An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Did anyone else think ‘global warming’ when the globe turned into a Chinese lamp?
BBB
Dunno. Was reading that new book on Paul Keating!
If you’re trying to work out the order:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics_national_flag_bearers
????! ????! ????!
Mark, is that the one titled “Paul Keating’s Interrupted Neoliberal Revolution”?
BBB
Something like that! Aka teh evils of teh ALP left.
One of these days Keating is going to work in an insult to bloggers and this fine institution is going to be sorely puzzled.
Everyone:
Seventh? …. and minus 4 here.
Watched the Olympics opening. Spectacular. Poor Gutenberg …. oh well, history is whatever you say it is,
I know’s it’s Xinhua’s job to spread propaganda. But perhaps they’re overdoing it:
BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) — The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games staged here on Friday night has caught nearly 40 billion people’s eyes worldwide.
Did anyone notice that Russia attacked Georgia last night (well, during the day, presumably, but you know what I’m saying). Not having sat through the whole turgid spectacle – was that even mentioned??!
Turgid spectacle meaning the Olympics Opening ceremony, of course, not the attack.
Well, the quadrennial Festival of Sweat is upon us yet again. Yippee.
I thought that the opening ceremony was way better than anything put-on by the Red Guards in the old days, although I did miss the little red book.
Also, I felt sorry for those poor Disco Chicks In White Boots lining the inner stadium: After standing there all night continuously dancing a weird sort of jig while the teams tramped past, they must have been utterly knackered. And in that heat. Quite a few of them looked like the next stop was gonna be the intensive care ward.
I suppose they were under strict orders not to collapse from heat stroke. Anyone disgracing China in that fashion on this, its night-of-nights, would probably end-up in some sort of Gulag, along with the rest of their politically incorrect family for slandering the State (or somesuch).
I thought parts of it were very beautiful and mysterious, especially the first 15 or 20 minutes. But I agree about the disco chicks in the white boots — watching them gradually slow down while the entire 204 countries or whatever it was was actually pretty funny, if painful. Some of the poor little sausages were sweating as if they were deep into the fifth set at Roland Garros. I bet Evan is right and at least half a dozen of them ended up on a drip in some horrid People’s Hospital.
‘… while the entire 204 countries or whatever it was went past …’
*Goes off to fetch more caffeine*
Incredible choreography , marvelous depictions of past cultural achievements and a cracker night to die for. I sat on the edge of the chair though in expectation of something going terribly wrong. Don’t know where I got the feeling that might happen.
But why no dragons on bicycles?
Can someone please explain to me what’s going on in South Ossetia? I’m having trouble following it all.
or no humpback whales jumping through flaming hoops being held up by pandas who had climbed up on the backs of some Tibetans.
At least that is what HG said was going to happen.
GW, just another of those interminable ethnic and resources disputes that infest the Former Soviet Republics.
At least the Chinese had the sense to keep the Russians and Georgians well apart in the operning parade, although it might have been great entertainment to march them sequentially.
Imagine some mustachioed Georgain weightlifter trying to throttle a Russian gymnast in front of the assembled dignatories. Quelle horreur.
Gold medal stuff.
Didn’t know how to tag or categorize this story: Brothel clients need a lift
Who said they’ve got no sense of humour in the suburbs?
GW – start with this Lawyers, Guns and Money post.
Re: Opening ceremony
I don’t normally care for fashion and the like but I have to say our aussie athletes uniforms looked quite ridiculous. I was surprised by how many basketballers were their country’s flag carriers.
Does anyone else play “spot the country’s you’ve never heard of before game”?
I just saw som e highlights – I thought it ewas pretty groovy, though the Channel 7 commentary was utterly moronic and pig ignorant of the historical references being made – ‘emperor nasi goreng’ style, but without the jest.
Brisbane in 1959 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEhb65yRGtU&feature=related
The postmodern panic seems to have run out of steam, the Higher Ed site has been dead quiet despite the teaser articles and the front-page treatment on Wednesday, and Gavin Kitching’s piece against theory I thought was dealt with quite persuasively by Ben Naparstek.
