Israel-Palestine and Peshawar

So, Israel’s pummeling Gaza. Again.

I’m not going to delve into the historical nuances of the Israel-Palestine question, by the way. For one, I can’t be bothered. Second, despite knowing a fair bit (whee!), I’m fairly certain that I still don’t know enough, and that you cannot come to a stated, non-controversial, or factually correct statement about who belongs where and the like.

Today is the second day of Israeli airstrikes (F16s, primarily) on Gaza. Israeli officials say they are targetting Hamas compounds and security centers. Olmert has come out and said that this operation will probably take longer, and there are reports of an imminent ground operation.

Now, a couple of interesting (and highly depressing points):

1. Elections are around the corner. Binyamin Netanyahu’s party, the conservative Likud, are leading in the elections.

2. The ceasefire being broken was largely Hamas being the complete cunts they are. Make no mistake, Israel’s being extremely heavy-handed but it WAS provoked.

3. Israel’s being heavy handed beyond belief. There used to exist a term called ‘proportionate response.’ Now, seemingly, Israel’s more than fed up of it.

4. Everyone in the world is having a go at Israel for it’s cack-handedness, for it’s disproportionate response to rocket attacks – everyone except the US that is. Well, they are having a ‘go’, but it’s more of a friendly jab to the shoulder rather than the vigorous finger-wagging ala the UK/EU.

Okay, that wasn’t so depressing. But this will be:

You see, Israel-Palestine is mired in a pit far, far deeper than superficially evident. Aside from the obvious fact that Israel’s current action is going to hand Hamas a shitload of family-less men and youth who’ve watched their sisters and mothers and fathers die, it’s also going to strengthen resolve for Hamas. Why would a party with a militant wing so hell bent on the destruction of Israel – when it’s again, bleedin’ obvious that the only way for Palestinians to live anything close to normal life would be extensive talks with Israel – continually gain support is beyond me. Yes, I know they run a very efficient welfare system, but surely that has to pale in comparison to Hamas’ fuckwittery re: Israel? Fatah, mind you, is little better, but they atleast present a realistic chance for a solution. Hamas only shows you a short film detailing NOTHING but war, and more war, and then some MORE war.

And who the fuck thinks Israel, at any point in time, will say ‘okay, we’ve had it with Hamas. They keep chucking rockets at us. Fuck it. Let’s give them most of the land back.’ Ofcourse, this’ll still not be good enough for Hamas, but my point is that a people who’ve lived through the holocaust and still bear marks of it will not for a fucking second even comprehend caving in on such a monumental state to some retards RPGs.

Israel has every right, for starters, to have a go at Hamas. It doesn’t have a right to be callous when it comes to civilian lives, and the hypocrisy prevalent in Israel’s actions against Palestinians as opposed to how they’ve suffered themselves is incredible. Ultimately though, as with any nation, Israel’s first priority is the security of their own people. With their funds, and their military might however, you’d expect and hope for them to be less indiscriminate. Yet, there’s an important question here: Hamas are rather brilliant at camoflauging (sic) themselves amidst the civilian population in Gaza. What do you then?

If you have 5 influential Hamas bastards in an apartment complex, amidst 60 civilians, what do you do? Ground forces are out of the question. So are black-ops, as you’d have to be a wee bit crazy to send them into Gaza to take out 5 guys amongst 60 civilians. You could take that risk, but again, few, if any nations would take less civilian lives at the cost of their own soldiers.

My point, fundamentally, is this – Israel has an extraordinary balance of power shift towards itself. Regarding the Palestinian question, it’s not even fair how lopsided the balance is. So, we have two options here:

1. We wait for Israel to grow a conscience. We wait for Israel to grow saner, to grow less violent. Is that going to happen, ever? No. For starters, Israel continues to be surrounded by antagonistic neighbours. Until Iran and Syria coupled with the rest of the Muslim world grow past their ridiculous hatred of jews, fuck all is going to happen here. Also, and this is my opinion, all the bollocks about hating Zionism and not Judaism is fucking bollocks.

2. Palestine ‘give in’. Giving in here, however, doesn’t mean that they lose all. Infact, seeing their current predicament, at this moment in time ANY solution would be incredibly beneficial for Palestine. But that’s not what they’re going to get. They’re going to get MORE. Israel and Israelis know that a non-violent Palestine is a great benefit for them. Not to mention at various times the two state solution offered has been more than enough. Yes, there are questions about settlements (something the Israeli state is becoming harsher on), and the question of Palestinian refugees, but they are solvable. A return to Pre-1967 borders has massive support in Palestine and in Israel. However, for any progress – and I meant genuine progress – to be made here, Hamas has to go.

