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Wednesday, May 28, 2003
The Matrix Re-viewed
“The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
For me, the appeal of the 1999 movie The Matrix is simple. It’s not the shades and black leather outfits; it’s not the ultraviolence. Those I could do without, although I did enjoy the noir style of the beginning, particularly the scene of the black caddy under the bridge in a rainstorm. The movie works for me because I read it as a straightforward condemnation of two powerful forces, corporations and media.
Corporations are the machines, the media the simulation.
In the abstract, and disregarding the fact that I work for one, corporations are similar to Frank Herberts’ sand worms -- a gullet with no eyes and no heart. They run on that famous engine called profit, which in turn feeds on the environment, people, anything that will keep it stoked. The intelligence of the corporation is unconnected to the organic systems upon which life depends; their one reason for being is to replicate profits, even if it means the creation of conditions antithetical to human life. They’re less than bright that way.
Only laws built to serve the common good can keep this force in check, yet corporations have wrested law-making authority from the people, governments from their connection to populations. Nearly every top job in the Bush administration, for example, is filled by a former corporate executive previously dedicated to subverting laws that make sense for old-fashioned, organic people, but not for modern corporate entities.
But back to the movie. The artificial intelligence Morpheus speaks of – the beginning of the great calamity – is analogous to the artificial personhood of the corporation and the artificial reality of TV.
It’s no accident that Morpheus’ speech to Neo on how the world was brought to its ghastly state features a blank room with two battered armchairs and a TV set, both circa the 1950s, the era of the birth of broadcast television. It is in this setting that Morpheus speaks of the “birth of AI.” Whether an electronic media mirage or a computer simulation, the end result is greater control, and a collective mind sold on the “wisdom” of machine or corporate rule, as the case may be.
Kurt Vonnegut articulated this modern-day dread in his Clemens Lecture presented in April for the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. “We have suffered a technological calamity,” he said. “Television is now our form of government.”
I haven’t seen The Matrix sequel yet, and I don’t see the need for one, except, ironically, its ability to keep the audience plugged in. The ending of the first was perfect, leaving the revolution that would free humanity up to the imagination, underscoring the point Morpheus makes to Neo: “I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”
In other words, it is incumbent upon everybody to wake the fuck up.
“… you have been down there Neo, you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be.”
Thursday, May 22, 2003
The Rockford College graduation speech by Chris Hedges
I want to speak to you today about war and empire.
Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now. (more)
Frank Paynter blogged this yesterday at Sandhill Trek. He gave it a much better title, Stoned in Rockford. (This is *not* just blogrolling in our time -- ed.)
Hedges, author of the book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, was booed fairly loudly and consistently during his speech at the small, (ahem) liberal arts college. Someone pulled the plug on his mic twice, and they thought it best to have security hustle him off the stage at the end of his presentation. I heard Hedges last night on Pacifica radio's Democracy Now!; their Web site offers an audio download of the powerfully delivered speech.
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
A new dark age?
Slavoj Žižek on why democracy is dead.
As for the United States itself, Zakaria’s diagnosis is that “America is increasingly embracing a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness as the key measures of legitimacy. ... The result is a deep imbalance in the American system, more democracy but less liberty.” The remedy is thus to counteract this excessive “democratization of democracy” by delegating more power to impartial experts insulated from the democratic fray, like the independent central banks.
Such a diagnosis cannot but provoke ironic laughter: Today, in this alleged “overdemocratization,” the United States and Britain started a war on Iraq against the overwhelming will of the rest of the planet (and, in Britain’s case, its own people). And are we not, all the time, witnessing the imposition of key decisions concerning global trade agreements by “impartial” bodies exempted from democratic control? Even more fundamentally, is it not ridiculous to complain about “overdemocratization” in a time when the key economic and geopolitical decisions are, as a rule, not an issue in elections?
Two more articles by Zizek here and here. All courtesy of In These Times.
Strange Weather Lately
"What has happened to us?" asked Kurt Vonnegut in his Clemens Lecture presented in April for the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. He answered: "We have suffered a technological calamity. Television is now our form of government."
He doesn't explore the idea, at least in this Alternet posting, but he does later explain that quoting Abrahm Lincoln is a mistake because he always steals the show. Vonnegut does it anyway:
The person congressman Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said was James Polk, our president at the time. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his president, our armed forces' commander-in-chief, "Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood – that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy, he plunged into war."
Holy smokes! I almost said, "Holy shit!" And I thought I was a writer!
