When did the poppy become political?

It worries me that this year, for perhaps the first time, publicity for Remembrance Day poppies seems to be more about honouring contemporary soldiers from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and not the fallen of the First and Second World Wars.

Perhaps this is an inevitable transition as we move further from 1914 and the last of those men and women who lived and fought in the wars is promoted to glory. Indeed, there is a striking symbolism (and irony) to the reality that today's soldiers are still fighting in poppy fields, although this time in Afghanistan rather than northern Europe.

However, I feel a deep unease about this move to honour (celebrate?) the more recent fallen. There is a sense that wearing a poppy is now akin to wearing a badge that says Support Our Troops, or at least it as at risk of becoming a symbol of tacit support for the current conflicts in which our forces are engaged around the world.

After reading much on the subject of conflict and faith, I am edging towards identifying myself as a pacifist. This is a pretty hard decision to reach, given that a) military hardware is strangely alluring to the male psyche and b) as an historian, I am aware of many occasions when not standing up and acting would seem not just counterintuitive but unforgivably negligent. However, history also reveals that redemptive violence is a myth; even the best intentioned violence only ever leads to more violence.

The Bible challenges us to adopt a path that is more constructive and ultimately more difficult than taking up arms; Jesus responded to persecution and violence with love and self-sacrifice that perplexed, frustrated and transformed the lives of his enemies (as well as costing him his own). It is often argued that the ‘righteous’ course of action is to fight evil with force, but we should remember that Jesus never said "Greater love has no man than this: to kill those who oppress others”.

Coming back to the immediate issue of poppies, I should clarify that its not that I don't believe those that have lost their lives in more recent conflicts shouldn't be treated with respect, but rather that wearing a poppy should not be a political (or indeed martial) statement.

Wearing a poppy is about recognising and remembering the tragic losses of the Great War. It’s about remembering the self-sacrificing and humbling bravery of ordinary people in both the First and Second World Wars. It’s about remembering that I am not a soldier, but were I to have been born in another era, I would undoubtedly have been. It’s about a point of universal agreement – on whichever side one's forebears fought, we all acknowledge the tragedy, the stupidity and the terrible loss of the wars of the early C20th.

We should be very careful not to allow vested interest groups to exploit the poppy (and the power of that fleeting moment of unity that it encompasses) to promote public endorsement of modern conflicts for which there has been less than universal support. I fear that doing so threatens to politicise and therefore undermine this unique and potent symbol of our mutual remorse, humility, pride and regret.

Twitter: A pointless exercise?

The bizarre and wonderful thing about twitter is that it allows communication between individuals who would never have met in the real world - whether that be a brief conversation with a celebrity or a the discovery of a new intellectual ally.

I don't care that 80% of my followers are US marketing bots or porn sites.

If even a handful of people outside of my pre-twitter sphere read and are inspired / intruiged / amused by my tweets, then my broadcasts are not pointless.

Anything that helps us connect to each other in this age of isolation is valid.

Somali Pirates: An alternative perspective

Over recent months, much attention has been given to the almost surreal resurgence of piracy on the high seas, particularly off the coast of Somalia. Most articles have roundly condemned these pirates, but some have taken an alternative view of their actions - condemning the act of hostage-taking, but recognising the validity of the pirates' motivations and local popularity.

Johann Hari from the Centre for Research on Globalization sums up this alternative perspective in this article, in which he argues that Somalis have resorted to piracy in response to international exploitation and extreme domestic need:

In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas."

Its the classic 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' senario, but certainly the evidence does seem to suggest that the developed world has been taking advantage of the instability in Somalia to further its own interests.

One possible solution to the ongoing problem of piracy, poverty and exploitation in the Horn of Africa would be to establish one of Paul Romer's Charter Cities in Somalia. If we assume that piracy is partly an expression of misappropriated capitalist ambition (as this satirical game from Wired.com argues), then we know that Somalis have the necessary drive to make a go of the more constructive opportunities for change that a Charter City offers. After all, many successful modern cities have their origins in illegal activities and investments, including London and Las Vegas.

One primary goal of Charter Cities is to alleviate poverty through creating opportunities for native innovation and organic development. Surely, few countries need to reduce poverty and instability more than Somalia. An additional ramification of such a development would be the reduction in the flow of Somali migrants and asylum seekers into Western states, thereby lightening the burden placed on Western welfare systems.

Finally, a Somali Charter City (in partnership with whichever developed nation) would likely have greater potential to stop foreign nations from exploiting Somali waters and therefore correct the fundamental complaint of the pirates.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Clearly, the issue of political instability elsewhere in the country would be a problem, but if we think of the charter city like the Foundation from the Asimov series of the same name - an isolated bastion of stability and innovation created to develop and share life-changing alternatives with its underdeveloped neighbours - then the potential for positive change must surely outweigh the threat of instability.

The goal of modern medicine?