Palestinians have suffered far too much, and they continue to suffer because of inept, war-mongering politicians and continued interference from the likes of Iran and Syria. Do those countries fund some of Hamas’ welfare programs? Ofcourse. But just what is the worth of that welfare? You get bread today, you get penicillin today, and tomorrow your house gets bombed because next to your house is a Hamas security compound. It is in the greater, long-term interest of Palestinians to reject Hamas. Israel will not negotiate with Hamas, and despite some anal behaviour, Israel has a right to not negotiate with a party whose militant wing continually chucks rockets into Israeli territory.

Unfortunately, there will be nowhere near any semblance of progress on the Palestine-Israel conflict. Violence begets violence, and we’re already seeing Ismael Haniya (I think), calling for another Intifada.

Every time I delve deep into this issue I come out neither angry and aggrieved, nor optimistic.

Anyway, second thing. Peshawar’s just suffered from another bomb blast. Amidst the countless rockets they suffer from (ironically, akin to Israeli towns like Netanya), there has been a rather alarming increase in the amount of bomb blasts in the city over the last couple of months. I really hope for that city, and for it’s people. This time, it’s being reported that the blast is considered retribution for some villagers opposing the taliban and in the process causing some militant casualties. So, my question here is: who do we blame now? I mean it’s not as if the blast was retaliation for drone attacks, right? Or for an extensive Pak-military operation?

Our everday way of life is slowly being destroyed by the taliban and their fundamentalist ilk. Yet, we are continually content to curse away the US, and now it seems India. But, the thing is, the taliban in Pakistan are not a by product of the US war on terror. They’re a by-product of Zia, of the ISI. Our border with Afghanistan – which is being ‘violated by US drones – has been violated since the 80s. Zia’s acceptance of Afghan refugees turned an already controversial border blurry beyond reproach. Our much vaunted sovereignty has, since then, been violated on a daily basis by Afghan smugglers whose products include various opiates, coke, heroin and guns. But we’ll never hear about that, will we?

I understand, and agree, that it is naive to not consider the US involvement in Afghanistan 2001 onwards and from the legacy they left in the late 80s. But there’s a difference between that and blaming them for all our ills. The US was NOT the reason that the Marriott in Isb got bombed. The US is NOT the reason the FIA office in Lahore was bombed. The US is not the reason the militants at Lal Masjid had shitloads of ammunition and guns.

When will we Pakistanis ever take responsibility? The “Yeh Hum Naheen” bollocks, that was set up to show the world that all muslims aren’t terrorists and the majority of muslims oppose it was neat, but it did fuck all at actually cleaning up our society in terms of fundamentalism. It was something to show – a superficial exercise. Look at me, I’m not a terrorist and I don’t believe in terrorism – but my local Imam preaches terror and I can’t be arsed to do anything about it. Infact, fuck it, it’s the American’s fault! Oh and 9/11 didn’t happen!

It’s ironic that Pakistani media is having a go at India and saying that they are unable to secure their own people and look at their faults, when the State of Pakistan and Pakistani media are just as fucking incapable of doing that!

Anyway, as always, my posts tend to descend into disheveled rants. This one is no different (except that it might’ve even started as a rant in the first place).

I hope today is the last day we see of Israel bombing the shit out of Gaza. I really do.

Top 50 albums of 2008

yay! My much awaited (by no one except myself it would seem) top 50 albums of 2008! A note however; the order of the albums is not comprehensive. That is to say I haven’t poured thought over the order of the albums for days and days…

