RANT: Guns 'n Bodies: Is It Not Enough?

Bombs went off in the Middle East this week, and many people died. Countless people no doubt died around the world due to guns and bombs and other timed explosives, and all matter of destructive man-made forces.

All of this news, day in and day out, is shocking and upsetting. Well, at least it is upsetting. How shocked can one keep being with all the constant bad news?

Yet the shooting spree this week that left 26 dead, including twenty children as young as six years of age, at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut shocked me most of all, as it no doubt did millions of people around the world.


Graphic courtesy of Yahoo! Images

It's not that the lives of mostly white American children and adults are more important than those of Afghan or Pakistani or Palestinian children and adults. It is that there is something fundamentally and profoundly sick about a single shooter entering a primary school of all things and killing children left, right and centre. It is shocking to the core - and always will be, whether it occur in Gaza or Kabul or Newton, Connecticut.

The obsession with protecting the Second Amendment right to 'bear arms' is a peculiarly and ferociously American obsession. And this week that obsession was, yet again, laid very bare, and very obscenely so.

There is NO fundamental right on this planet that affords the person to amass an armory of assault weapons and other such violent paraphernalia. Yet people will defend that right to the nth degree, and not only in the United States.

Offering protection and even unavoidable as weapons may sometimes be, but the ability to kill another human or an animal with any weapon of any type is de facto anti-life.

All the weapons and all the ammunition in the world are the very antithesis of what makes us human. They make a mockery of our humanity, and have done so since time began.

Will we ever learn? Will this bloodthirsty human race ever rise above its basest instincts? Never - after all, weapons define us. They always have.

Suffer forever the children and all the other innocents cut short by a weapon? Yes.

Do you get my point?

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Jean Baudrillard

A few weeks ago I came across this very ironic and thought-provoking quote by French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard:

"The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night."


It does say a lot about our (so-called) civilization and the primal fears that yet remain firmly entrenched within most of us. It does for me.

Will we ever see the light?

RANT: Of Mice and Sell-Outs

A golden opportunity came and went here on the southern tip of darkest Africa. I usually don't write about South African politics because (1) it bores me to tears (2) it's hardly democracy anyway and (3) I frankly don't give a damn anyway.

But in the past few days a momentous time occurred here in this banana republic. Or, rather, it should have been momentous. What happened is that the (mis)ruling African National Congress (ANC) had their annual powwow in the city of Mangaung (Bloemfonetin to the rest of us). It was the annual meeting of all the diehard sell-outs...ahem, delegates of the ANC to choose the leader of the party, deputy leader, chief cookie maker, etc etc.

Usually it's all very boring and of absolutely no interest to me or 99.7% of the country's population, but this year was a bit more important. Because this was the year when all the incompetencies, gross corruption and general pathetic state of Jacob Zuma should have finally come to the fore and he should have had his sorry (fat) ass kicked out of being party leader and, therefore, President of this sorry country.

But, alas, it was not meant to be. Instead, the political geniuses that are the ANC cadres decided to give the decrepit twerp another chance. How typically African - 'let's keep giving the corrupt, inane and ego-driven leader just one more chance because, hey, we're all about second chances and ubuntu and all that other nonsense.'  

So, instead of waking up to a new dawn in South African politics with a more modern, forward-thinking and less populist leader like the charismatic Cyril Ramaphosa:



Photo courtesy of Forbes

Ramaphosa might be a king player in the ultra-rich black elite of South Africa and he may have become a multi-billionaire with (much) thanks to the nonsense social engineering that is black economic empowerment (BEE), but at least he has a business mind and half-decent credentials. It's more than one can say (on any level) for Zuma.

He did come second in the voting, so is now deputy-head of the party and, therefore, should now be the Vice President of this merry little republic.

Although as for that McDonalds pin on his lapel in the photo above...ahem...

We instead continue to fumble along in the stupor that is South Africa being ruled by one of the most inept, uneducated and frankly embarrassing leaders that ever walked African soil (and that is against some damn stiff competition as we all know). This is what continues to be the leader of the richest and most powerful country in Africa:





Photo courtesy of the (ludicrously titled South African site) Football is Coming Home

Yip, the above is what this nation continues to be saddled with - a populist, divisive buffoon writ large and with way too much power.

