Worry, worry, such a flurry

As they say the things you expect them to say, all the modern conveniences, you think whether or not they’re actually conveniences or even modern. They’re convenient for you, now, and they’re apparently modern, but how much good will they do you elsewhere? Taking apart an automobile and rebuilding it so that you need to hold down thirty-seven buttons simultaneously in order to make a right turn may in fact give you more control in a particular situation, but overall isn’t it less control? And more inconvenient? Yet that’s what we’re up against, really.

Common tasks have steps added to them, they have additional requirements thrust upon them: they are made more complicated in order to bring added simplicity. Dig?

The most basic of tasks are turned into twelve-ring circuses. The tedium and uncertainty of catching/harvesting and preparing food is replaced with dissociation from the source and dislocation from the food itself. Because what can you know about a pack of crackers? What is partially hydrogenated soybean oil, anyway?

Convenience foods, stores, flags, etc. etc.

Convenient when and for whom and for how long? Where does the convenience come from and, most importantly, is it transferable? Yes in a general sense, but only to a limited extent. And because most convenience is created by transferring the burden of knowledge from the user to the creator of the convenience itself, the user finds herself most limited in her ability to replicate the convenience, should she find herself without and in a strange place. Unless said strange place is also equipped with said conveniences.

Is an invention that renders you partially (if not totally) helpless in its absence really so modern?

So you find yourself inconvenienced, and of course you can’t be expected to have infinite knowledge or to be capable of recreating your position of convenience, not absolutely, but will you be able to eat and sleep, might you somehow find shelter and water?

That convenience means that you don’t have to worry now. But worries don’t just disappear. They just get postponed and transmuted.

More later.

by on September 9, 2003  •  Permalink
Posted by Ben on September 9, 2003

https://www.swordbilled.com/worry-worry-such-a-flurry/

A reasonable expectation of service

If you sit at the right kind of table with the right kind of things in front of you and the right kind of people behind you and next to you and talking to you, you expect to be waited on. You have a reasonable expectation of service.

You can’t really be held accountable for the situation in which you find yourself, not accountable in the sense that you can be expected to conceive of any other way for things to be. This is how things are; don’t think how to create a different scenario, but how to make the current scenario better.

Besides, you’re entitled.

by on September 7, 2003  •  Permalink
Posted by Ben on September 7, 2003

https://www.swordbilled.com/a-reasonable-expectation-of-service/

Entro

Listen to you. You’re rambling. You don’t make any sense.

Calm down. Breathe. Swallow. That jabbing pain probably means you need to urinate.

That tingly sensation? In your fingertips? Your fingers are burning; take them out of the fire.

“We live in the kind of world where…” is one of your more favored catch-phrases. Really, one of your catch-phrase-prefixes.

“We live in the kind of world where… Isn’t that horrible?”

Isn’t it.

by on September 7, 2003  •  Permalink
Posted by Ben on September 7, 2003

https://www.swordbilled.com/entro/

Disassembling Oppositional Culture: cooperation & monkeywrenching the system

Introduction

What I’m trying to unravel is the mortal sin at the heart of Western culture. Call me crazy, but I think there is something wrong, not with our environment or our economy but with our culture. Crime, poverty and inequality, civic dissociation and withdrawal, environmental calamities: all of these, to varying degrees, are symptoms of a larger problem. That larger problem is what I’m trying to get at. Something tells me I’m not going to reach any definitive answers. Something also tells me I’m not going to come up with something that nobody’s ever thought of before. But it’s kind of what you might call a pressing question, and I really can’t avoid thinking about it, so here’s one idea I’ve come up with: opposition.

Whenever a culture emerges that has opposition as its central motive and driving force, it turns into something you might call an oppositional culture. That’s what I’m going to call it. With this oppositional culture, encounters with other cultures can only result in one of two possible outcomes: assimilation or destruction. And when such a culture emerges, it functions as a doomsday device, devouring other cultures until it self-destructs from internal divisiveness. This self-destruction happens because opposition, when taken to a personal level, leads to divisiveness among people. Divide and conquer. Divide and destroy.

(Opposition, I should point out, is nothing at all like balance. With balance there are two subjects. Two things to be balanced. With opposition there is a subject (sometimes) and an object to be overcome, defeated, conquered, assimilated. Opposition is linear and direct, while balance is holistic. Opposition is playing to win the game, balance is playing to find equilibrium.)

An oppositional stance dictates that in an encounter between two bodies (e.g., cultures, people, animals, plants), one will win out and one will lose. The one will establish dominance over the other. The one will be proven right, the other wrong. The one will gain and the other will lose. The winner and loser are both struggling to gain benefits, energy, prestige, honor, identity, life, and livelihood—or maybe they’re just trying not to lose them. This is by no means the actual scenario, but it is the scenario as perceived by the oppositional culture. And, to follow the woefully inadequate metaphor of a game, in many cases the oppositional culture ends up playing against a so-called opponent that isn’t even trying to play the game, much less win. Guess who usually wins?

Of course, opposition is not the only thread running through our culture; there are other threads that keep us from self-destructing. If opposition were the only guiding principle, we would have died long before now. The point is, however, that it’s a major thread even if we try to ignore it. We like to think that we help other people, that we’re selfless at times, that we’re “good at heart,” that we’re philanthropic. But to gain anything in our society—to get anywhere—you have to win, and someone else has to lose. That’s how our culture structures itself. It’s no longer just perception. Our culture forces you to compete against other people from whose losses you benefit. If you do not compete, you are stripped of your power, you’re given nothing, you gain nothing, you’re turned into the enemy.

This is key.

This culture does not allow us to get to a point that we can help others without us first benefiting from: the fact that the abhorrent worker benefits (e.g., safety, pay) in industry, in manufacturing around the world are what allows our food/clothes/electronics/[generic-consumer-products] to be so cheap.

Without us first benefiting from: the misfortune of somebody else not to get all the amenities basic to human rights (whatever those are).

Without us first benefiting from: the fact that we don’t pay for the externalities [read: ecocide, slavery, murder, rape, general oppression, etc.] of our delightful innovative consumer products.

Without us first benefiting from: our gender, race, ethnicity, parents, neighborhood, schooling, and so forth.

Without us first benefiting from: land that was stolen from Indians who were murdered by our grand ole forefathers, never to be returned.

Without us first benefiting from: all the people who lose so we might win.

There are other, non-oppositional benefits we accrue throughout our daily lives as well. Like friendships. Like the satisfaction of accomplishing something as a group. Like the idea of belonging to a community, a family, a group of like-minded individuals. But these benefits do not accrue in a vacuum; they accrue in an oppositional culture, so that any benefits we might receive through these non-oppositional activities and relationships are still based, fundamentally, on other people losing. So that we can win.

And what we win as part of our beloved, oppositional culture are primarily material benefits.

And those material benefits—profits—are theft.

Right now, material gain of any kind is theft. It’s theft from the earth, which must split its losses with all the other inhabitants of all races, species, kingdoms. It’s theft from all the people who are forced into a lifestyle of poverty to provide food, clothing, and entertainment to everyone who can’t quite understand this whole poverty thing. It’s theft from all these people who never understood poverty until it was explained to them that they needed more money to escape poverty and to become “happy.” People who were happy in the first place until they were dragged from their “worthless” lives and inserted into a worthy quest. A so-called worthy quest without any possibility of escape or success. All these people who are forcibly dragged into a hopeless cycle built on some imaginary goal of escape.

Stealing Nature

Because of this oppositional culture, our “relationships” with the natural world are based on opposition. If we want to take something from nature, we take it—unless, of course, there’s a law that forbids it. Even though the likelihood is that the law forbids it because it’s someone else’s property. (Old question, but: How do you own land?) Even though the likelihood is that the current owner of that “property,” at some point, just wanted something from nature and took it (the land), the difference between him and you being that he was able to create enough of a fortune to change the laws. Laws that protect him.

I’m not saying it’s fundamentally wrong to take things from nature, from the world around us.

Well, okay, so that is what I’m saying. What I’m not saying is that it’s wrong to use things from the world around us. We’d be in somewhat of a predicament if we only had our bodies, nothing else, and were not allowed to use anything from nature. But there’s a massive difference between take and use.

If you ask a friend if you may borrow their bike (and they say “yes”), you’re borrowing their bike, you’re using it. If you take the bike without asking and never return it, or return it as a mass of mangled metal, rubber, and plastic, well, we’d call that theft. Borrow the bike and never return it, and that’s theft.

If you walk down a sidewalk and think how much you appreciate the walk, the view, the exercise and so forth, that’s fine. Lots of people do that. You’re using the sidewalk. Good for you. Other people can use the sidewalk. Good for them. Maybe they can’t use it while you’re on it, but they’ll get their chance.

