War Meets Values on Campaign Trail
July 29, 2008
‘Will the Big Winner of 2008 Once Again Be a Conservative Culture-Wars Narrative?’, asks Ira Chernus (from TomDispatch)
By Ira ChernusWhile the Iraq war has largely faded from our TV screens, some 85% of all voters still call it an important issue. Most of them want U.S. troops home from Iraq within a couple of years, many of them far sooner. They support Barack Obama’s position, not John McCain’s. Yet when the polls ask which candidate voters trust more on the war, McCain wins almost every time.
Maybe that’s because, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press, nearly 40% of the public doesn’t know McCain’s position on troop withdrawal. In a June Washington Post/ABC poll, the same percentage weren’t sure he had a clear position. When that poll told voters that McCain opposed a timetable for withdrawal, support for his view actually shot up dramatically. It looks like a significant chunk of the electorate cares more about the man than the issue. Newer polls suggest that McCain’s arguments against a timetable may, in fact, be shifting public opinion his way.
McCain’s Only Chance: Values-plus Voters
Pundits and activists who oppose the war in Iraq generally assume that the issue has to work against McCain because they treat American politics as if it were a college classroom full of rational truth-seekers. The reality is much more like a theatrical spectacle. Symbolism and the emotion it evokes — not facts and logic — rule the day.
In fact, the Pew Center survey found that only about a quarter of those who say they’ll vote for McCain base their choice on issues at all. What appeals to them above all, his supporters say, is his “experience,” a word that can conveniently mean many things to many people.
Hollywood’s Terror Dream
July 29, 2008
Today I went to see the much-hyped Batman film, The Dark Knight. I find the whole idea of comic book superhero films a bit silly, but it is always the subtext that interests me. Leaving the theatre I remarked to a friend that the film could very well have been written by neoconservative guru Leo Strauss. In this case it carried two key tenets of neoconservative ideology — the ‘noble lie’ and unitary executive. The film could also be seen as apologia for Bush’s ‘war-on-terror’ — Batman uses surveillance, torture, kidnapping (rendition), and suppresses the truth lest the Joker (aka the ‘terrorist’) wins.
Having said that, the IMAX aerial shots of the city were breathtaking. The direction is slick, but most memorable of all — worth the price of the ticket in itself — is the turn by Heath Ledger as the Joker. Should he win an Oscar, he would have earned it. But unfortunately isn’t enough to rescue the film from its dross plot.
Who’s crazier, the Joker or his admirers? Christopher Nolan’s Batman sequel The Dark Knight has been compared to Hamlet, hailed as a work that “smashes [the Batman] legend into a million broken pieces,” praised as a film that refuses to “disguise from us the fantastic chimeras that dominate our real lives,” and singled out for “manag[ing] to handle grown-up subjects such as domestic surveillance with more frankness and honesty than our own real-life representatives.”
So what is all the fuss about? If you haven’t seen the film, here is a brief summary, with a few necessary spoilers. After the events of Batman Begins—which concluded with Bruce Wayne/Batman buying up and privatizing all the shares of his slain father’s company and teaming up with honest Lieutenant Gordon to battle crime as a wealthy corporatist playboy duce by day and a fear-inspiring vigilante by night—Wayne and Gordon are joined in their crusade against crime by new golden-boy D.A. Harvey Dent. The men form a “band of brothers” to crush the mob, but their plan goes awry when a madman called the Joker shows up preaching a doctrine of anarchic violence and absolute resistance to all forms of order.
The Joker gets himself hired by the mob to deal with Batman and Dent and complications ensue, some of them hinging upon Dent and Wayne’s homosocial erotic rivalry: Rachel Dawes, Dent’s new girlfriend, is Wayne’s long-lost love, and she spends her brief screen time torn between the two men, before being brutally dispatched in a glaring instance of the “women in refrigerators syndrome,” a sexist literary trope identified by feminist comic-book readers in which male authors kill, maim or de-power strong female characters as a woman-devaluing plot device.
Persepolis a Humanist Tale
June 2, 2008
“It looks like a wonderful film, it’s getting great notices, but be careful: you might start considering the Iranian people human beings.” Stephen Colbert
More of Marjane | Persepolis Trailer
For a far superior, though less hilarious, interview with Marjane Satrapi follow this link to Link TV. Where she explains that education through art, culture and literature is the true paths to human achievement, enhancement and change. A proposition for a better world which is the very antithesis of the US doctrine: she defines her work as fighting ignorance, a weapon of mass construction.
No Shangri-La
April 19, 2008
In a letter to the London Review of Books Slavoj Žižek dispels media myths about Tibet.
The media imposes certain stories on us, and the one about Tibet goes like this. The People’s Republic of China, which, back in 1949, illegally occupied Tibet, has for decades engaged in the brutal and systematic destruction not only of the Tibetan religion, but of the Tibetans themselves. Recently, the Tibetans’ protests against Chinese occupation were again crushed by military force. Since China is hosting the 2008 Olympics, it is the duty of all of us who love democracy and freedom to put pressure on China to give back to the Tibetans what it stole from them. A country with such a dismal human rights record cannot be allowed to use the noble Olympic spectacle to whitewash its image. What will our governments do? Will they, as usual, cede to economic pragmatism, or will they summon the strength to put ethical and political values above short-term economic interests?
There are complications in this story of ‘good guys versus bad guys’. It is not the case that Tibet was an independent country until 1949, when it was suddenly occupied by China. The history of relations between Tibet and China is a long and complex one, in which China has often played the role of a protective overlord: the anti-Communist Kuomintang also insisted on Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Before 1949, Tibet was no Shangri-la, but an extremely harsh feudal society, poor (life expectancy was barely over 30), corrupt and fractured by civil wars (the most recent one, between two monastic factions, took place in 1948, when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited industrial development, so that metal, for example, had to be imported from India.
