Tag: Al Jazeera

To beat a dead horse

Even to this day, people still using the Vietnam War as a figure of speech: “Syria will be another US‘ Vietnam” etc…

It was meant to be the new Boogeyman. To scare off the children. To conjure bad imagery and bring back nightmares.

In Rambo, Stallone’s rare line was “where they call Hell, I call Home”.

Occasionally, we read about the Powell Doctrine (purportedly derived from Vietnam War) i.e. if engaged at all, finish it quickly.

Not to beat a dead horse, Vietnam War has been like the Wave, in a football stadium. After a while, it dies down. Don’t try to start one yourself, without feeling silly. It’s like the Bee Gees “I started a joke”.

The irony is, both Kerry and Hagel were by-products of US involvement in Vietnam (not to mention McCain).

A generation comes of age in “Hell”. Trial by fire, baptized by fire.

Hot war on cool medium. America first Television War (pre-CNN era).

Now we got Al Jazeera, whose host died yesterday (David Frost – so, tell me, Mr Nixon, when a president does something, it’s not illegal?). It’s like the Vietnam War got covered by South East Asian News Network. “Unbias” and In-depth coverage.

After all, it’s their region and they know the conflicts as the back of their hands.

With that kind of money buying out Current TV, A J Network is poised for the new theater of war.

The gods of vengeance has moved from Europe to Asia, and now onto the Middle East. I don’t smell the smell of jasmine.

Nor do I smell napalm. This time, you can’t see nor can you smell anything.. Just drone and precision striking.

Powell doctrine + powerful broadband. Yet they still use Vietnam as a figure of speech. For fear of being dragged in.

For fear of war fatigue. I hear the other side saying “So what you’re gonna do about it” ( I used chemical weapon, so what?).

Go ahead, and call 911. It will be another Vietnam for you e.g. quagmire, divided nation, deficit, and post-traumatic disorder.

Where they call “Hell” you shouldn’t call “Home”. But then, can you sit still when your neighbors keep beating the kids, not with stick, but by spraying deadly poison. Wouldn’t you call 911 and to Hell with it. Another Vietnam? So what! Let it be.

Disco distraction

That’s what we need. Late 70’s, we also got gas price hike.

We got “a crisis of confidence”. And we got Middle East hostage situation that drove Nightline ratings over the top.  But we also got disco. It helped.

Distraction did not solve any problem. It just got our minds off the situation at hand. For however long the studio, most famous of all, 54, still opened.

Shiny shirts, bell-bottom pants, and yes, the disco ball.

Travolta, the Soul Train and the Bee Gees.

Everybody boogied.

Everybody heard of or listened to “Le Freak“.

Actually, it’s not the kind of music to be listened to, like “Air on the G-string“.

It’s dance music.

And for 15 minutes (Andy Warhol was there at studio 54) of fame, the disco era was gone.

For good.

Dancing Queen (no longer seventeen) and the Abba, all gone.

The hostage rescue effort failed. The Star Wars shield was dreamed up then took the Wall down along with it.

The Challenger went up in flame while the Concord got canned.

Now, NASA has to hitch a ride, and the Chinese bullet train hit its target (another train going on the opposite track). Everybody outspent their allotted 15 minutes of fame. Middle Eastern and Western terrorists also got their air time and equal time (Fort Hood in uniform vs Oslo, also in uniform).

I know now why we need a disco distraction: it arrived at the time when race, gender and class were all blended on the dance floor, under the ball. As long as you can afford some tight clothes, hitch a ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, then you are in.

Take your turn in the middle of the circle, and take some steam off (Saturday Night Fever).

Everybody got his/her turn in that tribal circle and the DJ was our Priest.

We melted from one disco song to another and the beat carried us through the night. Distraction? yes. Destruction? no.

Fast forward to 2011, everybody forms into “circles” (we used to call it cliques).

And with google’s SEO, google’s Plus etc…we only hear and see what we most want to “search” ( selective revelation and association). To stand out, we must pay attention to personal branding and (first) page-ranking.

No wonder the Oslo’s terrorist planned ahead not only his exit, but also his defense, his manifesto, and his image (preppy crusader and defender of an imperial past), all well crafted to maximize his allotted 15 minutes of fame. And we (and the cable news media) ate it up.

Without disco distraction, we have to face gas price, debt talk, and death toll with nowhere to turn to, except online, his planned pulpit for hate and intolerance. Disco, a distraction? Yes. The Oslo terrorist, a destruction? Yes. Now we know who is “Le Freak”.

flat “pyramid”

Viewed from above, the Pyramid in Egypt looks flat,  almost origami-like. And viewed from where I am sitting, the 18-day Revolution looks protean: leaderless, collaborative and spontaneous.

Although not the first to use Twitter ( Iranian post-election was), last week’s protesters showcased coordination and team work only digital natives can pull off.

First, they understood the power of organization i.e. the means (self-organized citizen patrol),

the mode (social media) and the manner (being kind to soldiers, just stop short of ” wearing some flowers in your hair”).

Second, they staged their demonstrations to appeal to Western media, their conduits to the developed world, Mubarak‘s entrenched base of support ( note the use of sound bites, and visual symbolism e.g. burned effigy).

Third, collaborative model. They built tents in the square, make-shift first-aid stations etc… like  Woodstock without the mud slide.

And they were young, urbane, well-conversant in English ( to offer comments on CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera).

The tipping point was when their expat counterparts flew back to join them while Westerners, American “non-essential” community, were evacuating for fear of the worst .

In The Future Arrived Yesterday, the author argued for the Protean Organization (boundary-less with a soft core). To unseat the Pharaoh who sat on top of the Pyramid takes a lot of thumbing (texting) (in 1989, they had to use electric saws to cut down the Wall).

This youth revolution, despite being leaderless, wasn’t disorganized. Its flat “org chart” was in contrast to the traditional command-control style.  It accommodated many sub-cultures (tech, youth, urban, westernized, pro-democracy) and world views, secular and religious. Their future arrived not a day sooner.

In all, they managed  to un-brand the leader (dictator) and throw a red carpet in front of the new flat pyramid for Nobel-prize winners from abroad and Muslims albeit Brotherhood Muslims at home, and any one in between (including a Google executive).

Even the author of the World is Flat was taken by surprise when he witnessed his ideas jump off the page into the middle of the Square, Tahrir Square.