E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

  Much that is menacing is left hidden (a reference to this film still for film fans) but the current strategy from the Trump revolution is to do so much, so often, and have so many outrageously controversial balls in the air at the same time, it is nearly impossible to comment on, let alone oppose, them. It was bad March 1st, but two and a half weeks later, it seems worse, not least because the crisis whereby the Executive branch defies the Judiciary seems to be starting, with rulings defied and judges threatened (signalling the attempted end of American democracy as a system of checks and balances, on, in other words, a coup); war is breaking out again in the Middle East, and threats against Iran, attacks on Yemen and Gaza, are commencing; the new peace negotiations regarding Ukraine seem designed to support the aggressor; and threats to the sovereignty of Canada, and Greenland, continue. Biden 's pardons are questioned; visiting professors refused entry; students threatened; tr...

what happens when the leader is a charismatic charlatan? I have been watching the dawning, infuriatingly slow wake-up call Covid-19 has been for many Americans these past few weeks... as the Washington Post editorial goes, this pandemic will strip the United States of any pretence to normalcy or capability. Trump is one man, but he represents something the land of the free has indulged for decades now - a willingness to ignore science, fact, and reality, for pure partisan ideology and bias. This emotive, irrational and blind behaviour, aided and abetted by the right-wing, often religious TV and radio media and latterly, the amoral nihilistic Silicon valley companies, literally recreated a biblical-level-event Babel. Since America is ludicrously rich and powerful, it has had much capital to spend, even waste. But it has been too intellectually and morally profligate, and now has a gutted and aberrant leadership, unable to form coherent, rational plans, and project determi...

prepared for February... Historians may be forgiven for finding January 2020 more stuffed with signs and wonders, horrors and events, portents and peril, than the entire Game of Thrones arc; not yet over, this month has given us, unbelievably: - a week of thinking there'd be a World War 3 triggered by an American strike on Iran's top military leader; - the tragic downing of the airplane flying from Iran; - the crisis of the British Monarchy triggered by 'Megxit' and lingering concerns over Prince Andrew's lack of testimony; - Brexit (see next post); - ongoing fires and environmental disaster in Australia; - The Trump impeachment and the Republican failure to be non-partisan in the Senate trial; - the novel and deadly Wuhan virus becoming a global emergency. I know I am missing more memes, meaningful deaths, earthquakes, and accidents. The trend is not an arc towards justice, but to chaos, ethical duplicity, corruption, war, and environmental destru...

2020, one wit has already said, 'is cancelled'. The joke, which is only about as funny as a swallowed switchblade, stems from the fact that, less than a week old, someone thought Greta's name was Sharon, Trump triggered a potential WW3, and Australia is facing its worst-ever natural disaster, etc. There wasn't much of a 'Boris Bounce' to the fresh start of a new decade - human idiocy and cruelty seemed to continue, like a never-ending Netflix series. Trump's decision to execute, with extreme prejudice, the top-ranking Iranian general (a de facto second in command of that nation) in Iraq (with the usual barely-considered collateral damage) was shocking for two reasons - one, it is not usual Western military policy to (openly) assassinate top-level leaders and generals; and two, this is likely to escalate a simmering conflict into war. It was also, ethically, and anthropologically, a pretty depressing start to a new decade. This is because, we have mayb...

much has changed... 18 YEARS AGO, like most everyone else, I watched the planes hit the twin towers on this day, on television, and was stunned. I felt instantly this was a different level of historic event I was witnessing - the world had changed. That gets said a lot, but 9/11 was a major shift - the start of the 21st century that has led, one way or another, to where we are today. IRONICALLY, the rise of the digital social media world, and the collapse of the banking system a decade ago, coul d not be foreseen then, nor Trump, Brexit, or the resurgence of Russia and China, and the relative decline of America, in the world. Nor that a Black President would be twice elected in a once slavery-owning nation. IN SOME WAYS, 9/11 feels like a much-more-distant event, now - like Pearl Harbour, or the Charge of the Light Brigade - because the 2003 illegal war in Iraq, and then the tragic destruction in Syria, as well as the enduring Palestinian-Israeli conflict, not to mentio...