Oppositional thinking tells us this sidewalk cannot be ours and someone else’s—and that it’s absurd to suppose that it might. And so, to follow oppositional thinking in this example is to uproot the sidewalk, to destroy it and reassemble it in your private empire. To tear up a public sidewalk (or even a private one) and commandeer it—that’s theft.

If you ask a friend if you can stay in their house for a night, maybe because you don’t have another place to stay at the time, fine. There’s nothing wrong with that.

If you break into your friend’s house, slit their throat, barricade the windows and doors, and courageously defend your house as the SWAT team descends on you…

Well, you’re a criminal. That’s what we like to think.

And if, instead of killing your friend, you break into their house, force them (at gunpoint) to take care of all your needs, and eventually convince them that the house is actually yours, and that you belong there, and that there’s nothing illegitimate about asking them politely to pour you a glass of water while a gun’s pointed at them, well…

Then you’re the founder of our culture. And you’re brilliant. And you’re a criminal. Just like all the rest of us. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Robbing People

Similarly (identically, really), because of our culture, our “relationships” with other people are generally oppositional. Lots of times these relationships are really elliptical and hard-to-follow, but that doesn’t change the reality of the matter. The reality of the matter is that, just as much as taking something from nature is theft, taking from someone is theft. It doesn’t matter what you’re taking from them: life, status, or work. All of this is theft.

To take life from someone is pretty straightforward. We sometimes call it murder, but—more often than not—the victim needs to be a member of our own culture, and even then they can’t be one of the questionable, marginalized sub-groups that hasn’t quite bought into all of culture’s demands. And if the person dies because of a military dictatorship, say, in another country, and if the military dictatorship is maintained in part to support an industry, and say that industry provides gold, and say that gold is bought by another corporation, and say that corporation puts the gold on a tiny circuit-board, and say you buy the computer in which the circuit-board is placed—then, well, you didn’t murder anyone. Which, despite all the lies of our culture, is nonetheless partly true: most of the people whose lives we take aren’t considered by our laws. For consistency, let’s just call it theft.

To take status from someone is to make them less than you because they’re a different gender, they’re a different race, they’re a different “class,” or they’re just a different type of person in general. Taking status does not have to be active to be theft. You can be a perfectly decent person, and I’m guessing that you probably are; most people are. But that doesn’t change the fact of the matter that people are being pushed down, and as long as you continue to benefit from this process, however indirectly, you’re stealing from them. Again, this is theft.

To take work from someone is also theft. And I doubt that very many people today would argue the benefits of slavery (or at least they wouldn’t have the audacity to say we should have slaves here, now, today). Slavery is not the only thing I’m talking about, though. Well, okay, so you’d probably admit that sweat-shops are bad, too. Or at least you’d admit that conditions could be improved. Sweat-shops and slavery, we say, are bad. Evil. Grotesque. They’re a horrendous exploitation of underprivileged people. People who, in some cases, have no one to speak out for them. And both of these things, slavery and sweatshops (both prevalent in our world today), are outrageous acts of theft. But the reality of our world is much more sinister than even these crimes can illuminate. In fact theft happens every time benefits accrue in vastly disproportionate amounts to the actual work done (read: any time there’s a profit). Fortunately, benefits in our society are based on something abstract and make-believe (money), so it’s easy to imagine that these ostensibly disproportionate benefits are not, in fact, disproportionate at all. In other words, the abstraction, the distance, the confusion, the terminology all allow us to convince ourselves it’s not theft. But: taking work is theft.

Taking these things—life, status, and work—is nothing less than theft, and in many cases it’s a lot more. Oppositional culture encourages, emphasizes, and drives these acts of theft. According to oppositional logic, life is a struggle in which people are required to die, to lose status, and to work. But actually I left something out, because the phrases should actually read: to die for others, to lose status for others, and to work for others. In an oppositional culture, you cannot die with others, lose status with others, or (most of all) work with others, because we’re all really individuals to be pitted against one another. These same cultures view all relationships as transactions in which someone wins and someone loses, the winner being more equal than the loser. And that’s okay (say these cultures) because it was fair, everyone played by the rules.

What I offer, instead, is that relationships that establish anything other than total equality are theft.

We don’t live in a perfect world, so for the moment there’s no use debating the subtleties of this; whether, for example, there can be leaders, or supervisors. Whether, for example, being a leader is, logically, being a thief. And there are other issues, too, like the fact that equality is not entirely comparable with sameness. But in the world we live in today, this doesn’t really matter because there are far too many other kinds of unequal relationships that need to be addressed.

I’m talking about hate, deception, lies.

I’m talking about prejudice, bigotry, biases.

I’m talking about hierarchy, I’m talking about violence, I’m talking about egomaniacal self-centered elitist consumerist profiteering sociopathic assholes. I’m talking about personal hate, I’m talking about institutionalized hate.

I’m talking about all this.

And all this is theft.

Clash of Cultures, Clash of Individuals

More than this, though, opposition divides.

If I had to pick one word to describe cultures that do not hold opposition as their central thread, I’d have to say it was “cooperation.” Cultures of cooperation see others as potential allies. Cultures of cooperation see others as people with whom—surprise—they might cooperate, thereby benefiting everyone. It makes no sense for an individual in this culture of cooperation to seek benefits that are limited to them personally.

Cultures of opposition don’t work that way. We tend to see others as opponents. As enemies. As villains. As adversaries, rivals, competitors. As people competing for the same resources (remember, only one party can benefit). As people fighting over the same benefit. It doesn’t matter whether or not the other people view themselves that way, because that’s how we view them. Instead of nurturing hopes, we nurture fears. All of this, oppositional.

Even if you didn’t know any history, even if you were completely ignorant of everything that’s happened in Western culture, I bet you could answer the following question:

What happens when an oppositional culture and a cooperative culture meet?

No, the correct answer is not sit down and talk about what a great friendship this is going to be.

No, the correct answer is not laugh and be merry and have a good time and wish each other good luck.

No, the correct answer is not go their separate ways and forget about the other.

Give up yet? The correct answer, and I’m sure you never would have guessed this, is that the oppositional culture destroys the cooperative culture! Imagine that! Yet it might not happen exactly like you think; it doesn’t need to result in the death of everyone who belonged to the cooperative culture. It doesn’t need to end like the countless incidents written and unwritten of a cooperative culture being killed slaughtered devoured tortured extirpated by the oppositional culture. These cooperative cultures are given a choice, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit: become oppositional or disappear. Join our oppositional culture or die. See us as your friends and others as your enemies (no, you may not have other friends) or we’ll kill you.

But this complex of the other-as-enemy is not limited to those outside the culture. It also works inside the culture. Everyone around you is someone who might want to kill you so that they might live. Everyone around you is someone who might steal your status so that they might gain prestige themselves—especially people whose status is less than yours. Everyone around you is someone who might take advantage of your work, either an employer or an employee who might steal your job out from under you. Everyone is someone who might work for less than you, who might do a better job. Everyone is an adversary. If our culture weren’t oppositional, we could live in a place where all these things were static and we worked on a collective goal of survival. Instead, we work at undermining one another. Instead, we create competition where there is none. Instead, we employ violence to protect the abstract. Instead, we invent enemies, villains, opponents, antagonists. My guess is that the stronger the drive of opposition in a culture, the more violent that culture becomes. Call it a hunch.

Responding to Oppositional Culture

So how do you oppose an oppositional culture? How do you survive if you’re of a cooperative mindset? How do you avoid complete and utter destruction?

The first answer that comes to mind, and not an answer that I particularly enjoy saying, is that you don’t. After all, I just said that when opposition and cooperation come together, opposition wins out. You can’t oppose opposition better than it can.

And in fact I’m not sure what measures a cooperative culture can take to prevent its consumption by an oppositional culture, by The Oppositional Culture we all know.

As insiders, we have a special advantage. And the more you resemble the model citizen of opposition, the greater that advantage. The advantage we have is that we are recognized as valid and honorable competitors. Because we’re part of the culture, it will allow us, according to its set of rules, to compete for available benefits. Culture does not need to offer us the choice of join or die because it’s assumed we’ve already selected join. Because we’re honorable competitors, we’re allowed to compete for benefits as long as we follow the rules (including rules of privilege). People outside of the culture are not given this benefit. The reason for this is that the goal of oppositional culture, as a whole, is to accumulate benefits. And everything outside of this culture hinders this goal. Hence, everything outside of the culture must be assimilated into the culture or destroyed, because anything outside of the culture is wasting benefits.

So as insiders, what do we do?

