No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens
We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them
Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us
We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too
Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now
Political Science by Randy Newman
· Lets not [Randy Newman]
Politics World's most powerful leaders subvert parliaments
Ever wondered how some of the world's most powerful leaders subverted parliaments and over-powered Politburos in their maniacal pursuit of power? Jeff Schubert compares the contemporary CEO to their historical counterparts.
· Maniacal pursuit of power [Crikey via Victory Over Want]
Media Chickenshit American journalists applaud courageous colleague, then pull punches
Colombian journalist Ignacio Gomez told a roomful of America's most influential journalists Tuesday how Washington-supported Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is connected to drug traffickers and how U.S. military trainers helped organize a massacre in his country.
· Gomez [American Reporter]
Publishing: Future's in our hands
Developments in technology may signal the end of mass communication and the rise of more personalised media. It's not the news that AOL/Time-Warner or News International want to be told; but unless they move out of media into advertising franchise control, they're doomed.
· Personalised media [Independent]
The Internet is Bad for Democracy
We are still lulled by complacent enthusiasm for e-democracy, claims oure-Democracy editor JAMES CRABTREE. Unless we are vigilant, we could have
a monster on our hands.
· A Monster [Open Democracy]
MY FAVORITE ARTICLE ON ARTS & GOD
Arts The secret life of us
We censor it, sentimentalise it, treat it as a commodity. But we can't reduce its power.
We experience an art that is disinfective. What precludes its relationship to the life world is its identification with the art world. By experiencing the act as art, it loses its potency as something necessary. Art is seen as a luxury. Formal expression is viewed as a mode of leisure, not urgency.
Art is a different value system. Like God, it fails us continually. Like God, we have legitimate doubts about its existence but, like God, art leaves us with footprints of beauty. We sense there is more to life than the material world can provide, and art is a clue, an intimation, at its best, a transformation. We don't need to believe in it, but we can experience it. The experience suggests that the monolith of corporate culture is only a partial reality. This is important information, and art provides it.
· Art is a different value system. [Guardian]
Philosophy Neither Lenin nor Lenon, but both
Ivan Illich is both a pilgrim and an intellectual pioneer. Through nearly 40 years as a churchman, social critic and historian, he has exposed to radical criticism such contemporary institutions as education, transportation, medicine and technology. In recent years he has written on economics, gender and the history of literacy. Ideas writer/broadcaster David Cayley prepared this series from extensive interviews with Illich.
They hunger for a self that comes into existence through the respectful love of an Other. This longing is specifically characteristic of 1996, utterly different from the spirit of commitment we witnessed in 1968. That generation awoke to a thirst for justice. They wanted to atone for privilege by making the Other an object of development; they wanted "to help" through various programs of economic, pedagogical or ideological transformation.
· Celebration of Awareness [Wood]
Is Poetry a bad thing?
Now, a materially minded person might suggest that in market terms, what we have is a serious imbalance between supply and demand. In other words, a lot more people are writing poetry than are reading it.
· Inevitable thing [Los]