Helen [9]:
I noticed …. and I don’t need The Holy Fridge-Magnet to make me both alert AND alarmed.
GW [16] and Evan [18]:
No, this time it has probably gone beyond a mere ethnic/border brawl related to the fracturing of the old USSR. Try a stoush between Russia and a country it now sees as a United States proxy.
Anyway, you could see it all building up on NTV “Sevodnia” [rebroadcast Mon~Sat 9:50am AEST on SBS TV] almost every day for the past couple of years. Naturally, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with trivia about gormless celebrities, it wasn’t deemed worthy to appear on the newsotainment programs of Channel Dumb-Bunny, Channel Bogan or Channel Consumer. [Besides, the presenters might have got distressed trying to pronounce all those funny foreign names].
Radio news just as it write this: Georgia is now in a state of war against Russia …. Goodnight; sleep tight ….
Russia v Georgia has many of the Ruritanian entanglements of Balkan geopolitics pre-1914 — ancient hatreds, patchwork ethnicites, gents with serious moustaches bristling with conflicting moral outrages.
But behind all that, some very serious stakes:
In 1914 Russia sought a warm water port. After a century of failure in the Bosphorus, Russia settled on a friendly Serbia with a port on the Adriatic — with explosive results. Meanwhile Germany had dreams of a trainline bearing oil from Baghdad to Berlin…
In 2008 Russia seeks to choke off supplies of Central Asian oil and gas skirting Russia by means of couple of pipelines traversing Georgia and debouching to the world on the Turkish coast.
One trusts that the result of this contratemps will be less explosive than the 1914 incident.
Yes, now I’ve done some googling it appears it was Georgia which attacked that smaller country and then Russia piled on.
So much for the Olympic spirit.
If there are any readers her from or ex-Melbourne Uni, I got an email to say Prof David Philips has died. (He taught modern british and south african history.) Very sad.
Lefty E, that was delightful. Do you reckon it looks better now than in 1959? Or did the Joh years remove too many of those lovely buildings?
GW, the Caucasus is as bad as the Balkans for ethnic divisions, further complicated by a history of Russian interference for its own ends. The Ossetians are spread between North Ossetia (in the Russian Republic) and South Ossetia. The latter was formerly a Soviet autonomous region but was reabsorbed into Georgia proper, to the horror of the inhabitants, many of whom fled into North Ossetia. Oh, and Chechnya is almost next door. I doubt that Russia is really that concerned with South Ossetian self-determination (cf Chechnya!) but they ARE concerned to retain economic control of the region and they don’t get on with the Georgians. Clear as mud?
Yeah, its a cool little flic, Chookie. Check out the nightlife!
For reasons explained here, I’d go with 1959:
http://bitemylatte.blogspot.com/2008/05/brisbane-eyesores.html
Maybe they should have looked at a map first.
If by “they” you mean Russia, they did look at a map. What they saw was a landlocked Serbia with nationalist ambitions to annex Bosnia, or enough of that part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire to give Serbia a sea coast.
Much to Serbia’s and Russia’s disgust, the Austrian Empire annexed Bosnia Herzegovina in 1908.
Gavrilo Princip was particularly annoyed…
Magnificent performance by Terry Mills and the CLP in the NT. Labor reduced to a one-seat majority with the outside chance of a hung Parliament.
Any insight into the reasons for the swing, Jacques?
Not really, Mark. Everyone expected some swing based on redistribution and two-termitis, but pretty much nobody predicted this kind of a performance.
I am inclined to put it down to Terry Mills, but that’s because I’ve dealt with him a bit over the years and think he’s fantastic. So my analysis won’t be very objective.
Ok!
I note the usual “dire news for federal Labor” vs. “fought on territory issues” thing in all the papers today!
I can assure you that it was a completely local election. NT elections always are and a lot of it comes down to the quality of candidates. Electorates only hold 4800 or so voters each and they expect to have met their MLA several times.
It has nothing, zilch, zip, zero, nada to do with the federal scene.
Anyway, I’m flying up there today so I’ll be interested to see Terry and Dave Tollner at Wicking’s exhibition launch. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I certainly wasn’t paying an enormous amount of attention to it, but from what I did see, it didn’t seem that federal issues got much of a run.