The only possibility is to “oppose” opposition through cooperation. To refuse to see enemies. To refuse to see culture’s game as a competition. But if you refuse to play culture’s game, how do you win benefits? How do you stay alive? Maybe you have to play the game of opposition, but you can cheat. Maybe you can try to undermine the rules: by helping out your official opponents. By, if you’re on the winning team, taking your benefits and giving them to the losers. By showing solidarity with the other team and—refusing to think of them as enemies.

One of the biggest sins inside oppositional culture is sharing. By sharing (says our culture) you denigrate the prestige of won benefit. What good’s your second-place, $10,000 prize if the first-prize winner ($25,000) has just handed his money to some homeless mendicant who’s too stupid to even have the possibility of winning this money?

Another thing oppositional culture views as a sin is volunteering for the public good, contributing large amounts of time, effort, energy, thought to the public good without recompense. I add the part about volunteering, because our culture hasn’t quite figured out what to think about people who work full-time, for example, for non-profit organizations. Based on oppositional logic, it seems that this kind of work should not be highly regarded, but there’s some kind of defense in the form of a salary. People explain their salaries by saying, “but I have to survive—I can’t work for nothing!” This brilliant oppositional logic endears them to the culture, and therefore they’re protected. I don’t know, just an idea.

Commit these sins. Commit them often.

Question oppositional logic. Engender cooperative language in your daily conversations. Try to avoid using the oppositional logic: do not make the other into an enemy, no matter what they’re doing. Creating enemies only reinforces the logic of the system. We have to show an alternate way. We can’t beat the opposition using their own rules.

I don’t know if cooperation can win out, but it’s the only chance we have.

by on May 27, 2003  •  Permalink
Tagged ,
Posted by Ben on May 27, 2003

https://www.swordbilled.com/disassembling-oppositional-culture-cooperation-monkeywrenching-the-system/

The Swainson’s Hawk in Argentina: Possibilities for Success in Migratory Bird Conservation [A Thesis] (PDF)

A thesis on the Swainson’s hawk. Precursed by a much shorter, more general paper called Migratory Birds and the Legislative Landscape of the United States.

Abstract:

In 1994, a U.S. Forest Service biologist, noting a marked decline in the Swainson’s hawk population in the western United States, decided to investigate further, and used radio transmitters to track two birds to their non-breeding habitat. The route led to Argentina, where fields were found littered with dead hawks. This was eventually tied to the grasshopper pesticide monocrotophos. The following year resulted in an even more dramatic episode of deaths, with as many as 20,000 dead hawks. A response was quickly initiated, resulting from the interplay between numerous actors from NGOs, academic institutions, government agencies in three countries (Argentina, Canada, and the United States), and industry. In a remarkable turnaround, the actions of these parties and the agreements reached resulted in only 24 hawks dying the following year, in 1996. This thesis addresses the question of why this case was successful. It highlights three aspects that were significant in the ability of the actors to cooperate and achieve a goal: (1) knowledge, and how that knowledge was utilized by actors in directing the path of action; (2) NGOs, and the unique pressure and support afforded by their participation; and (3) contextual factors of how the issue was framed and the domestic structures of the political and social forum in which it was addressed.

by on March 31, 2003  •  Permalink
Tagged , , , , ,
Posted by Ben on March 31, 2003

https://www.swordbilled.com/thesis/

Lewiston High School Science Fair

Lewiston High School Science Fair Procedurals (PDF)

Lewiston High School Science Fair Organizing Report, 2001 (PDF)

Lewiston High School Science Fair Organizing Report, 2002 (PDF)

by on May 8, 2002  •  Permalink
Posted by Ben on May 8, 2002

https://www.swordbilled.com/lewiston-high-school-science-fair/

Migratory Birds and the Legislative Landscape of the United States

The goal of this paper is to act as a review of wetland science and legislation in answering the question of how adequately the needs of migratory birds are met by current legal measures. First I will present a very brief history of wetland-related legislation in the U.S. in order to provide a background for assessing conservation features of law. Then, in two separate sections, I will address how well the services wetlands provide to migratory birds are protected by law and how well the problems facing wetlands are addressed by legislation.

Early US legislation regarding migratory birds had a strong focus on protecting the birds rather than their habitat. The primary reason for this is that hunting was seen as the greatest threat to migratory birds at the time. The woes of habitat loss were overwhelmed by the urge to develop, and the problem of illegal hunting, with bird parts being sold to expensive restaurants and hat fanciers, was much easier to address (“Guide”). To counter the problem of illegal hunting of game birds, the Lacey Act was passed in 1900, making it explicitly prohibited to cross state borders with illegally taken game (“Guide”). Later this prohibition was expanded to include international trade.

Other laws addressing similar issues were passed during the same period, including the Weeks-McLean Law, passed in 1913, which put migratory birds under the jurisdiction of the federal government (“Guide”). Due to constitutional weaknesses of the law, it was later replaced with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) in 1918. The MBTA was an international treaty that was originally between the U.S. and Canada (via Great Britain), but which later included Mexico, Japan, and Russia. While none of these laws really addressed habitat concerns, they set the foundation for protecting migratory birds, paving the way for future legislation.

In 1929 the first of several laws to address habitat issues, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, was introduced (“Migratory Bird Conservation Act”). Among other things, this law created a commission to oversee the purchase of lands specifically for migratory bird conservation and established a special Migratory Bird Conservation Fund. Between the years of 1935 and 2000, this conservation program produced almost $650 million dollars for the purchase of wetlands, which, by the end of 2000, had been used to protect close to 5 million acres of wetlands (“Migratory Bird Conservation Account”).

To help provide funds for this cause, a law that came to be known as the Duck Stamp act was enacted in 1934, requiring hunters over the age of 16 to purchase a hunting stamp put out by the US Post Office (“Migratory Bird Hunting”). The revenue from sale of these stamps was then deposited to the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund. To further expedite the setting-aside of wetlands for conservation purposes, several laws were passed increasing the amount of funds immediately available. The Wetlands Loan Act of 1961 approved a loan based on future sales of duck stamps to be utilized by the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund (“Wetlands Loan”). The Emergency Wetlands Resources Act of 1986 provided additional funds for the purchase of wetlands by authorizing use of Land and Water Conservation Fund money (“Emergency”). This act also provided additional revenue to the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund by authorizing the transfer to it of money equal to all duties from the import of guns and ammunition. As another source of revenue, it created an entrance fee to National Wildlife Refuges, which was to be split between the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund and actual refuge maintenance costs. Finally, it required the creation of a “National Wetlands Priority Conservation Plan,” which in turn was intended to aid in the selection of the most vulnerable wetlands for protection by establishing certain criteria (“National Wetlands”).

The measure known as the Food Security Act was passed in 1985 with provisions that prevent farmers who drain wetlands on their land from receiving federal aid (“Food Security”). This regulation is credited not only with greatly reducing the area of wetland destroyed for agricultural purposes but also with the setting aside of over 700,000 acres of wetlands through voluntary land easement (“Voluntary”).

The North American Wetlands Conservation Act was passed in 1989, creating an organization to administer and coordinate a North American Waterfowl Management Plan between the US, Canada, and Mexico. Working through a system of partnerships this program has invested over $1.7 billion to protect, restore, and “enhance” nearly 5 million acres of wetlands in the three partner countries (“North American”). Importantly, however, this plan focuses its efforts largely on the trends of breeding duck populations, though some attention is given to other species (“North American”).

Another important component of wetland protection lies in the regulation established by §404 of the so-called “Clean Water Act,” which gives the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) authority to regulate deposit of dredged and fill material (“Section 404” ). This has allowed the ACE to limit wetlands destruction via a system of permits. Additionally, in 1986 the Army Corps made the statement that its permitting authority extends not only to navigable waters, but also to interstate waters that provide habitat for migratory birds (“Solid Waste” ). This was an extension from the previously accepted authority the Corps had over waters immediately adjacent to navigable waters.

In the recent (2000) Supreme Court decision in the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) v. USACE, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the US Army Corps of Engineers does not have authority to regulate all waters providing habitat for migratory birds, potentially removing habitat protection from “isolated” wetlands.

There are two basic capacities through which wetlands serve migratory birds: as major stopover sites en route to migration destinations (e.g., Chesapeake Bay, Rio Grande valley) and as summer breeding grounds (e.g., Prairie Pothole Region). I will consider both of these in turn and attempt to address how well their utility to migratory birds is addressed by current federal law.

