes an inside-out and outside-in look at America.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-70984804114358581642011-01-20T08:49:00.000-05:002011-01-20T08:51:27.101-05:00Dear Chris.<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Dear Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Still can’t believe you’re gone.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Keep expecting to see you in the dug-out<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Whistling and pointing like a mad kettle directing traffic.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">But you’re not in the dug-out.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">You’ve been dug out of the dug out <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">By Mike Ashley and his disgraceful spade.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">What was he digging for anyway?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Not coals. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Maybe Gold.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Or a grave for the team that Chris built.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Dear Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">A Cockney in Toon<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">But Loved.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Not like Dennis Wise<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:135.75pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">You were the anti-Wise<span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">And yet so very Wise<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">If you see what I mean.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Wisdom<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Speckling your black hair profoundly white.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">You’d probably be played by Morgan Freeman in the film.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Dear Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">I bet you smelled of Old-Spice and dignity.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">When you bled<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">You bled black and white.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">(Although my TV is quite old<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">So maybe it was just that).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Caretaker Chris<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Who is going to take care of us now?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Will Carrol be alright without his father figure?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Pardews not his real dad.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">….Neither were you….<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">He’s probably got an actual dad…<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">But y’know what I mean.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Dear Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Fired.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">And right before Christmas Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">And it was your Birthday too.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">That does seem a bit harsh Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">In weeks, or months, when we see you with someone else<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Probably west-Ham<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">We will try to be happy for you and not too jealous.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">It’s hard to see a future without you Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Although, we did just do Liverpool 3-1.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt">Which was pretty good.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">Copywrite George Nicholls 2010.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-74921471966268714272008-01-02T14:32:00.000-05:002008-01-02T14:54:17.009-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqUuIQtfkZvSbJA7IJM7TZhjdG8YKg6wHvc2wWAccL0_HcWbbTmd0Cerd5cccegeyi3ZdQADKiSNkSGcF8vtB_3brBNEGi1bEkR93iuS0bjNwfnUpwt-mf4-gI-bYXGDZv2PD1/s1600-h/IMG_3044.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqUuIQtfkZvSbJA7IJM7TZhjdG8YKg6wHvc2wWAccL0_HcWbbTmd0Cerd5cccegeyi3ZdQADKiSNkSGcF8vtB_3brBNEGi1bEkR93iuS0bjNwfnUpwt-mf4-gI-bYXGDZv2PD1/s400/IMG_3044.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5150969926741855970" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxjUTD_gTKEVUPRTJ8RIQuUbp9UFkiBJkPi83rYr-pBvMIlJadnuNxsU9ZBuDRp5qCFvXFw8l4hN34-ErhPiQk4w-Li9N6pBJQGP7yVYVR6N6dWMuUsXZAgEAToxS8xVNnc7iK/s1600-h/IMG_3029.JPG"><br /></a>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-84164822954149052332007-11-09T07:36:00.000-05:002007-11-09T11:52:52.408-05:00Stag "Dos"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyPUEwLhK2V22V9Lec-mNLVHtzx4WeS-3Cqw7tLHtA0hY9k3cVfpRyu2XBt5NONVVAO2oMbe_sW453R7J_xeFXiu-gd3QIXoGmFcsfXIAodxfz4xGXolacsPr_MqpR3nqxFst/s1600-h/buckfight.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyPUEwLhK2V22V9Lec-mNLVHtzx4WeS-3Cqw7tLHtA0hY9k3cVfpRyu2XBt5NONVVAO2oMbe_sW453R7J_xeFXiu-gd3QIXoGmFcsfXIAodxfz4xGXolacsPr_MqpR3nqxFst/s400/buckfight.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5130848912340713058" border="0" /></a>My first friend is getting married. Which means my first stag do. Which got me thinking about stag dos. These are my thoughts.<br /><br />A bizarre ritual no? It's kinda like saying:<br /><br /> "Okay, i'll let you be a man and have fun with your friends ONE LAST TIME. Cos after we're married... <span style="font-weight: bold;">there will be no more of that. </span>We will go to garden centres on Sundays and watch reality tv on Saturdays and you will no longer dread going to work because it will be the only time and space you will have to yourself to <span style="font-weight: bold;">escape</span>."<br /><br />Of course I'm sure marriage isn't really as bad as all that but the masculine, let's-have-all-teh-fun statement that is a bachelor party doesn't reflect well on it as an institution.<br /><br />Still, I'm shall enjoy swinging about on ropes and eating curry and drinking beer and (hopefully) cleaning up at poker. With Kelvin. For one last time.<br />___________________________________________________________________<br /><br />This week I have been mostly......<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Watching</span>: <span style="font-style: italic;">Dawson's Creek</span>, the end of the series where Pacey and Joey get together. I swear this is clearly why i have such fucking warped and fantastical expectations of romance.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reading</span>: Romeo Dallaire's <span style="font-style: italic;">Shaking Hands With The Devil. </span>The man is amazing. His account of the Rwandan genocide is tough going but compelling reading.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Listening</span>: To The Jayhawks' "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" - sappy sentiment but still a brilliant song - and the newish Rilo Kiley. Jenny Lewis is uhmazin<br /> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sleeping</span>: uncomfortably.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-11544946737326144752007-10-22T10:23:00.000-04:002007-10-22T18:08:14.535-04:00I am without question rather more accustomed to crawling into bed as the sun comes up than I am to waking up before it has done so. If I had set my alarm for 6am yesterday it would have gone off as I was brushing my teeth.<br /><br />This morning I truly felt like a rat, as in the race of the same name. Barely alive, monging not mosying my way to the station, neither aware nor concerned as to whether or not I was wearing trousers (turns out I was). I had wanted to watch an episode of <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0141842/">The Sopranos</a> on the way to work, having recently been awakened as to quite how brilliant this show is. The French would say "c'est magnifique", the internet geeks: "teh awesome".<br /><br />But it didn't happen, woe is fucking me as other inconsiderate people got on the train and there wasn't space for the computer on the table. What a twattish gripe <span style="font-weight: bold;">that</span> was.<br /><br />Having started writing I've realised I have nothing particularly to say, no pertinent point to make, no witty zinger to finish with. I suppose this post merely serves as my reentry into the blogging world; writing as an exercise, to stretch my literary legs, no matter how mundane the subject matter and how trivial the trivia.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-21494785504794193202007-09-28T11:22:00.000-04:002007-09-28T11:23:43.739-04:00Genocide In Rwanda<strong>Examine the responses of Western countries to the Rwandan genocide of 1994. To what extent can they be said to have been complicit in the atrocities?