This is the area where I will be posting my thoughts on issues related to my PhD. I started this doctorate about 3 years ago and have been grappling with various aspects of it which have been kept in two forms of a reflective journal - a written diary, and an audio based tape recorded version of more or less the same details, observations, ideas, etc., etc. The latter have been and will continue to be put into written form and posted on this site.
Reflective Journal Entry: One
As my PhD is not considered a traditional one whereby a problem is identified, research conducted, and a conclusion made from the other two elements, I wanted to chart the progression of my ideas and indeed the very process of thinking that will end up becoming an artefact or finished product. This idea has come primarily from my reading of Blogging PhD Candidature: Revealing the Pedagogy by Mary-Helen Ward, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University of Sydney and Sandra West, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery at the University of Sydney.
I am in full agreement with them both when they explain 'the use of blogs to enhance scholar/researcher development, through the foregrounding they make possible of the pedagogical relationship implicit in the PhD process and consequent revelation of some of the hidden pedagogical practices that underpin it.' (http://www.swin.edu.au/hosting/ijets/ijets/vol6num1/pdf/Article4Ward&West.pdf)
I see the blog as a way to unmask some of the process and dynamics that are at work in the creation of new meta-narratives, and which in my view must ultimately replace many of the old narrative structures that have been hailed as the benchmarks for the production of new knowledge and research outcomes. I agree fully with Prof. Julia Evergreen Keefer in 'Searching for a Global Master or Meta-Narrative' who states that 'In our search for a global meta-narrative, perhaps we should start with the golden rule, Love the Neighbor as Thyself, for every religion in the world, monotheistic and polytheistic, includes some version of this truth in its teachings.'
And I also agree completely with Lucy Lyons thus, 'The importance of practice-led PhDs is that they are a legitimate way for artists to reclaim their work back from the historians, philosophers and critics by gaining an authoritative, academic voice through the validation of a doctorate.' (From "Walls are not my friends: issues surrounding the dissemination of practice-led research within appropriate and relevant contexts" - Lucy Lyons) (taken from - AHRC Research Review Practice-Led Research in Art, Design and Architecture - http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:p9siRtV6giwJ:www.ahrc.ac.uk/About/Policy/Documents/Practice-Led_Review_Nov07.pdf+practise+led+phd+thesis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=th)'
It is this reclamation of legitimate forms of pedagogy that interests me greatly for what constitutes 'proper' knowledge production has been in doubt from some considerable time and has been largely been allowed to be decided, determined, by those on the inside of the academy, not those practioners who have been actually engaged in these new, hybird forms of research. As she rightly says, 'We have also indicated some areas of inquiry that might be supported to advance the theory and methods of practice-led research. In particular we have come to the conclusion that conventional ideas of contribution to knowledge or understanding may not be serving us well.'
There are two components to this Practise Led doctorate (PLD): the first is a creative component called an artefact and the second is an exegesis or mode of interpretation which connects or links itself to the research question to provide a new mode of knowledge production and pedagogical practise. The following is the original idea some three years ago for my creative component.
My artefact:
'The creative component will consist of a set of short stories of approximately 80,000 words, which aims to address, in a meaningful way, the role of the stranger in narrative fiction, the issues of culture shock and assimilation, while still retaining literary market value. The stories will center around characters who enter the economic and cultural life of a city and, through dramatic events, not only change the city, but also become catalysts for change within themselves.'
This has in fact changed considerably. Now there is only one story and it is called 'The Accidental Terrorist'. I have also retained an analysis of the stranger in narrative fiction (though not insights related to culture shock), and in relation to issues like assimilation, cultural, philosophical as well as psychological insights will also be examined.
The exegesis:
'The exegesis component will be a reflection of the key tensions and issues that arose during the construction of my creative component with reference to the mechanics and craft of writing, and an investigation of the theories that underpin the literature of the stranger. Larger questions raised by Camus about the role of the outsider, concerns about culture shock raised in texts like Almost French, my own writing about these experiences in Thailand, and other academic and literary studies on assimilation by Sartre, Levinas, and Fanon will be examined. With increasing globalization, shared physical as well as cultural space, and the ideological clash between Islam and Christianity, there is now a need for a greater understanding of ‘otherness’ in the world today.'