As en route stopover sites, wetlands have the potential to be utilized by the greatest number of birds-both in terms of species and sheer numbers-because both landbirds and waterfowl frequent them. While there is still much to be learned, one emerging idea is that larger landscape contexts can be important for suitability to many migratory species (Naugle et al. 2001). There are several potential explanations for why this might be the case. For some birds this might simply be the case of needing to have a wide selection to ensure suitable stopover habitat despite the potential for great variability in water levels (Weller 127). Whatever the case, there is mounting evidence that migratory birds do utilize many different wetlands throughout a complex prior to and during migration (Plissner and Haig 2000). What this could mean in terms of habitat protection is that the landscape context in which wetlands are located would matter just as much as, if not more than, individual wetland quality. For species that tend to move among wetlands more readily (e.g., northern pintail, black tern), the importance of an individual wetland’s “quality” has been demonstrated to increase dramatically as the density of wetlands surrounding it decreases (Naugle et al. 2001).

Another more specific context in which wetlands serve as stopover sites for migratory birds is in arid regions, such as in the southwestern U.S. Birds migrating through these regions tend to follow the paths of rivers and streams where possible, concentrating in riparian habitats (Finch and Yong 2000). In such locations, habitat quality is directly linked to the survival of migrating birds: if the birds cannot find enough food prior to their migration across whatever obstacle awaits them (e.g., the desert, the Gulf of Mexico), their chances of survival will be greatly diminished (Finch and Yong 2000).

Unfortunately, legislation has of yet given little consideration to the value of wetlands as stopover sites to migratory birds. Most legally initiated conservation plans focus their policy decisions primarily on breeding birds, as opposed to stopover species. This is likely to be in part due to the fact that little information exists as to the exact importance of stopover functions. Another part of it is likely to be due to the fact that concrete values of breeding waterfowl are more easily quantified (via revenues from hunting) than the values of stopover species, which often spend little time in a region.

Since the Clean Water Act continues to govern navigable waters, adjacent waters, and tidal waters, much of the sub-set of stopover habitat in the arid southwest is likely to be protected (if only nominally), since wetlands occurring far away from rivers or other bodies of water are going to be rare. Stopover wetland habitat does not need to be completely destroyed to threaten the birds that rely on it, however, and fragmentation in this particular case is a very real concern in these particular cases.

Wetlands also serve as breeding sites for many birds. Breeding requirements are in some ways slightly easier to quantify than stopover requirements, if only for the fact that the birds spend more time in one area and are easier to track. Nonetheless, our knowledge about migratory birds (particularly nongame migratory birds) is quite limited. While large wetlands have been recognized as being important for a relatively long period of time, recognition of the importance of smaller patches of wetland is only beginning to occur (Weller 131). The benefits of large swaths of wetland are easy to quantify, because it is possible to cite numbers of species, whereas the benefits of smaller wetlands are difficult to compare. As components of larger landscape contexts, smaller wetlands provide valuable services to birds, whereas on a wetland-to-wetland basis, large wetlands appear to offer services to a greater number of species. The problem with making determinations based solely on the number of species frequenting a particular wetland, of course, is that as habitat small wetlands tend to attract different types of species of birds than large wetlands (Naugle et al. 2001). Enhancing this problem, “officially” listed breeding requirements for migratory birds emphasize a minimum feasible wetland size, prompting policy to recognize the importance of large wetlands while largely ignoring the potentially important functions served by small wetlands.

If policy is biased at all in the types of wetlands it protects-which it seems to be-it is biased in favor of large basin wetlands, which are easy to focus on and manage (as opposed to small isolated wetlands scattered around a landscape). For the period of 1986 to 1987, freshwater forested wetlands and freshwater emergent wetlands both declined, whereas freshwater ponds actually increased (Dahl 2000). Whereas many waterbirds rely on large areas of open water (and adjacent vegetated areas) for breeding, there are still species that are negatively affected by the decrease in forested and emergent freshwater wetlands. Additionally, conservation measures that merely satisfy breeding requirements may not ensure a species’ complete success, as other wetlands may be required for other life stages.

While wetlands have yet to be significantly addressed by law as stopover habitat for migratory birds, their status as breeding habitat for waterfowl is relatively well established. To that end, quite a few laws focus on the task of setting aside breeding habitat, whereas no law directly addresses the question of preserving stopover habitat. Preservation of breeding habitat does allow for the inadvertent preservation of stopover habitat, but does not ensure that all important stopover habitat is acknowledged.

At the turn of the century (and earlier), wetland loss was certainly a major threat to migratory birds, but given the protections of the time (i.e., virtually none), hunting was also a very real threat. Despite current legal measures in place now, however, habitat loss is a very real concern, especially considering the potential to build on a wetland allowed by the permitting process and the recent Supreme Court ruling deregulating federal protection of isolated wetlands. While there have been a wide range of problems facing migratory birds over the years, the most significant one is habitat loss. While it is true that not all migratory birds make use of wetlands, the number that do and the threatened state of wetlands make conservation all the more important to address.

Preventing wetland loss is obviously an important issue in the conservation of migratory birds. However, when it comes to actually preserving wetlands, several issues arise. First, there is the problem of saving fringe wetlands along the banks of rivers, not necessarily because of lack of legislation but rather because of “overlapping jurisdictional boundaries” (Weller 103). There is also the issue of preferential conservation in that certain types of wetland are just easier to save than others. Large basin wetlands are easy to buy and save, whereas tiny bogs scattered around the land are hard to rope into a conservation area that might protect them. To compound this problem, not only are certain types of wetlands easier to save, but some are found in locations more prone to development (Dahl 2000).

In the simplest sense, of course, any wetland saved is better than none, and the rate of destruction in the United States has definitely declined in the recent past. The rate of loss in the 1990s has been estimated at less than 60,000 acres annually, compared to 290,000 acres annually in the 70s and over 450,000 through the 50s and 60s (Dahl 2000). Still, the fact remains that a “No Net-Loss” policy has not been realized.

Various plans to acquire land for preservation and to enhance existing land is a positive influence on the status of wetlands; however, more regulatory measures are needed to entirely curtail the influence of development on wetlands. The Food Security Act has had a major impact on agricultural draining of wetlands, and the Clean Water Act has unquestionably played a major role in greatly reducing the destruction of wetlands for development purposes. For the most part, however, ducks have been the major benefactors of legally enacted conservation programs, with other species tending not to garner so much benefit (“North American”; Scheider and Pence 1992). Granted, a high proportion of other birds can benefit from policy driven by science focused on ducks, but the needs of certain species prevent that number from being 100 percent.

When set in the context of stopover sites for migrating birds, fragmentation of wetlands is another important concern. Whereas outright destruction of wetlands is relatively easy to prevent by enacting of laws, fragmentation is a much more imprecise threat that is more difficult to identify and stop.

One negative effect associated with wetland fragmentation-aside from the obvious impact of habitat loss-is something called the edge effect. While there is still debate on how much impact this effect has (and, in some cases, whether or not it even exists), it is generally noted that predation rates on young birds is greatest within a certain distance from the edge of a particular ecosystem (Paton 1994). What this means, then, is that with increasing fragmentation of wetland habitat we would expect to see decreasing nest success, further endangering already stressed populations of migratory birds (Rosenberg and Noon 1997). Moreover, fragmentation isolates populations from one another, which leads to decreased viability and survival rates (Rosenberg and Noon 1997).

Fragmentation does not require an obvious separation in order to have a negative effect on migratory birds, however, and can be achieved by invasions of alien species, small habitat modifications such as creating hiking trails, and other seemingly unobtrusive things (Finch and Yong 2000).

The SWANCC decision has the potential to threaten already-threatened and fragmented wetland landscapes by removing from federal protection those wetlands that may have been substantially isolated through development. Federal policy has not completely ignored this issue, however. In western states the Bureau of Land Management has adopted policies that try to minimize the impact of grazing on fragmentation (a major cause in the region) of forested wetland landscapes (Temple 1998). Additionally, conservation areas purchased through federal measures such as the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act are typically driven to set aside large parcels of land, both for logistical and scientific reasons of maintaining habitat. Such measures obviously protect against future fragmentation of the acquired land but do not protect generally against fragmentation nationwide.

Another not-so-obvious problem facing migratory birds is urbanization. While urbanization directly threatens wetlands through development, it also indirectly threatens species that use wetlands by altering wildlife communities. The most profound example of this is the effect cities can have of “enhancing” predator communities, which then have a negative effect on bird population and the survival of young. Generally, urban areas introduce new predators (i.e., cats and dogs), “subsidize” predators that can subsist on human garbage, and cause an increase in the numbers of smaller predators by eliminating larger predators (Marzluff et al. 1998). Migratory bird populations-and bird populations in general-are more negatively affected by the actions of smaller predators than they are of larger predators, since smaller predators tend to be the more voracious nest predators (Marzluff et al. 1998; Block and Finch 1997).

