A spectre is haunting the United States of America...the spectre of Change.
All the powers of old America have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Big Oil and the corporate lobbies, Murdoch and McCain, Christian fundamentalists and Neo-realist paranoids.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as "too liberal" by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of "socialism", against the more advanced opposition parties?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Change is already acknowledged by all Americans to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that those who believe in Change should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Change with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, liberals of various nationalities have assembled in this blog to view this speech:
And here it is. My 100th post. One hundred times of saying farewell to silence. To voice my opinion. To try and share my thoughts and feelings with the outside world. To connect or reconnect with those I've met in the past or will meet in the future. One hundred times of venting my mind in binary code instead of paying for a shrink.
I would like to thank (here goes the Oscar acceptance speech), first and foremost, my mom and dad for never leaving any embarrassing proud parent comments. Vancouver, for always saving the day with a pretty view when there is nothing to write about. Miriam, because without her, the "comment" links would be truly lonely. The Ubyssey newspaper, for ignoring the fact that I reprint their articles without permission. My friends who hate my guitar, for giving me the necessary courage on Wednesdays to upload yet another painfully corny song. My roommate, for his fine taste in cheese. Fred Herzog, because without him I wouldn't have had my most narcissistic moment in cyberspace. The Republican party, because without them there would be nothing truly important to oppose. Seattle, for attracting the dozens of bands that we get as rebounds, giving me a chance to brag about some uber cool evenings. And last but not least, special thanks to God, because by not existing, he/she/it provides yet another excuse for random blathering.
And today I feel that I'm exactly where I want to be.
Beware. This post will offend you if you place faith above reason in your scale of values.
I watched the film Religulous this past weekend and found it phenomenal. Bill Maher's take on organized religion mixes elements of "laugh your face off" comedy with bits of intelligent skepticism a la Richard Dawkins. As I expected, the film was less about the impact of religious beliefs and more about the ignorant society that keeps them alive. It was hilarious, inspiring, and at times offensive in all the right ways.
Bill Maher is unforgiving in his documentary, where he puts Scientologists and Jews, Cantheists and Catholics on the same plane. And that's precisely what makes the mockumentary worthwile: the realization that all of these organized religions can be as absurd as the other. The fact that the Bible is the #1 all time bestseller doesn't make religions based on it less illogical! For Bill Maher, Scientologists are as crazy for believing in the alien spaceship as Catholics for believing in a virgin woman giving birth to the human version of a God.
Surprisingly, the most intelligent parts of the film were provided by the Vatican's chief astronomer and a retired Vatican priest. These men, although strictly religious, made it clear that it is not the educated religious elites that take religious scriptures as dogma ad absurdum, but rather opportunistic religious leaders that use the fear inciting power of religion to spread harmful lies. (i.e. the for profit religious corporations like the Evangelists)
But the message is by no means that of intolerance towards religious people. Maher is not against religion per se. Instead, he is against the negative effects that religious thought has on the human thought process...because the mechanism of "faith" goes against the process of questioning, of unrestrained curiosity. He criticizes these organizations because they discourage scientific doubt in favor of imposed dogma. And a mind that doesn't doubt, might as well be dead.
Needless to say, I left the theatre with a big smile on my face.
Aaaahh! Qué buena rola! Hace poco vi a esta banda en vivo y hoy me desperté extasiado y con ganas de oir esto!
If the trials in are really getting you down, We had a close call, I didn't even see it, Then another one, and I hardly believed it at all
What the writers say, it means shit to me now, Plants and animals, here on the bender when it's 80 degrees, the end of December, what's going on, only for you and me
And to showing off his he's going back to the south, We're hungry, next that I know, and running the blender in a lightning storm, disguises a blessing I'm sure
Knowing up his, here comes a fork in the road, Pants have gotta go, here on the island on the 4th of July, Looks like the tide is going home
Time I find a little way to your heart, Now to the General Store, nothing specific, Gonna wash my bones in the Atlantic shore, only for you and me.
Chequen qué chida su página de interné de ellos: Band of Horses (Y también tienen un gran blog!)
