actually doing some work for a change...

...so i don't get a chance to blog properly ;)

here's a few bits and pieces that may have slipped beneath yr radars:

• men are trained like dogs - i wonder if these viewers complain about every instance of +female+ degradation they see on tv?
  
• just a film? - or a racist colonial fantasy?
• britain uses hate law to ban animal rights campaigner - i bet you didn't see that one coming!
• and in response to my praise for american regional initiatives, ken livingstone jumps on the band wagon

SeeDyTV

in case you were wondering what cctv is really for, given that it seems somewhat problematic in the fight against terrorism, it seems this news story might have the answer. doesn't that make you feel safe?

is this what democracy looks like?

i blogged with excitement (!) a while back on finding david graeber's fragments of an anarchist anthropology available for download. having read it i can heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. i certainly enjoyed graeber's irreverent style and his convincing attempt to synthesise the lessons of anthropology and anarchist organising. in particular, the final section, in which he talks about the current directions of anarchist organising, has some interesting ideas.

a post i made a while back generated quite a discussion (in the comments box) about democracy, what it is and what it could be. graeber has some interesting views on anarchist approaches to democracy, something that he sees as the key theme of current anarchist organising. the first thing to remember about consensus-based democracy is that:

this is a form of direct democracy which is very different than the kind we usually associate with the term - or, for that matter, with the kind usually employed by European or North American anarchists of earlier generations...

...as anthropologists are aware, just about every known human community which has to come to group decisions has employed some variation of what I'm calling "consensus process" - every one, that is, which is not in some way or another drawing on the tradition of ancient Greece. Majoritarian democracy, in the formal, Roberts Rules of Order-type sense rarely emerges of its own accord.

so the 'democracy' that george bush constantly chides various poor brown people for not adopting is a bit of an anomaly. graeber quite askly poses the question of why no one's really spoken up about this in academic circles, and comes up with the following rather unsavoury answer:

The real reason for the unwillingness of most scholars to see a Sulawezi or Tallensi village council as "democratic" - well, aside from simple racism, the reluctance to admit anyone Westerners slaughtered with such relative impunity were quite on the level as [sic] Pericles - is that they do not vote.

but, from an anthropologists point of view, the idea of voting is not an attractive one for a society:

If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end the destruction of communities.

what was different about ancient greek society then? it was an unusual example of a society in which there was the coincidence of a system of coercion to enforce group decisions, and a feeling that people should have an equal say in making group decisions. as graeber points out, where there is systematic coercion those wielding it are usually unlikely to make the pretense that they are enforcing the will of the people! graeber thinks that the greeks liked their 'democracy' to be like everything else in their society - intensively competitive. every decision-making council had to have a victor.

majoritarian democracy, according to graeber, makes the lines of force between the coercive apparatus (state violence) and the apparatus for maintaining consensus, explicit, and is inherently unstable. the instability is used by the state to justify their monopoly on violence and to minimise democracy to such an extent that:

it comes down to nothing more than insisting that ruling elites should occasionally consult with "the public" - in carefully staged contests, replete with rather meaningless jousts and tournaments - to reestablish their right to go on making their decisions for them.

the answer is to accept that "we" "the west" are not particularly special in our practice of democracy, and that, more often than not, we've been involved in the destruction of indigenous democracy in many parts of the world, rather than its cultivation. we should, according to graeber, be turning to anthropology to find viable alternatives to our corrupted modern system:

The fruits of ethnography... could be enormously helpful here if anthropologists can get past their... hesitancy, owing to their own often squalid colonial history, and come to see what they are sitting on [democracy] not as some guilty secret... but as the common property of humankind.

the remaining 99.5%

ha'aretz reporter amira hass has writen an excellent piece on gaza for znet in which she argues that:

For the sake of about half a percent of the population of the Gaza Strip, a Jewish half-percent, the lives of the remaining 99.5 percent were totally disrupted and destroyed.

she describes the inequalities that existed between the jewish settlers and the palestinians on the other side of the razor wire fences:

What talent it takes to live for 35 years in a flourishing park and splendid villas just 20 meters from overcrowded, suffocated refugee camps. What talent it takes to turn on the sprinklers on the lawns, while just across the way, 20,000 other people are dependent on the distribution of drinking water in tankers; to know that you deserve it, that your government will pave magnificent roads for you and neglect (prior to Oslo, before 1994) to the point of destruction the Palestinian infrastructure. What skill it takes to step out of your well-cared-for greenhouse and walk unmoved past 60-year-old fruit-bearing date trees that are uprooted for you, roads that are blocked for you, homes that are demolished for you, the children who are shelled from helicopters and tanks and buried alongside you, for the sake of the safety of your children and the preservation of your super-rights.

given the media outpourings about the 'sacrifices' made by israel in withdrawing from gaza, this is a point that needs to be made.

electric shock

check out a timely article on tasers. it's hard to think of any positive reason for using them (remember, they couldn't be used against potential bombers cos they'd be likely to detonate the device), and easy to think of plenty of really seriously bad ones (torture, deterrence from legitimate protest, extracting confessions).

oh yes, and btw - hindes is the chomsky of contemporary britain - his insight as dazzling as orwell, the prose dances on the page and greets the reader with its witty charm (i'll have that tenner now please... ;)

puerile...

