Thoughts on the Libyan situation

March 5, 2011 by Leave a comment

The tide of revolution sweeping the Arab world had looked as if it was going to wash away long-serving dictator Muammar Gaddafi, but as I write it appears that Libya is poised on the brink of all-out civil war. The situation is fluid of course, but it seems that Gaddafi has been able to consolidate his position around Tripoli and other strongholds, while the rebels are not showing much sign of advancing from the territory they have won in the east of the country.

The outlook looks grim in the short term, though at least there seems to be little appetite in the West for military intervention, so the Libyans should be allowed to fight it out on their own. I hope the rebels will prevail in the end, and usher in a more peaceful and democratic future for the country, but that outcome is far from certain.

Gaddafi’s reputation has come full circle in the last thirty years. Back in the ’80s he was a “mad dog”, and Ronald Reagan was trying to kill him; by 2009 his rehabilitation was so complete that Reagan’s successor could greet him like a long-lost friend. Now he has returned to the doghouse, and it seems unlikely that history will remember him kindly. Gaddafi’s popularity, or lack thereof, in the West always had more to do with global power relations than his personal attributes anyway; when he stood in opposition to imperialist designs in the region he was demonised, and when he was willing to sign deals with our oil corporations he was lauded. The views of the Libyan people, who actually had to live with him, were never factored into this of course.

I think that the Libyan revolution illustrates the reality of what it takes to challenge established power, and seriously undermines the idea that there is some new social media-related paradigm that allows us to overthrow the government by tweeting and posting videos on YouTube. The Guardian had a piece on this last week; here’s the comment I left in the discussion:

I think that the points about how Twitter, Facebook, etc have facilitated communication are valid, but I don’t buy the idea that social media have been the main factor, or even a major factor, in this wave of revolution – that honour belongs to the courage and initiative of the working masses, as expressed through their own forms of organisation, such as (in Egypt especially) labour unions.

I think that the tendency to reduce the complexity of these events to simple labels like “Twitter Revolution” betrays an essential ignorance in the West about the degree of development of Arab society, and represents an attempt to appropriate the energy of the revolutions in a way that portrays the West as a liberating force – “Aren’t these people lucky we set them free by giving them Facebook?” The truth is of course that we have maintained these repressive regimes over decades, and it is despite us, rather than thanks to us, that the people of the region are finally freeing themselves.

No doubt this debate will run and run, but the Libyan people, like their Egyptian and Tunisian counterparts before them, are teaching us a lesson about the courage and commitment that is needed to bring about true change.

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The Great Gonzo

February 20, 2011 by Leave a comment

On this day back in 2005 the great Hunter S. Thompson signed off for the last time, with a gunshot to the head. He had his reasons for such a dramatic exit, but it seemed like a tremendous loss at the time, a feeling that has deepened in the intervening years as the authoritarian shift in US politics has cried out for the sort of biting social commentary that was Thompson’s speciality.

Thompson is best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his 1971 account of a drug-fuelled trip to Nevada, but I think his finest work is Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, a collection of his reports on the 1972 US Presidential elections. …Vegas is a great book, but ultimately rather downbeat, charting as it does the defeat of 60’s counterculture at the hands of the Man. …Campaign Trail is much more optimistic, as Thompson gets caught in the tide of the McGovern campaign and starts to believe that progressive politics might just have a chance. It ends in disappointment of course, when Nixon wins with a landslide, but at least Thompson didn’t have to wait too long to see Tricky Dicky’s downfall. (Years later Thompson would write the definitive Nixon obituary, He Was a Crook.) …Campaign Trail‘s depiction of the youthful energy of McGovern’s supporters is still inspirational today, and should be required reading for community organisers and political activists everywhere.

To mark the anniversary of Thompson’s death The Quietus has a previously unpublished interview, along with a brief but useful biography. The BBC produced a fine documentary on Thompson’s life and work a couple of years ago, and Terry Gilliams’ film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with Johnny Depp as Thompson, is worth seeing too.

The style of journalism that Thompson pioneered has become so commonplace now that it’s almost a cliche, but out of his many imitators none have come close to the man himself. I’m going to settle down tonight with my dog-eared copy of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, and have a few drinks in his memory.

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Victory to the Egyptian people

February 11, 2011 by Leave a comment

So it turned out that my Egyptian friends’ predictions were right on the money, and Mubarak is gone.

This was my reaction to hearing the news:

Having had a bit more time to think about it, I’m going to temper my celebration to a “Half-Hooray!!”, since the fact that the army is taking over must put the prospect of a swift transition to democracy in some doubt. It was interesting that CIA director Leon Panetta told a Congressional Committee that Mubarak was going to stand down yesterday, suggesting that the agency has inside information from the new regime, though clearly it is not entirely accurate. Vice-President Omar Suleiman is widely identified as the CIA’s main man in Cairo, and the US may be looking to him to deliver the sort of “orderly transition” that will protect Western interests in the region.

