Images of 2011, Part 2

We’ve invited Dabblers to contribute their image of the year. Today, in our second installment, we hear from Brit, Noseybonk, Mahlerman, Jassy Davis and Daniel Kalder.

Brit: I’ve picked this image of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and others watching news from Pakistan of the mission that would kill Osama Bin Laden because I feel the death of Al Qaeda’s spiritual leader cannot go unremarked, even by The Dabbler.

The appalling insult of the 9/11 attacks transformed American and British foreign policy and the hunt for Bin Laden has been the single most controversial and important factor in global affairs for the last decade. And yet… what has changed since the hunt ended? Bin Laden’s death was strangely anti-climactic and is already almost forgotten as we transfer our fears from terrorism to economics. We live in a very strange world.

Noseybonk: Who can summon an idea of more nauseating horror than Ed Balls disguised as Santa Claus? Observe the agony on Osborne’s face as the Shadow Chancellor drives a sharpened stick deep into his anklebone while squealing from beneath the beard: “How’s this for a cut that’s too far, too fast, you Toff fugger?!”

Mahlerman: At the end of a year when my creaky belief system has been sorely tested, and the Christian Apologists and New Atheists seem to be getting planning permission where once a Nativity scene could be enjoyed, the enclosed picture from last summer in Clapham gives me hope that we are not irredeemably lost as a civilization. This, on the day when one of the greatest thinkers of our generation drew his last breath.

Jassy Davis: My image of 2011 has to be the post-riot clean up shot from Clapham. The riots played up to the worst of London’s reputation – that it’s a violent, feral place with no community – but the clean-up teams that gathered afterwards showed that we’re not totally detached and cynical; that there is a heart beating underneath the city’s stone.

Daniel Kalder: My image of 2011 is a screen shot of Colonel Gaddafi (bottom), taken shortly after his captors had attempted to ram a stick up his arse, and shortly before one of them would execute him with what Russians refer to as a “control shot” to the head.

I choose it not because I think it symbolizes the dawning of a new era of democracy in the Middle East or any of that fairyland nonsense, but rather for the unsettling emotions it evoked in me. Suddenly, at the end of his life, after 41 years of tyranny, following the fight to the death he had promised, The Brother Leader, The Man With The (literally) Golden Gun found himself surrounded by enemies- frightened, old, fat, bald, alone and utterly defenseless.

To my surprise, I found myself feeling pity for him in those last minutes. He didn’t deserve sympathy, but that’s how it was. It’s not often we get such an intimate glimpse into the last minutes of deposed man-gods. Suddenly he seemed very human, and I couldn’t help it. Perhaps too, I also felt sad for the jubilant humans around him, who will now surely enjoy more tyranny and violence, albeit at the hands of another.

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3 thoughts on “Images of 2011, Part 2

  1. Worm
    December 29, 2011 at 11:30

    It was interesting wasn’t it, the strangely conflicting emotions elicited by seeing Gaddafi’s last moments, I’m trying to think of another instance where I had a similar feeling

  2. johanssonsac@yahoo.com'
    Sally Johansson
    December 30, 2011 at 19:36

    Thank you Mr Kalder, for making us think.

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