Settlers (2021) — plus a few words on The Night Eats the World (2018)

 

Settlers is seriously unsettling. One of those movies you go to sleep on and wake up finding large chunks of it still sitting in the area of your upper abdomen, undigested. 

Viewers are dropped into a situation which is apparently simple and comprehensible close up, but mysterious and unexplained the further one pans out. 

There are elements of this that are rather familiar. Earth is "not what it once was" and so humanity has gone looking elsewhere; Mars in this case. 

It is not immediately obvious how this has been achieved or indeed how well it is going. Nevertheless, it soon becomes clear that a proper fight for survival is under way, human and environmental factors at the fore. 

And here, maybe it made a difference for us that the last movie we watched before this featured an extinction-level event of the living dead variety (albeit a slightly unusual one — The Night Eats The World (2018)— set in contemporary Paris), for I believe we have as a culture become inured to how the residual sentients tend to segregate in that now over-worked scenario. 

In Settlers we get to know four would-be survivors. They all seem decent enough, though there are serious enough grounds for conflict. There's a well-mannered yet ruthless antagonist one should hesitate to qualify as the villain. 

Base, biological instincts appear to be broadly constrained across the group, yet every one of them is ultimately seen to be capable of homicide, three in order to hold on to the palpable opportunity to persist, and one other in order to break out into the more mysterious existence beyond. 

In your bog-standard zombie apocalypse, survivors have near enough total freedom to be whatever they choose to be. The zombies too are free, yet dead. In his intro to The Walking Dead in its original comic format, Robert Kirkman notes that "In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living" — the walkers being a very prevalent and mobile form of memento mori. 

The situation is thus inherently replete with reminders that we should constantly ponder what being alive is all about, for during both pre and post apocalypse the wrong choice, the one leading to a form of ghoulishness, is undoubtedly available. 

However, an existence thus threatened moment by moment may also lead one away from explicit life-affirmation. In the trenches of WWI, the poet Wilfred Owen suggested that the way to survive the shelling was to become dead whilst yet still alive.  

The characters here have less than total freedom, it seems. A life of quiet desperation might actually be optimal. As someone who has lived in both a fully modern, consumerist society and one that is a bit less so, I found this calibration of what one can reasonably hope for both poignant and thought-provoking. 

Our Martian settlers have to decide if self, family or species should be the impetus for their struggle, but even the notion of shared species could be specious, as certain humans might even be taken for usurping extra-terrestrial invaders in this context. 

The choices each ultimately make are comprehensible and yet the consequences are disturbing, particularly in the light of what writer-director Wyatt Rockefeller leaves unexplained, or at least only shows rather than tells. (For instance, the reason why the parents we first come across have had but one child.)

Highly recommended. 

A few words on The Night Eats The World. It's not a contribution to the genre that one should feel obliged to seek out but has, rather like its marooned protagonist Sam, some interesting idiosyncrasies. 

Having crashed out on a sofa in his ex-g/fs flat during a party, Sam awakes to find that the city around him has basically eaten itself overnight. He seems to broadly understand the scenario, though his more or less solitary situation prevents us from learning about it in detail. 

Not so gay Paris: No England fans involved...

For most of the movie Sam is seen to be exploiting both the survival and self-developmental opportunities closest to hand. I was reminded a bit of the first episode of The Last Man On Earth, but as Sam is probably Norwegian, his overall approach is generally a bit more serious. 

It's only really in the last act that he appears to wonder whether it might be worth striving for more than mere personal preservation. 

One, two...

 

During the first of my two brief periods of residence in eighties Manhattan — 1985 — I was living here in the Lenox Hill area. Beneath the block on the corner of 2nd and E66th there existed, rather handily, this underground cinema. 

'85 was something of a vintage year for movies. I recall seeing the likes of Witness and Into the Night down there. 

Sadly, Beekman OneTwo appears to have closed. I had imagined that this might be a temporary consequence of the pandemic, but have since read that the box office sold its last tickets in 2019 and that, appropriately enough, The Farewell was to be the final feature presentation. 