<br /></strong><br /><br />‘The evil represented in this museum is incontestable. But as we are its witness, so must we remain its adversary in the world in which we live. So we must stop the fabricators of history and the bullies as well. Left unchallenged, they would still prey upon the powerless; and we must not permit that to happen again’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a><br /><br />On April 22nd 1993 President Bill Clinton dedicated the United States Holocaust museum with a clarion call. ‘Never again’ would evil be allowed to reign uncontested. ‘Never again’ would the world stand idly by as innocent people were killed for no reason other than their ethnic background. ‘Never again’ would responsibility be so flagrantly flouted. Yet less than a year later the Clinton administration stood at the forefront of an international community that either looked on, or looked away, as 800,000 people were killed in one hundred days in a small country in equatorial Africa. As the fastest, most efficient campaign of slaughter in human history [is this true? or ‘one of’?] was being carried out, countries in Europe and North America, and even the United Nations, either denied the nature of the killing, or repudiated an impetus to act to stop it.<br />Responsibility for the Rwandan genocide is not easily attributed; it is, of course, much easier to respond retrospectively to the events in and around the genocide than it could possibly have been at the time. Lack of knowledge is the most frequently cited defence of those arguing that no less was done than could have been done. Of course with hindsight we are able to examine all angles, to have a far greater breadth and depth of knowledge than was available both as atrocities were being planned and as they were ongoing. There can [cut? - therefore] be no truly comprehensive appraisal of the actions of the leaders, politicians and bureaucrats who made, or chose not to make, the decisions that allowed the Hutu militia to act with almost complete impunity as they sought to exterminate the Tutsi population. There is also a volume of literature that contests that even if the international community had been in possession of a full understanding of the situation in Rwanda it would still have been essentially unpreventable. Yet all actors involved now acknowledge that mistakes were made and that more could and should have been done. This essay aims to explore the extent to which the wealthiest, most powerful nations in the world failed to respond to the desperate cries for help of an impoverished population being slain in their thousands. While few of the parties involved can be said to be entirely free from blame I intend to focus on the actions of three: the United States, the United Nations – with particular emphasis on the role of Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali – and France.<br />These three all played a significant part in determining the course of events in the time leading up to the genocide, as well as during it. The US, as global hegemon, was in the strongest position to act; the United Nations with its responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security should and could have done more; France, with its relationship with the Francophone Hutu leaders in Rwanda, may be seen to have had some active responsibility for the fact that the genocide was not stopped sooner. Ultimately, in the international realm, political interest prevailed over morality, humanitarianism and collective responsibility as the driving force behind behaviour [cut? - and the Rwandan genocide gives us no reason to doubt this]. For too long events in Rwanda were passed off in the West as ‘civil war’ and ‘internal conflicts’, with responsibility for killings and clashes equally ascribed along both sides of the ethnic divide.<br /> I will begin by looking at the definition of genocide and the problems associated with identifying it. Did the various authorities genuinely miss the signs of genocide or did they deliberately choose to ignore them in order to avoid the obligation to act?<br /> The UN Genocide Convention of 1948 defines genocide as acts committed with the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a> (emphasis added) and says that ‘whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, [it] is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.’.The clause ‘whether committed in time of peace or in time of war’ is [cut? – both] particularly important and particularly troublesome, especially with regard to Rwanda. War can and does draw an obfuscating veil over abhorrent acts of human rights violation. The Rwanda-Burundi region of Africa had been in an almost permanent state of conflict since shaking off the shackles of colonialism in the 1960s, with no secret made of the violent rivalry between the majority Hutu tribe and the minority Tutsi. [Is this relevant to the argument here – perhaps put in the footnote? As colonial masters the Belgians had favoured the Tutsi and stirred a simmering cauldron of already heated resentment between the tribes.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a> ]<br />Genocide is not an act of war and has no inherent relationship to war. Nevertheless, international bureaucrats and the policy-makers used the civil war in Rwanda as a legal, if not moral, excuse for inaction. The view of the outside world was that the post-colonial history of Rwanda was littered with violent outbreaks and tit-for-tat tribal massacres and that this was simply accepted as the status quo. While peace between the Hutu and the Tutsi was obviously desirable, with animosity so deeply embedded in the culture there could only be ‘African solutions to African problems’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a>; neither side was deemed especially more responsible than the other and there was little external actors could do to resolve the dispute.<br />It is important that we maintain a consistent understanding of what is meant by the term ‘complicity’. I do not mean to suggest, and there is no evidence to support any claim, that the wealthy Western powers were active conspirators in the genocide, or that they had any direct responsibility for it. Nonetheless, either wittingly or unwittingly, they allowed the genocide in Rwanda to occur. In legal terms, failure to act to your full capacity to prevent a crime from taking place is complicity, and a crime in itself. [Even if unwitting?] This is the understanding of the term I will be employing throughout this essay.<br /> The Clinton administration, elected on an almost entirely domestic and economic platform and without a majority [majority of popular vote? or in Congress?] had no consistent foreign policy direction. Partly this could be attributed to Clinton’s lack of experience in foreign affairs, partly to his lack of a mandate, partly to the ambiguous nature of foreign relations in the early post-Cold War era. The result, however, was that when it came to international issues Clinton was a follower rather than a leader, preferring to take a back seat wherever possible. The loudest national voices on US foreign policy at this time did not emanate from the White House, as tradition would have had it, but from Capitol Hill and Congress, the de facto [?is de facto what you mean – or conventional/traditional?] seat of domestic responsibility. Republican Senator Bob Dole, one of the most aggressive proponents of intervention in Bosnia, made one of the strongest statements on US intervention in Rwanda when he said ‘I don’t think we have any national interest there… as far as I’m concerned, in Rwanda, that ought to be the end of it.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> It was of [? – cut more] experienced figures such as Dole that the Clinton administration took heed. Even before Somalia went terribly wrong, a goal of the administration was to avoid being drawn by the UN into foreign military engagements where US interests were not at stake. At the time, this was for budgetary reasons as much as from fear of accumulating US casualties [really ‘as much as’? Not just ‘as well as’?] When Rwanda erupted into crisis the administration’s response was already fully formed, with policy, rather than facts, determining the way in which events were interpreted; and therefore the response. Having predisposed itself to a foreign policy based on the expansion of American economic interests, only involving itself in conflicts where American interests were directly at stake, the administration failed to recognize an international legal and moral imperative when it arose. Even as late as May 25th 1994 Clinton’s rhetoric was that of reticence, retreat and reluctance: ‘Whether we get involved in the world’s ethnic conflicts,in the end, must depend on the cumulative weight of the American interest at stake.