(La Paz, Bolivia)
Last week it was reported that political dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo had died in his Cuban prison cell after a hunger strike that had started nearly four months previously. The 42-year-old plumber and bricklayer was the first victim of this particularly personal form of protest in Cuba since 1972, and the near forty-year gap between the deaths only serves to emphasise the seriousness of his final decision.
Zapata was originally sentenced to three years in prison for what the Cuban government calls “disobedience” but was subsequently sentenced to another thirty-six years for various other “crimes”. The hunger strike was a protest against the constant torture at the hands of the prison guards – the torture must have been unbearable for Zapata to decide to starve himself to death.
In Bolivia this week another hunger strike took centre stage as Franklin Durán, the head of the transport drivers’ union, was reported to have gone on hunger strike in order to protest against the Bolivian government’s decision to punish drink-driving. In a country where nearly one hundred people died in alcohol-related traffic accidents in January alone, a new law was long overdue. President Evo Morales – himself no stranger to the hunger strike as a form of protest – proposed a law which would see drink-drivers punished with considerable fines and a lengthy driving ban. If the convicted driver worked for a public transport company then the company would also be fined.
It is staggering to think that within days of each other the news headlines could carry items about two similar protests based on such remarkably different reasons. The transport union chief has suffered no torture from Morales’ proposed law; nor has he been imprisoned on a whim or seen his life taken away from him and his family victimised. On the contrary, both he and his family should benefit from being able to drive, cycle or walk around their city with less to fear from drunken louts in charge of a ton of speeding metal.
It is to be hoped that Mister Durán, when he finishes his offensive and futile crusade and the sugar starts returning to his brain, sees sense and supports the government’s law. It is also to be hoped that he looks around himself and compares his own privileged position to that of a political prisoner in Cuba, or Guantánamo Bay, or Myanmar. Perhaps then he will understand that a hunger strike is not a decision to be taken so lightly.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
We're out of this world
(Somewhere above the Earth)
The world is gazing in awe at Noguchi Soichi’s twitpics from space, beautiful portraits of our lives from a vertical perspective. The first one I clicked on was a close-up of the underbelly of Noguchi’s ship and it filled me with many feelings at once. Vertigo, fear. Excitement, desire. I continued to scroll through the images of Earth as fascinated as when reading National Geographic but with an extra thrill because these photographs come from space, a place I will never see.
How amazing that you can now take a photograph and transmit it instantly to the internet on Earth and straight onto a social networking site without any need for somebody on the ground to facilitate the process. How wonderful that we can all feel so close together as inhabitants of this tiny, vast domain.
Yes, but no. What is amazing is that with all our capabilities all we choose to do is gild the technological lily while people the world over still die through starvation, war and the effects of the environmental damage we have inflicted on our own habitat. We marvel at all these places because we are seeing them from the only view which excludes the scars of all the evil we have done.
It has been said many times that the only reason we concentrate on space is because we need another place to destroy. These pictures, although beautiful and well-intentioned, show the start of that process. We can no longer photograph the world without revealing the unquestionable evidence of our arrogance, so now we take them from space to spare ourselves the guilt.
The world is gazing in awe at Noguchi Soichi’s twitpics from space, beautiful portraits of our lives from a vertical perspective. The first one I clicked on was a close-up of the underbelly of Noguchi’s ship and it filled me with many feelings at once. Vertigo, fear. Excitement, desire. I continued to scroll through the images of Earth as fascinated as when reading National Geographic but with an extra thrill because these photographs come from space, a place I will never see.
How amazing that you can now take a photograph and transmit it instantly to the internet on Earth and straight onto a social networking site without any need for somebody on the ground to facilitate the process. How wonderful that we can all feel so close together as inhabitants of this tiny, vast domain.
Yes, but no. What is amazing is that with all our capabilities all we choose to do is gild the technological lily while people the world over still die through starvation, war and the effects of the environmental damage we have inflicted on our own habitat. We marvel at all these places because we are seeing them from the only view which excludes the scars of all the evil we have done.
