Where is Syriza going?

Where is Syriza going?

 

Monday, February 23, 2015

Where is Syriza going?

From Panagiotis Sotiris via Alex Callinicos:

First major negative reaction against the Eurogroup agreement from inside SYRIZA comes from Manolis Glezos, Member or European Parliament of SYRIZA, and a living legend of the Resistance against fascism (in 1941 along with Lakis Santas they took down the German flag from the Acropolis)

Here is a rough translation of his statement

Statement by Manolis Glezos

Before it is too late

The fact that the Troika has been renamed ‘the institutions’, the Memorendum has been renamed the ‘Agreement’ and the Creditors have been renamed the ‘Partners’, in the same manner as baptizing meat as fish, does not change the previous situation.
And you can’t change the vote of the Greek People at the January 25 election.
The Greek people voted what SYRIZA promised: that we abolish the regime of austerity that is the strategy of not only the oligarchies of Germany and the other creditor countries but also of the Greek oligarchy; that we abrogate the Memoranda and the Troika and all the austerity legislation; That the next day with one law we abolish the Troika and its consequences.
A month has passed and this promise has yet to become action.
It is a pity indeed
From my part I APOLOGIZE to the Greeκ people for having assisted this illusion
Before the wrong direction continues
Before it is too late, let’s react
Above all the members, the friends and supporters of SYRIZA, in urgent meetings at all levels of the organization have to decide if they accept this situation
Some people say that in an agreement you must also make some concessions. By principle between the oppressor and the oppressed there can be no compromise, as there can be no compromise between the slave and the conqueror; Freedom is the only solution
But even if accept this absurdity, the concessions that have already been made by the previous pro-memoranda government with unemployment, poverty and suicide, are beyond any limit of concession...

Manolis Glezos, Brussels 22-2-2015

Edited to add:ISJ Debate on 25th February  in London on Syriza and Socialist Strategy with Stathis Kouvelakis from Syriza and Alex Callinicos from International Socialism journal

Edited to add: Commentary from other Left wing members of Syriza Stathis Kouvelakis and Costas Lapavitsas

Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys Down In The Street Making All That Noise- When Frankie Was A Corner Boy King Of The North Adamsville Night- An Encore

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman    

Pallid Peter Paul Markin, no way, two thousand facts bundled up and at hand or not. Nix "Fingers" Kelly (formerly known as "Five Fingers" Kelly but he gave that up and went respectable), "High Boy" McNamara (and no, not in the post-drug world that kind of high, the other older one), "Jumpin’ Johnny" O’Connor (and do not, please do not, ask what he was jumping, or trying to) as well. Hell, double nix no nickname Benny Brady, "Billy Bop" O’Brian (and do not, ditto Johnny O’Connor, ask what or who he bopped, or tried to), Ricardo Ricco, "Timid Timmy" McPartlin and a bunch of other, no name guys who passed, passed fast, through the be-bop Salducci’s Pizza Parlor schoolboy night. No question, no question at all though that the king hell corner boy king of the early 1960s North Adamsville schoolboy night was one Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, and no other. And here is why.

In a recent series of sketches by Sam Lowell that formed scenes, scenes from the hitchhike road in search of the great American West night in the late 1960s, later than the time of Frankie’s early 1960s old working- class neighborhood kingly time, he noted that there had been about a thousand truck-stop diner stories left over from those old hitchhike road days. On reflection though, Sam suddenly realized that there really had been about three diner stories with many variations. Not so with Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories. Sam had a thousand of them, or so it seems, all different, ready to told to a candid world (Sam’s word influenced by some old-timey English sensibility drawn from reading Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence where he used the word a lot) just as soon as he could spruce them up for language. Hey, Sam realized, you, you the reader, already, if you have been attentive to his sketches (and his lawyerly ego is big enough to assume that you live to read those pieces of fluff), know a few Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, stories, okay. Sam promised to, or try to, stop using that full designation and just call him plain, old, ordinary, vanilla Frankie just like everybody else alright).

Yah, you already know the Frankie (see Sam told you he could do it) story about how he lazily spent a hot late August 1960 summer before entering high school day working his way up the streets of the old neighborhood to get some potato salad (and other stuff too) for his family’s Labor Day picnic. And he got a cameo appearance in the tear-jerk, heart-rendering saga of Sam’s first day of high school in that same year where he, vicariously, attempted to overthrow his lordship with the nubiles (girls, for those not from the old neighborhood, although there were plenty of other terms of art to designate the fair sex then, most of them getting their start in local teenage social usage from Frankie’s mouth). That effort, that attempt at copping his “style”, like many things associated with one-of-a-kind Frankie, as it turned out, proved unsuccessful.

