A look at the construction of Dubai, 40 years ago was desert.
Archive for June, 2013
Dubai: Structure And How It Works
June 30, 2013Farnham Carnival 2013
June 30, 2013
tea tent
cooling off in the River Wey
locally grown produce
relaxing on the banks of the River Wey
Mad Hatter’s tea party
I was at Farnham Carnival a couple of years ago, Then it was in Castle Street and quite good, certainly worth making the effort to attend again. A big stage at the top of the street with straw bales to sit on and lower down the street, an acoustic stage where I saw Mike Dawes and Amy Turk play.
I was in Farnham for the afternoon and had forgotten it was carnival today, last Saturday of June.
This year it was held in Gostrey Meadow. Had I gone to Castle Street, I would have assumed it was not on, though maybe there were signs (not that I saw any).
Gostrey Meadow was packed. Either Farnham Carnival has got bigger or Gostrey Meadow is not big enough.
A disappointment compared with a couple of years ago, and very big disappointment compared with Staycation Live in Godalming.
Tacky food stalls, beer stall selling commercial brands eg Carlsberg, the music was not good and badly distorted.
I was none too happy seeing food served in polystyrene boxes, especially as they were blowing around on the banks of the river and no one was clearing up. Indeed there was rubbish all over. I spoke to one of the festival organisers saying there was no excuse for the use of polystyrene boxes and they should be using biodegradable boxes. He was an ignorant idiot, bloody rude, did not want to know. He said they were commercial stalls (which summed them up). I said they are the organisers and should set standards.
Staycation is a Town Council event in Godalming and they take a pride in what they are doing, quality food, local suppliers and good music. A complete different atmosphere to Farnham. Farnham Carnival is organised by the Lions. Says it all really.
Across the river a house had a Mad hatters Party.
The one thing I was very impressed with, teaching young kids First Aid.
The best entertainment was a couple of dogs leaping into the river after a tennis ball. One of the dogs then dived through a man’s legs and tried to steal his food. He was not amused and sat there with a sour face.
Farnham Carnival takes place in Farnham on the last Saturday of June.
Top Story in Digital Mission Daily (Monday 1 July 2013).
Rolling Stones at Glastonbury
June 30, 2013
Rolling Stones Glastonbury
We’ve been doing this for 50 years or something. And if this is the first time you’ve seen a band, please come again. — Mick jagger
50 years in the business and still the World’s Number One Rock n Roll Band.
An estimated 100,000 in the crowd.
Farnham Carnival Parade 2013
June 29, 2013
Farnham Carnival Parade
It should have started at six and gone on until seven. It did not start until nearly seven.
An extremely irritating man on the tannoy.
Compared with a couple of years ago the procession was poor, compared with the Grand Parade that ends the Carnival in Puerto de la Cruz very poor.
In Puerto de la Cruz, they used to have bigflat bed lorries, now trailers pulled by tractor units, sound systems blasting out, dancing in the street.
The carnival was led by a couple of vintage cars.
In Puerto de la Cruz flat beds with sound systems, followed by hundreds dancing. In Farnham a 4×4, a trailer and a dozen or so trying to dance.
Where are the samba bands. You cannot have a carnival procession without samba bands.
Sat by me was a little girl with beautiful goldilocks curls. She had with her a little bear, it was photographed with the carnival as the backdrop. It reminded me of my Japanese friend Mio. I asked. The little bear did not belong to the little girl. It belonged to her school. Each weekend a different child takes the bear out on an adventure and records where the bear has been.
The Carnival Parade is part of the Farnham Carnival which takes place in Farnham on the last Saturday of June
Afternoon in Farnham
June 29, 2013
Farnham Carnival
Farnham Carnival main stage
In The Valkyries, Paulo Coelho describes how a guide had forgotten something, went back to collect it. Paulo could not understand why they did not immediately set off. The guide explains, that when that happens we should pause and reflect, the delay may have been for a reason.
I experienced that today. Morning it had been cool, I thought better take a warm jacket, as it is only going to turn cooler later. When I left the house it was very warm. I returned to the house and swapped for a light jacket. As I walked to the bus stop, the bus passed me by. But I saw St Mark’s, which is rarely open, was open. I popped in, and as a result missed the next bus, and the next, and thought I had missed the bus after that.
