Monthly Archives: September 2009

When peaceniks screed against Zionism

Uncategorized,

It’s rather unfortunate that those who take a pro-Palestinian/Arab side in the Arab-Israeli (or Arab-Hebrew) conflict have to equate Zionism to racism (or, more evidently, only anti-Arab culturism); ultimately, as with most other facets of the conflict, there is (and has almost always been) a risk of inflaming and tangiblizing religious passions even further, and at least most peaceniks hold off from directly criticizing or touching upon the role of religion in the conflict. As soon as one decides to utter the words "Khazaria" in one of their screeds, of when one becomes textually obsessed with the role of Maimonides and the Talmud in Jewish religion, I pretty much stop and desist from further reading.

However, I honestly don’t think that peaceniks who aren’t obsessed with the discrediting of the Jewish religion’s origins have fully addressed the issue of religious fundamentalism and its ties – on both sides – with a reductionist or eliminationist revanchism (that is, to vengefully regain the true width of the religious territory from the others – the infidels). (Semi-theocratic) Religious Zionism and (secular) Revisionist Zionism were both about getting the full breadth of the Land of Israel back from the Ottomans, British and Arabs, and both wings have played a prominent role in the history of hinterland settlement in or near areas of archaeologically-Jewish importance; the area of Jerusalem and Judea, in this case, is and has been at the forefront of revanchist politics since the earliest period of Zionism’s evolution as a diaspora, and later state and religious, ideology.

If peaceniks understood or saw the element of outwardly-lashing Jabotinskian and Kahanist revenge and rage within the settlement movement, I honestly could predict that they would see it in a different, more realistic light, albeit one that could still exhibit balance between the two sides of the conflict (and address the third, more ancient and rooted side: the Euro-Christian side).

My changing view on Israel’s evolution

Uncategorized

For the record, I no longer hold the opinions of this earlier post, nor will I defend (or attempt to clarify, unless one asks) those words in any public or private discussion. It was written in the heat of the moment, and it now looks ignorant.

Anyway, I think that Israel is heading towards a binational architecture of government, or at least that’s what will happen with the further increase of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria/West Bank. I also think that the Israeli government knows the inevitability of a binational architecture, which is why it is widely reputed in its own press scene for its encouragement of larger orthodox and Ultra-orthodox families (including Haredi and Religious Zionist) and higher orthodox birth rates; in short, Jewish religious fundamentalism (and all that is entailed, including "natural growth") is the government’s insurance against the Jewish/Hebrew culture being swamped by Arab/Muslim culture in the scenario of a binational Israel.

And who can blame them? A binational state seems to frighten those who fear the end and assimilation of the Jewish character of the state and its culture more so than those who move into the hinterland for religious (and apolitical) reasons. It would not be surprising to see a Gaza-West Bank-like split between the religious and non-religious Hebrew-speaking populations, with the Jerusalem-centric, hinterland-dwelling religious population remaining more dependent upon natural growth and the Tel Aviv-centric, coastal plain-dwelling non-religious population remaining dependent upon Aliyah from other countries.

For the Arabs who dwell within this new binational or federal state, the experience of delegated self-governance would remain centered in Samaria (where Ramallah is located), while the Arab experience in North District. They would have to deal and cooperate with a Hebrew-speaking resident minority in Samaria – one which is a naturally-growing mix of both religious and non-religious settlers – and would have to work out a suitable solution to access to ancient remains of Jewish civilization in Samaria while retaining or gaining equitable empowerment for the non-religious and orthodox Muslim Arab residents.

Jerusalem and Judea, on the other hand, is probably the most visibly and acerbically contentious portion of the entire conflict. Religious settlement in the Judean portion surrounding Jerusalem, and Haredization of the Jewish-majority portions of inner city Jerusalem, is obviously meant to tilt the demographic majority in the favor of Jewish fundamentalism and orthodoxy, neither of which have had as much of a historical dominance in Tel Aviv. This, of course, brings Israel and Judaism into direct conflict with the Islamic world and orthodox Islam, a demographically-skewed conflict for which Israel has long felt – at least since the Six Day War – woefully unprepared.