More recently Sam took you in a roundabout way to a Frankie story in a review of a 1985 Roy Orbison concert documentary, Black and White Nights. That story centered around his grinding his teeth whenever he heard Roy’s Running Scared because one of Frankie’s twists (see nubiles above) played the song endlessly to taint the love smitten but extremely jealous Frankie on the old jukebox at the pizza parlor, old Salducci's Pizza Shop, that we used to hang around in during our high school days. It’s that story, that drugstore soda fountain story, that brought forth a bunch of memories about those pizza parlor days and how Frankie, for most of his high school career, was king of the hill at that locale. And king, king arbiter, of the social doings of those around him as well. Hell, let Sam, Sam Lowell his old-time friend tell it, tell it from the inside:   

“Who was Frankie? Frankie of a thousand stories, Frankie of a thousand treacheries, Frankie of a thousand kindnesses, and, oh yah, Frankie, our bosom friend in high school. Well let me just steal some sentences from that old August summer walk story and that first day of school saga because really Frankie and I went back to perilous middle school days (a.k.a. junior high days for old-timers) when he saved my bacon more than one time, especially from making a fatal mistake with the frails (see nubiles and twists above). He was, maybe, just a prince then working his way up to kingship. But even he, as he endlessly told me that summer before high school, August humidity doldrums or not, was along with the sweat on his brow from the heat a little bit anxious about being “little fish in a big pond” freshmen come that 1960 September.

Especially, a pseudo-beatnik “little fish”. See, he had cultivated a certain, well, let’s call it "style" over there at the middle school. That “style” involved a total disdain for everything, everything except trying to impress girls with his long-panted, flannel-shirted, work boot-shod, thick book-carrying knowledge of every arcane fact known to humankind. Like that really was the way to impress teenage girls, then or now. Well, as it turned out, yes it was. Frankie right. In any case he was worried, worried sick at times that in such a big school his “style” needed upgrading. Let’s not even get into that story, the Frankie part of it now, or maybe, ever. We survived high school, okay.

But see, that is why, the Frankie why, the why of my push for the throne, the kingship throne, when he entered high school and that old Frankie was grooming himself for like it was his by divine right. When the deal went down and I knew I was going to the “bigs” (high school) I spent that summer, reading, big time booked-devoured reading. Hey, I'll say I did, The Communist Manifesto, that one just because old Willie Westhaven over at the middle school (junior high, okay) called me a Bolshevik when I answered one of his foolish math questions in a surly manner. I told you before that was my pose, my Frankie-engineered pose, what do you want, I just wanted to see what he, old Willie, was talking about when he used that word. How about Democracy in America (by a French guy), The Age of Jackson (by a Harvard professor who knew idol Jack Kennedy, personally, and was crazy for old-time guys like Jackson), and Catcher In The Rye (Holden was me, me to a tee). Okay, okay I won’t keep going on but that was just the reading on the hot days when I didn’t want to go out. There was more.

Here's what was behind the why. I intended, and I swear I intended to even on the first nothing doing day of that new school year in that new school in that new decade (1960) to beat old Frankie, old book-toting, mad monk, girl-chasing Frankie, who knew every arcane fact that mankind had produced and had told it to every girl who would listen for two minutes (maybe less) in that eternal struggle, the boy meets girl struggle, at his own game. Yes, Frankie, my buddy of buddies, prince among men (well, boys, anyhow) who kindly navigated me through the tough, murderous parts of junior high, mercifully concluded, finished and done with, praise be, and didn’t think twice about it. He, you see, despite, everything I said a minute ago he was “in.”; that arcane knowledge stuff worked with the “ins” who counted, worked, at least a little, and I got dragged in his wake. I always got dragged in his wake, including as lord chamberlain in his pizza parlor kingdom.

What I didn’t know then, wet behind the ears about what was what in life's power struggles, was if you were going to overthrow the king you’d better do it all the way. But, see if I had done that, if I had overthrown him, I wouldn’t have had any Frankie stories to tell you, or help with the frills in the treacherous world of high school social life (see nubiles, frails and twists above. Why don’t we just leave it like this. If you see the name Frankie and a slangy word when you think I am talking about girls that's girls. Okay?)

As I told you in that Roy Orbison review, when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday working- class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway, that was also conveniently near our high school as well. Maybe this place was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it cool for a while and no eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven.

Moreover, this was the one place where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, Tonio Salducci, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, blessed Leonardo-like master Tonio, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the doubled-framed big picture window and watch his handiwork in utter fascination.

Jesus, Tonio could flip that thing. One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza dough on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling, right near the fan on the ceiling, and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, Tonio, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie, alright.

