markjgsmith

There was much sex related bullying and goading for the rest of the day yesterday with women food vendors calling 'com suon' which is rice pork, 'come soon' instead, then later as I was eating the food I'd bought, 2 girls sitting in front of me continuously repeating 'com suon'. And the bloke shop staff saying 'I love you' to the customer ahead of me as they departed. And just constant small things like that. But at least I was able to buy some food and eat something. It felt like people were trying to make me sneeze the whole day, but I didn’t catch a runny nose or sneezing fits thankfully.

The soup vendor that occasionally offers me free soup did that again, and a variation on that old pattern emerged where he was saying it was free and the big gruff bloke also working the food stand was saying pay. I confirmed it was free with the bloke that had initially approached me. He speaks quite good english so I confirmed it was indeed free. No major repurcussions until now.

I listenned to some pretty good podcasts on politics and solo development. Made a lot of notes. Had a few ideas for some blog posts. Perhaps today I’ll find time between the harrassments to write a few. No progress on the reusable workflows yet, hopefully that will happen too. Charged all my devices and caught up with laundry. Hopefully today will be a bit more productive now that I’ve caught up with things. It’s a bit disheartening to know that by tomorrow another starvation cycle will have started, and it will all start over and I’ll be catching up for days only to get maybe 1/2 a day of productivity before it starts over again. #

Something else worth mentioning that I forgot about. The weird western bloke with the bald head that walks slowly showed up twice. First I passed him when I went to a place along the canal I haven’t been to in a while 2 days ago. Later that evening, he passed by in a totally different location. He used to apear all the time during COVID. He’s kind of creepy, has this strange vibe like he’s at an invisible funeral, walking slowly, head hanging down. He was wearing a purple tshirt. I mention it because it’s bound to turn into some sort of warpath. #

Rory and Alistair on the treatment of palestinian prisoners

It was interesting to hear Rory Stewart on a recent Rest is Politics podcast episode [35:18] discussing Isreal’s horrendous treatment of palestinian soldiers:

The situation in Isreali prisons is very very disturbing. There are currently 10000 palestinians detained in isreali prisons approximately. Of those, 4781 have been detained without trial, no charges, without the ability to defend themselves. It could be that they are young men of a certain age, who might be considered by the isreali defence forces as potential allies of terrorist groups. Some of them appear to be in purely for posting stuff on Facebook that seems to be critical of the isreali government.

And B'Tselem which is an isreali human rights organisation founded by progressive isrealis who are critical of the isreali government, have conducted interviews with 57 of these Palestinian prisoners and have recorded what they believe to be an absolutely systematic policy of physical torture, mental torture, depravation of food, depravation of water, depravation of sleep, striping of personal processions, 12 people being crammed into a prison cell designed for 6, some of them obviously sleeping on the floor, with no beds, no mattresses, no blankets. And this appears to be in line with the fact that the security minister, Itimar Ben Givere, who is on the right of the Isreali cabinet, has made it absolutely clear that he intends to make conditions in prisons worse for prisoners.

I was struck with how similar the language used to describe the conditions is to many of my descriptions of the situations that I've been put through here in Vietnam. Also for any numerologists out there, I can tell you that in this context, the number 57 is significant.

Rory continues:

He’s trying to hit the absolute legal minimum of provision for Palestinian prisoners, which is leading to this systematic abuse and torture. Related to this, 5 isreali soldiers are still currently charged for sodomising a prisoner in a desert camp. The associated press, in case people think this is just B'Tselem making this up, has also been conducting interviews with released prisoners, revealing people who are being allowed into daylight for 15 minutes in a periods of a few days. One of them hadn’t been outside for 87 days. So this is very very very disturbing.

Whatever one thinks, heinous attacks by Hamas on October, horrifying terrorist atrocities, but the response from the isreali government is being challenged and should be challenged and is being challenged by isreali human rights groups quite correctly, cause this is horrifying stuff.

What kind of legal minimum equates to systematic abuse and torture including physical torture, mental torture, depravation of food, depravation of water, depravation of sleep, striping of personal processions? That’s the most insane legal minimum I’ve ever heard about.

