The Republicans spent from 1992-past 2000 trying to dig up some crime or other to pin on Hillary Clinton, they spent tens of millions of dollars of tax money on just some of those witch hunts and they found nothing. And that's not counting what the Republican-fascists spent in in congress in the past several years.
HILLARY CLINTON IS THE MOST EXTENSIVELY VETTED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN THE HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY. THAT THEY'VE NEVER FOUND ANYTHING TO CONVICT HER ON IN THE PAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY MEANS THERE IS NOTHING THERE EXCEPT FOR LIES AND ACCUSATIONS. LET'S SEE HOW TRUMP WOULD STAND UP TO A FORTY-MILLION DOLLAR INVESTIGATION OF HIS ACTIVITIES LASTING AS LONG.
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Nguyễn Thanh Tùng - To The Woods - Dan Bau solo
Nguyễn Thanh Tùng is apparently one of the most accomplished player of the one-string monochord, played by a combination of sounding overtones found at nodal points on the string and changing the tension on the string using a flexible rod at one end of it. Today the instrument is usually amplified with a single pickup but for centuries it was played unamplified, other than the hollow body of the instrument and, sometimes, a resonator on the flexible rod.
Nguyễn Thanh Tùng was born blind and with other disabilities due to his mother having been exposed to agent orange during the war. Better living through chemistry, science and the wisdom of the West.
Update: Night of Prayer - Sister Chan Khong
Sister Chan Khong is one of the six original members of Titch Nhat Hanh's order of socially engaged Buddhists in Vietnam. This was recorded at their community in France, Plum Village.
What's The Matter With The Media Left?
Thomas Frank, best known for his book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" has a new book out, "Listen Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?", in which he bashes the Democratic Party as it is, a book which is being taken up by the Bernie or Busters in his rump effort to defy mathematics and the voters, and which is being excerpted and featured in many of the organs of the "liberal" press and pixels.
Obviously its publication was planned to take advantage of the political climate of a presidential election year, it was published March 16, I don't think there is any other explanation of why it would be brought out now. Obviously, now, in May, what was likely to be the case is set in stone, that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee facing a would-be fascist strongman, Donald Trump, the main impact of the book will be to drive people out of voting for her and either wasting their vote on someone who will never be president of the United States or not voting or, in a rather disturbing number of declarations, voting for Trump.
Thomas Frank is clearly hoping to benefit from this scenario or he would have published his book after the election, when it would probably have gotten far less buzz and sold fewer copies. I think that in this election season his book of would-be idealism is made into an act of cynical and irresponsible exploitation of the time and a sacrifice of the realistically achievable better alternative in favor of what will not be if Democrats don't win this election.
I have come to see that a lot of the institutions of the left are like that, the magazines, the webazines, the publishers, the few and far between figures in the electronic media, to one extent or another a lot of them are more interested in their own careers and media presence than they are in the very real reality that American politics are in 2016.
By the time the votes for the nomination have produced the real nominees who will go on to have a real chance at becoming President of the United States next January, the situation is set, the real issues determining who will be president are the only ones that matter.
The corruption in our politics is the creation of the Supreme Court in its "free speech" and money=speech rulings - those rulings cemented the role of millionaire and billionaire money into the determining factor in who is elected to office. They were aided in that by such allegedly liberal institutions as the ACLU and the free-speech absolutists - many of whom work in the corporate media. Those rulings are the real reason that Democrats CAN'T WIN ELECTIONS UNDER A MORE IDEALISTIC SET OF RULES, THOSE RULES ARE WHAT THE SUPREME COURT ABOLISHED AFTER DEMOCRATS PASSED THEM INTO LAW. To complain that Democratic politicians are forced to raise an effective amount of money by the mixture of pudding-headed sloganeering by "liberals" of the past and the REPUBLICANS on the Supreme Court, is to blame the only people who have any chance of fixing that. What it will take are Supreme Court justices who will overturn those rulings AND THAT DEPENDS ON A DEMOCRAT APPOINTING THEM TO THE COURT. And, the rules being in place, that depends on someone who is willing to game the system for that kind of change but you have to have the ability to fight by the rules as set, as they are.
Frankly, the people on the left who pretend that isn't the case are even stupider than Douglas Feith, the man who General Tommy Franks famously deemed, "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet." It is one of the lessons of the past sixteen years, confirmed in this one that a lot of the people on the alleged left are stupid enough to risk putting people like that in office again, not even a decade after they were voted out. I certainly put Thomas Frank in that category as well as those who are providing him with his book tour bookings and PR.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
C.P.E. Bach, Sonata in D minor, Wq 62/4
Ryan Layne Whitney
Score
There is no doubt that C.P. E. Bach, the most famous of J. S. Bach's sons favored the clavichord for those of his works on which didn't require a louder instrument. He said so, explicitly.
An idiot has mocked my posting of music on clavichoard as some kind of elitist practice. Which is pretty funny in that clavichords are probably the least expensive of keyboard instruments, the keyboard instrument most likely to have been found in many of the more humble homes when a more complex harpsichord would have been too expensive and likely too large. For instruments of fine quality they are, even today, generally far less expensive than a fine piano or harpsichord.
Update: The idiot has misspoken. My guess would be that the clavichord playing Stevie Wonder has more "street cred" in his note bending little finger than Stupy Stales would have if he had any in his entire body. Not to mention any number of other musicians who have played it. As I remember the smart mop head recorded at least one piece on it. Maybe he doesn't know that.
Update: C.P.E. Bach, Sonata in C, W. 62/10,
Score
Update: A clavinet is to a clavichord as a piano is to a forte-piano. The main difference is the tangent that makes the string sound is not metal and the use of electronic amplification of volume. It was invented to be a modern clavichord. It's not an electronic instrument, it's an amplified instrument. It's like an electric guitar.
You know, you can look things like that up.
Update 2: So, Stupy Stales doesn't know how a Hammond B3 works either. Amazing he was able to hoodwink his way into a career on the outskirts of one of the minor suburbs of musical journalism for so many years.
You know, there's this thing called a "search engine" that is just amazing for looking up stuff online. I know you're too lazy to look stuff up in the paper version of Grove's or even the Harvard Dictionary of Music.
Update 3: Let's see, a clavichord has keys which someone depresses which push tangents into strings to make it sound, a clavinet (the original instrument, not the later thing that goes by the same name) has keys which someone depresses to push a tangent into strings to make it sound. A clavinet is a clavichord with pickups to amplify the sound. That was what it was originally invented as being by Hohner. While Wikipedia is so often corrupted I don't generally like to quote it, this is the first sentence in its listing for Clavinet, The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord that was manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany from 1964 to the early 1980s. This is one of the instances in which what it says is entirely accurate.
A pipe organ has pipes which, when you push keys make air pass through the pipes to make it sound, a Hammond B3, when you push the key, has NO PIPES THROUGH WHICH NO AIR IS PASSED THROUGH TO MAKE IT SOUND but the quite distinctively different sound is produced in an entirely different way with an entirely different character.
I would love to see what your score on the Miller Analogies would have been.
Update 4: You know, having experienced the puerile tactics of Stupy Stales I've come to identify a method of how the little mind tries to wriggle out of things, he pretends, contrary to his entire line of argument, that when he has to face that he's lost he pretends that the very refutation of his line of bilge was his, not mine. It's something you might be familiar with from the kind of arguments people had in 7th grade. People of average intelligence, maybe lingering into the 10th grade.
"Leftists" For Trump
As if to prove my point that, now, Bernie Sanders is essentially campaigning for Donald Trump, I just heard a bit of what he said last night. He is, in effect, going to continue to attack the only candidate who will stand between the country, the world and a President Donald Trump and his appointees. At this point he isn't pushing any agenda to the left, he's running the risk of handing the agenda to the Republicans. That was the biggest fear a lot of us had about the potential of his candidacy from the start of it, he is repeating an all too familiar history of what the left has become in American politics*.
