Hurrah for free trade!

I enter a supermarket and think to myself – thank God for free trade.
The isles of freedom. Shelves filled with endless possibilities. A wonderful sight. Lo and behold. Here I must be able to buy ethical goods. So many soft drinks. Pepsi, Coca-Cola … that’s it actually. I can’t believe it. 40 soft drinks, a whole rainbow of opportunity and yet they are all owned by either the Coca-Cola Company or PepisCo. Good thing monopolies are a thing of the past. So anyway, no soda for me. Let’s stick to the unhealthy section. I walk towards the cashier and viola, there are the chocolates. I happen to know that they are placed exactly there for a reason and that heavy research is put into where which chocolate should be placed to have the greatest effect. But since propaganda is a thing of the past and free trade is the new in, these placements can’t affect me. Neither can the advertisements of special offers and sexy-lady-for-happy-male-chocolate-consumer posters that hang everywhere. This is free trade and the choice is always mine. I am free and this is my world – trade. Let’s have a look at the Willie-Wonca amount of varieties. Nestlé, Cadbury’s, KraftFoods. Free trade is evidently better in the chocolate section – we have three brands. Oh, wait, I found a fourth one: Mars.
Let’s get some soup … Knorr and Kraft.
Cereals … Kraft, Nestlé, Kellogg’s.
The choices, the choices. What am I supposed to do? Which immoral multinational am I forced to support today? Did I say forced? This is free trade.

The ten commandments – A personal view.

The ten commandments form the cornerstone of “western” ethics. Abide by these and all will go well. I will attempt to give a personal analysis of each commandment.
1) Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.
And so ipso facto there are other Gods? I find no moral imperative here. If God is good and God is great then he will, and must tolerate those who have other approaches than Christians, Muslims and Jews. I respect religious beliefs and I cannot give in to a law that forbids me from respecting Hindus and Buddhists.
2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image … etc.
Art is good and art is graet. No, leave art to be art and religion to be religion.
3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.
Language must be free. There can be no restrictions on freedom of speech. There is, however, nothing good in insulting the deities of others, but me cursing my God (if I have any) does no harm to anybody.
4) Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Yes. Yes. And further more yes. There is no moral imperative here, but without rest man is an animal. One day of rest per week is a necessity.
5) Honour thy father and thy mother.
If they deserve respect, then yes. But this cannot be a moral imperative raised above questioning. It cannot be right to honour thy father if he beats thee.
6) Thou shalt not kill.
This perhaps is the only commandment with an absolute moral validity. Murder must in all cases be deemed wrong. Would you kill Hitler if you had the chance? This question is stupid as it demands as a prerequisite that you know the future. At the given moment at which killing Hitler could be said to have been good he had not yet committed the crimes he was to commit later, and since one at that point had no way of knowing, and since one must accept mankind’s free will, then there is no saying that it would have ended that way. Life imprisonment for treason yes, but death, no. Murder is the only absolute evil.
7) Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Is this a moral imperative? Is it better to live together forever in misery after love is gone, or for life to move on. Is promiscuity wrong in itself? Circumstance baby, circumstance.
8) Thou shalt not steal?
What is theft? Is it theft for a state to take back its natural resources when a foreign company or foreign country has abused it? Is it theft to confiscate unused earth so as to redistribute it to the poor? If the economic situation is so unbalanced as it is today it cannot be wrong to reform for the sake of equality.
9) Thou shalt not bear false witness.
And what if you live in a regime where “correct” witness leads to the accused being killed. Shall bondage to this law make you an accomplice in murder? I see this commandment as a moral guideline in a functioning society, but it is not necessarily a moral imperative.
10) Though shalt not covet they neighbours house, wife, etc.
Desire is not action. Jealousy is not murder. So my neighbour has a nicer house than me, yet I do not steal from it, destroy it or murder him/her. Am I a bad person? Morals must be based on reality and not fantasy. Ethical norms cannot be thought police.

It seams to me that only two of the ten commandments are imperative. Murder is always a no-no. Rest is always a yes-yes. All the rest are circumstantial, must be contextualized and reflected over.

Poetry

Why not. The purest art form. Beauty in few words. They say a picture says more than a thousand words, but a poem can say more than a novel. I do not aspire to write a novel in my poems, I am not Darwish, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, but I try to say something. Not much perhaps, not art maybe, but something...

Haiku Flowers

Haiku flowers - restricted finesse,
floating beauty, rootless.

Chaos and serenity

In the chaos
of sound and sight
that was the city.

