Points-based Immigration and Overseas Students

For this post I’ve dropped the art in favour of straight up politics, but one has to flex with the inspiration. Paul Gilroy frequently uses the phrase ‘the European fortress’ in his persuasive arguments that British imperialism has not in fact come to an end but has simply morphed into something new. In many ways it is evident how the island of Britain itself is perpetually erecting and solidifying its own fortress apart from the EU even; one of the better examples being the UK Home Office’s introduction of what’s called the ‘points-based immigration’ system.

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What is the Points-Based System for Immigration?

The latest issue of Red Pepper contains a piece by Frances Webber entitled ‘Informers in the Classroom’:  http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Informers-in-the-classroom

And what follows is from a blog post, a good breakdown of the lead up and transition to the policy we’re now confronted with:

The UK is an interesting example of European trends. Over the last decades it was known to be one of the major European ‘immigration countries’ owing it to its highly liberal immigration policies. Yet, the latest developments portray the British government’s increasingly strict stance on this matter.

What Led to the UK’s Make-Over ?

After the 2004 EU enlargement to ten new member states, the UK witnessed a historical immigration inflow, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe. At that time, the Labour government under Tony Blair advocated a liberal immigration policy which would pose no particular limit to the number of workers from the new EU member states. Although only 13,000 workers per year were expected, the immediate introduction of free movement of labour resulted in an inflow 20 times higher than expected. Soon, the government faced heavy criticism from the media, opposition and the electorate. In 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown then announced he would advocate tougher measures to protect the British labour market under the banner of ‘British jobs for British workers’. The Labour government took a major policy U-turn from a highly liberal to a rather restrictive immigration policy. Home Secretary John Reid argued that low skilled migrants must be limited. Therefore, not only did workers from Romania and Bulgaria (who joined the EU in 2007) have to apply for a work permit, but highly skilled migrants were also favoured to low-skilled migrants, who in turn were limited to certain sectors and quotas.

Policy U-Turn : The Right Choice of Direction ?

Several research institutes showed that the British government’s turn to more restrictive policies seems economically unfounded. The 2004-2006 immigration inflow has rather proven to be beneficial for the British economy. In 2006, the National Institute Economic Review (NIER) published a study which showed that the UK’s output would rise by 1 percentage point in the long-run thanks to its liberal immigration policy. Conversely, a restrictive policy as pursued in Germany would result in an output rise of only half a percentage point. Besides, several studies such as those carried out for the European Commission or by the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) showed that the side-effects of an open labour market policy feared by the UK government did not become a reality. Unemployment did not rise, the skill composition was not imbalanced, nor were national workers ‘crowded out’. If the government’s economic fears were proven wrong, what else could have motivated their case against liberalizing the labour market ?

London: Demonstration for withdrawal of British troops from Iraq

Partcipating at demonstrations regarded as criticizing the government might in future delay the application process for British citizenship. European and national public opinion polls (e.g. Eurobarometer) have shown that among European countries, the UK was one of the least supportive of EU enlargement and immigration. In 2006, a Financial Times poll showed that 3 out of 4 British respondents claimed that there are ‘too many immigrants in their country’. In reaction to such negative public opinion, the British government may have adopted more restrictive immigration policies in order to remain legitimate and popular to its electorate. Whether its reasons were purely economic or mainly political is debatable, yet the results remain the same: Immigrating to the UK is becoming increasingly difficult. In the context of the current economic recession the government argues that in these conditions Britain cannot afford to continue accepting as many immigrants as it used to.

Applying for Citizenship : ‘Geese and Skulls’

Previously, citizenship was granted to those residing in Britain for five years or for three years if married to a British citizen. Given that in 2008 half of the people granted citizenship were either spouses or children of British citizens, the government now argues that becoming ‘British’ should be based on tougher requirements than mere marital or family relations. The new rules for acquiring citizenship are reminiscent of the popular children’s game ‘Game of the Goose’. In this spiral-shaped board game players move forward by as many spaces as there are numbers on the dice until reaching the finish line. In addition to the citizenship test, which will concentrate on practical information about life in the UK and on history and politics, a new rule has been introduced: Providing that it takes effect in July 2011, a points-based system will now test applicants’ behaviour. Just as players in the Game of the Goose have to reach the finish line, applicants have to accumulate a certain amount of points to be granted British citizenship. In the game, when landing on a space with a goose, a player is granted extra spaces. Similarly, in the points-based system, applicants receive extra points by doing voluntary work, actively learning English, or if they move to areas of labour shortage (e.g. Scotland). Also, the government favours applicants demonstrating qualifications and special skills currently in demand, such as math teachers, nurses and ballet dancers. But, be aware! When landing on a space with a skull in the game, the player must move a couple of spaces back. In the points-based system, landing on the ‘skull’ is somewhat more controversial. Indeed, applicants are not only penalized for being involved in illegal or criminal behaviour: They are even castigated for participating in demonstrations (Iraq and Afghanistan wars), and if judged to fail integrating into British society or respecting British values. Although Phil Woolas, Minister of Immigration, argued that this way immigrants would prove they ‘earned’ their British passport, it seems appalling that the immigrant’s path towards citizenship would be prolonged when exercising the universal right of freedom of speech.

