Amnesty Interactive

Amnesty International in New Zealand has come up with a neat idea. If you go to this site, your Facebook history is scanned and you find out which of your activities will mean you fall foul of the authorities in specific countries, and how many times you might risk imprisonment, torture or even execution. Of course, their app is simply searching for specific words, so it’s potentially as clunky as Facebook’s own attempts to determine what sort of person you might be from what you post, and thus which advertisers might have an interest in you.

For example, because I had expressed a fondness for the popular beat combo XTC, the Amnesty bot decided that I take drugs. XTC = ecstasy, geddit? Also in the likes list was gospel music, as a result of which I am assumed to be a Christian. Now neither of these is the case, which at first implies a certain flaw in the whole thing. But then you realise what it really means; if a state decides that being a Christian is against the law, you don’t actually need to be a Christian to fall foul of that law. In just needs an authority figure to infer that you’re a Christian, perhaps from your CD collection. Oppression is just as bad when it’s incompetent, arbitrary and misinformed as it is when it’s ruthlessly efficient.

And if you’re interested, by Amnesty’s calculation, for my online sins I’d be beaten 55 times, tortured 52 times, imprisoned 47 times and shot dead just the once.

A few words about gay marriage

I don’t think I’ve made any particular reference to gay marriage in this blog before, mainly because I didn’t see much point. I mean, I’ve long assumed that the whole thing would just trundle into existence eventually, to a few bleats of outrage and then within a matter of years we’d look back on the days when consenting adults weren’t permitted to marry someone of their own gender with the sort of bemused horror we now reserve for bear-baiting or child chimney sweeps. But apparently not. It seems that David Cameron is under pressure from Conservative constituency chairmen to abandon the whole idea.

Now, let’s be very clear. I support traditional marriage, which I take to mean marriage between a man and a woman. 12 years ago, I entered into such a traditional marriage. And if I thought that allowing two men or two women to marry would disrupt or destabilise my marriage or that of other traditionally married people, I’d be rather concerned at the prospect. But nobody has yet been able to explain to me how the legalisation of gay marriage would harm my own traditional marriage or any other traditional marriage to the tiniest degree. And since the so-called institution of marriage is nothing more than the sum of all those traditional marriages, past, present and future, I really don’t see the problem. Several million multiplied by zero is still, so far as I recall, zero.

I’m also baffled by the opposition coming from the Conservative Party. My hazy grasp of modern political philosophy tells me that Conservatives (see Republicans, right-wingers, etc) favour freedom as their guiding principle. Labour (Democrats, the left) lean towards equality. Many ideological clashes occur when these two great principles come into opposition. So you’d think that a law change that offers both freedom and equality would meet with rousing acclamation on both sides of the house. Apparently not.

Now, one argument against gay marriage that I do encounter is that it offends the sensibilities of various religious groups. Well, that’s a pity but, you know what? There are probably several thousand things about the modern world that offend me: reality TV; the smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken; fake tan; people who say “less” when they mean “fewer”; the brain-dead loudness of most action movies; my own increasingly saggy and decrepit reflection in the bathroom mirror. To be honest, I also get pretty offended by the inane platitudes of a lot of the aforementioned faith groups, and I’ve never quite understood why my aesthetic prejudices are less deserving of protection than their supernatural taboos. But it’s a modern, complex, interconnected world, with all the mess and noise that entails, so I just do my best to avoid KFC and my face and religious fundamentalism; and when such encounters are unavoidable I grit my teeth and remind myself that there are other, more delightful things around the corner that might compensate for the temporary glitch. Maybe those who oppose the idea of gay marriage because an old man in a dress tells them to could follow my example and just try to ignore it. It won’t go away, but you may find that it stops bothering you if you stop bothering it.

And it’s become something of a cliché, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true: if the idea of gay marriage offends you too much, maybe you should try to avoid marrying a gay person.

Hanbury Street: who nose?

Not entirely sure what to make of this. An LA graffiti artist, Mear One, has painted a mural in Hanbury Street, east London, which, according to how you choose to interpret it is either an attack on global capitalism or a collision of several different bonkers conspiracy theory tropes with a distinct stench of anti-semitism. “Oh, but those big-nosed guys on the Monopoly board aren’t meant to be Jewish,” say the picture’s defenders. “They’re just, y'know, capitalists. With big noses.” The fact that the mural appeared in a predominantly Muslim area has escaped nobody’s attention.