Urbanization can also threaten wetlands by taxing local aquifers, thereby lowering water tables (Marzluff et al. 1998). Additionally, species diversity can be influenced by the presence of urban (and suburban) areas, which tend to select for certain species and promote unnaturally high densities of species that are well-adapted to the city, altering competition and reducing biodiversity (Marzluff et al. 1998; Block and Finch 1997).

In some ways, the effects of urbanization are indirectly addressed by the fact that mitigation done for wetlands destroyed in an urban area is often conducted in a suburban or rural setting, depending on the individual circumstances. This is especially the case for mitigation banks, which, owing to practicality, also tend to replace urban wetland with rural or suburban wetland. Such actions also have the influence of altering the position of wetlands in the landscape, however, which can have negative effects on migratory birds.

While legal actions over the years have managed to greatly reduce the rate of wetland destruction, that rate has not yet reached zero and will most likely not reach it for quite a while. Nonetheless, achievements so far are laudable. Fragmentation and urbanization have yet to be significantly addressed as problems by legislation, however, with fragmentation being protected against in specific instances (e.g., sanctuaries, refuges) but not in general, and with urbanization not really addressed at all. Generally there has been little effort to address anything other than the most direct impacts of urbanization on wetlands.

* * *

In summary, it seems that while great strides have been made in protecting wetlands, there are still some important blind spots that need to be addressed. The threats to wetlands serving as breeding habitat, particularly in the case of waterfowl that are perceived as economically valuable, seem to be addressed much better than those threats to wetlands that serve as stopover habitat. As with virtually any environmental issue, there is a certain degree of uncertainty and overlap, but for the most part it seems that legislation having a significant interest in stopover habitat has yet to be introduced. Likewise, the more concrete problem of wetland loss has been addressed quite well, relatively speaking, whereas the other, less easily quantifiable problems of fragmentation and urbanization have yet to be addressed.

Bibliography

Block, William M.; Finch, Deborah M., technical editors. 1997. Songbird ecology in southwestern ponderosa pine forests: a literature review. Gen.Tech.Rep.RM-GTR-292. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 152 p. <http://www.ncal.verio.com/~nsn/effects.html>

Dahl, Thomas E. 1990. Wetlands losses in the United States 1780’s to 1980’s. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C. Jamestown, ND: Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center Home Page. <http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/othrdata/wetloss/wetloss.htm>

Dahl, T.E. 2000. Status and trends of wetlands in the conterminous United States 1986 to 1997. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C. 82 pp.

Emergency Wetlands Resources Act of 1986. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. <http://laws.fws.gov/lawsdigest/emwet.html>

Finch, Deborah, and Wang Yong. “Landbird migration in riparian habitats of the middle Rio Grande: A Case Study.” Studies in Avian Biology. No 20: 88-98. 2000

Food Security Act Of 1985. US Army Corps of Engineers, Directorate of Civil Works, Planning, and Policy. <http://www.usace.army.mil/inet/functions/cw/cecwa2/envdref2/pages/fsao1985.htm>

A Guide to the Laws and Treaties of the United States for Protecting Migratory Birds. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. <http://migratorybirds.fws.gov/intrnltr/treatlaw.html>

Hulsey, Brett, et al. “Permitting Disaster in America.” Sierra Club. March 20, 2000. <http://www.sierraclub.org/wetlands/reports/flooding/>

Keating, David M. “The Changing Wetland Legal Landscape: Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County vs. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” Appraisal Journal 69 (2001): 283-286.

Lipske, M. “How Much Is Enough?” National Wildlife 28 (1990): 18-23.

Marzluff, John, et al. “Urban Environments: Influences On Avifauna And Challenges For The Avian Conservationist.” Avian Conservation. Island Press: Washington, D.C., 1998

Migratory Bird Conservation Account. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. <http://budget.fws.gov/greenbook/1700MBCA.pdf>

Migratory Bird Conservation Act. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. <http://laws.fws.gov/lawsdigest/migbird.html>

Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. <http://laws.fws.gov/lawsdigest/mighunt.html>

Naugle, David, et al. “A Landscape Approach to Conserving Wetland Bird Habitat in the Prairie Pothole Region of Eastern South Dakota.” Wetlands 21 (2001): 1-17.

National Wetlands Priority Conservation Plan. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1989

North American Wetlands Conservation Act Progress Report 1998-1999. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2000.

Paton, Peter. “The Edge Effect on Avian Nest Success: How Strong Is the Evidence?” Conservation Biology 8 (1994): 17-26.

Plissner, Jonathan H.; Haig, Susan M. “Postbreeding movements of american avocets and implications for wetland connectivity in the western great basin.” Auk 117 (2000): 290-299.

Rosenberg, Daniel K. and Barry Noon. “Biological Corridors: Form, Function, and Efficacy.” Bioscience 47 (1997): 677-678.

Scheider, Kathryn, and Diane Pence. Migratory Nongame Birds of Management Concern in the Northeast. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1992.

Section 404. Legal Information Institute, U.S. Code. <http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/unframed/33/404.html>

Solid Waste Agency Of Northern Cook Cty. v.Army Corps Of Engineers (99-1178). Legal Information Institute, Supreme Court Collection. <http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-1178.ZS.html>

“Supreme Court Guts Clean Water Act Protection of ‘Isolated’ Wetlands Used by Migratory Birds.”‘ Ecology Law Quarterly 28 (2001): 543-546.

Temple, Stanley A. “Easing the Travails of Migratory Birds.” Environment 40 (1998): 6-14.

Voluntary Habitat Restoration with Private Landowners. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. <http://partners.fws.gov/TechAsis/techasis.html>

Weller, Milton W. Wetland Birds: Habitat Resources and Conservation Implications. Cambridge University Press: New York, 1999.

Wetlands Loan Act. U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. <http://laws.fws.gov/lawsdigest/wetloan.html>

by on December 8, 2001  •  Permalink
Posted by Ben on December 8, 2001

https://www.swordbilled.com/migratory-birds-and-the-legislative-landscape-of-the-united-states/

Die Fotografie: Auffassung, Kunst, Fakten Die kleine Figur meines Vaters von Peter Henisch

In Die kleine Figur meines Vaters von Peter Henisch stellt Peter seinem Vater, Walter, viele Fragen über seine Geschichte als Kriegsberichter für die Nazis. Es ist ganz klar, daß die Fotografie für Walter Henisch sehr wichtig ist. Aber warum, und wie? Es ist nicht nur Walter Henisch das Individuum, sondern Walter Henisch der Fotograf, was seine Geschichte interessant macht.

Auf der einen Seite gab es den Walter, der eine gespaltene Persönlichkeit hatte: eine Persönlichkeit, die menschlich war, und eine andere Persönlichkeit, die nur fotografisch war. In diesem Sinne funktioniert Fotografie als eine Katharsis, weil sie die Grausamkeit des Kriegs von menschlichen Verpflichtungen und Gefühlen distanziert. Aber es gibt auch die Sichtweise, daß Fotografie nur als eine Aufzeichnung der Fakten funktionert, und eine Diskussion darüber bringt diesen Aufsatz zum Schluß. Hoffentlich wird dieser Aufsatz erklären, was Fotografie für Walter tut und warum er fotografiert, aber auch wie sie (die Fotografie) seine Perspektiven ändert.

Walter macht während des ganzen Textes die Unterscheidung, daß er alle Situationen in zwei Bedeutungen sieht: eine menschliche Bedeutung und eine fotografische Bedeutung. Das beste Beispiel vielleicht ist seine Beschreibung, als er ein brennendes Haus fotografiert:

Wenn ich vor einem brennenden Haus stehe, und ich sehe, wie die Leute aus den Fenstern springen, so wird mir das als Mensch furchtbar leid tun. Als Fotograf aber wird es mir Motiv sein, und ich werde, den Finger am Auslöser, davor stehen, knien oder liegen und lauern. Und mein Fotografengehirn wird nichts anders im Sinn haben als die genaue Entfernung, die richtige Belichtungszeit und die entsprechende Blende. Und wenn die Frau, die soeben aus dem vierten Stock springt, genau am zweiten Stock vorbeikommt, drück ich ab. (Henisch 38-39)

Eigentlich ist es nicht nur, daß er diese Situation aus zwei verschiedenen Perspektiven interpretiert, sondern auch, daß er das Chaos und die Grausamkeit des Krieges in zwei Teile einteilen muß, um sie auszuhalten. Fotographie, sagt Susan Sontag in ihrem Buch On Photography ist ein Mittel um Macht zu erwerben. Sie schreibt: “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power” (Sontag 4). Dieses Gefühl von Macht hilft einem, sich der Illusion der Kontrolle hinzugeben.

