While smile know not when lock me away allow inside hide loneliness blue yelpy I won't stay in a world without love session thicker soul melody hollery pop articulated melodic record extra weight PUNCH vocal thickening it texture love grows that umbrella waiting at the stop started to be the same that's the way silly but true romance sun ice melts no more shelter how we live a roof hangs above our head without it our hair gets wet - umbrella wind rain employed it she was mine what do we own? Superstar of the folk world star super superlative star of stars groove, groovy shake the groove twist and shout and shake and spin -
"This Machine Kills Fascists"
Legend in the shadow, death around the corner. Larger than life, life looms large. Death always wins. Life versus death playing chess on a breezy summer day. Life looks to us like a four year old girl with a flower in her hair. She is wearing a pink dress with a white frilly trim. Death sits across the concrete table. He appears like a man close to eighty. He is wearing a black shirt with perfect white buttons that shimmer in the sunlight. He wears a baseball cap pulled down close to his eyes. The writing on the cap says, "Your End is Near." These two play every day, and have played every day that we have existed on this earth. The only problem is that life can't win.
She may not win, but she never stops playing.
Impending Doom
of modern context.
Gruesome and fearsome,
a dozen dead oceans.
Hammer's a bleedin',
tongues were all broken.
Thunder of warning,
drown the whole world.
Whispers of nobody listening,
masters of war.
A purist streak,
a lost crowned prince
in a commercial cesspool.
Highway for gamblers,
it's all over now.
Define a new sound.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The CNN Effect
Information is power. The manipulation of information, more importantly the media, is the most efficient way to dictate the events of a nation. In a Soviet style press system, all forms of media are strictly controlled, so the public only knows what the government wants them to know. The United States of America was built on the foundation of a free press. It is in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights because the framers of the Constitution believed that a democracy could only prosper with an unrestricted press, one that can act as a watchdog on government, even to act as a “fourth branch” of government. Growing technology, such as television and the internet have made the watchdog even more powerful than the founding fathers could have ever imagined.
News has evolved so much in history of America. First people could only read news in daily newspapers. Television came along and led to news cycles throughout the day at specific times when you could get information and news. In 1980, CNN was founded by Ted Turner. It was the first television network that set out to produce 24 hour news coverage. While now CNN isn’t the only network to have accomplished this, they are credited with starting a whole new relationship between the media, government and public relations. The “CNN Effect” is a phenomenon in which some say that government decisions can be directly affected by the quick and widespread nature of news coverage.
Some say that the actions taken by the US government in the early 1990’s with regards to Somalia were directly influenced by the CNN effect. Larry Eagleburger, the Secretary of State at the time, admitted in a panel discussion sponsored by the Brookings Institute that President Bush’s decision to send troops to Somalia was clearly influenced by pictures on television. The news networks were airing pictures of starving children suffering in Somalia, and it made it tough for the administration to turn the other way. It proves the strength that a picture can have. An interest group could have sent letter after letter to the President asking him to help the starving children of Somalia, and nothing would have come of it. Yet when there are pictures, when these children are given a face that is pumped through TV sets across the country, the administration has to respond. Without a response the Bush administration would have appeared inhumane. American troops did enter Somalia, but they did not stay there for long. New pictures started to cycle the news networks, this time of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The new pictures influenced the new administration to remove the troops from Somalia.
Another possible example of the CNN effect was the prisoner abuse scandal in the Iraqi central prison at Abu Ghraib. In January of 2004 an internal Army inquiry was ordered by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez about prisoner torture and abuse. The New York Times ran a story covering this inquiry on January 19th, but it was not a major story. It did become a major story when pictures from the prison were first released by 60 Minutes in April. The pictures were graphic and lead to a media frenzy about torture by Americans who were supposed to be in Iraq on a “civilizing mission.” Once the pictures were released, and were cycled all over television and the internet. The “internal” inquiry then became a public circus, and everybody wanted answers. Immediately the American soldiers who were involved were expelled from the army, and soon after were sent to trial for their crimes. Two of the soldiers, the ones in the pictures, were sentenced to jail time. This event had longer lasting effects as well. President Obama’s first executive order when taking office this year was about the closing of the prison in Guantanamo Bay. This prison is notorious for the torturing of suspected terrorists. President Obama’s decision was most likely influenced by the pictures that were released from Abu Ghraib. After those pictures, America’s image was damaged around the world. The President decided that the rebuilding of the image was even more important than the rebuilding of a struggling economy.