No sign of the bus, wait for the next one. It was running late. Sitting on the wall, waiting for the bus, the girl sat next to me on the wall said: I see you have The Alchemist, a very good writer, I have many of his books. I explained I had read The Alchemist, and was leaving it in a church for a lady who I had met a couple of weeks ago, and also showed her The Vicar of Baghdad. On the bus I told her of two other books she may not know of, Manuscript Found in Accra and Aleph. She said she was not aware of these two books, I said I was not surprised as the bookshop chains are pretty abysmal. She said she had experienced the same problem with the latest book by Haled Hussein, author of The Kite Runner. I said I had, but had not read. She had gone into a bookshop and they had one copy of And the Mountains Echoed. As I was leaving the bus I suggested she did a search on Paulo Coelho Athens.
On arrival in Farnham, I realised it was the day of the Farnham Carnival, their annual carnival, last Saturday in June. I had forgotten all about it.
I walked through Gostrey Meadow by the River Wey. I was surprised to find that was where the carnival was being held, as on my one and only visit to the carnival, it was held in Castle Street. The park was packed with people, I could hardly move.
I walked through the park as I had two books to drop off at St Andrew’s. To my surprise, Downing Street too, was busy.
Two books left in Farnham Parish Church: The Alchemist and The Vicar of Baghdad. These for a lady I met a couple of weeks ago who was preparing lunch for the next day. I also left a DVD of a talk by Canon Andrew White at Guildford Baptist Church.
Candle lit, prayer card writ.
The Borough was busy too. I looked in Castle Street, but no carnival, it had relocated to Gostrey Meadows, but with so many people on the streets, I thought maybe they were moving between the two locations.
I returned back to the park. Had a burger, which was not good, and at five pounds, poor value for money. Wandering around, a lot of tacky stalls, the music was not very good either. The sound system awful, overloading and very high distortion levels.
Just across the River Wey, a house with a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in full swing.
Then time for the Carnival Parade. It was supposed to be 6-7 but I do not think it started until nearly seven. It was led by a couple of lovely old cars. It was a disappointment compared with a couple of years ago, and a very big disappointment compared with the Grand Parade that ends the Carnival in Puerto de la Cruz.
In Puerto de la Cruz, they used to have big flatbed lorries, now trailers pulled by tractor units, sound systems blasting out, dancing in the street. In Farnham trailers pulled by 4x4s.
Back into the park.
I talked to one of the organisers about the use by one of the food stalls of polystyrene containers for their food. This is totally unacceptable, they should be using recyclable, biodegradable containers. He was bloody rude, did not want to know. Said they were commercial suppliers, which summed up all the food stalls, and the bar but that was no excuse. As organisers, they should set standards. What was of concern, the banks of the river was littered with this rubbish, at least if biodegradable, will rot down.
The bar was serving Carlsberg and similar rubbish. It was a mobile bar company, which no doubt does similar events. Tacky ice crams vans
Very poor compared with Staycation in Godalming. If Staycation can have good music, good food, local suppliers, then I see no reason why Farnham Carnival cannot. The big difference seems to be Godalming takes a pride in what they are doing and it is a Town Council event, whereas Farnham it is the Lions who run it, hence the commercialisation (same happens at the Donkey Derby in Farnborough).
I stayed for an hour or so, then left. Not sure if I had missed the last bus, and so caught the train.
A very warm evening. The first warm evening this year.
Nearly half an hour to wait for a bus in Aldershot. I wandered into Aldershot. The town centre dead apart from drunken scum wandering around and hanging outside bars. The sick joke is the local council is promoting Aldershot as a night time attraction. You got to be joking!
Top Story in Digital Mission Daily (Monday 1 July 2013).
The Dubai Fountain
June 28, 2013Set on the 30-acre Burj Khalifa Lake, the fountain shoots water jets as high as 500 ft (150 metres), equivalent to that of a 50-storey building. The fountain is 900 ft (275 metres) long and has five circles of varying sizes and two central arcs. It has been designed by California-based WET, the creators of the Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas.
The Dubai Fountain performs daily, with the performance repertoire including Sama Dubai; Baba Yetu, an award-winning song in Swahili; the Arab world’s top-selling dance number Shik Shak Shok; and the signature piece of world-renowned Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, Con te partiro (Time to Say Goodbye).
Over 6,600 WET Superlights – the most advanced incandescent large fountain lights available today – and 25 colour projectors create a visual spectrum of over 1,000 abstract attractions. The beam of light shining upward from the fountain can be seen from over 20 miles away, and will be visible from space making it the brightest spot in the Middle East, and quite possibly in the entire world.
If you have the bandwidth, watch in HD.
Also worth seeing, Magic Dancing Waters in Protaras in Cyprus, lights, water, music and lasers.
Top Story The New Musical Express (Sunday 29 June 2013).
Disgusting Southwest Trains
June 28, 20131830 Guildford-Ascot train, the stench from the toilets unbearable. I felt sorry for anyone who was forced to use the toilets.
