24 secs into this AFP clip, François Hollande is sporting a cocky attitude and displaying a smile fit for a toothpaste advert.
I suppose that it is because the French, who have just signed a contract with the ruler of Qatar, must have beaten somebody else to the game of selling their expensive war toys to undemocratic regimes. Of course, one wonders what concessions the French government made (Syria, Yemen, Iran or even something to do with home?) in exchange for the billions they will get for what they see as real wonders of French technology.
The industry of death (i.e. the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction) is one of the very few industries which the elites of the (formerly) industrialised West (USA, FR, UK, Italy, etc) have not offshored to the East, probably because it is one of the most lucrative and it generates huge kickbacks — so says Andrew Feinstein in his book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (http://www.theshadowworldbook.com/).
François Hollande, socialiste de mes deux ! Yes, I do feel that Hollande is a cheat – just like other so-called leftist heads of state, e.g. Clinton, Blair, Obama, etc.
PS the following book, an indictment of the French elites’ venality as regards Qatar, carries a pretty harsh statement in the concluding chapter (4th paragraph before the end, on page 289):
As our troops are fighting jihadists in Mali [the book was published two years ago almost to the day], it is necessary that the French people know that these bandits are in part funded by Qatar through so-called humanitarian organisations. This whilst in France the nitpickers flinch at the slightest encroachment to secularism, yet refuse to see that the breeding ground for intolerance is being sustained by the petrodollars of the Gulf, including those of Qatar, via the funding of mosques, Islamic centres, symposia or fundamentalist preachers. [My translation]
Maybe it is because we (the common folk – I am identifying here with Monsieur ou Madame toutlemonde) are not in the know and our elites are doing this for our own good. 😉
Cock-a-doodle-doo in Le Figaro, the day after a similar contract was signed with Egypt, earlier this year.
Dans quelques minutes, nous entamerons une nouvelle semaine ; dans quelques jours, un nouveau mois. « Tempus fugit » comme disaient les Romains. C’est inévitable ; peut-être que ce qui compte au final c’est d’avoir l’impression d’avoir bien utilisé son temps. J’ai l’impression que ce fut le cas aujourd’hui, dimanche 26 avril.
Je suis content d’avoir écrit ce billet car je pourrai ainsi demander à ma soeur de montrer les clips à mon neveu, histoire de lui offrir de « l’être » et non pas de « l’avoir », pour paraphraser Erich Fromm, pour son anniversaire en août (lui qui a un faible pour les chevaliers).
« Le nucléaire, c’est la galère », chanson militante d’Anne-Cécile Reimann
Oui, à plus de « 70 ans, Anne-Cécile Reimann manifeste toujours autant », pour reprendre cette belle expression d’un journaliste du « Minimag » de la RTS (4 mars 2014). Quelle noblesse d’âme et quelle verve !
Une photo « rafistolée » pour dénoncer une triste réalité, le rafistolage des centrales nucléaires en Europe ; Genève, devant le Monument National, 26 avril 2015
Un bien triste anniversaire que le 26 avril. C’était il y a presque 30 ans dans un pays actuellement en guerre (cela fait froid dans le dos d’imaginer ce qui pourrait se passer comme scénario catastrophe si les militaires venaient à faire n’importe quoi à Tchernobyl ou si, manque de bol, un autre accident venait à se produire, par exemple un obus perdu)…mais toujours cette obstination de la part de nos dirigeants de poursuivre dans cette voie. Pour ma part, je vois cela comme un véritable crime perpétré à l’encontre des générations futures.
Payot, Lausanne, 26 avril 2015
De retour dans la capitale du canton de Vaud, je décidai de rentrer à pied ; un crochet par la place Pépinet, histoire de contempler les devantures d’une librairie célèbre et de me rappeler de ne pas oublier d’assister aux commémorations d’un haut-lieu de la vie religieuse en Suisse et probablement aussi en Europe (vu que ce lieu abrite très certainement l’une des plus anciennes congrégations religieuses encore en activité dans cette partie du monde) pour ses 1’500 ans d’existence : l’abbaye de Saint-Maurice en Valais. Décidément, 2015 sera pour ce pays l’année de tous les anniversaires historiques.
Place de la Palud, Lausanne
Puis un petit détour par la vieille ville pour me rendre à la cathédrale Notre-Dame. Premièrement, pour y admirer la vue depuis le parvis.
Et ensuite des personnages bien pieux, d’autres moins.
Un peu plus loin, juste devant la Préfecture, une bien curieuse installation du Service de la ville qui gère l’eau afin de promouvoir la consommation d’eau du robinet.
Après cela un détour par le Signal de Sauvabelin et la partie basse du bois du même nom, histoire de me remémorer une partie du parcours que je suivais pour me rendre jusqu’à la Tour du temps où j’habitais en pleine ville. Je pus ainsi revivre de bien agréables souvenirs de coureur plus jeune, à la foulée bien plus fougueuse.
Puis une pente bien raide mais j’en vins à bout et je regagnai mon domicile l’esprit léger car ce fut effectivement une bien belle journée, bien remplie de surcroît.
Very early yesterday morning I got myself a new email address, but not a free one. I had to pay CHF27 (CHF25 for 12 months plus CHF2 for the VAT) for this privilege. Why did I do so when I already have four email accounts? I did so out of frustration with the main Swiss email provider I have been using since early July 2013, i.e. since Mr Snowden’s revelations about the prying eyes of the USA’s NSA and the UK’s GCHQ made the headlines of the world’s newspapers and press agencies.