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> As Douglas Brinkley put it, ‘He is more interested in helping Toys ‘R’ Us and Nike to flourish in Central Europe than in despatching Marines to quell unrest in economically inconsequential nations.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a><br />Without a popular electoral mandate and with no political capital to spend, the White House assumed a highly risk-averse stance, inclined only to pursue policies that would bolster Clinton’s popularity. Humanitarianism just didn’t qualify. UN peacekeeping operations were unpopular enough in Washington before the Somalia mission imploded; the fallout – also known as ‘Somalia Syndrome’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> - from ‘Black Hawk Down’ proved decisive. It was a question of politics and interests and it was perceived in the White House that the administration could only lose by despatching more troops to Africa, and the American people would not respond well. It can be argued however, that the administration underestimated the people. A poll taken in 1994 asked: ‘If genocidal situations occur, do you think that the UN, including the US, should intervene with whatever force is necessary to stop the acts of genocide?’ A significant majority – 65 per cent – responded ‘always’ or ‘in most cases’, with only 23 per cent saying ‘only when American interests are also involved’.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a><br />However, ‘American interests’ were precisely what drove America’s African policy: Washington ‘saw Rwanda through the prism of Somalia.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10">[10]</a> There were warnings, even from American officials. In March 1994 Prudence Bushnell, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, visited Rwanda to meet with the leaders of the RPF and the Rwandan government and urge both sides to take steps to curb the violence. In her report she warned Washington that ‘The failure to reach accomodation could result in tragedy for all Rwandans.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11">[11]</a> Similarly, in a fax to the Secretary of State for African Affairs, the US amabssador to Rwanda, David Rawson, articulated fears of a coup d’etat and warned that ‘the results of any coup would be catastrophic and could result in ethnic backlash throught the countryside.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12">[12]</a> Further warnings were issued by the CIA in December 1993, when it found that four million small arms had been transferred from Poland to Rwanda – while the Rwandan government was supposedly committing itself to the peace process – and in January 1994, when it informed the State Department of its analysis that should conflict in Rwanda resume, ‘the worst case scenario would involve one-half million people dying.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13">[13]</a> <br />However, it seems that in the upper echelons there were no ears to hear: there was ‘no incentive to go beyond their misconceptions to understand the situation. Rwanda was poor, remote and African – irrelevant to the national interest.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14">[14]</a> When Rwandan human rights activist Monique Mujawariya went to Washington to articulate the situation in her country and to push for US intervention, she met with the President’s National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. Having offered his resignation in the aftermath of the Mogadishu disaster, he was personally affected but politically disabled, in no position to urge another US military operation into the heart of Africa. One congressional offical responsible for Africa told Mujawariya: ‘The United States has no friends; the United States has interests. In the United States there is no interest in Rwanda.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15">[15]</a><br />Even when it was clear that massacres were taking place in Rwanda, the US simply refused to recognize that a genocide was taking place. Officials would go no further than speaking of ‘acts of genocide’. In a State Department press briefing on Rwanda WHEN?? spokesperson Christine Kelly was asked: ‘How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?’ To which her response was: ‘That’s not a question I’m in a position to answer.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16">[16]</a> Similarly, for the then US amabassador to the United Nations, Madeline Albright, the question of genocide was ‘a legal definitional thing’.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17">[17]</a> Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs George Moose was [when?] more straightforward: ‘the discussion was about how we might be viewed if we declared that there was a genocide and then we are not ready willing and able to do anything about it.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18">[18]</a><br />Yet whatever the resistance of the US to involvement in ‘ethnic conflicts’, the act of genocide carries an altogether higher level of responsibility: the genocide convention places a legal obligation on signatories to intervene.<br />The most important single figure in the UN at the time of the Rwandan genocide was the Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali [an Egyptian – cut – better left till later, when you explain how this is relevant]. While decisions on whether or not to authorise [the creation of] a peacekeeping mission are ultimately made by a vote of member states in the Security Council, the head of the Secretariat has responsibility for overseeing operations. The Secretariat is supposed to act as the eyes and ears of the Council, the link between the Council and the mission, assimilating all the information and reports provided by commanders on the ground and passing them on to the emissaries of the member states. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was instrumental in both the creation and the operation of the peacekeeping mission to Rwanda, named the United Nations Assistance Mission In Rwanda (UNAMIR),<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19">[19]</a> established in October 1993 and arriving in Rwanda in November. For Boutros-Ghali UNAMIR was the perfect vehicle to demonstrate the capability of the peacekeeping department to carry out a successful mission and he lobbied hard to bring it into being. [This sounds as if Boutros-Galli the good guy! Spell out specific mission of UNAMIR, what was the state of the conflict in Rwanda at the point when it was dispatched, what were the limitations of its mandate as compared with e.g. UNOSOM? Also suggest foll. sentence really belongs in this section: The US had been reluctant to support even the most tentative of UN operations in Rwanda, and they were certainly not going to back an operation with a stronger mandate to act.]With the 1993 Arusha Accords between the government of Rwanda and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF )in place and believed to ?, it was sold as a traditional operation, requiring a minimal mandate and minimal resources - essentially little more than a symbolic presence.<br />[Give full name first?]UNOSOM had been the first instance of a Chapter VII [do you need to explain what’s meant by Chapter VII?] peacekeeping mission installed without the permission of a sovereign government. It was deemed to be an exception because there was no recognized sovereign government in place in Somalia to provide such consent. Rwanda, while recognized as fragile, was considered to be significantly less problematic: there was an interim government in place and full diplomatic relations were established. Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire was to be the commander on the ground, and it was clear to him from early on that the task was not to be so simple. He had been warned of the dangers posed by militias and extremists and ‘the UN needed to get a peacekeeping force on the ground as soon as possible to prevent such forces from increasing their grip.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20">[20]</a> In the aftermath of Mogadishu states were reluctant to provide either troops or resources for the mission, and Dallaire arrived in Kigali with a skeleton operating force. The battalion under his command was made up mostly of Belgian commandos and Ghanaians, severely underequipped and underfunded, with troop numbers far below the level Dallaire thought necessary.<br /> On 11th January 1994 Dallaire sent to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York a telegram which has since become famous. His unit had been approached by an individual known as ‘Jean-Pierre’, a high-ranking [Hutu? army?] officer willing to provide information of the plot to derail the Arusha Accords and embark upon a campaign of violence on the most egregious scale. The Hutu elite he said, were transforming the militia group known as the Interahamwe<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21">[21]</a> into ‘a machine of extermination’ not just of the RPF but of all Tutsi.