black cat ★ red cat

Why am I going into academia?

I am glad that with the academic discipline I've chosen, at least I can be more or less certain that I'm not making the world a worse place. I'm not doing any kind of military research and my topic is not one that is laden with ethical dilemmas. Software engineering, at least the way I look at it and intend to practice it, is not about actually building specific things but rather about finding better ways to build things in general. Sure, if I ever make a world-changing (in any sense) discovery, it can be employed to bad ends. But at least nothing I actually do can be bad as of itself. I'm not studying e.g. knives that can prepare food but also kill, I'm studying better ways of building things, be them knives or forks. It's up to other people to build the things and even other people that chose to use things either way.

So, at least I know that by doing what I'm doing, I'm not doing anything bad. But I'm not sure if I'm making things better in any truly meaningful way. Sure, my research can end up being a nice little small improvement in the way we build software. My research (at the moment at least) being about software for cars, I can also pat myself in the back, thinking that ultimately I am engaged in a project to make this otherwise obscene machine something less harmful for the planet. But that's not a contribution to society that I would feel excited about. It's not like saving people's lives or improving society...

I feel as if being in academia is like being in a playground. We try to find fun problems, and we have fun solving them. And we do it for no other reason but for the pure joy of playing around with them. We are largely sheltered by the "real world", its problems and misery. Sure, academia is as real a place as any other and (although I've been lucky not to have encountered it so far) it has its own share of pettiness, narrow-mindedness, anxieties, precarities, job insecurities and overall misery, just as any other workplace. But in many senses, in the end of the day, it is a privileged working environment. With relative security, you get to have fun working on interesting and fun problems, largely of your own chosing, and along the way, you get to travel around the world and meet all sorts of fascinating people.

But is that enough? Is "I had fun solving problems" the thing I want to be able to reflect on my life? Sure, daddy, you had fun, but what did you do for the world? Ok, on one level, I struggle for that through engagement in left-wing politics and political struggles. I have indeed found a balance, which is reflected in my little blurb: "full-time Software Engineering grad at UofT, part-time armchair marxist revolutionary". Moreover, I have some abstract ideas about how possibly the study of software could be key to understanding some bigger social transformations that are happening in our crazy contemporary times. But this still does not feel enough.

I really don't know. For the moment, things look settled. I have things I am working on and I am in the process of building a stable me on all fronts. But this still looks like a temporary compromise. In the long run? I don't know. Honestly, I don't.

Athens 1973 - Tehran 2009

Today: Poverty free Ontario!

Here's the list of demands according to OCAP:

• Affordable and Accessible Housing: increased social housing and access to proper shelter supports
• Decent Income: Increased Social Assistance by 40%, Increased (Un)Employment Insurance and Minimum Wage
• Status for all immigrants and refugees: access to services without fear
• Justice For First Nations: stop economic warfare and recognize sovereignty

• Reduced Tuition Fees
• Affordable Child Care
• Public Housing
• A Living Wage
• Quality Public Health Care
• Employment Equity
• Raise in Social Assistance Rates
• Fair Employment Insurance Rates

See you on the streets!

"What's Wrong with Canada's Immigration System?"

All speakers made very substantial and informative talks, including a powerful one by our very own David McNally. It was highlighted that Canada is indeed built on top of the labours of marginalized and harshly exploited migrant workers of precarious legal status, from the Chinese workers that built the iconic Canadian railways in the latter part of the 19th century to today's non-status migrants working in atrocious conditions in sectors of the economy ranging from the extraction industries to domestic caretaking. And despite the widespread notion of Canada as being a nation that welcomes and nurtures immigrants, the truth is different, both in the past and today.

The speakers also talked about how the current situation is bad and worsening. For one thing, the Conservative Immigration minister Mr Kenney is in the forefront of pushing for regressive changes to the immigration system, and treats opposition to it with bigoted comments that go as far as declaring himself outright as a racist(!), while at the same time adopting exploiting xenophobia to bolster a populist agenda against refugees.

For another thing, the legal situation in Canada regarding asylum seekers is bad and becoming worse. The speakers talked about how the law is used to deny asylum seekers the right to even apply for asylum, while at the same time, the percentage of people actually granted asylum is declining. This was contrasted to the fact that people come to Canada as refugees exactly because of the community-destructive operations of Canadian multinational companies abroad, with cases of such abuse in Honduras, El Salvador and others brought as examples.

This international dimension of the issue was also highlighted by a reference to the upcoming Gobal Forum on Migration and Development, that is going to take place in Athens, Greece in early November. The GFMD is a platform for governments of both the rich and the poorer countries to meet to discuss agreements for what is essentially trafficking of labor from the latter to the former in the form of temporary (and thus disenfranchized, marginalized and exploited) workers. (On a side-note, the Greek left movement is not letting this happen without a fight. A call has been put out for an parallel international meeting against the GFMD and an international demonstration is organized for November 4th.)