Pregunta a los compañeros bloggeros: Una vez publicada una entrada, ¿se vale modificar partes importantes del contenido? Es decir, excluyendo faltas de ortografía y gramática, ¿se vale cambiar partes centrales de un post o agregar frases que le cambian el sentido?
Lo digo porque hay una diferencia fundamental entre cambiar de opinión, expresándolo en un post posterior, y cambiar el post original. La diferencia reside en que en el primer caso se puede trazar el cambio de opinión, se pone en evidencia el error o la aberración anterior. En cambio, al modificar el post original siento que le estoy haciendo trampa a los que ya leyeron una opinón y de repente resulta que ya no pueden quejarse porque "el post ya no dice lo que creí haber leido." Me suena similiar a arrancarle hojas a la historia.
No es crítica dirigida a alguien... lo digo porque me enfrento seguido al dilema.
(premio al primero que conteste "a quién carajos le importa tu blog, anyway")
Yes, the Illinois Senator delivered again. He explained with surprising calm and detail every part of his economic policy. He gave convincing reasons why McCain's healthcare policy, tax cuts, and neoliberal politics would fail miserably...without using the word miserably. Yes, Obama was above McCain's anger and desperation because he was enjoying the calm that comes from knowing that your words are grounded on sound theory. He explained that McCain's policies were indeed a repetition of Bush's 8 years of flawed decisions. And yes, he defended his pro choice stance and treaded through that delicate ground by reaffirming that the term "pro abortion" is wrong. Obama showed that far from being confrontational, his mind invites dialogue and favors argument over dogma. Given that his country is haunted by a medieval religious lobby, seeing Obama today at the third presidential debate was a relief.
As for McCain... I'll leave it to the Gossip Girls and MoveOn.org:
Today is a sad, sad day for Canada. Stephen Harper won yesterday's election with 37.6% of the vote (Liberals 26.2%, NPD 18.2%, Green 6.8%), renewing the Tory minority. My first thoughts (apart from a loud "dammit!") are that the NPD succeeded in splitting the liberal vote, causing the Liberals' worst performance since 1984. In other words, the widespread calls to "vote strategically" didn't work. I'm not surprised...
Why would anyone vote strategically knowing that their single vote has no incidence in an election? Every person wants to have the personal satisfaction of voting for their true choice...and even if the ultimate objective of all opposition voters was to beat the Tories, the mere notion that your Green neighbor might not cooperate with the strategy because he feels his single vote is meaningless would give you an incentive to do the same. It was a predictable collective action problem, in the parlance of our times.
In my opinion, if the opposition was so worried about a Conservative win, the candidates that ranked third and fourth places in last week's polls should have defected in favor of the strongest opposition candidate in their respective constituency. But, alas, that doesn't make democratic sense given that each of the opposition parties represented a very distinct set of legitimate ideals and projects. The tragedy of the Canadian political system then, is the lack of proportional representation. (for a much better explanation, read this perspective)
Anyway, I'm sad about Harper because I disagree with his worldview. These are my major problems with him:
- Harper has aligned Canada's foreign policy with the Bush administration. - Harper signed a deal to let US troops into Canada in case of an "emergency". - Harper has provided millions of dollars in subsidies for companies investing in the Alberta tar sands...an impending ecological disaster. - Harper supports tax cuts to big corporations. - Harper has silenced intellectuals speaking against him and blocked scientific panels discussing the effects of climate change. - And last but definitely not least, Harper is against reducing greenhouse gas emissions and described the Kyoto protocol as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations”.
In other words, Stephen Harper ranks high in my list of top 20 enemies of the world.
As the Georgia Straight put it, "there are many reasons not to vote Conservative, beyond the cost of the Afghanistan war and the idiocy of integrating Canada more deeply into the U.S. economy. They include: the Conservative leader’s misleading use of crime statistics to make Canada appear less safe than it is; his big lie that he wouldn’t tax income trusts; his other big lie in refusing to acknowledge that a Liberal carbon tax is offset with big income-tax cuts; Harper presiding over declines in Canadian productivity; Harper’s abandonment of agreements with the provinces that would have created more daycare spaces; the Conservative government’s decision to appeal a B.C. Supreme Court ruling in favour of Vancouver’s supervised-injection site; Harper’s elimination of the Court Challenges Program and the killing of the Kelowna Accord; Harper’s stacking of a stem-cell advisory panel with opponents of embryonic stem-cell research; Harper’s $45-million cuts to the arts; and Harper’s refusal to support the United Nations goal of having developed countries donate 0.7 percent of their national incomes to international development."