Game Over ?

Due to the economic recession the number of immigrants to the UK has already decreased. So whether changes to the previously rather liberal immigration policies in the UK are really a response to the recession is dubious. Rather, the underlying reason could be the ultimate will to remain in office. Whatever the rationale, an open but controlled immigration policy must clearly be in place. However, neither should an applicant have to move back to the start line for exercising his or her fundamental rights in a democratic country, nor should he or she become the loser of a game whose rules are evidently flawed. The UK is merely an example of the increasing trend to toughen immigration policies across Europe. However, in times of crisis, it won’t be long until other countries will have immigrants playing the Game of the Goose.

http://www.theeuros.eu/Goose-Chase-The-New-Immigration,3219

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One might expect there to be little concern for the problems the immigration policy presents for the majority who are legitimately seeking an existence in the UK, especially given the recent appearance of our leading political parties on BBC’s Question Time where they quite effectively argued the BNP party’s anti-immigration stance for its leader Nick Griffin. That politicians are pandering for votes in this way suggests that we have an electorate that has been largely swayed into discomfort with – estimably due to a lack of access to information, particularly about economics in Britain – flows of migrants into and within the British fortress. But while this may seem like a digression from students I raise the image of Question Time up only to point out that there is real resistance to it, the kind which is instructive and inspiring.

Consider how overseas students coming to the UK are currently being affected by the new immigration policy as it demonstrates great potential in the way of controlling and homogenizing university demographics, tracking terrorists, and on and on. At Goldsmiths College, University of London, there is a mounting campaign against the points-system in general and its effects on overseas students; a movement which has grown largely from the experiences many students have endured as a consequence of both the design of the new Home Office policy and the Home Office’s imperfect administration of it.

The campaign is aptly named ‘Students not Suspects’ and here is a sample from their literature:

On the basis of perceived desirability (level of skill etc.), points are awarded to workers coming from outside the European Economic Area (EEA). This system is currently affecting higher education, making it more difficult for both students and staff from outside the EEA to obtain visas and subjecting them to discriminatory treatment. Persons applying for student visas must demonstrate they have approximately £17,000 in the bank, continuously for 28 days, and must in some cases register with the police. Any students and staff applying to extend their stay must submit biometric information (fingerprints and photographs) and get ID cards. Also, colleges and universities wishing to recruit students or employ staff from outside the EEA must register themselves as licensed sponsors of these individuals—which means institutions are now required to monitor students’ attendance and report them to the Border Agency when a number of ‘interactions’ (classes, tutorials, assignments, etc.) are missed and/or for ‘suspicions of breach of conditions’.

Why you should care

More than just a violation of privacy, the rules constitute a serious
threat to academic freedom and to democracy. They encourage overseas
students to be treated as potential suspects who come to the UK with the specific goal of abusing the system. The rules harm the relationship of trust between students and staff and create divisions between overseas and
EEA students. Furthermore, the introduction of biometric ID cards for foreign nationals is a backdoor route to their general application. The Home Office rules introduce yet another means of surveillance and layer of
bureaucracy. Unnecessary bureaucratic complications have already disrupted a number of students in their education and have even forced some to return home. The financial requirements make study in the UK hardly possible for students from less privileged backgrounds and/or countries with low currency exchange rates. All this fosters inequality and suspicion, dampens dialogue and international exchange, and results in a
less vibrant campus environment.

Who we are

Students not Suspects are a broad and growing coalition of students, staff and campaigners who are op- posed to the new Home Office rules. While we are our home is currently Goldsmiths (University of London), we are
appealing to, involving and acting in solidarity with anyone anywhere who is concerned about and affected by this immigration policy. What’s happening Already Goldsmiths Students’ Union has passed a motion
requesting that staff not comply with the new rules; the Goldsmiths branch of the University College Union (UCU) has adopted a policy of non-compliance with the rules; and several departments in the College have
drafted statements opposing the rules: the Centre for Cultural Studies, Media and Communications and Visual Cultures. Following a public meeting in December 2009, we are holding weekly meetings and information and
solidarity events are in the offing. We invite your participation at any and all levels.

How to get involved
To get involved, more information and/or to sign our statement of opposition: visit the blog at http://studentsnotsuspects.blogspot.com/; join us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=252057804209&ref=ts; and contact us at studentsnotsus-pects@gmail.com, especially if you’ve been affected and have a personal story to relate. In order to raise awareness of both the issue and the campaign it’s important to spread the word as widely as possible. Please engage others in discussion about the Home Office rules, the points-based immigration system more generally, and the Students not Suspects campaign.

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I’ll admit I’m very interested in the Home Office’s new rules because their implementation suggests yet another mechanism which renders Britain a police state. While many baulk at a statement such as this – I once heard Harold Pinter being scoffed at when he advanced this very claim without equivocation – confirmation of this reality is emerging in the facts that a) universities are being solicited to turn registers over to the Home Office if asked and b) testimonials of students’ own subjection to the content of the rules and their harmful (mis)administration, those which I am told will soon be available on the websites mentioned in the ‘Students not Suspects’ literature I’ve cited above.

