On voting

Abstaining from voting and voting blank appear, when taken face-value, to be the same thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. If one investigates the two phenomenon closely one will discover that they are, in effect, diametrically opposed. Abstaining from voting is a non-participatory stance. Its political implications are – I don’t care!; It doesn’t matter who wins; All candidates are equally good; I agree with everything; etcetera, etcetera ad nauseam.

Voting blank, on the other hand, is an active statement of opposition. Its political implications are – I care!; It matters who wins, however, none of the candidates on offer represent me; I disagree so strongly with the status quo and those who claim to be able to alter/keep it, that I cannot support any of the politic(ian)s on the ballot.

For those disillusioned with the existing politics the choice between these two options is a vital decision. One must ask oneself: Do I care?

On perfection and the death of the metaphor

No metaphor can ever be perfect as such perfection would render the metaphor into the thing (phenomenon) itself, hence it would cease to be a metaphor. The use of the metaphor therefore is not that of recreating the thing, but rather that of approximating it in a rhetorical sense, making the reader think. The imperfection is an imbued part of this art, as the very imperfection creates a second level of thought. Not only is the reader forced to think – yes, that’s a good way of putting it! – but also – that’s not quite it, is it?

Reflections on the Nobel Peace prize

In two of the last five years’ Nobel Peace prize ceremonies there has been a certain symbolic silence, or a silence of symbolism.

The first of the two I am talking about is the 2002 prize handed to Jimmy Carter “For his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.” What isn’t said in this is the following: “Dear Mr. Bush. Please remember the good old days of American Foreign Policy when human rights really was an issue. Remember when the US-government really tried to achieve peace in the Middle East. Please Mr. President, it’s not too late to repent! You can still change your ways.”

The second such prize of symbolic silence is the 2007 prize, half of it handed to Al Gore. What was said was “For their [Al Gore and the UN Climate Panel] efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” What wasn’t said, in the tradition of silence, was: “Dr. Mr. Bush, the man who you defeated in elections (not completely democratically) has in his job as not-president, done a more important job for making the world a better place than you. A fact that is quite impressive considering the fact that you’ve ruled the greatest nation on earth, while he has been a mere traveling preacher-man.” Also, what isn’t said, is: “Dear American people. We recognize the fact that if you had a full-fledged, well-functioning democracy, the man whom we honour today would have been your president.” And by the same token: “Dear Mr. Gore. Thank you not only for your work on making climate change an issue, but also for your insistent work on pointing out the malfunctions of American democracy.” Taking the silence into consideration, perhaps the choice wasn’t so bad after all. Still, I can’t help wonder … why doesn’t Al Gore ever use public transport in his film?

Pilate the redeemer

Let us Pontus Pilate

all the unmentionable sins

discolouring our p(s)alms

as we recognize that

The niggers of the universe

come in all shades

and that universal suffering

is the colourless man’s burden.

What are the hegemony defining institutions?

