Eye Magazine

The Magazine of The International Academic Forum | Issue 8 | Autumn/Winter 2015

AtomicNarratives
American Caesar:

General Douglas MacArthur’sadministration of Japan

The Atomic Cafe:
Looking back at aCold War classic

PlusBill Gates and his(mis)adventures within
American education

EYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 8

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CONTENTS
Eye Magazine
Issue 8 | Autumn/Winter 2015

EditorMichael Liam Kedzlie
Assistant Editor (Copy
Editing & Layout)
Rachel Dyer
Original Design
Thaddeus Pope
Subscriptions
magazine@iafor.org

Copyright © 2015, Eye Magazine

2 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

4.
From the Editor
An introduction to the latest
edition of Eye Magazine
6.
Atomic Narratives Finding
narrative coherence in thebombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki, by Theron Fairchild
12.
American Caesar
General Douglas MacArthur’sadministration of Japan, byDavid McCormack
18.
Common Core’s Leviathan
Bill Gates’ (mis)adventures
within American public
education, by Craig Sower

24.
Common Core’s Panopticon
The freedom to teach or be
imprisoned by data, by Craig
Sower
26.
Shopping in the Metropolis
Consumerism in Jean Rhys,
by Qiang Fu
32.
Authority and the Individual
Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe
examines the themes of theindividual versus authority inthe works of Mark Twain
36.
Before the Darkest Hours
USAF operations order No. 35
by Michael Liam Kedzlie

EYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 8

36

38

42
46

48
38.
From Fiction to Reality
An exploration into Cosplay,by Shih-Pang Tsai andProfessor Ming-Hsiu
Mia Chen42.
Listenig to the Waves
Chanoyu outside Japan
by Alexandre Avdulov
46.
The Atomic Cafe
Looking back at nuclear
paranoia from the
80s to the 50s in a Cold War
classic, by Wajiha Raza Rizvi

58
48.
A Passion for Research
Doctoral program graduate,
Vineet Kaul, reflects on what
research means as heembarks on an academic
career50.
Legally Vague in a Lethal
World
Is it time for International
Humanitarian Law 2.0? By
Michael Liam Kedzlie

Front Cover: Origami
Kunst by Andreas Bauer.
Sadako Sasaki wasdiagnosed with radiationinduced leukaemia andsubsequently tragically diedat 12 years old, ten years
after the atomic bombing ofHiroshima in 1945. During
treatment she set out tomake 1,000 paper cranes,as according to Japanesemyth she would be granted
one wish on completion.
She made it to 644, but wasburied with the remainder
by friends. The paper
crane has since become
an international symbol ofpeace and hope.

If you would like to subscribe to Eye Magazine,
or would like to contribute to the content, pleasecontact us via magazine@iafor.org
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 3

A word from the editor

Welcome to the Autumn 2015 edition of IAFOR’s
Eye Magazine – The International Academic
Forum’s own in-house e-magazine publication. It
is our pleasure to again present to you a great lineup of articles and opinion pieces. In this edition of
IAFOR Eye Magazine we reflect on the past, in boththe historical and political sense, through a range ofcultural practices within literature, the arts, film andsociety. Much of this past is centered on Japan. This
year is the 70th commemoration of the first droppingof the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki andwe have a couple of outstanding articles that take alook at the tragedy and upheaval of that time andthe years that followed in Japan. Theron Fairchildcontributes Atomic Narratives about the political,
social, economic, moral, and speculative discoursearound the atomic weapons used against Japan andDavid McCormack in American Caesar writes about
the role General McArthur played during the postwar occupation. Also in this edition, Wajiha Raza
Rizvi takes a brief look back at the documentary
film The Atomic Cafe made in the early 1980s, which
captures the paranoia, propaganda and politics of theearly years of the nuclear age in postwar America.
This issue of IAFOR Eye also looks back at a coupleof cornerstone works of literature that have shaped
modern consciousness. Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe
examines the thematic underpinnings of authority
and the individual in the novels Connecticut Yankee andHuckleberry Finn of legendary 19th-century American
author Mark Twain. Qiang Fu in his article Shoppingin the Metropolis: Consumerism in Jean Rhys’s
Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight– textual tropes of empire and colony to formulate
postcolonial literature. These two novels both register
commerce and consumer capitalism as part of theliteral and figurative administration of empire and thearticulations of Englishness of the early 20th-century
period in which they were based.

Cultural Memory reports of astonishing statisticthat forces us to reflect on the role of architecturalpreservation. The average lifespan of a Japanese person
is among the highest in the world, in the mid tohigh 80s, however, the average lifespan of a buildingin Tokyo, may be as little as just 17 years. Alexandre
Avdulov contributes Listening To The Waves:
Chanoyu Outside Japan and discusses the delicate
balance between conservation and internationalisationof the traditional tea ceremony – that core culturaland distinguishing practice of Japanese life. Avdulov
articulates how this tradition is being carefullytransplanted to new places in its most original formand how it is taking root. A further cultural practicethat is more contemporary and has achieved Japanese‘cultural ownership’ is Cosplay. Though it began its life
US amongst the Sci-Fi fan community in the 1970s,
it was popularised in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s
and from that base it is now a 21st-century, global
popular culture phenomenon. Taiwanese writers
Shih-Pang Tsai and Ming-Hsiu Mia Chen examine
the creative and sub-cultural underpinnings of these
global Cosplayers in their article From Fiction to
Reality: An Exploration into Cosplay. Finally Vineet
Kaul, a recent Doctoral Program Graduate reflects onwhat research means personally, as he embarks on an
academic career in his opinion piece Developing my
Passion for Research.
As Editor, I must give special thanks to Thad Pope
who assisted in the production of this edition. It is his
hard work and advice, which has helped in getting thismagazine together and looking so good. I would also
like to thank our new publications manager, RachelDyer, for her invaluable assistance in producing thisedition. Lastly, I must again thank the voluntary
contributions of our featured contributors. They are thepeople who really make Eye the insightful, intelligent
and interdisciplinary magazine that it is. If you feelthat you have something new and interested to offer
as a written contribution to a future issue of IAFOR’s
Eye Magazine please don’t hesitate to contact me atmkedzlie@iafor.org.

When citizens appreciate important buildings for how
they help tell the stories of the past, quality of life in thecity improves. It is this sentiment that Charles Laurier
reveals in his fascinating article about the collective Sincerely,
cultural memory of Ueno Station, an 82-year-old
building in the Shitamachi area of eastern Tokyo. Michael Liam Kedzlie
Laurier in his article Tokyo’s Ueno Station in Japanese Editor

4 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition““

FROM THE EDITOR

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 5

Atomic Narratives

A Story

The bombs were dropped. A war wasended. Japanese mourned. Americans
rejoiced. The weapons were tragic but
necessary. Order ensued. Prosperity
emerged. Japan and the United States
became friends.

The first accounts of any historicalevent tend to become the benchmarksby which all subsequent accounts aremeasured. And for the past 70 years,
this popular narrative, concerning theatomic bombs and the final chapter ofthe Asia-Pacific War, has continued
relatively unabated in the global
imagination. Backed by early years ofscholarship and official government
positions on both sides of the Pacific,
the story eventually became known as
the traditional account. It remains aneasy pill to swallow. The weapons camefirst, the surrender happened shortly

thereafter. Thus, the first caused thesecond. What is left to know?
Despite its tenacity, the traditional
account has been dismissed frommost serious historical scholarshipfor at least two decades. A major
problem with the narrative is that it
potentially delivers little more than apost hoc fallacy (“after this, therefore
because of this”). It also contributes
to a muddying of facts and moral
considerations, along with a reductionof several key military, political, andeconomic variables, into a dichotomyof dropping the bomb, good or bad?

that undoubtedly supplies no single,
satisfactory narrative for everyone. In
his chapter on Robert Oppenheimer,from a book entitled The Dark Side ofCreativity, David Hecht noted that if
any single event has ever called into
question faith in science, creativity,and human progress itself, this one
is it. Oppenheimer himself, writing
critically in 1948, described his shared,
atomic creation as “an unparalleledinstrument of coercion”.

The hollow tree		 in what we called				the wilderness

6 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

In a more nuanced, evidencesupported interpretation, the useof atomic weapons against Japan,in August of 1945, remains anenormously complex, emotional,
and even paradoxical subject, one

Numerous scholars, activists, andother scientists, both before and after,
would join the critique. The motives tobuild the atomic bomb, the decision
to use it during wartime, the actualrole it played in ending the war, theultimate moral ramifications since its
use, and the question of whether it
was even needed, are interconnected
yet distinct issues for discussion anddebate. The 20th century was the

BY THERON FAIRCHILD
scientific century, when humankind
would pursue scientific truth toliberate itself from superstition andsocial and physical illnesses. At thesame time, backed by an array of newscientific vocations and institutions,modern violence itself had taken on
a scientific character, increasingly
impersonal, rationally organised, andinfused with economic principles.

A Bomb
The nuclear device known as “Little
Boy,” an enriched uranium-235
fission weapon, which cost the UnitedStates roughly 14 times more in initialdevelopment than the production
cost of an entire WWII aircraft
carrier, annihilated an estimated 7080,000 people at 8:15am, on Monday,
August 6, Hiroshima time. As a resultof injury and radiation poisoning,the disputed death toll reachedsomewhere between 90,000-160,000
by the end of the year, and climbed
to over 200,000 within the next five
years, making the detonation the
single largest destruction of humanlife as a result of an engineered
weapon. By comparison, during thenight of March 9-10 earlier that year,
279 B-29s had dropped close to 2,000
tons of mostly incendiary bombs overthe densely populated eastern wardsof Tokyo. The prevailing winds, whichwere factored in during pre-strike
planning, helped ignite a firestormthat destroyed approximately 15.8
square miles (25.4 square km) of
the city, killing 100,000 people andinjuring nearly a million.
Three days after Hiroshima, on
August 9, the more complex, more
powerful, and equally expensive
plutonium implosion device, known

as “Fat Man” (a copy of the original
Trinity test device in New Mexico),
was detonated over Nagasaki. The

A major problem with
the narrative is that it
potentially delivers little
more than a post hoc
fallacy…
city was actually the secondary target
on the mission, the primary being
Kokura, the historic city-arsenal at
the Straits of Shimonoseki between
Honshu and Kyushu. Except cloud
cover, and the smoke from nearby
conventional bombing, forced theB-29 to divert one hour and 18 minutesof flying time to Nagasaki, where
the plane was running short of fuelEye Magazine Eighth Edition | 7

By comparison, the United States has neveroffered compensation, neither to its own
severely affected POWs interned near the twosites at the time of the bombings…
and encountering more cloud cover.
At the last moment, not wanting tosimply drop their expensive weapon
into the sea (it could not be disarmed
in flight), the crew spotted a lessthan-optimal targeting point throughthe clouds. Far upriver from central
Nagasaki, Fat Man was released. The
blast destroyed a largely industrial
sector, limiting the initial death toll
to a disputed 50-70,000, which roseto 70-100,000 by the end of the year,
and to over 140,000 across five years.
In the decades since, hundreds ofthousands, from both Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, have been classified
as hibakusha, literally “bombaffected people”. Another 30,000,
both killed and surviving, were
non-Japanese, some of them Allied
POWs. In total, over the course of
the entire war, a minimum of 500,000
Japanese civilians died as a result of
military actions. The majority ofthem were killed in the bombings ofHiroshima and Nagasaki or in oneof numerous conventional air raids.
At least another 500,000 perished
due to famine and disease. (From all
countries, an estimated 15-22 million
civilians died throughout the AsiaPacific conflict of the 1930s and 40s,
mostly from famine and disease.)
The facts of the atomic devices,from the “what” of their design andconstruction, to the “how” of theirdeployment and detonation, remain
undisputed. The dilemma arises
with questions regarding the “why”,
including the essential questions ofwhether the bombs were necessary,and whether their uses could beconsidered crimes against humanity.
For the historically minded, howaccurate and complete these questions
are, and not simply how well argued
they are, remains tantamount.
In a 2012 paper, entitled Dissociative
8 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

Entanglement,
Yuko
Shibata
discussed the way in which both
Japanese and American literaryinterpretations of the atomic bomb,
beginning with John Hersey’s 1946
novel, Hiroshima, became inextricably
woven into the public discourse fromthe outset. John Dower, the awardwinning American historian of Japanand the Pacific War, took this a stepfurther. Throughout the body of his
work on the predominantly U.S.
postwar occupation, Dower madethe case that such interweaving wasdeliberate, with the Japanese andAmericans working together toconstruct tenable stories about the
war and about the bombs, which
included pushing the hibakusha outof sight as a means of buttressing
censorship and propaganda. The
efforts included misinformationand discrimination, where public
ignorance about radiation sickness
and its alleged contagiousness, as wellas the shame of disfigurement, were
exploited by the tightly controlled
Japanese press.
Not until the 1950s and ’60s, after
the end of the occupation, and after
considerable activism on the part of
the hibakusha themselves, did theJapanese government provide special
medical and monetary assistance toatomic blast survivors. By comparison,
the United States has never offeredcompensation, neither to its own
severely affected POWs interned
near the two sites at the time of thebombings, nor to its own citizens
who surveyed the sites after the war
and suffered the effects of radiation.
The postwar information control
had other purposes as well. With
the exception of specifically assigned
occupation, engineering, and relief
detachments, American military
personnel were largely kept at
a distance from Hiroshima andNagasaki. In fact, from 1945 to
1951, the occupation of Hiroshima
prefecture, along with the surrounding
areas and Shikoku Island, were placed
under the control of the British
Commonwealth Occupation Force(BCOF), which numbered 37,000
personnel during its peak (45,000
total over the period). The American
position was, because of the shock of
the atomic weapon used against thecity of Hiroshima, the U.S. should
hand over occupation duties of theentire region to non-American forces,
to aid in the pacification process.
The largest staffing of the BCOF
came from Australia, reaching about
12,000 personnel at any given point,
and a total of more than 16,000 for
the period. For their efforts, hundredsof these Australians later reported
disproportionately high rates ofcancers, particularly individuals who
had spent considerable time near
the centre of the blast or eaten a fairamount of locally grown food. Overthe years, many of these veterans
filed claims for special services orassistance, with both the Australianand Japanese governments, but todate neither nation has acknowledgedthem.
A recent fact sheet released by
the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs would appear to back thegovernment
decisions.
Thoughreadily acknowledged that Japanesepersons and Allied POWs received
massive doses of radiation, fromthe Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts
and during the subsequent weeks
of fallout, by the time occupation
forces had arrived, in October 1945,
radiation levels at the center ofHiroshima had fallen to about 1.25
rem or less. This is roughly twice
the daily dose of natural radiation
absorbed by the human body, whichis still considered a safe level, and forevery kilometer away from groundzero the fallout levels dropped
significantly. The problem withthis accurate, nonetheless general,
analysis is that it cannot account forindividual incidents of radioactive

Thaddeus Pope (www.britishphotojournalist.com)

exposure or contamination, and todate, determining the biologicaleffects of such radiation remains an
inexact science, where susceptibility
to negative consequences can be caseby-case.
As for keeping American service
personnel away from Hiroshima,
another reason for this strategy
was to help control perceptionsof atomic devastation back homeamong the American public. The
United States was becoming atechnological superpower and theeconomic master of the world, andimages of children or the elderly with
their skin falling off, due to atomic
blasts, ran counter to nuclear power
as a symbol of American progress,

and to the nation’s justification fortaking any and all life in the nameof preserving life and democracy.
The problem was that whereas the
Occupation authorities could keep afairly tight lid on official televisionand newspaper sources, many of
the greatest day-to-day accountsof the entire war and subsequent
occupation, including many of themost graphic images, were recordedby military personnel on the ground.
Among the photographs of atomic
bomb survivors that eventually madeit to the U.S., some of the most
disturbing were captured by U.S.
marines and soldiers who had passed
through Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

A Narrative

Someone with early access to theaccounts of atomic bomb survivors
was John Hersey, who got the idea towrite his genre-defining Hiroshima
after discovering the documents ofa Jesuit missionary who had lived
to tell. Hersey, with two years ofexperience as a war correspondent,
in both Europe and the Pacific, andone of the few journalists permitted
entry into Hiroshima early in theoccupation, was commissioned by The
New Yorker to write a series of articles
about nuclear devastation. Hiroshima,
constructed entirely from Hersey’s
interviews with six blast survivors,
was so shocking that The New Yorker
published the entire 31,000-word
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 9piece as a stand-alone article in its
August 31, 1946 edition, before it was
released as a book that November.
In predictable fashion, relying on
official accounts and honoring
the narrative of wartime necessity,
which was part of a public relations
campaign endorsed by the U.S. State
Department from the fall of 1945,
The Atlantic ran its own article on
December 1, 1946. The piece justified
the bomb because it supposedly
stopped an impending invasion of
the Japanese home islands, one thatwould have killed tens of thousandsof Americans pitted against Japanese“peasants, and the ignorant masses,”
blind followers who simply placed novalue on life. The rhetoric was crucial,
and would eventually be employedthroughout the Cold War against
other Asians, particularly in the
Korean and Vietnam wars to come.