Answer your own question, why dontcha
Driving into work this morning, I heard the following from the local public radio announcer:
Coming up on NPR's Morning Edition: What's behind the increase in the terrorist alert threat level? And Tom Gjelten reports on the Bush administration's desire to begin research on a new class of small nuclear weapons, despite a 10-year ban prohibiting the development of the so-called mini-nukes.
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Part Russian
I've always been glad that Russia is part of my genealogy, because, like Charley Reese, I admire the Russian people.
Charley was recently thinking about Russia and "that old drunk Boris Yeltsin." He got a column out of it, a good one.
I agree with Alexander Solzhenitsyn that the people who suffered under communist rule nevertheless retained their spirituality, while the West lost its soul wallowing in materialism. (more)
Monday, May 19, 2003
High Water
It's bad, you know. (more)
Friday, May 16, 2003
The Theory of Luck
With regard to the 9/11 attacks, it has been said that the intelligence agencies have to be right 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to get lucky once. This explanation for the devastating attacks of September 11th, simple on its face, is wrong in its value. Because the 9/11 terrorists were not just lucky once: they were lucky over and over again. Allow me to illustrate. (more)
~ Mindy Kleinberg is a founding member of September 11th Advocates, a family advocacy group that spearheaded the grassroots effort for the establishment of the independent commission on September 11th.
Read this devastating testimony given at the FIRST public hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which was...late 2001? No. Surely, with a president so intent on securing the country from further terrorist attacks, it had to be sometime in early 2002. Nope. Oh hell, I forgot, this is bizzaro America. Ms. Kleinberg gave her testimony six weeks ago.
Found Ms. Kleinberg's words at Mindless Blather. Site author Kyte makes a cogent point when he pulls out this excerpt:
With regard to the INS, the terrorists got lucky 15 individual times, because 15 of the 19 hijackers' visas should have been unquestionably denied.
Most of the 19 hijackers were young, unmarried, and un-employed males. They were, in short, the "classic over-stay candidates". A seasoned former Consular officer stated in National Review magazine, "Single, idle young adults with no specific destination in the United States rarely get visas absent compelling circumstances."
Yet these 19 young single, unemployed, "classic overstay candidates still received their visas." I am holding in my hand the applications of the terrorists who killed my husband. All of these forms are incomplete and incorrect.
Some of the terrorists listed their means of support as simply "student" failing to then list the name and address of any school or institution. Others, when asked about their means of support for their stay in the US wrote "myself" and provided no further documentation. Some of the terrorists listed their destination in the US as simply "hotel" or "California" or "New York". One even listed his destination as "no".
Had the INS or State Department followed the law, at least 15 of the hijackers would have been denied visas and would not have been in the United States on September 11th, 2001.
Kyte comments: "I find this absolutely incomprehensible. I came to the USA in 1996, with money, a destination, a contact address and phone number, an intention and a return ticket and date of return to my home country, and still I was taken aside and questioned before being allowed into the country. Why did this not happen with the terrorists?? Could it be because INS was told to let these people in? Heaven forbid. Makes you think, though...and perhaps its not so far from the truth."
Thursday, May 15, 2003
One of these things is not like the other
Which of the following 'known' al Qaeda terrorist attacks does NOT fit with all of the rest:
1998 - Truck bombing of American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
2000 - Boat bomb attack on USS Cole in Yemen
2001 - Simultaneous hi-jacking of 4 American commercial airliners that were then crashed into WTC & Pentagon from hundreds of miles away by unskilled pilots
2001- Attempted Shoe Bomb attack by Richard Reid
2002 - Bali Disco Bomb
2002 - Boat bomb attack against French Oil Tanker in Yemen
From Subversive Mike's Feb. 2, 2003 edition of subversivetalk.
We can now add to the list: 2003 - Car bombing of housing compound in Riyadh.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Big Media doesn't want you to know
By John Sugg
Come next month, you -- and America -- are probably going to get royally screwed (again) by George Bush's regime. "Huh?" you say as you tightly cross your legs, "Why haven't I heard about that?"
The answer to that is easy: Big Media, including the billionaire sisters who bleed Atlanta with their Coxopoly, don't want you to know.
After all, what promises to be a gang rape of the First Amendment, one of the most corrupt assaults on American democracy in memory, is a joint venture of the regime and the media. It's euphemistically called deregulation -- in reality, it's a license to consolidate almost all media into as few as a half-dozen conglomerates. Maybe only three. Maybe, someday, only one, the Fox/Cox/Gannett/Knight/Tribune/AOL/NBC/CBS/ABC/Clear Channel Network. Another name for that Frankenmedia monster is: Big Brother.
