French--cuisine, that is
Another gathering of creative cooks last night. Officially these are supposed to be Friday night gatherings, but some hosts opt for Saturday. I think I'll do that, too. I made Tarte Médiévale. Turned out nice, too. But as it is just custard, if I make it again I won't bake it in crust. The crust really soaks up a lot of filling.
So, last weekend I saw The Queen. Very good movie. I think that takes care of all the movies I want to see.
The Queen, never less royal, has never seemed so real. Perhaps Johnny Rotten got it half right. Perhaps, after all, she isn’t what she seems.
--Shari L. Rosenblum
Stephen Frears, the director, has made several wonderful films about conflicts and harmonies in the British class system (My Beautiful Laundrette, Dirty Pretty Things, Prick Up Your Ears), and "The Queen," of course, represents the ultimate contrast. No one is more upper class than the queen, and Tony Blair is profoundly middle class.
--Roger Ebert
It's the perfect metaphor for his presidency really: he gets behind the wheel, has no idea what he's doing, lurches forward into crowd of panicked onlookers, and then laughs at the bedlam unfolding around him. No wonder that 58% of Americans in a recent poll said they wished the man-child president would take a hike already.
--Democratic Underground
The great tragedy of the genocide of the native Americans, beyond its cruel injustice, is in its utter waste of human potential: the America that could have been. Though the Indians' ecological ethic has at times been overstated, what is incontestable is that over the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, they lived relatively healthy lives and sustained a healthy population on the continent for many centuries, a population that indeed affected its landscape but sustained a natural bounty of surprising diversity. In a time when we are constantly reminded of the limits of human civilization for sustaining itself in a viable biosphere, a dose of the Native American conservation ethic could even today serve us well indeed.
--Dave Neiwert
Everything you've been told about Iraq is a pack of lies, and the powers that be seem to think we're all stupid enough to be conned again. We can't trust our elected representatives to carry out the will of the people. They're been bought and sold, and have just proven it. For all practical purposes, a coup d'etat has taken place.
Tony Swindell
My favourite line of the week came from the "security source"--just how one becomes a "security source" remains a mystery to me--who announced: "Terrorists are always looking for new ways to strike terror... There is no end of the possibilities where terrorists can try to cause terror to the public." Well, you could have fooled me.
--Robert Fisk
The film does not attempt to give us a full account of the reasons for the strife; it shows us the “what” and the “how,” but not the “why.” Like numerous other films about political and social tragedies in Africa, it fails in this respect and thus portrays the events that befall the Sudanese, specifically the Lost Boys from the Dinka tribe, rather superficially. As far as the film is concerned, one group decided to oppress another, and that’s that. But much more has been at stake in the Sudanese tragedy, and oil has played no small part in it.
--Ramon Valle
Sudan is also an oil-rich and strategically located state. However, the rising power that has secured the greatest influence in the country is China. Beijing’s attempts to develop political and economic influence in Africa is viewed as a threat in both the US and Europe. The moral outrage over Darfur is a convenient means for undermining Chinese influence and providing the US and its allies with a pretext if a broader military intervention is deemed necessary.
--James Cogan
The Pentagon's new batch of "warrior intellectuals" and counterinsurgency aces dripping with PhDs have begun their Baghdad strike--but so has the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance), which, according to the Islammemo website, is now polishing its own counter-plan against "Safavid-American aggression." "Safavids" is a common Sunni reference to the Persian dynasty that converted Iraq to Shi'ism in the 16th century.
--Pepe Escobar
Fear, Distraction, Hypnosis and the National Attention Span by Carol Warner Christen
Grover Norquist’s frank admission is simply more evidence the neocons will go full tilt boogie on Iran. Of course, this should not be surprising, at least to those of us who have known for some time now that the neocons mean what they say and say what they mean and this will translate horrifically into a whole lot of dead people.
--Kurt Nimmo
The line Bush is taking is actually rather similar to what the people who support al-Qaeda say, which is to blame whatever happens on the Shia side on Iran--to say the Shia are pawns of the Iranians, if not actual Iranians. It's almost something that could appear on the al-Qaeda Web site, because that's their argument.
--Patrick Cockburn (interviewed by Lee Sustar)
The way the U.S. media has reported the "battle" of Zarqa is a virtual replay of the kind of reporting that characterized the run-up to the Iraq War. The media seems to be taking a chillingly similar tack in its reporting about "Iranian interference" in Iraq. For instance, a recent story in The New York Times reports that Iran may have been involved in the recent kidnapping and murder of five Americans. But the story presents nothing but a series of unnamed sources and speculations.
--Conn Hallinan
Pappe ... particularly mentions two of Nur Masalha's important books--Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 and The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Readers are encouraged to explore this issue further with these and other books exposing ugly truths long suppressed in the West and needing to be freely aired.
--Steve Lendman
The Republic needs constant war to avoid unmasking the egalitarian myth.
--Ken Couesbouc
A new ideological justification for more US violence in Iraq has been sounded in recent weeks from Bush administration officials, congressional Democrats and media pundits alike: all of them now maintain that the blame for the descent of Iraqi society into chaos and civil war should be placed, not on the American invaders, but on the Iraqi people themselves.
--Patrick Martin
Poor Dennis Kucinich ... is as close to bonafide Left as you can get in the Big Tent these days. Yet time and time again he stands alone by the punchbowl with only his pocket protector for company while the pretty girls run off to drool over some yob in a DLC varsity sweater. Weird Al tried, but aparently even he couldn't make nerds cool enough for the in-house Prog set. Maybe if you got that guy who used to be half of the White Stripes to remake your image, Dennis. But I digress.
