The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
art mistaken for terrorism

It seems as if news stories about such mistakes come along every couple months. Here are a few of them:

Steve Kurtz, Buffalo NY, May 2004 (thanks to Louise for bringing this latest one to my attention)

[6/7/04 follow-up story here]

[6/12/04 follow-up: Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund website here.]

Phil Teller, Bellevue WA, April 2004

Steve Hackett, Brooklyn NY, Jan. 2004

Antonio Rosano, Tucson AZ, Dec. 2003

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Oklahoma, March 2003

Olabayo Olaniyi and Reena Patel, Washington DC, March 2003

I could keep going, but you probably see what I mean. I am sure that the above list misses many incidents.

Then there are the cases of artists who, one could say, deliberately blur the line between their artworks and implements of terrorism. About this phenomenon, one could ask the question: "Is Art That Can Be Mistaken For Terrorism Protected by the First Amendment?"


yawn

The American Sociological Association publishes a journal called Contexts, which, for spring 2004, includes an article entitled "The Economy That Never Sleeps."

Forty percent of the American labor force works mostly during nonstandard times -- in the evenings, overnight, on rotating or variable shifts, or on weekends. These schedules challenge American families, particularly those with children.

Research suggests that such schedules undermine the stability of marriages, increase the amount of housework to be done, reduce family cohesiveness, and require elaborate childcare arrangements. . . .

We need to discuss whether employers and government can and should do more to ease the social and physical stresses that many families experience.

Is this above article on the web (yet)? No. Then what good am I to you? Why even direct your attention to it? Must you go walk to a newsstand, or mail away payment, to read this worthy article in full? Where's the instant gratification in that? How dare I?

To compensate, here are three fascinating articles from Contexts that you can find on-line immediately or sooner. They are about consumer culture in China, the influence of modern secularism on contemporary radical Islam, and an answer to the question, "Is it true that disasters drive groups of people into mass panic?" I trust now that all is forgiven.


my so-called "stream of consciousness"

Galen Strawson writes:

[I]t's not a very good metaphor. Streams have pools and falls, weeds and stones, not to mention waterboatmen and fish, and yet the suggestion of smooth, uninterrupted flow remains and is as inaccurate as Joyce's rendering of Stephen Dedalus's consciousness in Ulysses (1922) is accurate:

"Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right."

...

For most people, inner thought is broken and hiccupy. There are gaps and fadings and fugues. It seizes up, it flies off, it suddenly flashes with extraneous matter.

Is it not inappropriate, deceptive and cruel to you as the reader for me to say, above, "Galen Stawson writes," when he wrote the article over 18 months ago? My answer to this question, this evening, is, "That is a funny question."


"evitability"

Daniel Dennett said that.


Cover Stars



yawn epilogue (prologue?)
early modern caffeine dependencies


..





posted by TiR at 6:22 PM

 
too many
is the number of roads leading to Bataille at present.
posted by TiR at 7:28 PM

 
lest we forget

Last night, someone said,

A new Iraq will also need a humane, well-supervised prison system. . . . America will fund the construction of a modern maximum security prison.

This proposal is nothing new. "America" (meaning "our grandchildren") is already funding the construction of a maximum security prison in Iraq.

In fact we are funding two of them. 4000 beds each. $50,000 per bed.

This was all part of GWB's $20.3 request for funding back in fall 2003.

At the time, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) was one of the few arguing for a scaling back of the proposal, asking in part, "Do we really believe, in a democratic Iraq, there will be a need to imprison three times more Iraqi citizens than were kept behind bars under Saddam Hussein?"

The Senate passed the $87 billion total package on Nov. 3rd. 2003.

[Update 5/26/04: The Washington Post helpfully clarifies (that I was incorrect above): the purported dollar amounts going to prison construction in Iraq are far smaller than I thought -- or at least they were before Monday night's speech.