But whatever we in the West think, the final word will lie with the Egyptian people. Al Jazeera is reporting that the crowds in Tahrir Square are “hugely disappointed” with the army seizing control, and are vowing to take their protests to “a last and final stage”. Their courage and solidarity has carried them this far; it can surely lead them to victory.

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Egypt in revolt

February 10, 2011 by Leave a comment

I’ve not had much time for blogging so far this month, as I’ve been caught up with various more pressing concerns, not least following the momentous events in Tunisia and Egypt.

I know a couple of guys from Egypt, and, unsurprisingly, they have been glued to Al Jazeera, as well as getting updates from friends and family in the country. At the start of this week I was feeling a bit discouraged, as it looked like the momentum of the revolution was slowing, but my friends, on the strength of what they were hearing, were still confident that change was on the way. They tell me that the demonstrations tomorrow are set to be the biggest yet, and, now that strikes are spreading and the army is wavering, time seems to be running out for Mubarak’s regime (though he must have missed that memo). A full-scale democratic revolution may still take some time, but even modest progressive change will be a first step.

The events in Egypt have again brought up the question of the degree to which social media have changed the dynamic of such movements – there’s a useful round-up of opinion here. I’m still unconvinced – while the internet may have helped spread word of what was happening around the world, I think the organising within Egypt must have been based mainly on more personal contacts. People may hear about demonstrations via Twitter or whatever, but the decision on whether to join in or not will depend on what family, friends, neighbours and workmates are doing, and any large-scale mobilisation needs the sort of guidance that comes from an organisational structure if it is going to be persistent and effective. That structure may come from a pre-existing political party, or it may arise more spontaneously, but I think it has to be based on something more concrete than the weak ties of social media.

What social media does have to offer, I think, is more in the way of creating a record of what has been happening from the level of the streets, an immediate and intimate history that will serve as a template for future movements.

The situation as I write tonight is still uncertain. My thoughts, for what they’re worth, are with the people of Egypt; I hope I’ll be able to celebrate their victory in the not too distant future.

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2011: The year in preview

January 11, 2011 by Leave a comment

So, the New Year is here, time to think about the future, and make plans for what we want to do with this blog over the next twelve months.

Looking back over the last year, there are a few things that I planned to do but never got round to; organising some political activity within SL, delineating the psychological profile of a typical Second Life resident, and posting more general cultural commentary, in the form of book, film and music reviews.

I failed to complete, or even seriously start, the first two of these tasks for more or less the same reason; they are big projects, that would demand an investment of time and attention that couldn’t possibly be justified by the results, and thus seem rather self-indulgent. This is particularly true of the political organisation idea; virtual agitation isn’t going to have any practical effect, whereas spending even a fraction of the time on real-world activity would probably have some positive consequences. (Of course I can do the Second Life work from the comfort of my own home, rather than having to go out and stand on cold street corners, but that’s not quite enough to tip the balance.)

One can make more of a case for the SL psychological investigation plan; not because the final result would be particularly earth-shattering, but rather because there would be some likelihood that I would find the process educational in a generalisable way. Again though, utilising the time to study something more immediately applicable to my day-to-day work is likely to be more profitable.

So I’ll probably quietly forget about the political activity thing, though I do have a vague idea about doing a series of posts on the various political groups that already exist on the grid, and I’ll definitely be commenting on real world politics a bit more. As far as psychological comment goes, I suppose I’ll have to keep that going, since it is the ostensible raison d’être of this blog, but I’ll stick to small scale stuff rather then any more ambitious projects. Sherry Turkle has a new book just out – Alone Together, which “describes new, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy and solitude”; I expect I’ll have something to say about that once I get round to reading it. I may also try to do more about the psychosexual aspects of virtual interaction; I have written a little about this in the past, but mostly in the form of comments on other blogs.

I am going to start writing some more cultural reviews; the problem hitherto has been my rather obsessive nature, and my consequent inability to keep posts down to a manageable length. What I need to do is pick out a couple of aspects of the work in question and restrict myself to a few succinct comments.

I’ll have to do some basic blog housekeeping too; update the links, tidy up the tags, create a custom graphic for the header. The domain is due for renewal soon, and I’m going to pay WordPress a bit extra so they stop putting adverts on my pages, which should make things look a bit neater.

So there we are; a handy list of my aspirations, which will double up as a reminder of my shortcomings come December.