For more than a decade the train fares have been rising at more than twice the rate of inflation. We are told the service is improving, but those who use the trains see no sign of improvement in service, they cannot even keep their toilets clean.
Afternoon in Guildford
June 28, 2013A strange day. Late morning cool and autumnal. An hour or so later, very warm and humid.
A Craft Fair all week in Guildford High Street (ends Saturday). Part of the Guildford Festival, which started last weekend with Mass in Blue in Guildford Cathedral.
The bullet has finally been bitten. Instead of patchwork quilt repairs of the cobbled High Street, it is to be dug up and the entire street repaired. Cost £1 million.
Looked in Holy Trinity, which was open. It was laid out for a Leaving Ceremony for Guildford Grammar School, a boys school which now admits girls. I assumed this was some ancient tradition for an ancient school. Maybe it is, but now apparently it is something every does.
But as a result of the Leaving Ceremony, no candles. I spoke to one of the ladies guarding the church. She apologies and said, you can light one of the big candles on the altar, which I thought was very kind of her. She went off to get matches, then went off again and came back with a couple of prayer cards.
Lunch at Guildford Institute. Only myself an elderly couple I know.
Pastel water colours on the wall. They were quite interesting, but once again, glass in front. When are artists going to learn, it is impossible to see your work when you put glass in front?
In one of the art galleries top of the High Street, they have a Ronnie Wood painting of the Stones filling the window. Saturday night The Stones are playing Glastonbury. After much hassle, Mick Jagger is going to let the BBC broadcast one hour live, ie not the entire set. [BBC Two live Glastonbury feed]
The Star Inn, bottom of the High Street in Quarry Street, are this year running the Guildford Fringe, which is quite an ambitious undertaking. Tickets and programme from the Tourist Information, Guildford House, halfway up the High Street on the left (opposite Sainsbury’s).
Walking back down the High Street, I had a chat with a Chinese artist who was exhibiting his work. I suggested to him the Guildford Institute in North Street and The Barn in Farnham may be good places to exhibit his works. He could not understand the mentality of No Photography, as he said it is good publicity. Exactly!
I do not know what has happened to Milk & Honey. They were closed for two weeks for refurbishment. That was four weeks ago, they are still closed.
I sat in the Castle Grounds for a while, but it started to get cool.
Catching the train to Aldershot, the stench from the toilets was very unpleasant. What is it with train companies, is it too much to ask that they keep their toilets clean?
A strange day, it started cool and autumnal, lunchtime and during the afternoon, very warm and humid, by early evening, cool and autumnal.
Pussy Riot: “People fear us because we’re feminists”
June 28, 2013
Pussy Riot demonstrator
Pussy Riot aren’t just on tour. They’re on the run.
When we meet in a secret location in central London, they make it clear that this interview is on condition of anonymity. The Russian punk-feminist protest group, two of whose members are currently travelling the world, talking to activists and journalists and raising support for their band-mates in prison, are wanted by their government, who have branded them extremists for their stand against religious patriarchy and the Putin regime. It will be illegal to read or share this article in Russia.
“There’s a media war in our country,” says the one who, today, is calling herself ‘Serafima’, whispering painfully through a sore throat. Since three members of the group, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova, were tried and sent to labour camps last year, Pussy Riot has been attacked in almost every press outlet in Russia. The international outcry on their behalf goes unmarked. “Katya did not realise there was so much support until she was released. When we were in Russia, we didn’t fully understand, but now we see there truly is huge support,” says Serafima. She asks for a translation of a German proverb she knows: “Nobody is a prophet in their own country.”
Because of the very real danger that these young women will be arrested when they go back to Russia, every journalist who speaks to them must promise to reveal no identifying details. We swear to conceal not only their names, but their ages, where precisely they’ve travelled, and any physical description whatsoever. I can tell you that two members of the Pussy Riot are moving from country to country, talking to activists and journalists and raising support for their fellow band-members in prison. But there’s is so much I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you whether they wear their hair short and blonde or long and dark; I can’t tell you if they’re six-foot hardass rock chicks in ripped jeans or slight, nervous schoolgirls. I can’t tell you whether the girl curled in a hard red armchair in the lobby of a nondescript London office block, three off-key chords and thousands of miles from home, is a stranger or your lost little sister. What I can tell you is that she looks tired.