50.  The Tumbled Sea – S/T
49.  Fuck Buttons – Street Horrrsing
48.  Aussitot Mort – Montuenga
47.  Goldmund – The Malady Of Excellence
46.  Sumner Mckane – What A Great Place To Be
45.  Maybeshewill – Not For Want Of Trying
44.  Killing The Dream – Fractures
43.  Sun Kil Moon – April
42.  The Magnetic Fields – Distortion
41.  Vessels – White Fields And Open Devices
40.  Mystery Jets – 21
39.  These Arms Are Snakes – Tail Swallower And Dove
38.  Giants – Old Stories
37.  Ben Folds – Way To Normal
36.  Dan Friel – Ghost Town
35.  Kyte – Kyte
34.  Beach House – Devotion
33.  Okkervil River – The Stand-Ins
32.  Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
31.  Jason Collett – Here’s To Being Here
30.  Helios – Caesura
29.  VA – Thursday – Envy Split
28.  Fleet Foxes – S/T
27.  Damien Jurado – Caught In The Trees
26.  Mogwai – The Hawk Is Howling
25.  Mount Eerie – Lost Wisdom
24.  Library Tapes – A Summer Beneath The Trees
23.  Johann Johannson – Fordlandia
22.  The Mountain Goats – Heretic Pride
21.  The Samuel Jackson Five – Goodbye Melody Mountain
20.  Asmz – 13 Blues For 13 Moons
19.  Surrounded – The Nautilus Years
18.  Boduf Songs – How Shadows Chase The Balance
17.  Mount Eerie – Black Wooden Ceiling Opening
16.  Destroyer – Trouble In Dreams
15.  The Helio Sequence – Keep Your Eyes Ahead
14.  Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
13.  James Blackshaw – Litany Of Echoes
12.  Parts And Labor – Recievers
11.  Nick Cave – Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

10.  The Abbasi Brothers – Something Like Nostalgia

Shoegaze as a genre has taken a new shape over the past couple of years, merging itself with ambient to give rise to bands like Beach House and Serena Maneesh who don’t do the rather rock heavy shoegaze of MBV and Ride. The Abbasi Brothers take this contemporary shoegaze and run with it, providing cinematic soundscapes that sound absolutely gorgeous.

09.  The Hold Steady – Stay Positive

Not much to be said about Craig Finn and co except that they’re the best bar band on the planet. Yes, that term has been bandied about quite a bit, but it succintly sums them up. Meshing classic rock and elements of Husker Du with Finn’s incredible lyricism (which overflows with characters and their narratives), this is in my opinion the best album they’ve ever done.

08.  Matthew Robert Cooper – Miniatures

Matthew Robert Cooper. Eluvium. There’s nothing this man can do wrong (for me anyway). An absolute genius.

07.  Foals – Antidotes

Foals had shitloads of hype behind them (something the UK press/e-zines are very natural at creating (falsely or otherwise), and for some reason I kept my distance from them for a while. Huge mistake that, on my part. Antidotes is a brilliant marriage of varying time signatures and polyrhythms providing a base for thin, trebly guitars that weave into each other. Math rock, though, this is not, because I can bet you the minute Red Sox Pugie kicks in (or Cassius), your foot will be heaving and moving on its own accord.

06.  M83 – Saturdays = Youth

Anthony Gonzales’ homage to 80s music, I had my reservations when I first heard it. Then Couleurs came on and I was completely floored. There’s distant melancholy on this album, a lamented nostalgia almost. At the same time, you’ve got some pretty foot-tapping beats and the result is a distinct sound for a band that’s already carved its sonic niche in the world.

05.  Frightened Rabbits – The Midnight Organ Fight

I don’t know what it is with Scotland and Glasgow in particular. Arab Strap, Belle and Sebastion, The Twilight Sad, Mogwai, Boards of Canada – something about the weather must play a role. In some ways similiar to Arab Strap in terms of the melancholy and almost crass (but wonderful) lyrics, Midnight Organ Fight (euphemism for sex, btw) is an absolute gem. and is that you/in front of me/coming back for even more of exactly the same/you must be a masochist/to love a modern leper/on his last leg sings Scott Hutchison on opener and belter The Modern Leper. They also have a strong grasp on dynamics, making sure songs never get boring nor lose their intensity.

04.  Russian Circles – Station

Easily one of my all time favourite bands. Station, as opposed to debut Enter, takes a step back from the metal part of their post rock meets metal music binge. The songs are softer, with less emphasis on noise, yet with no loss of dynamics. Turncrantz on the drum kit is still a fucking monster, and though the heavier parts of the album seem less inspired that they were on Enter, the cleaner, post-rock parts are far better. There’s more colour in them, more meaning. And they sound less like EITS and more like something Williams has created.

