I’ve been reading an interesting book: Writing The War On Terrorism, by Richard Jackson. He critically analyses various speeches made by Bush and his government to show how they used language to create the assumptions that surround the ‘war on terrorism’. He says it best, I think:
The overall argument is fairly simple: the language of the ‘war on terrorism’ is not simply an objective or neutral reflection of reality; nor is it merely accidental or incidental. Rather, it is a deliberately and meticulously composed set of words, assumptions, metaphors, grammatical forms, myths and forms of knowledge – it is a carefully constructed discourse – that is designed to achieve a number of key political goals: to normalize and legitimize the current counter-terrorist approach; to empower the authorities and shield them from criticism; to discipline domestic society by marginalizing dissent or protest; and to enforce national unity by reifying a narrow concept of national identity.
He argues that constructing the attacks of September 11th, 2001 has been a purposeful and powerful effort in rhetoric, to convince the masses of people that the only way to solve this problem of ‘terrorists in our midst’ is to go out and bomb the places where they live.
Back in 1798, Thomas Malthus published a book called An Essay On The Principle of Population. In this book, he argued that population would outgrow food supply, which would lead to mass famines and deaths on a large scale. He predicted that this would happen in the 19th century.
As we now know, it didn’t happen. This is mainly because Malthus’ theory was a bit too simplistic. He suggested that population and food production rates increase at a steady rate, whereas the reality is far more complex. What we do know, however, is that population numbers have steadily increased. This is due to various factors: an increase in life expectancy, a decrease in infant mortality, advances in health technologies and breakthroughs, relative societal peace etc. At the same time, consumption levels of food and energy have steadily increased, as the world, as a whole, has tended towards development and betterment.
We are now approaching what some people think is a crucial stage in our world’s future. The graphs show this best, though I’ve shown them before:
Senate backs Bush over terror suspects
The US Senate has voted for legislation endorsing President George Bush’s plan for tough measures to interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects.
The new laws will grant the president permission to authorise interrogation techniques viewed as illegal under international conventions and allow the setting up of “military commissions” to prosecute terror suspects.
The 65-34 vote gives final approval for a bill seen by Republicans as a chance to highlight their tough stance against terrorism in the run-up to congressional elections on November 7.
Senators voted predominantly along party lines, though 12 Democrats voted for the bill and one Republican against it.
President Bush welcomed the news last night, saying in a statement: “The Senate sent out a strong signal to the terrorists that we will continue using every element of national power to pursue our enemies and to prevent attacks on America.”
The House of Representatives passed almost identical legislation by 253-168 on Wednesday. It must make a technical change to bring it in line with the Senate’s measure and Bush is expected to sign the bill soon afterwards.
Does Bush ever say anything that doesn’t sound like it’s been cloned from, and created for a soundbyte? I mean, damn. They ask him about just about anything and he responds with ‘freedom and democracy, terrorists are bad, we will protect America’. One of the blogs I like has a fitting description for this: Smirking Chimp.
Meanwhile, this is a precedent. Just watch the ‘evil’ countries now doing a little bit of ‘clarifying’ of their own.
Who needs international standards?! Anarchy and self-governance is better. After all, we do it in the name of democracy. What better way to convince someone to convert to democracy than by torturing them? Oh, we’re so clever. So, so clever.
So far, this blog has been about film, music and arts. Not anymore. I’ve had a lot of things on my mind lately, and I need an outlet for it all. It’s all interconnected, and all to do with the state of our world. And so, I have a feeling that the posts you’ll be seeing from me now will be to do with these types of issues. [E.g. politics, poverty, social problems and issues, human rights, and general world affairs.]
And so, with that.. I recently finished reading a book: The Bubble of American Supremacy by George Soros. He had some interesting things to say, though he seemed to take some things for granted which I would argue.
Here are a few excerpts which I found particularly interesting:
I am getting sick and tired of people being labelled as anti-Semites every time they so much as even criticise what the Israeli government does. There is a vast difference between believing ‘Jews suck’ and believing that the actions of the Israeli government are reprehensible. But popular media seems to imply otherwise – that the mere mention of anything Jewish in a negative light means that you’ve forgotten about the atrocities that were committed in World War II, and you’re a dirty, anti-Semitic, racist bastard.
Just the other day I was reading an article in one of Australia’s leading ‘intellectual magazines’. There were three articles there to do with Jews, and all had to do with what they perceived to be a revival of anti-Semitic sentiments in Australian Universities. They conveniently tied it in to the anti-American rhetoric that they claim is also pervasive through local academia. Now, considering the firm ties between the two nations, and considering that in all of the latest war debacle they could be blamed, isn’t it fair to see some sort of criticism from those who oppose the actions of Israel/USA? This doesn’t make them racist.
Granted, ideas like these can be expressed in a racist manner, but to claim that expressing anything like this is racist in and of itself is ridiculous, and they’re exactly the claims that are thrown around at the mention of anything even slightly critical. It’s rubbish.
I know that it’s a very teeny-boppy thing to post lyrics, but this song has been running through my head for the last week or so. It’s lyrics like these that make me love music oh-so-much. It’s poetic and beautiful, and scathing at the same time. I’ve yet to find another artist who can write music like David Gray does. It’s perfectly beautiful.
This is called Birds Without Wings. It’s not that long, read through it:
Wishing that something would happen
A change in this place,
‘cos I’m tearing off the fancy wrapping
Find an empty package
Take for a while
Your trumpet from your lip
Loosen your hold, loosen your grip
On your old ways
That have fallen out of step
In a changing time
Hoist a new flag
Hoist a new flag
Angry sun burn down
Judging us all
Guilty of neglect and disrespect
And thinking small
And death by boredom
And death by greed
If we can’t stop taking
More than we need
But across the fractured landscape
I find the same things
Tired ideas
Birds without wings
Ray LaMontagne is a 32 year old singer-songwriter from Maine, in the US. His rough and husky voice is beautiful. It sliiides over each of his notes, and works perfectly with his subdued guitar work. He’s got a very powerful voice, and belts out the notes in a powerful crescendo. You can feel the passion emanating from his songs. It’s very intense.
