[jihad]
it was a inflammatory thing very
the pope read quoting a palaeologus
Michael II emperor of byzant about
the holy war proclaimed by the Prophet
in the year who knows when and
all around are fires burning are
moats being considered around Baghdad
are the very ramparts of are
nothing is pure the stratosphere
is a hell of pollution waste gas
noxious fumes of human thought
rising from the abscess in the tooth
being employed by presidents of
Moloch with his jaws churning in
dream the oval office rose tinted
and will appoint as generals
Gog and Magog on either side
money is the fuel for love are
ardent desire to overcome bad sleep
habits when passing through deserts
it says in the Bible what are
the envious doing here what are
the thing is about the eglantine branch
the dogwood in flower the white
intense upon white before bleeding
the insane who are kept inside
Jerusalem who cannot explain mother
who assume father is the target
raising the blazing scimitar high
to cut the dove neatly in half
wonder in what century it will end
can it end the hypothetical iron
now rusting inside Shulamit’s breast
it will end the nerve defiant
in the resembling Eye! motionless
the wave immobile the wind senseless
the north of sky toward which
crawls the Beast unerring in song
are then others so removed from
is such the capacity of man to
why is the garden thus laid bare
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
painted universe descried from afar
out of control in its infinite gyres
does then the sheep cote sink in dark
the hundred asbestos angels are quick
in their flashing quicker still Krishna
passing silently through 3000 brides
“be thou my Love, still the beating heart”
for each constructed city a paragraph
of ire and spite for each other side
the reckless banks of sand collapse
are fortune and its Hollywood a reality
as is no more the small drugstore
where for a magazine of powder one
could purchase the end result
fallen to the curbside and armless
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
which is the century of the Golden Horn
and which the minute past caesar’s death
why it matters on the flickering screen
who dances in red beside a dread japan
who eats china in a repeated trance
why are they at the door why are
for this brief instant the multiples
of history shine like malibu neon
but for the sluggish ethiop stream
psychiatry metempsychosis lethargy
why they are not with us this day
the fabulous planets of Poesy
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
plunge then the tinsel Primavera
into her dry well, suck out the soul
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
dynasties like argent cobras pass
through migrations of awful dust
one is there who but none instead
stand outside the cycle in review
watching unidentified armies clash
watching each still point dissolve
it is never resolved but brain dead
in palo alto trying to match Boolean
ciphers the world of intransigence
some small some lesser yet and some
for whom a lunar madness fits
for whom the
attach
slumbering Air
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
resist the Call
ivan arguelles
09-17-06
See 9th Street Lab: http://9thstlab.blogspot.com
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Keith Olbermann's 911 Rant
In the event you missed it, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann delivered the most eloquent, heart wrenching and profoundly truthful tribute to the fallen of 911. It was presented only moments before the president took the stage at the White House and gave the nation yet another push for war in the name of the dead. The full text is posted on Common Dreams (9/12/06) and the MSNBC web site. A brief excerpt:
"Five years later this space is still empty.
"Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.
"Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
"Five years later this country's wound is still open.
"Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
"Five years later this is still just a backdrop for a photo op.
"It is beyond shameful."
Olbermann for President!
"Five years later this space is still empty.
"Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.
"Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.
"Five years later this country's wound is still open.
"Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.
"Five years later this is still just a backdrop for a photo op.
"It is beyond shameful."
Olbermann for President!
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The Most Dangerous Politicians in America
From time to time in the next two years, we will consider the candidates to succeed George W. Bush. This installment considers those on both sides of the aisle most likely to continue the neocon fantasy of endless war.
The midterm election looms and the prospects for 2008 are staking their grounds. On the left are Russ Feingold, Albert Gore, John Kerry and John Edward. In the center are Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman and Rudy Giuliani. On the right are Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and John McCain. The classifications are subject to change as the candidates seek a winning path through the unfolding political maze.
Though everything is in flux, some matters are resistant to change: For example, a candidate’s position on the war in Iraq and the greater war on terrorism. With that in mind, the following represents my current ranking of the most dangerous politicians in America (in reverse order):
6. Rudy Giuliani.
The hero of 9-11, America’s mayor, he marched bravely to ground zero, projecting confidence when our president was still bunkered down. He stood strong and urged New York’s finest to stand with him. Did he ever really say (“spontaneously like”), “Thank God George Bush is president!”? No one knows. Only later did we learn that Rudy was somewhat culpable for the tragic events of that September morn. It was his decision to place his command and control center in the towers – a known terrorist target. Rudy also contracted incompatible communications systems so that New York’s finest could not talk to each other in a catastrophic emergency.
What would Rudy do as president? Exactly what his advisers told him to do. Rudy knows how to play the game.
5. Dick Cheney.
He is the only certified neocon elected to office and the elevator in the White House runs straight from Cheney’s bunker to the Oval Office.
Could a man with a crooked grin, who looks like a cartoon personification of evil, ever become president of the United States? Yes. At this juncture, it would be difficult for Cheney to be elected dogcatcher in Orange County but there are other ways to ascend to power. If the Democrats get ahead of themselves and impeach the president before the vice president is safely shunted aside, Dick Cheney would not hesitate to fire a barrage of tactical nukes at our enemies. Nuke them all: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Spain!
If his heart holds out, Cheney would make a nice running mate for a new war president. He could keep the bunker.
4. Condoleezza Rice.
Is it even conceivable that the woman who failed to foresee the possibility of 9-11 despite a mountain of evidence, the woman who warned of a mushroom cloud from the evil Saddam, the woman who seconded every lie and deception the president ever delivered, could overcome all that baggage to become Commander-in-Chief? Ironically, the only thing that holds her back is her race and sex in a party that depends on the white southern fundamentalist vote. Despite the odds, if anointed, she would likely bring the Bush Doctrine to its illogical conclusion: a bankrupt nation and a collapsed empire.
3. Joe Lieberman.
He would rank higher if there were anything more than a whisper of a chance that this whining, rightwing Republican in a Democratic suit could win the White House. Then again, what were the odds that the most outspoken Democrat to impeach a Democratic president for a blowjob would become the party’s vice presidential candidate? No, Joe, we really don’t care what your record on civil rights is. What about civil liberties? On foreign policy, you’re as right and wrong as they come. One gets the impression that old Joe is suffering from macho envy squared. Nuking Iran would be such sweet sorrow if only Israel would nuke Syria first.
2. Hillary Clinton.
Hillary was for the war before it was popular to be for the war. Why not? Husband Bill set it all up for little George to knock down. It was Clinton who set the policy of regime change in Iraq. It was Clinton who first implemented the low casualty war plan, bombing from 15,000 feet in Bosnia even though it meant a lot of dead civilians, bombed media organizations and an occasional Chinese embassy. It was Clinton who kept the pressure on Iraq with deadly and criminal sanctions [1], periodic bombing and a cat-and-mouse game of weapons inspections. “Wag the dog” was a Clinton specialty. Everything that Clinton did was a logical extension of what the elder Bush did and a logical precursor to what followed. It would only be right to let Hillary finish the job.
1. John McCain.
The man never saw a war he did not like. Never. He wants to be king so bad he will swim through the muck for as long as required if he believes it will enhance his chances. He portrays himself a straight-shooting Joe with simple, unassailable values yet he bows on command to the most extreme leaders of the religious right. He will alter his positions on right to life and decry homosexuals as mortal sinners. He will begin and end every speech with “praise the lord” if he thinks it will win the Republican nomination. When and if he wins the White House, toss out all the pandering on social issues: It’s all about war.
I have a vision of McCain riding the nuke into the great beyond like Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
The US military has engaged in four major wars and dozens of military interventions since the end of World War II and the only criticism John McCain has ever uttered is that we did not go far enough. In Vietnam, we should have killed a million more “gooks” – only McCain is allowed to use racial slurs in deference to his prisoner-of-war status.
If McCain were president today, we would already be at war with five nations and the ultimate showdown would be rapidly approaching. Radiation would fill the air and military conscription would fill the ranks.
Manna from heaven for the fundamentalist doomsayers but pure hell for the rest of us.
[1] Recall former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s infamous reply to a question concerning half a million dead Iraqi children: “We think the price is worth it.”
SEE CHRIS MANSEL’S RANDOM INTERVIEW: www.interviewsbychrismansel.blogspot.com.
The midterm election looms and the prospects for 2008 are staking their grounds. On the left are Russ Feingold, Albert Gore, John Kerry and John Edward. In the center are Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman and Rudy Giuliani. On the right are Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and John McCain. The classifications are subject to change as the candidates seek a winning path through the unfolding political maze.
Though everything is in flux, some matters are resistant to change: For example, a candidate’s position on the war in Iraq and the greater war on terrorism. With that in mind, the following represents my current ranking of the most dangerous politicians in America (in reverse order):
6. Rudy Giuliani.
The hero of 9-11, America’s mayor, he marched bravely to ground zero, projecting confidence when our president was still bunkered down. He stood strong and urged New York’s finest to stand with him. Did he ever really say (“spontaneously like”), “Thank God George Bush is president!”? No one knows. Only later did we learn that Rudy was somewhat culpable for the tragic events of that September morn. It was his decision to place his command and control center in the towers – a known terrorist target. Rudy also contracted incompatible communications systems so that New York’s finest could not talk to each other in a catastrophic emergency.
What would Rudy do as president? Exactly what his advisers told him to do. Rudy knows how to play the game.
5. Dick Cheney.
He is the only certified neocon elected to office and the elevator in the White House runs straight from Cheney’s bunker to the Oval Office.
Could a man with a crooked grin, who looks like a cartoon personification of evil, ever become president of the United States? Yes. At this juncture, it would be difficult for Cheney to be elected dogcatcher in Orange County but there are other ways to ascend to power. If the Democrats get ahead of themselves and impeach the president before the vice president is safely shunted aside, Dick Cheney would not hesitate to fire a barrage of tactical nukes at our enemies. Nuke them all: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Spain!
If his heart holds out, Cheney would make a nice running mate for a new war president. He could keep the bunker.
4. Condoleezza Rice.
Is it even conceivable that the woman who failed to foresee the possibility of 9-11 despite a mountain of evidence, the woman who warned of a mushroom cloud from the evil Saddam, the woman who seconded every lie and deception the president ever delivered, could overcome all that baggage to become Commander-in-Chief? Ironically, the only thing that holds her back is her race and sex in a party that depends on the white southern fundamentalist vote. Despite the odds, if anointed, she would likely bring the Bush Doctrine to its illogical conclusion: a bankrupt nation and a collapsed empire.
3. Joe Lieberman.
He would rank higher if there were anything more than a whisper of a chance that this whining, rightwing Republican in a Democratic suit could win the White House. Then again, what were the odds that the most outspoken Democrat to impeach a Democratic president for a blowjob would become the party’s vice presidential candidate? No, Joe, we really don’t care what your record on civil rights is. What about civil liberties? On foreign policy, you’re as right and wrong as they come. One gets the impression that old Joe is suffering from macho envy squared. Nuking Iran would be such sweet sorrow if only Israel would nuke Syria first.
2. Hillary Clinton.
Hillary was for the war before it was popular to be for the war. Why not? Husband Bill set it all up for little George to knock down. It was Clinton who set the policy of regime change in Iraq. It was Clinton who first implemented the low casualty war plan, bombing from 15,000 feet in Bosnia even though it meant a lot of dead civilians, bombed media organizations and an occasional Chinese embassy. It was Clinton who kept the pressure on Iraq with deadly and criminal sanctions [1], periodic bombing and a cat-and-mouse game of weapons inspections. “Wag the dog” was a Clinton specialty. Everything that Clinton did was a logical extension of what the elder Bush did and a logical precursor to what followed. It would only be right to let Hillary finish the job.
1. John McCain.
The man never saw a war he did not like. Never. He wants to be king so bad he will swim through the muck for as long as required if he believes it will enhance his chances. He portrays himself a straight-shooting Joe with simple, unassailable values yet he bows on command to the most extreme leaders of the religious right. He will alter his positions on right to life and decry homosexuals as mortal sinners. He will begin and end every speech with “praise the lord” if he thinks it will win the Republican nomination. When and if he wins the White House, toss out all the pandering on social issues: It’s all about war.
I have a vision of McCain riding the nuke into the great beyond like Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
The US military has engaged in four major wars and dozens of military interventions since the end of World War II and the only criticism John McCain has ever uttered is that we did not go far enough. In Vietnam, we should have killed a million more “gooks” – only McCain is allowed to use racial slurs in deference to his prisoner-of-war status.
