John Lennon: its Christmas, and what have you done?

For nearly 40 years  a very long time John Lennon has meant something really important to me.  First as a teenage rebel, and then as a pretty serious social and political critic.   Nowhere Boy is my one essential Christmas season film-going this year.

His main message - speak your own truth and hold them accountable - is still right bang on the nail.

And here we are at end of the noughties:  Christmas 2009.  Lennon would have had a LOT to say about everything that has been going down.  One of his catchy lyrics comes to mind:

"And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?"

Indeed Ms. Sarah Louise, what have you done, in 2009, to make a difference?

Including, given the sub-text of Lennon's Christmas Song, what have you done about the knotty problem of war?

With failing heart I set to work to list what I have done, and I find I've done better than I thought.  I set the list out below for those who care to read further.

Meanwhile, let's just say that its all messy, and we all have to do our bit.  The main thing is to stay clear, pay close attention, and hold our so-called leaders accountable.  And I still love John Lennon. to say the least.  Here's how he put it:

Still true, still fabulous and still important!

And from the genuinely influential to my little part - 

First of all, what's still to do, for next year.

1. Join an organisation that is working actively to charge Tony Blair as a war criminal.
2. Join some effective mechanism on energy reduction, or a composite of organisations.  This is such an important issue, and we are being held hostage mainly by the US congress of capitalists and their chinese equivalent.  Some very drastic kind of Greenpeace-type action is needed.  Copenhagen was such a farce:  how can we get these wankers to take it seriously?.
3. Grow my own veggies
4. Cut down on my airmiles
5. Get my finances sorted, by which I mean properly planned, organised and recorded (this is the main one.  If I get this done I'll be way pleased.  Why am I so finance phobic? see I'm Looking for a Financial Adviser).
6. Keep learning more on web 2.0, and come to grips with html
7. Keep working on my fitness.

Here is my list of eight good things in 2009.

1. Family:  I provided part of a framework for my daughter to climb out of the mapless pit of trauma, depression and chaos into which she had fallen.  Using this framework, a huge amount of effort and a strong network of friends that she has built up, she has turned her life around.  I am very proud of her and all she has done, and the threshold of a new life that she has carved out for herself, and I am proud of myself for my small part in this.  For me, this is the single most important thing that I have done this year
2. Family:  I was able to spend several weeks with my father while he was dying over the summer, an incredible privilege which we both loved, and also to share information and pictures with our somewhat fractured family, which helped us all get through this difficult time together. 
3. Work:  I have participated in facilitating a really innovative and effective leadership training programme for United Nations senior staff, which will continue next year.
4. Work: I have been able to help the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) clarify their strategic priorities on women's and girls' rights, and in the case of UNDP work quite a lot on ways to prevent and provide recourse for violence against women.  
5. War: As a great deal of UNDP's work on violence against women takes place in war-torn and post-conflict situations, in a sense I have made a small contribution to mitigating the effects of war. This also will continue next year.
6. War: I participated in several demonstrations against the Israeli invasion of Gaza earlier in the year, and threw a shoe at the Embassy here in London, specially carried thence for the purpose.  I tweeted madly about the war criminal status of Tzipi Livni, and the distinction of Palestinian and Israeli origin for consumer items.  A very important step in my view, and I will certainly be boycotting Israeli goods.
7. Carbon Footprint:  I have worked quite hard on my carbon footprint this year.  First off I have become a vegetarian, pretty much.  I never buy meat for myself now.  This is because of the extreme carbon costs of producing meat relative to veggies, and also, for me,  the difficulty of knowing whether it has been reared and killed humanely.   That's about 25% off by carbon footprint right there.  Secondly I have stopped using my dryer and hair dryer, and have changed all my light-bulbs and turn them off more diligently.  Small beer, but still, that's what I have done.  I have joined the 10/10 campaign (10 % reduction in energy use by 2010).  Third, I have cut back on my car use considerably.  I did an audit on my average mileage for the autumn.  It was 68 miles a week!  Don't laugh, I travel a lot (air miles, oh dear), and I live alone, and I was sick for part of the time.  So, I will do another audit in 2010, what ever, and I will make sure to reduce it by at least 10% less next year, and, much, much more importantly, cut down on my air miles.
8. Personal:  I changed my life with Web 2.0.  Still enjoying tweeting and blogging

So all in all, not bad Sarah Louise.  Room for improvement, but on the right track.  Keep up the struggle my dear.

And the hardest thing I had to do?  Find a new new home for my cats.  And I succeeded in that too,  painful as it was.

Oh, and another thing for 2010 - don't turn into one of those people who brings their cats into every damn conversation.

Bringing Berlusconi Low.

Milan Cathedral by matteobertelli

Downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

Regular visitors to these musings will know that I have a very low opinion of Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, much in the news in recent days.  Indeed, to paraphrase Alexander Pope:

"I find it hard to know where lies the Fault / For BERLUSCONI's well-deserv'd ASSAULT..."

(A tweet by one of my favourite tweeps, @MrAlexanderPope)

My only comment is "wrong pecker, Sr. Tartaglia, but thanks anyway". 


