Capital

The oil tanker Andronikos has the word ‘CAPITAL’ painted in white letters on its red hull. This is useful. One knows how things stand.

It is on its way to Hound Point Terminal, Scotland from Yeosu, South Korea (YGPA – Yeosu Gwangyang Port Authority).

Hound Point is in the Firth of Forth. It is owned and operated by Ineos, a global chemical company.

‘Our products touch every aspect of modern day life. We comprise 36 businesses with 194 sites in 29 countries throughout the world’.

Hound Point Terminal is the largest facility in Scotland for the export of North Sea oil. Two sea-islands are connected to the Forties oil field.

Yeosu port was opened in 1923.

The container ship is the Himalayas en route to Hamburg from Piraeus.

I wish I was on that ship going to Hamburg. I would like to walk through the city again from Blankensee, along the Elbe, through the centre, and past the Außenalster and then to Eppendorf. Hamburg is a big city with a lot of character and a revolutionary history; or rather, a history of revolution.

It has a fantastic art gallery which has inside it one of my favourite paintings, Flora, by Jan Massys. Little is known of Massys (the son of Quentin) but it is rumoured that he was a member of the Family of Love.

There is a great deal of mystery in the painting (the city is Antwerp, that is known). But 1559 was a dangerous time in that city. There must be clues to the hidden knowledge in the painting. Can we find the key to unlock them? What were the connections with Thomas More, Utopia(s), Erasmus, Christoph Plantin and others?

In 1559, Antwerp was the great trading centre of Europe, and therefore a centre of capital accumulation. Capital flows like water but its flows are often secret and obscure.

How can resistance to capital be formulated, articulated and organized?

The day’s walk had nothing and everything.

Perhaps it’s time to start a study of the history of the sky.