If McCain were president today, we would already be at war with five nations and the ultimate showdown would be rapidly approaching. Radiation would fill the air and military conscription would fill the ranks.
Manna from heaven for the fundamentalist doomsayers but pure hell for the rest of us.
[1] Recall former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s infamous reply to a question concerning half a million dead Iraqi children: “We think the price is worth it.”
SEE CHRIS MANSEL’S RANDOM INTERVIEW: www.interviewsbychrismansel.blogspot.com.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
How We Leave The Beaten In The Well by Chris Mansel
A vengeful act born out of necessity, a scholar's translation born of prejudice and ending in legislation. The vengeful act originating from the ancient text those that are parasitic and agitated who have enjoyed and profited from these acts can and will suffer the growth of this industry. No matter your belief system, the margin to discredit has been abscessed. If you have grown to accept death in front of you, on television, death by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the millions then are you as guilty as the text, as guilty as the translator? The act of killing was easy to learn and easy to teach and so history has been translated into every language known to man and woman. Now, every man and woman not only knows how to kill but accept it.
We leave the body in the well and wait for it to rain? We leave the body in the well because we want someone to find it? The body was already dead? Pre-destined? In terms of political reality it really doesn't matter. How many wars have been started in your lifetime and what was the body count?
But wait, you're not dead yet. So while you await your death you'll have to keep a steady count, concentrate now.
- Chris Mansel
See The Mansel Report: www.themanselreport.blogspot.com.
We leave the body in the well and wait for it to rain? We leave the body in the well because we want someone to find it? The body was already dead? Pre-destined? In terms of political reality it really doesn't matter. How many wars have been started in your lifetime and what was the body count?
But wait, you're not dead yet. So while you await your death you'll have to keep a steady count, concentrate now.
- Chris Mansel
See The Mansel Report: www.themanselreport.blogspot.com.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Rumors From The Mansel Report
I've heard that Condi Rice's per diem includes a small plastic baggie of salted fruit and a dispenser of face lotion easily allowed on Air Force One.
The Secret Service agents say her thrust is all-wrong but she pays for the room. They really can't keep the earpieces in when she is going on the downbeat but it's a good duty.
George Bush is upset that Cindy Sheehan bought some property adjacent to his in Crawford, Texas. What he is upset about the most is that she used the money from the insurance policy from her dead son to buy something. Now the Washington press core is in shock that the President now wants to enlist his daughters into military service because he has his eye on some property in Havana.
The FBI has set up a scenario in case there is a problem with John Mark Karr. A crime scene negotiator has been placed on call. The negotiator is none other than Clay Aiken.
The armed suspect arrested yesterday at the University of Virginia campus it has been discovered was asking passersby if they knew the home address of Don Blankenship because he was running low on ready cash.
After hearing of the dinner John Mark Karr enjoyed on his flight the focus will now be off fava beans and will now be on Prawns?
- Chris Mansel
The Secret Service agents say her thrust is all-wrong but she pays for the room. They really can't keep the earpieces in when she is going on the downbeat but it's a good duty.
George Bush is upset that Cindy Sheehan bought some property adjacent to his in Crawford, Texas. What he is upset about the most is that she used the money from the insurance policy from her dead son to buy something. Now the Washington press core is in shock that the President now wants to enlist his daughters into military service because he has his eye on some property in Havana.
The FBI has set up a scenario in case there is a problem with John Mark Karr. A crime scene negotiator has been placed on call. The negotiator is none other than Clay Aiken.
The armed suspect arrested yesterday at the University of Virginia campus it has been discovered was asking passersby if they knew the home address of Don Blankenship because he was running low on ready cash.
After hearing of the dinner John Mark Karr enjoyed on his flight the focus will now be off fava beans and will now be on Prawns?
- Chris Mansel
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
A Change of Routine by Joe Speer
The Investigating Magistrate asked Mr. Eugene Groat to explain the circumstances of his outbreak. Groat talked loudly, making wide circular motions with his arms. The magistrate listened, wrote in his file, and said, "Start before the troika appears."
"Maybe if I start before the fight. It might help explain."
"Please do," said the investigator, "start at the beginning."
"I'm not sure where to begin. I'm usually told what to do. When I was young my parents me told what to do. Teachers at school told me when to do it. In the work place the boss and company policy told me how. I never had to think for myself, you see.
"I had a job in a bookstore. Then one day the manager got onto me about zoning my area instead of reading from random books. My spleen turned mauve. That same day I had a dispute with a co-worker. Yeah, I raised my voice a few decibels. I was fired that day. All this zero tolerance.
Without direction the only places I know to go are the public library and my post office box. That was enough excitement for me, accessing my mail late at night. A press in Berkeley printed one of my chapbooks and we sent proofs and whatnot back and forth.
I was distraught so I called a friend from work. He asked, "What up? I heard you wigged out."
"Oh, my emotions are overthrown!"
I told him I'm reading "The Brothers Karamazov". It makes me so agitated and resentful. It really bothers me because Dmitri is sentenced to twenty years in Siberia. The patricide he is accused of he didn't even commit. I think the father's rigor mortis is a cleansing of the community. He is a dissolute no-count money lender. Granted, we can't have people on a busting heads spree, but the old viper used his son's inheritance to coax his own girlfriend away from him. The old bugger had 3,000 rubles with her name on it. I'm outraged over all this injustice. The whole situation has crossed the line into my everyday life. It caused the scene in the bookstore. I asked him what I should do with myself and he said I could do whatever I wanted. I thanked him and hung up.
This advice put my life in a new perspective. I was excited and rushed about the apartment doing whatever I wanted. I piled books all over my bed and urinated in the sink. I felt free, but knew I would have to test myself to see if it was a true feeling. I could feign in my own apartment because no one was watching. I had to go out into the street and see what would happen.
I promised myself for the rest of the day no one would tell me what to do.
I hadn't gone anywhere for a long time. I became excited about just exploring different parts of the city. I left the apartment and when I got to the street corner I encountered my first test - a red stop light.
Here, already I was being told what to do by a an innate object. I thought about crossing the street, but I cowered, the cars were rapid and it looked like they would not stop for a misplaced bibliophile . I pretended to search the ground for lost change. But that was only kidding myself. Besides, it was only a red light, a stupid machine, and it didn't count because I could smash the lights out if I wanted. It was only people I wasn't going to listen to. The light changed green and I crossed the street.
I tell you I was angry with the judgment against Dmitri. All the brothers knew who killed their father. I'm so sorry Ivan has brain fever. He is so brilliant, having conversations with the devil and such. After walking several blocks I saw a woman leaning against a doorway. Round, bulging breasts, thrust out onto the sidewalk, loosely fitting sack dress smiling and touching herself. She asked if I wanted a date. She put her hand on my chest, undid a couple of buttons, and began to massage my stomach. Smiling, she told me to go upstairs with her. I refused.
Well, she wasn't really telling me what to do she just moved her hand down past my navel and lead me through the doorway by my belt. A man inside said I had to pay twenty dollars for the room. I refused.
He looked angrily at me, but the girl smiled him away. I followed her up a staircase and into a little room. There was a single bed against the wall, threadbare chenille spread lay on the mattress. She told me to take my clothes off. I refused.
Her hand went to my zipper as I stood looking at putrid stains and yellow spots. She inserted her fingers into my back pocket and moved into me with her hips. I stood looking at a crack in the wall, my arms dangling flaccidly at my sides. She was perturbed and asked what was wrong with me.
Suddenly two men burst in through the door. They were big with padded shoulders, sleeves rolled up, scowling beetle-browed. One of the men asked me what was I doing with his wife. I asked what was she doing with me. He got angry and told me to give him all my money. I refused.
They started after me and the woman coaxed them away. She told them I was crazy. They let me go and I hurried down the stairs and out into the street. A couple of small boys on the sidewalk pointed and laughed at me - small, impish, laughing through missing teeth. I pulled up my zipper and walked away.
Several blocks on down the street I entered a bar. Dark, tinny music hung in the air, smoke floated over two-toppers, sounds of glasses clicking, and ice drinks stirring, audible under music. I sat on a stool at the bar and ordered a Harvey Wallbanger.
Two men in suits were next to me talking in low voices but I couldn't help overhearing parts of what they said. One man said the heist was set for ten o'clock that night and the only people they had to worry about were on his payroll, ... he stopped suddenly.
I looked in their direction and they were staring at me. The man told me to move to another stool. I refused.
He reached into his coat and the other man stayed his arm. He said I must be crazy and motioned with his head. They both walked away. I felt good, had been tested twice and found worthy, felt my brain expand, felt I could encompass all the world, felt that space was not enough to contain me.
I had a few more drinks and walked back out into the street. I cut through an alley and halfway through it I saw a gang of boys circled around someone crumpled on the ground. Fists flying, shoes flashing, blood streaming from corner of mouth, eyes swollen puffy, cruel shrieks and demonic laughter. I walked past them quickly and out through the other end of the alley.
Back on the street I saw two men standing near a car. Looking about warily, prying at vent with tool, dropping tool in disgust, crowbar, broken glass, door flung open. I walked away and circled the block so as not to pass them. I walked tiredly in the direction of my apartment. The feeling of power was gone. I felt like I no longer lived in the world much less encompassed it. The world was something inscrutable I wanted to forget. I wanted to close the door and be left alone.
I was eager to get back to the quiet of my room. I wanted to finish the novel and see if there was a chance for Dmitri to escape his character. It is the way he acts that makes him culpable. I walked on the opposite side of the street until I was about a block away from my apartment. I crossed in the middle of the block and saw the steps of my apartment and a troika appeared. A driver reined in the horses, leaned out, and asked me if I thought Dmitri was guilty. He is innocent and why wouldn't you believe the word of an ex-monk over circumstantial evidence. "Stop!" a voice shouted. I refused. A hand touched my shoulder. I swung around, my fingers in his throat. I stabbed him with my jackknife. Then I attacked a second person. I struck out against the legal system's misguided judgments. I hammered his head against a post.
There were witnesses from my own apartment building. The police found me with a copy of "The Brothers Karamazov". I had just finished the part at the funeral of the young boy. Dmitri's fate is still doubtful. It was a long shot but maybe he could be happy one day. That's all there is to tell about my outbreak."
There was a noise at the cell door and the iron bars slid back. With notebook in hand the investigator walked out of the cell. The heavy door slammed closed and he said, "Just do what you are told and we won't have any trouble."
Joe Speer
contact: beatlickjoe@yahoo.com.
"Maybe if I start before the fight. It might help explain."
"Please do," said the investigator, "start at the beginning."
"I'm not sure where to begin. I'm usually told what to do. When I was young my parents me told what to do. Teachers at school told me when to do it. In the work place the boss and company policy told me how. I never had to think for myself, you see.
"I had a job in a bookstore. Then one day the manager got onto me about zoning my area instead of reading from random books. My spleen turned mauve. That same day I had a dispute with a co-worker. Yeah, I raised my voice a few decibels. I was fired that day. All this zero tolerance.
Without direction the only places I know to go are the public library and my post office box. That was enough excitement for me, accessing my mail late at night. A press in Berkeley printed one of my chapbooks and we sent proofs and whatnot back and forth.
I was distraught so I called a friend from work. He asked, "What up? I heard you wigged out."
"Oh, my emotions are overthrown!"
I told him I'm reading "The Brothers Karamazov". It makes me so agitated and resentful. It really bothers me because Dmitri is sentenced to twenty years in Siberia. The patricide he is accused of he didn't even commit. I think the father's rigor mortis is a cleansing of the community. He is a dissolute no-count money lender. Granted, we can't have people on a busting heads spree, but the old viper used his son's inheritance to coax his own girlfriend away from him. The old bugger had 3,000 rubles with her name on it. I'm outraged over all this injustice. The whole situation has crossed the line into my everyday life. It caused the scene in the bookstore. I asked him what I should do with myself and he said I could do whatever I wanted. I thanked him and hung up.
This advice put my life in a new perspective. I was excited and rushed about the apartment doing whatever I wanted. I piled books all over my bed and urinated in the sink. I felt free, but knew I would have to test myself to see if it was a true feeling. I could feign in my own apartment because no one was watching. I had to go out into the street and see what would happen.
I promised myself for the rest of the day no one would tell me what to do.
I hadn't gone anywhere for a long time. I became excited about just exploring different parts of the city. I left the apartment and when I got to the street corner I encountered my first test - a red stop light.