Email and me, almost a love affair
My first email account was with a Geneva-based Internet service provider, geneva-link.ch (acquired a number of years ago by Infomaniak, now a fast-expanding Internet service and data centre provider whereas in my twenties/thirties Infomaniak was simply the best port of call in Geneva for computer geeks). While I was still in Geneva I switched to a Lausanne-based ISP (urbanet.ch) a little later on, probably because it was cheaper. However, a year or two after I had moved to Lausanne (that was in October 2001), I switched to the city of Lausanne’s own ISP because it was based on cable and it came with cable-TV (even though I did not watch much of it as I was still using a television set I had bought in my teens to serve as a monitor for my very first computer, a ZX Spectrum — see this short BBC clip).
I set up an account with Yahoo! in November 2002 after having used a French equivalent, caramail, a service which disappeared not long after the Internet bubble burst in Europe too. I set up an account with Gmail only in February 2007 because I had been a little uneasy about the monopolistic ambitions of this famous company based in Mountain View already in the early 2000s – in fact, I had only set up a Gmail account for the purpose of receiving alerts on specific topics, but the keyword ads had made a little suspicious of the service and, although I have not terminated this account, I seldom use it.
Certainly not more than meets the eye
Swisscom’s tabloid homepage for bluewin, the email service it offers to its subscribers
An interview of Switzerland’s Mr Privacy published in a local weekly in the aftermath of Edward’s Snowden revelations convinced me to open an account with the email service offered by Swisscom (Switzerland’s national telco), called bluewin, as I did not like the idea that data about me would be passed on to third parties for commercial or other purposes. Unfortunately, only three months later, Swisscom decided to follow the example of Yahoo! and its highly sensationalistic approach to news selection on the page to which users are being redirected after having exited the email section. I was so disappointed that I even complained to bluewin about the change when users were solicited to provide feedback, even though I knew it would be to no avail given that this major revamp implied a shift in strategy towards catering to the lowest common denominators.
Why not go yellow?
Marketing people are the same everywhere: nothing but pretty women.
In September 2014, I decided that I had had enough of bluewin‘svulgarity, sensationalism and mindless promotion of sport, so I decided to look for alternatives, preferably encrypted ones (just to give the NSA the fig, to use a Shakespearan expression). The US government having shut down almost a year earlier the most famous such encrypted webmail, lavabit, I contemplated settling upon a Swiss counterpart, called Neomailbox. However, I opted for an alternative provided by the Swiss Post, called IncaMail, which is available at an annual subscription fee of CHF29. Unfortunately, email recipients must register with IncaMail before they can open any messages sent throughthis platform (probably because the email remains on their servers) and I have found out that some recipients are unwilling to go through the registration process (even though it is free for the recipient). In addition, IncaMail does not provide any incamail.ch addresses but uses one’s existing webmail or e-mail client. This is why I had to carry on using bluewin despite my strong reservations about the quality of this service (I have encountered several technical glitches) and its apparent intent to keep users in a state of manufactured imbecility (my coinage).
Why not use my own website’s address?
Last month, I set up a mini website because I had to transfer some extra heavy documents and I did not want to use a service like DropBox. The solution I found was to make the files ‘downloadable’ from a password-protected page on the Internet. To do so, I decided to buy some storage space on the servers of Infomaniak, the company which had acquired my very first ISP a couple of years ago. Based in Geneva, Infomaniak is subject to Switzerland’s strict confidentiality laws, which is why I would assume that there is less of a risk that my metadata or data will be passed on to a third party – even though I am aware of the fact that as the Internet primarily makes use of American-based infrastructure, it is close to impossible to avoid the NSA’s or the tech giants’ prying eyes). So I am now the proud owner of an email address that ends with my firstnamesurname.ch. This is what I call customisation. 😉
My next aim is to migrate this blog to the servers of Infomaniak because, you know, there is no free lunch. Offering services for free on the Internet is only possible because the user is the commodity…
POSTSCRIPT (18 March 2015)
Amnesty International issued today the results of a survey conducted worldwide in which more than 15,000 people were questioned regarding the United States’ mass surveillance of Internet and phone use – roughly two thirds said that they were opposed to such monitoring – Amnesty Int’l’s press release (‘Global opposition to USA big brother mass surveillance’) is available here.
[Please note that links to the Internet Archive may take a minute or two to download.]
‘One person’s freedom [of expression] ends where another’s begins.’
Some posts do not age well at all. Blog posts are like the words we say to people in conversations and there are times when we wish we had not said a particular sentence or a particular string of sentences to somebody. Similarly there are posts which we wish we had not written and certainly not published. Yet I am NOT going to delete this post. I am not going to do so because I believe that there is some educational value in leaving it online: it will serve as an example of what happens when one decides not to exercise one’s critical thinking and when one thus leaves one’s mind (and soul) at the mercy of highly manipulative and dark forces bent on sowing dissension and strife between the religious faiths and on fuelling hatred so as to justify the chaos that they are bringing upon the Middle East.
