We left the theatre on Palace Street and walked round onto Birdcage Walk; without needing to voice it, we were avoiding the tourist throng that hovered around the Buckingham Palace compound. An afternoon out, away from the constant mental health torment of news from the Gaza Strip and the Zionist atrocities. This was just before Israel invaded Lebanon and three months before the Syrian state was usurped.

We went into St James’s Park, where my companion stopped to take photos of some beautiful plants that gave her ideas for her garden. I was glad to rest my mind in this scene, as we walked north-east alongside the lake. But beyond St James’s the tall buildings to the east – Downing Street, the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence – disturbed my peace. At the highest point of each of these powerhouses was the flag of a faraway country, Ukraine. I thought, “They do that because they want a war, thousands of miles away. They want to keep it going. They don’t care about Ukraine, or Ukrainians, or Russians, or us. They send money and arms to Zelenskyy to keep it going because they serve the real power.”

But I suppressed my thoughts, and we strolled on, talking easily and romantically until we reached the big café which the tourist hordes were swarming over and we took that as our cue to leave the park, past the Mandela tree (planted in honour of the long-time “terrorist” Nelson) and up to The Mall, lined with huge Union Jacks. I numbed my brain to this spectacle, enjoying the day…

Complicit

I needed contrast, and found it when we stepped into the Institute of Contemporary Art, where an exhibition titled Transynchronic Rebel Portraits included this quote from the artist Rheim Alkadhi:

“Time is on fire – there is no time left to lose. Nothing could convince us to look away: the genocide in Gaza must be stopped. Repression of Palestinians and their allies everywhere amounts to complicity in genocide – this is not a smug declaration; it is plain logic. The States’ crimes are out in the open…Neither culture nor ethics have evolved far enough to keep us from arriving at this vile moment; resistance is imperative…”

In the back room, Jon Hopkins’ listening party and Q & A for his album Ritual was underway and we talked with his team. I thought, I’d like to ask Jon what influences his music, aside from other music.

Back out onto The Mall, under Admiralty Arch and up the slope to Trafalgar Square where we found a protest against the Chinese government. It could also have been labelled a ‘pro-Hong Kong rally’ but I thought “It’s not really pro-Hong Kong, it’s probably about using Hong Kong to have a war with China.”

A young woman in a Covid mask handed me a flyer. With maximum politeness I asked her what she thought of China’s wider role in the world, leaving aside Hong Kong and Taiwan for a minute. I asked if she recognised that its investments and its brokering of the Saudi-Iran peace deal were positives, but my companion interrupted, pre-emptively supporting the protestor, insisting that China does “terrible things” and commits human rights violations.

I persisted but the young woman said she didn’t know much about China’s role in the wider world, she just wanted Hong Kong to be independent. My companion talked about Britain “handing Hong Kong back to China” as if it was a benevolent act.

I thought, ‘This rally-protest is probably funded by our government or NATO.’ The flyer the woman had given me supposedly exposed Chinese state police repression, with an image of police with their batons clenched and poised to strike commuters on the Hong Kong underground. I thought ‘I bet these photos are staged.’ I don’t know if that thought contained the right instinct or if it was misleading me, but it was my thought.

Looking at the flyer now, the photos look strange. One of the police is wearing beige combat trousers and white trainers – is that standard police issue in China? In the most unsettling photo, a young man in a Covid mask is raising his hands in surrender but the policeman is poised to assault him anyway. Why is the man holding an opened umbrella on an underground train? To protect himself, or to make him look even more vulnerable?

These are just thoughts.

The flyer’s QR opens a drive of videos of the violence, credited to Hong Kong Free Press, an outlet founded and edited by British journalist Tom Grundy. A cursory search finds troubling details about that publication and its standards.

In Trafalgar Square, a man representing a supposedly hard left British Communist-Socialist-Workers-Peoples-United Front Against Fascism type group that I’d never heard of was doing the rounds, petitioning, selling newspapers. I thought, ‘He’s a plant from the state and his organisation is 100% astroturfed; propaganda for the military-industrial complex relentlessly assaulting my equanimity.’

Doc

We walked on up to Covent Garden then Soho and stopped for dinner. At a Malaysian restaurant we asked a man at the next table, “How’s the food?” and we ordered the same as him. He told us he’s a German doctor, both his parents are Lebanese, and he was in London for a conference of 40,000 medical professionals.

The doctor told us about the economic crisis for ordinary Germans, with the spending power of the middle class being reduced markedly since 2022. He said that in some cases it might be better to be on benefits now, with your income guaranteed at a certain level, than to be working. He said that it was obvious that the United States had blown up the Nord Stream Pipeline and that war with Russia could only be bad news for Germans.

Our doctor friend told us that he really likes English people because they’re so positive. Just before he left, he added the caveat that I was the first English person he’d ever met who didn’t love and immediately defend the US when he criticised that country. I thought, ‘that’s a sad commentary on a society losing its balls and its democracy.’

I thought that after we were lied into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Libya war and the Syria dirty war, that by the time of the Gaza genocide, people would be cynical about what they’re told by government and the mass media. I thought wrong. But when it comes to these psyops, I ain’t no cyclops.

by Tom Charles

@tomhcharles @urbandandyldn