"This is the end... click graphic to enlarge"
This is the end, beautiful friend | This is the end, My only friend, the end | Of our elaborate plans, the end | Of everything that stands, the end | No safety or surprise, the end...
"Injustice chases its people, and how unhealthy the bed of tyranny."
This is the second runner-up in the Time 'Photograph of the Year' competition. It's my competition—Time merely presented a selection of photographs—so I get to choose the winners.
The grandeur of these graceful New Orleans waterfront mansions has transmogrified to majestic cataclysm, a boiling tropical inferno shrouded by dense foliage and bowering trees. Framing a fearful symmetry with Falluja, redolent of the destruction of Colonel Kurtz's compound in Apocalypse Now, and measured against the graphic of the monument below, it is rich in symbolism.
To the left, the napalmed water set alight by hues bright as the rising sun, and to the right, a roiling, self-sustaining furnace angrily clouding the sky, devouring and obliterating centuries of history. As U.S. foreign policy slowly, steadily tightens its grip on the world and America, so that country falls prey to its own self-cannibalising feeding frenzy.
Disaster looms large.
And yet, it remains as a movie set in which—and unlike Tehran's bomb-proof, water-washed Azadi Tower celebrating millennia of civilization below—the placid waters will not rise to douse the flames, a fragile culture's fledgling facade will swiftly burn to ashes, and the jungle will soon extinguish all signs of its former existence.
Much as I disagree with Francis Ford Coppola tailoring his movie's end to his audience's taste, it is the director's prerogative to end his film as he chooses. The end of the Great American Movie, scripted by Usama bin Laden, looks set to correct Coppola's deception, i.e. that we might opt for an alternative to war.
On the one hand, Coppola failed his audience (and Joseph Conrad) by omitting from his film the fundamental untruth underlying our social contract. On the other hand, George W. Bush, directed by Bin Laden, looks set to play his part to the end.
So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.
Usama bin Ladin
This is the end | Beautiful friend | This is the end | My only friend, the end | It hurts to set you free | But you’ll never follow me | The end of laughter and soft lies | The end of nights we tried to die | This is the end.
The Doors | The End