The languages are different, but the titles are almost identical; this can only mean that the same ‘phenomenon’ is taking place in various countries…
Although I came to realise this in full and earnest only in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks of 13th November 2015 (with the ensuing unleashing of government propaganda in various countries in favour of military intervention in Iraq), I understood really for the first time that some were pursuing a dark and evil agenda when I attended a conference given by a famous French science fiction author on 5th September 2015 during which this author said that he believed in the ‘clash of civilisations’ – incidentally, a topic which had nothing to do with the conference.
On Thursday 3rd March 2016, I stumbled across the last piece of the Houellebecq jigsaw as far as I am concerned when I spotted in a municipal library a leaflet announcing a colloquium on that author at the University of Lausanne. Because I now consider Mr Houellebecq to be part of the professional Islamophobia industry which is helping to bring about the dark, evil and hidden agenda I mentioned above, I was so shocked that the University of Lausanne had accepted to associate itself with this agenda – whether wittingly or not. Once home, I decided to find out whether the decision might in any way be construed as having been unwitting on the part of the university by looking up the prevalence of the association of Houellebecq and Islamophobia (by typing Houellebecq and islamophobie on Startpage.com).
This yielded two very interesting articles, one in French [the link provided is to the article saved at the Internet Archive], the other in English. Even more telling than the name of Mr Houellebecq’s literary agent or than some of the views this author has expressed regarding events in the Middle East was the fact that Mr Houellebecq published in 2008 a book based on the correspondence he had exchanged with somebody who is nothing else than a war criminal (based on the latter’s highly pro-active, almost unrelenting support for French military intervention in Libya). I even stumbled across an article (written by a former university professor [the link provided is to the article saved at the Internet Archive]) picking up on the coincidence of the date of publication of Mr Houellebecq’s novel, the front page cover of that week’s issue of Charlie Hebdo and the attack against that magazine…
As a result, I am now convinced that Mr Houellebecq is part of a long tradition of carefully designed provocations aimed at eliciting anger, public demonstrations with ideally bouts of violence from very fervent and especially flammable Muslims so as to create a very bad impression of Islam in the minds of non-Muslims in the West (Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses [the link provided is to the article saved at the Internet Archive], Flemming Rose’s Jyllands Posten cartoons, Charlie Hebdo’s multiple provocations against Islam and Muslims, etc). In turn, this helps to quell any moral qualms Westerners may harbour as to their governments’ endless, highly bloody and particularly devastating military interventions in the Middle East.
Given the all-pervasive propaganda against Islam and the Arabic world in Western media (a French author has amply documented this for the French television for a period of thirty years – see the picture below), it is all too easy to submit to the quasi Pavlovian responses some are trying to elicit from us. The real issue then, dear reader, should therefore be more as follows: ‘to submit or not to submit to this Machiavellian and particularly evil propaganda that is being manufactured for us by our media, that is the question’.
[Le Monde of 7 January, Libération 8 January 2015]
Of course, it would be too easy to want to contrast Houellebecq with Charb (one of the cartoonists killed at Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday), who said in an interview two years ago that he would rather ‘stand up and die than live on his knees’ (source: Le Monde of 7 January). My point here is that people who like me had taken freedom of speech as something for granted in our societies will now have to reconsider their assumption.
Although I would point out that, in France, freedom of speech was probably killed some years ago, in 1993-94, when rehearsals for the staging of Voltaire’s play Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète, at Ferney-Voltaire, near Geneva were cancelled, so that the play (which had been scheduled for the tricentenary of the playwright’s birth) was scrapped (source: Michel Renard ‘Tariq Ramadan et Voltaire : pièces pour un dossier’). The irony of course was that Voltaire was instrumental to the setting up of freedom of speech in France and elsewhere in Europe:
Contrairement à l’an passé, je n’ai participé à aucune course cette année. Cela tient à plusieurs raisons. D’une part un contexte professionnel un peu « tendu » suite au rachat de la firme où je travaille par un concurrent établi à Munich (par « tendu », je fais référence aux licenciements qui ont suivi le rachat), ce qui, paradoxalement, au lieu de me pousser à trouver en la course à pied un exutoire pour cette situation « tendue », m’a plutôt ôté l’envie de courir. D’autre part, le temps a été très pluvieux dans la région où j’habite – ainsi « MétéoSuisse a mesuré le mois de juillet le plus gris depuis le début des mesures sur le Bassin lémanique, en Valais et dans l’Oberland bernois », soit en plus de 150 ans ! Finalement, je me suis blessé le pied gauche lors d’une randonnée dans les Alpes vaudoises début juin, ce qui m’a imposé un repos forcé en ce qui concerne la course à pied d’environ 7 semaines.
