It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, May 03, 2024
TPP
Legal Advice Sought Over Canadian Backflip On Dairy Trade
Trade Minister, Todd McClay, has slammed Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling over dairy trade as “cynical” and says New Zealand has no intention of backing down.
Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of the Government’s “next move” and says the Canadian Government still has time to honour its obligations to New Zealand both in the spirit and substance of the agreement.
New Zealand initiated the dispute because Canada was not complying with Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) rules, blocking dairy exporters’ access to its market, the Minister said.
A CPTPP arbitration panel ruled decisively in New Zealand’s favour. Canada had until 1 May to change how it administered its tariff rate quotas – to stop giving its own domestic industry priority access, and to allow exporters to benefit fully from the market access negotiated in good faith between Canada and New Zealand.
“The changes Canada has published today do not comply with the ruling. Canada’s ongoing failure to meet its legal commitments is disappointing, but we have no intention of giving in on this. We back our exporters and we will defend hard-won free trade agreement commitments,” Mr McClay says.
“New Zealand’s prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60% of the country’s total economic activity. It is only through a strong economy that we can reduce the cost of living and afford the public services Kiwis deserve."
“We continue to engage in good faith throughout this process and I’ve asked officials to provide advice on next steps. I will be making an announcement on that in due course.
“New Zealand supports trade rules and takes seriously its obligations to trade partners. We expect others to show us the same courtesy,” he said.
Government of Canada urged to take action on transnational repression of Hong Kongers in Canada
Today, Hong Kong Watch published a new briefing on the safety of Hong Kongers in Canada in the face of transnational repression and foreign interference.
This briefing warns about new threats expected to be faced by Hong Kongers with the passing of the new Safeguarding National Security Bill under Article 23 of the Basic Law of Hong Kong. It also includes case studies of transnational repression experienced by the diaspora in Canada, and recommendations for the Government and parliamentarians.
This briefing was presented to Canadian Parliamentarians in an online briefing session today. Among those in attendance were the offices of Senator Leo Housakos, Jean Yip MP, Tom Kmiec MP, Stéphane Bergeron MP, Jenny Kwan MP, and Greg McLean MP.
Hong Kong Watch’s key recommendations for the Government of Canada and Parliamentarians are as follows:
Condemn Hong Kong’s Article 23 legislation and clearly state that the extraterritorial provisions of the law will not be applied in Canada, and any attempts to do so will be duly prosecuted according to domestic law;
Create an interdepartmental agency to combat transnational repression;
Establish a foreign agent registry;
Relevant committees undertake a study on transnational repression in Canada; and
Establish a reporting hotline in Cantonese for Hong Kongers facing transnational repression in Canada.
Katherine Leung, Hong Kong Watch’s Policy Advisor for Canada, commenting on the briefing, said:
“With the passage of new security legislation under Article 23 in Hong Kong and its extraterritorial implications, it is increasingly important for the Government of Canada to take seriously the issue of transnational repression faced by the Hong Kong community in this country. The rights and freedoms that Hong Kongers came to Canada for are under threat.
We urge the Government to implement a strong framework to protect Hong Kongers who now reside in Canada from transnational repression and foreign interference, ensuring that the long reach of Beijing cannot harm those who are now on Canadian soil for exercising their rights and freedoms.”
03 MAY 2024 A family use a canoe after fleeing floodwaters in their village, Ombaka, near Kisumu, Kenya, in the middle of last month
A BISHOP in Kenya has blamed the torrential floods that have killed hundreds in East Africa on a lack of care for creation.
The Assistant Bishop of Bondo, western Kenya, Dr Emily Awino Onyango, said: “We have not cared for creation, and these are the effects. One of the biggest problems . . . is cutting down trees and the people settling on the banks of lakes and rivers. We all know that should not be allowed. As Christians, I think we need to come back urgently to the care of the creation.”
Kenya has been particularly badly affected, but torrential rain has also killed many and left thousands homeless in Tanzania and Burundi.
In central Kenya, many are still missing after flash flooding and mudslides last week swept people away as they slept in their homes. Survivors described an onslaught of water washing away houses and cars. Farmland has been submerged and livestock drowned. The President, William Ruto, has ordered the evacuation of areas at risk of further flooding, as the rain continues.
The rainy season has been much heavier than normal in the region, and comes in the wake of a prolonged drought described as the most severe in four decades.
The poorest were most affected, Dr Onyango said: residents of shanty towns saw homes and family swept away. “The people who do not have anything are most affected. Even if you give them food and blankets, that cannot replace homes.”
She called on the government to do more to prevent people settling in flood plains.
In Nairobi, the home of Tearfund’s operations lead for Southern and East Africa, Elizabeth Myendo, has been flooded. “Apart from feeling the fear of drowning in my own home, I am better off than most people,” she said. “The water flooded my house for two days, but at least we’ve now managed to drill a pathway for the water so that it goes outside now.
“People who were already living in much more difficult conditions are really badly affected, and many have lost everything. My church community is gathering resources to support those who were living in informal settlements, providing clothes, blankets, and the everyday basics.
“These floods follow ten years of drought; so the ground was hard, making heavy rain more dangerous. Even for an El Niño year, the rainfall has been triple what you would have anticipated. The flooding is much much worse than we’ve experienced before. It’s shocking how widespread across the country they are, affecting both urban and rural communities. We are really feeling the impact of climate change, and our work equipping the Church to be ready to respond in these times of crisis feels more necessary than ever.”
