Herald & Post Columns The Herald & Post, and anyone related to them take no responsibility for anything I write on here. This is all my own work, and consequently, my own fault.
I’m not one to moan, but I think I’d be fairly justified in saying that I’ve had a pretty bad week. Right now, for instance, I should be rocking out to Rage Against the Machine at Reading, but my tickets never materialised, and for the past few days I’ve had a bloody awful stomach bug, which meant I’ve spent a couple of days in agony as my stomach decided to make the metaphorical “pain in the arse” debacle that was my Reading tickets fuck-up almost literal (it was more of a horrible pain in the stomach).
But now to top things off, for reasons I forget, I’ve discovered that one of my favourite celebrities, Adam Hart-Davis, is related to one of my least favourite people: David Cameron. Yeah, I needed to take a moment to let that sink in too. It turns out that, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia anyway, that they’re second cousins once-removed.
This has somewhat tainted my preconceptions about how cool AHD is. I’d previously assumed that when he went into the polling booth, Adam (we’re on first name terms despite having never met) would obviously vote for the greater good, and do his democratic duty of voting for whoever keeps the Tories out. But now I know this new information, what’s to say his tribal loyalties don’t kick in? It’s pretty natural to vote for friends and family in things where voting is involved - it’s pretty much the done thing. Does this mean that AHD is voting for the Tories?
It would all make a depressing amount of sense: they both went to Eton and both have “riding bikes” as a sort-of quirky, eccentric trait. And Cameron used to be a director at Carlton Communications, one of the constituent companies that made up ITV… who later commissioned AHD’s (inexplicably excellent for ITV) How London Was Built.
I can only hope that AHD and David Cameron aren’t the best of friends. Perhaps AHD could be like the embarassing cousin? At family functions whenever Adam arrives, Dave winces and thinks “Oh god, not him again… what’s he wearing this time? Who thought the bright yellow shirt and shorts were a good idea? I hope he doesn’t show me up by enthusising about his love of science and history…”
C’mon Adam, betray your genetic make-up and don’t be a Tory, please! Ask your partner (leading psychologist and pioneer of memetics, Susan Blackmore) if she can introduce you to altruistic memes like social conscience and helping the poor!
If you’re reading a blog then chances are that you think you’re pretty tech savvy - you know your way around the internet, you can tell your lolcats from your RSS feeds, and you’ve probably become a bit complacent with your security-conscious mind.
“I don’t need anti-virus software, I’ll just be careful… I’d never fall for an internet phishing scam, I can spot a bogus deal from a mile off”, you’re smugly thinking right now, perhaps knowingly stroking your chin as you do so.
Unfortunately, this was my line of thinking until about two and a half hours ago when I discovered that I’ve unwittingly fell victim to an internet scam.
Months ago when tickets for the Reading Festival went on sale, I wasn’t quick enough to get a ticket from the initial sale, but my love of Rage Against The Machine and <i>sticking it to the man</i> by listening to politically-charged rock music caused me to look elsewhere for tickets. I’m sure you can see where this story is heading.
After not being able to find a Nigerian Prince to supply me with some tickets, I ended up the community trading sites, like eBay and Gumtree. On Gumtree I found a woman who was selling a couple of Reading weekend tickets at almost cost-price. Her story was that she’d bought them in the sale immediately after last year’s festival but now couldn’t go. So I sent her an e-mail enquiring.
Obviously I did all of the important checks before handing over the cash, and the signs were good: her e-mail address was at a proper domain and not just at Yahoo or Hotmail or something, the website associated with her domain appeared to be a real company with a real address, and she came across as a friendly person via e-mail.
Having used eBay with success in the past I was of the mindset that people are innately good, and people on the internet are honest. Unfortunately I would later be disproved.
So I sent “Emma” a Ā£100 “deposit” via Paypal-alike service NOCHEX and then waited for four months until earlier this week when I e-mailed her to remind her I’d bought the tickets and to arrange when I can collect them from her (as they only post them out a week before to stop, er, people selling them on). It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence when she wrote back signing off her e-mail as “Gemma”.
Then this morning, I got an e-mail where she claimed that because the card she bought the tickets on had been stolen just after she bought the tickets (<i>hmm</i>), the transaction might not have gone through so she won’t be getting the tickets.