There is a certain correlation between the state-running institutions and the institutions that define the hegemony. (I am obviously using the term hegemony as defined by Antonio Gramsci.) The state is run by a government, administered by ministries and financed through and by a series of financial institutions. None of these (government, bureaucracy and financial institutions) define the boundaries of political thought. Hence the correlation is not direct. Rather it is co-dependency that relates them. The relationship must be investigated by any person (or party) that seriously seeks to change society. For the sake of simplicity we must assume that our analysis is based on the democratic model, although many of the same characteristics are pertained in a dictatorship. However, the complexities of influencing the hegemony in a dictatorship needs to be studied by more intelligent people than myself. As the liberty of assuming democracy, truly a liberty indeed, has been taken, we can proceed.
As the hegemony defines what is politically imaginable, any political party that operates outside this given spectrum of ideas cannot be elected. The hegemony defines the discourses and the political arguments that breach this accepted set of words, expressions, ideas, etc. become invalidated – unlistenable. Since political parties are elected by the electorate based on the “soundness” of their arguments it is vital that the hegemony is as much in tune with ones political views as possible. The less in tune they are, the less likely one is of obtaining support. The political parties who are in tune with the hegemony can thus change society in their own image, thereby further strengthening the hegemony. Those political parties outside the hegemony, however, find themselves incapable of changing society, and, being forced against the wall, must either change themselves or challenge, that is attempt to change, the hegemony. In order to do this it is vital that one understands which institutions build, strengthen and hence possess the potential for tearing the hegemony down and rebuilding it.
These institutions must, ipso facto, be the institutions of words and thoughts. Such institutions would therefore include, in order of bottom to top: schools, ranging from first grade to university; labour unions and other similar social institutions; publishing houses; think tanks; the media, be it television or “the press” in all its forms; and finally political parties and their discussion forums, debates etc.
Although the top, ie. the later mentioned in the list possess the most direct influence, in the classic sense, they are almost completely dependent on the “lower” hegemony to institutions. That is to say that politicians, the media, think tanks, publishing houses etc. are completely dependent on an audience. This audience must, in a sense, have been raised. From this one can deduce that the hegemony is formed in and by the education system. Hence pedagogue is the very science of hegemonic alteration. Change in thought, as with most other forms of change, has a bottom to top structure, whereby the teacher, in the concrete rather than abstract sense, has the pivotal role. A person taught, from the age of six to eighteen (or more), that the world is flat, will have great difficulty changing his mind when informed by a newspaper later in his life that the world is in fact round. Likewise a person educated on the roundness of the earth will, with a flick of the wrist, denounce the journalist who fraudently reports on flatness.

On morality and circumstance

Is a moral man in an immoral system, that is a man who breaks with the immorality of the system yet still works within its confines, a moral man independent of the system or is he merely moral when contrasted to the system? Phrased differently - is personal morality dependent on circumstance or is morality independent of circumstance? This is a difficult question, and one for which I have no good answer, but the question is nonetheless worth investigating.
Take for instance the jailor who befriended Nelson Mandela. (If we indeed are to believe his version of events. For the purpose of argument, let’s accept it.) In his story he is portrayed as a moral person because he deviates from the norm. He is a firm believer in Apartheid, and works for the inner echelons of the security system, yet he doesn’t exhort to extraordinary violence – he stays within the confines of what is “permitted”. All his colleagues use that extra energy that is “required”. What does this tell us about him? Not that he is moral, nor that he is non-violent, in fact all it tells us is that he is obedient and has a firm belief that the racist system can function without the use of excessive violence. He is in fact just following the law that is made by an immoral system. The fact that he is not excessively immoral does not make him moral, only apparently so as he is, by degree, more moral than his fellow immoralists. Furthermore, as he loses faith in the system and sees the wrongs that are committed he hopes that it will end, yet he remains a jailor. Still, for reasons that are not clear, we perceive him as the good guy. Why? Is it perhaps that he doubts? Is it that he wills the system to end? But as they say – action speaks louder than words – and by this standard this jailor is so silent you can hear a pin drop. If he was so feverishly against the system could he really defend the fact that he was working for the very system that had held Nelson Mandela in prison for 20+ years? “I want to witness history unfolding,” he says (perhaps not in those exact words), and this is supposed to make us feel sympathy – and in a sense we do. But has this anything to do with morality? If he really wanted to make a change, based on moral grounds, he would leave his job in protest. He doesn’t – he risks nothing – he stays. Yes, he befriends Mandela. Yes, he is not as bad as the other jailors. Yes, he hopes Apartheid will end. But does this make him good or is this only a fata morgana produced by the circumstance of Apartheid?

4th of July. Requiem for a dream.