Religious leaders in Kenya issued a statement mourning the devastation caused by flooding, saying that places of worship were open for sanctuary, and worshippers were being mobilised to support those affected. The lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans has been affected, the statement said.
NEGOTIATIONS for a global plastics treaty were said to be on a “knife edge”, as the penultimate round of talks at the United Nations ended in Ottawa this week.
Delegates have made a commitment to working together on remaining issues in the run-up to the final round of talks in November, in South Korea.
Tearfund, which is campaigning for a global treaty (News, 19 April), sent a delegation to the conference, including representatives from communities most affected by plastic pollution.
Richard Gower, who co-leads Tearfund’s policy and advocacy work on plastics and waste, said: “An ambitious and effective treaty is still possible, but negotiations are on a knife edge: time is short, and strong opposition remains from the petrochemicals industry and states connected with it, even as their products pile up on street corners and in water courses around the world.
“The global plastics crisis demands a strong treaty, and negotiators owe affected communities every effort to deliver it. This will require commitment and creativity, as negotiations continue before the final meeting in Busan, South Korea.”
The 66 nations, calling themselves the High Ambition Coalition — which includes the EU and the UK — are pushing for bold limits on plastic production, but the United States and other oil-producing nations, including Russia and Saudi Arabia, are resisting the inclusion of production controls in any treaty.
Among the thousands of delegates who attended the Ottawa conference were many lobbyists for the fuel and chemical industries.
A global plastics treaty would be the most significant deal relating to emissions and environmental protection since the 2015 Paris Agreement, activists said.
Patriarch Kirill accuses Ukrainians of religious persecution
Palm Sunday, which fell last weekend in the Orthodox calendar, was celebrated in Kyiv, Ukraine
PATRIARCH Kirill of Moscow has urged Orthodox leaders abroad to help prevent a projected Ukrainian ban on religious communities linked with Russia, as Christians in both countries prepared to celebrate Easter (according to the Julian calendar) against a backdrop of missile strikes and front-line fighting.
“The ever-increasing pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church [UOC] has acquired the character of open religious persecution, forcing me to turn to you again for support,” Patriarch Kirill said in the weekend letter, which was also sent to the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as officials at the United Nations and Council of Europe.
“It is acquiring the features of total anti-religious terror — closure of churches and monasteries, illegal persecution of clergy and laity, and extra-judicial killings, as well as suppression of information sources revealing the truth.”
The Patriarch sent the appeal as Ukrainian parliamentarians prepared to renew debate on a long-planned law banning Moscow-affiliated church groups in their country.
In his latest clampdown on Russian Orthodox dissent, Patriarch Kirill also issued a decree unfrocking the Revd Dimitry Safronov, a Moscow priest, for conducting a brief memorial service in March for the deceased opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.
The Patriarch said that the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, had made several arrests during recent searches of premises belonging to the Moscow-linked UOC, in a series of “punitive measures” designed to “suppress any public testimony about religious persecution”.
In a Russian Orthodox Palm Sunday sermon, however, the Primate of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church (OCU), Metropolitan Epiphany (Dumenko), said that his countrymen should feel confident that Christ would free them from suffering, and preserve their culture and identity against Moscow’s campaign of “conquest and assimilation”.
“Far from respecting the sanctity of fasting, this enemy desecrates our holy days with bloodshed, as the Russian aggressors sow death across our land,” the Metropolitan told a Kyiv congregation.
“But we believe the evil will be overcome, and the Kremlin tyranny fall ingloriously like so many tyrannies before. Truth will triumph, and a just peace be established by the power of Christ the Saviour.”
The exchanges took place as efforts were made to secure Christian sites and gatherings against attack this weekend, after the Russian government’s rejection of an Easter ceasefire was echoed by Vakhtang Kipshidze, from the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department, who told Russian media that a temporary truce would “fuel misunderstandings”.
Fresh civilian deaths and injuries were reported during missile strikes against Kharkiv and Odesa, amid continued warnings of a large-scale Russian summer offensive to take advantage of faltering Ukrainian defences.
As the revised Draft Law 8371, banning religious organisations “affiliated with the centres of influence in a country carrying out aggression against Ukraine”, neared its Second Reading in the Ukrainian parliament, the abbot of the UOC’s Sviatohirsk monastery, near Donetsk, Metropolitan Arseny (Yakovenko), was arrested during a raid by the security services last week for allegedly assisting Russian occupiers.
Ukraine’s Religious Information Service said that another UOC Metropolitan, Ionafan (Yeletsky), who is appealing against a five-year sentence imposed on similar charges last August (News, 11 August 2023), had asked to be put on a list of possible POW exchanges with Russia.
A leader of the Union of Baptist Churches, Pastor Anatoly Kushnirchuk, said on Tuesday that he had signed a co-operation agreement with a charity in the United States which provides prosthetics and rehabilitation for amputees, and reminded Ukrainians to treat the mounting number of adult and child victims as “fully fledged and respected members of society”.
The Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, appealed on Monday for a pre-Easter exchange of prisoners and detainees, prioritising women, medical workers, and clergy, and put the number of Ukrainians held by Russian forces at 9600.
Wildfires rage in Russia's Far East due to dry, hot weather
Authorities declare emergency situation in Khabarovssk region
Elena Teslova |03.05.2024 -
MOSCOW
Wildfires are quickly spreading in Russia's Far East due to dry and hot weather, with several dozens of fires registered on the territory of almost 65,000 hectares.
