The Daily Opinion

Total War in Syria

Nawaf Fares, who was once Syria’s ambassador to Iraq and President Assad’s close friend, has claimed that the regime will opt for chemical weapons if the civil war begins to swing against them. I don’t think anybody is arguing against this. The only thing I’m happy about is that they don’t have weapons of mass destruction as I believe that they would use them if the regime began to crumble.

At the moment there are a large number of chemical weapons within the regime’s weapons cache. There have already been unconfirmed reports that these weapons have come into use in the artillery-ravaged city of Homs. However, it does have to be stressed that this could just be a lie by the opposition. Just because people have rebelled against President Assad doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be just as bad if they got into power. All you have to do to confirm that is look at Egypt. You have a hardcore Islamic party fighting with the military overlords of the country. It’s not exactly the best combination for a peaceful life.

Russia also said a few days ago that they were been blackmailed by the West into launching sanctions against their ally Syria. I’m not really sure where the blackmail is, but even if there is blackmail I would applaud it. The fact is that no matter which way the Russians want to spin it they are still supporting a criminal regime. Everybody knows that the only reason Western troops haven’t intervened is because of the likes of Russia and China. They need Syria or they lose a foothold in the region. Then it gives the locals and the Americans a free hand to practically do what they want.

Furthermore, what we have to remember is that Russia makes a lot of money from selling its weapons to countries like Syria. It’s how they made a lot of money during the Cold War and its how they are doing it today. I would even go as far to argue that their economy would be in dire straits in these tough economic times if they weren’t able to see President Assad use chemical weapons and continue to buy Russian weapons. If being blackmailed is what it takes to convince Russia to stop supporting scum then I really don’t see anything wrong with it. The political arena is morally and ethically grey. The political arena is not black and it’s not white.

Do I think the regime will collapse?

Oh hell yes. No way will that regime survive into the future. It might take a while since the West can’t intervene, but I think that sooner or later it will collapse. It’s already well-known that Russia is funding the regime so it will only be a matter of time before we start funding the rebels; and that’s assuming we aren’t already funding them, which I have a feeling we are doing.

Film Review: Went The Day Well?

Summon up an image of a quintessential picturesque English village and it’s quite likely you’ll get somewhere close to Bramley End, the fictitious setting for this 1942 WWII drama. Surrounded by rolling countryside, bees hum in untended hedgerows and butterflies flutter by in the warm spring sunshine. Narrow country lanes connect Bramley End to the neighbouring village of Upton Ferrars nearly seven miles away. There are picture-postcard cottages aplenty, their windows and front doors half obscured by climbing roses and honeysuckle and a church at the heart of the village and the church is our first stop as the film’s opening titles end. It’s here that a friendly pipe-smoking local welcomes us with a “Good day to you,” and leads us to the unusual memorial that we have no doubt come to see. It’s unusual because it has the names of German soldiers written on it. German names in an English graveyard? How bizarre. The local then proceeds to tell us how such a thing came about.

Saturday morning on a sunny Whitsun weekend in 1942 and a group of lorries filled with British soldiers rolls into the village. Apparently on an exercise of some sort for three days, they ask the villages for billeting for sixty men who, once the arrangements are made, settle into various houses around the village as well as the village hall. The villagers see it all as frightfully exciting and welcome them gladly but it doesn’t take long for them to discover that the soldiers are actually Nazis forming the vanguard of a German invasion of England. With their cover now blown, the Germans round up the villagers and lock them in the church while the children are held captive in the local manor house and supervised by the kind matronly lady of the manor. An attempt by those locked in the church to escape and get word to the neighbouring village is thwarted by a traitor among them, the village squire (played by Leslie Banks) who is revealed to be collaborating with the Nazis.

That night at the manor, a plucky young lad named George shins down a drainpipe after lights out and escapes into the woods to get help from Upton while at the same time, a group of extremely stiff upper lips finally manage to overpower their Nazi guards at the church. There follows numerous gun-butts to Nazi heads, a lot of gunfire and plenty of heroics from the stoic and defiant locals and just as their bullets are running out, a force of nearby British soldiers arrives to bring an end to proceedings. Oh, and as for the traitor….well, you’ll just have to see for yourself. All in all, a nicely shot little film from Ealing Studios with a cast packed full of familiar faces, some that you’ve never seen so young – if you thought Thora Hird was born a bespectacled granny then check this out; it was her first major role and she was a 31year old sweetheart.

But what marks this film out as truly interesting is its propaganda quality. Bearing in mind it was made when the Second World War still had two years to go, the introduction that the pipe-wielding local gives us at the start of the movie is a post-war one. He speaks of the newspapers calling the event at the village “The Battle at Bramley End” but that nothing was said of it until after the war was over and “old Hilter got what was coming to him.” One can only guess the impact such a film would have had on its audience, particularly one that knew all too well that the only thing separating them from occupied Europe was a narrow strip of water. Hitler’s planned invasion of the UK “Operation Sea Lion” may have been indefinitely postponed by 1942 (due in part to the Germans not having air superiority over the channel) but to a war-weary British public, the threat must have still been real and constantly in the backs of their minds. What this film did was to show the audience that even if such a thing were to happen and Nazis did land on British soil, with cool heads, brave heart and plucky British spirit, the Germans wouldn’t stand a chance. Simply put, evil would never triumph over good and the Nazis were the personification of evil.