Les graines du doute, la découverte de l’anti-UTMB
Une autre raison tient à la découverte en fin de saison 2013 d’un site « trublion » : je venais de lire le témoignage d’une journaliste coureuse de fond, Nathalie Lamoureux, intitulé « Courir de plaisir, Course à pied, ultrafond, trail… Les coulisses d’un véritable phénomène de société ! » et je cherchais des renseignements sur une course, la « Trotte à Léon », lorsque je suis tombé sur un billet d’Olivier Razemon publié sur le site Internet du journal Le Monde dans la catégorie « Transports » (!), intitulé « Vous n’aimez pas les trails en montagne ? Faites plutôt la sieste ». Ce billet traite de l’Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) ainsi que de son anti-manifestation, l’Ultra-Sieste du Mont-Blanc, organisée en contrepoint à la fameuse course depuis 2009, et cite l’un des organisateurs de cet anti-UTMB : « On est profondément anti-sport [: on n’a] rien contre l’activité physique [mais contre le sport] codifié, institutionnalisé, avec dossard et podium, qui colonise l’espace public, véhicule le modèle dominant de la compétition, le vecteur idéologique du capitalisme. »
L’apologie du culte de la performance, de la compétition
Un rapide survol de quelques pages publiées sur le site « trublion » mentionné précédemment par le collectif Ultra-Sieste lequel, en dépit de son point de vue très à gauche, sema, je l’avoue, un certain trouble en moi (« Ultra-Sieste 2012, arrêtons de courir, changeons de rythme ») ; voici un exemple de la pensée de ces anti-UTMB en particulier et anti-sport en général :
Si le trail en général, et l’ultra-trail en particulier, rencontrent un tel succès auprès de toutes les couches sociales de la population, c’est bien qu’ils correspondent à l’état d’esprit qui prévaut aujourd’hui. Le trail, dans ses aspects de compétition, de dépassement de soi, de concurrence avec ses semblables, de domination de la nature, colle parfaitement au modèle sociétal de notre époque. Car que demande ce modèle sinon d’aller toujours plus vite, plus loin, plus fort, dans une recherche toujours inassouvie de plaisirs individuels et narcissiques [ ? ]. Il faut soit vaincre, soit être vaincu, c’est la loi du plus puissant, du plus performant, du plus rapide, du plus entraîné, du plus équipé et au final du plus riche. Ce sont bien ces règles qui ont été adoptées par le trail. On glorifie les premiers et on dédaigne les derniers. On fait l’apologie des forts et on écarte les faibles. On court contre la montre, contre les autres, contre les éléments, et même contre soi-même, l’adversité y est la règle.
« Lasportivation de la vie»
Ce trouble s’enracina un peu plus profondément après que j’eusse écouté le politologue (ainsi qu’objecteur de croissance, amoureux du bien-vivre, signataire de l’Appel pour nos montagnes, auteur de nombreux ouvrages français) Paul Ariès et sa présentation du concept de la « sportivation de la vie » lors d’une conférence donnée dans le cadre d’Ultra-Sieste 2012 (vu que cette conférence est un peu longue, je me contenterai de donner le lien vers celle-ci sur Mountain TV pour la première partie, pour la seconde ainsi que pour la troisième partie, une session « questions-réponses » ; elle est aussi disponible sur le site Internet de Paul Ariès). Un bon résumé de la pensée de Paul Ariès sur le sport, telle que présentée durant cette conférence (soit le concept de la « sportivation de la vie »), est fourni par un entretien de ce politologue avec François L’Yvonnet dans le cadre de « Regards sur le sport » (une série d’entretiens produite pour l’INSEP, Institut National du Sport, de l’Expertise et de la Performance) :
Bien avant la découverte de l’Ultra-Sieste et de la pensée de réfractaires au sport tels que Jean-Marie Brohm (sa conférence à l’Ultra-Sieste est disponible ici), je me suis senti interpellé par la problématique des déchets laissés par les coureurs ou tout simplement ceux occasionnés par la tenue de la course (fanions, par exemple). Même si les organisateurs Sierre-Zinal, pour nommer une course à laquelle j’ai pris part en 2013, ont mis en place un service de nettoyage après la course (composé de volontaires – cf « Comment est organisé le service de nettoyage du parcours ? »), la semaine d’après lorsque je me suis rendu à Zinal en car pour y faire une petite course de montagne j’ai aperçu un fanion aux couleurs d’une grande banque suisse qui gisait à flanc de montagne. Au marathon de Lausanne, c’était bien pire : je ne vous explique pas le nombre de fois où j’ai vu des coureurs jeter des emballages de produits énergétiques en direction du Lac Léman (un lac déjà suffisamment pollué par les microplastiques pour ne pas avoir à subir des bombardements de déchets par des centaines de coureurs) ou dans les caniveaux. Je regrette que pour ces deux courses ex-muros, l’on n’ait pas fait plus pour sensibiliser les coureurs à cette problématique, à défaut de mettre en place des mesures, peut-être pas aussi strictes qu’au Forest Trail 31 (ouest Toulousain, France) ou qu’au Super Trail du Barlatay (voir le paragraphe « La gestion des déchets » dans leur Charte Eco-Trail) car les marathoniens ou Sierre-Zinaliens tiennent à leur « chrono perso » :
Les coureurs doivent avoir leur propre gobelet individuel pour être servis en boisson sur les ravitaillements. Ce gobelet individuel est inclus dans le « matériel obligatoire ».
Cela permet de supprimer les gobelets jetables sur le parcours.
Cela représente environ 10 000 gobelets jetables de moins !
[…] Tous vos déchets durant la course devront aller dans « votre » sac et seront en suite déversés dans les poubelles prévues à cet effet sur les points de ravitaillement ou à l’arrivée.