An emergency situation was declared on Thursday in the Khabarovsk region due to the worsening situation.
The area of wildfires increased by 17,000 hectares over the past day and exceeded 47,000 hectares, the regional administration said on Telegram.
At least 14 wildfires are raging the Khabarovsk forests, the statement said, adding that over the past day 11 fires were extinguished.
The Emergency Situations Ministry reported tense situation in six more Russian regions -- Zabaikalsk, Krasnoyarsk, Sverdlovsk and Amur regions, the Jewish Autonomous Region, and Buryatia. More than 19 wildfires engulfed some 17,000 hectares of forests in these regions, the ministry said.
PUTIN'S FASCIST YOUTH BRIGADES
New militant youth organisation opens center in Murmansk
Regional government ministers and representatives of the Northern Fleet on the 16th of April took part in the official opening of the military training center run by VOIN (“Soldier”) in Murmansk.
The region of Murmansk has major importance for the Arctic and all of Russia, he explained.
“This is where the Northern Fleet is based. Under the northern light of the Arctic we will together with the regional government of Murmansk join forces in the education of a young generation of patriots,” Yazynin underlined.
Leader of the Murmansk center is Aleksei Chufyryev, the 49 year old man that until recently headed the local militant youth group Vympel – Polyarnye Volki (“Pennant – Polar Wolfs”).
“This is a new page in my life,” Chufyryev says in a comment on his VK social media page.
Aleksei Chufyryev has won high-level recognition for his efforts to militarise local children and youth. In December 2023, he was awarded a signed Letter of Gratitude by Vladimir Putin. The Vympel – Polyarnye Volki will from now on be headed by Chufyryev’s son Andrei.
It is believed that many of the teachers and trainers at the VOIN centres have undergone training at the Spetsnaz University in Chechnya. The VOIN center in Chechnya is among the most active in the organisation. It is located in the premises of the Spetsnaz University.
Valentin Kovtun (left) and Dmitry Ivanov are among the instructors of the new VOIN center in Murmansk. Photo: vk.com/crvsp51
In September 2023, Russian Ombudswoman for Children Maria Lvova-Belova paid a visit to the Chechen center. In a video, she is seen testing weapons and praising the Chechen military training.
The VOIN centres first of all train teenage boys in the age 14-18 for service in the Armed Forces. Secondly, they train reservist men aged 18-35 for combat in the war of aggression against Ukraine.
At the opening ceremony of the center in Murmansk were Deputy Governor Yelena Dyagileva, regional Minister of Sports Svetlana Naumova, as well as Deputy Commander of the Northern Fleet Yuri Tripolsky.
They reportedly all expressed words of gratitude to the leaders, instructors and young men at the center.
Beyond Murder: Colin Wilson, Criminology, and the Evolution of Consciousness
In 2019, I read Paupers’ Press’ latest release, Colin Wilson’s ‘My Interest in Murder’. Although a short book at 40-pages, I kept a notepad close to hand and jotted down some reflections on Wilson’s many books on murder, most of which I had read. These include: The Criminal History of Mankind, Order of Assassins, A Plague of Murder, as well as the many ‘Mammoth’ crime editions published by Robinson. It quickly occurred to me that one could attempt a general synthesis of his overall philosophy with his works on criminology. I saw that the two ran side-by-side, complementing and reinforcing each other. Consequently, my notes became so substantial that I summarised my findings in this informal essay. It wasn’t until Easter 2022, however, that I revisited this article after two encouraging comments on my original piece. I was moved by these comments to revise and update my originally rather spontaneous musings into a more streamline and — hopefully — pleasurable and insightful read, despite its morbid subject.
‘My Interest in Murder’ was first penned as the Introduction to Wilson’s 1972 book, Order of Assassins, but was shelved by the publisher in favour of an alternative preface. Order of Assassins explores the psychology of murder and presents a uniquely stimulating and evolutionary interpretation of the human mind, as well as some of its darker expressions.
Although ‘My Interest in Murder’ is essentially the size of a pamphlet, it is not lacking as a substantial autobiographical reflection on just how and why Wilson became so fascinated by the subject of criminality and criminal psychology. But like anything Wilson wrote about, he always attempted to go beyond the limitations of the self-defeating, pessimistic mindset that has increasingly plagued the late 20th century and much of the beginning of the 21st. What Wilson penetratingly revealed about the criminal mind, however, is something closer to home for many of us non-murderers: the sense of frustrated energies of the creative individual who finds himself in a society increasingly alienated from its vital reserves — its cultural wellsprings. This was a theme which Wilson had already explored at length in his first book, The Outsider, in 1956.
A young Colin Wilson.
The creative process and the inner tensions that may lead to an evolutionary shift in consciousness — a breakthrough, in short — and the self-defeating collapse of values, which results in nihilism and breakdown, is central to Wilson’s philosophy. However, his fascination with murder, and its psychological and philosophical implications, are to be found in his first creative efforts in the form of the novel, Ritual in the Dark (1960), which took nine years to write. But it was his later novel, The Glass Cage (1966), that became for Wilson the “favourite among my own novels.” The Glass Cage is the crystallisation of his philosophy and the culmination of his early researches into criminology and mysticism — the two extreme poles of human experience; the former emerging from a denial of values — moral, philosophical, even cosmological and religious — and the latter a recognition of affirmation, cosmic consciousness, and universal yea-saying.
