Alice is doing all right
Another good show from Nevada Rep last night. I had never heard of A ... My Name Is Alice so it's nice that I found a review in RN&R. I don't take the show quite as seriously as the review does. I thought it started out kind of weak, but it picked up as it went along. The writers of the show aren't really the most profound bunch, but they know about commercially viable entertainment and they entertain very well. I Sure Like the Boys is a cool song, but the lyrics are written by a guy, so does it reflect his view or the character singing it? Let's see if I remember some of the other numbers. The Portrait is pretty powerful. Pretty Young Men is funny. I think it got the biggest laughs. The gals singing it knew how to milk it. Hot Lunch! Anne Meara shows she can write some wicked stuff. Emily the MBA was a cool spoof of Leader of the Pack without actually ripping it off. Well, those are some of the highlights. Nevada Rep used to be run by two guys, only. With Sue Klemp on board, a whole new brand of material has a chance of getting added to the mix.
Okay, I know Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy talks about Thomas More standing up against Henry VIII, though I forget how much of that portion of his book I excerpted. How much of his conception found its way into Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons? It's a pretty good movie, from an era (not all that long ago, really, as far as movies go) when movies really were so much better than what comes out today. Well, then again, I'm sure plenty of dreck can be found throughout the history of moviemaking. It's nice to see some of the classics, though.
As written by Michel Chossudovsky in his book America’s “War on Terrorism” “Members of Congress were fully cognizant of the links between the US administration and Al-Qaeda. They knew exactly who Osama bin Laden was--a pawn in the hands of the Clinton, and later, the Bush administration. Despite this knowledge, Republicans and Democrats in unison gave their full support to the President to ‘wage war on Osama.’”
--Larry Chin
BBC announced the collapse of World Trade Center Seven A FULL HALF HOUR before it actually collapsed. Even more amazing, the BBC correspondant on the scene reports the collapse while the building is clearly visible over her shoulder. What's wrong with this picture?
There is not much to be said about the 79th edition of the Academy Awards. No one said or did anything of particular interest during the more than three-and-a-half-hour ceremony Sunday evening. The film that received the highest honors (best picture, best direction, best adapted screenplay and film editing), Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, is a miserable, misanthropic work, the worst by some distance of the five nominated for best film (along with Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, Letters from Iwo Jima and The Queen).
--David Walsh
Seymour Hersh on planned invasion of Iran. (Print version).
It should be obvious what is going on here--Sy Hersh, offering a mix of truth and fabrication, is acting as a shill for the neolib faction of the ruling elite, weary of neocon over-the-top brusqueness and their overt Israeli obsession. Of course, the neolib faction does not exactly cringe at the prospect of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead Muslims, or the splintering of the Arab and Muslim world along the fissures of a hyped-up and exacerbated Islamic schism, but rather they prefer to do such behind the scenes, as they have in the past--through skullduggery and “color revolutions”--and avoid a cataclysmic “World War Four,” as the neocons fondly call their mass murder and misery project
--Kurt Nimmo
Never follow a leader who can't explain at least four possible scenarios about what the second and third-order effects of a proposed change will be. Not just one best-case scenario: you want to see a worst-case, a most-likely-case, and an off-the-wall case, too. If they haven't done these "what-if" thought exercises, they're not the person to be leading the change.
--Sara Robinson
I've been trying to figure out why the History Channel has been running the original Planet of the Apes. I guess there is historical allegory there, but nobody explains it to justify showing the film on the History Channel. Then again, that is one strange channel, what with the UFOs and mystical stuff, and such..
Here we go again! From springs spent trying to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11, to summers of cynically manipulated intelligence, through autumns of false patriotism, to winters of war, we have had more than four years of every cheap trick and every degree of calculated cynicism from this administration, filled with Three-Card Monte players.
--Keith Olbermann
The ’93 case, like the 2001 case, was quickly cracked. Mohammad Salameh, one of the alleged bombers, had repeatedly gone to the Ryder rental office in Jersey City and demanded that Ryder refund his $400 deposit for the van, which he claimed to be stolen. Why didn’t he just confess and ask to be arrested? You remember Mohammed Atta conveniently left a suitcase, in a Maine airport, full of documents in Arabic, maps, plans to destroy buildings, along with wills of fellow conspirators. Also, Atta’s passport miraculously surfaced from the smoldering debris at Ground Zero, shouting look at me, look at me.
--Jerry Mazza
The two historical faults with the movie are first it does not show us that the English abolitionist movement owed its beginning, its thrust, and its ending to the activity of the slaves themselves. The second fault is that it does not consider the historical proposition that the abolition of the slave trade could only succeed at the moment in economic development when other sources of exploitation became available to English capital, namely, the working class in England. Now, those are themes of tragedy.
