Björk
March 4, 2008Björk ftw. Seriously. During a performance in Shanghai in China, she shouted “Tibet! Tibet!” a couple of times while performing the frantic and utterly crazy “Declare Independence“. The Chinese could not handle this; they left the hall, and millions of Chinese are now all offended. The state media (as if there are any independent media in China) are ignoring the incident.
Thank you Björk. You have the guts to do what most here in the west do not dare to do: go into the lion’s den, and say it like it is.
“Declare Independence” has almost become my ‘motto’ - every people has the right to belong, to govern themselves in a way they deem fit, to protect their sovereignty, to declare independence. I fully support the people of Kosovo, the people of Schotland, the people of Tibet, and so on. This world will be a better place if people and cultures get the freedom and breathing room to develop themselves, to make their own decisions, while working together for the greater, common good under organisations like the EU and NATO. There’s no need for a global, bureacratic megagovernment in order to create world peace - all it takes is to give cultures independence and sovereignty on a local level, while working together closely on a global level.
It has worked pretty darn well in Europe. Except for the fact that the EU has invaded the local level a tad bit too much.
Yeah, so true.
Let’s come back to city-states like before.
Let’s come back to this time when each city were always fighting with their neighbor for supremacy.
Let’s people create their own state just because they don’t want to be associated with people not looking or thinking like them.
Let’s come back to a time were people were so divided that they were not able to defend themselves against bigger enemies.
Comment by Francis Kuntz — March 4, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
What part of “while working together closely on a global level” don’t you understand?
Having large, united countries never stopped any wars.
Comment by Administrator — March 4, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
“Having large, united countries never stopped any wars.”
Stopped no, but less war yes.
Comment by Francis Kuntz — March 4, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
Although I definetely support at least a free countries to be independent(Kurdistan for instance) it is foolish to support them all. Things are not always as simple as you present it. It’s not always a big country holding a smaller country.
Take the Kosovo-case. Although it’s complicated and there are hate(with grounds in history) on both sides one thing is that Serbs are afraid that letting go of a part of their country is seen as as weakness. (Percived weakness that can lead to more instability.) Also: Kosovo was originally only filled with Serbs, the Kosovo-Albanians come from… Albania. It was during when the whole region was under Ottoman Empire that the Albanians moved in there since they where treated better than Serbs because the Albanians where muslims just like the Ottomans. (I’m probably missing a lot of details, but this is just a quick example and explenation.)
But yeah; Björk does fucking rule. She’s brave as hell and without knowing really enough about the Tibet-issue I think I support her on this. (I think she’s tough to just say a so controversial opinion in China regardless anyway, considering the status of free speech in that country.)
She’s also one of my favorite artists and number 6 on my last.fm. Play Dead is among the few songs that can actually make my cry. One of the abselutely beautifullest songs I know. (I’m gonna stop know, I could go about Björk forever….)
Comment by TLZ — March 4, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
Bjork… Wow. The first time I encountered her was on one of 808 State’s albums. She did a song which was, I believe, entitled Q-Mart. Now, 808 State was pretty progressive for its day. But her song really stood out. I remember thinking “Who *is* that crazy girl?!”.
Nice to see she’s still making waves.
Comment by Steve Bergman — March 4, 2008 @ 8:12 pm
Those professional music artists who have a message, think about and have something to say about important things, and do not fear to say it, almost always make much better quality music artistically too than those commercial artists who just concentrate on being as popular as possible and making money. It seems to be so in other art forms too.
Comment by irbis — March 5, 2008 @ 12:01 am
I wonder what would happen if more western politicians visiting China would be as open about their support for Tibetan human rights as the pop star Bjork seemed to have been in China…?
The big irony in world politics is that since China became a major and willing business partner for western countries like the USA, I haven’t seen many western politicians doing anything very important, at least openly, in order to help the Tibetan people in China, except maybe meeting with Dalai Lama a few times.
But that is nothing new, is it? The western countries, nowadays considered democracies, have been known to support all sorts of cruel third world dictators around the world even in recent history, not to mention the colonial times, if only those dictators have been willing to do business with them.
I hope that democracy, liberty & human rights would not be so much only empty words in the western politics, often only hiding the real leading values: money, money & money.
Comment by irbis — March 5, 2008 @ 7:07 pm