For the record: From Name: Jim in TexasEmail Address: ———Comments: Noam Chomsky is a lying evil whore of Zarqawi’s murdering criminals and mass murdering lying tyrants like Fidel Castro, Kim Il Sung, and Saddam Hussein and we are going to send every last one of his leftwing Fascist thug’s to Hell. In a century from […]
DEAR LEADER’S FAITH IN DECEIT
The sane rationality of Noam Chomsky’s words and tone of voice offers a tonic to anyone who still has hopes for American idealism. Listening to him this morning on Democracy Now!, which broadcast a talk he gave recently in Santa Fe, N.M., I jotted down some notes. Chomsky, right, spoke about imperialism, Iraq, terrorism, pre-emptive […]
THE OTHER READING LIST
Matt Haber, in typical shallow fashion, has posted the titles of the other books on Georgie Boy’s reading list. Unlike the much-bruited “His Excellency: George Washington” by Joseph P. Ellis, “Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow, the holy Bible, Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons” and (who could forget?) Natan Sharansky’s “The Case for Democracy” — […]
WITH LIBERTY AND RETRIBUTION FOR ALL
When a majority of American voters re-installed Georgie Boy in the White House, it signalled not just a callous affirmation of his criminal regime, or a foul disregard of human rights at home and abroad, but most of all an overarching moral hypocrisy. Well, it’s payback time for the majority’s willingness to look the other […]
INCOMING
“We just got wired into the system.” Is this the future?
WELCOME TO THE DARK AGES
From Brian Urquhart’s “Extreme Makeover” in The New York Review of Books: In his recent book on the Scottish Enlightenment James Buchan writes of Edinburgh in the early eighteenth century, “Men and women were coming to suspect that knowledge acquired through skepticism might be more useful in this world below than knowledge ‘revealed’ by scripture.” […]
IN DEFENSE OF CAROL REED
Carol Reed was “a passable journeyman who could sometimes push a story along.” So sayeth Christopher Byron in The Sunday Times of London, referred to earlier. Jan — After Hitchcock left to work for Selznick, Carol Reed was the best director in England, and made some excellent movies before he went to war — “Midshipman […]
LET US COMPARE MYTHOLOGIES
I don’t even want to think about the state of our banana nation, so with apologies to Leonard Cohen for borrowing the title of his first book of poetry, here’s a comparison of three news stories that appeared earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post about […]
A JOYCEAN GROUNDHOG
Today is Groundhog Day and, as history has it, James Joyce‘s birthday. FINNEGANS BASH“Tell me now, then, is it your shadow,You’re seeking, Punxsutawney Phil?If so, you’d best be looking poorly,Else we’re stuck with the full winter’s drill.“Follow the modus op of that slackerFinnegan Seamus Patrick Dougherty(Who thumbed his nose at enslavement to duty)And hoist a […]
HONKY MYOPIA
Arts & Letters Daily is one of the Web’s great cultural boons. It is no more than a content aggregator, but its links provide some of the most intellectual articles for a general audience to read about literature, philosophy, history, sociology and science. I don’t mind that the site leans strongly to the libertarian right. […]
KEEPING AMERICA BEAUTIFUL
Dontcha just love it? PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) — The American Nazi Party has volunteered to pick up trash along a quiet stretch of rural road in Oregon state, causing an uproar after getting a sign placed there crediting its work. And they’ve got some fine little helpers. The sign, on a quiet stretch of road […]
THE GREATEST CYNIC OF ALL
As long as I’m posting messages from friends and messages about movies, here’s one about another movie (more or less) from another friend, a guy who calls himself Mr. Cheer, whom I’d tipped to Christopher Bray’s review of Clinton Heylin’s new book, “Despite the System: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood Studios,” in the Sunday (London) […]
SCHECTER CALLING ALL FANS
Filmmaker Danny Schechter‘s latest flick, “Weapons of Mass Deception,” will be released later this week. Have a look at the 30-second TV spot to be aired in New York on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. He sends this message: Dear friends, I am writing to friends, colleagues, and anyone I can think [of who] might be […]
SIRHAN SIRHAN: ‘MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE’?
Sirhan Sirhan joined a conservationist suit, as noted in December, to preserve the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Why? Because he and his lawyers believe that bullets still lodged in the hotel walls would prove he was not Kennedy’s assassin. (Sirhan, below, in 1997.) Now comes news that he […]
DOWNTOWN TRANSCENDENTALISM
Jan — A few days ago Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner pointed out that women seemed to represent about 50 percent of the downtown electronic music composers. I wondered why there seem to be more women in that scene (if there are). I speculated that it might be because the downtowners have possibly rejected the concept of the […]
SECRET SECRETS
Still rolling along as it has been all week, yesterday’s Democracy Now! broadcast was another stunner, this time featuring an interview with William Arkin, whose new book, “Code Names,” exposes the obsessive secrecy of the U.S. government and its apotheosis under the current regime. Arkin, at right, a longtime investigative journalist and military-affairs analyst, has […]
BORIS LURIE’S ‘NO!ART’ & THE HOLOCAUST
By Jan Herman Today, when the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau is recalled with “the mournful whistle of an imaginary [death] train,” the little-known No!Art art of Boris Lurie looms like a signal from the remembered depths. See, for example, his “Red Shit Sculpture” (below), or “Immigrant’s Box”, or “New York-Rumbula” (bottom), or “Bowl of Chains,” or […]