Brownian Commotion

What a splendid fellow former Stone Roses front-man Ian Brown turns out to be.

Interviewed about his new solo album, The World Is Yours, the charismatic Mancunian has this to say about world poverty: “I get angry about how African kids have to live. I thought the G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005 was a real missed opportunity... I didn’t like the way Bono and Geldof hijacked the summit demo with their pop party. The only result was that Pink Floyd sold a few million more albums.”
He continued: “People have to realise you don’t help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago. It was like 1750 all over again: we are the great white do-gooders. If there is another G8 meeting, there should be a court order banning Pink Floyd or Geldof or Bono from leaving their houses until it’s over.”
I don’t see how any sentient being could disagree with that. The World Is Yours is on release right now. Form a queue.
Barbara Ehrenreich (everybody must read her Nickel and Dimed, the best book about America published in the past decade) says she feels uneasy at airports now that she looks like a lesbian.
She took a ride on this train of thought after pondering the case of Senator Larry Craig, who, as noted in the last issue, was caught short of a convincing explanation when apprehended by a cop for making foot and hand movements of an ambiguous nature in the rest-room of Minneapolis airport.
Says Barbara: “For the last six years, between September ‘01 and today, my main airport worry was that I might look or act like a terrorist. No dangling earrings or dark lipstick, was my rule, though I had no hard evidence that female terrorists prefer them. No anxious glances at the uniformed personnel.
No tantrums when security confiscated my eyeliner. But now I see that my efforts to look less like a terrorist might have made me look more like a, heaven forfend, lesbian.”
Now she wonders whether, if she waggled her hands to make the rest-room blow-drier work, a female fuzz-person might leap from a stall and cuff her.
“I’d feel safer and a whole lot freer if I didn’t have to worry about accidentally impersonating a gay person. I’d feel freer still if I knew it didn’t matter, travel-wise, whether I was gay or straight.”
As wise a woman as there is in the west.
I wasn’t going to say a word. But then the pope piped up.
The Iraq talks in Hensinki, reckoned Benedict XVI a fortnight ago, had shown that Northern Ireland could be “an inspiration to those around the world seeking peace.”
He wasn’t the only one bowled over by the discussions involving a Northern Ireland contingent, a South African delegation and representatives of the Sunni and Shia communities in Iraq.
The Irish Times’ take was: “NI politicians coach Iraqis on building peace process” – our lads cast as wise mentors, the Iraqis, five thousand years of civilisation notwithstanding, as ignorant ingénues.
Both the Guardian and the Independent reported the talks in strikingly positive tones. The BBC, CNN, Associated Press and The Economist carried serious, lengthy pieces. The underlying assumption was that the Northern peace process has provided a model for “conflict resolution” which can usefully be exported to troubled areas around the world.
Well, it’s nice to be hailed as a harbinger of hope. But, truth to tell, Northern Ireland provides no model for the resolution of other conflicts. Neither did peace come about – insofar as it has – through political leaderships coaxing their communities away from war. Nor did Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern play any significant role.
Two facts explain the progress towards peace. One, the Catholics weren’t up for a war for a united Ireland. What they’d wanted was equality. If that could be provided within the Six Counties, there’d be no support for violence to get rid of partition. Gerry Adams and close associates realised this in the ‘80s and began shifting their movement into alignment with popular opinion. They weren’t leading, but playing catch-up.
Two, the Protestants were against a united Ireland but not against Catholics in government. Paisley and Robinson brought the DUP into conformity with this view when they abandoned opposition to power-sharing and argued instead for a settlement acceptable not just to Nationalists but to both communities.
This is the basis of the Sinn Fein-DUP coalition.
No model for conflict-resolution arises. Visionary leaders did not confront the prejudices of the people. The people were always ahead of the politicians. The process was bottom up, not top down.
There is only the vaguest of parallels with South Africa. There is none whatever with Iraq. Helsinki was a jaunt and a junket, signifying little. The pope doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Again.
Jonathan Edwards’ leap from faith was little short of miraculous.
Triple-jumper Edwards won Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000 and the world championship the following year. At one point in 2002, he uniquely simultaneously held the four major titles he was qualified for – Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth. He was BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2000, retired in 2003 as Britain’s most successful medal-winning athlete ever.
But what Edwards is best-remembered for is Christianity. He was an evangelical, had withdrawn from the Worlds in Tokyo in 1991 upon discovering that his event had been scheduled for a Sunday. He was wont to attribute all his achievements to God, and declared that when his career was over, he’d use his fame “to evangelise in an unbelieving world.”
Now he’s an atheist.
“When I retired, something happened that took me by surprise. I had been the best in the world at what I did and, suddenly, that was not true any more. With one facet of my identity stripped away, I began to question the others and, from there, there was no stopping... It was as if, during my 20-year-plus career in athletics, I had been suspended in time.
“Once you start asking yourself questions like, ‘How do I really know there’s a God,’ you are already on the path to unbelief... When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God…”
Doesn’t he miss the comfort of the certainty of religion?
“It is a completely different world to the one I inhabited for 37 years, so there are feelings of unfamiliarity. There have also been issues to address in terms of my relations with family and friends. But I feel internally happier than at any time of my life, more content within my own skin.”
Jonathan was once described by the Archbishop of Canterbury as “the most excellent role model for our children.”
Right on, Bish, right on.