Oh, and did I mention that Harper has close ties with Evangelist groups? (appointed a minister to a scientific advisory group!?)
How to explain the beauty of my first Thanksgiving dinner without turning this into the corniest, cliché ridden post you've ever read? You see, I'm very excited by my new found love for this holiday. It's not only the fact that there was an obscene amount of delicious carbohydrates on the table, coupled with turkey and a vast selection of cheese. It's also not just the fact that it was a great excuse to sit around a table with friends to fool around and laugh until our faces hurt.
No...Thanksgiving really amazed me because it seemed more spontaneous than other holidays. You don't have to dress up like Dracula. You don't need to buy a ton of gifts. You don't have to belong to a particular religion or have some medieval spiritual beliefs. You don't need even need to decorate your house in any particular way. For this holiday, you only need to bring your appetite (and a modest donation in the form of a wine bottle to whoever volunteered to cook the turkey).
There has been much talk about nuclear bombs in the past several weeks. Too much talk, I would say. But this reminded me of this little post I've been hiding from my readers.
A few months ago, I took a little break from daily life to go visit a little place called Port Hope, Ontario. The town boasts a beautifully kept historical "main street" and a couple of very old churches. But what really caught my eye was the town's uranium processing plant. The El Dorado plant (now called the Cameco plant) enriched some of the uranium used in the Manhattan project, and some say it even supplied the uranium for the bombs dropped on Japan.
As I strolled around the fence of the uranium processing plant, a sudden silence fell upon me. I couldn't stop thinking about the impact this little town had had on world affairs. On people. On families. I stopped for a second to take it in, to realize what the metal structures in front of me symbolized...
I wondered what the town felt like in August 1945. What did people have on their minds as they crossed the street in front of the uranium plant? Did it smell any different? Did people go to work as usual? Was there talk about the town's complicity with the big mushroom clouds that shook the Japanese sky?
Today I woke up at 9am to the sound of my phone ringing. It was my dad. He said he was in Tokyo. It was raining, and he had decided to test the infinite powers of Skype by calling me.
At 1.30 pm, I headed downtown to watch Michel Gondry's "Tokyo!", following my VIFF plans. The film opens with a scene from inside a car on a street of Tokyo. It is also raining.
At 2.30, the main character realizes she forgot to move her car from where she parked it. She runs only to find that it has been towed.
At 2.31, I try to quietly recharge my parkmeter via cell phone, but I get the infamous robot voice that says "parking is not allowed after 3 at this location".
I step on a full row of toes, run out of the theatre, and arrive just in time to move my car.
I drove home thinking about the beautiful improbability of the day's coincidences. I thought about my dad, and imagined him riding a taxi on a rainy morning in Tokyo.
There is no doubt in my mind that Senator Obama had a stellar performance in today's second presidential debate. The democratic candidate came off as knowledgeable, humble and sincere. He was able to refute most, if not all, of McCain's accusations and attempts at misinformation. But more importantly, when speaking about foreign policy, he was more assertive than in the last debate. He finally sounded like the commander-in-chief that is willing to take strong military actions, if necessary. Although his bit about Pakistan made me feel uneasy, it probably earned him a heap of brownie points among those undecided American voters that bought into Bush's scare tactics and feared Obama would not protect them against the terrorists.
My favorite Obama: "We may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake. [...] So when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us."
On the other hand, McCain looked stiff and uncomfortable... his suit was too tight. He adopted a grandfather voice that sounded patronizing and false. He desperately tried to distance himself from the Bush administration, but Obama correctly pointed out their affinities. McCain's phrases sounded like prefabricated regurgitations instead of authentic answers to the questions posed. Incredibly, he shot himself in the foot again by giving vague and uncertain answers to the foreign policy questions. It was his turf and he slipped in it! Also, calling every general "my hero" and saying that there has been a winning strategy in Iraq was simply pathetic.
