Two party system democracy

I’ve written more than enough about consensus democracy versus majoritarian democracy myself this week, I’ll just link two funny youtube videos on the subject.

Elections 2008 last couple of weeks

I’ve been planning to start using this blog more for a while now and one of the obvious things to write about is of course the elections. I haven’t properly read a Dutch newspaper for two weeks now and I don’t know what the regular newspapers say, but I followed everything on the internet, which properly gives you a more in-depth insight into things anyway (if you know where to look, although 95% of the stuff hopelessly biased). To me it seems we’re really living in fascinating times that may end up being quite historic. Probably the most interesting US elections ever, with first the first ever female and black presidential candidate against each other and now Obama versus the oldest candidate ever who picked up a woman from Alaska almost no one had ever heard of as vp candidate (arguably the weakest ticket for the republicans ever). And it’s not just the elections, but also the bail-out proposal that not only almost triples Bush already huge government deficit, but also nationalizes the biggest American investment banks, while US have been spreading the idea that everything should be privatized for over 30 years and even forced that upon foreign countries.  I know it’s a bit sadistic when you consider Wall Street and the global financial crisis, but I found it all hilarious, espescially Sarah Palin.  Espescially Sarah Palin. Jesus fucking christ. What was the Republican campaign thinking?

Alright.. It worked very well for them for two-three weeks. I also just read this article of Rolling Stone magazine, which might explain - what - the Republican campaign was thinking and is also rather hilarious, but seems to be written a couple of weeks ago. Because quite a few funny things happened back then; the Palin “troopergate” probe, 4chan internet-thugs ‘hacking’ (”What’s my zip-code?” as secret-question for your yahoo email account, awesome!) Palin’s yahoo mail, the Courtic interviews of CBS with Sarah Palin (Just watch on youtube, it’s rather embarrasing), McCain suggesting Bush to by-pass congress for the bail-out,  an actress parodying Palin’s interview without having to change the text, McCain claiming to have won the debate… before the debate, David Letterman attacking McCain two days in a row in his show, Palin indirectly calling Kissinger terribly naive after meeting him a day earlier, even prominent conservatives call Palin’s vp pick irresponsible, dangerous and are urging her to quit etc etc.

Seems the McCain campaign make mistake after mistake, their momentum is lost again and they’re going down in the polls. You can never be sure, but it’s looking quite good right now. If McCain does win however, I guess someone like Putin will be having a good laugh. A Putin negotiating over important stuff with Sarah Palin will be hilarious and sad at the same time, they should film it and turn it into reality-tv show, I’d watch.

Also interesting is this little insight in American ‘backdoor politics’ by the Washington Post, it’s about Democrats and Republicans meeting each other about the bail-out last week. It’s the day before the debate and it seems Obama kind of humiliated McCain there, which might explain why McCain didn’t look at Obama a single time during that debate and why McCain looked so uncomfortable shaking Obama’s hands after the senate passed the slightly edited new bailout proposal wednesday(here). Interesting.

There’s also this new rather long write-up about the life of John McCain by RollingStone magazine, which makes it seems he’s even more of a spoilt brat than George Bush. Might take a while to read it, but it’s good stuff.

VBS.TV - Immersionism Journalism

I’ve wanted to talk about this little site for a long while. VBS.TV is part of Vice Magazine, which is a free magazine (glosssy) about independent arts and youth culture. I’ve read the magazine once or twice and it doesn’t interest me at all, it’s also got that ‘hipster’ feeling which I don’t really like, but the free internet tv-channel VBS.TV is amazing. It’s one of the best things on the internet.

If you live in the Netherlands, you might know the public broadcasting company for the youth called BNN. BNN is awful and I think VBS.TV shows how BNN should be. It’s internationally orientated, innovative, taboo-breaking and shows stuff no one has seen before. For example, they just have a team of 2-3 people including a camera and just attempt to enter a country like… North Korea, somehow find a way to get into the country and then just film stuff inside the country secretly and interview people. Or they go to Baghdad and enter areas where CNN journalists never go, totally giving you a different perspective than what you hear in the Western press.

They call it Immersionism Journalism, they don’t really try to make objective documentaries, but just enter a situation, immerse themself in it and report from a rather personal perspective. You can find their mission-statement is here.

Anyway, they have a lot of good short docu’s, interviews and reports on music/art on their site. Make sure to check out their Guide To North-Korea, the reporter can be a bit rude and annoying, but him doing a karaoke version ‘Anarchy in the N-K’ of the Sex Pistols, which deeply shocks the Koreans there is rather hilarious. Check out True Norwegian Black-Metal, espescially when you hate metal, the interview with Gaahl in part 5 is one of the most epic interviews I’ve ever seen. Also take a look at Inside Sudan, Bolivian Maching Powder (with Evo Morales and Coca, very interesting!), Back in Beirut, El Dorado. There’s a lot more good stuff, but I haven’t seen everything myself. Also check out the Soft Focus interviews done by Ian Svenonius with Ian MacKaye, Penny Rimbaud and Henry Rollins, if you’ve heard of those people before.