HE VOTED TRUMP, ALAS Sorry for having been away. The world's tumult continues. Notably, and for the better, Macron beat Le Pen in France; the tide of hate was briefly halted. In America, Trump edged closer to Full Nixon , with this throttling of the very tall FBI director, and odd references to taped conversations. Nixon, as an aside, had a drink problem, mental health issues, BUT - and this is a big but - for all his errors and personality problems, and troubling ambition, and disrespect for the law of the land - was an educated legal mind, with a strong sense of right and wrong, a keen intellect, and a very clear economic and foreign policy objective - to defeat Communism. That Nixon fell well below his ideals and values is his personal and political tragedy and legacy. Disastrously for America now, and the world, Trump appears to have no moral compass, no worldview worth speaking of, no intellectual capacity - just the ambition, personality disorder, and lack of respe...

According to Time , The Observer , and David Cameron , "we" are at war with IS. This is debated, but if you consider the murder of 30 British tourists in Tunisia by an IS gunman provocative, and if you believe the news reports that 7 major attacks on British soil were foiled this year alone - and that one is pending any moment - you might think that IS was attacking UK interests. At any rate, the decision facing the British Parliament this week is  - bomb Raqqa in Syria, or not. As is widely known, Labour is divided on this issue, and some Lib Dems and SNP are also unsure it is a wise move, as well as a few Tories; Canada and Australia are not currently bombing Syria, it should be noted. Russia, Turkey, and France, however are, along with the USA. Mr Corbyn's pacifist leanings are not 'terrorist sympathising' despite what the British Prime Minister has said - it is honourable to question going to war. Furthermore, Britain could and should take far more refuge...

SOME WERE MURDERED ON THE BEACH WHERE THEY READ AND SUNBATHED, BY EVIL MEN President Obama is a great orator, and he more than rose to the occasion of his eulogy for the nine killed in their bible class in Charleston by a racist youth. He went beyond the call of duty, and gave a speech that is the equal to some of Lincoln 's. It touched on issues of morality, and decency, and in some ways, reminds us that though life can feel meaningless, those who feel touched by God's grace can find healing purpose even in tragedy. Ending with the song 'Amazing Grace,' which he sang, President Obama fittingly, and movingly, brought his eloquence into the form of address most suited to the occasion, a song that all in the great African-American church could sing along with as well.  He exemplified the power of words to move into song, into community, and to spread ideas of communion, and goodness. It is a matter of record that, meanwhile, the world is being ravaged by a religi...

Few wars, and few historical moments, present clear cut choices. Especially in the Middle East, a ruined region raped by successive Great Game imperial machinations for over 100 years, whose borders are debatable and often fictively imposed with force, it is unlikely any conflict will present the armchair general and seething metropolitan pundit a black and white cause for just war.  The last Good War was, it seems, WW2 - for though the motives for fighting Germany and Japan might have been imperialistic at core (protection of markets and colonies and borders; and petrol) - the Nazi regime was markedly evil, in ideology, intent, and constant deed. Never mind that Canada was anti-Semitic in the 1940s, and Churchill had mooted winnowing the weak; or that the British invented concentration camps in the Boer War; or that it was the Allies who dropped the doomsday bomb and burned Dresden - even so, the Nazi plan and the Nazi way was - and is - almost the definition of inhumanity. ...