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22">[22]</a> Jean-Pierre also said that the conspiracy included a plan to force a UN withdrawal by killing a number of the Belgian troops who provided the backbone of the mission. Dallaire relayed the information to the DPKO in New York, saying that ‘[Jean-Pierre] has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali and suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave was that in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn23" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn23" name="_ftnref23">[23]</a> Jean-Pierre had also apprised the peacekeepers of the locations of a number of weapons stockpiles that were intended not merely for the armed forces but for civilian Hutu distribution. Dallaire went on to inform the DPKO that, though wary of being set up, he felt the informant was a reliable source and he intended to investigate the weapons caches. He was not requesting permission because he had no doubt that such investigations were well within his mandate. The UN response, however was an unequivocal rejection: ‘We cannot agree to the operation contemplated in paragraph 7 of your cable, as it clearly goes beyond the mandate entrusted to UNAMIR under resolution 872 (1993).’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn24" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn24" name="_ftnref24">[24]</a> Michael Barnett rightly provides a defence of the officials in charge of the DPKO at the time, saying that ‘If the telegram is wrenched from its historical and organizational context, then it is an unimpeachable warning sign that cannot be ignored or misinterpreted. Once it is properly situated, however, then its Nostradamus-like qualities disappear.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn25" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn25" name="_ftnref25">[25]</a><br />Barnett however, goes on to critique this defence himself, arguing that the response of the DPKO was overtly [?overly] influenced by context and, more significantly, by the bureaucratic mentality of the United Nations. It was not that Dallaire’s message [cut? was in any way conventional or that it] didn’t ring any alarm bells within the department – as would later be claimed – it was that the UN chose not to hear the warning. Post-Somalia the bureaucrats were limited in what they could do but ‘those limits proved comforting to those individuals who wanted to play it safe because they were worried about the UN’s survival.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn26" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn26" name="_ftnref26">[26]</a> The fallout from Somalia had been that member states’ enthusiasm for peacekeeping had declined significantly; another failed mission or catastrophic event could be the final nail in the coffin for the department. Keeping peacekeepers out of harm’s way had become the number one, number two and number three priorities of the DPKO, with the actual mission itself barely a consideration. Chasing up an unreliable lead on weapons caches – the exact circumstances in which Pakistani troops were killed in Mogadishu – was out of the question. BARNETT QUOTE???<br /> Dallaire’s memo was not the only message sent from the Rwanda mission warning of the precarious ethnic knife-edge on which the Arusha Accords stood, but the UN was resigned to doing nothing, if they could possibly justify inaction. [cut? - As evidential as they were,] Outbreaks of ethnic violence were sporadic and seemingly random, and so could be ignored. This all changed on the night of 6th April. When Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on landing at Kigali’s airport the plans of the genocidal conspirators were rapidly brought to realisation. The Hutu extremists of the Interahamwe and the presidential guard began a systematic campaign of killing, beginning with Tutsi politicians, moderate Hutus [?] and, as Jean-Pierre had forecast, ten Belgian peacekeepers. On 5th April the UN Security Council had met to discuss the future of UNAMIR, with little progress having been made towards implementing the Arusha Accords and the coalition power-sharing government no closer to forming. The Secretary General’s report prepared for this meeting was ‘optimistic in tone’ and omitted Dallaire’s ten-page military assessment ‘highlighting his serious deficiencies in capabilities and equipment’.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn27" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn27" name="_ftnref27">[27]</a> Following the assassination of the President the council immediately reconvened for two weeks of emergency talks to determine the international response. This should have been the point at which the Secretariat, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali in particular, took the lead, as the body with [the most] direct jurisdiction over UNAMIR<br /> Boutros-Ghali’s role, as Secretary General, was to inform the Security Council, to assimilate the reports he was receiving from the mission on the ground, and to funnel [what? Such reports as he thought significant?] to the Council to aid the decision-making process. However, when it came to Rwanda the Secretariat and Boutros Boutros-Ghali ‘always straggled one or two steps behind the Security Council and almost always mimicked its recent conclusions.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn28" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn28" name="_ftnref28">[28]</a> The Security Council debate is often shaped by recommendations from the Secretariat; as the violence in Rwanda rapidly escalated ‘no such recommendations were forthcoming.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn29" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn29" name="_ftnref29">[29]</a> Dallaire’s reports were increasingly alarming and specifically emphasised the scale of the violence and its one-sided ethnic dimension, but the information passed on to the Security Council was tempered with regard to both. The ‘Secretariat’s mentality’ shaped its view of Rwanda and its response to the unfolding carnage; its reaction was not to provide the Council with the best recommendations for the mission but to offer the recommendations to which it felt the Council would be most receptive. Dallaire himself favoured simply a demonstration of a willingness to employ force, believing that such a move would be enough to halt the killings; but in an interview given just a few days before Habyarimana’s assassination Boutros-Ghali expressed his view that ‘To use force is an expression of failure. Our job is diplomacy, the peaceful resolution of disputes.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn30" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn30" name="_ftnref30">[30]</a> Iqbal Riza, Kofi Annan’s deputy in the DPKO, stated that: ‘Our mandate was not to anticipate and prevent genocide.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn31" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn31" name="_ftnref31">[31]</a> The mission was paralysed from the start by a risk-averse command structure that refused to accept that the violence was the product of anything other than a breakdown of politics, that would not consider the idea that politics might not provide the answer, and that could not or would not perceive a dimension of the situation that was distinct from the civil war.<br /> The Secretary General’s relationship with the genocide was not limited to his official capacity as head of the United Nations. Prior to taking the UN position Boutros-Ghali had been an Egyptian statesman and in 1990, as the RPF were launching their invasion into Rwanda, was working as a minister for foreign affairs. As the RPF offensive appeared to be an ever-increasing threat to Habyarimana’s Rwandan army, the government was desperate to find a new supplier of weaponry. Egypt had, for seven years, refused to sell arms to Rwanda; on the 28th October 1990, 12 days after a meeting between Rwandan amabassador to Egypt Celestin Kabanda and Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an arms contract for US$5.889 million was signed between the two countries.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn32" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn32" name="_ftnref32">[32]</a> This would be the first of several transactions of this kind to occur, coming as they did, as Belgium was attempting to engineer peace talks between the RFP and the Rwandan government. There was nothing illegal in Boutros-Ghali’s actions: in his own words, he was only doing his job as a minister of foreign affairs for Egypt and he ‘would have helped any government wanting arms from Egypt.