The News In Lego 2011

Osama Bin Laden's capture

A reproduction of some of the pivotal events in the news of 2011 using Lego. You can see more here.

Occupy Wall Street

 

The death of Steve Jobs

 

The Royal Wedding

 

US Forces Leave Iraq

As we move into 2012, with little to no fan fare, this happened. Was it worth it?

The last American troops have left Iraq amid fresh concerns about the stability of the political system they are leaving behind.

The last of roughly 110 vehicles carrying around 500 troops mostly belonging to the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, crossed the border into Kuwait as the sun rose on Sunday morning, leaving just a couple of hundred soldiers at the US embassy, in a country where there were once nearly 170,000 troops on 505 bases.

The generally subdued departure was punctuated by intermittent shouts of joy.

It ended a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead, many more wounded, and 1.75 million Iraqis displaced, after the US-led invasion unleashed brutal sectarian killing.

Read more at ABC News online.

The 9/11 Decade

As we draw near to the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the commentariat have begun looking back at the decade that was, investigating how it has shaped the United States and, more broadly, the global community.

While there is surely much more to be written as September 11 fast approaches, two extraordinarily good pieces have caught my attention. The first is Frank Rich’s article in New York Magazine. In his opening sentence, Rich quips, “It was ‘the day that changed everything,’ until it didn’t”.

In retrospect, the most consequential event of the past ten years may not have been 9/11 or the Iraq War but the looting of the American economy by those in power in Washington and on Wall Street.

In such an alternative telling of the decade’s history, the key move Bush made after 9/11 had nothing to do with military strategy or national-security policy. It was instead his considered decision to rule out shared sacrifice as a governing principle for the fight ahead. Sacrifice was high among the unifying ideals that many Americans hoped would emerge from the rubble of ground zero, where so many Good Samaritans had practiced it. But the president scuttled the notion on the first weekend after the attack, telling Americans that it was his “hope” that “they make no sacrifice whatsoever” beyond, perhaps, tolerating enhanced airline security. Few leaders in either party contradicted him. Bush would soon implore us to “get down to Disney World in Florida” and would even lend his image to a travel-industry ad promoting tourism. Our marching orders were to go shopping.

By framing the events of 9/11 in these terms, Rich suggests, the Bush administration unwittingly helped to exacerbate the current economic crisis in the United States:

By portraying Afghanistan and Iraq as utterly cost-free to a credulous public, the Bush administration injected the cancer into the American body politic that threatens it today: If we don’t need new taxes to fight two wars, why do we need them for anything?

The intervening years since 9/11 have evidently provided the benefit of perspective. This is illustrated nicely in David J. Rothkopf’s piece for Foreign Policy. In a similar vain to Rich, Rothkopf writes:

Indeed, we have been overestimating its significance since almost the moment it happened.

That is not, by the way, to diminish the brutal blows struck 10 years ago or the deeply felt human experiences associated with it and its aftermath. Rather it is to say that once again we will seek to frame 9/11 as a great event, the definer of an era, when in fact, its greatest defining characteristic was that of a distraction — The Great Distraction — that drew America’s focus and that of many in the world from the greater issues of our time. That distraction and the opportunity costs associated with it were bin Laden’s triumph and our loss — and our ultimate victory will come as we get a grip back on reality.

Rothkopf goes on to suggest 10 events of the past decade which are, culturally speaking, more important than the tragic events of 9/11. He suggests that with the benefit of time, we are now, collectively, able to look beyond the attack to other milestones that have shaped (and are continuing to shape) us.

Rothkopf nominates the following ten events:

10. The American Response to 9/11
9. The Arab Spring
8. The Rebalancing of Asia
7. The Stagnation of the U.S. and Other Developed-World Economies
6. The Invention of Social Media
5. The Proliferation of Cell Phones and Hand-Held Computing Devices
4. The Crash of 2008
3. The Eurozone Crisis and the Crash of 2011-2012
2. The Failure to Address Global Warming
1. The Rise of China and the Other BRICs

Food for thought, indeed.

