Footprints, Conscience Stamps

Yesterday I attended a meeting about how to approach individuals to convince them to buy fairtrade and organic products.  The speaker said that individual choices create a norm in society, similar to the norm in Sweden about not hitting children.

She discussed psychological tendencies amongst three stereotypes in our society.  One was our target group- the slacker activist.  The third group was hopeless – the overworked mothers with two part-time jobs.

However there was lingering discomfort looking round at the other ecological foot soldiers on a mission to convert consumers.  We prey on the individual conscience aided by photos of deserts and weeds : our future.  Moralising Food Soldiers.

In this role we are putting the individual in a pressure cooker, encouraging individualistic and egoistic mindsets, and also creating a pressure to conformity.

Much better to focus on the local government and its provision of facilities to enable individuals to make effortless green decisions : making recycling easier, more buses, cheaper public transport.

Much better then to act collectively rather than individually.

Czeched

From Democracy Now :

“

Czech Government Forced to Drop Vote on US Missile System

In the Czech Republic, overwhelming opposition has forced the Czech government to drop attempts for parliamentary approval of a US missile radar site. The Czech government had agreed with the Bush administration on hosting part of the so-called “missile defense” system along with a missile site in Poland. But on Wednesday, the government withdrew a planned vote, fearing it would be defeated. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek vowed to seek another vote.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek: “The government decided in tonight’s negotiations that it will take back the treaty instruments, both of the treaties from the United States about the placement of radar units in the territory of the Czech Republic. That doesn’t mean that we’ve entirely resigned from the process of missile defense, because we can return this back to parliament at any time.”

According to the anti-radar group Campaign for Peace and Democracy, two-thirds of Czechs have consistently opposed the radar plans. Czech peace activists have led calls for a national referendum and have been credited with pressuring lawmakers to oppose the US missile program.

eh, ja.

“Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured – new institutions, new maps, new rulers, new winners and losers – or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?” (Greil Marcus)

From Alice Through the Looking Glass - "It seems very pretty,' she said when she had finished it, `but it's RATHER hard to understand!' (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) `Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas -- only I don't exactly know what they are!"

I Confess : i’m a jew and i’m “left”

and so is Noam Chomsky

Norman Finkelstein

Naomi Klein.

Swedish newspapers are focusing on an anti-semitism breeding amongst those critical of Israel.  Media and lurking security agents don’t help the Jewish community by stirring alarmism, especially if it is not grounded in concrete facts. It surely pushes young Jews to feel hostile towards the Left, pushing young Jews to protective instincts and a rigidity in their opinions.

Paradoxically, by hasty allegations of “antisemitism” it is the mainstream media that is being antisemitic, by creating divisiveness and stirring racial tension.

There is however a real mistake when people mean to discuss ‘Isrealis’ and instead say ‘Jews’.

There’s a video of Naomi Klein speaking during Israeli apartheid week.  She specifically addresses the problem about labelling this movement as anti-semetic.  Instead, she says, the movement is in fact “honouring the Holocaust” by emphatically saying “never again” will a population be extinguished.

It would be a good idea, to have some meetings between Palestinians and Jews here in Sweden, maybe around a fika and speakers representing various positions.  If this were to take place, I would hope that a good cross-section of the Jewish population could be represented, including those who are firmly critical of Israel.

It is clear that the minority group that has it real bad in Sweden are the illegal immigrants, or imminently illegal immigrants.  Forced to work black, in a precarious daily life… They will pay 200.000 kr to a Swede in exchange for the pretense of a two year cohabitation, in order to secure a residency permit.  The rate they are willing to pay can even go up to 600.000 kr.  How credible is our legal system when we are often criminals or drawn into complicity with criminality merely for humanity’s sake?

This year is “deportation year” – I guess I’ll try to keep abrest of the deportations and the resistance as it happens.

Who Comes a-knockin’

“Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more.” (Edgar Allen Poe)

This evening a plain clothes tall bald man, knocked on the door and flashed a police badge.  He asked if we had a view to the alley, and gestured to enter the apartment.

We sent him upstairs and he sat for two hours on the fire escape with a video camera pointed to a flash restaurant.

When i think of police i think of a quote : “abuse of power comes as no surprise” – i must have got it off a friend’s facebook profile.

In The Local there is a story of a 15 year old Swedish boy fined 200 kr for saying, “oink” on the street to a police officer.   In an effort at intimidation, this boy had to go to court.  The court ordered the fine.  The law entrenches its own moral authority.  I can’t actually understand what law has been broken there.  And, the confusing thing is that the courts acquitted a train driver who called one passenger…the translation is like “black vagina” only 100 times more vulgar than that.

