Issue #99. March 18th - 31st, 2005

A New Start Is A Great Start
Religion tells us to love our fellow man, go out and multiply and not to judge each other but all too often shallow minded and ignorant people twist this into hatred and bigotry.
By Richard MacFarlane

On pink flowers and the lure of the seaside
It had only been ten days but of I had forgotten how beautiful the sea is. I don't think I can remember this sort of thing.
By Dimitra Daisy

A long cup of coffee
I looked at him hoping he would help me out but he remained silent. We brought our coffee into the living room where sunlight streamed through the window making the room look tidier than normal somehow and sat down.
By Rachel Queen

The Global Gulag Archipelago
Most people will have heard of Guantanamo Bay but it, like the camps Solzhenitsin describes, is just one jail among many. They span not just an entire country but much of the world.
By Duncan McFarlane

Dried Petals
With love I pressed them into your hand...
By Nima

A New Start Is A Great Start

The world is a terrible place - we know all about it, the news is always telling us that we are all bad people, especially those of us who dare to be different. Religion tells us to love our fellow man, go out and multiply and not to judge each other but all too often shallow minded and ignorant people twist this into hatred and bigotry.

I live in the west of Scotland and fell into this trap myself. I was brain-washed into believing that hating people just because of there beliefs was the right thing to do, but not any longer. I have turned my back on the lost sheep who can't think for themselves and moved on to a much better things in my life.

I put this down to a couple of events that happened in my life which I will share with you soon, but I must let you know a bit about my past to start with.

I was born like all of us in the not too unusual way into a Protestant family. I went to the local school and hated it with a passion. I started to get into football like most young boys do in this area and like most of my family started supporting Glasgow Rangers. Rangers have mostly a Protestant fan base and some of them (who I like to call the idiot brigade) are connected with Protestant factions in Northern Ireland. Their main rivals in the league are Glasgow Celtic who have a mostly Roman Catholic fan base and again some of them (again I like to call them the idiot brigade) have connections with republican factions in Northern Ireland.

I got involved with a few people who said to me why not joint the orange order and stand up and show people you’re proud to be a Protestant, I now realise that this was a major mistake in my life but at the time I went along with it and joined. After a few years though I knew this was not really for me but I was being used as a scape-goat to preach crap that I did not really believe in. As I do not have any real grudges against anyone and I couldn’t care less what church or other buildings people go to to pray in I found the whole thing a bit pointless.

Now that I have told you a bit about a past I am ashamed of, I will tell you what made me change my mind about a lot of things.

The biggest and most life changing thing that happened to me, happened in early October 2003. I had gone with a couple of friends to Munich in Germany for the beer festival. While there we decided to do a bit of site seeing as you do when on holiday. I have always had an interest in world war two and as Hitler made most of his early speeches before coming to power, around this area there was a lot of war related history in and around the city, including the very first concentration camp at a small village called Dachau on the out skirts of Munich, we decided we had to pay it a visit to see it first hand.

Even though the war had finished decades before it is still a very sad and depressing place. It is hard to describe how I felt as I walked about knowing that so many people had been butchered there and all because they had been born into the wrong religion in one man’s opinion. I walked through the gas chambers and the rifle ranges and I swear the smell of death still hung over the place as if the killing had just stopped the day before. The grounds and buildings were so quiet it was as if the birds even stopped singing as a mark of respect for the poor souls who had perished in such an awful way.

In one part of it there is an area known as the bunker which was used to house special prisoners and was also known as the prison within a prison. While I was in it I felt physically sick and had to get out of it to gather myself and get some air. It was at that point I found a small church in the grounds which had been built after the war as a kind of memorial, I entered, sat down and for the first time in ages prayed and pledged that I would never again condemn anybody because of something as daft as their religion.

After I returned to Scotland I stopped going to the Orange Order and started getting my life on track and living it, instead of just existing every day. I met a lovely girl who happens to be a Roman Catholic and we could not be any happier together. We spend all our spare time together and with her, I have found a love that I never thought existed. She has become my reason to be happy and we are planning to get married next year. I am only glad that I woke up when I did because if I had not I would never have been where I am now.

It has not been easy to get here, but I must admit it has well been worth it. I have had people who I thought were friends turn on me, spreading gossip about and trying to wreck what I've worked so hard to get and who I feel I really am, but what I'll will say to them is this - I woke up one morning and saw the world with clear eyes and saw people for who they are and not for what they are and if you could try that once and feel as great and alive as I feel you would never go back to hate, anger and bigotry. I have broken away from the old spiteful me and I have tasted what it is like to live without hate and it is the best feeling in the whole of the world.