That was in 1912-3, during the Balkan Wars, not 1914. Russia’s desire for warm-water ports had no direct connection to the outbreak of WWI, and was only one background factor among many.
Helen, yes, I was sorry to hear about David Philips — I didn’t even know he was ill. He was my supervisor for part of my 4th year thesis, I don’t think we agreed on what I was doing with it but he helped me improve it greatly, for which I’m grateful.
Actually, Austria annexed B-H in 1908.
Russia’s desire for a warm-water port had not receded between 1908 and 1914.
If you want to debate what should be considered as a “direct connection” I’d be happy to oblige.
When Serbia rejected one (and one only) of the post-assassination demands in Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia, the Serbian government did so with the support of an explicit pledge of the Russians to intervene on Serbia’s part should Austria wage war on Serbia.
Russia was therefore willing to engage the Central Alliance in the cause of Serbia. Slav fraternity may explain some Russian determination. But a handy war that destroys Austria as well as its inconvenient annexation of desired real estate on the Adriatic coast must also have been a motivating factor in Russia’s enormous gamble.
And the threatened bellicosity of Russia triggered the Schlieffen Plan which in turn triggered the bellicosity of France and Britain.
It thus seems to me that Bosnian real estate figured quite prominently in Russian calculations in July/August 1914.
Katz[26,31&41], Chookie [28] and Brett:
Nice to see at least three people aren’t wondering why there’s a war in “south Austria”.
Robert Merkel has kicked off a separate topic about the war on LP.
Channel 7 actually broadcast news about the war in South Ossetia for one minute twenty-one seconds – made a nice change from hearing vital news about some celebrity bimbo’s hairstyle or whatever.
What’s a non sequitur?
Again, the Russians should have looked at a map: Bosnia didn’t have any Adriatic coastline either (though at least it’s a lot closer to the sea than Serbia is).
Of course Russia had strategic reasons for getting involved in the Serbian issue. But the possibility of access to a warm-water port on the Adriatic was, to repeat, not a significant one. (It’d much rather have had Constantinople, for example, and might have got it were it not for the 1917 Revolution.) Serbia was a strong Russian ally in a fractious area between three major powers. If Russia were to stand by and do nothing there was every chance that Austria-Hungary would swallow up Serbia, and its influence in the Balkans would diminish directly and indirectly (through the demoralising effects on its other friends in the region and the perception in other major powers that Russia would back down when push came to shove). There’s really no need to inflate the port issue into the trigger which kicked off WWI.
You’re right, except for the fact that I didn’t.
And thank you for the concession that the port issue played some role in the critical Russia decision to underwrite Serbia’s rejection of Austria’s ultimatum.
To restate: my argument wasn’t that the ports issue was the trigger. My argument was that the ports issue was an important component in Russia foreign policy toward Serbia and Austria.
While that is true of Bosnia, it is not true of Herzegovina. The port of Neum had been part of Herzegovina since the 17th century. (That is, until Austria annexed B and H in 1908).
But the overarching point remains that Russians could hope for and work for a Slavic nationalism to roll back Austrian control not only of B-H, but also Croatia. The Black Hand was just one aspect of Slavic nationalism.
Bloody good opening ceremony, ancient history woven in; skirting over the Seven Mao Fiascos, Opium Wars etc. There was beauty, skill, artistry.
Made Sydney’s flame-rises-up-ladder (near) fiasco when it wouldn’t move and our Cathy had to just stand there trying not to look awkward while the engineers put some fesh sealing wax onto the dodgy mechanism, look fairly low grade.
But I’d rather lve in an imperfect democracy than in a badly polluted and socially backward country ruled by repressive one-party autocrats. A klunky opening ceremony is a price worth paying.
I still reckon the Melbourne closing cermony with all the athletes intermingling (suggested by a school kid) was truly one-out-of-the-box. [And at Melbourne we had Hungarian & Soviet Union fisticuffs, just after the invasion of Hungary; followed by defections. Height of the Cold War.]
