China vs the US – The Battle for Oil

China is perhaps too different from the US culturally and not different enough ideologically for there to be an immediate threat of actual war, however history shows that competition for natural resources tends to cause conflict.

For now, its more natural to secure a beachhead for access to oil resources by fighting against people who are both close enough and just different enough for there to be natural animosity. We fight people who believe in another branch of the Abrahamic religion, Islam rather than Christianity. In the global scheme of things, this is a hair splitting difference not dissimilar from Shia vs Sunni. These people have the resources that the US may eventually end up at war with China over.

Places that have wealth built on natural resources favor bullies who can grab it rather than the educated who have an upper hand when wealth needs to be created rather than mined. Places rich in natural resources: The Democratic Republic of the Congo; Saudi Arabia and Texas are therefore inherently pugnacious and anti-intellectual. From these places fighting springs naturally.

The battle in the subject of this movie is metaphorical. It could very well be figurative.
50 min 6 sec Jan 4, 2008

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1 comment politics, world

Death in Rome

A film about the murder of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, by the Red Brigades in 1978. This was a seminal moment in Italy’s history, comparable to the assassination of JFK. Its also been the subject of so much fiction that its good to watch a documentary on the subject.
45 min 0 sec Dec 15, 2007

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1 comment biography, history, politics

Athens – The truth about Democracy

Don’t be put off by the title, this is not a conspiracy theory piece, but a very interesting (if rather pedestrian in format) re-examination of 5th Century BCE Athens ‘ democracy. This hundred year period two and a half millennia ago, is the model for all Western democracy, yet the reality of its mechanism and outcome is not what has become commonly accepted.

Its a great premise for learning from history, both literally and by analogy.

(These documentaries are wrongly labeled on Google – Part 2 is part one and part 2 is unlabeled)
48 min 4 sec Nov 30, 2007

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1 comment history, politics

Clash of the Worlds: Mutiny

The first in a three part series (the others are in the sidebar after the link, although I haven’t watched them yet) which examines three clashes with the Muslim world during the British Empire: in Sudan, Palestine and India, in order to better understand what is happening now. Sadly, while there are excellent books written on this subject from an American perspective, such as Michael B.Oren’s ‘Power, Faith and Fantasy’, there are no documentaries of any substance.

BBC 2 58 min 14 sec Nov 25, 2007

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1 comment history, politics, religion, world

Planet of The Arabs

Planet of the Arabs is a very powerful 9 minute collage of racist stereotyping of Arabs in movies. What’s not at issue for me is the idea that an Arab volunteer from non-Arab Afghanistan might be portrayed (by an Indian) as Kalashnikov wielding, guerrilla fighter, opium trader, rather than a lefty apologist’s flower-growing, freedom fighter. What’s unnerving is the tone and the pattern of racist tradition, i.e. the number of appearances of unattractive, gormless, hook-nosed, brown people with twisted, toothy grins and bar-joke accents. All ominously reminiscent of historic, racist depictions, such as Dickens’ Fagin.

The utterly depressing thing about this film, however, is the context in which it has been received, as a conduit for those who foster both anti-semitism and anti-arabism.

The easiest way to recognize the veracity of a racist claim is to imagine the purported victim belonging to any other group of people and to not confuse equality with similarity or differentiation with prejudice. That thought experiment leads me to think the claim of racism against Arabs may have merit.
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5 comments politics, society, world

Steve Jones Interview – (in light of the Watson controversy)

James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, is in a lot of hot water after claiming that black people are less intelligent.
I was dismayed to see how many commenters on websites like Digg were saying things like ‘at least someone has the guts to say it’. It was equally worrying that there was a patronizing undercurrent of ‘perhaps this is true and we should censure science’.

Science may indeed create moral dilemmas – it has already with Darwinism. (Many apologists ignore the fact that Darwinism does in fact create an absolute moral dilemma for the religious. Darwinian creation is cruel, each perfected element being the result of the suffering of others, therefore, you cannot believe in a truly benign creator and the fact of Darwinism). It could have been true that some people are more stupid genetically. This would have been a moral dilemma, had it not been for the fact that the premise is wrong making it not worth examining the conclusion.

The statement ‘black people are more stupid genetically’ is meaningless, for the following reasons:

1. Black does not mean much genetically. Humans migrated out of Africa more than once. In other words, Non Africans are closer related to some Africans than those Africans are to other Africans. Even diseases like Sickle Cell Anemia are not black diseases, per se, just diseases that were inherited with a cultural grouping, having been predominant in malarial regions (thanks Tom).