Here, already I was being told what to do by a an innate object. I thought about crossing the street, but I cowered, the cars were rapid and it looked like they would not stop for a misplaced bibliophile . I pretended to search the ground for lost change. But that was only kidding myself. Besides, it was only a red light, a stupid machine, and it didn't count because I could smash the lights out if I wanted. It was only people I wasn't going to listen to. The light changed green and I crossed the street.
I tell you I was angry with the judgment against Dmitri. All the brothers knew who killed their father. I'm so sorry Ivan has brain fever. He is so brilliant, having conversations with the devil and such. After walking several blocks I saw a woman leaning against a doorway. Round, bulging breasts, thrust out onto the sidewalk, loosely fitting sack dress smiling and touching herself. She asked if I wanted a date. She put her hand on my chest, undid a couple of buttons, and began to massage my stomach. Smiling, she told me to go upstairs with her. I refused.
Well, she wasn't really telling me what to do she just moved her hand down past my navel and lead me through the doorway by my belt. A man inside said I had to pay twenty dollars for the room. I refused.
He looked angrily at me, but the girl smiled him away. I followed her up a staircase and into a little room. There was a single bed against the wall, threadbare chenille spread lay on the mattress. She told me to take my clothes off. I refused.
Her hand went to my zipper as I stood looking at putrid stains and yellow spots. She inserted her fingers into my back pocket and moved into me with her hips. I stood looking at a crack in the wall, my arms dangling flaccidly at my sides. She was perturbed and asked what was wrong with me.
Suddenly two men burst in through the door. They were big with padded shoulders, sleeves rolled up, scowling beetle-browed. One of the men asked me what was I doing with his wife. I asked what was she doing with me. He got angry and told me to give him all my money. I refused.
They started after me and the woman coaxed them away. She told them I was crazy. They let me go and I hurried down the stairs and out into the street. A couple of small boys on the sidewalk pointed and laughed at me - small, impish, laughing through missing teeth. I pulled up my zipper and walked away.
Several blocks on down the street I entered a bar. Dark, tinny music hung in the air, smoke floated over two-toppers, sounds of glasses clicking, and ice drinks stirring, audible under music. I sat on a stool at the bar and ordered a Harvey Wallbanger.
Two men in suits were next to me talking in low voices but I couldn't help overhearing parts of what they said. One man said the heist was set for ten o'clock that night and the only people they had to worry about were on his payroll, ... he stopped suddenly.
I looked in their direction and they were staring at me. The man told me to move to another stool. I refused.
He reached into his coat and the other man stayed his arm. He said I must be crazy and motioned with his head. They both walked away. I felt good, had been tested twice and found worthy, felt my brain expand, felt I could encompass all the world, felt that space was not enough to contain me.
I had a few more drinks and walked back out into the street. I cut through an alley and halfway through it I saw a gang of boys circled around someone crumpled on the ground. Fists flying, shoes flashing, blood streaming from corner of mouth, eyes swollen puffy, cruel shrieks and demonic laughter. I walked past them quickly and out through the other end of the alley.
Back on the street I saw two men standing near a car. Looking about warily, prying at vent with tool, dropping tool in disgust, crowbar, broken glass, door flung open. I walked away and circled the block so as not to pass them. I walked tiredly in the direction of my apartment. The feeling of power was gone. I felt like I no longer lived in the world much less encompassed it. The world was something inscrutable I wanted to forget. I wanted to close the door and be left alone.
I was eager to get back to the quiet of my room. I wanted to finish the novel and see if there was a chance for Dmitri to escape his character. It is the way he acts that makes him culpable. I walked on the opposite side of the street until I was about a block away from my apartment. I crossed in the middle of the block and saw the steps of my apartment and a troika appeared. A driver reined in the horses, leaned out, and asked me if I thought Dmitri was guilty. He is innocent and why wouldn't you believe the word of an ex-monk over circumstantial evidence. "Stop!" a voice shouted. I refused. A hand touched my shoulder. I swung around, my fingers in his throat. I stabbed him with my jackknife. Then I attacked a second person. I struck out against the legal system's misguided judgments. I hammered his head against a post.
There were witnesses from my own apartment building. The police found me with a copy of "The Brothers Karamazov". I had just finished the part at the funeral of the young boy. Dmitri's fate is still doubtful. It was a long shot but maybe he could be happy one day. That's all there is to tell about my outbreak."
There was a noise at the cell door and the iron bars slid back. With notebook in hand the investigator walked out of the cell. The heavy door slammed closed and he said, "Just do what you are told and we won't have any trouble."
Joe Speer
contact: beatlickjoe@yahoo.com.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
War Poem 7 by Jake Berry
Wasp in amber.
Christ's palms in formaldehyde.
The scribes are weeping
in the ruins of their broken vocabulary.
Comes a witch in Canaan
can speak in pure image.
The ground crawls with
maggots when she speaks.
Soldiers and
mortar gun trucks
raid the laboratories
and take the parameter.
They are figures
in a book of prayer
locked in a virus.
Her left hand clutches
the broach of Minerva –
The sea swells
and swallows them all
and the prophets with them.
The grain gone sour
in the monastery stores,
even hallucination
takes its meat and
breathes into the cameras
and satellites
Heaven is empty now
except these leeches
pocked in gravity's curve
falling toward the Capitol
collecting the populace
like teeth.
Christ's palms in formaldehyde.
The scribes are weeping
in the ruins of their broken vocabulary.
Comes a witch in Canaan
can speak in pure image.
The ground crawls with
maggots when she speaks.
Soldiers and
mortar gun trucks
raid the laboratories
and take the parameter.
They are figures
in a book of prayer
locked in a virus.
Her left hand clutches
the broach of Minerva –
The sea swells
and swallows them all
and the prophets with them.
The grain gone sour
in the monastery stores,
even hallucination
takes its meat and
breathes into the cameras
and satellites
Heaven is empty now
except these leeches
pocked in gravity's curve
falling toward the Capitol
collecting the populace
like teeth.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part six)
Once Karl Rove had hit a stopping point in his mind he shoved the two women into the wet grass and began taking photographs of them. As they writhed in some kind of illicit blessing of Ronald Reagan, Rove began kicking at them in his sock feet. Agents had circled the area and had re-directed tourists away. As we tried to inch closer and closer we noticed a startled Juan Williams, the regular Fox news contributor getting out of a SUV. One thing was unusual however: the SUV had diplomatic plates.
Jack and I at seeing Juan Williams stood up and walked gingerly towards the scene. We had had several conversations in secret with Williams and whenever he saw us around town he would begin trembling, as he had been a bit too honest for his parties good. He had detailed one night how the party had during the 2000 election attempted to impregnate several Gore staffers by force.
We knew that if we could get a photo of Williams alongside Karl Rove kicking two half undressed women in Arlington National Cemetery we could get Williams to open up about the tree house in the White House as he has been long rumored to be the one with the apple in his mouth.
Rove was in ecstasy. He didn't get the warning that Williams was approaching as agents had told him. As the women were beginning to scream now, the agents didn't notice us either. As we got closer we could hear Rove's ranting, "We'll call this HR 666! Yea, take that Bay Buchanan betrayer of the chair!" The harder Rove kicked the women the louder they would chant, "Four more years, four more years."
- Chris Mansel
Jack and I at seeing Juan Williams stood up and walked gingerly towards the scene. We had had several conversations in secret with Williams and whenever he saw us around town he would begin trembling, as he had been a bit too honest for his parties good. He had detailed one night how the party had during the 2000 election attempted to impregnate several Gore staffers by force.
We knew that if we could get a photo of Williams alongside Karl Rove kicking two half undressed women in Arlington National Cemetery we could get Williams to open up about the tree house in the White House as he has been long rumored to be the one with the apple in his mouth.
Rove was in ecstasy. He didn't get the warning that Williams was approaching as agents had told him. As the women were beginning to scream now, the agents didn't notice us either. As we got closer we could hear Rove's ranting, "We'll call this HR 666! Yea, take that Bay Buchanan betrayer of the chair!" The harder Rove kicked the women the louder they would chant, "Four more years, four more years."
- Chris Mansel
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part five)
Any member of the press core will tell you that if you shove the head of a baby into an airsickness bag and pop the bag immediately you will completely unsettle anyone near you. The mother will confess immediately every cock she had ever sucked and whether or not she saw what she had seen and testified what she had testified to in a case against a politician. This has been done in the case against the Bush administration. We saw the tale and we were there to report it.
Jack Random and I armed with cameras, starkly open and brutal honesty, we traveled to the tomb of the unknown soldier where we had been told Karl Rove held private conversations as tourists watched two guys in dress uniform flip around rifles in peace time and during war. Rove would appear we had learned with a hat pulled down over his misshapen ears. So there we sat waiting for Rove to appear when we noticed a representative from the Fox network we had photographed once on the balcony of a hotel in Maryland. He watched as he exposed him self to a group of Catholic priests. The Priests stood motionless in the tourist bus windows.
Waiting for Karl Rove had gotten to be a favorite pastime for Jack and I. We would sometimes pay someone to tip off the Secret Service that he had seen a photograph of one of them transporting illegal aliens into the streets of San Antonio and watch as the agent shoved the tipster against the wall. We didn?t do it too often as it usually cost us a couple thousand dollars and once it took the promise of an introduction to a certain celebrity who enjoyed urine in more than a relieving manner.
As Jack listened again to the tape from the hotel I saw a couple of tourists taking a few steps backwards. I watched closely as two agents opened one of the men?s shirts to reveal a listening device. I grabbed the camera from around Jack?s neck as he cussed me loudly. The agent took notice of Rove arriving in a sedan flanked by two women.
The man with the listening device made an attempt to punch the agent in the face and the agent was beating him senseless immediately. Every tourist eyes? went right away to the noise. Rove and the two women made their way past the tomb to section thirteen of Arlington National Cemetery. As they walked we strolled quietly by the violent outburst of several agents now subduing the individual. By the time we were in the wet grass of the cemetery they had the man down to his underwear.
- Chris Mansel
Jack Random and I armed with cameras, starkly open and brutal honesty, we traveled to the tomb of the unknown soldier where we had been told Karl Rove held private conversations as tourists watched two guys in dress uniform flip around rifles in peace time and during war. Rove would appear we had learned with a hat pulled down over his misshapen ears. So there we sat waiting for Rove to appear when we noticed a representative from the Fox network we had photographed once on the balcony of a hotel in Maryland. He watched as he exposed him self to a group of Catholic priests. The Priests stood motionless in the tourist bus windows.
Waiting for Karl Rove had gotten to be a favorite pastime for Jack and I. We would sometimes pay someone to tip off the Secret Service that he had seen a photograph of one of them transporting illegal aliens into the streets of San Antonio and watch as the agent shoved the tipster against the wall. We didn?t do it too often as it usually cost us a couple thousand dollars and once it took the promise of an introduction to a certain celebrity who enjoyed urine in more than a relieving manner.
As Jack listened again to the tape from the hotel I saw a couple of tourists taking a few steps backwards. I watched closely as two agents opened one of the men?s shirts to reveal a listening device. I grabbed the camera from around Jack?s neck as he cussed me loudly. The agent took notice of Rove arriving in a sedan flanked by two women.
The man with the listening device made an attempt to punch the agent in the face and the agent was beating him senseless immediately. Every tourist eyes? went right away to the noise. Rove and the two women made their way past the tomb to section thirteen of Arlington National Cemetery. As they walked we strolled quietly by the violent outburst of several agents now subduing the individual. By the time we were in the wet grass of the cemetery they had the man down to his underwear.
- Chris Mansel
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Pulling the Plug on Dissent
By C. L. Cook, Senior Editor, PEJ News, Victoria, Canada
July 25, 2006
[Editor's note: PEJ is short for Peace-Earth-Justice and Chris Cook is a relentless advocate for all three. If the readers have any doubt that spying and censorship are being conducted for political purposes, perhaps this will convince you. Something is definitely happening. When one voice is silence, the freedom of all is threatened. Do what you can and keep on speaking out.]
[Editor's Update: I am informed the site is back on line -- the explanation is a bit hazy.]
I read of the Moscow Times' decision to sack Chris Floyd with great disappointment, but not surprise. It's clear, the ubermensche rulers of the world brook no dissent. They've gone to a lot of trouble to corner the
"mainstream" media, but controlling newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema, and large swathes of internet information isn't enough; as long as there exists a single voice emanating even the smallest of
soapboxes, the paranoid psychopaths currently laying waste to the world will not sleep soundly.
