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movement
discussion forum
background
In the discussion about movement, ideas about how, why
and where we move, who and what moves were considered. These
can include discussions about migration, information, tides,
time, tourism, diaspora, speed, cyberspace, raving, colonisation
and space travel. If it moves, we wanted to hear about it.
Also in this forum you could talk about movements for social
and environmental change and activism, about being moved to
tears or moved to act. There are also those things which do
not move, which are still or static.
What are your ideas about movement and movements? Here
are some ideas about movement from others.
In Hawai’i, the destruction of our land and the prostitution
of our culture is planned and executed by multi-national corporations,
by huge landowners, and by collaborationist state and county
governments. The ideological gloss that claims tourism to
be our economic savior and the "natural" result
of Hawaiian culture is manufactured by ad agencies, tour companies,
and the state of Hawai’i which allocates some $60 million
dollars a year to the tourism advertising budget. As for the
local labor unions, both rank and file and management clamor
for more tourists, while the construction industry lobbies
for larger resorts.
Haunani-Kay Trask, Tourism and the
Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture, http://www.abc.net.au/global/culture/culture_trask.htm
The tides are a response to the mobile waters of the ocean
to the pull of the moon and the more distant sun. In theory,
there is a gravitational attraction between every drop of
sea water and even the outermost star of the universe ...
That the sun, with a mass 27 million times that of the moon,
should have less influence over the tides than a small satellite
of the earth is at first surprising. But in the mechanics
of the universe, nearness counts for more than a distant mass,
and when the mathematical calculations have been made we find
that the moon's power over the tides is more than twice that
of the sun.
Rachel Carson, The Tides, in John
Carey (ed), The Faber Book of Science, Faber and Faber, London,
1995, p 345 - 6 NB An extract from Carson's book, The Sea
Around Us first published in 1951.
Speed enables you to see. It does not simply allow you to
arrive at your destination more quickly, rather it enables
you to see and to foresee. To see, yesterday with photography
and cinema, and to foresee today with electronics, the calculator
and the computer. Speed changes the world vision ... Television
and multimedia are collapsing the close shots of time and
space as a photograph collapses the horizon in the telephotographic
lens.
Paul Virilio, Politics of the Very
Worst, Semiotext(e), New York, 1996, p 21
Why protest? Using groups such as the World Bank, the WTO
and the WEF, corporations have become the default world leaders.
While they profiteer from the earth's environmental decline
and cruel labor practices, governments become paid-off protagonists,
lowering standards to attract investment dollars in a global
race to the bottom that affects us all. There are real alternatives!
... S-11 and related events are a chance to come together
to breed hope for the future and actively learn about the
problems and consider alternatives both institutional and
in lifestyle. S-11 will put the implications of globalisation
and corporate rule into wider consideration. S-11 is part
of a global movement towards fairness, environmental sustainability
and genuine democracy.
S-11, Why protest? http://www.s11.org/s14/s11.html
The present evidence therefore suggests that the universe
will probably expand forever, but all we can really be sure
of is that even if the universe is going to recollapse, it
won't do so for at least another ten thousand million years,
since it has already been expanding for at least that long.
This should not unduly worry us: by that time, unless we have
colonized beyond the Solar System, mankind would long since
have died out, extinguished along with our sun!
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of
Time, p 49 http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/abhotswh.html
People trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal market
in the world, because of the number of people who are involved,
the scale of profits being generated for criminal organisations
and because of its multifold nature. We don't have just sexual
exploitation. We don't have just economic slavery, which includes
two things: forced labour and debt enslavement. We have also
a lot of exploitation of migrants. And we have classic slavery.
Pino Arlacchi, UN Under-Secretary-General,
reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/news/0006/26/world/world09.html
Who is a refugee? According to the 1951 Convention Relating
to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who "owing
to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of
race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social
group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his
nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling
to avail himself of the protection of that country."
United Nations High Commission for
Refugees, http://www.unhcr.ch/un&ref/who/whois.htm
Can diasporic peoples be anything else but travellers, happy
in their travel/travail; the nation-state simply an anchoring
point … the homeland always something other than the
land of our birth?’
Vijay Mishra, Meanjin: 3/2000 http://www.meanjin.unimelb.edu.au/issues/2000-3/
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