[ 17:34 sunday 14 october – piscita, isola di stromboli ]

a lot of people have written to me in response to what i wrote about september 11. i shall return to some of these responses in future despatches.
>> allegation 1 – financial links between bush and bin laden families >>
this appears to be true. james bath, a friend of gwb, disclosed under oath that he represented four saudi businessmen, one of whom was salem bin laden (father of osama) and invested money on their behalf under his own name. bath is listed as in investor in two of george w bush’s businesses from the late 70s and early 80s. the us treasury department was called on to investigate claims that saudi interests were thus illegally seeking to influence us policy during the reagan and papa bush administrations. i am not aware of the verdict of these investigations. thanks to stef in melbourne and alex in new york for pointing me to the relevant documents.

however it has been pointed out that the bin laden family is one of the most prominent and highly respected in saudi arabia and that it is not surprising that they should seek influence with a leading political dynasty in the us. it is further observed that the bin laden family severed all links with osama some years ago and that he is officially exiled from saudi arabia. therefore this allegation, though seemingly true, is perhaps not so very startling. dodgy financial-political bonds like this are commonplace, though they mostly remain invisible. thanks to olivia and ian in london for their comments.

>> allegation 2 – fore-knowledge of the attack in the us stock market >>
again this seems to be true. morgan stanley in new york reported a 30% pick-up in trading of stock-put options on airline and insurance firms prior to 11 september. the us treasury department has launched an investigation. its conclusions would make interesting reading but they’re unlikely to be made public. thanks to christian and roberto in london for the inside info.

>> allegation 3 – global media fabrication of islamic jubilation >>
this allegation is entirely false. several documents promoting it are in circulation, purporting to emanate from individuals in reputable broadcasting organisations, but it seems they are phoney. thanks to my namesake charles armstrong in london who established that the cnn footage came from associated press and is kosher. yuval in israel also reports that friends of his in the israeli army confirm that such celebrations did indeed occur (though these might not be the most objective sources). a nice comment too from olivia, who points out that anyone wanting to dupe public opinion would probably concoct something more impressive.

i don’t believe the events of september 11 were orchestrated by some kind of cabal of security forces and big business. but neither will i accept the official narratives without question. strange things are afoot in the world, things which may affect us all. in such a situation it is appropriate to take nothing for granted, to question all information and consider all possible interpretations, however distasteful. i notice already a subtle pressure against certain kinds of speculation, an implication that to voice “unpatriotic” thoughts is to support terrorists. this sets alarm bells ringing in my head. historically it is not a good sign.

mainly i am concerned about the way this event has changed the status quo. in retrospect it is possible this will be identifiable as the moment when an era of financial paramountcy gave way to an era of military paramountcy. the two sets of interests are very much interwoven but i do sense a distinct shift. and i think i prefered things with the financiers on top.

suddenly the initiative is with those who promote authoritarian solutions. as someone whose convictions are solidly liberal this bothers me a whole lot. what’s more i believe a shift towards greater authoritarianism is directly contrary to the economic interests of our societies. we don’t know much about the century ahead but it seems certain that imagination, adaptability and diversity will be crucial to continuing prosperity. these qualities are not exactly the strong suits of authoritarian societies.

for me there’s also a more personal concern. my efforts are largely devoted to the cause of social change. i am committed to working for a world where opportunity, well-being and liberty are more evenly distributed. the more authoritarian our societies become, the more my efforts (and those of others working for change) are likely to meet with resistance. this is not a prospect to be relished.

: cH

[ 23:20 saturday 13 october – piscita, isola di stromboli ]

one year ago i was catching my first glimpses of the dust and commotion of tamale, northern ghana. two years ago i was living in a tent amongst the elm trees in gaz and button’s garden on st marys, isles of scilly, forming the scillonia digital workshop in a derelict stable. three years ago i was completing my online consultancy work for the decca record company (circus foundation’s first commercial-sector job) and starting work with mark perrett on an identity for the school for social entrepreneurs (circus’ first social-sector job). four years ago i’d completed my first few days of employment at online magic, still uplifted from trekking with kirmo kivela in the expanse and the perpetual light of finnish lapland. five years ago craig, alex and i were collaborating within the electric company, nearing the end of that adventure.

ten years ago i was beginning my second year at st john’s college, returning to the misty ochre of a cambridge autumn already disillusioned by my studies. twenty years ago i was restless and slightly bored at primary school in the mid-west of cornwall, ever more absorbed in my music. thirty years ago i completed my first month of life in an old house surrounded by trees at curdridge, hampshire.

