From The Morgue

Jazz belongs in cellars. Heading down a few steps and into a small, smoky bar with no windows – that’s its natural environment.
Last night Cal and I went to Henry’s Jazz Cellar, one of Edinburgh’s long-standing jazz venues, and checked out a group called Les Ecossais. They were all music student age, and their look was somewhere between Boyzone and the skatepunks doing grinds in Bristo Square. It was nice to not be the youngest in a jazz venue – there were a lot of young folk there, diluting the old Jazzheads.
They got props from the crowd, too, and deserved it. Their stuff was pretty fresh. Mostly new compositions by themselves, with some by other folk I’ve never heard of (unsurprising given how closely I follow jazz, i.e. not even a little). It was a pretty cool set, and a good evening out. Must go again.
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What the hell is going on in New Zealand? I’m hearing crazy stories second hand, and the stuff I see in the news is crazy enough. Like, Brash making a speech in Napier today that was only a few steps removed from the British National Party cultural purity line? This can’t be true, can it? Like, a Maori woman declaring a train after the hikoi ‘for Maori only’ and forcing non-Maori off? Urban myth, surely? Like, a Maori person getting verbally abused in a corner store while buying milk? This one, sadly, is true.
It seems like New Zealand is turning into a different country while I am away from it. And it seems the new country is much nastier than the old one.
I hate to see the politics of fear played out so strongly in Aotearoa. It makes me ill.
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Excellent piece on reading the Iraq prison stuff, at Teresa Neilsen Hayden’s divine Making Light. Very much worth checking out.

Pearce writes, on Iraq and Saddam:
How would you have dealt with Saddam Hussein?…If you wouldn’t keep him in power, how would you have deposed him? And how would you keep extremists from taking power once he was gone?
Morgue, home sick today, responds:
Okay, assuming the kind of setup that says, instead of launching the Iraq war, the Coalition decided to halt action and say “okay, no war. but we still want Saddam gone. How would you do it then, left-wing person?”

Here are some scratchy-type-top-of-head ideas for a plan.

(Note: I take it as written that the Iraqi people want a democracy, and are capable of democracy. A lot of people dispute this, particularly the second one. I also take as written that democracy, for all its flaws, is the best form of government in the world at present.)

(And note: you don’t need an identified alternative to know that alternatives have not even been explored.)

Strategy:

* chip away

It will take a long time to bring about change without massive destruction – probably decades. Accept this. Improvement for Iraqis will be incremental. Accept this too.

* legitimise and use the UN

The only way to create a justifiable intervention in Iraq is through the UN; flawed as it is, it is also the only way to provide some kind of legitimacy that will prevent actions creating international resentment down the line. All actions should be performed through this body.

* have Arab nations take the lead

The Arab nations aren’t that fond of Saddam. Use this. Have Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Saudi take the lead in all dealings with Saddam. Do not give Saddam the option of calling it a culture war.
And don’t let the US get involved on any organisational level. They can contribute troops and suchlike, but they can’t be involved with policy or be seen to be leading negotiations. The history between Iraq and the US will not lend itself to negotiations.

* use Saddam’s ego to control him

Hussein is cornered and ready to fight. Every time the UN takes action, he should always be provided with an avenue of honorable retreat. Over many iterations, the cumulative effect will be large – his power base will erode, the sacrifices he must make can be made incrementally larger, other avenues will gradually present themselves. This is, of course, how most international politics is done, which makes the utter failure to deploy it against Iraq quite astonishing.

This will probably mean Saddam gets to be a hero, and his sons get to live in luxury. Let them.

* don’t make a big public issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Saddam has his reputation relying on his awesome military power. Getting into public games over what he has and what he wants is not going to lead to anything but a runaround. Keep the demand for inspections high on the agenda, but don’t make it a matter of public image. Progress was being consistently made on this issue.