One picture may be worth 1000 words, but one picture on CNN is worth way more.
News has evolved so much in history of America. First people could only read news in daily newspapers. Television came along and led to news cycles throughout the day at specific times when you could get information and news. In 1980, CNN was founded by Ted Turner. It was the first television network that set out to produce 24 hour news coverage. While now CNN isn’t the only network to have accomplished this, they are credited with starting a whole new relationship between the media, government and public relations. The “CNN Effect” is a phenomenon in which some say that government decisions can be directly affected by the quick and widespread nature of news coverage.
Some say that the actions taken by the US government in the early 1990’s with regards to Somalia were directly influenced by the CNN effect. Larry Eagleburger, the Secretary of State at the time, admitted in a panel discussion sponsored by the Brookings Institute that President Bush’s decision to send troops to Somalia was clearly influenced by pictures on television. The news networks were airing pictures of starving children suffering in Somalia, and it made it tough for the administration to turn the other way. It proves the strength that a picture can have. An interest group could have sent letter after letter to the President asking him to help the starving children of Somalia, and nothing would have come of it. Yet when there are pictures, when these children are given a face that is pumped through TV sets across the country, the administration has to respond. Without a response the Bush administration would have appeared inhumane. American troops did enter Somalia, but they did not stay there for long. New pictures started to cycle the news networks, this time of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The new pictures influenced the new administration to remove the troops from Somalia.
Another possible example of the CNN effect was the prisoner abuse scandal in the Iraqi central prison at Abu Ghraib. In January of 2004 an internal Army inquiry was ordered by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez about prisoner torture and abuse. The New York Times ran a story covering this inquiry on January 19th, but it was not a major story. It did become a major story when pictures from the prison were first released by 60 Minutes in April. The pictures were graphic and lead to a media frenzy about torture by Americans who were supposed to be in Iraq on a “civilizing mission.” Once the pictures were released, and were cycled all over television and the internet. The “internal” inquiry then became a public circus, and everybody wanted answers. Immediately the American soldiers who were involved were expelled from the army, and soon after were sent to trial for their crimes. Two of the soldiers, the ones in the pictures, were sentenced to jail time. This event had longer lasting effects as well. President Obama’s first executive order when taking office this year was about the closing of the prison in Guantanamo Bay. This prison is notorious for the torturing of suspected terrorists. President Obama’s decision was most likely influenced by the pictures that were released from Abu Ghraib. After those pictures, America’s image was damaged around the world. The President decided that the rebuilding of the image was even more important than the rebuilding of a struggling economy.
