Feature

shared with thanks from> https://www.focaalblog.com/features/in-honour-of-david-graeber/

Editors: Becky Bowers, Megan Laws, Giulio Ongaro, and Alpa Shah

Sometimes, the dead can be more alive than the living. With David Graeber, one year on, it certainly feels this way.

The contributions to this feature pay tribute to his legacy by beginning to unravel the generous gifts of writing he left us with.

These conversations first took place at the LSE Research Seminar on Anthropological Theory, which, in the Michaelmas Term of 2021, was devoted to honouring David’s writings by bringing two leading anthropologists together each week to discuss one of his major works.

David was a hugely influential public intellectual. He not only produced work that spanned an extraordinarily wide variety of topics that mattered to people, but he also wrote in an accessible and engaging language that broke with the constraints of institutionalised academia.

David revelled in his success but, above all else, he wanted to be seen as an anthropologist and to be critically engaged as such.

This feature is designed to do just that—to cast a critical lens on some of his most compelling ideas, beginning a project of analysis that will occupy anthropologists for many years to come.

David’s work was wide-ranging, from debt to pirates, bureaucracy to bull-shit jobs, kings to rewriting the teleological assumptions of the history of humanity.

In this feature, we will discuss a few of his important works: from his ethnographic research in Madagascar, to his later writing on value, debt, anarchism, myth, bureaucracy, and bullshit jobs.

Topics

Bullshit Jobs

David Graeber LSE Tribute Seminar: Bullshit Jobs

Massimiliano Mollona: Why the End of Work Will Not Be the End of Capitalism

Andrew Sanchez: Work is Complicated: Thoughts on David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs

Bureaucracy

David Graeber LSE Tribute Seminar: Bureaucracy

Michael Herzfeld: The Slyness of Stupidity: A Commentary on David Graeber’s “The Utopia of Rules”

Continue reading “In Honour of David Graeber: Exploring the Fissures and Cracks”

May 7, 2022 https://sonoranimages.wordpress.com/2022/05/07/common-ravens-a-conversation/ shared with thanks

Ravens mate for life and the mated pairs are very closely bonded. Mated ravens spend most of their time associating with each other.

You may enlarge any image in this blog by clicking on it. Click again for a detailed view.

Recently, I encountered a pair of Common Ravens. I find these birds often to be wary in the presence of humans.

For that reason, they are usually very difficult to photograph. However, this pair appeared to be indifferent to my presence nearby.

I believe that the ravens’ blasé attitude about me had to do with the fact that they were perching in a suburban neighborhood and they were inured to the comings and goings of people.

I was immediately struck by the fact that one of the ravens was vocalizing and the other appeared to be listening.

The sounds that the “talking” bird was emitting were not the loud “caws” that ravens make when they are sounding the alarm, but rather, a series of soft clicking noises and honking tones. The second bird seemed to be quite interested in what the other was saying.

I don’t speak raven, so I can’t translate the conversation. But I do know this: ravens definitely speak to each other.

They are masters of vocalization, emitting an enormous array of tones and calls. They are also excellent mimics, being able to replicate noises that range from car horns to phrases of human speech.

Scientists studying ravens have concluded that local populations of these birds develop a language consisting of many sounds. So it isn’t far-fetched to say that the two in this image were communicating with each other.

The image illustrates something else about ravens besides their propensity to speak to each other. It’s likely that the ravens in this image are a mated pair.

Ravens mate for life and the mated pairs are very closely bonded. Mated ravens spend most of their time associating with each other.

When I’m out searching for wildlife, I’ll often spot what I think at first glance is a solitary raven. In the majority of instances I will spot a second raven perching or flying very close to the first bird.

Image made with a Canon R5, Canon EF 400mm f4 DO II lens+Canon EF 1.4x telextender, M setting (auto ISO), ISO 2000, f7.1 @ 1/3200, +1 1/3 stops exposure compensation.

Related

Common Raven And Red-tailed Hawk — The Observed Becomes The ObserverDecember 2, 2021With 2 comments

Common Raven — BroadcastingJanuary 27, 2022

Common Raven — What Was It Doing?May 13, 2019With 2 comments

May 7, 2022—via  Internationalist 360° by Vladimir Platov

The arrest of Canadian general Trevor John Cadieu on May 1 by Russian troops while trying to escape from Azovstal in Mariupol can serve as a piece of evidence that official evidence of the “collective West” has unleashed a war against Russia in Ukraine.

Seven months ago he was considered a prime candidate for the position of the Canadian Army commander and had already become “famous” for a sex scandal among his fellow officers.

It is alleged that it was for the “evacuation” of the Canadian general that the Kiev authorities and the West came up with the whole idea of humanitarian corridors for civilians from Azovstal, involving French President Macron and his Turkish counterpart Erdogan, as well as the UN Secretary-General.