...and quite amusing - give it time to load: http://choad.tv/~mike/funny/bush-small.jpg

if bush says no, we'll do it without him

i was heartened to read about a new initiative by regional government in the usa, to bypass the federal government's unwillingness to act on climate change. according to the report:

[N]ine states are expected to announce a plan next month to freeze carbon dioxide emissions from big power stations by 2009 and then reduce them by 10% by 2020.

i'm no expert on greenhouse gases but anything's better than nothing it would seem, and at least there appears to be recognition that a reduction needs to happen. the states comprise a geographical region in the north east stretching from maine to new jersey, and look set to be joined by a bloc in the west (washington (state), oregon, california, arizona and new mexico), who are "exploring similar agreements".

from the looks of it the agreement is less demanding than kyoto, which is already deemed insufficient by many climate scientists, so perhaps i'm being a little optimistic. what seems to be of greater significance though, is the break away from washington's deliberate blocking of scientifically necessary measures because they would hamper business. whilst i am far from suggesting that state governments are more responsive to their constituents than the federal government, but on this occasion they seem to be adopting a more responsible attitude. it maintains my belief that positive change must come about through disengagement with the unchangeable and corrupt institutions that would block it.

science's dirty money

there's bad news for those who oppose the science fundamentalists: sir john krebs will be giving the royal institution christmas lectures. this will, no doubt, consist of children (the prime target of the lectures) being 'educated' about how the wonders of gm technology and that organic food is just an "image-led fad". previously head of the food standards agency (fsa) he once claimed that manure caused more air and water pollution than chemical fertilisers. there's no prizes for guessing where his allegiances lie, as gmwatch state that sir john:

has backed the position of the US government and the biotechnology industry in opposing strict EU labelling and traceability rules on GM foods and animal feed. Its position has been condemned by the Consumers' Association who 'remain bitterly disappointed at the anti-consumer stance' taken by the FSA.

another scientist for business then. when he chaired the oecd conference on the 'scientific and health aspects of genetically modified foods' dr arpad pusztai described it as "a propaganda forum for airing the views and promoting the interests of the biotech industry." since then he has become involved with the social issues research centre (circ) which appears to function as a self-appointed judge of media science coverage. sirc have gets considerable funding from big us food and drinks companies, including bestfoods (now owned by unilever) and several other front organisations for food and drinks companies. quite an unholy alliance if you ask me. do we really want a man payed by the food and drinks industries to be presented as a paradigm of scientific responsibility to kids?

the reality of the matter is that in the biological sciences gm is presented as the future of food, and the unpleasant aspects of this technology, such as the potential for its western ownership to control the daily bread of the poor, the potential for environmental disaster, and the insufficiently examined health issues, are considered irresponsible scaremongering. i've blogged recently about my worries over the rather messianical claims of the biological sciences and the insistence that the science is 'value free'. no scientist exists in a political vacuum. scientific funding directs what scientists can work on, and this is largely driven by big business in the form of agrobusiness and big pharmaceutical companies. there is enormous pressure on scientists to 'prove' that the companies' drugs and foods are effective and safe, so that profits can start to be made. if you stand against the profit-at-any-cost ethic, as a personal friend who was a toxicologist for l'oreal did, you pay the price. he said their product wasn't safe and was promptly fired.

it seems that the only way to break the involvement of corrupting finances in science is to get scientists to work for the people again. currently the government is hoplessly enamoured by the biotechnologists, such as lord sainsbury, the minster for science, and bush with his climate change deniers in the usa. as a result research funding councils, like britain's biotechnology and biological sciences research council (bbsrc) have pots of cash to throw into biotech, and the medical research council (mrc) does the same for animal research. we have to demand that the ethical implications of gm and animal testing are examined in detail, and don't just have lip service paid to them (as is the case with the rrr programme of replacement, reduction and refinement of animal testing). this can only be done by making science accountable to society. every penny spent on wheedling another ineffective antidepressant through clinical studies is one that could have been spent lowering the price of antiretrovirals for aids victims. every million on developing gm crops that only benefit monsanto could be spent developing sustainable agriculture. science should be for social benefit not corporate profits.

unanswered questions

the independent has a few questions about the j. c. de menezes case:-

• If the CCTV cameras showed Mr de Menezes using his Oyster card to open the ticket barrier, why did police sources suggest he vaulted it?
• Were cameras trained on the platform in full working order? Police and Tube sources contradict each other.
• How could all four cameras around the platform have failed at the same time?
• If the cameras had failed, why did the station log book contain no details of the fault?
• Why had CCTV onboard the train been removed?
  

i think similar questions could be asked about cctv in general. its ability to catch 'criminals' depends on the willingness of the 'criminal'-catchers to release the evidence. you'd just better hope the 'criminal' isn't one of their mates.

uzblog gets flashy

disillusioned kid wants us to blog for uzbekistan

here's some reasons why

go on, have a go!

what kind of anarchist are you?

http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=37281 - but be warned, it might call you christian

just out of vanity, here's me:-

You scored as Anarcho-Communist.