The downing of a Malaysian passenger jet a few hours ago, over rebel-dominated Ukraine's airspace, is a terrible loss of life - 295 souls, apparently, including a full complement of 15 staff. It is also an act of war, and a moral outrage.  Our prayers go out to the families of those lost, and any survivors, if there are, mercifully any. The possibility of it being a coincidence, in a corridor that has seen military jets downed recently, is slim.  It seems odd that a civilian airliner was routed over such disputed space, but perhaps the assumption was this was a civilised theatre.  It is not, anymore. America is weak at the moment, horribly so.  Firstly Mr Obama , the weakest American President in memory, refrains from reminding Israel (our democratic partner in the Middle East in many things) of the immediate and lasting need to avoid killing women, children, and innocent men in Gaza in any manner that has impact; he does nothing in Iraq, less in Syria; lets China ...

The USSR has a history of crushing dissent, in the spring.  One need only think of Prague.  And, tanks sent from Moscow rolled into Budapest too.  In both cities, in both countries, proud rebels opposed the moves.  But the tanks crushed in the end.  Russia is not the USSR, as I have been arguing, but since its Winter Games it has been playing a very aggressive sort of game with geo-politics.  I think the reason is the Black Sea Fleet, and the emotive, and real, linguistic and ethnic ties between Russia proper and Crimea.  President Putin , playing to the home crowd, would become a great iron man if he took back the Crimea.  I fear he may just try.  I am not sure what could or would stop him, short of thermo-nuclear threat, or severe economic sanctions.  This is the closest the world has been on the brink of world war since before 1989 - in a quarter century.  I don't think it is time to duck and dive just yet.  But this is seri...

After a pretty good winter games, Russia faces the hangover - trouble in their backyard that threatens to turn into conflict with the West, and perhaps, even, war.  Famously, the Crimea belonged to Russia (in the former USSR) until as the stories have it in the 1950s a drunken Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine within the same system, a tactical blunder to be sure.  As we have seen in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, the Balkans, and even, Quebec and Scotland, seccesionism has an ugly side.  Civil wars happen when one group claims to speak for the majority, but leaves a sizable minority out of the equation.  In this case, that Russian-speaking minority is based mainly in the Crimea, and is strategically located near the Black Sea Fleet, not a thing Russia is every likely to let go of easily (Russia has long fought to secure its access to that body of water).  The revolution in Ukraine appears to have unseated a flunky and a bit of a despot with expensive tastes, b...

The world has many divisions - one of them is between those who love the Olympics, and their idealism, and sporting opportunities for the youth of the world - and those who detest them, seeing mostly their propaganda value and their money-wasting potential.  Obviously, anyone in the second camp was going to be particularly indisposed to a winter games (the 22nd) held at a Russian resort in a land whose, shall we say democratic experiment (to be tactful) has yet to fully succeed (to be hopeful).  Many of these bitter commentators and protesters - often supporting the hard done by gay community in Russia, where to be gay is to be potentially killed or beaten - failed to see that Putin is not Stalin , and Russia is not Nazi Germany circa 1936.  Much more needs to be done in Russia, but it is not run by a madman who has published a book calling for genocide, nor does its society practise euthanasia of the mentally ill. Indeed, as the games reminded us, Russia, despite...

I feel a little guilty.  I am coping with some rather personal stressful stuff at the moment, and to unwind, I have started to watch the Breaking Bad season as it starts up again, on Netflix.  I had thought to write another critical love poem to this greatest of TV shows, to compare it to Shakespeare , to speak of how Heisenberg - that co-opted alias - is now synonymous with complex evil, as Iago was.  But then I think of Egypt - and a far more complex evil swims into view - or rather, a more evil complexity - for politics and people seem to mix badly some times, and there seems no clear answer in that tragic moment for that great country - because of such confusing paradoxes - the legitimate government was overthrown for being a tyranny in utero, and the new saving revolution is seemingly more steeped in blood than the last guardians of so-called Democracy.  How to praise the depiction of one man's ruination, when in the history of today, unfolding, we see a whole...