So there is nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there is, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please, in case I get might lucky tonight and that certain she comes in, the one that I have been eyeing in school all week until my eyes have become sore, that thin, long blondish-haired girl wearing those cashmere sweaters showing just the right shape, please, please, James Brown, please come in that door), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you call, uh, soda), usually a locally bottled root beer, and, incessantly (and that "incessantly" allowed us to stay since we were paying customers with all the rights and dignities that status entailed, unless, of course, they needed our seats), dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox.

But here is where it all comes together, Frankie and Tonio the pizza guy, from day one, got along like crazy. Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley, map of Ireland, red-headed, fair-skinned, blue-eyed Frankie got along like crazy with Italian guy Tonio. That was remarkable in itself because, truth be told, there was more than one Irish/ Italian ethnic, let me be nice, dispute in those days. Usually over “turf”, like kids now, or some other foolish one minute thing or another. Moreover, and Frankie didn’t tell me this for a while, Frankie, my bosom buddy Frankie, like he was sworn to some Omerta oath, didn’t tell me that Tonio was “connected.” For those who have been in outer space, or led quiet lives, or don’t hang with the hoi polloi that means with the syndicate, the hard guys, the Mafia. If you don’t get it now go down and get the Godfather trilogy and learn a couple of things, anyway. This "connected" stemmed, innocently enough, from the jukebox concession which the hard guys controlled and was a lifeblood of Tonio's teenage-draped business, and not so innocently, from his role as master numbers man (pre-state lottery days, okay) and "bookie" (nobody should have to be told what that is, but just in case, he took bets on horses, dogs, whatever, from the guys around town, including, big time, Frankie's father, who went over the edge betting like some guys fathers' took to drink).

And what this “connected” also meant, this Frankie Tonio-connected meant, was that no Italian guys, no young black engineer-booted, no white rolled-up tee-shirted, no blue denim- dungareed, no wide black-belted, no switchblade-wielding, no-hot-breathed, garlicky young Italian studs were going to mess with one Francis Xavier Riley, his babes (you know what that means, right?), or his associates (that’s mainly me). Or else. Now, naturally, connected to "the connected" or not, not every young tough in any working class town, not having studied, and studied hard, the sociology of the town, is going to know that some young Irish punk, one kind of "beatnik' Irish punk with all that arcane knowledge in order to chase those skirts and a true vocation for the blarney is going to know that said pizza parlor owner and its “king”, king hell king, are tight. Especially at night, a weekend night, when the booze has flowed freely and that hard-bitten childhood abuse that turned those Italian guys (and Irish guys too) into toughs hits the fore. But they learn, and learn fast.

Okay, you don’t believe me. One night, one Saturday night, one Tonio-working Saturday night (he didn’t always work at night, not Saturday night anyway, because he had a honey, a very good-looking honey too, dark hair, dark laughing eyes, dark secrets she wouldn’t mind sharing as well it looked like to me but I might have been wrong on that) two young toughs came in, Italian toughs from the look of them. This town then , by the way, if you haven’t been made aware of it before is strictly white, mainly Irish and Italian, so any dark guys, are Italian period, not black, Hispanic, Indian, Asian or anything else. Hell, I don’t think those groups even passed through; at least I don’t remember seeing any, except an Arab, once.

So Frankie, your humble observer (although I prefer the more intimate umbrella term "associate" under these circumstances) and one of his squeezes (not his main squeeze, Joanne) were sitting at the king’s table (blue vinyl-seated, white formica table-topped, paper place-setting, condiment-laden center booth of five, front of double glass window, best jukebox and sound position, no question) splitting a Saturday night whole pizza with all the fixings (it’s getting late, about ten o’clock, and I have given up on that certain long blondish-haired she who said she might meet me so onions anchovies, garlic for all I know don’t matter right now) when these two ruffians come forth and petition (yah, right) for our table. Our filled with pizza, drinks, condiments, odds and ends papery, and the king, his consort (of the evening, I swear I forget which one) and his lord chamberlain.

Since there were at least two other prime front window seats available Frankie denied the petition out of hand. Now in a righteous world this should have been the end of it. But what these hard guys, these guys who looked like they might have had shivs (yah, knives, shape knives, for the squeamish out there) and only see two geeky "beatnik" guys and some unremarkable signora do was to start to get loud and menacing (nice word, huh?) toward the king and his court. Menacing enough that Tonio, old pizza dough-to-the-ceiling throwing Tonio, took umbrage (another nice word, right?) and came over to the table very calmly. He called the two gentlemen aside, and talking low and almost into their ears, said some things that we could not hear. All we knew was that about a minute later these two behemoths, these two future candidates for jailbird-dom, were walking, I want to say walking gingerly, but anyway quickly, out the door into the hard face of Saturday night.

