not the motorcycle diaries

I received the email below today which is funny for all sorts of reasons, not least that I had intended to go here today to protest the Mexican Government’s recent attacks on Zapatista territory; this also being the day that these protests were held.

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:49:52 -0600
From: Australian_Embassy_Mexico_City@dfat.gov.au
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Reply-to: embaustmex@yahoo.com.mx
Subject: AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION - 24 NOVEMBER 2007 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] (more…)

Some current containers for unfocussed loathing that has very focussed results.

1. Little Children are Sacred, the report which justified the Intervention.

2. “Sexualised” teenagers in a series of images by Bill Henson; seized by the police in the war on child pornography.

3. Islamic school children; apparently intended for taking over the town of Camden (“My kids can’t read Islamic … how are they going to go to that school?”)

* Kevin Rudd.

1. Rendition

2. In the Valley of Elah

and coming soon …

3. Battle in Seattle (perhaps some enterprising Australian director will propose “Woomera” in a few years time - if so I bags a cameo as cardigan wearing social worker with gin addiction).

Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. (Applause.) Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. (Applause.) Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. (Applause.) Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. (Applause.) There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. (Applause.) By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it. (Applause.)

From here.

*hides*

Yo denuncio estas injusticias y envio mi apoyo y amor … por los dos compañeros y la lucha que continua …

“You can look at a war as a massing of arms and matériel and troops, but you can also see it as something else - as a delicate web of interwoven choices made by human beings, made out of a certain consciousness. The decision to order an attack, the choice to obey or disobey an order, to fire or not to fire a weapon. Armies and indeed, any culture that supports them must convince the people that all the decisions are made already, and they have no choice. But that is never true. So, mad as it may seem, this is the terrain upon which we base our defence of this city - the landscape of consciousness.”

- Lily Fong in The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk.

A reminder, to me anyway, of how to explain why nationality and sexuality should be, and are, studied together:

“the national project - animating the raison d’etre of every country and political society in the history of the world - maintains itself in complicated ways by regulating kinship, that is, by enforcing rules that reproduce the membership of that society and by establishing zones of legitimate sexual relationships.”

- Jacqueline Stevens, ‘The Politics of LGBTQ Scholarship’, GLQ Forum, 10:3, 2004.

Particularly since the NT intervention lurched onto the public scene last year, I feel the urge to keep up the critique of government and non-government ‘helping’ regimes. I’ve quoted it before, and I’ll quote it now: “the judgement ‘good’ was not invented by those to whom goodness was shown!” (Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morality).

So. On this. Whilst flicking through the notes I had made whilst I was overseas, I was reminded to share this little gem with the critiquitariat: Arzu Rugs. It was advertised in an aeroplane magazine, I forget which one. At first glance it seemed to be the usual marketing package of decorative non-western crafts attached to a charity venture: ‘conscious’ consumption with an ‘ethnic’ feel. Arzu brokers the sale of rugs crafted by Afghan women, “creating opportunities for women to obtain a consistent income”. But their trade has an even sharper twist than similar ‘fair trade’ products: it’s not just money, its empowerment, too, apparently:

“Core to the Arzu approach is our social contract with weaver families where we agree to pay the weavers market rate for their weaving, plus an additional 50% bonus on top-quality carpets.

In return for this higher wage, families must agree to send all of their children under age 15 to school full-time and to have at least one woman from each household attend literacy classes. Where children cannot attend a government school, Arzu partners with education providers and pays for classes to be set up in villages. Since most girls are well behind the education standards for their age group, Arzu funds “Fast Track” classes so they can catch up and join their peers at a government school wherever possible.”

This is a remarkably explicit ‘contract’ imposed on ‘third world women’ by ‘first world women’ in the name of salvation from the consequences of imperialist wars brought to the former by the kinsmen of the latter. I mean, those girls and women should sure be grateful. I wonder what they did before Western intervention in their lives?

In response to the (most tasty) Melissa’s comment on the post below: surreal is indeed the word for how it feels to be so far from home and reading news of this shift in governmental power in Australia after 11 years of a fascistic federal administration.  It’s a window of hope that the parliamentary process might now be able to deliver the occasional modicum of justice, maybe even that Australians voted beyond their hip pockets this time.  It’s particularly surreal as this news comes to me while I’m in Bolivia, where state politics are currently playing out in an overtly life-threatening environment.  Compare and contrast:

1.Front page of Bolivian national daily,

2.Front page of Australian national daily.

I’m thrilled that Howard no longer has any formal power over anyone else.  His personal contribution to stoking the fires of fear has had a muted, deadly violence of its own; the kind that can hide behind the global economic and race privilege that any Australian government and social majority enjoys (the same goes for Brough.  And likewise Ruddock, Abbott, Vanstone, Costello and Nelson - but they kept their seats).  I hope someone looks closely into the contribution of GetUp! to this result - a stellar one I think; with their relentless, grassroots, non-partisan electr(on)ic energy for realising Change in the order of environmental and social justice. Oh, and it’s surreal to see young women from my Adelaide age-political peer group elected, and this one in particular who, if she isn’t elected, has achieved a rather brilliant result against ‘SA’s real eastern suburbs princess’ (further, I would bet on her capacity to be a much better politician than this one, who, if I recall rightly, ran on the Labor Right ticket in university student elections - back in the day when there was a student’s association at our alma mater - with the claim that we should vote for her “because she didn’t know anything about politics”.  Genius.).  It’s surreal to see Nick Xenophon elected to a parliament once again largely on the strength of his own (rather lovely, in my experience) charisma and autonomous-if-not-populist-but-still-refreshing-in-a-world-of-beige take on policymaking.

At any rate, over the next month till I come home I’ll be watching and hoping that the new government will pull the troops out of Iraq, scrap the NT intervention legislation, sign Kyoto (for pete’s sake!) and re-evaluate immigration policy to ensure that the likes of this, this, this, this, and this never happen again at, and in the name of, the borders of the Nation.