Thursday, January 24, 02002
Enron as cult. Looks like I'll have to put Corporate Cults on my reading list.
Jihad vs McWorld is on the top of the pile now, waiting for me to finish a Vernor Vinge binge.
Update: Hey, maybe Eron'll turn out to be one of those wacky death cults. Conspiracy theorists, start your engines.
Posted at 01:26 PM EST [Link][Comment]
Tuesday, January 22, 02002
I attended a presentation by the group Interns for Peace at the Arlington UU church last night (yes dispite much recent piss and vinegar towards religion I'll still slink into interesting UU lectures etc)
The presentation was billed as a discussion of the present situation in the Middle East between a rabbi and a Palestinian, so I was expecting a little difference of opinion between the two, but it turned out that the Palestinian was pretty much employeed by the rabbi's group, so there was much lapdogging all around.
The presentation itself was extremely disconcerting. It sounded a lot like a business proposal. The focus of the group seems to be on setting up a shallow tolerance of the Israelis and Palestinians rather than a deep respect and understanding. The group also doesn't believe in dialog between the two groups since it isn'r productive ("an insult lasts forever"). There was also talk of marketing peace to people, which rubbed me really wrong.
And while I would normally applaud attempts to help control the local environment, the groups projects seem really lame. They do stuff like beautifying parks, setting up traffic crosswalks, and playing soccer. (one of the pictures in their material showed kids sweeping the streets) What's any of that matter when the work can be destroyed by a suicide bomber or bulldozer at any moment ? Wouldn't it just make the kids who did the work that much more callous ?
There was a lot of other discussion of "delivery systems" which cater to humanitarian need within the refugee camps, and empowering the refugees that really sounded like the group was placate a low skill, unhappy labor source. The rabbi was a graduate of my alma mater's school of International Labor Relations, so perhaps this wasn't so off the mark. I wasn't surprised to see endorsements from the World Bank included in the material.
It was very disturbing to see peace treated as a industry, though I suspect that is the case in the region - multiple groups all persuing their own version of peace, all working for the same limited donations.
My final impression I had was that the group's goal is to make the region just safe enough for multinational investment so that sneakers could be sewed there safely.
Posted at 02:00 PM EST [Link][Comment]
