Author: TC

Like so many of her fellow Patriots, she never saw a bomb she didn’t like, never saw a land she wouldn’t reduce to bare sand. She never saw a human right she would let stand when fixed on the goal of getting oil (and blood) on her hands. I hear she likes a good book — well, let her recite the Book of Blood, the one she knows so well by heart. And so the old tales goes, the one that plays time and again — she and her colleagues are the pleasant symptoms of the neo-feudal system of our day, the one we let play and play, until when? Until the whole world is deCondistructed into nothing more than a pure chunk of clay?

What to say about this stellar official? He may be one gun-blasting, murderous bombing, corporate-money-raking gun-of-a-gun, but he’s our gun-of-a-gun? What blessed land deserves this full of vice president? What contest in whose hell did we win? The corporate coffers — though not their employees’ accounts — threaten to explode with the amount of government and oil money this vice leader is cashing through. Who cares that it is stained Iraqi (etc) blood red? O to be the vice leader, and company…. Isn’t it rich?

Dick Powerdrunk — our stellar full of Vice Inc. President.

What more do you need to know? He helped lead the American media and the American Congress into a glorious war that the soldiers and people are so glad to have been invited along to. Oh, and of course the Iraqis couldn't be happier. I guess it only goes to show that you can conquer some of the people gloriously some of the time, even if you can't conquer all of the people all of the time. Hey, support the Generals. Tell them to "Stand Down." Now. Might spare them a future appointment with a Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Tribunal. Nothing but raw power could spare Don Powerdrunk now. Such are the glories of war, after all.

Stephan Smith-Said: Why Neil Young is Wrong

Arianna Huffington makes a few suggestions.

See Norm Magnunsson's work.

From Upton Sinclair’s book of art criticism and social analysis, Mammonart (1925):

…six great art lies now prevailing in the world, which this book will discuss:

Lie Number One: the Art for Art’s Sake lie; the notion that the end of art is in the art work, and that the artist’s sole task is perfection of form….

Lie Number Two: the lie of Art Snobbery; the notion that art is something esoteric, for the few, outside the grasp of the masses….

Lie Number Three: the lie of Art Tradition; the notion that new artists must follow old models….

Lie Number Four: the lie of Art Dilettantism; the notion that the purpose of art is entertainment and diversion, an escape from reality….

Lie Number Five: the lie of the Art Pervert; the notion that art has nothing to do with moral questions….

Lie Number Six: the lie of Vested Interest; the notion that art excludes propaganda and has nothing to do with freedom and justice….

Iraq War painting.

From The Existence Machine, an excerpt of an article by James Petras on the CIA and the Cultural Cold War, reviewing Frances Stonor Saunders' book, Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War:

The CIA's cultural campaigns created the prototype for today's seemingly apolitical intellectuals, academics, and artists who are divorced from popular struggles and whose worth rises with their distance from the working classes and their proximity to prestigious foundations. The CIA role model of the successful professional is the ideological gatekeeper, excluding critical intellectuals who write about class struggle, class exploitation and U.S. imperialism, "ideological" not "objective" categories, or so they are told.

The singular lasting, damaging influence of the CIA's Congress of Cultural Freedom crowd was not their specific defenses of U.S. imperialist policies, but their success in imposing on subsequent generations of intellectuals the idea of excluding any sustained discussion of U.S. imperialism from the influential cultural and political media. The issue is not that today's intellectuals or artists may or may not take a progressive position on this or that issue. The problem is the pervasive belief among writers and artists that anti-imperialist social and political expressions should not appear in their music, paintings, and serious writing if they want their work to be considered of substantial artistic merit. The enduring political victory of the CIA was to convince intellectuals that serious and sustained political engagement on the left is incompatible with serious art and scholarship.

Puts one in a bit in the mind of Hallie Flanagan and the Federal Theatre Project, including the Living Newspaper:

AP CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez inaugurated a Venezuelan film studio Saturday to counter what he called Hollywood's cultural "dictatorship."

Chavez announced $11 million in funds for the complex as he toured movie sets, costume rooms and sat in a director's chair — all part of Venezuela's new "cultural artillery" to combat U.S. domination, he said.

"It's a Hollywood dictatorship," he said. "They inoculate us with messages that don't belong to our traditions … (about) the American way of life, imperialism."

He accused Hollywood movies of stereotypes that cast Venezuela and other Latin American countries as violent havens for criminals and drug traffickers.

Chavez has pledged to use Venezuela's oil wealth to battle what he calls the evils of U.S.-style capitalism.

His government is the primary investor in Telesur, a television station billing itself as a Latin American alternative to corporate media outlets.

From this link, at the Times Online, Libby Purves:

. . .Bookselling is a trade; it is sad but not criminal that it operates like one, cutting deals to maximise profit. It is sad but not surprising that big booksellers do not care that their practices are widening the gulf between hyped authors and the rest, squeezing out new writers and truncating the careers of those who fail to return the publisher’s investment fast enough. "Bookselling is a trade; it is sad but not criminal that it operates like one, cutting deals to maximise profit."