In throwing the tourist trinket, Sr. Tartaglia has achieved something that no amount of demonstrations or arguments could do. He has humiliated Berlusconi. He has unmanned him in his own eyes.  

Berlusconi has taken to a highly successful extreme the applied sexism on which so much political power rests.  It seems that the language of male hierarchy is the only language that this bottom feeder understands, and I am deeply happy that one who trades in degradation has been brought so low by male-form humiliation.

The BBC reports today that his doctor says "his morale is still a matter of concern".  This is a promising snippet of information.

And fellow deep-chested male self-promotionist Vladimir Putin seems to have understood precisely what is affecting his Latin co-attitudinist.  "Berlusconi", he said on Tuesday "behaved in a manly way in an extreme situation".  A gross exaggeration, of course, but balm to the wounded soul, no doubt.

Only moments before the assault Berusconi had un-buttoned his shirt and asserted his masculine health and vigor to thousands of his delighted supporters.  Now he is depressed, and his departure from hospital twice postponed.   Let's hope he cowers from the press for many days to come.  I am not holding my breath, but I'm not entirely without hope either.

Berlusconi has successfully blurred the boundaries of entertainment and politics by including a former topless dancer in his cabinet and nominating starlets for the European Parliamentary elections. He's running Italy like a cheap bordello.

But if that were the only problem, we would be in a better position to do something about it. In fact the starlet effect is more pernicious and devastating than that. An interesting article in a recent edition of Time magazine How Silvio Berlusconi Uses Women on TV. showed how this reptile has “shaped” his electorate by using his media empire to numb their intellect through mindless TV game shows that are exceptionally demeaning of women.  I think "groomed"  his electorate comes closer to the mark, expressing the perverse and degrading sexuality that is involved.   These shows are nothing but pole-dancing in prime-time, for family viewing (e.g Sunday lunch-time, after church).  It's like total immersion in Zoo Magazine, if you can imagine such a thing.

If you speak Italian, check out Lorella Zanardo's award-winning video on YouTube "The Body of Women" (Il Corpo delle Donne).  It provides a powerful feminist critique of these shows.  Even if you don't have the language, the correlations with food and butchery make the argument visually clear.

This kind of perspective reaches me, and maybe a micro-percentage of those men and women who already understand that the man is a total shit.

But it just doesn't reach the man himself, or those who repeatedly vote for him.  What do they care about humiliating women?  It's what they deal in.

Only one thing has any weight.

I hate to say it, but violent humiliation by another man, especially a socially outcast and highly subordinated man (if the accounts of Sr. Tartaglia's isolation and mental illness are true), seems to be the only thing that has cut through Berlusconi's politico-virility, and if that's what it takes, I am very glad its happened.

Although his other pecker would have been even more appropriate, soft-tissue damage would not have been so comprehensively evident and demeaning as the crunch we are getting from his broken nose and teeth.  So that's OK too.

Or to paraphrase Pope again (but this time penned by me);

"The weighty TRINKET, seized from nearby shelf / expos'd th'Achilles' heal: a fragile (but inflated) sense of SELF".

And at least he won't be a distraction in Copenhagen.

Berlusconi in Copenhagen by matteobertelli

Downloaded from Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

You may also enjoy What Can We do About Berlusconi Think?

Leadership and Otto Scharmer

Thanksgiving weekend in north America, Eidh-al-Adha world-wide, but business as usual in Europe, and I have been in the incredibly beautiful baroque city of Turin, co-facilitating a workshop ethics and accountability in leadership.

The Po River at Turin by Funchye

Basilica of Our Lady Help of Christians, Turin by Flavio Cruvinel Brandao

We are based in one of the most exciting and imaginative learning spaces I have ever been in, the Leadership Centre for the Italian UniCredit Group -  Unimanagement.  So lovely, and such great staff.

Scuola Unimanagement Torino 2008

And I am totally pleased to report that we ran into an anti-Berlusconi rally in the Piazza della Castella on Sunday, and were able to participate enthusiastically.  The total antithesis of ethics and accountability.

Meanwhile at the workshop we have an amazing line-up of leadership gurus and practitioners - John Adair, the world's first ever professor of leadership studies, and still going strong, Otto Scharmer of MIT, Barbara Kellerman of Harvard, The Italian Army's Mountain Brigade, Maestro Kristjan Jarvi of the Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Regio, the amazing Radikha Coomaraswamy and Thoraya Obaid of the United Nations, Hans Van Sponeck former Humanitarian Coordinator for the Oil for Food Programme in Iraq, Steve McCurry, Pullitzer Prize-winning photographer, Chef Federico Colvi, who is leading an evening of "gastro-leadership", or competitive team cooking, Payam Akhavan, international human rights lawyer and Klaus Leisinger of the Novartis Foundation, among others.

Excited is not the word. It's totally cosmic.

Here is a video of Otto Scharmer describing his theory of leadership, presencing, co-creating  and "igniting a field of inspired connections".   Learning from the future as it emerges.  If you can, go thousands of miles to to see Otto Scharmer speak: its worth it.

Also check out his website on moving to capitalism 3.0.  Interesting.