I found peace and serenity.

A bench in a park,
miles away from civilization,
a minute from the metro station.

Charlie Parker

Salt peanuts, salt peanuts

To the sounds of Charlie Parker
I drift
to the sounds of Charlie Parker.

Salt peanuts, salt peanuts

Rumsfeld bites the big one!

Donald Rumsfeld has finally stepped down. The Democrats are no better than the Republicans as far as the Israel-Palestien issue goes. Bar the fact that they are as much pro-free trade as the Republicans. Let’s forget that there is not a nuance of left wing in the Democratic party. Let us forget that the Kyoto treaty still won’t be signed. Ban on landmines and arms control won’t happen. Much will remain the same … however – it is a time of celebration. In a country with a political spectrum ranging from right to righter, the people have used the best choice available. They have ousted the Republican grip on all that moves in politics, but more importantly they have forced the most arrogant of all military leaders to resign. The architect behind the Iraqi tragedy. The man who decided that State Department intelligence and army experience were liabilities rather than assets. The man who is directly responsible for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. This makes Donald Rumsfeld a war criminal that has thrown gasoline on the Middle Eastern fire that he was the architect behind. No matter what happens the next two years his ousting must be celebrated as the greatest achievement of yesterdays election. Glad to see you go Mr. Unknown Unknown.

Power Politics in the WTO.

In theory the WTO is a highly democratic institution. Practice however is theory’s diametrical opposition. The Secretariat is all but neutral, voting is completed on a high-pressure basis and closed meetings with restricted participation undermine the idea of transparency.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is in theory a democratic institution based on the consensus model and the principal of one country one vote. Theory in this case is often diametrically opposed to the practical facts of realpolitikk in world trade. This contradiction is apparent in a variety of instances, some of which we will investigate in this article.
The examples we could provide are many and the instances in which they incur are large and varied. For reasons of length and simplicity we have chosen to investigate only certain fields of democratic misconduct. The instances we wish to focus on are: a) the so-called neutrality of the Secretariat. b) Economic and political pressure applied bilaterally prior to voting. c) Exclusion from meetings.

The Secretariat: Negotiator or mediator?
The case of the Secretariat is such that in theory this is supposed to be a neutral role. The Secretariat is supposedly only to have the role of facilitator, and not that of a mediator. Upon closer inspection however, it becomes evident that this is a rhetorical hoax. In article VI.4 of the WTO it is stated that: “The … director general and the … Secretariat shall be exclusively international in character.” And further: “shall not seek or accept instructions from any government or any other authority external to the WTO.” In theory all is good. In practice however, all is not. Firstly, the secretariat as a whole is mostly composed of representatives from the developed countries, even though they represent a minority in the WTO. Secondly, the director general has as of yet not not been of a EU or USA origin. Thirdly, and more importantly, there are a series of situations where the director general has far overstepped his so-called neutral standing. Such instances include former director general Mike Moore appointing people to Secretariat posts based on personal politics. One relevant example here is the promotion of Chiedu Osakwe after he had supported Mike Moore’s election as Director General. Further complaints include the fact that he was accused of negotiating on behalf of the EU in Doha. The Secretariat is also overly involved in the drafting of negotiating texts, thus strongly affecting the outcome of final resolutions.
Developing countries have further complained that the technical assistance provided by the Secretariat is strongly biased, giving advise based upon the wishes of the stronger members, and that in their roles as minute writers, they often manipulate the results of the meetings. As is quoted by an African delegate: “they write what they want you to say, rather than what you actually said.”

Bilateral pressure
To move on to the argument that member states are pressured bilaterally through political and economical means, there is a large amount of evidence to support this. One of the most famous examples is the infamous aid package Pakistan received the day after the Doha round had successfully been completed. November 14. 2001 the Doha round was successfully completed, and Pakistan, which had previously been negative to the resolution, had abstained from voting against. The very next day Pakistan concluded a deal with Washington that was to give them a US$ 1billion aid package. The EU followed suit and provided Pakistan with increased textile quotas, and political recognition of President Musharraf’s rule. This is of course one of the more blatant examples of such bilateral economic pressure, and the strongly embedded powers of the wealthy inherit in the system.
The blatancy is not always eminent, but there are a series of other examples. We will provide some others before we move on to the third case for argument. In Doha for example, the 11th September attacks were used for all they were worth, and several negotiators were faced with the argument that passing this bill is part of the war on terror – the old with us or against us rhetoric. Other negotiators were faced with personal pressure, and for fear of losing their jobs softened their position. In other instances Washington realized that the strength of the opposition was due to the fact that the negotiators had factual “control” over the deal’s consequences, and would therefore bypass the negotiator and go directly to the ministers who had less competence in the area in question, and thus make the Capitol soften the position of it’s negotiating representative.

