Category Archives: Politics

Happy Birthday, Little Amal

Little Amal at St. Paul’s, London

Totally unnoticed in the states, an epic journey has been taking place for the past 8 months. Little Amal, a 3.5 metre tall puppet of a refugee child has been walking from the Syrian border, across Turkey and through Europe. Last week she made it to England, and yesterday celebrated her 10th birthday with the children of London, with events at St Paul’s cathedral, the V&A, Trafalgar Square, and elsewhere in London.

Thousands have come out to greet her wherever she goes. The 8,000km walking tour, known as The Walk, is organized by charity Good Chance, and ends next month in Manchester. The puppet, built by Handspring Puppet Company, South Africa, requires a team of three to operate. Best known for their work on horses and birds in the epic play, War Horse, Handspring have worked with artist William Kentridge, and theatre companies across the world.

Amal makes some friends

My best birthday wishes to Amal, and great thanks for the love and understanding her walk has engendered. Not surprisingly, there are those who feel otherwise…

Old Friends

Day one and already out and about. J is happy to see me, and welcomes me into her home & studio. We haven’t seen each other in almost exactly two years, she being one of my last visits from my autumn 2019 stay. We catch up in her kitchen, tour her busy & messy studio, and then, following an intractable hunt for keys, are off to dinner at the De Beauvoir Arms, J’s local. I have lamb chops over an absolutely perfect mojadra, with celery and spinach, while J opts for the mackerel escabeche. Both meals very good.

Not the mackerel escabeche

Two of Pawn’s favourite places in London are Hundred Years Gallery and Bookarts Bookshop. The former in Hoxton, the latter by Old Street, not very far apart. Leaving with J from the pub, Pawn goes south towards the Kingsland Road and Hoxton whilst J has errands to run.

Hundred Years Gallery was open, as hoped, and empty, aside from G, the proprietor. Their current show is Nouns for Gabriel by Mary Lemley. This is a delightful series of large format sketches of objects the artist Mary Lemley has made for her autistic son, a suite of hand-made flash cards to help teach him vocabulary.

In the prints bin I quickly find several I cannot do without, and out comes the charge card. That didn’t take long. A bit more of a visit with G, and I’m out the door and winding my way down towards Old Street and Bookarts.

Bookarts Bookshop is a true gem. I’ve written before of its incomparable selection and broad reach. It’s a very tiny storefront on the corner of Pitfield Street and Charles Square, just north of Old Street tube stop. T, the proprietress and shopkeep, is likewise a gem. I had barely started to peruse the window display she had prepared for that day’s opening & book release party commemorating Thieri Foulc and the Oupeinpo movement, when, seeing me through the window, T waved her arms and beckoned me come in. In the small shop, perhaps three metres sqaure, she had erected a small table covered with books she felt I might like. T & I have similar tastes when it comes to artists books, hers being broader and more studied, to be sure.

Quickly my hands alit on A Book for Spiders, by Tom Alexander. This is a beautifully hand bound, octagonal volume, with brown covers, roughly 7cm across, with a small white loop of thread piercing the top cover. Lifting this opens the book, which is a helix, called Missing Limbs, written in Vox Arachnae, for spiders to enjoy. A translation key is included within the craftily constructed outer wrap.

Mine is #2 of and edition of 10. T was beside herself when I grabbed this; the shop had received only two copies, and she had bought the other one herself. She was certain I’d want one. Other volumes making the cut were a Blow Up Press edition. I’ll be back for more shopping. This being an opening, there were soon several people in the small shop, and I had to step out to make way for them. In these COVD times, one doesn’t want to crowd into a small space with maskless folk, no matter how well read they may be.

And that concludes the evening. Back at the flat Pawn relaxed for the first two episodes of Ridley Road, the BBC four-part series on the Jewish opposition to English nationalism cum fascism of the early 1960s. My family left here in August 1963, while these events were still playing out. My father was a teenager in the East End (Tower Hamlets) during the events which came to be known as the Battle of Cable Street, years prior. One wonders how much the return of Fascists to London’s political life had an effect on my relocation to America. Had the fascists kept to themselves, may this entire trip not have been necessary?