They both look tired. Serafima is pale and rasping and has a nasty-sounding cough which almost prevents her from speaking. They both look ill and drawn and worn-out; somebody’s nan might tell them they look a bit peaky and ought to go to bed with some hot ribena. That’s not an option, though: Pussy Riot have work to do, before they move on to the next city, and there’s almost nothing any of us can do to make it easier. In the end, I offer Schumacher a multivitamin. I pop two out of the foil packet and take one myself, because if I were Pussy Riot I wouldn’t accept huge orange pills from strangers, even if they do come in a jolly box promising that they can keep a narcoleptic elephant awake for a week.
These girls are young. Very young. For their safety, I can’t say how young, but imagine how young you think they might be. Are you imagining it? They’re about five years younger than that. When they arrived I wondered, for a second, who let a couple of moody work experience kids into a clandestine meeting.
I had read their interviews, seen the court transcripts of last year’s show trials, gone to protests where students in home-made masks yelled out solidarity slogans in truly awful Russian, but I wasn’t prepared for this. Not for this frontless vulnerability, this sudden reminder that behind the bright balaclavas are real bodies that get tired and sick, real people who can still have everything taken away from them.
This is how media activism works, when it’s done well. You get to see the flash and dazzle of protest, but you don’t often get to see the toll exacted from individuals, the energy and courage it takes to keep going, day after day, when you’re being attacked in the press and hunted by police. The younger of the two, ‘Shumacher’, closes her eyes in the armchair and doesn’t talk to anybody, grabbing ten minutes of sleep before she has to answer more of our questions. Some Russians have a saying: “A person who smiles for no reason is a fool.” Pussy Riot are not fools.
Serafima smiles just once, when asked to describe the performance in Christ the Saviour Church in central Moscow of the song “Punk Prayer – Virgin Mary, Drive Putin Out!”, which got three of her bandmates jailed for ‘hooliganism’. She can’t divulge whether she was personally involved in the stunt. “It was designed as a maximal expression of freedom of speech,” she says, because of the iconic location of Christ the Saviour and its close connections with the political establishment. It was the biggest “fuck you” to the Russian elite that five girls could get away with. Except that they didn’t.
Since the trials, a smorgasbord of new legislation, informally known as the Pussy Riot laws, have been put into place in Russia to clamp down on the group and anyone who might try to imitate their art-protests. You can’t cover your face in public, and the laws against ‘offending religious sensibilities’ have been tightened in a way that suggests Jesus isn’t the one who’s worried. In addition, distribution and discussion of Pussy Riot’s protests is strictly forbidden. Their websites have been attacked, people have been prosecuted for making tshirts with their image, and videos of four of their impromptu concerts have been declared extremist, meaning that it is illegal to possess them in Russia. It is also illegal for any Russian citizen to criticise the administration to a foreign journalist. That’s what Pussy Riot have been doing for the past week and a half, and it’s what they’re doing right now, sitting at the end of a bare white table in a bare white room clutching coffee mugs and daring us to ask their names.
And then there’s the cultural backlash – including sexist attacks on what Pussy Riot stand for. “The simplest example is the idea that there’s a [male] producer behind us, or that we must be being paid by foreign governments – nobody can imagine that women themselves are expressing their opinions!” says Schumacher.
“In the Russian mass media they’re saying we’re stupid girls, not able to think. Among the orthodox believers, in the media, they tell us to stay at home, do cooking, give birth to children,” says Schumacher. “And Masha and Nadya are attacked for not fulfilling their roles as mothers.” This last is particularly cruel, because not only is it the Russian state that placed Masha and Nadya in Labour camps far from their children, but both have been denied the usual clemency that allows mothers of young children to receive suspended sentences.
Both women, who have been named “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International, were denied early release this spring, and the group is now preparing to take the appeal to the highest court in the land after continued hunger strikes put Masha in danger of her life.
In countries where Pussy Riot’s videos are uncensored, you can watch them light flares and thrash guitars on the rooftop of a Moscow Detention Center, pounding out a song against the corrupt judicial system which would shortly be pursuing them, too. Their acid-bright tights and face masks stand out against the drab, cold winter like a chemical spill on snow, like something from the old days of ideological certainty seeping through to contaminate the spotless surface of the New Russia. Pussy Riot are a problem. Putin’s government would like to make that problem disappear.
A journalist from the Telegraph asks if the girls consider themselves primarily activists or musicians. “Artists,” replies Shumacher, in English, cutting off the question. They are artists first, “feminist artists,” working within a long tradition of women’s political art; they cite Riot Grrl and Oi! punk as influences, but also feminist writers and activists like Alexandra Kollontai and Simone de Beauvoir. The group was formed in 2011 as an offshoot of the performance art collective Voina, and it is clear that Pussy Riot are not just a punk band.