So perhaps Israel is delaying the binational solution until a solid Hebrew, Jewish fundamentalist majority is stacked into all sides and corners of Jerusalem and surrounding Judea. I doubt that such a majority will hold for long in the region after a full annexation and binationalization is instituted, since Judea is right next door to Jordan, but Israel has a shot at sowing the seed of the majority through Orthodox natural growth and religious immigration from the coastal plain region.

I surmise that it’ll take another two decades before the government finally annexes the West Bank and institutes binationalism as state policy.

Response 2: Snow White

Essays, To Export, ,

Response 2: Snow White

By Harry Underwood

September 16, 2009

 

“The Queen’s Looking Glass” is an essay which evaluates the story of Snow White from a feminist-critical viewpoint which does rather well in its comparison and fusion of the divergent personalities of the wicked stepmother and Snow White. The essay renders both characters as essentially two personalities of the same female figure, akin to the psychiatric appraisal of the relationship between the modern-day comic book characters of Batman and Joker: to Gilbert and Gubar, the two characters complement each other in their opposite exhibitions of femininity, with the character of the wicker stepmother being more assertive, more creative, more intelligent, more expressive and, hence, more evil and masculine and hateful, and the character of Snow White simultaneously positing a more “ideal” femininity, retaining a child-like body and a lack of both voice and intelligence. Thus, to Gilbert and Gubar, the entire story of Snow White is an exercise in the demonization of expressive, intelligent, diverse femininity, that which is best expressed in the adult, mature, “uppity” wicked stepmother and queen as opposed to the docile child princess.

“The Huntsman’s Story”, by Milbre Burch, is a short story, based upon a real-life incident, which, from the onset, gradually morphs the setting of the huntsman in “Snow White” into the unbidden, real-life kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old girl. It is a damning story of how the “new huntsman” came to the young girl to perform the deed without the prior bidding of anyone, let alone a wicked stepmother queen; furthermore, unlike the happy ending of most other fairy tales, “The Huntsman’s Story” details how there was no joyous reawakening from the permanent sleep placed upon the 12-year-old some two months before her body was found.

The Merseyside Fairy Story Collective’s reworking of “Snow White”, on the other hand, goes against the grain of the traditional rendition by reappraising the young girl as a young adoptee of the dwarves in the nearby mines rather than an exalted, quiet princess. She, horror of all horrors, also has a mind (and a voice) to reject and subvert the intentions of the tyrant queen, and to win and turn the hearts of male and female, serf and soldier alike, against the potentially-murderous actions and machinations of the queen’s roughshod vanities, but she also personally and unequivocally rejects being made the princess of the queen, as she neither favors becoming the quiet, docile utility of the queen’s vanities nor becoming beholden to the same infatuation with beauty as is possessed by her would-be familial superior.

“Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”, as told by feminist poetry icon and suicidaire Anne Sexton, exudes something of a cynical, deadpan reappraisal of the characters in the story, while not completely reforming the story toward modern-day proclivities. Snow White is seen by Sexton as a “dumb bunny” when she forgets her hosts’ warnings and bites the poisonous apple given to her by the disguised queen. Ultimately, one gets the feeling that Sexton is exemplifying her taste for multi-layered poetry interpretation in the way by which she retells the story from a viewpoint which is much less charitable than that provided in the original telling.

Finally, “Snow Child” bears very little resemblance to “Snow White” other than the Snow Child in question is the object of a male figure’s passing fantasy in a travelling coach. When the Count piques his wife’s own rage by wishing for a child composed from supernatural, child-like beauty, the Countess decides to do everything she can accomplish to kill the naked little girl who assumes more of the Countess’ clothing. When she does succeed in speeding the girl to her last breath, the Count becomes so remorseful that he has sex with the seemingly-dead body of the child before it decomposes. Angela Carter’s telling of this original story is a testament to the feminist critique of male standards for, and sexualization of, female beauty and chastity.