Brexit-o-ween

I like my sex like I like my Brexit; hard and fast.

Street saying around Britain

My sex is like Brexit; glacial and unresolved.

Reality around Britain

The whole point of the schedule of Pawn’s current visit to London was to be here for the (latest) deadline of the UK’s execution of its Article 50 withdrawal declaration; Brexit. Brexit deadlines have figured in most of the last several such trips, ever since Pawn’s June/July 2016 visit, during which the ill-fated Brexit vote itself occurred, to such disastrous results. As with previous such deadlines, however, this one, too, has passed without resolution.

I shan’t go delving into the latest hubbub; there’s news channels and such for that. Suffice to say that politicians have learnt there are, in fact, limits to their powers. As for the whole Brexit topic, let’s leave it at this: British divorce from the EU is a worse policy decision than George W Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, but the ultimate effect upon the UK will be more like Bush’s policy’s effect upon Iraq than like its effect upon the USA. While it’s easy to see the Brexit vote as nothing more than the clear expression of the people’s will (it was a referendum, after all) it’s closer to the Bush’s fiasco than that. Bush lied to his own government, his own people, and to the governments and people of US allies in order to win his way. Brexiteers did the same.

Okay, so what does one do when the Brexit ball is kicked down the road? One goes to look at art, that’s what. So on Brexit-o-ween, Pawn proceeded down to Bankside, burrough of Southwark, and Tate Modern. Current shows include Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life, and what I’ve been referring to as a bafflingly comprehensive retrospective of Nam June Paik, the pioneering video artist. The former is big, bold, audience pleasing, and, due to massive phone-weilding crowds, unsatisfying. The latter is smaller, in the scale of its individual pieces, if not its scope, and, blessedly, less cluttered with the zombified masses of people mesmerized by the image in their phone rather than by the actual art in front of them.

One thinks Paik would have preferred it this way, and, for all I know, Eliasson would too?

Pawn witnessed the Paik first, and then the Eliasson, so here’s some snaps of each, in that order. But first, in the spirit of a day “…not spent, but well used up…” (in the words of Gilbert and George) in the pursuit of art, let’s start with a piece of simple graffiti found along the Shoreditch High Street, by Boxpark

The face, dummy, not the scrawl!

Now the Paik…

TV Buddha, 1974
TV Garden, 1974-77
Exposition of Music: Electronic Television exhibition poster, 1963
Robot family, father & mother
Richard Nixon television address, on a timer, first one image is distorted, then the other.
One Candle, (Candle Projection) 1989
Sistine Chapel 1993, shown for the first time since inclusion in German pavilion of the Venice Biennale of that year.

Ed Ruscha has adorned the Artists Rooms, and here’s his 2017 rumination on the US flag:

Ed Ruscha 2017

And now the one photo I took from the Olafur Eliasson exhibition, In Real Life. This exhibit was so totally clogged with people staring into their phone’s camera screens, that it was almost impossible to navigate the space, let alone enjoy any of the artwork. Also contributing to the claustrophobic effect of that was the fact that the hall was crawling with school children. Involving kids in the arts from a young age is to be applauded, but in this case there was far less supervision than required, and kids were slamming into artworks, slapping them (and each other) and careering about the galleries.

So this one photo I took? It’s of Din Blind Passager (your blind passenger) 2010, realized here in a long hallway, running almost the entire length of one of the exhibit hall’s walls. This hallway, narrow enough that one can reach out and touch both walls, has air- and light-lock rooms on each end, is filled with incredibly dense theatrical fog, and illuminated for almost its entire length in a vivid amber colour. Near the far end of the tunnel, the lighting changes to a very bluish white. One can generally only see about 18″ in front of oneself. Pawn took this single photo within this hall, of the unknown woman walking ahead of me:

And, of course, no visit to Tate Modern would be complete without whatever the hell they’ve decided to put in the Turbine Hall. Here it is Kara Walker’s turn. And this completes our tour…

Lord Adonis Has His Say

From the Guardian newspaper this morning comes this story, with a term I’ve never heard before:

Philip Hammond is being urged to earmark £7bn for new transport links in the “brain belt” spanning Oxford, Cambridge and Milton Keynes in next week’s budget, and persuade local authorities to build the first new towns in half a century.

