Posts Tagged ‘violence’
Facebook – It’s A Snide, Snide World
I don’t know the name of the geek from Facebook who said that he wanted everyone on the planet to become a member of his website but he follows Adolf, Joseph, Benito, Francisco and other tyrants in having ambitions that must be thwarted at all costs.
Let me be clear, yes, you can find me on Facebook. It’s true, with nearly half a billion members it is difficult to ignore it. I use it to publicise this blog to as wide an audience as possible. You can call me a hypocrite if you want but I don’t and won’t participate in the snide, puerile and thoroughly unhealthy relationships and lifestyle that it promotes.
Is This The Real Life Or Is It Just Fantasy?
If there are nearly a half a billion members on the site there must be at least a billion virtually identical photographs that consist of two or three faces (usually inane blondes at a party) pressed together cheek to cheek with vile grimaces or smiles. If it’s supposed to be about individuals why does everyone look exactly the same, talk exactly the same and behave exactly the same?
There are now an extraordinary number of sad, dysfunctional people who live their life, vicariously and actually, on Facebook. This, I believe, should be of great concern to all of us. More than that, the site encourages behaviour that is dishonest, underhand and snide. It’s not a force for good. It’s a force for evil. It’s a perversion and abuse of the internet, probably mankind’s greatest ever invention.
You know the sort of person who’d rather text than make a phone call? It’s often very dishonest communication, the ideal way for a coward to make excuses, lie or deceive. It’s said that 80% of communication is non-verbal and you certainly get a lot of that extra meaning over the phone. You get none at all by text. It’s just the bare, badly, carelessly or deceptively chosen words. Facebook goes even further, it encourages members to post messages and pictures so that they’re seen by third parties as well. In fact, often the message or picture is posted mainly for their benefit, to embarass or annoy. This is the real wickedness. It’s already led to murders and countless, countless, arguments and disputes which have ended in violence. Of course, it depends on you. You or your friends can behave badly through any medium or face to face. The point is Facebook encourages you to be snide. It’s not nice.
I don’t know what the answer is. I certainly wouldn’t be encouraging children to use it. For many it’s already become a substitute for real life. Its most well known deficiency is the way it makes you collect an ever greater quantity of friends with no regard whatsoever for quality. My sons and all their real world friends have in excess of 1,000 Facebook friends. I have 24 so that must make me – what?
There’s no doubt that there are business opportunities presented by Facebook. With that many members there’s bound to be. In that context it’s not surprising that Cheryl Cole has 1,698,477 friends. Mind you, Paul Macartney only has 11!
So I’ll be staying on Facebook but I won’t be participating in it. I think it should have a big warning flash up on the screen every time you log in: “GET A LIFE”
The Pacific
Until more than three-quarters of the way through, I was so, so disappointed in “The Pacific”. Of course, it had an awful lot to live up to. “Band Of Brothers”, its forerunner, although produced as a TV series, has to be one of the very best war movies of all time. “The Pacific” doesn’t even come close. That’s not to say that it isn’t excellent in its own right because it is but it isn’t in the same league, battalion or regiment as “Band Of Brothers”.
It’s a ten part series and until epsiode five I was bored. That’s not just because there’s a lack of action – there is – but there’s also very little characterisation or story. In “Band Of Brothers” you feel like you’re part of the platoon yourself. You grow to know and love each individual and you experience fear, grief, tension, terror alongside all of them. It wasn’t until epsiode eight of “The Pacific” when Sergeant Basilone falls in love with Lena, marries her and is then shipped to Iwo Jima that I felt the same searing emotional intensity. I remember when I first watched “Band Of Brothers”, each epsiode was like experiencing an intense personal tragedy. I would feel drained, exhausted and traumatised. It was almost too much but although it finishes well, “The Pacific” is not quite enough. Perhaps the most moving scene of all is in epsiode nine when Eugene comforts a dying Japanese woman. This is magnificent film making.
I think war is the ultimate movie genre. It describes the human condition at the very edge. Like all men, I am fascinated with horror, doubt and uncertainty about how I would behave in combat. I deplore violent films but when the story requires it, realism is essential. A war movie should make you understand the reality in detail, explicitly and make you turn away from violence.
My old friend Bruce won an Emmy and a Golden Globe working as a producer on “Band Of Brothers” and I remember talking to him about the sound of gunfire. He explained the effort involved in achieving a more realistic sound than ever before. You can hear how in every movie thereafter it’s been picked up and enhanced.
“The Pacific” does take realism even further. The spray of blood that bursts from a soldier’s body as he is hit, the red mist that appears around a group of soldiers as shrapnel lacerates them is horrifying. The graphic dismemberment and vile, grotesque injury that nowadays we see soldiers survive is beyond words. At times the cast is wading through a sea of body parts, of arms, legs, hands, feet. I think we now accept the shocking reality of this because today we see the survivors of such injury. At last, in the battle for Iwo Jima, “The Pacific” begins to communicate the deeply distressing heroism, the humbling, horrifying courage that these young men, our forefathers, summoned up to free the world from tyranny and allow us to enjoy the freedom that we do today.
