"They don't let people in to look at it or fondle it.”
It’s not as exciting as it sounds.
“That said, we have stroked the computer screen when we've seen the price go up."
I lurved this naughty sounding bit from this story about a fellow who sold his house for gold and is now experiencing the delight of jingly jangly coins in his pockets.
Someone in Holland took fondling a bit too far according to this Dutch website – basically, a Rotterdamer gets asked to leave a supermarket. He decides the best reaction is to jack off right there in the store. Eeek.
And now something completely different:
Teachers in the UK now have a chance to be like secret-agent spies, stopping children from turning to 'extremism'. (BBC News report - "Schools told to counter extremism")
I think the news media is trying to indoctrinate people into seeing the word 'extremism' but reading 'religious extremism' or more specifically 'Islamic extremism'. The article chats away about 'extremism' and you're about 1/4 through before they specifically mention Al-Qaeda, which is what they were referring to all along.
But aren't there lots of different types of 'extremism'? There are Christian extremists as well as Islamic extremists. And I'm a sceptic-extremist.
And how about my pupil who joined the army - the last I heard he was doing 'extreme' things to Taliban 'extremists'. Should I have reported him for wanting to enlist?
So if anyone influential in the mainstream media is reading this, hello, and please take care how you use buzzwords because not everyone has been brainwashed, yet. (At least, I don't think I have been).
And that is my brief and admittedly rather superficial round-up of things that amused me in the last 5 minutes. Now I must go and plug myself back into the BBC website to download more assumptions and world-views directly into my brain.
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Wednesday
Friday
Douglas Adams and Stanley Kubrick emerge from their graves
BBC News Magazine discussed the effects on children of the Black Hole scare and the 'end of the world' hoo-har.
Educational psychologist Alex Griffiths, advising parents on how to assuage their child's angst during the closing moments of the universe's existence, compounded by anger at the possible waste of public funds, is quoted thus:
"Experimentation is a good thing."
I'm with him on that point. Experimentation keeps children occupied during science lessons. Experimentation is the only way I can find out how to do something on my computer when the 'Help' menu doesn't and the technicians are too busy. Experimentation is how the Wright Brothers got to fly. Experimentation is how people 'discover themselves' (I experiment and I suggest you do, too).
Experimentation is A Good Thing.
The educational psychologist continues, and I don't care if the Beeb 'phoned him while he was sleeping or took his words out of context:
"Government and scientists are not going to spend large amounts of money on something that could harm us. Lots of thought will have gone into it and what is likely to come out of it."
Cleaners keeping a cheap, harmless nuclear bomb spic and span.
Educational psychologist Alex Griffiths, advising parents on how to assuage their child's angst during the closing moments of the universe's existence, compounded by anger at the possible waste of public funds, is quoted thus:
"Experimentation is a good thing."
I'm with him on that point. Experimentation keeps children occupied during science lessons. Experimentation is the only way I can find out how to do something on my computer when the 'Help' menu doesn't and the technicians are too busy. Experimentation is how the Wright Brothers got to fly. Experimentation is how people 'discover themselves' (I experiment and I suggest you do, too).
Experimentation is A Good Thing.
The educational psychologist continues, and I don't care if the Beeb 'phoned him while he was sleeping or took his words out of context:
"Government and scientists are not going to spend large amounts of money on something that could harm us. Lots of thought will have gone into it and what is likely to come out of it."
Cleaners keeping a cheap, harmless nuclear bomb spic and span.
Reducing How Much War There Is - Idea No.3: Go off half-cocked
We've considered sending free-prostitutes into warzones to distract soldiers from fighting and make a ceasefire necessary. We've looked at the idea of stopping soldiers from even reaching the battlefield, and sending them to mix with their erstwhile foes in holiday camps. Here is the final instalment of this 3-part essay looking at ideas to end or reduce war.
Précis: Wars could be fought as ‘simulations’ or in the same style as ‘historical re-enactments’, instead of proper battles with real, harmful violence.
This third idea for reducing war is rather harder for me to explain. This post is about me thinking out loud, and not seriously expecting to be understood. The idea is a work in progress, and this blog post is the workshop.