Brain Belt, that sounds like something a neurosurgeon installs to knock back the intelligence of an overly smart fellow.  Donald Trump had one installed sometime in the mid-80s.

17 November — Commemorate The Velvet Revolution

In an ironically Big Brother-ish twist, this was the greeting I received from the local ISP when I tried to surf to the Washington Post this morning:

You have attempted to visit a foreign site!

Today, just one click, but before 1989 it was difficult to look beyond the border.
The arbitrary abandon of the Republic was punished freedom for up to five years. If you did not shoot a border guard right when you tried.

Freedom is not a matter of course.

That is why we November 17th commemorate Velvet’s anniversary Revolution, and we are glad that we can bring you free communication with the whole world in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Learn more about November 17

I want to continue freely

Yikes!  That last line contained a link to escape this freedom-loving portal page.

Okay then, commemorate I shall.  But first, some coffee!

Retro Decorative

Sometimes it’s not just the things we remember, memorialize, preserve.  Sometimes it’s how we choose to do so which has a larger meaning.  Berlin, it strikes me, would be perfectly happy to put the Wall firmly in the rearview mirror of history, but there is a tourist draw there, and that cannot be ignored.  There is also that tendency, so strong in the wartime and post-war generations to Never Forget.

Europeans, in general, have long memories, when they wish to, and short ones when it serves them.  Italy, until recently, flirted for several years with a strongman president, in Silvio Berlusconi, for example, even though there are still people living who remember Mussolini.  Germany, which for generations has lived a kind of collective, historic shame for the way it treated neighbors & citizens alike during WWII, but then just elected to parliament a far-right-wing party for the first time since then.

As I commented to a friend, just before leaving on this trip; The last time a far-right party sat in parliament, my family’s home was bombed.

So, went to get a transit pass today.  A day pass for transit is 7€ and a Berlin Welcome Card, a tourist-focused offering, is 19.20€ for 48 hours.  Since I leave at 11:05 Sunday, I opted for the latter, as it was noon by the time I left my flat, and 48 hours would be just the right time frame.  I would have needed three day passes (they expire at 3AM after purchase) for the same coverage.

Off to the BVG I went, in search of said pass.  It was a harrowing experience, fraught with language barriers, but I ultimately found an obsequious clerk who claimed I had “Perfect German” and sold me my pass.  Now why couldn’t those flustered, German-only speaking public servants before him have just been as fawning?  One is left to wonder.

I hopped the S-Bahn (above ground trains, as opposed to U-Bahn, which are subways) and headed up the right bank of the Spree to Museum Island, where, as one might have guessed, the museums are.  I traipsed around there for a while, before coming to the conclusion that I really didn’t feel like spending my day inside a museum (or five) so I wandered over to the nearest tram stop and headed to Alexanderplatz.  This is a bustling square with malls and open air shops; fairly touristy.  Strolled around there in the light rain a bit, then down into the U-Bahn to ride home.  It was a nice little jaunt into the city, and away from the bleak neighborhood within which I’ve been cloistered so far.

After some lunch, a change of shoes, and a little catch-up, it was back out into the bleak side of things for a bit.  I had decided to check out the East Side Gallery, which is the largest preserved stretch of Die Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall), at 1,316 metres long (just short of a mile).

To get there, I walked down Köpenicker Straße to the Watergate (a music venue) and then crossed the river.  Along Köpenicker Straße is a lot of bleak, a lot of angst and a lot of broken.  Here’s some images from that stroll.  First, however, a little out of sequence, is an eloquent rejoinder to the hopeful logo above:

In case you cannot make them out clearly, or don’t recognize the reference, those items along the right side of the image are 100€ notes.  The rush from national reunification to what is widely perceived as subjugation to the European Union — the loss of the Deutsch mark (a formerly unrivaled store of wealth); the partnership with, and economic support of poorer neighbors, like Spain & Italy; the surrender of sovereignty to a continental body — for many still bitter from years of Soviet rule, the Euro has come to represent all they hate about the powerlessness state in which they find themselves.