Zusätzlich ist es nicht nur die Kontrolle, sondern auch die Bequemlichkeit, die Fotografie ihrem Fotografen gibt. Sontag beschreibt dies folgendermaßen: “As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure” (Sontag 9). In dieser Passage benutzt sie Touristen als Beispiel, aber es bezieht sich auch auf Kriegsberichter und ihre Unsicherheit. Walter drückt diese Idee von Fotografie als eine Quelle der Bequemlichkeit mit anderen Wörtern aus, indem er Fotografie mit Alkohol vergleicht: “Für den die Begeisterung, für jenen den Alcohol, für mich die Fotografie” (Henisch 47). Er beschreibt Fotografie auch als etwas, die ihn versteckt: “Die Kamera ist mein Talisman, sagt er, die Kamera ist mein Feigenblatt – ohne Kamera fühle ich mich gefährdet und nackt” (Henisch 37).

Diese Dichotomie zwischen der Menschlichkeit und der Fotografie ist aber vielleicht mehr als ein Widerspruch zwischen der Erkenntnis und der Unwissenheit. Die Motivation des Fotografs ist, Schönheit und Kunst überall zu finden. Für den Mensch scheinen Kriege schrecklich, aber für den Fotografen geben Kriege, wie alle anderen Ereignisse, gute Gelegenheiten für Fotos. Hier beschreibt Walter sein Gefühle von dieser fotografischen und menschlichen Perspektive:

Aber die besten Kriegsbilder, … ja wahrscheinlich die besten Bilder meiner ganzen fotografischen Karriere, habe ich in Russland gemacht. So viel wie in Rußland ist nie zuvor und wahrscheinlich auch nie mehr danach vor meiner Kamera passiert. Menschlich gesehen war das natürlich eine Tragödie, aber vom fotografischen Standpunkt… Ich hätte nichts daran ändern können und habe wenigstens versucht, für mich das Beste herauszuholen. (Henisch 61)

Dieser “fotografische Standpunkt” ist nicht ein kleiner Aspekt dieser Dichotomie. Tatsächlich beschreibt Sontag es als den springenden Punkt dieser Debatte: “The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth-telling” (Sontag 86). Dieser historische Kampf ist doch ein Kampf in Walters Leben, wie wir in den letzten paar Beispielen gesehen haben. Dieser Kampf spielt sich nicht nur auf der Mensch-Fotograf Ebene ab. Es gibt auch eine Anspannung zwischen der Wirklichkeit und der Kunst.

Walter Henisch macht seinen Beruf, weil er Kunst ist, aber er übt ihn auch aus weil er (sozusagen) eine ganz objektive Tätigkeit ist. Fotografien, glaubt er, sind unabhängig, und es macht nichts, für wen man fotografiert. Diese Idee ist nicht außerordentlich, und viele Leute sehen Fotografien als ganz sachliche Darstellungen der Welt an. Sontag sagt: “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it… The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture” (Sontag 5). Seine Beziehung zu Fotografie ist aber rätselhafter; er kommt zu der Erkenntnis, daß sein Werk Kunstgriff hat, aber er behauptet auch, daß sein Fotografien nur Bilder der Wirklichkeit sind. Diese widersinnige Einstellung geht Hand in Hand mit seiner gespaltenen Fotograf-Mensch Persönlichkeit. Sein Verständnis von seinen Fotografien ist vielleicht nicht nur auf ihn beschränkt. Wie Ron Burnett, in seinem Buch Cultures of Visionerklärt, ist es ein kulturelles Verständnis (oder Missverständnis), das die Fotografie und die Wirklichkeit miteinander verschmilzt:

At the institutional and cultural level there is nothing to prevent the photograph from being separated from the image. The choice, once it is made, tends to transform the observer’s gaze into a function of the photograph, which… naturalizes the artifice of the exchange. The result is a reversal of image and photograph with the latter taking precedence over the former in a chain of relations then described as representational. (Burnett 59)

Diese Besessenheit mit der Fotografie führt dazu, daß die Prioritäten vertauscht werden. Die Begriffe, die am wichtigsten sind, scheinen nur sekundär, und die Begriffe, die nur sekundär sind, scheinen am wichtigsten. Durch die Fotografie ist alles umgekehrt. Diese Umkehr wird durch Walters Fotos aufgedeckt; sie wird auch durch Walters Perspektive aufgedeckt (wenn sie nicht das gleiche sind).

Ein Beispiel, das diese Idee demonstriert, befasst sich mit einer Situation, in der Walter die Realität für ein Foto manipuliert. Walter erzählt die Geschichte von den zwei Brüdern, die getrennt waren und sich dann wieder “tief in der Taiga” getroffen haben. Das Treffen der Brüder fasziniert Walter, und er sagt: “Na klassisch, denk ich. Eine pfundige Story! Nur jammerschad, daß keiner sie fotografiert hat. Oder, wenn man es recht bedenkt, gottseidank. Was noch nicht fotografiert ist, kann’s ja noch werden” (Henisch 85). Dann hat er dieses Treffen zwischen den Brüdern noch einmal gemacht—und diesmal hat jemand es gefilmt, nämlich Walter Henisch. Dieses Treffen war für ihn die Wirklichkeit und eine Fassade: fotografisch die (oder eine) Wirklichkeit und andererseits nur eine Fassade.

Aber die Umkehr der Prioritäten wird auch durch Walters Denkweise klar gemacht, als er den Krieg im Hinblick auf Bilder beschreibt: “Ich habe den Krieg… von Anfang bis zum Ende als eine Folge von Bildern gesehn. Der ganze Zweite Weltkrieg liegt heute als ein riesiger Stoß von Bildern vor mir.” (Henisch 59) Diese umgekehrte Beschreibung Walters demonstriert, wie Fotografie die Ansicht des Fotografen verwirrt. Vilém Flusser beschreibt sehr klar diesen Austausch: “Their interest is concentrated on the camera; for them, the world is purely a pretext for the realization of camera possibilities” (Flusser 26-27). Die Welt war für Walter unbedingt etwas, was er durch seine Kamera sah.

Fotografie ist vielleicht schwer zu verstehen, weil es für manche Leute nicht nur ein Beruf, sondern eine Lebensweise ist. Für Walter funktioniert die Fotografie als eine Katharsis, weil die fotografische Hälfte der Persönlichkeit sich von der anderen Hälfte der Grausamkeit distanziert. Die Fotografie wirkt auch als eine ganz selbständige Denkweise: Walter, als ein Fotograf, sieht die Welt als eine Aneinandernfolge von Bildern. Wer ihn verstehen möchte, sollte nicht nur die eine oder die andere interpretation der Fotografie anschauen, sondern beide.

Bibliographie

Burnett, Ron. Cultures of Vision: Images, Media, and the Imaginary. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1995.

Henisch, Peter. Die kleine Figur meines Vaters. Salzburg: Residenz, 1993.

Flusser, Vilém. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2000. trans. Anthony Mathews

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977.

by on October 27, 2001  •  Permalink
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Posted by Ben on October 27, 2001

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Alberto

PHOTO BY: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57855544@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

I think it was five or six years ago when I first met him.

No, it was five. At the airport. O’Hare, in fact.

The nausea was unbelievable, there were so many people. So many different people; families, men and women in business suits, brightly-uniformed kiost workers on break, and so on. So many people going so many directions that I thought my mind would explode and I’d forget everyone I ever met. That’s not what happened, though.

What happened was: I saw Alberto.

There he was, plain as anything, standing right in front of me. Three paces and I could’ve tapped him on the shoulder or shaken his hand.

What I first noticed was his wristwatch–a shabby, beaten Rolex that at one time was probably gold and shiny, and that undoubtedly used to tell the proper time. And the watch was on his left arm, but there was a thin band of lighter-colored skin around his right wrist, as if he’d been wearing the watch there all summer. He had on ragged corduroy trousers that had seen better days, a black t-shirt, and muddy brown tennis shoes.

None of those details in and of themselves troubled me particularly much.

What troubled me was that I was Alberto.

And yet, there he was, standing in front of me. Not a reflection, not a drug-induced hallucination, not even a lively resemblance. There, standing right in front of me, was me.

Alberto stood there, his mouth hanging slightly open, his eyes blinking in disbelief, and said nothing.

Like a bad dream, we both looked around to see if anyone else was catching this.

Needless to say, they were not.