So, 200 kr for saying oink to a police officer.  I would have thought the police had thicker skins than that and they don’t really need to push their weight around with adolescent boys.

But I saw a photo of a really lovely smiling lady officer in the newspaper.  There are “dialogue police” at demonstrations in Malmö for the Davis Cup.  They should have a psychotherapist at hand as well – on the sideline of a demonstration…why not?

The headlines in the Guardian today covered the police surveillance in Britain.  If you go to the Guardian website you can even watch the film made by the police of environmental campaigners last summer.  The only little joy in watching this film is detection of an artistic quirky sense of humour in the police film maker.  Honestly I get a thrill out of watching State surveillance tapes.

Unfortunately so does Bill O’Reilly, so do all who use ridicule to undermine activists efforts.  I’m teaching my niece that ridicule is the best way to dominate a group of people.  We started with an educational video from West Side Story, you know the song :

Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough.
With all their marijuana,
They won’t give me a puff.
They didn’t wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin’ lizards! That’s why I’m so bad!

Officer Krupke, you’re really a square;
This boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care!
It’s just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.
He’s psychologic’ly disturbed!

My father is a bastard,
My ma’s an S.O.B.
My grandpa’s always plastered,
My grandma pushes tea.
My sister wears a mustache,
My brother wears a dress.
Goodness gracious, that’s why I’m a mess!

(Officer Krupke – I watch this clip with my 5 year old niece :  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq28qCklEHc)

UPDATE http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/20/police-intelligence-e-on-berr

The legal system is full of cost burdens, time delays and miscarriages of justice but I still have admiration today for Shami Chakrabati of Liberty, a great and brave lawyer (from my alma mater -LSE).   The police surveillance and storing of information on campaigners could be a violation of Article 8 Human Rights Act, Right to Respect for Private and Family Life and so there will be judicial review in the Court of Appeals.

Now Ian Tomlinson was clearly hit from behind by a police officer, at the G20 demonstrations, and he died of a heart attack the same day. The Stop the War Coalition are calling for an independent public inquiry to investigate the circumstances of his death, and the police brutality during the demonstrations.

UPDATE : A second post-mortem examination revealed he did not even die of a heart attack, he died of internal bleeding, therefore showing a direct link between the police officer’s violence  and Ian’s death.  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/reversal-of-postmortem-result-piles-pressure-on-the-met-1670411.html

Law as an Ass

oi donkey move a little quicker!

Stockholm stillness brought me to a drinking pool of more analysis and better grammar – it brought me wide eyed and wet (from snow) to local libraries and cafes. Amongst other things, in my lap jumped David Runciman’s book review, Bouceability in the London Review of Books.

Runciman brings Classical Athens back to relevance. He links current ideas about mass collaboration and knowledge aggregation as manifested in the battle against copyright laws and the creation of Wikipedia for example, with the life in classical Athens. Classical Athens had a form of direct democracy as opposed to representative democracy, and apparantly it was successful.

On my mind is how our legal system can act against our interests. The Rule of Law is an ideal that
“rests upon a strict separation of public power where formal equality reigns from private power generated by disparities in wealth being utilised in the market where hierarches may proliferate freely” (Hugh Collins, Roberto Unger and the Critical Legal Studies Movement).

Legal rules are embedded in context – understanding the context is the way to interpret the rule. The example offered by HLA Hart is a law prohibiting a person taking a vehicle into the park. There are a myriad of factual circumstances that could fall within the scope of this rule : such as taking a baby in a pram into the park, driving a truck over the grass, installing a truck as a monument (Hugh Collins, Lon Fuller). So we see the role of judicial discretion in applying the rule to the facts. It is Ronald Dworkin who argues that the judiciary refer to the purpose of the law. I suppose one predominant purpose of law is to protect private property. But it is also to promote the common good via dissemination of the benefits of technology and culture.

In the fascinating trial against The Pirate Bay, (Spectrial) we see the powerful confluence of the profit-motivated cultural industry and the legal system. (In a perverse twist one main investigating officer took leave of absence to work for Warner Brothers, a member of MPAA).

Why did I feel so good following Spectrial? Perhaps because the protaganists designed it as an antithesis to a Panopticon (instrument of social control and oppression.) The Spectrial, like the Athenian public buildings, was designed to promote intervisibility : “they made sure that everyone could keep an eye on everyone else and pick up on the moments when some member of the crowd appeared to be taking others with him”. (Runciman)

(i’m gonna keep working on this post it’s gonna change – if you’re more interested in life in athens my other posts are more interesting for you i think – p.s. i want to go to madrid soon)