John Mortell’s blog

I recently came across this Anime from a friend’s facebook account. According to the wikipedia article the show is based off a manga comic that satirises politics with mahjong games used to decide international relations.

It’s completely barmy as you can imagine.

Some of the touches, like Kim Jong Il’s son having ‘mickey mouse’ ears are nice nods to real world events and definitely add to the strangeness of the episodes. Anyway, I’ve put up what I can find off youtube so enjoy:
Continue Reading »

Really interesting part of Newswipe talking about how with the collapse of the Cold War, the narrative of the victim replaced that of ‘left vs right’. In particular, they mention how by making certain people the ‘good’ victims and others the ‘bad’ aggressors the ability to deal with complex politics became more difficult.

A recent example of the danger of the ‘victim’ narrative has been seen following the earthquake in Haiti. I do not think it is unreasonable to point out that at least part of the reason the damage was so extensive was down to Haiti being a non-functional state. Yet, Haiti’s political situation seems largely to have been ignored in favour of narrative about the ‘victims’ of the earthquake. Obviously, there are issues of time and what one can focus on, but I suspect what would help Haiti more than aid is a genuine discussion as to how Haiti could be made ‘to function’, something that the ‘victim’ narrative really cannot deal with.

The relevant part begins at 1.50 minutes into the video:

As an aside, anybody know how I can embed videos in a way so that it could begin at the point I want? Tried to do so but don’t quite understand the suggestions online.

A really good History Channel documentary on the history of Marijuana and how racism, immigration issues, control of non-whites and attempts to ban alcohol led to marijuana becoming illegal:
Continue Reading »

Or so this Discovery magazine article suggests may be the case. Certainly the idea that we’re here and the ‘dominant species’ because of random chance is not particularly surprising (for some of us anyway) but the idea that the ‘inferior’ humans ‘won the evolutionary war’ is striking nevertheless;

But people do not easily escape from the idea of progress. We’re drawn to the idea that we are the end point, the pinnacle not only of the hominids but of all animal life. Boskops argue otherwise. They say that humans with big brains, and perhaps great intelligence, occupied a substantial piece of southern Africa in the not very distant past, and that they eventually gave way to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens—that is, ourselves.

It’s a moot point really, but interesting nevertheless. And there’s definitely a science-fiction novel in it one imagines.

(Oh, wait. There is.) (Kinda, as it’s about Neanderthal’s rather than Boksops but…)

Fantastic article on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley about why most of the talk about a ‘two-state’/'single state’/other solution to the conflict remains just talk and the current ‘solutions’ are not really such. The whole article is worth a read but the real core of it comes when talking about the current negotiations and the two state solution which is their foundation:

The problem was built into the structure of the negotiations. It is only a slight exaggeration to describe them as a confidence game, a tacit understanding by all sides to elude the historic core of the matter through disingenuous ambiguity. Palestinians hoped they could achieve their goals even as they persisted in denying the Jewish people’s entitlement to even part of the land; Israelis trusted that if they granted Palestinians some kind of state the whole problem would fade away. The US assumed the role of a willing participant. Others, Europeans included, lazily followed.

Failure to deal with basic issues guaranteed their reemergence whenever the parties inched closer to a deal and recoiled from the implications of that last, fateful step. Then what had been obscured came into fuller view, namely that Palestinians were not truly prepared to stipulate that the conflict has been terminated and all claims set aside solely in exchange for an end to the occupation, and that Israel was not prepared to end its occupation in exchange for less.

Establishing two states would resolve the occupation, but that is only one aspect, albeit an important one, of a problem that arose decades before the occupation began. An Israeli leader will be loath to relinquish territory and permit the emergence of an indisputably sovereign Palestinian state at least as long as suspicion lingers that Palestinians have not genuinely made their peace with the new reality, that they are biding their time, and that a future of renewed strife lies in store.

In turn, a Palestinian leader cannot credibly proclaim that the conflict has come to a close if the solution ignores the genesis of the Palestinian plight and the historic core of its national cause. To adopt such a stand would be tantamount to conceding that the refugees—who make up a majority of the Palestinian population, were once its political vanguard, and could well regain that position—had waged six decades of struggle by mistake and endured six decades of suffering in vain. Internal challenges to such an arrangement might not be immediate. But they would be certain and severe, laying bare the fragility of a supposedly historic accord(my emphasis).

Not sure what to make of the writers ideas about either resurrecting the peace process as a version of ‘greater Jordan’ or going back even further to 1948 instead of 1967 and trying to sort things out from there. On the ’1948 plan’ (as it were) I have to admit that I would wonder whether any peace would by default not solve the ’1948 problem’ (something the authors themselves seem to recognise). While they try to suggest that the focus on 1967 has ignored the underlying causes of the conflict that existed in 1948, surely those remained the same leading up to 1967 and any solution on that front will be default solve the 1948 problems?

Regardless, its still worth a look and hopefully on a personal note, blogging will resume on a more regular schedule soon.

This is great, God doesn’t save anybody… Mr Deity’s site is great..

