rant ...

It keeps popping into my head...

   On the road to Basra stood young Lieutenant Jimmy Bly
   Detailed to go through the clothes of the soldiers who died
   At night in dreams he sees their souls rise
   Like dark geese into the Oklahoma skies

   Well this is a prayer for the souls of the departed
   Those who've gone and left their babies brokenhearted
   This is a prayer for the souls of the departed

Souls Of The Departed, Bruce Springsteen

Naturally, the whole thing is quite brilliant but that's the bit that's bugging me now.

media vs the war

A few years ago renowned left-wing activist Noam Chomsky visited Australia and amongst his various appearances was a speech to the National Press Club. He used the speech to lambast various Australian governments for not standing up for the East Timorese people. As usual, his speech was littered with an almost embarrassing detailing of the various facts of the issue but after that, he moved on to a question/answer session. About the only thing I remember about the whole appearance was someone asking him what the best form of government was: Westminster democracy, US democracy, communism or whatever. To this he answered: none was inherently better than any other. He then went on to explain that any form of government is useless if it is not open. The media must be able to prod and probe into every corner of the functioning of government. If the media fail to hold the government responsible, they will have failed in their duty.

So a friend asked me a few days ago where I was doing my reading about the war. Until hostilities commenced, I was reading a number of different websites, mainly The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC Online with occasional visits to CNN or the BBC. Amongst the less mainstream publications I've been reading a lot on Margo Kingston's challenging "Webdiary" on the SMH site and the crikey site.

Since hostilities have commenced, I've tuned out a bit. When the American military command have spent half a million dollars getting someone from Hollywood to construct a set for them, it's obvious that the media coverage of this war is as important as the war itself to the US government. In the face of that, what do you believe? You have to assume that you can't believe any of it. So then you think you can believe the journalists "embedded" with the troops but that assumes the troops themselves are aware of how their roles fit into the whole picture, which they probably don't for security reasons. This war might be producing more TV footage than any other but how much of it can be said to have any real value? What's been stage-managed or spun so much it only serves to make you dizzy? Frankly, it's probably impossible to sift the facts from the propaganda so I'm finding it much simpler to pay as little attention to it as possible. It's a pity that it takes bombs and death to remind us how vitally important a free and open media is to the wellbeing of the entire planet. Democracy, or any form of government, can't exist without it.

Hello.

I've been pondering this for a while - a place for me to simply rant about any topic I feel like ranting about. I suspect most of this will revolve around politics (at least, until John Howard leaves office) but I'll probably veer through other topics as well. Probably the only topic I won't go near will be music because I think it's better if that stuff stays on gstring.