Then the penny dropped and I realised that I’ve probably been scammed.
Checking the domain, the website lists an address in Weybridge, Surrey. The phone number listed is a London number even though Weybridge is outside of the London area codes, and phoning it sends you straight to an answerphone… Googling the address implies that a number of vastly different businesses operate from the same building, and googling the company name results in an eBay shop listing (eBay rating zero) claiming to be based in Northamptonshire.
This is especially frustrating, as it seems the scammers are more sophisticated than I gave them (Ā£100) credit for - and indeed, I’m much more fallible than I suspected (I thought I was infallible)… and now I’m Ā£100 down and not going to the Reading festival. You can probably imagine the stream of swearwords that left my mouth this morning.
So the lesson here that I want to get across is simply: internet scams are real… and it isn’t just your mum who is likely to fall for them. Consider yourself warned.
And if you’ve got any spare tickets for Reading (or indeed, Leeds), for the weekend or the Rage day… please get in touch with me!
What about that Olympic opening ceremony, eh? I know that last week I was slagging off China’s human rights record, but say what you will about authoritarian dictatorships, but they sure know how to organise people down to perfection.
I was in awe for as long as one reasonably can be during the four and a quarter how spectacular. After the ceremony had finished, and I’d calmed down after seeing a man fly around the stadium with the Olympic torch (what if he’d accidentally burnt the ropes holding him up?), I did begin to wonder, much like everyone else did, “How are London going to top this?”.
A lot of the ceremony was set aside for teaching us Chinese history through the medium of dance. Unsurprisingly, this missed out a few of the less glorious historical events, like the “Great Leap Forward” - perhaps because choreographing a dance about the deaths of 14-43m people is a bit tricky. This is understandable… but what if London 2012 tries to tell the history of Britain? Won’t most of the dances involve the British beating up the ancestors of the other Olympic participants? It’s not going to make us particularly likeable.
I think the biggest problem facing London 2012 though is how it’s going to be paid for. I’m assuming that unlike Beijing, the people planning the London games are restricted by pesky things known as “budgets”, and they need to make the money they do have go a long way to match up with Beijingās show ā and the games are already said to be way over-budget as it is. However, I think Iāve spotted a solution.
Earlier this week it turned out that a spectacular fireworks display during the Beijing ceremony had been faked and computer generated imagery was used, on the not-too-unreasonable excuse that flying over fireworks in a helicopter to film them might be a bit dangerous. No one noticed at the time ā everyone was too busy being impressed.Ā To take this to its logical conclusionā¦ why doesnāt London just fake the whole Olympics with computers?
Computer technology is comparatively cheap these days ā why bother with the faff of setting up all of those 300 events when former Blue Peter producers will verify that weāre the best in the world at TV fakery?
Computer games companies have been trying for years to perfect the sports simulation, so they must be pretty good at it by nowā¦ why not just set up the athletes with a Nintendo Wii and run the competition on that? That athletes still get to compete, and viewing becomes more fun as the participants have little cartoon faces. If we get a bit desperate for medals, we could just slyly enter the cheat codes when the other teams arenāt looking.
And best of all, playing out the 2012 Olympics on computers will be more inclusive ā theyāll no longer discriminate against the hideously unfit because as long as youāre able to swing a video games controller, youāre basically in the competitionā¦ and isnāt everyone playing together part of the Olympic spirit?
Maybe Iām just advocating this idea because itād be the closest Iāll ever get to being an Olympian?
I’ve studied international relations for three years now and have taken an active interest in world affairs for much longer, yet despite having an honours degree in the subject I still, frustratingly, am not really any closer to having any answers about how to sort the various international messes out. This isn’t a slight against my old university - it was excellent, and I can now explain the problems much better than I once could - but the world’s problems are so bloody complex that international relations cannot be mathematically modelled and experiments cannot be carried out to find solution - the carefully nuanced diplomacy that acts as the razor-thin wedge between a pragmatic peace and everything kicking off is more like an ultra-pretentious dance. Outside observers will be baffled and apathetic, asking “what’s the point?” and write-off the politicians, yet for the performers, every spin, kick or slow-motion movement is totally vital to the greater meaning of the performance.