And while he might, at times, pull back a bit on the Hillary hatin' a lot of his fans use his continued campaign to repeat old lines of Hillary hatin' much of it written by the worst of Republican-fascist propaganda mills. I'm beginning to think that the talk of there being a cross-over between the Bernie Sanders voters and those who will vote for Donald Trump in the fall is becaue there is a percentage of his supporters who only know about Hillary Clinton what they absorbed from the Republican-fascist hate campaign against her.
This has certainly been the year that I've had to face in a very hard way that the media of the left has learned absolutely nothing from the past sixteen years. If they didn't learn from the disaster of 2000 they are not going to learn from anything. I looked at the front pages of The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, In These Times, Alternet, Salon and a few other web sites and see they are, as well, still promoting anti-Hillary hit pieces, now, today, when it is clear that it is either going to be her or it's going to be Donald Trump who takes office next January.
I think one of the reasons that the leftist media in the United States doesn't do better is far removed from it talking against the corporate-oligarchic interests, those with the money to control the media. I think one of the reasons the leftist media in the United States doesn't do better is because their frequent immaturity and counter-productive publications discredit themselves among rational people who are more interested in reality than theory. The academic left which writes a good part of leftist media is too lazy to do something that will really change things, it's all academic to them. And the media is too busy trying to attract the attention of the lazy, immature element in the left with click bait. And there are few topics this year that bait them like Hillary hate. Then there are the idiots who dream of revolution magically coming from fascism as they write from their writing desks and their faculty offices and work stations, the kind who Samantha Bee so realistically noted would shit their pants if they were dropped down in a real revolution. The romance about revolution is the most lunatic of all loony and widespread ideas of the play-left. It is ubiquitous in leftist media.
The so-called leftist media has also lost credibility this year. And I don't think they deserve to regain any of it, at this point. We need a responsible leftist media, one that won't be full of the typical names and bylines.
* Not just this year in the United States and not just here. One of the greatest boons for the right, even the overtly fascist right, here and elsewhere, is the willingness for egotistical and irrationally ambitious and, or, vindictive leftists to cut the legs out from under those closest to themselves who have a chance to win elections. I think it's far more likely to happen on the left than on the right for any number of reasons, all I can prove is that it happens far more often than makes maintaining such a "left" reasonable. We need to dump those who do that.
And while he might, at times, pull back a bit on the Hillary hatin' a lot of his fans use his continued campaign to repeat old lines of Hillary hatin' much of it written by the worst of Republican-fascist propaganda mills. I'm beginning to think that the talk of there being a cross-over between the Bernie Sanders voters and those who will vote for Donald Trump in the fall is becaue there is a percentage of his supporters who only know about Hillary Clinton what they absorbed from the Republican-fascist hate campaign against her.
This has certainly been the year that I've had to face in a very hard way that the media of the left has learned absolutely nothing from the past sixteen years. If they didn't learn from the disaster of 2000 they are not going to learn from anything. I looked at the front pages of The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, In These Times, Alternet, Salon and a few other web sites and see they are, as well, still promoting anti-Hillary hit pieces, now, today, when it is clear that it is either going to be her or it's going to be Donald Trump who takes office next January.
I think one of the reasons that the leftist media in the United States doesn't do better is far removed from it talking against the corporate-oligarchic interests, those with the money to control the media. I think one of the reasons the leftist media in the United States doesn't do better is because their frequent immaturity and counter-productive publications discredit themselves among rational people who are more interested in reality than theory. The academic left which writes a good part of leftist media is too lazy to do something that will really change things, it's all academic to them. And the media is too busy trying to attract the attention of the lazy, immature element in the left with click bait. And there are few topics this year that bait them like Hillary hate. Then there are the idiots who dream of revolution magically coming from fascism as they write from their writing desks and their faculty offices and work stations, the kind who Samantha Bee so realistically noted would shit their pants if they were dropped down in a real revolution. The romance about revolution is the most lunatic of all loony and widespread ideas of the play-left. It is ubiquitous in leftist media.
The so-called leftist media has also lost credibility this year. And I don't think they deserve to regain any of it, at this point. We need a responsible leftist media, one that won't be full of the typical names and bylines.
* Not just this year in the United States and not just here. One of the greatest boons for the right, even the overtly fascist right, here and elsewhere, is the willingness for egotistical and irrationally ambitious and, or, vindictive leftists to cut the legs out from under those closest to themselves who have a chance to win elections. I think it's far more likely to happen on the left than on the right for any number of reasons, all I can prove is that it happens far more often than makes maintaining such a "left" reasonable. We need to dump those who do that.
At This Point Everything That Bernie Sanders Does Against Hillary Clinton Is, Effectively, Campaigning For Donald Trump
It is one of the conceits of many on the left that their ideological enemies refuse to accept the products of science and math. I've gone into that conceit more than a few times here.
Reading around the net, there are a few of the Bernie or Busters, many of whom mistake themselves as the definition of the left, whining about a bit of analysis of the results in Indiana last night. Especially that of Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight. The part that set them pouting was this.
The Democratic race remains fundamentally unchanged after tonight’s win by Sanders. Yes, his victory was somewhat surprising, given that all of the polls had Clinton winning and by an average of 7 percentage points. And yes, Sanders has promised to fight on in the primary until perhaps the convention. The problem for the Sanders campaign remains delegate math and demographics.
Right now, Sanders looks like he’ll earn about five to 10 more delegates than Clinton in Indiana. That means Clinton will have an elected delegate lead by the end of the evening of around 280 to 285 delegates. In order to catch Clinton in the elected delegate count, Sanders would need to win over 65 percent of the remaining elected delegates. That’s actually higher than it was before Indiana voted.
To repeat a point I've made before, I don't buy FiveThrityEight's predictive function based on polls but I don't think there is any source which does a better job of analyzing the numerical facts that are established.
Apparently some of Saunders supporters don't understand that under the rules, Democrats don't do winner-takes-all as the Republicans do and, at this point, Sanders has to not only win but has to win by an increasingly high percentage and gain an increasing percentage of the remaining delegates to just catch up with Hillary Clinton's lead. He failed to do that in Indiana. That's not surprising, what he needs to do would be something he's only managed to do in a few caucuses and he's run out of those. The percentage of the remaining delegates he must win grows, making that a more daunting problem for him than it had been.
I noted the other day that the Sanders campaign seems to want to change the rules to a "winner-takes-all" system for super delegates but it now seems that some of his supporters want to change that rule for the pledged delegates too.
The problem isn't that the math is crooked, it's that it's too complex for a lot of people on that left. I know that isn't everyone who has and still supports what Bernie Sanders is doing, I've read some of them facing the fact that he is not going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party.
The problem is that from now on everything he does against Hillary Clinton is that he is attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee, which is, in effect, campaigning for Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the only alternative to Hillary Clinton, today. One or the other will be sworn in as president in January and will be president for four or, more likely, eight years. As Reagan and Bush II have shown, a Republican will be supported by the media no matter how criminal, no matter how incompetent, no matter how dangerous they are. We really don't need someone who is asking for the Democratic nomination helping them.
Reading around the net, there are a few of the Bernie or Busters, many of whom mistake themselves as the definition of the left, whining about a bit of analysis of the results in Indiana last night. Especially that of Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight. The part that set them pouting was this.
The Democratic race remains fundamentally unchanged after tonight’s win by Sanders. Yes, his victory was somewhat surprising, given that all of the polls had Clinton winning and by an average of 7 percentage points. And yes, Sanders has promised to fight on in the primary until perhaps the convention. The problem for the Sanders campaign remains delegate math and demographics.
Right now, Sanders looks like he’ll earn about five to 10 more delegates than Clinton in Indiana. That means Clinton will have an elected delegate lead by the end of the evening of around 280 to 285 delegates. In order to catch Clinton in the elected delegate count, Sanders would need to win over 65 percent of the remaining elected delegates. That’s actually higher than it was before Indiana voted.
To repeat a point I've made before, I don't buy FiveThrityEight's predictive function based on polls but I don't think there is any source which does a better job of analyzing the numerical facts that are established.