The day has arrived once again. The day when the world’s first democracy celebrates its national day. The day of independence. The day that represents, more than anything else, the superiority of democracy and an end to occupation. It is the day that should represent that a better world was to come. That from then on man (not women) was free.
This year it is hard to celebrate. Once again the Algerian syndrome has been reawakened in Palestine. Iraq remains as removed from a democratic state as ever. The democratic development that was to sweep the Middle East like a positive domino effect has turned sour. It has become the realization of the domino effect of a bygone era. The Middle East has become less democratic. Lebanon seems to be heading towards another major crisis. Palestine has become Gaza and the West Bank – two governments, one people under occupation and no future (unless the world applies pressure in the right direction – that is against the occupier and not against the occupied). Then of course there is Iraq – where to begin? Sure the KRG works, but that’s about it (and what will happen if they demand Kirkuk?).Then there is Syria – vilified (well deserving, but it is still irresponsible) and hence forced to ally with Iran. Oh and then there is Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Our friends in the region. The ones who receive subsidies so that they can keep oppressing the people we don’t like. And of course Israel – in the words of UN special advisor John Dugard: occupier, colonizer and apartheid governor. When our friends are as bad as our enemies and we (the west) block all reforms for fear of the unknown, we have a tendency to shake our heads and say that the region is hopeless. But we cannot Pontius Pilate our sins. We invaded Iraq. We support oppressive regimes. We tip the balances. We boycott elected governments. We sell weapons to dictators. We drew the maps. We looked the other way when civil society was destroyed. We do nothing when walls are built. We ignore the UN-resolutions. We blame the victims. And then we wonder why it doesn’t work the way we wanted it to. Are we even sure how we want it to work? Do we have the right to decide how it should work?
And then back to the 4th of July. President Bush made his idealistic export turn sour and in the greatest irony of all, turned it sour in his own country as the paranoia kicked in. Yes I am talking about the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay and the “fuck-Kyoto-why-take-care-of-the-future-?” stance. And et cetera et cetera ad nausea.
4th of July should be a beautiful day. I beg of you – all Americans out there – make it beautiful once again. It will require a great effort, a cleaning of the closet and at least one election (great inshallah factor there), but for the sake of making that great day valiant again it is worth it.

Palestine - some experiences

For years now I have been studying the Middle East, but since the age of 5 I have not visited Palestine/Israel. Last week I finally did. I have come to realize that intellectuality can only prepare you so much.

The border: I ended up waiting there for over 5 hours. Of those 4 hours were spent before they actually spoke to me after I’d handed in my passport and answered all their questions. This didn’t bother me much. What bothered me was watching Palestinians waiting nervously hoping that they’d be admitted back home. Some had to return to Jordan without any explanation. The irony was heavy when I started talking with a Jewish-American who was also held up for 4 hours because she’d been to Lebanon recently. We both laughed at the irony that she has the right of return, but has problems entering as a tourist. They finally let me in with no explanation or apology for the wait. But for this I was prepared, anything else would have been naiv.

Bil’ein (pronounced Belaeen): Bil’ein is a small village of 1500 inhabitants close to Ramallah. The Wall has separated the village from 70% of its farm land and since the wall was erected the village has held a demonstration every Friday after midday prayer. As a result the town’s reputation has grown from that of an unknown place in Palestine to the very symbol of the anti-wall movement. We were joined by Israeli’s, Palestinians from other villages, journalists and international activists. For years this has been a strictly non-violent demonstration (unilaterally of course). The irony is amazing. The Israelis built the wall to “protect” themselves, and then every week they have to send soldiers to “protect” the wall. We didn’t get close. Soon the air was smoke filled. We were ducking teargas canisters raining from the sky and scattering into the olive groves. We tried to move the demonstration to another road, but found that that too was heavily fortified and we found ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when they started firing rubber bullets. Unlike gas canisters which you can see, rubber bullets are unavoidable. One person (he started throwing rocks about an hour into the demo against the will of the organizers) was hit in the arm, another was hit in the arm and the head (as I was to find out later, and which he regretted, he had kicked a soldier in the face while trying to pull free a Palestinian who was being kicked in the balls while lying on the ground), a local demonstrator in a wheelchair was hit by a gas canister in the head as he was unable to get out of the way. Apart from that there were no injuries on either side. Mostly we just stood there while being pelted with gas. After a while we pulled back due to there being too much smoke. At some point we heard the sounds of live ammunition – bursts of it. Were they shooting in the air? We had no way of knowing. As one of the Israeli demonstrators so aptly put it: I'm glad to see my tax money spent well.

