Let’s stomp out these ugly reports comrades …

It is easy to blame only the evil communist in China for all the censorship and blatant disregard for Tibet’s Freedom.

But Chinese Nationalism is as rampant as the state controlled suppression of the Tibetans. One only needs to remember the extreme rage against the Japanese during the last years. Japan has a lot to apologize for to China and Korea - and never has done so - so some of the outrage was “just”. But it was mostly insanely angry and fueled by Nationalism instead by a call for justice.

Chinese people - like the Russians, Iranians and North Koreans - live in a mental vacuum. They have no real news, only glints of reality and they don’t really know what’s going on in the world. Freedom of speech, public discourse and social experiments are absolutely limited and controlled by the state.

That is why many Chinese people defend their countries “actions” in Tibet as “just” and “fair” on the intranets. They are simply blind and ignorant. Patriotism is an ugly political disease, doesn’t matter if you scream “China! China!”, “USA! USA!” or “Heil Hitler!”.

HBO - like the BBC - is one of the great producers of astonishing stories, series and movies. It’s newest mini series “John Adams” is simply amazing - or at least the first two episodes so far.

Paul Giamatti is simply breath taking as John Adams - and Laura Linney as his wife simply blows me away.

The script is well written, the dialogues intriguing and one gets a pretty good feeling how hard it must have been for the so called founding fathers to break away from the British Empire and start their experiment called the United States of America.

Highly recommended!

Is it just me or are these TV presenters get hotter every year, with even bigger red lips and tantalizing outfits? Can’t we have simply ‘normal’ women not dress up dolls as presenters?

Star Trek featured the first kiss between a white and a black person (no, it’s not african-american) on US-TV. But they were actually forced to do it by some alien overlord … actually that’s a pretty good excuse.

Are there any taboos left for Star Trek to break? We had a woman captain, a black captain, an Asian captain, we had lesbian encounters … can’t remember any Gays on any Star Sip so far?

I personally think that American right wing attack dogs are very embarrassing for this great nation. They often are the very essence that smears America and has reduced it to a second rate country: greed, incompetence, distraction, war mongering, fear mongering, hate of others and most of all hypocrisy.

The GOP is obsessed with fighting causes that are irrelevant and don’t matter. Who cares if someone can burn the American flag or not? Who cares if gay people can marry or not? Who cares if Obama wear that bloody pin or not?

These issues are (brilliant) distractions from important stuff: America educational system (no child left behind?), the rampant militarism (no money for body armor, but for shiny new Star Wars systems), the pork & waste in Government bills (need a bridge to nowhere dude?) and care for the environment (the jury is still out on global warming and evolution).

The biggest shame is - that so many Americans still listen and CARE for these issues. The dumb discussions really have dumbed down American political culture as well (if you have ever read a speech made by Lincoln or any other great American president you know what this country is capable of).

Populism is certainly not an US invention, but they really made an new artform out of it.

Did McCain have an affair? Nah, not really interesting.

But I actually think such little squabbles will do him some good, because it implies that he still “got it”. In our hierarchical societies symbolism still is important - and nobody really wants an impotent leader. The countries top dog should also be a top sperm spreader.

Watching fertile bimbos playing with rubber swords and acting to bad scripts doesn’t give you any real insights into antiquity.

Shows like Xena and the related Hercules - and many Hollywood and Walt Disney movies have totally twisted our understanding of the good old heroic days. I would consider “Life of Brian” almost as historically accurate as these sins.

All these script writers, directors and most of all producers should be properly crucified for these sins!

Greece and Roman history offer many amazing and breathtaking stories. Also the myths are brilliant. There is no need to spice these stories up - there is loads of blood, sex and drama in them.

Watching the underclass, the addicted and the stupid getting busted. Doesn’t that make you feel superior?

It is amazing how many shows there are on TV that deal with justice, law and order. It doesn’t matter if it’s reality TV like Cops or fiction like those many CSI shows (all these different offspring of the same formula are a phenomenon in itself). Each country seems to have it own mixture of court TV, forensic documentaries, lawyer dramas and car chases …

In all these shows one topic prevails: the law wins, the bad guys are caught and punished.

One would think that we would want to watch something relaxing in the evening or ignore other people’s problems - instead murder and minute details of investigation seem to be more interesting than some simpler forms of entertainment.

I’ll give you blood, you give me better ratings!

But behind all this is our natural (?) desire for social porn: to participate in what’s going on and staying informed about the newest gossip of the global tribe. It doesn’t matter if it’s a real event like O.J. Simpsons trial or such trivial crap like Paris Hilton going to jail for being a drunken pussy. We want to be informed and we want to ‘relate’ - and it doesn’t matter if it’s a petty criminal or a superstar - or even fictional character.

