In the Water

Five-step Programme

Yes, an enlightening interview with yours truly. Disillusioned Kid brings up the important questions of our time, and we prepare for all worst case scenarios with appropriate abandon. Read till the end, especially if you now want me to interview you.

1). As a result of climate change and/or nuclear war its suddenly got incredibly cold. The dire state of the economy reduces you to using your book collection as fuel for a fire. What goes first and what do you hide away?

 Well first I’d probably burn all those Chomsky tomes about how human beings have a choice of whether they want to avoid environmental collapse and nuclear war or not. Also, would there be any point in retaining all that post-apocalyptic fiction? Perhaps it would be useful as a reference, but could be moved to the ‘non-fiction’ category. In any case all my comic books will be hidden away and defended with my life.

2) The dead are rising and devouring the living. Millions have already succumbed and you'll soon be trapped in your home. What's your plan?

I think about this a lot. Given that I live in one of the most densely-populated areas of the world, this would be a tough situation. But on the other hand, because land is so scarce over here, we don’t have that many graveyards, so the initial crop of living dead wouldn’t be too overwhelming. If the situation does get critical, there would be no point in barricading myself in my apartment- I would be totally surrounded and wouldn’t last very long. I would take my cricket bat, put on 20 layers of clothing to guard against bites, and try to make it out to the harbour and the ferry piers. That’s about an hour and half on foot. There I would commandeer a vessel and take it out to one of the tiny outlying islands where the odds are slightly better. Can the living dead swim?

 3) At an action you are far more successful than you had anticipated and find yourself in the midst of the G8 leaders. Unfortunately the only thing within reach is those little pastries they carry round on trays at posh events of this sort. Whatca gonna do?

For a while I would watch the G8 leaders eat those dairy-laden pastries and make snarky comments because as a vegan I have a significantly lower risk of developing cholesterol-related heart problems in my lifetime. Ha ha. Then I would try to organize the tray-carriers so we could hurl pastries and obscenities at them.

 4) Complete this sentence: "Say what you like about him, but at least George W. Bush..."

Has consistently railed against foreign militants in Iraq. I’ve heard there’s at least 150,000 of them from the States alone.

5) In 97 words or less, why haven't we defeated capitalism yet?

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

***

Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions (or leaving them in a comment on your blog). I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Insert water-related cliche here...

It's been almost a year since my last post, but I've been convinced/inspired to start writing this blog again thanks to some friends. All the posts from the past couple of years are still around, but you'll have to check them out in the archives... I wanted to clear this main page to avoid confusing myself, and to purge the main page of the comment-spammers that have descended like an army of robotic weeds upon this neglected blog.

Anyway, it's been a long, crazy year. Short story is that I'm moving out of HK within the next two months. There's going to be a lot to talk about in that time, and I guess it's good to have this thing up and running so I can document all that.

If you want the long version you can write me an email. It feels good to sneak back into this blog world, much like this spring roll sneaking into the picture below... yes, more soon!

Doha Round collapses

As the maniacal slaughter and calculated destruction goes on by Israel/US in Lebanon, there's lots of reporting in the business press now on the collapse of the Doha Round after an 'emergency meeting' of the six major negotiating parties... i.e. the representatives of India, Brazil, US, EU, Japan, and Australia. Here is a pretty matter-of-fact report from the Financial Times, with the usual ideological line of course, and another pretty OK report from the Grauniad.

This was after the HK Ministerial in December 2005, of course, which ended in what was more-or-less a failure, the Doha Round being on a 'lifeline' after that.

By all accounts, it's one of the central contradictions of the 'free trade' doctrine that caused the collapse. According to the FT:

"The US continued to argue for big cuts in farm import tariffs to open up markets for its farmers, a demand fiercely rejected by the European Union, Japan and India, who said America had first to go further in offering to cut agricultural subsidies."

I.e. 'Free trade' is OK for you out there, but WE would never subject ourselves to that... WE need a big state to protect our interests and underwrite our profiteering. Nothing new, of course, and one could see something like this coming from the very concept of something like the WTO. But a pretty big incident nonetheless.

So the situation now isn't that this doctrine and ideology is dead, but probably that its vanguard will resort to different tactics... most likely bi-lateral and regional trade agreements. There  were already words to this effect by a French representative at the G6 meeting... anyway, check it out, and keep a closer eye on events closer to home as regional and bi-lateral trade agreements become more popular.

English-Chinese-Korean Activist Glossary 1.0!