For Wilson, these tensions were ever close to the surface, especially in his teenage years and early twenties. He was determined to become a writer despite the banalities of his working-class existence, and declared that he would “make literature out of my revolt”. He had “tasted the pleasures of the imagination and intellect” and “wanted the pleasure to pursue them”. This lead to his first writing venture — Ritual in the Dark, which was originally titled after the Egyptian Book of the Dead as Ritual of the Dead. The novel is timeless, pacey and presents a fascinating reflection on the themes of frustration, alienation, and — importantly — outsiderism. It is hard to avoid comparisons with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, with the protagonist being torn between the intensities both within himself and the often shady people with whom he’s become embroiled.
In contrast to Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, however, Wilson describes his protagonist — Gerard Sorme — as a ‘Simple Simon’. Sorme is found wandering around London after receiving a large inheritance and, in his aimlessness, meets various eccentrics and intensely driven individuals, each with a backstory of semi-mystical visions which end up defining them, for better or for worse, as outsiders. Individuals who, because of their very intensity and thirst for more encompassing experiences and truths about human existence, make up a social minority.
The Misfits (1988)
Turning to Wilson’s later book, The Misfits (1988), which is advertised as a study of sexual outsiders, it is clear how he had his own ‘Simple Simon’ moments. Wilson admits in this book that he slowly (some would argue too slowly) realized a broad-shouldered, deep-voiced and intensely masculine Charlotte Bach was, in fact, a Hungarian cross dresser and conman called Karoly Hadju. Bach first caught Wilson’s interest when he or she forwarded him a manuscript which posited an evolutionary theory based upon a dynamic and creative tensions or interplay between the male and female psychological forces within each individual. Hadju — or Bach — was, a character that could have been lifted straight out of Wilson’s novels.
It was through Wilson’s such meeting with liminal characters that lead him to explore further the psychology of the outsider or misfit. It is therefore not surprising that this should lead to an interest in criminality and the motives for such extremities of experience, whether through sexual fetishes or indeed murder. After all, what is imperative to all such outsiders is a search for intensity of consciousness — an insight or control over one’s emotions, environment, or having achieved some sense of an ultimate reality from which to act meaningfully.
Wilson’s own interest in murder is reflected in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character John H. Watson, who observed in Sherlock Holmes that he appeared “to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century”. Wilson, commenting upon Watson’s remark, responds: “And why not? — for such knowledge was a part of his working equipment.” Wilson notes that by working with such morbid and extreme material, he felt like a “pathologist, working with unpleasant material, but viewing it with detachment”. And, in some alchemical sense, turning over the darker elements of human psychology and transmuting it into its opposite: affirmation consciousness instead of self-destructive criminality.
For Wilson, the sexual impulse and the impulse for murder or sadism are all driven by an intense stimulus — a release of enormous amounts of pent-up energy. This energy, in its raw state, is neither negative nor positive, but pure potential. In other words, the same forces that underlie these extreme drives could be used for great acts of creativity. But such negative expressions as murder or absurd sexual fetishes result when dammed-up potential has collapsed in upon itself.
Wilson writes:
“[T]here are certain people who possess the potentiality of creation, of purposive action; if this is frustrated it turns rotten. The mind is like a forward flowing river; if it is dammed up, it will turn the land around it into a swamp.”
The trajectory from Wilson’s earliest work is not driven by a morbid obsession, but a recognition of the creative spirit in its more general sense. The Outsider dealt with ballet dancers, poets, mystics, and esoteric teachers like the Russian-Armenian G.I. Gurdjieff, who was obsessed with de-automatising man and introducing a level of freedom rarely found in the ‘triviality of everydayness’. I’d argue that Wilson was not so much a ‘Simple Simon’ — far from it! — but a man of immense openness that enabled to him to actualise in his work what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead described the initiatory experience of all true existentialists. Whitehead argued the true thinkers should make it their job to experience everything; drunkenness, sobriety, depression, ecstasy, and so on. None of this, of course, is pursued out of mere hedonism or sadism, but as an attempt to understand the extent of the human instrument throughout its entire existential spectrum. Only then, Whitehead and Wilson would likely argue, could you comment upon the human condition in any general sense. Not as an ivory tower intellectual, but as one on the frontline of life, so to speak.
Murder emerges out of an immense damming up of frustration which then bursts out as a destructive and utterly pointless act. But it is these implicitly creative potentials that Wilson was so fascinated by. Ritual in the Dark resulted from Wilson’s own frustration, much like other classic books — Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, Emil Cioran’s On The Heights of Despair, and Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea. These were attempts to describe an essential feeling of alienation and the slippery texture of reality. But, unlike these authors, Wilson was driven by something altogether more optimistic and life-affirming.
Initially, he wrote out of a basically emotional revolt that expressed itself creatively. Once the circumstances in his life lightened up — and his naturally cheerful temperament reasserted itself — the tone and philosophy of Ritual in the Dark changed correspondingly. This in turn meant that the protagonist’s response to murder became more nuanced. A sensitivity or basic will-to-health appeared in Gerard Sorme who, albeit it late on in the novel, recognised the murderous act as truly sick and insane. These murders, Wilson wrote, were a “gesture of revolt” against reality — a reality, that the murderer had completely lost touch with, but was slowly dawning on the more healthy-minded Sorme, and, in turn, the author.