It doesn’t matter if it’s other humans killing each other or making love to each other - we love to watch and learn intimate secrets behind it all.

But there is another layer to this lust for justice. It’s a double sided affair of the same mechanism of ‘violence’. We all have been victims of social, emotional or even criminal violence - so we want justice, revenge or just the reassurance that we will receive justice and protection. But deep in our fantasies we are also thieves and murderers - we all had the impulse / moments in our life’s to cause mayhem to others out of anger or a simple case of road rage.

Science and bad scripts to the rescue - we bring justice on a weekly basis.

So on one side we want protection from violence - but we also love to explore and participate when others were violent or even killed. For a few minutes we can dive into the mindset of the killer, the victims and the justice system - and compare it to our own inner world. It a mental carnival in which we can play every role and explore their good and bad sides while munching potato chips.

Scientists have shown many times that we mentally and emotionally emphatize on a deep level with other people - no matter if we watch something happening in reality (like driving by a traffic accident and everybody gloats) or a fictional event (we cry when made up characters die or model our lives on their behavior).

Especially in our hysterical media world plus criminals and terrorists at each corner we welcome ’security’, ‘justice’ and ‘protection’ - even when it’s just artificial. Soothing our minds is almost as important as real justice, protection or security.

So watching violence and how others deal with it or are doing terrible stuff helps us to cope with violence in our own lives and shows us new, different or frightening ways to deal with this topic.

But real crime and real violence is no ‘game’ to explore. Especially in fictional crime the dead always return in another series and lethal injuries can be overcome with a good script. Even court TV, recreations or documentaries do not really show the blood, pain and horror or real crimes. So can’t really emphatize, we always only get a filtered nicer version of reality.

Even celebrity victims are pretty dead after being murdered by their celebrity husbands.

Before I finish the empathy aspect of the Justice Porn: it is amazing that we do not really hunger for justice. In many fictional and real stories we are rather fascinated by the dark and evil characters. Some murderers have become celebrities or have a weird cult following. It is more of a social consensus that the bad guys have to loose, not because we love justice, but because we don’t want to be on the receiving end of a bad persons action without protection and the moral high ground against ‘evil doers’.

Since we all can relate to pain and suffering we all agree / empathize that we don’t want to suffer from it. This has nothing to do with justice, this is simply egoism and self preservation.

It’s good to be the king …

One last aspect is the God-complex in all of this. Sitting there and watching the crime like God watches masturbating sinners - we ’see and know’ more than the real or unreal protagonists. We are TV Gods, we know it all - and we also judge the people in the stories and events we watch on screen.

It’s truly pornography of power for the powerless. It’s an illusion of power and simpler version of sitting on a jury bench yourself (just without any responsibility). Most of all ‘all of our couch potato opinions’ don’t have any serious consequences. The law and justice are thankfully no longer bound to popular opinions or people’s anger and rage - at least in most countries.

And that’s a good thing. Instead of ropes for lynching and stones for stonings give them TV.

Just because people watch you bending spoons doesn’t mean they believe in the paranormal. They rather like your little show and entertainment you provide …

CNN recently asked it’s viewers if they were sick and tired of all that shallow reporting? 94% of the viewers said yes. Even the question was so bloody obvious that one has to ask if not only the politicians, but also most of the mass media in that big country has lost contact with reality?

I recent weeks I watched the live reporting of the presidential primaries - and I was quite amused by the stupidity of it. The insights and talking points that the pundits and so called ‘experts’ used were chillingly flat - even I as an Non-American could see that.

This is not a dumbing down of a country - it is already dumb and shallow in the places were intellectuals should offer their brainpower to the people.

Apart from a few shining examples like Keith Olbermann I hardly see any TV journalist worth their money. Political agitation has become such a money game, that the messages they spread are so full of artificial flavor that they no longer need to have any nutritional value. American news has became like American Fast Food - it just bloats your mind, fattens your fears - but leaves you hungry and sick in the end.

So Sarko and his former wife worked as a team to bring him to the top - then they separated. Big deal? Nope!

His new affair with a former top model makes the European Yellow Press go gaga. But what’s the point of being the King … le President if you can’t have the hottest Mistress in town?

Once again we monkey watch the alpha monkey screwing another alpha. Sex is still the best distraction from the political process - a distraction that everybody can understand and relate too.

The political process dies somewhere in between speculation and hot gossip. Instead of carefully observing what the King is doing the public and the press are addicted to his penis and fertility.