This part is still very fluid, organic even. It is continually evolving although it is clear that there are several ideas that are starting to appear more salient than others. I am constantly amazed by the changeable nature of this as though it has already been written or exists somewhere else almost like Socrates' idea of the 'Forms' - the epistemological idea that there is no such thing as learning. When we feel that we have learnt something, we are in fact merely remembering it. Hence the idea of the forms is one where there exists a perfect copy of something - call it PF1 (perfect form 1). This would be the thing-in-itself, the version we see in nature. Thus, when you walk into your garden and see a tree, that is an instance of PF1. A painting of this very same tree would be PF2, and say, a dream of a tree, PF3, and so on ad infinitum. Each time we are getting away from the one 'true' form that exists and which we will never see or inhere in.
So I was thinking that there already exists a PF1 of my thesis and even though throughout this process of not having a clue about the nature of how or what the research outcome will be, as a 'practitioner', I am still able to unmask, unearth, uncover, and to borrow Socrates again, to 'remember' or 'recall' what has already existed in some other state or 'Form'. This for me is the most exciting part of the entire project.
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Why is life so unfair?
We all think the world should be fair but know that it isn't. Why are some people so talented that they can do almost anything they want? Some people are even multi-talented. David Beckham can play football well and he also is handsome enough to be a world class male model. The Oscar winning actor Jocham Phoenix, star of Ladder 49, and Man in Black recently said that he was giving acting up to become a singer, so again he has at least two major talents. Likewise, Angelina Jolie has also recently said that she's giving up the same profession in order to do something else, probably become a permanent UN Ambassador, so what hope is there for the rest of us who are scraping by on a measley 'Mr. Average' lifestyle?
When I was a lot younger, I questioned how the world must work. I soon figured out that my gain must be someone else's loss. If I become a rich man, then I am in some way taking away the resources of someone else e.g. in the form of food, or money for education or for some other purpose. I still believe that today, and I rationalise it by the fact that the world only works for so long when it's in some kind of harmony, some kind of equilibrium. Once you upset anything in nature, from a bee's nest to an Australian reef, you upset it for good, and it can never be the same as it was. So, if I take not just one resource from a place, but a lot more than I actually need, and waste it on my own personal enjoyment, I am ultimately doing something that is inherently detrimental to the total welfare of the planet. Like the poet said, 'No man is an island unto himself.'
It is in this context that I saw on the news yesterday that those car ('auto' if your American!) executives from Ford, Chrysler, and GM, who went to Washington with their begging bowls almost like Oliver Twist, 'Please can I have some more?'
The were asking for a princely sum of 25 billion US dollars. One would have thought that the very least they could do would be to try to find their own ways of reducing their costs, but they apparently all flew in privately owned corporate jets, one of which apparently cost over 36 million dollars! And they had the temerity to ask for (a) free handouts (without any business plan or conditions attached) and (b) that their employees accept that there will be job losses, redundancies, and pay cuts!? Um...the world really is unfair isn't it when people like this can, after all the chatter about the Wall Street banking executives being scourged in the media for their over-the-top bonuses, crowd around the corporate trough? When you think about the greed of these people, and the Bushes, and the Saudias, you can't help thinking about that famous Will Durant quote - 'The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.' That's what the Bush years were all about: the Neo Cons were the minority and us the majority, and we allowed them to turn the world into a giant business run exclusively for their benefit.
Warren Buffet is the second richest man in the world after Bill Gates and said the following which I think is also very clever.
Warren Buffet's opinion (more about how things should work) which I've always loved:
"Let's say that it was 24 hours before you were born, and a genie [magic person] appeared and said, 'What I'm going to do is let you set the rules of the society into which you will be born. You can set the economic rules and the social rules, and whatever rules you set will apply during your lifetime and your children's lifetimes.' And you'll say, 'Well, that's nice, but what's the catch?' And the genie says, 'Here's the catch. You don't know if you're going to be born rich or poor, white or black, male or female, able-bodied or infirm, intelligent or retarded."