Peut-être même plus que la question de la gestion des déchets (car ceci est plus facile à résoudre pour les courses qui ont lieu en milieu urbain), je regrette la marchandisation et la commercialisation presqu’à outrance des courses à pied. Je fais référence aux courses auxquelles j’ai participé car il est possible qu’il en soit autrement avec les courses qui attirent moins de participants – pour une liste de courses de montagne en Suisse romande, cliquer ici. Je regrette cette marchandisation, à l’oeuvre déjà dans l’espèce de « paquet surprise » que l’on reçoit lors de son inscription à une course, lequel est bourré d’échantillons commerciaux (je me sens vraiment infantilisé lorsque je reçois un tel paquet). Il y aussi les frais de participation, relativement élevés malgré les sponsors – peut-être parce qu’une partie de cet argent sert à récompenser les coureurs/euses élite qui montent sur le podium … Hormis la Course de l’Escalade, les médias ne s’intéressent d’ailleurs qu’à ce type de coureurs. Il est vrai que pour faire vendre des produits aux coureurs/euses, il est plus facile de se servir de « têtes d’affiche » – cf la politique de marketing d’une grande marque française centrée sur LE coureur de montagne du moment (auquel je me d’ailleurs suis senti obligé de consacrer un billet il y a un an … fétichisme sportif, quand tu nous tiens !).
[Bénévoles au stand de ravitaillement de Chandolin, Sierre-Zinal 2013]
Aspects positifs
Loin de moi la volonté de nier les aspects positifs de la participation à une ou à plusieurs courses à pied compétitives, à commencer par la pratique d’exercices physiques de façon régulière, laquelle est devenue une nécessité ô combien pressante pour la plus grosse majorité d’entre nous dans les pays (post-)industrialisés en raisons de notre mode de vie sédentaire, de notre alimentation, etc. Il y a le plaisir de courir en plein air, souvent à travers des paysages grandioses et parfois sans voitures à proximité, ainsi que de se retrouver en compagnie de centaines d’autres personnes qui partagent la même passion (un sentiment d’appartenance à un groupe vraiment porteur durant l’effort). Il y a le goût de l’effort, de la discipline auquel on astreint son corps (une certaine forme d’ascétisme à dimension quasi spirituelle selon moi), le plaisir presqu’ineffable de terminer une course difficile sur plusieurs kilomètres et qui aura duré plusieurs heures. Il y a le sentiment de quasi communion avec les spectateurs, les bénévoles aux stands de ravitaillement, les musiciens, les samaritains et masseurs, etc. En bref, participer à une course d’une certaine longueur et d’une certaine difficulté, et la finir, est une expérience mémorable, digne d’être vécue par un maximum de personnes.
La solution : un retour aux sources ?
La solution tiendrait peut-être à un retour aux sources. Les premières courses des « temps modernes » ont eu lieu en Angleterre, il y a plus de 140 ans, les fameuses « fell races ». Curieusement, les « fell races » y ont conservé leur caractère festif et donc non-commercial et non-« il n’y a que les vainqueurs qui comptent ». Les propos de Camille Askins, l’une des coureuses « fell » de ce merveilleux documentaire (en anglais) sur un groupe d’amateurs de ce type de course intitulé « The Bedlamites », sont éloquents à cet égard (10 minutes et 49 secondes dans le reportage) :
Fell running has been going on for a very long time. There have always been amateur groups and races in the lakes and the guides’ races. And things that people organise themselves. It is very low key and democratic. And it is just a much more pleasant environment than all the high-powered, money-oriented sports where you are just a spectator, really, and where it is assumed you are a subject whereas with sports like fell running you are a participant and you can participate at your level as much as you want, really. It is your arena […] and it must have more profound impacts on people’s physical health […] And your interaction with people from your area and exploring your area. And there are no big egos […]. It is actually getting out there and doing something and having a go. It is not watching these gods and goddesses on the television. […] That does nothing for people’s lives; it just makes them feel worse, I think.
POSTSCRIPT : Chaussures pour la course à pied – est-ce qu’on ne se fait quand même pas un peu avoir ?
En parlant d’Angleterre, je vous invite à faire un tour sur le site du seul fabricant européen (Norman Walsh) à produire encore des chaussures de course en Europe (à ma connaissance) …GBP70 = EUR87.50, soit environ la moitié de ce qu’on nous fait payer pour une paire de chaussures manufacturée en Asie … cela fait réfléchir, non ?
