no more slogans

2006-04-17T10:52:00.000-04:00

Aid to Palestine

The issues is obviously more complicated than whether or not to give.

The Russians claim that their aid will help keep an open dialogue with the Palestinian Authority and therefore encourage the Palestinians to take a more moderate stance. Others have countered that the Russians are merely trying to curry favour with the pro-Palestinian oil-producing nations. One might also cite Russia's historical anti-semitism - if not as a reason to support HAMAS, at least as one aspect of the ideological make-up of a people who may or may not raise their voice against this kind of support.

The Iranians are a different story. They are the first, and as of yet, only Islamic country to give substantial aid to Palestine. There is something more at play here than the unity of Islam. They of course have recourse to their historic support. However, we must also keep in mind Iran's stance in relation to the US - that is they seem quite willing to piss off Uncle Sam.

In a recent commentary on the Globe and Mail online Faisal Bhabha and Ameena Sultan, directors with the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, condemned the Canadian governments withdrawal of aid. They make a very good point that specific organizations, which were dependent upon Canadian aid, were working towards peace and democracy, and have now been shut down because of the across the board shut down of Canadian aid. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claims that there are ways to ensure that aid is spent on humanitarian needs. Whether this is the case we can imagine that it is in large part possible to direct our aid dollars. Following this logic, and keeping in mind that a civil war in Palestine might be a good thing to avoid, we could also imagine that large amounts of money are withheld as a sanction for the PNA's anti-Israel stance, but discretion is practiced and some aid is continued because it is seen to have a concrete, positive influence.

If we can drop bombs strategically, why can't we deliver aid in the same way.

2006-04-16T11:30:00.000-04:00

The morning is bright and it sounds like there is a party upstairs. I can hear the birds singing.

I'm lookining into angels this morning, because of a great film I say come to an end last night, Angels in America. i didn't know it but this was originally a play, award winning and deserving I would imagine. The film was extraordinary and fantastic.

But what about this angel story? Should we believe it? I found the passage in John where Jesus gets busted for performing miracles on God's day. This is possibly the most ironic passage in the Bible, but the style is so heavy you just can't risk a laugh. We need a rewrite that draws out the humour - the money and the hypocracy are getting me down, but I need to laugh to carry on.

My bible studies found no mention of the angel coming down to make a fountain of healing. Is this not in the Book? Does someone have a nice story to tell me about this happening?

In this movie the angels can't cut it without God who has slipped out the back door and left us humans alone, hence all the shit of the 20th century. We need to have hope they tell us and we manage to carry on and fight the plauge that is AIDS and discrimination and hatred.

But we can't forget the history. We need to see that the suffering is nothing new and that the good times and the bad have been done before. The scale is bigger but the proportion is the same whether AIDS in Africa or the Black Plague in Europe. We should let this get us down or ignore the seriousness of today's problems. But we need to realize that there is no end, at least not a good one, at best bitter-sweet. The cycle carries on and instead of this being the cause of all our angst we need to find hope because this means the good and the bad will return - and human life will continue to meet with both. This in itself is not evil or good, it just is.

Shout out to Burning Spear for some influence on my style this glorious day.

2006-04-13T18:09:00.000-04:00

Harper and the Role of Canada's Military

I've been wondering when things are going to start going poorly. I have had a string of success, due in part to hard work and in part to luck. However, I know these things do not last.

Today the bomb was dropped. I read in the Globe and Mail of the Conservative government's planned cuts to climate change and other enviromental programs. If this anti-Kyoto rhetoric was enough, an article posted later today spoke of PM Harper's visit to a military graduation ceremony. Here the PM spoke of his militaristic zeal and claimed that these solider's were embarking on the "highest calling of citizenship."

Granted for a PM to praise his own position in this way may have come across as somewhat arrogant, but there would have been some truth in it. There may be something necessary in the existence of a military, perhaps something noble. However, the highest calling of citizenship is not to be found in being the pawn of misguided missions of liberation and the spread of freedom which are more often than not done as an extension of the concerns of capital or in an attempt to gain favour with our neighbours to the immediate south.

If there is to be a role for Canada's military in the world it should be one of peacekeeping. If we are to take an increasingly prominent role we should be very weary of the government's motives and its choice as to where our brothers and sisters are sent to risk their lives.