The gesture of revolt against reality underpins Wilson’s study of criminology. In low moods we experience a weak grip on reality, and if we allow ourselves to sink yet further, we perceive from the equivalent of a worms-eye view of existence which, in the murderer, includes the reality of other people. Suddenly, the world seems to us meaningless and uninspiring, but, beneath all this, a resentment builds and seeks some sort of cathartic expression. But, as the individual’s grip on reality fails, so does his value judgements — and such ‘cathartic expressions’ become misleading and self-destructive. Murderers and criminals have fallen down this hole, becoming stuck in a loop where reality becomes increasingly unreal, which in turn requires increasingly extreme experiences to evoke any such sense of what the psychologist Pierre Janet called the fonction du reel, or reality function.
“The real present for us” wrote Janet, “is an act of a certain complexity which we grasp as one single state of consciousness in spite of this complexity, and in spite of its real duration, which can be of greater or lesser extent,” meaning that reality and the perception of it requires a fundamental grasping of complexity — a complexity that is increasingly low-resolution when one is feeling low or depressed. Perception is buoyed-up by energy, and, consequently, the more energised one feels, the more one can grasp complexity and the richness — and inherent meaning — of life.
One thing that has always interested me is how we observe ourselves in certain moments. As I’ve gotten older — I’m now 35 — it’s becoming increasingly obvious just how much we take for granted in our lives. Each moment — no matter how banal — offers itself up as a revelation, especially when considered in retrospect. For instance, I’ve worked in several industries, ranging from office work, apple picking, working as a drayman and working in various pubs. I’ve also written and edited several books. It was becoming acquainted with Wilson’s work that I felt an immediate sense of kinship. I too had sat on trucks and lorries for long journeys and had worked in several offices. On the one hand, I enjoyed the freedom of being out on the road, and on the other, I enjoyed stretching my intellectual muscles in office environments. However, I felt an enormous constriction on my energies in both — whether mental or physical. But after much meditation, I’ve now examined my experiences for more general and transformative insights or themes that revolve around something interesting or potentially helpful about the human condition. This is my debt to the work of Wilson.
Around about February and March 2018, I was working as a drayman during the ‘Beast from the East’ storm. A cold wave had blown over from Russia and North Asia, covering most of the West Midlands in precarious snowdrifts and unusually freezing temperatures. I’d get up early each morning and trek down a long and treacherous hill — Standhills Road in Kingswinford — avoiding the many opportunities for slipping over or filling my boots with powdery snow. Once I had arrived at my workplace, a cold room full of plastic and steel casks of ale would greet me each morning. A forklift truck driver would then prepare to stack up the van, which I attempted as best I could in the biting cold and slippery, black-ice-covered surfaces. Eventually the casks would be secured in place and we’d head out to the various pubs and then reverse the process, hoisting down the casks into the dark cellars using a fraying piece of rope with a hook attached to the end. The snow made it enormously difficult to push eighteen-gallon barrels. Often snow would gather up in front of the barrels as you pushed them, and you’d have to get around and kick out a path ahead of yourself.
After a long day of unloading and loading, I’d be exhausted. Again, I’d have to walk back up Standhills Road. This was made all the more difficult, as you’d have to put in twice the effort to walk up a hill than down it. But occasionally I’d take a shortcut and, each time, I’d pass a warm and inviting salon. Inside, beautiful women were blow-drying hair and manicuring fingernails.
In contrast to my day battling with steel casks and accompanying a grumpy chain-smoker, there seemed an obvious difference between men and women. Feminists had missed an important point about manhood. Suddenly — in my exhausted state — I glimpsed a world that appeared delicate and enchanting, altogether removed from the grim machine-like noise of working with heavy machinery and beer. For instance, I could understand why men working with tarmac or scaffolding would leer at the opposite sex. It wasn’t because they were sexist or sex-obsessed, but because the opposite sex represented another world of values.
Obviously, this is a controversial admittance in our politically saturated times. But I am convinced that this is commonplace enough that it is difficult to argue with. After all, political correctness is usually only correct in one dimension — politics. Psychologically, spiritually, experientially, it might be incorrect, impracticable and impractical, and exposing the limits of a political ideal. Life is not lived for political or economic reality alone, no matter what Aristotle or Karl Marx claimed contrariwise.
A few months later I began working in an office. This work demanded far more attention to detail and a different level of concentration. Initially, it was difficult to adjust to the people who have worked in offices for several years. Each day I’d sit at the same desk writing various bids for council jobs. The other employees baffled me as much as I probably baffled them. And not only did the work not engage me — writing about Health & Safety and fire extinguisher codes is intensely boring — the whole environment was vast contrast to working outdoors with burly, outspoken men, that I felt like I was trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare of pedanticism and bureaucracy. I’d secretly yearn for some chaotic event to break the monotony, whether it was a wasps’ nest falling through the ceiling or a member of staff revealing themselves to be a closet Nazi.
I had had a similar experience while working at an academic bookshop in Nottingham. The manager was insufferably short-tempered and petty-minded. Often, her accusations of misconduct or incompetency turned out to result from her own oversights or misinterpretations. Again, I found the people I worked with lacked a certain humility — or indeed sanity — that I’d found in manual labouring work. Feelings and thoughts seemed to be bottled up and would express themselves through passive aggression and the odd cutting comment. All this transferred itself to me, and I noticed that to calm down after work, I’d watch a film about boxing or listen to gangster rap.