Finally, one of the speakers noted a very interesting legal detail with regard to the process by which people brought to Canada as temporary workers can apply for permanent resident status. It was noted that an increasing number of people are brought to Canada to work with the obligation to be deported at the end of a 4 year period, a situation that is abhorrent as it puts the lives of these people on hold, and destroys any attempts on their part to build any meaningful connection with the community surrounding them. At the same time, a relatively recent development is the option that, while temporary workers cannot meaningfully apply for PR due to the huge backlog (created by the systematic financial strangling of the relevant services by successive governments), the right has been given to employers to achieve prioritization requests for PR status for some of their workers. The catch here, the speaker noted, is the delegation of the granting of PR status from the public sector, ie the government, to the private, as it is left entirely on the discretion and judgement of the employers to chose who can meaningfully apply and who cannot.

Apparently, much more than what I scribbled here was told, but my memory only goes that far. There were people recording the event, so look out for the videos, they're sure to pop up somewhere in the internets soon enough.

Rosa Luxemburg in Toronto

The Toronto New Socialists are organizing a reading and discussion group on Rosa Luxemburg. The recent developments regarding the realignment of the Left in Toronto, with the (tentative?) formation of the Anti-Capitalist Network, following the Workers' Assembly, makes the timing perfect to revisit Rosa's ideas and talk about what impact they can have in our contemporary struggles. Here's the blurb:

Rosa Luxemburg: A revolutionary for our times?

A reading and discussion group hosted by Toronto New Socialists

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) remains one of the most important but widely-neglected figures in the history of the socialist movement. Her writings – on socialism and democracy, anti-imperialism, reform and revolution, the mass strike, and more – continue to speak to urgent issues of our times.

This discussion group is intended to give activists an opportunity to read and discuss key texts by Luxemburg, including Reform or Revolution (1900) and The Mass Strike (1906) and to debate their relevance today.

First session: Monday, October 26 at 7.30 PM, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Participants will be sent details on readings and location.

For more information email: toronto@newsocialist.org

All the readings can be found online here.

(the photo is courtesy of Indymedia Ireland)

Kein Zurück

Click here to download:

Gazzump.com - Dimitris Papaspyropoulos vs Wolfsheim - Kein Zurück Live.mp3 (2805 KB)

When a Marxist encounters a bourgeois subject immersed in commodity fetishism, the Marxist's reproach to him is not "The commodity may seem to you to be a magical object endowed with special powers, but it really is just a reified expression of relations between people" but rather, "You may think that the commodity appears to you as a simple embodiment of social relations (that, for example, money is just a kind of voucher entitling you to a part of the social product), but this is not how things really seem to you. In your social reality, by means of your participation in social exchange, you bear witness to the uncanny fact that a commodity really appears to you as a magical object endowed with special powers."

So, you think that time is Linear. You think it has a start and an end. That all things are unique, they are born and they die.

And time is indeed Linear. It really is just that. Things are truly unique, unreproducible, eternally singular.

But this is not how things really seem to you.

In your social reality, in your day to day self-reflection, your perception of time is Circular, magical and eternally repeating.

You think that you will have other chances, that things will happen again. That they can return to normal or to that ideal past.

Well, no. Kein Zurück: there is no return, no turning back.

It is not a circle. You can only push forward.

Mark Steel: Karl Marx

For a leftist critique of the shift to Green Economy

During the recent Greek election, the centrist/blairite Socialists got elected running on a platform of transforming the Greek economy towards the direction of Green Development. Looking beyond the electoral campaign buzzwords, the idea of starting to seriously discuss pursuing a Green shift is definitely an important political development. For us in the radical Left, however, this shift is not as apparently progressive as it sounds, especially when viewed in the context of a global economic crisis that has caused serious regressions in labor rights.

In this vein, Greg Macdougall, sat down with Ben Powless, a young Mohawk activist and organizer of the upcoming Power Shift Canada conference to discuss issues of Green Economy and social and economic justice.

The interview is available on rabble.ca in two parts:

1. Grassroots must lead transition to green economy
   
2. Why youth and First Nations are key to green economy future

The Power Shift Canada 2009 conference will take place in Ottawa from October 23-26. The focus is on climate change, but also on a ‘just transition’ to green jobs. Between 1000-1500 mainly young activists will gather to figure out how to present the case for a shift to a green economy, and to develop strategy for local organizing to make that happen.

Ben Powless is a Mohawk youth and one of the key organizers of the conference. He’s involved with the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, among other pursuits. I had the opportunity to meet with him and hear firsthand the importance of green jobs and how we can get there in an equitable, just manner.

Pearl Jam - Black

Hava Nagila!