the present. two days ago i reached agreement with paolo russo, stromboli’s windsurfing supremo, to rent one of his houses for the next six months. it’s a traditional eolian structure, three interconnecting white cubes clustered around a courtyard. the house is here in piscita, northernmost part of the settlement, sitting on a black lava promontary with the sea breaking all around. landon and i chose it in preference to several larger and more luxurious dwellings elsewhere on the island.

it won’t be ready for a week. until then we have the run of another house which belongs to paolo’s aunt. it is from here that i write now, surrounded by the mismatched jetsom which gathers in occasionally-habited spaces.

i sense these months will be decisive for me in many ways, not all of which are yet apparent. sometimes i look at my past and it seems disjointed and haphazard. at other times it seems to be a steady elaboration of the same few themes. i have no reason to believe my future will be any different.

landon arrives on tuesday. the next episode begins.

: cH

[ 00:53 wednesday 10 october – casa melograno, piscita, isola di stromboli ]

for the last few hours i’ve been sitting on the northern side of the volcano above punta labronzo. up there it is possible to escape altogether from civilisation to watch the earth spit fire into the starry night with only the chattering insects and the rustling bamboo for company.

: cH

[ 21:51 thursday 4 october – piscita, isola di stromboli ]

i begin to smell a big huge rat…

allegation 1 – financial links between bush and bin laden families i’m told that the uk daily mail ran a story last week along similar lines to the il manifesto article relayed in my despatch of 28 september. the daily mail is about as mainstream as the british press gets, so why is this incredible story not causing a humungous outrage? caroline : does the financial times have anything on it?

allegation 2 – fore-knowledge of the attack in the us stock market a financial-sector source has claimed there was an unusual level of trading in options relating to airlines and insurance firms in the period immediately prior to the attack, taking the position that these stocks were about to nose-dive. several interpretations are possible of such fore-knowledge, most of them rather chilling. christian, roberto, leon, donald : are you able to confirm that such trading did indeed take place?

allegation 3 – global media fabrication of islamic jubilation a bbc source claims that the footage of jubilant palistinians broadcast by cnn and others in the aftermath of the attack (referred to in my despatch of 11 september) was in fact shot in 1991, during iraq’s invasion of kuwait, and that no such celebrations occurred in the hours following the attack. if this is true it suggests that a massive and deliberate manipulation of public sentiment has been carried out.

some headlines from the bbc news website this evening: “blair in terror talks with putin… to build a global coalition against terrorism”, “rowdy anti-war protests torment greece”, “the coalition: will it stick together once military action starts?”, “adopted son: how new york came to love george bush”, “mental illness: one in four world-wide will suffer”, “eu to freeze terror assets”, “doctors call for bio-terror action”, “soldier’s song: geri halliwell to perform for troops in oman”, “man arrested in london on two charges under terrorism act”, “us u-turn: official consumer group drops plans for online privacy laws”.

are we perhaps witnessing the end-game in a long-developed strategy to consolidate a global oligarchy? will this “war against terrorism” turn out, in fact, to be a war against freedom and democracy? when i see those planes flying into those towers i cannot help thinking of the blazing reichstag in 1933. we would do well to ponder the historical resonances.

orwell recognised in the 1940s that repressive states function best in a condition of war, and speculated that the governments of such societies would in future find ways to maintain such a condition on a permanent basis. but even he did not have the genius to see that this could best be effected by waging war not on a tangible enemy but on an abstract concept. a concept like “terrorism”.

you might as well declare war on “ugliness” or “stupidity”.

you know, i sit here in this idyllic place, typing by the light of a candle with the star-strewn sky above, and i wonder for how much longer i will be at liberty to express such dissenting thoughts. the important thing with repression is not to bend to it at the beginning. as soon as you permit fear to halt your tongue, as soon as you begin to exercise self-censorship, you forge the first link of your own shackles. as link follows link it becomes ever harder to throw them off, until eventually you can scarcely recognise your own slavery.

so, my friends, let us voice our thoughts without hindrance. and when fear bids us be silent, let us shout all the louder.

: cH

[ 22:20 monday 1 october – casa melo grano, piscita, isola di stromboli ]

well here i am, back on stromboli. i sit cross-legged on the roof of my current home with the powerbook on my lap and a caving torch strapped to my head illuminating the keyboard. to my left the full moon looks down from a perfectly clear sky. in front of me the volcano rises black against the stars. behind me the sea rushes and sucks at the pebbles. a warm breeze, heavy with jasmine blossom, blows across me as i write.

the last two weeks on pantelleria with seb and karen were as close as i come to a holiday. i did write and submit one funding proposal for circus foundation’s bushlink project, aiming to develop basic digital telecommunication networks for remote villages in africa, but that was about it. i continued to check my mail every few days, connecting in the back room of a local shop thanks to an arrangement negotiated by seb with the lady who runs it.

