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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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David wrote: | Perhaps we need to give ordinary Muslims a bit more credit for common sense. |
I think most people with half a brain do that. It's very possible to maintain a deep suspicion of the political use of Islam by Islamists without harbouring any desire at all to denigrate individual muslims. Most of us know muslim people at work, or (hopefully) as friends. On the whole, they are family-oriented and hard-working people with good values and, of course, similar hopes and dreams for themselves and their children as everyone else. Only a bonehead would believe otherwise.
But too much of the discussion reminds me of that stinker of a song from Sting at the height of the Cold War : "I hope the Russians love their children too". Surely they do, Stingy old bean, but that tells you nothing about the use of ideology by coercive elites who oppose our interests when they do not actually hate us and want to bomb our streets.
It's the usage of Islam as a force for violent political mobilisation that is the issue here. Whether Islam is more susceptible to being used that way than Christianity is arguable on textual or socio-historical grounds, though as these pages show, any conclusion will almost certainly follow one's pre-existing dogma. In any event, it is irrelevant to the fact that that we are dealing with an ideological perversion masquerading as a religion. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Mugwump wrote: | But too much of the discussion reminds me of that stinker of a song from Sting at the height of the Cold War : "I hope the Russians love their children too". |
Now you have really lost the plot. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ Don't tell me you liked that song ? Please don't tell me you liked that song ! _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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It was designed to communicate a point and convey a powerful feeling. It did exactly that. That is what good art is and does: effective communication with an emotional payload.
Me? Like it? Shrug. I seldom particularly like any music since about 1980 or so. I admired it as a nicely crafted bit of work; I liked the feel it had and particularly its ability to cut through the dross on commercial radio in a way very few songs can - how many political songs can you think of which would actually work on a building site? - and most of all I liked his inspired choice of tag line: very simple, very effective. Bit like a Tony Abbott Three Word Slogan, really, but minus the Abbott barf factor. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Tannin wrote: | It was designed to communicate a point and convey a powerful feeling. It did exactly that. That is what good art is and does: effective communication with an emotional payload.
Me? Like it? Shrug. I seldom particularly like any music since about 1980 or so. I admired it as a nicely crafted bit of work; I liked the feel it had and particularly its ability to cut through the dross on commercial radio in a way very few songs can - how many political songs can you think of which would actually work on a building site? - and most of all I liked his inspired choice of tag line: very simple, very effective. Bit like a Tony Abbott Three Word Slogan, really, but minus the Abbott barf factor. |
All I remember is a lurching synthesiser and a mournful drone, but each to their own, I suppose ; like you, music stopped for me ca 1982. Anyway, as an example of an intelligent man over-simplifying a problem of political power into one of personal relations, I thought it ranked up there. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Here's the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs
I actually had that album, dram of the blue turtles, his first solo album after leaving the Police. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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Mugwump wrote: | David wrote: | Perhaps we need to give ordinary Muslims a bit more credit for common sense. |
I think most people with half a brain do that. It's very possible to maintain a deep suspicion of the political use of Islam by Islamists without harbouring any desire at all to denigrate individual muslims. Most of us know muslim people at work, or (hopefully) as friends. On the whole, they are family-oriented and hard-working people with good values and, of course, similar hopes and dreams for themselves and their children as everyone else. Only a bonehead would believe otherwise.
But too much of the discussion reminds me of that stinker of a song from Sting at the height of the Cold War : "I hope the Russians love their children too". Surely they do, Stingy old bean, but that tells you nothing about the use of ideology by coercive elites who oppose our interests when they do not actually hate us and want to bomb our streets.
It's the usage of Islam as a force for violent political mobilisation that is the issue here. Whether Islam is more susceptible to being used that way than Christianity is arguable on textual or socio-historical grounds, though as these pages show, any conclusion will almost certainly follow one's pre-existing dogma. In any event, it is irrelevant to the fact that that we are dealing with an ideological perversion masquerading as a religion. |
Says it all _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Oh gawd, that video !! As Oscar Wilde would say, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to ... Laugh.... Especially that long heroic-yogi shot of Sting at the end as the Fu Manchu music ebbs away....
(It was a pretty decent album, though... We work the black seam together, Moon over Bourbon Street, etc). _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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think positive wrote: | Mugwump wrote: | David wrote: | Perhaps we need to give ordinary Muslims a bit more credit for common sense. |
I think most people with half a brain do that. It's very possible to maintain a deep suspicion of the political use of Islam by Islamists without harbouring any desire at all to denigrate individual muslims. Most of us know muslim people at work, or (hopefully) as friends. On the whole, they are family-oriented and hard-working people with good values and, of course, similar hopes and dreams for themselves and their children as everyone else. Only a bonehead would believe otherwise.
But too much of the discussion reminds me of that stinker of a song from Sting at the height of the Cold War : "I hope the Russians love their children too". Surely they do, Stingy old bean, but that tells you nothing about the use of ideology by coercive elites who oppose our interests when they do not actually hate us and want to bomb our streets.
