archive : s0metim3s

This, from Michael O’Donnell’s review of Darius Rejali’s Torture and Democracy:

Rejali’s provocative thesis is that most clean tortures were actually born in democracies, especially imperial Britain and France. He persuasively argues that the rise of clean torture was a reaction to transparency and monitoring in democratic states: Torturers could carry on despite public scrutiny as long as they left no scars. Although Rejali does not discuss it, this thesis plays out daily in the American legal system. Immigration courts, for instance, handle thousands of asylum applications every year, and judges usually demand that alleged torture victims produce evidence of scarring or hospitalization. No scars means no torture, and the applicant is sent home.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …

This declaration is many things, but it is above all the articulation of a seeming paradox that will preoccupy dialecticians of various shades for centuries.

Grant Farred, “Foreigners Among Citizens” (Cultural Critique 67, 2007), on the politizen, Clichy DuBois and Cronulla:

Some of the talk given at SydneyU earlier this year, and posted in light of current ‘events’.

First, it’s not surprising that the emergence of a so-called global activism was accompanied by debates about activism as such. Much of this turns around the crisis which Brett alluded to earlier: the refinement of ‘crowd control’ techniques that involve massive and often pre-emptive repression, movements increasingly constrained by barricades, designated protest zones, lockdowns and ever-more severe controls on migration during such events. But these are, let’s say, the external conditions of that crisis; whereas the crisis of activism itself runs much deeper. Because activism too has its borders, and the shape of these are not all that different from those more famously exercised upon it. Though it’s important to note that the specific techniques and levels of force do differ, the contours of those limits are remarkably similar.

Here’s the text of a talk - “Ordinary poverty and sores” - given by Elizabeth Povinelli at Charles Darwin University’s workshop “Indigenous policy reform in the NT: An extraordinary debate for extraordinary times”, on 20 July 2007.

Why are these exceptional times? Why is time exceptional now? What is exceptional about it? I have been living down at Channel Point, a place called Balgal, with a group of Aboriginal men, women and children who were driven out of their homes at Belyuen by other men, women, and children – their families to be sure, but wielding axes, chainsaws, pickets, and rocks. They ransacked their houses, stole their goods, and chased them into the scrub. No one was charged. The police investigation seemed minimal at best. Without any foreseeable housing in Darwin, and not wishing to live as part of the urban radical poor, they were promised housing at Balgal. Months later they are still living in tents, hauling water, firewood, as non-Aboriginal people live in houses just kilometers away on Aboriginal land. Not lease land, but unalienable Aboriginal freehold. And the government continues to pressure them to return to Belyuen where they risk slow death. Why cost, of course. Because as much as we hear that these are extraordinary times, they are also ordinary times; the same time it’s always been for the radically poor and black. The bottom line is the bottom line: What kind of life is worth what kind of investment? The rain is coming, everyone knows; perhaps the rain will push these families back.

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.

Newly-elected President of East Timor, Jose Ramos Horta - pictured here on election day promoting himself as Jesus Christ, and whose suits uniformly sport priestly collars - has, perhaps unsurprisingly, promised $10m to the Catholic Church so that it can “assume a bigger role in the spiritual and moral guidance of our people”, and intends to constitutionalise God. Describing himself as “President for the Poor”, he has also suggested the effective abolition of corporate taxes so as to make East Timor one of “the easiest countries in the world to do business”, and proposed expanding a “cash for work” programme (which I assume is another phrase for workfare/work-for-the-dole). There are currently around 1,700 UN police (mainly from Portugal, the previous colonial power), and 1,250 Australian and New Zealand troops deployed in East Timor - needless to say, each of those countries’ governments have applauded Horta’s election win. While abolishing visa payments from overseas “humanitarian workers”, Horta will no doubt enthusiastically embrace the trilateral agreement between Australia, Indonesia and East Timor to control undocumented migration in the region. East Timor - a firmly re-colonised, theocratic, impoverished, outpost of the Vatican.

More here. Some very brief remarks of mine on East Timor from 1999, in Italian (because there’s no English version via the wayback machine).