This entry was posted on
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005 at
1:30 pm and is filed
under Flash Music Video, Games and Objects, Tony ‘King Blair.

As I mentioned here, on the day after this specific project started, I often get good ideas for creative projects while working on other creative projects (related or otherwise). If I exercise the right part of my mind, I actually sweat useful material. Interesting, no?

No?

OK, anyway, on that day I made a promise, and it was as follows:

There is a new animation on the way. Totally new. You will be struck by its newness.

And here is that animation:

Backing Blair VII – The World According to Leo Blair

It’s 4.8Mb, so patience is required… but the impression will be lasting, I can assure you.

Now, let’s get back to the boring bits…

On the day the project was born, I’d just heard back from a guy by the name of Brook Adams after asking permission to use some of his great ukulele stuff in a Flash animation. Three songs were rattling around in my head that day; Anarchy In The UK, The Star-Spangled Banner and Live & Let Die.

On that same day, as I wrestled with my Blair/Guy and answered yet more awkward questions from my curious kiddies, I hit pay-dirt when the following thought occurred:

What does Tony Blair tell little Leo when his son asks questions about what’s going on in the world?

I started to imagine what Tony would tell him and how Leo would interpret this – and how he would balance it with whatever he picked up from snippets of broadcasted news and hushed/hurried conversations behind the door of 10 Downing St.

This animation is what I imagine would be going on in Leo’s mind right now if he were aware of the gruesome details of the invasion and ‘liberation’ of Iraq and the ‘war’ on terror… if those details were primarily presented from his father’s point of view.

It’s also meant to address the primitive parts of our own minds that readily accept carefully-crafted lies/summaries (e.g. ‘but then Saddam bombed 911…’) because the details are too hard to face. This is why the details (distressing as they are) are in there. Some horrible truths need to be faced – and addressed – before our complacency breeds something much, much worse.

UPDATE – Hahahaha! Oops: Chicken Yoghurt had a visitor today from someone googling ‘tim ireland bottle uzbekistan’. You’ll know why after watching the movie.

I’d best add this (and the word ‘bottling’) to the post just in case Google falls short – and so my own search engine knows just what the hell is going on.

Attention, strangers and newcomers! If you want to know more about Uzbekistan, then Craig Murray (former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan) is your man. Start there. Oh, and there’s plenty more here.

Independent – Craig Murray: The reality of Britain’s reliance on torture: So the UK receives this intelligence material not occasionally, not fortuitously, but in connection with a regular programme of torture with which we are intimately associated. Uzbekistan is one of those security services from whose “friendly liaison” services we obtained information. And I will tell you what torture means. It means the woman who was raped with a broken bottle in both vagina and anus, and who died after ten days of agony. It means the old man suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling while his children were beaten to a pulp before his eyes. It means the man whose fingernails were pulled before his face was beaten and he was immersed to his armpits in boiling liquid. It means the 18-year-old whose knees and elbows were smashed, his hand immersed in boiling liquid until the skin came away and the flesh started to peel from the bone, before the back of his skull was stove in. These are all real cases from the Uzbek security services which we viewed as friendly liaison, and from which we obtained regular intelligence, in the Uzbek case via the CIA. A month ago, that liaison relationship was stopped – not by us, but by the Uzbeks.

AlterNet – Rights and Liberties – Why Torture Doesn’t Work: No one has yet offered any validated evidence that torture produces reliable intelligence. While torture apologists frequently make the claim that torture saves lives, that assertion is directly contradicted by many Army, FBI, and CIA professionals who have actually interrogated al Qaeda captives.