Closed Meetings
The third point we wish to point out is the use of so-called closed meetings. Despite the WTO’s rhetorical cloak of democracy and its frequent use of the words “openness” and “transparency”, the use of closed meetings is common practice. These meetings are held not only on an exclusionary basis, they are also kept secret. This is one of the reasons several developing countries have complained that texts have “appear[ed] from nowhere”. Up until Seattle these meetings included no more than 20-30 countries, all selected by the so-called neutral chair, but not much changed after this. More members are now included, though nothing has changed in the sense that these meetings still occur, and that they are still arranged secretly. This despite comments from economical “big shots”, such as the Norwegian foreign minister Knut Vollebæk, who commented: “One cannot continue with global trade negotiations where 20 countries participate while the remaining 120 countries have to wait in the hallways.” (Aftenposten 3.12.99)
The included participants vary, but the EU and the USA are always included. Trend wise, common participating countries in these meetings are the countries also known as the “friends of the chair” and heavy-weighters in terms of population and economy such as India, Malaysia and China. Smaller and poorer developing countries are rarely included, yet it is in these “rooms of consultation” that most of the groundwork for the paper to be voted on in is laid. The paper is of course not final until it has been agreed upon through consensus, but due to factors previously discussed, opposition to such a paper is, more often than not, extremely difficult.

Wanted: Reform
As I have shown here, the WTO is in dire need of democracy. Much of the theoretical foundation can be said to exist, but practice can be seen as little else than a corruption of the idea. Criticism of the WTO is many faceted, and even the most ardent opposition groups disagree on their goals as to what kinds of changes are needed. Some see removal, others see reform. Yet one thing remains clear – to retain or obtain any form of legitimacy, there needs to be a process of democratisation. Several such reforms are possible within the given structure, others require huge changes within the organization itself. Some of the more realistic reforms can easily be laid out. For one, it is possible to have stricter rules concerning the Secretariat with quotas relating to membership on a national basis. Furthermore, to avoid bilateral pressure, voting should occur on an anonymous basis. And thirdly the closed meetings should be made accessible to all member states. These reforms will not please the most ardent opposition, but it will go a long in making the WTO into a more acceptable organization, make the negotiations fairer and the results will hopefully, as a consequence of this, have a closer correlation to the interest of the developing countries.

Commercialization and aesthetics.

It struck me as I first saw Piccadilly Circus. It had struck me before, but it really struck me as I saw Piccadilly Circus. It wasn’t just the massiveness of the commercials in themselves that struck me, the exposure space or the fact that as an epileptic I felt vulnerable. What struck me was the power of the aesthetics. These advertisements were masterpieces in their own right, genius in a sense, almost perfect. Their aesthetic value is immeasurable – and without considering them beyond this one could almost call them art – yet that is exactly what they aren’t. Art must, in one sense or another be autonomous. Now, that is not to say that art exists in a vacuum. Art is dependent on a social, political and inter-textual (visual is perhaps better?) context. This however is not the essence of art, it is rather where art finds itself. Art is a form of communication where there is no clear definition – no conclusion that is given from the beginning. That is to say that there must be some form of interpretive space, some mystification, some form of dialogue. Art is hard to define, but if one agrees that at least one or two of the definitions listed above happen to be true, then one must agree that commercials cannot be art – no matter how aesthetically impressive they are.
The interpretive space in advertisements is closed, sealed – the message: BUY! Buy this product! There might be more to it than that, the advertisement in question might support a certain value, or a state of being, yet this can never be the point, it too is a path to the one and only interpretation which is the above stated. Following this there is no room for mystification – the observer cannot demystify the commercial. There is no dialogue – only a monologue, a monosyllable monologue. An aesthetic tour de force and a brand name, a logo – end.
I would further argue that for a creator of advertisements to be pretending to be creating art is immoral. For being an artist must, in all definitions, demand a maximum amount of freedom. If limitations are set on the form of expression, the message that can be conveyed or on the artist itself, then the would be artist has given in to a pressure that would reduce him from an artist to a highly skilled aesthetically minded hired labourer. Nohting wrong in that, just not art. To quote Albert Camus: "Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others." The maker of a commercial has no expression – for he has no freedom to express. His job, for we must not pretend otherwise, is to make a product appear as sellable as possible. If his personal form of expression gets in the way of that, then the expression and not the product must suffer. That’s to say that the commercial can never be greater than the product in itself, it exists in a simple master and servant relationship where the advertisement has no real existence, no autonomous area, is in fact nothing without the product it represents. It is not it’s own idea, but rather a masterpiece in terms of being the conveyer of another idea.
In many ways commercials are for the capitalistic society what social realist “art” was for the Soviet state. Were they artists? Their job was to aesthetically portray a worldview, or ideology if you will, if by failing to do this they were rejected as “artists”. The same for advertisements. If the ad, however aesthetic it might be in itself, fails to sell a product, it itself is a failure. In fact a commercial film would be considered a failure if the sales didn’t increase, even if the very film itself won a palme d’or. In other words a commercial can be judged as an object in aesthetic terms, but not in artistic terms. Since the goal of the commercial is so set, the only “freedom” the maker has is on an aesthetical level. This, as Piccadilly Circus will demonstrate, is often done with great success, however they can never be appreciated beyond that, in an artistic sense.