We thereafter proceeded to finish our kingly meal, safe in the knowledge that Frankie was indeed king of the pizza parlor night. And also that we knew, now knew in our hearts because Frankie and I talked about it later, that behind every king there was an unseen power. Christ, and I wanted to overthrow Frankie. I must have been crazy, crazy as a loon.

[Frankie, now Francis Xavier Riley, Esq., figures right that he would take his blarney train, his lightly carried facts that he used and then tossed away like tissue paper unlike Sam, his very real charms and sense of the absurd and go into the law. Recently retired he made a successful and profitable career as a partner in mid-sized law firm in Boston with all the amenities (he swears his executive washroom was bigger than his whole growing up house in North Adamsville). He dabbled (dabbles in local Democratic Party politics) and is known among the older crowd of stalwarts. He married frequently (three times), divorced as frequently and had a slew of kids most of whom turned out well and none, none you hear, were corner boys or the modern day equivalent “mall rats.” All of this figures too.    

Stop The Damn Wars, Stop The Damn Bombings, Congress Vote Down Obama’s War Resolution On ISIS (And Whatever Resolution He Or The Next War President Brings Forth For The Next War)-Vote Down The War Budgets

 

 

For a very long time now under the influence of the Bolshevik Duma deputies in voting against the Czar’s war budgets for supplies in World War I (and winding up in Siberian exile for their troubles), the Bulgarian and Serbian Social-Democrats in that war voting against their respective war budgets, and more so the valor of  Karl Liebknecht in Germany in breaking with his Social-Democratic Party policy of voting as a bloc in voting against the Kaiser’s war budgets also in that same war (and winding in the Kaiser’s jails for his efforts) I have argued with those in the anti-war movement that the key to any political support to any politician is their negative vote on the war budgets. That is not the over-all defense budget which is asking for way too much these days and would have me put away for my own good even by Senator Bernie Saunders of Vermont but just against the specific budgets for whatever current adventure the United States government has embarked upon. That is the litmus test for any serious opposition at the parliamentary level.

This is no abstract question these days as I write (February 2015) since President Obama is now scratching around once again for Congressional authorization to go after ISIS and whoever else he has in his gun-sights these days. That said this moment I, we are not asking anything about the war budgets but for Congress to simply say “no.” That would be a big step and even Senator Bernie Saunders of Vermont would grant me a reprieve from that institution he was about to throw me in for such a reasonable request. Let’s get to it, let’s set a fire under the Congress and hold each and every hand to that fire on this one.  

Some of my fellow anti-war activists have argued with me about this “no support for politicians who say “yes” to war resolutions and budgets citing the “progressive” variation of the old chestnut that you must support Democrat X because despite the fact that he or she put up every hand for every war resolution and every war budget you have to support him or her because the other guys, usually Republican W, Y, Z, are so much worse, maybe wants to bomb extra countries or jack up the war budget or something (all these maneuvers whether my fellows know it or not honed to an art form in their turns by the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party the three leftwing organizations in this country that have had the minimal clout necessary to argue this point). I cannot follow that path. However I am always ready to join with the too few forces who care about such questions of war and peace to oppose whatever action the American government is taking to gear up for war, or gear up their incessant bombing campaigns. So yes you will see me walking along with the brethren whenever the call comes out.   

Off the recent track record in the failed state of Iraq, the failed state in Libya, the nearly failed state in Syria (I am still looking for those “moderate” anti-ISIS forces that the United States is trying to supply in Syria) and also the nearly failed state in Ukraine all of which have the fingerprints of American involvement over them the beginning of wisdom is to oppose further military involvement. Hands Off Syria! No New War In Iraq! Stop The Bombings and Drone Attacks! No Military Aid to Ukraine….and that is just for starters.                 

F. Scott Fitzgerald At The Movies-Almost-The Last Tycoon

Book Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1941

I suppose that it is just a matter of taste, or maybe just being a cranky literary guy of sorts, but publishing a well-known author’s last unfinished work, as here with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon seems rather sacrilegious or perhaps just publisher’s greed to play off one last time on an author’s fame. I have no problem with, say, a publisher publishing a posthumous book like one did in 1964 with Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast since that book had been  completed and moreover provided a great snapshot into the self-imposed American literary exile community, including some interesting insights into Fitzgerald as well, of post-World War I Paris.

The subject here, the partially told saga of the last of the self-made maverick movie producers, is hardly definitive, or as compellingly told about the corporatization of that profit-filled medium. Moreover the pieces here add nothing to Fitzgerald’s reputation which will always hinge on the novel, The Great Gatsby, maybe Tender Is The Night, and a slew of his prolifically produced short stories.             

