Saturday, June 11, 2005
More hilarious stereotypical librarian reporting.
I'm wondering how random the shuffle feature on an iPod really is. I've got almost 2200 tracks on mine, which includes the first six Blur albums, the first three Manics albums (and the greatest hits) and the last five Pulp albums, fifty tracks in and I've had two Blur tracks, (four if you include two tracks from 'Parkspliced', though that isn't indexed under Blur), two from the Manics and three in quick succession from Pulp, yet nothing from any of the five Brian Eno albums, only one from the Dandy Warhols, nothing from the six Bjork albums, nothing from the three Suede albums... and so on.
Damon Albarn criticises 'Anglo-Saxon' Live 8. Now I come to think of it, wasn't it mostly white faces at the forefront of last Christmass's awful Band Aid single, with black faces mostly harmonising at the back in the choruses? I'm quite happy to let this unsupported insinuation of racism stand rather than bothering to check my facts.
But a spokesman for Live 8 said Albarn should "check his facts" before criticising the event. "Bob Geldof's intention was to get headline-grabbing shows full of people who fill stadiums and arenas." The black artists Snoop Dogg, Ms Dynamite and Youssou N'Dour were playing at London's concert in Hyde Park, although none of these acts were in the original lineup announced on May 31.
Hmm? The Independent report of the same story goes on to quote the organisers as saying: "This is not Womad. We are not doing an arts festival" which is just fantastically snobbish. You're creating a concert in aid of a continent you think lacks any talent worthy of performing. If I remember correctly, and I accept I may not, after initial criticism of the concert line-up, Sir Bob himself tried to explain it by saying that all the black performers were already booked up for summer appearences. But seeing as Live 8 isn't directly about raising money for Africa in the way that Live Aid was, why do the organisers think headliners are only going to be white?
I'm a bit concerned about the debt write-off as it seems to be done with almost no guarentee that it will reach the people. And if it does pay off a country's debt, what's to stop the more corrupt rules from borrowing money from the big banks and putting it directly into their bank accounts and putting their country back where they started?
I've just read Natan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy in which he makes a case that the most useful thing you can do for a country is help the people within it to develop democracy. The book often mistakes autobiography and reportage for argument but I think his argument has a certain merit, although if you kill people to free them I'm not convinced you're doing them any favours. But is campaigning for debt relief the best way to help people? Would it not be better to campaign for our countries to have truly ethical foreign policies, to channel money to support opposition groups in places like Iran and Zimbabwe, to stop supporting the torturers in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia?
Debt relief has it's part though and Sir Bob is playing a useful role in that, you can tell by the criticism he's had from teachers for telling kids to bunk school, because heaven knows those last few weeks before the summer holidays are the time when the serious teaching gets done, from police from telling people to head to Scotland, because at the moment it's an untouched rural idyll, and from News International and th Daily Mail, who have been priting scare stories about the anarchists who are going to hijack the protest.
As for The Case For Democracy it's an okay read but it's obvious to see why it's popular with Shrubya, written in the 'black and white morality' tone that he purports to follow. The world can be divided into 'free states' and 'fear states' and, as someone who suffered in the former U.S.S.R. Sharansky is in no doubt as to where his homeland and the U.S.A. fit in. Therefore, when a fear state does something that can be considered 'good', they are doing it only because of what they get out of it, if the U.S.S.R. goes along with some international treaty, it's all part of some Machiavelan game plan along their route to world domination. If a free state does something bad, such as torturing a few Arabs in a prison somewhere, then it's a regretable lapse but not that serious, because everyone else is free. Unfortunately Sharansky doesn't clearly define how many freedoms the free state has to give up to become a fear state. He has clearly decided that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' and that as his enemy was the U.S.S.R. was his enemy, the U.S.A. and Israel must be his friend, so he's quite happy to soft-pedal (though not ignore completely) their faults. He believes what free society governments say, not what they do, so if Shrubya says he wants to free Iraqis from a dictator, that's what the U.S.A. is going in there to do, the fact that they are not welcomed by the Iraqis or the fact they secure the oil ministry and let the rest of the country go tits up or any of the many other little niggles don't really matter to Sharansky.
