Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

More reading, friends.

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When I was still teaching high school, I was asked to teach a subject on dissent to a group of year 11 girls. As part of the subject, we studied Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, and I wanted to make it relevant for the girls, so I asked them to read this article from The New Yorker about an American General’s dissent against the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. We also read some of the transcripts from the McCarthy hearings in the US Senate. In our discussion, once they got their head around the idea that people within the army knew about the torture in Cuba and were silenced, they could not understand why the US was allowed to continue torturing people while the whole world knew about it. I can remember one of the girls shouting: “They should stop the US from doing that!”

My response: “Who is ‘They’?” read on »

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Lincoln and Sarmad have whetted our appetites with their two cents on the massive issue of the environment. On October 15, the world will speak at once on this theme, in a virtual onslaught of opinion and reflection pieces for the inaugural Blog Action Day, an inspired initiative of a small group of creatives, spearheaded by a young Aussie Baha’i couple. Cyan and Collis, well done as always! The Neocrats will represent.

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Apparently, there’s a drought in the Southeastern US. There’s a drought here in Australia, too. After the recent torrential rains and flooding we’ve had, one headline mentioned that after the flood it was right back to the drought for many farmers. All of this drought in countires and regions where I have lived has me thinking about droughts in places where I haven’t lived, or even been.

I haven’t been to Africa, but I know that water is a scarce resource in many countries there, and that farmers are struggling to cope with changing weather patterns that leave them without the prmary resource they need: water. I have seen pictures of large disappearing lakes in Africa. I imagine it is not the same everywhere there, that there are places receiving rain and able to support themselves from agriculture. I have also read about severe drought in Western China, coupled with contemporaneous devastating floods in a neighboring province. Again, I imagine that this is not the same everywhere in China, that many regions receive appropriate amounts of rainfall and reap at least adequate harvests. read on »

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On a wall in Oldham is scrawled the immortal words modern life is rubbish. Shall we look for evidence? Well, first of all let us consider the Britney episode. She has been made the plaything of a hateful media. They said she was fat (?) and that it was the worst performance of all time. Perhaps it wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was no worse than all of the celebrated performances given by the X-factors and the people on Help Me! I Wanna Be a Star. These people win their television shows and immediately sell a notable number of records. But their performances are no better than what was put on the main news of the BBC. The entire Britney episode tells you everything you need to know about that culture.

The second thing we might consider is what has happened recently to one of the greatest television dramas ever made. Yes, Saleem was right, Battlestar Galactica is a modern classic. I waited with great eagerness for the release of the boxed set and have now finished watching it. As I got through the second half I began to wonder ‘why is this getting worse and worse? Where did the story go? Where did the characters go? Where is all the style?’ I have now discovered the answer. The channel who was funding the show interfered with it and forced the producers to abandon their story-arc in favour of standalone episodes. They had money but they were ignorant and aesthetically destitute. This happens all the time. It tells you everything you need to know about modern life. Almost. read on »

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11 years, thats all I had. Somehow I became the symbol of everything toxic about modern life, or our decadent toxic culture. It was almost as though before my murder - I was shot, in a seemingly unprovoked hit - by a teenage gang member no one had noticed that there is something seriously wrong.

The Prime Minister postured. He vowed that my killer would be tracked down. The leader of the opposition talked of ‘anarchy in the uk’. The papers blamed video games, MTV, guns, rap, hooded tops, our schools, poverty, the welfare state, state housing, television, drugs, YouTube, dangerous dogs, the government, the opposition, Europe, America, Russia…the list goes on. read on »

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It’s been a slow neocratic summer, a summer of utter nothingness. It seems our laxity has had cosmic repercussions. We are very sorry.

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