Richard McFarlane

on pink flowers and the lure of the seaside

Dear long lost friend,

February came and went and it didn't leave much of note behind, so what can I tell you? Being too lazy to write things down anymore, most them soon slip away from my head or they get muddled - the picture blurs into a finger painting of the sun the way it would look if you could make out the colours it is made of. Of course February, being February, was rather grey or at least colourless so I really don't mind it slipping away, except that is for the day by the seaside that is. That wasn't grey even even though its skies were and it didn't slip away, either. It was red and blue and it filled my head with pictures of bridges over highways and stadiums and trains and trams and the sea that stayed for a while -a night, then a day and another night- I had forgotten how beautiful the sea is. I had forgotten how different from everything else it looks, how it changes colours when the light fades and how it takes my breath away-

But that day left too and so did the pictures and March came, and we had a party, not exactly to celebrate that but sort of. The party was a mild success, which is a way of (not) saying it was a bit of a failure but it didn't matter much because somehow none of us had to work the next day, even though it was a Friday, and so we went to the seaside again. It had only been ten days but of I had forgotten how beautiful the sea is. I don't think I can remember this sort of thing. I don't think there's enough space in my head for a picture of how it stretches on forever or how it glimmers in the sun, or of the boats that float and their sails that hide the setting sun. And I hadn't even known that you can sit at a tram stop and look at all this and a fairground too, on a day when the sky had been blue beyond compare and there had been bright-coloured balloons tighted to ropes joining the lampposts on the square opposite the town hall, floating in the air, lots of them; or that I would have forgotten my camera at home. I hadn't known all this and I hadn't even imagined; and, somehow, this is all that matters.

All the little things that surprise me.

Like falling asleep on a Bank Holiday Monday afternoon after having spent the weekend, and the morning, indoors, being woken up by a phonecall and going out (to buy some milk to put in my coffee) just to realise spring had arrived while I was sleeping. The sun was warm, the breeze was gentle, kites were floating above the rooftops in it and suddenly the young trees in the street seemed to be in full bloom. I had been counting their pink flowers for a while, one turning into three into fifteen into what looked like fourty-something into "too many for me to count, but about half of the trees on the other side of the street" into "most of the trees on the other side and a few on this" into "all of them" over the span of a few days, too fast for me to have time to prepare myself for it or even imagine even though I feel I had been waiting forever for it to happen. In the end spring crept up on me while I was sleeping and I swear I felt like Alice in Wonderland on that afternoon. For a while it was like magic.

Now that -just three short days later- the flowers have started to turn white and rain petals on the street I am tempted to start worrying about looking forward to the future too much to notice the present but then I know it wouldn't really matter, as most things don't these days. There are few that do, like this gorgeous song and the sweetness of the weather and the fact that you are there.

Love and all the things that make you feel and care,
Dimitra Daisy
xxx

(More by this author)

A Long Cup of Coffee

"Why do you live?"
It was a funny question. I rested the teaspoon down on the side, and looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
He poured boiling water over the coffee I had spooned into the cup and repeated the question.
"Why do you live?"
"Is this a philosophical question, or do you mean me personally."
"You."
"I don't know."

I looked at him hoping he would help me out but he remained silent. We brought our coffee into the living room where sunlight streamed through the window making the room look tidier than normal somehow and sat down.

"OK put it this way, what are the most important things in your life?"
"You, my family, my dog, writing, erm…" I paused for a second and sipped the warm bitter coffee. I was never quite sure whether I really liked coffee but I always felt better for drinking a cup.

He was still waiting for more.

"Walking on yellow days, making something worthwhile, listening to music…"
"Playing music, travelling, watching bands." he cut in.
"Yes that too."
"Come to think of it I can't believe watching bands wasn't nearer the top of you list! Anyway you do all that already, so why do you suppose you would have been happier if you had got the job?"
"Because it was a better job, it had a purpose."
"And your life doesn't have a purpose without it?
"Well yes it does… but I should be thinking about the future. I should settle down and buy a house and show some responsibility. It scares me not knowing where I'll be this time next month let alone this time next year."
"And you would have known if you had got the job?"
"Well not exactly, but it would have been more permanent. Look I know what you are saying, and I know it is not the end of the world… its just… you know?"
I drank the remainder of my coffee in a gulp, the egg shaped bubble moved slowly down my throat warmth seeping into every inch of my body.