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn33" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn33" name="_ftnref33">[33]</a> He nonetheless was far more intimately connected and informed about the precarious situation in Rwanda than his subsequent actions as Secretary General might suggest. From this point up until the genocide began – with a population of only eight million people - Rwanda would become [was? – ‘would become’ implies escalation – was this the case – if so make clearer] the third largest importer of weapons in Africa, behind only Nigeria and Angola.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn34" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn34" name="_ftnref34">[34]</a><br />[Can you make a link here? Seems as if while Egypt was selling arms, France was going further, providing direct military aid to the Hutus? Don’t think foll. sentence works - how was relationship triangular? Sounds more like two separate relationships?] There was a triangular relationship between Boutros-Ghali, France and the Rwandan government led by President Juvenal Habyarimana. Under Habyarimana ‘the [Hutu] political elite embraced Paris as a source of cultural identity and protection.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn35" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn35" name="_ftnref35">[35]</a> This embrace was reciprocated by the French government, who actively supported the Francophone Hutus, providing them with arms and combat training to fight against the RPF, who oriented themselves on the Anglophone sphere. This was coupled with high levels of financial aid [from the French? To Rwanda? To the Hutus?], amounting to US$10 million in 1993.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn36" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn36" name="_ftnref36">[36]</a> Corporal Jean Damascent Kabure described an ‘ideological indoctrination against Tutsi as the French trained the Hutu Interahamwe’.<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn37" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn37" name="_ftnref37">[37]</a> In the early 1990s the RPF had lauched a number of attacks, originating from Uganda, against the Rwandan army, to bring a halt to Hutu massacres of Tutsi civilians; in response to each of these offensives France increased its military support for the Rwandan army (FAR). In February 1993 the RPF were on the verge of taking the capital Kigali when several hundred French troops were despatched. According to Alain Destaxhe ‘French intervention was the determining role in stopping the RPF advances.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn38" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn38" name="_ftnref38">[38]</a><br />We cannot say that the genocide would not have occurred had Boutros-Boutros Ghali not arranged the sale of arms to the Hutu government or had France not been actively involved in supported the Hutu government [cut - there is no reason to suppose that it wouldn’t]. We cannot even say that the arms sale would not have taken place had Boutros Boutros-Ghali not helped to orchestrate it. We can, however, say that both the future United Nations Secretary General and the French government were instrumental in the supply of an enormous quantity of weapons which were later used to carry out the genocide.<br />In his speech at the Holocaust museum Bill Clinton also said: ‘We must live forever with this knowledge, even as our fragmentary awareness of crimes grew into indisputable facts, far too little was done. Before the war even started, doors to liberty were shut.’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn39" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn39" name="_ftnref39">[39]</a> The President was talking about events a half-century earlier; but his words would take on a fresh resonance and [a duality of – or just ‘another/ a new’] meaning just eighteen months later in Rwanda. When it comes to the subject of what was known by whom and when, our conclusions are at best speculative: we can accept, if we choose, the standard stock sentiment of the politicians and bureaucrats that they ‘did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror’<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn40" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftn40" name="_ftnref40">[40]</a> without absolving them of blame. When it came to Rwanda the response preceded the stimulus. That is to say that long before the genocide itself began, the reaction of the international community had been settled. While the various individuals, groups and governments were not expecting a genocide to occur in Rwanda, when it began the signs were there, and the signs were ignored.<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/042293-speech-by-president-at-opening-of-holocaust-museum.htm<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3">[3]</a> While no doubt a factor that is, however, meant as background, and not a facet of the sculture of complicity I am looking to build here. Colonialism, while significant, cannot be said to have had a causal responsibility for the genocide.<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a><br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> Quote from Samantha Power, Atlantic Monthly article – date, page no.?<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6">[6]</a> PB Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda ?where?<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7">[7]</a> Douglas Brinkley ‘Democratic Enlargement: The Clinton Doctrine’ Foreign Policy 106 Spring 1997 (p. 125) <br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> ???<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9">[9]</a> Stephen Kull ‘What the Public Knows that Washington Doesn’t’, Foreign Policy 101, Winter 1995/1996<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10">[10]</a> Allison Des Forges, Leave None To Tell The Story – book? article? where?<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11">[11]</a> <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/Rw01.pdf">http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/Rw01.pdf</a><br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12">[12]</a> http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/Rw03.pdf<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13">[13]</a> Samantha Power: A Problem From Hell p338<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14">[14]</a> Ibid<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15">[15]</a> Frontline<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16">[16]</a> Samantha Power: Bystanders To Genocide<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17">[17]</a> Ghosts of Rwanda<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18">[18]</a> Ibid<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19">[19]</a> Romeo Dallaire Shake Hands With The Devil<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20">[20]</a> Ibid p60<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21">[21]</a> Literal translation from Kinyarwanda: ‘We who fight together’<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22">[22]</a> Barnett p78<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn23" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref23" name="_ftn23">[23]</a> Dallaire<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn24" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref24" name="_ftn24">[24]</a> <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/themes/response.html">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/themes/response.html</a><br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn25" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref25" name="_ftn25">[25]</a> Michael Barnett Eyewitness to a Genocide p80<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn26" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref26" name="_ftn26">[26]</a> Barnett p81<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn27" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref27" name="_ftn27">[27]</a> Malvern: The Security Council: Behind the Scenes<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn28" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref28" name="_ftn28">[28]</a> Barnett p108<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn29" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref29" name="_ftn29">[29]</a> Malvern: The Security Council: Behind the Scenes<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn30" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref30" name="_ftn30">[30]</a> Barnett<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn31" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref31" name="_ftn31">[31]</a> Melvern: Behind the Scenes at the Security Council<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn32" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref32" name="_ftn32">[32]</a> Melvern <br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn33" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref33" name="_ftn33">[33]</a> Linda