Now, onto the bleak:

Heroin Kids

Heroin Kids

One sees these Heroin Kids print ads (above) all over Berlin, and given the opioid epidemic in the US, can be forgiven for thinking they’re part of a hip awareness campaign.  Nope, they’re just what they say, Ignorant Fashion.  Click the image to see more of this dreck.

Looks like a striking piece of chalk street art, but really an ad for a Windows app which encodes long functions or “macros” onto adjacent pairs of keys (hence “keySstroke”) such as <s> and <x>.  Much of the polished street art one sees around is actually advertising, it seems.

Above is the (recently) burned out shell of a squat.  The pavement out front was littered with charred remains of mattresses, chairs and the like, and an acrid, smoky smell hung in the air.

The following series of photos are all of SOBR’s It’s Time To Dance poster project (Facebook page here).  I stumbled across this, but others have been following this artist’s work for some time.  There’s a pretty good article on the subject here.

One striking element of this poster art is that by this time it’s coming loose, like the girl’s head right below.  These loose pieces flutter in the wind, animating the work, and giving it at once an air of impermanence, fragility and energy.

Above is a current squat, a campground really, which was active as I walked by.  The sounds of loud music, argument, discussion; the smells of cooking, car repairs (reeked of acetone) and more.  The slogan Solidarität Mit Linksunten translates as Solidarity With The Bottom Left, which sounds like some sort of softened anarchy to me.

 

Another piece of street art verging on advertisement.  This directing one to the artist’s web page, where books and more are on sale.

The Wall fell, as it were (actually was opened) on 9 November 1989.  The first construction on it was on 13 August 1961.  So in the greater scope of history, the wall has been gone almost as long (28 years and 2 days) as it stood (28 years, 2 months, 27 days).  It is still recent history, but it soon will just be history.

Update: Mon 5 Feb 2018: Today is the day that the wall has been down for as long as it was up.  Longer, by the time anyone reads this.  As the Washington Post reported:

On Monday, Berliners celebrated a once unthinkable occasion: The Berlin Wall has now been gone for longer than it stood. But on the same day, the city’s authorities confirmed the discovery of a previously unreported stretch of the wall in the district of Pankow in northern Berlin.

It had already been discovered by a man named Christian Bormann in 1999, but the now-37-year-old Berlin resident kept his discovery a secret for almost 20 years as German authorities kept erasing more and more remnants of the city’s division.

“Berlin wasn’t ready for this discovery when I came across it,” Bormann told The Washington Post.

Following are some photos of the East Side Gallery wall segments, but first a juxtaposition, viewed from the Schilling Bridge, looking north:

Just views from one side of the bridge and the other.

Here’s some wall shots.  Remember, most of this graffiti is not historic, but an “artistic” response, years later, to the wall and what it means (meant):

Please see more on Thierry Noir, below.

Oddly enough, as one approaches the end of this stretch of wall, and a luxury office/condo project underway, one finds this warning placed in a gap:

It translates as “Guarded at the hands of City Control.” Brrrrrrr

The following image shows a segment of the wall from an area I walked both on my way home from East Side Museum, but also just a few days ago.  I include it here for historical context, and due to who took the photo.  First the context.  As you can clearly see here, “The Wall” was in fact a “wall system.”  It most often is comprised of two walls, with a “no man’s land” or “death strip”, on the east side of the Wall, here follows the curve of the Luisenstadt Canal (filled in 1932).  This is the exact same area I ventured along in the first post of this trip.

This image of the Berlin Wall was taken in 1986 by Thierry Noir at Bethaniendamm in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

The maker of the above photograph, Thierry Noir, is also the artist who made the final wall painting shown above.