Thaddeus Pope (www.britishphotojournalist.com)

As for the actual, intended U.S.-led
operation, codenamed Olympic, andslated for November 1945 against theJapanese home island of Kyushu, theprojected casualty levels were higher
than The Atlantic had assumed: atleast an estimated 150,000 Americans
for the entire campaign, and aminimum of 600,000 Japanese in justthe first month of the operation. It wasalso true that the Japanese Imperial
war planners, rather than negotiatingsome kind of end to the war, partly
to protect their own power and toprotect themselves from postwar
prosecution, were training (exploiting)thousands of children and the elderly
in how to fight with bamboo spears
against American flamethrowers andmachine guns.
At the same time, the binary of either
the Invasion or the Bomb no longer
holds much weight among scholars.
President Harry Truman, General
George Marshall, Admiral Ernest
King, and other leading politicaland military figures were, based on
the intelligence they were receiving
during the summer of 1945, alreadyhaving serious doubts about Olympic.
Given the severity and effectivenessof the U.S. blockade-and-bombing
strategy up to that point, it seems
reasonable that Olympic would havebeen at least postponed and probably
even cancelled, with or without theatomic bomb.
On the Japanese side, according
to the minutes of the Imperial
Administration emergency session on
the night of August 9-10, called in the

If the atomic bomb
played any role inending the Asia-Pacificwar, it was to hasten
imperial and militaryleaders to a ceasefire.
wake of the Nagasaki bomb and theSoviet invasion of Manchuria, bothearlier that same day, the principle
concern, particularly with the Emperor,
was the “domestic situation”. The
military and imperial administrators
had been in agreement for months
that Japan would eventually surrender.
The terms of that surrender remained
an obstacle, with the military
entrenched in an Armageddon
strategy of undermining the American
will to fight by inflicting as many
casualties as possible, which entailed
the sacrifice of millions of Japanese
civilians in the process. Recognising anation on the verge of mass starvation,
the Showa Emperor (Hirohito), who
was perhaps more responsible for aceasefire than anyone, foresaw internal
political and social collapse if Japan
continued diverting all of its resources
to the military’s gambit. Given theoutcomes of Germany and Russia in
World War One, both of which hadcollapsed under similar circumstances,followed by the destruction of theirrespective imperial institutions, theJapanese emperor invariably found a
better option for preserving his own
legacy in the Americans than at home.
If the atomic bomb played any role inending the Asia-Pacific war, it was tohasten imperial and military leaders toa ceasefire. In the process, hundredsof-thousands of civilians perished,
and many more would suffer in theyears to come. If the bombs had notbeen used, and no Allied invasion
ultimately imminent, the protracted
blockade-and-bombing
campaign
would have invariably killed a different
set of hundreds-of-thousands. It
might have also changed the natureof the postwar era, forcing the
Occupation government to contend
with additional millions of starving
and homeless, and with a militarythat had been ordered to surrenderout of political and logistical coercion,rather than by military necessity or
defeat – the exact problem that had
faced Germany after World War One,
which had led to the rise of National
Socialism and hardened militarism.
Ultimately, the narratives that havegrown up around the atomic weapons
used against Japan have historiesof their own, each influenced bypolitical, social, economic, moral, andspeculative arguments. Though someof these are more accurate, telling,
and better researched than others, adefinitive account will likely neveremerge. Histories of controversial
subjects tend to be histories of
relevance and perspective, of agendas
and power structures. In the quest
for narrative coherence, they often
devolve into simplistic interpretations
misrepresented as ones of clarity.
Seven decades since the end of theturmoil, and drawing on records thatpaint more detailed strokes, it is best
to realise which narratives remain
overly simplistic and belong in the binof myth.
Theron Fairchild is currently
a lecturer in the Department
of International Business andManagement, Kanagawa University,
Japan. Previously he has worked at
the Visual History Foundation in
Los Angeles. He is also a publishedscience fiction author with academic
interests in science, creative writing,and synthetic development. A
referenced version of this article is
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 11

American Caesar

General Douglas MacArthur’s Administration of Japan

By David McCormack
By the summer of 1945, much ofJapan lay in ruins, its cities having
been incinerated by the American
bomber fleets. Industry had been
shattered, the merchant fleet all but
destroyed. Two million people had
perished, a third of them civilians.
Never in modern times had a country
been so devastated by war. On
August 15, Emperor Hirohito brokewith tradition by broadcasting to
12 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

the nation. His address was couchedin courtly language pepperedwith classical phrases rather thancolloquial Japanese. Despite this,many understood his meaning
when he informed the stunnedand bewildered nation that, “tocontinue the war would ultimately
mean the extinction of our people
and the utter destruction of humancivilisation”. However, not all heeded

the Emperor’s message.
On August 22, Air Corps units
based on the Kamikaze home base at
Atsugi airfield near Tokyo dropped
leaflets over the capital encouraging
the population to “rise up against
their leaders and repel the invasion”.
This call to arms was unsuccessful as
it failed to inspire a general uprising.
However, small military cliques in thecapital did respond, one such groupconsisting of 400 soldiers raised
the banner of revolt by occupying
Ueno Hill. When ordered to desistby higher authorities, the soldiers,
who were mainly officers, committed
suicide. That same day, police
units attacked an “Ultra Rightist
Brotherhood” making a stand on

By the following day,order had been restored
and imperial edicts were
issued to military units tocomply with Allied orders
for them to lay down theirarms.
Atago Hill. By the following day,order had been restored and imperial
edicts were issued to military units tocomply with Allied orders for themto lay down their arms.
For many ordinary Japanese people,
the end of the war had been greetedwith a strong sense of release, followed
by a search for answers as to why
the war had been lost. The people’smood had been keenly observed by
Kido Koichi, the lord keeper of theprivy seal and the Emperor’s closest
confidante, who noted in a diary
entry how the people “felt a greatburden had been lifted”. With thelifting of that burden, the Japanesepeople contemplated the prospectof occupation with a combination ofrelief and fear of what was to come.
The occupation of Japan was tobe administered exclusively by theUnited States, as such there were
to be no zones of occupation as inEurope. The Soviets had wanted
to station troops in Japan, but werepolitically outmanoeuvred. For its
part, Great Britain, the long time
ally of the United States, was too
exhausted to stake any territorial
claims. The U.S. administration was
to be headed by General Douglas
MacArthur. He was the obvious
choice for this demanding role, anable and eloquent administrator,

MacArthur also displayed theimperious aloofness with which theJapanese people could both identify
and respect.
The occupation began in a low-key
manner on August 28, when a C-46
Skytrain transport aircraft circled
the Atsugi airfield, before finally
touching down at 08.28 hrs. This
was the lead aircraft in a flight of 16
bearing Colonel Tench, commanding
his advance party on behalf of theSupreme Commander for the AlliedPowers. The landing of the C-46
caused some anxiety on the groundas the United States representatives
were one hour early and no one
was ready to receive them. General
Seizo Arisue commanding the
Atsugi reception committee quickly
recovered his composure and after
assembling his reception committee
set off to meet the American
representatives. After proffering a

GeneralHeadquarters. Thanks
to a pervading tone of increased
co-operation and goodwill, rapid
progress was made. During thecourse of discussions, a second flightof 15 aircraft arrived over the airfield
at 09.35 hrs, followed by a third at
11.00 hrs. Meanwhile, Japaneselabour battalions set about repairingand lengthening the runways toaccommodate
additional
B-29
and C-54 aircraft. The work wascompleted quickly, much to Tench’s
relief as his advance group had as yet
established little more than a toehold
on Japanese territory.
On August 30, elements of 11th
Airborne Division deplaned on
the newly repaired runways from07.00 hrs onwards, thus providing
a much more substantial occupying
force. One of the first aircraft toland carried Major General Joe
Swing, the division’s battle-hardenedWith his corncob pipe clenched firmly between his
teeth, MacArthur decended the ladder to shake handswith Eichelberger, saying “Bob, from Melbourne toTokyo is a long way, but this seems to be the end of
the road”.
stiff salute to Tench, the Americangroup was led towards a tent in thecentre of the airfield which served as
the reception area. The atmospherein the tent was frosty, strict military
protocol taking precedence. When
Tench was offered a drink of orange
punch and some food, he instinctively
refused, thinking that it had beenpoisoned. Only after Arisue took adrink himself did Tench relent with aresultant relaxation of tension within
the tent.
Following a perceptible thaw inthe atmosphere, discussions beganwith Tench outlining his mission
as being to reconnoiter the airfield
to determine suitability for follow
up operations, establish supply
and support services, coordinate
improvements on the airfield andto establish communications withcommanding officer. Swing assumedcommand from Tench and beganconferring with Arisue regarding
arrangements for General Robert
Eichelberger’s imminent arrival, andthat of MacArthur, who was expected
later that day. Swing’s four enginedtransport aircraft were landing every
two to three minutes, bringing in
additional troops and supplies.
The last C-54 to land was
MacArthur’s personal aircraft Bataan
II, in which he was discussing thefuture administration of Japan
with his military secretary andchief of psychological warfare
Brigadier General Bonner Fellers.
After touching down at 14.29 hrs,
MacArthur paused at the top of theladder and was heard to say “This is
the payoff ”. With his corncob pipe
clenched firmly between his teeth,
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 13

MacArthur descended the ladderto shake hands with Eichelberger,
saying “Bob, from Melbourne toTokyo is a long way, but this seems tobe the end of the road”. A cavalcadeof decrepit old cars and trucks,
led somewhat incongruously by aspluttering bright red fire engine
ferried the Supreme Commander andhis staff to the New Grand Hotel,
serving as temporary headquarters
in Yokohama. MacArthur was shown
to room 315 personally by the hotel
owner Yozo Namura. A further 159
general officers were quartered at thehotel, including the former British
commander of Singapore, General
Arthur E. Percival and the defenderof Corregidor, General Jonathan
Wainwright.

When a Congressional Committee
later questioned MacArthur’s actions,his answer was unequivocal, “give me
bread or give me bullets”. The arrivalof transports laden with supplies did
much to reduce Japanese anxietiesand paved the way for the occupation
to proceed in an orderly fashion.
The American troops were, on the

MacArthur quickly established his
administrative priorities and saw his
first task as feeding the population. To
this end he established army kitchensand brought in 3,500,000 tons offood from bases across the Pacific.

whole, well behaved (MacArthur
had introduced the death penalty
for rape), and the population readily
accepted the security offered by the
new administration.

14 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

MacArthur also
displayed theimperious aloofness
with which theJapanese people
could both identify
and respect.

The occupation may be divided into
four distinct phases: demobilisation,
constitutional and religious reform,
political reform and economic reform.
The first phase, that of disarming andrepatriating in excess of 6,000,000
soldiers was carried out within a year.
The General Staff was abolished andmilitary officers barred from public
service. War criminals were brought
before an international tribunal,
seven leading personalities including
General Tojo were hanged.
The second phase began with ameeting between MacArthur and
the Japanese Foreign Minister,
Mamoro Shigemitsu, on September
3. During the meeting Shigemitsi
stated the Emperor’s determination
to cooperate and assured MacArthurthat the government “stood readyand eager to do his bidding”.
Shigemitsu was successful inpersuading MacArthur to shelveplans to implement direct militaryrule stating that the most effective

method of enforcing the Potsdam
protocols was to work directly“through the Japanese government
instructed by the Emperor”. This
scenario fitted in with MacArthur’splans, and so the scene was set for his
historic meeting with the incumbent
of the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Two weeks after his meeting with
Shigemitsu, MacArthur had his
first face to face meeting with
the Emperor at the United States
Embassy in Tokyo. The Emperor
arrived with his retinue dressedin a rather formal black ensemble,
which provided a stark contrast with
MacArthur’s more casual appearance.
To many Japanese officials, the image

charter. The so called “Peace Clause”,
enshrined within Article 9 of theconstitution, effectively outlawed war
as a means of settling international
disputes. Article 9 proscribed thepossession of the means to wage
aggressive war. However, theprovisions of the constitution did notin any way deny Japan’s inherent rightto self defence. As such, the Japanese
government subsequently interpreted
Article 9 as allowing them to possess
the minimum level of armed forces
and combat power needed to exercise
their right to self defence.

was issued as part of a New Year’s
statement on January 1, 1946. In
this declaration in the form of animperial rescript, he agreed to purge
himself of divine pretensions bystating that “the ties between us andour people have always stood upon
mutual trust and affection. They do
not depend upon mere legends andmyths. They are not predicated on thefalse conception that the Emperor is
divine”. By repudiating the conceptof being a living god, the Emperor
greatly facilitated the promulgationof the new constitution.

The militarists in Japan had decreedthat Shinto would be the state

The second change within thepolitical sphere came the abrogationof old laws and replacing them withnew civil and criminal codes. Reformof the civil code eliminated thelegal foundations of the patriarchal
family system, thus strengthening
the position of women in areas
such as inheritance and divorce.
In addition, long establishedauthoritarian structures such as theHome Ministry which controlled the
Police and prefectural governments
were abolished, the largest surviving
department being renamed theAutonomy Ministry. Political reform
served as the harbinger of economic
and social reform as American
planners had been correct in theirassumption that a more equitable
distribution of wealth, opportunityand power would ensure the futurestability of Japan as a peaceful anddemocratic nation.

Political reform served as the harbinger of
economic and social reform as American
planners had been correct in their assumptionthat a more equitable distribution of wealth,opportunity and power would ensure the futurestability of Japan as a peaceful and democraticnation.
of a tieless MacArthur wearing
a slightly creased uniform andtowering over the Emperor was
deeply humiliating, symbolising as
they saw it, his effective usurping of
the throne. Nonetheless, the meeting
went well, with MacArthur greetingthe Emperor with the words, “youare very, very welcome sir”. No
stenographic records were keptof the 50-minute meeting which
revolved around MacArthur’s desire
to promote the Emperor as “thefirst gentleman of Japan”. As such,the question of possible war crimes
charges were not raised as MacArthur
firmly believed that the Emperor not
only held the key to Japan’s surrender,
but also to postwar change.

religion. On December 15, the newadministration set about severing theclose ties between Shinto and the state.
The Directive for Disestablishmentof State Shinto was a powerfulindictment of the abuses of religion
by the state. Whilst not destroying
Shinto, the Directive sought to“prevent recurrence of the perversionof Shinto theory and beliefs into
militaristic and ultra-nationalist
propaganda designed to delude theJapanese people and lead them intowars of aggression”. Some elementsof Shinto were allowed to remain,
concurrent with the cleansing of
nationalist and militaristic elementsin the aforementioned Article 9 of
the constitution.

In keeping with MacArthur’s reform
priorities, a new constitution cameinto effect on May 3, 1947. Reforms
were largely carried out by Japanesebureaucrats, technocrats and outsideadvisors, with MacArthur’s staff
providing the directives. MacArthur
placed anti-militarist ideas at thevery centre of the new national

The third stage of instutionalisingreform involved two major changes
to Japan’s political structure. The
Emperor was not only reduced tobeing a symbol of the state withlittle political influence, but also to
being a mere mortal. His Humanity
Declaration, partly derived fromthe Five Charter Oath of 1868,

The fourth and final phase of theoccupation
authorities
reforms
began with a purge of the financial
magnates (Zaibatsu). The Zaibatsu
families had their assets frozen andthe bulk of their capital seized by
the government in a general levy.
Great families, such as the 17thcentury house of Mitsui faded into
economic and political obscurity. The
land reform programme improved
the situation of the tenant farmer.
Educational reform produced ageneration of students free from therestrictive discipline of the past.
In 1947, Washington began to
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 15

consider ways of bringing theoccupation to an end through apeace treaty. The Cold War was in
its infancy, tensions were growing
and Soviet Intransigence in agreeing
upon terms for a formal treaty would
prolong the occupation by several
years. Two external developments
served as catalysts for change, theinvasion of South Korea and thedismissal of MacArthur.

to the Veterans of Foreign Wars,
MacArthur outlined his ideas forunleashing the Nationalist forcesof Chiang Kai-Shek, against theCommunist regime of Mao Tse
Tung. He also wrote to Washington
urging pre-emptive strikes against
China’s war industries. Incredibly, heeven conceived of a plan to create a
impassable no man’s land on the 38th
parallel by sowing radioactive waste.