Part 1:
The first bit of background to my thinking is the claim that the Persian Gulf War did not ‘really happen’, as argued by French thinker Jean Baudrillard. He’s the philosopher who popularised (in so far as such an obscure idea can be called ‘popular’) the concept of ‘simulacra’. I’m not intending to say exactly what Baudrillard said, but I’m using some of his ideas to build my own. When I talk about the simulacra, what that word ‘simulacrum’ – or simulation, if you prefer - refers to is basically this concept:
We are surrounded by representations of things. All media is formed by representations of ‘real’ – or imagined - things, and there are also representations we’re so used to, that we don’t even think about the fact that they’re only representations of something else.
An example of a media representation would be an actor in a film portraying a real or imagined character. Another media representation is the caption a newspaper editor uses for a picture, which could define what the photo is showing. The choice of camera angle is a decision made by the photographer, leading to another particular representation of something. The colours, sounds, words – basically everything in any newspaper, magazine, book, website, film, radio or TV show, painting, or song – goes towards building some particular representation of something that exists or existed (whether in the physical world or in someone’s imagination).
Less obvious ‘representations’ are things like signs. For example, the little stick figures with or without a skirt on, to show the male and female toilets. Or to take it even further, something like an alarm is a representation. If you hear a siren you know it represents a police car or ambulance so you know to keep out of the way – so you feel ‘danger’ but the siren itself isn’t going to run you over. U2 in their song Sunday Bloody Sunday used a siren to help represent what they were singing about. That’s an example of a representation of a representation. And these words you’re reading are representations of the words I typed at my keyboard – but they’re not the exact same words I saw on my screen as I typed.
So in summary of the simulacrum, lots and lots of things are not exactly ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ in themselves, they’re images of other things, but we accept them as our everyday ‘reality’. This is what Baudrillard was referring to when he said the Gulf War didn’t really happen – he interpreted the ‘war’ as the culmination of the media reporting of a ‘war’, compared to the mismatch of the coalition forces who were ostensibly ‘fighting’ the Iraqi army, but were mainly just dropping thousands of tons of bombs and bulldozing their defences.
Disney Land was used by Baudrillard as an example of how an entire ‘world’ can be composed of simulacra (and I suppose this applies to any ‘theme park’), and that people’s experiences of so-called ‘reality’ and ‘simulation’ can be very blurred. Baudrillard also suggested that the ‘simulacrum’ eventually became indistinguishable from - and sometimes preferable to - ‘reality’.
Now, the second thing I need to talk about to try explaining the idea.
I spoke with someone involved with historical war re-enactments who told me of a group dedicated to creating an historically accurate display of the Croatian army from the Yugoslavian war of the early 1990s. This group visits various historical shows at weekends to give the public an idea of how the Croatian forces looked at the particular moment of (quite recent) history. Most historical re-enactors (so far as I am aware) recreate more remote eras like the English Civil War or even World War 2, periods we can more readily accept as being ‘historical’ and sufficiently long ago to be thought of as historical (even if within living memory).
The battle re-enactments, undertaken for public education and entertainment, are simulacra in yet another guise. The living history groups are setting a good example for how war could be conducted relatively safely.
To make this idea complete, I just need to contrive a way of combining Sealed Knot-style historical displays with modern, ‘real’ warfare.
Précis: Wars could be fought as ‘simulations’ or in the same style as ‘historical re-enactments’, instead of proper battles with real, harmful violence.
This third idea for reducing war is rather harder for me to explain. This post is about me thinking out loud, and not seriously expecting to be understood. The idea is a work in progress, and this blog post is the workshop.
Part 1:
The first bit of background to my thinking is the claim that the Persian Gulf War did not ‘really happen’, as argued by French thinker Jean Baudrillard. He’s the philosopher who popularised (in so far as such an obscure idea can be called ‘popular’) the concept of ‘simulacra’. I’m not intending to say exactly what Baudrillard said, but I’m using some of his ideas to build my own. When I talk about the simulacra, what that word ‘simulacrum’ – or simulation, if you prefer - refers to is basically this concept:
We are surrounded by representations of things. All media is formed by representations of ‘real’ – or imagined - things, and there are also representations we’re so used to, that we don’t even think about the fact that they’re only representations of something else.
