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Monday, October 27, 2003
The UNAFF 2003 The Stanford Film Society in cohoot with the United Nations Association has, for the last few days, been hosting the, United Nations Association Film Festival. That site has some great links to social activist sites including one that was recommended to us called, Witness. I personally managed to get my grubby hands on more than my fair share of tickets as my department was giving some away for freebies and I was there early enough to get first choice. The first film I saw was "Anonmously Yours" which looked at the sex trade industry in Burma and Thailand. They interviewed, among others, two girls who were victims of poverty and hated their lot in life, another woman who seemed to have accepted and made the best of bad situation and noted that it was a better life than the poverty she had come from, and the third main character was a woman who worked at the brothel selling the girls who had become a social worker in Burma. The next two sessions I attended were on Friday and came under the theme of "War and Peace". The Tree That Remembers interviewed men and women who had become poltical prisoners in Iran during the Revolution before escaping to Canada. The documentary was motivated by the suicide of an Iranian former prisoner who killed himself in Canada. The director tried to find out why this man had been so haunted 10 years after escaping from Iran that he couldn't bear to live anymore. The next film, "Plan Colombia" was not surprisingly about The US' Plan Colombia. It exposed the hypocrisy and bordering on conspiracy theory US policy in Colombia, supposedly to fight drugs but actually to make money for the military industrial complex in America and to support the Colombian government to ensure a stable and close oil supply. It went into the role of the School of the America's in training terrorists and future murders and dictators. During the discussion after the movie one of the audience brought to our attention the School of the America's Watch which protests against the school. The next session focused on Africa with Liberia: America's Stepchild, which outlined the history between US and Liberia and how Liberia got to its current situation of bloody civil war, and Zimbabw Countdown which chronicled the rise of Robert Mugabe during the war of independence from British rule to the present day and how he has changed from a freedom fighter into a cruel dictator. And finally, I only got time to go see one movie today, which also happens to be the festivals final day. Today I saw "Storming the Summit: The Bloody Days of Genoa" which told the story of police and political conspiracy at the G8 summit in Genoa to implant violent fascist protestors amidst the demonstrators to discredit the anti-globalist movement. It showed some fairly violent footage of the violent crackdown by the police during the summit as well. That was the sixth annual UNAFF so presumably there will be more to come in the following years. I found these documentaries to be well prepared, interesting, and highly informative. Of course, it also meant that I have not done ANY study this weekend at all despite the onset of mid-term assessments.
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Saturday, October 25, 2003
Not "Our" Party; "Roh's" Party The brand new, but not yet officially named "Uri Party" has gotten some initial criticism for being confusing. There is also a translation and comment from Oranckay about the naming of this new party. But whether its spelt Uri or Woori, it spells stupid. The funadmental reason this is not a good name for a party is that it has absoluetly no meaning whatsoever. Calling your party, "our party" doesn't say what the party stands for, doesn't allow for anyone to discern the guiding principles or ideology of the party, and its also the name of a bank in the country. Might be better had it been called the "Roh Moo-Hyun and his band of loyal followers" party which is exactly what it is. The number and frequency with which political parties are established and disbanded in Korea is mind-boggling for those who come from countries where stable poltical parties dominate the scene. Indeed, Australia's Labor Party celebrated its centenary in 1991 well ahead of the Liberal Party which was only a youngun of 50. Contrarily, Korean political parties are so strongly characterised by their leader that as soon as the leader changes, the party is often disbanded and a new one emerges with the new leader. That is to say, transfer of power of party heads rarely occurs, at least for any amount of time, in Korea. The implications of this stem down in the party's ability to maintain stability of the nation. As we see already the lack of confidence in the party and the changes going on at the party level are greatly affecting the governing of the country. Already there are calls for a cabinet reshuffle in light of the crisis. Frequent cabinet shuffling due to party squabbles and factionalism only leads to instability and poor country managment. DJ's own frequent shuffles only led to inconsistency in policy and confusion. As I've mentioned, in