The invasion of South Korea by
the Soviet trained/armed North
Korean Army on June 25, 1950,
diverted Washington’s attention fromJapanese domestic affairs. MacArthurin his role as Commander in Chiefof the United States Far Eastern
Command, assumed control over
the United Nations force. The North
Korean Army had made rapid inroads,
establishing a perimeter aroundthe city of Pusan. MacArthur’s
response was to launch operation
Chromite, breaking out of the Pusan
perimeter, simultaneously carryingout amphibious landings at Inchon.
Operation Chromite was a resounding
success, transforming certain defeat
into a spectacular military victory.
In Washington, earlier fears that theNorth Korean invasion signalled ageneral Communist offensive proved
groundless. The Soviets distanced
themselves from the North Korean
regime, not wishing to commit
themselves to the Korean adventure.

In Washington, President Trumanstated that with the North
Korean forces driven back to theirstarting point, it was now time
to bring the war to a conclusion.
MacArthur responded with astream of statements criticising theWashington administration. Senator
Wayne Morse observed that theUnited States was in possession of
two distinct foreign policies, “ thatof General MacArthur and that of
the President”. On April 6, 1951,
President Truman held a meetingwith his closest advisors at the WhiteHouse. A decision was reached todismiss MacArthur from his posts,
with the proviso that it received
the support of the Joint Chiefsof Staff. Two days later, the Joint
Chiefs met in General Bradley’s
office in the Pentagon and following
two hours of discussion gave theirrecommendations that MacArthur
be dismissed on the basis of the needfor a commander more receptive
to control from Washington. In
Japan, the Emperor was successfully
taking on a more temporal roleby establishing himself as a manof the people, ironically at a time
when MacArthur was becoming
increasingly
unapproachable,
adopting the style of a colonialviceroy. Truman had never cared
for MacArthur, considering him
something of a primadonna. His
aloofness smacked of hubris andplayed a significant part in his
downfall. For the Japanese people
the dismissal of the American
Caesar provided a valuable insight
into the democratic process. A
military governor of great stature
had been replaced with apparent easeby a civilian government. General

The policymakers in Washington
were satisfied that the fightingin Korea had remained localised.
President Truman and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff regarded Korea as an
exercise in containment. This madefor a very frustrating war for someAmericans, MacArthur most of all.
The ambiguous nature of the war
fuelled Macarthur’s conviction that
the Washington administration had
been subverted by Communists andBritish Imperialists. In increasingly
theatrical tones, MacArthur issued
statements that ran contrary tocurrent U.S. policy. His belief thatthe war against the Communists in
Korea should be extended to China
became an obsession. In a letter

Ridgway was appointed to succeed
MacArthur at a time when thetransition from occupation to self
government was almost complete.
The signing of the peace treaty in
San Francisco on September 8 1951
paved the way for the formal transfer
of authority on April 28, 1952.
General MacArthur would returnhome as a hero. In a speech to theHouse of Representatives he would
draw a veil on his long career as asoldier. Taking inspiration from theold ballad “Old soldiers never die.
They just fade away”, MacArthur
closed by saying, “like the old soldierof that ballad, I now close my military
career and just fade away – an old
soldier who tried to do his duty as
God gave him the light to see that
duty. Goobye”. Thus ended the reignof the American Caesar.
As for the Emperor, his reign would
continue until his death at the age of
87 on January 7, 1987. The nature of
his wartime role remains somewhat
obscured. However, his six decades on
the throne can best be characterisedby the transition of a “sacred andinviolable” personage to that of aman of the people, one who served
his country gracefully as a symbol ofunity and national regeneration.
Following a career as a certifiedsocial worker David McCormack
graduated from Salford University
as a mature student with a first classhonours degree in Contemporary
Military and International History.
Since April 2012, Mr. McCormack
has worked as a military historianand battlefield guide with UKbased Leger Battlefield Tours.

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 17

Common Core’s Leviathan
Bill Gates and (Mis)Adventures within
American Public Education
by Craig Sower

18 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

Hewlett
Packard,HoughtonMifflin, McGraw-Hill, IBM, andPearson, to name but a few, haveinvested heavily in the curriculum
and infrastructure to implement
the CCSSI. This nexus between
Big Government and Big Businesshas spurred growing opposition
from a disparate group of parents,
teachers, and citizens. In something
akin to a secular miracle, unionised
public school teachers find common
cause with parochial schools andhomeschoolers in resisting standards,
curricula, and tests over which they
have had no say. Much of the debate
concerns substantive disagreements
over details of the standards. Vital asthese issues are, however, it is more
important for traditionalists andprogressives alike to focus instead on
the dubious process used to develop,
fund, and implement the CCSSI.
The system being put in place would
harm students, parents, teachers, andsociety no matter what the standards
finally contain. It behooves anyone
interested in liberal education to join
in stopping the CCSSI.

The debate over the Common Core
State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) is
not politics as usual. At first blush it
may appear to be just another round in
the 100-years’ war between progressive
and traditional educators, but on
closer inspection it is deeply weird.
Instead of the usual suspects divided
along predictable ideological lines,
the CCSSI has made unlikely alliesof groups with little else in common.
Proponents of the Core have included
Republican and Democrat governors,
the U.S. Department of Education(DOE), state DOEs, teachers unions,the mainstream media, and two of therichest men in the world,Warren Buffet
and Bill Gates. Large corporations
such as Exxon-Mobil, Microsoft,

Advocates claim the CCSSI is stateled, internationally benchmarked,
and based on the latest research,
yet it is none of those things. In
addition to manifest pedagogicalshortcomings, Common Core isdangerously close to an army of crony
capitalists, anxious to cash in on thebonanza of federal, state, and local
contracts. Critics charge the CCSSI
with doing for education what the
military-industrial complex has done

their activities are shielded from theoversight normally afforded civil
servants by public hearings, sunshine
laws, and FOIA requests. Unlike
regular government programs, the
CCSSI is opaque and unaccountable.
Equally important, top-down controlof the standards, curricula, and tests
will lead ineluctably to prescriptive
practices that reduce teachers toassembly-line workers punching out
widgets.

History
The story began in 2008, when thenArizona Governor Janet Napolitano,director of the National Governors
Association (NGA) Educational
Policy Division, created a taskforceof governors, education leaders, andcorporate CEOs to recommend
changes in science and math education.
The CCSSI’s Ur-document was thetaskforce report. After the report wasissued, three groups funded by theBill and Melinda Gates Foundation— the NGA, the Council of Chief
State School Officers (CCSSO), andAchieve, Inc. — formally joined forces
to make the goals of the report a reality.
The U.S. DOE began providing funds
in 2009.
Gates has been the driving force
behind the CCSSI. In addition
to creating and funding Achieve,
Inc., to draft the standards, he has
lobbied state and federal governments
to assure ongoing funding andcompliance with the program. On
July 21, 2009, a month after receiving

Gates has been the driving force behind the CCSSI.
In addition to creating and funding Achieve, Inc.,
to draft the standards, he has lobbied state andfederal governments to assure ongoing funding andcompliance with the program.
for defense – spawning expensive andwasteful boondoggles overseen byburgeoning bureaucracies that harm
the very people the system purports
to help. The groups pushing the Core
operate in a murky area between
government and business in which

commitments from 46 state governors
and CCSSOs (and a year before thefinal standards had even been written)
Gates told the National Conferenceof State Legislatures:“We’ll know we’ve succeeded when
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 19

This nexus between Big Government and Big Businesshas spurred growing opposition from a disparate groupof parents, teachers, and citizens. In something akinto a secular miracle, unionised public school teachers
find common cause with parochial schools andhomeschoolers in resisting standards, curricula, andtests over which they have had no say.
the curriculum and the tests arealigned to these standards. Secretary[of Education] Arne Duncan recently
announced that $350 million of thestimulus package will be used tocreate just these kinds of tests – nextgeneration assessments aligned to thecommon core. When the tests arealigned to the common standards, thecurriculum will line up as well – andthat will unleash powerful market
forces in the service of better teaching.
For the first time, there will be alarge base of customers eager to buy
products that can help every kid learn
and every teacher get better …”
Gates was forthright about thecreation of a huge captive market
paid for with billions of taxpayer
dollars. He was also frank aboutstandards being inextricably linked
to curricula and assessments. Despite
his candor on some issues, however,
the transparency of the process used
to write the standards is debatablesince deliberations were kept secret bymandatory confidentiality agreements.
Confidentiality is common in test
preparation, but the CCSSI is public
policy, which normally requires andbenefits from the input of people mostaffected by proposals. The CCSSI’s
authors may have reasoned (correctly)that had people understood thestandards they would have strangled
the Core in its crib. While the authors
may have been cagey about this, thestates also share the blame for failingto do due diligence before joining.
According to the Huffington Post, theObama administration incentivised
the CCSSI with its Race to the Top[RTTT] competition. Stunned by
the recession, cash-starved states
signed up before knowing what they
were getting into. Funding for RTTT
alone, announced in July 2009, was$4.35 billion, not including billions
20 | Eye Magazine Eighth Editionof state and local tax dollars used to
implement the CCSSI. To receive
federal funds, states were required toadopt the standards and join one of
two approved assessment consortia:
the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers(PARCC), or the Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium (SBAC).
These consortia began overseeing
high-stakes testing in 2014-15. The
U.S. DOE withheld funds from statesthat did not submit to the CCSSI(and PARCC or SBAC). Initially, 46
states and Washington, D.C. joined.
Minnesota, Nebraska, Virginia, andTexas refused. By February 2015,17 states had quit the consortia(New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee,
Oklahoma, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,
Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Florida,
Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, andAlaska). Four more are now undecided
or actively considering withdrawing(Massachusetts, New Jersey, Louisiana,
and Michigan). This 46 percent
dropout rate is telling. Many school(CCMS) and standards for English
language arts (ELA). The Gates
Foundation and its creature, Achieve,
Inc., probably selected the staff though
exactly who, how, why, and upon
what criteria the decisions were madeis unknown due to confidentiality
constraints. The members came mostly
from the staff of Achieve, Inc., andthree companies: American College
Testing (ACT), America’s Choice,
and College Board. Two Work Group
members were businessman David
Coleman, and Bennington College
professor Dr. Jason Zimba. Dr. Sandra
Stotsky and Dr. James Milgram werenamed to the 25-member CCSSO/NGA Validation Committee (VC) toreview the standards. In 2010, Stotsky
and Milgram, among others, refused
to approve the standards.
Coleman, a businessman with a
Masters degree in philosophy, was leadauthor of the ELA standards. Zimba,
Coleman’s friend and business partner,
was lead author of the CCMS. Their
Chicago company, Grow Network,

In their paper, Milgram and Stotsky explained that theyrefused to sign off on the CCSSI because the standards
are not rigorous and do not do what they purport to do,
districts have already spent millions
on new Core-aligned textbooks; thatmoney is gone, further locking theminto the untried standards. Regardless,half the states have quit. The moreteachers, parents, and state officials
learn about Common Core, the lessthey like it. Supporters say the CCSSI
is state-led and voluntary; critics
say federal funding is bribery andintimidation.
As Gates was addressing legislators
in 2009, the 24-member Standards
Development Work Group was writing
the Common Core math standards

had multimillion-dollar contracts
from 2001-04 with Chicago Public
Schools (CPS) when Arne Duncan
was CEO of CPS. In 2004, theysold their business to McGraw-Hill,
which continues to service CPS. It
sells copyrighted materials including“lesson plans, and curriculum resources… identical to those now being usedwith Common Core,” according
to EAG News. Coleman has since
become president of College Board
where, in accordance with plansannounced by Gates, he is revising
the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)to bring it into line with the Core.
These changes in the SAT are seen as
crucial since methods embedded in thestandards would thereby be codified
in college admissions tests. Changing
the tests effectively forces states tochange curricula or see students fail.
The proposed ELA and American
history standards have been severely
criticised, but since literature andhistory are fuzzier than math, we will
limit ourselves here to the CCMS andSAT.

in math in my judgment. There are
the kind of groovy, understanding
people, then there are the mean,rote people.” According to experts,
however, the reform math in CCMS
does not add up. They say the standards
fail to prepare students for careers inscience, technology, engineering, andmath (STEM), and are a retreat fromcurrent best practice in many states.
Dr. Milgram, the only mathematician
among the members of the VC, isprofessor of mathematics emeritus at
Stanford University, and served on theAdvisory Board of NASA. In 2011,
he told Texas legislators he refused
to approve the standards because
committee members wanted to makeOn November 29, 2012, Coleman them as “unchallenging as possible”
declared his support for “reform math” and to make “sure their favorite topics
thus: “There are two types of people were present, and handled the way

Groovy Maththey like.” He explained, “by the end of
fifth grade the material being covered… is more than a year behind mosthigh-achieving countries … By theend of seventh grade Core Standards
are roughly two years behind.” The
CCMS delay or eliminate highschool requirements in Algebra I,
Geometry, and Algebra II, and exclude
Euclidean geometry including proofs
and deductive reasoning. While mostcountries expect high school graduates
to have passed calculus, the CCMS do
not even mention it.
Dr. Stotsky is professor of education
reform emerita at Arkansas University,
a former member of the VC, and former
Senior Associate Commissioner of the
Massachusetts DOE where she wasin charge of developing that state’s
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 21

leading ELA program. The literatureheavy curriculum she developed for
Massachusetts is credited with thatstate’s first-place ranking in national
reading scores. Like Milgram, she
refused to approve the final Core
standards. In a white paper prepared for
the Pioneer Institute titled, Lowering
the Bar: How Common Core Mathfails to prepare high school students for
STEM, Milgram and Stotsky tackled
the issue of whether the standards
are capable of accomplishing theirdeclared goal of making American
students college- and career-ready.
In their paper, Milgram and Stotsky
explained that they refused to sign off
on the CCSSI because the standards
are not rigorous and do not do what
they purport to do, despite repeatedassurances to the contrary. Stotsky
and Milgram’s detailed critiques to theWork Group were ignored without
comment.
Milgram and Stotsky’s paper details a
dispute over comments made by Jason
Zimba, lead writer of the CCMS. In
2010, Zimba told the Massachusetts
Board of Elementary and Secondary
Education that “the concept of
22 | Eye Magazine Eighth Editioncollege readiness [in the standards] isminimal and focuses on non-selective
colleges.” In 2013, Zimba claimed hewas misquoted. Fortunately, a videoof the meeting exists including his
exchange with Stotsky, who was amember of the board. In his opening
remarks, Zimba said, “We haveagreement to the extent that it’s afuzzy definition, that the minimallycollege-ready student is a student who
passed Algebra II.” When Stotsky
asked him to clarify his remarks hestated, “Well, for the colleges mostkids go to, but not for the colleges
most parents aspire to.” Stotsky: “Notfor STEM? Not for international
competitiveness?” Zimba: “Not only
not for STEM, it’s also not for selective
colleges … whether you are going to
be an engineer or not, you’d better
have precalculus.” Stotsky objected
to Zimba’s claim the standards makestudents college-ready.
Milgram also coauthored a Pioneer
Institute white paper with Richard
Phelps titled The Revenge of K-12:
How Common Core and the new SAT
lower college standards in the U.S.
Phelps is the author of four books onstandardised testing and founded theNonpartisan Education Review. Their
paper details many discrepancies
between the declared values of the
CCSSI and the standards produced.
Phelps and Milgram were especiallycritical of the lack of qualifications of
the lead writers of the standards. In
particular, they noted that Coleman
and Zimba were former business
partners and that Coleman has“no teaching experience in K-12 orabove.” Furthermore, they reported
that Zimba “had never written K-12
standards before or studied thestandards of high-achieving countries… Both he and Coleman were likely
selected to be standards writers by the[Gates Foundation].” Other writers
for CCMS and ELA are closely
connected to the Gates Foundation,
but similarly ill equipped for writing
usable standards. Milgram and Phelps
found no evidence that the CCMS
standards had been compared withinternational standards, much lessbenchmarked. To the contrary, theyfound the standards inferior to “Korea,
Japan, China, Singapore, [and] theNetherlands.” Phelps and Milgram

