This Should Be Closed Down

Yeah, it really should. Moleskines have become my medium of choice — a portability and convenience that WordPress simply doesn’t have. Perhaps I’ll still find a use for this blog, perhaps not.

Links for 11/8/2008

• Russians Push Past Separatist Area to Assault Central Georgia – NYTimes.com

  Two senior Western officials said that it was unclear whether Russia intended a full invasion of Georgia, but that its aims could go as far as destroying its armed forces or overthrowing Georgia’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

  If this is true then Russia may very well be attempting to install a regime-change in Georgia. Note taken.

  President Bush has promoted Georgia as a bastion of democracy, helped strengthen its military and urged that NATO admit the country to membership. Georgia serves as a major conduit for oil flowing from Russia and Central Asia to the West.

  But Russia, emboldened by windfall profits from oil exports, is showing a resolve to reassert its dominance in a region it has always considered its “near abroad.”

  Okay, so both the US and Russia have oil interests in Georgia; and both want to reassert their dominance. Another note taken.
• Will Russia Get Away With It? – NYTimes.com

  Compare the above quotes with those below, and we can play a little game of Spot The Hypocrisy:

  Dictators aren’t moved by the claims of justice unarmed; aggressors aren’t intimidated by diplomacy absent the credible threat of force; fanatics aren’t deterred by the disapproval of men of moderation or refinement.

  And the US is not an unintimidated and undeterred aggressor? Did it not violate international law and all diplomatic measures in regard to both Iraq and Afghanistan? Note the use of “men”, too.

  Russia is aggressive, China despotic and Iran messianic — but none is as dangerous as the 20th-century totalitarian states.

  The further good news is that 2008 has been, in one respect, an auspicious year for freedom and democracy. In Iraq, we and our Iraqi allies are on the verge of a strategic victory over the jihadists in what they have called the central front of their struggle. This joint victory has the potential to weaken the jihadist impulse throughout the Middle East.

  On the other hand, the ability of Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas to get away with murder (literally), and above all the ability of Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions effectively unchecked, are setbacks for hopes of peace and progress.

  And there is no evidence that China’s hosting of the Olympics has led to moderation of its authoritarianism. Meanwhile, Russia has sent troops and tanks across an international border, and now seems to be widening its war against Georgia more than its original — and in any case illegitimate — casus belli would justify.

  So, when the US conducts an act of imperialism it’s “an auspicious year for freedom and democracy”; but when its old foe, Russia (or anyone else), does the same (or merely fights for self-determination), it’s dictatorial, murderous and a setback “for hopes of peace and progress”.

  Now, let me reword the following paragraph:

  For this reason alone, we owe Georgia Iraq a serious effort to defend its sovereignty. Surely we cannot simply stand by as an autocratic aggressor gobbles up part of — and perhaps destabilizes all of — a friendly democratic nation that we were sponsoring for NATO membership a few months ago.

  It’s striking that dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes — whatever their differences — seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies. So Russia helps Iran. Iran and North Korea help Syria. Russia and China block Security Council sanctions against Zimbabwe. China props up the regimes in Burma and North Korea.

  And the United States has invaded or intervened in — in no particular order, and not exhaustive — Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Soviet Union, Turkey, China, Panama, Germany, Japan, Austria, Italy, Philippines, South Korea, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, Lebanon, Thailand, Congo, Cambodia, Iran, El Salvador, Libya, Mexico, Fiji, Palestine, Rwanda, Somalia, Albania, Chad, Bolivia, Peru, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bosnia, East Timor, Serbia, Georgia and Pakistan. This is not inclusive of proxy fights that use military and general aid or sanctions — such as in Israel. (Instances of use of United States armed forces 1798 – 2004.)

  No real comparison is there? New York Times Op-Ed: American foreign policy hypocrisy at its finest.

Links for 27/7/08

• Apple’s Culture of Secrecy – NYTimes.com
  

  On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”

• 4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images – NYTimes.com
  

  “It is absolutely censorship,” Mr. Miller said. “I took pictures of something they didn’t like, and they removed me. Deciding what I can and cannot document, I don’t see a clearer definition of censorship.”

  “The fact that the images I took of the suicide bombing — which are just photographs of something that happens every day all across the country — the fact that these photos have been so incredibly shocking to people, says that whatever they are doing to limit this type of photo getting out, it is working,” he said.

• After Iowa Raid, Immigrants Fuel Labor Inquiries – NYTimes.com
  

  They are the poster child for how a rogue company can exploit a broken immigration system,” Mr. Lauritsen said.