 

Black Widow (2021)

Highly entertaining, especially as it keeps the stuff that only stimulates the adolescents to a bare minimum. 

That said, it possibly helps if you have never seen a Bond movie. Like: megalomaniac with dodgy foreign accent builds ludicrously overblown lair then captures his would-be nemesis, so that he can explain his whole deal inside his inner mantuary, only... 

And one could argue that Scarlet is slightly outshone here by two very fine British actresses. And Red Guardian surely deserves his own 80s throwback sub-franchise...

Wemba-leah

Wember..ley.

Properly Wemba-leah, the forest clearing named after a Middle-Saxon chap called Wemba, an orignal boy from Brent who has since disappeared into the mists of time, but presumably by contributing in some way to the removal of a few trees, made space for the hallowed turf.

The village name first appears in a charter of 841. Æthelwulf was then King of Wessex and it would be thirty years before Alfred the Great would take on the task of forming England as a proper political entity.

Wembaleah was in the province of Middleseaxan, which had been part of the East Saxon kingdom — Essex — on the other side of the Romans' Watling Street (Edgware Road), which from 825 was held by a 'Dux' subservient to Wessex.

Today Brent is the most diverse county in the UK by country of birth.

Civilwarland in Bad Decline

This was close to the top of the list of books I intended to acquire in New York this year, in part because it had ceased to be available in electronic format some years ago, and since Rapidito Express shut up their operation in La Antigua I have stopped buying paperbacks via Amazon. 

Like many I suppose, I came to Saunders somewhat tardily, after he had won the Man Booker Prize for his extraordinary first novel Lincoln in the Bardo, though it was in the shorter form that he had established himself as in contemporary American letters. 

This was his first collection from 1996. In his gushing introduction Joshua Ferris describes the titular story as his first "unequivocally great" piece of short fiction. 

It appeared in Ohio-based The Kenyon Review in 1992.

I don't think I have ever encountered s a more 'perfect' short story. Across thirty odd pages of text one does not seem to encounter a single word which isn't pulling its weight. Towards the end I was beginning to anticipate the punchline to a bittersweet gag — possibly more sweeterbit upon reflection — usually in the middle of every paragraph. 

I am not sure if satire is supposed to be compassionate. But is this story forbearing, really? Maybe I was laughing too much to properly clock the darkness, but I did come to notice the author, whose voice could often be heard as a super-textual whisper above that of his narrator, and perhaps this at least suggests a shortcoming in something otherwise so impeccable. 

Ferris concludes that "while Saunders does satirize, or, in other words, render the real absurd, he also carefully and lovingly renders the absurd real, which is a much harder trick to pull off". 

So my own uncertainty, whether this is humanity with a wicked aftertaste, or perhaps vice versa, may ultimately be redundant. Rendering the nasty...nice. 

Shishitos and Patatas Bravas, Salinas — Chelsea, NYC

There is some previous...

 

Our most famous defeat at the hands of Viking marauders — Maldon, 991 — was the result of tactical naivety. 

We had them where we wanted them, trapped in their own area, unable to advance, but then our leader offered them safe passage across the midfield and into our half. (Hang on, that sounds a bit like the last semi-final we played in a major tournament...)

Let the Danish Cnuts play like Guthrums today please.

Actually many of them were Norwegians

Byrhtnoth, famed English hero and loser

The Tomorrow War (2021)

I hesitate to describe this movie as dumb, for the way it manages to be so utterly absurd and yet so undeniably entertaining at the same time smacks of a certain finesse. 

Watching A Quiet Place, Part II recently I found myself needing an explanation for how creatures so artlessly destructive could have developed the technology for interstellar travel. We didn't get one. Here, we sort of did, but by that stage I'd entirely ceased worrying about the intelligibility of the premise. 

Preparations to be together for an unknown period of time (2020)

 

From the moment I first heard about this film, listening to a podcast on a beach last March, it sounded like it was, in a sense, made for me. 