Stallman, the Swedish Pirate Party, and copyleft

Uncategorized, ,

Reposted from original article on NowPublic.

A few days ago, Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation published an op-ed to the GNU project’s website, in which he criticized the copyright views of the Swedish Pirate Party, which had recently succeeded in its endeavor to get a seat in Brussels’ European Parliament a few months back. His main consternation with the PP’s goal of shortening the shelf life of copyright to just 5 years was that no exception has been vocally made by the party for the large body of free, libre and/or open source software (FLOSS) for which Stallman has served as a longtime ideological advocate; such software, which are licensed to allow for unencumbered, unfettered redistribution, modification and even commercialization (provided that the license granting such freedoms remains attached and intact when redistributed), have become increasingly popular in many sectors, including homes, schools and businesses due to their effective turning of the more familiar proprietary model of intellectual property law upon its head. 

However, this ideological split between a leading advocate of the spread of such freedoms, also known as "copyleft", and a rather small, young, populist outfit from Sweden reveals a much deeper rupture of ideological idiosyncracies that harkens back to the roots of the related, but separate struggles which are pursued by the two groups.

Richard Stallman (or "rms"), a Massachusetts-based software programmer, found his initial bearings within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s "hacker" subculture in the 1970’s; contrary to our modern concept of a hacker as an antisocial trespasser who breaks into computer networks for any purpose, the hacker of the 1970s was a programmer who modified and functionally extended previously-published software for his or her own use and pleasure (akin to another modern concept, the "hack", which shows a lack of inelegance or originality, but instead uses the "shoulders" of others to create a modification that was not previously available but is otherwise very useful to a wider number of users). The subculture, which thrived in the wake of the 60’s hippie subculture, promoted a do-it-yourself/learn-from-your-neighbor attitude amongst its denizens, in which the knowledge to modify and extend the functionality of usually-proprietary computer software was publicly and mutually disseminated. However, Stallman also witnessed and protested the decline of MIT’s hacker subculture in the late 1970s as software publishers became more proactive in preventing the capability of third parties to redistribute and modify copies of their stringently-licensed software and their closely-guarded source code (the software programming concept of recipes in the culinary arts). After a momentous falling out with an MIT-based software startup, Stallman resigned from the institute in 1984, around the time when he announced his GNU project to mailing lists on ARPANET (the predecessor of the modern-day Internet); by 1985, Stallman had outlined his motivations for creating an operating system from scratch, one that would be both compatible with AT&T’s Unix operating system and licensed under "copyleft" stipulations that ensured that such-licensed software could be freely redistributed, modified and commercialized on a perpetually mutual basis. The same year, Stallman launched the Free Software Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group and think tank for his increasingly-popular definition of software freedom, but his GNU ("GNU’s Not Unix") operating system would languish in usage until 1991, when a Finnish computer science engineer by the name of Linus Torvalds began a project to create a kernel, or the very heart of an operating system. Following the combination of GNU with the Linux kernel, the free software movement was in full swing, amassing greater mindshare and greater ideological diversity throughout the 1990s and 2000s and resulting in the proliferation of free/open source software applications such as Firefox, Linux, Blender, Apache, Drupal and OpenOffice.org, but Richard Stallman has remained a stalwart advocate of the FSF’s "software freedom" and computer privacy, drawing strength from the semi-libertarian traditions of his hacker roots.

