Obama lifts the spirits, down to the template

Barack Obama's candidate speech - we've heard something about it, but did you read it? It is an arch-typical acceptance speech, composed of all those metaphorics that makes American oratory so great and fatty.

I haven't exactly made a thorough rhetorical analysis, but it would be an obvious task for someone...

The symbolics of the Iraq war

In Denmark we have our own emblematic images of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, most notably the pictures of Danish soldiers handing over prisoners of war to American soldiers in Afghanistan.

But on the internet lives a visual culture, that I tip will be THE visual symbolics once the last troops have disappeared from between the Eufrat and the Tigris. I am of course refering to the insurgency videos that are available, like this one showing a Chinook being shot down. It is hauting images that underscores the grim reality that we are too quick to forget here in Denmark, with a soundtrack of eerie male singing in arabic or farsi. When watching it, consider the symbolism that's in a silhouette of a Chinook helicopter seen from the ground, by the way. It is not hard to see, in a Freudian way, why someone should see them as tools of an invading force (dot dot dot).