It’s unfortunate but ever certain that in order to discover what’s wrong with policy we need to encounter and be affected by the victims of its exercise. Thus we realize that the passport we hold enabling us to move about freely and unhindered serves only too often as a blindfold. In this way our privilege becomes a mechanism for control in the very control society which, according to Gilles Deleuze, has succeeded the disciplinary society Michel Foucault so brilliantly diagnosed.

Art & Power 2010

Poet Laureate Takes On War

There’s so much to be said in response to the shift of attention to Afghanistan, particularly since the arrival of the recent US president. And while we’ve admittedly been lazy on this point, Britain’s recently appointed ‘president of poetry’, Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, is picking up the slack. That she is performing her duty with gusto, along with the fact of her gender, makes a significant and refreshing change from her predecessor, our old friend Andrew Motion.  Here’s what inspired us to post today:

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‘Exit wounds’
Carol Ann Duffy
The Guardian, Saturday 25 July 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/25/war-poetry-carol-ann-duffy

Poets, from ancient times, have written about war. It is the poet’s obligation, wrote Plato, to bear witness. In modern times, the young soldiers of the first world war turned the horrors they endured and witnessed in trench combat – which slaughtered them in their millions – into a vividly new kind of poetry, and most of us, when we think of “war poetry” will find the names of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon coming first to our lips, with Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Rupert Brooke … What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? … There’s some corner of a foreign field … Such lines are part of the English poetry reader’s DNA, injected during schooldays like a vaccine.

But other poems – not all by soldiers – also come to mind: Walt Whitman’s civil war poems; the poetry of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, written (or memorised) during the Stalinist terrors; Lorca’s poems from the Spanish civil war; the poems of the brilliant young Keith Douglas who was killed in the second world war; the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert from eastern Europe and Mahmoud Darwish from the Middle East, and of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley from Northern Ireland.

British poets in our early 21st century do not go to war, as Keith Douglas did and Edward Thomas before him. They might be poet-journalists like James Fenton, the last foreign correspondent to leave Saigon after it fell to the Viet Cong in 1975, or electrifying anti-war performance poets, like the late Adrian Mitchell, or brilliant retellers of Homer’s Trojan wars, like Christopher Logue. War, it seems, makes poets of soldiers and not the other way round. Today, as most of us do, poets largely experience war – wherever it rages – through emails or texts from friends or colleagues in war zones, through radio or newsprint or television, through blogs or tweets or interviews. With the official inquiry into Iraq imminent and the war in Afghanistan returning dead teenagers to the streets of Wootton Bassett, I invited a range of my fellow poets to bear witness, each in their own way, to these matters of war.
In Times of Peace

by John Agard

That finger – index to be exact -
so used to a trigger’s warmth
how will it begin to deal with skin
that threatens only to embrace?

Those feet, so at home in heavy boots
and stepping over bodies -
how will they cope with a bubble bath
when foam is all there is for ambush?

And what of hearts in times of peace?
Will war-worn hearts grow sluggish
like Valentine roses wilting
without the adrenalin of a bullet’s blood-rush?

When the dust of peace has settled on a nation,
how will human arms handle the death of weapons?
And what of ears, are ears so tuned to sirens
that the closing of wings causes a tremor?

As for eyes, are eyes ready for the soft dance
of a butterfly’s bootless invasion?
Listen

by Gillian Clarke

to the chant that tranced me thirty years ago
in Samarkand: the call to prayer at dawn;

to that voice again, years and miles from then,
in the blood-red mountains of Afghanistan;

to the secret placing of a double-bomb
at a dark hour in a Helmand street;

to the first foot to tread the viper’s head,
the scream that ripped the morning’s rising heat;

to the widow’s wail as she crouches in the rubble
over a son, a brother torn apart;

to a mother dumb with shock who locks her door
and sits alone, taking the news to heart;

to the soldier’s words, “It’s World War One out here”;
to the rattled air, the growl of the grenade;

to a chanting crowd fisting the foetid air;
to a silent Wiltshire town at a last parade;

to ruin ripening in poppy fields;
to barley burnished in the summer air;

to the sound at dusk, cantata of despair,
the holy call become a howl of prayer.
War on Terror

by Fred D’Aguiar

Lasts for as long as nightmares
paint behind the eyelids

as long as a piece of string
cut from a navel remains buried under a tamarind tree

as long as radar from a whale
sounds like my child crying in her sleep

not long after the eyes wash away
last nights paint

no longer than a piece of string
tied at a navel

shorter than this war in this time under
this government that drowns our children in their sleep
Untidiness

by Amanda Dalton
The National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad

Some time after the looting, the locked gates,
the US tank stood idle in a gallery,

Mushin Hasan, his head bowed
in a room of shattered stone,

after some had come back in blankets,
dustbin bags, the boots of cars,

in pieces – the Bassetki Statue, pulled
from a cesspool, smeared with grease -

and others recovered from Jordan, Italy,
France, US, UK, Peru, eBay,

they re-opened the museum,

missing maybe 3 or 11,000
(depending what you read), missing

the Hatra Heads, the Nimrud Lioness,
and doubting they’ll ever get them back,

those bits of the world,
bits of the civilised world, scattered.