"I know. You want something more. But look, your job is boring, but is it really that bad? Don't try to tell me that you don't spend half your time daydreaming and the other half listening to music. If you had got this job you'd have needed to concentrate, you'd have come home each night exhausted and you'd have not had as much time to write. You'd have still had to get up each morning earlier than you really want. The future will happen when it is good and ready and you can bet a million pounds it will still take you by surprise"

My dog walked in. She had the look about her, that "I've just been rolling around on the grass, the sun is shining and soon I will be fed" look. I looked at her and thought:

"My life is here. It is now."

I turned to him and said

"Yeah, I'm ok really"

I meant it too.

Rachel Queen

(More by this author)

The Global Gulag Archipelago

‘How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it – but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination.

‘And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus the employees would be astounded if you asked for a ticket to go there. They know nothing of it. They’ve never heard of the archipelago as a whole or any of its innumerable islands’

Aleksander Solzhenitsin ‘The Gulag Archipelago’(1973)

Much of the following information and the original idea for the comparison with Solzhenitsin's work on Soviet gulags comes from an article by Stephen Grey

Solzhenitsin was writing about the secret jails and forced labour camps in which political prisoners were held, and sometimes tortured or killed, by the secret police of the Soviet Union. The ‘archipelago’ was the network of jails and camps in which they were held – some were literally on islands – but he compared all of them to a chain of islands which most people had never visited, seen or heard of.

Most people will have heard of Guantanamo Bay but it, like the camps Solzhenitsin describes, is just one jail among many. They span not just an entire country but much of the world.

Citizens of dozens of countries including Britain and Canada are taken to them without charge or trial to be tortured.

CIA-chartered planes land at Glasgow and Prestwick airport in Scotland taking prisoners to the US naval base at Guantanamo bay in Cuba , Bagram airbase in Afghanistan , or the ‘Scorpion jail’ in Cairo, Egypt or sometimes to jails in Iraq, Morocco and Jordan.

Some , like their Soviet predecessors, are literally on islands - like Guantanamo bay and the American airbase on the British colony of Diego Garcia – or are ships like the interrogation centres on US naval vessels in the Indian ocean used as interrogation centres . Others like ‘Far’Falastin interrogation centre’ in Damascus,Syria are islands in the metaphorical sense.

The evidence on which they are being arrested may be based on torture as well. The British government has stated that it opposes torture. However it is quite willing to allow the sale of arms to dictatorships like those of Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan which routinely use torture – and to provide foreign aid to them on a large scale.

According to the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, the fact that the British government and courts accept evidence which may have been obtained under torture encourages the use of torture by the Uzbek government – which practices methods such as the removal of finger nails and burning victims with boiling water. (Murray is now standing as an independent candidate against British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.)

Of course evidence obtained by torture is worthless. Anyone who is tortured for long enough will tell the torturer anything they want to hear. Typically the torturers will have suspicions, demand that the victim admit these suspicions are true and then when, under torture, the victim eventually says – ok – it’s all true just please stop – the torturer thinks their suspicions have been confirmed.

This process of ‘rendition’ (illegal kidnapping as opposed to extradition sanctioned by the courts) was going on in the 1990s under Clinton – but has increased greatly since September 11th.

“Tens of thousands of political opponents and ordinary citizens have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape.

Wives are tortured in front of their husbands; children in the presence of their parents; and all of these horrors concealed from the world by the apparatus of a totalitarian state.”

President George W. Bush’s speech to the UN General Assembly, 12th September 2002 , referring to Iraq under Saddam Hussein

First the capture of Saddam was meant to be the end of torture as “the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever”.

Then Abu Ghraib was meant to be an isolated incident – ‘a few bad apples’ who were jailed

Amnesty International didn’t agree. Neither did the International Red Cross – and nor did Human Rights Watch.

Neither did Staff Sergeant Samuel Provance, who served in the 302nd US Military Intelligence Battalion at Abu Ghraib. He says dozens of people were involved in torture there and that “there’s definitely a cover up”.

In the ‘Camp Breadbasket’ court martials of British troops not one Iraqi was allowed to give evidence. Iraqis don’t allege the mere ‘sexual humiliation’ and ‘simulated beatings’ that a handful of British troops were convicted of. They tell reporters of very real beatings – often with metal rods - lasting an entire day.