I was unsurprised too to read of the classless manner in which the new editor executed his charge; compassion, understanding, and courtesy are "quaint" old notions, beyond the imaginings of the apparatchiks of our Brave New World birthing.
Though no match for Chris' decade-plus efforts to bring some notion of humanity to the readers of the Moscow Times, and more recently to broader Cyberia, I came home tonight to find my own little soapbox trodden under the boot of authority. PEJ News is a not-for-profit web news site. We're a small group of local activists and allies abroad, trying to emphasize Peace, Earth, and Justice. This month, after thousands of hours of dedication by our completely unpaid volunteer editors, writers, techies, and administrators, we were on record pace, boasting what would have been a near half-million page views for the month of July. But, our progress was abruptly halted.
With neither notification, nor consultation PEJ's "server" pulled the plug. When they finally got back to us, we were informed the site had been harbouring spammers - we're a site with the most stringent ethical guidelines going, recently pulling Google © ads due to that company's knee-buckling performance in China - and that was it. Our tech. dude is yet to be granted access to any of the "evidence" supporting their charge.
The Canadian government recently announced its intent to revisit "freedom of speech" laws in this country. It's a small surprise, considering Canadian "War President" Stephen Harper's enthusiastic support of both America's and Israel's horrendous criminality, he would too follow their lead obediently in further "limiting" citizen's rights in Canada. I wonder too if Harper is aping his friends south of the border, and allowing Canada's spy agencies to pressure communications companies, in an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
We're still waiting for word from our self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner "server;" but for now, as Lebanon burns, and Iraq burns, and Afghanistan burns, and Palestine ever burns, we are, temporarily at least, voices without a box to stand on.
"Steve" down at our "server" Doteasy.com invites everyone "Join the hosting revolution." If any are familiar with the work PEJ.org was attempting to do, (and if not, check out my contributions here at Empire Burlesque for a sample of at least one editor there's political philosophy) perhaps you may accept "Steve's" invite. He asks any further contact be addressed here: https://www.doteasy.com/ContactUs/Reply.cfm?C=328747-882569550.
Chris Cook is, until recently, a contributing editor to PEJ News, and host of Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. See www.pej.org.
July 25, 2006
[Editor's note: PEJ is short for Peace-Earth-Justice and Chris Cook is a relentless advocate for all three. If the readers have any doubt that spying and censorship are being conducted for political purposes, perhaps this will convince you. Something is definitely happening. When one voice is silence, the freedom of all is threatened. Do what you can and keep on speaking out.]
[Editor's Update: I am informed the site is back on line -- the explanation is a bit hazy.]
I read of the Moscow Times' decision to sack Chris Floyd with great disappointment, but not surprise. It's clear, the ubermensche rulers of the world brook no dissent. They've gone to a lot of trouble to corner the
"mainstream" media, but controlling newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema, and large swathes of internet information isn't enough; as long as there exists a single voice emanating even the smallest of
soapboxes, the paranoid psychopaths currently laying waste to the world will not sleep soundly.
I was unsurprised too to read of the classless manner in which the new editor executed his charge; compassion, understanding, and courtesy are "quaint" old notions, beyond the imaginings of the apparatchiks of our Brave New World birthing.
Though no match for Chris' decade-plus efforts to bring some notion of humanity to the readers of the Moscow Times, and more recently to broader Cyberia, I came home tonight to find my own little soapbox trodden under the boot of authority. PEJ News is a not-for-profit web news site. We're a small group of local activists and allies abroad, trying to emphasize Peace, Earth, and Justice. This month, after thousands of hours of dedication by our completely unpaid volunteer editors, writers, techies, and administrators, we were on record pace, boasting what would have been a near half-million page views for the month of July. But, our progress was abruptly halted.
With neither notification, nor consultation PEJ's "server" pulled the plug. When they finally got back to us, we were informed the site had been harbouring spammers - we're a site with the most stringent ethical guidelines going, recently pulling Google © ads due to that company's knee-buckling performance in China - and that was it. Our tech. dude is yet to be granted access to any of the "evidence" supporting their charge.
The Canadian government recently announced its intent to revisit "freedom of speech" laws in this country. It's a small surprise, considering Canadian "War President" Stephen Harper's enthusiastic support of both America's and Israel's horrendous criminality, he would too follow their lead obediently in further "limiting" citizen's rights in Canada. I wonder too if Harper is aping his friends south of the border, and allowing Canada's spy agencies to pressure communications companies, in an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
We're still waiting for word from our self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner "server;" but for now, as Lebanon burns, and Iraq burns, and Afghanistan burns, and Palestine ever burns, we are, temporarily at least, voices without a box to stand on.
"Steve" down at our "server" Doteasy.com invites everyone "Join the hosting revolution." If any are familiar with the work PEJ.org was attempting to do, (and if not, check out my contributions here at Empire Burlesque for a sample of at least one editor there's political philosophy) perhaps you may accept "Steve's" invite. He asks any further contact be addressed here: https://www.doteasy.com/ContactUs/Reply.cfm?C=328747-882569550.
Chris Cook is, until recently, a contributing editor to PEJ News, and host of Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. See www.pej.org.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Liberation Litmus Test: Foreign Policy
The Liberation Institute, an organization so shadowy it does not in fact exist, contacted commentator Jack Random, requesting an interview to determine the author’s qualifications as a liberator. The interview was conducted in two parts: Foreign Affairs and Domestic Policy. The following is a transcript of the foreign policy exchange.
Liberation Institute: Do you favor a timetable of withdrawal from Iraq?
Jack Random: Yes. On this issue, there are no acceptable alternatives. Iraq started a spiral descent from Shock and Awe and has continued its fall to the present day. Anyone who looks at what is happening in Iraq and says, “It’s complicated. The war was wrong. It was founded on lies, yes, but now we’re there and we have to finish the job.” is only fooling themselves.
It’s a form of mass hallucination. If we all pretend this is reality, we can keep on pretending indefinitely. The greater truth is that no one can suspend reality indefinitely without going mad. We either go mad as a nation and take much of the world with us or we give up the fantasy and begin to make amends. The problem is: We don’t know how to say we’re sorry without saying “but.”
The first step in embracing sanity is getting out of Iraq immediately and accepting the debt of a nation torn apart and decimated. It does not matter that Saddam was a brutal tyrant or even that he was our brutal tyrant for decades. We have to understand that people must rid themselves of their own tyrants and they will in time if we refuse to sponsor and assist them in pursuit of our own interests.
The game of geopolitics uses ethics as a pawn, discarded at will until it ceases to have meaning and the players lose all credibility.
LI: Do you oppose the war in Afghanistan?
JR: Yes for the same reasons. We’ve repeated the same pattern that produced the blowback of 9-11. During the Soviet invasion and occupation, we sponsored every radical jihadist on the planet. When the Soviets fell, we ended up supporting the Taliban and the people accepted the tyranny of the Taliban because at least there was some order and security. We turned to the warlords and expected the people to thank us for overthrowing the Taliban to restore anarchy. The Afghan economy may be backward by our standard but the people are not stupid. People everywhere know a liberator when they see one and they know he does not wear an American flag – not in this world.
LI: Should we allow North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles?
JR: It is like asking if the sun should shine on Tuesdays. We have no choice and very little influence. North Korea is primarily a regional concern. China, Japan and South Korea are our trading partners. It is not in China’s interest to allow North Korea to attack its trading partners. Unless our relations with China dramatically change, there is no threat. North Korea lives under the Chinese thumb. What we should be more concerned with is a president who scores political points by taunting and provoking one of the world’s most dangerous governments.
We should be engaged in diplomacy at all levels but only if the purpose of that diplomacy is diffusing conflict – not enraging it.
LI: Do you support regime change in Iran?
JR: I support the right of the people to freely choose their own government in every nation – including America. I oppose the right of any other power to choose for them. I believe that when an external power attempts to affect regime change, it invariably backfires with unpredictable results.
We have a sordid history in Iran. We gave the Iranian people the tyranny of the Shah. After the Shah, the Iraq-Iran war and the latest war in Iraq, even those who want peace and cooperation with America know we cannot be trusted. If we want to influence Iran or any other nation, we have to regain our credibility.
If there were no oil in the region, would our troops be stationed there? If every American knows the answer to that question, we can be sure the people of Iran know it as well.
LI: What should we do in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
JR: We should cry for all the people caught in the crossfire. We should push our own government to act as an honest broker. It is something we have never in fact done before but at least we have always held up the façade of honest brokerage and that has been enough to subdue each crisis before it exploded into a never-ending, ever-expanding cycle of war. Our current government has dropped the curtain. We are not even pretending neutrality. With both our media and government pounding us day-to-day with the right of Israel to defend herself, without any regard for the people of Gaza or the principle of proportionate retribution, how can we diffuse the crisis?
The real question is: Do we want to diffuse it or has our government decided, with all the wisdom and foresight they have demonstrated in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Iran, that ever-expanding war is in the national interest? I fear it is not the law of unintended consequences haunting this administration but a wanton and arrogant philosophy of conquest at any cost. The neocons are not dead; they are only sleeping.
LI: Do you support the Palestinian right of return?
JR: Yes but the qualifier is more important than the answer. I believe that the Palestinians possess the right of return, as any displaced people do, as a matter of principle, but I do not believe that right is paramount. Is it worth more than an independent Palestinian state? Through all the wars and negotiations, the right of return has been employed by both sides as a deal breaker. It is no different today.
Secure in the knowledge that the right of return can no more be denied than freedom of speech or the right to a living wage, let it be settled in the uncertain future. Let today belong to peace and Palestinian sovereignty.
LI: That concludes the foreign policy portion of the interview. Do you have any questions?
JR: Did I pass the test?
LI: The results will be tabulated and the findings released at an appropriate time.
JR: Does anyone pass?
LI: That information is confidential.
JR: Jazz.
JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE APPEARED ON DISSIDENT VOICE, THE ALBION MONITOR, BUZZLE, PEACE-EARTH-JUSTICE AND COUNTERPUNCH.
Liberation Institute: Do you favor a timetable of withdrawal from Iraq?
Jack Random: Yes. On this issue, there are no acceptable alternatives. Iraq started a spiral descent from Shock and Awe and has continued its fall to the present day. Anyone who looks at what is happening in Iraq and says, “It’s complicated. The war was wrong. It was founded on lies, yes, but now we’re there and we have to finish the job.” is only fooling themselves.
It’s a form of mass hallucination. If we all pretend this is reality, we can keep on pretending indefinitely. The greater truth is that no one can suspend reality indefinitely without going mad. We either go mad as a nation and take much of the world with us or we give up the fantasy and begin to make amends. The problem is: We don’t know how to say we’re sorry without saying “but.”
The first step in embracing sanity is getting out of Iraq immediately and accepting the debt of a nation torn apart and decimated. It does not matter that Saddam was a brutal tyrant or even that he was our brutal tyrant for decades. We have to understand that people must rid themselves of their own tyrants and they will in time if we refuse to sponsor and assist them in pursuit of our own interests.
The game of geopolitics uses ethics as a pawn, discarded at will until it ceases to have meaning and the players lose all credibility.
LI: Do you oppose the war in Afghanistan?
JR: Yes for the same reasons. We’ve repeated the same pattern that produced the blowback of 9-11. During the Soviet invasion and occupation, we sponsored every radical jihadist on the planet. When the Soviets fell, we ended up supporting the Taliban and the people accepted the tyranny of the Taliban because at least there was some order and security. We turned to the warlords and expected the people to thank us for overthrowing the Taliban to restore anarchy. The Afghan economy may be backward by our standard but the people are not stupid. People everywhere know a liberator when they see one and they know he does not wear an American flag – not in this world.
LI: Should we allow North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles?
JR: It is like asking if the sun should shine on Tuesdays. We have no choice and very little influence. North Korea is primarily a regional concern. China, Japan and South Korea are our trading partners. It is not in China’s interest to allow North Korea to attack its trading partners. Unless our relations with China dramatically change, there is no threat. North Korea lives under the Chinese thumb. What we should be more concerned with is a president who scores political points by taunting and provoking one of the world’s most dangerous governments.
We should be engaged in diplomacy at all levels but only if the purpose of that diplomacy is diffusing conflict – not enraging it.
LI: Do you support regime change in Iran?
JR: I support the right of the people to freely choose their own government in every nation – including America. I oppose the right of any other power to choose for them. I believe that when an external power attempts to affect regime change, it invariably backfires with unpredictable results.
