Tag: suicide

Suicide, Abortion and The Donald

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

One thing with writing in here each day is that it makes you take notice of interesting stories or news you discover online. Usually that evolves into an entire piece but sometimes two stories can become one. Sometimes I just want to make a short comment on something without having to turn it into a whole piece. When I do I risk dragging it out or am forced to spend time researching something enough to write a decent article. That isn’t always the case because if it’s politics or football I’m straight in there. Suicides in Japan though, what the hell do I know about that. But this being the internet, I’ll make a comment…

I was going to make some kind of statement about suicide being part of Japanese culture. Or at least that we’re looking at a situation in Japan through western lenses. However Japan only has the thirtieth highest rate of suicides in the world, above it are half of Africa it would seem and other countries like Belgium, Uruguay, India, and Russia. Importantly though South Korea comes in tenth and while the two countries culture and history are different I will make a potentially ignorant statement and suggest Korean culture is the closest to what is an incredibly unique one in Japan. Again, as per previous pieces, national and cultural stereotypes are stupid and a waste of time but we make them anyway for the sake of understanding. Perhaps it’s the link to Samurai killing themselves which makes us think it’s so high or the stories of Japanese overworking. Saying that Koreans are even guiltier of that apparently which may explain the higher rate. Anyway, this whole suicidal ramble was in response to a series of seemingly high profile suicides in Japan recently.

And then Trump, fuck the man’s pushing everyone even closer to a second civil war. I mentioned this fear previously and when I asked an American friend about it it was dismissed as something just going one in certain parts of the country. But still, a new Judge on the Supreme Court that will tilt it even further on a conservative slant. The likely affect on abortion rights, or Roe Vs Wade. It is happening everywhere seemingly but America is becoming even more divisive with every big moment. This election coming up is potentially going to be like a bomb going off. It’s not too crazy to envisage a civil war. They do have a history of such things. It is still remarkable that religion plays any part in the slightest in politics or how a country exists. I guess it affects cultural behaviours and then political ones too. The accusations thrown at the Middle-East, Islam and Sharia Law seem infinitely hypocritical.

Staying on Trump, the news that he only paid $750 over two years in taxes. Sounds like he needs a better accountant. That and him making losses all these years. I won’t feign surprise, that’s how these things work. It will have little bearing on an already entrenched vote. He has incriminated Ivanka though, her being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultancy fees while also being on the board is an entirely illegal act. That should be interesting although they don’t take down their own, not properly anyway. And ‘they’ are not divided by Democrat and Republic leanings. That’s just the game for us to play.

BR#9 – Accidental Death Of An Anarchist

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Another new playwright has crossed my path. Dario Fo wrote Accidental Death Of An Anarchist in response to the 1969 death of an anarchist in police custody Milan. He had been accused of the bombing of the Agricultural Bank which had resulted in the deaths of sixteen people. While in custody he, according to the official account at the time, committed suicide by jumping out of the window on the fourth floor of the police headquarters. Ten years later three fascists were convicted of the crime, some of whom were agents of the secret police, and in court proceedings it was determined that the major actors behind the bombing had been senior ministers and Generals who were condemned before being acquitted. The state once more protected it’s own while allowing those at the bottom who actually committed the act itself to go down for it. The play was written prior to this final outcome and was partly in response to a dearth of reporting from both sides of the political spectrum, the right-wing for obvious reasons and the Communists because they’re little more than power hungry political stooges themselves.

The play is set one week after the event and Fo uses the character titled Maniac to highlight the ridiculous nature of the police account of events, their incompetence and as a vehicle to get his political message across. I’m sure there’s a name for this type of character in a play but I forget what I learnt in school. While serious and dry approaches to storytelling always have their place, there is a particular way satire manages to express an idea and create an understanding in the audience. It is more accessible, despite it being on a serious topic comedy allows people to take it in without feeling they need to immediately react in a serious manner. Fo does this expertly and through his use of the Maniac manages to create a situation in which the police expose their own corruption and the left wing reporter her own hypocrisy.

To quote the Maniac in one of his more lucid moments;

“Why not ask yourself, Miss Feletti, what sort of democracy requires the services of dogs such as these? I’ll tell you. Bourgeois democracy which wears a thin skin of human rights to keep out the cold, but when things hot up, when the rotten plots of the ruling class fail to silence ours demands, when they have put the population on the dole queue and squeezed the other half dry with wage cuts to keep themselves in profit, when they have run out of promises, and you reformists have failed to keep the masses in order for them; well then they shed their skins and dump you, as they did in Chile*, and set their wildest dogs loose on us all”

*While events in Chile happened after the original was written, the text I read from was translated and adapted in the 1980s hence the reference.