« The Bedlamites », un poème sur une forme de course à pied anglaise non-polluée par le vedettariat et la marchandisation, Shyla and Lukas Lee (Clayhouse Productions), 2011
Ahead of the start of the Winter Olympics, prompted in part by the astronomical amount of money spent on the Games at Sochi (a staggering amount said to be close to 50 – yes, F I F T Y – billion US dollars), in part by the doubts I have harboured since my later teenage years over sport as a spectacle (especially planetary sporting events like the Olympic Games and the World Cup) and in part by the half-realisation/half-reminder (after having come across a reference to Ultra-Sieste, an ‘oppositional’ event held during the Ultra-trail du Mont-Blanc to discuss the politics behind such races as well as sport in general) that my own running and taking part in races was as much shaped by the same forces that are at work in such mega events as the Olympic Games and the football World Cup, I went to the library of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) here in Lausanne and I borrowed the following books:
As I have read in full only the title in French (even if I have perused through the other two titles), rather than discuss only Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague, I thought it would be fairer to cite excerpts from the book descriptions displayed on the covers:
Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague (Marc Perelman, transl. by John Howe, London: Verso, June 2012): [the Olympics] have provided a smokescreen for the forcible removal of ‘undesirables’; aided governments in the pursuit of racist agendas; affirmed the hypocrisy of drug-testing in an industry where doping is more an imperative than an aberration; and developed the pornographic hybrid that Perelman dubs ‘sporn’, a further twist in our corrupt obsession with the body. Drawing examples from the modern history of the international sporting event, Perelman argues that today’s colosseums, upheld as examples of ‘health’, have become the steamroller for a decadent age fixated on competition, fame and elitism. […]
Celebration capitalism and the Olympic Games(Jules Boykoff, London: Routledge, July 2013): […] In this provocative critical study of the contemporary Olympics, Jules Boykoff argues that the Games have become a massive planned economy designed to shield the rich from risk while providing them with a spectacle to treasure. Placing political economy at the centre of the analysis, and drawing on interdisciplinary research in sociology, politics, geography, history and economics, Boykoff develops an innovative theory of ‘celebration capitalism’, the manipulation of state actors as partners that drives us towards public–private partnerships in which the public pays and the private profits. He argues that the Athens Games in 2004 marked the full emergence of celebration capitalism, with London 2012 representing its quintessential expression, characterised by a state of exception, unfettered commercialism, repression of dissent, questionable sustainability claims and the complicity of the mainstream media. […]
Sport in capitalist society, a short history(Tony Collins, London: Routledge, April 2013): […] – Why are the Olympic Games the driving force behind a clampdown on civil liberties? – What makes sport an unwavering ally of nationalism and militarism? – Is sport the new opiate of the masses? […] Tracing the history of modern sport from its origins in the burgeoning capitalist economy of mid-eighteenth century England to the globalised corporate sport of today, the book argues that, far from the purity of sport being ‘corrupted’ by capitalism, modern sport is as much a product of capitalism as the factory, the stock exchange and the unemployment line. [The book] highlights the symbiotic relationship between the media and sport, from the simultaneous emergence of print capitalism and modern sport in Georgian England to the rise of Murdoch’s global satellite television empire in the twenty-first century, and for the first time it explores the alternative, revolutionary models of sport in the early twentieth century. […]
Given the billions that are spent on facilities that tend to become white elephants once such sporting events are over, given the lives that are lost during the building of such facilities (the World Cup in Qatar being a good example, with some 400 lives already lost according to some reports), given the risks to athletes’ health participation in the Winter Olympics often entails (not only because of the strenuous training regimes and the doping, but because of factors relating to nationalism – listen to Samantha Retrosi’s account of her accident at Torino 2006, 22 minutes into the interview), given the environmental costs of such events, etc, etc, etc, calls for a radical review of the Olympic Games/World Cup in their present format seem totally justified.
[Postscript: 23 February 2014]: I have managed to read all three books before the end of the Winter Olympic Games, hurrah. So which title deserves the gold medal (and which the silver and the bronze)? This is a tough one because not only does each book address a different topic, but one could argue that they all belong to different academic sub-genres. Sport in capitalist society, a short historyis the more historical work of the three as it provides an overview of how modern sport emerged in England in the 18th century and then conquered the rest of the world in tandem with the capitalistic and imperialistic forces that were first at work in that country and then in its empire. Leaving aside the book’s Marxist slant (which can be a little irritating at times – for instance, the author’s claim that racism did not exist as we know it before capitalism, p. 70), my main criticism is that the book has only 129 pages and that, therefore, it sometimes only barely scratches the surface of some themes as, for instance, when ‘itexplores the alternative, revolutionary models of sport in the early twentieth century’ [this quote is from the book’s cover, see above] on page 99. Celebration capitalism and the Olympic Gamesis the book to read to understand why the Olympic Games have become the autocratic and militarised juggernaut they are today as well as why they are so expensive. The book gives ample references to studies similar to the articles cited below. As such, it is a good starting point to find out what is wrong with the Olympics in their present form. Although Barbaric Sport: A Global Plagueis more of a diatribe against sport that falls within the categories of ‘politics’, ‘sociology’, ‘cultural studies’ than anything else, the book offers many interesting insights into contemporary sport (including the Olympic Games) as it was able to draw upon several decades of work on the subject by its author, Marc Perelman. To cut a long story short and to stay within the Olympic system of rewards, I think I would give each book a silver medal.
Links to ‘oppositional’ articles/interviews on the Olympic Games
‘To Brand or not to Brand?’, this was the question I had asked myself after having found out that the famous British comedian would be coming to town as part of the Swiss leg of his ‘Messiah Complex’ tour.
Although I am not familiar with his répertoire, I had seen a couple of minutes of him on telly when I was in London 5 years ago and, more importantly, I had stumbled across his famous article in the New Statesman (‘Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition” But before we change the world, we need to change the way we think’) early in November of last year.
When I came across the poster shown above (an allusion to a famous photo of Che Guevara) advertising the date of his show in Lausanne, this prompted me to find out a little more about him as I had only scrolled through the New Statesman article. I already knew about his ‘contrarian’ diet (he is a vegan, which is definitely a plus in my eyes) and that his humour relied heavily on bawdiness – a trait quite common to British humour since at least Shakespeare (maybe as far back as Chaucer, although I cannot recollect any specific instance in the Canterbury Tales right now), but one that can nevertheless be a little irritating to Continentals when it borders on grossness.