I came across this interesting comment in the book I'm reading at the minute (Island, by Aldous Huxley - of Brave New World fame). In it, Will, a cynical journalist and part-time oil prospector has been shipwrecked on an idyllic (and unexploited) southeast Asian island. While convalescing from his injures from the wreck, he learns about the unique way of life on the island, including these thoughts by his nurse on the problems with western medicine. Although perhaps, the nurse's verdict is too harsh, it raises interesting questions about what the health system is there for:

------------------------------------------------------

"So you think our medicine is pretty primitive?"

"That's the wrong word. It isn't primitive. Its fifty per cent terrific and fifty per cent non-existent. Marvellous antibiotics - but absolutely no methods for increasing resistance, so that antibiotics wont be necessary. Fantastic operations - but when it comes to teaching people a way of going through life without having to be chopped up, absolutely nothing. Its the same all along the line. A plus for patching you up when you've started to fall apart, but D minus for keeping you healthy. Apart from sewage systems and synthetic vitamins you don't seem to do anything at all about prevention. And yet you have a proverb: prevention is better than cure."

"But cure," said Will "is so much more dramatic than prevention. And for the doctors its a lot more profitable..."

Sunday joke

A zookeeper walks past the ape house and sees a large male ape sat on rock in the cage with a book in each hand. In his left, the ape has Darwin's Origin of the Species, and in his right he holds a copy of the Bible.

Confused, the zookeeper asks the ape what he's doing. The ape looks up and replies, "I am trying to decifer whether I am my brother's keeper, or my keeper's brother..."

Boom, boom

Book review: The Drowned World

Like the swamps and prehistoric jungles which form the landscape of much of The Drowned World, this book took some wading through in places. That being said, it was an immersive and beguiling read.

The plot is typical of my tastes (as my wife will tell you, I only ever seem to read post-apocalyptic dystopian novels): Fluctuations in solar radiation have caused the polar ice-caps to melt and the seas to rise. Global temperatures have climbed, and civilization has retreated to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. London is a city now inundated by a primeval swamp, to which an expedition travels to record the flora and fauna of this new Triassic Age...

Were this book written by Michael Crichton, this would be an action-packed romp through primordial jungles with a gung-ho cast of all-American heroes. As it is, Ballard's debut (published) novel is relatively light on plot. It is less an exploration of the new physical landscape as the landscape of the mind; a psychotropic(al) adventure into the psyches of those coming to terms with their new environment.

Ballard's prose is not always digested at first glance and his vivid descriptions frequently overwhelm comprehension. Nonetheless, his imagery seeps into your conciousness like the terrible throbbing sun of the protagonist's dreams to create a compelling and immersive vision.

[SPOILER WARNING]

I found myself unexpectedly allured by the strange beauty of the lagoons and shared the protagnost's distress when the waters were drained to reveal the lost streets and buildings beneath; like corpses raised to await Judgement. The horror and chaos of this hellish graveyard - complete with troupes of dancing devils - was evocative of the nightmarish events of Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday'. Like the protagonist, I too longed for the familiar, purifying waters to return and bury the decaying ghosts of London under the waves once again...

[END SPOILER]

Like other books by Ballard, this is not exactly an easy read, but it was certainly worthwhile. Even as I think back over the book to write this review, fresh details and significances float to the surface of my mind that will keep me pondering for some time to come.

Horizon Scanning with the MOD

I've been skim reading a strategic trends report from the MOD (2006). Its projections for political instability in Iran are remarkably prescient, but this projection on the risk of global economic instability seems to have rather overstepped the mark (emphasis added):

"Globalization will result in critical interdependencies that will link members of a globalized society that includes a small super-rich elite and a substantial underclass of slum andsubsistence dwellers, who will make up 20% of the world population in 2020. A severe pricing shock, possibly caused by an energy spike or a series of harvest failures, could trigger a domino effect involving the collapse of key international markets across a range of sectors. The impacts of this collapse could be transmitted throughout the globalized economy, possibly resulting in a breakdown of the international political system, as states attempt to respond to domestic crises and the local effects of wider economic collapse. Sophisticated societies that depend on complex, transnational networks for the supply of basic human needs, such as food that cannot be provided indigenously, are likely to face severe infrastructure failure, collapse of public services and societal conflict." (Pg 79)

There's also an interesting projection regarding the rise of (quasi-)independent city-states, as forecast by the Quantum Manifesto:

"Successful, internationally networked cities, as engines of economic development and opportunity, could increasingly assert their independence and new found status in contrast to their backward, less developed and burdensome hinterlands. The formation of new city-states would challenge the major assumption that underpins the current international system - the sovereignty and integrity of the nation-state. Recognition of city-states’sovereignty could cause wider secession and new alignments, leading to uncertain diplomacy and a heightening of international instability." (Pg 82)

Kudos to Justin Pickard for flagging up this report.