03.  Shearwater – Rook

I love Jonathan Meiburg. Rook is the album that takes Shearwater away from the shadow of Okkervil River, and onto a stretch of road they can call their own. Meiburg sounds less like Antony Hegarty here, and Shearwater have incorporated a more ‘orchestral’ sound to their music (helped a lot by their usual array of non-conventional folk-rock instruments; hammered dulcimers, glockenspiels, etc). Leviathan, Bound too, has to be one of the best (and saddest) songs I’ve heard this year.

02.  Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

If I could, I’d love to give Justin Vernon a hug. Skinny Love, Flume, re: Stacks, Blindsided, Wolves (Act I & II); the melancholy is overwhelming. His voice is simply beautiful and ridicously emotive. With alternate tunings helping find his voice and his niche, Vernon’s created an album that is unrivalled this year in terms of its emotional impact. I doubted how he could top this album, but as his Blood Bank EP shows, my doubts may very well (and hopefully will be) consigned to the bin.

01.  TV On The Radio – Dear Science

Forget your Coldplays, your U2s, your (insert-name-of-other-stadium-playing-big-bands). TV On The Radio are the greatest band in the world. 3 mind-blowingly original releases later, TVOR are probably one of the few bands in the world you can expect to blow your socks right off. It’s not just that they’re unbearably good songwriters, it’s that they are not shy in the least to continue experimenting, to continue challenging musical boundaries. There’s not a single poor track on this album (even the weird Golden Age is something you warm up to eventually).

–

So, that’s that. I really shouldn’t be writing shitty top 10 album ‘blurbs’ at 4:20 am with my mind pretty much done in for the night! Anyway, even though 2008 wasn’t a great year (not as good musically as ‘07), 2009 promises to be absolutely stellar. Hopefully in 2009 we’ll see the release of:

Mastodon
The National
Grizzly Bear
Sufjan Stevens (pushing it though, I think!)
The Shins
Andrew Bird (already leaked though, and it’s loooovelly)
Future of the Left
Final Fantasy
Animal Collective
Antony & The Johnsons
Circle Takes The Square
The Decemberists
Isis
Beirut (perhaps)
Broken Social Scene
Burial

oooh. I can’t wait :$

Frightened Rabbit

This band blows my fucking socks right off my feet. Scottish – lyrically in the vein of Arab Strap (lots of innuendo, raw, unfiltered, real – and utterly brilliant. They do without a bassist, so who steps up? The drummer. Fucking mental, all over the place, chaotic yet controlled, his drumsticks flailing as they careen and crash onto the cymbals and ultimately destroy themselves. The guitars are brilliant; when they’re through an amp they’re muddy, fiery, jangly. When they aren’t, they’re calm, austere, stately. I can’t believe I didn’t get this album earlier.

Fast Blood

The Modern Leper

Keep Yourself Warm

Good Arms vs Bad Arms

The album itself.

Arundhati Roy and the Mumbai attacks

Over the past couple of weeks, ever since the events of Mumbai took place, we’ve been subject to a ridiculous amount of demagoguery; not just from India but from our own shores as well. Understandably, we’ve also been subject to lots of exhortations about how that was India’s 9/11, and all that. As a result, personally, I’ve read very, very little in the way of erudite, well enunciated observations of the events that occured on that fateful, horrible day.

Now i’m not a massive fan of Arundhati’s literature, but I have a newfound sense of respect for her after this frankly brilliant article. It isn’t anything otherwordly; it doesn’t present to us instances we’re unaware of, or arguments we’ve never considered. But, at a time where the media fails to make these very valid points and amidst the barrage of shit pouring out, to be able to make these arguments with such a sense of clarity is applaudable.

Here

The article is a long read, but i’ll quote some paras here…

We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11″. Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the “Bad Guys” he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on “terrorist camps” in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It’s odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India’s richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir’s most ravaged districts.

And

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially “Islamist” terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: “There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy.”

And: “India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir.”

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): “We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don’t care if I’m hanged … just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay … I will finish them off … let a few more of them die … at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die.”

And where, in Side A’s scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: “Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening.”
Or: “To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here … a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)

All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi’s former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India’s biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.

Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: “Modi is God.” The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.

If that’s not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.

