Credit crunches can be romantic too

In the back of my head, I was sure that I had written something about speeches before, but I looked back on my blog and found that I hadn’t, and was a bit confused. Then I remembered that I had commented on one of Castles in the Sand’s posts. So I just want to give credit to CITS for inspiration for the theme “SPEECHES” – respect! (Although respect is diminishing as his last post was Monday, September 8th 2008).

So Obama’s speech.

It certainly wasn’t a Martin Luther King “Dream” speech, however I maintain the opinion (from the CITS comment) that it is more difficult to write a moving speech that will go down in history about climbing out of a credit crunch, than it is to write one about people coexisting in harmony. I believe he corrected the guy reading the oath – I love that!

I thought Naomi Wolf’s comments on the speech were pertinent:

“I thought Obama did three things impressively. Firstly, he sounded a note of our dire circumstances that was in line with a reality that many have been in denial about. That is technically ­brilliant, because he's inheriting a mess, and he's telling people, "We're not going to dig ourselves out of this easily." But also, "Don't blame me for it all."

The second was that he reasserted the primacy of the constitution and the rule of law. With Bush sitting behind him, that was like showtime at the OK Corral. I have written in the past that it is going to take a grassroots movement to support him in reasserting the rule of law, because there are so many vested interests that stand opposed to it. But that was a shot across the bows.

Thirdly, most amazingly, I feel that he dialled down the threat level of the US with just a few sentences. He reached out a hand to the Muslim world. For Obama to say, "I'm not going to demonise you" – that is extraordinarily stabilising.”

For the full article go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/21/obama-inauguration-no-more-fake-optimism (still haven’t worked out that whole URL thing).

As a follow up to my post on 20th October 2008, have a look at this http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/19/sources-obama-may-use-executive-order-reverse-abortion-policy/

Word of the day “OBAMA”.

New Year’s Resolution

This post is intentionally written in a very rough form. I have a new year’s resolution. I am going to post on my blog every day from now on (well…. every day that I am in front of my computer with internet). It is allowed to be one line (hopefully it will normally be more).

The reason I am doing this is that I have been rubbish with my blog in the last few months and I have been meaning to write more. But then I start a post and get stuck on it and feel like it has to be perfect before I post it. And then it ends up taking a month to write. This way I will keep writing, and post more and hopefully be more productive even with the more polished posts.

I also want to try new ideas out. I think I will have themes that I will come back to. I might even have a work of the day.

Today’s word of the day is “SPEECH”. And “SPEECHES” is also my new theme.

A lot of us will be watching an important speech later today. It will be Obama’s first speech as POTUS (“President of the United States” for non-West Wing Watchers).

So what exactly is it that makes a good speech?

About a year ago (maybe two years ago) the Guardian did a special series where every day you got a free booklet inside the paper of a famous speech (Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela etc). I collected most of them, and have them sitting next to my bed. So I intend to read them, and one at a time I will make comments. Please make this interactive (all four and a half of you).

And for those of you who are West Wing fans, check out Obama’s Sam Seabourn http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/barack-obama-inauguration-us-speech

(I have forgotten how to make that clever thing when you change the URL into a description, but I don’t have time today to look into it – this is my experiment of a speedy-typed post).

Anyway, Happy New Year dear fans! And go Obama! A new year, a new hope!

Turning point??

So I turned 30 yesterday.

And for the last few weeks I have been drafting a bit of a philosophical post, questioning all sorts of things and meanings of life and why we are here etc etc etc.

It is not finished.

But for now, here is a poem my mum wrote a couple of weeks ago. Mums are cool :)

FOR HAZEL’S BIRTHDAY
Our Small is turning 30 in a while
And in those three decades how much she’s done
And ev’rything she does, she does with style
Like study, travel, work and having fun
Degrees she has with honours and first class.
America has seen her and Taiwan
In Thailand she saw Buddhas made of brass

And rode an elephant like Genghis Khan.
No verses about Hazel are complete
Without a mention of a certain cat
Who’s mostly black with white on chest and feet
And often joins us for our tea and chat.
Haze makes us laugh and entertains us too
And someone, very proud, is saying “Boo!”

Go figure....

I haven’t written for a while. Since my last post I have finished my masters, and started a job. Is that excuse enough for a bit of silence?

So this is just a quick one. I read an article in a Malawian newspaper on Friday. I don’t have it with me but it went along the lines of… USAID has stopped providing US donated contraceptives to Banja la Mtsogolo, a Malawian family planning and reproductive health NGO (along with organisations in 5 other sub-Saharan African countries). This is apparently because BLM (and the other organisations) receive funding and technical support from Marie Stopes International, a British not-for-profit sexual and reproductive health organisation.

The reason that they have banned the contraceptives coming to these countries is that the Bush administration claims that a UN program in China (in which Marie Stopes is involved) is promoting coerced abortion and sterilisation.

So, in order to address their concerns over a program run by the UNITED NATIONS in CHINA, the US government is barring contraceptives to some of the poorest countries in the world, that are badly affected by HIV/AIDS.

Now I must admit that I only have one side of this story. I am going to speak to a friend who works at USAID here in Lilongwe to try and get more information.

But for now, all I can think is:

IT’S NOT JUST THE US THAT NEEDS YOU OBAMA – THE REST OF US DO TOO!!!

Panopticon

In 1785, Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher, designed a model for a prison called the Panopticon. The defining feature of the Panopticon was that an observer (prison warden) could watch all prisoners without them knowing that they were being watched. This involved partitions intersecting at the correct angle to eliminate shadows, zigzag openings, pods, modules, 180˚field of views. The intended effect was to produce a round-the-clock surveillance machine. And apparently Bentham explained that it was not just a model of a prison – it could be a school, a hospital, an institution. Basically, it was a mechanism.

In 1975, Michel Foucault, a philosopher, described the implications of “Panopticism” in his work Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison: "Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.”

The prisoners are, in effect, disciplining themselves. Because they will never know whether they are being watched, they will always act like they are being watched. This psychologically changes the behaviour of the prisoners.

‘He who is subject to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontane­ously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relations in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection’ (Foucault again).

Foucault associated “Panopticon” with the birth of disciplinary society and the production of docile bodies. Our mass surveillance society has been equated with this concept. One can find much literature and movies warning of the danger of mass surveillance – Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Minority Report, Enemy of the State. And obviously it is a very controversial topic in politics.

What about us? Are we the docile bodies behaving “well” in fear that we might get caught? And if so, who is at the top of the power structure? The hegemony?

But what I want to know is when did we begin to want so desperately to be watched? Is this at all related?

Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.

Please let me go on crappy reality TV. Let me reveal to the world my dysfunctionalities. Let me become famous for the sake of being famous.

Read my blog.

Look at my profile. Look at my friends. Look at my photos. Look at what I did last weekend. Let me tell you what I am doing every minute of the day. Please. Let me tell you what I am feeling every minute of the day. Please. See how popular I am? See how well travelled? See what kind of a person I am? See how much I am loved? Look at what I have done with my life! This is ME. Now you know! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!

Globalisation

So what is the definition of globalisation? Not an easy thing to define - various authors have of course made pretty good attempts at a definition.

My definition of globalisation:

One day I am going to have to spell it with a z.

Upside down

How many real heroes/heroines do we have in our world today?

And it was only yesterday that Nelson Mandela was taken off the US terror list.

I'm afraid I can't think of a nicer way to describe this.

F***ed up.