This digression into my experience has been an attempt to point out how — and in what form — energies can frustrate or be redirected into darker regions of our psychology, collectively or individually. Our day-to-day lives quickly reflect our feelings and those around us, also pent-up and frustrated, may begin to act out or project their unhappiness onto others. This, in turn, can also be taken into oneself unconsciously, and before you know it, you are reflecting your environment. Tensions escalate and the need for expression presents itself, albeit it in a form that is often unrecognised or unaddressed. This logical regression to an outburst of crime is made quite obvious, but relatively few of us are unbalanced enough to commit anything seriously consequential such as taking another person’s life.
Here I am reminded of a question levelled at the Indian mystic, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, about the purification of the mind. Nisargadatta used a brilliantly phenomenological and penetrating analogy, saying:
“Basically, man is afraid. He is afraid of himself most. I feel I am a man who is carrying a bomb that is going to explode. He cannot diffuse it, he cannot throw it away. He is terribly frightened and is searching frantically for a solution, which he cannot find. To me, liberation is getting rid of this bomb. I do not know much about the bomb. I only know that it comes from early childhood. I feel like the frightened child protesting passionately about not being loved. The child is craving for love and because he does not get it, he is afraid and angry. Sometimes I feel like killing somebody, or myself. The desire is so strong that I am constantly afraid. And I do not know how to get free from fear.”
In the frustrated criminal — or in the outsider battling with an inner conflict between absolute affirmation and absolute denial (mystical yea-saying and the negation of existence) — it is common to feel as if one is “carrying a bomb that is going to explode”. Nisargadatta compares the mind two water and honey — the European mind, steeped in logic, is like water; affected by any slight disturbance. Honey — which Nisargadatta compares to the Hindu mind — is disturbed but quickly returns to a state of immobility, of inner-stillness. The more de-energised the mind, the more sensitive is the water of the mind, but the more energised, the more coherence and inner-resilience that buffers such a disturbance.
We are here talking about levels of frustration and their potential consequences — creative or destructive.
One day, while I was working in the bookshop, an electrician arrived to fit some new strip lights. That day, the atmosphere was uniquely dull; the streets were empty, the sky overcast, and dreary and syrupy acoustic music played incessantly in the background. The air seemed to be charged with some sort of life-draining static. After an hour of unbearable tedium, the electrician caught my eye and, probably feeling so bored as to provoke a reaction in me, requested I change the music to death metal (he requested a band called Cannibal Corpse).
This took me aback, as I felt much the same. The environment seemed to demand chaos — a force of energy to stir-up a life-force that had become stagnant and even toxic. Extremity in the form of heavy metal — or even Beethoven — seemed to be the answer to our inner-frustration with the dullness of the job at hand. Indeed, everyone knows children are much more impatient than adults, and during monotonous journeys kick their legs or repeatedly ask, ‘Are we there yet?’. They are attempting to stir-up or spend latent energies that are being dammed by the seemingly endless waiting (time passes much slower for children than adults) and monotony of the journey.
The vitality of a child is redirected and siphoned off into displacement activity, which is defined in a popular dictionary as an activity “that seems inappropriate, such as head-scratching when confused, [and is] considered arising unconsciously when a conflict between antagonistic urges cannot be resolved.” Murder, too, is arguably a form of displacement activity; an attempt to express or channel latent energies into a destructive act. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas seemed to express this when he told the police that he was bitter at the world and killing someone, for him, “was just like walking outdoors.” Murder had provided him with a sense of reality that had become eclipsed by his own bitterness toward the world.
For many of us, simply walking outdoors can offer us such a release of pent-up energy. Recently I undertook a four-hour walk from Penzance to Porthleven. When I finally arrived, I found I enjoyed it far more than if I had driven there or simply caught the bus. The effort of walking outdoors had amplified my sense of values, my ability to as it were taste experience. For Lucas, this would have not been enough; negative emotions and frustrations had too eroded his grip on reality for him to appreciate anything so ordinary. His tastes — or more over his inability to taste experience — had become deformed and murder became the only form he could ‘walk outdoors’. Like any alcoholic, the only way he can feel his emotions is through increasing the quantity of his indulgence; a negative feedback loop that is ultimately self-defeating. We could say the same of sex and extreme fetishes that have distorted the basic innocence and pure essence of sex and of its higher expressions in lovemaking. All these extremes are attempts to grasp an ever-fading sense of aliveness, and to escape the worms-eye-view of low-pressure consciousness.
According to Wilson, reading about murder reminds us forcibly that we could easily misdirect our energies. This is not to say that most of us could easily become murderers — but simply that we can easily sink into states of passivity in which we require more extreme forms of stimulus to evoke a basic sense of aliveness. A violent act such as murder implicitly suggests that the killer has a low estimation of the meaning of his own life, which, in turn, is projected upon his victim and acted out as a basically pointless and anti-creative activity.
For Wilson, the purpose of such novels as Ritual in the Dark and The Glass Cage is to “confront the two extremes: the mystic and the criminal: the man whose sense of the goodness and worth-whileness of life is constant and fully conscious, and the man whose self-pity and lack of self-belief have driven him to expressing his vitality in the most negative way he can find.” Both novels portray the murderer as a failed mystic in the sense that their violent energies have usurped their emotions and expressed themselves in a profound act of life-negation.
Insightfully, Wilson describes the murderer in The Glass Cage, as a man of “immense and violent energies and appetites” that have curdled and express themselves negatively. He continues:
“[His] conscious attitude to life is so negative and defeated that they cannot find ordinary expression. When he eats, he eats ravenously, with the sweat pouring down his face; when he drinks, he gulps it down until he is unconscious. And when he has sex, all the vast energies roar out like a volcanic explosion there is a desire to eat, to drink, to entirely consume his sexual partner. If he possessed the power to remould his personality to express these energies positively, he might be a Michaelangelo or a Beethoven.”