One picture may be worth 1000 words, but one picture on CNN is worth way more.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Odious Importunities
“Why do we, you and I and many another, protest so vehemently against war, instead of just accepting it as another one of life’s odious importunities?” – Sigmund Freud
The reason that we as a people protest to war so vehemently is because we have a great enough intelligence to understand the horror and pain that it causes. Our minds have the capability of guilt and empathy. War is a primal urge an urge to survive and to prosper, a real competition of life. Our minds, though, give us the opportunity to put ourselves in another’s shoes and try to understand what another is feeling. When you put a rifle to the temple of another man does not an image of his family pop into your mind? Little Susie, his only daughter will have to grow up without a father, because you followed orders. War may just be one of life’s odious importunities, but we are too smart to accept it as such. The march toward peace is a march on a road that is bloodied and soiled. We must march toward peace in a single file line, boots kicking in perfect unison, chanting and screaming. We must achieve peace on the same battlefield where Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, to the graveyard of thousands slaughtered. Lincoln, Einstein, Freud, these are men who knew that man’s greatness was in the intellectual in the “superior moral.” Man has a high intellect in comparison to other species in the animal kingdom, but some men have a greater intellect than other men. Maybe, as we evolve, as we grow smarter, humans can learn how to end war. Are we growing smarter? Humans spent a thousand years thinking and learning, but what is to come of the next thousand years? Are we so engulfed in TV and sports that we really are not growing smarter? It is the knowledge, the intellect, the greater understanding of our universe that will lead us away from war? Even when we know killing is wrong ,there are other factors that overcome. Religion is the cause for an enormous percentage of the wars in the history of our people. Differing beliefs about god and the afterlife are not respectfully disagreed upon, but instead lead us to brutal slaughter. Slaughter bred field josh Upton Sinclair must have seen a cow get hooked by the captain. We see war for what it is not for what it does. We think so hard yet we hardly think. We are so smart but we know nothing at all. We kill and kill. We kill our brothers and our mothers. Two men separated by a bureaucratic line can find themselves at the end of each other’s rifle and they will both pull the trigger because it is what they are told to do. What do we do now? The world is filled with men who lust for blood, who kill for fun. What happens when one of these men comes to power and leads a nation of millions? The results are disastrous. Blood, truth, life, being wonders. I wonder what truth this blood of wonders will bring in my life. I bring you my legs of wisdom feel the juice of degenerate being. A life without knowing. Know your life. Life of lives. In, out, super men of wisdom. Wisdom, what is it? Knowledge can only take us so far - A man can spend a lifetime learning and teaching and gaining the intellect to know what is best for our kind. A similar man of the same age can spend his life as a soldier only taking orders never thinking for himself. If these two men faced off what would come of them? One with the intellect to create a better life for everyone, and one who can bring that whole world down. As the soldier lifts his gun to intellect’s chest our whole world could be shattered. Suffocated as his blood, his all knowing blood, seeps into his lungs. His next breath may have been the one that could have saved humanity. That last breath was one breath too soon. The soldier holsters his weapon and goes to find his next victim, the next great mind to snuff.
The reason that we as a people protest to war so vehemently is because we have a great enough intelligence to understand the horror and pain that it causes. Our minds have the capability of guilt and empathy. War is a primal urge an urge to survive and to prosper, a real competition of life. Our minds, though, give us the opportunity to put ourselves in another’s shoes and try to understand what another is feeling. When you put a rifle to the temple of another man does not an image of his family pop into your mind? Little Susie, his only daughter will have to grow up without a father, because you followed orders. War may just be one of life’s odious importunities, but we are too smart to accept it as such. The march toward peace is a march on a road that is bloodied and soiled. We must march toward peace in a single file line, boots kicking in perfect unison, chanting and screaming. We must achieve peace on the same battlefield where Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, to the graveyard of thousands slaughtered. Lincoln, Einstein, Freud, these are men who knew that man’s greatness was in the intellectual in the “superior moral.” Man has a high intellect in comparison to other species in the animal kingdom, but some men have a greater intellect than other men. Maybe, as we evolve, as we grow smarter, humans can learn how to end war. Are we growing smarter? Humans spent a thousand years thinking and learning, but what is to come of the next thousand years? Are we so engulfed in TV and sports that we really are not growing smarter? It is the knowledge, the intellect, the greater understanding of our universe that will lead us away from war? Even when we know killing is wrong ,there are other factors that overcome. Religion is the cause for an enormous percentage of the wars in the history of our people. Differing beliefs about god and the afterlife are not respectfully disagreed upon, but instead lead us to brutal slaughter. Slaughter bred field josh Upton Sinclair must have seen a cow get hooked by the captain. We see war for what it is not for what it does. We think so hard yet we hardly think. We are so smart but we know nothing at all. We kill and kill. We kill our brothers and our mothers. Two men separated by a bureaucratic line can find themselves at the end of each other’s rifle and they will both pull the trigger because it is what they are told to do. What do we do now? The world is filled with men who lust for blood, who kill for fun. What happens when one of these men comes to power and leads a nation of millions? The results are disastrous. Blood, truth, life, being wonders. I wonder what truth this blood of wonders will bring in my life. I bring you my legs of wisdom feel the juice of degenerate being. A life without knowing. Know your life. Life of lives. In, out, super men of wisdom. Wisdom, what is it? Knowledge can only take us so far - A man can spend a lifetime learning and teaching and gaining the intellect to know what is best for our kind. A similar man of the same age can spend his life as a soldier only taking orders never thinking for himself. If these two men faced off what would come of them? One with the intellect to create a better life for everyone, and one who can bring that whole world down. As the soldier lifts his gun to intellect’s chest our whole world could be shattered. Suffocated as his blood, his all knowing blood, seeps into his lungs. His next breath may have been the one that could have saved humanity. That last breath was one breath too soon. The soldier holsters his weapon and goes to find his next victim, the next great mind to snuff.