Melvern The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (p33)<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn34" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref34" name="_ftn34">[34]</a> Melvern<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn35" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref35" name="_ftn35">[35]</a> Chris McGreal France’s Shame – The Guardian 11/1/2007<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn36" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref36" name="_ftn36">[36]</a> Alain Destexhe Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century p52<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn37" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref37" name="_ftn37">[37]</a> Ibid<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn38" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref38" name="_ftn38">[38]</a><br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn39" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref39" name="_ftn39">[39]</a> http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/042293-speech-by-president-at-opening-of-holocaust-museum.htm<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn40" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=13635164#_ftnref40" name="_ftn40">[40]</a> Clinton apology http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/jan-june98/rwanda_3-25a.htmluptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-41382377910227567442007-05-09T15:20:00.000-04:002007-05-09T15:23:06.191-04:00In Da Club<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAvgZOXLfZu5Vwxa6TKCvhWGKwkhUUSjwdQasa95nuiIbrQgp-YDiqg1r3Bl1B2KoSVMaby4tg8hcA5CI3JJA-Nc_soyMCV4g8rdwCaae0RnHbxKdh1kBSvcDE1U4I1HphCuEQ/s1600-h/Bel+Canto+Flyer+1-+Front+copy.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAvgZOXLfZu5Vwxa6TKCvhWGKwkhUUSjwdQasa95nuiIbrQgp-YDiqg1r3Bl1B2KoSVMaby4tg8hcA5CI3JJA-Nc_soyMCV4g8rdwCaae0RnHbxKdh1kBSvcDE1U4I1HphCuEQ/s400/Bel+Canto+Flyer+1-+Front+copy.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5062643571175398738" border="0" /></a>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-80817849922837392862007-05-03T17:41:00.000-04:002007-05-03T17:51:08.777-04:00Indelible Ink<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5_bDTq9claiEuPVDkGBtJytH3JMFQ0Tny4J6SqghNRiG18ziWER-jg50EA3UIBM-Ldmf5AwP2qpcQhniM7rknVbVreBB0CJ6dAG8DhD3AyFSdZ7cbzf3AKGw2hNC1Kz5xKGXK/s1600-h/DSCN2704.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5_bDTq9claiEuPVDkGBtJytH3JMFQ0Tny4J6SqghNRiG18ziWER-jg50EA3UIBM-Ldmf5AwP2qpcQhniM7rknVbVreBB0CJ6dAG8DhD3AyFSdZ7cbzf3AKGw2hNC1Kz5xKGXK/s320/DSCN2704.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060454984690376002" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzgCpA7OBm9jUlJqfQQw9dI_fBz6xMjOD8W_3J_NVaXFPKiwT87D6LtErk8RGpF43OBL3k0RKTuP3FjnY_oE9hbr1amJppOf1HozGmXz9vrkZLRaWxHX8PelRipVmd1m4ZMYYH/s1600-h/DSCN2704.JPG"><br /></a>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-10648172176761895512007-04-24T05:13:00.000-04:002007-04-24T05:25:42.817-04:00Virigina TechI didn't want to write anything on this subject until the media furore had died down. In fact I didn'treally want to write anything on this subject at all, I really didn't think I had anything to add to the discourse and there were already enough people out there with nothing to say yet saying it way.<br /><br />But then I had an interview yesterday where they asked me, in a fairly general way, what I thought. I don't think I explained myself very well; I don't think I had it completely clear in my own mind then but figured it out later. What I told them was that I thought the coverage of the killer's "media package" was handled very badly. I said that it was not in the public interest to show it and and amounted to nothing more than quenching the public's macabre voyeuristic lust (i wasn't quite so eloquent at the time). The argument, which has been put forward, for showing the footage, was that it enables us to get inside the mind of a serial killler and understand why he did these horrific things. I said I didn't buy that.Where I failed yesterday, was in explaiining why I thought this, and producing some evidence to support my opinion.<br /><br /><br />What I should have said was that the value of showing his video, reading his letter and reproducing his photos, should be measured by the value of the commentary and analysis that followed. Absolute zero. if you look back on the newspapers and remember the tv news coverage of last week, can you see anyone <span style="font-style: italic;">anywhere</span> saying anything other than: "He was a nutjob", "total whacko", "what a faaaakin' lunatic". No, because it wasn't said. Because that's exactly what he was. We learned nothing form any of this and therefore the public interest argument crumbles.<br /><br />I didn't watch any of that by the way. Yeah, I'm standing on some high ground.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-53751333591629160792007-02-25T16:34:00.000-05:002007-02-25T16:44:09.299-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFI6CU9GBjMFrzkHAtZYkQoASv6RmklFu7W0FRCr9Y1cbbGLupvc2mAEEBK2hy0MfVnIGdkAIsOmU4s7SK690UucBrDcqxjmcNJ1wEDwSzaZPjj-B3yxuYCgxJaqUs08J7wGOn/s1600-h/belcantoblank.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFI6CU9GBjMFrzkHAtZYkQoASv6RmklFu7W0FRCr9Y1cbbGLupvc2mAEEBK2hy0MfVnIGdkAIsOmU4s7SK690UucBrDcqxjmcNJ1wEDwSzaZPjj-B3yxuYCgxJaqUs08J7wGOn/s400/belcantoblank.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5035590303701360530" border="0" /></a>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-32085863387772564112006-12-28T08:04:00.000-05:002006-12-28T08:08:50.992-05:00I love METRO<span style="font-style: italic;">In response to annual calls to ban the word<br /> "Christmas":<br /></span><br />I would just like to know who these faceless do-gooders against Christmas are. In fact, I think they need deporting for all the damage they do with their warped views. I think they must have forgotten which country they live in.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sue Blackburn, Surrey<br /></span><br />Lest we forget the Metro is a subsidiary of the Evening Standard which is a younger cousin of the Daily Mail, though no less authoritarian in nature. If only this woman were in charge of immigration policy eh?<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-28639315186533636722006-12-18T22:17:00.000-05:002006-12-18T22:18:47.053-05:00wOLF eYES<object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Vhn48pT-5aw"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Vhn48pT-5aw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="350" width="600"></object>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-29026281445257461622006-12-17T11:42:00.000-05:002006-12-17T12:28:48.128-05:00Bel Canto IV: Track ListingsStar Wars Theme<br />Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour<br />Spanky Wilson - Sunshine of Your Love<br />New Order - Fine Time<br />CSS - Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above<br />Fun Boy 3 + Bananarama - It Ain't What You Do<br />Jenny Lewis - Handle With Care<br />David Bowie - Fashion<br />The Ramones - Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)<br />The Beach Boys - All I Wanna Do<br />Badly Drawn Boy - Road Movie<br />The Band - Rag Mama<br />Gram Parsons - The Streets of Baltimore<br />Tony Bennett - Rags To Riches<br />Staple Singers - I'll Take You There<br />Velvet Underground - What Goes On<br />T-Rex - Telegram<br />Prince - Sign Of The Times<br />Stevie Wonder - Pastime Paradise<br />Buck 65 - Kennedy Killed The Heat (MSTRKRFT Remix)<br />The Waitresses - Christmas Wrappin<br />Paul Simon - 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover<br />My Morning Jacket - Just Because I Do<br />Echo and The Bunnymen - The Cutter<br />Chemical Brothers - Setting Sun<br />Soup Dragons - I'm Free<br />The Rolling Stones - Miss You<br />Isaac Hayes - Shaft Theme<br />Woody Bully - Sam The Sham and The Pharoahs<br />Johnny Cash - Cocaine Blues (Live at Folsom Prison)<br />Kenny Loggins - Playing With The Boys<br />The Libertines - What Katie Did<br />- I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas<br />Booker T and The MGs - Green Onions<br />?<br />Manassas<br />Led Zeppelin<br />Star Wars Interlude<br />Manfred Mann - 5-4-3-2-1<br />Beach Boys - Good Vibrations<br />The Faces - Stay With Me<br />The Ronettes - Frosty The Snowman<br />Wolfmother - Woman (Erol Alkan Mix)<br />Ima Robot - The Beat Goes On<br />Fisherspooner - Just Let Go<br />LoFiFnk - Springsteen (The Hustler ReLick)<br />Deerhoof - +81<br />Super Furry Animals - Ice Hockey Hair<br />T-Rex - Get It On<br />Talking Heads - Road To Nowhere<br />Marlene Shaw - Woman of the Ghetto<br />Chic - Chic Cheer<br />Jefferson Airplane - 3/5 of a Mile in 3 Seconds<br />Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues (Live)<br />Gloria Jones - Tainted Love<br />Sam Cooke - What A Wonderful World<br />Stevie Wonder - I Believe (When I Fall In Love With You It Will Be Forever<br />Elton John - Tiny Dancer<br />Nina Simone - Sinnerman<br />?