oti0sus

With the US election less than a week away, I thought I'd squeeze in another post about politics. This might be a rather rambling and disjointed post but I'd like to make some observations about what I've seen during the Bush administration. Before I continue, I should say that I consider myself neither liberal or conservative, and the last time I voted, if I remember correctly, I cast a ballot for a bunchofuckingoofs.I can't vote in US elections, but if I could, I'd vote for Kerry if he had any chance at gaining a plurality in the state where I voted. Otherwise I'd go for a third party candidate. They need all the help they can get.

In any case, I can see the positive side to a second term for Bush. I have no direct stake in America's future so watching him wreck a great nation would be entertaining. Certainly more so than watching Kerry's cautious attempts to put things right. More seriously, a second Bush term would strengthen the left by uniting it and focussing its energy on an easy target. A Kerry presidency would divide the left. Whoever wins, I think it's safe to say that in America, the vitriol will continue. Internationally, in his honeymoon, Kerry might enjoy a bonanza of support and gestures of reconciliation from all quarters. With Bush, no.

I'll add some further observations here about the campaign, the last four years, and the next four years.

debate - I don't watch TV so when I saw the debates via the net, both candidates were pretty new to me. I was surprised at how badly Bush was beaten. I could imagine the queasy feeling in the stomachs of his supporters turning at points to nausea. I also saw Bush making jokes and I understood his attractive side. I could understand how many say that Bush is able to work a room. But I think the debates were the decisive factor in swinging the election. Compared to Kerry, Bush was pitiful. He was completely out of his element. I was reminded of the feeling I had when I watched a dishevelled Saddam paraded before the cameras for a medical exam.


fiasco - After the Florida fiasco of 2000, I thought that the nation's legislators would put their heads together and institute reforms that would insure the soundness of future elections. Well, the future is here and if they did, I missed it. Florida's lesson was that tallying votes is not necessary when you have the right people in the right places. Numbers here are not important. Aside from Florida, there are other lessons from Bush's presidency that politicians and power brokers will take to heart: War armours an incumbent against criticism. Debate and unscripted exposure to the public should be avoided whenever possible. A final dark lesson, something that all Latin Americans should know already, is the power of violence and how effective a little can be in furthering a political agenda. This is a lesson that I think will become much more familiar in the near future.

I've had computer troubles over the past week. My computer has been running under Windows XP for about a year now. Although it's not ideally suited to XP, I hadn't noticed any deterioration in performance. Until I installed the SP2 patch, that is. Everything started to slow down until last Friday when finally my computer ground to a halt. It wouldn't even boot.

I took it in for service and the computer is back up, but the man told me to re-install Windows 98 when I got home. After a bit of rumaging, I found the CD which I'd bought from a Hong Kong triad/pirate in the days before broadband. Decidedly, a step back into the 20th century. I figured Linux was the way to the future.

It seemed that Knoppix might be right for me. I can boot from a CD without installing anything. Nothing irrevocable about it. There is a bittorrent here. I was pulling it in at over 400k/s and finished the 700MB file in less than an hour.

You get three files. As a dedicated trial and error computist, I ignored the two small ones. They simply verify that the large file is correctly transferred. I had some trouble burning the CD. I mistakenly extracted the 700MB file and burned it. Windows didn't help matters by identifying this large file with a "rar archive" icon and supressing its "iso" file extension. What you should do is open Nero, then "file", then "burn image". Choose the 700MB file and burn it. My CD boots fine.

I'm connected to the net and using the Mozilla browser. Just like before, only now I'm under the Linux operating system. There's a lot to get used to but so far so good.

There’s really no polite way to put it. You’re not welcome. These birds can’t talk, but that’s the vibe they’re sending out, and the closer you get, the stronger their message becomes. The ground around you is stained white by countless droppings and littered with the remnants of their large blue eggs. Overhead in the tangle of dead branches, dozens of nests sit clustered together, guarded by families of the majestic Grey Heron. They follow your every move, warning others in the heronry with a spooky cackle.

That's the first paragraph of a newspaper piece I wrote. I've visited the site regularly since moving the to Korean countryside, and I only make mention of it here to mark the passing of the season. It's fall now according to the method I've adopted. The herons have gone south. Actually, a few of the older guys who didn't want to make the journey are still around, but my Friday visit confirmed that most had already left for the Thailand penninsula.

