Well, I've just come in from watching the Luddite orgy of destruction known as the Mojo's Annual TV Smash, Austin's own kickoff for TV Turnoff Week. In usual fashion, the first twenty minutes were the most exciting/entertaining, with all the breaking vaccuum tubes and glass screens. After that, the spectacle of people, a fairly even mix of hackers and crusty punks smashing progressively smaller bits of glass, plastic, and metal into even smaller bits, was entertaining more for the raw enthusiasm involved than for the actual destruction.

It is also ironic that the crowd included people who were very much interested in technology taking an even more active role in destroying the TVs than the other participants. Also on the list of ironies for the day was the sheer number of video cameras and still cameras possessed by the spectators. Perhaps next year they can set up a closed-circuit television system so that people can watch comfortably from an even safer distance.

It would be nice if I could believe that everyone who participated in the TV smash today would proceed to actually not watch TV for a week (or a month, or however long.) However, my gut tells me that those who don't watch TV now aren't going to start, and those who do will be home watching the Sopranos or Adult Swim later on. It's a good sentiment, the idea that you should not watch as much TV. But I think that providing regular alternatives to watching TV is a better way than unleashing the unfocused rage of a bunch of kids on some dumb pieces of glass, metal and plastic. At least last year, when Lynn Bender gave a speech on how he had no relationship with his father due to his father's obsession with watching TV, there was some heart to the smashing. The year before (and the year befor that,) when the DJ kicked the smashing off with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's song"Television the Drug of a Nation", there was a political explanation for why turning off the TV is important. This year, there were several crappy punk bands of the if-we-turn-up-the-distortion-we-sound-good school (which hasn't sounded good since the early eighties,) and a surprisingly good (and supposedly Syrian) metal band called Malstrom. Despite the quality of the metal, it had no focus, and therefore lacked any kind of message to put behind the TV smash, other than raw anger.

Sigh.

Oh well, next year maybe they'll kick it off with an exploding teddy bear.

So it's the 10th anniversary of the attempted genocide in Rwanda, wherein the Hutu underclass rose up and slaughtered thousands upon thousands of Tutsi tribespeople, and it got me thinking. Will the West ever be able to truly face how horribly fucked up it has made a great deal of the world, especially Africa? After all, the Tutsis were put in power, as were many minority ruling classes, by departing colonial governments that felt that the country was better off with a nation-state model than with the previous tribal governments and boundaries. So for a long time, the smaller Tutsi group ruled over the Hutu, until the Hutus decided that it was time to rid themselves of the Tutsis.

The reasons for the racial conflict notwithstanding, the wealthy nations of the world did nothing, and many died. There have been a number of criticisms of the west for standing by and letting the atrocities happen, but in cases where we have become involved, there has been precious little to do. After all, the USA sent troops to Somalia on a humanitarian mission, and the Somalis made their feelings abundantly clear regarding the US presence. In fact, it seems like whenever any western nation commits troops in an attempt to end tribal warfare, or any other (for lack of a better term) blood feud, they are attacked by one or both sides, and people in the west are shocked at the ungrateful locals' treatment of the foreign soldiers. However, looking at it from another perspective, do we really have any business getting involved? If I were willing to ascribe a high level of education to any of the people in these regional conflicts, I would say that they were justified in expecting the western powers who left them in the lurch at the end of the colonial period to stay away, as they have for the last 40-100 years. However, even without that education (which the leaders of the aggressive parties may or may not have, and the footsoldiers almost certainly don't, beyond the basic propaganda) the reaction of a people who are simply conducting business as they see fit to foreign soldiers trying to tell them their business is understandable.

So what do we do? There are no easy answers as Gavagirl mentioned on her blog, moral relativism is not the answer-just because they think it's right, and their culture supports it, doesn't make it right. However, do the people of the US and EU have the stomach to accept the deaths of their countrymen in the name of keeping a given group of people from wiping out another group of people for reasons no one but those involved understand? Because that's what it will take. I'm not talking about UN peacekeepers in blue helmets saying "hey, don't do that," I'm talking about going in and removing the threat of violence. Are we willing to commit the kind of resources that will entail? Remember, many of the people killed in Rwanda were killed with machetes. Are we willing to be a real police force? Because that's what it will take. Conflicts like Rwanda are not affairs like western wars are, where there is a leader, and once that leader is dead and the regular army is broken, the defeated start looking for a reasonable solution. The closest thing we've seen to this kind of war is Vietnam, where the regular army was rarely seen, and it was largely civilian combatants, including children. There are many stories from all over sub-saharan Africa in which children are conscripted and are enthusiastic participants in the fighting. So, are we willing to fight 30-40 simultaneous Vietnams every year?

Two disasters in one day...make that three. First, I was walking to work and saw cops directing traffic on Guadalupe, and found myself wondering what the hell was going on. Turns out that a girl who had run away from home had been approached by her mother's boyfriend, who tried to force her to come back home. She ran, right into the path of oncoming traffic. Now she's in critical condition, three days later. According to people who had talked to her, she had run away because of her mom's boyfriend-no wonder she ran. The sad thing is that there are so many runaways that run away for a good reason. Most people seem to think that these kids choose the life, and in a lot of cases they are right. Unfortunately, there are just as many cases where the uncertainty of life on the street is better than certain pain at home.

After getting off work, I was walking north on Guad when I saw an orange glow in the sky. I decided to continue north, and saw an apartment building burning. After the fire was put out, half of the building had burned, and the other half was flooded. Luckily, no one was hurt. My friend Lucretia commented that things have been going really well for her recently, and it seems like when things are going well for her, the rest of the world starts falling apart. It brought back memories of a theory I had at one point, the constant of happiness.

The theory goes like this: For any social circle, there is a certain amount of happiness. If one person's level of happiness increases, the other members of the circle lose some amount of their happiness. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you believe it, as you get happier, your perception of your friends' increasing misery will temper your happiness.