Without wanting to descend to a pointless game of whataboutery, maybe those Danish cartoons were just pictures of some bloke. With a turban. Oh, and while we’re there, check out Amazon’s Dachau jigsaw; and, from a free speech perspective, William Saletan at Salon. My view? None of these things should be banned; but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s sensible to do them either.

Meanwhile, on a cheerier note: over here, I write an entire blog post about one footnote.

PS: Panic over. The mural’s going. But not before it becomes the victim of another moment of impromptu street art.

Julian Assange, Pussy Riot and the sacred art of fence-sitting

When it comes to the subject of Julian Assange, it appears that agnosticism is not an option, at least not in polite society. But I really don’t know whether he should be deported to Sweden or spirited to Ecuador or asked to stay on in London for the moment in case England’s batting line-up needs further bolstering. Pundits of impeccably leftist credentials such as Owen Jones and Cath Elliott have snapped at soi-disant liberals whose support for Assange appears to trump any sympathy for the women who accuse him of raping them. I certainly see their point, but A-HA! say the conspiracy theorists, this is why St Julian’s opponents have framed him as a sex offender: they know it will cause divisions among his instinctive defenders, whereas an accusation of, say, bank robbery (the offence that the South African secret services tried to pin on Peter Hain) wouldn’t be taken as seriously. Had Assange been accused of something else, would Jones or Elliott have been so eager to distance themselves? And, for that matter, if he had been accused of saying something rude about Islam, would George Galloway now be so steadfast in his defence? Rape is a heinous crime and accusations of rape need to be taken seriously; even in democracies, there are some people in positions of power who are prepared to use underhand means to silence those who oppose them. Neither of those is a particularly outrageous point of view, but right now it seems to be difficult to hold both of them at once.

I’m less conflicted about the case of Pussy Riot, the Russian punks who were sentenced yesterday. Modern Russia is a corrupt, dysfunctional plutocracy and the fact that Putin has managed to get the hierarchy of the Orthodox church onside just adds a thick layer of mumbo-jumbo and a dash of misogyny to the ghastly cocktail. The three women should not be in prison. But (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?), they were fully aware of who they were going to upset and what was liable to happen when they made their protest inside the cathedral in February; otherwise there would have been little point in doing it. Let’s be honest, if the verdict had come through yesterday and they’d been found not guilty and Putin apologised for the misunderstanding and said he loved their records actually, their righteously, rightfully indignant supporters around the world would probably have felt a little let down. Like Eliot’s Thomas Becket, they were seeking martyrdom and Putin, the clown, has handed it to them. I’m not entirely sure what Assange is after, or whether the weird dialectic created by his opponents and supporters will hand it to him or not. Adding to the confusion is that the three defendants in Moscow come across as fun, feisty broads with whom you’d like to have a pint; Assange seems to be a pompous dick. Which shouldn’t matter, but it does.

And there’s another paradox. Pussy Riot were caught bang to rights. We may not like the law they broke, but it’s pretty clear that they broke it. Even if Assange were to stand trial in Sweden, no verdict would satisfy everyone and the conspiracy theories and other grumbles would persist. Perversely, the legal process in Russia has been far more transparent than what’s happening with Assange in the nominally free and open West.

Still not sure about the big baby: a few more thoughts about the Olympic ceremony and that

Some stuff that should probably gone into the previous post.

1. Previous opening ceremonies either dutifully toed a political line (Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980, Beijing 2008) or expressed a prevailing zeigeist (Los Angeles 1984, Sydney 2000) that happened to tie in quite neatly with what the government wanted saying anyway. If Boyle’s efforts were truly subversive, was he just expressing a general mood that stands in opposition to what Cameron et al want Britain to be? Ai Weiwei liked it, which makes one wonder how many flavours of excrement would have hit the fan had he been in charge four years ago.

2. That said, I’m still slightly confused about the whole Industrial Revolution thing. Some right-wingers, claiming the whole thing was a leftie plot, have suggested that the event presented Brunel and co as evil, rapacious capitalists intent on tarmacking over Merrie Englande, whereas Boyle’s collaborator Frank Cottrell Boyce says that the huge technological upheaval was one of the “things we loved about Britain” and wanted to celebrate. I suppose it does expose the incoherence of English conservatism, yearning for an idealised, quasi-pastoral past while lauding the entrepreneurial spirit that wiped it out.