An example of a media representation would be an actor in a film portraying a real or imagined character. Another media representation is the caption a newspaper editor uses for a picture, which could define what the photo is showing. The choice of camera angle is a decision made by the photographer, leading to another particular representation of something. The colours, sounds, words – basically everything in any newspaper, magazine, book, website, film, radio or TV show, painting, or song – goes towards building some particular representation of something that exists or existed (whether in the physical world or in someone’s imagination).
Less obvious ‘representations’ are things like signs. For example, the little stick figures with or without a skirt on, to show the male and female toilets. Or to take it even further, something like an alarm is a representation. If you hear a siren you know it represents a police car or ambulance so you know to keep out of the way – so you feel ‘danger’ but the siren itself isn’t going to run you over. U2 in their song Sunday Bloody Sunday used a siren to help represent what they were singing about. That’s an example of a representation of a representation. And these words you’re reading are representations of the words I typed at my keyboard – but they’re not the exact same words I saw on my screen as I typed.
So in summary of the simulacrum, lots and lots of things are not exactly ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ in themselves, they’re images of other things, but we accept them as our everyday ‘reality’. This is what Baudrillard was referring to when he said the Gulf War didn’t really happen – he interpreted the ‘war’ as the culmination of the media reporting of a ‘war’, compared to the mismatch of the coalition forces who were ostensibly ‘fighting’ the Iraqi army, but were mainly just dropping thousands of tons of bombs and bulldozing their defences.
Disney Land was used by Baudrillard as an example of how an entire ‘world’ can be composed of simulacra (and I suppose this applies to any ‘theme park’), and that people’s experiences of so-called ‘reality’ and ‘simulation’ can be very blurred. Baudrillard also suggested that the ‘simulacrum’ eventually became indistinguishable from - and sometimes preferable to - ‘reality’.
Now, the second thing I need to talk about to try explaining the idea.
I spoke with someone involved with historical war re-enactments who told me of a group dedicated to creating an historically accurate display of the Croatian army from the Yugoslavian war of the early 1990s. This group visits various historical shows at weekends to give the public an idea of how the Croatian forces looked at the particular moment of (quite recent) history. Most historical re-enactors (so far as I am aware) recreate more remote eras like the English Civil War or even World War 2, periods we can more readily accept as being ‘historical’ and sufficiently long ago to be thought of as historical (even if within living memory).
The battle re-enactments, undertaken for public education and entertainment, are simulacra in yet another guise. The living history groups are setting a good example for how war could be conducted relatively safely.
To make this idea complete, I just need to contrive a way of combining Sealed Knot-style historical displays with modern, ‘real’ warfare.
Monday
Reducing How Much War There Is - Idea No.2: Hoard of Whores
Some people think ‘whore’ is an insult. If this idea works, to be called a whore will mean elevation to the highest ranks of heroism and a parade through the crowd lined streets of your capital city.
When the ancient Greek dramatist Astrophanes wrote (or etched) his sex-strike comedy ‘Lysistrata’ about Athenian women withholding sex in order to coerce their men folk into ending a long-running war with Sparta, he highlighted one of the key ways in which females can manipulate males.
I doubt such a sex strike would work in practice, however, unless depriving the political and military leaders themselves of sex. The men* deployed on the battlefield would scarcely have a chance to engage in sex anyway, so it would make very little difference what their sweethearts on the home front were saying.
So I feel Astrophanes got it the wrong way round. It is not through the withdrawal - but actually through the enforcement - of compulsory sexual activity that men (and perhaps women) can be forced to stop fighting and reduce war’s pervy grip on world affairs.
This is where the world’s women, in freshly recruited Sex Action Squads, would do more for world harmony than a legion of Nobel Peace Prize winners. I don’t have the financial acumen to calculate this in detail, but I imagine that the budget of something like a United Nations peacekeeping operation should buy the services of an overwhelming number of prostitutes – enough for a US Army style ‘surge’ into a warzone - especially if they were contracted en-masse and enticed by the opportunity of free travel to exotic parts of the world, soon to be freed from the scourge of conflict.
