For files and dark nights:
Lina Wertmuller’s masterpiece with Giancarlo Giannini.
The entire film — in Italian with English subtitles (the only way to see it — don’t ever watch the dubbed English version, it’s a horrible, destructive scandal) — is on YouTube in twelve clips or so.
Porca miseria — what life does to you !
Wow. The gosh darn truth, it seems to me.
He’s talking late night election night (November 2010) at Democracy Now, with John Nicolls and Laura Flanders in the studio with Amy Goodman.
He touches on the blackout, during the autumn campaign weeks, on the wars — indeed, foreign policy in toto. This was the first thing that came to mind as Jon Stewart concluded his interview with Obama two weeks ago. Not a word about Pakghanistan, Iraq or Israel. Not a fucking word. Clearly Obama demanded that silence in exchange for the appearance.
It’s also noteworthy, when he speaks of the Left’s guilt for its early support of the Iraq war, 2002-04, and names a few names and nods at institutions, that what he’s pointing to are prominent Jews of the Left, who supported the war persuaded in good part that it served Israel’s interest, and then recanted.
But Michael daresn’t say that to Amy. Not right out.
The recantation of Tom Friedman of the Times suddenly comes to mind as one of the most spectacular. But he was nothing like alone within the New York media. The New Yorker itself, of Remnick and Hertzberg. Perhaps I’ll find links.
Most broadly, the so-called Left here will never mount the kind of power challenge its constituency needs until it faces the huge ideological chaos within its ranks.
I mean, in nutshell: Identity Politics vs (marxian!) Universalism.
This came to mind again yesterday watching a group of three at Busboys & Poets Cafe in DC on Democracy Now. Nothing but racism. Seeing everything thru that narrow lens. Calling themselves Progressives even yet, after 30 years of getting fucked in the ass by the rich.
But … their ideas are so rooted in Academia, where so many people of lefty persuasion retreated after the assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, that what seems necessary also seems all but impossible. At least in my time.
But … it’s no wonder the Left is so powerless. Most Americans listening to the guys at Busboys & Poets would just shake their head and vote no.
Laura Flanders, following Moore, is also good. Maybe go buy her book (she gives the website during the chat — not available at Amazon etc):
And here’s something re his most recent — and, he suggests, his last — documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story.
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Note to Files after seeing Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens on stage with Jon Stewart at the Sanity rally in Washington yesterday.
But first — here’s a blog entry re the 60s he wrote earlier this month.
And one from today re the Sanity affair. Pretty cool.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s foundation awarded a Peace Prize to CS/YI in November 2004, months after the singer-songwriter was bounced off a jetliner by the Yanks, his name having appeared on the chaotic Bush-Cheney No Fly list.
But of course it was more than that. He wasn’t merely barred from boarding. He did board. Then the Yanks sent up fighters and guided the plane to an emergency landing and … Ludacris crap.
Gorbachev himself awarded the prize at a ceremony in Rome. Two of my favorite people on the planet.
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Guy Chimay, featured across the 2007 season of Wall Street Warriors as the Genius Hedge Fund Manager, has spent most of 2010 at Rikers Island jail off the tip of LaGuardia Airport, facing facing 30 years plus for securities fraud, grand larceny and what not.
Wow.
John Daker is something else. And me, sometimes.
Just joking re David Lynch …
Nice bit from the brit Prospect:
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Let me eblaborate if I may:
Does the technological civilization need books?
Modernity and the novel were coeval. (Hamlet was the first novel, I like to say.)
What happens to that civilization when the novel is cut off like a dead limb?
Will it still be able to walk and talk? Will it go mad?
The 21st century in America so far suggests no, no and yes.
Curious. But Google won’t link to the website for 2012: TIME FOR CHANGE, a great documentary about, in a word, environmentalism, and the need for and possibilities for civilizational change.
Here’s the URL that Google won’t give you:
http://www.2012timeforchange.com/
The film is showing in Los Angeles and New York. Go see if you can, or put it on your rental/stream que.
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Recollections and thoughts about the new film HOWL are on the way.
Meanwhile peeps can comment on the man and the poem and the movie — and a very local interview from 1988 — here below.
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Curious George Goes to the War
I don’t want the war
Don’t want the war I
Want the war I know
The war I know what
War I know what wars
I know what wars are
Know what wars are like.
I know the destruction and
Know the destruction and death
The destruction and death that
Destruction and death that comes
And death that comes with
Death that comes with them.
I am the one who
Am the one who has
The one who has to
One who has to comfort
Who has to comfort mothers
Has to comfort mothers and
To comfort mothers and widows
Comfort mothers and widows of
Mothers and widows of thee
And widows of the dead.