wrote, “The CCMS ended up as apolitical compromise. The document
was designed to look attractive to botheducation schools and content experts.
However, in mathematics, these aremostly incompatible objectives.” They
concluded that the standards are“poorly written and very confusing.”
Yet another issue raised by Phelps andMilgram is the ruinous effect of likely
changes in the SAT. They wrote, “thegreatest harm to higher education
may accrue from the alignment of the
SAT to Common Core’s high school
standards, converting the SAT froman adaptable test predictive of college
work to an inflexible retrospective testaligned to and locking in a low levelof mathematics.” There are two kindsof tests, they wrote: “Achievement
tests are retrospective, they measureknowledge already learned, whereas
aptitude tests are predictive, measuring
readiness for future activities.” The two
types of tests have different purposes
and measure different, thoughoverlapping, skill sets. To create ahigh-quality aptitude test, the makers
correlate items on the test with later
performance. They explained the key
differences: “Predictive tests can beperiodically adjusted to optimise theirpredictive validity (tossing poorly
predictive test items and drafting
new ones); retrospective tests areless flexible — their test items mustcover the high school content domain,whether or not they are predictive.
Further, in the case of … PARCC and
SBAC, they are required to test thematerial listed in the … standards.”
Since its inception, the SAT has
been a predictive test, something
Coleman intends to change. Phelps
and Milgram wrote, “On March 5,2014, Coleman announced plannedchanges in the Mathematics SAT.”
While the precise questions have yet
to be unveiled, the changes appear
to resemble the 1989 and 2000
standards of the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
that moved away from assessing
mathematical skills and techniques
to assessing philosophical ideas aboutmathematics. This does not bode well,since the NCTM standards to which
they referred “met catastrophic failure
after lowering outcomes in every statethat attempted” to implement them.
According to Phelps and Milgram,reform math was too groovy even for
California: “The NCTM standards
were adopted there in 1992. By 1996
the resulting problems had become soacute that a rebellion led by parents
and the state’s high tech industries
forced the state to create newstandards.” Maryland and Kentucky
suffered similar fates in the 1990s.
The scholarly work of Stotsky,Milgram,and Phelps is in stark contrast to
Coleman’s views, which one must readto fully appreciate. On November 29,
2012, a few weeks after becoming headof College Board, Coleman spoke at
the Brookings Institution. According
to the Brookings website, Coleman
explained: “assessment is an extremely
powerful signal for instruction, but
you’ve got to own it. You’ve got to
cut the [expletive] when you’re like,ooh we wrote this test and all thesepeople are doing test preparation.
They shouldn’t test preparation. They
should look at the standards. I mean,
is it a — like [expletive] you, like no.
I hate that disingenuousness. If you
put something on an assessment, in
my view, you are ethically obligatedto take responsibility that kids willpractice it 100 times. So when I lookover an instrument like SAT, I wantto say to myself is it worth it. Is thiswork worth doing?” Maybe Coleman
got carried away; perhaps he did not
yet grasp the function of the SAT;
or maybe he was, like, stricken withlogorrhea.
Parents should be troubled by the factthat their children’s education is in thehands of unqualified and unelected
people like Gates, Coleman, andZimba. Teachers should be troubled by
the fact that an assessment system run
by unaccountable elites will inevitably
lead to a prescriptive national
curriculum with neither local control,
nor room for the reflective practiceof teaching. The standards belong to
the CCSSO and NGA; publishers
hold proprietary rights to curricula

and textbooks; and assessments are
owned by testing companies. Teachers
can modify exactly none of this. Evenif everyone agreed with NCTM’sreform math, Coleman’s groovy math,and turning the SAT upside-down,
the fact that the system empowers an
inscrutable, centralised bureaucracy
impervious to input even from its own
Validation Committee should give us
pause.
We must assume that the roadto CCSSI was paved with goodintentions. The idea of common
educational
goals, anational
curriculum to reach them, and arobust data collection system to trackit all must have made sense to Gates,
Coleman, and Zimba. Surely they
did not anticipate the reaction theirplans have elicited. Advocates claim
Common Core is independent of thefederal government, internationallybenchmarked, and based on research,
but as we have seen, it is far from it.
Supporters use buzzwords like global
competitiveness, 21st-century, criticalthinking, career- and college-ready,and higher-order thinking. However,students, parents, and teachers arelearning the hard way that calling
something magic does not make it
so. There are better ways to build acurriculum than corporate cronyism
and secret standards. The question
remains: Is this the best we can do?
Clearly it is not. The CCSSI should be
rejected on the merits because it fails
to provide for a high-quality liberal
education for American children.
Prof. Craig Sower is a Professor
of English at Shujitsu University,
Okayama, Japan, where he has taught
writing and teacher education at
graduate and undergraduate levels
since 1998.

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 23

Common Core’s Panopticon

The Freedom to Teach or be Imprisoned by Data

The Common Core State Standards
Initiative (CCSSI) has created asystem to produce and sell standards,
curriculum materials, textbooks, andassessments. Working with federal
agencies and corporate sponsors, the
CCSSI has foisted itself upon half thestates.The last piece of the system is datacollection. Bill Gates and government
officials have long sought to track
students’ beliefs and performance.
Now they would like to micromanage
educators, as well. This puts the CCSSI
on a collision course with parents,
teachers, and civil libertarians who do
not trust the government to use suchdata wisely. According to the Gates
Foundation website, on July 21, 2009,
Gates told the National Conference ofState Legislatures:“Common standards define what thestudents need to learn; robust datasystems tell us whether they’re learning
it — and they tell us a whole lot more
24 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

than that … The stimulus package
contains funding for longitudinal datasystems; I hope you will use this funding
to support systems that track student
performance from early childhood
education through high school andcollege and into the workplace …
All states and districts should collectcommon data on teachers and students.
We need to define the data in astandardised way, we need to collect allof it for all of our students … Of course,
if you do build this system and get thisdata, you may have to deal with people
who don’t want you to use it.”“Dealing with people” who do not wantstrangers using their children’s datasounds a bit ominous, but at least Gates
was honest about it. Unfortunately
for supporters, the CCSSI has comeonline at a time when distrust of thegovernment is high. The recent scandal
with Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
agents using confidential taxpayer

information to punish citizens whose
political beliefs differ from their own
makes people nervous about the
government collecting sensitive data onchildren. Assurances that bureaucrats
only want to help are likely to fall on deaf
ears, especially in light of what federal
agencies have already written and put
into motion. In February 2013, theU.S. Department of Education (DOE)
Office of Educational Technology
issued a report titled “Promoting
Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance:
Critical Factors for Success in the 21stCentury”. The report focuses on how
fine-grained data about students can begathered, stored, processed, and used. It
reads in part:“[M]easurement may focus onsequences of behaviors, emotions,
physiologicalreactions,
and/orthoughts that unfold over time
during learning, extracting indicatorsof persistence and giving up. New

technologies using educational data
mining and ‘affective computing’ (thestudy and development of systems anddevices that can recognise, interpret,
process, and simulate aspects of humanaffect) are beginning to focus on‘micro-level’ moment-by-moment data
within digital and blended-learning
environments to provide feedback toadapt learning tasks.” The technicalimplements to accomplish this areshown on page 44 of the report (seeabove).
The report goes on to say, “Ed Dieterleand Ash Vasudeva of the [Gates
Foundation] point out that researchers… are beginning to use multiple
methods to explore how specific brain
activity is correlated to other cognitive
affective indicators that are practicalto measure in school settings.” Theauthors briefly mention ethics in asection titled, “Ethical Considerations
for New Types of Personal Data.” It
reads: “As new forms of measurement
emerge and new types of personal data
become available, the field must also
deal with critical ethical considerations… especially when leveraging data
available in the ‘cloud’ that users may
or may not be aware is being mined… Learners and educators have thepotential to get forms of feedback
about their behaviors, emotions,
physiological responses, and cognitive
processes that have never been available
before … developers must carefully
consider the impacts of releasing suchdata, sometimes of a sensitive nature,and incorporate feedback mechanismsthat are valuable, respectful, and serve
to support productive mindsets.” Theconcern seems to be that students,
parents, and teachers may be incapableof handling the information collected
about them.
A search of this 126-page report finds
the word “ethical” used four times
including in the title of the above section
and the table of contents. On the other
hand, the report is expansive about thedata they think should be gatheredon students, including their “beliefs,
attitudes, dispositions, values, and waysof perceiving oneself.” Gathering suchinformation violates a slew of existingfederal regulations including the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act of1974. As with laws forbidding federal
involvement with K-12 curriculum,
however, the DOE is skirting the needfor parents’ permission before collecting
data. In effect, the information belongs
to whoever gathers it; they may retain,
dispense, or use it as they see fit. The
National Center for Education
Statistics has taken the position that

Bill Gates andgovernment officials
have long sought totrack students’ beliefs
and performance.
Now they would liketo micromanage
educators, as well.
parental approval is required only forstudies funded directly by the U.S.
DOE, and therefore does not apply todata collected by other entities.
The now-defunct private database
inBloom, funded by the Gates
Foundation, was just such an entity.
Begun in 2011, inBloom was intended

as a repository of data collected on
American schoolchildren to be madeavailable to “interested parties,” thedefinition of which was so broad as tobe meaningless. This is a continuationof corporate data mining done in theprivate sector, but applied to the captive
market created by CCSSI, and toteachers. The tactic used is to provide
schools with “free” services like email
and then mine data on users. Google,
Microsoft, and Yahoo already employ
sophisticated algorithms to comb alldata collected on individual users —emails, web searches, websites visited— and use the results. Orwell’s Thought
Police were less thorough. Clearly
the effort to correct Big Brother’s
shortcomings is well under way.
One shudders to think where we areheaded. Do children have any right toprivacy, or does “affective computing”
preempt it? Will teachers remain free
to adjust lesson plans to better serve
students, or will a new Taylorism be thewave of the future? Will the new mindreading technologies obviate the needfor the reflective practice of teaching?
Are there any limits on government or
on how intrusive technocrats can be?
How much data is enough, and will thesame people control it as controlled the
IRS files? The Panopticon planned bydevelopers is one more reason parents,
teachers, and citizens should oppose
the CCSSI.
Prof. Craig Sower is a Professor
of English at Shujitsu University,
Okayama, Japan, where he has taught
writing and teacher education at
graduate and undergraduate levels
since 1998.
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 25

By Qiang Fu

Shopping in the Metropolis
Consumerism in Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the
Dark and Good Morning, MidnightOver the past few decades, theimperial dimensions of Jean Rhys’s
Voyage in the Dark (1934) andGood Morning, Midnight (1938)
have received significant criticalattention. While Jean Rhys’s
apparently anti-imperialist politicalviews have already been traced in her

Although she always
rejected him in thepast this time, Sasha
embraces him andpulls him onto the bed,
saying, “Yes---yes--yes.”novels, critics like Veronica Marie
Gregg and Mary Lou Emery havealso acknowledged the intimacy
of complicity and critique in Jean
Rhys’s narratives of England andWest India in her descriptions of
the British Empire. As these critics
suggest in separate arguments, suchcomplexities place her texts in acontested middle ground, relying
upon the very textual tropes of
empire and colony to formulate
postcolonial literature.
Voyage in the Dark tells us a story ofa Creole girl named Anna Morgan
who, like Rhys herself, falls inlove with a wealthy man only tobe abandoned later, resorting toprostitution in order to keep on
living. Anna’s dark voyage, from achorus girl to Walter’s lover andfinally to a prostitute, ends with acatastrophic abortion, after which
Anna breaks down completely
both mentally and physically. The

heroine of Good Morning, Midnight,
Sasha Jansen, is the eldest of Rhys’s
female protagonists. When thestory begins, Sasha is on a two-weektrip to a Paris that she knows well.
During her stay, she remembers
rooms, streets, and scenes fromher past, meets a few foreigners,
has several unpleasant encounterswith the man next door whom she
dubs the commis voyageur, andmeets a gigolo who later attempts
to rape her in her room. Sasha
drives him away but later regrets it.
She opens the door hoping he will
come back again, but the commis
enters instead. Although she always
rejected him in the past, this time
Sasha embraces him and pulls him
onto the bed, saying, “Yes---yes--yes.”
Both these two novels register
commerce and consumer capitalism
as part of the literal and figurative
administration of empire and thearticulations of Englishness with

racial categories. On the other hand,
Jean Rhys’s texts use the tropes ofthe marketplace in ambivalent ways,
challenging us to determine thestatus of resistance and complicity
within capitalist and imperialist
regimes. Voyage in the Dark andGood Morning, Midnight enables us
to trace the effects of a consumer
capital which affects colonised
women ideologically, psychically,
politically,
andeconomically,placing them in an impasse where
they cannot obtain what they desire
through consumption.

Dream and Promise
Alissa Karl (2009) precisely notes
how consumer capital “promises
belonging to the foreign and in thiscase explicitly colonial woman” inRhys’s Voyage in the Dark. Shopping
falsely promises Anna Morganwith a way that she can locate
herself in England and assume
an English identity. Fellow critic

Anna’s dark voyage, from a chorus girl to
Walter’s lover and finally to a prostitute, ends
with a catastrophic abortion, after which Anna
breaks down completely both mentally andphysically.
which the empire is intimately
linked, and which place colonial
women into a difficult plight. On
the one hand, Jean Rhys’s depictionsof consumerism and commerceindicate an evolving capitalist
culture, which is related to thedesignations of class, gender andAnna Snaith (2005) pointed outthat Anna quickly recognises thisform of dressing up as a potentialand effective way “out of her fixity”;
in other words, as a way to change
her fate. With the money given
to her by Walter, she purchases
new clothes, which represent a reEye Magazine Eighth Edition | 27

Anna herself
understands ‘purity’as it circulates in themarketplace, yet as
it is naturalised bycapital and empire.
invention. In the shop, she thinks:“This is a beginning. Out of thiswarm room that smells of fur I’ll
go to all the lovely places I’ve ever
dreamt of. This is the beginning.”
Here, at the “scene of the sale”
Anna imagines her possibilities interms of consumer practice thatwill enable her to start a new life inEngland. For both critics Snaith andKarl, this dress shop scene indicatesthe promises of consumption.
Karl contends that such instancesindicate “not how Anna wants tobecome ladylike, but rather how sheunderstands discipline as a matterof displaying commodities andavoiding visual conspicuousness.”
However, it is my own claim that
Anna wants to become ladylike inorder to conform to the English
discipline and mores, believing it
as the only effective way to change,even momentarily.

appearance reflects her feeling of
exclusion from English culture andidentity. Feeling that the houses are
sneering at her and that she will belaughed at for her inappropriate
clothing, Anna is ashamed ofher “hideous underclothes” anddetermines to “do anything for good
clothes.” According to Rosalind
Coward (1985), women are always
subordinated to and disempoweredby the gaze in a consumerist context.

Furthermore,Annadepends
on men for economic survival,
which determines her status as asexualised commodity whose socialand economic currency fluctuateswith male desire. The scrutiny
directed toward her body not only
commodifies her femininity but
also confirms men’s control andmastery behind the gaze. Walter, forexample, speculates about Anna’sbody; he notes Anna’s white teeth
during their first encounter andcomments twice on her teeth, as aslave owner would while purchasingslaves. Anna survives in the novel by
exposing herself to specularisationand commodification in order tosecure her economic circulation.
The end of the novel affirms thisBy showing how commodities cycle of commodification andshape her characters’ self-invention, desire when the doctor remarks
Rhys identifies the sexualisation of after abortion, that Anna should
foreign women. On the one hand, be “[r]eady to start all over again in
fashion and commodity locate no time.” This remark suggests thatthem, allowing them to re-invent Anna will continue to circulate asthemselves. On the other hand, a sexual commodity. When women
however, being alone and foreign, from the fringes of empire try tothese characters are extinguished conform or assimilate into theby the fashion commodities, dominant society, these women,
which increase the awareness of with a colonial perspective, try toforeignness. For instance, when apply the dominant viewpoint into
Anna returns from the dress shop, their own bodies. Meanwhile, thedressed up to the nines, the landlady consumer relationship, with men
concludes, “I don’t want no tarts as consumers of women’s bodies,in my house, so now you know.” establishes a dynamic of colonial
The irony is that the mannequin visuality in the metropole as well as
in the dress shop is not considered the specific procedures of consumer
as a tart although being clothed capitalist markets.
in an identical dress. In addition,
Anna’s anxiety over her ladylike The consumerist masculine gaze
28 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

that dominates Voyage in the Dark
and Good Morning, Midnightrecalls the cultural negotiationsof gender. The visual norm, which
is based specifically upon Anna
and Sasha’s being looked at, bothkeeps them separate and controls
them. When Sasha leaves theshop after her hat-buying, she ispleased because no one stares at her
anymore. Anna worries about her
looks and clothes when she meets
Walter one evening and is glad that
Walter makes no comment on her
appearance. Both women adjust
themselves to this form of visual
regulation, where the display offashion commodities satiricallytraps those marginalised women
into inconspicuous circulation.
Therefore, the marketplace enables
economic authority to produce a
gendered logic of consumerism.
Furthermore, the importance ofvisual regulation for the shopper
cannot be denied, as Rachel Bowlby(1985), stresses:
Consumer culture transforms thenarcissistic mirror into a shop
window, the glass which reflects
and idealizes image of the woman(or man) who stands before it, inthe form of the model she could
buy or become. Through the glass,
the woman sees what she wants andwhat she wants to be.
The shop window raises Anna’s
aspirations and fantasies witha transformative power, which
can bring her an altered identity.
While shopping gives Anna
the hope for change, the act ofgazing into the shop windows
foreshadows the impossibility ofsuch a transformation: “The shopwindows sneering and smiling inyour face, and then you look at theskirt of your costume, all crumpled
at the back.” The shop window evenstrips her naked and sees throughher “hideous underclothes.” This isa kind of self-reflexive female gaze.
Her desire for fine clothes causes
her financial dependence on Walter.
As a result, she has to acquiremoney to dress well in order to sellher body to attain more money.

to maintain her beauty in order tosustain herself financially and survive
in sexual circulation. For example, in
Voyage in the Dark, when Anna meets
her stepmother Hester, she is afraid
to tell Hester that she is living on
the money from Walter: I sat here.