We have a sordid history in Iran. We gave the Iranian people the tyranny of the Shah. After the Shah, the Iraq-Iran war and the latest war in Iraq, even those who want peace and cooperation with America know we cannot be trusted. If we want to influence Iran or any other nation, we have to regain our credibility.
If there were no oil in the region, would our troops be stationed there? If every American knows the answer to that question, we can be sure the people of Iran know it as well.
LI: What should we do in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
JR: We should cry for all the people caught in the crossfire. We should push our own government to act as an honest broker. It is something we have never in fact done before but at least we have always held up the façade of honest brokerage and that has been enough to subdue each crisis before it exploded into a never-ending, ever-expanding cycle of war. Our current government has dropped the curtain. We are not even pretending neutrality. With both our media and government pounding us day-to-day with the right of Israel to defend herself, without any regard for the people of Gaza or the principle of proportionate retribution, how can we diffuse the crisis?
The real question is: Do we want to diffuse it or has our government decided, with all the wisdom and foresight they have demonstrated in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Iran, that ever-expanding war is in the national interest? I fear it is not the law of unintended consequences haunting this administration but a wanton and arrogant philosophy of conquest at any cost. The neocons are not dead; they are only sleeping.
LI: Do you support the Palestinian right of return?
JR: Yes but the qualifier is more important than the answer. I believe that the Palestinians possess the right of return, as any displaced people do, as a matter of principle, but I do not believe that right is paramount. Is it worth more than an independent Palestinian state? Through all the wars and negotiations, the right of return has been employed by both sides as a deal breaker. It is no different today.
Secure in the knowledge that the right of return can no more be denied than freedom of speech or the right to a living wage, let it be settled in the uncertain future. Let today belong to peace and Palestinian sovereignty.
LI: That concludes the foreign policy portion of the interview. Do you have any questions?
JR: Did I pass the test?
LI: The results will be tabulated and the findings released at an appropriate time.
JR: Does anyone pass?
LI: That information is confidential.
JR: Jazz.
JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE APPEARED ON DISSIDENT VOICE, THE ALBION MONITOR, BUZZLE, PEACE-EARTH-JUSTICE AND COUNTERPUNCH.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Flashing the Hash at the Watergate: Parts 1-4 by Chris Mansel
[Editor's Note: If he isn't tamed by the system or swallowed by the beast, Chris Mansel is on his way to becoming the next Hunter S. Thompson. Give it a read and look for more from The Mind of Mansel...]
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate: Part One.
Television news crews surround the steps of the courthouse as Scooter Libby begins a slow walk to his car after another day of testimony. Down the street looking like a moth eaten turtle in a helmet of burnt hair sits Karl Rove slipping rounds into an eighteen shot clip. Cursing quietly under his breath Rove ponders erratically the choice of taking out the cause of the spotlight on him or empty the clip into his face.
Jack Random and I were strolling by having recently relocated to Virginia to research a book on terror warnings, bank defaults and their ties to the white supremacist movement. I noticed Rove slamming his weapon into the dash of the car and just as I leveled the camera lens Rove hit the accelerator and sped down the street in reverse. The press up the street hardly took notice having heard the sounds of violence in the streets of Washington before.
Scooter Libby made his way out of the courthouse to his car. The press following and asking questions but not expecting any response. Like prison guards watching the monotony of inmates coming and going they hardly notice when a guard is attacked and the alarm doesn’t sound but the alarm will sound for Rove soon enough.
We tracked him to the Watergate Hotel and down the stairs into a conference room. Jack stood by the door with a high-powered microphone to eavesdrop on whatever was going on. I questioned the hotel staff tipping those on the lowest rungs of the pay scale and threatening with expulsion those who never got their hands dirty. Jack captured the goods and came back out to the car to play back the tape and as he hit rewind secret service agents surrounded the car. We showed our hands and they drew their weapons. Exiting the vehicle we were asked for identification. Some time ago we had made two press I.D.’s that showed we worked for the Washington Times that is owned by the Rev. Sun Yung Moon, a name that would open any door in the city of Washington, certainly the beltway. As we were held against the car we noticed Libby driving by in a taxi and exiting into the Watergate.
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part two)
Fear looks like hope in the tall grass and that’s where we were, two inches of steel surrounded by a hard durable casing, the smell of cordite, and the kind of smell you recognize that the weapon has been recently fired. Secret Service agents who when they surround someone begin chattering on their communication devices and slamming themselves in place. They took a few minutes to analyze the fake identifications we showed them and slowly there was a look of recognition in the lead agents face. If I didn’t know better I thought the c*cksucker was going to drop to the street and begin his prostrations. I noticed a scar behind his right ear and Jack saw it too. It was the mark of a true believer, a West Pointer. Somewhere along the line he had been burned by something, he had known the smell of human flesh being singed into an emblem.
A huge crowd had gathered around us, a crowd of civilians. The agents knew he had to save face so he immediately started ordering his agents to make way for us and reducing the citizenry to a mass of insecurities. Their violent wand of intimidation about no cameras or questions led those around us to believe we were important. I could sense the onlookers squinting their eyes and trying to remember what we looked like so as to be able to identify us if we ever showed up on the news.
After the melee Jack retrieved the recorder from the car and we quickly made our way into the Watergate. Slamming into a booth in the bar we began to listen back to the tape.
We knew we had to try and hunt up Libby but first we wanted to hear what we had managed to capture on tape. The following is what we were able to transcribe.
Two or three agents will be enough.
The word is out on the limos and Duke (Cunningham) has f*cked that for us.
Hell we could get some pickup for that matter. If anyone can operate a shifter on the column it’s a hooker.
How much you think it would take to get the old Arab to squat over Durbin and piss?
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part three)
In the bar we met up with a photographer who had been staying at the Watergate at the behest of the manager of the hotel in order to photograph the renovation. He was paid a flat fee and given a room at the end of a hallway on the first floor. He explained to us that more than once he had been accosted by the Secret Service for what they describe as “loitering with intent.” He explained that he had overheard some of the recording and with a smile added that maybe we might be interested in some of the photographs he had taken around the hotel. Something in the way he said this made us believe that there was something more to these photos. He opened the satchel in front of him and we joined him in his booth.
The photographs were amazing. Some were of the hospital staff in compromising situations, photos of the restoration included the construction workers smoking pot and generally laying around on the job out of sight of the hotel surveillance system. As we looked Jack asked if he had anything more official, and with that question he lit up and turned towards the back of the collection to reveal covert photos of the Secret Service removing stuff from hotel rooms. In one of the photos a Secret Service agent carries a life-size sex doll made into an exact replica of G. Gordon Liddy. In another, an agent was holding a drunken Scooter Libby against the wall while he awaited the elevator.
Jack leapt to his feet and stormed over to the bar and grabbed at the phone to make a call. The bartender came down the bar and said something to Jack that I didn’t hear and Jack screamed, “If you’re mother was in this kind of situation you’d be on this side of the bar asshole!” The bartender who had seen many crazed looks like the one in Jack’s eyes (many from politicians) sulked back down to his newspaper.
“News desk! Hey. Mike! What would you do for a photograph of Scooter Libby being sodomized by an agent?”
The photographer looked at Jack and back down at the photograph and then to me.
“Well, you know the darkroom can do many things but these days a fraud can be spotted right away.”
I told him that it didn’t matter if the story was true or the photograph genuine. As long as it existed and was leaked in the right way it would show up on the news and get picked up by the wires.
I added, “If bullshit was the ration card of power the entirety of Washington would be bent over backwards digging corn.”
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part four)
As we left the bar we saw a group of Secret Service agents running to the salon located in the Watergate. We followed behind them to see a drunken Scooter Libby rubbing mud on his face and screaming about a free facial. Karl Rove was standing across the room talking into his cell phone. The Secret Service stormed into the room and Libby twirled the chair around at them and grabbing the terrified makeup attendant he started spitting on her neck and rubbing it in and screaming in a voice reminiscent of Truman Capote, “Isn’t it pretty, isn’t it pretty!”
The agents tackled the lady and Libby and began kicking them both. Rove sat down at the front desk and began flipping through the call caddy and copying down the names. One agent turned to secure the area and noticed us photographing the scene. The agent grimaced and started toward us but he slipped in the blood pouring from the woman’s forehead.
We ran down the hallway and were almost out of the hotel when Jack suggested we head for the conference room Rove had just left. We ran across the lobby and through the door. Down the stairs we met by a cleaning crew. We flashed our I.D.’s and took the garbage bag from them for inspection. They could have cared less why we needed it or for our identifications.
Back in the car I eased into traffic as Jack fished through the bag. He began laughing hysterically when he found a list of congressmen who had participated in the Duke Cunningham hooker scandal. Rove had the names circled and beside several of the names were amounts of money and personal phone numbers. One name in particular hit us more than others: Matt Drudge.
- Chris Mansel
SEE THE MANSEL REPORT.
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate: Part One.
Television news crews surround the steps of the courthouse as Scooter Libby begins a slow walk to his car after another day of testimony. Down the street looking like a moth eaten turtle in a helmet of burnt hair sits Karl Rove slipping rounds into an eighteen shot clip. Cursing quietly under his breath Rove ponders erratically the choice of taking out the cause of the spotlight on him or empty the clip into his face.
Jack Random and I were strolling by having recently relocated to Virginia to research a book on terror warnings, bank defaults and their ties to the white supremacist movement. I noticed Rove slamming his weapon into the dash of the car and just as I leveled the camera lens Rove hit the accelerator and sped down the street in reverse. The press up the street hardly took notice having heard the sounds of violence in the streets of Washington before.
Scooter Libby made his way out of the courthouse to his car. The press following and asking questions but not expecting any response. Like prison guards watching the monotony of inmates coming and going they hardly notice when a guard is attacked and the alarm doesn’t sound but the alarm will sound for Rove soon enough.
We tracked him to the Watergate Hotel and down the stairs into a conference room. Jack stood by the door with a high-powered microphone to eavesdrop on whatever was going on. I questioned the hotel staff tipping those on the lowest rungs of the pay scale and threatening with expulsion those who never got their hands dirty. Jack captured the goods and came back out to the car to play back the tape and as he hit rewind secret service agents surrounded the car. We showed our hands and they drew their weapons. Exiting the vehicle we were asked for identification. Some time ago we had made two press I.D.’s that showed we worked for the Washington Times that is owned by the Rev. Sun Yung Moon, a name that would open any door in the city of Washington, certainly the beltway. As we were held against the car we noticed Libby driving by in a taxi and exiting into the Watergate.
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part two)
Fear looks like hope in the tall grass and that’s where we were, two inches of steel surrounded by a hard durable casing, the smell of cordite, and the kind of smell you recognize that the weapon has been recently fired. Secret Service agents who when they surround someone begin chattering on their communication devices and slamming themselves in place. They took a few minutes to analyze the fake identifications we showed them and slowly there was a look of recognition in the lead agents face. If I didn’t know better I thought the c*cksucker was going to drop to the street and begin his prostrations. I noticed a scar behind his right ear and Jack saw it too. It was the mark of a true believer, a West Pointer. Somewhere along the line he had been burned by something, he had known the smell of human flesh being singed into an emblem.
A huge crowd had gathered around us, a crowd of civilians. The agents knew he had to save face so he immediately started ordering his agents to make way for us and reducing the citizenry to a mass of insecurities. Their violent wand of intimidation about no cameras or questions led those around us to believe we were important. I could sense the onlookers squinting their eyes and trying to remember what we looked like so as to be able to identify us if we ever showed up on the news.
After the melee Jack retrieved the recorder from the car and we quickly made our way into the Watergate. Slamming into a booth in the bar we began to listen back to the tape.
We knew we had to try and hunt up Libby but first we wanted to hear what we had managed to capture on tape. The following is what we were able to transcribe.
Two or three agents will be enough.
The word is out on the limos and Duke (Cunningham) has f*cked that for us.
Hell we could get some pickup for that matter. If anyone can operate a shifter on the column it’s a hooker.
How much you think it would take to get the old Arab to squat over Durbin and piss?
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part three)
In the bar we met up with a photographer who had been staying at the Watergate at the behest of the manager of the hotel in order to photograph the renovation. He was paid a flat fee and given a room at the end of a hallway on the first floor. He explained to us that more than once he had been accosted by the Secret Service for what they describe as “loitering with intent.” He explained that he had overheard some of the recording and with a smile added that maybe we might be interested in some of the photographs he had taken around the hotel. Something in the way he said this made us believe that there was something more to these photos. He opened the satchel in front of him and we joined him in his booth.