The Federal Communications Commission, bossed by Colin Powell's son Michael, is prepared to strip away the last restraints on media consolidation at a meeting June 2. The biggest winners will be General Electric/NBC, Disney/ABC, AOL Time Warner, Vivendi-Universal -- and, of course, the Bush neocon propaganda machines, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp./Fox and radio monster Clear Channel. (more)
What can you do? Support MoveOn.org's Stop the FCC campaign.
There's also an opportunity to make some noise in Atlanta, where "a group led by Heather Gray of WRFG (Radio Free Georgia) 89.3 FM has managed to arrange a May 21 public hearing with [FCC commissioners] Adelstein and Copps on the FCC proposals," says Sugg. Arrangements are still being finalized.
More info from Common Dreams.
UPDATE: The May 21 hearing with FCC commissioners is at 6:30 p.m. at Emory University's Glenn Memorial Church auditorium.
Die-hard liberals
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
~ Mario Savio at Berkley's Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964. (more)
---
It's not simply opposition to the war in Iraq which caused me to run for president. It's opposition to a policy which sets America apart from the rest of the world because it's the policy which says that America can be the policeman of the world, that America can invade any country it pleases, that America can impose its doctrines and power anywhere it wants in the world. I think we're in a new era where the advancing tide is towards human unity, where people all around the world want to come together. The United States is in a position where it can lead the way towards that and it can do it in practical ways by affirming the power of the United Nations so that the international process makes decisions on international security. And that way we make our own country more safe. The United States can help to secure a structure of international cooperation through participating in the international criminal court... which is basically a statement of equality before the law among nations. We can participate in the Kyoto climate change treaty and address our urgent environmental problems, which this country is a prime part in creating in this world. America can help to affirm international order, not through the force of arms but through the force of morality. The morality which says that we must lead the way in achieving a biological weapons convention and a chemical weapons convention and a land mines treaty and a small-arms treaty, and all of those things which say, 'We will work cooperatively with the world.'
~ Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, NPR's Morning Edition, May 14, 2003 (more)
Monday, May 12, 2003
Of things hidden and strange
I don’t normally think of myself as a spiritual person. I’m a modern American, so recognizing that dimension takes an effort. But something tells me – a spirit? –I should pay a bit more attention to things spiritual.
It’s not just that I watched Spirited Away Friday night. The Japanese animated movie is, as the name implies, about entering a spirit world. But before I even brought the DVD home, strange things were happening.
First, on Thursday, my car shorted out in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble, where I’d gone during lunch. I was going to combine a walk on the nature trail behind the store with a visit to the store -- I’d already eaten lunch at my desk – but instead picked up The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast from its resting place among the CDs, pens, and papers on the passenger seat.
After losing myself in the cold and heartless double dealing of the WTO, World Bank , and IMF, I decided I best get back to work. I went to start my car, and…zit…zat…click, click, click. Dead. But then my CD player came back to life, ejected its CD, and began playing a station I don’t listen to. But still the car wouldn't start. A jump from a worker at the AMC theater next to the bookstore did nothing, so Leigh had to make the one-hour trip to rescue me.
Car trouble, it happens to everybody. No reason to think I’d offended the spirits. But by the next morning, I was beginning to wonder. This is when, after calling a tow truck from the office, meeting the driver at B&N, and seeing my car safely off to a nearby garage, I turned to my wife’s car and realized I didn’t have the key. The tow truck and my Honda were merging into the four-lane commercial thoroughfare and I was effectively stranded. I searched the car and the parking lot, but to no avail.
A call to the garage revealed that the key had not been left on the Honda keyring. So, in addition to paying a tow truck driver that Friday morning, I also got to pay a locksmith to fashion a new key.
Later, after e-mailing Leigh a long, rant-filled missive of woe, she e-mailed back with reassurances that it wasn’t me, the universe *was* out to get me, and everyone else too. Mercury, after all, was in retrograde. A friend in Leigh’s belly dancing class had mentioned it as they were standing around trying to get a recalcitrant CD player to cooperate, and several dancers had murmured “aahhh.”
______Mercury______
We laughed about that, in our virtual fashion, but maybe there’s something to it. I can at least partially lay the blame for my troubles on mysterious forces. A quick check on the Internet reveals that “Mercury rules communication, but more informal communications, like writing, speaking, short shopping sprees and other erranding endeavors… Since the car is usually used for shopping and errands, don't be surprised if the battery wire loosens or the fan belt snaps just when you have rush out for that one ingredient you forgot to buy.”