It's the usage of Islam as a force for violent political mobilisation that is the issue here. Whether Islam is more susceptible to being used that way than Christianity is arguable on textual or socio-historical grounds, though as these pages show, any conclusion will almost certainly follow one's pre-existing dogma. In any event, it is irrelevant to the fact that that we are dealing with an ideological perversion masquerading as a religion. |
Says it all |
The next step is to start taking this seriously by viewing our own, detached power merchants in the very same light, not falling for their use of whatever ideological perversion is laying about to arouse people into funding, supporting and cheering on Western or Western-owned acts of violence, interference and appropriation overseas.
Given the power differential across the earth for the last good part of history, fairness would have it that we train our eyes extremely sharply on the actions of those claiming to act in our name, whether be politicians or companies.
Leadership, as ever, starts at home. _________________ In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ I'm sure you've noticed a rather vigorous press regularly criticising the government for everything from foreign policy to the domestic economy from alomost every side and every angle since you've been here. I really don't think there's a gap in the market for what you're describing. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Mugwump wrote: | Tannin wrote: | It was designed to communicate a point and convey a powerful feeling. It did exactly that. That is what good art is and does: effective communication with an emotional payload.
Me? Like it? Shrug. I seldom particularly like any music since about 1980 or so. I admired it as a nicely crafted bit of work; I liked the feel it had and particularly its ability to cut through the dross on commercial radio in a way very few songs can - how many political songs can you think of which would actually work on a building site? - and most of all I liked his inspired choice of tag line: very simple, very effective. Bit like a Tony Abbott Three Word Slogan, really, but minus the Abbott barf factor. |
All I remember is a lurching synthesiser and a mournful drone, but each to their own, I suppose ; like you, music stopped for me ca 1982. Anyway, as an example of an intelligent man over-simplifying a problem of political power into one of personal relations, I thought it ranked up there. |
Well yes, I agree with all of that. Over-simplifing? Well of course. It's a pop song, with pop song lyrics. Were you expecting an MA thesis? It over-simplifies powerfully and effectively, which is exactly what pop songs do. Well, that's what they do if they are any good, which most of them aren't.
"Turgid" would be an appropriate term to describe everything except the vocal line if you didn't want to use "annoying", "swirling" ore "muddy". On the other hand, the vocal line is haunting and powerful and the instrumental backing does create the mood for it effectively. (Especially if you can't really hear it properly, such as when it's on a piddly little AM radio.) _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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I always found the song to be an indictment on leaders, with the implicit message that Russians indeed love their children as much as we in the west do and it's our respective leaderships sending us down the path to annihilation.
I was a kid when this song came out, and I still remember being afraid of the possibility of nuclear war and 'The Russians'.
Apart from all the +1 to what Tannin said. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Mugwump wrote: |
Oh gawd, that video !! As Oscar Wilde would say, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to ... Laugh.... Especially that long heroic-yogi shot of Sting at the end as the Fu Manchu music ebbs away....
(It was a pretty decent album, though... We work the black seam together, Moon over Bourbon Street, etc). |
My fav song on that Album was "Fortress around your heart"
The video is pretty cool too, love the ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiPiRKbNCWY _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Tannin wrote: | Mugwump wrote: | Tannin wrote: | It was designed to communicate a point and convey a powerful feeling. It did exactly that. That is what good art is and does: effective communication with an emotional payload.
Me? Like it? Shrug. I seldom particularly like any music since about 1980 or so. I admired it as a nicely crafted bit of work; I liked the feel it had and particularly its ability to cut through the dross on commercial radio in a way very few songs can - how many political songs can you think of which would actually work on a building site? - and most of all I liked his inspired choice of tag line: very simple, very effective. Bit like a Tony Abbott Three Word Slogan, really, but minus the Abbott barf factor. |
All I remember is a lurching synthesiser and a mournful drone, but each to their own, I suppose ; like you, music stopped for me ca 1982. Anyway, as an example of an intelligent man over-simplifying a problem of political power into one of personal relations, I thought it ranked up there. |
Well yes, I agree with all of that. Over-simplifing? Well of course. It's a pop song, with pop song lyrics. Were you expecting an MA thesis? It over-simplifies powerfully and effectively, which is exactly what pop songs do. Well, that's what they do if they are any good, which most of them aren't.
"Turgid" would be an appropriate term to describe everything except the vocal line if you didn't want to use "annoying", "swirling" ore "muddy". On the other hand, the vocal line is haunting and powerful and the instrumental backing does create the mood for it effectively. (Especially if you can't really hear it properly, such as when it's on a piddly little AM radio.) |
Yeah. Confess the vocal line was better than I remembered.... trite lyric, though, and they don't have to be. Anyway, the point I was making was.... _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006 Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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... and I confess that the instrumental backing was worse that I remembered. _________________ �Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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