Donald Duck, The Spirit of 43

A piece of US propaganda that argues against consumerism. In the spirit of 43, Donald Duck is caught between good and evil. The good is represented by a frugal Scot with a ‘Lassie Come Home’ accent and the evil is represented by a zoot-suited, big spender.

After the end of the War, in overshoot reaction to Communism, this view of good and evil was perhaps reversed, to the extent that consumerism was seen a part of the ‘non-negotiable’ American way of life, and with the consequences that are now apparent.

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What Hitler Wants – Soviet WWII Cartoon

In this cartoon, what Hitler wants is to help the Capitalists, apparently.

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Der Störenfried ( 1940 )

This cartoon is a piece of Nazi propaganda, which can be compared with the previous US ones. It has the same adult material wrapped up in a cozy children’s view of the world.

Two things of note here: in my opinion it is really not of the same graphic standard as US cartoons of the same era, which is interesting since much of what the Nazis produced was very sophisticated, graphically; secondly, I’m posting this from France where this video was blocked by Youtube (France has active censorship laws against Nazi material) and I had to access through a US proxy. An example of why application of censorship laws can be ridiculous, since the whole point of this German film was to learn from the mistakes of the past rather than approve of them.

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Coal Black And De Sebben Dwarfs

This week on Smashing Telly, I’ll be focusing on historically interesting cartoons. This one is a black take on Snow White, which on the face of it is an outrageous piece of racist stereotyping. The setting and colors used are the deep reds of a cartoon bordello hell, versus the pastel blues of Snow White and her angel choir backing singers. On the other hand, Coal Black’s world is positively swingin’, and perhaps just goes to show how clawingly saccharin ‘white’ culture really was.

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Walt Disney’s: Education For Death

Disney’s adaptation of Education for Death, the making of a Nazi, is a fascinating piece of wartime propaganda. Convincing enough and expertly made, although a few years years later Disney hired a senior Nazi as one of their presenters.

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Stuart Kauffman: Reinventing the Sacred

Stuart Kauffman, biologist and complexity theorist, gives a talk about his latest book: Reinventing the Sacred. If you wanted to invent a religion that was much more interesting than outmoded simplistic ones like, oh, Judaism or Christianity etc. then Kauffman’s ideas would be a much better starting point.

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There is no Theory of God

A nice little animated film that explains the difference between science and superstition, showing, among other things, that the difference in the colloquial use of the word theory and the scientific use, leads people to dismiss scientific theories which have enough supporting evidence (such as evolution or spherical earth) that they are facts, in colloquial terms. In other words, colloquial theory = scientific hypothesis and scientific theory = colloquial fact.

Perhaps we should turn the argument around – there is no theory of God. In fact, based on the evidence, there is not even a true theory of the supposed historical figure, Jesus. Both are hypotheses, unsupported by evidence.

Running time: 10 mins.

Via Laurence Moran

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Einstein’s Biggest Blunder

The theory of Relativity might be more usefully called the theory of the constancy of the speed of light. So what if the speed of light wasn’t constant?

There is a general ground swell in physics towards exploring meta-laws which might govern the laws of physics themselves. These therefore might exist in different forms in different universes or at different times, within one universe. The heretical idea that the speed of light might vary, is part of this trend and has some serious proponents, who are interviewed in this Equinox special.

Running time: 50 mins.

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60 Minutes on the Price of Oil

60 minutes comes down firmly on the side of speculation vs demand as an explanation of last years oil price shock and traces the problem back to Enron and the deregulation of oil futures.

The analysis is good but non-conclusive. Unlike houses, both the equivalent boom and bust in oil happened together, in a much shorter period of time and in a more extreme fashion. This caused central banking policy moves which take 6 months to have an effect to switch from inflation concerns to deflation in a matter of weeks.

The Oil bubble was perhaps a bigger trigger of the market crash than housing and the fact that we have very little insight as to whether or not Wall Street speculation, Opec deceit about supply or BRIC economy growth determined oil prices, is terrifying.

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Cherry Red Records 30th Anniversary

If the words “pay no more than 99p” mean anything to you, then this documentary will make you dewey eyed.

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