It occurred to me much later that it would have been a spectacular idea to have captured the meeting on film, video or otherwise, as I realized that no one would ever believe me if I told them. Not to mention anything of lost trust. What most struck me afterwards, however, was how little I looked like I thought I looked. Which was what first threw me off–and what took me by surprise when I discovered the truth. Now, as I think back, I envy the brilliant opportunity I had, something most people can only dream of.

But as I was standing there looking at him, him looking at me, we suddenly went our separate ways, I don’t know why. I couldn’t tell you whether he or I was the first to walk away; who knows; maybe we parted in a mirror image. I suppose that might make sense. But we were there, and then we weren’t.

If that wasn’t anticlimactic enough, I then boarded the plane and went home. It was six months before I could think about the meeting and not think I was crazy. Which is not to say, of course, whether or not I was. Maybe six months is how long it takes someone crazy to convince themselves they’re sane. After six months had passed, I found my thoughts wandering back to Alberto, to me. I wrote a song about it, in fact, but you’re probably not interested in hearing it. I’m not that great of a song-writer anyway.

For my thirty-forth birthday I got a check in the mail from an aunt of mine in Idaho. That and a number of other largely insignificant things.

So I used the money to hire a private investigator–a private detective to find me. It was quite a large gift, from my aunt, so I could afford a top-of-the-line gumshoe. The best of the best.

You’ll probably laugh at me when I tell you what he told me, several months later: he told me that I didn’t exist.

Naturally, I was skeptical, and thus I went to the public library. And then I went to the town hall. And then I went to the bank, to look through a safe deposit box where I thought I’d kept important sorts of papers.

No matter where I looked, though, I couldn’t turn up any proof that I existed. No deeds to my house, no birth certificate, no social security card, no papers of any kind, nothing. Returning home, I found that I had no home, and that there was a large junkyard where my house used to be, if indeed I ever had one.

I started to retrace my steps, to visit every place I’ve ever lived, hoping, I suppose, that someone might recognize me. As was becoming painfully apparent, no one did; everyone was a stranger, every place less and less familiar.

And then something strange happened: I found a place that I recognized, where I recognized people. It’s probably painfully obvious to you, but as I stood there in my only pair of pants, a battered pair of brown corduroys, wearing a black t-shirt, I chanced to see someone who looked strangely unfamiliar, a younger man whom I knew had to be Alberto. The people all around didn’t care about us; they were too busy rushing to catch flights to meet relatives, friends, lovers, and didn’t care about us, much less notice us standing there across from one another. A puzzled expression sat on his face, his mouth gaping, eyes wide in disbelief.

I turned and walked away in disgust.

by on April 21, 2001  •  Permalink
Posted by Ben on April 21, 2001

https://www.swordbilled.com/alberto/

The Wonderful World of Michael Spammy (How to be a Villain)

1.

They’re everywhere, you know. All around us. Ready to close in on us at any moment, gnash us in their teeth like giant mice.

This isn’t a story about giant mice, though. Oh, sure, there are giant mice involved, but that’s not the focus of the story. No, not at all. So naturally, I’m sure, you’re wondering why you’d want to read something that’s not about giant mice. Let me just assure you, there will be a relatively interesting piece with giant mice in it.

That’s not what the story is about, though.

I’ve escaped for long enough to be able to write down this much; I hope to be able to finish the story, spread it among the population. Because, after all, this is something that the people need to know. It’s not like one of those haughty-taughty conspiracy theories that claims it explains away all the unexplained.

No, that’s not what this is, but it still needs to be explained.

This is a story of genetic engineering, a used bookstore, and a certain ocean-side resort hidden under the streets of a city called Glensbrook. There are a couple other key components of the story too, of course. Like a mad scientist, a sports car that is so ridiculously expensive and top-secret that it officially doesn’t exist, and the beginnings of a revolution.

Primarily, though, this is a story about villains.

Not necessarily in a bad way, though. After all, villains often get much more credit for being bad than they really are. It’s mostly bad press, is what it is. Villains aren’t really all that much worse than your everyday, run-of-the mill suburbanite neighbor; they just have higher standards and are more determined. Which is not to say that your everyday, run-of-the-mill suburbanite might not be a villain, of course. She might.

This is a story about the joy of villaintude, and some twisted heroes’ attempt to destroy it.

2.

It all started, as you might guess, with a bit of confusion about ownership of a camera on a whale-watching boat ride out on the Atlantic Ocean.

Well, okay, so you might not have guessed that, but that’s more or less how it started. There I was, sitting on a cold and slightly wet, albeit comfortable, metal bench when I realized that was missing something. Something very close to me, it seemed, though I couldn’t quite place my finger on it.

Namely, because I had my fingers securely wrapped around a pair of binoculars, focusing on a particularly interesting patch of ocean, and didn’t particularly want to put down the binoculars. I had a nagging feeling that I should be looking somewhere else, though. Intuition that paid off when I put down the binoculars, because I saw someone else taking a picture with my camera.

“Hey!” I said.

“Hey,” the strange man said, continuing to snap off pictures of blue ocean with my camera.

“That’s my camera,” I said, pointing, indeed, to the camera.

“I don’t believe it is,” the man said, looking at the camera in question. “What’s your name?”

“Michael Spammy.”

“Oh,” the man said, looking again at the camera. “I guess it is your camera. Sorry about that, guess I got carried away.”

“That’s okay,” I shrugged, taking back my camera.

The other man, as you might’ve guessed, looked like your ordinary, run-of-the-mill casual whale-watcher: wearing a pair of fairly well-worn jeans, some relatively new white sneakers, and a blue and white golf shirt. Not what the typical person would consider a prime candidate to be an ultra-villain.

But maybe that’s too much foreshadowing.

Oh, and one more thing: he wore a baseball cap that said: “My Other Car Is A Porsche, Too.”

“Rupert Borga,” he said, offering a hand, which I reluctantly shook. “Sorry about the camera.”

“It’s okay,” I shrugged again, casting down a quick glance to make sure that he hadn’t permanently damaged it or anything. “I probably wouldn’t have gotten anything on it anyway.”

“You on here by yourself?” he asked.

“Well, er, yes,” I said.

“So no one would miss you if I threw you overboard?”

“Er…”

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t actually do it. I was just wondering,” he said, shrugging with the sort of casual indifference that frightened me. This, I would come to find, is one technique utilized by only the best villains.

“Er, I suppose not,” I said, considering the question.

Suddenly, my attention was distracted from Rupert to a portion of the ocean that began to violently froth and foam, with water spraying high up into the air. Given that we were on a whale-watching tour and that I hadn’t really seen a whale before or known what to expect, I suppose it was logical for me to assume that what I saw was the surfacing of a whale of some sort.

It was not.

It was not a whale, that is. It was logical to assume that it was a whale.

“Oh, jolly good,” Rupert said, glancing down at his diamond-studded platinum and gold pocket-watch. “They’re actually on time for a change.”

“They?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I glanced back at him.

“Want to come for a ride?” he asked, grinning as he took from his face the super chic sunglasses he had been wearing, revealing two silver eyes.

Realize that when I say silver, I don’t mean gray. If I meant gray, I would have said gray. No, his eyes were silver—as silver as the back of a mirror, and just as shiny and reflective. His eyes were just two big silver ovals, staring out at me from who-knew-where.

Well, his eye sockets, naturally.

“A ride?” I asked.

“Trust me, you want to come for a ride,” he grinned again as some of the other people on the boat began to grow nervous. And when I say nervous, I basically mean that they were running around, screaming—not that there’s really anywhere to go on a small boat.

“A ride on what?” I asked.

“On that,” he pointed, and I saw that where the ocean had previously been frothing, there was now a sleek and sporty nuclear submarine, apparently waiting to be boarded by Mr. Borga.

“How…” I began, wondering exactly how we were going to get onto the nuclear submarine. At this point, despite all my other obligations—my job, for instance—I hadn’t really considered not going along. Once again, part of the special charisma utilized by ultra-villains.

“Right there,” he grinned, pointing to where a stairway was magically being raised to connect the side of the whale-watching boat to the nuclear submarine.

“Ah,” I nodded.

Rupert turned around to face the generally chaotic and utterly confused public that was still running around frantically on the top deck of the whale-watching boat. Mysteriously, something resembling a bullhorn found its way into his hands.

“Attention people,” he spoke into the bullhorn, his deep and calm voice having a bit of a cheery and reassuring effect on the rest of the people. “Do not be alarmed. This boat is about to be boarded for sinking further out in the Atlantic Ocean. Your captain will then instruct you once more on how to use the life-boats. No one will be harmed.” He turned to me and, covering the bullhorn with his hand, whispered, “they’re all going to die, basically.”

