John Mortell’s blog

I recently came across this Anime from a friend’s facebook account. According to the wikipedia article the show is based off a manga comic that satirises politics with mahjong games used to decide international relations.

It’s completely barmy as you can imagine.

Some of the touches, like Kim Jong Il’s son having ‘mickey mouse’ ears are nice nods to real world events and definitely add to the strangeness of the episodes. Anyway, I’ve put up what I can find off youtube so enjoy:
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Really interesting part of Newswipe talking about how with the collapse of the Cold War, the narrative of the victim replaced that of ‘left vs right’. In particular, they mention how by making certain people the ‘good’ victims and others the ‘bad’ aggressors the ability to deal with complex politics became more difficult.

A recent example of the danger of the ‘victim’ narrative has been seen following the earthquake in Haiti. I do not think it is unreasonable to point out that at least part of the reason the damage was so extensive was down to Haiti being a non-functional state. Yet, Haiti’s political situation seems largely to have been ignored in favour of narrative about the ‘victims’ of the earthquake. Obviously, there are issues of time and what one can focus on, but I suspect what would help Haiti more than aid is a genuine discussion as to how Haiti could be made ‘to function’, something that the ‘victim’ narrative really cannot deal with.

The relevant part begins at 1.50 minutes into the video:

As an aside, anybody know how I can embed videos in a way so that it could begin at the point I want? Tried to do so but don’t quite understand the suggestions online.

A really good History Channel documentary on the history of Marijuana and how racism, immigration issues, control of non-whites and attempts to ban alcohol led to marijuana becoming illegal:
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Or so this Discovery magazine article suggests may be the case. Certainly the idea that we’re here and the ‘dominant species’ because of random chance is not particularly surprising (for some of us anyway) but the idea that the ‘inferior’ humans ‘won the evolutionary war’ is striking nevertheless;

But people do not easily escape from the idea of progress. We’re drawn to the idea that we are the end point, the pinnacle not only of the hominids but of all animal life. Boskops argue otherwise. They say that humans with big brains, and perhaps great intelligence, occupied a substantial piece of southern Africa in the not very distant past, and that they eventually gave way to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens—that is, ourselves.

It’s a moot point really, but interesting nevertheless. And there’s definitely a science-fiction novel in it one imagines.

(Oh, wait. There is.) (Kinda, as it’s about Neanderthal’s rather than Boksops but…)

This is great, God doesn’t save anybody… Mr Deity’s site is great..

This new book coming out from David King looks quite interesting and foreign policy have a nice preview of it here. My personal favourite though has to be this one of Stalin:

Like everybody else it seems, I have seen the clip of Susan Boyle singing, and while I do not deny that she has a tremendously impressive voice, frankly I have found it hard to buy into the general ‘ugly duckling / swan story that has been built around her. Even if the story is a good one. But Clive James, over at the BBC, in my opinion hits the nail on the head about the story here. Follow the jump for the full article, but the important part I have attached in block quotes:

The facts, alas, say that in every opera house in the world the chorus contains at least half a dozen people with voices as good as Susan’s, and most of them won’t become stars, so all the hoo-hah about Susan’s sudden stardom was at least partly illusory, based on the dangerous notion that overnight prominence on television will always change reality permanently.

In the opera house, music ought to matter more than anything but it remains true that one of the reasons people flock to hear Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca singing together is that they look the part almost as well as they sing it.

Things shouldn’t be that way, but strangely enough they have become more and more that way in the last forty years, during the very period when feminism as a train of thought has done so much to educate us about the restrictive nature of expectations based on pulchritude.

When I first started attending Covent Garden in the early 1960s it was still quite common for the soprano to be an unlikely stimulus for the tenor’s cries of passion. Today, most of the sopranos look like film stars. It could be said that the more our primitive male prejudices are broken down, the more we all become free. But one of the consequences of freedom is that ticket buyers are free to choose, and it is likely to remain a fact that ticket buyers of both sexes will choose to see the imported dreamboat.

Susan might very well, after this, get a job in the chorus and even sell a lot of records, but if the press expects more than that it could be adding yet another chapter to a long story in which discoveries have been shoved onto the boards to fulfil a role in a fairy story which is fated not to turn out well.

I realise I haven’t been posting really at all lately, the joys of two jobs, a masters and trying to decide whether to do a phd and avoid the real world for a bit longer or try to find a job (some chance, you say) have proven to occupy my time somewhat. Heading to Brussels next weekend to see the EU parliament and some other stuff there, so I’m wondering, what would people recommend to see/do there? Bear in mind I’ll only be there for two and a half days so…

… Is a rather enjoyable short film by Kyle Higgins. Though a little bit simplistic in its plotting, and even though the ‘villains’ motivations don’t really make sense, it’s a great looking, well designed movie set in 1960′s Chicago about a superhero union. The link for the film is here and just to give you an idea of the ‘style’ of the film, here’s a poster for it:

This article brought a huge smile to my face…

Some analysts write fearful tracts that the pirates have links with terrorists and extremists, that the chaos is a direct result of international neglect of Somalia, and try to link pirates to the islamist insurgency that control much of the south or the recent terrorist bombings in Somaliland. This is nonsense. The origins of Somali piracy are not found in the southern half of the country, where a “transitional government” is dueling the Union of Islamic Courts with the half-hearted assistance of the Ethiopian military. Somali piracy originates in Puntland, a self-declared autonomous region of Somalia at the horn, hailed for years by policymakers as a model of a stable Somali state. Piracy has its origins in the organized communities of the Puntland coast. In the 1990s, a group of fisherman in settlements there banded together to prevent illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste off their shores. This harmless community action inspired many analysts to designate Puntland a model for Somali civil society. When some ships illegally fishing were boarded in attempts to police the region, the reward offered for the boats return was enormous—amounts that were many times the monthly income of entire villages. Piracy took off as an attempt to gain income from this type of civic policing, and slowly grew to what Kaplan called the “innocence” of piracy. It wasn’t long before the pirates became more ambitious, using the fishing boats they captured to hunt larger prey. And with the money that came in, small fishing towns were transformed into pirate havens. As responsible organizers, pirates have invested some of their profits back into the franchise, replacing barely seaworthy rafts with speedboats, AK-47s with modern arms, and GPS tracking systems to boot. The East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme says there were just 100 Somali pirates in action in 2005, but there are now well over 1,000.

Fascinating idea that the Somali pirates are probably the most organised and representative group in Somalia at the minute….