I didn’t know what to say. There
wasn’t anything to say. I kept on
wondering whether she would ask
Both Voyage in the Dark and Good me what I was living on. ‘What

Circulation and Aging

Morning, Midnight depicts a woman
who trades on her body and has

is Purity? For Thirty-five Years theAnswer has been Bourne’s Cocoa.’

Thirty-fiveyears…Fancy
being
thirty-five years old. What is Purity?
For Thirty-five Years the Answer has
been….’ (Rhys 1934, p.59)
This scene suggests that thediscourse of purity is associatedwith upper-class gentility, as Walter
insists that virginity is importantand that “it’s the only thing thatmatters” As Alissa Karl interprets,just as the colonial import cocoa
is brought back to England for
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 29

In his essay entitled “Femininity,”
Sigmund Freud observes thata woman of about thirty often
frightens us with her psychicalrigidity and unchangeability as her
libido has assumed a final positionand seems incapable of exchanging
this position for others. Likewise,
Sasha devotes her energy topreventing herself from being
deemed obsolete. In other words,
she resists this “unchangeability.”

For Sasha andthe other female
characters, money
links the present andthe future “by allowing
women to cover up
evidence of the past”
In order to “compensate for theloss of youth through purchasesthat mask or prosthetically renew
the surface of the body,” (Port,
2005) she cosmetically alters her
face and body to conform with
commodified femininity.

processing
and“purification,”“Anna herself understands ‘purity’as it circulates in the marketplace,yet as it is naturalised by capitaland empire.” Here, purity becomes
a commodity to fit the imperial
narrative that is constructed by
British male society.
Both protagonists act as consumers
and objects of consumption,needing to consume goods inorder to maintain themselves asobjects of consumption. Albeit thedecrease of their value, “like coinsor stamps that enter circulation,”(Port, 2005) they continue to invest
in their clothes and appearance
30 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

to sustain themselves as devalued
commodities.
Good
Morning,Midnight in particular emphasizes
the heroine’s dread of female aging
as “an economy of loss” which
requires constant funding of aninvestment that will inevitably lose
value. As Sasha approaches middle
age, her anxiety grows:
Now, money, for the night is coming.
Money for my hair, money for myteeth, money for shoes that won’t
deform my feet (it’s not so easy now
to walk around in cheap shoes withvery high heel), money for good
clothes, money, money. The night iscoming (Rhys 1939, p.120).

As she approaches the “midnight”
of middle age, Sasha is also anxious
about, in addition to money, thelinear progression of time andhopes that by spending money on
fashion items, the “sensation of
spending” could relieve this anxiety:Tomorrow I’ ll go to the Galeries
Lafayette, choose a dress, go along
to the Printemps, buy gloves, buy
scent, buy lipstick, buy things
costing fcs.6.25 and fcs.19.50, buy
anything cheap. Just the sensationof spending, that’s the point. I’ll
look at bracelets studded withartificial jewels, red, green andblue, necklaces of imitation pearls,
cigarette-cases, jeweled tortoises.… And when I have had a coupleof drinks I shan’t know whether it’syesterday, today or tomorrow. (Rhys
1939, p.121)

With some drinks, Sasha wishes
to lose track of the passage of time
without remembering yesterday,
today, or tomorrow. In his famouswork The General Theory of
Employment, Interest and Money,
John Maynard Keynes suggeststhat “the importance of money
essentially flows from its being alink between the present and thefuture.” For Sasha and the otherfemale characters, money links thepresent and the future “by allowing
women to cover up evidence ofthe past” (Port, 2005). While her
shopping plan at first is situatedin a future time (tomorrow),
Sasha’ s moves from alienatingpresent to traumatic memory are
ultimately suspended since it might
be yesterday, today, or tomorrow.
Out of a linear progression
and into a cyclical marketplace,
Sasha constructs a narrative,
motionless impasse, which obscures
perceptions of past, present, andanxieties about the future. Whilethe black dress, new hat, or freshhairstyle fixes Sasha in time andplace, the perpetual circulationin the department store allows
Sasha to fight against the fixing
and fragmenting. Good Morning,Midnight applies the requirementof capital–circulation as analternative method of shopping
for identities.

because it is the most explicitlycolonial of Rhys’s early novels. The
consumer culture in her novels also
plays a vital role in rendering themarginalisation of Rhys and herheroines in the metropolitan space.

The Marketplace’s Circuit Of
Endless Desire
Capitalism reshapes the psycheof colonial women like Anna andSasha. To avoid the “imperialgaze” and to fulfill their dreams,
they choose to dress in a ladylike
way, to conform to the imperial
norm, and to adopt social andsexual discipline. Both novels not
only exemplify the contradictionsof consumer choice in themarketplace, but also emphasise
the marketplace’s circuit of endlessdesire. Anna and Sasha circulate as
sexualised commodities according
to the rules of British male society
which dominate female sexuality

and
link
the
metaphoricalcolonisation of women’s bodies
through “commodification, visual
control, and imperialist tropesof specular fantasy to actualcolonizations (economic, military,culturalandsexual)” (Karl,2009). The unattainable desires
generated by the marketplace
force these heroines into theimpasse of economic and imperial
paternalism.
Born in China, and moving
to Japan in 2006 Qiang Fu iscurrently a Ph.D. Candidate at
the University of Tokyo, Japan.
A fully referenced versionof this article is available on
request from the Editor at
publications@iafor.org

Both novels witness Rhys’s vaguely
foreign and marginal heroines
being offered the promise to fulfill
their dreams in the capitalist
market place and being absorbed
into urban life as they participate
in the consumer culture and visual
economies. However, they failto locate themselves, and theirpositions are always held at bay.
Recent critical works on Rhys
have examined how her earlynovels treat urban space as ametonym for colonial subjectivity.
These works almost exclusively
discuss Voyage in the Dark perhaps
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 31

Authority and the Ind
in Mark Twain
The theme of the individual versus
authority in the works of MarkTwain has relevance not only to
the world Twain lived in, but to ourown, and to human society generally.
The particular Twain protagonists
I’d like to focus on in this article
are Huckleberry Finn (from The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) andHank Morgan (from A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur’s Court).

The central assertions I’d like to makeare that Twain’s works have occasion
to reflect the view that resistance tomalignant authority in defiance oflaw and social convention is justified,
and that lying, deception, escape,and direct resistance are morally
imperative means to do so. Moreover,I’d like to assert that there are two
motifs in each of the two Twain
texts I will focus on which directly
support this element of Twain’s
writings. One is the connection
between power relationships andmoral clarity, which I see as especiallyrelevant in Huckleberry Finn. Huck’s
resistance to authority contains anelement of surety that is high whenhe’s resisting an authority figure
closer to himself in social status, butwhich plummets when he’s dealing
with an authority figure that is much
more powerful, essentially what heviews as the Abrahamic God or his
perceived representatives. The othermotif, which I see as a major elementof Connecticut Yankee, is what I call“the morally imperative lie”. That is,
the protagonist lies because it is rightand proper to do so.
All of this applies quite importantly tothe question of what the relationshipshould be between the alienatedindividual and authority. This
question, I would assert, is a timeless
one, particularly as long as theinstitution of the state exists. It’s not aquestion I will presume to definitively
answer. But I do plan to stick my neckout a bit and speculate as to what
Twain would have thought aboutcertain institutions that appeared in
the decades after his death, such as
the rise of totalitarianism, and how
these might have modified his views.

So first, let us take a trip down theriver with Huckleberry Finn. If you
had to make a list of the most morally
conflicted, self-doubting Twain
protagonists, Huckleberry Finnwould be at or near the top. This ismost famously illustrated in Huck’s
decision to tear up the letter he had
written to Miss Watson revealing thewhereabouts of Jim, her escaped slave.
A lot of commentary has been madeover the years about this scene in
the novel, but relatively few analyses
explicitly place Huck’s dilemmas in
the wider context of his relationshipto various kinds of authority. So
yes, Huck is resisting authority inthe form of what he sees as a Godsanctioned slave system, and he does
experience inner conflict over it. And
this is very important. But this is not
the only form of authority he deals
with, so if we contrast his responses
to different forms of authority, we
see that he also sometimes resists
authority without any qualms or
hesitation at all. It depends on who it
is and how Huck sees these authority
figures as compared to himself. This iswhat I term moral clarity.
Leo Levy has accused Twain (as well as
Twain’s critics on this issue) of “verbal

quibbling” on the point of making a
distinction between conscience andmorality. In an attempt to approach
this aspect of the novel as concisely
as possible, by “moral clarity” I mean
one’s level of conviction on how rightor wrong a given action is, and in thecase of Huck Finn this means action
against authority.

Huck considers himself to be a personof little value, and in fact that’s what
the term “huckleberry” was used forin 19th-century America, to describe
a person of no account. That’s why
when he believes he is resisting thewill of God in assisting Jim, he isterrified. But a less intense exampleof this is when, upon hearing two
different versions of Heaven from his
guardians the Widow Douglas andMiss Watson, he decides that there
must be “two Providences”, and thathe prefers the Widow’s, but seriously
doubts that he could qualify toenter. Concluding that there are two
Providences is the only way Huck canreconcile this contradiction without
questioning the competence (andhence the authority) of at least oneof the two adults. He doesn’t consider
himself morally fit to do otherwise.
When Huck decides to escape fromhis abusive father Pap, faking his own
death in the process, he has no qualms
at all. Whatever parental authority
Pap has is mitigated by the fact that
he is, other than being a white adultmale, essentially no higher than Huckin whatever social hierarchy may
exist. Similarly, when dealing with thesham aristocrat con artists known as
the King and Duke, Huck expresses
not the slightest twinge of guilt when
he steals and conceals the money thedividual

by Arthur Shattuck O’Keefeslave system, which he sees as Godsanctioned, that is, he assumes hewill go to hell if the takes any action
to help Jim maintain his perceived
fugitive status.
So Huck’s responses to pressure from
authority are determined by moral
clarity which is in turn determined by
the relationships of power.
On to Connecticut Yankee. Lying anddeception figure greatly in this novel,
and in fact I identify this recurring
motif as the morally imperative lie.
In several of his essays, Twain
postulates the lie as a natural
underpinning of civilisation thatspans all levels of human interaction,and by implication all of humanhistory. Garden variety lies arenothing to fret over; we can’t avoid
them in any case. But if lies per se areunavoidable, the “big lies” that aid themachinations of malignant authority
are what one should condemn. Liesin and of themselves are not evil. The
moral quality of a lie is defined by its
objective. Connecticut Yankee serves
as a fictive framework for these sameassertions.
Since at least the 1960s, a common
assertion about Hank Morgan, the19th-century factory foreman who
two men are attempting to swindle ever devised by man. The King and gets inexplicably transported tofrom the Wilks family while posing Duke simply represent the starkest Arthurian England, is that he is a
as relatives from England.
manifestation of such a swindle. malign figure, at best a well-meaning
Twain places the issue of royalty in fool, at worst a kind of incipient
The King and Duke have little power the microcosm of the river, stripping totalitarian dictator. One of the mainin society at large, but can act as it to its bare essence: Huck and Jim, pillars of this argument is that Hank
conduits to bring the greater power of representative members of the “lower” lies and deceives in order to gain
antebellum society to bear on Huck orders of society, are cruelly used for power. My argument here is thatand Jim. As adults, they automatically the benefit of the parasitical “royalty.” Hank has no other choice but to lie
have an implied authority over Huck. Huck sees through this particular and deceive from the outset of his
As white men, they carry the potential version of it, and so experiences no adventure up to the very end.
threat to turn Jim in, or sell him, which dilemma regarding moral clarity.
they do. As sham aristocrats, they He quickly realises that other than Soon after he appears in sixthuse their false titles as a rationale for being adults, the two men are no century England, Hank is captured
treating Huck and Jim like servants. “better” than himself in the context by the knight Sir Kay the Seneschal.
Huck soon realises that “these liars of antebellum Southern society. So He is then accused of being a manwarn’t no kings, nor dukes, at all, but Huck experiences no sense of guilt devouring ogre and sentenced tojust low-down humbugs and frauds” when he steals and conceals the burning at the stake. Hank only saves(836). In an 1889 letter to Sylvester money the two men are attempting himself by using a fortuitous solar
Baxter of the Boston Herald, Mark to swindle from an unsuspecting eclipse to claim to be a wizard with theTwain condemns the institution of family. This is in sharp contrast to power to destroy the sun, convincing
monarchy as “the grotesques swindle” Huck’s actions regarding Jim and the the King to release him and granting
34 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

him the rank of first minister.
This event is pivotal in establishingthe vital role of deception in Hank’s
relationship to authority, and isconsistently not mentioned in thoseanalyses that try to paint Hank as anincipient Hitler who is on a morally
equal footing with his antagonists.
Parallels between Twain’s nonfictional statements on the subject ofmonarchy and those of Hank Morganin Connecticut Yankee strongly
indicate that Hank served not as a
cautionary example of a deranged
dictator, but as a vehicle for Twain’s
personal views on monarchy. In an1888 notebook entry Twain states that“the institution of royalty in any form
is an insult to the human race.” Hank
Morgan virtually mirrors this when
he says “any kind of royalty, however
modified…is rightly an insult” (990).
A notebook entry of Twain’s from thesame year insists that if all the malemonarchs of the earth were stripped
naked and marched around a circus
ring with 500 naked mechanics, thecrowd would be unable to pick out
the monarchs. This is essentially
identical, in Connecticut Yankee, toHank Morgan’s statement regarding
a prisoner he had released from
Morgan le Fay’s dungeons, whose
crime had simply been to say that “ifyou were to strip the nation naked
and send a stranger through thecrowd, he couldn’t tell the king froma quack doctor, nor a duke from ahotel clerk” (1039). Unless one wishes
to simply ignore authorial intention
altogether, any attempt to paint Hank
Morgan as a megalomaniac must bereconciled with the parallels between
these fictional and nonfictional
statements. It seems clear that Hank
Morgan was a character the author
personally identified with, and thus
whose deceptions were, in Twain’seyes, morally imperative.
In conclusion, then: Huck Finn’squest for freedom in lighting out for
the Territory ultimately proved to bea transient ideal for Americans in reallife (not to mention its implications
for Native Americans). The frontier

was rapidly disappearing in the periodthat Huckleberry Finn was written andpublished. As Twain was doubtlessaware of this, perhaps a sense ofpoignant nostalgia was partly what
prompted him to write the novel.
The hope that Connecticut Yankee
served as a vehicle for, namely
the erasure of Church-backed
monarchies, has partially come true.
The monarchies that now remain arelargely stripped of power. But Twain
would surely be disappointed toknow that they were replaced in somecases by cruel secular dictatorships
and totalitarian states rivaling oreven surpassing their predecessors
in inhumanity. He might also be
surprised to see that some of theso-called “modified” monarchies hewas skeptical of are now peaceful,prosperous, and free societies.
Yet considering Twain’s willingness
to change his views over time(such as he did with slavery andwomen’s suffrage), it seems certainthat he would have conceded thatmonarchy and religion per se are
not automatically manifestations oftyranny.
Today, unlike Huck Finn, we are all
registered, numbered and monitoredin various ways, and daily face aubiquitous,
subtle,technologyarmed authority that Huck would
undoubtedly find confusing andperhaps frightening. This is lessmenacing in some states than in others,
and may give us more “security.” Yet it
can also make us wary or even fearfulof a force which in its own way is evenmore powerful than the monarchies
Twain railed against. This inspired
certain writers in the generation
following Twain’s death – notably
Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell – toexplore the individual’s relationshipto authority in the dystopian novel.
In Huckleberry Finn Huck escapes“sivilizing” and Jim is freed, but in
the Orwellian nightmare we are allslaves and have no Territory to lightout to. And Pap is sober, smart, andeverywhere at once.