Anarcho-communists seek to build a society based upon a decentralised federation of autonomous communes and a moneyless 'gift economy'. The movement first emerged in the late 19th century and has had a large influence particularly in Spain, Italy and Russia. Key thikers include Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta.

• Anarcho-Communist 60%
• Anarcha-Feminist 50%
• Anarcho-Primitivist 50%
• Anarcho-Syndicalist 40%
• Christian Anarchist 25% [eh?]
  
• Anarcho-Capitalist 20%

more stuff

bristle (bristol's anarchist rag) has a rundown of really antisocial behaviour

are chimps really a bunch of conformists?

is this the key to scientific breakthrough?

even the police are pissed off about it now

weekend warrior

just back from a weekend in the peaks at this lovely little event. the weather was fantastic and the set up was like a little slice of the horizone at stirling: (seriously good) food by anarchist teapot, cider infused revelry, and plenty of eco-shit pits. big difference tho - not a yellow jacket or riot van in sight! oh, did i mention, there was some political stuff too.

people were discussing the g8: highlights and things that could have been better. there seemed to be a significant minority keen to shift back from endlessly discussing tactics to more discussion about what we're aiming at. there was also considerable discussion of where dissent! is to go next, and i was surprised (agreeably so!) by the support for reaching out to the broader left through informational activities like trapese. this is something we've talked about in nottingham before, and it seems to tally well with the common observation that socialists often come round to anarchist methods and ideas when they get exposed to them. some good propaganda aimed at disillusioned swp-ies could be useful.

there was a good film about jeff 'free' luers shown on saturday night. for those who don't know jeff was accused of ecoterrorism for his supposed involvement in three separate incidences of arson. jeff claims he was only involved in one incident, where he set fire to 3 suvs at a car dealership in oregon, usa, but, with dodgy evidence and thanks to a foolish attempt at a solidarity burning by others mentioning jeff by name, he ended up getting accused of a whole list of offences. jeff ended up getting sentenced to 22 years and 8 months, without possibility of parole. as was pointed out in the film, this is over twice as long as the 10 year sentence handed out to those accused of the abu ghraib tortures. jeff, as he and his supporters claim, is clearly a political prisoner - held for an excessively long time to prevent his pursual of his political activities.

sunday morning was spent being 'arrested' in hay bale cells by activists who had had enough experience to be scarily like police officers. a useful practical guide to your rights and how to avoid getting stitched up. and if the sadistic desk sergeant with the dread and shaved head that put me on suicide watch is reading this...

the mix of people and politics was quite interesting. there were more individualist and primitivist types than i'm used to, but the only major dispute was the perennial party-people vs. early-nighters. actually the quiet away from the sound system was much more tranquil than many sites i've been on, and the (almost) full moon made everything seem very still. beautiful.

for those who're into activism (and not just environmental activism) and want to learn skills and network, i'd recommend it.

prize bu(e)rk!

today's independent has unsavoury news of a bilious erruption from the direction of michael buerk:
"the veteran BBC newsreader [read: tired old hack] Michael Buerk has complained [whined] that "almost all the big jobs in broadcasting [are] held by women."

let's have a quick look at the biggest jobs in britain't biggest broadcaster, the governors of the bbc:

• 1 male chairman
• 1 male vice-chairman
• 9 males in total out of 12 governors

at a glance that looks pretty male-dominated to me, i think i should make a complaint!

apparently burk reckons that "life is now lived in accordance with women's rules". perhaps a slight exaggeration, burk, as the people who make the country's rules are made up as follows:

• 1 male prime-minister
• 17 male in cabinet (total of 23)
  
• 519 male mps (total of 646)

once again, some gender imbalance here, think i should write to my (male) mp!

"Almost all the big jobs in broadcasting were held by women - the controllers of BBC 1 television and Radio 4 for example. These are the people who decide what we see and hear," he said in an interview with Radio Times...
He continued: "Products are made for women, cars are made for women - because they control what is being bought."

good god! we can't have that now. women having control and power - but how will they know what to do with it without men to tell them? fortunately burk has some inciteful analysis as to why this dangerous state of affairs has materialised:

"There is no manufacturing industry any more; there are no mines; few vital jobs require physical strength...
What we have now are lots of jobs that require people skills and multi-tasking - which women are a lot better at."

oooh the nasty cheats! how dare they multitask effectively!