Apparently some of Saunders supporters don't understand that under the rules, Democrats don't do winner-takes-all as the Republicans do and, at this point, Sanders has to not only win but has to win by an increasingly high percentage and gain an increasing percentage of the remaining delegates to just catch up with Hillary Clinton's lead. He failed to do that in Indiana. That's not surprising, what he needs to do would be something he's only managed to do in a few caucuses and he's run out of those. The percentage of the remaining delegates he must win grows, making that a more daunting problem for him than it had been.
I noted the other day that the Sanders campaign seems to want to change the rules to a "winner-takes-all" system for super delegates but it now seems that some of his supporters want to change that rule for the pledged delegates too.
The problem isn't that the math is crooked, it's that it's too complex for a lot of people on that left. I know that isn't everyone who has and still supports what Bernie Sanders is doing, I've read some of them facing the fact that he is not going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party.
The problem is that from now on everything he does against Hillary Clinton is that he is attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee, which is, in effect, campaigning for Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the only alternative to Hillary Clinton, today. One or the other will be sworn in as president in January and will be president for four or, more likely, eight years. As Reagan and Bush II have shown, a Republican will be supported by the media no matter how criminal, no matter how incompetent, no matter how dangerous they are. We really don't need someone who is asking for the Democratic nomination helping them.
Stéphane Galland & Nelson Veras duet: Saidas E Bandeiras (Milton Nascimento)
Couldn't sleep, worried about what Trump will do to the world.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Why Schools Have Failed or Happy Teacher's Day
It is Teachers Day in the United States, which many in the profession must find to be rather bitterly ironic. That's a day when it is pretended that the country respects teachers even as they are undercut, under paid, education undermined and the task of educating is made next to impossible. The idiotic Jeffersonian localism that governs schools in the United States results in an ineffective network of local systems, weak and dependent on the income level of the area or neighborhood schools serve, the local culture of support for schools and the extent to which they and their budgets can be turned into a political football by politicians and media in order to put those who would crush the public schools into nonexistence into office. And I could talk about the huge role that football and other school sports play in the diminution of education.
And then there is the political motive in attacking the teachers' unions which sprang up due to the disrespect, lack of support, low pay and bad working conditions. That is in the states where teachers' unions are not banned by law.
But that's not the worst of it. In the United States the stupid, late 18th century model of local school districts has lost out to the national system of entertainment media, movies, television and the internet. The measly few minutes several days in the week that a teacher has to try to teach their subject to students already trained in how to watch TV by the time they start is swamped by all of that other entertainment media, geared to attract eyes and, so, geared to appeal to the most facilely won, least challenging, lowest and basest of the weaknesses in our collective character. And that was something also allowed under the Jeffersonian slogan of "freedom of the press". I have got to say, the more I think hard about why we are in the mess we are, the more I think Madison, Jefferson and the other founders were remarkably short sighted in the system they produced, not to mention we in the quite different 20th century who still like to play late 18th century dress up and doll houses with the Constitution when it couldn't be clearer than that the beliefs and expectations of that generation just don't work today. Sorry, but it's unavoidable that that system is why sit-coms and teen pleasing media wins over public education. There is a reason that the enemies of public education are the biggest fans of our frequently fat-headed founders. If they weren't fat-headed when they lived, their ideas imposed on us like an enlightenment era corset are today.
One of the worst things that has been done is to fall for the confusion that the separation of church and state mandates that the schools have no role in educating children in the moral standards that are the actual bedrock of a democratic or, in fact, any decent society. The idea that that can be safely "left to the parents" means that a dangerously large number of children will grow up to be functional sociopaths if not psychopaths, the roles they are instructed in by the media. Since we make no demands in that area in the media - "freedom of the press" don't ya know - our country devolves ever more into the kind of place where Donald Trump,not by any accident as seen on TV, could quickly be elected as the fascist strong-man of the United States. He will certainly be no friend of public education, he never set foot in one as a student for even one day. Something he has in common with way too many of our politicians. It did nothing to make him respect education or civic responsibility.
So the teachers in our public schools have my respect, they have my sympathy for trying to do a next to impossible job, producing a cohort of children who end up being educated to live in a democratic society in which they will cast informed votes that will produce a better society than that imagined by the worst of Hollywood. And they do it while under attack and while under paid and unsupported and disrespected.
Hillary Clinton, this would be a great day to announce that your Secretary of Education will be someone who is a product of public schools, public universities and who has a stake in the future of public education through their children or grand children. There are certainly many people of that description who could do the job. Though I doubt you'll find them in the higher eschelons of the DC-academic education establishment. I think the history of that department proves that no one less than a stake holder in public education could ever work there. No Democrat should ever appoint a Secretary of Education who is a product of the prep-Ivy equivalent system, ever again. They don't get it.
Though even that would still leave public education to die at the hands of the media that has become the de facto school and church of the majority of people in the United States.
I think I'll go read a Jonathan Kozol book to celebrate. It won't be a pleasant celebration but it will be an appropriate one.
And then there is the political motive in attacking the teachers' unions which sprang up due to the disrespect, lack of support, low pay and bad working conditions. That is in the states where teachers' unions are not banned by law.
But that's not the worst of it. In the United States the stupid, late 18th century model of local school districts has lost out to the national system of entertainment media, movies, television and the internet. The measly few minutes several days in the week that a teacher has to try to teach their subject to students already trained in how to watch TV by the time they start is swamped by all of that other entertainment media, geared to attract eyes and, so, geared to appeal to the most facilely won, least challenging, lowest and basest of the weaknesses in our collective character. And that was something also allowed under the Jeffersonian slogan of "freedom of the press". I have got to say, the more I think hard about why we are in the mess we are, the more I think Madison, Jefferson and the other founders were remarkably short sighted in the system they produced, not to mention we in the quite different 20th century who still like to play late 18th century dress up and doll houses with the Constitution when it couldn't be clearer than that the beliefs and expectations of that generation just don't work today. Sorry, but it's unavoidable that that system is why sit-coms and teen pleasing media wins over public education. There is a reason that the enemies of public education are the biggest fans of our frequently fat-headed founders. If they weren't fat-headed when they lived, their ideas imposed on us like an enlightenment era corset are today.
One of the worst things that has been done is to fall for the confusion that the separation of church and state mandates that the schools have no role in educating children in the moral standards that are the actual bedrock of a democratic or, in fact, any decent society. The idea that that can be safely "left to the parents" means that a dangerously large number of children will grow up to be functional sociopaths if not psychopaths, the roles they are instructed in by the media. Since we make no demands in that area in the media - "freedom of the press" don't ya know - our country devolves ever more into the kind of place where Donald Trump,not by any accident as seen on TV, could quickly be elected as the fascist strong-man of the United States. He will certainly be no friend of public education, he never set foot in one as a student for even one day. Something he has in common with way too many of our politicians. It did nothing to make him respect education or civic responsibility.
So the teachers in our public schools have my respect, they have my sympathy for trying to do a next to impossible job, producing a cohort of children who end up being educated to live in a democratic society in which they will cast informed votes that will produce a better society than that imagined by the worst of Hollywood. And they do it while under attack and while under paid and unsupported and disrespected.
Hillary Clinton, this would be a great day to announce that your Secretary of Education will be someone who is a product of public schools, public universities and who has a stake in the future of public education through their children or grand children. There are certainly many people of that description who could do the job. Though I doubt you'll find them in the higher eschelons of the DC-academic education establishment. I think the history of that department proves that no one less than a stake holder in public education could ever work there. No Democrat should ever appoint a Secretary of Education who is a product of the prep-Ivy equivalent system, ever again. They don't get it.
Though even that would still leave public education to die at the hands of the media that has become the de facto school and church of the majority of people in the United States.
I think I'll go read a Jonathan Kozol book to celebrate. It won't be a pleasant celebration but it will be an appropriate one.
Monday, May 2, 2016
Vladimir Ussachevsky: Suite from "No exit" (1962)
People seemed to like the avant-garde pieces I posted so here's one that I found ... well, I can't exactly say moving. Compelling, maybe. It's electronic music made for a film production of Sartre's dead depressing and oppressive play No Exit.
