Step Up Blog

What are STEP UP’s thoughts on “Trenton Oldfield” and his purposeful sabotage of the boat race? Is he a modern, meaningful role model or a hypocrite, considering his past education and current social status? Did he think his brave and possibly reckless actions could really make a difference? Or was he selfishly using the excuse of protesting against social “elitism” for his own gain?
by anonymous 

Bit late on this one! I didn’t really know anything about this, being on tour in the US and all. (US media concentrates on approximately 90% national only issues) If like me you’ve been living under a rock in regards to this event you can just type ‘Trenton Oldfield’ into google to get a jist of what happened.
I guess this has all died down now but thought i could at least say a few things that perhaps wouldn’t have been widely discussed amongst the media commotion and impulsive emotion vented over the event.

I don’t think we should simply dismiss this guy as a hypocrite just because of his ‘class’ or upbringing. If he is at all sincere in his motives and reasoning then we should not discriminate. Remember, he obviously did not personally choose his parents and education. We shouldn’t victimise him for something he had no hand in.
Also someone living within the system or class that they are protesting against, can, with the right mindset perhaps give a far more detailed refutation of it’s longstanding justification.

Personally, to be brutally honest, I don’t really side with either Trenton or the harsh but perhaps fair remarks made by the rowing team. I don’t care for the sport or the ‘honour’ supposedly involved in this competitive tradition.
I mean, what was achieved from the boat race? Of course a lot of hard work went into it on the side of the competitors, but for what? The betterment of themselves? The amusement of the upper class audience?

Now I’m not saying I don’t think there should be a boat race… I’m saying I just couldn’t care less about it. I beat my record running around the jogging circuit in my local park last week, even though a young group of ducklings got in my way at one point. Hurrah for me and my honourable upstanding sporting citizenry achievement!

For me, the word ‘honour’ is closely tied to the word ‘morality’. The word ‘honour’ is one step further than respect. I respect someones technical ability, whether Artist, Athlete or Abseiler. But I deeply honour anything that I perceive to be scientifically moral; 
The Artist that uses his art to educate or help others
The Athlete that uses his athleticism to encourage or to help others
The Abseiler who uses his… abseiling ability to save others!
So don’t come at me whinging about someone ruining your ‘honour’ if you are simply rowing down a river in a little boat for the joy of some families whilst they pop open some champagne and enjoy the pleasantries of the day on a quaint river bank.

As to whether Trenton achieved anything, i really don’t know. It looks like he made me rear my ugly head as a “rowingist”.
I’m not by the way. Lots of my friends are a rowers…

So here it is. 
As I say, I’m not sure what it’s going to evolve into yet, it will probably become more talk based with slightly less music. Hopefully we’ll have more interactions with you guys in it as well, plus interviews with people on relevant subjects. Any pointers or suggestions do let us know on the forum or via info@stepuphq.com.
Enjoy!

STEPCAST #1 - April 2012
http://stepuphq.podomatic.com/
If you want to download via iTunes the link is in the bottom left corner of the page.

Got back from Australia yesterday and found myself bombarded by people sharing and encouraging my involvement in the ‘Stop Kony’ campaign. The rise of the free online movie i think is completely unprecedented in the activism world. And I’ve been barraged on twitter and facebook to share the kony video and ‘join the movement’ by literally thousands.

So, introducing Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army, ahhh the shocking realisation that there are people who commit disgraceful terrorism in the name of Christianity too! I can see all the right-wing Americans now, ‘where’s this dudes turban?!’ I’m sure Fox news will turn to photoshop soon enough.

Atheistic jokes aside, I want to briefly take a few steps back from the hype and analyse a few things. Now the video is undoubtedly brilliantly made; It’s a bite size, emotional roller-coaster, igniting the flames of discontent in every ordinarily happily ignorant, middle-class western kid.
Psychologically attractive and easy to take in films like these need to be done again and again. Anything that spurs the normally blinkered self interested human being into a compassionate, human-rights conscious one is a winner in my book.

But I’d like to seriously address the issue of him being the ‘bad guy’. Of course he’s a bad guy, but once again we’ve fallen into the ‘bad apple’ trap; Take out the bad guy and all will be fine, he’s just the one bad apple out of the harvest. This is obviously rather silly, but it’s something that we always seem to jump into.
We have to target and eliminate the cause of how people like Kony came to materialise rather than the individuals themselves. It is only then that the atrocities will actually stop. Behind Kony are people supplying him with weaponry and funding and also a system that allows such perversion of humanity and human welfare.

We must ask why and how Kony became able to commit his obscenities and keep committing them for such a bloody long time?
And what’s to stop someone taking his place if he is ‘removed’?
And that means killed, Just like Osama, as if he’s going to ‘give himself up’, troops will have to fight to get to him, and fight who…? The very children that make up Kony’s army; the very children that ‘Invisible Children’ want to save. ‘Invisible Children’ have run into trouble labelling Kony’s army as “perpetrators”, as they are often “victims” too.

Africom (the United states military division for securing US foreign policy and interest in Africa) has attempted to ‘stop’ Kony many times and each time it has resulted in a backlash of increased death and disgraceful behaviour.
The environment that made Kony who he is, would still be in place to create successors if Kony himself is stopped. Even The Ugandan Army, The UPDF have been accused of rape, looting and land grabbing… (the very army that ‘Invisible Children’ support.)