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2010: The year in review

December 31, 2010 by 1 Comment

The year’s end draws nigh, and I feel I should produce some sort if review of the twelve months gone by…

First up, the topic that is dearest to our hearts, this blog. Here’s our top ten posts for the year, by traffic:

  1. Second Life demographics – a brief review
  2. Second Life, with graphics, on the iPhone?
  3. On Second Life and addiction
  4. O Superman
  5. What’s up
  6. Zombie Epidemiology
  7. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
  8. Anatomy of a scandal
  9. Running Away
  10. That gum you like is going to come back in style

The demographics post is top by miles, with nearly as many hits as the rest put together, thanks to Google deciding that it should be the #1 result for the query “second life demographics 2010“. It got a lot of traffic in October, presumably due to media studies students researching start-of-term assignments, with another surge this month, probably because other SL bloggers are preparing their end-of-year posts. I think that the fact that this very slight essay, which I knocked out over one lunchtime back in April, should still be able to masquerade as an authoritative source says more about the paucity of serious academic interest in the topic than any brilliance in my writing.

Of the others, the addiction post benefited from my efforts to promote it by dropping a link into the comments of any blog post that mentioned the topic; the Superman post got a boost after it was featured in the Herald; “What’s up” gets traffic from people looking for pictures of 4 Non Blondes (a Google quirk that has at various times also given us hits from searches for Laura Palmer, Mae West and Catherine Deneuve/Susan Sarandon); the Zombie post is still getting referrals from the Undead Report; the rest, I don’t know, probably just random clicks.

Other posts from this year that I thought were OK, but that didn’t make the top ten:

I’m not sure if there was a theme to our posts this year; possibly something about the importance of narrative in the formation of identity, or some such pseudo-intellectual nonsense.

The year in Second Life? Stagnation, layoffs and general management chaos are the things that spring to mind; more detailed round-ups can be found at Daniel Voyager’s blog and Your2ndPlace if you’re interested.

In the real world it’s been a busy year politically; the event with the most direct effect on us was the return of a Conservative government to power in the UK. It’s been a bit of a phoney war since the summer, with only some student-led skirmishes, but the cuts will start to really kick in from now on, and the class struggle should get more intense. 2010 saw the right resurgent over in the US too, without much sign of the left regrouping; hopefully that will change in the months ahead.

In our last New Year review I suggested that we would be posting more general cultural comment during 2010; this remained, alas, an unfulfilled ambition, but I have belatedly managed to think about picks for book, film and album of the year.

Choosing a book was the hardest task; looking back I see that I didn’t read a single new novel all year, though I did buy a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, which is glaring at me accusingly from the shelf. Instead I stuck to the classics, of which my favourite was Fielding’s Tom Jones. I hardly saw any new films either; from a restricted field I would have to give the nod to The Social Network. I did buy a lot of new albums; the two I’ve listened to most are Majesty Shredding by Superchunk and The Suburbs by Arcade Fire.

And so to the future… I expect I’ll keep this project going, out of habit if nothing else. Things might be a little quiet in January, while I’m busy with my New Year resolutions – do more serious writing, get more exercise – but once these have been discarded it’ll be back to our usual cavalcade of whimsy.

I’ll finish by sending our best wishes for 2011 to all our readers – may the New Year find you happy, healthy and prosperous.

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The time is right for a palace revolution

December 15, 2010 by Leave a comment

Picture of the month, if not the year, has to be this one. Normally I would be aghast at the sight of an elderly couple being menaced by an angry mob, but this is one of those iconic images that seem to capture a moment in history, in this case the instant when the bubble around the privileged elite burst, and hard reality forcefully intruded.

Whether this will turn out to be just a fleeting breakdown of deference, or a more serious breach in the established order, only time will tell. There do seem to be a lot of angry people around at the moment; the last time I remember it being quite like this was in the heady days of the Poll Tax protests. I’d like to say that I was in the thick of it back then, but I’ve always been more of a make-sure-the-bus-is-booked-get-the-flyers-printed sort of revolutionary, rather than a street fighting man. I worry sometimes that everyone these days is so busy rioting, and tweeting and blogging about it, that no one will be interested in the boring organisational work that actually gets things done. There are always plenty of would-be bureaucrats (like me) around though, so I probably shouldn’t be too concerned.

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In support of Wikileaks

December 10, 2010 by 2 Comments

Last month I posted a piece about the Twitter-related travails of Paul Chambers, and commenter LarryE rightly pulled me up for my apparently unsympathetic tone. The point I was trying (and failing) to make wasn’t that I was unsupportive of Chambers, but rather that his case was small beer compared to things like the latest developments in the Wikileaks story.

My position is one of complete support for what Wikileaks are doing. I don’t have any sympathy with the notion that governments and diplomats need to operate in secrecy; it just buys into the idea that the business of running society should be reserved for the ruling elite, with the rest of us left in the dark. A lack of transparency favours the status quo; anybody who claims to be interested in progressive change has to believe in maximum openness. As Trotsky said, apropos of the Bolsheviks’ decision to publish secret Tsarist diplomatic papers, “Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests … The abolition of secret diplomacy is the primary condition for an honest, popular, truly democratic foreign policy.”