OK, so this is strictly the beta, v.1.0, prototype of a multilingual activist glossary that some friends and I have been working on. There's only a few terms there now and the format is pretty basic. BUT, we are working on improving both the content and quality, hopefully even with .wav samples of what each word/term actually sounds like!! Near future, I promise.

So for now please check out the glossary and learn far far more than 'where is the bus stop?', 'what time is it?' and other terms that seem to keep popping up in your routine language classes. If you are really creative and combine the two you could have questions like 'where is the bus towards anarchism?', for example, or 'what time is it? revolution?'.

An endless source of amusement, I know.  Like I said, it'll get better.

And my email address lies somewhere on this page, so PLEASE send us more terms to translate so that we can add more than what our meagre brains can come up with and hopefully get a list of what people actually want to know!!

Breaking News: Bob Geldof is Not Jesus...

... he is still a shameless self-promoting twat who continues to use his celebrity in the contemptible support of power.

As George Monbiot writes in a new piece, now that the attention has gone elsewhere, the G8's "promises" on debt and aid to Africa have been broken with such speed as to surprise even the most hardened cynics. The G8 "deals" themselves were hailed by Geldof as a resounding success (he at one point chanted the hopefully-infamous line "On aid 10 out of 10; On debt 8 out of 10" like some glazed-eye mantra to his great suited gods). That African campaigners themselves and campaign groups worldwide described the G8's actions as "a disaster for the world's poor" seems to have been besides the point.

Anyway, check out Monbiot’s piece, best summed up as follows:

"He [Geldof] seized a campaign which commanded great public enthusiasm, which had the potential gravely to embarrass Tony Blair and George Bush. He asked us to focus not on the harm the G8 leaders were doing, but on the help they might give. When they failed to deliver, he praised them anyway. His endorsement and the public forgetfulness it prompted helped license them to start reversing their commitments. When they did so, he said nothing. This looks to me like more than just political naivity. It looks as if he is working for the other side."

I personally don’t know why Geldof was given so much time after already amply proving that he’s a moron with statements like this.

For a longer and particularly damning deconstruction of Geldof and the whole Live8/Make Poverty History campaigns, I can't suggest any better article than this piece here by Stuart Hodkinson.

The 'Free Market' and the Famine in Niger

Jeevan Vasagar has an important article on the famine in Niger in today's issue of the UK newspaper The Guardian. As was the case with some of the worst famines throughout history, in Ireland and India under British colonialism, for example, Vasagar observes the contradiction that people are starving while there is in fact plenty of food currently in the country. The markets of Niger, he writes, show "no sign that times are hard":

"[T]here are piles of red onions, bundles of glistening spinach, and pumpkins sliced into orange shards. There are plastic bags of rice, pasta and manioc flour, and the sound of butchers' knives whistling as they are sharpened before hacking apart joints of goat and beef."

The crucial observations he makes are that people cannot afford the food that is there inside the country, and that long-standing demands by starving people for free distribution of this food were rejected by the government, under pressure from international donors such as the EU and the UN. Thus, the crisis could have been averted at an earlier, less-critical stage had market-fundamentalism not guided the country's economic policies. So, take a look at this important article, which conclues that:

"The starvation in Niger is not the inevitable consequence of poverty, or simply the fault of locusts or drought. It is also the result of a belief that the free market can solve the problems of one of the world's poorest countries."

Zapatista Red Alert Lifted

Since I mentioned the Zapatista Red Alert a few posts back, just thought I'd link to this quick update from Chiapas...

With the completion of the internal consulta – whose results have already been made known – the EZLN has decided to lift the Red Alert which it has been maintaining since June 19, 2005 in the zapatista indigenous communities...

The full communique released by the EZLN has been translated by irlandesa, and can be seen on her blog...

Zapatistas on Red Alert

The Zapatista movement (EZLN) in southern Mexico has recently issued several communiques indicating a situation of 'red alert' in its communities. I'll link to an English translation of the latest communique in the next paragraph. But basically it seems that several factors combined have indicated to the EZLN that the federal government of Mexico and/or paramilitary organizations in the Chiapas region are planning a major offensive against them.

Anyway, the first communique citing the red alert can be read here. After that, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos has most recently issued this communique, citing the reasons for the red alert. And for further reference, one of the major sources of English translations of Zapatista communiques, irlandesa, now has her own weblog, which is linked on the right hand side of this site.

The Zapatista movement has been a source of tremendous inspiration and ideas in the anti-corporate globalization struggle, and international solidarity is one of the main reasons their communities have been able to survive. The more noise we make outside, the more chance we have of averting a potential disaster in the region.