--Ms Xeno
So, last weekend I saw The Queen. Very good movie. I think that takes care of all the movies I want to see.
The Queen, never less royal, has never seemed so real. Perhaps Johnny Rotten got it half right. Perhaps, after all, she isn’t what she seems.
--Shari L. Rosenblum
Stephen Frears, the director, has made several wonderful films about conflicts and harmonies in the British class system (My Beautiful Laundrette, Dirty Pretty Things, Prick Up Your Ears), and "The Queen," of course, represents the ultimate contrast. No one is more upper class than the queen, and Tony Blair is profoundly middle class.
--Roger Ebert
It's the perfect metaphor for his presidency really: he gets behind the wheel, has no idea what he's doing, lurches forward into crowd of panicked onlookers, and then laughs at the bedlam unfolding around him. No wonder that 58% of Americans in a recent poll said they wished the man-child president would take a hike already.
--Democratic Underground
The great tragedy of the genocide of the native Americans, beyond its cruel injustice, is in its utter waste of human potential: the America that could have been. Though the Indians' ecological ethic has at times been overstated, what is incontestable is that over the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, they lived relatively healthy lives and sustained a healthy population on the continent for many centuries, a population that indeed affected its landscape but sustained a natural bounty of surprising diversity. In a time when we are constantly reminded of the limits of human civilization for sustaining itself in a viable biosphere, a dose of the Native American conservation ethic could even today serve us well indeed.
--Dave Neiwert
Everything you've been told about Iraq is a pack of lies, and the powers that be seem to think we're all stupid enough to be conned again. We can't trust our elected representatives to carry out the will of the people. They're been bought and sold, and have just proven it. For all practical purposes, a coup d'etat has taken place.
Tony Swindell
My favourite line of the week came from the "security source"--just how one becomes a "security source" remains a mystery to me--who announced: "Terrorists are always looking for new ways to strike terror... There is no end of the possibilities where terrorists can try to cause terror to the public." Well, you could have fooled me.
--Robert Fisk
The film does not attempt to give us a full account of the reasons for the strife; it shows us the “what” and the “how,” but not the “why.” Like numerous other films about political and social tragedies in Africa, it fails in this respect and thus portrays the events that befall the Sudanese, specifically the Lost Boys from the Dinka tribe, rather superficially. As far as the film is concerned, one group decided to oppress another, and that’s that. But much more has been at stake in the Sudanese tragedy, and oil has played no small part in it.
--Ramon Valle
Sudan is also an oil-rich and strategically located state. However, the rising power that has secured the greatest influence in the country is China. Beijing’s attempts to develop political and economic influence in Africa is viewed as a threat in both the US and Europe. The moral outrage over Darfur is a convenient means for undermining Chinese influence and providing the US and its allies with a pretext if a broader military intervention is deemed necessary.
--James Cogan
The Pentagon's new batch of "warrior intellectuals" and counterinsurgency aces dripping with PhDs have begun their Baghdad strike--but so has the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance), which, according to the Islammemo website, is now polishing its own counter-plan against "Safavid-American aggression." "Safavids" is a common Sunni reference to the Persian dynasty that converted Iraq to Shi'ism in the 16th century.
--Pepe Escobar
Fear, Distraction, Hypnosis and the National Attention Span by Carol Warner Christen
Grover Norquist’s frank admission is simply more evidence the neocons will go full tilt boogie on Iran. Of course, this should not be surprising, at least to those of us who have known for some time now that the neocons mean what they say and say what they mean and this will translate horrifically into a whole lot of dead people.
--Kurt Nimmo
The line Bush is taking is actually rather similar to what the people who support al-Qaeda say, which is to blame whatever happens on the Shia side on Iran--to say the Shia are pawns of the Iranians, if not actual Iranians. It's almost something that could appear on the al-Qaeda Web site, because that's their argument.
--Patrick Cockburn (interviewed by Lee Sustar)
The way the U.S. media has reported the "battle" of Zarqa is a virtual replay of the kind of reporting that characterized the run-up to the Iraq War. The media seems to be taking a chillingly similar tack in its reporting about "Iranian interference" in Iraq. For instance, a recent story in The New York Times reports that Iran may have been involved in the recent kidnapping and murder of five Americans. But the story presents nothing but a series of unnamed sources and speculations.
--Conn Hallinan
Pappe ... particularly mentions two of Nur Masalha's important books--Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 and The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Readers are encouraged to explore this issue further with these and other books exposing ugly truths long suppressed in the West and needing to be freely aired.
--Steve Lendman
The Republic needs constant war to avoid unmasking the egalitarian myth.
--Ken Couesbouc
A new ideological justification for more US violence in Iraq has been sounded in recent weeks from Bush administration officials, congressional Democrats and media pundits alike: all of them now maintain that the blame for the descent of Iraqi society into chaos and civil war should be placed, not on the American invaders, but on the Iraqi people themselves.
--Patrick Martin
Poor Dennis Kucinich ... is as close to bonafide Left as you can get in the Big Tent these days. Yet time and time again he stands alone by the punchbowl with only his pocket protector for company while the pretty girls run off to drool over some yob in a DLC varsity sweater. Weird Al tried, but aparently even he couldn't make nerds cool enough for the in-house Prog set. Maybe if you got that guy who used to be half of the White Stripes to remake your image, Dennis. But I digress.
--Ms Xeno