Saturday, December 20, 2003
...Infected Mushroom...
I was just at a friend's birthday party, and the DJ at the place played the infected mushroom & Berry Sacharoff track "yom huledet".
The DJ had no idea what he was playing, just another random infected mushroom track...but it made my day. Night. Week. Year.
My friend, who isn't Jewish (but likes infected mushroom) was pretty stoked when I told him what the song was. As I said to him, it was a birthday wish from my people to him.
I gotta say, there's no better ambassador for Israel than Israeli trance. Infected Mushroom, Yahel, Telafon Tel Aviv......ask anyone into trance and they'll know them instantly. That totally rocks in my book.
Saturday, December 13, 2003
...to swastika or not to swastika?...
Microsoft has published this letter of apology after its Bookshelf Symbols 7 font, included in office, contained two swastikas (via typographi.ca)
I just opened the font up in the microsoft character map, and sure enough...there it is.
Personally, I don't find the symbol offensive when I see it displayed in that context - within a white circle surrounded by red is a different story. Yet, at this point in time, I can't see any use for it in a widely distributed microsoft font other than in neo-nazi propaganda. For its use would still signify Nazi hatred and practises - particularly as so many WW2 survivors still exist.
Yet we often forget that the swastika was actually hijacked by the Nazi party, effectively demonising the harmless ancient symbol. This website discusses the history of the swastika, as part of an effort to redeem it of the negativity it connotates since its associations in the Second World War.
The question follows: once a symbol is appropriated, how easy is it to abolish this new meaning? The meanings of many symbols around us are today representative of something completely different than they were hundreds, or thousands, of years ago. For instance, We all know that a tick means yes, a cross means no..but have we ever wondered how that came into place, and what the origin of these symbols are?
The same holds true for many facets of a particular culture - symbols abound in art, film, music and- most importantly - language. Study of these types of symbols, their impacs and evolution is called semiotics, and is fundamental to cultural studies - also coming into play in any kind of exploration of visual culture.
Most semioticians agree that culture is something that constantly evolves. So too do the meanings of our symbols. As such, perhaps there will come a time that the Nazi symbol will become devoid of its message of hatred. At the same time, there would have to be a general cultural infusion of an apathy towards the occurrences of the holocaust, or at least forgetting what the Nazi party, Hitler and the Swastika truly signify.
On a related note, the Australian memories of the holocaust website has been nominated as one of the top 10 Australian websites for 2003. You can vote for it here.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
...IMC at it again.........
Via Gil. Timely, considering my last post on the matter.
The saga continues with LGF noting that the Israel IMC is actually down due to Israeli investigation rather than the "upgrade" noted on the website. A post about the whole situation can be found here.
Opinion: The picture that sparked the entire saga, one of Sharon kissing Hitler, is absolutely ridiculous in and of itself. The controversy sparked is just legitimising an absolutely idiotic stunt by this Brazilian "artist". I strongly doubt that IMC Israel is being shut down due to this piece of stupidity, but it's about time that the IMC introspection I alluded to in my last post occurred.
Sunday, December 07, 2003
...Late, but.......
Whilst trying to catch up on happenings within the blogosphere, I came across this post on LGF, about the Seattle branch of Indymedia closing down.
Some of my studies last semester centered around the internet and media democracy. One example that came up recurringly was the Indymedia story - which many political economy media theorists (who are on the left by definition) lauded as one of the truer examples of democracy on the internet.
Of course many of the sources I read were from around 1999-2000, and it shows. Ultimately, Indymedia version of democracy became a mouthpiece for anti-Semitism, as long as it was thinly veiled as anti-Zionism. The time I read a post which described a certain far-left Israeli as a "good Jew" comes to mind.
I had come to terms with the fact that by virtue of my stance in the middle east, I would disagree with some if not all of the left-leaning academics of the Arts department. So I took the comments regarding Indymedia with a grain of salt. I even accepted the fact that electronic intifada was accepted as an example of democracy on the internet because - in essence - it is. The fact that the Electronic Intifada website is coupled with sites such as Internet Haganah makes accepting such statements much easier, regardless of how pointedly one sided such a statement is.
Yet I can't help thinking that there is much more to democracy than meets the eye. It's not simply handing out two different viewpoints and letting people decide - because people, we all know, are creatures of habit. We tend to read and accept those things that naturally fall in line with what we wish to accept. If we prefer to read what we see on LGF (and I'm not sure that I always do) over Indymedia, we stick to reading LGF and leave Indymedia by the wayside. Same is true for certain newspapers over others, television channels and so on.
There's nothing truly democratic about the media at all. Many would argue by saying that the media help keep us truly politically informed in a democratic fashion. I disagree. Spin doctoring, and media hype, place a shroud on top of what should truly be informing us. So, to a certain degree, the internet and all it's offering of choice should technically allow us to keep ourselves informed in a way independent of all those things that caused indymedia to establish itself in the first place.
When the answer becomes the anathema, that's when we have ourselves a problem. So indymedia became a Mecca for "jargon-laden, factually incorrect anarco-leftist rants" - hypocritical to its very thesis.
So...Goodbye Indymedia Seattle. Hopefully, the death of the flagship Indymedia centre will prompt the other indymedia centres for some introspection. If it doesn't, the dominoes will fall, and even if they don't, who cares. I mean...it's only the internet, right?
Sunday, November 23, 2003
...time to get re-acquainted...
Hi. Sorry about going a whole week without posting. It's just been one of those weeks....y'know?
Bombs in Turkey, worrying about possible casualties of friends who were visiting Turkey at the time, things to see, people to do...etc etc. Hopefully it's all over. Tomorrow I join a new gym, wish me luck.
Monday, November 17, 2003
It seems that Al Qaeda have taken responsibility for the Turkish synagogue bombings, citing that their intelligence stated that there were "five israeli agents" in the synagogue.
Nice. They've justified the bombing, linked it to Israel, and we can all hold hands and be happy because there really was a reason for the bombs other than anti-semitism.
All that worry was for nothing! Back to regular scheduled programming....