I have one unanswered question: Who had the brilliant idea of putting McCain back on those drugs that make you say "my friend" every two minutes? Adviser fail.
I've lived with a foul smell in my apartment since last Thursday. I took a minute or two every morning and every night to try to find the source, with no success. I knew it was coming from the kitchen, but kitchens are such good keepers and producers of smells that I assumed it was a "phase" my dear kitchen was going through. I let it be.
But this smell was not one to dissipate into the fresh air coming from the window. It intensified as the days went by...until it became unbearable. Today, at 1300 hours, I decided to take some action.
I poked my nose out into the air to follow its trail...which led me to the cutlery drawers. "Weird", I thought, "there's no food in these drawers that could rot." I slowly opened them one by one, expecting a dead rat or a similar horror in any of them. Nothing of the sort appeared.
Instead, as I opened the last drawer (the one where I keep plastic containers, ziplocs, etc), I found a deliciously putrid Camembert stored neatly in a small tupperware! Ahhh...the beauty of having a pothead roommate!
Here is the article that I wrote following Herzog's talk last week. The Ubyssey newspaper published an edited version in last Friday's culture section...but it's Sunday and I've decided to privilege my blogfans with the original version. Enjoy!
Don't Photograph Landscapes
“I’m not here to show my work, I’m here to start a dialogue” said Fred Herzog, as he introduced himself to the eager crowd of aspiring photographers that attended UBC Photosociety’s first annual general meeting at the SUB on September 25. “I hope I can be interrupted often, and I hope you get used to my accent.” At that moment, a projector was fired up, marking the beginning of a memorable evening with the renowned Vancouver photographer.
Herzog’s work needed no introduction. After forty years of photographing street scenes in this city, his images of Vancouver have become as common to photographers as the totem poles in StanleyPark. Yet, it was the photographer’s presence, his own voice explaining his photographs that filled the evening with magic. The kind of magic that exudes from Herzog’s lively, colorful prints.
Born in Germany, Herzog moved to Vancouver in the 1950s and soon began capturing the life of the city with his camera. He separated himself from other photographers by shooting mostly in Kodachrome, a color slide film that was hard to turn into prints. This limited his ability to exhibit because “Making cibachrome prints was not feasible. It was almost impossible for me to make a profit selling the prints.” Thus, although his collection of slides continued to grow, his work remained in the dark for decades.
In a way, however, this initial marginalization helped to turn Herzog into a living legend. His images were taken decades before the were finally shown in galleries, turning his exhibitions into colorful odes to nostalgia. It takes only a minute or two of glancing at the impressive colors and contrast in his photographs to understand the power of images that bring back to life an era that is generally remembered in black and white.
Moreover, anyone that attended Herzog’s fantastic retrospective at the VancouverArtGallery last year understands that there is something very personal about his work. His images occur in the most public spaces, yet they remain deeply intimate. As spectators, it feels as if Herzog has suddenly allowed us to take a glimpse into the private life of his subjects, making us all voyeurs of life in an epoch that is foregone but never forgotten.
As a projector showed us some of Herzog’s famous images, Herzog explained that photography is about looking, about waiting. He mocked people who carry a bag full of expensive lenses saying “the picture has to be in your head, not in your camera bag” and underlined the importance of concentrating on a moment, on a sudden detail that makes an otherwise irrelevant scene unique. With this, Herzog revealed his place in the long tradition of documentary photographers who, like Cartier Bresson, causally roamed the streets waiting for the instant précis to capture a unique event forever.
Considering the inherent difficulty of shooting people on the streets, Herzog was quick to explain that it is imperative to look for body language, which includes clothing. Stopping the projector at a picture of a woman with a cigarette in her hand, he said that first impressions matter because humans automatically make judgments of the people they see, and thus, a photograph has to capture a gesture or a detail that gives a strong first impression. He then added, that “if you look long enough, you can find vitality anywhere.”