Tomorrow there will be an article in the Globe and Mail about the Dafur conflict's affects on Chad. The situation in Sudan is dire and has been so for at least the past fifty years. It is in large part a conflict of Muslim and non-Muslims, but there are imporant resources (oil, fertile land) that are at stake. The situation in Dafur has its own particularities, which are complicated by the state of affairs in Chad.

Is a foreign military presence the stabilizing force needed in Western Sudan? Perahps or perahps not. However, it would seem that the UN's reluctance to go into Sudan is not based simply on this question, and of course the issue is not straight-forward. However, it would seem that Sudan is a qualified candidate for this kind of work and given the scale and duration of the conflict it may be time that our priorities were shifted so that, at the very least, an attempt at stabilizing this area and allowing people to build there lives might begin.

2006-04-12T08:57:00.000-04:00

Torturous Events.

I'm awake but would rather be asleep.

The late night bus from North York didn't take as long as expected. Perhaps it was the booze, or perhaps the company, but there was even something pleasurable about riding at the back of an empty bus full of fluorescent ambiance.

The screening as well lacked the expected feeling of torture. First year film students make better films than I expected, or perhaps they just got better over the course of the evening, and maybe that too had something to do with my expectations going into the whole thing.

Given an alternate set of events I could have spent my evening quite differently. The Union was meeting, among other things, to elect me to Vice-Chair. The nomination came from a familiar face without a name. A fellow student I had met at a party that I had hosted on the weekend. It turns out she is a friend of a friend, and will be hosting her own party sometime soon. She suggested that she might invite me. Given an alternate set of events this could have been a torturous interaction.

I was sick the day of the party. Maybe it was the company, maybe the echanichea, but I got feeling better.

On the morning of the conference I was still a bit iffy as to whether coffee was a good idea. As usual it was less of a good idea than I had hoped, but also somehow necessary. (Isn't this the definition of addiction?)

So a pattern developed sick - party - conference/screening - party - sick, where the first half was a series of events endemic to my life in Guelph and the second to that of Toronto, so we might add sick - party - conference - bus ride - screening - party - sick.

This is of course a simplification drawn from a kind of valuation of particular events, which in turn requires this unique gift (or curse) to be able to compartmentalize experiences after the fact: driving to Waterloo, having lunch, getting home - talking in the kitchen - checking the mail, etc. The gift allows us to tell a story that is something other than the series of total movements, which in itself would be an impossibility because of the infinite detail of life. This I think shows us something else: experience is never of a series of individual movements, ie reaching for my cup of coffee is just that, and not a series of compartmentalized movements which come together to form a whole (perhaps through some internal synthesis). That reaching for my coffee cup is indistinguishable from typing this sentence is due to time...

That I loose the detail of my past is the curse of this power. However, to what extent this is necessary and to what extent I can put myself back in the kitchen and recall the details of the kitchen is perhaps dependent upon the person I am, the imperative (or lack there of) to perform this act. More important is whether this power of recall of detail is somehow different than the memory of talking in the kitchen, that is, whether the former is a process of abstract thought, whereas the latter is the product of a bodily memory. Do we construct a room and investigate its details? Or do we remember a particular event in relation to each object of which we would like some detail (memory as a tool)? And has this abstracted space been constructed from memory, a sort of composite of my history with the kitchen (memory as building block)?

2006-04-07T08:43:00.000-04:00

The Newer School.

I've been recently thinking about founding a university. This isn't a new idea. I spent sometime with some friends in Germany talking about this, but not in a very serious manner.

There are several reasons I have returned to this train of thought. First, the increase in tuition fees. The province of Ontario has removed the two year tuition freeze and the University of Guelph, for example, plans to increase fees significantly, especially for international students. Second, the increase in class-sizes, which when mixed with new hi-tech forms of insturction, is I believe is detrimental to the learning experience. Third, the necessity of having a Bacholer's degree in today's job market. This of course feeds class-sizes which "forces" universities to move to hi-tech pedagogical techniques and for some reason causes them to charge people more money. The last part doesn't quite make sense, but there you have it.

In one sense, it is an issue of social justice. We need accessible post-secondary education that does not discriminate against international students. Whether or not a person is allowed access to education should be based on their willingness to actively engage in the learning process. Does this mean that only people with high marks would be accepted? No, not necessarily. However, people who are interested in learning in and of itself will probably, although not necessarily have high marks. They might also be people with little or no formal education or people who have been out of school of sometime. The idea is that those who are willing earn an education. Those who are going through the motions because they need a job, because their parents told them to, or because they don't know what else to do with themselves can go elsewhere.