Empathy

Someone’s son got a letter from Barack Obama today.

Welcome to 1984…?

This kind of stuff just scares the shit out of me. I’m not talking about a so-called “Pirate Bay killer”, I’d rather keep the Pirate Bays of the world around as well, but removing them isn’t in any way life threatening, I still could easily do without. It’s this extreme internet censoring bullshit that scares me, as the people at TorrentFreak said, it turns the internet into a virtual police state.

When I first read this (two hours ago or so) I really hoped it was fake, but quite a few major sites seem to have picked it up. I’m seriously more worried about this sort of censoring adding to the (already high in some countries) police state potential than a possible nuclear war.

Also, read this China’s All-Seeing-Eye article about how China has already build it’s own high-tech police state prototype. It’s worth your time.

( Dutch article about ACTA on tweakers. )

Muxtape

It’s a cool new site, here’s my muxtape.

How to sell a war

Got to love public tv in the Netherlands sometimes. Of course, 90% of it is crap and for some reason our government-sponsored tv still has to fight viewer-rates and downgrade it’s quality to appeal the masses (something that was decided a couple of years ago..), but it’s good to see some amazing stuff for everyone on public tv every now and then. Yesterday there was a very nice dutch documentary about how the Americans sold the Iraq war to the public. Nothing new eh? But it was worth watching. It was also fun to see our very own Prime Minister shaking on his feet while talking with G.W. Bush 5 years ago. Unbelievable, must say he became a lot more presidential the last few years, although he’s still rather uncharismatic. There was also an interesting suggestion about why exactly the Dutch government supported the Iraq war, might have something to do with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. Heh.

Anyway. It’s a dutch documentary, but it’s mostly in English with dutch subtitles. Watch it here.

Political Campaign Ads

Yes, here’s another post on the USA elections.

Here’s an old ad of the Johnson campaign back in 1964. School-example of how politicians often use fear to get votes. Even now it’s a rather scary video.

Then a 20 years later Walter Mondale followed this example against Gary Hart in 1984.

John McCain did the same earlier this year here:

Now a few days ago Hillary Clinton started abusing the fears of people as well:

Then only a few hours after the ad was aired, it’s been countered by the Obama team. Impressive:

Oh, and here’s someone that abused a speech of Bill Clinton into an Obama ad. Awesome:

Anonymous and Church of Scientology

Probably nothing new to most of you, but if it is, I’ll urge you to check the following links. You really shouldn’t miss this, it’s one of the most hilarious and interesting things that happened so far in 2008. It’s easily the coolest protest I’ve ever heard of. Anyway, look at the links below here that explain it all much better than I ever could:

http://deathboy.livejournal.com/1082404.html
http://www.dailymotion.com/SA-Anonymous/video/7341208
http://unfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/

There are also dozens of video’s on youtube.

Anyway. I think it’s all rather brilliant and it’s amazing to see so many people following an anonymous message on the internet. 7500 people showing up is what they’re claiming, it really does remind you of V for Vendetta. I’m just wondering if this will be used in the future as a way to gather people and make some noise. There’s are so many fucked up things in the world and I think that mostly we’ve all become a bunch of Alright Jacks, that don’t bother with anything at all, and if we do it’s usually just whining on a forums/blogs instead of actually doing something about it, including me (obviously). But this is a great way to rally alright jacks. And this protest is their first, the second gathering in March will probably much and much bigger after all this footage on the web. I’m actually almost tempted to stop being an alright jack for a day as well.

I think this has potential. I’m wondering exactly who the masterminds behind Anonymous are and what they’re planning to do. I know it mostly came from 4Chan / Something Awful forums etc and it relies mostly on internet volunteers, posting their own video’s/pictures, but there must be a select number of people coordinating the whole thing. What would they do after the Church of Scientology stuff. This will continue for a month or two probably,big chance it’ll have some influence and make some scientologists leave the “Church”, but after a while the whole Scientology hype is over, what’d be next? I’m not sure what the plans of the Anonymous lads are, but I think there are some more things out there in the real world that need to be ridiculed. And they do have the audience now.

The word is not the thing…

Take a minute and listen to this.

Joe Lally - Sons and Daughters

The word is not the thing - We say war when we really mean: rape and murder
The word is not the thing - We say war when we really mean: making some money
The word is not the thing - We say war when we really mean: ideas above people
The word is not the thing - We say free when we really mean: to say our pleasure
The word is not the thing - We say war when we really mean: anything goes
The word is not the thing - We say war when we really mean: see what we’re selling
The word is not the thing - We say war when we really mean: watch us work
The word is not the thing - We say free when we really mean: our way of thinking
The word is not the thing - We say them when we really mean: people like us
The word is not the thing - We say us when we really mean: our sons and daughters

Quite a brilliant song without any instruments. It’s right on spot I say. It’s a song of Joe Lally, who was bassist in Fugazi. I’ve been listening to the “There to Here” record for a while now and I like it when I’m in the mood for it. It’s all rather modest and calm, with some good lyrics.