* prepare a democracy-building plan

So when Saddam is gone, this is ready to take its place. Preferably it will start at the ground level, with elections held in each small region and each chunk of city. This will elect a congress that is actually seen as representative. Part of the problem in Iraq is that the new temporary government has never been accepted. Remember, in some areas Iraqis self-organised elections after Saddam was deposed – and these elections were forcibly shut down by the coalition.

* accept the fact that Iraq will have an Islamic presence in government

And so it should, it’s a democracy. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Islam can be quite progressive. It’s taking massive abuse of power to maintain the oppressive status quo in Iran, and in Iraq the citizens are used to freedom from the excesses of Sharia.

A continued UN presence to ensure Iraq doesn’t fall into fundamentalist hands, as happened in Iran in ’79, will also be necessary I think.

Tactics:

* abandon trade sanctions

This is a human rights imperative. The trade sanctions have to be ended. This is political capital, however. Iraq has always been able to buy itself out of trade sanctions with WMD co-operation, according to resolution 687 – but that’s apparently not going to happen, since the US scotched the deal in the mid-90s. Give them up for something else, but give them up, incrementally if possible.

* attack the regime apparatus at the ground level, starting small

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other organisations have been reporting on specific atrocities in Iraq for a long time. Low-level personnel who are responsible must be targetted whenever they can be identified. (Police officers and police chiefs, for example.)

The idea is to make a big issue about one event, make it a political problem for Iraq (which, remember, has been trying for years to present itself as a responsible player on the world stage.) Then do everything possible to get the regime to sacrifice the person targetted for criminal justice.

Every time this is done, congratulate Iraq and Saddam on its honorable behaviour as a modern state. Then do it again. Keep hitting at the low-level building blocks, and rewarding the people at the top of the chain. Alone, this tactic won’t change much, but as part of a suite of tactics, it should help destabilise the regime’s control structure and ability to project its domination down to those in the street.

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Ach. This is hard. I will return to these ideas some other time.

And I bet George Monbiot has written something cool on this, but my google-fu is not enough to find it.

I’m about to start the long-awaited account of our trip to Palestine.
And I need to set some stuff down first. So here it is.
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When I was showing Palestine photos to my workmates Teresa and Kerry, I realised how hard it was to talk about anything without massive digressions explaining where I’m coming from, and why I hold the perspective I do.
Here, then, in abbreviated form, are some points of reference to use when reading about Palestine.

Continue reading Palestine: My Points of Reference

So I’m reading this book on Eminem. It’s by Anthony Bozza, a Rolling Stone journo who’s covered him since he started to break, and its pretty much in that RS free-flowing journo style – not nearly confrontational/cutting edge like the mag supposedly was in its heyday, but solid, investigative, thoughtful.
I still don’t quite know where I’m at with Marshall Mathers and his music. I remember the strange feeling as music critic after music critic lined up with the teens of the world in hailing the coming of the Great White Rapper. I didn’t get it. His singles (especially ‘My Name Is’ with its numb hook that still sends me to sleep) didn’t turn me on, and the controversy over his content was nothing new in the hiphop lyric field; I had no incentive to look closer.
But he kept getting bigger and bigger.
I don’t class myself as a hiphop backpacker, but rap music holds a key place in my background. Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet in 1990 was my wake-up call to the world of music. I had coasted through the 80s without ever engaging in music on any level – nothing ever got to me, until this. (Honorable exception: Karma Chameleon, the only song from the 80s I remember enjoying in the 80s.) PE was astonishing. Finally, music I could get into!
Over the next few years I followed Matt, Nicky and Brad’s explorations into the music, and eventually started making my own. I fell pretty firmly into what Bozza calls the ‘College Rap’ crowd – Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Arrested Development.
I did enjoy the music of the aggressive, and rising, gangsta sound. The gangsta fantasy never really bothered me, except for its prevalence, and the suspicion that way too many people were taking it seriously as a bible for life.
The misogyny and homophobia were bigger deals, but still not dealbreakers. I needed to investigate and see how deep it ran, how serious the artist was, in order to figure out if I could back the music.
Course, I wouldn’t do any digging if the beats weren’t good. That’s why I didn’t care about Eminem for ages, and why I’m coming late to the party now – his recent single ‘Lose Yourself’ is outstanding in every way. And I still haven’t figured it out, but its a familiar process – trying to get to the meat of what’s going on with the image that’s presented.
Which leads back to the book. Here’s a quote from Bozza’s book, because it crystallises exactly the core of my reaction to the media storm over Eminem back when I hadn’t found any reason to care about him:
“When he did appear the problem for me was that he received all this analysis and psychoanalysis that black rappers never got. If you look at somebody like Tupac… when he was alive he was a ‘bad boy’, that’s all people thought of him. There was no effort in the media to deconstruct who he is or where he comes from. But as soon as Marshall Mathers appeared they all said ‘Oh, this troubled white youth. May we lay you down on the couch? What’s your problem?’ To me it really highlighted the issue that nobody gave a rat’s ass about why young black men felt like expressing themselves in this way, but as soon as a white guy did it then there was an effort to understand.”
The quote is actually from someone named Farai Chideya, a journo who runs Pop and Politics.
And I’m not going to follow this line of thought any further, because my dinner’s getting cold.

