I am a boycott kind of a person, I have to admit. In the olden days it was Barclays Bank and South African wine. These days it’s a bit complicated. For example, Palestinian farmers have to label their produce as Israeli or they are in danger of their crates being left ‘accidentally’ to rot on the tarmac, so I still sometimes buy Israeli avocados. I try not to buy toys made in China, but it’s as much on aesthetic as political grounds because I know that, despite my objections to the torturing, murdering government, success in the Chinese economy has the potential to lift millions of people in China out of miserable poverty. And of course there’s America. I have the uncomfortable feeling that any of my money that goes into the US economy is funding repression, injustice and global warming. On the other hand, I love my Mac, I couldn’t buy any other make of computer or operating system.
So when I was looking recently at buying two LCD computer monitors, reading lots of reviews and comparing specifications, I was quite relieved that I was able to rule out the highly rated and cheap Dell monitor almost entirely on political grounds. Michael Dell, the boss of the company, gave lots of money to Bush and worked on his campaign. I really never would buy anything from Dell, even if it was a real bargain. Mind you, they are very ugly as well.
Comic publisher Drawn & Quarterly are republishing a book by one of my favourite comic artists, Julie Doucet. Unfortunately their printer has thrown away some of the film of the book and the original artwork was sold, a while ago, to ME! So they emailed me and asked me if they could have a scan of it. Do you think I could get away with scanning it and then changing it a bit, maybe put my face on one of the characters? Would that be a bad thing to do?
I’m doing a theatre soundtrack for a show in Stuttgart this summer. The artistic director of the festival, Marie Zimmermann, has written a brilliant little essay about theatre on the festival website. The closer I get to this show the more excited I get about doing it.
The Americans in Iraq frequently kill people at checkpoints. When they do this they usually claim that a car approached at speed and they tried to stop it by “making hand signals, flashing lights and firing warning shots - before firing at the vehicle’s engine.” Sometimes they shoot at the vehicle’s driver instead of the engine. A while ago one of these killings hit the headlines because the gory aftermath was photographed and because the American soldiers at that checkpoint made orphans of the five children in the car. I wondered why a father would intentionally drive his car, jam-packed with the people he loved the most, at speed towards a group of soldiers notorious for their disregard for Iraqi life. The US description of the incident made him sound like he was stupid or crazy. But maybe he just thought they were bandits or kidnappers.
On Friday a car containing Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and three Italian security agents was shot up by bored, trigger happy US soldiers. The occupants of the car were trying to get to the airport; Giuliana Sgrena had just been released, or maybe rescued, from a gang of kidnappers. The incident has caused a “major diplomatic incident” and the Italians are demanding an investigation. It’s impossible to believe that an experienced, professional spook would believe that he could just whizz through an American army checkpoint. In fact, it sounds like these Italians met the fate of goodness knows how many Iraqis when they drove into what really amounted to an American ambush.
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