Basically this is just a long winded excuse for being rubbish at international relations. But it’s not like the people who do it professionally are any better.
Take the Georgia “crisis”, for example - which is actually a war, even if the media doesn’t want to call it that yet. Tanks? Check. Incursions on to foreign soil? Check. Opposing armies shooting at each other? Check. I haven’t a clue how to fix it - but I can tell you the problems it has caused.
If anything, this (yet again) exposes the inadequacies with the international system. Back in the 17th century, the chaps around the table at Westphalia probably thought they were being pretty smart coming up with the concept of a sovereign nation-states as discrete territorial units - unfortunately this has become The Done Thing, which means that, in theory at least, all of the minorities or regions after some independence are essentially fucked by international law to the point where you get absurdities like Taiwan not being a real country and having to fudge its way into international things (”Chinese Taipei”) or entire regions of the world in a weird status-quo because the other countries can’t really be seen to be supporting them for fear of pissing off their “rightful owners”. If only Northern Cyprus, or Somaliland, or South Ossetia were as lucky internationally as Kosovo.
This especially doesn’t seem fair for South Ossetia, who seem pretty keen on being a part of Russia, or presumably united with North Ossetia in one way or another. The west have been pretty quick to condemn Russia for their ridiculously disproportionate response and moan on about Georgia’s sovereignty and that… they didn’t seem quite so concerned about Serbia’s sovereignty when they were busy recognising Kosovo. Don’t get me wrong - Russia are massive hypocrites too when they talk about South Ossetia’s rights to self-determination, as I’m sure the people of nearby Grozny would want to point out.
And that’s the overall problem with the international system - it’s horrendously unfair. As any realist will tell you, there’s no real international laws, it’s just the big guys calling the shots. They might play fair if you’re lucky, but chances are they’ll only do it when it’s convinient for them (cf: America ignoring the UN over Iraq, then getting pissy with Zimbabwe and threatening to get a UN RESOLUTION over it - no wonder Mugabe presumably laughed it off and went back to organising gangs to kill opposition supporters).
This setup works when you’ve got a unipolar setup - like the 90s with America basically in charge of the world. It’s by no-means fair, but then international relations never is, but it’s stable because no one has the power to stand up to them. They might fuck a few people over but they’ll generally keep the peace. A bi-polar system like we had in the Cold War is pretty good too as they kept each other in check with the whole Mutually Assured Destruction thing. What’s scary is that it looks as though we’re entering another period of a multi-polar balance of power with the great powers being America, China and Russia (or Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia, if you will). This isn’t particularly stable, as 1914 and 1939 grainily illustrated. With more than two powers the balance of power may end up somewhat asymmetrical (Oceania and Eastasia have always been at war with Eurasia), and if backed into a corner in a war sparked off by a small international event - say, the assassination of an Arch-Duke or a power wading into conflict over a breakaway region in the Caucasus region - it can’t be long until someone starts chucking the bigger guns around?
Whilst I paint a pretty nightmarish picture of the imminent apocalypse due to the international community’s inability to adapt to modernity, I would like to think that if any of my former lecturers, or indeed anyone who knows what they’re talking about, are reading they’ll think that what I’m suggesting is laughably implausible because I haven’t factored in the one thing that can save us. And it ain’t a pretty solution. Money could hold the answer to this. More capitalism could be the thing that pacifies the international system. Sure, some sort of revolutionary socialist utopia could probably solve a lot of problems, but let’s be realistic - what’s more likely to happen? Unlike a science experiment, we can’t run a test, and we’re active participants in a constantly changing international environment - in the absence of the interactions of some sort of personal God who happens to be big on Marx, we can’t reform the system from the top-down, so capitalism is the, er, best option.
Though capitalism does make wage-slaves of millions of people in the developing world, keeping them oppressed and unable to participate in the political process, thus maintaining the status quo and allowing for us in the west to become slaves ourselves to consumerism and thus distracted from politicial participation ourselves, it does have one thing going for it. It maintains a degree of stability in the international system.