we were living in a wing of an old farmhouse surrounded by vineyards. our landlord, batiste (whose wife’s family formerly inhabited the place), was a splendid character. scrumpled face, shock of white hair, gruff basso-profondo. seb, a connoiseur of italian dialects, wept whenever he heard him speak. by the time one gets that far south people are more or less speaking arabic. batiste was magnificently kind, dropping off bucketfuls of grapes every few days and towards the end of our stay inviting us to a feast with what seemed to be his entire family. afterwards i could scarcely move. at seb’s suggestion i showed batiste a convincing photo-montage, manufactured by bobo, depicting osama bin laden doing something unspeakable to the younger bush. this provoked great delight, together with a request to see them the other way round. i was able to oblige after a few minutes cutting and pasting in photoshop.

pantelleria was the first bit of italian territory to be “liberated” by the allies during the second war, a sort of appetiser before the invasion of sicily. mussolini, lacking any aircraft carriers, had turned the island into a static equivalent (though this turned out to have a few strategic shortcomings). the official history describes a prolonged aerial bombardment of the island by the americans, reducing its mediaeval port to rubble. however we met a fascinating old photographer, resident on the island since the thirties, who explained that the whole thing was a complete fabrication. the americans landed without meeting the slightest resistance, invited the population to leave their homes and dynamited everything in sight so they could get the propoganda footage they wanted. all the photographs showing bombers flying over the island are fakes.

the result of this terrorism is that the port area is now 100% concrete and entirely unattractive, which is a tragedy. the rest of the island is dotted with the traditional dwellings, which have dry-stone walls of the local volcanic tufa up to a metre thick with lime-sealed roofs designed to capture rainfall in the winter and channel it to a subterranean chamber. it’s a strong and beautiful indiginous architecture. in the last decade the island has become a voguish retreat for wealthy north-italians. these folk generally inhabit huge modern parodies of the traditional dwellings, sporting jauntily domed roofs and with a tufa facing glued to the walls to hide the concrete beneath. the most obscene of them come with swimming pools and rows of giant palm trees imported at several million lira each.

at noon on saturday i left pantelleria on the ship for trapani. since there was no possibility of travelling to stromboli the same day i decided to spend the night there and continue on sunday. after hunting for an hour for a pensione (the youth hostel helpfully signposted from the station turned out to be in erice, several miles away and on top of a mountain) i resorted to the advice of a taxi driver. in sicily this is generally not an intelligent tactic, or at least it tends to be an expensive one. but in this instance the result was that i spent the night in a baroque palazzo bang in the centre of the old town for ten quid. pretty good! trapani is a lovely little city, much under-rated. i was woken in the early hours of the morning by a huge thunderstorm.

yesterday i aimed to reach stromboli. but all the connections took an age and by the time i reached palermo it was clear i was not going to make the last hydrofoil. so i resigned myself to spending the night in milazzo. but i got talking to a swiss lady on the quay when i arrived there and after a couple of phone calls had organised a bed in malfa on the north coast of isola di salina, another of the six eolian islands.

i’d never visited any of the islands in the archipelago except stromboli. the others are lipari (the capital), vulcano, alicudi, filicui, panarea and salina. they form a curving three-pointed star each of whose limbs stretch about fifteen miles.

it was magical to be standing on the open deck at the stern of the hydrofoil, skimming across the smooth water in the violet-hued twilight with the mountainous coast of sicily receding aft, and later skirting the dark masses of the islands.

the “bed” i had organised on salina turned out to be a whole house, ancient and rambling. its owner, to whom i had spoken, was a lovely fellow called renato who runs a restaurant in malfa. i think he liked my impulsiveness. after pantelleria the island seemed overwhelmingly verdent, with trees and flowering plants bursting up on every side. i now learn that it, alone of the eolian islands, is blessed with a dependable natural water supply.

an extremely efficient service of little blue buses connects the disparate settlements dotted around the island’s two peaks. i was interested to discover that the company operating them was formed through a collaboration between the island’s three “comuni”, a fine example of local entrepreneurship.

with a slightly heavy heart i left salina this afternoon and travelled first to lipari, then to stromboli, exactly a month since i departed. from the port my bags and i were conveyed in an electric golf cart (just like st agnes!) to this house at the opposite end of the settlement. midway i bumbed into alice and nancy, with whom i stayed in ginostra, who also arrived back today. alice, a sculptor, has decided to buy a house here (they’re shockingly expensive).

over the coming week i shall finalise negotiations over the house in which landon and i shall live through the winter. the place in question is a stone’s throw from where i sit now. landon leaves his job in seattle on the fifth and makes his way here. then our work begins.

: cH