The Pirate Party of Sweden, however, arises out of more recent, more media-related circumstances. In 2003, Rasmus Fleischer, a Halmsted-born historian and musician, took part in the foundation of Piratbyrån ("Pirate Bureau"), a think tank that sought to improve the image of the controversial but popular and proliferating peer-to-peer file sharing networks and applications which had launched in the wake of the 2001 Napster trial in the United States; the same year, The Pirate Bay, a web-based index of hyperlinks to torrents, or files which download other, larger files through a decentralized network known as BitTorrent, was launched by members of the Piratbyrån. The Pirate Bay, which enjoyed immense popularity among both downloaders and uploaders of films, television series, books and software, became increasingly tangled with legal threats from a large number of corporations, most of whom accused The Pirate Bay of copyright infringement and depriving the corporations of the distribution monopoly to which they were entitled by intellectual property law; in early 2006, IT entrepreneur and former Microsoft employee Richard Falkvinge decided to harness the increasing public consciousness of file sharing by launching the amusingly-named Pirate Party, which advocates copyright reform through parliamentary legislation. While the Pirate Party is not associated with The Pirate Bay or Piratbyrån (and is, thus, not a political wing of the latter entities), all three organizations happened to share the same Internet servers; this one common tie between the three organizations was a key factor in the May 31, 2006 police raid on those servers (targeting the Pirate Bay’s operations), resulting in the shutdown of all three websites and leading to public demonstrations by members of the party’s youth wing, Young Pirate, at the server seizures and the arrests of Pirate Bay administrators. This preceded the 2006 parliamentary elections, in which the party participated, and it did not result in the party gaining the necessary 4% of the vote to send a member to the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, but it did result in the larger parliamentary parties (the Green Party, the Moderate Party and the Liberal People’s Party) shifting their stances on copyright reform to incorporate many of the Pirate Party’s stances, primarily the ability to non-commercially share files without the looming threat of litigation over copyright infringement. Three years later, a full-fledged copyright infringement enablement court case was launched by the IFPI against the Pirate Bay administrators, resulting in a heavy loss for the Pirate Bay but resulting in a both a huge boost to the Pirate Party’s numbers, the winning of a seat in the European Parliament and the possibility of a more successful campaign in the 2010 Riksdag election. 

Thus, a proper appraisal of the two histories, the resulting ideologies, and the semi-coincidental intersections of interests is in order. Stallman, the FSF, and most FLOSS projects come from the perspective of the hacker, which places greater emphasis upon transparency and modifiability of source code (hence the idea of "open source") over the mere ability to redistribute various media over the Internet and other networks; Falkvinge, MEP Christian Engstrom, other PP and Piratbyrån members, and most BitTorrent tracker and search engine administrators are more concerned over the reform and liberalization of intellectual property law and practice in Sweden (and the European Union, if need be), and have not yet addressed the issue of source code availability for those who love to hack and modify in their spare time. Both groups want an end to the more litigious and tyrannical aspects of copyright law in the age of the Internet, where information of all sorts in all formats is more likely to be copied, shared and even remixed despite the agitations and ill will of corporations, but the two collectives, Stallman’s and Falkvinge’s, are heading in separate ideological directions which may mutually undercut each other’s best-intentioned efforts.

Ultimately, one group which may stand to benefit, or stand to suffer, from both collectives’ efforts is the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia encyclopedia and the MediaWiki software distribution, which also runs the Wikimedia Commons, a freely-licensed media repository. The Commons database contains millions of images, video, and sounds, and receives contributions of media from private individuals, corporations and governments on a regular basis. However, it – and Wikipedia – most recently ran into trouble with the United Kingdom’s National Portrait Gallery over the high-resolution scanning and uploading of some 3,300 portraits from the gallery; such portraits are considered public domain in that their copyrights have expired in the United Kingdom, but English copyright law protects the museum’s right to prevent the distribution of high-resolution copies, even if the works in question are in public domain. As Wikipedia has itself become an ideological bastion of information and media freedom advocacy, such kerfuffles over copyright may make or break the free online encyclopedia, or at least its assumptions of fair use vs. free use; in such a monumental legal struggle, the Pirate Party and the Free Software Foundation possess a shared and mutually-vested interest.