It is the publics obsession with following the alpha pack that is their own undoing in the political process. If nobody would be interested in the private life of officials - and would be rather focused on their public and political life’s - our Democracies would be less shallow …

It’s all about politics stupid - not the penis!

Time Magaine’s choices for the person of the year haven’t always been ‘nice’ ones. People like Hitler made the list. But this is not about being nice, but about being influential.

Vladimir Putin has changed Russia and put it back on the world stage - after that drunken and chaotic Boris Jelzin a big change. (See also this BBC News video)

He certainly was one of the most dominating characters of 2007. See also Time Magazine’s other choices …

I applaud the current writer’s strike in the US. The creative people should be paid for their stuff! But I don’t think I can cope for much longer without Stephen, John, Dr. House, Boston Legal …

But especially American political satire is needed these days with all the weird presidential election stuff going on. Bring some insanity back to explain all the political madness going on …

As an European I am used to being ignored by American media companies. Most of them block foreign access to their web video players. The BBC has done the same with the spanking new iPlayer as well.

I find it very annoying that in the age of international media consumption markets are still protected so fiercely. On one side media companies like to have a global hype to sell their wares (in that case DVDs and TV rights around the globe), but they don’t want an international audience to join the fun at the same time. They are only allowed to join the ‘local’ party - organized - or better say licensed - by some national broadcaster / company.

This is boring. For example ‘Heroes’ arrived two years after the hype started in the US. People read about that a long time ago, but had already forgotten about that ‘cool new thing’ once it arrived 24 months later. Not so cool anymore.

Many movies are released on the same day worldwide. Movie companies now understand what it means to have a global audience. TV broadcasters are still on that national mindset - that seems to directly program their firewalls to keep people like me out.

Today the American Mainstream Media is finally showing some backbone and attacks the Bush government. But for many years nobody was brave enough to raise his or her voice - with a few applaudable exceptions.

One of these exceptions is Keith Olbermann (and his crew) - anchorman of the MSNBC news show Countdown. The show itself follow the usual American pattern of facts mixed with some political pundits comments within a three to eight minutes slot between advertising. Nothing special here.

But his special comments are superb (click here to see a list of his greatest moments on YouTube)! Sometimes his monologues are up to ten minutes long and present well analyzed reflections of the current situation (or usually fuckup by Mr Shrub and his cohorts).

There is a brilliance and intelligence in his speeches that most mainstream TV journalists don’t come close.

So in the recent years he has been the voice of sanity in the dark called the United States of America. Thank you Mr. Olbermann!

On one side big media companies have greatly reduced their international reporter network and therefore lost ‘local competence’. On the other side a huge army of freelance photographers, reporters and cameraman has developed in the least two decades.

But the media mercenaries focus mostly on popular stuff that brings in the money. Unpopular topics are left to a few brave reporters and photo journalists. So commercial news is today mostly about ’sellable’ news. If you can’t sell a picture or a story you won’t report about it again, because you need to pay your bills.

This is why we need support alternative media outlets for journalists and a willing audience to pay these people.

We also need more institutions like the BBC and other democratic and state funded media organizations, who can afford to report unpopular causes and criticize the powerful.

Free markets for news organization is a disaster. To provide a balanced public service will always collide with the quest for higher profits. Let big media create the entertainment, let publicly funded news organizations make the news.

And screw Rupert Murdoch and all the big media tycoons.

Newspapers have a hard time in the digital age. The readership numbers are sinking while the Internet sucks away their audience. Will they die?

TV and Radio already were serious competitions - why didn’t these inventions kill off the Newspapers a long time ago? Because there was still some space left for newspapers to fill.

But the real killer of Newspaper is their own ignorance. They - like the Recording Industry - ignored all the predictions and than trends way too long. Instead of going with the changed market they tried to fight it.

Today the they are all online: New York Times, Telegraph, L.A. Times, International Herald Tribune and The Independent. Most of these online editions are brilliant - constantly experimenting with new ways to report and engage the readers - something that was long forgotten in the print editions.

But competing with the information overkill on the net is hard. Buying several international newspapers is cumbersome and sometimes hard to do. But on the web the they all compete just a mouse click away from each other.

I often prefer newspaper website over other news sites like from TV channels (like CNN or MSNBC - and even the BBC). Their reporting is often deeper, their writers provide smarter and better commentaries. I would only compare Keith Olbermann as the only TV journalist able to write and perform longer commentaries that can match most print essayists.