--Peter Linebaugh
Changing the players changes absolutely nothing. You have to change the system in ways that change the players' behavior.
--Sara Robinson (Continuing her series from above--she seems ambiguous about believing this)
Just as the Bush Faction has replicated every mistake, misdeed and miscalculation of the Vietnam quagmire in Iraq, so too the "grand strategy" of the "War on Terror" replicates the worst strategic mistake of the last quarter of the 20th century: arming and training violent, obscurantist Islamic militias--in effect, creating (with Saudi and Pakistani partners) the global jihad movement as an effective force--in the vain and frankly stupid hope that these groups could be manipulated into serving American policy and then safely set aside when their usefulness was through.
--Chris Floyd
Under conditions of a build-up of American forces in the Persian Gulf, Washington is sending a clear message that it will not tolerate any dissent from the Shiite parties within its puppet government in Baghdad. The treatment of SCIRI is a warning to all governing parties to sever or cut back relations with Iran, do nothing to obstruct war preparations and contain the inevitable opposition of the masses--or face the consequences.
--James Cogan
Bush has the full support of the congressional Democrats for the escalation of the US war in Afghanistan, which is, proportionate to the number of troops already there, as great as the escalation that has begun in Iraq. A slew of top Democrats has passed through Afghanistan in the past six weeks, including Senator Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
--Patrick Martin
And there it is, fellow citizens: our land of mile-wide, inch-deep symbolic gestures, with this one nomination, can put paid to the black blood debt. And if the half-African meritoid actually gets Whitehoused to pilot the invisible earth empire--well then, the tables will be turned, and black folks will owe us big-hearted Caucasians a debt they can never hope to repay.
--Owen Paine (His neck is on the block now)
Three classics from Chaplin: Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux
Pierre Tristam reprints varying views by and about Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917-2007): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Three of Woody Allen's more interesting movies: Shadows and Fog, Purple Rose of Cairo, Mighty Aphrodite
Movies worth seeing for one reason or another: Laura, World of Henry Orient, Flim-Flam Man, Wrong is Right
The idea of the optimally adapted being has no place in the natural world and belongs to a very particular school of 19th century pre-Mendelian British thought. It is mostly attributed to Herbert Spencer (who invented the phrase “survival of the fittest”) and his thoughts about markets, government and the natural order of men in competitive capitalist society. In essence he was looking for a natural justification for inequality and a selfish society. His arguments are stock for the free market right-wing in Anglo countries. You know you are in Spencerland when adaptability is talked about in terms of the Individual and not populations.
--(So, there is dissent over Kauffman's Rules--I haven't figured out either side of the argument--it's getting a little weird)
I should have said "it's expected in business." But it's not fine there, either.
As national or world leaders of any kind, these people are simply unfit--and a danger to the rest of us.
--Sara Robinson
Okay, I know Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy talks about Thomas More standing up against Henry VIII, though I forget how much of that portion of his book I excerpted. How much of his conception found its way into Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons? It's a pretty good movie, from an era (not all that long ago, really, as far as movies go) when movies really were so much better than what comes out today. Well, then again, I'm sure plenty of dreck can be found throughout the history of moviemaking. It's nice to see some of the classics, though.
As written by Michel Chossudovsky in his book America’s “War on Terrorism” “Members of Congress were fully cognizant of the links between the US administration and Al-Qaeda. They knew exactly who Osama bin Laden was--a pawn in the hands of the Clinton, and later, the Bush administration. Despite this knowledge, Republicans and Democrats in unison gave their full support to the President to ‘wage war on Osama.’”
--Larry Chin
BBC announced the collapse of World Trade Center Seven A FULL HALF HOUR before it actually collapsed. Even more amazing, the BBC correspondant on the scene reports the collapse while the building is clearly visible over her shoulder. What's wrong with this picture?
There is not much to be said about the 79th edition of the Academy Awards. No one said or did anything of particular interest during the more than three-and-a-half-hour ceremony Sunday evening. The film that received the highest honors (best picture, best direction, best adapted screenplay and film editing), Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, is a miserable, misanthropic work, the worst by some distance of the five nominated for best film (along with Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, Letters from Iwo Jima and The Queen).
--David Walsh
Seymour Hersh on planned invasion of Iran. (Print version).