The Grey Herons of Asia are no where near as celebrated as their Blue cousins in North America. In Korea, at least, they are usually confused with cranes - in fact the "county bird" of Dangjin is the crane; this despite the fact that I've yet to see one here. I've gained a small reputation as a local expert simply because I could point out that cranes fly with a straight neck while flying heron neck's are s-shaped.

I can't finish this post without relating a story which has had a powerful effect on me. Once upon a time, while taking a walk on the Leslie Street Spit in Toronto, I came upon a vast nesting ground of seagulls. It seemed as if every seagull in the city must have been hatched here. The spit, by the way, is truly a remarkable place, the only man-made wild life area I know of, right in the heart of the city. As I passed their nests, the seagulls would fly up into the air so that I would never get too close to them. After a few minutes of walking though, I paused, turned around and saw that I was completely surrounded by thousands of angry birds. The scene overwhelmed me. I felt a panic in my stomach and left the nesting ground quickly. I guess some of this feeling informed the above newspaper article.

Anyway, the story has become something of a personal political allegory for me. Had the gulls consciousness of their collective strength, I may not have been able to leave their nesting ground alive. This is the lesson I took home with me. If people (or gulls) act together as a community, they would have great (or terrible) potential. But before anything is accomplished, an awareness of that potential is necessary.

With the American election less than a month away, I thought I would make some comments about the campaign. I hope I can offer something fresh and different. It may not be so easy as the election is heatedly discussed by many much better informed than I am. I'll start this series with some observations on terror, a key issue in the campaign.

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

That's the definition of terrorism according to Dictionary.com. I doubt many would take issue with this, but there is an important aspect that is not covered.

I think the main goal of Al Qaeda terror is not to intimidate or coerce. Rather it is to drive a wedge between Islam and the West. So, an act of Al Qaeda terror is staged for two separate audiences, but with only one purpose. By appealing to their lowest instincts, the two communities are herded together and simultaneously driven apart from each other. In this case, Al Qaeda furthers its cause first by drawing confrontation with the West to the brink, and secondly, by forcing more moderate Muslims into the extremist camp. This double action is a key feature of the terror strategy which is missing from the traditional definition.

Judged from Dictionary.com's definition, the attacks of September 11 were a failure. Americans were stunned, confused and frightened by the attacks but I don't think anyone would argue that the United States were intimidated or coerced by the violence. Using my expanded definition though, the attacks were far more successful.

We can see in Iraq today how this is so. After the attacks of September 11, Bush seized on the plan to invade Iraq. I don't know whether bin Laden expected this. Perhaps he would have settled for an American invasion of Afghanistan where they could re-fight their glorious battles against the Soviets. But with Bush in Iraq, bin Laden had a dupe acting out his role with a gusto that he would never have dared imagine. The Bush administration almost boasts now of how they have turned Iraq into the central front in the war against terror. Raining terror upon a land, even a foreign one, is not a mark of success. The fact that Islamist suicide bombers have made Iraq even more dangerous does not mitigate Bush's failure.

In that famous speech, Bush declared, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." It's nothing new to say that Bush ignores reality. The reality here is that most people of the world, like it or not, are happy where they are in the middle and have no desire to be forced to take sides in a conflict that has nothing to do with them.

And to Iraqis, those families of children killed by American missiles, or families of the hooded men tortured at Abu Ghraib, does Bush offer them the same choice?

Does anyone doubt which side they would take?

This post will continue with a new bittorrent offering. In keeping with the alphabetical title of last month, I present A Zed & Two Noughts. This film might playfully be summarized as a playful two-hour meditation on the zoo/ooz pseudo palindrome. There is a lot more to it than that. You could watch this movie 26 times and there would still be something to discover.

I haven't seen the film that often, but I wonder if further viewing would clarify the close relationship between Vermeer, and death and decay. There was a rather moving account of the writer Bergotte dying as he sat before a Vermeer painting near the end of "In Search of Lost Time," fascinatingly elaborated upon here. Also, another character, Swann, had written a monograph on Vermeer. Proust was a very early proponent of Vermeer's genius and toured Europe in search of his paintings. His last written words were a reflection on Vermeer's work.

About the connection between death and Vermeer, I feel that with Proust it is simply a case of his obsessing in death as he did in life. With Greenaway, although he briefly alludes to Swann's Way, the connection remains a mystery to me.

Incidentally, there is a great story here about van Meegeren, the Vermeer forger who fooled the Nazis.

Godard on Vermeer: He painted the 17th Century at 24 frames per second.

Hmong on Greenaway: Check out those snails!