Couple 243

Civil liberties, LGBT
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Last Monday, gay marriage became legal in the US state of Massachusetts, which immediately led to a run on marriage licences there, in towns like Cambridge. One couple who did so, couple 243, blogged their experience. It is a very emotional, happy piece:

We paid our $15 and walked up the stairs to the exit. People shook our hands on the way out, and as we walked out the front door at 4:15am we were greeted by a small cheering crowd.

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” they yelled as we got to the bottom of the nearly-deserted steps. We kissed, posed for a picture and drove home through the nearly deserted streets.

(Brian)

[…]

I have a hard time gauging what my emotions were as we started running up the gauntlet — the avenue that led from the sidewalk on Mass Ave. up to the front doors of City Hall — to find that there were relatively few couples seeking licenses — fewer than the thousand I might have expected — but that there were about three thousand just *watching* — a mass of people singing spontaneously, chanting, waving signs, all with their own little political agendas to defeat bush or proclaim love for gays or just be happy that we were getting what they had rights to — a mass overfilling the lawn in front of City Hall, filling the sidewalk on both sides of Mass Ave, and stretching tendrils up and down several blocks, towards both Harvard and Central. As soon as Brian grabbed my hand and said let’s give it a try, and started running, they all started cheering, clapping, screaming. I did not expect that.

(Aaron

It’s hard to imagine the impact this has in the US when you’re living in a country where gay marriage has been legal for a number of years now. Where it was realised more as the logical end result of the emancipation process rather than as something people had to fight hard for. It must feel so good to finally be able to proclaim your love for each other the way you want to, knowing there are so many who would keep that from you; even if Bush pushes through a constitutional amedament tomorrow making it illegal again, the moment itself can never be taken from you anymore.

Good luck and congratulations to Brian and Aaron; may they and all those other couples who can finally
marry have a long and happy marriage.

What happened in Haiti

Imperialism
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Another article from The New Left Review takes a look at what happened in Haiti earlier this year:

What began following the Lavalas election victory of 1990 was the deployment of a partially new strategy for disarming this revolution, at a moment when the Cold War no longer offered automatic justification for the repression of mass movements by the overwhelming use of force. Designed not simply to suppress the popular movement but to discredit and destroy it beyond repair, the key to this strategy was the implementation of economic measures intended to intensify already crippling levels of mass impoverishment, backed up by old-fashioned military repression and propaganda designed to portray resistance to elite interests as undemocratic and corrupt. The operation has been remarkably successful — so successful that in 2004, with the enthusiastic backing of the media, the UN and the wider ‘international community’, it resulted in the removal of a constitutionally elected government whose leadership had always enjoyed the support of a large majority of the population.

Planet of Slums

Life under Capitalism
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Mike Davis, in The New Left Review writes about the urbanisation of the third world (as also touched upon in an earlier post):

Urbanists also speculate about the processes weaving together Third World cities into extraordinary new networks, corridors and hierarchies. For example, the Pearl River (Hong Kong-Guangzhou) and the Yangtze River (Shanghai) deltas, along with the Beijing-Tianjin corridor, are rapidly developing into urban-industrial megalopolises comparable to Tokyo-Osaka, the lower Rhine, or New York-Philadelphia. But this may only be the first stage in the emergence of an even larger structure: ‘a continuous urban corridor stretching from Japan/North Korea to West Java.’ [13] Shanghai, almost certainly, will then join Tokyo, New York and London as one of the ‘world cities’ controlling the global web of capital and information flows.

[…]

But slums, however deadly and insecure, have a brilliant future. The countryside will for a short period still contain the majority of the world’s poor, but that doubtful title will pass to urban slums by 2035. [49] At least half of the coming Third World urban population explosion will be credited to the account of informal communities. Two billion slum dwellers by 2030 or 2040 is a monstrous, almost incomprehensible prospect, but urban poverty overlaps and exceeds the slums perse.

A very frightening article, reminiscent, as Ken MacLeod also noted of science fiction novels like John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar.

The Pentagon as slumlord

War on Terror, Warfare & Military history
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The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighbourhood militias inflicted 60 percent casualties on elite army rangers, forced US strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as ‘Mout: Militarised Operations on Urbanised Terrain’. Ultimately a National Defence Panel review in December 1997 castigated the army as unprepared for protracted combat in the impassable maze-like streets of poor cities. As a result, the four armed services launched crash programmes to master streetfighting under realistic Third World conditions. ‘The future of warfare’, the journal of the Army War College declared, ‘lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world.’

Socialist Review, May 2004

The results of this are currently on display in Iraq…

Link via Genosse Tabu

Recently Read

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
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Newton’s Wake – Ken Macleod
369 pages
published in 2004

I was a bit worried after finishing Engine City, as it wasn’t up to Ken Macleod’s usual standards; it read as if he had to force himself to finish it. Fortunately, Newton’s Wake is much better, basically a space opera trilogy complete in one book.

Singularity Sky – Charlie Stross
313 pages
published in 2003

Singularity Sky is a clever book masquerading as broad farce. Charlie Stross’
starting point seems to have been “what if 1905 Tsarist Russia had experienced a full Vingean
Singularity”. Don’t expect the same density of ideas as in his short stories; this is an almost
traditional space opera. Almost.

A Question of Blood – Ian Rankin
440 pages
published in 2003

Continuing the Scottish theme, this is the 14th Inspector Rebus series and one of the
better efforts. Rebus is a hardbitten, hard luck cop in Edinburgh, who this time gets called in to
investigate a school shooting. He’s also in trouble again, to great surprise, this time for possibly
being involved in the violent death of a small time crook who was harassing a friend.

Year’s Best SF 7 – David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (editors)
498 pages
published in 2002

The best short science fiction stories of 2001, according to the editors. Some good stories, but
their taste in science fiction is definately not mine. There’s a lot of chaff amongst the wheat.

The Great Siege: Malta 1565 – Ernle Bradford
256 pages, including notes and index
published in 1961

History written as if it was an adventure story, this tells about the siege of Malta by the great
Ottoman Emperor Soleyman. Ernle Bradford’s sympathies clearly lie with the besieged, the Knights of St. John, but he still manages to be objective. Worth a look if you can find it.