Alistair Campbell responds:

I guess the thinking behind Charlotte’s question is that, is it really being challenged? Here we are in Chicago and the biggest demonstration that’s going on, there’s quite a few demonstrations around the place, the biggest demonstration is about the american administration and position on Gaza, and there’s pretty steadfast support for Isreal. And the other thing in this context that was, I thought, quite newsworthy and interesting this week, was this letter of resignation by a civil servant at the foreign and commonwealth and development office, Mark Smith, who essentially had said I’ve been trying to raise alarm about our system for selling arms to isreal, and what they have been used for, I get nowhere, therefore I am resigning, and it didn’t make that much of a splash. And I think this is the point that we’ve been making repeatedly is that this stuff has just become very very normalised. And as it happens, I think David Lammy, he is reviewing this position about Britain’s arms relationship with Isreal. I don’t know when that’s coming, I don’t know what the decision will be, but I wonder whether Mark Smith’s was a deliberate move trying to push in that direction. I’m sure you’ve spoken to people in the foreign office who are pretty alarmed about this?

Well obviously that’s going to catch my attention. How bizare, another Mark Smith trying to raise awareness about people being miss-treated. I don’t think I’ve ever met another Mark Smith in person. He sounds pretty cool.

And a final back and forth on the matter:

Rory: Yes but there is of course a consensus between the main political parties in Britain, and pretty much a consensus between the political parties in the US as well, and pretty much a consensus between the main political parties in Germany, which remain pretty stead fastly pro-Isreal, and again I am very aware that in quoting this report, and criticising the treatment of prisoners, I can see the flood of emails about to come in, saying at least we investigate, at least we have human rights groups, at least we have imprisoned our soldiers for sodomising people. But I don’t think you can get around the fact that the security minister has made it entirely clear that this is a policy. Nor can you get around the fact that 5000 people are detained without trial.

Alistair: Or the fact that 40000 people are dead, and they’re not all Hamas.

Rory: And this is where in Chicago we need a very clear sense from Kamala Harris on what she’s actually doing, what is her strategy, because clearly Biden’s strategy hasn’t worked. And I assume the way to do this, if she wants to hold the two parts of her party together, is to say to Isreal your strategy is not working. This is not the way to win a war and you are going to have to stop doing this. Meanwhile let’s not forget about Lebanon, let’s not forget about the possibility of a war with Iran.

Strange old world sometimes isn’t it fellow internet cousins?

Here’s to hoping a resolution to the situation will be found. A lot of people suffering unnecessarily. #

Steph and Grace on how education affects collective organising & action

I enjoyed listening to the latest The Rest is Money Podcast episode where Steph talks to economics author Grace Blakeley. One part that stood out to me was when they were talking about education and how it has a big impact on the values the people that end up in leadership positions have.

Grace outlines her education journey:

I went through various private schools, and then through to Oxford and especially at Oxford I found that the economics and the politics we were studying were pretty irrelevant to the way that the world actually works, but also you are constantly fed this idea, never explicitly, always implicitly in terms of the activities that you are encouraged to signup for, and the way politics and political societies work, you are fed this idea that there is this hierarchy, there’s this natural hierarchy, where the powerful, the successful, the inginuitive, the intelligent, naturally rise to the top, and the only good way to run a society is to make sure that those people do have all the power and get to tell everyone else what to do. And I think that this subtly figures in a lot of the politics that we have today and the way that politicians understand the way society should work. [...]

There’s this inherent suspicion, amongst people who have been trained to believe that there’s this natural hierarchy in society, of any forms of collective organising because, they are like, those people are just a mob, they can’t be trusted with power cause they will abuse it [...] it’s based on this elitism that certain people are in charge and some people should obbey. And I just don’t think that’s how a functioning society works.

Steph then compares with her quite different experience:

I am someone that grew up in the North East. I went to state school in a very deprived area. Kind of defied the odds to do what I’m doing now. What’s interesting on what you’re saying is, for me collective action should be in education. It shouldn’t be when you are in your job. As much as you were taught you can rise to the top and everything, but for me in state education in a deprived area, half the time was spent just trying to teach us how to survive as much as anything else, so there wasn’t time for all this leadership and how to speak publicly and how to do all these amazing things, it was about how do we not end up in crime.

How we collectively organise and take action is changing, and we need to realise that there is quite a lot of variety in how we’ve all been brought up and educated. That can be a good thing. We need to understand each other so we can integrate and all meaningfully contribute and feel part of society.

Personally I love the idea of collective organising and action, but there are a lot of situations where it effectively does turn into a mob that bullies individuals not part of that specific mob. And with technology and AI if we are not careful, that could lead us into a situation where we are all in some way bullied by the mob.

The whole episode is worth listening to but I thought this was a particularly endearing and eye opening back and forth. #