I am left with two desires: 1) for two weeks off and free Lexis-Nexis service, so that I can compile a breakdown and chronology of the confusing/underreported/unsynthesized ups & downs of what we're spending in Iraq (I could find no such compilation on-line before posting yesterday), and 2) for a straight answer to the question that the Wash. Post article raises: Will the newly announced Iraqi prison project be: a) yet another unfunded mandate, announced in a high profile speech but thrown by the wayside when it comes time to pay for it? or rather, b) an attempt to expand Halliburton/KBR construction contracts prison building projects in Iraq by the steamroller of executive fiat after Congress specifically cut them back?]

[update 5/27/04: answer to my above q seems to be "b", as indicated by today's nyt article (gist of which is conveyed here, registration free), entitled "Pentagon Was Blindsided by Bush Pledge to Raze Prison" and which features final grafs:

Mr. Bush's announcement also surprised Capitol Hill, including the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, which oversees reconstruction spending in Iraq.

"None of the groundwork was done for something like this to be more than a public relations announcement," said Tim Rieser, a senior Democratic aide to the subcommittee. "And now we're going to have to figure it out after the fact." White House officials, Mr. Rieser said, "routinely treat Congress as their personal A.T.M. machine."

Last fall, the administration asked Congress for $400 million to build two maximum-security prisons in Iraq, but Congress, citing what it described as excessive estimates, reduced that to $100 million for one prison, in Nasiriya. Although the administration has money for another prison — Congress appropriated $18 billion last fall for Iraqi reconstruction, with much not yet spent — officials would have to get lawmakers' approval for it.

yes, i am devoting far too many blog inches to this story, maybe because i am having trouble removing my eye from what seems to be a small, fascinating microcosm, example, case study and peephole into power-with-a-capital-P as we see it exercised in its most prominent forms in 2004, in all their incoherence, abhorrence, comedy, wastefulness, willful obliviousness, sado-masochism, wish-fulfillment fantasy and sickness, beholding of which produces a queasy voyeuristic feeling not unlike looking at this artwork.]

post-Rapture economics

I can't find anything in the 2004 Republican Party platform that addresses the question of tax relief after the Rapture. When 15% of the population disappears, won't that mean a much higher tax burden on the 85% (according to Billy Graham) Left Behind?

I think that this is a serious omission in the GOP's preparedness for the End Times, a failure to think a couple steps ahead, and one that could undermine the base's confidence about the Party's across-the-board commitment to lowering taxes and making the pResident's tax cuts permanent.

Certainly, the government's Tribulation-related expenditures will be high, what with the need for military preparedness for the final war, propagation of the Mark of the Beast, etc. But GOP true believers shouldn't complacently expect to rely on offsets and efficiencies caused by consolidation of all states into the One World government to cause the reduction. There is a serious question about whether tables should be produced now clarifying how rates will be adjusted during the post-Rapture period until the Second Advent (.pdf).

If the answer is that "only unbelievers will be Left Behind, and tax relief for that constituency is not a concern," then this raises, by reverse implication, the question of why the tax burden on believers shouldn't be entirely removed now, so that only those who deserve it pay their share. The 2004 Party platform glaringly omits mention of this reasonable tax reform proposal.

I have looked to see if this question has been addressed on such incisive sites as Prophezine, the Institute for Christian Economics and Original Intent, with no success.


"getting the subtlety exactly right"

Interview with Dia: Beacon architect Linda Taalman.

The same issue of Loud Paper has an essay about what it is like to be in love with an architect.





posted by TiR at 6:37 PM

 
Fool me thrice

un (Saudi Arabia/Wahhabi fundamentalism), deux (China), trois (Iran)

(in which "We" get played by eeevil "Foreign Powers")

(but we can't get fooled again. for we know that the tranquilized never lie. do ya?)


posted by TiR at 8:24 AM

 
Dils
in honor of extra track on vinyl verz of new Mission of Burma record

Eagleton
on fascism

Frank

[update 5/26: In this absolutely smashing interview, TF reveals that he wrote What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (from which the above-linked essay is taken) in part to answer the question that burned inside of him: "How did Wichita produce The Embarrassment?"]

Harvard's Civil Rights Project
"A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?"

Mary Hays

Behold in this awful scene, which heaven permits thee to witness, the fatal effects of heedlessness, guilt, and criminal despair!