He admitted that some changes have been for the good, but asked: "What are the men left with?"

a recent paper by the institute of employment research at warwick uni highlights gender inequality in a number of areas including the media, and suggests that:

"In the labour market, inequalities suffered by women include: lower pay levels compared with men; lower shares of full-time compared with part-time employment; and employment at lower occupational levels."

the equal opportunities commission have a booklet entitled facts about women and men in britain that perhaps burk would be well-advised to read before opening his mouth. it includes useful facts and figures such as this:

Median individual weekly income for all women aged 16 or over was £154 in 2002/3, and for men was £288. This gives a gender income gap of 47%

also, it would make sense to pay a visit to the fawcett society, who campaign for equality between men & women, who reveal the following:

• Reported rape has trebled in the last decade but the conviction rate has dropped from 24% to 6%.
• Two women a week are killed by their current or former partner.
• One fifth of all women say their male partner has the final say on financial decisions, rising to one quarter of women with an income of less than £400 a month.
• One in four women experience domestic violence at some time in their lives.
• In 70% of heterosexual couples where both partners work full-time, the woman does most of the housework.
• Some golf clubs offer entry to women members only during the day time, on the assumption that women would not be working.

poor old men eh, missing out on all that. and having to put up with better pay and conditions too. it's a hard life. but michael isn't finished yet:

"All [men] are is sperm donors, and most women aren't going to want an unemployable sperm donor loafing around and making the house look untidy. They are choosing not to have a male in the household."

ah, ever the romantic! i'm bloody glad i'm not his wife!

Les Voleurs

Out of the closet and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief. All the artists of history, from cave painters to Picasso, all the poets and writers, the musicians and architects, offer their wares, importuning him like street vendors. They supplicate him from the bored minds of school children, from the prisons of uncritical veneration, from dead museums and dusty archives. Sculptors stretch forth their limestone arms to receive the life-giving transformation of flesh as their severed limbs are grafted onto Mister America. Mais le voleur n'est pas presse - the thief is in no hurry. He must assure himself of the quality of the merchandise and its suitability for his purpose before he conveys the supreme honour and benediction of his theft.
Words, colours, lights, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas l'originalite, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons as it creates. Vive le vol - pure, shamelss, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.

Brown Man Shot Because Policeman Was Taking a Piss

Wednesday August 17, 2005
The Guardian

The young Brazilian shot dead by police on a London tube train in mistake for a suicide bomber had already been overpowered by a surveillance officer before he was killed, according to secret documents revealed last night.

It also emerged in the leaked documents that early allegations that he was running away from police at the time of the shooting were untrue and that he appeared unaware that he was being followed.

Scotland Yard has continued to justify a shoot-to-kill policy.

The evidence given to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) by police officers and eyewitnesses and leaked to ITV News shows that far from leaping a ticket barrier and fleeing from police, as was initially reported, he was filmed on CCTV calmly entering the station and picking up a free newspaper before boarding the train.

It has now emerged that Mr de Menezes:

• was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;
• was unaware he was being followed;
• was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;
• never ran from the police;
• and did not jump the ticket barrier.

A surveillance officer admitted in a witness statement that he was unable to positively identify Mr de Menezes as a suspect because the officer had been relieving himself when the Brazilian left the block of flats where he lived.

The report shows that there was a failure in the surveillance operation and officers wrongly believed Mr de Menezes could have been one of two suspects.

does this man...
...look like these?

anarchist anthropology

in a previous post suggesting anarchist alternatives to the state, from an anthropological perspective, i was interested in looking for examples of anarchist anthropology. and then along comes this review of david graeber's fragments of an anarchist anthropology, which seems to provide just that. the good thing is that you can download it here. haven't read it all yet but it looks promising. there's a whole section on the subject of democracy that seems to have provoked quite a discussion in comments to my previous post. last i heard yale were trying to kick out graeber, probably on the grounds of his political ideas. there's a petition you can sign to support him.

overhauling the kleptocrats

in a post last week i mentioned that i'd been reading some jared diamond. moving on from geography to anthropology has been quite thought provoking. jared diamond seems to have spent quite a lot of time in papua new guinea doing anthropological field work. in his chapter from egalitarianism to kleptocracy from the book guns, germs, and steel he summarises some of his inferences about social organisation, dividing societies into four levels: bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states.

the nomadic band is really an extended kin group of a few dozens of people and is the smallest level at which human society can operate. society is egalitarian and mutual aid is the mechanism of exchange. conflict resolution is informal as everyone knows everyone else so disputes are usually mediated through the family. next up we get the sedentary tribe (hundreds of people) which is largely the same as the band except settled in a food-rich area, and often with a "big man" as an informal chairperson of tribe gatherings. the big man is usually hard to distinguish from other tribe members as there is no division of labour or wealth at this stage. the chiefdom is larger again, comprising several villages and has a chief with a monopoly on the use of force. diamond suggests that this transfer of power from the people to an elite occurred to eradicate the potential for internal conflict. with a group of this size it was impossible for everyone to know everyone else and the previous methods of conflict resolution no longer worked. finally chiefdoms aggregated into modern states with highly centralised control apparatuses and wealthy elites.

diamond suggests that the theft of people's self-determination by a small elite (as implied in the term kleptocracy, rule of the thieves), and the accompanying transition to a stratified society in which slavery was commonplace, and power was centralised, was a necessary response to an increasingly densely populated world. he gives four reasons why:-

1. conflict resolution - the increasing complexity of human relations amongst larger groups (i've heard it suggested that you can only every 'know' 150 people) mean that the likelihood of murderous disagreements increases that can't be mediated within families, requiring reference to external authority
   