Based on a short story entitled “The Lieutenant Died Last” by the English author Graham Greene, Went the Day Well? was directed by Brazilian born Alberto Cavalcanti who would go on to make a handful of films for Ealing Studios in the 40s most notably, “Champagne Charlie” and “Nicholas Nickleby”. The film’s reputation has grown significantly with the passing of time and in 2005 it was named as one of the “100 Greatest War Films” in a Channel 4 poll in the UK. In 2010, the British Film Institute National Archive released a restored version of the film and it was met with critical acclaim. I think Tom Huddleston of Time Out London summed it up perfectly by writing that it was “jawdroppingly subversive. Cavalcanti establishes, with loving care and the occasional wry wink, the ultimate bucolic English scene, then takes an almost sadistic delight in tearing it to bloody shreds in an orgy of shockingly blunt, matter-of-fact violence.”

Went The Day Well? is a great little film and a window into a time and a place that has long gone and yet to watch it and to understand its message is to truly find respect for the men, women and children that lived through those dark years of Nazi terror. A classic in every sense.

The Scottish Referendum will be a vote on music, as well as politics

Ask the common man on the street who the most commercially successful Scottish musicians are, and the chances are unless you happened to encounter an avid music fan with a taste for biographies, you’d be lucky to squeeze much out of them.

On the other hand, if you were to ask that same stranger the accolades of English musical exports, you’d have found yourself in a much more familiar place. But is this surprising?
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has produced some of the most influential musicians of the modern era – but considering Scotland’s population accounts for just 8.4% of its makeup, a mere 5 million people, they’ve probably got the strongest music credentials per capita of any country on the entire planet, harboring a creative ingenuity that is something more reflective of its 32% share of our geography. The 1970s were witness to such Scottish cultural sharings as the Bay City Rollers phenomena, one of the first of many acts to be labeled as ‘the biggest band since the Beatles’. Aberdeen resident, Annie Lennox, went on to achieve success not only in Eurythmics & The Tourists but as a solo artist also, selling over 80 million records and subsequently earned the distinction of the “most successful female British artist in UK music history” – collecting four Grammy Awards and a record eight Brit Awards on the way. Franz Ferdinand, KT Tunstall, The Fratellis, Paolo Nutini, Biffy Clyro and Calvin Harris are yet more examples from a long list of exemplar specimens of the Scot sound.

However, despite a fervent nationalism and such cultural romanticisms that make their southern neighbors seem drab and generic in comparison, their music industry is by no means reflective of the quirky and mythical place it calls home.

English music in comparison has a completely different story to tell, in part to the fact that it actually has a story. The woolly and strange thing about the concept of ‘Englishness’ is its lack of appropriate context; it’s strange that for a nation that tends to drop the cross of St. George for a larger and more encompassing ‘British’ mentality – its music industry is the word’s most staunch admirer, second only to football.

Gene Simmons of KISS once said in an interview with The Sun “When you say guitar god, it really just means English, doesn’t it? There are no American guitar gods. All the rock gods are English.” Whether Simmons falls into the Yankee misconception of England being synonymous with the UK is unclear, but the fact the red and white nation was singled out speaks of more than a confusion of definition.

Fact is, the geo-politics of the music business is a side often never told. Not only does this idea play out on a field between constituent countries, it’s something that has been a fierce factor in the generation of the British sound. When Manchester’s music scene blew up in the late 80s/early 90s with the likes of The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and The Charlatans, label scouts were ordered up north on a musical pilgrimage that would mark the most significant cultural moment for the city, ever. So powerful was this movement, even its ensuing hangover was enough to propel Oasis into the history books. But what spoke most about the comparative emptiness was the rhetoric that ‘the record execs had called them back to London’; the HQ of not just English, but British music. And it was true.

Against the industry’s London-centrism, surely Scotland had a role to play in the brewing music nationalism of Britpop and ‘Cool Britannia’ of the 1990s? Nope, not really. Mostly down to a flurry of over-excitement by the British music press, Britpop was initially an ‘Anti-American’ movement characterised by a nostalgia for English rock and character, yes, not British.

Damon Albarn of Blur spoke of his “attempting to write in a classic English vein” when talking about their album ‘Modern Life is Rubbish’ (a record that was almost called ‘England vs America’). The predominantly ‘English ideal’ of the era was somehow repackaged into a more falsly inclusive form. From its anti-grunge dogma, to its championing of more camp and socially awkward personal traits (Brett Anderson, above), the idea from its inception was a purely English one. In the years that ensued, the Union Jack went from a backward imperial remnant to a fashion icon, and by the time Geri Halliwell got her hands on that infamous dress nobody gave a fuck what started it.