If you had that the wish granted by the genie, what kind of world would you create and why?
When I was a lot younger, I questioned how the world must work. I soon figured out that my gain must be someone else's loss. If I become a rich man, then I am in some way taking away the resources of someone else e.g. in the form of food, or money for education or for some other purpose. I still believe that today, and I rationalise it by the fact that the world only works for so long when it's in some kind of harmony, some kind of equilibrium. Once you upset anything in nature, from a bee's nest to an Australian reef, you upset it for good, and it can never be the same as it was. So, if I take not just one resource from a place, but a lot more than I actually need, and waste it on my own personal enjoyment, I am ultimately doing something that is inherently detrimental to the total welfare of the planet. Like the poet said, 'No man is an island unto himself.'
It is in this context that I saw on the news yesterday that those car ('auto' if your American!) executives from Ford, Chrysler, and GM, who went to Washington with their begging bowls almost like Oliver Twist, 'Please can I have some more?'
The were asking for a princely sum of 25 billion US dollars. One would have thought that the very least they could do would be to try to find their own ways of reducing their costs, but they apparently all flew in privately owned corporate jets, one of which apparently cost over 36 million dollars! And they had the temerity to ask for (a) free handouts (without any business plan or conditions attached) and (b) that their employees accept that there will be job losses, redundancies, and pay cuts!? Um...the world really is unfair isn't it when people like this can, after all the chatter about the Wall Street banking executives being scourged in the media for their over-the-top bonuses, crowd around the corporate trough? When you think about the greed of these people, and the Bushes, and the Saudias, you can't help thinking about that famous Will Durant quote - 'The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.' That's what the Bush years were all about: the Neo Cons were the minority and us the majority, and we allowed them to turn the world into a giant business run exclusively for their benefit.Warren Buffet is the second richest man in the world after Bill Gates and said the following which I think is also very clever.
Warren Buffet's opinion (more about how things should work) which I've always loved:
"Let's say that it was 24 hours before you were born, and a genie [magic person] appeared and said, 'What I'm going to do is let you set the rules of the society into which you will be born. You can set the economic rules and the social rules, and whatever rules you set will apply during your lifetime and your children's lifetimes.' And you'll say, 'Well, that's nice, but what's the catch?' And the genie says, 'Here's the catch. You don't know if you're going to be born rich or poor, white or black, male or female, able-bodied or infirm, intelligent or retarded."
If you had that the wish granted by the genie, what kind of world would you create and why?
Thursday, 13 November 2008
God Bless America!
Did anyone see that show on Oprah Winfrey about the woman who had been hoarding everything in her house for 13 years? I've never seen anything like it and not because of the sheer volume of things that she collected over that period.
Her 11-bedroom house was wall-to-wall with every conceivable item, though being a woman, the vast majority as you can imagine, was taken up with clothes, shoes, and handbags. Despite its size, you could barely move in the house so cluttered was it with items, many of which hadn't even been taken out of their store wrappers. Even her three garages were completely jam-packed with stuff and could barely be opened because of this. Likewise her huge basement was full of household items, many never even touched from the day were first bought.It took a 10,000 square feet warehouse to store all the items once they were removed by Oprah's team amassing several tons of items in the process.
What bothers me most though is not that she was sick and needed the help. (She didn't just need psychological help but medical help as well because, due to the lack of space, air couldn't circulate in the house which resulted in black fungus (the worst kind of fungus) and her's and her husband's health suffered as a consequence.) No, my problem is that here we have a woman who is clearly sick psychologically, and needs help, but who probably never missed a meal in her life (and she looked like she could easily afford to). If you can afford to live in such a large house, and can afford to continuously shop for items you don't need, you are obviously not someone who has any financial problems. Yet what was the result of all this?
Oprah, provided her with a world renowned psychologist, an expert in the area of hoarders like her, who counseled her back to normal health. Then she had her entire house, all 11 bedrooms + kitchen and dining areas (even the toilets) kitted out with the best furniture you could imagine, all free of charge?! Whoa! Wait a minute? She got a complete refurbishment of state-of-the-art furniture for what? Being a rich sick woman? I'm sorry but that's obscene! What about the millions in Dharfur or the Congo or a gazillion other places that don't even have a pot to piss in? Where's the justice in that?
