Archive for the 'Politics' Category
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
english chelsea fan, this is your last game; we’re not galatasaray, we’re sparta f.c.
how strange is this?
and what is the legacy of 68? i find it difficult to read accounts of the events of that year around the world, since i’m not sure how much of it is simply nostalgia and romanticism.
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Can I borrow your punk?
Interesting point indeed. I suspect the direction of Pakistani pop music, especially in it’s infancy was probably influenced by the tastes of a very small group of individuals; hence the seemingly obvious next move to punk was never quite as inevitable.
As much as this may seem a viable explanation, I would it breach the Hippocratic oath I never took, if I were not to explain that this is a bit of a sophism; because, from what I recall VS (for whom, my retrospective appreciation only grows) were, as individuals big fans of early-punk like Black Sabbath et al. (they are proto-punk, right?) but I think that while early pop had an underpinning of rhythm which sort of fit into the Pakistani oriental sensitivity, punk probably doesn’t quite cut it like that?
What about Junoon’s Talaash though? Wasn’t that the ultimate angry-young-man bohemian rhapsody?
Shame, i was just getting on a roll, but a “silver BMW” is here. I’m off, with only cherry cola tangy candy to keep me company. More later.
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
rip it up and start again.
well, thanks. =) to be honest, it was something i picked up on thanks to various sources around the interwebs. i recognised the similarity across ‘last nite’, ‘the sporting life’ and ’selfish jean’ at first, later ‘town called malice’, and then some digging around brought up the rest. can you think of any others? in fairness, ‘last nite’ and ’selfish jean’ have different tempos, so it’s less apparent. even in ‘town called malice’ you have to really try to pick out the beat - i think it’s most apparent at the beginning, where they play the ‘beat’ on the bass and snapping fingers! i’m surprised you hadn’t heard ‘you can’t hurry love’ before. might i suggest a refresher course in motown classics?
emma goldman was an lithuanian-american anarchist. the wikipedia article on her is decent. so, the thing is, emma goldman is mistakenly attributed the quote:
If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution.
or variations of that. sophie ellis-bextor’s song ‘if i can’t dance’ is based on this.
apparently, the closest thing to this that she said/wrote is:
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.
i haven’t read as much of her as i’d like. wikiquote tells us this is from living my life.
as for amy winehouse, she of course just won a grammy for record of the year. i’d say she’s fairly well-known around these parts. and her troubles have gotten quite a bit of publicity on tv, etc. definitely more than pete doherty, i’d say. i’d also guess his music - with either the libertines or babyshambles - has less of a following than winehouse’s music.
Sunday, February 10th, 2008
the revolution will be commodified.
a fluorescent chick of a different sort:
pity emma goldman, misquoted and sold as pop.
catchy though. no?
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Comedians aint stupid
Yeah, my first thought too, was that the poster was quite horrifying. But I wonder if we didnt have the emotional baggage of the tragedy on 9/11, would have been able to look at it without an automatic grimace?
Speaking of film, I’m currently majorly smitten by post independance Indian cinema (no, I dont mean Bollywood’s wet-saree tree hugging); Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa in particular is certainly an ‘interesting’ film, steeped in a very classical indianess.
Dil dil Pakistan shows up as number 3…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/us/features/topten/profiles/index.shtml
I must have shoved this down the throat of everybody i know, but : Steve Job’s Stanford address is pretty swell
My train of thought as follows:
Conan >> “gee, he did a nice graduation day speech at Harvard” >> graduation day speeches are nice bits of chicken soup >> who else did a decent graduation day speech? >> not at my college, clearly >> is KFC really bad for you? >> ah, the apple guy >> you mean steve jobs? >> yeah >> something about trans-fatty acids gives them a bad name, apparently.. >> [null ]
Monday, January 21st, 2008
PIA Ads - Charting the demise of Pakistani liberalism
I was looking for the ad below, as an example of something PIA just wouldnt be able to get past most people’s self-righteous morality, and I came across a discussion for another PIA ad that would be unpublishable for a completely different reason..
I suspect vs. the 60s when this ad was published, pakistani society has certainly regressed when it comes to pluralism / liberalness (no thanks to Zia, et al.), but there is probably a far greater gap in absolute perspectives on society than there ever was previously..
Source: http://commercial-archive.com/node/142249
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
three cheers for our side
you know, i’m not sure how to end this. a maulvi figurehead wouldn’t appease anyone, i think.
basically, this is an armed battle between the army - i.e., the state - and the tehreek-i-taliban. now, the army - even if it didn’t have taliban sympathisers within - can’t go after the taliban as strongly as they would some foreign attackers, because that would only alienate more people from the state. the taliban, on the other hand, don’t have this problem, i think, because their support is based mainly on ideological grounds. it seems like they think they’re fighting for a utopian ideal, and no cost is too great to achieve it.
in the middle ground, i guess, there are people who sympathise with political resistance against the state, but who are simultaneously in favour of a state that’s less committed to enforcing an ideology. i think they usually end up yielding in the face of force, whether from the taliban or the state. i don’t know, but it’s certainly possible that, if this does become a more widespread thing, we could see a third group - or maybe more - emerge - one that’s anti-taliban and anti-state. if any such groups ally themselves based on ethnicity, and not behind the idea of pakistan, then we could see the breakup of pakistan into more than just two or three parts.
in ideological terms, the strange thing about this situation is that both the pakistani state and the taliban have similar lineages - ones drawn from islam. despite the labels tossed around - infidel! extremist! - it’s very difficult to convince most muslims - like most pakistani citizens - to fight other muslims. in political terms, there’s the fact that most of the support for the taliban comes from places where people don’t consider themselves part of pakistan, and not accountable to the state.
in any sort of discussion or negotiation, i suspect the state and the taliban wouldn’t be able to reach a settlement because the taliban would ask for shariah law, and the state would ask them to lay down their arms. and, understandably, neither would be willing to make those concessions.
so, i think, there is definitely space for some sort of islamic project to reconcile the two, and there’s also space for a political project to reconcile them. martial law won’t do it, and neither will legions of suicide bombers. since they are both too busy fighting each other, someone else will have to start working on these issues.