In decades to come, elderly ladies will have much to be proud of when their little ones – who, I admit, may be of uncertain paternity - ask them ‘Granny, what did you do in the war?’, and they tell the story of how they won the coveted War Whore medal.
For Hollywood it will be another 'based on a true story' movie. To the soldiers, it will be the difference between death and survival.
*For the sake of simplicity I am discounting homosexual and mixed-sex armies from this argument, and I will not be touching on the subject of battlefield rape, important though it is.
When the ancient Greek dramatist Astrophanes wrote (or etched) his sex-strike comedy ‘Lysistrata’ about Athenian women withholding sex in order to coerce their men folk into ending a long-running war with Sparta, he highlighted one of the key ways in which females can manipulate males.
I doubt such a sex strike would work in practice, however, unless depriving the political and military leaders themselves of sex. The men* deployed on the battlefield would scarcely have a chance to engage in sex anyway, so it would make very little difference what their sweethearts on the home front were saying.
So I feel Astrophanes got it the wrong way round. It is not through the withdrawal - but actually through the enforcement - of compulsory sexual activity that men (and perhaps women) can be forced to stop fighting and reduce war’s pervy grip on world affairs.
This is where the world’s women, in freshly recruited Sex Action Squads, would do more for world harmony than a legion of Nobel Peace Prize winners. I don’t have the financial acumen to calculate this in detail, but I imagine that the budget of something like a United Nations peacekeeping operation should buy the services of an overwhelming number of prostitutes – enough for a US Army style ‘surge’ into a warzone - especially if they were contracted en-masse and enticed by the opportunity of free travel to exotic parts of the world, soon to be freed from the scourge of conflict.
In decades to come, elderly ladies will have much to be proud of when their little ones – who, I admit, may be of uncertain paternity - ask them ‘Granny, what did you do in the war?’, and they tell the story of how they won the coveted War Whore medal.
For Hollywood it will be another 'based on a true story' movie. To the soldiers, it will be the difference between death and survival.
*For the sake of simplicity I am discounting homosexual and mixed-sex armies from this argument, and I will not be touching on the subject of battlefield rape, important though it is.
Reducing How Much War There Is - Idea No.1: Mutually Agreed Downsizing
Imagine 2 opposing countries, Country A and Country B, about to launch into war against each other. For argument’s sake, suppose that both A and B have evenly matched numbers of individuals capable of military service – 100,000 a piece.
So, not counting potential civilian casualties, A and B stand to lose up to 100,000 people each. These people will either be killed in battle and lost forever, and in any case they’re temporarily of no economic value to the country, as they have had to leave their regular jobs to join the military.
Either way, there’s no benefit from these people being in the armed forces, other than to square up against their opposite numbers in the other country.
Now. The peace talks have broken down. The negotiations have come to nothing. 200,000 troops are set to clash. There is little for them to look forward to other than destruction, death and misery.
That is, unless they participate in Mutually Agreed Downsizing.
This is how I suggest it works. Each of the individuals serving in the military is scored with a ‘fighting factor’ on a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being a soldier who might have trouble enlisting with Dad’s Army, and 10 for Herculean warriors who make the SAS look like sissies.
The scores of an individual’s fighting value could be decided by volunteers from a neutral country - It could even be done on the internet, with a 'HotOrNot' style website, where volunteers view the soldiers' photos and use those to rate their machismo and fighting power. 'ShootOrScoot.com'? Never mind.
With the volunteers' ratings published, the belligerent countries must then ‘down-size’ their armies, each expelling equal numbers of soldiers of comparable combat value. These de-mobbed soldiers are sent to internationally monitored camps – I’ll call them ‘Non-Combat Sanctuary Zones’ for the moment. Using the word ‘Zone’ should appease war-mongers because it sounds like military jargon, and the generals can pretend it’s all part of their strategic plan - while the name encapsulates what it basically is – a hide-away for retired cannon fodder.
Ex-soldiers from both sides would have to mix together in the Non-Combat Sanctuary Zones, so they serve as ‘human shields’ for each other, disincentivising either country from wishing to attack the N-CSZ.