For a start they had me at Budapest. I had the privilege of hanging around several major Central European cities — for professional reasons — in the half decade after the Iron Curtain was lifted — Warsaw, Prague in particular — but my train journeys to Hungary's double capital all occurred before 1989, but in spite of that distance in time, it remains one of my top ten cities in the world, possibly even top five. 

So we have a location that is oddly transcendental and a beautiful, enigmatic female protagonist (played by Natasa Stork from White God) — a brain surgeon, reverting to her native land to meet a colleague and compatriot with whom she believes she shared a signifiant connection at a conference in New Jersey, who nevertheless skips their agreed assignation on the Liberty Bridge and then apparently fails to recognise her when she rushes up to him outside his hospital. 

It feels a bit like a Kieslowski tribute, and that should be a good thing overall, except that in the end Lili Horvát's s film perhaps lacks the courage of its own convictions. The mystery sort of slips away at the end, in what is less a big reveal, than a slightly irritatingly small one. 

The great Polish director would have left his audience scratching their heads for profounder reasons. Still, if the destination is not quite where I expected to end up, the journey itself is stimulating. 

Vindaloo

I have, rather tediously, had this song in my head all week...

Whatever one might think of this 'postmodern hooligan anthem', the video is something of a classic, not least because it was conceived rather explicitly as a life-affirming response to the dour, misanthropic paseo of Bittersweet Symphony, shot on the same street and released the previous, footie-free summer of 1997. 

Chicken Vindaloo, Patiala Indian Grill, NYC.

The long history of this dish, before it became a familiar test of English masculinity — typically taken under the additional duress of acute intoxication — is rather fascinating. 

The Portuguese arrived in India in the sixteenth century with a package of novelties for the natives, principally Catholicism and chillies. 

They found that the majority of the locals were, somewhat inconveniently, vegetarians with a particular, faith-based resistance to beef or pork, but quickly determined that this was a problem that copious quantities of both Catholicism and chillies might ultimately solve. 

The Goan Inquisition was a thing, a rather unpleasant thing. By 1650 two thirds of the people under Portuguese rule were, nominally at least, practicing Christians. Many doggedly retained their traditional beliefs at home, but the spicy meat-eating habit had taken a proper hold. 

The British discovered Vindaloo when they invaded Goa in 1797. It had originated as vinho e alhos on mid-Atlantic Madeira, which now has rather strong footballing associations thanks to one Cristiano Ronaldo. 

An example of Arab-influenced, adobo-style cooking (adobado here), this dish was essentially pork cooked with garlic and vinegar, the latter absent in India, and so the process of naturalisation began with a replacement, bittersweet paste made from tamarind and black pepper. And some might say excessive quantities of chillies. 

The British had made no similar effort to change the Indian diet, but Goan cooks, lacking any obvious inhibitions about meat and alcohol, were a significant imperial resource, so they took them with them when they departed the state in 1812. 

And thus this fiery 'delicacy' — a blend of ingredients and techniques from Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas — made its way across the sub-continent and then out into the curry houses of the world. 

Vaccines Work

 

Or at least that is what this UK dataset seems to indicate. 

With the once-postponed Freedom Day in England approaching in just over a fortnight, the virus is moving more freely and a little less lethally within the younger demographic and overall, antibodies have reached 86% of the population, a figure that seems to be increasing by a percentage point every day or so. 

Meanwhile...

By attempting to control the covid threat by applying the same border controls that have broadly worked with other illegal biological immigrants, evil kitties and Chinese nibbles, Australia has apparently messed up, big time. 

There remain some 34,000 Aussies in exile and, as of today, they have half the number of flights to try and clamber onto. 

My own situation is not so different. Although fully-vaccinated, I cannot yet return to the UK without having to do time at one of those mind-numbingly bland quarantine hotels near the airport, at my own expense. This is because Boris and Biden have failed to open up a travel corridor and because Guatemala is a long way from being on anybody's green list.