Here's a production in English from 1964, Harold Pinter appears in it as an actor, which is pretty interesting, itself. I can't say I like the play which, like everything I ever read of Sartre seems to be geared to depress and oppress and which goes nowhere. Existentialism is one of the list of ways of thinking about life in the universe, "the human conditions" in Walter Breuggemann's book The Bible Makes Sense, which I'm still engaged in studying. Existentialism is a philosophy for depressive adolescents and young adults when you have time to waste on that kind of thing. That is if you don't fall in a hole and decide to end it all. In the end, I like the music more than the play though it is kind of scary in a claustrophobic way.
Here is a French movie from 1954 with music that is even more depressing.
Update: Stupy Stales thinks that No Exit is a comedy. I am guessing it's another case of him reading the Cliff Notes instead of the play. It's one of the bleaker visions by one of the bleakest authors of the last century. I'll bet he thinks La Nausée is a laugh riot too. Or at least he'll fake it, like he does pretty much everything that didn't happen right under his nose in NYC in the 1960s and 70s. And I wouldn't take his word for any of that, either.
Update 2: I could be standing at the bottom of the Quechee Gorge and Stupy wouldn't be able to produce anything that could go over my head from the bridge across it.
Stupid Hate Mail From A Stupid E-tot
If Duncan Black didn't host a person who lies about what I say on practically a daily basis, I would like nothing more than to ignore his blog, his commentators and him. If he didn't do that the existence of all three would be a matter of complete indifference to me. As it is, all three give me material and if they do that voluntarily I'm going to use it.
Freki-Jr is as big a liar as Simels but she isn't as OCD about what I write here. And, for the record, When I began the blog Crush Seth MacFarlane's Nuts it had nothing to do with Steve Simels, it was a response to MacFarlane's assholish behavior when he hosted the Oscars. It was when I realized that in the response of his fan boys in the days after that We Saw His Assholes. I merely chose to write about Simples there because I had the idea that I'd rather not junk up this blog with it. The other one was put up to do the same when I started having problems with CSMNs.
Update: Simels is incredulous that I would begin a blog with a title that mocks Seth MacFarlane in the days after his assholish, sexist behavior at the Oscars was the topic of conversation and that that blog with MacFarlane's name on it could be devoted to anyone but Steve Simels. As someone who has had years to observe Simels, one thing is clear, he's at a loss to understand anything that isn't all about him.
Update 2: Simels proved my last point by thinking that the blog in response to Seth MacFarlane's being a sexist prick was about Simels. If the guy's ego got even a little bigger there would be a black hole open up somewhere in the lesser NYC area.
Update 3: Eschatonian Special Post
These are words. For them to work you have to read them all. That may be hard work for you but that is too bad. They will not work unless you do.
Freki-Jr is as big a liar as Simels but she isn't as OCD about what I write here. And, for the record, When I began the blog Crush Seth MacFarlane's Nuts it had nothing to do with Steve Simels, it was a response to MacFarlane's assholish behavior when he hosted the Oscars. It was when I realized that in the response of his fan boys in the days after that We Saw His Assholes. I merely chose to write about Simples there because I had the idea that I'd rather not junk up this blog with it. The other one was put up to do the same when I started having problems with CSMNs.
Update: Simels is incredulous that I would begin a blog with a title that mocks Seth MacFarlane in the days after his assholish, sexist behavior at the Oscars was the topic of conversation and that that blog with MacFarlane's name on it could be devoted to anyone but Steve Simels. As someone who has had years to observe Simels, one thing is clear, he's at a loss to understand anything that isn't all about him.
Update 2: Simels proved my last point by thinking that the blog in response to Seth MacFarlane's being a sexist prick was about Simels. If the guy's ego got even a little bigger there would be a black hole open up somewhere in the lesser NYC area.
Update 3: Eschatonian Special Post
These are words. For them to work you have to read them all. That may be hard work for you but that is too bad. They will not work unless you do.
Will The Bernie Sanders Campaign Be The Death Of The Left?
As I do now, from time to time, I look in at Salon webazine to see what the play-left is up to. The answer is unsurprising, doing what the play left always does and has done pretty much since Eugene McCarthy brought stunt candidacies into its present form and Ralph Nader proved that they are a grotesquely irresponsible act of ego. They're enabling Republicans.
Up today is an invitation to tantrum by Sophia A. McClennen, Bernie Sanders is not a sore loser: Our democracy is screwed unless we fix the unfair rules which is extending the Bernie or Busters lines about alleged corruption sinking his campaign, lines which I'm sorry to say Bernie Sanders is encouraging with his complaints that super-delegates are not pledged delegates, and, apparently, not only that but wanting them apportioned on a winner-take-all basis instead of the proportional basis that pledged delegates are awarded in the Democratic Party. The closed primary issue as opposed to open primaries is being used which is odd because- Bernie Sanders won more than a few closed primary and caucus states, he and his supporters seem to forget that, but, then, this isn't about intellectual honesty it's about twisting slogans in any way needed to make it come out the way you want.
I am convinced that, contrary to the title of her piece that Bernie Sanders is proving he is not only a sore loser but has the potential to act as a spoiler even as he proclaims that he would never risk putting Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in office. If he doesn't realize that is what he has been doing even as recently as this weekend, he is a lot less politically savvy than I'd always figured he was. His continued twisting and turning and churning over the rules of the process as a means of trying to coerce super delegates to flip for him even as it's obvious he can't do that has no other explanation than that he is willing to do exactly that.
If he hasn't noticed, whenever he or Jeff Weaver or Tad Devine, Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore or his other surrogates do that, it sets off the Bernie or Busters who will reinforce and extend whatever they say into, frankly, stuff that sounds like the insane anti-Clinton stuff from the 1990s. I can't believe that this would continue if the man at the top of his campaign doesn't want that to. A responsible presidential candidate asking for the Democratic nomination wouldn't be doing what Bernie Sanders is continuing to do.
If Sanders blows this election for the Democrats he will have confirmed the worst case for why the left can't be trusted. AND I DON'T MEAN THAT HE WILL HAVE DONE THAT FOR THE DNC OR OTHER ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS. If he blows this election for Democrats he will have confirmed that even his left can't be trusted by those of us whose rights and lives depend on the defeat of the Republican-facist, corporate machine. He and his campaign will have shown us that we can't trust the left and need a real left that cares about the reality we live in as opposed to the fantasies of the play left.
I have been a long time fan of Bernie Sanders because I thought he was not a member of the play left, His talk has certainly not been the typical bull shit that play-leftism, much of it issuing from mildly discontented academics and those - especially those in the social sciences - whose job doesn't depend on having a connection with real reality. Such a "left" is more of a life-style statement than it is anything real.
But talk is cheap as compared to offices won, laws changed and policies enacted. Reality is real, posturing is easy.
I thought Bernie Sanders understood that winning an election meant something and making sure someone like Trump doesn't win means at least as much. I'm not convinced of that anymore. He's going to have to make some big changes if he's going to convince me that he's what he's sold himself as being. Firing Weaver might be a good way to start. I can imagine all too well what kind of a Chief of Staff he'd make.
Up today is an invitation to tantrum by Sophia A. McClennen, Bernie Sanders is not a sore loser: Our democracy is screwed unless we fix the unfair rules which is extending the Bernie or Busters lines about alleged corruption sinking his campaign, lines which I'm sorry to say Bernie Sanders is encouraging with his complaints that super-delegates are not pledged delegates, and, apparently, not only that but wanting them apportioned on a winner-take-all basis instead of the proportional basis that pledged delegates are awarded in the Democratic Party. The closed primary issue as opposed to open primaries is being used which is odd because- Bernie Sanders won more than a few closed primary and caucus states, he and his supporters seem to forget that, but, then, this isn't about intellectual honesty it's about twisting slogans in any way needed to make it come out the way you want.