The Revolution of the Bloggers has shown that people want good writers on the net. But they also want interaction and community style feedback loops. If newspapers can find their way back to their audiences they should survive in the 21st century …

The ‘electronic book’ was already dead when it was first proclaimed as the next big thing on CD-ROMs. But nobody bought those shiny edutainment books on CDs, no matter how annoyingly they stuffed down our throats. Remember when almost every magazine had a silver disc attached to it?

Then came the mainstream web and the browser - and once again the book was considered dead by tech pundits - the web was the new "electronic book". This didn’t stop companies like Apple, Sony and Palm to also sell their PDA’s as new "electronic books".

Everybody knows that reading a long text on screen sucks - even on very good screens. But Amazon.com has decided they do it all better. Their new "electronic book" reader is called "Kindle" (which is already a weak name) and it has WiFi, built in search, a weird keyboard and an extra nice screen, so we can read it in the bright sunlight.

Forget Kindle - buy an Asus Eee PC …

Amazon has rolled out a huge launch page on it’s site with many videos, reviews, celebrity endorsements and stuff you can already download via your Kindle.

But the user reviews are a disaster. Anyone reading the specs of this ‘contraption’ immediately sees that it is hardly state of the art. And it lacks basic PDF support among other things, battery lifetime is too short and the thing is simply bloody ugly. They should let Apple design a new one.

But for the most part it’s totally overpriced: $399 for a simple eBook reader? You can buy for less dollars any old decent Palm and get more value for your money. Or you buy a really cool and more useful Asus Eee PC for also $399. It’s bloody small, has a proper browser and office suite - and can also be used to view eBooks.

Of course for $399 you can buy many books and magazine  … without all the digital hassle and simply read without worrying about battery time and sunlight reflection on your display.

I am pretty sure you many of this great Maestro’s artwork. His movie posters are legendary. His style is breath taking and often reminds me of ‘Jugendstil’ and the great Alfons Mucha.

But please judge for yourself - and visit this great gallery of his work.

More? Wikipedia entry

“The American Christian fundamentalists are nothing like the Taliban.”

The Taliban used football fields to execute people. They enforced stoning and other cruel laws of the Sharia. They suppressed women, they disliked music, drugs and movies - all that fun stuff. A terrible regime of orthodox believers. Agreed the Taliban were terrible.

American Christian fundamentalists so far haven’t killed anyone - their actions are within the law of the land. Physical violence isn’t anywhere near the Talibans bloody actions. So the American fundamentalists are ‘better’ then their afghan counterparts?

Measuring a society or group just by their usage of physical violence is a bad and not very precise tool.

The basic concept of fundamentalism is that their version of ‘reality’ is the only truth that is acceptable. Anything else can (maybe) tolerated, but never accepted.

Visit www.americanfundamentalists.com to view the image in a larger size - and learn some other stuff as well.

But acceptance of plurality is the most important cornerstone of our modern democracies. This very acceptance is shown in the rule of law that everyone is the ’same’: we all have the same rights, the same obligations - although we are different individuals and by no means the same.

Religions fundamentalists and modern states both have laws and rules, which more or less make sense. But the very difference is who made the law: either they are eternal, because they were made by some God or they are in constant development, because they are made by man and still adapted, expanded and changed.

This also shows a very basic psychological element of the fundamentalist: with a rule set given by your eternal Overlord you have a ‘perfect’ and static system to live by. Not much surprise there. Very different to a pluralists society that continuously changes itself. Although your life might be difficult at times you at least know with a fundamentalist mindset what is right or wrong.

We are right! We are right! We are right!

Here we encounter another problem with fundamentalists: anything that is ‘wrong’ according to his/her believe basic system has to be changed. These people are on a holy mission. Now this is very contrary to ‘in the name of the people’ when you want to change society ‘in the name of the Lord’.

In a Democracy you need the consent of the majority, you need to agree. In a fundamentalist system there is nothing to agree on, no need for debate or even change. Anything that comes from the Lord is not open for discussion. This is especially explosive when a Priest or any other Leader ‘claims’ to speak the Lord’s words. How do you ask God if that person is really his Prophet? You can challenge any law, policeman and politician in court, but again there is no discussion with the word of God.

Lets come back to our American Christian fundamentalists. They are much smarter then the Taliban. They won’t use physical violence to change society - they simply change the laws so society has to adapt. Instead of accepting plurality they use lobbyism, votes and money to enforce only their fundamentalist views.

This is one of the greatest weaknesses of Democracy, that it’s very openness to change and populism allows it’s own destruction. Once again it is important to mention the Hitler lesson (Newsflash: Orangeguru says Christians are Nazis). He was voted into power and slowly abolished democratic laws one by one with popular consent until there was only ‘ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’ (one people, one country, one Führer).