The photographs were amazing. Some were of the hospital staff in compromising situations, photos of the restoration included the construction workers smoking pot and generally laying around on the job out of sight of the hotel surveillance system. As we looked Jack asked if he had anything more official, and with that question he lit up and turned towards the back of the collection to reveal covert photos of the Secret Service removing stuff from hotel rooms. In one of the photos a Secret Service agent carries a life-size sex doll made into an exact replica of G. Gordon Liddy. In another, an agent was holding a drunken Scooter Libby against the wall while he awaited the elevator.
Jack leapt to his feet and stormed over to the bar and grabbed at the phone to make a call. The bartender came down the bar and said something to Jack that I didn’t hear and Jack screamed, “If you’re mother was in this kind of situation you’d be on this side of the bar asshole!” The bartender who had seen many crazed looks like the one in Jack’s eyes (many from politicians) sulked back down to his newspaper.
“News desk! Hey. Mike! What would you do for a photograph of Scooter Libby being sodomized by an agent?”
The photographer looked at Jack and back down at the photograph and then to me.
“Well, you know the darkroom can do many things but these days a fraud can be spotted right away.”
I told him that it didn’t matter if the story was true or the photograph genuine. As long as it existed and was leaked in the right way it would show up on the news and get picked up by the wires.
I added, “If bullshit was the ration card of power the entirety of Washington would be bent over backwards digging corn.”
Flashing The Hash at the Watergate (part four)
As we left the bar we saw a group of Secret Service agents running to the salon located in the Watergate. We followed behind them to see a drunken Scooter Libby rubbing mud on his face and screaming about a free facial. Karl Rove was standing across the room talking into his cell phone. The Secret Service stormed into the room and Libby twirled the chair around at them and grabbing the terrified makeup attendant he started spitting on her neck and rubbing it in and screaming in a voice reminiscent of Truman Capote, “Isn’t it pretty, isn’t it pretty!”
The agents tackled the lady and Libby and began kicking them both. Rove sat down at the front desk and began flipping through the call caddy and copying down the names. One agent turned to secure the area and noticed us photographing the scene. The agent grimaced and started toward us but he slipped in the blood pouring from the woman’s forehead.
We ran down the hallway and were almost out of the hotel when Jack suggested we head for the conference room Rove had just left. We ran across the lobby and through the door. Down the stairs we met by a cleaning crew. We flashed our I.D.’s and took the garbage bag from them for inspection. They could have cared less why we needed it or for our identifications.
Back in the car I eased into traffic as Jack fished through the bag. He began laughing hysterically when he found a list of congressmen who had participated in the Duke Cunningham hooker scandal. Rove had the names circled and beside several of the names were amounts of money and personal phone numbers. One name in particular hit us more than others: Matt Drudge.
- Chris Mansel
SEE THE MANSEL REPORT.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Maggots For The Prosecution (for Bob Kincaid)
(from The Mind of Chris Mansel)
At long last the bloody scarred hand of seething animal skin inhibition has finally escaped the last or more current beast that is America. Marchers of illegal aliens, the discussion to remove the all-seeing eye of the live feed, the camera from the White House press room and the first indecision and false start attempt to reap blood from the tragedy of September 11 have all come into view.
Pennies over the eyes of trauma victims and the incoming devastation in New Orleans this hurricane season, the requests for former FEMA manager Michael Brown for interviews, face time, leads the citizen of the world to strike back with words but not votes. It is no longer enough to kill a mockingbird; today you must define that act of violence by downed power lines and residue from discharging the weapon.
Like the German army in the Russian snow we have become the bodies thrown across ox carts like Napoleon except these bodies travel in first class with unseen American flags falling from the skies, the thread of fabric catching on every wire service radar. Bats hang in desolation waiting for darkness to jump out like political consultants, precinct captains in the mid-term elections to label the war as high gas prices and not body bags. The winning of Iraqi hearts and minds left to postmortem explanations.
- Chris Mansel (see The Mansel Report)
At long last the bloody scarred hand of seething animal skin inhibition has finally escaped the last or more current beast that is America. Marchers of illegal aliens, the discussion to remove the all-seeing eye of the live feed, the camera from the White House press room and the first indecision and false start attempt to reap blood from the tragedy of September 11 have all come into view.
Pennies over the eyes of trauma victims and the incoming devastation in New Orleans this hurricane season, the requests for former FEMA manager Michael Brown for interviews, face time, leads the citizen of the world to strike back with words but not votes. It is no longer enough to kill a mockingbird; today you must define that act of violence by downed power lines and residue from discharging the weapon.
Like the German army in the Russian snow we have become the bodies thrown across ox carts like Napoleon except these bodies travel in first class with unseen American flags falling from the skies, the thread of fabric catching on every wire service radar. Bats hang in desolation waiting for darkness to jump out like political consultants, precinct captains in the mid-term elections to label the war as high gas prices and not body bags. The winning of Iraqi hearts and minds left to postmortem explanations.
- Chris Mansel (see The Mansel Report)
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Ravaged and Bruised At Sea Level
(from the Mind of Mansel)
The great suede back split vein shiny headed fiend that is Scott McClellan left the White House the other day and strode off into the private sector as the U.S. press core gathered to cover him in spit and to urinate on the tires of his four door tan sedan as it wheeled through the traffic of Washington. A few blocks down the street away from the barricades he had enjoyed for so long and into the crime riddled streets that even the press core shies away from and he was instantly recognized as the man who had crouched in the alley behind a YMCA basement window six weeks before.
My partner and I Jack Random scuttled towards the gates of hell known as Camp David and awaited the roar of the presidential helicopter to thrush at the bending trees that scatter the garbage cans of the locals into the streets. We interviewed the locals until we were escorted to a narrow passageway through the governmental hedgerow and were exposed to the latest installments of hi-tech weaponry being used to combat the unwanted advances of the president's cabinet upon those senate and congressional pages who could not find more honest work in the Washington subways.
- Chris Mansel
The great suede back split vein shiny headed fiend that is Scott McClellan left the White House the other day and strode off into the private sector as the U.S. press core gathered to cover him in spit and to urinate on the tires of his four door tan sedan as it wheeled through the traffic of Washington. A few blocks down the street away from the barricades he had enjoyed for so long and into the crime riddled streets that even the press core shies away from and he was instantly recognized as the man who had crouched in the alley behind a YMCA basement window six weeks before.
My partner and I Jack Random scuttled towards the gates of hell known as Camp David and awaited the roar of the presidential helicopter to thrush at the bending trees that scatter the garbage cans of the locals into the streets. We interviewed the locals until we were escorted to a narrow passageway through the governmental hedgerow and were exposed to the latest installments of hi-tech weaponry being used to combat the unwanted advances of the president's cabinet upon those senate and congressional pages who could not find more honest work in the Washington subways.
- Chris Mansel
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Home Run Bonds!
RANDOM JACK – DISSEMINATE FREELY.
Aaron, Ali, Robinson, Armstrong & Bonds:
An Open Letter to Bonds Haters
You love to hate Barry Bonds and even a Giants fan has been known to throw a few curses in his direction but when the whole world turns against him, as if he were the reason for America’s decline, for an unfathomable debt, for the steady slide in working wages, for the brutal cuts in social services, for the inaccessibility of medical coverage, for the price of gasoline, for the browning of our environment, for the poisoning of our water, for the neglect of our children’s education, for the destruction of New Orleans, for the wasting of our values, for the loss of American pride, and for the catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan, then by god I’ll stand up for Barry Bonds.
You don’t like it when we compare Bonds to the great Babe Ruth but for the years 2001-2004 Bonds posted numbers against juiced pitchers and juiced competitors a full two standard deviations above the norm.
You don’t like it when we rate Bonds among the elite players who ever played the game but for the two decades of his career there is no one who even begins to compare.
Baseball fans are strange and fickle creatures. You love the numbers when they support your point of view but ignore them when they do not. Who among you did not marvel at Brady Anderson’s 50 home run season? Who among you did not bow to Ken Caminiti’s MVP season? Who among you did not stand and cheer the great home run chase of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire? Are their accomplishments any less today?
Step out of baseball for a moment. The comparison that should hit home is Lance Armstrong to Barry Bonds. In the world of contemporary sports, only Armstrong, Gretsky, Jordan and Tiger Woods rise to the level of Bonds’ accomplishments. The evidence of Armstrong’s “blood doping” is every bit as strong as the evidence against Bonds. Neither Armstrong nor Bonds ever failed a drug test.
Why are there no politicians or sports writers clamoring for an investigation of Lance Armstrong? Why are there no Grand Jury witch-hunts?
You don’t like it when we compare Barry Bonds to the immortal Jackie Robinson but what Bonds is confronting today is bitter, ugly and un-American racism.
You don’t like it when we compare Barry Bonds to Mohammed Ali but the same ignorant threats directed at Bonds were once hurled at Ali.
You don’t like it when we compare Barry Bonds to Hank Aaron but even the Hammer knows: The same racist hate mongers who once clamored for his death are now out in force for Barry Bonds.
We no longer care what you think or how you explain it to your kids (what about Bonds’ kids?). You don’t like him? Fine. You don’t want your kids to admire him? Fine. But if you want to blame Bonds for everything that’s wrong with America, get real. Take a good long look at the man that 51% of you voted for to lead this nation.
He’s our player. Leave him alone.
Jazz.
Aaron, Ali, Robinson, Armstrong & Bonds:
An Open Letter to Bonds Haters
You love to hate Barry Bonds and even a Giants fan has been known to throw a few curses in his direction but when the whole world turns against him, as if he were the reason for America’s decline, for an unfathomable debt, for the steady slide in working wages, for the brutal cuts in social services, for the inaccessibility of medical coverage, for the price of gasoline, for the browning of our environment, for the poisoning of our water, for the neglect of our children’s education, for the destruction of New Orleans, for the wasting of our values, for the loss of American pride, and for the catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan, then by god I’ll stand up for Barry Bonds.
You don’t like it when we compare Bonds to the great Babe Ruth but for the years 2001-2004 Bonds posted numbers against juiced pitchers and juiced competitors a full two standard deviations above the norm.
You don’t like it when we rate Bonds among the elite players who ever played the game but for the two decades of his career there is no one who even begins to compare.
Baseball fans are strange and fickle creatures. You love the numbers when they support your point of view but ignore them when they do not. Who among you did not marvel at Brady Anderson’s 50 home run season? Who among you did not bow to Ken Caminiti’s MVP season? Who among you did not stand and cheer the great home run chase of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire? Are their accomplishments any less today?
Step out of baseball for a moment. The comparison that should hit home is Lance Armstrong to Barry Bonds. In the world of contemporary sports, only Armstrong, Gretsky, Jordan and Tiger Woods rise to the level of Bonds’ accomplishments. The evidence of Armstrong’s “blood doping” is every bit as strong as the evidence against Bonds. Neither Armstrong nor Bonds ever failed a drug test.
Why are there no politicians or sports writers clamoring for an investigation of Lance Armstrong? Why are there no Grand Jury witch-hunts?
You don’t like it when we compare Barry Bonds to the immortal Jackie Robinson but what Bonds is confronting today is bitter, ugly and un-American racism.
You don’t like it when we compare Barry Bonds to Mohammed Ali but the same ignorant threats directed at Bonds were once hurled at Ali.
You don’t like it when we compare Barry Bonds to Hank Aaron but even the Hammer knows: The same racist hate mongers who once clamored for his death are now out in force for Barry Bonds.
We no longer care what you think or how you explain it to your kids (what about Bonds’ kids?). You don’t like him? Fine. You don’t want your kids to admire him? Fine. But if you want to blame Bonds for everything that’s wrong with America, get real. Take a good long look at the man that 51% of you voted for to lead this nation.
He’s our player. Leave him alone.
Jazz.
Monday, April 17, 2006
SF Jazz, Karma & Human Nature
RANDOM JACK: DISSEMINATE FREELY.
Attending a concert at SF Jazz is always a pleasure – a momentary release from the hard driving pressures of an engaging life in interesting times.
Sometimes you get more than you bargained.
This was my third SF Jazz Collective experience and each has been a memorable evening of masterful musicians finding their groove and driving it home. The concert, featuring director Joshua Redman (sax), Bobby Hutcherson (vibes), Nicolas Payton (trumpet), Miguel Zenon (sax, flute), Andre Hayward (trombone), Renee Rosnes (piano), Matt Penman (bass) and Eric Harland (drums), performing original compositions and selected works of Herbie Hancock, was superb.