This is one of my pet hates about Americans. They live way beyond their means; they have a Media that feeds them a daily diet of disinformation; they have greedy brokerage houses who not only bankrupt their own firms (Lehman Bros, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac etc.)but in the same breath cause financial volatility around the world and then, when the shit hits the fan, they have well-meaning entrepreneurs who will happily bail them out in order for us to watch great TV. God Bless America!
Her 11-bedroom house was wall-to-wall with every conceivable item, though being a woman, the vast majority as you can imagine, was taken up with clothes, shoes, and handbags. Despite its size, you could barely move in the house so cluttered was it with items, many of which hadn't even been taken out of their store wrappers. Even her three garages were completely jam-packed with stuff and could barely be opened because of this. Likewise her huge basement was full of household items, many never even touched from the day were first bought.It took a 10,000 square feet warehouse to store all the items once they were removed by Oprah's team amassing several tons of items in the process.
What bothers me most though is not that she was sick and needed the help. (She didn't just need psychological help but medical help as well because, due to the lack of space, air couldn't circulate in the house which resulted in black fungus (the worst kind of fungus) and her's and her husband's health suffered as a consequence.) No, my problem is that here we have a woman who is clearly sick psychologically, and needs help, but who probably never missed a meal in her life (and she looked like she could easily afford to). If you can afford to live in such a large house, and can afford to continuously shop for items you don't need, you are obviously not someone who has any financial problems. Yet what was the result of all this?Oprah, provided her with a world renowned psychologist, an expert in the area of hoarders like her, who counseled her back to normal health. Then she had her entire house, all 11 bedrooms + kitchen and dining areas (even the toilets) kitted out with the best furniture you could imagine, all free of charge?! Whoa! Wait a minute? She got a complete refurbishment of state-of-the-art furniture for what? Being a rich sick woman? I'm sorry but that's obscene! What about the millions in Dharfur or the Congo or a gazillion other places that don't even have a pot to piss in? Where's the justice in that?
This is one of my pet hates about Americans. They live way beyond their means; they have a Media that feeds them a daily diet of disinformation; they have greedy brokerage houses who not only bankrupt their own firms (Lehman Bros, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac etc.)but in the same breath cause financial volatility around the world and then, when the shit hits the fan, they have well-meaning entrepreneurs who will happily bail them out in order for us to watch great TV. God Bless America!
A Pregnant what? A pregnant man? Get away!
Has anyone seen that guy who just had another baby today? Yes, he apparently already has one. Am I the only person to have never heard about it? Umm...how exactly does that work? I'm no scientist, but I imagine he first needs to have a womb. Actually, our 'mom-to-be' or should that be 'mom-and-dad-to-be' is a transexual, or to give the out the proper term, 'transgender'. His name is Thomas Beatie, and what possessed him to do it is something of a mystery to me. If he was originally a woman, then the obvious question is why didn't he want to have a baby when he was a woman? In other words, why change your pyscho-sexual as well as physical gender, in order to keep your womb?
According to an ABC article (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=5028746&page=1) 'Beatie said he shaves while resting his arm on his baby bump and may even consider having more children.' Yeah? Well I use my beer gut to shave so there you go! He even says, and this is the really funny part, 'It's My Right, Pregnant Man Tells Oprah.'
Something is definitely wrong with the world today. Don't get me wrong - I'm not homophobic, and I support gay & lesbian marriages, but there is something distinctly unwholesome about this, like giving pigs hearts to human patients with angina, or giving free NHS surgery of vaginal 'tucks' and labia corrective surgery to young women in order to make them feel good about themselves by having good looking, tight vaginas. Has the world gone mad?
Am I merely someone showing my age, or do other people think, like me, that this is really odd?
According to an ABC article (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=5028746&page=1) 'Beatie said he shaves while resting his arm on his baby bump and may even consider having more children.' Yeah? Well I use my beer gut to shave so there you go! He even says, and this is the really funny part, 'It's My Right, Pregnant Man Tells Oprah.'