The term “complex independence” was coined (by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye if you’re looking for someone to blame) to describe circumstances in which states maintaining an economic interest in each other creates a mutual desire to cooperate rather than blow each other up. To take a ludicrously extrapollated example, America would never attack Britain, even if Gordon Brown punched Laura Bush in the mouth and kicked Barney, the Presidential dog, around the face, because America has far too much money tied up in Britain, so it’d essentially be attacking it’s own interests.
Back in the real world for a moment, this makes the apparent response to what’s going on in Georgia all the more bizarre. Obviously no one in the west is talking about military action, as that could be the kiss of death for the existence of biological life on this planet, but someone has suggested (yeah, I do my research thoroughly), that delaying Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organisation could be a good idea.
Though the WTO isn’t be any stretch of the imagination a force for good in the world, what with the raping of the third world, and the hilariously inbalanced voting system of voting power being weighted based on the size of the memberstate’s economy, surely getting Russia in on the machine that powers the wheels of global capitalism can only help pacify it?
One of the (alleged) reasons for Russia’s continued military action in Georgia is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that apparently pumps 1m barrels a day - about 1/90 of world output - which was specifically designed to not go into Russian territory, meaning the Russian’s don’t get a cut. Similarly, a lot of this “resurgent Russia” talk is centred around Russia’s new importance for supplying Europe and others with energy? If energy wars are going to be the geopolitical flashpoints of the future then surely you want these guys on the inside and negotiating, not left alone outside getting pissed off about it?
(Another option would be to do the decent thing and go green and work on renewable energy, but obviously some sabre-rattling and tough words are much easier.)
It’s utterly bizarre really that “sanctions” in both the metaphorical sense of delayed entry to the WTO and literal sense like pre-2003 Iraq (etc) are touted as a viable tool in international relations as they never work. Putting them on Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Cuba… basically the ‘axis of evil’ to name only a few, has only isolated them more - if we’d worked to bring them into the international economic system where they could have been economically active like how, say, Taiwan and Indonesia were transformed in the mid-20th century, or how China is being transformed right now. I really can’t see how working to piss off Russia even more is going to help at all.
A pleasant side-effect of all of the globalisation that I’m rather inexplicably advocating is that it erodes the power of the nationstates - the ones with the weapons - and in one sense makes the economic system fairer as countries compete more fairly - look at Lenovo and Tata from China and India respectively as successful multinationals that are helping gradually shift the power away from America. If Russia were in on the west’s evil system of exploiting the poor in pursuit of nice consumer goods, they might be less inclined to attack the west’s interests.
And yes, the cruel irony of this change in the international system (which to a large extent has already happened) is that we do end up with some sort of horrendous, unaccountable, amoral, profit driven, worker-exploiting corporatocracy, which itself would be a problem at least as massive as one where the nationstates are in charge.
Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t very good at solutions, but was pretty good at describing the problems?
(End note: No, I’ve no idea what my political opinions/leanings are anymore either. I thought I was some sort of liberal idealist, but what I’ve just written may beg to differ. And would you like to see more incoherent treatise on international relations? Or should I stick to going for the lols? Let me know in the comments, like?)
Surprisingly, I’m actually quite looking forward to the Olympics. Not for the reasons that the Chinese hosts are hoping though - I’m looking forward to what will hopefully be an unrelenting fortnight of protests.
Everyone knows that the Chinese government could be described as a “nasty piece of work”. They’ve got heaps of human rights issues and the like that could easily compete with the nastiest international villains like Robert Mugabe, or Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. When the International Criminal Court accused the latter of committing genocide rather than deny it or perhaps even laugh it off, as you might expect, really endeared himself by threatening “more violence and blood”. I mention this not because China are key players in propping up these awful regimes, but because it shows how sneaky they are in comparison to these amateurs.
We don’t see politicians moaning about China so much because China use their massive power to deflect criticism: if western politicians slag off China too much, they might cut off our supplies of cheap iPods and Happy Meal toys… and obviously that would be a clear sign we’re only a few steps away from Armageddon.
The Olympics are so important to the Chinese government because it’s a big platform for them to project their “we’re nice guys really” image - though their gamble is that they won’t be able to crush any protests quite so easily if every TV camera in the world is pointing at them. It’s not 1989 anymore so it won’t just be Kate Adie filming it - any “uprising” would be caught by every mobile phone in the area and be on the internet in minutes.