I didn’t know this, however, when I spoke with the mechanic on Friday morning. I was merely glad when he told me confidently that he had found the problem, a short that had fried my battery. He had isolated the problem to the steering or something coil (a wire!), and he just had to isolate it further (I will find the short, he said) and it should be okay. The CD player he was not so confident about, he told me in his Middle Eastern accent. "I don't know CD players. I can't fix that. The only thing I know about CD players, I listen to them." I told him not to worry about it.
The only thing I was concerned with was getting home and putting the week behind me. So on Friday night’s menu, in addition to the cold chicken and cous cous salad, the trip to Bruester’s for ice cream, and the bath and bedtime routine with the kids, was some made-to-order escapism – Spirited Away.
As the plot unfolds, as a girl of 10 is lost to a strange spirit world, you notice something important is happening. A world is created of majestic beauty, but also of hardship, vice, conflict. But there is a payoff for the true believer, and maybe, finally, it’s something as simple as a deeper respect for the living, the dead, the lost, and the strange, and for your world and yourself.
Spirited Away is uplifting, as any epic crowd pleaser should be, but the richness of color and detail of its hand-painted cells adds a very special effect – artistic vision. It’s one I’ve carried with me all weekend, even during what proved to be further trying adventures. Because Saturday night, 1 and ½ year old Audrey’s cold had blossomed into a full-blown ear infection. She woke us up at a quarter to one, crying in pain. And even after a dose of Tylenol and the attention of both parents, she still cried, screamed and intermittently writhed in my arms for over an hour, until we both decided that one of us best take her to the hospital to ease the pain, and to either be sure it was an ear ache and go ahead and get the prescription for antibiotics, or find out if it was something else.
And so, at 2 a.m. I found myself gliding through the deserted streets and highways, while Audrey drifted into a fitful, car-induced sleep. And I thought of Chihiro, the Spirited Away heroine, riding a ghostly train through a deserted but undeniably beautiful terrain in an attempt to save a loved one.
On Sunday, as Eleanor and Leigh ran errands and Audrey slept, I sat on the front porch and watched my yard receive a steady rain, my eyes soaking in the green hues of the trees, grasses, bushes, hostas, and herbs. A red cardinal at the feeder under the dogwood provided a sharp contrast. Before eating he looked over at me. Perhaps our eyes met. Perhaps our worlds met.
I don’t know. But Spirited Away reminds me of the hidden dimensions, the mysteries, the sometimes-rocky road. It reminds me to take care, pay attention. You might not find anything in it. Your mileage may vary. But I still think, even if I did find the missing key lying innocently on the floorboard under the lip of my front seat when I picked up the Honda on Saturday, that you should be extra alert when running those errands. Mercury is in retrograde until May 20.
Friday, May 09, 2003
A Damocles Sword hangs over Humanity
"It is the sharp edge of our own 'intelligence.' It is the raw power of human emotion. It is our intense desire toward Life and an indomitable will to overcome that is at once our salvation and our damnation." That's Subversive Mike at subversivetalk.
Here's another one (there's a bunch of columns over there):
It has been a while since I spoke to my good friend, Golden Bear. He is a Miwok medicine man and man about town. But with war looming and the world on the brink I sought him out for some much-needed wisdom. Golden Bear lives in a modest cabin high up on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County California. He forages for berries, roots, herbs and bored yuppie housewives. He has no trouble getting what he wants. Golden Bear is a rascal. But he is also one of those wise old sages who sees further and wider than the rest of us. More often than not when we meet he kicks my ass about this 'n that and helps me to see through my own self-righteous anger.
As is the custom, I brought him a six-pack of beer and a carton of cigarettes. This time it was Lagunitas IPA and Camel Lights. Also, as is the custom I carried a small tape recorder to document the words of Golden Bear. I parked my car at the Dipsea trailhead, girded myself for the climb and trudged up the mountain.
To be honest I didn't know what I wanted from him or what advice or opinion to expect. War is inevitable. Many around the world have marched in outrage, but that outrage has landed on the blind, deaf and dumb American President like belly-button lint. It's a mild curiosity about where it came from, but easily disposed of and forgotten. (more)
Discovered via BartCop.
Thursday, May 08, 2003
Cartoons To Ignite Your Id
In his latest column for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford asks, "Can animated gems like 'Spirited Away' save the ravaged American imagination?" It's an indication of the high praise he heaps upon the film, and since Mark is extremely cool, it's probably worth checking out.
Here's a few initial graphs of Mark's piece.
And then along comes one of those extraordinarily rare and shimmering hunks of gorgeous pop-culture art/entertainment to make you rethink everything you thought you believed and about which you were sort of comfortably sad and bitter and resigned.