Abu Dis – Jericho – Dead Sea: This was the most surrealistic day of my trip. I met a French PhD student with whom I decided to go to Jericho. To get there from Jerusalem, if you’re not Israeli, you haveto go by bus to Abu Dis. Abu Dis is a small village literally cut in two by the wall. Dozens of houses were demolished for this purpose and families now find themselves divided by the wall. Then we took a limousine taxi to Jericho. Not as flamboyant as it sounds, a limousine taxi is just a larger taxi which only leaves the station when it has been filled by its 7 passengers. Then we drove through one checkpoint to enter Jericho. Jericho is zone A, but is surrounded by zone C so it is sealed off. The city breathes poverty and reeks of wasted potential. The city is the oldest in the world and is littered with historical sites, yet is walled off and receives hardly any tourists. The Oasis Casino and the Intercontinental Hotel stand as testimony to the failure of Oslo. The city is also running massively short of water as the main underground river (wadi) that served the city has been diverted to serve the local settlements. From Jericho we caught a taxi who took us to the Dead Sea within the Occupied Territories. Strictly reserved for Israelis of course. We crossed two checkpoints – one out of Jericho and one into the Dead Sea resort. What a contrast. The Dead Sea was a beach resort where conflict did not exist. They even had an oriental café, so that tourists from Tel Aviv could visit the Orient without the trouble of meeting an Arab. Being outside of Palestinian jurisdiction there weren’t any buses going back so we hitch-hiked with two Israelis. Compared to our journey to the Dead Sea this was amazing in terms of ethnic divide and conflict perception. The car, having Israeli plates, drove straight to Jerusalem on super highways reserved for Israeli’s. These don’t have checkpoints. The couple were from Tel Aviv and had hardly ever been to Jerusalem so we got lost in a settlement, then we got dropped of in the outskirts of Jerusalem. It was Sabbath so no busses. We walked towards the old city, but lost our way slightly. We stopped a car to ask for directions, but the man in the car warned us not to walk there. The conversation must be repeated in full:
- Why?
- Because you have to pass the Arab quarter.
- And?
- It’s dangerous there.
- But we live there.
- Oh … in that case I better drive you to your hotel.
- … thanks.
- What do you do?
- I study in Norway.
- Ah … I serve in the army.
- Where?
- Special forces … Lebanon, Ramallah … but I am human after all, so I give the terrorists water when we arrest them. It never stops … it’s a circle of violence.
- Don’t you think the occupation is the problem.
- It’s complicated … but I have Arab friends.
- In the West Bank?
- What is the West Bank?
- The Occupied Territories.
- The what?
- Occupied Territories … Palestine.
- Yes, I have Palestinian friends.
We reached our hotel and he welcomed us to Israel. Neither me nor the French guy had been inside Israel proper, so my French friend said:
- Actually we haven’t been to Israel.
- (Not catching the quip) Welcome!
So much more: I have so many more stories. It was one of those holidays which require a vacation afterwards. The Occupied Territories reminded me more of South Africa than I’d have dared to imagine. The daily indignation the Palestinians have to suffer. The wall that stands 8 meters tall dividing the two societies. The settlements which stand out like green gardens of Eden behind walls, next to ancient Palestinian towns without water. The contrast noticable in the short walk from the Muslim Quarter to the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem. And what luxury ... I can leave and think this suffering over, churn it in my head and suffer mentally, but I can leave. I guess that's part of what drags me back - the feeling of guilt in leaving this behind.

