archive : s0metim3s

The second part, “The Lonely Robot”, of Adam Curtis’ documentary, The Trap. Other parts can be found via here, or on The Trap blog. Worth watching for those who, like me, haven’t got around to seeing it as yet - particularly in light of previous discussions about contract and the measures declared under the ‘emergency’ in AU of late.

The introductory sketch from a draft below. See also the posts and discussion at Influxus, Wildly Parenthetical, Hoyden, Stilgherrian and Shrike. And just let me say that I think those people who, rather than criticise the welfare measures announced, clamour (in the putative language of non-discrimination) for their extension to everyone (really: all poor people) are worse than stupid. Anyway, here’s part of the draft:

On June 22nd 2007, the Australian Prime Minister declared a de facto state of emergency over remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. The overt reason given for this extraordinary move was the protection of children from abuse – or, more specifically, its occasion was the release of the report by the Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse in the Northern Territory.

I just heard about the acquittal of Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley. Below is the quick piece on it that I wrote a couple of months ago, and as it appeared in the most recent edition of Left Curve. I don’t know what else to say, other than to sit with the moment. A moment heralded and marking the first time anyone has been brought to trial for a death in custody.*

Nickel and dimed, as a musical - from The American Ruling Class.

See the most recent post for more cogent remarks.

Commenting on the recent report (here as a 6.4MB pdf) from the Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse - which, perhaps not surprisingly, goes by the theologico-political title of Little Children Are Sacred - Guy Rundle wrote:

You don’t have to go far into Little Children Are Sacred, the report on child abuse in Aboriginal communities, to be shocked and appalled:

In addition to the many excellent writings by Laura Agustin (many of which are here), the abstract from Nandita Sharma’s “Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of a Global Apartheid” (NWSA Journal, 17.3, 2005):

the historical and contemporary discursive practices of anti-trafficking campaigns […] within the global North, often led by feminists, constitute the moral reform arm of contemporary anti-immigrant politics that targets negatively racialized migrants. As in the past, current campaigns collude with a state-backed international security agenda aimed at criminalizing self-determined migrations of people who have ever-less access to legal channels of migration. I argue that only by recognizing the agency, however constrained, of illegalized migrants can we come to understand how processes of capitalist globalization and the consequent effects of dislocation and dispersal shape the mobility of illegalized migrants. Within the current global circuits of capital, goods, and people, I argue that along with a call to end practices of displacement, a demand to eliminate immigration controls is necessary if feminists are to act in solidarity with the dispossessed in their search for new livelihoods and homes.

The rest is here as a pdf.

Also, while not on ‘trafficking’, Mandy Thomas’ piece on the garment industry might be of some interest. Part of it - the part about watching horror films - reminds me of why I think the Zombie Shuffle might resonate more than do EuroMayDay-type actions with the experience of precarious work (and without the latter’s recourse to strategies of inclusion-regulation).

Further to the previous post, some remarks on the eternalisation of the border, or perhaps I mean the border as a form of eternalisation. Wildly Paranthetical has some interesting takes on biopolitical health, as does Influxus on contagion. Read both.

But the aspect of this I want to turn around a little more is the relation between the border and temporality, heading off from the concluding remarks of that prior post - and some of those considerations about Kant’s “Conflict of the Faculties” from elsewhere. This latter might seem wildly tangential, or more so than Influx’s more specific reading of Kant’s discussion of the medical faculty. These are, as are most things here, notes in motion.