Case numbers have increased here this week at a near exponential level. 909 new infections on Wednesday, 2855 on Thursday...

Antigua Guatemala, lately a kind of miraculous amber island in the midst of a sea of red, can anticipate more restricted times ahead. Two absolutely vital marquee events, the illumination of the stadium and the Miss Antigua pageant have already had to be cancelled. 

There's a cliff edge in sight. Any sort of cross border travel may soon be problematic again, though the Mexicans have been pelaverguistas up to now and yesterday they even vaccinated Neto Bran. 

This past fortnight we have witnessed some slightly chaotic attempts to vaccinate around 600 a day at Cesar Brañas. Some days have been more oversubscribed than others, possibly due to the 'on the buses' phenomenon familiar from election time. Residency does not appear to be a strict requirement. 

Right now any vaccine is better than no vaccine, but I have some serious reservations about Sputnik V in the Central American context, not least because the Russians appear to some extent to have pocketed the dosh and done a runner. 

Firstly, Sputnik V is not widely approved in the developed world, which implies that its use for vaccine passport purposes in 2022 and thereafter will be somewhat hamstrung. (It is also being reported that the EU's scheme will not accept UK Astra Zeneca vaccinations based on doses produced in India.)

Secondly, my understanding is that the subsequent dose is not identical to the first, so one has to trust to some extent in the logistical competence of the authorities here to ensure that anybody who has had part 1 now, duly gets the remainder of the concoction they will need in three months' time. And those three months could anyway be critical. 

We have already seen reports of people from the capital showing up in Antigua seeking what would be a second first shot. 

Opportunism of this sort is not uniquely Guatemalan. In the UK many of the young ones are seeking a second Astra Zeneca jab ahead of schedule, largely in order to be able to have a summer holiday in 2021. Guardians of fairness like the Guardian itself may object in principle, but there is something to be said for any incentive that encourages the more youthful age-groups to get themselves covered. 

Given that the authorities in Chiapas seem happy to stick a syringe full of Astra Zeneca into willing Chapin arms*, this does seem like the better option for more adventurous locals. 

Especially as 6000 doses have been administered here in Antigua now and until fresh supplies arrive, no more will be. 

* Update: Neto's self-promotion appears to have killed this cross-border opportunity stone dead. 

Flashback (2020)

There's a kernel of an interesting idea here, but by the end of this Canadian movie I had kind of lost track of what that might be. 

The title* suggests a linearity which is actually absent, for the protagonist Fred has seemingly detached himself from the A to B logic of human existence, itself blamed on the interventions of an alien force which is never elaborated upon. 

Other intriguing conceits are suggested and then vanish in the mist. What if we could 'explore' the alternative pathways of a multiversal existence that normal, un-jumbled time denies to our consciousness. 

At high school Fred had a kind of manic pixie dream girl-chum called Cindy who does seem to be up that lark, thanks in part to a street drug called 'Merc'. Fred himself appears to be 'flashing' in and out in a less purposeful manner.

The blurring of realities, past and present, provides a hint of something profound behind all the opacity, which there probably isn't, but the overall effect is surprisingly un-disappointing as writer-director Christopher MacBride has perhaps knowingly served up something which his audience can put to their own subjective contemplative uses.

Present too is the existential dread of having hidden horrors in one's past trajectory which reveal themselves in the form of disturbing visions that cannot easily be distinguished from revived memories of past nightmares.

* In some markets the film goes by the name of The Education Of Frederick Fitzell. 

Taking The Knee

Can we be clear on this — if Russian fans boo taking the knee, chances are it's not a principled anti-Marxist stance. 

The gesture does not inherently belong to BLM, inevitably tied to all their dodgy, 'foreign' politics. It belongs, in the main, to Colin Kaepernick. 

So yes, it's an American cultural export on some levels, and like hamburgers in the 70s, it is probably an ultimately unavoidable one. But it was conceived as 'respectful', like a flag at half mast, and so itself is surely deserving of some basic respect. 