Looking Backwards

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On June 26, 2016 2:40:27 PM GMT+01:00, R wrote:

Nic,

When people find out you’re an American, are they asking “what are you
thinking?”.
When I was in Canada, one guy said “what are the American people
thinking.  A lot of the world looks to the US for leadership”….
Have you gotten any reaction????
Geez, if you say you’re American…. “what are you thinking with Trump”
If you say you’re British…. “What are you thinking with pulling out of
the EU”
Good time to be out of the country??…. “what were you thinking”

What was I thinking? What were they thinking?!?

To get a sense of just how quickly things are moving over here.  Since I left my London flat @ 6:45 this morning, 8 10 11 20 30 31 Labour MPs have resigned from the “shadow” cabinet, and at least 10 more from various leadership positions.  They’re resigning so fast I have to keep updating this post!  So far that’s about half the entire shadow cabinet.

Labour & Tories are both now in leadership struggles, as are the Greens. Lib Democrats have sworn to return to the EU, if elected (fat chance of that).

BREXIT-1024x626

Meanwhile millions (Pawn included) have signed an online petition demanding a mulligan on Brexit.  That now seems to be getting a new portmanteau, CNN are using REGREXIT, but I think that should be ReBrexit, or maybe just Oops!  Seems not all signatories are legit, however, so an investigation is underway:

Despite Vatican City, a tiny city state, having a total population of just 800, over 39,000 residents of Vatican City appeared to have signed the petition.

Oh, and that petition they’re all signing?  It was actually started by a Brexiteer, who thought it would give Leave a hedge against a razor-thin Remain vote.

My favourite story to come out of this is Cornwall, which voted Leave by over 56%, yet then turned around to complain that the UK had damn well better make up for the large share of EU funding they now stand to lose out on.  Cut off your nose…

Region was on course to benefit from £2.5bn of funding between 2000 and 2020 but voted 56% in favour of leaving EU

This is largely in line with the Washington Post story which has stayed on their most circulated list all weekend long, “The British are frantically Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it.”

WaPo also has a similar thread about Tilbury:

Tilbury is one of England’s poorest places — and one of its most Euroskeptic. More than 72 percent of voters here and in surrounding Thurrock voted for Britain to leave the European Union in Thursday’s referendum. Few places voted more decisively.

But by Sunday, the initial excitement among some pro-Brexit voters had already started to disappear, making room for worries about what’s next for an increasingly divided Britain.

Some in this town of 12,000 have also begun to wonder whether they had been misled by politicians advocating to leave the E.U. amid a campaign marked by negativity on both sides.

“I was swayed by the rhetorics, but if I had thought this through, I would have voted to stay in. I would certainly do so now,” said Antony Kerin, 38, who was watching his daughter at a newly refurbished but empty playground.

But then again, Brexit may just never happen at all.  This meme was forward me by A:

The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.

The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?

Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?

Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.

If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over – Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession … broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.

When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was “never”. When Michael Gove went on and on about “informal negotiations” … why? why not the formal ones straight away? … he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.

Indeed. This seems to align with a point which R put forward in re: the Trump campaign:

He has been running this like an episode of the apprentice…..

This is what I see happening, Trump has talked to Reince Priebus, saying “I’m a winner and I don’t want to be associated with loosing causes.

“I can’t win the election in the fall, I don’t want to be seen as a “looser”, so I want out.”

That’s why he hasn’t been raising money for the fall election…

That’s why the Republican party is pushing this “Vote your conscience” idea with the delegates.

Trump won’t get the nod on the first ballot, he’ll clam it’s been stolen from him…

“I’ll sue…I’m going 3rd party…” bla bla bla

He’s going to try and fade away still being a “Winner”, who got things stolen from him in a rigged election.

Yikes, pretty detailed scenario there. In general, people who try to predict what Trump might do are the only bigger fools than those who try to understand what he does.

See what I did there?  Drew a direct comparison between Trump and the whole tawdry Brexit affair?  I’m hardly the only one doing it.  Some have even suggested Trexit for the Trump effort.  Yetch!

But back to Article 50, that’s a few paragraphs in the EU’s Lisbon Treaty which defines the precise manner of leaving the union.  The first step is to invoke this article, “A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention” (emphasis mine), and when that happens is the real question.  Cameron won’t do it.  He’s stepping down.  BoJo has said he wants to take things slow and deliberate.  The EU wants it to happen now, and are even investigating whether they can trigger it.