Hiroshima Bombing - Barefoot Gen
March 31, 2008
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki, surely among the most unspeakable crimes in history.” Noam Chomsky
The Hiroshima bombing came at a time when the Japanese were negotiating peace with the USA. The United States however wanted to test its new weapon: demonstrating its power to the world, especially to the Soviets. When Gore Vidal was asked if he thought the Atomic Bombing was the end of the Second World War or the beginning of the cold war, he chose the latter.
I visited Hiroshima in 2004 and entered the “peace park” museum without giving it much thought (put in quotes because I think the American post war Government had a propaganda campaign promoting “peace” in Japan - worried that people might want revenge). Perhaps I was a little ignorant because I was in for a gut wrenching, stomach churning experience.
One of the exhibits that I remember vividly was something quite odd. I was looking at it in its glass case and couldn’t quite focus on what it was. Rather unusual, so I looked at the little plaque beside it - which had a story. It said that there was a young girl - 8 years old I think - that had been caught in the bomb blast. Her first instinct was to run home even although she was covered in burns. When she made it to her mothers arms much of her skin had peeled off and there she died. I can’t imagine how the little girl or her mother felt, I can only guess. But to help convey the full horror to her partner - the woman collected the little girls fingers, that had melted off, to keep and show him when he returned. Reading the story I was quite moved. Hesitantly I looked back and could see that indeed they were fingers with recognisable nails - on top of everything else I’d seen I almost threw up. Leaving the museum also hit me hard, walking onto a busy street I realised it was people just like these that suffered so terribly.
The following film is based on the work of a manga artist in Japan, Keiji Nakazawa, a 6 year old survivor of the bombing. I think the film, made in the 80’s reflects the true horror of the atomic bombings and the true horror of war. All through a childs eyes and loosely based on Nakazawa’s own experiences. An interview with Keiji can be seen here (15 mins into the show).
We Think
March 29, 2008
The 20st Century = mass production for mass consumption.
The 21st Century = mass innovation.
More ideas being shared by more people than ever before.
Great stylish video on the culture of sharing ideas.
El Proceso
March 28, 2008
Reclaiming culture in Venezuela (from upside down world).
Carmen Pulido quietly sits on a crowded public bus in Mérida, Venezuela. The bus overflows with impeccably dressed students who tend to their tightly gelled hair and top-of-the-line clothing as they head to class on University Avenue. The bus driver’s favorite Reggaetón songs blast through the breeze on this bright day in the Andes Mountains. Out the tinted window Pulido gazes upon row after row of glossy posters of ultra-skinny, mostly lighter-skinned beauty pageant contestants who are half-wearing lingerie and pointing their limbs in all directions. Alternating with the posters are beer ads portraying excited, ordinary-looking men holding bottles at waist level pointed towards the sky, surrounded by everything except women’s heads.
I Don’t Believe in Atheists
March 16, 2008
It is amusing how some on the ‘left’ have once again rushed to embrace the drink-soaked popinjay and implacable warmonger Christopher Hitchens (see Richard Dawkins’s fawning portrayal of Hitchens; the popinjay also features frequently on the formers website), now that he has come out with a book attacking Islam (don’t confuse it with ‘religion’ as his target in the book, much like Sam Harris, remains Islam, despite claims to the contrary). Is it not ironic that the so called ‘antiwar’ left cheers a man denouncing religion as the cause of all the world’s ill even as he continues to remain the leading cheerleader for Bush’s ‘crusade’.
In the following interview Chris Hedges discusses his new book with Charly Wilder. ‘Foreign correspondent and intellectual provocateur Chris Hedges explains why New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens are as dangerous as Christian fundamentalists.’
Also check out John Gray and Terry Eagleton’s elegantly caustic demolitions of the New Atheists.
To listen to a podcast of the interview, click here.
Many charges have been leveled at foreign correspondent Chris Hedges over the years, but shrinking from conflict isn’t one of them. Hedges spent nearly seven years as Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, covered the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and was part of the New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of global terrorism. He took on the American military-industrial complex with his books “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” and “What Every Person Should Know About War,” and provoked the rage of the Christian right by likening them to Nazis in last year’s “American Fascists.” Hedges now cements his reputation as an intellectual provocateur with the charmingly titled “I Don’t Believe in Atheists.” While speaking out against the Christian fundamentalist movement and its political agenda, Hedges noticed another group — this one on the left — conspicuously allied with the neocons on the subject of America’s role in world politics. The New Atheists, as they have been called, include Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and bestselling author and journalist Christopher Hitchens — outspoken secularists who depict religious structures and the belief in God as backward and anti-democratic.
Commanding Heights
February 4, 2008
The Battle for the World Economy
Here is an excellent three part series from PBS that presents a rather celebratory but interesting account of globalization.
1. The Battle of Ideas
A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack …. The year is 1914.
Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.
The Ghost of Rambo
January 29, 2008
Twenty years after he last sprayed bullets across America’s movie screens, John Rambo has returned in Rambo, a 93-minute feature in which Sylvester Stallone’s bulky soldier wields a bow, a machine gun, and his muscle-bound, 215-pound body against another army of foreign villains. If you’re rolling your eyes, you’re not alone: According to Rotten Tomatoes, just 38 percent of the new film’s reviews have been favorable, with its critics deploying such phrases as “torture porn,” “jingoistic imperialism,” and “the Schindler’s List of B-list butchery.”
For the most part I’ll have to join in the jeers. This is basically a paint-by-numbers action picture that has almost as little to say as its laconic protagonist. But I can’t dismiss the Rambo franchise entirely, and even this entry shows a brief glimmer of something thoughtful beneath the monosyllabic grunts and the CGI gore.
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