One of those moments

I just had one of those moments. I was sitting, looking downwards, thinking. While looking down, a particular hair on my knee caught my eye; it was standing upright, merely existing, as hairs tend to do. It was a remarkably mundane observation. And, perhaps, by virtue of how mundane it was, it managed to kick some cogs in my head into gear. The hair was so incredibly fine, and, almost magically, by itself, standing upright. So fine and yet so infinitely smaller than the absolute density of the rest of my body. Its atoms, its molecules, its — whatever scientific term you wish to apply — had grown through time, continue to grow, and now stood seemingly calmly upon my knee. Simultaneously: to the eye — utterly still and stagnant; to reality — constantly in a state of flux, developing unseen, unconscious of its own development and imminent cessation.

We apply a multitude of terms to both the micro and macro components of the world as we understand it, and yet we do truly know so little about our world. All this matter that forms us, all that we conceive as “natural”, and all that we shape with our own hands. It all just exists. And with all that is sentient it does more than just exist (from our perspective at least) — it lives. All these somethings combined provide an uncomprehendable awareness. And we don’t really know how, nor do we really know why. Perhaps we will establish answers as we progress forward; or, perhaps more likely, we never will.

Ever so much like that solitary hair — unconscious of our own development. Sure, as we pass through time we do grow in our understanding of ourselves and that which surrounds us, but it’s not unlike being born into an unexplored, sealed Labyrinth. Darkness all around, dead ends, and a limited amount of light that can flood the travelable paths. Never knowing from whence we came, and never knowing where we shall end up.

Blind Patriotism

Photographed by Warren Zinn (AP Photo/Warren Zinn, The Army Times Co.)

Via a link on John Nack’s post ‘War, suicide, fire… and t-shirts’ I found this article from the Washington Post, ‘Ricochet‘. The article describes an embedded journalist who, while in Iraq in 2003, photographed an image of an American medic carrying an injured small boy to safety. The photographer then goes on to explain how that medic recently committed suicide due to PTSD, and how he is torn in wondering if the publicity the medic received from the photo played a role in his death.

On one hand, upon reading the article, I saw the actions of the medic and photojournalist through an appreciative lens insofar as both the photography and the rescuing are admirable. However, on the other hand, I also immediately thought: “Why was that 4-year-old boy in harm’s way?”; “Why did that 4-year-old boy get shot?”; “Why were the medic and the photojournalist in the area?”; “Who shot the boy?”. From that perspective, I became particularly angered at the patriotism that is seeped into the article. In particular, the first real signs of patriotism that entered the article with this phrase:

I knew this was a moment that the world needed to see — a moment of American heroism, of American commitment to saving a people and to saving lives.

At which point, I was thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me? Heroism! Commitment!” If I blew up your house and then proceeded to rescue your child from your burning house, I sincerely doubt you’d consider me “heroic” and “committed”. As far as I’m concerned, the capacity and will to save a child’s (or anyone’s) life is a human (and non-human too, I guess) attribute — not a uniquely American one. Moreover, while it may be both an American and human thing to act in such a fashion, the fact that Americans and humans were also shooting and dropping bombs in that very same area means that they are capable of horrific things also. That is, the same people are also heroically committed to murdering an innocent population. The medic’s soldier’s uniform tells of both potentials in one single photo.

And more of the same:

U.S. soldiers perform courageous deeds daily, deeds that go undocumented — and unrecognized. The difference between Joseph’s act and theirs is that I just happened to be in front of him with a camera when he did his job. If a camera could follow U.S. soldiers in action around the clock, newspapers would be flooded with images of their valiant actions.

Undocumented and unrecognized courage and valiance? Objectively, the act of risking one’s life is indeed courageous and valiant. Yet, could it not also be considered stupid and pointless? Who benefits from that risk? Neither the soldier nor the majority of people.

In the context of photographing a departing father:

To me, that image is truly iconic: an anonymous soldier holding his child’s hand as he heads off to battle, hoping that he’ll see his son again, sometime soon.

A tragic, emotional image that raises the simple question: “But why?”

At the time, it represented hope. Hope that what we were doing as a nation in Iraq was the right thing. Hope that our soldiers were helping people. Hope that soldiers such as Joseph cared more about human life than anything else.

How many people need to die in imperialist war before a care for human life is no longer present? Evidently, not enough.

It makes me realize that so many soldiers are physically torn and in such mental anguish that for some of them, hope has turned to hopelessness.

And maybe, just maybe, those soldiers, unlike you, realise the true nature of the war.

He was memorialized in that image trying to preserve life. But he could no longer preserve his own.

Well, he perhaps originally thought that he was trying to preserve life. I doubt that is why he then committed suicide.