Some people would call this graduate school, but I'm not sure that I'm happy with the way things are in graduate programs either. As Bachelor's degrees become more wide spread people will need a new way to distinguish themselves and the same problems will filter into grad schools.

For a model lets create a philosophy department. We need a core of professors, 8-10. Schools like Trent and Bishop's already have Philosophy departments smaller than this. It is an excellent time to find professors right now. There are a large number of them being forced into early retirement, who would be happy to continue working and teaching, and there are hundreds of intelligent qualified individuals living hand to mouth working as sessional instructors or non-tenured professors.

Your undergraduate program accepts between 15 and 20 students per year. To fill out there degree they take courses at near by universities or set up semester abroad.

That being said a interdisciplinary department is a much better idea. Of your ten professors you have people with backgrounds in psychology, sociology, political science, development studies, literature, etc. So four or five of the professors are able to teach those course which round out the social science and humanities background necessary for a good undergraduate degree in the Arts. Why this makes sense is because we are not offering a standard BA in philosophy that people could get at any university in Canada. We have a strong emphasis in continental philosophy, unlike most departments in Canada, and a strong emphasis in social/political philosophy, and the history of philosophy.

It's a pipedream. But it looks a lot like the New School for Social Research.

The other idea is to have a college program that has courses in NGO administration, finance, advertising, etc. as well as a theoretical component. These things exist for development related NGO's, but I'm not sure they are closely connected to philosophy as they should be.

2006-04-06T19:06:00.000-04:00

Why no more slogans?

We all know that groups, organizations, movements based on idealogy are dangerous. Idealogies need slogans. They need rallying cries, and these are found both on the left and the right, the centre and those places that fall outside of these distinctions.

We know this, yet we live in a time inundated with slogans. The "media" that is, advertising, is not the only source, nor the most dangerous. Politicans are advertisements and they all have their slogans. The American government under G. W. Bush is a government of slogans, and I think particularly dangerous ones.

Freedom and justice are important words, and although I would never want to be dogmatic about their use, I do think that they need to be used with a care that is not exhibited by the ad-campaigns of the American Government or the the pro-government news sources, ie Fox News, CNN, etc.

Solidarity is also an imporant word and should not be forgotten. So, when I call for an end to slogans (which I realize is it self a slogan) I am thinking of slogan in two different ways. I went to Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary and found the following definition:

slogan
1 a : a war cry or rallying cry especially of a Scottish clan; b : a word or phrase used to express a characteristic position or stand or a goal to be achieved
2 : a brief attention-getting phrase used in advertising or promotion
[alteration of earlier slogorn, from Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, from sluagh army, host + gairm cry]

What we need to get rid of all together is the second kind of slogan, the kind that leads to ad-campaign politics. This is the kind of slogan that goes beyond just summarizing content (which is bad enough in itself) and annuls content. "We got your attention, we don't care how we did it." There is something to be said for this kind of slogan, and in a sense "no more slogans" is this kind of slogan. However, when a slogan is used to mask a particular content rather than represent it there is something wrong with that slogan. We saw this happen when "liberte - egalite - fraternite" became the slogan of the Terror.

Admittedly, 1b seems innocuous. However, it can become the slogan of idealogy: as a "position or stand" a slogan becomes a motto, creeed or guiding principle, and it is in part to principles that I am opposed, although not categorically. Again the principles behind the slogan, always somewhat obscured, twisted, deformed are really what is at question in the end.

If I am to keep slogans they will be as battle cries. Once the troops have come together, having understood or felt why they are there on the battle field, when if they are there under false pretenses it is not because they have been mislead by generals and politicans, war campaigns dressed with ad-campaigns, then we can raise our voices and our slogan can be forged in the cry of battle. Only when the breath released by the oppressed as they rise up coins the phrase under which they are already in the process of fighting, will the slogan ring true in every heart, and only then will the slogan be legitimate.

Some other definitions:

motto
1 : a sentence, phrase, or word inscribed on something as appropriate to or indicative of its character or use
2 : a short expression of a guiding principle
[Italian, from Late Latin muttum grunt, from Latin muttire to mutter]

creed
1 : a brief authoritative formula of religious belief
2 : a set of fundamental beliefs; also : a guiding principle
[Middle English crede, from Old English crEda, from Latin credo (first word of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds), from credere to believe, trust, entrust; akin to Old Irish cretid he believes, Sanskrit srad-dadhAti]