At Abu Ghraib, at the US airforce base at Bagram in Afghanistan and in the case of Baha Mousa, beaten and kicked to death in British custody at a British base near Basra, people have been tortured to death in the Anglo-American global gulag according to the testimony of both Iraqi witnesses and British and American troops.

There have been over a hundred investigations by the British Ministry of Defence against British troops alleged to have tortured or summarily killed Iraqi prisoners or civilians – and similarly 300 Pentagon investigations of US forces. A few have resulted in jail sentences for a several soldiers. Most have led to no charges.

British citizens released from ‘Camp X-Ray’ at Guantanamo bay tell of being sexually abused , beaten and tortured – and their claims would seem to be substantiated by Sean Baker who served in the 403rd US military police at Guantanamo - and was left brain damaged by a severe beating after playing the role of prisoner in an ‘interrogation’ training exercise.

There is also an ‘interrogation camp’ for children at Guantanamo bay – ‘Camp Iguana’ – and allegations that children were tortured and even raped at Abu Ghraib. One source of these allegations is the award winning journalist Seymour Hersh , who was the first to report on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and allegations of torture at Abu Ghraib. Both times his claims were dismissed by the Pentagon until the full story came out and proved him right. (You can read his address to the American Civil Liberties Union here – scroll down to the section with the title ‘Worse Torture Revelations to Come’).

This is not to say that other governments and militaries don’t use torture – they do – and many of them on a far bigger scale – the Chinese government being just one example. However torture by British and American forces has not been a few isolated incidents of handfuls of soldiers ‘out of control’ either – and when the governments or militaries of long established democracies like Britain and America carry out torture or use evidence obtained by torture it is not only as wrong as when any other government is involved it also undermines their attempts to promote respect for human rights in other countries.

copyright©Duncan McFarlane 2005

Duncan McFarlane

(More by this author)

Dried Petals

Nima   

The Donnas - Live at Manchester Academy

Tonight, in this city, four shapely (one more shapely than the other three) Californian girls have come to rock and roll, with more hair than is absolutely necessary, and with a out and out good time attitude the kindly folk of Manchester are about the be introduced to the sub rock punk fun time fuzz bomb that is The Donnas. Armed with good skin, Les Pauls, cheery dispositions and an alarming degree of hair product, the scene is set and the stage is ready.

The Donnas, for those who have yet to experience, this trans-Atlantic frolicsome foursome are the modern day equivalent of Brian Wilson’s ‘Californian Girls’. They spent their teenage years in daddy’s garage honing a thrilling cacophony of three chord power pop rock that will see us shaken to our very core tonight.

Immediately the audience is grabbed by the proverbials as the band take to the stage in a thunder of tribal drum poundings and power chord riffing, it’s real air punching territory, and the crowd seem happy with the arrangement. “You guys look like you’re ready to have a good time” opens lead singer Brett Anderson (not to be confused with the snake hipped, sexually ambiguous former Suede front man), “Yeah, I like this crowd”, before rattling into ‘Friends Like Mine”. The drum break provides more arms in the air type clap-a-long-a-thon behaviour before the song explodes back into life. Make no mistake, this is rock kid, and you better be ready for it. ‘It’s So Hard’ is the point where I, oddly enough, notice just how much hair this lot have between them, I’d say enough to fill a rather large wheel-barrow, but that’s not really why we’re here, but fittingly enough, they do strike me as a kind of new format Californian girl group, a Bangles for the disaffected generation, a Shirelles for doomed youth.

An old song is introduced, and it turns out to be ‘Hook It Up’ from their ‘Get Skintight’ days, it’s real blues-y uber-riffing rock and roll that would have Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper jiving from beyond the grave. What follows next, is however a little bit suspect, the girls start throwing out ‘gifts’ to whoever in the audience can shout the loudest, it sort of makes the whole thing seem like a rock and roll pantomime, and I start to wonder if this lot are the ‘Steps’ of the Californian rock world.

‘Is That All You’ve Got For Me?’ is more of the same, intensely rhythmic drum driven pounding, whilst Allison Robertson rips it all to shreds with classic, biting hooks spewing forth from her trusty Les Paul. “Are you ready to get mental...are you ready to get mental’ screams Anderson over and over before they launch into ‘Takes One to Know One’. Whilst reclaiming some of their integrity The Donnas still make this sound something like the soundtrack to Meatloaf’s roller disco. It’s almost becoming a pale parody of what they have committed to tape, it’s what a loner teenager would hear whilst riding Satan’s pizza delivery moped.