3. That Daily Mail article. Oh dear.

4. For some reason I keep thinking back to that poor man who died at Tate Modern last week and the rumour that some people initially thought it was a piece of performance art. If something hideous had happened during the ceremony, how soon would it have been before someone twigged? And would it be appropriate to quote Bill Shankly?

5. Not directly related to the ceremony, but anyway: the empty seats fiasco; and the problems in TV coverage of the cycling being blamed on excessive Twitter use. Do people still need to attend sports events in person? Do they still even need to see them on TV? I didn’t watch the opening ceremony live, but I followed it on Twitter. In 20 years’ time, will athletes be fencing and diving and underclad-volleyballing in near-empty stadia, accompanied only by the tap-tap-tap of a few accredited live tweeters?

6. David Hockney’s response to the whole thing:

The Olympic opening ceremony: being Boyled

(The following thoughts are pretty much a synthesis of about 14 different conversations I’ve been having on various online media over the past few hours. As such, they are probably neither original nor coherent. You have been warned.)

I was a bit torn a few weeks ago when the news came that the test for prospective UK citizens will contain more questions about history. On the one hand, this is something I can only applaud, because it’s impossible to understand what makes a country or culture tick without knowing how it came to be where it is. But when you get to the nitty-gritty of which bits of history should be included, things become more complex. Nelson and Wellington and Churchill, fair enough; but what about the Putney Debates, the Rebecca Riots and the Tolpuddle Martyrs? The Jarrow Crusade and the Battle of Cable Street? Too political you say? But Churchill wasn’t?

You see, even if you agree on the basic facts, there are always multiple histories, parallel, interweaving, depending on the emphasis you choose to place on those facts. And in that spirit I bloody loved Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony for the Olympic Games. His was a people’s history of the UK, Blake rather than Kipling, suffragettes rather than Beefeaters, Dizzee Rascal, not the Last Night of the bloody Proms. And the CND badge and the Brookside lesbians and, of course, the glorious in-your-face-Cameron salute to the NHS. Anything that provokes Telegraph readers into splenetic online rants about the evils of multiculturalism has to be good value.

But hang on a moment. Was it really as cheeky and subversive as it seemed? Boyle wanted to make a story about revolutions but rather than Hegelian dialectic we got phallic chimneys appearing from the ersatz countryside as the industrial revolution brought pollution and capitalism to the countryside, turning everything dark and satanic. And yet Brunel and his top-hatted, bewhiskered chums were still presented as the good guys, forging the modern age and beginning a continuum that leads inexorably to a benign Tim Berners-Lee at his desk. Take that, greens and lefties alike. And there was still Elgar and there was still James Bond, purveyor of thick ears to assorted dangerous foreign types. And yes, there was still the Queen, even if she didn’t appear to be enjoying it as much as she’d revelled in that strange boaty jamboree last month.

Baudrillard would have argued that we’re simply blinded by the razzmatazz and spectacle of the whole thing, that obscures and eventually supplants the reality, including historical reality. And sure, there were lots of fireworks. But there’s also a sense that the very real spirit of subversion and nonconformism and sheer bloody-mindedness in British history has been appropriated; what Debord and the Situationists called recuperation. Yes, there were bits of the Stones and Bowie and the Sex Pistols and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, music that shocked and disturbed when it came out. But punk rockers became a posse of outsized marionettes, far more funny than scary. It all came through the door marked HERITAGE.

This is the problem when a nation decides to build its post-imperial identity around irony and self-deprecation, where the worst sin is to take oneself too seriously. To be truly subversive, to truly shock, Boyle would have had to come up with something utterly po-faced and self-important. A bit like the Beijing gig four years ago, in fact.

Maybe that at least would have made the Queen crack a smile.

Hitchens, Orwell, Lenin and the virtual slop-pail of fame

In his introduction to a 2010 edition of Animal Farm (also included in the almost-posthumous collection Arguably), Christopher Hitchens makes this observation on Orwell’s cast of characters and their equivalents in the Russian revolution:

There is, however, one very salient omission. There is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig... Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time (and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face).