2. effective decision making - requisites for communal decision making become unobtainable
3. economic considerations - mutual aid becomes unworkable for similar reasons as described for conflict resolution, require a redistributive economy in addition to the reciprocal one
4. distribution of resources - with increasing population density becomes impossible for everyone to get all their necessities on their own. requires complex organisation.

diamond, then, seems resigned to our kleptocratic present situation as a necessary evil. these arguments require a robust response from anarchists if we are to convince others that there is an alternative to centralised authority without reverting to the primitive band structure.

conflict resolution appears to be a tricky one for anarchists. i've previously argued with anarchists who insist on maintaining a legal structure to deal with such things, but that smacks of centralised authority to me. if there really is no alternative to this (and i'd like to hear people's suggestions) then the law would have to be the outcome of a truly democratic process, would have to be dynamic (subject to continuous change), and any police force or judiciary would have to be selected in a similar manner. this still doesn't strike me as a particularly anarchist system. i would suggest that this objection is dependent on a certain view of human relations, not irrational in modern society, that humans are bound to come into irresolvable conflict sooner or later, and chose to end that conflict by force. anarchists would, perhaps, have a somewhat less pessimistic view about this, and about the willingness of others to intervene.

effective decision making in large groups has and is done rather well by non-hierarchical organisations. modern technology makes it easier, but a truly democratic system relying on face-to-face meetings can also be conceived wherein meetings are held at a local level of perhaps 50 people, who elect a delegate to a meeting of 50 such delegates, and so on, up to the highest levels. this is the kind of thing that has been suggested previously by stephen shalom (parpolity).

the economic 'problem' is also one born of the attitude that others are always out to exploit us, so prevalent in our modern capitalist society (and no surprise!) the classic anarchist response is to suggest that in a society founded on genuine principles of equality, that are upheld sincerely by its members, exploitation becomes rare and is quickly exposed. nonetheless, this change doesn't solve the practical problem of how one is to obtain all that one requires in a complex society, simply by bargaining with what you may produce yourself. it doesn't seem efficient. alternative, non-capitalist economies have been proposed, such as parecon, the participatory economy, and other schemes such as LETS (local exchange trading systems).

having had a brief stab at dealing with these i realise that there's a lot more to say on the issues. i'd recommend taking a look at murray bookchin's social ecology for an anarchist view also deeply rooted in anthropology. but in the meantime it would be good if readers would post their own solutions and ideas...

miscellany

some of you will be interested to see what a muslim anarchist believes in

also: an anti-fascist response to the london bombings

and don't miss: the future of recreational drug taking?

can biology explain the world?

following being ruthlessly experimented upon by this psychologist yesterday, a friend gave me two photocopied book chapters that he thought i'd be interested in. they were both from books by jared diamond, the award-winning evolutionary biologist, and came from the books the rise and fall of the third chimpanzee and guns, germs and steel. i've read rise and fall..., albeit a long time ago, and remember enjoying the immensely ambitious task the author set himself of describing the rise of western civilisations over others in biological and geographical terms, without lapsing into racist and false genetic arguments.

the chapter argued that the domesticatifiability (if that really is a word) of animal and plant species, and the geographical axes on which the continents of america and eurasia are formed, were major factors in the technological and agricultural progress of eurasian civilisations relative to american and australasian ones. very few animals can be domesticated, and the presence of the big five (cows, pigs, goats, sheep and horses) in eurasia was a huge bonus to the civilisations emerging there. the horse in particular was of major importance in military terms. tapirs and kangaroos, the american and australian 'nearest equivalents' are not domesticatable. had they been, diamond argues, the history of european conquests may have been very different. likewise, the presence of a large number of readily domesticatable grasses, such as wheat, barley, millet, rice, etc. in eurasia contributed to the ease of development of agriculture there. the staple cereal of the americas, maize, was much harder to domesticate, and is nutritionally deficient in a number of ways. the east-west axis on which eurasia spreads made the spread of plants from one area to another much easier than in the north-south spread of the americas, as there are large bands of land where the climate remains relatively constant.

interesting reading, and certainly a compelling argument is made. however, i am often sceptical about the enormous claims biologists like to make about the extent to which their discipline can explain the world. this is especially true in the realms of evolutionary psychology. let's be lazy here and take a definition from the wikipedia link:-

Evolutionary psychology (or EP) proposes that human and primate cognition and behavior can be better understood in light of human and primate evolutionary history. Specifically, EP proposes the primate brain comprises many functional mechanisms, called psychological adaptations or evolved psychological mechanisms (EPMs), that evolved by natural selection to benefit the survival and reproduction of the organism.

i actually would seek to ammend this quotation somewhat, as most of the subscribers to this viewpoint that i know of do not simply suggest that cognition and behaviour can be "better understood" in the light of evolutionary history, but can be largely explained with reference to it. now don't get me wrong, i accept that the physical structures that comprise the human brain are the product of biological evolution, but i disagree that they are of paramount importance in determining individual humans' psychologies. i should mention that i spent my undergraduate years studying neuroscience, and am now doing postgrad study in psychology, so i'm not just throwing my random ill-informed yahoo comments into the debate. they're fully informed random yahoo comments.