What’s Going On?

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It hasn’t been too much of a strain not knowing what’s going on in the world. In truth I’ve quite enjoyed it. Being oblivious of all the bullshit is quite a liberating experience. I’m not sure how I’ll feel after ten days but I suspect this will be enough of a thing to make me limit my access to news channels in the future. It hasn’t been entirely easy admittedly as there have been moments when I’ve accidentally caught sight of a headline on a website or newspaper stand, or when I’ve gone on Facebook to check my email I’ve seen a little of the first post at the top of my feed. I have found out for example that something has happened with Giselle Maxwell or whatever her name is, you see I can’t go and check, and that Prince Andrew may be in trouble again for sexually manipulating under age girls. I wonder if he’ll give another car crash interview and incriminate himself further, I also wonder whether she has gone and committed suicide yet. Even having conversations with people, I’m trying not to listen to what they say too much as if knowing the news will harm me in some way. It’s strange not being able to respond with knowledge too, I enjoy discussing events.

I discovered that the pubs opened last night. I didn’t find this out from any news source but from having actual conversations with people. I knew pubs were opening soon and part of me actually thought they already were but with my desire for a pint not what it once was I hadn’t bothered to find out anything else on the issue. Living on the main street in this little village means I get to do my best Mediterranean grandmother impression and watch out my window keeping an eye on proceedings. Generally I’m a people watcher so there is a certain pleasure in it but last night I forgot how much watching drunks walking up and down the street was once a thing, and also how quickly we forget what was once normal. In truth it’s actually quite nice to see people in the pubs and being a little drunk, as long as they’re not screaming outside my window all night I’m fine, although that’s what ear plugs are for, and I quite enjoy the streets coming to life again. I loved lockdown in a way, there was such peace and quiet, everything was so paradoxically calm while the world fell apart. But it is nice for life and jovial frivolity to return. I may have just missed it. Maybe I should go and have a pint after all, see what all the fuss is about.

What’s The Fucking Point

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Jonathan Pie said it best “What’s the fucking point” and you know what the man is right. He’s also not but he is. We drink with our paper straws, carry around our tote reusable bag and eat organic tofu before driving to work in a Land Rover. Those are also more or less his words.

I gave up trying to save the world about ten years ago. I had just given up being an environmental pescatarian – completely missing the point obviously. Those were my dark days when I was oblivious to the stupidity I’ve now just learnt to shut out or laugh at. Then there are vegetarians who lead a completely pointless life; don’t eat meat but keep them in pain as slaves until they don’t serve a purpose just so you can have milk in your coffee in the morning, the dairy cows still need the soya from what was once the Amazon, they still feel pain. It has to be vegan or just eat meat and be done with it. Despite what people attempt to say there are no ethical or rational arguments for continuing to eat meat, you just eat it because you want to. I still eat meat but I do so because I like it, am lazy and manage to shut out the little voice.

But back to the main point that there really is no point. About the time I started eating meat again all those years ago I also started flying again. Apparently a return flight from London to Melbourne is the equivalent of 16.8 tonnes of carbon. If we are to do anything positive in regards climate change we need to cut emissions by two tonnes per person per year, or at least that is what it was ten years when I gave a shit. Now fuck knows, most likely a hell of a lot more. When in Greece with the refugees I discovered they weren’t all escaping war but many were arguably climate refugees as their homes had now been made inhospitable. This isn’t talked about. Nor incidentally was the massive amounts of carbon produced from the many flights people took coming out to rescue them. But then that doesn’t mean fuck all in comparison to the one hundred and two thousand flights per day in the world as a whole. It’s good business you see. Creates jobs apparently.

Clearly I am frustrated but ultimately I am just frustrated with myself. I’m not going to tell anyone what to do when I still eat meat and buy vegan vegetables which been flown in from Spain, Israel and South America. Maybe I’ll buy the vegan burger from McDonalds to show I care. The television series The Good Life sums it up best; life now is so complex it makes it almost impossible to live a good life. From the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the books we read, the vehicles we drive, the jobs we work, the batteries for our phones to virtually every aspect in our lives we are simply doing harm one way or another. If we really wanted to save the Earth we would just commit suicide as a species. That or end this ludicrous system of constant economic growth. We can’t have both. I would say it was time to choose but lets be honest it has probably been time to choose for a while now.