Yet Twain was ultimately an
optimist. If he had not been, hewould not have bothered to write
such impassioned pleas to resistanceas “The Czar’s Soliloquy” and “TheNew Dynasty.” He believed it waspossible to make the world a placeof more justice, of more moral right.
Huckleberry Finn ends with Huckand Jim achieving different brandsof freedom. Connecticut Yankee ends
on a more poignant note, with the
Church triumphant and the aged,
dying Hank back in the 19th-century,
yearning for his wife and child. But
it is a tale of a thwarted utopian
attempt rather than a dystopia. The
novel as a whole carries an air of
positive possibilities, especially as
we know that the reinstated feudal
system will eventually be displaced
by a democracy. There’s not a glimmerof such hope when Winston Smith
is tortured and brainwashed into
submission in Orwell’s 1984, or when
the citizens of OneState all have their
imaginations surgically removed in
Zamyatin’s We. As important anddefining as the dystopian novel has
been to 20th-century literature, it
seems doubtful that Twain would
have joined in its development had
he lived to see the era of Stalinist
pogroms and the dawn of Nazism. He
tended to prefer happy endings, or atleast endings in which the victory of“the bad guys” is not absolute.
Mark Twain was both optimist andrebel, and his was a rebellion of thepen. He doubtless outraged autocratsof all stripes in the uncompromising
expression of his convictions. And hedoubtless delighted in doing so.
Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe currently
researches and teaches at Showa
Women’s
University,
Tokyo.
This paper is based upon an oralpresentation combining portionsof several of the author’s previously
published works. A fully referenced
version is available on request fromthe Editor at publications@iafor.org

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 35

Before the Darkest H

USAF Operat

This year marks 70 years since thedropping of the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima. What happened thatmorning of August 6, 1945 was adestructive force never witnessed
before with the exception of the secret
Trinity test held a fortnight earlier in
the Jornada del Muerto desert of New
Mexico. The world has simply neverbeen the same and never will be.
Over the years much has been written
about the Manhattan Project that built
those first nuclear bombs as well as
the awful aftermath that the citizensof Hiroshima suffered. However,
the events of the actual mission as it
unfolded are less well known. The
vagaries of the weather that August
morning sealed the fate of four cities.
36 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

Three survived and one was obliterated.

overweight due to the heavy fuelload and the weight of its onboard
At approximately 2.45am on August ordinance that morning. It took every
6, 1945 USAF pilot Colonel Paul ounce of horsepower, every metre ofTibbets, taxied the silver Boeing B-29 tarmac to get the 60,000 kg aircraft
Superfortress towards the end of the airborne. Thirty seconds later USAF
floodlit runway ‘A’ at North Field, Operations Order No. 35 was rising
Tinian Island in the Mariana’s. When into the inky blackness of the northern
the huge bomber named ‘Enola Gay’ Pacific skies on an initial flight path
after Tibbets’s mother, reached the to Iwo Jima where it rendezvoused
end of the runway it turned 90 degrees with mission support aircraft whose
and was pointed in the direction of the primary role would be to document
Japanese islands some six hours’ flight what happens over the next few
time away. At the controls Tibbets and hours on film and through scientifichis co-pilot Captain Robert Lewis telemetry. Three other supporting
carefully built the four Wright R-3350 B-29s had left Tinian an hour earlier toengines to the roar of full power, conduct weather reconnaissance overreleased brakes and slowly began to the selected targets on the Japanese
lumber down the 2,500-metre runway. mainland. From Iwo Jima, the Enola
The Enola Gay was 7,500 kilograms Gay and its two support aircraft veeredHour

tions Order No. 35

By Michael Liam Kedzlie

eastward towards the island of Honshu
and increased their cruising altitude to
9,500 m and settled into a sustained
speed of around 200 kilotons.
What many people don’t realise isthat even at that midway point in the
mission the flight crew of the Enola
Gay did not yet know exactly where
the target was going to be. They had
onboard “the gadget”, a single bomb
ordinance called “Little Boy”, yet they
had up to three other possible alternate
targets. Though the prime target
was Hiroshima in the early hours ofAugust 6, 1945, the first operational
atomic bomb used in warfare could
have ended up elsewhere. For example,
if the city was too overcast or too
windy that morning, the bomb might

have fallen on Yokohama, Niigata
or Kokura, which were deemed thealternate mission targets.
High over the city of Hiroshima at
around 7am one of the mission support
aircraft flew a reconnaissance course
and an air raid siren rang out around thecity. The aircraft called Straight Flushsent through a radio message, which
was picked up by Enola Gay. “Cloud
cover less than 3/10th at all altitudes.
Advice: Bomb Primary.” On the
ground an all-clear siren was sounded
ten minutes later and soon the peopleof Hiroshima once again continued to
go about their lives, walking to school,
eating breakfast, opening their stores,
catching their tram to work. To themAugust 6 would be just another day.
Two hundred miles away flying overthe Pacific, the Enola Gay had theprime target confirmed. It was 7.30am.
The target was the T-shaped Aoio
bridge in the central business districtof Hiroshima. At 8.10am the crewof the Enola Gay lined up for theirbombing run and Colonel Tibbets
switched over to the onboard autopilot.
Control of the mission at this point
was now handed over to the aircrafts
bombardier, Major Thomas Ferebee
who would aim and release the bomb.
It was only five minutes later that the
Enola Gay arrived over the target at analtitude of 9,470 m. Ferebee calibrated
aim-sight crosshairs, lined up the Aoio
Bridge and released the bomb. It was
8.15am local time.
Little Boy took 43 seconds to freefall to the predetermined detonation
height of 600 m above the target,
where barometric triggers initiatedthe firing mechanism and detonatedan explosive force equivalent to 15
kts of TNT inside the steel casingof Little Boy – a uranium gun-typeatomic weapon containing 64 kg ofenriched uranium. Immediately on
detonation, X-ray-heated air created a
6,000°C fireball that was almost 400
m in diameter, generating a five psipressure wave at a velocity greater than
the speed of sound, that fanned out
in all directions. It simply vapourised

people to the point that all that wasleft of them was a shadow burnt into
the concrete where they stood. Little
Boy destroyed completely everything
within a 1,600 m radius and created afirestorm that was 3 km in diameter.
Over 70 percent of the buildings in
the urban area that was around 12
km2 were destroyed. Approximately
70,000 people or over a third of the
population were killed instantly as adirect result of the Hiroshima blast,with 60 percent of immediate deaths
were caused by the firestorm. Some
50,000 of those killed were regular
citizens, many of them children or theelderly. A further 70,000 were injured.
Many receiving lethal doses of nuclear
radiation and would die in the months
and years ahead.
In those 43 seconds from the bombrelease to the point of detonation the
Enola Gay had traveled 18.5 km fromthe point of ground zero before thecrew felt the shock wave turbulencefrom the blast rocking the aircraft. It
was then that Colonel Tibbets got on
the aircraft’s intercom and reported tothe crew “Boys you have just dropped
the first Atomic Bomb.” As the aircraft
raced back across the Pacific to theMariana’s on that clear blue morning
the crew were still able to observe
the infamous mushroom cloud rise
above the city to a height of almost
13,000 m some 360 km away. After
12 hours of mission time the Enola
Gay and her crew touched down on
Runway ‘A’ at Tinian. It was at 3pm.
USAF Operations Order No.35
was completed. Three days later thesecond atomic bomb dubbed ‘Fatman’was dropped on the Kyushu city ofNagasaki with comparable lives lostand damage done. It was a terrible
end to a terrible war that never bears
repeating, but bears all of us to always
remember.

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 37

From Fictio
by Shih-Pang Tsai and Professor
Ming-Hsiu Mia Chen

“Cosplay” is a portmanteau wordof the English words costume andplay. It is a performance art in which
participants wear costumes andaccessories to represent a specificcharacter or idea from specific art
work.

Thus, costume and play combine tobecome cosplay.

Cosplayers often interact to createa subculture centered on role-play.
A broader use of the term cosplay
applies to any costumed role-playin venues apart from the stage,
The term was coined by Nobuyuki regardless of the cultural context.
Takahashi of the Japanese studio The characters can come from many
“Studio Hard” while attending sources, from manga, anime, game,the 1983 World Science Fiction comic books, through to films,
Convention (Worldcon) in Los dramatic programming, novels, andAngeles. Takahashi was impressed light novels. Any entity from theby the event and its costumed real world or virtual world that lends
fans and subsequently reported on itself to dramatic interpretation
both in Japanese science fiction might be considered as a subject formagazines. The coinage “cosplay” cosplay.
reflects a common Japanese methodof abbreviation in which the first Since 1990, the number of people
two moras of a pair of words are used who take cosplay as a hobby has
to form an independent compound. gained rapid growth, and has made38 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

cosplay a global popular culture
phenomenon. The rise of the internet
has played a significant role in thispopularity, enabling many cosplayers
to create their own websites or
blogs to communicate with othercosplayers or fans around the globe.
These personal websites and blogs
usually focus on cosplay activities
such as outdoor shooting, studioshooting, tour shooting or events
recording. However, communitybased forums on the internetcomparatively have a far greaterinternet footprint. These cosplay
communities allow fellow cosplayers
to share stories, photographs, news,
opinions and general information b
tween each other.

on to Reality

An Exploration into Cosplay

Practice of Cosplay
Cosplay costumes vary greatly andcan range from simple, themed
clothing to highly detailed costumes.
As such, when in costume, cosplayers
will often seek to adopt the affect,
mannerisms and body languageof the characters they portray. The
characters chosen to be cosplayed may
come from a variety of sources, but thepractice of cosplay is often associatedwith replicating anime and manga
characters. In order for cosplay to bepracticed it must have an element ofcharacterisation. An individual who
simply wears a costume, without
the element of play, acts merely as aclothes-hanger. On the other hand,
only play, without costume, would
be chaotic for the audience, because
there is no indication as to what

exactly the main subject is. Costume
and play, based on the character, haveto be grounded in reality, and cosplay
is based on the costume and play has
to be put into existence. This is thereason why the cosplay must havea specific character to be put it into
cultural and performance practice.

Costumes
Most cosplayers create their own
outfits, referencing images of thecharacters in the process. In thecreation of the outfits, much time isgiven to detail and qualities, thus the
skill of a cosplayer may be measured
by how difficult the details of theoutfit are and how well they have been
replicated. Because of the difficulty of
replicating some details and materials,

cosplayers often educate themselvesin crafting specialties such as textiles,
sculpture, face paint, fiberglass,fashion design, woodworking andother uses of materials in an effort toaccurately render the look and textureof a costume.
Cosplayers often wear wigs inconjunction with their outfit in order tofurther improve the resemblance to thecharacter. This is especially necessary
for anime and manga characters which
often have unnaturally coloured anduniquely styled hair. Simpler outfits
may be compensated for their lackof complexity by paying attention tomaterial choice, and overall excellent
quality. The process of creation may
then be very long and time consuming,
making it a very personal journey andachievement for many. This taxing
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 39

The rise of the internet has played asignificant role in this popularity, enabling
many cosplayers to create their own
websites or blogs to communicate withother cosplayers or fans around the globe.

and often expensive process is known
to unite cosplayers and is considered apart of the culture of cosplay.
Cosplayers obtain their apparelthrough many different methods.
Manufacturers produce and sell
packaged outfits for use in cosplay,in a variety of qualities. These
costumes are often sold online, butalso can be purchased from dealers
at conventions. There are also a
number of individuals who workon commission, creating custom
costumes, props or wigs designed
and fitted to the individual; somesocial networking sites for cosplay
have classified ad sections where suchservices are advertised.
Cosplayers who prefer to create
their own costume use materials
like unstyled wigs or extensions,hair dye, cloth and thread, liquid
latex, body paint, shoes, costume
jewellery and prop weapons. The
characters in anime and gameusually have weapons, armours orother accessories, which are hard
to replicate, and conventions of thecommunity have strict or hidden
rules for those weapons, whichmakes cosplayers pay more attention
to crafting. Many cosplayers engage
in some combination of methods
to obtain all the items necessary for
their costume.

Fiction to Reality
Props are the thorniest problem incosplay, especially for the beginners.
Even though cosplayers could obtain
their apparel through many different
methods, such as having them custom
made by craftsmen, or purchasing

the finished products, this is usuallya high cost way to acquire, which
beginners cannot afford. Cosplayerswith economic concern and a strong
desire for cosplay will make props
and outfits by themselves. Unlike inmany western countries, cosplayers in
Taiwan mostly do not have enoughspace for crafting, therefore theyuse many other techniques, skills
and materials. A cosplayer’s main
considerations when deciding onmaterials are price and manufacturing
convenience.
The main considerations forcosplayers when it comes to materials
are price and manufacturing
convenience. It ideally will allow
the cosplayer to design and craft inhouse, using simple tools such as apenknife, glue stick and scissors.
Conclusion: Characters in animation
are mostly surreal, some of themexisting only as two-dimensional
pictures. It is a challenge to actualise
the fictional character in real life
through the production of costume
and props. A sense of design isextremely important when producing
the props and costumes.
Cosplayers may differ in age,generation and background, but thepattern of their crafting is highly
similar.
Shih-Pang Tsai and Professor
Ming-Hsiu Mia Chen are fromthe Institute of Industrial Design,
Tatung University in Taiwan.

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 41

Listening to the

Chanoyu OutsidDr.

Originating in ancient China andrefined in medieval Japan, Chanoyu( Japanese, literally “hot water for tea”),
commonly known as the Japanese tea
ceremony, had jumped continents by
the end of the 20th century and found
new homes in lands far and near fromits origins. A delicate balance between
conservation and internationalisation
enabled this tradition to transplant
to new places in its most originalform and take root. It developed toaccommodate local conditions whileconversely influencing the original
42 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

tradition in its motherland. Though
the globalisation of Chanoyu is justa raindrop in a hurricane of cultural
globalisation, it is a complex anddiverse transmission across national
borders on multiple levels. As John
Tomlinson wrote: “...the hugetransformative processes of our timethat globalisation describes cannot
be properly understood until they
are grasped through the conceptual
vocabulary of culture, likewise thatthese transformations change thevery fabric of cultural experience and,indeed, affect our sense of what culture
actually is in the modern world.”
Chanoyu literally means “hot water fortea” which is not really very helpful as adefinition. Chado or Sado translates as
The Way of Tea and refers to the pathof practice. It is a discipline, a tradition
and a learning complex. Paul Varleydefines Chanoyu as “a unity of ritual,
methods of expression, setting andhighly structured environment.” Assuch Chanoyu is a synthesis of various
aspects:
spiritual, philosophical,

e Waves:de Japan. Alexandre Avdulov

kneaded tea. They learn by watchingothers and practicing one of theforms themselves. Variations on thebasic forms of increasing complexity
encourage mindfulness, awareness andmemory. The student, depending on
interest and ability, studies calligraphy
and its reading in Japanese andChinese, cooking, flower arranging,
Japanese garden and tearoom design,
the history and philosophy of tea,
poetry and so on to the end of one’s
life or physical and mental ability
which, by the way, remains remarkablein tea practitioners. Tea is the perfectparadigm for life-long learning.
Chanoyu comes very close to thedefinition of culture itself.
The origins of Chanoyu are in 12thcentury Zen Buddhist monasteries in
China. The monks, using tea as therare medicine, offered it at the altar
and then drank it communally. This
communal sharing of a single bowlof tea is still at the heart of currently
practiced Chanoyu. Japanese monks
took back tea seeds and the teasharing ceremony to Japan as part oftheir import of the Zen (meditative)
school of Buddhism. Over the next
400 years as the drinking of tea as abeverage became popular, it graduallyleft the temples and Chanoyu becamea primarily secular pursuit. The tea
drunk in today’s tea room is the same
now: powdered tea leaves are whipped
into a foamy infusion by mixing tea
with hot water using a bamboo whisk.

moral, aesthetic and artistic. All senses
are brought into play in a complex
ritual, which involves food, wine,
two types of fire and two types of tea
preparations. A tea gathering typicallytakes three to four hours with one hostand up to five guests. It has been called
meditation in motion.
Tea students usually visit theirteacher’s tearoom three times amonth and study one of dozens ofdifferent forms of making two typesof tea: thin whisked tea and thick

By the 16th-century Chanoyu had
been formalised, under the patronageof the military elite, which ruled Japan.
It then spread to the mercantile andartistic communities. The foremost
among these formalisers was Sen
Rikyu (1522-1591) whose descendants
have carried on the tradition for 16
generations. Rikyu’s 20th-century
descendant, Sen Soshitsu XV, wasinstrumental in globalising tea.
Globalisation of Chanoyu can beconsidered in a number of different
dimensions. The first is that it istaught as an art form and a discipline
to thousands of people around theworld. The huge learning curveand dependence on innumerable
accouterments have prevented it fromachieving the millions of adherentsof its Asian cousin’s yoga and taichi. Nevertheless, it has reached acritical mass of enough people to beconsidered part of global culture.
The second dimension is apparent
in the influence Chanoyu has on