There is a real mistake in some of the earlier episodes when many of the scenes are just too dark. There isn’t even the excuse of it being made for the big screen. It’s just wrong. Also some of the CGI, particularly in wide shots of amphibious landings for instance, doesn’t work. It’s not as convincing as the more primitive, model based effects in “Band Of Brothers”
There is one part of “The Pacific” that deserves the very highest praise. The titles are quite simply one of the most beautiful things I 
have ever seen on television or at the cinema. They consist of extreme close ups of an artist drawing battle scenes with charcoal. As the charcoal disintegrates into dust and splinters on the page it mixes through to become the detritus of battle, the dirt, dust and shrapnel of combat. The backgrounds merge with finely textured, laid paper, with live action, graphics and animation. It really is quite breathtakingly, achingly beautiful. All the more so so because its subject is precisely the opposite. The wonderful, haunting theme music is the same as “Band Of Brothers”. At least that’s the way I hear it. If it isn’t then it’s been composed to be so similar that they might as well have stuck with the original.
All in all, I did, eventually, greatly enjoy “The Pacific”. Most of all though it shows just how bloody marvellous “Band Of Brothers” is.
The Evil Of Organised Religion
If we lived in a world without religion there wouldn’t be any conflict in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Twin Towers would still be standing. We wouldn’t be hearing the dreadful news about child sexual abuse in Ireland. The Christian Church and Islam are both condemned for thousands of years of violence and evil. They are both as bad as each other. If I had my way they would both be disgraced and proscribed by appropriate public ceremony.
“Too many have died in the name of Christ for anyone to heed the call”
Teach Your Children
These are the immortal words of Crosby Stills & Nash. Substitute “Christ” with any deity you care to mention.
I accept that in all organised religions there are people who do good. However, an accounting of the last two thousand years: the Crusades, the Inquisition, Palestine, the vile behaviour of priests and nuns, so many wars – shows that religion is seriously in the red and, quite seriously, perhaps it should be illegal.
Worship who or what you want as you want. The minute that two or more of you get together to promote ideas that lead to death and suffering – well then you’re in a conspiracy.
Shame on the Irish Catholic Church for what it has done to Ireland. No consequences could be too great or severe for this godless institution.
I pray to the God I believe in for justice and healing.
Where Are The Police – Again?
Mob Rule
In one of the most tightly policed locations in the country a mob is allowed to shout down, assault and drive off Nick Griffin, the new BNP MEP without any police intervention? See the full story here.
I am very, very frightened by this. Much more so than by the election of a couple of idiots to a stage where they will be able to make even bigger fools of themselves.
Sir Paul Stephenson! Are you a man or a mouse, a police officer or a political servant?
Man Or Mouse?
You seem to act under ruling party political direction when it is unnecessary – Damian Green. You fail to act when it is crucial – banker robbers, MPs expenses, police violence and today’s blatant blind eye.
Where Have All The Poppies Gone?
I had the misfortune to have to visit London briefly last week. I was thoroughly disheartened to see how few people in Hammersmith were wearing poppies.
They should be ashamed of themselves. More worrying though was just how difficult it was to buy one. Hardly any of the shops had them available. Even those that we should be able to rely on to show a responsible lead like Tescos and Sainsburys are letting down our heroes. None of the staff are wearing them. What is going on? Weymouth and Dorchester are doing much better and the BBC appears to make it a compulsory requirement – and that’s no bad thing.
London is a miserable place full of miserable, selfish people and it reminds me again how I have no enthusiasm for ever returning there. Tired of London? Yes, tired of death.
“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
— Samuel Johnson, 1777
Samuel Johnson
To someone living in 18th century Britain this famous quotation may have had some relevance After all, you could walk from the heart of the city into open countryside in little more than an hour.
Today, any man, with any intelligence, will spend only as little time in London as he has to, for today London is all about death.
The death of our children as they run wild, out of control, knifing, abusing and assaulting each other.
The death of liberty as we are watched and spied on relentlessly without proper cause by jobsworths and parasites.
The death of our culture as we have allowed minorities to create ghettoes that now overwhelm our indigenous communities.
The death of integrity as those who run our government and financial systems become ever more venal and corrupt.
Perhaps the only cause for hope in London is the bright light that is Boris Johnson. This apparent disinterest in the Poppy Appeal, this insult to our heroes really is the final straw for me. London has become a vile, oppressive hot bed of greed, violence and selfishness. I shall fiddle with delight while it burns.
The Heart And Soul Of London
The Disappearing Canoeist
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/7520803.stm
What utterly absurd sentences for Mr and Mrs Darwin! When there are violent thugs loose on the streets, this is the sort of idiocy that brings the law into disrepute. The judge has made himself look an utter fool and has done nothing at all in the cause of justice. Clearly these two people were dishonest but the greatest harm they perpetrated was on their sons. I have no sympathy for the insurance company at all because, by definition, it is engaged in a process of long term, calculated but legalised fraud. How many years are the directors and regulators of Equitable Life looking at?
Prison is a place for those convicted of violence, not for sad people like the Darwins. How can the judge live with himself? What rationale can there be for this? I hope he has no connection with the insurance industry. He should have no further role in the judicial system.
Peter Reynolds 