this is what my many years looking at brains have taught me: the most recent evolutionary components of the human brain, those that set us apart in such a huge way from our primate cousins, are neocortex, mainly association cortex. neocortex is plastic. that means that it's highly adaptable, and enables us to learn and cognise. whilst human and chimp dna differ by only about 1%, our ability to learn complex tasks and form complex representations are hugely different. this is because, whilst a genetically small jump, the expansion of cerebral cortex makes a huge difference to our abilities to learn about our environments. what we have and chimps don't, is a massive capacity to store complex information about all aspects of the world in which we find ourselves. this means, in my opinion, that we are much more products of our culture than products of our biology.

now, i'm sure that the kind of attitudes i'm addressing here are the attitudes of the extreme from amongst this community of scientists. nonetheless, with the extreme reductionist positions of many scientists, and the high financial and political clout wielded by those in the biological sciences over those in social sciences, it is a view that is unofficial dogma to many. for example, psychology is currently undergoing a split into cognitive neuroscience and social psychology, and the former are getting the lion's share of the funding. research is being led towards the biological by the dangling carrot of cash, a much needed resource in any academic department.

i am certainly in favour of examining the biological origins of our motives and drives (through understanding subcortical brain structures, for example), and to what extent our learning and acquisitiveness is affected by these. nonetheless, to suggest that a human can be summed up by this is more than just an overstatement - it's plain wrong. our cognitive abilities and the culture they bring us are what stand us apart from other animals, and are, to me, the most important things about humanity to be studying.

right, now back to jared diamond pt 2...

slide into fascism?

i am increasingly worried about the direction that popular discourse is taking with regards to 'what is to be done' to stop terrorism. disillusioned kid picked up on hazel blears' godawful pr suggestion that ethnic minorities need relabelling with the obvious implication that he is now a 'white-british' person. oh? what's that, white-british people don't need rebranding? it seems that the ethnic majority is as invisible as usual in all of this. d.k. thinks that this is not inconsistent with polyculturalism, but i would suggest that the lack of germanic-british, or celtic-british in all of this talk suggests that it is.

which brings me on to george monbiot's excellent indictment of this rush to embrace the union jack:

To argue that national allegiance reduces human suffering, you must assert that acts of domestic terrorism cause more grievous harm than all the territorial and colonial wars, ethnic cleansing and holocausts pursued in the name of the national interest.

quite. "And what, exactly, would a liberal patriotism look like?" muses monbiot, "How, for that matter, do you distinguish it from racism?". i think my answer would be that patriotism is racism-lite. acceptable racism, and this feature, perhaps, makes it more virulent than the open racism favoured by the likes of the bnp. it allows these views to become widespread.

on the other hand open racism is pretty horrendous too. i've been engaged in a debate with the truffle snuffler who suggests that the police should be open about the racism of their anti-terrorist operations, because it will save lives. of course, i totally reject the idea that a) the police should be racist at all and b) that we should accept racism from any public body. 'sniffer quotes a survey finding that "Over 80% of the population does not believe it was wrong to shoot Jean Charles de Menezes." i would suggest that that was because that 80% are unlikely to find themselves in a similar suggestion because they're white. if they were brazilian or asian the findings may have been different. when the discourse of the supposedly educated starts turning to 'when is it ok to shoot innocent brown people?' i think we should start screaming 'NEVER'.

for those of you who think i'm overreacting, that this racial profiling isn't already happening, take a look at this little incident in my home town of nottingham, spotted and photographed by the ever-vigilant tash. armed police pull over a bus in broad daylight, openly brandishing weapons. they search a, wait for it, asian-british family, and then leave. what's worrying is that this could start to become routine. we will become desensitised to it, treat it as normal police activities. even shootings could become normal, and justified in the 'war on terrorism' as is the case in iraq and israel.

once we start putting our faith not in our fellow human beings but the flag and security forces, when we fail to right the legitimate grievances of the worlds' poor but expend our resources in building walls around ourselves, we move further and further towards fascism. i, for one, refuse to give in to this fear.

update (15:30):
one aspect of the increasing repression not mentioned in this post, is the mounting legal apparatus being prepared to snuff out dissent. jnv go into it here. they summarise the issue thus:

The issue is not ‘justifying’ or ‘glorifying’ terrorism, otherwise the British political class would be on the run from the law. The issue is, as the Independent commented, that certain kinds of offensive speech are being criminalised, and the state is taking upon itself the role of deciding what may or may not be said.

anyone for a little thoughtcrime?