And more Ambigulous…
The choice of a grade 4 Scottish band to play at the opening ceremony was eclectic to say the very least. When the lads were first asked to play, Scotland the Brave, at the Chinese olympics they thought it was a hoax.
Funny that.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7549580.stm
I stand corrected about Neum — I confess I’d not heard of it. But as far as I can tell it was not a harbour of any consequence before 1914 (or after, for that matter).
Except you kinda did. Or else what ‘explosive results’ were you referring to when you said:
and ended with:
I took this to be a reference to the First World War, but perhaps there was some other explosion that you’re referring to?
Except I kinda didn’t. I said it was an insignificant factor among many more important ones. OK, technically that’s ‘some role’, if you want to claim a consensus, but the port issue doesn’t seem to rate a mention in any of my modest collection of origins-of-WWI books as far as the July crisis is concerned (feel free to supply some references that do mention it). It’s such a minor factor in a field overcrowded with far more plausible triggers — despite the obviously highly contingent nature of the actual spark that ignited it, WWI sometimes seems like the most overdetermined war in history — that I wondered why you mentioned it alone of all Russia’s motivations, except to construct some tortured historical analogy between 1914 and 2008.
joe2 – fanbloodytastic !!
Shorter Brett: I don’t understand the difference between an explosive and a trigger.
In my original comment I also mentioned the Baghdad-Berlin railway. I understand that it is very rare for a single event (WWI) to have more than one trigger. Both the port and the railway question are instances of the stakes over which great power rivalries are played, not “triggers”.
They are interesting parallels with the Georgian pipelines, not analogies, as you insist.
Shorter Katz: look at me! I speak fluent snark!
Did you really mean this? It might be true if we were talking about billiard balls, but it’s rather silly to regard WWI — one of the most complicated periods in history, about which people are still arguing heatedly — as a ‘single event’ in this sense. Of course it had more than one trigger. It wasn’t an inevitable war as soon as the Archduke was assassinated: a myriad other things had to go wrong afterwards (and beforehand).
So I reject your dichotomy between explosive and trigger in this sense. There are only more proximate and less proximate causes. And to repeat, the port issue was one of the less proximate ones.
Unless you’re talking about geometry that’s some pretty fine hair-splitting you’ve got going on there. However interesting your non-analogous parallel is, it’s based on bad history (the supposed salience in the July crisis of Russia’s desire for an Adriatic port), which is all I’m objecting to.
Even Big Mining thinks ‘Clean Coal’ has no future
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/12/2333041.htm
The use of the word “trigger” is possibly metaphorical and one might care to ponder it awhile. Analogy is truly difficult, a “minefield on a hair-trigger”. Mangle, mangle, mangle.
Blogospheric punditry is a wild thing. Obviously it’s about people and plight, touch of humour, especially power, historical responses to all of that, and art. Oh yes, and Olympics. And while all of that is about numbers, here’s two balls on the line for a numbers record: I reckon Barista is on its way to Gold.
You’re right about that, Ambigulous, and I think this is probably one of those silly internet conversations where the two parties probably don’t actually disagree all that much, or at least would be quite happy to agree to disagree if they were in a pub holding forth over a pint, but have instead gotten hung up on minor semantic differences. So for my part I apologise to Katz for my own snarkiness.
Well said, Brett
It occurred to me that if a war is begun by a “trigger” then
i) the gun must have been available and loaded
ii) some clown had already taken the safety catch off
[iii) blame the Chinese for inventing gunpowder]
If a tendency towards armed conflict is exacerbated by bombastic rhetoric, poor diplomacy, fundamental conflicts of vital interests, cranky leaders, local “hotheads on the ground”, the passing of time, opportunity, bad luck, etc; then to talk of a single “trigger” might possibly be a little simple. Too simple?
And then to argue over that “single trigger” might be time wasted.
There were “forces” at work leading to war. Were there? Or is that Mr T. T. Hindsight piping up again? Damn his certitudes. Bah, humbug.
Gravitational, electrostatic, aerodynamic, nuclear forces seem well-established. These here “social forces” need a bit more investigation, I reckon. Certainly, social changes and wars can be observed. But why go all Newtonian on us and ascribe the changes to specific “forces”??
cheers