• “Untidiness” is how the then secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld,described the looting from the Iraq National Museum.
Big Ask

by Carol Ann Duffy
(In memory of Adrian Mitchell)

What was it Sisyphus pushed up the hill?
I wouldn’t call it a rock.
Will you solemnly swear on the Bible?
I couldn’t swear on a book.
With which piece did you capture the castle?
I shouldn’t hazard a rook.

When did the President give you the date?
Nothing to do with Barack!
Were 1200 targets marked on a chart?
Nothing was circled in black.
On what was the prisoner stripped and stretched?
Nothing resembling a rack.

Guantanamo Bay – how many detained?
How many grains in a sack?
Extraordinary Rendition – give me some names.
How many cards in a pack?
Sexing the Dossier – name of the game?
Poker. Gin Rummy. Blackjack.

What’s your understanding of ’shock’ and ‘awe’?
I didn’t plan the attack.
Once inside the Mosque, describe what you saw.
I couldn’t see through the smoke.
Your estimate of the cost of the War?
I had no brief to keep track.

Where was Saddam when they found him at last?
Maybe holed under a shack.
What happened to him once they’d kicked his ass?
Maybe he swung from the neck.
The WMD … you found the stash?
Well, maybe not in Iraq.
The Grassington Mandala

by Ian Duhig

The photograph, a monk explains,
shows statues once in Bamiyan;
near here the Pilgrimage of Grace
fought Bluff King Henry’s Taliban,

where now enlightened refugees
rebuild their Buddha’s house in sand,
a sand once ground from precious stones;
they laugh, now statue-dust’s as sound.

The sun and moon attend his throne
surrounded by five jewelled walls;
a foursquare palace circles both
(with, on its roof, white parasols),

then rosaries of thunderbolts,
and rainbow-serpent aureoles;
each high brocaded gate supports
two kneeling deer with dharma wheels.

This Mitrukpa Mandala’s power,
to these who travel with belief,
absolves the karma of who kill
or are involved in taking life.

The RAF train overhead -
Jihadists also, up the Dale;
a homeless monk with steady hands:
another serpent bites its tail.
Landlock

by Matthew Hollis

Rain came rarely to the white wood valley.
In between times, he did what he could,
cut rhubarb and gooseberries, brought flowers
from the hill: camel-thorn in winter, rest-harrow
in summer, rock-rose, barberry, mimosa.
He ground wormwood to settle her fever.
When the trouble was done he would take back the farm,
plant olive and cedar, build her a home.
But she thought mostly of the sea -
the uncommissioned sea -
wild at her, salt strong -
not the starving river, brackish and torn -
a river is never enough.
One of her wishes was to find her own path,
but the lowlands were locked down, the plains undone;
so they climbed, and climbed as one.
And when she could not walk he carried her
and when he could not carry her she walked.
Such as this the days went by, till his strength too was sapped.
He laid his back against the longer rock
and set her head that gently in his lap.
Sleep overtook them on the slope.
He woke to take the sunlight in his eyes
and could not see at first the greater distance,
the strange blue, stain blue light in the distance,
that seemed every bit to move, impossible, surely,
a thin drawn band of sea, somewhere meeting sky.
He raised her head that she might see it done.
But where she was she had already gone.
Descent

by Alan Jenkins

… when suddenly out of that lake of blood
And plasma and the seepings of old sores
And indistinct stuff, rotted flesh and mud
And floatings of chemical froth, the spores
From carrion-flowers, the bandages that dressed
Deep-tissue wounds acquired in recent wars,
Moment-of-death evacuations (deliquesced),
The slippery insides of bodies cut in two,
Brain-matter, bits of muscle and the rest -
Three bubble-streams rose up; then from this stew
Appeared, slime-covered, plop plop plop, three heads,
All familiar. Each seemed about to spew
But more muck filled their open mouths, and threads
Of mucus clung and dripped from them as all
Were forced to swallow back those strange sweetbreads.
And so their words came thickly though a wall
Of vile breath and the noises that each made
In struggling to be heard: “I [burp] now call
On our great nation, and the mighty shade
Of Winston … [awk!] Churchill [blurp] … I mean, look …”
“Perhaps you dickheads think” – a fierce tirade
Came now from his confrere – “that this [blurf. Flook!]
War will be some kind – of fucking – picnic -
Though we could just make out a Don! or Dick!
Among his snarls of petulant disdain
And “DON’T MISUNDERESTIMATE ME” (sic)
He shrieked, futilely fending off a rain
Of liquid shit expelled in passing by
A bony old man with a baggy stain
For underpants, long matted beard, wild eye.
“To satisfy their vanity”, my guide said,
A million, two million forsaken had to die.
Now they must squabble in this place instead,
But no lies they repeat will justify
Their crimes, or earn forgiveness from the dead … “
Inquiry