Something is definitely wrong with the world today. Don't get me wrong - I'm not homophobic, and I support gay & lesbian marriages, but there is something distinctly unwholesome about this, like giving pigs hearts to human patients with angina, or giving free NHS surgery of vaginal 'tucks' and labia corrective surgery to young women in order to make them feel good about themselves by having good looking, tight vaginas. Has the world gone mad?
Am I merely someone showing my age, or do other people think, like me, that this is really odd?
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
The Wandering Thai!
Long ago we used to hear the story of the Wandering Jew which so often permeates Western literature. Nowadays, in Asia, we have that poor old man called Thaksin Shinawatra who, it seems is a Wandering Thai without a home despite his 2 billion dollar wealth.
A former Thai prime minister, he was ousted in a bloodless coup in 2007 whilst he was giving a speech to the United Nations in New York. Off he then went to buy up an English football team called Manchester City so that he could win back the support of the Thai people who are absolutely crazy about football especially the Premier League in England.
That didn't work and he ended up selling the club because he needed the money owing to the fact that The Royal Thai government seized a large chunk of his assets held in Thai banks due to corruption charges. He was then sentenced to two years in jail in absentia whereupon (unlike another famous citizen, Socrates, who ate his hemlock rather than disobey the laws of the land) he promptly declared that the charges were politically motivated.
And now we hear that his visa has been revoked from the UK which means that when he leaves his current abode (he's holding up in China apparently and building a 30 million dollar mansion there) he'll have nowhere to go. England doesn't want him, The Phillipines doesn't either (the government under Gloria Aroyyo publicly stated so yesterday) so he is fast becoming a complete outcast. Thaksin must be thinking about the words of that song now - like Van 'the man' Morrison says: 'Gonna shout it every night, Gonna shout it every day, G.L.O.R.I.A, G.L.O.R.I.A'
Perhaps the Burmese will take him as he is known to have had strong ties (not Thais) with his former, near neighbours, the military junta, and especially General Than Shwe allowing them to traffic their drugs along the Golden Triangle, the border with China, Laos and Thailand, and lock up Nobel Prize winning citizens like Aung San Suu Kyi who won an election in the country but was then subsequently jailed as a reward for her troubles.
Poor, poor man! What dreadful luck could have befallen such a clearly talented individual? What could he have done that was wrong to invite such a terrible punishment? What pound of flesh could he have asked for to bring about such rancour and bitterness? Well, the Thai people loved him for a while. His populist policies were selling 'like hot cakes' for a time: he brought in the 30-baht health scheme, where all citizens (read the poorest of the poor who were not surprisingly the ones who voted him into power) were guaranteed medical care for less than one US dollar. The One Tambon (no, not tampon, 'tambon' which is an area or region in Thailand, One Product)OTOP program which helped promote and sell local handicraft and locally produced products around the world. Oh yes! He was flying high for a while and it seemed like he could do no wrong. But then the bubble burst and his enemies surrounded him and stole his piece of the pie when his back was turned in New York! What ingrates, I ask you!!
His biggest mistake, and one which most Thai people even now refuse to accept, was his selling off state assets. They could forgive the fact that he had his hand in the proverbial cookie jar like an underfed Pooh Bear; they could forgive his crackdown on supposed drug dealers killing 2,000 people in extra judicial killings in 3 months (and thinking he was doing the Thai economy a favour by saving the cost of a trial for each suspect); they could even forgive him for the death of 120 people in the Tak Bai incident where protesters were herded onto the back of a truck after being savagely beaten by the police (I know because I saw the video myself), in 35 degree Celcius heat, handcuffed, forced to lie face down. The official verdict was that it was an accident. Yeah! Right, sure. Whatever you say Bro! But the selling off to Temasek Holdings, a Singapore company, of radio waves that belonged to the country, not his own company, Shin Corp, that was the last straw, the one that proverbially broke the camel's back!