Israel – apartheid state?

I have heard it argued by more moderate progressive thinkers that Israel is not an apartheid state, although the same political analysts are willing to concede that the Israeli politics in the occupied areas can be considered to have a character reminding of apartheid. I find this to be a highly interesting argument – though it is full of faults. If we accept this argument, that the policies in Israel proper are so radically different from those conducted in the occupied territories that the one is non-racist and democratic society, whilst the other is apartheid, then there are massive international political implications that must be considered. If one can apply this logic to Israel then it must be equally applied to all states, otherwise it becomes a case of double standard. Let us take the South African example, from whence the expression apartheid originated. Could one separate policies conducted in the townships and the Bantustans from those conducted in white South Africa? Or, was colonial Britain not colonial because the colonies existed outside Britain? Neither of these rhetorical questions can be answered in the affirmative. One cannot separate internal politics from foreign affairs when it comes to characterizing a state.
That aside – let’s consider the argument at large – is Israel an apartheid state? Well, let us consider some of the particulars. Does Israel apply racially discriminatory policies? Both yes and no. Israel, we must remember is, within its own borders, a democracy in which Arabs, Jews, Druzes and all other groups with citizenship have voting rights. In this there is no racism. If this was the case with the occupied territories as well, that is if all inhabitants of the occupied territories were equal, then it would be an occupation, but not apartheid. This however is not the case. Palestinians living in the occupied territories do not have the right to vote, yet Jewish settlers (many of whom don’t recognize the state of Israel) do. This would point in the direction of supporting the apartheid paradigm. Either everybody should have voting rights, or nobody should – in this case ones right to vote is determined by ethnicity.
Do all inhabitants of the occupied territories have equal rights to the use of the infrastructure? No. Certain roads are reserved for Israeli citizens, even if these citizens live in the occupied territories, in settlements of which some are deemed illegal by the very state that allows the settlers to use the roads while keeping Palestinians off them. Is water equally distributed? A quick glance at studies made by people like Sara Roy (an Israeli) will show how this is not the case, and that the water is unproportionatly reserved for Israeli’s. Does the army apply equal tactics when dealing with demonstrators independent of ethnicity? Not the case – shocked Palestinians watched as illegal settlers were evacuated. What shocked them was not the evacuation in itself – although it was politically shocking if we ignore the greater picture – but rather the fact that the IDF showed such care not to harm the demonstrators who had attacked the police, thrown acid at them and burned tires. A further look at studies made by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International will show how Jewish torture victims don’t exist, yet torture occurs frequently towards Palestinian “terrorists”. On might claim that that is due to the fact that there are Palestinian terrorists, yet there are no Israeli terrorists. Not the case. If PFLP is a terrorist organization for having assassinated Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi, an allegation I will not argue against, then so is the case with Rabin’s murderer. He however was not deemed a terrorist, but rather a criminal, a murderer, a fanatic. Why the difference in definition?
If Israel can be deemed to be conducting apartheid policies in any of the areas under their jurisdiction, then the state itself is apartheid. If the state of Israel wants to cede being apartheid then it must withdraw from the occupied territories. If this is the case, then the moderate progressives will be right – Israel is not apartheid, and the ex-occupied territories are not our internal affair. As it stands however the occupied territories are internal affairs and must be treated as such – policies there determine how one defines Israel proper.

Hip-Hop: Busting the hegemony or normative capitalism

A philosophical thought piece on the nature of hip-hop.