That said, that off my chest I will say that Fitzgerald who did do work as a screenwriter, although it is not clear how successfully, has a pretty good idea of what was going on in Hollywood once the “talkies” came in and forced the story line and dialogue of a film to ratchet up several notches. And then there is the question of putting what looks like a good idea on the screen with many times temperamental actors and inadequate financial backing. In any case the movie producer here, Monroe Stahr, is foredoomed to be the last of the independent filmmakers not only by the new system coming in place but by the fact that despite his “boy wonder” status for producing mostly hits and getting the most out of his employees come hell or high water he is headed for an early grave due to rough living and a weak heart.

The story, his story as far as it goes, is told by the daughter of one of his associates who is young enough, a college student at Bennington, to be seriously in love with him although he is only, at best, tepid toward her. The reason, or rather the big reason Monroe was still in thrall to the memory of his late actress wife, and, was smitten by a woman he met randomly on his studio lot who preternaturally looked like his late wife. That short tremulous love affair which ended in sorrow and departure is the human interest center of the story. Additionally there are scenes like how screenwriters write individually and collectively (or don’t write under either category), the importance of skilled cameramen in getting just the right effect that the director or producer whoever is hanging over him or her, how stars are made (or unmade), which gives an insight into the collective nature of the film industry no matter who produces, who directs, and who stars. That theme was done very well cinematically in the 1950s film, The Bad and the Beautiful about a post-World War II Monroe Stahr –like figure and the director, the rags to riches actress and the screenwriter he put the screws to in order to produce what he thought were great films.

There are also some interesting scenes, and some references sprinkled throughout The Last Tycoon, about the coming unionization of the industry, the fears that thought produced in the movie moguls, including Stahr, and a decidedly more morbid fear about the “reds” bringing revolution to their Hollywood front door which, perhaps, foreshadowed the post-war  red scare Hollywood Ten blacklist night. Nice pieces, nice insights but as a whole he does not hang together since the driven Fitzgerald have not worked out all the kinks in the story-line. Enough said.            

Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now! 

Manning advisory board member Michael Moore responds to ‘haters’

After ‘American Sniper’ uproar, film-maker Michael Moore lays out all of the ways that provides real support to US military veterans–including his continued role as an Advisory Board member of the Chelsea Manning Support Network.
By Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone

Filmmaker Michael Moore caused a firestorm this week when he tweeted, in response to the film American Sniper, “My uncle [was] killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot you in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders are worse.” Even Kid Rock criticized the Fahrenheit 9/11 director, writing “Fuck you Michael Moore, you’re a piece of shit and your uncle would be ashamed of you.” After a week of being attacked by the right wing and Fox News for allegedly “hating the troops,” Moore penned a lengthy Facebook response that details his frequent support for our armed forces.
“Here’s the truth they can’t or won’t report: I’m the one who has supported these troops – much more than the bloviators on Fox News,” Moore writes before listing the many ways they’re misinformed in their opinion of him. When Moore’s father passed away, he asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Veterans for Peace. The filmmaker also refuses to do business with vendors that don’t hire vets, sits on the Advisory Board of the Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning Support Network and has donated thousands of dollars to “help veterans and wounded warriors.”…

Read more in Rolling Stone

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program- Twelve -Sacramento, 1967     

…there is a famous picture of them, of the Black Panther core, Huey and the Bobbys, all black proud and black smart, not just street smart that day, but all the way smart, kind of  “turn whitey’s rules back on him” smart, in May 1967  over in Sacramento at the State Capitol, arms in hand, shotguns, serious business shotguns if the occasion arose, arms and shotguns uplifted away from any thought of placing anyone in harm’s way like whitey’s law book said was okay, just fine out in the cool blue-pink American West night. It might not have worked in Cambridge or Peoria but out when the cowboy lands ended, real and faux cowboys, anything went, went with whatever small uplift proviso the local government attached to it.

That day though all black proud, armed, berets tilted slightly showing a sign of determination and not just show, black leather jackets, sharp, yah, uniform sharp and leaving that same uniform sharp impression any serious uniform brings up (soda jerks, McDonald ‘s burger flippers, and gas jockeys step back, step way backs serious uniforms are in town). That day too those brothers evoked, evoked proud black manhood, evoked memories of Africa slave-catcher revolts, evoked memories of maroon fights down in Caribe islands, evoked old Nat Turner come and gone plantation fires, evoked old Captain Brown and his brave band at Harpers Ferry fight, evoked the memory of those two hundred thousand blue-capped, blue-uniformed, yes, uniformed, sable warriors who made Johnny Reb cringe and wish he had never been born. Evoked too, Africa freedom struggles, and desperate fights to break the down presser man’s will, his fortitude, and his hunger to keep what was never his. And evoked no more turning the other cheek stuff, no more waiting on whitey, even leftie, and more, much more, the great white fear…negros with guns, jesus.                