by Carola Luther

how close how far how deep
what shade what shape what height
these quiet skulls like eggs how old
how wide one hundred thousand
which angle which side
the walls fall slowly as if half asleep
stepping out of clothes what’s heard
what’s said her stained abaya
from where from when
miles for water what’s dug up
who’s missing who’s quiet
their bed in the crater by the park
what number what cost on the step a baby
his sucking mouth what’s named what’s lost
on the rubbish mound two girls in black
looking for nylon and Pepsi cans
what’s counted what’s hidden
what’s not documented the boy still searching
for the head of his dog what’s shredded
what’s kept which contractor who’s job
in the city darkness electric switch click
click who’s friend who’s father which cellar
which jail underground the oil what email
one perfect apricot in the flattened orchard
who’s dental record who’s record beneath
a new sim-card painkillers ninety nine
prayer beads which faction which cabal
sometimes she tries to get to school
that firm which consortium at the widow’s stall
petrol by the cup tissues chewing gum
who’s ring who’s tongue left by the road
in his mascara khol private clothes
what’s stolen what’s found
a Sumerian statue from the flipflop man
what’s ignored inside there were ants
what’s replayed the Sony camcorder
whirring like a watch under her bhurka
that’s intact what’s standing what story
what rumour sepsis making its yellow flower
which fact which faith just tea and dates
tea and dates and three small onions
my son has gone the teacher’s leaving
which airport which building
quiet men meeting
After the Stealth Bomber

by Robert Minhinnick
(Umm Ghada at the Amiriya Bunker)

It is years later now
but time can also run backwards.
Still she squats in candlelight,
Umm Ghada in the caravan,
or in 125 degrees Fahrenheit,
a cockroach ticking on her divan.

At night
they come out of the bunker,
the children, the old people,
but all a fog of flesh.
one body with four hundred souls
is exposed in a photographic flash.
They pick the wedding rings and wisdom teeth
from crematorium ash.

Who was it dreamed a stealth bomber?
Stealth steals.
Think of a smart bomb.
Not so smart.
Where the missiles entered Amiriya
daylight was star-shaped in the sarcophagus,
the concrete blasted back,
all the bodies foaming like phosphorus
in a bunker in Iraq.

The old women
took off their shoes
to welcome the fire that jumped into their mouths.
How quickly the children
found themselves unborn.

Yes, stealth steals.
But still Umm Ghada
guards. Umm Ghada
who goads God
with her grief
and the ghosts she carries,
Umm Ghada my guide
in the charnel house corridors.

What is she but a woman
in desert black.
Yet no desert was ever so black
as the sackcloth that Umm Ghada owns.
Not the Syrian desert’s
Bedouin black, its cairns
of cold stones.

• The Amiriya bunker in Baghdad was destroyed by the USAF on 13 February 1991. More than 400 civilians wer killed. Umm Ghada, lost manymembers of her family in the destruction, became a guide at Amiriya, living on the site. I met her there in September 1998. Her whereabouts today are unknown.
Afghanistan

by Paul Muldoon

It’s getting dark, but not dark enough to see
An exit wound as an exit strategy.
Have I Got Old News For You

by Daljit Nagra

You’ve been mapping the best mortgage
for our first house in these skint times,
recalling the latest tracker rate
you hint we play it safe
with a five-year fixed.

You’re by the telly when Dubya flashes up
twitching a smirk in his cowboy gear,
now safely in the past, yet verged
on a mind-blowing
thought.

I’m sorry Love, in the head to head,
my head had gone astray so you were
second best, it’s just that I banked
on a dead cert gaffe to raise
us a laugh.

You don’t hand me another Bud, but quiz
my smiles at this sniggery ad-lib game
of gags (that won your broken
laughter back then).
I’m thrown

to our courtship years glued to the smoke of Guan-
tanamoww, Eyraaq, and of course Affghanestaan
freed by John Simpson for the Crusades,
way before our daughter
trod the earth.
Of Course If I Can Help in Any Way

by Sean O’Brien

May we begin? Please tell us what you said
Or did, or saw the others do or say
Or see, or write, or somehow intimate.
We’re anxious to be clear on all the facts.
… But no. You think it’s wiser if instead
You don’t do that. You haven’t got all day.
How could we grasp the interests of the state,
The angel-subtleties its work exacts?
Are we suggesting you might swerve
From righteousness? Why should we need to know?
Who do we think we’re talking to like this
When – okay, look – God’s asked you to preserve
His plans from scrutiny? You smile. You go.
Outside your creatures queue to take the piss.
Battle Lines

by Carole Satyamurti

They wear the same boots, the same touching hair-cuts,
they’re smiles on the News, digits on print-out,
our brave boys;
names, ranks and numbers, action men
splitting the night with mind-trash noise.

Below them, the lights are the Fourth of July,
the screen shows cursors falling, converging
on other brave men -
abstract enemies with blanks for faces.
The mission’s to smash them and smash them again.

Each leader works at poses, inflections:
strong on screen, bluff on the air-waves,
caring friend.
Each of them bathes in his own propaganda;
his currency’s lives, and he’s plenty to spend.

