The world is losing its battle to extremism. It's so sad that such people take action without really thinking.

Until the next time, cheers.

Suspects held over schoolgirl shooting

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The Sydney Morning Herald, October 14, 2012

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Living in hope ... Pakistani schoolgirls pray for peace campaigner Malala Yousafzai. Photo: AFP

POLICE in Pakistan have arrested three suspects in connection with the attempted murder of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old peace campaigner shot in the head, and the Taliban claimed the attack was months in the planning.

The schoolgirl faces a critical weekend as she fights for her life in hospital. Doctors said she remained unconscious but was in a ''satisfactory'' condition on Friday after being shot by a gunman who boarded her school bus on Tuesday.

Local television quoted police sources saying three key suspects had been detained and that officers were closing in on the mastermind behind the attack.

Seriously wounded ... 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai. Photo: Reuters

However, dozens of suspects have been arrested so far in the investigation - including the bus driver, school guards and witnesses - and all have been released on bail. Malala rose to prominence after she emerged as the author of a blog on the BBC Urdu service, which described life under the Taliban when they controlled her home town in the Swat Valley in 2009.

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A spokesman for the Swat branch of the Pakistan Taliban claimed the would-be assassins were drawn from a pool of 100 specially trained men. Speaking from Afghanistan, Sirajuddin Ahmad said the decision to attack her was made months ago.

''Before the attack, the two fighters personally collected information about Malala's route to school, timing, the vehicle she used and her security,'' he said. They decided to shoot her near a military checkpoint to make the point they could strike anywhere, he added. Vigils and prayer meetings were held for her around the country yesterday.

Held high ... a young supporter holds up a photo of Malala Yousafzai. Photo: AFP

A group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwa against the gunmen who tried to kill the teenager.

The Islamic scholars from the Sunni Ittehad Council publicly denounced attempts by the Pakistani Taliban to mount religious justifications for the shooting of Malala and two of her classmates.

A Taliban spokesman said they would attempt to kill Malala again if she recovered from her injuries.

A spokesman for the Pakistani military said the next two days would be critical for her.

A national day of prayer was observed in schools and mosques for the young peace activist.

Telegraph, London; Guardian News & Media

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/suspects-held-over-schoolgirl-shooting-20121013-27jnl.html#ixzz29Ed8N4Cy

What do you think? Is he right or discriminatory? Will it result in people becoming less family orientated or we should allow adult some quiet time. I read in a newspaper article recently by a German expatriate who lives in Malaysia for a long time. He recently returned to Germany for a holiday with his young family and found that Germany is not very family friendly in restaurants and shopping areas. Is this how the world is coming along?

Until the next time, cheers.

Grounds for complaint as Berlin coffee house bans the pram

Date

The Sydney Morning Herald, October 14, 2012

RALF RULLER wanted a sacred ground for coffee connoisseurs in Berlin, somewhere devotees could sip their drinks free from distraction.

Kate Connolly

This purist - not to say militant - approach to coffee drinking extended to a long list of rules at his brew bar, the Barn Roastery, including a ban on extra milk, spoons, laptops, dogs, mobile-phone ringtones, loud phone calls and ''media'' (apart from newspapers). Sugar is discouraged.

But the rule that has provoked the most heated reaction is Mr Ruller's decision to prohibit pushchairs and prams. ''Coffee Nazis, choke on this swill'' and ''totalitarian coffee regime'' are just two of the many messages of protest Mr Ruller received after he installed a stone bollard - complete with a picture of a pram with a red line through it - in the doorway of his coffee house in the northern Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg. (The bollard is moved for wheelchairs.)

Marianne Burkert-Eulitz, a family policy spokeswoman for the Green party, called Mr Ruller's attempts to keep prams out ''a socially incorrect affront to families''.

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But the former actor turned barista is unapologetic, upset only that his brews are not receiving the attention he believes they deserve. ''People should listen to their senses when they drink a cup of coffee. Just as we take care of the coffee bean from crop to cup, we also take care of the people who come in here to drink it.''

Mr Ruller's team demonstrates the brewing process to customers, measuring temperatures, checking aromas, ''taming'' froth, and timing to a second the creations magicked out of vacuum presses and syphons.

The staff include Rob MacDonald, a dairy farmer from Australia who claims his taste buds are so refined he can tell what a cow has eaten from the flavour of its milk. ''I love this artistic approach to coffee.''

Mr Ruller used to work as an actor in London, where he often played Nazi soldiers in TV war dramas. Though initially hurt by attempts on Twitter and Facebook to label him the ''Soup Nazi'', he laughs as he suggests the comparison to the Seinfeld character is not so far off the mark. ''Like him, I'm incredibly proud of my product and want people to respect it.''

Guardian News & Media

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/grounds-for-complaint-as-berlin-coffee-house-bans-the-pram-20121013-27joc.html#ixzz29EbfRU5l

Gangnam Style - a reflection on the philosophy of horsey dance

Date

The Sydney Morning Herald, October 13, 2012

• 37 reading now

Damien Spry

So Psy's Gangnam Style has hit No. 1 in Australia and almost made it to the top of the US Billboard. The YouTube clip views are approaching half a billion. He's been ubiquitous on television worldwide and is due to appear on Sunrise and The X Factor next week. He is the most successful Asian pop music act ever, and as close to an international household name as South Korea can claim.

