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25 November 2007 by nathaniel

a war about war

Although I sometimes cringe at his take on liberal things as I see them, I appreciate Andrew Sullivan’s thought process and writing on most things political – he’s a classic ‘conservative’ (not a neo-con) and has the insight to see that his species is endangered…. He has a great article on Obama in The Atlantic right now. Really, really smart ideas about what a candidacy would mean…

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

Nice, long piece, too. Read more.

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15 November 2007 by nathaniel

iCommons benefit auction

The iCommons Auction: Unique Internet Artifacts

iCommons, the global non-profit incubated by Creative Commons, and based in Johannesburg, South Africa is auctioning off paraphernalia donated by some of the world’s leading Internet figures.

The over thirty items on the auction list run the gamut from the historical: the coats worn by Internet activist and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig while he traveled the world talking about free culture, to the cultural: pre-print copies of books by best selling sci-fi author Cory Doctorow and Internet guru Jonathan Zittrain and the fun and funny: one of the 20 limited-edition, plush Fox-keh dolls, made by Firefox Japan and a selection of Indian intellectual property expert Lawrence Liang’s favourite Bollywood films – not to mention high quality prints of Internet entrepreneur, Joi Ito’s best photographs.

The people who have donated to the iCommons Auction are leading figures in the global movement to make the Internet a powerful tool for change, innovation, sustainability and development. Their donations tell stories of a history that is currently being written about the power of the Internet for change and development.

All the proceeds of the auction, which will take place online between the 19th of November 2007 and the 14th of December 2007, will go to developing and sustaining the iCommons Node programme, which connects global free culture projects around the world.

For more information, visit icommons.org/auction

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10 November 2007 by nathaniel

call waterboarding torture?

Off-topic, but I have to put this out there.

The constant Republican talking point on this topic is that if Democrats (and others) sincerely feel that waterboarding is torture, then they should explicitly state as such and make it illegal. Currently, the law reads “acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” as torture. They’d like to turn the debate into a Democratic problem, claiming that there is a reasonable argument against its being torture, and that since it is questionable, it is the Dems fault that they are carrying out said torture.

The Democratic response is that it is not questionable. All over the world, Americans or not, all military interrogators and officers (the second link goes on to explain that we prosecuted the Japanese for War Crimes when they used it in WWII), former POWs, or yes, even Bush lawyers, who have undergone or used waterboarding agree that it is torture. And this is a valid point, and the reason the Mukasey confirmation debate has carried on – to paraphrase Jon Stewart, “how could he not know waterboarding was going to be on the test?” It is undeniably torture.

But we still need to answer the off-topic-attempt-to-refocus Republican talking point: why not make it illegal explicitly? The Dems response of “we shouldn’t have to” does not hold water. The real response is: then what?

Then what? Do we have to list every known form of torture, and every one that could potentially be invented in the next hundred years? And when you make a new method not yet on the list and use it, you can say, again, that it was not explicitly illegal? And the cycle begins again. This is a horrible and stupid precedent to set. I cant believe that anyone is letting them get away with this kind of reasoning; the media should be ashamed, and the Democratic leadership should take it on with some sense.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me restate that the world, and America, agree that waterboarding is torture. The experts agree that waterboarding is torture.

Jerks.

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05 October 2007 by nathaniel

eat – slam poetry / video installation

Gonna spend the next few hours converting and uploading videos and video documentation to youtube, in preparation for the new web site (probably going up in a week or three). Enjoy!

“funny slam poetry about identity as constructed through mass consumerism; eat was a site-specific video installation made for a solo exhibition at the Outlet Gallery in Pretoria, South Africa” (more)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZlef-GM-n0]
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