Thank you so much to the ANC delegates at Bloemfontein. The mock democracy that is that of South Africa continues to dawdle along like some child that simply refuses to pass into adolescence, never mind adulthood.

Then again, and as I always say whenever bad and rotten leadership raises its ugly head anywhere in the world: a people gets the government it deserves.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: The Sublime Works of Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer's greatest legacy must surely be the layout and design of most of the futuristic buildings of what was to become the new Brazilian capital city, Brasilia. His sublime, futuristic design included the main government buildings and parliament building itself, some of which can be seen in the photos below:




Congresso Nacional do Brasil, Brasilia - photo courtesy of Scoop Italia




Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida, Brasilia - courtesy of Chiquero



Palácio da Alvorada, official residence of the President of Brazil, Brasilia - courtesy of Chiquero

Just compare the stunning elegance and splendor of the presidential palace in Brasilia as above, and compare it to the dowdy, fuddy-duddy neo-Classical carbuncle that is the White House in Washington D.C., and you tell me which official residence you think is more fitting of a modern president. I know which one I would choose if president. Such is the foresight and sheer brilliance of Niemeyer.

Some more of his outstanding work over the decades:




Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro - courtesy of Wikipedia

Casino Funchal, Madeira, Portugal - courtesy of Wikipedia



Olho Niemeyer Curitiba, Brazil - courtesy of Wikipedia

Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, Brasilia - courtesy of Wikipedia

Auditorio Ibirapuera, Sao Paulo - courtesy of Wikipedia 

His work just goes on and on and on...I never had any idea he was so prolific and so determined an architect (given his range and until how recently he was still designing outstanding works) until I started looking through his list of works today. 

Simply breathtaking.

If this man could not be given the plaudit of 'visionary' in his field, then who, pray tell, could be bestowed that honour.

Thankfully, though he may have passed at the advanced age of 104, his legacy will remain for all of humanity for many, many years to come.

RIP: Oscar Niemeyer

This past week saw the passing away of the brilliant Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer. He was most certainly one of the most influential architects and brilliant design visionaries of the 20th century.

 Photo of Oscar Niemeyer in the 1940s - courtesy of Scoop Italia

Some may even argue that he was possibly the most influential and most visionary architect of them all. 

I certainly believe more and more that he could very possibly have been the most influential and most brilliant architect of the mid- to late-20th century. This I will attempt to prove with a showing of some of his best works in my next post after this one.

As quoted in Wikipedia, it is well known that Niemeyer was "most famous for his use of abstract forms and curves that characterize most of his works, and wrote in his memoirs:

I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein. "

He was also a committed Marxist well into his old age, which explains why he had to go into exile in Paris during the hideous fascist dictatorship that gripped Brazil from 1964. He only returned to Brazil in the 1980s once the dictatorship had been replaced by a (type of) democracy in his home country.

Not only was he a design genius, but clearly a man of conscience too. He was also an atheist his entire life, marvelling rather in the wonders of the Universe and the human mind and immense capacity and ability, as any true humanist who doesn't believe in fairytale religiosity would believe. 

Even more commendable was Niemeyer's incredible longevity. Because he died this week at the ripe old age of 104.

Photo courtesy of The Guardian UK

That's correct - 104.

He had been recently asked to what he attributed his admirable long life and tremendous vitality, to which he simply replied was his never-die, and ultimately optimistic outlook on everything in life. 

His simple philosophy in life does make a likely mirror to his relentlessly modernist, always forward-looking and, yes, undeniably optimistic design aesthetic. 

A quiet revolutionary who revolutionized the world of architecture with an eye for design that was anything but quiet, and everything that uplifted the soul and made it soar.

An atheist who may have been, but Oscar Niemeyer was surely one of the most spiritually profound architects and artists of the modern era. 

Filho do Brasil, inspiraçao de nos todos...obrigado, Snr. Niemeyer.

R.I.P.

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