Jazz played well has the power to take you to a distant landscape where none of the rules apply. It is structured anarchy, ordered disorder, and harmony in the realm of discord.
Jazz is the music of dissent and rebellion. As chronicled, it was the rhythm of the Velvet Revolution in Prague. Jazz was condemned and banished by the imperial overlords of the Soviet empire before the fall, fearful that it would lead to independent thought. Jazz is why white America could not discount the cultural and intellectual contributions of black America. Jazz is the heartbeat of the nation – its pride and its mystery – and jazz is why we can never forget what happened to New Orleans – not in a million years.
But the legacy of jazz was not what preoccupied my mind as I drove the moonlit highways home Saturday night. It was what happened before and after the concert.
As concert time approached, I was still circling off Van Ness, trying to find a parking lot. I found one close to the theatre but it was unattended and the machine refused to accept my money. A gentleman in ragged clothes approached to offer assistance. I hand him my bills and watched him fiddle with the machine unsuccessfully. He told me, if I was in a hurry, he would take care of it.
As I locked my car, I saw a sign above the entry, warning me not to trust anyone posing as an attendant. I said to the man: “You’re sure? They’re not going to tow my car, are they?” He waved me off and gave assurances.
I walked on to the theatre, figuring that I would have hell to pay. Once before, I had my car towed in San Francisco. Worse than the fees and fines are the hours of waiting in a cold and frigid building that slowly and inevitably drags you down to a level of mutual misery.
I managed to shake off the distraction, the second-guessing, the dread of that probable experience long enough to enjoy the concert. When the encore was finished, the gloom descended as I made my way to the car.
A gentleman in rough if not ragged clothes asked me if I could afford a handout. I told him truthfully I had no more ones. He offered “three for five” and I replied truthfully I had no fives. He said it was his birthday and he was thirty-six years old.
He summoned the number nine (those who understand will understand, those who don’t will not) and I offered up a ten.
Resuming my walk, I wondered if it was karmic test.
I found my car where I had parked it – much to my amazement. The gentleman who had promised to take care of it had kept his word. He found an old parking pass and placed it on my windshield. Apparently, it did the trick.
I wanted to thank him but he was not to be found. Anyway, it might be a little awkward.
Lessons learned. You cannot judge a man by his costume or station in life.
Jazz.
SEE DISSIDENT VOICE FOR LATEST CHRONICLE: Designated Fall Guy: Replacing Rummy.
Attending a concert at SF Jazz is always a pleasure – a momentary release from the hard driving pressures of an engaging life in interesting times.
Sometimes you get more than you bargained.
This was my third SF Jazz Collective experience and each has been a memorable evening of masterful musicians finding their groove and driving it home. The concert, featuring director Joshua Redman (sax), Bobby Hutcherson (vibes), Nicolas Payton (trumpet), Miguel Zenon (sax, flute), Andre Hayward (trombone), Renee Rosnes (piano), Matt Penman (bass) and Eric Harland (drums), performing original compositions and selected works of Herbie Hancock, was superb.
Jazz played well has the power to take you to a distant landscape where none of the rules apply. It is structured anarchy, ordered disorder, and harmony in the realm of discord.
Jazz is the music of dissent and rebellion. As chronicled, it was the rhythm of the Velvet Revolution in Prague. Jazz was condemned and banished by the imperial overlords of the Soviet empire before the fall, fearful that it would lead to independent thought. Jazz is why white America could not discount the cultural and intellectual contributions of black America. Jazz is the heartbeat of the nation – its pride and its mystery – and jazz is why we can never forget what happened to New Orleans – not in a million years.
But the legacy of jazz was not what preoccupied my mind as I drove the moonlit highways home Saturday night. It was what happened before and after the concert.
As concert time approached, I was still circling off Van Ness, trying to find a parking lot. I found one close to the theatre but it was unattended and the machine refused to accept my money. A gentleman in ragged clothes approached to offer assistance. I hand him my bills and watched him fiddle with the machine unsuccessfully. He told me, if I was in a hurry, he would take care of it.
As I locked my car, I saw a sign above the entry, warning me not to trust anyone posing as an attendant. I said to the man: “You’re sure? They’re not going to tow my car, are they?” He waved me off and gave assurances.
I walked on to the theatre, figuring that I would have hell to pay. Once before, I had my car towed in San Francisco. Worse than the fees and fines are the hours of waiting in a cold and frigid building that slowly and inevitably drags you down to a level of mutual misery.
I managed to shake off the distraction, the second-guessing, the dread of that probable experience long enough to enjoy the concert. When the encore was finished, the gloom descended as I made my way to the car.
A gentleman in rough if not ragged clothes asked me if I could afford a handout. I told him truthfully I had no more ones. He offered “three for five” and I replied truthfully I had no fives. He said it was his birthday and he was thirty-six years old.
He summoned the number nine (those who understand will understand, those who don’t will not) and I offered up a ten.
Resuming my walk, I wondered if it was karmic test.
I found my car where I had parked it – much to my amazement. The gentleman who had promised to take care of it had kept his word. He found an old parking pass and placed it on my windshield. Apparently, it did the trick.
I wanted to thank him but he was not to be found. Anyway, it might be a little awkward.
Lessons learned. You cannot judge a man by his costume or station in life.
Jazz.
SEE DISSIDENT VOICE FOR LATEST CHRONICLE: Designated Fall Guy: Replacing Rummy.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
BIG DADDY BOYS
RANDOM JACK: DISSEMINATE FREELY.
What Have You Got to Hide?
We all remember the Big Daddy Boys, the ones who always supported their government, the ones who christened such memorable phrases as “My Country, Right or Wrong!” and “America: Love it or Leave it!”
We remember the days when the military was welcome on college campuses and no one laughed when someone said, “He’s still the president.”
Remember what the Big Daddy Boys always used to say, whether the inquiry was about registering for the draft, marijuana or jay walking: “All you need to know is: It’s the law.”
They don’t say that any more.
They used to say you could never trust a man who looks you straight in the eyes and lies through his teeth.
They don’t say that any more.
When Ronnie Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover and Tricky Dick Nixon wanted to keep dossiers on everyone in America, the Big Daddy Boys chimed in harmony: “What have you got to hide?”
Time to turn it around: If the NSA has only spied on Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda associates and Al Qaeda affiliates, what was the problem in getting a warrant from the FISA court? I am no expert on intelligence gathering but I would guess it takes all of thirty seconds to get a warrant to listen in on an Al Qaeda member talking to someone in the USA.
How often are we expected to believe Al Qaeda calls someone in this country: Every day, a thousand times a day?
As for affiliates and associates, those are concepts that go a long way: All subscribers to Al Jazeera, anyone who tapped the news service, all who read an email from an imam in Spain, and all who tapped the website that posted it.
It is no great leap to see that the NSA warrantless domestic spying program can be used to spy on virtually anyone.
Mark it, post and save: This White House has a political enemies list and is using the NSA to destroy anyone who gets in the way. If not, what have they got to hide? Open the books. Let’s have a peek at who you’re spying on.
THERE IS NO FREEDOM WITHOUT THE RIGHT TO DISSENT.
What Have You Got to Hide?
We all remember the Big Daddy Boys, the ones who always supported their government, the ones who christened such memorable phrases as “My Country, Right or Wrong!” and “America: Love it or Leave it!”
We remember the days when the military was welcome on college campuses and no one laughed when someone said, “He’s still the president.”
Remember what the Big Daddy Boys always used to say, whether the inquiry was about registering for the draft, marijuana or jay walking: “All you need to know is: It’s the law.”
They don’t say that any more.
They used to say you could never trust a man who looks you straight in the eyes and lies through his teeth.
They don’t say that any more.
When Ronnie Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover and Tricky Dick Nixon wanted to keep dossiers on everyone in America, the Big Daddy Boys chimed in harmony: “What have you got to hide?”
Time to turn it around: If the NSA has only spied on Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda associates and Al Qaeda affiliates, what was the problem in getting a warrant from the FISA court? I am no expert on intelligence gathering but I would guess it takes all of thirty seconds to get a warrant to listen in on an Al Qaeda member talking to someone in the USA.
How often are we expected to believe Al Qaeda calls someone in this country: Every day, a thousand times a day?
As for affiliates and associates, those are concepts that go a long way: All subscribers to Al Jazeera, anyone who tapped the news service, all who read an email from an imam in Spain, and all who tapped the website that posted it.
It is no great leap to see that the NSA warrantless domestic spying program can be used to spy on virtually anyone.
Mark it, post and save: This White House has a political enemies list and is using the NSA to destroy anyone who gets in the way. If not, what have they got to hide? Open the books. Let’s have a peek at who you’re spying on.
THERE IS NO FREEDOM WITHOUT THE RIGHT TO DISSENT.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Libertad y Justicia para Todos!
(Para mis amigos y amigas en Espanol)
El pasos debajo es necesario para aliviar el aprieto de los inmigrantes (secondario, para resolver la problema de imigracion):
1. Documentacion para inmigrantes con no documentacion. El solucion obvio para imigracion ilegal es a legalizar. El razon ese trabajadores con no documentacion es no ese inmigrantes gusto a correr desde policia. Este es ese trabajadores con no documentacion tener no derechos legal. Inmigrantes con no documentacion recibir menos que sueldos minimo. Ellos y ellas es barato y disponible. Trabajadores con no documentacion es no necesario para pagar.
Cuando el corporacions dar documentacion por el inmigrantes, ellos deber pagar sueldos decente. Ellos deber proveer beneficios basica. Ellos no deber desconocer seguridad para trabajadores.
Cuando el corporacions comenzar pagar sueldos decente, Americanos querer buscar empleos semejante.
2. Definir y establecer el sueldos para vivo en Canada, America (norte), Mexico y otro nacions en America Central y Sur. Requerir nacions en todo para sorportar regulas de sueldo para vivo si calificar por estado preferencia en comercio.
3. Demoler el pared! Nosotros tener el derecho para saber quien es adentro el nacion. Nosotros poder requirir documentos cerca de destinacions: propietarios, directors de hotels, patrons y patronas.
Es no necesario para gastar billons de dolars en el pared de la borde sur. El pared bloquear como mucho para partir como para entrar. Nosotros haber cosas mucho mejor par gastar nuestro deniro: construir New Orleans, sevicio medico, educacion, sistemas para masa tranporte, energia salvo, exploracion de espacio, y minoria empleo.
El nacion en dueda no poder malgastar su dinero. Esta es verguenza de nacional.
Viva Chavez! Viva Mexicanos! Viva Americanos!
Libertad y justicia para todos!
SEE BUZZLE.COM FOR RECENT CHRONICLES.
El pasos debajo es necesario para aliviar el aprieto de los inmigrantes (secondario, para resolver la problema de imigracion):
1. Documentacion para inmigrantes con no documentacion. El solucion obvio para imigracion ilegal es a legalizar. El razon ese trabajadores con no documentacion es no ese inmigrantes gusto a correr desde policia. Este es ese trabajadores con no documentacion tener no derechos legal. Inmigrantes con no documentacion recibir menos que sueldos minimo. Ellos y ellas es barato y disponible. Trabajadores con no documentacion es no necesario para pagar.
Cuando el corporacions dar documentacion por el inmigrantes, ellos deber pagar sueldos decente. Ellos deber proveer beneficios basica. Ellos no deber desconocer seguridad para trabajadores.
Cuando el corporacions comenzar pagar sueldos decente, Americanos querer buscar empleos semejante.
2. Definir y establecer el sueldos para vivo en Canada, America (norte), Mexico y otro nacions en America Central y Sur. Requerir nacions en todo para sorportar regulas de sueldo para vivo si calificar por estado preferencia en comercio.
3. Demoler el pared! Nosotros tener el derecho para saber quien es adentro el nacion. Nosotros poder requirir documentos cerca de destinacions: propietarios, directors de hotels, patrons y patronas.
Es no necesario para gastar billons de dolars en el pared de la borde sur. El pared bloquear como mucho para partir como para entrar. Nosotros haber cosas mucho mejor par gastar nuestro deniro: construir New Orleans, sevicio medico, educacion, sistemas para masa tranporte, energia salvo, exploracion de espacio, y minoria empleo.
El nacion en dueda no poder malgastar su dinero. Esta es verguenza de nacional.
Viva Chavez! Viva Mexicanos! Viva Americanos!
Libertad y justicia para todos!
SEE BUZZLE.COM FOR RECENT CHRONICLES.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
THE RIGHTS OF LABOR
THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES – DISSEMINATE FREELY.