I think there is a home for him. He should be captured and brought to jail on the charges he has been convicted of. There is a jail in Thailand called Bang Kwang - it's not as famous as its sister prison - The Bangkok Hilton, but it's a hovel of a place that would scare the screaming be-jesus out of Dante with his infernal capital of Hell - Pandemonium! Thaksin should be arrested wherever he is like that Taiwanese ex-president yesterday, Chen Shui-bian, who we all saw on CNN, waving his handcuffed hands in protest, thrown in to the cell, the door locked and the key thrown away. He deserves nothing less for the punishment he has meted out to those who had no rights or a voice to be heard!
A former Thai prime minister, he was ousted in a bloodless coup in 2007 whilst he was giving a speech to the United Nations in New York. Off he then went to buy up an English football team called Manchester City so that he could win back the support of the Thai people who are absolutely crazy about football especially the Premier League in England.
That didn't work and he ended up selling the club because he needed the money owing to the fact that The Royal Thai government seized a large chunk of his assets held in Thai banks due to corruption charges. He was then sentenced to two years in jail in absentia whereupon (unlike another famous citizen, Socrates, who ate his hemlock rather than disobey the laws of the land) he promptly declared that the charges were politically motivated.
And now we hear that his visa has been revoked from the UK which means that when he leaves his current abode (he's holding up in China apparently and building a 30 million dollar mansion there) he'll have nowhere to go. England doesn't want him, The Phillipines doesn't either (the government under Gloria Aroyyo publicly stated so yesterday) so he is fast becoming a complete outcast. Thaksin must be thinking about the words of that song now - like Van 'the man' Morrison says: 'Gonna shout it every night, Gonna shout it every day, G.L.O.R.I.A, G.L.O.R.I.A'
Perhaps the Burmese will take him as he is known to have had strong ties (not Thais) with his former, near neighbours, the military junta, and especially General Than Shwe allowing them to traffic their drugs along the Golden Triangle, the border with China, Laos and Thailand, and lock up Nobel Prize winning citizens like Aung San Suu Kyi who won an election in the country but was then subsequently jailed as a reward for her troubles.
Poor, poor man! What dreadful luck could have befallen such a clearly talented individual? What could he have done that was wrong to invite such a terrible punishment? What pound of flesh could he have asked for to bring about such rancour and bitterness? Well, the Thai people loved him for a while. His populist policies were selling 'like hot cakes' for a time: he brought in the 30-baht health scheme, where all citizens (read the poorest of the poor who were not surprisingly the ones who voted him into power) were guaranteed medical care for less than one US dollar. The One Tambon (no, not tampon, 'tambon' which is an area or region in Thailand, One Product)OTOP program which helped promote and sell local handicraft and locally produced products around the world. Oh yes! He was flying high for a while and it seemed like he could do no wrong. But then the bubble burst and his enemies surrounded him and stole his piece of the pie when his back was turned in New York! What ingrates, I ask you!!
His biggest mistake, and one which most Thai people even now refuse to accept, was his selling off state assets. They could forgive the fact that he had his hand in the proverbial cookie jar like an underfed Pooh Bear; they could forgive his crackdown on supposed drug dealers killing 2,000 people in extra judicial killings in 3 months (and thinking he was doing the Thai economy a favour by saving the cost of a trial for each suspect); they could even forgive him for the death of 120 people in the Tak Bai incident where protesters were herded onto the back of a truck after being savagely beaten by the police (I know because I saw the video myself), in 35 degree Celcius heat, handcuffed, forced to lie face down. The official verdict was that it was an accident. Yeah! Right, sure. Whatever you say Bro! But the selling off to Temasek Holdings, a Singapore company, of radio waves that belonged to the country, not his own company, Shin Corp, that was the last straw, the one that proverbially broke the camel's back!
I think there is a home for him. He should be captured and brought to jail on the charges he has been convicted of. There is a jail in Thailand called Bang Kwang - it's not as famous as its sister prison - The Bangkok Hilton, but it's a hovel of a place that would scare the screaming be-jesus out of Dante with his infernal capital of Hell - Pandemonium! Thaksin should be arrested wherever he is like that Taiwanese ex-president yesterday, Chen Shui-bian, who we all saw on CNN, waving his handcuffed hands in protest, thrown in to the cell, the door locked and the key thrown away. He deserves nothing less for the punishment he has meted out to those who had no rights or a voice to be heard!