Lessig

It was Hamlet without the prince.

Mahler
went to this so had to find this (.pdf), this, this, this, this and THIS

Orwell, 1941

What had happened was that the whole moneyed class, unwilling to face a change in their way of life, had shut their eyes to the nature of Fascism and modern war. And false optimism was fed to the general public by the gutter press, which lives on its advertisements and is therefore interested in keeping trade conditions normal.

Wilfred Owen
should have seen it coming a mile a way that i'd be reading this guy this spring. Latin bit translates as "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country."









posted by TiR at 8:10 PM

 
a vision

After reading two news stories in quick succession this morning, I had a sudden vivid image of a document that I imagined existing in the near future:

From the Desk of Karl Rove
To: GWB

Dear Sir:

Here is a response to your two questions.

Answer to Question No. 1:

The following are some of the countries that have no extradition treaties with the United States, to which individuals who might be wanted for prosecution by U.S. criminal courts may safely flee:

Algeria
Cuba
Iran
North Korea
Libya
Malawi
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia

Answer to Question No. 2:
Yes, some of these countries do have baseball.

Sincerely yours,
"Turd Blossom"

The month the music died

NYC's WLIB: RIP 4/1/04

Clement Dodd: RIP 5/4/04

These two were omnipresent, major "efficient causes," starting over 20 years ago for me, of much of the stuff that is now woven into the backdrop of the backdrop of the backdrop of my unconscious daily mental soundtrack.



The End of Cheap Oil

National Geographic Magazine has the scoop. Get the print edition.



Forcing the lines through the snow

Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy




posted by TiR at 5:15 PM

 
Every cook can govern?


Body of empirical evidence, serving as basis for inductive reasoning:

I think Clinton made it look too easy. Here he was a successful president with one hand tied behind his back, always under assault by a hostile Congress and the nutcase right. Americans just assumed it wasn't that hard to be president so they took a flyer on Bush.

(similar sentiment expressed by Franken here, Oct. 2000)



Flawed major premise/fallacious conclusion:

In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant; Harry Truman wasn't brilliant, and he helped save Western Europe from Stalin. He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever. White Houses are always full of quick-witted people with ready advice on how to flip a senator or implement a strategy. You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks.

(Peggy Noonan's Character Above All was published in March 1999)




Result:

"Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader. . . . In order to lead, you have to have judgment. In order to have judgment, you have to have knowledge and experience. He has none."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, yesterday


(title taken from C.L.R. James, who might have disqualified from governing those who, far from being a "cook," had never had to cook a meal for themselves, much less for others in exchange for low wages, in their entire lives)







posted by TiR at 7:12 PM

 
I ♥ the GAO


posted by TiR at 7:22 PM

 
Do the Starbucks Mambo

one step away from the pack

one step to the right, two steps to the left

one great leap forward




posted by TiR at 7:34 PM

 
"There Is There Are"

That's how Anne Hyde Greet, in a volume I accumulated today, translates the title of this "calligrame" poem ("Il y a") by Apollinaire, written essentially in the trenches of WWI, in which the line that fascinates me the most this evening, for some reason, is:

"There's an inkwell I made in a 15-centimeter rocket they didn't send off."


The Anonymous Cheese

Hugh Kenner wrote in The Pound Era (1971) about T.S. Eliot, who, in this scene, has just been presented with the cheese board in a restaurant, as follows:

His attention was now bent on the toadstool-yellow specimen. This he tapped. This he prodded. This he poked. This he scraped. He then summoned the waiter.

"What is that?"

Apologetic ignorance from the waiter.

"Could we find out?"

Disappearance of the waiter. Two other waiters appear.

"?"

"____________."

He assumed, at this silence, a mask of Holmesian exaltation:

"Aha! An Anonymous Cheese!"

He then took the Anonymous Cheese beneath his left hand, and the knife in his right hand, the thumb along the back of the blade as though to pare an apple. He then achieved with aplomb the impossible feat of peeling off a long slice. He ate this, attentively.