“Oh,” I nodded. At this point I was feeling pretty good about getting a ride on a nuclear submarine. “You, er, want my camera?”

“No,” he chuckled, “it’s your camera, after all. Don’t worry about the people, they’ll be fine. Well, dead, but it won’t be all that bad.”

“Ah,” I nodded again. I was getting pretty good at these one-word responses.

There was a high-pitched shriek—the sound of metal twisting—and I glanced over once more to see the stairway now firmly clamped on the side of the boat. And the top deck, at that.

“Right this way,” he nodded, walking towards the stairway.

So, placing a fairly high value on my life, I followed him, walking down the amazingly sturdy white stairway of metal-gridwork. As submarine-to-boat stairways go, I imagine that it was probably top of the line. Expensive stuff.

Not that nuclear submarines are particularly cheap either, of course.

Unless you steal them, of course.

A hatch on the top of the nuclear submarine opened up, allowing us to crawl through it as two men with white suits and leopard-masks walked past us, heading for the boat.

“Good day,” they said simultaneously, saluting—or so I would presume—my new best friend, Rupert.

“Yes it is, isn’t it?” he smiled, descending into the depths of the submarine. “Just for your knowledge, Mike, we don’t allow flash photography inside the vessel.”

The hatch closed behind me, and we were immersed in darkness.

“This is the UNV Pasta Ship,” Rupert declared, as the darkness was abruptly cut off by the eerie purplish luminescence of several black lights.

Even so, it took my eyes a little while to adjust to the relative darkness of the room we were in, after having been outside in the sun for a little over an hour. Once my eyes adjusted, I saw that we were in some sort of game room, complete with a pool table, a pinball game, a gambling corner, and a rather nice sound system.

“Pasta Ship?” I asked, looking around in awe.

“Yes, Pasta Ship, two words. UNV, unlicensed nuclear vessel,” he nodded grinning. “Feel free to make yourself at home—have a seat or whatever. Would you like a drink or something?” he asked as a section of the wall slid away to reveal quite a wide variety of drinks. “I can mix you something, or you can just have orange juice or something of the like if you prefer.”

“Um… Your choice,” I shrugged, sitting down in an absurdly plush armchair that was dangerously comfortable. “Wow,” I said, the word just escaping from my mouth.

“Like it?” he grinned, furiously mixing something with his back turned to me. Not that I could see whether or not he was grinning, his back being turned to me and all, but it seemed quite logical given his statement and the inflection on his voice.

“You could say that,” I nodded, taking in the sights of the room. “Wow.”

“So, you’re undoubtedly wondering, ‘why me,’” he said, undoubtedly grinning. “But of course, you don’t want to ask because you don’t want to chance that I might think about it some more and throw you back out into the ocean.”

“Er…”

“You don’t really need to answer,” he said, turning around wielding two highball glasses of something blue. “I’m psychic. I can read your mind. That’s one of my specialties. Anyway, you have nothing to worry about from me for now; you’re perfectly safe.”

“Well, in that case, why?” I asked, wanting to get up to check out the pool table, but also not wanting to leave the comfort of the chair.

“Here you go,” he nodded, handing me one of the glasses and taking a seat on the sofa next to my chair, simultaneously taking a rather long sip from his glass.

I smelled the drink rather cautiously, and then took a sip. For some reason, it reminded me of sitting next to a fireplace on Christmas Day, unwrapping packages. Not in a bad way, of course.

“I call it, ‘sitting-next-to-a-fireplace-on-Christmas-Day,-unwrapping-packages,’” he grinned.

“You read my mind.”

“I did indeed,” he grinned again.

“You still didn’t answer my question,” I noted, taking another, longer sip of the drink.

“Well, first of all, your last name’s Spammy.”

“And?”

“Well, I couldn’t let someone die who had a last name like that. Jacques, or Vladimir—well,maybe. But with a last name like Spammy, you can’t go wrong.”

“I see.”

“Besides, I’m looking for a new student.”

“Student?” I asked. “For what?”

“Well, I’m not immortal, you know. Some day I’m going to die, and when I die, I want to have someone to replace me. There are all sorts of other people who could do the job, but I don’t know if I really want them to. I don’t really think they’d be up to it.”

“So you’d pick me instead?” I asked, skeptical for obvious reasons.

“Part of it is that you have powers you don’t even realize,” he said, downing the remaining contents of his glass in a single gulp. “Not powers in the typical comic-book sense of the word, but powers nonetheless.”

“Like?”

“Well, for one, you have no relatives. I know that you think you have relatives, but they’re not really your relatives. You are not your parents’ progeny,” Rupert said, setting the glass down on a coffee table that consisted of a flat pane of glass sitting on top of a large dinosaur skull. “This is probably the first you knew for sure, but can you seriously tell me that you didn’t have questions before?”

“Well, no…” I began, wondering whether I had stumbled into a dream-come-true or a nightmare.

“Exactly. So let me just affirm: you do not have any relatives. And—”

“How is that a power?” I asked.

“The rest of your powers you’ll have to either buy from the catalog or discover on your own,” he said, clearly dodging the question.

“I don’t think you really introduced yourself to me,” I said suddenly, wondering just exactly what it was that Mr. Borga did for a living. “Well, you introduced yourself to me, but didn’t really say what it was that you did.”

“Ah, yes. Good point, Spammy. I am Rupert Borga, but you already know that. What you don’t know is that I’m an ultra-villain—a member of the elite class of only the best villains. We are a rare breed, you and I.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really.”

“What if I don’t want to be a villain?” I asked hesitantly.

“Oh, you’ll want to be a villain, trust me.”

“What about my job? My career? My family?”

“You don’t have a family,” Rupert pointed out, standing up. “Besides,” he nodded, pacing the room dramatically, “we will become your family. Villains have the same needs as normal people, you know. Somewhere out there, there’s a nice villainess for you. And career? Pah. You work—or worked, rather—as a guide at a modern art exhibit, for crying out loud. You think people who go to see that are mentally, shall we say, stable? Socially well-adjusted?”

“Er, not particularly, I suppose.”

“Precisely,” Rupert grinned.

“Well, in that case, where are we headed now?” I asked. “And what are we doing?”

“So glad you asked, so glad you asked,” Rupert said, beaming. “We’re going to my secret underwater headquarters, where I’ll introduce you to a few of my colleagues and where we’ll decide on my next brilliant scheme.”

“I see. And where would this underwater headquarters of yours be located?”

“Under water, of course.”

“Of course,” I nodded. “Where else?”

3.

“Come right this way,” Rupert said, the pool table sliding out of the way with a flourish to reveal a secret stairway that was apparently lit by Christmas lights. “I think you should be able to see our destination by now. We have a rather wonderful observation deck on this little beauty,” he nodded, apparently in reference to the submarine, running down the stairs quickly enough that I almost tripped and fell no less than twenty-three times as I tried to keep up with him.

At the bottom, as I was wheezing and gasping for breath, he calmly stepped onto an elevator-like device, a tad bemused at my condition.

“Don’t get much exercise, do you?” he intoned, waiting until I had stepped onto the platform to press a bright red button clearly labeled “DO NOT PUSH.” The button then began to flash while a klaxon sounded, and the platform—and hence, Rupert and I—was sent lunging downward and through an inky darkness to who-knew-where.

Well, obviously Rupert knew, but I certainly didn’t have any idea. I still didn’t have any idea once we were doused in light, because the surroundings seemed so alien. Not in that there were a bunch of short, gray-skinned humanoids walking around, but in that it just seemed extremely odd.

Or at least bizarre. Peculiar, you might say.

Most observation decks I’ve been on in the past—especially ones in submarines (not to give you the false impression that I’ve been in terribly many submarines)—have somehow incorporated Plexiglas or something of the like to allow an unrestricted view of the surroundings.

Not the UNV Pasta Ship, though.

When the lights came on, we found ourselves in about two feet of water.

“Since you’re undoubtedly wondering, this is my observation deck, intended to model the surroundings. This water, quite naturally, represents the ocean. And this,” he said, kneeling down to point to a tiny plastic train, “is the UNV Pasta Ship. This,” he said, pointing to a small model of the Statue of Liberty situated on the floor of the ‘observation deck,’ “represents where we’re going. My secret underwater base, as it were.”

“So this is to, ahm, scale?”

“No, not particularly. But after a while you get a feel for these things. Like right now, for instance,” he said, pointing to the tiny plastic train as it moved through the water, “I can tell that we’re about five minutes away from the base.”

by on August 13, 2000  •  Permalink
Posted by Ben on August 13, 2000

https://www.swordbilled.com/the-wonderful-world-of-michael-spammy-how-to-be-a-villain/

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