Robert are you cheating?

Apparently Zimbabwe is having troubles counting up the votes for its general election...is this possibly because Mugabe is so far behind that he is making last ditch attempts to increase the levels of his skullduggery????

I've just read on the BBC website that he is due to stand down anyway...

But that isn't the point of this post.

Americans scoff at countries like Zimbabwe and China and (Iraq) for the lack of, what they band about daily in their classrooms - freedom.

Remind me, for a country with a population of 300 million people, how truly free are your decisions, when your president is a guy whos dad also did it, and another presidential hopeful is the wife of another guy who did it???

This year, even social networking is playing its part in deciding the presedential candidates - the music video below, produced by Black eyed Peas star Will.i.Am returns 39,700 entries in YouTube, a top video watched by more than 6 million viewers and user generated spin offs that have been viewed by many more. The success of the videos on Youtube, chronologically, has neatly reflected Obama's real-life surge - first in opinion polls, and now in democratic nominations.



How free is a country who's presedential options are narrowed down to those who can financially afford to campaign??

How intelligent, democratic, and free thinking is a country when its presidents are potentially chosen on the back of a music video??



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Naomi Klein...again!

So i've decided to read Naomi Klein's book No Logo for what essentially is the third time...

I've just finished the chapter 'No Space'. It describes how corporations have invaded every minute aspect of our lives in the quest for owning pieces of our minds. Now, not only can we convey our opinions, lifestyles and political persuassion through the simple adorning of nylon garments bearing block letters and small horses, we can also convey our anarchtic rebellion against these 'evils' ... by adorning or consuming brands. Klein points out that no area of life is left unbranded - tourists who go "off the beaten track" for example, are not rat-race rebelling individualists seeking out new canvases for life's experience, but experience-marketing's victums of pre-packaged adventure designed as a short cut to feelings of freedom and self-actualisation.

It got me thinking that it would be interesting to know Klein's view of how web 2.0 and the user-generated blogosphere is affecting marketed space. Yes, messers facebook and youtube provide advertisers with yet another arrow to add to the marketing arsenal, but it is also possible that these sites provide escapism from everyday branded life; Chinese kids in their bedrooms playing guitar compete with America's pop idols whilst Highschool dance-offs eclipse Michael Jackson videos. In the media-owned world, we are talked at by advertisers and told whats cool, in the media-generated world, the cream rises to the top by its own fruition - untainted, un-corrupted, and unbranded.




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