A few searches on vimeo/DailyMotion/YouTube yielded some interesting TV footage. I was enthralled by his performance during ‘Morning Joe MSNBC’ on 17 June 2013 as well as by his interview with Jeremy Paxman, the political commentator of BBC Newsnight, a few months later:
However, I also came across some commercials he had shot for HP (http://vimeo.com/36582677; http://vimeo.com/81344382), surely a company which looks very much like the corporations he has ranted about. In addition, in the interview he gave to Mehdi Hasan in November he criticised the retailer Philip Green for tax avoidance, only to be reminded by a member of the audience in the next question that he had been to one of Green’s parties (53 minutes into the interview).
Of course, the suspicion that Russell Brand might be guilty of duplicity and that the whole thing might simply be a huge publicity stunt on his part (some kind of personal ‘branding’ as an anarcho-populist) crossed my mind, but I dismissed it as his outbursts in the Paxman interview seemed too genuine to me to have been possibly faked. In short, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, even despite his past employment as a presenter at MTV (which Brand himself has described as ‘perhaps the planet’s most obvious purveyor of neurodross and pop-cultural claptrap’ – New Statesman article).
In part because of the price (80 Swiss francs, even if this is the kind of price one pays for concerts around here), in part because I had expected his show to take place next week and my mind earlier this week was still quite focused on the aftermath of Sunday’s vote here in Switzerland (more in a forthcoming post), I delayed checking the date again until a couple of hours ago, only to find that it was too late as the Lausanne and final leg of his Swiss ‘Messiah Complex’ mini-tour took place three days ago. So no more for me the opportunity to ask myself whether ‘to Brand or not to Brand’ (unless I am prepared to go to Vienna or to England) … In consolation, a clip on the subject of immigrants (‘Keep still on the rock’), an issue which has become highly topical in Europe:
I recall a conversation I had with my father on European politics a couple of months ago in which I praised the Swiss political system and in particular the ability of the Swiss people to launch initiatives to propose legislation changes or their right to hold referendums against existing laws. I remember that my father (who is not Swiss) promptly dismissed the power of the initiative by arguing that the Swiss people were not using the so-called people’s initiative for issues that really mattered, for instance to veto the recent and highly controversial purchase of 22 Swedish Gripen fighter planes for CHF3.1 billion. I replied to my father that it was not a done deal and that I was expecting the Left to bring forward an initiative with a view to holding a referendum against the planned purchase given that in this country only 50,000 signatures would be necessary to do so (within a time frame of 100 days).
Screenshot of the story as it appeared on bluewin.ch, photo Keystone
As the above screenshot of the platform I have to put up with each time I log out of bluewin (the free email service offered by Swisscom which I truly abhor as it is nothing more than ‘infotainment’) will demonstrate, I was proved right: more than 100,000 signatures were handed in to the Swiss Federal Chancellery today. This means that, even though the Swiss parliament gave the green light for the purchase of the planes in September of last year, the final decision regarding the purchase will be submitted to the will of the Swiss people in the ballot some time this year (with a bit of luck on the date of my birthday in May).
To me this initiative against the purchase of 22 Gripen fighter planes is an example of direct democracy at its best as I firmly believe that not only is this plane not suited to our country, but it is not even necessary given that the existing fleet of FA/18 aircraft [despite the recent crash] should be sufficient to defend our national airspace. In addition, there is a risk that the plane will turn out to be more expensive than initially budgeted (some fear that it might end up costing the Swiss tax payer as much as CHF10 billion).
Unfortunately, although one could argue that the sum of CHF3.1 billion could be put to much better use elsewhere (for instance into the promotion of renewable energies or by making our homes more energy efficient, both of which would result in job creation), this will not be the subject of the vote: the Swiss people will only be allowed to vote on whether or not they wish that CHF300mn be allotted from the Swiss military budget each year over a period of ten years to the purchase of these planes. However, an initiative could be launched to reduce the military budget … and this might not be that remote a possibility in the light of the fact that there have already been three anti-conscription initiatives in this country over the past 25 years.
To finish on another positive note: unlike in 1993 when the Swiss government had made too generous a down payment to the Americans when they bought the FA/18 aircraft (which is why the referendum against the purchase was turned down by the Swiss people by a majority 57%), this time the government should be able to cancel the contract, so that there is a chance that the Swiss people will refuse to buy the planes …
Google’s doodle to mark Simone de Beauvoir’s 106th birthday
‘Doodles are the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists’. Google, About doodles
Despite the several instances of the conjunction ‘and’ in the above sentence, it took Google a good thirteen years to be ‘ inclusive’ enough to feature the woman who probably had the greatest impact on twentieth century feminist thought, the French writer Simone de Beauvoir (born on 9 January 1908).
That it took Google so long to feature Simone de Beauvoir is in itself highly indicative of the male bias of Google’s doodles, a fact which has been pointed out by several (women) commentators (see the links at the bottom of this page). The table below showing the percentages of doodles celebrating women’s birthdays is consistent with the figures published elsewhere.