I was finishing reading John Le Carre 's latest literary spy thriller, A Delicate Truth , when the news broke about the US government's secret Prism project, whereby almost all our online activities are received, recorded and analysed, at least potentially, by national security snoops.  The last pages of the novel, which I feel is a masterpiece, and worthy of comparison to Greene 's The Ministry of Fear and Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four , find Emily and Toby confronting a very compromised world, where digital activity automatically triggers massive response.  I recommend the book highly - and am astonished by some of the lukewarm reviews.  Its style, hard to relate to at first, grows on one, with its arch, italicised speech, and the passive-aggressive behaviour of its Establishment characters; after half the book was complete, I recognised it as a satire as well as a thriller, and perhaps the most moving and eloquent indictment of the privatisation of intelligence and...

The West has no monopoly on civilised behaviour, as the new shocking report into the Hillsborough tragedy reveals - where police officers colluded to demean the reputations of the dead (including children) with multiple false allegations; and worse.  However, at least the British PM has made a statement to clear the air, and there have been apologies from newspapers and the police - and criminal charges may still be laid.  On the other hand, the events in Libya on 9/11 the other night are revelatory of a problem that, frankly, liberals in the West usually shy away from - that of barbaric, endemic "street" outrage, usually triggered by "blasphemy". Again, the West has fundamentalist lunacy at its core - one thinks of Mitt Romney 's running mate; or those who burned Beatles albums years ago.  One thinks of the KKK and John Birch Society.  One shudders at intolerance.  Still, there is something deeply wrong with a culture that can encourage, or at least turn a bl...

Episode 11, Carrie is distraught Yes, that's right, the new telly sexy star of the moment in Blighty is Claire Danes , playing the bipolar CIA intelligence expert who loves Jazz, lives alone, and doesn't want there to be another terror attack on US soil on her watch.  She replaces Ms. Lund, the dour Scandinavian police detective of the infamous jumper.  Poor Carrie, in episode 11 of season 1 of Homeland , has gone all mental without her pills after a bomb-trauma.   This is good for mental health sympathy.  This is good TV.  But is it propaganda?  Who cares.  Bring it on.   Eyewear like Obama loves the show. Claire Danes in Homeland

In the late 1930s, poets and intellectuals in Britain discussed and were concerned with the prospects of war with a tyrannical state known for its regional importance and anti-Semitism; many resisted the terrible implications of the conflict.  Others, such as Churchill , predicted that such a war would have to come, and Britain should be prepared.  In the end, after a phony war, it came, and evil was finally defeated.  Now, in 2012, the West faces a similar shadow over our daily lives: What To Do About Iran?  It is not enough to simply say that all war, especially all wars in the Middle East, are wicked - we know war is dreadful, but some wars are necessary.  Nor is it I think sufficient to take a sort of multicultural-nuclear approach, and accept that, if Israel and indeed Pakistan, as well as India, America, France, Russia, Britain and China, have nukes, then what is the harm of Iran joining this ominous club.  The fact of the matter is, Iran poses an exi...

The UK is an island, in name, and attitude - at least according to one man, David Cameron, who returns, raising his empty hand like a salute.  While the Eurozone struggles with an epoch-defining crisis that could yet plunge the world (including the UK) into deep recession, or worse, our PM fiddles with party politics.  As one French wag put it today, the Tories are acting like a man going to a wife-swapping party, without his wife.  Indeed.  It is time for the voters of Britain to decide, whether they see a future inside Europe.  Eyewear does, but also thinks a referendum makes sense - it will force the hand of all sides, and get the best arguments out there.

Canada has changed.  No longer boring, it is now one of the richest countries in the world, with the largest reserves of oil after Saudi Arabia - alas, it is also becoming more conservative, in a Bush -like way.  The Canadian government has signalled it will not renew its Kyoto obligations.  Indeed, the decision (aided and abetted by the UK) to develop the Alberta Tar Sands, is horrific - if this goes ahead, dangerous global warming will be unstoppable.  I am not sure what to do, as an expat Canadian, except to say there is a new kind of international figure swaggering on the world stage: The Ugly Canadian - the Toxic Canuck.