In the face of an injured child and a soldier who committed suicide from PTSD, not once does the article consider that neither tragedy was inevitable; that both tragedies could have been prevented; that both were a product of imperialist war; that both were a product of capitalism in all its magnificent heroic commitment.

Patriotism clouds an article that is inherently political from any real political thought.

Reflections on WYD08: A Far Too Fucking Lengthy Report

I had the (mis)fortune of working at World Youth Day 2008. And yes, I’m fully aware of the double irony — a Marxist, atheist, vegan making and serving food at a festival of Christians. Ironies aside, it’s a week of work at fairly decent rates, so upon receiving my pay cheque I can’t really complain. (Even though I’ll proceed to do exactly that.)

Shutting up for a second, I’ll acknowledge that it was a good week for me (for additional reasons other than the payment); and I imagine, partly for different reasons, a magnificent event for hundreds of thousands of others. So, take everything I’ve said above and will say below with that in mind — people had a positive experience, which renders any personal opinion of mine almost entirely irrelevant. This paragraph is what some would call hindsight.

Where to begin? First of all, why the fuck does this thing extend to an entire week? A day (24 hours) is somehow simultaneously an entire week (168 hours); perhaps more aptly titled ‘World Youth Week 08′ or ‘A Shitload of Mostly Catholics Hijacking an International Calendar Day Mostly With an Intent to Worship Some Old Guy’.

Semantics over, on to the organisation (or complete lack thereof) of the event. From my own experience, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the security by and large was about as organised and secured as any State Government Department of Bureaucracy. Being personally asked whether you carry ‘dangerous items’ is ridiculous. People (obviously) never lie. It just doesn’t happen. That M16 machine gun is just a metal coffee cup, right?

A second point on security and organisation is the security passes that all staff, volunteers and registered pilgrims should wear. You know you have a fuck up and a half when cops don’t know official procedure. Photo ID required and then not required 4 times in less than 10 minutes is a stunning degree of communication and organisation. Amidst the press about the new police powers, WYD08 was not unlike APEC insofar as their listed reasons were as much of a facade. Police were indeed present; but, in terms of their capacity to do anything new if anything actually happened within the event, odds are they’d be too late. Case in point: I could (and did) walk in as per instruction, say that I was working and then easily get a security pass — no verification of name or existing occupation. Sure, security heightened when the Pope rocked up, but the measures had almost no relation to security for the pilgrims except that it was probably more of a pain in the ass.

Now, on to the food. As a vegan I can’t exactly account for the taste of the bulk of it, but considering my job for 57 hours I can sure as hell comment on the rest of it. Every catering worker (but no volunteer who did the exact same job oddly enough) had to have a food safety and handling course completed. The business that hired us was merely complying with the event’s demands as we had Health Inspectors come periodically throughout each day, and I guess the business had a reputation to maintain. That aside, though we used gloves and generally obeyed good health policy, I was still pretty sceptical of most of the food. It smelt and looked largely like ass. Of course, catering for half a million people means that no one could intelligently expect a high quality. Although, some people, predictably middle class, had absurdly high demands — you want fucking added sugar and mocha in your hot chocolate? Go jump, please?

Another aspect of food that I found to be problematic was the amount that just went to waste. We had to give so much food away to anybody at the end of day, or else it had to be thrown out. Yet, by the end of the week, thousands and thousands of people could have had a filling, full meal. Some other workers suggested giving the food to the neighbouring homeless and food kitchens in the immediate area; but that, of course, is damaging to the business’ profitability and therefore didn’t happen. Also, the vast majority of food was donated, and yet, large amounts of it was sold at extortionate prices, so someone is clearly making a tidy profit out of their business venture. Bourgeois, inner-city cafe prices for what was essentially probably worse than what a McDonald’s Drive Thru produces.

Next, people. I was admittedly bored shitless upon the Pope’s first arrival as all work had stopped and I was left wondering what the fuck to do with myself. “OK, some old, former Hitler Youth, guy whose shit apparently doesn’t stink.” Beyond moments of Christian zeal like that, my experience with other people was overwhelming good. The pilgrims were mostly kind and cheerful. The volunteers were always happy, willing to do what needed to be done, and I had great experiences trying to communicate in broken English with some of them. Thinking of synonyms and hand gestures to explain something genuinely appeals to me. I should learn another language. My piss-weak understanding of Italian doesn’t count. A side point on volunteers, though, is that I was politically conflicted over the fact that they are scabs. I am politically opposed to scabs where ever they can be found as they provide room for reducing wages and hiring less people. The workers and supervisors were equally friendly. Our supervisors got paid the same and had about as much training as us, and there generally was a really flexible hierarchy that made work quite enjoyable. Workers running the show is always preferable. As an example of how this atmosphere worked out, all of us staff, volunteers and supervisors exchanged photos and Facebooks after most nights. That just doesn’t happen in most workplaces after a single week of work.