It is also consistent with the two quick searches I have conducted using the doodle finder functionality with the key words ‘women’ and ‘female ’:
Of course, to derive an accurate figure, I would have to be more systematic and go through all years starting from 2000 and then calculate the percentages myself, but I do not have the time to do so right now. I therefore have to rest on claims such as Shelby Knox’s, who, on 6 July 2010, wrote that
Of 109 innovators, artists, revolutionaries and creators designated important or interesting enough for a doodle, only 8 have been women. It took eight full years for the Google team to find a woman worthy of the honor, which finally went to French pilot Hélène Boucher in May of 2008. Her doodle could only be viewed on the Google France homepage. The first woman to receive a global doodle was Beatrix Potter, best known as the author of the Tale of Peter Rabbit series, and the second was Mary Cassatt, an American impressionist painter. The third, it seems, is Frida Kahlo. [Links to the doodles as well as the dates are my additions]
So why do Google’s doodles display such a male bias? Given that the USA have been so instrumental in bringing about the progress seen in the 20th century as regards women’s rights, this issue is a little puzzling to say the least. Could it be ascribed to the male bias which seems inherent in nerdy culture? It is hard to tell because I do not work at the Googleplex and I do not know much about Google (although enough to feel inclined to write this: ‘Google, hands off my private data, please’) and its employment policy as regards women. Anyhow, I would think that to have a few more graduates at Google with degrees in Women or Feminist studies would certainly help to correct this male bias when it comes to celebrating ‘the lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists’.
In the meantime, we could take Google at their word and send them lists with names of women who deserve to be celebrated, for instance: Cleopatra, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Elisabeth the first, Catherine de Medici, Queen Victoria, Eleanor Roosevelt or even Margaret Thatcher (to limit the list to political figures from the West, but with each having been a pioneer in her own right):
The doodle team is always excited to hear ideas from users – they can email proposals@google.com with ideas for the next Google doodle. The team receives hundreds of requests every day so we unfortunately can’t respond to everyone. But rest assured that we’re reading them 🙂 [Google, About doodles, red is my emphasis]
If only to ensure that the current huge percentage (50% if we include Simone de Beauvoir’s 106th birthday doodle today) does not revert back to a percentage more in line with the historical average at Google. Who knows, it might have been a good resolution for 2014 on the part of the doodle team to have less of a male bias for their logos 😉
The hard-core team solely responsible for drawing the doodles, as opposed to the additional handful of engineers who make the images interactive, is made up of around nine doodlers, three of which are women. [red is my emphasis, no pun intended on my part]
Interestingly, on the Swiss homepage of Google, there is today (10 January) another doodle celebrating the literary/musical achievements of a woman for her 217th birthday: Annette von Droste Hülshoff. So there has definitely been some progress in 2014 … so far!
I could not sleep well and I got up in the middle of the night and I switched on both my Internet router and my computer. I did so because I felt guilty about having written a frivolous entry on the past twelve months from the viewpoint of personal memories (mostly related to running) against the background of some really far more important events having taken place across the world in 2013.
Of course, a blog is mostly a means to share personal thoughts, feelings, memories, etc with friends and strangers alike over the Internet and the topics treated are therefore most likely than not to be of a light-minded or non-serious nature unless one is writing in a professional capacity.
Leaving aside the system of mass surveillance put in place by Western governments which was revealed by Edward Snowden, the hundreds of workers to have died in factory fires in Bangladesh or the dozens on World Cup construction sites in Qatar, the thousands who were killed in Syria, Iraq or Sudan (to mention only these countries), the hundreds of thousands who are suffering because of the economic crisis and the subsequent austerity measures which have been put in place by misguided governments, I feel that the most pressing issue to have been brought to the fore this year is the dire state in which our environment is as a result of human-induced carbon dioxide emissions.
In May of this year, the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold was passed for the first time in 2-5 million years. In 1958, when measurements were started at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, the reading was 316 ppm and scientists believe atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to have stood at 280 ppm at the start of the industrial revolution about two hundred years ago. The problem is that the last time the earth had seen such concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere its temperature was 3 to 4 degrees (Celsius) higher and the sea level was some 5 to 40 metres higher than it is today (source: What Does 400 ppm Look Like?).
Given the extreme weather events that took place in 2013 (there was even a tornado in Sardinia, which is very rare) and which resulted in thousands of lives lost and hundreds of thousands affected by the loss of loved ones, of their homes, of their means of economic sustenance etc, this does not bode well for humans (some fear the 1,000 ppm level could be reached by 2100).
So what can be done at a time when governments (whether left or right) in countries such as France, the UK, Spain and Poland are even keen to give the go-ahead to highly controversial practices like fracking and as (‘ Yes, he can’) Obama does not appear very inclined to veto the Keystone XL pipeline (which is intended to carry tar sands crude from Canada to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast and which James Hansen, NASA’s ex chief scientist, has warned that it would mean ‘game over’ for the climate if this project is allowed to proceed)?
I think that first and foremost one should discuss this issue with relatives, friends and (why not?) even strangers based upon the assumption that the more people know about this critical issue, the more people will eventually try to hold their political representatives accountable for what is happening. Remember the words of the anthropologist Margaret Read:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
So to answer the question posed in the title, I guess it simply boils down to how many of us are prepared to take action, not to save the planet (because the planet does not need to be ‘saved’ by us as it will still be there in a million of years and it will bounce back, whatever the extent of the damage caused by us), but to save our own species and thousands of other species. As we say in French ‘le jeu en vaut la chandelle’ … ‘the outcome is well worth the effort’!
Tap water is 1,000 times more environmentally friendly than bottled water Each litre of mineral water imported into Switzerland is equivalent to 0.31 litres of petrol. Each litre of drinking water distributed through the public water distribution system is equivalent to only 0.0003 litres of petrol or about 1,000 times less energy.
Links
What Does 400 ppm Look Like?, The Keeling Curve (a daily record of atmospheric carbon dioxide from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego)