Gerald Laing's Truth
Here's the latest art controversy to hit the headlines (CLICK): Truth or Consequences by Brit. pop artist and former soldier Gerald Laing, on display at the National Army Museum in Chelsea until Monday 9 July (one week only). Technically, this is a sophisticated work of art; it changes from one picture to another, according to the angle at which you view it. (Click the title link to see the full sequence, from Tony Blair and a crippled London bus to President Bush and a scene from the Iraq war). Politically, it is extremely naive in blaming Bush and Blair for Islamic atrocities. The attack on the twin towers came before the Iraq War. In my home town, back in 1988, Muslims smashed windows of W.H.Smiths and Central Library for displaying Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Ilford has been on Islamic terrorist alert for the last 19 years, long before Bush and Blair came to power!
posted by Unknown @ 3.7.07
6 comments
6 Comments:
Where we live, peaceful local shopkeepers allowed themselves to be filmed for TV innocently waving butcher's knives, declaring;
"Rushdie called my wife a prostitute ... bring him to me ... I will kill him" and suchlike pleasantries.
Some of us do have memories longer than the last rave or anti-whatever demo.
Indeed! What a shame our government lives on another planet. If it didn't, it would see what we see. It actually helps to talk to Muslims too. One of my Muslim colleagues thought Sadam Hussein was a hero of Islam, because he was always filmed on his prayer mat when the chips were down and he needed some Islamic support! She also tells me that birds never drop a poo on Mecca. It's a miracle! (Same for Wimbledon, now they have a hawk patrolling the grounds.)
We mustn't let our rulers off the hook for this, them and their wretched Globalisation Project.
Ever read "Green Mantle"? Written by a former private secretary to Milner in South Africa, director of information under Lord Beaverbrook and ultimately Governor General of Canada, John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir) was also married to a cousin of the Duke of Westminster. Top drawer chap.
"Green Mantle" is, at root, very sympathetic to Islam, even while seeing what it can do.
Then there's TE Lawrence, and Lord Mountbatten and the shoddy treatment the Hindus ended up with at decolonisation, and so on.
And ever since then they've been stirring it with globalisation and modernity, when most people everywhere just want to be left to carry on with their traditional values.
Our leaders are just as arrogant as they were in Victorian times. They don't believe they can get stung, whether by Islam or China or anywhere else.
You're right, they don't listen. But don't care was made to care.
I was forced to read Greenmantle at school, The 39 Steps too. All I can remember about The 39 Steps are tedious descriptions of Scottish heather and dialogue in Scottish accents I couldn't understand. Greenmantle is a complete blank.
Victorian society was so hypocritical, I'm not sure what it was all about, apart from making money (pretty much like today). And while you're the biggest con artist in the business, you don't see how anyone can con you (same as today).
(The Yanks are pretty good at this too; they've financed most of the countries and organizations they've since fought! But didn't we all enjoy seeing Afghan tribesmen blowing up Russian tanks?)
I think I prefer the naked greed of our "Golden Age" under Queen Elizabeth I. The old girl and her Establishment cronies made fortunes out of piracy and slavery and to hell with any pretence to morality. Of course when the Spanish Armada threatened our fleet, because Spain was miffed we kept nicking all the gold they'd nicked from the Americas, it was down to the English pirates and their Queen to defend the Nation against those dastardly Spaniards! The Virgin Queen's heroic "I'm only a weak woman" speech and the ultra cool Sir Francis Drake playing bowls before battle have gone down in history. Great stuff!
And despite the Establishment's belated apology for slavery, it still hasn't admitted that Queen Elizabeth I financed the whole thing from the start (you need to read the small print to find this out.) If the Establishment wanted to make a genuine apology, it would be Queen Elizabeth II apologizing for Queen Elizabeth I. Don't hold your breath.
Greenmantle (whoops, too a.m.), very Victorian. Elizabethans do seem a lot more honest in their red-bloodedness ... pre-Enlightenment and all that.
As to the birds over Mecca, I'll refrain from comment.
I'm sure there are a few human vultures about. "Buy yer 'oly water 'ere, mate."
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