Crocodile Tears and Other Reptile Body Fluids

So at last I blog once again as promised; see, I do sometimes make good!

And as promised it's a bit of a rant. Society and The Media stuff, yep.

So the North Korean premier dies and as we've come to expect from dictatorships ruled by megalomaniac psychopaths, our screens are filled with images of people gathered en mass in city squares, living rooms and shopping malls, crying and wailing and waving their hands around, rocking back and forth and sobbing, hugging and consoling one another; our "beloved" leader is dead, what shall we do?

Cue Western cynicism and smugness; crocodile tears, all for the cameras, even "they're all mad." Well, here's hoping you never find out but I reckon if you lived in a place like that, with one of the lowest-ranking human rights records in the world, a place people regularly defect from and report  torture, starvation, rape, murder, medical experimentation, forced labour, and forced abortions, you too might inhale a bit of onion and try to squeeze out a few tears, with the state broadcaster filming you under the watchful eye of the "police." It's amazing how the thought of disappearing in the night never to see your family again can improve your acting abilities, I imagine.

I'm sure most of the cynics direct their sneers at the North Korean government for directing these scenes, rather than the people forced to play them out, and rightly so. But here in the land of The Sun and The Daily Mail, laughter often travels faster than the thought that caused it, and one fears some of the black humour is insensitive and unfeeling at best, cruel and racist at worst.

Either way, where is all this worldly knowingness when our own so-called statesmen are the ones crawling, cooing, congratulating and crying for the news cameras?

Later that same evening I am watching a news item about a soldier who lost both legs in Afghanistan receiving, quite correctly, an award for his courage and dedication to duty in battle. He is flanked, at various times, by the likes of former (is that too cruel?) pop star and TV talent judge Alesha Dixon, and Old Etonian, former marijuana-dabbler and least popular premier in Europe, David Cameron.

Alesha - God bless her, she seems a nice girl and probably not the type to bore net-surfers with her thoughts, if she has any, on war, politics and the power structure - was humbled by hearing what our Forces are going through out there "for us." I could have wept. I completely respect the dedication, bravery, sacrifice, selflessness and professionalism of servicemen and women who follow their conscience and literally put their lives on the line for what they believe to be right. But the desperately sad fact is that the "war" in Afghanistan is plainly not "for us."

Rather, it's Orwell's nightmare vision come true; a war geographically, experientially, morally and spiritually removed from anything "we" will ever really get to spend much time worrying about, even if we want to. A turf war for resources that will profit the warlords - on all sides - to a degree unimaginably greater than that to which "we" will benefit, if we do at all. An arms manufacturer's Formula One race, a weapons dealer's super heavyweight title bout - nothing, for the rest of us, but a TV spectacle of dubious merit that involves us at only the most superficial, meaningless level, and from which we soon turn over, bored and no better off.

For the politicians, like Cameron, Afghanistan is a power-point presentation, backing their claims of being in control, of knowing best and of being strong, strong "for us." In reality they are bit-part players, knowingly or otherwise, in the stag party videos of the really powerful, the macho bully boys we never meet but who rule us all with fear in all its guises.

Cameron, probably wisely, didn't speak in the segment I watched. I don't know how he had the gall to even stand there, personally. Sucking up photo-opportunities like a junkie snorting speed, smiling and shaking hands with disabled servicemen and women, their young lives forever blighted by injuries to body and mind, by memories no one should ever have to keep, by feelings of loss I will probably never be able to imagine, God willing, and surely knowing full well that all this blood and slaughter and pain and tragedy is for anything but "us."

And as for the Royals who blessed the ceremony with their demi-godliness, well, that is a whole other level of bullshit again. As you will no doubt read here sometime...

Late News Breaking, This Just In...

Well - hello World!

This is the first posting on my blog. I have no idea what or when I am going to post, just gonna feel my way into it. I have a feeling there may be a lot of rants; most times I feel like blogging are when I am frustrated/disgusted/outraged/bewildered by the world, mainly in terms of how it appears to me through The Media. Lets face it, that's the main way it appears to anyone, in the West at least, nowadays.

Without me realising it at first, this relationship between people, reality and the media has become a fascination, in a way, in my life. So perhaps through this I can explore it some more. Please feel free to comment, and comment freely. I'm big enough and ugly enough for my posts to take a battering from those who feel they know better, and hopefully I'm flexible enough to at least consider alternative viewpoints.

So who knows when or what I shall post next? Not me. But from the above, and looking at a TV currently showing something called "The Lost Kennedy Home Movies," I think there'll be plenty of material to be discussed!

Catch ya later,

The HM.