It has been said many times that the only reason we concentrate on space is because we need another place to destroy. These pictures, although beautiful and well-intentioned, show the start of that process. We can no longer photograph the world without revealing the unquestionable evidence of our arrogance, so now we take them from space to spare ourselves the guilt.
Tongue in cheek
I often read Time magazine, more for the excellent writing and international range of stories than for the opinions of the journalists. In this week’s edition, dated February 22nd, there was an article on how the U.S. military and U.S. government respond to violent incidents involving American soldiers.
The first part of the sub-heading of the article was “Some soldiers become murderers.” Did the journalist really write that with a straight face? The second part was “The military needs to figure out how to stop them”. Did anybody read that with a straight face?
The first part of the sub-heading of the article was “Some soldiers become murderers.” Did the journalist really write that with a straight face? The second part was “The military needs to figure out how to stop them”. Did anybody read that with a straight face?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Generation dodo
(Madrid, Spain)
Last night the Spanish television channel laSexta 2.0 premiered its latest reality show, “Generación Ni-Ni”, with a huge fanfare. The title of the programme refers to the section of Spanish society that “ni trabaja ni estudia”, doesn’t work and doesn’t study; using the same technique of abbreviation in English it could be called “Generation dodo”.
The premise of the programme is that eight adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two (the press release specified the potential age range as “16-25”) live together in a spacious house surrounded by cameras. They are observed by their parents and two psychologists – and, one imagines, by a few million Spanish people – as they are obliged to go out and work for their keep. According to the specific information published on laSexta’s website:
“eight youths...are going to undergo a process of re-education. The Generation dodo psychologists will try to change the behaviour and values of these youths”
The first thing which stands out is the age group being targeted by the programme – middle-aged television producers seem determined to aim their disdain at “the youth of today”, even though there are plenty of middle-aged people who neither work for a living nor fill their time with useful study. Those people would tell you that the situation is bad in Spain at the moment – but it is no better for young people, in fact it tends to be much worse as they have yet to be given a chance at anything in life apart from following incomprehensible rules.
What many people seem unable to understand is that people leaving school look at their parents’ generation and see very little incentive to follow the only path which is laid in front of them by authorities with little imagination or empathy. Quite apart from the wholly natural desire to rebel against the previous generation, during a recession there is even less proof that conforming will provide school-leavers with any future security. The press release from laSexta describes the participants in the programme as “apathetic” – in the face of today’s reality, why should they be anything else?
In reality Generation dodo highlights the fact that the values of our parents become extinct as soon as their children form opinions and that the current system long ago lost the power of flight. What is also clear, however, is that when it comes to finding ways to brain-wash young people into conforming, middle-aged people and television form a dangerous cocktail indeed.
Last night the Spanish television channel laSexta 2.0 premiered its latest reality show, “Generación Ni-Ni”, with a huge fanfare. The title of the programme refers to the section of Spanish society that “ni trabaja ni estudia”, doesn’t work and doesn’t study; using the same technique of abbreviation in English it could be called “Generation dodo”.
The premise of the programme is that eight adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two (the press release specified the potential age range as “16-25”) live together in a spacious house surrounded by cameras. They are observed by their parents and two psychologists – and, one imagines, by a few million Spanish people – as they are obliged to go out and work for their keep. According to the specific information published on laSexta’s website:
“eight youths...are going to undergo a process of re-education. The Generation dodo psychologists will try to change the behaviour and values of these youths”
The first thing which stands out is the age group being targeted by the programme – middle-aged television producers seem determined to aim their disdain at “the youth of today”, even though there are plenty of middle-aged people who neither work for a living nor fill their time with useful study. Those people would tell you that the situation is bad in Spain at the moment – but it is no better for young people, in fact it tends to be much worse as they have yet to be given a chance at anything in life apart from following incomprehensible rules.
What many people seem unable to understand is that people leaving school look at their parents’ generation and see very little incentive to follow the only path which is laid in front of them by authorities with little imagination or empathy. Quite apart from the wholly natural desire to rebel against the previous generation, during a recession there is even less proof that conforming will provide school-leavers with any future security. The press release from laSexta describes the participants in the programme as “apathetic” – in the face of today’s reality, why should they be anything else?