<br />?<br />Neil Young<br />Fairport Convention<br />Housemartins - Happy Hour<br />Nancy Sinatra - These Boots Are Made For Walking<br />Jimmy Cliff - You Can Get It If You Really Want<br />The Verve vs Jack the Knife - Bittersweet Arsenal<br />Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion<br />Kelly Clarkson - Since You've Been Gone<br />Metric - Monster Hospital<br />Grandaddy - Miner at the Dial-a-View<br />Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - Second that Emotion<br />Pulp - Inside Susan<br />Rolling Stones - She's A Rainbow<br />Primal Scream - Call on Me<br />Joy Division - Transmission<br />The Jam - Shout<br />The Beatles - Taxman<br />Candi Staton + Source - You Got The Love<br />Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbyeuptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-18197071252773083902006-12-14T19:33:00.000-05:002006-12-14T19:36:55.622-05:00A friendly word of advice for anyone taking photgraphs at a gig<span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" >TURN THE FUCKING FLASH OFF!!!!!</span>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1163912294575404752006-11-18T23:57:00.000-05:002006-11-18T23:58:14.586-05:00<a href="http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/"><img alt="toothpaste for dinner" src="http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/091305/hipster-party.gif" border="0" height="252" width="594" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/">toothpastefordinner.com</a>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1163169345741546842006-11-10T06:27:00.000-05:002006-11-10T12:59:29.786-05:00New Cunts; Same As The Old Cunts?So the Democrats won on Tuesday did they? Did they <span style="font-style: italic;">really?</span> No, of course they didn't.<br /><br />he American people came to their senses and gave the Republican party the stuffing of a generation. Tired of hypocrisy and troops dieing and George W, this was, as so many have said, a referendum on the government. Unable to kick monkey boy out they did the next best thing and told his minions in Congress and the Senate to go f themselves.<br /><br />But the Dems, besides choosing a few vaguely electable conservative candidates, didn't actually <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> anything. 'DE-FAULT' as Homer Simpson said, 'the two greatest words in the English language.'<br /><br />Now they're firmly established as the party of leadership the Democrats are going to have to be prepared to lead. That means directing the political discourse; it means formulating policy; it means making a firm stand on the issues that matter. If they spend the next two years fearful of turning all the voters off instead of trying to turn them on - and in so doing risk losing a few - they can only lose. Have some goddamn cojones will you?!!?<br /><br />Kerry, a good man in my opinion, lost the Presidential election in '04 because he stood for nothing. Americans, in general, don't like to vote AGAINST, they want to vote FOR someone. Tuesday was different because clearly the Republicans had screwed up <span style="font-style: italic;">so </span>very badly it was impossible for them to stay but the Dems can't count on that forever. The pressure's now on for them to show they're a responsible party with focus, with direction, with unity, with ideas on what should be done, not merely what should not be done.<br /><br />The leadership is crucial. Two years until Bush goes which means far less than two years for the Democrats to find someone the party and the people can get behind. You'd better believe the Republicans woke up on Wednesday morning thinking: what do we have to do to make sure this doesn't happen again? They're in disarray and it's an opportunity for the Dems to mark themselves out as different. As better.<br /><br />Nancy Pelosi seems like a good woman. She's a liberal (well, as far as such a thing can really exist in American politics) leading a party leaning far more towards the middle than herself. She has to work with Bush, to cooperate with him to some extent, but she can't be seen to bend over. He's a lame duck President looking for a legacy and she's leader of the majority with a popular mandate that Bush can only dream of. She's got the power to make a difference and she must. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6134734.stm">The refusal to confirm John Bolton to the UN is a good place to start</a>. It shows the executive that, although foreign policy is the White House domain, the House is not without scope to act.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1162809943739454352006-11-06T05:09:00.000-05:002006-11-06T05:45:43.790-05:00Fireworks!!!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2571.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2571.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2582.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2582.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2585.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2585.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2592.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2592.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2596.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2596.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2550.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2550.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2544.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2544.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2551.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/IMG_2551.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />irresponsibly let off in our back garden. supposedly one should be 25 metres+ away fromt hem but our garden is only ten metres end to end. made for very exciting will he/won't he blow-his-frickin -hand-off fun.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1162745868881952632006-11-05T08:55:00.000-05:002006-11-05T11:57:51.036-05:00Bel Canto: Part 2New poster!!!!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/belcantothesecond.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/320/belcantothesecond.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Okay, so it looks remarkably similar to the old one. But it's bigger and better and has a sexy tagline at the bottom.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1162469336585665072006-11-02T07:03:00.000-05:002006-11-02T07:08:56.613-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2528.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/320/IMG_2528.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2527.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/320/IMG_2527.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2526.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/320/IMG_2526.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/IMG_2530.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/320/IMG_2530.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1160990637341948892006-10-16T05:21:00.000-04:002006-10-16T05:23:57.350-04:00Chocolate HobNobs vs. Chocolate DigestivesI cannot believe there's even two sides to this debate but apparently some prefer the salty, pussy-ass biscuit against the oaty, wheaty knobbly, tea-killing man cruncher. Insane (in the membrane).uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1160917210516642222006-10-15T08:47:00.000-04:002006-10-15T09:00:10.530-04:00A TwatHouse party in the Hove area last night. All very nice; far more enjoyable than I had anticipated; stole some beers for the walk home. <span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="color: rgb(204, 51, 204); font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />I found myself in conversation with a nameless individual (actually, he did have a name - who doesn't have name? I ask you! - I'm just choosing not to disclose it) and the subject came up, as it so frequently does these days, of the upcoming musical phenomenon that will be <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Bel Canto: Music Without Borders. </span><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>In a painfully self-promoting kinda way, I tell him he should come down because "I guarantee the music's going to be great". His response: "How can you say that when music's so subjective?". SMUG SMARMY SELF-IMPORTANT BASTARD! It's not so much What he said as the way he said it: As if he were the first person in the world clever enough to make such an observation. Of course music's subjective</span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> you wanker</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">. I'm just trying to shamelessly promote my night so why not indulge me, just for a minute and then fuck off.