None of this, of course, is a defence of the act of a murder, or even a celebration of a murderer’s innate potential for genius. Instead, it is a recognition of intensely frustrated energies that could have been put to good use had they found a more fulfilling and evolutionary outlet. The problem with destructive acts is that they are self-cancelling and fraught by diminishing returns — nobody gets anywhere by murder. It is an ultimately devolutionary act and, once the law catches and prosecutes the criminal, his life is over and more often than not the killer attempts suicide.
If one can get past the savagery of murder, then it is quite easy to see how that in our own moments of frustration — whether it’s exhaustion after a hard day’s work, or a sense of diminishing returns in life — we might, too, chose a destructive outlet. It is precisely in these experiences which can undermine our sense of values, of our general sense of a larger meaning to life. The murderer has simply abandoned all such scruples and has declared his statement on life — that it is ultimately meaningless and not worth the effort to elevate, or to pour our energies into producing great art or a loving family environment.
My own experiences have been ordinary enough to share. And I suspect they are general enough to be familiar to many of my readers. Ultimately, this article has explored what Wilson called ‘duo-consciousness’ — that state you find yourselves in when you are in bed during a cold rainy day and know you have to get up in five-minutes. Duo-consciousness is that heightened savouring of warmth and comfort beneath those sheets. This state ceases to affect us on weekends when there is no great demand to get up early. As our mind rests in a type of one-sidedness, we cease to enjoy the moment — the contrast between a warm, comfy bed and the harsh, cold outside world. All this is abruptly changed when we are awaiting the alarm-clock on a busy workday…
The psychological mechanism of duo-consciousness can be accessed by our very reading about such morbid subjects as murder. We can read accounts of horror and tragedy as a sort of mirror, contrasting our more coherent and stable lives against those nightmarish worlds of true crime. Effectively, this reminds us that our lives could be a lot worse than they are. The act of reading true crime is, for Wilson, a means to “throw light upon its opposite: the passion for order, creativity, sainthood.”
‘My Interest in Murder’ is a fascinating study of the basically existential and evolutionary purpose of true crime writing. Wilson wrote the book in the spirit of pleasure and good faith; as an attempt to stimulate duo-consciousness in the reader, a way of ‘throwing light upon its opposite’, and to ignite the spirit to improve our own lives and those of others. Reading about criminality helps us to attain a firmer grip on our own reality — a grip that enables to climb to higher levels of consciousness and contribute to our own inner-development and creatively engage more fully with life.
White House Defends Biden's Statement Calling India, China, Russia & Japan 'Xenophobic'
Biden hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a State Visit last year, while Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the White House in April for an official visit. PTI Updated on: 3 May 2024
Joe Biden Photo: AP
The United States is a country of immigrants, the White House has said, defending President Joe Biden's remarks calling two of his QUAD partners -- India and Japan -- as well as Russia and China "xenophobic" nations, asserting that none of these countries, unlike the US, welcome immigrants.
Responding to a question about the remarks made by Biden at an election fundraiser on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the president was making a "broader point".
“He was making a broader point. Our allies and partners know very well that — how much this president respects them," Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference on Thursday.
"As you know, in regard to Japan, they were just here for the state visit. The US-Japan relationship is an important relationship. It’s a deep, enduring alliance,” she said.
"He (Biden) was making a more broad comment, speaking about this country and speaking about how important it is to be a country of immigrants and how it makes our country stronger. And so, that’s what he was talking about,” she said.
“It relates to our relationship with our allies, that continues. Obviously, we have a strong relationship with India (and) with Japan. And the President, if you just look at the last three years, has certainly focused on those diplomatic relationships," Jean-Pierre said.
“He was talking about who we are as a country. He was talking about the importance of being in a country of immigrants, especially as you see the attacks that we have seen very recently, in the last couple of years, those attacks on immigrants, in particular,” the White House Press Secretary said, defending the president.
"The President is always going to be really clear on speaking to issues that matter to the American people. We are a country of immigrants. That matters. And we’ve seen these attacks. And so, the President is never going to shy away from that,” Jean-Pierre said.
“It is important for us to remember that we are a country of immigrants. I’m explaining what he was talking about and what he was focusing on in those comments: a country of immigrants makes us stronger. It is important to be very clear about that," she said.
While addressing his supporters at the Democratic Party fundraiser here on Wednesday evening, Biden said, "This election is about freedom, America and democracy. That's why I badly need you. You know, one of the reasons why our economy is growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants."
"We look to — the reason — look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they're xenophobic. They don't want immigrants,” Biden, the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party, said.
India and Japan are members of QUAD - a four-member strategic security dialogue that includes the US and Australia.
Biden hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a State Visit last year, while Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the White House in April for an official visit.
Biden has been under attack from his opponents and the Republican Party for his immigration policies, as hundreds and thousands of illegal immigrants enter the United States every month.
Immigration is a hot topic in the November 5 presidential election in which Biden will face former president Donald Trump, the presumptive candidate from the Republican Party.