His thesis is sound. His biography impressive. His arguments for his case less so.
I'm wondering how random the shuffle feature on an iPod really is. I've got almost 2200 tracks on mine, which includes the first six Blur albums, the first three Manics albums (and the greatest hits) and the last five Pulp albums, fifty tracks in and I've had two Blur tracks, (four if you include two tracks from 'Parkspliced', though that isn't indexed under Blur), two from the Manics and three in quick succession from Pulp, yet nothing from any of the five Brian Eno albums, only one from the Dandy Warhols, nothing from the six Bjork albums, nothing from the three Suede albums... and so on.
Damon Albarn criticises 'Anglo-Saxon' Live 8. Now I come to think of it, wasn't it mostly white faces at the forefront of last Christmass's awful Band Aid single, with black faces mostly harmonising at the back in the choruses? I'm quite happy to let this unsupported insinuation of racism stand rather than bothering to check my facts.
But a spokesman for Live 8 said Albarn should "check his facts" before criticising the event. "Bob Geldof's intention was to get headline-grabbing shows full of people who fill stadiums and arenas." The black artists Snoop Dogg, Ms Dynamite and Youssou N'Dour were playing at London's concert in Hyde Park, although none of these acts were in the original lineup announced on May 31.
Hmm? The Independent report of the same story goes on to quote the organisers as saying: "This is not Womad. We are not doing an arts festival" which is just fantastically snobbish. You're creating a concert in aid of a continent you think lacks any talent worthy of performing. If I remember correctly, and I accept I may not, after initial criticism of the concert line-up, Sir Bob himself tried to explain it by saying that all the black performers were already booked up for summer appearences. But seeing as Live 8 isn't directly about raising money for Africa in the way that Live Aid was, why do the organisers think headliners are only going to be white?
I'm a bit concerned about the debt write-off as it seems to be done with almost no guarentee that it will reach the people. And if it does pay off a country's debt, what's to stop the more corrupt rules from borrowing money from the big banks and putting it directly into their bank accounts and putting their country back where they started?
I've just read Natan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy in which he makes a case that the most useful thing you can do for a country is help the people within it to develop democracy. The book often mistakes autobiography and reportage for argument but I think his argument has a certain merit, although if you kill people to free them I'm not convinced you're doing them any favours. But is campaigning for debt relief the best way to help people? Would it not be better to campaign for our countries to have truly ethical foreign policies, to channel money to support opposition groups in places like Iran and Zimbabwe, to stop supporting the torturers in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia?
Debt relief has it's part though and Sir Bob is playing a useful role in that, you can tell by the criticism he's had from teachers for telling kids to bunk school, because heaven knows those last few weeks before the summer holidays are the time when the serious teaching gets done, from police from telling people to head to Scotland, because at the moment it's an untouched rural idyll, and from News International and th Daily Mail, who have been priting scare stories about the anarchists who are going to hijack the protest.
As for The Case For Democracy it's an okay read but it's obvious to see why it's popular with Shrubya, written in the 'black and white morality' tone that he purports to follow. The world can be divided into 'free states' and 'fear states' and, as someone who suffered in the former U.S.S.R. Sharansky is in no doubt as to where his homeland and the U.S.A. fit in. Therefore, when a fear state does something that can be considered 'good', they are doing it only because of what they get out of it, if the U.S.S.R. goes along with some international treaty, it's all part of some Machiavelan game plan along their route to world domination. If a free state does something bad, such as torturing a few Arabs in a prison somewhere, then it's a regretable lapse but not that serious, because everyone else is free. Unfortunately Sharansky doesn't clearly define how many freedoms the free state has to give up to become a fear state. He has clearly decided that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' and that as his enemy was the U.S.S.R. was his enemy, the U.S.A. and Israel must be his friend, so he's quite happy to soft-pedal (though not ignore completely) their faults. He believes what free society governments say, not what they do, so if Shrubya says he wants to free Iraqis from a dictator, that's what the U.S.A. is going in there to do, the fact that they are not welcomed by the Iraqis or the fact they secure the oil ministry and let the rest of the country go tits up or any of the many other little niggles don't really matter to Sharansky.
His thesis is sound. His biography impressive. His arguments for his case less so.