And they freaked, those whites guys freaked like they always did, like they always did when even the idea, no, even the thought of an idea of armed black men touched their radar. Hence death this and death that slave codes, hence Nat Turner brutal ashes, hence no quarter given, no respect, no  black honor respect before Fort Wagner fight when black men bled red for freedom and on a hundred other battlefields, hence Robert F. Williams flights. So that day, that freaked-out day a sort of cold (soon to be hot) civil war was a-brewing. And whitey, maybe not so smart but afraid of armed black men and ready to act forthwith on that decided that maybe, just maybe, the wild west needed a little taming, just in case the brothers decided to aim those guns straight at someone.       

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists, Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or lying their own heads down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e. cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones, and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school, old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front, and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea. Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.   

And do not forget when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….            

    

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Those Measureless Fields: A First World War Story

by Caroline Scott (Goodreads Author)

Those Measureless Fields: A First World War Story 4.25 of 5 stars 4.25  ·  rating details  ·  4 ratings  ·  3 reviews

An exceptionally well-written, poignant evocation of the First World War and its aftermath. The novel explores the lasting legacies of war and the traces left behind both geographically and psychologically.

Hardcover, 376 pages

Published August 19th 2014 by Pen & Sword Books

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The Rich, The Very Rich, Are Just Like You And Me-Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You, 1938

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

You Can’t Take It With You, starring James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Albert, directed by Frank Capra, from  a screenplay by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart

F. Scott Fitzgerald is famously (or infamously) noted for having said that the rich, which by that he meant the very rich, the ones who in his day lived in open air mansions and who today we of common clay never see since they are protected from view by about seven layers of security which even the President would envy, are different, very different from you and me. I believe that there was more truth in that statement than he realized and certainly today with all the talk about the income equality gap getting very much skewed it is plain for all to see. Of course not everybody has (had) to buy into that premise even in the Great Depression when everything for lots of people was going to hell in a hand-basket like in the film under review, an adaptation of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s play You Can’t Take It With You. In America the notion of class and class differences has always had a murky existence, always been muted by the roads paved with gold dream, even when those differences are rubbed in our noses every day.

This film is a comic tribute from the master of the genre Frank Capra who plays to that murkiness and presents a counter-position to Fitzgerald’s take on class in America. Now during the Great Depression when life’s laughs were few and far between almost everybody could a few laughs at the movie theater and that is what at the comedic level Capra gives us, and even I can agree that such entertainment has its place. As social commentary though especially in the later 1930s when working people were in some very heavy battles to organize themselves into unions and performed other acts of solidarity it runs rather thin even today as archival material. 

Here’s the skinny on this one and you make up your own mind about what is what about the rich, the very rich:        

Young Tony Kirby (played by amiable James Stewart), son of a high-end aggressive big time New York banker who is learning the ropes in his father’s business as a Vice-President in charge of himself apparently, is, well, smitten, with his secretary, Alice (played by Jean Arthur) which already does not bode well for what is to come. See old man Kirby (played in a part that is tailor-made for him by Edward Albert), a ruthless scoundrel out of the old school of cutthroat capitalism where the idea is to grab everything of value not nailed down (and even then give it a shot) has big plans with his cronies to run up a big monopoly on munitions production for what everybody knew was the seconding coming of war to Europe. Not only are old man Kirby and the boys interested in huge profits but also in ruining a fellow munitions maker who needs to expand his operation if he is to survive. Kirby came up with the bright idea to buy up all the land of the people around the competitor’s operation and freeze him out. Nice work.          

The problem is that the whole area had to be purchased or the deal would sink and of course there was one hold-out, Grandpa, Alice’s Grandpa (played as a jolly wise old ex-capitalist who had seen the light and dropped out of the rat race by Lionel Barrymore), who sees no reason to leave the old homestead for no matter how much filthy lucre. So we get to step two of the problem. Mother and Father Kirby as parents to young Tony Kirby are looking for him to succeed his father after he retires. They are not interested in seeing that derailed by his being taken in by a gold-digging secretary (their take, she is just America’s sweetheart) no good can come of any of this. Ho also just happened to be a granddaughter of the guy who is gumming up the works for old man Kirby’s big plans.