The idea was that under the guise of “refugees” he, with a number of other senior NATO officials remaining there, could leave the Russian-controlled war zone in Donbass and avoid not only shameful captivity, but also a show trial by Moscow.

It is noticeable that, according to reports circulating, General Cadieu was in charge of Azovstal’s underground bunkers, including biological laboratory No. 1, where 18 people worked with deadly viruses.

He will therefore clearly have something to tell not only to the investigators in Moscow, but also at the open trial, where, by analogy with the Nuremberg Trials, there will certainly be strong charges brought against the US and its Western cronies for unleashing war in Ukraine, strengthening and protecting Nazi criminals in that country for this purpose, creating biological weapons in US secret laboratories in Ukraine, testing them on Ukrainian citizens in violation of all rules of international law.

Although, of course, these facts are no secret to anyone today. After all, the US claims to be a “democracy” for no reason, having long ago transformed itself from a republican to an imperial power, as the US media openly point out today.

Americans have already paid dearly for this, but an even heavier moral reckoning lies ahead. After all, Biden and his administration are doing what they please in Ukraine, not only blatantly boosting the wealth of their families at Ukraine’s expense, but also plundering the country, burdening it with US and international financial debts that will take decades to be paid off by the Ukrainian people.

US officials are increasingly determined to cast aside international doubts about US direct involvement in the military conflict with Russia, they are expanding the supply of lethal weapons to the current Kiev authorities, and are doing so without hiding.

Two weeks after the conflict had begun, President Joe Biden assured that “a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III. And something we must strive to prevent.”

Continue reading “Ukraine: What will the Canadian General captured fleeing Azovstal Tell us?”

Sweden’s ruling party divided on NATO

Women’s section of Social Democrats reportedly wants to stay out of US-led military bloc

© Getty Images / Jonathan Ernst

Sweden’s ruling political party is reportedly divided on whether to join NATO, as the women’s wing of the Social Democrats has called for keeping the country militarily neutral.

Annika Strandhall, the country’s climate and environment minister, told Stockholm newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that the women’s faction of the party opposes joining NATO. The faction has “a long history and struggle in matters concerning peace, disarmament, détente and military freedom of alliance,” said Strandhall, who is federal board chair of the women’s wing.

We in the federal board have decided to remain in line with our congressional decisions that Sweden should be militarily non-aligned and stand outside NATO.

Strandhall’s comments mark the first major political pushback against a proposal for Sweden to apply for membership of NATO and they come shortly before an assessment on the country’s security policy that is due out by May 13. The coalition government is scheduled to decide on the issue by May 24, following issuance of a position paper by the foreign ministry.

see also: Swedish opposition may change stance on NATO

Another key figure in the Riksdag, Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson, said last month that he will recommend that his right-wing opposition party advocate joining NATO if neighboring Finland applies for membership of the alliance.

Akesson has long opposed giving up Sweden’s military independence, as have most Swedes, but public opinion began to shift sharply after Russia launched its military offensive against Ukraine in February.

Riding on meddia hysteria over Russia’s defense by attack of ethnic Russians in Donbass, Finland is set to ram through agreement to join NATO next week.

The plan is to avoid even a parliamentary vote on Finnish NATO membership, never mind a referendum. Finland has an 800km border with Russia, a goldmine for the US military industrial complex. .

NATO membership will allow the US to set up its military bases, mount nuclear weapons on Finnish owned US jets, and install nuclear missiles, counter missiles, Rapid Response Forces, etc. to further threaten Russia.

Swedish and Finnish NATO membership will make them of necessity targets for a desperate preemptive nuclear Russian first strike..

May 7, 2022 – Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina’s notes

Of course, it must be disappointing to the developers and then the buyers of magnificent new toys, to know that those toys cannot actually be really played with. I mean, they did have a couple of little real games in 1945, and that was fun.

Since then, they’ ve had some sort of second-rate games – testing the toys on indigenous lands, and in the oceans, I mean, tough luck that this destroyed environments, brought cancer and death and dislocation to indigenous communities.

see also> NATO leaders ignoring nuclear war risks – Russia

\And heck, even some white communities were damaged! Also, just building the toys caused thousands of workers to be made ill, and many to die.

But we knew that it was all in a good cause – didn’t we?

And now, many voices, especially some powerful and oh-so-knowledgeable voices, are calling for getting serious with these toys…

– time to nuke the Russians to bring peace and democracy to them?

And, time for the Russians to nuke us in the interests of getting in first?

But the trouble is, some thoughtful people think that it might not work out so well.

Apparently, even a very clever computer worked it out that no-one could win in a nuclear war.

Indeed, the computer thought that the only way to win – is not to play.

To write seriously – it would be an awful pity if we let those oh-so-knowledgeable voices pass their thinking on to us all, or to enough people – so that using nuclear weapons whether bombs or ”tactical” is accepted as an OK thing to do.