2. It hasn’t always been black people that were looked down upon. The Romans, for example, had an African emperor and viewed Northern Europeans as being an inferior race.

3. Statistics that correlated lower intelligence with color, had that correlation removed if class were taken into account. I.e. being poor makes you less likely to do well in an IQ test. People who are looked down upon tend to be poorer, like Germans in the Roman Empire.

If accusation of lower intelligence just happens to correspond exactly to prejudice which is due to an irrational grouping of people, then its probably the grouping that is wrong and therefore it not worth looking into whether black people are less intelligent – no dilemma, stupid and biased premise.

Here Steve Jones, a sensible person, talks about genetics, the day after the author of the infamous ‘Bell Curve’ appeared on Charlie Rose.

Charlie Rose Inc. 57 min 47 sec Feb 20, 2007
www.charlierose.com

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2 comments interviews, politics, science, society

Al Gore: The Climate Crisis

I haven’t much time for the Nobel Peace prize, its previous nominees include some of the more barbaric and notorious of the world’s criminals.

However, in honor of Al Gore’s deserving win, which sends an amusing ‘fuck you’ to the knuckle scraping goons lolling around the White House, here is an excellent Channel 4 profile and interview of Gore. It is presented by the UK’s most savvy US correspondent, Johnathan Freedland.

Channel 4 46 min 41 sec Jun 5, 2006 www.climatecrisis.net

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4 comments environment, interviews, politics, science

Crazy Rulers of the World (1/3) – The Men Who Stare at Goats

Channel 4
48 min 37 sec Aug 28, 2007

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This is the first of a 3 part documentary series, by Jon Ronson (the rest are also on Google Video), which was 3 years in the making. Ronson uses his superficially nerdy demeanor and Gonzo style journalism to elicit candid responses from interviewees who have their guard down.

The topic here is the acceptance of crank ideas such as new age mysticism, by the military, due the openness to new methods after failing to win in Vietnam. At times the documentary seems like parody, but despite being about a lunatic fringe who believe that soldiers can be trained to do such things at communicate psychically with animals, it shows a serious point.

Each one of the, actually quite likable but mad, people that are interviewed represents a uniquely American cultural stereotype, Texan cowboy, West Coast hippie, Pro Wrestler style martial arts fan. As such they are able to take crazy ideas and make them palatable to a supposedly conservative organization such as the military, by making them feel American.

If this is a real, albeit extreme reflection of the reality of the military’s ability to be influenced by irrational ideas that seem culturally acceptable, then ideas that are more widespread in the US but not in the rest of the world, such as extremist Christianity could also damage its efficacy. When the majority of the worlds military expenditure cannot create armies that can win a relatively small war in Iraq, then perhaps the services should be looking at what ideas they are open to.

4 comments interviews, politics, society

The Swindle of the “Great Global Warming Swindle” film.

Stephen Nodvin 43 min 11 sec Mar 24, 2007 blog.nodvin.net Link

The Great Global Warming Swindle, was a very popular rebuttal of the idea that Global Warming is caused by humans. A glossy piece made by competent film makers and commissioned by a respectable channel, it was highly influential. This film, which consists of a lecture presentation and commentary by Chris Merchant a lecturer in geophysics at Edinburgh University takes it apart, piece by piece.

Despite the rough and ready nature of the presentation, it is straight from the lecture hall, rather than film studio, this is a really interesting film for two reasons: 1. it is a logical analysis of the type of argument used in the film, and dispassionately reveals common arguments which lead to fallacy such as false dichotomy and ad hominem attack. 2. It shows what should be possible with online videos, in the near future, a kind of endless dialectic produced by mashup and commentary.

It would be good, for example, to see a mashup of the mashup, make by the original film makers. However, Chris’ analysis is ultimately so devastating that they perhaps would be better to stay quiet than reveal themselves as charlatans.

Thanks to Kaan Atakan for the link.

5 comments nature, politics, science

Live Aid Documentary – Rocking All Over The World

1 hr 24 min 10 sec – Jul 11, 2007

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The story of Live Aid – the worlds biggest concert. Seeing this in an age where people don’t seem to give-a-shit, almost brings tears to my eyes. In fact, it almost brought tears to my eyes then, because I couldn’t go, on account of being somewhere in the middle of Hungary, where I crashed a party after hearing ‘do they know its Christmas’ from the window.

Journalists have been trying for years to track down the girl that Bono picks out of the audience making her globally famous for 15 minutes. I know who she is, but I’m not telling!

2 comments history, music, nostalgia, politics