just three years at the Ministry of Planning and Budget there were four ministers. But a cabinet shuffle goes much deeper than this. With each ministerial change there was a shake up at the office level. So in some cases a director appointed just two months prior to my office would then be shifted off to another office. Of course the new people in charge of the office would not know what the previous boss had done, and because everyone had changed jobs there was no time for information exchange or training. The result being that with every change some projects would be abruptly stopped and new ones taken on and this happened every few months. If Korea wants a stable political environment and better names for its parties it needs to establish firm committed parties based on policy and ideology and not on personalities. The current swings and machinations are undermining the countries ability to move forward not only politically but economically and socially. Thursday, October 23, 2003
"That's the Australian Parliament for you" Bush's speech in the Aussie Parliament was met with hecklers from the anti-war Labour and Green Parties. Bob Brown, leader of the Greens calling out "We are not a Sheriff" at one point reportedly getting a welcome laugh. Of course, heckling a characteristic of the Aussie Parliament but its good to see that we do it even to visitors. You can't beat a good flying insult session.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Discussing North Korea Carthatidae posted a link to an article advocating the end of the Kim dynasty in North Korea. A interesting article. Stanford, as part of Homecoming, held a panel discussion on Friday entitled: Its a MAD mad World: Prospects for Security, Diplomacy, and Peace on the Korean Peninsular. Speakers were , Bernard Black, Mi-Hyung Kim, Scott Sagan, and Shin Gi-wook. It was chaired by Allen Weiner. Each speaker addressed a different perspective of the issue such as North Korea, South Korea, & US and highlighted the big differences in priorities between US and South Korea and the possible motivations behind North Korea's actions as a means of trying to assess which policy approaches might work and which might not. The general consensus in the end was that this is a difficult situation and none of the options are attractive and different options are even less attrative than others for different countries. Professor Sagan brought up the interesting topic of 'precedent setting' and looked at what lessons other countries who possess the capabilty to develop nukes might learn from US handling of the North Korea issue. Antoher issues mentioned was the unlikelihood of making much further progess on this issue until after the US elections in 2004. As one speaker put it, the North is probably hoping that regime change will come to US before it comes to them. During the question and answer session, Jim Woosley, former director of the CIA and apparent alumni asked a question or rather a comment about the possibility and forces required to change a system from within. Korea Peace Day I have added numerous new links to my site which was a much overdue update. Among the newbies is the link to the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. Co-founder, Professor Shin, is a member of the Stanford faculty and has been telling us about this upcoming event which seems quite worthwhile. Thursday, October 09, 2003
Friday, October 03, 2003
Virginia Postrel
Fellow blogger, albiet a way more famous one, Virginia Postrel was at the campus bookstore last night to give us a talk and read some passages from her new book The Substance of Style. Although I haven't read the book and after a day of heavy spending for text books I was not inclined to make any more purchases I found her talk quite interesting. Although I think, on the surface, I disagree with the hypothesis that over emphasis on style and the aesthetic imperative is 'not a bad thing'. I am inclined to be of the opinion that *over* emphasis on asethetics can crowd out more useful (socially and personally constructive) things to do with one's time or energy than spend x amount of hours choosing colour schemes and agonising over beige or light brown for certain house fittings that no-one will notice anyway. It could be said that acceptance of the asethetic imperative can lead to greater 'dumbing-down' of the population by validating it and allowing pursuit of such to be undertaken at the expense (as mentioned) of more usefull stuff. Hoever, I should clarify my expression of "over-emphasis". I certainly agreed with her comments of us as sensory creatures who notice difference much more astutely than we take in sameness and our desire and need to be changing and expanding our ideas and that vision and asethitical means are a channel of such. Therefore I would guess that there is minimal substance in style and something that should not be neglected but to say that it is "not a bad thing" may not always be true. I think it can, in some cases, be a bad thing. Also in the sense of the amount of waste that is produced due to making things more stylish and to offer more choice.
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