People are a product of their environment, and the environment in Uganda can be horrendous. Just like much of Africa, Uganda is in the struggling corrupt state it is in because of it’s resource ‘curse’ (it’s rich resources being controlled and exploited by colonial western powers) and all the other telling side affects of capitalism. 

Many respected scholars of northern Uganda have recently stated “Until the underlying problem — the region’s poor governance — is adequately dealt with, there will be no sustainable peace.” 

There is an overly simple subtext for the whole ‘Kony 2012’ film which seems to be nothing more than; get troops in, take out the bad boy, punish him and high five each other. Ultimately, the Kony 2012 campaign is based on a false premise: that increased American involvement in this issue will solve it. This might sound completely reasonable to young apolitical, shocked facebookers, but we know that increased American involvement very, very rarely leads to increased peace and stability.

In fact with recent Oil deals being made i could see this escalating into something we’d all be campaigning against in a few years time, after we send in our troops and end up taking more of their resources.

I cannot corroborate ‘Invisible Children’ as a supportable cause at this stage with only 37% of their expenses going to it’s programs in Central Africa and would suggest supporting some of these hard working charities:
warchild.org.uk 
doctorswithoutborders.org
Uganda Red Cross - redcrossug.org

I would also recommend you alternatively support the following community-based organizations in Northern Uganda:
Concerned Children & Youth Association (CCYA)
Art for Children Uganda
Children Chance International
Friends of Orphans


Further reading:
a blog post form The Independent
Visible Children Blog

With the doom and gloom everywhere we look, energy crisis, environmental crisis, climate change crisis, etc, i thought i’d do a nice positive blog about the current developments and progresses in renewable energy!

‘Renewable Energy is just a few years away from reaching grid parity with fossil fuels’ 

(Parity = n. the state or condition of being equal) After i looked up what parity meant i realised what welcome news this was that had emerged from the World Economic Forum the other week in Switzerland.

It encouraged me to have a snoop around the current advances and steps that have been made recently to help renewables take over the world!

First up is Bio-photovoltaic paint. What a truly phonetically gorgeous word to say. Biophotovoltaic. Mmmm. My friend here below in the video will do a far better job of explaining than i can, but basically the idea came about from Biomimicry. And Biomimicry is fucking awesome. Again just say that word slowly… Biomimicry. Mmmm.
‘Through the course of 3.8 billion years, nature has gone through a process of trial and error to refine the living organisms, processes, and materials on planet Earth. The emerging field of biomimetics has given rises to new technologies created from biologically inspired engineering and technology.’

Basically as nature doesn’t copyright it’s ingenious processes, we can hop in and do a bit of nature ‘plagiarism’ and steal it’s brilliance to help us with progressing scientifically as a species.

• Spiders can still spin a material far stronger than we can produce, and they do it using only the raw materials of dead flies and water…
• Beatles can detect forest fires up to 80km away, roughly 10 thousand times the range of manmade fire detectors. And the little buggers aren’t powered by fossil fuel power stations, just leaves and insects…

We still have a lot to learn from nature really don’t we…?
Ok anyway, back to painting a hut in photovoltaic paint which can then absorb solar raise to produce electricity… 

Awesome huh?
Moving on; different types of generating power from water are being tested all the time. The main problem for all renewables is producing a steady and consistent source of energy at a low cost. Searaser have a new design that ticks those boxes.
Check out the video; As the ocean swells, it moves the two buoys up and down which pumps seawater to an onshore turbine. Simple, clean and the cheapest way of producing electricity, even comared to fossil fuels. 

Moving on; My favourite recent development is using the by-products in the production of whisky as biofuel!
I’m going to have to try and develop a taste for whisky now, i’ve always wanted to be able to sit by the fire contemplating stuff whilst sipping whisky… But it’s just too fucking vile. This is real inspiration to help ‘wean’ myself onto the stuff though! 

Moving on; Now, with developments in grid I.T. we can develop a global energy grid fuelled by the whole variety of renewable sources. It really could be just a matter of years before we wave goodbye to the silly and archaic digging of holes and sucking up of the earths finite resources for power, when renewable energy is all around us, and ready to be harnessed.
Let us go forth and harness. 

3d printers have excited me for a few years. Apparently the technology has been available and progressing for over 30 years, but now it is looking like within our lifetime big things a gwan in this area! 

‘You will download your sneakers in 20 years’ 

‘No more shipping huge amount of products around the world’

‘And no more shipping broken products back.’

‘No more child labor. We’ll be able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal.’

These are the types of statements being made in a recent article by Pirate Bay about it’s planning for a future file sharing of 3d printing data. And this is not distant idealist future. This is going to happen soon.

And when it does, it will be another nail in the coffin for capitalism.

• imagine being able to print spare parts to that hoover that’s been discontinued. You wouldn’t have to go out and buy a new hoover and throw away your broken one, you could search through an online database of parts and print out the one you needed. (The end of pointless consumption and waste?)
• imagine being able to print your own custom made designs of literally any product… there would be no more need for ‘runs’ of products creating waste and again encouraging pointless consumption to prop up our failing economy.
• imagine data being sent across the world via email for to be printed, instead of products being physically sent across the world. This would save money, fuel, energy and help our global carbon footprint.

No more boring manufacturing jobs. This will be a manufacturing revolution. And hopefully a signal to finally evolve out of an unsustainable, wasteful, unprogressive, unequal structuring of society.