It should be obvious what is going on here--Sy Hersh, offering a mix of truth and fabrication, is acting as a shill for the neolib faction of the ruling elite, weary of neocon over-the-top brusqueness and their overt Israeli obsession. Of course, the neolib faction does not exactly cringe at the prospect of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead Muslims, or the splintering of the Arab and Muslim world along the fissures of a hyped-up and exacerbated Islamic schism, but rather they prefer to do such behind the scenes, as they have in the past--through skullduggery and “color revolutions”--and avoid a cataclysmic “World War Four,” as the neocons fondly call their mass murder and misery project
--Kurt Nimmo
Never follow a leader who can't explain at least four possible scenarios about what the second and third-order effects of a proposed change will be. Not just one best-case scenario: you want to see a worst-case, a most-likely-case, and an off-the-wall case, too. If they haven't done these "what-if" thought exercises, they're not the person to be leading the change.
--Sara Robinson
I've been trying to figure out why the History Channel has been running the original Planet of the Apes. I guess there is historical allegory there, but nobody explains it to justify showing the film on the History Channel. Then again, that is one strange channel, what with the UFOs and mystical stuff, and such..
Here we go again! From springs spent trying to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11, to summers of cynically manipulated intelligence, through autumns of false patriotism, to winters of war, we have had more than four years of every cheap trick and every degree of calculated cynicism from this administration, filled with Three-Card Monte players.
--Keith Olbermann
The ’93 case, like the 2001 case, was quickly cracked. Mohammad Salameh, one of the alleged bombers, had repeatedly gone to the Ryder rental office in Jersey City and demanded that Ryder refund his $400 deposit for the van, which he claimed to be stolen. Why didn’t he just confess and ask to be arrested? You remember Mohammed Atta conveniently left a suitcase, in a Maine airport, full of documents in Arabic, maps, plans to destroy buildings, along with wills of fellow conspirators. Also, Atta’s passport miraculously surfaced from the smoldering debris at Ground Zero, shouting look at me, look at me.
--Jerry Mazza
The two historical faults with the movie are first it does not show us that the English abolitionist movement owed its beginning, its thrust, and its ending to the activity of the slaves themselves. The second fault is that it does not consider the historical proposition that the abolition of the slave trade could only succeed at the moment in economic development when other sources of exploitation became available to English capital, namely, the working class in England. Now, those are themes of tragedy.
--Peter Linebaugh
Changing the players changes absolutely nothing. You have to change the system in ways that change the players' behavior.
--Sara Robinson (Continuing her series from above--she seems ambiguous about believing this)
Just as the Bush Faction has replicated every mistake, misdeed and miscalculation of the Vietnam quagmire in Iraq, so too the "grand strategy" of the "War on Terror" replicates the worst strategic mistake of the last quarter of the 20th century: arming and training violent, obscurantist Islamic militias--in effect, creating (with Saudi and Pakistani partners) the global jihad movement as an effective force--in the vain and frankly stupid hope that these groups could be manipulated into serving American policy and then safely set aside when their usefulness was through.
--Chris Floyd
Under conditions of a build-up of American forces in the Persian Gulf, Washington is sending a clear message that it will not tolerate any dissent from the Shiite parties within its puppet government in Baghdad. The treatment of SCIRI is a warning to all governing parties to sever or cut back relations with Iran, do nothing to obstruct war preparations and contain the inevitable opposition of the masses--or face the consequences.
--James Cogan
Bush has the full support of the congressional Democrats for the escalation of the US war in Afghanistan, which is, proportionate to the number of troops already there, as great as the escalation that has begun in Iraq. A slew of top Democrats has passed through Afghanistan in the past six weeks, including Senator Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
--Patrick Martin
And there it is, fellow citizens: our land of mile-wide, inch-deep symbolic gestures, with this one nomination, can put paid to the black blood debt. And if the half-African meritoid actually gets Whitehoused to pilot the invisible earth empire--well then, the tables will be turned, and black folks will owe us big-hearted Caucasians a debt they can never hope to repay.
--Owen Paine (His neck is on the block now)
Three classics from Chaplin: Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux
Pierre Tristam reprints varying views by and about Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917-2007): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Three of Woody Allen's more interesting movies: Shadows and Fog, Purple Rose of Cairo, Mighty Aphrodite
Movies worth seeing for one reason or another: Laura, World of Henry Orient, Flim-Flam Man, Wrong is Right
The idea of the optimally adapted being has no place in the natural world and belongs to a very particular school of 19th century pre-Mendelian British thought. It is mostly attributed to Herbert Spencer (who invented the phrase “survival of the fittest”) and his thoughts about markets, government and the natural order of men in competitive capitalist society. In essence he was looking for a natural justification for inequality and a selfish society. His arguments are stock for the free market right-wing in Anglo countries. You know you are in Spencerland when adaptability is talked about in terms of the Individual and not populations.
--(So, there is dissent over Kauffman's Rules--I haven't figured out either side of the argument--it's getting a little weird)
I should have said "it's expected in business." But it's not fine there, either.
As national or world leaders of any kind, these people are simply unfit--and a danger to the rest of us.
--Sara Robinson