Kaepernick was adding a footnote to his own nation's patriotism, rather like a caveat relating to equality and the founding ideals. 

Try arguing that this is not at all relevant to England without sounding like a twat.

Emerging...

Things have been flatlining here in Guatemala, but there are signs of slow covid recovery, Delta variant notwithstanding, in the more temperate zones to our north. 

I'm feeing exceptionally fortunate right now that none of my close friends or family in the UK, Guatemala or elsewhere have fallen prey to this pandemic. Touch wood. 

Witnessing my eldest niece Nicola emerging from hibernation this week in London was definitely a mood boost. 

How much more of this do we all have to endure? 

I'm going to be watching England vs Scotland on Friday June 18 in a pub called The Churchill Arms. Whether or not I have my 'vaccine passport' by then remains somewhat moot. 

Long Story Short (2021)

 

Romantic comedies are habitually targeted at a demographic to which I no longer really belong. So, those of us who either feel excluded, to a degree, or perhaps disapprove of the genre per se might not appreciate the lure of this title. 

It's what you might call a high concept romcom, which potentially broadens the basic appeal. I've never come across anyone hostile to Groundhog Day, have you?

The premise here is possibly less brilliant, yet it has some other more latent forms of canniness about it. 

It has been written and directed by Queenslander Josh Lawson, seen recently in Mortal Kombat (in the pile) and funded by Screen Australia, suggesting more cautious, sensitive investment than one might typically encounter in Hollywood. 

This could have been set up as a gratuitous big screen advertisement for the NSW lifestyle, but instead the cast and locations have been carefully and rather cleverly constrained. 

At no stage does the narrative flag in any way. The script and the impetus of the story is consistently good throughout, and it is funny, enough. 

And however pithy the underlying message might be, it is undoubtedly relevant to just about everyone. 

New Order

It looks like Mexico is going full guinea pig when it comes to the roll-out of covid vaccines. 

These the latest stats on its programme — from yesterday — which show enough doses in situ for roughly a fifth of the relevant part of the population. 

The variability that ultimately emerges may not just be a matter of efficacy — especially against the Delta variant, now accounting for 91% of new cases in the UK — but also of international admittance. 

We can see some early signs of this as the UEFA European Football Championship opens tomorrow with fans at Wembley being able to skip the testing requirement if they can show proof of having had both jabs at least 14 days prior to the match. (It will be interesting to note the age profile of the crowd for England's opener against Croatia.) 

The geographically-dispersed format of the competition was laid down before the pandemic. The result is that a number of teams (Hungary in particular, with full stadiums, though fortunately not the Frogs) are going to have a measure of home advantage in the group stages. 

Group B for example, features both Denmark and Russia with matches in Copenhagen and St Petersburg. 

Danes will be welcome at the latter…but, Guatemalans, Argentinians etc. please note: Sputnik V has not yet been approved by the EU — if it ever will be — which means that Russian fans are not going to be welcomed in the Danish capital. 

This is a fairly inauspicious sign that the protocols being given a run out this month will not feature an entirely level playing field as we press ahead into the new era of vaccine passports. 

The Mosquito Coast Season One Finale

 ...though much less of an actual finale than more of the same.

At the end of the last episode we witnessed the Foxes fleeing CDMX because the entire police force in the Mexican capital is in league with the cartels.

Their stated destination was Guatemala, which in this episode we learn is apparently up-river of Pichilingue, a township that anyone who has ever bothered to look at a map would know lies at the arse end of Baja California. 

Not exactly a direct route south and undoubtedly one that leads directly into narco territory. 

This show has disrespected Mexico in umpteen ways, but the scenario here also seriously disrespects the audience, most of whom, one would assume, could have accessed Google Maps. 

We see the Foxes encountering, and to some extent overcoming, yet another situation, supposedly super tense, and yet the real tension (and frustration) as ever comes from the refusal of the adults to open up to their children — and thus the audience — regarding the underlying predicament. If the show were to be cancelled now, we'd have learned zilch. 