Winter weekend

and it brings us to our last seething steps,
a ritual for gods and the young;
lots of chocolate dripping from half-formed lips,
and eyes drowsy from the previous nights
ghastly endeavours. c’est la vie, they said,
as their words careened through the clouds,
poking holes this way and that,
making way for the sun and it’s rays.
though it’s winter, with glittering grass in
the morning and leaves withering brown and black
in each other’s company – we are to each other
what sparrows are to the sky,
their puffed out tails swinging
and slashing, cutting arcs of beauty through
the air. Despite the spade of rising voices,
and intermittent timbres of sound, you sit and
read obscure japanese poems while i brush the
dust off precious vinyls. The day soon will
draw to a close, like a play run past it’s
worth; and past the open door you’ll run. Soon,
perhaps, we’ll see each other again.
but not before the heavens crumble
some more, and the earth under our feet gives
way to dried mud and bones.

new dashboard

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

The new wordpress dashboard is so goddamn cluttered No likely weird changey. What’s with all the LOOK AT THE SHINY SHINY?

Anyway, went and watched Quantum of Solace yesterday at Pindi’s Cinepax. Really liked the film. Seemed to have a loosely strung together plot, but Daniel Craig’s acting paid off in spades. This is what Bond should be like. There are comparisons here to be made with The Bourne Ultimatum; both are generally action flicks with class and, if possible, nuance in action scenes. Both are built around not-so-interesting story archs (though Ultimatum was fairly better than QoS in that dept), both have humanely violent (wha?) action sequences, both control the need to chuck in some outrageous bollocky parts. In short, remember when you watched Brosnan drive his Vanquish on ice and then make it ‘disappear’? Well that shit ain’t happenin’ here.

I absolutely love DC as Bond for the simple reason that he’s actually fearful. We get the usual sarcasm, but it’s restrained; it’s occasional, popping up only when utterly necessary and not chucked in to induce some worthless smiles.

Also, if you see this in a cinema, there’s some brilliant censorship work. Really.

QoS has been dissed a lot for Daniel Craig’s Bond not being too, Bond-like. From what I’ve read around on the internet, it would seem that DC’s Bond is more akin to Ian Fleming’s Bond than any other. I don’t know how true that is, but this Bond is better than any I’ve seen (and I haven’t seen many, to be fair).  Enough of the suave, charming bullshit. It’s ridiculous, and annoying.

Anyway, enough of that. Bon Iver’s new EP, Blood Bank, has now leaked. Aside from an auto-tuned last track (seems like a mix between Kanye/T-Pain and Imogen Heap) that isn’t bad – but isn’t great either – the EP is glorious. The title track is fantastic; different in mood from For Emma, Forever Ago, in the sense that it’s warmer, more upbeat. The live version (linked to below) is even better because the dynamics are more prevalent; the simple hypnotic kicks bouncing off of Vernon’s delicately poignant voice that seems to confess while hoping for more. Even as the imagery points to a subdued, austere atmosphere his voice runs in stark contrast to it, coupled with the jangly guitar and a continously running synth that swirls at the start and then ends up in a lull only to rise again for the chorus. Babys has a lilting, circular melody that lends way to a magnificant build up at the end; a wish wash of gorgeous melody that dies down almost as soon as it hits.

Bon Iver – Blood Bank (live)

Bon Iver – Blood Bank (live – this is more of a mirror link to the same version as above)

holy hell

So, I have around £195 to spend (coughblowcough) on an acoustic guitar. My current one is a cheap Chinese make (though it still sounds brilliant), but unfortunately it’s to beaten up now to survive as anything more than an instrument used to spill stuff on.

Now, I went to this shop in Islamabad, in F-8 called ‘Hi Volts’. They stock the best stuff (not saying much there) in Islamabad. I looked at three guitars, essentially:

Yamaha FD01 = £154 $229 Rs. 18,000
Yamaha FD02 = £197 $292 Rs. 23,000
Oscar Schidt OG2 = £171 $254 Rs. 20,000

Now, if you’d follow the links to those Yamaha guitars, you’d see that the FD01 on Amazon UK is priced at £70, while the FD02 £118.98 (and that’s a starter pack, so it includes various accessories as well).

That difference in price is utterly, utterly ridiculous. Absolutely. Fucking. Ridiculous. And it’s not as if shipping is expensive too. It would cost around £35-40 to ship the guitar to Pakistan. However, these guitars aren’t made in the UK, they’re made in China/Indonesia, which makes the frankly outrageous pricing even more foam-at-the-mouth worthy.

So now my option is to order from a site that’ll ship to Pakistan (and in the process blow all my cash), or I instead get a Boss DD-20 Giga Delay. I don’t know what to do