Of course for us that
Course for us that would
For us that would be
Us that would be the
That would be the best
Would be the best solution.
Besides it would save us
It would save us fifty
Would save us fifty billion.
Warhol was able to collapse
Was able to collapse high
Able to collapse high serious
To collapse high serious art
Collapse high serious art and
High serious art and low
Serious art and low pop
Art and low pop culture
And low pop culture making
Low pop culture making the
Pop culture making the art
Culture making the art of
Making the art of painting
The art of painting into
Art of painting into a
Of painting into a part
Painting into a part of
Into a part of pop
A part of pop culture
Part of pop culture he’s
Of pop culture he’s an
Pop culture he’s an incredible
Culture he’s an incredible genius
He’s an incredible genius but
An incredible genius but he’s
Incredible genius but he’s the
Genius but he’s the devil.
This is a bit from a long piece of journalism about life during the siege. Provoked to posting here by chat on Facebook about sophisticated ignorance, ignorant cynicism, etc.
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COUNSEL
For Shri Hariji, Who Said It
Whether you believe or not
Think as if you do
Stop the blind effort
Ask yourself what you need
Success as the moment
Is not in your interest
Turn to silence, nothingness
Where you are
Is where you have to be
Know, you are not wise
This is difficult
Grasp your folly
And you grasp yourself
What you have eaten
Is merely unripe fruit
So, now, learn to fast
Do without, be absent
Keep the eyes closed
Keep the mind steady
What you will see
You will also understand
No visions, except in darkness
Listen to the voice
That is not your own
Then move again
Without remorse or guilt
Love is more concerned
About your fate
Than you have ever been
That is why you have survived
Express your gratitude
By giving what you have to give
You may get nothing in return
And bear your restlessness with grace
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Nizzim Ezekiel
Latter-Day Psalms, 1982
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Nissim died in 2004. Here are two brief memorials.
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See more at the Boston Globe.
As part of the protracted transition back to Manhattan, I just sold all my Avalon Hill war games to an enthusiast, cutting a tie to passionate childhood, wishing to lay burdens down by the riverside and study war no more.
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Came across this while spring cleaning, and the author of a deeply felt piece on the state of student-body politics therein suggested scanning was in order.
Here are legible scans. (Enlarge once they open in yer browser.) Eight pages cover to cover.
Page One
Page Two
Page Three
Page Four
Page Five
Page Six
Page Seven
Page Eight
When things get too confused on the screen, go to paper.
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This new ad on the NY subway (like Starbucks) seems asking and aching for a stencil campaign.
The old NAACP (if memory serves) motto comes to mind: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” I see it stenciled, shouting, across this wannabe actress’s face.
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The caption up top (clipped as I snapped the photo) reads in full: “Education for the Real World.”
Indeed:
– The world of Arne Duncan, our Secretary of Education, who spent the first decade of the New American Century turning five public schools in Chicago into ‘military academies.’ No need to even begin going through the motions of education. Just teach’em how to spit and shoot and salute and send them off to patrol the mideast.
– And the world of our First Lady — who a few weeks ago explained that America’s kids need to lose weight so they qualify for military service.
There’s general alarm about Net Neutrality going away.
I’ve been saying for ten years that our Owners would not allow the internet to go on in its free form. The surprise is that Google is the lead dog.
It’s rather like education itself, which was suddenly made plentiful and cheap post 1945, as a kind of Thank You card to the Citizen Soldier, and looking forward to decades in the US when skilled labor would otherwise be in short supply.
But by 1974 our Owners had realized that an educated working class is a pain in the ass. And the dawning Globalization would mean they didn’t need one.
The defamation and starvation of the public schools began, quite abruptly. Direct federal aid to colleges was frozen in the 80s and has never been thawed.
The Pesident of St John’s College in Annapolis, Christopher Nelson, spoke in public for five minutes about the Fed freeze at a fancy fundraiser in New York three years ago, in response to my question re same (itself a response to being told the news by a man who served on the SJC Board of Governors for 20 or 30 years).
Mr Nelson explained that, indeed, the face dollar amount of direct Fed aid was frozen, during the Reagantime, and now, degraded by inflation, gets spread across millions of more students.
Thus the Buying Power Per Student that SJC receives in Fed aid is a pittance of what it was when I was a student in the early 80s — a big part of the reason why tuition skyrocketed not long after we left. And the story, of course, is the same all over.
Put this together with the so-called pension reform of … 1987, if memory serves. (Defined Benefit plans out, Defined Contribution plans in. The 401k Casino.)
What could be clearer? Fordism died under the Reaganauts. Maybe “The Fourth World” is the best name for where most Americans are headed.