Back in University in the mid 90s, a large chunk of my social life was built around “the BBS”. It was a bulletin board system for Vic students (and ex-students), and it was a virtual hangout for an awful lot of cool and interesting folk. An important element that sets it apart from every other virtual community I’ve come across was the amount of crossover into real life – most people on it knew most other people on it in the real world and BBS parties were commonplace.
I loved the BBS. I met many wonderful people, had many preconceptions challenged, had my first and only “e-romance”, was introduced to The Onion, and learned lessons about online discourse that have served me well as the entire world has gone digital…
…but this isn’t a general nostalgia trip. This is about something specific.
Somewhere along the line, the BBS ended up celebrating Hug Day. This was basically an excuse for going around and hugging other BBS members in real life, because Hugs Are Good. Somehow or other I became the flagwaver for hug day in the BBS’s latter days (the BBS was shut down for good in 99 – or 2000? – a shadow of its former self due to member attrition and the rise of so many other avenues for online entertainment and community).
Anyway, today I’m thinking about hug day, and that excuses to hug other human beings are far too infrequent. So, promise me that today you’ll go out and hug someone you normally wouldn’t hug. Your excuse can be this: “I promised Morgan.”
And you wouldn’t want to let me down, would you?
(I can’t remember the time of year in which Hug Day fell – late in semester 1 I think. Doesn’t matter much. Every day is Hug Day!)

In my last post I wondered at the failure of the internet to stay on top of the prison story as compared to slow-coach television.
I neglected to mention that the first I saw of the prison story was in Idiot/Savant’s No Right Turn. So the internet won the race (like Vortox, the internet always wins) but Old Media won the, erm, the discus and the javelin and stuff.
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And the internet has provided my new favourite thing:
people who have had control devices implanted in their brains by the New World Order have set up an online questionnaire to be filled out by the perpetrators.
“While we all want the torture you are heaping on us to stop, at the same time, we would like to know something about you as well.”
(Found via the delightful Making Light, still essential reading for writers of all stripes.)