He then transferred the Anonymous Cheese to the plate before him, and with no further memorable words proceeded without assistance to consume the entire Anonymous Cheese.

I discovered this hilarious passage upon noting that the volume's index included an entry for "Stilton Cheese, pgs. 7, 440-1."

I found the Stilton entry while searching the index for any mentions of Algernon Charles Swinburne.

I went looking for Swinburne because he was the fellow, in part, for whom the young Ezra Pound wrote "Revolt: Against the Crepuscular Sprit in Modern Poetry."

(Does "crepuscular" mean "of, relating to, or resembling twilight"? Why, yes it does.)



Psychedeic Republicans trading cards


posted by TiR at 1:01 AM

 
you see he feels like Ivan

Actually I feel more like Alyosha. But I think Cambone, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, et al. feel like Ivan:

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

"And can you admit the idea that men for whom you are building it would agree to accept their happiness on the foundation of the unexpiated blood of a little victim? And accepting it would remain happy for ever?"

"No, I can't admit it. Brother," said Alyosha suddenly, with flashing eyes.

from The Brothers Karamazov.

[update 5/13: I am proud to report that, as I have just now learned, Ariel Dorfman in The Guardian beat me to the above association by 4 days, in a very thoughtful essay. I expected to see the connection made first by an Tom Friedmanesque American pundit who, after a show of moral agonizing, would come down in favor of torture as a "necessary evil," given the importance of the War on Terra, while invoking 9/11.]

as in Heaven as in Hell

The above passage from Dostoevsky of course leads directly into the famous "Grand Inquisitor" chapter. It feels uncannily contemporary, reading it today, although it perhaps applies more to the likes of Ashcroft, Cheney, Tom Ridge and Michael Powell.

For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good. Dost Thou not believe that it's over for good? . . .

But let me tell Thee that now, to-day, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet. But that has been our doing. . . .

We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all. They will become timid and will look to us and huddle close to us in fear, as chicks to the hen.

They will marvel at us and will be awe-stricken before us, and will be proud at our being so powerful and clever that we have been able to subdue such a turbulent flock of thousands of millions.

They will tremble impotently before our wrath, their minds will grow fearful, they will be quick to shed tears like women and children, but they will be just as ready at a sign from us to pass to laughter and rejoicing, to happy mirth and childish song. . . .

And they will be glad to believe our answer, for it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony they endure at present in making a free decision for themselves.

Today's best line

"You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals."

Kurt Vonnegut, naturally.

Would it be too bloggish to say, "Go read the whole thing"? Of course it would.

[6/10/04 update: I now see that, when Vonnegut's piece was republished, one day before Memorial Day, in Allentown, PA's The Morning Call (Tribune Publishing), the "best line" was the only line (by my reading) omitted. Odd.]

"The Passion of THE" reaction roundup

Buddhists

Archaeologists

Matthew Fox

Worthy words in the above-linked issue of Tikkun were also contributed by Susannah Heschel (daughter of this great man), whose essay is not on-line. It reads in part:

The torment of Jesus in Gibson's film (a detailed account of the torture found nowhere in the Scriptures, an account that Gibson allegedly holds as sacred as Scripture) sanctifies the right-wing memory of the horrific events of September 11 -- the Passion of America -- as innocent, defenseless Americans, were attacked over and over in a most brutal fashion, in an unthinkable, unprecedented, unwarranted assault that killed thousands of innocent people, and left thousands of families bereft.

Think of the wars, massacres, crusades, and burnings that have been committed in the name of Jesus's crucifiction and imagine what we Americans might do with our Passion if it is elevated from an unconscionable political assault to an act of religious martyrdom. . . .

The film is possessed by Holocaust-envy, seeking to outdo in horror and suffering the many Holocaust films that Jews hope will inspire compassion for Jewish suffering. . . .

The Jesus of Gibson is not new. He reiterates the fascist myth of the "Aryan Jesus."

Invented in Germany long before Hitler came to power, that myth is marked by three motifs: Jesus was no lamb of God but a macho man; he was racially Aryan and not Jewish; and he liberated himself from the constraints of Jewish doctrine.

