ARCHIVE - Nate Midgley's blog

ARCHIVE - My project: Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

Nate Midgley — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:51:45 -0700

Here's my overview since it won't work as an attachment:

Overview of Maps:

The two maps that I composed capture the two leading oppositional arguments of the Iranian nuclear acquisition conflict. The first, "The West's point of view", outlines the reasons why the west, led by the United States, is antagonistic to any type of Iranian enrichment program. Even if the Iranians claim the project to be peaceful, the argument follows, by their very nature they are likely to ignore rationality or negotiations and still pursue the "weaponization" of nuclear material. While this may very well be the case (as outlined in the other map, "Iran's point of view"), the west's argument is that this would pose a serious threat to the "global community". What they mean by "global community", or the west, is essentially the international order developed by 500 years of imperialism. Today nuclear diplomacy is one of the main avenues through which today's "global community" pursue's its imperial ambitions. However, this "global community", for relatively obvious reasons, does not put it's argument in those terms. At an essentialist level, the west's argument is based on the discourse of orientalism, which characterizes the 'oriental', in this case the Iranian, as a child-like/unrational being who only responds to aggression or material reward. At a particularist level, the west's argument centers around Iran's obvious "anti-American"/"anti-Israeli" sentiment, without providing an argument that delineates from its essentialist portrayal of the 'oriental' and his relgion, Islam. These arguments, though largely unproven, set the stage for UN Security Council sanctions and possible war. On the other side of the coin, Iran's claims that its intentions are "peaceful" are just as deceiving. Don't believe that Iran only wants nuclear energy; it already has enough oil to power it's economy for years to come, and because of this wouldn't spend so much time on the nuclear issue if it was just for energy. Rather, Iran wants a nuclear weapon so that the West has to engage it diplomatically rather than militarily. In this sense, Iran could point to the west's differentiated dealings with fellow "Axis of Evil" countries, North Korea and Iraq.

ARCHIVE - A couple things to consider

Nate Midgley — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:23:01 -0700

This film consists of a speech by Arundhati Roy (hailing from India, she is one of the foremost voices of anti-imperialist thought) that took place months after September 11th, prior to the Iraq War, and a moving collage of images and video clips, contributed by an anonymous author. The result is at most compelling, if not revolutionary; and at least, free. You can watch it here:
http://www.weroy.org/watch.shtml

This article is a response to those who found Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to be relevant. While I don't mean to undervalue the importance

ARCHIVE - Can EP be a means to an egalitarian end?

Nate Midgley — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:20:07 -0700

I'd like to start my blog career by stating that I appreciate the potential of the type of studies evolutionary psychologists are undertaking. A number of important, relevant and potentially useful points have been elucidated in the discourse's history, for example: in Cosmides and Tooby's article they mention that adaptation does not necessarilly imply a qualitative or qunatitative increase for the species involved. This argument could be used to build a critique of racism (a hot topic tonight). For instance, while racism was produced out of a response to a set of circumstances in which a part of 'coalition building' entailed the superficial classification of those that didn't resemble the agent as an 'other', one could argue that racism today represents a threat to the survival of the species (in regards to concepts of environmental racism, genocide, the threat of nucleur war, etc.).

While I'm not adversed to critiquing the sciences, as will become obvious by my next entry, I would first like to stress their significance. If anyone else has any examples of how to apply the concepts discussed in class to meet these progressive ends lets hear them.