Hip-hop has two natures, an intrinsic Janus-face if you prefer. I use the term Janus-face, because this two faceted nature is a set of diametrically opposed expressions. The first is the political face, made famous through such groups as Naughty by Nature, early
2Pac (2pacalypse now etc.). The other face, probably most famous of the two, is the social-pornographic face. Artists ascribing to this face would be the likes of Snoop Doggy Dogg, 50Cence etc. (Though I would like to argue that the first was indirectly political in his heyday.) I will argue that hip-hop was not always Janus-faced, but that there has been a transition of time. To paraphrase Theodor Adorno – art is political in its very nature, as it rises above the crowd and just is. It has no use, it is not a tool of capitalism and through its mere expression as art, it is dynamic, contrary to the norm and opposed to the hegemony. (The last term is Antonio Gramsci’s) In such a sense, early groups such as The Rock Steady Crew are political even though their lyrics are nothing as compared to blatantly political texts such as the modern: “they keep the 3rd world in a stagnant position / cause they profit by holding it down” or “it’s money makes money makes people act funny”, both by Roots Manuva. The point being that early hip-hop was political in its mere essence, whilst the hip-hop of today must be blatantly so in order to be termed political. The Rock Steady Crew, one of the first major hip-hop bands, could be called political because they, like early jazz before it, claimed a black expression – opposed to the norm, the popular music dominated by white artists. Their lyrics were anything but political – not only not political, they can best be described as naïve: “There’s a new headline, there’s a new sensation / Ev’rybody’s talking about the situation / Bodies in expression of music inspiration / Tell us when you feel it ‘cause we’re gonna rock the nation.” This was a clear statement, yet it was not political in classical terms. The message was – listen, we have our own expression and it’s coming your way. Popular music was never to be the same again. Would a brand new band with the same lyrics be considered political? The banality of the question reveals the answer. Some of the explanation in how Rock Steady Crew, despite of this, can be considered as a political band can be found in theories of the Other and Representation as found in the works of Edward W. Said. He attacks thinkers like Karl Marx for their idea that the Other cannot represent, it must be represented. The Rock Steady Crew in a sense opposes the Marxist doctrine and follows Said – here is “our” expression! In such a sense much of the early gangsta rap can be said to have been political - “Yeahhh so we gonna smoke an ounce to this / G's up hoes down while ya motherfuckas bounce to this. / Rollin' down the street smokin' endo sippin' on gin n juice / Laid back--with my mind on my money and my money on my mind” – can be said to have been an internal expression, a wake up call for “rich” Americans, where the “gangstas” expressed themselves. This is our life, we enjoy it, we’re more than mere statistics in your criminal records! As with Rock Steady Crew the “show” cannot be repeated, as with all art it has an effect in the now – an effect that phases out. Today 50Cence can write similar lyrics but he is 10-15 years too late. Now his expression is part of the grand musical industry – he has lost expressional credibility – he has become institutionalized so to speak. Now the same lyrics express what an average hip-hop fan expects. What is hip-hop without the guns, the tits and the crack? It’s all about money now, 50Cence cannot, in Adorno’s terms, rise above the norm – he is the norm. It is here that the implicit political context of “old school hip-hop” vanishes and modern artists are forced to be explicitly political in order to be considered political at all.
Perhaps this is not true for female hip-hop artists. Although women have always featured in hip-hop (the lead singer of Rock Steady Crew for example was a woman), they have usually played the role of a chorus or the subjects of the lyrics: “I got a pocket full of rubbers and my home boys do too / So turn off the lights and close the door / But for what--we don't love you hoes”. (Snoop Doggy Dogg) In this context it might therefore be considered to be political when artist such as Beyonce sing: “Tonight i'll be your naughty girl / I'm callin all my girls / We're gonna turn this party out / I know you want my body / Tonight i'll be your naughty girl / I'm callin all my girls / I see you look me up and down / And i came to party” The point here being, as with Snoop Doggy Dog and Rock Steady Crew, this could be considered a case of the “Other” representing itself. Tired of being the sexual theme of male hip-hop, female hip-hop singers are now “liberating” themselves, expressing their own sexuality. Sex is still the theme, being naughty is still a hip-hop virtue, but here it is the woman being naughty by her own nature, she runs the show and she brings her girls rather than having them being called on. Politics and art are temporal – what was political yesterday is no longer politics today, and what was art yesterday is capitalistic reproduction today. The hope for hip-hop must be that it is able to realize the nature of transition and always keep one step ahead of the music industry.