When asked about the risks of photographing strangers, Herzog first shared that “people have shouted at me, people have told me to get away, people have told me to get off their property, and people have threatened me with calling the police.” Thus, he suggested that we “shoot first, and ask questions later!” However, he confessed that in his particular case it has been easier since by the time he started exhibiting, most of the subjects in his pictures were too old to care. Almost jokingly, he suggested to wait thirty years before publishing a picture of a stranger because “a dead person will not take you to court!”
As the evening came to an end, Herzog delivered his most poetic moment. “To me, the city is a stage and the people on the streets are all actors.” In this sense, Herzog stressed that “We need to record how people look in their natural state…it’s the reality of how we look.” He explained that if photographers don’t accept the task of showing people with no interference, without staging them, then we will lose any visual evidence of the way we really were.
As a closing remark, Herzog comically reminded us for the twentieth time that in order to succeed as photographers, “don’t photograph landscapes, everybody does it, and nobody cares.”
I enjoy going to films by myself, especially when the place is packed because you can always get a great seat (couples or groups tend to leave an empty seat between them and the adjoining group). However, it's exponentially better when I can share the experience with someone and discuss the film. (I especially like it when I bump into someone I know in the theatre and it becomes an involuntary date)
So, with the double purpose of putting an end to phone calls asking me what I want to watch, and hopefully recruiting some of you to come with me to watch a film, here are my choices for the remainder of the VIFF:
When It Was Blue----Oct. 3---9.30pm
Chomsky & Co.-------Oct. 5---9.30pm
Gomorrah-------------Oct. 7---9.30pm
Tokyo!-----------------Oct. 8---2pm
Addicted to Plastic---Oct. 9---9.30pm
The Grocer's Son-----Oct. 10---10.30am
Blue Gold: World Water Wars---Oct. 10---1pm
The Class--------------Oct. 10---10pm
(este post se podría titular "Cruzada contra mis validas")
I'm speechless. My mind is racing in all directions, yet I can't put the thoughts together. Images of war, of human suffering. A story told in first person from a man that cannot remember it. Because he doesn't want to. He can't. He can't accept that he could have been part of a massacre, even if he played a minor role. His mind wanders as he searches for answers...just like mine.
How to explain the tragedy of Beirut? The hate, the horror. How can one get used to blood?
Bashir the idol, Bashir the ideal. Soldiers ordered to kill a faceless enemy. Really? Faces of children, of old men...lying in the rubble, swarming with flies. Israeli tanks remain vigilant, only the yellow flares appear to be alive at night. Spectators become quiet participants. Of genocide.
For those of you who've spent the past month in a cave and still don't know who Sarah Palin is, here is a little homework from your blogger, to be seen before you watch tonight's debate.
"A lie repeated often enough becomes truth." Vladimir Lenin (and then Goebbels).
(Please cross your fingers for the first televised case of human spontaneous combustion!)
Last week I had the privilege to attend a talk with legendary Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog. My task was to take a portrait of him and then write a piece for the Ubyssey newspaper. I must confess they both proved to be tremendously difficult tasks.
Trying to take a photograph of a lecturer without intruding or without distracting him and the audience is obviously hard. And it becomes even harder when you are being judged by dozens of aspiring photographers in the audience and when your subject is a man who made his name in the history books of photography for shooting unsuspecting people in public places!
As the evening progressed and Herzog continued to talk about his work, I found it increasingly complicated to find a good moment to take my camera out and stand up to snatch a pic. I thought that maybe I should just wait until the end and ask him to pose for me with the white wall of the room as a background. But then...just as I was about to give up, Herzog said the magic words: "I like to record how people look in their natural state...it's the reality of how we look. I don't stage pictures." Aha!
I put my camera bag between my legs and quietly opened the zipper. I turned the power switch of my camera "On" and quickly adjusted the exposure settings. Herzog said "you have to wait for a good moment, for a gesture, a detail." And like a hunter, I waited.
Suddenly, the slideshow ended and the lights came on. It was over. Had I lost my chance? I became increasingly nervous...and then the miracle happened. Herzog was asked to sign a book. He walked straight towards me to find a pen on the chair next to mine (I was sitting on the front row). Then, without warning, he took a step back, slowly raised his pen to the light...and surely heard my loud CLICK!
