One of the great virtues of the blogosphere is the way it can push radio and TV transcripts into the public debate. Twisted images of the week come from last Thursday�s interview on Triple J’s Hack with George Gittoes, found by Troppo Armadillo. The audio files are there only till Thursday the 29th; maybe they will post a transcript.
It covers George�s frequent returns to Iraq, this time to make a film about music in a time of war. He moves through a network of musicmanic mates, balanced by his memories of Afghanistan and Timor. People tell him they expect a twenty year cycle of civil war fed by payback. They ask him for help to come to Australia. They grieve for a heavy metal guitarist murdered by fundamentalists.
To Gittoes, Baghdad seems full of contemporary Western music. In corners, hiding from the religious maniacs, is a flourishing Iraqi rock and roll scene. In tank and humvee territory, the camps and trucks echo to the competitive rants of ghetto hiphoppers and wailing guitarists composing music to dead comrades. They are mixed in computerised studios mounted under army trucks, and sent as CDs to mourning families at home. The PC apocalypse.
Road to Surfdom recasts the war in Iraq as something from Mad Max. Since the Humvee manufacturers turned production to civilian versions, there are not enough armoured bodies produced. So the Humvee lite, or SUV as the troops call it, has been deployed instead, and the soldiers are jury rigging them with anything they can find. Beyond the jokes is the brainbending recurrent story that the army of the richest nation in the world is badly equipped.
Elsewhere, Iraq seems to be in a state of strategic stasis as the Iraqi Governing Council revealed its new national flag. Amazingly, as Josh Marshall reports, it looks like the flag of Israel. That is a small problem � our very own ubereconomist John Quiggin is reporting that the June 30th handover of power is a sham:
Anybody silly or corrupt enough to join the new ‘government’ will be in the same position as the Iraq governments of the British Mandate/Treaty period, taking responsibility for policies dictated by a foreign occupying force, while having no effective power over anything that matters.
The specialist Iraq tracker Agonist has a useful roundup of military activity in Southeast Asia. And Body and Soul has a doorway into the extraordinary attempt by right wing Catholics to deny John Kerry communion because he supports abortion.
Anzac Day put the blogosphere in a contemplative mood. Surprisingly, the Right tended to avoid it, except for a thoughtful piece on Paul and Carl’s Daily Diatribe (via Troppo) which manages to coolly and emotionally invert nationalism. Back Pages takes us back to C.E.W. Bean, the official WW1 historian:
By mid-August around Pozieres and the British sector of the Somme the road and the trenches were strewn with the dead. The shrapnel left human bodies ‘mere lumps of flesh’. A lieutenant cried like a little child. Some struggled and called out for their mothers, while others blabbered sentences no one could make out. The moans of the wounded and dying were heard above the din of battle…
Tim Lambert, normally writing on science, brings a sad photograph and a homely family touch which bites almost deeper than the horror. Gary Sauer-Thompson asks about “Anzacs, regionalism and national identity”, with powerful illustrations to break up his challenging polysyllables. I added my usual pacifist outrage.
With a blogosphere infiltrated with academic lawyers, economists, and public moralists, the Timor Gap and its oil revenues were bound to set the keyboards rattling. Troppo Armadillo started the ball rolling with a learned and lucid opinion about the legal position and the government�s hardline machinations, aided and abetted by Gary Sauer-Thompson, who added the links to DEFAT and other bloggers.
Cast Iron Balcony runs a fine line in moral outrage: Can nations be selfish? Bloody oath they can!
Meanwhile, Latham�s alleged plagiarism was a gift to bloggers. Of course everyone divided on partisan lines, but various commenters revealed themselves as sometime speechwriters. Chris Sheil at Back Pagesconfessed to popping bits of Gorbachev into a National Party minister�s speeches, while ‘Nabakov’ admitted:
I’ve “borrowed” stuff from sources as diverse as CS Lewis, Ian Fleming, Simon Schuma, Bruce Sterling, Larry Ellison, Nye Bevan and Sir Richard Burton.
Andrew Norton took up the debate from the right, but was not concerned:
Yes, sure, it is better to be original, and if you can’t to acknowledge your sources. But Latham’s offence is at most very trivial.
Hot Buttered Death is a dab hand at the outrageous story. He located a pretty tale about a homeless student who lived in the New York Public Library for seven months – and ran a blog from his nest. Soul Pacific has found a new BBC game show, about soldiers who solve humanitarian crises in the Third World. Let the soulfull describe why it�s such a sick idea.
To temper outrage, The Spin Starts Here (normally so acerbic) creates an endearing vision of shared households and a younger brother barely more lively than a tree sloth.
Yobbo, never endearing, attempts a defence of McDonalds on the grounds that the horrible filmed experiment in which someone makes themselves sick on the stuff is actually cheating.
Gummo Trotsky, possibly inspired by last week’s story of his unaccustomed silence, has now turned his coyness into 34 comments. How much further can it go?
Sadly, Jason Soon at Catallaxy touched my heart with the news that John Maynard Smith, theoretical biologist and inspiring provocateur, has died.
Last week, I asked for news of small treasures. Here they are:
* Wood’s Lot poems, pictures and ideas from Canada,
* Tooles – A Sydney journalist hunts for work and the meaning of stuff…,
* J-Walk blog – some American fun,
* Lakatoi – cross-cultural observations and reflections by a former Australian Ambassador and High Commissioner, Dr James Cumes,
* (Southern Cross) Words – Cross-cultural observations and reflections by a former New Yorker on Sydney Australia,
* Dolebludger – a Tasmanian wonder,
* Henka’s Journey – more Tasmanian wonder, and
* Random Prose – stuck at the moment on Hamas and the NBL, but has lighter moments.
I have two which always inspire me:
* Boynton – wry, writerly and with a lovely sense of the found picture, and
* Laputan Logic – a genuine sense of wonder. And from Melbourne.
NEXT WEEK: What are the good sites that cover the Israel/Palestine conflict? Suggestions to Barista.
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Blogjam6 by Barista, Heartstarters for the hungry mind.