Ideally the armies actually conducting combat operations could be reduced to a few dozen, allowing the war to be settled quickly and with minimal casualties. It would also be impossible for one country to occupy another’s territory with just a dozen or so troops. Invading armies would be ridiculed and probably battered by old men with pitchforks.
That is basically the idea.
Probably wouldn't work.
However, I believe Mutually Agreed Downsizing of armies would be a worthy avenue of diplomatic endeavour, alongside economic sanctions and that sort of thing.
So, not counting potential civilian casualties, A and B stand to lose up to 100,000 people each. These people will either be killed in battle and lost forever, and in any case they’re temporarily of no economic value to the country, as they have had to leave their regular jobs to join the military.
Either way, there’s no benefit from these people being in the armed forces, other than to square up against their opposite numbers in the other country.
Now. The peace talks have broken down. The negotiations have come to nothing. 200,000 troops are set to clash. There is little for them to look forward to other than destruction, death and misery.
That is, unless they participate in Mutually Agreed Downsizing.
This is how I suggest it works. Each of the individuals serving in the military is scored with a ‘fighting factor’ on a scale of 1 – 10, with 1 being a soldier who might have trouble enlisting with Dad’s Army, and 10 for Herculean warriors who make the SAS look like sissies.
The scores of an individual’s fighting value could be decided by volunteers from a neutral country - It could even be done on the internet, with a 'HotOrNot' style website, where volunteers view the soldiers' photos and use those to rate their machismo and fighting power. 'ShootOrScoot.com'? Never mind.
With the volunteers' ratings published, the belligerent countries must then ‘down-size’ their armies, each expelling equal numbers of soldiers of comparable combat value. These de-mobbed soldiers are sent to internationally monitored camps – I’ll call them ‘Non-Combat Sanctuary Zones’ for the moment. Using the word ‘Zone’ should appease war-mongers because it sounds like military jargon, and the generals can pretend it’s all part of their strategic plan - while the name encapsulates what it basically is – a hide-away for retired cannon fodder.
Ex-soldiers from both sides would have to mix together in the Non-Combat Sanctuary Zones, so they serve as ‘human shields’ for each other, disincentivising either country from wishing to attack the N-CSZ.
Ideally the armies actually conducting combat operations could be reduced to a few dozen, allowing the war to be settled quickly and with minimal casualties. It would also be impossible for one country to occupy another’s territory with just a dozen or so troops. Invading armies would be ridiculed and probably battered by old men with pitchforks.
That is basically the idea.
Probably wouldn't work.
However, I believe Mutually Agreed Downsizing of armies would be a worthy avenue of diplomatic endeavour, alongside economic sanctions and that sort of thing.
3 Ideas To End War Or At Least Reduce How Much War There Is: Introduction
The following few posts will form a mini-essay giving more or less what the title says.
During my time I’ve had several ingenious - or at least innovative* - ideas for ending or reducing the amount of war that takes place on this planet we call Earth. Remember that earth is also the name of the substance that people end up covered with if they pursue war through to its logical conclusion, which is death. While helping to 'kill ' the planet (figuratively) they are ironically offering themselves up as fertiliser at the same time. But do soldiers ever think about that before sacrificing their lives?
The Earth could aptly be renamed ‘Mars’, after the Roman warrior god, despite the confusion this may cause. The other planet currently called ‘Mars’ could also be re-named, but I see no real need for this.
In these modest proposals I have discounted ideas which may be impractical, such as sending all soldiers off into space to conduct warfare on our moon, or some other environment where they will cause no harm to non-warring parties. However, I believe such fantastical ideas have potential for future development.
What will end war? Some people promote peace talks. Some said ‘flower power’. Still others would form a noble League of Nations, debating world problems and finding solutions.
The deterrent value of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, facilitated by huge stocks of nuclear weapons, is believed to have helped keeping one half of the planet from trying to destroy the other half during the Cold War. MAD may have postponed war, but it certainly hasn’t made it impossible.
Then there have been the protesters – shouting and waving banners at politicians, sometimes making token actions such as smashing jet fighter aircraft before they leave the factory, or camping outside military bases. They have made their mark on the collective memory, but we can’t really quantify any real difference they’ve made.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, and 3 ideas. The ideas follow in the next posts to this blog.