It’s no use praying for some clean ending,
the God of the cross, of the star, of the crescent
is deaf and blind.
The fall-back, an echo of voices from childhood:
Don’t cry big boys. Never mind.
St Brides

by Jo Shapcott

There is a tower of the winds as tall
as this one in another city, a steeple
filled with fire by the incendiary raids
of a coalition of the unwilling. Nocturnal
shocks pound the citizens who survive,
blast them out of their beds into the streets,
children bundled under their arms. The gutters flame.
Dust is alight. I was born in a city

to come and go safely through the boroughs,
carrying inside me every morning’s news: pictures
of soldiers in places they didn’t want
to understand, made to fight for loose change,
for the hell of it, for a can of oil. I live here,
but the smell of print and ashes is in my nose.
It could have been

by Clare Shaw

Ali, son of Abdul. 16 months.
Rocket on house, Sadr City 16.5.2009.

Ali, but for some detail of history,
this day could have been yours.
It could have been you this morning,
stood at the end of your bed,
eyes still shut, arms held up for your mother,
who makes sun and all things possible,
who could, little Ali, be me.

Tony Edward Shiol, 5 years.
Kidnapped, found strangled, Shikan 12.05.2009.

If God had sneezed or been somehow distracted.
If that ray of light had shifted
and you had landed
with that small, metallic thrill of conception
as I walked down Euston Road,

then this could have been your morning.
It could have been me inhaling
your breath straight from sleep,
the smell of hot lake and woodsmoke, could
have
been
my tired arm under your neck.

Unnamed baby son of Haider Tariq Sain.
Car bomb, Nawab Street, Baghdad 7.04.2009.

It could have been you
shouting “carry”
at the far top stair of my stairs -

hello stairs
hello breakfast

- your feet in these shoes
which do not contain ants;

Unnamed daughter of Captain Saada Mohammed Ali.
Roadside bomb, Fallujah 20.4.2009.

biting soap
which smells good
but does not taste; watching
the unsteady wonder of bubbles;
throwing water up into the light.

Unnamed child of Haidar, male, aged 4.
Suicide bomber, Baghdad 4.1.2009.

then swimming:
your body held out in my hands;
the pear-shaped
weight of your head
safe away from the pool’s sharp side

Sa’adiya Saddam, aged 8, female.
Shot dead by USA forces. Afak, 7/8 Feb, 2009.

It could have been me on that street
with you in my hands
and my hands red and wet
and my face is a shriek
and my voice is a house all on fire

But for geography,
but for biology,
but for the way
things happen,
it could have been

Unnamed female baby of the Abdul-Monim family.
Shot dead, Balal Ruz 22.1.2009.

you falling,
you holding your hand up for kissing.
Poppies

by Jane Weir

Three days before Armistice Sunday
and poppies had already been placed
on individual war graves. Before you left,
I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,
spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade
of yellow bias binding around your blazer.

Sellotape bandaged around my hand,
I rounded up as many white cat hairs
as I could, smoothed down your shirt’s
upturned collar, steeled the softening
of my face. I wanted to graze my nose
across the tip of your nose, play at
being Eskimos like we did when
you were little. I resisted the impulse
to run my fingers through the gelled
blackthorns of your hair. All my words
flattened, rolled, turned into felt,

slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked
with you, to the front door, threw
it open, the world overflowing
like a treasure chest. A split second
and you were away, intoxicated.
After you’d gone I went into your bedroom,
released a song bird from its cage.
Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,
and this is where it has led me,
skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy
making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without
a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.

On reaching the top of the hill I traced
the inscriptions on the war memorial,
leaned against it like a wishbone.
The dove pulled freely against the sky,
an ornamental stitch. I listened, hoping to hear
your playground voice catching on the wind.

A&P

America’s Political Legacy

In thinking about the recent coup d’etat in Honduras, I’ve pasted below an article which appears in Facing South: A New Voice for a Changing South. The article is followed by a poem I’ve written. It seems that indeed President Obama has inherited more than a financial crisis.

‘Key leaders of Honduras military coup trained in U.S.’

By Chris Kromm on June 28, 2009 2:57 PM

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-military-coup-trained-in-us.html

‘Leftist President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped and transported to Costa Rica on Sunday morning after a growing controversy over a vote concerning term limits. Over the last week, Zelaya clashed with and eventually dismissed General Romeo Vasquez — who is now reportedly in charge of the armed forces that abducted the Honduran president.

According to the watchdog group School of Americas Watch, Gen. Vasquez trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at least twice — in 1976 and 1984 — when it was still called School of Americas.

The Georgia-based U.S. military school is infamous for training over 60,000 Latin American soldiers, including infamous dictators, “death squad” leaders and others charged with torture and other human rights abuses. SOA Watch’s annual protest to shut down the Fort Benning training site draws thousands.

According to SOA Watch, the U.S. Army school has a particularly checkered record in Honduras, with over 50 graduates who have been intimately involved in human rights abuses. In 1975, SOA Graduate General Juan Melgar Castro became the military dictator of Honduras. From 1980-1982 the dictatorial Honduran regime was headed by yet another SOA graduate, Policarpo Paz Garcia, who intensified repression and murder by Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in all of Latin America (founded by Honduran SOA graduates with the help of Argentine SOA graduates).

