This Week's Songs

Art Neuro-Vision Song Fest
I have 2 songs up at iCompositions this week.
The first one is 'Americans' in my Coelacanh project.


This is based on a song Chris and I used to play in Satellite City. It's in the key of C and goes to the top note often which made it really hard to sing live for Michelle. So we shelved it, but I guess I never lost faith in the song.
It's about Orson Welles, Rita Heyworth and 1940s Americana including cheesy USO shows 'for the boys at the front'. It's also about myths and myth-making. I've rewritten the words somewhat in the light of the many years since those days where editing a song meant re-learning material and we just never felt we had the time.

Anyway, this version is notable because I arranged it for a big band sound with some odd embelishments and has me doing an impersonation of Orson Welles' famous Harry Lime speech about Switzerland, peaceful-ness and cuckoo clocks.
It also features 48 tracks of sound; by far the largest thing I've mixed on my Mac. It's quite a hefty piece of work, really.

Do check it out. All you have to do is click the link on the song title above.

The other song is a remix of my old jam tune 'It's All Right'.


It's sort of a groovy little rocker with some side guitar noodling. A little bluesy in parts, but also a little New Wave/Post-Punk. Do check it out by clicking on the link. Let me just say, I like it; I wouldn't have done it otherwise. :)

The Russian Take On Iran


I found this article amongst the Google Headlines. 'KK' is Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Russian State Duma's International Affairs Committee, who is being interviewed on the topic of Iran by one Nargiz Asadova.

NA: As such, if Iran yields and agrees to allow other countries to undertake uranium enrichment on its behalf, this will mean that Iran is de facto admitting that it is somehow fundamentally different from the other countries that participate in the NNPT. For example, it is distinguished by its political system, a system that does not inspire trust in most other parts of the world.

KK: In general, the fact that the Iranian nuclear dossier was taken to the UN Security Council in the first place amounts to a crisis of trust. The international community has no complaints about the current stage of Iran's nuclear program, but there is no certainty that the program will develop according to the guidelines that Iran itself is currently setting forth. The world is afraid of a repeat of the North Korean scenario, in which Pyongyang diligently followed all the prescriptions laid down by the IAEC and all of its duties concerning non-proliferation, only to move on to a weaponry program, without a single pang of conscience, as soon as it had reached the necessary level of technical expertise. The international community suspects that Iran could theoretically take the same path.

NA: Does this mean that there are no legal foundations for pursuing the case against Iran?

KK: As far as I know, at this stage no legal foundations exist. Such grounds could arise only in the case of supporting conclusions made by the IAEC's inspectors. If the inspectors arrive, inspect Iran's nuclear facilities, and find evidence of activities that are forbidden by the NNPT, then there will be legal grounds for completely undeniable accusations to be addressed to Iran. At this time, such legal grounds do not exist, so the position of the international community is to try and offer Iran incentives to act in good faith and to act not only like a national government that exists independently from the rest of the world, but like a member of the international community – that is, to agree to meet halfway and to first rid itself of those elements of mistrust felt by the international community towards the country and its nuclear program. And this mistrust is chiefly provoked by Tehran itself, by that string of absurd – in my opinion – pronouncements in which its leadership rejected Israel's right to exist and denied the Holocaust.

NA: In your opinion, what will Iran gain by this kind of behavior?

KK: It seems to me that Iran is deriving great pleasure from the current situation, because, as I have already said, the legal situation is ambiguous. Thus, Tehran is behaving in the following manner: I am going to do what I think is necessary, and I will then see what you can do with me. In addition, of course, Iran aspires to a leadership position in the Islamic world. This is absolutely clear. The country has a very potent economy and a large population, and it – or its leaders, in any case – need some victories, whether small or large (even a moral victory would do) over the so-called West. This seems to me to be the primary motivation driving Iran's current leadership. But this primary motive is a lie. It is false because the opposition of the Asian and European worlds, the Western and the Eastern, the Islamic and the Christian – all of these are false oppositions. Any nation that tries to ground itself upon these oppositions is making a global strategic error of colossal proportions.

That's really interesting all the same. The Russians think Iran is playing by the IAEC rules and the NPT. What Iran is doing wrong is that they've made themselves less transparent in the due process stakes, and that unless they disclose all things to do with their nuclear programme, they're going to be singled out for their non-disclosure. Therefore, the Russians appear they accept Tehran's position that the Iranian nuclear programme is peaceful until proven otherwise; yet they recognise the Pyonogyang precedent (where the North Koreans suddenly went to weapons and close off inspections) in taking that position.