The Ides of March – Trailer

The trailer for The Ides of March, one of this year’s most anticipated drama/thrillers, has been released. An idealistic staffer (Ryan Gosling)  for a newbie presidential candidate (George Clooney) gets a crash course on dirty politics during his stint on the campaign trail. Directed by Clooney and based on the play by Beau Willimon, The Ides of March also stars Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman in support. All signs indicate that the buzz surrounding this film is justified. Oh yeah, and the film’s poster gets my vote for movie poster of the year (so far).

The Carbon Tax Debate

On 10 July the Australian government announced it would introduce a carbon tax at $23 a tonne in July 2012, rising 2.5% annually plus inflation and moving to a market-based emissions trading scheme in 2015.

Judging by the reaction of Australian media and commentariat, you’d be forgiven for thinking Prime Minister Julia Gillard had announced the new date of the Rapture.

Inevitably, the he said/she said slinging match between Julia Gillard and Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, started immediately.

While the science surrounding climate change should stand as irrefutable, it appears the economics is still disputable.

Here’s a taste of some of the better commentary:

Frank Jotzo writes in The Conversation:

Although the carbon pricing scheme has its warts, the negotiations between Labor, the Greens and the Independents have also produced some genuinely positive outcomes. The package will not bring big reductions in emissions in the short term, but it can be the first step on the long road to a lower-carbon economy.

However, as Bernard Kean writes in Crikey:

Regardless of how well Labor, the independents and the Greens argue the case for the carbon price package in coming days and weeks, Tony Abbott has already secured a major victory. The fall in consumer and business sentiment in recent months across a range of indicators is attributable to several things, including worsening conditions overseas, but many economists are attributing it to concerns about the carbon price scheme.

Concerns, of course, that have been ruthlessly fanned by Abbott, exploiting uncertainty and lack of detail to warn the sky would fall in, driving up household costs and endangering jobs.

The fact that it’s now clear few jobs will be endangered and those households that aren’t compensated face only trivial price rises, while inconveniencing Abbott as his makes his way around the country, is secondary to the fact that voters appear to have taken on his counsel of despair.

While the public may still be scratching their head about the carbon tax and how it impacts them, economic correspondent Peter Martin writes on his blog:

Gillard’s policy can be understood. It takes on board the two key lessons learned in economics over the past two centuries – that relative prices matter, and if you change them you change behaviour. Want more babies? Offer a baby bonus. Want more people to work? Raise the tax-free threshold, and so on.

…her plan eschews the creation of a massive new bureaucracy to hand out grants for worthy programs to cut emissions…And there’s something else. Gillard’s scheme offers certainty – not just for the next nine years as does Abbott’s scheme, which spells out a plan to achieve emissions reductions until 2020 and then stops – but to 2050 and beyond.

Whether firms like the prices imposed by the Gillard scheme or not, it lets them do the sort of planning they need to do when they are considering installing long-lived equipment such as new power plants or bidding for firms…

To see more of what the experts think, check out the great commentary on The Conversation.

Madrid Street Advertising Takeover

On 30 March, the PublicAdCampaign launched its most recent street ad intervention in Madrid with the aim of reclaiming outdoor advertising as a venue for public art. The latest in the series, MaSAT (Madrid Street Advertising Takeover), targeted Cemusa bus shelters in four heavily populated locations around Madrid. The bus shelter advertising was replaced with text-based works. The resulting street art encouraged public dialogue and asked consumers to question the commodification of shared public spaces.