But this is where this film as romantic comedy comes in and saves the day. Young Kirby loves his sweetie more than somewhat screwy family and all (“and all being related and unrelated hangers-on at the wacky family homestead). So he will not be put off without a serious fight. After several social mishaps Alice comes down firmly on the “no go” side of the decision that she cannot marry into the Kirby family since they see her (and her family) as beneath them. She takes off for parts unknown. Not good, not good for young Tony and not good for Alice’s family when Grandpa decides to sell out and find a place for the family near wherever Alice is. At the same time Tony gave the old man the word that he was quitting the rat race business even though it is on the brink of creating the monopoly the old man has dreamed of. That triggers an epiphany in the old man as he realizes that despite his wealth (remembering that he can’t take with him) the loss of his son’s respect and presence only leaves ashes in his mouth. You can figure out the rest, figure out that a certain secretary from a wacky family is going to be going down some church aisle with a renegade son and with the father’s (and hesitantly the mother’s) blessing. See the rich are just like you and me when it comes to family. I don’t think this one would have been played that way in let’s say a Theater Guild production of the time but for entertainment it is just fine.         

21st Century Warfare: Pentagon Strategy and Activist Response

When: Wednesday, March 4, 2015, 7:00 pm

Where: Cambridge Friends Meeting • 5 Longfellow Park (off Brattle St) • Harvard T • Cambridge

 
Subrata Ghoshroy, research affiliate at MIT Judy Bello, NY State Coalition to Ground the Drones
The Pentagon has a new strategy for 21st century warfare: overwhelm the enemy with high tech, "intelligent" forces.  Full Spectrum Dominance will utilize drones, space weapons and cyber attacks.  Covert operations are favored, invading with large armies is a thing of the past.  The antiwar movement needs a new response, activists opposing killer-drones have led the way.
Subrata Ghoshroy will speak on "High Tech Wars in the 21st Century."  Subrata is research affiliate at MIT, and was a defense analyst and whistleblower at the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), and also worked as a staff member for the House Armed Services Committee.
Judy Bello will address, "Expanding Drone Wars, In and Out of the Media Spotlight.  She is active with the NY Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, has been jailed for resistance at Hancock Air National Guard Base in New York and visited Pakistan with Code Pink where she interviewed victims of Drone Strikes.
Discussion will follow on peace/antiwar movement response.
Sponsored by United for Justice with Peace
For more information, call 617 383 4857 or write info@justicewithpeace.org  

Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart-With Blues Queen Janis Joplin In Mind  

 

It was never stated in so many words, perhaps we being young could not articulate it that that, maybe too afraid to speak of it out loud fearing to unleash some demons that we could not control lived under a certain sign. Those of us who had been washed clean by the fresh new breeze that came through the country in the early 1960s lived under the sign of “live fast, die young and make a good run at it.” To be old, old being over thirty, reflecting the phrase of the time taking direct aim at parents “don’t trust anybody over thirty,”  meant “square,” a residue expression for the tail end of the “beat” generation which whether we knew it or not was our launching pad as we came of age in that 1960s red scare Cold War night. Meant too that if one did not imbibe in whatever one desired by the time we did get to thirty it would be too late, way too late.     

So we pursued our outrageous appetites, from the traditional fashion dress and hair statements and liquor addictions to the new ones of the era (new at least to young mostly white eyes not familiar with old-time Billie Holiday jazz needles and “Beat” high tea time) with the emerging hip “drugstore” of every imaginable medication to salve the soul. Tried every kind of living arrangement as long as it drifted toward the communal and every kind of love, including the love that could not speak its name (this well before GLBTQ times). Tried every way to take dead aim at old bourgeois society and turn it upside down. Wanted to, desperately wanted to, listen to new music that reflected the new drug-induced karma that matched the chemicals spinning in our brains. No more rock and roll music, or any music, that our parents might like, might even tolerate. Everything had be acid etched.          

If we sought to “live free,” to break from convention we expected out musical heroes (actually all heroes) to partake of our newly established ethos, to lead the way. Expected like our slightly older brothers and sisters who went wild over brooding Marlon Brando, sulky James Dean, and moody Elvis them to live high off the edge. And so they did, so anyway did what became our holy trinity come concert night, come party time, Jim (Morrison), Jimi (Hendricks), and Janis (Joplin). They lived hard, lived out there on the edge subject to their own doubts, subject like us to those rat ass things that formed our childhoods and would not let go and they needed release just like us. So Jim twirled the whirling dervish shamanic dance, Jimi fired up his grinding guitar and Janis, little Janis with the big raspy voice sang like some old-time barrelhouse blues mama reincarnate. Yeah, and they, she lived fast, and died, died way too young not matter what out ethos stated.       