This new book coming out from David King looks quite interesting and foreign policy have a nice preview of it here. My personal favourite though has to be this one of Stalin:

Like everybody else it seems, I have seen the clip of Susan Boyle singing, and while I do not deny that she has a tremendously impressive voice, frankly I have found it hard to buy into the general ‘ugly duckling / swan story that has been built around her. Even if the story is a good one. But Clive James, over at the BBC, in my opinion hits the nail on the head about the story here. Follow the jump for the full article, but the important part I have attached in block quotes:

The facts, alas, say that in every opera house in the world the chorus contains at least half a dozen people with voices as good as Susan’s, and most of them won’t become stars, so all the hoo-hah about Susan’s sudden stardom was at least partly illusory, based on the dangerous notion that overnight prominence on television will always change reality permanently.

In the opera house, music ought to matter more than anything but it remains true that one of the reasons people flock to hear Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca singing together is that they look the part almost as well as they sing it.

Things shouldn’t be that way, but strangely enough they have become more and more that way in the last forty years, during the very period when feminism as a train of thought has done so much to educate us about the restrictive nature of expectations based on pulchritude.

When I first started attending Covent Garden in the early 1960s it was still quite common for the soprano to be an unlikely stimulus for the tenor’s cries of passion. Today, most of the sopranos look like film stars. It could be said that the more our primitive male prejudices are broken down, the more we all become free. But one of the consequences of freedom is that ticket buyers are free to choose, and it is likely to remain a fact that ticket buyers of both sexes will choose to see the imported dreamboat.

Susan might very well, after this, get a job in the chorus and even sell a lot of records, but if the press expects more than that it could be adding yet another chapter to a long story in which discoveries have been shoved onto the boards to fulfil a role in a fairy story which is fated not to turn out well.

As I said to my supervisor last week when having a quick meeting about my dissertation, the most unexpected problem I have encountered is not a strictly ‘academic’ one but rather, that the topic itself, namely the Lebanon war of 2006 is quite depressing.

I don’t mean ‘depressing’ in a sort of existentialist way of ‘war is hell’ or ‘why can’t people just get along’ sense, but rather that I’m finding it very hard to read about many of the (mostly Israeli) actions that have tremendous human impact and the general human suffering involved, and either maintain some feeling of objectivity and, more importantly (at least for my personal sanity) do not leave me with an unhelpful feeling of anger or disgust directed at the Israeli state..

In many ways this feeling come from several different areas.. Which for my own health and sanity I want to break down to see if I can make sense of the constituent parts:

For starters, I am not exactly what you would call pro-Israel. I generally believe that the Israeli state is sectarian, racist and generally quite unpleasant in its dealings with many of its neighbours and ‘Arab’ citizens (also with ‘Jews’ that don’t make the cut for whatever reason, like the Russian immigrants or the ‘African’ Jews). The main problem I have here is that I can accept that some of my prejudices are just that, and that the alternative states in the region are not exactly ‘good’.. But that still doesn’t excuse or block the fact that for me, the persistent, consistent and obvious abuses committed by Israel.. at the very least make it hard for me to maintain my objectivity.

As an example, one of the things that have gotten to me most in reading about the war is that Israel, in the last 48 hours of the conflict, while negotiating a cease-fire dropped cluster bombs on Lebanon. Apparently, just to kick the Lebanese population ‘while it was down’. Given that I’ve seen articles on the BBC talking about the civilian deaths from this war, there use seems to just be a means of terrorising the population.

So, solution to problem one – find (reasonable) sources, that can explain to me, without using the mindset that they’re ‘just filthy Arabs’ why Israel’s actions are correct or moral.

Problem two – the fact that I’m being bothered by the morality. I’m having a hard time distancing myself from the current situation. While writing this would probably be easier if I could just ‘turn off’ any political senses I have, the general current historical proximity of the events makes this pretty hard, if not impossible.

The other major problem I have is that I’m having a hard time finding a focus in this topic. Partially it is because there seem to be no books on anything to do with the Middle East in which you do not at the very least find gross distortions or lies. But mostly it is just the problem of finding something that I can sink my teeth into enough without getting .. dragged down perhaps? As an example, anything pro-Hezbollah, skirts dangerously close at times to ‘evil hooked-nosed Jews came and ate my baby’… While things like Robert Fisk often spend quite a length of time discussing how ‘this old woman lost her entire family to a disproportionate Israeli attack’… But as I’ve sad in my ‘problem one’, finding anything that isn’t basically the ‘Faux news’ version of the world that supports Israel is nearly impossible.. In terms of my focus, this is making it very difficult to find a focus that I can feel comfortable with.

On the other hand, speaking of my prejudices, I’m not certain that they are a problem. Mainly because I am willing to acknowledge that I have them? But on this factor, I’m not certain.

Anyway, apologies for the rambling, and (probably) incoherent nature of this post, but I had it suggested to me that doing something like this may at least get other people to give me helpful suggestions, or would at least help me sort it out in my own head..

I realise I haven’t been posting really at all lately, the joys of two jobs, a masters and trying to decide whether to do a phd and avoid the real world for a bit longer or try to find a job (some chance, you say) have proven to occupy my time somewhat. Heading to Brussels next weekend to see the EU parliament and some other stuff there, so I’m wondering, what would people recommend to see/do there? Bear in mind I’ll only be there for two and a half days so…