*Another way of saying I can't be sure that no one else already thought of these ideas, but I haven't found any evidence of that.
During my time I’ve had several ingenious - or at least innovative* - ideas for ending or reducing the amount of war that takes place on this planet we call Earth. Remember that earth is also the name of the substance that people end up covered with if they pursue war through to its logical conclusion, which is death. While helping to 'kill ' the planet (figuratively) they are ironically offering themselves up as fertiliser at the same time. But do soldiers ever think about that before sacrificing their lives?
The Earth could aptly be renamed ‘Mars’, after the Roman warrior god, despite the confusion this may cause. The other planet currently called ‘Mars’ could also be re-named, but I see no real need for this.
In these modest proposals I have discounted ideas which may be impractical, such as sending all soldiers off into space to conduct warfare on our moon, or some other environment where they will cause no harm to non-warring parties. However, I believe such fantastical ideas have potential for future development.
What will end war? Some people promote peace talks. Some said ‘flower power’. Still others would form a noble League of Nations, debating world problems and finding solutions.
The deterrent value of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, facilitated by huge stocks of nuclear weapons, is believed to have helped keeping one half of the planet from trying to destroy the other half during the Cold War. MAD may have postponed war, but it certainly hasn’t made it impossible.
Then there have been the protesters – shouting and waving banners at politicians, sometimes making token actions such as smashing jet fighter aircraft before they leave the factory, or camping outside military bases. They have made their mark on the collective memory, but we can’t really quantify any real difference they’ve made.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, and 3 ideas. The ideas follow in the next posts to this blog.
*Another way of saying I can't be sure that no one else already thought of these ideas, but I haven't found any evidence of that.
Sunday
Stop Press - WAR
The first Gulf War* came along at the same time that my elderly neighbour and reality decided to go their separate ways.
Having seen the latest TV pictures of the British hostages being held as Saddam Hussein’s human shields, my neighbour would come to the garden fence, shake his head incredulously and say something like ‘I can’t believe those chaps went out there to get involved with this. Why couldn’t they just mind their own affairs like everyone else?’
He apparently believed that the ex-pat hostages were some sort of feckless ‘war-tourists’ who’d decided to jet out and take the kids to Kuwait especially to witness the Iraqi invasion.
I can see why he may have had this misconception – after all, it was pretty much what he and several hundred thousand other Brits (minus the kids) had done in France, in khaki, 50 years earlier.
Then the time when I told the neighbour about cancelling my planned holiday in Yugoslavia.
‘But why? You told me you were looking forward to going!’ He was more incredulous than ever.
‘Oh, I’m just silly, you know. I hear there’s going to be a better war starting in Portugal in a couple of months so I’d rather hold on until then. Get some winter sun at the same time’.
The Foreign Office is now warning Britons to leave war torn Georgia. I wonder if I can get anything on lastminute.com?
* By which I mean the 1990/91 war, not the counting the Gulf War of the 1980s. I’m not sure why no one really counts that war – maybe because America wasn’t in it.
Having seen the latest TV pictures of the British hostages being held as Saddam Hussein’s human shields, my neighbour would come to the garden fence, shake his head incredulously and say something like ‘I can’t believe those chaps went out there to get involved with this. Why couldn’t they just mind their own affairs like everyone else?’
He apparently believed that the ex-pat hostages were some sort of feckless ‘war-tourists’ who’d decided to jet out and take the kids to Kuwait especially to witness the Iraqi invasion.
I can see why he may have had this misconception – after all, it was pretty much what he and several hundred thousand other Brits (minus the kids) had done in France, in khaki, 50 years earlier.
Then the time when I told the neighbour about cancelling my planned holiday in Yugoslavia.
‘But why? You told me you were looking forward to going!’ He was more incredulous than ever.
‘Oh, I’m just silly, you know. I hear there’s going to be a better war starting in Portugal in a couple of months so I’d rather hold on until then. Get some winter sun at the same time’.
The Foreign Office is now warning Britons to leave war torn Georgia. I wonder if I can get anything on lastminute.com?
* By which I mean the 1990/91 war, not the counting the Gulf War of the 1980s. I’m not sure why no one really counts that war – maybe because America wasn’t in it.
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