Cinematic/tech artist & filmmaker. Online since 1999.
Four videos. This won’t hurt much.
First up, American Public Media’s Paddy Hirsch deploys the Antarctic Expedition metaphor:
Second and third, Max Keiser — financial activist and former Wall Street wunderkund — explains the bankrupting of Iceland. Presciently, this was made in August 2007, when the global markets were still flying high:
And finally, John Fortune and John Bird explain how it all goes off:
Scooter is a big, dumb arena rock act — but since they’re German they do techno. They’re as brainlessly self-aggrandizing, self-referential and self-conscious as Kidd Rock, Monster Magnet or club hiphop.
Download the uncensored video for “Weekend,” and you’ll start to get it. The director’s concept seems to have been “Alexander the Great.” It’s become a mini-addiction for me. Lead singer H. P. Baxxter rides in cape and armor with three sometimes topless multiethnic dancing girls upon a boat carried by a sea of Buddhist monks. Warriors and dancers appear in fast cuts on a dry nighttime plane, the frames shooting psychotically from the beautiful (three girls making out in the snow) to the disturbing (passable CGI replacements of Baxxter’s head onto a line of boys). A striking Hindu dancer crawls toward Ganesha — the height of my guilty pleasures. Baxxter’s face morphs awkwardly out of a man’s back to kill the fun. There’s a maybe virgin Mary in heavier eye makeup than Filter’s “Take A Picture” mermaid. Nothing is held up long enough for rational thought. It’s a wonderfully terrifying thing.
You’re not supposed to feel good about listening to this music. The clever flourishes don’t make it okay. The dozen platinum albums don’t either. Forcing you to admit that there’s some flaw in you that enjoys the music is Scooter’s only redeeming characteristic.
I believe in accountability. I believe that no crisis removes an American’s responsibility to uphold the Constitution. As a result, I feel duty-bound to oppose Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bill granting American telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for any illegal wiretaps they may or may not have performed at the behest of the National Security Agency and the White House in the years following September 11, 2001.
Were the issue one of protecting companies acting in good faith, a cap on settlements would be proper. Granting immunity instead dismisses all present and future court cases, removing the public’s only avenue of discovery regarding the reality or extent of any illegal actions taken. Crisis does not justify barbarism.
Very little can be done by the public at this point. I’ve summarized my moral argument and sent it to lobbying group The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Stop the Spying campaign in the form of the photo below:
As a postscript, I regard Reid’s bill as another example of the spinelessness that caused me to leave the Democratic Party.
Because it isn’t enough to provide the shortest billing to payment due period of any company you do business with, Comcast gives you something more: the light euphoria of never knowing what precisely to ascribe to incompetence, policy or indifference.
Scorn a man who says
Only what you want to hear
And now Doctor Phil