General Vasquez isn’t the only leader in the Honduras coup linked to the U.S. training facility. As Kristin Bricker points out:

The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, studied in the School of the Americas in 1996.  The Air Force has been a central protagonist in the Honduran crisis.  When the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes for the opinion poll, the ballot boxes were stored on an Air Force base until citizens accompanied by Zelaya rescued them.  Zelaya reports that after soldiers kidnapped him, they took him to an Air Force base, where he was put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica.’

By Chris Kromm on June 28, 2009 2:57 PM

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/06/key-leaders-of-honduras-military-coup-trained-in-us.html

***

‘I See Honduras Stumble’

You, military man, perform a coup d’état,

When you don’t even speak French.

You’d persuade us all the more though if you did,

Above your guns, that is, your tanks, and your stripes.

No matter; there’s always still a language to bestow:

The sort that calls a thing white—when it’s clearly black.

So like a cur, you salivate on the people, on the world,

Barking of fair play, and of truth, and of justice, as it were.

It is true, we need no longer like Juliet ask:

‘Where art though?’

(July 2009)

A&P

Art’s Social Importance

The following is an article I read on trughout.org, after which I’ve written a few thoughts:
Studies Show Art Audience Decline
Tuesday 16 June 2009
by: Jacqueline Trescott | Visit article original @ The Washington Post
http://www.truthout.org/061609EDA#comment-61127

Two separate national surveys gauging youth and adult participation in the arts reported yesterday that visits to art museums are declining.

A study of nearly 4,000 eighth-grade students, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, found dwindling field trips over the past decade. “The percentage of eighth-graders who reported that they visited an art museum or gallery with their classes dropped from 22 percent in 1997 to 16 percent in 2008,” said Stuart Kerachsky, the acting commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the assessment.

The National Endowment for the Arts also released new data yesterday showing that fewer adults were choosing an art museum or a visual arts festival as a leisure-time destination. From 1992 to 2001, 26 percent of adults reported that they visited such attractions, but the number for 2008 dropped to 23 percent. The decrease is small, but it may portend coming declines as the most loyal part of the museum audience ages. The exception, the NEA said, was in the D.C. metropolitan area, where 40 percent of adults said they had visited a museum in 2008 – reflecting tourism and free admission at most major museums.

In addition, the agency noted sizable declines between 1982 (when it first started documenting arts participation) and 2008 in almost every performing arts field. It reported double-digit rates of decline for classical music, jazz, opera, musical theater, ballet and dramatic plays.

The NEA survey “shows that audiences for the arts are changing,” said Patrice Walker Powell, the acting NEA chairman. “While many now participate in arts activities available through electronic media, the number of American adults who are participating in live performing and visual arts events is declining. The findings underscore the need for more arts education to foster the next generation of both artists and arts enthusiasts.”

The National Assessment of Educational Progress report is part of a periodic federal look at how America’s students fare in various subjects. Arts education was last measured in 1997, but because of budget constraints, the survey was limited this time to music and visual arts. The schools and students were selected at random, said a spokeswoman, and the questions took various forms.

Some results were promising. Students were asked to identify the instrument in the opening solo of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Fifty percent correctly identified the clarinet.
Other results indicated that students need improvement in basic skills. In NAEP’s visual arts component, students were asked to do a self-portrait. Only 4 percent received the highest mark of “sufficient,” while 57 percent received a “minimal” rating, the third-best ranking.

General accessibility to arts instruction remained constant, the NAEP report said. Music instruction was offered at least three or four times a week in 57 percent of the schools and visual arts instruction in 47 percent.

Yet there were several gaps in student scores. Whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders scored 22 to 32 points higher than black or Hispanic students. On music questions, public school eighth-graders scored 14 points lower than private school students and nine points lower than their private school counterparts in the visual arts sections.

The recession’s impact on school arts programs has not been statistically evaluated, but anecdotal indicators are not encouraging.

“School budget cuts are underway, with more projected next year,” said Eileen Weiser, a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, speaking of the economic climate in Michigan. David W. Gordon, the superintendent of the Sacramento County Office of Education, said California is cutting back on school buses, which would further jeopardize school trips.

~And here’s the sole comment in response to it:

”and we wonder why our’
Tue, 06/16/2009 – 23:48 — meanolemom (not verified)
and we wonder why our children isn’t learnin’…Charlotte Iserbyt was right, the deliberate dumbing down of our children is working out nicely…so very sad

~Art and Power says:

If not a ‘deliberate’ dumbing down, then one that is convenient for those interested in persuasion and social organization. While acknowledging the likelihood that studies/surveys such as this are infrequent due to lack of funding, it bears thinking about the fact that the last survey of this sort took place in 1997. Is this an indication of how art ranks within the US government’s agenda and its general vision of American society?

In thinking about the seeming decline in public engagement with art I can’t get the following out of my mind, however related or unrelated it may be: On the road to WW II the Nazi party effectively undermined the arts by investing all government funding and energy in science, technology, and warfare. Is this not familiar given the recent figures indicating that 3 billion USD has gone to financing the ‘war’ in the Middle East?

Is the decline of art as an everyday experience only facilitating the widespread acceptance that capital rules and that consuming goods is time well spent… and that war is the best place to focus an astronomical portion of our budget and debt?