I also had the odd experience of being a supervisor for 13 hours from Saturday at 8.00pm to around Sunday 9.00am. Being a supervisor was actually quite fun. Things got done more efficiently and the workplace became genuinely enjoyable. I found that if you go around asking volunteers and workers if there’s anything you can do for them, and personally adopt any shitty tasks you see lying around yourself, you garner a certain respect throughout the shift. Unlike what is the standard supervisor approach, I also found that if you ask others what they think the best course of action might be and actually learn from their own experience, the job becomes much easier also. Perhaps this is playing with semantics, but it felt like there was a distinction between a traditional boss’ commands and me just providing leadership. I guess the significant difference between the two is that in this situation I didn’t have my own boss breathing down my neck and, because I’m not exactly a careerist fuckwit, I wouldn’t have cared had I had such a boss anyway.

Another aspect of being a supervisor was handling large sums of money. You know, easily in the thousands. On one hand, I had the sole key to the safe and was the only person who put money in that safe, and therefore probably should have recouped the rate of exploitation and taken some of what I was owed. Nobody would have known and there’s absolutely no way I would have been held accountable. Yet, bourgeois ethics prevented that from happening. I’m kind of regretting it now.

I also had the opportunity to discuss serious politics throughout the week. On one occasion, I discussed the nature of class and the Marxist understanding of it to a fellow worker and USyd student, and on the other I talked to a man from Papua New Guinea about politics in PNG. In the later, we covered the impact of Australian businesses in PNG and how our economic interests are rife there, and the state of unions and the government in PNG also. Both were quite intriguing discussions.

The aftermath of it all was that I got paid a fair bit, had some good experience, ate about 80% less than the norm, didn’t do hard weights for a week, and slept way less than I should have. I’ll probably proceed to dampen my bank account by buying books, eat rapidly in large quantities, exercise my ass off to get back into routine (I’m trying to run more than 2kms in 10 minutes), and oversleep to make the problem even worse. Fun fun fun.

School, Religion, and the Causes of Burgeoning Dislike

A recent discussion with some friends sparked a few thoughts to go racing around my head. Not particularly new thoughts mind you, just, seemingly, synthesised in a different way. The relevant part of the conversation was about religion. The current World Youth Day events that are happening in Sydney this month have brought a lot of back and forth to the fore both in individual discussions and more broadly in the mainstream press. My friends and I tried to illuminate that fine line that exists between being able to condemn the flaws of a religion, and yet not imply that people aren’t free to engage in religious beliefs and practices if they so choose. Although, the notable part of this is that it suggests that religion, at least in some respects, should be open to critique. If I can criticise a religion for being homophobic, why are the fundamentals of religion off the table? While it is true that the religion of the oppressed and that of the oppressor are indeed different, I still don’t think that a class analysis gives it any impunity.

Another product of a similar conversation was that atheism is not left wing. Well, not inherently, by default. By mere virtue of not believing in a god or gods someone doesn’t magically become left-wing. For example, Dawkins is definitely not left-wing among the public intellectual, atheist, camp. Importantly, though, atheism, like theism, can be left-wing depending on the context. The creation of sects that opposed the official religion of the Tsar in Russia were religions of the oppressed, and atheist groups that made a similar divergence from the state’s official policy were also an oppressed group. Whether religion is revolutionary or reactionary from a philosophical perspective deserves another post.

Unfortunately, not all that long ago, I was quite a prick when it came to religion. I probably wouldn’t disagree with you if you said that I also am one now. My attitude was probably a mixture of having it essentially rammed down my throat in all my schooling (13 years or so), and me characteristically being a fan of rigorous debate — especially when I get on the defensive. In the spirit of debate, quite often I become stripped of any respectable sensitivity in the pursuit of driving a point home. And yes, that’s a quick and easy path into asshole territory. I truly failed (and perhaps continue to fail) to understand why religion is somehow different to, say, politics; both are certainly heavily contested. And it’s not as if politics isn’t personal, which is often used as a defence for religion. Someone being a sexist fuck surely is also personal, and I definitely won’t refrain from telling you what I think about it. Then again, it could be argued that religion doesn’t have quite the oppressive nature that something like sexism does, and therefore is protected territory. Does the fact that religion can be oppressive and yet, ostensibly, consensual mean that it, once again, isn’t fit for argument? I’d argue no. Much like sexism, consensual oppression is still fucking oppression. And if we establish that religion isn’t oppressive then that still leaves its fundamentals to be critiqued — if criticism for the sake of being “right” or “wrong” is even a valid debate in this context.