I am convinced that, contrary to the title of her piece that Bernie Sanders is proving he is not only a sore loser but has the potential to act as a spoiler even as he proclaims that he would never risk putting Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in office. If he doesn't realize that is what he has been doing even as recently as this weekend, he is a lot less politically savvy than I'd always figured he was. His continued twisting and turning and churning over the rules of the process as a means of trying to coerce super delegates to flip for him even as it's obvious he can't do that has no other explanation than that he is willing to do exactly that.
If he hasn't noticed, whenever he or Jeff Weaver or Tad Devine, Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore or his other surrogates do that, it sets off the Bernie or Busters who will reinforce and extend whatever they say into, frankly, stuff that sounds like the insane anti-Clinton stuff from the 1990s. I can't believe that this would continue if the man at the top of his campaign doesn't want that to. A responsible presidential candidate asking for the Democratic nomination wouldn't be doing what Bernie Sanders is continuing to do.
If Sanders blows this election for the Democrats he will have confirmed the worst case for why the left can't be trusted. AND I DON'T MEAN THAT HE WILL HAVE DONE THAT FOR THE DNC OR OTHER ESTABLISHMENT DEMOCRATS. If he blows this election for Democrats he will have confirmed that even his left can't be trusted by those of us whose rights and lives depend on the defeat of the Republican-facist, corporate machine. He and his campaign will have shown us that we can't trust the left and need a real left that cares about the reality we live in as opposed to the fantasies of the play left.
I have been a long time fan of Bernie Sanders because I thought he was not a member of the play left, His talk has certainly not been the typical bull shit that play-leftism, much of it issuing from mildly discontented academics and those - especially those in the social sciences - whose job doesn't depend on having a connection with real reality. Such a "left" is more of a life-style statement than it is anything real.
But talk is cheap as compared to offices won, laws changed and policies enacted. Reality is real, posturing is easy.
I thought Bernie Sanders understood that winning an election meant something and making sure someone like Trump doesn't win means at least as much. I'm not convinced of that anymore. He's going to have to make some big changes if he's going to convince me that he's what he's sold himself as being. Firing Weaver might be a good way to start. I can imagine all too well what kind of a Chief of Staff he'd make.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
I'm Not Going To Give In To That Black Mail
To paraphrase Lewis Black, Steve Simels has antisemitism Tourette Syndrome.
I said why I said that the state of Israel has no rights, I said it over and over again, I said that no state has rights, including the one I live in, including the Nazi state, including such other self-declared "states" as ISIS(L) and a number of others. I said why that is the case, over and over again. I also said why I would not make an exception for the United States or Israel because to declare that states have rights has been one of the most dangerous venues through which those who govern and mistake themselves as being the embodiment of that state use an assertion of such "rights" to murder and oppress people in huge numbers. I would certainly include the United States in the list of countries in which that has been done, is done and will, no doubt, be done. I will not pretend that Israel is not also a place where that has happened and happens now. I'm under no obligation, personal or moral to carve out the unique exception in that for Israel, I think the large majority of those who acquiesce in allowing that exception are caving in to a form of blackmail which Simels is attempting to practice on me.
I would certainly not say that Israel is the worst of the offenders but it is far from the least offending state. I have no illusions about its special status as a moral force, it's a country which, after decades of constantly being in a state of war is, unsurprisingly, devolving into a military state. Whenever a country is as beleaguered as Israel has been, that is almost a certain result. It's no surprise that the same is true of Palestine, the Palestinian people have certainly been beleaguered for as long and not only by Israel but also its patron, the United States.
If an American tried to force me into granting an exceptional moral status to the United States, using similar forms of thuggish coercion, I'd tell them to go soak their head, or something like that. I'm certainly not going to say anything less to an American who tries to pull that same black mail on me over Israel, a country which certainly has no more of a claim to my allegiance than the United States does. No country in the Middle East, Europea, Africa,.... has the right to make those kinds of demands. They're certainly not going to get me to give in to such an attempt.
In his essay, Vietnam The Logic of Withdrawal, the American historian Howard Zinn devoted a chapter going into extensive detail about the fact that no nation can be trusted, every government practices immorality. The United States becoming enmeshed in the civil war in Vietnam was a result of the same kinds of moral postures, made far more of phony, sentimental, even cloying assertions of moral rectitude sold with the most vulgar of PR tactics. The appeal to the experience of the fight against fascism and Nazism was put to some of its most horrible use in the campaign to sell that war to the American people. It did so at the very same time it was engaged in one of the most sustained series of moral and legal atrocities in 20th century American history. And considering that history, that's saying a lot. The same tactics are used to silence the critics of the Israeli government and military and to coerce the silence of most people on that topic through some of the most thuggish intimidation there is. I will point out that there is probably more robust discussion of what the Israeli government does wrong in Israel than is allowable in the United States, the country which provides so much of what the Israeli government uses to commit what would be called a crime if any other country did it.
To assert that states have rights is extremely dangerous. To assert that a country has rights very quickly turns committing crimes and even the most appalling immorality into a pose of moral rectitude.
I am not morally obligated or required to like the state of Israel or the Israeli government, those have no rightful claim on my love or devotion. The people who live there do, the people in the occupied territories, in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc. all of them can claim a moral right to my respecting their rights, not the governments that rule them, not the state. I don't especially like any of the governments in the Mid-East, Israel included. But my liking any of them or even disliking any of them less than others is of exactly no importance in preventing people getting killed and having their rights violated in appalling ways. The only people who have benefitted from the status quo are the lowest, dirtiest of politicians, war profiteers and terrorists. Frankly, I don't like any government that tries to maintain that status quo because of that, including the government of the United States. I'm fed up with it, the least I can do is stop lying about it because some asshole like Simels is going to accuse me of antisemitism over it.
Hate Update: Lewis Black knows you? He has my condolences.
Hate Update: Lewis Black knows you? He has my condolences.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
György Ligeti - Symphonic Poem for 100 Metronomes
There is an announcement and a description after the performance. According to it, the piece takes about ten people to set up the metronomes to the exact specifications of the composer and in the past it required some quick work to set them going. Then more than thirty years after it was composed, someone who was fascinated by the piece came up with a means of setting the metronomes going automatically. That's what this video shows.
I haven't had one of those things in close to fifty years, I dropped mine and it never worked right after that. I went electric with an old analogue Franz metronome, I loved it because you never had to stop and wind it up but you couldn't play this piece with them. Nowadays it's all digital without the annoyingly familiar mechanical click.
It's been a long time since I posted a piece of legitimately avant-garde music. This one is fun.
Update: Steve Reich - Pendulum Music 1968
Joan Cerveró
Víctor Trescolí
Isabel León
Estefanía Sánchez
Franz Schreker - Kammersymphonie - Two Versions
Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen
Conductor. Jonas Alber
Soloist. Wibert Aerts
score
Arrangement for Piano Solo by Ignace Strasfogel
Emma Schmidt, piano
I found these in my bookmark list with other files about the activities of Schoenberg's Society for Private Performance, I don't recall if the piano solo version was one of the reductions of new orchestral music played there or not. But these are performances I listened to when I was writing about that a few weeks back. I'd not known any of Schrecker's music, though I do know that Schoenberg considered him a fine musician. He was one of the major composers in Vienna, especially known for his operas, though his career faded even before his death in the early 1930s. I don't get why, he was a very original and interesting composer.
This piece, in particular is quite magical, both in the orchestral version and in the authorized arrangement for piano solo. In some ways I almost prefer the piano version. The orchestration is quite something, though some of the textures and sounds were stolen by cheezy Hollywood composers later in the century. It's a hazard that lesser composers will steal your inventions.
Just As I'm So Through With Pretending That America Is An Exception I'm Not Making Believe Israel Is One Either
Note: This was posted accidentally in a first draft earlier this afternoon. By the time I noticed, it had been reacted to. Though I doubt it had been read. I had intended to post it tomorrow. This is a later draft. Further revisions will probably come as well.
