Although this website archives texts and books published by Architects for Social Housing between 2015 and 2021, this is no longer the website for the work of ASH. To keep abreast of ASH’s ongoing design and community work, in both London and Hong Kong, please click on the following link: Architects for Social Housing, the … Continue reading About this Website
Zones of Interest: The Holocaust Industry in Film
It should surprise no-one that, in the middle of the 6-month liquidation of the Gaza concentration camp by the Israel Defense Forces, the UK film industry released not one but two films about the ‘Holocaust’.1 One Life, a UK film about a British man who helped Jews from German-occupied Czechoslovakia, was released in the UK … Continue reading Zones of Interest: The Holocaust Industry in Film
Settling In
Out of Hong Kong’s nearly 7.5 million people, 340,000, around 5 per cent of the population and 10 per cent of the working population, are foreign domestic workers. Most of these are from the Philippines and Indonesia, with some from Thailand, Sri Lanka or Nepal. 98.5 per cent of these workers are women, many of … Continue reading Settling In
On Kowloon Ferry
Kowloon, the smallest and most densely populated of the three regions of Hong Kong, is an urban area on the mainland, from which ferries run across the harbour to Hong Kong Island. Although most of Hong Kong is on the mainland, this term is used by Hong Kongers to refer to the People’s Republic of … Continue reading On Kowloon Ferry
Gaza Selfie: Representing the Chosen People
‘Encouraging and integrating aliyah is a strategic event for the State of Israel. Aliyah in the coming years will serve as an enormous growth engine for the Israeli economy and an engine of values — a renewal and refreshment of Zionism.’ — Bezalel Smotrich, Israel Finance Minister, February 2024 There is a difference between the … Continue reading Gaza Selfie: Representing the Chosen People
Gaza Funeral
‘Mankind’s . . . self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic.’ — Walter Benjamin In 2014, in response to Israel’s attack on Gaza, which was the most deadly in decades, … Continue reading Gaza Funeral
Khan Younis, February 2024
‘We will wipe this thing called Hamas, ISIS-Gaza, off the face of the earth. It will cease to exist.’ — Yoav Gallant, Israel Minister of Defence At one minute and fifty-one seconds In the drone footage you’re alive, a man Walking up a hill, swinging his legs and arms With a will and intentions, and, … Continue reading Khan Younis, February 2024
‘For as long as it takes’: NATO’s War on Russia
‘The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.’ — Emmanuel Goldstein, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, 1984 When the governing executives of the United Kingdom, the European … Continue reading ‘For as long as it takes’: NATO’s War on Russia
Extremism
Because I do not own a rifle My loaded words must serve as bullets And when you tell me they’re not legal I’ll know exactly where to shoot it. Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, a statutory duty was placed on U.K. police, education, health and local authorities to prevent terrorism by identifying citizens … Continue reading Extremism
On Becoming an Immigrant (again)
On becoming an immigrant, I promise not to call everyone with a different skin colour to me ‘racist’. On becoming an immigrant, I promise not to denounce the country that has welcomed me within its borders as ‘institutionally racist’. On becoming an immigrant, I will not demand that I be described as the same nationality … Continue reading On Becoming an Immigrant (again)
An Open Letter to Nobody: The Duties of Poetry Now
It is six years since Alice Oswald’s last book was published, and although this is not an excessive time in the work of a poet, the interruption has been occasioned, of course, by the ‘lockdown’ of the UK for two years between March 2020 and April 2022 and the unprecedented changes to our society it … Continue reading An Open Letter to Nobody: The Duties of Poetry Now
A Communist in Hong Kong 