Why War?
“The very domain of human activity most crucial to the fate of nations in inescapably in the hands of wholly irresponsible political rulers….In our time, the intellectual elite does not exercise any direct influence on the history of the world.” This was written by Albert Einstein in a letter sent to another great intellectual, Sigmund Freud. This was at the beginning of what we now look back on in history as the Great Depression. Einstein understood the course of events that was about to take place with regards to the leaders of the world. In times of economic strife, it is not the intellectuals that the masses turn to. It is the intellectuals who called for a liberal democratic system that was leaving millions starving around the world. This quote was written just before two of the most “wholly irresponsible” leaders in the history of mankind were going to take power, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. These two men promised their nation’s order, and order is what they achieved. At what cost? At the cost of leading their nations into a brutal world war that led to the slaughter of millions and millions of their people. For these leaders, order and stability were breathed in the same breath with war and conquest. World War two would not have taken place if it wasn’t for these irresponsible rulers, but more importantly without depression and hunger, these men would have never gained their great power in the first place. “Man has within him a lust for hatred and destruction.” Does man have within him such a lust? Or is it just a propensity to react a certain way under extreme duress. There are many reasons nations of people resort to warfare to settle issues. Surely some people do have such a lust for destruction, yet more people have a lust for happiness and security. It is when this security is threatened that a man lacking a lust for destruction will resort to killing and violence. “Conflicts of interest between man and man are resolved, in principle, by the recourse to violence. It is the same in the animal kingdom, from which man cannot claim exclusion.” This quote was part of Freud’s response to Einstein’s letter. Einstein had a tough time coming to terms with the idea that such an intellectual, rational species could still be killing themselves off by the millions. Freud thought it was necessary to remind him in the very beginning of his letter that even though humans are a magnificent species, they are still part of the animal kingdom. You would not ask a pack of wolves to come to terms to make an agreement. The same intellect and reason that makes our species so great may also be our downfall. Einstein believed that humans should be able to use their reason to stop violence, while the reality is that we use our intelligence to create more efficient ways to kill. When the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the human race proved that they have the intelligence to completely wipe themselves out. “It is the communal, not individual violence that has its way.” War is fought by nations. War calls for the individual to give up his rights, and sacrifice everything for the good of the nation. War between men cannot be stopped until every individual in this world puts down his weapon. This will be a day when Nationalism, religion and economic troubles are put aside and humans can realize that every person on earth deserves the right to live freely. “There is but one sure way of ending war and that is the establishment, by common consent, of a central control which shall have the last word in every conflict of interests.” At the time this was written by Freud, a worldwide committee to solve disputes between nations was a new and exciting idea. A committee like this, like the United Nations today, can have a profound impact on the events of the world. Yet such a committee does not quite have the effect that men like Freud and Einstein would have hoped. If there is just one nation that chooses not to follow the decisions made by the rest of the world, war is still inevitable. The pressure in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians will never be solved by a western committee such as the United Nations. Their hyper-nationalism and undying faith in their religious beliefs are in such striking contrast to one another, it seems that they can do nothing but fight each other to the death. Over the past few centuries it seems as if humankind is in a steady march towards its own annihilation. Time will tell if intellectual men, the Freud’s and Einstein’s of our time, will be able to convince us to put aside their “lust for destruction” for a lust for life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