<br /><br />Lots of things are subjective. For example, compleltely inexplicable to me is the fact that people seem to like you, although nowhere near as much as you evidently like yourself.<br /></span></span>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1160916402149595002006-10-15T08:04:00.000-04:002006-10-15T08:46:42.213-04:00"I can't believe I've only known you for XXXXX"(XXXXX being a very - relatively - short period of time obviously.)<br /><br />Question: Is this something girls say to every bloke? Cos they seem to say it to me a lot.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, I like hearing it and I'm not complaining but to me it just seems a little, umm err, daft. I don't especially thing I do anything different to any other geeza to put girls at a particular level of ease in my presence but my relationships with the fairer sex, if they go anywhere at all, seem to go there in an awful hurry. From "let's just see how it goes" to "girlfriend/boyfriend" and "I miss waking up next to you" texts before Richard Hammond is even able to get cut out of his upside-down rocket car.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1160302055292020632006-10-08T05:56:00.000-04:002006-10-08T06:23:45.673-04:00http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifNothing especially noteworthy to add today but figured I may as well update thee on Subculture bits n bobs:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.subculturemagazine.com/reviewdetails.php?id=296">Beck: Ths Information</a> - Jez said he thought this was one of the best things I've ever written. He is wrong.<br /><a href="http://www.subculturemagazine.com/reviewdetails.php?id=287"><br />Pipettes Live: Corn Exchange</a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/1600/belcantofinal.0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7938/934/400/belcantofinal.0.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I should also let you know that <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bel Canto: Music Without Borders</span></span><br /><br />is officially up and returning and launches at The Gladstone on the Lewes Road on the 27th of October. That's a mere <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 51, 153);font-size:180%;" >19</span> days away. Please come, the music will, I promise, be amazing. Not to mention the fact thta the more people show up the better we look and the more likely this is to turn into a paid gig as opposes to one with merely a bottomless bar tab. Oh dear, I'm going to have to exercise self-restraint....... shit.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1159498939820709062006-09-28T22:53:00.002-04:002006-09-28T23:02:19.823-04:00I've just been scanning through the photographs on my computer. Mostly from the past eighteen months or so. it feels like a different life, looking back at picttures of Keira in particular. because that's all she is now; a few pictures on my screen. she looks beautiful. i can scarceley believe that i ever had anythig to do with that woman. bizarre is what it is. i loved her, more i think than i've ever loved anyone and yet she's barely even a memory anymore. these mementoes of time past are hardly even that anymore. all they are is what they are. what do they remind me of? the hurt itself is gone. i remember that she hurt me but not really how it felt. i've come a long way since then, been involved with other girls that have treated me a lot better. yet she's never going to quite go away. i wish she would.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1158425197521902762006-09-16T12:01:00.000-04:002006-09-16T12:55:33.680-04:00ObservingI cannot tell a lie: my two weeks work experience at The Observer has not, at times, been all it was cracked up to be. Up until today I would say the sum total of my time actaully spent on WORK would be around an hour, maybe two. <br /><br />(On the flip side I have managed to get an awful lot of stupid little essential jobs done that otherwise would not have been had I been at home or in Brighton. I've opened a bank acount, written several pieces for Subculture, applied for jobs and more work experience and sorted out the broadband for the new house.) <br /><br />But then there's today, a day that has gone so far beyond anything I could have expected. I'm buzzing, I seriously am. Let me tell the long story, rather than the short one.<br /><br />Last night was Franner's birthday do. Because the last sodding tube was at 12.30 (In one of the busiest, supposedly most cosmopolitan cities in the world. What a motherflumping joke) I had intened to just go out briefly to the boy's and come home and not spend the night sleeping on the floor using a hand towel as a blanket. I'd been feeling rough (and you know how much worse a cold is for a chap) and just wanted bed, with maybe a sprinkling of The OC.<br /><br />But you know how I am. And how these things are. They just don't work out like that do they? Let's be honest I was never going to head home after an hour.<br /><br />We were originally supposed to go to Button Down Disco at 93FeetEast but it got too late for that. I was having a good time anyway, scaring people I'd never met and chatting obnoxiously as I am wont to do. Then some girl called Lizzie (who I'm sure is lovely really but in that environment she just came across as a fit-but-you-know-it posh bint) decided that everyone was going to go to a club callled Turnmills in Farringdon - just across from The Observer actually - and was clearly one not used to not getting her own way. I said no. But not actively enough to influence others. And there were several others. But I was not goign to spend £15 getting into somewhere I had no interest in going to. <br /><br />So I dragged my feet a bit, along with the other less enthusiastic folks and we'd missed the tube so it just wasn't happening. We went for a scuffle in a patch of scrubland and Francis went dustbin surfing down the road. Party on Ted!<br /><br />So back to Francis' gaff (my word this is a very roundabout way of making a point, which I haven't even gotten to yet and might not even exist) and more beer, Mexican coffee and suddenly its 4.30am and I'm making bacon sandwiches for all.<br /><br />The floor it is. Sleeping bag rather than towelette and sofa cushions to cushion but I had 4 hours before I had to get up. Bugger.<br /><br />But get up I do. Borrow a fetching green shirt from Francis without his knowledge and on my way.<br /><br />And actions stations almost from the off. Robin tasks me with writing an information panel for his big ass feature on biofuels. It takes a lot longer than it should and i start to sweat. But it gets done. After a few frighteningly cantankerous celtic barksI find some information.<br /><br />Lunch. £6 for a steak sounds good but rib-eye is a crap cut of cow.<br /><br />And then it kicks off. "I want this 600 word report turned into 200 words of interesting writing." growls the Scotsman. Now THIS is work. I read the piece on 'Pester Power' again and again (actually, having said that, I'm not sure I read the whole thing in one go at all) find what I think are the most pertinent points and attempt ot write something decent. Not sure if I succeed. Not sure if it's going. Not sure if that's even the point.<br /><br />The point is I'm doing it. That's not TRYING to be a journalist, that's BEING a journalist. The sweat, the pressure, the deadline, the being shouted at. Before last week I THOUGHT I wanted to do this, now I know for sure. And I really think I can be good at it. BUt that's not the end of my day's excitement.<br /><br />Shortly after this Robin throws a photo in front of me and demands 100 words on Open House London REALLY, REALLY quickly. Thank God for being friends with "archies" eh? Cos I actually know something about this.<br /><br />Quick as you like 100 words - and specifically, 100 good words - emerge before Robin has even had the opportunity to hassle me. I'm pleased with what I've done. it's not much but this is one instance where size really doesn't matter. (Because of course, in all other areas, size is VERY important.)<br /><br />And my name is in the paper again. But this time I feel no neet to blast everyone with an email because what I've done today feels self-validating. If people read it then great. I'll have a few copies but my ego isn't gonna overtake me as it did before.<br /><br />This is what I want. This is what i can do.uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13635164.post-1158147020272890222006-09-13T07:26:00.000-04:002006-09-13T07:30:20.283-04:009/11: Five years onThis is a really great piece.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/B_4ZmcPEcVY"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/B_4ZmcPEcVY" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>uptoelevenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07207056266606667312noreply@blogger.com0