Against this, how about art’s humanizing function? In letting lapse our exposure to a phenomena that is well able and known to inspire feeling, thought, and all manner of growth in humans are we not undermining one of the most potent social correctives?–especially in times where fraud and financial corruption have become institutionalised and where the rich-poor gap is arguably at its widest.

To my mind, no matter what its genre art fosters empathy, the capacity and courage to ask relevant questions of ourselves and our world, and prompts us to feel and think outside of the clichés and habits that come at us from all directions daily. Inspiring us to think and to feel without limits, art functions well enough as a roadblock to agents who seek to mobilize the populace to war, which, as we know, has increasingly become a necessary component of the economic market.

Let’s get US citizens into those galleries and to those performances, and get art into their classrooms. Making art a part of our lives is by no means an innocent or benign activity, something you can take or leave in matters of social organization and, most importantly, education. Beneath the statistics in this article I see problems of both the real and potential variety pertaining to social organization and where political agents think they are taking their nations. A wanning of our exposure to and, it likely follows, our interest in art will surely entail a blowback of violence in a number of forms.

Zaidi vs. Bush

In the news today:

‘An Iraqi journalist hailed as a hero in the Arab world for throwing his shoes at former US President George W Bush has been jailed for three years. [...] Lawyers had unsuccessfully argued that [Muntadar al-]Zaidi should be tried under article 227 of the penal code, covering public humiliation of a representative of a foreign country, which carries a two-year jail term.

At the earlier court hearing, Zaidi said he had been unable to control his emotions when Mr Bush had said in Arabic “thank you very much” to the assembled journalists.

“I had the feeling that the blood of innocent people was dropping on my feet during the time that he was smiling and coming to say bye-bye to Iraq with a dinner,” he said.

In an interview afterwards, Mr Bush described the incident as “interesting”, “weird” and “unusual”, but he insisted he didn’t harbour any ill feeling about it.

“It was amusing – I’ve seen a lot of weird things during my presidency, and this may rank up there as one of the weirdest,” Mr Bush said.’

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7938947.stm)

*

Zaidi’s remarks, as thrown into relief by Bush’s language, produce a vivid and striking image. As found poetry I’m adding them to this site’s tiny collection of poems against war.

Let’s hope for a wave of protest as this brave and honest Iraqi dissident serves three years in prison for, among other things, confounding Bush and the media in their joint mandate to write a certain version of history.

*

I had the feeling that the blood of innocent people was dropping on my feet during the time that he was smiling and coming to say bye-bye to Iraq with a dinner–Muntadar al-Zaidi

… ‘After Lunch’

And after noon the well-dressed creatures come

To sniff among the dead

And have their lunch

And all the many well-dressed creatures pluck
The swollen avocados from the dust
And stir the minestrone with stray bones

And after lunch
They loll and lounge about
Decanting claret in convenient skulls

Harold Pinter
(September 2002)

from “War” (Faber & Faber, June 2003)

The Ever-Contested War Poem

Did you ever notice how war poetry is quite often understood to be ‘inferior’ poetry? I’m thinking about this phenomenon as I read 101 Poems Against War. I’m also thinking about how war poems written in days gone by may or may not relate to war in contemporary societies. Following from the Pinter poem ‘Democracy’ I posted some time ago, I thought I’d publish a few more below:

*

Dorothy Parker

‘Penelope’

In the pathway of the sun,

In the footsteps of the breeze,

Where the world and sky are one,

He shall ride the silver seas,

He shall cut the glittering wave.

I shall sit at home, and rock;

Rise, to heed a neighbour’s knock;

Brew my tea and snip my thread;

Bleach the linen for my bed.

They will call him brave.

*

Randall Jarrell

‘The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner’

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly til my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I awoke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

*

W. B. Yeats

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’

I think it better that in times like these

A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth

We have no gift to set a statesman right;

He has had enough of meddling who can please

A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

*

e.e. cummings

‘my sweet old etcetera’

my sweet old etcetera

aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what

is more did tell you just

what everybody was fighting

for,

my sister

isabel created hundreds

(and

hundreds)of socks not to

mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my

mother hoped that

i would die etcetera

bravely of course my father used

to become hoarse talking about how it was

a privilege and if only he

could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly

in the deep mud et

etera

(dreaming,

et

cetera, of

Your smile

eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

Art and Power 2009: blogging art, power, and politics

Once a website for the 2008 University of Leeds Art and Power conference,  this is now a blog for contributions and discussions about art and power in whatever shape or form. Postings will appear now and again, the logic and form  of which yet to be determined. For now, visit the ‘Artist’ page of this site, on which there are some questions posed by the conference’s guest artist and a debate about art that may or may not still be running.

Also for the time being, here’s a poem by the recently passed Harold Pinter that’s been on my mind lately as I contemplate American president Bush’s last days in office, read David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberlism, and watch Israel use American and British weapons to turn Gaza into a parking lot:

Democracy
There’s no escape.
The big pricks are out.
They’ll fuck everything in sight.
Watch your back.

Februrary 2003

I dedicate this poem to the Palestinians in Gaza, and of course to HP.

A&P