While it would be hard to identify the stupidest of the regular commentators at Duncan Black's blog, I will admit that there are those even stupider than Steve Simels, the guy who has seldom allowed a day to go by without lying about or misrepresenting what I've said with Black's obvious, almost always tacit, approval for most days in the past five or so years. But he's stupid enough to be getting on with.
He is repeating his accusation that I'm an anti-semite because I don't believe states have rights. States are artificial entities made by people and imposed by those who assent to the formation of a state on those who don't accept that formation. I think the idea that artificial entities have rights, as opposed to natural beings and human beings is one of the most dangerous of all superstitions. In the formulation of the state I live in it is asserted that all people were endowed by their Creator with rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in that grotesquely inadequate list with which the author of the Declaration of Independence enumerated .
Natural beings, individuals, are the only embodiment of rights, NOT ENTITIES CREATED BY PEOPLE*.
Even the fashionably deistic members of the Constitutional Convention were at a loss to explain any other origins of rights and, also, their wider distribution than the British conception that associated those with monarchy and class. The language of the Constitution asserted equality while the writers and adopters of it, those who pledged their lives, their honor their sacred fortunes to its declarations were dependent on violently keeping slaves and the slaughter and dispossession of other people, many of them living in what were, in fact, other nations who they certainly didn't allow any rights. In the mean time. they enumerated what were later so disastrously termed "rights" to states and to the national government. Such "rights" especially those allowing the keeping of slaves, led to the unprecedented carnage of the American Civil War and the equally appalling Jim Crow period. We are still living with the echos of the original intentions of that document, the sacrifice of individual rights and lives to that vague and dangerous language.
-------
I am only describing the reality of states and why it is extremely dangerous to endow the state with rights, as did the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Maoists, the American Confederates, etc. . That is something I think will always come at the expense of the rights of individuals and, especially, those groups, THE PEOPLE, who the state chooses to oppress and destroy.
That the 20th century atheist regimes, those regimes which attempted most strenuously to put their understanding of science into practice through their various states were notable for the greatest genocides in history, genocides only approached by earlier monarchs and officials who asserted the rights of the state were embodied in their will, would force the idea that the belief that states have rights is an extremely dangerous delusion. That such states, obviously, didn't hold that individuals were equally endowed with rights by their creator is certainly relevant to their character and their behavior. The most extreme current example is probably North Korea, that "workers paradise" the state with probably the largest percentage of hereditary slaves kept under Stalinist confinement in the entire world. If there a metaphysical concept backing the reality of the North Korean government it is the idea that the state has rights that obliterate the rights of people.
--------
That the slogan which makes threats about "driving Israel into the sea" has been used as much by the champions of the state of Israel as by those who enhance their own status by asserting they will do that, is unfortunate but it doesn't endow Israel with any more rights than it does the Palestinian nation. The majority of voters in Israel and its allies, most of all the United States does everything in their power to suppress any national aspiration of the Palestinian people. That, does nothing at all to endow Israel with rights it just means that it has the military might and the backing of the United States to do that. If Israel is to be held to have rights then Palestine has rights, they have the right to not be driven into Egypt or Jordan or into the sea or starved to death in Gaza, as would seem to be, now, long standing Israeli policy.
The future existence of the state of Israel isn't a matter of the state of Israel having rights, it's a matter of it getting along with those people within its borders and outside of those.
The assertion of rights, especially the rights allegedly gained by taking land from people who lived there before the Israeli state occupied it aren't anything that anyone will feel the need to take seriously in perpetuity. I doubt that the present status will hold for much longer.
That "right" has been asserted for most of the 20th century and it is probably accepted by fewer people today than it was the first time it was made. I don't think that number is likely to increase as compared to that of those who don't find the present policy of the Israeli government acceptable.
The extent to which Israel can be expected to continue to exist depends on it allowing the Palestinian people to form their own, independent, contiguous state BECAUSE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE HAVE ABSOLUTELY AS MUCH RIGHT TO DO THAT AS THOSE WHO FORMED ISRAEL DID. THEY CERTAINLY HAVE AS MUCH OF A RIGHT.
The matter of Israel remaining a state is not a matter of the assertion of superior rights based on the history of the oppression of Jews in Europe. That is something that the Palestinian people had no hand in. The demand that they were the ones who had to pay the price of that is grotesquely unjust. As some pointed out at the time of the creation of Israel, if it were a matter of justice it should have been formed in the European heartland.
That people thought that Palestinians and their cousins in the Middle East would be any more accepting of what happened than they would have in Europe, I think that is due to the same racist assumptions that led Europeans to believe they could forever keep the indigenous populations in their colonies under control due to a belief in their intellectual and moral inferiority.
I will note that when I suggested that a Jewish State would have been more safely established on land donated for that purpose by my own country, the United States -which might barely notice the subtraction - the idea was derided as if the Holocaust had happened here instead of the United States having helped end it. I still say that a Jewish homeland surrounded by the United States would almost certainly have flourished in a state of peace instead of having been in a state of war for its entire history.
But all of that is a moot point, now. That wasn't the path that was taken and the millions of people, ALL OF THEM THE POSSESSORS OF EQUAL RIGHTS, there on the ground in 2016, is the context in which any settlement will have to be attempted.
If it will succeed is unknown but to let the matter remain unsolved because it might fail is only beneficial for the worst of politicians and demagogues. Such are the ones who have benefited the most from the status quo. And the terrorists, they have benefited mightily from this situation. It is one of the ironies of Israeli history that what began in the aspiration of social democrats is ending up the kind of military state that is the inevitable result of being at a state of war for years and decades. I think the Jewish people deserve entirely more than that, as do the Palestinian people and, in fact people of other countries in the area and everywhere. They deserve more because among those rights everyone is endowed with by our Creator are those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If the most extreme supporters of Israel demand even with all of their dirtiest polemical tactics that the entire world treat Israel as if it were the embodiment of a unique exceptionalism they are deluded. Whether or not they believe that exceptionalism is real, the majority of the world do not and will not ever grant its reality.
The same kind of grotesque and horrible consequences come when that has been asserted by many in United States. The present assertion of it is a warning sign that we are in grave danger of devolving into fascism, It is one of the reasons that we face the prospect of an actual fascist being nominated by one of the two real parties here. Assertions of American exceptionalism have been behind a majority of the worst acts taken by the United States. The concept of manifest destiny is an assertion of the right of the American state to commit genocide. Other assertions of the right of the American state and individual states are some of the forces most destructive of personal rights here and around the world. It is enormously dangerous and it is bound to descend into worse as the majority of the world does not acquiesce to that delusion only to the further rage of the deluded.
And if you think the United States and Israel are the only places that can happen, that the assertion of the rights of states is safely segregated to those two countries, you are deluded. Russia is only one place where that is also a terrible and grave danger. The only safe thing to do is to give up the delusion.
Update: Simels is now telling me to shut up on this topic, one I hadn't planned on writing about this month. If he doesn't like that I have said what I have, he only has himself to blame. I can point out that compared to what Gore Vidal said, I've been entirely even handed on the topic.
* I have commented on the mistake of calling the privileges granted to the press "rights" and how that endangers self-government. The fabled "Founders" sacrificed clarity in favor of rather minor late 18th century poetry a number of times.
Update to the later revision: The idea that a Jewish homeland surrounded by the United States would probably have flourished in peace instead of having been in a perpetual state of war since the late 1940s is being derided. All I can say is that the idea that a Jewish homeland on land taken from the Palestinians, surrounded by them in refugee camps in countries that were hostile to that act and the founding of Israel where it is would eventually flourish in peace is now obviously known to have been a delusion.
I would still be in favor of that offer being made because I think the world would be a much safer place if it happened. I'd love there to be millions of more Jews living on North America. I'd love there to be millions of more Jewish citizens of the United States. For some reason my antagonist hates that idea, whereas he's lived here his entire life. Maybe he just doesn't care for Jews all that much.
Ok, that was said to be provocative. But it's still the truth.