But just to be sure, Brexiteers are starting to walk back their most audacious claims, like that huge savings for National Health.

Then there are those who propose that even it Article 50 is invoked, it could be blocked.  Nicola Sturgeon, Scotish First Minister is one such pol:

Nicola Sturgeon has suggested that the Scottish parliament could block the passage of legislation necessary for the UK to leave the EU.

In an interview with the Sunday Politics Scotland, she said that “of course” she would consider asking the Scottish parliament to vote down the legislative consent motions required for the legislation.

In her fifth major political interview of the morning, Scotland’s first minister told the show’s host, Gordon Brewer: “If the Scottish parliament is judging this on the basis of what’s right for Scotland, then the option of saying we’re not going to vote for something that’s against Scotland’s interests, that’s got to be on the table. You’re not going to vote for something that is not in Scotland’s interests.”

Asked if she could imagine the fury of English people who voted for Brexit if Scotland tried to block the UK leaving the EU, she said: “I can, but it’s perhaps similar to the fury of many people in Scotland right now as we face the prospect of being taken out of the EU against their will. I didn’t create these situations. I’m trying to navigate the best way forward through them.”

So now Pawn finds himself in the Netherlands, which is actively considering Nexit, I kid you not.

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As a matter of fact, until early 2015, there was a Eurosceptic party here named, ready for it? Article 50.  It hasn’t gone away, just merged with another party, For The Neatherlands.

Never a dull moment, as my British father used to say…

[Update: This post has been updated to reflect the current number of Labour shadow cabinet ministers who have stepped down]

The Mourning After

On 06/24/2016 03:13 PM, DB wrote:

You are really in the thick of it. Just reading a bit about it this a.m. Thanks for your blog posts. 


I’d love to hear your interpretation of what this means. Is it the most conservative faction that wanted independence. Is this about immigration as much as anything?

Anyway, enjoy. Looking forward to your next report.

D,
Yes, quite thick things are here.  I’ve just come from the Book Arts Book Shop.  When I got there all the talk was of the collective hangover people feel today about this.  One gentleman had spent the entire past week campaigning for Remain, and said he hadn’t slept yet.  Tanya, the proprietress, complained, “I talked with my neighbours, I talked with my friends.  Everyone I know voted Remain, so what more could we have done?”

She then announced that it was her birthday, and she did intend to celebrate, despite the long faces all around.  I do believe I helped in that undertaking, buying a pile of books.  “I feel like shutting the store and going to celebrate right now!” she exclaimed.  “You say that every time I’m here,” I replied. “That’s because you spend so much.”

My thoughts on this are still resolving.  I think, for the short term, there will be much upheaval.  The financial markets are a mess, and a recession is widely anticipated.  Some have suggested the pound sterling may ultimately lose as much as 30 – 40% of its value, although the BofE seeks to ensure it will not.  The FTSE will doubtless continue to suffer, although at present is up for the week, mostly on the strong pre-Brexit trading volume.

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Cameron’s resignation, pending until a vote can be organized — first within the Tory party, and then, perhaps, nationwide — sets up an epic power struggle.  Boris Johnson, former mayor of London, is widely expected to stand for PM, and just might win.  Meanwhile, in Labour, there is already a call for a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn, and challenges have been mounted.

This all in just the past few hours.

Scotland have threatened secession, again, but will no doubt succeed this time.  SNP, the standard bearers of Scottish independence, control over 70% of the Scottish parliament, and Scots voted overwhelmingly for Remain.  They feel more tightly bound to Europe than England lately.

Wales, while not asking to leave the UK, have demanded assurances on funding levels.  They feel England forced through this referendum, and even though they voted Leave by roughly 60%, they are now complaining about the effects of that.

And this all in just the past few hours.

See what I mean?  The dust has hardly settled, and already ever sharper lines are being drawn.  France, Holland, Greece, Denmark and more are queuing up to Leave now, too.  If that happens, the entire experiment is as god as over.  Marine le Pen has already called for a French exit, Frexit I guess it will be called, or perhaps Fraisser, to introduce a new, French, portmanteau.  Last country out, please douse the lights!