Well I noticed when I first read it, probably around the age of 14 or 15, at the same time I was covering the revolution in my O-level history class. And I’m sure I pointed it out at the time, although I wouldn’t be surprised if none of my peers paid any attention. And I’d be astonished if thousands of people over the years hadn’t read the book and stroked their chins and thought, “Hang on...” Of course, that’s not what Hitchens means. He means that nobody within his golden circle pointed it out, nobody with whom he was at Oxford, nobody who wrote for the New Statesman in the 70s or Vanity Fair in the 00s, nobody with whom he drank and smoke and roistered and even doistered. If I’d had a blog (OK, its analogue equivalent) back in the early 80s I might have raised the matter then, but I suspect even if I had it wouldn’t have come to his attention. Some writers, it would appear, are more equal than others.

Incidentally, if you key “animal farm” into google.co.uk the first site that comes up is an adventure park in Somerset, where you get to meet Peppa Pig. Maybe she’s Lenin.

The Queen’s Birthday Honours: Armando Iannucci and the bees

I don’t actually have a problem with the basic idea of a state handing out shiny nicknacks to reward its citizens for their various deeds of good-eggery. It gives a certain coherence to that vague concept of being a national treasure; official recognition to the fact that, on the whole, the British people think David Attenborough or Judi Dench are not only talented in their respective fields, but also the sort of folk you wouldn’t mind having a pint with.

What does irk me is the hierarchy of the system. When Jenny Agutter found out she’d got an OBE, might her shiny happiness have been a little scuffed by the knowledge that Kate Winslet has a CBE, which is a more prestigious decoration? How do these distinctions arise? Winslet has an Oscar, which Agutter doesn’t, so maybe that counts for something. But Kenneth Branagh doesn’t have an Oscar, and he got a knighthood, which is one louder than a CBE. Meanwhile, the government has reinstated the BEM (British Empire Medal), supposedly as a metal-and-ribbon manifestation of their Big Society catchphrase, to include long-serving lollipop ladies and milkmen and the like. But why couldn’t those people just be given MBEs, the next step down from the O? Or would that have upset white-collar recipients of that order, local government officials and Rotary chairmen and the like, who are quite happy to be seen as less wonderful than Jenny Agutter, but still want to be maintain their distinction from the people who clean their drains? But of course, we’re not allowed to mention social class, are we?

The latest round of gong-giving has thrown up one intriguing little controversy; not, as is normally the case, about the refusal of an honour, but about an acceptance. Armando Iannucci, deadpan kebabber of the powerful and their foibles, has been awarded an OBE. Alastair Campbell, supposedly the model for the monstrous Malcolm Tucker, suggested via Twitter that this was inappropriate. And then it really kicked off.

For what it’s worth, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Campbell. Iannucci is a satirist and should occupy the role of a court jester, tolerated with gritted teeth by the establishment but never quite welcomed into its bosom – at least not until his best and most ferocious days are behind him. As it stands, all his OBE signifies is that someone in the depths of that establishment considers his achievements to be less impressive than those of Richard Stilgoe or Tessa Jowell, but at the same time more worthwhile than those of one Geoffrey Hopkinson, an 84-year-old beekeeper. I hope that makes him feel good.

Duran Duran and the Olympic gig: white boys always shine

I’ve never been a big fan of positive discrimination, mainly because it doesn’t work; inevitably it’s easier to base quotas on empirical criteria such as race or gender or disability, rather than things that are harder to quantify but no less real, such as socio-economic status class, there, I said it. But I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the choice of acts for the gig marking the beginning of the Olympics. Leave aside for the moment the galumphing tedium of all the performers on the bill; Duran Duran were moderately amusing for a couple of albums in the early 80s, while the others (Paolo Nutini, the Stereophonics, Snow Patrol) have never even aspired to such lofty standards. That said, do we really think that London in 2012 is best represented by a dozen or so white men in their 30s, 40s and 50s, many of them playing guitars?

Obviously nobody wants blatant tokenism: I’m old enough to remember the line-up for the Band Aid single, with a few members of Shalamar and Kool & the Gang hovering around the edges. But for an event that aims to show off 21st-century Britain to the world, this is a bit embarrassing.

PS: In the Telegraph, Lucy Jones fumes.