Israel falls victim to its own rhetoric

The original Saudi Peace plan was rejected by Israel because it clearly stated that a settlement must include the Right of Return for the Palestinian refugees. (Right of Return is the most fundamental law in Israel, however it only applies to Jews.) The new version of the Saudi Peace Plan, now dubbed the Arab Peace Initiativ (Initiativ for short), no longer states “Right of Return”. The new formula is “Just Solution of the Refugee Problem.” Israel has stated that the Initiativ is interesting, that it is a good starting point for negotiations, but that they cannot accept the refugees Right of Return.

The response from Israel implies two things:
1) We are not really interested in peace
2) Right of Return is a just solution

The first implication is clear due to the fact that they purposefully misread the text so as to make the suggestion harder to swollow than it is, making it seem as if it’s the Arabs who are stubborn. Any sound reading of “Just solution” would be that it is an issue we must negotiate about in order to reach something that is just to all parties. Israel’s reading however states that this cannot be negotiated, hence it must be removed from peace negotiations altogether. Anybody who knows anything about the issue knows that a peace with no solution concerning the refugees, is no solution at all. Hence, by implication, we (Israel) have no interest in reaching a solution.

The second implication is by far the most interesting. In order to make the The Arab Peace Initiativ negatable Israel has been forced to make an admitance it otherwise would not have dared to make, and surprisingly few commentators have caught this point. The Arab Peace Initiativ solves all of Israel’s stated problems as well as modifying the biggest sticking point from “Right of Return” to “Just Solution”. Interestingly Israel has then re-modified the text from “Just Solution” to “Right of Return” in order to make the initativ unreasonable. Does this not imply that Israel consideres the terms “Right of Return” and “Just Solution” to be interchangeable? If this is the case Israel will in fact have made their greatest admitance as of yet – We are responsible for the refugee’s plight, and justice will only be fulfilled once they are given their right of return. This is in a sense also a double admittance: Yes, right of return is just, and no, we will never grant it.

On objectivity and the worldview of the other

Objectivity is an ideal and never a reality. One must always be aware of the limitations of knowledge. To be objective is to write Truth. Since all intelligent people with a certain amount of insight would realize that Truth is a preposterous goal, the best one could aspire for is “objectivity”. “Objectivity” is the subjective’s approach towards the ideal of Truth. The closer one appraoches this ideal, the more “objective” one is. However, one must realize that the goal can never be reached, merely approached.

Since every form of ”objectivity” is bound with a subjectitvity, the “objectivity” can never be fully neutral. Hence, all ”objectivity” pertains a limitation in its outset. What then is the role of the subjective in this strive for neutrality? The subject’s first and foremost responsibility lies in becoming aware of its own heritage – cultural, historical etc. Everything else followes. A high degree of personal insight is required in order to understand one’s limitations, and hence limit the impact these have on one’s thoughts/writing.

This is important as one writes about/analyses something using your own worldview (Weltanschauung). However it is doubley important if one is to describe the worldview of the other. In such cases subjectivity is doubley present and has a double function. First of all there is the subjectivity of the subject. This will effect his/her thoughts on the other. Secondly, and this is more importantly, the other posseses its own subjectivity. This subjectivity must be treated with the utmost caution as it can neither be ignored, removed nor remain untreated. With this I mean to say:

a) The other’s worldview has a value in itself
b) The other’s worldview is independent of our worldview, but
c) The interpretation of the other’s worldview is dependent on our worldview

The implications of this are as follows – In order to present the world as they see it, we are forced to present the world as we interpret them seeing it.