Crime? Trade? "Free" trade (as it's called)? NAFTA? WTO? World Bank? Of course much "trade" is criminal, backed up by the biggest of guns, bombs, and threats, and often railed against. The book "trade" is part of that — a reflection of the larger society and economy, much of which is criminal, however legalized, and protected by force (from the marginalized, the executed, the disappeared, including those who would speak and mobilize on their behalf). Just how common knowledge this is, is indicated by the fact that the reality is noted merely in passing for the purpose of dismissing it without argument — a gesture, an effort, probably unconscious, that's comical, at best…

"cutting deals to maximise profit" — nothing criminal about that happy state of affairs, as the thriving world can attest.

"Hey mom, when I grow up, I want to 'cut deals to maximise profit'."

"Excellent, son. Just be sure to hire enough police, and military, to protect you. Try your luck in books, why don't you? I hear the police there talk a lot and don't need to carry guns."

Stop that. Brazen intrusion of reality, that the word police, or their spokespeople, and acceptable litterateurs, are quite visible, and are as busy now as ever.

That's the claim:

Harvey Wasserman, Why the Fundamentalists are Freaking Out Over the Da Vinci Code

A couple politics and art news items:

Lee Ballinger, What Backlash Against the Dixie Chicks?

   update: John Nichols, Dixie Chicks Are Number One

Arthur Asiimwe, Rwandan president scoffs at "Hotel Rwanda"

Some thoughts on the New York Times “best American fiction” discussion: 

In my view, a lot of what the NYT discussion group said was valid and interesting, and thus part of a useful exercise, but in many ways the discussion also seemed inbred and stunted, or oblivious. First, through no fault of the members of the discussion group, the narrow makeup of that group reflected the narrow makeup of the polled group, and then who could be surprised that the discussion would revolve largely around those writers featured prominently in the poll, even if partly in dissent? The main problem with the poll, as has been widely remarked, was the set-up, which the discussion group itself reflected, even as they to some extent pointed out some of the flaws in the set-up…lending an underlying bizarre flavor to the entire discussion.

Beyond that, “American” (that is U.S.) economic and social and cultural influence is so expansive that it is in significant ways strange to think of American fiction as being confined to U.S. citizens/residents (or, that is, _set apart from_ a lot of fiction abroad), let alone the small nonrepresentative group involved in the poll and the discussion both. There were many calls, rhetorical at least, from citizens of countries all around the world for the right to vote in the most recent U.S. presidential election because the quite accurate view is that what the U.S. does has often a significant or even profound and decisive impact on conditions abroad, which cannot help but include and affect literary production as well.

So think of what might have been added to the discussion if a literary figure like Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy had been involved:

Arundhati Roy with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: “I want to ask in our last 30 seconds: the role you see of the artist in a time of war?”

ARUNDHATI ROY: “Well, I think the problem is that artists are not a homogenous lot of people, and some of them are as rightwing and establishment as they can get, you know, so the role of the artist is not different from the role of any human being. You pick your side, and then you fight, you know? But in a country like India, I’m not seeing that many radical positions taken by writers or poets or artists, you know? It’s all the seduction of the market that has shut them up like a good medieval beheading never could.”

There are also a number of U.S. literary figures who make similar observations about the state of U.S. literature. During these past decades of nonstop U.S. covert and overt military action, with U.S. military installations in something like 150 countries around the globe, and hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers also spread around the globe, and U.S. weaponry even more pervasive, what are we to make of this statement by Ron Jacobs?: “Not since Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five [1969] has there been a novel for the US market that so clearly addressed war from an oppositional viewpoint.” This may be something of an overstatement but the underlying deficient reality, it seems to me, is enormously telling. Something akin to a “medieval beheading” is evident in a variety of ways in U.S. literature, in the NYT poll, and in the discussion itself.

As I’ve commented elsewhere: “In a time of state aggression and state terrorism and non-state terrorism; in a time of nuclear proliferation; in an increasingly perilous time of environmental catastrophes, those arrived and those impending, it’s long since time for skilled novelists…to get up to speed in these areas not least” in a modern and contemporary society/culture that bears more than a little resemblance, it’s surely not too difficult to imagine, to a “Good German” culture of the Nazi era…:
https://apragmaticpolicy.wordpress.com/2006/05/22/updated-barbara-kingsolver-bellwether-prize-2006-post/

Am I asking the NYT poll and discussion to do something it was not designed to do? Yes, absolutely. And, no, not at all.

 —

This post and more thoughts of my own and others: here.

Traditional anarchist colors.

Art and politics in Nepal — The Color[s] of Freedom:

"My inspiration has always been my fascination with society, figures, the romantic, birds, trees, animals," says Manandhar. "I focus on the female form, not the male. That for me is where the real beauty is."

But now Manandhar says he is in a different phase – one which will likely follow the trajectory of Nepal's democratic process. He says these are not just the empty words of a dilettante but something he is backing up with action.

Indeed, at an event held next to Gongabu Street in Katmandu, site of some the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in April, Manandhar and 55 other artists and poets are creating works of art that will be sold to raise money for those injured during violent confrontations with the police….