So I was planning a happy-skippy blog entry about how I’ve been really busy knocking off dozens of items from my post-Palestine to-do list (no exagerration – the list came to 40 items and I’m down to the teens). And talking about Kill Bill, because I saw part 2 and feel I have Things To Say about it. And making wry comment on the coverage that sheep and that budgie have been getting all around the world.
But I’ve just seen the coverage of the Iraqi prisoner abuse.
First thing – it’s on TV way before the net. Discussion boards have the story but the mainstream newssites and big blogs aren’t covering it yet. Weird – TV ahead of the internet – I can’t think the last time it happened to me.
Second thing – oh my lord. Of course, it’s one incident and it’s being dealt with and it’s not a general situation – but there have been so many reports of this kind of thing in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Gitmo. It is a sign of a general culture. This kind of activity is the outgrowth of the rhetoric surrounding the US military effort and ‘clash of civilisations’ and war on terror etc. It’s *inevitable*. It was predicted. It has been reported before. But photos tell a different story.
Third thing – it’s been a rough two weeks for the Arab world (which does exist as a collective entity on some level, if only because the rest of the world keeps lumping them together) – Bush supporting Sharon, Fallujah being bombed, and now this. If you’re already feeling victimised, this run of events certainly looks like the West is prepping for a fight to the finish with the Arab Middle East.
Fourth thing – the grinning thumbs-up may be familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to the war-blogs for the last few weeks – the ‘Boudreaux controversy’ has been argued all over and made it into Salon.com a few days ago. Basically, its a photo of a grinning GI next to an Iraqi kid holding a sign – but there are two versions of what the sign says, one sickening and one heartwarming. Obviously one, or both, was photoshopped for political reasons. I think psychological logic supports the idea its the negative one, but it’s impossible to prove. This prison activity will lend more weight to this logic, because its premised on the fact that some soldiers in Iraq are happy to humiliate the Iraqis. And now we see that this is indeed the case.
Christ. Things are going to get worse before they get better.
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I did like Kill Bill 2, for what its worth.

Beautiful run of days lately. Sweet. *Puts global warming thoughts aside*
Yesterday I sat in the Meadows under pink-blossomed trees and read Russell Hoban’s Angelica’s Grotto, and wrote in my travel journal of Palestine. I’ve written about twenty pages and I’m at the start of the first full day in-country. It’s taking a long time to process.
I’m trying to get writing happening again but this has stalled it. Gah. Soon, though. Ron the Body is aching to be written.
My friend Tina is back in Edinburgh. She was my best friend at work and she dematerialised to England, but has come back. We had a nice wee drink at our local pub on Saturday night, which was sort of a new experience for me. Very cool though. Apart from that it was a weekend of sunshine and roleplaying. Too much roleplaying! But it’s all good stuff. I want to make the most of my time with the Providence Summer crew before they scatter to the four corners of the earth; and the Ottakar’s Club isn’t quite ready for me to walk away from it, though it’s close. I have a number of usurpers who are pretty much running things now – we just need a few more people running games to take the pressure off.
I have been saddened to note the gender balance of the Ottakars group has slipped markedly. Our women have left the country and no new ones have joined. Bums. But what can you do? At least GEAS is a very healthy demographic variety. That’s the way we like it.

Still drifting, just a little.
Haven’t yet come to terms with Israel and Palestine, in that I haven’t turned it into something I can tell stories about. It’s too big and complex. There’s a couple I am comfortable with, but most of it is just too much. Tomorrow I plan on sitting in the Elephant House after work and writing down everything I can about the trip. That should be a good start.
We have some great photos at least. These will be shared shortly.
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Just saw Shaun of the Dead. It’s a solid 4-star effort, well worth the cash but no groundbreaking classic. And given that my criticism is “but no groundbreaking classic” you can imagine how much I enjoyed it. (Lots.)
It was effectively scary, and very funny. Filled to the brim with easter eggs for horror trivia fans. (Name of the restaurant Shaun rings to make reservations: Fulci’s.) And the gore, while infrequent for a zombie movie, was very effective – in fact, I think it’s the best disembowelling-by-crowd-of-zombies I’ve ever seen. (Maybe Day of the Dead tops it. Maybe.)
Which reminds me, it’s Dead by Dawn this weekend at Filmhouse. I forgot to book tickets in advance AGAIN. Dammit. Last year Freddy Kreuger elbowed me and I saw Bubba Ho-tep. Not sure what I might make it to this time around. Maybe nothing. I feel much, much busier this time out.
Beltaine celebrations are coming, and they’ve put an attendance limit on it for the first time. Calton Hill will still be the venue and thousands of all ages are expected. Should be great.
Gah. Sleep needed. Zombification imminent.