This is obviously problematic for the Chinese government but they’re trying their best to manage the problem. They’ve set up special “protesting zones” in parks a long way from the stadium, but you have to wonder whether this will be enough. They can’t exactly send the tanks rolling into the stadium if any athletes unravel a Tibetan flag on the podium Ć” la the famous Black Power salute. I think there’s only one thing they can really do if they want to crush dissent: Make protesting an Olympic sport.
Making protesting a sport will turn it from a serious form of political participation and into a silly game. It’ll make protesting funny and trivial - on par with say, dressage, or horse dancing, which inexplicably qualifies as an Olympic sport. Protesting would become a farce if after the protestors have made their point a series of strict judges grade them on their performance, docking marks for say, lack of style or being too disorganised. Also, I don’t know about you, but every time I hear celebrities wade in on political issues, be they actors, musicians or athletes, I roll my eyes and switch off assuming they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. Making athletes out of the protestors would render their opinions worthless.
The Chinese themselves could probably rack up a few gold medals in the protesting events - those Tibetan dissidents could play for China ā they seem to know a thing or two about smashing windows and stuff.
For the next couple of weeks I’m going to be doing some freelancing at Tech Digest, writing about gadgets and tech and stuff like that. If you’re craving some fresh new James O’Malley material, here’s some links to things that I’ve written so far:
So check out TD, they’re really cool, and that’s just not because they might give me some money soon. They’re genuinely excellent - they’re letting me write like I normally do, but on their popular website!
I received a rather belated birthday present from my friends JD and Fundar (they’re nicknames, obviously), the other day. It was pretty impressive, as it was the punchline to a running gag started some eighteen months ago when we went to the Tate Modern.
They passed me a cardboard tube, and with some trepidation, I slowly opened it and unravelled what was inside. It was… it was… a print of The Snail by Henri Matisse.
This filled me with so many emotions. I was delighted that they’d bought me a present, but on the other hand, The Snail is shit. Look at it:
This isn’t art. It isn’t even a snail.
What really winds me up about it is the back-story - perhaps it’s excusable and almost is art if it has an interesting back-story, or is covered in all sorts of meaning and depth. But from the Tate’s own website, here’s an explanation of it:
At first sight it appears to be an abstract arrangement of vibrant coloured, geometric blocks on a white background. The blocks of colour are arranged in a loose spiral suggesting the shape of a snailās shell. Instead of being painted directly onto canvas, the blocks of colour are made from pieces of paper that have been painted in a water based paint called gouache. The brightly painted paper has been torn and cut into uneven shapes and stuck onto a white paper background. The whole composition has then been stuck onto canvas.
In other words, Matisse has matched the artistic abilities of a child with learning difficulties.
Although at first sight The Snail looks entirely abstract, Matisseās art was always based on observation of the world around him.
It’s a good job we had photography in the first half of the 20th century, as it means that nobody had to commission a painting to illustrate great historical events for prosperity. If Matisse was told to come up with a picture of the 1943 Tehran conference, historians might all think that Franklin D Roosevelt had a red square for a face, and Stalin had a crescent moon where his body should be.
Maybe I just can’t appreciate great art, as after all, my favourite work of art is Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Gray.
Why do I like it? What could be better than waking up every morning to see a ginger woman being beheaded?
If you’re wondering why it has been quiet on my blog lately, its because last week I was in London with my internet mates. Here’s a video diary of what happened:
It never rains, it pours - quite literally in the case of Gordon Brown. He’s taking his first holiday since he became PM, and the Met Office has issued severe weather warnings for the east of England, where he’s holidaying in Southwold.
Poor Gordon, you wait ten years to get your job, and then you’re rubbish at it. Then Barack Obama, probably the most popular politician this side of North Korea (Kim Jong Il’s opinion poll rating of 100% is admittedly fairly impressive), who’s reflective glory you could bask in, comes to Britain, but he’s not really here to see you at all, is he? He wanted to get a photo with your more popular predecessor and arch-nemesis.
Oh, and you got obliterated in another by-election, where if the 22% swing was reflected nationally (fairly unlikely), even you yourself would almost literally have the seat pulled out from under you, losing your seat in Parliament.