The other’s interpretation of the world can be wrong (based on lies), but it is none the less ”true” (”objective”) in the sense that it is their interpretation (in which they fully believe). The ”objective” analyser must be aware of this double subjectivity – the first must be controlled, while the second must be used. In order to approach the ”objective”, the second subjectivity must dominate the first, while simultaneaously making the reader aware that the ”objectivity” lies in the very fact that this is a presentation of the subjective worldview of the other.
The point presenting somebody elses view of the world lies not in portraying the world as it is, but rather how it is percieved. This is in reality only a differnce of sorts as the world never really is, it merely is percieved to be. (That is not to say that the world doesn’t exist as such, it merely means that the world is always percieved.) What is special in this case is that one attempts to describe somebody elses view of the world – a fact that only enhances our understanding of the difference between the world as it is and the world as we percieve it. This form of analysis therefore has a double function in that it both reveals how the other views the world, and also aids us in understanding the fact that there is no Truth, merely ”objectivity”. Certain things can be more correct than other, but there is no final Truth.

So it goes. Kurt Vonnegut in memoriam

Two books which I happened to read at about the same time changed my view of literature. The first was Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, which revealed to me the possibility of writing beautifully about the banal. The second was Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, which revealed to me the possibility, and at times necessity, of writing banally about utterly serious matters. After the world war (for was there not really only one in two acts?) the literati argued about the death, or at least disintegration, of expression. How does one write after Hiroshima, the Holocaust, Gulag? The list goes on and on, but we must not forget Dresden, a city Kurt Vonnegut was in as it was bombed beyond recognition (the oxygen was used up as fire storms ravaged the city). Miraculously he survived. How does one write about this? The dramatic writing styles of times past could not suffice. There were no heroes in Dresden, only victims. Tens of thousands of them. As one left the shelters (the few of which were not turned into ovens) the lucky survivors gazed out onto a moonlike landscape filled with charcoaled corpses. Should one write an elegy for each and every single person? It would not have been possible. Kurt Vonnegut captured the banality of evil like no other … so it goes. These three words are repeated over and over throughout the book as the only reaction to everything that happens. Three simple words. Each one drenched in an irony so black that they captured the whole essence of the disasters of the twentieth century. “So it goes” must have been the only method of thinking left for the witnesses, for the perpetrators, for the victims. So it goes. Without these three words everybody involved would have gone insane. But, and here lies yet another layer of irony, the mere fact that humanity was left viewing these disasters with a flinch of an eye, a flick of the wrist, and a nonchalant “so it goes”, proved, like the acts themselves, that mankind was (and is perhaps still) insane.
Another favoured literary trick used to perfection by Kurt (I use his first name, for I feel almost like his friend) was to reveal how things would unfold almost before starting the story. The ending, or unfolding, that he would reveal always seemed so unlikely that no matter how many of his books you read, you were never quite able to believe that things would take such an insane (unlikely) twist, but they always did. This gave his books an almost magical quality – I will tell you what will happen, but you won’t believe me. Time and again I was fooled by this trick. Time and again it worked. So it went. This was also, in a sense, a reflection of his acute understanding of modern reality. If in 1930 you were told that mankind would develop (and use!) bombs that could eliminate whole cities, you would have had to be insane (or evil) to believe it. If told in 1945 that more bombs would be dropped on Cambodia than was dropped on all of Europe during WWII you would have only been able to laugh at the sick joke. But so it went. Both predictions came true.
In The Sirens of Titan, the most science fiction inspired of his novels, the whole world, and human history, is reduced to a tool for supplying a stranded alien with a spare part. Everything is made into a practical joke of sorts. This was Kurt’s gift. Wittgenstein once said: “That which we cannot talk about, we must keep silent about.” I sometimes got a feeling that Kurt’s method was a direct response. No, we must not keep quite. That which is too horrid to talk seriously about, we must joke about. The world is a dark place and if we lose our sense of humour (however dark it might be) we will lose it all.
Kurt was not one of those authors that buried himself in literature and left the world alone. He was always present. Always there with his dark humour, always catching the sentiment of the times. In one essay written shortly before his death he warned that he wanted to sue the tobacco companies because they promised him an early death. In another, written as a dialogue between President George Bush and God, God tells Bush that he didn’t ask for Bush to go to war in Iraq. Bush insists that God gave him the instructions to invade, an accusation God denies, but Bush keeps insisting that his mandate came from God and the whole dialogue ends by God saying: “Yes God”.
I will miss Kurt, I already do. So it goes.