The fact is, Scottish music has never had its own distinct legacy or concise narrative. And despite its creative genius and flare, it often struggles to receive its proportionate share of limelight; more times than not boiled down to an ultra-creative enclave off the north of England – with piercing through as a cultural collective being something that continuously evades them. It’s become true, now more than ever, that a union with a more aggressive larger sibling comes with a fair share of downsides. And if the Scottish public decide to go the way of independence in 2014, the inevitability of a more insular and self-concerning domestic musical policy will certainly follow. No longer would London be the speakers through which the sound of Scotland is amplified. And I think they’ll be a shitload better for it.

Video of the Week: Parking Fail

Military Called for Olympic Duty

It was announced that 3,500 additional military personnel have had to be called in for the London Olympic Games after revelations that the private security firm G4S couldn’t supply the required number of people. But now there’s a big storm in the media and people are honestly complaining about this.

G4S isn’t under the control of anyone. They are essentially just mercenaries on the government payroll. If we have to use more of our armed forces to protect London 2012 then what’s the issue? I would feel safer having my own men keeping me safe than a random security firm who couldn’t care less whether you live or die. They get paid no matter what happens. More importantly, I’d like to think that bringing the military in costs a lot less as we are already paying for their upkeep.

Oh but what about dragging the military away from their duties outside of the London Olympic Games? Well that’s true. You are dragging them away from their normal duties, but those normal duties are nothing special. If we are whining because we have to use the armed forces for protection in our own country then can somebody tell me the point of them? If they are not there for protection then they have no purpose. If that’s the case then surely the cuts to the armed forces that will eliminate 20,000 people are justified as they don’t have a purpose?

Back to the point, though, I’m surprised we didn’t use the military from the very beginning. We have all of those troops based at home just sat around scratching their arses or waiting to go and get blown up in Afghanistan. So surely the best place for them is at London 2012 because they are getting real world experience in an actual operation? What’s more, they are situated in the capital which is the heart of all of the military intelligence, so it’s really the best place for them.

I know we don’t know much about the cost of G4S and their private security services, but I would still opt for the military even if it happens to be more expensive. Look at G4S, they are not military men, they are just private security personnel. The military are going to be better trained and better able to deal with any threat. If we used the military exclusively then operations would be simplified as well due to the fact that you’re not coordinating with multiple bodies. All you have to do then is run it past yourself.

So I’m really not seeing the problem with bringing more of our own forces in to protect the London Olympic Games. They are going to be better trained, better organised, and the chances are they are going to be cheaper than bringing in an outsider.

The Unstealable Object

There have been many people who have wondered whether it’s possible to find an object that can’t be stolen. This object is safe and you don’t have to go out of your way to keep it safe. As technology levels increase we are undoubtedly getting closer to the time when thieves actually become good people, but will it be a day that will ever come?

In my opinion no. Let’s look at it like this. Yes, technology is increasing and we are now getting stories where stolen laptops, iPads, and iPhones have anti-theft software that can tell the owner where it is and even who stole it by taking remote photographs. Most thieves are generally morons so they usually don’t notice or take into account software like this. So it will certainly increase the number of items that are returned to the owner.

Going back to my point about the thief community being made up of mainly idiots who couldn’t exist in a real job, it’s a certainty that more of these will be caught. However, if they are stupid then they are still going to try to steal it as they will believe, wrongly, that they will get away with it. This is not an unstealable object. Just because the object happens to be returned doesn’t really mean anything. That means that your iPads and your iPhones are still at risk. All you are doing is giving yourself a better shot of catching the individual who did it in the first place.

Will it reduce the levels of people trying it? I think it will as some thieves are smart enough to not go for high-risk objects. And if everything becomes a high-risk objects then they’ll give the game up and just go back to leaching off of state benefits instead. So there’s a point in introducing all of this anti-theft software as it will reduce the levels of people who are stealing.

But there’s also a risk. Thieves have existed since humanity began and they will exist until humanity ends. So that tells us that they are more than capable of moving along with the times. If we move into a world where technology protects everything from sticky fingers then they will just move with the times again. In the beginning there will be a reduction in crime as they struggle to adapt to the new world of anti-theft tools, but eventually they’ll adapt.

Personally, I think we will see a world with a smarter criminal. You will still have your petty thieves who try to steal a packet of cigarettes from the local shop, but I think that the large majority will simply move online. It’s a well-known fact that as more people become connected to the internet the levels of cyber crime just increase. So in the future it will be the thieves acting from a remote base who will be the biggest threat. It will create a smarter thief. And I daresay that it will create more of them because if you steal from home then it takes less courage and less bravado than it does to walk into a store and take something off of the shelves.