Random

admin Post in Uncategorized
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The internet has become the site of struggle for the future of our freedoms (in the West). 

Can I make an observation here, one that takes in the experience at Dartington. In my time there, I looked on in amused despair at the fact that the arts appeared to be struggling to reconcile themselves to science, with the feeling that scientific inquiry (particularly that of quantum physics) represented the edge of humanity’s engagement with matter, with fundamental reality. While not being able to challenge that directly, it seemed a fashion had developed for 1/ incorporating some scientific concepts into arts practice (sometimes along with getting into multimedia and so on), and 2/ for employing terminology reminiscent of scientific language in the discourse of the arts.

To me, this now appears to have been utterly blown away this last decade, and I hope to God nobody is still mincing around doing devised theatre concerning Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, etc.

I suppose, later, having read stuff like Daniel Bell, I had confirmed my feelings re: the above, recognising that science belongs, primarily, to the techno-economic sphere, while art remains resolutely of the cultural sphere, the bridge not being popularised notions of the behaviour of black holes or collapsing wave functions, but, absolutely, definitively, *the computer*.

I’d go as far as to say that nobody today, be they artist or whatever, can understand the world they live in without some appreciation of computers and their historical development. The twin tracks of the rise of the surveillance state and the empowerment of individuals (be they users or programmers or builders) meets at the site of the final conflict, The Internet, and we can either ignore the battle, sit on the sidelines and observe, or take part ourselves.

If the internet is decisively turned towards becoming subject to more and more corporate control, then its possibilities will be severely curtailed, and, in a very real sense, freedom will be lost. In that sense, Anonymous and the other groups truly do represent freedom fighters (and certainly are not terrorists) and their rhetoric, actions, and their subsequent hunting down and incarceration for appalling lengths of time, truly tell the story of our times. Same with Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.

I have found that the gripping nature of what is transpiring has made me forsake ‘creative activity’ and become more devoted to ‘understanding the world’. But, coming to things with the sensibility I have, I am always positioned on the right side, as my guiding light is the imagination and awareness, and whatever fosters those, or seeks to preserve them, is always where my sympathies will lie.

This will make me sound like a nihilist, but, on balance, it makes me realize and reflect upon the fact that the most important thing about creative endeavour (I hate calling it ‘the arts’), is not the art itself, but the way creative people think and feel and engage with the world.

May imagination, talent, and wit be the weapons with which this battle is won!

The crusades in reverse

admin Post in Reverse crusade
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Re: Mali and ongoing actions in Africa, Pakistan, the Middle East. The explanatory framework I am happiest with is to consider this “The Crusades in Reverse”. Unfortunately, the same phrase has been used, wrongly, to mean a counter-crusade to restore the caliphate.

The idea of restoring the caliphate is a beautiful sentiment to place in the mouth of a useful idiot. Indeed, I heard one of the Mali jihadists uttering those words today on the BBC World Service. An actor? Western voices who recite the caliphate idea are either genuinely sucked in by it, or understand that it recirculation within Western discourse empowers the complementary narrative of the Global War on Terror.

Anyway, what I mean is that the vanguard of Western imperialism are the jihadists, who are proving the most useful idiots. Displace them into whatever territory you wish to control and they quickly depopulate, destroy and destabilize. The kicker is that the ideology they bring (which is not Islam, in the sense of their being any sort of definitive Islam, but which is 1/ genuinely barbarous with regards to fundamental human rights, and 2/ can be parlayed easily in Western discourse into standing for all muslims, thereby bolstering easily the case for ongoing interventions) is such an abomination: cultural destruction, summary execution, women treated disgustingly, that the Western powers are easily able to fend off any sort of reticence on the part of the left/traditional opponents of such adventurism.

The whole thing is a fait accompli. I despise NATO, but they win, because they have worked to a long-term plan and have successfully shut out any meaningful alternatives. My only knowledge of Mali is, in common with many in the West, I suspect, the appreciation of the Tuareg desert music of the North that brought ‘The Festival in the Desert’ and the songs of Tinariwen. These musicians are now fleeing and reappearing in other parts of Africa, having been warned they risk having their tongues cut out or being murdered if they continue to perform in Mali. These desert people are not stooges/propagandists for the West. This is genuine tyranny, and now the battle is joined by the Western powers. It’s totally depressing to me, but the posture of ‘not in my name’ and of opposing these interventions no longer seems to hold water.

Dear Lord, NATO or jihadists.

Austerity to last forever

admin Post in Uncategorized
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Austerity to last until 2018. Forever.

Finished!

admin Post in Indonesia, Social Research, Taiwan
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My first piece of social research.

I made it through all the steps. Probably very badly.

View the PDF

Geographical Distribution

admin Post in Indonesia, Social Research
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Here is the geographical distribution on Java, of the respondents to my questionnaire, so far.

Social science and garbage

admin Post in Indonesia, Social Research
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Social science and taking out the trash combined.

The stink of rotting bananas replaced by the sweet scent of fresh knowledge!

Social Research – First questionnaire returned

admin Post in Indonesia, Social Research
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A small yet proud moment for me, return of first completed questionnaire. No idea what it says…

Hong Kong

admin Post in Hong Kong
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This meticulously arranged vegetable stand near Central caught my eye.

Social research

admin Post in Indonesia, Social Research
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The second semester at Taipei Medical University is almost over, halfway to a masters degree.

This week I am in the data collection phase of the first social research I have conducted.

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I could say a few words about Indonesia and Taiwan. Indonesia has a long history of migration, initially internal. Since the 1970s, the Indonesian state has been organizing the export of surplus labor (overwhelmingly women) to a number of key countries: Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. This exporting of labor has generated a huge flow of funds into Indonesia, in the form of remittances, which has served to mask the inept economic management on the part of the government.

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The intersection between Taiwan and Indonesia is in filling ‘the care gap’; because Taiwan (and Malaysia) have, since the 1980s, pursued a high-skilled economy, women have been drawn into the labor force in increasing numbers. This has left young children and the elderly with nobody to care for them. In the case of Taiwan, this situation is aggravated by the facts of a rapidly aging population and the country’s low birth rate (the world’s lowest) and the numbers of foreign domestic workers in Taiwan continues to increase (up 8% last year).

While women from the Philippines initially filled these domestic worker/caregiver roles, over the last decade Indonesian women have displaced them (the reasons for this are perhaps cultural, in that an image has been developed of the Indonesian woman as ‘the perfect maid’; docile, not too bright, hard-working, etc.). Today there are about 150,000 Indonesian domestic workers in Taiwan.

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The legal picture regarding domestic workers is that they are exempt from the provision of the Labor Standards Law, joining a number of other occupations, such as fire fighters, nurses, doctors, lawyers, etc., that are neither allowed to unionize, nor to strike. These groups are also not bound by the maximum working week of 48 hours. For domestic workers, this means that their contracts usually stipulate no days off (certainly for the first year), and this fact, along with the amount of power their employer has over them, has led advocacy groups to invoke the term ‘slavery’ to describe the situation of these workers.

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For this research, I firstly engaged in extended dialogue with a number of Indonesian domestic workers, and from this I developed a questionnaire that was translated into Bahasa Indonesian. The aim is to gather some evidence on work conditions, what time off is received (if any), sources of conflict with employer, and attitudes towards the Taiwan National Health Insurance scheme that these women are obliged to join. Other surveys have been conducted, but hopefully the more open questions in my survey will take me beyond these in terms of the knowledge gained.

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Onwards.