The issue of government secrecy shouldn’t be confused with that of personal privacy; it’s perfectly consistent to believe that we should know what they are doing while maintaining the confidentiality of our own activities. Our rulers certainly see the distinction; while they scramble to keep their own secrets intact they are building up the infrastructure needed for a surveillance state.

Now Julian Assange finds himself in prison, and on charges that leftist types like myself will feel uncomfortable about dismissing as trumped-up, no matter how much we feel the timing of the case is very convenient for the authorities. It is of course possible to approve of what Assange has done with Wikileaks without endorsing every aspect of his character, and the allegations against him shouldn’t distract us from the substance of the issues that have been exposed.

It’s heartening to see the Anonymous response to the attacks on Wikileaks, though, as we’ve noted before, it seems unlikely to be sustained enough to really damage ruling-class interests.

Still, this feels like an early battle in what is going to be a protracted war. Even if Wikileaks doesn’t survive this skirmish in its present form, there is now an established community of radicalised internet activists ready to keep the fight going. With a bit more organisation the virtual class struggle might yet get the bourgeoisie on the run.

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Everybody’s got a bomb

December 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

I’ve had a bad cough for the last week or so, what with all the cold weather, and it’s been keeping me awake at night. Consequently I’ve been watching more late-night TV, mostly junk like CSI reruns or televised poker, but also a couple of semi-good movies, including Cold War drama-doc Thirteen Days.

Actually “semi-good” is being generous; the heavily-fictionalised account of the Cuban missile crisis is rather melodramatic, as it portrays the heroic Kennedy brothers (aided by a brooding Kevin Costner) facing down the evil communists, while simultaneously restraining their own gung-ho generals, who are itching to launch a full-scale war. The story is inherently gripping though, and, even though obviously I knew there was going to be a happy ending, I enjoyed the building tension as it looked like the two sides had boxed themselves into an inevitable conflict. (My favourite film about the crisis, which deals with the themes much less earnestly, but rather more effectively, is Joe Dante’s Matinee.)

Watching Thirteen Days reminded me a little of the 1980s, when, after years of relative détente, it looked like Ronald Reagan was determined to start World War Three. I was never one of those kids who got all neurotic about the prospect of nuclear armageddon, but I was a bit freaked out by watching things like The War Game (made and suppressed back in the 60s, but still a favourite at leftist meetings 20 years later) and The Day After, though I wasn’t ever concerned enough to do much beyond going on a couple of CND marches. (Central American solidarity was my main political interest at that time, as I recall).

Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and we all enjoyed the 90s, free, we thought, from the shadow of complete destruction. There was still plenty of war to go around, of course, and not a little millennial angst, but it was probably the safest decade since the end of the Second World War (for those of us in the West anyhow).

Fast-forward to today, and we’re all supposed to be worried about The Bomb again, though this time round it’s not the Reds we’re told we should be scared of, but North Korea, Pakistan and Iran, or al-Qaeda, or just “terrorists” in general. I can’t say that I lose too much sleep over those last three, but North Korea and Pakistan (and to a lesser degree Israel and India) are more concerning. While these countries don’t have the capacity to nuke the whole world (or, hopefully, provoke anyone else into nuking the whole world), that just means they are less restrained by the logic of mutually assured destruction, and might use their weapons for local strategic reasons. At least with the old East/West standoff one had the idea that Washington and Moscow knew that once they started fighting it was going to end badly for everyone, but one can’t be so confident that the smaller nuclear states will never convince themselves that a first-strike strategy might be successful.

There’s not much to be done about it I guess, except to keep on working away at building the sort of progressive international movement that will eventually bring the people of the world together and abolish war altogether.

That, and partying of course.

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God Save The Queen

November 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

The papers today are full of the joyous news that the country is to be lifted form its collective gloom by a Royal Wedding. Times may be hard, but we are sure to be cheered by the sight of our future King and his radiant bride walking happily down the aisle.

Our are we? The obvious parallel is the 1981 wedding of William’s parents, Charles and Di, which also took place in the midst of a recession, and has gone down in history as an event that united the nation in rejoicing. I do remember the media-orchestrated mood of generalised hysteria that accompanied those nuptials, but I also recall that a substantial number of people didn’t buy into it.

The three decades that have passed since that day have not been kind to the idea of deference to Royalty, and I suspect there will be more than few of Will and Kate’s future subjects wondering why exactly we should be getting excited about the union of two members of the country’s privileged elite, let alone be paying for it.

There are months to go yet of course, plenty of time for the press to whip up some patriotic fervour, but also time for the left to do some anti-monarchy agitation. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but this wedding might just be the event that gets a serious republican movement going in this country.

Even if that doesn’t work out, we might at least see some anti-establishment sentiment back in the music charts.

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