UzBlog

friend and comrade disillusioned kid's come up with a plan to raise awareness about the dire situation in uzbekistan (something he's been writing about passionately for some time): blogging. on 1st sep (independence day in uzbekistan) all those signed up to the uzblog pledge (which i would encourage anyone who cares enough to do) will write a blog article about the human rights situation in the country, and call for sanctions to be imposed on uzbek cotton. please get involved.

if you don't know much about uzbekistan, d.k. is a great place to start:-
Sanctioning Karimov
The New Great Game Kicks Off
The New Great Game Kicks Off, Part 2
and more...

a change of heart

found myself back at work. in front of a computer. faced with the options of work... or the dreaded innernet.

i cracked.

good news is that nottinghamshire indymedia has now finally launched (hurray!) i went along to their first meeting full of enthusiasm, but inability to attend later meetings and somewhat of a personality clash with a "leader" (the tyranny of horizontalism!) meant that i distanced myself from the project. nonetheless, i'm very happy that everything's finally up and running and intend to contribute to the newswire (when i've actually done anything).

they've also made a nice little video about sheffield's g8 meeting, which i blogged about a while back, which is well worth a view.

i'd better get out of here quick before i start getting drawn back into the deadly web...

bloggering off

have finally realised that the good ol' world wide web is seriously sapping me. after kicking off here, and wandering around in search of some meaning i realised that none was to be found in cyberspace.

think i'll spend a week or two here.

laters!

...and now for just about everything that i haven't had time for

fortunately disillusioned kid's on school holidays so he gets to blog a lot. for ruminations on uzbekistan, id cards, the gaza withdrawal, the scout movement, and niger (and probably everthing else i've missed too).

multi- vs. mono- vs. poly-

...i'm talking about the type of prefix to -culturalism that you might be in favour of. just read a nice article by hanif kureishi in the grauniad, in which he comes out in favour of multiculturalism as a considerably lesser evil than monoculturalism:-

"If the idea of multiculturalism makes some people vertiginous, monoculturalism - of whatever sort - is much worse. Political and social systems have to define themselves in terms of what they exclude, and conservative Islam is leaving out a lot."

of course, kureishi, whose father was pakistani and whose mother was english, is no stranger to the evils of monoculturalism, having to grow up with racism from both sides. his screenplay for the film my beautiful laundrette (which incidentally, is ace!) and his book the buddha of suburbia have evoked the ire of muslims for their portrayal of homo- and bisexuality in young men of pakistani and mixed race origins. nonetheless, kureishi sees religion as something that must be given space:-

"You can't ask people to give up their religion; that would be absurd. Religions may be illusions, but these are important and profound illusions. And they will modify as they come into contact with other ideas. This is what an effective multiculturalism is: not a superficial exchange of festivals and food, but a robust and committed exchange of ideas - a conflict that is worth enduring, rather than a war."

the comment about "festivals and food" strikes the right note for me. it seems that, in britain, ostentatious official displays of "multiculturalism" seem to be celebrations of traditional cultures within a rigid european capitalist framework of ideas. civic bodies are keen to spend money on fun days out for the family with a cultural twist, such as dance and music, but the celebration of radically different cultural values and ideas is rarely seen. perhaps this is one of the reasons why this kind of thing is on the increase. liberal white british attitudes towards other cultures seem usually to revolve around worship of quaint costumes and chicken tikka, whilst keeping "unbritish" ideas in their (lower) place.

the opposition of multiculturalism vs. monocuturalism is, i believe, a bit of a red herring. perhaps it would be good to consider a third possibility: polyculturalism. this is concept i've seen discussed at length by justin podur in this interview on znet. podur sees problems with multiculturalism, in that it leads to acceptance of what would otherwise be unacceptable in a culture (e.g. racism, sexism, homophobia), out of respect for that culture. it views cultures as static and unchanging, when in reality we know that cultures do adapt and change over time. john korber, who grew up in queens, new york, amongst immigrants from all regions of the world, describes the struggle for identity thus:-

"Identity is amorphous. How should I define myself? By where I have been? By what I have known? By where I am going? I am uncomfortable with any association that divides the greatest whole."

a polycultural viewpoint accepts that none of us may be represented by one culture, be it racial, religious, national, etc. etc. polyculturalism suggests that, as citizens of an increasingly global world, we are influenced by increasingly heterogenous cultures. john korber suggest that we must recognise these, and learn from them, but ultimately find our own selves distinct from easy cultural pigeonholes:-

"We do not need to cling to any identity set down in writing, preached from a pulpit, determined by a few genes, or circumscribed by a political border. What we need I cannot tell you, but it is there now, and will not be the same tomorrow. Explore the other. Celebrate diversity. Foster it. Make it your own."

anarchist sci-fi

i've recently finished reading the dispossessed by ursula le guin, and have thoroughly enjoyed. having come across le guin whilst just a little nipper, reading the earthsea books, i was reunited with her work through the enthusiasm of my girlfriend a few years back, and discovered that they're still great. a far cry from the brashly macho world of many fantasy novels, the books explore the subtle psychological terrains of their characters*. le guin's writing often emphasises deep yearnings, subconscious fears, and a deep sense of otherness. the main characters of both the earthsea novels and the dispossessed are people who are deeply rootless and alienated from the societies that surround them, something that is easy for me to empathise with.