A tea gathering
typically takes three
to four hours with one
host and up to fiveguests. It has beencalled meditation in
motion.
its connected arts, such as cuisine,architecture, design, gardens, pottery
and other crafts. Few would knowthat Japanese cuisine actually derives
from “kaiseki”, the formal Chanoyu
meal, which in turn had its roots in
Zen Buddhism. Thought to predate
the better-known French formal
meal, the food of tea has influenced
western cuisine through its emphasis
on seasonality, beauty of presentation,
small portions, staggered service andthe elevation of native and natural
tastes. The architecture of the tearoom,
spare and empty, has influenced thework of such architects as Stanford
White, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter
Gropius and others. The tea garden,“roji” literally “dewy ground”, hasgreatly influenced western garden
designers, not only as something toincorporate, but also as an inspiration
for the re-consideration of theconcept of space itself. Yanagi Soetsu
writing in 1972 defined Chanoyu as “acomplete university of artistic taste.”
Several philosophical and aesthetic
qualities associated with Chanoyu
have been influential in the West, forexample, wabi (natural beauty), sabi(beauty of age and patina) and shibui(astringency). Not widely understoodin their native land, they neverthelesshave influenced artists, designers andwriters far beyond Japanese borders.
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 43

Jao Rodrigues who spent most of his life inJapan, suggests that “the qualities required
to appreciate Chanoyu have a much wider
application and can be extended to every
branch of cultural life.”
The third dimension is the mostfascinating. It is the nascentapplication of the forms of Chanoyu
itself which could be adapted to areasfrom education, business, leadership,
hospitality, business, art appreciation,
psychological testing to memoryand sensory improvement. Take forexample, learning. The whole pattern
for learning tea can become a model
for learning of almost any othersubject. Things like the “loop” review,
the specific emphasis on learning
rather than being taught and thepanoramic style of learning opposed
to a vertically structured one could
be applicable to learning any subject.
Study of principles and structure ofcurriculum can also become a valuable
resource for other disciplines.
Chanoyu represents so-called “handmade” cultures, the ones that preserveand protect the old ways of doing
things. Today, when most things in
our lives are not made or grown by
yourself, but mostly bought or ordered,
Tea practice offers something like asecurity system for the humankind
and can diffuse de-humanising of ourlives.
Paul Varley considers the concept ofharmony as being central to Chanoyu.
He describes harmonious interaction
between people, nature and objects ina very limited space for an extended
period of time and concludes that thisexperience could be fully applicableto the ways human society strives tofunction. It can be linked to the areasof a number of environmental issues
such as sustainability, slow food andmany others. In a way, “tea” became an
adjective, at least among practitioners
to define certain style or approach.
First to encounter Chanoyu in Japan
were the early Europeans, mostly
Portuguese and Spaniards who
44 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

arrived in Nagasaki in the mid 16th
century. They were mainly diplomats,merchants and Jesuit missionaries.
The latter group stayed and lived
in Japan having to learn about thecountry and its culture and findways to fit in. It was due to the nonreligious but deeply spiritual qualityof Chanoyu that it was chosen (bythe missionaries from the multitude
of cultural complexes available) asa path to the hearts and minds oftheir future converts and as a key
to this unknown civilisation. Acuteobservers of culture, the Jesuits haveleft us accurate descriptions of early
Chanoyu in letters, diaries and reports.
Since Chanoyu is mainly an orallytransmitted tradition, equivalenttexts of similar age and value don’t
exist in Japanese. Their accounts areinvaluable since they shed light on the
prototypes of the forms, which exist
now. Michael Cooper in his article“The Early Europeans and Chanoyu”
writes about three Portuguese Jesuits:
Luis de Almeida (1525-1583),
Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606)
and Jao Rodrigues (1561-1633) andgives their perspective on the formsof Chanoyu and its role in Japanesesociety as well as their view of thepossibility of a wider application of its
characteristics and principles. Luis delAlmeida described the actual teahousethe following way. “The place was alittle larger than the courtyard andseemed to have been made by angels
rather than by men… no words candescribe the order and the cleanlinessof it all.” Being a European of the
16th century he certainly saw things
to learn and implement back home.
Cooper writes, that Alessandro
Valignano who was supposed toinspect the work of missionaries
and implement appropriate changes
in policy, not only reorganised thestructure of the missions according
to the order and principles of the
Rinzai school of Zen but went as far

This communal
sharing of a single
bowl of tea is still at
the heart of currently
practiced Chanoyu.
as to insist that missionaries learn tospeak “correct and elegant” Japaneseand ordered that all Jesuit residences
should possess “their own Chanoyu”,
meaning that not only the ceremony
was to be conducted but also a special
place had to be designated andutensils to be acquired – he provided
a list of approximately 40 objects
everyone had to have. “Obviously,
Valignano understood that thesuccess of the Christian mission
in Japan hugely depended on how
deeply the missionaries themselves
learned and adapted to the customsof the new land … hardly a startling
thought for the 20th century, but
practically a revolutionary concept
for a 16th-century European” It was
Chanoyu that he selected as the allencompassing cultural repository ofJapan. The descriptions of Chanoyu
were not limited to its external form
only. Jao Rodrigues who spent mostof his life in Japan, suggests that“the qualities required to appreciate
Chanoyu have a much wider
application and can be extended toevery branch of cultural life.”

Therefore, Chanoyu was recognised
not only as a formal introduction
to the Japanese culture and society
but also as a deeply spiritual, indeed
unique practice with great potential
for intercultural communication.
Immersion in Chanoyu allowed theJesuits access to Japanese society. It
subsequently made its way to Europe
in the form of objects, descriptions
and stories. The connection worked
both ways and enriched both sides.
At least three of the seven closest
disciples of Sen Rikyu became
converted Christians.

was the first and most important
cultural encounter between the two
civilisations just before Japan was
to tightly shut its doors to anythingforeign for the following 300 years.
Dr. Alexandre Avdulov, teaches
in the Department of Modern
Languages and Classics at SaintMary’s University, Halifax, Canada.
A fully referenced and extended
version of this article is available
on request from the editor at
publications@iafor.org

It is apparent that there was avery close connection between theearly Europeans and Chanoyu. It
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 45

The Atomic Cafe (1982):
Looking Back at Nuclear Paranoia from the
80s to the 50s in a Cold War Classic

By Wajiha Raza Rizvi

Directed by Jayne Loader and
Kevin Rafferty, 1982’s The Atomic
Café is a devastating take on thechronological snobbery of American
disbeliefs and the scant knowledgeof the A-experts at the advent of theatomic age. The film, informative yetentertaining, horrific yet hilarious,
dwells on stereotypes of those firstten years of public ignorance andnuclear paranoia during the Cold War
46 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

era, as well as errors and atrocities of
its inventors.
With its wonderful montages of Cold
War kitsch compiled with archival
materials from the 1950s and 1960s
reflect, The Atomic Café officiallynormalises the character of nuclear
war. In doing so, it acts just like theother conciliatory propaganda films
that were aimed at the American

public for mystifying the nuclear
fallout paranoia presenting adevastating collage is a true mirrorof the official and unofficial attitudes
towards American use of the atombomb against Japan in the years
following WWII and preceding theCold War.
The film opens to the archival clipsof the first successful Trinity Test
at Alamogordo, a thriving Pre-WWII Hiroshima, the civilian
target A-bombed, narration by Paul
Tibbets, the pilot of the Hiroshimabomber, the irradiated city baked andflattened, dying citizens, a Japanese
shoe burnt into a bridge, and Captain
Kermit K. Beehan, the pilot of theNagasaki atomic bomber expressingthat he was absolutely thrilled.
The scene canonises domination to
mirror the modernist aesthetics ofdesublimation. The hysterical triumph
is turned into a Pyrrhic victory.
According to critic Oloruntoba John
Olubunmi, the camera, in a vérité
moment, unobtrusively captures
Harry S. Truman’s grin before heannounces the use of the atomic
bomb at the virgin civilian targets
for the purpose of bomb damage
studies and, ironically, he thanks
God for guiding America to use
the bomb “in His ways and to His
purposes.” The Atomic Café cuts asequence of Americans celebrating
victory, peace and the baby boom,
an American Navy officer advising
Marshallese islanders of the Pacific
Ocean to surrender to God’s will andmove to a remote island as their true
tropical paradise Bikini Atoll became“uninhabitable by human beings forthe next 500 years.”
In the traditions of Soviet filmmakers
Esfir Shub and Dziga Vertov,
The Atomic Cafe delivers media
caricatures of Burt the Turtle fromthe “Duck and Cover” campaign
from 1951, an unrealistic normalising
corporate response, but it neverundercuts the seriousness of theatomic issues. This reflects public
and soldier paranoia in juxtaposition
to propaganda newsreel, government
films, and military clips such as WWII
victory celebrations, advertising, ordemonstration films concerning the
Trinity Test in the Alamogordo, on
the Jornada del Muerto (Journey ofDeath) desert. In a children’s training
film, Burt the Turtle demonstrates
his ducking skills inside the safetyof his shell whenever a firecracker
explodes in his vicinity, advice for“children to crawl under their desks”
and cover “their eyes” if exposed to
the flash of an A-blast.

The film rivals any comedy inthis sense because of what Peter
Rollins describes as “film irony”. A
powerful technique in which image
and sound contradict each otherthrough a process of compilation
aimed at decontextualising, andrecontextualising through exposé
quotation or change of immediate
context of shots for the purpose ofreinterpretation. A powerful exampleof the simultaneous intermixing ofthese techniques can be seen in thenewsreel of Hiroshima survivors
that juxtaposes the clips of two radio
comedians making fun of Hiroshima
attacks, “It looked like Ebbets
Field after a doubleheader with theGiants”. The sequence bears thespirit of an attack for a noble cause
as the enemy dies for no cause. In an
another hilarious sequence, a doctor
diagnoses a patient with nuclearosis(nuclear war paranoia) and, whilelooking at A-charts, comments “itis absurd that 85 percent of the
population should be so fearfulwhen only 15 percent would bekilled in an all-out nuclear war.”
These satirical montages reflect thefaith and confidence of the UnitedStates public figures in the American
dream. The God-gifted atom bomb
becomes a symbol of American love
for international peace, freedom, anddemocracy, until the red communists
test their power. The communists’paranoia first parallels and thendismisses the nuclear paranoia. The
public faith in the American dream isreflected in their trust in “duck andcover” and “fallout shelter”, you live
if you survive the alpha particles foreight to ten days. It also mirrors theirtrust in A&H-bombs compared to“red” fever as a Southern Californianbusinessman, who believes that“shopping centers are an expressionof the free world”, sponsors a nuclear
defense drill. Similarly, the lens of a
Navy periscope in juxtaposition to an
American family watching televisionevokes the meaning that the people
are being watched. Critic John
Olubunmi sees a dialectic collision
between “the inherent perspectiveof the original archive and its radicalreuse” during recontextualisation,

which according to Paul Arthur
inverts “conventional meanings” andcauses “a ‘politicised activation of
suppressed ideas’”.
The Atomic Cafe hints at several
American wars, conflicts, threats,
and fears of communism, the ironcurtain. In a hilarious sequence, afather tells his kids that in case ofmass deaths following a nuclear
detonation, survivors would havemore to eat and divide among
themselves. The film also refers toseveral eastern and western block
political tussles by naming leaders
like Eisenhower, Truman, Nixon,
Reagan, Wilson, and several U.S.
military figures. This chronologicalsnobbery is brutally honest abouta history of American paranoia andthe officially normalising attitude
toward the nuclear war. Its powerfuland disturbing intellectual montagesofanticommunist,pronuclear,paranoia films prefer a strategy
of subjectivity over objectivity toefficiently mix satire with drama withapocalyptic black humor to leaveviewers immersed in the absurdityof American historical truth andBush’s first-strike policy in pursuit ofpolitical ideals. Though now over 30
years old and reflecting on an era fast
fading from memory it is for thesereasons that The Atomic Café, is still
relevant today and still very funny.
Wajiha Raza Rizvi is the founding
director of the Film Museum
Society of Lahore. She collects
the archives of Pakistani cinema,conducts research, produces films,
and provides consultancy to anumber of established film andmedia institutions.

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 47

A Passion for Research
Doctoral Program graduate Vineet Kaul reflects on what
research means as he embarks on an academic career

Simply put, passion is the engine thatdrives excellence. It is what motivates
us to continue pursuing our dreams
when times get tough, when we gettired, or when others tell us we can’t
possibly succeed. And when passion
and performance meet, we experience
our greatest satisfaction and impact inlife. In the summer of 2010, during mysenior year of college; I faced a harddecision about my future career. I hada job offer from a reputed national
English daily and an acceptance letterfrom the Media and Communication
doctoral program at the DA-IICT
University. I had also just handed in
the manuscript for my first nonfiction
book, which opened the option of
becoming a full-time writer. These arethree strikingly different career paths,
and I had to choose which one wasright for me.
For many of my peers, this decision
would have been fraught with anxiety.
Growing up, we were told by guidancecounselors, career advice books, thenews media and others to “follow ourpassion”. This advice assumes that
we all have a pre-existing passion
waiting to be discovered. If we havethe courage to discover this calling
and to match it to our livelihood, thethinking goes, we’ll end up happy.
If we lack this courage, we’ll end up
bored and unfulfilled — or, worse, inlaw school. To a small group of people,
this advice makes sense, because they
have a clear passion. Maybe they’ve
always wanted to be doctors, writers,
musicians and so on, and can’t imagine
being anything else.
But this philosophy puts a lot ofpressure on the rest of us — anddemands long deliberation. If we’re
not careful, it tells us, we may end
up missing our true calling. And even48 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

after we make a choice, we’re still notfree from its effects. Every time ourwork becomes hard, we are pushed
toward an existential crisis, centeredon what for many is an obnoxiously
unanswerable question: “Is this what
I’m really meant to be doing?” This
constant doubt generates anxiety andchronic job-hopping.
As I considered my options during mysenior year of college, I knew all about
this Cult of Passion and its demands.
But I chose to ignore it. The alternative
career philosophy that drove me isbased on this simple premise: The traits
that lead people to love their work are
general and have little to do with ajob’s specifics. These traits include
a sense of autonomy and the feelingthat you’re good at what you do andthat what you do is having an impact
on the world. Decades of research on
workplace motivation back this up.
(Daniel Pink’s book “Drive” offers anice summary of this literature.)
These traits can be found in many jobs,
but they have to be earned. Building
valuable skills is hard and takes time.
For someone in a new position, theright question is not, “What is this job
offering me?” but, instead, “What am I
offering this job?”
Returning to my story, I decided after
only minimal deliberation to go to DAIICT University... true to my alternative
career philosophy, I was confident
that all three of my career options
could be transformed into a source of
passion, and this confidence freed mefrom worry about making a wrong
choice. I ended up choosing DA-IICT.,
mainly because of a slight preference
for research, but obtaining a researchhigher degree is the pinnacle of formal
education achievement. As a high-achieving student with an analyticalmind and an intrinsic desire for problem
solving, I will have the opportunity tomaster new skills, overcome obstacles
and make a contribution of new
knowledge to my chosen discipline.
The chance to immerse myself in my
topic and persevere with my researchover a number of years will give me
an overwhelming feeling of great
personal achievement.
I would have been equally content
heading out to the media world. Or,with the advance from my first book,
I could have hunkered down in a quiet
town to write.
During my initial years as a graduate
student, I certainly didn’t enjoy anunshakable sense that I had found mytrue calling. The beginning of doctoral
training can be rough. You’re not yet
skilled enough to make contributions
to the research literature, which canbe frustrating. And at a place like DAIICT., you’re surrounded by brilliance,
which can make you question whether
you belong.
Had I subscribed to the “follow ourpassion” orthodoxy, I probably would
have left during those first years,
worried that I didn’t feel love for mywork every day. But I knew that mysense of fulfillment would grow overtime, as I became better at my job. So
I worked hard, and, as my competence
grew, so did my engagement.
The option of a career in academia
is likely always to remain open foryou if you complete a Ph.D., both
immediately after graduation and as you
continue to build knowledge and gain
experience in your discipline graduates
regularly report that their research
journey was extremely challenging

Photography by Laura Dyer (theartstack.com/dyerlaura2000)

and because of that, highly rewarding.
The research program normally
involves several milestones startingwith the research proposal, literature
review, data collection, confirmation,
regular progress reporting, analysis,
and several thesis drafts before thefinal version is ready for examination.
A higher research degree can belikened to a full-time job. Candidates
generally work on their research 9 am
to 6 pm, Monday to Saturday fromJanuary to December with four weeks
off for recreational leave usually overthe summer period. Research involves
defining and solving problems andconstantly striving for improvement inyour chosen discipline. We regularly
receive feedback from graduates thatdoing a Ph.D. has given them a real
sense of achievement and the feelingof having contributed to something
positive for the future.
Today, I’m a professor teaching Media& Communication and I love my job.
The most important lesson I can draw
from my experience is that this lovehas nothing to do with figuring out at
an early age that I was meant to be aprofessor. There’s nothing special
about my choosing this particular path.
What mattered is what I did once I
made my choice.
National prosperity depends on having
people with the skills, knowledge andexpertise necessary to drive innovation
and respond to global challenges.
Research is a growth industry, andgaining a research higher degree
will give us an advantage for future
employment. Workforce projections
indicate that demand for research
qualified people is set to grow at a fasterrate than overall employment demandin our economy over the decade to2020, with the number of employedindividuals with a doctorate by research
qualification alone expected to rise by
3.2 percent per annum over this period(Access Economics 2010).
To other young people who constantly
wonder if the grass might be greener
on the other side of the occupational
fence, I offer this advice: follow yourpassion, it is something that will follow
you as you put in the hard work to
become valuable to the world.
Once you’ve done all this, go get it.
Hold tightly to your passion and neverlet go. Let it infuse your life withmeaning and purpose and become themotivator for everything you do. Then,put in the hard work needed to turn yourdreams into reality. Discovering andclaiming something you love to do has
an amazing effect on your entire life.
It’s like a tiny perfect raindrop landing
on a previously smooth, unremarkable
expanse of water. The instant thedrop arrives, beautiful waves of everenlarging rings flow across the entire
surface, spreading out virtually toinfinity.
Vineet Kaul recently completed his
Ph.D. in Media & Communicationand has embarked on an academic
career at DA-IICT University,
Gujarat India.

Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 49

Legally Vague in a Lethal WorldIs it time for International Humanitarian Law 2.0?

By Michael Liam Kedzlie
The late Karin Tackaberry, in her July
2007 essay “Time to Stand Up and Be
Counted: The Need for the United
Nations to Control International
Terrorism” noted that with respect tointernational law, terrorists and othernon-state actors engaging in armed
conflict were now openly operating in
an international dimension, and wereorientated territorially, politically, or
ideologically, with specific interests,
approaches or outcomes in mind.
Tackaberry, who was one of themost engaging and foresightfulinternational lawyers specialisingin the field of International
Humanitarian and Armed ConflictLaw, forewarned in a series of essays
in the years preceding her untimely
passing in 2012 of a number ofcontemporary terrorist scenarios that
unfolded later. Boston, Bangkok,
Ottawa and Sydney are representativeof this precedence, however it is when
you read Karin Tackinberry throughthe retrospective lens of ISIL/ISI,
how it started, how it was allowed tofester and grow, and the consequencesof the international community not
constructively intervening, makes
for sobering reading. Would themass exodus to continental Europe
from Syria and Iraq be happening at
the extent it is today? International
Humanitarian Law and its application
50 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition(or not, as the case may sometimes be),its legal standing and efficacy in its
wider sense, should not be just about
terrorism and state-on-state conflict,but about avoiding human createddisaster, neglect and brutality.
The principles of International
Humanitarian Law (IHL) are mostly
embodied in the broad frameworkthat encompasses what is popularly
known as the Hague Law, the Geneva
Law and the United Nations Charter.
For much of the last 70 years this“Geneva framework” has provided
guidance and rationality amongst
international institutions and nation
states. However, given the recent
surge in the number of conflicts since
the end of the Cold War, and evenmore significantly, how those conflicts
are technologically conducted andby whom or even what, serious
questions are emerging over how
effective or even relevant the current
regime of international humanitarianlaw is. Deliberate environmentally
destructive acts or eco-terrorism,cyber attacks or cyberterrorism, theuse by proxy of private military andsecurity companies, the use of robots
and automonous drones, the lone wolfor small wolf pack ability to commit
international acts of violence are now
all part of, or potentially part, of themileau when it comes to modern
threats to humane conduct amongst
the international community. If we
except that position, then do we
believe that it fails to protect theinnocent or impedes the need to meet
new threats?
If so, your answer maybe that eventhough the Geneva framework islargely working for what it was
primarily designed for – governanceof armed conflict between UN
member states. It, however, lacks
coherency when the framework is
applied to these contemporary threats,
as well as technological developmentsthat are now emerging and were notpart of the intellectual or politicalconsciouness back in September 1945
when the United nations first came
together in San Francsico.
But first a little background to
the uninitated regarding IHL andits context in recent events anddevelopments. Following World War
Two, the Geneva laws were enacted
to develop humanitarian conduct
and behaviour of member states andthus control international armed
conflict. IHL covers two broad
areas. Firstly, international armed
conflict law which usually refers tointer-state conflict such as the fourGeneva Conventions of 1949 (withthe exception of common article 3)
and the 1977 Additional Protocol I,
and secondly the Common Article
3 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions
and the 1977 Additional Protocol II
concerning non international armed
conflicts which usually refer to intrastate armed conflicts.
The UN Charter has, since its
enactment, legally restricted theability to go to war, and generally
nations have complied as few stateon-state wars between nations haveoccurred since the UN was formed.
However, initially with the end of
the Cold War and then definatively
bookended following September 11,
2001, another global change has takenplace requiring the same genuine levelof collective response from all UN
members, like they took in 1945. Of
course that collective response is based
upon the Geneva frameworks of IHL.
However, at the same time, running inparallel over the last decade and a half,
it has also been a period of time thathas seen the rise of a technologicalrevolution develop from the confinesof the military-industrial complex
into the hands of the individual andeveryday usage whereever they may
live. Global access to technology canbe sought and used, and this is where
it touches upon IHL abused, whether
in a village in the South Sudan or in
an affluent seaside metropolitan area
anywhere in the OECD.
When an international collective
response is required it is throughthe mandate powers within Chapter
VII of the UN Charter that gives
the UN Security Council (UNSC)
the authority and responsibility todetermine the existence of any “threat
to the peace” or acts of aggressionthat are reported to it by member
nations, as well as the response to it
through armed enforcement to reestablish peace. It was under Chapter
VII resolutions following September
11 that counter terrorist operations
began in Afghanistan. The attack on
the World Trade Center and the huntfor Osama Bin Laden have clearly

revealed the fundamental difference
between armed conflict operationsin the counter terrorist context fromthe classical inter-state wars that
the Geneva Laws were guarding
against during the Cold War. The
UNSC when evoking Chapter VII
action against the Taliban and Al
Qaeda, deemed it an act of global
terror and not an isolated territorially
specific action, as had previously
been regarded as the prior context ofterrorism. More recently, Resolution
2170 (2014) condemned the gross,widespread abuse of human rights
by the extremist group ISIS/ISIL/
Daesh in Iraq and Syria and called onmember nations to suppress the flowof foreign fighters, financing and othersupport to Islamist extremist groups.
A US/NATO led response using air
strikes and Special Forces began inlate December 2014. Of course China
and Russia, permanent members of
the UN Security Council, were in
diplomatic speak “rather unhelpful”
in widening the scope of what waspossible under the mandate, as wellas others relating to Syria using theirveto powers and thus constraining afull response under Chapter VII.
Some critics allege that one of thebarriers to moving ahead with any realchange to our current regime of armed
conflict law relating to terrorism has
been the inability of the UN to reacha consensus on a workable definitionof terrorism since the 1960s. They
argue that this lack of a definition has
caused an ineffective framework of
criminal law-based treaties that rely
on domestic laws for the adjudicationof actions that are consideredterrorist offences. Therefore, it seems
if progress is to be made, the firststep for the UN General Assemblyis to at least agree to a broader
definition. Because at international
law level their really isn’t one. Thoughcontentious, a couple of explanations
are probably wise to include at thisjuncture. Karin Tackinberry wrotethat the “Terrorism” is frequently used
to characterise acts of violence that
increasingly fall within the categoryof armed conflict and argued that thisdoes not entirely suffice as a definition
as the modern terrorist does not
employ violence as a necessary evil
but as a desirable form of action. In
another nuanced explaination ofterrorism Paul Jones (1993) noted, “…
to terrorists, violence is not a political
weapon, to be used in extremis: It isa substitute for the entire politicalprocess.” To Jones and Tackinberry the
problem with traditional explanations
is that terrorism provisions under thecurrent Geneva laws of armed conflictare only meant to apply to situations
involving “Members” of the UN and“High Contracting Parties”.
Since the Cold War ended, thenature and rationale for warfare has
evolved into more intra-state conflicts
involving asymmetrical warfare andless of a conventional state against
state military engagement. That state
on state military events are more orless contained through diplomacy andmutual self interests. This is borneout by the fact that there have been
more intra-state conflicts in the 20
years since the Berlin Wall fell thanthe previous 45 years of the Cold War.
The UNSC evoked Chapter VII of
the UN Charter 18 times for the 12
years from 1990 to 2002 comparedto the six times during the Cold War
between 1946 and 1989 ( Johansson
2003). Asymmetrical warfare has
led to the use of tactics and weapons
suited for countering the technologicaladvantage of standing armies. An
example revealed by Michael N.
Schmitt in his article “‘The Vanishing
Law of War’ Reflections on Law and
War in the 21st Century” publishedin the Harvard International Review(Spring 2009) is the use by Al Qaeda
aligned insurgents of improvised
explosive devices as a means ofneutralising US mobility and firepowerin Iraq and Afghanistan, without
exposing themselves to the risks ofconfronting the Americans head-on.
“Unable to engage the enemy directly,
insurgents have adopted tactics andstrategies that either skirt the law, or
violate it outright”. Technology andits use for destructive purposes is
rapidily moving from the state level
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 51

to the small group and individuallevel. Ideologically-driven lone wolf
attackers in urban environments? A
young sociopathic computer nerd
with a politically disruptive agendathat puts infrastructure at risk, andthrough that, civilian lives? Low-cost
UCAV drones with remote operators?
Eco-attacks or enviroterrorism todestroy an economic and socially viablecommunity rival? Not to mention theautonomous lethal robots that may
sound like the stuff of a Hollywood
sci-fi plot but are a technological morecapable than one may think. All arepotential activities that go beyond thelegal orbit of criminal events withina civil society and transgress into the
new grey area not fully captured by the
Geneva framework. They are activities
that present a direct challenge to asovereign states security and not justcriminal nuisance or malfeasance.
It all boils down to a lack of clarity
in our legal framework regarding
the scope and application of IHL.
If military operations between a
52 | Eye Magazine Eighth Edition

state and a terror movement, even if
they involve the states’ armed forces
operating outside its own territory,
they are still not enough to bring themwithin the full scope of provisions
regarding international armed conflictin the 1949 Geneva Conventions andthe 1977 Geneva Protocols.
Adam Roberts (2002) outlined thedilema by noting that that anti-terror
operations in this context may only
assume the form of interventions by aState against those forces conducting
terror activities within its own
territory, or by countering organised
opposition forces that are attempting
to overthrow the government andonly if those forces are perceived to becommitting terrorism. “The principle
agreement on non-internationalarmed conflict, Common Article
3 of the 1949 Geneva Convention
provides the core rules surrounding
what a actions must be avoided, but
says little about the application ofthese rules.” Roberts argues that the
problem with Common Article 3

when read with the Protocols, is that itis “based on an assumption that there
is a conflict between at least one state
actor and at least one non-state groupand that non-state group is organised,
under command, exercise partial
territorial control and can sustain
concerted military operations.” In hisview this has created the incoherency
in the current armed conflict law
arrangements.
However, other opinions exist
reflecting the status quo, and regard
the current Geneva framework as all
too relevant in our post September
11 world and that the current legal
framework appropriately triggers theapplication of criminal responsibility
for grave breaches during armed
conflict. Gabor Rona (2004), forexample, considers that “criminal
responsibility should only rest withcurrent legal frameworks via the set up
of international criminal courts to deal
with transgressions of humanitarian
law and abuses during the conductof armed conflict”. Rona and otherslike Antoine Bouvier (2006), who also
support the status quo, argue that noalternative system is available, andthat it would take considerable timeto have new rules of internationallaw universally ratifying the context
of terrorism. They also take the viewthat the ability to achieve justiceunder the present rules should not be
underestimated as the current systemin their view continues to function
in most of today’s conflicts. In someways that is their achilles heal – “mostof today’s conflicts” – most does notmean all conflicts and going back to
Tackaberry and Roberts, conflict, bothstate and non-state, is becoming moreasymetrical, more automonous and yetvery much in the international sphere.
The arguments that a criminal law‘trigger’ is available via Common
Article 3 when read with 1977
Protocols, still assumes that a UN
sanctioned counter terror operation
using armed force under a Chapter
VII resolution is up against at least
one non-state group and that nonstate group is organised, undercommand, exercise partial territorial
control and can sustain concerted
military operations. It could be argued
that Rona and Bouvier fall into themistake of confusing armed conflictas envisioned by Hague and Geneva
Laws with contemporary terrorism
and that the criminal law response is
the complete panacea. Most – is still
not all, most still presents a grey area
and the law whether it is criminal,
civil or with respect to armed conflict,despises any uncertainty or lack ofclarity. International human rights
law was designed originally to govern
the state/individual relationship, withthe state the bearer of the obligationand the individual the possessorof the right. International criminal
law gives rise to individual criminal
responsibility and, accordingly, certain
provisions of war crimes law areinterpreted in a narrower fashion thantheir international humanitarian law
counterparts. If the law is to be applied
directly in situations of armed conflict,this vertical relationship according
to Sivakumaran (2011) may require
re-thinking, with non-state armed

groups, however small, potentiallybeing held subject to human rights
obligations.

it, “fill the void in the existing law ofarmed conflict,” and by creating “a newproposed convention on international
terrorism that should focus only on
Though an organised ‘military’ non-State actors.”
counter-terror response will no doubt
be the response under Chapter VII It stands to reason that if the world
resolution, the terror group they are community is actually serious about
targeting is not necessarily likely to finding a long-term solution to
be under a traditional and identifiable combat terrorism, shouldn’t thecommand structure, nor can sustain world community find it somewhat
concerted military operations. That easier, faster and more effective tois not always the actual nature of work together and streamline a new
conduct in contemporary terrorist international legal solution? One that
operations, especially now that would cover the vagaries currently
the unconventional is becoming surrounding
non-international
increasingly more likely. It may not conflicts between terrorists andeven be a group or populist terrorist the United Nations members
cause. Former CIA director Leon concentrating on non-state actors?
Panetta in his recent memoir stated One which would shape and scopethat the rise of the lone wolf or small coherant and embracing responses
automonous or independent terrorist to new technological and tacticalcells are becoming more previlent, threats that are beginning to emerge
more dangerous. As soon as the ink and challenge the current and aging
was dried on Panetta’s book according IHL framework? The UN Charterto the US Congress Research Report has since its enactment restrictedof October 10, 2014, ideological a nation’s ability to go to war, andsympathetic, geographically transient, nations have generally complied as few
yet autonomous informal splinter ‘wars’ between nations have officiallygroups arrived on the international occurred since the UN formed over 60
terrorist scene. And the tools and years ago. The existing regime of IHL
methods are changing faster than the including the ad-hoc arrangement oflegal framework’s snail-like speed.
criminal treaties, are inadequate toaddress the violence and aggression
Despite those calls that the current waged by non-state actors such as
regime of international law in modern trans-national terrorist cells
combating terrorism does not need or even lone wolf operator scenariochanging, even with the escalating with sympathetic ideological andlevel of violence conducted by terrorist logistical support. The old IHL is likegroups with international reach, an analog response to a digital world.
the few anti-terrorism treaties that It needs an upgrade, a kind of IHL
actually exist are based in criminal 2.0 to legally capture the new tactics
law, and not within IHL. Pauletta and technology present in armed
Otis (2007) argues this point most conflict, terrorism and other acts ofconvincingly stating that to effectively anti-humanitarianism. We must givepunish and limit terrorism, the UN clarity and coherency to an area ofmust move on from the vagaries and international law that is still legally
scarcities of the treaties prohibiting vague and yet, if unchecked, illegally
the crimes of terrorism, and craft a lethal.
new body of law premised on the lawof terrorism within the scope of armed Michael Liam Kedzlie is the IAFOR
conflict. Her view is that the current Research & Policy Manager and theregime of anti-terror treaties are not Editor of IAFOR Eye Magazine.
robust enough in the modern context
to combat terrorism, nor are they able
to remedy the situation. What areneeded is new laws are needed thatcan, or as Rama Mani (2007) puts
Eye Magazine Eighth Edition | 53

Thank you for reading
the eighth edition of

Eye Magazine

The magazine of The International Academic ForumIf you would like to subscribe to Eye Magazine or if you
would like to contribute, please email magazine@iafor.org
Issue 8 – Autumn/Winter 2015
Editor: Michael Liam Kedzlie
Assistant Editor: Rachel Dyer
Original Design & Layout: Thaddeus Pope
Produced by:
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR)
Published under Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License
ISSN: 2187-8935