A Woman Scorned-American Psycho #324-Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike’s Gone Girl

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, from the book by Gillian Flynn, 2014

 

No question modern marriage, I am speaking of modern twenty-first century heterosexual marriage here I will leave the same-sex variety alone until we have more anecdotal evidence but I have a feeling that will be a parallel universe, is a tough haul. Very tough in the case of seemingly well-matched America’s sweethearts couple, Nick (played by a laid back Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (she nee Elliot daughter of the famed Amazing Amy children’s books writers and maybe that will give us a clue to where things went wrong), in the film under review, Gone Girl, based on the book by the same name by Gillian Flynn. Now I am no stranger to the stresses of marital bliss having wed and shed three wives the old-fashioned way (divorce and some alimony) and have now determined that it is wiser (and cheaper) to just finish out my days with companions rather than wives. Apparently Amy Elliot Dunn (played with sardonic verve by Rosamund Pike) had a different take on the matter and despite her Type A Harvard-etched accomplishments she has joined the pantheon of cinematic American psychos (although it is not absolutely necessary to have an Ivy League degree to fit into that category).                

On the surface as the beginning flashbacks by Nick and Amy of their takes on about went wrong in order to fill us on how thing went off-track appears to be an old-fashioned vanilla marriage filled with the normal stresses of wedded bliss, You know both mates working in their respective professions, making love in the off moments and living out there in dead-end suburbia trying to avoid that counting off the years of marriage fate which seems to be closing in on them. Between losing jobs, moving from high-style New York City to Podunk Missouri to nurse Nick’s mother, after five years of marriage though the wheels were starting to come off.

So yes you can blame the Great Recession of the Bush-Obama years, blame the vicissitudes brought on by five years of marriage and blame the lonely crowd-ness of suburban living although I personally blame those star-struck parents but Amy has had an epiphany about Nick and their marriage, a devious one to boot. But who are we kidding it had nothing to do with economics, psychology, personality, or any such like it was another, younger woman, a junior college student for Chrissake that set dear Amy off after seeing them together one night coming out of Nick’s (purchased with her dough, ouch). Yeah, this is the woman scorned theme that had run through a ton of films since they started making them which we should have been hip to all along.              

Here is how it played out though because Amy really did plan her revenge for Nick’s boorishness and infidelity with Type-A zeal. Simple, on their fifth anniversary Amy went missing from their house when Nick came back after being at his downtown bar which his sister who he is very close to runs (and like I said Amy had financed). Then through the cinematic device of teased-out flashbacks we find out what this American average married couple were really up to. Amy was not just “missing” missing though but had set up the scene up in their house so it looked like Nick was so bent on being rid of his wife even a rookie cop coming to investigate could figure it out, although in this case it was actually a savvy female detective who put the two and two together that put Nick behind bars.

Amy did a beautiful job, a job any ordinary psycho would be proud of. A job they will be talking about for years, maybe somebody will grab a Ph.D. out of the thing. She really had put Nick in a box, a big old frame, from the look of things, jumping up her insurance policy to a big number shortly before disappearing, buying tons of stuff on credit in his name and stashing it at his sister’s house, leaving blood in the house, leaving evidence that she was pregnant, and a telltale diary hidden in a well-placed spot that explained her fears that Nick will kill her. The gone, gone girl, was gone. By her actions Nick, finally figuring out that everything was closing in on him as a wife murderer was all set despite hiring a crack criminal defense lawyer to take the big step-off in death penalty Missouri.     

Then Amy has another epiphany, not uncommon among the psycho set. Nick, now knowing that Amy has set the big frame-up for him as preclude to the big set-off in death penalty Missouri, now knowing that all the evidence points to the fact that she was alive and well and meant him every harm went on  the counter-offensive. Nick went on talk television which had taken Amy scorned to its bosom and used a popular talk show to make his confession of infidelity and contrition public. A not uncommon occurrence in these confessional age days although usually not in a murder case. Amy, who by this time had while hiding deep underground been ripped off of her cash stash by a low-rent couple who lived in her hide-out complex where she was staying turned to an ex-high school boyfriend who never got over her for help and was staying in his isolated summer house, saw the broadcast and changed her mind about Nick, wanted him back.

Of course the circumstances where Amy had supposedly been murdered by Nick left things a little dicey for their reunion so in a fit of mad genius she set up and killed, gruesomely killed, that ex-boyfriend claiming he had raped her. Nice touch Amy. Nick knowing that the rape was a set-up tried to tell that story but the public atmosphere of Amy’s return, their “joyous” televised reunion trumped that savage knowledge. Despite Nick’s fervent desire to leave he was caught in her web, doubly caught since she had made herself pregnant through artificial insemination. Good luck, Nick, you are going to need it. As for the rest of us we should take Nick’s attorney’s advice as he walked away from the case since his man was off the hook “don’t piss your spouse off.” I would add perhaps spreading newspaper around your bed to forewarn you of an advancing unhinged spouse just to be on the safe side.