no more posts on michael jackson . . . after this one!

I like Gary Younge, he appears to be intelligent, articulate and pretty right on, but seriously, enough bashing Jackson cos he wasn't black anymore. All one has to do is look at some of the more candid photos of him from the early 80's onwards and you can see the vitiligo clear as day; the newspaper Mr Younge writes for even has a handy one at the top of the article here: http://tinyurl.com/q4h8yu, if you can't be bothered to look at all the pictures someones put up here: http://tinyurl.com/5gfmwy

Put natural vitiligo in the mix with a man who was at the very least a bit strange, and who hated the fact that he looked like his father (i recall him mentioning this in the bashir interview) then the leap to changing his facial structure to look like a white man doesn't seem that large. I have of course to bear in mind the lessons of southpark (as always) that as a white man i just can't "get" race, but i do get a bit cheesed off by this facet of the criticism that the man came in for.

Anyhow, that's it as far as MJ is concerned here, I'm off to find something more important to get indignant about.

the Gary Younge article to which I'm referring can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/rdp4xh

MJ, Steven Wells and Farrah Fawcett

I'm aware that as of this moment in time no-one reads this, but i dont care. Flawed icons are by far the most interesting and he was the epitome of this. More to the point this is MY blog, and he was important to ME.

I always saw him as a profoundly sad person, so perhaps its appropriate he died of a broken heart.

Anyway, i'm off to play Billie Jean, Dangerous (yes dangerous, AND Jam AND She Drives me wild) Thriller, Beat It, Off the Wall, Blame it on the Boogie and They Don't Care About Us . . . LOUD. I encourage you to do the same.

I guess i should listen to Gone too Soon as well!

that pesky war thing

All the hoopla regarding public enquiry into the Iraq war makes it a vaguely appropriate time to post something about my opinions regarding the case for the intervention that commenced on

intervention in the running of other sovereign states is always going to be a bad choice, lives will be ended, property destroyed etc etc. The moral questions posed are hard, and the standards for decision are impossible for us all to be happy with, we all make our own choice in this matter and i find it hard to say who is right and wrong . . . not that i don't say when i think someone is wrong, but I'm always at least a little conflicted when i do.

so what do I think??

I'm convinced there was a moral cause for war, I'm also convinced that the case made wasn't the case i would have made.

Its interesting to look at where individuals get their morality from, when i look at mine i see a worrying influence from the comic books i read in the early 90's, most profoundly seen in the Stan Lee maxim "with great power comes great responsibility."

Fact is Saddam Hussein was a total fucktard who had no problem killing his citizens, and those of other countries, often in particularly brutal ways. Shouldn't we in the wealthy (relatively) free, (relatively) democratic first world bear some responsibility for dragging men like this into the street and dealing with them.

I know this statement begs the question where do you stop, statements about people in glass houses and accusations of cultural imperialism, but lets just imagine we lived in 1984, the world of V for Vendetta, Zimbabwe or North Korea. Wouldnt we want our fellow man to help us throw of the yoke?

I'm painfully aware that solutions like these rarely solve anything (despite what Robert Heinlein told us) but dammit i'd feel much better if the SAS went in and literally gutted the ruling classes of most of the middle east, North Korea, Burma. Clearly it would all go wrong, but god dammit our intentions would be noble!