Monday, 28th of August, 2006

War-Torn Middle East Seeks Solace In Religion.

Give this a go.
I’m interested in what results are found after enough people answer the above. It only takes half a minute and could be worth it in the long run… maybe.

Friday, 18th of August, 2006

Fascinating. Bruno Latour, scion of “science studies”, is worried enough by the Right’s co-opting of much of the discource of “critique”, “Theory” or whatever you want to call it, that he’s asking whether maybe its time is over:
Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern
And he sounds almost entirely reasonable. Unfortunately it’s all too easy to get the idea from his and others’ writings in general that they are skeptical all the way down about facts, evidence and objective reality. Here he writes:

While we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we have now to reveal the real objective and incontrovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? And yet entire Ph.D programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always the prisoner of language, that we always speak from one standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we meant? Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like it or not? Why can’t I simply say that the argument is closed for good?

Fascinating.

Sunday, 13th of August, 2006

Recently, my band has decided forthrightly to stop flying with one of the cheap carriers here (you can guess who). Why? Apart from the obviously lower level of comfort on their flights (but they are generally cheaper, so it never stopped us in the past), we recently encountered a remarkable level of hostility from them regarding the realities of our job. We were told that they have a rule about not allowing instruments in the cabin — something we’ve never been informed of before — and in addition they stopped us from taking our boxes of CDs on board with us.
We were lucky on that flight not to have smashed CD cases on arrival, but while CDs in the hold might be just tolerable, violins and violas in the hold is a complete farce. Here’s a great news item from BBC online, which describes how the Bolshoi Theatre musicians will have to travel by train now that the cabin baggage restrictions are in force in the UK, because their insurance doesn’t cover instruments in the hold. And a cellist describes her horror at putting her instrument in the hold. Admittedly I transport mine that way, because I simply can’t afford to pay for another ticket for it, but it does get bashed around — even the Qantas baggage handlers have no respect for musical instruments plastered with Fragile stickers. This quote resonated depressingly with me:

At Zurich airport, she found the prams lined up neatly in the baggage hall but she had to wait for her cello to come in on the bulky items conveyor belt on which it had been placed upside down.

Yep, the fuckers inevitably stick the cello belly-down on the conveyor-belt (in fact, in Australia is’t even sometimes on the main conveyor belt with the other luggage). How stupid can you be? Well, it doesn’t always come out on the conveyor-belt, but when it does, it’s hardly ever the right way up. And things do shift around inside the case, so if I’m putting it on a long flight I try and pad it with clothing as much as possible.
(Nice to see a comment on the BBC page from the wonderful cellist Steven Isserlis, too!)

These issues are just some of the reasons that I suspect that the UK’s full ban on cabin baggage can’t last long, especially if the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit. Who cares about no liquids? Noone really; but not being able to take one’s expensive laptops and musical instruments, often with limited insurance, on board would be disastrous for many of the most frequent air travellers.
Meanwhile, we no can longer trust that the above-mentioned airline will do the right thing by us, and thus cannot travel with them any more. This means more expensive travel for us (and the necessity of trying to confirm times as early as possible so as to get the cheaper flights before they get taken), but the alternative is unacceptable.

Friday, 11th of August, 2006

MySpace sucks, doesn’t it?
But it has its uses. Like this.

Friday, 4th of August, 2006

Here’s something rather troubling. The Gay Police Association in the UK were so concerned about the increase in “very serious homophobic incidents on the grounds and justification of religious belief” that they took out an advertisement in the Independent’s Diversity supplement in June. Certainly the ad contained some strong imagery, “depicting a Bible beside a pool of blood under the heading ‘In the name of the father’”.
Christian groups have gone mad over it. To the extent that the Metropolitan Police are investigating “whether the advert constitutes a faith crime”. Say what? Whaaaat? See, this is where you get when you create legislation stopping people from criticising religion. You’re protecting one set of minority groups over others. Choice quote from some Christian cop:

He stresses that while he wishes to say nothing against the GPA - with whom he says they have good working relationships - “we are getting to a position where, to state any position contrary to the GPA position, is homophobic.”

Not like those Christians, who start Metropolitan Police investigations and call for the chairman of the Gay Police Association to resign as soon as their oh-so-frail belief system is challenged. *sigh* Look forward to the Spanish Inquisition, coming soon to a free, democratic, open society near you.

Via Ophelia Benson.

Tuesday, 1st of August, 2006

Here’s a stunning blog post from Lisa Goldman on the affect the conflict has had on the (relationship between the) editors of Time Out Beirut and Time Out Tel Aviv.
Read it all to get an idea of the effect of this war, but also a tiny bit of a concept of what is at stake for Israel. There’s no doubt they’ve made many very bad moves, but it may be that responding with full force to Hezbollah was not one of them, as such. It’s worth never forgetting what a tenuous position Israel is in in the area, although it’s worth tempering that somewhat against the natural Jewish paranoia.
This isn’t to say that I don’t utterly deplore the way that Israel has variously blamed civilians for not getting out in time (when often they have no means to get out of areas after they’re leafleted), declared civilians to be basically terrorists purely based on their location, and destroyed so much. It’s a tragedy - for Israel’s standing in the world and for the tremendous number of Lebanese who have had their lives turned upside down, suffered, died…

So yeah. It’s all gone to shit, and a peaceful Middle East seems more distant than ever. The thing is, how many fanatics of one provenance or other there does it take to bring it all down? Not many. If we can’t convince every rabid rabbi and mad mullah that there’s a middle ground where everyone can live together in harmony, then someone’s just going to provoke the other side all over again at the critical points.
It seems like there’s no way to surmount this “people problem”, but I guess we have to “keep the faith”, by which I mean that we have to behave, in our actions, plans, rhetoric and hope, as if there is a peaceful future possible. If we don’t, it will never happen.

This ties in with something I’ve been thinking of recently, which is to do with “being realistic”. It seems to me that the Left often likes to hold different groups up to different ideals. The Left wants a world where there are no borders, no bosses, no oppressors. It seems often to say to Israel, the US, etc: “Don’t pursue your own interests. Just stop oppressing those Palestinians! Stay out of Lebanon!” and so on, but it fails to treat everyone else the same way. You have to be willing to question the motives and actions of the Palestinians as well, of Hezbollah; but as far as my point goes here, you also have to be realistic. You may wish for a world where borders and differences don’t matter; but you can’t get there by expecting one side (”your side”, or “the West”, or “the Establishment”) to already organise their lives, States, infrastructure, as if that world were already here. If Israel dissolved its army today because it believed in a world without war, then it would be annihilated, pure and simple.
There’s a more nuanced way that still “keeps the faith”, works towards a better world, but by being realistic, by acknowledging the way things are, can actually do its job better. As Peter Singer says in A Darwininan Left, progressive movements owe it to themselves to learn from science and respect truth, because it’s with the tools thus gained that they can make the world they want.

Well, this has been a rather rambling and unfocused post. I hope it made a tiny bit of sense. Other further reading:
Why Truth Matters by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom
and lots of the various blogs and feeds I try to keep up with these days (you can see most via the link, but can’t mark them as read or anything without being logged in)
Some interesting commentary on left-vs-right arguments viz this conflict at Polemica