To be clear, just because I see numerous similarities between discussing politics as I do religion, this doesn’t mean that it is always constructive to debate either of them. While I may personally enjoy the process of such debate, that does not mean that I place a large importance in it in changing opinions and views. Its importance only really lies in conjunction with material forces.

Anyway, I digress. What I originally wanted this post to primarily be about was how when you have very little choice in something your dislike of that something will burgeon rapidly. This relatively simple, and perhaps obvious, synthesis came out of the same above discussion when science was the topic. Primary- and high-school are structured in such a way that by the mere fact that you have almost no choice in what you’re learning or how you’re doing that learning, you become resentful. This alienation is not unlike the same process that is undergone in the workplace. In this conversation I stated that I hated science, and then proceeded to qualify that by saying school made me hate it. What I meant was not that I hated science per se — at its most basic, is anything not a product of science or at least influenced by it? — but more so that I hate the memory I have of my experience in learning science. The same goes for maths, too. Or maybe that isn’t correct; all I know is that I don’t want to study either. Normally, such a preference is dismissed as someone being a “words person” (contrasted to being a “numbers person”), which I don’t think is particularly accurate. Such a preference is socialised, so somewhere along the line you developed that taste through interaction. Another suggestion on this is that school usually delves into the fundamentals of a subject and consequently isn’t very interesting. I disagree. I would have loved a class on grammar and linguistics during high-school (not to mention ethics, politics, philosophy), just as I haven’t resented any (with one exception) of the “fundamentals” university classes that I’ve undertaken. That exception, a class that began with the fundamentals of law, derives partly from a political standpoint and partly because it was dead fucking boring. The politics aside, how vital is delivery in the process of learning in its capacity to create good or bad memories? Or, more broadly, what makes something boring? How much of it is the delivery and how much of it is content? I think such memories are probably important in creating temporary precedents for how you think about, and what you associate with, certain topics; but I don’t think they’re the be all and end all. Like, I might have had a few boring lectures about law, but that certainly doesn’t compare to me having almost no inclination to do any science-related classes — ever.

Ignoring the questions on whether religion can and should be critiqued, the common thread is “How has my dislike for both science, maths, and religion been shaped by my previous interactions? How much of it is in the content itself and how much is in the way it has been delivered to me? And if it’s in the content itself, and not just in memories of its delivery — why is, and how has, that content become so objectionable?” Maybe I’ll try and answer that in another post, but I have a feeling that I’ll just end up at those broad, ever-present, categories of structure and agency.

Two highly recommended articles on the subject:

1. The Value of Science. A public address given at the 1955 autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences by Richard P. Feynman.
2. Against School: How public education cripples our kids, and why. An article originally published in Harper’s Magazine by John Taylor Gatto.
   

Links for 29/6/08

• This surveillance onslaught is draconian and creepy – The Guardian
  

  The worst thing is the blithe insistence that this is all necessary and normal. We are watched more closely, by more cameras, with each passing day. But so faultlessly designed is our society that we have never come close to having a say on it.

• Five Myths About the New Wiretapping Law: Why it’s a lot worse than you think. – Slate Magazine
  

  Whatever Hoyer and Pelosi—and even Obama—say, this amounts to a retroactive blessing of the illegal program, and historically it means that the country will probably be deprived of any rigorous assessment of what precisely the administration did between 2001 and 2007. No judge will have an opportunity to call the president’s willful violation of a federal statute a crime, and no landmark ruling by the courts can serve as a warning for future generations about government excesses in dangerous times. What’s more, because the proposal so completely plays into the Bush conception of executive power, it renders meaningless any of its own provisions. After all, if the main lesson of the wiretapping scandal is that we need more surveillance power for the government, what is to stop President Bush—or President Obama or President McCain—from one day choosing to set this new law aside, too? “How will we be judged?” Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., asked in a stirring speech deploring the legislation yesterday. “The technical argument obscures the defining question: the rule of law, or the rule of men?”

Crazy screenshot of Gmail’s CSS

While editing Gmail’s CSS, Firefox’s Web Developer extension displaying the site’s classes and Ids with outlining turned on.

Links for 23/6/08

• Marxism vs. anarchism – The Red Scare
  Prior to my exams, I was going to critique the same blog’s post Why We Can’t (and Shouldn’t) “Win”; now I think he’s saved me the trouble.
• Mystery on Fifth Avenue – NYTimes.com
  Architect decides to build an elaborate scavenger hunt mystery into an apartment, without mentioning it to his client.