Update 3: Again Mr. Simpey claims that there would be more peril in the establishment of a Jewish Homeland surrounded by the United States than in Palestine. I have to wonder how he could feel secure living in the United States if he's so sure of that. I don't understand why he hasn't fled the lesser NYC area for that land of peace, security and safety, Israel, if he really believes that. Why hasn't he fled this hell hole? Someone once said, "A Zionist is someone who thinks YOU should move to Palestine.
Update 4: Oh, yeah, Simps, that's because everyone knows that all American anti-semites would love to have millions of more Jews as citizens of the United States. I have to admit that I've got a selfish motive, I think if there were millions more Jews in the United States we may never have another Republican president and the prospect of a fascist like Trump or Cruz becoming president would be ever so much more remote.
So, if it's so bad here, why are you securely seated in the NYC area? What a brave guy you are, giving up he safety of Israel for this place of peril.
While it would be hard to identify the stupidest of the regular commentators at Duncan Black's blog, I will admit that there are those even stupider than Steve Simels, the guy who has seldom allowed a day to go by without lying about or misrepresenting what I've said with Black's obvious, almost always tacit, approval for most days in the past five or so years. But he's stupid enough to be getting on with.
He is repeating his accusation that I'm an anti-semite because I don't believe states have rights. States are artificial entities made by people and imposed by those who assent to the formation of a state on those who don't accept that formation. I think the idea that artificial entities have rights, as opposed to natural beings and human beings is one of the most dangerous of all superstitions. In the formulation of the state I live in it is asserted that all people were endowed by their Creator with rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in that grotesquely inadequate list with which the author of the Declaration of Independence enumerated .
Natural beings, individuals, are the only embodiment of rights, NOT ENTITIES CREATED BY PEOPLE*.
Even the fashionably deistic members of the Constitutional Convention were at a loss to explain any other origins of rights and, also, their wider distribution than the British conception that associated those with monarchy and class. The language of the Constitution asserted equality while the writers and adopters of it, those who pledged their lives, their honor their sacred fortunes to its declarations were dependent on violently keeping slaves and the slaughter and dispossession of other people, many of them living in what were, in fact, other nations who they certainly didn't allow any rights. In the mean time. they enumerated what were later so disastrously termed "rights" to states and to the national government. Such "rights" especially those allowing the keeping of slaves, led to the unprecedented carnage of the American Civil War and the equally appalling Jim Crow period. We are still living with the echos of the original intentions of that document, the sacrifice of individual rights and lives to that vague and dangerous language.
-------
I am only describing the reality of states and why it is extremely dangerous to endow the state with rights, as did the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Maoists, the American Confederates, etc. . That is something I think will always come at the expense of the rights of individuals and, especially, those groups, THE PEOPLE, who the state chooses to oppress and destroy.
That the 20th century atheist regimes, those regimes which attempted most strenuously to put their understanding of science into practice through their various states were notable for the greatest genocides in history, genocides only approached by earlier monarchs and officials who asserted the rights of the state were embodied in their will, would force the idea that the belief that states have rights is an extremely dangerous delusion. That such states, obviously, didn't hold that individuals were equally endowed with rights by their creator is certainly relevant to their character and their behavior. The most extreme current example is probably North Korea, that "workers paradise" the state with probably the largest percentage of hereditary slaves kept under Stalinist confinement in the entire world. If there a metaphysical concept backing the reality of the North Korean government it is the idea that the state has rights that obliterate the rights of people.
--------
That the slogan which makes threats about "driving Israel into the sea" has been used as much by the champions of the state of Israel as by those who enhance their own status by asserting they will do that, is unfortunate but it doesn't endow Israel with any more rights than it does the Palestinian nation. The majority of voters in Israel and its allies, most of all the United States does everything in their power to suppress any national aspiration of the Palestinian people. That, does nothing at all to endow Israel with rights it just means that it has the military might and the backing of the United States to do that. If Israel is to be held to have rights then Palestine has rights, they have the right to not be driven into Egypt or Jordan or into the sea or starved to death in Gaza, as would seem to be, now, long standing Israeli policy.
The future existence of the state of Israel isn't a matter of the state of Israel having rights, it's a matter of it getting along with those people within its borders and outside of those.
The assertion of rights, especially the rights allegedly gained by taking land from people who lived there before the Israeli state occupied it aren't anything that anyone will feel the need to take seriously in perpetuity. I doubt that the present status will hold for much longer.
That "right" has been asserted for most of the 20th century and it is probably accepted by fewer people today than it was the first time it was made. I don't think that number is likely to increase as compared to that of those who don't find the present policy of the Israeli government acceptable.
The extent to which Israel can be expected to continue to exist depends on it allowing the Palestinian people to form their own, independent, contiguous state BECAUSE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE HAVE ABSOLUTELY AS MUCH RIGHT TO DO THAT AS THOSE WHO FORMED ISRAEL DID. THEY CERTAINLY HAVE AS MUCH OF A RIGHT.
The matter of Israel remaining a state is not a matter of the assertion of superior rights based on the history of the oppression of Jews in Europe. That is something that the Palestinian people had no hand in. The demand that they were the ones who had to pay the price of that is grotesquely unjust. As some pointed out at the time of the creation of Israel, if it were a matter of justice it should have been formed in the European heartland.
That people thought that Palestinians and their cousins in the Middle East would be any more accepting of what happened than they would have in Europe, I think that is due to the same racist assumptions that led Europeans to believe they could forever keep the indigenous populations in their colonies under control due to a belief in their intellectual and moral inferiority.
I will note that when I suggested that a Jewish State would have been more safely established on land donated for that purpose by my own country, the United States -which might barely notice the subtraction - the idea was derided as if the Holocaust had happened here instead of the United States having helped end it. I still say that a Jewish homeland surrounded by the United States would almost certainly have flourished in a state of peace instead of having been in a state of war for its entire history.
But all of that is a moot point, now. That wasn't the path that was taken and the millions of people, ALL OF THEM THE POSSESSORS OF EQUAL RIGHTS, there on the ground in 2016, is the context in which any settlement will have to be attempted.
If it will succeed is unknown but to let the matter remain unsolved because it might fail is only beneficial for the worst of politicians and demagogues. Such are the ones who have benefited the most from the status quo. And the terrorists, they have benefited mightily from this situation. It is one of the ironies of Israeli history that what began in the aspiration of social democrats is ending up the kind of military state that is the inevitable result of being at a state of war for years and decades. I think the Jewish people deserve entirely more than that, as do the Palestinian people and, in fact people of other countries in the area and everywhere. They deserve more because among those rights everyone is endowed with by our Creator are those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If the most extreme supporters of Israel demand even with all of their dirtiest polemical tactics that the entire world treat Israel as if it were the embodiment of a unique exceptionalism they are deluded. Whether or not they believe that exceptionalism is real, the majority of the world do not and will not ever grant its reality.
The same kind of grotesque and horrible consequences come when that has been asserted by many in United States. The present assertion of it is a warning sign that we are in grave danger of devolving into fascism, It is one of the reasons that we face the prospect of an actual fascist being nominated by one of the two real parties here. Assertions of American exceptionalism have been behind a majority of the worst acts taken by the United States. The concept of manifest destiny is an assertion of the right of the American state to commit genocide. Other assertions of the right of the American state and individual states are some of the forces most destructive of personal rights here and around the world. It is enormously dangerous and it is bound to descend into worse as the majority of the world does not acquiesce to that delusion only to the further rage of the deluded.
And if you think the United States and Israel are the only places that can happen, that the assertion of the rights of states is safely segregated to those two countries, you are deluded. Russia is only one place where that is also a terrible and grave danger. The only safe thing to do is to give up the delusion.
Update: Simels is now telling me to shut up on this topic, one I hadn't planned on writing about this month. If he doesn't like that I have said what I have, he only has himself to blame. I can point out that compared to what Gore Vidal said, I've been entirely even handed on the topic.
* I have commented on the mistake of calling the privileges granted to the press "rights" and how that endangers self-government. The fabled "Founders" sacrificed clarity in favor of rather minor late 18th century poetry a number of times.
