zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — i’m posting here some earlv drafts of longer pieces i’m working on for eventual publication elsewhere — this is a draft of the outline of a paper on climate change ]
.

**

How about them Independent headlines?

I intend to write a longish paper in which I voyage from the global to the intensely and varied local, and then catch up with cross-cuts that have either appeared in sundry of the localized sections but deserve gathering under their own heads, or which have somehow escaped the net of my keen interest.

For now, though, I thought this spray of headlines from the Independent would make a nice intro to the project for ZP readers.

**

Sources:

‘Untold human suffering’: 11,000 scientists from across world unite

Extinction Rebellion: Nearly 400 scientists support climate activists’ civil disobedience

Climate activists including Extinction Rebellion to receive £500,000

Why the Green Party is proposing £100bn a year

Climate ‘apocalypse’ to leave Scotland with abandoned villages

Scotland plants 22 million trees to tackle climate crisis

Ireland becomes second country in the world

Our ageing world rulers are unfit to tackle climate change

**

Scots:

Of course I’m a Scot down my father’s line, clan Cameron, of the Camerons of Erracht.

[ by Charles Cameron — following on Advertising series 01: Music — maybe I’ll post three today — here’s the second ]
.

Ludacris Mercedes– there’s a moment in the middle of this magical commercial where magic transforms opera into rap — the Mercedes driver’s preference, as we see at the end of the commercial, when he instructs the car to play his music:

Opera as luxe:

The aria is — well, here’s how the LA Times puts it, in a piece titled Does Volvo know it’s using opera’s most monstrous villainess to sell its SUVs?:

Volvo’s new spokesmodel for its SUVs, the Queen of the Night from Mozart’s “Magic Flute” (Diana Damrau), ordering up the murder of Sarastro, the High Priest of the Sun, in a production at Covent Garden.(Royal Opera House)

.

Ha! For a different take, an opera-rap mix, see Twist of Fate Wines’ Embrace the Unexpected ad:

Like it? Switch modes of culture-clash:

Flight of the Bumblebee:

And go to Calvinball:

Last but not least, give things a sacred twist? Hallelujah:

**

Previous episodes in the same series:

Advertising series 01: Music
Eros, the Renaissance and advertising
Authentic, spiritual magic!
The magic of advertising or the commercialization of magic?
Here’s magic!
The magic of miniatures
rhyming, twinning, pattern recognition
the purring, roaring Jaguar

I imagine there will eventually be about twenty posts in the series..

[ by Charles Cameron — this series has been quiescent, and that’s a pity — so I’ll post two today, to re-kick-start the series ]
.

Jaguar:

You’ll likely have seen the jaguar (cat) keeping pace with the Jaguar (e-pace), the cat and the car in parallel..

The cat-car association is embedded in the name: the addition of a beautiful woman never hurt from an ad-man’s perspective. Here’s a 1959 ad for an XK150 Roadster:

The same formula works today —

Eva Green features in an alluring, almost purring commercial in which her cat accompanies her to her car:

As the lady says, It’s just electric.

And in a docu-short, Ms Green tells us:

When I think of Jaguar I think of the power and the elegance of the animal, it’s such an iconic brand..

Cat and brand are no longer running in parallel, they’re merging..

**

Previous episodes in the same series:

Advertising series 01: Music
Eros, the Renaissance and advertising
Authentic, spiritual magic!
The magic of advertising or the commercialization of magic?
Here’s magic!
The magic of miniatures
rhyming, twinning, pattern recognition

I imagine there will eventually be about twenty posts in the series..

[ by Charles Cameron — magic is imagination, see my post Vlahos: violence is the magical substance of civil war earlier today ]
.

Act One: Jacob’s Ladder

Jacob’s ladder, on which angels are show ascending and descending, is revealed to Jacob in a dream: sheer magic — and how richly strange to see the ladder emerge from a simple loop of string..

**

Act Two: Pavel Tchelitchew, The Concert {via Alabandine]

That the string figure should become a stringed instrument, plucked by the teeth and accompanied by tambourine.. again, we are raised an octave above our grounded selves..

**

Act Three: Bob Dylan, Song and Dance Man

And the song and dance musician magician Dylan — his harmonica, making an anthem for us all.

[ by Charles Cameron — Vlahos is a mighty analyst warrior poet –used to teach at the Naval War College and Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs, and I wouldn’t mind at all if the poet came towards the fore in some future works ]
.

Here’s the key sentence from Michael Vlahos, Civil War Begins When the Constitutional Order Breaks Down — staggering title, that — published November 4 2019:

Violence is the magical substance of civil war.

You might think magic is nothing, a whisp of imagination good for fantasy novels with hair and silks trailing in the wind — but Ferdinando Buscema, the Institute for the Future‘s New Magician in Residence would disagree, the erudite >Erik Davis too, Hannibal Lecter, and Ioan Couliano, author of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, as would Dumbledore, Gandalf and Merlin, and notably the poet and practicing magician WB Yeats, and before him Queen Elizabeth‘s Dr Dee — but that’s far enough back, King Arthur‘s Merlin and Queen Elizabeth‘s Dr Dee between them should give you pause for thought.

Magic is imagination. And imagination is power.

Shakespeare‘s Prospero:

It was mine Art..

**

Michael Vlahos is not unaware of the power of imagination, or morale as it is often, shape-shifting as is its wont, called on the field of battle. Indeed, Vlahos has written brilliantly about the magical properties of dreams, discussing UBL‘s dreams before 9/11 in Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam:

Usama bin Laden: “He told me a year ago: ‘I saw in a dream, we were playing a soccer game against the Americans. When our team showed up in the field, there were all pilots!’ He didn’t know anything about the operations until he heard it on the radio. He said the game went on and we defeated them. That was a good omen for us.”

Shaykh: “May Allah be blessed!”

Usama bin Laden: “Abd Rahman al-Ghamri said he saw a vision, before the operation, a plane crashed into a tall building. He knew nothing about it.”

Shaykh: “May Allah be blessed!”

You remember those dreams? What’s stirring in the unconscious is always potent as motive.

**

Vlahos, therefore, on violence as the necessary in civil war:

Violence is the magical substance of civil war. If, by definition, political groups in opposition have also abandoned the legitimacy of the old order, then a successor constitutional order with working politics cannot be birthed without violence. Hence violence is the only force that can bring about a new order. This is why all memorable civil wars, and all parties, enthusiastically embrace violence.

Think on that, in our present context, or read his whole article — and one that preceded it:

Michael Vlahos, Were Americans Made for Civil War?