How the erosion of American pluralist consent is progressing can best be documented by the fierce fight about ‘intelligent design’ and abortion. Slowly the fundamentalists ideas are introduced and cemented into popular opinion as the only truth in small steps. I especially admire the propaganda and rhetoric’s to actually use pluralism to enforce fundamentalism: hey, why don’t you teach ‘intelligent design’ - it’s just another form of science?!

Abortion is wrong / terrible for other reasons - not because your God said so.

But the war on abortion speaks even louder: here pressure groups have been working for decades to enforce their mostly religious point of view onto American society. On PBS.org is an excellent documentation ‘The last abortion Clinic’ that show you how fundamentalist lobbyism can work wonders against pluralism.

So, is there such a thing as an American Taliban? Yes, there is! The methods might be different, but their attitude is very much the same. Most of all over the recent years we can see the ‘just anger’ and aggression against anything liberal and pluralistic getting fiercer and fiercer.

And it’s that religious righteousness I am most afraid of.

Usually I am not into reviewing single TV episodes - but last nights Boston Legal was outstanding. It concluded a story arc about Joseph Washington - who died in this episode.

The overall theme of this story arc was conviction and forgiveness. The not so fictional character of Joseph was an African-American accused of rape and murder in different cases. His murder trial ended with not guilty.

But he was sentenced as a sex offender although the rape was never proven. That alone sent him to prison and he was obliged to register as a sex offender. This was hard enough: you had to register as such in his local community, was forbidden to use public transport and even drive a car. Most of all: all the ‘good’ people of the once again not so fictional ‘Middletown’ wanted him to leave, harassed him and tried to kick him out of their nice community.

In this episode his sex offender case was reopened and the girl that accused him of being a rapist admitted she lied. Now his sex offender status was revoked, but still the good people of Middletown wanted him to leave.

Joseph Washington was found later in that episode murdered. Sad enough. But the real heartbreaking scene was, when his lawyer spoke before the people of Middletown in Church: "Let us pray for forgiveness and acceptance."

Would Jesus kill innocent men? Would Jesus kill even acquitted rapists or murderers?

This episode of Boston Legal asked some tough questions and attacked Americas addiction to locking away people, cutting legal deals instead of looking for the truth and never reintegrating offenders back into society. This is also true for many other countries as well …

The BBC News website started ten years ago - so happy Birthday to the world’s best news source online!

The BBC site has won numerous prices, but most important of all it has become the #1 source for many people in countries with ‘bad’ or censored news. This state controlled public broadcaster beats all the big commercial outlets like CNN. And the BBC is one the few remaining broadcasters that keeps it’s OWN huge reporter network running - and doesn’t outsource everything to Reuters or AP (as good as they may be).

Another precious gem is also BBC Radio, which has literally hundreds of good shows running every week. Thank you British TV license payers for letting us non-brits watch, read and hear all that good reporting and newscasting.

John Steward and his crew have been the voice of the resistance during all these dark years of Bushism and overall American ignorance.

Finally Comedy Central built this great site only dedicated to all those great moments in (political) comedy.

Enjoy! www.thedailyshow.com

Currently all TV channels are flooded with singing and dancing contests. Looking for the next superstars all over the globe - and now the dance mania with Celebs.

The more I see these old photos from old music movies - the more I miss the grace and romance they portrait. I think we really lost something here - similar to old school ballroom dancing. Aggressively parading around on TV shows to win something or humping and jumping in modern clubs is simply not the same.

Gimme some back some glamour, style and most of all silent grace.

One thing I hate about modern activists are their guilt tactics. Europeans and Americans ‘kill’ people in Africa, because we take away their resources.

First of all ‘guilt’ is not a very good motivation to help others. Guilt only creates anger and ignorance over time. We should CARE for our brothers and sisters in any country - but we should not feel guilt.

Second - we can’t disappear. Modern people consume a huge amount of resources. Sure you and I still can try to be a bit more modest and aware. Drive smaller cars, use public transport or buy only certain brands. But still our complex modern worlds need power for computers, commerce and traffic.

Third - we can only buy technologies that are on sales. To a certain amount we can vote with our wallets - and with tax. Yes, we developed countries still spent not enough money for better development, but we are not completely ignorant either.

Fourth - the ugly truth is that people die in shitty places all the time. Can we prevent every death? Nope. We can try to make living ‘nicer’ for all, but there is no remedy to the human tragedy.