And so, if you haven’t already heard his album, I suggest you do so. It’s called Trouble. Check out the stand-out track from the album, called ‘How Come’.
A few weeks ago I posted a link to a blog which linked to various Ray LaMontagne early songs – unsigned, and completely legal to download. ;) In case you didn’t get to check them out, I’ve narrowed it down to a few of my favourite selections from that bunch. It’s three songs, and they’re all worth listening to:
Still Can’t Feel The Gin.
Hobo Blues (acoustic).
Everything I Need.
Check them out. Especially if you’re into lyrically-interesting acoustic folk-type music. :)
[Click to view the original.]
This semester, I’m taking a class titled ‘State of the World’. I’ve already had my eyes opened to a whole new world [excuse the pun] of issues affecting us globally, and population is just one of them. I’m completely clueless as to what the solution is, but it’s obvious to me that there is a problem. I’m hoping that the reading I’m doing will eventually lead me to some sort of conclusion on how best to approach this issue. So far, it’s been a case of ‘here are the facts, enjoy’ but no actual solutions. It’s quite frightening. Heh.
Anyway, this graph. This graph scares me more than anything else.
It’s really not easy to find new music. I’ve developed a bit of a method – I load up my favourite artists in the Last.fm player, and see which other artists pop up. Or head on over to Pandora to do the same. Or go to AllMusic.com and check out the ’similar artists’ listed under the names of my favourites.
But these methods of mine are not exactly efficient. And frankly, they rely too heavily on what other people consider to be ’similar’. Recommendations are similar – they’re great, and very useful, but unless you’ve got friends with really good taste [;p] then it’s really a case of hit-or-miss.
This frustrates me, so every once in a while I’ll go trawling across the net in search of new music. I’ve found that another interesting way to discover artists is to head to the forums of some of your favourite artists. It was at the Damien Rice fan site, Eskimo Friends, that I struck gold today. Mmm. Musical gold. One of the topics in the forum linked me to a blog which had a whole bunch of links to various Ray LaMontagne live recordings. Mmm. Musical gold.
Incidentally, that blog led me to find another music blog, with more musical goodness to be found for download. Both of these blogs are treasure troves of new artists for me to feast my ears on.
I’m curious – how do you find new music? What are your methods for discovery?
Ha. Like I said, I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately. I’m on holidays and bored brainless, so is it any wonder? Hehe. Here’s the last batch of 8, which will bring me roughly up to date with all that I’ve seen in the last few weeks.
The New World – this is one of those movies that I watched over the space of quite some time. It’s a reeeally slow movie, and I was just not in the mood for it, so I stopped watching half way through and left it for another time. ‘Another time’ just happened to be about two months later. Heh. Oops. Anyway, despite how very slow it is, it’s actually a rather beautiful movie. I didn’t think I’d like it, but was pleasantly surprised. I’m not one to be into chick flicks or romance, but this had a lovely depiction of love. If I had to class it in a genre, that would be it: this is a ‘love movie’. It loses points for being so slow, but gets a 7.5/10 from me.
Magnolia – Ok, I have a confession to make. I tend to rate movies by how much of an impression they leave me with. I prefer movies with impact, whatever form that may come in. I like the movies that last in my mind and give me something to mull over. This one.. well, it fell short. I can’t pick any actual flaws in it, but it’s just an anti-climax. Perhaps this is because I’d seen Crash before Magnolia, so there was no novelty to the structure. I don’t know. It was just not very impressive. 7/10.
V for Vendetta – this is one of those films which you either love or hate, I think. I might write more about it later, but the short version is that I loved it. It was ‘Politics 101′ for the mainstream teen target audience. Or like a modern-day 1984 with Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving. And by the way, Hugo Weaving’s delivery is great. I’ll be watching out for him with a keen eye now. 9/10.
Apocalypse Now – one word: overrated. I know, I know. It’s a brilliant classic, an important movie and all that. Yeah and despite all that, it’s still overrated. It was not nearly as good as I expected it to be. 7/10.
A Beautiful Mind – sappy, simplistic, cliched.. and yet quite entertaining. I really enjoyed Russell Crowe’s performance in this. Does that make me a bad person? Haha. 7/10.
Big Fish – in hindsight, this reminds me a bit of A Cock and Bull Story [which I reviewed here] because of the ‘movie-in-a-movie’ feel – the dual layers. Big Fish did a better job of it, by far, but I’m still not sure I enjoy this format. It was a very entertaining movie, though, and a lot of fun to watch. I think it’s accurately described as a ‘fairytale for adults’. 8/10.
Blade Runner – this is another case of having seen the movie too late for it to really have an impact on me. I’ve seen too many sci-fi movies to be impressed with Blade Runner. Kudos for having done it first, but it was lost on me. Having said that, though, I really liked the sets and cinematography, J.F. Sebastian’s house and dolls in particular. I wish I could take a walk through it, or at least see it all in much higher resolution.. good stuff! 8.5/10, for doing it first.
Dogville – wow. I loved the theatrical feel to this one. It really placed the focus on the people and what was happening with them, rather than getting bogged down with the ‘pretty’ images. The themes are a bit ambiguous, but this is one of those movies that has stayed in my mind for a long, long time after I’d watched it. Besides that, it was also surprisingly enjoyable to watch. 8.5/10.
