mmoa_writes

Utterly demoralised.



Watched - because once you start, you have to finish - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Just a load of rubbish special effects, over the top fight scenes and Sean Connery with one extra, ultra-arty edge...

All the characters are from classical novels! Go you!

The acting was horrendous, the characters ludicrous (and for me to say that is truly saying something... cliched characters are my speciality.... so long as they're acted out well enough).

But then, I'm biased, I've read the original comic which had all the basic precepts of the film and yet, turned out so much better. But then, maybe that's because Alan Moore doesn't suffer from an inflated opinion of what he does and the two-a-penny directors/producers in Tinseltown these days unfortunately do.



That's not the real reason, of course. I was watching Parliament the other day and whilst I fully agree with Ming that Blair should have been present throughout the debate on Britain's future involvement with Iraq, but then he went onto the (only?) future prospect that is on everyone's lips right now...

Pulling out.



Iraq is a mess and that's just with soldiers (Iraqi and foreign troops alike) fighting off the rebels; the religious extremists, the political extremists and the hopeless but angered miniority who just want to take advantage of the chaos around them.

So I don't quite see how withdrawing soldiers is going to do anyone any favours. It's not a question about face ("No-one can accuse [us] of cutting and running after four years involved in the war" says Ming. But is that what it's really come to? Protecting our appearance to the international community?) but simple morality. We started this mess, we may as well see it through.

On occasions like this, Patriotism would have been useful if only to get the public in a 'let's do this thang as a team!" Whilst I think the tactics of our American friends are deplorable, (effectively in denouncing anyone who critisises the government as a traitor or even worse, un-American... *gasps), I can understand why the powers that be determinedly insist that everyone must 'stick together'. Then again, there is no doubt that the American public do support their troops, just maybe not the war.

In Britain however...

My anarchistic principles are always put in opposition to what I suspect may be the right way to go on matters such as these. The right way to go, for instance, would be to stay in Iraq and yet I can't help feeling disgusted, not just by the tactics of our government that led us into the war, but the entire system that we're enslaved to in itself. The sham of democracy - and the impossibility of any counterpart that I could imagine would be closer to the essence of democracy - the sham of the heirarchal society we live in. The sham of what we call freedom. It's all just so deeply, truly unsatisfying and yet at times like this, one becomes painfully aware of the fact that the solution on which one has based one's moral and political philosophy...

.... just may not be the true solution for a particular equation.

And so begins the descent from the ivory tower.

To leave Iraq would be so horrendously selfish. Afghanistan is going down the drain, but at least we have a barely tangible grasp on it. That is worth keeping. The same goes for Iraq. Without us there, well, maybe I'm being a short-sighted, ill-informed coward, but I cannot see how that would help anything.

There is always the opportunity for us to learn from our mistakes. Technically. Though the debaucle of Saddam's hanging puts a dampner on any such hopes.



Watched Skins on... Thursday and loved it. I also love Lily Allen's latest single.