"Since the Taliban, anyway."

The above is a stray line in just about the most intelligent piece of commentary about the USA that I read, amidst much intelligent journalism in general, in the Canadian press while happily severed from the internet for a week.

The piece was written by Bill O'Reilly's apparent nemesis, one Rick Salutin of the Globe and Mail. An excerpt:

I realized that in the United States, the main political divide now runs between Christian fundamentalism and "secularists." I said I was grateful for this insight: that the U.S. may be the only nation that defines politics in such religious terms.

If you read Salutin's piece, you will see how he deftly draws a direct line from American religious fundamentalism to the pronographic undercurrent of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal:

It is never surprising when sex gets entangled with faith, patriotism, and everything else in this context.

OK, no more religion-related posts tonight.












posted by TiR at 6:37 PM

 
this week

u.s.a.'s new nat anthem should be "the american in me" (1978) by avengers

time/newsweek need to have covers by otto dix or george grosz -- can't decide which.

paper-library-inferior internet should asap get text of "to a city sending him advertisements" 1917 e. pound poem on the 250th b-day of newark, n.j. which the awards committee said "assaulted our civic sensibilities in a poem of violence directed at the head, heart, and hands of Newark"

[5/15 update/part redress

1st stanza of the poem ends:

"Will you, having got the songs you ask for,
Choose only the worst, the coarsest?
Will you choose flattering tongues?"

last stanza ends:

"Some more loud-mouthed fellow, slamming a bigger drum,
Some fellow rhyming and roaring,
Some more obsequious back,
Will receive their purple, be the town's bard,
Be ten days hailed as immortal,
But you will die or live
By the silvery heed of Apollo."

]

..




posted by TiR at 7:31 PM

 
bathing her heart

America,
where are your credentials?

the final two lines of Anne Sexton's "The Firebombers."

According to Middlebrook's biography, Sexton wrote the poem in the winter of 1967-68, after seeing a photograph in a newspaper.

[No, it's not the photograph I initially thought of, which was taken by AP photographer Nick Ut after a napalm attack on the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972.]

At around the same time, the biography recounts, Sexton wrote in her journal the following:

"I hate killing of any kind, and protest the war in every way, and my husband thinks we ought to 'win' the war.

"I live a lie. [. . .]

"We just don't talk about the war. A lie."

I wonder how many Americans are living a similar lie today, amidst their friends, families, loved ones, co-workers, religious congregations and communities?





posted by TiR at 7:31 PM

 
When in doubt...

. . . quote JPS at length:

"Let us look at ourselves, if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us. First, we must face that unexpected revelation, the strip-tease of our humanism. There you can see it, quite naked, and it’s not a pretty sight.

"It was nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage; its honeyed words, its affectation of sensibility were only alibis for our aggressions. . . .

"You know well enough that we are exploiters. You know too that we have laid hands on first the gold and metals, then the petroleum of the 'new continents,' and that we have brought them back to the old countries.

"This was not without excellent results, as witness our palaces, our cathedrals and our great industrial cities; and then when there was the threat of a slump, the colonial markets were there to soften the blow or to divert it. . . .

"Violence has changed its direction. When we were victorious we practised it without its seeming to alter us; it broke down the others, but for us men our humanism remained intact.

"United by their profits, the peoples of the mother countries baptized their commonwealth of crimes, calling them fraternity and love; today violence, blocked everywhere, comes back on us through our soldiers, comes inside and takes possession of us. . . .

"It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name, it’s not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgement on yourself.

"I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realize what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues. . . .

"And your silence is all of no avail; today, the blinding sun of torture is at its zenith; it lights up the whole country. Under that merciless glare, there is not a laugh that does not ring false, not a face that is not painted to hide fear or anger, not a single action that does hot betray our disgust, and our complicity."

from the 1961 preface to Fanon's Wretched of the Earth. I've been hanging onto the link since seeing "The Battle of Algiers" six months ago, with Amy, Adam and Nurri.






posted by TiR at 6:57 PM