politics

A demonstration of a circuit bent George W Bush doll, via the appropriately named Wrongbot.

Before the wingnuts come out in force, note that wrongbot’s work is all-over-the-place sick and wrong, but in a good way.

We generally avoid politics at Synthtopia, but Time Magazine’s Joe Klein has penned an interesting take on Obama’s February 24 speech to Congress that’s relevant to synthesis.

In the article, Klein call’s Obama’s speech “A Tonal Masterpiece“, and compares the qualities of recent presidents as synthesizers:

The modern presidency is a vast electronic synthesizer, capable of exhilarating musical effects or rank cacophony. The President needs to be able to throw his voice in a variety of ways — now sober, now soaring, now educating, now soothing.

George W. Bush’s presidency was straitjacketed by his inability to command any style but clenched orotundity. The two great television-era communicators in the office were yin and yang: Bill Clinton was a master of the conversational, not so good at set-piece speeches; Ronald Reagan just the opposite.

Barack Obama has now demonstrated an ability to synthesize those two. On the day before his budget speech, the President was positively Clintonesque, interacting easily with a gang of high-powered political and business leaders at his entitlement summit, alternately ribbing Eric Cantor, the House Republican, about GOP intransigence, then wonking out on defense procurement policy with Senators Susan Collins and John McCain.

If the entitlement summit was a conversational concerto, the budget speech was a full-blown symphony featuring a percussive series of simple declarative sentences that conveyed a sense of command, especially in the emotional heart of the speech, the section on banking reform.

While Obama did do a great job with his speech (at least, as a speaker), Klein’s direct comparison of Obama to an electronic synthesizer is a little bizarre.

Other writers have compared Obama to a synthesizer, but not in such explicitly musical terms.

Disregarding politics and focusing on Obama’s oratory, do you think it’s valid to compare Obama to a synthesizer?

Brian Eno spoke out against the Gaza situation at the Stop Gaza Massacre protest, London Saturday 3 January 09.

Here’s his summary of his comments:

An Experiment in Provocation

Stealing Gaza

By BRIAN ENO

It’s a tragedy that the Israelis – a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression – are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked “Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it’s the Palestinians”. By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they’ve forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians – with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers – and themselves – with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world – they sacrifice all credibility.

The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly…and, surprise, surprise – they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now ‘under attack’ you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn’t possibly reach an accommodation.

And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.

I tend to agree with Eno. The US has been dumping buckets of money into the Middle East for decades, and it’s difficult to see how this serves our interests or humanitarian interests anymore.

You can hear that there were both supporters and hecklers in Eno’s audience, though.

Do you think Eno is right? Or do you think he should STFU and get back to making music?

via Dean Whitbread

We try to avoid politics at Synthtopia, because we’d rather be thinking about patching a synthesizer than thinking about patching up the country. 

We know you don’t come to Synthtopia to read about politics – you may even come to the site to escape it for a while. 

But – can George W. Bush be gone soon enough?

Bush’s legacy to his country will be 8 years of incompetent administration, the worst deficits in history and laying waste to traditional Republican values.

You might think that music and musicians could escape George W. Bush, but no. 

Massive Attack has publicly condemned the use of their music by the Bush administration as a tool for interrogation and torture.

Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor has just made this statement, Regarding NIN music used at Guantanamo Bay for torture:

It’s difficult for me to imagine anything more profoundly insulting, demeaning and enraging than discovering music you’ve put your heart and soul into creating has been used for purposes of torture.

If there are any legal options that can be realistically taken they will be aggressively pursued, with any potential monetary gains donated to human rights charities.

Thank GOD this country has appeared to side with reason and we can put the Bush administration’s reign of power, greed, lawlessness and madness behind us.

When news like this comes out, you realize that you can’t ignore it, compartmentalize it or think that this stuff won’t affect what you do. 

George W. Bush has bought the domain name for his Presidential library back from cybersquatters – so lets hope that he gets to work on patching up his legacy, so we can think about patching up ours.

Dancefloor hooligans Coldcut join forces with America’s leading audio-visual vigilante TV Sheriff to bring you an election vivisection Revolution ‘08. 

A drum+bass powered all-out AV assault on an American media machine now in psychotic overdrive for the Presidential election. A 10000-frame crash edit comedy celebration of the blatant corruption, warmongering, florid insanity and plain good old smelly bullshit that characterises the cultural landscape of the world’s most confused country. 21st century satire is alive and well.