Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart

"If tomorrow the Vietnamese are communists, they will be Vietnamese communists! And this is something you never understood, you Americans."
Hubert de Marais, Apocalypse Now Redux (1979)

Defaced Great Seal of the United States, Wikipedia, 2004

This year marked the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, and also the 40th anniversary of the capitulation of South Vietnam. A scant thirty year period in which the United States of America went from being unstoppable in the Western hemisphere to crumbling world power. The Vietnam debacle was one of a string of events (the energy crisis, Watergate, stagflation, etc) in the lead up to the US Bicentennial celebrations that put America on much the same stagnant footing as the Soviet Union under Brezhnev. The only reason history is more interested in the Soviet experience is because that state did eventually fall, and in doing so left the US placed for assuming the role of hyperpower. Explaining the decline of American power in the second half of the 20th Century is critically linked to the tumultuous years in South-East Asia.

Threnody

US poster, public domain, 1945

But you must remember there was never a war when crimes weren't committed, and there never will be.
-Rochus Misch

All too often alternative history fiction revolves around the concept of the Axis forces winning the Second World War. Robert Harris' Fatherland used it as the setting for an Orwellian murder-mystery, yet it's largely a cliché of the genre. Likely because alternative history often hinges on decisive military actions, and the most over-used conflict in popular media is the centrepiece struggle of the 20th century against the unambiguously evil enemy in the form of the Nazis. Germany is made to bear the responsibility alone while the other axis members are often overlooked (especially any other than the following two); the armed forces of Fascist Italy are always seen as something of a joke, and Imperial Japan's conduct of the war was downplayed with the emergence of the Cold War and maintained with its rise as an economic superpower. Japan was, however, the scene of the spectacular conclusion of the conflict. You need only mention the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki - I don't even need to implicitly state what happened in 1945. As someone who has dabbled in alternative history, it's struck me for a number of years that far more interesting than a world in which the axis triumphed would be a history like our own where they were defeated, with the key exception that nuclear weapons were not available and the invasion of Japan was necessitated. The debate about the use of those weapons started before they were even dropped, and for me it's a subject that I've wished to write about since the very first post on this blog.

I Thought It Was The UK, Or Just Another Country

PART ONE OF A SERIES.

Na Nož, Jaroslav Věšin, 1913

Britain isn't cool you know, it's really not that great / It's not a proper country, doesn't even have a patron saint / It's just an economic union that's past its sell-by date
-Take Down the Union Jack, Billy Bragg, 2002

At the deepest historical time-depths there is a very basic notion of identity between the self-identified civilised peoples and the barbarians. While the concept of being Greek (Hellenes) didn't yet exist, the city states at the base of the Balkan peninsula saw a commonality between themselves but not with others to the uncharted North or in the later conquered territories of Alexander's empire. The genesis of this fraternity also lies in transmission of culture as the Greek alphabet (save for some regional variations) allowed folk culture to be stored. The established alphabet may also have smoothed over the dialects as it only represents the sounds distinguished within a dialect and not the phonlogical distinctions between the dialects. That would not be unlike the unifying force that Hanzi had on the disparate Chinese languages by representing words and not the component sounds of the languages (which are as wildly different though related as French and Romanian). Indeed, language is one of the most prominent pillars of ethnic identity along with religion (historically Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, etc paganism for pre-modern Europe) and, of course, land.

The Stars Our Destination

Star Trek Into Darkness poster

Hard to believe it's just gone ten years since Star Trek: Nemesis was released. 2002 was expected to be a great year for sci-fi: The Matrix sequels, a Red Dwarf film, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film, and the aforementioned Star Trek X. In the end only Nemesis made it out that year alongside the equally poor Die Another Day. Shatner's diabolical Final Frontier narrowly avoided being responsible for the death of the Trek film franchise in 1989 - sadly the responsibility for achieving just that thirteen years later fell on The Next Generation cast. Interesting it should happen in December 2002 at the exact time Die Another Day was doing the same for Bond. As with my Skyfall review, discussing Star Trek into Darkness requires discussing my experiences with Trek. Be warned, it's going to take a few thousand words before I get to the review...

Panic (Hang the DJ)

But the waters... receded

Sextant (NOAA), Public Domain

Predictions of the end-times are likely as old as creation myths as likely as old as history itself. The invention of cinema enabled the depiction of the ultimate dramatic scenario and so it began. The disaster movie as a genre emerged in the seventies (Towering Inferno, et al) as classically narrative compared to their modern antecedents - almost all stories are of characters facing an obstacle they must overcome; in the above case a fire in a skyscraper. They boasted highly popular actors in the lead roles which, like any other film of the era, drew audiences. After Jurassic Park demonstrated the sky was the limit with computer generated imagery the floodgates opened (a metaphor that could actually make an interesting post-modern disaster film about the effect of CGI on film-making). Now there was nothing that could not be depicted. A lot of the modern disaster films since the mid 90s can be attributed to one Roland Emmerich and his little known 1996 film Independence Day. Inevitably someone will chime in with the old adage about how any critique of 'low-brow' movies is a comment on how the critic cannot turn their brain off and just enjoy it. I enjoy Independence Day and I happen to own The Day After Tomorrow (which I last watched on October 30th) despite its ludicrous implausibility. I even have a Steven Seagal movie (Under Siege 2) amongst a home video collection that includes a number of foreign language films, but the film 2012 (dir. Roland Emmerich) is just bad. Not enjoyably bad... and you already know why I'd bring that up three years after release.