‘Who Invited You’ and ‘Five O’Clock in the Morning’ close the set proper. The former a single note solo salvo straight from rock and roll heaven or hell, I’m not entirely convinced either way; the latter a throbbing, pulsating riff-o-rama, a dedicated hands aloft clap-a-long with a scintillating guitar solo. And with that, The Donnas are gone for a pre-arranged close set/come back for encore fix. Forty five minutes, not really a full days work is it?

The encore is introduced with Anderson explaining to the masses that bass player Maya Ford has been throwing up all tour (well, she is heavily pregnant) and that we are a bit mean for wanting them back. Oh, rock and fucking roll. Allison Robertson swaps her Les Paul for an SG and delivers a much more raspier workout during ‘Fall Behind Me’, this earns the money for tonight alone. The inter song banter continues, and continues some more, maybe a little too much. “I blame Chris Rock” says the photographer, and you know what, he may be right.

In all it’s great, fun, jumping around stuff. Whether it’s altogether a serious rock and roll proposition is still up for debate, but the crux of the matter is this – if it’s great rock and roll, played at full throttle by a bunch of shapely Californian chicks wielding guitars and kudos then I’m up for it. If it’s Steps, then I’ll leave it alone.

Lets Rock.

Johnny Mac

(More by this author)

Undercut - Live at Manchester Night and Day Cafe

Sometimes it’s like that, sometimes a record sleeve, or even just the name of a band will catch your eye, draw you in and make you turn an ear. I often wonder just how much I have missed, just by not being in the right place at the right time, or even in the right place for a long enough time; but Undercut I did not miss. A unassuming email arrived last week, I liked the cut of it’s jib and so I gave them a looking at, and without reservation I liked what I saw. 

Undercut are a traditional rock and roll five piece from Bristol who have been garnering interest with their debut single ‘Soul Food Mother’ which was given a soft release at the end of last year. Other sources have tagged the track as ‘a killer hit’ and ‘as epic as it’s possible to be in three minutes and forty seconds’, and in formal journo back slapping mode I’d be inclined to agree. It’s an out and out sonic rollercoaster of guitar spewed mayhem, it’s only hanging on by it’s fingernails, as though the whole thing could collapse around their ears at any moment. But it doesn’t, and Undercut win out at the end. It really is something you should try.

And so, with a comfortable feel the quintet take to the stage, they are obviously a little older than a lot of the ‘new acts’ that the Night and Day promotes, but with those few extra years comes a maturity and a clearly defined skill honed through time spent on the circuit. Opening with the pumping, pulsating ‘Soil’ they set out their stall with passion and ferocity, with a definite call for the audience to sit up and take note. They are not here for the good of their health, and we know it.

‘Holding On’ is an aggressive, raw quasi-anthemic song which fades to a regimented drum and then explodes back into life, whilst ‘Delight’ is somewhere on a line drawn from The Cure, New Order, Lloyd Cole and Echo and The Bunnymen. Maybe that’s a little vague, but the writer can see elements of all those influences thrown in, thrashed about, beaten up and thrown back out again. No bad thing, no bad thing at all.

‘Take Me As I Am’ is utterly infectious, with chiming melodies overlain by a vicious wall of sound, the two doing battle until the bitter end. Current single ‘Soul Food Mother’ and ‘Crazy Too’ have more of the same, the delicate splashes and surges of melody seeping through the insistent, forceful layers of guitar. It really is something special. Whilst with ‘Butterfly’ the band exhibit a slightly rockier side with them sounding more like The Clash with every bar played, it’s urgent, it’s emphatic, it’s totally persistent.

Closing the set with forthcoming single ‘To Die For’ Undercut really leave the crowd with something to look forward to, the song builds slowly to an intense, deafening crescendo and then rides roughshod over all that has gone before until it crashes, explodes and fades like the last embers of a dying star. It’s truly magnificent.

Undercut may not be a name on your lips or in the NME just yet, but I assure you that they will be soon. The album due out later this year promises to be a real treat if tonight is anything to go by. Under-exposed, undercut.

Listen to tracks here.

Buy the single here.

Johnny Mac

(More by this author)