And then you’ve got even newspaper columnist writers with centre-left sympathises, who would theoretically gravitate towards your party, slagging you off in newspapers. Those columnists really do have a nerve.
You might think Brown has the most difficult job in the world - he’s not only got to run the country, but he’s also got to figure out why everyone hates him and sort it out pretty quickly, otherwise he’ll lose this job. However, I don’t think this is the most difficult job in the world. I think that job belongs to David Cameron.
I’d hate to be David Cameron. Not just because that would mean that I’m a member of the Conservative Party (the very thought sends a cold shiver down my spine), but because doing his job is incredibly difficult. Cameron may be pretty smug when looking at the government’s woe at the moment - I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look so happy at coming third in an election after he gave a speech following the Glasgow East debacle, but he needs to be careful not to go too far.
At the moment, Cameron is essentially playing the game Buckaroo- Brown is a horse he must try his best not to irritate too much, and he is an eight year old child. He’s got to place little plastic shovels and cowboy hats on to Gordon Brown’s spring-loaded back, without making Brown jolt suddenly and run away from his job. For all Cameron may say about the PM and how rubbish he reckons he is - getting rid of Gordon would be bad for the Tories because the next Labour leader might be someone people actually like, which would present more of a challenge to them.
This is a fairly interesting irony really. Whilst it could be possible to moan that this quirk merely serves to illustrate the symbiotic relationship between the political classes and potentially erodes the ability of the opposition to hold the government fully to account over issues of national importanceā¦ I just think itās funny that (at risk of giving advice to the Tories), the best strategy for them is to help Gordon Brown stay in office.
As you may know, the world is currently fighting a War on Terror. Itās pretty important ā as the so-called war is causing us to tackle all sorts of important issues. Issues of war and peace, issues of civil liberties, and then thereās the debate over torture. Basically the War on Terror has more issues than your average moody teenager.
Torture is a complex issue ā both proponents and opponents of torture make some points of varying validity. Opponents argue that the use of torture to extract information, or rather, essentially confessions is barbaric and goes against the ethical standards of our modern society, and even when used, can result in inaccurate or dodgy information rending it useless anyway ā as if someone is hurting you, chances are youāll say anything to make them stop. Youād probably even admit to being a terrorist, or a UKIP voter, or even Episode 1 being your favourite Star Wars film.
Proponents of torture (who do actually exist, though mostly live in America) donāt just support it on the grounds of āWhatās the harm? Itāll never affect us as we donāt look āMuslimā enoughā ā they would argue that torture could be a necessary evil to extract information, for example, if a suspected terrorist knew where a bomb was or other vague hypotheticals, like those acted out by Jack Bauer in the TV series 24, where the United Nations Convention Against Torture is broken in almost every episode.
One thing about torture is clear though ā itās a powerful technique. So powerful in fact, that it can make even opinion columnists change their mind about something. And as a loud-mouth opinion columnist myself, I can tell you the one thing I hate most in the world is admitting that I am wrong and changing my opinion.
The American torture technique du jour at the moment is water-boarding ā a āprocessā in which the suspected terrorist has water poured over his (blindfolded) face and into his nose and mouth ā causing the gagging reflex to kick in, and is made to feel as though heās being drowned. Of course, the proponents of water-boarding claim that it isnāt torture, but then seem awfully sheepish when asked if theyād want to undergo it themselves.
A columnist for the American Vanity Fair magazine, Christopher Hitchens, recently underwent water-boarding, in the name of journalism, after he was challenged about a column he wrote where he argued that water-boarding isnāt torture. Do a search on YouTube to see the video, though it does fluctuate between distressing and hilarious depending on how much you like Hitchens. Needless to say, he changed his opinion pretty sharpish.
I think that this was very admirable of him and ā and I must admit Iāve got to declare a hidden interest here ā way beyond the call of duty for an opinion columnistā¦ thereās not a chance in hell that Iād volunteer to be tortured to find out what itās like, if you were to offer it.
This said ā I will say that getting an iPhone for free is probably tortureā¦ if anyone from Apple wants to prove me wrong; Iāll grudgingly accept any free gifts ā entirely in the name of journalism, of course.