Last week, I spent a couple of crowded, heaving hours with 80,000 others at Psy's free concert in central Seoul. Among the fireworks and razzle-dazzle, it was impossible not to be struck by the Korean superstar's immense crossover appeal. Koreans young and old, kids and grandparents, enthusiastically sang and danced along to familiar numbers. (One lady about, ahem, a generation older than me insisted I join her in Psy's signature ''horsey dance''; who could say no?)

As Psy's star has risen, it has been accompanied - both here in South Korea and internationally - by a constellation of experts, pundits and ordinary fans seeking to explain his song and its success.

Craze … Psy performs on NBC, New York. Photo: AP

Psy is alternatively interpreted as a class-conscious satirist (not really), a people's choice social media phenomena (certainly), a self-referential clown celebrating trashy kitsch culture (yes), the beginnings of a Western appreciation for Asian pop (probably not) and a threat to every other aspect of Korean culture, either traditional or avant-garde (possibly, but that's how culture works).

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Some of them are further from the mark than others. So, in the likely case that it comes up at a dinner party, parents' group or executive board meeting any time soon, here are some ways to talk about Gangnam Style.

First, is the song a piercing critique of inequalities in Korean society that have arisen out of the past few decades of rapid economic growth? Gangnam is a flashy area, home to most of Seoul's nouveau riche who profited greatly by getting in early on a real estate boom that hasn't (yet) busted. As articles in The Atlantic Monthly and New Matilda outline, the lyrics and the film clip highlight and ridicule the pretensions of these elites.

This is a fair analysis; the song does make fools of those flashy gadflies. But I suspect the appeal of this form of analysis has more to do with giving those like me a reason to like and discuss a funny song than it reflects Psy's intentions or the song's reception by Koreans.

For one thing, Psy and his family are known to be quite well off Gangnam locals. Psy himself is the face of marketing campaigns for mobile phones and washing machines, and has been recruited to boost flagging sales of the most expensive tickets to the Korean Formula One Grand Prix.

Psy is no Bob Dylan or Bob Marley. Rather, he has compared himself on CNN to Austin Powers and Mr Bean and says his motto is ''dress classy, dance cheesy''. He celebrates Gangnam style and its foolishness; he is one of them.

Herein lies a second explanation: the song is a playful and kitsch celebration of what Professor Lee Dong-yeun of Korean National University of the Arts calls ''B-class culture'', the kind that wallows in being gauche, melodramatic and unsophisticated. More soap opera, or Oprah, than opera.

Despite his privileged background, Psy's appeal lies in part in his apparent ordinariness. He's not blessed with the brooding good looks and lithe athleticism of most Korean pop (K-pop) stars. He did not come up through the famed K-pop star system, instead writing his own material and building a large local fan base on the strength of legendary performances for Korean university students and those serving in the military. It took him six albums to become a superstar; along the way he gathered famous showbiz friends, many of whom make cameos in the Gangnam Style clip.

His rise owes more to the capacities of social media users to find, share and promote otherwise little known acts than it does to a carefully managed campaign. Gangnam Style owes its success to YouTube and trend-spotter sites like gawker.com - and to the social media users whose word-of-mouth endorsements carry much more weight than any slick marketing strategy.

Psy is a kind of people's pop star whose dreams accidentally came true. (As he told the crowd at his Seoul concert, he always thought a K-pop star would make it, he just never thought it would be him.) As such, he is closer to his audience than most K-pop idols. Heck, we can even dance like him!

Psy's horsey dance seems destined to join the moonwalk and the Macarena as pop cultural touchstones, but surpass them as subjects of debate. The quasi-Marxist analysis claims it is a satirical reference to the equestrian interests of elites of America's north-east, where Psy attempted degrees in business and then music.

Patrons of Seoul nightclubs from the days of Psy's youth claim it is one of the kind of dance moves that were common back there and then. Professor Lee in The Korea Herald simply argued that "people were stressed and the horseback-riding choreography was easy to dance to and gave a few giggles. But that's the end".

Not everyone is a fan. In The Korea Times, editor Oh Young-jin came out against Psy's ''vulgarity'' and his horse dance, fearing that international audiences would confuse Koreans (traditionally farmers) with Genghis Khan and his marauding Mongols.

The backlash doesn't end there. Cultural bloggers koreaBANG reported on a recent performance by Korean rapper Tiger JK, requests for him to ''shut up and do the horsey dance'' were met with a barrage of invective. "F--- all yall who think Asian are here to make you laugh by dancing my asses off.''

Charming language aside, Tiger JK's views express a fear that Psy's success will over-shadow everything else that there is to know and love about Korea, its traditions and passions and eccentricities and dynamism. I hope he's wrong.

Moreover, as cultural blog Racialicious outlines there is a degree of orientalism in play when Western audiences accept only those acts that meet their expectations and then go about explaining their success and appeal on our own terms.

Of course, none of these critiques prevent us from enjoying Psy's music and celebrating his achievements.

Damien Spry is a University of Sydney academic based in Seoul.

Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/entertainment/music/gangnam-style--a-reflection-on-the-philosophy-of-horsey-dance-20121012-27i8r.html#ixzz29ALgk0Ss