Monday, 3 November 2008
A Political Houdini?
Am I the only person to notice this? The political Houdini magic trick has almost been pulled off? Doesn't it seem weird how Bush has come onto the political landscape, spent the 3 trillion dollar surplus that Clinton left him on wars and degrading the American image abroad? That he deliberately engineered a crisis like 9/11 to scare the living daylights out of the American people (who lets face it, aren't the most politically savvy or worldly wise anyway given the staple diet offered to them by their media outlets).
And now, right at the end of his presidency, the economy is in crisis, markets up and down like a playground swing, the economy in freefall, and he just walks away into the sunset like a cowboy of the American past, his job done successfully? He told us we were either with him or against him and that he'd always get who he wanted, like it said on thsoe wanted posters, dead or alive. Well he sure got Sadaam Hussein but the other one seems to have eluded him yet now right at the end he doesn't even seem to be looking. Why?
An historian might say this was simply a failed presidency full of missed opportunities and poor decisions. Those more cynical might say it was a clear plan, hatched probably by Dick Chaney to steer the world towards Neo Conservative values. Who knows, maybe they engineered the whole thing - the entire presidency? The vast increase in oil revenues benefitted who exactly? Qui bono? The Saudias? The Bushes have been doing business with them for 30 years. Other oil rich countries? We will never know what secret deals have been done with others to maintain this myth of Osama Bin Laden. A man who lives in some of the harshest terrain in the mountains of Pakistan who, like Neitzshe's Ubermensch, Superman, comes down from the mountain to change the world.
And tomorrow we will be swapping Osama with Obama if the polls live up to their predictions. But what if the politicians have got together like in David Rothkoph's 'Superclass' book which has as its central premise that only about 5-6,000 people run the world from people like Bush, George Soros, Cheney, Rupert Murdoch et al and they engineer every aspect of our lives to suit their own purposes. Read up on the Council of Foreign Relations if you want to know more about the shady people he's talking about too as that organisation, many people believe, is a front for the kinds of people David Rothkoph is talking about.
Seems to me like Bush has done very well for himself; a recovering alcoholic, born again Christian. His faith now must be as unshakeable as the Tower of Babylon. He has seemingly got everything he wanted.
And now, right at the end of his presidency, the economy is in crisis, markets up and down like a playground swing, the economy in freefall, and he just walks away into the sunset like a cowboy of the American past, his job done successfully? He told us we were either with him or against him and that he'd always get who he wanted, like it said on thsoe wanted posters, dead or alive. Well he sure got Sadaam Hussein but the other one seems to have eluded him yet now right at the end he doesn't even seem to be looking. Why?
An historian might say this was simply a failed presidency full of missed opportunities and poor decisions. Those more cynical might say it was a clear plan, hatched probably by Dick Chaney to steer the world towards Neo Conservative values. Who knows, maybe they engineered the whole thing - the entire presidency? The vast increase in oil revenues benefitted who exactly? Qui bono? The Saudias? The Bushes have been doing business with them for 30 years. Other oil rich countries? We will never know what secret deals have been done with others to maintain this myth of Osama Bin Laden. A man who lives in some of the harshest terrain in the mountains of Pakistan who, like Neitzshe's Ubermensch, Superman, comes down from the mountain to change the world.
And tomorrow we will be swapping Osama with Obama if the polls live up to their predictions. But what if the politicians have got together like in David Rothkoph's 'Superclass' book which has as its central premise that only about 5-6,000 people run the world from people like Bush, George Soros, Cheney, Rupert Murdoch et al and they engineer every aspect of our lives to suit their own purposes. Read up on the Council of Foreign Relations if you want to know more about the shady people he's talking about too as that organisation, many people believe, is a front for the kinds of people David Rothkoph is talking about.
Seems to me like Bush has done very well for himself; a recovering alcoholic, born again Christian. His faith now must be as unshakeable as the Tower of Babylon. He has seemingly got everything he wanted.
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