The Rising Tide to New York City Did They Ride Into The Street

Send us your brightest, your smartest, your most intelligent,
Yearning to breathe free and submit to our authority,
Watch us trick them into wiping rich people's asses,
While we convince them it's a land of opportunity.

JULY IV
MDCCLXXVI

Engraving on the Statue of Happiness, GTAIV

The Masses Against The Classes

PART ONE OF A PROLOGUE TO A SERIES.

The following was written for the Marxism module of Politics A class in the HNC Social Sciences course. I was up until 6AM writing this five years ago. In fact, this was the only paper I bothered to hand-in before failing/dropping out of the course by early 2006.

(Deeper Underground) But I Got To Go Much Deeper

»Spoilers From The Outset«

B0000609, ghackettny, 2001

Looking for something to watch on Sunday night, I put on Cloverfield again. Last year I wrote a short review after first seeing it, in which I thought it was underrated. As I was munching through a packet of crisps the Brooklyn Bridge collapses killing Jason and many unknown others. People are screaming names and fleeing in abject terror, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable. Indeed, some reviews criticised it as September 11th pornography - making entertainment out of tragedy as the horror genre does with fear. In my mini review I saw it as a contemporary framing of the monster/disaster movie genre but lacking depth or social commentary. That unease prompted me to question whether it really was without merit, leading me to watch it yet again on Thursday.

Prior to 2001, the most destructive act of terrorism in the US was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 - as referenced in the opening scenes of The X-Files Movie (1998). That incident is well known but largely restricted to that city in terms of impact. September 11th, on the other hand, was a game-changer, broadcast live as it unfolded - its effects on American culture are profound and long-lasting. Before it, the American public was only familiar with terrorism on the evening news. It had never struck home on such a large scale. With the thousands of people who died on that day, how could Hollywood ever make a disaster movie again? To make a popcorn disaster movie with a massive body count would be grossly insensitive.

Somebody Up There Likes You

Frakk em all!, Don Solo, 2009

As someone raised on Star Trek I've been reluctant to leave the comfort of the Roddenberry universe. Perhaps because Trek is the oldest standard for serious (by 60s standards) sci-fi television, all other shows come across as re-costumed copies. I was too young to see The Next Generation during its original run, but BBC2's tea-time repeats in the 90s made me a fan. When Deep Space Nine was imported I was probably too young to appreciate its breaking of the Trek mould - war, questionable ethics, the Federation losing for once. I preferred Voyager at this point but as it went on I became convinced Star Trek was losing steam. Voyager in particular was either repeating itself or TNG or pulling a deus ex machina every time they walked into the Borg. Despite that, the Doctor was and still is a great character, but his story arcs with Seven of Nine (and her own character development) would have been so much better if Seven wasn't visually the epitome of fan service.

Turn On, Turn On, Turn On The News

Tomorrow Never Dies, 1997

For the past few months Rupert Murdoch has been tilting at Google accusing them of stealing his 'content' - that is, linking to it. One gets the impression he hasn't a clue about the interwebs, which has become increasingly apparent since buying MySpace in 2006.

If you look to the Financial Times, it's true that readers will pay for real quality content. Murdoch's best-selling "newspaper", on the other hand, relies on jingoism (Gotcha!), xenophobia (Swan Bake), outright lies (Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster) and tits. If the dead-tree version is worth only 10p to the masses, who are you going to find willing to cross a paywall to access this moronic bullshit online?

Foreign 9: Trans-Europe Express

It happened again. The restaurant last night played an excellent Greek pop/rock song, somewhat reminiscent of indie-Natalie Imbruglia, and I have no idea what it was called. Last time that happened I was in the duty-free shop in the airport on Gran Canaria and they kept playing this catchy song. A few months later Las Ketchup topped the charts across Europe. I can only hope the same happens again. I'll recognise it if that happens, but until such a time I'll keep almost remembering how the chorus goes.

Japonic Economics

I can't remember how a Napoléonic History class managed to go on a tangent about Japan, but it got me in a mood to write an essay... or be lazy and blog the main points *cough*... The premise was that Japan used to be a backwards feudal society completely isolated from the world except for a small artificial island open only to some European traders. Today it is the second most important economy in the world. What some economists are wondering is whether the same magic that turned Japan around can improve Africa's economic state.