See also comment 4:

This is great; Manandhar is a significant artist, and quite famous in Nepal and even in India. But what I think I love the most about this atricle is the way he is distancing himself from the Royal Court. "Sees only Black and Red"; for now…but quite likely to see other colors later. Somewhat ironic, as his patronage extended right up to the previous Queen, and he enjoyed long running painting shows in the former Queen's "Palace". But what they hell; that's the way it is with "revolutions"; when the new administration comes in, best to have a few qualifications that keep YOU from being frog-marched down a dank, dark corridor to rot in a concrete cell. Not to detract from his creative talent though; he clearly has the juice. But self-promotion is also a skill of all great artists.

Arundhati Roy with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now, from ZNet:

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask in our last 30 seconds: the role you see of the artist in a time of war?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, I think the problem is that artists are not a homogenous lot of people, and some of them are as rightwing and establishment as they can get, you know, so the role of the artist is not different from the role of any human being. You pick your side, and then you fight, you know? But in a country like India, I’m not seeing that many radical positions taken by writers or poets or artists, you know? It’s all the seduction of the market that has shut them up like a good medieval beheading never could.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think artists should do?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Exactly what anyone else should do, which is to pick your side, take your position, and then go for it, you know?

A review of Homefront – anti Iraq War novel    

    Optimism of the Will    

    by Ron Jacobs

Tony Christini wondered why there were no antiwar novels published in the US about its war in Iraq. So did his cohorts Mike Palecek and Andre Vltchek.  

After all, doesn’t this war and its implications need a fictional approach to reach readers who avoid non-fiction? Don’t other cultures and peoples utilize the fictive approach to make political points. Indeed, haven’t writers throughout history understood the power that fiction provides for a view too often unheard. I guess one could argue that there is such a thing as political fiction in the United States if they included novels about Washington corruption and chicanery, but there is little fiction that considers the politics of US extraparliamentary movements. Given this dirth of literature, Christini, Palecek and Vltchek started a publishing venture to resolve the situation. The company, known as Mainstay Press, has around a half dozen titles currently on their list, most of them fiction. It also includes a website that features discussions about literature and politics.  

Homefront is the first novel in a trilogy that takes on the Iraq War and the complicity of the common citizen. Set somewhere in the United States, the story is told through the words and thoughts of one family and some members of their circle. A year after losing their son during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the novel presents the family’s questions and doubts. Simultaneously, it carries on a conversation with the reader about the reasons for the young man’s death.   

Oftentimes, novels like Homefront are so political that they read more like a tract from some political sect than like a novel. In other words, the politics render the flow of the story and its characters to be woodenlike props. The story become secondary at best to the politics. While there is no doubt that this book is very political, just like there is no doubt as to the author’s politics, Christini manages to make this work quite readable. The story has its own compelling style that sweeps the reader into the minds and hearts of its characters.  

The son’s death proves to be a cathartic event in the life of the family and the individuals that make it up. The mother can’t get away from the doubts she has regarding her first statement to the press where she stated “Aaron (her son) died for all of us.” It seems that within minutes of her utterance, she begins to wonder whether she should have said “Aaron died because of all of us.” It is this question that the novel revolves around and it is this question that the author wants each of us to answer for ourselves.

Like Upton Sinclair’s King Coal or even John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Homefront is part moral and political outrage and part story. Taken from today’s headlines, there are themes in this book that read like the evening news. However, the format of fiction allows the writer (and the reader) to go beyond the soundbite. Thereby that ordinary US family becomes an intellectually and emotionally complex creature. Mom not only questions the complicity of her politician cousin, she also questions her own. The dead man’s brother wonders how much the world of sports and macho masculinity created he soldier his brother became. His sisters move from their very private worlds to the public sphere where nothing is certain but their own convictions. It is the author’s hope that the reader will do the same.  

Is the US public this complex? Or are they like so many docile creatures that think only how they are told? Are their concerns really only as deep as the next episode of their favorite television show or the next ball game? Christini thinks not. Otherwise, why bother writing the novel? Most folks involved in the antiwar movement agree with Christini. Otherwise why bother spending the energy it takes to go to meetings and marches? Most politicians, on the other hand, seem to hold the opposite viewpoint. Otherwise, why would they continue to support and fund a war that poll after poll tells them their constituents don’t support? If they don’t consider us to be the simple creatures described above, than the only other possibility is that they hold us in even greater contempt than previously thought. Or perhaps it’s just that the money from the plutocrats that really run this country is just so plentiful that any public or private conscience that the politicians have is rendered dumb in its presence. The presence of amoral (if not immoral) power and greed, and their effect on those whom we choose to rule us is the subject of the second book in the trilogy, Washburn.  

Homefront is an overtly political and staunchly antiwar novel. This in itself is a rarity in today’s world of publishing. Besides the novels of Washington corruption and chicanery mentioned above, Tom Clancy and a myriad of others publish works that justify and encourage the warmongers and their backers, all the while implying to the reading public that the world the imperialists made is the only real world and one that not only deserves to be, but is as permanent as the mountains of the Himalayas. Not since Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five has there been a novel for the US market that so clearly addressed war from an oppositional viewpoint. Homefront is a noble attempt to change that fictional reality.