Instead, they are the idea of a punk band. They don’t release albums or go on performance tours; they have no interest in being entertainers. They are the idea of a girl with a guitar screaming in a church, and in today’s Russia that idea is frightening enough to initiate the kind of cultural clampdown that gives the lie to the illusion of a state at peace with itself. That was the point. “It is not three singers from Pussy Riot who are on trial,” said Nadya Tolokonnikova in her closing statement to the court. “If that were the case, what’s happening would be totally insignificant. It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation which is on trial.”
“There are two reasons why we frighten people,” says Schumacher, popping a chocolate biscuit into her mouth. “The first thing is that we’re a feminist, female group with no men connected to it, and the second is that we don’t have leaders.
“These two aspects, the structure that has no leaders and the emphasis on women, these are strongly connected. Russia has always linked the idea of leadership with some man or other, who can control things, and control women. A woman’s group with no leaders… this activism comes from a place people do not recognise, and sets itself up against the structures of power.”
The insistence on anonymity isn’t just to protect individual group members from persecution. Even before the backlash began in earnest, Pussy Riot only ever gave interviews using nicknames, pursuing an image of memetic militancy: without names or leaders, anyone could be Pussy Riot. The trials of Nadya, Katya and Masha forcibly removed some that anonymity, but they have spoken out from jail declaring their willingness to see others continue the work.
Allergy to leadership and hierarchy has been a defining feature of the new youth protest movements that erupted around the world in 2010 and 2011. It’s not just Pussy Riot with their bright balaclavas. It’s the Arab Spring and Occupy with their horizontal, networked organisation systems. It’s the black bloc face-rag, the grinning Guy Fawkes masks on the front lines of riots and in occupied squares in Cairo, Tunis, Athens, London and, this week, in Istanbul and Sao Paulo. Nor is it only Russian protesters who now risk arrest if they cover their faces – new laws in Britain and the United States mean that if you go to a protest in a you could well face what Schumacher delicately describes as “intimate problems with the authorities.” The iconography of Pussy Riot is infectious and easy to appropriate because it works in the way that resistance works in a post-ideological age where art moves faster than organisation and repressive regimes can be shaken by irreverent protest memes, bright colours and bravery.
And, of course, it’s a girl thing. Every sexist society, including this one, fosters an image of women as basically interchangeable. Underneath the makeup, girls are all the same, aren’t we, with the same petty problems and weak, willing bodies. Pussy Riot take the image of modern womanhood as a faceless smile, repeated endlessly, and turn it back on us as a scream.
“The idea of women liberating themselves, speaking out and acting out against Putin and other forms of power is something that appears strange,” she explains, “It’s an attempt to transform the role of women, who are seen from the conservative viewpoint as people who have to behave, have to be subservient, have to be as soft as possible, as giving as possible.” It upsets people. The name upsets people. Broadcasters have trouble pronouncing it; parents purse their lips. And that’s the point, too. “People ask us all the time, which is more important, politics or feminism, and for us politics and feminism are one and the same thing.”
So. Here’s how you make a balaclava out of old stockings. Cut a length off a really thick pair, preferably in day-glo pink or blue or green, and pull it over your head to work out where the eye and mouth sockets go. Snip little holes with a pair of kitchen scissors; pull them apart with your fingers. Bear in mind that if you go outside like this, you may be breaking the law in several countries, including this one. Put on your homemade neon balaclava. Now go and start an oppositional art revolution.
It’s what Pussy Riot want you to do. Really. Right now, it’s extremely difficult for the six group members who are still free to organise protests: they want their punk-feminist, anti-authoritarian message to spread around the world, and they want people to interpret it in their own way. “We’re open-source,” says Serafima. Throughout the entire interview, it’s the only thing she says in English.
“In travelling, we have understood that this isn’t just about Pussy Riot, but about a broader movement – this is very important, this is a wonderful discovery,” says Schumacher. “We met people from Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Sandy in New York, and we agree with what they’re doing. It turns out that at we inspired people, and now we are inspired ourselves. This is really key, because any living person can become Pussy Riot, if they support the ideas. We support third wave feminism, and we want to bring that wave to a finish,”.
“It’s like when Marcel Duchamp posed the question of ‘what is art?’” says Serafima softly- her throat still hurts, and she’s trying to talk through it, even though speaking is so difficult. Speaking is always difficult. “I reckon that we asked a similar question – it just takes time for everybody to understand.” Duchamp didn’t have much time for women, but he did say that “art is either plagiarism or revolution.” Pussy Riot are originals. Their manifesto is a call to action – “we are open-source-extremists, the feminist virus infecting your thoughts.” In a time of bland hegemony, that takes unbelievable guts.
— Laurie Penny
Published in The New Statesman.
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