Indeed, seven hours of this and essentially all we have seen is an above-averagely annoying white American family traversing a bizarre geography of otherness, that as disaffected liberals they are surely obliged to engage with, on some level at least. 

Yet the Foxes clearly hate Mexico, at least this version, which could just as well be a futuristic amusement park called Mexicanstereotype-land packed with rather basic androids.

We have seen multiple bigger assholes inform Fox that he is an asshole, but this time it was the turn of his own wife and kids, even as he led them to one of the most perfect tropical beaches imaginable.

There was one amusing part, when Fox said he'd been mugged and blamed a rampaging mob of...Canadians.

Brought to you by Apple, Inc.

Countdown to the 11th

We are now but a few days from a tournament that will surely be talked about as much in terms of good thinking as good kicking. 

So, herewith a handy guide for anyone suffering from anticipated perplexities.

1) Fans performing monkey chants whenever a black player has the ball...

= RACIST

2) A Uruguayan referring to his (also Uruguayan) mate on social media as 'negro'...

= NOT RACIST

Fortunately not a likely scenario during the 'Euros'.

3) Booing England players taking the knee before kick off...

= RACIST

Ok, you might think you are objecting to 'Marxism', but please check with the non-white, anti-marxist beside you before going there.

In general, this is one of those cases — actually not as widespread as contemporary culture appears to assume — where the benefit of the doubt has to go to the person at the end of the gesture.

4) Disagreeing with England players taking the knee before kick off...

= RACIST / NON-RACIST

In other words it is is in your head, so Schrödinger's Prejudice. There is no such thing as a thought crime, at least until someone haphazardly opens the box...

Je ne gette rien...

And in other news, noted biologist can only comprehend the term metamorphosis literally...

Oh professor, perhaps this text is symbolically inadequate in much the same way that your 'flying spaghetti monster' is a metaphysical misfire. 

Or maybe not. (Never shy of showing off his blind spots.)

On the subject of bad science fiction...

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

Not a bad movie per se — this third outing for the Warrens definitely looks good — but one that takes itself way too seriously. To the extent that I was almost hoping for a blooper reel over the end credits. 

But instead we got all that based on the shockingly (obviously not) true story stuff, which compounded the devout goofiness which had just wrapped up.  

This movie from Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona) kicks off with a fun set-piece exorcism sequence, which puts one in the mood, yet unless one is seriously Catholic and/or actually believes in demons, then what follows barely produces a single scary moment. 

And the demon itself struggles for agency. 

Cerebrum (2021)

Rather silly body-swap premise dressed up as serious science fiction. 

There's a sort of Mexican stand-off at the end by the trio of male protagonists, all in the wrong body. The technology that made this possible is flimsy to say the least, put together in a barn in Texas. 

It's possibly as potentially confusing as a Christopher Nolan plot, without anything that might be classed as cereb-ral. 

It doesn't help that the characters all act like the dumbest person in the lone star state, so that the greatest mystery is really how none of them have worked out what is actually going on. 

The Great American Naming Decision

An article from the New York Times in 1970 announcing the opening of The Great American Disaster in London. 

We didn't get our first McDonalds in the capital until 1974 and that was way in out in Woolwich for some reason. 

So we had a very brief hamburger spring in the early 70s when the 'real thing' arrived on our shores and all we had to do was add a topping of 'cooly aggressive waiters'. 

My 'uncle' Alan duly opened a competing chain called The Great British Success. I don't think it was. (But he had Wimpy House to fall back on...at least until they started erecting those evil arches.)

I remember going with my mother to the branch of the restaurant with the altogether less foolhardy name on Beauchamp Place. My milkshake debut, I seem to recall.

The very first one mentioned in this article was on Fulham Road, a corner that was later occupied by The Chelsea Kitchen after it was forced to move from King's Road. It too, sadly no more. 

Intimations of Morality

 

This week in the LRB Thomas Nagel offers a fascinating, if complex primer here on the nature of our moral intuitions. 