On Corporate Social Responsibility and the intrinsic weakness of Stockholder Capitalism

Any corporation has a single raison d’etre, that is the maximizing of wealth accumulation. This is particularly true for stockholder companies. For these the accumulation of wealth and the maximizing of profit is not just a cause in itself, it is also the responsibility of the company. So much so in fact that a shareholder can legaly take his/her own company to court if he/she feels that this responsibility is being shunned. Many analysts have taken this to be proof that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an impossibility. True, on a purely moral basis, a company owned by shareholders cannot be morally responsible if the consequence of such responsibility is a net loss in profit, but the simplicity of such an analysis is defeatist in that it doesn’t look closely enough at the structure of these companies, and hence is incapable of realizing that in this there is a weakness that can be used. This weakness is the possibility of moral choices having economic consequences.
If we examine the shareholder company structure more closely, we will come to the realization that although companies cannot act morally if doing so adversely effects their profits, by the same token, they must act morally if not doing so adversely effects their profit. By this I mean to say that if an immoral act is negative for the profit of a company, it must cease committing the act. From this one can deduce the idea that a purely moralistic attack on a company won’t have an effect, however a combined economic-moralistic attack must have an effect.
Hence the question arises: How does one go forth with such a combined approach? The answer is theoretically simple, yet highly difficult in practical terms. The answer is consumer awareness. Rather than approaching the company by saying: “so and so, in which your company partakes, is immoral”, we must rather approach the consuming public by saying: “this and this company, whose products you buy, partake in such and such immoral crimes”. This approach is difficult, as one is dealing with a vast amount of individuals, but if completed correctly it will result in consumers, and in some cases certain morally conscious shareholders (the Norwegian Oil Fund stands out) will withdraw their support for the given company. Once this has been done and the resulting calculated loss for the company, as a whole, exceeds the profit in the criticized area of investment, the shareholders will find the investment transformed into an economic liability and hence can take the given company to court if a divestment doesn’t take place.
Allow me to illustrate with an example: Caterpillar, or Caterkillar as it has been dubbed. This tractor company has become infamous for its role in the collective punishment towards Palestinians through the house demolitions as completed by the Israeli army (IDF) using the specially designed Caterpillar armoured bulldozers. Rather than informing the Caterpillar shareholders of this moral violation (although this has had some effect as there has actually been a shareholder vote on the issue), we should inform consumers of the crimes committed by the company. Caterpillar’s consumers include building companies as well as middle (or higher) income individuals that buy products from the Caterpillar clothing brand. This approach can further be strengthened by working with and through labour unions who will, (hopefully) induced by their solidarity with the Palestinian people, urge their contractors to use alternative machinery. If this is done correctly, and consumers react, one need only wait until the loss of income in these sectors surpass the income from selling bulldozers to the IDF. When that occurs Caterpillar will be forced, by its own shareholders, to cease selling equipment to the IDF. If this campaign is a success we can logically extrapolate from this that no other bulldozer producing company will dare invest in the IDF for fear of suffering a similar economic setback.
Some will argue that we cannot demand such a sacrifice from average consumers. Against this argument two points come to the fore. First of all, is it really a sacrifice to change brands so that an act of injustice will cease? Secondly, if an individual cannot be expected to stand for an ethical society, then who? This approach is difficult, indirect and defeatist in the sense that it “gives up” on companies as institutions able to make moral decisions. It can also be said to unjustly abuse the guilt of the average Joe. However, unlike the CSR-approach it is realistic. It is naive to hope that companies will become moral beings on their own accord. In fact, as I have shown, such a free will moralism is almost structurally impossible. It is therefore time that we realize the need for a forced moralism, which is better than none at all.

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.