Update to the later revision: The idea that a Jewish homeland surrounded by the United States would probably have flourished in peace instead of having been in a perpetual state of war since the late 1940s is being derided. All I can say is that the idea that a Jewish homeland on land taken from the Palestinians, surrounded by them in refugee camps in countries that were hostile to that act and the founding of Israel where it is would eventually flourish in peace is now obviously known to have been a delusion.
I would still be in favor of that offer being made because I think the world would be a much safer place if it happened. I'd love there to be millions of more Jews living on North America. I'd love there to be millions of more Jewish citizens of the United States. For some reason my antagonist hates that idea, whereas he's lived here his entire life. Maybe he just doesn't care for Jews all that much.
Ok, that was said to be provocative. But it's still the truth.
Update 3: Again Mr. Simpey claims that there would be more peril in the establishment of a Jewish Homeland surrounded by the United States than in Palestine. I have to wonder how he could feel secure living in the United States if he's so sure of that. I don't understand why he hasn't fled the lesser NYC area for that land of peace, security and safety, Israel, if he really believes that. Why hasn't he fled this hell hole? Someone once said, "A Zionist is someone who thinks YOU should move to Palestine.
Update 4: Oh, yeah, Simps, that's because everyone knows that all American anti-semites would love to have millions of more Jews as citizens of the United States. I have to admit that I've got a selfish motive, I think if there were millions more Jews in the United States we may never have another Republican president and the prospect of a fascist like Trump or Cruz becoming president would be ever so much more remote.
So, if it's so bad here, why are you securely seated in the NYC area? What a brave guy you are, giving up he safety of Israel for this place of peril.
J. S. Bach - Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV 903 played on Clavichord
Anna Maria McElwain clavichord
I think this piece is one of the pieces by Bach which is most obviously suited for the capabilities of the clavichord. It's a great piece on any keyboard but its deep intimacy is best suited for the most direct and intimate of keyboards with an ability to produce a large range of volume and subtle alteration of pitch.
Race, Ethnicity And Class Distinctions Are The Most Enduring Forms Of Discrimination
In the postscript to the piece posted here last Thursday, I noted how the rights of LGBT people have been advancing as the rights of black people, Latinos, members of other racial groups and women have been either lagging or have gone into reverse. I noted that could well be because the media representation of LGBT people and, so the idea of us that most people carry in their heads is of white, middle-to upper class, white collar types, or, really, stereotypes, and so we have benefited from the racism of the media in some ways. I pointed out that other identities of white people who have been the subject of even grinding discrimination in the past have also benefited from the racism that is rampant in our media elites and ruling class.
But the particular facts of our identity as LGBT people carries its own advantage. The fact is that no member of the elite, the white, wealthy elite who really run the media and through that have an influence on the thinking of an effective majority of Americans, isn't related to someone who carries the LGBT identity. No family in the country, in its extended if not nuclear configuration is without lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or transsexuals. That has been made public sometimes by outing, sometimes by self-outing in even some of our most corrupt Republican-fascist political families as they have used hatred and fear of us for their political and financial gain. It is as true for the members of the media who have carried the poison of such political and financial elites. And the same can be said of those in other walks of life, the fundamentalist clergy and ersatz religious figures who do the same.
The extent to which the advancement of LGBT rights has benefited from our close familial relations with those who would deny us our rights is important to consider because it can account for why racial groups and other groups who are not in the families of those elite oligarchs have been subjected to hate campaigns in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The almost exact parallel lines going up and down in terms or rights form at the same period. What should have happened is that all of us should have gained in equality when that's not the case.
Another telling thing to consider is that the rights of women have also suffered in the same period and, so as to show that every group that has been oppressed has to work against its own particular dynamics, no family is male only. In that case economic class become even more relevant to what is happening. Look at the women who are in the media, especially the alleged news media. I'm old enough to remember when the only on-air role for women in news reporting was the two or three minutes Nancy Dickerson had around 3:00 on CBS. The white women on CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the broadcast networks have been the real beneficiaries of the same affirmative action laws which cover them, even as their networks and shows have promoted politicians who have attacked affirmative action for black people and members of other minority groups, and even white women lower in economic class to them. I'm sure some of the women in the media and in politics know that better than I could. I'm sure Nancy Dickerson realized that it was her social and economic class that allowed her to pioneer the role of women on TV as much as her abilities and work ethic, many women who were as intelligent and hard working never got the chance she did. Though I am just as sure that the women who work at CNN and FOX could care less about that or they wouldn't work for those organizations.
There is a class and a racial divide among women and among LGBT people which divides us and is used to weaken any attempt by us to rise as a group. The divide between black feminists and white feminists was a topic of serious consideration and discussion among feminists in the early 1970s and persists even today. It is a tribute to feminists that they confronted that to an extent that I don't remember ever even being discussed among gay men. But the issues of race and economic class which has weakened our attempts at equality won't be suppressed forever, anything which weakens us as a group is a potential opportunity for our enemies. And, more importantly, it's a matter of morality, a matter of the kind of people we aspire to be. I don't think that divide is surmountable without economic justice, which means, in the end, an end to the raging disparity of incomes among the rich, the middle class and the poor. Without that and the removal of class privilege full equality will never be achieved.
But the particular facts of our identity as LGBT people carries its own advantage. The fact is that no member of the elite, the white, wealthy elite who really run the media and through that have an influence on the thinking of an effective majority of Americans, isn't related to someone who carries the LGBT identity. No family in the country, in its extended if not nuclear configuration is without lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or transsexuals. That has been made public sometimes by outing, sometimes by self-outing in even some of our most corrupt Republican-fascist political families as they have used hatred and fear of us for their political and financial gain. It is as true for the members of the media who have carried the poison of such political and financial elites. And the same can be said of those in other walks of life, the fundamentalist clergy and ersatz religious figures who do the same.
The extent to which the advancement of LGBT rights has benefited from our close familial relations with those who would deny us our rights is important to consider because it can account for why racial groups and other groups who are not in the families of those elite oligarchs have been subjected to hate campaigns in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The almost exact parallel lines going up and down in terms or rights form at the same period. What should have happened is that all of us should have gained in equality when that's not the case.
Another telling thing to consider is that the rights of women have also suffered in the same period and, so as to show that every group that has been oppressed has to work against its own particular dynamics, no family is male only. In that case economic class become even more relevant to what is happening. Look at the women who are in the media, especially the alleged news media. I'm old enough to remember when the only on-air role for women in news reporting was the two or three minutes Nancy Dickerson had around 3:00 on CBS. The white women on CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the broadcast networks have been the real beneficiaries of the same affirmative action laws which cover them, even as their networks and shows have promoted politicians who have attacked affirmative action for black people and members of other minority groups, and even white women lower in economic class to them. I'm sure some of the women in the media and in politics know that better than I could. I'm sure Nancy Dickerson realized that it was her social and economic class that allowed her to pioneer the role of women on TV as much as her abilities and work ethic, many women who were as intelligent and hard working never got the chance she did. Though I am just as sure that the women who work at CNN and FOX could care less about that or they wouldn't work for those organizations.
There is a class and a racial divide among women and among LGBT people which divides us and is used to weaken any attempt by us to rise as a group. The divide between black feminists and white feminists was a topic of serious consideration and discussion among feminists in the early 1970s and persists even today. It is a tribute to feminists that they confronted that to an extent that I don't remember ever even being discussed among gay men. But the issues of race and economic class which has weakened our attempts at equality won't be suppressed forever, anything which weakens us as a group is a potential opportunity for our enemies. And, more importantly, it's a matter of morality, a matter of the kind of people we aspire to be. I don't think that divide is surmountable without economic justice, which means, in the end, an end to the raging disparity of incomes among the rich, the middle class and the poor. Without that and the removal of class privilege full equality will never be achieved.
Friday, April 29, 2016
Gerald Clayton - Deep Dry Ocean
Gretchen Parlato . vocals
Gerald Clayton . piano
Joe Sanders . bass
Justin Brown . drums
I love this album. Gerald Clayton is a master composer of deep, mysterious and profound music for master performers.
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