Talk by Andre Vltchek

Andre Vltchek is a US filmmaker, writer, and political analyst who has spent a lot of time covering events in Asia and Latin America. He has most recently spent time in Indonesia, and his newest film, Terlana: Breaking of a Nation deals with the continuing history of that country. His most recent article for ZNet, uploaded yesterday, can be read here, and describes the situation in Aceh following the tsunami

The reason I'm bringing this up is that Andre will be in Hong Kong to give a talk about the political situation in Indonesia on the afternoon of June 8 (next Wednesday). The hours aren't good for working people, but if you can make it, do try to come... it will be at the City University HK (Kowloon Tong area) from 10:00am to 12:30pm. Here are more details from the organizers:

Southeast Asia Research Centre
City University of Hong Kong
Terlena - Breaking of a Nation
A Seminar with Documentary Film Presentation
by
ANDRE VLTCHEK
Political analyst, writer and filmmaker

Wednesday, 8 June 2005, 10:00 AM to 12:30 PM
Room Y4302, 4/F Academic Building
City University of Hong Kong

Abstract: Andre Vltchek will be presenting a 90-minute documentary film Terlena Breaking of a Nation, which he directed and produced in 2004. Terlena (the word means amnesiain Indonesian) was finished in May 2004. It was selected and screened at the prestigious New York International Independent Film Festival (NYIIFF) in November 2004. Artistic Director of NYIIFF Anoo Cottoor praised it in the following terms: A truly groundbreaking, informative, impactful and passionate documentary about the silencing of voices in Indonesia during the regime of Suharto, and the impact&on society and culture then and up to today.Terlena includes some testimonies by important Indonesian intellectuals and artists, such as former President Abdurrahman Wahid, world-famous Asian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Ilham Aidit (son of murdered the Communist leader Aidit), Asvi Warman Adam (head of political studies at LIPI, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences), Djokopekik (leading Indonesian painter) and many others. Terlena contradicts official Indonesian and American propaganda scenarios concerning the coup in 1965. It also exposes the tremendous violence that followed Suhartos takeover. This violence, in many ways, continues until now.

After the screening, Andre Vltchek will answer questions related to the film and will be commenting on the present situation in Indonesia, including the recent elections he covered from Aceh to Flores as a political analyst, the lack of political diversity, the unchallenged power of Indonesian elitesand the military, and the persistent rampant corruption. He will discuss the human rights situation, including some concrete cases for example, the assassination of human rights activist Munir and the disappearance of several key PRD leaders. He will also offer his analysis of the situation in Aceh, where he witnessed inefficiency, corruption and direct blocking of the aid by the military and government. During his work in Aceh, Andre encountered the leaders of GAM and visited villages that were terrorized by the military even after the devastating tsunami wave. His report can be found at www.oaklandinstitute.org (Aceh Abandoned: The Second Tsunami) and will be distributed among participants of the seminar.

Andre Vltchek is an American journalist, political analyst, writer, photographer, documentary film-maker, and a specialist in Southeast Asian, Pacific and Latin American affairs. He studied at Columbia University in New York. He has been working for European, Asian and American newspapers and magazines (covering conflicts in Peru, Cambodia, Indonesia, Russia, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere). He is presently chief editor of the international web-based journal WCN. He has written several politically charged books (both fiction and non-fiction), such as Western Terror: From Potosi to Baghdad (Common Courage Press, 2005), Exile (Seven Stories Press, 2005, with Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Rossie Indira) and Point of No Return (forthcoming in 2005). He presently resides in Indonesia and the South Pacific and can be reached at andre-wcn@usa.net.

New Stuff

A few new things have been added to this site, so I thought I'd mention them. The archive categories on the left have been changed... there are now several more categories than before, so that pieces are shelved in more specific sections.

Also the links section has been updated, with several new sites added... here is some info on a few of them:

People's Radio Hong Kong: Wow! A web-based grassroots radio station in HK! Radio of the people, by the people, and for the people. (Thanks Chucky!)

Edge of Sports: Yes, a leftist sports writer! Merges professional sport with insightful political analysis... want to know more about Ronaldo's trip to Palestine, outspoken anti-war basketball player Steve Nash winning the MVP award, and the Iraqi football team giving Bush the boot? Then check out this site!

Chatter Garden: Blog/discussion forum run by journalism students at HK University

Dollars and Sense: Economics like you wouldn't find in the classroom...

War Times: Amazing free newspaper created in the US to report on the 'war on terror'. The print version is no more, but their issues are now up online...

Enjoy!