[via PSFK]

Hunter S. Thompson interviews Keith Richards

This is just so fucking cool… The title says it all. Hunter and “Keef” having a shit talk back in 1993 - watch and enjoy:

[via Flavorwire]

God Went Surfing With the Devil – Trailer

Its always interesting to see how a culture like skating or surfing can transcend borders. Directed by Alexander Klein, God Went Surfing with the Devil is a look at the Israel-Palestine conflict through the lens of surfing. In 2007 it emerged that a small group of young men were surfing in Gaza, sharing battered surfboards they had attained prior to the siege. Word traveled north to Israel, and that same year, a mixed group of Israelis and Americans delivered a dozen boards to their Palestinian counterparts. In the spring of 2008, they would attempt to deliver another 23 surfboards into Gaza. By this time the situation in Gaza had deteriorated further, the border still sealed, with military activity a near daily occurrence. God Went Surfing With the Devil charts the difficulties and dangers encountered by surfers in the region. Along the way the doco speaks to Israelis, Arab-Israelis, and Palestinians affected by the violence, charting their daily struggle to supersede the conflict through the joys of surfing. Scope the trailer below.

[via Juxtapoz]

Which Aussie Actor Should Play Julian Assange in the Inevtiable Hollywood Adaptation of the WikiLeaks Drama?

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Julian Assange (L: Max Vadukul, T Magazine. R: Carmen Valino, Guardian)

The WikiLeaks scandal has all the ingredients of a Hollywood thriller (there are even reports of a James Bond-like WikiLeaks lair!). No doubt, some big studio has a bunch of monkeys working around the clock on an early treatment of the still unfolding saga. Below are my tips for who should play WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Julian Assange in the inevitable Hollywood movie. Feel free to add your own actor suggestions in the comments section…

1. Richard Roxburgh: having already played a number of real life Australian figures (Roger Rogerson, Bob Hawke), Roxburgh has the credentials – and haircut – to play the role to perfection.

2. Hugo Weaving: No Australian actor could play creepy genius / vulnerable idealist better than Weaving.

3. Guy Pearce: Pearce is a camelion – he doesn’t so much perform a role as inhabit it. I could see him doing an intense character study of Assange.

Now, someone get Paul Greengrass on the phone to direct and we got a movie…

WikiLeaks

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’re probably aware by now that WikiLeaks is the issue du jour. So you can join the conversation, here’s a round up of some of the latest commentary.

“WikiLeaks publishes its material on its own site, which is housed on a few dozen servers around the globe, including places like Sweden, Belgium and the United States that the organization considers friendly to journalists and document leakers. By being everywhere, yet in no exact place, WikiLeaks is, in effect, beyond the reach of any institution or government that hopes to silence it.” – The New York Times

“It would be an exaggeration to say that diplomacy will never be the same again. Self-interest means that countries will still send and receive private messages. But communication will be more difficult. The trading of opinions, insights and favours necessarily requires shadow, not light. Unofficial contacts such as businessmen, journalists, campaigners and other citizens who talk to American diplomats, out of goodwill or self-interest, will think twice about doing so. Being tarred as an American crony can be lethal.” – The Economist

“WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?” Julian Assange in The Australian

“Julian Assange is one of us, as worthy at least of our protection as Chapelle Corby. He has broken no law and has greatly enlarged the amusement of nations.” – Bob Ellis in The Drum

Ideas of the Year

The Atlantic has published a list of ten of the most remarkable ideas to emerge in 2010:

What’s that expression? Necessity is the mother of… Let’s just say 2010 has been a year of great necessity. Natural disasters, man-made disasters, bedbug plagues, political tsunamis (or was it monsoons?)—they all changed life in ways that demanded ingenious thinking. And whether by finding new uses for existing technologies, or devising novel solutions wholesale, smart minds dealt with this year’s challenges with that most effective of coping mechanisms: innovation.

To take a look at ten of the most remarkable ideas to have emerged in 2010 click here.

Skateistan – To live and skate in Kabul

Diesel New Voices presents a short film on Skateistan directed by Orlando von Einsiedel. Skateistan has emerged as Afghanistan’s first skateboarding school, and is dedicated to teaching both male and female students. It aims to build indoor and outdoor skateboarding facilities in which Afghan youth can come together to skateboard: here, they forge bonds that transcend social barriers. Here, they’re enabled to affect change on issues that are important to them. Skateistan strives to tell a positive story about Afghan youth, using global media platforms to send a message of hope, unity and peace.

[via Monster Children]