the dispossessed is set across two worlds: the materially barren, yet philosophically rich world of anarres, and the materially rich yet morally bankrupt world of urras. anarres is the moon of urras, inhabited by settlers from urras who have created an anarchist society there. these odonians (their philosophy derives from the teachings of odo, a revered thinker and revolutionary) are deeply communistic and their society has no gods and no masters (in theory). work is voluntary and individuals are expected to spend a certain amount of their time engaging in manual work, such as farming and construction. whilst there are no rules regarding interpersonal relationships, it is frequently the case that 'pairings' of adults will occur to produce offspring. most activities are communal, however, including child rearing and mealtimes. the peoples' principles are revealed in the types of behaviour they class as undesireable: propertarianism, profiteering, and egoising.

shevek, the main character, despite his apparent love of many aspects of the society, is always an outsider within it. his troubled relationship from his mother who showed little 'propertarian' behaviour towards him as a child, and his classmates dislike of his 'egoising' intellectualism, stand him apart from his peers. he grows up to become a brilliant physicist, but is troubled by the relative luxuries enjoyed by fellow academics, which contrast with his beliefs in an egalitarian society. he is soon preyed upon by sabul, a parasitic colleague who takes credit for shevek's work, in return for clandestine access to communications with the planet urras. despite the odonians' despisal of profiteering urras, their much larger population and superior facilities mean that their physics is of a much higher standard than that on anarres. unable to stand the eploitation of sabul for long, shevek soon becomes involved with the syndicate of initiative to engage in their own clandestine radio communications with urras, seeing themselves as true revolutionaries, unbound by what they see as the tyranny of social norms on their planet. in a move deeply unpopular with most of his peers, shevek ends up deciding to travel to urras, in an attempt to engage in dialogue between the two worlds.

well, that's not quite how the book runs. the first chapter details shevek's exit from annares and travel to urras, and his first experiences of urrasti values. his bemusement with their wastefulness, religion and patriarchy. thereafter, the book tells two stories in parallel, in alternative chapters: the story up til that moment on anarres, and the story after on urras. shevek is initially insulated in high class urrasti society. he has his own servant, spends time with urrasti intellectuals and samples the delights of urras' material bounty. it's not long, however, before he comes across dissidents. first, chifoilisk from thu, an agent of the communist government of one of urras' provinces, who tries to persuade shevek that they have more in common with eachother than with a-io's profiteers. later, as shevek's realisation of his separation from the poor and disadvantaged of urras grows stronger, he escapes the clutches of his hosts and joins a mass demonstration of anarchists and socialists in solidarity, and delivers a rousing speech extolling values of freedom, solidarity and egalitarianism. the demonstration is brutally suppressed by armed security forces, but shevek escapes to the embassy of an alien planet, where he seeks immunity. the story ends with shevek returning home.

the dispossessed works due to both the compelling vision of a free yet principled society it sets out, and the fact that the story of shevek reinforces these ideals, whilst critiquing them at the same time. i would highly reccommend this book to anyone with an interest in how an anarchist utopia might look, and what the pitfalls might be with such a society. le guin's writing makes the values she obviously deeply believes in become realisable through the experiences of her characters. i'm often struck by the beauty with which she describes male-female relationships outside of the realms of male domination and tired gender stereotypes. le guin is particularly inspired by taoist ideas which may explain her knack for balancing yin and yang. according to her it's a natural complement to pacifist anarchism:-

"I read Lao-tzu and the Tao Te Ching at 14. My father had it around the house in the old edition with the Chinese text. I sneaked a peek and was and remain fascinated. Taoism is still an underlayer in my work. It begins talking about what we can't talk about--an old mysticism that intertwines with Buddhism and is practical and not theistic. Before and beyond God. There's a humorous and easygoing aspect to it that I like temperamentally and that fits in with anarchism. Pacifist anarchism and Lao-tzu have a lot of connection with each other, especially in the 20th century."

the dispossessed is obviously a book that has been taken seriously be academic anarchist studies, as a quick internet search will reveal. it's well worth a read.

whilst on the topic of anarchist sci-fi (arcane i know), i should mention some rather different but no less compelling material i've been reading in the compilation sf published by semiotext(e). whilst the collection is certainly patchy and rather too biased towards the excessive-references-to-robotic-phalluses school of sci-fi for this reader's liking, there are some gems in there. one that springs to mind is the anonymously-penned visit port watson! (which can be read in full here). despite the anonymous tag, i assumed that this was the work of hakim bey, pseudonym of co-editor and anarchist thinker peter lamborn wilson. the piece is written in the style of a travel guide detailing a utopic tropical island, sonsorol, where society runs on distinctly libertarian principles. it fits in well with bey's idea of a temporary autonomous zone, inspired by a similar brand of 18th century piracy found in some of william burroughs' later novels (cities of the red night, the place of dead roads, the western lands). check it.

* whatever you do, however, avoid the tele adaptation of earthsea i had the deep misfortune of witnessing over easter. myself and t. were aghast at the total misrepresentation of the complexities of the books in this blockbusterisation of the novels (as was le guin). sacrilege!