In reality Generation dodo highlights the fact that the values of our parents become extinct as soon as their children form opinions and that the current system long ago lost the power of flight. What is also clear, however, is that when it comes to finding ways to brain-wash young people into conforming, middle-aged people and television form a dangerous cocktail indeed.
Net curtain television
(London, England)
Two rather strange new programmes are currently gracing English television screens. First the BBC announced it would hold a competition which looked for the country’s best butcher and then Sky said it would air a programme in which celebrities went bird-watching with another celebrity.
The BBC programme is typical of the national station in that it is bland and lacking in direction. While a competition which promotes winning by merit is evidently better than being famous for nothing, and in spite of the fact that butchery is an honourable and traditional trade which should be preserved and not plastic-wrapped and relegated to the supermarket shelves, making television from people cutting meat is bizarre. Watching it is even more absurd. The Sky programme is also appropriate to the station – banal and lacking in intelligence – but no less ridiculous for its predictability.
Yet these programmes are almost logical in the recent timeline of English television which reveals an unhealthy and voyeuristic obsession in unspectacular activities realised by uninteresting individuals with an emphasis on moralising and crushing criticism. The reality of reality television is that we are not being entertained, we are being controlled more than ever – the television tells us how to clean our dirty houses, how to re-educate our hooligan children, how to dress our unattractive bodies, how to cook, how to drive, what books we should be reading and even how we should have lived had we been around over a hundred years ago. The celebrities that are so cheaply created are happy to take this phenomenon to the next level in order to perpetuate the control.
English people love it but this should not be a surprise. This is simply an extension of every middle-class English person’s petty, mean-spirited desire to spy on other people with the sole intention of catching them out in some way and gaining the all-elusive moral superiority. It is also the logical past-time for a country which contains one security camera for every handful of people, some accompanied by a loudspeaker which tells people how to behave in the street.
English society is its own Big Brother – that’s a character from a novel called 1984, written by a writer called George Orwell – and it is presiding over its own demise. It deserves the governments it votes in, it deserves the television it pays for and above all it deserves to be told home truths. Perhaps they should do it in the form of a reality TV show. They could call it “I have a personality, get me out of here”.
Two rather strange new programmes are currently gracing English television screens. First the BBC announced it would hold a competition which looked for the country’s best butcher and then Sky said it would air a programme in which celebrities went bird-watching with another celebrity.
The BBC programme is typical of the national station in that it is bland and lacking in direction. While a competition which promotes winning by merit is evidently better than being famous for nothing, and in spite of the fact that butchery is an honourable and traditional trade which should be preserved and not plastic-wrapped and relegated to the supermarket shelves, making television from people cutting meat is bizarre. Watching it is even more absurd. The Sky programme is also appropriate to the station – banal and lacking in intelligence – but no less ridiculous for its predictability.
Yet these programmes are almost logical in the recent timeline of English television which reveals an unhealthy and voyeuristic obsession in unspectacular activities realised by uninteresting individuals with an emphasis on moralising and crushing criticism. The reality of reality television is that we are not being entertained, we are being controlled more than ever – the television tells us how to clean our dirty houses, how to re-educate our hooligan children, how to dress our unattractive bodies, how to cook, how to drive, what books we should be reading and even how we should have lived had we been around over a hundred years ago. The celebrities that are so cheaply created are happy to take this phenomenon to the next level in order to perpetuate the control.
English people love it but this should not be a surprise. This is simply an extension of every middle-class English person’s petty, mean-spirited desire to spy on other people with the sole intention of catching them out in some way and gaining the all-elusive moral superiority. It is also the logical past-time for a country which contains one security camera for every handful of people, some accompanied by a loudspeaker which tells people how to behave in the street.
English society is its own Big Brother – that’s a character from a novel called 1984, written by a writer called George Orwell – and it is presiding over its own demise. It deserves the governments it votes in, it deserves the television it pays for and above all it deserves to be told home truths. Perhaps they should do it in the form of a reality TV show. They could call it “I have a personality, get me out of here”.
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