Similar nationalistic parties are surging all across Europe, and if their main economic and security apparatus crumble and fall away, what is to stop another march towards war?  We already see borders being closed against each other; crude characterizations of the other in the press and campaigns.  Waning religious majorities in France and elsewhere are waking up from decades-long slumbers to discover that in fact a significant portion of their fellow countrymen worship differently than they do.  Intolerance on one side is met with intransigence on the other, and vice-versa.

Then along comes Donald Trump to rub salt in the wounds.  Thank you The Donald.  May you choke on haggis.

UK leaders are variously calling for immediate invocation of Article 50, or a more deliberate course, leaving such actions for the next PM, who, in any event, wouldn’t take office until October, earliest.  The EU, meanwhile, are impatient, like a jilted lover.

A senior EU leader has confirmed the bloc wants Britain out as soon as possible, warning that David Cameron’s decision to delay the start of Brexit negotiations until his successor is in place may not be fast enough.

Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, told the Guardian that EU lawyers were studying whether it was possible to speed up the triggering of article 50 – the untested procedure for leaving the European Union.

“Uncertainty is the opposite of what we need,” Schulz said, adding that it was difficult to accept that “a whole continent is taken hostage because of an internal fight in the Tory party”.

“I doubt it is only in the hands of the government of the United Kingdom,” he said. “We have to take note of this unilateral declaration that they want to wait until October, but that must not be the last word.”

Sounds like the UK may come home some day soon to find their clothes dumped on the curb.

Okay, this started out as a note to you, but it seems to have grown into my next blog post.  I haven’t even taken time to enjoy my new artist books yet!  I’ll be sure to share them when I return.

Ciao!

Brexit and Breckage

What hath we wrought, indeed.

It is 8:26 in the morning, and David Cameron has just resigned.  That is not the first fallout from yesterday’s vote for the UK to leave the EU.

“A seismic moment for Britain.” “A crushing, crushing defeat for Britain and for Europe.”  That’s just two of the responses heard on the BBC.

“Shares in Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland have both fallen by 25%.” shouts the Guardian.  “…the FTSE 100 is now ‘only’ down 400 points, or 6.4%.”

Things started off on a good foot for Remain, with Gibralter coming in at midnight with 19,000 Remain and 822 Leave.  But then came the narrow lead in Newcastle on Tyne, at just 51/49%, much lower than expected; then Sunderland, with a significant triumph for Leave.  With turnout numbers of 65 – 75% across the board.

By 01:00, the pound was in free fall.  After having been bid up to $1.50/£, it quickly fell to $1.34.  This has stabilized slightly, but still hovers near that 30 year low.  Not even during the financial crisis in 2008 did it suffer so.  Gold, on the other hand, and the dollar, are bolstered.

The shit storm here has only just begun.  I worry for my friends. A, Australian by birth, not seeing a future for herself in a non-European UK, talks of returning down under.  El & Is, the brilliant women behind Artellite — parent company of Degree Art and Contemporary Collection — have built a thriving business due in no small part to the open borders and markets of the EU.  Will they be able to continue to exhibit across the continent as they have?  Fraught times ahead.

For myself?  I will mourn the loss my EU citizenship.  I am proud of my UK passport’s banner heading, European Union.  It feels good to be a citizen of these two large democratic blocs, the US & EU. I have not exercised EU citizenship much — visits to the Czech Republic and Netherlands not withstanding — but this Sunday, as I disembark from the ferry in Holland, I will once again exercise the freedom of movement so central to the EU dream.  My UK passport expires April 2017.  Will its replacement contain that EU banner? This is not yet known.  British PM Cameron is expected to invoke a clause to grant a 2 year period during which the ties between UK & EU are fully severed, and my renewal comes during that window.

Enough for now.  “A new day has dawned, in Britain,” the BBC news reader, who has been up all night, just intoned.  Indeed, and that way monsters lay.

My next stop on this European tour is Holland, widely considered to be the next most likely to vote for EU exit.  Sigh…