As hip-hop grows in China, its performers seek a voice that reflects their lived experiences
THE ASSOCITED PRESS
May 3, 2024
Chinese rapper Boss X performs at a concert in Chengdu in southwestern China's Sichuan province, Saturday, March 16, 2024. (AP Photo)
CHENGDU, China--In 2018, the censors who oversee Chinese media issued a directive to the nation's entertainment industry: Don't feature artists with tattoos and those who represent hip-hop or any other subculture. Right after that, a well-known rapper, GAI, missed a gig on a popular singing competition despite a successful first appearance. Speculation went wild: Fans worried that this was the end for hip-hop in China. Some media labeled it a ban.
The genre had just experienced a banner year, with a hit competition-format TV show minting new stars and introducing them to a country of 1.4 billion people. Rappers accustomed to operating on little money and performing in small bars became household names.
The announcement from censors came at the peak of that frenzy. A silence descended, and for months no rappers appeared on the dozens of variety shows and singing competitions on Chinese TV.
But by the end of that year, everything was back in full swing. What had looked like the end for Chinese hip-hop was just the beginning. “Hip-hop was too popular,” says Nathanel Amar, a researcher of Chinese pop culture at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China. “They couldn’t censor the whole genre.”
Since then, hip-hop’s explosive growth in China has only continued. It has done so by carving out a space for itself while staying clear of the government’s red lines, balancing genuine creative expression with something palatable in a country with powerful censors.
The effort has succeeded: Today, musicians say they’re looking forward to an arriving golden age.
Much of the energy can be found in Chengdu, a city in China's southwestern Sichuan region. Some of the biggest acts in China today hail from Sichuan; Wang Yitai, Higher Brothers and Vava are just a few of the names that have made Chinese rap mainstream, performing in a mix of Mandarin and the Sichuan dialects.
Although Chinese rap has been operating underground for decades in cities like Beijing, it is the Sichuan region — known internationally for its spicy cuisine, its panda reserve and its status as the birthplace of the late leader Deng Xiaoping — that has come to dominate.
The dialect lends itself to rap because it’s softer than Mandarin Chinese and there are a lot more rhymes, says 25-year-old rapper Kidway, from a town just outside Chengdu. “Take the word ‘gang’ in English. In Sichuanese, there’s a lot of rhymes for that word ‘fang, sang, zhuang,’ the rhymes are already there,” he says.
Part of the city’s hip-hop lore centers around a collective called Chengdu Rap House or CDC, founded by a rapper called Boss X, whose fans affectionately call him “Xie laober” in the Sichuan dialect. The city has embraced rap, as its originators like Boss X went from making music in a run-down apartment in an old residential community to performing in a stadium for thousands.
“When I came to mainland China, they showed me more love in like three or four months than I ever received in Hong Kong,” says Haysen Cheng, a 24-year-old rapper who moved to the city from Hong Kong in 2021.
The price of going mainstream means the underground scene has evaporated. Chengdu was once known for its underground rap battles. Those no longer happen, as freestyling usually involves a lot of curse words and other content the authorities deem unacceptable. These days it’s all digital, with people uploading short clips of their music to Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, to get noticed.
Rarely can a single cultural product be said to have originated a whole genre of music. But the talent competition/reality TV show “The Rap of China” has played an outsized role in building China's rap industry.
The first season, broadcast on IQiyi, a web streaming platform, brought rap to households across the country. The first season’s 12 episodes drew 2.5 billion views online, according to Chinese media reports.
In the first season, the show relied on its judges’ star power to draw in an audience. Two winners emerged from the first season: GAI and PG One. Shortly after their win, the internet was awash with rumors about the less than perfect doings of PG One’s personal life. The Communist Youth League also criticized one of his old songs for content that appeared to be about using cocaine, very much violating one of the censor’s red lines.
Then came the 2018 meeting where censors reminded TV channels of who could not appear on their programs, namely anyone who represented hip-hop. PG One was finding that any attempts to release new music were quickly taken down by platforms. The platform, IQiyi, even took down the entire first season for a while.
But by late summer 2018, fans were excited to hear that they could expect a second season of “The Rap of China,” though there was a rebrand. The name in English stayed the same, but in Chinese the show’s name changed from “China Has Hip-Hop” to “China Has ‘Shuochang,’” a term that also refers to traditional forms of storytelling. Regulators had given the go-ahead for hip-hop to continue its growth in China, but artists had to obey the government censors. Hip-hop had to stay away from mentions of drugs and sex. Otherwise, though, it could proceed.
“It was a success for the Chinese regulators," Amar says. “They really succeeded in coopting the hip-hop artists.”
With tight censorship on the entertainment industry and a ban on mentions of drugs and sex in lyrics, artists have reacted in two ways. Either they wholeheartedly embrace the displays of patriotism and nationalism or they avoid the topics.
Some, like GAI, have fully taken on the government’s mantle in the mainstreaming of hip-hop. He had won “The Rap of China” with a song called “Not Friendly” in which, in classic hip-hop fashion, he dissed other rappers. Just a few years later, Gai is singing about China’s glorious 5,000 years of history on the CCTV’s Spring Festival New Year’s Gala broadcast.
The red lines have also pushed artists to be more creative. But developing a genuine Chinese brand of rap remains a work in progress. Hip-hop got its start from New York’s boroughs of Brooklyn and the Bronx, where rappers made music from their tough circumstances. In China, the challenge is about finding what fits its context.
Wang Yitai, who was a member of Chengdu’s rap collective CDC, is now one of the most popular rappers in China. His style has infused mainstream pop sounds.
“We’re all trying hard to create songs that not only sound good, but also topics that fit for China,” Wang says. “I think hip-hop’s spirit will always be about original creation and will always be about your own story.”