The Immigration Conundrum
By Jack Random
Americans scoff at the French as they protest a new labor law making it easy for employers to dismiss young workers without cause in the first two years of employment. We long ago sacrificed the rights of labor – job security rights, the right to a living wage, the right to organize in unions, the right to fair and impartial arbitration, the right to strike – and we expect others to passively do the same.
Lurking beneath the French labor dispute, which is nothing short of an attack on an already marginalized union movement, is the European immigration conundrum: a growing dependence on a second class labor force which is routinely denied all rights.
We are so enamored with the rights of our corporate masters that we denigrate anyone who stands for the rights of the worker.
Europe is at a crossroad: Trapped between the American neo-liberal model (let the market rule, labor laws and unions be damned!) and the modern European tradition of caring for the working class, the poor, the dispossessed, the infirm and unfortunate.
Somehow, Americans have difficulty making the connection between our own loss of skilled, secure middle class jobs and the methodical stripping away of labor protections in our own and other nations.
For so long now we have been duped into advocating against our own cause because we fail to recognize that we are members of the working class. The impoverished workers of other, less fortunate nations are who we used to be not so many years ago. They are who we will become again if the neo-liberal globalists have their way. Instead of holding our foreign brothers and sisters up, we have learned to be indifferent and dismissive. We have been conditioned to accept an inevitability of globalism on the terms offered by the neo-liberal ideologues, neglecting to observe that the model has been a dismal failure on both macro and micro economic scales.
Latin America has learned the value of an economy that strengthens the working class so that they are transformed into a consuming middle class. The European model has not failed; it has simply given up the struggle to cheap labor.
Already reduced to representing less than ten percent of the labor force, the neo-liberal administration of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin is attempting to finish the job of crushing the unions while pretending to open new opportunities for employment. Translation: Let them work in the French version of Wal Mart.
With the failure of the flawed and ultimately dishonest European Union constitution (a document that ignored the problem of cheap immigrant labor) and the revelations that both Germany and France aided the American invasion of Iraq with strategic intelligence, hope is waning that continental Europe will fulfill its promise as a counterpoint to American dominance and corporate neo-liberal globalism.
Only Spain has moved in the right direction by recognizing that labor rights are not the problem but the solution to the crisis that threatens all of European culture, its essential values and the underpinning of its social order. Spain, however, is only one nation and one nation cannot stand alone against the tidal wave of globalization.
It is apparent that Europe is no longer leading but following the American model. It is a model that has wreaked havoc all over the world and one that is doomed to failure for it eliminates the most essential component of a thriving economy: a prospering middle class.
Saddled by unimaginable debt and the debilitating combination of tax cuts for the elite and uncontrollable military spending, America will go down first. Soon America’s fate will be in the hands of its foreign creditors. When the chips are called in (as they inevitably must be), America will decline. She may well attempt to reclaim her glory by asserting her military might but, as all the world save a handful of neocons in Washington already know, the military dominance model failed decades if not centuries ago.
At that crossing, Europe will face a choice: Whether to blindly follow the American path of unrestricted, global free enterprise or to strike out in a new direction. If she chooses the former, she will inherit America’s former clientele, the international corporate monoliths, only to discover, as America did, that the clients have become the masters and the masters have become the slaves. She may suffer under an illusion of prosperity for a spell but the illusion will soon dissipate and the spectacle of spiral descent will be visited upon much of the world.
If she chooses a new path, she must discover an old friend.
America is afflicted with an impairment that Europe does not share. Americans are terrorized by words. What is cause for reflection and debate in European circles sends Americans into convulsive fits of madness. The mere mention of the word “socialism” shuts off all discourse, oblivious to the stone cold fact that America’s emergence from the Great Depression was largely a function of socialistic medicine.
If the world is to be saved from the coming fall, Europe must follow the path that is currently sweeping through Latin America in response the wholesale failures of neo-liberal globalism.
Far from the defunct Soviet model or the flawed Cuban model, we must find a way to blend the virtues of socialism with the vibrancy of capitalism. A viable economic system must be founded on an open social and political system that guarantees the fundamental rights of humankind, including the rights of labor.
It must be supported by an education system that sacrifices nationalistic propaganda in favor of the free flow of knowledge and information, a principle that must also be translated into a free and open press.
The Soviet Union did not fall because socialism failed. It fell because of its oppressive, closed political system, a system that fostered massive corruption, and an ideologically driven prohibition on free enterprise. We are now discovering that uncontrolled capitalism with an ideologically driven prohibition on government regulation and social safeguards is equally prone to corruption and preordained for demise.
If we are to avoid that failure and the catastrophic collapse that will follow, we must create a balance, a hybrid that allows for both equity and prosperity, individual innovation and social responsibility.
It begins with a rediscovery, reaffirmation and globalization of the inalienable rights of labor.
Jazz.
JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS).
The Immigration Conundrum
By Jack Random
Americans scoff at the French as they protest a new labor law making it easy for employers to dismiss young workers without cause in the first two years of employment. We long ago sacrificed the rights of labor – job security rights, the right to a living wage, the right to organize in unions, the right to fair and impartial arbitration, the right to strike – and we expect others to passively do the same.
Lurking beneath the French labor dispute, which is nothing short of an attack on an already marginalized union movement, is the European immigration conundrum: a growing dependence on a second class labor force which is routinely denied all rights.
We are so enamored with the rights of our corporate masters that we denigrate anyone who stands for the rights of the worker.
Europe is at a crossroad: Trapped between the American neo-liberal model (let the market rule, labor laws and unions be damned!) and the modern European tradition of caring for the working class, the poor, the dispossessed, the infirm and unfortunate.
Somehow, Americans have difficulty making the connection between our own loss of skilled, secure middle class jobs and the methodical stripping away of labor protections in our own and other nations.
For so long now we have been duped into advocating against our own cause because we fail to recognize that we are members of the working class. The impoverished workers of other, less fortunate nations are who we used to be not so many years ago. They are who we will become again if the neo-liberal globalists have their way. Instead of holding our foreign brothers and sisters up, we have learned to be indifferent and dismissive. We have been conditioned to accept an inevitability of globalism on the terms offered by the neo-liberal ideologues, neglecting to observe that the model has been a dismal failure on both macro and micro economic scales.
Latin America has learned the value of an economy that strengthens the working class so that they are transformed into a consuming middle class. The European model has not failed; it has simply given up the struggle to cheap labor.
Already reduced to representing less than ten percent of the labor force, the neo-liberal administration of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin is attempting to finish the job of crushing the unions while pretending to open new opportunities for employment. Translation: Let them work in the French version of Wal Mart.
With the failure of the flawed and ultimately dishonest European Union constitution (a document that ignored the problem of cheap immigrant labor) and the revelations that both Germany and France aided the American invasion of Iraq with strategic intelligence, hope is waning that continental Europe will fulfill its promise as a counterpoint to American dominance and corporate neo-liberal globalism.
Only Spain has moved in the right direction by recognizing that labor rights are not the problem but the solution to the crisis that threatens all of European culture, its essential values and the underpinning of its social order. Spain, however, is only one nation and one nation cannot stand alone against the tidal wave of globalization.
It is apparent that Europe is no longer leading but following the American model. It is a model that has wreaked havoc all over the world and one that is doomed to failure for it eliminates the most essential component of a thriving economy: a prospering middle class.
Saddled by unimaginable debt and the debilitating combination of tax cuts for the elite and uncontrollable military spending, America will go down first. Soon America’s fate will be in the hands of its foreign creditors. When the chips are called in (as they inevitably must be), America will decline. She may well attempt to reclaim her glory by asserting her military might but, as all the world save a handful of neocons in Washington already know, the military dominance model failed decades if not centuries ago.
At that crossing, Europe will face a choice: Whether to blindly follow the American path of unrestricted, global free enterprise or to strike out in a new direction. If she chooses the former, she will inherit America’s former clientele, the international corporate monoliths, only to discover, as America did, that the clients have become the masters and the masters have become the slaves. She may suffer under an illusion of prosperity for a spell but the illusion will soon dissipate and the spectacle of spiral descent will be visited upon much of the world.
If she chooses a new path, she must discover an old friend.
America is afflicted with an impairment that Europe does not share. Americans are terrorized by words. What is cause for reflection and debate in European circles sends Americans into convulsive fits of madness. The mere mention of the word “socialism” shuts off all discourse, oblivious to the stone cold fact that America’s emergence from the Great Depression was largely a function of socialistic medicine.
If the world is to be saved from the coming fall, Europe must follow the path that is currently sweeping through Latin America in response the wholesale failures of neo-liberal globalism.
Far from the defunct Soviet model or the flawed Cuban model, we must find a way to blend the virtues of socialism with the vibrancy of capitalism. A viable economic system must be founded on an open social and political system that guarantees the fundamental rights of humankind, including the rights of labor.
It must be supported by an education system that sacrifices nationalistic propaganda in favor of the free flow of knowledge and information, a principle that must also be translated into a free and open press.
The Soviet Union did not fall because socialism failed. It fell because of its oppressive, closed political system, a system that fostered massive corruption, and an ideologically driven prohibition on free enterprise. We are now discovering that uncontrolled capitalism with an ideologically driven prohibition on government regulation and social safeguards is equally prone to corruption and preordained for demise.
If we are to avoid that failure and the catastrophic collapse that will follow, we must create a balance, a hybrid that allows for both equity and prosperity, individual innovation and social responsibility.
It begins with a rediscovery, reaffirmation and globalization of the inalienable rights of labor.
Jazz.
JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS).
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
V FOR VENDETTA: CINEMATIC COURAGE FOR THE POST 911 WORLD
RANDOM JACK: DISSEMINATE FREELY.
V for Vendetta, the Wachowski brothers’ latest entry in the futuristic action genre, is the second act of true cinematic courage of the post 9-11 millennium – the first was Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott’s twelfth century crusader film. Unlike the later, Vendetta is destined to reach a mass audience.
Maybe it was still too soon for Kingdom to reach the masses. Maybe the people were not ready to accept historical truth – or maybe they just didn’t get it.
Vendetta is a masterful parable, a brilliant futuristic metaphor, and a logical projection of where current political trends may lead if allowed to grow and prosper.
The film includes four superb performances: Natalie Portman as the awakening activist, Stephen Rea as the Inspector, John Hurt as the Chancellor, and Hugo Weaving as the Shakespearean superman behind the Guy Fawkes mask.
If she had not done so already, Natalie Portman graduates from the Star Wars straightjacket to a first class dramatic actor. If you are not moved by her epiphany, you are immovable.
John Hurt oozes a menacing pathos. Stephen Rea enables us to understand the debilitating nature of mass consciousness and the liberating nature of transformation. Hugo Weaving is nothing short of astounding in conveying a depth of emotion from behind an unchanging, smiling face.
Director James McTeigue has created an astonishingly believable future that holds a mirror to our world and demands revelation. He has accomplished the most difficult trifecta of cinema: To simultaneously entertain, inform and instruct.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Jefferson could not have said it better.
“Remember, remember, the fifth of November!”
Jazz.
V for Vendetta, the Wachowski brothers’ latest entry in the futuristic action genre, is the second act of true cinematic courage of the post 9-11 millennium – the first was Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott’s twelfth century crusader film. Unlike the later, Vendetta is destined to reach a mass audience.
Maybe it was still too soon for Kingdom to reach the masses. Maybe the people were not ready to accept historical truth – or maybe they just didn’t get it.
Vendetta is a masterful parable, a brilliant futuristic metaphor, and a logical projection of where current political trends may lead if allowed to grow and prosper.
The film includes four superb performances: Natalie Portman as the awakening activist, Stephen Rea as the Inspector, John Hurt as the Chancellor, and Hugo Weaving as the Shakespearean superman behind the Guy Fawkes mask.
If she had not done so already, Natalie Portman graduates from the Star Wars straightjacket to a first class dramatic actor. If you are not moved by her epiphany, you are immovable.
John Hurt oozes a menacing pathos. Stephen Rea enables us to understand the debilitating nature of mass consciousness and the liberating nature of transformation. Hugo Weaving is nothing short of astounding in conveying a depth of emotion from behind an unchanging, smiling face.
Director James McTeigue has created an astonishingly believable future that holds a mirror to our world and demands revelation. He has accomplished the most difficult trifecta of cinema: To simultaneously entertain, inform and instruct.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Jefferson could not have said it better.
“Remember, remember, the fifth of November!”
Jazz.
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