You know the ones. Those astonishing unexpected gems that somehow manage to break through your thick wall of bitter media-numbed ennui and slip right around your fine-meshed bullshit filter and hit you right in the solar plexus of hope and enchantment and maybe humankind isn't so utterly savagely doomed after all even though it probably is, but oh well.
Because this is when you finally catch the animated Japanese masterpiece "Spirited Away" on DVD. This is when you finally find a pop-culture art piece that speaks to multiple levels of human creativity and divine imaginative power, which you want to champion and cheer and exalt and bow humbly before and say to the jaded world hey, you know what?
And if you are anything like me, you see this movie and you are completely taken aback, dazzled and humbled and impressed, at once enthralled and encouraged and also realizing in one sad sighing punch how utterly and embarrassingly bereft American popular culture is of any sort of fresh and ingenious mythmaking. (more)
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
Wheel of fortune
It's time for America to spin the wheel of fortune again, time for gladiators to enter the arena of presidential politics.
Here's a little early handicapping on the Democratic candidates from Ed Hanratty at democraticunderground.com :
Did anyone catch the recent Democratic Presidential debate? Of course not. Why? Not because you don't care - because the ABC network ignored its FCC duty to best serve the public interest, airing (at least in the New York market) "Wheel of Fortune" and "Gladiator" as eight men and one woman spoke publicly in the most underrated art-form we know, civil debate, about why they believed that they should be the forty-fourth President of the United States. (more)
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Pinch hitting
for me today is my wife, Leigh. She wrote the lovely piece I'm offering below one late, late night this past winter when she couldn't sleep.
The Angel Princess Eleanor Ballet
The performance, like many others, is scheduled for dinnertime, ensuring that the call to table will be accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth. The star? Three-year-old Eleanor, wearing a pale pink leotard and tutu over her sweatshirt and flannel pants. The show is about to begin. Daddy and Mommy are sitting on the stairs, restraining fourteen month old Audrey, who likes nothing better than crawling or walking around, squealing with delight, during one of her sister’s carefully planned performances. We have been seated by the star, Daddy at the bottom of the stairs and Mommy at the top, and our seats provide an excellent view of about one-third of the performance. The rest will take place on the far side of the living room, out of our view, or in the dining room or kitchen. The star, besides ushering, also provides her own music and hoists her own pretend curtain.
Angel Princess ballet encompasses everything that Eleanor thinks is beautiful and, if she knew the word, virtuous. She does not know that angels can be bearers of bad news or that they can stand with flaming swords, barring you from Paradise. She has not yet learned that princesses are spoiled, self-absorbed, overbred remnants of a parasitical and obsolete system of government. Or that ballerinas spend their careers battling pain, injury and eating disorders. All that knowledge comes later, with experience. For now, it’s all about beauty.
There is simply not enough beauty in the world of a three year old, even one with a liberal arts major, stay-at-home mom. There’s not enough candy or TV watching either, but those are other essays. Particularly in February, when there has been no snow to relieve the dank bare grayness of trees and sky, when one cold, cloudy day rolls into the next and the only spots of color come from the occasional cardinal or bluebird at the bird feeder or the brave and lonely yellow crocus that has been blooming since last week. Spring, with its promise of warmth and green and vividness, seems years away. In lieu of a colorful, warm alternate universe into which a child might pop via a chalk sidewalk picture, a dusty wardrobe, a rabbit hole, or a magical dragon scale, one must invent beauty this time of year. Eleanor’s mother brings home stacks of gardening books from the library. Eleanor has put all of her yearning for beauty into this performance.
I don’t wish to appear naïve. I know that this performance is also about power. There is also never enough power in the world of a three year old, or there shouldn’t be, at any rate. Eleanor feels shortchanged when it comes to power. Already she feels the allure and speaks openly and often of her wish to be a grown-up, so that she can watch as much TV as she wants, stay up late, and not finish her milk. The power of arranging a performance that she controls completely has been undermined tonight by the manifestation of an imaginary stagehand who won’t talk to her. This stubborn and silent being lurks behind the big reading chair in the living room; Eleanor ducks behind the chair and comes back out, wondering aloud why that girl won’t talk to her. The performance is being delayed, dinner will be ready in mere moments, and still, the invisible girl holds up the show. Finally, I suggest that the non-communicant must belong in the audience, with Mommy, Daddy, and Audrey. Eleanor likes her audiences attentive and absolutely quiet until called upon to applaud.
What does it mean that a child so young yearns after both beauty and power? I think that the Angel Princess ballet is an eloquent illustration of human frailty – it is our weakness to desire what we don’t understand. Most of the world’s big messes, from the Trojan War forward, can be blamed on this lethal combination.
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