I suppose my own leanings are basically deontological, in spite of the fact that I have never really accepted that the universe could have been created in order to lay down a fixed set of rules. 

That individual rights should be considered inviolable, no matter what context the collective has come up with, seems almost essential to me. 

My appreciation of history has perhaps led me to be more inherently wary of judging actions by outcomes. Individually and collectively, we are often poor at determining the greater good, even in the short-term. 

Here in Guatemala I have all too frequently come across a particular moral intuition which also strikes me as highly dubious, especially when voiced by lawyers — essentially the old 'it's OK to steal from a thief' canard. 

In a country such as this, not much good at all can come from that sort of 'reflective equilibrium'. 

So, in Nagel's opening anecdote, Stuart Hampshire might have felt morally free to provide the bogus guarantee to the captive collaborator, as the latter was somehow un-deserving of the Brit's better instincts.

Partita

 

Back in 1990, when I was working in the sheet music department at Foyles on Charing Cross Road, in walks Murray and I had the pleasure of flogging him a shitload of Chopin. At the time he was more noted for his Mozart interpretations...

Someone dear to me passed away listening to Bach. 

This particular album would be a top pick for a certain unfortunate predicament: desert island, rapid global warming...

Oxygène (2021)

A kind of high tech version of that movie featuring Ryan Reynolds in a coffin: Buried (2010). 

There's not much more I can say without spoiling it and I don't want to because this movie is GREAT.

What I can say is that high concept science fiction films used to come along a lot more frequently. If this one is high concept, it is also simple concept, and in a sense also familiar concept, because the premise has featured in at least three movies we've watched this year alone (there's even a grisly pandemic) and yet it still feels startlingly fresh and throwbacky to the golden era of the genre.

The plot has a few inexplicable holes, but then so does the universe.

While we're here...

Arriviste, moi?

Napoleon's favourite armchair. 

Reminds me of a minor spat between two of Thatcher's key ministers, Alan Clark and Michael Heseltine. Clark would observe...

"The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy his own furniture."

Some re-orientalism

Behind much of the recent verbal conflict around Israel-Palestine witnessed outside the region is the notion that the Israelis are colonisers and that the Palestinians are oppressed indigenes. 

This fits the wider apprehension held by almost everyone except crazed white supremacists that Jews (and thus Israel) are occidental whereas the Arabs are oriental, and people who prefer packaged ideas to 'raw' history are often rather adamant that colonialism is something that the West traditionally inflicts on the East. 

Yet the Arabs arrived in the area very much as miltant invaders. Previously pinned to the peninsula that bears their name, relatively becalmed between Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia, they gathered and broke out spectacularly a few years after the death of Mohammed. 

In the east they were eventually halted by a Tang Dysnasty army and in the west when 'Sword of Islam' Uqba ibn Nafi al Fihri somewhat symbolically (or perhaps over-enthusiastically) rode his horse into the Atlantic beyond Tangier.

They had besieged Christian Jerusalem in 636 and the following year the Patriarch Sophronius handed over the keys of the holy city to Caliph Umar.  The Caliph had a choice to make. He could walk into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and pray to Jesus, a prophet of Islam, yet should he do so his followers would immediately turn the place into a mosque. 

So instead he decided to build a brand new holy site — the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque — right on top of the ruins of the Jewish temple. 

Caliph Umar

From that single decision made by a victorious conqueror, much trouble has indeed followed. What if he had instead chosen to humiliate Christianity rather than Judaism? In this instance the latter was perhaps the softer target. 

What happened after that was a great civilisation, but also a great empire. 

Christians did rather briefly re-take Jerusalem four centuries later and no doubt would have flipped the Holy Sepulchre back to their own brand of nonsense, yet one suspects that the contours of the conflict today would still be rather different.

Surviving the abuse...

Accusing, isolating, demeaning, mind games, belittling, coercing, gaslighting, controlling, chronic deceit...